He Said, Sidhe Said

I didn't see the girl at first; I saw the flowers. Three big, pink roses sprayed onto the side of the pipe. She wasn't easy to spot because she was kneeling down at the bottom of the third rose, painting in her tag. Her green jacket kind of blended in with all the foliage.

I mounted up and carved my way down to the bottom just as she stood. Her tag read Janet. Given that she was at the bottom of the pipe and couldn't get away, she stood her ground.

"Nice work," I said. "I haven't seen you around here before."

"My old man doesn't want me coming here. Says I'll meet the wrong sort." She shrugged. "I come anyway. I've seen you."

"You have?"

"Duh, you haunt this place. Yesterday afternoon, I saw that super high switch heelflip you did."

"Actually, it was switch front heelflip, switch heelflip, backside tailslide and a fakie hardflip."

"Wow."

"Yeah." It was good to talk to someone who understood. She was riding an urban assault board, way bigger than most girls like at forty inches, and I could see her eyeing my pro model. I have no idea what made me say it, but I stepped off and pushed my board over. "Go on. You know you want to."

Her eyes widened. Letting someone else on your ride was more intimate than screwing, and I could tell from her expression, she'd never done this before. Finally, she nodded and pushed her ride toward me. "What the hell. The front trucks are a little tight."

She was right and I bailed coming out of a tailslide, trying to carve left across the bowl. Took most of the landing on my right shoulder, but still buffed a strip of skin off my jaw. Late afternoon, she came off some air and into a fakie, shifted her weight wrong, hit, and rolled up, blood seeping through the knee of her cargos.

Bonded in blood. Cool.

With her leg locked up, she was done for the day. Using her board like a crutch, she hobbled to the edge of the park and turned to stare back at me. "You want to go get some fries or something?"

Actually I did, but Annie was expecting me back, and…

Janet snorted. "You got a girl. I should've known."

While I was thinking of something, anything, to say, she limped away.

* * * *

He was bleeding when he returned to me that night, and he stank of mortal company. I would have demanded to know her name, but that vexatious Puck lingered still about, and I would not have him carry tales of a mortal lover who dared to cheat on me.

Later, with the nettlesome sprite safely in sight, but out of earshot as he sought to annoy me by having Tommy Lane teach him new tricks, I got the whole story from the Loireag.

A girl.

I would use her.

That night, as he slept, I cloaked myself in shadow and did what I had not done for many long years – I walked amid the mortal race. The girl was easy enough to find; her blood had mixed with his, and his was mine.

She sat by the entrance to her dwelling. Within, raised voices discussed locking her in her room until she told them the name of the boy she was seeing.

In guise of one Tommy Lane would believe, wearing the face of my husband's emissary – which had, of late, become as familiar to me as my own – I sat down beside her. "They sound angry."

"Who the hell are you?"

Of old, the young were much politer. "I bring you word from Tommy Lane."

"Who?"

Thus I discovered the reason she had not told her elders the name of the boy. "You met him today at the ring of stone by Carterhaugh Pond. You rode his board and he yours."

"Yeah, so?"

"He is in grave danger. Tomorrow night, the Queen of Faerie will take his life."

"Where?"

I sighed. "She will end his life."

"Why?"

"Because a tithe to darkness must be paid, and she will not sacrifice an immortal knight when a mortal man is close at hand."

"Look, I don't know what you're on, but I got troubles of my own, so make like a leaf and get lost."

I drew her gaze around to mine, captured it, and held it. "Do you believe me now?" I demanded when, after many heartbeats, I released her.

She drew in a long, shuddering breath. "I guess."

As that appeared to be as good as I would get, I continued. "You must go to the park as the sun leaves the sky, and when the Queen arrives to claim him, you must snatch him from his board and hold him tight." A possible problem occurred to me. "Are you afraid of snakes?"

"No."

"Good. Do not fear although he be turned within your grasp into angry beasts or red-hot iron or burning lead or…"

"Does this fairy tale have a point? Because if I'm not inside in five minutes my old man's going to come out here and kick my ass."

"If you hold tightly to young Tommy Lane, he will in time become himself again. Then you must wrap him in your mantle green."

"My what?"

I sighed again. "Wrap him in your green jacket, and the spell will be broken."

* * * *

Annie looked real pleased with herself the next morning, and when I went for a quickie before breakfast, she was so into it, it was kind of scary. I mean, I liked her enthusiasm, but man…

She stretched out on the bed looking all catlike and said, "Wait at the park this evening until I come for you. I have a surprise planned."

Later, everyone I passed on the way to the park said goodbye.

I was making my third run down over Janet's roses, when it was like she suddenly appeared. I looked up on the lip, and there she was.

I flipped up beside her. She looked pissed.

"Are you real or what?"

"What?"

"Bastard!" She punched me in the arm.

"What are you talking about?"

And then she told me this bullshit story some short brown dude told her about my Annie and sacrificing me tonight and crap.

"It's a Halloween prank," I told her.

She snorted. "I thought so. The whole thing's a friggin' lie!"

"Not all of it," I admitted. I told her my side of the story, and she snorted again.

"Jeez, you are so lame! If that's true, then what makes the story I got told not true? It sounds to me like the Queen wants more than your bod. You said she looked pleased with herself. She said she has a surprise planned. Everyone said goodbye to you when you left. Duh! How many times have you bailed on your head?"

When Janet put it that way, it all began to make a horrible amount of sense. Puck. The short brown dude had to have been Puck. He liked me, and he didn’t seem to like my Annie much. I guess now I knew why.

I stepped onto my board. "I'm so out of here."

* * * *

And that was my cue. I could not allow him to merely ride away; the power of the gift I'd given him had to be broken or I would ever live with the nagging feeling that someday he might return.

As I stepped into the mortal world, I was pleased to see the girl wrap her arms around young Tommy Lane and drag him off his board. I wrapped myself in terrible beauty and, as she tried to stare me down, raised a hand.

First I turned him to an adder, and Janet held him close, although her language would have withered apples on the tree.

Then I turned him to a lion wild, and Janet released one hand and smacked the beast upon the nose.

Then I turned him to a red hot bar of iron, and Janet screamed and threw him in the pond, throwing her smouldering jacket in after him.

Close enough.

Another wailing visit from the Loireag was little enough price to pay.

As I removed the glamour and he was once again Tommy Lane, I cried out, "If I had known some lady'd borrowed thee, I would have plucked out your eyes and put in eyes of tree. And had I known of this before I came from home, I would have plucked out your heart and put in a heart of stone!"

"Possessive much?" Janet snarled from the edge of the pond.

Dragging Janet's jacket behind him, Tommy Lane waded to the shore, shaking his head. "Babe, we are so over."

I had thought that was the point I was making.

When I stepped back into Faerie, it was to find Robin Goodfellow awaiting me.

"Ah yes, the old held by mortal maid shtick." He scratched reflectively beneath one arm. "Funny thing, though, I could've sworn that tithe went out after seven years, not seven days."

Had it only been seven days? It had seemed so very much longer. "Shut up," I told him.

"Hey, rules were followed, traditions upheld, I got nothing to say." He bowed, sweeping an imaginary hat against the ground. "If Your Majesty has no further need of me."

I forbore to remind him that I never had need of him nor ever would. He waved in his most irritatingly jaunty manner and sped through the deepening twilight toward the Lord Oberon's Court, indulging in a series of kickflips as he rode out of sight.

A velvet hush settled over my Court as, with stately grace, I moved among my knights and ladies. As I settled upon a grassy bank and allowed my ladies to twine starflowers in the midnight fall of my hair, I came to an inescapable conclusion.

It was entirely possible that I had remarkably bad taste in men.

This story was originally published in 1992. Twenty-two years ago. I honestly have no idea where the idea came from or why I made the choices I made when writing it. Seriously, twenty-two years. I don't always remember what I did last Tuesday. "Write something for a Christmas anthology," I was asked. "Okay," I said. And I'm paraphrasing, because I don't remember the conversation either.

I will say that the old farmhouse in the story belonged to my great-grandparents and it cost a fortune in oil to heat, so the only really warm room in the house was the kitchen where the wood-stove reigned. No one in my immediate family ever kept pigs in the porch.

I also remember that I showed an early draft of this story to Michelle Sagara when we were working together at Bakka Books in Toronto, and, because her brain doesn't default to sexy times, she had a completely different idea of what the music was offering. For Michelle's sake, I made it more obvious in later drafts.

I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

"...yes, you'll be dressed in holiday style if you come down to Big Bob's pre-Christmas clothing sale. All the fashions, all the frills, all major credit cards accepted..."

"Are we there yet?"

"Soon, honey."

"How soon?"

"Soon."

"I'm gonna be sick."

Elaine Montgomery took her eyes off the road just long enough to shoot a panicked glance at her daughter's flushed face. "We're almost there, Katie. Can't you hold on just a little bit longer?"

"No!" The last letter stretched and lengthened into a wail that completely drowned out the tinny sound of the car radio and threatened to shatter glass.

As Elaine swerved the car toward the shoulder, an echoing wail rose up from the depths of the beige plastic cat carrier securely strapped down in the back seat. The last time she'd assumed Katie could hold on for the two kilometres to the next rest stop, it had taken her over an hour to clean the car – which had allowed the cat's tranquilizers to wear off long before they arrived at their destination.

Neither Katie nor the cat were very good travellers.

"Mommy!"

Wet gravel spun under the tires as she fought the car and trailer to a standstill. "Just another second, honey. Grit your teeth." How many times can you throw up one lousy cheese sandwich? she wondered, unbuckling her seatbelt and reaching for her daughter's. Thank God she's not still in the kiddie carseat. It had taken a good twenty minutes and an advanced engineering degree to get Katie in and out of the safety seat, and, here and now, all signs indicated she had closer to twenty seconds.

"It's all right, baby. Mommy's got you." She slid them both out the passenger door and went to her knees in a puddle to better steady the four-year-old's shaking body. December rain drove icy fingers down the back of her neck, and not for the first time since leaving Toronto that morning, Elaine wondered what the hell she was doing heading into the middle of nowhere two weeks before Christmas with a four-year-old, a very pissed off cat, and all her worldly goods.

Trying to survive, came the answer.

I knew that. She sighed and kissed Katie's wet curls.

* * * *

"Ms. Montgomery?" Upon receiving an affirmative answer, the woman who'd come out of the house as the car pulled up popped open an umbrella and hurried forward. "I'm Catherine Henderson. Your late aunt's lawyer? So nice to finally meet you at last. I was afraid you weren't going to make it before I had to leave. Here, let me take the cat..."

Elaine willingly surrendered the cat-carrier, tucked Katie up under one arm, and grabbed for their bag of essentials with the other. The two-story brick farmhouse loomed up out of the darkness like the haven she hoped it was, and feeling more than just a little numb, she followed the steady stream of chatter up onto the porch and into the kitchen.

"No need to lock the car, you're miles away from anyone who might want to steal it out here. I hope you don't mind going around to the back, I can't remember the last time the front door was opened. Careful on that step, there's a crack in the cement. The porch was a later addition to the original farmhouse, which was built by your late aunt's father in the twenties. You'll have to excuse the smell; your aunt got a bit, well, eccentric later in life and kept a pair of pigs in here over last winter. I had the place scoured and disinfected after we spoke on the phone, but I'm afraid the smell is going to be with you for a while." She dropped the umbrella into a pail by the door and heaved the carrier up onto the kitchen table. "Good heavens, he's a big one isn't he? Did he wail like that all the way from Toronto?"

"No." Elaine put Katie down and brushed wet hair back off her face. "Only for the last hundred kilometres or so."

"I'll let him out, Mommy." Small fingers struggled with the latch for a second, then a grey and white blur leapt from the table and disappeared under the tattered lounge by the window.

"Leave him be, Katie." A quick grab kept her daughter from burrowing beneath the furniture with the cat. "He needs to be alone for a while."

"Okay." Katie turned, looked speculatively up at the lawyer and announced, "I puked all over the car."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Catherine took the pronouncement in stride. "If you're feeling sick again," she crossed the kitchen and opened one of four identical doors, "the bathroom is through here." Reaching for the next door over, she continued. "This is the bedroom your aunt used – I suggest you use it as well as it's the only room in the house that's insulated. This is the hall, leading to the front door and the stairs – another four bedrooms up there, but as I said, uninsulated. And this is the cellar."

Elaine took an almost involuntary step forward. "What was that?"

"What was what?" the other woman asked carefully, closing the cellar door.

"The music. I heard music... just for a second. It sounded like, like..." Obviously, the lawyer hadn't heard it, so Elaine let the explanation trail off.

"Yes, well, these old houses make a lot of strange noises. There's an oil furnace down there, but it must be close to thirty-five years old, so I wouldn't count on it too much. I think your aunt depended on the woodstove. You do know how to use a woodstove, don't you?"

"I think I can figure it out." The question had hovered just on the edge of patronizing, and Elaine decided not to admit her total lack of experience. You burn wood; how hard could it be? Whole forests burn down on their own every year.

"Good. I've left a casserole and a litre of milk in the fridge. I don't imagine you'll want to cook after that long drive. You've got my number; if you need anything, don't hesitate to call."

"Thank you." As Catherine retrieved her umbrella, Elaine held open the porch door and wrinkled her nose. "Um, I was wondering, what happened to the pigs when my aunt died?"

"Worried about wild boars tearing up the property? You needn't; the pigs shuffled off this mortal coil months before your aunt did. There might still be packages marked Porky or Petunia in the freezer out in the woodshed."

Elaine closed the door on Catherine's laugh and leaned for a moment against the peeling paint. Porky and Petunia. Right. It had been a very long day. She started as skinny arms wrapped around her leg.

"Mommy? I'm hungry."

"I'm not surprised." She took a deep breath, turned, and scooped her daughter up onto her hip. "But first we're both putting on some dry clothes. How does that sound?"

Katie shrugged. "Sounds okay."

On the way to the bedroom, Elaine dropped the overnight case and pulled the cellar door open a crack, just to check. There was a faint, liquid trill of sound, and then the only thing she could hear was water running into the cistern.

"Mommy?"

"Did you hear the music, Katie?"

Katie listened with all the intensity only a small child could muster. "No," she said at last. "No music. What did it sound like?"

"Nothing honey. Mommy must have been imagining it." It had sounded like an invitation, but not the kind that could be discussed with a four-year-old. It probably should have been frightening, but it wasn't. Each note had sent shivers of anticipation dancing over her skin. Elaine was willing to bet the farm – well, maybe not that, as this rundown old place was the only refuge they had – that she hadn't been imagining anything.

* * * *

The forest was the most alive place she'd ever been; lush and tangled, with bushes reaching up, and trees reaching down, and wild flowers and ferns tucked in every possible nook and cranny. She danced through it to the wild call of the music and when she realized she was naked, it didn't seem to matter. Nothing scratched, nothing prickled, and the ground under her bare feet had the resilience of a good foam mattress.

Oh, yes! the music agreed.

The path the music lead her down had been danced on before. Her steps followed the imprint of a pair of cloven hooves.

She could see a clearing up ahead, a figure outlined in the brilliant sunlight, pan pipes raised to lips, an unmistakable silhouette, intentions obvious. She felt her cheeks grow hot.

What am I thinking of? Her feet lost a step in the dance. I'm responsible for a four- year-old child. I can't just go running off to... to... well, I can't just go running off.

Why not? the music asked indignantly.

"Because I can't! Yi!" She teetered, nearly fell, and made a sudden grab for the door frame. The cellar stairs fell away, dark and steep, and from somewhere down below the music made one final plea. It wailed its disappointment as she slammed the cellar door closed.

A little dreaming, a little sleepwalking, a little... Well, never mind. Elaine shoved a chair up under the doorknob and tried not to run back to the bedroom she was sharing with Katie. I'm just reacting to the first night in a new house. Nothing strange about that... And old furnaces make a lot of... noises.

Of course, she had to admit as she scrambled under the covers and snuggled up against the warmth of her sleeping daughter, old furnaces didn't usually make lecherous suggestions.