Thursday, July 25, 2013

Lily Rose's Journal: Part Four

There are worse than what I've written here, and worse things done. This is what they call the humans tricked into their families.



The Blessed: Mortal families chosen in any place the Fatas have nested. They are fortunate in wealth and health, and, after the age of seventeen, don't remember the pact they've made with the Fatas -- but, subconsciously, protect and aid them in the true world -- while the next generation is contacted and drawn into their world.

Changelings and Aislings: The ones stolen away. A fake body is left in the changeling's place, a thing made to look human, which usually dies, unless one of them is made to look like the stolen person. Aislings are humans frozen in place, made immortal, taken from their eras by any Fata powerful enough to accomplish this time-travel kidnapping.





Jacks and Jills: The Sluagh. The dead. Teenagers changed by the Fatas with a sort of alchemy of flower petals. They're assassins, keepsakes, hostages. The Fatas, the monsters, call this Stitchery. I call it Frankensteining.



Monday, July 15, 2013

Lily Rose's Journal: Part Three

The Fatas have their strange people, too, the ones that can't really be grouped as families.

The Grindylow: I've only seen one, and I don't know what makes them. They're life-sized, ball-jointed dolls. They're beautiful and they kill, not nicely either. They're like the golems from Jewish folklore, like clockwork spirit things. Fatas usually can't kill humans -- that's what they use us for...and the Grindylow.



The Monasty: The collective name for the solitary Fatas. Some are outlaws or criminals...most just prefer not to be ruled. They have many different forms.




The Strigormes: The Owls. They're solitary and make their homes in abandoned places, in large forests. Most are crazy. If you ever see a girl or a boy in white, near an old barn or in the woods...run.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Lily Rose's Journal: Part Two

Then there are the Fatas from the water element:

The Uisce are old royalty and they're remorseless as sharks. They'll drown anyone in their lakes and ponds. Silvery-haired and lovely, they live in decrepit, sprawling houses near bodies of water.



The Fuath live near lakes, in houses that seem warm, inviting, and old-fashioned. They also pose as an extended family. They are dangerous in that they charm strangers to their deaths.

The Vodyanoi live mostly in Eastern Europe, usually in abandoned mills. They're the ones who eat people. Don't ever go near any creepy mills, even here.

The Afanc are wanderers and most often pose as bikers, sleek, wild, and tattooed. They were once known as Kelpies, Horseheads, who drag unsuspecting people to their deaths in water. Most of them don't do this anymore.


Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Lily Rose's Journal: Sketchbook One

THE DARK FAERIES, THE FATAS, who call us things with teeth, have teeth of their own. In the Wolf's house, I've learned a lot of things. Here are some of them:

THE REDCAPS are distant children of the Dragon. They can cast hekas (spells) that change a person's shape. They have red hair and tattoos. They are solitary, and they're mercenaries.



THE TIAMATS are the children of the Dragon. Related to the Djinn, the Fatas of the Middle East, they, too, are always red-haired. They'll pose as a parentless family of old money. If you're ever invited to a cocktail party in a grand house and everyone there is young and punk-antique...watch out.

THE MOCKINGBIRDS are a tribe of vampire-like Fatas. White skin and white hair and lovely, like most poisonous things. They seem polite and friendly -- that's a mask. They can be found as families in old, abandoned resorts.






Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Ten





THE TRUE WORLD RETURNED in a blink. She stood in the twilit yard of MoonGlass mansion. A car sped past on the road and she was holding the hand of a girl whose head was bowed, her face obscured by the dark wings of her hair.
    Then Tess raised her head. Annie flung her arms around her and almost screamed with relief. Instead, quietly, she said, "You're real, right? Not a trick--"
    She coughed, felt something like feathers in her throat, as Tess whispered, "Annie?  I'm real. What's wrong--"
    Annie reeled back in a panic. She felt wings beating within her ribcage, against her heart, a rush of violence through her lungs that sent her to her knees. She tried to scream as feathers filled her mouth. She had been tricked -- she was still in the Borderlands.
    The monster came bloodily up out of her throat, her mouth, with the rustle of wings...

    Annie opened her eyes to the sound of traffic. She lay in the dewy, cold grass and she could smell car exhaust, and iron, and tainted air. She inhaled, swallowed blood, sobbed once.
    "Annie? Annie?" Tess was gazing down at her. If it weren't for the blood, Annie would have thought it had been a bad dream.
   "Okay," she croaked. "I'm okay."
    "You're not okay." Tess crouched beside her. There was a levelness to her voice and gaze that told Annie all of the harm had been undone; Tess wouldn't need medication anymore. "How did you do it?"
    Annie followed Tess's gaze to the body sprawled a few feet away. No longer a scrap of avian spirit, the king of crows lay naked and unconscious in the grass. Annie sat up and shivered, tasted blood. She'd brought something into the world that had no more defenses or survival skills than a newborn god. "It wasn't me. It was him."
    Tess helped her to stand and they cautiously approached the unconscious boy whose resemblance to Tess was perfect. Annie knelt beside him, reacehed out with a shaking hand to touch warm skin.
    His eyes opened. They weren't immortal silver. They were the gray innocence of a human boy's.
    And madness was born into the world on the wings of a--
    "Blackbird," Annie murmured and, by naming him, took away his power. "Dubhean. Devon. Welcome to the world."
    As Tess's brother drew his first breath, the absoluteness of the world fractured, just a bit. And Annie didn't think that was such a bad thing.

                                                                        the end

   

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Nine





ANNIE STEPPED INTO THE HOUSE OF THE CROW, blinked as light from a red glass chandelier stranded over her. The walls of the room were hung with paintings of raven-like figures: a young woman, fierce and tattooed; a knight in ebony armor; a black man in a white suit, holding a skull-topped cane. Feeling as if she might forget to take her next breath, Annie whispered, "Where is she?"
    "Look behind you."
    Annie turned and saw a boy in white armor, his long hair the color of frost, his face innocent. She recognized him from Tess's stories -- the Duke of Doves, who said, "He sent me to tell you this: She is where she belongs."
    "No she isn't."
    "Should it be the world above and madness? Or Atenoux and life as--"
    "A shadow?" Annie raised her head and looked around for the Fata she'd come to confront. She shouted to the unseen, "I was wrong. You are not the Bran Corax. You were human once. You died. You infected your own mother and sister because you didn't want to leave."
    He came from the shadows, Tess's twin, his hair threads of ink falling to the shoulders of black glass armor formed into the images of birds. The light honeyed his skin. His eyes were silver with slitted pupils. A tattoo in the shape of a crow stained one side of his face.
    Annie realized it wasn't just the Borderlands that she was dealing with. Carefully, she said, "You are dead."
    "I live." He smiled and the ghost light glinted in his eyes.
    "You were stillborn. And you've become a parasite to your own family."
    "Speak respectfully in my house." Massive wings rustled somewhere. stirring dust and the bones of birds.
    Annie kept her voice low, steady, "'He is an iron flower, a tendriled spike. He is the smoke of altars and autumn leaves. He is winter air on stone.'"
    He flinched as if the words had hurt him. "You cannot name me."
    A wise person had once told Annie: They find their kings and queens among mortals. They need mortal blood to be real. They needed Tess so that they might bleed and breathe. The king of crows had been born a scrap of flesh, his spirit raging at the world he'd been denied. She reached out, grabbed his cold hand. "Give her back. If you love her, don't condemn her to this--"
    His eyes went black.
    Annie stumbled as a veil of silence and darkness fell over her and the hand in hers -- she didn't let go -- became icy. She wondered if she'd made a mistake. It would be easy to become lost in their world...
    She continued to grip his cold hand because she couldn't leave Tess in this dreaming tomb.
    The darkness vanished in red light and the king of crows was gazing down at their twined fingers as if he'd never been touched before. She whispered, "You're neither here nor there, are you? Them or us?"
    He said, "I have no name."
    "I'll give you one." And she spoke it.
    Atenoux fractured.

Monday, May 13, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Eight


THE CAILLEACH OIDCHE'S FACE was a Kabuki mask, white-skinned and red-lipped, the white hair that spilled over her shoulders streaked with brunette. Her eyes were not gold, but the silver of the otherworld.
    Annie stepped back from the cold hate she saw in the owl girl's expression,, even knowing it wasn't directed at her, but another. She breathed out, "I'm sorry about Nathan Clare, the boy who lived here, about what happened to him. I know he was Jack's friend. And Jack..."
    The Cailleach Oidche bowed her head. "It was the Wolves killed my Nathan, little rabbit. Now listen carefully to what I tell you. First, armor yourself with things from loved ones..."

Go to his place of power. You must confront him in his domain. If you are drawn Between, touch one of your talismans. You mustn't stay long, or you will be lost. Your girl will be disguised but in plain view. Touch her and speak her name.

The children of nothing and night had wanted Annie to feel helpless.
    In her room cluttered with second-hand books, earth-scented candles, wind chimes, sunflowers, and crosses of iron, silver, and oak, Annie prepared for battle. She chose a T-shirt painted with a silver unicorn, a gift from her friend Sylvie Whitethorn. The jeans sewn with pearl buttons up the sides had belonged to her sister, Angyll. She fastened Tess's chain of plastic daisies around her left ankle. Around one wrist, she knotted a bracelet of silver charms given to her by a girl named Finn, who'd had her own encounters with the others and who was now like an older sister.
    The Fata, the loas, the spirits found power in mortal poetry, so words would be Annie' s weapons.

It was called MoonGlass and it was one of several abandoned mansions on the Hudson, a collection of fairy-tale towers and stained-glass windows with lunar themes. A moon face smiled above the doors. The gates before the tangled lawn were made of bronze, not the iron that would have kept Them out. MoonGlass was one of the places used by Them, the perfect setting for the world Tess had imagined, and Annie could think of no other place in which Tess's particular Fata would nest.
    "Atenoux." In Celtic, Atenoux meant 'returning night'.
    As she moved up the path toward the house, she tugged a tiny, wooden box from one pocket of her coat. The Cailleach Oidche had given her something to help her into the Borderlands. She took from the box a mushroom the color of new snow and placed it on her tongue.
    The true world melted. Weird shadows slanted across the trees to either side. She heard a sound like the tick-tocking of a gargantuan clock. The evening was painted with purple, the air tainted with the fragrances of an alien land.
    She flinched as a massive beast seemed to emerge from the night -- the statue of a horse, its black marble hide reflecting the red sky. Beyond it, the doors of the house were open, revealing a lamplit hall with a chessboard floor. As Annie moved up the stairs, she saw who waited for her within.
    Seated in a red chair was Nadine, and she was flanked by her Magpie Knights, their ivory blondeness radiant.
    "Come over the threshold," Nadine called, "Annie Weaver."

Monday, May 6, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Seven




ABSALOM ASKEW'S BICYCLE was gaudily spray-painted with dragons. He raced with Annie down the street to the house called LeafStruck, where they abandoned their bikes at the foot of a crumbling stairway hidden in a tunnel of branches. This dark passage led to a porch with carvings of leafy faces leering in the corners and wicker furniture rotting beneath foliage.
    Absalom, cast in moonlight, was solemn."It wounds me that you won't let me take care of this for you."
    "I thought you were supposed to be neutral?"
    "When it comes to you, Annie Weaver, I'll never be neutral."
    His words sent shivers up her spine, because it wasn't a boy looking at her through those golden eyes.
    The door to LeafStruck creaked open, revealing a dark, dusty hall, a floor scattered with leaves. A pale light glowed at the end.
    Absalom smiled. "You are, however, on your own when you step across this threshold. We don't trespass on each other. Remember: She's an owl and they're predatory. But she's no friend to the ones who haunt your mad girl."
    "How did you--"
    "Farewell." He jaunted down the stairs.
    Annie gazed after him. Then she looked into the house, which smelled of decay and malice.
    "Hello?" She stepped inside. She heard music from upstairs -- a cobwebby violin solo crackling from what sounded like an old recording. She slowly made her way up the stair,gripping a banister wreathed with ivy. She glanced at paintings of wild, sinister people and found it hard to believe this had once been a temporary home for her friends -- a boy who'd lost his life to a wolf king and a young man who'd been freed from a queen of serpents.
    Only one door in the upstairs corridor was open and the room beyond flickered with shadows and light. There was a presence in there that didn't bother to disguise itself and made the air hum like electric wires before a storm.
    Annie thought of Tess's pale face in the hospital.
    She stepped into the gloom, her sneakers crushing leaves and dead insects.
    Colleen Olive, the Cailleach Oidche, sat in a rocking chair, a tattered veil concealing her from head to toe. She spoke in a voice that resembled the rustling of leaves, "Little rabbit. Why have you come?"
    Annie tried not to imagine silver claws beneath the gloves, an owl's yellow eyes beneath the veil. "Ma'am, I've come for help against the King of Crows, the Bran Corax, who is trying to take my friend."
    "Trying? He wouldn't be trying...he'd have succeeded."
    "I won't let him."
    "Ah. That is why. She has had protection. She had someone before. Now, she's got a braveheart."
    The someone must have been Tess's boyfriend Vine, the one who had painted Atenoux. Was Annie then the braveheart? She spoke carefully, "Is the King of Crows your friend?"
    Colleen Olive made a spitting noise and her voice was suddenly young, "You should be afraid of me, coineanach. But I will help you against the Bran Corax because you are Jack Hawthorne's friend."
    As she flung back the veil, Annie braced herself to keep from flinching.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Six


ANNIE'S MORTAL FRIENDS, most of whom were older, would instantly shift into protection mode if they knew what was happening. She didn't want that -- they had been through enough. So she went to Absalom Askew, who was used to trouble and actually thrived on it. She rode her bike to Xo's Buffet Banquet and pushed through the black door which led to the upstairs. After tugging her bike into the dingy hall, she loped up the stairs before she lost her nerve.
    As she raised a hand to knock, the door opened and a boy in tattered jeans and a T-shirt appeared and smiled at her. The black T-shirt was scrawled with red, dripping letters: I ____ Vampires. She could hear Tom Waits growling from the stereo.
    "Annie Weaver." Absalom's honey-colored eyes were not a boy's. His scarlet hair glinted as he tilted his head. "What brings you to my door?"
    "I need to speak to the Cailleach Oidche."
    "And what makes you think I'll be allowing that?" The lilt of another time and place slinked through his voice as something ancient moved behind his eyes.
    "They've come as a court of birds. You might want to tell Phouka. Or not."
    "My queen is otherwise occupied. I'll help you, fair girl. Come back before midnight. That is the Cailleach's hour."
***

Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Five


ANNIE STARED AT THE THREE nightmares on the veranda. Having found their way out of the dark, they hadn't quite got it right -- their skin was like alabaster, their eyes the silver of ghostlight. Shadows clung to their eyelashes, their fingers, threaded from their lips. They must be young, Annie thought, for their kind.
    The Empress of Ravens drew closer. "I'm Nadine. The tall one is Krysto. The other's Johnny. Those aren't our real names, of course."
    As Annie drew back into the house, the soles of her Converses squeaking against hardwood, she whispered, "I know what you are."
    "She's got the sight." The tall twin was attempting to sneak himself over the threshold -- a hand, a booted toe. "We should blind her."
    "Go away." Annie, who didn't wear iron or silver, realized they couldn't get over the threshold. They had to follow the rules which kept them in their shapes. "Or I'll tell Absalom you were here."
    The name worked. They retreated.
    "We'll see you around." Nadine, shimmering, turned and sauntered away. "Annie Weaver."
    The Magpie Knights smiled and ambled from the veranda. Silvery dust swept from their moth-pale hair.
    When Annie had been twelve, one of their kind, the crom cu, the crooked dog, had murdered her sister. But they weren't all bad, the Fatas, the children of nothing and night.
   She knew a few.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Four

ANNIE WALKED DOWN A HALL painted the glossy crimson of Minoan temple interiors.
    Tess's aunt had given Annie the key to their apartment so that Annie could sometimes fetch things for Tess -- or the creature They had put in Tess's place, the object her aunt sang to, spoke to, and cared for.
    She switched on the lights in the parlor, stared at the empty place where the painting called Atenoux had hung.
    She stepped into Tess's room and sat on the bed. Gossamer curtains drifted in a breeze laced with honey and dusk. Unlike her own cluttered haven, this was a room of stark hues, ivory and black. On the bed was the pewter casket that had held Tess's medication. She frowned at Tess's reading glasses, the books on the nightstand -- Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, and a book of poems by W.B. Yeats. So. Tess had begun to suspect.
    Annie touched a petrified sea horse dangling from the bedpost and whispered, "What happened?"
    He came, the little thing whispered, from Between.
    Annie dropped her hand. She began to shiver. She rose and left the apartment.
    As she clattered down the stairs, clutching the bannister to keep from falling, she felt the world shimmer. Her breath suddenly became vapor in the glacial air that swept from outside.
    On the veranda, shadows stirred, came forth, became two ivory boys and a girl. The taller of the blonde boys, in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and jeans, looked as though he'd stepped from the Seventies. The sly-eyed boy in a ribboned jacket and striped breeches, a flower in his hair, resembled a Renaissance page. The girl's black velvet coat and plumed top hat didn't look like a costume. Her raven hair was knotted in two braids, and inky crescents were painted beneath her poison-silver eyes.
    Annie knew what they were, these creatures who looked human. She could see shadows slithering around them like ribbons, smelled moss and flowers.
    She remembered sauntering through a field of wildflowers with Tess, tugging her tie-dyed skirt away from nettles, clutching at her straw hat to keep it from the wind as she watched Tess's green-painted fingernails break the stem of a sunflower. Annie had been telling her friend stories. "The Empress of Ravens is beautiful but merciless. She's consort to the King of Crows. The Magpie Knights, who are twins, are also her lovers."
    "What are their names?"
    "Someday, I'll think of names for them."

Saturday, March 23, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Three



ANNIE HAD BECOME AFRAID for Tess, because Fair Hollow had its secrets and they'd be like poison to Tess's fragile psyche.
    When Tess's aunt called Annie to tell her that Tess had been temporarily hospitalized, Annie knew what had struck the girl whose mother had encountered Them.

As Annie stepped into the hospital room, she noticed the walls were bare of any paintings. Tess was white and shadowy-eyed in the bed, and, as Annie sat beside her, Tess whispered, "Annie....he stood there...and his skin was white and he smiled at me and the crows came all bloody from his mouth..."
    Annie lifted her gaze to the stricken face of Tess's aunt,who didn't understand why Tess should never have come to Fair Hollow.

As Tess slept, her Aunt Lucia told Annie about Tess's mother, who, in their Chilean town, had once entered an abandoned house on a dare. Years ago, a girl had killed herself within, and, because the nightingales which nested nearby were sometimes found dead with blood beading their feathers, the suicide was called the Nightingale Girl. Tess's mother had gone into that house when she'd been twelve years old. She had emerged pale as paper, and shaking. She'd never told anyone what she'd seen.
    She'd seen the dangerous kind, Annie knew. The ones who inhabited neglected places, old bridges, graveyards, derelict buildings. The children of nothing and night.
   
Three days later, Tess had become catatonic.
    But Annie knew it wasn't Tess in that hospital bed.
***
(Illustration: Gustave Moreau)

Saturday, March 16, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part Two



DID VINE PROTECT YOU AGAINST THE DARK THINGS? Annie, who could read objects and people, imagined Tess's Vine as a young man with long dark hair and tattoos, painting in a garage with a Harley gleaming near the door. She drew closer to the canvas to study the central figure; a knight in armor like black glass, his face similiar to Tess's, his world a chessboard where a moon hung in the sky like a green lamp. Tess set her chin on Annie's shoulder as Annie read the painting's name, "Atenoux."
    "Vine listened to all of my stories."
    "The king of crows." Annie stepped back, remembering their childhood stories, the kingdom they had created. She whispered, "He painted the king of crows with your face."
    "He told me the painting is a talisman. Like the gargoyles in churches, someting scary to keep away the bad things. Your poems are like that."
    Annie frowned. She wrote poems about girls with snakes in their hair and sonnets about poison-eyed boys. Poems were her armor against such things.
    "My dad," Tess touched the painting, "would have called them loa, spirits."
    Annie said warily, "He would have called what spirits?"
    "The people I dream of." Tess gazed at the painting. "Them. Him."
    Annie stepped back from 'Atenoux'. She whispered, "He is winged, ink-eyed, night incarnate. Hands like lilies unfolding. Skin white as a saint's sin."
    "That's beautiful. Want some coffee?"
    Annie narrowed her eyes at the king of crows and murmured, "I don't like him."

Despite being observed by the king of crows in the painting, Annie had a great time. They watched a scary movie and played a game of Scrabble while drinking gourmet coffee -- Tess's aunt didn't believe in video games, though she had grudgingly given in to a Wii.
    When Tess placed the word 'fate' on the board, Annie breathed out. She'd never told Tess about Them. She said, idly, "So what about the loa?"
    Tess sorted her tiles. "My dad didn't believe in them, but my mom did. She called them something else -- asikaku. She said they lived in the mountains near her town."
    "Your mom was from Chile."
    "Mmh."
    "So when she said they lived in the mountains near her town, she meant the Andes?"
    Tess tilted her head. "She said they were beautiful ghosts who lived in courts called Hummingbird and Flamingo. She said she saw one, once, with silver eyes and red hair. He wore a coat of green feathers. She could tell what he was because his skin was white, as if he had no blood. And wherever he walked, little red toadstools appeared."
    "Where did she see this ghost?" Annie was careful not to sound panicked. Tess had never mentioned such things about her mom or dad -- or maybe she had, but Annie, back then, hadn't taken any notice.
    "When she was a kid. She got scared and ran. She said she knew he wasn't human. I guess you'd just know wouldn't you? Whether or not someone was flesh and blood. Human or not."
    Tess's mother and father had separated. No one knew where her father had gone. Her mother had been institutionalized for years, unable to cope with the common world. Annie hadn't known about the encounter Tess's mother had had with one of them. Sarah Rocquelette must have seen more, though, than the pretty toadstool boy.
(Illustration: Edward Burne-Jones)
***

Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Madness of Crows: Part One




LET ME TELL YOU A SECRET, said the girl named Tess Rocquelette, and, with a whisper, nine-year-old Annie Weaver was initiated into a world of spirits and madness.

Repeating the name Atenoux, Annie lifted her gaze to the stuffed birds that seemed to glide through the red parlor. Tess's grandfather had hunted the hawks and doves, the owls and wrens, made their corpses trophies in the house where Annie had escaped many humid afternoons. Tess had been born in this house, with a twin brother, a bean-shaped afterthought wrapped around his tiny sister. He hadn't lived past his first breath.
    When Annie turned eleven, she and her family moved from New Orleans, to the town of Fair Hollow, New York. And it was in Fair Hollow that Annie's older sister was murdered by a thing called the crooked dog.
    When Annie turned sixteen, and was much wiser to the invisible world, Tess Rocquelette moved to Fair Hollow with her aunt, a playwright who wanted to be closer to New York City.
    When Annie came to visit, it was as if five years had never separated her and Tess. Tess's aunt had rented the upstairs of a majestic mansion that had been converted into apartments, their spacious home scattered with purple and black furniture from thriftshops and an aquarium of angelfish dividing the kitchen from the parlor. A large painting hung on one ebony wall. Annie was drawn to it.
    "The boy who painted it was named Vine." Tess's hair was still a sable fall. She wore a dark cotton dress and red Doc Martens. She'd always been graceful and pretty, even when they were little.
    Annie's jeans and her T-shirt, with its decal of a skull, seemed at odds with her golden freckles, the white-blonde hair which fell to her shoulders and into her eyes. She never felt pretty. "Who's Vine?"
    "It doesn't matter. He left me. I'm so sorry about Angyll, Annie. I never thought she'd do...that."
    Annie couldn't speak. Her sister's murder had been bewitched into looking like a suicide. But Annie knew the truth.
    Tess came to stand beside her and gaze at the painting. She murmured, "Vine was strong."




   
   

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Lily's Note:



THEY DON'T LIKE BEING CALLED FAERIES. But that's what they are, whatever name they give themselves, or are given, whether it's fairies, skinwalkers, djinn, dybbuks, asikaku, or just spirits. And I am here now, in this cold place, by my own choice, even if it was a Trick.
    Sometimes, I see what will be, because the house I'm in, the Wolf's House, is never in one place for very long. Maybe I'm allowed to see stuff, like they're telling me "This is what will happpen to those you think will save you." But I can warn you, out there, and keep you from making the same mistake I made, and that others have made.
    They made a mistake when they let me see what will become of a girl named Annie Weaver.

                                                                        ***

Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Mermaid House: The End


VIOLET OPENED HER EYES because she heard the hush of the ocean tide. She shivered. She was wet, but her skin burned. Slowly, she uncurled, lifted herself, winced at the light blazing in her eyes, a car's headlights--
    Her vision resolved into colors she'd never thought she'd see again; sun-drenched turquoise and shimmering white, a sky that was so blue it seemed painted on.
    She swallowed and pressed a shaking hand to her chest, felt the pulsing heartbeat, breathed out, bit her lip hard and tasted blood.
    "Leander..." Her voice was a croak. She staggered to her feet. "Leander!"
    She tripped over something in the sand, looked down.
    She crouched and gazed at the blue T-shirt wrapped around a boxy shape. It was Leander's T-shirt. Shivering, she drew from its folds a lunchbox painted with the image of a big-eyed girl in pink. It was her own lunchbox, one she'd kept her secret things in, the one she'd been carrying when she'd come across the Gorgon's path. It couldn't be the real thing -- it quivered with Fata magic.
    Her hands shook so badly, she was scarcely able to undo the latch. She lifted the lid.
    Her cry joined with those of the gulls circling above.

Leander floated in a peaceful nothingness, aware but unable to move, drowsing and numb.
    Slowly, he rose towards light and warmth that he didn't feel on his cold skin.
    He broke the surface, clutching at the wet folds and bare legs of the thing disguised as a girl, which knelt before him and cupped his face in its hands. His wide gaze was held by her silvery one. Her black hair, glistening with sea anemones, swirled around them as she whispered, "My dear morning boy."
    He looked dazedly around at the elegant, glass bathhouse, the crystal chandeliers glittering above, light licking over giant mirrors, the leaves of ornamental trees...and the gazes of the others nearby...slender, beautiful girls and boys with the silver light of death in their eyes.
    Amphitrite, smiling, whispered against his cheek, "Welcome home."

Leander thought he would feel cold. He felt nothing as he and his family drifted from the glass bathhouse, separating, to follow the Gorgon's creed.

He found Violet.
    She still wore what she'd had on the night he'd died. She was huddled on a park bench, the lunchbox that Amphitrite had kept, the one that had held her soul, set beside her.
    She finally stirred, wiped a sleeve across her face, and rose.
    He followed her as a shadow, the streetlights occasionally giving him the form of a teenage boy in a T-shirt and denim.
    She hesitated at the end of a street of neat houses, where TVs glowed in the windows and a few children were playing a game in the street. She moved forward as if she were on a mission.
    "Violet," he whispered and remained in the dark, watching her prowl up the walk of a house with blue shutters and a wreath on the door.
    A pain twitched in his chest and he winced, clenched a fist against the hollow where his heart had been. As he watched Violet raise a hand to the doorbell, he felt the seed of something begin to gnaw in that hollow.
    He smiled as warmth blossomed beneath his ribcage.

The door flew open. Violet blinked in the cascade of light as a familiar, careworn face emerged.
    Violet said, "Hey, mom."

                                                               The End
(Illustration: Frederic Leighton)

Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Mermaid House: Part Twenty


THE DEAD CAN'T live again.
    Leander stepped back, toward the ocean. "You can't have me then. What did you give Owen for his life? Or Johnny? Or Violet? How many rules have you broken?"
    "You are not in my good graces now." Amphitrite tracked him slowly as he backed away. "But I shall tell you what I gave them -- Owen Thyme's father would have soon succumbed to a growth in his brain, but my element destroyed it. As for Joukainen...well, I took him instead of his girl. And Violet...do you know what Violet wanted, brave boy?"
    He felt the tides around his feet as he stared at the sweetly smiling monster whose words were like a macabre prayer. Amphitrite continued, "She wanted to live forever, the selfish little thing."
    Leander looked at Violet, curled on the sand. She was still, one small hand outflung. Her denim jacket and jeans were soaked from the tide. How long had she existed like this?
    His throat hurt. He suddenly very much wanted his home, his grief, the TV dinners and old movies, the boredom of school, his mother's embrace.
    Violet would never have those again.
    "Give Violet her life back. Or I'll step into this riptide -- it is a riptide isn't it? And you can't go back in here, can you? There are...others, in this ocean, who kicked you out."
    Amphitrite suddenly wasn't so pretty, baring teeth like needles. He took another step back, almost fell into the strong swirl of the water.
    "Stop!" She moved with dragonfly swiftness and stood with her toes just barely touching the foam drifting in and out. "I cannot make her alive again. I can make her a more realistic replica of human life. No one will notice, if she is careful. And she will eventually feel again, warmth and chill, pain and comfort, even if it is only her reality." She stretched out a hand. "I will even allow you to see the deal done."
    He looked up at the stars, the last thing he'd see as a human.
    He reached out and clasped her cold, cold hand.
(Illustration: Herbert Draper)

Monday, January 28, 2013

The Mermaid House: Part Nineteen


WHEN LEANDER TURNED, Amphitrite the dead girl, the gorgon, stood before them. She seized Violet by the throat and flung her.
    As Violet slid into a heap against the rocks, Leander yelled and lunged, but a clawed hand pressed against his chest, over his heart, paralyzing him. The blood seemed to stop pumping through him.   
    Amphitrite leaned close, whispered, "I shall sew you up, filled with morning glories, my beautiful boy."
    Those claws needled into his chest. He closed his eyes against her, said, "You have to give something back."
    He felt the claws withdraw a little. Warm blood slid beneath his T-shirt. The ocean was a cold abyss at his back, but what stood before him was ancient, luminous, and fatal. She whispered,"What did you say?"
    Something wet and cold twined around his neck as her body pressed against his. His stomach knotted as he realized it was her hair, swirling around him. He opened his eyes and met her silver gaze. "If you take from me, you've got to give something back. That's the rule."
    Her eyes narrowed. She stepped back, her writhing hair sliding from him. "Well...what shall I give? Because, Leander Cyrus, I am taking you."
    There was one thing he could request, to set things right. He said, "Let Violet be human again."
    "She's been dead for seven years."
    "You're a sea goddess and you can't give one girl her life back?"
    An eel slithered through the tangles of her black hair. "It is the first rule: The dead cannot become living again."
(Illustration by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer)   

Saturday, January 19, 2013

The Mermaid House: Part Eighteen

 
 
I'M DEAD.
    Then Leander was breathing again, choking up water, blind and cold as he lay on the sand. A voice was telling him roughly, "Idiot."
    He opened his eyes, saw the night sky. He could hear the ocean. Crouched beside him was a dead boy in soaked jeans and a T-shirt. Owen Thyme said, "You need to get away now."
    Leander whispered, "You're dead."
    "I'm dead because of that monster you nearly made a deal with."
    Leander slid into a crouch, spat out sea water. "You're the thing in the well...the snake..."
    Owen Thyme raised his head. His eyes were black. "I belong to Amphitrite."
    "Owen." Leander felt his voice choke into a snarl. "Tell me what will kill her."
    "I can't tell you." A dark flower petal slid from between Owen Thyme's lips. He coughed and more petals emerged, like flakes of dried blood. He stared as they fluttered away. "You've got a chance to get away, Leander Cyrus. Take it."
    Leander staggered to his feet. "Not without Violet."
    "Goddamn it!" Owen pushed his hands through his wet hair. He looked up and whispered, "I can't help you, can I? Remember this then: If they take, they have to give someting back."
    Leander heard Violet call his name. He whirled and pelted across the sand.
    In the shadows of the tall rocks, someone grabbed his hand.
    Violet flung her arms around him. He held her tightly, believing in her warm reality, and she kissed him. He tasted the salt of tears, whispered, "I won't let her take you."
    They ran as clouds twined across the moon. They fled past the elegant, glass bathhouse flickering from glittering reality to scattered ruins. The shadows seemed to glide after them, spiky and silver-eyed, whispering.
    Leander, looking over his shoulder, didn't see it coming.
(Illustration: John William Waterhouse)

Sunday, January 6, 2013

The Mermaid House: Part Seventeen



GLASS WALLS SLICED ACROSS the night sky. Metal girders evolved from the moonlight. An elegant interior of pools, potted trees, and chandeliers enfolded Leander. Statues ghosted from the air. He stood ankle-deep in a shallow pool, with a ceiling of glass arching above him and the stars glimmering down through it. He heard violins echoing in the distance, along with laughter and joyful shouts. The chandeliers burst into light, each one resembling a crystal octopus.
    The pool furthest away began to shine as if a star was being born within it.
    He was tired of running, tired of being scared. Exhaustion and grief made everything seem dream-like and he swayed where he stood, said hoarsely, "Where is Violet?"
    She rose from the water, the black-eyed thing posing as a girl in a white, wet gown. She stood on the water and smiled and the illusion of the elegant bathhouse flickered like stuttering electricity. When it went dark for seconds, it became a moonlit ruin again, and she...she became something like a tangle of bones and gauze, glistening crabs and fluttering anemones. He was almost sick.  He quickly averted his gaze.
    "Boy." The black-eyed girl walked toward him, through the water. "You should not have kissed her."
    He couldn't speak. Terror was fracturing his courage. But he had come too far. "Just let her go...why do you need her?"
    Her eyes were ink-black. Like the bathhouse, she seemed to flicker in and out of  reality...a beautiful girl one moment, a hollow-eyed horror of writhing white and black the next. She tilted her head. "Do you want to bargain?"
    Instinct shrieked at him to run, to deny her offer. He thought of Violet huddled beside him, remembered how she had stared at the blood on her hand. She had had a family once. She had done something, something that had gotten the attention of the nightmare before him, and her life had ended. He swallowed, whispered, "You can have me in exchange."
    "And why," She stood before him now, smiling, "would I want you?"
    "Because I'm new." He understood what he was offering. He didn't care. The world was full of pain and loss, but maybe Violet could appreciate it more than he did.
    "And lovely." She raised one hand -- he thought he saw translucent bits of skin between her fingers -- and touched his face. He braced against a shudder.
    He felt something coil around his ankles --
    -- the jolt of being yanked beneath the water was so unexpected, he inhaled and began to choke. Darkness swept his vision as he was dragged further downward.