Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  He flashed a mischievous half smile. “That I was hungry?”

  I couldn’t stay cross with Áed for long, but his father’s patience was growing thin, and Ita knew it. She had given him three more sons and a daughter since Áed’s birth, but the fact remained that he was her first child and the lordling’s presumptive heir, despite his dubious origins. To make matters worse, Áed shared few of his father’s interests. His brothers, like their father, were the martial type—budding swordsmen from a young age, trained on horseback from earliest childhood—but Áed had a queerly painful reaction to iron, and no horse in his father’s stable would suffer him for more than a moment. He read and studied voraciously and had a pleasant enough voice, and his mother dropped hints that perhaps the boy should be trained for the priesthood. But her husband, who grew more concerned by the season for the well-being of his true sons, feared even then that Áed might find a way to return and steal an inheritance.

  Ita told me all of this through tears. As she had done ten years before, she and Áed rode to me one night after the moon was down, but this time, the boy’s arm was in a sling, and his face bore fading traces of bruises. “He tried to make it look like an accident,” she said, holding her son close. “The old well in the courtyard . . . Áed caught himself halfway down, but if he had landed . . .”

  I took the shaken boy from her and rested my hand on his broken arm, dulling his pain. “He will heal,” I began, but Ita cut me off.

  “Can you take him somewhere safe?” she begged. “Please? He’s in danger if he stays here, and I can’t . . . I can’t . . . just until—”

  Until my husband dies, she tried to say, but I saved her the effort. “Yes, of course.”

  By then, Eoin had joined us, and he watched Ita weep with a grave face. “What do we tell your husband?” he asked. “That the boy ran away?”

  She wrung her hands. “If he thinks Áed is still alive, he’ll come after him, I know it, he’ll hunt him down . . .”

  I gripped her cloaked shoulders to calm her hysterics. “I’ll give you a body,” I murmured, holding on to her until her breathing calmed. “Bury it. He’ll never know the difference.”

  Her eyes were wide and wet, but she nodded her assent.

  There was a rotten piece of timber in Eoin’s field, the remains of a lightning-blasted stump of about Áed’s weight. I threw a glamour over it, giving it the boy’s face and form, and added deep gashes to his body. “He ran away, and a wild animal found him,” I told Ita, presenting her with the double. She paled and backed away, but I said, “It’s harmless, and no one will ever know the lie.”

  “I’ll conduct the service on the morrow,” Eoin assured her. “Your boy will be safe.” He turned to me and asked, “You’ll go with him, Coileán?”

  “Yes, of course.” Áed looked up at me with frightened eyes, and I patted his uninjured shoulder.

  The old priest grunted. “Then I’ve sent you down south with a message, and I’ll look for your return.” He pointed to Ita’s horse and added, “Time’s wasting. Let’s get it lashed on.”

  I did as he asked, holding the horse in check one last time, then waited while Ita embraced her son. “Be good,” she whispered, pushing his unruly hair from his eyes. “Do as Brother Coileán says. I love you, my Áed.”

  I waited until she had ridden out of sight before taking the boy in hand. “I’ll come back when I can and see if it’s safe,” I told Eoin.

  He nodded curtly and said, “Don’t be away too long, now.” With that, he squeezed my shoulder, then stepped into his house and closed the door.

  I looked down at Áed and tried to smile. “We’ll have to see your grandmother, I’m afraid,” I explained, “but after that, there’s a lovely little house by a lake. You’ll be safe there. And here,” I said, placing a hand on his temple until he looked up in bewilderment. “You’ll need the tongue,” I said in Fae. “Understand?” Áed nodded and smiled back at me, and with that, I opened a gate to Faerie in the middle of the road and pulled my nephew through.

  I had aimed for an area slightly outside Mother’s throne room, but to my dismay, we stepped out into the middle of the cavernous space—which had become a pink crystal construction in my absence, I noted—and found her holding court. She paused mid-sentence, rose, and marched off the rose-colored dais toward us. “Coileán,” she snarled, and the hair on my arms stood on end with the force of the magic building around her.

  I quickly pushed Áed behind my back. “Mother. It’s been a time.”

  She stood on tiptoe and grabbed the front of my tunic, pulling my face to a level with her flashing dark eyes. “What have you done?” she murmured, her voice soft but frigid.

  Resistance seemed like a bad idea at that moment. “I brought you your grandson,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. “Áedán’s boy. Áed,” I said, gently pulling him forward, “this is your grandmother.”

  There was terror in his eyes, but he bowed clumsily and held his tongue.

  Mother released me for the moment and turned her attention to the boy. “He has Áedán’s look,” she said, taking Áed’s face in her delicate hands. “Not his hair, not at all, but the look . . . yes, I see it.” She pulled back slightly and stooped to look into Áed’s eyes. “Are you a good boy?” she asked.

  He nodded after a moment’s pause. “Yes, my lady,” he whispered, “I . . . I try.”

  “Hmm. And this?” she inquired, touching his sling.

  “I fell and broke my arm, my lady.”

  Mother smiled again, then looked back at me, all pretense gone. “I know you killed Áedán.”

  “I won’t deny it,” I told her, “but it was an accident. He was raping the boy’s mother, and I tried—”

  She held up her hand to silence me. “Rape, you say?”

  The room continued to hold its breath, watching our reunion play out. “He came at her invisibly and took her against her will,” I replied. “She was frightened and in pain. I tried to stop him.”

  “You did, obviously.” Mother smiled down at Áed again and stroked his hair. “So, Coileán, you think what Áedán did was . . . wrong?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  She weighed this for a moment, then patted Áed’s cheek. “Well, it’s said that sons are like their fathers, and we can’t take the chance of displeasing you again, can we?”

  She snapped, and little Áed fell lifeless at her feet.

  Before I could lunge at her, Mother’s guards were on me, and she took my chin in her hand. “Oh, Coileán,” she sighed, “I have so much planned for you.”

  I should have known better than to return to Faerie. I should have grabbed Áed and fled with him to the ends of the earth, and we could have passed the years in relative peace. I should have known that Mother would know of Áedán’s death and my hand in it, and that she wouldn’t forgive me for killing a child she preferred. I should have anticipated that she had been planning my punishment for the best part of a decade.

  For fifty years, I sat in a gray-walled room with only a skylight to let me mark the days. I could produce food and water, but the bind Mother placed around my prison kept me from escaping. I saw no one, spoke to no one, and heard nothing but my own thoughts and the voices of the dead. To stave off madness, I produced vellum, ink, and a quill, and I began to write down what I remembered of Eoin’s precious book, over and over and over again.

  When she finally released me from my hell, the piles of vellum reached the ceiling, and she incinerated them all with the flick of a finger. “Go where you will, I have no use for you,” was all she said, and then I was left to my own devices.

  I made my way back to the meadow of my youth, hoping to find solace in the familiar, but all I found was a fire-charred shell where my home had been. The lake was choked with weeds, the birds had vanished, and a cold wind blew through the high grass. I wrapped my cloak around me against the chill and surveyed the ruins of my childhood one last time, then changed my clothing and turned my ba
ck on my homeland.

  Eoin’s church remained, but I knew without asking that Eoin was long gone.

  I wandered through the little village, which had grown larger in my absence, then made the hike to a new monastery a few miles away to seek information about the priest’s end. My father’s monastery, an old farmer told me through suspicious eyes, had burned years ago.

  The abbot, old, bald, and rust-bearded, welcomed me into his cell and listened to the story I invented about living in the village as a boy and coming home for the first time in years. He nodded along, and when I ceased talking, he smiled and said, “Father Eoin died when I was a boy, my son. You would never have known him.” One thin eyebrow rose fractionally. “Unless, that is, you’re the man who took my brother away.”

  I kept my expression neutral. “Your brother?”

  “My eldest brother, Áed,” the abbot replied, and I traced Ita’s features in his lined face. “I was five when we buried him,” he said quietly, “but Mother told us the truth when Father died. Are you the man?”

  I nodded silently, seeing Áed’s open, unseeing eyes.

  The abbot’s face creased into a warm smile. “And my brother, how does he fare abroad?”

  “He fares well,” I heard myself say in a passing impression of the truth. “He fares well, and he sends his love.”

  The lie was, I decided, a kindness.

  The abbot—Kevin was his name—was gracious enough to show me to a cell for the night. The room was drafty, and the bedding stank, but after my imprisonment, hearing voices in the corridor and rats in the walls was heavenly. “If you need help, we might be in need of an assistant,” the abbot offered. “We’ve produced several beautiful Bibles—do you write, by chance?”

  I thanked him and told him I would consider the matter, then settled down to sleep.

  For three months, I shared the brothers’ food, ground their inks, and sharpened their quills. I prepared vellum—in truth, I’d take a hide over a horse any day—and tended the garden, and I sat quietly in the back of their chapel at prayers, contemplating the candlelight and remembering Eoin’s voice as it rose and fell when he read. Eventually, I was given some practice pages and instructed to copy, and when the brothers were satisfied with my hand, I joined them at their painstaking labor, copying thick books one cramped letter at a time. The work was largely mindless, but I craved companionship after so many years of solitude.

  Half a year passed before the bishop sent a messenger requesting my presence. “His Grace wishes to meet you outside the town tonight,” the abbot told me, frowning as he rolled the note in his hands. “He didn’t state the cause, but he knew your name.”

  I didn’t like the summons, but one did not simply ignore a bishop, and so I found myself standing in a field east of Sligo that night, watching warily as a man in a dark hooded robe walked up the path to join me.

  “Your Grace?” I asked when he drew within hailing distance, puzzled at his appearance. I had anticipated more ornate apparel befitting his station, but the man I presumed to be the bishop had dressed like the poorest monk.

  He paused a few feet away from me and pushed back his hood, revealing a well-lined face in the moonlight. I could make out pale, bushy eyebrows and a fat nose, but his eyes were deep pits of shadow, and his voice was unfamiliar. “Are you the one called Coileán?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Of the king’s court or the queen’s?”

  I froze, considering my options, then settled for the truth. “The queen’s, though she and I aren’t speaking for the foreseeable future. How did you know—” I began, but before I could finish the thought, the old bishop pulled a long stick from within his sleeve and pointed it at my face.

  “Die, devil,” he whispered to the night, and I smelled the unmistakable odor of magic.

  I dodged the lightning that exploded from the stick, then ducked and appeared behind him. Wrapping my arm around his throat, I pulled the bishop to the ground and set fire to the stick in his hand, which fell into the wet grass and began to smolder. “Who are you?” I hissed, tightening my chokehold. “What do you want? Did she send you?”

  “Arcanum,” he gasped. “To protect—”

  I saw his hand reaching for a backup stick in his other sleeve, and I snapped his neck before he could pull it free. When he was dead, I burned his body and let the wind take the leavings, and then I made my way back to my cell.

  The abbot must have seen my face the next morning, as he was wise enough not to ask.

  About a week later, I was heading into the garden when I heard a weak cry for help. Rounding the corner of the barn, I found a wizened old man huddled against the stone, dew soaked and shaking. “What’s wrong?” I asked, crouching beside him. “Are you hurt? Wait here, I’ll get the abbot . . .”

  The man feebly pulled on my robe until I ceased my attempt to rise. “She sent me away,” he croaked, panting as if exhausted by the declaration. “Told me to . . .”—he gasped, straining for air—“to seek Coileán for help. Please . . . please, I don’t want to die . . .”

  I took the changeling’s ancient face in my hands and smiled sadly. “You don’t want to live like this,” I murmured, and stopped his heart.

  The next morning, four of the bishop’s associates arrived, reporting him missing and seeking his last known whereabouts. They asked the abbot if they might speak with me.

  I smelled the faint odor of their hidden wands, calculated the odds, and slipped out the back of the chapel.

  For the next three centuries, I ran from wizards and changelings alike, but somehow, they continued to catch up with me. Some nights, I see their faces when I close my eyes, the ones I killed in self-preservation and the ones I killed in mercy.

  Sometimes, I forget which are which.

  Chapter 18

  Hearing nothing more from the police in Ireland, Joey and I caught a flight home in short order. Night had fallen, clear and chilly, when I finally drove past the weather-worn Welcome to Rigby, Home of the Buccaneers! sign and shook Joey awake. By the time he’d cleared the sleep from his eyes and patted his hair flat, I was pulling in front of my place—only to see a line of unfamiliar sports cars parked in the street. Without slowing, I rounded the corner, then turned onto the street behind Mrs. Cooper’s building and parked at the back of her shop.

  “Were you expecting company?” Joey asked as the car ticked through its cooldown.

  “No.” I opened the door and stepped out onto the cracked driveway, listening for clues. The night was silent but for the sea, however, and I pointed to Mrs. Cooper’s fire escape. “She might have seen something,” I whispered to Joey. “Let’s go.”

  I led the way up the staircase, weaving around the haphazardly scattered pots of daffodils that would surely have been Mrs. Cooper’s death in the event of an actual fire, and rapped on her back door. A moment later, her silhouette shuffled into view through the lace curtains, and she drew back the bolt. “Oh, Mr. Leffee, there you are!” she whispered, stepping aside and beckoning me into her laundry room. “I was so worried, dear—there are hoodlums in your apartment, did you know that? Oh, hello, Father,” she added, catching sight of Joey, but had the grace not to mention his black eye. “Come in, come in, close the door.”

  I picked my way past her line-drying undergarments and headed for the front windows. “What’s been going on, Mrs. Cooper?” I asked, scanning the windowsill for her binoculars. “Father Joseph and I were out of town on business. We just got back—”

  “They got here last night,” she said, pulling the binoculars from her pink housecoat’s pocket. “I hadn’t seen your car for a few days, but I knew you had company . . .”

  “A friend and my brother,” I muttered, taking the binoculars from her and drawing back a corner of the curtain.

  She clasped her hands together, momentarily distracted from our surveillance. “You didn’t tell me you had a brother!”

  “They’re not close,” Joey offered, holding the cu
rtain so I could focus on spying. “What have you seen, ma’am?”

  “Well, first of all, they don’t close the blinds properly,” she replied. I could practically hear her lips tightening in disapproval. “And I was only checking because I was worried about you, mind.”

  “Of course,” I mumbled, looking around my living room. I could make out two of Robin’s men in front of the television—I’d run into them before, a pair of nuisances lately based out of Los Angeles—and spotted what appeared to be a trussed bundle on the couch.

  “There’s a young lady over there,” Mrs. Cooper continued, joining me at the window. “Dark hair, quite short, but I don’t think we’ve been introduced . . .”

  I heard the hopeful query in her tone. “Toula. Friend of mine.”

  “Ah. Well, I almost called the police a dozen times since last night—they’ve got her tied up with clothesline in there!”

  Shit. I saw the bundle squirm and recognized Toula’s spikes, and I ground my teeth.

  “You haven’t called them yet?” Joey pressed.

  Mrs. Cooper hesitated. “Well, um . . . you see, Father, before Mr. Leffee moved in . . . there was this young couple living over that shop, and I . . . uh . . . saw something one night, and I called the police, and as it turned out, it was all a terrible misunderstanding . . .”

  “This isn’t that kind of bondage,” I broke in, saving her the embarrassment of further description. “How many have you seen in total?”

  “Besides the young lady?” She took the binoculars from me and had a peek, then said, “Those two men, a pair of ladies, and another two men. Seven all told, then.”

  “All about my age?” I asked, taking the binoculars back.

  “From what I can tell. I haven’t seen any up close outside the building—well, no, I take that back, I saw one of the men come out when the others drove up. Their engines were so loud! My windows started rattling like you wouldn’t believe—”