Smells Like Finn Spirit

by Randy Henderson

  “That’s more like it,” Mort said. He leaped at me again, swinging the weighted end of his weapon at me like a great mallet. I hopped backward, my arms raised, my hips and stomach pulled back. The swing whooshed by me.

  I tried to punch him in the stomach with my own weapon as he recovered from his swing, but he, too, jumped back out of range.

  We circled each other, and then he jumped forward and thrust his weapon two-handed against mine so that we were locked in a contest of strength.

  Even though he was smaller and thinner, I could feel myself losing the battle as he pressed me back, and down, so that I began to bend backward.

  I bent my knees, straightened my back, and thrust up with all my strength.

  Mort stumbled back.

  I threw my weapon at him like a spear. Screaming, I leaped after it.

  Mort knocked my weapon aside, and I crashed into him. I grabbed for his weapon. If I could just twist and do a judo throw thingy—

  Mort twisted the weapon around, which twisted me so that my back was to him, and I suddenly found the wooden shaft across my throat, pressing in.

  I began choking.

  *Do you think that’s air you’re breathing?* Alynon shouted.

  Seriously? I shouted back.

  Whether or not there really was air, I was choking. Maybe it was the rules of the contest. Maybe it was just my inability to both believe I didn’t need air here and provide my body the oxygen it needed. Either way, I could not release Mort’s weapon to fight back without him crushing my throat. I tried to thrust back with my hips, tried tripping him up with my feet, tried anything I could to get him to lose or loosen his hold as I gasped for air.

  I maneuvered him toward the fire pit, and pushed backward, stumbling back with him until he tripped. He managed to miss falling into the pit, but at least we were separated. I rolled across the ground, coughing, then rose slowly to my feet. A torn flap of my shirt hung down now from one shoulder, the cut across my abdomen burned, and my lungs ached.

  Mort began to rise, his hand grasping for and finding his weapon.

  I screamed “RELEASE THE KIRKEN!” and charged at him, tackling him back to the ground.

  We landed hard together and rolled, each trying to get on top of the other. He tried to push me away and stand, and I tackled him back to the ground, and wrestled him underneath me, then sat up on his chest and started beating at his face with my fists as he did his best to stop my blows.

  I lost myself. I suddenly felt all of the anger and frustration and fear of the past few days, of the past months, swell up in me like a marshmallow in a microwave, a ragemallow, boiling hot and billowing out until my body felt too small to hold it. Flashes of all the hurts and frustrations of the past months played across my mind like a projection illumined by fire. The terrible moments when I realized that my own grandfather had sent me into exile, of Heather’s betrayal, of the deaths of Zeke and Jo and finding Felicity’s corpse. Of dying in the freezing water. Of trying to adjust to a world that had moved on twenty-five years beyond me. Of trying to make me and Dawn work, trying to figure out if it was wrong for me to even try. Of fighting to protect Pete and Vee from a Fey war and failing at every attempt.

  Of Mort’s betrayal.

  My strikes slowed down, until I was more just holding Mort down than beating on him.

  Mort’s betrayal.

  Was it a betrayal when he really had warned me constantly that it would happen? When he had shouted his anger and frustrations and hurts at me, and I had just thrown up my hands in exasperation or given a token attempt at reconciliation?

  I had placed Mort’s issues, his needs, pretty much at the bottom of my list of concerns. That had made sense at those times when I’d been running for my life, or fighting to stop a war and save Petey and others. But in the months between, I had more or less avoided him, and told myself it was what he wanted. At first, because it had been easy to dismiss his complaints to the same problems of jealousy and small-mindedness that had caused our fights before my exile, when we were just teenagers, not considering that maybe he had new reasons now, or at least that his jealousy and small-mindedness had new cause. Not wanting to consider it, really, since some of those reasons might have been my fault. And then the Brianne incident happened, when I accidentally banished his spirit wife to an unknown fate, and I definitely kept my distance.

  But that distance, that avoidance, was not what he needed. It was not what we had needed, our family had needed, from me.

  I pushed away from Mort, and stood, wavering, physically and emotionally spent. Mort groaned, and rolled away from me, using the ledge of the fire pit to pull himself up.

  *What are you doing?* Alynon demanded. *Finish him!*

  It’s better if I lose, I said, looking for an explanation he would accept. If I win, the Shadows and Mort will still find some way to keep me here even with Chauvelin’s charges dropped. You know they will. But if I lose, if Mort takes back my physical body, Pete and the others can at least use it as an anchor to pull my spirit back, like they did before with the Summoning Simon.

  *Your body will be taken over by your grandfather before that happens.*

  Maybe. But if I beat Mort, you also stay trapped in my head. If Mort wins, he sets you free.

  Alynon didn’t respond to that. What could he say? That he would sacrifice his life for mine? I couldn’t blame him for his silence.

  And he hopefully wouldn’t blame me for not sharing my other reason, perhaps the most important reason. I would throw this fight because Mort needed me to. He needed to win, needed to let out his own anger before it destroyed him and hurt Mattie even further. There was no guarantee even if I won that I would get out of this mess whole and in control. The one thing I could control was whether I caused even more damage to Mort, or if I instead tried to help my brother and my family this one last time.

  “Yield!” I said. “Or are you too stupid to give up?”

  Mort-Chauvelin’s face was a green-bruised mess. But he struggled to his feet, and spat green blood onto the sand at my feet. “Fuck you.”

  “You’re pathetic,” I said. “You couldn’t beat me with a—”

  Mort screamed and charged at me, knocking me to the ground this time. We fell hard, and I could have rolled with it, maybe gotten on top, but I let him wrestle his way to straddling my chest. It was his turn to beat the hell out of his brother.

  Despite my best intent to let him have his go at it, I couldn’t help but try to stop the blows as the pain started. Funny how blinding pain will do that. But at the same time I did my best to let blows through. Not that I had to try that hard. Fists pounded into my jaw, my mouth, my neck, my temples, until I was dizzy with pain and possibly a concussion.

  “You’re an ass!” I said as best I could.

  “And you’re losing!” he said.

  “You’re losing,” I replied between blows. “You need to—ow!—get over your stupid—uhn!—grudges already! For Mattie. For yourself. Look what they’re turning you—OW! Jesus, that—”

  A hard punch sent my ears ringing, and the world collapsed into a narrow tunnel before expanding again. I blinked against the pain, dimly aware that Mort was screaming as though he was the one in pain. His hands trailed a thin stream of blood droplets through the air now as they pulled back from my face before coming in for another strike.

  The world went black.

  And then exploded back into prismatic painful existence again as Hannibal dragged Mort back off of me, and said, “Victory!”

  Mort jerked and pulled against Hannibal’s grasp.

  “Hold, arcana!” Hannibal said. He might have been more a master strategist than a hulking warrior, but Hannibal still towered over Mort and looked as though he could easily break the smaller Fey body that Mort possessed in half. “Hold, or forfeit your victory!”

  Mort settled down, then held up his hands, still covered in my blood. He stared at them with a dazed look.

  The landscape and unifo
rms melted away for the last time, replaced by the green room. I was back in my jeans and Space Invaders T-shirt, and Mort in the frilly French Goth outfit. The wounds and the blood all disappeared, and with them the cloudiness of near-death.

  I rose to my feet. “Mort—” I began, my voice shaky.

  A memory rose up unbidden, filling my awareness: Mort, Sammy, Petey, and I all gathered in excitement on the library carpet before the television, as Mother carried in a tray with Mexican hot cocoa and Father set a giant bowl of popcorn down in front of us just as The Year Without a Santa Claus came on.

  The memory evaporated even as it played out, lifting up and carried away to some Fey collector.

  I felt a moment of sadness, of strange disconnected loss, as though I’d just discovered the death of a good childhood friend that I’d not talked to in decades.

  “Come,” Hannibal said, slapping Mort on the back. “We shall go and arrange the conditions of your reward.”

  “And well fought, both,” Odysseus said, entering the room behind me, before I could call out to Mort. “Phinaeus Gramaraye, if you will follow me?”

  “But—” I began, and turned back to find Mort already leaving through a side door, a deep frown on his face. I sighed.

  Odysseus led me back out to the hallway, where Dawn stood waiting. She threw her arms around me.

  “Thank you for not dying,” she whispered. “At least not for real. You idiot.”

  “I, uh, you’re welcome?” I looked behind me, though Mort was no longer in sight. What would happen now? Had I reached Mort at all?

  She leaned in close, her breath warm on my ear. “You threw the fight didn’t you. Why?”

  Two figures approached along the hall. One dressed as a Frankish knight from the crusades, and one as an impeccably groomed businessman in a tailored suit.

  Before they reached us, I whispered quickly, “They aren’t going to just let me go, whatever I do. But if Mort takes back my body, he might be able to free my spirit as well with Pete and Verna’s help. Stick with him, try to convince him—”

  Odysseus gave a slight bow of his head to the approaching Fey, and said, “I must go prepare for the lady’s return to her world. te’Godfrey and te’Bateman shall guide you both to a holding room until I am ready.”

  Godfrey of Bouillon I recognized, a Frankish knight and leader of the First Crusade. The businessman I did not, though he had sharp, lean features and an intense gaze that was unsettling.

  “Forget it,” Dawn said. “I am not leaving without Finn. Or at least his body.”

  “Your freedom has been secured,” Odysseus replied to Dawn. “You would be wise to accept it. The ARC ambassador won the right to claim Gramaraye’s body over our right to hold him for those claims laid by Chauvelin. But Phinaeus is now to be held for his more recent crimes.”

  “What crimes?” I asked, not even able to muster fake surprise at this news.

  “The killing of the younger jorõgumo, Kaminari, and the unauthorized travel to our Realm, which were not among those offenses laid against you by te’Chauvelin, and thus not resolved by your duel.”

  Dawn shook her head. “You cheating bastards—” She advanced on Odysseus with fists clenched.

  A wall of black brambles covered in wicked-looking thorns sprang up from the hallway floor between us and Odysseus, followed by a second wall behind us, separating us from the other two Fey.

  “Make another aggressive move,” Odysseus said, “and you both shall be pierced more thoroughly than a hundred enemy suitors.”

  21

  GOOD VIBRATIONS

  The thorny walls on either side of us shivered and moved in, forcing Dawn and me close together to avoid being punctured.

  “When I get out of here—!” Dawn practically growled at Odysseus.

  “Fight and be impaled,” Odysseus said. “Or calm your fury, and allow yourself to be taken to a room where you may at least spend some moments with your man here as I prepare your passage home. It is your choice.”

  Dawn looked at me, and clenched her fists, but didn’t say anything more.

  Odysseus looked past us at the other Fey, and said, “Take them by the prescribed route, lest you disrupt important events.”

  “Of course, captain,” the knight, Godfrey, said.

  “I know my job,” Bateman added in a tight voice that belied his creepy smile. “Just don’t be late relieving us, I have important business.”

  Godfrey’s mouth quirked up in a smile, and Odysseus gave Bateman a sharp glare. “Ware, te’Bateman. You may be rising rapidly through the ranks here, but you have far to go before you would be wise to offend me.”

  “As you say,” Bateman said.

  Odysseus nodded, and said, “I shall fetch the woman once the way is prepared.” He marched off.

  “Come,” Godfrey commanded, and began marching off in the opposite direction. Bateman glared murder at the knight’s back for a second, then flashed us a salesman’s smile and said, “Come.” He walked double pace to catch up with the knight, and moved slightly ahead of him.

  The thorn walls moved after them, forcing us to keep pace or be skewered.

  “I know of you, Gramaraye,” Bateman called back. “Exiled from your world in nineteen eighty-six. I have … memories of that time, of the music.”

  Dawn looked at me with an arched eyebrow. “I thought they couldn’t handle human music,” she whispered.

  “They can’t,” I replied as softly. “The vibrations and emotion interrupt their control of reality here.”

  “I haven’t heard the music played here, of course,” Bateman said, as if overhearing us. “But I have extensive memory of it, and would love to discuss it. I particularly enjoyed Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love.’ Are you familiar with it?”

  “Of course,” Dawn replied. “I’d be happy to play it for you.”

  “Very funny,” Bateman said. “Did you know that the dancers in his music video for that song were based on the paintings of Nagel? And that for several years it was the height of fashion in a number of Demesnes to make one’s features appear washed out and stylized like the women in Nagel’s paintings? Different Demesnes had different reasons of course. The Heart Lands because they felt it was a distillation of lustful beauty. The Emerald Fortress because they felt it reflected the pure, simple clarity of logic and order. The Summerland because—”

  “Great,” Dawn muttered to me. “We’re getting escorted by a psycho Casey Feysem.”

  Bateman looked back. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Dawn snorted, and said, “If you’re going to bore us, can’t you at least do so with good taste? Rattle on about The Smiths or even Lionel Richie, please? Unless you mean to torture us.”

  Bateman’s face flushed red, and veins leaped out on his temples as he shouted, “Disrespect me again, and I’ll torture you until you beg me to kill you, you goddamned filthy human!”

  “te’Bateman,” Godfrey said in a warning tone.

  Bateman’s eyes snapped to the knight, then he shuddered, and his face changed—a ripple actually passed over his features instantly transforming them from furious to charming. “But I live to serve the Greatwood, of course.” He continued marching in silence.

  “Dawn,” I whispered, “just stay cool until you get out of here. Your best bet for helping me is still reaching my family.”

  “I don’t know,” Dawn said. “I—ouch!” A thorn caught her on the arm, and she sucked at the wound, then continued. “Here, I actually seem to have some magic like you for once. And I have half a mind to go Red Dawnya on their asses.”

  *Her will is uncommonly strong.*

  “Will, not magic,” I replied. “You’ve always been strong-willed, Dawn, it’s one of the reasons I love you. But it isn’t enough to take on the whole Shadows Demesne. Please, just trust me. Going home is your best chance to help me.”

  “Fine, but don’t think I won’t come back here with every strong-willed mus
ician I know armed with guitars, sitars, and scimitars if they don’t—Ah! Damn it!” Dawn hissed in pain as another thorn found her rear, and said, “This is one situation where being bootylicious isn’t helpful.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “When Odysseus gets back, maybe you can distract him with some flirting and I can knock him on the head or something. He does have a thing for beautiful women with sexy voices.”

  “Except they won’t let me use my voice. And you just think I’m beautiful because you love me.”

  I took her hand. “No, I love you because you’re beautiful, in a thousand different ways.”

  She didn’t respond, but walked in silence beside me.

  “You okay?” I asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Yes. You told me to leave you here.”

  I sighed. “We covered this.”

  “Still—Hey! That’s my guitar!”

  The door to our left swung open as we passed it, and in the room beyond, rotating slowly in the air above a glowing white stone, floated Dawn’s guitar.

  “Great,” I said, raising my hand to my collar. “Except—”

  Dawn grabbed the collar around her own neck. I could see the muscles on her arms and jaw stand out as she strained against both the strength of the Fey steel and the pain that shot through her body at the attempt. The thorns stopped moving, but not before several dug into her back, causing her to give a long, angry shout of pain.

  “No!” Bateman shouted. “This is not how you are supposed to behave!”

  There was a high-pitched metallic keening that made my teeth hurt, then Dawn’s collar snapped, and she launched herself in a stumbling sprint for her guitar.

  The thorn wall between me and our two Fey escorts shrunk away, and a broadsword appeared in Godfrey’s hand. He charged after Dawn.

  Bateman advanced on me. “I have all the memories of a human being within,” he said as he strode toward me. “But I have never seen a true human opened up.” A chainsaw flickered into life in his hands.