Harvest of Changelings (3 page)

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.

“Tell her I told you to get those nails. Geez, Ben, she's leaving. You gotta talk to her.”

I shook my head and asked Danielle, our waitress, for more sweet iced tea. I didn't want to talk about it anymore.

Valeria and I never mentioned the nails.

 

Valeria left April 30, Beltaine Eve.

“Are you just going to draw a pentagram on the floor at midnight and step through it?” Ben asked a few days before. He wasn't angry; he was just sad; they both were. They were in the bedroom and Valeria had just put Malachi to bed. They stood by the crib and watched as he dreamed, his breathing slow, easy, the sheet rising, falling, his fists by his face. The floor was still speckled with the black soot. Ben had tried every cleanser he could think of—Murphy's Oil
Soap, Pinesol, Formula 409—nothing had worked. Valeria had finally made him stop: the soot had bonded with the wood. He would have to replace the entire floor, she had told him, and destroy the wood. She had given him instructions how. Floors made of oak, holly, elder, thorn, ash, hawthorn, and apple wood were going to take some doing.

“No, I have to go to the nearest gate,” Valeria said and made some imperceptible adjustment to Malachi's covers. “I'll take a taxi. Let's go in the living room or we will wake him up.”

“Take a taxi? You can fly, or teleport, can't you?” Ben asked, following her down the hall. He would have to replace the floor in the hall, too, and the living room. The embedded black spots were everywhere. Valeria had told him the longer they remained in the wood, the weaker it would be until the floors just collapsed. And that sometimes the black spots could make anyone that walked on them for too long sick of heart, and eventually, of the body. They sat down on the couch, and Valeria leaned into Ben, her head on his shoulder.

“I don't have the strength for it, not so soon after delivery. Ben, I really don't want to go. You know, if the Fomorii hadn't found me, tried to kill me—I would have stayed, Dodecagon or no. But there is just too much at stake, and I need you both to be safe. Without me, you're safe. With me, you're not.”

“Can't I go with you to the gate?”

No, she told him, it wouldn't be safe. She didn't even want him to know where it was. Besides, it would make leaving all the harder.

 

I needed to hear that: she would have stayed. She had forgiven me the nails.

 

I said I told my son almost nothing about his mother until he was ten. I think now I was wrong to do that. He needed to know who and what she was, if for no other reason, to know who and what he was and was becoming. If I had, I think it would have made the first part of his puberty, when his fairyness started to manifest, so much more bearable for the both of us—much less scary for him. But I would have denied him that, if I could. That was wrong, too, I know. But I was so afraid of losing him as I lost her.

Now, I know there are worst things to be scared of than losing someone you love.

I have told him this story now I don't know how many times. Malachi knows it by heart. And no matter how many times I tell it, the ending is always the hardest: I have to tell him how his mother
died and that there was nothing I could have done to save her and that she died so that he and I would not die, that she loved us that much. I do not tell him that there seems to be no limit on how many times a heart can break, or that when I grieved for his mother, I grieved again for Emma, for loose flagstones, for human weakness, for not being enough, for feeling that I had failed again. I do not tell him I was angry with both women, with myself.

 

It hurt to watch the taxi turn into the driveway, Val gather her things, kiss and hug Malachi. When she turned to kiss Ben, they were both crying. Neither of them could say anything. Valeria touched Ben one more time, lightly, just the tip of her glowing fingers on his cheek, and turned to go down the front steps onto the flagstone path to the waiting red taxi.

Valeria was halfway between the steps and the car when the air shimmered, broke, falling in a rain of broken light, freeing the other Fomorii. It snapped its fire whip when its foot touched the earth, a snap so hard the whip broke, releasing a huge fireball, a miniature comet, with a tail of flames. The fireball was aimed at Ben. He could see it coming, smell and feel the approaching heat, and he knew there was no time and nowhere to go. Then Valeria threw herself in front of the fireball. Ben screamed: Noooo, don't, don't, nooo. The fireball exploded on impact.

Or did she explode? Ben was never sure. The resulting white fire burned away the night, the dark, the stars, the Fomorii, and the fire whip, Valeria, and part of the yard, the flagstones, the shrubbery. The shock wave, a sudden rippling, an airborne tide, hit Ben in the chest, throwing him back, into the flowerbeds, into the pansies and daffodils. The living room windows all shattered, the taxi flipped over, once, twice, three times, slamming into the fence. Ben never knew what happened to the driver; he was gone when Ben, some time later, remembered to check. The flagstones melted, as did a good part of the asphalt, driveway. And there was nothing left, except the melted glassy earth, the burnt grass, and a fine ash, of either Valeria or the Fomorii. The police and fire department arrived to find Ben still lying in the flowerbed, the grass still on fire, the gravel and asphalt, molten. At least, Ben thought, they had something to do. A paramedic helped him up into a barrage of questions. All he could think to say, since the taxi hadn't been considerate enough to explode, was ball lightning. The police, at least, kept the neighbors at bay.

“There's not a cloud in the sky. Ball lightning?” a sergeant asked, one eyebrow raised.

Ben nodded, and repeated his story and told them again and again he had no idea where the taxi driver had gone. Finally they left, and Ben repeated his story to the handful of neighbors still up, and then, shaking his head, no more, enough, went back into the house, and sat down on the couch. He couldn't do anything else. He couldn't think, talk; he could barely breath. When Malachi started crying, he was finally able to move. The clock on the dresser said three-thirty. He didn't turn on a light; he didn't need to. The baby glowed. Something new hung from the crib mobile Jack had given them, a slender, silver-grey necklace with one dangling charm. Putting Malachi on his shoulder, Ben held the charm in his hand. It was also silver-grey, heavy, and shaped like a star, a small star with twelve points.

By then Malachi was yelling so loud, Ben could have used him to guide in airplanes at RDU. Leaving the charm to dangle on the mobile and rubbing the boy's back, Ben went into the kitchen. There, on the table, inside what looked like a nest of light, was a bottle. Ben carefully put his hand through the light-nest and it faded away, as if someone had blown it out, as he pricked up the still-warm bottle. He knew it was Valeria's own milk—one from the precious few bottles she had left. He went back into the bedroom to the rocking chair and sat down, yawning, with Malachi in the crook of his arm. He looked up at Ben as he sucked noisily, with golden eyes, from her mother's family, Valeria had said.