When the heart monitor seized into a flat line alarm, the nurse hit the emergency button on the control panel. Gill knew he had only seconds. Muttering an old Gaelic prayer for the girl's soul, he reached into his chest and pulled out Aithne's fairy heart. He then lowered his hand back to the girl's chest and placed the ghostly organ inside. Immediately the girl began to breathe again.
The nurse gasped. “I don't believe it,” she said as the girl kicked her legs with a newfound energy and purpose. However, before Gill could escape, the nurse looked up and saw through his glamour to his ancient eyes, tall pale form and wild clothes. “Who are you?” she screamed. “Where's Dr. Ballard?”
Gill smiled at the nurse, noticing with approval that she stepped protectively between him and the baby. Such a true thing for humans to do against the fey, he thought sadly. He turned and quickly walked out of the neonatal unit as the real Dr. Ballard and several other nurses rushed in. “Stop that man,” the nurse yelled, but Gill was already gone.
So the love story of Aithne Glaistig and Gillian Dhu began, six months after her death.
* * *
By the time Gill reached home after fleeing the hospital, he had no energy left. He collapsed on the sofa, his glamour gone, his heart broken by the loss of his last connection to Aithne. He didn't move for three days. Instead, he simply stared as sunlight filtered through his ancient lace curtains and danced sprite-shaped dust motes above the paisley rug. The pale light took him to memories of Scotland's ancient Caledonian Forest, of the forest's massive pines and birches and smaller trees of rowan, aspen, and hazel. He remembered the day he first met Aithne as she'd wailed her loneliness near Loch Maree. He recalled their years traveling the world on the human's wooden ships, amazing at humanity and their works, and how they finally settled in Chicago, where Aithne fell in love with the singing sand beaches along the shores of Lake Michigan.
Gill also thought about the baby he'd just given Aithne's heart. In the old days, the baby would have been raised by the fey. However, Gill was the only fairy for thousands of miles and he didn't have the patience or stamina to raise a child. But he also knew he couldn't simply let humans raise the baby. A fairy child needed special teaching and protection.
Sadly, Gill realized he couldn't walk away now.
After his third day on the sofa, Gill finally stood up and staggered to the kitchen. He plucked some leaves from the large potted fichus there and ate them slowly, chewing each leaf without taste or care. He then walked to the greenhouse in his back yard. Heavy snowflakes fell outside and tapped softly on the glass. Once inside he breathed in the deep smells of birch and pine and moss. A tiny waterfall bubbled into a pool in the middle of the greenhouse and small specks of light danced over the water. If Gill closed his eyes and ignored the faint sounds of Chicago's traffic – and the occasional gunshot in the distance – he could almost imagine he was back in the days of endless twilight's eve.
Gill shucked his clothes of leaf and moss and stepped into the pool. He almost didn't recognize the middle-aged face staring back from his reflection, especially the faint wrinkles traced around his eyes. The way things were going for him, he'd probably have a white hair or two within a century. Still, nothing to be done about that. Fairies may age slowly, but they still aged like everything else in the world. With a sigh, Gill sank underwater and slept soundly through the night.
The next morning, Gill felt rested enough to again confront humanity. He produced enough glamour to give his face a more human look and shorten his height, then dressed and walked to the L for the train ride to the county jail. As always, the chaos and energy of Chicago assaulted his body. The train's iron ached his bones even though he wore human clothes, gloves and shoes as protection.
“May I help you, sir?” a stern looking deputy asked when Gill stepped into the jail's visitation room.
“Yes, I'm here to see Ria Cortés,” Gill said, handing the deputy his ID. The deputy nodded and handed Gill a visitor's badge. Gill carefully held the badge's steel pin away from his body as the deputy pointed him to a small table. While Gill waited, he opened his briefcase and flipped through the assortment of leaves and flowers inside. If he needed any documents or IDs he could create them in an instant.
Eventually, Ria Cortés walked into the visitation room, her hands and legs in restraints and two female deputies on either side of her. Gill couldn't believe the tiny woman deserved this. In fact, Gill hesitated to even call her a woman since she was barely eighteen, stood less than five feet tall, and was so thin that her cheekbones shone through her light brown skin. However, the two deputies never left her side and watched her suspiciously even after she sat down across from Gill.
“Who the hell are you?” Ria asked.
Gill reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small leaf. “My card,” he said.
Ria glanced at it. “A lawyer? I can't afford a lawyer.”
Gill nodded as he pulled more leaves from his briefcase. Suddenly two files rested in his hands, detailing Ria's entire arrest history. “Quite a record here. Robbery. Drug possession with intent to sell. Drug use. In and out of juvenile detention since age 8.”
Ria glared at the table and Gill knew that she was debating whether to lunge at him. Instead she muttered a few obscene words in Spanish. “Can I go?” she asked.
In response, Gill pulled out a special flower he'd picked from his greenhouse and pushed it across the table. Ria picked the flower up and stared at it, tears falling down her face. The two female deputies glanced over her shoulders and shook their heads.
“Where did you get this?” Ria asked as she placed the picture of her newborn daughter back on the table. “They won't even let me see her.”
“That doesn't matter. What matters is that I can help you and your daughter.”
Ria glanced again at the picture. “What do you want?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, what do you want? People don't help people without wanting something in return.”
As Ria glared into him, Gill grew nervous and his glamour flickered slightly. For a moment he felt the overpowering urge to confess all, to tell Ria that her baby was dead and now his sweet Aithne lived within the little girl's body. However, he put aside all doubts about what he was doing and repeated, in perfect, even tones, “I just want to help you and your baby.” Ria didn't appear convinced, but she nodded her head as she stared at the picture.
When Gillian Dhu left the jail, the lie he'd told ached so badly inside him that he cried the whole way home.
* * *
For the next several months Gill worked to free Ria from jail.
He could, of course, have easily spirited her free, but for his plan to work – and perhaps, he realized, to ease his guilt – he needed Ria and her baby to stay within the human realm. So each day Gill went to court and talked with the judges and prosecutors about Ria, presenting motions and requests for her to receive drug treatment and retain custody of her child. Gill realized with pride that he could have made a good lawyer, although he had no idea how human lawyers handled paperwork without magic.
But despite Gill's glamour, dealing with so much human tragedy continually drained his energy. As he spent time around Ria Cortés, he couldn't help but experience her life's pain. Her parents had died in a car accident when she was four. The relatives who took her in barely tolerated her. By the time she was eight she was shoplifting, by ten a lookout for the drug dealers in her neighborhood, by fourteen addicted to cocaine. Ria's life shook Gill to his core every time he was around her. Like all humans, she had such beautiful potential. Like all humans, few things had ever gone her way.
Soon the judge ordered Ria transferred to a halfway house. For Gill these became magic times because, twice a week, Ria's daughter was brought to the house by a social worker, who showed Ria how to care for her baby. As Ria's lawyer, Gill was permitted to attend these sessions.
Their first visit did not go well. The little girl was four months old a
nd Ria hadn't seen the baby since birth. The social worker placed the baby in Ria's arms and the little girl started screaming.
“She doesn't like me,” Ria said in panic.
“Nonsense,” the social worker said. “She just doesn't know you. Here, here, hold her like this.”
Gill watched as Ria rocked the baby and muttered little lullabies in Spanish. The baby screamed so loud that before Gill could stop himself, he began reliving the baby's sad death. He looked at Ria trying so hard to make her baby love her and the fact that this was no longer her child cut through Gill until his glamour faded. He muttered an excuse and ran from the halfway house.
As he rode the L home, he shook so hard that the passengers thought he was a drug addict. When he reached home he ran to his greenhouse and plunged into his pool without bothering to take off his human clothes. He stayed underwater for the next week.
The next time he visited Ria, she handled the baby with total confidence. Gill watched the little girl slap her bottle in happiness as Ria fed her. He imagined Aithne as a baby, all those thousands of years ago, and wondered if she'd behaved like this.
“I want to thank you,” Ria said, obviously lying, because Gill felt her hate and suspicion toward him. “Without you, I'd never have gotten her back.”
“It's been my pleasure,” Gill said, also lying. “Have you picked a name yet?”
Ria laughed. “Not yet. They gave her the name Jane, but I'm not having an Anglo name on my child.”
“Ah yes,” Gill said, again feeling his heart ache at his lies. “I'm afraid I don't know any Hispanic names, but I've always been partial to Aithne. It's an old, very old, Scottish name.”
Gill meant the words half in jest, but Ria actually smiled at the name. “Who was she?” Ria asked.
“My wife,” Gill said. “She died not long ago.”
Ria looked at her baby and nodded. “Aithne.”
And so for that one brief moment, Gill actually believed fate and love were again bringing him back to Aithne.
* * *
Times passed as it always does in matters of love. Soon, Ria was released from the halfway house.
Gill agreed to be her sponsor. Ria accepted even though she still didn't trust Gill, believing the judge wouldn't let her keep her baby without him. Gill used his glamour to split half of his large Victorian house into an apartment, creating walls and doors and furniture and locks. When he offered the apartment to Ria, she was suspicious – as always – but Gill pleaded good intentions. “Without my wife, the house is too big. Please. Just until you get back on your feet.”
Ria reluctantly accepted, causing Gill to smile his first true smile since Aithne died.
His smile lasted until Aithne cried all night. Gill threw spell after spell at the walls, trying to keep out Aithne's enchanted wails, but nothing worked. Finally, in a fit of irritation, he knocked on Ria's door and asked what was wrong with the baby.
“No problem,” Ria said with a tired smirk. “Haven't you heard of colic?”
After three nights without sleep, Gill abandoned his bed for the greenhouse, where all he had to listen to were the sounds of gunfire and traffic.
Such was love.
For many months Ria was content to stay in her apartment and take care of Aithne. She never allowed Gill inside, and Gill, for his part, never tried to enter. Once a week, Gill rode the L to a different pawn shop and sold a handful of fairy gold before purchasing formula for the baby and food for Ria. When she opened the door for the food, Gill would have a brief glimpse of Aithne. This thrilled his heart enough to last until the following week.
Their routine lasted almost a year. Then one day Gill arrived home to find Ria packing a taxi with her few belongings. Aithne hung in a sling around Ria's chest and cooed at Gill.
“Where are you going?” Gill asked in a panic.
“Away. Out. In case you didn't know it, my parole is up today. I don't need your support anymore. My aunt says I can live with her.”
Gill's face flushed with fear and for a moment his glamour cracked, causing his eyes to glow. “But I can help you,” he said. He held out the bag of groceries in his right hand. “I have food. Money. I can help.”
Ria shook her head. “Like I said, people don't help people without a reason.” With that, she stepped into the taxi and drove away.
For the next week, Gill stayed in his greenhouse. Summer was upon Chicago and so much heat beat down upon the glass that he kept the air vents open and the fan running. During the day he walked aimlessly around the greenhouse, touching the silver and downy birch trees and making sure they didn't grow too tall, or massaging the sticky sap of the Scottish pines. He felt no need to maintain his glamour so he walked as he was, tall and extremely pale. He mended his clothes with new leaves and moss. He slept each night within the bubbling flow of the little pool.
During this time, he finally realized that Aithne was never coming back. She was dead. Nothing could change that. And, he realized, he deserved hell or worse for what he'd tried to do, and for what he'd done to Ria.
On the night of the seventh day, the sound of breaking glass disturbed his underwater slumber. A light shone across the greenhouse before lighting upon the pool. Gill waited for long moments, not wanting to be disturbed, but when the light didn't leave he sat up out of the water.
He heard a curse in Spanish. Ria.
“I knew it,” Ria said, her flashlight shining on Gill's pale skin. “I knew there was something about you. Don't move or I'll shoot you.”
Gill stared at the pistol in her hand. He started to tell her that the lead bullets were harmless to him, but then he sat down at the foot of the pool and stared into her eyes. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“You know why,” she hissed. “What did you do to my baby?”
“What do you mean?”
“Since I left, all she's done is cry. She won't eat, she won't sleep, just cries and screams and cries. What the hell did you do?”
Gill considered for a moment. Perhaps he could once again have Aithne. He started to open his mouth for another lie, but stopped. His heart couldn't handle any more untruths.
“My Aithne was killed,” he said, “in the alley behind our house. She was out there, trying to save a little half-dead tree, when someone hit her across the head with a piece of cold iron. By the time I reached her it was too late to do anything. As a memento of our love, she placed her heart into my body.
“The fey don't have children. Instead, when a fairy becomes too old or ill we place its heart into the body of a human, making them a new fairy. This hasn't been done for millennia, but it occurred to me that perhaps I should try it with Aithne's heart. At first I thought about using an adult human, but they are so set and stiff in their ways that I wasn't sure Aithne would return as she was. So I used a newborn.”
Ria glared at him in horror. “You killed my baby?”
“No. Aithne would never have wanted to live inside a stolen life. I searched for a baby that was about to die and found yours. Your baby died because of the drugs you used. Once she died, I placed Aithne's heart inside her body, hoping Aithne would return to me.” Gill shook his head. “It was the stupidest thing I've ever done.”
Before Gill could say anything more, the pistol rang out and several bullets slammed into his body. He picked the lead off his skin and flung them through the shattered glass of the greenhouse. “You will need iron to kill me. I believe the crowbar the human used to kill Aithne is still behind the garage. If you want, I will wait for you.”
But instead of moving, Ria simply collapsed and started crying. “I knew it,” she sobbed. “I knew she'd died. I was in the jail hospital and felt it. I mean, I prayed and prayed, said I'd do anything if my baby just survived. But she still died.”
Gill listened to Ria cry. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was. How he'd been wrong to intervene and would give anything to undo his deed. But instead of speaking he simply reached out a long, skinny pale hand and gen
tly hugged her.
So the love story of Aithne Glaistig and Gillian Dhu ended.
* * *
And so it began anew, but different.
Ria and Aithne moved back in with Gill. When Ria appeared at his door he didn't ask her why, although he felt a sense of resignation and a yearning for forgiveness within her. Gill knew enough about humans to understand that the forgiveness she sought could not come from him, so he merely said she was welcome to stay as long as she needed.
Ria and Aithne again lived in their own apartment but, unlike before, Gill now saw them daily. Ria was still nervous around Gill, especially since he no longer wore his glamour and stood a full two feet taller than her. Still, over time, Gill sensed an aching acceptance in her, which he tried not to disturb by demanding or asking anything of her. They had a truce, so to speak, that existed around and because of Aithne.
Aithne loved visiting Gill, mainly because he used his glamour to both entertain the child and teach her about the fey. While she toddled among the flowers growing from the carpet and chased little sprites around the sofa, Gill and Ria talked about her future. Gill explained that once she reached adulthood she would begin to age very slowly. He also explained about the dangers of iron and steel and how Aithne should protect herself.
“So what is she?” Ria asked.
“Well, my Aithne was a Glaistig. A very solitary fairy, half of earth, half of water. In Gaelic the word means water imp. Aithne was mostly benevolent. Guarded cattle. Occasionally gave a Banshee wail when someone important was about to die.”
“What else did they do?”
“Do?”
“Yes, do. What was their purpose? What was their role in the world?”
Gill arched his eyebrows. “Their role? My dear, that is a silly question. I mean, that's like me asking what your role in life is. Humans are born, they live, they die. Fairies are the same. We simply live longer than you.”
Never Never Stories Page 23