Hound

by Caleb James

  After class, Luluba tagged at his heels as he headed toward the asylum and his dreaded session with May. She was troubled, but in his fogged state, Redmond didn’t notice.

  “It’s her,” Luluba said in a tremulous voice. “She’s back. I don’t see how that’s possible.” She lowered her voice. “She’s locked up in the hospital. She can’t be both locked up and free… as some sort of fire-breathing salamander.”

  Redmond listened with half his attention. The other part ruminated on how he’d make it through today’s session with the coalescing and convalescing queen. “It’s rare, what she has done.”

  “She’s carnivorous,” Luluba stated.

  “Yes, they both are.” They approached the first security gate outside the forensic hospital. Uniformed ogres inspected their palms to verify their identities. The outer wards came down, and he and Luluba entered. He emptied his pockets in bins as a flock of pixies scanned for contraband.

  “So the salamander is her… and what you have locked up is her,” Luluba whispered. “I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

  Despite his funk, Redmond chuckled.

  Luluba caught his drift. “If it’s possible, then it’s probable, which means it’s true.”

  “Exactly. Queen May split in two. The difficulty being, or rather her problem is, she is in a severe schizo-diddled state that is worsened by her frequent forays between the worlds. Her cleverness and machinations have cost her.”

  “You can fix her,” Luluba said with admiration.

  “I believe so. Our problem is that by fixing her I screw each and every one of us. We know what she’s capable of. What I don’t yet grasp is the method behind her madness.”

  “Queen of three worlds seems a good place to start. She’s power mad. It’s narcissism on steroids. It’s always been and always will be about her her her,” Luluba stated.

  “Yes, but deeper. The creature you describe devouring all that come in her path is a symptom.” He paused. She suffers from her own addiction to power. It’s a hunger without end. “It’s a part of May, and what we have locked deep in the earth is another part. But even with the two put back together, she will still not be whole, and that’s been the mystery. Some crucial piece has been lost to her.” He turned to Luluba as they approached the sweeping circular stairs. “No.” He read eagerness to join him. “You see your patients, and I will see mine.” He had few illusions about May’s capacities. From the moment Lizbeta had first come with her proposal, he’d known the truth. This will not end well. One slip and I’m dead. His head, clearer than an hour ago, still rang with traces of a dustover. He paused. And you’ve already made that slip.

  Thirteen

  IT FELT familiar and strange as Finn took the Fort Tryon Park ramp off the Henry Hudson Parkway and followed Charlie’s SUV up the steep, winding drive to the castle-like Cloisters.

  He’d never gone inside, though he knew it housed the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of medieval artifacts. He parked and got out. It was near dark, and the grounds would soon close.

  It’s Tuesday, he thought as he took in his surroundings. It’s May. The sun is setting, the trees are green, and I’m out of my fucking mind being here. He watched as Charlie, Liam, Alex, and Jerod piled out of Charlie’s pickup truck. I’m just with a bunch of guys… and one of them has a bare-breasted fairy with swirly tattoos and butterfly wings on his shoulder. Nothing wrong with that.

  “This way,” Charlie said as he took Liam’s hand. “Come on.”

  Finn trailed behind as they left the asphalt drive for one paved walkway after another and then through a hedge and onto obscured deer trails that cut through the otherwise gracefully manicured acres of the park. The ground squished from recent rains and last fall’s leaves. Here and there he glimpsed the glittering gray surface of the Hudson River hundreds of feet below.

  What am I doing here? He looked up and caught Nimby staring at him from atop Alex’s shoulder. Their gazes connected. She nodded but did not speak. Instead she threw her arms around Alex’s neck and kissed him on the cheek.

  Alex turned. “What is with you?”

  “No questions,” Nimby said and turned back to Finn. “Ask no questions. Remember that.”

  “Okay,” Finn said, his gut telling him to get out of there. A twig snapped under someone’s heel. He startled. A leaf brushed his face. Why is Nimby staring at me? Every time he looked up, those red eyes were on him, studying him. “What? Why are you looking at me?”

  Nimby shook her head. “No questions, Finn Hulain. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. If you give, it must be free.”

  “Awesome.” The unmarked path they’d followed led to a meadow that had escaped the park’s ground crew.

  “Shit.” It was too familiar as the night of a thousand fires thundered back. Because there, in the middle of an overgrown field of dandelion and wild pansy-faced viola, towered the weeping mulberry. It was into the bower of that tree that Charlie had followed Liam and the beast and they had vanished… for a month.

  Charlie whispered, “Into the breach.” And he and Liam went hand in hand through the tree’s dense curtain of limbs and heart-shaped leaves. Jerod and Alex followed Nimby, whose gaze never left Finn, seemed terrified. Perhaps it was a trick of the dimming light, but to Finn, it appeared as if the leaves parted and swallowed her.

  “Crap.” He inhaled deep and, putting his hands in front of his face to avoid getting scratched, followed.

  It was pitch-black inside. Finn pulled out his cell and clicked on the Maglite. Alex and Charlie did the same.

  Nothing happened.

  “It’s not working,” Alex said. He looked at Liam, born fey but stripped of much of his magic as the cost of his passage between realms. “Tell me what you feel.”

  “Nothing. The only magic in this place is love. Mine for Charlie, yours for Jerod. Even Nimby’s for you.”

  “Awesome,” Finn groaned as he shone the light on Nimby, who was trembling. She bit into her lip with a sharp fang-like tooth. She looked like she wanted to scream.

  “There is magic here,” Nimby said. Her eyes glowed red. She screamed, “It’s coming! It’s tricky, trappy! Alex. I love you. I’m sorry. Goodbye….”

  Finn felt it too. A tingle in his belly, not like nerves but like bees. It buzzed. “Guys, something’s happening.”

  He searched for them with his light but found only darkness and the red eyes of the terrified fairy. “Something’s happening. Alex! Charlie! Guys, where are you?”

  Nimby howled. “No questions!”

  The buzzing belly bees spread. Stunned into silence, Finn felt the air rush out, like being sucked through a giant vacuum. “Holy shit.” The earth canted, and his feet left the ground. His stomach lurched, and he had the sensation of floating and then of falling. Something landed on his shoulder. Tiny claws gripped his shirt and broke through his flesh. Jabs of pain and Nimby’s frightened voice as she clung to him. “I’ve given away my Alex. My Alex. I have little time and must soon pay. Oh. No no no.” The fairy looked at Finn with glowing eyes. She spoke fast, as though needing to confess before whatever was about to happen arrived.

  As they fell, she clung to his shoulder as her words tumbled forth. All the rules for the fey. Like she was reciting lessons to a child. “Questions come with cost, so ask none. Neither a borrower or a lender be. At day’s end, everything must balance. What is taken must be replaced. And the travel between worlds always comes at a cost. The fey will tell you the truth, but it’s often laced with tricky and trappy.”

  Finn tried to speak.

  “Shh. I speak. You listen. You have a part to play and a path to follow. I do not know what it is, but if you listen, and not with your ears, you will find it. Open yourself to the winds. It’s how magic comes in. Not through the brain or the ears or the eyes or the nose. You’ve another sense, Finn Hulain, though humans have fallen out of practice.”

  The air shifted, and a salt breeze washed across his face. Bile rose in t
he back of his throat, and like an elevator coming to a stop, something cushioned their descent onto a moonlit meadow. His feet touched down, and he gazed up at a star-filled sky and a bloodred crescent moon.

  He whispered, “Alex! Charlie! Liam! Jerod!” There was no reply.

  Nimby’s teeth chattered.

  He looked at the little fairy as she did deep knee bends on his shoulder. Her hands flew to either side of her face, and she grinned, though it seemed more grimace than smile. Her lips parted, and at the top of her tiny lungs, she sang and did whip-fast pirouettes on his shoulder. “I’m a little teapot short and stout….” She did not stop.

  Fourteen

  ALONE IN his chambers, Redmond stared at two brownish dust bunnies he’d purchased after work. They looked like small dirty eggs. I should have bought more. You bought too much. One is too much. You know that. It’s as though a part of his brain had separated from him. Or maybe this is just who and what I am… a dusthead. Once a dusthead, always a…. He tried to hold on to the rational part of himself. The part that had achieved so much in his life, that had built the Center into the premier institute for the psychological study and betterment of all sentient beings in the Unsee. But it had become so much more. It was a haven… the haven. What are you doing? Shut up already and eat it. He was at war… with himself. He knew this battle was lost.

  Yesterday he’d finished work and found his way to the alleys of the capital. The horse knows the way… to the streets where a hundred years earlier he had skulked in the shadows waiting for his dealer and his fix. His face concealed, hidden by a dingy scarf. Little had changed; only the prices of dust had come down. It’s too cheap. Someone… something has flooded the market. He’d pulled out the coin and paid the blue-skinned sprite. It was easy.

  “And here I am. Once a dusthead, always a dusthead.” Saliva welled in his mouth. As he reached for the bunny, a high-pitched noise came through the windows. The song of a lone female pixie.

  “I’m a little teapot short and stout. Here is my handle. Here is my spout. I’m a little teapot short and stout. Here is my handle. Here is my spout….”

  He paused. Is that real? Am I hearing this? He wondered if the off-kilter singing was a symptom of one of the later stages of dust addiction, where hallucinations were common, though more typically visual than auditory. He went to the window and peered into the night, toward the meadows that ringed the Center. The cool air helped, and the little creature’s song reeked of madness. At least it’s not my madness.

  Careful to not handle their sticky surface with his bare skin, he pushed the dust bunnies back into their clear package and dropped them into his stash box, hidden inside a drawer. He locked it with a chant.

  “Duty call.” He belted on a robe and flew on the currents into the night. He mentally cataloged the patients. There were only a few pixies in the current census. It took a lot for someone that small to do something so big that it could get them locked away at the Center. Someone has gotten out. But who? He thought to call security, but having a troop of uniformed ogres hunt down a lone pixie seemed overkill.

  Riding the cool night air, he followed the song. It didn’t vary, the same two lines over and over. As he neared its source, he hovered and reassessed the situation. Yes, one mad tattoo-covered pixie, dancing and singing, and something unexpected… a human man seated on the ground with hair the colors of fire and ice. The pixie’s tune changed. She pointed up at him. “Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are.”

  Sounds like my cue, and more curious than cautious, he touched down. The man’s gaze followed him. His jaw hung slack, and his incredulous expression told Redmond he was a new arrival. It also spoke to the cause of the pixie’s obvious madness… travel sickness. One broken little pixie. But why and…. “You’re not from around here,” Redmond said as he took in the odd duo, seemingly dropped in the middle of a heavily protected field.

  The man stood and started to speak. “Wha….” And then stopped. “I’m trying to figure out how to do this without questions.”

  “Someone has prepared you. You are from the See.” Redmond took in the well-built man, with his flaming locks gone silver at the temples and dark, soulful eyes. Neither young or old and… beautiful.

  “She did,” the man said, motioning to the little fairy who was oblivious to either one of them as she trilled from nursery rhyme to nursery rhyme with accompanying jigs, reels, and a bit of ballet.

  “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily.” She giggled and made rowing gestures. As her wings beat out of tune, she spun in circles.

  “She’s broken,” Redmond stated. Something tugged at his heart as he realized that human and fey alike had to pay for the travel. The pixie was pixiellated, but the human…. Redmond shifted to a more clinical appraisal of the situation. The pixie is broken, but the man… a fine-looking man. “Tell me your name.”

  “Finn. Tell me yours.”

  He paused. Normally it would be Dr. Fall, but that’s not what came out of his mouth. “It’s Redmond, and you’re on the grounds of the Center.”

  Finn extended a hand.

  While not a fey custom, Redmond knew what was expected. What was unexpected was the moon’s glow in Finn’s eyes and the strength in his grip. It mesmerized, and the contact was like a cleansing wind that washed away Redmond’s earlier despair. “Tell me if you’re hurt,” he said.

  Finn shook his head. “No pain. Confused, but nothing hurts.” He looked down at their still joined hands and then back to Redmond. The two stood, seemingly frozen, each thinking the other would speak.

  Nimby broke the spell. She sang at the top of her lungs. The pitch grew higher and higher, like a teakettle set to boil. “Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posy, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” And then she screamed.

  Fifteen

  SALAMANDER MAY howled, though she did not know why. Something tore deep in her chest. She thrashed on the ground and spat random projectiles of fairy fire. Some immolated members of the drug-hungry throng that trailed her. Here and there a pixie, sprite, brownie, or ogre went up in flames. It smelled like cookies at a barbecue.

  Dorothea stroked her shoulder. “Tell me your pain, my queen.”

  The ache in her chest was unexpected. I know this.

  “Show me,” Dorothea urged. “Let me help.”

  May saw flashes of the Hound, a red-haired shifter. A spell learned on her mother’s knee flashed through her mind and out of Dorothea’s lips.

  “With a mickle and a care, I will go into a hare.”

  No. May pictured the tough rabbits and hares that populated the Unsee, as well as the occasional puka who held obeisance to the Goddess of a thousand names whose symbols were the owl, the moon, and the hare. Not a hare… a hound.

  She sniffed. Something was different. Something lost and something gained. She pounded the ground with her tail, her thinking even more muddled.

  “Your sisters’ spells still cloud these memories. You must be stronger than their magic to take back what’s been stolen.”

  Yes. Good friend. Good advice. Mustn’t eat her. Instead she grabbed an ogre from the ranks and bit off his head. The magic in his blood and bones helped clear her thoughts. The haffling, third time’s a charm.

  She howled again as blood trickled from her maw and stained her hide.

  “The child fled, Your Majesty. We were there. You must remember.”

  He’s gone. I was there. I don’t remember.

  “Because of the spell,” Dorothea stated. “It lingers. It’s sticky and tricky. The instant you turn away from it, it grabs hold again. I am under no such enchantment. I will be your memory.”

  Rage, frustration, her sisters’ magic blinded May. But something else, it filtered up her nostrils and sizzled in her brain. Not a hare… a hound.

  “Exactly.” Dorothea hesitated. “He was both enemy and lover. And from what I glimpse in your mind’s eye, he was both human, though remark
able, and had a second nature. He shifted into a beast, a dog, though unlike any I’ve encountered.”

  May, with the ogre’s booted legs still in her mouth, shook her head from side to side. She bounced once to clear room in her belly and sucked the last of him down. It helps. She let her thoughts drift to wondrous nights spent in bed with the Hound of Hulain. I remember. Though it was hard. She saw a massive curtain-draped bed with a beautiful man naked and twisted in the sheets… in her arms. Their nights of passion. But just as she tried to hold on to the feel of his flesh on hers, a wall of forgetfulness clouded the edges of her thoughts. No.

  “I am here for you. I will hold all your memories. I will remind you that you gave him your heart and that we hunt for it now. But there is something more. It’s gone beyond a memory.”

  His scent.

  “Yes,” Dorothea stated. “You smell him, and not just in your mind’s eye. If he has smell, then he is real… he is here, though I can’t say how such a thing is possible.

  He’s here. He’s back. He’s come back for me. She inhaled deep. I know that smell. It rolled around in her brain, and no amount of Lizbeta’s and Katya’s tricks could push the intoxicating blend of musk and man away. He’s come back for me.

  Dorothea nodded. “This troubles me. The Hound should have perished more than two millennia ago in human years. When a fey snatches a human babe, they last a good couple hundred years, maybe even three, of their time, but not this long.”

  May barely listened. The smell rekindled wondrous feelings. His flesh against hers. Darker feelings intruded. He hurt me. I hurt. She turned on her hind legs to where the scent came strongest. I will find him.

  “Yes,” Dorothea said. “You will, and I will help.”

  If salamanders could have smiled, May would have. I will find him. There will be no tricky. There will be no trappy. She turned to look at Dorothea, with her pincer gently rested on her flank. Take back what’s mine.