by Kim Deister
“I’m supposed to save myself with butter and coffee?” The skepticism was real and it was strong. “What am I supposed to do? Grease myself up so she can’t grab me?” I ducked just in time to avoid a slap on the back of the head, but wasn’t quite quick to dodge the smack on my butt. Twenty-six years old and my grandmother still spanks me.
“Hardly. Make yourself useful,” she ordered, handing me the dish of butter. “Heat this up. Medium-low, and don’t let it scorch. Skim off the foam as it builds up. We need the ghee.”
“The what now?”
She rolled her eyes at my lack of knowledge. “Ghee. Clarified butter. When it’s done, strain it through this.” She handed me another Mason jar and a strainer lined with a scrap of cheesecloth.
Still clueless as to what was happening, I dutifully did as I was told. While I skimmed, she and Finn measured out coffee and inscribed runes on the filter. Finn scrawled Siofra’s name on a scrap of paper torn from the pad and set it aside. By the time my ghee was ready, they were ready, too. Finn set the scrap of paper in the filter and Grandma Fiona buried it with coffee grounds before directing me to pour the ghee over it all. Finn gathered the edges and tied it closed with the ribbon. The three of us held hands as Grandma Fi chanted words of protection to set the spell.
“When you get home, toss this into the woods behind your house. As it decays, so will any bad mojo directed toward you.” She handed me the sodden mess, now safely held in a plastic bag.
I looked at it skeptically as I set it aside. “Mojo? Is that a technical magic term?”
She threatened me with a spatula before continuing with the lessons of the day, this time spells involving daggers and amulets. We finally called it a day just before lunch. Finn left to go home to get ready for work, his new bike roaring to life and startling a flock of birds out of the trees. I helped my grandmother put everything away and, after a lazy lunch with her, it was past time for me to get back to work. After hugging her goodbye, I hopped in my truck and headed home with my buttery coffee grounds.
As I drove down the lane, I sang at the top of my lungs. I felt surprisingly light-hearted, even after a morning of battle training. But I almost swallowed my own tongue when a huge moose shoot out of the woods and skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. I slammed on my brakes and just barely missed slamming into him. He turned to face me, staring right at me, his flanks heaving. He was so close that his chest brushed the grill of my truck. Sunlight filtered through the trees, making his golden fur glow as he stood frozen in front of me. He was immense, his rack wider than my truck. I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful he was… right until he backed up several feet, pawed the road, and lowered his head as he charged.
The entire truck shuddered under the blow. My head snapped back against the head rest and I felt it all the way through my neck. Before I could fully process that I was under attack by a rogue moose, he backed up and charged me again. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop the assault. Honking the horn just seemed to enrage him even more. All I could do was brace myself and pray to the Goddess that he’d get bored and leave me in peace. I could hear the metal of my truck groan every time his bulk slammed into it.
It was almost ten minutes before he stopped, giving me one last look before he disappeared into the woods. I lowered my head, resting it against the steering wheel, and just breathed, willing my heart to slow to an acceptable speed. After a quick look to make sure the coast was clear, I got out to examine the damage. My heart fell when I saw the extent of it. The moose shattered my grill and pushed the entire front end at least a few inches. The hood was crumpled enough that it wouldn’t open when I tried to check my engine inside. It was a mess, but I knew it could have been a lot worse.
Taylor was never going to believe this when I told her. She firmly believed I attracted the weird. Being attacked by a moose more than qualified as weird.
I shook my head ruefully and climbed back into my truck. It had stalled when I slammed on the brakes without benefit of the clutch. As I turned the key, I wondered if my baby was still even drivable. But she didn’t let me down, starting right up with a purr. I shifted into gear, testing her out. She wasn’t pretty, but she worked.
I took one last glance into the woods on both sides of the lane, hoping Mr. Moose didn’t have friends lurking, a second wave of attack. No moose, but there was a flash of movement that seemed out of place. It looked like a pale arm, a whip of glossy black hair. My heart jumped into my throat and I froze, one hand on the shift. Siofra, I stared, trying to get another glimpse, but whatever I’d seen was long gone. Shaking it off, I drove home without any more wild animal attacks. After disposing of the dripping coffee filter in the woods, I spent the rest of the day holed up in my studio, safe from wild moose as I raced against the clock to finish everything I needed to do.
When I finally finished, midnight had come and gone, but I was done with everything I needed to do. In about eight hours, I had to be in my booth and ready to go. As usual, I worked right to the end, but my overachieving ways would pay off. Now I needed sleep in the worst way. I also required sustenance if I didn’t want to spend the night listening to my stomach growl. The house was pitch black as I made my way down the stairs like an old woman. Breaking bones would be problematic and inconvenient, to say the least, but I didn’t want the light to wake Finn. It wasn’t his fault I’d been burning the candle at both ends lately.
My luck held and I managed to make it to the kitchen without injury. I made myself a steaming mug of oolong and lavender tea and helped myself to a huge brownie that Finn must have made earlier. It was freezing outside, but I felt like I had been living in a cave for days. My fleece was hanging next to Luna's and I threw it on before stepping outside onto the deck.
I was right; it was freezing. And at some point during my self-imposed exile from the outside world while I worked, it had snowed. It was only an inch or so, but it was enough to hide the grass. It wasn’t quite winter yet, but snow sometimes fell early in this part of the country. The sky was clear and full of stars and the full moon shone down, sparkling my yard with snow diamonds. A trio of owls hooted back and forth to one another in the dark woods that bordered the lawn.
Finn had obviously been on top of things while I worked. The deck was bare of furniture, the lights gone, the plants moved. The only place to sit was the bench under the pergola and I tried to ignore the cold leeching into my butt. Munching my brownie, I leaned back against the house. The night was beautiful, the fresh air refreshing after the smells of adhesives and hot metal that hung in the air of my studio.
As I drank my tea and listened to the sounds of the woods, I felt the tension slowly leaving me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d truly relaxed and I felt myself starting to doze, even in the cold. But a sharp crack from the woods startled me before I could fall too far into sleep. The noise was loud, but silence followed it. The woods were completely silent, the owls no longer hooting to each other. I strained my eyes to see beyond the glow of light coming from inside, staring into the darkness. It took a moment for my eyes to pick anything out from the deep shadows of the trees, but when they did, I discovered the reason why the woods were so quiet. Standing at the edge of the woods was Macy. What the hell? I couldn’t think of one sensible reason why the new French teacher would be lingering in my woods. Every instinct in me had told me that something was off about her and now I knew I had been right. It had to be Siofra.
Too late, I remembered that Finn wasn’t asleep inside. He was still at the shop. I was alone with a chick who was a crazy, immortal fairy with a personal vendetta. At best, she was a French teacher with a personal grudge, thanks to my performance in the parking lot. Either way, it wasn’t good.
The coffee filter spell obviously wasn’t having much of an effect quite yet, because the animosity was so thick, I could cut it with a knife… if only I had one. As I stared at her, I inventoried everything around me for a potential weapon. I had an almost empty
porcelain mug. Not exactly hardcore weaponry. I had absolutely nothing in the way of anti-fairy protection. No marigolds, no primroses, no red berries. No iron, no bells, no salt. Not a single thing that my grandmother insisted I keep with me at all times. My pajamas weren’t exactly made for packing heat. I was alone and I was defenseless. And we both knew it.
Then tension built as we stared at each other across the yard. For a long time, she made no move to approach me, just watched me across the yard with a smug smile. It was the smile of a predator who knew she’d trapped her prey. I had never felt so powerless in my life, so insignificant. Her power was like a force field that surrounded her, trapping anyone and anything within it. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it. The hair on my arms raised, even under my fleece. I felt goosebumps on my neck that had nothing to do with the temperature. It was the icy chill of fear and the total certainty that my life was over.
My blood pressure began to rise to dangerous levels as I contemplated my possible demise. It spiked even more when she stepped out of the trees and began crossing the snowy lawn toward me, leaving behind not a single footprint in the fresh snow. She had barely moved more than a few feet when the silence of the night was shattered. It was the most beautiful and welcome sound in the world, the sound of Finn’s motorcycle as it pulled into the driveway. Macy/Siofra heard it, too. As she backed away and disappeared into the woods, she extended a single middle finger in my direction. Apparently, the bird was a universal gesture of snarkiness in the fairy realm as well as the human one. I didn’t even know if she was still there to see it, but I returned the gesture with great vehemence. It was useless, but I felt better.
I grabbed my mug and dashed back into the relative safety of my house. I locked the back door just as Finn opened the front. My encounter outside suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. I heard him in the front hall, but my legs wouldn't hold me long enough to greet him. I stopped fighting it and slid to the floor, barely managing to set my mug on the washer as I collapsed with a loud thunk against the machine. I was still shaking when Finn found me.
He knelt on the floor in front of me, stilling my hands with his. “What happened? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
He fired the questions at me one right after another. I didn’t need to answer all of them. They all had the same answer. “Siofra. At least, I think it was her. It might have been Macy. Or it might have been both of them. In the yard. And by the moose.” Complex sentences were beyond me.
“You don’t know if it was more than one person?” I watched his face and saw the moment the rest of what I’d said hit him. “The moose? What the hell are you talking about? Did you hit your head?”
“No, there was just one.” He thought I was hysterical. I could see it in his face. I forced myself to calm down and I explained. “It was Macy. You know, the chick I went bat shit on at the coffee shop? She struck me as off even then. I think she’s Siofra. I think Macy is Siofra.”
“What happened? Did she hurt you? Did she talk to you?”
More rapid-fire questions that made my head hurt. “She was in the backyard under the trees. She didn’t even speak to me. And she didn’t do anything; she didn’t have a chance to because you came home,” I answered. “Well, technically she did do one thing.”
“What? What did she do?” I could hear the desperation in his voice.
“She flipped me off.”
There was a long silence before he said anything. When he did, his words were slow, as if he were speaking to a two-year-old. “She. Flipped. You. Off.” He didn’t sound quite so desperate anymore. He sounded confused and maybe a little amused. “Well, I didn’t expect that.”
“Neither did I.”
“And the moose? I’m a bit confused. What does a moose have to do with anything?”
I gave him a rundown of the attacking Bullwinkle, another reference that went over his head. By the time I finished my tale, poor Finn looked like he didn’t know whether to be concerned or to laugh hysterically.
“Well, that explains the condition of your truck. I saw it coming inside.”
There didn’t seem to be much to say after that, other than a short lecture from Finn about my lack of preparedness. He threatened to ground me, but I dissuaded him in a mature, adult way. I kissed him senseless until he shut up. It was an effective technique. Not only did he stop lecturing me, I made up for missed cardio and worked out some of the stress. And then I drifted to sleep, tucked securely into Finn’s arms.
The next morning came too early after a night filled with less than stellar dreams. I preferred dreams of pirates, but Siofra had the starring role last night. Thankfully, the pirate was capable of making me forget all about her, at least for a little while. I had worked for weeks for the show today, but all I wanted to do was stay home with Finn and forget the rest of humanity. But Finn wasn’t having it and he eventually cajoled me out of bed with an impromptu striptease and the promise of a shower for two.
Saturdays were busy at the shop so Finn had to work, but he had time before he needed to be there and I wasn't above using him for manual labor. We loaded up my truck in record time, leaving us enough time to pick up even more coffee on the way to the arena. The doors were just opening when we pulled into the parking lot. A long line of vehicles already waited for a turn at the curb. The concrete pad between the curb and the arena was mass hysteria as people moved back and forth unloading cars and hauling box after box inside. I watched more than one person risk their lives as they unloaded one box at a time and strolled inside at a snail’s pace. Curb space was at a premium and tensions rose by the minute.
When it was finally my turn, there were already a couple of people shouting at each other over it. I had come prepared for a quick unload, having no intention of putting my life in any more danger than necessary. I had enough waiting in the wings with Siofra. Thanks to the industrial-sized dolly I pulled out of the back of my pickup, Finn and I unloaded my truck with unholy speed. The thing looked like the car in that old show, The Beverly Hillbillies, by the time we were done. Bungee cords wrapped around a pile of boxes, a few folding tables, even Finn’s big terrarium. I slung the bag holding a folding gazebo over one shoulder and pushed it, following Finn as he carried the only thing that wouldn’t fit on the dolly, a heavy wooden screen covered in pegs that my dad made for me a few years ago.
It was because of that screen that I was happy to have my muscle-bound pirate. It was heavier than hell and moving it was an unholy struggle between it and me that I usually lost, even with the dolly. But Finn picked the damn thing up and carried it like it was nothing. The view from behind was enjoyable, which was an added bonus for me. Tight jeans and leather jackets worked for the man and, as we walked into the arena, I realized I wasn’t the only one to notice. Whiplash was a serious health concern when heads whipped around as he passed by. It gave me a delightful ego boost.
He set the screen in place and left to move my truck while I set up. My booth was in the goal crease, the ice invisible under huge sheets of plywood. I had one of the bigger areas and I was grateful for the space. Finn came back as I shoved the last table into place, just in time to hear my barrage of expletives when I pinched my finger in one of the leg’s hinges.
“Are you sure you aren’t a pirate, too, lass? Your language could rival any sailor’s.” When he kissed my finger, I might have moaned in a very dirty way.
He laughed and gently pushed me back to my boxes. I stuck my tongue out at him, but I behaved. As we unpacked my boxes and set up my booth, I noticed that there was an unusual amount of traffic around us. Maybe I should keep Finn here as a living display. But he had work and if he stayed, I thought he might get more attention than my jewelry and that wasn’t good for business. Of course, he’d probably prove to be an even bigger distraction for me. After a lingering kiss goodbye, he left me to finish on my own.
The show wouldn’t open to the public for another two hours which gave the judges plenty of time to examine the entries and award
the winners. This show was a big deal. It was sponsored by a major magazine and it was always the focus of a special issue. Artisans came from all over to be in this show every year. Not only were there prizes in individual categories, but a huge “Best of Show” grand prize, too. That winner was going to be the focus of a ten-page spread and it came with a nice check for fifteen grand. I wanted some serious upgrades to my studio. The national exposure wouldn’t hurt sales either. I was overdue for some good luck.
A commotion at the other end of the arena caught my attention. Crap. The judges had arrived. Quickly, I put the last touches on my display and stepped back to take a slew of photos for my website. I’d gone all out with the whimsical woodland frog theme, even using Finn’s terrarium to showcase some of the pieces. It was set up in one corner with its doors open, necklaces and bracelets hanging from the branch inside. Rings nestled in the moss along the path to the little house and around the pond and earrings hung here and there.
I had forsaken a lot of sleep for this display. I even conned Finn into helping me in the middle of the night a couple days ago. We spent hours ice-dyeing entire bolts of fabric in shades of brown and green, in deep blue and purple. Long lengths of it covered my display tables, covering their gouged and stained tops. I turned some of it into long scarves with elaborate, beaded fringes, draping them all over the booth.
Before he left, Finn helped me put the gazebo over my booth. The top was covered with thick sheets of moss that trailed down the sides. It had been a pain in the butt to transport, but the effect made it worth the effort. Inside, the ceiling was hidden under more of the ice-dyed fabric. It wrapped around the frame and pooled on the floor around the support posts, creating a little woodland glen.
The woodland theme carried over to the tables, too. Driftwood nestled into more moss, pieces of jewelry hanging from the branches. Terra cotta pots of soft moss held rings and hair sticks that bristled out like the quills of a porcupine. It was magical, but in a good way, which was saying something these days.