by Ken Altabef
The seething madness above him took on a familiar silhouette. Eric remembered Ketch’s description of the thing as a shining woman in the sky. There was no detail, only an outline filled with a maddening, shifting gray static but the contours nevertheless seemed vaguely feminine.
The shining woman had a voice. To Eric it sounded both sweet and nauseating at the same time, as if a child had been force-fed candy and sweets until ready to vomit. The combination turned his stomach. He gagged on the taste of bile.
The voice said: “Love me. Despair all others and love me!”
Now a death struggle began in earnest. Eric forced himself onward, fueling the red beam with his own personal rage. The woman in the sky, however, did not seek to strike back. Instead she sought to pull him in. He felt claw-like fingers dig into his shoulders as long, invisible insect-arms stretched earthward toward him. She wanted to draw him up, to take him inside her seething emptiness.
He knew he was hurting the monster, because bits of it seemed to be flaking off and raining down like confetti. They looked like shining mirror fragments with sharp edges but so insubstantial he wasn’t sure they were really there. They passed through the people on the field without hurting them. He watched them pass right through Theodora’s hair.
But the exertion was hurting him too. A raw ache flowed down from the tips of his fingers, and his arm grew heavy as if slowly being turned to stone. The abyss above kept drawing at him, as if the earth could no longer hold him and at any moment he might simply fall into the sky. He felt himself slipping. The monster kept pulling at him, weakening his determination and sapping the strength from his arm, from his very soul.
“Love me!” she commanded. A hot wind whipped across the field, carrying bits of stone and brush that pelted his skin, stinging badly. “Love me, or I will scour the flesh from your bones. I will scrape your entire world clean.”
Eric felt himself growing dizzy and weightless. She waited for him in the sky, a mad, deadly lover. I can’t do it, he thought. It’s too strong. I’m bound to lose this fight.
Theodora’s hand slipped into his own. Suddenly Eric felt his strength renewed. Theodora’s voice rang in his head, “Remember, my love, the moonlight. The secret is the moonlight.”
She squeezed his hand and he felt her, really felt her. Clarimonde. The two of them began to merge, joining in spirit as if their minds had become one.
In all the years he’d been married to Theodora, Eric had never really known Clarimonde. The faery had remained hidden inside the human façade, a terrible secret, an inevitable scandal, a disgrace. But now all was revealed. Linked by the lens in a moment of perfect understanding, there were no more secrets.
Eric experienced what it had been like for Clarimonde as a baby in the Patch. Safe within a silken cocoon, her first few years had been such a perfect and sweet existence, so peaceful and carefree. In those days before the Purge she had communed with the mushroom, sipping from its mind-altering nectar. Her awareness had extended throughout the Patch, discovering the secrets of the whole of nature, every creature great and small, every root and shoot and flower under the shining sun.
Eric tasted this natural bliss through their newfound connection. And the Fen, a faery childhood full of fun and jokes and a growing appreciation for the unseriousness of life. And then maturity among the faeries, sitting under a willow tree listening to the philosophical musings of Moon Dancer.
The danger. The mission. The pretense. Her life with him at Grayson Hall. How could such a mundane and boring existence compare to those great heights she had already experienced? Eric felt a strong urge to turn away, to read not these pages in her history which he already knew so well. But he was astonished to learn that Theodora considered her life with him even more wonderful than anything the faeries could offer. He saw himself through her eyes, and was astonished and amazed.
In a like manner, she became familiar with all his own secrets. His secret shame at Griffin’s thuggish nature, the pain and guilt at surviving his parents and brother, his intense feelings for his one true love, Theodora, and their children.
“Love me!” roared the Chrysalid.
“Not a chance,” they both said together.
They joined together, man and faery, as they bent to the task. “Rage is not enough,” she said. “The secret is the moonlight.”
Eric redirected his efforts, angling the lens to capture the light of the brilliant half-moon. With the added boost of the moon’s power and Theodora’s strength, they just might have a chance. The crimson beam widened. The monster roared.
For Eric there was nothing left of the world except the four of them, locked in mortal combat. The man, the faery, the Chrysalid and the Moon. The exertion took its toll. Eric felt as if the struggle was tearing him apart. But even at their greatest exertion, he and Theodora could not completely repel the Chrysalid.
“There’s not enough moonlight,” he said.
“There has to be.”
Theodora sent a prayer skyward to her great patron. Mother Moon would not desert them, not now or ever. “Help us, Mother!”
“I’m your mother!” roared the Chrysalid. But apparently there was some disagreement on that point. The moon’s brilliance swelled, feeding more and more power into the lens. As it surged, the monster screamed.
And then it was gone. It had retreated back along its mysterious skyway, back through the rent it had created, to the other side. The sky sealed behind it with a tremendous sucking sound that set Eric’s ears to popping until he could hear nothing else at all. He thought he must have gone deaf.
“I love you,” he shouted to his wife.
He could not hear her reply. He didn’t need to hear it.
Chapter 50
Eric hurried along the smuggler’s tunnel, a small oil lamp in his hand to light the way. He recalled the last time he’d fled down this earthy corridor. He’d been a broken man, disowned, defeated and driven half-mad from torture. This time things were different.
He was back in charge of the Grayson estates. There was a hell of a job of rebuilding to do, that was for certain. But he’d been there before. He’d spent most of his life rebuilding the damage left behind after the death of his parents and the ravages of the Creeping Gray Rot. He was quite proud of the success he and Fitzroy March had achieved in restoring the Grayson properties and name. This time, unfortunately, he would have to do the work without the guiding hand of his good friend and adviser. It was time for him to be his own man now, in every way.
Eric emerged through the end of the tunnel, and onto the quiet stretch of moonlit beach. He half expected his brother Hake to be standing there ready to challenge him to a game of ‘pirates’ among the roiling surf.
Instead, a real pirate was waiting. One of the Grayson ships, a small one-masted sloop, was docked in the little smuggler’s bay. A pair of lamps burning on deck bobbed gently up and down with the shifting sea. The ship’s hull tapped the rotting planks of the tiny quay with a dull thunk, thunk, thunk.
Ketch stood on the rocky shore among the crates and barrels, stores and supplies that cluttered the beachhead waiting to be loaded on. His back turned, he gazed out on the open sea. What thoughts churned in that man’s skull Eric could not guess. Was he dreaming of bloodthirsty conquest, with a little rape and pillaging thrown in, or a quiet beach in Martinique?
Eric stepped up beside him. “She’s unarmed, but fast. And her hull is clean. She’ll get you to Martinique, so long as you don’t go looking for trouble.”
Ketch smiled coyly. “Trouble has a way of finding me.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Never matter, M’lord. They’ll not take me alive, and I never surrender.”
“Now listen to me, Ketch. Those are my men on that skiff. Good sailors. Nothing happens to them, you understand? This is simply a passenger run, with one passenger and that’s you. You’ll do as you’re told and enjoy the ride. I want all of them, and the sloop, returned to me unharmed.”<
br />
The pirate smiled, yellowed teeth glinting in the moonlight. “Not to worry, squire. You can rely upon me.”
Theodora stood naked before the full-length standing mirror in the Grayson’s master bedroom. Finally, she did not have to pretend. Her skin shone a dusky green in the candlelight. She tousled her hair, the color of summer wheat, and let it flow across her shoulders. As she admired her reflection, she noticed Eric’s reflection admiring her. He seemed fascinated by the delicate filigree of tiny veins that marked the gossamer wings stretching from her naked back. He had not yet noticed that detail before, as with so many other new things he still had left to discover.
Theodora thought the ancient mirror suited her refection. After all, it was hundreds of years old, older even than she. It had been a part of this house, the Grayson family for a very long time. It belonged here. And for the first time, she thought that maybe she did too. I feel so free, she thought. At last I can be my true self in my own house. It’s wonderful.
She turned to face her husband.
“A faery in the master bedroom!” she said. “So scandalous! What would Griffin say?”
“He’s not saying anything,” replied Eric. “He’s long gone, iron bell and all. You’ve been at me for years to take that thing down and I suppose you’ve finally succeeded.”
Theodora spun around, twirling gracefully. She reached out to the white lilies in a vase on the night table. There were always flowers in the bedroom. Eric had insisted on that ever since their wedding night. “Good riddance to the bell,” she said, “but we’ll have to rebuild the chapel.”
“Aye. We’ve quite a lot of rebuilding to do.”
Eric, seated on the canopy bed, turned his attention to the palm of his right hand. The outline of Griffin’s lens was a raw red scar, burned into his flesh.
“A lot of rebuilding to do,” he repeated, “And to top it all off, I’ve half a dozen men turned into some sort of faeries.”
“I can find a place for them at Barrow Downes, if you like.”
“No, I don’t think so. They belong here, just as you do. Above ground. Things are going to have to change in Britain as regards the faeries. I’m going to make them change.”
Theodora sat down beside him. “That’s a tall order.”
He smiled at her. “We’ve done worse.”
“Aye.”
“One thing I don’t understand. That thing changed my men, turned them half into faeries, but not me. I wasn’t affected. Why not?”
Theodora shrugged. “You’re a Grayson.”
“And the children?”
“They’re part Grayson,” she said.
“And part faery.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll just have to see what happens, I guess.”
“Well, they won’t grow up in a country that reviles faeries. Not if I have anything to say about it. How soon can you arrange a meeting with Moonshadow?”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Do I?” he said. Eric opened the drawer of his night stand and produced Griffin’s lens. It caught a flicker of candlelight as he held it up. Theodora felt a sudden unease.
He threw it to the floor and stomped it with his boot. The lens tinkled as it shattered. Such a small sound to mark the end of such a dangerous device.
“For the children,” he said.
She threw her arms around him. “For the children.”
“So, how did your picture come out, James?”
Nanny Lucinda peered down at the paper. James had rendered one of his father’s best chargers in thin lines of charcoal crayon. The tall gray mare was a bit lopsided, he thought, but not too bad a job.
“Very fine,” said Lucinda. “I can almost see it dashing across the page. A very fine horse indeed. And here?”
She turned her attention to Nora’s drawing, which was a lovely red rose, still on the vine, with a pair of green thorns sticking out just below the blossom. The picture was terrific. James didn’t think a professional artist could’ve done better.
Nanny seemed impressed as well. She stared at the drawing for a long moment, her brow wrinkling. He realized she looked worried.
It’s just a flower, James wanted to say. It doesn’t mean anything.
“Don’t you like it, Nanny?” Nora asked.
James saw the problem clearly. Nora hadn’t just drawn the flower, but spent altogether too much effort on the vine. It curled and looped, a wild thing bristling with thorns. And there was a tiny face hidden among the shoots and tendrils. A tiny green face. Nora shouldn’t have done that.
“I suppose,” said Lucinda at last. “I suppose roses do have thorns.”
She said nothing more and James drew a sigh of relief.
Nanny’s reaction to the incident of the faery monster had been so odd it left the children wondering if she remembered what she’d seen that night at all. She hadn’t spoken of it to them when she woke up from her swoon on the floor. She’d looked around confusedly, dabbing at the cool wet cloth Nora had fetched for her forehead. “Must have taken a tumble…” she muttered. She remained very concerned for the children’s welfare, but that was not anything out of the ordinary. They had both returned to their normal appearance as soon as the thing in the sky had been driven away. She tucked them into their beds and left them to sleep. A moment later she returned and re-hung the fallen drapes back up on the window rod.
James thought he heard her mumble, “Damn nixies!”
After she had gone away again the children stared at each other.
“James, what are we to do?”
“I don’t know,” he shot back, then, remembering that he was nineteen months older, and a boy, he thought he must be the one to come up with a plan. “We mustn’t tell,” he said. “That’s for sure.”
“But… she knows.”
“It doesn’t matter. It was just a dream for her... and for us. Just a nightmare is all.”
“It wasn’t just a dream.”
“Don’t argue.”
Nora finally agreed, the two of them making a secret compact there in the nursery bedroom. They would never tell anyone what had happened to them. They didn’t want to be different. They didn’t want to be changed, like those men who had been caught out in the field below. It was simpler just to pretend.
Since then Lucinda had said not a word about what she’d seen. James and Nora felt guilty about keeping their experience a secret, but with all the terrible things Nanny had to say about blights and nixies, they thought silence was best. James had resolved never to speak of it again, even with Nora. But he could not shake the feeling that something, something both terrible and wonderful, had slipped through their fingers. The monster had claimed it was their mother, and he had felt true love shining back at him from its hundred eyes.
Meadowlark shifted his weight on the branch. He sat high in the big ash tree on the eastern side of Grayson Hall, waiting, watching.
A pair of silhouettes were clearly outlined in the master bedroom. Though the thick window curtains blotted out all detail, he saw one of the figures move across the candlelight.
Meadowlark blew a shrill note on his pan pipe. The note was followed by another and another, making a barebones original composition, the outlines of a sad song.
Swinging his leg lazily from the high branch, he watched the Graysons douse their bedroom light.
Goodnight Clarimonde, he thought. Clarimonde. Not Theodora. Never Theodora.
So she was prancing about the house without her glamour these days. Fair enough. He’d like to see her try that trick down in Kensington or London. An English lord married to a faery lass. He wondered what Old Georgie would have to say about that.
Meadowlark contemplated a visit to the Winter Court, perhaps to ask the Dark Queen that same question. On his way north he might just visit Black Annis in her cave in the mountains. Why not?
Meadowlark continued playing his pan pipe. Softly now, so softly none other could hear. It was still a sad, lon
ely song. He wanted it to be a happy song instead but couldn’t change it. Can’t change, he thought. Can’t change?
But of course he could. He’d think of something. That’s what he liked best about music. So many possibilities…
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Eric Grayson has devoted his life to freeing the faeries from oppression, sacrificing his lands, title and honour. With little cooperation from the British, his faery wife Theodora and their Summer Court allies must resort to a desperate plan.
The seductive Dark Queen enacts a scheme of her own. The Winter Court faeries have infiltrated the court of King George III with designs upon the entire British Empire.
With spies in the Royal Court and deadly false faces among the faeries of both camps, “Changelings at Court” delivers non-stop fantasy, political intrigue and suspense.
To find out more, visit AMAZON.
ALSO AVAILABLE:
ALAANA’S WAY
All five books in this epic fantasy series are now available. To find out more visit AMAZON
In the frozen north, a land of deadly weather and unforgiving spirits, the shaman is all that stands in the way of disaster. When Alaana is called upon to become shaman for the Anatatook people she discovers a kaleidoscopic world where everything is alive, where the tent skins whisper at night and even the soapstone pot has tales to tell. She faces vengeful ghosts and hungry demons as she travels the dangerous path to becoming a shaman. And there's just one other problem. Girls aren't allowed to be shamans. This is Book One in an epic fantasy series with a unique arctic setting. All fans of fantasy will enjoy these five novels.
