Page 44 of Box of Frogs
‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘Ask. I won’t lie.’
Morgan took a deep breath. ‘When you woke up with amnesia, explain to me exactly what you saw and exactly what happened.’
Easy. ‘I opened my eyes and there was a dead body next to me. I knew he was dead because his head had been cut off,’ I added helpfully.
Morgan’s expression remained unreadable. ‘Was he Fey?’
I tried to think. Had he had green eyes? It had been night time and I wasn’t even sure his eyes had any colour to them. ‘Uh, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. He could have been.’ I offered a helpless shrug. ‘His skin was kinda green. Anyway, I worked out I was on a golf course. I also found a sword underneath the dead guy’s body. I touched the blade and…’ I held up my now-healed finger. There was no trace of my earlier wound. ‘Well, you know what happened with that.’
‘Describe the sword.’
I bit my lip. ‘It was long. With a pointy bit at the end.’
Morgan rolled his eyes. ‘Really? Is that the best you can do?’
‘I’m not a sword expert. Or at least I don’t remember being a sword expert. It was just a damned sword. What does it matter?’
He stood up and walked to a bookshelf, glancing along the row of spines before pulling a leather-bound book out and flicking through the pages. Then he walked over to me and pointed. ‘Did it look like this?’
I glanced at the page. There was a photo of a sword displayed in black and white on the left-hand side. ‘Yes. That looks like a sword. The weapon I found looked like a sword.’
‘You’re being deliberately obstructive,’ he snapped.
‘I’m really not. Pointy weapons obviously aren’t one of the things in my vast repertoire of knowledge. I was also,’ I reminded him, ‘somewhat traumatised and concussed.’ Concussed anyway. Morgan shook his head in annoyance. ‘Does it really matter?’ I asked.
‘This is an example of a sword belonging to a bogle,’ he said, as if that explained everything.
‘And a bogle is…?’
‘Technically, a faerie. They’re trapped here just like we are but they’re not part of the truce. Neither do they tend to have much power, or to care what Fey like us do. They’re bad-tempered but not typically violent.’
‘Except they carry around swords,’ I said, pointing out the obvious flaw in his last statement.
‘Bogles use their swords to destroy things, not people.’
‘Well, that didn’t work out very well for this bogle,’ I muttered. ‘Anyway, this is good news. If bogles aren’t part of the truce, it doesn’t matter whether it was me that killed him or not.’
Morgan gave me a long look. ‘It doesn’t matter if you murdered a living being?’ he enquired, ice dripping from every word.
I grimaced. That came out wrong. ‘What I meant was, even if I did cut off his head – and I’m not saying that I did – I’ve not broken the truce. And if I did behead him, it was probably in self-defence.’ I was aware that I was digging myself into a deep hole here but I couldn’t help it; my mouth had a mind of its own
Morgan turned away and returned the book to its original position. ‘The truce doesn’t work like that. As Fey, we can’t hurt another. But bogles and other creatures are lesser faeries. They’re not included in the truce.’
‘What?’ I screeched. ‘How the gasbudlikins is that fair?’
Morgan ticked off his fingers. ‘They have a lot less power than we do. Many of them are native to this demesne, not to Mag Mell. Typically, they’re not violent.’ He looked at me. ‘And no one ever said life was fair.’
‘I think not being able to defend myself is stretching that concept to extremes.’
He shrugged. ‘You walked away. The bogle didn’t.’
‘If you’re going to keep judging me, I’m going to feel less inclined to tell you everything I remember.’
‘You promised,’ he said, without a trace of emotion. ‘Carry on.’
I gritted my teeth. At least Morgan’s manner was reminding me that I disliked him. Intensely. As dispassionately as possible, I described the rest of that night, leaving out no detail. If he wanted to know everything, he could know everything. I failed to see how I could have acted any differently and still survived.
‘The three men who attacked you,’ he said once I’d finished. ‘What exactly did they look like?’
