Black Swan Rising

by Lee Carroll

  I tried again. This time the spark traveled to my thumb and flared up into a tiny bluish white flame. The sight of my own thumb on fire startled me so badly I shook my hand to make it go out.

  Oberon groaned. “It’s your own life force burning,” he said as if lecturing a kindergartener. “It can’t hurt you. Now try it one more time.”

  I stared at my hand, summoned my aura, placed thumb and middle finger together, waited for the spark, snapped my fingers, held my thumb upright . . . and the flame leapt out of my thumb and swayed there like a miniature hula-dancer. Oberon was right; it didn’t hurt.

  “Good job,” he said.

  I glanced away from the flame and grinned at him. “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I almost wish I smoked so I could show it off.”

  He shook his head and started down the steps with me following him, my fears abated by delight in my new powers . . . until Oberon gave me something else to worry about. “Just don’t try to do it if you’re menstruating. Women have a tendency to light themselves on fire at that time of the month.”

  I started down the stairs after him, wondering how he had known it wasn’t that time of the month, but he was already issuing another warning. “Stay close to me and don’t go off into any of the side corridors.”

  How many side corridors could there be in a Manhattan basement? I wondered as I followed him. But as we went farther and farther down the spiral stairs, I began to suspect that this wasn’t any ordinary Manhattan basement. For one thing, the walls were faced with a glittering pink quartz. When I held my thumb-flame up to the wall, I saw symbols and pictographs etched into the stone. There were carvings of figures—beautiful men and women riding on horseback through a landscape of mountains and woods. There were scenes of people dancing around circles of standing stones and great bonfires. Winged creatures flew through the air—dragons and griffins and, I noticed with a shudder, manticores. Dragons also crouched inside caves deep inside mountains where small, wizened creatures mined gems and minerals. These pictures were adorned with actual gems: diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds that glittered in the light from my hand. I’d taken enough gemology in college to know they were real, but I couldn’t begin to estimate the monetary value of such a hoard.

  The largest stones of all were four gemstones, a sapphire, an emerald, a ruby, and a topaz, each carved into the shape of an eye, each set on top of a tower.

  “Come on,” Oberon called from a few steps below me. “We don’t want to leave Puck and Fen alone too long—” He stopped when he saw how closely I was looking at the wall and climbed back up to where I stood.

  “Are these the watchtowers?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes on me, not the pictures. “They were built to defend humanity against the dark forces. Each one was given a guardian, one of the fey who dedicated her life to guarding the tower.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “There was a war. The towers were destroyed . . . one of the guardians was killed—”

  “I thought you guys were immortal.”

  Oberon shook his head. “We don’t age, but we can be killed in a few specific ways and sometimes we . . . diminish.” He uttered the last word with such a dire intonation that I didn’t dare ask him to elaborate. Instead I asked him what had happened to the other three guardians.

  “One went into hiding, one chose to become human—that was your ancestor, Marguerite.”

  “And the fourth?”

  “We don’t speak of her,” he said, turning to go down the stairs. “She joined the other side. And for that she was consigned to the deepest pit of hell.”

  King of Shadows

  Just when I was beginning to be afraid that we were descending into the deepest pit of hell, we came to a round room at the bottom of the staircase. Four narrow corridors branched off from the circle. I couldn’t see that they were marked in any way, but Oberon didn’t hesitate before setting off down one. As he went, he touched the flame on his hand to sconces along the wall that instantly flared up, lighting the arched corridor. I tried to guess what direction we were heading in, but going around and around in that spiral staircase had completely turned me around. At any rate, it was hard to imagine that we were still below the streets of Manhattan at all—that subway trains ran over our heads, that people were going to work, eating lunch, working out at gyms, walking their dogs, putting cranky toddlers down for their naps up there in the “real” world. That felt like an illusion. This felt real—the solid stone walls, the arched ceiling . . . I looked closer at the ceiling. It was paved in a herringbone pattern of ceramic tiles that looked familiar.

  “Hey,” I called to Oberon’s retreating back, “this ceiling looks like the one in the Oyster Bar at Grand Central, and like the dome at St. John the Divine.”

  “That’s because they were made by the same person—Rafael Guastavino,” Oberon answered without turning around. “He was brought down here in the 1890s. We’d always had trouble with leaks before.”

  “Really? You mean a mere mortal was able to do a better job than a bunch of immortal fairies?”

  Oberon stopped so abruptly I nearly ran into him. The expression on his face looked pained, but when he spoke his voice was gentle. Sad, even. “There’s nothing mere about mortals. There are many things that you can do that we cannot. We may have once been a great people—there were those among us who were revered as gods—but over the centuries we have grown stale and insular. What spark we have left we get from contact with your kind—from the great thinkers and creators among you. It is that spark that keeps us alive. We feed on it.”

  “You make yourselves sound like parasites.”

  He shook his head. “The humans we touch bloom in our company. They do their best work while we drink of their dreams. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.”

  “And what happens when you leave them?”

  Oberon tilted his head. In the light of the torches he looked old. Centuries old. “What makes you think we ever leave the ones we love?”

  “Because I grew up in a house filled night and day with artists. I’ve listened to the stories about the ones who went mad—like van Gogh—and I’ve seen the ones who burned with so much passion that they seemed to glow . . . and I’ve seen that glow go out. Why did Ray Johnson jump off the Sag Harbor bridge? Why did Santé Leone overdose on heroin? Why hasn’t Zach Reese painted anything in twenty years?”

  “It’s true,” he said. “Sometimes our touch is too much for them. The fire burns through them leaving a shell. Sometimes a careless fey moves on with so little warning the human is left searching for that light for the rest of his life. But you shouldn’t judge us by our failures. We’ve also fostered Shakespeares and Beethovens, Tolstoys and Brontës, Picassos and Einsteins. It isn’t all up to us. Sometimes the human is more fragile than we thought . . . or sometimes too greedy. Sometimes they leave us and choose a dark companion.” Oberon glared meaningfully at my neck. “We’re not the only players here.”

  He turned and strode on in front of me, into a high-ceilinged circular room at the center of which was a large round oak table that gleamed under a chandelier made out of twisted branches that was lit with a hundred sparks of light. More than two dozen chairs ringed the table, but only two people—if I could call them that—sat there: Fen and the rainbow-garbed beggar I’d seen at the 190th Street station. He’d taken off the fur cap so that I could see that his ears were pointed. When he smiled, I saw that his teeth were pointed too.

  “Well met by moonlight,” he exclaimed as we came in. “Welcome, daughter of the Watchtower, fair Marguerite. We are honored to have you grace our company.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, returning the bow and taking the chair he pulled out for me. “Again. If I’d known who you were, I would have added something to your cup.”

  Oberon scowled. “Puck, have you been panhandling again? Surely I pay you handsomely.”

  “It’s not for th
e money, my lord, it’s for the spark. When I amuse a weary traveler and they forget their woes, their light warms me to the bottom of my toes.” He lifted his feet and wiggled them in the air. I half expected pointed slippers, but he was wearing red Nike Air Jordans.

  “And it was just a coincidence that you ran into Garet?”

  Fen answered, “I told him she would be coming out of Fort Tryon Park. I didn’t tell him who told me.”

  “It’s true,” Puck said, “I didn’t know our Fenodoree was in touch with the vampire until a few moments ago. But you mustn’t be too hard on her. Remember, he was our friend before he became a dark one—and beloved of our Marguerite.”

  “She asked me to keep an eye on him,” Fen said.

  “And so you’ve been his spy for all these years?” Oberon roared, his shadow, thrown onto the curved stone wall by the light of the chandelier, seeming to grow larger. I noticed other shadows on the wall that ringed the room. Shadows that seemed to be cast by nothing I could see.

  “Not a spy!” Fen insisted. “A caretaker. An observer. And a reminder of what he once was. He never takes life unless he has to, or turns the ones he drinks from to the dark. In truth, he always leaves them happier than when he found them.”

  I thought of the way it had felt when Will Hughes drank my blood—the way it felt now when I thought of him—and turned away from the table so they wouldn’t see me blush. The shadows ringing the table seemed to have inched closer.

  “That’s very sweet. I’ll remember to nominate him for vampire of the year. I suppose you told him about the reappearance of the Watchtower?”

  “No! He called me early this morning—just after dawn—and told me she was leaving the park. He asked me to send someone to watch her home, so I asked Puck. And see? She’s come to no harm.”

  I was afraid that Oberon was going to rip the scarf from my neck and reveal the fang marks there, but he didn’t. He only sighed and sank down into a chair. “What’s past is past. We have to decide what to do going forward. Dee has summoned the demons of Despair and Discord.”

  “Already?” Fen asked. “I thought we had seven days from when the box was opened.”

  “We have four days now to be rid of them,” Oberon answered.

  “But how will we banish them if they’re already taking shape?” Puck asked.

  As they went back and forth, I noticed that the shadows around the room were drawing nearer. One by one they detached themselves from the walls, slouched toward the table, and slipped up into the chairs. Once at the table they took shape . . . or, rather, shapes. One sprouted horns and a tail, another grew a dozen eyes and claws. Many unfolded wings, slick and black as if they’d just hatched from a cocoon. Goblins. The word came unbidden to my mind as if I’d always known such creatures existed . . . and not just in storybooks. I remembered my mother reading me a poem she loved called “The Goblin Market” and shivering at the descriptions of the creatures in it. One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry-scurry. Oberon had called Will Hughes a dark one as if distinguishing him from creatures like himself and Puck and Fen, but then what were these grotesque creatures? Dark ones or light ones? Maybe the lines between them couldn’t be so sharply drawn. I peered into the shadows to better make out their shapes, but it was hard to get a clear picture of them in the flickering light . . . then I realized that the light was flickering because it too, was on the move. The flames in the sconces hissed and undulated, then divided and flitted through the air to land on the table where each flame became a diminutive person with wings. They looked like the light sylphs I had seen last night only brighter, and instead of being transparent their skin was spotted orange and yellow like a salamander’s. Yellow and orange flames licked around their heads instead of hair. Some fluttered around my head before they landed on the table, and I could hear a sound like cicadas buzzing and tree frogs peeping. One hovered so close to me I could feel its wings brushing my face. It took all my willpower not to bat it away.

  “Don’t worry,” Fen whispered to me when she noticed the frozen expression on my face. “They’re fire fey. They’re perfectly harmless.”

  One landed on my arm and sat on my elbow. I looked down at it, remembering the way the sylph had snarled at me last night, but this creature only yawned and curled up in the crook of my arm and began to make a low humming noise like a cat purring. When its friends saw I wasn’t shooing it away, a dozen more perched on my shoulders, arms, and lap. One landed in my hair.

  “It won’t set my hair on fire, will it?” I asked Fen.

  “No, but you might not like how she does your hair. Lol,” she addressed the creature in my hair, “no beehives! It’s not the sixties anymore.”

  Something tittered in my ear.

  “Lol?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh. She started LOL on the Internet. A little joke of hers—”

  “If you two are done gossiping,” Oberon interrupted, “perhaps Garet would like to focus on the task at hand.”

  “But what can I do against Dee and two demons?” I asked. “I don’t even know what these demons are or what they look like.”

  “They look different each time they take shape,” Oberon answered. “In the Middle Ages they often took the shape of dragons. In ancient times they appeared as leviathans beneath the sea. No one knows what they’ll look like this time, but it won’t be hard to recognize their work. As they gain power, they’ll sow despair and discord throughout the city, then the country, then the world. People will grow sadder and then angrier. They’ll lose hope, they’ll quarrel . . . before long some will even be driven to kill themselves and their families. If the box remains open for seven days, then Dee will take control. The last time the demons were abroad, Hitler came to power. If they hadn’t been slain, he wouldn’t have been defeated.”

  “But again, what can I do? I have no powers, no experience.” I wanted to add that I was probably lacking in courage and moral fiber as well. After all, hadn’t I gotten Edgar Tolbert killed and abandoned his body in the Cloisters to be found by strangers? But I didn’t even have the courage to bring up my failings.

  “Yes, it’s unfortunate you were never trained. Each one of your line has the ability to become a powerful guardian against evil—a protector of humanity. Encoded in your DNA are the secrets of how to defeat these demons, but you have to be trained to recognize and use those powers. But it’s not too late.”

  I shook my head. After everything I’d witnessed and allowed myself to believe, this part still caught me up short—that I had some special destiny to play in these events. I was getting used to the idea that my mother could have had a secret life; she was undeniably special. But me? I’d grown up surrounded by people of amazing talents—painters and sculptors who could make their dreams concrete—but I wasn’t like that. I was an ordinary craftsman, a welder and jeweler, and even my jewelry was only a remaking of old symbols and designs. I was nothing special.

  “I think you have the wrong person,” I said.

  The rustling of the gathered throng—the goblins, the fire fey, and the things that still lurked outside the light in the shadows—came to a sudden halt. Oberon stared and flexed his wings, the sound echoing in the otherwise quiet hall like a great flock of birds taking off. “Of course we understand if you are too frightened to take charge. You are right to be afraid. Even with training, there is no guarantee that you will be able to find Dee and the box and that once you find him you’ll be able to get the box away from him and send the demons back to hell.”

  I swallowed. Send the demons back to hell? He was right; I was frightened. Hell, I was terrified. I looked around the table at all these strange creatures, some beautiful, but some grotesque, and some too much a part of the shadows to make out at all. They were all waiting for my answer. All these amazing creatures were waiting for me to say whether I would help them or not. I felt inside me others waiting as well: Edgar Tolbert, who had been senselessly murdered, and my father lying woun
ded in the hospital. How many more would be hurt if I did nothing?

  “Okay,” I said, my voice sounding small and hollow in the great hall. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Oberon, Puck, and Fen spent the next hour arguing about who should train me in each of the skills I would need to find Dee, overpower him, and take the box from him. I wasn’t clear how I was supposed to do any of that, but apparently there were guides who could teach me what I needed to do. The goblins and fire fey joined the argument from time to time, but I couldn’t understand their language so I stopped paying attention, and once I stopped paying attention I started getting sleepy. After all, I hadn’t slept in . . . how long had it been? I wasn’t even sure what time it was. I had no sense of time down here underground. My eyelids grew heavy, the lights of the fire fey began to swell and blur, and my head began to nod . . . but then I felt a tiny hand propping my chin up. It was one of the fiery-haired fairies. I watched her as she flew over to Oberon and chattered in his ear, her orange-spotted skin undulating in the glow from her own hair and wings. As she hovered above Oberon’s ear, I noticed that the markings on her wings looked like two large brown eyes with yellow irises—like the eyes of a tiger. Glimpsed among the foliage you might think you were being stalked by a giant predator. It gave me more of a sense of respect for the little creature—and the idea that she wasn’t to be taken lightly. Oberon certainly seemed to be taking what she was saying seriously.

  “Lol has suggested that while we decide who can teach her what she needs to know, Garet should go home and get some sleep. How does that sound, Garet?”

  For an answer I yawned. I heard Lol chittering as she flew around my head. I got up to follow Oberon out of the hall. Puck bowed his farewell to me, but Fen got up to walk beside me until we reached the corridor.

  “Tell Will I said hello,” she whispered in my ear.

  “I don’t really know if I’ll see him again,” I whispered back.