Aeon Eleven

by Aeon Authors

  “And so the trap is sprung,” Atticus said as he looked back toward his men on the other side of the barrier. “Just we few to stand before the queen of the Gauls?” he asked no one. He glanced backwards for a moment; his men hammered against the translucent wall in vain.

  “We are gravely outnumbered here,” said Bellicus.

  “Thank you for that intelligence,” Atticus said. “We will trade our lives for the lives of these hell spawn.”

  Bellicus only nodded.

  “Stand ready men,” he swept his gaze over the few who stood with him. “We are the sacrifice that ends this charade. May our actions spare the others.”

  He turned, shivering as the snow slid off his shoulders. The warm air caught in his throat. The pungent aroma of springtime filled his head. Flowering shrubs and budding trees permeated the air with a miasma of odors that confused his winter-deadened senses.

  Hundreds of tiny pixies flitted about the glen, their wings flashing iridescent colors as they flew in and out of the trees. From the shadows, men, women and children could be seen. The Romans fingered the blades of their swords.

  “Bring no battle here,” a rich alto voice said from deeper in the glade.

  From the shade of the forest stepped a maiden with black hair and piercing green eyes. She wore a dress of leaves and a small circlet of red and white flowers adorned her hair. A halo of light shone around her as she moved forward.

  “Marabus,” the old druid breathed, falling to his knees.

  Atticus whirled around to the druid. “Marabus?” he hissed. “This woman-child is the leader of your tribe?”

  “Yes,” said the prisoner. “Since my father’s father’s father’s time.”

  “No wonder the Fey are your allies,” Atticus said pitching his voice low. “You follow their queen.”

  Laughter tinkled down from the trees. Marabus chuckled like the water flowing over the rocks in a quick-moving stream.

  “No, foolish Roman. I do not pretend to take the rightful place of Titania, Queen of the Fey, may she reign forever. I am but one of her humble servants.”

  Atticus shook his head. “I think humble too light a compliment for you, Queen of the druids.” Surely his eyes played tricks. She was so beautiful.

  “I am but a leader of a single tribe. Why must you insist on giving titles, foolish man?”

  “What should I call you then?” Atticus asked.

  “Why, Marabus, of course. Haven’t you listened to Leucix? He is accounted very wise among our people.”

  “You do me honor, Marabus,” Leucix said.

  Atticus stared at him.

  “Do you like what the deaths of your men have wrought?” Leucix asked.

  “What do the deaths of my men have to do with this unholy place?”

  “It took the sacrifice of many of your men to open this refuge,” Marabus said. “You have managed to drive us from our homes, which should be enough for you—and yet you have followed us to your own demise.” She bowed her head for a moment. The soft buzzing of the fluttering wings hummed against the background of breathing men and horses. When she raised her head once more, tears rolled down her pristine face. “You see, enemy mine, you will not be permitted to leave this glade.” She opened her arms to encompass the greenery that surrounded her. “Titania has lent her magic to this place. Her power will protect us. Lay down your arms. There is no war here.”

  Atticus wound the reins tighter in his fist. “We hold no peace with the Fey.” Hades! To be trapped here, after all this? “You have sacrificed many of Caesar’s good men to create this place,” he said sweeping his hand across the wide green wood. “But your efforts are in vain. Caesar’s troops sweep through Gaul as we speak. We are but a small part of that iron fist.”

  Marabus laughed. The men quailed about Atticus, the fear apparent on their faces. He felt hope dwindle as the shattering laughter pierced him. “The storm that rages outside this refuge will sweep all the lands of Gaul, freezing your precious Caesar in a winter colder than his black heart.”

  “You lie,” Atticus growled. Why did his head throb so?

  “You have no chance to spare him and his legions.” She smiled. “We have struck a bargain with Titania, to live out our lives in this realm in exchange for freedom from your Caesar. Your blood can enrich this land. How is up to you. The trees thirst, but we can come to a truce, mix our blood in other ways,” she tilted her head to the side.

  Atticus found breathing suddenly harder. Fire burned through his veins. Passion rose in him, unbidden.

  “You cannot hurt us,” she crooned. “This is a place of magic. Titania provides more than springtime in this sanctuary. You are trapped as we are. Give over your blood lust and join us.”

  “What if she speaks the truth?” Bellicus’ harsh whisper grated through Atticus’ head. “Her words make sense. If we are trapped here after all, why fight them?”

  “Your magic is strong,” Atticus said, fighting the wave of surrender and lust that flowed over him. “You will not bewitch me with your words. If we are trapped here, then we will make you pay for our lives with your blood.”

  “Your weapons of bronze are useless here,” she said again. “Come to me, embrace me and be at peace.”

  The sound of pixie wings rose to a fevered pitch in Atticus’ head. He slid from his horse and leaned against the saddle. She spoke truth, he knew. They were trapped here and she would hold them with her magic. He pushed himself away from the horse and stumbled toward Marabus. His men did not move to stop him. The pixies’ incessant buzzing seemed to fade. Stillness fell over everything. No one moved but he.

  Marabus stood amongst the flowers and the greenery, resplendent in power and beauty. Atticus could feel the last bit of his anger in the back of his mind like a fruit pit, hard and firm. She killed my men, he thought, yet she is so beautiful. He squeezed his eyes shut and in his mind bit down hard on the pit of anger, releasing the poison that resided within. Hatred and bile flooded him, pushing against the tide of her magic.

  He stumbled into her arms and the world seemed to stop. In one brief instant Marabus had won. She cradled Atticus’ head to her bosom and threw her head back in laughter. The Romans were lost. Atticus screamed in anguish as woody tendrils slid out of her fingers and began burrowing into his scalp. For the briefest of moments, the buzzing stopped as Atticus slumped against Marabus. Then her smile faded to shock. Atticus fell back from her, trailing roots like woody tresses; in his fist he grasped a bloodied dagger.

  “But, how?” she gasped as blood flooded her mouth and spilled down over her dress.

  “Cold iron,” Atticus said as he slid to the ground. Blood poured from the spots where her fingers had begun to take root in his scalp. “Caesar has wise men of his own. We know of your weaknesses.” He rose to his knees beside the dryad. “Take them,” he cried, waving his left hand toward the huddled druids and their families.

  The stillness shattered at his words, and the cacophony of sound and colors resumed. His men surged forward shouting “Mars vigilia!” as they rushed into the midst of the stunned crowd. Atticus fell forward over the body of Marabus, his mind filled with flashing reds and greens, vibrant flowing colors of a rushing summer. He felt the first breaths of wintry cold blow through the glade as the barrier ebbed with the flowing of Marabus’ blood. The cries of the dying filled his head, shredding the remnants of Marabus’ final words. He slipped into darkness and the acrid scent of decay.

  Reverend Sykes stood at the bottom of a huge oak. The twins used loggers’ gear to scale the monster tree. Once at the top they began to harvest the mistletoe. Deacon Smith caught the plants as they fell from the sky. Not a single leaf hit the ground.

  “This reminds me of a tale my gran used to tell,” Michael said. “Ain’t this the way the old druids gathered the mistletoe?”

  “Could be,” Reverend Sykes said. “My daddy was a preacher in these hills, and so was his father. Before that we came over from France. I learned to gather
the greens from them.”

  “Look,” Michael said. “That moon sure is pretty.”

  “Yeah,” Deacon Smith said. “Really lights up this old grove, don’t you think?”

  “A night of magic,” Reverend Sykes said. “Come on down boys, I think we have enough for this year’s celebration.”

  “Yessir,” Tim and Jim said in unison from fifty feet overhead. The twins shuffled down the tree. Jim hit the ground first and hustled over to stand under his brother.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Tim called out from twenty feet up.

  “What’s the matter?” Jim called.

  The other men formed a circle around the tree, looking upwards. Something flashed past Tim’s head—something golden and fast.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Tim said as he jerked back against his safety lines.

  “Is that a bird?” Deacon Smith asked.

  “Don’t look like no bird I’ve ever seen,” Michael said.

  Tim’s line snapped.

  The men scattered. Tim fell the last twenty feet, his body limp. Jim dodged to the left, but managed to put himself directly under Tim. The boot spikes slashed Jim’s face and left arm. Tim bounced at the end of his tether and jerked back into the air, his body spinning. Two more rebounding drops finally halted his movement. He hung against the tree, tangled in line, spread-eagled with his head lolling to the side. Jim lay at the bottom of the oak, the deep red blood flowing from him, bathing the oak’s thick roots.

  “God Almighty,” Deacon Smith said as he fell to his knees by Jim’s side. He clamped his gloved hands over the young man’s neck. Blood quickly turned the pale yellow leather maroon. “Sliced right through his carotid.”

  Michael looked around the clearing. Blood flowed from Tim’s throat, which appeared to be cut. Reverend Sykes stood dumbfounded with one hand over his mouth, the other clutching the cross around his neck.

  “Michael,” the reverend said, “you run and get to the trucks.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped a splash of blood from his face. “Get one of the rangers up here as quick as you can.”

  Michael took off, heading towards the highway.

  Several small winged creatures flew from the top of the oak after Michael. Fifteen feet from the glen he fell with a cry.

  Reverend Sykes walked over to Deacon Smith and placed his hand on his shoulder. “You got your gun on you, Bill?”

  Jim’s eyes stared upwards, unseeing. The flow of blood around Deacon Smith’s fingers had stopped flowing. “Gun?” he asked looking up. Dozens of winged creatures burst from the trees with the overwhelming miasma of rotted flowers. Iridescent flashes spiraled upwards into the frigid sky.

  “God in heaven,” Reverend Sykes said as the buzzing of wings filled the air.

  Atticus sat propped against a tree, his head swathed in bloodied linen. Around him his men collected the bodies of the fallen Fey.

  “Hang those as a warning to our enemies,” he said. “Just as they filled the trees with our dead, so shall we fill the oak, laurel, and birch with the bodies of theirs.”

  As his remaining fifty men prepared to make the long march out of the forest, the tree trunks ran green with the blood of the Fey.

  “And so you see,” said Mabel, “we are the last to honor the pact—children of children, back to the cold days before Christ.”

  “But what do we repay?” Candace asked, her eyes wide.

  Mabel wrung her hands together, massaging the great swollen knuckles. “Blood—”

  Several women in the back began to sob.

  “—for blood. Titania demands recompense. Each generation pays a tithe…” she sighed heavily, her breath rattling in her bony chest. “… and a little more.”

  Candace looked back at her mother. Sally Preston shook her head slowly, mouthing “I’m sorry,” at her daughter. Tears flowed down her face.

  Junie stood forward, placing her hand on Sally’s shoulder. “It’s just the men folk that pay the blood,” she said, her voice as steady as a beam.

  “But we pay in heart-ache,” Deacon Smith’s wife said from the back of the room. “We carry the burden.”

  For a long moment, the only sounds above the crackling of the fireplace were the quiet sobs of the mothers and wives of the eight who walked the deep woods.

  Mabel’s eyes never wavered, just stared off into the distance. The women in the church watched her with reverence and fear. Mabel fell to her knees, the breath chuffing from her in painful sobs. “Three,” she croaked. “A trinity for our Christ.”

  Candace pulled away from her mother to stand with the other women, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

  “Who, then?” Junie begged.

  “I see them,” Mabel whimpered. “Their blood flows into the sacred grove.” She raised her hands in supplication. “My…” a sob choked her for a moment. “My grandchild. My promise.” She clasped her hands into fists, and raised them to her forehead. “Oh, my Michael.” She shrieked, falling prostrate to the floor.

  “Who else?” Junie said, falling to her knees beside Mable and bending her head downward. For a moment there was muttering and Junie raised her anguished face to the other women. “She’s taken the twins.”

  Vivian Farley began to keen, a low anguished lament that rose upwards to a wail.

  “It is done,” the deacon’s wife whispered. “Perhaps this time it will be enough.”

  Passing Beneath Stars

  Marcie Lynn Tentchoff

  By starlight's gleam I saw his face,

  And cursed his name beneath my breath,

  All dazzled by his mortal grace.

  By starlight's gleam I saw his face,

  While I lived, young, at fairy pace,

  Grow dim and old, and fade in death.

  By starlight's gleam I saw his face,

  And cursed his name beneath my breath.

  The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie

  Rob Hunter

  “The scenario: warriors from the Planet Xenon have landed a battle cruiser in your dooryard. But wait…just who, exactly, is the alien invader here? Parallel universes need not be remote, and anything so small as an ant is easily dismissed. An untimely swarming before the garden party? Suck ‘em up with a vacuum cleaner. We shall agree to disagree then—the ants and us—as to whose house this is. Tomorrow perhaps. My relationship with the carpenter ants of rural Maine goes back almost thirty years. I trust ‘The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie’ shows a proper respect for them. They were here first. As for the starry-eyed back-to-the-earthers from the glittering megalopolitan sprawls to the south—well, I was one in 1973. And size doesn't matter.”

  HAIL TO OUR MOTHER, who caused the messenger, the soldier, the worker, who scattered the seeds of her body as she came forth from Paradise, great and white, fat with honeydew, her diadem a ring of captive queens.

  Hail to the goddess who shines with her bright wings, triumphant in the face of the deceiver.

  Hail to our mother, who dropped her wings, who poured forth abundance as she came from Paradise.

  See how they love her, gathered near!

  “Oh, Jim—it’s a full cape,” trilled Ginny Levitan. The house was a daisy chain of architectural whimsy, a ramble of weathered ells, wings and add-ons in the style of whatever moment. Their house-to-be cuddled coyly behind a tangle of alders and runaway roses.

  The house was not unoccupied. Ten-by-ten-inch white spruce sills had been shaved thin from the inside out, resonant as a fiddle back for over a century. Raddled with passageways, the sills still supported the house. Beneath the floors, past wide boards of ancient pumpkin pine pumiced, oiled and varnished by successive generations of householders disappeared, dead, or run away, lay the galleries of the Long Walkers.

  “It’s leaning,” said her husband. “And I don’t think it’s quite a cape—too many floors and chimneys.” Theirs was a marriage defined by silent protocols, forgotten but honored. No fights. Not today. Not yet, at least, but it was still early. “Anyway it’s most lik
ely got issues—rotted sills, bats, beetles. Something, carpenter ants. The carpenter ants own New England,” said Jim. “Bob Vila said that once on This Old House. If we’ve got ‘em, we’ll never get rid of them. Or maybe Norm Abram said it.”

  The house clung to a granite outcropping, the Ledge locally. An overgrown path led out back. “Hold on. I’ll do some reconnaissance.” Jim picked his way down the ragged slate of the ledge to get around for a better view. He stopped to examine a shrub, a dwarf juniper stunted by the perpetual on-shore wind, and gave the shrub a yank. From the rocks below came a delayed rattle of pebbles—there was a sheer drop to the shale beach. Ginny went to thumping clapboards and poking in the remains of a perennial bed. Sandpipers dodged the pebbles and scurried after small things left by the tide.