Harvest of Changelings Read online

  “Wood? I can find some plastic,” the waiter said, as he lit the candles, as if beautiful women asked him for wooden cutlery every day.

  “How did you manage to ride in my steel car?” Ben asked, feeling guilty about the ten-penny nails now in his jacket pocket. They had been jabbing his leg.

  “Skingloves,” she told him and slowly pulled off one. The glove was transparent and soft, yet tough. “Leggings, too. Besides, I like humans, always have.” Much later, Ben would learn just what she meant by that, of the human lovers she had had in the past and in another land. Loving humans had caused no end of grief with her parents. And he would learn her past was a lot farther away than his.

  They learned from each other, at that dinner, in a coffeehouse after a movie another night, on walks around the neighborhood, sitting on each other’ porches . . . Ben learned the Daoine Sidhe had few machines and a longstanding misunderstanding with the Catholic Church over what was a good and a bad fairy. The Daoine Sidhe had visited the human universe often—before the war. They had come to teach. What? Oh, all sorts of things. They were the First-born in their world; dwarves, swimmers, and the wood-folk were the Second- and Third-born ...

  Ben, when pressed by Jack years later, could not say exactly when he fell in love with her or when he knew she was in love with him. He tried to remember when he fell in love with Emma and he couldn’t. Love came slowly for Ben—no magic glances across the room, no bolts of lightning—but rather like a glass beneath a dripping faucet, filling one drop at a time. There was no one movie or dinner or late-night swim, but at some time during that summer the drop fell that over-flowed the glass and they were in love. Everyone else knew before Ben did: Jack, Mrs. Carmichael, the head librarian, even the volunteers who came in to shelf books.

  Jack wanted to know what it was like to sleep with a woman who could do a little magic—not that she ever did much; the wards, lights, teleporting hither and yon, small stuff. All that I told him and all that I am going to tell here is that it happened inside a white flame that rippled around, between, and through us. The flame changed colors, becoming a living kaleidoscope. And that when I woke, later, the lights still lingered in her, rippling across her back like moonlight through a venetian blind someone was opening and closing. I walked around her house, in its warm and close dark, just to touch her things, straighten the magazines she had brought back from her jaunts around the Earth. I walked in her kitchen, a somewhat bare room, as she tended to short out small appliances and when we ate at home, I cooked, in my kitchen. I walked back to her bedroom and straightened the things on her dresser: a brush, a comb, a tiny bottle of perfume. I looked at the perfume for the longest time, trying to read the fine, italic words on the label, but they were in a language and an alphabet I didn’t recognize. Then I lay back down in her warmth and went to sleep.

  I told Jack nothing else. I have told Malachi nothing at all of that night. And this is all I will tell you of it.

  Ben and Valeria went to Ocracoke the first of August, for two weeks. There they stayed in the Crews Inn, tucked away on Back Road, and every day they rented bicycles and rode up NC 12 to the beach. The sea reminded Valeria of home and as they walked on the white sand she told him about the sea that had been in front of the house in which she had grown up, a multi-colored sea: gold, silver, green, white, blue, and grey. Dolphins and whales, along with the merfolk, the swimmers, lived in her ocean, and, yes, of course, dolphins and whales were intelligent and could speak—or rather were telepathic. Ben remembered thinking then that all the fairy tales he had ever read or ever heard: good fairies and bad fairies, talking animals, and mermaids, and all the rest, were true. All the stories were true.

  Two nights before they were to go back home, as they had lain in bed together, Ben braiding her long, golden hair through his fingers, Valeria told him she was expecting, gravid, in the family way—

  “Pregnant?” he had said and she had said yes, and told him other things he needed to know.

  She was fifteen days pregnant and a Daoine Sidhe pregnancy was eight months long. In two-and-a-half months Valeria wouldn’t be able to teleport anywhere, as the baby might be left behind. In three-and-a-half months Valeria wouldn’t be able to leave the house. She would be glowing and exuding light from practically every orifice in her body and would no longer be able to control it as she usually could.

  And after the baby was born—a boy—she would have to go back to Faerie, without the baby, without Ben.

  Ben could not understand why. Why hadn’t she told him this from the very beginning? Because she had decided not to go back, ever—furlough or no furlough, she was going to go AWOL, desert, go walkabout. Then she had seen him and met him and fallen in love. Then she had decided to take him back with her, war or no war—she wasn’t going to leave her human lover behind, not this time. But the baby had changed everything. Why? A half-human baby would be very vulnerable to the Fomorii for too long a time, not until he is trained into his powers, powers a fairy child would learn to use the way he learns to walk and talk. The baby needed to be human first, then a fairy. And Ben would have to stay and raise the boy until the war was over and she could come for them both.

  Besides, she said, as they argued and walked the beach and argued and packed and drove to the ferry and argued and rode the ferry over Pamlico Sound to Cedar Island, the gulls diving for bits of bread, she was needed in Faerie. There was one more thing she hadn’t yet told him: she was on the Dodecagon, the ruling council, one of the twelve most important people in Faerie. Valeria was the Prime Mover, the head of the council. She had been foolish to think she could escape her responsibilities, that she could abandon the cause of the Light beyond the Light, which would go out on both worlds if the Daoine Sidhe lost.

  She showed me my light once, the light that is part of the Light beyond the Light.

  “I have a light, too?”

  “Yes, but it’s really hard for humans to see their light, their aura—at least it used to be.”

  We stood naked in front of a mirror and slowly the light in the room dimmed and the light around me became visible. A pale blue-grey light outlined my flesh. Another layer, rainbow-colored, enclosed the blue-grey. On the top of my head, at my throat, my heart, my solar plexus, my stomach, and my groin, there seemed to be inner fires of different colors. Just beyond the rainbow layer, beginning at my head and spreading down was yet another layer, bright yellow.

  “A halo,” I murmured. “Does everybody have a halo and all these layers of light?”

  “Yes.”

  I lifted my hand and the layers of light moved with me, sparking and shooting off tiny falling stars.

  The trip home to Garner was in silence. For a week we stumbled around each other, muttering and grumbling. Mrs. Carmichael asked me if I was sick; she told me she hadn’t seen me so despondent since Emma died. I wanted to talk to Jack, but he was out of town, so, to my surprise, I drove into Raleigh to St. Anthony’s, to Father Mark, the same priest who had come to see me when Emma died, the same priest I told to go to hell, punctuating my command with a slammed door. I was afraid he would do the same; instead he listened. At the end of my haphazard story, a melange of generalities and specifics (I just couldn’t tell him Valeria was a Daoine Sidhe), we were well in late summer twilight and the light in his office was changing and moving, as it burnished his white hair, outlined the gold of his glasses. He looked hard at me and told me I had left parts of the story out, and so he didn’t quite understand it all. But, he said, leaning into his desk, to love another is to accept them as they are, and not to try and make them into what we would want them to be. My love for Valeria couldn’t be based on her promising not to die like Emma, on her promising to be what she wasn’t, to do what would make her what she wasn’t. Did I understand? Yes, but what do I do? Go home and love her, he told me. Believe that she loves you. Believe in your love for each other. Go home, Ben.

  So I did.

  There were times that fall when Ben alm
ost forgot Valeria had to leave. He almost forgot at Halloween—Samhain—when his house—their house, now—was the closest to being haunted as it had ever been. Green witch-lights glowed in pumpkins all over the yard and, no matter how hard the neighborhood kids tried, they couldn’t get near one. What looked like ghosts drifted and moaned in the trees. Banshees wailed in the darkness, sending kids screaming down the street.

  In Faerie, Valeria told him, Samhain was not disguises or loud noises or scary stories. Samhain was a festival of lights. Great bonfires lit the mountaintops. Valeria remembered seeing the flames from her home by the sea. At midnight there were prayers, songs, poems, or simply conversations with the Good God and Goddess wherever one was: on the beach, in a forest glade, or the Great Temple in the White City. To remember the dead, to say good-bye to the old year, to welcome the new. It was a night when you could see another’s soul, plain and visible.

  She made Christmas a festival of lights as well. The tree was filled with multi-colored, shimmering lights drifting in and out of the branches. Outside she sent more lights to roam the eaves, porch railings, weaving a shining net over the house. By then she was showing and she was luminous—the light grew as the baby grew, she said. Her mother had told her it was to light the way for the baby’s soul. Daoine Sidhe mothers couldn’t stop the glowing at five months—all their energy was spent in the baby. Ben had been able to deflect the neighbors’ questions about Valeria’s absence: bed rest, doctor’s orders, at her mother’s, where he went every weekend. He had to park his car at the library on weekends and sneak in his house to make that story work. To answer questions about the decorations: experimental special effects, like the movies—a friend worked for Industrial Light and Magic, really, no, trade secret, but be on the lookout at the theatre. One of his neighbors, months later, swore he saw the same lights in a film. Ben had just nodded and said, “See, I told you so.”

  There would have been still more questions about the fey crèche Valeria sat beneath the tree. Fortunately no one, except for Jack, ever saw it. The crèche had three babies inside, the Three Sons sent by the Good God and Goddess: Oberon, Pan, and Triton. Then, she set four candles in the window, for the Four Teachers, one of Earth, one of Air, one of Water, one of Fire.

  And Ben started going back to mass. He stuffed dollars in the votive offering box each time and carefully lit the tiny candles in the blue and green glass jars with one of the long sticks stuck in a sand pot. He argued with himself as he lit each candle: this was a superstition, this was a prayer to keep her, this was the Catholic magic he laughed at, this was all he could do to keep her here.

  In the first week of March the baby was born.

  “The baby’s coming. Ben, wake up, wake up. My water broke; I’m in labor.”

  Ben turned over groggily and looked up into Valeria’s face. He had never seen her radiating so much light before. He could barely look at her. The room was filled with light.

  “The baby? Now?”

  “Yes. Do you remember the things I need for you to do? Are you awake?”

  “Wide awake.”

  “Remember, this isn’t an ordinary human birth. Close all the curtains and blinds—otherwise the neighbors will think the house is on fire ...” Valeria went on, giving Ben a detailed list of things to gather, what temperature the room should be, how far apart her contractions were, how much time that meant, and so on. He didn’t tell her she had given him almost the same list two months ago, and a month ago, and a slightly revised version last week. He just nodded at each item as he twisted the bed sheets with his hands, telling himself to be calm, just be calm, take slow, deep breaths, count to ten, be calm . . .

  “Well, Ben? Get busy!”

  He got busy.

  Our son, Malachi Lucius Tyson, was born four hours later, just before dawn. When he came out, head first, there was a tremendous explosion of light. He slid into my hands all wet and slippery and hot. I had never felt (and have yet to) a healthy baby so hot before. I cut the cord and wrapped him in a wet towel, steam rising into my face.

  He was the most beautiful baby I have ever seen.

  Ben thought it was Malachi’s crying the next night that woke him. He sat up quickly and rolled out of bed. The baby was fast sleep. Ben stood, one hand on the crib, listening. He could hear Malachi breathing, and then softer, yet in the same rhythm, Valeria. He heard the faint tick of the clock on the dresser. And a thump in the living room that shouldn’t be there, followed quickly by another, dull and heavy on the floor. A bird—a bat against the window—could he have possibly left the window open?

  I still remember what I was thinking, trying to make sense out of an impossible noise. I still remember wishing I had a baseball bat or a tennis racquet as I went down the hall to check, feeling foolish.

  They stood by a picture of Faerie Valeria had hung in Ben’s living room, right above the table where she had set the terrarium with the little dragon. There were two of them, shadows blacker and darker than anything Ben had ever seen. Their shadows swallowed light. Ben watched as the moonlight was sucked up into their darknesses. The nearer one sniffed and turned, and looked directly at Ben, its eyes dark red fires. It took one step forward, its claws scratching on the wood. Ben stepped backward. The Fomorii had come; they had gotten through after all. And it was in the middle of the night and Ben was stark naked.

  The nearest Fomorii took another step toward Ben and spat on the floor. The spit hissed like water tossed into a frying pan. Then it cracked a whip. Sparks flew and Ben felt the air in the room suddenly grow hotter and closer. A few more steps closer and he knew the whip would have left a burn on his chest. The monster cracked its whip again and this time caught Ben on his leg. He screamed and the two Fomorii started walking slowly toward him, one behind the other, backing him down the hall. Why should they be afraid of one naked human when they were winning battles against the lords of Faerie?

  Faerie. Nails, iron, the blood metal. He knew they were from yet another universe, but maybe, just maybe. The ten-penny nails were still in his jacket pocket, right where he had left them months ago. Behind Ben, about six feet away, was the bedroom door, a white rectangle, the light contained inside the doorframe, as if someone had caged the light. Had Valeria set the wards? But he had been able to go out—did the wards know him, let him come and go? Could they keep out the darkness? The jacket—where was it?—his closet.

  The Fomorii were less than five feet away. He saw them clearly: crests erect, black scales, yellow fangs, yellow claws, those red eyes. He took another step backward; the Fomorii matched it. The bedroom was less than three feet away. Ben could hear Malachi screaming. He took another step backward, felt something give, and he was inside. The Fomorii stood at the door, stopped by the light. He glanced to be sure Valeria had the baby and he bolted for the closet and the jacket and the nails.

  “I forgot to set all the wards. I was too tired; I forgot; I thought we were safe. I can’t hold them much longer—I just don’t have the strength ...”

  He didn’t even look at her as he frantically searched for the nails. When Ben found them in his jacket pocket, he yanked them out and turned as the Fomorii snarled, in one fluid motion. The air and the light in the door shimmered and for a very brief moment he saw what looked like a very fine spider web crack in a windshield. Both Fomorii cracked their whips and hissing fireballs the size of basketballs flew through the shimmering air that now seemed to fill the room. Valeria matched the fireballs with her own lightning bolts, exploding them like fireworks. The air in the door shook again, vibrating, and broken, bits of shattered light cascading to the floor. The first Fomorii steeped into the room, the darkness coming with him, a living, silent, foulsmelling storm cloud. It ate the light, breaking it into firefly-sized pieces. With the nails tight in his hand, wishing they were longer, Ben ran straight for the monster and stabbed at him, slashing open one scaly, black arm.

  The darkness froze. The second Fomorii froze. The wounded one screamed and moaned
and then it began to melt, its crest drooping and oozing, the scales blurring, everything blurring into a dark, vile, smelly mess on the floor. The second Fomorii ran and Ben could hear another shattering of the air. The darkness vanished at the shattering and there was only the grey-blue dawn light. Ben could see the sky and a few stars out the window. The only other lights in the room were the baby and Valeria. She looked at him and he looked at her, the nails still in his hand. At Ben’s feet were tiny bits of darkness, like black soot on the floor.

  We never really talked about what happened. I wish we had. Jack tried to make me talk to her, but I couldn’t.

  “You haven’t talked about it at all? Ben, you fought off the Forces of Evil and saved your woman and your child and you can’t talk to her about it? Ben!”

  “You don’t understand. I had nails, iron nails, in my jacket pocket in our bedroom, the room our son was born in. Yes, those nails saved her and Malachi, but I got them to protect myself against her. Remember?”

  “She must have said something,” Jack muttered, as he carefully mixed the gravy and mashed potatoes on his plate together. We were in the Kuntry Kitchen for our regular Friday lunch.

  “She told me why the Fomorii came. They were assassins.” And I told him the rest: that she was not just one of the Twelve on the Dodecagon. She was the Prime Mover, the head, the focal point. If they got her, the tide of the war would change. That they even got through was a sign she was desperately needed back home.