“Delilah Micheva, saviour.”
“Don’t mess with women, Marick. We’re better at defending what’s ours than you think.” Delilah pressed herself within inches of his chest, gave a honey-sweet smile and turned. She wiped her hands together.
“All yours.” She shook hands with an elderly man in a repaired, yet faded kente cloth robe.
Chapter 12
The last doorknob shut with a dull bang. Finnegan hopped off the chair and yelped as his knees cut out from under him.
“Enough exercise, me lad. Oof. Colin, we have any stout left?” The Fae Lord of Finnegan’s Bluff pulled his aching bones to a hidden alcove with a brightly roaring fire scented of applewood, cinnamon and pine.
“Always hold some back. Never know when a VIP’ll wander in and demand their tipple. Felicity made cassoulet, want her to dish you some?” Colin drawled, pulling a narrow table beside Finnegan’s trusty wing chair and setting down a svelte pint. Finnegan nodded and hugged the pint in his lap, kicking off one shoe at a time and wiggling his toes on an upholstered foot rest by the flames. Dance music and a lulling roar of conversation filtered around the leprechaun’s hidden alcove and if he wasn’t careful, he’d nod off clutching his pint.
“What a day.”
The music and conversations faded to the trickling songs of spring birds. Heeled shoes tap, tap, tapped behind him, the sound growing deeper and louder than the crackling fire. Finnegan set his pint on the table and clutched the arms of his chair. The fire spurted in the blues, pinks and purples of a May sunrise. His cheeks pulled taught. A gold and purple throne grew out of a coat rack, half of the fireplace’s mantle and the shoes Finnegan had left behind. A woman perched prim and tall, her knees and ankles pressed together in a robin’s egg skirt and long sleeved silk blouse with gold collar and cuffs. A pair of purple suede boots swept up her calves, flourishing like tulip petals at the bottom of both knees.
“I wish you had told me of your fatigue. I would have organized a vacation for you.” Queen Selyka’s stately alto voice melted across Finnegan’s shoulders from lips dressed by fresh morning’s dew. Her manicured fingernails tapped at the arms of the makeshift throne. A twinge of mischief and throng of malcontent played in eyes, which flittered from the colour of a clear sky, to a storm’s tempestuous grey, to the sunshine of daffodils opening to the morning sun above cheeks tinted with the laughter of infants.
“Your Majesty!” Finnegan went to rise.
“Sit down, Finnegan.” Selyka gripped the throne’s arm. Finnegan’s shoulders rose. He pushed himself into the back of his armchair and cleared his throat.
“Rather spontaneous, really. Off I popped for a snack and forgot to jamb the door is all. Didn’t mean to hold up traffic. What luck to come across Einridsen in Canada.”
The Queen of Fairies shook her head, gently bound hair bobbing in soft curls around thinly, pointed ears.
“I employ Carolee for her lack of conscience, not her lack of sense. What happened? Or… have you grown tired of your position? Perhaps your party should cease and you dedicate yourself to a retirement in my Court.”
Finnegan’s breath caught. He grinned through gritted teeth and sucked in the cinnamon apple scent of his crackling, kaleidoscopic fire.
“My Queen, it’s not that serious a foible, missing one half-day’s worth of travellers. Not for…”
“For what?” Selyka seemed to grow, the Queen’s presence filling the alcove and overcoming even the crackling spark of the fire. The air became an oppressive perfume of dried florals, moss and budding trees.
“Caleb… found a spot of trouble and I needed Raynar to save him.” Finnegan’s fingers unclenched from the armchair and wrapped around his pint. He drank half the pint down while the Fae Queen leaned back in her throne and crossed her ankles.
“Might I assume your journey had our… predicament in the forefront of your thought and deeds?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Finnegan nodded. “Caleb remains ignorant of the Accord. Believe me, I needed Ray or I’d never have gone. Couldn’t do it by myself, it ha-”
Queen Selyka raised her palm and pushed her fingers under her chin. The dainty lady sat in noiseless repose. Colin’s hands faded into the space and placed a goblet and bottle of red wine on Finnegan’s table. Finnegan lunged for the stemware, sloshing a generous portion of wine into the cup, before offering it to the Queen.
“I see now that Carolee was the wrong representative to send. Do pardon me for drifting to the worst conclusion.”
“I follow the rules, mind my Pub and answer the calls of travellers. It was…” Finnegan turned his eyes to his unclad feet.
“Was?”
“I’d forgotten the breeze.” Finnegan licked his lips, a timid smile growing on both ends.
“A crowd of people listened to my music, and I met a woman who was kind enough to help a stranger. Their automobiles don’t lurch on cobblestones, they glide on pavement and stop in a blink. I would… I would like to go outside again. Maybe visit and have coffee and watch a motion picture.”
Selyka’s lips pursed around the rim of the wine goblet. She let the glass float beside her and reached for one of Finnegan’s shivering hands.
“I forget to have our convenience you must be prisoner in your eternal party. There is no reason for you to fear the outside world’s call on you, if you follow Mauthisen’s rule. Next time tell me directly and I’ll send Astraea as your company instead of Carolee. Brilliant move, using my dear Dimple’s door.”
“Lucky we were in Vancouver… and that Raynar brought his new lover. Magical deaf-mute. Fine rack, though.” Finnegan chuckled, sipping at his pint.
Selyka smiled and nursed her wine.
“We will watch Livia from now on. Thank you, it’s been ages since I’ve had juicy news about our resident backslidden Viking. Now, what is bothering my perpetual jester? I don’t like you musing and serious. You’re far more entertaining when you laugh.”
The crackle of his fire pick-pocked back into Finnegan’s lulling ears. An adventure should be worth a tale, but Finnegan shut his jaw, while Felicity brought two platters of cassoulet and soda bread for the Lord and the Queen. She bowed her green haired head and sunk out of the alcove.
“Ray was his indefatigable self, until we entered the Whore’s flat… her potent gypsy curses and protections were as tight as any from here to the Tree, but she’s left her daughter unprotected. How is the girl?”
“I still can’t weave the truth about the incident from Astraea, nor our sweet dimpled girl. My songbirds watch her constantly for a sign. It is beyond my station to investigate. That scoundrel did nothing to help her child. Dimples has been with Astraea and Liam in the Summer Castle, but school begins soon and she will go back. There’s more you haven’t told me. What about Einridsen is giving you pause?”
“There was a photograph of the girl he couldn’t put down. He was so quiet he was shaking. Thought I wasn’t looking, thought I was enthralled with getting back to my Pub. I’ve never seen him overwhelmed. The man near burst into tears.”
Selyka sat back and inspected the chair surrounding Finnegan’s body.
“You didn’t know Einridsen when last he raised children, did you? No, I suppose you didn’t. He lost his wife and daughters to Scarlet Fever. They dropped like petals within days of each other, first the mother, then the toddler and babe. His eldest was a brave young thing, she nursed her mother and sisters until their last breaths. Never complained. Raynar was heartbroken already, but when Brigit fell ill?”
Selyka pulled her soda bread into quarters and dunked one in the stew’s thickened broth.
“Neither my magic, nor his precious Christ could save her.”
The Queen pulled air into her lungs like a butler opening the windows of a stale room after winter. Her chin dipped to sup on the stew, rising with a distant eye to the unhappy, complicated past which whirled and settled around every person whether aware or unaware.
“If Brigit had a twin,
it would be our darling Dimples.” The words fettered around Finnegan’s ginger head, nipping and pecking at his forehead and the creases of his eyes.
“Who did father the child?” He whispered, pint too empty to stomach the answer.
“My dear Finnegan. Why else do you think Delilah would leave her daughter ignorant, and unprotected if not to hide that fact from every corner of the world?”
“Eh?”
“The girl’s not useful if she’s recognizable. If Delilah is anything, she’s an excellent judge on what is, and is no longer useful.”
West Africa
“I assume you will be going with your father and this… uncanny brute?” Delilah asked, glancing between the panting men. Bragi slid to the mud with Magni’s heaving, crumbling body. Magni’s peerless dragon eyes stared past Delilah to Raynar’s chin rising and falling beside the cave-in’s rocks.
“What, done with me already?” Caleb smirked, brushing a spot of dust off Delilah’s shoulder. She stared at the shoulder, pursed her lips and walked back to the waiting ATV. The engine burst, and Delilah was gone.
Giving his father a hand from the sodden ground, Caleb watched the procession of ATVs and Delilah’s triumphant army march off.
“Didn’t even say goodbye. How’s that for gratitude?” Caleb shook his head.
“What’re you going to do? Some people.” Raynar tutted, arm around Caleb’s shoulders. Magni’s gaze crumbled into Raynar. Bragi tugged on Magni’s emaciated body, slipping to the soil with every heave he tried to give.
“Where’re you taking him, Bragi?” Raynar asked.
“Home! To Asgård. At least one half of the brothers Thorson ought to return before Ragnarok. Come with us. Meet the family.” Bragi said, hefting Magni slowly to his feet. Magni's body slid along the slick red ground. Feet which felt not but cold stone were numb to their freedom.
“I have my family.” Ray sighed.
“Still sore, are you? Folk die every day. No need to go chasing crosses.” Bragi grimaced, pulling at Magni’s shackles with a screwdriver.
“Don’t think it’s got past me that you fed my son my tattoo in a backward attempt to open up a dialogue. Use Caleb to get to me, and I won’t hold up the next cave that goes falling on your heads.” Raynar pulled away from the mud-stained Æsir and paced.
“It was your tattoo I was chasing.” Caleb’s jaw set in a formidable line. Conclusions, once reached, were terrible mistresses
“My gift to my blasphemous brother.” Magni groaned.
“Magni… I…”
Magni lifted his gargantuan head, steel blue eyes holding no comfort nor pity within.
“Atone for your desertion, or die. I know no other way with you.” Magni said, voice taken by the gravel and musk of the cave.
“I’m not giving up my faith, Magni. I wish you could see how mistaken you are in yours.”
“Mistaken! I’m the son of Thor!” Magni reached outward. His knee hit the ground and the surrounding countryside rumbled. Rainclouds settled overhead.
“Christ, Magni. It’s always been and will be Christ. I’m prepared to forgive you, let me help you see what I see. Please! Stop being stubborn!”
“I would continue our battle, little brother, but it seems you’ve traded one priest for another.” Magni craned his neck at Caleb, staring into his eyes with the gaze of a dragon: cold, unyielding, searching for weak blood.
“This is my son, Caleb. I’m proud of him, he’s a good man. Someday I hope you’ll see him without putting your hands around his scrawny neck.” Raynar slapped his palm on Caleb’s chest.
“I’ll take him for the glory of Asgard!” Magni yelled.
Caleb coughed and stepped between Raynar and Magni.
“You’re new here, so I’ll give you the same warning I give everyone regardless of religious, magical or mystical tradition. You get one chance to turn around and do no harm on the people of this world. No magic, no supernatural mumbo-jumbo, no tricks on the humans, no playing God. Quarrel against yourselves, in your own space and we don’t have a problem. Come into my space and it becomes my problem. My problems don’t last long, Magni. Stay away from my Dad unless you’re there to make peace. And you, Bragi, stay the heck out of my business. The same applies for you.”
Magni’s lips parted in a contorted, slim smile.
“And what is your business, Caleb Mauthi’s son?”
“The glory of God.” Caleb turned his back on the recovering Norseman and nodded for his father to follow. Ray shrugged and pointed his thumb at Caleb.
“I’m his ride. Take care of yourself, Magni. I still love you.”
Magni spat.
“Oh, Bragi! Have fun getting him out of Africa!” Caleb kept walking until the stench of his uncle’s unwashed body disappeared.
“Dad?” Caleb’s back straightened as they walked. His hand clenched around the Jæren journal, which he took from his pocket.
“Caleb.”
“Bragi turned my head in circles, I thought you…” Caleb asked.
Raynar shook his head, “We’re fine, Cale. Trust and obey. We’ll always be fine.”
“Did Bricius die in that fight?”
“He sure wasn’t a Cardinal when he landed in Jæren.”
“How did he get out?”
“Tell you when you’re older. Stop stealing my stuff, it’s a sin.” Ray grinned and took the leather bound journal from Caleb and shoved it in the back of his jeans.
“Why’d you bring the she-beast? She’s not good people, Cale. Stay away from her.”
“I don’t know… I can’t. Every time I try to leave her behind, well, Delilah’s got a fantastic way of growing back… whatever it was we had.”
“Did you… yes, you did.” Raynar peered at his son’s head, tussling Caleb’s hair back and forth. “You hit your head too hard.”
Caleb grumbled and put his hands in his pockets. They walked along the riverbed until it started to trickle and pour with fresh rain. Ahead of them, a sea plane bobbed in the water.
“Is that… Liv? You brought your girlfriend to come rescue me?” Caleb grimaced. Maybe it would be easier to accept his father's dating habits if Raynar wasn’t a thousand years older than his date.
“What, she’s a pilot! Do you know how few doors there are around this beautiful jungle? Finnegan could only get me close enough. Liv volunteered.”
“Uh huh?” Caleb glared.
“Volunteered… after I promised that you’d stop staring at her like she’s a toddler in a gun fight.”
“She’s like, 20!”
“A mature 28.”
“I’m 163! You’re 1,300-something!”
“Giddyup!” Raynar grinned, smacking Caleb on the back.
“You ought to try it. Keeps me young! Oy! Liv! Time to go, I got Caleb!”
“Is he the only survivor?” Liv asked, her clipped British accent as tightly woven as the blonde hair kept up in a stern bun on the top of her head.
“Naw, they can find their own way home. Wanna stop off in Morocco? I’m dying for some lamb tajine.” Raynar said, hopping up onto the plane and helping his son into the cabin.
“Lamb? Lamb sounds good.” Caleb quipped, settling into the back and buckling up. Raynar wrapped an arm around Liv’s prim waist, holding her for a smacking kiss. She tried to frown as she put on her earphones. It didn’t work. Caleb rolled his eyes and looked out the window.
“So, when do you think Delilah’s going to realize I still have the keys?” He said.
“About three seconds after she sees there’s no cell phone reception out there.” Raynar tapped at a gear panel and buckled in the copilot’s seat.
Caleb started laughing. Then he choked on his heart as Liv took off from the river.
“Daaaaad!”
“Relax! Liv’s a fighter pilot! She can fly anything! Mostly!”
“Finnegaaaaaan!”
It might have been Caleb’s imagination, but Livia’s hands wobbled on the yoke and a smile broke
out on Livia’s stern, yet lovely face.
Caleb felt naked without his father’s journal. The sound of Raynar’s rough baritone voice lilting gracefully to Livia pulled Caleb’s soul in a long strand from his body to dangle outside the small aircraft. The noise of regular living: talk of folding laundry, did we put the spinach in the freezer before you went back to the base? I left the lamp on by the window, further yanked Caleb from the discord of his past weeks. Weeks? He pushed his palms into his eyes and curled into his muddy coat, refusing the wave of nostalgia he imagined as a child when he thought of normal parents. Raynar had long forgotten the vestiges of ‘mundane living’, bathing instead on a healthy diet of hedonism and Christian piety in a slip-slide of faithful conversion and wild year binges, when Caleb was a boy.
At the threshold of events, Delilah once again set her boundaries, Bragi played Caleb for a chump and Finnegan was worried enough to leave the safety of his Pub for a mad dash into the human world, and one Raynar Einridsen.
If Finnegan had been that upset, there must be a part of this mess Caleb hadn’t figured out yet, some piece of the symbol which remained blurry to his fatigued, crashing eyelids. What would make a Leprechaun dash out on behalf of the Judge of Mystics? Bragi’s play for Magni was as red a herring as finding his own father’s tatted skin in the Outer Hebrides. The Cernunnos spirit shook into Caleb’s gut and lolled there, its’ horned brow digging into his right side. Fae and their magic protected a place with hidden Norse skin… maybe he ought to dip his head near Selyka’s door and let the Faerie weave herself in her own dubious traps.
“Cale?”
“He’s exhausted, Ray. Look at him. Let the man get some rest.” Livia said, as Caleb descended into a fitful, turbulent sleep.
Morocco’s capital of Rabat dotted and burled between the Atlantic Ocean and the river Bou Regreg encroaching upon it. After their arrival at a dust-swept airstrip, Livia yanked a long sleeved linen shirt over her olive trousers and grey tank. Weaving a pashmina around her neck, she refused to pull it over her blonde hair until a gaggle of gentlemen began to whisper from the entrance to a café in the oldest part of the city. Raynar’s burly arm had been enough to buy them temporary silence, until an old friend came upon the trio and bustled them into his home off a side street on the outskirts. A wife and three daughters busied around with warm flatbread and a well seasoned tajine full of lamb, dates and sumptuous spices. They ate on cushions on the floor, Raynar’s booming voice shaking the clay walls with laughter as Livia grinned at the advent of coffee. She chattered with the girls, who marvelled at her career as a pilot, military Officer and commander of men. Caleb’s mouth laid mute, as he filled the gaping hole in his belly. Kale salads and Red Red by the roadside were temporary relief, but as Caleb chewed down a third portion of stew and flatbread, his shoulders heaved over a barren, thin chest. His father’s palm rubbed across Caleb’s back. Caleb jolted. He looked up to the room’s occupants focussed on his empty cheeks and vacant, starving eyes.
Son of Abel (The Judge of Mystics Book 1) Page 11