Chasing the Bard

by Philippa Ballantine

  Will and Sive sobbed into each other, but their shared Art still obeyed. The Between rippled, and they stepped through the

  Veil to whatever remained for them.

  It was the second dawn for the Fey. In a realm of perpetual evening, the sun was rising for the first and therefore last time. It was a sunrise that they all deserved to see, and no matter how battered or how broken in spirit they might be, the remaining Fey host turned their faces to it. Morning mists hovered on the distant hills before rolling back to the blasted earth they were cast from. The Fey let out a collective sigh and settled on the ground to wait for it to reach them.

  A ripple ran through the air near the quiet Puck, and the Veil parted as it always had. Will and Sive, huddled against each other, stepped through. The Trickster wasn’t surprised that Auberon was not with them. Even without Brigit he had foreseen that.

  Sive was holding him, and for the first time there was nothing hard or unyielding about it.

  “Puck.” Sive’s voice was dry and heavy. “Auberon...”

  He didn’t need to know, didn’t want to hear about what had already happened.

  * * *

  “Hush, cousin,” He turned her to where the sun had crested the hills in a blaze of scarlet and fuchsia. Sive needed to see what her brother had helped win.

  “Look and feel," Puck said, his voice touched by real awe. “The Shattered is leaving, and soon the mortal realm will too.” Sive was silent, her cheeks silvered with tears, but her back as straight and proud as it had ever been. After all what was not to be proud of, all her people were heroes today. She glanced across at Will, whose eyes were half-hooded with an emotion she could neither read nor guess.

  So the three of them stood very still and listened to the shifting of worlds together. In the mortal realm Will’s girls would live to see the end of magic as Fey and mortal parted. Sive the Shining hunched her shoulders; it was a bittersweet victory that she could hardly bear. They had won, but had also lost.

  With Auberon gone, the surviving Fey were already gathering around Sive; she would be their queen, and perhaps under her they would grow strong again. It was something she’d never wanted, but after her brother’s sacrifice there was no choice.

  Will raised his eyes, and now Sive saw the shadows of hurt in them. The chaos thorn had put something melancholy and powerful in him as much as the Goddess’ Bardic gift.

  Sive didn't need him to speak to see the truth; he would not stay here. She’d seen it all and knew love for his children would draw him back to Stratford. Poor Hamnet had lost because Will had not been there, Judith and Susanna would not, he’d determined.

  And Puck. Sive held out both hands to her cousin, but he didn’t see the gesture. He was looking elsewhere, to where traces of green were already poking their heads out of the blackened earth, and the exhausted Fey warriors were raising their heads, smelling the jasmine once again. The Mother of All was smiling on them, healing what was hurt. Her mists and gentle rains were falling on smiling upturned faces, the Fey breathing again.

  If there was a scent of hope in the air, Puck was not inhaling. Sive ached to see the changes wrought in the Trickster. He had not emerged unscathed from the Shattered; Brigit’s final departure had broken him. Everywhere he looked there was another memory. For one who had thrived on frivolity and mirth it was more than painful.

  He was turning, and another certainty had already lodged itself inside Sive. Puck opened his mouth, shaping it around something, perhaps a witty remark, something to make her laugh, and forget. But he stopped, and instead pursed his lips, thinking and deciding.

  Then Puck called his Art, and his shape became that of a young world—weary mortal, in whom there was little of Fey. Perhaps in this form he would it easier to deal with the darkness he’d found himself guardian of. In his cousin’s head he planted a goodbye, but that was all he could spare. He nodded to Will, making his peace with the man he’d once guarded against harm.

  Sive told herself she would not cry, and would not ask him to come back, but when he turned away, she could not help one thing.

  Good luck, she whispered into his bruised head.

  He gave no sign of hearing, and simply parted the Veil, and stepped across into the mortal world before it sped away.

  Around Will and Sive the worlds began to heave harder as if the Trickster’s leaving had been a sign.

  Will was now clasping her hand, trying to pull her closer, but she resisted. Neither wanted the words to come, but they did. “I wish...”

  Sive shook her head and rested her fingertips on the place where the thorn had pierced. To come this far, to have struggled so hard—there was no fairness in it.

  Her fingers brushed his lips, “Do not say it; there must be a way. You have my heart foolish mortal, so trust me. I will find a way for us.”

  Will nodded, taking the small hope she offered to him, clutching onto it.

  The mortal realm and his daughters were calling; if he waited a heartbeat, they might be beyond him. Sive’s Art cleared the way, and the Veil parted for the last time, opening into the world that was already losing its magics.

  Will’s last glance of Sive the Shining was of her hand half raised in parting, the glow of Fey once more lying about her. Hers was of his trusting smile. Then, like her cousin, he walked through and disappeared.

  They were coming to her now, the still hurting Fey, scarred and afraid of what the Between had shown them. Perhaps it would help them in the days ahead, that new knowledge, perhaps they would not be as foolish.

  As her people drew around, Sive’s lost strength returned to her. The realms might be parting, but she would not give up on Will. She never had before, and if they could defeat the Unmaker, finding a way to be with him would be easy.

  21

  As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free.

  Where to does a broken Fey go to hide and lick his wounds? Puck supposed few would understand his choosing the human world, but as he stood watching the sunrise over golden fields of wheat, and heard the sounds of the world coming awake, he knew he’d made the right choice.

  Even the most well-meaning of his kind could ever understand the gaping hole within him left by the final slaying of his aunt. He could only hope some human time would heal it.

  In the distance, his sharp hearing made out the noises of humans bickering in the farmhouse, and his lips twitched in something that could once have been a smile. Dangers there would be in trying to live as a human, and his Art severed from the Fey would not last forever. He'd prepared himself for surprises, and was ready to learn how to live with regrets and guilt like mortals did.

  Ah yes, there was the farmer and his dewy-eyed son, making their way through the wheat, heads bent in concentration. What things were they looking for, what signs could they read, that Puck could not? A tender bruised part of his psyche was excited. After all, this realm had seasons and weather, and was all the things the Fey were not: chaos and change.

  Death might exist there, but his people had been very wrong about that; they were not immortal, just long lived. No, Puck told himself, I am ready for this.

  Farmer and son were coming up the slope towards him, somewhat cautious because of the muscular body the Trickster wore, but when he managed a smile they returned it, not immune to his charm. That was something that didn’t rely on Art.

  Puck already knew they would accept his offer of help with the harvest. A thought struck him then; he could choose another name, one to begin again in the mortal world. He would give up the Trickster, and become something new. The thought pleased him.

  The boy waved, despite his father’s scowl. But in both was a genuine good heartedness.

  And so Puck raised his arm in greeting, and began a new journey.

  * * *

  The skip of mortal time was not enough to contain all that a person was, and the run of days between Fey and human worlds a cruel one. Sive the Shining had worked hard to find the
ir only chance, but even then the course of time had nearly beaten her. Mortals lived too quickly.

  Standing at the foot of his bed, the fingers of uncertainty ran through Sive. A great congress of Fey with linked Art had let her enter the mortal realm one last time. The Veil was now much more difficult to pass, and her time here was short.

  But then, so too was his.

  The room was grey and dark, and Sive could barely see Will. Inching closer she perched on the edge of the bed, and looked down at her love. However long it had seemed to her, for Will at least it had been twenty years.

  The question was then, had she left it too late?

  Anne had long since made her peace with her husband, and retreated to the kitchen to await the final conclusion. Only then would her husband be truly hers, when the cool earth claimed him. For these last moments though, Will was Sive’s alone.

  She held his hand tight, and saw how onrushing death had drawn his face taunt. His watering eyes darted from place to place, his mind skipping along old paths that she could not follow him on.

  Will had become so thin that he only disturbed the flatness of his bed a little. Sive ran her hand over the sheets, and along the bone sharp length of his leg. Her thoughts were meshing with his, and his laboured breath was her own. How sweet the singing of the lark outside the window was to him.

  Sive’s hand touched his, feeling the thin coolness of it, in vain trying to draw him back to her. Every line and care of life magnified twenty fold, until that was all there was. He might be nothing but skin, bones, and flesh, in her memory he still burned young, vibrant and most of all alive.

  Deep within the ancient, perfect heart of Sive the Shining something snapped, and welled up in her throat. She had cried before, bright tears for a brave solider, or for a sweet moment that touched her heart, but now she cried like a mortal, deeply, without care, and knowing there was nothing she could do. Her shoulders shook, and the silver tears exploded. Perhaps she too could die right there.

  Her aunt had lied; there was no comfort in this moment, no bittersweet revelation that made it all better, and only a vast hollow in her chest.

  Don’t die. Her fingers clenched around his; willing him to deny his nature, and be as she was. Will’s head shifted on his pillow, looking for the first time at her, and through her to another time.

  His thin fingers caught the lock of hair that ran against her right cheek; grey had grown into it after his going, strands to mark their trials in the Shattered Realm. He raised one eyebrow as he had used to, but said nothing, only smiled a little, resting his hand against her cheek.

  Sive pressed Will’s chill hand there and wept into its palm. “I love you, William.”

  “Love will only take you so far.” His voice was already something from beyond the grave. “And if ours was wrong, I will pay for it soon enough.”

  Sive watched a trail of sweat run down the furrows and hills of Will’s face. That the Queen of the Fey should be begging at an old man’s bed seemed right. Humility was something that had developed from her time in the mortal realm, and by now she'd grown accustomed to it.

  The worst of it was that Will seemed ready to depart, ready to give in. In the face of such acceptance, she offered something else, something to pin their hopes on.

  “Remember, my love, I told you I would find a way for us to be together.” Sive whispered her hope into his ear. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Will. Enough of the Fey Art dwells in you to find another body and home there. You need only wish it.”

  The Mother of All owed him some time, and the Fey needed a Bard to heal those remaining wounds. With Art, and Art alone, he could be what Sive had always wished him to be—a creature of the Fey.

  Will smiled at her, his throat too dry to speak. When he next gasped for breath, she flinched. Sive heard herself murmuring, begging Will to follow her into the Fey, to be hers forever. Will’s eyes fluttered.

  All the simple moments of his life, all the little horrors, the small joys, the tiny dreams, ran down to this one gasping moment—his last breath.

  Sive leaned forward to catch it and bring him home with her, but the choice to stay or go was his.

  “Please, my love,” she pleaded with all her heart, as only a woman could.

  None could say if her call even reached him. With a soft sigh, William’s spirit flew free into the realms he had saved. The Bard went home… to her.

  About the Author

  New Zealand-born fantasy writer and podcaster Philippa (Pip) Ballantine is the author of the critically-acclaimed Books of the Order series, and has appeared in collections such as Steampunk World and Clockwork Fairy Tales. Other works of hers include the award-winning Chasing the Bard, and her New Zealand set epic fantasy Weather Child.

  She is also the co-author with her husband, “Tee Morris, of Social Media for Writers and a co-creator of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Both the series and its companion podcast, Tales from the Archives, have won numerous awards including the 2011 Airship Award for Best in Steampunk Literature, the 2013 Parsec Award for Best Podcast Anthology, and RT Reviewers’ Choice for Best Steampunk of 2014.

  Their latest title in the series, The Curse of the Silver Pharaoh, debuted at #1 under three different Steampunk categories on Amazon.com.

  Philippa resides in Manassas, Virginia with their daughter and a mighty clowder of cats.

  www.pjballantine.com

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