Faerie Tale

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘If he knows, he knows,’ he said. ‘He probably saw everything, and if he wants to kill me, I can hardly blame him. But he’s right. We shouldn’t lie to him.’

  ‘I don’t want to kill you at all,’ said Denny. In fact, I know what happened here, because it happened to Cindy and me too. I know you couldn’t help it. And I’m guessing you stopped yourself, like I did. Because it’s not real, although it certainly felt it.

  ‘We have to be careful,’ he continued. ‘If you really want to know, I followed you because I had a feeling something weird was going on. But I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t keep up with you.’ He tapped his injured leg. ‘I’m glad I missed it,’ he added. ‘That’s probably a memory I could do without.’ He gave a forced laugh.

  ‘You said that you couldn’t remember anything,’ said Tamar accusingly – referring to the aforementioned incident in the forest with Cindy.

  Denny shrugged. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘And I suppose you would have told me all about this would you, if I hadn’t caught you?’

  ‘That’s different,’ she said without thinking. ‘You said you knew it wasn’t real …’ Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late.

  ‘But you weren’t sure?’ said Denny. ‘I see.’ He looked away biting his lip.

  ‘Denny…?’ began Tamar, but he just gave her a look, which silenced her. She had never known him so cold.

  Denny sat down suddenly as if his leg was giving him pain, and Tamar hurt inside that she could not comfort him – he did not want her right now.

  There was a long, awkward silence in which nobody seemed to know what to say.

  Eventually Stiles spoke. ‘We should get back,’ he said

  And Denny attacked him.

  It was a more evenly matched fight than it would otherwise have been, inasmuch as Stiles was managing to hold his own due to Denny’s injury. But he found it hard – as the guilty party – to fight back with any real commitment. He felt he deserved his beating, and frankly, he wanted it. Only his instinctive sense of self-preservation made him defend himself at all, and Denny was beating him down.

  ‘Stop it,’ shouted Tamar. ‘You’ll kill him!’

  Denny felt as if icy water had been poured down his back at these words. He stopped and stood up straight looking down in shock and horror at Stiles bloody face. He felt the real world come flooding back into his consciousness. It was true, he realised. Had he carried on he would have killed him.

  ‘That wasn’t real either,’ he said suddenly realising the truth.

  ‘None of this is. We have to get out of here,’ said Tamar.

  ‘No, we’re being manipulated,’ said Denny. ‘All this, right from Cindy coming down here in the first place, it was all planned. We can’t leave yet; we have to find out why.’

  ‘I don’t care why.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Denny bluntly. ‘Of course you care, but something doesn’t want us here, and doesn’t want you to care. You have to fight it. You always care, remember that! Now heal Jack up and let’s go.’

  ‘The Sidhe?’ said Tamar bending down to take care of Stiles.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said something doesn’t want us here, but we know what it is, don’t we? The Sidhe.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Denny.

  ~Chapter Five ~

  ‘Faeries!’ thought Hecaté, ‘after all this time?’ She had seen Faeries before, many centuries ago, and knew well the destruction they could wreak. But she thought that they had all been banished or destroyed or something. However, it appeared that they had only been biding their time. Biding their time until what, though? What did they want now? What they always wanted of course, she realised. Entertainment.

  ‘Oh, yes’! she thought. ‘They think that humans are toys.’

  Watching people make fools of themselves was by way of light entertainment for the Faeries. Like TV. “All The World’s a Stage” or rather, in these modern days, a Soap Opera.

  But it was worse than that, because they had the power to direct the action.

  They had been gone for centuries – or had they? – So, what had happened to them? Somebody had dealt with them once.

  She realised that she was getting incoherent. Her thoughts were spiralling out of control. It was the panic of course. Tamar, Denny and her beloved Jack were out there in the woods with those things and, what was worse, had no idea what they had got themselves into.

  * * *

  Tamar did not usually panic, but this was all getting too much for her. She was used to being the manipulator not the manipulated, and if Denny was going to goga-ga, it was over her dead body. But was he? Or was it her? Did she just imagine that Denny had told her about the Sidhe? Suddenly she was not sure.

  ‘What are the Shee?’ said Denny innocently.

  ‘You tell us, ‘came the voice of Stiles from the ground. You were the one who brought them up in the first place.

  ‘I never …’ Denny trailed off uncertainly.

  But Tamar now felt a little better. Obviously, Denny had been got to, which meant that he was probably on to something. Unless … it was she and Stiles who were the ones … she shook her head to clear it. It did not help; this was mind control, too subtle a form of attack to deal with directly as per her usual method of solving a problem – hit it and it will go away. Denny was the subtle one. They needed Denny to solve this, and he was “away with the fairies” to coin a phrase. All Tamar’s instincts told her to find the Sidhe and beat holy hell out of them until they gave up. But her common sense told her that they would not be found unless they wanted to be, not unless there was some way to free their minds first.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Stiles.

  ‘They made him forget,’ said Tamar tersely.

  ‘But not us?’ said Stiles. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because we don’t really know anything I suppose. He’s the one who found out …’

  ‘We can’t believe anything,’ interrupted Stiles. ‘Not even our own memories. How do we know that he found out anything? How do we know that he didn’t tell us if he did? I mean maybe he did tell us, and we just can’t remember it. Or maybe …’

  ‘There’s no point in second guessing ourselves … do you hear that?’

  Faint and distant was the sound of silvery laughter echoing through the trees.

  ‘Someone is finding all this very amusing,’ said Tamar grimly.

  She sent a bolt of lightning through the trees, more to relieve her feelings than anything else, but she was horrified by the result. Instead of the surrounding trees catching fire as you might have expected, the lighting raced up the trunk of a nearby oak and danced through the upper branches crackling from leaf to leaf like a living thing. Then, without warning, a bolt came shooting down from the canopy and struck Denny right in the head.

  It did not throw him too far and, once Tamar got over the shock, she could see that he was not seriously hurt, only a little singed and extremely surprised.

  ‘Bloody Hell!’ he said

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Tamar anxiously.

  ‘Fine,’ said Denny. ‘Actually, I’m more than fine. I’m me again. Nothing like a good bolt of lightning to clear the brain if you know what I mean?’ He winked.

  Tamar did see. ‘Do me,’ she said catching on immediately.

  Denny hesitated, on the one hand, he knew, rationally, that it would not harm her in any way, but, on the other hand, there is an inherent cultural taboo against throwing bolts of lighting at your girlfriend, no matter how much she is asking for it.

  Stiles was gaping at them in horror. This seemed like the craziest thing yet.

  Tamar narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh come on!’ she snapped. ‘I want to know that what I’m thinking is what I’m thinking …

  ‘If you see what I mean,’ she added after a moment’s thought.

  Denny struck.

  Tamar picked herself up and dusted herself d
own. It tickles,’ she announced blithely.

  ‘And…?’ questioned Stiles who had caught up by now.

  ‘It worked,’ she tapped her head. ‘Clear as a bell.’

  ‘I’m certain,’ she added as Stiles looked doubtfully at her.

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ said Denny. ‘But it’s different … you just know.’

  ‘Pity you can’t do me then,’ said Stiles glumly.

  ‘Maybe just a little bolt,’ said Tamar. ‘Might work. Probably knock you out for a while but …’

  ‘No!’ said Denny. ‘Too risky, he’s human.’

  ‘More risky than not being in control of your own mind?’ said Stiles. ‘Do it.’

  ‘It could kill you,’ said Denny.

  ‘I’ll risk it,’

  ‘Look I just …’

  ‘Oh, I’ll do it,’ interrupted Tamar. And, before Denny could stop her, she had.

  ~ Chapter Six ~

  They were here many millennia ago. The fair folk, the lordly ones, the Faeries. And in some ways, the land has never forgotten them.

  They spawned a million myths and legends and had a hundred different names, but no one remembers the truth.

  Vague echoes of the truth have filtered down through the centuries. People talk of mischief, of tricks and pranks. People educated in Faerie lore might mention the courts, theSeelie Court and the Unseelie Court, the homes respectively of the good and the bad faeries.

  But there were only ever the bad faeries – only ever theUnseelie Court. And its real name is forgotten.

  But Hecaté remembered.

  As she ploughed through the many written works that Denny had found on Faeries and their counterparts, recollections of the truth filtered back to her.

  They were afraid of iron (iron to bind.)

  They loved music (music to maze.)

  They were beautiful.

  They were elegant.

  They were cruel.

  They were vicious.

  They were murderers.

  But she still did not know where they had gone, had never known as a matter of fact. As a goddess, the doings of the Sidhe had not been of much interest to her at the time, and when they had vanished, she had barely noticed. It really had not mattered much. It mattered now.

  There was one person who could tell her what she wanted to know. The problem was she was terrified of him.

  “Changelings” she read. “Often fairies would take a human child and replace it with a fairy child.” Well, they had got that right at least, but nowhere did it say why the fairies were supposed to have done this although there were numerous speculations. Hecaté did not have to speculate, she knew why – Infiltration. And she realised, with a jolt, that this time it was happening on a wide scale – Stiles’s missing baby cases. Denny had evidently worked this much out according to his notes on the subject. But he had not figured out all of it.

  He had not seen the changeling right under his nose.

  * * *

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Tamar impatiently, ‘just knocked out.’

  ‘Now what?’ Denny did not waste time on recriminations, there was no point, Tamar would not have listened anyway.

  ‘I’ll wake him and we can … can … get the hell out of here anyway. We need to talk.’

  They limped, hobbled and dragged themselves back to the gypsy camp. None of them had ever been in such a bad way before; it was unnerving. Just a few hours in this cursed forest and they were wrecks of their former selves.

  ‘But,’ said Tamar, ‘at least our minds are our own again.’

  The gypsies scolded them for running off into the woods, particularly Denny whose injury was very bad they said.

  Denny was mildly surprised – he had forgotten his wounded leg in all the excitement, and then he realised why. He looked down at his blood soaked trousers and saw that the blood had dried – there was no more leaking out. He stomped his leg on the ground, and there was no pain. His leg was sound.

  ‘We can beat them,’ he said. ‘It was all in our minds. I was healed. You healed me just fine but I didn’t believe it – they weren’t letting me.’

  ‘What has power like that?’ mused Tamar.

  ‘Actually, power over the mind isn’t all that special,’ said Denny. ‘Hypnotists can do it and so on. The problem is that there’s really no defence against it, unless you’re prepared. We just didn’t see it coming.’

  ‘But we will now,’ said Tamar fiercely.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Denny in a distracted fashion.

  He turned to the gypsy king. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ he asked. ‘Alone.’

  The gypsy king nodded and led them to his private tent and left them there.

  ‘I don’t trust them,’ said Stiles unwarily as soon as the king was gone.

  Tamar looked meaningfully at the tent flap, but Denny shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘If they are listening, then either we are not telling them anything they don’t already know or they need to know this too. Either way it doesn’t matter,’ he reiterated.

  Tamar argued with this. ‘If they can’t be trusted then surely we don’t want them knowing how much we know,’ she said.

  ‘I guarantee, if they can’t be trusted, it means they already know exactly how much we know,’ said Denny. ‘Besides, why shouldn’t we trust them? They’re only gypsies.’

  ‘What exactly do we know?’ asked Stiles, who did not think this was true, but knew there was no point in saying so.

  ‘Not much,’ admitted Denny.

  ‘Tell us about the Sidhe,’ said Tamar. ‘How do I kill them?’

  ‘Iron basically,’ said Denny, smiling slightly at the way she put it. “How do I kill them?” ‘As far as I know, it’s the only way. Even this,’ he withdrew the Athame, ‘is no use against them.’

  ‘No problem then,’ said Tamar manifesting an iron bar.

  ‘No good,’ said Denny. ‘It has to be real iron, manifestations are no good. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh,’ Tamar looked put out as she made the bar disappear or “unmanifested” it, as Cindy always said. She had said it so often that it had caught on among the others even though, as Denny pointed out, it was not a real word.

  ‘You called them fairies,’ put in Stiles.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Denny. ‘But don’t be fooled, it makes them sound harmless, but they aren’t. They’re extremely dangerous.’

  ‘We’ve noticed,’ put in Tamar sourly.

  ‘And …’ Denny looked at Stiles gravely, ‘they steal children.’

  He waited for the penny to drop. It did not take long.

  ‘It was them?’ Stiles snarled, going red with anger.

  ‘You’ve heard of changelings?’ Denny continued. Stiles nodded, unable to speak through his fury.

  ‘If it helps, the children are probably all right.’

  Stiles found his voice. ‘Why?’ he managed in a strangled tone.

  ‘Nobody knows.’ Denny sighed. ‘What I don’t understand is … he broke off. ‘Oh my God,’ he gasped. ‘I am so stupid. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.’

  ‘What?’ said Tamar.

  ‘Changelings,’ said Denny. ‘They usually grow up as a part of the family. No one ever suspects. We never suspected, even though he is such a little horror.’

  ‘Jacky!’ gasped Tamar and Stiles at the same time.

  ‘I said he wasn’t Eugene’s kid,’ added Tamar. ‘I just never realised he wasn’t Cindy’s either.’

  ‘We have to get back,’ said Stiles. ‘My wife is in the house with that … thing!’

  ‘But where’s the real Jacky?’ asked Tamar. ‘And the rest of the missing kids for that matter?’

  Denny shrugged. ‘I don’t have all the answers,’ he said.

  ‘But what do they want?’ Tamar said plaintively. ‘Why are they here?’

  ‘Fun.’ The voice was a soft female voice and it seemed to come from all around them. ‘W
e want to have fun,’

  * * *

  Somehow, Hecaté realised, some of the parents were accidentally exposing the changeling in its true form. That was surely the only explanation for the mysterious transformations occurring. So why had it not happened here? And how many others were out there, that had not been exposed?

  Many of the older children were, as Denny had surmised, acting – as she now recognised – like Faeries might be expected to. But it was only the very young – the babies – who had been exposed for what they were. Another clue? Were the older ones also changelings? Changelings who had not been exposed? How long had this been going on?

  Long enough (and here she shuddered) for some of these to have grown to adulthood? She realised, with a shock, that Denny had thought so, and he was usually right about these things.

  However, this was conjecture and more important to Hecaté, at the moment anyway, was the fact that once the changeling was exposed, the parents ceased to care for the interloper, and it ran away. She had to work out how to expose Jacky (or the thing that looked like Jacky) to Cindy. She decided to read Stiles’s notes on the missing children, there might be a clue there, now that someone knew what they were looking for.

  * * *

  Three heads whipped round and saw her standing in a pool of scattered light. Tall, beautiful with a crown of pale green flowers atop her long golden hair. She was smiling. Silvery laughter filled the air around her.

  ‘This was our world,’ she said, ‘long ago.’

  ‘Until you were banished,’ said Denny defiantly.

  ‘We left,’ she corrected him, but no one believed her. ‘And now we are back.’

  ‘You state the obvious beautifully,’ sniped Tamar sarcastically.

  Bright green eyes were turned on her with an expression that clearly said, “You are nothing. I could wipe you out without a second thought”. They were not ordinary eyes. They were, when you looked into them, the cold dead eyes of a serial killer. Tamar stared back unflinchingly – no one else could have done it.

  The Faerie gave in first. Tamar had a stare like a thermic lance and had probably been practising longer. It was the sort of thing she would do – gaze into a mirror until it broke out of sheer desperation.