by Caleb James
“Oh no.” Gran pointed a finger at him. “I want two handsome men driving me home.” And in a voice meant for just Charlie, “We have things to discuss.”
As they backed out of the drive, with Liam hidden in the shadows of the backseat, she started. “Liam, tell me where you’ve been since leaving my home so abruptly and so rudely. I believe you are one of the good people, the Tuatha Dé Danaan. You are fey, and you will tell me the truth.” She flipped down the sun visor and flicked the mirror open, her gaze on Liam.
Her bluntness struck Charlie dumb, again with the odd phrasing, a question embedded inside a command.
“I apologize for my rudeness.” Liam sensed her intellect, her curiosity, and her fear—of him. “I returned to my home.”
“I see. Tell me of your travels.”
Charlie’s eyes fixed on the road, his attention riveted to Liam’s response.
“I rode home on a dream… Charlie’s dream.”
“So it’s true?” Charlie asked. “That dream was true.”
“Charlie,” Gran cut in. “There are rules with the good people that are different from ours. They don’t like questions, or rather, they view them as a sort of currency. Every answer exacts a price.”
“It’s truth,” Liam said. “But here, I find, questions have no value. People give answers and expect nothing in return. The dream was true… all of it.”
“I kissed you in the dream.”
“Yes, and as I said then, you should not have.”
“And the thing is done,” Gran stated. “It’s obvious Charlie is infatuated with you, Liam Summer. You will cause him great pain. You will break his heart. I could kill you for that.”
“Gran! Stop. I’m an adult.”
“He’s not human!”
Liam nodded. “She is right, Charlie. You wanted to know of my travels….” He told them of the trip through the Mist and back to the Unsee. Of mad Queen May trapped as a white salamander, yoked by her sister Lizbeta. “It is why I must find Alex Nevus. Lizbeta’s yoke will soon snap. May is a raging beast. She will not calm. She will escape.”
Gran listened, intent on his every word. “Queen May. Tell me her other names.”
“Mab, Maeve.”
Gran gasped.
Charlie looked at her. “You know about this?”
“Of course…. The thing about our people, Charlie, is that history and folklore twine together. Where one starts and the other ends is difficult to say. Queen Maeve was a warrior… and more than a thousand years since her stories began, she survives.”
“She is not human,” Liam said.
“I have many books about Maeve and her lover and enemy Cuchulain. They were constantly stealing one another’s cattle, battling to get them back, and then making love, only to war again in the morning.”
“Hulain? Like Finn Hulain?” Charlie asked.
“Possibly. Hulain was a man who killed a beast, which turned out to be a king’s hunting hound. To repay his sin, Hulain became the king’s hound. Eventually the king embraced him as his son, and when the king passed, he ruled.” As though this information was normal, Gran barreled on. “Maeve had sisters. This Lizbeta is one. There is another.”
“Yes… Katye. They each embody a major magic. It’s called their special. May is power, Lizbeta is peace, and Katye is love.”
“Lizbeta, the peaceful one, has trapped her sister,” Gran stated. “But she sends you here to find how she can contain her. Interesting. Just like in the books, where fey starts and human begins is not clear.”
“Not at all,” Liam agreed. “Alex Nevus, half human and half fey, embodies our connection. There are three of them as well.”
“Three of what?” Charlie asked.
“Hafflings. Alex has both a sister and a brother. The little boy, Adam, is with his mother, Marilyn, and his father, my uncle Cedric, back in the Unsee. His sister, Alice—if she lives—she is here.”
“She lives,” Charlie said. “She called Alex while we were in the park.”
“That is good news.” From the back, Liam could not read Charlie’s expression. A situation that Flora Fitzgerald made difficult, as each time his eyes tried to catch Charlie’s in the rearview mirror, she pulled him back to the conversation. What does he make of this? Of me? I have told him the truth, not the best of it and not the very worst. Does he hate me?
For Flora, the conversation was a revelation. It brought whiffs of her childhood. While different from the little fey she’d played with as a child outside of Limerick, Liam was proof of what she’d experienced. That in fact she’d not made it up. It had not been the imaginings of a little girl. But with validation came danger. If this is real…. “It’s May’s motive that is not clear. You see, the minute we believe your story, Liam, is the minute we believe her threat.”
“You do not believe.”
“I do,” she said. “So what I know of Queen May—Maeve, Mab, whatever name you use—she was a warrior. And she led the Tuatha Dé Danaan in a protracted war against the humans. The tales say it lasted a thousand years.”
“What did they fight over?” Charlie asked.
“The world,” Flora said. “And if you take all the stories and attempt to pull them into one, this is how it settled out. It came down to the forces of Queen May and those of Cuchulain. Lovers and enemies. After more than a thousand years of bloodshed and battles, they called a truce. They came together to determine the conditions of a peace.”
“A thousand years? It’s absurd,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, if you want logical things, this is not that story. If what Liam tells us is true, then logic must stand side by side with leaps of faith and belief in the unbelievable.”
“I saw a fairy today,” he stated.
“Tell me.”
“Small, no bigger than my hand. Her skin was black as coal and covered with swirling gold designs. She was mostly naked, and her wings looked like they came from a swallowtail butterfly. She was with Alex and Jerod. But you were getting to the part where May and her boyfriend made up.” Charlie glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Liam’s eye.
Gran continued. “Yes, they made peace, and a treaty was signed whereby the humans would take half of the world and the fey would keep the other. But Cuchulain—the Hound—was crafty, and the document, once done, created a wall between two worlds.”
“After a thousand-year war, sounds like a good thing,” Charlie stated.
“Yes, but it was not a fair truce. The humans took the top of the world—the See—and the fey were forced into the ground and under the ground—the Unsee. If I were May, I would be furious. It wouldn’t have been the first time she was tricked by Hulain.”
“Hell hath no fury,” Charlie said.
Liam spoke. “It is so. We too have those stories. And Flora Fitzgerald, you may have gotten to the soul of May’s ambition. She would rule both worlds. She would take back that which she feels was stolen.”
“It’s a theory… a scary one,” Flora added as Charlie headed up Fifth Avenue and took the right onto Twenty-Third. He parked on the street across from her building. “Perhaps there’s more to it.”
With the engine off, Charlie unbuckled and turned to Gran. “What are you thinking?”
“That you’re right, Charlie. Think of what it feels like to be cheated.”
He paused. “It doesn’t really happen to me….” He stopped. “I take that back. Oh God.” He thought of his brother Rory and his uncle Charlie, both killed in the line of duty on 9/11.
“Yes,” she said. “Think of what it feels like to have something—someone—you love stolen from you. The fury, the sadness, the pain, and this horrible feeling like you should be able to do something, and you can’t. You have no power.” Gran’s voice cracked. “This May might be mad, but she has her reasons.”
Charlie got out as Liam fumbled for the door handle.
“It’s there,” Gran said in the darkened cab. “You put your fingers inside and pull it toward you.”
Before he could figure it, Charlie walked around and opened the doors. He gazed at Liam, bathed in light from one of the nineteenth-century gaslights that had been converted to electric. He knew he should look away, that all this ogling Liam was no good. He couldn’t stop. He wondered if once Liam had the information he’d come back for, he’d vanish. He studied the planes of his face, his strong jaw, the curve of his cheeks, and the way his lashes curled beneath those beautiful eyes. Dude is so far out of my league.
Liam spoke. “I’m sorry for your dead, Charlie… Flora. I know this pain.”
“Yeah.” Do you? Who have you lost? Or is this part of the lies… the glamour? Charlie broke his gaze as Liam got out, and he helped Gran down.
The trio crossed the street in silence, each deep in thought.
Gran greeted her doorman and fished her keys from her pocketbook. “Walk me up, Charlie.”
“Of course.”
“I can wait,” Liam said.
“No, you too,” Gran said.
He nodded and followed.
In the elevator up, Liam braced for the attack of her cats and thought of what Flora and Charlie had said about May. The Hound of Hulain was an oft-told story, apparently both in the See and the Unsee. Yet if true, it explained much. To have the one you love betray you, trick you…. And isn’t that what you do? Have done. He felt the weight of Charlie’s gaze and caught him staring in one of the fish-eye mirrors mounted up in the corners. This has to stop. I have to get away from him. It’s hurting him. Other thoughts intruded as he looked into Charlie’s true blue eyes. He’s not broken. He crossed between worlds. He got out of his red metal dragon in the Unsee. How is this possible?
They followed Flora to her apartment and waited as she undid the double locks.
Liam strained for the sounds of the cats. There was nothing.
She opened the door, and standing like sentries in the middle of the bookcase-lined hall were the two tabbies, and behind them the older black-and-white sisters, with the little Siamese winding her way around them. Her long tail, like an arabesque, whipped one way and then the other. They neither hissed nor moved.
Gran looked at her feline army. “There’s something you don’t see every day.” She turned to Liam. “At least they no longer want to rip your eyes out.”
“Don’t be the toy,” Charlie said.
Gran smiled. “And don’t be the perp. Come in, boys.”
“Gran, we should get back.”
“I know.” She brushed past her cats, who didn’t budge from their posts. “You sure you can’t stay for a cuppa?”
“Not this time, Gran.”
She turned to the two men, her Charlie with a good four inches on Liam in his borrowed clothes and tied-back hair. He looked like some eighteenth-century prince caught out of time. He will break Charlie’s heart… and I can’t stop it. She looked back at her cats, with five pairs of eyes on Liam, neither attacking nor backing away. It’s different tonight. Something has changed.
“This is just creepy,” Charlie said as he pushed through the cats to get to Gran. He wrapped her in his arms, smelled the lilac in her hair. “I love you, Gran.”
“And I you.”
As they embraced, the smaller and bolder of the tabbies broke formation and walked to Liam. He butted his fuzzy head against Liam’s ankle.
Liam froze as Gran and Charlie separated.
“He wants you to pet him,” she said.
“I don’t want to be the toy.”
“I don’t think Aldo will hurt you. Just rub the top of his head,” she instructed. “Let’s see what happens.”
Liam crouched as the bushy-tailed cat brushed back and forth against his ankle. He put his hand gently on the fluffy fur and rubbed. The cat purred. “He’s so soft,” Liam said.
“Yes, they still have a bit of kitten in them.”
The bigger tabby followed the action closely. He apparently decided Liam was safe, so he followed his brother’s lead and demanded attention.
“This means something, doesn’t it?” Charlie asked.
“It does,” Gran agreed, her eyes on Liam, who shifted from crouching to sitting cross-legged on the floor with two purring cats. One by one, the remaining three approached.
Charlie watched Liam play with the animals. He thought back to the fire and the little dog, who would have certainly died had it not been for him. “So tell me, how come one night they sound like they could rip him to shreds, and now….”
“I’m not certain… unless….”
Liam turned, aware of their attention but enjoying the fuzzy antics and different feels of each of Flora’s animals. “Please tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I think you’re more human now. They still sense the fey, but it’s faded….” She looked from him to her grandson. “Liam Summer, I see that you are trying to mend your ways. My offer of hospitality still holds. And now that my cats don’t want you for their supper, you are welcome to stay with me.”
Charlie shook his head. “No, Gran. It’s late, and Liam, I want you to stay with me.”
Liam, from his nest of cats, looked up at Charlie. She wants me away from him. She’s trying to protect him, and she’s right. “Charlie, I can stay here. You needn’t—”
“Just stop, okay? The both of you.” And aware of Gran’s attention, he didn’t care. “I get it. You don’t want me macking on you. I’ll keep my distance. I’ve got a pull-out sofa.”
“I have no idea what that is,” Liam said.
“You’ll see. It’s comfortable, and you can stay as long as you like.”
Liam grew quiet. He looked from Gran to Charlie. “You don’t see me for what I am, Charlie. She does… and your family will talk.”
Gran spoke. Some things you cannot fight. “Of course they will… they already are. Charlie, it’s about time you gave them something to talk about. But before you go, let me give you some reading. It could help.” She grabbed a couple of books from a near shelf and handed them to Charlie. “I’ll be right back.” She vanished for less than a minute and returned with another half-dozen volumes. A couple looked like children’s books, and the others were antiques with titles like Among the Sidhe, Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight, Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men: The story of the Tuatha De Danaan, and one slender leather-bound on Cuchulain.
She loaded them into Charlie’s arms and gave him a last kiss. “Call me when you can, and go to Mass.”
He kissed her cheek and promised he would.
Liam extricated himself from the furry pileup and stood by the door.
“Come here, you,” she said.
He approached, with a tabby on either side.
Gran drew him into a hug and whispered in his ear, “If you break my Charlie’s heart, I will cut out yours.”
Nineteen
THE RIDE back from the city, across the Brooklyn Bridge and then over the Verrazano Narrows, was the first real chance Charlie and Liam had to talk alone. It was awkward at first.
“So what was it like growing up in… fairyland?”
“Don’t be a snarkling. It’s called the Unsee or Fey. And now that I’m not there, I see my life in a different light.”
“Tell me,” Charlie said, his eyes on the road but wanting to look at Liam, afraid that at any minute, he’d again vanish.
“My life was spent in her court. As a child, it was clear that I was to be raised with a purpose. My parents knew this. It’s what led to their death… to their murder. They attempted to get me away from May. I can barely remember them.”
Charlie thought of his own parents, of how fiercely they loved their children. Of how more than ten years after the horror that killed Rory, they still grieved. “What happened?”
“They trusted a relative to hide me. Instead he took their money, and the night I was to vanish into the backlands, the soldiers came. They brought me and my mother and father before May.” Liam grew silent.
“I’m sorry, Liam.”
“No,
Charlie. It’s just I don’t think about these things. I go through life with doors in my mind that I do not open. If you don’t look, maybe it never happened….”
“Then don’t.”
Liam braced against the leather seat. “She made me watch as she ripped them open. Father first… then…. She did not do it quickly.”
Charlie’s eyes misted. He could not find words. “I’m sorry.”
“You did not kill them, Charlie. You have nothing to be forgiven for. I, on the other hand….”
“Stop! You didn’t kill them either. You were a child. That was not your fault!”
“But it was. If not for me, if not for them loving me, they would be alive. So yes, it is my fault. I caused their death.”
“Hell no! Parents love their children. They tried to protect you, and some evil fuck killed them. It is not your fault.”
“As you will. The facts stand. To save me, they died… were murdered, and I was not saved. You asked me of the Unsee. It is beautiful, there is no doubt, but filled with fear and terror. That was my life. She killed my parents, and she would have killed me… at least, that’s what she said.” He stared out the window as they crossed a second great bridge. Like time had never passed, he was there, May lovely in a silver gown, her hair swept up with jewels, resplendent over the bodies of his mother and father, their bellies ripped open, blood and steam rising from their guts, the smell of fairy fire thick in the air. “She told me, ‘Liam Summer, you may follow your parents in death, or you will swear fealty to me, for now and forever.’”
Charlie waited.
“I was weak… and young. I did not want to die. I wanted to kill her, but I did not have the strength, and I knew it. I was a coward, Charlie. I gave her my pledge.”
“No.” He struggled to drive through the tears. “No, Liam, that’s not cowardice. That’s survival.”
“It is both. In time I realized she had always intended to kill them. They were not obedient, and they were strong. I was raised by my uncle Cedric and his woman, Marilyn Nevus.”
“Alex’s mother.”
“Yes. Cedric and I are much alike.”
“Is he the one who turned in your parents?”