by Ramy Vance
The thought of Justin on top of everything else that was happening—the murder, the fights, the emptiness inside me—was just too much. And as far as seeing him? I think I just wanted to see him. Wanted to be saved by him.
Deirdre must have seen the distress on my face, because she put a cool hand on my chest just above my heart. In a way, that gesture was a fae hug. It was her way of telling me that she was here for me, no matter what.
“I know you are, Deirdre,” I said, touching her hand. “I’ll be OK. I think it was just the lack of oxygen and the fact that I wanted to see Justin. We ended our last talk on such horrible terms, and I’ve been so—”
I thought about telling Deirdre about the emptiness, but decided not to. She had just lost her hero, and as much as I was sure we were no longer in harm’s way, it didn’t change that we were stuck in a building with a murderer on the loose.
Deirdre had been serious when she offered me so much of her, and she would make my emptiness the top-priority on her To-Do list. But that could wait until we were out of this place.
So instead of opening up to my friend, I said, “It’s nothing. I’m just tired. Let’s sleep.”
Deirdre gave me a long, hard look, her hand still on my chest. “Very well, milady. We are safe in here, and you are safe with me.”
“Thank you,” I said, turning around to sleep.
↔
As much as I wanted to sleep, I was afraid of having another nightmare. Even as an observer, the last one was awful. I wished I could remember any details about it, but all I really remembered was the horrible feeling when I woke. That, and death.
It took what felt like an eternity for sleep to come. I must have tossed and turned for an hour before my fears finally succumbed to my exhaustion.
My foolish fears … they should have fought harder.
The dream that came was my worst nightmare wrapped in a duvet of horrible. It started pleasant enough: I was in bed, and Justin was rubbing my back the way he did. He was humming something, and although I couldn’t make out the tune it filled me with a sense of peace. This was nice. This was good.
But the rubbing became harder, started to hurt. I turned to ask Justin to relax, but instead of seeing my beautiful, intact boyfriend with the impossibly beautiful eyes and perfect hair, I saw a bald, hollow-eyed Justin.
He looked like he had died a year ago and was only now returning, half-decomposed. I screamed, not that Justin noticed; he continued humming, but his song no longer soothed me.
“I want you to know that I don’t blame you,” he said between notes. “You are trying to make up for all the wrong you’ve done in your long, long life, and what happened isn’t your fault. It’s just that death follows you.”
Justin sat up and showed me his arms. Much of the flesh had left them, but enough remained for me to see the long slits from his wrists to his elbows.
The word “suicide” tumbled out, and my hand went to my mouth as if to hold the word back, and when it failed to do so, to capture it before it traveled too far.
Justin nodded. “I couldn’t live without you. When you left me, rather than be alone, I took the coward’s way out.”
“We … we … are still—”
“Are we?” he said in a harsh tone. “Are we? Or are you gathering the courage to say goodbye? Biding your time while I spend a week in hell waiting for you to decide what will happen to us, not caring what I want? What I need!”
Justin’s corpse sat up, his brittle bones snapping with the effort. His movement was so sudden, so violent that I moved away from him, falling on the floor as I did.
When I stood, I saw through tear-filled eyes that he had snapped his spine. His torso had separated from his legs.
He looked down at his detached legs before turning to me. “You did this! You selfish bitch—you did this!”
I screamed, and I think I would have continued screaming had a harsh, hard hand not slapped my face. Once, then again. And on the third slap, I turned to see Deirdre standing next to me. “Milady,” she said, “you are safe, milady. Safe with me.”
It took a few seconds before I realized I was still in bed. No Justin, no bones or taut skin stretched over bones. Just my friend and me.
I got up, got away from the bed. I didn’t care if it was just a dream. I didn’t care that I knew Justin was home with his family, that he was safe, and that we were still together.
That he was still alive.
The dream felt real. More than felt real … as far as I was concerned, it was real.
I went to the door and tried to get out, but even with all the adrenaline pumping through my body, I wasn’t strong enough to move the wardrobe. Not that it stopped me from trying. I pawed at the damn thing, desperate to get away, my tears equal parts frustration and despair. I might have continued that way all night had Deirdre not picked up the wardrobe and moved it.
With it gone, I pulled at the couch, unlocked the door and left the room. I had no idea where I was going. My only thoughts were of getting away.
I walked downstairs. With every step I took away from the room, I calmed little by little. By the time I made it to the ground floor, I had found myself again.
Good, I thought, taking a deep breath and wiping away tears. Better. Much better. I turned to see Deirdre behind me, her face a mixture of fear and concern.
“Better,” I whispered. Then I remembered how vivid the dream was, and I couldn’t face going back upstairs. Besides, I’d never fall asleep again tonight—not after that. “I just can’t go back into that room. I need to be somewhere else.”
Deirdre put a hand on her chest, the fae’s way of saying As you wish, and she gestured toward the conference room. “Perhaps you will find peace there.”
I nodded. As we drew closer to the unlit room, we heard voices.
As distressed as I was, we were still trapped in a building with a murderer. I placed a finger over my lips and the two of us took another step forward, listening.
“If this is some kind of cruel joke or trick, I swear on my father’s name I will end you.” It was Sarah’s voice.
“No trick, my little fairy angel—”
“Don’t you dare call me that. Only he can call me that. Only he …”
“But it’s me, my darling Sonia.”
Sonia? I thought her name was Sarah. I looked at Deirdre, whose eyes widened at the mention of the name.
“No,” she said, “you’re dead. They told me you’re dead.”
“Funny,” the voice said, “they said the same thing to me about you. It seems we have both been lied to.”
“If it is really you, and not a trick or a glamor, prove it.”
“Very well,” the voice said. “Do you remember the night of the attack, when the barguests came? Do you remember what we were playing?”
“Checkers. Well, what we called checkers then.”
“Do you remember the score?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice sharp, afraid.
“Seven games to one. In your favor.”
Sarah—or was it Sonia?—let out a sharp wail that could only come from one truly in pain. “This is a trick. A lie. A lie. You lie!”
“No, my sweet fairy angel, it is me. I swear it. It’s me.”
“Let me go. Let me—”
Sneaking around or not, I barged into the room, turning on the lights as I did. There I saw the dark elf reaching for Sarah as the halfling pulled back, desperate to get away.
That was all I needed to see. I tumbled toward the dark elf, planning to get behind him and punch him in the back of neck.
You know what they say about plans: you make ’em, and dark elves laugh.
And that was literally what he did. He laughed as he turned around with the kind of speed I didn’t think possible and backhanded me across the room.
Dark Elves and Kidnapping Papas
The dark elf’s backhand sent me flying toward the wall with such speed and ferocity that it could well have bro
ken my back had Deirdre not caught me mid-flight.
Putting me down, she looked at the dark elf and I swear I saw her grow in size as she huffed and growled, preparing for battle. “You dare,” she said, pointing her finger at the elf. She charged at him, swinging her fist.
He ducked under and counter-punched, but Deirdre was ready, deflecting the blow with a downward swing of her arm.
“I dare,” he said, his voice commanding and confident. “I am not the one who attacks their king.”
“There are no more kings,” Deirdre said, grabbing a chair and throwing it at him. “No more queens, no more gods, no more UnSeelie Court.” With each statement she threw another chair, and although he deflected them easily, I saw what she was doing: keeping him off balance and pushing him toward me. “Everything we once knew is gone. We have been abandoned. Abandoned on this mortal plane.”
“Don’t be foolish. Oberon and Titania would never leave us. They would—”
I kicked him in the back of the knee and as he went down, Deirdre tackled him, wrapping her powerful arms around his body.
“What are you doing?” he cried out.
Grabbing his legs, I held them together so he couldn’t kick his way out. “Grappling an asshole,” I said.
“I am your king,” he screamed at Deirdre.
“You are, my lord, but I have sworn my sword arm and heart to her,” Deirdre said, but she said it in the same tone she used when she wasn’t sure about human etiquette. Things like: ‘Can I cut in line?’ ‘Can I scream for the waiter’s attention?’ ‘Can I punch the boy staring at my butt?’
Before they could work out the standards of fae hierarchy, a boom came from the door and broken stone flew into the room. I turned to see Jack pushing through, ripping the door frame out of the wall. He stopped when he saw who we were grappling with, neither helping nor hindering us.
Behind him I heard footsteps as Orange, Remi and Jarvis ran in. One of them said, “King Aelfric,” and whether it was Jarvis or Remi I could not tell.
Out of breath, Remi went to Sarah. “My darling, are you harmed?”
“No,” she said, “I’m not. Who … who is that?” She pointed in our direction, where we were still wrestling with the dark elf. I’d fought strong before, but never this strong. I could see on Deirdre’s face that it took everything she had to hold him down.
Remi turned to us. “I can tell you who it looks like.”
The dark elf stopped struggling and said, “My daughter Sonia—please, search yourself. You know it is me.”
The halfling lifted a regal hand, demanding silence. The dark elf, Deirdre and me—hell, everyone in the room—shut the hell up.
“I know you said something to me,” she said, “just before I lost my sight. I was crying, afraid that without sight I wouldn’t be able to find you again. You said I always would, because you would come to my side and whisper a secret word only we knew. Tell me that word now, or I swear I will command Jack and Remi to rip you apart. Slowly.”
Daaaamn! The halfling got bite, I thought.
“They would never hurt their king,” the dark elf said.
In answer, Jack pounded his fists together and Remi removed his gloves. It was clear where their loyalties lay.
“Good,” the dark elf said, no longer trying to break free. Rather than being intimidated by Jack and Remi, he seemed pleased. Relieved, even. He looked at the giant and ly erg. “I am so grateful for your loyalty, that she had the two of you in my absence.” He looked at Sarah, or Sonia, or whoever she was. “I … I have missed so much. I have not had the pleasure of seeing you turn from a girl into the beautiful woman you are today. You look so much like your mother. So much so that it was I who thought he’d seen a ghost.”
“Enough!” the halfling screamed. “Tell me the word, or death.”
“Very well, but there is one problem. I swore to you that day I would never share that word with anyone but you.”
“Oh, give me a break,” I said. “Surely there’s a break clause. As in, me happily breaking your legs.”
“Silence, vampire,” the dark elf scoffed.
“I’m not … not a vampire.”
“Lie to yourself if you wish, but a vampire dressed in human clothing is still a vampire.”
I didn’t know how he knew, but I squeezed his legs together in response.
He winced in pain before looking at the halfling. “I swore to you, made an oath. I cannot break it.”
Fae and their oaths. But he was right: if he swore to never share the word with anyone but her, then there wasn’t a torture technique, a truth serum or a confession spell in this universe or any other that would get him to talk.
A long silence elapsed until Sarah finally spoke. “Let him go.”
“What? No, my darling. He is just trying to get close to you so that he may—”
“Let him go,” she said in the commanding tone the dark elf had used earlier.
Deirdre looked at me and nodded. We let go.
Free of us, the dark elf pulled himself from the floor and slowly approached Sarah.
“If you hurt her,” Remi said, putting a hand on his chest as he drew close to Sarah.
“So now it is to you that I make this oath, my Rem-ii,” he said, pronouncing the ly erg’s name with a heavy fae accent. “My faithful soldier and friend, I will never hurt the halfling whom you hold so dear.”
Remi’s eyes widened. He removed his hand from his chest.
The Elf King took another two steps toward Sarah. Standing before her, he brushed back her long amber hair before leaning in close and whispering a word into her ear.
The halfling placed a trembling hand over her mouth, and a tear that had escaped her eye rolled over her fingers. In a voice that belonged more to a child than a fully grown halfling princess, she returned his word with a lone word of her own. “Father?”
Death Does Not Become Him
It’s not every day your father returns from the dead. Believe me, I know. My mother returned from the dead (largely because I turned her into a vampire three hundred years ago) and that was a shock. But then again, I didn’t have the best relationship with her.
Judging by the halfling’s tears, I guessed that wasn’t the case for her. This grown young lady fell into her father’s embrace like a toddler who knows that the safest and most loving place to be is in your parents’ arms. If she was conscious of us watching her, she made no show of it as she cried with tears she must have saved just for him through all these centuries.
I would later learn that her father had died when she was eight, and the tears she cried that night in Douglas Hall’s lecture room were for every scraped elbow, head bump and bruised knee he wasn’t there to make better.
Her tears were for every maypole game lost, for every missed father-daughter dance, for every bad dream he wasn’t there to comfort her after.
Her tears were for all the victories, too: every game won, every A+ earned, every moment she had triumphed.
Her tears were for all the little moments that make up a childhood.
She fell into his arms, allowing him to envelop her as though to make up for it all. An impossible task, but one that both of them were willing to take on.
As they cried, he hummed in that way only the fae are capable of, and what I felt there was an unfaltering, unwavering love. This dark elf, this king, would die for her. He did die for her. And whether by magic or time or the departure of the gods or just sheer willpower, he came back from the dead to be with her one more time.
We let them have their time, slowly departing from the conference room to the kitchen while they celebrated their tearful reunion.
↔
That night, no one spoke for a long time in the kitchen. No one said anything as we loitered around the room’s metal tables and near its stainless steel refrigerators, ovens and stoves.
No one spoke, but in our silence, we said volumes of soundless words. It started with Orange removing his wig, reveali
ng his red scalp. With it gone, the ugly elf’s features began to change and he morphed into a goblin. Magic, I thought. Probably the wig possesses a minor glam that allowed this algae-colored goblin to look like a human flesh-colored elf.
But his metamorphosis also revealed something else: he wasn’t Orange the elf, and never had been. His red scalp told us who he really was.
Next was Jarvis. He removed his hat and valet coat. There was no magical transformation, no trow becoming something else. But still he changed, a bright smile adorning his face. Jarvis—or whatever his real name was—reached for Orange’s hand and once they were together, they both wore a look of relief, as if the simple act of their hands touching made everything right in this world.
United, they both pulled out pendants from their pockets and pinned them to their shirts. The artistry was incredible, and the pendent that was no more than three inches in length looked like it was built from a thousand tiny leaves woven together.
Deirdre’s eyes widened in recognition, not because she didn’t approve of a trow and goblin union, but because their reunion confirmed who they really were. “Redcap and Krelis,” she said.
The two, still hand in hand, nodded, placing their free hands over their hearts—the UnSeelie Court salute.
Remi too removed his disguise, taking off his gloves and tossing them in the garbage before putting on the same pendant as Orange and Jarvis … or rather, Redcap and Krelis. He looked at his multicolored palms, a rainbow of blood, all creatures felled by his hands. He rubbed the red stain on his palm like he was trying to remove it.
Jack too transformed. While his appearance stayed the same, he reached into his pockets and pulled out two shackles that he put around his wrists. As soon as the metal braces locked, chains grew out of them and as they lengthened, he wrapped them around his wrists, forearms and biceps until his arms looked they were made of chain-linked metal. That done, he put on the same pendant.
“Jack-in-Chains,” Deirdre said, saluting him in their fae way before bowing. Changelings only bow when presenting themselves to their superiors, which meant that Jack-in-Chains wasn’t just a giant … he was a military general of the UnSeelie Court.