Authors: Scott V. Duff
“No, Lord, I mean, yes, Lord Daybreak,” Braedon stammered fearfully. “Please, Lord, your pardon, Lord. I will not allow Ilan any further metalcraftings without access to a forge, Lord Daybreak, and, yes, the Palace is huge, as is your love for your world and its people, Lord. We fear that we will never be able to show our appreciation adequately.” The little sprite was in tears over it.
“They’ve been around you less than I have, haven’t they?” Jimmy asked me.
“Yeah,” I muttered in distress, unsure of what to do with Braedon and his clan now. This was frustrating.
“Dude, he’s a lot simpler than he seems,” Jimmy said to Braedon softly. “If you want him to be happy with you, happy that he brought you and yours here, all you need to do is keep your family fed, safe, and happy.”
“But that is nothing compared to what he has done for us!” Braedon argued in the Faery common tongue. “Look around you, First. Mere days ago this forest did not exist. Our previous lord was not… He was a very bad… He destroyed us.” Braedon stammered over that worse than he had with me. His memories of the horror that the breaking of the geas were actually worse than the pains Ilan and all of them suffered from the metal poisoning. His was the only voice speaking for miles.
“He ripped out the souls of my brothers and sisters, our parents and their siblings,” Braedon continued, his blue eyes streaming in tears as he told Jimmy his story. “He stripped us of our connection to Faery! We could barely breathe when the pixie of the Free Lord showed up. Then Daybreak was born, in a man, no less. The Queens of Faery were destroying our previous lord’s lands to a wasteland, incapable of supporting any life for centuries to come, and we were applauding that decision.
“When we arrived here, we were fully expecting to die here,” Braedon said. His tears slowed as his memories turned into brighter and happier moments of that day. “The doorway Daybreak created was to an ethereal wasteland, a viable realm certainly, but not capable of supporting such a large colony of us even for a night. Daybreak was exhausted from his battle with… It was a colossal battle, First. That the boy survived even with the weapons at his disposal was astounding.” Braedon’s eyes looked bigger than his head for a second.
“When he finally closed the door to Faery on this side, he collapsed,” he said sadly. “We huddled together in the dark and made peace with the fact that we would die but die free and together. And as the boy’s father wrapped his arms around his son, Daybreak started working. Even the father saw that happen. We say that Daybreak made Gilán because we watched him do it, First. And when he woke up, he tied us to it. We could breathe again and on a new world. How can we ever repay that?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. It seemed too unreal, which I suppose it was.
Jimmy had an answer for him, though, and it was a pretty good one.
“By keeping your family fed, safe, and happy, Braedon,” he said, bending over and smiling upside down at the confused and frustrated sprite. “He’s really not that hard to satisfy.”
“Ilan, you shouldn’t be up yet,” I said in rebuke of the sprite as he stuck his head out of his hole, peeking out into the world. It was short-lived. Braedon’s story mellowed my anger at them considerably. The two female sprites that were supposed to be acting as his caretakers shrieked at themselves for getting distracted and ran to him, but I had him cradled in the Stone’s energy already and was gently lifting him out of the tunnel and pulling him forward.
Jimmy and I moved in closer to the lean-to. He really didn’t need to be moved further. His nurses converged on him there and began washing him and changing bandages immediately. His eyes, though, never left Jimmy or me. Daybreak and his First had come to see him and he wasn’t going to miss it just because he hurt.
“I’m sorry to cut this short, but Ilan needs to rest,” I said gently to everyone. “And we’re keeping most of the village awake anyway. Ilan, remember, no more metal working until you have a proper forge and tools to work with. Should you want to continue, the Palace has forges that you can work with or we can find something that will work.”
“I’ll try to get him to come back tomorrow after the morning nap,” Jimmy promised Ilan, nodding to Braedon seriously. “It has been a pleasure meeting all of you and I look to our future with optimism. I must warn you though. I don’t always understand him either.”
“Come on, Jimmy, there’s at least one other thing to check on this morning,” I said. “Shrank, is there anything else you need today?” He almost looked big hovering in front of Braedon.
“No, Lord Daybreak,” Shrank called out, turning and flitting to us. “I was about to turn in for the morning when Deacon saw you. I have a temporary home nearby.”
“Well, once Kieran gets up, his apartment is in the key. You can use it to shift over and back. I wouldn’t do it if he’s not expecting you, though, especially after a day like yesterday. You might startle him and … Just let him know ahead of time.”
“Understandable concern, Lord Daybreak,” Shrank squeaked, laughing in fits. “My Lord is not one to sneak up on. I was with him the two days you were missing. He is a scary, scary man whom I am proud to serve.”
“Good-bye, everyone!” I called out then shifted Jimmy and me to the river where the water nymphs played. They had traveled quite a few miles from the stream with the
Esteleum
field and they were enthralled by the power of the river over the streams and minor tributaries they’d seen so far. We found them kneeling together at the muddy join between their stream and the turn of the river just after it met with the lake below the Palace. This was a massive outlet so the rush of water was huge.
“It is pretty, isn’t it?” I asked them, startling them both.
“Lord Daybreak!” the male called, his voice deeper than the day before and they’d both grown considerably. And they were… pubescent. No, I got that wrong, post-pubescent, because she was pregnant already. Gilán was being insistent about increasing its population.
“You two shouldn’t range too far just yet,” I said lightly. “The Claiming is in two days. You don’t want to miss it because you got swept away by the currents.”
The girl looked at the river, alarmed, then back to her mate. They both wanted to make the river their home and the pregnancy had started her nesting instincts to kick in already, even if she didn’t yet know why. It was incredibly sweet to watch.
“Would you like to see where it all ends up?” I asked them. “All the rivers and streams?”
“Lord?” mumbled the male, confused.
“Just this once,” I said. “I don’t want the two of you wandering off this far from your home and family…” I shifted the four of us to the coast where the biggest of the continental rivers let out into the ocean. The big pool of water scared them both initially and excited them tremendously once they realized I wasn’t tossing them in and leaving.
“It’s so big,” the female whispered in awe.
“This is the smallest of the three oceans on Gilán, the fresh-water sea,” I told them. “The salt water seas are bigger.”
“Salt water? Does anything live in brine?” the male asked.
“A great many things live in briny water,” Jimmy said, stepping out into the surf. “A great many things live here, too.” He bent at the waist and put his hand down on the surface of the lapping water, sending out feelers along the wave fronts. The nymphs followed his example and grinned up at him in excitement.
“What are those? They look like stones that move,” the girl asked him.
“Well, since everything on Gilán is brand new, I guess we get to name everything, don’t we?” he said, his eyes twinkling in equal delight at the little nymph. “Seth obviously gets the last word, but they look sort of like what we call ‘crabs’ back where we came from, but with fewer legs. So for the time being, how does ‘decacrab’ sound to you?”
They giggled shrilly at Jimmy. I remember he had that affect on girls when we first met. Then he’d invariably say something else that would show his jerk side, but today he was behaving very well. It didn’t hurt that he was dealing with a pair that had the intellectual capacity of eight-year-olds. As I watched them interact, though, I saw all three of them learning from the experience. After fifteen minutes, I called a stop to it. I was getting hungry.
“We need to be getting back, Jimmy,” I said. “We’ve got work to do today.” The nymphs jumped up from the water and clutched Jimmy tightly around the knees, not wanting to be left behind. Jimmy chuckled through the shift to the river.
“He wouldn’t have left you there,” he reassured them, gently rubbing their heads. They gasped as they took in the new surroundings, causing Jimmy to look up and realize I’d moved us to a different location on the river.
“What do you think of this as your home?” I asked them, looking back to the shallows behind me. All of us were standing in the water now, in a wide wading pool of slowly moving water caused by the joining of a larger stream to the much bigger river. It was closer to the Palace along the river, a few miles up from where their previous stream met the same river. “It’s closer to your family so you can visit easily and this looks like a good, safe place to raise your child.”
The girl looked shocked by the statement, her hand flying to her belly, just below her navel, then a slow smile crept across her face as she realized what I meant. I didn’t know she hadn’t known. The boy was clueless and all smiles anyway.
Cocking my head to one side, I asked them, “Should I send for your parents?” Once again, neither of them understood why I asked and apparently, Jimmy didn’t either. “Orlet, the First will get your parents and I’ll get his, and you can tell Arwene while we’re gone.”
“Tell him what?” Jimmy whispered to me.
I snickered at him. “You can pick out a crab underwater at a hundred yards, but you can’t pick up on that?” I shifted him near her parents before he said too much, then went in search of the male’s parents. Not that it was much of a search, knowing exactly where they were.
I appeared next to a tree as his Daddy chased his third child gleefully around a bush. This child showed no evidence of changing. His second child, though, was definitely going to be taller than either parent, already eclipsing her mother’s height and closing in on Daddy. Big brother still had nearly a foot on her, though. And wouldn’t you know it? Mommy was on her way to number four already.
“I really need to give you guys something to do,” I said, laughing a little and surprising them. Daddy jumped forward and grabbed his toddler, swinging around to face me and squealing loudly in warning. The sister and mother jumped defensively forward, too, and the glen burst to protective life at the sprite’s call. Deacon’s answering call was heard in the distance, stopping the advancing sprites in their tracks. “I seem to have that effect everywhere I go lately.” Sinking down cross-legged to the ground, the sprites relaxed. Kind of.
“I wonder if I might borrow the four of you for a few minutes?” I asked, pointing out Arwene’s family out of the sudden crowd of sprites that surrounded me. “I have news of your eldest son.”
Worry and alarm filled them and I rushed to say, “No, this is good news! Good news!” Then I shifted us to the riverside. We were alone at the moment, the river gurgled softly behind me. I reached out into the water looking for the nymphs. The girl was upriver a little, swimming through a swift current toward us while the male was downriver and pushing the water hard to create a counter current. He was actually
pushing the water
. When they neared the shallows the girl veered in, trying to pull the river with her and cut into the riverbed, hitting the bottom and sliding up, out of the water and into the air, chittering merrily. He did something similar, veering out and back in to follow the same route, creating a large spout of clashing water in the middle of the river. He flew up into the shallows, disoriented and chittering happily at his mate. Together they surveyed their work, not happy with their results.
Jimmy stood beside me when their parents called their names. The proud parents-to-be turned into children again. It was a tearful and happy reunion that convinced me I’d be deaf by forty.
“Can you understand them?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah. You can’t?”
“No,” he said glumly. “I think I could given enough time, though. I just get vague pictures or ideas when they’re in groups, but when it’s one-on-one it’s easier, like with Braedon. With her parents, I got the impression they were afraid I was coming to get them because you were mad at them for having a changed child. It didn’t make sense to me, really.”
“His were worried about that, too,” I said, dipping into their minds a little. “And they’re probably not the only ones who are going through that fear.” I hadn’t considered that side of this issue, worrying more about the actual Changed and not their relatives. I didn’t know enough about the Fae and things like postpartum depression to make an informed decision, so I erred on the side of caution.
“Deason, Deacon, would you come here for a moment, please?” I called to them, pushing some power behind the words. The Dea brothers popped into the air in front of me.
“You called, Lord Daybreak?” Deacon chirped happily.
“Yes, Deacon,” I said. “Jimmy just pointed something out to me I hadn’t considered yet that he ran across with Mrs.…”