by Tom Deitz
“Like some of us go to the zoo, or hike, or go hunting—any place that’s different from home,” Liz observed.
“Right. But what really spooks me,” David went on, “was the way the guy looked at me. He knew I was there, and he knew I’d caught him doin’ something he shouldn’t—it was like he was defyin’ me and what I represented by my implicit connection with the old-line Faery hierarchy. Like he was thumbin’ his nose at Lugh through me.”
“At authority, in other words,” Liz concluded.
A shrug. “I guess. Never thought of myself as an authority figure.”
Calvin leaned back and gnawed his lip. “So what I’m readin’ between the lines here is more trouble in Tir-Nan-Og.”
Another shrug. “We’ve known for a while that things aren’t right there. There’s the human/anti-human faction for one thing: those who acknowledge that we’re stronger than the Sidhe in some ways, and that since we control the World whose gravity maintains their World, we need to be cultivated and trusted; versus those who think we’re a threat to them, and that our World would do as good a job supportin’ their World if it was a glowin’ mass of slag.”
“Wrong word,” Calvin cautioned. “Slag’s often iron residue—and iron melts through the World Walls, if I recall.”
“If they’re thin enough where iron is in our World,” David acknowledged. “But to get back to Tir-Nan-Og, there’s also the problem of the small Faeries—bodachs, leprechauns, and so on—feelin’ ignored and dispossessed by the Seelie Lords, as they call ’em. A lot of ’em have emigrated to Ys, which is another Faery realm that, best I can tell, overlaps our World underwater, but which also has access to another, empty World, where the small guys would have nothing to fear from us.”
“All of which I knew,” Calvin yawned.
“Sorry,” David grunted. “I forget who knows what anymore. Need to do a chart, I reckon.”
“Comes of keeping secrets,” Liz muttered.
“Of havin’ to keep secrets,” David amended.
“Whatever.”
“Anyway,” David continued, “the bottom line is that Faerie, which was always fairly factionalized, has become more so since—forgive my ego here—I found out the Sidhe were trompin’ around my pa’s back forty. Basically, I’ve given both big factions a rallyin’ point, and—’cause of the effects of all the Gating we’ve wound up doin’—helped polarize all kinds of minor factions and grievances as well.”
“My man, the revolutionary figurehead,” Liz drawled.
David grimaced. “Very unwilling figurehead. Frankly, it still feels unreal, ’specially when I think back to when I first heard music and sneaked out of my folks house, and met the Faeries riding in the woods one summer night. That all seems like a dream now.”
“Good dream, too,” Calvin assured him. “Oh, sure it changed your life—it changed all our lives, and I didn’t even know you then. But look me straight in the eye, David Kevin Sullivan, and tell me you’d undo it if you had the chance.”
“I’d undo the damage I’ve done those folks in a minute!” David replied hotly.
“But not the experience itself. If Lugh, or Nuada, or any of ’em told you they’d wipe your memory if you wanted—which we know they can do—you wouldn’t let ’em.”
David shrugged a third time. “I dunno. Probably not.”
“No,” Calvin echoed firmly. “Because we both know there can never be too much wonder in the world.”
Silence, for a moment, then, from Liz: “Well, the main thing I wonder right now, is whether I oughta take a bath or a shower.” And with that she uncoiled herself from the bed, gave both David and Calvin perfunctory smooches, and pranced into the bathroom. As the patter of water began, David likewise rose and crossed to the window, to stare down at the thronging street. Calvin joined him. “I have a terrible feeling,” David whispered, “that something may be starting. I— What the fuck?”
He spun around in place, saw Calvin caught between confusion and alarm. Someone had just rattled the lock. And voices sounded outside: the barely audible whispers of at least two people.
David relaxed, even as Calvin cocked a brow. “God, I’m jumpy,” he griped, and strode toward the door. He twisted the knob exactly as the recalcitrant key performed its intended function, and the result was a brief tug of war that ended only when Calvin calmly removed David’s hand from the knob and dragged him back.
“Liz!” David yelled. “We got company.”
“Company indeed!” the first arrival snorted as she stalked into the room, so laden with parcels she was visible mostly as a fluffy topknot of wheat-blond hair. “I live here, David Sullivan! Nor do I recall giving permission to entertain!”
“Cal’s family,” David protested, as he helped Myra Buchanan, the studio’s actual owner, disencumber herself.
“I know,” Myra retorted, nodding over her shoulder. “So’re these guys.”
“Literally,” one snickered: a tall, lanky lad with hair as blond as Myra’s, and much the same cast of feature, save that his were younger, more angular, and foolish, rather than savvy. “Runnerman!” David yelped, snaring his startled friend in a hearty embrace. “Look what the cat dragged in!— Shoot, an hour ago, it could’ve been a ’gator!”
“Ahem!” Myra warned, cocking a curious and rather resigned brow that assumed there was story behind that remark which would have to be related in due time. Darrell merely gaped. David reached up to knuckle his friend’s head: one of their ancient MacTyrie Gang rituals—at which point he caught the merest shadow of movement from the darkened landing and found both himself and his childhood pal embraced as a set and lifted a foot off the ground. “Gary?” he gasped, trying to twist around so as to confirm his assailant. “Better be, ’cause nobody else that strong’s entitled to this kind of foolishness.”
One arm relinquished its hold, though the other was still sufficient to bind David and Darrell together in a stifling bond, with David playing principal entree in a sort of buddy sandwich. Meanwhile, the newly freed hand had found his sensitive (and still bare) ribs, and had begun to tickle. David squirmed but couldn’t escape, and began first to giggle, then to cackle helplessly. At some point Darrell joined the attack, and for a moment the studio echoed with curses, laughter, and the dire threats of young men who’d known each other forever and loved each other like the brothers none, save David, possessed.
“Ahem,” Myra warned again.
“Oh,” David said. “Myra, you have a leaky roof.” He filled her in on the where and how much, and she rolled her eyes.
“Thanks for the heads up, and that helmet better not be water-damaged,” she replied. “Come on, brother of mine.” Whereupon she grasped her younger sibling’s waist-length ponytail with one hand and dragged him away.
David availed himself of that lull to hook a leg around one of Gary’s, twist, and wrest him to the floor, where he straddled the larger boy and began his own quest for vulnerable body parts. It was, given Gary’s cast of features, a little like assailing a larger and less buffed Tom Cruise.
“God, Sullivan,” Gary panted. “Get off me, man! I’ve got, like, kids.”
David paused in mid assault. “Kids?”
“A kid, anyway.”
“In that case, we’d best take pictures for the little tyke,” David crowed, and dived in again—whereupon something wet inundated him from above. He whipped around to see Myra standing calmly beside him with an empty plastic pitcher in her hand. “I take it,” she intoned archly, “that you boys are glad to see each other?”
David disentangled himself from his friend, and rose, reaching down to give his beefy buddy a hand up—and immediately regretted it. Gary had always been the largest of the Gang, or at least the strongest and most muscular, if not actually the tallest, which honor went to six-foot Darrell.
“Well, Myra,” David wheezed, when they’d resumed reasonable, if soggy, decorum, “I thought you weren’t coming till tonight—and that this guy”—he elbowed
the grinning Gary—”wasn’t comin’ at all.”
“I promised his lady he’d be good,” Myra confided. “A little girl-talk goes a long way!”
“I’ll say it does!” Liz agreed, emerging from the bath toweling her hair but otherwise fully dressed. “Welcome back. Uh, good to see you guys, too.”
Gary and Darrell immediately leapt to their feet and took turns hugging her—then repeated the process—several times. “Hey,” David called after the sixth round, “how many times you gonna do that, anyway?”
“One each for every month since we’ve seen her,” Gary shot back with another grin. “What you guys get for playin’ hermit down here in Bulldog Land and forgettin’ your domesticated pals.”
“I’m not domestic,” Darrell objected. “Speak for yourself, G-Man!”
Myra wrinkled her nose. “Is that bacon and omelettes I smell?”
Calvin, who’d remained by the window during the chaos of greetings, sauntered forward at that, to give Myra a hug of his own, which he repeated solemnly with the two guys.
“Red Man lurk in shadows,” he grunted theatrically. “Red Man hear compliment to cooking. Red Man willing to trade cook-breakfast for blankets, beads, and gossip.”
Myra eyed the much-rumpled bed, then her assorted companions. “Well, guys, what do you say?”
“White Man hungry,” Gary acknowledged, rubbing his tummy—which, David noted, seemed to overlap his belt a bit more than the last time they’d got together.
“Hungry,” Darrell echoed, from where he was already sorting through the head-high CD tower between the fireplace and the kitchen corner.
A moment later they were all—save Calvin, who was back at the stove, and Liz, who’d volunteered to help—ensconced in Myra’s bed, waiting expectantly. “So,” David inquired, “what brings you back so soon?”
“That’s our David,” Darrell sighed. “Got grown-up and serious on us.”
“Just ’cause I’m not a vagabond of the road,” David retorted, cuffing him on the shoulder.
Myra regarded him curiously. “Actually it is serious—kind of—maybe.”
David lifted a brow.
Myra handed him a rolled-up newspaper. David spread it open across his lap. It was a copy of the Mouth of the Mountains, the weekly rag of his home county: the newest edition, which he hadn’t seen, nor would’ve been likely to, since he didn’t subscribe nor get back home all that often. He scanned the headlines, finding nothing more than usual small town trivia, until Myra drew his attention to a mid-length article tucked away on page two.
Amnesia Rampant in County
David started to skim the column, but Myra preempted him. “Basically what it says is that there’s been an upsurge in folks in our old stomping ground showing up with gaps in their memories. No big deal at first; but then a couple of the doctors got to comparing notes, and folks to talking, and all of a sudden everybody’s coming forward.”
“So?”
“That’s what I said,” Myra replied. “Folks do forget, and a lot of those are old folks, ’cause there are a lot of old folks up there. But the thing is, one of the doctors got to looking for common elements, and he found a couple—”
“Which are?” From David.
A sigh. “That the bulk of them are either members of the MacTyrie Fire Department, or else they live in or near Sullivan Cove or go to church there. Not your folks, though!” she added hastily. “Nor any of ours.”
David’s eyes grew large, and a cold, hard knot formed in his gut. “And you think….”
“Yeah, I do,” Myra finished. “And there’s more. See, somebody bothered to check the dates that those folks have forgotten—they’ve lost specific events, apparently—and guess what? They’re the dates of…certain occurrences we all know about, and that you, in particular, Dave, have been party to.”
David swallowed. “Like—let me guess: a certain fire in a certain campground in MacTyrie? A certain storm during a certain graduation? A certain white stag freakin’ out traffic umpteen years back?”
Myra nodded grimly. “See?”
Calvin wandered over to join them, with a pile of omelettes and bacon. Liz followed with coffee. “Red Man eavesdrop,” Calvin rumbled. “Red Man think these all be times that place impact this place.”
“Whew,” David breathed. “Wow! I mean, this is really weird. Like, we knew Nuada had spin doctors in this World moppin’ up hard data about Faery incursions and all. But it sounds like he’s been foolin’ with folks’ minds—which isn’t cool.”
“No,” Myra agreed, “it isn’t, not from an ethical point of view. Which is why I took one look at this, rounded up these dudes, and came on down. Figured you’d want to know posthaste, and since we were coming anyway….”
“Damn!” David gritted. “And the trouble is—well, there may be trouble brewin’ down here too.”
“And the real trouble,” Liz observed, “is that there’s nothing we can do right now—if there’s anything we either can do or are supposed to do at all”—she eyed David speculatively—”’cause me and this gaping lout here have dueling finals today.”
Myra’s brow wrinkled. “Yeah, I know, and maybe I should’ve waited, but I kind of had to strike while the iron was hot, Garywise—catch him before the little woman could think of reasons not to bring him along. And—” she paused. “See, it’s like this. I’ve got a bit of the Sight, as you know, and…I’ve got a feeling about tonight. No more than that, so don’t ask, but it has been six years since all this began for you guys, never mind mine and Scott’s little adventure, and Midsummer’s coming on, and we all know what that means.”
“It gets worse,” David growled, checking his watch. “Maybe, it does,” he amended. “But Liz is right: I really do have to boogie, and she does too, though she won’t admit it. So, Cal, my man, you get to be the one to tell ’em.”
“After breakfast,” Calvin said flatly. “Angst is bad for the digestion.”
“Fair enough,” Myra conceded, eyeing him speculatively. “By the way, what’s that nice buff bod of yours doing this afternoon?”
“Anything you want it to,” Calvin shot back sweetly, with a warning glare at David. “You want smooth, scaled, furred, or feathered?”
Interlude III: Debriefing
(Tir-Nan-Og—high summer—midday)
“Will My Lord wear silver tonight or gold?”
Nuada Airgetlam, sometime warlord to Lugh Samildinach, High King of the Daoine Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og, ignored the handsome young man who had posed that question: Taran O’Neill, his valet—his half human valet, in fact, which appointment had scandalized his household when he’d given the lad that post, though the baser part of the boy’s heritage showed only in a more robust frame than most men of the Sidhe, and in hairier limbs and body, which Taran had the sense to keep concealed.
But Nuada had no time for pondering clothes at the moment, intent as he was on events in his sovereign’s audience hall, which he observed in his quarters via a small table mirror that reflected whatever transpired before a certain tourmaline in a carved zoomorph in the base of the High King’s throne. Just now it provided a splendid view of the hem of that High King’s robe: gold velvet edged with black, along which sun-circles worked in topaz and tiger eye rolled in endless file. Beyond that, it showed the front curve of a carpeted dais, with, further on, a vast, high-arched hall thundering off to vagueness and haze. A hall through which Lugh’s courtiers, most of whom Nuada outranked, and most of whom were also, to some degree, his friends, strolled and gawked and gossiped.
Law older than any of the Faery realms required that the High King sit his throne once in every quarter of this World’s moon, and hear whoever had nerve enough to demand a say. And so it was that Nuada chanced to attend this latest petitioner.
It was one of the small folk—a bodach, it appeared, one of many who’d dared Lugh’s court the last few seasons. All of them had the same complaint: that their voices be heard, that Lugh be advised that th
eir lands, which most often lay on the fringe of Tir-Nan-Og, were likewise most subject to the predations of the Lands of Men; that their fields, farms, and houses were ever more likely to be plagued with those Holes into nothingness where the World Walls dissolved, typically (as seemed the case now), where iron had lain longest in the Lands of Men and worn those barriers (which were thinnest there anyway) through.
Yes, that was the most common charge, and this complainant—a particularly knotty example in a threadbare kilt and clean white shirt, worn beneath a handsome velvet hat he now, however, kneaded in nervous, gnarled hands, revealing a head of crimson hair—was no different, save that he seemed also to have fallen victim to a less common human incursion, namely that a carriage from the Lands of Men had burst through the Walls completely, to terrorize his clan a few seasons back. Nuada couldn’t help but smile at the man’s impassioned description of the red dragon his wife had told him was called a shev-ro-lay. He knew better. Having spent a fair bit of time in the Lands of Men himself, and having made it his study for time untallied, he knew that had been no dragon, but what the humans called a car or an automobile. Indeed, he’d even ridden in one, when he put on human substance so he might tarry among that folk at length and not suffer the pain of iron.
He paused for a languid sip of the spiced pomegranate wine that filled his cup of gold-bound amber—amber in which paired scorpions lay locked in a frozen embrace that could have been either battle or sex.
And frowned.
He’d heard it all before, too many times; had his own opinions on what ought to be done, and had given Lugh his advice, solicited and not. Almost he stopped watching; almost he heeded his anxiously scowling valet. But then the bodach raised another matter, and Nuada found himself paying closer mind.
This bodach—Gargyn was his name—had been one of many similar supplicants who had sailed west the last few seasons seeking sanctuary with Rhiannon of Ys, whose willingness to accept them (for whatever reason) was widely known. This one had evidently reached her realm and been refused. Nuada had known part of this before, of course. But Gargyn was the first of those failed refugees who had actually conjured sufficient gall to plead his case in court. He was unlikely to be the last. It was also unlikely to make much difference.