by Tanya Huff
I guess I wasn't too good at hiding what I thought because the little brown dude – name of Robin Goodfellow, but he tagged Puck – turned to me and asked what I thought. I could've lied, but he didn't look like he was having such a good time either, so I told him.
"Too bad you've got no decent tunes with you."
"I do." I tapped the player on my belt. "But I'd need a deck to plug in to."
"I could take care of that."
"Bonus!"
I handed over my player, and next thing I knew, The Bedrockers were blasting out at a hundred and twenty decibels.
The queen, my queen, whirled around so fast it was all hair and drapery stuff for a minute. Once that settled and I got a look at her face, there was, like, a second where she looked totally scary. Then Puck told her it was my sound, and she chilled, although her smile seemed a little forced.
I spent a couple of songs teaching the crowd to move, and I gotta hand it to them, for all they looked like they had a collective stick up their butts, they sure could dance.
* * * *
Worn out by the exertions I would not dignify in calling dance, Tommy Lane spent the night asleep, so I did not even gain the small physical pleasure I might have from his presence. When he woke, he was annoyingly insistent upon eating and would not travel until he had broken his fast. Barely concealing my impatience, I had the sprites bring him bread and honey and clear water, as much as at this time I would have preferred him to have been fed with insects and the dregs of a swamp. Or better still, fed to insects and lost within the swamp.
Although Puck had returned to my husband's Court, I did not trust his absence and resolved to keep up the pretence until the boy was gone.
With no intention of travelling to the crossing at a mortal's pace, I took his hand and we were there. Unfortunately, we were not alone.
"Sending him back so soon, Majesty?"
"Why should I not? I have wrung from him all his strength."
At that moment, the boy chose to fling himself down a sheer rock face then up and over a bank of earth. Folding himself near in two, he clutched at his board, spun about in the air, and landed with a merry whoop.
"Seems to have gotten his strength back. Your husband, my lord Oberon, is pleased you have found amusement. How unfortunate that you find he does not suit."
I could well read the implication between his words. As much as accuse me of a foolish choice. I would not have that. Much angered, my voice sheathed in ice, I said, "Then my husband, the Lord Oberon, will be pleased to hear that I am not sending him back, but rather gifting him with passage between our worlds, so that he might amuse himself as he will." Masking my fury, I called Tommy Lane to my side and opened the way. "You may go once each day to the place that I found you."
"You trying to get rid of me?"
From his smile I could see that he was making fun, and for the sake of our audience, I denied it.
"Her Majesty grants you a great gift," my husband's irritating emissary declared. "Do you not, Majesty?"
"Yes," I snapped before I thought.
A Faerie gift, once given, can not be recalled.
In order for me now to be rid of Tommy Lane, the decision to leave must be his.
* * * *
I had it all. A major babe, servants, and great food – after a few tries, they even managed a decent burger and fries – I could ride when I wanted, and some of the fairy dudes were starting to catch on.
* * * *
"Finvarra, what are you doing?"
He dropped to one knee, his waist-length hair wrapping around him like a silken curtain. "I believe it is called a nollie, Majesty. In essence, an ollie performed by tapping the nose of the board instead of the tail."
My lip curled, almost of its own volition, and my hand rose to teach him such a lesson as would last the length of an immortal life. Unfortunately, at that moment Tommy Lane dropped down out of the trees, followed by that nuisance Puck.
"Hey Finvar! Rad move!"
"Your boy's really livening up the place," Puck announced, leaping off a board of his own. With no iron on the original, Faerie magic had been able to duplicate it easily. No one knew exactly what aluminium was, except that it wasn't iron. "Isn't it great?"
All three waited for my answer.
I locked my temper behind an indulgent smile. "It is."
Tommy Lane waved up toward the line of bark ripped in looping patterns from the inter-locking branches of the trees. "Did you know that Disney used boards to work out how Tarzan would move?"
"No."
It seemed my husband had not yet tired of the bothersome Puck's reports.
I would have to get creative.
* * * *
Riding the trees was fine, but it was hard to keep it real; there were just some moves I couldn't do on bark, no matter how broad the branch. And sometimes I rolled right through living space, and that was just whack. Also more danger than I needed in my life; some of those dudes had really big swords. So, every day, I went back to the skate park.
I didn't see the girl at first; I saw the flowers. Three big, pink roses sprayed onto the side of the pipe. She wasn't easy to spot because she was kneeling down at the bottom of the third rose, painting in her tag. Her green jacket kind of blended in with all the foliage.
I mounted up and carved my way down to the bottom just as she stood. Her tag read Janet. Given that she was at the bottom of the pipe and couldn't get away, she stood her ground.
"Nice work," I said. "I haven't seen you around here before."
"My old man doesn't want me coming here. Says I'll meet the wrong sort." She shrugged. "I come anyway. I've seen you."
"You have?"
"Duh, you haunt this place. Yesterday afternoon, I saw that super high switch heelflip you did."
"Actually, it was switch front heelflip, switch heelflip, backside tailslide and a fakie hardflip."
"Wow."
"Yeah." It was good to talk to someone who understood. She was riding an urban assault board, way bigger than most girls like at forty inches, and I could see her eyeing my pro model. I have no idea what made me say it, but I stepped off and pushed my board over. "Go on. You know you want to."
Her eyes widened. Letting someone else on your ride was more intimate than screwing, and I could tell from her expression, she'd never done this before. Finally, she nodded and pushed her ride toward me. "What the hell. The front trucks are a little tight."
She was right and I bailed coming out of a tailslide, trying to carve left across the bowl. Took most of the landing on my right shoulder, but still buffed a strip of skin off my jaw. Late afternoon, she came off some air and into a fakie, shifted her weight wrong, hit, and rolled up, blood seeping through the knee of her cargos.
Bonded in blood. Cool.
With her leg locked up, she was done for the day. Using her board like a crutch, she hobbled to the edge of the park and turned to stare back at me. "You want to go get some fries or something?"
Actually I did, but Annie was expecting me back, and…
Janet snorted. "You got a girl. I should've known."
While I was thinking of something, anything, to say, she limped away.
* * * *
He was bleeding when he returned to me that night, and he stank of mortal company. I would have demanded to know her name, but that vexatious Puck lingered still about, and I would not have him carry tales of a mortal lover who dared to cheat on me.
Later, with the nettlesome sprite safely in sight, but out of earshot as he sought to annoy me by having Tommy Lane teach him new tricks, I got the whole story from the Loireag.
A girl.
I would use her.
That night, as he slept, I cloaked myself in shadow and did what I had not done for many long years – I walked amid the mortal race. The girl was easy enough to find; her blood had mixed with his, and his was mine.
She sat by the entrance to her dwelling. Within, raised voices discussed locking he
r in her room until she told them the name of the boy she was seeing.
In guise of one Tommy Lane would believe, wearing the face of my husband's emissary – which had, of late, become as familiar to me as my own – I sat down beside her. "They sound angry."
"Who the hell are you?"
Of old, the young were much politer. "I bring you word from Tommy Lane."
"Who?"
Thus I discovered the reason she had not told her elders the name of the boy. "You met him today at the ring of stone by Carterhaugh Pond. You rode his board and he yours."
"Yeah, so?"
"He is in grave danger. Tomorrow night, the Queen of Faerie will take his life."
"Where?"
I sighed. "She will end his life."
"Why?"
"Because a tithe to darkness must be paid, and she will not sacrifice an immortal knight when a mortal man is close at hand."
"Look, I don't know what you're on, but I got troubles of my own, so make like a leaf and get lost."
I drew her gaze around to mine, captured it, and held it. "Do you believe me now?" I demanded when, after many heartbeats, I released her.
She drew in a long, shuddering breath. "I guess."
As that appeared to be as good as I would get, I continued. "You must go to the park as the sun leaves the sky, and when the Queen arrives to claim him, you must snatch him from his board and hold him tight." A possible problem occurred to me. "Are you afraid of snakes?"
"No."
"Good. Do not fear although he be turned within your grasp into angry beasts or red-hot iron or burning lead or…"
"Does this fairy tale have a point? Because if I'm not inside in five minutes my old man's going to come out here and kick my ass."
"If you hold tightly to young Tommy Lane, he will in time become himself again. Then you must wrap him in your mantle green."
"My what?"
I sighed again. "Wrap him in your green jacket, and the spell will be broken."
* * * *
Annie looked real pleased with herself the next morning, and when I went for a quickie before breakfast, she was so into it, it was kind of scary. I mean, I liked her enthusiasm, but man…
She stretched out on the bed looking all catlike and said, "Wait at the park this evening until I come for you. I have a surprise planned."
Later, everyone I passed on the way to the park said goodbye.
I was making my third run down over Janet's roses, when it was like she suddenly appeared. I looked up on the lip, and there she was.
I flipped up beside her. She looked pissed.
"Are you real or what?"
"What?"
"Bastard!" She punched me in the arm.
"What are you talking about?"
And then she told me this bullshit story some short brown dude told her about my Annie and sacrificing me tonight and crap.
"It's a Halloween prank," I told her.
She snorted. "I thought so. The whole thing's a friggin' lie!"
"Not all of it," I admitted. I told her my side of the story, and she snorted again.
"Jeez, you are so lame! If that's true, then what makes the story I got told not true? It sounds to me like the Queen wants more than your bod. You said she looked pleased with herself. She said she has a surprise planned. Everyone said goodbye to you when you left. Duh! How many times have you bailed on your head?"
When Janet put it that way, it all began to make a horrible amount of sense. Puck. The short brown dude had to have been Puck. He liked me, and he didn’t seem to like my Annie much. I guess now I knew why.
I stepped onto my board. "I'm so out of here."
* * * *
And that was my cue. I could not allow him to merely ride away; the power of the gift I'd given him had to be broken or I would ever live with the nagging feeling that someday he might return.
As I stepped into the mortal world, I was pleased to see the girl wrap her arms around young Tommy Lane and drag him off his board. I wrapped myself in terrible beauty and, as she tried to stare me down, raised a hand.
First I turned him to an adder, and Janet held him close, although her language would have withered apples on the tree.
Then I turned him to a lion wild, and Janet released one hand and smacked the beast upon the nose.
Then I turned him to a red hot bar of iron, and Janet screamed and threw him in the pond, throwing her smouldering jacket in after him.
Close enough.
Another wailing visit from the Loireag was little enough price to pay.
As I removed the glamour and he was once again Tommy Lane, I cried out, "If I had known some lady'd borrowed thee, I would have plucked out your eyes and put in eyes of tree. And had I known of this before I came from home, I would have plucked out your heart and put in a heart of stone!"
"Possessive much?" Janet snarled from the edge of the pond.
Dragging Janet's jacket behind him, Tommy Lane waded to the shore, shaking his head. "Babe, we are so over."
I had thought that was the point I was making.
When I stepped back into Faerie, it was to find Robin Goodfellow awaiting me.
"Ah yes, the old held by mortal maid shtick." He scratched reflectively beneath one arm. "Funny thing, though, I could've sworn that tithe went out after seven years, not seven days."
Had it only been seven days? It had seemed so very much longer. "Shut up," I told him.
"Hey, rules were followed, traditions upheld, I got nothing to say." He bowed, sweeping an imaginary hat against the ground. "If Your Majesty has no further need of me."
I forbore to remind him that I never had need of him nor ever would. He waved in his most irritatingly jaunty manner and sped through the deepening twilight toward the Lord Oberon's Court, indulging in a series of kickflips as he rode out of sight.
A velvet hush settled over my Court as, with stately grace, I moved among my knights and ladies. As I settled upon a grassy bank and allowed my ladies to twine starflowers in the midnight fall of my hair, I came to an inescapable conclusion.
It was entirely possible that I had remarkably bad taste in men.
This story was originally published in 1992. Twenty-two years ago. I honestly have no idea where the idea came from or why I made the choices I made when writing it. Seriously, twenty-two years. I don't always remember what I did last Tuesday. "Write something for a Christmas anthology," I was asked. "Okay," I said. And I'm paraphrasing, because I don't remember the conversation either.
I will say that the old farmhouse in the story belonged to my great-grandparents and it cost a fortune in oil to heat, so the only really warm room in the house was the kitchen where the wood-stove reigned. No one in my immediate family ever kept pigs in the porch.
I also remember that I showed an early draft of this story to Michelle Sagara when we were working together at Bakka Books in Toronto, and, because her brain doesn't default to sexy times, she had a completely different idea of what the music was offering. For Michelle's sake, I made it more obvious in later drafts.
I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
"...yes, you'll be dressed in holiday style if you come down to Big Bob's pre-Christmas clothing sale. All the fashions, all the frills, all major credit cards accepted..."
"Are we there yet?"
"Soon, honey."
"How soon?"
"Soon."
"I'm gonna be sick."
Elaine Montgomery took her eyes off the road just long enough to shoot a panicked glance at her daughter's flushed face. "We're almost there, Katie. Can't you hold on just a little bit longer?"
"No!" The last letter stretched and lengthened into a wail that completely drowned out the tinny sound of the car radio and threatened to shatter glass.
As Elaine swerved the car toward the shoulder, an echoing wail rose up from the depths of the beige plastic cat carrier securely strapped down in the back seat. The last time she'd assumed Katie could hold on for the two kilometres
to the next rest stop, it had taken her over an hour to clean the car – which had allowed the cat's tranquilizers to wear off long before they arrived at their destination.
Neither Katie nor the cat were very good travellers.
"Mommy!"
Wet gravel spun under the tires as she fought the car and trailer to a standstill. "Just another second, honey. Grit your teeth." How many times can you throw up one lousy cheese sandwich? she wondered, unbuckling her seatbelt and reaching for her daughter's. Thank God she's not still in the kiddie carseat. It had taken a good twenty minutes and an advanced engineering degree to get Katie in and out of the safety seat, and, here and now, all signs indicated she had closer to twenty seconds.
"It's all right, baby. Mommy's got you." She slid them both out the passenger door and went to her knees in a puddle to better steady the four-year-old's shaking body. December rain drove icy fingers down the back of her neck, and not for the first time since leaving Toronto that morning, Elaine wondered what the hell she was doing heading into the middle of nowhere two weeks before Christmas with a four-year-old, a very pissed off cat, and all her worldly goods.
Trying to survive, came the answer.
I knew that. She sighed and kissed Katie's wet curls.
* * * *
"Ms. Montgomery?" Upon receiving an affirmative answer, the woman who'd come out of the house as the car pulled up popped open an umbrella and hurried forward. "I'm Catherine Henderson. Your late aunt's lawyer? So nice to finally meet you at last. I was afraid you weren't going to make it before I had to leave. Here, let me take the cat..."
Elaine willingly surrendered the cat-carrier, tucked Katie up under one arm, and grabbed for their bag of essentials with the other. The two-story brick farmhouse loomed up out of the darkness like the haven she hoped it was, and feeling more than just a little numb, she followed the steady stream of chatter up onto the porch and into the kitchen.
"No need to lock the car, you're miles away from anyone who might want to steal it out here. I hope you don't mind going around to the back, I can't remember the last time the front door was opened. Careful on that step, there's a crack in the cement. The porch was a later addition to the original farmhouse, which was built by your late aunt's father in the twenties. You'll have to excuse the smell; your aunt got a bit, well, eccentric later in life and kept a pair of pigs in here over last winter. I had the place scoured and disinfected after we spoke on the phone, but I'm afraid the smell is going to be with you for a while." She dropped the umbrella into a pail by the door and heaved the carrier up onto the kitchen table. "Good heavens, he's a big one isn't he? Did he wail like that all the way from Toronto?"
