Exile
Page 17
Nimby smiled. “Yes, please.” She took the hard candy, and with a decisive crunch, her needle-sharp teeth made quick work of the sweet that was half the size of her head.
“She needs to see the YouTube thing,” Liam said. “It’ll let her know what we’re up against. At least a taste of it.” He looked at Nimby, whose wings trembled with the first rush of sugar. He smelled the butterscotch, and his mouth watered.
Flora followed his gaze. “I have another. Would you like it?” She fished a second candy from her pocketbook.
“Oh yes.” He popped the glass-hard treat into his mouth. The flavors were rich, buttery, sweet.
“I always brought them sweets.” Her voice sounded wistful as Liam led her to the desk with the computer. He pulled up a chair with arms for her to sit.
“Thank you.”
And as he’d seen Charlie do, he held the chair steady as she gripped the tufted leather arms and eased down.
They replayed the Alex-vomiting-out-a-salamander video from IT, as well as the performances that led to it, where each week one or two contestants had been eliminated.
“She was obsessed with this stuff in the Unsee,” Liam said.
“Explain,” Gran prompted.
“The years before her possession of Alex, she was furious to discover….” He thought back through the studios May had created, uncreated, and recreated in her palace.
“What?” Gran urged.
“This.” He pointed to the screen, now paused on a still of Alex at the piano, with Lance the frog about to mix up the performance. “This is what she wanted. To gain followers…. This little box does that. You said there have been nearly a billion views. You gain power from others. Like Jerod and Alex harnessing first their love and then amplifying it with the people in that room. The chanting, whether or not you realized it, was magic, an incantation that gained strength with numbers.”
“I remember,” Alex said. He shuddered and shook his head. “When I was there… in the Unsee. She was doing some kind of cooking show. There was a cupcake with cherries, and she didn’t like it. She threw it on the floor and stabbed the fairy who’d had the idea for the cupcake. She killed it.”
Jerod was out of the chair and at his side. “For a cupcake? Seriously?”
Alex nodded. “She ranted about needing something new, something people hadn’t seen. The cupcake didn’t cut it. But it looked delicious, even though I thought I was losing my mind. I can still see that poor thing, with a pencil jabbed in its forehead, dying on the ground.”
Liam spoke. “Here’s more you need to know. The fey she killed—and I was there that day—was then taken to a kitchen not made for cupcakes. But one with a stone floor and hoses to wash away blood. The fey she murdered, like all the others, was both an object lesson for the living and a snack for later. A powerful strain of magic comes from our blood and our organs. She has gorged on her subjects. Her power is immense.”
“Liam, that is important.” Gran glanced at the monitor as they replayed the televised extraction of the salamander. “Hold it there.”
Jerod hit Pause. Flora stared at the moment when the massive creature lost physical contact with its haffling host. “That’s where her magic broke.”
Liam nodded. “She needs the physical contact with a haffling. It’s what tethered her to the See.”
Gran looked from Nimby to Alex. “Your little fairy—you seemed surprised that I could see her.”
“Yes, no one does, although….”
“Although what?”
“Lately that’s less true. Growing up, it was just me. I tried to tell people I had a bare-breasted black fairy with squiggly gold tattoos on my shoulder. It did not go well. Once I realized that I was the only one who could see her, I shut up. I even learned how to block her out.”
Nimby, now recovered from her butterscotch buzz, flew at Alex’s head. “You were bad, bad, bad.”
Gran smiled. “I understand. I grew up seeing fairy circles in the woods outside my home in Limerick. Others did not see them…. I learned to not speak of them.”
Alex whispered to Nimby, “I’m sorry, little bug…. When I was little, I’d talk about her. When you’re real small, it’s not such a big deal, but with a mother who hears voices, people looked at me funny. They’d wonder if my imaginary friend was the apple of Mom’s schizophrenia not falling far from her crazy tree.”
“But others see her now,” Gran prompted, her eyes on Nimby.
“Yes. Jerod, my sister, Alice, Charlie, Liam… even Charlie’s friend the marshal could see her. That doesn’t happen.”
“Finn saw her?”
“He did.”
“Finn…. Hulain. How could I not have seen this? This is no coincidence. All of this matters.” Gran grasped the chair arms and stood. Her rubber soles squeaked as she turned in place. Her mind skittered over the bizarre: the monitor frozen on the giant white beast, the walls filled with magnificent books, a little black fairy, a man who claimed to be—was—a haffling, and of course, Liam. She looked at the purple-eyed one, with his perfect face and easy glamour. She shuddered. He was the queen’s weapon. Is he still? Can he be trusted?
Liam came to her side. “Flora, I think I know the wander of your thoughts. It is important, all of May’s plans, her cooking shows and flea-market contests, and then that… singing through Alex’s body.”
“She needed us to believe in her,” Gran said.
“Yes, and they did believe, just not in her. Jerod, please take it back again.”
“Sure.” He moved the status bar back to the start and hit the Play arrow.
“Make it louder,” Liam instructed, and standing next to Gran, he watched and listened as first Jerod claimed his love for Alex, and then the audience picked up the refrain and chanted louder and louder. “It’s them—Alex and Jerod—that the audience believe in. They believed in love.”
Alex snorted. “I’m sorry, that just came out a little too after-school special.”
“I thought it was sweet,” Jerod said. “And you know he’s right. You sidhe—hafflings included—think you have the market on magic, but we have some. It’s love, and Liam is dead right. All of the other pyrotechnic-frog-morphing-fairy-queen bullshit doesn’t come easy. May tried to force too big a pill down everyone’s throat. That’s where she screwed up.”
Gran spoke up. “Not entirely, as evidenced by more and more people seeing darling little Nimby. This is an important piece to tuck away…. For May to conquer the human world, the blinders must come off. You can’t be conquered by someone you can’t see.”
“Right,” Alex said. “It’s like Peter Pan, that if you don’t believe in Tinker Bell, she doesn’t exist.”
Gran wandered to the book-filled cabinets. Reverentially, she opened the one that housed the oldest volumes. She breathed the perfume of parchment, vellum, ink, and leather. Her fingers traced the spines and settled on one with intricate Celtic embellishments in tarnished black silver. “All these stories, even the most unbelievable, are rooted in both worlds. That’s the path we have to take. Like you, Alex, the way between the worlds is neither fey nor human but both. May knows this… and you are not safe. Though how she can again attempt to possess you, I do not know. For the thing that ousted her before, your love for Jerod, is strong.”
“Shit!”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Language, young man.”
“Sorry. It’s just, I’m not the only one. I have a sister and a brother.”
“That’s not good. I mean….”
“I know what you mean.”
He pulled out his cell. There were no texts from Alice, something they usually did a couple dozen times a day. He checked the history. Her last texts were from yesterday morning. Nothing from last night, and no morning check-in. Not like her. He knew she’d be in school and sent one anyway. What you up to? He stared at the screen. “She’s probably in class.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. Wait till school’s out,” Jerod said, his tone less
certain than his words.
Alex nodded and wondered if he should hop a subway down to Stuyvesant and check on her. He hit the GPS locater app on his cell and entered her number. He waited as the red target appeared.
“See,” Jerod said, a hand on his shoulder. “Right where she’s supposed to be.”
“She’s been acting weird the last couple days.” He turned to Liam. “Since you showed up.”
“Tell you what.” Jerod grabbed his cell. “I’ll text Clay. He gets out half an hour earlier than she does. You know anything Alice related, and he’s up for it.”
“I don’t want her leading him on.”
Jerod chuckled. “Yeah, well, that ship sailed the moment he met her.”
Gran looked from Alex and Jerod to Liam. Can he be trusted? He looks so human… and he’s not. And do I have a choice but to trust him? She laid the manuscript beneath a goose-necked lamp. “This is the epic tale of Cuchulain, a kind of Irish Hercules. It’s where the name Hulain comes from.” She opened the hinged cover and gazed on pencil markings that documented the book’s prior owners and prior sales, the last from a major auction house. “This is the real thing, maybe twelfth century, maybe earlier. The first written manuscript of Hulain’s battles is eighth century. Which, considering all these stories began as oral traditions, eighth century just hints at its true age. The tale started well before Christianity.”
As she turned the stiff vellum pages, with images of mythical beasts and warriors caught in the swirl of Celtic knots, she translated. Even Nimby was entranced by Hulain’s adventures, starting as a small boy going on to defeat a god-king’s army. “The stories don’t have a continuous narrative,” Gran remarked. “There are tales of how Cuchulain fell in love with a fairy queen—Maeve, Mab, May. Though in some stories she is human and he is sidhe. They’re more like chapters, with bits of his life missing in between. Each tale is both whole unto itself and part of a larger body. There’s one where he kills a king’s hunting dog by accident and in return offers to be his hound. There are hundreds of those stories in which he is simply referred to as the Hound. And while his relationship with May was filled with passion, they both delighted in tricking one another. Lots of cattle stealing and plaguing one another with curses. And everything on a scale too big to be believed. Thousands of cattle stolen in a night. Hulain single-handedly defeating an army.” Flora came to the center page and unfolded the oversized sheet. She gasped. “This should be in a museum.” It showed a great battle between a human army and creatures that ran the spectrum from men and women to beings comprised of animal, insect, and human portions, along with red-faced ogres and bright blue and green trolls.
“It’s like the pictures Mom used to paint,” Alex said.
Gran looked back at him. “So your mother is with a….”
“Fairy. My dad is a fairy.”
Liam nodded. “’Tis true. Uncle Cedric.”
“And your mother, where is she?” Gran asked.
“With him and my little brother, Adam, who I’ve barely met. They’re in the Unsee, and she pretty much can’t return. She’s crazy on this side and perfectly normal on the other.”
“Right…. That’s another piece,” Flora remarked. She pointed at the battle scene before them. In the center of the sidhe contingent was a beautiful blonde queen astride something that had the lower two-thirds of a praying mantis and the head and shoulders of a man. In the creature’s mouth was a severed human hand, to which the artist had added drops of blood, which pooled on the ground. “There…. In the war between the humans and the sidhe, Hulain lost a hand. He was no longer whole and so could not rule. Much blood was shed in the war, which they say lasted a thousand years and was a draw in the end. A truce was struck and a treaty drawn in which the world would be divided. Hulain tricked the fey, and the land was divided between above ground—the See—and all beneath the earth’s surface—the Unsee. But deals are deals, and the fey hold true to contracts.”
She flipped to the book’s end and shut it. She stared through the light-filled windows at the treetops of Central Park. “Her magic is growing, and she is persistent. I believe she intends to reunite the worlds, with her as the ruler over all. She tried it by taking your body and working magic on TV in front of millions. It’s why more people can see Nimby. It has something to do with your being here.” The latter was directed to Liam. “None of this is coincidence, and she is many steps ahead of us.”
Liam spoke. “She’s poking holes in the Mist. She burned one with fairy fire, and it sucked me in.”
Gran scanned the open cabinet and grabbed a second smaller volume, this one bound in white kidskin with a tight golden knot on the cover. It was filled with miniature illustrations, almost like the cells in a comic book, albeit with medieval clothes and the now familiar mix of beast and man. “This one’s even older. It shows the signing of contracts between May and Hulain.” She paused, struck by a thought. “Could such documents truly exist? If the treaties are real, who possesses them?”
“They both signed.” Alex stared at the page. “If they both signed, it’s a binding contract. One thing I learned about the fey—they stick to their rules. Without breaking the contract, she can’t rule here.”
“You are correct,” Liam said. “Somewhere, someone possesses the treaties. If the image is to be believed, there were two. Hulain would get one and she the other. Unless—”
“Tell me,” Gran said.
“A contract need not be written. Like Alex and Jerod’s love, it need only be sworn to bind.”
“Yes, let us tuck that away.” Gran turned the page to a split image of the human world above and the sidhe cast into shadows, woods, and caves. Above, in the light of the sun, Hulain, his hand replaced by one made of silver, sat in a castle with a redheaded wife and seven redheaded children. Below, surrounded by fire, was blonde May, her eyes rimmed with blood.
Liam looked at Alex and then at Gran. “The two of you are both of ancient families. If the Hound still exists, he does so in the blood of his children. She will look for them. They will not be safe. My head, it swims.” Memories, horrible scenes from his life in May’s court, passed through his mind. Things he’d learned to block out. The screams, the pleas from those caught in the crosshairs of her fury and her hunger…. She will bring that here. It cannot be.
“It’s a lot,” Gran said. “And we haven’t even pieced together the bits of the three sisters.” Her eyes glittered as she looked around the library. “Yet we know more now than an hour ago. I don’t think this Katye would mind my staying here. These books hold answers. And one thing I’ve learned in my long life, if you want to solve a problem, you must first understand it. My place is here.” One by one she looked at the men and the little fairy. “None of this is coincidence… the ancient families coming together. And Finn, Finn Hulain. I have no doubt but he has the blood of the Hound.”
Liam nodded. “She means to start a war.”
Flora risked looking into his wondrous eyes. “Yes, Liam. And we must all find our courage, prepare for battle, and fight for those we love.”
Twenty-Five
FREE, FREE, free. The two white salamanders, their skin not yet fully hardened, ran free from Lizbeta’s yoke.
We are whole!
We are free!
We are two,
It’s all me.
Their long necks arched back as they glanced at each other one final time. Then in unison they dug deep into their guts and spat forth one ball of fairy fire after the next.
They reared up and stared down the tunnels burned into the Mist. One shook her head, sniffed at the entrance, and like a puppy trotting to its master, scampered in. She stopped at the opening between worlds. She stared into the bright blue sky of the See. She shook her hind legs and wiggled her plump belly. Just enough, Alice…. Her thoughts flew through the air. It’s time. The teen came into view, the girl’s thoughts calm and receptive. Her body crackled with fairy dust. Perhaps you need a wee bit more.
MAY KNEW. It’s time. She is perfect. Not like the other. Her emotion darkened at the thought of the brother. But we will get him, and he will be delicious. I will grind him into a paste and…. She snorted flame through her nostrils, amused by how much troll and ogre she’d dined on. Though truth be told, the bone grinding… not so bad. But soon it would be time for party dresses and payback. Alice, knock, knock, knock, let me in, let me in.
LOST IN euphoria, Alice heard the singing and sang back. Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
May laughed and coughed up a final fireball. As it flew up her neck and out her mouth, she clamped down tight with her jaw and hung on for the ride. The night air, the sky filled with smoke, felt so good against her hardening skin as she hurtled toward the roof of Alice’s building. She landed hard. She dropped the fireball from between her teeth and watched it burn through tar and wood and beam. Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.
Flames burst orange, white, and hot as the fireball fell to the floor below. Like riding an elevator, she climbed on top of her fiery treat and dropped floor by floor, sizzling through steel and concrete like a knife through butter. She hopped off on nineteen, in the bedroom of the haffling, Alice Nevus.