And the Creek Don't Rise

by R. M. Gilmore

  I shouted after her, “Find Puck.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. Finvarra had been waiting on me, Cu Sidhe, not to come home but to loose the beast free from its curse. To end the killing of his kin.

  I sniffed back fear and the tears that threatened to take over. We got this, girl. I’ll get you out of this place.

  A squeaking, scurrying caught my attention. From a large crack in the wall in the back corner of the room, a small gray mouse popped through. It scuttled around my feet and back to the hole. Silver shimmers glittered its fur.

  “Puck,” I snarled. “You get your naked rear end over here right now or so help me, I will bust outta here and when I do, you’ll wish you could die.” I waited, tapping my foot, hands planted firmly on my hips.

  I trudged over to the helpless little thing, legs weak. One good stomp and the bones would crack around his teeny, tiny lungs. With a smile as wide as Texas, I lifted my foot dramatically in the air above the pathetic little vermin. A moment before I made contact with the dirt floor, its shimmering grew and Puck popped into existence. Hands up in surrender, crouched just enough to prove submission.

  “Wait. Wait. Wait,” he begged. Looking around, he realized he’d already changed into his human. “Lynn, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You lying,” I said, swinging a fist at him. “No good.” I kicked at his shins. “Piece of—” I reared back to lay a hard punch across his face. He kissed me instead. Our lips touched and the magic of the place filled my soul. Like nothing I’d felt on earth. Puck’s lips to mine—rain so fresh I felt it on my cheeks— set fire to my human body.

  He huffed, pulling in panting breaths, and ripped the cloak from my shoulders. Hand smoldering, he tossed it to the floor. My girl flared to life, a bubbling roar pushing from my lungs.

  “Wait, just, wait.” Bright smile wide, fake. “I didn’t lie.” I swung. He ducked. “Okay, I didn’t tell you everything. I let you live your life until you were ready to come home.”

  “This isn’t my home, Puck.”

  “I know. I know. Avery… I understand now.” He shrugged. “I wanted to come home. This was the only way. The Cu Sidhe belongs in Cnoc Meadha. And you belong with me.”

  I kissed him. Long, deep. Living in the magic for one perfect moment. Letting out a slow breath, I whispered, “Not on your immortal life,” sending one hard knee into his man parts. Immortal did not mean impervious. He wailed and fell to his side.

  “King Finvarra,” I hollered, dragging Puck out the door on a blanket of pelts, inhuman strength I could get used to. “He’s here. I got him,” I called to the king.

  Footsteps shook the ground. Finvarra barreled around the corner. “Aye, a fast worker you are, my little Cu.”

  Puck groaned. “I will have your throne, Finvarra.” He coughed, and with an accent so perfect, I almost didn’t believe it was him, he added, “Beidh mé go bhfuil tú marbh.”

  Finvarra fumed. Lip snarled, teeth bared. “You will die in your quest, boy.”

  A sinister grin twisted my lips. “You’ll have to survive your feral dog first, King.”

  Eyes flamed golden embers. Hands trembled, waves of magic rolled down my arms. A pop and out burst my girl. A clean, flawless transition. Teeth gnashing, claws splayed. Finvarra’s eyes rounded. A beast he hadn’t laid eyes on in centuries, his loyal pup, rife with power and vengeance.

  Puck may have been too quick for the hulking king, but I had the power. Finvarra ran, long, gaping strides carrying him through narrow dirt streets lined with stone houses. I gave chase. Hurling legs, bounding, dodging. His breadth did him no favors.

  Swiftly I was on him, clinging to his massive back. Claws sunk deep into muscle. He refused to fall. Scaling his back, I met his throat with piercing sharp teeth and ripped a chunk from his flesh. Decadence filled my mouth.

  The earth trembled beneath him when he fell. Blood glugged from his neck. Real, red blood. I’d torn holes in men half his size for years and not once was I faced with the sight of their blood. My girl didn’t blink twice at it.

  Finvarra gurgled, laughed. “Sidhe can’t kill me. Nothing can.” He coughed. “I am King Finvarra.”

  Puck caught up, skidding to a stop beside me. He patted me on the head. “That’s my girl.” The sound of a blade freed from its sheath churned my stomach. “What about silver?” He raised Finvarra’s sword high above his head. “Ainm daoine maithe.” And plunged it deep into the king’s belly.

  Green tinged smoke billowed from the wound. It sizzled, spurted. The beast slinked backward, ready to flee.

  Swirling winds rattled shutters. “Shit.” Puck knelt in front of me. “Listen, you have to change back. Right now.” Wide, black eyes pleaded. “Please. She can’t see you and you’ll never make it out on four legs.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Please.”

  Who? I snorted, shook my hulking coat, knocking my human free. Laying in a heap, Puck scooped me up across his arms. Whistling through branches and over rooftops, gusts nearly pushed him over. He ran as quickly as he could carrying me, back to the bed of pelts where I’d dropped my bag.

  Even the bravest of the creatures took shelter in open doorways. Blonde hair flipped over my face with the wind. Those golden pill bugs zipped into hiding holes in nearby trees.

  Puck set me down on two legs and shoved the backpack into my hands. “Head toward the hawthorn ring, to the west. Climb, dig. Think of home.”

  “Puca,” a woman shrieked, opening Puck’s eyes wide.

  He looked back over his shoulder, curls whipping around his face. “I’m sorry I brought you here.” His lips pressed to mine, I closed my eyes, clinging to the memory of what we’d been. “You were everything I hoped you’d be.”

  He’d lied to me. Tricked me. Loved me. Taught me how to survive. “Come with me.” I grabbed his arm. “You don’t belong here either, clearly.”

  He swallowed hard, solace hitting his face a second before a smile pulled wide. “Then how will you escape?”

  “Padraic O’Kain,” she wailed. “You’ll burn for eternity for your crimes.” Her commanding voice carried through twisting vines, curling them in on themselves.

  One last glance over his shoulder, he said, “Listen to the old girl.” He poked me in the stomach. “She knows what do.” One last kiss on the tip of my nose and he was off. “Tell them about me,” he shouted over his shoulder, bright grin wide on his face.

  Sidhe moved from hiding places and gathered to watch the spectacle. I wrapped myself in the pelts, slinking into the shadows. Through an open door on the far side of a window, a woman approached Puck. With his arms open wide, he grinned.

  “Queen Oona, I didn’t realize you were back.” Round butt cheeks clenched when she snatched him up by the neck without a word. “What a coincidence, so am I,” he croaked.

  Puck kicked and squirmed in the queen’s clutch. Her wavy strawberry hair trailed the ground behind her, inches shy of the embroidered hem on her rust colored dress. Puck might’ve been quick, but the queen—just a little thing herself—was strong as an ox and had her own vengeance to reap.

  I ripped a pair of pants and shirt from my bag and slid them on, hidden huddled in the fur.

  She dragged him, dirt clinging to his bare skin, stopping at a series of posts jutting from the ground. Oona tossed Puck to the dirt. Squatty, furry goblins—swamp green with tall, pointed ears—scurried along to help her, quickly shackling Puck’s wrists to the posts.

  “Padraic O’Kain,” she bellowed. “You are hereby charged with treason. Malice acts against the laws of Tuath Dé. What say ye?”

  “Puca are wild, indulgent, and full of mischief. Can you fault me?” His accent rolled free as he grinned up at the queen.

  “It is of the decree of Queen Oona of Cnoc Meadha, on this turn of Saturn, Padraic O’Kain is guilty and shall be sentenced to the bearing of iron. One for eac
h act of treachery. Until the day I do deem him reformed. Do the people agree?”

  “Aye!” many of the crowd shouted, fists in the air.

  Slinking back, further from the action, I kept my eyes on the men in the center of it all. A large creature, all limbs and a pimpled pot belly, carried a handful of chain in a great gloved hand. Puck’s dark eyes found mine through it all. I stopped. Frozen. Too scared to move and too prideful to look away. His jaw clenched and his chin jutted out while he stared at me, curling smile carving dimples in his cheeks.

  The gangly creature laid one long iron chain across Puck’s shoulders. Another chain and he closed his eyes. Pale skin around the chain smoldered and festered. Three. Four. By the fifth, he couldn’t hold back his pain anymore and he let out a scream of agony that stung me square in the center.

  The beast roared back through my lips and I knew it was the only chance I’d get. I took off in a full run toward the west—I hoped. My feet cut into the dirt, kicking up dust at my heels. I’d wanted to stop and look, marvel at the beauty of it all. Soak in the world that’d birthed my lineage. The crowd’s echoed cheers promised I wouldn’t survive if I stayed behind.

  Tiny white flowers dotted a group of trees ahead. I pushed forward, toward the pungent stench of a hawthorn in full bloom. Without stopping to think, I slammed against a twisted trunk. I climbed. Gripping tightly, afraid to slip, scaling the prickly tree for my life, I dug in my toes and pushed up. Thorn-barbed branches poked holes into my palms, leaving spots of blood behind as evidence.

  Puck cried out again when I reached the top. The sound brought bile up my throat. He’d been my friend. An ally. Leaving him felt wrong. Lynnie wanted to go back, rescue my friend, save the day. The beast clawed down my center. A warning. Time’s up.

  Impenetrable overgrowth held me tight in the Otherworld. Limbs curled, slipping up a pant leg, around a wrist. Clinging to the branches, I shook loose leaves with the force of my whole body.

  Another scream caught in the breeze trembled my insides. My girl hung on the fringes, dying to burst from my seams. I nearly let her.

  Teeth clenched, I rumbled, “I just wanna go home.”

  White petals swirled in tornados, falling through from the tip top of the trees. Tingling zapped my center, tugging an invisible line. I growled, shoving through thick branches. They slid free from each other, cradling me in their spiny grasp. Lost in a sea of white, the hawthorn trees, to the west of Cnoc Meadha, swallowed me whole.

  The meek shall inherit the earth

  Tiny round petals floated to the ground around me, falling to my cheeks. A familiar ring of Hawthorn trees surrounded me—not a bloom in sight. Spiny branches jutted overhead, creaking in an autumn wind. Leftover magic fizzled on the tip of my nose.

  Panting, the Otherworld still tight in my chest, I crooned, “Let’s see the Ozark Howler do that.” Leaves rustled in the grass.

  A gun cocked half a second before something shadowed the sun. “Lynn?”

  I sat up, nose to the barrel of a rifle. Circled in a ring of whitecap mushrooms. “Hattie?” I asked, squinting at the figure of an old woman with familiar brown eyes. Her hips had widened and the set of her jaw had changed with age, but the grandma I stared at was my best friend.

  “How in the holy hell did you end up out here?”

  Puck’s cries echoed. I closed my eyes against the ghost. “I escaped,” I croaked.

  “I thought I’d never see the likes of you again.”

  I blinked over and over again, taking in the map of lines carved into her face. “I just saw you. A week ago if it was a day.” Where’s Garret? “You had two little ones toddling around the yard.” I whimpered, “What happened?”

  She blinked right back. “Lynn, I ain’t seen your face in fifty years.”

  Head swam. Fifty years gone in a day—in a matter of hours. An immortal existence spent.

  No. No. No. The price you pay… “Hattie…” My eyes filled with tears. “Where’s my brother?”

  She looked down at the ground, sorrow set on her face. “We lost him last year.”

  I’d missed it all. I’d left them behind to follow a fantasy, a trick. A blink in the Otherworld had stolen decades from me. Any options I had for my life gone. I wanted it all back. The heavens could take my last breath for one more moment in Havana. My Havana.

  “Mama?” Hattie shook her head. “The kids?” I asked with hope.

  “Rusty joined up with the war.” What war? “He’s out in California now. Haven’t heard from him since his daddy passed. My girl, bless her heart, met a good man, Carrington Mallock, from Danville, and moved away after college. She lives in Shreveport now with my grandbaby.” She’d done just what I told her to. She’d left Havana in her dust. A look passed over my face that scared Hattie to a fit. “Don’t you even think about it, Carolyn. Not for one second. You stay away from those two.”

  “Maureen is in her fifties now, right?” About the same age as my mama was when—

  A gut-ripping tug yanked in my center. Ancient magics come calling. Avery’d said my time was up. Another day, two—a matter of minutes in the Otherworld—the beast would’ve missed her appointment with Croí na Tlachtga. Trapped in Knockma, she’d have been freed from this human prison. I could’ve ended it, this curse on both our houses. Freed the Cu Sidhe, my kin. Hattie’s grandbaby would’ve been free to live and grow. Generations of women would never know the power of Cu Sidhe. Finvarra seed would spread, tainting the world with its lustful greed. Choices, shit stink of the universe.

  Hattie held her face and shook her head. “No. Lynn, it ain’t gonna happen.”

  I stood, kicking a mushroom from the ring. “Hattie, you didn’t tell them?”

  She leaned her rifle across broad shoulders. “Not a word. You was gone for good and there was no sense in it continuing.”

  I didn’t know the person who stood in front of me. Behind those familiar eyes was a grown woman with demons of her own. I was one of them. “It must, Hattie. I’m sorry.” I didn’t have anything else to say. There was nothing else I could say. I’d royally screwed the pooch and there was no taking it back. Nothing left to do but try to make things better. To not let my life happen again.

  “Where’ve you been?” Tears filled her eyes.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Snatching my mostly empty bag from the dirt, I swallowed hard, not sure how to ask what needed asking. “Hat, can I borrow Garret’s truck?”

  She looked at me like I’d shot her cat. “You pop up here out of the blue and have the nerve to borrow your dead brother’s truck?” She set her jaw and glared at me. “You’re going to them, aren’t you?” she asked but knew the answer.

  There was no way I couldn’t. Either I went on my own, or I’d be summoned to die when the time came. The least I could do was to make sure my successor didn’t meet the same fate I had. She’d know more. She should have known from the day she was born. It was my fault she didn’t and I was going to fix that.

  “Hattie, please. If you love your grandbaby, you’ll let me go to her. She needs to know. Our bloodline depends on it.” I wrapped my arms around her, breathing in apple shampoo. “She’s a warrior, Hattie. Destined to smite the wicked.”

  “Do you know? For sure?”

  I stepped back, hands wrapped tight around her arms. “Sure enough to claw my way from the Otherworld to be here. There are things she’ll need from me, people out there who will prey on her. Without me, her life will be just like mine. Gone before she knows it.”

  I’d always thought Hattie and I would get old together. Die gossiping about the town on our front porch. It tore my heart into a million fiery pieces knowing I’d missed Garret’s passing, Daddy and Mama’s too, and sure as the sun rose, I’d miss Hattie’s. To make things fair, they’d all miss mine.

  Her nostrils flared. A woman hardened by time and heartb
reak. I knew in my heart Garret never did stop looking out the window for me. I read it in the lines on her face. “You take care of her, Lynn.”

  “For the rest of my life.” Pulling her close, I squeezed, soaking in one last drop of who I’d been so many years ago. Wiry gray hairs popped from her bun, tickling my nose. “She’ll need you too. Know her. Love her. Remind her she has the knowledge right inside her. All she has to do is listen.” The beast rumbled, anxious, tense. “I love you, Henrietta, with all my heart,” I said into her shoulder.

  “I love you, too.” She sniffed and wiped away tears. Stoic in her old age, her tough skin had only gotten thicker. “Now, get on with it. Oh, Lynn, the keys—”

  “I know,” I yelled over my shoulder while I ran to a fancy truck parked out front of an aging blue house. The old brown doublewide had been replaced years before with a sturdy two-story. I grinned. “Good on you, brother.”

  Throwing my bag to the passenger seat, I slid behind the wheel. I reached to open the glove box for Garret’s keys. Time reached out and cold cocked me square in the jaw. Like nothing I’d seen in my lifetime, screens and buttons and things I had no clue what to do with. “Fuck. It’d be really cool if I had time for this kinda shit but…” I opened my eyes wide to the heavens, waving hands over my churning stomach.

  The door flung open, and I nearly fell out. “Listen, I’m older than you and I deserve your respect. When I’m talking, you do not walk away from me.” Hattie stepped up on the side, leaned over the top of me, and pushed a button under the steering wheel. Lights popped on inside, the engine so quiet I wondered if I imagined it. “I want to slap you across your face right now. I want you to know that.” Maybe she was still my Hattie.

  “I’d let you.” A punch to the gut ticked my running timer, doing her job for her. “I’m losing time, Hat.”

  She watched my face, surely seeing in the anguish festering in my soul. “Tell her to come see me.”