Indebted to Faerie

by WB McKay

  Zelia squealed with delight, startling me. She bent down to get a better look as she walked around me. "I knew something was missing. Now, it's perfect!"

  I smiled at her enthusiasm and admired my new, strange form in the mirror. It was disconcerting to look in the mirror and not see myself, but also strangely exciting. I was completely anonymous. "Do I use the same word to change back?"

  "Yes," she replied, returning to her all-business self. "Remember that you still occupy the same space in a room. The costume doesn't physically change you in anyway. You may want to practice walking around with your eyes closed to get accustomed."

  "Monarch," I said. The costume exploded into a burst of color and reassembled itself into its original form. The change back was just as spectacular as the first one. I imagined that if everyone was wearing costumes like this at the ball, I was in for quite a visual feast. "Is there anything else I need to know?"

  She handed me a paper covered in cramped writing. "Care instructions. If followed precisely, you will be able to keep this for the rest of your life."

  When a fae made something meant to last a lifetime, that was saying something. A thought struck me, making me grin. "You mean this won't turn into a pumpkin at midnight?"

  Zelia's brow scrunched up, and her nose wrinkled. "Pumpkin? Why would you want to appear as an oversized orange squash?"

  It was my turn to laugh. I knew it was a risk to reference a human story, but it tickled me anyway. Her confusion only made it even better. "I wouldn't. It's a fairy tale thing."

  "Faerie tail?" she asked. "You don't have a tail." Her brow furrowed, her expression starting to drift toward irritation.

  It was all I could do not to laugh harder. I let out a choking cough and shook my head. "Don't worry about it. It was a human reference."

  "Ah, humans. Such silly, insignificant creatures," she said, her smile returning. Apparently laughing about humans made complete sense to her, and her irritation fled as she felt she was now in on the joke. "Oh." She looked up at the top of my head. "The Fleece has returned to its original home."

  "Yeah, it does that," I said, grumping out of habit. Truthfully, I didn't feel the irritation I would have a couple weeks ago. The Fleece was becoming part of my life. Yes, it was dangerous, which is why I wasn't using it, but it wasn't like dangerous, untouchable magic was something new for me. I'd been afraid of my death light for years. The Fleece was coming to feel like a part of me in much the same way. For better or worse, I was coming to believe we were in this together.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  With my new costume bagged up, I stepped onto the hectic streets of Mellosh. Cumin, lilacs, cinnamon—a scent I associated with Owen, and I was immediately pained with homesickness for him—freshly chopped carrots, cooking meats, and so many more fragrances rushed at me. I was once again overwhelmed by the smells. Much better than the less pleasant fragrance of filth I'd found near the portal. I dodged a few people offering to show me places and offering to carry my bag, and headed back the way I'd come. I was pretty sure, anyway.

  A few turns later, I was definitely off the original path I'd taken, but I was fairly certain I was going in the same general direction.

  Without warning, the small street I was on spilled into a square packed with vendors and people perusing their wares. The ebb and flow of the traffic and the sound of the vendors calling out to potential customers was vibrant and full of life. I would have remembered coming through there before; I was someplace new.

  Not sure going back was going to do me any good, I moved forward. I walked past a vendor selling a dozen kinds of juice. He called to me professing the quality of his product and the low cost. I kept going, and another vendor, whose setup was exactly the same, including the signage, did the same. I thought I was losing my mind when it happened a third and a fourth time. I turned a corner and did a double take when where were still more of the same. I counted at least nine different street vendors selling the same juices, all at the same prices. The only thing separating them were the varieties of calls they made to the potential customers going by. It was a competition of charisma. I loved it.

  My favorite vendor was an unassuming man with dark brown skin and a meek demeanor. When I first saw him, I felt sorry for him. I was certain he was in the wrong profession, and wouldn't last long. Then, a loud group of people walked by, chatting about the meal they'd just had. The vendor listened for half a second, then started calling out to them in their own voices. It was eerie to hear the women's voices come out of his mouth. They whipped around in confusion, and the man continued extolling the virtues of his juice, switching between four different female voices. The most impressive thing about it was that I didn't smell the slightest hint of magic. It wasn't a magic ability, he was just a talented mimic. Each of the women walked away with a huge cup of juice that cost five times as much as the base price listed on the large signs.

  I smiled and walked on. This place was ridiculous and amazing. If I didn't hate Faerie on principle, I might be tempted to come back to Mellosh for a vacation. I wondered what Owen would make of the place.

  Around the next corner, I almost ran into a man holding a lava snake in his bare hands. I stepped back, an involuntary gasp escaping my mouth. The man's face lit up, ruby red skin peeling back from shockingly white teeth. "Hello, pretty lady," he said, holding the snake out toward me. "Would you like to hold a lava snake? My magic will protect you."

  I looked him over, wondering where the trick was. I shook my head, and he moved over to the next passerby and put the snake right on the man's shoulder. There was no burn. The snake was definitely glowing with the heat of lava, like the one I'd defeated on my quest for the Fleece. Then I looked at the snake charmer's red skin and let out a shudder. It had the same subtle pattern as my armor, though it was a different shade.

  Spinning on a heel, I marched in a random direction to put some distance between me and the man whose skin I owned as armor. A disgusted shiver ran down my spine. Just when I was starting to find something I enjoyed about the place, Faerie's true nature reared its ugly head.

  A shout rose up from the crowd to my right. I wouldn't have paid any attention if it hadn't been such a small voice. A child? I pushed through the throng, wanting to make sure.

  The crowd parted, allowing me to push to the front of the circle that surrounded two fae. One was a tall man with mottled skin, a thick beard, and a furious look on his face. He held the wrist of a child of no more than six years. He shook the kid's wrist and said something I couldn't understand. Unlike the sellers, who were using charms so everyone understood what they said, these fae of Faerie had no reason to speak human languages. Still, I could understand enough. He was looking for the parents.

  The part I wasn't yet sure about, was how the child's face had come to be covered in blood. His small frame wracked with sobs. When he periodically caught his breath, he let out a tremulous wail. My heart lurched in my chest.

  A blur raced across the other side of the circle and a small figure collided with the bellowing man. And, we've found the mother. The fierce way she bit and scratched at the man holding her child left no doubt in my mind as to the woman's identity. Her clothes were little more than rags, and she had no weapons, but her spirit gave her a fighting chance.

  The man pulled a green knife across the mother's face. The mother and the child both went still as the orange blood poured down her gray cheek. He kept the woman back by waving the knife in front of her, splashing her blood across her shirt. With mother and child now under his control, the man began yelling at the crowd. He shook the child again, and this time I noticed he held both the child's wrist and a wallet.

  The kid stole his wallet. The man yelled confidently to the crowd, telling his story. He believed he was in the right. By the bobbing heads around me, I had to think that at least some of this crowd was agreeing with them.

  They were agreeing with violence against a child. I couldn't understand it; I searched the crowd hoping
to find something there to make what I was seeing make sense. Fae children were precious. They didn't come along nearly as often as human children. Then he shook the kid again, laughing at his next comment, and I saw the pointed ears. I should have noticed it sooner. Red eyes, gray skin, pointed ears—all elves were highly regarded in Volarus, but I'd heard gray elves weren't looked well upon in the elf community, or in Faerie.

  "This is a child." I stepped forward, facing the crowd. "What are you thinking? Do something!" I waved my hands at the crowd, urging them to get up and snap out of this. "Call the police!" There aren't any police, I remembered. At least, I didn't think so. City of chaos. "Do something!" I yelled again, and then lunged. I grabbed the man's wrist, twisted, and squeezed. The knife clattered to the ground. He wasn't much of a fighter. He gave me a shove. I stumbled a bit, knocking the mother back, but quickly regained the ground and put myself right in his face. "Let. Him. Go."

  The man sneered, showing off his large, square teeth. His breath reeked of tuna fish.

  I sneered back and growled for good measure. "Now."

  He looked past me to the crowd at my back and said something in a much nicer voice. He laughed and took a step back, but didn't let go of the child, so I reached for the hand still gripping the little one. Quick as a whip, the sneer was back and the child was thrown hard behind him. I pulled Haiku, but I was too late. A tall woman stepped smoothly between myself and the man. Her skin was mottled in much the same way his was; I'd briefly noticed her in the crowd before. She reached down to her side and pulled out a long knife. A moment passed in slow motion where I knew what was going to happen, where I saw my own power in the situation, and I knew I could reach out and stop her hand.

  I didn't do it.

  There was no hesitation when she plunged the knife into his chest. The crowd around me surged forward. Anyone with a weapon drew it. Magic flew haphazardly around me. Bare hands and claws tore through flesh. Within seconds, the man who had injured the child was no more.

  The body, what remained of it, was left on the cobblestones. The crowd dispersed slowly, as if they had no fear of the authorities. And of course they didn't. This was Faerie. There were no authorities. This… this was their government. This was the system.

  A few people had stayed behind to make sure the mother and child were well, the blood of the man still coloring their hands. In Volarus, that man probably would have spent a few years in jail for the violence against the child and his mother. Maybe more if whatever else he'd had planned had been successful. Here, he'd received real justice.

  Maybe Faerie wasn't so bad after all.

  I shook my head violently to clear the dark thoughts. What the hell was wrong with me? I'd just watched a man get violently murdered based on nothing more than public opinion. Even as I had that thought, some part of my mind asked what would have been gained by giving him a trial. How would society be served by allowing a child abusing monster the opportunity to get away with his crimes on a technicality?

  My feet started moving before I remembered telling them to. I needed to get out of Mellosh quickly. All the chaos was affecting my mental state. Again, there was that whisper in the back of my mind, telling me that the Fleece wanted to show me something. I pushed it away with all the mental force I could muster. If it managed to get words into my mind right now I'd scream. I'd scream and scream and never stop.

  The sound of my shoes slapping on paving stones and snap decisions at corners was all I could focus on if I didn't want to lose my mind.

  Eventually, I found myself on the street that held the portal I'd come from. I pounded past the crowds, my costume bag clutched to my chest like a life preserver. In a flash, I was gone. The wooded area where I'd fled from the Orani and their lynch mob seemed oppressive in its silence. I rubbed my ears, trying to dispel the feeling that I'd gone deaf.

  Not quite knowing why, I slumped down in the grass and cried. I just wanted to go home, wrap my arms around Owen, call Belinda and tell her I loved her, and forget the rest of the world. No, that wasn't true. My world was bigger than that now. I didn't want to regress. I just wasn't sure that I wanted any further progression. Every time something lovely happened, like making a new friend, it was balanced by learning that either myself, or the world in general, was a new kind of horrible.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When I woke the next morning, I tried to keep the previous day firmly behind me. It wouldn't do to dwell on the past. I needed to keep going forward.

  I slipped out of bed and stretched my wings. First, I needed breakfast, then I would check in on Graulfv.

  The dining hall bustled with clansmen eating huge breakfasts of bread, eggs, and sausages. My stomach gave a painful rumble as I took my usual seat near the kitchen. Food was already on the table even though nobody was sitting there. The Morrigan, thankfully, was not sitting on her throne. I doubted the woman ate. Outside of battle, anyway. I shuddered at the images that brought up and forced my mind to think of other things. I practically inhaled my breakfast, focusing on the motion of moving food from my plate to my mouth. It didn't work. My mind still wandered to the events of the previous day. I had loved Mellosh.

  I'd made myself an authority—not with the Fleece, just me. And when I'd let that next thing happen—and I had to be honest with myself, I'd let it happen, I could have stopped it—it was the same as if I'd killed him myself. I didn't have to do that. There was no immediate danger to anyone. I'd gained the crowd to my side, and even if I hadn't, I could have found a way to safely remove the child from the situation on my own. If nothing else, I could have used the Fleece. I'd chosen not to. I'd made myself the authority—judge, jury, executioner—and I had sentenced that man to death.

  I'd allowed vigilante justice, violence, chaos, and made myself an authority figure. I took responsibility, I stepped in. I couldn't pretend anymore. I was powerful. And that did come with responsibilities.

  I didn't know what that meant. For my future, for who I was... I didn't feel sure about anything anymore. And more than that, I didn't know if I had a choice. If I didn't want to be whatever I was becoming, could I even stop it?

  I knew one thing, and one thing only. I needed to go home.

  I finished the last of my breakfast, sad that I hadn't really tasted it. The crown on my head felt heavy. How much of my thoughts were governed by The Fleece? I should be spending all of my time trying to find a way to destroy it, or return it to its ghostly guardian. Instead I was eating breakfast with a view of The Morrigan's throne.

  Lost in my bitter thoughts, I found myself at Graulfv's room without seeing the halls I walked. I knocked and was immediately called inside. Graulfv was propped up in his bed, smiling brightly, despite his bruised and battered appearance.

  "Hey there, old man," I said, giving him a weak grin.

  He patted the spot on his bed next to his knees. "Will you sit with me, Sophie?"

  I sat and looked him over. For only having a day to heal, he was much better than he should have been. "Silas really knows what he's doing," I said.

  Graulfv looked me over as if I were the one that was injured and he was checking on my healing progress. "It was a rough trip," he observed.

  I shrugged. "Not physically," I replied, my eyes focused on my hands.

  "Physical issues are the easier ones to heal," he said, sagely.

  I snorted. "You sound like a fortune cookie."

  "So, you don't want to talk about it." It was a statement, not a question.

  "Not really," I said, my gaze roaming the purple bruises that peeked out from the bandages that covered his otherwise bare chest. My mind had found something else to focus on. "I think I might be able to speed this along," I said, waving a hand vaguely in front of his torso.

  Graulfv nodded, acknowledging my change of subject. "Do you think it wise after what happened when you brought back Seamus?"

  Ah, so that was his name. I'd been background processing what happened when I'd resurrected Seamus. "I don'
t think it was the healing that caused… the incident." It sounded so ominous when I said it that way, and to be honest, it was. "I think in order to bring him back, I had to draw my death magic back into myself, along with the inherent magic that is in the act of death itself. All of that death magic overloaded me. The healing of his heart was another thing entirely. That was actually an expenditure of magic."

  He nodded again, biting his lower lip. "You believe you can heal me without any adverse effects to yourself?"

  "Yes," I replied.

  "Then it would be greatly appreciated." He looked around his small room and tapped the book sitting on his leg. "I love to read, but being able to do nothing else is rather tiresome."

  I took a deep breath and placed my hand on his shoulder. I wasn't sure if physical contact was required, but it seemed right, so that's what I did. There was no whisper from the Fleece this time. It didn't think it needed to show me again.

  There, in the back of my mind was an unfamiliar sensation. I'd never thought much about the way my magic felt inside me, it just was. Now that I had a new magic to compare it with, I realized the abilities I'd always assumed I'd gotten from The Morrigan felt cold. This new healing magic was very warm, almost hot. Not that it was a real sensation. The feeling was imagined, more emotional than anything else.

  Gradually, I felt around the edges of the magic and coaxed it forward until it left my body and poured into Graulfv. The heat transformed from imaginary to real. My hands warmed noticeably, then the feeling spread through my body, having the most effect on my head. Sweat poured off my skin. My magic swept through Graulfv's ravaged body, repairing tissue and bone. He was in much worse shape than he looked. Almost every part of his body had been compromised. The magic ingredients that Silas had applied were definitely speeding the process. I could feel their slow, green burn suffusing his body. They wouldn't have healed him in time to come to the ball. Well, at least not enough for him to go without being in significant pain. I knew he would have come anyway and never complained.