Digital Magic

by Philippa Ballantine

  When it cleared and there was golden light again, she was alone except for a tall dark haired woman. She looked familiar, the shape of her face echoing in some undiscovered memory. When she smiled at the nameless woman, she knew she couldn’t be nameless for ever. That smile soothed all hurts and offered only infinite love.

  “Where are they?” the nameless woman asked hesitantly. “Tania and Alice and little Penny?”

  The other touched a spot on her flawless chest, “They are here—within me.”

  Realisation and remembrance helped her give this goddess a name. “Anu.”

  “Ah, dear child,” a cool hand brushed her hair away from her eyes. “You have suffered so much—been separated from your parents, just as I have been separated from all I love.”

  “Grandmother,” the nameless one said through a hesitant smile, as stories welled up inside her. “You were lost to the Unmaker.”

  She passed a hand over her grandchild’s face and let her see the moment of doom. Anu, the Queen of the Fey, mother of Sive the Shining, had been lost in the distance between worlds. It was she who had bound the Unmaker in the Dawn of Time to his broken world, and when she sensed he was close to escape, it was she who had gone to make sure the breach was closed.

  “But I was arrogant, vain perhaps, and thought that I could do it alone. I did not take any other Fey with me, though my sister Brigit would have gone willingly.”

  The Unmaker had taken her unawares, being so much stronger than she had imagined. However, Anu was the avatar of the Earth Goddess herself, and was not easily destroyed. So the Unmaker had broken her like the three realms, shattering her into her three parts; child, maiden and crone. The first two he’d scattered through time and space. The crone he had swallowed whole, before sending her to the human world to watch for the coming Fey. He knew eventually the time of Healing would occur. Poor Tania, the eternal crone, had been driven mad by it all. Unknowingly, she had worked for her enemy.

  The nameless woman found herself sobbing in Anu’s arms, feeling the pain and emptiness of her friend.

  “You, too, have suffered,” Anu said softly, “More than I would have wished for child of my child.”

  “And I’ve lost my name. I was Aroha, then Nill and finally Ella—so many names and I don’t know which one is mine.”

  Anu kissed her forehead. “Your mother, Sive, gave you one on your birth, and it has never left you. It has always been waiting for you. Throw away the others and take it up.”

  The memory bubbled up from within her, a remembrance which no mortal could have had, of her first breath and her given name. Aine, her mother had whispered it into her ear, all warmth and love. It meant joy. No other had ever spoken her name. It was a gift and a weapon, the same as to all Fey, though she was half human. It would not be spoken until she was strong enough to defend it and choose who to give it to. Her father, the Bard, had kissed the top of her head before giving her to the woman she would come to call Nana.

  Aine clutched the name to her. It felt more right than any other name she’d ever had.

  Her real grandmother hugged her tightly, “Be proud of who you are, child of my child, but remember that it means you bear greater responsibilities than others.” Her perfect forehead folded in worry. “You must go back, back to Penherem.”

  Aine shivered, seeing the King Stone and Ronan straining against it, but it was so distant. It was so tempting to remain here in the golden light.

  “I’m sorry, dear child, but that cannot be. My maimed Tania fragment spilled the blood of a Fey with the magic of the human realm. The Nexus is weak, and the Shattered Realm will receive the Healing that is meant for another. When it is reunited with the human world, the Unmaker will be able to cross.”

  Aine nodded, feeling the weight of duty. If she had remained whole, and done her job properly…

  “No time for that, child,” Anu chided. “Regrets are for mortals.”

  She recognised truth. It was the task that had been set for her by her mother when she had sent her only daughter to Earth. Aine turned back to the real world and heard the ancient queen’s parting words.

  “I will wait for you, granddaughter, for your return.”

  Then the golden light melted away from her and she was back, but not the same. The women had vanished, absorbed into one, but Anu had been right. Blood on the King Stone mocked Aine, and a terrible sound in the air made her shiver deep down in her core.

  “Ella,” Ronan called to her, still tied to the face of the rock. He couldn’t know her real name—not yet anyway. He was more glorious through her now opened eyes. He all but blazed in Aine’s vision.

  She ran to him, passing straight through a frantic Bakari. Her friend’s form seemed more solid now, like he was mastering the electronic output required.

  “Did I get it right?” His eyes were wide. “Penny told me what to do, but…”

  “Yes, you did what was needed.” Aine tugged at the chains wrapped tightly about Ronan.

  “Tania spelled them.” The Fey strained against them. “I couldn’t break them.” He sounded so very sorry at his own failings.

  Yet the fragment that had been Tania could never match Anu’s granddaughter in power. She put her hands to the chains and put forth her Art, so they became nothing more than lines of dust across Ronan’s chest.

  He looked up at her with a chill stillness. He had sensed her power on Raven Hill, but now there was more, a touch of the royal Fey line. It did frighten him, Aine could see that, but only in that he was afraid to lose her. He really didn’t know how she felt.

  Taking his hand, Aine helped him up from the King Stone. “Foolish Fey, I love you—no matter what my name is.” To prove it, she bent and whispered it into his ear.

  Then he was laughing aloud, hugging her, crushing her to him. Looking over his shoulder, she could feel many things changing. Her sharpened senses could discern the arrival of the villagers of Penherem. They had come, just as when she’d asked the people of Makara, bringing with them their little magics won at great cost.

  Helen, Rob, Janey, Toby, Bev, Ned and all the other faces that had surrounded her while she healed in the village. In between she could also sense the presence of the little ones, the lesser Fey who had slipped through the Between or had awoken from hibernation. The weight of their attention was focused on her.

  The blood on the King Stone was not to be ignored. Her own blood made of Fey and Human told her that the balance had shifted; the old pact between the two races was broken. The Hall groaned on its foundations, crying out like a stricken woman, bulging abruptly at the seams as power built within.

  Bakari spat out a bitter oath as the projection equipment closest to the stone imploded in an explosion of metal and glass. His image dimmed, relying on the remaining one.

  Ronan’s hand tightened on her shoulder. He’d seen the last time, been in the battle in the Shattered Realm and looked into the face of darkness. “He’s coming through,” the Fey’s voice cracked with dread.

  All that Aine had been through and all that her broken selves had witnessed had been a forge for this moment. The human Bardic power of her father and the Fey energy from her mother boiled inside her, a rising tide of energy. They had sacrificed watching their child grow up to make sure she was here for this moment. Her Nana had died to preserve her. She thought of all the people who had also been lost, even unknowingly for this. Sally’s cheery smile, Daniel’s bravery and the ranks of her childhood friends rose in memory.

  Aine’s head buzzed and every ounce of her strength went into holding herself back. The world was opening. The back wall of the room was disappearing into a broken landscape, a yawning mass of low black clouds and jagged hilltops. All that occupied this place was hatred. It washed out from the chasm and rolled over the people. The strength of it was such that everyone but Aine and Ronan bent and fell to their knees. Even Bakari, somewhere on the Line, felt it and was toppled.

  Above on the mezzanine floor, the Seed shri
eked its delight and leapt down to alight like a giant malign spider on top of the glass case. Its jaws snapped and the bone white shell glowed with the presence of its master. Aine turned her head and glared at it. Just as it was at Makara, the Seed would serve its master by killing the villagers. It would be its gift of blood.

  She gave Ronan a push. “Go. Save them.”

  He looked back once at the chasm, face white, eyes wide, “But…”

  “This is what I was born for,” she kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Serve me best by saving them.”

  He saw it in her, the strength of Sive and the Bard. He needed no more. He trusted in that strength as he had hundreds of years before. Ronan leapt away, shifting in the air, becoming his dangerous feline form.

  Unmaker chose that moment, when Aine was alone. A huge human form of utter darkness stepped towards the chasm, ready to pass into the human world. She was all that stood before him. Aine knew she looked frail and small beside the massive thing of hatred and destruction.

  She did not move.

  It called out to her memories, showing her again the death of Nana, the fatal fall of Sally. She did not blink, merely remained where she was; a force of human and Fey. Like steel which derives it strength from a union of iron and carbon, she remained.

  The Unmaker delved deeper, finding the memories of how it had broken her uncle Auberon and even her grandmother the great Anu. Still she did not move. A thousand forms of chaos and death it sent to her, enough to rupture any being, mortal or immortal. But she had looked into the face of destruction before, found her own horrors much earlier, and so was unmoved. It wailed and gnashed above her, unable to get past.

  Aine felt the battle between Ronan the Trickster and the Unmaker’s Seed at her back. Once, it would have been death for Puck. The Fey's Art had been weak before, but now it was strong. His shapeshifting had been restored with her touch. The cat moved faster than the Seed and his form was fluid, constantly changing, using all its Feyness against the Seed. Puck the Trickster was in every move and action. He was speed and glory and the fight ended quickly. The Seed was no more, a blight gone from the village. A murder was avenged.

  The Unmaker was not made less by the loss of one minion. It roared as one claw of darkness found purchase in the real world, piercing the ground only a few inches from Aine. The vessel of her body was suddenly filled with understanding.

  The Nexus. Stepping back only fractionally she laid her hand on the King Stone, feeling the pulse of the place where three worlds met. It had been made by great magic and it could be undone. It knew her, or rather, it knew her blood. Her father Will had once been prepared to sacrifice himself for it. He had given his life to the Nexus, part of its magic had flowed back into him in return, and from him into his daughter.

  Now she called on that force, turned that power in on itself, demanding the Nexus break. The strength of its own magic could not be denied. The King Stone cried like a child, a wail of despair at such outrage. The anchor snapped like a broken harp string and the link between worlds was destroyed. Crystal shards exploded all around them, becoming a whirlwind of daggers and intense cold. The King Stone had obeyed, giving up its life at her command. The chasm began to seal, like a wound that had been waiting to be healed.

  One claw of the Unmaker was buried deeply in the human realm, and even as its moment passed, it would not give up. Destruction was slowly pulling itself free of the Shattered Realm.

  That was when the villagers cried out—not in horror this time, but in denial. They would not allow this to happen. Aine turned to them, looking among the crowd of people, but also seeing those that were still present but no longer alive; feeling their will being given to her. Nana. Sally.

  She knelt down and touched the Unmaker, filling him with love and beauty, letting him see the will of the world. Into him flowed all the agony and joy that Aine had found in this realm. The Unmaker only knew pain and hatred—he was their avatar. Aine was filled with something far different. She had suffered here too, been broken and used, and all she loved had been killed before her. Yet there was more to the world than just pain. There was unquenched love, a touching of souls, laughter that cemented friendships, and a community of hope.

  All this Aine poured into the Unmaker while tears washed down her cheeks. They were not tears of despair, not at all like the millions he had wrenched from others; they were tears of gratitude for all that she’d learned here. It was too much joy. He pulled back. With him went the Shattered Realm. It receded, hiding its broken landscape and parting from the human realm.

  The chaos subsided. No more chasm, no more King Stone. The villagers stood quiet, smiling, without fear. They had felt the back wash of Aine’s joy, seen themselves through her eyes. It was an experience that could not help but leave them touched. To understand your own goodness is to be surprised.

  Aine sighed, but smiled at them.

  Ronan slipped his hand into hers. “It’s time to go, isn’t it?”

  He could feel it too. The thin strand of Fey that had been drawn down by her arrival in Penherem was withdrawing. Nothing remained to bind it to the human world—there was no healing for it today. Aine nodded. “We have to go back. This place is not yet ready for us.”

  “You can’t leave us,” Bakari looked like he might have been crying digital tears. He had tasted more magic in these days than any other mortal had in a long time. He did not want it to slip away now.

  “Dear friend—I will miss you most of all. But I’m leaving you with something.” She ached to take his hand.

  “Yeah, and what would that be?” He crossed his arms and managed a glare.

  “Hope,” She reached out with her fingertips and almost touched him. “You know there is magic in what you do. And though the Nexus is broken, perhaps in time you could build another bridge to the Fey world. Work your own magic and find us.”

  A little sliver of her power leapt across to him, burying the information he would need inside his now digital brain.

  “It will take so many years,” he replied softly, but in awe. “What do we do until then?”

  Aine smiled, “I leave a portion of my Art here in Penherem, so that the little Fey who have chosen to come back may survive. There will always be greatness here—it is a place touched by Anu.” Her heart ached at the thought of leaving it. “And you of all people now have the time to master this new human magic.”

  He blinked, thinking of the body he’d left and what he’d become instead. “It’s possible, then?”

  Ronan laughed; it was a sound to lift the spirit, filled with the essence of the Puck of old. “Haven’t you learned by now, Bakari? There is magic in everything you humans do. And the impossible is made possible by it.”

  The little Fey, satyrs and fairies, looked at her with longing eyes, peeking out from behind the humans they had taken to heart. They yearned for the Fey, but love would not let them leave.

  “You are safe here, little ones,” Aine whispered to them. “A time will come when Bakari finds a way, and then I will return with my mother. Take care of these, your human friends, until then.”

  They sighed, twittered and smiled. For immortals it would be but a heartbeat.

  Aine whispered a word, a call, and out of the crowd Qoth appeared. She darted to her mistress with a chirp of delight and was scooped up. Over the feline’s head Aine looked one last time at her home. “I will return when you have rebuilt the Nexus, but this time, connect only two realms. The Shattered you will leave drifting alone in the Between. It will be a new alliance.”

  The villagers sighed and leaned forward, as if to catch a last breath of their savior.

  Bakari straightened. “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Then care for each other until then,” Aine whispered, though they all heard her. “Make the magic in your own way.”

  Then without further words Ronan, Qoth and Aine turned as Anu opened the pathway. They stepped forward and were gone into the Between worlds. Back home to the
Fey.

  Futures

  The wind was blowing over the golden hills, ruffling the grass and scarlet flowers alike. The man was standing on the hill, looking down at a lake that reflected everything but the clouds. He had not quite got that part right. It was a detail, but one that was important. Bakari made a mental note to fix it as soon as possible. This construct would be complete once it was done, and then the children would be able to take over. He had limited the number of parameters that could be changed, and they would enjoy the flowers as well as the numerous small furry animals that occupied the forest by the water. He’d enjoy hearing the laughter and sensing their growing power.

  “Master?” Sarah’s voice was behind him. She must have been getting much better at her entrances of late, as he hadn’t even heard her arrive.

  He turned about and smiled. She was only a youngster, in her early twenties, but already in the blue of the Second magery. Her eyes were almond shaped and full of reverence today as they had never been before. He shook his head. “And here was I thinking you were the only one who didn’t treat me like some sort of high priest.”

  A delicate blush spread through her cheeks. “I don’t think that. I just can’t help it, it’s just awesome… all this,” she gestured to take in the lake, the hills and the forest below. “In some of the Feeds, they are calling you the new Merlin.”

  Bakari ignored those last words. Thanks to his old Liner ways, he found it difficult to accept his new celebrity. “Well, this construct is nearly done,” he admitted.

  “We should already be onto the next one. So many more people are coming to the worlds of the Line you create.” Sarah bent, picked a flower, spun it with her fingertips and examined it closely. “They all want to see what you’ve done, learn from you.”

  She thought it was all so wonderful, but Bakari wasn’t completely without a clue, even if he did live solely on the Line now. In the beginning there had been plenty of people who wanted to hurt the Work, or exploit it somehow. Human beings hadn’t changed that much since he’d become disembodied. But because Bakari had expected it, he’d been able to deal with it. The power of a being that lived purely on the Line could not be overcome by those who still had the limitations of a body. Not yet, anyway.