Bardic Circle, Leyover, Gatesinger,
Skyfire & Fighting Bard
some short tales of hmor, adventure and maybe, oh goddesses did I just perpetrate a romance?
Sp,e days, I have no idea what my nearly semi immortal characters did in the past.
I've done living history with the likes of the Longship Company, the SCA, and some black powder/early America groups over the years. Sure, it's fun taking a bath in a horse trailer after you've hauled the wood, stoked the fire, and warmed a bucket of water you had to carry from the buffalo (no, not a critter, a water tank). It's fun whacking large guys upside the head with swords while wearing armour in August in PA...
Gatesinger: Bran meets a woman named Rainger, who seems awfully familiar...
Skyfire: ...and he is eventually asked about that magic sword. When? Where? Things not to ask Elves: look at a clock, follow a calendar, and remember what century that was...
Fighting Bard: the sequel to Bardic Circle, because Aislinn the Fighting Bard needed more than just a buddy...
And, on another page:
Leyover: Marshawk ditches Mr Cheaty I Can't Commit, goes to work for Hawk Circle, and goes on a mission to Ireland... Land O Legends. But what's the secret her Hawk Circle companion is harboring...
Bardic Circle: Aislinn the Fighting Bard is outta magic, outta patience, and done done done... but why is some rando dude asking her to go up the faerie hill in the middle of the night at Pennsic Puddle to play a folk concert...
Gatesinger was started on 2023.06.26... aka 626... happy Birthday Stitch... (Lilo and Stitch, who was experiment 626). It is a prequel to Skyfire. Rainger needed an Irish American last name. Murphy was a the name of the blue cat I got from the SPCA, who became "Sindarin", Tolkien's grey Elven language and people.
A few more short tales of women who took the (S) Elf Serve path... (click the titles below). Bardic Circle is the prequel to Fighting Bard, and the earliest of this lot.
Leyover and Bardic Circle
I've done living history with the likes of the Longship Company, the SCA, and some black powder/early America groups over the years. Sure, it's fun taking a bath in a horse trailer after you've hauled the wood, stoked the fire, and warmed a bucket of water you had to carry from the buffalo (no, not a critter, a water tank). It's fun whacking large guys upside the head with swords while wearing armour in August in PA...
Gatesinger: Bran meets a woman named Rainger, who seems awfully familiar...
Skyfire: ...and he is eventually asked about that magic sword. When? Where? Things not to ask Elves: look at a clock, follow a calendar, and remember what century that was...
Fighting Bard: the sequel to Bardic Circle, because Aislinn the Fighting Bard needed more than just a buddy...
And, on another page:
Leyover: Marshawk ditches Mr Cheaty I Can't Commit, goes to work for Hawk Circle, and goes on a mission to Ireland... Land O Legends. But what's the secret her Hawk Circle companion is harboring...
Bardic Circle: Aislinn the Fighting Bard is outta magic, outta patience, and done done done... but why is some rando dude asking her to go up the faerie hill in the middle of the night at Pennsic Puddle to play a folk concert...
Gatesinger was started on 2023.06.26... aka 626... happy Birthday Stitch... (Lilo and Stitch, who was experiment 626). It is a prequel to Skyfire. Rainger needed an Irish American last name. Murphy was a the name of the blue cat I got from the SPCA, who became "Sindarin", Tolkien's grey Elven language and people.
A few more short tales of women who took the (S) Elf Serve path... (click the titles below). Bardic Circle is the prequel to Fighting Bard, and the earliest of this lot.
Leyover and Bardic Circle
Gatesinger
or
the Andysarchus circus
We pause to remember the stormsilver grey cat, Sindarin...aka Murphy.
"Ranger Murphy?"
"That's me. With an I." I said.
He paused, a tall, lean man in a T-shirt that declared "Earth Life Foundation, staff". The illustration on the shirt was a wizard with a staff, and a raven sitting on it. Tall Staffperson's name tag said "Bran", which my brain full of random useless knowledge told me was a Celtic word for raven. He cocked his head, amusement I thought, or confusement.
"R-a-i-n-g-e-r," I said, "with an i. Rain for short. Blame it on my hippie dippie mom and my professor dad, who wouldn't let her name me Galadriel."
"Ah. I didn't see it in print. Grandmother Aura just said to meet you here. Show you around." He grinned, a rather charming pirate grin that went all the way into his deep blue eyes," you're here about the teaching position."
Around me early spring birdsong filled the woods, hedgerows and fields. Mud tried to suck off your boots if you strayed from the path. The early Pennsylvania spring couldn't decide between shouting GREENUP!!! and 'oh wait, have some more winter'.
"Rainger?"
I blinked. How long had I been standing there, gaping like a largemouth bass. Staring into eyes like the sky at the top of the Rockies. Or one of those blue holes in the ocean. Deep stormsilver hair, long enough to ponytail, with wild pieces that fell in his face like some kind of anime hero, legs that went on forever, lean chiseled muscle under the T-shirt, cheekbones that... "Um, ah, yes." No Rain. Just no. You are here to save the world, just like it says on their sign and ads; Education, Legislation for Future generations. You are here to supplement your meager public school salary with educating people about something you deeply care about, the environment. You are not here to fall into another energy sapping, brain bending Care And Feeding Of The Male Human 101... or 104, or 109. "Ummmm, Rain for short." Oh, wait, I already said that.
His eyes fell to my left arm, and the tattooed letters spiraling up. It was written in elvish letters, one of the alphabets invented by J.R.R. Tolkien."Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter." He said it in a perfect Yoda voice.
"Only a very serious nerd would be able to read that." I said. "And do the voice."
"You have no idea."
"What? The level of your nerditude?"
"Indeed. What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?"
"42."
"You'll fit right in.
This E.L.F. outpost in southcentral Pennsylvania was Hawk Circle Farm. There were other outposts of this obscure environmental dot-org, one of many dot-orgs vying for your tax deductible dollars. It sprawled across uncounted acres of field and forest. On Google Earth it sat serenely between several creeks, forming a vaguely circular island in the midst of Pennsylvania farms, developments and small towns. There were four barns, laid out like a compass rose or medicine wheel: a white one in the north, yellow to the east, red to the west, and oddly, a black one in the south.
Who paints a barn black?
There were ancient farmhouses attached to those barns, and elsewhere, cabins, yurts and one tipi for interns, staff and others. Over the hill was a state park and campground. Occasionally, a random hiker would miss a trail marker and end up on a Hawk Circle trail. The trails seemed to coalesce on the Black Dragon, a sort of medievalish tavern/pretty good restaurant near the black barn. Several of the volunteers told me they'd wandered in from the campground, learned about Hawk Circle, and come back to volunteer.
Somehow, Hawk Circle didn't quite match its satellite imagery, it seemed bigger on the inside.
Bran was right, I fit right in. I came on weekends, some nights. My "real job" had become a slog through marsh mud, through bureaucracy, through a space where only the middle of the road, neurotypical kids had a chance to succeed. I was out of spoons and tired of fighting.
Hawk Circle was different. They hosted school groups, home schoolers, general public. there were naturalists and teachers who understood the neurodivergent, the fidgety, the members of Short Attention Span Theater and got their attention. There was a riding program, snorkeling, scuba and kayaking in the old quarry with its clear cool water, wildlife programs, a flock of resident ravens on the hill, merfolk in the quarry (at least on weekends when they converged on the banks to pull on colorful tails of spandex and silicone), and a black and white Shetland Pony who wandered all over the place as if he was one of its guardians. During one of the weekend faires, someone stuck a unicorn horn on him, and it looked like it belonged there.
There were other staff.
Tas, the one who retrained problem equines and problem humans. She peered out at me from under a tangled mane of blond and white, like a pinto mare. Disconcertingly she had one blue eye and one brown, which, in legend, indicated faerie blood. I could not decide if she liked me or not. Her best friends seemed to have four legs.
There was Bran's sidekick, Ian, a quiet young man... quiet like a wolf watching you from the forest shadow. Wolf to Bran's raven. In nature, both species played off each others' strengths, raven leading wolf to prey, then sharing in the feast. When they did anything together, they moved like sled dogs on a team, like birds wheeling on the same wind.
Earla, short and broad and able to build anything out of duct tape and chewing gum and fence wire. She borrowed my cell phone for a few minutes the first week, and handed it back with upgrades. Then my laptop, after it sent up a small nuclear cloud of doom after Bran had tried to help me google something. It had some Very Serious Upgrades.
There was Piper, a young woman who was Earla's techie apprentice. Together they'd probably invent warp drive or something. Piper wrangled the computer classes, and goat yoga, and a class called Thor's Team of Chaos, in which kids and adults with various needs learned to drive goats, just like the Norse god.
Yeah. You heard that. Goats.
Earla's dad, Doc, was the Mr Fixit of the place, plumbing, mechanics, electricity, didn't matter, he knew how it worked and could rebuild it, make it better than it was before. Like Earla, he was short, broad, and peered at you with minedark eyes from under eyebrows like two arguing wolverines. I'd once asked where Sleepy, Grumpy and Sneezy were and got a glare through his beard, followed by a hearty laugh, a backslap that nearly knocked me over, and an offering of some of the best brownest beer I had ever tasted.
Zan, the slender redheaded teen who surely had the RPG alignment of chaotic chatty neurospicey. He did a bit of everything, helping with educational programs, capturing the attention of kids whose brains were constantly going "squirrel!". He climbed trees like Spiderman or Mowgli, and his own brain was full of weird random knowledge. Sometimes he just felt way older than 15.
The Grandmothers, whose long shed, covered in vines and brambles, was a permanent recycling yard sale. "Three Sisters Salvage (Thrifty Necessities and Recycled Wonders)" had, as a logo, the three local recycling critters: opossum (Didelphis virginiana), crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos), and turkey vulture(Cathartes aura ). I took me weeks to realize their names, Delphi, Cora and Aura, sounded a lot like parts of the scientific names for those critters.
There were Jon and Marshhawk, the raptor rehabber and her cat rescuing partner. Cats, as in snow leopards and tigers and lions oh my. Wild cats large and small who had been bought by people with too much money and not enough common sense, rescued, and cared for in proper habitats. If Jon was a cat, he'd be a cheetah. All of his cats seemed to think he was one of them. He had pale sky eyes, but they had the same... energy... as Bran's. I noticed most people didn't meet either one's eyes for long. I had no idea why. They were deep, beautiful, and full of light.
Bran was my program partner, more often than not. There he was, bounding up the hill with a pile of kids in tow, to find the resident ravens, me straggling behind wondering if I could at least borrow a pony from the stable. When I helped with the kayaking program (I could point out lakeshore wildlife, or pull something out of the shallows and identify it) Bran was holding the attention of the most wriggly of the middle schoolers with pirate tales.
"Privateers!" He emphasized. "War of 1812. Flyers and sea wolves. We were never pirates."
"We?"
"Ah... Americans. We may have been rebel teenagers stabbing the hearts of our parent nation, but it was time for them to let us grow up."
"My dad's specialty is history. I think you'd have a fabulous conversation." I was right. When my parents finally came for a visit, I couldn't pry those two apart.
I was eventually called upon to be assistant wrangler for a riding class led by Tas. I was deemed good enough to do it from the back of a little bay Corolla pony named Greenbriar, where I could demonstrate proper seat, and handling of reins.
Bran kept a close eye on the students from his blue roan, Bluewater Sailing.
With no saddle or bridle.
Showoff.
Except he wasn't.
He seemed unaware of the women leaving eyetracks all over him in every program. He could engage any kid in a discussion about wildlife, the latest video game, or superhero film. He could silence the Mean Girls or Jock Jerks or Chatty Moms or Misinformed Know-it-alls and Mansplainers with a deep blue look. If there was a downside to him, I couldn't find it... unless it was middle aged and still single, which meant... what? Maybe Mr I Can't Commit. Or, Married, Dead, Gay or Fictional.
Whatever. Rain, you're here to save the world, sort of. Just. No.
I was a month into it all when the Hawk Circle Faire came up. There was a permanent camp out in the open fields, bordered by woods, near the quarry. The faires varied in theme, from superheroes to fantasy to sci-fi. This was a fantasy role playing game, fantasy literature and film weekend. I figured I'd just be the Ranger, the character I'd played all my childhood in games, in dress up, in my own only-child imaginative rompings through the woods: bow, sword, somewhat grungey woods worn clothing as if I'd been guarding the edges of the world. Hawk Circle had a good costume shop, and when I finally looked at the weather worn ranger in the mirror, it matched what I felt. I was getting less sleep than I needed, but it was the day job that was doing me in. The work here was... demanding, challenging, but somehow, it made far more sense, and... flowed. Flowed in a way nothing had for a long time.
I wandered into the faire, a medallion hung around my neck, a hawk silhouetted against a sun, Hawk Circle's logo, marking me as one of the staff, one who could be questioned, one who had a Map of Important Things, or at least an app on the phone.
I stopped to answer questions about funnel cakes, volunteer opportunities, where the big cats were, were there mermaids this weekend?
"MerFOLK." I said. "They come in all sizes, shapes, ages, colors, genders."
The teens broke into smiles, the Grandpa cocked a hairy eyebrow, certainly unable to wrap his brain around more than two genders.
I paused to engage a kid who remembered hiking up the trail to see ravens (I now knew more than I had ever imagined about ravens, thanks Bran), I tried to remember where the composting toilets were, and had to produce the very odd image of a Wandering Ranger consulting a smartphone.
I stopped to listen to one of the bands. Behind me someone began to sing the song. They were good, and sounded familiar. I turned...
A tall wood Elf in green and brown and grey, bow slung over one shoulder, long lean sword at the narrow hip, looking as if he'd traveled across most of Middle Earth to get here.
I repeated the largemouth bass impression I'd done the first day.
The Elf bowed, held out a hand, "Brannan Hrafenson, Ravenkin, Gatesinger, of the Álfar of the Northern Realm..."
Largemouth bass, still happening...
"Rainger?"
"Elf!" I managed to say. Alfar. He had said Alfar. "Alf." I amended. "Norse myth. Norse Light Elves. Mom always was big on mythology."
"Ælf." There was a subtle twist to his pronunciation that suggestion more knowledge of linguistics than mine. "All we need is a Dwarf and we can save Middle Earth."
"Ahahah. Where's Earla?" I left some eyetracks on him.
"Over at the forge, demonstrating how to turn a lawnmower into a broadsword."
He looked... more amazing than usual. "Eh, nice job on the ears, there..." I said.
He flashed his pirate grin. "We have good costumers and makeup." His hand was still there, reaching gently in my general direction, "do you dance?"
"Ah..."
"There are two types of beings in the universe, those who dance, and those who do not." He said it in Drax's voice, from Guardians of the Galaxy.
"I'm guessing you're a dancer." My feet were rooted to the ground, nope, I really didn't...
He nodded, moving a little closer.
"I took a few classes because my mom thought I should be well rounded or something. I was always going left when they were going right, backwards when they were going.."
He took my hand and pulled me toward the sound of drums and flutes.
"Really... I.. people are watch..."
"Just imagine them with no clothes."
I snorted, because I had just imagined him...
He spun me into the mass of movement, and somehow, I kept my boots on the ground and my head more or less on top of them.
The Faire included photoshoots with the merfolk (try on a tail!), volunteers walking around with birds of prey, or one of the ravens, fantastic food, choreographed swordfights. Bran, Ian, Tas, a woman only identified as "Dragon Woman", and a tall strong girl named Val showed skills worthy of the next blockbuster film. Bran seemed to defy gravity with flips and spins that should have been special effects or wirework.
They weren't.
Afterwards, they pulled in curious visitors, handed them padded swords, helmets, and showed them some moves.
The visitors dispersed, Bran and the others packed up the gear, slinging some back on themselves, and stowing the rest in a small tent. "We'll need you for the next bit," he said.
I poked at the schedule on my phone. There were several events at any given time. "Which one?"
"Come on." He flashed his pirate grin...sorry, privateer... and headed off.
I scampered after, feeling a bit like a lost puppy. "Which what where?"
He gestured. We were in sight of the archery field. "You can help us wrangle the kids who want to be Robin Hood, or Legolas or Hawkeye or Merida."
The bow I'd been carrying flicked into my hand. "You do know this is my bow, right?"
He turned, eyed the bow, me. One eyebrow crept up. "Nice... bow... actually..."
I stepped past him, in a move practiced since I was four, fired an arrow straight into the center of the target.
Both his eyebrows were making an exclamation point.
"Yeah, I wanted to be those heroes too."
"Hey Elf."
"Hey Rainger."
That had become our catch phrase. Even with his ears back to normal, and his wood Elf gear exchanged for mundane T-shirts and cargo shorts or jeans, he still looked like he'd be at home in a fantasy RPG.
"You look like you're outta spoons," he said.
"Hah. I won't bore you with the ineptitude of the local public school system. Or the kids I feel helpless to help."
"That's why you found us."
Yeah, I had found them. It seemed accidental, but my hippie mom always said things like "the universe has larger things in store..." and "the currents and winds blow across the vast sea, now you just have to set your sails." OK, fine, I set the sails, I see the island, but the ship is taking on water, and the last spoon has gone overboard.
He held out a hand, "Come up to the Rock Garden."
Up the hill, in the oak and hickory woods, was a line of rocks left by glaciers eons ago. Big boulders, tumbled and strewn as if stone giants had been playing in a storm. Bran leapt up one, easily as if he had wings. He perched on it, moved a few feet, then sat. He patted the rock surface next to him. I clambered up, sat.
"What do you feel?"
Not, what do you see, hear, smell, the things we told kids to look for, to sense. Turn on all your senses, be quiet, listen, smell, see the gazillion shades of green. "Feel? A rock. It's rough, cool. Lichen there. Moss there. Ants. Wolf spider. Bit of shed skin from a black rat snake."
"No, feel, it's the bones of the earth, with the intertwined nerves of the tree roots weaving around it, the branches above like blood vessels, like river deltas."
"You sound like my mom."
"Hah."
"She was always trying to plug into the great universal energies or something. Yoga, meditation, all that. She still does."
"Did she ever show you how to ground, center?"
"Yeeeeeeeeeessss," I let out a breath, "and chakras and all that."
"Try it. Here."
I made a vague noise of I Really Don't think This Works.
He breathed and moved both hands down his chest, as if sending energy to his center. Nice.
Chest.
Stop it Rain.
I sighed. Made vague hand motions. Breathed.
He breathed.
I breathed.
I became aware that we were breathing together.
I felt it like an anchor dropping, into the abyss, then landing, then...something... flowing back up that anchor line. The trees whispered, I felt the Mother Tree, the biggest oldest one, the One Who Remembers. I felt the scamperings of small things, the light tread of deer, the flitterings of birds, the swift flickering movement of animals compared to the timeless sense of trees.
A movement from Bran, and the feeling blew away like spindrift on sea.
"See?" he said.
I had no idea what I'd just seen, but it felt deeper than the basic yoga 101 Mom had tried to teach me.
Six months in, Grandmother Delphi called me into her office, the large farm kitchen, hung with copper bottom pots and drying herbs. On counters and shelves were aquariums with heating pads and screened lids housing small creatures either healing or growing from orphanhood to adults that could be returned to the wild. The resident Virginia oppossum came out of the shadows, eyed me, and trundled out the cat door. Grandma Delphi slid me a plate of Earla's famous brownies and a cup of tea. Her eyes were so dark they had to be black, her hair a silver frizz. Even in summer, she wore black fingerless gloves, leaving the ends of her pink fingers exposed. Like most folk here, she did not beat around any bushes: "You are stressed, overworked and burned out."
I sighed, was it that obvious? Juggling two jobs. Probably being inadequate at both. I wanted to shout, but I LOVE being here.
"You need to take a lesson from Possum. Slow down. Maybe a lot."
"I don't think playing dead will help."
"Possum survived the big rock that took out T-Rex. Stop being T-Rex."
"What?"
"We need you here. But I don't think you can do this and your dammit job."
Best description I'd heard of that job yet.
"The teacher position is now full time. If you want it." Her bottomless dark eyes twinkled. "I'm sure your rent is outrageous too. We've got an empty cabin."
I gave the school my notice the next day.
May again. Over a year since I'd arrived at Hawk Circle, a stressed out teacher trying to fit into an impossible mundane box. I didn't fit in boxes. I fit in circles. I fit in the quiet places where Bran showed me how to quiet my squirrel mind and feel the forest. I fit in the challenging places of showing blind kids how to navigate across the quarry lake in a kayak. Of showing the girl who didn't fit into mainstream culture's ideas of beauty, that she too could be a beautiful mermaid (and learn stuff about what was under her fin in the lake). I fit in the personal challenge of Bran and Ian teaching me sword skills. My biology major showed its usefulness and its shortcomings as I learned more about everything from ravens in the woods to macroinvertebrates in the Hawk Circle Streams.
I had borrowed a horse from the stable and wandered up the Screech Owl Trail. Not just any horse, Bran's horse Blue, the blue roan Marsh Tacky. He'd insisted I take Blue.
"He'll take care of you."
I'd ridden a bit as a teen, with a friend on her horses, quiet trail horses who plopped up and back down the trail, occasionally letting us blast out at a fast canter, pretending we were heroes on a quest. I'd had to ask what even a Marsh Tacky was, and got a long blue stare as if Bran was in his left brain library, unable to find the book he needed. He did that a lot, as if time meant nothing.
I tapped his forehead, a little harder than necessary, "Reset!"
He blinked, "...they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream."
"Legolas, as they're leaving Lorien," I said. "Biological time vs clock time. Industrial Age time. I think Tolkien hated the Industrial Age." I studied him, "I think you do too."
Bran made a face that indicated a distaste for clock time. Clocks were almost his mortal enemy, and more than once, I had seen one self destruct in his presence. And no visitor could hand him a random cell phone without it glitching and attempting to contact Mars. Hawk Circle's programs began more or less on the clock, but were more... fluid. Some students needed more time to explore, absorb, ask questions. When their brains were full and they'd run out of questions, the program ended, but always with the door open, leaving them wanting more.
"I don't like clock time much either." I said. "What's a Marsh Tacky?"
"One of the Spanish Colonial Horse breeds. Descended from the Spanish type horses first brought to this continent. South Carolina. Small, hardy, agile. Endangered heritage breed. There's a whole history of the Dust Bowl and ranchers moving back east, bringing their western styles of cattle handling, and screw worm with them. They needed big muscular Quarter Horses to handle the cattle their way, so the Marsh Tacky and the Florida Cracker Horse nearly became extinct."
His left brain library was a bottomless pit of weird knowledge: the intricacies of Viking and Polynesian sailing and navigation, what it was like on a trade route in Medieval Europe, the details of an iron age hill fort, eleventh century cooking, fifteenth century horsemanship, nineteenth century pirate ships... er... privateers.
It was almost as if he'd been there.
I eased up over the hill, turned at the trail leading down to the state park and campground. My phone pinged. I dropped the reins, Blue would stop at a word, turn at the light pressure of a leg. No reins needed. I looked: text from Bran.
Hurry back to the stable, we've got a wildlife situation. Invasive species, loose. We're gonna go on a wild west roundup.
I texted back: need horses?
Nooooooooooooooooooooo, not this time!
They were gathered at the stable. In front, by the horse trailers, was a big van in shades of leaf shadow greens, painted with spray cans, with real leafed branches as stencils. There was Bran's blue Jeep with the raven silhouetted against a sun circle, and an experimental small SUV that I was pretty sure ran on starship tech. Earla and Piper and Doc had built it, along with the tech that filled the inside of the leafshadow van. There were drones and computers and screens and... it looked like NASA.
Earla, Piper, Tas, Ian, Zan, Bran and me.
"This is, ah, quite a crew for a little wild goose chase." I said.
Earla rumbled, "We're pretty sure it's more than wild geese." She waved vaguely at the big van and its surveillance equipment.
"What, then?"
"Not sure." She abruptly turned and piled back into the big van with Piper.
Tas and Ian slid into the SUV. Zan parkoured himself over the rollbars into the back seat of Bran's Jeep, leaving me to ride shotgun.
I turned and saw him crammed in half the seat, the other half filled with bows and arrows, "We're hunting them?"
"Sort of," Zan held up an arrow, "Trank darts."
"Most people use rifles for that."
Zan grinned, "Bows are better."
"Well I think so. Wait, is that MINE?"
"Yeah, well, we thought you'd work better with your own," Zan said.
I glanced from Zan to Bran.
"You CAN shoot a moving target, I've seen you," Bran said.
"How fast is it moving?" Somewhere in my head I was picturing escaped hippos, the most dangerous animal on several continents.
"Yeah," Zan said, as if he'd read my mind.
We followed the leafshadow van down winding back roads, "I swear these were designed by someone following a drunken cow," I said.
"Maybe a drunken driver driving donkeys," Bran quipped.
"At least we won't get tigers invading suburbia, or hippos, or whatever." I was still foggy on how they'd been alerted to escaped non natives, and where they'd escaped from, but we were following a van full of high tech gear, and there was always some yahoo who felt the need to have a tiger or a tapir or a hippo in their backyard.
The van rounded a corner and pulled over. Woods went up a hill on the left, farm fields flattened out on the right. Tas and Ian slid out of the SUV, empty handed. Earla and Piper stayed hidden in the big van. A phone pinged. Tas and Ian nodded at each other, and vanished uphill into the woods. Bran studied his phone for a moment, eyed Zan and me. "Get your bows."
I checked my compass. Bran waved Zan and me to the south along the fallow farm field. The barn and house were set well back, nearly hidden in trees, so no one was likely to inquire what we were up to.
"Look for tracks. Or anything... unusual." Bran called.
I had spent a childhood tracking things in the woods behind our house. I had six field guides on it. I could tell a fox from a coyote most of the time.
I could not tell what the heck I was looking at when I found the moose-sized track squooshed into the May mud. "Zan..." I turned to find him right behind me, "Geez! Walk louder."
"Sorry. Habit."
"What IS that?" I pointed. It looked more or less like a giant wolf track. Sort of.
"Um," he frowned. "Even toed ungulate?"
"More toes than two, look."
"Giant pig of doom? Pigs and deer sometimes leave dew claw marks in mud."
"Yeaaaahhhh..." It was way too big for either of those. I tried to remember if I'd ever seen hippo tracks. I paused, frantically googling it.
It looked a lot like what I was seeing in the mud under my feet.
"Crap." I said.
Zan peered at my phone, frowning.
"What?" I asked him, "I can see the hamster wheel in your brain turning."
"Not... sure..." His voice trailed off, then he trailed off, stepping slowly along the trail in the opposite direction our "hippos" were going.
I followed him, and the trail, into the field, moving faster, passing Zan. Had they come from the farm ahead of me? Why would some farmer have hippos? Somewhere behind me I heard Zan ping Bran's phone. I looked down the farm lane. Empty. Good. And whatever the beasts actually were, they'd gone the other direction.
Ping ping, Zan was sending more info and pics of the tracks.
The tracks became a clusterfest of mud, a herd galloping and tearing up the ground. I squinted at them. "One, two.... three... four individuals. Maybe more, probably not." I looked up along their line of flight and...
Whatthehell was that? In the falling light, in the middle of a fallow field, there was a shimmer in the air. I squinted, a clump of shrubbery? Something catching the light oddly? I stepped toward it, then walked, with purpose. "Zan..."
I stopped ten feet from a shimmering hole in the Pennsylvania spring air.
"Ohshiiiiiiiiiiiiit!" Zan stood beside me, bow in hand, eyes wide.
"That is not what I wanted to hear." On the other side of the shimmer was a landscape, and not a continuation of the one we were standing in. There were trees, grass, rocks, and light that indicated a much earlier time of day than our falling dusk. "It is not sparkly around the edges..."
"No, Doctor Strange wasn't here," came Bran's voice.
"Crap, somebody left a Gate open." Zan said.
I stared at the impossible hole in the air, then at my companions. "Gate?" And something clicked deep in my brain. Gatesinger. Bran's LARPy RPGish introduction at the faire. "To where?"
Zan shot a glance at Bran...
Bran stayed silent, stepped forward, and through the looking glass.
I stood a half beat, then went after him.
Zan was already on my heels, bow still in hand. I took mine off my shoulder and pulled an arrow out of my quiver.
The Gate shimmered, like water. It felt like a thin veil of water, but not wet. The landscape on the other side was utterly ordinary, oaks, hickories, a recognizable redbud tree, a wetland with frogs singing. They sounded like spring peepers. "Where are we? When are we?"
We rounded the rocks and found people, one man and several kids of varying sizes, ages and colors. The man was lying against a rock while one teenaged kid applied a bandage to his leg. They were dressed in clothes appropriate for one of our fantasy faires, and two of them had decidedly leaf shaped ears. "What?"
They looked up, startled, at my exclamation. Zan stepped forward and addressed them. It was in no language I had ever heard. One of the smaller kids came to meet him, and began babbling, gesturing at the Gate, the tracks visible in the soft ground. His... or hers... I couldn't tell, hands went as wide as they could, and reached up as high as they could. Zan turned to us, glanced at Bran, at me, at Bran.
"Just tell us." Bran said. "She's an ally now." He tilted his head, birdlike, toward me.
I'm a what now?
"You heard." Zan said to Bran.
"Tell Rain."
"It's a school. They disturbed a bunch of..." Zan frowned, "wargs. They charged, Instructor got hurt, all the kid could think of was throw a Gate in front of them. They went through it. To us."
"Wargs? Come on..." I said.
"There's a more accurate name, Zan." Bran said.
"Well they LOOK like wargs."
"What? WHAT are we chasing now?" I demanded.
"Andy Circus." Zan mumbled.
"What now? Come on kid, speak up for the middle aged lady here."
"Andrewsarchus." Bran said.
My brain tossed the hippos and ticked through Extinct Mammals 101 and came up with something that did, indeed look very much like a warg. "Entelodonts. Entelodontidae. Middle Eocene, forty-nine-ish million years ago. Biggest ones were the size of a Clydesdale. Basically, Hellpig. Makes our supposed hippos look tame, I'd bet."
"More or less," Bran said, "Andrewsarchus, same clade, Cetancodontamorpha, different family: Andrewsarchidae, not Entelodontidae. Or, that's how you all put it on your nice neat taxonomic tree."
"WHAT... is it doing THERE?" I waved at the rest of the Gateworld, and ours on the other side.
"Welcome to Erda. It's not your past, it's... sideways I guess." Zan said. "We got wargs."
"They have a lot of things that no longer exist in our world." Bran said. To my unspoken question he said, "No dinos though. Unless you count the little flying ones with feathers."
Bran turned and strode toward the gate, gestured at the smallest kid, still wide eyed in panic. He said something in the same language Zan had used. The kid trotted after us. We went back through the Gate.
The kid had pale tightly curled hair, medium brown skin and very leaf shaped ears. They stared at our vehicles, the road, the farm in the distance, and the muddy trail Andysarchus had made. Bran was furiously messaging on his phone. He finally looked up, "Here's the plan."
"We all know what happens to plans," Zan said.
Bran fixed him with a blue stare, then moved up the hill into the woods. The rest of us followed. The plan, so far, was Tas and Ian, farther up the hill, would somehow drive the Andysarchuses down toward us. We'd knock them out. Maybe. Had anyone done a scientific study on the effectiveness of this particular tranquilizer on extinct mammals the size of Clydesdales? After we tranked, them, then what? We sure weren't moving anything that large. Maybe the kid would open a gate under them.
Gatesinger. Or Bran...
A deer trail opened up into a clearing where an old tree had fallen, the Andy Circus band had followed the deer trail, widening it as they went. We all, from the kid to Zan and Bran to me, read the trail as large animals in unfamiliar territory, concerned, disoriented, not knowing where food, water and shelter lay. They stuck together. If they vocalized in any way, the way the horses and goats did at Hawk Circle, we didn't hear it. We stayed quiet. The Elf kid and my two companions went silent. The woods was wet, so no crunch of dry leaves, but they were all unnaturally silent.
Elf and Ranger, I felt like I did when I was ten, running around in the woods with my two friends... only this was deadly serious and contained the likelihood of surprising large annoyed extinct mammals.
We stopped. Spread out. Hand signals from Bran: bows at the ready.
I had hit all kinds of targets as kid, a teen, and adult. I had once ridden with my friend in a horsed archery class. I had gone to archery events where targets swung out of the woods on intricate ropes and pulleys. I had hit all of them. I was not at all sure I could hit a rampaging Clydesdale sized hell pig with my bow.
There was something odd about the approaching dark. The green dark was deeper here, in the woods, but with night falling, there should have been the last songs of birds, the first notes of owls.
It was too quiet.
We waited, tensed. What if we were on the wrong trail? What if they veered hard aport while we waited here?
Silence.
I thought of the times I'd sat with Bran in the woods, in the Rock Garden, listening, feeling, the woods. I reached out tendrils of energy. Something was disturbing the distant trees.
I heard it, a whisper at the edge of hearing. Bran looked over at me, nodded. It became a rustle, the sound of surf, then of avalanche.
They blew out of the dusk like sharks blasting up from the green depths.
Don't think, just see arrow and target as one. Did I remember that from my long ago archery guru? Or was it a stew of wisdom from a thousand fantasy books and role playing games?
I stopped thinking and fired. It struck the first one behind the shoulder, another arrow followed it, and another, and more, and then there were none left in my quiver.
Andy Number One went down in a wave of leaf litter and sticks. Andy Two tripped over One and fell, three arrows loaded into its side. Three plowed into them, the rest of our arrows bristling from him.
Four kept coming.
Bran stepped in front of us, and an impossible blue light bloomed in his hand.
He stepped aside with the ease of a jujitsu master, the swordshaped light raking down the Andrewsarchus' side. It fell in a great van sized lump three feet away. The blue light snapped and vanished.
We all breathed again.
Bran stepped back, summoned the kid, explained something. The kid nodded.
Frowned. Concentrated. Sang into the gloom. A shimmer appeared in the air, Bran added to the song. The Gate glowed with full daylight from the other side. Then it moved, sliding over the slumbering beasts, swallowing them back into Erda. The song ended. The Gate closed. We stood, silent in the dark.
Tas and Ian appeared out of that dark.
"They're gone, back to Erda." Bran said.
Tas eyed me, then Bran. It felt like a silent communication going on.
"She never missed." Bran said.
We went back down the hill in near dark. Found the other Gate still shimmering in the field. We walked through.
an knelt by the wounded teacher, wrapped his hands around the man's thigh, and knotted his eyebrows. Light, like the faint green glow of firefly larvae emerged from Ian's hands. He knelt there for a few minutes, for forever, time seemed to slow and flow like lava.
Then Ian stood, the glow sunk back into him again.
The kid spoke to the teacher, hands flying, apparently telling the story of our encounter. Zan backed him up, inserting a paragraph or two here and there, sometimes nearly galloping off with the entire tale until Bran stopped him.
We said our goodbyes, walked back through the Gate into the dark of a Pennsylvania night. Bran turned, the kid waved at us from the other side, and the Gate snapped shut.
Someone flicked on a headlamp, Ian.
Zan raised a hand and produced a soft firefly glow out of thin air. His shaggy red hair fell back far enough to see the leaf shape of his ears. He looked up at me, "Welcome to the real E.L.F."
A van door shuuuunked open, Earla and Piper appeared, looked from one to the other of us.
"The E-L-F." I said.
"It was the Dwarves idea of a terrible pun." Bran said.
"It was NOT." Earla rumbled. "I think it was YOUR idea."
Piper snortchuckled, "Ally?" She nodded in my direction.
"Ally." Bran said.
Piper patted a decorative wristband, and the lower half of her body morphed... into goat legs.
"What?" I said.
"Tas is Sidhe, a pooka, with both horse and wolf forms. I'm a faun. Bran's Ravenkin.
"I'm... the Erdan tribal name is too complicated, here they call us the Fox People, Vulpans," Zan grinned, "You know, kinda like the other pointy eared people. But we're Elves, Fae. Except for Ian. Ian's just this random human dude..."
"With some... interesting... superpowers." I said. I stepped in front of Bran, he had dropped whatever disguise he felt he needed in the mundane world. The chiseled jawline was still the same, the cheekbones, the stormsilver hair, the eyes still shone with some kind of inner light I could almost see, he looked younger, or at least, with no discernible age I could pin down. His ears were most decidedly leaf shaped. Quietly he said; "Brannan Hrafenson, Ravenkin, Gatesinger, of the Álfar of the Northern Realms."
I smacked him square in the middle of his glorious chest. "And WHENTHEHELL WERE YOU GOING TO TELL ME THIS?"
Something in his face stopped me. He looked... vulnerable. The badass mythic Elven archer/swordsman who had just faced down a charging hellpig with a magic lightsaber looked ... like a chastised ten year old. "About now," he said softly.
"I've... known. You. For. A. Whole. Year."
"Longer, actually."
"What?"
"Ask me about the sword."
"The blue glowy thing? That you took out the last Andy Circus with?"
"It has other powers than slaying. I could knock the beast out. Probably have a headache for days though.." He looked down, at my hand still square on his chest. "I... wanted... to..." Weirdly, for Bran, he ran out of words.
"He's usually the first to rip the veil off." Piper said. "He hates having to hide, to be what he is not."
"You could have told me." I said.
"I did, at that first faire."
He had. Only I'd taken it as a faerie tale, a LARP, a cosplay.
He looked up, "I was afraid you'd run screaming into the night."
"Clearly I'm still here. Hellpigs and all."
"I... ah... really didn't want... to take the chance... of...losing you. We need you." He paused, looked straight into my eyes, "I need you."
I took a moment, trying to make sense of that. Why would a badass mythological nearly semi immortal Elf need me?
He slid a hand along my face, gently, lightly, looked straight into my eyes. Then he leaned his forehead against mine. I slid my hand along his fabulous jawline, and felt something deeper. The luminous beings we both were.
We sat in the Black Dragon, the lot of us, chattering about the night, the relocation of large Eocene mammals, the mission of Hawk Circle (no, no, not to fight Evil Dark Lords in all their forms, but what they clearly stated on their website: Education, Legislation, and future Generations).
"Are you immortal?" I asked.
"Nothing's immortal, not the sun, the moon or the stars, certainly not us. Long lived, yeah. Immune to disease and aging, yeah. Death, not so much."
"He's done it before." Tas quipped.
"What?"
"Death. Ask about the sword."
"What about the sword?"
"It was a gift, from a goddess and some dragons. I'll tell you the whole tale sometime."
"A goddess..." I said.
"Morrigan."
"Battle Crow." I said.
"Among other things."
"One of my favorites. Courtesy of my mom the hippie goddess worshipper." I paused, staring into my drink, "What if you die? It looks like they send you back..."
"Through the womb, usually, but not always."
"And...they...who? And where do you even fit on a taxonomic chart of evolution?"
"Science doesn't know everything." Bran said, "Humans don't know everything. The Fae don't know everything. And the Wise don't tell us everything... you don't learn umpteenth degree black belt moves until you've mastered the other colors. "
"All the stories you tell the kids, everyone, in the programs, Vikings, pirates..."
"Privateers. We were never pirates."
"Of course. You were there. Has to give you some perspective on the 21st century."
"Oh yeah, look at all the fabulous clothing you have in purples! I've never seen so much salt in one place. Or pepper, and cinnamon. I still walk into a grocery store and can't believe how much stuff is right... there." He leaned forward, turning over the shrimp tail he hadn't addressed yet, "Your folk, humans, have done this."
"We've also done climate change, pollution..."
"...touched the moon, launched a telescope that can see to the edge of the space-time conundrum, put robots on Mars. Don't underestimate your own species." He held up his cell phone. "We would never have invented this."
"Yeah but Earla can...ahhhh, do crazy stuff with them." I nodded at the phone.
"She has to. Elves channel energy in inconvenient ways. We fry tech. Unless it's shielded."
"That explains a few tech meltdowns and why you don't touch visitors' phones."
"Yeah."
I studied his face, edges chiseled as if by a sculptor.
"What?"
"Can't you read minds or something?"
"It's considered... invasive."
"Well, I'm still trying to figure out where you fit on the taxonomy tree."
He snorted. "Humans. Weigh it, measure it, stick it on a nice neat chart somewhere."
"Hah. You're probably Vulcans, stranded here on this backwater world..." I said it mostly in jest, I figured Vulcans were just a science fiction equivalent of The Other, the Fae.
"No, not aliens. We're tied to this world. You won't get us into a tin can and launch us into orbit much less to the stars. That's your people's mission." He paused, fell into that inward looking Time Means Nothing thing he did... because time flows differently for the Elves.
"Reset." I patted his hand.
"Ah." He looked up into my eyes. "We were numerous once. Guides, teachers to the Secondborn. But... you reproduce fast, and we don't. There's eight billion of you now. Some of our folk moved through Gates into worlds less crowded, more clean. But some of us are... invested... in this world. Bound to it. Hawk Circle and the other ELF outposts are liminal realms, places of healing, change, education. We've ripped off the veil. You're part of it now."
I downed another glass of mead handed to me by a faun.
"That is, if you want to be."
"What else would I possibly want to do?" I stared into my empty glass, laughed, "But I'm going to wake up tomorrow and be like, that was the weirdest dream ever..."
Bran studied me for a moment, for forever... "Well, you could stay with me...
I looked up from my glass into that blue sky over the Rockies space between the stars gaze. I smiled, and quoted: "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while."
"...as you wish..." he said.
Fin
...wait wait, there's more: You want to know about the sword, right? And other stuff... "Skyfire" is up next.
This tale was committed to keyboard on 2023.06.26... aka 626. Happy Birthday Stitch (Experiment 626). It is loaded with nerdy Easter Eggs.
This writer once went to the SPCA to rescue a cat. A blue cat, the color of Bran's hair, was screaming at me, TAKE MEEEEEEEE!!!" So I did. His name was Murphy, but I changed it to Sindarin, the grey Elven language from Tolkien's world.
Skyfire
or
how I died and got a magic sword
"When? Where? You humans always want to nail it down, carve it in stone, fasten it to a piece of earth that has shapeshifted into something else by now, to a time marked by calendars that aren't even accurate." I stared at the woman, beautiful in the ways deer and trees and horses and solid earth are. A line of Elvish script spiraled up one arm, it read, in English, 'luminous beings we are, not this crude matter', and I always heard it, and repeated it, in Yoda's voice when I saw it. "It's all dust now," I said.
Rain peered over her enormous coffee mug ("I only snap before coffee"), light from the woods outside poured through the big windows, across the hand carved wood of the table. "A pebble launched into an ocean, but it still made ripples."
Rainger, Rain, Rainy-rain, she's the Ranger, I'm the Elf. Her parents were almost as nerdy as she is... as I am... when they named her Rainger. But they had no idea she'd end up with the Earth Life Foundation...yeah yeah, bad pun acronym, talk to the Dwarves about it... helping kids turn over rocks and identify macroinvertebrates in the stream, lecturing about ravens to bored teens, and fighting evil in Washington by being a very adamant advocate for our environmental concerns.
"Ripples," she repeated, staring into my eyes. It was almost disconcerting. Not many people other than my own kin could do that without taking on an expression as if they'd fallen into the space between the stars.
"Dust." I said.
"THAT'S not dust." She touched the miniature sword hanging at my throat, along with the raven necklace. "And you most definitely are not dust."
"Ehhh." I had been. More than once. "A long time ago in a galaxy..." by now she was matching me word for word. Nerd for nerd.
"...far, far away." she finished.
"Or not so far. Or not so long, as my folk count things."
"We do not count the running years, not for ourselves," she quoted.
Legolas, LOTR, lost at length in the library that's my left brain, or is it the right one? "I don't know the when. There was no gunpowder. There was steel, or was it just iron? Depends if it was Elf-made or Dwarf-made or human smiths. Tiny villages. Hill forts. Sheep, cattle, goats, horses. Men who want power. Power, heh, what is it and why do they want it?"
"With great power..." Rain began.
"Comes great privilege, or so they felt. And they did not want to lose their privilege. They wanted more, always more."
"Clearly Spiderman needed to show up a few millennia earlier."
"Welp, they got Eoin and a Ravenkin."
"What?" Rain was leaning forward. "Bran...WHAT?" She smacked my forehead, "Reset!"
"What?"
She let out a breath, "Ergh! Elves, and their fluid sense of time. Five minutes of silence and glazed eyed gazing into the past does not a story make. Nor can I read your mind unless you do the Elven mind meld thing."
"Oh. Sorry." Not all memories are clear. Now is what matters, not the dust of the past. Where? Was it the place you call Scotland? Or Ireland? I could almost hear the lilt of the language. "It was a village. On a hill. You call them hill forts now, what's left of them. A village of farmers, smiths, craftsfolk, children, livestock, gardens. Well armed men wanted its resources, and cast wanton eyes upon its women. We had a band of defenders, a few of my folk, some villagers we had trained, Eoin's kin."
"By the look on your face, he's important."
"Swordbrother."
"You've had more than one? I mean Ian, now, but..."
"No. Eoin, Owen, Ewan, Ian, he keeps finding me again, every time he returns to the circles of the world." I paused, a moment, a heartbeat.
"You're doing it again."
"What?"
"Bending the space time conundrum." She glanced at the wall clock, something I utterly ignored 98% of the time. "If this was a podcast, all your subscribers would be gone. Dead air doesn't work. So, Oh-wen... Ian... who else did you have for defenders?"
"Ardeen." I studied the woods beyond the windows. The protected forest of Hawk Circle, the E.L.F.'s Pennsylvania base. Somewhere deep in the woods crows called. Corvids, kin to raven and chough, magpie and rook. The memories began to fade from black, to blur, to focused, like the beginning of a movie.
"Good name." Rain said quietly, studying my eyes, waiting for me to say the rest.
"Ardeen... meant Great Forest, as Rainger means Guardian of the Forest. She was versed in healing and other arts, often wandering the Great Forest alone, finding herbs and... other things... useful to her craft. She honored the Morrigan, she of many names, and the Dragon Grandmothers."
"Sounds like Seven Samurai. Band of warriors defending a village from bandits."
"Magnificent Seven." My eye fell on the action figure collection in the cabinet behind Rain, "That Mandalorian episode. The same story plays out everywhere, everywhen. The memory was focused now, mostly... " We beat back the first band, a scouting party, well armed and armoured. They retreated, and perhaps not because they were outmatched. They returned, in more numbers."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The storm silver raven circled once, kraaaaacking out a hoarse call. Ardeen looked up from her work, laid the potion jar on the table and ran out to meet the bird. She held up a hand, but he banked in mid-turn and vanished in a swirl of rain and earth and leaves. Bran shook a few leaves out of his storm silver hair and walked toward her, swiftly, a look on his face that was anything but Elven calm.
"A day's march, that way, they'll be here by highest sun tomorrow."
Ardeen swore, more fiercely than the mariners down by the sea whence her mother had come. "We cannot fortify any more, we cannot FIND any more fighters, and I need more time..."
"We'll go back down the road, those of us who can travel swiftly. Use some raven tricks, split them up, lead them off. Fewer will show here, at least. Eoin should stay here, you'll need another healer, and he is wicked with a sword, in need."
"You and your kin can't carry weapons in raven form..."
"Eimhir can carry them in horse form, pookas run swifter than any steed, and our enemy is on foot. Mostly. Berard can ride, and when we get there..."
Ardeen let out a breath, "our bear man would be better here."
"He'll be back, don't worry. Your people's cooking is so good you'll probably be stuck with him for life. And I have three other Ravenkin, enough to nip at the heels of our foe and turn them like sheepdogs turn sheep."
Ardeen turned back to her potions, "I hope you're right." She paused, turned and met Bran's deep sky eyes. She touched his face, lightly, like the brush of feathers. "You'd better come back... to...us."
Brianan the Rook, Aislinn the Magpie and Eadan the Chough flew ahead with Bran. Eimhir thundered behind, throwing up divots from his great black hooves, while Berard perched among swords, bows, and one entirely too Dwarvish battleaxe, sheathed, but banging uncomfortably against his thigh. Why the Elvish chough needed a bloody battleaxe was beyond him. As for himself, all he needed to do was to change from a rather intimidating human to a more intimidating bear. At least the pooka, for all his great black hairy size, had a decent gait and the odd magic that kept any rider glued to his back.
The pooka, for his part, was going to have a conversation with Berard, if they lived, about Berard's riding skills.
The Ravenkin, all four of them, had vanished to specks in the distance. A harsh call from the road ahead showed they had left at least one within shouting distance of Eimhir and Berard. The rest had risen high and spread out to better see the lay of the land, and anyone on the road.
The sun sailed a handsbreadth across the sky, then another few fingers width. Finally a kraaaaaaaack! from a raven. He circled, flared and landed. Dust swirled, stung Berard's eyes, and caused the pooka to lay down some skid marks as he slid to a halt.
"They are ahead, in greater numbers, armoured and carrying shields."
The other Ravenkin emerged from the distant sky, and shapeshifted back to Elven form. Eimhir the Pooka turned his head to glare at Berard, then Bran.
"Not you," Bran said, "Don't shift. We really don't want to have to pack all of that again." He found a leafy branch, brushed flat a piece of earth and drew what the Ravenkin had seen. A curve in the road, trees, open space, a narrowing, a stream, a rise... a place for an ambush. "They are trained to fight in the open, in formations. We on the other hand, can fight with stealth, from hiding." Bran eyed the giant pooka and the bear-serker. "Most of us, anyway."
Plans were laid.
And quickly, like many other things, their ambush shapeshifted into chaos.
Mere horses seemed to teleport, if something startled them; here one moment, then suddenly the rider is left hanging in midair while the equine vanishes. Pookas had refined this art to actual teleportation, and once Eimhir had relieved himself of the weaponry he avalanched into the marching army, grabbing armed men in his teeth and vanishing with a clap-bang of displaced air. It sowed chaos among the few horses in the army, and they ran in all directions at once.
Then the bear stormed out from the trees.
The four Ravenkin had faded into the woodwork, hiding among branch and leaf, bows at the ready. Even with a giant rampaging draft sized pooka and a bear thrice the size of the native bears of the land, and arrows flying and panicked horses and men running hither and thither and yon, the Ravenkin's arrows found marks. Eadan the Chough grumbled at having to sit in a tree while his axe lay idle in his belt, but his bow was singing as loudly as any.
Eventually though, bows run out of arrows.
Now the Ravenkin were running among the branches, dropping down to use sword or axe or dagger, and vanish again. Berard roared by Bran long enough to gift him with the half dozen arrows stuck in his dense hide. Eimhir reappeared, gasping, to take up a bow, a quiver of reclaimed arrows in his hand. "I can't 'port any more. But I can shoot!"
The armoured army had scattered. It was impossible to tell how many were still functional. A few last stragglers ran into the woods. Bran heard the roar of a bear, then silence.
Bran motioned, Brianan and Aislinn shifted, took to the sky. They returned with news of a scattered force, much reduced. "We'll pace them, keep just ahead. Harass and nip at them as long as we can."
"Until the land opens up." Brianan pointed toward the lowering sun. "Too open there."
"Then we'll have to work harder here."
They moved through the trees on foot, on the ground or by branch, picking off any who wandered too far from the reforming ranks. Eimhir dropped back, scavenging arrows. Berard could run as fast as a horse in bear form, so he stayed in that shape, loping through the trees, sniffing out soldiers, emerging to snatch an unwary armoured form.
It was a good plan until they ran out of trees.
Now they loaded their weapons back on Eimhir and the Ravenkin took to the skies, the pooka thundering behind them. Berard stayed in bear form, ready to fall back and smite any of the army who advanced too far. He could run for a thousand strides or more, which would put the army well behind them, but he would eventually have to ride again. His ancestors had chosen Bear for his strength, not his endurance.
They flew down the road, in the skies and on foot. They would not be able to stop what was left of the army until they got to the hill fort.
Ardeen and Eoin saw them coming, specks in the clear sky. Even with mere human eyes, Eoin could pick out each one even at this distance by their overall shape and the way they moved; he counted four: chough, rook, magpie and... he let out a relieved breath, one raven. The others were Bran's kin, but Bran was his kin, swordbrother, raven to his wolf.
The Ravenkin landed, and not far behind them was the thunder of oversized hooves, and the heavy panting of a massive bear in full charge, for Berard had leapt off the pooka and shapeshifted into battle ready form.
"They are fewer, and scattered and battered, but they are still coming." Bran said. He ran to the pooka to retrieve his weapons... clattering to the ground as Eimhir shifted shape to Elf form.
Horns blew, the hill fort fell into readiness, the sky was empty of birds except for the distant echo of crows.
"Battle Crows." Ardeen said softly..
Bran and Eoin glanced at her.
"I have woven the protections as best I can. I have created potions. I have called upon the Goddess."
"Which...one..." as if Eoin had to ask.
"Morrigan, Warrior, Battle Crow."
Goddesses do not usually literally come to battles. Bran knew, that even with his kin's deep connection to that Goddess, this mortal fight was up to a bunch of mortals, and a handful of Elves, and one human who could turn into a bear. The army was reduced, but it was still potent.
And it came on like a storm.
The arrows ran out too fast. Bran could catch a few aimed at him, or at Eoin fighting alongside, there was barely time to grab any from the ground. Eoin fought, solid as a rock and measured as a wolf taking down an elk. Bran wheeled around him, flipping into the air as often as lashing out from the ground. In mid-leap he saw Ardeen, bow on her back, staff in hand, shouting invectives at the invaders, hammering helmed heads with a flash of green light from the staff. Beside her was a girl of not more than fourteen, wielding a sword almost as big as she was. The battle seethed around them, a raging sea, and one well armed man leapt at the kid...
Ardeen stepped between them, blocked, ducked, missed, tumbled, rolled back with the man's sword aimed at her head.
Bran's sword clanged into the man's sword, blocking him inches from Ardeen, a step, a twist, and the sword flew into the melee...
Ardeens' sudden panicked shout, "Bran, behind..."
...and he felt the odd sensation of a sword piercing his heart.
She froze, for a heartbeat, for forever. She dropped, crouched over him, protectively, but her healer's hands and eyes knew, he was gone. Only this shell remained. She howled, there was no curse in any language she knew fierce enough for the enemy who did this. "MORRIGAN!" She howled. She found Bran's sword where it had fallen, a long, light Elvish blade. With it in one hand and her staff in the other, she stormed into the melee, wreaking havoc on all sides, mowing a path of devastation, in full Battle Crow mode. No one stood before her.
He blinked, his eyes didn't seem to want to work, it was dark, blurry... wait... light... shapes... blurry...shapes... a... someone... sometwo... no...three... what?
The shapes coalesced, focused.
Bran stood in a hall, a wide, spacious, vast cavern, with a smooth tiled floor, carvings along the walls... were those...dragons? Three women regarded him: two tall, strong looking, wearing scaled armour; one in blue, one in purple... strange...colors, hard ones to make in dye or paint. The other woman was shorter, compact, voluptuous and hard muscled at the same time, clad in black armour, scaled... no, it looked more like...feathers.
Her hair was red. Blood red.
Behind them in the shadows... something...another carving... giant carving.
It moved, breathed and spoke.
"Hail, Traveler. Welcome to our hall."
"What?" He took a step. Floor...felt... funny. Or maybe it was his feet. As in they didn't feel at all. He looked down, caught sight of his hand, raised it.
He was looking right through it.
He looked down; hand, arm, leg... everything... see through. And the see through did not include clothes.
"What!" He looked up, and the giant shape in the back of the hall moved into the light. It was a dragon, golden, iridescent with subtle rainbow light and great golden eyes. "Grandmother!" he whispered and bowed, knelt. Dragon Grandmothers, he was in the hall of the Dragon Grandmothers, and now he remembered the battle and Ardeen and blocking a blow and a sword through his heart and... "I must be dead." he said out loud. He'd never heard of anyone going to the Dragon's halls when that happened, you went... between, to the Otherworld, and if you were Elvish, some day you would be re-embodied. You would re-enter the world through the womb. What happened to humans, he was not sure, though Eoin had certainly been re-embodied a few times. Ardeen... Ardeen was still there, fighting... or was it all in the past now? These places had a tendency to be outside of normal space and time. "Ard.. No. Ardeen. Nooooo." He looked up, imploring, into the Dragon Grandmother's sun eyes "The... others. I need... I need to. "
She remained still and silent.
The woman with the blood red hair walked up to him, eyed his spirit form up and down.
It felt to Bran as if she could see who he had been, not just his physical form, still recorded in this spirit form, but his whole nature, his whole spirit, flaws and all. He really really wanted some armour. Or at least clothes.
She spoke, in the straight forward way of his own people. "It was Ardeen who summoned me."
"Summoned...Morrigan? Goddess." He knelt again.
"Rise, Ravenkin. Long have your kind served me."
He stood, finding it hard to meet her eyes. "Ardeen." he implored, "And Eoin. I need to...protect them."
"She called on me to protect you... then invoked me again as she picked up your sword and devastated your foes."
"Ah." He could all too well imagine her pain, her rage, her ferocity before which no one could stand. "Is she... are they..."
"It is well. For now. But the battle is not over."
"Ah." His face showed pain, distress.
Morrigan studied him, "You do not have sorrow for yourself, only them." She turned, traded silent looks with the Dragons.
The great golden Grandmother moved forward till her head was nearly touching him. The floor vibrated under her great clawed feet, somewhere in the shadows an immense tail swished across the tiles. Her head was the size of the great standing stone at the edge of the village, the one no one knew how it had been moved or set. Her eye, the size of an eagle's wingspan, peered straight into his soul. It was like standing too close to a fire. She spoke at last; "Then receive this gift, Ravenkin" She breathed in, then out in a great gout of golden flame.
It surrounded Bran, poured through him, seared him, every cell of his non existent body was on fire, he didn't know if it was the roar of the flames or his own voice...voice...voices... something howling in his head, no, singing... searing...singeing, singing...
Then silence. His head echoed, hurt. Hurt. How could he hurt if he was still dead. The great dragon sat on her haunches studying him. The red haired Morrigan ran her eyes over him and lifted a blood red eyebrow in approval.
He followed her gaze. Raised a hand... a solid flesh and blood one that could wield sword or bow. He touched his chest, his face, and then his hand went to the thin braid under his hair, the braid that held one stormsilver feather. It was there, as it always had been. "My ladies..." he gasped, wide eyed.
The blue dragon, still in woman form, stepped forward, "you can't go naked into battle." She handed him a carefully folded pile of scales. He unfolded it and found underclothes and dragon scale armour like hers.
"You'll need a sword." The purple dragon stepped forward, handing him a sheathed sword.
He took it with a reverent bow, and unsheathed it halfway. It glowed blue with a fierce light, like the sky on fire.
"Ah!" He stepped back, nearly dropping it.
"It will cut through anything... except its own sheath of course." Purple eyed him, "and it's master. You. It can also be carried in stealth, in miniature, on a cord around your neck, so you can carry it in raven form. And if laid down or lost, it will come to your hand."
Another voice, "But you are one of the Elvenfolk, and a Ravenkin, so the bow is your true weapon, it flies with the feathers of our kind." Morrigan stepped forward, with a bow and quiver, arrows fletched in black. She pulled one out, flicked it into the tile floor, it sunk deeply and flashed into blue flame. She reached out a hand, and the arrow returned to her hand like a bird in flight, "Archers are always running out of arrows," she said, "this should solve that problem. You have only to do what I did, reach out your hand, and they will come to you." She sheathed the arrow in the quiver with the others. "And you may have need of fire beyond that sword."
"Ah. Ah!" Bran bowed to all of them. "Ahhhh!" He who was often the one to tell the stories, who could outsing most bards, who had been accused of using too many words at times, could find no words.
"The battle is not yet lost." Morrigan said.
"Time flows differently here." Blue Dragon said, "You will appear where you left."
"Ah..." He did not know how to say it, his eyebrows knotted...nice new eyebrows, good to have them back, really. "...the ...old... body. It would be..."
"Very strange for both of you to exist at once." Morrigan said.
Purple gestured to a raised stone behind Bran. It was empty, but bore the marks of fire. "We lifted you from the field. The old body is gone, consumed and transformed by fire..." she gestured at himself, now, "into this."
"Ah." Again words failed him.
The dragon woman made one last adjustment to his armour, and handed him a helmet. "One more thing. Sing the song."
"Song?"
Dragon Woman Blue looked at Dragon Woman Purple, then at Morrigan.
Morrigan sighed. "Men, no matter the time period, no matter the species."
"The song echoing in your reconstituted skull." Blue Dragon said.
Bran frowned, it was dancing away from him like a new colt... he grasped at it, found it, watched it skitter away again. Morrigan stepped in front of him and smacked his forehead with her hand.
"OW!"
"Reset." she muttered.
"Ah...AHHHH!" Now he could hear it, he began softly, repeating the sounds in his memory, then louder, and stronger.
In front of him a stretch of air shimmered and became a frozen snowscape.
"What?" He stepped toward it, reached out to it, cold air was flowing through it into the hall. "Is that a Gate?" A Dragon Gate, the ones the Grandmothers had made, the ones the Dragonkin walked through without thought as easily as one walks down a road.
"Yes." Purple said, "But it helps if you visualize where you want to go first."
Chaos shimmered into existence before him, he leapt through, sword drawn, into a hurricane. Skills honed over centuries assessed the placement and movement of forces, both from the hill fort and from the invaders. Without looking he blocked a sword blow aimed at his head, the blue fire sword slicing through the blade of the attacker. The armoured man let out a cry and scuttled backward, away from the fiery blade and the grim expression of the one wielding it.
Bran cleared a path through them, eyes and other senses looking for Ardeen, Eoin and the others. A block and slash, a young villager saved, wheel, leap, kick, a girl broke loose from an armoured man and added her own fierce kick to his fall. Eimhir raged out of the melee, back in giant horse form, 'porting enemies to goddess knew where. A hundred strides away came the roar of a very annoyed bear.
He found her, with a tight group of defenders, against a rampart, facing off dozens of attackers. He brought a wheel of blue fire into their midst, from which those not touched ran. He paused, breathing hard, Ardeen staring at him.
"My lady..." he began.
"I have no idea who you are or whence you came, but we thank you... and we need a new plan..." she turned to her companions, "Blow your horn," she called to a young girl, "gather here..." she looked back at the strange man with the sky fire blade.
Bran froze. She did not know him. Do I look the same? Is even my aura different? She could see past the surface of things...what? Why couldn't she...
Oh, the helmet... bloody... helmet. He pulled it off.
She stared at him, and her eyes widened. Then narrowed, "are you a shapeshifter?"
"Of COURSE I'm a shapeshifter!" Bran said with a wild combination of sheer joy and annoyance, "I'm Ravenkin!"
"No," she said fiercely, stepping toward him, "I mean one who can assume the appearance of others."
He reached out, touched her cheek, "Look at me."
She glared back, still filled with much of Morrigan's battle rage.
"Look," he said softly.
She met his eyes, her own widened, softened. "Ohhhhhh. How..."
"Ah. YOU are the one who summoned the Morrigan, and who speaks to Dragons. Now. We need a plan, Lady Ardeen. What's the plan?"
Bran raised the bow. Light, lighter than any he had wielded before, but he could feel the immense power in its length of tree and sinew string, gifts of the earth. The bow sang and the black feathered raven arrow flew, buried itself in that earth and sent up a gout of blue flame. Another, yards away, and the flame became a fence, a sheepcote gathering the enemy, herding them toward...
The Gate that he sang into being. There was a certain mountain pass he knew, treacherous, one edge leading into a vast abyss. He had a very clear memory of that pass, and it was not a pleasant one. He sang it into being, and the invaders, fenced by blue fire, and hounded by defenders, ran into it.
The field fell silent, except for hushed voices, calls to missing friends, someone sobbing over one lost.
A few remained of the invaders, surrounded by villagers, they laid down their arms, and took off their armour. They were freed to go back with a very clear message; trouble us again and meet your doom.
Out of the devastation came Eoin, he stopped a stride away, studying Bran. He eyed the armour, the bow, the black feathers and the new sword sheath. He cocked a questioning eyebrow.
"You missed the part where I died and got a magic sword."
"Ah. I was rather busy." He closed the space between them and caught Bran in a great hard hug. "You know... I felt it. I couldn't..."
"Yeah, I know." Bran didn't let go, "there are sons and daughters who lived because of you."
Ardeen touched his arm, he turned to face her. "I..."
"...know." she said. "There are things..."
"I should have spoken of..." Bran said, his face had a shadow of sorrow and longing.
"Sooner... before it was too late." she said.
Bran sighed. "We have another chance." Ardeen touched his face, behind him, he could feel Eoin smiling, damn Wolfbrother, he knew all along. He should have said something, sooner, louder, for the dense skulled Ravenkin. "I don't think..."
"...I can live without you." Ardeen finished.
Ardeen and Eoin, and the others who practiced healing, tended to those who needed it. A storm of crows and ravens hovered around the fields and woods for days, but bodies were buried or burned, with a few, fallen in hidden places, left to Morrigan's children. Items left by the invaders were distributed, most were of good quality and could be made use of.
Bran spent a great deal of time in a bath, or the stream, washing off blood and grime and death, and considering his new old body. It seemed to work as well as ever, perhaps better. Certainly Morrigan had approved of it. Ardeen seemed to as well. Very much approved. But other than being able to open Dragon Gates, he didn't seem to have gained any superpowers.
A few weeks later riders appeared on the road, one tall man on an unusually tall horse, her withers reaching Bran's nose. Two riders flanking on each side. From the hill fort Bran could see the flanking riders were very very young. They all wore the clothing and armour of the former invaders, but the standard they carried was different. They rode to a respectful spot and stopped. A rider on the flank raised a horn, but Brianan had already seen and alerted Ardeen and a small delegation, well armed. Bran leapt down from his perch, caught up the sword, and strode out to meet them. Above him, his three kin flew out past the visitors to see if there were other, hidden forces on the road.
The leader was old enough to have the wisdom to win wars, or stay out of them. He regarded Ardeen and her delegation, then his eyes fell on Bran. He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. The horse remained still, eyeing Bran with curiosity. Bran walked up, held out a hand to the horse, it was nosed, sniffed. The rider's eyes followed Bran, eyebrows knotted.
"Who are you?" Ardeen demanded.
"Seitheach, of Beinn na Caillich. My cousin, Dughlas is dead. He was a man of... impetuousness, hubris, belligerence and warmongering. Many of our kin are being mourned," he glanced uncomfortably at Bran, "because of his madness. I am Chief now. We come to parley, to assure you that you will not need to decimate more of us."
Ardeen looked at Bran, it was the look of an eagle, of one who knew and could read the man in front of her, but also wished for Bran's read on him.
"Your horse says you are a truthful and honorable man, it is good you are Chief."
Seitheach stared down at the Ravenkin, "...my...horse?"
"Animals don't lie." Bran said. He went down the line of ponies, all short, sturdy fell and dale and marsh ponies of a type that would keep easily in hard times, and travel readily and far over difficult roads. He met the young eyes of the riders, some looked away as if they'd fallen into the space between the stars, others met his gaze briefly. The boy on the roan kept staring in a kind of wonder. "We thought you were naught but legends," he finally said.
"Hah." Bran chuckled quietly, "We are not so different from your folk. We want this," he gestured at the green hill behind them. "To live, to love, to grow things in the fertile earth, to sing, to dance." He put his hand on the roan pony's head. "Your pony says you are a kind man. Peace will be good for both of you."
The riders followed Ardeen, Bran and the delegation to the Great Hall. Ponies were left to graze. Riders were led to food and drink and parley. Songs were sung, stories told. Slowly, the villagers of the Hill Fort and Seitheach's riders came to an understanding.
Bran noticed the young rider who had looked him in the eyes was limping. Had he been part of the running battle on the road?
"I broke my leg in a fall many years ago, it did not heal well. I am slow on the ground, but I can ride better than most."
"You have no healers?"
"Some. Not as good as yours...unless your stories are exaggerated."
"No, they are true."
"We used to have many, old women who knew things, but Dughlas put an end to it."
"Why?"
"They had power. It frightened him." The kid paused, "It was a woman who killed him. Eochaidh saw it. A woman who raged through our ranks shouting the name of the Death Bird, the Battle Crow."
"Ah." Bran glanced across the hall, he could see Ardeen talking with great animation to another of the young riders. He turned back to the boy, "How would you like to have some of our healers look at your leg?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Did she heal him?" Rain asked.
"Yes, she and Eoin. He stayed awhile to learn the healing arts himself. Others of his tribe came to us for learning. Their women regained their knowledge from ours, as well as their agency. Peace reigned. We traded cattle for ponies. Craftsfolk traded knowledge. Someone found a good way to make purple and blue dyes. But Ardeen told me I needed to name my sword and keep it handy. Blue sky fire had saved us that day, so that became her name. Skyfire. She was not needed for a very very long time."
"You loved her." Rain said.
She did not mean the sword.
I let out a breath. "Deeply. And to the end of her days."
"Badass witchy warrior woman who could invoke goddesses and heal all wounds."
Subtext; I will never be that.
"Mmmm. Well...she keeps finding me again." I lifted her chin and looked into her brown earth eyes.
Her eyes widened.
I traced the line of Elvish script on her arm, "Luminous beings we are..." of course I did it in Yoda's voice.
Fighting Bard
from Bardic Circle to Hawk Circle
Aislinn the Fighting Bard was slogging through Pennsic Puddle when she joined a late night bardic circle, and then another, stranger one, on the "faerie hill" in the camp. A few years later, she is part of the educational staff of Hawk Circle and the ELF.
It's nice ot have friends, to be an ally, but, wait, is there more?
It's nice ot have friends, to be an ally, but, wait, is there more?
"My Lady Aislinn, we have need of a fighting bard again."
Aislinn looked up from her harp. On its soundbox, and on the harp bag at her feet, was a white raven above a leaping sea.
The tall Elf addressing her was clad in greens and browns and greys, as if he had traveled across half of Midgaard to find her. Across his chest a raven similar to hers, in dark silver, like his hair, flew against a silver sun.
Aislinn cast a glance at the faire crowd, wandering now to the next event. She tucked her harp into its case. "Well, my lord..."
"We don't have lords, remember?" His expression was deadpan, but his mouth had a hint of privateer grin.
"OK. Right. We're not in Kansas, or the SCA, anymore." Aislinn smiled. Tribal, matriarchal, the Elves were matriarchal, egalitarian. No kings and nobles and such, not much like the old Society for Creative Anachronisms she'd been part of back when... it seemed like centuries ago, when she'd first met Bran and the other fae of Hawk Circle Farm and the Earth Life Foundation. Considerably less drama with the Elves too, with their blunt honesty, candor and general inability to lie well, except where they had to misdirect the mundanes, so they could stay hidden in plain sight. Hidden, except for here, at Hawk Circle's own faire where everyone not an ally would assume the pointy ears were just cosplay. "Well my friend, Bran, Ravenkin, of the Álfar of the Northern Realm, did someone bail from the swordfighting demo that you need to summon the bard who's only swashed buckles with you and Ian and Rain and Val for the last several many years?"
"Nope. Not that. But, Maryann O'Grady, YOU are the best, and we need you." He turned, scanning the path behind him, "Connor, where are..."
A man looked up from Fiona's Fine Funnel Cakes, one hand balancing an enormous paper plate piled with the dribbled dough delight, covered in confectioner's sugar. He strode over to them, held out the funnel cake to Aislinn, "Have a bite?"
"Oh Goddess, my favorite, how'd you..." yeah Bran probably told him, or he was just doing that Jedi mind trick thing all the fae did, sensing things from people or animals or even trees and rocks. She pulled off a powdery piece of the cake, meeting his eyes. Yeah, she didn't even have to look at his leaf shaped ears, ears that might have been clever silicone cosplay costuming, like other attendees at the faire. But the eyes didn't lie; his deep blue eyes were like Bran's, and it was like peering through the James Webb Space Telescope to the dawn of time. His hair was black though, not Bran's stormsilver. Raven black.
"Um, my cousin, Connor." Bran said.
Of course, they looked similar, the lean spare build, graceful, like a bird in flight. The chiseled jawline, the cheekbones, the raven beak nose. Aislinn smiled at the nose, bigger than even Bran's significant beak... hooter... privateer prow. "Ravenkin," she said, more of a statement than a question.
Connor nodded. "Indeed."
"Why do you need a fighting bard?" Aislinn said to Bran, her eyes still on Connor.
Bran reached for a piece of the funnel cake, Aislinn was treated to the amusing image, never seen in fantasy films, of two glorious elegant elves getting powdered sugar everywhere. "We have a faerie festival booked, I mean, we're booked to go to the one in York, Hawk Circle is. We need a bard and one who can do the raven program and maybe get people to come here eventually. You know, support your local environmental educational dot org with your tax deductible donations."
Aislinn chuckled, "This isn't some kind of enchanted forest where people live with no visible means of support." She met Bran's deep blue eyes, full of humor. She intoned, "the Earth Life Foundation: Education, Legislation, and Future generations, but mostly get 'em here and eduficate'em." Her eyes went to Connor, "The Hawk Circle ravens don't leave the woods here. So, ah, which one of you is volunteering to be the bird?"
"I'm booked that weekend." Bran gave Connor a push forward, "He's your man, er, Ravenkin."
"You said fighting bard..."
"Well I need you, but without the sword, it's a peaceable faerie kingdom according to the flyer." Bran said, "but I need my best bard buddy..."
"I'm kind of your only bard buddy."
Bran said more softly, "I need you to look after my cousin."
Aislinn eyed the tall Ravenkin, the other one, the one with the black hair. Broad shoulders, lean hips, long legs, that graceful as a tumbling raven or running wolf hidden power. "He looks like he can take care of himself."
"He hasn't been here since World War II." Bran said.
"What?"
"He's been at Hrafnheim since then..."
"Your family home..."
"That and running the trade routes into Erda."
"Gatesinger?"
"No. He has other talents."
Aislinn pulled off another chunk of funnel cake, passed it back to Bran. Over his shoulder she saw Connor talking to two girls in costume for the faire. Both looked like they were chaneling their D&D characters, elven ranger and magic user, Aislinn guessed. They looked a bit thrilled to find another Elf. A particularly hot other Elf. One of them held out her cell phone to Connor.
Aislinn moved, swooped in and caught the cell phone before Connor could touch it, "Here," she said cheerfully, "let me get ALL of you in the picture!"
The girls giggled, posed, Connor looked appropriately heroic, if a little confused. The girls giggled again and Aislinn handed them back their phone.
"Nice catch," Bran said letting out a breath.
"Did you not TELL him to not touch the humans' tech?"
"Several times. He's uh, used to the older stuff, like 1940s older. It didn't fry as readily as 21st century tech. And, ah, he just got here. Not much time to show him anything." Bran's expression had the kind of near pleading look of a Labrador Retriever. "Help me."
"Uh huh. Yeah, well, I'll keep an eye on him."
Keeping an eye on Connor was a bit like herding cats. Or having a herd of them following you around. Lady Aislinn, aka Maryann O'Grady taught music part time at a local elementary school. Part time, because mundane schools had cut back on the arts. Aislinn the Fighting Bard taught other things part time at Hawk Circle. Other things ranged from harping, to poetry (because most songs are poetry) to doing the raven program, to teaching kids with a wide range of abilities, or lack thereof, how much fun music actually was, to being the sweep rider on the trail riding program that took everyone up through the Raven Woods into the State Park next door. She regularly showed up on Hawk Circle's several times weekly youtube videos and podcasts. She swashed buckles with Bran and Ian and Val and Tas and Rain and others; less the competitive hard blows of the old SCA days, and more choreographed dances, lightly padded pool noodle pats. Enough to keep in shape. Enough to maybe smite someone effectively with a stick if she was ever attacked, unlikely, because Hawk Circle had its protections, and she lived here, within that protected circle, now.
Connor had apparently had millennia of practice with sword shaped objects.
And equines of all sorts.
It took him a whole minute to figure out that the plastic kayak was not much different from the other small boats he'd paddled for eons.
Unlike Bran, Connor's nerd references stopped at the 40s. He had no idea what the superhero on that kid's T-shirt was, what that movie quote or bit of soundtrack was, he spent a great deal of time flashing Aislinn looks of confusion.
He did, however recognize Captain America, Superman and Batman. Of course, they were some of the oldest comic book superheroes in existence, having appeared between 1938 and 1941, when Connor was firmly entrenched in the mundane world, trying to help keep it from burning down. He said little about the Great War, and less about what happened after it. He was too busy trying to make sense of the 21st century.
Confronted with a (well shielded) computer in the lab, he stared at it like it might suddenly spring to life and attempt to devour him.
Aislinn sat next to him and tried to get her brain in gear to explain it to him. Most grade school kids had more skill than this guy, who appeared to be at least kind of middle aged. The age was a subtle illusion, Elves in their true form were impossible to pin down as to age. In the mundane world, they had to 'fake age' as Bran called it, spinning misdirections to blend in.
Connor looked over at her, "How do I turn it on?"
"Wiggle the mouse, it's already on."
"Mouse?"
"The thing, there, see the cord? Like a tail, sort of..."
Connor's expression suggested that the tool was vastly misnamed. He stuck out a finger and wiggled the mouse.
"Put your whole hand over it, like this..."
"Ah."
"Doesn't... Hrafnheim have a computer room or something? Internet?"
"No. We have an extensive library... and I've spent a lot of time on the road, on trade routes, in Erda. There is no... internet... there."
Erda, the GateWorld, the MirrorMultiOtherverse or whatever it was. "There are no satellites there." Aislinn said. "Bran told me."
"What?"
"Um..." Aislinn made circling motions with a finger.
Connor cocked a questioning eyebrow.
"Rockets..."
"Yes...we had them. As early as the 10th century, they were used to propel arrows. And, rockets red glare? Many researchers working on rockets before and during the war." He paused, "Sorry, I tend to be a bit pedantic."
"Ah. We'll have to discuss history in more depth... sometime. But now we need to... here... do you know what happened after the war?"
"Not so much."
Aislinn leaned over Connor and googled it. "...1957, Sputnik, first satellite launched into Earth orbit." She closed the window. Aislinn glanced over at Connor, "You do know the earth is round, right?"
He gave her a deadpan deep blue stare.
"OK, yeah, so by 1969 we have astronauts on the moon, and now we've got space stations and robots on Mars, and a gazillion satellites orbiting the planet. Some of them are making sure we have cell phones and internet. And the James Webb Space Telescope peering into the dawn of time."
"What?"
"Ahhhhhhhhh... here, talk to Mr. Google."
"Who?"
"Click that..." she pointed to the icon on the desktop.
Connor produced a clicking sound. "Or do you need a different click, there's the one Rain's car made this morning, the ones jays make, cowbirds, mourning doves, starlings, mockingbirds, ravens..."
Aislinn looked at him, and could not tell if he was like a raven pulling Wolf's tail... or if he was serious. Ravenkin, like the birds, were perfect mimics. "No no, nonononono you... eh here, right click, left click..." she put her hand over his... long fingered gorgeous Would Make A Fine Musician hand. "Click..."
"Ah."
She drew back, somewhat embarrassed.
He didn't seem to notice, continuing to peer at the screen.
"Do you, ah, do any kind of music?" she asked.
"We all learn many things as children. I can play a few instruments." He glanced over at her, "Not very good at harping though. And it's been a long time by human estimation."
"Ah. Well. Here. Just type in James Webb... "
He set his hands on the home keys, and began typing.
"You, ah, know how to type..."
"There's this thing we had, called typewriters?"
"Ah, of course."
"Different, had to punch harder."
"I've used one, a vintage one. Ergh."
Connor smiled. "This is easier."
"There, click on that there..."
A page opened with images from deep space. From the dawn of time.
Connor leaned forward.
"Click this, make it bigger."
They clicked through the images; distant galaxies, dust cloud star nurseries, "13.4 billion years ago." Aislinn said. "... when the whole universe was only about 350 million years old."
"How... how do your people... do this?"
"Don't ask me, I'm just a bard. I mean, it's a telescope, in space, and it can see to the edge of time."
"Clearly I've missed a few things in eighty years."
Ravens, of course he understood ravens. He'd had to follow one for its entire half century lifespan. Then he could become one. Shapeshift. Feel the wind through his feathers. Tumble on the wind. Aislinn and Connor stood before a group of third graders, two of the ravens from the wooded hillside on their arms. The birds had come down to Connor's call, and stayed or left as they felt the need. They were well paid with peanuts and other prized goodies, so they tended to stay for the whole program. The kids stared wide eyed, and occasionally a raven would hop onto someone's head and pull playfully at their hair. Hands were held out with peanuts, and ravens accepted the offerings, then flew up and demonstrated some barrel rolls just for fun. Occasionally, one would present a kid or adult with a shiny rock or other object.
The kids and teachers dispersed, on to the next program.
Connor stood, watching the birds disappear back into the deeps of the woods.
"What's it like?" Aislinn said softly.
Connor turned, "What?"
"Being one of them."
"Ah, the first time you shift, it's terrifying. Your body, your true form, the body you came into this world with... flying apart, swirling like a storm, then reforming as you focus your whole intent and power on it. Then... you are light, so light. You lift your wings and the air takes you. You feel every shift of the currents of the wind. You adjust each feather for maximum performance. At least at first, you think about it. Then eventually, you just fly, Ride the wind. Become part of it." He fell silent, stared up at the woods and the sky beyond it.
"Ah." Aislinn said quietly. Tas had once shown her what it was like to be a horse, Jon what it felt like to stalk like a snow leopard. Aislinn thought of it as the Elven mind meld, they felt the world, saw through others' eyes all the time. They could let you see through theirs. Sometimes.
She kind of wished she could see through Connor's.
The Faerie Festival in York was a bit different from the ones Hawk Circle ran; more sprawled across acres of the park, more vendors, more chaos, and, Aislinn noted, no protective circle like the one bordering Hawk Circle. No wild unicorn disguised as a grumpy pinto Shetland Pony guarding the borders either. No other fae. Connor was the only actual fae she, or he, was aware of at this festival. But as at the Hawk Circle events, where Elves and others could drop their misdirections and be who they were, and be taken as only cosplay, here, at this faire, Connor could simply be himself.
HimsElf. Aislinn thought with a snicker.
Connor stood contemplating the collection of nylon and metal poles Aislinn slid out of the big bag Connor had lugged to their temporary site at the faire.
"How does this work?" he asked.
"Surely you've done tents before."
"Many kinds, in many places and times." He hefted it, "But not like this one." He dropped his voice so low only Aslinn could hear, "Human tech has truly advanced in the last eighty years."
"Earla built this one. Here, lay it down," she pointed.
Connor obliged. Aislinn flicked a switch on the side and the whole thing bloomed like a giant flower, rose up, snapping into place. Connor stared. So did a few early birds setting up their own tents.
"Of course," Connor said under his breath, "Dwarf tech." One eyebrow dropped.
Aislinn could not tell if disapproval or something else. "Hmmmm, Hawk Circle isn't like Middle Earth, no Elf-Dwarf conflagrations." She waited for him to say 'what?'. Explaining pop culture references was becoming a thing between them.
Connor looked over at her, "I was there when The Hobbit was published, I understood that reference."
Aislinn smiled, "I understood your reference to the understanding of a reference."
"And I understood your reference to the understanding of the understanding of... I know the movie it came from now. And besides you, Bran has been inflicting his twenty first century nerd-dom on me." Connor reached for a bag, then another. He followed Aislinn into the tent, juggling multiple bags as easily as any superhero.
Aislinn dropped the door. "Bran said this would be adequate to shapeshift inside of. Because we need you in both forms: raven and Elf."
Connor nodded. "Big enough, air can come in from under, earth under my feet. Well done."
They arranged the tent with their gear, already in comfortable costumes for the day, they stepped out into the growing chatter and flutter and sparkle of a faerie fest gearing up.
Back in the dark ages of medieval living history, Aislinn had tended to woodsy colors. Here, she went full sparkling ocean tones, with ridiculous amounts of glitter, and a sheer cloak that looked like rippling water. Connor looked a bit more... authentic? Authentic what? Those particular deep irridescent blues and purples would have been a rarity or impossible a millennia ago, even for the Elves. His long lean leashed leopard walk captured no few eyeballs. Women, and a few men, left eyetracks all over him. Aislinn saw and snortchuckled under her breath. Not that she had any illusions about their relationship being more than allies, friends. It was still amusing to be wandering around the faerie fest with the only actual 'faerie'.
Several years ago, when she had first met them, she'd had a head full of myths and faerie tales and no few more modern tales about Elves. It didn't take long for the mask to slip, for the idealized image in her head to slam against the reality of nearly semi immortal beings who had as many flaws as any other living beings. Perfectionism kills creativity, and love someone had told her. Told her on the heels of falling for one of the Sidhe who'd only been there for a week before he headed to Outer Mongolia on a long term mission. Yeah, someone, Bran who had adopted her as honorary Ravenkin Sister. Bran who had no less than two humans who kept reincarnating back into his life, despite his many quirks. Also Tas, who had loved a man once, gone into rage-grief when he was killed, and been a wild horse for more than a century. Tas, who did not care to find a 'soulmate' or permanent lover. Earla who had more romantic encounters than Aislinn could count, with more... what were they anyway, different species? Where the heck did they fit on the taxonomic tree? And Rain, who kept finding Bran, lifetime after lifetime, and Marshhawk, the raptor rehabber who had somehow ended up with Jon and his exotic rescued cats. One of them had said the universe is perfect in its imperfection. She eyed Connor, certainly he had imperfections.
She was having a hard time finding them.
"Hey,"
"What?" Aislinn blinked, clearing her head.
Connor was gently touching a sculpted dragon, designed to wrap its tail around one's neck whilst sitting on a shoulder. "This is an amazing piece of art."
"Thanks," said the young woman setting up her booth. Her eyes settled on his leaf shaped ears, then his eyes, she paused a little longer than most.
"Humans have envisioned them so many different ways..." Connor began.
"And how do the Elves see them?" She was playing along, Aislinn thought, with the cosplay she thought she saw.
Connor smiled, "We only see them when they desire us to, and then they can take any form they wish."
The girl smiled back, went back to her arranging of her wares. Connor handed her a card for Hawk Circle and its own faires.
The girl chuckled, "Seriously, the ELF?"
Connor flashed his privateer grin, winked, then followed Aislinn down Wayfarers Way.
He paused to peer at every stand, gently touching the wire wrapped stones, the mermaid and dragon gauntlets, the dreamcatchers, the bangles and earrings and handmade plush unicorns, Green Man carvings, handing out cards for Hawk Circle, asking questions of the craftspeople still setting up. Every size, shape color and gender, they all had approximately the same reaction to him: they would begin talking about their craft, look up, catch his eyes, and fall silent for a moment, as if they'd fallen into the space between the stars. Connor would smile and glance away, asking another question, prompting the craftsperson to go on.
Down the main way, they encountered The Ice Giant, a van sized food truck draped in icy northern colors. It appeared to offer ice creams, snow cones and other frozen treats. Aislinn eyed Connor, "Not those kind of ice giants I hope."
"They would not like this climate. Or its changing." Connor stepped up, studied the sign, and looked at Aislinn, "which one would you like?"
"Chesapeake Bay Bottom, is that..."
"Double Death Chocolate, basically," Ice Giant Woman said, "more chocolate than you can possibly... imagine..." she trailed off, eyeing Connor up, down, then up again, and getting lost in his eyes.
He coughed, and pointed at something on the sign in a cone, in blues and purples, "DelMarVa Delight?"
"Blueberry... raspberry...all... the berry..." Ice Woman said. Her eyes trailed down his be-purpled chest again.
"Ahmmm..." he eyed the sign and fished in the bag hanging at his waist, and produced a ten.
Ice woman took it, in a kind of cheerful daze, and in a minute produced change and two cones, piled extra high. She studied the raven design on his tunic. "Excellent... embroidery... there."
Aislinn cut in, "We're doing a raven program, we've got, a raven. I'll be the, ah wandering bard. With a raven. Look for us." she smiled and pulled Connor away back onto the path.
She watched him devour his cone, slowly... deliciously... realized she was imagining him licking other things, shook her head to clear it. The first words that managed to fall out of her mouth were, "Ice cream... do you have that at Hrafnheim, in Erda?"
He looked at her, bemused, "Ice cream and its relatives go back to at least the first century BC. Both Hrafnheim and Erda have ice houses, ice harvested in the mountains, or in winter. The seventh to tenth century emperors of the Tang Dynasty may have been the first to make something like ice cream. Cow, goat or buffalo milk, heated with flour, camphor was added to enhance flavor and texture..."
"Camphor, the smelly stuff made from evergreen trees?" Aislinn asked. "Uh."
"I hear it was good."
"You weren't there?"
"I'm not THAT old."
"I think Bran is."
"That's how my brain is full of weird bits of knowledge. A certain cousin who likes to talk endlessly about weird, yet interesting things."
"Yes, yes he does."
They walked down the main path, Aislinn studying the map of the site. Small signs in decorative script, printed and laminated with arrows pointing the way read Wanderer's Way, Merchant's Maze, Dragon's Den, Mermaid Grotto... "Why is it always merMAIDS," Aislinn muttered, "We have merFOLK, and at least one of them is real, not just a hobbyist in spandex, and he's definitely not a maid."
Connor eyed a passing fairy woman in a vast swath of greens with wire and tule wings. "The Victorian Age, hm."
"Flower fairies of the wayside." Aislinn said. She made little fluttery motions with her hands.
"Ehhh."
"Corsets."
"Confine and control your women." Connor's eyebrows dropped a notch into definite disapproval.
"At least they had Sherlock Holmes."
"Stories needed more women. Maybe a little sister..."
The grandmother aged woman setting up Crone's Creations looked up and kept looking.
Connor stopped at the table in front of the Crone's tent, eyed the polished stones and crystals wrapped in copper and silver and gold wire. He passed a long fingered hand over the lot and paused over one blue and green stone. "Ah," He glanced up at the woman behind the table. She met his eyes, but didn't have that stoned look Aislinn was used to seeing. The woman held his blue gaze and seemed to look deeper.
Some folk, Aislin thought, still remember who you really are.
"Something talking to you?" She said, still gazing at him. It wasn't the gaze of most women, the one that wanted him to lick something more than an ice cream cone. It was intent, curious, but steady and carrying some wisdom.
Connor picked up the stone, and held it in his hand for a moment.
Aislinn had learned to channel those energies through her harp, through her hands in the martial arts she learned from Bran and the others. She had learned to see them. Connor was channeling something, into the blue and green stone.
"This is a good one," he said, "but I think you knew that." He laid it back down, "I feel like someone will need this."
She smiled and nodded. "Someone often needs many of these. That's why I make them."
Connor dipped into his pouch and produced a Hawk Circle card. "Come visit us. We do our own festivals several times a month. Vendors welcome." Softer he said, "Allies especially welcome." He smiled.
The woman smiled back, "I certainly will." She paused, "Pick one, for yourself... or your lady friend."
Connor stepped aside, gestured to Aislinn. She picked one in mossy greens and browns, wrapped in copper. It felt like Hawk Circle's raven woods.
"She saw you." Aislinn said.
"Yes. Some still have eyes to see, even without raising the veil."
Aislinn turned the mossy stone over in her hand, "Moss agate."
"Healing. Balance. Tranquility. Some farmers used to hang them from trees, or around the horns of oxen while plowing to ensure productive harvests. Fosters balance of male and female energies... and new relationships."
Aislinn felt her face go warm. Well, that could still mean allies. Friends. Ravenkin Sister.
Connor held out a hand, "Here, let me see..."
She handed it to him, and saw the subtle energies he channeled into it.
"There." He smiled with a bit of the privateer smile Aislinn associated with Bran.
"What? I can throw magic missles now? Maybe a raise dead spell? Repel telemarketers?"
He didn't answer, just grinned wider.
Aislinn sat before the tent, harp on her lap, the raven beside her on his perch. No leash or jesses adorned this bird, not even for show. And part of the show involved him doing some of the aerial tricks ravens, but not crows, could do.
"Ravens are incredible mimics," Aislinn said to the gathered crowd, "In Bernd Heinrich's book Mind of the Raven, it is mentioned that after some construction in one park, people kept hearing '3...2...1..." and here she made a fair imitation of an explosion into her portable mic. Behind her the raven shifted on his perch, and quothe, "3...2...1... PQCHOOOOOOOO!" in a perfect imitation of an explosion.
The audience chuckled and some applauded.
The raven followed with a very authentic sound of a toilet flushing.
"Yeah, THAT was also heard on a park after they installed flush toilets." She held up a hand, and the raven dropped onto her glove. She stood, and lofted him into the air. He stroked upwards into the sky, then tumbled down in a graceful series of barrel rolls. "Ravens are part of Nature's recycling crew. They're omnivores, scavengers, and without them, and here in PA, also crows, opossums and vultures, we'd be up to our eyeballs in dead things."
A kid in the crowd went "eeeeeeeeeewwwww!"
"They also have a close relationship with Wolf. They have been seen signaling to hunting wolf packs, 'prey, this way!' The pack will follow the ravens' lead to elk or deer, take it down, and share the kill. Or at least, not mind too much when the ravens come down and nab some lunch, and pull a few wolf tails for fun." Here the raven landed on her head and yanked playfully at Aislinn's braid. "Questions?" she said, holding out her hand, the raven dutifully bounced onto it.
"What's their name?" a girl asked.
"Holmes." quothe the raven.
Aislinn smiled, feeling like a dork... that was the one thing they had not discussed, if the raven had a name. Well now he had Connor's last name, which was unlikely to be used here for Connor in his usual form, so, OK fine.
"Shouldn't that be Poe?" someone quipped.
"Nevermore." quothe the raven.
Aoife, behind the table at Crone's Creations looked up from her crafting to see a teen, of indeterminate gender, peering at the things on the table. They passed a hand over the stones, much the way the tall Elf had earlier, the one with the raven design on his tunic, the one with the raven black hair and the sense about him that Raven was more than just a design on a tunic. The one from an environmental dot org called, of all things, the E.L.F. The one who had charged that blue and green stone. The stone the teen was now holding.
"How much?" the teen asked.
There was something about them, their aura was... muddled. Bright colors, but overlaid with... something. Aoife could see the energy from the stone beginning to seep up into that muddled mass of greys, bringing some sort of... light... to it.
"What's in your pocket?" Aoife said.
"Um, " the voice sounded girlish, or very young boy, and the face was as indeterminate in age as in gender. They dug in one pocket, then the other, and produced a five.
Much less than the twenty and up Aoife usually charged. She held out her hand, "Perfect."
The kid smiled, "It...feels..."
"Right?" Aoife finished.
"Yeah."
"Keep it close," Aoife said, "I think it has some Elf magic in it."
The kid smiled, slightly, and not in the way adults did when Aoife said things like that. No hah hah that's cute. Nope. The kid seemed to be one of those who could see...
Aislinn let the last note sink into the hot summer air. The small cluster of faire-goers applauded and wandered off. Connor appeared with a vast funnel cake on a ceramic plate.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Funnel cake stand, over there," he nodded in the direction of Ye Olde Court of Foodies.
"No, I mean the awesome ceramic."
"Oh. Brought it with me, from home." He handed it to her.
She pulled off a chunk of funnel cake and stared at the intricate design dancing around the edges of the plate. "Must have some sort of story..."
"One of my mother's You Too Shall Be Well Rounded lessons for several of us."
Aislinn laughed.
"What?"
"It's... round. Well... rounded?"
"Hah." He gave her an eyeroll.
"When did you make it?"
"When, where, you humans love to put things on a calendar and a map and a nice neat chart somewhere."
"Now you sound like Bran."
"It's in the DNA. And we spent a lot of time together. Viking."
"Did what, with Vikings?"
"Viking, it's a verb. Among other things, we came to the Americas before the Spanish colonizers."
"Oh, right."
"Privateering in the War of 1812. Interfering with the slave trade." He paused, and his face lost its humor, "Then the world blew up, twice."
"World wars one and two." She looked over at him, a thousand unanswered questions tumbling like ravens in an updraft.
"Those were human conflicts. We do not... normally... fight... in such."
"Prime directive." Aislinn said.
"What?"
"It's going to be awhile before we get you up to Bran's nerd quotient. Star Trek. Don't interfere with, eh, less advanced civilizations."
Connor fixed her with a blue stare, "You have a telescope that peers to the dawn of time. You have robots on Mars. You have... Mr. Google. Everybody's got a computer in their pocket that has more power than the computers that sent the first mission to touch the moon. There's nothing less advanced about humans. You're just... different. Different gifts. We just leave your fights to you." He picked apart a chunk of funnel cake, leaving a dusting of snowy sugar on the ground. "Except those wars. They touched everything. Including us. So we got involved. We spied. We flew. We untangled secret messages. We carried others."
Aislinn felt it, the undercurrent of things he wasn't saying. "My grandfather fought in it, came back in one piece, lucky for him. Not so lucky for others. There were things he wouldn't even talk about to his wife."
Connor nodded. "I have done all the talking, to our Elders, to the Grandmothers, to the Wise." He fell silent.
"OK... then." Aislinn fidgeted apart the last bit of funnel cake, offered him the half.
He took it. "OK." He sighed. "I lost someone. It is, for your folk, a long time ago, what, three generations? Four? So all dust now."
"Some griefs take longer than others to heal." Aislinn said.
They finished the cake, Connor wiped off the plate and placed it carefully in the tent, on the little foldy table they'd brought. He emerged to find Aislinn absently plucking harp strings and staring out over the scattered faire-goers, a motley array of colors in evening sun. He followed her gaze.
"You feel something," he said softly.
"A great disturbance in the Force..."
"What?"
"Talk to Bran about the nerdy..." she stood, frowning vaguely off into the distance.
"I feel it too. A darkness."
Aislinn turned to look at him, "Like what? Dark lords? Evil minions? Politicians of a certain stripe?"
He dropped his eyebrows a notch, focusing. "Dark, but Dark is not always evil..."
"Yeah but sometimes it is." It felt... dangerous... She clutched her harp closer, a hand playing over the strings, ready to raise a shield or...
The darkness rounded a tent in the form of the least possible scary thing: a big furry black Newfoundland dog.
"Loose dog." Aislinn said, and as soon as the words were spoken, she knew...
"Not. A. Dog." Connor said.
"Shapeshifter?"
Not A Dog met their gaze for a moment, then turned and trotted off, its gait utterly normal.
"Follow it!" they both said at once.
Aislinn tucked her harp under her arm, and jogged after Connor, already in the lead. Ahead of them, the light crowd parted like a bow wave before Not A Dog. Eyes followed them, assuming they were trying to catch their own wayward mutt. Aislinn began to fall behind. Connor slowed, "Stay with it!" Aislinn said, "I'll... catch up."
He shook his head, "I need the bard."
"What?"
He took her hand, "Trust me?"
"Ahhhhhh..." she felt her feet lighten, her whole body, as if she could lift off, as if she was floating in water. She looked down, "AHHH!" Her feet were still firmly on the ground, but now Connor was jogging forward, and she with him, effortlessly. Down Wanderer's Way, Not A Dog meandering ahead through Merchant's Maze, around the Dragon's Den, past the Mermaid Grotto, where several mers lounged in an inflatable pool. Not A Dog turned left and vanished.
"Ohcrap, now what." Aislinn breathed.
"Close. Hasn't gone far."
They turned left, around a merchant selling breezy sheer cloaks and fairy wings...
Not A Dog was standing before a slender teen, staring at... him, her, them. The kid stood, transfixed. Not A Dog took a step forward.
Connor said, "Please. Start playing. The harp."
"Play what?"
"Whatever comes to mind." He stepped forward, raised a hand.
Not A Dog went into a sudden down stay, a startled look of Whatthehell?" on its drooly loose lipped face.
"Stay." Connor said, but not to the dog. To the kid.
The kid had apparently failed Obedience School 101 and fled.
Aislinn struck a chord, another, and a tune poured forth like a storm tide.
Connor gestured, Not A Dog rose and leapt after the kid. Five bounding strides and it knocked the kid down in a glorious demonstration of This Is What Giant Dogs Do For Fun.
"DOWN!" Connor gestured again and Not A Dog obeyed. Connor stalked up to the kid, still sitting on the ground, peering up at him, then at Not A Dog, then at Connor, then at Aislinn approaching with the harp. Then at Connor, and into his eyes.
The kid's eyes widened.
"Ah, you have the sight." Connor's eyes fell to the wire wrapped stone on its cord around their neck.
"Why did you sic your... it's not a dog, is it..." they looked at the massive mound of black fur, panting in the last evening heat.
"It is not, and I did not send it." He looked up at Aislinn, "Keep playing," he said softly.
Not A Dog grumbled something under its breath but stayed. Faire goers passed by, unaware of the fae battle going on.
"But it was sent, and you have something it wants. Or rather, whoever sent it wants."
The kid clutched the wire wrapped stone, "The Crone said something about Elf Magic..."
"Yes, it has, I put it there. And it is about the only thing besides us keeping the Gytresh from spiriting you away with..." he looked down, scanned the kid with other senses than sight. "What else have you recently acquired."
Behind them, the harp filled the air with distant sounds of surf and storm.
"Ahhhh," the kid's eyes went from Connor to Not A Dog to the bard with the harp. Black raven on the Elf's tunic, white raven on the bard's. "Ravens," they said, and reached around the back of their neck, unclasping another necklace, this one with a large medallion...
Round. With something like Celtic or Norse knotwork, and intertwining ravens.
Connor reached down a hand, "stand." Behind him Not A Dog stood. "NOT YOU!" he commanded. Not A Dog dropped back into his down stay.
Aislinn's song had changed from nearly breaking storm to fierce lightning. A small crowd had gathered. She moved so she still had a clean line of sight with Connor and the kid... and whatever Not A Dog was.
"Where. Did. You get that?" Connor said.
"Ummm, ebay?"
"What?"
"Internet thing." Aislinn said over the strumming chords of the song.
"Inter... HOW?"
"What IS it?" the kid hastily thrust it at Connor, looked past him to Not A Dog.
"Something with more power than you can handle. Something someone else wants, but surely should NOT have."
The kid looked from Connor to Aislinn to Not A Dog, "but, um, you're OK with it."
"I most certainly am not. But I can get it into safe hands." He turned to Not A Dog, reached down and caught up a bit of shaggy hair, pulled.
Not A Dog let out a "yerp!"
"I should take YOU back to Hawk Circle with me, but this will suffice to track you." He stuck the hair in his pouch. "Now, begone, and trouble us no more."
Not A Dog stood, eyed each of them, kind of sadly Aislinn thought, then trotted off, vanishing around a tent toward a patch of trees. She did one last flourish of harp music, Connor nodded, and the last note faded into the falling dusk.
"Guy trash?" Aislinn said.
"It's one of many kinds of shapeshifters who appear as large black dogs. It is mentioned in Jane Eyre."
"You read Jane Eyre?"
"I have read many things. The Hrafnheim library is extensive."
The kid's eyes went from one to the other, then back to Connor.
He held out a hand, "Connor, Connor Holmes." He produced a card for Hawk Circle and the ELF.
"Skylar Brown." They looked at the card, "Earth Life Foundation... seriously, ELF?"
"Don't look at me, it's my cousin's fault."
Skylar closed their hand over the wire wrapped stone. "Um, can I keep this?"
"Of course. I didn't know who would need it, but I felt someone would."
"That, not-dog thing. Will it be back?"
"No."
"Is it... evil?"
"No, not really. It has powers and can be dangerous if you don't know how to approach it. Someone was using it to find this." He held up the medallion. "Ebay." He shook his head.
"WHO on ebay?" Aislinn asked.
"Um," Skylar reached into a bag slung from their hip, produced a phone. Blit blit bleep bloop. Skylar thrust it at Connor.
"Noooooo no no no no... give it to me." Aislinn said.
"Why?" Skylar frowned.
"Because Elves channel energy in really inconvenient ways and fry electronics. Unless they're shielded by Dwarf tech."
"What? Wow." Skylar handed the phone over to Aislinn.
She took a photo with her own phone, being sure the vendor was visible. Then read it out loud to Connor.
He fished for a pen and paper and wrote it down. "Paper, a viable technology since 105 AD."
"You that old?" Skylar said.
"Maybe."
"Cool. Can you help me with my history assignment?"
"Ah." He glanced at Aislinn, his face clearly saying help.
"Well, come see us and we'll see what you can help us with. The fae need allies, and since you can see..." said Aislinn. "We need volunteers with our educational programs, with the horse stable, the wildlife, the stream program, kayaking, the raven program..."
"Ravens! I did a report on them last year. I may have overdone it. Teacher only wanted 20 pages, I gave 'em a hundred."
"Ah." Connor said, a hint of the privateer smile returning.
Skylar turned to Aislinn, "I can play a mean guitar, I don't know how that would work with a harp, but maybe... maybe you could show me how you did that..." they waggled their fingers..."magic stuff."
Aislinn glanced at Connor.
"You may indeed be able to learn that," he said.
Skylar held out their hand, "Let me see your phone, I'll give you my number..."
Numbers were duly exchanged, Connor made sure Skylar had the biggest big gulpy drink from The Ice Giant and three hot dogs with all the fixins.
A phone pinged, Skylar looked down, "ah, Mom's here. Gotta go." They paused. "Hey, um, thanks. I'll, ah be there. At Hawk Circle. Soon. Mom's pretty enthusiastic about environmental stuff, and volunteering. She's not into the faerie fest stuff so much, cosplay, LARPing, D&D, doesn't really get that. Oh...and uh, also thanks for not asking if Skylar's a boy's name or a girl's."
Connor shrugged, "why would it matter?"
"Seems to, to most folks."
"He is definitely not most folks." Aislinn said.
"Yeah." Skylar turned and took a couple steps, then turned back, "Black raven," they pointed at Connor, "white raven, they pointed at Aislinn. "Kinda like a yin-yang. Balance. Dynamic balance. Live long and prosper guys."
"What?" said Connor.
"Ask Bran." Aislinn said.
The medallion with the ravens was delivered to the Grandmothers; Aura, Delphi and Cora. Dragon Woman pored over it with them, all four declaring it Something They Would Deal With Themselves. Connor gave them his tuft of black Not A Dog hair so they could track whence the beast had been summoned.
Both he and Aislinn sat in the Black Dragon, downing meade made by the fauns of Hawk Circle.
Aislinn pulled out the mossy agate. Healing. Balance. Tranquility. Balance of male and female energies... and new relationships. Allies. Friends. Just friends.
Connor was scrolling through his new, shielded smart phone. "Look at this." He held up a page with the latest meme.
"Um. Hahhah."
"There's... so...much." He looked down and scrolled some more.
"And it'll suck your brains right out through your eyeballs if you keep scrolling." Aislinn said.
Connor set the phone down, met her eyes.
Nice eyes, she thought, deep, like sky over the Rockies, but with some kind of inner light that most people didn't see. Mostly they didn't get past the long legs and the nice chest. They didn't see the big heart inside.
"Why did you choose Raven?" he said.
"What?"
"Long ago, you chose Raven as your shield."
"I don't know. I read some books. I saw one one day, or, at least I wasn't sure if it was a really big crow, or something else. We didn't used to have them in this part of Pennsylvania. So many legends attached to them. Odin. Morrigan. Raven carrying the sun, moon and stars into the sky." She shrugged. She really didn't remember exactly why. It had just happened...
"It felt right." Connor said.
"Yeah. Little did I know." She gestured at the Black Dragon and what lay beyond.
"Why white?"
Aislinn shrugged, "a book I read mentioned they come in other colors sometimes, like Bran's stormsilver pewter blue cat look."
Connor smiled, "he kind of stands out in our tribe. The not-black sheep of the family." His hair moved and faint iridescences danced in it... like raven wings. He looked up at Aislinn, "I'm glad you were there."
"Ah. You had it all under control."
"Only because you kept playing."
"Heh, really?"
"I was barely holding them, the kid, the magic item, the Gytresh. Couldn't have done it without you."
Aislinn looked at him, trying to wrap her brain around what that meant.
"Skylar said it, we are rather like a yin-yang. Balance. Dynamic balance. Balance of male and female energies." He nodded at the mossy agate, still in her hand.
"Oh."
"We make a good team," he said quietly.
"Ah." Allies. She made herself look up, into those deep eyes. Good thing Elves didn't read minds (because it was rude). Well, allies, friends, good enough.
"There are, ah, other ways to combine our energies," he said.
It took Aislinn a whole 'nother minute, and another glass of meade to realize he meant more than just allies.
And yes, he certainly had other talents.
