by Tom Deitz
The last thing David recalled seeing before sleep ambushed him entirely was the sad, wistful look in Fionchadd’s inhumanly beautiful eyes. The first things he saw when he regained bleary-visioned consciousness were Piper’s soulful brown ones staring at him across a foot of dirty floor. Utterly disoriented, he blinked in alarm and sat up abruptly, almost frantically; yawning, feeling hungry, tired, and sore all three—and likely a number of other unpleasant things endemic to staying up late, drinking too much, and sleeping on raw pine boards. Piper remained where he was: scrunched up along one wall of Dale Sullivan’s abandoned farmhouse—watching.
David wondered how long the little guy had lain there like that. God knew he did it often enough; it was the only safe time to really look at your friends: when you awoke beside them and they were still asleep. Things showed on sleepers’ faces that were lost in the clear light of day. He wondered what Piper had seen in his.
A soft movement was Fionchadd crouching beside him, with—wonder of wonders—a cup of coffee in his hand. “I am not sure I prepared this properly,” he confessed, “but I tried to watch last night. It seems I may be in this Land awhile, so I thought it wise to learn its ways and wonders.”
David yawned again and scooted up against the wall—the same one against which he’d slumped when sleep had claimed him. It was not quite dawn, he reckoned, by the warm glow visible beyond the grimy windows: sunrise edging the mountains with scarlet and gold. Three hours, at best, by extremely approximate guess: that was how long he’d slept. Everyone else still did—save Piper, who was now ’possuming. And Fionchadd.
“You hoodooed me!” he accused, as he accepted the brew; too muddleheaded to do more than gripe and tease at once. The former was appropriate, the latter an indulgence: proof he was back in what he laughingly called the real world. Teasing was something real people—human people—did.
“You needed sleep, and there was too much in your mind to allow it,” Fionchadd returned. His face was tight with anxiety—probably, David surmised, because he was in a hurry.
“Shit,” David grumbled, mostly to himself, and tried to rise without making too much noise. “Guess we need to roust the rest of these sluggards and get our butts in gear.”
Fionchadd shook his head. The room filled up with silence—almost with peace. “If we wake too many, we will talk all day. Better those of us who must travel the Tracks and the Seas seek those ways alone. You should be the one to rouse them—only them—for they trust you as they could never trust me. The others will awaken when we are safe away. I will leave word with them so that they do not fear.”
David nodded solemnly and nudged Piper with his toe. “C’mon, Music-man, rise and—well, I don’t expect anybody to shine this early, but do what you can.”
“Coffee,” Piper mumbled through a yawn, as he rolled onto his back. His expression hadn’t changed from earlier. Still shell-shocked. Still…fated—or wyrded—or maybe simply doomed. All at once David hated himself for the part he’d played—and was yet to play—in upsetting the life of this sweet, flaky, unassuming guy.
“Coffee,” Fionchadd echoed, and knelt to pass Piper a steaming cup.
While Piper drank, David busied himself waking the others—those he assumed would respond to the effort. Liz first (he couldn’t resist stealing a kiss), then Alec, Myra, and finally, because he didn’t trust him not to be disruptive, Brock. To his surprise, the merest tap on the shoulder roused the boy. Even more surprising, the kid stretched twice—full and languidly, like a cat—then rose gracefully and padded onto the porch. An all-too-familiar sound ensued. David raised a brow at Piper and smirked. Piper smirked back—and stood. David eyed the door and lifted the other brow. Piper nodded.
David felt much better when he returned a short while later with a comfortably lighter bladder and a fidgety Brock in tow. The others were up by then—Alec, Liz, and Myra—and were all sipping at assorted cups and mugs. Myra scowled at hers. “There’s something in this besides coffee—or moonshine,” she announced accusingly, gaze fixed on Fionchadd.
“It will make you alert and help you—what is your word?—focus. You may need to be alert as we begin this journey, for our route may be a queer one until we win the coast. You may also need courage. You do not need to dilute that courage with fear.”
Alec’s reply was a grumpy grunt, followed by a gasp of sheer panic as he glanced around the room. “Oh, God—where’s Aife?”
“At present, she is an enfield,” Fionchadd informed him. “Soon enough that will change. Have no fear, I can speak to her mind-to-mind. She will journey with us.”
“Speakin’ of which,” David murmured through his second cup. “Actually, speakin’ of a number of things—uh, what about food? And travelin’ gear? Clothes, and all? And weapons and stuff? I mean, I’ve got all kinds of weapons and whatnot I’ve picked up on my forays to other Worlds. Trouble is, it’s all back in Athens—but oughtn’t I to take it? Or what about weapons from our World? Guns, or…iron?”
“You would be a fool to carry iron where we are going,” Fionchadd snapped. “Enough to be useful would proclaim our presence like a torch, and we must move in stealth. As to the rest: there will be food. There will be clothing. The other gear might serve us, but time would serve us more—as you know.”
“Yeah,” Brock broke in impatiently, “but exactly how’re we going? Shoot, where’re we going, for that matter; I don’t even know that much, really.”
Fionchadd took a deep breath. “The Land of the Powersmiths lies beyond Annwyn, which lies…atop the country you call Wales the same way Tir-Nan-Og lies across the southeast part of this Land. But it does not lie across Wales at the same point in time.”
Brock gaped at him incredulously. “Huh?”
Fionchadd grimaced. “This is not the place to lesson you about such things. Suffice to say that the Realms of Faerie overlap the Lands of Men one way in space and another in time. One way is…level; the other is…at a slant. Ask no more of this, for truly I tell you, we must hasten.”
It was a wary-eyed crew who assembled on the ruins of Dale Sullivan’s front porch, and David, for one, felt wildly unprepared. If not for Alec’s compulsive neatness, he couldn’t even have combed his hair. His friend had come through, however, with the proper implement—and probably had a horde of other useful articles tucked in his fanny pack. David wished he hadn’t dumped his own backpack, and wondered which of its contents he’d miss a week, or a month, from now—
—if he was fretting over such trivialities at all. For now, he had to worry about larger problems. About these friends—all back in their mysteriously cleaned and dried Tracking garb—who were venturing with him into the unknown. And those others who might face equal, if different, perils here behind.
At which point the sun lifted full above the horizon and, as though that were a sign, Fionchadd pointed to the left, toward the lake. David wasn’t surprised to find their path leading there. Nor was he taken aback when Fionchadd steered them past Scott’s camp, to a secluded cove maybe a quarter mile around the southern curve of one glassy finger.
He could see Bloody Bald from there, but only dimly, for a froth of oak leaves on a peninsula further north laid a veil of darkness across the view. He had deliberately refrained from seeking it earlier, for fear of what he might find—like a phantom palace consumed in raging flames.
“Well,” Brock huffed, when they finally halted on a relatively clear stretch of sandy marge, where a small stream ran in from the mountains to the south, “I don’t see no boat.”
Fionchadd smiled cryptically, then ambled over to where a rotten stump braced a fallen limb, leaving a dark hollow beneath. He squatted there briefly, only to rise again with something in his hand. Brock’s face lit up when he saw it, and David too felt a thrill of wonder—and recognition.
“We’re going in a…toy boat?” Myra choked.
“Not if that’s what I think it is,” David giggled.
“One like it,” Fionchadd admit
ted. “I retrieved it from a secret place while you slept.” He held out the object for inspection.
It was a toy boat, or appeared to be. More properly, it was a model. An exact replica of what most resembled a Viking longship with a small central cabin, the whole thing no more than a foot in length. It was made mostly of wood, and every detail was depicted, from the incredible delicate carving on the dragon-head that graced the prow and the spiraling tail at the high-curved stern, through the thread-fine rigging, to the line of tiny shields along either side.
“No oars,” Piper remarked, to David’s astonishment. Even more amazing, Piper’s eyes were dancing.
“That is where you come in,” Fionchadd replied. “But not yet.”
“I’m not gonna ask!” Myra muttered. She whipped her black cloak around herself with a theatrical flourish and slumped down on a stump, sipping from the coffee she alone had had sense enough to bring along.
“You have seen this like before,” Fionchadd told David and Liz, as he slipped down to the water’s edge and set the boat gently in the shallows. “You have seen a ring much like these two as well,” he added, raising his hands to display matching bands on each fourth finger: a silver Ourobouros with blue eyes on the left; a golden, red-eyed one on the right. He scratched the gold one affectionately, then extended it toward the boat. Brock hissed in alarm, and Myra too cried out, as the tiny head opened its jaws and vented a spark of flame. The fire promptly ignited the miniature rigging, and an instant later the entire vessel was ablaze. “No!” Myra groaned, reaching forward. “If you didn’t want it—”
David caught her before she could do anything rash. “Watch!” he urged with a smirk. “I did exactly the same thing first time I saw it.”
“If you say so….”
“Oh, Jesus, man!” Piper breathed behind them. “It’s…stretching!”
And so it was. As the model burned, so it expanded, growing larger and larger by the second, so that less than a minute later it was the size of an actual vessel—a hundred feet or more end to end, and fifteen at least across the beam. The mast brushed the overhanging treetops. It had also drifted further from shore, so that it now rode high and proud fifty or so feet out.
“Son of a bitch!” Piper mouthed.
“Not what I’d have said,” Myra retorted. “But I know what you mean.”
Brock’s eyes were big as saucers. “How—?”
Fionchadd’s face knotted in a resigned scowl. “I see I am going to spend this entire voyage fielding questions, but the simple answer is that the ship was made mostly of Fire, and in order to make it smaller, that Fire was removed. When I relit it, the flame was restored. It is quite simple, really.”
“Right,” Brock snorted. “Yeah, sure.”
“Think freeze-drying,” David suggested absently, turning his gaze toward Liz. “You’re remembering, aren’t you?” he continued, more quietly. “The way you and I first did it on a ship like this—place like this too, actually.”
Liz responded by blushing.
He kissed her impulsively.
“Uh, I hate to mention this,” Brock broke in, “but…I thought we were going to the coast.”
“We are,” Fionchadd assured him.
“This is a long way from there,” Brock persisted. “And that’s a mighty big boat, and I don’t think there’s a river big enough to hold it up here….”
“Not here,” Fionchadd agreed. “But somewhere between here and Faerie. It is for that I require Piper’s aid.”
Piper started. “Me?”
A nod. “You have your pipes, have you not?”
Piper first looked shocked, then stricken, then despondent. He shook his head.
Fionchadd scowled at him. “But how do you propose to learn tunes if you do not have your pipes?”
Piper studied the ground.
“Never mind,” Fionchadd sighed, with a wink at David. And with that he returned to the place from which he’d retrieved the ship and drew out something far less wieldy than a toy boat, and far, far larger. It sprawled across the Faery’s arms like a nerveless octopus. A set of pipes. New pipes, to judge by the gloss on the wooden drones and chanter, and the bright plaid fabric those pipes were set into. Uillean pipes, too: for there was also a shiny new bellows.
Piper’s mouth dropped open. “These—” he began, then faltered. “These are fit for a—”
“A king,” Fionchadd finished. “Which is convenient, for it was a king who wrought them.”
“But….”
Fionchadd peered up at the sky. “Not now. We must hasten. I have talked too long and the Worlds draw apart. If I would set us on our path aright we must hasten.”
Alec gazed about anxiously. “Aife….”
Fionchadd puffed his cheeks, then closed his eyes. An instant later, a familiar yellow shape darted toward them through the bracken. Alec picked her up and stroked her. She purred.
“Seems to me,” Liz drawled, “that you and that cat, which you claim to hate, are getting along better and better.”
Alec bared his teeth.
Fionchadd cleared his throat. “Come, oh talkative ones, our vessel awaits.” And with that he strode into the lake.
David followed. So did the rest. The water had almost reached David’s chest (it was cold, too, and he wondered what they were going to do about dry clothes) before he was able to snare the rope ladder hanging down the side halfway back. He eased left to let Liz and Myra ascend before him, with Fionchadd assisting them aboard, then clambered up himself, ahead of Alec and Piper. Alec handed up Aife. Piper handed up his fine new pipes. A moment later they were all on deck.
Fionchadd slapped his hands against his gray-clad thighs—which were already, David noted sourly, dry. “Now, Piper,” the Faery said. “I will whistle a tune, and that is the tune you should play.”
Piper eyed him warily. “I’m not that good.”
“The hell you’re not!” Myra cried. “I’ve heard you reconstruct songs you heard weeks before note for note.”
“I have faith in you,” Fionchadd acknowledged. “Now listen.”
And with that he pursed his lips and whistled a slow, plaintive air. Twice he repeated that melody, and by the time he had begun a third round, the new bellows were pumping, the bag was full, and Piper’s fingers were dancing along the chanter.
And the ship was moving. Slowly, at first, and then more rapidly, it swung around in that narrow, hidden cove and eased into open water. David’s heart sank, for surely this would put them in plain view of anyone watching through the glamour that shrouded Lugh’s palace, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone there to know what they were about. Yet when they finally cleared the cove, Bloody Bald was gone.
So were the rest of the mountains.
A mist had risen around them, appearing so stealthily it was as though it had congealed from the very air. That air was glowing—or the lake was—and when David hurried up to the prow to determine which, it was to see the unmistakable glitter of a Straight Track lying upon sun-gilt water. An upward glance showed blue sky; a downward glance, the light of an unseen sun glittering on oddly transparent ripples. But all around was mist: mist that looped and whorled like certain all-too-familiar briars. And all the while, Piper kept on playing.
* * *
The interval that followed had the quality of a dream. The sky never gained a sun, but was otherwise unchanging. The ship glided smoothly. The fog showed no sign of dissipating, though sometimes the whorls and spirals roiling through it took on a different cast than at others. Piper no longer played—Fionchadd had told him to stop as soon as they came fully onto the Track, and had cautioned him not to amuse himself with trying to repeat that melody, and absolutely not to attempt themes and variations. As best David could tell, it had something to do with the Tracks having a certain resonance, and matching that resonance with the pipes. Magic was also involved, of course—Power, as the Sidhe would say—but whether that magic was born of the Tracks, the pipes, the
ship, the tune, or Piper’s artistry, David had no way of knowing. For himself, he was content to relax while they waited for their mundane clothes to dry—Fionchadd had found them loose tunics in the tiny central cabin. Liz had queried that, but the Faery had only smiled and informed her that he had far less Power than some of his tribe, had used it lavishly of late, and would rather the sky assumed the task of leaching water from fabric than his own poor humble self.
They’d also eaten: leftovers from the council, if David wasn’t mistaken. And now, warm, dry, full, and relatively unharried, they followed Fionchadd’s advice and slept, strewn in a comfortable pile in the bow; everyone—probably by design—in partial contact with someone else, as though to affirm their reality in the face of pervasive strangeness.
Fionchadd stood in the prow, watching. Once Brock joined him. Once, as well, did a yawning David, though he could think of nothing useful to say. And then, again, he slept.
Myra was in heaven. David could see that by the way her lips curved as her pencil raced over the pad of what was not quite paper Fionchadd had produced from the cabin-of-many-wonders. She looked incredibly content, too: curled by the gunwale atop a sprawl of thick, green-hued fur. She had long since relinquished her Tracking togs (the cloak and minidress had been a mistake, she’d been first to admit) in favor of a plain loose tunic of blue-grey velvet that had likewise come from the cabin.
David strained to peer over her shoulder—which always bugged her, though by now she ought to be used to it. “Looks just like ’em,” he opined.
It did too. Fionchadd stood in the narrow angle behind the ship’s prow, gazing forward intently, his profile like chiseled marble. Brock stood right beside him in precisely the same pose, long hair whipping behind, but little different otherwise, save for a stubbier nose. Myra had captured them exactly: two fine young men of two Worlds, both displayed in profile, both posed identically, with the intricately carved curve of the prow curling up and around and eventually out of frame. It was not the first sketch she’d assayed since the voyage began, nor would it be the last. Even with no landscape visible beyond the pervasive fog, she hadn’t lacked subject matter.