by Sean Cullen
Kim, Brendan, and Charlie stood up and headed for the door.
“Oh, and Charlie?”
Charlie turned.
“Try not to do anything too outrageous, please?”
“Me?” She grinned. “Never.”
41 I once leapt over a police car. It belonged to my nephew, who is three.
THE CIRCLE
The winter solstice, the time when the sun was farthest away from Toronto’s latitude, would fall on December twenty first, a Friday. That Friday would therefore be the shortest day of the year. It might also be the last day Brendan ever saw. Everything else seemed insignificant beside the Challenges. Brendan had four days until the Proving ceremony, and he was completely terrified.
According to Greenleaf and Kim, strong Wards, Compulsions, and glamours were being woven to keep the Human residents of Toronto away from the Island of the Ward. Weather glamours would freeze the lake to discourage travel, and the ferries would cease to run. Island residents would be convinced that they should spend the weekend away or ensconced in their homes.
Brendan couldn’t imagine the power required to work such a massive glamour. But he could easily imagine the worst coming to pass in the days ahead. In the four days he had left, he had to prepare for any possible test the judges might throw at him. And do his social studies project, although the wrath of Mrs. Scott, his teacher, paled in comparison to a fate worse than death. Brendan couldn’t believe how much his perspective had changed over the last few weeks. Before then he’d had a healthy fear of his high school teachers. Now he was standing across the sparring circle from Saskia, part-time bartender and full-time Warp Warrior, who was getting ready to hand him yet another beating as part of his training.
“This is completely hopeless!”
“Naw, it ain’t, lad! Ye were better tha’ time,” Og urged him. “Ye almost touched her once.”
“I missed by a mile,” Brendan grumbled.
“Och, aye. But still, it was closer than last time!” Og sat at the bar of the Swan of Liir, swigging from a mug of brown ale the size of Brendan’s entire head. Despite the glass’s size, his gnarled fist hefted it with ease. “Ye can’t give up.” He burped.
“Nope!” BLT cried, waving a tiny fist. She sat on the lip of a glass of diet cola, her feet dangling down and her free hand clinging to a drinking straw. “You show her who’s boss!”
Brendan was still gasping for breath after the last round. They’d been at it for an hour now, and he didn’t feel that he’d improved at all. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat and his hair plastered down. Saskia looked as if she’d just rolled out of bed, fresh as a daisy.
“You think too much, Brendan,” the Faerie said. “Your thoughts slow you down. Clear your mind and react, only react.”
Easy for you to say. Brendan tried to free his mind of all stray thoughts. The fact that he had an audience didn’t help. Kim and Greenleaf stood at the railing on the balcony above, witnessing his humiliation.
Kim had been very cold to him when he’d arrived at the Swan. She was still angry about yielding her authority to Charlie.
“Where’s What’s-Her-Face?” she’d sneered when he had come in the door for his training session with Saskia.
“You mean Charlie?”
“Who else would I mean? Or do you have another girl I don’t know about?” At that, Kim had spun away and left him speechless.
As for Charlie, she had declined when he’d asked her to come along to the Swan.
“I have a few errands to run before the Gathering. Besides, I don’t think Kim is all that thrilled with me at the moment. I’ll see you later tonight, non?”
Her absence annoyed him, which was strange because he’d found her incredibly annoying when she’d first shown up. Now he was mildly shocked to find that her presence was reassuring. She always had good advice. She was right about one thing, though: Kim was not fond of her at all.
Finbar was hard at work polishing the wooden tables. He pretended not to watch, but Brendan could see the old man stealing glimpses of him as he rubbed oil into the worn, gleaming surfaces.
Finbar had become a fixture at the Swan ever since he’d led Brendan to the amulet he’d stolen from Brendan as an infant. Though the old Exile had caused him a lot of trouble, Brendan had spoken up for him, taking his part in a bid to be reinstated in the Faerie Fellowship. Brendan knew what being an outsider felt like, so he sympathized with the white-haired, haggard man with the haunted blue eyes.
Still, the way those eyes followed him whenever he came to the Swan disturbed him. He saw a hunger there, a plea for help. Brendan had done all he could to plead Finbar’s case to Ariel. He imagined what it would be like to be an Exile himself, always knowing that another world existed and never being able to see it. He felt a sharp sadness for the old man wiping the table so doggedly.
“Hey, Finbar,” Brendan said with a little wave. Finbar raised his sad blue eyes from the table he was polishing. “You okay today?”
“Right as rain, young Prince. Right as rain.” The answer didn’t match the emptiness in Finbar’s eyes. “You just keep yer mind on yerself. I’m just fine.”
Brendan smiled and looked around the room. The rest of the audience was made up of a few early-evening patrons. Monday was a slow day at the Swan. That was why Saskia had the time to spar with Brendan. Leonard, usually the doorman and bouncer, was keeping an eye on the bar for his love, Saskia. They made a formidable couple: she a Warp Warrior and he a shape-shifter. Brendan had never seen the big man transform into a lion, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Leonard grinned at Brendan, his golden teeth glittering against his dark skin. “Don’t let her scare you, Brendan. She ain’t such a hard one, deep down.” Saskia bared her teeth at her man in a feral grin and growled deep in her throat. Leonard’s booming laugh rolled out across the bar like thunder.
“Ready, Brendan?” Saskia asked.
“I guess … ” He barely got the words out before she blurred across the circle on the attack. Brendan dove out of the way, brushing against the invisible barrier of the fighting circle. The barrier flared with a purplish light, and his shoulder stung where he’d brushed against it.
The fighting circle itself was amazing, though Brendan was too busy getting his butt handed to him to really marvel at it. Prior to their sparring match, as she had done before every session, Saskia had cleared the floor of furniture and drawn a circle on the seamless wooden floor with what appeared to be a piece of purple chalk. Satisfied with her work, she tucked the chalk in her trouser pocket. They were confined within the circle.
Saskia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. Brendan had seen many Faeries perform similar rituals to focus their minds before employing their powers. He envied her concentration. No matter how hard he tried, he could never seem to block out the world around him and see what he wanted with his mind’s eye. Saskia then clapped loudly once at each of the four points of the compass, north, south, east, and west. Suddenly, a shimmering cylinder of energy sprang up from the chalk line, reaching from the floor to the ceiling high above. The energy shimmered and then faded.
“That’s so cool,” Brendan had said the first time she’d created a fighting circle. He’d reached out to touch where he thought the barrier was. His fingertips brushed a flexible, elastic, yet impenetrable surface. Instantly, his hand sang with pain and went numb. A flare of purple light accompanied the agony. “Ow! MAN!”
“The circle is a holy shape, sacred to our people,” Saskia had explained. “It is simple. It is perfect. It is eternal. Within this circle, I will attempt to teach you how to defend yourself. The circle will contain you. You may not leave until I permit you to leave.”
“What if I have to go to the bathroom?” Brendan had quipped on that afternoon, weeks ago.
Saskia didn’t laugh. She flexed her fingers, stretched her neck until it cracked loudly, and then began to mercilessly thrash Brendan. When she’d finally let him out of the circle by
scratching away a section of the chalk, Brendan was barely able to limp to the Faerie Terminal. He’d spent two hours in a hot bath at home before going to bed.
Now he was about to take a beating again. He watched Saskia crack her knuckles and his heart sank. He’d never so much as laid a finger on her in ten sessions. She was just too fast and far too experienced for him.
“The circle is in place,” Saskia said. “The pain is a distraction. Avoid the barrier. Defend yourself!” The sparring match commenced.
Another hour of punishment followed. Though he was aching from a hundred carefully aimed blows, Brendan believed he was beginning to follow Saskia’s movements a little better. She came at him from every angle. Her movements were so fast that her limbs were mere blurs.
Brendan was having less trouble staying in warp mode. He found he could connect with something inside him, like a current of energy running under the surface of his skin. He realized that apart from being a pain in the butt last night and keeping him from getting a good night’s sleep, Charlie had perhaps helped him see what he had to do.
In the meantime, Brendan had been scorched, whacked, slapped, and tripped more times than he could count while never landing a solid blow on his opponent. Saskia looked as fresh as ever. Her skin was flushed and slick with sweat, but otherwise she seemed unaffected. Now she was stalking him around the circle in an effort to lay yet another beating on him.
Brendan was exhausted. He was bruised. He was more than a little sick of being a punching bag. He tried to imagine himself moving faster, warping more efficiently, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was in too much pain. He couldn’t turn off the part of his mind that shrilled in his ears that he wasn’t able to beat Saskia and shouldn’t try.
Then he remembered what Charlie had said as they sat on the dome under the stars, watching the Dawn Flyers. Sing a song inside your head. Brendan thought about that. It sounds crazy. I’ll probably just get my head knocked off, but at least there’ll be musical accompaniment.
He decided to sing a song that his father loved. One of Brendan’s earliest memories was of his dad rocking him to sleep and singing the song as he drifted off. It was a Scottish folk song, and probably the only song he knew all the words to. As Saskia crouched for a new attack, Brendan struggled to remember the lyrics.
In his head he sang,
Oh, you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland before you
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
He’d been thinking so hard about the words that he almost failed to see Saskia’s attack coming. He ducked under a roundhouse kick and stepped aside. Even so, she managed to clip him on the shoulder. His arm went numb to the fingers. Still, he’d dodged the worst of the blow. Saskia’s yellow eyes registered the slightest surprise before narrowing.
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
The words were coming easier now. Brendan could hear his father’s voice in his ear. He grinned, imagining what his dad would think if he knew that his son with the tin ear was singing, even in his head.
He tried to block out everything but the song. He tried to conjure the sound of it. His pain faded. He was vaguely aware that Saskia was swinging her fists at him, but her blows were so slow. So slow! His head wove from side to side as the song rumbled on in his head.
By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie bonnie braes
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond
There me and my true love spent many happy days
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
He was dancing along now. He shuffled and whirled in the circle, avoiding kicks and punches. He kicked into the chorus and felt the glory of the song fill him.
O ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye
But me and my true love will ne-er meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’.
Suddenly, a Moment crystallized. He saw Saskia, and it was as though the fierce woman were swimming in syrup. She ducked under a kick and prepared to rise at him with her right hand flat as a blade, driving for his chest.
Brendan almost laughed. It was too easy! He reached out with his left hand and grasped Saskia’s wrist, pulling her toward him. With his left he made a fist and, ducking low, drove it straight out from his shoulder, folding her over with a perfectly placed punch. There was a satisfying whoof as Saskia doubled over, falling backwards. Time returned to normal.
“I did it! I did it!” he crowed. Immediately, dismay flooded through Brendan. “Oh NO! What have I done? Saskia? Are you all right?” Instead of replying, Saskia lashed out with her leg and swept his feet out from under him. He fell to the floor with a loud crash. “Ooof.”
“Don’t let your guard down,” she wheezed. She forced herself to stand up.
Brendan pushed himself painfully to his feet, panic and remorse filling him at once. “Are you okay?” He turned to the spectators. “She needs help!” He ran to get a glass of water from the bar and ran smack into the circle barrier.
The flare of pain singed his nerves from head to toe. He fell to his knees, shivering. Still, his head was full of worry for Saskia. He looked down at the chalk line on the floor that was the circle’s boundary. His urgency made him see it clearly. The chalk line wasn’t solid. He could see each particle of chalk on the wooden grain of the floor, making up a seemingly unbroken line. But he could now see a break, a place where a minuscule span of floor was free of chalk dust. Without thinking, he reached over and wiped the chalk away on both sides with his index finger. He felt the circle collapse, the power draining away, a blizzard of bits of energy dispersing into the air of the Swan. He leapt to his feet and dashed to the bar. “A glass of water and a bag of ice, please, Leonard. Hurry!”
He knew immediately that something was up the way Leonard was staring at him. Nothing ever surprised Leonard. He was the bouncer in a Faerie bar, after all. But he was staring now.
Brendan mistook Leonard’s surprise for anger. Apologies tumbled out of his mouth. “I’m sorry I punched your girlfriend! It was an accident.”
That’s when he noticed the silence. Even BLT didn’t speak. She sat staring from the lip of her glass of diet cola, the straw in her hands forgotten. He realized that there was no sound in the bar save for the low drone of a golf game on one of the big screens. He slowly turned around to see that Saskia hadn’t moved from the centre of the circle.
“What?” Brendan asked. “What is it?”
“How?” she said.
“How what?”
“How did you break the circle?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, confused. “Did I do something wrong?” He looked up to see that Kim and Greenleaf were also staring at him. “Oh no. You all have that ‘Brendan did something impossible’ look on your faces.”
“It is impossible to break a circle drawn by another,” Saskia breathed.
“Oh.” Brendan winced. “By ‘impossible’ do you mean unlikely or … ”
“Impossible,” Greenleaf repeated, coming down the stairs from the balcony with Kim at his side. “A Faerie circle is a sacred thing tuned to its creator. No other can break it without permission.”
“Well, uh … How did I do it then?”
Greenleaf shook his head and smiled. “You really are a mystery to me, Brendan. You constantly confound all expectations.” He sat down on the stool beside Brendan. “What did you feel when you broke the circle? Do you remember?”
“Not really,” Brendan admitted. “I was tired. I was angry. I was fed up with that stupid barrier. I had to help Saskia.”
“What else?”
“I can’t think of anything else,” Brendan said, annoyed at the whine in his voice. “I just …”
“Yes,” Kim prompt
ed. “It’s really important.”
Brendan tried to remember the moment when he’d broken the circle. “I just saw the line. I saw that it was a little thinner at one point than everywhere else, and I wiped it away.”
“Well.” Greenleaf raised his eyebrows in amusement. “You are full of surprises, Brendan.”
Brendan snatched the glass of water from Leonard’s giant hands and took it to Saskia. “Here. I’m sorry.”
Saskia took the water and drank gratefully. She finally smiled and patted his cheek with her palm, a short, stinging slap. “Don’t worry about it. You think this hurts? I’ve had worse. You should be proud of yourself.”
“Proud?” Brendan said incredulously.
“Let’s just say you’ve made a breakthrough and leave it at that.” Saskia shrugged.
Brendan was about to apologize again when his eye caught a glimpse of the wristwatch Og had made for him.
“Holy crap! Is that the time?” Brendan said. “My mum is gonna kill me. I’ve gotta get home for dinner.” He grabbed his bag from the floor. BLT flitted to his shoulder. He called to Kim and Greenleaf, “I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”
Brendan hefted his school bag over his shoulder. He had a load of geometry to get through before he went to bed. Of course, he might not get to sleep if he went to bed. He didn’t know how long Charlie would let him rest tonight. As he walked out the front door, Finbar caught his eye. The old man winked at him and gave him the thumbs-up. Brendan merely shrugged and waved before leaving the Swan.
Greenleaf watched Brendan go. “I am at a loss as to how to help him. He seems so helpless most of the time, and then quite out of the blue he accomplishes something extraordinary.”
