by Zoe Chant
“Deep magic?”
“Like source water for the leylines. Power so pure and strong that it held the pillars of our world aloft.”
Gwen eyed him curiously. Was it metaphorical, or did he actually come from a fairyland held up on columns of magic?
Socks, realizing that Henrik’s attention was no longer on her worship, dug claws into his knee as she leapt away.
“You were about to ascend a level?” Henrik said, pointedly looking at the gaming screen. It was certainly more than he’d ever volunteered about the world he came from and Gwen didn’t want to push him any further.
Chewing over the new information, she turned the game back on and was quickly immersed in her more accessible digital goals.
23
The days crept closer and closer to the date marked “Thanksgiving” on the house calendar and there was still no news from Robin or Tadra’s key.
Both of Henrik’s shieldmates had tried repeatedly to scry, but neither of them had ever been skilled enough to cross such a distance. Henrik himself peered into every reflective surface he could find, staring until his eyes crossed, wishing for the magic that had once come so easily to him.
“They’ve got cellphones in Ecuador, don’t they?” Trey said impatiently.
“Pretty sure they have all the modern conveniences,” Daniella told Trey. But she also looked worried, and she often watched down the long driveway as if she expected them to suddenly drive up it.
There was a gigantic plucked bird in the refrigerator, thawing in a plastic tub of water. A turkey, Gwen explained, and she showed him a video of a flock of large, foolish-looking birds who made a curious gobbling sound. There were many rituals to be observed for this holiday, apparently, and Daniella and Heather both seemed to spend an inordinate time on their own cellphones appeasing their families about their inability to attend distant gatherings.
Some part of Henrik expected Robin to pop through a portal at any moment the next day.
Surely they were only waiting until the last moment in order to make a dramatic entrance.
Daniella even arranged them a seat on the table, their smaller table draped with a lace handkerchief and placed with a small china tea set. There was certainly enough food to accommodate several extra mouths.
The incomprehensible game of football that Ansel and Heather liked to watch was put on in the game room with the door open so that the cheers and music infused the entire house. Trey and Rez were enraptured by the sport and the mesmerizing commercials.
Henrik was coerced by Daniella and Gwen to assist in the kitchen, where he chopped bright orange potatoes and celery and onions and more familiar white potatoes. Every appliance seemed to be in use: both ovens and every burner on the stove were all being used, and every inch of counter space was filled with the food in progress.
Heather left the television long enough to make a pie, shouting back down the hall every time there was the sound of a score.
There was no meal planned in the day besides the elaborate dinner, something Henrik only realized when Daniella rapped his knuckles for stealing sticks of carrots from the platter she was filling. The scent filling the house did nothing to suppress his growling stomach; as the day went on, it only smelled better and better.
There was a selection of cheeses and a bowl of round crackers that were permitted snacking before the feast. Heather gushed over a soft pimento cheese full of tiny red peppers. Gwen stuck to safer cubes of mozzarella. Henrik sampled everything he was permitted.
There were pies, and bread, and something called dressing that did not look at all like clothing, and a dish that Heather waxed joyfully over called green bean casserole that was covered all over in crispy fried onions. “Mama’s would have bacon in it,” she pointed out.
There were fresh rolls, and the orange potatoes were covered in dark sugar and soft white marshmallows. There were regular white potatoes as well, smashed smooth, and bowls of potato chips, as if that were not enough kinds of root, and little dishes of olives and fresh vegetables and green salad with bottles of a completely different kind of dressing called “ranch.” A jewel-red sauce of a berry called cran came straight from a can, complete with imprints of rings from its vessel.
“That’s part of the charm,” Daniella insisted, when Ansel protested that he could make a homemade sauce.
And then there was the turkey itself, which Daniella insisted on taking from the oven, straining at the weight of it and beaming proudly. It was a glorious fowl, baked to steaming perfection, covered with a crisp golden skin. It was brought triumphantly to the table, where they were all seated, and Ansel, who had elected himself the carver, paused a moment and looked at Robin’s place setting.
Heather bowed her head and gave a short prayer that ended with, “And may we all eat together with our missing friends really soon. Ingeesussname, amen.”
Henrik had no idea what ingeesussname was, but the ritual was obvious. When her words came to an end, Gwen squeezed his hand. He wasn’t even sure when she’d taken it, but she let go then to begin serving food, and they all dug in with gusto.
The turkey was deliciously moist beneath its crackling skin, and when smothered in the odd can-shaped jelly, a terrific treat. It was all rather amazing, and they ate enthusiastically for some time.
Heather talked about things she would have eaten at home. “Bacon,” she said. “There would have been bacon in everything. Green bean and bacon casserole. Bacon collard greens. Bacon in the gravy. Bacon crumbles in the salad. Mama even put bacon grease in pecan pie.”
Gwen nodded knowingly; the two were from a similar southern area of the land of America, and they often laughed together over the curious things that ‘the northerners’ did.
“We didn't celebrate American Thanksgiving when I was growing up,” she explained as she cleared the last of her mashed potatoes off her plate with a roll. “But we did observe Chuseok, which translates to autumn’s eve. It’s basically the same thing except three days long and a little earlier in the year.”
“Did you eat these foods?” Henrik wanted to know, gesturing to the decimated spread.
“No, we ate traditional Korean foods, like songpyeon, a stuffed rice cake, and Korean pancakes. Oh, and yugwa, which is a kind of fried cookie. We’d exchange gifts. Really practical gifts, like toothpaste and coffee.”
“My mother used to think socks were a great gift,” Heather said sympathetically.
“We should celebrate Chuseok next year,” Daniella suggested, and everyone became solemnly quiet as they considered the idea there might not be a next year.
“I have no room for pie right now,” Heather said too brightly into the silence. “But the second game is coming on. I’ll help clear up and load the dishwasher.”
Cleaning up seemed as much effort as the preparation had been, but it went swiftly with many hands.
Ansel took charge of repacking the refrigerator. “Nobody cook anything for a week,” he warned. “I don’t know if the floorboards here are designed to hold up this much weight.”
“I don’t know if I’m meant to hold up this much weight,” Gwen groaned.
Henrik carried dishes from the table, trip after trip, and very grimly took down Robin’s place setting.
24
Watching him at the cafe a few days later, Gwen could almost believe that Henrik was just his cover story, a perfectly un-magical immigrant from Norway. Trey and Rez had trained him up quite well, and he shyly told Marie just enough made-up details about his fisherman life in the LoFoten Islands. They’d even found him a cable-knit sweater that barely fit over his muscled shoulders. It didn’t make him look the tiniest bit less sexy.
Then he tried to explain that tomatoes were not available in Norway, to Marie’s confusion, and the others deftly took over the conversation.
Heather was sitting with the three of them, and Daniella was waiting tables across the cafe while Gwen handled the espresso machine.
“It was nice of Trey to
import you such a swoon-worthy friend,” Marie told her as she passed by, bussing the table’s dishes. “They sure do grow them large in Scandinavia.”
Gwen grinned at her and finished the latte she was making. “You have no idea,” she said, thinking about Henrik as a pigeon-sized gryphon curling up with her cat, and Trey, big enough to fill the garage.
As she delivered the cup to the table across the room, there was a sudden scream from the kitchen.
“Marie!” The entire table of knights rose as one, reaching for weapons that they weren’t wearing. Gwen was already scrambling straight over the counter towards the back.
Marie was standing near the open back door, a trash bag still dangling in her hand. Gwen had a glimpse beyond her of a sinuous shadow, bigger than any dour she had ever seen, and before she could get halfway through the kitchen, it had slithered up and into Marie.
Gwen knew what to expect from a dour. Marie would be Marie, but the very worst of her. She would sound and look like Marie, but twisted in anger and hatred and irrational fears. Gwen just had to keep her from harming someone in her fit, and one of the knights would come and purge out the darkness that was tainting her spirit.
But when Marie turned, Gwen sucked in a breath of sharp air, because it wasn’t Marie at all, and she wasn’t just primed for a fight, she was there to start one.
The bag of trash hurtled towards Gwen with more strength than she even thought that Marie had, and while Gwen was busy dodging it, Marie took up two of the big butcher knives from the block on the counter and charged forward. The trash bag split when it hit the counter, spilling garbage everywhere.
“Hold it, Marie!” Gwen said, spinning out of her way. “Remember that this isn’t you! I’m your friend!”
“You’re the gryphon’s key!” Marie snarled. “We’re here to end you, human!”
Then there was a spitting ball of golden feathers screeching like a bird of prey from the dining room door. Gwen watched one of the knives arc expertly towards the oncoming gryphon with a sinking heart and almost sobbed when Henrik managed to wheel out of the way at the last moment.
“She’s got a dour!” Heather said in dismay, and Gwen spared a glance to see the two other keys arranging themselves at the doorway, Daniella drawing in a deep breath and Heather reaching into the air above her. They were blocking the door to the dining room, and Trey and Rez were standing at their side, clearly gauging the space against their magical forms.
“It’s more than a dour!” Gwen said, returning her attention to the battle. “It was big, and not just chaotic. She knows about us! All of us!”
Marie drew up then, and just as Trey and Rez were advancing down the aisle by the ovens towards her, she suddenly flipped the knives in her hands and placed the blades at her own throat. Everyone froze.
“You know the best part about taking an innocent human host?” someone else’s voice asked from her throat. “They’re weak and pathetic, but you’d do anything to keep them from harm.” She looked towards Heather and smiled too wide. “Even landlords that don’t deserve any better.”
“Release the human and fight us yourself,” Trey snarled. “Or are you a coward?”
Marie laughed, a terrible, un-Marie sound from her twisted face. “So noble,” she cackled. “So honorable. And you expect everyone else to be, too.” Thin lines of blood appeared at her neck. “I have no interest in exposing myself even to your feeble magic.”
Gwen felt sickeningly helpless. She didn’t dare press forward; her techniques for disarming were for weapons being used against her, not against themselves.
Suddenly, there was a streak like fire, and Henrik was landing on Marie’s head.
Surprise made the blades withdraw a hair, and even while Gwen was trying to figure out what she could possibly do with that tiny opportunity, there was a sudden snap, like the world’s tiniest transformer blowing, and lightning sizzled around Marie.
If Gwen hadn’t been staring at Marie, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the expression on her face going briefly slack; whatever Henrik had done, it had separated the dour-thing from human for just a moment.
What should she do? What could she do? Gwen longed for a pause button so that she could investigate the manual for clues.
But this wasn’t a game, and it hadn’t come with a manual. Marie was slicing with both knives over her head at Henrik, who tumbled backwards out of her reach.
Trey and Rez had not hesitated like Gwen had, and they were within arms length of Marie now. There wasn’t room for either of them to shift, but Daniella was singing and Heather was knitting the air.
“You will release the human!” Trey commanded, and there was something in his voice that made the woman shiver. Rez dashed forward and laid a hand upon her shoulder before she could recover, and there was an unworldly cry of pain and fury as the darkness fell away from Marie’s face and shivered back into a dour nothing like the ones that Gwen had seen before.
It was the size of a large dog, undoubtedly bigger and fiercer than Fabio, with eyes like pits to nowhere. Its shape shifted and smeared, as if Gwen had tears filling her eyes. It gave a rusty howl, and flattened into a puddle, slithering out the open door behind it and vanishing down through the slats in the porch.
Marie staggered in place and dropped her knives, looking dazedly around.
Rez let go of her and dashed out the back door in pursuit of the creature.
Henrik landed and shifted, exchanged one guilty, mournful look with Gwen, and followed him.
“Are you okay?” Daniella asked Marie anxiously.
“What happened to the trash?” Marie wanted to know. The waste was spread out over the counter it had hit, trailing onto the ground.
“You must have tripped,” Heather said. Trey was already starting to pick it up.
Shaking her head, Marie went to get a new bag. “Huh,” was all she said.
The cafe customers were all clustered at the door to the kitchen that Daniella and Heather had kept shut. “What happened?” “Is everyone okay?” “Should we call the police?”
“Everything’s fine!” Daniella insisted. “Just an...uh...errant trash bag! We’ll get it picked back up and get back to work. Might be a little delay in the food. Nothing to worry about!”
Marie wandered out then, looking much more herself. “What a lot of fuss for nothing,” she scolded. “I just dropped a trash bag, will you people get back to your tables?” She had just the right air of sheepishness and impatience to send everyone scurrying back to their seats.
25
Henrik and Rez searched beneath the porch, around the back of the cafe, and behind the large metal container that reeked of trash, but the thing was truly gone.
“If I had access to the magic, I could trace it,” Henrik said miserably. “I could dowse for danger, and ward our safe places. I could scry, and...”
“Do not blame yourself,” Rez said kindly, and he might have drawn him into an embrace, but Henrik didn’t want his shieldmate’s comfort.
“Who shall I blame, then?” Henrik demanded. “Gwen? A human woman thrust into a role she never wanted, trying to do something none of us know how to do? Robin, for sending us here? Cerad, for his relentless hunt? Tadra, for not being here to stand at our shoulders? I should be able to protect us! I should!” He sank into a crouch. “I should be able to protect her.”
Rez’s hand squeezed his shoulder, tightly, but he said nothing.
Nothing would have helped.
Henrik gathered his wits, shamed by his outburst, and stood again. “We have a new kind of threat to consider,” he said gravely, and he stalked back into the cafe.
Gwen was sterilizing the counter, and the look she cast him held no blame.
“We were unable to follow the dour,” he reported.
“How was that a dour?” Gwen wanted to know. “Dours are little. They don’t control people like that.”
Marie returned then, and she shook her head tolerantly at Henrik.
“Your boyfriend’s not supposed to be back here,” she reminded Gwen, but she winked at Henrik. It was unnerving how different she was than she’d been such a short time prior.
It was a topic of great interest later, when they were all safely back in the great house of Ansel.
“It did not appear to act as a dour would,” Trey said thoughtfully, after they had traded notes about what each of them had witnessed.
“Not the dours I’ve seen,” Daniella said. “It was smarter, not just bigger.”
“Superdours,” Gwen said wryly, kicking off her shoes. “That’s just what we need.” She curled her feet underneath herself and cuddled on the couch next to Henrik. Her nearness was some comfort.
“The entity appeared to be controlling the human in full,” Rez said thoughtfully.
“It knew who we were,” Heather said. “And it knew about my landlord in Georgia. Was it a bleak? The same bleak, maybe? We stopped that one, but it got away.”
“It didn’t look like other bleaks,” Rez said. “And Marie wasn’t a willing vessel like Marcus. It acted like a dour, but was intelligent like a bleak.”
Something terrible occurred to Henrik. “Could it be a burned-out false key?”
Beside him, Gwen shuddered and everyone else stared at them.
“Dours are the ashes of magic,” he pointed out. “Chaotic and simple. They do not direct, they only sow darkness. This is more like a bleak than a dour, but diminished in power. If a bleak were to take a willing vessel and burn them to nothing, is this not what might result? A dark, bodiless minion which could possess independent direction and purpose, able to slither into a human as a dour can?”
“A reduced bleak,” Gwen said wryly.
“A reduction of bleak,” Heather giggled.
“A redux of bleak,” Daniella added.
Their ladies laughed, clearly near hysterical.