by Jeffrey Cook
“Sorry. Bought a painting, and then there was … that guy.”
“Yeah,” Lani said. “It's interesting and all. But let's go get food, okay?"
"Sure. Where's Ashling?" Megan looked at the bazaar-like area up ahead and wondered if there was the lamp exchange the pixie had mentioned.
The group started towards the bigger tents, with the promised curry. "She was with us for a little bit. Then she said she needed to check something out. I'm sure she'll be right..."
There was a loud squawking ahead, accompanied by a shout. Megan had by this point learned just enough Gaelic to wonder if Ashling even knew the target's mother.
Chapter 7: Collector
Megan's question was answered immediately as she managed to parse the next string of shrill words floating over the market, which called into question whether the target ever had a mother. When the screaming and cawing didn't stop, Megan took off alongside Lani, just behind Cassia and Justin, already running in the direction of the pixie's voice.
“That last part sounded different,” Megan called to Lani as they darted towards the outbursts.
“That's because she switched to German.”
“Well, it does make better heavy metal for a reason,” Megan conceded breathlessly before another, even harsher string of sounds followed. When Lani winced, Megan asked, “What?”
“That was really vicious in Klingon.”
“Of course you speak Klingon.”
They emerged from a row of vendors in time to see a tall, auburn-haired man shoving people out of his way as he ran. Ashling, astride the Count, was in hot pursuit from above. That was all the inspiration it took for Cassia to join in, racing after the man, knocking over a couple of people just as they were getting up. After sharing a glance, and trying to be more cautious of those around, the three teens took off after them.
The man knocked over a pot of SoUp—and its vendor with it. Some of the ingredients scrambled away on varying numbers of limbs. Recovering his balance, he evaded a dive from the crow-mounted pixie and took off running again.
When the Count next dove—and the man appeared ready to avoid the bird—Ashling leapt off the crow in flight, managing to catch on to one of the pouches at his belt. Noticing the added weight and movement, the man alternately tried grabbing for her, or shoving her away.
Ashling kept darting about and finding handholds, evading his grip. He finally caught hold of the pixie by one leg, pulling her away. Something came away from his pouch in her hands as he tried to hold on.
Cassia's war cry carrying over the crowd alerted him, and instead of holding on or wrestling for whatever it was, he flung the pixie away towards the satyress. Catching Ashling took only a moment, but it was long enough for him to reach, and duck down another row, out of Megan's sight.
Megan and Lani tried to dodge their away around the crowd enough to reach the others. They caught up with Justin first, then, a short time later, with Cassia, Ashling, and the Count trying to make their way through a dense crowd. They finally regrouped.
"I had him! I had him!" the pixie shouted. "We need to keep looking!"
"Ashling, he's gone. We're not going to find him in that crowd, with all those tents, but we'll keep an eye out. Who is that?"
“The Butterfly Collector,” Ashling snarled.
"You're sure?" Lani asked, horrified, and staring down the row like she might pick him out of the crowd somehow. Megan, in contrast, was trying not to stare at Ashling's sliced wings.
"I'm going to remember that face. And those hands holding cold iron. And that voice—the poxy bastard went on and on 'til the Count got to me. It's him.” Ashling was shaking as she tried to hoist herself back on the Count's back.
“Wow,” Megan said, still trying not to look right at the wings. “You don't think he brought cold iron here, do you?”
“He'd have to really be a moron,” said Cassia. “This crowd would tear him to pieces. Orlaith exiled her own nephew for trying to duel with cold iron once. A mortal, at the Goblin Market..." Cassia trailed off, shaking her horned head, but the implications were clear.
“If this guy really is who Ashling says he is—” Lani began.
"He is," Ashling interjected, scowling.
“Caw.”
“You see? The Count never forgets a face—”
“Caw.”
“—or a terribly pretentious lapel pin. Seriously, a bronze and ivory bull? That is downright bull—”
“Caw.”
“Yeah.”
Lani had stood there, mouth still open, waiting to no longer be interrupted. "—then maybe we should see if there's any way to find him."
"And tear his wings off," Ashling added.
"Pretty sure he doesn't have wings,” Justin said.
Ashling's scowl just grew more intense. "Arms or legs will do fine, then. Though, really, why stop at 'or'? Let's go with 'and' instead."
“Caw.”
“You said it, Count.” Ashling's face was getting rather disturbingly gleeful.
Megan raised an eyebrow. “The Count isn't normally real thirsty for non-carrion blood.”
“You don't normally see him given cause,” Ashling said. “Nobody holds grudges like a crow. Nobody.”
A nod of a beak seemed to affirm this.
Megan blinked. “I guess I'll take your word.”
Lani interrupted, "So, yeah. Ashling's clearly got a vested interest in looking into the matter.”
Cassia handed Ashling what seemed to be a tiny pink headgear constructed out of part of a flower. Ashling accepted it, raised it to her mouth, and took a bite. She sighed loudly. “Not even eating a hat is going to calm me down.” But she had another bite anyway.
“She pulled this off of him,” Cassia said, holding up a large scrap of paper. “Had to keep her from wrapping herself up.” The paper was definitely bigger than Ashling. Lani looked at it, then showed Megan.
It appeared to be a piece of a map. There were four small brownish-red Xs—Megan again chose to assume rusty red ink was involved—impeccably printed at scattered points across the scrap of parchment. One corner of it contained part of a body of water. Beside it was a tiny footnote in Latin. Megan pointed. “What's that say?”
“'Lake shore varies depending on drainage cycle,'” Cassia said.
Megan indicated another footnote. “And this one?”
“'Swamp. Watch for wisps.'”
"Where's all this supposed to be?" Megan asked. “And what's on the other half of the map?” It certainly seemed like the place to start when looking for the owner of the map.
Lani and Cassia looked at the map over her shoulder, then glanced at one another. Then they fidgeted. “Give us a minute,” Lani finally said.
“While you take that minute,” Justin said. “I'll go pick up the cats from their... tree. I also need to get something from under the stage. I'd hoped to be pleasantly surprised and not need it, but sometimes life is just not surprising.”
Chapter 8: Glitter
Lani and Cassia were still huddled over the map, trying to decipher it. Ashling and the Count were pacing back and forth, even if the Count had to make awkward sequential hops to do so. Ashling had quickly finished the treat with which Cassia'd tried to distract her and was now determined to stay ready for ad-hoc limb amputation. Megan was pacing too. She had longer legs than they—and less of Cassia reaching over to put a hand in her way when she got too excited.
Megan's pacing took her further and further each time, and as she did, her thoughts started wandering as well. She started with the map, but didn't even know where it led. The guy Ashling had been chasing was next—the pixie had said something about a fancy lapel pin. Maybe that meant something? She would have sworn she'd seen some kind of motif like that in some of the art when she'd bought her painting. She glanced in the direction of the art dealers, and found herself staring at the hook-nosed goblin on the big rock. What he'd said about curing black moods had stuck with her. Could this be someth
ing better than the green pills with supper every night that never seemed to do enough?
"Need a cure, young lady?" asked the goblin standing on top of the boulder.
Megan startled, and glanced up. "Uhm, maybe. You can really cure anything?"
"If you can pay for the cure, certainly."
"What if it's, uhm, not for me?" Megan asked.
"That's fine," the goblin said, gesturing to the rows of vials. "What's the ailment?"
Megan hesitated, entirely unsure about this deal or the goblin. But it was a better chance than she was ever going to get elsewhere. "It's my mom. She kind of spent too much time around a sidhe. I want to sort of...reignite whatever burned out, you know?"
The goblin crouched and leaned in close to her. "How long ago was this?"
"Uhm, about fifteen years. Is that a problem?"
"Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. It's a lot of time to adjust for, but I can fix it... it will just have a suitable mark up in cost. You're sure that's what you want?"
Megan wasn't sure, but she remembered the time she spent overmedicated, living in a fog. She thought about her mother's anti-depressants, her obsessions, and her spending the last decade and a half working event management in the music industry without ever going to shows. She thought about the comments about incendiary bass work—while the bass gathered years of dust alongside the CDs. "I'm sure."
She reached for the baseball card. Her father had said it could pay for nearly anything. Then she remembered the impulse buy. "How much?" she asked, reaching for her wallet instead.
The goblin considered her. "F Sharp," he responded.
Megan blinked, looking at him confused. "What?"
"You have a lovely voice, and it's my favorite note. I'll take F Sharp," he responded, rummaging through his supplies.
Megan took a deep breath, trying to think how that would even work. Then the inspiration took over. "Deal!" she insisted.
The goblin ignored her outstretched hand as he pulled out an odd little tuning fork. “Can I get that in an F Sharp please?”
Megan decided it was a good thing she had perfect pitch. “...~Deal~...?” she sang.
The tuning fork vibrated, and the goblin placed it in a ceramic bowl. He then picked up a ceramic pestle and proceeded, though Megan had no idea how, to crush the tuning fork into a shining silver powder, like glitter. He poured half into a vial that went on his shelf. He then poured the other half into an envelope
He proceeded to get out a pen and write her mother's office address, which Megan had not given him, on the envelope.
“All right,” he said. “She'll be the herself she was supposed to be."
Megan was about to ask about side effects, or about how long it would take, or about basic laws of physics or questions of privacy, when Lani's voice drew Megan's attention away from the goblin. "Megan, what did you do?" she asked, running towards Megan. Cassia wasn't far behind her, with Justin trailing—lugging the instrument case he'd left under the stage.
"It's okay. I have a cure for Mom. That's all."
Lani looked dubiously at the goblin. "You sure you know what you're doing?"
Cassia slapped Lani on the back, almost knocking her over. "Don't worry. The Doctor is good people. If he says he's got a cure, he does. Speaking of which, Doc, Maxwell wants his stuff. Usual payment."
The hook-nosed goblin set to work.
"What stuff?" Megan asked.
"Enchanted catnip. The normal stuff is okay, but whenever the market opens up, I try and get him the good stuff."
“And only Maxwell gets some?”
“Jude's too straight-edge.”
Lani sighed. "If Cassia vouches for him, that's... something. I'm not sure exactly what. Just be seriously careful, okay, Megan? We should talk about this. Soon. But not now. We need to hurry while the cats are still keeping Ashling and the Count from leaving without us. We figured out the map. Maybe it's nothing, but I still want to check it out."
Megan sighed. "Check what out?"
"Mag Tuired. If he had a map for it, he might be there."
"He might be, but that's not necessarily a good thing," Justin said, "He obviously knows how to get into Faerie. We surprised him here, but out in the wild..."
Megan nodded. "We'll have to stick together. We'll have you, the cats, and Cassia. And the Count will be watching for trouble."
"We need to help Ashling, and it's not like we can convince her to wait any longer than necessary." Lani added. "Besides, we need to find out what kind of buried treasure—or something—a guy like that would be looking for in Mag Tuired, of all places.”
"Sure. There's just one problem," Megan said.
"Oh? And what's that?" Lani asked.
"What the heck is Mo-ay Tu-ra?"
Chapter 9: Mag Tuired
The walk along the lake shore was slow going. It was just as well Cassia hadn't brought her chariot, since as soon as they emerged into the real world, the leopards had ended up looking like kittens again. Megan still wasn't sure how the magic worked. Most of the faeries just ended up looking different, with Ashling looking like a butterfly, and Cassia looking like, well, mostly herself, but lacking horns, a tail, and goat legs. The cats, though, actually seemed to really revert whenever they were somewhere a human might see them.
Indeed, they'd had to accommodate the kittens when they hit the wet, squelching ground. Maxwell had scrambled up Cassia, to rest on her shoulder. Jude, meanwhile, had sat politely, mewing up at Megan until she picked up the kitten in his tiny aviator helmet and placed him to peek out of the pocket of her cargo pants as they walked.
“So, I'm seeing lakes,” Megan said. “Weird hills with some kind of stone-agey things on them...some sheep in the distance. Are you sure we didn't come out in the wrong century?”
As it was, Justin was walking around, even if only distant sheep were looking, with the Sword of Light sheathed at his hip, having finally set the instrument case aside just as they left the Market. Megan watched him walk in his particular hypervigilant way for a moment before she managed to look back at Lani questioningly.
Lani sighed. “Past the sheep is a 21st-Century wind farm, Megan. We're not in the Dark Ages; we're in the countryside.”
“Okay, so here we are. Middle-of-Nowhere, Ireland. And you promise we'll still get home on time?”
“Yes. We'll be back in Seattle when we left Seattle. That's how the Market works.”
“And why is it afternoon in Ireland instead of the middle of the night?”
“Look, don't look a gift temporal-anomaly in the mouth. Think of it like a pause button.”
“Is that what it's like?”
“No, but the closest scientific analog is string theory, so we're going to stick with pause buttons, to keep everyone less uncomfortable.”
“I can promise you, Lani,” Justin said calmly. “That when it comes to the confusions of time, absolutely nothing is going to make me comfortable, so on my account, at least, you needn't worry.”
Megan worried for him a little, but she still couldn't get over the place. “Why did the Market even have a path to a bunch of sheep farms? You said it's a historic site?”
“Yeah. Second Battle of Mag Tuired. Now let me make sure we're on the correct side of the lake.”
“What did that note mean about the shore changing based on water drainage?”
“Sinkhole,” said Cassia grinning. “Considering how it was made, the lake's not exactly going to be stable.”
“Do I want to know?” Megan asked. “Okay, yes, I want to know, but after you tell me, I might not want to know anymore.”
"Of course you want to know," Cassia said, "This is where Balor Birugdere died. It's hard to get a much more epic story."
"What's a Balor?"
"Not what, who. One of the great Fomoire generals. You remember their handiwork in Findias, right? The biggest enemies of the gods... and all the folk whose remnants ended up in An Teach Deiridh."
"Ok
ay, so he died here?"
"Lugh put his spear through his eye. Wish I'd been there to see that. Your dad was there, though. You should ask him about it." Cassia said.
Lani gestured towards the lake. "The legend goes that this is where he fell, and as he died, his eye created the lake here."
"Seriously?"
Lani nodded. "That was his big thing, the evil eye. If he didn't have it covered, it'd burn everything he looked at. And, obviously, if the lake thing is true, he was huge."
Megan glanced out at the water. "That's putting it mildly."
"The Fomoire were bad news. They weren't all that big, but there's a reason the gods left the world in order to keep them from coming back." Lani said.
Megan paused, continuing to study the water, trying to imagine the giant that could have caused it, not liking any of the images in her mind. Finally, “Okay, that is officially the weirdest lake ever.”
“Not quite,” Lani responded.
"Wait, seriously?" Megan asked, looking dubious.
Cassia glanced at Lani and grinned. "Yeah, I'd say the 'fishing hole' wins."
"Those have to be some seriously messed up fish." Megan said.
"You know more about it than I do," Lani offered, gesturing to Cassia.
"Sure. Messed-up fish, trapped Fomoire, fun stuff. When the gods left, they sealed the Fomoire up. They used all of the enchantments on the city of Gorias to do it, too."
"Gorias,” Megan echoed. “That's one of the four lost cities you guys abandoned?"
"I wasn't around yet,” Cassia said. “But the Celtic fae, yeah."
Megan glanced at Ashling, just waiting for some contradiction or odd statement about the lake, or fish, or one-eyed giants. The pixie just sat on the Count's back, where he perched on Lani's shoulder, both of them looking more intent than she'd ever seen them. She wasn't even sure how she could tell what the crow was feeling, but it was clear.
"Anyway—" Cassia continued, "They didn't have much choice. All of the magic of the city was channeled to the lake, to freeze it over as a prison. All of the Fomoire who survived the war are down there, under the ice."