by Jim Butcher
She led me to the far end of the hall, pausing several times to call something aside, in a complex, musical tongue, to one of the other Fair Folk. We walked past a miniature table laid out with a not-at-all-miniature feast, and my stomach suddenly informed me that it had never once taken in an ounce of nutrition, and that it really was about time that I finally had something. I had actually taken a couple of steps toward the table before I forced myself to swerve away from it.
“Wise,” said the Jili Ffrwtan. “Unless, of course, you wish to stay.”
“It smells fine,” I replied, my voice hoarse. “But it’s no Burger King.”
She laughed again, putting the fingers of one hand to her still proportionately impressive bosom, and we passed out of the great hall and into a smaller cavern—this one only the size of a train station. There were guards there—guards armored in bejeweled mail, faces masked behind mail veils, guards who barely came up over my knee, but guards nonetheless, bearing swords and spears and bows. They stood at attention and watched me with cold, hard eyes as we passed them. My escort seemed delightedly smug about the entire affair.
I cleared my throat and asked, “Who are we going to see?”
“Why, love, the only one who has authority over the curse upon Wrigley Field,” she said. “His Majesty.”
I swallowed. “The king of your folk? Gwynn ap Nudd, isn’t it?”
“His Majesty will do,” rang out a voice in a high tenor, and I looked up to see one of the Fair Folk sitting on a throne raised several feet above the floor of the chamber, so that my eyes were level with his. “Perhaps even His Majesty, sir.”
Gwynn ap Nudd, ruler of the Tylwyth Teg, was tall—for his folk, anyway—broad shouldered, and ruggedly handsome. Though dressed in what looked like some kind of midnight blue fabric that had the texture of velvet but the supple sweep of silk, he had large-knuckled hands that looked rough and strong. Both his long hair and beard were streaked with fine, symmetrical lines of silver, and jewels shone on his fingers and upon his brow.
I stopped at once and bowed deeply, making sure my head went lower than the faerie king’s, and I stayed there for a good long moment before rising again. “Your Majesty, sir,” I said, in my politest voice. “You are both courteous and generous to grant me an audience. It speaks well of the Tylwyth Teg as a people, that such a one should lead them.”
King Gwynn stared at me for a long moment before letting out a grunt that mixed disbelief with wry satisfaction. “At least they sent one with half a sense of manners this time.”
“I thought you’d like that, sire,” said the Jili Ffrwtan, smiling. “May I present Harry Dresden, magus, a commander of the Order of the Grey Cloak, sometime mortal Champion of Queen Mab and Esquire of the Court of Queen Titania. He begs to speak to you regarding the curse upon the Field of Wrigley in the mortal citadel of Chicago.”
“We know who he is,” Gwynn said testily. “And we know why he is here. Return to your post. We will see to it that he is safely returned.”
The Jili Ffrwtan curtsied deeply and revealingly. “Of course, sire.” Then she simply vanished into a sparkling cloud of lights.
“Guards,” King Gwynn called out. “You will leave us now.”
The guards looked unhappy about it, but they lined up and filed out, every movement in sync with the others. Gwynn waited until the last of them had left the hall and the doors boomed shut before he turned back to me.
“So,” he said. “Who do ye like for the Series this year?”
I blinked my eyes at him several times. It wasn’t one of those questions I’d been expecting. “Um. American League, I’m kind of rooting for Tampa Bay. I’d like to see them beat out the Yankees.”
“Aye,” Gwynn said, nodding energetically. “Who wouldn’t? Bloody Yankees.”
“And in the National League,” I said, “the Cubs are looking good at the moment, though I could see the Phillies pulling something out at the last minute.” I shrugged. “I mean, since the Cubbies are cursed and all.”
“Cursed?” Gwynn said. A fierce smile stretched his face. “Cursed, is it?”
“Or so it is widely believed,” I said.
Gwynn snorted, then rose and descended from his throne. “Walk with me.”
The diminutive monarch walked farther back into the cavern, past his throne and into what resembled some kind of bizarre museum. There were rows and rows of cabinets, each with shelves lined in black velvet and walls of crystalline glass. Each cabinet had a dozen or so artifacts in it; ticket stubs were some of the most common items, though there were also baseballs here and there among them, as well as baseball cards, fan booklets, team pennants, bats, batting gloves, and fielders’ gloves.
As I walked beside him, careful to keep my pace slow enough to let him dictate how fast we were walking, it dawned on me that King Gwynn ap Nudd of the Tylwyth Teg was a baseball fan—as in fanatic—of the original vintage.
“It was you,” I said suddenly. “You were the one they threw out of the game.”
“Aye,” King Gwynn said. “There was business to attend, and by the time I got there the tickets were sold out. I had to find another way into the game.”
“As a goat?” I asked, bemused.
“It was a team-spirit thing,” Gwynn said proudly. “Sianis had made up a sign and all, proclaiming that Chicago had already gotten Detroit’s goat. Then he paraded me and the sign on the field before the game—it got plenty of cheers, let me tell you. And he did pay for an extra ticket for the goat, so it wasn’t as though old Wrigley’s successors were being cheated the price of admission. They just didn’t like it that someone argued with the ushers and won!”
Gwynn’s words had taken on the heat that you can only get from an argument that someone has rehearsed to himself about a million times. Given that he must have been practicing it since 1945, I knew better than to think that anything like reason was going to get in the way. So I just nodded and asked, “What happened?”
“Before the game was anywhere near over,” Gwynn continued, his voice seething with outrage, “they came to Sianis and evicted him from the park. Because, they said, his goat smelled too awful!”
Gwynn stopped in his tracks and turned to me, scowling furiously as he gestured at himself with his hands. “Hello! I was a goat! Goats are supposed to smell awful when they are rained upon!”
“They are, Your Majesty, sir,” I agreed soberly.
“And I was a flawless goat!”
“I have no doubts on that account, King Gwynn,” I said.
“What kind of justice is it to be excluded from a Series game because one has flawlessly imitated a goat!?”
“No justice at all, Your Majesty, sir,” I said.
“And to say that I, Gwynn ap Nudd, I the King of Annwn, I who defeated Gwythr ap Greidawl, I the counselor and ally to gods and heroes alike, smelled!” His mouth twisted up in rage. “How dare some jumped-up mortal ape say such a thing! As though mortals smell any better than wet goats!”
For a moment, I considered pointing out the conflicting logic of Gwynn both being a perfect (and therefore smelly) goat and being upset that he had been cast out of the game for being smelly. But only for a second. Otherwise, I might have been looking at coming back to Chicago about a hundred years too late to grab a late-night meal at BK.
“I can certainly see why you were upset and offended, Your Majesty, sir.”
Some of the righteous indignation seemed to drain out of him, and he waved an irritated hand at me. “We’re talking about something important here, mortal,” he said. “We’re talking about baseball. Call me Gwynn.”
We had stopped at the last display cabinet, which was enormous by the standards of the furnishings of that hall, which is to say about the size of a human wardrobe. On one of its shelves was a single outfit of clothing; blue jeans, a T-shirt, a leather jacket, with socks and shoes. On all the rest were the elongated rectangles of tickets—season tickets, in fact, and hundreds of them.
; But the single stack of tickets on the top shelf sat next to the only team cap I’d seen.
Both tickets and cap bore the emblem of the Cubs.
“It was certainly a serious insult,” I said quietly. “And it’s obvious that a balancing response was in order. But, Gwynn, the insult was given you unwittingly, by mortals whose very stupidity prevented them from knowing what they were doing. Few enough there that day are even alive now. Is it just that their children be burdened with their mistake? Surely that fact also carries some weight within the heart of a wise and generous king.”
Gwynn let out a tired sigh and moved his right hand in a gesture that mimed pouring out water cupped in it. “Oh, aye, aye, Harry. The anger faded decades ago—mostly. It’s the principle of the thing these days.”
“That’s something I can understand,” I said. “Sometimes you have to give weight to a principle to keep it from being taken away in a storm.”
He glanced up at me shrewdly. “Aye. I’ve heard as that’s something you would understand.”
I spread my hands and tried to sound diffident. “There must be some way of evening the scales between the Cubs and the Tylwyth Teg,” I said. “Some way to set this insult to rights and lay the matter to rest.”
“Oh, aye,” King Gwynn said. “It’s easy as dying. All we do is nothing. The spell would fade. Matters would resume their normal course.”
“But clearly you don’t wish to do such a thing,” I said. “It’s obviously an expenditure of resources for you to keep the curse alive.”
The small king suddenly smiled. “Truth be told, I stopped thinking of it as a curse years ago, lad.”
I arched my eyebrows.
“How do you regard it, then?” I asked him.
“As protection,” he said. “From the real curse of baseball.”
I looked from him to the tickets and thought about that for a moment. Then I said, “I understand.”
It was Gwynn’s turn to arch eyebrows at me. “Do ye, now?” He studied me for a time and then smiled, nodding slowly. “Aye. Aye, ye do. Wise, for one so young.”
I shook my head ruefully. “Not wise enough.”
“Everyone with a lick of wisdom thinks that,” Gwynn replied. He regarded his tickets for a while, his hands clasped behind his back. “Now, ye’ve won the loyalty of some of the Wee Folk, and that is no quick or easy task. Ye’ve defied Sidhe queens. Ye’ve even stuck a thumb into the Erlking’s eye, and that tickles me to no end. And ye’ve been clever enough to find us, which few mortals have managed, and gone out of your way to be polite, which means more from you than it would from some others.”
I nodded quietly.
“So, Harry Dresden,” King Gwynn said, “I’ll be glad t’ consider it, if ye say the Cubs wish me to cease my efforts.”
I thought about it for a long time before I gave him my answer.
MR. DONOVAN SAT down in my office in a different ridiculously expensive suit and regarded me soberly. “Well?”
“The curse stays,” I said. “Sorry.”
Mr. Donovan frowned, as though trying to determine whether I was pulling his leg. “I would have expected you to declare it gone and collect your fee.”
“I have this weird thing where I take professional ethics seriously,” I said. I pushed a piece of paper at him and said, “My invoice.”
He took it and turned it over. “It’s blank,” he said.
“Why type it up when it’s just a bunch of zeroes?”
He stared at me even harder.
“Look at it this way,” I said. “You haven’t paused to consider the upside of the Billy Goat Curse.”
“Upside?” he asked. “To losing?”
“Exactly,” I said. “How many times have you heard people complaining that professional ball isn’t about anything but money these days?”
“What does that have to do—”
“That’s why everyone’s so locked on the Series these days. Not necessarily because it means you’re the best, because you’ve risen to a challenge and prevailed. The Series means millions of dollars for the club, for businesses, all kinds of money. Even the fans get obsessed with the Series, like it’s the only significant thing in baseball. Don’t even get me started on the stadiums all starting to be named after their corporate sponsors.”
“Do you have a point?” Donovan asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Baseball is about more than money and victory. It’s about facing challenges alone and on a team. It’s about spending time with friends and family and neighbors in a beautiful park, watching the game unfold. It’s …” I sighed. “It’s about fun, Mr. Donovan.”
“And you are contending that the curse is fun?”
“Think about it,” I said. “The Cubs have the most loyal, diehard fan following in Major League ball. Those fans aren’t in it to see the Cubs run rampant over other teams because they’ve spent more money hiring the best players. You know they aren’t—because they all know about the curse. If you know your team isn’t going to carry off the Series, then cheering them on becomes something more than yelling when they’re beating someone. It’s about tradition. It’s about loyalty to the team and camaraderie with the other fans, and win or lose, just enjoying the damned game.”
I spread my hands. “It’s about fun again, Mr. Donovan. Wrigley Field might be the only stadium in professional ball where you can say that.”
Donovan stared at me as though I’d started speaking in Welsh. “I don’t understand.”
I sighed again. “Yeah. I know.”
MY TICKET WAS for general admission, but I thought I’d take a look around before the game got started. Carlos Zambrano was on the mound warming up when I sat down next to Gwynn ap Nudd.
Human sized, he was considerably over six feet tall, and he was dressed in the same clothes I’d seen back at his baseball shrine. Other than that, he looked exactly the way I remembered him. He was talking to a couple of folks in the row behind him, animatedly relating some kind of tale that revolved around the incredible arc of a single game-deciding breaking ball. I waited until he was finished with the story and turned back out to the field.
“Good day,” Gwynn said to me.
I nodded just a little bit deeply. “And to you.”
He watched Zambrano warming up and grinned. “They’re going to fight through it eventually,” he said. “There are so many mortals now. Too many players and fans want them to do it.” His voice turned a little sad. “One day they will.”
My equations and I had eventually come to the same conclusion. “I know.”
“But you want me to do it now, I suppose,” he said. “Or else why would you be here?”
I flagged down a beer vendor and bought one for myself and one for Gwynn.
He stared at me for a few seconds, his head tilted to one side.
“No business,” I said, passing him one of the beers. “How about we just enjoy the game?”
Gwynn ap Nudd’s handsome face broke into a wide smile, and we both settled back in our seats as the Cubs took the cursed field.
The Warrior
Harry
I sat down next to Michael and said, “I think you’re in danger.” Michael Carpenter was a large, brawny man, though he was leaner now than in all the time I’d known him. Months in bed and more months in therapy had left him a shadow of himself, and he had never added all the muscle back on. Even so, he looked larger and more fit than most, his salt-and-pepper hair and short beard going heavier on the salt these days.
He smiled at me. That hadn’t changed. If anything, the smile had gotten deeper and more steady.
“Danger?” he said. “Heavens.”
I leaned back on the old wooden bleachers at the park and scowled at him. “I’m serious.”
Michael paused to shout a word of encouragement at the second baseman (or was that baseperson?) on his daughter Alicia’s softball team. He settled back onto the bleachers. They were covered in old, peeling green paint, and it clashed
with his powder blue and white shirt, which matched the uniform T-shirts of the girls below. It said COACH in big blue letters.
“I brought your sword. It’s in the car.”
“Harry,” he said, unruffled, “I’m retired. You know that.”
“Sure,” I said, reaching into my coat. “I know that. But the bad guys apparently don’t.” I drew out an envelope and passed it to him.
Michael opened it and studied its contents. Then he replaced them, put the envelope back on the bench beside me, and rose. He started down onto the field, leaning heavily on the wooden cane that went everywhere with him now. Nerve damage had left one of his legs pretty near perfectly rigid, and his hip had been damaged as well. It gave him a rolling gait. I knew he couldn’t see out of one of his clear, honest eyes very well anymore, either.
He took charge of the practice in the quiet, confident way he did everything, drawing smiles and laughter from his daughter and her teammates. They were obviously having fun.
It looked good on him.
I looked down at the envelope and wished I couldn’t imagine the photos contained inside it quite so clearly. They were all professional, clear—Michael walking up the handicap access ramp to his church; Michael opening a door for his wife, Charity; Michael loading a big bucket of softballs into the back of the Carpenter family van; Michael at work, wearing a yellow hard hat, pointing up at a half-finished building as he spoke to a man beside him.
The pictures had come in the mail to my office, with no note, and no explanation. But their implications were ugly and clear.
My friend, the former Knight of the Cross, was in danger.
It took half an hour for the softball practice to end, and then Michael rolled back over to me. He stood staring up at me for a moment before he said, “The sword has passed out of my hands. I can’t take it up again—especially not for the wrong reason. I won’t live in fear, Harry.”