by brett hicks
“That was insanely direct for the man who had danced all around the subject of mom for fifteen years!”
He raised his palms out in surrender.
“I know honey, but I had no choice. Information is dangerous and being full-blood faerey, we cannot tell an outright lie. I could not have someone milking you for information about your parentage.”
“God dad, what is going on? How can I be…”
I gestured down my body and over my face, “This!”
He gave me a look of deep sympathy.
“You were born to two Moch Sidhe and you were hidden away in the American Wyldes. Much of our people prefer the old world. Most of the best portals and doorways are in the many various portions of the United Kingdom and most of Europe.”
My brain hurt from the information dumping. I held up my hand and I gestured around us.
“Dad why is all of this happening now?! What did you do? Are we some kind of criminal outlaws?”
He sighed and he shook his head.
“We don’t have long my girl, but I will give you a few bits of information that you must remember if you wish to survive our world.”
I was back to being frozen in place again. My back tingled and I felt the prickles of danger causing my body to flood with adrenaline.
“There were many wars back when the clans were separate. Blood flowed freely and Faerey kind nearly extinguished itself from all the dimensions of this world. The Blood Queen rose, conquering the clans and the tribes. She who is now the Empress of the Imperium came to rule. It is due to her tyrannical law that I fled, not for crimes committed, but for the sake of freedom.”
“What happened to Queen Tatiana and King Oberon? Aren’t they supposed to be the high rulers of the Faerey people in all of the mythology?”
My father shook his head and sniffed.
“Please, Lord Oberon was just a self-important Duke at most! He tickled the ears of a few bards and suddenly his name became synonymous with the ruler of Faerey kind! Tatiana was just a Moch Sidhe noblewoman that Oberon was besotted with! He used to drool over her at every chance meeting!”
I nodded dumbly about this information and my brain felt like it was shorting out. My father seemed to notice this and he waved his hand and purple mist flowed out of his hands and the coffee pot lifted itself and hovered over and poured dark liquid into my empty cup. The creamer flew over next and then a spoon that put in three tablespoons’ worth of sugar before stirring.
My eyes watched in silent awe at the open use of what I could not deny as magic!
“How did you do all of that dad?!”
He smiled warmly and seemed to preen under my awe and praise of his powers.
“We all have our own unique gifts and then there are basic spells and magic that all can learn. You see the mist around us?”
I nodded, yep, I noticed the strangely swirling colored mist.
“We can shape the mists to basic spell-work. Faerey folk can weave illusions with just the mists of magic and our belief in our own powers. That is how I hid you from this reality for the first fifteen years, but now you have awakened. Last night, the wine I gave you was faerey wine. It acts as a medium to clear the illusions woven in the mists. If humans drink it, then they will see us for what we are and our hidden doorways, so we try not to carry it out of the Faerey dimension often.”
What could I say to all of that?
“Why do we not have any time? You have mentioned being short on time several times. Dad, what is happening?”
He smiled proudly at me.
“My clever sharp-witted girl that is the right question to ask me. I’m afraid that you will have to leave to scoil draíochta.”
He blinked and sighed as if just realizing that he had slipped into another language.
“We have had academies in place for longer than humans have had an organized education. Or magic is complex and it takes years to master and control. I have sent word to the Head Mistress of Cambridge Academy and she has agreed to enroll you, even though you are quite late for the start of this school year. We must be on our way even now, or you will miss your first day of class!”
I blinked up at him with my mouth hanging open wide in shock and awe.
Three:
The mist was everywhere when we stepped outside of our house. My father placed a hand on my shoulder and I turned. He looked into my eyes and I saw a spike of worry shoot through him.
“I will show you your first lesson in glamour magic. Your eyes, you must keep them glamoured to the more mundane color of an amber, sweetheart. Please do not ask me why, for I cannot tell you. Just know that your eyes are very distinctive and you might die if someone were to see them like this.”
Chills shot down my spine at the weight of his truth. My father the faerey, seemed to think I was in that much danger just for existing! I swallowed down and I nodded dumbly to him and cleared my throat.
“How do I change my eyes?”
I asked it and seemed to forget for a moment how impossible this whole conversation was. Not to mention, how insane everything since I woke up was! Who the hell wakes up to their pointy-eared father proclaiming them something inhuman and begins to tell a girl she is in danger, or that she is starting school effective immediately!
I would stew over this entire morning, later! Right now, I was much too scared to ignore my father’s warnings.
He seemed to brighten and he reached out to the mist that coated the air around us. My eyes widened at how tangible the stuff was. It seemed to be just as insubstantial ad normal mist, but I mirrored his motion and I felt the stuff thickly, slightly sticky on my fingers. Dad pulled the stuff over his eyes and I watched in amazement as the mist soon disappeared and his faerey green-golden eyes became dark green, the color I had always known his eyes to be.
Part of me felt a pang at the lie that was my father’s appearance. Maris has been my rock and my only constant in life. This felt like a sort of betrayal, even if only in some new inexplicable manner.
“When you touch the mist to your eyes, visualize your amber eyes as they have looked to you up until today. Glamour is the faerey imagination making the dreams and thoughts into manifest images.”
I was reluctant to touch the sticky misty green material to my eyes, but I did. It was cool and even soothing to my delicate tissue. And, surprisingly, I could see through the green-tinted mist on my eyes. I began to think and I remembered the amber reddish-brown tint of my human eyes.
Maris made a humming sound and he produced a small hand mirror from the green mists around us. He handed the very real illusionary object to me.
“Look, you have done it! You are a natural with glamour! That’s my girl!”
His praise was both elating and also unsettling in this context. My brown-red eyes peeked out at me through the mirror and I furrowed my brow. My grip tightened on the mirror and it crumpled into green mist a moment later.
My dad chuckled and tsked.
“I am a very good illusionist, but the insubstantial is still not real. Put too much pressure on it and it will need to be repaired. You will need to work new glamour over your eyes every morning. The rising sun burns away all the mists and glamour from the world for that moment. Only the strongest of faerey spells can be enchanted to hold their form through the rising sun.”
I blinked and looked up at my dad, who had already broken the glamour over his eyes. His gaze was green-gold again and held an inhuman level of allure to them. I could now see why all the women seemed to find themselves drawn to him. Maris was like male catnip to human females.
“Why did you hide your eyes from me?”
I said it as much in accusation, as it sounded like a question. Maris’ eyes darkened and he huffed out a long haggard breath.
“T’was not for me to reveal anything Faerey to you until you came into your own magical maturity. You are now an adult by all the standards of the fae. However, do not let that knowledge go to your head, my child. You are but a fledgling in your
powers and it will require years of study for you to become anything resembling an adult to the eyes of the world.”
As with most things, his lyrical tone took on slightly hushed and wary quality. Maris was bloody cryptic, but he seemed to be warning me constantly.
“Dad, why am I such a secret? If so, then why are you trying to throw me off into England? None of this makes any sense. Hell, I should be checking you into the nuthouse for all of this.”
I waved my hand around in a wide arc. My father watched me with slight bemusement in his eyes and his normal mischievous glint.
At least I now know why he always looks like he is playing a damn trick on you! He was!
If there was one thing I was suddenly sure of about Faerey people, it was that they did love mischief and jokes. My father, in retrospect, now made a hell of a lot more sense to me.
Maris owns a small but widely successful clothing design line. He does custom fantasy costumes for human movies and TV shows. Hell, he has done several fairy costumes that I know of! Being the ever curious little beaver that I am, I always wondered how such a starkly straight man could enjoy working with clothes and making crazy costumes for a living. Now, it all fits together perfectly. Maris was exploiting his gifts as a faerey to pay his mundane bills and raise his not so mundane daughter!
“Dad, please, tell me what you know about my mom. Tell me why you’ve been hiding me!”
Maris winced at my use of the word “please.”
“Do not say please or thank you to any faerey. It implies a debt between you and it can be used to make you do things you would not normally consent to do.”
My brows furrowed deeply and I pointed a finger at my dad.
“But, I have said both to you my whole life. I don’t feel indebted to you.”
Maris smiled broadly and nodded in confirmation.
“I must confess that I was wrong to allow you to grow so human in your speech habits. I feared you might become too suspicious if I kept insisting you never thank anyone. After all, it is polite to mortals to do so.”
“You’re dodging the question, father.”
My tone was still sweet, but Maris’ eyes widened a fraction. He knew that daughterly tone I was invoking now. The tone every girl has when scolding her father. Because girls can scold their daddies, this is a time-tested fact of life! Apparently, even faerey fathers are not immune to the reproach of their female children. Maris winced slightly and sighed.
“Very well, you would learn this soon enough anyway. You cannot incur debt from a blood-relative or any close relation. Meaning, one cannot owe, or be indebted to family. Such would be a horrible abuse of our nature if the worst of parents could hold their children to debts.”
I blinked at this information. Maris must have winced more because he hates hearing me say please or thank you, and he previously stated that he cannot outright lie to me. Granted, I knew my father was a master at dodging things when he did not want to speak of them. Like my many, many attempts to ask him about my mother.
“Why do we live here in America, if most of our kind likes to hang out in the UK? Dad, what is the story here? I am about to walk into the world you left, right?”
Maris nodded and he simply said, “Just be very wary of the Imperium. They cannot legally claim territory in Cambridge proper; it is neutral ground for the world’s supernatural species. Trust me when I say, fairies are not the only thing that lives amongst the human population. The Empress never travels to Cambridge for this very reason and as such, the city is a haven for students and the unaligned fae.”
“Huh…”
Was the extent of my intelligent response to this latest information dump.
“What is this Imperium all about? Are they likely to cause problems for me?”
Maris shrugged and nodded at the same time, a confusing mix. I narrowed my eyes and said, “Which is it, dad?”
My hands were on my hips and I looked up as menacingly as a five-three blonde teen could at her tall lean, but perfectly toned father. Maris was a “pretty-boy” type of guy, but he still looked every bit as strong and nimble as his newly discovered status as a magical being would make him.
“It’s not safe for me to tell you much, my child. Do not let them sign you up with them. No contracts of service, no matter how flattering the job they offer you. The Imperium does scout out all the new talents coming up in Cambridge for the express purpose of expanding its armies and its talents. All they do is for the furtherance of the Blood Queen’s hold over the larger portion of this earth and all its many dimensions.”
That was about the third time I heard him mention this Empress, or “Blood Queen.” His tone took on a harsh note I had never heard in my father before, even when he caught me sneaking out to go to a concert last fall! I swear, he seems more pissed at this woman, than anything I have put him through in my young life. Trust me when I say, I can be a handful at times. My dad is a veritable saint to have dealt with me so kindly, considering how reckless I have been.
“Who is she, and won’t it seem suspicious to them if I am all anti-Imperium?”
My dad shrugged and waved that question off.
“You’re from what is known as The American Wyldes. The dimension that overlaps the mortal realm here in the US is not a tame one. Being from this segment of the world will make any opinion you have for their government self-explained. This was the main reason we were brought here.”
He stopped me with his hand raised before I could even start to ask the next most logical question.
“Sorry, but you cannot ask me anything further. You must remain ignorant of some things, or a crafty little faerey might coax a deadly truth from your lips. Like I said before, you will require years of hard work to perfect your glamour and your natural magic.”
I frowned at him and though it went unspoken for now, my look told him we were far from finished with this conversation. I could see the look of remorse in my father’s eyes. He placed a hand gently at the small of my back and we began to walk.
He led me down the block, looking for all the rest of the world like a father-daughter pair out for a stroll.
We passed my neighbor’s house and I noticed my long-time friend and nanny waving with long furry canine ears perked up on the sides of her head. Her eyes were wide as she took me in. She seemed to be curious, but not at all surprised by the long slender tips of my ears, or the way the red mist seemed to swirl around me.
“Is everyone…”
My father shook his head quickly.
“No, but Sue has been a dear friend. She is a Cu Sidhe a type of faerey dog-shifter. She has a fully fae-canine form that she often changes into. To all the human neighbors, this large German Shepard will seem like her pet canine. She is clever at maintaining her cover while in her shifted form and all our human neighbors know to send the German Shepard to her house if they decide to be nosey and figure out why the big dog is roaming free. Sue could smell our fae blood from the moment we moved in. She has always known what you were and she has opted to become a loyal friend, remember this. You might not owe her a debt, but you do owe her some friendship. Friends are a rare thing in our world, my child.”
Upon this somber note, we walked towards the wooded hiking trail at the edge of our neighborhood, the same woods I had played paintball in yesterday.
Four:
My father led me to a large oak in our forest. It still held the paintball splatter from the day before. That had a slight twitch to my lips in amusement.
The oak split in the center at my father’s touch and a narrow white-gold light poured out from the now open doorway. My father waved his hand and he kept the other firmly rooted on my spine as if to keep track of me. Who knows, that might be the truth?
“After you, my darling daughter.”
Maris waved his hand with some real flare. Thinking back on my childhood, I could see a number of odd behavioral gestures my father was prone to making, which should have alerted me that he was not wha
t he seemed to be. Then again, who exactly is looking deeply into their father’s quirky actions? Unless given a reason to, kids tend to just naturally believe their parents. Before now, I would have sworn there was only one secret between us, my mother. Now, tack on a whole magical world of secrets and that was the new distance between us!
I swallowed down my fear of the unknown and I stepped into the glowing tree—not too disconcerting at all!
A rush of warmth spread throughout my body and I sucked down spicy air. In a flash, literally, I was standing in the ancient gothic city of Cambridge, England. I have seen many pictures of this area since I had more than a passing fancy with several schools in the area.
We emerged from another tree, an oak so similar it was nearly the twin of the other paintball- riddled tree. I looked around at the gardens and greenery. We were not in the same place anymore. Judging by the noticeable shift in the people around me and their dress, I would be correct to assume this was not even the US any longer.
Add to that the sprinklings of conversations that were loud enough to carry on the wind, I noted the accented English. To be more precise, the “proper British-English” accents around me were of note.
“How is this possible?”
I breathed out the question as I took in the people not so very different from the common American, but just enough to be noticeable. Maris chortled and he waved with his free hand and gestured me onward.
“This way my child, we are running a tad behind now.”
I blinked several times and nodded reluctantly.
“Are we…”
His dark brow quirked highly and his mischievous smile widened.
“In Cambridge, yes we are.”
Maris led us out to the main road and I noted that even here, there was a McDonalds on the next street up from us. I chuckled and nodded to it.
“Where are the fish n’ chips?”
Maris snorted and waved around in a vague gesture.
“All over the place, that is like asking where the cheeseburgers are in America.”
Despite the morning we had, I laughed at him and smacked his chest playfully. Maris knew I was still livid with him, but this was too amazing to stay mad over, for now.
