The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t know what I am, is, or willbe.” He pulled at his mug. “All I know is was. I know what I was. Your father was there with me. That’s all I could ask.”
    Henry licked his lips. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he didn’t think the faerie was drunk. He wasn’t sure if it was possible for Frank to get drunk.
    “I need to hurry,” Henry said. “But can you just tell me what happened?”
    Fat Frank moaned and shifted his short legs on the stool. “What happened is the committee. That’s what happened. Had a hearing today. All proper. All duly called and treble notarized. I thought it would be motions and tablings just to get to my exception. But no. No exception for Franklin of Badon Hill, who saved your life more than just once, who saw the faeren brought about straight, who dragged you safe to a christening and saw Mordecai, God green him, walk through that door, and a blade thrown and the mound magic of the faeren broken. No exception for me.”
    “What did you do?” Henry asked.
    The faerie slid off his stool and walked to a cask against the wall. He refilled his mug, braced his belly with one arm, threw his head back, and drank deeply. Then he turned and threw it into the kitchen fireplace, sending shards out the grate and across the kitchen floor.
    “I told,” Frank said. “I broke the first article in the
Book of Faeren
. I told a human.” He looked into Henry’s eyes and pointed up into his face. “I told you how to break a faeren spell. I told you to throw the knife that freed your father.”
    “So what?” Henry said. “The committee had betrayed my father. They were trying to kill me.”
    Frank shrugged. “Rules is rules, or so they say, the new shiny-faced cud-chewers on the committee. There was a time I’d have been killed outright, jellied and fed to foxes or something like. Might have liked that. Would have known where I was.”
    Henry blinked. The faerie had begun sobbing. “I’m not faeren, Henry York. Not anymore. They unselfed me. Right then, banging the gavel and in front of a crowd, they said the words not said in a lifetime. I’m unpeopled. Franklin Fat Nothin’.”
    “Come on, Frank,” Henry said. “You’re still a faerie, and I don’t care what they said. They can’t change that.”
    Frank’s eyebrows shot up. “Can’t they? You should know better than to doubt the mound magic, Henry. Should know better.” He sighed. “The frost’s coming to Fat Frank. My blood’s chilled, and the green will die. Have a look. Trust your pauper eyes if you can’t trust me.”
    The round faerie hopped back up onto his stool and thumped his round head into his hands, tugging at his crazy mop of faeren hair.
    Henry’s eyes relaxed, and the world began to spin. He focused in on his friend, on the green vines of strength that always surrounded him.
    At first nothing seemed to have changed beyond the faerie’s mood. And then Henry caught his breath. He could still vividly remember the first time he had seen Fat Frank with his second sight—tumbling around the bottom of aboat, fighting a wizard to the death. His green strands had been wild and strong then, and they could snap and lash around like lightning when he was angry. Now, in his sadness, they wove slowly, tangling and disappearing in the air. But at the end of each strand the color had changed. Green was now tipped with yellow.
    Henry shook his head and blinked it away. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what it meant.
    “Am I brown and twisted?” Fat Frank asked. His voice was sullen. “My autumn is here. Every faerie’s magic grows out from the mound where he was born, and I’ve been root-lopped. Frank the faerie husk. Frank the magickless dwarf. I’m a waned faerie, doomed to end as a bit of dead, chalky nothing.”
    “It’s only a little yellow at the tips,” Henry said. He wanted to sound confident, but he couldn’t. “That can’t mean anything. It can’t. Can it? What does it