“Will you help me?” I asked. “I have nothing to give you. I left the palace in a rush, bringing nothing with which to barter.”
“I will help you for the cost of the only thing you have—a promise.”
“I will give it,” I said, the words tumbling from my lips pell-mell, like a spring down a mountainside.
“Be careful, child. You should not agree before you have heard the terms. Nonetheless, I will take your promise for aid in a future endeavor. I do not yet know what help I will require from you, save that I will not ask you to betray or harm your king or kin.”
“I agree to your terms,” I said.
The old woman grinned and turned to walk deeper into the wood. “Then follow me, princess. We shall find you a path out of Mab’s domain and into the world of men.”
I followed her for hours as she wove a twisted, turning path through the forest. Several times I was sure that we had done little but retrace our steps, only to have a seemingly familiar stretch of trail turn into something completely unknown. We hiked across rocky mountain trails, trudged through nigh-invisible swamp passages, and padded long across carpeted glades of evergreens.
Finally, as my feet ached and my legs throbbed, we stepped into a clearing, and I could see the sun for the first time in hours. I looked up, and rather than the frosted blue-white sunshine of the Winter Court, I saw the warm yellow smile of a spring afternoon. There was no frost licking the limbs of the trees above me, and the sea of golden dandelions before me swayed in a warm, gentle breeze that kissed across my cheeks and tickled my hair across my ears.
“Where are we?” I asked, a hint of wonder creeping into my voice.
“This is the land of Georgia,” the Witch said. “You are in the world of man, now. Your magic no longer works here, and you are human in all ways that matter.”
I reached up to touch my ears, the very visible reflection of my Fae-ness, and found them odd. No longer were they gently swooping, graceful ovals coming to a point after several inches of travel. Instead, they were these awkward, floppy things with fleshy lobes hanging from them and drab rounded tops. My mouth curled up in an unintended sneer, prompting another screeching cackle from the witch.
“Everyone does that at first,” she said, once she finished laughing at me. “You will soon enough become accustomed to the dangly bits and to all the other myriad pains and trials of being a human woman. But know this—you may not stay.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You are of the Fae, and that will never change. You do not belong here, and the longer you stay, the more your body will reject this world, and this world will begin to reject you. This is not a world of magic, but you are a creature of magic. You cannot simply separate the magic from the girl—to do so would be to remove everything about you. Eventually, this world will destroy you. You will weaken and grow sick, and if you do not return to Faerie, you will die.”
“How long can I stay? Can I come back after I leave?” I was frantic. I had escaped Mab, only to find that I would have to return.
“You can remain outside of Faerie for twenty of this world’s years. No more. As that time draws to an end, you will feel yourself begin to change. When the pains begin, you must return to Faerie for as long as you have been gone. Only then can you return to this world without consequence.”
“So, if I stay here for a year, I have to stay in Faerie for a year?” I asked.
“Exactly. You can return before your time is up, but you will become grievously ill immediately. Do not try to cheat magic. It knows,” she said in a grim voice. “Now, I must leave you. I make many such trips, but I never stay more than a few hours. Be safe, child of Mab. I hope you can stay here for many years, for the Mad Queen will not forgive you easily or quickly.”
With that, the old woman turned and walked back into the woods. She took a few steps into the shade, stepped behind a giant maple tree, and simply vanished. I walked around that tree four times without finding any sign of her.
“Well,” I said to the empty air. “I suppose now I should begin to find out what a ‘Georgia’ is.” I heard a strange whirring sound coming from the south, so I struck off through the pines toward the source of the noise and my new life.
The whirring noise was, as I now know, a highway. The Witch had transported me to a patch of woods just north of Atlanta, right off Interstate 85. I knew nothing of these strange machines that flew by me faster than any carriage I had ever seen. I looked in awe as these boxes of red, green, blue, white, black, and every color I had ever imagined flew by my face at breathtaking speeds. Some screamed at me with terrible noises, some ignored me completely, but I knew I wanted nothing to do with them. They were loud, and they belched horrible odors into the air. The entire path stank to high heaven, reeking like the den of a thousand fornicating goblins.
I must have stood on the side of the interstate for thirty minutes before one of the odd creatures passed me, then slowed and pulled off the road into the grass some fifty yards past me. A hatch opened on the side of the carriage, and a man got out. He was a big man by my standards, having lived my life around the slight frames of the Fae. He had his long hair tied back in a ponytail, and a smile shone through his beard. I knew instinctively that this was a kind man, one I could trust.
Even with that, I kept a hand on the dagger at the small of my back. I thought he looked trustworthy, but I had been wrong before. Once upon a time, I even thought my mother was sane, after all.
“You okay, miss?” His words were strange, but I understood them, even though his speech was heavily accented.
“I am, I believe,” I said.
“Your car break down?” he asked. I stared at him blankly, having no idea what he was saying. He repeated himself, then shook his head. “You got no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“I don’t think I understand what you are saying, no,” I said, hoping I was answering his question. He seemed nice enough, and perhaps he could help me find shelter and safety.
“Are you hurt?” He slowed down his speech even more, almost to the point of comedy, but it helped.
“No,” I said. “But I am alone and far from home. Can you help me?” I watched his eyes for any signs of pleasure or flashes of greed at my words but saw nothing but a touch of sadness and perhaps empathy for my plight.
“Well, I don’t know how much help I can be, but I’ve got some food and can get you a place to sleep that’ll be out of the rain.”
“Rain?” I asked. I honestly thought perhaps the word meant something different here, for the sky was perfectly clear.
“Oh yeah, you definitely ain’t from around here,” the man said. “It don’t look like it right now, but it’ll be pouring down in about three hours. ‘Round here we got a word for that. We call it July.” He laughed at his own joke, and I smiled vaguely. I had no idea what he meant, or why it should be funny.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when he was finished slapping his own knee. “Why don’t you get in the truck, and I’ll take you home where you can get something to eat. Then we can figure out a place for you to sleep and make some plans for tomorrow. How does that sound?”
Something to eat sounded wonderful. I’d not eaten a bite in hours, and I was famished. The forest had contained nothing, not even berries or nuts. I followed him to his truck and stood behind it as he walked around to the right. He opened the door and gestured for me to get in.
“Don’t you have more than that little sack?” he asked, pointing to the pack on my shoulders.
“No,” I said. “I left in a rush.”
He gave me a steady look, then just nodded. I slid into the truck, and he closed the door. He walked around the truck, got behind the wheel, and cranked up the old blue Ford. The truck rumbled to life, and he grasped the top of a stick protruding from the floor and jiggled it into position. The vehicle lurched forward, and we merged back into the steady stream of northbound traffic.
And that was how I met your father and ca
me to live in the cabin with him.
5
I stayed in the cabin with your father, deplorable though his housekeeping skills were, for some time. His father, your grandfather, came to eat dinner with us every evening, and every night I slept on the sofa in the den. We had been living together for about a week when he stopped me as I got up after dinner to go read in the rocker by the fire, as was my custom. I learned a great deal about humans from their literature, and I had nearly exhausted the meager library your father owned in just a few days.
“Sit down a minute,” he said as we finished clearing the dishes.
I sat. Your grandfather had not joined us for our evening meal that night, so we were alone in the house. “What is it?” I asked.
“We need to talk about what your plans are,” he said. “I don’t mind you sticking around here. As a matter of fact, I kinda like it. You certainly are easy on the eyes, and the place smells a lot better with you here than with just me and Pop. But if you’re thinking about staying, I reckon we need to talk about a few things.”
I stood. “If one more evening is not too much trouble, I’ll be gone in the morning.” I had no intention of answering any questions about my origin, certainly not from a man who carried a pistol everywhere he went, even inside his home. It was only later that I learned exactly how important that habit was.
“You don’t have to go, but if you want to stay, there’s some stuff you need to know.”
I stopped. He wasn’t asking me things, but telling me? What secrets could this plain-spoken human possibly have? His round face was as open as any I had ever encountered, and there was not a disingenuous bone in his body, at least as much as I could tell in the few days we had shared the space.
“What would you like to tell me?” I asked, taking my seat once again.
“Well, this would be a whole lot easier if Pop was here, but I reckon the fact that he ain’t is part of the reason I feel like I got to tell you in the first place.”
I sat silently, waiting for him to continue. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I just allowed him to continue at his own pace.
“There are things in the world,” he started. He shook his head and let out a little laugh. “This is one of them kinda talks like parents have with little kids, except it usually goes the exact opposite of the way this one is gonna go.”
I waited.
“So, you know how when you’re a little kid, and you’re scared of monsters under the bed, or in the closet, and your mama or daddy comes in and tells you that there ain’t nothing in your closet and that monsters ain’t real? Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but monsters are real.”
He looked at me, but whatever reaction he was expecting, I didn’t give it to him. Of course I knew that monsters were real. I was a Princess of the Fae, after all. I had been raised around goblins, and nixies, and pixies, and even the occasional troll attack. Why was this even a subject for debate?
Then I realized that in this world, monsters were considered mythical. It all made sense to me in an instant—the machines, the hiding of my ears, the lack of magic—this was truly a mundane world, with almost no magic whatsoever. I tried my best to fix a look of shock on my face, but I feared it was too late.
Regardless, your father continued. “There are real monsters out there. There’s vampires, and werewolves, and zombies, and ghosts, and ghouls, and all kind of things that you only hear about in books or stories. But that ain’t all. There ain’t just monsters. There’s people who fight the monsters, too. People like me. And Pop. We’re Monster Hunters. That’s where he is tonight, out on a hunt.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“I reckon if you stay here much longer, there’s a chance that I’m gonna have to leave you here by yourself some night ‘cause I don’t make it back from a hunt before you go to bed, and I wanted you to know why.”
I tried to put a small tremor in my voice to appear a timorous little thing, not a woman trained in the use of magic and blade. “Do you think any of those things can find us here?”
He looked shocked, as though he had never considered the possibility. “Oh no! Me and Pop do a good job of keeping where we live real separate from where we hunt, and…well, to be honest, there ain’t ever been anything left alive when we’re done with a hunt. So, I ain’t never worried about anything tracking us back here.”
“So, your father is out on a hunt this evening and that made you think that I needed to know about your life?”
“Yeah,” he said, a slight blush creeping up his face. “Well, that and…well, I reckon I kinda wanted…”
“Wanted what?” I asked. He was so cute with the pink almost blinking through his beard.
“I kinda wanted to see if you would mind if I courted you a little bit, and I wanted to make sure you knew what you was getting into if we went on a date.”
By now the blush had reached all the way into his hairline, and I had to take pity on him. I leaned across the small kitchen table and took his hand. “I appreciate that. And I think I would very much like it if you courted me a little bit.”
He grinned across at me. “Are you teasing me?”
“A little bit,” I said with a smile.
We sat for a long time like that, holding hands across the table. He told me stories of the hunts he had been on, and I deflected his questions about where I grew up and what my family was like. I trusted him and felt strongly that he was to be very important in my life, but I still did not want to reveal myself completely to him. I suppose a small part of me was worried that he would see me as just another monster, something to be destroyed. I couldn’t bear that, so I kept my true nature hidden from him. I kept it hidden from him the entire time we were together.
Your grandfather returned the next morning to find us asleep together on the couch, your father’s arms around me as we slept, fully clothed, thank you very much, in front of the television.
“Well, I was starting to wonder if you was a little light in them loafers, boy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he said, startling us both awake. I will admit that your father wasn’t the only one blushing at that.
The old man stood in the kitchen, covered in the drying blood of who knows what creature, looking to us for breakfast. I poured the orange juice, your father cooked eggs and grits, and we sat down to eat ignoring the gore coating your grandfather from head to toe. This became a routine of sorts—we never discussed the hunts or the family business after that first night. It was something the Brabham men did, and I was not involved in any way.
We were married that winter, and a few short years later, you were born. I knew when I first held you that you would break my heart, and I counted the days until I knew I would have to leave you. Then Jason was born, and my fair-haired boy was just as dear to me as you were, my giant man-child firstborn.
The hardest thing I ever did was leave you both, and the second hardest was to return. I walked away from this world at the last possible moment. I began to feel myself become weaker, and had I remained here even a few weeks more, I would have become deathly ill and been unable to make the trek back to Faerie.
The day I walked away from here, I drove to the spot where your father first met me on the side of the road, walked into the forest, and stepped into the clearing. It was still there, unmolested after two decades. I lay down on the grass, surrounded by toadstools, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was home.
And I wept for the life I left behind.
6
The moonlight had given way to the pink of sunrise by the time Mama stopped talking. We all looked at her for a long time, saying nothing. Over the course of her story, Amy, Skeeter, and Joe had come out of their rooms and sat down at various places around the room. Amy sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, her head leaning back on my knees. Skeeter was on the other end of the couch, his legs curled up under him covered up in a blanket we kept on the back of the sofa pret
ty much just for him. Joe sat in my recliner, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped up on his hands.
“So, you’re back now…” I kinda let my question trail off into nothing.
“Because I wanted to see my children,” she said. “I missed my family. I missed my husband. I missed my boys.”
“Yeah, that didn’t work out so good, I reckon.” I was applying for Understatement of the Year with that one. The first time I saw Mama, a little more than a year ago, Jason had her tied to a stake and was ready to kill her as part of the kickoff party to his attempted monster revolution. She had to watch as I killed my brother in front of her, then I told her I never wanted to see her again.
I meant it, too. But she showed up with the rest of my gang when I most needed backup to save the world from a demon invasion, or at least some really shitty country music. So, I reckon she listened about as good as I usually do.
“I’ve had better reunions,” she agreed. “Jason was…”
“Batshit crazy,” Skeeter offered.
“Troubled,” Joe countered.
“Nuts,” Amy said right in time with the others.
“An asshole,” I concluded. “But you missed the mess with Pop. I killed him, too. Cut him down with Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s sword.” I pointed to the corner of the room, where the sword leaned up against the wall. I didn’t carry it too often anymore. A little too much blood of people I cared about on it for my tastes.
“I know,” Mama said. “Jason took great joy in telling me of your battle with your father. He seemed to think it would turn me against you.”
“Did it?” I asked.
“No. Even in Jason’s telling, it was obvious you had no choice. Your father was driven mad by the lycanthropy. It happens in some cases. You had no choice, Robbie.”
“Bubba,” I corrected.
“I don’t think I’ll be calling you Bubba, dear,” she said, and there was some of that steel in her tone that let me know that no matter how old I got, she was still my mother.
Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4 Page 3
