Aspect Of Winter Read online

  “Little one, I do know things, as you so eloquently phrased it. I also have the gift of knowing what it is that you need to hear. Allow me to be the bearer of bad news, children. I only show up to those individuals who are worthy of my help, and those who are in great danger that I can help to combat. You three,” he intoned, pointing a hoof at each one of us, “fall into the latter category.”

  Tyler raised his hand, as though we were in class or something. The Baí Zé looked at him approvingly.

  “Ah, I see one of you possesses basic manners. You there, boy, what is your need?”

  “Um, sir, we weren’t aware we were in any danger. Would you mind telling us what we’re missing?” Tyler asked tentatively, still a bit off-balance from seeing a magical creature for the first time. Frankly, I was impressed at his ability to adapt and cope, but then I was kind of biased.

  The Baí Zé sat back abruptly on it haunches, putting its front hooves together contemplatively. It looked ridiculous to me, but the apparent gravity of the situation (barely) kept me from giggling.

  “You see, you three have been performing magic quite a bit of late. I can smell it on you, and more importantly, all over these lands nearby. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you must understand that using magic has an effect on the world beyond the spell’s intended one.”

  I nodded. I remembered Aiden saying something like that.

  He looked at each of us, its gray goat eyes unblinking. “I will assume that, like most humans, you are unknowing of most of the basic facts of the universe in which you live. You see,” he said, pausing for emphasis, “Samhain begins on the eve of tomorrow.”

  I perked up.

  “Wait, I actually know that one. Gramma Alice used to tell me stories about it. That’s the old Gaelic holiday that eventually became Halloween, right? Where the old Irish people would have festivals to usher in the coming of winter and to appease the old spirits of the land?”

  “A bit of an oversimplification, yes, but you’ve cut to the heart of the matter,” The Baí Zé said, looking at me shrewdly.

  “Samhain is the time where the borders between worlds are thinnest. You know the spells that journal you carry seems to specialize in? Summoning magic works by forcing its way through the separating lines, to carry over a creature from one of the Branching worlds, into the world of Gaia. Most of the time, summoning magic is the only way for beings such as me to reach Gaia. On Samhain, however, sometimes the borders are just thin enough that some of the creatures, especially the Sidhé of Irish lore, are able to pass through on their own.”

  “Okay, so why haven’t people ever reported seeing fairies or whatever showing up on Halloween? Don’t you think that would get attention or… oh.”

  Tyler stopped, perturbed.

  “Wow, that works perfectly, doesn’t it. Halloween, the one time of the year that seeing weird things roaming about isn’t unusual, is the time that they actually are.”

  I frowned. That actually made a twisted sort of sense.

  “Correct. The Sidhé are quite talented at passing unnoticed, and this holiday makes it all the easier. There is one more thing that makes sightings unlikely. The borders, while frail on Samhain, are still too thick in most areas to allow passage. Only in areas of a high magical concentration may they force their way through. These places are known throughout human history, and structures are often built around them. The Pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, the Parthenon… all are places where even the most normal of humans can sense how unique the environment is.”

  “So what’s the problem here?” Sam asked. “As far as I know, there aren’t any ancient buildings or burial mounds in Owl’s Head. Why does this affect us?”

  The Baí Zé faced her, hooves still clapped together.

  “Child, you have been using magic extensively in this area. Every time you do so, you weaken the barrier just a little more, if only for a while. By tomorrow, with the added impact of summoning me here, the borders will be thin enough for the Sidhé to pour through, and spread forth their mischief across the town.”

  Well, that didn’t sound good.

  “What are they going to do?” Tyler asked. “I mean, is it really just mischief, or are people going to be in danger here?”

  The Baí Zé turned to face him. “I imagine that would depend on what sort of creature makes its way across. Most of the known areas of the world have trained Arcanes to defend the crossing points, and keep out any… immigrants. This town, however, has none. It will be up to you three to keep the town safe.”

  “How do we do that?” Sam inquired. “Do we just kill everything that shows its face?”

  “That,” the Baí Zé said dryly, “would almost certainly lead to the Seelie Court declaring you as an enemy of the Fey. You would not last long before you were killed for your impudence. There are other methods of making sure the town stays intact.”

  “Would you tell us them, please?” Tyler asked earnestly.

  “I will. There are several things you must be sure to do.”

  The Baí Zé stood up on all fours again, and began to pace back and forth in the circle.

  “First, you must find the tear. The place where the Sidhé are going to come through. It will be in only one spot, somewhere that holds emotional significance to the majority of the people in the town. Graveyards are the most common place for tears to occur. It is there that you must make your stand. Most of the Sidhé respect the old customs. When they cross the border, they delight in causing small mischiefs, such as spoiling milk, causing disturbing visions, and in this modern area, fiddling with appliances excessively. Most of these things, they do under the cover of a Veil, to avoid being seen. Some of the more outgoing Sidhé, the ones that resemble children in masks, will actually go out and play. The problem is that their playing often leads the children away from the safety of their parents, and some of them never return. These Sidhé can be appeased by simple offerings of food left out, and the promise of the proper offerings to the fire.”

  Tyler did the hand-raising thing again. I probably shouldn’t find that adorable. “So, if we do that, we’ll be fine?”

  “No. You will keep the more benevolent of the Sidhé appeased with a bonfire, food and drink, but there are those who delight in chaos and pain. There are no rituals to keep those ones at bay. You cannot easily destroy them, and so you must banish them from this realm. Each has a weakness, a method of defeat that you must utilize if you wish your town to escape unscathed. I will tell you these things, for helping those who need it is my reason for existence.”

  I squared my shoulders, and Sam and I shared a look. “Do you think we can do this? Or are we doomed already?”

  The Baí Zé regarded us impassively. “I would not have appeared at all to those whose fate I could not help. By warning you of this, I have given you a chance. It is up to you to make use of it. You have the power, if used correctly, to weaken these beings enough to banish them. I will provide you with the final step. Listen well, and I will tell you what you need to do.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Tyler drove a silver BMW, and he swung by my house first thing in the morning to pick me up. I dashed outside to meet him, and got pinned to the wall by my dad’s raised eyebrows. And then thoroughly gutted by my mom’s knowing smirk. No words were said, but I was still left shuddering as I made my escape. Tyler just waved at me obliviously, per usual. For a clever guy, he was really… dense, about some things.

  The first few minutes of the drive were awkward because Tyler kept trying to start conversation topics and I wasn’t exactly talkative at the best of times. Considering that we might all be dead by the time tomorrow came around, stress was making me clam up even more than usual. Fortunately, Tyler figured out quickly that if he just rambled about whatever was on his mind at the time, I’d occasionally throw in an affirmative grunt or something at the right moment.

  We pulled into Tyler’s neighborhood. The houses there were huge, with rolling sculpted lawns. I�
�d known that Tyler was well-off, but not this much so. His house-mansion thing was at the end of the exclusive cul-de-sac, and it towered over the area. I’d never seen a house with a patio level on four different floors.

  “Jeez, how many siblings do you have?” I asked, gaping. Tyler scratched the back of his head embarrassedly.

  “At home right now? Uh, just me and my parents, though they aren’t around much. I have five older siblings, though. Three sisters and two brothers, though they’re all out of college now except for Eric. I’m kinda the runt of the family.”

  Wow. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of a family that size at all.

  “Anyway, you wanna head in?” Tyler asked. “I already picked up supplies; I just need to bring them in to the kitchen.”

  “Uhh, sure. I’ll help.”

  We grabbed the basic supplies necessary to make a mountain of bread and different kind of pastries and candies. According to the Baí Zé, the Sidhé loved sweet things that had heart in them. The Sidhé were like that aunt that insisted love was why her cookies always tasted so good. And, as it turned out, Tyler used to love making cookies and other treats with his mom whenever he was feeling down. He admitted to me blushingly that they still did sometimes. I tried not to let my melted heart trickle too far away, but it was a difficult battle.

  I would only be watching him bake for the most part anyway. The Sidhé apparently also really liked baubles and shiny things. Most of them were essentially like immortal children, too young to really understand the ethics of a situation, the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. I was going to try to make ice that wouldn’t melt for days, which would hopefully shine enough in the light to gather the attention of the friendly ones. I wasn’t sure how I knew how to make them, but I just… had a feeling about it.

  While Tyler started making the most amazing smells waft from the oven, I tried to focus. The problem is that it was really hard to focus when the guy you’re crushing on is bending over with an apron and oven mitts on. I was torn between ogling his ass and cooing at the sweetness of a jock baking, and there wasn’t much left of my mind to try and work magic. I made a strangled noise of protest and went off to his house’s massive backyard to give it another go.

  There was an ornate birdbath in his backyard, so I ambled over to it. Score. It was full of clean water, by the looks of it. I held my right hand over it, and bore down on the image in my mind. The water cooled rapidly, and a large swirl of compacting snow and ice floated in front of me. I closed my eyes slowly, and when I opened them, it looked all the world like a massive diamond was hanging in the air in front of me, its facets gleaming in the sunlight. Staring at it closely, it also seemed to give off a pale blue glow. Somehow, I was sure that it would at least last through the night. I repeated the process several more times, and soon I was left with a cluster of large, glowing faux-gemstones. I was pretty impressed with myself. The whole thing hadn’t taken more than a few minutes.

  I headed back inside to see if Tyler needed any help. He was in the process of preparing a second sheet of cookies, so I was, in fact, useful. I molded the cookies into whatever shapes I was feeling at the moment. I was especially proud of my snowflake cookie, which I was sure would look amazing as well as taste delicious when it was done. Tyler looked at my efforts, and then let out a short huff of amusement. He didn’t say anything, though. When we took that tray out, though, I saw why. My beautiful efforts had been utterly ruined when the cookies expanded from the heat. I took out my poor blob of a snowflake cookie, devastated.

  “Goodbye, poor snowflake cookie. You will be mourned.” I took a tearful bite, ending its suffering. I would endure the burning of my mouth, for this. It was something I had to do. I heard a noise behind me, like a barely-stifled squeak. Tyler was covering his mouth, trying desperately not to laugh, his green eyes bright. Shit, I’d forgotten that I was with him and not Sam. When he was finished stifling his laughter, he gave me an appraising look and smiled.

  “Fay, you’re actually really funny, you know that? You should speak more often.”

  Naturally, that was the point when I just blushed and went back to shutting up. Tyler just tilted his head to the side like a confused puppy. I was so not getting paid enough for this. Come to think of it, I wasn’t getting paid at all, except maybe in extra cookies.

  We worked in companionable silence for the next couple hours, and then cleaned up. I also ran the sink and created several dozen more of the fake gemstones, using some of the food coloring in one of the cabinets to produce different colors. By around 3:00, we had several hundred cookies made. We probably could have done with more variation, but some pastries take a really long time to make. I looked triumphantly at the resulting pile. There was no way the Sidhé could resist this. Tyler grabbed a picnic blanket from his laundry room and several six-packs from the basement.

  Tyler saw me looking and grinned.

  “Eric sometimes comes home with beer. I might occasionally hide away a few.”

  I helped him carry everything back to the car, and we headed out. The Sidhé would start arriving at dusk, which left us only a few hours.

  I’ve never been so grateful that Owl’s Head is something of a backwater town before. We actually have an antiques shop. That, then, was where we were headed for the last bit of supplies, to deal with the Dark Sidhé. The inside of Barson’s Antiques was, unsurprisingly, a mess. The owner was a notorious eccentric, and he perused yard sales on a near-daily basis. The shop was basically the resulting mess of throwing together whatever he decided were the best bits of each yard sale. Fortunately for us, plenty of said mess was useful. The Baí Zé was extremely specific on the methods for dealing for each of the Dark Sidhé we were likely to encounter.

  To stop any spirits, apparently called the Sluagh Sidhé, that might show up, we needed to place a candle atop all of the graves in the graveyard. Doing so would apparently mark them as places of warmth and home, putting the corpses lying below completely off-limits to the spirits. Considering that sounded like a zombie apocalypse preventative measure, I was happy to spend close to fifty bucks to buy tons of candles.

  We also needed quite a few mirrors and a compass. The Baí Zé said that the Sluagh Sidhé would always approach homes from the west, to attempt to carry away the souls of those who lived inside. Placing westward mirrors around the summoning site would cause them to act as miniature prisons for any Sluagh Sidhé who flew too close. The ones who didn’t would be contained by the boundaries of the graveyard itself. The Baí Zé had taught us how to inscribe runes on the cold iron fencing lining the graveyard, so that the lesser spirits couldn’t go past at all, or at least in theory. The Baí Zé hadn’t sounded very optimistic about that part. Either way, we’d have to lure them close to the mirrors to get them contained for the banishing ritual.

  We also needed to get some daggers, preferably of cold iron, which meant old. They were the most surefire way to deal with the more… physical, of the creatures that might show up.

  After I bought the candles, I walked just out of the owner’s sight, near the dagger display. I couldn’t just move the daggers around, since they were metal, not ice, but I could encase them in ice and practically do the same thing. I concentrated, and the air around the daggers quickly began to be coated with frost, until I had three white lumps sitting in front of me, a convenient shelf blocking me from view. I levitated the ice slowly, just about an inch off the ground, and kept them there.

  “Tyler, you ready to go yet?”

  That was the signal. We were new at this, be nice.

  “Gimme a second, man, I just want to ask him about that sick model ship over there. Sir, would you mind telling me more about it?”

  “Certainly, young man,” The store keep replied scratchily. “It’s got quite a history to it, you see. It’s a perfect small-scale replica of ‘The Lady Fair,’ one of my great-grandfather’s…”

  His voice faded as he led Tyler away from the cash register to t
ake a closer look. Tyler played the intrigued customer perfectly, and I took the opportunity to move the daggers swiftly out of the shop. Thankfully, there was no alarm system in place, and I kept the daggers down low, skirting around the shop until I could put them safely in the car. Tyler came out a couple of minutes later with the coins, looking slightly harried as he climbed in.

  “That was the first time I’ve ever had to steal something, and hopefully the last. I can’t say I liked it.”

  “Me neither, but we had to do it. Let’s go meet Sam at the graveyard.”

  I passed him the daggers, and he frowned. “I really hope we don’t have to use these.”

  Sam, as it turned out, had been busy. Not only had she gotten permission from her dad to have a Halloween bonfire on the cemetery green, but she also managed to get him to load up the back of her Jeep with several cords of wood. By the time we arrived, she had already built up the bonfire pile on the green.

  “Well, if it isn’t the two latecomers. Have a nice time baking cookies, sweeties?”

  “Yep!” Tyler replied blithely, choosing to ignore the mocking. “We’re pretty much all ready to go.”

  He brought out the picnic blanket, a nice purple affair, and rolled it out in front of the woodpile. He started laying out plates of cookies, while I placed down my mock gemstones. Sam oohed and ahhed appreciatively at the red ones. She always had a thing for rubies. We then went around triple-checking the runes on the fence-posts as well as lighting candles atop all the graves. At that point, it was just starting to get dark, so we lit the bonfire. It took a couple of minutes, but the flames were beginning to leap high into the air at the same time that we started to hear the voices and laughter of kids out on the streets.

  Sam passed us each a mask, made of black felt. Mine had a snout like a bear, Tyler’s was like a dog, and Sam’s own mask was clearly that of a cat. One of the bigger ones, like a panther.