Incubus

by Carol Goodman

  “—into darkness begone incubus I send you away demon I cast you—”

  Although maybe that is what he’d been doing by showing me those dreams about the fairies marching. I’d asked him, “Who are you?” and the sex dreams had stopped and the marching dreams had begun. Is that what you were trying to do? Tell me who you are?

  A particularly fierce gust of wind blew against me, but it wasn’t cold. Although snow was now covering the heads and shoulders of my circle mates and ice had formed over the broken glass in the windowpanes, the wind that lapped against my face was as warm as a Caribbean breeze. Yessss, it crooned into my ear, sending hot waves down to my toes. I want to know you and for you to know me. You and I have known each other before.

  I laughed out loud. It was the oldest line in the book: Don’t I know you from somewhere?

  But even as I laughed an image was blooming inside my head – the rolling heath, the long line of travelers, my companions fading into mist before we could reach the door … because the Riders were going through first … and then the one horse coming back. For me. He was coming back for me. Then we were in the glade – our wedding chapel – making love. We were vanishing into the mist together, but then his eyes widened into dark shadowy pits. Someone was calling him. “No,” I cried out – in my dream and in the bedroom in Honeysuckle House, “don’t leave me!” But he was already turning, looking over his shoulder, at her. The woman in green on the dark horse who bade him come to her and whom he dared not disobey.

  My eyes snapped open.

  You left me for that …

  I couldn’t help myself, Cailleach. The warm coil wound itself down the neck of my shirt and caressed my breast. I wrenched my right hand out of Diana’s limp hand and slapped it away.

  “Get out!” I hissed. “I never want to see you again.”

  For one moment the warm air turned into a hand and grasped mine, but I let it go – as he had let mine go so long ago – and then the coiled air snapped back like a rubber band and hit the window, shattering what was left of the glass. It whipped against the house like an angry cat’s tail and then crashed into the woods. I heard trees snapping and something close by exploded.

  I looked down and saw that one of the cast-iron doormice had shattered. The other four were glowing red. Another exploded, sending shards into the air. One hit Phoenix right above her left eye.

  “Get down!” I screamed.

  Soheila grabbed Diana and knocked her to the floor. I felt Elizabeth’s hand on my back, pushing me over just as the third mouse blew, splattering hot molten iron. I heard Diana scream in pain and guessed she must have been burned by one of the drops. As I hit the floor I saw that the tailless doormouse was tottering on its little hind legs. I grabbed it – singeing my fingers on the hot iron – and tossed it away from the circle. I thought I heard the sound of tiny feet scurrying away and one last moan soughing through the woods. Then everything went quiet.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SOHEILA HELPED PHOENIX downstairs while Elizabeth and I helped Diana. Although Phoenix was bleeding and screaming, I was more concerned about Diana. She was barely conscious. Elizabeth and I had to practically carry her to the living room couch.

  “I shouldn’t have let her get so close to so much iron,” Elizabeth said, stroking Diana’s limp hair back from her damp forehead. The freckles on her face stood out like spots of blood.

  “Is there anything that we can give her … an antidote?”

  “Do you have any rosemary in the kitchen?”

  “I think Phoenix bought some for the stuffing.”

  “Boil some water, then and steep the rosemary in it along with some black tea and mint. And bring a dishcloth. We can make a compress with the tea until she’s able to drink it.”

  In the kitchen Soheila was cleaning Phoenix’s wound and murmuring a steady stream of soothing reassurances. “It’s all over. There’s nothing to be afraid of. No, you’re not going crazy.”

  “You saw it too, didn’t you, Cal?” Phoenix asked when she saw me. “You heard the wind and saw the candles blow out and the mice explode, right?”

  “Yes,” I answered, putting the kettle on the stove to boil. “It’s all over now … right?” I tried to catch Soheila’s eye. Phoenix wasn’t the only one who needed reassurances.

  “Yes, it’s all over,” Soheila said, but she was too busy bandaging Phoenix’s forehead to look at me when she said it. At least I hoped that was the reason she wouldn’t make eye contact.

  When the water boiled I made a pot of the rosemary-mint tea and put it on a tray with a shallow bowl and a checked dishcloth, which I then brought into the living room. Diana was still unconscious. I sat on the opposite loveseat while Elizabeth steeped the cloth in the tea and then swabbed Diana’s forehead with it, all the time murmuring soft words of endearment. I felt like I was intruding, but I couldn’t budge until I knew Diana was okay. This had all been my fault. If I’d been sterner with the incubus maybe he would have left sooner. Or if I had asked for help sooner … The recriminations swirled around in my head, but Elizabeth’s soft voice combined with the splash of water and the soothing aroma of mint and rosemary soon lulled me to sleep.

  I must have slept for a few hours because when I awoke the first rays of dawn, muted by the ice-coated windows, were spilling across the floor. Elizabeth Book was standing by my chair, her usually immaculate coif a rat’s nest, her face in the cold morning light lined and drawn. She was holding a phone in her hand.

  “It’s your boyfriend, Paul,” she said, handing me the phone.

  I took the phone from her but covered it with my hand and asked how Diana was.

  “I think the worst is over.” She glanced at the couch where Diana lay motionless under Elizabeth’s fur coat so that it looked as if a giant bear was snoozing there. I noticed that one of the alpaca throws was over me. Elizabeth must have covered both of us in the night. “But we’ve got some other problems. Take your call and we’ll talk when you’re done.”

  “Paul?” I said into the phone. “Is everything okay? Where are you?”

  “I’m in Buffalo!” he cried, his voice more excited than I’d heard it since the Yankees won the Series. “My plane almost crashed! A freak storm came up out of nowhere! The pilot made an emergency landing in a cornfield. Everyone’s saying that it’s a miracle we all survived!”

  “I’m so sorry …” A freak storm? Could it be …?

  “No, don’t be sorry!” Paul started talking so fast and excitedly that I had trouble following what he was saying. I was also distracted by the possibility that I had caused the storm that had almost killed him. When I started focusing I heard him say: “It was the most amazing experience of my life. You should have seen the lightning! They say the wind speed was a hundred and fifty miles per hour. I really thought I was going to die, but then I didn’t. It just clarifies things.”

  “Wow,” I said, wondering what exactly Paul’s near-death experience had clarified. “That’s great, I guess. I can’t wait to hear all about it. Can you get a plane from Buffalo? Or maybe drive from there? I think it’s about a five hour drive …”

  “Oh my God! You haven’t been outside or watched the news yet, have you? Take a look out your window.”

  I was staring at my window but the panes were coated with ice. I got up and walked through the kitchen to the back door, not wanting to disturb Diana by opening the front door.

  “They’re calling Fairwick, New York, the epicenter of the storm,” Paul was saying as I opened the door. “The roads are blocked in all directions in a twenty-mile radius of the town. It’s the largest ice storm ever recorded. What does it look like there?”

  “It looks …” I tried to think of a word to describe what I was looking at. A sheet of clear ice, shimmering like melted opals in the first rays of the rising sun, spread across my backyard up to the edge of the woods. As the sun climbed up the trees they too began to glow – every branch, many of which were broken, twig, pine-needle an
d stray brown leaf had been encased in a sheet of clear ice that burst into fiery brilliance at the touch of the sun. “It looks,” I finally said to Paul, “like a fairyland.”

  Paul told me he was going to the hotel provided by the airline for him and his fellow “survivors,” as he called them, to try to catch a few hours of sleep, and then would call me when he found out anything more about his travel options. After I got off the phone, I went back into the kitchen. Elizabeth and Soheila were at the table drinking coffee and watching CNN on my little portable TV. I poured myself a mug from the coffeemaker and sat down to watch.

  “The Thanksgiving ice storm came out of nowhere,” a female reporter in a heavy fur-trimmed down parka was saying. She stood in front of a line of stalled cars at an exit sign for Fairwick. “Stranding motorists everywhere. Curiously, this is not the first time that the town of Fairwick has been the victim of freak weather. In the summer of 1893 the town was hit by hailstones carrying live frogs …”

  “One of Caspar’s chemistry experiments gone awry,” Soheila said, rolling her eyes. “I tell him not to mess with the weather.”

  “And in 1923 a sandstorm covered the town.”

  “The Ferrishyn Wars?” Elizabeth asked.

  Soheila nodded. “Nasty creatures. I still find sand in my closets sometimes.”

  “Sources in Fairwick say that the town has been without power since midnight.”

  I looked at the electric coffee machine and the TV. “How are these working?” I asked.

  “Courtesy of Soheila,” Elizabeth said. “Didn’t I mention last night that she’s a wind spirit? She can conduct energy, too. Now shush a moment. I want to hear how far the ice goes.”

  The screen now showed a map of upstate New York. Fairwick was surrounded by a blue blotch with ragged edges – some graphic artist’s attempt to represent ice, I supposed, although it looked more like a malevolent microbe to me – that enclosed all of the state park to the east and north, but didn’t quite reach West Thalia to the west or Bovine Corners to the south.

  “Oh good,” Elizabeth said. “At least it’s only our little valley. I think we can manage if it’s contained. We’ll call Dory to organize a visiting committee to check on the elderly and infirm, to make sure that they have enough firewood – if they don’t have generators – and food.”

  “Brock and Ike can head up the salt truck and plows,” Soheila said.

  “Thank goodness most of the students have already gone home for the holiday. I’ll have Casper and Oliver check for stragglers in the dorms.”

  “Mara Marinca didn’t go home,” I volunteered.

  A worried look crossed the dean’s face. “No, she wouldn’t have. I’m sure she’s fine, though, and she’ll be here later for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “I’m not sure Phoenix will be up to cooking,” I said, remembering for the first time how many people I had invited over. “She was pretty wigged out by what happened last night.”

  “I am worried about her,” Soheila admitted. “But I got her to bed by two this morning and cooking might take her mind off what happened.”

  “Plus Dory Browne called to say she’d be by to help,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t worry about that. Here in Fairwick we all pitch in during an emergency. But there is something I need you to help me with right now. Would you mind taking a little walk with me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. Make sure you wear sturdy non-skid boots. The footing will be rather treacherous where we’re going.”

  Since the entire town was coated with a two-inch layer of ice I thought Elizabeth Book’s warning was unnecessary, but when I saw she was heading for the woods I wondered if any warning was sufficient. Before the temperature had dropped the wind had knocked branches and even whole trees down; then the debris had been coated with so much ice that it had all melded together into a glittering, unmovable tangle. I couldn’t even see where the path was. While Elizabeth stood uncertainly at the edge of the woods staring at the wreckage, I turned back to look at my house. The shutters over my bedroom window had been completely torn off, and the rest of the shutters were missing slats and hanging crookedly from their hinges. The copper gutter had been wrested from the north eave where it hung limply, twisted like a chewed up swizzle straw. So many slate tiles were missing from the roof that it looked like a checkerboard.

  “What a spoiled brat!” I cried. “That demon’s little temper tantrum is going to cost me thousands of dollars in repairs.”

  Elizabeth Book turned around and looked at the back of my house. “Yes, that’s the problem with incubi – they’re all libido. And he can’t use being a demon as an excuse. Soheila’s a demon and look how evolved she is! Honestly, though, I’m surprised the damage isn’t worse. From the state of these woods I’d say the wind he summoned was moving at a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour. If it had hit your house at that velocity it wouldn’t be standing. Something must have lessened the impact …” She switched her gaze from the house to me. “Almost as if you’d managed an aversion spell before the wind hit …”

  “I don’t know any spells,” I said somewhat petulantly, peeved that the dean wasn’t taking my house damage seriously enough. “Should I? You said before that you thought I had fairy blood, not that I was a witch … Is being a witch hereditary?” I asked, suddenly overcome with all the unknowns in this new world I’d stumbled into.

  “There are witch families that have passed down their craft from generation to generation,” Dean Book said as she stepped over a downed pine bough, which the ice had turned into a festive Christmas decoration. “I myself come from a long line of witches. No one is sure how much of being a witch is nature or nurture. Some believe that the original witches interbred with the fey, which is what gave them their power. But the more reactionary anti-fey witches believe that fey blood cancels out a witch’s power.”

  “There are reactionary witches?” I asked, scrambling after her, grasping ice-slick branches to keep from slipping. It felt like we were walking through the ruins of a strange and foreign world. The ice rings of Saturn, perhaps, or Jotunheim, the glacial home of the Norse ice giants. The violence that had caused the wreckage was frightening and yet the effect was oddly beautiful. Giant trees had been snapped in two, but pine cones, acorns, and even the delicate yellow flowers of witch hazel trees had been preserved in ice like sugared treats to put on top of a cake. It seemed an appropriate setting in which to learn about this other strange world that Dean Book was describing.

  “I’m afraid so,” she told me with a pained look. “There are those who would have us renounce all ties to the fey. But if we did, then the last door to Faerie would close entirely. No one would ever be able to get out again …”

  She paused as we reached the honeysuckle thicket. The ice-sheathed snarl of vines and branches looked as if it had been spun out of sugar. Jeweled shapes glimmered in the crooks of vine and branch like Christmas lights. Peering closer I made out the shapes of small birds, tiny mice, voles, and chipmunks – all the tiny creatures that had died in the thicket. Elizabeth cupped her gloved hand around a frozen chickadee. Nestled in her palm it looked like an exotic jewel.

  “Why do so many creatures die here?” I asked.

  “These are the Borderlands,” she said. “Small creatures lose their way. Even large creatures – very powerful creatures – lose their way between our world and Faerie. More and more get trapped between the worlds each year. The door is narrowing and opening for shorter periods. That’s why we were so excited when we realized you might be a doorkeeper.”

  “I still don’t know what you mean by that. It sounds like some kind of doorman or janitor …”

  “That’s what the Romans called their doorkeepers. They knew that thresholds were sacred and that certain gods were dedicated to crossing places – Janus, the two-faced god and Hecate, the three-faced goddess of the crossroads – both were doorkeepers, as you are, Cailleach.”

  “You’re saying that I’m d
escended from gods and goddesses!” I was trying to make a joke of it. “That’s even harder to believe than being descended from fairies.”

  “They’re one and the same, Callie. What we call fairies and demons are the last of the race of old gods. They’re all from the same ancient race – although the variety within them is great, especially as the old ones began interbreeding with humans … as you can see here …”

  She held back a heavy vine studded with purple berries turned to amethyst by the ice and looked up. I followed her gaze, seeing nothing except tangled ice thicket at first, but then, as the sun appeared and shone through the tangled branches, I began to make out shimmering shapes suspended in the air. It looked as though a giant spider web had been strung between the branches and then frozen – but the pattern in the web revealed faces in its intricate weave: the faces of men and women and animals, and some creatures that seemed to be neither human nor animal. Some had human faces with horns or pointed ears or reptilian skin; some had animal faces with human intelligence glittering in their eyes. All were contorted with pain.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “This one’s a phouka,” she said pointing to a dog-man. “They’re related to the Puck of William Shakespeare. “This one—” She pointed to a horse with a fish’s tail “—is a kelpie. They like to wait in streams and drag down unsuspecting maidens. Foolish thing. I don’t know why it thought it could cross at this time of year when the streams are all frozen. We’re probably better off without him. Your incubus raised a storm in both worlds. Generally only one or two creatures cross at a time, but the storm must have driven many into the Borderlands; then, when the ice came, it froze them in the passage.

  “Are they all … dead?”

  Elizabeth stepped close to one – a woman whose slim body ended in a fish’s tail. “This one’s an undine,” she said as if she hadn’t heard my question. “Creatures of the water. We’ve heard that the male undines are dying out, which might be why this one risked coming over in the middle of the winter, although I don’t know why she’d come outside of breeding season. Poor thing. She must have been confused. She’ll never survive.