Work Text:
A/N: This takes place within the Guardian of Screwing Up continuum, between The King of Cold Mountain and The Boy Who Found Fear at Last. It’s not necessary to read those stories to get this one but for those who are reading GoSU, this happened.
A Game of Overblowns
by Kate Anders
Jack landed hard in the dirt, the impact blasting his shoulder with a web of pain. He rolled to his back, gasping, his mouth dust-dry, the glaring sun blinding his tired eyes.
He tried to stand, but his whole body felt like one big bruise. He gave in and sprawled on the ground with a defeated groan.
The sun above him was suddenly eclipsed as Bunny skidded to a stop beside him.
“Get up, mate.” Bunny hoisted Jack up by his shoulders. “C’mon Jack, you’re all right.”
“I don’t know if I can keep going,” Jack gasped, clinging to Bunny for support as the rabbit pulled him to his feet. “How did this even happen? Bunny, how did it come to this?”
“Don’t you give in on me now, Jack, we can still do this. Look at me –” Bunny gripped Jack’s shoulder, and Jack reluctantly looked him in the eye again, heaving to catch his breath. “We can do this together. We can still turn this around. We have to, mate! Think of what’s at stake! We are not losing. Not like this, and not to them!”
What’s at stake. Jack’s resolve crystallized at the center of his being, giving him new strength. He nodded, clapping Bunny on the shoulder. “Okay. I’m with you. We can do this.”
“Too right we can.”
“Oi!”
The shout carried over from the other side of the field, where the Leprechaun was shaking his hands with impatience.
“Are we playing the game or what, you saps?”
Jack took a running stance. “How did I go 300 years without hearing about Mythic Rules rugby?”
“I have no idea,” Bunny said, crouching to run next to him. “It’s not a carefully guarded secret."
He tossed the rugby ball to the centerline, counting down - “And - go!” and they charged back into the process of horrifically losing to - of all people - the Groundhog and the Leprechaun.
The field itself seemed set against them. The ball when kicked by the Groundhog or the Leprechaun flew straight and true, but whenever either of them got a good shot in, it was deflected by some invisible flaw in the field, their shots all going wild when they most needed them not to. It wasn’t until the balls they kicked started ricocheting around the field as if it were a giant pinball machine that Bunny reached the obvious conclusion.
“You’re cheating, you Paddy hoon!” he shouted, looking fit to forget the game and pound the Leprechaun more literally, and violently, into the dirt.
“Janey Mack! You think I would?” the Leprechaun feigned insult.
“If he’s cheating, doesn’t that mean we win?” Jack asked.
“No luck there,” Bunny answered, with a resentful growl. “Cheating is fair game, as long as you can cover it up. He only loses if we figure out how he’s doing it. Which I will!” he finished with a shout.
The Leprechaun just laughed mightily. “The game’s nearly done, you Aussie amadán! I wish you all the luck in the world. You’re gonna need it.”
“Now hang on a hot minute,” the Groundhog cut in. “I resent the implication that America needs luck to win something as simple as a rugby match between friends.” He chuckled the self-congratulatory laugh that was like razor wire to literally everyone else’s ears.
"Right, we know, you’re the best at everything,” Bunny groaned. “Now get back to being the best at the game.”
“As you know, America has a long tradition of winning,” the Groundhog went on, as if Bunny hadn’t spoken. “At everything. Everything that counts anyway; important things such as barbecue. And creating the best version of football.”
“Okay, we get it!” Jack exploded, as he blazed past the Groundhog, ball clamped firmly under his right arm, and, unbelievably, tripped on absolutely nothing.
The Groundhog plucked the ball from Jack’s grasp and trotted off with it, stopping only when Bunny dashed between him and the goal line. The Groundhog threw the ball, and Jack was prepared to laugh as it launched high over Bunny’s head, but fell almost immediately behind him, where it bounced right back into the air and fell right into the waiting hands of the Leprechaun, who stepped over the goal line for another score.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. How is this happening to us?” Jack asked, gaping, appalled, as the Groundhog and the Leprechaun did yet another victory dance. He threw his hands out to the spectacle as Bunny loped to his side. “How is this my life?”
“‘Bout time we stopped goin’ easy on ‘em, wouldn’t y’say?” Bunny said, expression wry, eyebrow raised.
Jack beamed a wicked grin back. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, but let’s make them sorrier.”
“Couldn’t’ve said it better myself,” Bunny said, crouching at the starting line. His smile had turned wicked as Jack’s. Moss was already growing beneath his paws. Jack crouched beside him, the temperature of the air dropping around them both.
It wasn’t that anything went in Mythic Rules rugby. There just wasn’t a lot that didn’t.
The game resumed as a no-holds-barred brawl for victory. Bunny exploded in and out of the earth faster than the Groundhog could say Uncle Sam, and Jack sent the Leprechaun slipping every which way on ice slides, once slingshotting him around so fast that the Leprechaun scored a goal for their side.
“Oi! Not everyone’s a powerhouse, y’bluearsed flies!” he shouted, stamping his foot and throwing the ball down.
“Not everyone’s a dirty cheat either, but we stopped complaining!” Jack shouted back. “this is for Glasgow in 1920!”
“Aww!” The Leprechaun breathed, putting a hand to his heart. “Still sore in yer tisnae over that, laddie? Why don’t you be sore about this, instead?”
He threw the ball, which pinballed back into Jack and Bunny’s goal before Jack could freeze it in place or Bunny could catch it with vines.
Jack looked at Bunny. “Sore in my what? I feel like that was dirty. Bunny, do you know what that means -?”
“It was, and I do. Don’t even ask.” Bunny waved a paw, eyes squinted shut in frustration. “Just - just play the game. We don’t have much time left.”
They threw themselves harder into the game, Jack freezing the ground solid when the Groundhog tried to burrow, Bunny snagging the ball across the field with new greenery, and in their renewed efforts (and lack of going easy), the score quickly rebalanced itself in their favor. But Bunny hadn’t lost his worried expression as the end of the game drew close.
With only a few seconds to go, and he and Jack eight points in the lead, he started shouting. “Y’charmed the ball! Coyote lent you a tooth! You owe Baba Yaga a solid! Concentrated luck?”
“No, no, no, and naught!” the Leprechaun shouted, laughing. “And the game’s set! Face your fate, y’clean ratten shoibags!”
“I’m so confused,” Jack muttered. “Are those actual words? Or does he just make them up and count on them to sound mean?”
Bunny threw the ball down hard enough to crack turf. “Strewth! I’m gonna wring every last galleon out of your hide you cheating Paddy hoon!”
“Relax, Bunny, we still won!” Jack said, as Bunny dragged his paws over his face in frustration.
“No we didn’t,” Bunny groaned. “We didn’t figure out how he was cheating. We needed two more points to win without figuring out how he cheated.”
“Who made this game up?” Jack yelled, throwing his staff on the ground beside Bunny’s angry open fault line.
The Leprechaun bared his gold-toothed grin. “You know what that means, gents.”
"No, I don't!" Jack yelled. "I don't know anything about mythic rules football! I don't think ANYONE knows! When was the last time you even PLAYED this game?"
"Bragging rights."
Bunny let out a wordless yell of anger, slapping his forehead with both paws.
The Leprechaun chuckled. "AND: Loser buys."
Jack looked from the opposing team to Bunny. “Loser buys how? Does the Leprechaun think EVERYONE’s got a pile of gold just lying around somewhere?” He paused. “And loser buys what?”
“Drinks after,” Bunny explained. He groaned again. “What a bloody pain that’s gonna be to get together. The Groundhog’s a two-pot screamer, but the Leprechaun can outdrink me and I used to party with the Centzon Totochtin.”
Jack reached into his pockets and turned them inside out. A moth fluttered out of the ragged, threadbare cloth. "Unless holes became extremely valuable in the last three hundred years without anyone telling me, I can't help you there."
“No worries. I’ve got an idea or two, but we’re gonna need some help to get it turned into cash.”
--
Jamie stood in the outfield, not so much playing this round of little league practice as existing in it. Sophie sat next to him, not engaged in the game at all. She was plucking yellow dandelions and bedecking Jamie with them wherever they would stay, sticking them in his pockets, threading them through his belt loops. Jamie endured his beflowering with manly stoicism as he waited for a fly ball strong enough to come within his range.
"Psst!"
The voice hissing from the bushes next to him was familiar.
"Jamie!"
Jamie whirled around, as did Sophie. Jack waved them both over to the bush in which he and Bunny were hiding, silently elated as ever to see the recognition in both of their eyes, elated that he had to hide at all. He retreated back into the bushes and the children climbed through in a moment.
"Hey Jack, what's up?" Jamie asked. His attempt at a casual tone didn't cover the excitement on his face.
"Bunny!" Sophie squealed, loud enough that someone outside the bushes had to have heard. She ran over to Bunny, steadier now than she had been a year and three months ago on toddlers’ legs.
"Hey, Soph," Bunny said, kneeling as Sophie hurtled herself towards him. He didn’t expect her to throw her arms around his neck in a tight, three-year-old hug, so he wasn’t braced for impact and she nearly bowled him over in her enthusiasm. “Woah! Good t'see you too, you little anklebiter,” he said, rallying, patting the little girl on the back. His expression as Jack caught a flash of it was almost helpless, the same charmed surprise of that Easter two years ago, the ruined one Sophie had helped make.
“You didn’t come see us for Easter!” Sophie blurted out, as she pulled away.
“Hey now, of course I did,” Bunny objected, “Didn’t you find the googies I left ya? Didn’t hide ‘em too hard this year, did I?”
Sophie shook her head. “I found the eggs, and I looked for you but you weren’t there,” she went on, her little frown more and more indignant.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” said Bunny, lowering his nose as Sophie reached up to pat his forehead, as if reassuring herself he was real. “Easter was a bit of a rush job this year.”
"What's going on?" Jamie asked Jack. "Is it another mission?" He was doing his best to put his serious, Guardian-consultant face on. "Do I need to get my Pitch-smacking boot?"
Jack laughed. "No, it's - not exactly a Guardian mission, but we do need your help. Think you can give us a hand?"
Jamie nodded enthusiastically, and for a moment, Jack was embarrassed. "Okay. Well, uh, first Bunny needs to give you a few talking points about horticulture -"
--
“We’re terrible role models,” Jack murmured, as he peered through the bushes at the door to the garden center, the door Jamie had disappeared through moments before. “Has he been in there too long? I think he’s been in there too long.”
“Go check on him,” Bunny said. “I’ll keep an eye on Sophie. Don’t forget the invisibility.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said, creeping out of the decorative shrubs which offered Sophie and Bunny cover. Contrary to Bunny’s advice, he didn’t keep himself invisible, darting up to the glass office door quickly. Jamie stood inside the office, safely haggling with a woman who was barely keeping her shock in check as she verified the species of the plant this 10-year-old boy had handed her.
Jack dashed away from the door before she could look up and get a glimpse of him. Having to MAKE himself invisible just in case an adult might see him in a moment of open-mindedness was weird. Having to tone down his visibility went against everything he’d longed for in his three hundred years of solitude, but there was something about his ethereal presence that mortal humans noticed, to the point that even he couldn’t walk into a shop and expect to be treated like an everyday human. Adults who caught a glimpse of him immediately knew there was something different about him, and that it ran deeper than his premature grey. Children were content to let that be magical and intriguing, but adults got wary too fast.
He returned to the bush where Bunny was growing flowers to amuse Sophie, to wait for Jamie to get back with the money neither of them could barter for.
“There’s just something that feels so . . . illegal about this,” he said, settling down in the dirt by Sophie.
“I grow those orchids the old-fashioned way, same as anybody,” Bunny said, as he tapped the earth with his front paw and sent daisies springing up around Sophie, in the not-old-fashioned way. “This isn’t the first time I’ve needed to cash one in.”
“I know, but still, something about sending a kid in to sell it for us -”
"You’re not wrong,” Bunny agreed, his expression strained between guilt at the way they were using Jamie, and distraction as Sophie tapped the ground, pointing out where, in her opinion, flowers should be grown. She hadn’t stopped giggling since they’d settled in the bush. “But consider our alternative."
"Which is?"
"Asking Tooth for a loan."
Jack momentarily pictured how that would probably go down - mainly, he pictured the Look that he suspected Tooth would give both of them.
"We're terrible role models," Jack murmured, parting the bushes to watch the door to the garden office again.
"You said it," agreed Bunny, as Sophie's attempt at weaving a flower crown fell apart again, and he picked up the fallen flowers to thread them together. "Here Soph, try it like this."
The door to the garden office opened, and Jamie came out, thumbing through a considerable wad of cash. Jack parted the bushes to let him through, and Jamie slipped in.
"You guys are seriously enlisting a child's help to get money?" he said. "You're terrible role models."
"Yeah, and don't you forget it," agreed Jack.
"If you're gonna model yourself after a Guardian, pick Sandy or Tooth," Bunny added, as he laid his flower crown on Sophie's giggling head. "They're brave, dedicated, hard workers -"
"We're irresponsible rascals who lose rugby games against the Leprechaun," Jack finished, ruffling Jamie's hair. "We’re not role models. We’re terrible warnings."
"The worst kind of warnings,” Bunny agreed, lowering his head as Sophie stood on tiptoe to crown him with her finally successful flower wreath.
Jamie's wry smile didn't change. "Okay, well then I want a bigger cut."
"What!"
"Otherwise who knows? Mom could use the money. Maybe I'll start some racket of my own. Now that I've got a taste for questionable money exchange, who knows how far I'll fall into a life of sort-of-crime?"
Jack's own expression turned wry. "This is about something other than our questionable role-modelness, isn't it?"
Jamie's face broke into an indignant frown. "I can't believe you guys didn't let me come watch mythic rules rugby! It sounds hilarious."
Jack laughed, ruffling Jamie's hair. "Next time, all right buddy? When the Leprechaun isn't cheating and we're actually winning."
While Jack and Jamie were figuring out plans, Sophie was pushing plans of her own.
“So next day-before Easter, I’ll go outside after Mommy tucks me in and wait and you can come get me so I can help,” she insisted, weaving daisychains like it was her job. “I’ll wait by the side door, the garage one, okay?”
“Ah - Sweetheart, don’t you wanna get a good night’s rest before the big day? Y’need your strength to find every egg -”
Jack laughed out loud. “Yeah, good idea Bunny, nothing a kid loves more than sleeping before a holiday.”
The look Bunny gave him said “you’re not helping” as plainly as if Sandy had been the one giving it. Jack wondered why that was. Bunny treasured time with the Bennet kids as much as Jack did, as much as all the Guardians did, and Sophie had a special place in his soft spot for children.
“I can help!” Sophie insisted. “I practice my coloring every day. Mommy says my eggs I draw are the prettiest in the world.”
“I bet they are,” Bunny agreed, “but wouldn’t your mum have a fit if she walked into your room and found you gone? That wouldn’t be right to do to her. You understand?”
Jack thought about all the times he hadn’t thought of exactly that when spiriting Jamie out for an adventure - to Cairo, or Tokyo, or any part of the world that the boy had never seen before, always in the dead of night, always leaving an empty bed behind. He tried to bring himself to feel bad about it, and managed something closer to awkward. Perhaps it wasn’t strictly right, but it was fun, and no harm had ever come to Jamie from it -
Sophie appeared to be giving this the same degree of deep thought as Jack. Her face cleared as she reached her solution. “I’ll ask Mommy then. She’ll say it’s ok, and then you can come get me, and she won’t be worried.”
Jamie laughed. “Yeah, mom can’t say she didn’t ask,” he said, all bright trickery.
“What parent is gonna tell their kid they can’t go help the Easter Bunny paint eggs for Easter?” Jack asked, grinning at Bunny. “You know you’ll have fun.”
The look Bunny gave him was as close to angry as Bunny ever got with Jack these days, which was not very. It was more a look of frustration that they weren’t on the same page.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, and Jack wasn’t sure if Bunny was talking to Sophie or him. “For now, Jack and I’ve got a deal to make good on.”
Jamie held out his hand. “My cut!”
“With interest,” said Jack, plunking cash into Jamie’s hand.
They dropped the Bennet kids off back at the edge of the softball field, then made for Dublin. Snagging a crate of Guinness and leaving the money behind for it left their consciences clean enough, and Jack was sitting on the crate while Bunny stood nearby on the Scottish moors in the last light of the sunset.
“Hey listen,” Jack said, as they waited. “Back with Jamie and Sophie - why were you so set on her NOT helping with Easter this year? She loved helping that one year and you can’t even begin to tell me you didn’t have a good time.”
“We don’t go around just dragging kids out of their homes every time we feel like it,” said Bunny, as if Jack didn’t do just that with Jamie. Jack wondered if he should admit to that - but Bunny went on. “We protect kids so they can live happy human lives. Just grabbin’ a kid every Easter because I want to sets a bad precedent,” he said. “It gives ‘er something she has to pretend didn’t happen.”
“We babysat her all afternoon,” Jack pointed out. “She already has to pretend that didn’t happen.”
“Yeah, and there wasn’t - that wasn’t even right, was it?” Bunny insisted. “That’s bad enough - we took kids from where they were supposed to be, just because we wanted to. Because it was convenient. It’s not exactly Guardian behavior.”
“But it was fun,” Jack said, grinning. “C’mon! It was totally harmless. And if she’s already in this deep, you might as well let her keep having fun, right? Besides, being around kids is good for us. Remember how stuffy you all got, when you weren’t hanging out with them? You could use the good influence. And you didn't object when we were calling the kids out of their homes to deal with Pitch.”
"That was the worst kind of emergency."
"But it was fun," Jack pushed, waiting for Bunny to agree.
“Look at it this way,” Bunny said. “Their mum was a kid once, too, and we protected her like we do Jamie and Sophie now. Imagine when Jamie and Sophie are grown up, with kids of their own, if they went to check on their kids at night and found their beds empty. Imagine how scared they’d be. Really - think about that. Sophie’s mum doesn’t believe in us anymore - so imagine her comin’ to check on her little girl Easter night, and finding her bed empty. And all she’s got to go on is that Sophie asked if she could go with the Easter Bunny, who, remember, doesn’t exist to her anymore. What’s she going to think, when her little girl’s vanished without even a sign that she ever left her room? How’s that going to make her feel? Her, a kid we used to protect.” He shook his head, looking over the hills. “There are things out there that do that to mortals, and we stop those things. We can’t start acting like them. Any more than you and I already have in this mortal lifetime, anyway.”
Jack fell silent, thinking of all the times he’d whisked Jamie out of his home for adventures. He didn’t want to admit, now, that he had, even to tell Bunny that he was overthinking things, that Jamie’s mom had never freaked out at finding his bed empty. He rolled the unhappy thought around in his mind, the sensation of being in the wrong an uncomfortable ember in his stomach, but before he decided on anything to say, the music reached them.
It came across the hills before the Leprechaun did, the raucous sound of many voices and many pipes and many feet on the distant hills. Soon, the Leprechaun leaped over the crest of the nearest hill, followed by a mass of small fairies so thick, they looked like a moving carpet.
Bunny groaned at the Leprechaun. “You brought the pictsies?”
The kilted, woad-smeared fairies laughed and cheered loudly at being recognized, not in the least dismayed as Bunny growled with frustration. “C’mon mate, we only got enough for four.”
“Seriously!” Jack exclaimed. “We went over the thing where not everyone has a pile of gold lying around!”
"What’s the matter, doon’tcha think the whole team should be in on the party?” the Leprechaun asked, the glint in his eye matching the glint of his grin.
“The whole -” Bunny’s eyes widened with realization. He sniffed the air, already thick with the heavy smell of unwashed pictsie, and the field-sized mass of tiny, burly blue folk. “They were your ace in the hole!” Bunny shouted, stamping his foot. “How did you - who gave you a charm to make them invisible? How’d you cover up the smell? When I find out who -”
“Relax, I knew you’d never figure it out,” the Leprechaun said. “Tell you what, I’ll cut you a bit of slack, seein’ as how you’re neither one of you known for investing. Boys!” a gold piece appeared suddenly in the Leprechaun’s palm, whether by magic or sleight of hand, and he flipped it across his knuckles before flipping it to two of the pictsies. “Go get us some more o’ the good stuff, won’t you?”
The chosen two vanished just as a little mound of earth popped open and the Groundhog leaped out, wearing shutter shades and with glowsticks in each paw. “All riiiight!” he shouted, and everyone winced. “Let’s get this party started -” at the sight of the pictsies, the Groundhog lowered his shutter shades, and looked at the Leprechaun. “Who are they?”
Bunny looked at the Leprechaun in disbelief. “He didn’t even know?”
“Know what?” the Leprechaun asked, all diminutive innocence that dissolved into a sneer. “‘Course not, as if he could houl his pish. Yank, the Pictsies. Pictsies, the Yank. Now you’ve met, aye? They’ve come to share a wee tipple t’celebrate the game.
“I will find out how you did that,” Bunny warned the Leprechaun, just as the disappeared pictsies raced back, two more cases between them. “Live it up now, because that’s one trick you’ll never be able to get past me again.”
“I’m tearin’ up I am, for my deep loss,” the Leprechaun said, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye. “How long are you goin’ t’keep up bein’ a sore loser? Because my thirst is mightier than your outrage, I’ll wager.”
The Groundhog flipped his shutter shades back on. “I SAID LET’S GET THIS PARTY STAAAARTEEEED!”
The pictsies cheered too as the Leprechaun cracked the first Guinness. Bunny rolled his eyes, but when Jack elbowed him, smiling, he shrugged. “Might as well.”
The sun went down fully as the Pictsies shouted out highlights from the game, arguing about which one had been responsible for what winning goal, who had been the one to trip up Bunny or Jack which time, and when the stars were fully out, the music started again.
"'Tis the last rose of summer, left -" sang the Leprechaun, his voice rising shockingly sweet over the misty hills.
"No, nope, not that one," Bunny interrupted. "Give us something with a bit of life in it, will ya? It's too early and I haven’t drunk enough for that one."
"A song with a bit o' life in it? Just a bit," the Leprechaun said, with a grin. "Haven’t you noticed someone dies in most of the songs o' the old country? Every other song is a wake! All the same -" and he launched into a much livelier round. "Oh the night that Patty Murphy died is a night I'll never forget. Some of the boys got loaded drunk and they ain't got sober yet -"
The pictsies cheered, producing instruments from . . . Jack honestly was not sure where. He didn't want to expend a lot of thought as to whether they'd pulled them straight out of thin air, or from somewhere in the vicinity of underneath their kilts, but it was easy not to dwell when the music began. The fairy tunes sent an itch straight to Jack's feet, and he knew if he'd been mortal, and even if he hadn't been himself, it would have been impossible for him not to dance.
To Jack's surprise, not a verse had gone by before Bunny had jumped in, of all things, singing with the Leprechaun. He had a good voice. A great one, even, and he and the Leprechaun wove harmonies against each other with ease, as if they'd done this more than once before. To Jack, who might have been able to carry a tune if someone had put it in a bucket for him, the fairy singing was a magic of its own.
After Pat Murphy, it was Lanigan's Ball and The Star of the County Down. Bunny and the Leprechaun took a break, as the pictsies kept on playing, fairy music pouring over the hills like water. More strange figures appeared from behind rock and tree, from under leaves on the ground and drifting in on breezes, until the flat grass was fairly crawling with gnomes, brownies, lutins, and goblins of the benign sort, that had no reason to shy away from the company of Guardians.
"Oi, ya paddy gallah, y'ever hear this one? In South Australia I was born -"
"Heave away, haul away -" the Leprechaun picked up, without missing a beat.
The fairy party cheered as the pictsies, not knowing the song, plucked out the notes anyway with what might have been magic, or might have just been hundreds of years of skill. Jack turned to the brownie on his left, politely offering him the rest of his drink, but just behind the brownie, someone with the power of duplication was already going to work on what the pictsies hadn't already drained. Refreshments, it seemed, were no longer in danger of running out.
The Groundhog, between every song, put all his effort into making it clear to everyone there, even the ones he'd never met before, that he loved them, man, no seriously, and once tried to chime into the singing with "The Star Spangled Banner."
"Have another mate," Bunny insisted, hooking an arm around the Groundhog's slight shoulders and shoving a Guinness into his paw.
"Or three," the Leprechaun insisted, foisting a lot more than three onto the Groundhog. "A hard day's game deserves a hard night’s drink.”
"You guys are . . . you're the guys," the Groundhog slurred, cracking the top off a bottle with his strong rodent teeth and downing it. As he gulped, he became less and less vertical, until with a thud and a splash, he was flat on the ground, Guinness soaking into his fur, surrounded by unbroken bottles.
"Two-pot screamer," Bunny murmured, plucking the empty bottle from the Groundhog's unyielding paw.
"Is he gonna be ok?" Jack asked.
"We all will be now that he's not singin'," the Leprechaun said. “Now where were we?”
“At Jack’s turn to give us a tune,” said Bunny, slapping Jack on the shoulder. “C’mon mate, y’got something from the new world that ISN’T bloody patriotic?”
“Well -” Jack considered, trying to think of something good and fun. “I don’t know if you guys’ll know this one, but -”
He launched into “Sailing For Adventure” from Muppet Treasure Island, which had been one of Jamie’s favorites last year. To his surprise, every single fairy there knew every single word, and joined in with so much enthusiasm that they ran through the song twice.
"I had no idea you guys liked the Muppets,” Jack said, bemused.
“Sure and it’s our late Jimmy we’re fans of,” cut in the bagpipe-playing pictsie.
“Aye, that was a rare mortal,” added a nearby goblin, a wrinkly, long-nosed brown person who, now that Jack thought of it, he might have actually seen in Labyrinth. Next to him, a colorful, shaggy fairy who wouldn’t have looked out of place in Fraggle Rock nodded enthusiastically. “There was a lad who knew a goblin when he saw one.”
“And how to make a good likeness, huh?” Jack said, glancing at the fairy crowd, observing the truth of the statement.
“Aye, indeed,” agreed a nearby brownie. “We’ll not see his like again, I’d wager, not unless the world becomes a luckier place.”
“The world was a richer place with him in it,” added the pictsie fiddler. He wiped a sentimental tear from his eye. Every fairy wearing a hat whipped it off solemnly, and slapped a hand to their chest, then changed hands when they remembered human hearts were on the left side.
“Well, that’s honor enough for one night,” decided the Leprechaun. “Time for another round, I think, we’ve not carried on long enough yet to be maudlin.” He began singing again, as did Bunny, and the music and dancing with them. The Groundhog murmured happily in his sleep, rolling over to spoon an unopened bottle, mumbling something about hamburgers, or maybe guns.
The party raged on, grubby, dirt-streaked, raucous, everything a mortal probably would not have thought of hearing the words "Fairy dance." The pictsie with the bagpipes took offense at the pictsie with the piccolo, and both threw down for a fight, which the fairies cheered enthusiastically. No one seemed to know why the fight had begun, or which side to cheer for, so the cheers they gave anyway were free to be claimed, and the rest of the pictsies (all but the fiddler) joined in, wanting to claim some cheers for their own. The fiddling pictsie underscored the brawl most skillfully, until the bagpipe-playing pictsie (who’d forgotten why he had started fighting the piccolo player, only that it had to be done) took offense at the fiddler’s playing, and picked up his bagpipes again to outplay him.
It might have been the drink alone, but it might have been the fairy dance, too, mushrooms springing out of the ground at the edge of the grass their many feet had already trodden flat. Jack’s memory slipped in and out around the edges of the songs, one or two now that were slow and full of longing slipping in among the dancing tunes. One minute the pictsies were weeping on each other’s shoulders, dry-eyed and laughing to a lively song the next. Jack recalled the Leprechaun singing alone, Bunny wiping a tear away, as words seemed to burn through the haze and onto Jack’s heart – “When true hearts lie withered, and fond ones are flown – o who would inhabit this bleak world alone?”
But the world was not bleak, and no one was alone. The next moment, Bunny’s arm was around Jack’s shoulder, and Jack was leading yet another round of Sailing For Adventure. Echoes of “MARGARITAS AT THE MIDNIGHT BUFFET” chased each other around the hills, louder than any other verse yet.
And there was ever a song to follow - Lukey’s boat is painted green, ha me boys – his father’s sword he has girded on and his wild harp slung behind him - I’ve had a life that’s full, everyone’s been good to me, so fire up that fiddle boy and give me one last drink –
The songs blurred together, the Leprechaun and Bunny no longer pausing for a break as Jack danced with everyone who would lend him a hand, even - once - the Leprechaun. Mortal music and music no mortal had ever heard swelled over the hills, while the night carried stars across the sky and Jack’s thoughts ran together.
When the eastern sky had brightened to a light periwinkle, Jack felt unsteady on his feet, as if he could feel the world spinning for the first time. The pictsies had dropped their instruments to fight again, and many more fairies had simply dropped to the ground, some already asleep, some watching the stars fade away as the dawn approached.
This time, Bunny began the song, kneeling at rest on the grass. “Of all the money that ever I had –"
“I spent it in good company,” the Leprechaun joined in, and the sounds of fighting faded as the pictsies looked up from their brawl, and, for the first time, seemed solemn as they picked up their instruments.
“But since it fell into my lot that I should rise and you should not, I’ll gently rise and softly call – goodnight and joy be to you all –"
Jack found himself thinking. Not of people who’d died, as were in so many of the other songs, cheerful as they were, but of myths of their kind – the ones who had faded away as their believers passed and no new ones were born to take their place, that had been forgotten by mortals, but never, perhaps, by them.
It was the grandest sound Jack had ever heard, and the notes sailed out a long time over the hills. The best kind of weariness settled into Jack’s bones as he realized he’d danced enough for then. He slumped down on the grass beside Bunny and flopped against his friend, using him as a pillow. “You sing really well,” he said, as sleep crept at the edges of his thoughts. “How come you never said so?”
“How come you never asked?” Bunny chuckled. Sleep didn’t seem to be weighing on him, and he rested his paw on Jack’s head, gently squeezing through the frost spirit’s hair.
Too tired for banter, Jack just closed his eyes.
Alone of the fairies disappearing into nearby homes, gusting away on the friendly wind, or sleeping where they lay in the mushroom circle growing at the edge of their trampled dancing ground, Bunny stayed awake. Alone of the creatures that walked on the earth, he looked directly into the sun as it broke over the hills, his eyes unburnt, smiling faintly as if it were the image of an old friend.