Chalice of Life

by R. A. Rock

“What, you don’t think I make enough to buy one of these?”

  “The price will come down, but right now, I’m sure it’s out of your range. I saw your apartment, you know?”

  “Well, that’s insulting, immortal,” she said, throwing his nickname for her back in his face. “And the joke’s on you because there are no more pennies in Canada anymore—except digitally. So I can’t save them. I’ll have to save nickels instead. Or loonies would probably be better.”

  “Loonies?” Finn asked. “You’re going to collect crazy people?”

  Jayde leaned back and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a large golden coin and gave it to Finn.

  “That’s a loon,” she said as he examined the bird on the coin. “When Canada first switched to a one-dollar coin, people started calling them loonies because of the loon. And it kind of stuck.”

  She took back the loonie and handed him another coin. This one was large with an outer golden part and an inner silver part that sported the image of a polar bear.

  “This is a two-dollar coin,” she said. “Guess what it’s called?”

  Finn inspected it, gave it back to her, and held up his hands.

  “I can’t. I really can’t.”

  “We call it a Toonie. Like a loonie, but two?”

  “You crazy Canucks,” Finn said. “Damn, I love your language. Canadian English is even funnier than American English, I think. Tell me some other weird ones.”

  “We called a knitted winter hat a toque.” She pronounced it like it rhymed with spook. “And some people call boys’ underwear gitch, which is sort of funny. Or sometimes, it’s called gotch. That’s a bit of a debate.”

  “Gitch?” Finn was beside himself.

  She thought some more. “Americans call that fizzy drink we had with the chips last night soda. But we call it pop.”

  “More, more,” Finn demanded.

  Jayde grinned and shook her head.

  Ethan got out and made a disgusted sound as the entire vehicle was absolutely engulfed in enormous bugs, flying around it so thickly that he could hardly see. He swatted at them and moved away from the jet, which they seemed to be attracted to.

  The damn things that looked like enormous flies wouldn’t leave him alone, so he pushed a tiny magical force field out away from him, keeping them back. Tess and Finn were flapping their arms, trying to keep the bugs away too.

  Jayde walked in the midst of a cloud of them, unconcerned. She only swatted one if it landed on her.

  “What the hell is this, mortal?”

  “This,” she said, flourishing her hands. “Is July in Northern Manitoba. Home sweet home. Did I mention there would be horse flies?”

  “Horse flies?” Ethan said, looking in disgust at the large bugs that were nearly an inch long and almost half an inch wide.

  “Because they’re as big as a horse?” Jayde joked. “Just don’t let them land on you. They bite. Hard. Mostly, they don’t land, though. Just shoo them if they do.”

  “Ethan,” Tess said, giving him an annoyed look.

  “Tess.”

  She glared at him and he relented, spreading the tiny magical field over all of them, which kept the bugs back.

  “Thanks,” Jayde said. “That should keep the mosquitos and black flies away, too.”

  “Shadows take me, there are more kinds?” Finn said, aghast. “I’ve only ever seen the odd mosquito in Ahlenerra.”

  “Well, you’re in Kansas now, Finn.”

  “Ooh, ooh,” Finn said, brightening up. “I know that reference. You’re twisting the ‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore’ quote.”

  He sighed in contentment, kicking a bit of broken asphalt. “That’s one thing you humans do very well. Movies.” Then he frowned again. “I am not impressed with the bugs, though.”

  “Yeah, well, neither are we. And we didn’t invent bugs. But they are part of the ecosystem and very necessary, though, so don’t get any ideas that you should magic them away and starve all the animals that feed on them.”

  “Of course not, mortal,” Ethan said. “I’ve lived on Earth long enough to know the rules. It’s you humans who seem to have forgotten them.”

  “You have a point,” Jayde admitted. Then she turned back to Finn. “The mosquitos and blackflies are smaller and bite more. And more often. So watch out for them.”

  “This sucks.” Finn gazed out at the cloud of bugs that surrounded them.

  “Yeah. This is bug season. It lasts for a couple weeks at its worst. And we happen to have dropped in at its worst. Doesn’t help to complain about it, though. Especially when you’ve got magic bug spray so we don’t have to worry about them.”

  Jayde began walking across the parking lot toward the highway. “Let’s go. We need a guide to take us out to the Kettle Stones. We’ll ask around in town.”

  “I’ll have to drop the shield when we get close,” Ethan informed them.

  “It’s fine,” Jayde said. “There are worse things than a few bug bites. You’ll get used to it.”

  Tess was not getting used to it.

  Ethan had dropped the magical shield when they arrived on the outskirts of town so that they wouldn’t draw unwanted attention. And the bugs were terrible. A horsefly landed on her arm and she shook it off. There were about twenty all circling them and buzzing madly. It was very annoying. The more time she spent on the Earthly Realm, the more she started to understand just how much of a paradise Ahlenerra truly was. Tess scratched behind her ear and her finger came away bloody.

  “What the hell?”

  “Oh, you have to watch out for the blackflies,” Jayde told her. “They like to get into the hair and behind the ears. And they take a good chomp. Leaves blood sometimes.”

  “This place sucks,” Tess said.

  Jayde laughed. “Toughen up, faerie.”

  Tess smiled at the good-natured ribbing.

  The sun beat down as they trudged on the side of the highway and Tess felt a bead of sweat dripping down her back. Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves on the trees, which was a huge change from the prairie where the wind never seemed to stop. They finally arrived at the edge of town and the bugs seemed a little less dense.

  “Nice swan,” Finn said as they walked past the enormous white bird on their left and the car dealership on their right. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Jayde said. “I’ve only driven through here. But I’m looking for the local greasy spoon. The restaurant where everyone in town goes will have someone who will know someone who can help us.”

  “You want a greasy spoon? At a restaurant? That’s disgusting. Why wouldn’t they wash it?” Tess wondered what they had gotten themselves into, asking a human for help.

  “Greasy spoon means a local restaurant that’s not exactly high class,” Jayde explained, turning her head this way and that to see as much as she could. “This place is way more prairie-farming town than it is northern town. That’s for sure.”

  “Didn’t we see farms when we flew in?” Ethan said.

  “That’s right,” Jayde said, spotting someone. “We need to find someone to ask. I’ll just pop in there and be right back.”

  They waited on the cracked sidewalk while Jayde went in and talked to someone at the car dealership. She came out several minutes later, and by this time, Tess was getting impatient.

  “What’d you find out?” Finn asked. “Are we going to a greasy spoon?”

  “No need,” she said. “The guide that takes people out to Kettle Stone Provincial Park is the owner of the car dealership’s friend. The guide’s name is Conrad Beardy. The owner gave him a call and he’s going to meet us here.”

  “So now we have to wait around until this guy gets…” Finn trailed off as a beat-up old pickup truck with huge wheels roared into the parking lot.

  “We’re in a small town,” Jayde said, with a grin. “Every place is two minutes away.”

  The man parked the truck and got out. He walked slowly as
if he wasn’t in a rush, as if he had as much time as he needed. And when he walked around the car, Tess sensed something from him, though she wasn’t sure what.

  He was an indigenous man with brown skin and black hair that was short and neatly trimmed. He wore an old baseball cap and his jacket hung off of him. He seemed older than he looked, but Tess didn’t know why she thought that.

  “You guys need a guide to take you to the Kettle Stones?” he said in a quiet voice with only a hint of an accent.

  “We do,” Finn said.

  The man’s eyes locked with Finn’s and then he looked straight at Tess. He studied them, mild surprise in his eyes.

  “Okay then. You ready? Get in.”

  He puckered his lips and indicated the truck. Tess remembered that Jayde had done the same thing and she decided to ask her about it once they were settled in the vehicle. Then she took a second to actually look at it.

  The four of them stared at the beat-up old truck with the huge wheels.

  “Are we all going to fit?” Jayde said, her tone dubious.

  “There’s five seatbelts,” he informed them. Then he climbed back in, using the bar he had installed on the truck to pull himself in.

  Tess glanced at the others and then walked over to the truck, pulling herself in. The front seat was pushed forward.

  “Jump seats in the back,” Conrad said.

  Tess half climbed, half crawled into the back seat of the truck. There were two seats that flipped down. She flipped one and sat on it, awkwardly getting her seatbelt around her and clicked in.

  Jayde took the other jump seat. And once she was in, Finn got in next and sat in the middle seat of the bench, pulling a lap belt across his waist. Ethan climbed into the truck with an expression of distaste on his face.

  He did up his seatbelt and Tess repressed a laugh at how the three men were squashed in the front seat, like three peas in a pod.

  “Hey, Jayde,” Tess said, leaning forward and whispering as Conrad fiddled with the keys. “Why did he do that thing with his lips? I saw you do it too.”

  “What thing?” Jayde said, puzzled.

  Tess demonstrated, and Jayde laughed a little.

  “In Cree, and other cultures, it’s rude to point with your fingers. So we use our lips.”

  “Cool,” Tess said, sitting back.

  Conrad started the truck and the noise was deafening. He put it in gear and they drove out of the parking lot and back out of town. Until the truck got up to highway speed, the horse flies kept pace with it and Tess wrinkled her nose at the enormous, annoying insects. The windows were wide open and the hot summer air blew in, cooling them slightly but also adding to the noise.

  “It’s an hour drive,” Conrad said, raising his voice to be heard over the racket. “And the road is a little rough, so hang on.”

  He turned onto a trail in the bush, as Jayde called it, that could hardly be called a road and they started bouncing down it. Jayde grabbed for the handle that was fitted into the ceiling and Tess followed suit. She had never been jostled like this before, not even in the oldest wagon on the worst road in Ahlenerra. She only hoped she’d arrive there with all her teeth because at the moment, she felt as if they would clatter right out of her head.

  She focused on her goal to keep her mind off the discomfort.

  They were going to get the Chalice.

  And they were going to get back to Ahlenerra and save Finn.

  And they were going to get the other artifacts.

  And they were going to end the Severance and unite all the Fae.

  It was going to be great.

  If she could just survive this truck ride into the middle of nowhere.

  Chapter 43

  When the truck finally jolted to a stop, Ethan threw open the door and jumped out immediately. He had never had such a horrible ride in his life. They had driven down this road that was barely a deer trail in the forest and he thought his brains would rattle out of his skull from the bouncing.

  Standing on the ground in the forest, he took a breath, calming his irritation. The late afternoon air was hot but less so because the trees created some shade. Ethan could smell the freshness of the lake from here, with his heightened senses, and he took a few steps in that direction, wishing for a moment that they could go swimming. It was so damn hot. He felt as though he was melting. He was sweating everywhere. He was—

  Then Ethan stepped over an invisible line and sensed it.

  All his complaints disappeared.

  Now this was more like it.

  The place was pulsing with magic. Possibly more than at the Omahk.

  Jayde’s calculations were right.

  The Kettle Stones were at another magic point and it was highly likely that the King really had buried the Chalice here.

  “This way,” Conrad said, taking off through the forest on no path that Ethan could see. They all hastened after him, not wanting to be left behind. Ethan was the first in line. He followed him at a distance, studying him and trying to figure out what was different about this human.

  But he couldn’t figure it out until they arrived at the Kettle Stones and Ethan switched to scanning for magic. Once he did this, the human fairly lit up.

  “What the hell?” Ethan said, so surprised he stopped walking.

  “What are you doing, Ethan?” Tess said, annoyed as she bumped into his back.

  Finn and Jayde walked around them and began admiring the huge stones.

  “You can sense magic in someone, right?” Ethan said in a low voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, sense him.”

  Tess frowned at him and closed her eyes. They flew open again a few seconds later.

  “What the Chasm?” Tess stared at Conrad. “Why does the human have magic?”

  “He doesn’t just have magic. He’s brimming over with it.” Ethan stepped closer to Tess and spoke into her ear. “What if he’s part of it?”

  “Part of… ohhh.”

  “What if he’s a guardian that the King left?”

  “Then we have to convince him to show us the way in.”

  “Agreed.”

  “With force, if necessary.”

  “It’s usually the only way to get through to humans,” Ethan said.

  “You’re kind of prejudiced against them, you know that?” Tess said, giving him a disapproving look.

  “That’s what happens when you live among them for so long. And anyway, so are you and Finn. Don’t pretend you don’t look down on them.”

  “Fine. But I like Jayde. She’s one of the good ones.”

  “Agreed. What should we do?”

  “I’ve been wanting to try this gun out,” Tess said, patting the holster she had on her side, under her jacket. “You have one too, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, let’s pull them and see if he’ll talk.”

  “You sure? What about Jayde and Finn?”

  “Guns always work. I’ve watched a lot of movies since we arrived. And Finn and Jayde want to get the Chalice as much as we do. They’ll go along with it.”

  Ethan shrugged. “Okay.”

  They took their handguns out of their holsters and strode across the clearing.

  “Hands up, Conrad,” Tess said, planting her feet and holding the gun with straight arms the way Ethan had taught her. Then she took a calculated risk and called him out on his secret. “Or should I call you Sakiwayo?”

  Conrad raised his hands and met Tessa’s eyes. She was shocked by what she saw. The man was exhausted, though that really didn’t cover the depth of how tired he was.

  “Show us the way in, Conrad,” Ethan said, standing beside her and holding his gun on him, too.

  “What the hell are you two doing?” Jayde said, angry at this display of violence. “Put the guns down.”

  “He has magic, Jayde,” Tess told her, not dropping the gun an inch.

  “Humans always respond to having their lives threatened,” Ethan tol
d Jayde. “This one will too. He’s something to do with the Chalice.”

  Conrad frowned, his hands dropping. “You know about the Chalice? You’re here from the Great Chief from afar? He’s sent you at last?”

  Ethan and Tess exchanged glances.

  “Yes,” she said. “Finn and I are…”

  “Mannegishi,” he filled in for her. “I know. Your King was here. And he ruined my life.”

  “Sakiwayo, we’re really sorry about what happened to you,” Jayde said. “My Kookum always said—”

  But Conrad didn’t let her finish. “You’re sorry? You’re sorry?” He gave her a sour glance. “What would your Kookum know about what I’ve been through?” He shook his head. “You know the history of our people?”

  “Of course.”

  “So can you imagine having to watch it?” he asked. “All of it? There is no worse punishment.”

  “What do you mean, Conrad?” Finn said, troubled.

  The question seemed to unleash something in Conrad. When he began to speak, fire lit his eyes and anger infused his every movement. This Sakiwayo was so different from the quiet, downtrodden Conrad they had met in town that he seemed like a different person.

  “I am not Conrad. I have never been Conrad. I am Sakiwayo.” And as he said these words, his back straightened, and his eyes cleared, and Tess saw a flash of the man he had once been.

  “Your damn faerie King showed up here thousands of years ago and I saved him. Stupid, kind man that I was. Otherwise, he would have died. Or whatever. His body would have frozen and he would have had to heal for months or even years. It would have been highly unpleasant for him. And I got the feeling that something big was happening back home for him and he didn’t want to miss out on what was going on.”

  “The Severance and everything that happened after it,” Tess whispered to Ethan, dropping her gun. Ethan dropped his, too. He stood slightly behind her and they both listened to Sakiwayo’s story.

  “So I saved him. Brought him water in that damned cup. And he was fine. Like he’d never had frostbite, never been exposed to the elements. As good as new.”

  He continued to pace the clearing as he spoke.