Authors: Kate Griffin
As I sank my feet into the grass and drew power from it for healing, I also sent out a call – sort of an instant message through the earth – to an iron elemental I knew, informing him that I had two faeries standing in front of me if he wanted a snack. He would answer quickly, because the earth is bound to me as I am bound to it, but it might take him a few moments. To give him time, I asked my assailants a question.
“Out of curiosity, were you guys trying to capture me or kill me?”
The one to my left, hefting a short sword in his right hand, decided to snarl at me rather than answer. “Tell us where the sword is!”
“Which sword? The one in your hand? It’s still in your hand, big guy.”
“You know which sword! Fragarach, the Answerer!”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” I shook my head. “Who sent you guys? Are you sure you have the right fella?”
“We’re sure,” Spear Guy sneered. “You have Druidic tattoos and you can see through our glamour.”
“But lots of magical folk can do that. And you don’t have to be a Druid to appreciate Celtic knotwork. Think about it, fellas. You’ve come to ask me about some sword, but clearly I don’t have one or I would have whipped it out by now. All I’m asking you to consider is that maybe you’ve been sent here to get killed. Are you sure the motives of the person who sent you are entirely pure?”
“Us get killed?” Sword Guy spluttered at me for being so ridiculous. “When it’s five against one?”
“It’s two against one now, just in case you missed the part where I killed three of you. Maybe the person who sent you knew it would happen like that.”
“Aenghus Óg would never do that to us!” Spear Guy exclaimed, and my suspicions were confirmed. I had a name now, and that name had been chasing me for two millennia. “We’re his own blood!”
“Aenghus Óg tricked his own father out of his home. What does your kinship matter to the likes of him? Look, I’ve been here before, guys, and you haven’t. The Celtic god of love loves nothing so much as himself. He’d never waste his time or risk his magnificent person on a scouting trip, so he sends a tiny little band of disposable offspring every time he thinks he’s found me. If they ever come back, he knows it wasn’t really me, see?”
Understanding began to dawn on their faces and they crouched into defensive stances, but it was much too late for them and they weren’t looking in the right direction.
The bars along the wall of my shop had melted silently apart behind them and morphed into jaws of sharp iron teeth. The giant black maw reached out for them and snapped closed, scissoring through the faeries’ flesh as if it were cottage cheese, and then they were inhaled like Jell-O, with time only for a startled, aborted scream. Their weapons clattered to the ground, all glamour gone, and then the iron mouth melted back into its wonted shape as a series of bars, after gracing me with a brief, satisfied grin.
I got a message from the iron elemental before it faded away, in the short bursts of emotions and imagery that they use for language: //Druid calls / Faeries await / Delicious / Gratitude//