Dreams and Shadows: A Novel

by C. Robert Cargill

  The nixie looked up at Meinrad, extending an outstretched hand. “Please,” she said softly. “The boy. The Tithe Child.”

  “Please what?” demanded Ruadhri, shocked at the appearance of the dying creature.

  “Kill him,” the nixie pleaded. “As he killed my sisters.”

  “What?!” cried Colby. “What is this?”

  “It would appear your friend has killed again,” said Coyote.

  “That’s impossible, I just left him,” said Mallaidh, shaking her head.

  “Perhaps the nixie runs far faster than you,” said Rhiamon.

  The nixie nodded. “It was him,” she coughed. “He looked like our boy, only uglier. I would know him anywhere. He dipped his hat in our blood as I ran.”

  Meinrad looked sadly upon the nixie. “It would seem he has turned completely, and now dips his hat in our blood.” He then looked at Mallaidh. “Passage is revoked. The boy must die.”

  “NO!” cried Mallaidh. “No! No! No!” She glanced around wildly, at once both frightened and furious. Then, without warning, she bolted, running as far and as fast as she could.

  Ruadhri was the first to step away from his stone. “I must marshal our forces. Meinrad, grant me the right to raise an army.”

  Meinrad nodded. “Granted. But raise no more than fifty. Then meet here and you may lead them.”

  Ruadhri bowed, taking his leave. Rhiamon smiled wickedly, fading into the night. Ilsa immediately took a knee beside the dying nixie, comforting her as her spirit passed, her last breaths drawn with strained moans sounding like squeaking doors in a creaky house. Meinrad sank into the earth, becoming one with it, his presence vanishing from the circle.

  Coyote turned—a satisfied smile on his lips—and walked off toward the woods. Colby rushed after him, ready to tear him limb from limb.

  “I know what you did,” said Colby.

  Coyote came to a stop, but did not turn around. “Do you?” he asked. “Do you, really?”

  “Yes.”

  “But do you know why?” asked Coyote.

  “Because it is your nature.”

  Coyote smiled, his copper skin rippling with wrinkles. “I see you’ve traded your youth for wisdom.”

  “It’s easy to spot evil.”

  Coyote’s smile dropped into a look of disappointment, the wrinkles settling sadly upon downturned lips. He turned around. “But not so wise yet as to fully grasp the world around you.”

  “Wise enough to know why we’re both here.”

  “And why are you here, Colby?”

  “To kill you.”

  “Ah, so it’s come to that, has it?” asked Coyote, a glimmer in his eye.

  “Yes, it has.”

  Coyote shook his head. “Perhaps I was too quick to judge your wisdom, confusing it with your swelling pride.”

  “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you.”

  “Apart from you having to ask for a reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you know people only ask that when they don’t intend to kill someone.”

  Colby narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have one.”

  “Of course I don’t. I’m Coyote. You’ve read the stories, you know my tales. I’ve died a thousand deaths before and I’ve a thousand more to die before the end of time. This is a death hardly worth telling. What I’ve done cannot be undone by killing me, nor will you bring an end to my mischief. You will only reset the cycle anew. Perhaps next time I will be a kinder, gentler Coyote, playing pranks on children and concerning myself with finding delicious stew. Or maybe I will come back vindictive and meddlesome, eager to set nation upon nation while reveling in the bloodbath. You never know. I don’t even know who I’ll be next time around. I only know who I am now, and what I intend to do. And once you figure that out, then and only then will you know whether there is reason or not to let me live.”

  “Or maybe,” said Colby, “you’re just another wily spirit, overinflating his own legend, seeding storytellers with tales of your many past lives in hopes of convincing guys like me that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t, when in truth you have but one life to give and your only defense is to convince us not to take it.”

  Coyote smirked, beaming with pride. “Now that’d be a trick, wouldn’t it? That’d be a trick indeed.”

  “You’re pathetic.”

  “Do you really think so little of me?” asked Coyote. “Do you honestly believe I did all this because I give a shit about your little friend? About a boy who cheated death only to dangle his feet over the edge every day since, waiting for nothing more than to fulfill his destiny? Dying alone and anonymous in the street? That’s what the great Colby Stevens thinks of Coyote? That I spend my time putting bumblebees in jars to watch them fight?”

  “Well . . . I . . . ,” stammered Colby.

  “You do think that of me, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have much to understand about the nature of man.”

  “You’re no man.”

  “No,” said Coyote. “I am his unflattering reflection.” He shook his head. “I have outlived billions of gallons of blood, and you think I somehow delight in the spilling of a few more pints. You see my hand in the affairs of a few mortals and you think that I’ve but wound them up so I can watch them bounce off one another in the night. Never have you asked yourself why I might do such a thing—to what end this bloodshed might serve. The trouble with human beings is that when examining the actions of others, they always apply their own ethics and point of view, hoping to understand them in the context of what they might do and why they might do such a thing. When no answer lies in that examination, they always ascribe malice. Malice, you see, is the only thing people understand without explanation. You are born with it and thus come to expect it.

  “Do you know the difference between a good man and a great man? A good man looks around at his brothers, sees their ignorance, finds himself horrified by it, and sets out to educate them. A great man instead finds himself elated by realizing that his brothers will never know any better, using it to his advantage to forge an army of the ignorant, fighting to leave the world a better place. Ignorance is the only one truly unstoppable force in this world. And the only difference between a despot and a founding father is that the founding father convinces you that everything he does was your idea to begin with and that he was acting at your behest all along. Yes, people are sheep. Big deal. You need to stop trying to educate the sheep and instead just steer the herd.

  “No one wants to admit that they’re not smart enough to understand what’s going on, so they create such elaborate fictions to convince themselves otherwise. Fairies are the construct of man and bear with them both his arrogance and his ignorance. You look at what I’ve done and you think this is about tormenting your friend. If I told you now that the blood about to be spilled would change the world as you know it, would you deign to stop it? Would you believe me at all?”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” said Colby.

  “Good,” said Coyote. “Were you to believe me, you might not do what I need you to do.”

  “And all this is supposed to stop me from killing you?”

  “Who cares if you kill me, Colby?” he said, rolling his eyes. “The machine is sprung. Mallaidh’s run off at full speed to save the man she loves, while you’ve stood here threatening an old man. The events unfolding as we speak can no longer be held at bay, but a moment will come when you will be forced to make a choice about what sort of man you really want to be, and that is where my gamble lies.

  “When fate finally comes for you, who will you be, Colby Stevens? Who will you choose to be?”

  Coyote turned and walked into the thick blanket of brush, disappearing into a tangle of branches, Colby staring, standing still in stunned silence.

  “This isn’t over between us,” called Colby into the dark wood before him.

  “Nor would I want it to be,” called back Coyote’s distant v
oice.

  Colby stared, bewildered, into the night, fully aware that he’d most likely just been conned. But there were worse things than finding yourself fooled by the Trickster himself. Then worse things sprang to mind. Ewan!

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  SPACE AND TIME

  Ewan sat naked in the corner of his apartment, his arms tightly wrapped around his knees, covered from head to toe in blood, mud, and lake water. He was high—punch-drunk off the fresh blood soaking through his cap and dripping onto the carpet. Tingles ran along every inch of his body, his mind slowing to a crawl; he was barely lucid, unaware of the world around him. It was like floating through an electric current, each heartbeat tickling his insides like the aftershock spasms of spent love.

  He drifted in and out of semiconsciousness, reliving the moment his pike struck home, spilling open the bare chest of that scaly green creature, her gape-jawed expression staring blankly at him, horrified as her innards erupted, spraying across the water—every drop remembered in crisp detail.

  He liked it; he liked it a lot.

  The knock at the door shook him halfway out of his daze. Something felt familiar. He looked around, saw the scraps of paper on the floor, the grease pencils scattered about, for a moment wondering if the last few hours had even happened at all. Wasn’t I just scribbling something? he wondered. It felt as if he was drifting in and out of some dream, pieces of time folding in upon themselves and, as he began to wake, the pieces started taking shape again.

  Another knock.

  He rose to his feet. He saw the puddle on the carpet, felt the muck drip off his limbs; he knew this was no dream. It was taking longer to shake off the fuzzy feeling than he imagined. Slowly he wobbled, faltering, toward the door, barely able to grasp a coherent thought.

  KNOCKS STOOD OUTSIDE the door, taking a deep breath. I shouldn’t be doing this. It was just nerves, but something felt very wrong. For as many years as he had dreamt of strangling the very life out of Ewan, he’d never thought it would be in a late-night ambush; yet here he stood, a sharpened piece of iron in his pocket, disguised as Mallaidh’s alter ego, Nora. With the genie in a bottle and Colby distracted by the council, this might be his only opportunity, and any chance to kill Ewan was one worth taking.

  Again, he rapped loudly on the door.

  There came no answer.

  He has to be here, he thought to himself. Unless the genie lied.

  He rapped again.

  Again no answer. Damnit, a few seconds longer, then it was back to the warehouse for another hour of torturing the genie.

  “Who is it?” grumbled a muffled voice from behind the door.

  “It’s me,” said Knocks. The door unlatched, swung open, the dank smell of stagnant water and body odor wafting out, almost bowling Knocks over. There stood Ewan, covered from head to toe in a moist reddish-brown layer of god knows what, naked as the day he was born save for the dripping red cap atop his head. He’d been hunting, and now was only a few nights shy of his transformation.

  The very thought of Ewan becoming a redcap infuriated Knocks. For all the years he’d run with the redcaps, wearing a blood-soaked cap of his own, he would never be one of them; he would always be an outsider. A wannabe. All Ewan had to do was to put the cap on once; he probably didn’t even want to be one. Bullshit, Knocks thought. Fucking bullshit. He wanted to stab him right then and there.

  “What did I tell you?” Ewan asked gruffly. “I don’t want to see her. She doesn’t exist.”

  Knocks snapped back from his wandering thoughts. What was he thinking? Of course Ewan didn’t want to see Nora; he knew she wasn’t real. Hastily he formed an image of Mallaidh in his mind, running over every specific detail, from the curve of her hips to the cut of her chin. “Sorry,” he said, shifting forms in front of him. He crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping that Ewan wouldn’t notice any subtle differences.

  Ewan motioned him in.

  The place was a mess. Knocks wasn’t sure what to expect, but somehow had always imagined him living in a nicely furnished, rock-star-like apartment. It’s not that he thought him rich, but better than this. The carpet, covered in a light coat of scattered cigarette ash, like a fresh dusting of late October snow, stank of whatever it was that dripped off Ewan. This was nothing to envy; it was a tiny little shithole nestled in the armpit of a much larger shithole.

  “What have you been doing?” asked Knocks.

  “Nothing you’d want to know about,” said Ewan, his eyes shifting nervously, as if he had some great secret to hide. He looked sick, like he’d been strung out for days on some illicit back-alley juice cut with cold medicine.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I am now. What did they tell you?”

  Shit. Who? Who was Mallaidh talking to? “They didn’t tell me anything,” he said, trying to buy a little time, fishing for a hint with which to craft a believable story.

  “What do you mean they didn’t tell you anything?” Ewan eyed Knocks up and down.

  Knocks glanced around for clues, spying a massive wooden pike, its blade smeared in fresh blood, running down and pooling in a stained circle on the floor beneath it. He looked up at Ewan, who was now piecing things together.

  Ewan lunged for the pike. Knocks stepped between him and the weapon, pulling a blade from his pocket, sinking it deep into Ewan’s exposed side, slipping the flat of it between two ribs.

  Ewan screamed, the force of it resonating in Knocks’s bones.

  Knocks smiled; finally. “You hesitated,” he gloated.

  “It won’t happen again,” Ewan spat out. He swung, landing a blow that picked Knocks off his feet, throwing him across the room. He was as strong as a redcap now, perhaps stronger. Still rattled by Ewan’s blow, Knocks slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the room.

  Ewan plucked the dagger from his side, tossing it away, a spray of blood following. Gritting his teeth through the pain, he picked up the pike and charged Knocks, screaming.

  Knocks shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from it, darting away before he was finished, the pike swinging just inches from his neck. Caught without his knife, without the element of surprise, he had no cards left to play.

  I have to get out of here.

  He made a break for the door, but Ewan put a stiff leg between his running feet, sending him sprawling, shattering his cheek, putting a solid knot on his forehead.

  Ewan was ready to charge again.

  Knocks grabbed the doorknob and turned it, flinging the door open.

  Ewan brought the pike to bear once more.

  Knocks dove out the door, dragging his left arm behind for balance. The blade of the pike whistled through the air, catching Knocks’s exposed palm, cutting a gash across it from one side to the other. He winced in pain, losing his footing, crashing headfirst into the rickety railing overlooking the fetid pool.

  Like a shot, Knocks jumped to his feet, springing toward the stairs. He ran as fast as his feet would carry him, down the industrial cement walkway, silently cursing himself for blowing this so badly, praying for the miracle that would buy him time to get away. This was all wrong, he chastised himself; he’d gotten cocky. I never should have tried this alone.

  His hand burned as if he’d stuck it in fire, the wound stinging like it was full of broken glass; he clenched it into a painful fist, only making it worse. Fingers throbbed, bones ached. The pain spread, setting fire to his arm all the way up to his elbow.

  He reached the stairs, racing down them, desperate to reach the bottom.

  MALLAIDH RAN ACROSS the parking lot, outrunning phantoms. She wasn’t sure how long she had run or how fast; all she knew was that she was finally here. There were less than a hundred steps between her and Ewan; nothing was going to stop her now.

  She rounded a corner, bolting up the stairs, first up one flight, then up a second. One floor left, she thought to herself. Space and time. Once again she had crossed space and time. And then she found herself beside herse
lf, literally, running past a doppelganger bearing her own image.

  They both stopped, staring, mouths agape, eyes wide in surprise. Her first instinct was to lay into the duplicate, attacking whoever it was that had stolen her face, but as her muscles tightened to throw a punch, one thought overwhelmed her. Ewan. She took off again, this time somehow running faster than before, scrambling up the stairs, down the derelict walkway.

  Ewan stepped out from the apartment, bloody and naked, pike at the ready. Mallaidh—the sight of him still standing fluttering her heart with joy—threw her arms open wide. His eyes narrowed, his muscles clenched all at once. She smiled.

  Ewan drove the pike straight through her gut.

  Her eyes went cold with shock.

  “Space . . . and time . . . ,” she said softly, struggling for breath.

  “What?” asked Ewan, confused.

  He looked down at the wound. Mallaidh cupped it with her hands, desperately holding her innards in, blood pouring into them; neither of them gashed.

  He looked up at the staircase, saw Knocks, still disguised as Mallaidh, standing in the shadows. Slowly, Knocks stepped smiling out into the light, raising his left hand to show his bloody palm. Ewan gasped.

  “No!” he screamed.

  Mallaidh toppled into his arms, the two falling slowly together to the ground. Ewan cradled her, his arm around her back, her head in the palm of his hand.

  “No, no. No, no, no.”

  She looked up at him with a weak smile and sad eyes. “I did everything right,” she said. “I did it right.”

  Ewan shook his head. He didn’t know what to say.

  “I crossed space and time for you,” she continued. “I waited and I found you.”

  “Yes, you did,” he said. Tears formed in his eyes, a slow pattern of quiet sobs overtaking him.

  Mallaidh looked down at the pike, still standing upright out of her stomach. A small tear trickled down from the corner of her eye. “It was worth it,” she said. “It was all worth it.” The light began to fade from her eyes.