"There she is," said killory, taking off his hat and falling to one knee. "I'd be crying rivers if I hadn't had a gallon of poteen to shore up my nerves just now."

Cliff, the cluricaun, and the other faeries were in the market square, hidden in a big ore cart pulled by Buckley, who himself was disguised with a big moustache. Disguise was necessary as reward posters had been posted all over Serpentopolis.

"That's her?" Cliff cocked his head sideways. "She's a bit... larger than I imagined."

"No stupid. That is a thousand ton iron statue. She is underneath it."

"Talk about pressure."

"Aye. The snakes captured her essence in a spell and transmuted her to text form. She is actually in the form of ink on paper. They drew seals around her to trap her on the page, then folded up the paper eight times, each fold increasing the holding power. Then to make sure no one could undo the spell, they put that big lump of iron on top of her. I don't have to tell you that we faeries are mortally allergic to iron. That smoky water you see bubbling down the side is at boiling temperature. And as a final protection, they planted barb-a-roots around it. You touch one of those plants and they shoot their poison barbs into your skin. You have an agonizing week of paralysis with nightmarish hallucinations and then die. Oh, and there are guards all over the place in towers."

"Is that all?" Cliff said. "You'd think they would have some kind of serious security here."

"Oh, well, go right in there and ask them for the paper then, if you think you can do it."

"Nah, just kidding."

"Please, go ahead. If you think you're better than all of us. You think we haven't tried for centuries to think of a way to get her out? I want to see you go try it. Go on, right now."

"That's enough!" said Zelfia. "We don't need to sully the respect of our queen with this fighting. Anyway, you'll blow our cover. Brock, we've seen enough. You can haul us back to headquarters now."

Back at the base, Zelfia said, "Cliff, we took you to see the queen's prison because we thought you might have a fresh perspective. You seem to think there is something we can do about this. I hope you haven't lost your nerve."

"No, not at all," Cliff lied.

"You have a plan?"

Everyone cheered. "He has a plan! He has a plan!"

"Well, hold on.... I have some ideas, but... I mean, I can't yet..."

"You need some help thinking?" Mimi squealed. "We have some thinking herbs here. Want us to mix you up a batch?"

Ah, that probably meant coffee or tea or something with caffeine. Yes, he wanted some of that.

"Okay, here you go. Drink it up nice and hot."

He swallowed it and grabbed his throat. It was most definitely not coffee. When he first tried coffee many years ago, it had tasted bitter and awful, but he gradually acquired the taste for it. This concoction he would never, ever develop a taste for. In fact, he was not sure he could hold it down.

After struggling with the urge to vomit for a while, the feeling past and he just sank into low-grade nausea and sweating. His mind started to speed up unpleasantly. Disjointed pieces of thoughts jumped around like popcorn in a popper. He could not control his thoughts and started to panic.

"Ah! Help! What is going on with my mind?"

"What was the dose you gave him? Four spoonfuls of herbs? That's too much even for a giant. He's had an overdose! What do we do?"

"How about we give him some relaxation tea?" Mimi suggested.

"Yes, quick! Make some of that tea." Zelfia frantically waved her hands.

They raced around the kitchen, bumping into each other. Finally, they had a cup of the sleepy syrup and poured it down Cliff's throat. He stopped raving in a few moments, then fell over into an uneasy and fitful sleep. His body twitched and strange sounds came out of his mouth. His closed eyes vibrated in their sockets.

"Get him some smelling salts!" Bryce ordered. "The powerful kind we use on trolls when they get hit in the head with stalagtites."

Buckley poured some from his hip pouch, accidentally spilling it all into Cliff's nostrils. It was as if his mucus membranes were on fire. He saw only white. He screamed, "ah ah ah ah!"

"Oh that's too much," fretted Zelfia. "The salts have started eroding his brain. We have to calm him down before his blood boils away. There's only one thing for it. Killory, your poteen."

"What? Waste it on that useless heap? No way."

"What do you care, it's an infinite supply you have in your flask. Hand it here. Good, good. Now, we don't have time to make him swallow it. We have to inject it. Bring me the slug baster. I'll put a few drams in there. Now, we stick it in his vein and..."

Cliff's head made a hollow coconut sound when it hit the floor. Foam poured out of his mouth. His eyes dilated fully, then became pinpricks. His hair fell asleep. Little marching bands marched out of his mouth. Smoke poured out of his nostrils.

"Oh dear," worried Mimi. "Now we've done it. Is he dead? I hear his kind stops living now and then."

"He'll be fine," said Killory. "He's just like a fellow who's had too much fight and needs to sleep off a concussion. We'll leave him alone and he will be in good order by morning."

After a few hours, Cliff opened his eyes. He was completely awake, more awake than he had ever been in his life. And he wasn't jittery or nervous. He felt wonderful. He had never had such a lovely and infallible plan before. In fact, he had never really planned anything before. But this plan felt right. It had to work.

"Guh buh luh zobba zuh!"

His lips were like huge bags of sand. His tongue was an epileptic salamander. How could he get his ideas across? He tried to mime it with kitchen artifacts and pointing at people. Against the bookie's odds, it worked.

"You want me to create a distraction?" Killory punched the air. "Woo! All right! Starting fights is uniquely suited to my talents."

Cliff nodded. He moved a sugar bowl around and dumped it onto the salt and pepper shakers.

"A cart of pillows?" Mimi asked. "Sure, I can wheel that over to the barb-a-root plants and dump them there. The barbs should be caught in the fluff and not harm anybody. Good idea."

Feeling more confident now, Cliff spun forks around and tossed a loaf of bread in the air.

"Barrel of flour?" Buckley said through the window. "Me throw up at steaming water spout to block. It soak up water like sponge and make yummy puff pastries. And Elsie throw puff pastries to troll guards to distract more."

Now Cliff pointed at himself and rolled a cookie over the table. He caught it with a spatula before it went over the edge.

"You're going to be a decoy, Cliff?" Zelfia put her hands to her face. "For the sticky tongue? Oh, it sounds dangerous. But it isn't going to hit you? It will hit the statue instead?"

More manipulating household objects conveyed the rest of the plan.

"Me turn crank and pull statue over!" Buckley laughed, shaking the house.

Zelfia clapped her hands. "And I grab the paper, and run it over to the scribe elves station where we erase the sigils and free the queen."

"And I'll have a bracing glass of mead ready to perk her up," added Killory. "But one question for ye, when do the pigeons dressed as clowns come into play? And do I get me own tommy gun made from bread too?"

Cliff shrugged. That wasn't part of his plan. He had no idea where that came from.

They decided there was no better time to do the plan than that night. Most of the snakes were busy watching an opera, leaving a skeleton crew of snakes in the guard towers. There were still plenty of faeries roaming about with which to start a riot.

Killory pulled off his part perfectly. Choosing a pickled pepper cart, he launched numerous bottles on trajectories all over the square. This enraged the gnomish vendors who began to leap on anyone who was not a gnome. The exploding bottles made loud sounds like bombs going off, which caught the attention of the guards. And the pickled pepper mist stung everyone's eyes, causing them to scream and run around in pain.

Bryce succeeded in covering the barb-o-roots in pillows. The rocketing barbs could be heard thudding on the downy barriers. Buckley unshouldered the big barrel of flour and launched it unerringly into the water spout where it stuck and blocked the boiling waterfall. As it absorbed water, it shook and rumbled, hinting at something exciting to come. Cliff threw off his disguise as a gnarled tree creature and raced through the crowd, shouting to draw attention. With his height and non-faerie appearance, everyone recognized him immediately from his mugshot on the reward poster.

"There he is!" captain of the troll guards pointed at him. "That's the one starting all the ruckus. Fire the Sticky Tongue."

The pink appendage sprang like a rubber band over the crowd at near the speed of sound. From hundreds of yards away, Cliff only barely leaped out of the way in time. It struck the statue and held firm. As the guards waited for the un-sticker team to liberate the tongue for a second firing, they did not notice Buckley come from behind. They woke up in a cart of saurkraut the next day with terrible headaches. The un-sticker team were disposed of in a different way. They had been distracted by a sudden rain of delicious pastries freshly cooked from the barrel above the statue and molded into shape by Elsie.

Buckley turned the crank on the sticky tongue, making it more and more taut. The statue jerked a little, but did not topple over. Zelfia paced around the base of the statue nervously. The statue wobbled a bit, but she could not reach under without getting caught when it rocked to the other side. The barrel in the spout would not stay put for long. She and Cliff started pushing the statue, trying to rock it over. They almost had it off balance when the nets fell.

"So!" A tall and noble snake in pompous regalia called down from a balcony high above the square. Universal Chancellor Shishelby, as he called himself, spoke through a megaphone held by a smaller snake. "Treachery in the ranks of our dear friends the Faerie folk, eh? And led by one surface dwelling human? I say that it is a sad day indeed that we let a mortal interloper pound a wedge between our races. But one among the traiterous group has salvaged our friendship by revealing the evil plan to us. Step forward, little one, that you may receive your reward."

Sheepishly, a gnome plodded forward.

"Bryce! How could you..." Zelfia cried.

"They offered me a terrific retirement package," he said sheepishly. "I mean, so what if we liberated the Queen. You think it would have made a difference? Look around you. Most of these faeries don't have the fire in their bellies to stand up to the Snakes. The light has gone out of their eyes. It's time to stop dreaming and wake up."

"Indeed," said Shishelby. "Except for the need to stand up to us, everything the imp says is correct."

"I'm a gnome, not an imp," said Bryce.

"So, let us not quarrel or fight. We are all happy citizens of this fair city. The ungratefuls will be returned to their rightful places in the dungeon and we can all go back to our delightful lives. Here here!"

The faeries in the marketplace stared upward quietly. The brief disturbance that lent them a modicum of hope had been quelled. Their hearts sank once more into cold pools.

"Here, here!" repeated the snake.

Another snake unrolled a colorful banner that read "applause" in ogham script. A lackluster "huzzah" filled the air. The faeries went back about their work, cleaning up the mess, continuing on their errands, resuming their miserable lives. Snakes, satisfied the disturbance was over, flicked their tongues contentedly as they were carried along. Troll guards cinched the nets tight around their prey and dragged them off to be disposed of in the new magma-filled oubliettes that had been built to repace the damaged prison.

"So that was your plan," Killory growled at Cliff, being dragged in the net beside him. "Bloody stupid plan, that was."

Cliff said nothing. He quietly accepted his fate as a loser in the game of life. A very bizarre round of this game, but still a loser in it. His stomach rumbled. He'd have to die on an empty stomach, most likely, adding insult to injury.

But he wasn't hungry. The rumbling was not coming from his stomach. He looked around. Was it an earthquake? The grand chandelier was shaking slightly, and began to flicker. The snakes and faeries around him stopped and looked up. It grew louder, but was localized. It was coming from one side of the square.

And there was another sound: a car's horn.

The balcony wall suddenly exploded into the square, followed by a huge, shiny black projectile. Cliff had no trouble recognizing it as an automobile. It looked like it would fly over the big statue, but caught the head on its bottom side. With its momentum, the car pushed the statue off-balance. It stood, unsteadily, on one corner for a long moment, loud creaking and scraping sounds indicating its instability. Together, the car and statue fell over.

It was a horrible sound. The metal statue clanged like an angry, satanic bell. The car's wrenching metal and shattering glass added painful, chaotic overtones. Afterward, the only sound for a long time was the huge statue rocking on its side.

Standing, slack-jawed and in shock, the guards dropped the nets, letting the infamous faerie-human gang crawl out. Cliff shuffled through the smoky dust, trying to feel his away around, and tripped on some debris. While on the ground, he happened to find a folded piece of parchment, which he stuffed into his pocket quickly.

All the faeries and snakes in the area slowly moved forward, encircling the bizarre black projectile that had just crash-landed. Nothing like this had ever happened before and they were more curious than fearful.

"Ha ha!" A blurry figure inside the dust cloud stood up and thrust its arms in the air. "Thank heavens for seatbelts," said the female voice, its owner now walking out of the fog. Noella triumphantly emerged and held up a very shaken bird and cat.