Derecho- Part Five- Aftermath
“Easy,” the voice says. A hand touches my face.
Even after, consciousness does not come easy. I struggle to open my eyes. “Where is the boy?”
“Gone,” the voice states.
Someone tugs at my bandages; fresh pain erupts along my side. The sudden sharp bite of tincture.
“Helichrysum,” the voice continues. “Used to staunch the bleeding. Willow bark and peppermint to dull the pain. Frankincense for healing.”
Is it the old woman? Has she returned?
The bitter taste of willow bark. “Where am I?” I cannot see, all is dark around me.
“You are here,” the voice states. A hand touches mine. “Do not struggle, least you reopen your wounds. It is dark in this place, that is why you cannot see.” A moment’s pause, then light appears. The room and darkness reveal their occupants-
It is the Fancy Lady. She stands over me, veil brushing the back of my hand.
Her hands continue to administer. I reach out, grab her wrist.
The Lady gasps.
“Where. Am. I?” I struggle to rise- only to fail and fall. The sheets beneath me are wet, soaked in sweat and blood.
“Again, you are safe,” she says. She frees my grip. “We are no longer with the Master, you are in my room, under my care. No harm shall befall you here.”
“I do not believe you.” Everywhere she touches, my skin crawls. “Get away from me.” I strike out, catching her in the side.
Pain returns-
All goes black!
The next time I wake, I am alone in a room bare of furnishings save the bed. On my left, a window, its shape boarded up. Tattered curtains of yellow and orange flowers dangle from bent curtain rods. On my right, a closed door. The room smells musty, looks dusty. Yellow and brown-stripped wallpaper hang from the walls in strips.
My wrists and ankles have been bound to the four corners of the bed. The pillow beneath me smells of lilac and rose.
I wonder where my belongings are.
I wonder about lex.
Bandages wrap about me, from the armpit down. The wrappings smell of antiseptic, healing oils, and herbs.
I test the bonds- tight, but loose enough not to bind.
I stare overhead. A single bulb stares back at me.
Silence everywhere.
I think back to my dream- to Salisbury Hill, the sword in my hand, and Roland…
I think back on betrayal and my son.
I return to the demon, the one with the fake angel wings and scythes for fingers. Was the boy even alive? What had become of the Fancy Lady? Who was she referring to, when she said, ‘Master?’
A timid knock interrupts. The door opens.
I turn and lay eyes upon ethereal beauty, a young lady dressed in blue jeans and a tee, golden curls wind past her shoulders, she has a slightly upturned nose and elven features.
She reminds me of the Aos Sí[1]–
The aos si were tricksters, predating man. It was the aos si who met the Picts on the shores of Banba[2] , and set the first Kings of Man on their thrones.
The aos si created lex talionis.
The girl closes the door, approaches the bed, fingers interlaced before her. “Are you better,” she asks.
I know the voice, it is the Fancy Lady.
“You,” I begin.
She remains beside me, eyes dancing. I cannot tell if she enjoys my fear or not. The aos si have always been fickle when it comes to man, some would say arrogant.
“I thought your kind dead,” I said.
The smile remains. “The reports of our deaths have been greatly exaggerated,” she replies.
Touché.
She reaches out to brush a lock of hair from my eyes. “You need to heal,” she says.
Fear overwhelms me like a tsunami. Why keep me alive? Why not kill me outright?
Why did the fat man, let me go?
“He does not know,” she said as if reading my mind. “I have hidden you from him.”
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.” A pause. She studies her hands.
“Why did you chose this town, and these people?”
“If not here, then elsewhere,” she says. “They desire blood and fear, you know that.” She tosses a handful of curls over her shoulder, “Besides, the story fits.”
“Story?”
“Silverheels,” she says. “Do you not remember what the boy told you?” I am confused. Sigh of impatience, “If only we had time,” she exclaims, “alas, we do not.” A frown crosses her face, like a cloud darkening the sun. “As before, I need… your help.” The pain of asking, in her arrogance, has cost her something. Something dear.
She speaks, eyes distant-
“You can find meanness in the least of creatures. But when God made man, the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. An evil that can run itself a thousand lifetimes, no need to tend it.”
The aos sí were a machine, They certainly were!
I look away. Again, I am being asked for something, something I am loath to admit. From the boy, revenge, from fate, my life, from destiny, my death, and from the aos si, a favor.
I turn back, “Help to do what,” I ask.
***
Two weeks pass, the aos sí hiding me in a small shack just at the edge of town, a mere stone’s throw from where Saul, found me.
In her care, I find my strength. She makes me strong- we, however, do not speak another word.
We are machines.
On the day I can raise my hand without feeling pain I tell her, “I’ll need my gun, and I’ll need the boy!”
“The gun you can have,” she says. “The boy, a different matter.” She then relates to me the boy’s fate.
For long moments I remain quiet. Anger burns. “I want to see him!”
Sadness fills the aos si’s eyes. “That I can do,” she says, “though the way is dangerous. The Master has placed a guard over it. He visits the boy often… and feeds!”
Even in death, he is defiled!
In the end, the aos si agrees, hands me lex. The gun is wrapped in layers of cloth. The aos si, though its creators, areloath to handle it.
Their kind hates iron!
“Doesn’t he know you betray him,” I ask, holstering the pistol?
She hands me my clothes. She has laundered and repaired them. I dress.
“He thinks he owns me,” she continues. “He thinks too highly of himself, and I allow him to do so. We aos si live long lives. There is no need to hurry when it comes to revenge and the inevitable.” She stares at me, blue eyes glaring, “You, are my inevitable!”
Wheels within wheels…
She hands me a handkerchief the color of sky.
“What is this?”
“The only thing that will kill a demon,” the aos si answers.
In my hand, six perfectly silver bullets.
“To kill the Master, you must first kill the demon,” she says.
I open the cylinder, remove the remaining unspent cartridges, pocket the spent brass, and reload with silver.
I needed more. I needed to know about this fat man. How she came to be in his employee. Why this particular place, and for what purpose, exactly. I wanted to ask these things and more- what it would take for me to kill the fat man in the bed above the saloon- instead, I nod and accept the gifts she has given me.
If the fat man truly is one of them, I will not need special shells, I will only need my gun.
[1] The aos sí; older form aes sídhe is the Irish term for a supernatural race in Irish mythology and Scottish mythology, comparable to the fairies or elves. They are said to live underground in fairy mounds, across the western sea, or in an invisible world that coexists with the world of humans. This world is described in the Lebor Gabála Érenn as a parallel universe in which the aos sí walk amongst the living. In the Irish language, aos sí means “people of the mounds” (the mounds are known in Irish as “the sídhe“). In modern Irish the people of the mounds are also called daoine sídhe; in Scottish mythology they are daoine sìth.
[2] In the Tochomlad mac Miledh a hEspain i nErind: no Cath Tailten, it is related that as the Milesians were journeying through Ireland, “they met victorious Banba among her troop of faery magic hosts” on Senna Mountain, the stony mountain of Mes. A footnote identifies this site as Slieve Mish in Chorca Dhuibne, County Kerry.
Part Six Follows…
