Roadside Magic

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Properly introduced, the cat stropped her ankles as she cautiously tried the kitchen. A plastic container of dry cat food, cunningly designed so that it would measure out more as the cat ate, and a burbling fountain full of clear water set on the floor for the cat’s delectation, its tank only half full. She could smell a litter box, but not very strongly. There was half a carton of milk in the fridge, and it had not spoiled. Robin drank it all, her throat moving with long, hasty swallows, strangely naked without her locket. Gallow had kept that . . .

  She had not wanted to think of him.

  Fortunately, she was tired enough there was little sting to the memory, even fresh and new as it was. The former Armormaster had seemed almost willing to let her stay, draw trouble and yet more violence to him—if, that is, she could be as blithe and bonny as her dead sister.

  Daisy.

  Jeremiah Gallow’s wife.

  The trailer’s narrow hall held no pictures. She pushed the bedroom door open slowly and found a monk’s narrow bed, a closet full of blue overalls with EDDIE neatly embroidered on the left pocket flap, three pairs of workboots ranged below. Cold iron and engine grease, and the smell of a dark-haired male; Robin sniffed a little more deeply. Nobody had slept here for a few days. Perhaps he would be gone tonight, too.

  Eddie’s dressertop held a jewelry box that played a tinkling tune when opened and a white card stitched with silver tinsel. A wedding invitation. Perhaps he was a-visiting. When he returned, hopefully he would find good fortune awaiting him, and not a smoking ruin reeking of Unwinter.

  Robin Ragged fell onto a stranger’s bed and did not dream.

  BIRTH

  4

  The storm, stalking the city all through morning and half the afternoon, finally leapt on its quarry with a gush of warm spring rain and a rattle of heavenly artillery. Fat, heavy droplets drummed across the rooftops and washed away frost-rimes from the last hard chill as the wind veered and became sweeter. The Gates of Seelie were open, and lion-maned spring roared forth. Surprised mortals scurried through the downpour, newspapers and grocery bags became soaked, drips started through some ceilings, street drains still blocked from last year’s fallen leaves, pine needles, or mortal refuse gurgled and foamed.

  Atop the Savoigh, water beaded on the thing’s hard, hornlike shell, each drop softening its semi-translucent barrier. The metal hood shielded it from stinging wind, and lightning flashed along whorls and rings decorating its hunched, unlovely carapace. Faint shadows played underneath, something inside twisting and turning, angles pulsing and shimmers of green-yellow.

  Thinning, like a snail’s curled home soaked in honey or a tortoise’s in simmering oils, the hard surface slowly collapsing. It settled, a sheet of hardened leather now instead of a shell, over a small, curled form. Knees drawn up, its vague approximation of a head far too large for the rest of it, spines along its back flexing but unable to pierce through.

  Little spatters of foxfire began, flickering around the collapsed shell. It pulsed, a low punky glow, and the pixies solidified as they always did where the Veil was thinning, clotted, or disturbed. Each one a dot of chiming light, their excited wing-clatters lost in the thunder—blue, red, gold, green, each burst of color passing through a pixie’s neighbors and giving way to the next, a semaphore of feverish joy. The braver ones swooped down to almost touch the pulsating shape, and each time one did it flushed yellowgreen and darted away, buzzing a little high-pitched squeal. Excitement or trepidation, who could tell? They were probably indistinguishable to the little naked, glowing forms with their gossamer wings.

  Lightning again, bleaching the rooftop. In the moment afterward, the tough, thick, elastic covering showed an odd protuberance, almost as if a small fist had struck it from inside.

  The pixies flittered, fluttered, but now they observed from a safe distance. Scatterbrained and hummingbird as they were, they knew enough to stay out of reach. Some forgot but were pulled back by the agitated chiming of their brethren.

  The spines along its unseen back flexed, not quite piercing the tough almost-leather, membranous as a turtle’s egg. The thing, bigger now, rolled across the top of the roof, fists and feet flailing. The rain thinned its covering even more. The pixies, dodging raindrops and turning white each time lightning flashed, followed. The Veil thinned afresh, reverberating with whatever event was rising to the surface of now.

  A snap. A crunch. A shower of wet saltsmell, spines now piercing the thinned membrane. The thing, on all fours, shook and twisted, the toothy projections from its back scraping and rending. Clear fluid bubbled free, the drumming rain mixing opalescent, steaming slugsheen onto the roof. The Savoigh Limited’s ragged, carved gargoyles couldn’t bear to watch; they gazed at the river-streets below instead.

  Thunder boomed. The thing tore free of the membrane and tumbled free, wet and naked on a gush of smoking birthfluid that stain-scorched the roof’s grit-crunching top. Rain spattered, each drop striking twice from the violence of impact. Extra-jointed hands flailing, a scream tearing from a wet O of a mouth, yellowgreen irises flashing before the black of the pupils swallowed them whole, the creature steamed. It was clawed both hand and foot; the membrane that had held it dissolved under steady pounding water.

  They called him Eldest, and Fatherless. It pleased him to allow it, sometimes, and surely no other sidhe could do this.

  The pixies fluttered nearer, nearer, then scattered as its hands and feet shot out again, grasping as if to tear. The newborn thing howled, and the pixies burned yellowgreen to match its eyes before settling on a throbbing, stinging crimson cloud. More and more of them came, flocking to the disturbance in the Veil, climbing out of small holes between the real and the more-than-real.

  It collapsed and lay under stinging water-needles. For now, it was content simply to cough the fluid out of its lungs, vomiting jets of rubbery acid foam that etched complex patterns into the mortal roof.

  Its belly was hunger-distended, though. Soon, it would need to eat. The pixies were too quick for it to catch in its weakened state.

  It didn’t matter. Once the rain stopped, prey would creep out to see what the rain had washed up or exposed. Mortals would be best, certainly, but they were large and it was small, no matter that its teeth were sharp.

  But . . . rats. Pigeons. Even in this concrete hell, the mortals kept pets. Cats. Dogs.

  A veritable buffet. Its teeth champed, thinking about it. It caught a mouthful of the exhaust-tinged rain, not satisfying in any way, but its warmth helped. An aperitif, you could say.

  The reborn thing dozed, curled around its hunger, waiting for the rain to pass.

  A VERY THIN SHIELD

  5

  Dusk turned to dark well before true nightfall as the storm’s wing passed over a small trailer park on Guayahoya Avenue. The sun, as it sank, peered underneath the clouds, turning the west to a furnace of gold and blood. The last streakflashes of crimson and yellow faded to indigo dusk. Quiet fell, broken only by cars grinding to a halt and quick bursts of supper-scent puffing out before trailer doors slammed. Evening thickened, swirling under trees whose wet branches now had hard little green nubs, spring overflowing forth all at once.

  A soft breeze rattled droplets from bough and bush. Night tiptoed over the city, thief instead of grande dame.

  A feline hiss brought Robin into wakefulness with a terrified jolt, a taste of bitter almonds on her tongue and every nerve taut-prickling. The cat, her formal black and white disarranged by the puffing of her fur, hissed again, and Robin was off the bed in a flash, instinct driving her toward the closet before she halted, her skirt swinging.

  No. Be canny, Ragged.

  They were not close, not yet. She shut her eyes, listening, taut as a bard’s lutestring, the mortal house a very thin shield indeed.

  There. A silver buzz against the nerves, a faraway ultrasonic thrilling most mortals wouldn’t hear. They would feel it, though—a cold brush up their backs, a sudden uneasiness.

/>   Huntwhistles. Unwinter’s knights rode tonight, perhaps even Unwinter himself. She was no longer stumbling-weary; milk and rest had soothed her aches. She had two pins, the bone comb, her wits, and the music below her thoughts—the massive noise that could kill if she let it loose for long enough. Not to mention the knife at her belt and the pipes tucked in her secret skirt pocket—a collection of age-blackened and use-lacquered reeds, lashed together with tendons too fine to be animal.

  Puck’s treasures, now hers.

  But it was night, and only spring instead of the full season of glory. Even though Summer had opened the Gates, Unwinter could still ride dusk to dawn if he chose. Slipping into Summer to rest might have been an attractive option, save for the thought of some sidhe remarking on her and carrying tales to the Queen. Robin did not wish to face her again so soon, either.

  Did Summer know who had invited the lord of the Hunt into her lands? Could she guess? Goodfellow perhaps had not told her, but Robin could not trust as much. Then there was Sean.

  All the stars of Summer’s dusk ground into shattered amber dust, the child she had cared for gone into whatever awaited mortals after death.

  No, when she saw Summer again, Robin wished to be thoroughly prepared.

  First, though, she had to survive the night. The silver huntwhistles were far away, but the cat began to growl low in her chest, an amazingly deep noise from such a small animal.

  Robin kept breathing. Four in, four out, you could not sing if you could not breathe, and though her hand wrapped itself about the cold hilt of the loathsome dagger, the song was still her best weapon.

  A scratching. Much closer than the huntwhistles. The knights were coursing abroad, probably hoping to find any prey at all, a net she might be able to elude. It was the silent hunters she would have to worry about.

  More scritch-scratching, and a desire to laugh rose in Robin’s throat, killed a-borning by the discipline of breath. The music under her thoughts took on a sonorous dissonance. Who is that nibbling at my house?

  Only the wind, she replied silently, the child of heaven. Mortals never realized how much truth was in the old tales. Sometimes they slipped through into the sideways realms—mostly children, but also adults who had not lost the habit of seeing. Usually a swift death awaited them, or a return to the mortal world full of slow, lingering illness, not realizing what they pined for. A few survived somewhat unscathed, and their stories passed into myth and child’s tale, warning and dream.

  Her gaze traveled across the bedroom, to the neat dresser and the invitation-card with its tinsel. She ghosted across cheap carpet, still listening to the scratches. Mortals did not bury iron under their doorsteps anymore, or nail up horseshoes to bar ill-wishing. There was salt in the kitchen; she could have poured thin lines over every windowsill and doorstep, but that would simply tell any passerby that someone wished to guard something of value.

  Sidhe were a curious, curious folk. Always peering and poking, prying and noticing.

  Soft padding footsteps. More scratching. How many of them? Why had they not broken in already to lay waste to flesh and trailer alike? She was an ill guest indeed, bringing destruction to such a neat, humble home.

  The wedding invitation was heavy paper, and inside, written with purple ink under the printed date and time, was a round childish hand: Uncle Eddie, you’d better be there to give me away! Love, Kara. The moonglow tinsel on the card unraveled under Robin’s quick fingers, whispered chantment dropping from her lips. The Old Language slipped and slithered between the strands, the pins and needles of Realmaking spreading into her palms.

  Realmaking was precious, but it required something to begin with. She could not simply spin chantment out of empty air; that was a fullblood’s trick. When given something, though, she could make something else, something that wouldn’t fade into leaf and twig come daybreak. It was strange that a tinge of perishable mortal in one’s blood was necessary for Realmaking. They were rare, those architects of the fully real, and no fullblood, highborn or low, had ever been among their number.

  A flick of the wrist, another, silver glitters attaching to her fingertips. A full complement of ten, and a swift lance of pain through her temples as a jolting impact crashed into the side of the trailer, rocking it on its foundations.

  What in Stone’s name is that? She skipped down the hall, past the tiny scrubbed-clean bathroom with its strangely unsmelly litter box. Her shoes lightened, their chantments waking, too, as she called upon speed and lightfoot, and by the time the living room window shattered she was in the kitchen, her fingernails throwing hard, sharp darts of hungry moonlight as she tweezed open the cabinet near the oven. A blue canister of salt was tucked behind other spices. Her hand darted in and the small bottles and cans holding pepper, garlic, onion salt, oregano, thyme, all swept out in a jumbled mass, falling like rain, shattering and spilling their fragrant cargo. She whirled, and it was not as bad as it could have been.

  Not barrow-wights, with their subtly wrong, noseless faces and their strangler’s fingers dripping with gold leached of its daylight luster. Not fullborn knights, either, or Unwinter’s narrow-nosed, leaping dogs with their needle-teeth. Instead, it was two lean, graceful drow and a woodwight, accompanied by a looming silver-necklaced shadow that chilled her clear through until she realized it was a stonetroll on a moonfire leash, making a low, unhappy grumbling sound as one of the drow poked it with a silvertipped stick.

  None of them were familiar from song or rumor, or known to her. They piled pell-mell into the mortal living room, one of the raven-haired drow leaping atop the couch and hissing, his handsome face distorted as the teeth elongated, rows of serrated pearls. The woodwight swelled, his lean brown frame crackle-heaving between treeshape and biped, living green sprouting from his long, knobbed fingers. Serrated leaves, a dark trunk—an elm, a bad-tempered tree indeed.

  The troll heaved forward again, widening the hole in the side of the trailer. Glass shattered, cheap metal buckled and bent, and Robin flicked her right pinkie fingernail with the pad of her thumb.

  A silver dart crackled into being, splashing against the woodwight and scoring deep. Golden, resinous sapblood sprayed, and the wight’s knothole mouth opened bellow-wide. A furious scream made of creaking, snapping, thick-groaning branches poured out.

  The troll halted, its tiny close-set eyes blinking in confusion. It withdrew slightly, and the second raven-haired drow peered over its shoulder, poking at it afresh with the silvertip stick. Robin flicked her right middle and ring fingers, one dart catching in the woodwight’s branches and tangling, the other flying true and striking at the troll’s eyes. Index finger, another dart made a high keening noise as it streaked for the first drow, who batted it away with contemptuous ease. The spray of sapblood from the woodwight eased, and the thing hissed a malediction at her, a black-winged curse flapping, ungainly, through the close confines.

  The troll howled, the noise and its stinking breath fluttering Robin’s skirt, cracking the screen on the ancient television, and batting the flying curse aside. It lashed out, horselike, with each limb in turn, the first its left hindleg, catching the second drow with a crack audible even through the uproar. The first drow leapt forward, shaking out something that glittered gold with flashes of ruby, and Robin’s skin chilled all over.

  Is that what I think it is?

  She flicked her thumbnail now, and a high piercing whistle burst between her lips. Ruddy orange flashed, the dart becoming a whip of flame, and it kissed the edge of the woodwight’s trunk.

  Golden sapblood kindled, and a new layer of noise intruded. Robin ignored it, skipping aside with the canister of salt now in her right hand. A fine time to wish I had cold iron, she thought pointlessly, and dodged, for the gold-and-ruby glimmer in the first drow’s hands was a net, hair-fine metallic strands with red droplets at their junctures, supple-straining as it sensed its holder’s quarry. It retreated with a cheated hiss, and the drow snarled at her again.

  So
someone wished her taken alive. Unwinter had sworn to Puck Goodfellow that he would not hunt her, but drow were not of Summer unless they were half something else, whether mortal or another manner of sidhe, and in any case it did not matter.

  The Ragged did not mean to let these suitors, or any other, press their attentions too closely upon her. The curse, flapping in the living room, vanished under a sheet of flame. Robin’s whistle ended, and she whooped in a fresh breath, bringing her left hand forward.

  The sinister hand. These darts would be more brittle . . . but far more powerfully malefic.

  The troll, fire-maddened and half-blinded, heaved. The entire trailer lifted, foundation to roof, buckling and breaking. The woodwight, screaming and completely alight by now, blundered into the couch, thrusting itself straight into the troll’s face as well. The poor creature—stonetrolls were not known for their intelligence—was hopelessly entangled with the side of the trailer, insulation and sharp metal ribboning around its hard hide. It heaved again, and the drow with the net slip-stumbled between carpet and linoleum, his dark, liquid eyes widening as footing became treacherous.

  Robin jabbed her left hand forward and the drow dodged aside, crashing into a flimsy closet door—but she hadn’t released the darts, and now she flicked them all, fanwise and deadly, a baking draft scouring her from top to toe and her eyes slitted against the blast. Smoke billowed; it would make the air unbreathable after a few more moments. The back door was behind her; she fumbled with her left hand for the knob, her right hand sweeping in a semicircle, scattering salt in an arc that would not halt Unwinter’s minion.

  But it would delay him, and salt could be fashioned into other things. There was the song, too, her loosening throat scorched with smoke-tang, and just as the drow with the net shook himself free of the ruins of the coat closet and the troll heaved again, the knob turned under her fingers and she half-fell backward, saving herself with a wrenching fishlike jump as the wet wooden steps outside splintered.