by Ken Altabef
James fired the shot, snapping the branch just an inch in front of the squirrel. The animal leapt from its perch, caught the trunk of the tree and scrambled to the opposite side, out of sight.
“You missed.”
“No, I didn’t,” James said. “I knocked him from the branch, like you asked. I just didn’t want to hurt him. He was only stopping to enjoy the view, watching us. The smell of the gunpowder made him curious. He has a family to provide for. Three little ones.”
“How do you know that?”
And that was how it had started. His father kept asking him, 'How do you know?' Over and over. His father seemed inordinately concerned with such a small thing, his intensity disturbing, but at the time James didn’t understand.
How do you know? How do know what the squirrel was thinking?
How could he?
“I just know.”
That specious explanation had not been enough for his father who, in hindsight, had already formed definite suspicions about his son’s true nature. But even then, even on that day, Eric had not yet been sure he’d married a faery. That revelation came later, but the suspicion was already there.
At the time, James knew nothing of any of this. His mother was simply his mother, Lady Theodora Grayson. A spectacular mother, he thought, but just a normal person. He and his sister Nora had no idea of their true nature. This they learned in a most surprising way on the night of the Chrysalid. Unbeknownst to the children, a monster had been called forth, a being of incalculable power, to cross the divide between dimensions. On one fateful night late in the summer of 1750 it had broken through its celestial bonds and burst into this dimension, half-materializing in the shredded sky above Grayson Hall.
What really happened the night of the Chrysalid? Even now, ten years later, James could not be sure. The entire event was painted in such strange colors, vivid pastels and wildly fragrant hues—the only thing that had ever come close were the flashing lights he’d seen after sampling some of the more exotic mushrooms cultivated by the faery-folk. Neither Nora nor James ever spoke of it to anyone, but something did happen that night, something terrifying and wonderful.
That night, James had awoken from pleasant dream to nightmare. A noxious buzzing sound, which had manifested in his dream as a horde of multicolored stinging bees, filled the children’s bedroom. Nora heard it too; she sat up in bed, terribly frightened as James rushed to the window and drew the gauzy curtains aside.
The sky, ablaze with wild lights, seemed to have been torn open. A jagged hole, bordered by a rim of bubbling static, had appeared above the manor house. The sky flashed yellow, then white and crimson. James smelled mustard, mint, and burnt ochre. On the other side, peering at them through the gaping miasma, was a being so alien and frightening it made Nora scream. The Chrysalid was made of eyes, hundreds of eyes, all different sizes and colors but most definitely alive with intelligence. The eyes shot beams of emotion at them—curiosity, anger, betrayal. And love.
“Children!” it said. “My dear children!”
Their nurse rushed into the room, cursing the thing in the torn sky, and worrying James away from the window. While trying to cinch the draperies closed, she screamed, “The blights! Dirty scheming nixies.”
When she glanced back at the children—at how they had changed—she promptly fell into a swoon. Nora’s skin had turned forest green, her hair a dark seaweed atop her head fluttering about as if caught by some midnight breeze. Her ears were sharply pointed, her eyes shimmering like diamonds.
James had changed as well. His hands had turned a dark purple, his fingernails black and sharp, the flesh of his face hard and grained like a wooden mask. He was awash in new and uncomfortable sensations—flashes of sparkling light in yellow and green, the smell of cardamom and exotic spices. He felt a frightening urge to jump from the window and soar across the open air, to sing at the top of his lungs, to laugh, to cry.
The change lasted only a few moments during which James had thankfully not given in to the self-destructive urge to jump. He didn’t know what might have happened if he had taken that step. To this day he still suspected he might actually have flown out across the fields. Who knew? Out in the clearing below, his parents subdued the Chrysalid and sent it back to the bizarre dimension from which it had come.
The dissolution of the Chrysalid left the children shaken. James felt great relief that the horror of his transformation was over and rejoiced to see Nora looking human again too. It had been a nightmare after nightmare, and it was now done. But relief came also with a tinge of regret. The Chrysalid had claimed it was their mother and he had felt true love shining back at him from its hundred eyes.
James shuddered even now to think of it. Nora had felt the same way. They agreed, making a secret compact there in the nursery bedroom, they would never tell anyone what had happened to them. They just couldn’t, given the things Nanny Lucinda had been telling them all their lives. She called the faeries blights and mound maggots and was forever telling tales of their treachery and evil. And then there were the Changed Men, the members of his father’s staff who had suffered disfigurement and madness out on the plain below the raging Chrysalid. They had been permanently twisted by the Mother of all faeries, and they suffered.
James and Nora felt guilty about keeping their experience a secret. They didn’t want to be different. They didn’t want to be changed. Sometimes for children, and even for adults, it is simper just to pretend. So they made their solemn vow not to tell, while looking down at Nanny’s collapsed body, and kept their secret sacred for many years, until they could hide the truth no longer.
Nanny’s reaction to the incident was so strange it left the children wondering if she even remembered what she’d seen that night. She never spoke of it to them, just kept up her usual patter against the blights or nixies or whatever. But she never referred to the children that way; she still loved them. But she was different. She seemed more cautious than ever before and they caught her studying them with strange looks at odd moments. She did remember, but said nothing about it. The old woman continued to rant against faeries until Lady Theodora revealed that she was one of them, a faery herself. Nanny packed up her things and went away. She stole into the children’s room the night of her departure and woke them softly in their beds. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t play with fire.”
Her tender eyes, glazed with gray cataracts, were wild with fear. She had loved them for years, and now she was afraid for them. Or afraid of them. But nothing happened. Nora didn’t change again. Not for a long time. And James never changed again at all.
The squirrel, he reminded himself. Concentrate on the squirrel before it runs off.
After all, he wasn’t sitting out here naked, catching his death of cold, just for his own deranged amusement. He must practice. He’d been doing this in secret—joining with the wild—ever since his early teens. When his mother finally revealed what she was and what her children were, the night of the Chrysalid suddenly made a lot more sense. Theodora took them underground, to the Barrow Downes, to visit the secret enclave of the faeries. James was amazed at the fantastical world he found there, full of spectacle and high emotion. As he met each of the faeries he sought help from them—Moonshadow and Gryfflet and Arabelle. Under their spiritual tutelage he began to make real progress. He still didn’t understand the extent of his abilities, for he was not a true faery, only half. James was, for all intents and purposes, just an ordinary human man with no other magical abilities except outstanding eyesight.
And the joining.
He let his mind go blank, concentrating fully on the squirrel’s blue-gray eyes. The natural wariness of the creature made the connection difficult. From past exercises of this sort, James had a familiarity with the thoughts of squirrels, which ran mostly to self-protection and gathering foodstuffs. It was late in the season. This one had salted away plenty of food stores but felt ill and uneasy just the same. James realized it was dying and knew it would n
ot see sunlight again in spring. He hoped to ease the creature’s mind, if he could, as the connection began to solidify.
Too late. A blue jay set down on the tree branch and his little friend the squirrel disappeared behind the bole of the oak tree. The blue jay tilted its beak at James, then flew off again.
Okay, he thought. Let’s try again, before I catch my death of cold.
He glanced around for a suitable replacement subject. He caught a glimpse of a white-furred hare below the same tree, but it was gone in an instant. He heard a frog croaking at the rim of the lake but didn’t see it. He settled on a large mushroom at the base of an old oak tree. Perhaps a better place to start. At least the mushroom wouldn’t take up and run away.
Using the techniques the faeries had showed him, James emptied his mind again, seeking peace enough to link with the toadstool. Mushrooms had no thoughts of their own, but they did perceive sensations of a sort. James felt the warmth of the sun on the mushroom’s broad cap, the cool wet of rainwater percolating through the soil, the reassuring shroud of pungent earth. The mushroom had sprouted from the decaying corpse of a field mouse just under the ground. Life squatting defiantly atop death; poetic, in its way, a cycle of life and death, breakdown and regeneration.
But the mushroom’s roots went a lot deeper than that. James discovered a vast underground system of slender filaments, hidden far below the surface, interconnected all down the line, penetrating soil and rock as they traversed the English countryside. James sent his consciousness streaming along this fine tapestry of roots and fibers, sampling the savory earth along the way, peeking his head up to experience the world through mushroom caps sitting atop rotting logs and shaggy tree roots in meadow and field. He traced the roots all the way down the meadow slope and into the harbour town below.
Most of the tendrils ended there, stomped out beneath merchant’s boots and muddy cart wheels, but James was able to taste salt air and tobacco before sending his consciousness retreating back up the vegetative highway. The roots became thicker and more powerful as they headed north from the hilltop and James gleefully followed as the trail led him all the way to the great mushrooms, the giant denizens of the faery caves beneath the earth at Barrow Downes. These mushrooms had lived for eons and were well-respected members of the hidden society of the faery folk. Some had even been hollowed out for houses, imbued with so much faery energy they shone in the darkness underground. James enjoyed a glimpse of the distant faery stronghold through the vague senses of the great mushrooms. The mood was frantic as faeries ran this way and that preparing for the upcoming festival of lights. Passions among the faeries burned ever-bright and James felt a great wave of joy and excitement.
“James?”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, snapping back to the reality of his physical body.
Arabelle stood over him. Her lovely face was pale even in silhouette, her skin almost a pure white except for a half-moon of purple skin on each cheek and her full lips which shone an enticing peach color. Her hair was spun wheat, her eyes a deep blue.
He was not troubled at being caught sitting naked. He had nothing to hide. Not from her.
Arabelle was almost as naked as James, wearing only a wreath of baby’s breath across her bosom and groin, its small white flowers concealing very little of the delicate curve of her breasts and narrow hips. A pair of gossamer wings fluttered behind in broad curls of gold and silver, tipped with sunlight.
“Where were you just now?” she asked.
“Barrow Downes.”
“Oh, looking for me, or some other lady love?”
She knelt beside him, perfectly graceful. She was starlight, and golden wheat and fresh peaches.
“Another?” He chuckled. “No, I doubt I could handle another one as well.”
Her alabaster cheeks flushed crimson. “As well? Do you take me for granted, James Grayson?”
“Never.”
And he meant it too. Of all the women he had ever met, of all the faeries that lived below, he could not imagine loving anyone more than this dear soul. Unlike his parents, whose romance had begun under dubious circumstances of pretense and deception, he’d known Arabelle’s true nature from the start. In fact, he typically saw her without any glamour at all. When his mind was clear, as at this moment, he always ‘saw true.’ She was young and beautiful, the most gentle, fun-loving soul he had ever encountered.
Arabelle produced a ripe plum, though where she had hidden it in her sparse costume James could not even hazard to guess. She held the dark purple fruit in front of his mouth and he lunged for a bite. She playfully yanked it out of reach.
“Don’t tease,” he said.
“Never.”
He leaned forward for a lusty bite. The faery fruit tasted cloyingly sweet as if it had been dipped in honey. He thought he detected a hint of bitter foxglove as well. That herb was poisonous in large measure but a potent aphrodisiac in small doses.
James’ amorous inclinations needed no such artificial encouragement. The nearness of Arabelle was stimulation enough. She traced her slender fingertips along the back of his left ear as he chewed and swallowed the sweet fruit. Even this gentle touch ignited a fire in his belly; he wanted so much to kiss her.
She stroked the line of his jaw and tickled the nape of his neck. He felt a spark of creativity fanned to a bright flame and wished he had his lyre at hand to match notes to the sweet song taking shape in his heart. Never matter, he thought, a verse will do just as well. He smiled back at his beautiful muse and said:
“In loving music fingers play.
And tender hearts unite,
So let our tuneful tongues combine,
And passion’s song take flight.”
“Wonderful!” She clapped her hands together, giving him too much credit for poetry which her own gentle touch had caused. She smiled sweetly. “Let us test that out. Shall we?”
She pressed her lips against his and the lingering taste of the pear dissolved into sweet honeysuckle. Her kiss was wet and warm, and surprisingly insistent, forcing his lips apart. Their tongues met midway and James felt as if his entire being had dissolved, like sugar in hot water.
Actually it was Arabelle’s body that was dissolving, flesh and blood melting away into a pure white mist. She became something betwixt faery and angel, a condensed cloud seen at twilight, a creature of pure sensation whose body was light and malleable and built to please. The mist clung to him, making a perfect seal against naked chest, hips and groin. She was still there, of course, at the heart of the mist, wrapping herself all around him, so warm and pleasant. Yes, she was still there...
Chapter 3
October 18, 1760
The Strand, London
As the most-populated city in Europe, London was renowned as a capital where refined society strained to reach new heights. Home to an amalgam of larger-than-life personalities bristling with energy, a seat of innovation where artists, writers and spiritual leaders thrived. It was, undeniably, the very heart of the British Empire, the center of court and politics, of trade, commerce and culture. As he walked its crowded streets, Eric Grayson should have felt a certain type of kinship and pride. But the one thing that impressed him most was something he had purposely forgotten. The stench.
The butchers and meat-sellers on High Holbourn Street were too lazy to cart their leavings all the way down to the piers on the Thames. Instead they carelessly dumped buckets of gory entrails directly into the sewers, clogging the flow of human waste heading to the river. The rotting meat smell rising from the grates was almost unbearable. Add to that the odor of sheep urine running down in streams from the holding pens along the sides of the road. Eric nearly gagged as he stepped over a flowing rivulet of filth in order to cross the street.
After a long two-day ride, it felt good to stretch his legs a bit. Eric and his steward, Richard Langdon, had made a hundred miles southward on the first day. He’d brought Langdon along more for the protection than the company. The coastal towns
and villages along the North Sea were pleasant enough but the long stretches of rough terrain between them held many hidden dangers. An attack by bandits was more than just a nuisance; it was a potentially deadly threat along the east Brigham road, especially around Louth and Folkingham. The cut-throats were less likely to engage a pair of riders than a single horseman, and Langdon was an accurate and deadly shot with the pistol. Eric might have brought his son James, who had the best eye for pistols among anyone he’d ever seen, but his son was little use as a bodyguard. James refused to shoot at another human being under any circumstances, even in self-defense.
The two travelers spent the night at a small Newmarket inn and completed the journey next day, arriving in London just after noon. Eric hosteled their horses at a stable in Smithfield, a small ranch adjacent to huge pens where sheep were grazed and fattened for the city-center markets. The two men parted ways upon reaching the Thames. Eric tasked Langdon with canvassing the shipping houses along the docks, hoping to massage the floundering relationships between Eric's Graysport concerns and the London traders.
Eric stood watching the chaotic swirl of activity on the piers. So many tall trading ships were in port, clogging the river with a forest of bobbing masts. Crowded shops and stalls lined the wharf, traders doing good business amid a clatter of loading and unloading, shouts and cat-calls, police whistles, and the occasional vagrant musician. All doing good business, he thought bitterly.
He walked down to one of the inns along the docks and sat on a broad wicker chair at an outdoor table. He stared enviously at all the hustle and bustle along the river. The oysters were just fresh off the boats and tasted fine. Eric washed them down with a light ale, swallowing also a generous heaping of envy and regret. Over the past few years the docks at Graysport had become so little used three of its slips had fallen into disrepair, crumbling into the hungry sea.