by Natasja Rose
Unconventional it might have been, but at least they weren’t going into the fray unarmed.
Tina was finally settling into bed with a book, ready for the first peaceful night in a while, when she heard a quiet knock at the door. Tucking her feet under the folded down blanket and biting back a few choice words, Tina marked her place and put the book down. “Come in.”
She perked up to see that it was Lizzy, flexing one hand in what was Tina recognised as writer’s cramp. “Hey. I hoped we’d get the chance to talk before you left again.”
Tina wriggled closer to the wall, leaving room for Lizzy to slip in beside her. It was a silent invitation that they had in place since primary school (though it had been much easier to fit both of them in a single bed back then), and a message that there was personal stuff to talk about. Tina closed her eyes and pulled up the blankets, adding another item to the list of things she was going to miss about Lizzy. “Are you happy here, Lizzy? I mean, with what happened last time?”
Lizzy draped an arm over her. “It was a little nerve-wracking, at first, and I seem to avoid the Village Green more than I should, but mostly I’m fine. James is the same way. John and Bess’s memories faded after a while, and the worst of it for us happened away from the Inn.”
Tina released a breath that she hadn’t realised she was holding, changing the subject. “I’m sorry I had to cut my visit short.”
Gazing up at the ceiling, she felt Lizzy shrug. “I was upset and a little disappointed when you snuck out, but now that I know why I’m mostly just worried about you.”
Tina snuggled closer. “I think I’ll be all right, eventually. I miss you, especially when I’m recovering from encounters with visions, but at the moment there is nothing in the world that could make me move to this ghost-infested island.”
Lizzy sniggered, and Tina could almost hear the raised eyebrow. “Really? So I was imagining the looks you were aiming at Ben’s friend?”
Tina tried very hard not to blush, but had the sinking feeling that she failed. How Lizzy managed to spot romance a mile away, while being largely oblivious to world events, would never fail to amaze her. “Damn you and your romantic perceptiveness. It’s early stages, and I have the promise of a coffee date once all this is over.”
Lizzy giggled wickedly, bringing back memories of High School sleepovers where Tina would complain about boys who thought her looks made her a good candidate for a notch on the bedpost, and Lizzy sulked that the girls she found attractive on an emotional and intellectual level were regrettably straight.
Tina shifted a leg to kick Lizzy gently. “You managed a long-distance relationship, and Valerie’s work means that we’d only see each other infrequently anyway. It might not even go anywhere.”
Lizzy pushed her shoulder lightly. “‘Nothing in the world’, she says. Don’t give up so quickly.”
Tina elbowed her in response. “And what about you, Miss Married-Despite-Twenty-Eight-Years-Of-Swearing-Singledom?”
Tina grinned triumphantly when she sneaked a glance to the side and saw Lizzy blushing. “If you ever have kids, I’m naming them. Besides, I hadn’t met James, then. And no, I am not divulging the sordid details of my love-life.”
The fact that Lizzy even had a love-life to give sordid details about had been a shock to most of those who knew her. Tina smirked, managing to fit more innuendo into a single facial expression than most tavern songs about Milkmaids in May. “I’m surprised that you’re in here talking to me, honestly.”
Lizzy’s smile faded, replaced by a furrowed brow of concern. “We’ll be spending tonight sleeping lightly in case Madge needs support. Richard is a deep sleeper, and you remember what I was like after Bess moved on.”
Tina winced at the reminder, unsure if she would ever manage to forget. Months of nightmares, and weeks of dreams where Lizzy woke up and spent breakfast trying to separate her own psyche from Bess’s memories. Time-Zone differences hadn’t been the only reason for the late-night Skype calls to England. Poor Madge.
Lizzy hugged her friend tightly, the same reassurance that everything would be all right that she used to give after Tina saw a particularly gory death and Lizzy picked up on her mood-change, before she slipped out of the bed. “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll even whip up a batch of Turkish coffee for an early start.”
Lizzy left, closing the door quietly behind her. Tina pulled the covers back again and settled in to sleep, dreaming of coffee strong enough to actually wake her up in the morning and hoping that Lizzy wouldn’t insist on ‘recommended’ serving cups.
Madge looked exhausted, but grimly determined as she handed Valerie several pages of hand-written notes, half in a clear, smooth script, and half in Lizzy’s messier but readable cursive. Richard was hovering, to Madge’s obvious growing exasperation as she addressed the members of the group who had made it downstairs. “Be careful, and make sure that you end this - yes, dear, I’ll have a lie-down later!”
Tina, rather more awake than she normally would have been at this hour, hid a smile behind her coffee mug, which had come full of strong turkish coffee and the warning that she wasn’t getting a re-fill until the others promised not to hold the Journeyman’s Rest liable for any caffine-induced side-effects. With a long car-trip ahead of them, it was probably a sensible precaution.
Thomas, who had tasted the much smaller recommended serving, had been shooting worried looks in Tina’s direction, apparently waiting for her to bounce off the walls. No one had enlightened him that Tina being awake and not biting people’s heads off for trying to engage her in conversation was as hyper as she was going to get off a single mug.
Tina leaned in to read Madge’s notes over Valerie’s shoulder as the door opened and a family of four entered. Through the window, a taxi could be seen waiting. “Do you have any rooms available? We’re sorry for the early hour.”
Lizzy poked her head out of the kitchen. “We have a pair of twin rooms, or three singles and a fourth later in the day, and breakfast ready in ten. Which would you prefer?”
It was unusual to see the normally-withdrawn Lizzy acting as a hostess, but the family practically melted in relief, the mother disappearing out the door out the door to pay the driver. “Twin rooms, please and thank you. We came down by train, and our original place double-booked, with nowhere else available.”
The two children, both girls, looked around curiously. The older was clearly looking for something on an abstract level, while the younger one’s eyes widened when they lit upon the window to the stableyard, where Tim the Hostler could be ‘seen’ attempting to correct Will’s technique in moving hay bales.
Tina raised an eyebrow, as the girl clearly saw something, and nudged Valerie, wondering what the children’s gifts were.
Richard stepped behind the counter, opening the Guest Registration book and collecting two room keys. “Well, you are welcome here and if you need, we can have one of the hands drive you to the station when you depart. How long were you planning to stay?”
The mother walked back in, carrying two suitcases which Ben and James promptly relieved her of. The woman sighed in relief as the two disappeared upstairs, “Just one night. Something of a road trip down to Northampton before the kids go into St Andrews.”
Both children scowled and grumbled something about there being nothing wrong, while the parents exchanged a resigned glance that said that it was not a new argument.
Tina and Valerie shared an alarmed glance at the name. Maybe there was a school that shared the name, but during the Summer school holiday, and with the way Valerie had raised an eyebrow at the girls, Tina doubted it. Through the kitchen window, she saw Madge waver slightly, and Lizzy place a supportive arm around her grandmother-in-law.
Tina hastily swigged down the last of her coffee as Thomas and Valerie stood up. “Well, we should probably get going if we want to miss the traffic. Tina, can you make sure that the others have everything?”
Tina was already on her way up the sta
irs. “Sure. I’ll grab your stuff while you pay, too.”
She didn’t run, but there was a definite urgency to her pace. For their own sake, she hoped that the family’s road trip was a long one.
Chapter Twelve
The journey back to Northampton had been tense, filled with a quick explanation of why they had left in such a hurry, profuse swearing, and reading through Madge’s notes while formulating a basic plan.
According to Valerie, the girls were gifted, and strongly. The elder could tell if a place was truly haunted, or if there was some other, natural explanation. The younger was similar to Tina, in that she could see and hear ghosts, though was fortunate enough to be spared Tina’s ability to view their deaths.
In essence, that meant that they had maybe three days before the Fae had two new victims. They needed to find a way to end the child-stealing, and they needed to do so in three days or less.
The basic plan was simple, at least in theory. They would find the way Under the Hill to the land of the Fae, retrieve the stolen children, and get the hell out of there.
They knew that it wouldn’t be that easy, since the Fae were unlikely to take the intrusion lying down, or release their captives so easily. How they were going to stop the Fae from following them on the way out, or stealing more children once their back was turned, was another problem, with no clear solution except to cross that bridge when they came to it.
Rachel, Joshua, Kayla and Christopher would be dropped off at the grounds of St Andrews, where Joshua would scour for hotspots that might be used as a gateway beyond the veil. Rachel would try to talk to the victims again, with Kayla and Christopher there to protect them from anything that might come along.
Valerie would go back to the hospital itself, to see if there were any potential victims in residence that should be temporarily evacuated, just in case the team failed.
Thomas and Tina were sent to find somewhere out of the way to practice very basic fighting, so that Tina’s chances of survival, if they didn’t manage to make it out before things descended into violence, became at least slightly higher than abysmal.
Insufferable as Thomas might often be, he knew what he was doing with a rapier. Of course, he was the only one out of all of them who knew how to use any kind of traditional weapon, but it was better than nothing.
By the time they were due to meet back at the Poplars, Tina was exhausted and aching in places she hadn’t even known she could ache. For all the frustration that working as a PT frequently brought her, she hated to think how she would be feeling if she wasn’t in such good shape.
Thomas, on the other hand, had been reduced to gritting his teeth from the number of times they had been interrupted by well-meaning bystanders, not-so-subtly trying to make sure that neither of them was being assaulted. While the genuine concern was comforting, it was also a colossal time-waster.
Waiting for the others to return, Tina took the opportunity for a quick shower, and started reading over Madge’s notes again while Thomas took his turn. Whatever ill-effects Madge’s stint as a Changeling had caused, it had also left her the gift of being an amazing storyteller, her information more like short children’s tales than lecture notes, catching a listener’s attention and drawing the reader in.
‘For all that they feature so heavily in mortal imagination, the Fae themselves are possessed of surprisingly little creativity. Even their tricks rely mostly on illusion, suggestibility and clouding of the senses, and rarely deviate from a pattern. The clouding of the senses is why mortals so readily believe the strangers who provide them with the means to dispel the enchantment or curse, when the method they suggest would sound frankly ludicrous to the rational mind.
Madge wasn’t wrong. Looking up old stories of Changelings had revealed that the most common method was to fill eggshells with water and pass the Changeling over a fire. Tina didn’t think that any parent in their right mind would try that just because their child was behaving strangely, but a clouded mind and being mystically left open to suggestion might explain it at least a little.
The sound of keys in the door made her look up as Valerie walked in, looking and sounding exhausted. “Well, the doctors in charge of the psychically gifted - there were only two of them as patients at the moment - have come down with a sudden illness, and the patients are being moved to a sister hospital for a few days. Convincing Dr Davis wasn’t easy, and it turns out four more long-term patients were Changelings, and dealing with that was exhausting.”
Tina thought over the various methods, “Priest, I’m guessing? It’s Sunday, so you have an excuse, and I haven’t heard any fire sirens.”
Valerie flopped onto the bed next to Tina, “After I spent half an hour convincing him that I wasn’t the possessed one, yes. Why is this even our lives?”
Tina patted her hair in what she hoped was a comforting manner, “On the bright side, we’re land-locked, and the nearest lake is far enough away from St Andrew’s that we almost certainly won’t have to deal with any of the shape-shifters.”
Valerie lifted her head slightly. “I hadn’t considered Kelpies, so that may be some of the best news I’ve had all day. There’s not enough wooded area on the grounds to pose a problem with forest spirits, either.”
Thomas emerged from the bathroom, pausing long enough to make sure the kettle was full and turn it on as he made a beeline for the counter with the teacups. “You look tired, boss; Breakfast or Earl?”
Valerie lifted her head for a moment. “Either is fine. Status report?”
Thomas ran a hand through his still-damp hair, ignoring Tina’s annoyed glare. “Well, she probably won’t die, but I recommend a buddy. If possible, we should all be paired up psychic and non-psychic, just in case.”
Valerie nodded from her prone position, “I’ll take that into consideration. The others aren’t back yet?”
She had barely finished speaking before the missing four staggered in, all looking even worse than Valerie, who sat up in alarm. “What happened?”
Christopher cast a longing glance at the kettle, pulling out several more cups and teabags. “Well we got information, but it isn’t good. You know the two different courts? Well, apparently they’ve been fighting, and the abductions were attempts to introduce a curveball, of sorts.”
Tina swallowed hard, thinking of the horrible implications and the new danger they represented. “And the deaths?”
Rachel’s expression was the un-natural calm of someone who was about to explode from rage. “The deaths were either attempts to prevent the introduction of said curveballs, or to stop the ones who escaped from telling what they knew.”
There was a very long moment of silence before Thomas connected the dots and went disturbingly pale. “You’re telling me that both sides have been abducting mortals whose imagination, creative thinking or psychic abilities might give them an edge, and the Unseelie Court has been killing off anyone that they think might stand a chance of stopping their plans or exposing them?”
Kayla dashed for the bathroom, one hand over her mouth, as Rachel nodded solemnly. “Trying to keep people in this world in the dark for as long as possible. Illusion is less effective when a mortal knows that what they’re seeing isn’t real.”
The Summoner took a shaky breath, obviously not feeling too well herself. “People like Tina or Joshua, who can see what is normally invisible to Mortal eyes, or me, able to summon or speak to the dead… we are one of the few things that could prove a serious threat to their secrecy.”
Tina swallowed the bile rising in her throat, resisting the urge to join Kayla in being noisily sick. “So they either kill us before we have the chance to become a threat, or abduct us as human weapons? After this is over, I am never setting foot in this town ever again!”
Joshua offered her a weak smile, not looking much better than Tina felt. Christopher gripped his shoulder in silent support. “That’s pretty much how we reacted.”
Valerie looked very grim, not an unusual sight t
hese days. “Fine. We have tonight to risk-assess our plans, and tomorrow morning to practice. Dawn and Dusk are supposed to be the best times to attempt a crossing, so once visiting hours are over and we have less chance of interruption, we head to St Andrews. One way or another, we are going to end this.”
Even though it was the worst possible time to notice the fact, Tina had the fleeting thought that Valerie was really quite attractive when she was being commanding. With a flush of warmth, she really hoped that they both survived long enough to get to that coffee date that Valerie had promised.
Chapter Thirteen
If her life ever got made into a movie, the last day or two would make a really interesting montage.
To distract herself from the overwhelming terror, Tina tried to imagine it. A long shot of the sun rising, several seconds of the team sitting in their hotel room with the curtains carefully closed, making preparations. A few shots of sparring, possibly with a close-up of Tina’s panicked face as she tried to follow the unfamiliar moves, and a slow-mo finale of them walking out, on the way to a dramatic showdown.
Lizzy would have laughed at the idea and tried to convince Tina to act it out one night when they had nothing else to do, until they collapsed laughing and tried to make their old TV work long enough for a MST3K episode over ice-cream or popcorn. Right now, however, things were deadly serious.
The world of the Fae was… largely indescribable.
For the most part, it seemed much like the normal world, yet somehow more so. In other places, it was more fluid, the landscape and seasons changing at random and without warning.
After the third change of scenery in less than five minutes, Christopher ground his teeth. “I hope someone has a reliable way of finding our way back, because landmarks clearly aren’t going to help.”
Joshua clapped him on the shoulder, voice rich with false bravado. “I can track the hotspots, though we might not come out in exactly the same place. The first Lord or Lady I see, I’m feeling a strong urge to punch.”