Chapter Three Dairmuid
“This is going to be simple, yes? We take the faeling and leave something in its place. Did you find a goat? Don’t humans like goats?”
“It’s a bit more noticeable to put livestock in someone’s crib. I got a dog,” Bonwit says and holds out a sleeping black and brown mongrel no bigger than a loaf of bread.
“All right. Slip it in, and take the child. Bring him to me,” I breathe, crouching in the darkness, surrounded by shrubbery.
The mortal world is... well, it’s not as I imagined.
Humans are not the sort of hapless, lolling things I pictured, content to play and toil at little tasks, rather inferior to fae.
I see the world they’ve built, how different, how sophisticated, and yes, surely, they may have done it with fae help in some cases but not all.
What I have been missing?
Bonwit turns on me. “What? Me!? It’s your child!”
“Shhh! No one knows that.”
“Well, they will once you bring it back, won’t they?”
I wince. “Maybe not for a while. My mother...”
“Maybe it doesn’t look too much like a demon,” Bonwit comforts, patting my arm.
Such familiarity wouldn’t be tolerated by some fae, but I don’t bother with all that. I keep to my own interests and rules, at least as much as I can. Some rules are ironclad—and yes, some with literal iron. We fairfolk aren’t fond of it.
“You have more experience with humans.”
“Not breaking into their houses! I sit on gates and ask pretty maids for a kiss. I dance with them at Samhain, when the veils thin. That’s it, really.”
“Do it, and I’ll pay you handsomely.”
“You already pay me handsomely—which is to say, you pay me nothing, and I just take the gold I have need of, and neither of us seems to mind.”
“That’s true,” I murmur, suddenly straightening up. “Shh. She’s there.”
The woman who lives in the end house, the house on Balsalm, is suddenly just a few feet away through hard, sheer glass, standing over a tap that runs straight into the house, scrubbing at something furiously, and then measuring a buttermilk-colored powder into a bottle.
My son is there. But where?
I don’t see him, and my heart stops with fear. What does he look like? Is he well? Is Saz already in the house, pulling the strings of the human woman who now turns her back to us?
“She’s gorgeous, m’lord,” Bonwit whispers, eyes wide and transfixed like some lovestruck calf. “Look at her.”
I do, mainly to try to judge what sort of a woman has my child.
She is gorgeous, by human or fae standards. On the matter of her face, she looks like she belongs in the Autumn Court, with delicate, graceful features, features that I can envision as either serene or furious, although now they simply seem determined.
The longer I stare, the more I can see: her in gowns of pine green, fair gossamer wings on her bare shoulders. “She is a picture,” I murmur.
Long, lithe arms and legs. Tall and slender.
Some might say a mannish cut, with fewer curves and more angles, but I like the subtlety.
If I weren’t so badly burned in matters of the heart (or the loins), perhaps I would think about how delicious it is to discover something that isn’t blatantly on display, so different from Saz’s obvious, sensuous glory.
I’m looking merely as an observer, an explorer, a fae on ‘safari’ to the human realm, as I think the term might be. She’s just a new experience for my eyes.
Her eyes. They’re a hazel with a green hue, and her hair is the shade of sunlight on turning leaves, a rich red that gleams.
She is in every way different to my last paramour, with pale skin, lines instead of swells, and a certain worry in her features. Most immortals don’t wear such looks of anxiety. We are timeless. We know our tasks. In the Autumn Court—we are often quite bored. Saz was my excitement.
Too much excitement.
“This thing just piddled on my shoe!” Bonwit hisses, holding the puppy out and looking aggrieved. “Take him, and go fetch your faeling!”
“I... I don’t know how to charm a human or even to use stealth with them.”
“That’s nonsense, it’s in your blood, man!” Bonwit shoves my shoulder with his—well, as near as he can get to it, seeing as he’s a handful of inches shorter.
He’s right. It’s in my blood.
But for some reason, the sight of the woman hurriedly preparing a bottle for my son with such tired worry in her eyes makes me feel as though she is not the human for me to practice my native deceptions on.
“Please, Bonwit,” I mumble, feeling an awful coward. I should storm in, take my son by force, and wipe her mortal memory of the encounter. And instead, I’m afraid. I’m afraid to fumble this, lest I hurt him, or risk his life, or his soul, or... so many things.
I am a coward. A princely, lordly coward who always has his servants do his dirty work.
Bonwit seems shocked by my humbled expression and my plea. “All right, then. We’ll have to wait a little bit. It’s best to wait until she’s asleep and just slip the child out.”
“All right. It’s awfully late for humans to be up, isn’t it? I thought they retired a few hours after the sun set, so as to save their candles and grease?”
Bonwit gives me a pitying look. “Do you never, ever pay attention when your cousins talk about the human realm?”
“I do not pay attention when anyone in my family speaks, at all,” I admit, and we laugh, settling into the shadows. To mortal eyes, that is likely all we seem to be.
“Humans have electricity, motor cars, electric cars, flying planes that cross entire oceans, and little boxes that contain thousands of tomes of ancient and modern knowledge. They want directions to a distant town? It’s in the box.
They want to know who will play in the next cricket match? It’s in the box.”
“They match crickets?”
“A amadán,” Bonwit groans under his breath. “You really haven’t paid attention to much of anything in the last dozen centuries, have you?”
I shrug. “What are these boxes called?”
“Mobiles or cellulars. Sometimes just phones. Or computers. Or laptops.”
“And they’re all the same thing?” So humans aren’t little stumbling pups. They’re confusing and surprisingly knowledgeable about everything, it seems.
“I’m not sure,” Bonwit admits. They have different sizes.”
“And what do they know of fae nowadays?”
“They think we’re all girls in tiny dresses with sparkling bums.”
That almost makes me laugh aloud, even though my entire body feels like a knot in a thunderbolt, waiting for the conditions to be just right before I can explode.
“Or, they think we’re all these cruel, vicious royal types with insatiable sexual needs.” Bonwit snorts and gives me a bemused look. “You look the part, I suppose, if cruel sex fiends had such pretty hair.”
“Stop it,” I sigh, starting to plait my almost waist-length red locks.
They’re a similar shade to the woman who holds my son hostage.
Or perhaps she cares for him.
I wish I knew. That’s a power I don’t have, to see into minds. Clairvoyance, I’ve heard it called, or second sight, or all sorts of other names.
“Think you prance about in lofty castles. Wish they could get a look at your ‘estate.’ Tumbledown is the word.”
“It’s perfect! It’s home,” I snarl softly.
My tone softens suddenly, “It’ll be just the place to raise a boy.
All the clouds he’ll learn to fly through, and the storms he’ll learn to control, and the woods and hills, and the rivers and lakes...
I’ll teach him to whittle and name all the stars,” I whisper, leaning back against the tree we’ve taken refuge under.
“Aye.” Bonwit’s answer is short. Quiet.
“When we get him,” I say firmly.
If we get him.
Bonwit and I sit side-by-side, with the dozing puppy occasionally waking to demand treats from Bonwit’s pocket.
One by one, all the lights in the house go out.
The lights in other houses are out, and yet, in some houses the lights go on, and people appear at the doorways, and hug each other before one leaves, driving off in their strange, metal carriages.
“Vampires. Gargoyles. Supernatural sorts. Monsters and beasties,” Bonwit says, tense beside me.
“But... They live in little houses. They drive little autophones.”
“Automobiles. Mobiles are phones that you can carry about. Automobiles are things that carry the person about.”
“Humans are horribly confusing.”
“At their core, they're simple. They want love and basic comforts. The good ones don’t get too greedy, and the bad ones deserve everything that fae dish out.”
“But why are the vampires allowed here? Why was Saz?”
Bonwit gives me a look that shows he’s awfully concerned.
“Can’t you feel it? This is a place where the energy calls to immortals and the others that aren’t quite human.
It’s... Can’t you feel it?” He touches the air like he could pull up a handful.
“Tuatha Dé Danann,” he breathes reverently.
“That’s sweet. You wouldn’t know, I suppose.
You’re always in your realm, and the energy is saturated with magic.
It’s rich as Cernunnos here. It’s not like this everywhere I land, which is why I usually stick to Samhain, when the veils thin.
This place? The walls between worlds are like water.
Swim right through. Saz came in easy enough.
I guided you here without a fuss. What I don’t understand is if this place is meant for beings of good or evil.
If Saz came, and those bloodsuckers live here freely, we could find ourselves facing down demons in seconds, m’lord. ”
At least I feel like I add something to the mission now.
“You go in quietly, Bonwit, and find the child’s nursery. I’ll stand guard and fend off whatever demons may come.”