Hero is a Four Letter Word Page 6

  “She hurt him,” Jen says, voice an awed hush, loathe to break into Liam’s story, to startle him away from it. But she has to ask.

  Liam blinked slowly, inner gaze still on that faraway court, still wandering the fairy lands. “The Good People, we call them. The Kind Folk. But it’s not a name, it’s an invocation. It’s a plea. Be good to us, we beg. Because the Fae … they aren’t good. They’re capricious. What is a joke to them is crippling, maiming, murder to us. What they call lovemaking, we call rape. They forget that we’re so very breakable. And they love to see pain. Hurt reflected back in a lover’s eyes, a heart beating too fast, adrenaline sweat and cold fear. Wooden eyes can’t cry. A stone heart can’t bleed.”

  And now he is starting to panic, breaths becoming gulpy and shallow, desperate, fingers twisting into his hoodie.

  “Liam,” Jen says softly, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

  He jumps, blinking hard, and made a sound like an aborted sob.

  “I’m fine,” he lies, after he has caught his breath again.

  Jen let the falsehood hang heavy in the air. “In the stories, Margaret saved Tam Lin.”

  “That she did,” Liam agrees. “And she loved him well. But they realized after a time … we realized, that Maggie was aging and I … was not. The Faery Queen had accepted that Tam Lin would not be her tithe that year, and released me to wed my rescuer. But she did not let me go.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There was a child, in that painting,” Liam whispers, his voice crackling over the grief.

  “The art historian said so,” Jennet agreed. “A little boy.”

  “Rab,” Liam says. “He was seven years old. He died on All Hallows Eve.”

  Understanding struck swift and cold. “Dear God.”

  “Yes. I thought that was the Fae’s revenge for having humiliated their queen. To take my firstborn son. But then our third child, a girl, the queen took her too, in her seventh year. So Margaret bore no more children. Thomas grew up and I did not grow older. So on the next tithing I threw myself on the mercy of the queen, begged her to take me instead of him, for he was twenty one then, with a wife and a babe of his own. And she laughed and took my grandson instead. And she said to me, Tam Lin, I will take all your children for all of time, or I will take the world. I will stop the tithe and Hell will be upon this earth. Which would you prefer? And so I … what else could I do, Jennet? What else could I do? My blood, my children, for as long as there are children, or me and then everyone else?”

  “What do you mean, your children?” Jennet asks. “It’s been centuries. Surely she can’t still be after … us. Me?”

  Liam takes her hands and kisses each of the palms.

  “The closer to my blood, the better,” Tam Lin explains. “When it grows too thin, I rejoin the family. I am a new lover, a husband, a cousin come a-courting. All Hallows Eve is next week, Jennet. You see my desperation.”

  “You fuck your own descendants and get them pregnant on purpose?” Jen asks, aghast. She tries to pull her hands back and he doesn’t let go. The candle sputters.

  “They enjoyed it, every one,” Liam says with a shrug. “You’ve had no complaints.”

  Fury makes her suddenly strong. Jen wrenches a hand free and slaps him hard across the face.

  Liam just grins as his lip splits and dribbles blood. “Ah, there’s my Maggie.”

  Jen stands, stalks out of the circle and around it, too furious to leave, too upset to sit still. “And then what, you just let them die?”

  “The Faerie Queen demands her tithes. Every seven years they must send a soul to hell, and about a third of the time she remembers that I owe her mine. The time between tithes is getting longer. It was nearly fifty years this time. Maybe one day she’ll forget.”

  “And meantime, you give her your sons!”

  “Sometimes the daughters,” Liam says, light and unconcerned, perhaps slightly confused by her fury.

  “You vile, disgusting, unbelievable monster!” Jen snarls.

  “They all volunteered! They consented!” Liam protests. “Each and every one of them! Out of love! If not for me, then for their family!”

  “Love!” Jen screeches. “What does a seven year old know of love and sacrifice! That is not informed consent.”

  “They knew the songs, the stories, they knew that one day they would —”

  “Oh my god,” Jen hisses, and her knees dump her onto the edge of the circle with such force that she hears a crack. She falls onto her side, to desolate to sit up. “Oh my god, Da.”

  There is a long silence, and then Liam crawls across the grass and buries his fingers tenderly in Jen’s hair, massaging gently across her scalp. “He did it for love of you, Jennet Carter. He wanted to save the world from hell and he consented. He saved me,” Liam finally chokes. Tam Lin. “He took my place.”

  “It was a heart attack,” Jen protests.

  “He was a tithe. He was a hero.”

  “It’s not heroism,” Jen protests. “It’s suicide!” Jennet wrenches away from his touch, sitting up, turning around and shoving his shoulders hard enough that he slams back on the ground. His green eyes are wide and, for the first time, filled with fear.

  “It could have been you. It should have been you, you revolting coward.”

  Fire snaps in that emerald gaze, burning away the surprise, and he kneels up and shoves her back. “And then who, Jennet Carter of Carterhaugh? After the Faery Queen has had her Tam Lin, then who would she come after? My descendants? There’s only you left, and then who? Seven years after that? Who would she pick? The nearest human? Perhaps your Karen? She does so love her walks in the woods.”

  Jen claps her hands over her ears. “Stop.”

  “Or little Mattie?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Or perhaps some of your tourists, or your Mrs. MacDonald.”

  “Shut up!”

  “I will not!” Liam roars. “Because you will understand me, Jennet Carter!”

  “No!”

  He grabs her wrists and yanks her hands down, trapping them in one hand. The other he digs into the hair behind her ear and holds her head still, so she can’t look away, can’t break his gaze.

  “When my Maggie saved me from the tithing the Faery Queen vowed her revenge, and she is old, and she is dark, and she has not forgotten. The Faery Queen will never give hell one of her Fae, she will empty the world of humanity before she gives up her kin, and because I cannot bear to see the world destroyed I rip out my own heart and give it in their place. I give her children of my blood, yes, because they are raised to know what I will ask of them, and because I can hold them here.” He flings away her hands, thumps a fist into his own chest so hard it echoes through the night.

  And does that make him a villain, or a hero, Jennet wonders, dazed.

  Silence jams her ears, loud. Sizzling. It is broken only by wrenching, horrid sobs. Liam is curled on the grass, face against the dirt, shuddering, shivering, wracked. “I am a monster,” he moans. “I hate myself and I hate her and it’s not fair. I did no wrong, Jennet. I only fell asleep in a fairy circle. I didn’t mean to. How was to know that the Fae love children so much? The Erokling …”

  A frozen horror stabs into Jen’s joints. Ghastly disgust and understand pull at her guts, and she swallows hard on the urge to vomit.

  “What do they do to the children they take?”

  Liam only sobs harder. “Ask me not, oh, ask me not,” he weeps.

  Jen stands outside of the circle they currently occupy. She watches the candle burn low, the stars wheel overhead. Slowly Liam’s sobs go quiet, then still. He is limp with exhaustion, cradling his head, moaning and shivering in the damp of the grass and the chill of the night.

  As he’s been weeping, atoning for his sins, Jennet has been thinking. She is the daughter of Margaret, who stole Tam Lin once. It can be done again.

  So when the candle is nothing more than a puddle of wax and a tenuous flame, she
reaches out and pulls Liam’s head onto her lap. She threads her fingers through his golden hair, dries the tears from his freckled cheeks, and asks: “How do you summon a Fae Queen?”

  “Jennet, no!” he says, jerking upright.

  “Tell me, or I’ll find a way to do it myself, and I’m certain I’ll do something wrong. So. Tam Lin of legend, tell me how to summon a Fae Queen.”

  “You need merely ask,” a deep and melodious voice says, from somewhere just outside of the circle. It is accompanied by an uncomfortably chill breeze and the scent of nightshade. Her voice is devoid of all accent, flat and unnatural, and all warmth as well.

  Liam buries his head in Jennet’s lap and moans in fear.

  “Ah, my Tam-a-Line,” the Queen croons.

  “My Tam-a-Line,” Jennet corrects, straining to meet the Queen’s gaze against the dark of the night, but her skin is obsidian and her eyes are white fire, and though Jennet raises her chin in defiance, she cannot meet the Queen square.

  “I have heard that from one like you before. I shall assume that my wee man means to attempt to escape me in the arms of a mortal woman again.”

  “No,” Jennet says. “This time it’s I who defies you. And, I think, this means I’m the one to bargain with you.”

  The Queen laughs, and Liam scrambles into Jennet’s embrace, holding her tight, pressing the bridge of his nose under her ear and whimpering, “No, don’t do it, don’t, don’t, my sweeting, say nothing.”

  Jennet pets the back of his head, cleaves to him, clings, and whispers back, “This princess has chosen her husband. Now let her lay the path for rescue. Hush.” She looks up at the Queen. “I understand your preoccupation with him, your majesty,” Jennet says aloud, infusing her voice with as much coolness as she is able. “He’s so beautiful when he weeps. His skin pinks so prettily.” Liam whimpers and Jennet forces an indulgent laugh at the sounds. “He is a kitten. I will trade you for him.”

  “What can you have that I would want?” the Fae Queen asks.

  “My children,” Jennet offers, voice low and as emotionless as she can make it. She bites the inside of her cheek hard, to keep it from quivering. To maintain her bluff. “And my children’s children.”

  “If they are of Carterhaugh blood, they are already mine,” the Queen sneers.

  “Ah, but only on the tithing. I offer you this: all the children of my womb. As soon as they are born, they are yours. Changelings for your court.”

  The white fire in the Queen’s face burns brighter. “You would give me this? All your children?”

  “I offer you all the children born of my womb as soon as they are free of it,” Jennet agrees. “In return for Tam Lin’s mortality. I want him human again, and free of your geis. He will begin to age again, slowly, naturally, and you will have no claim to him, nor any resident or visitor to Carterhaugh, for your tithing again.”

  “Done!” the Fae Queen cries. “Take your husband, human woman, and I will see you nine months for the first of my prizes!”

  The breeze flutters again, the snuffling puddle of candle goes out, and slowly, all around them, the birds and the insects of the night resume their careful, cautious humming.

  Liam looks up from his lap and stares at Jennet in awe.

  “You …” he begins, but Jennet kisses him quiet.

  “Not in the circle,” she says, and they help each other stand, legs numb from the dew and the cold. As the sun rises, bloody and cold, they pick their way back to Carterhaugh manor. They share a bubble bath and when he combs the long strands of his hair out of his eyes, quiet and numb, Liam gives a cry and scrabbles at his head.

  “What is it?” Jennet asks.

  “A grey hair!” He turns in the tub, looking up into her face, and holds her tight, water-slick skin flush against hers. “Jen! Grey I’m free! Oh, my hero! My lover! Marry me!” he crows. “Take your prize, you’ve saved your damsel!”

  “On two conditions,” Jennet says, kissing his giggles into her own mouth. “First, tell me you love me for me. Not what is or isn’t inside of me.”

  “Jennet, my Jennet,” he whispers and smears kisses and promises against her neck. “You saved me, you saved me, and I am yours, forever. I love you, I love you.”

  Jennet grins, a smile curling on her face to match the stretch of scar on her stomach. “And the second: do think your Fae Queen knows what a hysterectomy is?”

  “No,” Liam, Tam Lin says. “So let’s go to bed and get a start on making that first child for her. Earnest effort will have to go into the endeavour.”

  “It’s a deal,” Jennet says, and takes him by the hand and leads him out of the waters of the bath, and into life; glorious, wonderful, messy life.

  Maddening Science

  by J.M. Frey

  First published in “When The Villain Comes Home”

  Edited by Gabrielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood

  Dragon Moon Press (August, 2011)

  Bullets fired into a crowd. Children screaming. Women crying. Men crying, too, not that any of them would admit it. The scent of gun powder, rotting garbage, stale motor oil, vomit, and misery. Police sirens in the distance, coming closer, making me cringe against old memories. Making me skulk into the shadows, hunch down in my hoodie, a beaten puppy.

  This guy isn’t a supervillain. He isn’t even a villain, really. He is just an idiot. A child with a gun. And a grudge. Or maybe a god complex. Or a revenge scheme. Who the hell cares what he thought he had?

  In the end, it amounts to the same.

  The last place I want to be is in the centre of the police’s attention, again, so I sink back into the fabric, shying from the broad helicopter searchlights that sweep in through the narrow windows of the parking garage.

  If this had been before, I might have leapt into action with one of my trusty gizmos. Or, failing that, at least with a witty verbal assault that would have left the moron boy too brain-befuddled to resist when I punched him in the oesophagus.

  But this isn’t before.

  I keep my eyes on the sky, instead of on the gun. If the Brilliant Bitch arrives, I want to see.

  No one else is looking up. It has been a long, long time since one of … us … has donned sparkling spandex and crusaded out into the night to roust the criminal element from their lairs, or to enact a plot against the establishment, to bite a glove-covered thumb at ‘the man.’ A long time since one of us has done much more than pretend to not be one of us.

  The age of the superhero petered out surprisingly quickly. The villains learnt our lessons; the heroes became obsolete.

  A whizzing pop beside my left ear. I duck behind the back wheel of a sleek penis-replacement-on-wheels. The owner will be very upset when he sees the bullet gouges littering the bright red altar to his own virility.

  I’ve never been shot before. I’ve been electrocuted, eye-lasered, punched by someone with the proportional strength of a spotted gecko and, memorably, tossed into the air by a breath-tornado created by a hero whose Italian lunch my schemes had clearly just interrupted.

  Being shot seems fearfully mundane after all that.

  A normal, boring death scares me more than any other kind — especially if it’s due to a random, pointless, unpredictable accident of time and place intersecting with a stupid poser with the combination to daddy’s gun drawer and the key to mommy’s liquor cabinet. I had been on the way to the bargain grocery store for soymilk. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get any now.

  Because only the extraordinary die in extraordinary ways. And I am extraordinary no longer.

  I look skyward. Still no Crimson Cunt.

  Someone screams. Someone else cries. I sit back against the wheel and refrain from whistling to pass the time. If I was on the other side of the parking garage, I could access the secret tunnel I built into the lower levels back when the concrete was poured thirty years ago. But the boy and his bullets are between us. I’ve nothing to do but wait.

  The boy is using a 9mm Berretta, military
issue, so probably from daddy’s day job in security at the air force base. He has used up seven bullets. The standard Barrette caries a magazine of fifteen. Eight remain, unless one had already been prepared in the chamber, which I highly doubt as no military man would be unintelligent or undisciplined enough to carry about a loaded gun aimed at his own foot. The boy is firing them at an average rate of one every ninety-three seconds — punctuated by unintelligible screaming — and so by my estimation I will be pinned by his unfriendly fire for another seven hundred and forty-four seconds, or twelve point four minutes.

  However, the constabulary generally arrive on the scene between six and twenty-three minutes after an emergency call. As this garage is five and a half blocks from the 2nd Precinct, I estimate the stupid boy has another eight point seven minutes left to live before a SWAT team puts cold lead between his ribs.

  Better him than me.

  Except, probability states that he will kill another three bystanders before that time. I scrunch down further, determined not to be a statistic today. This brings me directly into eye-line with a corpse.

  There is blood all around her left shoulder. If she didn’t die of shock upon impact, then surely she died of blood loss. Her green eyes are wide and wet.

  I wonder who she used to be.

  I wonder if she is leaving behind anyone who will weep and rail and attend the police inquest and accuse the system of being too slow, too corrupt, too over-burdened. I wonder if they will blame the boy’s parents or his teachers. Will they only blame themselves? Or her?

  And then, miraculously, she blinks.

  Well, that certainly is a surprise. Perhaps the trauma is not as extensive as I estimated. To be fair, I cannot see most of her. She has fallen awkwardly, the momentum of her tumble half-concealing her under the chassis of the ludicrously large Hummer beside my penis-car.

  I am so fascinated by the staggering of her torso as she tries to suck in a breath, the staccato rhythm of her blinks, the bloody slick of teeth behind her lips, that it’s all over before I am aware of it.