by Luna Lindsey
“Sunday…”
And they were most susceptible to…
“Monday…”
Boxwood.
Jina smelled the stench from the hedge right next to her. She hated the things, a common shrub with tiny round leaves, but smelly as hell. She loved them now.
She grasped a branch and ripped off a sprig. She quickly blessed it with as much belief as she could muster, then she thrust it in front of his face, making up a rhyme on the spot.
Evil faerie, go away,
Come again another day.
Shit, a bad word choice. It was the only rhyme she could think of on short notice.
Scarf stopped and frowned.
That’s it Scarf, wear a frown,
And while you’re at it, put that down.
She motioned towards her backpack with the sprig. He just laughed. For a moment, she thought it wasn’t enough to keep him away, either, but as she backed up, he stayed put.
When she reached her car, she struggled to keep the boxwood aloft while searching for her spare key hidden under the driver’s side door. The tiny magnetic box came away, covered in road grime. She slid it open and managed not to drop the key.
Scarf did not advance, but he kept that same creepy grin frozen in place.
Her hands shook as she unlocked the door. She locked it behind her and started the engine, pulling out of her parking place. Tension fled as she watched him get smaller in her rearview mirror. He just stood there holding her bag.
Jina had but one option, though it scared her.
She considered couch surfing at Brandon’s, or calling up Trey; neither of those would work when she had nothing but a sword to protect her. Hollis had shown her how to use it, a little. But she hadn’t practiced.
Normally after a “breakup”, she’d go to Sandy’s. That was obviously out. Thinking about it brought tears to her eyes.
She’d enabled Sandy to sink deeper and deeper into alcoholism and hate. By making it okay, Jina never made it not okay. She should have walked out long before it came to this. It was the same with her mother. The whole time, Jina thought she’d had no choice, no one else to help protect her from the fae, and no one to provide the leadership to protect others from them.
But she did have a choice–
Jina swerved, and narrowly missed hitting someone.
She looked back and Pogswoth waved at her from the middle of the street.
“Fuck,” she whispered. She hooked the twig of boxwood over the rearview mirror. It didn’t keep him from appearing in the middle of the street again.
Jina’s hands shook against the wheel as she locked on and accelerated. He disappeared into a puddle just before she hit him
A couple more blocks to the freeway, a couple more blocks. She risked a moment to turn behind her to grab the katana from the floor and set it on the passenger’s seat.
Jett might be the unknown, but she would never have allowed Ezra to die. She would have taken care of him and shown him how to use his power to help, not harm. If Jina wanted someone to help her protect the innocent, Jett had to be a better ally.
She slammed the accelerator and took it up to seventy on the onramp. Scarf’s face appeared in the rearview mirror. But he wasn’t in the backseat. She stuck the boxwood on the dash, ripped the mirror off, and threw it out the window, rolling it back up quickly.
When he appeared in the side mirror, she ignored him. She started rehearsing what she would say to Jett.
CHAPTER 41
*
THE CHAINS BURNED. Ezra bore it as well as he could. He’d borne cold winters, long hunger, loneliness, rejection… surely he could bear this… Just until they got the demon out of him. If it didn’t work, he’d just be back on the street again, looking for another purpose.
And if he could trust these crazy people, surely he could trust Lady Jett.
He’d seen his bracelet hanging from the man’s belt. He hoped they would give it back to him when this was over. When the demon was gone, would he still like it? How much of him would be the same, and how much would change? He hoped the demon would take away all the bad parts, and leave the good. Which meant he’d still love his bracelet. And then he’d be normal again, like everyone else.
The women started chanting. He wondered who they were. Not nuns. And not ministers; only men could be ministers, he thought. They were more like witches, especially now with the incense and chants and the big design on the floor.
Ezra felt something slither into his mind. It was the woman with the old accent. She started rooting around, then up and down his spine. He felt her touch his inner core.
The red haired lady, Sandy, she said his name, his true name, and he convulsed.
How did she know it? Where did she find his name?
She pronounced it three times, commanding it to go… as if the name was the demon, and the demon was the name. Each time she said it, he felt sicker. Something wasn’t right. She said the nykk would be unhappy about being cast out, so that was probably it. But his name was him, and he was his name.
He struggled with all his great strength. The iron chains sapped his energy, made him weak.
He felt his soul, his own soul, begin to flee. It tried to rise up, to leave his physical form, while the iron held him fast. The pain grew more intense. He had been commanded to leave, yet he could not leave!
Ezra struggled against the chains, he raged, he screamed. And she merely continued to chant as if she were giving Latin mass in an old church.
It was then he realized that this demon, this nykk, it wasn’t separate. It was not an invader. It was him. If she persisted, he would die.
“Please,” he begged. “I changed my mind.” He pleaded with her. He looked to the woman with the accent, and pleaded with her. “It’s killing me! That’s my spirit you’re looking at. That’s me. Just let me go. I won’t do anything wrong, I swear.”
She just kept her slimy grip on his soul, letting the power of the ritual rip it up from its roots like a vital organ being yanked out.
Then he looked at Jina behind him. She was the nice one. She’d played him a song. She didn’t want to kill him, he knew it. “Please, don’t let her take my spirit away.”
He could tell from her eyes and her sudden movement towards him that he convinced her.
Too late. It was over. With a click, the shackles opened up. Once freed, his soul floated upwards on the smoke of the incense.
Time stood still as his life flashed before his eyes. Not just Ezra’s life, the short existence of the misunderstood runaway Christian boy, but the much longer life of Orvenoldsted, the troll from Noregr. He remembered a time before the Vikings, back to his earliest memories as a god among the Fosna people, with their flint spears and hide-covered boats.
As his spirit rose through the air, he rode the smoke, compelled toward the ceiling by Sandy’s command. He looked down, and there, hanging from the belt of the white-haired man, was his bracelet. On it, the red ruby earring sparkled at him, calling to him with its magic.
A tendril of incense curled around close to the ruby. He clung to the smoke as it curled across the ceiling and settled down the wall, until he could touch the stone and call to her.
He vanished into ruby depths and found himself in a cave lit by a single torch. Lady Jett knelt naked at the feet of a statue. Praying?
That’s when he recognized her. One of the Alfar. His brothers on the island across the sea would have called her one of the Tuatha De Danann. She was as old as he, and noble in her own right, just as he had been. Divine in her own right too, as he had once been, oh so many lifetimes ago.
He nearly forgot himself, lost in thought, reviewing his timthreall as Ezra, looking for meaning and finding none. In this life, he had bought the ancient lie again, thinking himself a demon. He looked down at his massive, clawed hands, recognizing himself as he had the Lady.
Fae.
He curled his fingers into fists, settling into himself, a feeling both str
ange and familiar. Then realized how huge he was, at how the rock and dirt of the ceiling pushed down on him. He was forced to sit.
The Lady Jett bowed, and he remembered her, the great poet, prophetess, and sorceress.
He dipped his head to her, as an equal. “Bé Chuille.”
“Orven?” she said, dipping her knee. “Céad míle beannachta. I remember you, though it was as many years ago as it was miles away.”
“One hundred thousand blessings to you, Lady. Yet we spoke just last week. I am Ezra.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “Something has happened to end that timthreall. You could have summoned me, and saved yourself.”
“I did not remember you, nor did I trust you, and because of that, I have been banished from my blaosc. From all blaosc.” Orven looked down at his hands. “And now I shall never build my masterpiece. Perhaps it was never meant to exist.”
Jett inhaled sharply. “Who did this?”
“Fiagai, I think. They thought I was demon possessed. The old story, retold. I could have prevented the seeds of the witch hunts, so long ago. I tried to stop them.” Orven stared up at the ceiling, lost in the distant past. Jett’s hand on his arm brought him back.
“Orven, which fiagai? Was her name Sandy? Was Jina there?”
Orven nodded slowly, and stared at his hands.
Lady Jett became all in a rage.
“It has started again,” she said coolly. “The Inquisition, the murder, the torture, the injustice. I failed to protect you. I cannot protect any of you.”
She paced back and forth beside the little pool. Earthworms followed in her wake, and she trampled them underfoot.
Orven watched the water drip peacefully from the stalactite, and moved towards it.
“Stay here. I am sick of letting the acorn fall where it may,” she continued. “They’re not even Christians this time. Or scientists or skeptics or doctors of philosophy. Just people who have nothing better to do, who think this is all some kind of video game!”
Orven drew circles in the dirt. “I wish you would stop yelling.”
“They killed you. Where is your anger? You have to help me fight them!”
Orven just shook his head. “I have already forgiven them. Timthrealls end, blaoscs die, over and over again. They ended my lives’ work, by binding me outside, but perhaps… it is just as well.”
“It is not just as well. We let magic die. We let it ebb; we let the places of power erode. We let humanity’s beliefs refocus on Yahweh, and then on iron, cold science, and intentional destruction of wild places. What Christianity failed to obliterate, skepticism finished off.”
He just wanted her to stop shouting.
Then he got his wish. Far above, on the surface, he heard a loud pounding on the door, followed by a voice, a female voice, screaming to be let in.
Jett stopped mid-sentence, her face frozen.
“She’s here,” she whispered. “Why did she come here?”
Orven shifted his weight, and pivoted to a knee. “Be light with her,” he said. “She did her best.”
“Jina? She is the most dangerous of all of them.”
“No,” Orven said. “She is more like good Father Sigurd than King Olaf.”
“I find that as likely as rocks with feathers,” Jett said.
“And yet rocks may fly,” Orven replied, stepping into the pool.
“No, don’t go,” she said.
Orven cocked his head. “You cannot command me. I am your equal.”
Jett nodded. “It is so.”
“I will return, once you are calm,” he said. “If for nothing else but to… remember.”
She smiled, only a little. “Please do,” she said.
Without another word, Orven disappeared down the drop that slid from the tip of the stalactite and into the water. He traveled the underground channels, until he found a fey line. From there he navigated the network of old elfin roads and faerie furrows until he found his old home.
The sun shone here in Noregr. It shimmered on the ancient stones, igniting the primordial splendor of the place. Mossy walls were all that remained of the grandest building in all of Europe, rivaling even the great cathedral Notre Dame built three centuries later. The spires had once risen above the very pines, the windows shone with the radiance of diamonds, the arches pointed to the sky, the carvings bespoke holy things.
Being in its presence had been like standing before heaven. Or Valhalla.
Wearily, he leaned against the damp stones. After each timthreall he returned, and the old cathedral seemed a little more decayed. More of the stones had fallen to the ground, the wind and weather etched deeper scars in the surface of those few which remained standing.
In the days of stone, Orven had been born as a god in this very grove, created by the beliefs of his people. Millennia later, the bronze people continued to worship him, though they created new gods, more important gods, in other groves.
As time changed, so did culture, and the new gods rose to greater and greater power, fueled by the wishes, prayers, and sacrifices of their people. Over the centuries, the stories changed, and so did Orven. Yet the magic of the ancient people still dripped from the trees, and Orven was content to lie in the sun all day like a cat.
Then stories came from deeper in the mainland. Rome had converted to a dramatic new religion that did not tolerate the old gods, and demanded whole-hearted conversion to the three-as-one god. They called themselves Christians.
Land by land, they converted people at the point of a blade. The old ways, Orven’s ways, were being struck down, branded as evil, outlawed. The spirits of the earth were renamed; what once were nymphs, pucks, alphs, and sylphs were now called demons and devils. Orven’s brothers, the animated essences of nature, were combined into the image of a new demon god Lucifer, with the hoofed feet of a satyr and the horns of Pan, the personality of trickster Loki, and ruler over all the vile minions of hell.
Orven’s people in the northlands still worshipped Wodan and Thor and hoped for an afterlife in Valhalla. Those few Christians in Noregr were peaceful, yet all fae lived in fear of the cross, the symbol that one day, their lives and beloved people would be destroyed.
Orven recalled the day he returned to his grove and heard his first Christian prayer. He followed its toradh until he found a priest, on his knees, with an old stump, Orven’s table, for an altar.
Orven recoiled from the priest’s vestments and his crossed staff. The day of destruction had finally come.
Yet this priest prayed to save people, not from sin and devils, but from the coming tide of violence. Orven listened as this man implored his god for help. He wished to convert the Norse people by peaceful means. If he could build a cathedral like Valhalla, a magnificent heaven to prove his God’s power by its grandeur, then perhaps everyone would be spared the power of man’s sword.
He prayed to his god to find the funds and men to build such a glorious testament.
Orven felt like an angel then, coming to answer his prayer. He had strong arms and craftsman skills. He could build it, if he but had the design.
When the troll stepped into the clearing, Father Sigurd was as terrified as Orven had been when he first saw this Roman Priest in his holy grove. But Orven’s voice had ruled both men and fae, and so he persuaded the priest to be still.
“I have been sent by the gods,” Orven said, and Father Sigurd believed him.
The priest held no grudge against the gods of old. Orven suggested his cathedral display both the symbols of the new god and the carved images of the old gods, lest they be forgotten, and lest faekind wither and die.
The two quickly reached agreement, and Orven swore before all gods that he would finish the cathedral exactly as the priest designed. In return, Father Sigurd swore that neither he, nor the church, would harm the Noregr faeries or profane the names of the beloved gods. Orven sealed it with a geas to ensure this fate.
With a stack of parchment, Father Sigurd designed
a cathedral so expansive, he worried Orven would not be able to accomplish it.
But stone by stone, Orven hefted, stacked, and carved, until a decade passed, two, then three. People came from miles around to watch the cathedral reach slowly toward the sky. They were all eager to worship there, for it was the largest, most ornate, most lovely structure then known to man.
The geas held the structure upright, until the day of completion when it would fully set, much like clay baked in a kiln.
Orven was immortal, but good Father Sigurd began to age. The Priests of Rome began to convert the Noregr kings, passionate mobs of converted Vikings threatened and bullied their pagan neighbors, and the fae became fearful. Orven rushed to complete the geas and seal the Roman Catholic Church forever in its magic.
One morning, Father Sigurd died.
All that remained undone was the steeple. By now King Olaf, the most powerful of the Noregr kings, had converted. He united the smaller Norse kingdoms, but each time he tried to outlaw the old religion or commit violence in Christ’s name, he found he could not speak. Such was the power of the geas.
King Olaf wanted the mighty cathedral for his own. So he paid a gyoja, a priestess of Wodan, who promised she could rid the land of the troll.
She knew Orven’s true name as Sandy and Jina had. It had been passed down in the gyoja’s family for generations, from the time when her ancestor-priests spoke it in reverence in that very grove.
For days, she stood beneath the cathedral, waiting for Orven to finish the last spire, which stretched like a grasping arm to the sky, until Orven began to place the last tile on the steeple. She spoke his name in a curse and turned him into stone.
The tile slid down the roof, cracked into pieces on a buttress below, and scattered across the green forest floor.
The geas broke with it. Orven could not complete the promised cathedral, so Olaf was free to send troops against the heathens, imprison them, and drown them in the rising tide, all to the contenting of his vile heart.
Orven remembered that last tile. He remembered the feel of it in his hands, heavy black slate, the whorls and layers of old stone. Had he placed it, his beloved building would have stood for ten-thousand years. But when the geas broke, so did the spell, and like a keystone, the building could not stand without it. The weight of Orven’s petrified body pressed down on the steeple, which leaned sideways against the center beam from above, which shifted all the beams and buttresses of the side wings and remote hallways. A carving of Yggdrasil grew in the main chapel, its branches supporting all the roofs, its roots holding fast the walls to the floor. When the beams slid, the tree swayed. It toppled onto the crucifix, which crashed into the statue of Wodan.