by Ron C. Nieto
“I would hesitate to claim such a thing. Was she not part of your flock?”
“Indeed she is. The babes, the old ones. They are my interest. And yet, you just said ‘was.’” Glaistig leaped on the tidbit of information like a hound and Lily wondered if Troy had fed it to her or if it had slipped from his tongue. “Should you not ask someone else about the fate of the departed? The graveyard’s Grim, mayhaps?”
“I would, if she were dead. Your confirmed claim over her just proved that she is not and that I did bring my questions to the right place.” He smirked and it earned a minuscule frown from their host.
“Very well. Do answer me first. Why are you posing such questions, Kelpie? I would think your pet mortal to be the interested party.”
Lily felt Troy tense beside her. Somehow, Glaistig had just regained the advantage and she realized it as soon as she read the unease in him.
“Let her speak,” she commanded. “Tell me, Doctor’s Whelp, what drove you to ask questions about your family to a stranger such as myself?”
Lily wet her lips. Her throat had gone dry under the sudden scrutiny and she could feel Troy’s attention on her too, heavy with warning. But she couldn’t warp words and weave traps like he could. She could only offer the truth and hope she would get an honest answer in turn.
“The house was attacked and she’s disappeared,” she said. “I’m worried about her. I need to know what happened.”
The moment her words were out, Glaistig’s polite smile widened into the feral grin of a huntress. Her pink tongue poked between her sharp, sharp teeth, as if she had just caught the scent of prey and was savoring the kill in advance. Lily shuddered and cut a side glance to Troy, who just stared at her with a blank expression.
“Ah,” Glaistig said. “I understand your need to assuage the pain of the unknown, and I shall offer my help for I believe my answers might prove to be a balm for your mind and heart.”
It couldn’t be that easy. The faerie’s look belied her words.
“Do you know where she is, then?” Lily asked anyway. She had to.
“Such eagerness,” Glaistig said with a low chuckle. “I may or I may not, my sweet. Either way, just as I have proved such understanding of your predicament, surely it is only fair to ask you to return the favor?”
An alarm bell went off in Lily’s head. In the tales and legends she knew, bargains were hardly ever fair. But what other choice did she have?
“What do you want?”
“The babes, the old ones, the cattle that sustains their lives. Such are the things I rule over. Yet as of late, a bout of a most irritating sickness is wreaking havoc among my charges, leaving them prostrate with a consumption their bodies cannot heal. All I ask is that you should retrieve for me a stone that will banish this plague from my lands.”
Lily thought back to the cure for pixie pox her grandmother had brewed with her. She thought of Ms. McEnroe, lying in her bed, of her son who was just a kid acting like a grown man. She remembered how bad she had felt upon seeing them in their grief.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” she said. “And you’ll tell me what you know about the disappearance of my grandmother in exchange,” she added, feeling the need to clarify to avoid being cheated.
“I accept,” Glaistig crooned. “It is sealed.”
“Where is the stone?” Lily asked. “How will I know that I get the right one?”
“You will recognize it, rest assured. It is smooth and slippery, black as the poison it is meant to heal, in shape like the sole of a shoe. Furthermore, you will know it for the place where it rests, in the heart of the cave overlooking the Braeroddach Loch where the cuelebre stands guard.”
“And what is a cuelebre?”
“A cuelebre,” Troy cut in, “is a serpent meant to protect the secrets of the land from meddling mortals and from those who would misuse them. You shall find it holds remarkable resemblances to the guardian dragons plaguing the minds of your medieval ancestors.”
“What!” Lily recoiled from his words, but also from his sharp tone and from the scathing look he had given her. “How am I supposed to get past a dragon?”
“Is now the time to ask such a question?” he said with a smile that was almost vicious.
“I…” No, it wasn’t. The moment for it came and went, right before she accepted the bargain. “I don’t have any real chance of killing a dragon, have I?”
“A cuelebre,” Glaistig corrected, tutting faintly. “And while death is nearly assured should you charge off blindly like the knights of old, I expect you to use your cunning to defeat this foe if the need arises.”
Lily snorted. “Of course it’ll arise. It won’t let me just go with the treasure it’s meant to protect. You’re just trying to get rid of me.”
Glaistig narrowed her eyes and the good humor that had surrounded her evaporated. The look she gave Lily was long and hard, cold, and full of sharp edges, and it made Lily think of Troy’s words. For she dislikes devouring anything but young and hale men. She could see the terrible behind the beautiful now and it made her swallow past a lump in her throat.
Then, as quickly as it came, the look went away and left a slightly colder, more formal Glaistig in its wake.
“I am sure it was an unfortunate choosing of your words that made it seem as if you implied treachery in my pact,” she said, enunciating with exaggerated care. “In my magnanimity, I shall even remind you that cuelebres do not part with their treasures willingly, but they do accept offerings most graciously. Now go and come back when your part of the bargain is done.”
Troy stood first and he left without word or backward glance, leaving Lily scrambling to catch up before he crossed the opening of the path alone and left her lost in Glaistig’s domain.
C H A P T E R XVI
“Irresponsible girl!” Troy turned and hissed when they had barely lost the riverbank from sight. “Did you fancy yourself very clever for bargaining with the fay?”
“You think I enjoyed that deal? Because trust me when I say I don’t look forward to facing that dragon… that cuelebre thing.”
“You rushed into acceptance without even knowing of it.”
And that was the crux of it.
“I’m sorry if I’m not as experienced as you would like me to be about faeries,” Lily said. “But it’s not like I could say no. There’s too much at stake here.”
“And you made sure she knew of your desperation, of course. Understanding that a service only has the value given to it by those who desire it is common sense, and the fact you handed over all negotiation power can hardly be blamed on your lack of education.” He took a step back and ran both hands through his hair. Lily saw he was distressed, truly upset over the blunder.
“Is it that bad?”
“Yes.”
“But we can do it, right? We can get the stone.”
“We? I certainly do not plan on facing that beast.” He resumed walking, not bothering to look back to see if she followed.
“We have a deal,” she reminded him.
“Not quite. You have struck a ridiculous bargain, but I do not have part in it. There should be an alternate way to find the information.”
“Grandma doesn’t have time for us to waste thinking of other methods when we have already found one. And besides, technically, I’m bound to fulfill my end of the bargain, right?”
“Indeed. But as I said, only you are. I can find different ways to pursue the answers once you fail, so all is not lost in spite of your stupid wasting of the best source I had.”
“You don’t mean that.” Lily breathed out, struggling now to keep up with him. His anger had lengthened his strides.
“Do I not?” he mocked, lifting a brow.
“No, you don’t!” She grabbed his arm, pulled with all her strength, managed to bring them both to a stumbling halt. “You don’t mean that!” she shouted, desperate to believe her own words. He just regarded her, cold as a marble statue, and she hit his chest, tryin
g to get him to react because even if he laughed at her naiveté, it would be better than this indifference. “You’re supposed to protect me,” she finished lamely in a small voice.
“Should it be within my possibilities,” Troy said. “If the redcap pack resulted to be such a harsh test, exactly how do you expect to prevail against the cuelebre?”
“We could find a way. Glaistig said it wasn’t impossible, so there must be some trick. She even gave us a clue, didn’t she? We could figure it out.”
Troy sighed. Reaching up, he disentangled her fingers from the front of his shirt, where they had clung when she gave up on the hitting, and forced some distance between them.
“If you must know, she suggested you give the guardian a poisoned offering, as if such a thing were simple.”
“Right. So that’s what she meant. And I don’t suppose you can kill a cuelebre with raticide, right?”
“No substance made by man would work. And you do not have the means to obtain the rarer ingredients that might do the deed.”
“Do you think Grandma could have them?”
“No. The good doctor did not dabble in poisoning.”
“But iron would still work, right?” She was clutching at straws, she knew.
“And how do you plan to slip it past his senses? Nothing in this world carries a stronger stench than iron. The cuelebre will see the ruse and know you are to blame.”
“We have to try.”
He shook his head. “Desist. Find a loophole in the bargain and let us find another way.”
“I gave my word I would do this,” she protested.
“And both parties neglected to mention when. Walk away from this folly and it will be no fault of yours if you choose to perform your task one hundred years from now.”
It was so very tempting. Lily thought back to the river running red from Troy’s wounds after the redcap encounter. They appeared to be healed now and he moved seemingly without pain, but it was a sharp reminder of what could happen should she insist on facing the cuelebre. He was giving her a way out, a way to continue the search and stay safe, and she ached to take it.
“Who else might know what happened?” she asked.
“Those who foresaw her death might be able to explain the nature of their visions.”
“But she isn’t dead. We know that now, so those visions wouldn’t be accurate anyway.”
“No,” he admitted.
“Then there’s no choice, Troy.”
Troy bowed his head for a moment. When he looked up at her again, Lily could have sworn there was a tinge of something soft behind the harsh, cutting glass of his gaze. Was it pity? Regret?
“There is always a choice, Lily Boyd. Do remember that,” he said in quiet tones that touched her soul without searing it with command.
And he chose to turn around, walking back toward his water domain and leaving her alone and dirty and cold on the outskirts of town.
Lily made it home in a daze. The front door was still propped up in place, so she entered through the kitchen. After their escape from the redcaps, they had left it ajar and the wind had blown dirt and dead leaves into the house. It was the only thing out of order. She looked at the kitchen clock. It said it was eleven-twenty and she couldn’t remember if she should be worried, if it should be marking some other time. She couldn’t even care what day it was. The only important thing was that the neighbors seemed to be intent on not realizing what happened around them and no one had come to the house, no one had called the police.
That was nice. That would allow her to prepare her trap.
She would just take a short shower first.
And perhaps a short nap.
She had to hurry, but surely she could spare a few minutes to rest. Her grandmother always used to say that tired minds didn’t think straight, and she was so very, very tired.
C H A P T E R XVII
Lily woke when normal people went to sleep all around her. Before collapsing on her old bed, she had showered and changed clothes and she felt like a different person when she opened her eyes.
Different was perhaps the key word, she mused while stretching. This time, there was no urge to deny the events, to claim everything had been a dream. She was only too aware of her new reality. A new reality where one of the first things to do included listening for strange sounds that could identify potential killer faeries readying an attack.
She had been reckless, coming back to her grandma’s after the last two exits she had been forced to pull, but she had also been out of options. She needed to take a deep breath and sit somewhere and think. And prepare a trap for the cuelebre.
Step by step, she told herself.
Her first step was entering every room in the small house and turning on the lights. She was under no illusions. If the redcaps were back, or if something even meaner had been sent in their stead, then keeping the lights off wouldn’t fool them. The lights, however, would prevent her from not seeing them until it was too late. Even though it reeked of small child scared of monsters under the bed, going room by room and turning on every light available, big or small, was the best option she had.
Then she turned on the light in the living room and froze.
Someone had been in the house after all. The overturned couch was back in place. Every chair was where it was supposed to be. The spots of human blood and the rust-like dust of faerie remains had been brushed off and cleaned. The pieces of the vase she had used as a weapon and shattered against a bogey’s head had been picked up and placed in a neat pile where the original vase should be. The poker had been returned to its place too, and were it not for the odd way it was bent out of shape, Lily could have thought that her very real memories were nothing but madness after all.
But the vase was broken, the poker had been used as a weapon, and over on the table sat the small box full of iron nails. And she had to kill a dragon-like faerie and no time to wonder at the housekeeping abilities of a pack of monsters that didn’t seem to be home anymore, if her uninterrupted sleep through the day was any clue.
She grabbed the box, weighed it in her hands. The nails inside were of various sizes, from a full inch to barely a quarter, and they were in all sorts of states, from bent and rusted to brand new. There had to be dozens of them.
So she had a weapon. Now, how to use it?
Glaistig had said to use an offering. Troy had said she wouldn’t be able to slip the iron past the cuelebre´s sense of smell. She was inclined to believe him, judging from the way the redcaps had suspected iron as soon as she had stepped through the door the previous night—or had it been two days before? How long had passed already since her grandma went missing? Did time even matter anymore?
In any case, if Glaistig said she could use a ruse, and taking into account how offended she had looked when it seemed that Lily thought she was cheating, it seemed it may be crazy difficult, but possible.
What could hide the smell of iron? She took a handful of nails, brought them to her face, sniffed. If she was very hard-pressed, she might admit to a soft metallic tang in the air, but for the most part, it was unnoticeable. Perhaps the stench was more of a mystical thing, in which case she didn’t know how to counter it.
No. Focus on what you can control. Keep going step by step.
She took the box to the kitchen and set it in the counter. An idea was beginning to hatch. All her life, Lily had seen Mackenna leave the offerings out for the fair folk: bread, milk, honey. Every day she had been there, the small plates had been out in the porch, in the yard, or by the trees that farther on would become the forest. She could almost hear the words spoken with Mackenna’s voice fifteen years earlier to a wide-eyed child too young to understand them. “This way they know to which house they should not bring harm.” And harm meant blood and blood had iron.
Different, of course, but perhaps it could work.
Lily took out a container and mixed flour with salt. She also needed yeast and she found it where she had dropped i
t during the first encounter with the bogeys. She had a vague recollection of adding water too. Mackenna’s voice from old memories explained how more water would make bread tasty, but would also cause it to harden faster, and Lily decided to add in a cup and a half of milk instead. She wanted it to be soft and taste great and, if things went badly, there would be no time to lament that it had gone too hard. Then she added a bit of honey, because you could never go wrong with honey and faeries. When the dough looked just about right, she dumped it on the table.
And, on top of it, she dumped the nails. And she began to knead.
It hurt. She bruised her knuckles and the nails broke her skin. She gritted her teeth and kept going, watching while the dark grey disappeared in the dough. Specks of red flourished here and there, traces left by her wounded hands, but she only stopped when she had to yank out a particularly rebellious nail from her flesh.
The wee hours of the night came. She shaped the dough, making sure no nails poked through the surface. At some point, she realized it was not going to get any better.
Now, how long in the oven? She recalled waiting with all her inexistent patience for warm bread back in the day, but any approximation of time was beyond her. However, such a silly thing could not be the demise of her plan, could it? Surely there were cook books or something with the information.
Perhaps she should have consulted them before half revisiting and half improvising the recipe itself, but no matter. It was done and it would have to work. She put the bun of bread in the oven, washed her hands, and set about to search for the information.
Mackenna didn’t have proper cooking books. She had never bought anything like 100 Easy Recipes to Impress for Christmas or Cooking Fast and Delicious Meals with No Salt. That was more her mother’s sphere. Her grandmother bought notebooks instead and painstakingly wrote the recipes as she had learned them from her own mother, who had learned them from her mother. Lily found a small stack of such notebooks stored in a drawer. There was no index, no order to the contents. Some lines were scratched out and notes to improve the recipes were added in the margins.