First Dangle and Other Stories Read online

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  I dropped down to the ground to give Coriander the cloth and shifted to human once I got there. “Here,” I said. “Found this. Recognize it?”

  Coriander took it and frowned, but before he could answer I heard some gasps and exclamations nearby and realized that in my excitement I’d forgotten what era we were in. People thought nudity remarkable now so they were remarking on mine.

  “Look, there he is!” someone shouted. It was the man who’d threatened to fetch security earlier, and he had followed through. He had a large bloke with him and he was pointing at me, loudly proclaiming that I was not only prone to violence but to perversion. “He’s a menace!”

  “Well, time to go,” I said. “Come on, Slomo, drop down and I’ll catch ye.”

  “I recognize this,” Coriander said, frowning down at the pink scrap.

  “Tell me later,” I urged him. “We need to talk elsewhere.” Slomo dropped down from the branch and I swung her around to me back.

 

  Her claws scratched me up but there was no helping it. Security was sprinting toward me and shouting at me to get down on the ground. I scooped up me clothes giving them a prize view of me backside, and then the streaking began.

  The patrons of the Royal Gardens got a superb value for their ticket price that day, seeing a naked man with a sloth on his back running in tandem with someone who looked like a movie star away from an outmatched security guard. We could have bested him in combat if we wished but that would only have drawn more attention. We were headed to a copse of trees and could easily lose him in there.

  “I’m going to cast camouflage—” I began.

  “No, don’t bother,” Coriander said. “There’s an Old Way to Tír na nÓg here.”

  “Do we want to go there?”

  “Yes. We do.”

  I was asking more for Slomo’s benefit than mine. She’d just had herself a fine yak and was probably feeling a bit weak. It was too soon to shift planes again. But maybe traveling via an Old Way—a convoluted path through the forest that would bridge the planes—wouldn’t have the same effect on her as using tethered trees.

  Sometimes humans stumbled across these paths, slipped into Tír na nÓg, and were never seen again. It wasn’t common but it could happen.

  We ducked behind a hedge, temporarily out of sight, and then Coriander took the lead and I followed directly behind him. We wove through bushes in a sinuous pattern and they weren’t the sort that completely shielded us from view, so the security guard located us again and took a much straighter path through them than we did.

  “Coriander, lad, I don’t mean to rush ye,” I said after taking a quick glance over me shoulder, “but how long is this Old Way?” I was worried what the guard might to do Slomo if he tried to tackle us.

  “Almost there,” the faery replied, and he was as good as his word. The huffing and puffing of the guard faded, as did the ambient noise of Kew Gardens, and the plants changed and the sound of the birds did too as our footsteps took us into Tír na nÓg. To the security guard’s eyes, we would have gone transparent before fading from view. I hoped he’d be smart about it and say he just lost us.

 

  Other people wouldn’t let us find clues in peace.

 

  Yes we did. And thank you for your assistance.

 

  Of course I don’t mind. You can say what ye like. I want to hear it. What’s so strange?

 

  We try to hold them accountable. Bring them to justice. Make them pay, somehow, for the crime.

 

  I guess so. You’d have to set up a judicial system with lawyers and judges and—well, no, never mind. All ye need is me. If a toucan ever bothers ye, Slomo, I’ll punch it right in the beak.

 

  Coriander halted and tuned to me, waving the cloth like some foul bumrag as I helped Slomo attach herself to a tree. She’d suffered no nausea from the trip, I noticed. I’d have to see about using Old Ways to travel with her as much as possible. Maybe we could even make a new one that led to her patch of rainforest in Peru.

  “This kerchief,” Coriander said, “belongs to a rather odious pixie who is less than friendly with Brighid and myself. She was loyal to Fand.”

  So it was a kerchief.

  “But Fand is dead now,” I said, “so who are pixies like her looking to these days?”

  “I don’t know,” Coriander admitted.

  “Okay, we have two branches to follow here,” I said. “First, was it the pixie who left that kerchief there and eavesdropped on your conversation, or was it someone else who wanted to frame the pixie?”

  “Oh,” Coriander said, blinking in surprise. He hadn’t thought of the second possibility.

  “Second, if it’s the pixie, could they have set that hook binding by themselves?”

  “No. Certainly not.”

  “So that would imply the pixie is working for someone more powerful. And maybe there are factions involved here—I’m just thinkin’ aloud, ye understand, because I think something must have made that pixie leave in a hurry.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because it’s an obvious clue that will lead us directly to them. Only reason they’d leave it behind is because they had no choice, or it’s a frame job. So is there a faction or two in Court that would object to that pixie eavesdropping on ye?”

  “For certain. Those who are loyal to Brighid.”

  “So ye mean someone on your side might be running counter-intelligence ops?”

  “Yes.”

  “If that’s the case, then, why didn’t we hear anything about this?”

  “I’ve been away from Court. Perhaps Brighid knows something. She may have tried to warn me. I wouldn’t know.”

  “What’s a better bet, finding the owner of this kerchief, or finding out more from Court?”

  “Court, without a doubt. I have no idea where to begin looking for the pixie anyway, except at Court.”

  “Can we get there without shifting? Me sloth doesn’t handle it well.”

  “We can. Follow me.”

  There were shortcuts built into Tír na nÓg much like Old Ways that we could travel with Coriander escorting us. It wasn’t long until we were breaking into the dense co
pse of trees that ringed the large meadow of Faery Court.

  And there, waiting for us with triple flails in hand, was a pack of kilted badger men.

  On the one hand, I’ll always love and respect the Dagda for his creative energy and his vital role in making sure the Fae kept the Tuatha Dé Danann powerful and relevant to humans. The sheer breadth of his voluminous seed ensured that the magic of the Fae—the magic of Druids—would never truly disappear from the earth. And it had resulted in truly remarkable wonders like unicorns and merfolk.

  On the other hand, he was also responsible for trolls and goblins and all manner of ornery critters because he couldn’t stop copulating with any hole-shaped orifice he found.

  Badger folk were created when he fecked a badger den one day—not the actual badgers, mind, but the whole bloody den, because it was a hole in the ground that he found inviting, or winsome somehow, and nothing would do until he had humped it urgently and deposited a quick cocksplat into its depths. His incredibly potent package thereby created badger men who adopted the dress of Scots and played the most miserable bagpipes in the planes. Disagreeable types, in other words, who looked ready to disagree with our intention to proceed.

  “Ackphth,” one of them spat. “Rapth nak spuffthuk hurrrrk.”

  “Don’t mumble, now, lads. Be plain and use your words.”

  And then they attacked us, because badgers are like that, and we’d already received more courtesy than we could reasonably expect, and the day a badger uses words instead of claws is the day a fish stops breathing in water.

  They were quick and savage and Coriander stepped in front of us to take the first assault while I slipped on me brass knuckles. Crafted by Creidhne, they allowed me to punch through most anything. I could take on a wall of granite and the stone would come out the worse for it. But me powerful offense is nothing compared to Coriander’s defenses.

  He’s surrounded by kinetic wards that reflect a hunnert-fifty to two hunnert percent of the force directed against him. So punch if ye like, he’ll let ye, but in the meantime your bones will be shattered and you’ll be knocked backwards besides. Fire a gun at him and the bullet will come screaming back to destroy your spleen. Whip a flail at him, as one of the badger men did, and you’ll find the spiked balls of it embedded in your skull double-quick.

  The second badger man, seeing the first go down with his own weapon and Coriander unharmed, paused and blinked.

  “Rraphth kackthpf?” he said.

  The third badger man had either missed it, or was profoundly unable to learn from the mistakes of others. He stepped up and whipped his flail at my head from the side. I ducked underneath the swing and applied me knuckles to his knee. He went down howling over a shattered kneecap and I rose to me feet and pointed at him as I said to the second badger, “Kackthpf.”

  I don’t know what that meant, or even if I said it correctly, but he got the message. With one comrade toast and the other disabled while we weren’t wounded or even breathing hard, he realized he was confronting a class of opponent several levels above his own.

  “Away with ye now, and we won’t have any more blood. How would that be?”

  “Poomphth,” he said, and scarpered off. That left a clear path to Court, where Coriander might be able to find out what happened to the pixie who owned the handkerchief.

 

  An object lesson on the dubious wisdom and provenance of fertility gods. Orgies have consequences, love.

 

  They tend to be sticky. You wouldn’t like them.

  Coriander led us to Court where a veritable swarm of Fae were working on a new throne for Brighid—one that wasn’t made of iron but which made much to-do about her power and glory and such. It was largely made of living wood—boughs with mushrooms and ivy growing on it, and an appropriate cloud of butterflies and bees attending it all.

  Brighid sat off to one side in the meantime and looked quite surprised to see her Herald Extraordinary in his workaday duds.

  “Coriander? And Eoghan? What news?”

  He drew her aside to speak for a while in privacy and I got to answer Slomo’s questions about the Fae.

 

  That’s right.

 

  Not even a little.

 

  Some of them might do that, but they’re not like mantises. Most of the Fae eat leaves and flowers like you. But occasionally they eat the hearts of children. You can’t be too careful around the Fae. They’re like humans in that regard. They could be completely lovely and they could be the most depraved monsters of your nightmares. Approach them with caution.

 

  Over where? Oh. Them.

  It took me a moment to see who Slomo meant because there was such a muddled cluster of creatures milling about the meadow of the Fae Court, but it turned out she was looking at a small, radiant group of the Tuatha Dé Danann who all had the same Druidic tattoos on their arms as I did. They glowed faintly, being fecking awesome and knowing it, and they were surrounded by a cluster of attendant faeries.

  Those are very powerful beings, I said to her. Goddesses of the Irish, like Brighid.

 

  Fecking hells, love, you really have a problem with big-beaked birds. They could indeed do that if they wished, but I can practically guarantee you that they are not interested in toucans.

 

  Power, mostly. Who has it, and who doesn’t, and how much. Though I’m not sure it really matters to them; it is more of a game they play because if they don’t, they’ll die of boredom.

 

  Indirectly, yes. Boredom makes you do stupid things to entertain yourself and sometimes those things are fatal. Like parkour.

  Slomo said, responding to the images I sent.

  Right? Kids these days.

 

  I nodded faintly at the nearest one, since pointing was likely to be taken as an insult. She was a regal looking dark-haired woman in modest white robes and a crown of white roses ringing her head. She was attended by several fairies in similar garb.

  That one is Ecne, goddess of wisdom. She’s the daughter of three brothers and therefore tends to call everyone uncle.

 

  Not really. It’s called fraternal polyandry and it’s also sticky. See the next three to her left?

  I indicated a trio of ethereal beauties, each of them coolly watching Brighid speak with Coriander without seeming to be particularly interested. One was blonde, another brunette, and the third red-haired. They had a small horde of faeries flitting about them, waiting to do whatever their laconic natures might desire.

  That’s Eriu, Banba, and Fodhla, the patron goddesses of Ireland.

 

  Artisanal toast for sure, I agreed. And they can sling a fine poem when they feel like it.

  Slomo stretched a discreet claw toward a woman who looked anything but bored by the construction of Brighid’s throne. Disgusted or contemptuous, more likely. She had her dark hair gathered into a queue and ringed in gold hoops, and she plainly wore armor and weapons in contrast to the other Tuatha Dé Danann.

  That’s because she always is. That’s Clíodhna, the Queen of the Banshees. The bean sídhe, I should say. That’s them floating behind her, the Fae in gray flying without wings.

  They we
re only two or three feet high, ragged gray cloaks draped over wizened, wrinkled frames dressed in diaphanous green. Their eyes glowed red and their white hair swirled around their heads like thunderclouds. They moved slowly but constantly in a gentle churn of movement behind their leader.

 

  They are harbingers of death. I hear they were supremely annoyed at being left behind when the Fae host went to fight in Ragnarok. They missed a lot of quality keening and wailing that day. But Clíodhna was particularly unhappy to miss out on the slaughter. She’s been itching for one.

 

  Now that I think of it, when it comes to death and who might have died recently among the Fae, the bean sídhe might have some answers for us. Let’s go have a chat.

 

  Oh, she’d never do that, love. Unless she feels like it.

  I took three whole steps toward Clíodhna before Coriander broke away from Brighid and floated my way, indicating he’d like a word.

  “The pixie in question was indeed, as I suspected, loyal to Fand rather than Brighid,” Coriander said. “Like many such Fae, she worked in service to one of the other Tuatha Dé Danann rather than work for Brighid directly. But Brighid hasn’t seen her at Court for weeks, which corresponds to my picnic in Kew Gardens. It’s likely the pixie hasn’t returned to Tír na nÓg, or if she has, she’s been very careful not to attend Court.”

  I gave the barest nod toward the Queen of the Banshees. “I was about to ask Clíodhna if she might know whether that pixie was still around or not.”

  Coriander’s eyes darted that way briefly and returned to mine. “She does not give such information away for free.”

  “Ah. Well, never mind then.” The last thing I’d ever do is get myself in debt to the Tuatha Dé Danann. That kind of dealing is what got Siodhachan in so much trouble.

  “No, it is a good idea. I will pay whatever she wishes. It’s not normal for the pixie to be absent this long. Something has happened.”

  The Herald Extraordinary led the way and the cluster of goddesses and faeries shifted subtly at his approach. Clíodhna crossed her arms in front of her, a clear negative signal. Soon after, Fodhla and Banba mirrored this. They were all but shouting that they did not welcome him, either personally or as a herald of the First among the Fae. It looked like some of them were curious about my presence here, which I did not appreciate. Drawing the attention of the Fae rarely worked out to one’s benefit. It was best to live in such a way that they never knew of your existence, or failing that, in such a way that they found uninteresting.