Harvest of Changelings (12 page)

The ceiling fan is beating down over my head. Outside I hear crickets and cicadas, cranking, cranking, cranking, their screeches reaching a crescendo, then gone. And again, and ebb and flow of noise. It's hot. Even with the fan on, I am sweating. I guess the computer generates more heat than I thought. At least the window units in the bedrooms are cranking right along with the insects.

Maybe I'll give in tomorrow and call the local AC boys and order central air. I can certainly afford it. Well, not tomorrow, since tomorrow is the first day of school and I am afraid for my son. He hasn't been fairy-sick since the first of the month, since Lughnasad, but I am certain there will be other bouts. What happens if he gets sick at school? Will his teacher whack out or call 911 or Dorothea Dix and have him taken away in a straitjacket?

I have been to Nottingham Heights, talked with the principal, a Miss Hallie Bigelow. A bit rough around the edges, but she cares passionately for her school, the children, education—a good woman. His teacher, Charlotte Collins, seemed a bit cold, but all right. Probably distracted, the first day and all.

Maybe I should put him in a private school. Ravenscroft is supposed to be one of the best. I can certainly afford that, too—I have barely touched the money Emma left me in her will. New cars every few years, yes. But mostly I have spent it on Malachi. To arrange for his forged birth certificate, immunization records, doctor's records, fake physicals.

And all the books and art prints. His mother loved art museums.

But Malachi is different enough. Putting him in a private school
would mark him as even more set apart from the rest. No thanks.

Besides, it's not the school I am worried about so much. Notting - ham Heights feels like a good
place.
No, it's not the
school
—
it's
everything else. People are talking and
whispering
—
not
about
Malachi
—
but
it's like the very air has become charged, or the atmo -
spheric
energy has changed its voltage, AC to DC. The list of strangenesses gets longer and longer. Since Lughnasad, in Wake County alone, I have noted the following:

1. Man found in tree in Pullen Park, swears he spontaneously levi - tated, placed under observation at Wake County Medical.
   
2. Sixteen sightings of UFOs: mostly balls of green and blue light. Three people claim they saw a dragon in flight; five, a winged horse.
   
3. Ghosts sighted at almost every graveyard in the county.
   
4. St. Raphael's Catholic Church petitions Archbishop for an exorcism; claims education wing is infested with poltergeists.
   
5. As for poltergeists: incidents in bars, schools, playgrounds, offices, malls. One afternoon at Crabtree Valley Mall, the store security gates kept rising and falling, every five minutes, for two hours.
   
6. Librarians at Cameron Village arrive to find every book off the shelf, stacked in neat piles all over the library. A handful, like birds released from a cage, were flying about the room, hitting against doors as if trying to escape. Two librarians were placed on medical leave.
   
7. Power shortages, blackouts, appliances, cars going dead—repairmen and mechanics swamped with calls.
   
8. In the past two weeks, fifteen people have called in unicorn sightings, in gardens, backyards, front yards, highways.
   

And I have seen the Fomorii—or rather their ghosts or shadows or Projections. I've felt them: that sense of dread, of evil, of badness. Last week I'd swear one came in the library, looking for Malachi, a dark, scaly creature, those red eyes. Mal was sitting in the children's section, reading, and the thing was going straight toward him. I ran across the library, yelling.

Of course there was nothing there. Mrs. Carmichael thinks I need to see a doctor. I don't know—maybe Jack is right. He thinks I am protecting my own fears, conjuring up my own shadows. Regardless, I won't let Malachi take off the twelve-pointed star, even to bathe.

His mother could have blasted the thing with a fireball or something. I don't know if Malachi could have or not. He is still just a ten-year-old boy, who is half-human as well as half-fairy.

Malachi continues to change, sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once. His eyes are golden now, and sometimes they glow in the dark. His ears are as pointed as his mother's, and like hers, nobody but me and Jack notice they are. He seems to have instinctively hidden them with fairy glamour. He can fly. He is psychokinetic and he can manipulate light and he is beginning to see auras. But Malachi can't count on any of his fairy-powers—his age? His human heritage? And while we have had no more crazy nights with wild lights, I know he doesn't feel well a lot of the time. He tires easily and his appetite is off; he's losing weight.

 

You know, there must be a lot of fairy DNA in the human genome. There have always been clairvoyants, witches, fortune-tellers, mediums, psychokinetic, levitators and bilocators, telepaths—the paranormal list goes on. Yes, a goodly number of these paranormals were and are fakes, but now, I believe the rest were and are real. All the changeling stories, the incubi and succubae, the pregnancies that “just happened”—they're true, or a lot are. But, doesn't this fly in the face of all we know about biology? How can two species, Homo magicus, and Homo sapiens, from two different rooms in the House of Creation, interbreed? Perhaps all we know are the operative words here, but even given that, I think there must be another explanation. I think the answer might be in another old story, one I don't know that well, and actually haven't read, but have only heard about. Adam was supposed to have had a first wife, Lilith, according to Jewish folklore. And Lilith, in other Semitic myths, was a demon, or had extraordinary powers. I remember in the Narnia stories Lilith was supposed to be a jinn, and the ancestress of the White Witch. Perhaps God originally had thought to give humankind magic, the paranormal, ESP, as a manifest part of our being. Did He change his mind? Did Lilith succumb to some sort of temptation, as Adam and Eve did? Or did God intend for Homo magicus and Homo sapiens to be separate all along and yet related and connected, cousin species, like dogs and wolves? Lilith left Adam or did he cast her out? I wish I knew the story. What-ever happened, I bet she left pregnant. And she just went next door, so to speak, through a door that has been, apparently, easy to open.

Now, Malachi thinks there is a difference in witches and fairies. Witches do magic, fairies are magic. Valeria never mentioned witches in Faerie—but then, did we talk about everything? Are witches something peculiar to our universe? Did Lilith leave a few of her children here?

I don't know.

Malachi is telepathic now, too. It started a week after Lughnasad. We were going to Jack and Hilda's for dinner. I was in my bedroom, changing clothes and worrying about Hilda, about what Jack had told her, if he had told her, and how she would behave around Malachi. Some serious fretting.

Malachi came down the hall. “Dad, Hilda's okay. Jack hasn't told her about me yet, but she will be okay. Don't worry; it will be okay.”

I stood there half-dressed, in my underwear and a Carolina T-shirt, and stared at him. “How did you know I was worrying about her?”

“I heard you.”

“Mal, I wasn't talking out loud. I was thinking—you heard my thoughts.” I sat down hard on the bed, with my head in my hands. Malachi came and sat down beside me on the bed.

Dad?

I looked up. “And you can—what mind-talk, too? Farspeak?”

“Dad, don't be mad at me; I didn't know; I didn't mean to listen in—”

He started crying and I hugged him. And we talked. About how people's thoughts—even his father's—are private and farspeaking is one thing, but listening in was no better than eavesdropping, and would he want everybody to hear his thoughts?

 

Like all his new fairy-senses or abilities, Malachi can't rely on his telepathy. But he's learning how to screen out other people—sort of like a background radio or TV, he said—and can really only pick up the thoughts of people really close to him. Mine, Jack's, mostly. Not Thomas, which surprised me at first, but then Thomas Ruggles is part of the strangeness, too. I don't want him near my son. Thomas is more than a little creepy and he smells wrong—not BO, really, but like a really old book or corners in deserted houses, an obscure spice. Thomas smells dark. And his eyes: they have become opaque and hard, like cold stones set in his head.

Thomas and Jack aren't talking.

Anyway.

I have to take him to Faerie; I know that, but I don't know how. I watch him—he's not well and he's not getting well. Being here, being half-fairy and having no real control over his feyness—if I don't get Malachi to Faerie, he's going to die.

I have stacks of books in my office on fairy lore, magic, Wicca, the occult, and I am going through them, painstakingly, looking for clues. In Ireland, there are fairy mounds and fairy rings. And the Cherokee
have stories about gates between here and the Otherworld, which are behind waterfalls and under cliffs and beneath dark pools. To pass through into what sounds like Faerie—a world of little people, giants, humans with super powers, strange animals—one had to fast, bathe, and have a magical guide.

Which doesn't help me. Valeria was going to take a taxi to her gate, so it is near Garner and Raleigh. The next day the gates can be opened is Halloween or Samhain. I have two months to find her gate and take my son down the Straight Road to Faerie and save his life. In all the books, so far nothing, except the Cherokee stories, says North Carolina, let alone the eastern Piedmont.

Two months.

I lit a candle in church yesterday, after mass at St. Mary's. One of the tall, two-dollar ones. A new priest, fresh from seminary, Father Jamey Applewhite, gave the homily, on the Catholic perspective of the world as sacramental, as being imbued with the presence of God, and God as an ultimately unknowable mystery expressed in Creation. Accept the mystery, he said. There is no reason to be afraid of what we cannot hope to ever fully understand, at least in this world. The Celts accepted the mystery. They lived in a sacral world, numinous with spirits in trees, lakes, fountains, springs. Like Faerie.

I am afraid for my son, that his mystery will not be accepted, by the people around him, by the very earth itself.

Malachi keeps asking me to tell the story about his mother, over and over. Every detail again and again, about her, about Faerie. So I tell him the story over and over and over again ...

After the rite and the feast were over, the Second remained behind to clean up and put everything in its proper place. Out of habit she repeated the healing words said to close the rite and seal the call to the changelings. She carefully gathered the salt from around the burning, white candles and took the bowl of water and rue off the table and after saying the appropriate words, emptied the bowl out the window. The White City could stand healing as well. Then she put the bowl back on the shelf by the window.

“This candle is the earth that is sorely wounded. By the power of the Light Beyond The Light, we abjure the wounds and call home those who were sent out, that their strength will strengthen the
earth,” the Second said and extinguished the north candle. The white shadows that played around her grew smaller and less distinct.

“This candle is the fire that heals as it burns, refines, and changes. By the power of The Light Beyond The Light, we dissolve the scars of the hurting flame and call home those who were sent out, that their souls will enkindle the flames of light and healing that are flickering,” the Second said and extinguished the south candle.

“This candle is the wind that clears and sooths the mind, the heart, and the soul. By the power of The Light Beyond The Light, we ask for the wind of light, warmth, and sweetness; we call home those who were sent out, that their minds will make the very air clear and sharp and strong.” She extinguished the east candle. The room grew smaller as the third white flame was put out.

“This last candle is the water that cleanses and nourishes away the dark. By the power of The Light Beyond The Light, we call for the water of life as we call home those were sent out, that they may bring new life.”

When the west candle was out, the only light in the room, coming through the north and east windows, was that of White Moon, a silvery white outlining the tables and the chairs and candles and the shelves in sharp silhouette. The bowls on the shelves glowed. The Second stood at the north window for a long time, watching the moon and smelling the sea before she finally left, carefully leaving the door slightly ajar behind her.