by A. J. Aalto
The spriggan liked that the road had a name. She wanted to name other things. The rambling, wild pink rose. The fence under it. The boathouse. The sky. You’re a funny little critter, aren’t you?
I set all my goodies down near the end of the driveway. Placing the yellow votive candle in a small glass holder, I walked over to the edge of the grass. Yellow was the color of balance and vitality, and it was here that I hoped to draw the spriggan out. I scattered the strawberries, a feminine, water-element fruit, to the far left, closest to the forest where I would have Batten the Jerkface plant the honeysuckle. Next came the blue, right between the grass and the driveway, on a patch where the grass gave way to dirt and gravel. Blue was a transition color, bridging the current state of my problem and the solution, the exit strategy. The grey went on the stone driveway, representing grey matter and intellect, where the spriggan currently resided in me, where I hoped the spell would begin, and, not coincidentally, the path along which her honeysuckle would arrive.
The revenants inside were tired but restless; I could feel it in my bones. They’d risen early due to my stirring the house, and they hadn't yet had a chance to feed. I squinted up at the sun. It wouldn’t be long before the dead guys could safely join me outside.
I Felt Wesley’s uncertainty about leaving me alone in the yard while I got a shovel from the boat house, but the spriggan and I had reached a tentative understanding. I tried to picture myself kicking butt and taking names, being tough and capable, even in my current situation; I knew he wasn’t buying it. When I returned, I used the shovel to cut into the turf near the edge of the yard as it met the trees, the spriggan helping to find the right spot and gauge the size of the hole we'd need. It was a nice, quiet, collaborative bit of teamwork, and the soft loam turned easily under the spade, even without Jerkface's muscles or the undead guys' preternatural strength.
Harry stood on the porch smoking a menthol cigarette, staring at me with his benevolent grey eyes, and every now and then I felt his mind flicker across mine, felt the probing of my Cold Company through the Bond, his approach polite, like two strangers meeting for the first time. When I finished digging, I reached out mentally to one of the revenants inside to bring the grimoire. Harry nodded and said something over his shoulder to Wes, then flicked his cigarette butt in the gravel driveway and turned inside to check his scones. I began to light the candles. With each new light, I took a generous swig of the boozed-up Marseilles vinegar, soothing my guest as the liquor started warming veins. I left just enough for the last phase of the spell.
The sky was edging towards dark over the wide expanse of forest to the west when Batten returned. He opened the back of the SUV and branches flapped out, smacking him with greenery and dropping blossoms on the driveway. He wrestled them into a bundle in his arms, dug his hands under the root system, which he’d collected in a garbage bag, and lumbered over. I showed him the hole, and he dropped his precious cargo off in a dirty lump.
Wesley joined me in the yard with the book, eyeballing Ajax and Homer, his and Harry's debt vultures (I had to internally share what those were with the insatiably curious spriggan). He had my grimoire in his hands and was studying the incantation as though he was cramming for an exam. He needn’t have bothered sweating the fine points; in most magic, and certainly in the type of green kitchen magic I practiced, focus, belief, and intent were far more important than the word-for-word recitation. I appreciated his attention to detail, though.
I watched his lips move as he read and was filled with an unfamiliar warmth joining that of the booze; my baby brother’s brow was set low with concentration, but his one good eye was filled with something else. Discovery. Curiosity. I sensed he wasn’t entirely sure he could pull it off, but he was determined to try his best. For someone who'd dropped out of high school after just one year to bounce from couch to couch, smoking dope and mooching off anyone who’d have him, this might have been the hardest I’d ever seen him strive to do something. I was impressed. He’d grown up a lot in the years since I'd left home.
He'd been Mom’s favorite, could do no wrong, and had practically everything he'd wanted without having to work for it. He faced a childhood without consequences beyond me or one of my sisters beating his ass for being in our room, stealing our chocolate, or crop-dusting us at the dinner table. Perhaps the consequences he was facing as an adult – the cost of giving himself to Master Strickland and immortality, and the price he’d paid when he’d pretended to be Harry at the front door and someone greeted him with holy water, the burden of seeing and helping with my work when it went onto dark places – were teaching him a hard but necessary lesson. I’d give him a gold star later.
Wesley’s good eye wilted to the color of old violets and faded silk as he slowly brought his telepathic gaze up through his lashes at me. My assessment had been tough but fair, though, and I stood behind my thoughts by showing him a loving and sympathetic smile.
“We all grow up someday, Marnie,” my brother said. “Our parents taught you how. But not me.”
That was fair, too. I reached for his hand and he let me take it. His lips turned up near his scar into a smile that the puckered skin morphed into a partial snarl. Behind us, a dirt-smeared Batten began to plant the honeysuckle in the hole, the sound of his exertions filling the yard. Normally, I'd be all over a sweaty, muscular dude going to town on my hole, I thought at the spriggan. That is some serious pollinating-for-funsies.
Wes grimaced and swatted my arm playfully. “Do you mind?”
Harry swept out of the cabin, having changed for the evening into his finest tux and tails, top hat and all. The yard seemed to respond to his arrival with a hush as all the living things twittering in the dusk sensed the press of immortal power into their space. Insects fled, night birds took flight, and forest animals froze in place, afraid to be spotted. Harry pretended not to notice, but I knew better; the affirmation of his ability to startle living things always amused him, and showed in the tiniest curl of his lip. In the near dark, his eyes flashed chrome at me, and he fluttered his lashes in a show of faux innocence. My spriggan felt a quiver of fear; it was clearer than ever to her that the dead guy had dangerous powers, the extent of which she didn’t quite understand, and she didn’t like it.
Coming to stand behind Wes, Harry clucked his tongue chidingly. “You’re making the beefy mortal toil over a job you could complete in seconds, lad?” Harry said with laughter in his voice.
Wes squawked and motioned to the grimoire. “I’m learning how to be a dude-witch or something. That’s harder!”
I snort-laughed. Dude-witch?
“Do you want this meathead to do it?” Wes demanded of Harry. “He’ll never get it right. Can he even read?”
Batten paused digging to glare at Wes, then tossed the shovel aside and motioned to the landscaping. “Maybe we should have put you in here first, see if we got the depth right.”
Harry purred. “Point: the cold cook, yes, my MJ? Your sweaty gigolo does have a clever side. As it has previously escaped our notice, one is forced to wonder where usually he keeps it?”
“Okay, stop,” Wesley told them. “I have to focus. This is serious.” He fished through our collection of goodies to press the blended herbs into my gloved palm. He began to intone solemn words that I tried not to anticipate, lest my little green hitchhiker see what was coming. Wes stumbled when the spell slid into Latin. I frowned; I didn’t have many spells that weren’t translated into English for my own ease of use, and I wasn’t going to be able to help him. I took another pull from the flask to still my tongue and distract my thoughts and, oh yeah, help with the ceremony.
Harry sighed and peered over his shoulder to smoothly finish up, “Cave! Cave!” Beware! Beware!
Wes muttered, “I could have said that part.” He sighed and slapped the grimoire’s top page. “You guys don’t give me enough credit. When are you going to start taking me seriously?”
Harry smiled at me over my brother’s head and said,
“I think you should find that I would be quite relieved to take you seriously, lad, when you have at long last proven yourself worthy.”
I lit the last candle, knocked back the last of the vinegar and rotgut tincture, and tossed the match into the gravel. Wes continued grumpily, “Mother and Crone, call your child, Fair Aradia, back to the wild,” and put one hand under my own. He tapped some powder into my gloved palm and shoved the cupped herbs under my nose, at which point I sniffed inward as hard as I could. The sneezing began in earnest after the third snort of powdered herbs. My eyes watered, and I crammed them shut.
“Marnie?” Wes said, his voice full of concern.
It felt like something was tearing in my brain. Could she really be ejected the way she’d entered? She was a creature of magic; no mundane creature could have made their way into my brain the way she had without doing serious damage. Maybe the reverse was also true. It felt like she was holding on by wrapping splintered roots in my sinuses and forebrain. I hurried to summon what little green energy I could while the spriggan was clumsily bumbling in that area of my mind.
Batten stood over us with his arms crossed over his chest. He grabbed the whole mortar of blended herbs and tilted it under my nose a moment too soon, and I sneezed into the mixture, splattering it everywhere. “WAAA-CHOO!”
“Charming,” Batten commented, one eyebrow darting upward. “Is magic always this goopy?”
The spriggan made me swat unhappily at his face, and he caught my wrist in one hand easily, even if it hadn't been slowed by the rotgut and was being worked like a puppet.
“Oh no you don’t, sassy,” he growled, holding my arm without difficulty as the spriggan and I struggled in his grasp. He lowered his voice, his deep blue eyes calculating. Normally, I'd have been reduced to a throbbing, flaming pile of lust by a move like that. “Is that you trying to clobber me, or the moss monster?”
I wasn’t sure; we stuck my tongue out at him.
Wes stopped chanting his spell and said, “This isn’t working.”
He was right. My spriggan was a clever, resourceful creature, and she didn’t entirely trust me or the men. We’d have to try something more drastic. I closed my eyes, summoned psi, and Felt my surroundings to get a taste of all the forces at work. There was power available to me, but it was either external and muted in nature, or internal and muddled by my guest pushing through grey matter and rattling my metaphysical connections.
We needed to pull out the big guns. I thought at Wes, Seven bites of seven plums, charged with moonlight. Goose feathers gathered under the noonday sun scattered around the planting spot to ensure strength to withstand. Unsalted butter on corn. Pomegranate seeds for female prosperity. Four pennies for Hecate buried at the crossroads and soil from that dig site transferred to the new planting.
“How do you know all this?” my brother wanted to know, flipping pages in the grimoire. The Blue Sense reported he was feeling lost and out of his depth. “I don’t know, Marnie. If she knows what you’re going to try next, won’t she be able to predict and fight it?”
I prodded him with one foot because I didn't have enough control to kick him in the ass, especially with the Jerkface still holding my arm. He was right again, but I couldn’t deal with his lack of belief and still focus on distracting the intruder. I needed Wes to be my eyes, ears, hands, and voice; how could I even attempt this without him?
Harry said, “I do hate to disagree with you, my dearest one, but your brother brings up a valid point. Your visitor doesn’t want to leave you, and she’s anticipating your every move. If you would just allow me, this one time, to assist you?”
Wes shook his head in wonder, looking through spells and ingredients. “How are you sure any of this works, anyway? Do you just drink a bunch of cheap booze, try stuff, and hope it flies?”
Flying. I shot Wes a look and nodded enthusiastically.
“Uh, no.” He glared at me with his one good eye. “No, no, no. I’m not flying her around on my back. I’m not a taxi, Marnie-Jean.”
That was exactly what I was thinking, and bounced a bit on my butt in the grass, pumped. My spriggan thought maybe the deal wasn’t solid, so I poked Wes hard in the shoulder with a you’d-better older sister glare. He poked me back with his hard dead-guy finger, and the spriggan and I yelped.
“Ow!” The spriggan had a moment of fear; she didn’t like that my body felt pain like that, and she hadn’t expected this dead guy to injure me. I let her see just what Wesley was capable if he really wanted to hurt me.
“First things first,” Batten said. “We’ve got to get her out.”
Harry put a hand on Wes’s shoulder and bent to speak in his ear. My spriggan and I tried to listen in, but Harry shot me a look and took Wesley aside, where he began to think in my brother’s direction, blocking all feeling through our Bond. I was being kept out of the loop. Wes looked uncertain, and it seemed like Harry had to repeat himself several times before Wesley got the full picture.
Wes said, “We’d better warn Batten before we… yeah. Okay.” He looked me up and down and shrugged. “If you’re sure she’ll forgive you? I don’t have to live with her afterward. I can hide in Canada.”
Batten grumbled, “Don’t like the sound of that.”
Neither did I, frankly, but I wasn’t sure if those were my worries or those of my spriggan. The three men had a private consultation a few feet away. Batten grumbled, but nodded that he understood, and strode back to finish settling the honeysuckle plant into its new home in my yard. I tried to catch his eye questioningly, but he avoided my glances. Wes and Harry turned to face me in unison, and both of them set their shoulders like they were preparing for a physical rumble.
That’s exactly what they’re doing, I thought, and the spriggan jerked in my brain with alarm. She poked through my memories to figure out if they’d really hurt me, and as a last ditch effort to encourage her to leave, I showed her Harry and Wes going feral and chasing me through the yard in a savage night of bloodlust brought on by a black witch’s spell. I flashed back on Harry’s pale grey eyes going over to pure white, his fangs becoming tearing weapons, sinking into my hand so hard I felt the little bones snap. The spriggan knew any pain to befall me would hurt her, too, and she began to panic.
Wes bolted in my direction without warning, hissing, showing me full fang. Part of me didn’t buy it, and that was trouble; the spriggan instantly latched on to my doubt. He stopped close to me, getting in my face, spittle flying from behind his fangs.
The spriggan had a surprise of her own. My hands snatched at the air near the ground, grabbing green energy with a natural fluidity my witchcraft had never allowed. She dragged that power into us and slammed Wes with both of my palms. He was not expecting it; I felt a blast of strength heat my hands inside my gloves and Wesley went flying back. He landed on his ass with a grunt of surprise, shaking his head.
That was some serious Raiden from Mortal Kombat shit, I enthused. I didn't have time to explain any of that to the spriggan before Harry approached.
“Very nicely done, Nameless One,” Harry said, smiling benevolently. “The young lad was not anticipating such a formidable defense. Perhaps you’d like to try it on me?”
Harry’s attack was a blur ending in a vice grip on both of my biceps, his fingers digging in enough to impress upon my intruder the strength of his hands. She accessed my self-defense training to whip both my fists outward like Hood had showed me; on anyone else, including Wes, it would almost certainly have worked to break his grasp. Her green power was impressive, and the heat of it roared through my arms. Harry blinked with surprise but managed to keep hold, pressing his cold fingertips into my flesh harder.
I attempted to drop out of his grasp, using the downward swing of my weight to unbalance him. He held me up effortlessly. I tried to use that shift in balance to throw my body into his left side, but he would not be moved. Centuries of experience had him moving with grace and ease to counter any move I might make, while his implacab
le, unblinking grey gaze challenged me and my hitchhiker. After a minute’s struggle, I hadn’t even unseated his top hat. He grinned, swinging me around and dragging me up into the cold, relentless clutch of his arms. Pressed belly-to-belly like this, I could see directly up into his mouth, and he’d clearly planned that.
I watched his fangs slide out from behind his human canines, slowly, like the well-crafted threat it most certainly was. He opened the Bond abruptly, his hunger and command roaring into my body hard enough to claim every inch, his authority over his companion vibrating my tightened muscles as they strained against him. He turned his unholy platinum gaze down at me, showing me a dollop of sympathy; he intended to hurt me. It was going to be bad. It was going to be worse than anything I’d felt, a punishing blow to shock my system. If anyone could, it was Harry. I writhed and a horrified whimper escaped from deep in my throat, and I cast around for help. Wesley and Batten averted their eyes. This was no bluff.
“Brace yourself, love,” Harry whispered against my mouth.
The spriggan drew a last blast of power from the earth under my feet and brought a knee up. It hit Harry squarely in the groin. For a second, his grasp slipped, and she took her chance. Snatching every last drop of control she could, the spriggan used my legs to escape, bolting for the forest.
Wes shouted and Batten rocked into motion. His powerful legs kept up with me for the first ten steps but soon fell behind. He wasn’t my biggest problem. It’ll never work, I thought. The dead are too fast. My little legs pumped desperately as I pelted through the wet grass. Her extra energy was thwarted by the unsteadiness of the liquor in my veins, and my Keds slipped clumsily. Harry was an undaunted shadow racing at my side in the dark, and within moments, Wesley joined him.