The Maker, the Teacher, and the Monster

by Leah Cutter

  “Maybe one will show up when you move to a bigger city,” Dale said. They’d had this conversation more than once. Nora always needed to talk things to death. She was convinced that a teacher was supposed to have appeared in her life to help her learn magic. Dale didn’t know if it was wishful thinking on Nora’s part or some sort of innate feeling she had.

  “I still don’t understand why a teacher never showed up here. Someone to help me learn,” Nora complained.

  “Maybe someone already showed up and you turned them away,” Dale teased. “Couldn’t stand your whining and complaining.”

  “It wasn’t Kostya,” Nora declared. “He tried to teach me wrong, so I wouldn’t be able to see.”

  “And now he’s back,” Dale said, tentatively.

  “You are not getting involved with the fairies again,” Nora said fiercely.

  “Kostya isn’t good,” Dale told Nora. “His coming back is actually really bad.” Dale had never trusted the dwarf. That the dwarves and the fairies were mortal enemies hadn’t helped.

  “He can’t get in the house,” Nora said. “I made sure everything’s protected.”

  “And Mom?” Dale finally asked.

  Nora actually looked away from him, toward the door. “She still doesn’t quite believe me.”

  “I know,” Dale said. He didn’t point out that Nora should have told their mom earlier. “Will Cornelius come back and bother her, do you think?”

  Nora shook her head no but said, “I don’t know. He doesn’t have her name, and Mom won’t give it to him, now. He has no control over her. And the bracelet will at least make her suspicious of any illusion, even if she can’t see through it.”

  “Why couldn’t she see anything when she first put the bracelet on?” Dale asked. The world had changed immediately when he’d put on the first one Nora had made especially for him. It was why he didn’t like wearing them all the time: They made the world seem too bright, too distracting.

  “It wasn’t because I messed up,” Nora said hotly.

  “Whoa, whoa, there,” Dale said. Where the hell was that coming from? “I was just asking a question. Idiot.”

  “Jerk. I don’t know why Mom couldn’t see anything at first. But I’ve been thinking about it. Grandma Lilly was probably magical,” Nora said. “And it skipped a generation. That happens, you know.”

  “Well, Mom didn’t have any siblings, so we can’t assume that. It may have just skipped her,” Dale felt obliged to point out.

  “Whatever,” Nora said. “She’s safe enough, now.”

  Dale hoped that was true. “And the magic?” he asked softly.

  Nora flashed him a grin. “I figure it’s like coming out, right? But instead of finding out that her daughter’s gay—which I’m not—I’m just magical. She needs some time to adjust. I’m still the same person.”

  “So—magical and fabulous?” Dale teased.

  “Exactly,” Nora said, turning serious. “She’ll come around.”

  “She will,” Dale assured his sister. She had to. Or that would break their family apart in ways that nothing could ever repair.

  * * *

  Unlike her lazy-assed brother, Nora had found a job that summer working in one of the local craft stores. The work was soul-sucking: teaching bratty kids finger painting, making cheap pottery and decorating it, even weaving together those stupid rubber-band bracelets.

  Neither Mom or Dale could understand why Nora refused to make enough work to sell at the various craft fairs up and down the coast. She knew her scarves, sweaters, and shawls would make a lot of money. And she’d get to work with a bunch of creative people as well.

  But Nora would have to be so careful of everything she made. None of it could contain even a thread of magic. She couldn’t risk it falling into the wrong hands. Plus, any work she made commercially available would have to be generic. It couldn’t contain any of Nora in it.

  Or it could be used against her, like her first sweater had been, by Queen Adele, who’d unraveled it in order to learn Nora’s name.

  So Nora got up early the first morning after school got out, earlier than she wanted to, even if she didn’t sleep as much as Dale, waved at Mom in the kitchen before heading out. Though the store didn’t open until ten, she had a bunch of prep work to do for the classes that day.

  As Nora struggled with the key for the shop, trying to get the door unlocked, an older woman came up to her. She looked like a typical tourist widow, with short, curly gray hair and glasses hung from a beaded necklace around her neck. She wore a white shirt, a gray cardigan, a colorful Bargello-quilted skirt.

  “Excuse me, dear,” the woman said.

  Nora contained her sigh, pasted on a smile, and turned to the woman. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  “Ah, dear, no, I’m here to help you!”

  Great. Just what Nora needed. A crazy woman before she’d even had breakfast. “I’m sorry—”

  “Maker,” the woman said, her querulous voice suddenly growing stern. “I’m here to warn you.”

  Nora blinked. “Why are you calling me that? I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her heart pounding hard in her chest. How did this woman know she was a Maker? She shouldn’t admit to it, should she?

  The woman gave her a glacial smile. “You came into your powers five summers ago, Maker. All the teachers who have been sent to you have been forced away from here. Most disappeared. You must leave this place. Something is hunting us. Keeping us away from you.”

  The power emanating from the woman washed over Nora, hard and cold, as bracing as storm winds blowing off the ocean. She had no doubt that this woman told the truth. “How did you get through?” Nora asked, finally getting the damned key to turn.

  The laugh the woman gave was tinkling, filled with broken icicles and glass. “I’m already dead!” she said cheerily.

  Shit. Was she a zombie or something? Nora looked critically at the old woman, but she had the appearance of a retired schoolteacher.

  “The cancer just won’t let go,” the woman said, her smile pointed and sharp. “So I agreed to a suicide mission. Might as well go out doing something meaningful, eh?”

  “I am leaving. At the end of summer. For college,” Nora promised the woman.

  The woman shook her head. “You need to get out sooner. This monster knows your plans and will do everything he or she can do to stop you. Leave today.”

  Nora gulped. “But my family—”

  “The longer you’re here, the more endangered they are. Do you think this thing won’t injure one of them in order to get you to stay?”

  “But if I leave, couldn’t it injure someone I love to get me to return?” Nora asked. What if it wasn’t safe if she stayed or left?

  “No, the monster will follow you, at least for a while,” the woman assured her. “But it will be weaker away from its nest. We’ll be able to help. You must leave. Go. Now.”

  Nora shook her head, then looked away. “I can’t. I need, I need a few days.” To get her act together. To make plans. To say goodbye.

  “I don’t know if I’ll still be alive in a few days,” the woman told her bluntly. “Or if the monster will arrange an accident for me. Like the one that claimed your grandparents.”

  Nora turned wide eyes toward the woman. “Excuse me?”

  “There was no accident,” the woman said sharply. “Or rather, it wasn’t their fault. That road wasn’t abandoned when they died. It wasn’t the ice that caused their car to skid off the bridge.”

  “Come inside,” Nora said, looking up and down the street. Was this monster watching, even now? She had to learn more.

  “No,” the woman said. “I won’t endanger your employer, as well as everyone who enters this shop.” She handed Nora a business card from one of the local hotels. On the back, Mrs. Wentworth was sprawled in an old-fashioned cursive script. “Come get me when you’re ready to go. Don’t wait too long. Or we both may be dead.”

  With that, and a cheery w
ave, Mrs. Wentworth turned and left.

  Nora stood there with her mouth gaping. She knew there was supposed to be a teacher, someone who was supposed to come and show her magic. She’d felt it in her bones.

  Evidently there had been. Several. How many had died or been killed over the last five years?

  Nora walked into the shop, carefully locking the door after her. Who was trying to keep her in the dark? Hindering her growth as a Maker? The fairies? Kostya? No, something else.

  Some monster.

  Fear transformed into anger. How dare they?

  Nora had no idea where she was going to go. She had money saved for college, but the dorms wouldn’t open until fall, and she didn’t want to spend all her cash for rent and food now.

  However, Nora would leave. By the end of the week. She’d never knowingly put her family at risk.

  * * *

  Kostya made a comfortable spot for himself that morning outside the house of the Maker and the Tinker, across the street in the tall grass. He needed to wait until both of them had left so he could approach the mother alone. The day dawned clear and cool, though Kostya knew he’d be sweating soon: the magic that protected him, that drained him, left his body less able to process mundane things like sunlight and chill winds.

  How could the Maker have been so thoughtless?

  Nora had never given the mother one of her knotwork bracelets, the ones that the Maker had perfected, despite how Kostya had tried to misdirect her, giving her incorrect directions when she’d first started to learn. She didn’t have any other protection either as far as Kostya could tell, no necklace or ring. Nothing to provide her protection against magic.

  How lazy was the Maker? He’d thought she’d work harder at her magic. She should be stronger than she was. He’d certainly prepared for her to be much more advanced.

  His original plans hadn’t included the mother, but when Kostya saw that she was unprotected, he modified them.

  Though the mother had never wronged him, he had no objection to involving her in the upcoming war and taking her life, too.

  Finally the Tinker left, carrying a large box and trudging down the gravel road toward the highway where those awful infernal engines and cars and trucks ran. The way he carried the box told Kostya that it was precious, delicate.

  It tempted Kostya to suddenly appear, or to throw something to startle the Tinker, to make him drop his burden.

  However, Kostya had learned even more patience while he’d been away, while the skin-mage had been knitting bones and weaving his face back together. His eyes remained the same, which made him glad: His poor, dead wife, whom the fairies had killed, had always told him that they’d been his best feature.

  Much of his face was smooth, now—burned skin that would never quite heal. His poor broken nose had been cropped, no longer hanging low, almost over his bottom lip. The bony ridge running down it had protected his face to some extent. But his skin had burned and burned.

  He still felt it burning, sometimes.

  It didn’t matter what his original appearance had been, or what he looked like now. He’d had magic woven into the new skin, magic to make him invisible, magic to protect him.

  Magic that would help him get his revenge, despite how it weakened him, drained away his life, brought his death closer, more quickly.

  After the Tinker had passed, Kostya stayed seated for a few more moments, trying to bring air into his still blackened lungs, lungs that would never quite fill. The pain they gave him helped fuel his constant rage.

  Then Kostya reached into his bag and pulled out his mask.

  It only resembled Kostya in the most casual way, in that it was obviously a dwarven face. It had been a gift from the dwarven king, to help Kostya on his scouting mission. He hooked it over his ears quickly, shuddering as it crawled against his skin, settling intimately.

  With a single pass of his hand, Kostya made himself visible. Then he changed the look of the mask to match the human ideal—hiding his large teeth and making his nose strong and whole, with crooked eyebrows and pointed ears, as well as the mustache and beard that humans thought all dwarves should have. He maintained his golden eyes but shrank his claw-like fingernails down to human-size, whitening them as well. Finally, he spruced up his clothes, making his shirt whiter, his vest richer, and his pants cleaned and pressed

  Then he marched across the gravel road, to the Maker’s house. The damn protections she’d set up made his skin crawl. He’d never get inside, not even if he was invited, and possibly not even then.

  It didn’t matter. His people didn’t have to get inside the house to get at the humans there. His invisibility had proven itself against the fairies already.

  Their kingdom he’d already visited. It hadn’t been nearly as protected.

  The Maker had grown strong. But not as strong as she could have—there were things she could have done to stop him from even walking up the driveway. He tsked again as he dropped an invisible ball, something that only another dwarf would find, marking their house. Then he dropped a second, just to make sure that this house was marked.

  All who lived inside were now at peril.

  Then Kostya knocked on the front door, rocking back on his heels, waiting.

  The mother opened the door, looked down at him, and gave him a wary smile. “Oh. You’re Kostya the dwarf, I presume?”

  Kostya opened his mouth, then shut it again, the world shifting under his feet, his careful plans already starting to unravel.

  * * *

  “What do you mean you found one of the lost troops?” Garung asked, shock holding him still under the dark pines. Why would one of the troops build a life for themselves here, just outside the Redwood Fairy Kingdom? Were they mad? Had some sort of insanity taken over them, so that they never came home? He looked fearfully at the trees. Did they have some kind of magic?

  “Come! See!” Frieda said, turning and taking off through the trees.

  “Stay together,” Adele warned as Garung hesitated to give the order. “Can’t take all of us,” she added gruffly. “In case this is a decoy, and there are scouts and warriors hiding, ready to attack.”

  “Thanks,” Garung said grudgingly. “All of us. Stay together. Stay sharp,” he added.

  He never would have thought about this being a trap. He was suddenly very glad Adele was there. Pravir and Sree looked uncertain, but Titir was smiling, nodding, and directing the others into a tight line.

  Garung flitted under the trees. Where had that annoying girl gone? Up ahead he saw a flash of wings. Why was she going so fast? What was the rush?

  Unless it really was a trap.

  Garung opened his eyes as wide as he could, trying to see better. While fairies could naturally see in the dark, as a student, his sight was more accustomed to brighter lights, so that he could read. The curses behind him told him that the others suffered the same, which made him feel better.

  “Be ready for anything,” Garung called out softly over his shoulder as he flew toward the spot where Frieda had disappeared.

  Adele came up beside Garung. “If there’s a fight, let me lead,” she whispered.

  Garung considered. On the one hand, Adele was from the warrior caste. She knew more about fighting than he did. On the other hand, no one would follow his lead ever again.

  It was worth it, if he could bring all his troop home alive this time.

  “All right,” he whispered. He didn’t have to glance behind him to know that Adele’s eyes were whirling and she was vibrating with suppressed energy.

  He actually pitied any who challenged her.

  Another flash off to Garung’s left pulled him that way. Up ahead, Frieda waited, her wings spread wide as she hovered in the air. Beyond the trees was a natural depression and clearing.

  Garung flew closer. Behind him, Adele whispered urgently, “Look up.”

  High in the trees above them were fairies, warriors, holding very still, with spears. But they weren’t attacking.


  Not yet.

  Adele flew along the line, warning the others, while Garung continued forward, to the very edge of the trees.

  There, in the center of the bowl, on an overgrown toadstool, sat Garung’s long-dead brother, Ramit. Only he wasn’t dead, but very much alive. His dark hair curled wildly over his head. He wore a vest woven out of dried leaves, fading and falling apart. Petals and long vines hung from his waist like a kilt.

  “Welcome, brother,” Ramit said. “Welcome to the Forest Fairy Kingdom.”

  * * *

  Dale couldn’t stop grinning as he walked along the dusty gravel road in front of their house, even after the bus was late, even after the long walk from the last stop up the main drag, bumping into tourists, trying to shelter the box he carried from falling.

  The white-and-blue porcelain clock was finished. So maybe he’d worked on it more than he’d promised, so instead of delivering it on Friday, it was only Wednesday.

  Still. It meant Dale had an excuse to go to Betty’s.

  And maybe run into Leslie there, at the shop.

  He knew that he was supposed to save all the money he made from his clock business into his college fund. But it was close to noon. Maybe he could take Leslie out to lunch instead.

  Mom would understand. Nora would too, though she’d tease him about it. If he told her. Which he wasn’t about to. Not yet.

  Still smiling, Dale sauntered up the sidewalk, past the little boutique kite shop that sold kites for more than he’d ever pay, even if they were pretty, past the crystal, rock, and bead shop that always made Nora sniff dismissively and say disparagingly, Crystal magic. Then past the craft shop. Maybe he’d stop by and see Nora on the way back, after lunch.

  However, Dale hadn’t gotten two steps past the door before he heard his sister calling his name.

  Dale stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He didn’t want to turn around. He had plans. He was going to go see Leslie. He still turned back. “What?” he asked, impatient.

  Nora jerked her head imperiously, indicating that he needed to step closer.