by Chris Lowry
"There is no fate but what we make."
Her eyes widened.
"That is a good way to approach the task before you."
"I saw it in a movie," I told her.
Didn't want the mind reader to think I was taking credit for somebody else's bumper sticker platitude.
"Close your eyes," she said.
I did.
"Are you going to kiss me?" I teased.
"Something like that."
I didn’t feel warm wet senior citizen lips on mine, though I might have liked it.
What I felt was a spinning vortex that whirled around us and though I was scared and ready to fight, I kept my eyes closed.
“Trust, remember.”
"Open," she commanded.
We were in a glade staring at a line of half naked men brandishing clubs, bronze swords and skin shields. Some were on horseback, directing the others, like generals or commanders of some sort.
Not the sort I was used to dealing with.
When I was in the Great War, or Sidhe War as I truly knew it, my role started as a soldier in the infantry. The generals I knew stayed way behind friendly lines, far from the fight and potential to be killed in battle.
These guys did not get that memo.
Their generals and leaders were not only in the fray, but at the front of it.
"Why are they fighting?"
"That's not fighting," the gnome said from beside me. "That's training."
I glanced back at the men on the field, and the strewn bodies leading up to the line.
Most of them were still moving, albeit slow.
"Watch," she directed me to look at a man on horseback riding along the outside of the advancing line.
He led the horse toward us in an attempt to flank the group, and a quarter of the men along that side angled toward him to counter his attack.
"It's a ruse," I said and sure enough, the horseman was a distraction.
As soon as the line turned to fight him, the opposition rushed in and crashed into their now exposed flank.
The man on horseback slowed to a trot and pulled up just in front of where we were standing.
He was tall for the time, half naked like the others, wearing only a plain spun wrap around his waist, sandals strapped to his feet and muscular calves and paint on his chest. He looked like a Spartan warrior from the movie where they fought the Persians.
Ripped, muscular, tan and angry.
He glared at the men and screamed.
I couldn't understand the words coming out of his mouth.
"A form of Gaelic," the Gnome said. "We don't have to whisper. What you are observing is a memory."
"When is this?"
"Five thousand years before you were born? More maybe? The records of this history are long gone and buried."
"Then how do you know it?"
"Magic," she said.
Which could explain a lot. Or was just her way of deflecting the question.
The voice of the General sounded familiar, but I wasn't sure if that was because I had been on the receiving end of yells like that before, or it was just his voice.
There are only so many tonal qualities and pitches in the human range, and though his words were lost to me, the meaning was clear.
Get your ass in gear and get your act together.
The gnome reached her fingers up in front of my face and snapped her fingers.
Like a switch, the volume didn't change, but the words did.
"I don't give a frog's ass if you're tired," the General screamed. "Do you think the fekkin’ fairies are going to give a damn if you're ready for your supper?!"
I was right, he was laying into the group of men.
The battle had fizzled out in front of us as he yelled, the men looked exhausted and spent.
"What are they preparing for?"
"War," the gnome answered. "Why else train?"
She was right.
If this was five thousand years ago, they would be preparing to battle another clan or invaders. I tried to remember my history. Were Vikings around that long ago? Who was?
I guess it depended on where we were and when.
I looked around at the landscape trying to place it, but if you've ever tried to figure out where you were by just the look of the trees and bushes around you, it ain't always easy.
Sure, if there were cactus, you could guess Arizona, or lots of alpine trees, and you could guess Switzerland.
This valley looked like a thousand other meadows I'd seen on three continents. Long narrow pasture, trees on either side, leading to a small rise on the end I could see.
The grass was filled with clover, which kept it mostly shin high on the soldiers training beyond, but that could have been a result of feet that stamped through the field all day and tramped it down.
The General nudged his horse forward.
"We'll do it again," he called out.
The men grumbled and gathered their weapons to separate into two sections on either end of the field. As they went, they gathered the fallen, helping some back into battle stances, and carting others off to the side where they could recuperate.
"Look," said the gnome and pointed a gnarled finger to a spot in the bushes several yards from us.
The leaves rustled and parted as two tiny three foot tall figures stepped out of the shadows behind the general. They were dressed much as he was, bare-chested and kilted, and so perfectly formed that it made me catch my breath.
They looked like children, but held bows in one hand, swords on their hips and attitudes like they were a couple of bad asses on the prowl.
We watched the duo saunter toward the General. The one in the back hesitated and stared at the bushes we were standing in.
"Can they see us?" I whispered.
The gnome shook her head.
"We are but ghosts here, observing, but he may sense something. His power is great."
"Power?" I said and looked around for Elvis.
My own personal pet ghost was nowhere to be found, and I felt a twinge. It was the first time we'd been separated since I got him killed by a couple of witches in Memphis.
I knew the Gnome beside me was powerful, but my estimation shot up a couple of notches. Making a memory ghost was something no one else could do.
Maybe the Judge.
Then it kicked me in the nuts.
I realized why I knew that voice so well and stared at the man on horseback.
"Judge," I said.
"Not bad for a babe,” Knu giggled. “I mean infant, not the kind like him."
She pointed.
The muscles in his back rippled as he held the reins, the corded legs clenched the girth of the horse, clamping him down tight. His other hand rested on the pommel of a sword, and he wore a leather thong around his neck with an iron totem carved in a symbol I didn't know.
The two tiny men approached him and he caught the movement from the corner of his eye.
"Go home boys," he shouted. "There's no room for children in this fight."
"Children?" said the little one in the lead.
They stopped several steps away from the horse.
"Saddle me not with infants!" the Judge screamed.
The lead man leaped from the ground and flipped in the air. He sent three arrows winging from his bow to a spot in the field and landed on the flanks of the Judge's horse.
A tiny needle tipped knife pressed against the Judge's tender neck as the little man curled his hair in his small fist and yanked back.
"I am no infant," the small man growled. "Nor am I a child to be sent home."
The Judge didn't flinch.
He didn't move either, which told me something, but I couldn't see fear on his face.
"This is where the munchkin gets turned into a pile of ash," I whispered.
"Not yet."
The Judge laughed.
It echoed across the field and caught the attention of the soldiers who gathered around the horse i
n a semi-circle.
"You'll have to forgive me one of the wee," the Judge said. "I was mistaken in my rush to dismiss and did not pay attention to who made the approach."
The wee one lowered his dagger and bowed.
I guess the apology worked.
He leaped off the back of the horse with an impressive flip and landed on light feet next to his partner. They stared up at the Judge in expectation.
He slid off the back of the horse and kneeled in front of them and waited until they did a quick bow.
"Easily forgiven," said the second one as he held out a hand. "I am Radar of Clan Riley, come to join you in your fight. And you've met Shannon of Clan Dell."
The Judge glanced at the three arrows sticking into the one inch ball of iron on the pommel of the sword stuck in the ground a hundred yards away.
"You are most welcome in our fight," he rose.
"Not just your fight against the First Folk," said Shannon.
His fingers worked the hilt of his dagger like he was playing a flute.
"Aye," the Judge agreed. "This is a fight for all of our world."
"Who are the First Folk?" I asked. "And who are the munchkins?"
Radar turned to face the bush and studied it with keen eyes, eyebrows crinkled in concentration.
"Are you sure he can't see us?"
"See us? No. He senses us though," said the Gnome.
"Let me guess. Magic."
She nodded.
"Do you not know what they are?"
I studied them closer. They had sun weathered skin, freckles and looked as if they could be cousins.
"Clans," I said. "Scots?"
"Close. Wrong island."
"Irish," I said. "Celts."
"Even before there was a name for Celts, these are those people."
"Which ones? The Judge or the little people."
Radar stomped over to the bush and parted the leaves. I could have reached out and tweaked his nose he was so close.
He peered left and right, up and down, looking right over and through us. He even sniffed long and deep, as if he could catch our scents.
"What do you sense?"
Shannon joined him, dagger in hand.
"I cannot tell," Radar huffed. "Something."
"What is it Wee Folk?"
"He senses something, but knows not what," Shannon explained.
The Judge made a motion with his hands and scouts went to either side of the woods and began hunting, searching.
"You think the Sidhe sent a spy?"
Shannon nodded.
"They always have spies," he spat.
"Then let us away to my camp," the Judge said. "You are my guests."
Shannon nodded as if he expected nothing less.
"Who are these guys?" I whispered.
Radar drew his sword and shoved it into the bushes. The point slid into my chest, but didn't leave a mark.
That didn't mean it didn't hurt though.
I grunted.
I'd been stabbed before, but last time there was a lot of blood. This time, it was just a dull ache, like a piece of ice inside of me.
He did it again and I almost punched the little turd nugget.
"Did you get it?" Shannon asked.
The tiny man shook his head.
"Nothing," he said confused. "There is nothing there."
It didn't feel like nothing.
It felt like getting stabbed with an icicle.
I wanted to punch him. But I figured it wouldn't do me a lot of good.
"It would not," the Gnome agreed.
We watched the Judge hop up on the back of the horse and scoot forward, making room for Shannon and Radar to join him.
They leaped up behind him, settled in as he galloped over the rise and out of view.
"So the Judge, huh?"
She nodded.
"There is still more to learn."
I rubbed the cold spot on my chest.
"I'm okay so long as people quit stabbing me with tiny ghost swords."
"Stop making them nervous," she said.
"Me? What did I do? I asked a question. We're in the spirit world, right? He can't hear me in the spirit world."
"Magic," she said. "And theirs is the oldest. You don't know what they're capable of."
Her watery eyes stared into mine.
"Then why don't you tell me?"
So she did.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
We popped up on the edge of a campsite in a clearing in the woods. I could see pickets in the trees around us, sentries staring into the growing darkness for enemies that preferred the cover of night.
Knu directed my eyes inward to a fire flickering in a pit. Logs were placed around the fire for seating, and the Judge and his men sat on them filling cups with red liquid from a goatskin sack.
Shannon and Riley sat on one side of him, watching the men with equal parts amusement and curiosity.
"Leprechauns," Knu said and I saw her eyes glisten with unshed tears as she stared at the two tiny men. "They are cousins of my people."
Gnomes and Leprechauns in the same branch? I shook my head and started to point out the differences.
"It is," she stated with a finality that shut me up. "All of what you call the wee ones, the little people are of the same tribe of Fairie. Pixies, Gnomes, Leprechauns, Sprites, Imps and more."
Hobbits? I almost asked.
But the sadness in her face made me hold my voice.
"Did you know them?" I asked instead.
She nodded.
"In this world before the bridge was torn asunder, many of the Folk travelled back and forth. The leprechauns settled on this island, while my people moved into the Black Forest."
The history of our world was an evolution in information. It's something most people take for granted, especially today when so much of our daily lives are recorded and captured, and stored.
People don't realize that a daily record is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Newspaper dailies lasted for just over a century, and prior to that, information was done through weekly papers, and even those have only been around for a couple of hundred years before that.
The thing about recorded history is for the longest time, it wasn't.
There were oral traditions, and stories passed down, but so much has been lost, that it’s hard to know what is true, what is fiction and what is a mixture of the two.
Even modern history can be wrong.
Everyone has seen the DEWEY WINS ELECTION headline, a misprint that was plain wrong. But if something happens, and that image is the one that happens to survive a thousand years, people then will construct a narrative around Dewey winning a presidency.
"You need to tell me about the bridge," I said. "And the Black Forest."
One was information I could use to fight the Sidhe, or at least tell the Judge, though by the looks of the warrior in front of us, he might know it already. The second was my own curiosity.
Plus, I noticed she didn't say how she knew them.
And it looked like she wasn't going to. Her eyes were locked on the three figures by the fire in a really easy to decipher pay attention look.
So I did.
As far as we think we've advanced in technology, knowledge and our understanding of the world, I don't know that any modern man would react so nonchalant about creatures of legend walking out of the woods to join a fight. The Judge sat on one of the fallen logs dragged around the fire and ladled stew onto his trencher, and invited the guests to help themselves before tucking in with a chunk of bread.
The leprechauns heaped oversized portions of thick peppery stew onto trenchers of their own, and skipped the bread, opting to scoop with two fingers and shovel it into tiny mouths.
The rest of the men settled into spots, all close enough to hear and share voice, and I realized I'd seen this before.
Not this particular tableau, but one so close like it that only the men and uniforms changed. It wa
s a council of war, and the Judge was giving his men time to recover, unwind and decompress before they made further plans. The appearance of the wee one's, though unexpected, must have been a boon to their fight.
Radar finished first, licking the smooth wood trencher clean before wiping it with the elbow of his sleeve and placing it back by the kettle. He searched around for a moment, and the Judge slipped a rope knotted skin off his shoulder and held it out to him. The leprechaun uncapped it, smelled the liquid and squirted a long pull into his mouth.
He recapped it and tossed it to Shannon, who repeated the action, and kept it.
The Judge smiled.
There were obligations as host he was obliged to follow, and once the tiny warriors were fed, and thirst addressed, he could turn the conversation to business.
No matter that only the sounds of men smacking and knives scraping against wood competed with the crackling of the fire as the light pressed back the growing darkness.
"You're magic," I sighed to Knu. "Couldn't you just have poofed us to the good part? What does their eating have to do with anything?"
Radar spun around like a top, bow raised and sent an arrow straight into my heart.
It passed through me and sent a cold shiver up my spine.
"Little shite has good aim," I remarked.
He notched two more and let fly. All flew true and through me, three arrows planted in a one inch circle on the tree behind us.
"We all do," she whispered.
"What do you see?" Shannon asked.
"I can't say," his partner answered. "But the spirits are out there, I think. Fae spies."
"None can approach," the Judge placed his trencher in the pile and wiped his hands on the cloth around his waist. "The ways are warded.
But he made a signal and the men went on high alert, searching for the enemy the wee one hunted.
"Bah on your wards," Radar spat. "The Sidhe care not for such things."
"I paid a shaman good wage to ward this camp," the Judge defended. "His magic is strong."
"Not strong enough," said Shannon. "It's why we came."
“The Judge isn’t magic,” I whispered, careful to keep my voice low.
I wasn’t concerned with any of the soldiers tripping around in the bushes, I was just tired of getting shot by a leprechaun.
“He was not,” Knu said. “But he became so.”
“How?” I asked in wonder.
