Iveston on the Moor, Devon, England
Thursday
The King’s
Raven soared up out of Faerie, spiraling between banks of summer storm and into
the sun over Dartmoor. The veils that cloak his world from ours fell together
behind him like a crystalline song. Icy wedges of air streamed past the sharp
eyes, poured across the stretching wings as he reached over the horizon for the
moon’s white disk. Then pivoting on a night-black wing tip, he turned and
powered towards the ground, flipping barrel rolls for joy, because he could.
Just as he flattened out to skim the granite-crowned tors, a glint of sapphire
glittered at him from somewhere below.
Reluctant
but obedient, he tumbled out of the sky over tiny Iveston village, stalled, and
came to rest, wrapping hooked talons over the fence that defined the
well-ordered yard of a country pub from the wild moor lands beyond. For a moment,
he was a laughing young man sitting on the fence in black jeans and shirt. Then
the elegant gentleman who had called him snapped an order, clearly expecting to
be obeyed.
Vulgarly
impertinent, the boy was the raven again. His head bobbed once, and again, in
case his lord had missed the courtesy. (He hadn’t, and couldn’t resist
smiling.) Shouted a territorial caw, in case the ordinary corvidae in the neighborhood had missed his arrival. Then he sprang
up with a noisy clap of wings to settle on the roof peak of the pub called
Day’s Star. On guard, eyes bright, he settled in.
* * *
Inside the
lime-washed and serviceable Star, its dark interior redolent of time and beer,
things were not so poetic. Well, not entirely. A pair of old men bent over a
chess game in a corner under horse brasses and framed headlines from the Great
War. Another, content to sit alone with his Kindle reader and a short whisky,
took up the seat nearest the bar, occupied by his father and grandfather in
their turns. Quiet enough, then, excepting the click of the e-reader paging,
and the occasional muttered “Check!” There’s a bit of poetry in all of that, maybe.
Mr Day, the
landlord, added a metallic clank and thump to the mix, fitting a new keg in
under the bar. But the sound that rang up to the sharp-eared Raven on the roof
was none of these: less content, much younger, and utterly American.
“I said no,
Peter, and I meant it! Just no!” Ben Harper had been reviewing galley proofs of
the new book all day and had come down to the pub for a sandwich and a pint. “I
should never have picked up,” he muttered.
“What’s
that, eh?” said his agent.
Ben sighed
and let the other man go on. It was an agent’s job to keep the magic going, and
wild ideas that worked were Peter’s specialty, yes. He was the one who had
turned Ben’s knack for efficiency and clear thinking from a cottage industry
into a career. So he was grateful. Really. The man earned his percentage, but
there were limits. There had to be!
Ben drained
his pint and gave up. “Peter, stop. Could you stop? I said, no castles. No US
locations. Maybe next year.”
“Just let
me finish, mate! This is brilliant! You’ll love this.”
Ben set the
cell phone gently on the table and raised his empty glass and a meaningful look
to Mr Day, who nodded back.
“Sorry?
Sorry, Peter, you’re breaking up!” Ben shouted, and with guilty satisfaction,
tapped the call closed. Most of Dartmoor didn’t even get cell service. Calls
got dropped here all the time. It could be minutes before Peter noticed and
rang back. A few blessed minutes, Ben thought. Maybe longer.
A fresh
pint of Day’s Best Bitter appeared in front of him, tiny bubbles rising through
the gold to a thin, creamy head. When a second one materialized next to it, he
looked up again, confused.
A quick
flare of sunlight flooded the window over Ben’s head, rendering his benefactor
more or less invisible.
“Hope you
don’t mind.”
The pleasant
voice might have come out of the air, or from another world, there was no way
to tell. Then a cloud, or something, softened the light again, and the
comfortable shadows returned. The voice became a shape, then a man, and a whole
new problem. Harper blinked and dropped his glasses back down to his nose.
Wary, he
tipped his thanks with the fresh pint. “I don’t usually accept drinks from
strange men.”
It was part
of Ben’s nature to notice, catalog, file, and he did it now without thinking.
The tall, lordly type in beautifully tailored jacket and a silk shirt of pale
but uncertain colour smiled at him, then dragged up a chair and sat down
opposite. Black hair curled loosely on the man’s shoulders framing a
sharp-featured face. Celtic, perhaps, or more exotic than that. Eurasian,
maybe. High cheekbones touched with warmth, fine features, dark eyes so deeply
blue they matched the sapphire that winked in one slightly pointed ear. A
tendril of smoke spun up from the cigarette he held cupped between long manicured
fingers.
Ben shot a
questioning look back towards the bar; Mr Day just shrugged.
“Aubrey.”
The accent was plummy and posh, like the manner, if perhaps just a touch
foreign. Not from around here, no. “Aubrey King.”
“I’m
sorry—Oberon? Not a name you hear a lot.”
A cloud
slipped off the sun again, and a stray sunbeam highlighted the planes of the
face. He might almost have been posing for a magazine. Or an album cover. Ben
suspected the guy was aware of the effect he created.
The fellow
lifted one sable eyebrow, chuckled lightly as if he heard that all the time,
the picture of aristocratic ease. The old wooden chair didn’t even creak when
he settled back in it.
“Aubrey,”
he corrected. Aubrey took a deliberate drag on the cigarette, then carefully
let it out over his shoulder. “Been following your career, Ben Harper. Have a
proposition for you.”
Ben rolled
his eyes, manners collapsing altogether. “Oh, of course you do.”
Conversations
that started like this invariably involved a unique opportunity he didn’t need
and couldn’t afford. For the sake of distraction, he nodded at the cigarette.
“Y’know, you can’t smoke in here.”
“Ah!” said
Aubrey, his glance flickering to the cigarette with a grace note of surprise
that might even have been genuine. “Quite right. Old habits.”
He made a
show of pinching out the cherry, then folding the stub into his palm. With a
gesture like a stage magician, he fanned open the fingers again and it was
gone.
“My
7-year-old can pull a quarter out of your ear.”
We know the Sparrow! Yes, we do!
Listen!
Silly human!
What the hell? Tiny
voices like a pack of munchkins were giggling somewhere, maybe under the window
behind him, or just outside the door that stood open to the car park.
“Pfft,”
said the guy, Aubrey. “Pixies.”
“Yeah, okay,”
Ben said. “Or kids.” But he did wonder if the school had let out already. He
had to pick up his son today.
In fact, he
thought, it was probably time to go. Yeah, he should go. He tipped back his
glass for a last appreciative swallow, and set it down a bit harder than he
intended. By all rights it should have sloshed beer over the rim, but it
didn’t.
He stared
at the glass for a second, then stood up. “Sorry. I really have to go.” Feeling
churlish but in suddenly desperate need of open air, he flung himself away from
the table.
An
enigmatic smile hovered around his lordship’s mouth as the dark eyes tracked
the American. “I think you’ll find it’s not the kind of proposition you
expect.”
“It never
is, mate. But whatever it is, I really don’t have the time,” Ben said over his
shoulder, and added with the barest courtesy, “Thanks for the beer.”
He ducked
under the low doorway to emerge, striding out across the pub’s postage stamp
front garden. Before his eyes had even finished adjusting to the light, the clouds
parted then closed an instant later. Dazzled, running shoes skidding on the wet
grass, Ben drew up short before he could slam into a picnic table still beaded
with rain.
Vision
cleared, and there was Aubrey.
He stared,
then flung a look back over his shoulder towards the doorway he’d just come
through. The man still appeared to be sitting at the table, calmly sipping his
beer.
Again he
looked to the rail fence where Aubrey couldn’t possibly be but manifestly was.
The double-take might have been comical if it weren’t so bloody impossible. Ben
pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose with one finger. Who was this guy?
“Okay,” he
said carefully, backing away from the table, and the stranger. “Nice trick. I’m
sure your idea is utterly unique, won’t cost me a thing, and will make me
rich.”
A thin
smile lifted Aubrey King’s eyes, but he just put his hands in his pockets,
shifted his weight, and said nothing.
“But could
you just, y’know, call my agent, okay? He vets brilliant ideas all day long.”
Like a criminal
seeking sanctuary, Ben was edging backwards toward the pleasant darkness of the
Star. He had taken no more than a few steps when a huge bird dived out of
nowhere with a harsh cry, cutting the space between the two men. Ben stumbled
back as a night-black wing tip nearly clipped his nose. “Hey!”
The bird
banked, traced a figure-eight around Aubrey, and soared back up to the roof. It
snapped its beak and trained its black eye on the American, then gave a throaty
croak, as if having the final word.
There was
that childish giggling again.
“Aw, come
on!”
Ben stared
around, a little frantically. Still no children. Behind him, the figure with
the beer had gone. And Aubrey just stood there by the front gate, calmly
looking back at him. There was something else about the guy, despite the casual
pose, that Ben couldn’t quite put a name to. An air of…
Ben
shivered slightly, then sighed again. If this was what stress was doing to him
even before the new series started shooting, he was in serious trouble. “Damn,”
he breathed.
And then he
started to laugh—at himself, at the day, at life. Shaking his head, he gave up
and walked back across the grass with a rueful smile. As he put out his hand,
his gaze for the first time rose to meet Aubrey’s long blue eyes, dark and
strange as the sea.
“Look, I
don’t know what’s going on.”
“Going on?”
said Aubrey.
Ben said,
“Sorry,” and realized he meant it. “I’m listening. What can I do for you?”
Aubrey put
his hand in Ben’s, accepting the apology with a nod.
“It’s going
to take some explaining,” he said. “And some time. Ah! I know, that word again.
But time is not really the problem, Ben. At least, not in the way you think.”
“Oh, now
you’re just being mysterious.”
The
aristocratic smirk again. “You did leave a pint of perfectly good beer on the
table. Shall we go in?”
Pushing a
fringe of sandy hair back out of his eyes, Ben looked at the man, really looked
at him. “Are you glowing?”
Well, he
was. Not in any vulgar, glittery way but a glow indeed—an aura maybe—pale in
the watery, unreliable light.
“Am I?”
That eyebrow lifted again with amusement and something else Ben couldn’t guess
at.
When the
clouds moved again, it was gone. “Hmm, maybe not.”
Stress, Ben
thought. And sunlight bouncing into his eyes. English springs are notorious for
bright intervals of sun and shadow. And technically, it was still spring for
another week or so. If the yard seemed perceptibly darker, that would be the
trailing edge of the earlier storm slipping by on its way to Surrey.
“Curious,”
Aubrey said. “So. Drinks?”
Time appeared
to be the recurring theme of a day growing steadily more odd.
“It’s— I
don't know.” Ben checked his watch, then turned to look down the street toward
the sixteenth century clock tower and beyond it to Iveston School. “Damn it!
I’ve got to get my son from school. Would you mind—?”
“May I walk
with you?” Aubrey King gestured with grace.
“Uhm,
okay.”
Compartmentalizing
out of habit, and because he saw no other choice, Ben set the weirdness aside
and crunched down the driveway and into the road, with the tall, fae gentleman
strolling easily at his left hand.
The
half-timbered pile that was the Star (est. 1621) sprawled at one end of the
village. The school in serviceable red brick lay, wisely, at the other. As
Iveston was one Devon’s smaller villages, the two ends were not all that far
apart, with little more than the vicarage and the consecrated breadth of St
Michael’s church (est. 1528) between them. As they passed the ancient lychgate
leading to the graveyard, Ben felt more than heard the other man take a step
back, then cut behind him with a rhythm almost like a dance step, to walk on
the other, sunnier side of the street. The green smell of the moor washed over
them as he moved, and a light scent of violets.
“Issues
with the Church?” Ben asked with a curious grin.
“In a
manner of speaking,” the other man said, without elaborating. A raven, probably
not the same one, called from somewhere. “Indeed,” he added obscurely, smiling.
They walked
on with Ben expecting a hard sales pitch at any moment. Instead, the man was
humming a clever little tune he’d never heard before.
“Who are
you?” said Ben suddenly. “Really?”
Aubrey’s
face lit up, as if he had been waiting for this question, then appeared to
reconsider. Finally he shrugged and said slowly, “What if I told you I was
Oberon, king of Faerie?”
Ben
snorted. “I’d look around for hidden cameras. Or the men in the white coats.”
“Yes, I
suppose you would. Still, it might be true. This is Dartmoor, the heart of
England’s magick, and there are stories. The fae, it’s well known, cannot lie.”
“So they
say,” Ben allowed. “But come on, who are you? What are you? Reporter? Rock
star? I know, super hero. Is this your secret identity?”
That made
Aubrey laugh out loud. “I knew I liked you,” he said without answering. When
they finally stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the low wall that protected
the school from the street, he faced the American soberly.
“The real
question, Ben Harper, is who are you? An efficiency expert who has no time? A
musician who never plays? An actor of more than ordinary charm who’s content to
be a TV star writing housekeeping manuals?”
“Hey!”
The voice
was light, almost mocking, but the expression was serious. “What other gifts
are you neglecting? Don’t you wonder?”
Ben pushed
his glasses up again. It’s not like he hadn’t been asking himself those very
questions lately. Lately, and for a while, in fact. But having someone else
fling his doubts in his face, doubts he’d barely begun to share with his wife,
was something else again.
“Hey,” he
repeated, and felt stupid when he did. Not exactly a devastating comeback for
the man’s too-accurate assessment. A few yards away, the clock on the school
wall ticked over another loud minute before Ben said, annoyed: “So, what is
this, a rescue? Some kind of intervention? Are you the ghost of Christmas Yet
to Come? Who put you up to this?”
His new
friend, if that’s what he was, stiffened slightly. So much for his more than
ordinary charm. It sounded insulting even to Ben.
Those
pixies, or small children, were laughing at him again or maybe it was the wind
in the oak tree just over the way.
“Okay,” Ben
said as the strained silence lengthened. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
Now the man
did crack a smile. “You’re collecting your child from school, I thought. What’s
his name again?”
The
awkwardness shifted.
“Uh,
Sparrow. He’s called Sparrow.”
Ben pushed
open the chain link gate to join the cluster of waiting parents applying their
x-ray vision to the smoked glass doors for the first glimpse of their kids.
Alas, parental super powers were on the fritz today. All anyone could see were
their own fun-house reflections.
Aubrey
considerately stayed behind, leaning his back against the wall, paying
attention to the village instead of making the other grown-ups nervous. Well,
maybe that was the motivation, but when Ben looked back he had that feeling
again, of some kind of power restrained and contained. For all the relaxed
elegance, the man stood like a soldier on guard, scanning for trouble. Who was
this guy?
Abruptly,
the flat buzz of the school bell jangled the country quiet, and the question
slipped away. In seconds the tiniest children burst shrieking through the
double doors in a bobbing river of robin’s egg blue, and slammed into parental knees.
Before they’d quite cleared the hallway, a half-dozen 7- and 8-year-olds came
barreling through, their gap-toothed smiles as sunny as summer days.
Next week—
no, tomorrow, Ben realized—was the last day of term. No wonder they looked so
especially cheerful. They’d be free, and two weeks later he’d be back at his
London desk, living on fast food and coffee, the willing architect of his own
depression. Willing, mind you. Which brought him back to Aubrey King and the
favor that hadn’t yet been asked. King of the faeries, oh yeah. Still, there
was something...
Where the
hell was Sparrow?
A light
glimmered behind the tinted doors, a child skipping, tow head bobbing like the
bird that had given him his nickname. You’d never know, most of the time, how
delicate he really was. As he pressed through the doors, cheerful but paler
than usual under the sunny hair, Ben noted with worry the signs of strain on
the kid’s face. Something had happened—an asthma attack? How severe? The
medication usually worked, but now and then Sparrow pushed himself too hard to
keep up with the other kids. Things happened; Ben made the effort to stay cool.
The teacher
was bringing him out, one hand on the slender shoulder as if trying to keep him
from floating away.
“Daddy!”
Sparrow started to break away but the restraining hand caught him back. He
squirmed while Daddy exchanged a few words with Teacher about chronic illness
and activity levels. Daddy took his hand.
Might be
worse, the grown-ups agreed. Might still be living in Los Angeles.
*
* *
Impatient,
Sparrow squiggled, bounced, and danced, still tethered to Daddy but distracted
by everything, humming some little hum that wasn’t quite a song. Unless it was.
The pixies had been singing with him at lunchtime today, before the asthma
started up, and now he heard the tune again, all twisty and strange. Two or
three of the pixie folk were pulling at him, dragging at his shoelaces, and
babbling in their tiny voices. One of them squeaked and pointed, until he
looked up.
A wee man
just about the size and shape of a garden gnome stood on the wall wearing a
curious coat of leather and leaves, with a red feather in his pointed cap like
a safety flag. Sparrow giggled, as he always did, for the wee man’s nose was so
long and curved down that it almost touched his chin, and his chin was so long
and curved up that it almost touched his nose. They’d met before. And he was
chatting familiarly with a tall, dark haired man wearing a golden crown and a
sober expression.
The man
said something. The wee man roared with laughter. It hopped on one foot three
times, spun around, and vanished with a pop! Sparrow gasped. The kingly man
looked down and met the child’s awed gaze.
Sparrow
knew better than to talk to big strangers, even faerie ones, so he whipped back
around at once, suddenly shy, and tightened his grip on Daddy’s hand. He had
meant to give a loud, impatient sigh, but forgot.
Finally,
Miss Martin went away, and it was time to go.
“How now, gentle knight,” said Ben, giving the
boy his complete attention—finally. “Your charger awaits. Will ye ride?”
“Good my
lord, so shall I,” Sparrow cried, because he was his father’s son.
===================================================================
Dragon Ring background material and other goodies.
Dragon Ring background material and other goodies.
Fabulous excerpt, Maggie. Thanks for sharing. :-)
ReplyDeleteAwesome Maggie! Gonna go bug Laurence now.
ReplyDeleteThank you both so much!
ReplyDelete