“Training exercise,” suggested another marine.
“We are here for a training exercise. There is nothing to worry ab—”
“You’re here because you’re guarding that,” Emily said with a gesture to the intricate ring on the ground. “It’s an improvised time-traveling device made by one Merle Lynn that he thought would integrate Earth with a magical world of fairies and elves. But it didn’t.”
The marine screwed up his face, groaned at his men. “Oh, come on! Does everyone know more about what’s going on than us?”
“This is nothing,” said Erno. “Ask her to guess what number you’re thinking of.”
“So they left you to guard the device,” Emily added, “just in case it suddenly works, which it won’t. And the others left to confront Nimue inside Goodco headquarters in the middle of Lake Meer.”
Just then the ground shook again, and not just the ground—the trees, the air; the secret strings that tie everything together. You may wonder how a person would notice that last one, but when it happens you just know.
The lightning had ignited the sky, and now the sky was on fire.
“It’s too late.” Emily shuddered. “They’re going to be too late.”
In their Iroquois helicopter they balanced in the air above Lake Meer. The other chopper had drifted ahead and engaged the enemy—the enemy being a mere dozen Freemen firing rifles from the roof. These Freemen were subdued quickly and laid down their weapons.
“This is great,” said Merle. “Why didn’t we do it this way all along? With a private army, I mean.”
“Because everyone else on Earth thought we were mad,” said John.
Freemen were streaming out of the headquarters to the edge of the bridge, which of course was ruined. Some of them were taking their chances in the water, attempting to swim across.
“Even they can tell somethin’s wrong,” said Mick. “The rats’re desertin’ the ship.”
John pointed at the bridge, or rather the lack of it. “Did you lot do that?” he asked the staff sergeant.
“Negative. I was about to ask you the same question.”
They landed on the roof and established a perimeter, and Merle asked, “What does that mean, actually? Establishing a perimeter,” and the staff sergeant got somebody less important to explain it to him, and then John and Merle and Mick were rushed down a stairwell and into Goodco headquarters.
“I’m getting word,” said the staff sergeant with his hand up to his ear, “that the Freemen in the city are losing control of the children. It’s like the kids are waking up.”
“Nimue’s losin’ control of everythin’,” said Mick.
“Yes, sir. Also the sky is on fire.”
They all shared a look.
Up ahead and around the corner, men were shouting. John and Merle and Mick were waved ahead, and they saw a Freeman with his hands in the air.
“It’s all falling apart!” he was shouting. “You have to stop her! It isn’t happening like we were told!”
Merle stepped forward. “Okay, calm down. We’re gonna fix this, but you have to tell us where she is.”
“Yeah. Yeah. She’s in a room in the center of the fifth—”
A shot was fired, a head-splitting noise in these close quarters, and the Freemen crumpled. This was immediately followed by the marines raising their weapons in unison, a gruff chorus of men shouting “Drop it! Drop it!” Eventually they disarmed another, more familiar Freeman in a black cowboy hat.
“I recognize this one,” said Mick to Merle.
“Right,” Merle agreed. “From the Philly airport.”
John was outraged. “You shot that man in the back!”
“That man was a traitor,” the Freeman with the black hat said as marines bound his wrists and ankles with plastic ties. “A traitor to all humanity.”
“You prat,” said John. “We would have found her eventually anyway, with or without his help.”
“You got that right,” said Mick. “I can feel it below us. It’s buzzin’ up through the floor.”
The staff sergeant scowled at the Freeman. “Leave him,” he said. “Let the next wave clean up the garbage.”
Erno jerked backward as another marine approached their group carrying a tiny Queen Elizabeth like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Then Emily and Biggs bowed, so Erno shrugged and bowed too.
“Your Majesty,” said Emily.
“You must be Emily,” said the queen. “You appear unsurprised by my size.”
“I assumed you’d look something like this.”
Erno sighed and rolled his eyes. This gave him an unplanned glimpse of the fierce and fiery sky, which he’d been trying to avoid looking at, so he focused on the tiny queen again.
“I’m told you’re in possession of a rare and gifted brain,” the tiny queen continued. “Have you any thoughts about our predicament?”
Emily tightened up a little. “My brain isn’t what it used to be,” she said, and looked down at Merle’s octagonal ring on the ground. “It wasn’t a bad instinct, trying to close the loop like this. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m currently full of magic—I could try to give it a boost, but I still think something’s missing. Some piece of the puz—”
Emily froze, then placed a finger against the wire of her headgear.
“What?” said Erno with a grin. “What is it? I know that look—you’ve figured out what we need to do!”
“Yes,” said Emily. “I’ve figured out what we need to do.” She grimaced and hugged her feeble body. “I’ve figured it out, and it’s impossible.”
On the fifth floor they could all feel it; it was like walking into an oven. Waves of glamour radiated out from the hot center. And as they trod through the high-arched corridors, they came across more Freemen—Freemen lying facedown, Freemen folded into uncomfortable shapes, Freemen with some aspect of them changed by wild magic. One was wearing a dress, another was growing mushrooms from his face, still another was just an orangutan in a robe. One had been made so monstrously large that he would have been terrifying if he wasn’t already dead. Still, they had to thread their way past him single file.
The magic affected Mick first. He doubled over as if he’d been hurt, but he came up laughing. His gnarled old face was nearly split by an agonizing grin, and he began to dance around and clap his hands.
“O lads, I cannot take much more.
I’ve only so much time before
I caper till I’m out o’ breath
An’ laugh myself to death.
“This glamour’s filled me like a cup.
I’ll jig until the jig is up,
An’ cackle till my face goes purple,
Nothing rhymes with purple.
“I’ll—”
But here Merle grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Snap out of it!” he said. “We’re gonna need you in there!”
“Maybe he should just get to safety,” said John.
“No . . . ,” said Mick, panting. “No, I’m all right, lads. Heeee! Sorry. I can . . . heh . . . I can hold it together.”
They all kept an eye on Mick as they advanced. “What’s the situation?” the staff sergeant asked John under his breath.
“He’s a leprechaun,” John answered. “We probably should have explained that before. He’s a magical being, and all this wild magic is making him a bit . . .”
“Drunk? Annoying?”
“HA!” barked Mick.
“I was going to say ‘spirited.’ Anyway, I’m worried it’s going to get to me next.”
The big marine raised an eyebrow. “Why would that be?”
“I’m part fairy,” said John. There was a quiet pause, and he eyed the man. “Is that a problem?”
“No, sir. The United States military is very accepting of that sort of thing nowadays.”
Holes started to appear in the walls they passed. Then wide swaths of the walls and ceiling were absent—not fragmented or collapsed, just gone. The corridor lights flickered,
and here and there water or air spilled out of riddled ductwork.
“What’s that noise?” asked John. “That high-pitched sound—it keeps getting louder.”
Soon they turned a corner that was barely a corner, passed a Freeman made of tubers lying next to a half wall, and then they could see her. The Lady of the Lake, the Godmother.
“Oh,” said John, “it was her. That sound was her.”
She was screaming in the center of the vast ruins of several rooms, white flares and pink fire swirling around her. Wreckage, unrecognizable debris everywhere. The fairy queen herself was like a bright ghost, a diaphanous spirit of light. What was left of the magical machine, with its golden batteries, oscillated around her. The staff sergeant squinted at it.
“What is that?” he muttered.
“Sort of a magical backup generator,” said Merle. “Based on my own designs, I’m sorry to say. Shoot those golden parts out of it, and we might be able to end this thing quick.”
“Heeheeeee!” said Mick.
“Heh,” said John, and then he stifled an explosive laugh behind his hand. “Sorry. Good plan. My laughter has no bearing on the plan.”
“Jefferson!” called the staff sergant, and a marksman with a long, lean rifle stepped forward. “You heard the man.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jefferson took a knee and raised his weapon with steady hands. Merle put his fingers in his ears, and John covered his mouth to suppress another laugh, so Mick covered his eyes just to complete the theme. After the first shot was fired, Jefferson frowned, but he fired two more.
“Sir—” he said.
“I know. Didn’t even hear any impacts.”
Mick twirled in place.
“The magic maelstrom forms a sphere
That makes your bullets disappear!”
“Look, give me a chance to talk to her,” said Merle. “We, ah, have a history.”
“They used to date,” said John, and he cracked himself up.
“No, sir,” said the staff sergeant. “I can’t allow a civilian in there. If we can’t neutralize the machine at a distance, then me and my men will have to secure the room.”
“I really don’t think that’s the best idea—”
The younger marines fell into formation around the staff sergeant, and on his signal they rushed into bedlam.
The man on point began almost immediately to float upward into the air—then he turned upside down, then his fatigues turned pink. The marine called Jefferson dropped his rifle and commenced singing a heartfelt rendition of “La Vie en Rose” in the original French, while another marine nearby kept tripping over thorny vines that sprouted spontaneously through the linoleum. Two more marines were slow dancing, and now the vines were blossoming and actually wrapping their way up several ankles, and soon Merle and Jon and Mick heard an order to retreat and all the men fought their way back into the hall.
Jefferson stared out at nothing in particular. “Don’t even know French,” he whispered.
The staff sergeant was cradling a Dalmatian that he hadn’t had when he’d gone into the room.
“Okay,” he told Merle. “You have five minutes.”
CHAPTER 28
Merle stepped forward, and as soon as he did, the screaming stopped.
“MMMERLIN,” said the shining woman in the eye of the storm.
“Hey, honey,” said Merle.
The swirling glamour surrounded him now, and his appearance changed. Recently he’d swapped the robe he’d been given in the Village of Reek for more workmanlike clothing in Antarctica, but now these coverings spun outward and wove themselves into a robe again—the robe he’d worn so many centuries ago, actually. The very same. His hat became a skullcap, his shoes soft boots.
Then Nimue clenched her hands, and with some effort the light in her dimmed so that she looked more or less like herself. More or less.
Merle gazed at her poreless smoothness and found himself thinking not the word skin, but rather covering. She had the look of something flawlessly manufactured. She would come with instructions for care. She would be kept out of direct sun and wiped down occasionally with a damp cloth. She should have looked her most beautiful, but she also looked her least human; and Merle understood that, to his eyes, she couldn’t be both.
“I see Sir John,” said Nimue. “The leprechaun, Mick—is he with you too?”
Merle glanced over his shoulder. “He’s right there. Can’t you see him? The little Lord of the Dance?”
Nimue was silent. She looked as if she was about to cry.
“Heh. Heee! She can’t see me,” said Mick as he turned and reeled. “That’s . . . ha! That’s her honor, what’s left of it.”
“What’s this?” asked the staff sergeant as he soothed his Dalmatian.
John held his laughter long enough to explain about the honor of the Fay.
“Most fairies,” he said, “most fairies think that doing right means doing well. Winning, having more luck and glamour, that sort of thing. If you act honorably, the universe rewards you.”
“They’ve got some weird ideas about right and wrong,” said the marine.
“They do,” John agreed. “That’s true. But deep down, Nimue must know what she’s doing is evil.”
“That’s why she can’t see me, I’ll reckon,” said Mick, suddenly grave. “That’s why the glamour hurts her, though it makes the likes o’ John an’ me delirious. She don’t feel she’s one o’ the Good Folk anymore.”
“Look at them back there,” said Nimue. “Whispering. Conspiring. You’ve brought an army, I see. I have an army too.”
Merle tilted his head, held his palms out in what he hoped was a nonthreatening way. “Do you, though?” he asked. “Your Freemen have mostly split. And my new friends back there with the fancy cell phones tell me that your block party is breaking up.”
Nimue was silent for a moment. “I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, you know how kids can be. They’re all excited for the sleepover until suddenly it’s the middle of the night and they all want to go home.”
She was glowing fiercer again, and looking more angry than sad.
“They tell me the sky is on fire out there,” Merle continued. “The whole thing’s out of control. And maybe me and my friends are kinda to blame for that, but you have to end it. You have to end it before there isn’t any kind of world left for your people.”
“Lies.”
Merle drew nearer. “It’s not lies, and you know it’s not. Tell me you can feel it.”
“Not a step closer, Merlin. I know your tricks.”
“I’m so sorry, honey. I’m sorry about everything. I still don’t understand how I split the worlds apart, but believe me that I never meant to. I was just trying to save the world I knew.” Merle winced, even as he advanced. Then he sighed, a long, shriving sigh like all his parts were settling inside him. “No. I’m such a liar. I was trying to save my mom and dad. That’s all . . . that’s all it was ever about, was that. I wanted my mom and dad back.”
“I can paralyze you, Merlin. Not another step.”
“Oh, please. Look at you. You don’t have the fine control for a spell anymore. You can barely keep the rift open. You’re not all delicate fingers anymore, sweetheart, you’re a big fist. The best you could do is throw a wild punch, and that’d probably kill me, and you’ve never killed so much as a horsefly without getting a secret cult of Freemen to do it for you.”
Still Merle came closer. Only a dozen feet separated them now.
“Just because I don’t want to doesn’t mean I won’t.”
Merle considered this.
“No. No, it doesn’t, does it?”
Mick inhaled sharply. “He’s gonna do it.”
“Do what?” said John.
“Don’t do it, lad! There’s gotta be another way!”
But Merle vaulted forward, toward Nimue and the machine. Later (and there would be a later, for some), John would be unable to recollect if it
had seemed in slow motion only in his mind or because of Nimue’s weird magic. But: to protect her plans, the Godmother lashed out with a fiery haymaker that knocked the old man clean off his feet and backward, somersaulting, crumpling to the ground.
The marines began to move, but Mick held out an arm. “No, no,” he said. “Not safe yet.”
Nimue looked upon what she had done and wailed. The vortex of witchcraft around her seemed to fly apart, scatter like birds from a dead tree. The magical engine went to pieces with pings and cracks, and the men in the hall had to duck the shrapnel. Then Nimue crawled, as if legless, across the pockmarked floor to where Merle lay.
“Stupid man!” she shouted. “Fool! Oh, my darling.”
“No,” said John in hushed tones, and he started into the room. “No. She doesn’t get to come near him.” But Mick rushed in and grabbed John around the legs, tackled him. “Mick! What’re you doing?”
“I know, son, I’m sorry. But yeh don’t wanna get in that one’s way just yet.”
The storm of glamour had subsided, but Nimue still crackled and glowed. She was glowing brighter as she clutched at Merle’s lifeless body.
“Say something,” she told him. “You always thought you were so smart, so clever. Say something smart. Some famous last words.”
She pulled herself up to him so that they were almost embracing, like lovers.
“You broke the spell, you villain. Say it. Say ‘I told you so.’ Say ‘I . . . I didn’t know you cared.’”
But Merle didn’t, couldn’t. And Nimue burned whiter and brighter until the light of her consumed them both; and when John and Mick and the rest lowered their hands from their eyes, both witch and wizard were gone.
“Ow,” said Emily in the park, and she clutched at her face.
Erno leaned around her. “What’s wrong?”
“My headgear just fell out.”
The elaborately fashioned metal of it had just unraveled and sprung from her mouth.
“Huh. Well, you didn’t need it anyway, right?”