The Urban Fantasy Anthology

by Peter S. Beagle

  I’m not sure when I start to hear the music—fiddles and drums and bells playing a soft marching rhythm. I just know I’ve been hearing it for a few moments before I see lights approaching on the far side of the meadow. And then…

  I have to shake my head.

  It figures. Who else would Edric be meeting out here but some back-tothe-earth Renaissance Fayre types. These ones are riding horses and they’re all decked out in fancy gowns and robes. Edric’s played the Fayres for years—he took me there on one of our first dates and didn’t I fit in, all in black with my tats and my hair cut short and spiked. I’d laughed when Edric put on the hose, doublet and all to play the wandering minstrel, but had to admit he had the build that could pull it off.

  They all took it so seriously. Apparently, a lot of them were part of something called the Society for Creative Anachronism and they had this whole role-playing thing set up where they dressed like medieval lords and ladies and had feasts and jousts and, of course, the Fayres.

  I ended up liking a lot of them—once we got over our mutual culture shock. But today? Not so much. Between finding out Edric’s got a twin who’s apparently been sharing his conjugal rights, traipsing around in the autumn woods, which is not my idea of fun, and now this, I’m not feeling particularly charitable toward them.

  I figure the looker on the front horse is the woman he’s here to see. She’s wearing the usual SCA low-cut bodice, a blue-green cape flowing over her mount’s withers. She has a crown—naturally—and her hair is a dark waterfall that goes all the way to the small of her back in a curtain of ringlets. The rest of them are acting like they are her court—like she’s the queen her crown says she is. I start to look for a safe way down to confront them when it occurs to me that none of the riders are carrying the lights. The lanterns are bobbing in the air, floating above the little entourage. And then I see…then I see…

  Children, I tell myself. They’re just children.

  Except some of them have wings and they’re no bigger than cats. They’re flying—flying!—above the riders, carrying their lanterns and…and…

  My knees feel weak. I sit down on the stone under my feet before my legs give way.

  I try to convince myself that I’m not seeing what my eyes are telling me I am. They’re doing it all with wires. Mirrors. It’s just a trick. That’s all.

  Just.

  A.

  Trick.

  The music falls silent when the lead rider stops her horse directly in front of Edric. She says something to him. I can hear her voice—high and musical—but I can’t make out what she’s saying. It’s in some language I’ve never heard before.

  Then they both look in my direction.

  Oh crap.

  They don’t know I’m here. They can’t know I’m here.

  But then a pair of those flying cat-sized people come zipping from the meadow and my pulse goes into overdrive. I want to bolt, but I can’t even get to my feet. The pair dart between the boughs of the spruce, holding their lanterns, until they’re circling above me. I’m blinded by the light and hold my arm up to cover my eyes. They make a last circle above me—so close the hummingbird motion of their wings has my hair lifting and fluttering and I can smell the sweet oil from their lanterns—then they’re gone again. I see stars until my eyes adjust to the darkness.

  My heartbeat is still drumming in my chest when I hear the woman speak once more—this time in English.

  “You know what happens now,” she says.

  I see Edric nod. His shoulders are drooped.

  He knows, and I can guess. They’re going to do something to me—I don’t know what. Wipe my mind of the memory of seeing them, maybe. Banish me into some weird Fairyland prison.

  Or they could just kill me.

  I sit straighter and stare at them, waiting for I don’t know what. My sentence to be pronounced, I suppose. But I won’t go without a fight.

  I look around and reach for a branch that’s lying on the stone nearby. I make myself get up—will the shaking in my legs to stop. When I’m sure I have my balance, I break the branch against my knee. That gives me two small clubs with which to defend myself.

  The snap is loud in the night. Edric and the fairy court turn in my direction. I can see the queen frowning from where I stand, but then she lifts her arm. I stiffen and try to psyche myself for the attack I’m sure she’s about to command. But when she brings her hand down, the whole fairy court simply vanishes and the woods are plunged into night.

  It takes my eyes a long moment to adjust to the darkness again. When they do, I can’t see Edric anymore. I have the sudden thought that I’ve just dreamed the whole thing. Any moment I’ll wake up—back home, in my own bed—and everything will be back to normal. But then I hear a scuffling on the rock below. I step closer to the edge and see Edric working his way up a switchback to the top of the ridge.

  There are only three turns—the ridge is no more than twenty-or-so feet high. I step back from the edge when he comes into view, my clubs held out in front of me. The light’s poor, even with the bright moonshine coming down through the trees, but I know he sees me. Sees what I’m holding.

  “Mary,” he says.

  I glare at him.

  “So, what did she tell you to do?” I demand. “Are you supposed to try to kill me?”

  He shakes his head. I can’t read his features.

  “Nothing like that,” he says.

  “Yeah, right.”

  Neither of us say anything for a long moment.

  “Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?” he finally asks.

  “Why did you have to have secrets?”

  “I was under a geas,” he says. “Do you know what that means?”

  I nod. “Some kind of old promise or something.”

  “I wasn’t allowed to tell you. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. It was like…like a fairy tale, you know? Like Bluebeard’s room.”

  “Oh, that’s a great example,” I say, “considering he turned out to be some kind of serial killer freak. And if we’re going to use folklore as an ethical barometer, what about all those sailor boys who are gone seven years, but then come back and try to trick their loyal girlfriends with some sleazy pick-up shtick?”

  “Okay, you’re right. What I mean is—”

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re of the sidhe.”

  “She who? What’s that supposed to mean? Are you talking about that woman on the horse?”

  He shakes his head. “Sidhe,” he repeats and spells it out for me. “They’re one of the elfin races.”

  “Elfin.”

  “As in pixies, fairies…”

  “And you’re one of them?”

  He nods.

  “I guess this is a whole new twist on having your boyfriend come out of the closet to tell you he’s a fairy.” I think about it for a moment, then add, “Is this why you never wanted to have kids?”

  He nods again.

  “Could we even have had kids?”

  “Yes, but our children would be half-breeds.”

  “Jesus, would you listen to yourself.”

  He winces. “I’m sorry. I’m not saying I agree. But that’s what my people would call him. The Court—for the most part—is against mixed-marriages, and especially the children that result.”

  “Why would they even have to know?” I say. “And we wouldn’t have had to tell anyone—not even our little girl. No one would have to know except for us.”

  “Because our child…she would be different. She would be able to do things that we would have to teach her to control.”

  I’d noticed that we both had our own ideas about the gender of this child we’ll never have. Apparently Edric did, too. But his attempt to soothe me by coming over to my side just pisses me off. Everything about this pisses me off. I know I should be trying to see some way past this, some way we can work things out. We’ve been together for so long. We were happy for so long. But there’s this h
uge lie rearing up between us now. And that twin of his, taking his place who knows how many times when I thought it was him?

  I can’t stop the fury, burning up all the love and good memories. Knowing what I now know, I’m not sure I even want to.

  “And I suppose this fairy queen’s your little bit on the side?” I ask.

  “God, no. She’s my sister.”

  “Your sister. And I guess that was your brother you pulled out of the tree earlier?”

  He shakes his head. “That was a kind of changeling—made to take my place in the world while I conducted my business here.”

  “And did that business include him banging me when you were too busy to do it yourself?”

  “No, no.”

  “So what kind of business?”

  “Court business. I’m a prince of the Court. No matter how much I’m not interested in it, I have responsibilities I can’t shirk. So we made an agreement—my parents and I. I could live in the world of men so long as I came back once a lunar cycle to fulfill my obligations to the Court.” He pauses for a moment, then adds, “And so long as no one discovered the truth.”

  “Do you know how stupid that sounds?”

  “Why? Because it doesn’t fit in with your concept of living life as a free spirit, the establishment be damned?”

  I don’t have an answer for that.

  “I have to go now,” he says.

  “Of course you do.”

  “I didn’t want it to work out this way.”

  “Of course you didn’t—but here we are, all the same.”

  “I…” He stops. When he goes on, I know this isn’t what he started to say. “The changeling…he gets to have my life now. I’m not going to tell you what to do or not to do, but I don’t recommend you see him. He’s not human and he can be dangerous.”

  “Except, apparently, you’re not human either.”

  “No, but—”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I don’t want anything more to do with either you or your doppelganger.”

  “Changeling.”

  “Whatever.”

  He sighs. “Why did you have to follow me?” he asks.

  I have to laugh. “I thought you were having an affair.”

  “If you’d trusted me—”

  “What? We could have happily lived a lie for a while longer?”

  “It wasn’t like that for me.”

  I shake my head. “You knew everything about me, but it turns out I didn’t know the first thing about you. Was everything you told me a lie?”

  “No, I just didn’t give you all the specific details.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugs. “We don’t have a cottage—we have a lakeside palace. I didn’t go to a one-room country school, but we did have a small class with a private tutor.”

  “Kind of a big difference.”

  “I truly do love you.”

  “Yeah, well, I saw The Little Mermaid. You could have given up all the magic and stuff to be with me.”

  “I would have—but that isn’t an option for royalty.”

  “Right. Prince Edric.”

  “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he says.

  I shake my head. “No, I have the right to make this as hard on you as I want.”

  He nods. “I suppose you do.”

  I don’t want it to be like this. Moments ago I was so angry—I’m still angry—but we had so much love between us. We gave each other seven years of our lives. You don’t just walk away from something like that without trying to fix it.

  I take a breath to steady myself.

  “There’s got to be a way around this,” I say.

  “There isn’t. If there was any way I could fix it, I would.”

  “So you’re just going to walk away from me—from what we have. Had.”

  “If I don’t, they’ll hurt you. I won’t let that happen.”

  “We’ll go to the police…” I start to say, then realize how stupid that has to sound.

  “And tell them what?” he asks. “They could hide us away, but the Court would find us. There’s no place we could go that they wouldn’t find us.”

  “And they would really hurt us—like kill us or something?”

  He studies me for a long moment, then nods.

  “I should go,” he says.

  I feel empty. And the only thing I can find to fill that emptiness is anger.

  “Yeah,” I tell him, my voice sharp. “They’ll all be waiting on you.”

  “Mary, I—”

  I put up my hand to stop him. It’s still holding my makeshift club, so I throw it and its partner away.

  “Don’t,” I tell him. “Don’t say anything else.”

  He nods. He gives me another long look, then he steps to one side, and just like the fairy Court, he vanishes.

  I’ve managed to hold back my tears, but now that he’s gone, I go down on my knees on the top of that granite ridge and let them come.

  It takes me a while to get back to where I left Karen’s car. I get turned around a few times, but I finally find the big field and from there on it’s pretty easy. I half-expected to find a ticket on the car, or that it had been towed away by the highway patrol, but it’s right where it’s supposed to be.

  I have another crying jag, once I’m behind the wheel. It’s a long time before I can wipe my face on my sleeve and start up the engine.

  I feel wrung out. Empty. Sadder than anyone has a right to feel.

  And then the anger comes back.

  I know Edric was right. I shouldn’t have anything to do with his changeling twin. But when I turn the car around, I don’t head south, back into the city. Instead, I cut east, aiming the car for The Custom House in the little town of Sweetwater. That’s the bar where Edric was supposed to be playing tonight. Where his changeling twin is playing.

  I have a moment of disassociation when I step through the front door of the bar and see him on stage. Because I can’t tell it’s not him—Edric, I mean. He looks exactly the same. He plays exactly the same. It’s not until the end of the set when I go up to the side of the stage as he’s retuning his guitar that I see the difference.

  Actually, there is no difference—at least nothing you can measure. It’s in the way he looks at me. In the tone of his voice.

  “You,” he says.

  I have to clear my throat, but when I do manage to speak, my voice is steady.

  “Yeah, me,” I say.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just had to see for myself.”

  He scowls at me.

  “I’m the one who’s real now,” he says. “This is my life now.”

  I shrug.

  “I’m grateful for the part you played in my getting it, but—” “I’m not here for your thanks.”

  “—this ends here. We’re not taking up together or anything.”

  I pull a face. “Like I’d want to.”

  “I’ll just come get my stuff tomorrow, and that’ll be it.”

  “You don’t have any stuff,” I tell him, “so don’t bother.”

  His eyes narrow. “Well, then you don’t have a car anymore.”

  “Fine. If you want the cops to pull you in for car theft, don’t bring it back.”

  “Then I’ll get a warrant to get my stuff back.”

  “I told you. You don’t have any stuff. But Edric’s crap is going to be sitting on the curb just as soon as I get home from here.”

  “I’m Edric now.”

  I shake my head. “No, you’re not. You’re just some pathetic little changeling that he grew out of a tree.”

  He takes an angry step towards me.

  “Temper temper,” I say. “You don’t want the good people who came here buying into your peaceful guitar groove to find out you’re really just a nasty little creep, do you?”

  He glares, but he stays where he was and I leave the bar.

  Well, that went well, I think as I get into the car. Vent
ing like that was just so mature, wasn’t it?

  But it felt good.

  I have another long cry before I start up the car and head home to put Edric’s belongings on the curb.

  “You know,” Gwen says when we’re sitting in the Half Kaffe Café the next day, “I didn’t really mean that I was happy you were having problems.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  I had Karen commiserating with me when I brought her car back earlier this morning. Mine was parked where it was supposed to be, on the street, with my resident’s parking pass displayed on the dashboard. Edric’s stuff was all gone—but whether the changeling got it, or street people, I don’t know. Or care.

  Now I’ve got Gwen figuratively holding my hand.

  “So he really was having an affair,” she says.

  I didn’t say anything to either her or Karen about changelings and fairy courts and the fairy tale geas that pushed Edric and I apart. I simply told them there’d been another woman—which wasn’t entirely a lie. He just wasn’t sleeping with her.

  “He has this whole other life,” I tell her. “It’s been going on from before we even met and he won’t—he says can’t—give it up. So what am I supposed to do?”

  “That sucks,” she says, then she cocks her head. “And there you were, wanting me to ask Bill about his fixation with the SuicideGirls.”

  “I wouldn’t bother,” I say. “Not unless he starts listening to Goth music and starts talking about getting a tattoo or a piercing.”

  “As if.” Then Gwen sighed and added, “You really just put all Edric’s stuff out on the curb?”

  “I wasn’t going to keep it—and I didn’t want to see him again.”

  Only it would be the changeling coming by, not Edric, and there’s no way I can explain that without sounding completely mental.

  “I’m still surprised you didn’t want to try to work things out,” Gwen says. “I mean, you of all people…”

  “I agree there are relationships you can work on, but for ours to stay good, either he or I would have had to have a complete makeover—and you know how I feel about that kind of thing.”

  Gwen shakes her head. “I still don’t get it. When we started going our separate ways back in high school, you didn’t give up on us.”

  “That’s because, for all our differences, we were actually willing to work on our friendship. You and me. It takes two.”