Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  Leaving Joey secure in the room, I wandered off down the street, listening to the town slow around me. A group of teenagers laughed as they walked, and I saw the warm lights of a pub up the road. But as my feet instinctively headed in that direction, I stopped myself and took another street. The memories were going to come that night, no matter how much I tried to drown them, and so I headed for the river alone.

  Chapter 17

  Eoin had occasional letters from the southeast, warning of skirmishes with the invaders from over the narrow sea, but the conquest didn’t hurt us greatly in those early years. While the invading Normans settled down and built up Sligo, the surrounding farmers tilled the soil and protected their flocks, fishermen went to sea and sometimes never returned, and the faithful trooped into Eoin’s church on a regular basis, leaving him gifts of food. The local lordling, a pinched-faced third son of little account whose name I’ve long since forgotten, demanded a more substantial share of his people’s harvest, but even he contributed to Eoin in his turn.

  “The Lord asks for a tithe,” Eoin explained as I helped him carry vegetables to the root cellar. “He gives us all we have—surely we can give that little back.”

  The theology that flowed so readily from the old priest was unfamiliar and perplexing to me, but Eoin insisted that I learn it. “If you’re to pass as my novice, or even a lay brother,” he said, “you must know these things by heart. Even the unlearned know the stories,” he added with a hint of reproach. “How do you propose to walk among them if you don’t even know the Blessed Mother’s name?”

  “Margarita?” I guessed.

  “Maria. Muire.” He sighed, and shook his head.

  The key to all of this knowledge was Eoin’s prized possession, a large book filled with tiny, neat, indecipherable black characters. It was a Bible, he told me, and I must learn to read it. “I won’t ask you to profess the faith,” he said, “but I’ll ask you to render a fair impression.”

  And so, every night, once the chores were completed and the prayers were said, I hunched over the massive tome and squinted at the letters in the firelight, trying to make slow sense of their meaning. There was no need for the exercise—though I had come to Eoin without a word of Latin, I could have pulled it from him, just as Mother had given me his tongue—but Eoin seemed to enjoy teaching, and so I plodded on as a child might. The priest proved a patient and apt tutor, explaining the characters and their sounds, turning sounds into concepts, and weaving those concepts into the fuller story he so fervently believed. Sometimes, in his excitement for us to relate passages to each other, he would forgo the Latin lesson entirely for a moment and translate the text himself, looking up periodically to make sure I understood.

  Within the year, I had committed the basics of Eoin’s faith to memory, and I could hold my own when he tested me with questions. Knowledge didn’t equate to belief, however—at least not in my case—but I kept my thoughts to myself; faith gave Eoin comfort, especially as he saw his life beginning to draw to its close, and I didn’t want to grieve him. “I’ll be sixty-two this summer,” he told me one afternoon as we tended his garden. He rested with his foot on his spade and grimaced as he unkinked his back. “I don’t know how many more years the Lord will see fit to give me.”

  Even after spending months among Eoin’s people, I found it almost inconceivable that he could be a mere eleven years my senior. His body was already failing him. Eoin had seen nothing more than blurs in the distance since childhood, but his near vision had begun to dim, too, making his reading all the more challenging. His joints ached with every change in the weather, and his hands often rested on his lower back, as if he were attempting to buttress his weak scaffolding. A few of his teeth had fallen out; the rest were yellowed and crooked. “I’ll be deaf and blind before they bury me, if I’m lucky,” he joked, and I heard the resignation he tried to mask with laughter.

  But Eoin showed me a rough sort of kindness, and I did what I could to ease his burden. I cleaned and polished, taking precautions with his few iron and silver things, and kept his fire going. On his orders, I avoided the village girls, even the plump young woman who flashed come-hither looks at me during Mass. Eoin didn’t need to tell me to avoid the village boys; a quick mental scan of the Sunday crowd had made it clear to me that such advances wouldn’t be welcomed. And so I labored on in unplanned celibacy, wondering to myself what sort of deity would demand that life of his faithful.

  I had been surprised at first when Mother didn’t trouble herself with bringing me back to Faerie. True, she had other matters to address and children she liked better than me, but surely, I reasoned, she would miss me eventually. Christmas came and went with no sign of her, however, and then Easter and the summer warmth, and I ceased worrying about the matter. I still hated her for what she had done to Étaín, but with time and thought, my rage had cooled from suicidal to merely simmering. Simply put, I couldn’t beat her, and so I turned my energy to Eoin’s garden and tried to forget her. And aside from the occasional birth, death, storm, or escaped horse, each day rolled on like the one before in pleasant monotony.

  The best things always end too soon, however, and this end came with a pounding on the door in the middle of the night.

  I rose first from my bed by the hearth—even at midsummer, I appreciated the warmth—and, wrapping my hand in my sleeve for protection, drew back the bolt. A young man stood outside, waiting a few feet away from a tethered horse, which nervously stamped as soon as I appeared in the doorway. “What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to discern the time from the position of the setting moon.

  His face was drawn, and he tripped over his tongue in his rush to get the words out. “Something’s attacking my lady, something invisible. Could Father—”

  Eoin shuffled up beside me and held his candle aloft. “Niall? What troubles you, my son?”

  The man cast his glance back at the horse, obviously eager to be off. “It’s my lady, Father—she’s under attack by something unseen—”

  That was enough for the priest. “I’ll gather my things and join you shortly,” he interrupted, and pushed me toward the door. “Coileán will accompany you now.”

  I turned back to Eoin, wide-eyed. “Me?”

  “Get the others away from her,” he muttered. “If she’s under attack by the Evil One, they’re all in danger.”

  I nodded and followed Niall toward his gelding. “He’s not usually like this,” he said, puzzled by the horse’s fear.

  “Let me try something,” I offered, then grabbed the leather reins and pulled the horse’s face level with mine. I’d had ample opportunity to practice the enchantment that forced the beasts into submission, but it grew no easier, and this horse in particular wanted to murder me. Still, even he faltered after a moment, and I swung up onto his bare back behind the servant. “Just a trick I learned to calm them,” I lied, anticipating the question. Niall was too worried to press me further, and we rode off toward the small stone tower near the shore where the lordling had brought his young lady wife, a particularly beautiful redhead named Ita. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen, at least half her husband’s age, but she carried herself well, smiled demurely, and always had a kind word for Eoin. I couldn’t imagine what the trouble was.

  We rode up to the gate, and I slid off the horse and headed inside, cringing as the freed beast sprinted for the fields with Niall still clinging to his back. A servant half dragged me to the bedchamber, which rang with muffled cries even through the stone walls and heavy wooden door. As her terrified husband and household watched from the safety of the hall, I cursed under my breath, pushed up my sleeves, and let the servant fling the door open so I could face the alleged demon head-on.

  What I saw in the firelit bedchamber threw me for an instant. The room was a disaster, strewn with bits of clothing and items evidently tossed from the dressing table. Ita herself was pinned to the bed by an unseen force, which held her arms above her head and spread her legs wide. Her nightgown
was torn and hiked up to her hips, and she sobbed and begged her assailant to stop.

  The room stank of magic, and when I applied it properly, I found the source.

  “Get off her!” I shouted in Fae, throwing myself at the bed.

  My older half brother, who was still invisible to the mortals around us, fell to the floor with the force of my blow. He rose slowly, clutching his head where it had struck the wooden bed, and glared at me. “Coileán?”

  “Áedán,” I growled. “Leave her be.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “You weren’t using her—”

  “She’s not to be used!” I slid over the bed as Ita curled against the headboard, sobbing, and stood between them. “You can’t just . . . just rape her!”

  “Why not?” he asked, perplexed and annoyed at the interruption, and clutched at his trousers. “What does it matter to you?”

  “It just does,” I said, stepping toward him. “Go home.”

  He sighed, then tossed me into the wall with a burst of energy. “I’m not finished yet, stupid,” he replied, and began to crawl back onto Ita, who shrieked when his fingers grabbed her ankles.

  I picked myself up and closed my eyes until the room ceased spinning, then looked about for a weapon. The girl’s cries crescendoed, and distantly, I heard her plead with me for help.

  And then I saw the lordling’s dagger on the dressing table.

  Wrapping my hand in my sleeve, I pulled the steel hilt free of its ornate leather sheath. The blade caught the firelight, reflecting red flashes into my eyes, and I seized the opening.

  Before Áedán knew what hit him, I leapt onto the bed, flipped him onto his back, and plunged the dagger into his throat. He gasped and gurgled, staring at me in shock, and I pulled the blade free. “I told you to leave her alone,” I said, waiting for the healing to begin.

  I was still waiting five minutes later when Eoin arrived and closed the door behind him. “What happened here?” he asked, bending over Áedán’s now visible body.

  Ita’s husband had carried her off some moments before, but I had barely noticed her leave. I stood by the bed, the dripping dagger in my hand. “It wasn’t supposed to kill him,” I mumbled, staring at the corpse. “Just hurt him. It . . . he should have healed . . .”

  Eoin pried the dagger from my fist and peered at his prize. “Steel,” he said softly. “You know how long it takes you, son.” He put the blade on the bed and gently pulled me away. “What happened?”

  “He raped her. Ita. I . . . he hid himself, but I . . . I saw . . .”

  At that moment, the touch of Eoin’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing tethering me to reality. “You know him?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Áedán. My brother.”

  The priest sighed and tightened his grip on me. “Be strong, Coileán. I’ll take care of this,” he murmured, and led me out of the room, past the staring throng.

  They burned Áedán’s body that night and scattered the ashes on the sea. The next morning, Niall brought me the bloody dagger. “My lord wanted you to have it,” he explained. “He sends his thanks.”

  I carefully took it from him, and Eoin moved between us so Niall wouldn’t see my reaction. “And your lady?” he asked.

  “Resting,” the servant replied, then hesitated before asking, “Father . . . why would a demon take such a . . . a form?”

  Eoin covered the young man’s hands with his own and stared into his eyes. “Never underestimate the Evil One, my son. Not for a moment.”

  When the door closed, he turned back to find me with my bare hand wrapped around the hilt, my teeth gritted against the pain, my flesh smoking.

  I bore those deep scars for many years. In the right light, I can still see them.

  Ita returned to her husband’s bed, but it was obvious that the first son she bore him wasn’t his. The baby was beautiful, fat and red-cheeked and topped with his mother’s red hair, but his eyes were Titania’s in a smaller face, dark against his parents’ blue. Though unaware of his father’s name, they called him Áed. The villagers whispered about the demon child, but Eoin chided them, baptized the boy, and then quietly asked me what was to be done with him.

  “He’s half fae,” I told Eoin. “Like me. Áedán was full-blooded.”

  Eoin’s brows knit in thought. “So, the boy will be like you in . . . all respects?”

  “Probably. And he’s my nephew, after all . . . I should look after him, shouldn’t I?”

  “That would be wise,” he said, but lowered his voice. “Coileán, for his sake—”

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted. “I won’t tell him the truth. Not now.”

  Eoin frowned. “Not ever. The boy’s future depends upon him carrying his father’s name.”

  I pointed to my ever youthful face. “He’s going to know something’s wrong eventually,” I reminded him, and the priest slowly shook his head.

  Ita’s husband may have been nothing more than an ignorant Norman, but she was a local girl, well versed in the land’s lore. More important, she was clever beyond her years, and so I wasn’t surprised when I realized that she knew there was something odd about me. I was initially surprised that she kept the matter quiet, but then there was the matter of her baby.

  When Áed was a few months old, Ita came to me in the middle of the night with him bundled against her chest. “Strange things happen around him,” she whispered in the stillness of the empty church. “Objects move. Things appear, disappear. I . . . I don’t know what to do,” she said, rocking the sleeping child. “Please, Brother, is there anything . . .”

  I tried to concoct a reassuring lie, but something told me the girl was strong enough for a form of the truth. “Strange things will always happen around him,” I murmured, stroking his fine hair as he slept in her arms. “He can’t help it right now. When he’s older, when he . . . well, when he understands what he’s doing,” I said, struggling for just enough of an explanation, “be kind with him, but be firm. And if that fails, bring him to me, and I . . . I’ll see what I can do.”

  She nodded in the darkness. “Is he a danger to us?”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “but he’ll be less so if he knows you love him.”

  “I do,” she softly replied, glancing down at his face, then met my eyes. “Brother Coileán,” she began, but hesitated.

  I could hear the unspoken thought: The thing that did this to me, the thing that fathered my Áed—you knew it, didn’t you? How? What was it? And what are you?

  I shook my head. “You don’t want to ask me those things.”

  Ita nodded again, resigned. “If something should go wrong . . . will you promise to take care of my son?”

  I did, and she slipped back into the night, carrying her uncanny child with her.

  As the years passed, I took it upon myself to look after the boy. When he reached the age of four, Ita sent him to Eoin once a week under the guise of improving his religious education. In truth, the priest passed him to me, and I tried to stress to him the importance of keeping his talents secret. Poor Áed was young and impulsive, but he meant well, and he dearly loved his parents and his baby brother. Still, I found myself explaining to him that he shouldn’t make the unsavory parts of his dinner vanish, that toys shouldn’t move of their own accord, and that even though his mother missed the summer flowers, the climbing roses weren’t meant to bloom in the snow.

  Sligo burned, the skirmishes came and went, and Áed continued his weekly visits. “You’re very special,” I told him one day when he was a solemn nine-year-old, his baby face beginning to sharpen into contours I recognized all too well. His mother had caught him eating fresh apples long out of season. “Not everyone will think that’s a good thing. You must be cautious.”

  He sat beside me on the stone altar steps that morning with his chin in his palms, frowning at the distant door, and I studied him in silence for a moment. “What’s troubling you, Áed?”

  When he faced me, his eyes threatened to brim over. �
��I heard the cook talking yesterday when she didn’t know I was there. She said I wasn’t my father’s son.”

  I kept my face still. “Is that so?”

  Áed nodded miserably. “And I looked later, like you told me, and the other servants think so, too. And . . .” He sniffed, fighting back tears. “I didn’t want to ask Father, but . . . but I . . .”

  I glanced away, giving him his privacy while he wiped his face dry, and wished for his sake that he’d been born with wisdom enough to override his curiosity. “Áed,” I said quietly when the worst of the sniffing had subsided, “if I tell you a secret, will you swear to me that you’ll never repeat it?”

  “I swear,” he mumbled, watching me with red eyes.

  I took a moment to choose my words, then murmured, “Your father—your true father—did a very bad thing to your mother. You were born from that. Do you understand?” He nodded, though his lip quivered. “That doesn’t make you bad,” I continued, lifting his chin. “But you should know that your father was . . . special, and that’s why you are, too.”

  “Do you know him?” he whispered.

  “I did.”

  Áed’s brow began to wrinkle. “He’s dead, then?”

  “Yes,” I replied after a moment’s pause, trying not to upset the boy. “He was hurting your mother. I tried to help her.” I released him and waited for the inevitable next question, but then I felt the faint sensation of Áed clumsily searching my thoughts for the answer. His eyes widened, and I looked away. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said. “But in truth, Áed, the man you call your father is a far better father than Áedán would ever have been.”

  “Áedán,” he mumbled, and my gut wrenched.

  “He was my brother,” I said, and Áed looked up in surprise. “I promised your mother I’d keep you safe, and I will. But Áed,” I added, reaching over to muss his hair, “for the love of all that’s holy, think before you act! Ripe apples, boy? With the fields just now blooming? What were you thinking?”