Changeling Hunter

by Frank Hurt

  “Red ribbons?” Ember looked to Stephanie for translation.

  “Last week was 4-H Achievement Days up in Stanley.” Stephanie smiled at her children. “They entered the beef judging event.”

  “Except ours are dairy calves. Mine’s a heifer,” Marta said.

  “And mine’s a steer,” Maxim added. “Do you want to see them?”

  Stephanie shook her head. “Oh, kids, Ember’s got to get back to work. She’s much too busy.”

  “It’s alright, really.” Ember smiled at the twins. “I’d love to see your calves. Show me?”

  The children found a new reserve of energy, as they yelled out a cheer before racing across the yard, down to an enclosed wooden fence attached to the old barn. Ember and Stephanie walked at a much more leisurely pace. Lucky, realizing belatedly that attention was being focused elsewhere, grabbed her pig ear and ran full tilt back to the corral, beating the adults to the finish line.

  Three yearling calves were standing in the corral. A black steer laid in the shade next to the barn. Two ruddy brown-and-white calves ran up to Maxim and Marta, who fumbled with pulling bright-colored halters on their animals. The calf Maxim worked with soon wore a blue halter around its face, while Marta’s calf wore purple. When the buckles on the halters were clasped, the kids attached lead ropes with a spring-loaded clip to the small steel hoop at the base of the halters. The calves offered no resistance and followed their handlers obediently as they were led around the small corral.

  “They’re, um…pretty.” Ember struggled to think of an appropriate observation. “What are their names?”

  “This is Dexter,” Maxim pet the neck of his calf.

  Marta spoke in a squeaky voice, “Mine’s Dee Dee. They’re red Guernseys. Boy and girl. Twins, like us!”

  “Dexter’s not a boy anymore,” Maxim said. “He’s a steer.”

  “He’s still mostly a boy,” Marta shrugged. “And anyway, they don’t have to be hamburger anymore!”

  Ember blinked and realized her mouth had opened involuntarily. She gave Stephanie a bemused expression.

  Stephanie’s smile turned into a full grin. “I know it probably sounds crazy to a city girl, but that’s farm life. After the livestock judging is complete, people bid on the calves, and the steers are taken to feedlots where they are eventually slaughtered. The heifers sometimes are too, unless they have good genetics for breeding stock.”

  “But Dexter and Dee Dee don’t have to become hamburger now.” Marta hugged her 800-pound calf around its neck and burrowed her nose into its auburn hide. “Uncle Rik bought them, so they can live long, happy lives with us. He said he would sell us their hay for one dollar.”

  “One dollar, each,” Maxim corrected. Dexter found the edge of his owner’s sleeve and began sucking on the fabric.

  Ember felt a lump form in her throat. “Your Uncle Rik did that? He bought Dexter and Dee Dee so that they can be your pets? So, what’s the other calf’s story? The black one over there in the shade?”

  “Oh, he’s their friend,” Maxim explained as though he was explaining the obvious. “He’s a black Angus.”

  Marta leaned against Dee Dee’s shoulder. “This one girl named Alice, she—"

  “Her name’s Elise.”

  “Oh yeah. Her name’s Elise. She won a blue ribbon for her calf.” Marta laid her head against the docile heifer as she talked. “When it came time for the auction, Elise cried. She didn’t want Coal to be sold to a feedlot.”

  “She cried like a baby,” Maxim said as he pulled his soggy sleeve from Dexter’s mouth. “But she’s only eight or nine.”

  “I think she’s nine.” Marta offered a shrug that mirrored her mother’s. “Uncle Rik bought Elise’s calf, too, and told her that she could come visit him anytime.”

  “Her family lives near Palermo.” Maxim was pushing against Dexter’s nose with futile effort. The steer’s long tongue curled up and licked at the boy’s shirt. “When we showed her Dexter and Dee Dee, she renamed her steer to Mandrake.”

  “Mandrake?” Ember raised an eyebrow and laughed. “Where do you kids come up with these names?”

  “Dexter’s Laboratory,” the twins both said in unison.

  “It’s a silly cartoon they watch,” Stephanie explained.

  “It’s not silly, Mom,” Max grunted as his calf got hold of his shirt sleeve again. “Dexter, behave! Can’t you see we have company?”

  The inimitable crackle and glow of an arc welder flickered from within the biggest outbuilding at Alarik’s farmstead. Ember drove the rented SUV up to the open door and got out. She thought she would sneak up on him, but even with a welding helmet on, the changeling was not caught unaware.

  “Hey, what’re you doing here?” Alarik flipped the helmet up. He extended his steel-toed Red Wing and flipped the power off for the Lincoln Electric welder. A loud “click” preceded a diminuendo hum within the boxy red contraption.

  “Nice to see you, too!” She mock-punched him in the chest. The smell of burning electrodes and melted steel hung heavy around the man. It was a scent that reminded her of when they first met, not too many weeks ago.

  “What did you do to your arm? Let me guess: another beating from Debra?”

  Ember shrugged self-consciously. “I actually held my own against her this morning. Well, for a whole minute, anyway. She doesn’t pull any punches, to be sure. I’m learning a lot.”

  “It’s always good to learn how to get your ass kicked. Want a beer?” He removed his helmet and hooked it on a corner of the project he was assembling. Alarik stepped over cables and lengths of cut angle iron on his way to the shop refrigerator.

  “Let’s see,” Ember unfolded a finger for each of her points. “It’s not even noon yet. I haven’t eaten lunch. I still have to get back to work. I’m technically on the clock even now.”

  “So that’s a ‘yes,’ right?” Alarik grinned as he reached into the fridge. “Do you like dark beer? One of the derrick hands at a drilling rig told me about this one from Texas. It’s called Shiner Bock. I’ve gotta say, once I tasted it, I realized I’ve been drinking gutter water all these years.”

  “With an endorsement like that, now I’ve got to try it,” Ember smirked. “Bugger responsibilities, yeah?”

  “Bugger ‘em all to hell, Guv’ner.”

  “Are you mocking me, Mister Schmitt?” Alarik’s poor impression of an English accent reminded her of the Third-Floor receptionist at the embassy building. Joy, the sugar glider changeling, made a hobby out of speaking in terrible accents.

  “That’s preposterous.” He twisted the cap off with his soot-colored hands and handed her a dark, long-neck bottle. The opaque glass was cloaked in an old-fashioned style golden label featuring a ram’s head logo.

  She sipped the lager and studied the text. “’Nothing’s finer than a Shiner.’ They’re rather confident, these Texans.”

  “You have no idea.” Alarik grinned before tipping the bottle up to his lips.

  “I don’t drink much, but this is pretty decent. I’ll remember this one next time I try organizing a piss-up in a brewery.” She preemptively held her other hand up. “Never mind, don’t ask for a translation, Yankee.”

  “No, of course not,” he murmured. “So how did the Healer work out?”

  “Doctor Gloria Rout is rather full of herself,” Ember sighed. “But I’ve got to give her a chance. So far, not much progress though. She’s going to stay over at your folks’ place and try to see how she might use the Aedynar Artifact. She already connected with your brother’s aura.”

  “Arnie’s been doing a little better lately. He’s been sleeping some and helping me out on welding jobs at well sites. Not full days, but for a few hours here and there.” Alarik picked at the corner of his beer bottle’s label. “It’s probably too much to hope that she might figure this artifact thing out, huh?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Rik. She can’t have any worse luck than I’ve had in trying to use it.” She pointed a
t the mess of iron in the shop. “What’re you building?”

  “Oh, it’s just a feed trough. For my niece and nephew’s calves.”

  “I got to meet them this morning,” Ember smiled. “Dexter and Dee Dee, and their friend Mandrake. You are such a sweetheart. Uncle of the Year, yeah?”

  Alarik looked pensive. “I’d do anything for those kids.”

  “I don’t doubt it. And the little girl from Palermo? Elise?”

  “If you would have seen her, Ember. That poor kid was crying so hard. She loves that steer of hers like a pet.”

  “I can’t imagine asking a kid to raise a calf, train it to follow them around, and then sell it for slaughter.” Ember shuddered. “It’s barbaric.”

  “It’s how we farm kids were raised. It’s the circle of life.” Alarik sounded defensive. “If you enjoy steaks, where do you think—”

  “I know, I know. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve. I was insulated from the realities of our food supply, I know that. For me, food comes from a grocery store. I’m learning a lot spending time with you and your family. Just be patient with me, yeah?”

  Alarik scratched the stubble on his square jaw. “It’s different when they become pets. I remember when I was the twins’ age and in 4-H. It always made me sad to know that the steer that I bottle fed and curry combed and halter broke would be sent to a feedlot somewhere. But I also knew that was the way of things. It’s the circle of life, all that shit.”

  Ember chose her words carefully. “So why did you rescue the twin’s and Elise’s calves?”

  “Because I can.” He shrugged. “Because doing that made three little kids happy. They’ll have the rest of their lives to discover the cruel realities of life, but for this one moment they can still be little kids.”

  “You’re a big softy, Rik.”

  “Don’t let my secret out, mage.”

  “I won’t, coyote. I’ll add it to the growing list of secrets we share.”

  He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Are you going to the Brooks and Dunn concert at the State Fair on Friday with Anna?”

  “I plan to, though I’ve never heard of the band before,” Ember admitted. “You’re going to be there too, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I plan on it, but I’ve been getting a lot of emergency calls from operators. Last minute break-downs. When the toolpushers are desperate, they all but give me a blank, signed check. This oil boom won’t last forever; gotta make hay while the sun still shines.”

  Ember felt a tinge of disappointment. She was hoping to see him in a social setting, even with his sister present. She finished her beer and deposited the bottle in a steel barrel that served as a trash can. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll leave you to your project. I’m off to visit your landfill.”

  “You’re going to check on the bodies again? They haven’t gone anywhere since the last time you went to the garbage pit.” The grey soot of burnt flux formed dark furrows in his brow. “What are you doing out there, anyway? Are you talking to their ghosts?”

  6

  Magic Malvern Hex Shit

  His remark was meant to be facetious when he asked her about visiting with ghosts, but Alarik had no way of knowing how accurate his jest was. Ember thought that someday, she would tell him about her more arcane abilities. Just not today.

  She left the rented Highlander in his yard and walked through Alarik’s pasture on the backside of his property. The ground was too rough to risk high-centering and damaging the SUV’s undercarriage. In any case, it was no chore to stroll through the bluestem grass and purple coneflowers on a hot summer day with meadowlarks singing and pheasants running ahead as escorts. Pity the destination is so dreadful.

  It wasn’t the garbage pit that made her trepidatious, but what was buried among the trash. After Anna Schmitt and her Uncle Boniface buried the three bodies, Ember insisted on being shown the location. The deceased had been spying on her under orders from a corrupt bureaucrat. They had gone rogue and attacked her at a rest area east of Devils Lake.

  Scarcely two weeks had passed since the kidnapping attempt. The memories—and the scar on her chest—were still fresh. It was the reason she now trained so intensely in personal defense, and why she had become so much more aware of her surroundings. She nearly became a victim that day. If Alarik and Anna hadn’t arrived when they did, in all likelihood it would be her body feeding the worms right now. Those three bastards got what they deserved.

  Even so, she never reported their deaths to the authorities at the Viceroyalty. She never even told Duncan Heywood, the Senior Investigator who was technically her supervisor while she was staying in the Magic City colony. She would probably have been vindicated of any potential formal charges, acting as she was in self-defense. Reporting the deaths would have also revealed that she was no longer under the effects of Elton Higginbotham’s Deference Spell, and with that, her cover would be blown—along with any hope of discovering how deep the corruption went.

  Ember felt completely justified in the actions she took, not only because she was defending herself, but because she was acting to protect others from shady elements within the bureaucracy. But by refusing to report her actions, she was technically contravening Druwish Law, and her own oath under the Investigator’s Creed.

  She cleared her throat and recited the sacred words. “I, Ember Wright, do swear by the spirits of my ancestors that I will well and truly serve the Druw High Council and uphold The Council's Law in words and in deeds. I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of The Council, without fear or favor, affection or ill will.”

  What does it mean when justice and the law are not precisely identical? When I start choosing which laws to follow to the letter and which ones to bend—no matter how good the rationale—am I not treading on a slippery slope?

  Ember chose to blame her introspective mood on consuming alcohol before lunch. It didn’t help that with each step she felt rising dread for the interrogation she was preparing to initiate. Maybe this time I’ll actually learn something from them.

  Cut into the bank of a narrow gully in the pasture, Alarik’s landfill was mostly filled with the trash of previous generations of the small farmstead’s residents. Rusted appliances from the 1960s laid on their sides next to gutted box spring mattresses and broken plastic children’s toys from the 1970s. Rabbit-eared television sets mingled with weathered furniture and glass bottles. Broken tree branches were piled high, the bark darkened from the Dutch Elm Disease infestation which necessitated their culling from the shelterbelt. All of it would get buried and forgotten in time.

  Until then, Ember had questions that still needed answering.

  She found the disturbed soil within the pit, at the foot of a steep earthen ledge decorated with broken fence posts and rusted rolls of woven wire. She stood atop the shallow grave, closed her eyes, and steeled herself for the subjects. Maybe this time the bloody wankers will cooperate.

  “I call on the ones known as Doug, as Matty, as Josh. Awaken, you three, and speak with me.” She decided to keep her tone civil—for now.

  The high-pitched hiss of a turkey buzzard startled her, even though Ember knew to expect it. She turned and saw the dark-winged bird peering at her from within the burnt-out husk of a discarded tractor cab. The apparition was transparent, and when it hopped up through the hole where a window used to be, she saw that its eye sockets were empty.

  The crow made its appearance next, soundlessly flapping its wings while it stared at her accusingly from atop a rotted fence post.

  “Josh. Doug. Nice of you to join me,” Ember nodded at the two birds. Though the sun was high in the noon sky, the air grew chilly. “Where’s your buddy?”

  “What d’ya want, bitch?” A dark-haired young man sleeved in tattoos floated through the knotted stack of rusted woven wire. His features glowed a dim, transparent cobalt, and like his friends, he watched her sullenly with empty eye sockets. “Ya come to bury us proper? Instead of at
a fuckin’ dump?”

  The crow flapped its wings and called out its vulgarity, “cunt!” It seemed to be the only word Doug was capable of pronouncing in the afterlife.

  She looked through the ghost of Matt. Rotting tractor tires formed a backdrop, making it hard to see his transparent silhouette. “Hi, Matty. I’d like to know your last name, please. Yours and your friends’.”

  The spirits were, more or less, as they looked right before they died. Ember had spoken before with changelings who had perished when in their animal subforms, but they usually had no trouble forming words when she asked them questions. Granted, those changelings had generally not accused her of being the reason they were dead.

  When spirits spoke to Ember of their own free will, it wasn’t altogether different from talking to someone who was still alive. If they chose not to cooperate, the ace up her sleeve was to call them by their full names. She had done that with her sometimes-not-so-willing mentor, Barnaby Harrison. He was a Grand Inquisitor in his life, and though he had the terrifying power to resist her, Ember was still able to coerce him to her bidding simply by pronouncing his full name.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t know these ghosts’ full names, and they were anything but willing to help her. That didn’t stop her from trying.

  “I tell you what, Matty. I’ll make a deal with you. You tell me your last name—”

  “Cunt!” Doug cawed.

  Josh hissed angrily.

  “Yar, we don’t give a flyin’ fuck about you or your deals, bitch.” Whenever Matt pronounced “bitch” he added extra emphasis. He was as imaginative in death as he was in life.

  “You didn’t hear my offer,” Ember continued, leaning her shoulders against the earthen ledge that tapered above the grave. “My offer is to give you a proper burial. Wouldn’t you like to have your final resting place be somewhere other than a garbage pit, yeah?”

  The ghost of Matt floated up to her and spit in her face.

  Ember felt a puff of stale air pass over her with enough force to make her blink. Particles of sand and gravel were blown loose from the ledge to noisily blast the red-and-white sheet metal of the tractor cab. If I get these idiots angry enough, they could literally bury me beneath the rubble. Maybe I should step lightly. The realization made her anxious.