And the Creek Don't Rise

by R. M. Gilmore

  He groaned, not quite awake, not fully asleep. “Live in magic for me, Lynn,” he breathed.

  A final kiss on the forehead—deep lines cut across it, matching the whiskers starting to form around his eyes. “I love you, old man.”

  I was at the door when he said, “I love you too.”

  Daydream believer

  Puck—and the life I’d carved out for myself—waited on me in a cushy room just outside of Little Rock. I wouldn’t make him wait too long. I had a few ends to tie before I left Havana for what I’d decided then would be forever—until my time came near its end. My soul just couldn’t take the blows being home brought along with it. The cover of darkness would serve me well to not get caught.

  Tires crunched along the gravel road that wound through grassy spaces around plots. There was only one major cemetery near Havana, not counting family gravesites on homesteads scattered about the county. Everyone I’d come to see would be right there in one place.

  I figured my daddy would be to the west with the Russells and I knew just where Nana would be. Right next to my granddaddy. I parked the truck and tromped along the grass toward the Russell section. There were a lot of us, and most were laid to rest in one clump near the big tree in the back corner.

  No true stone yet, a metal marker with a paper sign marked his place. Someone had left a toy truck—double trailers with a blue cab, just like his. He’d lived most of my life in that rig.

  Ass over teakettle in love with Mama back in high school. It wasn’t often a love burned so hot it lasted forever. By the time I came along, there was no turning back and Daddy knew it. He started driving truck that same year. Eventually, the hauls kept him gone longer and longer. Until the day came I knew my dad only by the trinkets he brought me.

  I dropped to my knees in the dewy grass. “Oh, Daddy. I feel like I let you go long before you left.” Sitting back on my heels, I took a big deep breath, pulling in the smell of the gardenias. “You did what you had to do. I get that now. I don’t hate you for it. Thank you for bringing Garret and me into this world. Thanks for making up the human part of me. I don’t know what I’d do without it. I love you, Dad. I guess…” I stopped to consider my words. “I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

  I stood and brushed the grass from my knees. I had more goodbyes to say, and on a night so fleeting time wouldn’t wait.

  Standing tall, in near the center of a shallow hill, Higgins carved into a stone. I swallowed hard and shuffled to the place I’d visited more times than I could count.

  Delma Devlin Higgins. Mother and Nana. Gone to the Heavens, etched just below the Higgins name. The silhouette of a cat carved beneath the date. A day I’d remember even in death. The sight of it dumped tears on my lashes. My bottom lip shook, and I thought twice about biting it off just to keep it from wriggling away and taking my resolve with it.

  “Nanny,” I said, and a full sob poured from my depths. Falling to my knees, every ounce of emotions I’d hidden away in my years gone from Havana bubbled up and out, soaking my cheeks with salty tears.

  “I’m sorry. I’m more than sorry. I’m…” Dying, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. It was a lie. I wasn’t dying, because I couldn’t. I sure wanted to. “I want you to be with God. I pray to whatever will listen that you’ve found your way home. With Granddaddy.” I stopped myself. My grandpa was the only man I knew, but he hadn’t stolen her heart, not fully. “I want your soul to be happy wherever you find yourself.”

  I left my knees to lay in the grass at the foot of the headstone. The tall, etched stone stood over me, my guard. I closed my eyes and pictured Nanny’s face. Her curly silver hair and fingers filled to the tip with rings of all types. The way her eyes crinkled around the edges when she laughed. There was nothing I wanted more in that moment than to crawl up her lap and listen to her humming a song deep in her chest. I thought maybe I could, one day, when I was allowed to leave the confines of earth and my soul flittered off to play with those who left before me. The thought became a hope and I tucked it away for safekeeping.

  “My heart is filled with your wisdom and love. You taught me how to be a woman in this world. Your blood brought with it my gift to the universe. My gift of justice, my sacrifice of life for the greater good. Your strength, the strength of your family before you, courses through my veins and reminds me I have more to do than sit and blubber over my can’t-haves.”

  Blue light cast eerie shadows. “I healed my cracks, but I never stopped to look them over. To accept them for what they were. It’s about more than mending and ignoring,” I reminded myself. “I needed a moment to step back and admire the work. Even the worst of the world needs attention. Even the hurt need love. Sometimes, saying goodbye is all it takes.”

  I’d say it, and I’d mean it. “Goodbye, Nana. I love you,” I said after a long few minutes of breathing and reassuring myself that I knew what I was doing.

  Too many years had passed and I thought in that time I’d moved beyond Havana and the losses my soul had seen there. I hadn’t gotten over anything. I’d just put enough time behind it and my humanity forgot its hurt. It takes things like that, pain and sorrow, to remind us what it means to be a human in the first place.

  Puck smiled about everything. Not because life was a happy place to be, but his lack of empathy for things that stung deep. I’d come to learn it was just part of his makeup and in reality, part of mine. My fae had begun to take over and steal away my human, leaving me content, indifferent with life and losses I’d felt. Immortality seemed to do that to people. Returning to the place I’d thought I’d forgotten ripped the human right to the surface and lay it out raw for the stings of the world to scratch over the breadth of it.

  I clawed, digging at the earth. Nosed my muzzle into the deep hole I’d dug. My heavy paw scooped dirt away from a gray stone buried deep in the ground. Shoving dirt away, two round holes. I nosed against it and freed it from the earth. Swiping a paw, I tipped it on its side. Along the right side, a silver tooth shined in the moonlight. No stone, a skull. Our heart twisted and churned until it escaped from my throat in a howl that shook the forest. In the dead of night, in some woods somewhere, I’d dragged up the skull of my nanny.

  I sat up screaming. Yellow sun blared into my eyes. Rode hard and laid out wet, I smacked away the tang from my mouth and shook the nightmare from my head.

  A stiff breeze whipped through my hair. I closed my eyes against the dust that stung my cheeks. Using the stone to brace me, I stood and turned my back to the wind. Off, beyond the blooming hawthorn to the north, a man stood, leaning against a tall marker. It was the form of a man I never thought I’d lay my eyes on again. Without thinking, I tore off in a full run. The heels of my boots dug into the grass and kicked up the dirt around them.

  My eyes stayed trained on the figure. I’m coming. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. He flickered, his signal growing weaker the closer I got. A weak smile spread over his face, and in an instant, he was gone. I reached the marker where he’d been leaning. I scoured the landscape for any sign he’d been there. Searched the soil for boot prints.

  “Rusty,” I panted, clinging to the stone for balance. “Come back,” I pleaded with the ghost.

  I waited for a few panting breaths before giving up. Taking one last look at the dirt that surrounded the tall, slender headstone, I realized where I was standing. Ruston Kemp - taken long before his time. A wailing sob escaped my lungs before I could stop it. I wrapped my arms around the stone as if it were Rusty himself. It was warm under the southern sun, the edges sharp and digging into my skin. I let it. A pain I more than deserved.

  “Are you here?” I whispered through my crying. “Or are you trapped in this place?” I asked and held a hand to my breaking heart.

  In all those years, I’d never let Rusty go. His death was a mar on my human soul and his love was a thread by which I was stitched to this earth. He was as much a part of me
as my ancient fairy beast. Accepting my guilt, his death, I tucked away the hope that one day I’d see him again.

  Bottom lip quivered as resolve bled from my core through the tips of my fingers and toes.

  “My darling boy. Your life ended because of me. By my hand, you’re not here with me. I will live with that until the day I’m finally free of this earth. Until then, I promise to keep you tucked away, safe with my raw human bits.” I sucked up all my courage and let go of my selfish, human feelings. “I’m off to do special things, just like you told me to.” More tears threatened to come. I wiped them away with the tenacity and resolve that came along with being an ancient creature. “You are my humanity. I love you with every last ounce of that. Until we meet again, my love.” I closed my eyes. Letting out a breath, I sent with it the pain of Rusty’s death that had festered in my depths.

  With the cemetery in my rearview mirror, a longing settled in my soul I knew then would never leave. I would spend my life longing.

  Sam’s pump station—the place I thought I’d grown up—sat vacant. Boards nailed on the windows, a no trespassing sign plastered on more than one. I wondered what’d happened to Sam, the man who taught me the meaning of a dollar, what hard work and respect looked like. He’d called after me on those first days of my rebirth. Worried about me. Left a couple messages on the machine, the last sounded tearful. Another player in the game of my life, lost to memory.

  Mama Lee’s cluttered yard hadn’t changed much in the years I’d been gone. Person-tall sunflowers jutted from the edges, framing the backside of the property. I grinned at the beaded curtain on her back porch. I knew, in my gut, she was just on the other side of those beads. Killing the engine, I hopped out, my boots puffing up dust around them.

  “Well, I’ll be. Lynnie Russell in the lovely flesh,” Mama Lee called to me from behind her beads. “Get on up here, girl.” Time, it seemed, had stood still for both of us.

  “I got your letter.”

  “Well, never would’ve if you hadn’t kept me up-to-date with your travels.” Her smile spread from ear to ear and she opened her arms wide for a hug.

  Stronger than she looked, Mama Lee’s slender arms wrapped around my shoulders and damn near squeezed the breath from me. The beast tumbled inside, happy to see our old friend.

  “You been out to see your nanny,” she said like she already knew it to be true and wasn’t bothering with a question.

  “Yeah.” I nodded and she let me go, making her way into the house.

  “Got to visit with Rusty?” She seemed to already know that, too.

  I followed her inside. The room was still filled to the brim with trinkets and magical things. “I did.” Drying herbs and flowers, wrapped tight in twine, hung from hooks in the doorway.

  “Feel better?” she asked and poked her head from around the jamb of the door that led into the kitchen.

  She knew exactly what she was up to even if I didn’t. “I do.”

  “Well, then, how’s about some breakfast? You must be starved half to death.” She disappeared into the kitchen. “Getting skinny, too. That curly headed boy not feeding you?” She asked about Puck as though she didn’t know his name. “Come on in here. I’ve got a pig frying.”

  I raised a brow at her. “I feed myself.”

  “Good to hear.” She turned to look me in the eye. “Did you get out all that darkness that’s been weighing you down all these years?”

  Spicy smoke swirled from the end of a burning bundle of herbs, I breathed it in, remembering the day she’d calmed the beast and called me free. “I did,” I said under my breath. “Didn’t even know it was there.”

  “Can’t let go of something unless you know where to find it.” Drying her hands, she continued, “You won’t be back, Lynn,” she said, a matter of fact that I had yet to speak out loud. “This was your last visit to Havana… until your time comes, so I’m assuming. If you hadn’t come back now, that hidden sorrow wouldn’t’ve ever had the chance to come out in the open and blow away with the wind.”

  “I see. I didn’t, but now I do.” She slid an icy glass of tea in front of me. “You’ve been a friend to me when the world seemed to turn its back.” I took a gulp, living in the memory of my youth for a moment. I couldn’t stay there forever, in that place. It was a place of dreams meant only for memory.

  “Your face hasn’t changed an inch.” She ran a rough finger over my jaw, taking in the magic of it.

  “I was just thinking the same about you.”

  She swallowed hard and sniffed back something I couldn’t quite peg. “You, my dear, have a long, interesting life to live. You leave us be here. We’ll get on fine. You’ve done what you came here to do.” She kissed my forehead and stood up from the table. “Cleaned house.”

  “I wish I could stay.” I looked out the open door at all of her trinkets. “I’d like to get to know my niece and nephew. I miss my brother and Hattie.” Sadness trickled its way over my heart and my feet hesitated to leave. “There are things here I want,” I said without thinking.

  “You’ve got a job to do. Go do it. We’ll get on fine here.”

  “You trying to kick me out?” I joked.

  She plucked a dried sprig of rosemary from a bundle and stuck it behind my ear. “For remembrance.”

  Havana needed me to say goodbye. I needed it too. Vengeance waited for no man. Or woman. As it were.

  I hugged Mama Lee, tight and long. She held her breath in, perhaps fighting off tears. I didn’t have room to cry anymore. It was a much-needed moment, a stitch in my existence that’d waited just long enough for me to grow unbreakable.

  “Goodbye, old friend.”

  She sniffed and patted me on the shoulder. “All right now, be on with you.”

  I stepped off the porch steps and turned back over my shoulder. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Long off.” She shooed at me with a withered hand.

  Before I drove off, she shouted one final bit of advice. “Be careful of your instincts, girl. They may not have your best interests at heart,” she warned, and disappeared behind her curtains.

  Taking Flight

  Bright, white and charming, Puck’s grin greeted me when I shoved through the door of our suite. “Miss me?” he asked, closing a book and setting it on the table.

  “More than I expected, actually.” I dropped my bag on the floor beside the bed.

  Long legs cleared the distance between us. Strong arms wrapped around my middle. Small, intimate kisses covered my cheeks.

  “You smell different,” he whispered against my neck. “Like a spring breeze.”

  Ghosts of Havana dust peppered my cheeks. “And children.”

  I cleared the lump in my throat. I wouldn’t go back. Couldn’t. It wasn’t my home anymore. They’d be my people until I was gone from the earth, but my home was with the beast. With Puck. Cu Sidhe didn’t belong in Havana. She was a worldly creature with an Otherworld home of her own. A place that held the secrets of what we were. What’d been kept from me.

  “I’m ready,” I said quietly in his ear.

  He walked me backward, plopping me down to the couch. “That wasn’t my goal, but who am I to turn down a beautiful woman.” A sly grin curled his lips. He kissed my neck.

  “I’m ready to go home.” I closed my eyes, sitting in the idea of leaving all I’d known. If it meant security for the future of my bloodline, I’d give it all up. Every day of earthly life. For that little redheaded girl I’d have done just about anything. “It’s time I see Knockma for myself.”

  His eyes held mine for a long few breaths. “Are you sure?”

  One good breath, a hard swallow, then “Yes.” A simple word changed everything, as that word tended to do.

  Eyes black as coffee and just as tempting scanned my face. “I knew this day would come. Never imagined this soon, but you�
�re certainly ready.” Eager hands groped the back of my head beneath thick hair.

  My girl roiled inside, desperate to break free. Trapped inside her human too many hours while we traversed Havana. “Just one thing,” I breathed, enjoying the weight of him on top of me.

  “Anything.”

  Soft curls sprung free, falling over my face. “Can I trust you?”

  “To the ends of the earth.” His grin lit my soul on fire, stomach flipping somersaults. It could have been the beast, though. Maybe it knew where we were headed and was leaping for joy at the thought. It was finally going home. If I couldn’t go home again, at least I could make sure one of us could.

  “Now what?”

  He touched the tip of his tongue to the corner of his mouth. “We fly.”

  My brows dropped. “Like with wings?”

  He kissed my nose. “Like with Delta.”

  We’d packed so many times over the years neither one of us kept anything around that couldn’t fit in a suitcase. This time though, we packed only what we couldn’t absolutely leave behind. I’d shoved the photos of Garret and my family I’d been lugging around for years and the small cotton pouch that held the only piece of magic I owned into a small backpack already stuffed with tightly rolled clothes and my coffee mug.

  My hand trembled, fingering the edge of the black leather folder that held my passport. Puck’s friend, a clúrachán he knew out west, had made me a stack of false identification some years back. The drunk little thing said times had changed and Tuath Dé—which I’d come to learn was my ancestral heritage—better change with it. They’d lived among humans for centuries undetected; cleverness and adaptability had surely been a strong suit.

  “You’ll be fine. Promise.”

  Puck’s voice cut through my own thoughts. He kissed my knuckles. It was more than the flight; it was the hours trapped in a tube of people. One of whom could cut to purple midflight and we’d be in a world of mess. I’d talked with my girl, warned her, begged her to let me be. But she’d been restless since we left Havana. Sensing home so close. I’d felt the same when we crossed the Arkansas state line for the first time in years.