The Dark Thorn

by Shawn Speakman

  Even though it galled Richard to admit it, Merle was still deft at his craft.

  Just when the knight was about to give up his vigil and head to his alley bed, the door to the darkened bookstore opened. Bran emerged into the night.

  Richard stood still, watching.

  The boy locked the door behind him. He wore a dark sweater and jeans, his hair as wild as in the morning. At first Bran did not move. Then with furtive eyes scanning his surroundings, he hiked a brown knapsack upon his shoulder and moved southward along First Avenue.

  Richard separated from the gloom and followed.

  The knight kept at a safe distance, thinking. Myrddin Emrys was a sneaky old bastard. He never made a choice that did not suit his ends. The boy had some role to play in Merle’s plans, and Richard could not—would not—let another innocent become a pawn. Richard no longer cared if the old man had a well-intentioned purpose or not; the knight had witnessed firsthand what that meant and wished it on no other.

  He would learn all he could about the new worker for Old World Tales.

  And decide how best to progress with Merle.

  Never deviating from the shadows, Richard watched Bran cut deeper into the heart of Pioneer Square. The knight hung back far enough to not be observed but close enough to keep up. He had no trouble; he knew every street, alley, and niche. The tall spire of Smith Tower lorded overhead, its white stucco gleaming, the light at its apex blazing amethyst over blocks of squat brick buildings. The night was mostly silent. As the boy avoided those leaving bars and traveled deeper into the Bricks, Richard passed bundles of sleeping bags, blankets, and flattened cardboard jammed into almost-hidden spaces. Homeless addicts, the mentally handicapped, criminals—or worse—they were the underbelly of a city that largely disdained them.

  No matter the new clothing he now wore, Richard had a great deal in common with the denizens of the Bricks.

  The self-contempt he carried in his heart made it so.

  Within the bowels of the building he walked passed, the portal to Annwn thrummed, a reminder of his duty and why he tracked Bran. Pioneer Square was the oldest part of Seattle, but in 1889 a great fire had decimated it, giving the city council of the time an opportunity to improve it in the rebuild. It had originally been built upon tide flats that flooded twice daily; as a way to fix the problem of backed-up sewage, the council decided to sluice a nearby hill into the flats and raise Seattle above Puget Sound. The business owners could not wait for the project to finish before reconstructing their stores, resulting in thick buffering walls between the buildings and the dirt. The entrances to the businesses soon vanished beneath the modern-day street level.

  The ruins below Richard’s feet were what used to be the first floor of Old Seattle.

  Much later, the portal to Annwn had been placed there where few ventured, a concrete defensive cap encasing the entry into this world from the fey one.

  Richard exhaled sadly. He had watched over the portal for years, ever since graduate school. It felt like a lifetime ago, and the memories he carried seemed to be those of an entirely different man—one who had dreamed, hoped, and loved.

  Merle had destroyed all of those things.

  Bran turned down Second Avenue and passed Waterfall Garden Park, remaining in the shadows as much as possible. The boy was being careful, but for what reason? Was he on an errand of import for Merle? Or was he on his own after-hour venture?

  “Come on, kid,” the knight whispered. “What are you doing?”

  As if hearing Richard, Bran paused, head tilted like a wolf catching a scent.

  And then disappeared.

  Richard blinked in shock. He pressed himself into obscurity, unsure of what had just happened. One moment Bran had been in clear sight.

  The next, the boy had vanished.

  Long minutes passed.

  Richard peered deeper into the gloom where Bran had last stood. Two buildings sat next to one another. No alley existed between them, no doorway he could discern. Nothing presented itself.

  The knight was about to investigate when movement stopped him. Two police officers walked out of an alleyway farther down from where Bran had vanished. They were young men, new to the force, Richard wagered, placed on night shift in one of the darkest parts of Seattle. They spoke in hushed tones as they passed where Bran had been and beyond where Richard hid, laughing at some shared joke before entering the next block.

  After the cops had strolled on, Bran reappeared as if by magic and traveled on.

  Richard frowned, curious, and approached the spot where the boy had disappeared. A gap not a foot wide separated the two buildings, a tiny enough space for Bran to hide from the police.

  Smart lad, Richard thought.

  The knight followed anew, knowing to be more careful. Richard had never seen Bran in Seattle but the boy knew the Bricks well. Bran had to have come from the derelict and disenfranchised part of a different city.

  The Bricks changed, became darker, the distance between the street lamps increasing even as the buildings fell into greater disrepair. Richard kept alert. Pioneer Square could hide any number of evils and become a dangerous wild creature if one was not careful once the sun had gone down. Bran did not seem to mind the change, never deviating from his direct path, and he crossed into an empty parking lot where two buildings joined to form a bordering ell.

  An orange light glowed ahead, fighting against the night.

  Richard slowed and angled to get a better view. At the base where the two buildings met, a small fire flickered lowly. Specters in ragged clothing huddled around it, unmoving, stealing the flaming light and its warmth. The scene was muted like a cemetery in winter.

  Bran walked straight toward the group.

  Richard hung back.

  The boy approached without hesitancy. He was only a few feet from them before a gaunt man turned, the hint of a downtrodden soul peering from black eyes that lit up in greeting. Then the others turned—two bearded older men, a stringy-haired blonde woman with palsied hands that shook like Walker’s, and a round black man—and all welcomed Bran with smiles and warm words.

  Richard frowned. He did not know these particular homeless.

  Bran unslung his pack, withdrew tinfoil-wrapped objects that glinted in the weak firelight, and tossed them to the group. Some of the homeless tore into their offering; a few came over and patted Bran on the back first.

  It could only be one thing, Richard thought.

  Food.

  Bran sat with them for a few minutes, embracing their reverence and the fire, before saying his farewells and leaving. Richard sank back into his shadows; he was unwilling to confront the boy just yet. The streets were tough and he didn’t know enough about Bran. The harsh conditions forced homeless men and women to form bonds of kinship out of a necessity to survive. Despite Richard choosing to live a life alone, he still relied on others like Al and Walker, people who—like him—endured through collective companionship. The knight found it curious that Bran, at such a young age, had developed such selfless responsibility for others.

  It meant the lad had been on the streets a long time and knew these people well before joining Merle at Old World Tales.

  Bran walked through the gloom as he had before, furtively careful. He did not return the way he had come. Richard watched him take a corner on the far side of the lot and disappear, on his way to a different part of the Bricks.

  The knight was about to follow when his instincts screamed.

  He froze and waited.

  The itch at the back of his consciousness grew, a preternatural warning given life. The knight looked about. Nothing presented itself, but he knew better. Someone or something was watching, and the prying eyes held ill intentions. He had been in his role long enough to know the difference. But Richard did not know if it came from the fairies, the police, or another entity entirely. It did not feel alien—just angry, watchful.

  He moved from his place of hiding, frowning darkly and peering into
every crevice he passed as if it held a snake. Naught became apparent. He was a match for anything that might appear, but he would not be careless. To be so could lead to death. Arondight thrummed just beneath his skin, always a thought away from materializing, the ancient sword an assurance against being attacked by even the most formidable opponents.

  If his life were in danger, he would have no qualms calling the blade into being.

  But the night continued to hide its spy.

  Bran visited two more groups, none of which Richard knew. The boy gave more food away until his pack was limply crumpled. The knight watched him, keeping his other eye on whatever pursued them from the shadows. Nothing presented itself. No matter what tracked the two, Merle’s assistant seemed to be unaware of it as he aided those who were not as fortunate in life as he had become.

  Richard stepped into the light to catch up to Bran, to confront the lad and notify him of the danger he was in from Merle and whatever watched from the shadows, when a sound came on the chilly air that stopped him short.

  It was a chittering Richard knew well.

  The knight sank deeper into the night, watching. He did not have to wait long. The hum came again, more urgent and excited this time, whirring overhead from several directions at once. Richard kept quiet. He watched to differentiate whom the buzzing creatures were after.

  “Come get some,” Richard whispered.

  The shadows dropped like stones but not toward the knight. Instead they went for Bran, too colorful to be bats. His worst assumptions about the boy made clear, Richard scowled.

  The fairies had found their prey.

  Bran Ardall strode through the vacant, dilapidated streets in the area he now knew as the Bricks, the city of Seattle hiding him beneath a mantle of darkness.

  The damp avenues were like many others he had traveled.

  Even though he had not lived in the city since before the death of his parents and had never been in the Bricks to his knowledge, Bran felt he knew Pioneer Square. Every city possessed a quarter where the less fortunate converged—an area a bit darker but available, more run down but with a soup kitchen, perceived less clean by the locals but with enough people to beg change from. The name of the city did not matter. Bran had been up and down the West Coast from place to place, but wherever he roamed he was prepared to survive because it never changed.

  He hated living in such conditions.

  To be homeless was hardship he wished on no other.

  It was a difficult life. Food was hard to come by. The winter stole warmth and the summer scalded. Sleep was fitful and rarely replenishing. Danger strolled the streets in the form of aggressive drug dealers, meth heads, and thugs from every background, all of whom fought for imaginary turf. Thieves were rampant; liars were everywhere. Despair was a tangible entity, able to kill if one let it. Disgust from those who passed on their way to lives of importance permeated this world, gazes of contempt left unchecked.

  Bran wondered when such looks would not wound.

  Now nineteen years old, Bran hoped it would no longer matter. He had settled. Merle had given him an opportunity, looked past the grime of the streets, and Bran planned on taking advantage of his generosity.

  Bran had been discovering what type of businesses existed in the Bricks, when he stopped in front of Old World Tales to scan the volumes in the windows. His father had loved books. As a nine-year-old, one of the last memories Bran had of him took place in his father’s library, watching him pore over various tomes. Bran could not touch them; many were quite old, bound in leather with foreign letters stamped into the spines. When his father was not traveling, Bran watched him closely, fascinated by what he deemed so important.

  At times, the odor of parchment and ink from that library returned to Bran from buried memory, thick in his nose, reminding him of a past before the streets, a past when he was happy and loved.

  No matter what city he found himself in, the memory accosted him anew when coming across a bookstore.

  While staring at the books, lost in reverie, the door had opened. A white-bearded man wearing a white collared shirt and khaki pants stood at the entrance and breathed in the warm late summer air before his eyes settled on Bran.

  “Love books?” the man inquired.

  “I do,” Bran said, nodding. “Just something about them.”

  “Magic.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Magic,” the old man repeated. “Nothing like a book, really. Nothing like a book can help a person become who they have always wanted to be. Nothing like a book can return us to our childhood. A book can hold amazing magic.”

  Bran looked at the man. Icy blue eyes penetrated deep, but his face held warmth and understanding.

  “Looking for a way to get off the streets?”

  Bran frowned. Trust was a luxury he had a hard time offering freely. Homeless rarely benefited from such unions with more respectable members of society. But there was something different about the man in the doorway, an innate goodness like his father had possessed.

  “You own the store then?” Bran asked.

  The other smiled. “Maybe.”

  “Then maybe I am looking to get off the streets.”

  “My name is Merle.”

  “Bran Ardall.”

  Merle nodded and, pulling a pipe from his pocket, welcomed Bran into the shop.

  It had been a month since they met, the summer giving way to fall. Bran helped in the bookstore, dusting shelves, aiding customers, cataloguing books Merle acquired, and giving Arrow Jack—a temperamental merlin who watched with beady-eyed curiosity—occasional freedom to hunt outdoors. At times Merle also disappeared for days, leaving Bran in charge; it was that kind of trust that made Bran respect Merle all the more. The owner had one condition only—read the books he supplied to gain an education. It had been hard at first but Bran had read seven already, most about European history. It was easy work for a wage and the chance to sleep in his first bed in years. Now Bran tried to use his new life to help his few friends still on the street.

  It was all he could do. As a high school dropout, he had limited options.

  Bran had just begun to make his way back toward Old World Tales and an evening of reading in his warm bed, when instincts honed during his life on the street screamed like sirens.

  He slowed, looking about.

  The night was as secretive as before. The Alaskan Way Viaduct loomed in front of him, its double-decker highway blacker than the midnight around it. Light from the occasional streetlamp created vast puddles of dank shadow.

  Danger could come from anywhere.

  The face of Merle’s visitor flashed in his mind—the haunted eyes, the emaciated frame. Richard, the bookseller had called him.

  Was it that man out in the gloom, watching Bran now?

  Bran didn’t think so. Whatever followed him felt different. It was not the police, a thieving addict, or any of the commonplace threats that used to confront him daily. With the feeling came a stabbing hatred, one not tired like the streets, but fresh and vibrant.

  A shift of gloom at the corner of his eye raised his fight reflex. Heart racing his mind, his feet picking up the pace, he probed the world.

  Nothing.

  The movement came again, closer, accompanied by a high-pitched whine. It came once again from two directions, and he understood with stunning clarity why he hadn’t caught sight of his pursuer earlier.

  It was in the air.

  Bran ducked self-consciously as tiny flying shadows materialized. They were gone just as quickly, darting back into the night. Bats would buzz people, but with autumn come, the bats had gone into hibernation. When the fast-moving creatures came again, crossing over his head almost at the same time, Bran got a closer look at them—and couldn’t believe his own eyes.

  They definitely weren’t bats.

  They were something else entirely.

  It was enough to set him running. The things came again, swooping in on sleek dragonfly-li
ke wings of gossamer that shimmered in the weak light. They were each the size of a bat, but any other resemblance disappeared with their human-like arms and legs and tiny leaves sprouting in patches over cocoa-colored skin.

  Panic quickening adrenaline, Bran dove behind a parked car, keeping low, watching. He was still several blocks from the safety of Old World Tales. What he had seen gave his sanity pause and his fear rein. Uncertainty pulled him in multiple directions—run, scream, fight, or all of them.

  The chittering returned and he picked out intelligible words.

  “Here, here, here!”

  “Kill, kill, kill!”

  “Feed, feed, feed!”

  There were other words, but Bran couldn’t make them out. The dark twittering litany increased from all directions. As they swooped past his head again, Bran bolted. Shoes pounding the sidewalk, he tore through Pioneer Square, his confusion and fright lending him strength. The buildings passed in a blur. Each breath burned in his lungs as a fire, every nuance of the world acutely emblazoned on his awareness.

  He would fight until he won safety.

  He was almost back to Pioneer Place Park, Old World Tales only two blocks away, when one of the creatures slammed into his head. Revulsion flashed hotly through his body. Clawing and scratching, the enraged fairy kept at him, spitting curses into his ear. He fought the thing, stumbling into an alley in a panic to get away from the creature, hissing like a cornered cat.

  The fairy leapt off suddenly.

  Breathing hard and worried at the next attack, Bran searched the air frantically. The fairy flew to join its brethren in the middle of the alleyway. The three floated on the air, chattering excitedly, their wings a blur and voices echoing and shrill.

  Bran turned to flee down the alley—and froze. There was nowhere to go. Three brick walls prevented exit.

  It was a dead end.

  As Bran cursed his mistake and turned to flee, he skidded to a halt on the graveled pavement.

  A creature from nightmare blocked freedom.

  “What the hell?” Bran breathed.

  The thing was wolf-like, its red eyes glaring malice. It was larger than a mastiff, with patches of coarse black hair like spikes growing out of dark green fur along its shoulders and hindquarters. Its hair bristled as it came deeper into the alley, the muscles beneath thick and rippling, its tail a braided mass sweeping the night like a whip. Slaver dripped from its fangs, evidence of its thoughts.