The room the two were led into was a kitchen.
They were pushed into chairs by the deceptively weak-looking fairies and glared at until the two awful creatures were satisfied that they wouldn’t get up and wander round.
The kitchen was a bustling hub
Cooks and maids of all shapes and sizes ran around and through things and each other, grumbling at everyone and everything.
“That girl called us humans,” Miranda observed, gazing at the only point of calm in the room, a serene cook who was slicing carrots so finely that they seemed to melt into nonexistence. Her skin was a very pretty pale blue colour.
“She did?” Oscar asked, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.
“Yes,” Miranda replied, choosing to ignore his distraction, “she did.”
“Oh,” Oscar said and then added, after some very deep thought: “She was beautiful.”
Miranda sighed. “Yes, she was,” she agreed, still watching the carrot slicer.
A burly cook with three more arms than is generally considered acceptable bore down on her and told her to get a move on. Without breaking a sweat, the serene cook tripled her speed, moving so fast her hands became a blur.
Miranda was impressed.
After a while, a small maid with nothing to do sidled up to them.
“Are you… you know… human?” she asked, tentatively, and Miranda marvelled at the fact that she was cockney, despite being three feet tall and swamp green.
“Of course we are!” Miranda replied, a touch affronted. She thought it was pretty clear that they were.
“Really?” the maid asked, and her excitement was almost tangible. “I never saw a human before. ‘Cept the Princess, of course, but she hardly counts.”
“What are you then?” Miranda asked, politely.
“Sprite. The Prince is an elf, of course. Wouldn’t see an elf in the kitchen, neither,” the little maid paused her to think, then added: “Wouldn’t see an elf needed a kitchen, really. It’s just for the Princess.”
“The Princess is the pretty girl with the pointy cheekbones, isn’t she?” Miranda asked, leaning forward.
“Yeah. Do you like her?” the sprite asked.
“She’s-” Miranda begun but then thought better of whatever she was going to say and so said instead, rather redundantly, “well, she’s pretty.”
“Oh, isn’t she! Course the Prince is a looker too, but really he’s nothing like her! Prettiest human I’ve ever seen, and better glamour than any fairy, too.”
“Glamour?” Miranda asked, dumbly. She vaguely remembered the word from her reading, but she wasn’t too well up on her fairy lore.
“You know. Sparkly magic to throw the humans off the scent,” the sprite explained. Miranda opened her mouth to reply, but didn’t get a chance to do so before the elf darted behind her. “I was only talking, I was only talking,” she shrieked, peering over Miranda’s shoulder at patch of air that turned out to be the Prince himself.
“Get away. Marlene said no sport,” he proclaimed coldy.
“I wasn’t having any sort of sport, I was just talking because I never seen a human before save Her Majesty, your Majesty,” the sprite babbled. She was terrified out of her wits, and she clung onto Miranda tightly, drawing blood with her nails.
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” Miranda said, feeling compelled to defend the sprite. She was the only company Miranda had had, as Oscar had become almost vegetative since opening the door into this palace.
The majestic figure rolled it’s eyes.
“Human, if this little thing was having sport with you, you’d not know until you were dead. Take it away,” he said to the fairies that had led the two into the kitchen. Miranda wondered when they had arrived.
She watched horrified as her sprite’s arm was roughly grabbed and twisted, and the sprite was dragged away.
She was nudged in the back of the knees by the second guard, and propelled forward several meters by this. She only just managed to stop herself from falling.
They were taken into another sparkly room, where the pretty girl sat in a ridiculously high throne that was supported by what seemed to be a column of ice.
The sharp faced man- the Prince- disappeared and then reappeared in the chair by her side.
“You should curtsey in the presence of her majesty,” the Prince said.
“Karrow, shut up,” the pretty girl spat. “I don’t want them to curtsey at me. And, men don’t curtsey, anyway. They bow.”
“They needed to show you the respect you deserve, my love. They’re in your kingdom.”
“My kingdom, my rules. I don’t want kids bowing at me, please. They’d look ridiculous.”
The Prince, Karrow, sighed. “You’re annoying today.”
The Princess scowled in return. “So are you. Why are you so eager? Don’t answer that!”
Miranda cleared her throat gently, drawing the attention of the couple back to her.
“Ye gods, this day just doesn’t get better,” the pretty girl grumbled.
“Sorry to… ruin your day, but we’re kind of confused, Oscar and I. We don’t know how we got here, and I would kind of like to get home.”
“Well, I don’t know how you got here,” the girl said.
“Does that mean we’re stuck here?”
“I will serve you your highness!” Oscar cried suddenly, flinging himself down to the floor. For his first words in about an hour, they weren’t very reassuring.
The Princess ignored him. “I’m sure you’ll get back some day, the same way you came,” she mused instead, half to herself.
“I will be a loyal servant, your highness!” Oscar shouted again.
Miranda nudged him with her toe. “Stop that,” she hissed.
“Don’t let them stay. I don’t like the male,” the Prince murmured.
“I’m sure you don’t,” the Princess spat in return, “but the female’s fine, yes?”
“Still a little too human for me, my dear,” he replied blithely.
“I’m human!” the Princess cried, affronted. But her prince only scoffed.
“Barely, my dear, barely.”
“You are infuriating,” the Princess muttered to the Prince before turning back to Oscar and Miranda. “I can bring you back to your world,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I am not a taxi service. That’s as good as it’s gonna get.”
“Thank you,” Miranda gushed happily.
The Princess only rolled her eyes.
-
She took them to a car park of a quiet block of flats.
“The high street is that way, sort of. Go along.”
“Um, where are we?” Miranda asked. Oscar was still struck dumb.
“London. Kentish Town. Now go.”
Miranda left, pulling Oscar with her.
It took forever to find out where he was from, slapping his cheeks and pinching his nose.
“Mill Hill? I’ve never heard of Mill Hill. Where’s that?”
But the boy wouldn’t- or couldn’t- answer.
A glance at her phone told Miranda that it had been twelve hours since she’d attempted to go out into her garden.
It was 01.15 AM.
“Christ,” she wondered aloud to herself, as Oscar was still no use, “how am I to get home?
-
The Princess and her Prince watched the humans stumble onto a bus, with interest.
“That was odd,” the Prince said, an arm around his Princesses waist.
She nodded. “Yes, it was. Do you think they realised they were speaking in Faery?”
Her Prince shrugged. “Does it matter? Come to bed, my love.”
The Princess acquiesced, with one last glance through the eyes of her pictsie, at the humans who found her secret kingdom.
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