Post by The Mouth on Jul 19, 2014 16:26:45 GMT -8
28 July, 2013
20 miles North of Limerick, Ireland
Travelers have a culture that is all their own; largely very Catholic and rather unhealthy. They like to stay off the books, avoid doctors, and speak a language that is largely incomprehensible to outsiders.
Of course the various other things that bump in the night love them.
Months ago I started looking for my daughters - Mine from a few months spent with a traveler camp. Ghouls don’t often have Children, some part of the vitae resists the biological processes for creating life. Don’t ask how Davenish and I managed the feat four times. Jena’s folks were at 22 children last I counted, seemed like Mama, as we called her, always had a raft of children around.
Jena wasn’t a ghoul, but her blood was fey, other, the wyrd was in it. Both her parents were odd ducks; not entirely human nor t’ other. They died in the Week of Nightmares when the world, at least the world in the shadows, awoke to find that the old gods were stirring.
I need the gels, needed them for my plan. And I know one spot all three would be. On the 28th is a county fair north of Limerick and three different bands of Travelers have been meeting at the fair to exchange fosters and kin marriages for the last 13 years.
Not a coincidence, I’m sure.
It took me this long with private detectives, a couple of grand in Euros, and my own investigative abilities. Turns out the local Universities likes to study the Travelers with various grants in anthropology, sociology, social work, and public health; they make a great population of people without settle addresses who are less likely to be piss drunk and violent.
Less likely.
As such they have the various camps and groups tagged and tracked. The trick was to find the groups that had faded out of view and the others wouldn’t talk about. This lead me to six, one was Liam’s and two others had suffered tragedies, which, it was rumored, the last three were responsible for.
I couldn’t be a Traveler; they have too many mores and taboo structures for an outsider to successfully penetrate. So, next best thing: Would you mind earning 10 euro if you answer a few questions? Great! Just take this voucher to…
The Fair is different from most like you would see in America; no rides or arena like events. Livestock are shown, traded, and hobbyists come to sell their wares and show off their projects. The Travelers have been coming to events like this for as long as can be remembered. Tinkers, potsmiths, salesmen, entertainers - All in the tinker train to squeeze a little something out of the settle folk. Smart ones wouldn’t thieve too much and justice among the Travelers is still more a series of unmarked graves than anything resembling the Queen’s Justice.
Lately the fairs have taken on something more akin to a farmer’s market. Booths are being organized, rents charged, the like. These three camps are the only three that still come to this fair and they have put the word out that the university types will not be appreciated. Since I thrive on conflict…
I arrive in the evening. It is warm, pleasant, enough of a breeze that the scent of livestock is not overpowering and merely earthy. I can hear the fiddles, the harps, and the storytellers… There are little booths offering foods and organic veggies and jewelry. I see my target on the far edge of the green; a tent with a barker and a small circus around it.
First thing I do is wander up to the tent and stand outside. I put up a sandwich board sign that says ‘Survey! Get paid 10Euro!’ and wait for people to show up, which doesn’t take long. I have a little que going in five minutes, just need to wait for a heavy to come by…
“Pardon me sir?”
I turn and see, honest to god, purple eyes. A button nose, mop of fine curls, mouth slightly too wide. A peasant blouse and a skirt round out the outfit; she is barefoot. The blouse is hand-embroidered on the edges and on the breast; in fact it looks handmade in it’s entirety.
“Oh, yes, sorry miss? Would you like to take a survey? Sponsored by the Univeristy of Limerick?” I’m wearing my Devon Phillips face with some glasses, should look young enough to be a third year at uni.
“No, I’m afraid you have to stop. You weren’t registered to be in this space and the circus has paid for it…”
“Oh! Oh! I’m so sorry. I was just told by the professor to come out here and take surveys. Do I need to get some paperwork filled out?”
She smiles and nods. “Yes! Just come with me; the fair council was about to meet anyway.”
Great. Fair council. Busybodies with too much time and a great predilection for bureaucracy. I should just pack up and go home now and tell that busybody professor where he can stick his survey but I guess I get to meet the council instea-
Whoa. Keanu Reeves Whoa. I just got rolled.
Someone just whammied me with my own cover story. Like they wanted me to meet the council but be exasperated by them. I bring my senses on high alert and immediately force blood through my heart and skin to make them more human looking; an easier task with my own little gifts.
“Say, what was your name again?” The girl is leading me into the dark areas past the circus tent to another structure past that; a large yurt or some kind. As we got close enough I realize they are wheeled wagons pulled into a lager with a massive canvas roof.
“I never told you, Francis.” She giggles and dashes through an opening between the wagons covered by a curtain. There is a flash of light from the interior and then it too is gone.
I stop and consider my options; she knows my name or at least one of them. Did she put the whammy on me? A growling fills the night and I look to my left on the hill overlooking the green; an ancient chalk deposit with some sort of intricate design cut into it. From the hill I can hear growls and spot at least three sets of red glowing eyes; all fixated upon me. They start to get closer, and I decide to trust my luck and dive through the curtain with a knife in hand.
Inside I’m assaulted with the smells of spices and cakes and stewed meats and vegetables. the sound of feet on a wooden slat floor, hopping and dancing over and across weapons. Men stand in the far corner tossing man sized logs; women are chatting in a dozen dialects being translated across generations from great grandmother to youngest daughter.
The music is lively and oh fuck me fuck me it is bigger in on the inside fucking hell magic run I gotta run I gotta
Fucking hell. Second whammy in a row.
I turn to look at the curtain behind me. Three young men and two young women walk in, hair is perfect blonde, almost white. They look at me in utter disgust and stalk off.
The girl who lured me in here is in front of me suddenly. So suddenly I jerk back in surprise, and almost knock a young man over; one with red hair - Almost blood red. The girl herself has jet black curls. The man growls at me and reaches for my throat but the girl intervenes by placing her hand on his wrist.
“Not yet, not now Jory,” she says soothingly. Jory grunts and moves off.
“Come along Francis, the mothers wish to meet you!”
And she was off again, my own mop haired white rabbit.
I try to follow her, hard enough with all these people - Where did they all come from? My mind is spinning; the shadows don’t match the people, the torches, wait, torches? flicker without smoke. The air is pure, clean, no scent of people or animals, and I’ve walked through three canvas curtains into hallways that cannot be. The light doesn’t flicker with the torches, remains constant yet sliding and moving.
The Rabbit stops in front of a stout wooden door, round. “Only you can go in, the Mothers were clear that you were to enter alone.”
The door has a ring mounted in the center, like a door knocker. I grab it, and the mechanism rotates, the door opens inward. I push against the door, but it is resisting; I push harder and it moves a small piece, harder still, with a scream from the hinges and myself the door moves open and I stumble into the room.
Except it is not a room; it’s Liam’s camper park, 1972. Summer, heading into Autumn, towards the tail end of my time with Liam’s little family. I’m taking the time I’ve got to lie in the field with Jena, staring at flowers. I’m fifty years old, been a ghoul for twenty, and I’m a little in love with this seventeen year old girl on my arm. I am a fool, and I know it. The sun is warm on us; I actually missed that warmth; the heat soaks into you and makes everything alive in a way that the simple colors of the night fail to.
And I’m not burning.
Which is a funny thought, ghouls don’t burn in the sun much.
Jena is on her side, looking at me like she does; she has the most intense eye’s I’ve ever seen, part of what drew me to her, beyond the boredom. I’ve recently concluded that I’m like a shark - Move forward or die. I don’t take on problems - I swarm them, obliterate them, and I flip them. I like the risk, the building of things of my own and tearing down everyone else’s.
“You’re going to leave me, aren’t you.” Its not a question from Jena. She’s pretty, freckled, and her eyes… Lavender in the light, black in the dark, yellow in the moon. They see through me, all of me, and she doesn’t hate what I am. She takes me in; cups her hand on my face.
“I’m leaving in two days, the job will be done, and I won’t likely be back.” I trace her cheek with my thumb, this is my world for a moment, even Casterly is down to a dull roar in my blood, the rest filled by Jena.
She kisses me, and doesn’t say another word. We make love in the sun, crushed grass scent all around us. When I leave a few days later I mope around until Sir Casterly gets exasperated. “Francis! I don’t know what is wrong with you, but I need you to focus.” His voice fills my head and my veins with fire and I put Jena in a box, and throw away the key.
Later that week Davenish and I make up for whatever jealousy we had over Casterly.
“Francis, I need you to…”
“Francis, I cannot have you…”
“Take care of this Francis…”
It goes on for forty years.
Me smuggling my children out of the house; tracking them through the years.
I remember stabbing a woman with a stick and not caring because I could feel Casterly filling me up and that we were one mind and voice…
I remember dying.
I’m weeping at the end, and I’m on my knees in a stone room.
There are three women in chairs in front of me, each them in their twenties. One hair so blonde to be white, the middle with hair so black it has blue tones when it catches the light, the last a red like blood.
The chairs are cheap folding chairs.
“Girls,” I manage to gasp out. “Don’t think you’re too old for me to take over my knee.”
They look at each other and say in unison, “Father, it is good for you to join us.”
I take a kleenex from pocket and wipe the blood from my face. “Oh, don’t start with the creepy twins routine, children.”
They all smile and come off the chairs to kneel next to me. I go rigid as they wrap their arms around me, after a moment I just shiver because I can smell them, their clean power of their vitae and even though I can’t drink from them I really want to try.
I take a moment to master myself, then clutch them to me briefly. They aren’t my children, they are all of my children that I left in the wreckage of my devotion to an indifferent master.
They pull back and sit cross legged in front of me; all three are wearing simple leggings, skirts, and blouses. My blonde daughter wears a complicated tribal symbol made of gold, my raven haired has tattoos running along her arms and up her next, and the blood hair daughter has an obsidian knife hanging between her breasts.
We look at each other; their mother looks at me through them. I inhale deeply, then let the air out. “I’m not your father, really, daughters.”
My girls look at each other and giggle. I’m utterly lost as to how this is happening, why I feel alive around them, why this place is so able to avoid little rules like physical limits on size and distance travel.
“Father,” the blond one starts.
I hold my hand up. “ I need names, I keep calling you ‘blonde, brunette, and redhead and it’s driving me bonkers.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do Da. I’m Airgidf.”
The brunette raises her hand, “I’m Beanna.”
The red head smiles and softly says, “I’m called Caipin Fola.”
Their names trace themselves, burning, and I look at my arms and see smoke rising from underneath my coat, I rip it off. Scoring into my flesh is fire, and my face burns and I feel the bones crack. I know without looking that my original face is back.
My arms are covered in language, a tongue that is familiar yet not at the same time, I watch as pictures arrive with the words, the words forming lines for the pictures, until I see that there are three figures, a warrior with a red hat, a white wolf, and a dark owl, all on the inside of my left arm.
The words fade from fire to char, then to pale scars. Even those quickly fade but the images remain.
I look at them, and I can see they have joined hands and are somewhere else.
“How did…”
“Father, your blood is our blood. Casterly blood ran in you when you conceived us. Liam’s blood ran through Mother when we were born. Our lives were all marked by the blood of our keepers,” Airgidf is clearly the dominant speaker.
“How do…”
“Da, I know how you hate it, but Grandfather and Grandmother were old, nearly as old as Liam,” Caipin jumps in. “They were part of something of an experiment, as you might say. We are the result. It… We don’t all understand it, but there is magic here. Old magic.”
“Fu-”
“Don’t swear here, Francis Reginald Royce Casterly!” Beanna snaps out. “It is a place where words have power.”
Her outburst flays open my cheek, exposing my teeth. I sigh and hold it back together until it heals, and for the first time since coming here someone other than me looks uncomfortable; none of the ladies meeting my eye for a moment.
“How… Each of you is part of the others, aren’t you? The wolves, the magi, the fae?” The girls look at each other instead of at me.
“Why… Why do you hate the vampire so much?”
The girls all laugh lightly. “Silly man, we don’t hate any part of ourselves. But our spouses, our children?” Beanna trails off.
“Vampires are immortal, timeless, yet possessed of a will to possess and own that few others do. And you have a long time to do it, that owning. And you take and take and take; always in the name of beating your next foe. Even Ileana Cardae takes the moral high ground; this was done deliberately,” Caipin is the historian; the thinker.
“It keeps the young always at the old, and the old seeking to protect themselves from the young. Your instincts are to submit or to control; no one lives forever submitting,” Airgdif drops on me.
“I can see this just as clearly as you can, m’dears. I suspect you pulled it from me. So the others don’t like how we do business,” I conclude.
“More like a religious proscription to avoid you at all costs. Yet your blood is in us, and our magic in you. It is what has kept your human aspect partially intact,” Beanna is the enforcer, the one who keeps the others in line with the rules.
“And that means your blood is in our children, and the babes they now bring forth, and I’ll be damned to give ye any for your schemes. Much less give a damn to Liam for what he did,” Airgidf spits out. She’s the the charger, the leader, the one who the others will follow.
I shrug. “I understand. More so now; if you ask your husbands and children would be betrayed. The wolves think I am polluted thing to be erased; the magi believe me to be a schemer to trap them into being tools, the faerie thinks I will consume and obliterate them.”
I grin my feral grin. “And they are absolutely right, my daughters.”
I see that same grin reflected back and a deep sadness fills me. I could’ve seen these grow up, these women. I could have handed them to husbands, held grandchildren. I could’ve.
But I wouldn’t have. The Great Game calls me, and I think I know why a little bit more every day.
“But if I ask?”
They look at each other. “We cannae stop you, father,” Beanna drawls out as if tasting the words, and they do not taste good.
“But the children will have fathers who will stop them and mothers who will worry. And this is a place of power; that rage and worry will flay me alive, no?”
“Aye…” Airgidf says.
I smile. “Good enough for me. I’ll do it. How much time before sunrise, ladies?”
They look at each other, “As long as we need father,” Caipin whispers.
“Then questions! Answers! I’d like to know you ladies, know you so well that when you tell me I can’t ever come back I can bandage the wound of the rejection with the knowing of you,” This is a play, and I am an actor on a stage, and I know the story already. I usually do.
“Like, for instance, how are we so, well, intimate with each other? I mean, we should be strangers…”
“Well, when mother would tell us stories -” Deanna starts.
“They would always be about you, with you in them, on adventures-” Caipin continues.
“And Liam’s magics in her would bring them to life. When we got older we could always know where you were; when the madness came and took our mother we lost you.” Airgidf.
“And as soon as I stepped on to your island you found me again. That’s how you clear the caravans at Liam’s park, magic.”
Caipin giggles. “I actually just pay people to handle the issue.”
I laugh with her. My girls. My lovely girls.
***
I’m standing in front of the gathered clans, tribes, and Peoples of the Mothers. The girls inherited their grandparents fecund nature; every child they bore has a connection to the old magics, and apparently me. We’ve worked out that this is a one time offer; after this connection or no when I leave if I am seen again I will be driven away or killed, with their blessing.
“This is our father!” Airgidf starts.
“And he will speak with peace,” Beanna continues.
“And you will listen with it,” Caipin concludes.
I stand up and address the room full of curious and hostile stares. I see a young girl with black hair playing with a babe. I kneel before her, nod solemnly, and chuck the baby under the chin. The child giggles and smiles with all three teeth; and I smile back. The girl looks away and I stand up.
“You are my hidden family, after tonight you will return to the mists and I will walk out into the night to do what it is I do; spread blood, chaos, and death in the name of my masters and my goals. My family of Blood has asked me to do this; to end an ancient creature for their vengeance and their politics.
“I will not claim to love my masters. Only that if I fail, I will die. I would ask that you send with me three; one from each family. Volunteers. I will not promise they will come home whole in mind or body; not even that they will come at all.
“But as I once provided the means for life among your Mother’s people I will provide the means of vengeance for yours. When Yuria, the creature I seek to end, when she came to power her agents went among you; killing, maiming, bribing. This had to be a terror on two levels: The initial shock of contact and the understanding that an immortal with over a thousand years of experience in intrigue and manipulation knew who you were and how to get to you.”
Everyone is silent, rapt.
“That is not information that many would hold; only herself and her spymaster will have it. I would find them both, kill them, and this free you from that tyranny of fear. For myself; my daughters have proven that the ties of Blood that bind us allow them to… They can conceal themselves and you.
Finally,” and this could put me in a big hole, “I will owe a debt to the family, one to each branch. If I should lose your child that debt will be as if I owed a life, as reckoned by my kind. In kind for lesser injuries and minimally it will be a dept of service; each family will have a letter from me that will grant the bearer my services dependent on what that family sacrificed in aiding me.”
I take one last roll of the dice… “It is an odd thing to speak of debts to a family unknown. But this is the absolute promise; I shall not know you, beyond my daughters. I shall not know your children, beyond the three who come with me. I shall not know you, after this night. But some part of me is in you; in all of you. And that will bring me a very human comfort in my utterly monstrous world.”
I step back and my daughters step forward.
“We will discuss this Father. Have a seat,” Airgidf points to a chair, where I sit.
The debate is short, intense, and heated. Three men are the primary opposition; an older gent with blond hair, a very forgettable man, and a hulking brute wearing a kilt and red hat that has… I scent blood in the air. The hat is dripping blood.
Weird. In fact I strongly suspect that the whole affair has been in the mind of something or someone else.
The argument ends when the silver-blonde girl I saw when I walked in comes up and volunteers, her father and siblings loudly objecting. Then my rabbit joins, her father nodding. The one I bumped into, Jory, comes up and volunteers. I clearly misunderstood the nature of Jory because her father screams out ‘My Gel, my baby Gel!’ and gnashes his pointed teeth. Three granddaughters.
Why am I not surprised.
“They have been found! They shall be anointed and set forth in the world to return wiser and fiercer than they left. Rejoice, Children, and know that your sisters are to know!” Caipin has a knack for the speeches, when she wants to.
There was a party that I don’t remember anything of. I stayed in the chair. In fact I couldn’t move from the chair, and there was pain; so much pain in my chest…
I look down and there is a sword stuck through me; more like a funny long knife with a seriously long hilt. Oh, no problem, the hand is still attched to hit; because there is a knife in my hand too. To the right of me I can see a man gasping for air through the holes in his chest; red hat and kilt. An exceptionally forgettable man is to my right trying to stop the bleeding in his thigh; looks like someone nicked his femoral artery.
And I’m on the hillside, on the top, with the whole Clan around me, my blood and the blood of the fathers spattering the white chalk of the design carved into the hill. My daughters are using a mix of my blood, their fathers blood, and the chalk to make a paste which is being used to paint designs on the brows of the three girls before them.
With a clatter I drop my knife and work to remove the sword that is pinning me to the chair, scratch that, tree, on top of the hill. I strain for a moment and then it comes free, just as the crowd finishes some cant. I make my way to the bland man and apply a tourniquette, then move on to the red capped gent with multiple sucking chest wounds. On the other side of the tree I find a man clutching his wrist with a number of other wounds and proceed to patch him up as well. “Why do you have to have them, our babies?” he asks me as I stuff his intestines back into his body.
“Because their blood is special. It will get me through the door on many levels. I’ll be a pusher with the only drug in town.”
He closes his eyes and twitches as I start sewing. “You want to pimp out our daughters for their blood. What glory is there in that, leech?”
“Plenty, since they are going to be the enemy within and without.” I finish up with, but even so I can see the wounds healing rapidly. I leave his knife-sword next to him with his hand.
I walk back around the tree and the hillside is empty but for my daughters and three granddaughters.
“Children mine, what the hell happened?”
“The debate got heated,” Airgdif offers.
“But you did well, and our husbands will heal,” Caipin adds.
“And we needed to have you all bleed to get the damned foolishness out of you all. Men are like that sometimes,” Deanna concludes.
“Right then. I’ll bring your children back to you within a year or so.”
The women look at each other and as one shake their head. “No. They are gone, banished. They are to make their way and when we find them again it will be with joy. But they shall not find us. Nor shall you, father. Nor shall you…” They speak in unison and I feel their words locking something my mind; the curiosity about them or an urge to find them ever again, or to even speak of them outside of the girls…
“A geas we place you father; never shall you seek us, never shall you find us, never shall you know us again. Go with our blessing and out peace…” Each of them is holding a scroll. I know without looking that each scroll is my promise to them written in my blood.
And they are gone. No special effects, nothing. Just gone. Left are three teen age girls who look scared and excited all at once. A werewolf, a mage, and a faerie. With potent magical blood. And little experience of the outside world…
“What are your names,” I manage to grind out. They look at each other then me.
“I’m Hannah” says wolf girl.
“You can keep calling me Rabbit,” says rabbit-mage girl.
“And you can call me Jory,” says my faerie.
“Great. You can call me Mr. Casterly. I will also respond to ‘master’ or ‘master Casterly’.”
“Master of what?” Rabbit girl is sharp, on the ball.
“Of your educations. I’ll teach you the thieve, con, and lie like few others can. I’ll teach you to fight to win, fight with honor, and fight like a low down dirty son of a whore. And if we all get lucky I’ll teach you survive. First things. How much of what happened was real?”
The girls look at each other. “Most of it,” says Hannah. “But Mom did hint she let you live a little bit of a happy family fantasy,” adds Rabbit. “Also, you stabbed the fuck out of our dads,” concludes Jory.
Like mother, like daughter?
“Great. Well I appreciate the gift. Now, I’d like to get off this bloody hill, get to the car, and get to Limerick before dawn. So off we go girls.”
Right. Taking care of three teenage girls. Fucking nightmare.
But the last piece I need to take down Yuri and her entire court was in hand.
All downhill from here.
The Others
By Ben Vaughan
20 miles North of Limerick, Ireland
Travelers have a culture that is all their own; largely very Catholic and rather unhealthy. They like to stay off the books, avoid doctors, and speak a language that is largely incomprehensible to outsiders.
Of course the various other things that bump in the night love them.
Months ago I started looking for my daughters - Mine from a few months spent with a traveler camp. Ghouls don’t often have Children, some part of the vitae resists the biological processes for creating life. Don’t ask how Davenish and I managed the feat four times. Jena’s folks were at 22 children last I counted, seemed like Mama, as we called her, always had a raft of children around.
Jena wasn’t a ghoul, but her blood was fey, other, the wyrd was in it. Both her parents were odd ducks; not entirely human nor t’ other. They died in the Week of Nightmares when the world, at least the world in the shadows, awoke to find that the old gods were stirring.
I need the gels, needed them for my plan. And I know one spot all three would be. On the 28th is a county fair north of Limerick and three different bands of Travelers have been meeting at the fair to exchange fosters and kin marriages for the last 13 years.
Not a coincidence, I’m sure.
It took me this long with private detectives, a couple of grand in Euros, and my own investigative abilities. Turns out the local Universities likes to study the Travelers with various grants in anthropology, sociology, social work, and public health; they make a great population of people without settle addresses who are less likely to be piss drunk and violent.
Less likely.
As such they have the various camps and groups tagged and tracked. The trick was to find the groups that had faded out of view and the others wouldn’t talk about. This lead me to six, one was Liam’s and two others had suffered tragedies, which, it was rumored, the last three were responsible for.
I couldn’t be a Traveler; they have too many mores and taboo structures for an outsider to successfully penetrate. So, next best thing: Would you mind earning 10 euro if you answer a few questions? Great! Just take this voucher to…
The Fair is different from most like you would see in America; no rides or arena like events. Livestock are shown, traded, and hobbyists come to sell their wares and show off their projects. The Travelers have been coming to events like this for as long as can be remembered. Tinkers, potsmiths, salesmen, entertainers - All in the tinker train to squeeze a little something out of the settle folk. Smart ones wouldn’t thieve too much and justice among the Travelers is still more a series of unmarked graves than anything resembling the Queen’s Justice.
Lately the fairs have taken on something more akin to a farmer’s market. Booths are being organized, rents charged, the like. These three camps are the only three that still come to this fair and they have put the word out that the university types will not be appreciated. Since I thrive on conflict…
I arrive in the evening. It is warm, pleasant, enough of a breeze that the scent of livestock is not overpowering and merely earthy. I can hear the fiddles, the harps, and the storytellers… There are little booths offering foods and organic veggies and jewelry. I see my target on the far edge of the green; a tent with a barker and a small circus around it.
First thing I do is wander up to the tent and stand outside. I put up a sandwich board sign that says ‘Survey! Get paid 10Euro!’ and wait for people to show up, which doesn’t take long. I have a little que going in five minutes, just need to wait for a heavy to come by…
“Pardon me sir?”
I turn and see, honest to god, purple eyes. A button nose, mop of fine curls, mouth slightly too wide. A peasant blouse and a skirt round out the outfit; she is barefoot. The blouse is hand-embroidered on the edges and on the breast; in fact it looks handmade in it’s entirety.
“Oh, yes, sorry miss? Would you like to take a survey? Sponsored by the Univeristy of Limerick?” I’m wearing my Devon Phillips face with some glasses, should look young enough to be a third year at uni.
“No, I’m afraid you have to stop. You weren’t registered to be in this space and the circus has paid for it…”
“Oh! Oh! I’m so sorry. I was just told by the professor to come out here and take surveys. Do I need to get some paperwork filled out?”
She smiles and nods. “Yes! Just come with me; the fair council was about to meet anyway.”
Great. Fair council. Busybodies with too much time and a great predilection for bureaucracy. I should just pack up and go home now and tell that busybody professor where he can stick his survey but I guess I get to meet the council instea-
Whoa. Keanu Reeves Whoa. I just got rolled.
Someone just whammied me with my own cover story. Like they wanted me to meet the council but be exasperated by them. I bring my senses on high alert and immediately force blood through my heart and skin to make them more human looking; an easier task with my own little gifts.
“Say, what was your name again?” The girl is leading me into the dark areas past the circus tent to another structure past that; a large yurt or some kind. As we got close enough I realize they are wheeled wagons pulled into a lager with a massive canvas roof.
“I never told you, Francis.” She giggles and dashes through an opening between the wagons covered by a curtain. There is a flash of light from the interior and then it too is gone.
I stop and consider my options; she knows my name or at least one of them. Did she put the whammy on me? A growling fills the night and I look to my left on the hill overlooking the green; an ancient chalk deposit with some sort of intricate design cut into it. From the hill I can hear growls and spot at least three sets of red glowing eyes; all fixated upon me. They start to get closer, and I decide to trust my luck and dive through the curtain with a knife in hand.
Inside I’m assaulted with the smells of spices and cakes and stewed meats and vegetables. the sound of feet on a wooden slat floor, hopping and dancing over and across weapons. Men stand in the far corner tossing man sized logs; women are chatting in a dozen dialects being translated across generations from great grandmother to youngest daughter.
The music is lively and oh fuck me fuck me it is bigger in on the inside fucking hell magic run I gotta run I gotta
Fucking hell. Second whammy in a row.
I turn to look at the curtain behind me. Three young men and two young women walk in, hair is perfect blonde, almost white. They look at me in utter disgust and stalk off.
The girl who lured me in here is in front of me suddenly. So suddenly I jerk back in surprise, and almost knock a young man over; one with red hair - Almost blood red. The girl herself has jet black curls. The man growls at me and reaches for my throat but the girl intervenes by placing her hand on his wrist.
“Not yet, not now Jory,” she says soothingly. Jory grunts and moves off.
“Come along Francis, the mothers wish to meet you!”
And she was off again, my own mop haired white rabbit.
I try to follow her, hard enough with all these people - Where did they all come from? My mind is spinning; the shadows don’t match the people, the torches, wait, torches? flicker without smoke. The air is pure, clean, no scent of people or animals, and I’ve walked through three canvas curtains into hallways that cannot be. The light doesn’t flicker with the torches, remains constant yet sliding and moving.
The Rabbit stops in front of a stout wooden door, round. “Only you can go in, the Mothers were clear that you were to enter alone.”
The door has a ring mounted in the center, like a door knocker. I grab it, and the mechanism rotates, the door opens inward. I push against the door, but it is resisting; I push harder and it moves a small piece, harder still, with a scream from the hinges and myself the door moves open and I stumble into the room.
Except it is not a room; it’s Liam’s camper park, 1972. Summer, heading into Autumn, towards the tail end of my time with Liam’s little family. I’m taking the time I’ve got to lie in the field with Jena, staring at flowers. I’m fifty years old, been a ghoul for twenty, and I’m a little in love with this seventeen year old girl on my arm. I am a fool, and I know it. The sun is warm on us; I actually missed that warmth; the heat soaks into you and makes everything alive in a way that the simple colors of the night fail to.
And I’m not burning.
Which is a funny thought, ghouls don’t burn in the sun much.
Jena is on her side, looking at me like she does; she has the most intense eye’s I’ve ever seen, part of what drew me to her, beyond the boredom. I’ve recently concluded that I’m like a shark - Move forward or die. I don’t take on problems - I swarm them, obliterate them, and I flip them. I like the risk, the building of things of my own and tearing down everyone else’s.
“You’re going to leave me, aren’t you.” Its not a question from Jena. She’s pretty, freckled, and her eyes… Lavender in the light, black in the dark, yellow in the moon. They see through me, all of me, and she doesn’t hate what I am. She takes me in; cups her hand on my face.
“I’m leaving in two days, the job will be done, and I won’t likely be back.” I trace her cheek with my thumb, this is my world for a moment, even Casterly is down to a dull roar in my blood, the rest filled by Jena.
She kisses me, and doesn’t say another word. We make love in the sun, crushed grass scent all around us. When I leave a few days later I mope around until Sir Casterly gets exasperated. “Francis! I don’t know what is wrong with you, but I need you to focus.” His voice fills my head and my veins with fire and I put Jena in a box, and throw away the key.
Later that week Davenish and I make up for whatever jealousy we had over Casterly.
“Francis, I need you to…”
“Francis, I cannot have you…”
“Take care of this Francis…”
It goes on for forty years.
Me smuggling my children out of the house; tracking them through the years.
I remember stabbing a woman with a stick and not caring because I could feel Casterly filling me up and that we were one mind and voice…
I remember dying.
I’m weeping at the end, and I’m on my knees in a stone room.
There are three women in chairs in front of me, each them in their twenties. One hair so blonde to be white, the middle with hair so black it has blue tones when it catches the light, the last a red like blood.
The chairs are cheap folding chairs.
“Girls,” I manage to gasp out. “Don’t think you’re too old for me to take over my knee.”
They look at each other and say in unison, “Father, it is good for you to join us.”
I take a kleenex from pocket and wipe the blood from my face. “Oh, don’t start with the creepy twins routine, children.”
They all smile and come off the chairs to kneel next to me. I go rigid as they wrap their arms around me, after a moment I just shiver because I can smell them, their clean power of their vitae and even though I can’t drink from them I really want to try.
I take a moment to master myself, then clutch them to me briefly. They aren’t my children, they are all of my children that I left in the wreckage of my devotion to an indifferent master.
They pull back and sit cross legged in front of me; all three are wearing simple leggings, skirts, and blouses. My blonde daughter wears a complicated tribal symbol made of gold, my raven haired has tattoos running along her arms and up her next, and the blood hair daughter has an obsidian knife hanging between her breasts.
We look at each other; their mother looks at me through them. I inhale deeply, then let the air out. “I’m not your father, really, daughters.”
My girls look at each other and giggle. I’m utterly lost as to how this is happening, why I feel alive around them, why this place is so able to avoid little rules like physical limits on size and distance travel.
“Father,” the blond one starts.
I hold my hand up. “ I need names, I keep calling you ‘blonde, brunette, and redhead and it’s driving me bonkers.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do Da. I’m Airgidf.”
The brunette raises her hand, “I’m Beanna.”
The red head smiles and softly says, “I’m called Caipin Fola.”
Their names trace themselves, burning, and I look at my arms and see smoke rising from underneath my coat, I rip it off. Scoring into my flesh is fire, and my face burns and I feel the bones crack. I know without looking that my original face is back.
My arms are covered in language, a tongue that is familiar yet not at the same time, I watch as pictures arrive with the words, the words forming lines for the pictures, until I see that there are three figures, a warrior with a red hat, a white wolf, and a dark owl, all on the inside of my left arm.
The words fade from fire to char, then to pale scars. Even those quickly fade but the images remain.
I look at them, and I can see they have joined hands and are somewhere else.
“How did…”
“Father, your blood is our blood. Casterly blood ran in you when you conceived us. Liam’s blood ran through Mother when we were born. Our lives were all marked by the blood of our keepers,” Airgidf is clearly the dominant speaker.
“How do…”
“Da, I know how you hate it, but Grandfather and Grandmother were old, nearly as old as Liam,” Caipin jumps in. “They were part of something of an experiment, as you might say. We are the result. It… We don’t all understand it, but there is magic here. Old magic.”
“Fu-”
“Don’t swear here, Francis Reginald Royce Casterly!” Beanna snaps out. “It is a place where words have power.”
Her outburst flays open my cheek, exposing my teeth. I sigh and hold it back together until it heals, and for the first time since coming here someone other than me looks uncomfortable; none of the ladies meeting my eye for a moment.
“How… Each of you is part of the others, aren’t you? The wolves, the magi, the fae?” The girls look at each other instead of at me.
“Why… Why do you hate the vampire so much?”
The girls all laugh lightly. “Silly man, we don’t hate any part of ourselves. But our spouses, our children?” Beanna trails off.
“Vampires are immortal, timeless, yet possessed of a will to possess and own that few others do. And you have a long time to do it, that owning. And you take and take and take; always in the name of beating your next foe. Even Ileana Cardae takes the moral high ground; this was done deliberately,” Caipin is the historian; the thinker.
“It keeps the young always at the old, and the old seeking to protect themselves from the young. Your instincts are to submit or to control; no one lives forever submitting,” Airgdif drops on me.
“I can see this just as clearly as you can, m’dears. I suspect you pulled it from me. So the others don’t like how we do business,” I conclude.
“More like a religious proscription to avoid you at all costs. Yet your blood is in us, and our magic in you. It is what has kept your human aspect partially intact,” Beanna is the enforcer, the one who keeps the others in line with the rules.
“And that means your blood is in our children, and the babes they now bring forth, and I’ll be damned to give ye any for your schemes. Much less give a damn to Liam for what he did,” Airgidf spits out. She’s the the charger, the leader, the one who the others will follow.
I shrug. “I understand. More so now; if you ask your husbands and children would be betrayed. The wolves think I am polluted thing to be erased; the magi believe me to be a schemer to trap them into being tools, the faerie thinks I will consume and obliterate them.”
I grin my feral grin. “And they are absolutely right, my daughters.”
I see that same grin reflected back and a deep sadness fills me. I could’ve seen these grow up, these women. I could have handed them to husbands, held grandchildren. I could’ve.
But I wouldn’t have. The Great Game calls me, and I think I know why a little bit more every day.
“But if I ask?”
They look at each other. “We cannae stop you, father,” Beanna drawls out as if tasting the words, and they do not taste good.
“But the children will have fathers who will stop them and mothers who will worry. And this is a place of power; that rage and worry will flay me alive, no?”
“Aye…” Airgidf says.
I smile. “Good enough for me. I’ll do it. How much time before sunrise, ladies?”
They look at each other, “As long as we need father,” Caipin whispers.
“Then questions! Answers! I’d like to know you ladies, know you so well that when you tell me I can’t ever come back I can bandage the wound of the rejection with the knowing of you,” This is a play, and I am an actor on a stage, and I know the story already. I usually do.
“Like, for instance, how are we so, well, intimate with each other? I mean, we should be strangers…”
“Well, when mother would tell us stories -” Deanna starts.
“They would always be about you, with you in them, on adventures-” Caipin continues.
“And Liam’s magics in her would bring them to life. When we got older we could always know where you were; when the madness came and took our mother we lost you.” Airgidf.
“And as soon as I stepped on to your island you found me again. That’s how you clear the caravans at Liam’s park, magic.”
Caipin giggles. “I actually just pay people to handle the issue.”
I laugh with her. My girls. My lovely girls.
***
I’m standing in front of the gathered clans, tribes, and Peoples of the Mothers. The girls inherited their grandparents fecund nature; every child they bore has a connection to the old magics, and apparently me. We’ve worked out that this is a one time offer; after this connection or no when I leave if I am seen again I will be driven away or killed, with their blessing.
“This is our father!” Airgidf starts.
“And he will speak with peace,” Beanna continues.
“And you will listen with it,” Caipin concludes.
I stand up and address the room full of curious and hostile stares. I see a young girl with black hair playing with a babe. I kneel before her, nod solemnly, and chuck the baby under the chin. The child giggles and smiles with all three teeth; and I smile back. The girl looks away and I stand up.
“You are my hidden family, after tonight you will return to the mists and I will walk out into the night to do what it is I do; spread blood, chaos, and death in the name of my masters and my goals. My family of Blood has asked me to do this; to end an ancient creature for their vengeance and their politics.
“I will not claim to love my masters. Only that if I fail, I will die. I would ask that you send with me three; one from each family. Volunteers. I will not promise they will come home whole in mind or body; not even that they will come at all.
“But as I once provided the means for life among your Mother’s people I will provide the means of vengeance for yours. When Yuria, the creature I seek to end, when she came to power her agents went among you; killing, maiming, bribing. This had to be a terror on two levels: The initial shock of contact and the understanding that an immortal with over a thousand years of experience in intrigue and manipulation knew who you were and how to get to you.”
Everyone is silent, rapt.
“That is not information that many would hold; only herself and her spymaster will have it. I would find them both, kill them, and this free you from that tyranny of fear. For myself; my daughters have proven that the ties of Blood that bind us allow them to… They can conceal themselves and you.
Finally,” and this could put me in a big hole, “I will owe a debt to the family, one to each branch. If I should lose your child that debt will be as if I owed a life, as reckoned by my kind. In kind for lesser injuries and minimally it will be a dept of service; each family will have a letter from me that will grant the bearer my services dependent on what that family sacrificed in aiding me.”
I take one last roll of the dice… “It is an odd thing to speak of debts to a family unknown. But this is the absolute promise; I shall not know you, beyond my daughters. I shall not know your children, beyond the three who come with me. I shall not know you, after this night. But some part of me is in you; in all of you. And that will bring me a very human comfort in my utterly monstrous world.”
I step back and my daughters step forward.
“We will discuss this Father. Have a seat,” Airgidf points to a chair, where I sit.
The debate is short, intense, and heated. Three men are the primary opposition; an older gent with blond hair, a very forgettable man, and a hulking brute wearing a kilt and red hat that has… I scent blood in the air. The hat is dripping blood.
Weird. In fact I strongly suspect that the whole affair has been in the mind of something or someone else.
The argument ends when the silver-blonde girl I saw when I walked in comes up and volunteers, her father and siblings loudly objecting. Then my rabbit joins, her father nodding. The one I bumped into, Jory, comes up and volunteers. I clearly misunderstood the nature of Jory because her father screams out ‘My Gel, my baby Gel!’ and gnashes his pointed teeth. Three granddaughters.
Why am I not surprised.
“They have been found! They shall be anointed and set forth in the world to return wiser and fiercer than they left. Rejoice, Children, and know that your sisters are to know!” Caipin has a knack for the speeches, when she wants to.
There was a party that I don’t remember anything of. I stayed in the chair. In fact I couldn’t move from the chair, and there was pain; so much pain in my chest…
I look down and there is a sword stuck through me; more like a funny long knife with a seriously long hilt. Oh, no problem, the hand is still attched to hit; because there is a knife in my hand too. To the right of me I can see a man gasping for air through the holes in his chest; red hat and kilt. An exceptionally forgettable man is to my right trying to stop the bleeding in his thigh; looks like someone nicked his femoral artery.
And I’m on the hillside, on the top, with the whole Clan around me, my blood and the blood of the fathers spattering the white chalk of the design carved into the hill. My daughters are using a mix of my blood, their fathers blood, and the chalk to make a paste which is being used to paint designs on the brows of the three girls before them.
With a clatter I drop my knife and work to remove the sword that is pinning me to the chair, scratch that, tree, on top of the hill. I strain for a moment and then it comes free, just as the crowd finishes some cant. I make my way to the bland man and apply a tourniquette, then move on to the red capped gent with multiple sucking chest wounds. On the other side of the tree I find a man clutching his wrist with a number of other wounds and proceed to patch him up as well. “Why do you have to have them, our babies?” he asks me as I stuff his intestines back into his body.
“Because their blood is special. It will get me through the door on many levels. I’ll be a pusher with the only drug in town.”
He closes his eyes and twitches as I start sewing. “You want to pimp out our daughters for their blood. What glory is there in that, leech?”
“Plenty, since they are going to be the enemy within and without.” I finish up with, but even so I can see the wounds healing rapidly. I leave his knife-sword next to him with his hand.
I walk back around the tree and the hillside is empty but for my daughters and three granddaughters.
“Children mine, what the hell happened?”
“The debate got heated,” Airgdif offers.
“But you did well, and our husbands will heal,” Caipin adds.
“And we needed to have you all bleed to get the damned foolishness out of you all. Men are like that sometimes,” Deanna concludes.
“Right then. I’ll bring your children back to you within a year or so.”
The women look at each other and as one shake their head. “No. They are gone, banished. They are to make their way and when we find them again it will be with joy. But they shall not find us. Nor shall you, father. Nor shall you…” They speak in unison and I feel their words locking something my mind; the curiosity about them or an urge to find them ever again, or to even speak of them outside of the girls…
“A geas we place you father; never shall you seek us, never shall you find us, never shall you know us again. Go with our blessing and out peace…” Each of them is holding a scroll. I know without looking that each scroll is my promise to them written in my blood.
And they are gone. No special effects, nothing. Just gone. Left are three teen age girls who look scared and excited all at once. A werewolf, a mage, and a faerie. With potent magical blood. And little experience of the outside world…
“What are your names,” I manage to grind out. They look at each other then me.
“I’m Hannah” says wolf girl.
“You can keep calling me Rabbit,” says rabbit-mage girl.
“And you can call me Jory,” says my faerie.
“Great. You can call me Mr. Casterly. I will also respond to ‘master’ or ‘master Casterly’.”
“Master of what?” Rabbit girl is sharp, on the ball.
“Of your educations. I’ll teach you the thieve, con, and lie like few others can. I’ll teach you to fight to win, fight with honor, and fight like a low down dirty son of a whore. And if we all get lucky I’ll teach you survive. First things. How much of what happened was real?”
The girls look at each other. “Most of it,” says Hannah. “But Mom did hint she let you live a little bit of a happy family fantasy,” adds Rabbit. “Also, you stabbed the fuck out of our dads,” concludes Jory.
Like mother, like daughter?
“Great. Well I appreciate the gift. Now, I’d like to get off this bloody hill, get to the car, and get to Limerick before dawn. So off we go girls.”
Right. Taking care of three teenage girls. Fucking nightmare.
But the last piece I need to take down Yuri and her entire court was in hand.
All downhill from here.
The Others
By Ben Vaughan