The Prince of Neither Here Nor There mp-1

by Sean Cullen

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I ruined your night out.”

  “Not at all. I’m not really into that Celtic stuff, y’know. I like the rock and roll.” He punched Brendan in the arm. “I say we get some barbecue pork and head home, huh?”

  “Okay.”

  An hour later, after a delicious stop at the Golden Stone Barbecue Restaurant, Brendan climbed into his loft feeling totally exhausted. He was still reeling from the concert experience.

  Leaving his father and mother talking in the kitchen, he went upstairs to his room. They’d both been looking at him a little too closely as he kissed them good night like they were expecting him to freak out or something. He knew his father would be telling his mum about his episode at the concert. He groaned at the prospect of their concern.

  Picking the iPod up off the dock, he flung himself down on the bed. He didn’t feel in the mood for the Ramones. Too harsh. He clicked over to the RECENTLY ADDED playlist and scrolled down to find the new Wintersleep he’d downloaded before going to school. There it was, down at the bottom. He sat up suddenly, bumping his head again on the sloping roof.

  “Ow.” He rubbed his scalp and peered at the screen of his music player. There was a new entry. He froze in mid-rub.

  “What is this?” he asked the empty room. He read the name. “Deirdre D’Anaan?” He racked his brain. Had he downloaded this by accident? He couldn’t remember downloading any of her music. Maybe his father had done it. What was the alternative? Had someone stolen his iPod from his knapsack, put some new music on his deck, then put the iPod back?

  “Just another weird thing on the weirdest day ever,” he mumbled.

  He clicked on the entry and the album cover came up on the screen.

  The picture arrested his attention. She was just as beautiful as he remembered from the hall that night. The picture was so vivid. She seemed to stare out at him from the tiny screen. The title of the CD was traced in the vines: THE FAERIE BANQUET.

  Brendan frowned. You should just wipe it. Get rid of it. You know what the music did to you. Mum and Dad are downstairs right now discussing the possibility that you might need a lobotomy. Erase it, fool.

  “Well, I might as well give it a listen.” He slotted the iPod into the dock and pushed play. He lay back on the bed and waited.

  A harp rippled softly in the dark. The lilting harmonics of the strings were joined by Deirdre’s voice. Clear and strong but completely controlled, the notes soared, sending shivers across Brendan’s skin. He closed his eyes to let the sound wash over him.

  Throbbing with emotion, the harp was lush and vibrant. And when Deirdre D’Anaan sang, her voice was so personal, as if she were singing for him alone. The woman’s face filled his mind’s eye. She looked so familiar.

  Then it hit him. Those eyes. They were just like Greenleaf’s! The more he looked, the more he felt that this woman and Greenleaf could almost be related-cousins or even brother and sister.

  The music was soothing. As he changed into his pyjamas, he looked over at the single gable window that filled the end of the room. Moonlight angled in low across the floor. Trees, their leaves backlit by the moon, swept like dark shadows back and forth with the wind. Their movement was restful, hypnotic. He was safe here in his little world. He could relax. So he did. In a few minutes, his breathing deepened and he fell asleep.

  Something in the music tugged him out of his slumber. Brendan opened his eyes and saw that the ceiling above him was no longer made of plaster and wooden beams. The poster of a space marine firing a laser cannon at swarming aliens was obscured by a mass of dense vines. Brendan sat up, his head brushing the trailing leaves. The whole room had changed. The centre of the roof was gone. Overhead the stars shone down, cold and densely packed.

  “Hello, this is weird,” Brendan said out loud. His breath came out in a frosty cloud. He realized he was cold. “Is this a dream?” He looked at his hands. They glowed softly white in the pale light of the moon. He looked down to see he was still wearing his pyjamas-a pair of flannel plaid trousers and a T-shirt.

  He stood up and stepped to the centre of the room. He found himself on a stone parapet. The wooden floorboards were gone and in their place were heavy stones crusted with moss. A low wall surrounded him. The trapdoor remained in the same place, the top of the ladder poking up. The music seemed to be coming from below. Shivering, he descended the ladder.

  The music was louder here. The hall had undergone a similar transformation, plaster walls replaced by stone, and framed pictures replaced with woven tapestries. Brendan passed his sister’s room. The door was open. Looking in, he was shocked to see the green vines woven throughout the room, twined through the mass of clothing on the floor, tangled around his sister’s bed. A half-eaten sandwich was oddly cradled in a nest of leaves. Delia lay beneath a blanket of dense vines, her face pale and peaceful in the moonlight. If left to their own devices, the vines would soon cover her face and smother her. Brendan felt alarm but the music beckoned him, urging him toward the living room.

  The familiar room was utterly altered. He recognized the richly carved hall from the artwork on his iPod. His parents’ comfortable, overstuffed furniture was barely visible under a carpet of vines. Where the TV usually occupied the corner, a large wooden chair loomed. In the chair, so real, more real than she could possibly be, sat Deirdre D’Anaan.

  In the picture, she had been beautiful. Onstage, she had been incandescent. In person, she was breathtaking, terrifyingly radiant. In the eerie light, her pale skin glowed with a cold fire. Her long, nimble fingers, each decorated with golden rings, caressed achingly beautiful music drawn from the harp she held on her lap. The harp was exquisitely carved, inlaid with woods of many different hues, its surface polished and smooth. On her shoulder perched the tiny creature from the CD cover and the show that night. The little wings, veined and transparent like an insect’s wings, fluttered once, twice. The little eyes glittered in the pale glow of the moon streaming through the broad front window. It glared warily at Brendan as he came to stand in front of the woman’s chair.

  “Is this a dream?” Brendan asked. His voice sounded so loud, a jarring contrast to the rich sound of the harp.

  She didn’t stop playing. She raised her eyes to his, and he felt a shiver of delight that she should waste a gaze upon him. “A dream? No. I have wrought a Sending. Such are my gifts: I am a Weaver. I pass the thread through the loom and make tapestries for the mind’s eye. But I have no time to waste. What I do is exhausting.”

  “What do you mean?” Brendan frowned. He felt like a child, an infant in front of her. Looking directly into her shining eyes was like looking into the sun. He wanted to hide his face but he made himself hold her gaze.

  “You left the hall tonight before I could accomplish my goal. I rarely perform for the People of Metal. 40 I had to see you for myself.” The woman raised a hand and pointed a long, elegant finger at his chest. His scar flared in agony. “I have come to dispel the glamour that has hidden you for so long. The Ward is failing. Soon, you will come to understand who and what you are. Enemies search for you. Soon, they will be able to see you.”

  “Enemies,” Brendan gasped, clawing at his chest. The pain was deepening. “I don’t understand.”

  “No. You were hidden among Humans until you were old enough to defend yourself, choose for yourself. You cannot possibly understand. You must learn your true heritage and find your true strength before you are destroyed or turned to darkness.”

  “Turned to darkness? I’m a high school student! What darkness?” Brendan shook his head. “I must be dreaming. This is some kind of post-concussion thing. I’m going to wake up and everything will be back to normal.”

  “Foolish boy!” The woman frowned, and for the first time, Brendan sensed something dark and dangerous behind her beautiful eyes. The mark on his chest ignited with fresh, crippling pain. As he fell to his knees, gasping, she said, “You have no idea of the danger you are in. I am trying to save you!”
r />   “You have a funny way of showing it!”

  “Breandan! You have a destiny. There is no use trying to escape it.” Her voice was impossible to deny. The tone was fell 41 and it throbbed with power.

  Brendan staggered to his feet. He had to get away from the music, from the power of her voice. The strange way she said his name, like Mr. Greenleaf. The thought that they were related came back, stronger than ever. “Who are you, exactly? Why should I trust you?”

  “There is no time,” Deirdre said. “This Sending is exhausting to maintain.” Indeed, lines of strain creased her brow. “Listen to me.”

  “No!” Brendan cried. He staggered across the floor and through the door that led to the hall.

  The walls, the carpet crawled with vines that coiled around his ankles and wrists, making him stumble. Something buzzed past his ear. The little creature had left Deirdre’s shoulder and zipped about his head, shrieking. The whir of its tiny insect-like wings was maddening. Brendan batted at the creature but it ducked away easily. Suddenly, the thing dove at his chest, scuttling under his T-shirt. The feel of its tiny hands scrabbling across his skin filled him with revulsion.

  “Get away!” Brendan shouted, slapping at the thing with both hands. “Get off me!” He was starting to panic. He banged into the wall and fell on his hands and knees. Instantly, the vines clutched at his hands. A sharp pain in his chest made him cry out. The little creature had bitten or clawed him!

  Then the creature, having slithered out from the shirt, flew up and hovered in front of him, holding something in its hands. Brendan’s eyes went wide. It held a glowing spiral shape in its tiny fingers. While Brendan looked on in fascination, it opened its jaws to reveal rows of minute, needle-sharp teeth and began to devour the glowing shape, shredding it like a pastry and popping the pieces in its mouth with relish. 42

  The shape was somehow familiar. “My scar,” Brendan whispered in horror. “It’s eating my scar!” He looked down at his bare chest, exposed by the rent in the cotton shirt. In place of the scar there was merely an empty patch of reddened skin. “That is so gross!” He swatted at the creature, but it darted out of reach and continued its feast.

  “The Ward is broken,” the woman’s voice intoned. “Now you will know your true nature! You will live among the People of Metal no more. You shall come to the Fair Folk!”

  Brendan spun around to find Deirdre standing in the hallway behind him. She was tall and dire, filling the doorway. Her face radiated an aura of strength and authority. She spoke, and her voice was as irresistible as a hurricane, as inevitable as an earthquake. “The People await you. Your true family awaits you. You will return to us! You must be prepared before it is too late. There are those who wish to harm you. They will try to turn you to a dark purpose.” She reached for him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Brendan shouted. “I’m with my family! Who wants to harm me? You’re the one with the crazy vines and the creepy little, scar-eating thing! Why should I listen to you?”

  “You must listen,” Deirdre demanded. “I don’t wish to frighten you. I wish you to understand!”

  “No,” Brendan whimpered. “Leave me alone.” He backed away, tripping over a snarl of vines. He had to escape. “Mum! Dad! Help me! Don’t let her take me!”

  Scrabbling against the clutching vines, Brendan hauled himself hand over hand into the kitchen. He pulled free of the clinging tendrils with a final heave. He grabbed the edge of the kitchen table and pulled himself to his feet. He gasped in horror.

  His mother and father sat at the table with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits between them. The vines had completely engulfed his parents. His father’s head lay on the table, his mouth open. Leafy fingers clawed down his throat. His mother sat with her head thrown back, a mass of crawling leaves engulfing her. The only part of her that was recognizable was her left hand, where her wedding ring glinted in the silvery light.

  “No!” Brendan screamed. “No! Let them go! Let them go!”

  A thick root twined around his foot and jerked him off balance. He crashed to the tile floor of the kitchen as vines swarmed hungrily over him, enveloping him, pinning his limbs uselessly to his sides. The vines wormed their way up over his shoulders…

  “Let me go! What do you want from me?” he shrieked, writhing desperately.

  “You are one of us,” Deirdre whispered. “You must join with us or be overwhelmed. The darkness is coming for you. You must join us. It’s your only hope of survival!”

  At last he could stand it no longer. “Nooooooo!” he screamed. His open mouth filled with vine, choking him, strangling him.

  “Brendan!” He was being shaken. “Brendan! Wake up!”

  His father’s voice was calling.

  Brendan opened his eyes and looked up into the faces of his parents. Their eyes were filled with concern. He sat up and saw he was in the kitchen. His pyjamas were soaked with sweat, lying cold and damp against his skin. He shivered.

  “Brendan, are you okay?”

  “Huh? The woman…” Brendan croaked. His throat felt raw. “She’s going to hurt you. She’s trying to get me.”

  His parents exchanged a worried look. Brendan blinked away the sting of sweat and looked around him. The vines were gone. Tea dripped from the tabletop where two cups lay overturned. His mother’s favourite china teapot was shattered on the floor beside him. Brendan looked up at his parents again.

  “You’re all right,” he said softly. “You’re okay.”

  “We’re fine.” Brendan’s mum bent down and pulled his head to her chest. “We’re just fine.”

  “It was a dream, son.” His father ruffled his hair, reassuring him. “Everyone’s okay.”

  ^39 Umpteen no longer exists as a proper number. In ancient times, it was used by uneducated people who couldn’t count past nineteen and so they would refer to anything over nineteen as “umpteen.” The word still lingers on as an idiom that describes a number that is basically uncountable.

  ^40 The People of Metal is the Faerie name for Humans. Humans have a love for iron, steel, tools, and machines that pound the world into shapes of their choosing. Faeries prefer to use less invasive methods, choosing to manipulate the inner energies of nature to achieve their goals.

  ^41 Fell in this instance is not the past tense of fall but an adjective meaning dark and dangerous. It wouldn’t make much sense if she suddenly fell down in the middle of a menacing sentence, would it. That would be silly.

  ^42 And by relish, I mean enjoyment, not the condiment.

  A REVELATION

  Brendan looked around the kitchen, blinking stupidly. “But… how did I get here?”

  “You were sleepwalking, Dorklord,” Delia’s acid voice sneered. “And screaming like a little girl.”

  She was leaning against the kitchen doorframe, her dressing gown wrapped around her. Her hair stood out like a tatty halo.

  Brendan shook his head. It had all seemed so real… more than real. He still felt the grip of the terror and the sound of the otherworldly music.

  His mother released him and stood up. “I’ll get this mess swept up, then we’ll put on some hot milk.”

  “Give it to him in a baby bottle, too,” Delia said, rolling her eyes. She left the doorway and went back up the stairs.

  Brendan let his father help him to his feet. He still felt shaky.

  “I should probably just get to bed, Dad.”

  “Sit.”

  Brendan looked at his father’s face and saw there was no escape. He pulled out his chair at the table and sat down as he watched his father fetch the milk from the fridge and his mother clean up the mess he’d made.

  It seemed so real, Brendan thought. But it couldn’t have been. It was a dream. He winced as the fabric of the T-shirt brushed against his chest. When his parents weren’t looking, he surreptitiously 43 pulled the collar of his T-shirt down and looked at the space over his heart. Where his scar had been for all the years of his life, there
was now a patch of reddened, irritated skin. The odd spiral scar was gone. He quickly covered up the mark again before anyone saw.

  His father took a seat opposite him as his mother heated the milk in a pan. “We’re worried about you, Brendan,” his father began seriously.

  “Dad, I’m fine! It was just a bad dream like you said,” Brendan insisted.

  “I don’t know,” his dad said. There was worry plain on his face. “We’ve had a couple of calls from the school nurse. You had some kind of confrontation with a bully at school and you hit your head…”

  “It’s nothing,” Brendan groaned, secretly cursing the kindly Mrs. Barsoomian. “I got tagged in the face in Murderball. And I banged my head on a door. Really. I’m just clumsy. You know that.”

  His mother sat down, putting a cup of hot milk in front of him. Ever since he was a child, his mother had made him hot milk when he was sick or upset. He picked up the cup and blew gently on the surface of the milk, watching a skin form on the top. When he looked up, both his parents were looking at him with sober expressions on their faces.

  “Oh.” Brendan suddenly understood. “Oh, no way! I’m not on drugs or anything. It’s not like that. Besides… how could I afford drugs on my allowance? Huh? Ha!” They didn’t find his joke funny either.

  “What are we supposed to think?” his mother asked. “You’ve been behaving so strangely. And your father said you had some kind of episode at the concert tonight.”

  “Episode? No! It wasn’t an episode,” he said hurriedly. “I was just… tired and… I don’t know.” He thought back to the concert and how he must have looked. If he’d been watching himself, he would have thought the same thing as his parents. “I was just getting into the music. Really. It’s nothing to worry about. I’m a teenager. I’m supposed to do weird stuff.”

  “But we do worry,” Brendan’s father said. “It’s a dangerous world and we want you kids to be safe. You have to be careful.”