“Oh sure,” I said. “I’m just . . . you know, having a rest.”
She leaned her back against the wall, then slid down until she was sitting beside me. She glanced at how I was holding my jeans and grinned.
“Having some trouble with your pants?”
I shrugged. “I think my zipper’s broken.”
From the first night I’d met her, all I’d ever wanted was to be close to her. But right then I just wanted her to go away.
“Maybe I can fix it,” she said.
In any other circumstance, could this have played out any better?
“I don’t think so,” I told her.
I couldn’t believe I had to say that. She was going to think I was such a dork, but instead she gave me a knowing look.
“Had a run-in with the local butter spirit, did you?” she asked.
Butter spirits were supposed to be a kind of house faerie related to leprechauns, but much more thieving and malicious. Back home they especially enjoyed fresh butter and would draw the “good” of the milk before it was churned.
I blinked in surprise. “How do you know about that kind of thing?”
“Daddy-ji’s Indian,” she said, “but my mum’s Irish. There was a big to-do when they hooked up.You know, son disowned, the whole bit.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Not your fault. Anyway, Mum was forever telling stories about the little people.”
“My dad did, too.”
“I just never thought they were more than stories.”
“But you do now? Have you seen him?”
She nodded. “Not up close. But I’ve caught glimpses of him and his little grappling hook that he uses to clamber up the outside walls. I think he pilfers food and drink from the bars and restaurants in Chinatown. I’ve seen him leave empty-handed, but return with a bag full of something or other.”
“You never said anything before.”
“What was I going to say? I thought you’d be telling me about him soon enough. And if you didn’t, what would you think of me, telling you stories like that?”
“Has anyone else seen him?”
She laughed.“How do you think you got this job?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been working here for almost nine months and you’ve lasted the longest of anybody who’s worked this floor in all that time. How long have you been here?”
“Almost a month.”
“Most people don’t last a week. There’s almost always an opening for the job on this floor. Management tries to shift some of us to it, but we just threaten to quit when they do.”
“So that’s why it was so dirty when I first came on.”
She nodded.
“And it’s the butter spirit that scares people off?”
“Most people just think this floor is haunted, but you and I know better.”
“They got on the wrong side of him,” I said. “Like I just did.”
“Don’t worry,” she told me. “Whatever he’s done—”
“Fixed it so my pants won’t stay up.”
She grinned. “It doesn’t last.”
“Well, I can work in my boxers, but I don’t know how I’m going to get home.”
“If it’s not gone by then, we’ll see if we can rustle up a long coat for you to wear.”
3
“So I’m assuming it wore off,”Miki said when I was done.
I nodded. “Before I left the building at the end of my shift.”
“Then what was tonight all about?”
“He likes to remind me that the tithe is still coming due.”
Miki got a hard look. “You see what I mean about how this is all shite?”
She looked off the stage, trying to see if the little bogle man was in view, I assumed. He wasn’t. Or at least he wasn’t visible. I knew, because I’d already checked.
“It’s not shite,” I said. “It’s real.”
“I know. It’s shite because it does no one any good. There’s a reason the Queen of the Faeries gave Yeats that warning.”
“What warning?”
“He was seeing this medium and through her, the Faerie Queen told him, ‘Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us.’ But do any of the punters listen?”
“I wasn’t trying to find out anything about them.”
She nodded. “I got that. My point is, any contact with them is a sure recipe for heartache and trouble.”
She had that much right.
“You don’t seem any more surprised by this than Nita was,” I said.
“I’m not. Messing about with shite like this is what got Donal killed.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, it’s not something I’m going to shout out to the world.” She paused a moment, then added, “So what happened with Nita? She sounded nice from what you had to say about her.”
“She’s wonderful. But that little bugger made her allergic to me, and that spell hasn’t worn off yet.Whenever she gets physically near to me, her nose starts running, and she breaks out in hives. Sometimes her throat just closes down, and she can’t breathe.”
I finished tightening my last string, dropped the string-winder under my stool, and plugged my guitar into my electronic tuner.
“We seem to still be able to talk on the phone,” I added.
“Is that who you’re always calling?”
I nodded. I didn’t have a better friend in the world than Nita. And at one time, we’d been far more than that. But the butter spirit thought making her allergic to me would be a good joke—especially when he didn’t let the enchantment wear off. Talking on the phone was all we had left.
“I always thought it was one of your brothers or sisters,” Miki said.
“Nita’s like a sister now,” I told her, unable to keep the hurt from my voice.
Miki gave me a sympathetic look.
“So it’s not just breaking guitar strings and pulling your pants down,” she said.
“Christ, that’s the least of it. Mostly things happen in private. Shutting off the hot water on me when I’m having a shower. Or fixing it so that the electricity doesn’t work—but only in the room where I am. It’s the big jokes that I dread. Once I was in a coffee shop and he curdled all the dairy products just as I was halfway through a latte. There were people puking on the tables that day, and I was one of them.”
Miki grimaced.
“And then there was the time I was downtown, and he vanished all the stitches and buttons in what I was wearing. It’s the middle of a snowstorm, and suddenly I’m standing there trying to cover myself with all these pieces of cloth that once were clothes.”
“And you’ve never said anything about it.”
I gave her a humorless smile. “Well, it’s not something I want to shout out to the world either.”
“Good point,” she said. She paused for a moment, then added, “We’re just going to have to find a way to turn the little bugger off.”
I didn’t want to feel the hope that rose at her words, but I couldn’t help it.
“Do you know a way to do it?” I asked.
She shook her head, and my frail surge of hope fled. But that was Miki. Determined, tough.
“Only that doesn’t mean we can’t find out,” she said. “You wouldn’t know this butter spirit’s name, would you?”
I shook my head.
“Too bad, but I suppose that would have been too easy.”
“What use would his name be?”
“There’s power in names,” she said. “Don’t you pay attention to the stories? Just because it’s all shite doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“Right.”
I was having trouble relating to our conversation. I mean, to be having it with Miki, of all people.Who knew that behind her disdain, she was such an expert?
“When’s the tithe due?” she asked.
“April 30.”
She gave a slow nod. “Call
y Berry’s night.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“They call her the Old Woman of Gloominess. She’s the blue-skinned daughter of the sun and rules the world between Halloween and Beltane. On the last day of April she throws her ruling staff away and turns into stone for the next half of the year—why do you think there are so many stone goddess images louting about in Ireland? But on that night, when she gives up her rule to the Summer Goddess, the faeries run free—like they do on Halloween. Babies are stolen and changelings left in their cribs. Debts and tithes are paid.”
“Lovely.”
“Mmm. I wonder if we have a gig that night . . .”
She took out her Palm Pilot and looked up our schedule.
“Of course we do,” she said. “We’re in Harnett’s Point at the Harp and Tankard, from the Wednesday through Saturday. Close enough to Newford for trouble, though I guess distance doesn’t seem to be a problem with him, does it?”
I shook my head.We were halfway across the country in Arizona at the moment, and that hadn’t stopped him.
“Actually, that can work to our advantage,” she went on. “I know some people living close to Harnett’s Point who might be able to help.We’ll put together some smudgesticks . . . let’s see . . . rosemary, rue, blackthorn, and hemlock. That’ll be pungent to burn indoors, but it’ll keep him off you.”
“You really think you can stop him?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not just the butter spirit. There’s the Grey Man, too.”
She nodded. “Old Boneless. Another of those damned hard men that we Irish seem to be so good at conjuring up, both in our faeries and ourselves. But I have a special fondness for the bashing of hard men, Conn, you’ll see.Now tell me, how intimate were you and Nita?”
“Jeez, that’s hardly—”
She held up a hand before I could finish. “I’m not prying. I just need to know if you have a bond of flesh or just words.”
“We were . . . very intimate.Until he pulled this allergy business.”
She gave me another one of her thoughtful nods.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“Nothing.Not yet. I’m just putting together the pieces in my head. Setting them up against what I know and what I have to find out.”
“Not that I’m ungrateful,” I said, “but you seem awfully familiar with this kind of thing for someone so dead set against it.”
The grin she gave me was empty of humor. It was a wolf ’s grin. Feral.
“It’s the first rule of war,” she told me. “Know your enemy.”
War, I thought. When did this become a war? But maybe for her it was. Maybe it should be that way for me.
“So what’s Nita doing these days?”Miki asked.
“She’s a social worker. She was working on her degree when I met her at the Sovereign Building.”
“Is she with the city?”
I nodded.
“And you still love her? She still loves you?”
“Well, we’re not celibate—I mean, it’s been six and a half years now.We had six months together before the butter spirit conjured up the allergy, but . . .” I shrugged. “So, yes, we still love each other, but we see other people.” I paused, then added, “And you need to know this because?”
“I need to know everything I can about the situation. You do want me to help, don’t you?”
“I’ll take any help I can get.”
“Good man. So, are you all tuned up yet?” she asked, abruptly shifting conversational gears. When I nodded, she added, “Then I think it’s time to start playing again.”
I was going to have to fight the tuning of my guitar for the rest of the night as the new set of strings stretched. But better that—better to lose myself in the mechanics of playing and tuning and the spirit of the music—than to have to think about that damned butter spirit for the next hour or so.
Except I never did get him out of my head. At the very least, throughout the set, I carried the worry of my strings snapping on me again.
4
Miki wasn’t at all forthcoming about her plan to deal with the butter spirit. The first time I pressed her harder for details—“Hello,” I told her. “This concerns me, you know.”—she just said something about the walls having ears, and if she spoke her plan aloud, she might as well write it out and hand it over the enemy.
“Trust me, Conn,” she said.
So I did. She might get broody. She might carry a hard, dark anger around inside her. But it was never directed at me, and I knew I could trust her with my life. Which was a good thing because if the Grey Man ever did get hold of me, it was my life that was forfeit.
THE MONTH WENT BY quickly.
We finished up our gigs in the Southwest, did a week that took us up through Berkeley and Portland, and then we were back in New-ford and it was time to start the two-hour drive out to Harnett’s Point for our opening night at the Harp & Tankard.
Harnett’s Point used to be a real backwoods village, its population evenly divided between the remnant of back-to-the-earth hippies who tended organic farms west of the city and locals who made their living off of the tourists that swelled the village in the summer. But it had changed in the last decade, becoming, like so many of the other small villages around Newford, a satellite community for those who could afford the ever-pricier real estate and didn’t mind the two-hour commute to their jobs.
And where once it had only the one Irish bar—Murphy’s, a log and plaster-covered concrete affair near the water that was a real roadhouse—now it sported a half dozen, including the Harp & Tankard, where we were playing that night.
Have you ever noticed how there seems to be an Irish pub on almost every corner these days? They’re as bad as coffee shops. I can remember a time when the only place you could get a decent Guinness was in Ireland, and as for the music, forget it. “Traditional music” was all that Irish-American twaddle popularized by groups like the Irish Rovers. Some of them were lovely songs, once, but they’d been reduced to noisy bar jokes by the time I got into the music professionally. And then there were the folks who’d demand “some real Irish songs” like “The Unicorn,” and would get all affronted when first, you wouldn’t play it for them, and second, you told them it was actually written by Shel Silverstein, the same Jewish songwriter responsible for hits like Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone.”
Miki and I played an even mix of bars, small theatres, colleges, and festivals, and I usually liked the bars the least—probably a holdover from when I was first trying to get into the music in a professional capacity. But Miki loved them. It made no sense to me why she kept taking these bookings—she could easily fill any medium-sized hall—but they kept her honest, she liked to say. “And besides,” she’d add, “music and the drink, they just go together.”
When we got to the Harp & Tankard that afternoon, we were met out back where we parked our van by a Native American fellow.Miki introduced him to me as Tommy. I thought he was with the bar—after all, he helped us bring in our gear and set up, then settled behind the soundboard while we did our soundcheck—but he turned out to be a friend of hers and in on her secret plan. After we got the sound right, he lit a pair of smudgesticks, then he and Miki waved them around the stage until the area reeked. They weren’t sweetgrass or sage, but made of the herbs and twigs that Miki had told me about back at the Hole: rosemary and rue, blackthorn and hemlock.
The smell lingered long after they were done—which was the whole point, I suppose—and didn’t make it particularly pleasant to be up there in it. I wasn’t the only one to feel that way. I noticed as the audience started to take their seats that people would come up to the front tables, then retreat to ones farther back after a few moments. It was only when the back of the room was full that the closer tables filled up.
The audience was part yuppies, part the local holdover hippies, with a few of the longtime residents of the area standing in the back by the bar. You could tell them by
their plaid flannel shirts and baseball caps. There were also a number of older Native women scattered throughout the room, and I wondered why they didn’t sit together. I could tell that they knew each other—or at least they all knew Tommy, since before he got back to the soundboard, he made a point of stopping and chatting with each of them.
“Do you know the song ‘Tam Lin’?”Miki asked.
Tommy was back on the board now, and we were getting ready to start the first set.
“Sure. It’s in A minor, right?”
“Not the tune—the ballad.”
I shook my head. “I know it to hear it, but I’ve never actually sat down and learned it.”
“Still you know the story.”
“Yeah.Why—”
“Keep it in mind for later,” she told me.
Her mysteriousness was beginning to get on my nerves. No, that wasn’t entirely fair.What had me on edge was the knowledge that tonight was the night the butter spirit meant to make me his tithe to Old Boneless.
“Don’t forget now,” she said.
“I won’t.”
Though what “Tam Lin” had to do with anything, I had no idea. I tried to remember the story as I checked my foot pedals and finished tuning my guitar. It involved a love triangle between the knight Tam Lin, the Queen of the Faeries and a mortal woman named Janet, or sometimes Jennet. Janet loved Tam Lin, and he loved her, but the Faerie Queen stole him away and took him back with her to Faerieland. To win him back, Janet had to pull him down from his horse during a faerie rade on Halloween, then hold on to him while the Faerie Queen turned him into all sorts of different kinds of animals.
It was hard, but Janet proved true, and the Queen had to go back to Faerieland empty-handed.
Fair enough. But what did any of that have to do with my butter spirit and him planning to make me his tithe to Old Boneless?
Apparently, Miki wasn’t going to tell me because she just called out the key of the first number and off she went, blasting out a tune on her accordion. In a moment, the pub was full of bobbing heads and tapping feet, and I was too busy keeping up with Miki to be worrying about the relevance of old traditional ballads.
Emerald Magic Page 17