“Like me,” Ella whispered.
“It’s not unusual.” With a nod, Grace indicated the corner behind Ella. “If you turn slowly, Brownie Thistlekin is standing over there.”
Ella turned so slowly that Grace wanted to tell her she did not have to be that careful. Brownie Thistlekin held very still, waiting for the moment when Ella saw him. He had done this before for Grace, and was the only one of the Folk in her house willing to show himself to a mortal without dire need.
As Ella ogled at him, Grace said, “Never thank a brownie; you’ll hurt their feelings and make them think they are not welcome.”
“How does that—”
“It makes them think that the relationship is at an end. Friends trade favors with one another all the time. To thank means that you want nothing more from them. Like a servant. Leave a bowl of cream out if they do something you appreciate.”
Ella nodded, understanding softening her face. “I’ll have to leave out a trough of cream when I get home.”
Grace suppressed a sigh of relief. Ella had all the makings of a fine goodwife.
She caught a hint of movement in the edge of her vision. Brownie Nutkin stood at the edge of the room. He was studying Ella and turning his broomstick over in his hands. The wee lad bit his lower lip. He took a step forward. Then another. On his toes, he edged into Ella’s line of sight.
Grace whispered, “Ella ... allow me to introduce you to one of your own housefolk. This is Brownie Nutkin.”
He gave her a short bow. “How do, goodwife?”
Ella let her breath out slowly. “How do, Brownie Nutkin.”
There was no way to explain to Ella exactly how brave Nutkin was being, to come out in the open like this. Grace pressed her hand against her mouth. She was so proud of him.
“It seems I owe you cream and more.” Ella’s brow crinkled and Grace could see her working out how to show gratitude to someone without thanking them. “If . . . if there is ever anything you need from me, don’t be afraid to let me know.”
“Dost thou mean that?”
“I do.”
“And the nasty man is gone?”
Ella’s breath caught audibly in her throat. “And never coming back.”
Brownie Nutkin straightened his shoulders and stood to his full knee-height. He turned to Grace. “Then, Granny, we’uns don’t need a new hearth and home.”
“For that, I am glad.”
“I do wish . . .” Nutkin hesitated and blushed. Asking for something outright was rude, and Grace could guess that he was imagining his mother′s instructions. “Will you take me home?”
Ella nodded. “I would be glad to.”
Grace smiled at the goodwife. “Then let’s make your first lesson, how to safety-proof a car for the Folk.”
Maybe someday she could teach the folk to integrate fully into the mortal world again. But for now, one more habitat had been saved.
THE SONG OF THE WIND
Paul Crilley
The trees used to sing to me, a private song of autumn winds and gray chill. Ancient branches swaying in a stately dance, dying leaves whispering intimate words that spoke directly to my soul.
No longer, though.
When autumn comes around, I leave my home and walk. Brianna thinks she understands why I do this, but she does not, and I haven’t the heart to tell her. I wander far through the cold rain. I climb the hills in my path and perch on the highest peaks, the land spread out below me in a wave of browns and greens, straining to hear the voices that once spoke to the very depth of my being, that once inspired me to trap fleeting emotions on a prison of paper with bars of ink.
I never hear them though, and I know I never will. Not unless I leave Brianna, something I will not do. For that was when the wind stopped singing to me: when I met Brianna and we fell in love. She is a fickle mistress, the wind, my muse, and she demands a faithful lover.
Most of the year I don’t even mind. But when the wind starts driving up the hills, ruffling the manes and tails of the highland ponies, I know I must leave for a few weeks lest I bring resentment to bear on someone who does not deserve it.
I take my lyre with me, which for most of the year is wrapped in silk and wool and placed carefully in a small chest. When I climb the hills I place it on my knees and close my eyes, feeling the wind vibrate the strings to a thrumming song, and think back to the time when I was a bard, traveling from village to village, playing and reciting for an appreciative audience.
I would remember those days and weep silently to myself, begging the wind to take pity on me and sing her song.
She never does.
Dusk falls gradually around me, blending in quietly with the rocky crags. I look up and see dark clouds scudding briskly past the lighter grey, feel the wind refreshing against my face.
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, cold air filling my lungs. I feel suspended in such moments. My body does not exist. My mind flies with the wind, soaring in the twilight breeze over mountains and forests, rippling lakes and roaring oceans. I am one with the wind. I feel I can accompany it anywhere.
When I reluctantly open my eyes again, a girl is standing before me. I do not see her at first, dressed as she is in a grey shift that blends in with the rock and sky around us. She is staring at me intently with eyes black and cold, her mouth turned down into what is almost a pout of displeasure.
“It is dangerous for one of your kind to be so far out,” she says, and although her voice is barely above a whisper, I hear her clearly.
“The same can be said for you,” I say. I gesture at her flimsy dress. “Are you not cold?” I ask. “You can have my jerkin if you like.”
She frowns at me. “No,” she says after a moment. “No, I am fine. Though it is kind of you to offer.”
“A fire, then? You are welcome to share. You should not be alone at night. I assure you, you have nothing to fear from me.”
“I know, Cuan the Bard. You are a goodly man.”
“How—”
“I think I will offer you a gift,” says the girl suddenly. “Your greatest wish. What you have always wanted. Will you accept?”
“I do not understand,” I say, confused. “What do you offer me? I deserve nothing. I have shown you only common kindness.”
“Not so common, I fear. I offer you your greatest wish, Cuan. Your talent. That which thrives on aloneness and contemplation, but shrivels and dies in happiness and love.”
I gaze at her, realization dawning. “My poems . . . ”
“Yes. I can give you the urgency back, the desire to allow your thoughts to take you where they will without being pulled back by the sanity of your love. That need you once had, that urge to write everything down or go mad with the denial.” She stares at me, and smiles. “I can give it back to you.”
She leans forward and touches my heart. Then she turns around and disappears over the rocks.
It is as if she was never there.
The day is colder today, winter making her presence felt. I climb to the summit of the next hill, the way forward made difficult by the uneven rocks. I try not to think of my encounter from last night. I woke up realizing what had happened, aware that I was a very lucky man. Not many talk to a denizen of Faerie and get off so lightly. Men are known to disappear for seven decades or more, and come back looking not a day older, only to crumble to dust as the ages suddenly catch up with them.
I cannot even remember what we talked of. It is like a mist has descended over my memory, leaving only vague pictures and half-remembered feelings.
I reach the summit and look down. Forests dwindle away to the north. I will have to turn west now, to keep with the hills and mountains.
A brown leaf, caught in the eddies of an ill-tempered wind, flies past my head. I reach out and catch it. It crackles in my hand, falling into brittle parts. I release them, watch as they are recaptured and led away into the gray sky. The wind grows stronger.
And I hear her song.
Cold shivers run all over my body. I lift my head, letting her caress my hair, my skin. I open my arms to her embrace as she grows stronger, her voice louder. Leaves are whipped from the trees down below and tossed into the blustery grey sky. The wind soars through my body as if I am not there, borne from distant lands. Joy rises within me. A feeling of excitement starts as a small ball in my stomach and spreads throughout the rest of my being. I feel a sudden happiness with life, a contentedness, presented to me by the briskness of an autumn day. I am complete, two halves of my soul reconciled for the first time ever.
And I remember what the faerie said to me last night.
I run all the way to the next village, my mind afire with ideas and compositions, experiments with sound and verse that would never have occurred to me before. I forget more in those hours of running than I have ever thought of in my whole life up till that point. I feel like I am going mad with frustration, with the desire to have paper and quill in my hands and put down the thoughts that are searing my mind with their brilliance.
I take out a room and with the last of my coins purchase quill and ink, and an obscenely small amount of parchment: it is not required often in this tiny village.
I sit on the floor and write down ideas and concepts, thoughts and feelings, in handwriting almost too small to read.
I awake, my head throbbing. I try to sit up, but my arms will not support me. I collapse heavily to the floor and retch. I try to remember what happened last night, why I am feeling so ill. My last recollection is of touching the quill to paper and making the first ink stroke.
I roll to my side and gently push myself up. A sight of devastation greets me.
Paper is strewn everywhere, covered in illegible writing. I pick up a piece. I have written on the paper, then when it ran out, I have simply written over the top again, over and over until all beneath is unreadable. The walls are covered with scratched and angular writings, the knife I used still embedded deep in the wood. I try to read the words, but none of it makes any sense to me. A nonsense of drunken thoughts and unreadable writing.
Fear wells within me, a feeling that does not quite mask the hollowness that permeates my being. I get slowly to my feet, drained and weak as a newborn babe.
What has happened to me?
And then I realize. My gift.
My curse.
I wait as the dusk folds around me like a damp cloak. The wind bites me, no longer invigorating, but draining. It travels beneath my skin, filling my bones with a leaden numbness that makes it difficult to move.
I am on that same hill again, surrounded by the rocks and the crags. I could not move another muscle if my life depended on it. The rush to get here before the day was over took everything left out of me.
I have been cursed. I realize that now. How foolish was I to accept a gift from the fey? Just because I treated her with kindness, I thought I would be treated likewise. My naivete has ruined me.
She comes, forming out of the darkness like a ghost in the mist. She tilts her head at me quizzically.
“I know you, yes?”
“You do,” I reply weakly.
“From where?”
How fickle they are! “You gave me . . . a gift. You touched my heart.”
“Oh, yes!” The faerie clapped her hands. “You have returned to thank me.”
“I have returned to ask you to take it back. I am drained. I wrote everything that was in me, verses and sonnets, one on top of the last, so that I can read none. It is as if a part of my being, my essence has left me. I feel empty. As if my soul has been riven from my body.”
“The flame that burns bright, dies quickly,” says the faerie. “It is part of the bargain.”
“I made no bargain!” I double over in a coughing fit, my anger useless and fleeting.“What . . . what are you?” I asked weakly.
“I am Leanan-Sidhe,” said the faerie. “To some their muse; to some their death.”
“You are evil.”
“Not I. I belong to the Seelie Court. We are . . . benign.”
“You have emptied me!”
“I gave you my gift, and that is not something I do lightly. You have created more in this one night than you would have done in your entire life, but such brilliance claims a price.”
“I did not ask for this gift.”
“You asked the wind to speak to you again. I am the wind. I am inspiration.” The fey reaches out and stroked my cheek. “We were lovers once, you and I. We were joined as one, till you deserted me, deserted your muse. I have simply answered your pleas, Cuan the bard.”
“So I die.”
The faerie shrugs. “I do not know much about you human people. You lead such short lives anyway, how can you even notice?”
Tears flow down my face at the unfairness of it all. The uncaring obliviousness of this creature that has ruined me.
The faerie peers at me, a look of confusion on her face. “What did you expect?” she asks.
“I just wanted to write while I was happy, in love.”
The faerie backs away into the darkness. “Goodbye, Cuan the bard.”
The darkness swallows her up. I sit on the rock, shivering, my teeth chattering, too weak to move.
“I just wanted to write again,” I whisper.
I return home. It takes me days, maybe weeks more than it should. All the way I fight. Fight the thoughts that soar through my mind, the descriptions of autumn trees sighing in the wind, the poems that lay themselves before me, fully formed, waiting only for me to acknowledge their presence. I develop a fever. For days I am delirious, though still I manage to fight off the things racing through my mind, the demons waiting to destroy me. I don’t think I eat. I only drink when I stumble into rivers and fall face first into the icy water. I have to hold off. I won’t give in without seeing Brianna, to apologize for ruining everything. Why couldn’t I have been happy with what I had? Why didn’t I leave well enough alone?
The shock on Brianna’s face when she sees me is enough to make me weep. I fall into her arms and hold her tightly. A curious mixture is happiness and sadness. For this is what I feel. I look into her eyes, her beautiful green eyes. I reach up and touch her face.
“I love you,” I say. “And I have lost you.”
She looks down at me, confusion and pain evident. She strokes my skin. I feel peace at her touch.
“I am dying, my love. My soul has burned high and devoured itself. I have been cursed by faerie.”
I hug her tight to myself let my tears flow.
I hold off for as long as I can, but I know it will be days at most. I explain everything to her, of my past and my writing. I give her my bound papers, all the things I have ever written, that I kept hidden in my chest.
She tells me she is with child.
Oh, my love, how I have betrayed you!
Dawn, watery and gray. I stand outside and breathe in the fresh, cold air. It rained last night. Wet leaves dance through the air, taunting me. The wind yanks my hair with cold fingers, as if trying to pull me away. I turn and go inside. Brianna is still asleep, curled beneath three blankets in the darkened bedroom. I go to the chest and unlock it. I lift out my small lyre and lay it carefully on her abdomen, where the life we created together grows.
I fetch a piece of parchment, quill and ink. I sit in a chair at the foot of the bed and stare at her smooth face, her milk-white skin. The voices scream in my mind, sensing their imminent release, clamoring to be free, to destroy me. I fight them off, force them to wait as I put them into some kind of order, as I decide how they will be let out.
I title my poem, my last gift to my first love.
Brianna.
The wind blows through her long hair as she stands on top of the hill just behind their house. She reads the poem again, even though she will never forget the words as long as she lives.
She carefully tears the parchment into tiny pieces, then opens her hand.
The fragments, the last bits of Cuan’s life, are sn
atched away from her as if by a jealous child, flicked and tossed into the grey sky. She tries to see them as they fly away, but they are invisible against the sky.
She stands there, at the crest of the hill, for a long time afterward. She is listening to the song of the wind, feeling its caress upon her face.
It sounds like Cuan’s voice.
FIRST BALL . . . LAST CALL
Rob Thurman
When the world ended, the very first thought I V had was of my first dance. I didn’t even like dancing—damn, how embarrassing would that be? Yet there it was. That was the memory I flashed back to. That’s where some part of me considered my life starting. A dance. Or maybe it wasn’t the dance. Maybe it was the girl. I’d loved her, not that I remembered her name now. But at the time I thought I loved her. I knew I lusted after her. But isn’t that how love goes? Her skin was dusky and warm, her eyes fields of lavender, her black hair pulled up and then falling, a solemn black sea around her bare shoulders.
Okay, yeah, it was definitely the girl.
The world ended and I was still thinking with the brain between my legs instead of the one in my head. The cock ruled the roost. At least I admitted it. I doubt my partner would. He was all about the manners and shit that hadn’t mattered before and damn sure didn’t matter now. I cut him some slack though, because he could shoot straight, ride for hours on end without bitching too much, could cook over a camp-fire without turning a rabbit into charcoal, and, bottom line, at the end of the world, you made do with what you had.
It had been ten years ago—when it had happened. The sky turned gray, the sun a sullen distant red, and the entire world shook. I looked back now and saw that shaking for what it was: death throes. The world had died that day and since then we were nothing more than scavengers on a corpse.
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