Last Car to Annwn Station

by Michael Merriam

  Her realm.

  She felt someone touch her shoulder. She looked up at Death. He was smiling.

  “Yes, Maeve Kathleen Malveaux. Your realm. Keep it wisely. Guard it well.” He nodded to the rest of the party in the clearing and walked toward the waiting streetcar.

  Mae turned to the conductor and motorman, who had exited the car and picked up Marie Arneson between them.

  “Easy now,” Lowry said to the woman. “We’ve come to take you home.”

  “Does she need a fare?” Mae asked in a soft voice.

  Lowry gave her a gentle smile. “No, ma’am. Her passage is paid.” He nodded toward Death’s back as He climbed aboard the streetcar. “She’ll reach the other side safely.”

  “And you?” Mae asked Chrysandra, who was walking next to her mother’s ruined body, holding Marie’s hand. Fay stood next to Chrysandra, her face worried, her eyes filling with tears.

  The undead girl released her mother’s hand and looked up. “I don’t know. I—I… Once we cross back over I’ll finally… I’ve been dead for a long time, I guess.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Fay whispered, the threatened tears spilling down her cheeks.

  “You could stay here,” Mae said. “I could release your soul in Annwn. You could wait here until…” Mae paused, unwilling to finish the sentence. She didn’t want to think about her or Fay’s deaths so soon after losing her mother.

  Chrysandra shook her head. “Thank you, but I have to go with them. They—they’re my parents. Maybe we can be a real family in the next world.”

  Mae nodded her understanding and moved away, allowing her sister to say her goodbyes to the dead girl in private. She watched as they spoke quietly and hugged. Jill came up and placed her arm around Mae, silently lending her support. Another hug between the two girls, and Chrysandra climbed aboard the streetcar. Mae heard Hodgins’s scream, high and frightened, and Marie’s manic laughter as the car rang its bell twice and rolled away. Fay sat on the ground and watched the car take her friend and her captives away, sniffling loudly in the cold, still air.

  Mae turned back to Annwn. The landscape was thawing. Under Mae’s feet the last of the snow vanished, and the long-dormant grass began to turn green.

  “What happened here?” Jill asked, poking at the torn front of Mae’s sweatshirt.

  “Oh, I got run through with a spear.”

  Jill gave an exaggerated sigh. “I let you out of my sight for five minutes and you ruin your clothes again.”

  Mae laughed and grabbed Jill in a fierce hug.

  Sunday, 17th of December

  Dear Diary,

  I’m starving.

  Of course, I’m just being dramatic when I say that, but Mae promised to take me out to breakfast this morning, and if she and Jill don’t hurry up, it’s going to be lunch.

  They’re just—incorrigible. And loud. It’s kind of sickening.

  The one time I complained, Jill snorted and said they’d try to keep it down next time.

  And then my sister said that someday I’d meet some nice girl, and then we’d see how I really felt about it, and Jill pointed out that I might meet a boy, you never knew.

  I told them that my sex life, when I have one someday, was my business. Of course then Jill wanted to have The Talk. Mae cringed and said I wasn’t allowed to have a sex life until I’m thirty.

  I had to point out to her that, technically, I’m thirty-six.

  Mae spit her coffee and Jill laughed hysterically.

  I love them both.

  I’m adjusted to living a semi-human life relatively well. Mae says I’m pretty much like any other teen girl. Except for the whole magic and fae-blood thing.

  I have my own room in the townhouse. Mae moved into the master bedroom with Jill. Closets were rearranged and bathrooms fought over, but it’s all temporary. Once the remodeling and redecorating is finished, we will be moving to the lake house permanently.

  One of our biggest problems has been arranging for me to receive a mortal education. There was a birth certificate for me. Mae had found it during one of our frequent weekends staying in our mother’s home in Llysllyn. Unfortunately, it showed me to be the same age as Mae. Jill solved the problem by volunteering to teach me everything I need to function in the mortal world. Home schooling, they call it. Mae and Lady Elliefandi arranged tutors to help me learn the ways of the reality underneath the human one. Someday I’m going to have to go back to Llysllyn and take over mother’s position, so we live in the human realms that I might grow and mature faster. Lady Elliefandi needs me to return to her Court and be her swynwraig, her wizard.

  That was a tense night, when we went to the Seelie Court to retrieve Elliefandi from Lady Rhyania.

  Jill simply forced her way into Rhyania’s hall and demanded Lady Elliefandi’s release. When the warriors and nobles of the Court moved to apprehend her, Mae strode through the doors, the Cn Annwn at her heals and infinity in her eyes. I’ve become quite adept at commanding silver, so the warriors and guards found themselves unable to draw their weapons. Mae informed the nobles of the Llysllyn Court that, as their new Champion, she demanded they restore Lady Elliefandi to her rightful place as Lord of the Court and call off their hunt for her consort, Jill Hall.

  Lady Rhyania had barely contained her laughter at the stunned look on her cousins’ faces.

  Lady Elliefandi ferch Myfleria thanked Mae and Jill for saving her people, then gathered her cloak around her tired body and returned to Llysllyn. There was a short, vicious battle for control of the Llysllyn Court between Elliefandi and the council of nobles who had taken over when they banished Elliefandi. Sweet, kind Elliefandi exacted a gruesome revenge against those who had cast her out of her home, a revenge that involved hot silver swords and heads on poles. The Court bent to her will after that night. Most do not know that Lady Elliefandi has been negotiating to merge Llysllyn with Lady Rhyania’s Seelie Court. Rhyania’s mother was of the Tylwyth Teg, so it is a natural match.

  The rest of the Tylwyth Teg think Mae’s a hero, and as the new Lord of Annwn, the nobles of the Llysllyn Court keep trying to ally themselves with her. The lords believe if they can become Mae’s consort, distasteful as it would be to join with a half-human, they’ll be able to take over the running of Annwn. After all, she’s not only half-human, but a woman too. It’s very political and funny, since they have the hardest time dealing with the fact that Mae likes girls instead of boys. They don’t understand that Mae and Annwn are one and the same. This has caused some—well—problems.

  One of the minor nobles, an idiot named Baron Kandin ap Runelanor, got the bright idea to force Mae into taking him as a consort by getting her pregnant. However, since Mae would have nothing to do with him or any of those other over-stuffed idiots, he decided to try to use a sleep charm on Mae and impregnate her while she was unconscious. He caught her alone and by surprise on her way home from an audience with the Lady Elliefandi. Fortunately, the hounds warned me about his plot. I summoned Lady Elliefandi and Jill to her aid. When we got there, Mae was on the ground asleep. The moron was standing over her smiling at his own cleverness.

  He was damned lucky Jill didn’t kill him.

  In the end, after he suffered his beating at Jill’s hands, Ellie bound his magic and cast him out of Llysllyn. Mae’s would-be suitors cooled their ardor after that.

  Now that Annwn is working as it should, the spirits of the Tylwyth Teg who had died in Annwn spend their days and nights engaged in eating, drinking, playing music, dancing and loving while waiting for their spirits to be reborn.

  Sadly, other creatures did not fare as well during the thaw, especially the spirits of humans who were unfortunate enough to be banished to Annwn by the circle of Mages over the years. Mae managed to set aside a place for them to dwell, away from the Tylwyth Teg and other faerie creatures and is still working with Death and others of his kind to find a solution to their problem.

  Taking over Annwn, though easy in the doing for Mae,
was difficult in the beginning.

  One of the very first things we had to do was go back to the ruins of the Arneson mansion so that I could make sure the portal there to Annwn was permanently closed. The place stirred terrible memories for all three of us, but Mae had to collect the spirits of our mother and Kravis ap Thimp and guide them to Annwn. I think, for me at least, knowing mother’s spirit is whole and happy in Annwn helps to—not erase—but ease the memories of her final moments. It was good to grieve. It is good to know she’s there waiting for us.

  We also had to sneak around that night to avoid notice of the local law enforcement. The police had doubted Mae’s story. She told them about the personal investigation she had been doing concerning the welfare of Chrysandra Arneson. She told them about the county attorney’s involvement with what should have been a routine case. She talked about being forced to take a vacation from her job and being threatened with unspecified repercussions if she continued to stick her nose into this business. She told them after her apartment was broken into, she became afraid for her life and did not know who she could trust, including the police or any authorities.

  The police might have laughed her story aside and locked her in jail, except for the evidence and aftermath of the fire in the Arneson mansion.

  When they identified the skeleton found on the grounds as Chrysandra Arneson, the investigation took on a whole new track. The fact that Marie Arneson had been found ritually disemboweled with William Hodgins, dead from heart failure, lying next to her holding a bloody knife made the evidence for a black magic mass murder more solid. After the police identified all the dead bodies in the basement, it lent even more credence to Mae’s bizarre story.

  The local newspapers had gone mad with sensational headlines about a group of rich and powerful Twin Citian’s seamy occult conspiracy and the violent slaughter that destroyed them all. Jill says it’s the stuff of cheap novels.

  The police are still investigating, but so far no charges have been filed. A small revolver was traced back to Jill’s father, and Robert Hall III had died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head

  Mae will probably need to keep a low profile for the rest of her life. I think eventually we will move someplace the human police can’t find us—maybe faerie or a spirit realm—but Mae says she’s not ready to give up on her human life yet. She’s even learned to make her eyes appear their normal brown when she walks in the human world. I’m sure it has more to do with being with Jill. But someday I will have to go home to Llysllyn. And someday Mae will need to move into Annwn for good, and take her place under the Great Oak. And someday Jill Hall’s mortal span will end.

  But that is all in the future.

  I can hear Mae and Jill coming down the stairs, laughing like little girls. Today there will be breakfast in a wondrous restaurant where the servers wear night clothes and the decorations include a buzzard and tiny devils. Tomorrow, well, tomorrow will take care of itself, and that is good enough.

  About the Author

  Michael Merriam has published novellas with Carina Press and Sam’s Dot Publishing, more than seventy pieces of short fiction and poetry in various magazines, and edited an anthology of short fiction, Northern Lights: 20 Minnspec Tales. He received an Honorable Mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008 and is a three-time semifinalist in the Writers of the Future contest.

  Like most writers, Michael has worked a variety of odd jobs over the years, including as a musician, short-order cook, freight logistics manager and the booking agent for a puppet troupe. In 2003, after being laid off and declared legally blind, Michael began writing again, rekindling a passion he had set aside nearly two decades earlier.

  Michael is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers. He lives in Hopkins, Minnesota, with his wife and an ordained cat. Visit his homepage at www.michaelmerriam.net.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4268-9181-6

  Copyright © 2011 by Michael Merriam

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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