She wasn’t sure, in the morning, if it was the tomte or the cat who had eaten the oatmeal—Silk had certainly been known to scarf down stranger foodstuffs. But the bowl was emptied and her keys, for once, remained where she had left them.
That evening Viv called her parents and asked them about tomte stories: “In the books they wore cute little clothes, didn’t they? Have you ever heard of a kind of tomte that went naked?”
“Oh sure,” said her dad, “in fact, sometimes the fellow in the story will try to give them clothes as thanks for their work. But then they leave forever.”
“I thought that was a different story. With the elves and the shoemaker.”
“It’s how the tomte stories go too. Remember, I used to read to you from that big book of Swedish fairy tales? Anyway, why do you want to know?”
“I’m thinking of starting a collection of lawn gnomes,” Viv joked, “and I want mine to be historically accurate.”
The rest of the week she tried to remember to leave little plates of food out for the tomte, and not only did her keys stay where she put them, but things around the apartment started to magically clean themselves. She woke one morning to find her dirty laundry neatly washed and folded; another afternoon she came home from work and found the kitchen floor gleaming and freshly mopped. But she did not glimpse the little woman again.
Soon after, on her way to work, a newspaper headline caught her eye: POWER SHORTAGE LOOMS warned the Chronicle. Viv dug out her new cellphone—bought at Jennifer’s urging and under her direction—and dialed Auterre.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he answered, and the crackle of his accent through the handset brought a smile to her face.
“Heya,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just, did you see the Chron? They didn’t scoop you, did they?”
His tone turned serious. “No. But it’s happening, you see? Just like I said. I was going to call you anyway, Viveka. I’m going to have to leave for Sacramento tonight, there are files in the courthouse I need to study. My source still won’t go on the record, but if I can dig up some substantiating evidence, find a pattern of the power company exploiting the droughts, then my editors will run the piece even with anonymous sourcing. I’m sorry, I know we had plans this weekend—”
“No, don’t worry,” Viv cut in, “of course I don’t mind.”
“I can save lives if I can stop this.”
“I know. Go. Good luck. I’ll see you when you get back.”
She sighed as she slipped the phone back into her pocket. It would be the first weekend without Auterre in a while, and she realized now that she didn’t have many other friends to fall back on.
Once in the office she made Noah’s server closet her first stop. “Hey,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Guess what? There’s a fairy living in my house.”
He peered up at her owlishly from behind his Coke-bottle glasses. “A good fairy or a bad fairy?”
“I think sort of in the middle. She seems to be a free agent, like Piper: not one of Le Fay’s creatures.”
“She could be spying on you,” Noah pointed out.
“She could be,” Viv admitted. “But I don’t know—she seems a lot more worried about how clean the apartment is than anything having to do with Excalibur. And speaking of that, I know I’ve been bad about practicing, but it looks like I’m free this weekend?”
As soon as the words left her mouth she regretted them: her tone was glib, but Noah was plenty smart enough to know exactly what she meant.
“That French guy broke a date, didn’t he.”
“No, he’s got something important—look, I’m sorry, I know I’ve been blowing you off. I want to catch up. I wanna hang.”
Noah leaned back in his chair, combing both hands through the fringe of curls at the sides of his head. “Believe it or not, my time is actually in demand. The SCA’s summer tourney is in two weeks. It’s a big deal for us—it’s when we choose our Prince and Princess for the year. Rob and I need to patch our tent, Bree wants me to help her with a performance, and I’m trying to get a quarterstaff tournament organized as a sideline to the main bouts.”
“Noah, I didn’t mean it like that.”
He left her squirming for another moment, then relented. “All right, but I want you to do something for me.”
“I owe you about fifty times over, so—yeah, sure, what do you want?”
“I want you to come to the tourney and fight for Cloondara.”
She blinked. “What?”
“We call San Francisco the Shire of Cloondara,” he explained, “and the larger Bay Area is the Principality of the Mists. There will be all sorts of shires and cantons represented at the tourney. I want you to enlist, and fight for Cloondara. Our team’s not very deep—I’m okay with a sword, but much better with a quarterstaff, and there’s Rob, but nobody else brings much credit to Cloondara.”
“But I suck,” Viv objected.
“No, actually, you don’t. Your skills have improved dramatically in a very short time. You can’t use Excalibur, of course: that would be cheating. But I know you can fight, and I think you can win.”
“And winning would mean what exactly?”
“Winning would bring honor and glory to Cloondara,” he said.
“And you care about that,” she ventured.
That made him laugh a little, but he answered readily: “Yeah. Some guys get really into cars, or sports teams, or whatever. I care about my Shire.”
She shook her head, amused. “Fine. I won’t pretend I understand it, but fine. If that’s what you want, I’ll join your fight.”
“Well,” he said, sitting up suddenly, “if you’re really back in this thing, then I have something to show you.” He pulled open a desk drawer and lifted out a newspaper clipping. “Look at this.”
Viv accepted the clipping. The headline ran NEAR-DROWNED BOATER SAW ‘CREATURE’.
A San Francisco resident nearly escaped drowning last Sunday when his boat capsized in Stow Lake. Neil Henry, 34, was treated at California Pacific hospital for unexplained wounds after bystanders pulled him from the water. Henry claims a ‘creature’ overturned his boat and attempted to drag him to the bottom of the lake.
“‘It was big and furry, it had legs and hooves and a long head full of sharp teeth. I think it was trying to eat me,’ Henry claimed.
“Park officials assure residents that no such ‘lake monster’ exists. ‘We are very familiar with the flora and fauna of Stow Lake,” a park spokesman said. “It’s possible that Henry saw a large catfish and, in the panic of his oxygen-deprived state, hallucinated a monster.”
“Catfish can grow up to one hundred pounds although park officials say they have no reason to believe that Stow Lake holds a fish of that size. Even very large catfish pose no threat to humans.
“Henry’s account is not the first colorful tale attached to Stow Lake. The spot features on the ‘Haunted Haight Walking Tour,’ and is a popular destination among tourists and paranormal enthusiasts hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghostly woman said to haunt the watershore.
“Park officials say they do not plan to close the lake to boaters, but are considering posting additional warning signs.”
Viv looked up. “I don’t get it.”
Noah leaned forward. “In my fairy research I’ve read about exactly the kind of monster that guy is describing. It’s a fairy horse, sometimes called a pooka or a kelpie.”
“Wait a minute,” Viv interjected, “I thought a pooka was an invisible bunny.”
Noah shook his head. “You’re thinking of the Jimmy Stewart movie. In real Irish folklore, a pooka is a water spirit that can take the form of a horse. It lures travelers onto its back, and then it runs into a lake where it can drown its victims. It’s not a nice critter at all.”
“And a kelpie is...?”
“Basically a Scottish word for the same thing. The Swedes have it too, they call it the bäckahästen.”
“Huh,” said Viv. “Never heard of it.”
“Well, similar creatures are known by different names all over the world, but they’re shapeshifters, so accounts of their appearance vary a lot. Sometimes they’re gray, sometimes dark green, sometimes they don’t have skin at all. Sometimes they take human form. Sometimes their hooves are on backwards. And their back can lengthen to hold any number of riders, but all the stories agree that once you get on you can’t get off until you’re underwater—or unless you have cold iron or something.”
Viv made a face. “Why would you climb on a horse without skin? I mean really. Warning flags should go up.”
“I don’t know,” Noah said. “Fairy magic, probably. Anyway, I think you should get this thing.”
“But in the water—” Viv objected. “I wouldn’t be able to use the sword, at least, not well.”
“You’re the Lady of the Lake!” he exclaimed. “Maybe you can breathe underwater! We don’t have any idea what Excalibur can do. We haven’t done nearly enough experimentation.”
“I dunno,” she said, putting down the clipping. “I just don’t know. This guy didn’t die. Maybe we should leave well enough alone.”
“Look,” Noah said, his tone darkening, “there’s something else. I didn’t want to tell you because you seemed pretty shook up after that business at the Pulgas water temple. But you should know.”
“What?”
“I followed up on that kid you brought back. He went in the hospital, Viv. About a week after. And he’s still there, in some kind of a coma. I even got in touch with his caseworker—she said it’s an infection brought on by poor nutrition and exposure. Apparently even though he has no insurance the hospital can’t legally pull the plug without his mother’s permission, and she hasn’t given it. But they don’t expect him to wake up.”
Viv sat down on the nearest box of cables, feeling as if she’d been punched in the gut. “You’re kidding.” But she knew he wasn’t. “I held him—I carried him—” Her voice choked off.
“The worst part,” said Noah softly, “is he isn’t the only one. There’s been a dozen other kids, all desperately poor, who have died in the same way over the past decade. And probably more that they didn’t identify as part of the syndrome. There was something of an exposé in one of the papers about a year ago: they blame it on industrial pollution from the military bases.”
“But it wasn’t that,” Viv whispered thickly.
“It only seems to happen here,” Noah said. “Why would it only happen here?”
Viv screwed her eyes shut and dropped her head, and then Noah came around the desk, but she turned her face away as the tears dropped down her cheeks. After a moment she took a deep breath, wiping her hands over her face. “Screw this, screw fairies, screw everything,” she whispered hotly. Noah made a little motion towards her but broke it off, instead just standing awkwardly beside her as she fought for control.
“Okay,” Viv said, looking up abruptly. “Yes. These things kill kids. We can’t have any of them running around. Tell me where you think I can find this fairy horse, and what I have to do to kill it.”