The fairy voice came from within the bread. "An oak tree must be grown from the center of the cedar. Cedar isn't hard enough to contain all that magic, especially a damaged one."
"All we need to do is plant an oak?"
Her head popped up again. She was not looking at me, but rather Maggie. "I'm sorry, human. You have been kind to us, but wild magic can be used in many ways. It is very dangerous."
"Without the magic leaking from the tree, he...can't stay, can he?" Maggie's voice hitched a bit at the end. "Troy will go away, won't he?"
The fairy looked over at the transporter, but Troy had completely disappeared after his demonstration. "If he is ready. He has guarded the magic in the tree for a long time. He uses the magic to stay in-between and to make friends, but only for harmless dead things."
"Is it the combination of death and magic that hides you from your clan?" I asked.
The fairy swiveled her head to glare at me. "Leave it, human."
"How did I go from "kind sir" to just plain "human?" The name is Max, and we're trying to help here."
"You won't give up the ghost," she accused.
I looked at Joe. He looked at Maggie. Maggie's shoulders slumped, but her voice was strong. "His ghost was never ours to give up. It has always been Troy's choice."
"You would remove this?" She waved at the mangled hunk of metal. "And you would give us his ring to plant with the tree?"
Slowly, Joe walked over to the transporter. He leaned over and picked up the ring. His fist closed around it tight, but as before, he did not put it on his own finger. "The ring is his. He's been taking it back to the tree." He opened his hand, looked down at the ring and then back up at Maggie. "If the ring belongs back at the tree, that is where we'll take it."
"The ring does have something to do with the triangle!" I exclaimed.
The fairy gave me a look I commonly saw from my own mother, one of exasperation and warning. "Can someone take me where I need to go?"
Maggie picked up the bread loaf. "Tell us where." Her hands were not so steady, but her face held the same determination as Joe's.
I left the barn with them, but then we parted ways. While Maggie and Joe took care of the fairies, I went back near the cedar tree and waited out of sight behind the trunk of another tree.
It was a long wait, but just at sunrise, in the magic of dawn, they came across the field, collecting dew from the tips of the wild oat grass, the spring clover, and the not-yet-blossomed blue bonnets. They didn't stop there. Several battalions of firefly fairies came and spun around the tree, letting the dew soak up the magic.
Someone else had seen what I was seeing. Maybe they had come here to make peace with the past, maybe to be angry about losing an arm or fret about chances lost. They must have seen the fairies. Maybe Sandra and Albert had been together or maybe one had dragged the other here with a plan.
The fairies should have known better, but it was possible that not even they realized how dangerous leaking magic mixed with an old death could be. While they flew about mining the magic, how difficult would it be to entice a child with honey or some other rare winter treat, and then capture a mother who was seconds too late to keep her child from being tricked?
Keeping the captured fairies hidden couldn't only be a result of the wild magic, because magic was in many places. It might be the triangle between the ring, the barn and the tree.
Whatever the reason, the fairies were making certain it didn't happen again. After the last fairy collected every bit of magic the dew would hold, two lines formed. Down the center, a single fairy flew. From her bluish sparkle, I was certain it was the fairy that had been captured. She carried an acorn as large as her head.
Four other fairies followed. They had the ring, the piece of wood that Joe had set it on, and what might have been a piece of the transporter. All the objects went into the split in the cedar. Somewhere in the depths, that acorn would take hold.
I wondered how long it would take. With the magic here, probably not long.
The end of the line pushed forward. Uh-oh. Two much larger objects floated forward: humans, one male and one female. I backed up, not realizing it until I hit the tree behind me. I had never witnessed fairy revenge and was pretty sure I didn't want to now.
The two had to be Sandra and Albert. The woman twitched as though trying to pull her arms away from her body, but fairy magic kept her bound and floating about a foot above the ground. Dark hair flew across Sandra's plump face as the fairies pulled her forward. The man next to her was missing his arm from the elbow down, which surprised me. With the magic and technology available these days, it was rare to see someone who had not been fitted with a replacement. Albert was short, bald and...resigned. Then again, as they floated to the tree, I noticed his eyes dart here and there, looking or hoping for an escape.
In the blink of an eye, the fairies finished their flight. They circled the tree and the two humans.
One of the fairies began to glow brighter. Like a tree, he grew, radiating the glowing green of new leaves. His arms took on the appearance of bark; wiry, brown and tough. His legs, like roots, were not quite straight, but were strong enough to support his frame, a size that was suddenly as tall as my own almost six-feet. His skin reminded me of an ash tree, channeled and rough--not human.
"You want gold?" he said to the two humans. "So be it."
The fairies circled. Fast. In the blur of light, the giant glowing fairy never budged. He was the only fairy I could distinguish while the other fairies moved.
When the light stopped, Albert and Sandra still remained. I let out the breath I was holding. When I breathed in, the smell of magic made my head reel. I grabbed the tree trunk behind me. Had it not been there, I would have fallen over backwards.
The large fairy raised his arm. Maybe the fairies had already spun Albert a new arm when they were flying, but until the fairy pointed, I didn't notice. The arm was shiny, ending in perfectly crafted fingers. This was no medical miracle. Those fingers would never move and the arm wouldn't do him much good. From the elbow down, his arm was perfectly sculpted in gold.
The fairy released whatever magic restrained Albert. Like a statue, he toppled sideways, the sudden weight of a golden arm yanking him down. He gasped and his eyes continued their frantic search for escape. There was none. There were too many fairies.
"No one harms the fairy realm without paying the price! A greed so great that is blind to the consequences can only be repaid by greed of the same. See how well you do in protecting against the greed that goes after you for your gold. Perhaps, like you, they will not believe there will be consequences. Perhaps for them, there will be none."
The fairy then turned to Sandra. He laughed.
My skin crawled with the magic and the threat of it. Like a tree limb scraping the side of a house, it was mother nature about to open up with a storm. I swore that somewhere in that laugh, I heard the side of a house rip apart.
"You not only enticed the little one, you did not feed her. There is no suffering greater than a mother watching her child in need. For this, you earn gold." His bark-covered arm raised again. A gentle breeze lifted Sandra's long hair. When the strands fell, she had new, very thick gold highlights.
"It is your head they will want, human. How long do you think you can protect it? The same lifetime a mother longs to protect her own child?"
Without waiting for an answer, the fairies swarmed again. I made the mistake of blinking or perhaps I wasn't meant to see the fairies disperse. All I saw was a cloud of dust. When it settled, Sandra and Albert were gone. I had a feeling they were going to wake in their own beds, but the very bad dream they had just had wasn't going away.
The fairies were like dust motes, flickers and then nothing even as I searched for them.
All except one. In the growing sunlight, she was nearly invisible. The wooden Celtic knot that she carried was more visible than she was.
"We thank you." She flitted near my hand. I held it ou
t, and she dropped the delicate carving there. "The spirit of their youth was trapped in the tree alongside Troy during the accident. Sandra and Albert have always been a part of the circle here, so much so that my clan could detect no outsiders, no clues, when we were kidnapped. So long as they kept us inside the circle, we were just part of the magic."
"But how did they know to keep you here?"
Her wings stopped beating, but she did not fall. "They were nothing if not ignorant! It was only Stupid Human Luck, that chaos magic that you humans attract. Magic likes magic; it does not like to have parts leave. Because they were part of the circle, there was a tug here, always. It was a natural choice for them to leave us inside. Sadly, my clan did not guess what had happened." Her tiny shoulder shrugged. "We have closed the circle, and it cannot be repeated. We thought the leaking magic was a boon, but we were wrong." She zipped just above my head. "Thank you, human. We are in your debt."
Before I finished saying, "You're welcome," she was gone. I looked at the gift she had left. Even though she had disappeared, I still said, "Thank you." The intricate knot was fairy magic; delicate, perfect and strong. The center was filled with fairy gold, secured by the outside circles of the knot.
Who knew what magic was hidden within? For magic it was, and I didn't even need to smell it.
The tree was in full sun. It would be a while, but not too many years before a huge oak would stand here, guarding the spot that Troy had guarded, a magical leak that let him stay in-between.
Privy to Secrets
A Max Killian Investigation
Maria E. Schneider
I don't know if wormholes exist, but I do know that if someone kidnaps you and shoves you through time or space, they should pick a better landing than a privy. At least pick something with modern plumbing and keep it on the ground.
One second I was sitting at my desk, home of Max Killian Investigations. Next thing I knew I was tumbling through the air in an outhouse. It certainly wasn't Kansas, but neither was it the hill country in Texas, where I ran my nice, mundane detective agency.
I can smell magic and discern its purpose, but I hadn't smelled any magic in my office. The outhouse, on the other hand, was rife with it. I suppose I should be grateful that magic was the only thing I could smell. My arms shot out to the wooden sides to steady myself, but the outhouse was still airborne and unstable. The thing tipped completely over, dumping me off the wooden hole onto the splintered ceiling. If there was anything down the privy hole, I counted myself lucky it missed.
The thing took another tumble before hitting earth. Old weathered boards shattered, helping break my fall. I, master detective, had been plucked from my office without a clue.
"Oh dear."
The female voice obviously wasn't mine, and my own internal cursing wasn't so polite. Either my head was buzzing or...I was near water. A stream. I could hear splashing and the scream of a bird. I empathized with the screaming part.
"Are you okay?" The boards shifted rather quickly. I smelled the sharp ozone that often accompanied powerful magic.
Carefully, I opened my eyes and peered at...a very old lady. She waved her arm, and a few more boards obeyed, piling neatly off to the side. When grandma finally got a good look at me, she drew back sharply. "Well. You're...not what I expected."
I coughed as I tried to suck enough oxygen into my lungs to clear my head. "Yeah, me either." My mind had conjured aliens, a powerful wizard atop a mountaintop and of course, elves. Elves weren't usually combative, preferring commerce instead, but no one really knew their power limitations. That they often sold magical wares made them likely suspects when magic was involved.
Granny was not elflike. Her ears were large, but rounded. Her gray hair was braided and strayed as though full of static. Her wrinkles would have made a walnut proud. If she were elfin, she was the oldest I had ever encountered, and until she spoke again, I thought she lacked the inherent, snobby confidence of most elves that I knew.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
I sat up and looked around. I could hear the stream and smell it under the magic, but I was on sandy ground with stray rocks, tree branches and...cactus. My landing had left a bit of a dent. "Max Killian," I said. "Who did you think you conjured?"
She frowned, making the wrinkles worse. "I did a spell for help." She looked around again as though hoping someone else might drop down.
I glanced up, praying that if another privy were on its way, I had time to move.
"I have a problem."
I hadn't exactly offered to help, but I was here now. "I charge--" I stopped. "Does this place have gold?" She nodded sharply, started to speak, then changed her mind. I stared at her. "I think you better tell me what this problem is before I tell you what I charge."
"Hmph." She slammed a cane into the sand. "I think we better figure out how it is that I got you when I did a conjuring for something to help solve my problem." Granny turned her attention to a mess of objects in the sand. There was a chunk or two of wood lying next to feathers, some of which looked burned. A very round stone displayed an arrowhead and a pile of what looked like brown hair that might or might not have been dipped in blood.
Granny leaned over and picked up a small piece of wood from the center of the pile. "I didn't want anyone to notice you coming through so I used a spell to call a like object. I wanted you to drift in through the stream." She squinted at the wood in her hand. "I thought this was driftwood."
We both glanced over at the destroyed outhouse. "Apparently not," I said.
"Then too, I didn't expect you to come in so high." With the edge of the not-driftwood, she flicked at a burned feather. "Moving such a large object displaces a lot of air and power. The incantation was obviously correct, except for the light as air part, and I'll have to be more careful about aligning like objects."
"Tell me that you didn't call me here to help with spells?" I tried to hide my desperation. My power to sense magic didn't enable me to use it, just as my being able to smell the dead didn't lead me to...anything. I was a detective, but despite my deductive powers, I didn't see how any of the clues fit.
She snorted. "Spells? Of course not. I can do those quite well."
I kept from glancing at the broken outhouse by supreme force of will.
She stabbed her cane firmly into the sand again. "I've been robbed. I need you to find the thief and return my valuables." She raised a shaking finger and pointed at me. "I want revenge. I wanted a stubborn bloodhound with a vicious personality." She glanced again at the pile. The tangle of hair matched mine in its dull, brown color. Mine was nearly as shaggy, especially after tumbling through the air and then standing outside in the breeze.
"What is it you want me to find?"
She straightened her bent, old back as much as possible. "An Object of Power."
"Of course." I stifled a grunt of frustration. "And without this thing of power, I can't get back home, I presume?" Even though I was a good detective, people liked to hire those with more obvious magic. I generally only got mundane work or people in the desperate category. I had a bad feeling I knew which type of case this was going to be.
She frowned mightily, causing her face to look as though it were trying to absorb into her bones. "What? Nonsense! I can send you back any time. That's easy."
Again, I didn't look at the pile of used goods in the sand, but my face took on a few new wrinkles.
Granny stayed on track. "He took it from me." She held out a badly singed cloth. "But I got a piece of him. You can use this to track him. Of course, I was expecting a dog, not you."
I stared at the piece of material.
"Don't worry. He'll be easy to find. I cast a spell on him. I've got lightning after him."
I fingered the piece of material and imagined that I saw a wisp of smoke. "If you have lightning tracking him, what do you need me for?"
She slammed her cane into the ground. "It takes time to build up a storm to create the lightning. As soon as he f
igured out the spell, he moved. That's why I needed a bloodhound." Her top to bottom look was filled with disappointment. "You'll have to do, because it will take too long to start over and conjure a real bloodhound. You any good at tracking? You must be or you wouldn't have answered the spell."
With that, she set off across the sand. "Come on then. I'll tell you where lightning last struck. You can catch the scent. Follow him. Get my Object."
I took one last glance at the mess in the sand. Sure, my dream case was to chase a dangerous lightning storm.
The sounds of the stream died behind us as we hiked into tall pine trees. Reddish bark dripped sap. The sap kept me from using the trees to steady my footing on the generous boulders decorated with desert lichen.
It wasn't long before granny gimped out of the trees onto a trail. Good thing. I didn't have a cane to help me over the rough terrain. Not that my almost-thirty self was old, but I was sore in a few spots after my hard landing.
As she hiked up an ever steepening trail, I haggled with her over payment. Getting paid probably wasn't going to prove to be my biggest challenge, but it beat worrying about getting back home. Or lightning storms.
Granny didn't appreciate my practicality. "I'll pay you when you're done. Or maybe I should just call another dog."
Since I had to eat, regardless of where I found myself, I continued to negotiate. "I'm cheaper than a dog. If you call a dog, you'd still have to feed it--and guide it. Me, I work alone. It's like a bonus for you. You don't have to go trolling along after me."
Since she was ahead of me on the trail, and I was huffing and lagging, I wasn't sure my argument would work, but all she said was, "How do I know you'll return my Object?"
"Because that's what you're paying me for. Of course, you could just send me back if you want."
Stalemate. She didn't want to do another spell. I wasn't budging without money, and there was no point in her coming along. If she could do the job, she wouldn't have called anyone in the first place.
Tracking Magic Page 7
