THE MAEBOWN (Weald Fae Journals, Book 4)

by Christopher Shields

“You sound…human, Bastien. Do you suggest we create a formal system of control—such as a governing body? Do we give that body the power to police and punish offenders?”

  “That is not a bad idea.”

  “It is utterly human, and it has not worked for them. Giving away any liberty, any whatsoever, softens the resolve of the governed, allowing for greater abuse.”

  “Perhaps, Zeus, you would have a different perspective were you not the leader of the Olympians. I imagine the younger members of your clan have a different perspective since they have lived under your rules for millennia—long ago you and the other elders established boundaries of acceptable behavior, did you not?” Tse-xo-be said.

  Zeus narrowed his eyes and grumbled.

  “You have rules for them. It seems to me you are only concerned when those rules apply to you specifically,” Bastien added.

  “Of course that is the case,” Zeus growled. “And it is the very reason that you have never joined a clan. Your reasoning would seem less disingenuous if the foundation of your very existence was built on anything other than the desire for complete autonomy.”

  “You are correct, of course—I have never had the temperament for clan politics, but I have found that complete autonomy is the weakest of foundations.”

  “Oh, and how is that so?” Zeus challenged, laughing dismissively.

  “Absolute free will to do anything you desire—that is an illusion. What you desire is as elusive as pure love, unbridled kindness, and eternal peace. They exist only as concepts, ideals one uses as a measure of his success in life.”

  “That is philosophic babble. Are you actually going to stand there and tell me you have never experienced complete autonomy?”

  “I have, and I am the only one who ever will. Absolute autonomy disappeared the instant Tse-xo-be joined me in this existence. From that moment forward, every decision I made, I made with respect to him. During my seclusion I learned that a single tyrant can hold an entire world hostage. With her first edict, Ozara placed shackles on me just as she did on each of you—every experience I’ve known since then has been in bondage. I denied that fact, of course, until an eighteen-year-old human and her friends crossed my path. She caused me considerable consternation,” Bastien said, smiling at me. “She, of course, does not know that I have watched her since birth. It is ironic that it wasn’t my own kind who brought me here, but a human. A human with tremendous power—power unfathomable to other humans, unimaginable to most Fae, but somehow bridled—asking for my help to solve a problem that, if I’m being honest, I hadn’t the courage to recognize. Maggie’s greatest strength is not Aether—it is her conviction to preserve a future for the people and the Fae she cares about, and the courage to see that future come to pass.”

  His words made me blush.

  “It always comes back to humans, does it not? What do you propose?”

  “Maggie, I believe that question is best answered by you?”

  The spit in my mouth turned to dust, and for a split second, I saw stars, and couldn’t coax my mind to function. Even though I never expected them to ask, I had given considerable thought to an ideal future. “The day my aunt told me about the Fae, before I ever believed that you existed, she said something that stuck in my mind. She thought it was a waste that the Fae didn’t work with humans.”

  “But we did work with humans,” Zeus said.

  “Yes, I know, right up until Ozara forbade it. If my timeline is correct, she put an end to our cooperation about the time the Dark Ages started.”

  “Approximately,” Bastien said.

  “I think we need to figure out a way for humans and Fae to work together—it’s dangerous to pretend you don’t exist.”

  “Work together…as equals?” Zeus said.

  “Well, I’ll overlook the fact that I’m more powerful than you, if you will,” I said.

  Zeus laughed, and nodded. “Should we keep you from destroying yourselves?”

  I laughed when he said it, but there was something strange in his voice and the way he looked at me. I caught a worried look in Gavin’s eyes. “What? What’s going on?”

  “Several countries are on the brink of war, and it promises to expand.”

  “Brink of war? What happened?”

  “Someone fired a missile at someone else, people died, then that someone else fired several missiles back, escalating everything. It’s nothing new for those of us who’ve watched you kill one another for—”

  “Okay, okay, enough with the lectures. Who fired at whom?”

  “I think it was the Russians and Koreans, the Americans, maybe the Chinese, I don’t know exactly. All I know is they are all at each other’s throats.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Ignore it. We do not have time to worry ourselves with human conflicts.”

  I wasn’t about to argue with Zeus, not yet anyway. However, my intuition was nagging at me—warning me that the human conflict wasn’t human at all. I needed to project, and I had to be away from the Fae to do it. “I’m a little tired and I know all of you have a lot to talk about, so would you mind if I went back to the cottage and got a little sleep?”

  They were silent, undoubtedly trying to read my energy levels.

  “That’s fine, Maggie.” Caorann said. “Would you like me to go with you?”

  “No, that’s alright. I know how to find it.”

  I began walking back to the road when Gavin trotted up next to me. Like every time before, the gathered Fae moved out of our way, but stared at us like we’d crashed a wedding wearing overalls. I cloaked us and kept walking, ignoring the impulse to whisper curse words just loud enough for all of the gawkers to hear.

  Gavin took my hand as we strolled along the narrow blacktop. The sun was rising just on the other side of Cnoc Aine, not quite above the horizon, but just enough to give some green color to the Irish countryside in the cool morning air.

  “Ignore them, Maggie.”

  I tugged at his thick fingers and hid our conversation from prying ears. “I know. Old bigotries die a slow death and all that. Does it bother you?”

  “I don’t care what they think,” he said. “This is going to sound a little conceited, and I don’t mean it that way, but I’ve spent my life as the object of human and Fae desire—most of those who have a problem with us have propositioned me on more than one occasion. Jealousy is ugly. I think I feel pity for most.”

  “Oh no, that didn’t sound conceited at all,” I said, trying to keep from laughing.

  Gavin chuckled. “No, I’m being serious.”

  “I know, Gavin. The Ohanzee told me.”

  “Really? Told you what?”

  “That you’re even more spectacular in Naeshura than you are in physical form.” I rolled my eyes, teasing him. “The day I met Wakinyan, back at Thorncrown Chapel, he said that even among the Fae, you were considered the hottest.”

  Gavin raised an eyebrow, grinning annoyingly. “He said hottest?”

  “Well, no. But you’re all physically attractive, so using the adjective beautiful really doesn’t do it justice.”

  He laughed again. “Others have taken my physical form from time to time, but it doesn’t work for them.”

  “I wish I could see you in Naeshura—well, I don’t guess I could see anything, but you know what I mean, experience you like they do.”

  He nodded and squeezed my hand. “Who knows, maybe you’ll learn. You already understand Naeshura better than I do.”

  “No, that’s not true. I’m still a novice. I can blow a mountain apart, sure, and I’ve learned how to fly in a straight line, but I still can’t turn that rock into wood,” I said, pointing at a small gray mass beside the road. “Even the youngest Fae can do that.”

  Gavin grabbed it and held it between us. “Of course you can. Just concentrate—you can undoubtedly sense everything in the rock. Here, I’ll do it first.” He glanced up at me with a devilish grin.

  In a deliciously s
low transformation, it lightened in color and then turned an ashen gray color and the minerals morphed, one by one, until it resembled a chunk of oak from a limb, forming bark around the outside. Then he handed it to me. I could sense every part of it, and even though it looked like wood, and it was much lighter than stone, I could tell that it wasn’t wood at all—or at least, it had never been alive. Gavin had rearranged it perfectly, probably drawing on some piece of wood he’d studied at one time or another. I’m sure it had all the chemical components of wood, and it might even have the exact cellular structure, with one exception, it was just a facsimile of something real. It was no closer to wood than pleather was to leather.

  “Are you serious?”

  “You finally see, don’t you?”

  “It’s fake.”

  “Yes. And you can do it all day long.”

  I changed it back and forth several times and then dropped it and drug Gavin back in motion. “Wow. I had no idea, but it really does make more sense. When Billy changed my car to stone…”

  “That’s a little different. Changing one inanimate object into another is much easier, and more convincing, but even then, a Fae can tell.”

  “That night, the night I faced Chalen, he was only trying to fool humans.”

  “That’s right.”

  I felt a smile form on my face. “I have one other question. What about the different physical forms that Fae take. I mean some are enormous, like Miele, when he took the shape of a dragon at Caer Bran, but some are very small—a bird or insect.”

  “The more powerful the Fae, the more energy we can draw, and the more energy, the larger the shape. But enormous size isn’t necessarily an advantage,” he said.

  I laughed. “Yeah, I know. When the Rogues attacked the Kabouter in Veluwezoom, Freya took the shape of a sylph and she killed a Fae who’d taken the form of a werewolf—he swallowed her whole and she popped out of the top of his head.”

  Gavin smiled. “She is very old and very powerful—he was a fool. I wish I could have seen it… So, are you going to tell me the truth?”

  “What truth?’

  “The truth about why you left the elders just now. It wasn’t to talk about sylphs and wood.”

  “Well, I am tired. We’ve been at it all night.”

  “True, but I know you, Maggie. Something is bothering you. Talk.”

  The sun just topped the peak of Cnoc Aine, showering the fields around us in golden morning light, chasing away the last vestiges of darkness. Symbolic, I thought, as Gavin had seen through my poor attempt to keep the conversation away from what was really on my mind.

  “Fair enough. I’m afraid the Fae are behind the conflict Zeus told us about.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I may not be as up on current events as I should be, but even I know if you mention the US, China, Russia, North Korea, and war in one sentence it can mean only one thing—death.”

  “You think the Alliance may be steering those nations toward conflict? Why?”

  “What better way to kill off the human race than to force us to do it to ourselves.”

  He studied my face before lifting me into the air, speeding us toward the cottage. My blood went cold—it was possible I was just being a little paranoid, but I’d learned it was bad news anytime Gavin got frantic. I hoped I was wrong.

  EIGHT

  REVERBERATION

  “Who should I look for?” I asked. “I’ve never tried to locate people I’ve never met before.”

  “Well,” Candace started, “I looked online. The New York Times article says the Seventh Fleet was engaging the North Koreans. It also said the fleet was under the command of Vice Admiral Coker. Here…” she paused to navigate her phone. “Ah, here’s his picture. Can you find him?”

  I studied the image. He was wrinkled, balding, and looked very severe. I committed his face to my memory, trying to imagine what his voice sounded like.

  “Maggie, look for Fae. If there are any around the admiral you need to come back immediately,” Sara said.

  “Okay, here’s hoping I’m wrong,” I said.

  The amber flecks in Gavin’s eyes seemed electric when he stared at me, and the muscles in his square jaw were taut. He cupped my hands in his, forcing a smile. “I hope you are, too.”

  Ronnie and Candace exchanged a nervous look before I closed my eyes. My mind untangled from my body, floating gently to the rough-hewn beams and plaster in the ceiling of the century-old cottage. With Admiral Coker’s face in the front of my mind, I concentrated. A moment later, I hovered near him in a metal room as several uniformed people talked to others via headsets and handsets. Admiral Coker studied a spot on the floor, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, nodding occasionally when the men barked off words to which I didn’t know the meaning. There were no Fae in the room. From below, I sensed the thrum of enormous engines and the churning of water. We were on a ship of some kind, and if I got the name correct, it was called the Blue Ridge. Other than that, what the men and women were saying seemed like code to me.

  I spread my senses out and found what I was looking for. My mind passed through the bulkheads and steel walls and over the open ocean. I had no idea what direction was north, but I guessed it to be late afternoon or early evening wherever we were, so about seven or eight hours ahead of Ireland.

  With the USS Blue Ridge on the horizon, I stopped above a place in the cobalt sea. There were two Fae below me in the water. Unnerved, my mind sank into the dark water deeper than I ever dared to swim. I’d never been scuba diving, and despite my comfort in the water, descending to the Fae freaked me out. Stay calm, you don’t need to breathe. Keep your head.

  The Fae were in physical form, and despite the low light, I could clearly make them out with my mind’s eye. Gray, smooth skin pulled taught over sleek lean bodies that appeared human from the waist up, the Fae seemed to be watching everything going on above the surface. From the waist back, they looked like dolphins. It didn’t surprise me, actually. In the last two years I’d seen dragons, werewolves, sasquatches, a griffon, and a boar the size of a rhino. Why not a pair of mermaids?

  The sleek creatures were communicating with another several miles away, beyond my sensory range.

  “Is it coming?” asked the one closest to me.

  “Not yet,” came the reply. “They are planning to strike at dusk. The contamination will be catastrophic.”

  “Should we intervene?”

  “Ozara has left, but many remain, including Ahriman—it will be too dangerous,” came the distant reply.

  “Will these humans be able to defend themselves—destroy the device before it explodes?”

  “No, Ahriman will hide it from them. They won’t see it coming—all will be lost.”

  The Fae closest to me was silent for a moment. She said, “I will inform Derketo and Atargatis.” She transformed to Naeshura before disappearing into the depths.

  The other Fae remained close, but the conversation appeared to be over for the time being. I had no idea who these Fae were, but it appeared they were watching the Alliance Fae. I recognized Ahriman’s name. He was the Unseelie Elder who’d joined Zarkus at Caer Bran. I ran his memory through my mind and immediately shot away. My mind stopped in another control room. The electronic systems looked older and cruder than I’d seen on the Blue Ridge, and they were manned by several people of Asian descent. Unlike the room on the navy ship, this one was deep underground, I could tell that much. The people focused on the monitors were silent, studying the displays with complete intensity. Ahriman had taken the shape of one of the workers. He, too, looked intently at a screen, but unlike the humans in the room, his focus was not on the display. He compelled everyone in the room, paying particular attention to a small, angry-looking man in a uniform and a military hat far too big for his head. With his arms folded behind his back, he scanned everyone in the room, seemingly in control, completely unaware he was just a pawn.

  I’d seen wh
at I needed and snapped back to my body.

  “What did you learn?” Gavin asked when I opened my eyes.

  “I was right. Ahriman is planning something at dusk, wherever he was—China or Korea.”

  “Ahriman? The Unseelie elder?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are they planning to do?”

  “I’m not sure, I couldn't understand anything on the navy ship. They were talking in codes—echo bravo and stuff like that. But I do know they’re sailing into a trap. Who are Derketo and Atargatis?”

  “Derketo? Atargatis?” Sara whispered to Gavin. “Are they aligned with Ozara?”

  “They are Nereid and Oceanid elders…two Fae clans who claim the seas as territory.”

  “The two I saw looked like mermaids,” I said.

  Candace moved closer, her eyes wide open.

  Sara glanced to her and nodded. “Yes, we don’t just inhabit the dry parts of the world. There are dozens of clans, primarily water aligned Fae, who spend the majority of their existence in the oceans.”

  “Are they big clans?”

  “No, they are not, but they do control huge amounts of territory,” Sara said. “The planet is mostly water. They prefer to keep to themselves, so whatever is happening has apparently caught their attention. Were they helping the Alliance?”

  “No, I don’t think so. They appeared to be spying on Ahriman.”

  “Ahriman?” Gavin said, shifting his gaze to the wavy glass in the window. “Then it is the Alliance. Tell us everything, Maggie.”

  I did better than that, I played back everything I saw in my mind and explained what I heard along the way. I did that two more times over the next hour—first to Bastien, then to the rest of the congregated Fae. The debate was short and the conclusion decisive. The Alliance had to be stopped. Not because of any pressing need to protect the US Navy, as most of the Fae despised human militaries even more than run of the mill humans. They agreed that any plan the Alliance had was to create instability in the region with a war. That, in turn, would be for the sole purpose of forcing the Ancient Ones into choosing sides. All the elders felt that securing the Ancient Ones’ cooperation was the key to success. Without them, our prospects looked dim. If they joined the Alliance, I feared nothing could keep our fragile Coalition together.