Windmaster's Bane

by Tom Deitz

  David looked puzzled for a moment, but Nuada went on obliviously.

  “And to answer your third question: Many of our kindred still dwell in Erenn, and many there have kindred here. This Track we now ride connects the two, yet that passage becomes ever more difficult as more and more the works of men breach the Walls between the Worlds. But, still, there are certain times of year—four of them, to be exact, of which this is one—when the Road is strongest and the journey less perilous. Those times we follow the Track to the Eastern Sea to greet whomever has chosen to come here. That is why we ride tonight, and where.”

  Nuada paused, as if considering whether or not to continue, and the strength of his gaze made David feel as if his soul were being read. “You have a sympathy for the old things, David Sullivan, that I can tell. It is now a rare child indeed, in this or any other land, who has heard of the Sidhe at all, much less Cuchulain or Nuada Airgetlam. And you have the Second Sight, as well—and that is a gift both precious and perilous. Now farewell, David Sullivan, for the Track calls us, and the Track may not be denied.”

  David felt his eyes tingle once more. Little Billy snored softly. All at once David felt very sleepy himself. He took a step backward, and then another. The paralysis was gone, the barrier lifted.

  Nuada extended his silver hand forward and then raised it above his head in salute before gathering up his reins. He shook them once, so that the silver bells chimed, and then again, and again, and the host took up the rhythm with other bells, and with tambourines and flutes. Even the golden Track beneath them began to pulse gently. Old, that music sounded—older than man, David suspected—and filled with a heart-rending longing.

  Little Billy slept quietly. David watched until the last horse had woven its way out of sight among the trees. Where the Sidhe had passed, the moss was unbroken, the pine needles unstirred. Only a faint golden glimmer remained to mark their passage, and then that too faded. He yawned again and began the walk home, his brother clutched in his arms.

  As he came to the line of briars, David paused. They seemed lower, less densely tangled, less . . . vigilant. And he noticed that mortality had taken back the night: It was dark again—moonless, as it should be.

  As the last light faded behind him, he did not see Ailill draw a needlelike dagger from a sheath at his waist and very discreetly prick his own right forefinger, which he then shook so that three drops of blood fell to the ground.

  Nor did he see another member of the company, who had fallen unobtrusively back to ride near the end of the procession, rein his horse to a halt and turn empty silver eyes after him, and with great precision inscribe a circle in the air with the ringed fourth finger of his right hand.

  Chapter IV: The Ring Of The Sidhe

  (Sunday, August 2)

  “I have seen the Sidhe!” David said to himself, flopping back against his pillow, arms folded reflectively behind his head.

  It was not the first time those words had chimed in his thoughts that night. No, he had whispered them over and over again as he passed ghostlike through the dark forest, across the yard, into the silent house—never certain if he walked, or ran, or moved by a remnant of some supernatural power that lingered yet about him. He had seen, but still could not believe; his mind recoiled from what it had witnessed. Already his body was falling asleep around him as he strove to sort his confused thoughts. He had seen the Sidhe!

  The Sidhe.

  Impossible; or was it? That castle on Bloody Bald, the one he had almost convinced himself had all been a hallucination or the work of an overly active imagination—it was real! He had seen it, had heard the horns of Elfland greeting dusk and dawn.

  And his eye problem—the recurring itchy tingle. Was that what had enabled him to look into that other world? They had called it Second Sight. But how did it work? More to the point, how did he get it? Certainly he had not always had it.

  David yawned, stretched luxuriously, and glanced across the room to the door where Little Billy had appeared the night before. Abruptly he had a troubling thought: Exactly how much had Little Billy seen? What would he remember? The little boy had seen the lights and heard the music, that much was clear. Yet he had not seemed to see anything during the actual encounter, at least not if his response to David’s actions was any indication. And the Sidhe had said they were visible to mortals—it was funny thinking of himself as a “mortal”—only if they chose, or, he supposed, if they had the Sight. For that matter, why had Little Billy not reawakened, even when David laid him in bed? Was that more Faery magic? Or—as David was beginning to fear—something worse? He wished he’d thought to ask Nuada a few more questions, but it was too late now. He was probably lucky to get away with his skin. What had they got themselves into?

  God, he was tired, he realized, as consciousness faded further—not entirely voluntarily. But there was something lingering in the back of David’s mind, one more thing that he needed to recall before he could sleep—something important. But whatever it was hovered tantalizingly just beyond recall and would not focus. And as his mind dropped its guard to follow that elusive something, sleep found him instead.

  Certainly it was not enough sleep, but when his mother hollered in the door that breakfast was ready and he’d better get it while it was hot because she was going to church and wasn’t going to cook but once, David woke immediately, unexpectedly refreshed. Simultaneously he realized what had been bothering him the night before. It pranced into his consciousness and sat there clear as day: He had forgotten to ask the Sidhe for the promised token of their meeting.

  “Crap,” he said aloud as he climbed out of bed and pulled on his jeans, noting a few briars still caught in the worn denim. He paused to look in on Little Billy, who slept peacefully, a blissful smile upon his face, seeming none the worse for wear, then padded barefoot into the bathroom.

  David splashed cold water on his face, ran a comb roughly through his tangled hair, and was just picking up his toothbrush when he felt a sudden burning pain against his right thigh, like when Mike Wheeler had put a hot penny down the back of his shirt in the eighth grade. He glanced quickly down, half expecting to see smoke, but saw nothing; stuck his hand into his pocket and found the source of the heat—and felt it grow cooler even as he fished it out and looked at it: a silver ring, almost a quarter of an inch wide, entirely plain except for an indentation running completely around the circumference. Automatically he slid it onto the forefinger of his left hand.

  It fit, though perhaps a big snugly. He raised it to eye level to examine it more carefully. Not as plain as he had thought; there was a pattern in the indentation, an intricate knotwork of interlacing lines that passed over and under each other in an endless looping circle. He found his eyes following that pattern, fascinated. Simple it was, and yet fabulously complex. And beautiful—the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It never occurred to him to wonder where it had come from. He knew. “I have seen the Sidhe!” he whispered.

  Little Billy trotted into the bathroom, yawning hugely, rubbing his eyes with his fists. David whirled around, glaring, and jerked his hand behind his back.

  “Don’t you ever knock?”

  “Door was open. Now get, I gotta go. Ma’s lookin’ for you.”

  “So what else is new?”

  Behind his back David tugged at the ring, and it came loose, slipping capriciously from his grasp to fall to the beige tile floor with a gentle ping. He snatched it on the second bounce and stuffed it hastily back into his pocket, realizing as he did that trying to hide it was absolutely the wrong thing to do. His brother would be suspicious now.

  “What’s that?” Little Billy asked sharply.

  “Oh, just a ring.” David tried to change the subject. “Did you sleep okay last night?” he asked carefully.

  “Fine. Had some funny dreams, though.”

  Well, that’s a relief, thought David.

  His brother stared solemnly at him. “Where’d you get the ring?”

  “Fo
und it. What’d you dream about?”

  “Nothin’ much. Where’d you find it?”

  “Up in the woods.”

  “When?”

  “When . . .” He hesitated; he was not ready for this, not when there was so much to sort out. “When me and Alec went camping a couple of nights ago.”

  Little Billy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Then how come I never seen it before? How come you never showed it to me?”

  David was not at all pleased with his brother’s persistence.

  “I’ll show you my hand on your backside if you don’t hush up.”

  “You’re hidin’ somethin’, ain’t you, Davy? You didn’t find that old ring, did you?”

  David thought desperately. “I got it from the . . . from a . . . from a girl,” he said finally, making up the best excuse he could on such short notice, immediately aware of how lame it probably sounded.

  Little Billy raised dubious eyebrows. “You got a girlfriend?”

  “Don’t tell . . . please?”

  “Okay,” Little Billy agreed, a bit too quickly.

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. . . . Oh, and thanks.”

  “Had my fingers crossed,” Little Billy whispered gleefully as David left him alone in the bathroom. Teach him to keep secrets!

  So much was whirling through David’s mind as he drifted down the hall to breakfast that he felt almost numb. There was the night before to consider, of course, when things he had thought unreal, or at best safely distanced, had suddenly crowded hard and near upon him, so that the entire composition of reality had shifted around him. And there was the matter of the ring, and of the lie he had just told Little Billy and already regretted. He had always preferred telling as much of the truth as he could when in a difficult situation—it made getting caught harder. Oh well, he thought as he slumped into the kitchen and sank down at the table that dominated the center of the room, maybe Little Billy has already forgotten about it; at least he doesn’t seem to remember last night. Thank God for that!

  That! The encounter with the Sidhe! Had it really happened? David shivered suddenly. If things had not gone as they had—if he had not won the riddle game—he would not be sitting down to breakfast now. All at once he saw his parents with a new appreciation . . . and with a trace of sadness as well, for the drabness of their lives. He knew his own would never be drab again.

  David felt certain they would instantly pounce upon him. God knew they had plenty of reason, if they suspected what he’d been up to—if they could understand it at all. But, instead, his mother laid a shiny new romance novel facedown by the butter dish and got up to stick a couple more slices of bread in the toaster. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Big Billy was drinking strong black coffee with his bacon and eggs and reading the Sunday edition of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Everything normal there, too. David’s guilt was still his own.

  Little Billy bounced in and sat down next to him and helped himself to a pile of bacon and eggs and toast nearly as big as he was, with homemade blackberry jelly for the toast.

  “You goin’ to church this morning, boy?” Big Billy asked loudly without looking up.

  The abruptness of the question so startled David from the apprehensive stupor into which he had settled that he nearly fell out of his chair. Fortunately nobody noticed.

  “Hadn’t planned to,” David answered as nonchalantly as he could, pouring himself a cup of coffee, black for a change.

  “Way you was talkin’ yesterday, and way you been talkin’ lately, you better go,” Big Billy replied in turn.

  David suppressed the urge to follow with the inevitable response that Big Billy didn’t go either, but held his tongue. He had more important things on his mind just then than rehearsing that tired old argument.

  “David’s got a girlfriend,” mumbled Little Billy through a mouthful of toast.

  David tried to look daggers in two directions at once and found he couldn’t. Too much too fast. What had possessed Little Billy to blurt out his secret like that? It was not even a true secret, either, just a hastily constructed fabrication that could not stand scrutiny. He needed time to sort things out, to get his stories straight, or he would get so far in he’d never get out. Maybe his pa had a point at that; maybe he should go to church. Now that David had proof of at least some supernatural creatures existing in the world, didn’t it follow that there could be more?

  Suddenly God was in his Heaven and all wasn’t right in David’s world. His ambivalent agnosticism was hanging in tatters like the scrambled eggs hanging from his fork.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Little Billy,” his mother told him. “Now don’t let me have to tell you again, hear?”

  Little Billy chewed noisily for a moment.

  “I said David’s got a girlfriend!” The boy looked so smug it took all David’s willpower to keep from pushing his face down into his cornflakes then and there.

  Big Billy slowly lowered his paper and looked up incredulously. It had taken a moment for the words to sink in.

  David kicked at Little Billy under the table, missed, and got a chair leg instead. He grimaced and pretended interest in a slice of bacon.

  “He’s got a ring and everything,” Little Billy went on, delighted by David’s discomfort. David discovered to his horror that he was wearing the ring again, in plain sight. Big Billy was looking straight at it.

  “Son-of-a-gun!” Big Billy exclaimed, with unexpected good humor. “It’s about time!” He set his coffee cup down hard and laughed. “Sneaky old son-of-a-gun—like his daddy. Who is she, boy?” he asked conspiratorially. David was more than a little taken aback by his interest.

  “Uh . . . you don’t know her. She’s a girl. . . . a girl at school.”

  “You ain’t been to school this summer,” Little Billy pointed out.

  “I didn’t say it was this summer,” David replied angrily, feeling as if he were rapidly digging his own grave.

  “A girl!” repeated Big Billy. “Well, I’ll be damned! You may make a man yet! But who is she, boy? Don’t do to be ashamed of your woman.” His eyes narrowed. “You ain’t done nothin’ you’d be sorry for, have you?”

  David looked horrified. Suddenly he felt very uneasy.

  His mother seemed surprisingly disinterested. She picked up her coffee and her romance, shuffled into the den, and turned on the TV. The raucous noise of cartoons sounded for a moment, followed quickly by the crackling hiss of fuzzing wavelengths and then somebody with an oil-on-water voice wanting to tell a nation of wretched sinners about Jee-ee-uh-sus-uh.

  Big Billy changed tactics. “What’s her name, Little Billy? Who’s your brother’s gal?”

  Little Billy shrugged. “I dunno. All I know is he’s got a ring he’s been tryin’ to hide, and I could hear him mumblin’ last night about seein’ the she.”

  David rolled his eyes skyward in dismay. Had he talked in his sleep as well? And so loud Little Billy could hear him from his room?

  “A ring and everything! Must be serious. You give her one too, boy? Goin’ steady?”

  “Uh, not yet,” David lied. Things were getting worse by the minute. “She just happened to have this one, so she gave it to me; it was sudden—unexpected, you know. I met her down in Atlanta at that Beta Club convention back before school was out. Nothing serious . . . really,” he added lamely.

  “But you just said she was a girl at school,” Little Billy noted.

  “Maybe I will go to church,” David said, grasping at anything to change the subject and get himself away from the breakfast table. “I haven’t been in a while.”

  “I ’spect that’d be a good idea,” Big Billy nodded, returning to his paper. “Get yourself some practice,” he added, “before that gal down in Atlanta drags you to the altar.”

  David got up and took a long cold shower—long because he needed to think, and cold because his wits were obviously still muddled, or he never would have got
himself in such a fix. Neither helped. In the end church seemed the best option. Any help would do now.

  Worse and worse, David thought as he eased his mother’s two-year-old Ford LTD into the gravel parking lot of the First Antioch and Damascus Baptist Church, too late to sneak in unobtrusively. Normally, when he went to church at all, he accompanied Alec to the much more liberal MacTyrie Methodist; but that was usually when he’d spent Saturday night at Alec’s house. David hadn’t been to services in a Baptist church in maybe three years.

  As soon as his mother opened her door, Little Billy squirmed between the seat back and the doorjamb and ran off to play with some of his friends.

  His mother got out with considerably more grace, and David couldn’t help noticing that she did cut a fine figure—when she wanted to, and spent half the morning putting it on. It was also apparent that she was completely delighted to be seen at church with her delinquent older son, since her husband—despite his talk—had not set foot in a church in eighteen years except for weddings and funerals.

  David took a deep breath, straightened his tie, and opened his door. Some girls he knew from school were standing on the semicircular steps at the door of the white frame building, watching his arrival with considerable interest and no little surprise. One of the girls pointed, and there was a chorus of giggles behind hands. David felt extremely self-conscious, and wondered what sin they imagined he had committed that was bad enough to bring him to church. An even worse thought struck him briefly, and he glanced casually down to check his fly, breathing a small sigh of relief that it was still securely fastened. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dark blue suit—it was getting a little tight through the armpits—and felt the coolness of the ring on his finger.