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“And, he said there’s a man in the moon!”
“That’s ridiculous. How would he even get up there?”
Tubbo has a new human friend. He specifies that he’s a friend and not a thrall, which Eret frankly finds strange, but having a friend seems to be good for him, so Eret doesn’t mind. She hasn’t met this friend yet – Tubbo had said something about not wanting to scare him – but from what she’s heard, he’s about Tubbo’s age and stumbled into a ring by accident while Tubbo happened to be in the area. In her opinion, six-hundred is far too old to be just stumbling into faerie rings. The child really should have known better.
“He had a book of stories, he said,” Tubbo continues, rocking on his heels, “He said he’d bring it with him next time, so I could read them! That’s where he got everything he knew about faeries and how to talk to us so he wouldn’t accidentally give us his Name.” He rolls his eyes. “Didn’t even give me a chance to ask, he just knew.” Tubbo crosses his arms, grumbling under his breath. “Not that I even wanted his Name, anyway.”
Maybe this child was smarter than Eret was giving him credit for.
Some time later, Tubbo returns with the book from his friend. He breezes into the forest and flops backwards into Eret’s bower in a spray of blossoms.
“Look!!” he says, rolling over and shoving the book at them, “Look look look look!!” Eret takes the book delicately, raising an eyebrow at the cover.
“Tales of the Fair Folk,” he reads. The cover shows an illustration of a young woman being offered a rose by a young man held fast by thorns. “...How accurate are these?” Tubbo grins, eyes sparkling.
“Not at all.”
Snorting, Eret flips through the first few pages, looking at the table of contents. Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, a story about some bloke named Jack and a massive beanstalk, something about six whole swans, and the tale of Tam Lin, Byrd Janet, and the Faerie Queen.
“There’s one about Mother?” they ask, glancing over at their little brother. Tubbo snorts, wriggling over and propping himself up against their leg so that he could see the page.
“Yeah, but it’s not accurate at all,” he starts, “Like. It’s about this guy, right, and he gets lost in the woods and taken by the faeries. And then Mum makes him, like, her boyfriend. Then this girl – that’s Janet – comes through and is like, Where’s my boyfriend? And when she finds him, he tells her how she’s supposed to fight Mum off and get him out of the faerie world.”
“How does she do that?”
“Wrap him in a sash, sprinkle holy water all around, and wait until morning, apparently.” Tubbo scoffs, looking up at Eret. “As if.”
“...Does he eat or drink the food Mother gives him?”
“Dunno.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t say. Don’t think she’d let him go if he did, even if his girlfriend’s got some fancy water and a pretty scarf.”
The rest of the tales are equally incorrect about the general workings of the fae world. Yes, you should never give your name and you should never eat of their food or drink of their wine, but they know nothing about the court (“What does Un-Seelie mean?” “No idea.”) and know even less about the royal family (“Says here we’ve got seven sisters!” “Well, I’ve never met them.”) and all together the affair is quite funny.
“Who even wrote this?” Eret asks, halfway through an incredulous laugh.
“Somebody named…” Tubbo leans forward to read the cover. “Jacoband Wilhelm Grimm.”
“That’s a stupid name,” she snorts, “Someone should tell this Jacoband Grimm that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I’ll get Tommy to do it,” Tubbo says, with the self-assured confidence only someone in their early six-hundreds could have. Eret misses those days; eight-hundred and fifty has been full of doubts, he hates it. “He probably knows him, that’s how he got the book.” That makes perfect sense to Eret.
“He’s called Tommy?” they ask. It’s the first they’ve heard of this new friend’s name. Not Name, but the thing he’s referred to as. You know. Fae rules.
“Mhm!” Tubbo sits up, brushing a stray flower out of his hair. “I started to ask for his Name but he started going on about something called a Full Legal Name and I really don’t know how that’s any different from…”
Eret had a feeling she was in for a long night. Not that she minded. She had this silly book to keep her entertained if her little brother’s ramblings went on too long, after all.