Fire and Fantasy: A Limited Edition Collection of Urban and Epic Fantasy

by CK Dawn

  “Calm down, Boone,” Aileen said, placing her hand on my knee. “Calm yourself before you change entirely. I can’t have an angry falcon flapping about my living room.”

  “Can you fix my mind?” I asked, heaving a sigh of relief as my claws began to ease back into human shaped fingers.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Will you try?”

  “I can, but it will hurt. A great deal, I’m afraid.” She pursed her lips. “Are you sure? You only landed in the forest a night ago.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Then we must go to the tree,” she said. “You may have lost your memory for a reason. Uncovering it may be the last thing you need.”

  “I’ve thought about nothing else,” I said, my brow creasing. “I may have asked someone to take it, I may be protecting something of my own, I may be protecting someone I care about, or someone may have stolen it. How am I to know which is true?”

  “Aye, you have a point. It’s a flawed plan—amnesia—because everyone craves an identity. Who we are is everything we are if you get my meaning.”

  “I don’t see that I have any other choice.”

  Aileen grimaced, but she waved her hand. “All right. Let me put on my shoes, then we’ll go to the hawthorn.”

  “Thank you,” I said as she rose to her feet.

  “Don’t be thanking me yet. You may be cursing the day I was born before long.”

  I doubted it, but I didn’t tell her that. As she disappeared into the hall, I hoped her magic could unlock something, anything, that could shed some light on who I was.

  The forest was dark as we made our way toward the ancient hawthorn.

  The wet, earthy scent permeated my senses as the closeness of the trees and the wildness of the place put me on edge. It felt as if a hundred pairs of eyes were glued to my back, and I instantly thought of the ravens. Peering over my shoulder, I could see nothing but the trees and ferns we’d already passed. We were alone.

  As with the previous night, I could hear bubbling water off in the distance. It must be much deeper into the wilderness past the clearing that held the hawthorn.

  Stepping into the clearing, Aileen nodded toward the hawthorn. “Can you feel it?”

  I stared up at it, noticing how tall it was compared to the one in the village. It must be a thousand years old to have grown into the dominant thing it was now. Even in the dark of night, I could pick out the colors. Its leaves were a rich emerald, the berries on its boughs red as blood, and its branches knotted and snarled.

  I nodded. “The air feels close. I didn’t notice it last night.”

  “I doubt you noticed much of anything,” she quipped. “That closeness you feel? That’s the tree’s protection. Whatever spell I cast here will be kept hidden, but only as long as we remain under her canopy.”

  I stepped closer, casting my gaze up as the branches stretched above my head, and the air thickened even more.

  “Kneel,” Aileen commanded. “Place your palms against the roots, and open yourself up to the magic in her old bones.”

  The notion that a tree held magic seemed absurd, but I’d felt something come from it the night before as I did now. Warmth, safety, and something else. Placing my knees into a hollow at the base of the trunk, I grasped the exposed roots and bowed my head.

  Aileen stood behind me, her hands on my shoulders, and I tensed.

  “This is going to sting a little,” she warned. “Try to hold still.”

  “Do what you need to,” I replied, bracing myself.

  "All right. You asked for it.”

  At first, I felt her magic trickle into my mind, her hands warm on my shoulders. Slowly, the darkness began to shift…then pain tore through my mind like a hundred hot pokers stabbing into my flesh. Over and over, biting, burning agony.

  A woman cried out from far away, and all at once, the connection was severed. Shoved forward into the tree by a silent explosion of air, I grunted, smacking the top of my head against the trunk. Dazed, I turned just in time to see Aileen fly across the clearing. With a wallop, she hit a pile of leaves, and they flew into the air, fluttering everywhere.

  Scrambling to my feet, I sprinted to her, my heart beating frantically. My head throbbed something fierce, but it was nothing compared to the alarm that overcame me at the sight of Aileen in full flight.

  I kneeled, scraping leaves away from her face, and dug her out.

  “Are you all right?” I asked as she blinked up at me.

  “Wowee!” she cried. “What a kick!”

  I frowned, not expecting her reaction at all. From the way she’d flown across the clearing, I thought she would be bruised and battered, but it looked like she was high as a kite.

  “What happened?” I asked. “You look…”

  “Whatever happened to you, it’s strong,” she said, sitting up. “Your mind is locked tighter than Fort Knox!”

  “What’s a Fort Knox?”

  “A really big vault that’s impossible to get into,” she explained. “I’m afraid there’s no getting inside there.” She tapped my forehead.

  I fell back onto my ass and cursed, rubbing my hands over my face. “So I’ll never know who I am?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then how can I unlock this Fort Knox?”

  “It’s not a Fort Knox… That’s just a metaphor.” Aileen sighed and started picking leaf litter from her hair. “I would say the only way you’re getting your memories back is by finding whoever locked them up in the first place. That kind of magic comes with a signature, like a combination.”

  I cursed again, this time growling my frustration to the sky. It came out a little too animal like for Aileen’s liking, and she flinched.

  The only way I was finding out who I was was finding someone I couldn’t remember to undo the spell they’d put on my mind. I was stuck, and I knew it, and so did Aileen. There was no quick fix to this. Realistically, there might not be one at all.

  This? My rebirth as Boone—the shapeshifter who couldn’t control his changes, the man who didn’t know his heritage, and the man without a home—might be it.

  I was hunted by a dark power I didn’t understand, and the only place I was safe seemed to be Derrydun with its mystical ancient hawthorn tree. I knew to come here, so what did that mean? The moment I left to search for answers, they could find me again. This was it. This place, this person I’d woken up as… This was it.

  I couldn’t leave. I was stuck here. Probably forever.

  “Come,” Aileen said gently. “Let’s go home.”

  “Home?” I whispered, feeling completely lost.

  “To be sure,” she declared. “Where else are you going to go?”

  Five

  A week passed, and I’d resigned myself to building a new life in Derrydun.

  Under the protection of the hawthorn, I was free to come and go as I pleased, helping Aileen with her garden and shop. We continued the ruse that I was nothing more than the son of an old friend of hers, and just like that, I was now a resident of the village.

  I didn’t know who or what was after me so I couldn’t leave, and Aileen knew about my abilities, so she could help me come to terms with what I was. Like a child, it seemed, I had to learn everything all over again. Instinct was one thing, controlling what happened in front of a bunch of people who didn’t know magic existed was another.

  Like clockwork, I’d taken to sitting with Aileen in her shop every morning before prowling the forest of an afternoon. I couldn’t go far—I wasn’t sure where the boundary of the hawthorn’s magic ended—but it was far enough.

  I watched Aileen shuffle her tarot cards. She hadn’t asked me to draw another, and I hadn’t felt the need to with the message she’d given me that first day. Stabbed in the back. I had been, but besides the ravens, it could be the reason why my memories were locked away.

  I winced, a sharp spike of pain splitting through my head, and Aileen narrowed her eyes at me. Her look said eve
rything.

  Turning to the counter, she placed the cards facedown and swept them across the surface in a long arc. She peered at them for a moment, then reached out and drew one from the left side.

  Turning it over, she sighed and set it down in front of her.

  “You always draw the same one,” I said, placing my finger on the card. “What is it?”

  “The Tower.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “A variety of things,” she replied. “So much has happened this last week, I was entirely positive it was pointing at your arrival, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Because it keeps coming up?”

  “Precisely.” Aileen smiled and pulled the cards back into a neat pile. “The Tower looks like a frightening card with its crumbling tower and storm clouds, but it’s actually quite positive. Tarot is like that, and so is the world. Nothing is what it seems.”

  “It reminds me of the tower house on the hill,” I murmured, thinking of the crumbling ruin that loomed over Derrydun.

  “If you travel deeper into the forest, you’ll find more ruins,” Aileen declared. “The tower house was once part of a sprawling estate built over lands that were once home to the ancient peoples of Ireland. The entire area is full of magical places and stories that would warm your heart and make your toes curl at the evils that live in our world.”

  “How far can I go before the hawthorn’s protection ends?” I asked.

  “The hawthorn in the forest stretches at least a few miles, and the one here in the village perhaps a mile,” she replied. “Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps I should make myself useful if I’m going to be stuck here.”

  “I know it’s not ideal, but it is what it is. Things tend to happen for a reason, you know.”

  “I can’t sit around and wallow in my misfortune,” I said, glancing out the shop window. Another busload of tourists had just navigated the hawthorn down the road and was pulling into the coach bay beside Mary’s Teahouse. “Besides, you clothe and feed me and ask for nothing. I may have lost my identity, but I haven’t lost my strength.”

  Aileen snorted. “If you want some work, there’s plenty of it around here. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”

  “There is a bus coming,” I said. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “I can manage. Mairead should be here soon enough.”

  Leaving Aileen with her tarot cards, I ventured out into Derrydun to start building a semblance of a life. If this was to be my home, then I had to make it into something I could tolerate. Filling my days with work would mean less time inflicting myself with headaches trying to puzzle out my past.

  I set out with fierce determination, and by the end of the day, I’d negotiated duties and payment at several shops and also up on the farm overlooking the village. I was to help three nights a week in the kitchen at Molly McCreedy’s, and I’d offered to tend to old Mrs. Boyle’s garden and trim her hedges once a month. I was to fetch the local produce deliveries for Mary at the Teahouse, and I was the new farmhand on Roy O’Toole’s property on the hill behind Aileen’s cottage.

  It was simple and lonely work, but I would be close to nature where I felt the safest, and well within the boundary of the hawthorns.

  Molly McCreedy’s had been my last stop, so I pulled up a stool by the bar. It was a tiny little place, full of the scent of stale barley and hops as well as the lingering perfumes of cooking from the kitchen beyond. Behind the counter was a set of taps with large handles. I watched the barmaid pull down on one and fill a glass with beer, the top frothing as the golden liquid reached the rim.

  “Ye want one?” a man asked from beside me. “My shout.”

  “Sure,” I replied, looking him over. “Why not?”

  “You’re Boone, the lad staying with Aileen, right?”

  I nodded. “I am.”

  “I hear ye are goin’ to be workin’ with Roy.” He held out his hand. “Sean McKinnon.”

  Slapping my palm in his, we shook. We seemed to be around the same age, though Sean was well worn around the edges. His face bore the lines of exhaustion, his beard was scrappy, and his clothes were slightly rumpled. He also had the ingrained smell of alcohol around him, which didn’t bode well.

  “Yes, I start tomorrow‬,” I replied. ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

  “Have ye worked with sheep before?”

  “No, but I have a way with animals,” I said. A literal way considering I could break all the bones in my body and change into them at will.

  “There’s naught much to it,” he said, his thick accent almost musical. “I can teach ye how to whistle to Phee, and she be doin’ all the leg work.”

  “Phee?”

  “The border collie. Smart as a tack for a dog, and to think she was the runt of the litter.”

  His words evoked a familiarity to me, and I frowned, shaking off the sensation before my head burst in the middle of the pub.

  “Here you go.” The woman behind the bar placed a pint of beer down in front of me, her red lips smiling broadly at me. Her eyelashes fluttered. She was quite pretty with her red hair, freckled cheeks, and slender frame, but romance was the furthest thing from my mind.

  “Stop makin’ eyes at him, Hannah,” Sean complained. “You know my heart burns for ye.”

  “Sean, stop it with your blabberin’,” she said with a groan. “You’re drunk. You know what that means.”

  “Aye. Time to go home.” He slammed his empty glass onto the bar and held out his hand to me. “Nice to be meetin’ ye, Boone. I’ll see you on the farm.”

  “Sure,” I said, shaking on it. As he stumbled off, he bumped against a table, then immediately sat in a chair by the door.

  “He lost his wife a few weeks ago,” Hannah explained as I sipped on my beer. “Cancer, the poor girl. She was a real beauty. Sean’s been a fixture around here ever since.”

  “He’s not handling it very well?” I asked, assuming he was self-medicating his loss with alcohol.

  “Yes and no. Sometimes, he’s bright as can be, but other times, he’s just lost, you know?” Hannah glanced across the bar and frowned. Following her gaze, I saw Sean had slumped in his chair and had begun snoring loudly. “He comes here so he’s not alone, I think. We look out for him, but there’s only so much we can do.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You might have to start cutting him off.”

  “Oh, I see how it is,” she declared, pouting. “One week in Derrydun, and you know how it is. Where did you come from to know all there is about these parts, eh?”

  “Do you want me to take Sean home?” I said, blatantly avoiding her questioning. “He’s starting to drool.”

  Hannah narrowed her eyes. “If you like.”

  Standing, I brushed off my trousers. “Where does he live?”

  “Half a mile along the main road to your right. The farmhouse just past the bend. On the fence near the gate, you’ll see the name of the house, Ashmere. That’s the one you be looking for.”

  “Thanks.” Approaching Sean, I wondered if I could carry him. I seemed to have a great deal of strength, but I wasn’t sure it extended to drunken Irishmen.

  “Boone?”

  Turning at the sound of Hannah’s voice, I raised an eyebrow.

  “Thank you. He’s impossible to move when he passes out. I was afraid I would find him asleep in Mrs. Boyle’s flowers again. She was beating him with a broom, and he still wouldn’t move.”

  Smiling, I nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  Giving him a shake, Sean’s eyes opened, and he started muttering to himself.

  “Time to go home,” I said, pulling him to his feet.

  Giving one last wave to Hannah, we left the empty pub and started the walk, his arm slung over my shoulder while I propped him up. We must’ve been a comical sight, stumbling down the side of the road in the dark, but Derrydun was a sleepy little place, and there was no one around to witness it.

  As we approac
hed the farmhouse, my skin began to itch and prickle. Pausing to rest a moment, Sean moaned, his breath stinking of beer.

  “Are we there yet?” he asked.

  “We’re just outside,” I replied. “Do you see?”

  He peered up at his house. “Oh, yeah. That’s the one.”

  Glancing at the forest behind the farmhouse, I was sure something lingered just past the rise. Hoisting Sean up, I guided him down the path to the front door of his house, and he leaned against the wall, completely out of his mind.

  Everything felt electrified as if a storm was brewing on the horizon, but I knew there was no bad weather coming. Not in the sky at least. The harder I focused on the presence, the more my skin prickled. It tugged at me like a magnet attracting metal, and I turned, staring into the darkness. There was something there, calling to me. Something…

  Sean moaned and began rattling at the door. “It’s locked,” he cried. “Justine! Let me in, woman! Justine!”

  Shaking off the odd sensation, I turned back to Sean, assuming Justine had been his wife.

  “She’s not here,” I said, patting his coat pockets looking for his house keys.

  “You’re Boone,” he said, slurring his words.

  “That I am.”

  “You’re staying with Aileen.”

  “Yes.” Finding the keys, I began trying each in the door until I found the right one. The lock clicked, and I let us into the house. “Can you find your way to bed?”

  “Go, go,” Sean said, waving his hand at me. “I’ll be fine.”

  Not wanting to linger a moment longer, I let him be, leaving behind the farmhouse and the weird pull toward the forest.

  Outside, the darkness was soothing, the air seeming to dilute the effects of whatever was lingering just outside of my awareness. Worried it might have something to do with the things that were hunting me or even the parasites Aileen had mentioned were searching for her, I hurried back to the village.

  The lights were still on in the cottage when I finally crossed into the garden, and inside, I found the witch sitting in her favorite armchair, knitting some unknown article of clothing. Her fingers worked the needles with expert precision, and she didn’t even drop a stitch when she looked up at me.