Tara watches the elves disappear. Her fingernails bite her palms. Inside she is in turmoil, a swirling mess of conflicting feelings. She feels like Jesus on the mountain. She wasn’t offered riches, but she was offered freedom, and she said no, because to abandon Lionel would be wrong. On the other hand, she has never been more afraid. The expression “paralyzed by fear” doesn’t feel like a metaphor but a literal truth.
Swallowing her fear, and the urge to cry, she whispers, “What do we do now, Lionel?”
“You own me, remember? Perhaps you should figure it out yourself.”
At first Tara thinks the words are in jest. She huffs, almost laughs, and then her eyes dart to his face. His expression is stony. Feeling nauseous, she says, “You don’t believe that, that’s not possible …”
His lip curls. “You just saved me based on your ownership. How could I not believe?” He raises an arm toward the darkness. “They believed.”
Tara’s heart drops. She has to take deep breaths to keep from throwing up. “No … I just … I didn’t mean it … I wasn’t speaking ...” She can’t quite find the word for “literally” in Elvish, and stutters. “It was a metaphor.”
Lionel tilts his head. She notices that his hair is no longer a solid gold curtain. His bangs on either side are singed and black. “It was the truth,” he sneers.
“But no …” Tara protests. “It’s not, it can’t be …”
Lionel’s pale face is as hard as stone.
Tara blinks. It doesn’t matter what she meant. The elves believe she owns Lionel. She puts a hand over her mouth. She knows her history; how sometimes free blacks went on to buy their own slaves. She’s accidentally stumbled into the same condition.
She just manages to turn before she begins to dry heave.
Lionel doesn’t even ask her if she is all right.
Panting, bent over, hands on her knees, she thinks back to how this happened. It had something to do with Lionel having confessed his indebtedness to her saving his life. She bites her lip. “How do we undo this?”
In the silence that follows, she hears a fish jump in the water. Her heart beat quickens. She hopes it is a fish.
At last Lionel says, “I save your life, and then we are even.”
Tara breaths out in relief. “Well, there, you’re done!” Smiling, she spins toward him. “You saved me from the village.”
He glares at her, and her smile melts.
“Are you trying to doubly indebt me?” he hisses.
“What?” Tara protests, throwing up her hands.
He dips his chin, and one of his nostrils, still delicate—though perhaps not so delicate as it was before—flares.
She licks her lips. “What am I not understanding?” she says.
His eyes narrow.
“I really don’t get it!” she says, flummoxed.
He huffs.
She stamps her foot.
He crosses his arms.
Throwing her hands in the air, she exclaims, “Can you explain it to me in some way that you don’t wind up doubly indebted?”
She hears another plop in the water.
He sighs. “Were you really in danger in the village?”
“Well, after I went back and rescued you—” She closes her eyes. “Oh.” She’d saved him not once, but twice.
Tara’s thoughts are spinning in a vortex. She takes a stab in the dark. “It isn’t the deed … it is the acknowledgement of the deed that creates debt?”
“Of course,” says Lionel, but he sounds a little less certain. “Isn’t that true on Earth as well?”
“No,” she says. She huffs and rolls her eyes. “Well, some people might say it does, but they’re wrong. You should save your fellow humans—”
She waves at Lionel, and his eyebrow arches.
“—or fellow sentient beings, because it is the right thing to do.”
“The right thing?” Lionel asks, his voice laced with incredulity. “And how is that determined?”
“What causes the least pain and suffering to all involved,” Tara says, but her voice falters. She’s pretty sure that not reporting Lionel would have put her in the crosshairs of her fellow countrymen. Closing her eyes and rubbing her temple, she says, “Look, I just want to undo this without you feeling you’re indebted to me. You’re free. You owe me nothing.”
Lionel snorts. “As you’ve pointed out, humans can lie. How can I believe that you aren’t lying, and won’t call up the debt when it suits your fancy?”
Stamping her foot, Tara mutters, “Oh, for …” Stifling a curse, she stares at him a moment. Lionel glares back at her. Something shrieks much too close, and she thinks she sees him shiver. This is important to him, even if she thinks it is ridiculous. “Look,” she says. “I’m going to make a special promise, a promise that by long and time-honored tradition I am honor bound to keep. It’s called a pinky promise.”
Lionel rolls back on his feet. “A pinky—”
The critter in the swamp shrieks, a little closer this time.
They don’t have time for this. “Copy me,” Tara says, hand up, pinky outstretched. Lionel does, and Tara takes it with her own tiny finger. “Lionel of the Queen’s Palace, or South Vale, or wherever, I, Tara Lupita Gibson, do solemnly absolve you of your debt to me. Pinky promise.”
Lionel pulls away and looks down at his hand. “You shouldn’t have done that. You should have compelled me to save you from the creatures rapidly approaching from the swamp. I can leave you now.”
Tara hadn’t been aware how cold the night had begun, but it suddenly hits her like a blow. “You’ll leave?”
Lionel tilts his head and smiles cruelly.
Tara shivers. “Well, that is your right. I thought maybe we’d have a better chance getting out of this together.”
The shrieking creature lets loose a scream that is so close that Tara swears she can feel it on the back of her neck. She looks up at the tree branches, and hopes it can’t climb.
“You really meant it,” Lionel murmurs so quietly Tara almost doesn’t hear. Tara’s eyes snap to him. The cruel smile is gone. In the night, the creature shrieks. Lionel backs away from her, looks to the shriek … and vanishes.
Tara stares at the place where he stood. “Lionel?” she calls out. She hears footsteps retreating down the hill and then nothing but the sounds of the night. She feels like she might be sick again, but instead, she jumps up, catches the first cold-slick branch, and pulls herself up.
It’s hard to climb in the dark and cold, but Tara manages to get a good twenty feet above the ground. Settling into the crook of the tree, wrapping her arms around herself, she sits there, shivers, and almost cries. She is the epitome of sticking your nose somewhere it doesn’t belong and living to regret it … but she’s not going to live to laugh about it, and hell, she won’t make a Darwin award either because no one is going to know where she is.
“Come down!” the whisper in Elvish startles her so much, she almost slips off her branch.
She peers through the shadows to the ground, and barely makes out silver-white hair and light eyes.
“Lionel?” she whispers, her heart leaping, and then settling in her chest at a place that isn’t quite right. It wasn’t very mature of him to leave her like that.
“Come down,” he whispers in a rush. “It’s dangerous. We have to go quickly.”
She can’t lecture Lionel right now. She has to be grateful he had a change of heart. “Okay, I’m coming,” Tara replies, half-climbing, half-slipping down the tree. Hanging from the final branch, face to the trunk, she can’t quite keep it inside. “You shouldn’t have left me like that,” she says, dropping to the ground. They have to stick together. They can’t have petty fights in the swamp.
“I won’t leave you now …” he whispers, his voice almost a hiss.
Tara turns around and takes a step back. Lionel’s features are shimmering, as are the clothes he is wearing. Everything about him is blurry and indistinct. “In fact, you’ll never escape me,” he says.
He smiles, revealing gleaming white pointed teeth.
Lionel drags a foot along the ground, cutting a narrow channel in the soft earth. Maintaining his invisibility, he recites an ancient poem about death, danger, and despair. The poem focuses his mind on the task at hand—creating a “fairy blind” around the little hillock where he and Tara will have to spend the night. He can’t leave her … he would be within his rights of course, but she is so … hapless? Genuinely naive? She had him in her power and let him go with a pinky promise. No elf he knew would have done so, even a peasant. They might not hold him to the debt, but they’d lord it over him for centuries.
Shaking his head, he continues his task, making sure the circle he is carving is unbroken. Any creature that approaches the demarcation will be filled with fear and foreboding, and feel the need to turn aside and go elsewhere.
Reaching the end of the poem, he straightens. The circle isn’t quite complete, but he’s hungry and exhausted. He tightens his hand on the silken cord of his keychain, pulls the magic to him, and feels his senses sharpen. In the water, the creature that had been issuing the hideous screams veers away.
In the tree, he hears Tara say, inexplicably, “I’m coming.” Before he can think about it, the ripples of the creature in the water’s wake reach the end of the blind, and it swings back toward the hillock. Lionel begins his recitation again, hopping and dragging his foot parallel to the creature’s new path with renewed vigor. The monster swims off, and Lionel falters, half in relief and half just because his body feels foreign to him. Even with his leg wound completely healed, it’s an effort to keep from stumbling. He starts again, and stops abruptly when his toe encounters strange footprints in the mud. Lionel pauses, and feels the heat of magic against his neck in the direction of the hillock’s apex and Tara.
Tightening his grip on his key, he spins and races toward her. He sees a hominid shape with white hair, and feels the heat of illusion on his face. Out of view, Tara screams and he thinks he sees her strike out with a fist. The creature bats her hand away with a laugh. With a snarl, Lionel lurches up behind the beast on unsteady legs and wraps a forearm around its neck.
There is a split second when Lionel’s brain screams, “What are you doing?” The creature’s neck is thicker than the illusion, cold, and wet. Hair like wire bites into Lionel’s face.
The creature tries to throw him forward, but Lionel wraps one of his newly long legs around it, and refuses to let go. Key clasped in his hands, he wills all the cells of his muscles and sinews not to relent. The creature reaches back and sharp nails dig into Lionel’s flesh. The beast rears back, and then forward, trying to throw Lionel … but Lionel’s leg holds fast, and the momentum from the creature’s attempt pulls its own legs out from underneath it. Lionel growls as his forearm and leg are pinned underneath its mass. Pain makes Lionel angrier, and he wills his muscles and sinews to contract, squeezing the creature’s windpipe tighter. It flops beneath him, rolls them over, and they tumble down the hillock together until the monster is on top of him. Lionel hears an uneven roaring in his ears. He doesn’t feel pain or fear anymore, just fury. He flips the creature over and uses his torso to grind its face into the mud. It occurs to him that the roar he is hearing is his own heart. His newly long limbs are shaking, and he’s flooded with heat.
“Lionel, are you all right?”
Tara’s voice above him makes Lionel realize that the creature hasn’t so much as quivered in minutes. He doesn’t let go, but slides a finger up to where its pulse should be and finds … nothing. He spreads his consciousness, searching for life. There is none.
He killed it. The realization makes him hastily scramble to his feet. For the first time, he sees the beast. It has a vaguely equine-like head with long, sharp teeth protruding from its mouth. Sharp, slender fins, as long as his hand, run from its head to its shoulder blades, looking a bit like a mane. Its torso is human, but it has a sharp, finned “tail” and its legs are like a frog’s with finned feet that have sharp claws on the toes.
“An each-uisge,” Lionel says, recognizing the creature from the queen’s books. He can’t believe it’s dead, or that he killed it. He’s gotten the impression that warriors feel very proud at times like this. Instead, he’s filled with terror. He wants the thing away, and fast.
“Help me drag it,” he says, grabbing a finned hand.
Nodding, Tara grabs the other arm. Together they drag the thing down the slope.
“I thought you left,” Tara gasps.
“I never left,” Lionel pants. They cross through the unfinished boundary of the circle, and Lionel adds, “I thought it was best to take care of the circle of the fairy blind invisibly … the grindylow might have eaten me before I’d finished.”
“Grindylow?” Tara squeaks. “Like Harry Potter?”
A scream erupts in the night. Lionel’s eyes get wide. “Run back!”
They drop the each-uisge and dash back up the hill. Halfway up, Lionel realizes that the circle still isn’t closed, and cries, “Don’t talk to anyone who doesn’t know your name!” Making himself invisible, he dashes back to the incomplete circle and begins his incantation again. The water just past the body of the each-uisge swells in a wave. Lionel focuses on his foot, and the poem, and stumbles anyway. His key ring slips from his wrist, and he falls, the circle still unfinished. He looks up, and then he’s sad he did.
Tara can’t see Lionel, but she sees his key go flying through the air. And then what she guesses is a grindylow emerges from the water. Its face is reminiscent of a frog’s, slimy and gray in the darkness, but as wide as her arm span, and filled with finger-long teeth. With webbed fingers tipped with enormous talons, it reaches toward a spot or empty air—is Lionel there but invisible? Charging forward, Tara tries to give a blood-curdling yell. It isn’t very blood curdling, more of an “Urp.” But the creature pauses. Afraid of going any farther—Lionel had said something about a circle, and Tara’s read enough fantasy to know better than to step out of a magic circle—she bends down and grabs the first solid thing she can find in the grass, which turns out to be a soft clod of dirt. She throws it with a shout … and hits the creature smack in the eye.
The grindylow’s huge mouth makes an ‘O’ of surprise. Its remaining eye goes to the clod, and then back to Tara. The single eye narrows. The grindylow steps over the each-uisge, growling and hissing, focused on her.
Gulping, Tara backs up, her eyes riveted on the monster … and then Lionel is suddenly in the way. Spreading his arms, he chants long syllables in what sounds like Elvish … but not quite right. The creature hisses, and pauses as Lionel’s chant gets louder. He drops his arms, and a blue flame jumps between him and the grindylow. It fans out around the hillock, but then disappears as fast as it had appeared. The grindylow hisses and charges on frog-like limbs. Blue flame rises again and it screams in pain. With a howl, it retreats into the water, dragging the each-uisge with it.
Something groans in the distance. Tara shivers, and Lionel turns toward her. “I invoked the Destroyer,” he whispers. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“The Destroyer?” Tara asks.
Lionel shakes his head. “I never thought I’d stoop so low … but I was so afraid.” He puts his hand to his face. “And I’m not that strong … it shouldn’t have worked.” He looks at his wrist. “I didn’t have my key.” He darts down and retrieves it from the ground.
“This Destroyer, he’s not like …” Tara switches from Elvish to English. “… the Devil?” Apparently, Elvish doesn’t have a word for that. She tucks it away for future reference, and then realizes Lionel might not understand. She is about to explain when he says, “I am familiar enough with the Abrahamic religions to catch the reference.” He looks away. “I don’t know the answer.”
“Invoking him isn’t like calling him, is it?” Tara asks nervously.
“There is debate over that,” Lionel replies.
“Should we maybe leave?” Tara asks, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering.
On cue, something screams in the swamp.
Lionel looks toward the sound. “I think that if the Destroyer wants to find us, he will.” He nods. “Better to stay in the circle tonight.” He shivers from his head to his toes. Somehow in the scuffling he’s lost his socks.
“What do we do now?” Tara asks.
Covering a yawn, Lionel says, “Try to sleep.”
Tara looks dubiously at the former circle of flame, not sure how much she trusts it.
From her right is a squeal of terror. She spins to see a burst of blue flame. There is a sizzle and then she nearly gags on the smell of burnt fur. A giant-rat-thing, as big as a Rottweiler, goes skittering back into the swamp, screeching the whole way.
“That rat was of unusual size,” says Lionel.
“You said it, Dread Pirate Roberts,” murmurs Tara.
“That’s not my …” Lionel covers his face with his forearm and yawns again. She swears he’s swaying on his feet.
“Let’s try to get some sleep,” Tara says.
They go back to the top of the hillock, and settle backs against the tree. By light of the moon and stars, Tara sees a far off look in Lionel’s eyes. His arms are wrapped around himself, and she notices he’s shivering. He’s also not sleeping, though he’d seemed about to fall over a few minutes ago.
Tara bites her lip and makes a decision. Taking off her coat, she scoots closer and covers the garment over them like a blanket. “Here,” she says. “We can share.”
Lionel looks down at her—and it’s odd, because before she’d looked down at him. “It’s a good idea,” he says, “but this way, we are both only half warm.”
“Yeah, it’s a little small—” She stops abruptly as Lionel’s arm slinks around her back.
“If you don’t mind,” he mumbles, not quite looking at her, in a way that is either exhaustion or shyness. “I have an idea that will keep us both warmer.”
“Um … okay,” says Tara. He looks too far gone for her to suspect anything untoward, and she’s grateful for that. Really.
His opposite hand goes to the other side of her waist, and before Tara knows what is happening, he’s picked her up and settled her between his thighs, her back to his chest. His arms wrap around her stomach beneath the coat, and he pulls her close.
“There,” he murmurs into her hair. “Much more comfortable. Too tired … to use magic.”
He’s not just taller, he’s broader than the slender elf she’d found in her alley—in a good way … and he’s filled out since they got out of the cell. She’s not sure how that worked out. By the conservation of matter, he should be a tall, thin beanpole, but she’s pretty sure magic breaks all the known laws of physics. She feels herself melting into him, her back fitting his embrace perfectly, and she is warm between him and the coat-blanket, in more ways than one. She doubts very much that she’ll be able to sleep feeling like this.
“There is the door again,” Lionel whispers enigmatically, laying his chin on top of her head. “Maybe this time I should step through.”
“Huh?” says Tara.
His whole body shudders, and he leans more heavily against her. It takes her a moment, but then she realizes that Lionel isn’t having trouble going to sleep. “Always the teddy bear, never the bride,” Tara murmurs. This is not the first time she’s had a gorgeous male friend.
Something in the swamp makes the circle briefly flame blue, and Tara decides that maybe it’s just as well she stay awake. Someone should keep an eye out. She looks up at the stars, yawns, and closes her eyes just for a moment.