I stared at the water leaper, Llew, and tried to pull my thoughts together.
Magorian clearly was scrambling, too, for he said in a strangled voice, “Aurelius just…let you go?”
“And he strained my wing so I can’t fly, neither,” Llew said, with an unpleasant whine in his voice.
“You should consider yourself lucky,” Magorian told him. “Aurelius usually hands out death for mistakes, not bent wings. I can’t understand why he let you go at all. Not here, where he knew we’d question you.”
“He says he doesn’t know anything.” Haul’s tone was unhappy. “And we in here aren’t the type to encourage people to talk.”
“I am, if it comes to that.” I kept my tone cold, my gaze steady, selling the bluff as hard as I could.
Llew looked at me with growing horror.
“I’m a medical doctor,” I explained to Haul. “You’d be amazed at what can be done to a body with a scalpel and bleach.”
Haul wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, the charcoal black skin rasping on his tusks. “I’ll leave that up to you.” He sounded ill.
“It may not need to come to that,” Magorian said. “Llew looks like he knows how to protect his hide.” His gaze shifted to Llew. “Where did you meet Aurelius? How did it happen?”
Llew shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
Haul folded his arms, and spread his legs. “There’s no point protecting Aurelius. He doesn’t want you, now your use has expired. You’re of so little interest to him that he left you here for us to find and deal with. He couldn’t even be bothered killing you and getting you out of the way himself.”
It was a sharp observation, one that made me suspect that Llew really didn’t know anything about Aurelius that would let us locate him. But I kept my expression grim, anyway.
“Perhaps Llew knows something that Aurelius wants us to know,” Magorian said. “He wouldn’t be the first victim Aurelius has used as message boy.” He paused. “The last time Aurelius sent us a message, he dumped the woman in a lake of acid, leaving her with eighty percent of her body burnt. She barely lived long enough to tell us Aurelius’ message. She made herself live long enough to give us everything she knew about Aurelius, which let us stop him destroying the Pont du Gard in France.”
Llew looked as sick as Haul. So did his two handlers. None of them could know that Magorian was laying it on thick. Paloma von Napoli had been dumped into bio acid. And she had given us information about Aurelius that had helped us find the bugger. But she had survived her burns and was still living in La Mancha forest, happily researching whatever aspect of history Magorian needed.
Llew cleared his throat. “I don’t know nothing.” His tone was sullen, but the whining note had gone.
“You know more than you think,” Magorian said. I spotted the fingertips of the hand he was using to hold his staff lift a fraction of an inch. They moved in a tiny circle. He was casting a spell of some sort and hiding it.
“I’ve got a set of scalpels back at the house,” I told Magorian with a conversational tone, to draw everyone’s attention away from Magorian’s staff. “I can go and get them…”
“Not yet,” Magorian said, and everyone looked mildly relieved, while Llew looked pathetically grateful.
“Where did you meet Aurelius, Llew?” Magorian asked.
Llew shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
“You do remember,” Magorian told him. “But a siren sang to you and covered over the memory. Do you remember Aurelius singing to you? Or was it someone else? Does he have other sirens with him? Think. What is the first memory you have of him? Describe him.”
Llew’s gaze drew inward. “His glasses were dirty.” His tone was ethereal. “I kept wanting to take them off and clean them for him.”
I didn’t show my relief. Aurelius did wear glasses, which made him one of the rare Old Ones who had not had their vision corrected via the wholesale changes to physiology that came with their transition.
“That’s the very first time you saw him?” Magorian asked.
“Yes, I…” Llew frowned. “No, actually. Now you mention it. There was another time.”
“Where?” Magorian pressed.
“Ummm…”
“What can you see in your memory? Was it inside, or outside? Hot or cold?”
“Heat…” Llew murmured. He spoke as if no one but Magorian was there. “Super hot. That week of heat waves.”
I glanced at Haul and lifted my brow.
“July,” Haul said without hesitation. “It reached thirty-eight degrees here. People…humans…were dying because of it, and the smoke and ash in the air, which was very bad that month.”
I felt a rush of relief even more intense than the last one. If Aurelius had targeted Llew back in July, then he hadn’t attacked the forest because I lived next to it. I had been in Canada in July. Tapping Llew for information about the Carmarthen forest had nothing to do with me, as Magorian had tried to tell me last night.
“Where was this meeting, Llew?” Magorian asked. “The first meeting, when it was very hot and bright and the air was so unpleasant?”
“On the Tywi.” Llew’s voice was remote. Disinterested. “I wanted to skim the water. Just to skim it, not take it. I wanted to be wet. But the avanc…he got angry. Threatened to pull my wings off. Didn’t matter how much I apologized. Then the siren arrived and demanded to know why we were making the water sour with our screaming.”
“That was Aurelius?” Magorian asked.
Llew nodded. “He introduced himself to me, while the avanc laid face down in the water at his feet. He told me he’d talk to the avanc later, but first he wanted to hear my side of the argument.”
“Stepping in to save him. Sets up a debt of gratitude. It’s slick….” Haul murmured.
Magorian ignored him. “Aurelius talked to you?” he said to Llew.
“He was ever so nice,” Llew said. “Seemed to know just how hard it is to get through a day, now.”
“Wanted to know where you lived, how you spent your days?” Magorian crooned, and I realized with a start that his natural Canadian accent had shifted. There was a lilt to his words, now, that was almost, but not quite, Welsh. He was keeping Llew at his ease, not forcing him to process an accent or strange words.
“Yes,” Llew confirmed. “He liked my stories, you see.”
Magorian nodded. “And he wanted more of them. Did he give you food, Llew? Fill your belly, make you feel warm and happy?”
“Every time we met,” Llew said.
“You always met alone? None of Aurelius’ people came with him?”
“They were all meeting friends of their own, he said,” Llew replied. “But I didn’t mind. He was such a good listener.”
“Where did you meet?” Magorian asked.
“Pub, most of the time,” Llew said.
“There is a pub in Carmarthen that lets Old Ones drink there?” I added, feeling a jolt of shock. “I’ve not heard of such a thing,” I added in a lower voice.
“Which pub did you meet Aurelius at, Llew?” Magorian pressed.
“The Long Frog,” Llew replied.
Magorian looked at me. I shook my head. He looked at Haul.
Haul rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Thought the place was made up. Wish fulfillment. It’s supposed to be a pub where Old Ones can go. Only Old Ones. Somewhere in Carmarthen. Some joker said it was a non-Muggles inn.”
“Apparently it’s real enough,” Magorian said. He studied Llew once more. “So you met Aurelius at the Long Frog. How many times?”
“Every couple of weeks. Beer and the day’s special.”
Magorian raised his fingers from the staff, holding them out. Then he relaxed and turned to us. “Llew can’t hear us right now,” he said in his normal accent, which by contrast told me how much he had altered his speech while talking to Llew. “But that won’t last long.” He paused. “If Aurelius’ people were all out meeting their friends, then Llew wasn’t unique. Aurelius didn’t pick on him for any significant reason. He must have arrived in Britain sometime before July. But we do know Aurelius was in Spain in late October, so perhaps he’s doing this all over western Europe—making friends with water races everywhere, visiting them, listening sympathetically and perhaps singing to them to reinforce their loyalty. Then he waited to hear any news that would help him.”
“Like a spider sitting in the middle of a web, waiting for it to vibrate,” Haul said.
“And Llew shook the web,” I added. “By telling Aurelius the shield was here in Carmarthen Forest.”
Magorian raised his hand. “He’s coming out of it. Hang on.”
We all turned back to focus upon Llew, who blinked and looked at us with a blank expression. “What was I saying?” he asked Magorian.
“You were telling us the story about why you told Aurelius that the shield was here in Carmarthen Forest,” Magorian said. “Seems like a tall story to tell someone you admire, when you knew the shield wasn’t here at all.”
“But he was so pleased when I did,” Llew replied. “I didn’t think it was such a big thing. I heard Haul and the others who sit around him talking about it, including that American siren and the Scots lass. And it had been weeks since I’d had anything to tell him at all, and he was so nice, always buying me a meal. I wanted to make up for that.”
I stared at the water leaper, pulling it together. “You boasted to Aurelius about the shield. You lied to him to look…what? Important?”
Magorian made a hissing sound, and waved his hand in a near-violent circle. “To make Aurelius respect him…as he hasn’t gained that respect here in the forest.”
Llew blinked as though he was waking up. The spell had been broken. He looked at all of us with a touch of fear. He didn’t ask what he had been talking about, this time. Instead, he said to Haul, “You all treat me like shit, here.” And the whining note was back in his voice.
Haul made a sound in the back of his throat, that wasn’t quite a growl. “The reason you’re not respected here among us is because you’re a whining weasel who doesn’t deserve respect. You’re a slacker and lies come far too easily to your lips.” He waved his hand at the water leaper, as he would a fly. “I’m embarrassed you’re an Old One.”
Llew’s crystal clear eyes seemed to grow enormously and I wondered if his chin was about to wobble. It was likely he’d never heard such bald truth spoken so plainly.
“This is your forest, Haul,” Magorian reminded him. “Do you really want to be watching your back all the time?”
“No,” Haul said, his tone decisive. He looked at the two goblyns. “A long walk for the second night in a row. I wouldn’t ask, but I don’t think any of us will rest easy until he’s gone.”
“What?” Llew cried. “You’re expelling me? But…!”
“Yes,” Haul said flatly. “I’m expelling you.” He paused and looked at the trees leaning far over the sides of the clearing, so that there was little night sky left to see—and what there was to see was as grimly ochre as day sky. “And the trees will take note and let us know if you try to move back across the borders and into their land.” He paused again. “Given how accurately they can toss a branch, I wouldn’t be surprised if their first act would be to hit you back across the border like a hockey ball.”
Llew swallowed. “Where am I to go? I don’t have relatives, not that’ll talk to me.”
“A state most of us can claim.” Haul’s tone was indifferent.
The goblyns on either side of Llew grabbed a shoulder each. “A second long walk doesn’t sound so bad, if it rids us of you,” one of them said.
We watched them leave the clearing, Llew protesting all the way.
“I think listening to him will exhaust them faster than the walk they face,” I said.
Haul snorted. “If they’re smart, they’ll take off the ropes and put a plaster over his mouth, instead. He’ll be too busy trying to breathe through his nose he won’t be able to whine.”
Then Haul invited us to share his breakfast, but we declined and promised we would return to the forest soon.
And we did.
The aborted battle brought us and the folk in the forest together in a way that Aurelius could not have possibly anticipated. Jamie was our diplomat and when she wasn’t reinforcing or guarding the house in the semi-siege state Magorian had requested, she was in the forest, helping the people there learn how to live as independent Old Ones. Diedre, Tony, Euclides, and Ketill all helped, for they were just as at home in the forest as Jamie.
Days clicked by, faster and faster, for there was always more to do, to show the Old Ones, and to help the humans along my road who had learned that Old Ones could help make their lives slightly more comfortable in unexpected ways.
It wasn’t left to the four Old Ones in our house to provide that support. Jamie recruited less bitter Old Ones from the forest and marched them to the house of the day to clean water, or warm soil, or help the winter crops grow better. Most of the humans were grateful for their help, even though the Old Ones were never invited inside the houses.
“Wouldn’t want to step into their mucky old houses, anyway,” Glyn told Tony while they munched on vegetarian pizza as a second breakfast, around ten p.m. Tony had met Glyn and others in the forest. Glyn was about Tony’s age and was also a hobgoblin. Their friendship had been instantaneous. “Human houses, now…I can feel my throat closing up, just standing in them,” Glyn said. “There’s a reek that rolls off the walls.”
“Industrial chemicals used to build houses,” Magorian rumbled, his gaze on his laptop, his giant coffee mug in his hand.
Glyn shook his head. “Whatever. It makes my eyes water as much as the air outside the forest. So I’m fine flying over their fences and warming their veggies. I like the look in their eyes when I do.”
The forest began to transform, deep in the heart, where humans would not spot the changes. Cottages made of forest materials appeared where there was enough room beneath trees. Only, the weather was cooler than in Spain, so the cottages were built to different specifications, all of them Old Races-created.
Goblyns could make earth warmer by drawing up thermic heat from far beneath the ground. They also learned they could do the same thing with stones. The bigger the stone, the longer the heat lasted. So instead of digging a basement, or building directly on the earth, the builders would lay the stones the goblyns had warmed as their foundation, with goblyn earth-crete to smooth out the floor and make it stable.
The walls of the cottages were made of more earth-crete, which was more stable than rammed earth, and impervious to rain. “Because if there’s one thing Wales has in abundance, it’s mud,” Haul had explained to Diedre, with a rare laugh. “It never stops raining here.”
The roof of a cottage was insulated with moss and leaf litter, with hand-formed curved tiles to shed rain as the top layer. The tiles were made of clay and fired in earth kilns.
Every Old Race could supply skills to make what went inside the cottages. When the flax they had planted matured far earlier than expected, in mid-December, they turned to producing linen from the flax, which provided clothing, cushions, sheets and more.
After yet another tour to inspect everything that the Old Ones had turned their hands to, to create comfort, warmth and security in their new leafy home, Magorian and I walked home in absorbed silence. We were nearly to the borders, and the ochre-lit human day beyond, when Magorian said, “Perhaps we should all move into the forest, now.”
“All of us?”
“Until it’s time to go back to Spain.” He paused for several long steps. “I’m starting to feel safer here.”
I recognized with a jolt the same feeling that had been growing in me. It didn’t even matter than I was human and worked in a human clinic across the road. I had been thoroughly accepted by everyone in the forest and had proved my medical knowledge was useful, even to the Old Ones.
I had begun to resent having to return to the house, which was not much more than a roof to shield our possessions from the rain, and a place to lay my head at night.
But to move into the forest seemed like a far too deliberate and decisive action to take. While we lived in the house, we straddled the two worlds – human and Old Races – and could help both.
So even though my instincts matched Magorian’s in this, I didn’t reply to Magorian. I let the subject drop. There would be time later to explore it. Magorian thought May was the critical window and we were still in December.
Besides, it wasn’t as though Magorian and everyone in the house would be here forever. Once we dealt with Aurelius, they would go.
So, I said nothing. Later, I would come to regret that.