Sixty-One Nails

by Mike Shevdon

  She could probably hear the traffic on the Charing Cross Road.

  "I never made it into the office. I'm not going in. There was a woman, she rescued me."

  "I might have know there'd be a woman involved."

  "Oh, please. She's about sixty, OK?"

  "Well, I suppose that's a bit old, even for you."

  I sighed. Despite Katherine's accusations I had never been unfaithful to her. "Look, she's a doctor. She revived me. I collapsed on the platform and she was the only one who helped."

  "Where are you? A hospital?"

  "No, I'm in Trafalgar Square."

  "Well, it can't have been that serious then, can it?"

  "Listen, Kath. I need you to understand. I've got involved in something unexpected. There are some people who are trying to find me. I can't go to the hospital and I can't have Alex with me."

  "Are you in trouble with the police?"

  "No. There's no police involved."

  "Then go to them. They can protect you."

  "It isn't like that. The police would think I was nuts."

  "They're not the only ones."

  "This is serious, Kath. Do you want Alex to be in danger? Do you want her harmed?" The other end went silent. "I can't be with her, Kath. I'd be putting her in danger and I can't do that. "

  "What have you done, Niall?"

  "Look," I took a deep breath. "I just need you to explain to Alex that I can't be there tonight. She'll be expecting me and I don't want to let her down, but– "

  "Oh, so you don't want to let her down."

  "Or you, OK? It's too dangerous. These people may be following me and I don't want them anywhere near the two of you. In fact," an idea occurred to me, "could you go away for the weekend?"

  "What? I was planning to go away. Remember?"

  It was suddenly apparent to me that she was lying. Her words sounded sour, somehow, filled with deception. Why would she lie to me about something like that? I shook myself. It didn't matter. I just needed her to look after Alex.

  "I know, I know, but for me, could you take her away with you? Take her to the coast, maybe somewhere in Europe?"

  "Europe? I haven't got that kind of money and you

  damn well know it, Niall Petersen."

  "I'll pay for it," I volunteered.

  "Well, I'm very pleased that you can afford to spend weekends swanning off to Europe, but we have other priorities in this house." Her voice had taken on its familiar sarcastic tinge. I couldn't afford to get tangled in this well-rehearsed debate right now.

  "I can afford it if it means Alex doesn't get kidnapped," I stated coldly.

  "What do you mean, kidnapped?"

  "I mean taken away from you, and me. Hurt. Harmed."

  "You're not serious?" She sounded frightened now. "What kind of trouble have you dragged us into, Niall? "

  "I don't know. I'm just trying to be very careful with the people I care about and I care about the two of you." I think some of the emotion in my voice travelled down the phone line because it went very quiet. "Are you still there?"

  "Yes. I'm here." There was a further pause. "Where can we go?" All of a sudden she was taking me seriously.

  "I don't know, and don't tell me. It's better I don't know." Echoes of my conversation with Blackbird came back to me. "Use the internet, book one of those lastminute city breaks somewhere, go today. "

  "I can't just drop everything, Niall."

  I knew she could. "Yes you can," I insisted.

  "You really are serious, aren't you? My God."

  "Yes I am."

  "What do I tell Alex?"

  "Tell her it's a surprise trip."

  "Not about that, about you?"

  "Tell her I love her." My voice broke at the end of the sentence and I had to stop and breathe for a moment. "Niall? Niall, for God's sake, what have you fallen into?"

  "I don't know and I don't want either of you involved. Take your mobile with you and I'll call you in a few days." A thought occurred to me. "When I call, I'll ask about the dog, understand? "

  "We don't have a dog."

  "I know. If I don't ask about the dog, don't say anything. Especially, don't say where you are or what you're doing. In fact, just hang up. And if you see me, make sure it's me, understand?"

  "What do you mean, make sure it's you?"

  "I mean these people, they can make themselves look like other people." I was sounding a bit strange now, even to myself. "Look, just get me to remember something only we would know, to make sure I am who you think I am."

  "Who I think you are?" She was starting to sound sceptical again.

  "Just do it for me, OK?"

  "Niall? What are you going to do?"

  A little part of me was glad she still cared enough to worry what happened to me.

  "I'll be all right. I'll have it sorted out in a few days. I'll call you on the mobile when the coast is clear. OK? "

  "OK."

  "And if I don't call, don't come looking for me. Understand?"

  "If you don't call me, I'm going to the police."

  There was an edge of determination to her voice that made me feel momentarily proud of her. "OK. You do that." Maybe it would do some good.

  "Niall…?" Everything that remained between us, despite all the harsh words and hurtful silences, hung in the pause after that word.

  "I know, Kath. You take care of each other."

  "Bye."

  "Bye."

  The connection closed, leaving me standing alone and apart.

  I walked back across the paving to the table where Blackbird waited. She looked up as I approached. "All settled?"

  "Yes. She's going to take her away for the weekend."

  "That would probably be for the best, Rabbit. Are you ready?"

  "What for?"

  "A little walk, and then perhaps an introduction or two. It is about time you met some of your new brethren." She stood up, tucking the chair neatly back under the table and leaving the paper cups at one side where they could easily be collected.

  "Is this the person you said could help me?"

  "Perhaps. They will at least be able to offer you guidance. Whether you act on that guidance is up to you. "

  "Another one of your choices?"

  "Life is choices, Rabbit. We are defined by the choices we make."

  I stood up and followed her to the edge of Trafalgar Square and then back up St Martin's Lane.

  "So what does one do when one is introduced to one of the Feyre? Shake hands?"

  "Touch is an intimate thing amongst the Feyre. You don't touch another Fey unless you're invited. "

  "But you touched me." It wasn't meant as a criticism, but she gave me a hard look.

  "The other circumstance when one touches another Fey is when one is using power, Rabbit, or when fighting or killing. That is why it is considered discourteous. "

  "So you touch someone to do magic on them… to them?"

  "Some of our gifts require touch, and touch can enhance other gifts, making them stronger. Some of it works without touch, or even presence. "

  "You can use power over a distance?"

  "Some can. The spell that binds each Fey to their court works regardless of distance, or even presence. A Fey who broke that spell would risk their life, even if they were a world away, like the Untainted." We continued along our route through the back lanes and side alleys of Covent Garden. There would appear to be a dead end then we would turn a corner and find a gate or the way through a fire escape. People didn't leave their back entrances open in central London because they didn't want drunks or druggies hanging around the fire escape, yet all of these opened to her hand.

  "Are you using magic to open these gates?" I asked her.

  "Stick to the path, Rabbit. That way is safer." She hadn't answered my question.

  We wound our way in a loose spiral around Covent Garden, with me catching occasional glimpses of landmarks I knew and several times finding myself walking in the
opposite direction to the one I thought we were going in. "Do we have to come this way?"

  "The straightest path is not the shortest," she said.

  "What does that mean? Are we talking some mystical geometry here? Surely the shortest path between two points is a straight line?"

  "That depends on what is between you and your destination."

  "So what would be between us and our destination? "

  "This way is safer," she said. "Believe me."

  She squeezed her way past a fence post and around the back of a huge wheelie-bin into the rear courtyard of an office block. Two curious smokers, ostracised to the outside, watched us thread our way through and then along the back of the building and through a hole in the fence to the next.

  "Now they've seen us, the hole won't be there next time."

  "Yes, it will. They won't remember seeing us."

  "Why? Did you do something to their memories?"

  My voice fell to a hush as she approached the corner of the building more stealthily. Two pigeons were strutting around each other in a doorway, but there didn't appear to be any other hazard to be wary of. "I didn't do anything to their memory. I used my glamour, the part of my magic that affects my appearance, to make us unremarkable. By the time they've finished their cigarettes, the conversation will have moved on to something else and they won't think enough about us to mention it to anyone. "

  "So are you using your… glamour to affect my appearance too?" She was walking slowly up behind the pigeons. "Glamour is the least of Fey magic. It allows us to alter our appearance to suit our surroundings or our circumstances. It's all a matter of knowing how you look and willing it to be so. It's a bit like driving, it takes practice, but once you know how, you don't even think about it. As far as they are concerned you are standing in my shadow, in a manner of speaking. The impression it leaves can spill over."

  She took a soft brown sack from her bag, then reached down and lifted one of the pigeons off the pavement. The other looked bemused, as if its playmate had vanished. After a moment it flew upwards towards the strip of sky overhead. Blackbird eased the docile pigeon into the sack.

  "Why are we catching pigeons? "

  "It's a gift."

  "Do you mean the catching of them, or that the pigeon itself is a gift?"

  "It's bad manners to turn up on someone's doorstep when you haven't seen them for months and not have something to offer." She opened the door, stepping out onto the edge of Covent Garden Piazza. "Which reminds me, you need to do a little shopping. "

  "I do?"

  She opened the alleyway door and strolled out into the open square as if we hadn't just been furtively sidling around the back of offices. I followed and the door slammed shut behind us, an anonymous doorway in a row of Georgian houses.

  "Oh, I've missed this. It's one of the old places." Her mood lightened as she crossed onto the cobble stoned plaza.

  I corrected her. "It's not as old as people think, actually. The flower market is only late nineteenth century. "

  "And why do you think they built a flower market here?"

  "Well, I guess it was part of the original settlement. Maybe there were market gardens here once? "

  "Oh, there were gardens here, convent gardens actually, and there was a market here long before Christianity and for much more than flowers. Herbs and potions, talismans and wardings, you could buy anything here, once." She stepped up onto the paving around the covered market and breathed in as if inhaling a heady scent.

  "Blackbird, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you, exactly?"

  "Didn't I tell you it was rude to ask someone's age?" She arched an eyebrow at me, but I was prepared for her evasion this time.

  "No, I don't think that's actually what you said. I think you asked me what age I thought you were and then, when I told you, you laughed and said you were a lot older than that, but you never told me how much. "

  "Perhaps I thought you were being nosey." The comment was not harshly made and left just enough of an opening for me to ask once more. "Are you going to tell me?"

  "No, I don't think so, except to say I have rolled in the buttercups here and come away dusted in their pollen. I have slept here under the stars on the solstice and been gifted with dreams of the future and I have fought for my life here and come away bloodied, but unharmed. It is a place that has been special to me for a long time." Her words hung in the air despite the milling tourists that passed us by, unaware of her reminiscences. "Buttercups, huh?" I mused.

  "Trust you to latch on to that." But the smile she flashed me was one that hinted of the young woman in the square.

  She walked through the meandering tourists and I followed her, walking past numerous stalls until we came to one selling semi-precious jewellery. We stood waiting while an elderly couple debated the merits of a haematite pendant versus a pair of olivine earrings. The stallholder was a middle-aged woman with fair wavy hair which fell around her shoulders. She wore a peasant skirt and a bronze top with an open neck. Her earrings were made from coloured feathers and beads and her belt was a band of interwoven colours with more beads strung from it. If this were the Sixties then she would have been one of the flower people. Her face was lined as if care-worn and she looked pensive; worried even. Then she smiled and twenty years vanished. Her eyes were alight with humour and her creases became laughter lines.

  We waited until the couple had made their decision and their tiny gift-wrapped parcel was handed over. She wished them a good day and turned to us.

  "Hello, Blackbird." To my surprise, she walked around the front of the stall and embraced Blackbird with affection, which Blackbird returned. She had told me that the Feyre didn't touch others, but here was Blackbird greeting this woman like a sister.

  "How's everything?" she asked Blackbird. Her voice was deep for a woman and had a worn quality, as if it had once been soft and low and someone had taken sandpaper to it.

  "Things are good," said Blackbird, holding onto her hands for a moment. "I would like to introduce you to someone. This is Rabbit. Rabbit, this is Megan." She turned to me and extended a hand in greeting. "Pleased to meet you, Rabbit."

  I took her hand, figuring that if Blackbird had embraced her then it must be OK. Her hand was warm and, like her voice, had a delicate roughness to it. "Pleased to meet you too."

  Closer to her, I realised that what I had thought were beads were actually polished stones. Her necklace, earrings and even her belt were adorned with small stones, carefully matched for shape and colour.

  "Megan and I have known each other for some time, haven't we, Megan?"

  "It's been a while, Megan agreed, "but it all goes by so fast. I can't keep track," she admitted, shaking her head and leaning back against the stall.

  "Anyway, this isn't entirely a social call. Rabbit would like to choose some stones from your excellent selection."

  "I would, would I?"

  "Have a look and see if there's any that take your fancy," Megan gestured across the selection. "It is a test of sorts. You cannot pass or fail, but it may tell me something," said Blackbird.

  "Is it something you should know?" Blackbird appeared to have my interests at heart, but there were still too many unknowns for me not to ask the question. "Well said, Rabbit, and by your choice I will do you no harm." She said it as a promise or a vow, and I believed her. After all, if she lied to me I thought I would know. "How many? "

  "As many as you will, and no more."

  Megan gave me a complicit smile but offered no help. I turned to the semi-precious stones set out on the table, searching for obvious clues. They were all nicely shaped, though not completely regular. Megan plainly had a gift for selecting ones that were attractive because they were imperfect.

  A stone in a cotton-lined rectangular box caught my attention. It was a lozenge with brown and gold stripes that glowed with an inner light. I lifted it from its box and was slightly startled when Megan held out a black suede pouch for me to drop it int
o. I let it fall into the soft pocket and she retracted it, waiting for me to choose again.

  The second choice was easier as I had more idea as to what I was looking for now. My gaze settled on a lump of minty rock with a sparkly surface. I collected it and dropped it into the proffered pouch. I glanced at Blackbird but she had a watchful withdrawn expression. My third choice leapt out at me when I spotted it amongst the stones at one side. It was stratified like the first, but had verdant green hardness that stood out amongst the others. It joined the rest in the black pouch. For the next one I struggled, scanning the rows of boxes for some minutes until I lit upon a dark red stone, deeply embedded and sulking in its nest of cotton fibre. I found myself curiously hesitant to touch it. Instead, I lifted the box and emptied it into the pouch. Megan nodded, knowingly.

  I would have ended there, but there was a sense of incompletion, of things left undone. I went over the table again, sifting through the boxes with a fingertip, until I passed over a box and felt a nerve-tingling jolt. I came back and hovered over a stone that hummed under my finger.