Door Into Faerie

by Edward Willett

  “MacPhaiden,” Wally said. “She comes from a long line of Scots.”

  He’d been clicking around on the site as he spoke, reaching Current Projects; Shooting Schedule. He blinked. “Well, that’s a coincidence.”

  “What?” Ariane leaned closer to the screen.

  “She’s in Scotland. Shooting at a place called Castle MacPhaiden.”

  “An old family residence?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know much about our family history.”

  “What’s the project?”

  “Probably some low-budget fantasy flick. Scottish sword and sorcery.” He grinned. “Polearms and porridge. Halbards and haggis.”

  “Wally…” Ariane growled.

  “Sorry,” Wally said contritely. He clicked on the project link, and blinked again. “Huh. Wrong again. It’s something titled ‘Family Legends,’ and she calls it, ‘a personal journey of discovery.’”

  “Sounds like she’s researching that family history you say you don’t know much about,” Ariane said. “I wonder if she’ll turn up anything about King Arthur?”

  “That’d be on the male side,” Wally said automatically.

  Ariane raised an eyebrow at him. “Would it?”

  “Of course it –” Wally stopped. Sexist much? he thought. Sure, in Arthur’s day boys came first when land and titles were inherited – what was the word for that, prima…primo…primogeniture, that was it. Although, come to think of it, the word itself just meant the firstborn inherited, it didn’t specify the firstborn being male. But that had nothing to do with genetic inheritance, and – he’d bet – even less to do with magical inheritance, which clearly followed its own rules. After all, after so many generations, there should be hundreds or thousands – or maybe even hundreds of thousands – of “heirs of Arthur” or “heirs of the Lady of the Lake” floating around. Instead there appeared to be only him and his sister on the Arthurian side, and Ariane – and before her, her mother – on the Ladyian (Lakeian?) side. And the fact they’d both ended up in Regina, Saskatchewan, at the same school, and at the same lake at the same time on the same morning…that was far more than coincidence. The magic had been choosing its path since the days of the original Arthur. Presumably it had always been in someone, someone who could have wielded Excalibur had it been reforged, or someone who could have accepted the power of the Lady of the Lake had it been offered.

  So why wasn’t it? Wally thought, and was a little startled it was the first time he’d thought it. Why didn’t the Lady…um, “activate” one of her heirs before now? Merlin was imprisoned for centuries. Why not reforge Excalibur before he could even go looking for it?

  It might have been the first time he’d asked that particular question, but it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d questioned whether the Lady of the Lake had told them the whole truth. Maybe someday I’ll get to ask her, he thought.

  Right. And I’m sure she’ll tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth when I do.

  “You’re right,” he said humbly to Ariane. “Whatever Flish and I have inherited from King Arthur could have come down through the male or female side. The fact it ended up in someone named Knight may have just been coincidence.”

  “Or Excalibur’s idea of a joke,” Ariane said darkly.

  Wally knew what she meant. Excalibur was clearly more than a hunk of metal. It had communicated with both Wally and Ariane – mostly variations of “kill your enemies,” so it wasn’t exactly a wisecracking Disney sidekick sort of sword – but still, who could say just how sentient it was?

  Maybe we’ll find out if we ever get it put back together, Wally thought, and it wasn’t a comfortable thought. He knew Ariane’s mantra of “I control the sword, it doesn’t control me,” and he approved – but those were just words. Maybe just teenage bravado.

  Just who would be in control once the sword was forged anew?

  He shook his head. Hypotheticals were just that – hypothetical. “Whatever, this Castle MacPhaiden is where Mom’s going to be on…” he checked the calendar, and grinned. “On Mother’s Day. How perfect is that? I’ll surprise her.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Ariane said dryly. “So where is it, exactly?”

  A quick Google turned up more information about the castle, which was far off the beaten paths in the Highlands of Scotland, and privately owned. It saw few tourists, although it had been used in a number of movies and TV series over the years. Wally skimmed the history. “Built in the thirteenth century…came into the MacPhaiden family in the fifteenth century when a wedding feast ended in the slaughter of the previous owners…said to be haunted by the murdered mother of the groom, who walks the battlements in a long white robe, wailing her anger and grief.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Ariane said.

  “You didn’t believe in magic until a few months ago,” Wally pointed out.

  Ariane laughed. “You’ve got a point. Maybe we should take some garlic, just in case.”

  “Um…that’s vampires. For ghosts you use…” Wally thought about it, and realized the only lore he had at his disposal had come from watching Supernatural. “Um…salt or cold iron?”

  “Why does it have to be cold iron?” Ariane asked curiously. “Wouldn’t hot iron work just as well?”

  Wally laughed. “I don’t know. That’s just the way it’s always described.”

  “Well, we’ve got the cold iron,” Ariane said. “Two shards of Excalibur. You can pack a saltshaker, too, if you want.” She straightened. “So you really want to do this?”

  Wally went back to the Knight Errant Pictures website, and called up the publicity shot of his mother. It was a few years old, old enough that he remembered when she’d brought it home to show the family. He’d been eleven and Felicia had been just-turned fifteen and his best friend. It had been a wonderful year…

  …and it had been shortly after that his family had started to fall apart.

  Now the four of them were scattered all over the world.

  He couldn’t do anything about patching things up with Felicia. He’d at least spoken to his father. But his mom…it had been months since he’d even heard her voice.

  “Yes,” he said. “I really want to do this.”

  Ariane nodded. “Well then,” she said. “Let’s all celebrate Mother’s Day in Scotland.”

  Wally blinked at her. “All of us?”

  She grinned. “Why not? It’s spring, we’ve got no lead on Excalibur, we’re going stir-crazy. I can take everyone to Scotland…it might take a couple of trips, but I can do it. We’ll have some fun, and you can talk to your mother.” She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s my present to you both.”

  “Thanks,” he said, as the computer screen turned strangely blurry. They should replace it, he thought.

  They didn’t have to go back to the hotel to travel back to Barringer Farm, and there wasn’t even any need to change into their swimsuits. They’d arrive in the slough, to be sure, but Ariane could order the water off of them the moment they climbed out, and hot showers and clean clothes awaited in the house. Which was important, since, although she could remove the water, whatever was in the water stayed on their clothes and there was a whole herd of cows that spent a lot of time down by that slough.

  They went in search of a bathroom, their path taking them past a reading area with comfortable chairs and a few magazines scattered on low tables. Wally glanced down at one of the tables as they passed, and stopped dead.

  Ariane took another step, then turned back inquiringly. “What?”

  Wally pointed. “Look.”

  Ariane looked down at what had brought him up short. “Oh,” she said.

  Rex Major smiled toothily at them from the front page of a business magazine. ENTREPRENEURS FOR EDUCATION read the banner over his head, so he was clearly at some kind of gala charity fundraiser. And in the background, dressed in a low-cut slinky dress that sparkled in the lights, was Wally’s sister, Felicia, slightly out of focus but
still recognizable, and looking ten years older than her actual age of eighteen. “Seems to be enjoying herself,” Wally muttered.

  “Come on,” Ariane said.

  A moment later, after making sure no one was looking their way, they ducked together into one of the main-floor washrooms, Ariane turned on the tap, and they were on their way back to Barringer Farm.

  Unfortunately, Ariane’s grand plans for a mass outing to the Scottish Highlands didn’t work out. Emma and Aunt Phyllis both flat-out refused to come, making it clear they had no desire to experience Ariane-travel again, having survived it once. It was a sentiment Wally could appreciate, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice. “It’s only planes, trains and automobiles for me from now on, dear,” Aunt Phyllis had said. “Besides, Emma and I have to get the place spic-and-span for the Barringers. They’ll be back June first, you know.”

  So in the end, only he and Ariane and Ariane’s mom convened in the upstairs bathroom at ten o’clock at night, water running in the sink. The odd departure hour had been necessitated by Wally’s guess – though admittedly it was only a guess – that his mom and her film crew would show up at Castle MacPhaiden very early in the morning in Scotland. Since they were well past the equinox, sunrise was around five a.m. that far north…and there was a seven-hour time difference.

  Which meant, of course, that Wally would probably be yawning his head off during any meeting with his mother, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. People who complain about jet lag have never experienced Ariane-lag, he thought.

  Ariane held out one of her two shards of Excalibur to Wally. The other, he knew, rested against her side beneath a tensor bandage, where this one would join it later, when it wasn’t needed any longer. Supposedly Major couldn’t just take them from her and make use of their power – she had to give them to him willingly, at least until he got the final piece, the hilt. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get hold of them and hide them somewhere the teens would never be able to find them, if he somehow obtained one Ariane had left in a place she thought was safe but wasn’t.

  Wally took the proffered end of the shard in both hands. The piece of Excalibur didn’t sing to him, as Ariane said it did to her, but he could feel its magic, like a vibration or a faint electrical charge, thrumming in the steel and in his fingers. The spark of magic he’d inherited from Arthur somehow activated the sword’s own power – it seemed pleased that he was touching it.

  “Hold on to me, Mom,” Ariane said, and Emily wrapped her arms around her daughter. Ariane plunged her free hand into the running water, and the bathroom dissolved around them.

  Almost at once, it seemed, they erupted into the cold water of a small lake – loch, Wally corrected himself. Castle MacPhaiden, recognizable from the photos of it on his mom’s website, loomed off to the south, little more than a grey blob in the morning mist under a drizzling rain.

  “Sorry about the weather,” Ariane said.

  “What?” Wally said in mock outrage. “Can’t you control that, too?”

  Ariane laughed. “Not yet.”

  Wally grinned. “Welcome to Scotland. This is the same kind of weather we had the whole week I spent in Edinburgh with my family a few years ago.” He peered through the mist and rain at Castle MacPhaiden. It wasn’t a very large castle, really just a large house – maybe “keep” was the right word – built behind a battlemented wall at the top of a cliff. The road running up to it passed by the loch, maybe a hundred metres away. They trudged across boggy ground over to the road, then stood on its crumbling pavement, stamping their feet to knock the mud off their shoes.

  “Mom and I will go down to the village,” Ariane pointed the opposite way from the castle. “We’ll wait by the church for you at noon, if we don’t see you before then.”

  Wally nodded. “Be careful,” he said. “If anyone takes a photo of you, Rex Major could –”

  “Take hours to get here,” Ariane said. “Don’t worry, Wally. And good luck with your mom.”

  “Yes, good luck, Wally,” Emily Forsythe chimed in. She smiled at him, and he was struck by how much her smile looked like Ariane’s. “I’m sure she misses you more than you realize. She’s going to be thrilled to see you. Wish her Happy Mother’s Day for me. I wish I could meet her.”

  “Someday,” Wally said.

  But not today, he thought, as he turned and started the cold walk toward the forbidding grey castle. Not while she’s still under Merlin’s Command to tell him everything she knows about Ariane and me. He would have to be exquisitely careful in his choice of words to her, since he had to think she would give a word-by-word account to the sorcerer. He trusted himself to be that careful, but he didn’t trust Ariane’s mom. The fewer people who had to guard their words, the better.

  Less than an hour later, he stood on the battlements of castle’s wall, damp and dripping, stamping his feet to keep warm, watching the road, feeling like an ancient sentry awaiting the arrival of an invading army…and here they came at last, advancing on the castle under his mother’s command.

  Not that it was a very large army – a car and a van. And not that he could be entirely certain his mother was in either of them – it could just be a vanguard of the camera crew. But he didn’t think so. His mom had always been a very hands-on filmmaker. She’d want to be at the location right from the beginning.

  He realized belatedly that if he could see them they could potentially see him. So he ducked down behind the wall, sat on the cold, wet ground, and waited, his heart pounding in his chest.

  Funny. He’d fought Merlin’s thugs, been held at gunpoint by Merlin himself, flown halfway around the world on his own, swum to an island in the middle of a New Zealand lake, and been almost struck by lightning on a Caribbean island – and yet this impending meeting with his mother scared him more than any of those.

  The road curved around to the north of the castle, where a long drive led up the hill to the main entrance, out of his sight. It passed through a portcullis and emptied into a cobblestoned courtyard, with the keep on the east side and several smaller outbuildings to the west. These were probably originally stables and storerooms and now, it looked like, garages, although there were six garage doors. Who needed that many garages?

  Maybe the owner collects cars, he thought. He knew the castle still belonged to a MacPhaiden. A relative?

  Maybe his mom could tell him.

  He heard the rumble of tires on the cobblestones, heard the sound of doors opening and closing. The castle seemed unoccupied. He’d approached it cautiously, but seeing the shuttered windows and the lack of smoke from the chimneys, he’d decided it was safe enough to take up his sentry position against the wall. He ran over to the keep and, keeping close to the wall – the tall, thin windows were still well above his head even when he stood upright – crept to the corner, and then crawled forward on all fours until he had a view of the courtyard through a screen of heather.

  Wally saw his mother at once. Wearing jeans and a warm-looking woolen sweater, her long brown hair drawn back in a practical ponytail, she stood with her hands on her hips, talking to a man he recognized as a cinemato-grapher she’d worked with before. “We’ll set up in the Great Hall,” he heard her say, and, to his astonishment, the mere sound of her voice made his throat constrict.

  Getting sentimental in your old age, Wally. Is this what being fifteen is going to be like?

  The camera-guy nodded, and went back to the van to help the rest of the crew – just one other man and a woman, both of whom, like the cinematographer, looked vaguely familiar – start unloading equipment and cables. Behind the van, a third vehicle, a big black Jaguar with tinted windows, rolled into the courtyard.

  Meanwhile, his mom had turned around, and now she walked straight toward him.

  Wally scuttled back and around the corner of the keep and stood up again, heart pounding harder than ever. He’d been wondering what would be the best way to reveal himself, and had imagined any number of scenarios – but
not one that had him rising from the heather like one of the angry ghosts that supposedly haunted the castle. His mom might have a heart attack!

  He stared across the open space between the keep and the wall, wondering if he could arrange to be casually standing on it when she came around the corner, as though he just happened to be sightseeing in the very place she had chosen to shoot a film.

  And that was when the idea that had seemed so great back on the porch in Saskatchewan turned bad.

  Very bad.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  Wally’s head jerked around as he heard a new voice echoing around the castle courtyard.

  Flish!

  Chapter Three

  Storming the Castle

  The small village located just five kilometres down the road from Castle MacPhaiden had looked pleasant and picturesque in the pictures Wally had showed Ariane online in Weyburn, but those pictures had all been taken on a sunny summer day. On a grey and drizzly spring day, at 6:30 in the morning, it wasn’t nearly as pleasant. Although Ariane grudgingly admitted to herself it could still be seen as picturesque, at least in a “What a great setting for a creepy Doctor Who episode involving alien invasion!” sort of way.

  “I may not have thought this through very well,” she said to her mother, apologizing yet again as they trudged into the town. She’d used a little of her power to keep them dry during the walk, but she didn’t dare do that where anyone could see them and so now they were getting both cold and wet.

  Mom laughed. “Ariane, stop apologizing. I’m just happy to be with you on Mother’s Day for the first time in years.”

  Ariane swallowed hard at that, and tamped down the little bit of residual anger that still tended to rise in her when she thought of how – and why – she’d been without her mom for so long. She understood now that her mother had run away, after refusing the power of the Lady, to try to protect her daughter, to try to ensure Ariane wasn’t drawn into the Lady of the Lake’s quest to gather the shards of Excalibur and, more importantly, wasn’t drawn into the crossfire of the feud between the Lady and her brother, Merlin – Rex Major. It had been a useless attempt, and all that it had accomplished had been to land Ariane in a series of foster homes and a series of schools – complete with a series of assorted bullies – but she did understand, and she had forgiven her mother.