Emerald City Dreamer

by Luna Lindsey

  None loitered – they all crept forward, shambling or hopping along. A winged one flew towards Sandy’s face, and she swung wide, catching it in midair and slicing it in two.

  She no longer tried to identify and classify. Each one was an enemy, a soldier in that elf-woman’s declared war, and Sandy’s only aim was to kill them all.

  She stepped out on the porch and began slashing, with Gretel and Hollis behind.

  At first, Sandy’s aim was poor, but Hollis seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He’d sliced through four of them in the time it took Sandy to chase down one.

  Sandy took heart from his example. Boldness counted for more than skill here, especially when the faeries seemed unwilling to run.

  A scrawny little lutin scampered up to her, his cane held high like a baseball bat, his long white beard dragging along the ground. He couldn’t be any taller than two-feet high. With a howl of rage, Sandy used her sword like a golf club and sent his glamour-ridden head rolling across the grass.

  The fear dearg who attacked her next looked much like the lutin, with the same red outfit and long beard. Only he was larger, and his teeth were sharp and dripping with fresh blood. He received the same quick fate.

  Were they stupid? It didn’t matter. They kept coming, and the first dozen fell, only to be replaced by more.

  After a while even Gretel shared the same gusto, hollering in the glee of battle, cutting down her foes with confidence.

  “That elf was a fool!” Sandy shouted as the last faerie fell. “Did she really think her so-called army could match our strength? We are hunters! We have the power of iron, and they are nothing but flimsy dreams. Ideas, glimmers of imagination, forgotten characters from old storybooks that aren’t even read by children anymore!”

  Sandy stood on the lawn grinning, hand on her hip, surveying the damage.

  They were all dead, every one. “They can’t hurt us,” Sandy said, sighing with exhaustion. “Not anymore.”

  “There are more coming,” Gretel said, motioning her head down the street.

  “Good,” Sandy replied. “Let them come.” She lowered her stance to mirror Hollis. He obviously knew how to fight.

  “Shit,” Gretel said, sending a shiver down Sandy’s spine.

  A police car slowly rolled up the street. She lowered her weapon, and gestured to the others to do the same.

  The officer parked the car in the middle of the street and got out.

  “Put your weapons down, now!” he shouted, resting his hand on the butt of his holstered gun.

  They all nodded and complied, dropping the swords to the ground with a clatter.

  “I got a noise complaint. What’s going on here?”

  Sandy stammered, but Hollis spoke up, saving her. “Sorry, Officer. These swords are perfectly legal. We’re all members of the SCA. We are on our own private property, doing a little practice. Can I remove my wallet and show you my membership card?”

  The policeman relaxed. “Yes. Do it slowly.”

  Sandy was surprised to see he actually had an SCA card. The officer glanced at it, and then looked the three up and down. “Shouldn’t you kids be wearing knight clothes or something?”

  Sandy bristled when he called her a kid, and she started to open her mouth but Hollis got there first.

  “Not when we practice,” Hollis explained. “Too hot. T-shirts are more comfy. Listen, we got a little carried away playing our parts. We’ll try to keep it down.”

  “See that you do. And I’m not sure it’s safe, you guys practicing on the front lawn like this. Take it to the backyard.”

  The back. There were probably more faeries back there.

  “Of course, Officer,” Sandy said.

  “See that I don’t get called again. I have more important things to worry about than rich geeks wasting time with their stupid fantasies.”

  He got back into the car and drove away.

  Sandy heard a chuckle coming from the gutter over her porch, and then a whole chorus of snickers, chitters, twitters, and guffaws all around her. Like Cheshire, their images slowly faded into view.

  “Let’s do as the officer said,” Hollis announced. “Let’s take this out back.” He opened the front door for Sandy and Gretel. Once inside, he tossed his sword on the ground, scratching the hardwood floor. “And while we’re in here, let’s pick up some heavier ordnance.”

  “Yeah!” Sandy shouted.

  Gretel grinned. “You mean guns?”

  “Of course I mean guns, you hippy,” Hollis bellowed. “Come on.”

  Gretel led the charge down to the armory.

  “What about the police?” Sandy asked. “Won’t guns be a little… loud?”

  “Worry not. I’ve been working on a little something…” Hollis turned on the light and went to the gun rack. He tossed Gretel a heavy-looking black rifle. Or was it a shotgun? Sandy didn’t know the first thing…

  Hollis shoved one into her hands. It was heavy. And cold.

  “How is this not going to be loud?”

  “They’re all air guns.”

  “Weak,” Sandy said.

  “Quiet,” Hollis replied. “Gretel’s is a Gamo Viper Express shotgun, altered with a nitrogen piston, iron shot, and a modified barrel to widen the spread. But that beauty is not as good as these two. I made them myself, custom.”

  The gun Sandy held didn’t look handmade, although she wasn’t sure she could tell the difference. It also looked like it might be older than Hollis, but she didn’t argue with him. He led them out of the armory to some kind of air compressor in the corner of the lab.

  “So you don’t have to hand pump it,” Hollis said, attaching the tip of his gun to the compressor and turning it on. It was a strange juxtaposition, the wood stock of the gun against the shiny metal tank. He rambled as it loaded.

  “These are full-sized shotguns,” he said, “and run entirely on air. With the reinforced barrels, these can fire shot at nearly 800fps, yet quietly as an electric stapler. The neighbors will think we’ve traded in our SCA hobby for a little remodeling.”

  Sandy hefted hers between her hands, impressed.

  “I want one of those,” Gretel said, holding out her inferior gun.

  “Yours may be smaller,” Hollis said, “but it’s more powerful. With the nitro piston, the iron will fly at close to 1100 fps, just under the speed of sound. I calibrated it that way to make it the most powerful quiet gun on earth.”

  Gretel seemed pleased to hear this.

  With Sandy’s gun filled and loaded, they headed out back where a high brick wall blocked their neighbors’ view. The backyard was crawling with fae who seemed eager to join their dead kin from the front.

  From the porch, Gretel was the first to take aim and fire. She hit her target right in the center of his grisly, greasy forehead.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Gretel said bashfully before she reloaded and aimed again.

  Sandy brought the gun to her shoulder and brushed her finger against the trigger.

  “Watch the recoil,” Hollis said, whipping his weapon up, taking aim, and blasting a bloody hole in the middle of a twiggy spriggan.

  Sandy focused on what looked like a rotting horse with a skeleton head. A hellish puca or kelpie. With a flick of her finger, it was dead.

  And so was the next one, and the next one. Their ethereal bodies began to pile up, dissolving into a faded blue mist that covered the ground.

  Jett could send all the faeries from hell, and Sandy would kill every single one.

  CHAPTER 45

  *

  IT HAD TO BE FOUR in the morning by now. Maybe later. Jina shoveled Chinese takeout into her mouth. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.

  She avoided eating the faerie food. Her resolve strengthened when she learned that Pete made almost everything in this house from scratch. Even the junk food.

  But this meal came from Dragon Lotus Delivery. She’d watched the man bring the white containers right up to the door. It would hav
e to be good enough.

  Jett had seen into her mind, had learned of the horrors she’d experienced in Haun’s realm. Her touch had been like a wave that rushed in and took bits of driftwood, shells, and half-dead jellyfish out to sea. Somehow, Jett had seen Jina’s fears in that flotsam, and it had almost saved her.

  At that same moment, like a half-dead jellyfish, Jina found herself sinking to the bottom of that sea, and there she had glimpsed Jett’s own hidden fears. They unfolded like clairvoyant underwater visions.

  She watched as Jett’s loved ones and brugh were snatched away from her – Fiz, Pete, Ramón, Ivy, Kenny. There were hundreds of empty spaces, as if Jett had room to protect more, but there were no more to be had. Each missing space felt to Jett like a missing tooth.

  She had seen glimpses of Sandy, her face twisted in hate; the enemy, the other, throwing a match onto the brugh, and the house lighting up like a pile of newspapers.

  And Jina had seen three different versions of herself: As a hunter, beside Sandy, full of destruction; as a lover fair, in old-style clothing and harp in hand, covered in blood; and as a powerful sorceress, beckoning forth, ever weaving a spell of control that Jett fought off with all her might.

  Were all these visions true reflections of Jett’s fear? What power could Jina possibly have over a faerie princess?

  The room seemed to grow chilly, though no one else seemed to notice. It was the middle of the night, and the thermostat had probably turned off hours ago.

  Ivy guarded her, though Jina hardly needed guarding. There were plenty enough eyes watching her from the dark recesses of the house. This woman was a gaunt stick figure, a skeleton with skin, her eyes hollow dark patches. She tapped her fingertips against the giant oak table. Jina tried to ignore her.

  She found her phone was working now. Despite the hour, well past five, she texted Trey to let him know where she was so he wouldn’t worry and call Sandy. The last thing she needed was Sandy storming the gates, leaving a bloody mayhem in her wake.

  Jina had no thoughts of running. She could likely contrive some spell and catch Ivy unawares, but Jett’s magic would likely thwart her as promised. Besides, Jett didn’t seem likely to hurt her, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  The room grew colder until her sweater was no longer enough. Under Ivy’s suspicious eye, she got up to get a blanket she saw folded in the laundry pile.

  She heard the stairs creak and smiled to see Fiz coming down.

  “The sun has risen,” he announced. “And so have I, from my brief nap, to take over Ivy’s watch. Not that a fair lady such as the lovely Jina Harper would try anything requiring a watchman.”

  Jina glanced out the window, expecting to see some glimmer of dawn, but what little of the sky she could see was midnight.

  Ivy scowled as she took her exit. “Don’t think Fiz will let you get away with anything,” she said, her voice steel wool whispering on gravel.

  Fiz bowed low again and offered Jina a hand. “Care to take a stroll around the grounds, fair lady? I will show you all the delightful joys of the brugh, and what to beware.”

  She dipped her head. She supposed that’s what a fair lady was supposed to do. Or maybe curtsey. “Indeed,” she said, playing along, grasping his fingertips. They were soft and slightly fuzzy. She kept the blanket close around her and went up the stairs. “If you’re going to show me around, perhaps we could start with the thermostat?”

  Fiz looked surprised. “It is quite warm in here. Do you tend toward the cold side?”

  “Not usually,” Jina said, hesitant.

  Pogswoth’s final words came back to her. “When you said the sun has risen, just a minute ago, did you mean the sun had literally risen?”

  Fiz stepped over to the kitchen window and pulled back a wispy curtain. “And not a cloud in the sky.”

  Jina got goose bumps as she realized the blanket wasn’t really helping to keep her warm.

  “Are you alright, fair dreamer?”

  Jina nodded. “I’ll be fine.” Jett would be back soon. If there was any faerie magic going on here, she would know what to do.

  Fiz did not believe her, but began by proudly showing her the kitchen. He explained everything to her as if she were moving in. She learned where the cups, plates, and silverware went. She learned the chore rotation, and how to deal with the nykks who lived here like cats. And how to deal with transient nykks who dropped in for unannounced visits. Shoes off in the house, coats on the rack, always clean up after yourself, don’t touch other people’s stuff without permission or eat labeled food.

  The vine in the living room was actually a lesser dryad named Bart. The tree in the kitchen wasn’t quite substantial enough to have a name or be a dryad. Not yet.

  As she went through each room, she felt a little colder. She found that if she fidgeted, she could generate a little more body heat. She found herself wishing Jett would be home soon.

  The upstairs hallway looked more like a forest path in a Disney film, full of floating fireflies. The air felt misty and the floor was pleasantly damp. It felt a little warmer here. Perhaps it was the humidity.

  The hallway seemed a lot longer than it should have been, and there seemed to be two or three more rooms than ought to fit into this kind of house. This house definitely seemed bigger on the inside.

  The statue in the middle of the hall winked at her. Jina halted.

  “Pay it no mind,” Fiz said, laying a comforting hand on Jina’s shoulder. “It does that, but it is harmless enough. We bought it from Gargoyles.”

  Jina reached out and touched its cold stone. “None of their statues ever winked at me before.”

  “Ah,” Fiz said. “They don’t just sell plaster things to mortals. Sometimes they get merchandise that isn’t exactly… dead.”

  Jina raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  Fiz smiled. “There are so many places in the city that are not what they seem.”

  All the doors on this level were closed, and Fiz didn’t show her into anyone’s personal rooms, but one door was ajar, and the walls inside were covered with lit candles.

  At the end of the hall, Fiz opened a door to a small room looking not much different than the hall forest. Tree branches curved up one wall and curled around the ceiling in a canopy. There might have once been a window, in a spot where there was an indentation covered in leaves. The bed, probably an old twin mattress in reality, was carved into the side of the tree, and cushioned in moss. An open flower provided light like a reading lamp.

  “We were saving this room for Ezra,” Fiz said. “But he never called. You may have it, if you wish.”

  At the mention of his name, the magic left the room. Now it only seemed gloomy and sad. It could have been his, if he were still alive. “I’d rather sleep on the floor someplace,” Jina said. “This place is… It wouldn’t be right.” She turned and headed down the stairs. She wasn’t planning on sleeping any time soon, anyway. “Can I get some hot chocolate? Coffee maybe?”

  “But of course.”

  In the kitchen, Fiz started to fumble with the coffee grinder, but Jina swept in. If she kept moving, maybe she could keep warm. She drank it black as soon as it came dripping out of the machine, letting the hot soak into her muscles and fight off her fatigue. She poured another cup.

  Through it all, Fiz tried joking with her, chatting with her, and eventually she shook the ghost of Ezra and he succeeded in distracting her from worrying about her chill. He suggested she was merely coming down with the flu. She knew better.

  Jina wandered out onto the porch to smoke, with Fiz close at her side. She gazed at the sidewalk, knowing it wasn’t freedom.

  After a while, she tried to call Sandy. Fiz frowned, but Jina wasn’t able to reach her anyway. She hoped Sandy was comfortably asleep in her huge warm bed. Somehow she doubted it.

  When she’d had too much coffee, she switched to hot chocolate and turned on the TV in the living room, hoping to find the sun there. She found it, on the morn
ing news, but only in recorded footage. When a live broadcast came on about a shooting at a convenience store, she saw only night, even though the timestamp read 7:38am.

  Jett came in a few moments later. Jina muted the TV. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but Jett flowed in and wrapped her arms warmly around Jina, as if nothing had happened.

  “Mo bláth beag,” she said sweetly.

  “What have you done to Sandy?” Jina asked, unable to keep the accusation out of her tone.

  Jett stood back up and said almost cheerfully, “Her riches shall diminish, as shall her larder, and all the fae in the land will hunger for her. I have left my curse at her doorstep, and I, myself, will trouble her no more.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Jina said.

  Jett forced a short laugh, almost a bark. “Surely the ferocious archer can defend herself against a mere doe,” she said, tilting her head. “For as long as it takes.”

  “Sandy is not as strong as you think she is,” Jina whispered. “She’s not some medieval Frumentarii with the power of Church and State to back her.”

  Jett’s stance took on an air of finality. “I have done what I have done, and I wash my hands of it.”

  Jina shivered and drew the blanket closer around her neck. “What I went through, she got it worse…”

  “No more.”

  “There’s something else. Not to do with Sandy.”

  Jett sat back down. “Whatever is troubling my little flower? Name it, and I will do what is in my power to bring you a sliver of cheer.”

  “The sun never came up today.”

  Jett laughed, her voice like innocent silver bells. “Of course it did.”

  “Not for me.”

  Jett looked at Jina and her face grew serious. “The korrigan?” Her voice trailed off.

  “He said night would be as day. But it’s worse than that. I can’t seem to get warm.”

  “Impossible.” Jett pursed her lips. “I protected you Jina, from the day I fell in love with you. I claimed you with an elf-shot, marking you as mine and protecting you from all others.”

  Jina rubbed her eyes, emotionally drained, yet full of dread. “I had an amulet in the Order. You saw it, once. It protected me from all glamouring: his… and yours.”