What I saw was Magda, dead.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“At first I thought it was Gilly,” she told me, “but when the griffin followed us into the woods, I knew it couldn’t be. He’d know the woods would stop him. She didn’t.”
“Or maybe she just didn’t care,” I answered. “Maybe—no, not maybe—she hated me so much, she was determined to kill me. And it killed her. My god, how she must have hated me.”
“Witches are like that,” Ruthana said. “You’re well rid of her.” She declared it in a matter-of-fact way. And that was it. Magda was out of my life.
I was (sort of) in Garal’s home. (Don’t ask me to explain that; I never could.) I’d been there since the griffin attack, carried by Garal and—I, later, learned to my surprise—Gilly. He was in awe of his stepfather and obeyed him implicitly. Ruthana wanted to help, but Garal forbade her lest she endanger the welfare of the child.
So, when I “came to” (as so many A. Black protagonists do), I was in Garal and Eana’s residence, my back—I, also, later, learned—in semi-shreds. They gave me something to drink, which immediately allayed the severe pain. Then, over a period of weeks, they worked on my back, their healing magic fully as efficacious (another dandy elitism) as Magda’s—or whoever—or whatever—she’d requested help from. In a short while, the back was taken care of. Lovingly ministered by Ruthana, Garal, and Eana, the torn-up flesh was restored. I never looked—or asked to look—at the griffin’s destruction. I preferred not to see it. It was, doubtless, hair-raising.
During my recovery period, who else but good ol’ Gilly came to visit. Not to wish me well, of course, but to express his amusement that I, much less Ruthana, believed the griffin to be his shape-shifted responsibility. “You think I’m stupid?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think you’re stupid,” I said. “I think you’re a God damn vicious son of a bitch.” I was feeling sassy. Also safe in Garal’s house.
My words only evinced a smile from his goddam, vicious lips. “Get well,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “So I can kill you.”
“Good luck,” I snapped. But I was far from feeling (three!) snappy.
I was scared.
* * *
Later, I spoke to Ruthana about it.
Wasn’t there some way to prevent Gilly from attempting to murder me? Were there no preventive laws in Middle Kingdom?
She only reiterated the only law in Middle Kingdom. Life was sacrosanct, untouchable. Gilly could be punished for a life-threatening action, no more. After the action, that is.
“Punished how?” I asked. “What if he kills me?”
Ruthana smiled at that. A sad smile, naturally. “He can be put away,” she said.
“Not executed?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “All life is precious.”
“What about mine?” I persisted. “Less than precious?”
“It is to me, Alexi,” she said quietly. “If you die, I die. Like Gilly’s mother did after his father was killed.”
“Oh, Ruthana,” I could hardly speak. She lay beside me—carefully—and I held her as tightly as I could. “I love you, Alexi,” she whispered. “You are my life.”
“Oh, God.” I squeezed her until my back stung from the effort.
“Careful,” she murmured. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
She kissed me lovingly. “I’ll watch over you,” she said. “Gilly will never harm you.”
“He’ll try, though, won’t he?” I asked.
Her answer was simple—and chilling to my bones.
“Yes, he will,” she said.
* * *
And so it was. Big-time. If I’d hoped—and I did—that he would take a break from his quest to obliterate me, I was doomed to disappointment. (This is sounding more like an A. Black tome all the time. Midnight Middle Kingdom Massacre? No, too long. Midnight Gilly Kill? No; forget it.)
I was in danger, though. Constantly. Let me enumerate what that bastard (sorry) did to undo me.
1. Somehow (I never found out how—another faerie mystery)—he managed to modify the paths on which Ruthana and I customarily strolled. At first, it created no worse than a slightly confusing alteration in our route—pleasant in any direction. I think Ruthana knew what Gilly had done. There was a smile of faint amusement on her lips. Then, at a specific moment in our walk—maybe fifteen to twenty minutes into it, she took hold of my arm abruptly—she was on my right—and halted me. “Wait,” she said. I watched curiously as she edged forward, pressing her foot down. Did I mention the ground was covered by leaves? In front of her was a pile of them. “Oh, yes,” she said, as though understanding. She tapped her foot down sharply, and the leaves collapsed. They had been obscuring an open hole. “An old well,” Ruthana said. “Not used anymore.”
I drew in a shaking breath. “Good ol’ Gilly,” I said. It occurred to me then that, if Ruthana hadn’t sensed the trap Gilly had set, she might also have fallen into the well. Clearly, Gilly knew it, too. She was his sister, carrying a child. If she’d been killed, a primal faerie rule would have been violated.
Later that day, Ruthana—and Garal—took Gilly to task for his infringement of Middle Kingdom law. I wasn’t privy to their reprimand, but as I gathered from Ruthana’s later account, they had raked him over the coals. I doubt if their castigation did more than aggravate my dear stepbrother (I guess that’s what he was considered to be), but at least it got me a week’s respite before—
2. Ruthana and I were sitting in a lovely glade when the tall figure of a man emerged from the woods in front of us. He was completely naked, his body glowing with a bizarre yellow green light. “My god, what’s that?” I asked. Ruthana was unflustered. “Ignore him,” she said. At that, the glowing man glared (glowing—glared; not bad) at me, raised his fisted hand threateningly, and vanished. “What in God’s name was that?” I asked, more strongly. “Gilly, of course,” she said, “trying to frighten you.” I exhaled—hard. “Well, he succeeded,” I said. She was amused. She laughed. (Which didn’t please me.) “He’ll do worse,” she told me.
3. And so he did. He felled a tree behind me. It missed Ruthana, who—in her usual quick way—pushed me out of the tree’s rushing descent. Obviously, I knew then (or suspected, anyway) that Gilly made no further attempt to include his sister in his homicidal plots. I was, at once, both pleased and displeased at the realization. Pleased that his devious plans did not entail harming Ruthana. Displeased because she might, inadvertently, be injured or killed while protecting me.
On top of that, I felt damn provoked at Gilly’s invulnerability. Maybe it was a leftover attitude from my human being days—but it still seemed to me (no, more than seemed) that either Gilly should be tossed in the clink permanently or I should be armed with a pistol to use at his next attack. About that time, the fantasy of pumping a slug into brother(-in-law’s) nasty brain was pleasing indeed. Because of or partially due to—
4. Gilly tried to steal my shadow. How this is done is also way beyond me. But he pulled it off—for a few minutes—before Ruthana undid it. And let me tell you, the disappearance of one’s shadow is incredibly dismaying. Try to visualize it. No, you couldn’t possibly. Take my word for it. It makes you physically sick, nauseated. It’s so against natural law. It’s also fatal if it lasts. Which, thank heaven, did not happen to my vanished shadow. Where Gilly put it only God knows. Ruthana got it back, however. Saving me from what she said would be a horrible death. One more escape from Gilly. As in—
5. Gilly appearing suddenly, pointing a hazel wand at me. From the wand end, blue flame shooting. Blocked and inverted by Ruthana’s wand. Since the griffin attack, she kept it on her person at all times. (Where—once more—I have no idea whatever.)
6. Oh, why go on? Except to tell you of the attack that almost worked.
Ruthana and I were sitting beside a shallow pool, feet dangling in the water. She was getting large now. Maybe it decreased,
somewhat, her perspicuity (big word, that; it means, I think, her clarity of awareness). Sports writers would have observed: “She was not on top of her game.” She sat smiling to herself; she did that a lot toward the end of the gestation. She kicked her feet slowly and idly in the pool. I was in a dream state myself. Soon our baby would be born. I did not miss human existence at all. I was with my precious angel.
All was well.
I should have known better. I thought it was our kicking feet that leisurely stirred the water. I was wrong. I should have warned Ruthana sooner. I didn’t. I stared into the rippling water as though hypnotized. Something was beneath its surface, rising. A fish? An uprooted plant? An optical illusion?
A hand! Surging up from the water’s surface! Green, scaly, long nailed, clamping itself around my ankle! I was so shocked, I couldn’t make a sound, my voice paralyzed by mindless terror.
Then something even worse. A huge round thing popped up, the body of the hand. It, too, was scaled, purple in color. It had a gigantic mouth and huge eyes staring at me, gleefully it seemed.
My strangled whimper would likely, all on its own, have been enough to arouse Ruthana. As it was, she became aware before I made a sound because, in an instant, moving with the incredible speed I’d seen so many times, her right hand seemed to shoot out and grab the hand, yanking it from my ankle.
To my horror, I saw the green hand clutch at her wrist and begin to pull her down. Ruthana’s face was gripped by fright. “Alexi!” she cried. Off-balanced by the weight of her stomach, she began to fall forward toward the pool. I remember crying, “No!” and grabbing at her arms. The huge eyes of the creature opened wider. As did the gigantic mouth. I saw its teeth, greenish yellow, ready to clamp on Ruthana’s arm. I pulled at her as hard as I could. “Gilly, no!” I screamed. “Your sister!”
To this day, I have no way of knowing if I had anything to do with the attack ending so suddenly. I only know that, in an instant, the ugly hand released Ruthana, and its gross purple body vanished beneath the flailing water—which, abruptly, became still again.
* * *
My meeting with Garal, Ruthana, and Gilly was a somber affair. Garal had ordered it immediately following the attack at the pool. Why he allowed me to attend, I don’t know. No matter my sanctioned approval in the Middle Kingdom, I was, nonetheless, an “outsider,” a human being given limited access to the Kingdom. I could never be considered a full-fledged faerie. (I should be impressed with that triplet, but recollection of the meeting and its grim nature prevents me from enjoying the three-word combo.) I suppose it was my relationship with Ruthana that made the difference. Of course it was.
“Well, what do you have to say?” was the opening statement of the meeting. From—needless to say?—Garal.
“Say?” countered a sullen Gilly.
Garal waited, his features carved from stone. I saw a betraying swallow on Gilly’s throat. Garal clearly held sway over him. Not only was he Gilly’s “father,” he was also the accepted leader of the clan.
“What do you want me to say?” he finally asked. He tried to make it sound like a demand but couldn’t quite bring it off.
Garal cut to the bone. “That you tried to kill your sister,” he said.
I knew the word “blanch.” I’d never seen it, though. At Garal’s words, Gilly’s face lost color, very quickly. He was frightened. Him. The faerie thug who had terrorized me since my entry into Middle Kingdom. The little black-haired brute whose one goal was to kill me. It was his turn to be frightened. Him. I gloried in the moment.
“I didn’t mean to,” was all he managed to say.
“Yet you tried to drag her down into the shellycoat’s maw,” said Garal. Accusingly now.
Condemningly.
“Father, he’s a Human Being!” (Still the capitalized pronunciation.) Gilly tried a switch in his defense. “They killed my real father. Made my mother die! Am I supposed to forget that? Forgive Alexi because he’s our size now? He’s still a Human Being. I will not forgive him!”
Garal’s voice was cold. I felt a numbing gratitude that his anger was not directed at me.
“I’m speaking of your sister,” he said. “I forced myself to overlook your attempts on Alexi’s life because I knew Ruthana would protect him, I would protect him. But the attack on your sister is unforgivable!” I had never heard him raise his voice. It was a daunting sound.
“I didn’t mean it!” Gilly shouted. It was not a daunting sound. It quavered. Something else I’d never heard, especially from Gilly.
“That’s not the point!” said Garal. “You did it. That is the end of it. You are going to the Cairn.”
Did I say “blanch” before? I swear to God that all the blood rushed out of Gilly’s face; his skin grew wax white. “No,” he whimpered. “No.”
“Now,” said Garal. “This instant.”
Another sound I never heard—or even thought of hearing. Gilly crying. Sobbing. A pitiful sight. I actually felt sorry for him. Him!
Garal led him away. Then both of them vanished in that inexplicable faerie way. I sat in wordless withdrawal. Ruthana was crying, too. Softly. Miserably. I put an arm across her shoulders. Imagination? Or did she twitch as though resisting my comfort? I felt emotionally adrift.
Not helped when Garal returned, appearing next to me in that sudden faerie manner—zip! Like that.
He put his hand on my knee—and, abruptly, I experienced an unpleasant twinge of memory, the movement bringing back an image of the Captain, although, God knows, he’d never placed a hand on me. It was just something in the moment that dredged up a recollection of Lecture Time.
Which it was. “Alexi,” Garal said, “you know that this is not a common happening. It has never occurred in my family.”
“I’m sorry,” was all I could say. My inner voice, naturally, jumped up with What do you expect from me? Regret? The bastard tried to kill me over and over! If he hadn’t made a mistake and gone after Ruthana, would you ever have punished him?! Probably not! Maybe after he finally did me in! What good would it do me then?!
None of which I vocalized. I sat in chastened muteness as his reproving went on. It was reproval, never doubt. I was still an outsider. I had (in all innocence, God damn it!) caused a rule to be broken, and I must be careful never to breach that standard again. I kept glancing at Ruthana as her father (stepfather; oh, who the hell knows?) spoke. Looking for an expression of sympathy. At least understanding—for me, I didn’t see it. She agreed with every quiet injunction Garal made. My alienation from Middle Kingdom was called up again. Magnified. I would be reminded of it at a later time. In a different way, but even more radically.
At least, however, I was rid of Gilly.
For a while.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Arthur Black (at least the kernel of his black-hearted fetus) slithered into the world during that period. No longer attacked on an almost daily basis by his beloved (step)brother, he had time to plant the seed of his dire existence.
Alexander White wrote a novel. MIDNIGHT. An innocent commencement of the soon-to-assault-the-reading-public MIDNIGHT parade. I say “innocent” because, initially, it was. I meant it to be a love story, a story of moral retribution. Of course, with my background—and with the recollection of the alarming incidents in my life with Ruthana—there were any numbers of scare-stuff in the story. (There I go again—scare-stuff in the story; Arthur Black in genesis.)
These were the lone elements which the publisher (it was published, years later, reviewed, and sold rather well) later—even later (better never)—brought to unnatural birth the author known as Arthur Black (born in London, son of a distinguished military colonel, three times decorated veteran of the Great War, graduate, with a master’s degree, of Oxford University where he majored in Literature and Philosophy).
Hell, I never even got out of high school!
* * *
I must say that my new family was damn gracious about my novel—except for Gilly, I’m
sure; although I doubt he was told about it.
It was a nice piece of work. As I said, a love story. Inspired (needless to say, he said) by Ruthana.
What the story was (is) about is a young man (me, of course) who travels to the woods of Canada. I was going to have him travel to the woods of Northern England but decided otherwise, lest I offend my brethren. I call them that; it’s how I truly felt about them.
At any rate, my young protagonist hied himself to the Canadian forest to bag an elk. Ruthana didn’t like it that his motive was to hunt but consequent pages ameliorated that.
One afternoon, the young man (named Roger) is attacked by a large wolf. He shoots it, then discovers, to his shock, that when he approaches the dead body, it is in fact, the bloody corpse of an old man. (Note the early spawning of A. Black grisliness.) He is totally stunned by this. Equally so when he is surrounded by a group of angry Forest People (as I called them). They are enraged by what he’s done. Among them is a lovely young maiden named Aleesha. The old man was her grandfather.
To make a long story short (a capacity I totally lack), Aleesha spares Roger’s life by explaining to the other Forest People (as I called them—I said that already, didn’t I?) that her grandfather was showing unfortunate signs of mental decline and was shape-shifting devoid of discretion. I forget, exactly, how she explained it. Roger was—reluctantly by some, especially Aleesha’s brother (guess where that came from)—exonerated and, with limitations, accepted by the Forest People—who were human-sized, not small—this tickled the faeries considerably.
So time went by. I will not divulge all the details of my masterpiece (joke) but say only that Roger and Aleesha fell in love, and he came, more and more, to embrace the Forest People way of life, taught their various skills. (The faeries loved this section; I was requested to read it aloud on many an occasion. I became quite popular for a time. To my [by then] nineteen-year-old delight.)