Storm Warrior (The Grim Series)

by Harper, Dani

  “I found a few stacked on a rafter in the machine shed,” said Rhys, stalling for time to think of how to explain his strange task. He decided right away to keep quiet about the barrel of rusty iron nails he’d already used up. Nor was he going to reveal that unnatural creatures had watched him as he did it. Or that they’d crept and slithered, flown and trudged around the perimeter of the farm, leering and hissing at him from the other side of the fence as he hammered nails into the top of every wooden post on the property. More than likely, the small fae beasts had been the unwilling forerunners of the bwgan. Rhys imagined that even the Tylwyth Teg had needed to practice a little before they could successfully send the monstrous salamander over such a distance. He wondered how many failures there had been, how many lesser fae had perished in the attempts. Of course, the Fair Ones would neither notice nor care.

  No, Rhys wasn’t going to talk about any of that to Leo. Nor mention that he’d buried nails deep in the hard-packed soil between gateposts so that there was a perfect ring of protection around the farm. Nails even studded the corners of the roof of Morgan’s house, and Rhys had pounded two or three nails into the trunk of every tree on the property. The trees would be unaffected, but they were now poisoned against lesser fae. The Tylwyth Teg would be unable to send any more minions to the farm. If they wanted to cause trouble, they’d have to do it themselves.

  “You call that a few? I counted about twenty or so horseshoes. And how come they’re all on their sides? Looks like the letter C or something.”

  Rhys looked at the horseshoe and back at his friend. “They’re just as they should be.”

  “My dad always said horseshoes were for luck, kind of like four-leaf clovers. And if you didn’t hang them with the opening at the top, all the luck would pour out. But maybe it’s different in Wales.”

  Rhys considered what to say. He wouldn’t talk of the Fair Ones to Morgan at present—she would equate that with madness for sure, and who knows what she would do? Perhaps even call Officer Richards again. Leo, however, was different. “The Welsh hang their horseshoes like this so they look like the crescent moon. The sign of the moon plus the iron will repel faeries. The very presence of iron weakens them, and its touch will burn or poison them.”

  “Never heard that one before. Seems like a mean thing to do to a cute helpless faery.”

  “In Wales, faeries are neither cute nor helpless, and often humans must protect themselves against them. There are many different kinds of fae—the greater ones, the Tylwyth Teg who rule over all, cannot be repelled by the presence of iron, though they can be injured by its touch. All of the lesser fae and the darker ones, now, they’re the faeries that cannot abide iron at all. They’ll not come near it.”

  “All this faery stuff reminds me of my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Farnsworth. She was English, and if we behaved and got all our work done, she’d tell us faery tales. Stories about sprites and brownies and pixies and such, and all the squabbling they did with each other. Used to be that I couldn’t wait to get to school in hopes we’d hear a story that day.” Leo sighed and picked up a horseshoe from a stack. “So if I put this up over my front door, I’ll have no more trouble with the little people?”

  “Take two. You need to cover both doors, front and back,” said Rhys, then did a double take. “No more trouble?”

  “A couple days after you left, I started finding things out of place. Books, knickknacks, that kind of thing. They’d be on the shelves when I left the house and then there’d be a dozen on the floor when I came back. And no way was Spike responsible—he can barely get around. But nothing was ever broken.

  “And then it started happening with the plates in the kitchen. Again, nothing broken, just taken out of the cupboards and stacked on the floor every morning. Never any doors or windows unlocked, no sign of anyone having gotten in, so I couldn’t blame it on a prankster. Almost had it figured for some kind of damn poltergeist, like in the movies. But today I finally saw the little guy. All brown, about two or three feet high, dressed in leaves and with leaves in his hair. He was throwing my tools around my workshop like he was having some kind of tantrum.”

  Rhys frowned. It could only be the ellyll. “I’m thinking I should be paying a visit to your house then,” he said. “I’m done with my tasks here for now. I’ll just be checking on Lucy and changing her dressings and then we can go.”

  Leo looked relieved. “I’d like that. I’d appreciate a second opinion.”

  Rhys thought Leo might come with him to the barn, but he said he wanted to spend a little more time on Morgan’s large and comfortable porch swing. That was fine with Rhys—he needed to think. He’d spotted the ellyll briefly while in Leo’s garden, but he’d expected that any creatures working for the Tylwyth Teg would follow their target to the farm. After all, the bwgan had come directly here—and thank the gods for that. Why had the ellyll lingered? Perhaps it had expected Rhys to return and was simply making a nuisance of itself in the meantime.

  He unwrapped the old gauze and applied new, his fingers deft and sure yet gentle. The mare twitched and lashed her tail, letting him know that she didn’t like having the dressings touched where the wounds were the worst, but still she permitted him to work on them. “Fy un hardd,” he murmured. My beautiful one. A fresh outer layer of cloth bandaging protected the dressings. As he finished the last, he heard Morgan’s car drive up and hoped she had brought more from the clinic—

  Morgan. Leo. Together. Rhys cursed and left the barn at a jog, hoping he could interrupt their inevitable conversation before Leo could call her attention to the horseshoes—or, worse, mention what creatures they were meant to keep at bay. He found Morgan sitting in the chair beside his friend. “Lucy’s looked after now,” he announced, more brightly than he felt. “Afternoon to you, Morgan.”

  “Same to you.” She smiled at him, and was it his imagination or was there just a little more warmth in her gaze than had been there yesterday?

  Leo cleared his throat. “I was just telling the doc that I found some more work for you to do, so I need to steal you back for a little while.”

  Rhys relaxed. “I’ll be pleased to help, as always. I won’t be gone long,” he said to Morgan.

  “No worries. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.” She waved at a thick folder of papers in her lap. “Have a good time, you two.”

  A good time? A strange thing to say to a man who was about to turn his hand to a task. His puzzlement must have showed because Leo leaned forward and cupped a hand to his mouth in a stage whisper. “I may have let slip there was a baseball game on TV tonight.”

  “Your secret male plans are known to me,” said Morgan with a laugh. “Make sure you order pizza from Gibby’s. They’ve got a special one with nachos. Don’t worry about coming home early to check on Lucy—I’ll do that before I go to bed. Happy bonding!”

  As she went into the house, he followed Leo to his car, grateful that the subject of faeries hadn’t come up. “What does she mean by bonding?”

  “She’s just referring to a fancy new catchphrase: male bonding. Don’t know why somebody had to go and give it a name. It’s just guys getting together and having a good time doing guy-type things without women around. You know, like watching sports and drinking beer and eating a lot.”

  “Men have been doing that for many centuries.”

  “Exactly. But now it’s got a damn title,” said Leo as he turned the car onto the highway. He was quiet for a long moment, then sighed. “So it seems I got a few questions to ask. I never saw anything like this faery creature in my whole life. For a moment, I thought I was seeing things, that maybe my mind was finally starting to go. Then that little guy looked right at me and asked me where you’d gone to and when you were coming back. Asked for you by name, that is.” The old man looked meaningfully in Rhys’s direction. “So I’m thinking, is there anything you’d like to tell me about where you’re from and what you’re doing here?”

  There was no help for it. Rhys too
k a deep breath and told Leo his story. The old man didn’t say much as he drove, just listened, asking only a couple of brief, clarifying questions. On Rhys’s advice, they stopped to pick up supplies for the ellyll. Leo said little even then, simply paid for the purchases and got back into the car.

  After his experiences with Morgan and with the police, Rhys was all too well aware of how insane his story sounded to the people of this time and place. He hated the idea of losing Leo’s friendship, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. The truth was the truth. But by the time the car turned into the old man’s driveway, he fully expected to be ordered off the property.

  Instead, Leo turned to him, his face a curious mix of expressions—but none of them hostile. “Rhys, I used to think that people got smarter as they got older. Turns out, it doesn’t quite work that way. The longer I live, the more I realize I don’t know.

  “Now you’ve dumped a whole shitload of stuff I don’t know into my world. And I gotta say, if I didn’t see that little guy with my own eyes and hear him with my own ears, I don’t know if I could have swallowed a story like that.”

  “You believe me then?” asked Rhys.

  Leo nodded. “Don’t get your hopes up too high, though. Maybe I’m just crazy too. So let’s go visit this—what the hell did you call it?”

  “An ellyll.”

  Leo gamely tried to wrap his tongue around the LL, the most difficult of all Welsh language sounds. Then snorted. “Forget it. It’s an elf.”

  “But it’s an—”

  “Elf.”

  “An elf, then,” agreed Rhys. “But not in his hearing.” He didn’t know if ellyllon liked elves—they were similar creatures but different enough that perhaps being mistaken for one could be insulting. What he did know was that many ellyllon had quick tempers and that the ones he’d met could curse more fluently than any warrior. As elementals, they wielded a very ancient magic and were known to make up charms and spells on the fly—particularly to use against an enemy. “Perhaps it would be best if I spoke for us.”

  “No argument there.” Leo led the way to the workshop on the other side of the garden.

  Rhys peered inside. Nothing moved. He pushed the door open farther. No sound, no movement. “It’s not here—”

  Thwack. A pair of garden gloves struck him in the chest.

  “There ya are, ya great helynt.” The little brown man walked out from under the workbench and pointed a long twiggy finger at him as the brown leaves that covered him rustled and fluttered.

  “Me, a troublemaker? Why?” asked Rhys, surprised.

  “Why? Why? Why?” mocked the ellyll. “If it weren’t for you, ya twpsyn, the Tylwyth Teg wouldn’t have marooned me in this strange country. I’m to be their eyes on ya or lose my own.” He seized a screwdriver from the scattering of tools on the floor and let it fly.

  The tool struck the doorpost next to Rhys’s head and stuck there like a thrown knife. He struggled against his fighter’s instincts and managed a polite response instead of lunging for the creature. “Far from home you are indeed, good spirit. Might I make you an offering of milk and bread?”

  The ellyll’s blue eyes glittered, and he dropped the pliers he’d just picked up. “Fair starved I am, ’tis true. My current employers tend to stint on their wages.”

  “It’s strange to me that such a powerful elemental need be employed at all. Surely the earth yields you her abundance.”

  The tiny man snorted. “Abundance I once had, but not here. Family I once had too, but no one is left of my clan. The Tylwyth Teg fight among themselves, and the harm they would wreak upon one another spills about like a pot overboiled. I am called Ranyon, and ’tis my fate to be alone.” He seemed to droop at the last word and sighed deeply. A number of small items tumbled from beneath the leaves that covered him—bits of copper wire, steel washers, and some tiny gears from an old clock made a half circle around the saddened creature.

  “I am sorry to hear of it,” said Rhys, trying to think of what to say. Like Ranyon, he’d experienced devastating loss, but he knew of no words that could help. All he could do was kneel and gently pick up the ellyll’s treasures for him and deposit them in the tiny palm of his twiggy hand. For a moment, he wished Morgan was there—with her kind heart, he was certain she’d think of something to say.

  But it was Leo who stepped up. “Well, nobody needs to be alone here, or hungry neither,” he declared and held out a hand to the dejected creature. “Ranyon, you come on in to my kitchen and we’ll get you fed. We picked up some fresh bread on the way here. Rhys said faeries like butter and cream, so I got some of that too. Oh, and you gotta try the raspberry jam that I made this summer. It’s my granny’s recipe. She was always taking home blue ribbons from…”

  Surprised, Ranyon took the hand that was offered and found himself led to the house like a child, as Leo talked about food and baseball. Rhys followed behind, wondering if his friend knew what he was getting himself into and not daring to tell him.

  An ellyll was extremely loyal.

  As it turned out, the ellyll was an instant baseball fan too. Leo and Rhys sat on the long sagging couch with Ranyon between them, and within a few minutes, the little brown creature was standing on the cushion and loudly cheering on the Blue Jays. Rhys leaned toward the Cardinals himself, and Leo, as a Mariners fan, declared himself neutral but couldn’t help but get caught up in the close game. The three of them polished off a pair of large pizzas. Despite his size—and despite having already consumed the bread with butter and jam—Ranyon ate most of one pizza by himself. He did share a few crusts with Spike, who was more than happy to accept them from him.

  “Did you notice that Spike didn’t even bark at Ranyon?” Leo whispered to Rhys during a kitchen break. “I know the dog’s deaf and blind, but there’s nothing wrong with his nose. He always gets upset at strangers.”

  “An ellyll is an elemental. He’s of the earth itself, so Spike wouldn’t scent anything odd or out of place.”

  “You mean Ranyon smells kind of neutral—like a rock or a tree or something?”

  Rhys nodded. “He’s much like a tree in many ways.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me that all those goddamn leaves on him—”

  “Grow there. Aye, they do.”

  Leo shook his head as if to clear it. “Hope the damn dog doesn’t pee on him,” the old man muttered as he carried a second tray of nachos to the living room.

  When the Jays surged ahead at the bottom of the ninth inning with three runs and finished seven to five, the ellyll could no longer contain himself. He bounced off the couch, vaulted the coffee table, careened off the bookcase, and somersaulted several times in front of the TV while howling and hooting with delight at the top of his lungs. His many small and shiny treasures peppered the floor.

  Leo slapped his knees and laughed until tears ran down the leathery creases of his face. Rhys laughed too but with a watchful eye on his friend in case he was unable to catch his breath. He needn’t have worried.

  “Goddamn,” wheezed Leo at last, wiping his face on a pizza-stained paper napkin. “Goddamn, I almost pissed myself. Ranyon, you are a cutup. I haven’t had a belly laugh like that in heaven knows how long.”

  “And I haven’t had such a fine meal nor such solid companions in an age and a half,” chuckled Ranyon, lying on his back in the center of the room with a hand on his distended belly. “Truly, it’s been a brammer of an evening.”

  “I take it that’s a good thing,” said Leo.

  Rhys nodded. “Aye, it is indeed.” He moved to gather dishes, planning to take them to the kitchen.

  “Leave ’em be,” said the ellyll, with a wave of his twiggy hand. “I’ll be taking care of those myself tonight. It’s the least I can do fer such fine hospitality.”

  Leo protested immediately. “You’re my guest, and guests don’t wash dishes.”

  “Ellyll likely don’t wash dishes either,” whispered Rhys over his shoulder, as he put the plates ba
ck on the coffee table.

  “Aye,” said Ranyon, as if Rhys had spoken aloud. “I’ve a charm fer that. It’ll all be put right by morning.”

  Leo glanced over at Rhys, but he had no idea how to begin to explain and just shrugged. The old man opened his mouth, then closed it again as if he’d thought better of asking any questions. He was likely still mulling over what Rhys had told him about Ranyon’s leaves…

  In the end, Rhys agreed to stay overnight, partly because he didn’t want to trouble Leo to make the long drive out to Morgan’s farm in the dark, and partly because he wanted to see what his friend was going to do with the ellyll. Things played out much as he expected—Leo simply assigned Ranyon a room of his own upstairs, down the hall from the one Rhys used.

  The little brown man was delighted and bounced upon the bed. “Lookit this fine bit o’ comfort here!” Burrowing under the covers, Ranyon sighed happily, and it wasn’t long before loud snores all out of proportion to his size were echoing along the hallway and down the stairs.

  Back in the kitchen, Rhys peered at what the ellyll had left on Leo’s table. A blue coffee mug had a fork and a potato peeler attached at strange angles to its handle with a carefully wound length of copper wire. The mug was half-filled with water, and in it were three smooth white stones, a sprig of something that Ranyon had called soapwort, and an ancient green toothbrush. The brush had a tiny copper bell wired to it.

  “I don’t know if it’s modern art or a setup for TV reception,” grinned Leo. “I guess I’ll display it on top of the fridge, like the artwork my great-grandkids send me. I didn’t understand what the little guy was saying when he put it together, but he was sure proud of it when he was done.”

  “The ellyllon do not create art. ’Tis a charm, and a strong one.”

  “That? Shit, what’s it do? Is it dangerous? Goddamn, I didn’t know he was serious about that stuff.”

  “Nay, it’s not dangerous, although I don’t know its purpose. A charm is designed to be helpful in some way. And an ellyll takes everything seriously, especially friendship. He’s not likely to leave your home now.”