by Phil Parker
I’d hoped we weren’t going to revisit this little spat. I tried to avoid the argument by affecting an upper class voice.
‘Hello Prime Minister. I’m a member of the Fae race that are currently invading this country but I’m really on your side. Please let me be your advisor. Oh but wait Prime Minister, why are you putting me in prison?’
Oisin smiled politely but my mockery had made matters worse. She glared at me. Mainly because she knew I was right and she was wrong.
‘Stop being ridiculous. The fact remains you hid in that cottage of yours and hoped the war would pass you by. It hasn’t. It’s come knocking at your door.’
A final attempt at levity. ‘They knocked it down actually.’
Her expression, as a certain famous playwright was fond of saying, could freeze beer.
‘Find someone else Robin.’
I knew better than to provoke her any further, not with a kitchen full of creatures who’d take her side. Major was already growling softly.
I attempted a smile. ‘How are the twins?’
With the change of topic her shoulders relaxed and she glanced at Oisin.
‘It’s OK, you can talk in front of him.’
That earned me a look of gratitude.
‘They’re not having too good a time. A local group have started sniffing around the farm. It started with stealing, just the usual petty stuff, but Brea got annoyed and blasted some of them. Needless to say that’s drawn a lot more attention. They’ve had several nights of sustained attacks.’
‘Shit. Why can’t she just…’
Her raised eyebrow told me not to finish that sentence. The tone of her voice told me this was going to be a lecture, one not to be interrupted.
‘You’ve neglected those kids, just like you have me. They’re lonely, they’re kids without parents.’
‘They’re seventeen!’ I said and got frowned at.
‘They’re kids. And they’re trying to come to terms with being different to everyone else. It’s not so bad for Finn in a way, he can hide his skill. But Brea is struggling. I mean, fuck it Robin, you’ve known the family a hell of a lot longer than I have. You know what she’s going through. The energy she keeps pent up in her body affects her in so many ways. She’s still learning to control it and it makes her cranky, which causes her to blast any sly buggers who steal things from her.’
I’d had enough of the guilt trip. ‘I’ve given them a home haven’t I? It’s secluded enough to keep them safe, so long as Brea doesn’t draw attention to herself.’
Amelie looked at me in the way she always did by the end of our conversations. She wore an expression of impatient antagonism. She took a deep breath, apparently the lecture wasn’t over.
‘It’s not a home when you’re lonely, isolated and afraid, certainly not when your family are all dead and everyone blames you for the situation the world’s in. Plus, they are Gawain’s descendants. To the rest of humanity, they are freaks Robin. They are teenagers, with all that entails, unable to fit in and they live like hermits, not by choice but by necessity. Your obligation to their father was more than keeping them safe in some isolated farmhouse. It was about being a surrogate parent.’
Her voice took on the tone of a military leader, it wasn’t so much a suggestion, more a command. I felt my temper building, she’d bottled all this blame inside her and needed to express it, but I had other things to consider beyond parentcraft.
‘You need to go there and help them.’
She flicked her eyes at Oisin, her question was obvious. Was I taking him with me?
Before I could reply a loud flapping of wings announced the arrival of a barn owl that swooped through the open window and landed lightly on the table in front of us. It turned its head to look at Oisin before switching its focus on to Amelie. She frowned as she stared into its unblinking eyes, exhaled loudly and glanced at me and shook her head sadly. Conversation finished, she stood up, moved to a shelf on the wall, reached into a bowl and took out a piece of meat. The owl watched her avidly and the instant the meat appeared in her hand it took off, snatched the meat from her fingers and flew back out through the window.
‘We’ve got visitors.’ Those flint-grey eyes turned on me, the accusation clear.
I hurriedly tried to think of a plan. Amelie’s cottage was at the end of a narrow gully with no other way out, trapping us. She knew there was only one option.
‘How did he find us?’ Oisin asked, panic on his face now.
Amelie shook her head. ‘The boys you met? Whatever you said to them must have made them curious. They followed you. Llyr caught them.’
Oisin’s lack of experience of life in wartime Britain became apparent.
‘Are they all right?’
Amelie’s expression hid none of her contempt. ‘Of course not. He tortured them.’
He looked at me the way he once did when I’d disappointed him. There was just sadness and disbelief. In his world, as the most celebrated storyteller in Tir na nÓg, he hadn’t experienced such horrors. He had always possessed a light in his being which compensated for the darkness in mine, it was one reason for loving him as I had. If he stayed with me for much longer, that light was going to get snuffed out.
‘You need to leave quickly.’
All the creatures in the kitchen reacted to her words, even though they were meant for me. The place became chaotic as cats, dogs and goats strutted to positions at windows, doors and outside the cottage. The birds swirled around the kitchen once before flying out of the window.
‘But what about you?’ I asked.
‘Solomon’s getting help. My friends will protect our home.’
I was responsible for the trouble I’d brought her and said as much, she only shrugged her shoulders.
‘You need to get to the horses.’
We hurried outside, to the stable behind the cottage. She’d already got them saddled, she’d decided she was sending me to the twins before I’d arrived. I didn’t like being manipulated but when you face imminent capture you shut up and show your gratitude for a quick escape.
From a pocket in her dress she took out some cubes of green stuff that smelled of summer meadows. Both horses’ heads instantly swung in her direction. She made a point of handing them to us both, two pairs of dark brown eyes watched every movement.
‘It’s encouragement if they get spooked but these two will carry you to where you need to go.’
Her look made it clear we both knew where that was.
Oisin and I led the horses out of the stable and on to the narrow lane. I kissed her on the cheek and thanked her again and got an impatient and rude reply before she slapped the rump of my horse.
At the end of the narrow lane lines of spriggans waited, weapons ready.
They were wedged in tightly between the walls of the gulley so bursting through with the horses was never going to happen. The sight and sounds of angry spriggans made the horses nervous, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask Amelie how to feed my animal its special cube when I was sat on its back. I looked behind me in the hope of help and in those couple of seconds a cacophony of high pitched shrieks almost deafened us. The spriggans turned their heads as birds of all descriptions, many of them huge gulls, dive bombed. In another few seconds the spriggan lines were broken as long arms flailed helplessly and the smarter spriggans knelt on the ground so the birds attacked the taller targets. The gulls were especially vicious. And agile. They swooped, changing direction in a fraction of a second, clawing and pecking their victims. There were a few raptors, buzzards and kestrels mainly, who preferred to strafe, clawing scalps and lacerating faces.
Oisin and I were completely ignored, Solomon had successfully identified who needed to be attacked and who had to be left alone. I had never been so grateful to an owl in my life. We galloped through the avian mayhem, trampling a couple of distracted spriggans in the process and arrived on the Old Beckery Road and straight into Llyr. He stood far enough away, watching in astonishmen
t and free from attack, presumably because the birds judged his human appearance to mean he was an ally.
He grinned at me as our horses skidded to a halt in front of him, it wasn’t until that point I understood why he wasn’t hurrying to get out of the way. He reached into a pocket and prepared to throw what he took out. I launched myself at him, determined not to be frozen again when a strident screech and the noise of flapping wings distracted Llyr. He dropped the small crystal in a desperate effort to protect himself from the barn owl’s raking claws. The ground instantly turned frosty white, forcing Llyr to dance on tiptoes around the expanding fingers of frost. He almost succeeded but one booted foot wasn’t quite quick enough, it turned white and rooted him to the spot.
His grin froze as well when he saw me reach over my shoulder to snatch my sword from its scabbard on my back. He looked around in the hope of rescue but his spriggans were fighting battles of their own, preoccupied by the need to defend against squawking squadrons of birds plus dogs and cats now too.
‘You mad bastard!’ I yelled, grabbing Llyr by the flowery frills of his shirt. ‘I’m going to slit your throat just like that kid you murdered.’
He babbled something, his widening eyes fixed on mine. Deep in my head I felt Puck cheer me on, which robbed me of some of the vengeance I felt but I dismissed it as I raised my sword arm.
‘No Robin! Don’t!
Oisin grabbed it, pulled it back with all his strength. I tried to shake it loose, angered so much I could feel Puck bristling with frustration, I yelled at him, tried to yank myself free, shook the man like a rag doll. Panic made him shake his head repeatedly until he suddenly let me go. When he spoke it was breathless but with authority, like he was delivering a performance.
‘Kill Llyr and you will bring the Light Court into the war.’
That stopped me.
He pressed his advantage quickly.
‘You’ll make him a martyr. You will have committed treason and regicide. You will have done what he’s been trying to do since he snatched the throne. Is that what you want?’
I lowered my sword, turned from Oisin to look at the grinning face of the bastard I wanted to kill so badly.
Behind us some of the spriggans had realised their monarch was in deadly peril and raced towards us, treading on the stricken bodies of animals and birds beneath their feet.
You choose where and when to fight your battles if you want to win them. It was a lesson I’d learned in the early days of my training, a painful one, as they all were. It didn’t make the decision any easier to bear. The man I hated, whose death was what I wanted more than anything, stood in front of me, immobilised. I could kill him and risk the repercussions. That fucking grin of his tempted me even more. But Oisin was right, we all knew it, especially Llyr, and that made me even angrier.
I jumped on to my horse and galloped off down the Old Beckery Road, listening to Llyr’s insults and threats to hunt us down until we were out of earshot.
We followed the pitted tarmac route that had once been the A39 out of Glastonbury. We rode hard and in silence, Oisin knew better than to say anything to me in my present mood.
Llyr had beaten me again, even when he was helpless and vulnerable. No wonder he grinned at me so much. I was a soldier, I didn’t run away from a fight. I had to admit my training hadn’t equipped me for thinking strategically, I was the type that dealt with danger rather than look for ways to avoid it, Oisin had known that. Though, if I was being honest with myself, I used to be like that. Amelie’s words stuck in my head, I had hidden in my cottage and hoped the war wouldn’t come knocking. Not out of fear but purely because it wasn’t my battle, I was the queer guy trapped in the middle of it all. She’d been right about me failing in my obligations to the twins too, that was another instance of not having a strategy. I hated being blamed, especially when others were in the right. My brain spiralled with more and more regrets, guilt and disappointments that made life such a lump of shit. Spirals tend to go one way, you finish up at the bottom of a dark pit where your thoughts focus on the futility of everything.
My horse had slowed, she was breathless, I’d ridden her too hard for too long. I looked around, at the twilight countryside.
‘Robin?’
The hesitancy in Oisin’s voice was obvious. I let him draw level.
‘Is it safe to travel at night?’
I shook my head. I felt him watching me but I kept my eyes straight ahead as though I was searching for the route. I should have been grateful to him but he was so fucking rational. After ten minutes of awkward silences we arrived at an old barn where I’d stayed on previous occasions when I’d ridden to see the twins. It was made of corrugated steel and sheltered by a wood on three sides so had survived the mega-storms without too much damage. It was filled with old hay bales which had provided fodder for animals long since gone.
‘We’ll stay here.’
We led the horses into the back of the barn where the hay kept them content. I closed the wooden doors to keep the cold and damp out as much as possible. Oisin remained with his horse, talking to it quietly and stroking its nose affectionately.
‘I forgot how much you like horses.’
He glanced at me, his lips curling into the smallest of smiles. ‘Any animal. Do you remember the mouse I rescued from that cat when we were boys?’
I did, it was stupid how such small events stayed with you over such a long life. He’d been broken hearted at the way the cat played with the little creature as it desperately tried to escape. In the end he chased the cat away and took the exhausted mouse, fed it and kept it safe until it was fully recovered. I’d tried to make him understand the frustration of the cat, having successfully hunted its prey and how its playful behaviour was actually about honing its reaction time. Oisin didn’t care, to him, the cat was cruel.
It made me wonder if that was when I first saw Oisin’s light and my darkness.
My recollection and the silence it brought meant the moment quickly passed. I lay on hay bales and stared up into the rafters of the barn. Some distance away I heard Oisin lie down too. We didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally I heard him take a breath.
‘Amelie was hard on you. You do what you can Robin but you’re not the twins’ father. You’re just a man who made a vow to someone.’
I stared into the darkness and thought about how it mirrored what was inside me, how it hid the demons that lived there, Puck particularly. Here was this man trying to tell me otherwise.
‘I make vows too readily. Always fucking doing it.’
I could hear his smile in his voice. ‘Do you know why?’
‘Because I’m a fucking idiot.’
‘No Robin. You pledge to help people because you care for them. You try your hardest to protect them.’
‘And I fuck that up too.’
A light laugh. ‘You do sometimes. But it’s because you’re can’t always prevent it. That boy, earlier, you couldn’t have helped him. Sometimes bad things happen and you can’t stop all of them Robin. The fact you try is what’s important.’
‘I should have woken up earlier, got him out of the house sooner.’
Suddenly I could just make out Oisin’s outline in the darkness as he sat beside me.
‘Robin,’ the smile was in his voice still. ‘We followed him and waited for dawn. You’d have sent him straight into Llyr’s soldiers. He’d served his purpose. Llyr was going to kill him. I think he guessed you’d take him and try to protect him. Do you see? You couldn’t have prevented that boy’s death.’
‘Still…’
It got an exasperated sigh. ‘Stop blaming yourself for everything Robin. I don’t know why you feel the need to protect others all the time.’
‘Yes, you do.’ This was a discussion we’d had a very long time ago and I wondered if he remembered.
‘Because you were once part of an elite fighting unit committed to defending people with your lives. But that was a long time ago and in a different
world. You can stop now.’
‘That’s my point. It’s so ingrained in me that I can’t stop. I wish I could.’
‘Do you? Really?’
If he really knew me he’d have understood that my training and formative years were driven to one goal at the expense of everything else, nothing else made life meaningful. The one time I’d abandoned my purpose and become the Court clown, Fate shat on me.
‘Amelie was right about one thing. I had hidden in my cottage and hoped I could avoid the war. I’d tried to stop being me, you see. That was my mistake.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’
‘Go back to being Robin Goodfellow, the Trooping Fairy. I’m going to see the twins, make sure I take better care of them, get them somewhere safe. Then I’m going to hunt Llyr down and find a way to kill the bastard that won’t bring the entire Fae race through the portals.’
I took a breath.
‘And get you home too.’
‘I’m not leaving your side Robin. Do you remember how we used to talk about my light and your darkness?’
I smirked, knowing he couldn’t see me. ‘Vaguely.’
‘You need me to show you the light when the darkness threatens to overwhelm you.’
‘Can you do that?’
A soft snigger.
‘Managed it without too much trouble this evening, haven’t I?’
‘I bet you feel smug, don’t you?’
I felt him lie down, close enough to me that we almost touched.
‘I do actually.’
We lay in silence, I listened to his steady breathing and found I’d missed it. I wanted him to be with me, he was right, he did complement my dark nature but I worried what lay ahead for us. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to this man. We seemed to be rekindling our friendship and I didn’t want to lose it, not again.
I heard him stir. ‘I remember another time when you and I spent time in a barn. And what we did there. Do you?’
I kept still and breathed in a regular rhythm to make him think I was asleep. He moved closer to me, placed an arm over my body. After a while his breathing slowed so I could move his arm off me and shuffled further away.