The Sidhe Series
The Circle
by Cindy Cipriano
Copyright © Cindy Cipriano 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
First published by Odyssey Books in 2013
Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2019
Illustrations by Paul Summerfield
ISBN: 978-1-912701-69-8
Cover by Claire Wood
www.vulpine-press.com
For Connor
The Changeling
Deep within the faerie realm
when a babe there cannot be,
I’ll snatch you as you sleep my dear
and you will live with me.
My child of laughter, or made to weep
forever you will be.
Your family will forget you,
all alone with me.
Together we will watch the nest,
till death takes the chickadee.
And if those seven years you stay,
you never will be free.
When time has gone, and it’s too late,
that’s when you will love me.
And with your heart, I’ll change your mind
and who you used to be.
For that is how we add our clans,
our servants and family.
The verse once spoken cannot be claimed
and you will be as me.
Prologue
As the summer downpour slowed, three boys charged outside to play in the newly created puddles, racing paper boats in ribbons of water that flowed from the house to the road. Covered head-to-toe in mud, the boys loved every minute of it.
Something—a rock? A pebble?—flew out of nowhere, landing in a puddle at Calum’s feet. Water splashed into his face and at once he was blinded by an unexpected and intense pain. He rubbed his eyes and called out for help.
“What’s wrong?” Hagen asked.
By now, Calum’s eyes were on fire. It was hard for him to think of anything else except the searing pain. “Something’s in my eyes,” he shouted.
“Go rinse it out,” said Finley, still slopping away, digging mud from a puddle.
“I can’t see anything,” said Calum, no longer trying to hide the panic in his voice.
“Come on. I’ll help you,” said Hagen. He took Calum by the arm, leading him into the house.
Calum’s mother, Kenzie, met them in the hallway. To a casual observer, the sight might seem run-of-the-mill, something to be expected when three boys wallow in the mud. Surely it was an ordinary scene that had played out many times in ordinary neighborhoods.
But, Kenzie, Calum, and his cousins are not ordinary people. They aren’t actually people at all. Calum and his family are Sidhe, or faeries, and they did not live in an ordinary neighborhood. Calum’s home was in Tusatha Mound, one of dozens of faerie mounds scattered throughout the Otherworld.
Like all adult Sidhe, Kenzie was able to read the thoughts of other faeries. She had been monitoring the boys all morning and was alerted by the abrupt change in Calum’s emotional state. Kenzie knew something was wrong and she was already on her way outside to check on them when Calum and Hagen staggered into the house.
“Bring him to the kitchen,” she said, leading the way.
Kenzie pulled glass vials out of an old wooden case on the floor of the pantry. The tiny bottles were unlabeled, but that didn’t slow her down. She settled on three and placed them on the table just as Hagen eased Calum into a chair. Kenzie skimmed the tops of the vials with her fingertips. “This one,” she said, snatching the vial up and quickly opening it.
“How do you know?” asked Hagen.
“I can feel its purpose flowing from it,” said Kenzie. She stood over Calum, tipped his head back, and carefully applied one drop into each of his eyes.
Calum felt instant relief. The white-hot pain in his eyes was replaced by a cloud-light sensation of cooling comfort. He was perplexed by the speed at which the pain first had come and then gone. Calum blinked once and his vision returned to normal.
“What was it?” asked Hagen.
Kenzie looked into her son’s eyes, searching for clues. “I don’t know, but it’s gone now. Where were you playing when you got hurt?”
“We were over by the—” said Calum.
But Kenzie was out of the kitchen, running toward the front door before Calum finished his sentence. She bolted outside, screaming Finley’s name.
Chapter One
Siopa Leabhar
Calum Ranson was sure his cousin Finley was alive and knew he would be the one to find him. After all, it was his fault Finley had disappeared in the first place. Calum rubbed his eyes, as if the gesture would help him remember some clue about Finley’s disappearance. Calum often did this while he was deep in thought. It was a nervous habit, a subconscious twitch. And, though his eyes no longer burned, they still held what his mother described as a “phantom” pain.
“Like a memory,” she’d said.
A memory, Calum thought. Just like Finley was becoming. Nothing more than a memory. He paused briefly, repeating his promise to Finley. I will find you.
A gentle tug reminded Calum they were running late. He smiled down at Wrecks, his large black dog. Wrecks’ tail was sharply bent at the end, making him look as if he were perpetually taking a right turn. He bounced rather than walked, leading the way down the cracked sidewalks of Emerald Lake. When the pair neared Siopa Leabhar, Wrecks impatiently pulled Calum up the front steps.
Siopa Leabhar was the oldest store and only bookstore in Wander County. No one remembered when it had been built, and that was no accident. Secrets filled the bookstore—secret stories, secret rooms, and secret people.
Calum opened the door and Wrecks bounded in, wagging his tail. He ran to each shelf, or stack, as Calum’s mother called them, sniffing everything as if he had never been there before. The stacks were ancient and made of heavy dark wood. Curved seats facing opposite directions were carved into the base of each stack, and the shelves were covered with delicate script.
The words were Italian, providing a record of difficult faerie verses. They were spoken into existence by one of the oldest of faerie clans, the Foletti. Not one surface of the shop was free of the tiny writing.
Finding a particular verse was nearly impossible because the lines constantly shifted. As new lines were added, existing lines spread out like dye in water, moving to accommodate the new faerie verse. Calum first witnessed the never-ending rearrangement of words when he was eight years old.
He was sitting at the checkout desk, wondering if he’d ever master the fine art of bicycle riding. An odd glowing on one of the nearby stacks caught his attention. He moved to get a closer look and found one of the verses pulsing with a soft orange glow. Calum read the verse, quickly realizing it would help him learn to ride his bike. He ran back to the checkout desk for paper and a pencil to copy the lines. But by the time he returned to the verse, the words were drifting to the highest part of the stack. Kenzie had observed Calum’s mad dash and took the opportunity to explain that he was not allowed to use his talents to gain any advantage.
When Calum had asked his mother about the glowing, she’d said the verses anticipate the needs of Siopa Leabhar’s visitors. “The lines glow when a visitor nears the verse t
hey desire.”
And, that’s the story they told the tourists.
Emerald Lake was one of many resort towns in the mountains of western North Carolina. In addition to Siopa Leabhar, Specs Optical, and several boutiques, the quaint town was home to Columbia Springs. Tourists invaded Emerald Lake every summer to swim and fish in the cool springs, smugly thinking they knew the best-kept secret of the mountains.
If they only knew, thought Calum.
Along with the ever-moving sea of faerie verse, odd items turned up unexpectedly in Siopa Leabhar. One morning, Calum and Kenzie were surprised to find a large, empty picture frame hanging beside the front door. Faerie verses had shifted and squeezed together to free up the entire space inside the frame, exposing the weathered brick wall. The purpose of the frame was revealed when a customer dropped their keys at the base of the frame, bent to retrieve them, lost their balance, and toppled through the wall.
This prompted one of the few visits by the Foletti. They explained they were testing their idea of putting thresholds, or portals, to the Otherworld in plain sight. “Making the jump between the worlds more convenient for Sidhe who had decided to live in the Realm of Man,” the Foletti Sidhe explained.
The Foletti returned the customer, no worse for wear, but minus a bit of her immediate memory. They had decided the convenience of such a threshold was not worth the trouble of accidental visitors. The frame disappeared with the Foletti Sidhe and neither had returned since.
Another time, a key popped up, hanging from an ornate hook on the end of one of the stacks. When Calum grabbed the key, a keyhole materialized, hovering in mid-air. He fit the key into the keyhole and a burst of light shot through, freeing an imp. The imp darted from the bookstore before Kenzie could catch him. Thankfully, the lack of dark Sidhe in Emerald Lake tamed the imp’s devious tendencies. He soon learned to adapt to life in Emerald Lake, settling in a mandrake grove on the edge of town. And Calum learned to never touch any “new” item in Siopa Leabhar without first checking with Kenzie.
Calum stepped over the morning mail that had fallen through the slot on the front door. He quickly scooped it up before Wrecks tried to “help.”
A slender woman stepped from around one of the tall stacks. Her long brown hair spilled over her shoulder as she bent to plug in the string of white lights framing the shelf.
“Well, good morning, son,” said Kenzie Ranson. “Sleepy start?” She turned on antique table lamps as she wove her way between ballooned chairs and puffy ottomans.
“Yeah,” said Calum, yawning as he spoke. “Tell me again why I can’t take the rest of the summer off and stay home?”
“We’ve been over this,” said Kenzie in a lilting voice. “It’s been so busy this season and the tourists seem to be hanging on longer than usual. Besides, you’d get bored sitting around the house all day by yourself.”
Calum sighed. He hung Wrecks’ leash on a brass hook beside the door and walked through the cinnamon-scented bookstore toward the shelf where the dog’s bed was kept.
“Accessi,” he said, his hands stretched out before him.
Nothing happened.
He felt his mother’s eyes on him as he repeated, “Accessi,” more forcibly this time. He willed the bed to move from the shelf, but it didn’t budge.
Kenzie cleared her throat and busied herself, straightening a stack of magazines.
Calum knew he was slipping. He was losing his Sidhe talents, and he didn’t know why. His magic had always been reliable, but over the last few months, something had changed. Calum’s talents were unpredictable and weak. Giving up, he dragged the dog’s bed down in frustration, dropping it beside the store’s only checkout.
The checkout was made of the same dark wood as the stacks, and hundreds of lines of writing covered its surfaces. A dozen crystal vials bounced colorful light across a thin plate of protective glass on the countertop. Kenzie’s herbal treatments. A yellowed certificate designating her a Master Herbalist was pinned under the glass plate. The certificate was a fake, but it didn’t matter. All of Kenzie’s “treatments” worked so well, no one ever questioned her license to practice.
Kenzie walked to the small café at the front of the store. A crescent-shaped light hung from the ceiling, casting a warm glow on the curved counter. Each of the tall and extraordinarily soft chairs would soon be filled as locals drifted in for their morning coffee and baked treats. A half dozen aged diner booths lined the windows of the café, giving it a retro feel. Kenzie clicked on machines that brewed her delicious espressos, coffees, and teas. The house favorite, a sassafras tea, encouraged customers to be loose with their money. Kenzie made sure this tea was available all year long. Iced in the summer, hot in the winter. It was not at all unusual for a customer to come into the bookstore with a craving for sassafras tea, and suddenly remember they needed to buy a book. Or two. A trolley sounded its bell as it rolled by the bookstore on the first of many trips through town.
“Time to open,” said Kenzie. She unlocked the door and raised the wooden blinds covering the store’s windows.
“But there’s nothing to do,” groaned Calum. He slumped on the stool behind the cash register, his shoulders drooping low, and picked up a box of price stickers. He removed several and stuck them on the ends of his fingertips. Calum smiled as he remembered the time he and Finley had “decorated” their younger cousin with similar stickers. Even though none of the customers had seemed interested in buying a screaming toddler, both boys were sent to different corners of the bookstore along with several long picture books.
“There’s plenty to do,” said Kenzie. “You can start by organizing the desk.” She pulled a bright orange clearance sticker from his forehead. “The summer reading books are going fast so please unpack the rest of them and add them to the display. Oh, and put these flyers out, too.” She handed him a stack of paper.
Calum read one of the lavender sheets.
Share your Talent at Siopa Leabhar.
Join us every Friday night for good food and great music. Come early and stay late as we support our local musicians.
He hung his head at an angle, allowing his light brown hair to fall away from his face. “And then what?”
“And then,” said Kenzie, tucking a bit of his hair behind his ears, “you can get a haircut.”
“Awesome,” Calum said sarcastically. He sighed loudly as he unpacked the books and restocked the shelves, moping about his predicament. As he put the last book on display, the shop bell chimed. Wrecks scurried to greet the customers, his toenails making ticking noises as he slid across the oak floors.
Calum looked up to see a girl with a bouncy blonde ponytail enter the store. She was closely followed by a woman who had the same color hair, the same clear skin, and the same gleaming blue eyes. The woman carried a red-and-white purse, and the girl held a canvas tote bag.
“Good morning,” Kenzie said brightly. “Can I help you find something?”
“Yes, please,” said the woman. “I registered my daughter at the middle school yesterday. They sent us here to buy her summer reading books.”
“Well, welcome to Emerald Lake. I’m Kenzie Ranson.”
“Andrea Werner. And this is my daughter, LaurelAnn.”
“Laurel,” said the girl, rolling her eyes.
“Laurel needs to get the summer reading books for rising sixth graders,” said Andrea, a hint of exasperation in her voice.
“We’ve got plenty,” said Kenzie, conveying her understanding with a warm smile. “That’s my son, Calum.” She pointed to him at the checkout desk. “He’s going into the sixth grade, too.”
Calum was trying to slide off the stool and slink behind the desk. He didn’t have much experience talking with girls. Well, not lately. Although he’d known all of the girls in Emerald Lake for most of his life, many of these friendships seemed to change towards the end of the fifth grade. Lots of the girls now seemed silly. They constantly giggled about everything, leaving him clueless in their wa
ke. He supposed this had something to do with all of them heading off to middle school.
“Newcomers get refreshments on the house,” Kenzie said in a friendly tone. How about a nice cup of sassafras tea, Andrea?”
Calum smirked at his mother’s offer.
Kenzie saw him and added, “Calum can help Laurel find her books.”
That was one of the last things Calum wanted to do, save for maybe shutting his hand in a car door. No matter, he thought, she’s just another customer. He led Laurel through the bookstore, pointing out various sections while Wrecks ran circles around her, his tail thumping loudly against the stacks.
“Sorry about him,” said Calum.
Laurel shifted her bag. “That’s okay.” She bent to pet the wriggling dog. “What’s his name?”
“Wrecks. With a W.”
“W-R-E-C-K-S?”
“Yeah. We named him that because he had really big feet when he was a puppy, and he wrecked everything.”
“Cool,” said Laurel. “I have a cat, but I’ve always wanted a dog, too.” She continued stroking Wrecks, who seemed to calm at her touch until at last, he sat down on the floor. “Where’d you get him?”
“The animal shelter. He’s some kind of mixed-up mutt. Part pit bull terrier and part who knows what.” Calum snapped his fingers. “Come on, boy.”
“He’s sweet,” said Laurel, standing to follow them. “So, what’s Seo...Sio...opa.”
“Shuppa Leb Har,” said Calum.
“Yeah, that. What’s it mean?”
“It’s Gaelic. Siopa means shop and leabhar means book.”
“Do you know Gaelic?”
Calum nodded. “Kenzie’s from Ireland. She taught me.”
“Kenzie?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Calum.
It was a Sidhe secret, how they called each other by their first name to strengthen their talents. Calum had spent so much time with his mom at the bookstore, he’d let his guard down, calling her Kenzie in front of Laurel. He tried to think of a cover for his mistake.
The Circle Page 1