“Can people see you now?” Scott asked Mick as they sat on a bench, waiting for the bus. “Because of the glamour Harvey gave you, I mean?”
“Nah. That was only good for the children. Or the lad, at any rate.”
“Why didn’t it work on Emily? Could you smell magic on her like Harvey could?”
Mick shook his head. “Harvey’s got a considerable nose. An’ Emily’s something I’ve never seen before. If she’s full o’ magic like Harv says, she’s keeping it way down in her root cellar where I can’t see it at all.”
“Maybe she’s a changeling,” Scott muttered. “It’s … it’s not like she and Erno exactly look like brother and sister.”
“Meant t’ ask you about that. One o’ them adopted?”
“No. I mean … they’re supposed to be twins,” said Scott, and Mick huffed. “I’ve tried to bring it up with Erno, but I’ve never gotten very far.”
“Well, if she was just a changeling, she’d be able to see me an’ Harvey an’ all the other things that don’t belong in this world.”
Down the street a windowless white van was pulling into the parking lot next to the Park Authority Building. Scott was on alert for white vans, for all the good it did. Now that he was paying attention it seemed like they were everywhere. So far they’d only meant plumbers or flower deliveries. This one had a long ladder hitched to the side.
“Okay,” he said to Mick. “Well, if you don’t belong in this world, then where?”
“Maybe nowhere. Listen, I’ll tell yeh a story.”
Another story. Mick was getting nothing if not more talkative.
“This was abou’ a thousand years ago,” the old elf began. “I don’t remember much before it happened, an’ sure an’ I don’t remember everything since. But I remember this: one day, a thousand years ago, the sun rose twice.”
In the lands of King Anguish of Ireland, the sun lingered just beyond horizon’s door as though smitten with all creation, and reluctant to say good night. This was the twilight time, and the favorite time of the Fay. The old elf-man Fergus Ór (for if he had always existed, then he had always been old) emerged from his mound, clean as a turnip. He stood and whistled, and before long the firebird, Finchbriton, joined him. Then Fergus packed his pipe, and Finchbriton took his perch, and each smoked a while in his own way.
“Quiet this evening,” Fergus said, and the little bird trilled in response. “Well, I ween it’s because so many good Christian men an’ boys are off helpin’ our friend Arthur,” Fergus explained.
Finchbriton warbled humbly.
“No cause to be embarrassed; yeh weren’t to know. I only mean Arthur. He’s King o’ the Britons, he is,” said Fergus. “But I amn’t much of a Briton meself, an’ you’re a bit of a bird, if yeh don’t mind me sayin’ so.”
“Who’s a bit of a bird?” asked a passing beansidhe, who stopped and watched Fergus from a thicket of dead trees. She was pallid and clothed in diaphanous tatters; and Fergus thought she could be beautiful if only she fixed her hair, or at least combed the worms out of it.
“Just my friend here,” said Fergus, and he pointed to Finchbriton with the stem of his pipe. “Only don’t tell him; he thinks he’s a dragon.”
“You and that bird,” the bean-sidhe sneered.
“Me an’ this bird,” Fergus agreed. “That’s it exactly. What brings you by, Mona? Not business, I hope.”
“Not business,” said the bean-sidhe with notable regret. “I should be in the east, at Camlann. A great battle rages.”
“Still? It’s not Arthur an’ Nimue’s boy again, is it?”
“Arthur and Lancelot are again of one accord. Today they fight Mordred, Arthur’s bastard son.”
“Well, aren’t you the gossip.”
And then a strange sun rose in the east. To begin with, there was only a glow, like the first light of morning.
“Well now,” whispered Fergus, as much to himself as to the bird or the bean-sidhe. “What do yeh make o’ that?”
The bean-sidhe turned to the east and clutched at the trees. Her hair writhed.
“A sign! A new day begins, and Arthur hath prevailed! Or died!”
This strange sun breached the hills, looking jagged and broken through the trees. It grew larger, closer, not a sun but a dome, or else a great sphere of light that was half above the ground, half below. Finchbriton flew to Fergus’s shoulder and whistled low.
It came at them, this curved radiant wall, and passed on through. Then they were inside the light, and the light was magic. Pure magic, like neither elf nor bird had experienced before. The trees held their branches still, while every blade of grass quivered and the stars fell like cherry blossoms all around. Fergus burst out laughing: round peals of laughter like church bells. Finchbriton sang out loud and clear and set the tops of trees ablaze, while the bean-sidhe keened and wailed and fell to her knees.
Everything blurred, and it occurred to Fergus through his tears that he was seeing double. Then perhaps his brain guttered a bit, and he dropped to the earth.
“Seein’ double,” Mick repeated. “That’s what really stayed with me after I woke up again.”
“Finchbriton?” asked Scott. “You said that elf wasn’t you.”
“Yeah. I lied.”
The buses didn’t run much at night. Scott breathed on his hands to warm them and watched another white van pull up and park next to the first. Mick played with the zipper on his jacket and slumped back against the bench, which was papered with an ad for Aspercreme. Then he took another little drink from his flask.
“What is that stuff, anyway?” asked Scott.
“Perfume.”
“It’s fine for fairies,” said Mick, sounding defensive. “You shouldn’t drink it, though—very bad for boys an’ such.”
“Were you just giving me the ‘not until you’re older’ speech?”
“Heh. Yeah. Not till you’re twenty-one hundred.”
“So what was it? The big sphere of light? What happened?”
“Didn’t know what it was then, still don’t. Suddenly there’s no sun or moon anymore, but it’s always twilight, so that’s all right. ’Ceptin’ the air still seemed to crackle with magic. Too much glamour, an’ unfamiliar glamour, too. Like the magics o’ the whole world had come to roost in Britain an’ Ireland. Then word got around that France wasn’t there anymore, either.”
“Not there?”
“Most of it, anyway. Gone. Iceland too, and Saxony. An’ all other points north, south, east, an’ west. All gone, except for Britain an’ Ireland, Ireland an’ Britain. Let’s call the two o’ them Pretannica—the Greeks did.”
“Pretannica,” Scott repeated. The magical world. Sounded like one of those thick fantasy books with a lot of complicated maps inside.
“Pretannica’s there; everythin’ else’s missin’. Yeh travel too far an’ you’d find an ever-thickening fog o’ enchantment that could not be crossed. Which drove the humans nutty as conkers. Suddenly a farmer who’d never been so much as ten miles from home pined to see all the riches o’ Araby. They tried to get through the fog, they never came back.”
“That’s scary.”
“Sure. Can’t say I thought of it much at first, though. Ireland was my home, an’ I’d never really believed the rest o’ the world existed, anyway. I’d always lived in a bubble. It was maybe a hundred years before anyone realized the bubble was closing in.”
“You mean getting smaller?” asked Scott. He imagined his desk globe, and half a Ping Pong ball covering the British Isles.
“Right. The bubble was contracting. Slowly, but still. Now the Good Folk take notice. We figure it’s all the humans’ fault somehow. We remember the Battle o’ Camlann, even if they mostly don’t. Father an’ son killed one another on the battlefield, an unnatural act. Maybe this was punishment. People believed in things like that back then.”
“You said Arthur retired. He died in battle?”
“Well, some said he died; some said he was only badly wounded an’ taken to Avalon to rest up an’ return. I wasn’t there.”
There were three white vans now, though thus far Scott hadn’t noticed anyone get out. He realized they must be Park Authority vans, the way they were lining up in front of the building like that.
“So how did you fairies fix things? Make the world as it was before?”
“We didn’t. The Good Folk aren’t much for makin’ plans. We’re a flighty bunch.” Mick sat up. “Rumors start spreadin’, though, abou’ the Fay disappearin.’ The superstitious fairies (an’ we’re all a little superstitious) revive all the old stories abou’ elves going to hell to pay a tithe to the devil, but truth is, it’s not just the Fay disappearin’. It’s all manner o’ magical creatures. They’re slippin’ away, three or four a year. Then one morning it happens to me, an’ I’m in New Jersey.”
Afterward, when the reporters from the Goodborough Telegraph asked Mary Coleman just how her baby daughter had come to be replaced by a tiny bald Irishman, she told them that two burly kidnappers had made the switch right before her eyes. When Harper’s Weekly asked her to recount the same story three days later, it was four kidnappers with pistols and a getaway carriage. But in truth she’d only looked away from where her baby lay for a moment, and when she turned back, there was a wrinkled little man in the pram, looking every bit as surprised as Mary.
“Dear Ann!” Mary screeched. “What’s become of you?!”
“What?” said Fergus Ór.
“You’re not my baby! What have you done with my baby?!”
“I’ve nothin’ to do with your baby, lass, an’ I—”
“Kidnapper! An Irishman! Help! Help!”
Fergus could see where this was going. He struggled up out of the soft quilted poufs of the cradle and tumbled over the side of the carriage to the street. He was in a narrow cobblestone lane, slick with rain and lined with shops. It was day. There was true sunlight here, such like he hadn’t felt for centuries. It made him squint. Through his squint he saw people, all of them staring back at him.
“He stole my little girl!” the woman was telling them. “He’s Irish!”
They were approaching from all sides. Men in long coats and top hats, a barefooted boy. A peddler pushing a cart hung with knives and holding a long whetstone like a cudgel. Fergus pivoted about, looking for an alley, but there were no alleys. Then he composed himself—grabby human hands were something else he hadn’t felt for centuries, and he wouldn’t feel any today either if he kept his head. He let the glamour slide off him as he ducked to avoid the swing of a walking stick and leaped to escape the lunge of the peddler, and heard the sharp crack of the one connecting with the other. He tore off down the street, the cobblestones so punishing against his feet, and left the men and boys to discuss in high voices just what had become of him.
Within a week the Telegraph warned that substantial numbers of hungry Irishmen might now be posing as infants, looking to be fed. It was a popular story and gave rise to the slang term “paddy wagon,” which initially referred to a baby carriage but later became synonymous with the police van. A chapbook published later that year intimated that the little man may well have been a changeling—an Old World fairy left in place of a stolen child—but of course this theory was widely regarded as hogwash.
Fergus wended his way north to the edge of town, feeling naked without his glamour. More than once a dog, unable to see him but still haunted by apparitions of smell and sound, would whimper or bark in his direction. Once only, in a poor shantytown at the edge of the thin woods, he thought twin girls might be watching him pass; but he didn’t stop to make conversation. He walked briskly through the camp, came to a river and a bridge, checked for trolls, and came away disappointed.
In the centuries since the Gloria (or the Morning Glory, or the Marvel—that world-changing-sphere of light and magic had inspired as many names as it had questions), the forests of Pretannica had grown tangled and primeval. So the woods here looked comparatively precious, almost cute. Like a crowd of reedy, earnest children. When Fergus realized the forest was getting no thicker, he paused to rest, and to reach out with his senses. He raised a glamour and felt about for some magic. Anything. Even before the Gloria, the air of Pretannica had always held some faint trace of magic. It infused the air like humidity—the sort of thing you’d only notice when it was suddenly gone. This forest was a desert, and Fergus began to panic.
After half a day of walking it was sunset, and Fergus could feel that familiar light unwind him a little. He searched again for magics and sensed something slight but not so far away. A kinsman, he thought, and put on his best glamour. Enchantment was not just for the humans, after all; with his glamour, Fergus appeared a full two inches taller, and magnificently wrinkled, like a cabbage. He slid down a mossy hill toward a dying oak, its roots laid bare by erosion. And huddled beneath that rib cage of dry roots was the fairy.
“Well met, cousin,” said Fergus before the creature lunged.
It fell upon Fergus and pressed him to the ground, its chapped hooves grinding the dirt on either side of the old elf’s head. It had a long face like a horse. But not exactly like a horse. It had a pair of large, limp bat’s wings that dangled uselessly from its shoulders.
“Cousin!” Fergus panted. “I meant no offense! Grant mercy on your poor Irish relation!”
The fairy flared his nostrils and breathed a sulfurous wind that made Fergus’s eyes water. Then it withdrew and sat back on its haunches.
“Cousin,” the fairy repeated hoarsely. Fergus scrambled back a bit on his hands and heels and stopped when his rump hit a stone.
The fairy sat like a man, with its spindly legs crossed in front. Both hands and feet were hoofed, and horns grew like briar from its temples.
Was it some strange kelpie? No, it wasn’t dripping anything, especially. It was a pooka, Fergus realized, though he’d never seen one so anatomically confused. Best not to mention it, he thought. “Cousin, where am I?”
“New Jersey.”
Fergus frowned. “There’s a new Jersey now?” He supposed there should be—the old Jersey had been swallowed five hundred years ago by the Gloria wall.
It was an odd characteristic of the Fay that, though none of them could claim to have seen a true fairy birth, they were all nonetheless connected like a family. No one remembered back far enough to say just how this had started. There was an old human’s tale that claimed the fairies had become enchanted by the notion of human families and decided to imitate them. But (the story said) they’d gotten it wrong: they made an ancient-looking boggart the son of a beautiful elf who was the very picture of youth, or perhaps a bone-eating giant was now uncle to a swarm of electric little sprites. The Fay had no comment except to note that the humans’ tales tended to flatter the humans.
So the two fairies compared family trees and determined that they were indeed third cousins, on their mothers’ sides. It was dark when Fergus asked, “What d’yeh call yourself, friend?”
“The Jersey Devil,” said the Jersey Devil.
“That’s … nice,” said Fergus, forcing a smile.
The fairy’s wings shivered and then once again lay still. “You’re in a new world. You’ve crossed an ocean and something far greater than an ocean to get here. You’re just arrived?”
“This morning’,” Fergus answered. “Blimey, I’m one o’ the disappeared now, amn’t I?”
The Jersey Devil stood up on its hind legs and, with visible strain, spread its rank wings. Fergus could see moonlight through the skin. “Run as far as you can from this place. There is a … grain mill nearby. They trap our kind. They take our magic, I know not why. I escaped, but I am drained, and my glamour is addled.”
“It’ll be restored, friend,” Fergus whispered. “Yeh need only live honorably—”
“It does not come back, here.”
The pooka was still standing, still spreading its wings, though it trembled with the effort.
“This earth does not love us. Run, or out of kindness I will kill you myself and drink your blood, and with stolen glamour I will set upon the men of the grain mill and make their hearts to brast. Run or perish!” hissed the Jersey Devil.
“So I ran,” said Mick. “Holed up in Washington during the war. Ran some more after Lincoln died. Tried to stow away to Ireland, an’ that’s when they caught me. The first time.”
Mick heaved a great sigh.
“I think it’s like…,” he added, then faltered. “Like the whole universe got cracked. Like an egg with two yolks. An’ the yolks, the worlds inside, they got split apart, an’ this yolk’s a lot bigger than the other.” Mick chewed on his lip. “It’s not one o’ my better metaphors.”
Scott didn’t know what to say, so they were quiet a minute.
“Maybe the buses don’t run this late,” he spoke finally, and stood up to examine the sign beside the bench. That’s when he saw them: eleven white vans in the parking lot, two blocks away, and a twelfth just pulling up. “Um.”
Mick looked up. But he was short, and there was a hedge. “What is it?” he whispered. “I can’t see.”
In a rapid drill of clunking doors and pattering feet, seventy men emerged with rifles and black jumpsuits and glinting eyes. Among them was a small detachment of men in pink rubber suits carrying what looked like an aluminum crate between them. And two more men not dressed like the others.
“Haskoll and Papa,” Scott whispered. He had never felt so sure of anything.
Mick was standing atop the bench. “Maybe they don’ know exactly where they’re goin’,” he said. “Maybe we can get to the tree first.”
Papa was giving the assembly some orders, but he was interrupted by Haskoll. Scott couldn’t make out any of it.
Five of the men mounted four-wheel ATVs. The rest saluted Haskoll. Then they all trooped off around the Park Authority building, and Scott and Mick sprinted back into the trees.
