Digital Magic

by Philippa Ballantine

  Greer settled her hands about the node. “I’m very glad you’ve finally worked that out. But unfortunately, I don’t think you’ll like what the combination of magic and technology can do.”

  Dry fear touched him then.

  “I will find out what you know, Bakari. And you can make it easy for yourself, or you can make it hard. It matters little to me which you choose.”

  He thought of her blank cruelty, the way she’d used the image of his dearest mother. He could only imagine what she would do to his closest friend. The warmth of his African dream had not left him, though, and the echo of it made him stronger. His mother had been brave, holding onto life as long as she could in a shattered body. He recalled her smile and her love, and knew there was no other choice for him.

  “Do what you like,” he said calmly. “I won’t tell you anything.”

  Greer’s hands were moving, dipping and dancing in some strange ritual that drew his eye. “Very well… Hard.”

  Her delicate fingertip flicked the control of the node and they fell into another world together.

  15

  Surrender

  Ella’s life had suddenly become a moving dream. She felt alive, more so than ever before. Every sound and every colour was more vivid. A single, still moment of life had ensnared her and wherever she looked there was fragile beauty, so perfect that it made her want to cry.

  She’d opened Raven Hill and taken Ronan through into it—all done with something that could only have been instinct. I don’t really know myself at all anymore, she thought, but it did not fill her with dread; rather, with a strange excitement.

  Ronan said nothing, content to be led. He was slightly dazed by her sudden command: she could feel that in him. They walked down into a pale silvery light, the earth glowing with its own inner magic and brightening as she approached. And the air, even that was different, scented and heavy with the hint of jasmine. It filled Ella up and made her senses reel.

  The tunnel opened into a large room, but nothing like what she might have expected. A dry stone hearth, and a stiff-backed chair big enough for two that looked as though its occupant might just have stepped out to gather herbs. Two large beds were covered with furs and bracken and the scattered remnants of someone’s simple life. Ella felt she was intruding somehow.

  The light had dimmed to a faint bluish haze coming from the walls.

  “Is this Fey?” Her voice sounded very different, too, in here.

  Ronan moved away, running his hands over the back of the chair with a dreamy gaze. He raised them to his face and drew in a great deep breath. “Yes. Not truly part of my home, but very, very close. This would have been the shelter for a simple Fey, a woodland creature, or one of the farmland.”

  “And they lived here?” Ella asked, uncertain how anything so homely could be otherworldly.

  “It’s like a hunter’s cabin in the woods, a place of refuge from the wilds of the human realm.”

  “And all under Raven Hill?”

  Ronan was bending by the hearth. He took wood stacked beside it and began to assemble a fire. “Not really under. If archeologists dug down, they’d find nothing. It’s there, but not quite. Like something just out of phase. You need Art to be able to find such a place.”

  Ella shivered, but he said no more. She snuck closer and watched over his shoulder as he finished his task. At a soft commanding word, flames leapt up from the wood and began to burn cheerily.

  “Impressive,” she said.

  “Not really,” Ronan sat down on the seat, seemingly unconcerned for its stability, “Not compared with what you just did.” He patted the spot next to him. “There’s nowhere to hide this time, Ella. The Seed has the hill blocked until sunup, and we really need to discuss this.”

  Fighting down the lump in her throat, Ella reluctantly did as she was asked. Though she couldn’t decide which was more unnerving, being questioned, or the long length of Ronan’s thigh pressed against hers.

  “I know what you’re going to ask.” God, this was her worst nightmare, what had driven her from Doyle, what she’d been fleeing for so long. This was exactly how a stag brought to bay by hounds must feel. “You’re going to ask who I am, who my parents were.”

  “Perfectly reasonable place to start.”

  “Yes, all perfectly reasonable—except I don’t know. I have no idea what those answers are.”

  She looked down at her hands, feeling the tears burning and feeling Ronan’s eyes drilling into her, but she wouldn’t look up. She’d done that with Doyle and the look had been the end of them—she wouldn’t do it again. So Ella just said it without meeting his eye, blurting the truth into her clenched hands. “Ten years ago I woke up in a medical facility—I was in a bed, there were machines everywhere. I don’t even know what my name was.” The metallic, tinny taste swelled in the back of her throat, just like it had on that night. Doyle’s had been the face above her, just as surprised and frightened as she was. Her mouth had been so dry she couldn’t work it to say anything, so only a muffled wail communicated her plea.

  And the voice in the unseen distance by the door hissed, “Doyle come on, we’ve got what we came for.”

  She’d seen his indecision then; the desire to turn a quick profit battling with the urge to do something good.

  “Can’t leave you in this freakin’ place,” he’d muttered under his breath, breaking her out of her restraints before logic kicked in.

  Doyle and his crew had broken out more that night than just the equipment they’d been hired to appropriate; they’d also found their newest recruit. She’d been so glad, so very grateful when they’d whisked her away in their van, leaving the steely corridors and pain behind. Though she couldn’t remember it all very precisely, only fear and panic when she thought of it.

  She’d had nothing else: no name, no idea when her birthday was, what her parents had been like, or if she’d ever had a dog or a cat. The whole past was a mystery, and she was left with nothing.

  So she’d called herself just that—Nill, and it had suited her and the occupation she learnt from Doyle. They’d been frightening years for sure, but they’d also been years when she’d been able to forget that place and that dreadful unknowing fear.

  Ronan was silent as he took her hand in his. He said nothing when it shook and she cried. He waited until the storm had passed.

  “But you didn’t stay with Doyle—what happened?”

  “He betrayed me.” Ella shook her head. “No... that’s not right—that’s just what I’ve been telling myself. It was me. He started to get curious, started to want to know things. And every time he asked, there would be dreams. Nightmares, I guess. So I left. My gratitude only lasted five years.”

  Ronan’s hand tightened on hers, “You should have got out sooner—he was only using you for your talents. You don’t owe him anything.”

  “Maybe not,” Ella said in a small voice, still fighting her thudding heart.

  “So you came here to Penherem—and changed your name?”

  “Nill didn’t mean anything to me anymore, I could feel myself changing, becoming… something else. I liked it and I chose Ella because it had beauty in it—and I wanted some beauty.”

  Ronan seemed about to say something, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him suddenly clamp down on it, holding something in he perhaps knew she wouldn’t want to hear. “And why Penherem?” he asked instead.

  She shrugged, “I can’t answer that either—I was on a train, passing through the sprawl and then the countryside. I got off on a whim and it was here.”

  “My aunt used to say, there is no such thing as a whim, there is only fate.” He smiled kindly at her. His eyes looked dark violet again in the light of the cavern.

  Ella could feel her pulse throb in her throat again, but not with fear this time. She knew she was blushing. “I don’t believe in fate,” she said in a rush. “There are paths laid down, but we decide which ones we take.”

  “I agree with yo
u entirely, but such elevated discussion isn’t going to fill our stomachs. I don’t know about you, but after a fight I’m always ravenous.” Ronan got up. “There might still be a chance for food—such places usually have something tucked away. Even after all this time, the Art might still hold.”

  Ella tucked her feet under her and leaned back against the chair. As she watched Ronan move about, she could only admire him. He was utterly unselfconscious, not even really caring at that moment how beautiful he was. He’d laugh if I told him that, Ella thought smugly, he’d know it but it wouldn’t matter to him. Only a shape shifter could truly underestimate the value of shape.

  Ella stifled a giggle.

  “Well, there is some hard tack in here, though even after all this time, it's nothing to laugh about.” He dropped to the floor in an elegant legs crossed position and offered a slice to Ella. “Though it might sound vain, Fey food, even stuff such as this, is still better than human fare.”

  Ella nibbled doubtfully on the round biscuit's corner. It tasted vaguely of lavender and sugar, and was not at all unpalatable.

  “You know, if I was in my full power, I could have filled this room with flowers and a magnificent feast in an instant.”

  “Now you’re just boasting,” Ella admonished.

  “No—truthfully,” he wolfed down his biscuit, “But it's been a very long time since then. I was quite different, quite... unique.” He grinned up at her and now those eyes were definitely the colour of violets.

  Though he was smiling, in his expression were his real feelings. He was so scared and so lonely that she gasped like she’d been stabbed. Ronan looked at her and a frown creased his forehead. “Ella?” he reached out and grabbed her hand as if he thought she might fall.

  Her wild gift broke free, snapping across the link into him, but it wasn’t Ronan she found. It was his older, freer self.

  He was a power, a cousin of the greatest Fey, born out of the wildness near the edge of their realm. Unloved by his own mother, his aunt had raised him, but it was his cousin Sive he loved. Dark haired, violet-eyed Sive the Shining had burned her way into him.

  He played the fool around her, with his shapeshifting antics, but inside something like his heart yearned for her. So he traveled, entered the world of men, played tricks on them and laughed until he hurt. He took the shape of the wild pooka and broke ships and made sailors wail, but all unaware, only in it for the fun. He drank milk left out for lesser brownies and made them scamper away with little hisses. He took the shape of dark jungle cats and prowled the recesses of the wild when the mood took him to be mysterious. He dallied with dusky maidens in as many continents as he pleased, stole them from beneath their lovers' noses and made them mad for him. Even the terrifying Fey court could not alter his ways. He treated it as he did any other place, existing for his amusement. The King of the Fey, Auberon, tried many times to tame him, break him, but it never seemed to quite stick. All this he did, but none of it really touched him.

  The two realms were his, and trouble seemed to roll off him like salt water off a pooka’s back. He was not a fool, merely careless with the awesome power that he’d had as his birthright. But then one day he was given care of a child by Sive, a child that would change him, break his heart and remake him in another image.

  Ronan cried for that loss of power, but also for the loss of innocence. For that was what he had been; the pale wicked child, the roaring tiger, the Trickster, the pooka—Puck.

  Ella blinked, suddenly back in her body, aware only that her hand was still with his. She didn’t let go.

  “Puck?” She’d seen the plays, laughed at him in Midsummer Night's Dream, but what she’d felt was more wild than that, more elemental.

  Ronan’s eyes fell away from hers. “I used to be… no more, though. I’m only an echo of that creature now. I can recall things that happened to him—to me, I guess. But that is all, because in between him and me is the time I spent alone. The only Fey, the only one who stayed.”

  She knew he no longer could even find the shape of the Trickster, it had gone along with all the others. Only the cat and the pooka and the human shape remained, and she tasted the sadness in that too. He was alone and as lost as she’d felt in the hospital facility. He knew who he was, but at that moment Ella wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or not.

  She clasped her other hand around his, willing him to get some strength from her, hoping he could see how glad she was to know him.

  Ronan’s lips twitched. “I’m not sorry for it though—staying. I’ve learnt so much, found so many friends, seen so many things. I even found something unexpected.” He leaned across and brushed his lips to hers. Time had mellowed the Trickster, for he did not nip her as Puck might have, just to see her expression. Instead, his kiss was now deep honey and power suddenly unmasked.

  Their gifts, one new and great, one older and less, joined again, sweeping through them, an unexpected tide of longing. She was Ella and the frightened Nill. He was Ronan and the powerful Puck. It was good to be together, good to know each other and very good not to be alone.

  Ronan’s arms slid up hers. His hands cupped Ella’s face, and when he pulled back, his violet eyes were wide but peaceful.

  He wanted to say something, to tell her what he’d done and what he’d been for hundreds of years in this world, but there could never be enough words for that. So he just said what came first. “I’m afraid,” and they were truthful words.

  Ella knew that to love was to risk pain. In the human world, there would always be pain with death so close. Stroking Ronan’s face, she smiled, letting her strength flow to him. They wouldn’t be alone, whatever happened, and for now there was the moment to enjoy.

  A gently lit cavern, a quiet space to themselves, a warm nest of ancient furs; they needed nothing more for now. Taking his hand, Ella guided it inside her shirt and against her skin.

  Somewhere between nightmare and reality, Bakari found a little respite from the pain. He floated away from his body and was among that silver light he’d experienced when riding the earth magic. He could only be glad that somehow he’d managed to escape the torment of magic and Line that Greer had conjured up for him, even if only for a while.

  “You shouldn’t let her do that to you.” The young voice seemed to have no origin. Then Bakari realized that even in this place it was still necessary to open his eyes. He looked down and there was Penny Two Dolls, standing in the disembodied wilderness of the light. She was staring up at him, but with none of the vacancy that she usually had.

  In all his time in the village, he’d never heard her speak—in fact, he’d assumed she was mute. But now that seemed a ridiculous idea, for the look in her eye was the most piercing he’d ever seen. It was like she could see every part of him that had ever been; hardened street Liner, grief stricken young man, frightened child, and even loved baby.

  Bakari shook his head. He was getting the strangest ideas.

  “You shouldn’t let her do these things,” Penny repeated and her tone was not that of a child, but more of an admonishment.

  Knowing it was stupid to have an argument with a kid, even if it was just a pain induced hallucination, Bakari grinned to himself. Since there was only this, or the pain of reality, he decided to choose this.

  “Not much I can do about it, you know.”

  “There is always something to be done.” Penny was looking down at the most battered of her dolls, holding it out in her hands like it was a precious pearl. “You aren’t powerless, Bakari.”

  “Penny—she’s got me locked up.”

  The child’s eyes returned to his, and they were pools of swirling stars. He felt swallowed by them. Galaxies were turning, stars bursting to life and dying, all in the gaze of a child. But there was warmth too, a feeling of love such as he hadn’t felt since the loss of his mother, and it washed over Bakari now. He wept, and she put her hand in his.

  “You are strong, too. You are a warrior in your own realm. You can fight
and you can win.”

  Those last were the words of his mother, the final words she’d said to him before he’d left on that fateful morning. Hearing them again did not plunge him into despair as they might have. He felt no gaping hole, no grasping grief, only sureness and love as if his mother and all the mothers before her were speaking to him now.

  Penny was right. He wasn’t powerless, and there was always hope. Greer would not break him, and he would not betray his friend. She would not get Ella’s name from him.

  A plan solidified in the back of his brain.

  The greater part of him did not want to go back. Not because he was afraid, but because with Penny he found he could remember his mother without pain, and that was something he had never been able to do before.

  “You have a task,” Penny said, and turned her raggiest doll so he could see it. The face and the dark hair was familiar: it was his friend, Ella. An overwhelming urge to protect her, to shelter her from whatever Greer had planned, rose in him. Liners weren’t used to being the heroes.

  Penny Two Dolls smiled, and Bakari turned back to the edges of the light and to reality.

  He plunged back to himself and the nightmare wrapped itself around him again, but this time there was no fear with it.

  Magic burned his senses, while the Line consumed him. It was fire and pain. A forest burned around him, an ancient place. He was running, fleeing on roasting feet through it. Trees crashed and fell around him, while the sound of the fire broke against his eardrums. And she was coming. The flaming goddess of pain stalked him through the conflagration. This time, Bakari did not run from her.

  Instead he turned and let the fire lick up his legs. He could smell his own flesh bubbling and burning away, the scent was enough to drive anyone mad. But the goddess coming through the smoke and heat was even worse.

  Greer wore the aspect of a burning giantess. She had eyes here, soulless sucking maws, ringed in flame. No clothing could survive such a figure, her perfect breasts ran in colours of red and orange and she pushed aside crumbling trees carelessly with her hands. She was terrifying and glorious in her femaleness, enough to bring a man to orgasm and then fling him down into death.