Harvest of Changelings (33 page)

It was, Father Jamey thought, actually a good time to be a Catholic priest, although he wasn't sure the price being paid for full pews was worth it. Fear had brought the lapsed Catholics back to mass, not any sudden reconversion.
But, you take ‘em where you find 'em.
He looked again at his morning schedule on his desk calendar. Decidedly full, now that he had penciled in the appointment with Ben and Jack. Ben had called five minutes ago and the two men were on their way. He had them down for an hour. After Ben and Jack, Janet Thompson. Her oldest child had disappeared and her grief was choking her. Next were Carrie Maxwell and Jeff Allamaok. Probably wanted to postpone their wedding. He would encourage them not to, but, instead, to choose life over fear.

He yawned.
God, am I tired. And whom am I kidding? I don't have any answers. Did I ever really have any?
People came to his office and to him as if he were an oracle of some kind or another. As if in all the books lining his walls, and the file cabinets filled with clippings and case histories and back issues of
The North Carolina Catholic, Commonweal,
and
The Catholic
Digest there was one right answer.
There isn't even one answer in the Bible—not one neat answer, anyway. Telling people to have faith, to trust God, to love, to follow Jesus' example—was any of that enough? But it had to be. What else was there?

“Father Jamey?”

Jamey looked up to see Ben Tyson peering around the door. Behind him, looking very tired, was Ben's friend, Jack Ruggles. Jack hadn't shaved in what looked like a week and his hair looked as if more than a week had passed since a comb had gotten anywhere near his head. The priest stood and waved the two men into his office.

“Sit down, Ben, Jack. That couch looks like crap, but actually it's pretty comfortable. Just throw those papers on the floor. Coffee? Isn't the best—you know how hard it is to get really good coffee since the Weirdness started. I asked at the Harris Teeter, Farm Fresh, and at the Food Lion, and nobody knows why. The guy at the Food Lion thought it might have something to do with Santeria in Brazil, but—you are not here to listen to me babble about coffee.”

“No coffee, thanks—I'm floating in it already. Put in enough sugar and milk and it tastes all right. Father, what are you doing on the 18th, this Friday night?” Ben said as he sat down on one side of the couch. Jack sat down beside him, and leaned back, clearly wanting Ben to do all the talking.
His face, so gaunt, tired. He's lost so much weight his clothes look two sizes too big.

“The 18th?” Jamey glanced down at his calendar. Friday night was open: no counseling sessions, no rosary groups, no Bible studies. But then every night of the week was open. He had even moved up the Saturday evening vigil mass to four o'clock in the afternoon. People were not going out in the dark unless they had to. “Friday night? What have you two got cooked up? You know the nights aren't safe.”

“Father, Malachi's gone. We know where he is, and if we don't get him back, the days won't be safe, either, let alone the nights. We need you to help us—” Ben paused, looked down at the floor, at Jack, then back at Jamey. “In all the fairy tales I have ever read—and I have read a lot—priests have powers. Special powers. And if the fairy tales are true, then that has to be true, too. Will you help us? You can do things Jack and I can't.”

Jamey listened as Ben talked. Thomas Ruggles had the boy and evil had Thomas Ruggles. The boy was far more important than he had expected: not one, but two universes' fates hinged on what happened to Malachi. Jamey had known Malachi was special from the moment he had seen the boy. But not
this
important. The last stand of the Fomorii, already beaten in Faerie, but if the changelings did not return, there could be no recovery from the war, and the Fomorii would have won, there, after all. And a victory there would mean an eventual victory here. The two universes were forever linked; one could not survive if the other fell. The priest listened, pondering, as Ben explained what Thomas wanted and what they had planned to do with his help. Jack's face was taut with pain and fatigue and a grief so deep Jamey wondered if he could ever recover.

“I can see auras, Ben, and I can see through glamour and even make a little of it myself. And I can see those who are changing,
even before they grow pointed ears or their eyes began glowing. And this.” He made the Sign of the Cross and a Cross took shape, shining, pulsing with charged light that shot out green and white sparks into the air. The first time that had happened in church, he had been as surprised as the congregation. One woman had dropped to her knees, her rosary beads whipping through her fingers. A man had got up and walked out. The rest had just sat there in a stunned silence. And a handful had come after, to touch his robe.

“That cross might do the trick, Father. Priests cast fairies out in the old stories. With holy water and crucifixes,” Ben said and went on to explain Jack was to be the bait. Thomas could gain great power by the blood-sacrifice of his father—maybe even more than control of Malachi offered.

“Jack thinks Thomas believes he will still get the boy anyway, so why not make a deal. I know he can't be trusted, and he certainly won't trust us,” Ben said. “But it may buy us enough time to get Malachi to a gate by Halloween and back to Faerie. He'll die if he doesn't. I don't think Thomas knows that—or maybe he doesn't care.”

Jack finally spoke up. He leaned forward and talked in a low voice, his words sounding as pained as his face. Jamey saw that, when juxtaposed with Ben's white and yellow aura, Jack's looked all the more grey-streaked and stained with brown and black. “I've told Thomas I will come alone to the place where he makes his sacrifices, his black altar. It's in Clemmons State Forest. He will have Malachi there—to use to channel and control the energy he will release by sacrificing his father, eating his father's heart. I go in alone. And when he turns his attention from Malachi to me, then you distract him with that cross and the holy water and whatever priestly magic you have. Ben will get Malachi and I think the other three children will be doing some magic of their own. I
may
be able to break free then.”

“I'll help, but will that be enough?” Jamey asked. The plan sounded too simple. Making a cross glow in the air and having three changeling
children
doing magic seemed hardly enough to combat Thomas and his witch-friends.

Jack shrugged. “It's all we can do.”

Larissa, the Second, left the White City and went home for the first time since the Call to the changelings. She flew alone, leaving early
in the morning, just as the sun began to burn its way up through the sea, turning the green golden, scarlet, and white, illuminating one last time the noctilucent
savva.
The birds became black shadows against the light. The far sky was still night-purple and Yellow Moon was still visible, although fading, behind distant clouds, as well as a dim handful of stars, a band of glowing dust. White Moon had set hours ago. The near sky's purple had almost turned to blue.

She had only told the Third she was leaving, wanting only the privacy of her thoughts and none of the questions or worries of the rest of the Dodecagon. The hungry thoughts of the gulls were more than enough. And the beach was empty—before the war there would have been children, up early to go with one of their four parents to fish, to collect shells, to give the rest back home a break.
This is only temporary,
she thought as she flew soft, following the bright white line of the surf for a while, and then, as she had done as a child, out over the ocean.
Fishing folk on the beach when I was a girl and swimmers in the ocean, and dolphins. They were always here, and if I knew them, I would dip down and fly through the water, in and out of the waves, over and under jumping dolphins, diving swimmers.
She had hoped they would come back once victory and peace had been declared, once the Call had been given, but only a few had, and none of the people who had lived below, on shore or off.

Peace. Victory,
she thought as she flew closer to the water, wanting the spray to catch her face every now and then
. But at what price? There are so few of us left, so few complete tetrads. If the changelings do not come home, the Fomorii will have won anyway. And where is the First? The Prime Mover—will the Peace last, the changelings come—stay?—if she was not at the table? I know she is dead—why is it taking me so long and why is it so hard to say that out loud?

Do the Fomorii know what happened. to her?
At the last meeting, when the surrender had been signed, the Fomorii lord had wanted to know where the First was—this was to be a meeting between equals, yes? He had towered over the Second, a huge creature whose black scales shed as he walked, leaving a trail of smelly darkness in his wake, patches of grass here and there withering, turning brown, desiccating into brittle dust. Had he been—smiting? Did Fomorii smile?

“No Valeria? No Prime Mover? Well. You say she is traveling in the other universes, taking her rest before coming home? How
interesting,
Lady. Will this journey be long enough to give her sufficient
rest and renewal so she can rebuild Faerie? We are resting from the war as well. She will be home by Samhain? Of course,” he had said, with a slight nod, “you must protect her privacy. May I have another drink? It has been some time since I have had the wine of the White City.”

The Second had made a slight, quick gesture to the guard as she smiled and sat back in her seat. “Of course. I think I will join you. Two,” she said to the silent guard ...

Enough. I promised myself I would not replay every conversation, every gesture, every look and glance.
They had talked of inconsequential things afterward, as they sipped the hot spiced wine the guard had carefully set before them, the tips of his ears a disapproving red. Now, as the Second banked toward the shore, her parents' home just ahead, she wondered about the rumors that the Fomorii had violated the terms of surrender: troop movement, illegal use of magic, interuniverse crossings. Samhain was only days away. The gates would be open then, releasing magical energy into both worlds. Enough to let the changelings return, and to let others cross as well—depending on who controlled the gates, by whose will the gates open. Enough magic to overturn the Peace, no matter that neither fairies nor Fomorii would survive a second war.

She dropped to the ground behind the house. She stood for a moment, listening and smelling, looking. Flowers bloomed all around her on vines laced through a fence, up and down tree trunks, in the trees, on low bushes, in neat rows and circles on the lawn. Red, pink, white, yellow, blue, purple, and various shades in between, and all the accompanying perfume and music, the latter, faint, soft, just at the touch of a breeze. All of it—color, smell, and sound—was woven together in a kaleidoscopic harmony.
They knew I was coming. They always set the garden to bloom for me
. Inside she heard voices, low and muted, behind the walls of the house. Mom and Mama, and Dad and Papa. Making morning bread, the sweet, sweet bread she had loved as a child.

How long have I been gone? Too long.
She slowly walked to the house, the grass wet beneath her feet, as the orange and scarlet trumpet-lilies announced her arrival.

For a long time after the fire in the Garner library Malachi was lost. He wasn't at home in his bedroom, next door to his father. Nor was he in Russell's attic bedroom or the dinosaur nest where Jeff slept.
Nor was he in the neat and orderly room Hazel kept, her computer in the middle of her desk, and Alexander, her overgrown Siamese, in the middle of her bed. He wasn't in Uncle Jack's, whose house, even after a major effort by his second wife, Hilda, looked like an attic the library used for storage. Nor was he in church, leaning back against the satiny wood of the pews, half-listening to the priest, as he looked up to count the tiny, star-like crosses on the church ceiling.

Nor was Malachi in the other place, the place of his dreams, with forests of white and silver trees and gold trees and the shining sea everywhere and the White City. Malachi had dreamed of the White City the most often, next to his dreams of his mother. The City was high on a promontory, looking down on the ocean, its walls growing out of the cliffs. In his dreams he had stood on the walls, almost drunk from the sea air and watched the ocean, just as he did on the annual summer trips he took with his father to Ocracoke. Malachi loved the tiny island twenty miles off the North Carolina coast, the two-hour ferry ride, and its long, empty beaches and the wild ponies. Malachi had never told anyone—not even his father or Uncle Jack, who stayed with them for at least a few days, sometimes the entire two weeks—but the ponies, once he was old enough to roam around by himself, had come up to him. Snuffling, nudging each other, nuzzling his hands and face, they let him pat their heads and feed them apples and carrots. Malachi loved Ocracoke, but he knew he would love the White City and its rocky cliffs even more.

Malachi had seen his mother for the first time in his dreams of walking the walls of the White City. He had started remembering her when he was five: a warm light peering down at him in his crib. He had tried asking his father about her then, and learned Valeria was forbidden territory. Now he knew his mother was dead. Had his dreams not been dreams after all, but real memories of her ghost visiting him? Where did people go after they died? He knew his father still dreamed of her. Malachi could tell by his father's eyes the next morning: they echoed the lights in his own when he began to see her just ahead of him on the walls of the City.

But Malachi was in none of those places; he was lost. There had been the fire and the smoke and his father and Uncle Jack and the Fomorii. They had chased him from his house, with Thomas and that woman—Mrs. Collins, his
teacher
. And the burning books falling all around, the glass shattering, and the fire. Where was he now? Even with the light oozing from his eyes, ears, nose, and fingers, Malachi saw only greyness. Had he been asleep? Sick? Why
was it so hard to open his eyes? Why was everything so grey—was this yet another universe, one without light?

“Dad? Uncle Jack? Hazel? Russell? Jeff?” Malachi said slowly and softly.

No one answered.

Then Malachi remembered.

They
had taken him.

He opened his eyes, even though doing so hurt, to look into Thomas's face. He tried to move, but something was holding his arms and legs in place. Even his head. Malachi couldn't move at all.

“He's awake,” Thomas said, speaking to someone Malachi couldn't see. “No, don't try to move, Malachi. The binding spell will only constrict you even more; it will really hurt.”

“He is so little—do you really think he has all this power?” Another voice, familiar—there, she had moved into his field of vision: Mrs. Collins. Then he hadn't imagined her chasing him with the others, just before the fire. The two adults bent down and for one moment, Malachi could see their faces clear and sharp, but then it was as if he had fallen, back first, into water. The colors and shapes blurred and smeared, as the sounds of their voices waxed and waned in loudness. Words and sentences disappeared, evaporated, between their mouths and his ears. More magic, he thought.

“Malachi ... can ... me?”

“I'm falling, everything is, it's hard to see, I can't hold on any longer.” Malachi tried to reach up, to grab something, but there was nothing. He couldn't move. He wasn't even sure if he had spoken out loud. Then his vision cleared again: a living room, on a couch. Thomas's? A lamp, a table, chairs. Thomas and Mrs. Collins. The lamp was vibrating and glowing. It got brighter and brighter—now it was on fire. The two adults started yelling. The more the lamp burned, and now the table it was on, the clearer he could hear them speak. The fire, it seemed, was burning away whatever held him so close and in such fog.

“Throw something over it, get some water. Quick! I thought you could control him, Mr. Magician, Your Majesty, the Great Witch King. He's going to burn down this place just like he did the library. Fireballs! Tho—”

He slapped her so hard she fell. “I'm trying, you damn bitch. You get the damn water and let me take care of him. Let me try giving him another injection—there.”

“There. The fire's stopped, the drug worked.”

“Is he going to stay under control until Friday? He could burn us
all up,” Mrs. Collins said, standing, a bucket in her hand, by the smoldering lamp and table.

“I know,” Thomas said. “But he's under control and he will stay under ...”

Malachi closed his eyes and slept.