Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  The gate opened behind me, and I ran toward Étaín and home, resolute in my decision to never again leave.

  For ten years, I never did. Instead, the outside world invaded our sanctuary, first in the form of tutors, and then in visiting members of the court, Mother’s friends, her sycophants, and occasionally, her other children. I learned to read and multiply, to recite history and poetry, to shape my world to my will. I learned what I was, and what Étaín was, and finally, when I was on the cusp of manhood, one of my tutors let slip that I might have a father elsewhere, and that he probably looked like me; I barely resembled Mother, after all, and my coloring had to come from someone.

  One of my sisters suggested that he lived close to Étaín’s old home—Mother, with an odd compulsion, tended to steal potential nurses living near her children’s fathers when she coupled with mortals. I knew little of the place, but with years of prodding, Étaín gradually told me bits and pieces about her tiny village, the sun rising over the mountain, the dark sea to the west, the endless sprawl of stars at night, the rains and the fogs and the pungent smoke of peat fires. Not until I was twenty-five did she speak of her husband and her three strong sons, boys with flaxen hair and their father’s dark eyes.

  My heart broke for Étaín even as I clung to her. I knew I had the power to free her, to send her back across the gulf between the realms to her good, strong man and her boys—now men, surely, with wives and children of their own—who must have missed her. I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. I tried to rationalize my decision to keep her with me—perhaps Mother would be angry, I thought, if I sent one of her pets away—but my heart knew the lie even as my mind insisted it was the truth.

  Even as I tried to push thoughts of Étaín’s lost family from my mind, thoughts of my own began to encroach with greater persistence. Étaín had explained to me the limitations of the mortal life span, and by the time I reached my forties, I had to face the fact that my father, whoever he was, was quite possibly dead. I wondered if he had left other children behind, if I had siblings who looked like me—or had looked like me at one point, I reasoned, unsure of their potential ages. My curiosity grew, and finally, a few days before my fiftieth birthday—at least by Faerie’s reckoning, which didn’t necessarily align with that of the mortal realm—I resolved to search for my family while there might still be a trail to follow. Étaín’s village would be a logical starting point, I mused, but grudgingly admitted to myself that if anyone knew where to find my father, it would be Mother.

  And so, with Étaín by my side in encouragement, I presented myself to Mother on my birthday, explained my proposed errand in the mortal realm, and asked for her assistance. To my surprise, she favored me with a smile—still as cold as ever—and replied that she would give me three gifts. First, from the throne room, she opened a gate to reveal a tantalizing sliver of rolling green country. Next, she beckoned me to her side, then took my face in her hands. I felt a quick, disorienting buzz, and when it subsided, she explained that she had given me the locals’ tongue. Mother then stepped out of the room and instructed me to wait. An hour later, after I’d sneaked a thousand glances at the open gate, she returned with a strand of wooden beads in her hands. “He gave this to me,” she said with a smile. “Perhaps you can ask for its owner.” She would give me no other hint.

  With the beads clutched in my fist, I thanked Mother and bid her farewell. The last thing I did before beginning my first foray out of Faerie was kiss Étaín’s cheek and promise I’d return soon. She nodded, then quickly cut her eyes to Mother before stretching on tiptoe to whisper in my ear, “If you find my Rónán, give him my love.”

  The clouds overhead threatened a hard spring rain, but I didn’t know that at the time, having never before seen precipitation. What I sensed as the gate closed behind me was that this realm seemed darker somehow—in retrospect, that was the thick cloud cover—and colder, and it smelled . . . well, fresher. I sniffed deeply, trying to pinpoint the change, then realized that I was smelling the land itself, the vegetation and the smoke of distant fires (and, as I would soon discover, the livestock and their leavings). The overpowering scent of magic, so omnipresent in Faerie that my nose had long since tuned it out, was far weaker here, and I stuck my face in the first bush I saw just to experience the difference. Unfortunately, that bush had thorns hidden beneath its leaves, and I pulled back in alarm, bleeding from a dozen shallow scratches and slightly disenchanted with the realm. I cleaned myself up and repaired my injuries, and then I heard two male voices in conversation approaching down the dirt track on which I found myself standing.

  In hindsight, I should have asked Mother to open a gate a few days in advance and allow me to observe the locals without attempting to interact with them. As it was, however, I was clueless about mortal societal niceties, and so I stood by the thorn bush in my golden cape and matching suit and waited for the travelers to come within hailing range. When the men rounded the bend and spotted me, they froze, and I quickly took stock of their dress: short, belted, off-white tunics and brown leggings, all crafted from a rough cloth and dirt stained. Their heads were bare, and each had tied back his auburn hair with a leather thong. I stepped forward, smiled, and displayed to them my beads. “Gentlemen, good day,” I began, trying not to trip over the foreign syllables. “I search for the man who once owned these. Do you know him?”

  They continued to stare in silence, blanching slightly, and then the braver of the two pointed behind him toward a stone tower in the distance.

  “My thanks,” I replied, sensing that I would get nothing further from them, and walked past them to be on my way. The men slid to one side of the road, giving me a wide berth, and I felt their eyes on my back until I rounded the bend and walked out of their sight.

  The stone tower was farther away than I had imagined due to the winding road, and I soon grew impatient to reach my destination. Still, prudence counseled me to walk, as any fellow traveler I came upon might have information about my father.

  If they did, I never knew it; the few souls I passed on my way either ran or pressed themselves to the far edge of the road and stared in unabashed silence, and I hurried on so as not to frighten them. I tried to determine what was giving them such cause for alarm, but not knowing the region, I was at a loss as to how to remedy the situation.

  Thunder was beginning to rumble in the distance when I finally reached the tower, which resolved itself from the hedges and low stone buildings into a modest but well-kept complex. A neat field stretched behind it, away from the road, and a pair of beasts I would later recognize as cows grazed at a slight distance, fenced off from the partly tilled earth. I hesitated, uncertain of the best approach, and studied the complex for a long moment, trying to decide between two wooden doors. As I pondered, the first drops of rain fell on my face. I glanced up in alarm, looking for the source, and heard deep laughter across the road. Snapping my attention back to the complex, I spotted a queer figure standing just inside the smaller door. It took several seconds before I realized the figure was a man, albeit an ancient one, his face deeply creviced and his little remaining hair gray. He wore a long dark hooded robe and had slipped a strand of beads not unlike mine through the rope around his waist.

  “Were you planning on drowning in the rain, then?” he said with a smile, stepping back from the door. “If not, come in.”

  I joined him inside just as the heavens opened up, and he nodded at the deluge. “Good for the fields. Now,” he said, closing the door on the storm, “I just had word of a young man all in gold wandering in this direction. What say you to that?”

  A boy who had run the other way without bothering to speak was his source, I reasoned, but decided not to mention him. “I mean no ill,” I replied, and held out my beads. “I’m searching for the man who owns these . . . or owned them once, I suppose. I . . . I know not if he still lives . . .”

  My host took the beads from me, studied their markings for a brief time, then handed them bac
k with a tight mouth. “I might have an idea,” he said, then motioned for me to follow him. “But first, to warm and dry you. Come with me.”

  The smaller door, as it happened, led into a sort of apartment set off from the larger complex. Around a corner, I spied a low fire burning in a stone hearth and a pair of wooden chairs clustered before it. “You’re most kind.” I sighed, sinking into one of the chairs—the day had turned unpleasantly cold—and the old man smiled.

  “I’ll fix a drink,” he said, then ducked out of the room for a short time. When he returned, he carried two cups in his hands. The first, made of a rough sort of pottery, he set beside the empty chair for himself. The other was made of a gray metal and finely decorated, and this he extended toward me. “My best for visitors,” he explained. “This should warm you, my son.”

  Something about the drink made my hair stand on end, but I didn’t want to insult him, and so I simply smiled back. “Thank you,” I said, and reached for the cup.

  The instant my fingers touched it, they began to smoke and blister. I yelped and retracted my wounded hand, and as I sucked on my fingers to ease the burn, I thought that perhaps the drink was just overly hot, that my host had been careless with his fire. But the look on his face told me otherwise; though watery with age, his eyes had hardened, and he watched dispassionately as I suffered.

  “You’ve never seen silver before, have you?” he asked after a long moment, once I had ripped a long section from my cloak to wrap around my burned hand.

  I shook my head, beginning to worry, as the simple enchantment that healed my cuts and scrapes seemed to be working far more slowly than usual. “I meant you no harm—”

  “I don’t believe you, I’m afraid.” He pulled his beads loose, and I noticed a large T-shaped piece dangling from one end. “Behold and tremble!” he cried, holding it close to my face. I didn’t flinch, however, and he stepped back, perplexed. “You . . . have no fear of the cross?”

  I assumed he meant the dangling bit. “Should I?”

  The old man frowned and put his beads away. “You are of the aes sídhe, are you not?”

  The term was a mystery, and I gave up and peered into his thoughts, too bothered by the pain to play guessing games all afternoon. What I found there confused me, but it was close enough to work for the moment. “More or less, yes,” I replied, perplexed at his reaction. “Is that a problem?”

  He sat in the empty chair and drank deeply from his clay cup, staring at me all the while. “My mother told me of the aes sídhe,” he said quietly when the cup was dry. “Iron and silver can protect. I had thought the cross might as well, but I see I was mistaken.”

  I frowned, still befuddled. “Iron?”

  He pointed to a blackened metal stand beside the fireplace, which carried a set of long tools. “I wouldn’t touch that, were I you.”

  “Noted,” I mumbled, wondering if he would be upset if I created a bowl of ice for my hand. When I had spoken to her of my intent, Étaín had cautioned me that magic frightened mortals, but my fingers were beginning to throb. Throwing manners aside, I produced the bowl and shoved my hand deep inside, numbing the pain until I could deal with my injuries.

  My host’s bushy eyebrows rose, but he kept his composure. “Now, why do you trouble poor Christian men?”

  “I meant no trouble, I swear it,” I protested, and held out the beads again. “The man who owned these was my father. I wish to know his name.”

  “Only his name?”

  I hesitated. “And if he lives yet, then to meet him. That’s all. Please, can you help me?”

  We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the rain pelt the roof. I shivered in a draft and turned, then saw the window behind me, which was nothing more than a bare hole in the wall.

  The old man cleared his throat. “Your father, you said?”

  I nodded. “My mother won’t tell me anything about him.”

  He sighed softly, then put his cup down on the hearth. “If he’s the man I think he is, then he lives not far from here. I . . .” He paused, frowning into space. “I can help you find him.”

  My heart lightened, and I resisted the impulse to embrace the old man. “I am Coileán, of the queen’s court,” I said in a rush. “If I can repay you—”

  He shook his head. “Eoin. Father Eoin, I am called, and I need nothing of you.” He pulled his chair closer to the fire, then stared into its glow. “Spend the night here, I have room,” he offered. “In the morning, I’ll send you on your way.” He glanced at me, then shook his head. “Those clothes will not suffice.”

  I wrapped what was left of my cloak around my shoulders, suddenly self-conscious. “Wrong color?”

  “Wrong everything. I’ve never seen anything so strange. And with the weather, you’ll want wool—like this,” he said, pinching a fold of his sleeve.

  I studied him for a few seconds, then shifted my attire into a copy of his. “Like so?”

  “Not exactly—you’re not of the clergy,” he replied. “But that’s close enough for the moment.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Your father, if I’m correct, hasn’t spoken a word in almost fifty-one years. He won’t until he has his rosary back,” he explained, pointing to my beads. “The way I heard it told, he gave his rosary to a lover, and he’s done penance ever since.”

  I ran the beads through my unburned fingers, feeling their smooth forms. “Penance?”

  “For his sin,” said Eoin. “He’s a monastic brother—they vow to remain chaste, just as I did.”

  My nose wrinkled. “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t presume to question the will of God. But you must realize that Finnén . . . he was never supposed to have a child.”

  Finnén. For the first time, I had a name, but my excitement was tempered by the blow the old man had just dealt. “He won’t want to see me, then,” I replied, mentally dismissing my imagined siblings.

  Eoin shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. You will need to be cautious and, uh . . .” He gave my modified clothes another look. “It would be best not to let our little secret slip, understood?”

  The ice bowl disappeared, and I carefully unwrapped my fingers to check on their slow progress. “Understood. Nothing about the, uh . . . aes sídhe, correct?”

  He gave me a flicker of a smile. “Wise boy.”

  Night fell, though with the storm, I couldn’t be certain of when the transition had finally come. Eoin busied himself in the largest room in the complex—a church, though I had no clue as to its use at the time—and I lurked in the back, shivering against the stone wall as I tried to avoid the spray coming through the open windows. At the priest’s direction, I had modified my dress in half a dozen ways, but even the wool that he suggested did little to warm me in the open room. Still, something told me that artificially raising the temperature would be frowned upon, and so I tried to tough it out in silence as Eoin went about his business, lighting a few candles and spending the better part of an hour on his knees before a wooden altar.

  When his prayers were completed for the moment, he led me back into his apartment, which was significantly warmer and smelled of stew. “It’s just me here,” he said almost apologetically as he removed a covered iron pot from the fire. “My cooking would shame my mother, rest her soul, but then she’s not here to complain, is she?”

  I couldn’t, either; the soup tasted strongly of brine, but I craved its warmth. I huddled by the fire, wrapped in a well-worn blanket, and drank straight from the clay bowl Eoin had given me. He watched me shake for a moment, then frowned and prodded at the fire until the peat bricks spat. “Constitution’s a bit weak?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s never this cold at home. Or wet,” I muttered, glancing toward the noisy roof.

  “You’ll survive,” he replied, putting the poker away. “And you can sleep by the fire, if you like—I’ve only the one pallet for myself, but there’s blankets enough to soften the floor . . .”

  A soft rappi
ng at the door caused us both to whip around in surprise, and Eoin scowled as he rose. “Evil night to be abroad. Come with me—and not a word, now,” he cautioned, then took up a candle and headed out of the room. I followed close at his heels, tossing off the blanket in an effort to give the visitor no cause for a second glance, and waited a few paces behind the priest as he threw back the bolt and opened the door. “Yes?” he asked the night, glancing about him, then cast his eyes on the soaking wretch at his feet. “Saints defend us,” he murmured, crouching to throw the visitor’s face into candlelight, “and what might you be doing out on a night like this? Come in, my daughter, come in. Coileán,” he called over his shoulder, “help me carry her!”

  I joined him at the threshold, where I found a wizened, white-haired creature huddled against the wall, her eyes pale blue and clouded. I couldn’t tell the color of the rags she wore—the night and the weather made everything beyond Eoin’s candle a dark mess—but she trembled with cold and stared up at me imploringly. “Here, it’s warm inside,” I began, reaching to scoop her up, but froze when I finally saw what the lines of age had momentarily masked.

  “Coileán,” Étaín croaked, then doubled over with a spasm of coughing.

  My body moved, though my mind was elsewhere, screaming. I gathered her into my arms and ran past Eoin toward the hearth, then put her in my chair and began to remove her dripping wrappings. The fabric, ancient and sodden, tore like wet paper in my hands, and I pulled back, panicking as her clothing seemingly dissolved at my touch.

  She groped for my hand with her gnarled fingers and tried to squeeze. “It’s all right, sweet boy,” she murmured, and her head lolled against the back of the chair. “Let me rest.”

  I knelt before her, too stunned to move. “Étaín,” I whispered, “what . . . why . . .”

  Her eyes drifted in the direction of my voice, and I realized that she couldn’t see me.