The Prince of Neither Here Nor There

by Sean Cullen

  “Okay.” Brendan took a deep breath. “This is gonna sound totally weird but ဦ the thing is … I’m a Faerie.”

  “Faerie? I don’t know this word.” Dmitri frowned. “What is ‘Faerie’?”

  “A Faerie! As in Faerie tales? Like Tinkerbell, only not like that either. Aagh. It’s complicated.”

  Dmitri shook his head. “I don’t know what this ‘Tinkerbell’ is. You should just tell me where you have been and—yuck! What is that?” Dmitri’s face twisted in disgust as he pointed at Brendan’s blazer pocket.

  Brendan looked down to see BLT’s head and shoulders sticking out over the edge of his pocket. The tiny woman was sniffing the air. “Is that chocolate?” she asked excitedly.

  “Chocolate cake,” Brendan told her. He looked at Dmitri, who was staring in disgust at BLT. “See, this is what I mean. This kind of Faerie!”

  “That is the biggest fly I have ever seen. Why are you carrying such a horrible insect in your pocket? And why are you talking to it?”

  Brendan was confused. A fly? Why can’t he see her?

  Before Brendan could stop her, BLT flitted out of his pocket and zoomed up onto the table. Dmitri recoiled in horror as she plunged face first into the chocolate icing on top of the cake.

  “Gross!” Dmitri jumped up from his seat and reached for a newspaper. Rolling it up, he prepared to swat BLT. Brendan leapt up and grabbed his hand.

  “Don’t, D,” he begged. “That isn’t a fly! Can’t you see her?”

  Dmitri looked at Brendan as if he were mad. “See who?”

  “He can’t see me,” BLT announced around a mouthful of cake. She rolled over onto her back in the icing and smiled drunkenly up at them. Her whole body began to glow. “He sees a big hairy fly. We protect ourselves with illusions. He sees what I want him to see.” Her eyes lit up. “This is good cake. Sweet! Sweeeeeet! ”

  She commenced a frenzied, erratic flight, buzzing here and there around the kitchen, causing Dmitri and Brendan to duck their heads to avoid a collision. She banged into cupboards and knocked over a jar full of wooden spoons by the stove. Brendan managed to reach up and snatch her out of the air. With great effort, he held BLT as she wriggled. It was like holding on to a shooting star. “How can I make him see you as you are? I need him to understand. I need him to believe me.”

  “If you let him see me, he sees all of us. When that happens, he won’t be able to go back. What’s done is done.” She licked some icing off her fingers and wriggled, desperate to spend her energy. Dmitri was watching this exchange. He looked at Brendan as if he was sure now that Brendan had lost his mind. Brendan knew he would have thought the same if he found Dmitri talking to an insect. He was torn. If he could take back everything and just be a normal person, blissfully ignorant of the secret world that had materialized over the last two days, he imagined he would do it in a heartbeat. Should he subject Dmitri to the kind of craziness that his life now contained?

  I know I’m being selfish, but I can’t do this alone. I need some help and I have no one else I can trust.

  “Brendan? Are you okay?” Dmitri asked, his face filled with concern. “You’re talking to a fly.”

  Brendan groaned.

  “All right. How do I do it?” he asked the struggling BLT.

  “Are you sure you want to?” BLT managed to ask.

  “I have no choice,” Brendan replied.

  “Okay. All you have to do is say it. But you have to say it with sincerity. Will is everything. That’s what makes the magic work.”

  Brendan let her go, and she recommenced her blazing circuit of the kitchen. Brendan turned to Dmitri and grabbed him by the shoulders. He looked into the smaller boy’s blue eyes and said earnestly, with all the honesty he could muster, “Dmitri, I need your help. I need you to see what I can see.”

  Dmitri shivered. As Brendan released him from his grasp, the smaller boy blinked and rubbed his eyes then looked up into Brendan’s face. His jaw dropped. “What …? Brendan … you look … you look different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I can’t describe it,” Dmitri said softly. “Oh. You aren’t wearing glasses. And your pimples are gone. And … you shine!” Dmitri laughed.

  BLT, her energy finally spent, fell to the tabletop exhausted.

  “It worked,” BLT said wearily. “He has the Sight now.”

  At the sound of her voice, Dmitri whipped his head around to stare at her. His mouth dropped open. He pointed at BLT. “There is a tiny person on the table.”

  “Dmitri Krosnow, meet Basra La Tir, Lesser Faerie,” Brendan made the introduction. “I call her BLT.”

  BLT hopped lightly down onto the tabletop and bowed with a flourish. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.” Dmitri stared for a moment in dumbfounded shock. BLT frowned and cocked an eyebrow. “Got any sweets?”

  Brendan swept her up in his hand. “No more sweets.”

  Brendan waited for Dmitri to run screaming, lose his mind, and freak out. He was ready to clap a hand over the boy’s screams for help. Nothing like that happened. Dmitri turned to him with shining eyes and a huge grin on his face. “My mind blows!”

  Brendan grinned back. “It blows your mind, you mean. Yeah, I know. I can hardly believe it myself.”

  Dmitri grabbed his arm and pulled Brendan down into a chair. “Tell me how this is possible. Tell me everything!”

  So, for the next hour, in the quiet kitchen, by the light of the small lamp, Brendan told his friend everything that had happened to him over the last few days. He told him of Greenleaf and Deirdre, the concert and the dream. He told him of Kim and her secret self. He told him of their flight through the Undertown, Borje and Orcadia, the Kobolds and the Silkies, and about the Swan of Liir. It felt so good to be able to tell someone everything and to share the burden. Dmitri interrupted with questions and the occasional exclamation of amazement, but mostly he watched and listened, trying to take it all in. Throughout the conversation, BLT flitted about the kitchen sampling bits of food and exploring the shelves. Brendan made sure she didn’t get hold of any sugar, which earned him a few curses and angry glares.

  At last, Brendan reached the end of his tale. Dmitri sat in silence, processing what he’d heard. Brendan could almost hear the cogs turning in his friend’s mind.

  “So, you must find this amulet or else you will be vulnerable to those who wish to hurt you?” Dmitri asked.

  “From what I understand, that’s the deal,” Brendan said. “Once I’m initiated or whatever, I’m off limits and I get certain rights. Not that she seems to respect the rules. Once I’m initiated, I get all my powers and I may be able to defend myself. At least I’ll have a fighting chance. The problem is, I have no idea where to look for this thing. It could be anywhere.”

  “They say you had it when you were a baby,” Dmitri said thoughtfully. “When your real father …”

  “Briach Morn,” Brendan offered.

  “Him. When he dropped you off in the Human world. And only another Faerie could take it from you.”

  “That’s what I understand,” Brendan agreed. He was amazed that Dmitri had just come on board this whole business. He didn’t know how he would have reacted in Dmitri’s shoes, but he doubted he would have been so calm.

  Dmitri’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh my! I understand now.”

  “What? You know what to do? Tell me!”

  “No, not exactly. But it’s something about my babka. Remember the other day when you asked me about dreams and we talked about my babka?”

  “Yeah,” Brendan confirmed.

  Dmitri’s face coloured. “I kind of downplayed that a bit. You see, it is a bit embarrassing. She is a sort of … I don’t know the exact word. She claims to be able to see things. In Polish we call such a person a vrooshka. Do you know what I mean? A psycho …”

  “She’s a psychic?”

  “That’s it! That’s the word! People, mainly Polish people, friends of ours and other people who ha
ve heard about her, come to visit her. They bring her gifts, sometimes money, and she tries to help them by using her special sight.” Dmitri grimaced. “My father doesn’t like it. He thinks it is hopelessly old-fashioned and makes us look like ignorant peasants, but the truth is we can use the extra money.”

  “Do you think she can help?”

  “It’s just that for the last little while she’s been acting a bit strangely,” Dmitri explained. “Well, she’s always been acting strangely, but she’s been oddly focused in her weirdness. Last week, she insisted that my mother take her out to the hairdresser. She wanted a perm and her hair dyed.”

  “That doesn’t sound weird to me.”

  “She lost all of her hair about five years ago.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “We got her a wig and she seemed pleased. When I asked her why she needed her hair done so suddenly, she said that she had to look pretty for His Highness.” Dmitri paused to let this sink in. “She has been babbling in her sleep, too. She keeps saying things like ‘He has been hiding.’ And last night she woke up shouting, ‘He rides beneath the waves! He rides beneath the waves!’ My parents have been talking about getting her some help. They think she’s going senile but now I see that, as impossible as it seems, she was describing what was happening to you.”

  Brendan thought about this for a moment. “Maybe I could ask her about this amulet. Maybe she knows where it is.”

  Dmitri shrugged. “I suppose it’s worth a try.”

  “I can’t wait’til morning, Dmitri,” Brendan said urgently. “Can we wake her?”

  A woman’s voice called from the next room. The voice was quiet but clear and spoke in Polish. Brendan heard his name, recognizable but heavily accented.

  Dmitri looked surprised as he translated. “That’s my babka. She’s awake. She says she’s been waiting for you, Prince Brendan. She wonders why we’re wasting time in the kitchen. What’s this Prince Brendan stuff?”

  “I have no idea. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Dmitri led Brendan through the swinging door into the sitting room. BLT flitted to Brendan’s shoulder and sat down.

  “You’re getting icing all over me,” Brendan complained. BLT answered with a prolonged belch. “Nice. Can you keep it down? You’ll wake the whole house!”

  “Don’t worry,” Dmitri reassured them. “It’s only me and Babka. Both my parents are working nights this week.”

  The living room was absolutely full of furniture. The chairs were overstuffed and comfortable, covered with woven throw rugs of many different colours. A television sat on a shelf loaded with rows of little ornaments, painted wooden dolls, and crystal animals. A spray of framed photographs of varying sizes and ages were mounted on the wall over the heavy antique couch. Lying on the couch, cocooned in a thick comforter and with a woollen shawl draped over her bald head, was Dmitri’s grandmother or babka, as he called her. A small table lamp shed golden light on her round face.

  She was obviously very old. Her face was like an advertisement for wrinkles. A thick fur of white bristles whiskered her chin, and she had a mole the size of a golf ball on her thick neck, also home to a healthy colony of thick white hairs. Despite her age, her eyes were a lively blue. When she saw Brendan, she smiled, and Brendan felt instantly at home in her presence though he’d never met her before. She had always been upstairs in bed whenever he’d visited Dmitri.

  The blue eyes were riveted on Brendan as he came into the room. She stared so intently at Brendan that he had to look away.

  “She asked us to move her down here yesterday,” Dmitri said. “She wanted to watch TV”

  Dmitri went to her and spoke gently in Polish. She smiled and beckoned Brendan closer with one hand, heavy with rings.

  “Prince Brendan,” Babka whispered softly.

  Dmitri spoke in Polish to his babka and she answered him. Dmitri translated. “She says you’re a prince. The Misplaced Prince.”

  Brendan suddenly remembered Og greeting him in the same way when he’d arrived at the Swan. What was that all about? BLT darted from Brendan’s shoulder and did a loop around the old woman’s head. She clapped her wrinkled hands and laughed with delight. She spoke excitedly in Polish to Dmitri, who looked in wonder at his grandmother. The old woman held out a hand, and BLT gently lit in her wrinkled palm. She cooed to the tiny Faerie in soothing tones. BLT responded by stretching out and going to sleep.

  “My babka says she used to speak with the Little People, the Chochlikach, she calls them, when she was a little girl in Poland. They came to visit her often.”

  Brendan moved closer, and when he was in reach, Babka grabbed his hand in a firm, moist grip. Suddenly, she was speaking fast in Polish, her eyes bright and her face serious.

  A little disturbed, Brendan asked Dmitri, “What is she saying?”

  “She says that she sees a dark future for you, but it can be changed if you find what you are seeking,” Dmitri translated. “Do you think she’s talking about the amulet?”

  “Ask her if she knows where to find the amulet,” Brendan said eagerly. He waited while Dmitri posed the question. The old lady pointed out the window where the sky was greying toward dawn. “Well? What did she say?”

  “She says that she can’t see it. A man has hidden what you seek. She holds his face in her mind’s eye,” Dmitri said.

  Brendan knelt down beside the old woman and took her hand in his own. “Can she describe this man?” Brendan waited in an agony of impatience while the question was translated. Babka started speaking, her eyes closed as she concentrated.

  Dmitri translated. “He is old. With white hair. He was tall once but now he is stooped over. He is down. No, the correct way to say it would be ‘laid low.’ He’s sick? Or hurt, maybe?”

  “Can’t she be more specific?”

  “She says it doesn’t work that way. She sees what she sees.”

  “I wish she could give us a better description. That could describe any old man at all.”

  “What can I do?” Dmitri shrugged. “It’s not easy to translate accurately.”

  “I wish we had one of those guys who do those drawings for the police, you know?”

  “That would be helpful,” Dmitri agreed. Suddenly, his face lit up. “But we do know someone who could do that!” He went to the phone and started dialling.

  “Wait a minute! Who are you calling?”

  “Harold! He could do it!”

  Brendan crossed the room in two strides, plunking his finger down on the phone to cut off the call. “No!” he said quickly. “I can’t do that! It would mean that I’d have to tell him everything. It’s bad enough that I had to tell you.”

  “Harold is your friend,” Dmitri whispered. “You can trust him.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust him,” Brendan said. “I don’t want to put any more people in danger. Orcadia isn’t exactly a fun person to have breathing down your neck, Dmitri.”

  Dmitri frowned. “The way I see it, if you don’t find this amulet soon, you won’t survive. I know that Harold wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you. We’re your friends. You have to let us help.” Dmitri lifted Brendan’s finger off the receiver. “Besides, you don’t have to tell him what’s going on. He just has to draw the picture.”

  Brendan weighed Dmitri’s argument and found that he couldn’t fault his friend’s logic. He needed to at least know what the old man looked like if he wanted to have a hope of ever finding the amulet. He looked at Dmitri and nodded. “Okay. But we don’t say anything about what’s happened to me. He just draws the picture, right?”

  “Of course,” Dmitri said gleefully and dialled Harold’s cell.

  Twenty minutes later, Harold was sitting on the sofa beside Dmitri’s babka, his tablet open and his charcoal in hand. He’d been awake when Dmitri had called, sitting up waiting to draw the sunrise from his back balcony. He’d ridden his bike over right away when he heard that Brendan was okay and he needed help.

  The old woman
had sat patiently on the sofa under her blankets while they were waiting for Harold. Her eyes glowed with excitement. She chatted quietly with BLT, giggling like a little girl.

  “You speak Polish?” Brendan asked the little Faerie.

  “Sure,” BLT said. “It’s a fun language, very expressive. Lots of interesting swear words.”

  Brendan had insisted that BLT hide in his pocket when Harold arrived. A giant fly would probably be hard to explain.

  “Brendan,” Harold said when he came into the living room. “Dude, you’re okay! I was worried. I mean, after Chester Dallaire disappeared, I thought maybe there was some kidnapping ring operating in town or something.”

  At the mention of Chester, Brendan felt a cold lump of guilt in his gut. He would have to take care of that if he made it through this in one piece. “No, I’m fine. But I need your help.”

  Harold listened as they detailed what they needed him to do. When asked if he could draw a composite sketch from Dmitri’s instructions, he shrugged and said, “I can try. I’ve never really done it before although I do a lot of portrait work … but that’s mostly of my mum’s friends’ pets.”

  “Great!” Brendan groaned. “This will never work.”

  “Let’s try,” Dmitri insisted. “Babka?”

  “Tak?” Babka asked.

  So, for the next forty minutes as the sky turned from black to grey, Dmitri tried to translate his babka’s description of the man she saw in her vision. Harold went through a whole pad of sketch paper. The job wasn’t made any easier by the fact that Babka’s eyesight wasn’t the best. Each time Harold held up his work for her to critique, she would squint and shake her head. Harold would then begin again, scratching and smudging with his charcoal, trying to get the right combination of strokes that would satisfy Babka’s inner eye. Brendan and Dmitri watched over Harold’s shoulder as he worked.

  Finally, Babka announced that she was satisfied. The picture was as accurate as she could make it. The old woman was obviously exhausted.