Magic Sucks, chapter three

the fae make the scene

[chapters one, two]

Elsbeth yelled, “Kids, I’m going out with Mary, there’s leftovers in the fridge!”

The teens still stared at the pink light, as if waiting for it to do something else.

“Kids?”

“OK, Mom, have fun!” Pike absently called. They heard the door close behind her and the garage door opening. “Well,” he said after the sound of Elsbeth’s car had faded, looking at Maggie. “Are we going?”

She nodded and stood, glancing at Brad. “What the hell are you wearing?”

“I’m cosplaying Point Break. You like?”

“Yeah, you look great, you should always wear those.”

Brad stage-whispered to Pike, “I think she’s being sarcastic.”

The three of them left the house by the sliding-glass door that led to the backyard from the kitchen. The woods, as they had always referred to the several acres of trees dividing their street from an adjacent subdivision, began about twenty yards behind the house, one of those scrubby Jersey patches of red maple, pitch pine, and the occasional oak.

Maggie led them in silence down the little trail created by decades of foot traffic, stopping occasionally to consult the softly pulsing rock as if it were a compass. She’d say “I think it wants us to go this way” or “Left here” or would just start off in a given direction. Brad issued various comments on this behavior that were ignored. They’d been walking for about ten minutes when she came to an abrupt halt, making a little noise of surprise. She pointed to a small, irregular stand of trees at the end of a little field. Pike couldn’t see anything. No, wait, there were two figures. Somehow they were hard to see. He thought they were children. But the longer he looked at them, the more they seemed to come into focus. He felt his flesh crawl, understanding that idiom for the first time. He was suddenly quite frightened. Jesus, those weren’t children. They appeared to be very, very small adults. They were standing just inside a little ring of grass, openly staring at the teenagers. Pike glanced at Maggie, who was gawping at the strange figures. She seemed terrified.

“Mags, you’re being rude,” he whispered. “They obviously have some sort of disability.”

Maggie looked at him frantically, searching his face for something. “But aren’t they—aren’t they—”

“It’s fine,” Pike said, looking at Brad, who also appeared freaked out. “Hello,” he shouted across the space.

The two figures startled, then looked at each other. The taller one—Pike didn’t think he could have stood more than four feet—spoke rapidly. Pike couldn’t make out what he was saying. The second figure, squat and bearded, shook his head and spat on the ground. The taller one began to walk cautiously through the grass toward the teens, the squat one reluctantly trailing.

As the taller one approached, Pike saw that he’d mistaken her gender. She was quite graceful, with short dirty blonde hair, beautiful in a somehow unearthly way that made him uncomfortable. Her companion was—well, he looked like a dwarf, frankly, from Lord of the Rings. But that was offensive, not to mention ridiculous. “Hello,” he said again.

The tall one stopped a few feet away, studying him. When she spoke, he actually gasped. Her voice was like nothing he had ever heard before, beguiling, musical. It made him think of poetry words, like “glade” or “dale.” What was going on? He realized he had no idea what she had said. “I’m sorry?” he said, staring at her.

“I asked if you can see us,” she said, her voice turning to moss in his mind. “But I suppose you have answered that question.”

“What kind of question is that,” Maggie said quietly.

Pike looked at Mags and Brad, who looked back at him. He wondered idly if he was dreaming. He heard birdsong in the trees. He turned back to the small woman. “We can see you.”

She looked at them without speaking for a bit before saying, “Interesting.” She spoke a few words in a language he didn’t recognize to her companion, a lilting tongue full of glissandos. He shot the teens a surly look, muttered something to her, and spat again.

She turned back to Pike. “You have perhaps recently found a gem.”

“What the fuck,” Brad whispered.

“A gem?” Pike said stupidly.

Maggie said. “Do you mean this?” she asked, withdrawing the strange rock from her pocket and holding it out to the strange woman. Pike noticed it was no longer casting light.

“No, don’t give it me,” she said. “It is yours now. Tell me, was it lying in a …”—here she said a word that bounced off Pike’s mind. She frowned, seeming to recognize his incomprehension. “In a circle,” she tried again, “like that one,” pointing to the ring of grass where he’d first seen them.

Pike was even more confused. “What? No, it’s from a meteorite.” She didn’t seem to get it, so he said, “A rock, from space. From the sky. It smashed my sister’s car.”

“It smashed my car,” Maggie said more vehemently.

The small woman looked shocked. “This fell from the skies?” The surly one put his hand to his head and began to mutter angrily in their language. She held up her hand to silence him, which worked, for some reason. “You are certain?”

“Uh, yeah,” Pike said.

She looked very grave, and turned to her companion. They stared at each other in silence for a moment. She looked at Pike again, then at the ground.

“Is something wrong?” he said.

“If that stone fell from the skies, then yes,” she said as if to herself. She looked back up at him. “We must go. You will forget this.”

The two weird strangers turned and began to walk back across the field.

“Wait!” Pike said, surprising himself.

The woman turned back to him as her companion continued on his way. She looked at him questioningly.

“I—what the fuck is happening right now?”

She shook her head. “You would not understand.”

“Then explain it to me!”

“I do not have time. And it is not for you. You will forget. Go home.”

“Is this for TikTok?” Brad asked.

She turned and joined the shorter man, who was waiting by the ring, gesturing impatiently. She said something softly to him and they stepped into the circle. After a moment they looked around as if surprised. They conversed with each other in low tones for a minute, then turned back to look at the teens. “Is everything all right?” Maggie called.

The small people walked back over to them with a harried air. The woman looked at Maggie and said, “It would seem not. We appear to be … stuck. The”—here she said the word again, and again it skipped off their minds like a pebble off the surface of a lake, then gesturing toward the ring, she continued, “the gate, you would call it, we cannot pass through.”

“Is that unusual?” Pike said.

“It should be impossible. To close a gate is no small thing.” She pondered. “It is a fell sign.” She looked at Pike. “I am afraid I must ask for your aid, sons of Adam.” She nodded at Maggie. “Daughter of Eve. I am Fira. This is Twig. He is gruff but his heart is good.” Twig made a scoffing sound.

“Well, that’s, uh, nice. I’m Pike. This is Maggie, and that’s Brad.”

Brad said, “Twig, like a twig? A stick?”

Twig glowered at him. Fira said, “No.”

“Got it,” Brad assured Twig.

“Brad is mentally defective,” Maggie added.

Fira looked at Brad and nodded. “I understand.”

“She’s kidding. Tell them you’re kidding,” Brad said to Maggie, who smiled at him innocently.

“What can we do to help?” Pike asked Fira.

“Wait!” Brad said loudly. “I’m sorry, but what … I mean, what are you?”

“Brad!” Pike and Maggie said in unison.

But Fira looked amused. “It is a fair question. We are not children of men.”

Brad whispered, “Are you … are you—elves?”

Twig, who had been warily eyeing the surrounding forest, immediately whirled on Brad with a guttural epithet. Fira leapt in front of him, holding out her hands and speaking quickly in their strange lilting tongue. Twig responded angrily, pointing at Brad. Fira shook her head and gestured at Brad and the others, speaking calmly, then placed her hand on Twig’s upraised arm and gently drew it down. Twig glared at her for a moment before muttering what Pike presumed were oaths and looking away.

Fira turned back to Brad. “We are not elves,” she said firmly.

“I’m sorry,” Brad said. Sweat trickled down his face. “I’m so sorry,” he said again, turning to Twig. “I didn’t know.” Twig muttered something and refused to look at him.

“Now you do know,” Fira said.

“Yes. I won’t make that mistake again. So if you’re not, uh, that … what do you call yourselves?”

“Are you fairies?” said Maggie, glancing nervously at Twig. He didn’t move.

Fira seemed to consider the questions. “What we call ourselves is what we call ourselves. This is not for you. Some of your kind have called us fairies, yes. Some have called us sith, which is better.”

Brad gaped. “Like Darth Maul?”

Fira turned to him. “This name I do not know.”

“Ignore him,” Pike said. “Like, at all times.”

Maggie clapped her hands. “Oh! I know this! I read about the sith in this book on folklore. The invisible people.”

Fira nodded. “Men have called us this as well. This is also acceptable.”

Maggie whispered, “This is so fucking crazy.” Fira glanced at her. “But cool,” she quickly added. “So fucking cool.”

Fira looked at the sky. “You speak of weather?”

“No,” Maggie said, “it’s—never mind. I just meant this is, uh, exciting. For us. To meet … your kind. And hard to believe. I mean, we don’t believe in fairies. Or didn’t. I don’t think anyone does anymore, not really.”

Fira nodded once. “It is better for us when your people believe we are but myth and story. It is easier to share the ground.”

Pike shook his head, unable to take in the idea that he was talking to a real live fairy. But somehow during their conversation his fear had left him. He felt almost giddy, in fact, and Maggie and Brad seemed to have experienced a similar transition. He said again, “What can we do to help?”

Fira thought. “Do you have shelter nearby? Our enemies cannot easily enter men’s dwellings.”

“Totally, our house is like a mile away. Or, uh, I guess you aren’t familiar with our system of measurement, but a mile is not very far.”

“I am familiar with the mile. We have had limited interactions with your kind before, in other lands. We will follow you.”

Brad whispered, “Did she say enemies?”

As he led the way from the woods, Pike noticed the light had mostly seeped from the pines. The moon was up and nearly full and followed them through the forest’s canopy. Hadn’t it been afternoon when they started down the path? No matter; he knew his way among these trees, had spent summer days building forts with Brad and arguing about which would be the wickedest mutant power to have. Brad said Cyclops’s eye-beams, but Pike didn’t want to watch the world through a ruby-quartz visor. He’d take Kitty Pryde’s phasing ability, shifting his atoms through solid objects, sliding through the world like he was a ghost. Or like the world was, he reflected now, feeling a bit ghosted by reality. Soon he was opening the back door, standing aside to allow the others to enter the kitchen. His mom hadn’t yet returned from wherever she said she was going, however many hours ago, back when the world made sense even when it was crazy. Falling space rocks he could just about wrap his mind around, but fairies …

“We can use my room,” Pike said.

“Ew,” said Maggie. “Eau de jizz sock.” Brad snorted. “We’ll use mine,” she said, leading the mismatched crew down the hall to a room from whose walls various dour musicians glowered.

Twig looked around the room then said in a gravely voice, “Do you have Xbox?” The three teens stared at him, dumbfounded. It was the first English sentence they’d heard him speak.

Pike began, “How—”

Fira interrupted him. “We do not have time.”

“OK, but at some point you really need to explain how you know about Xbox but not ‘cool.’”

Twig waved a dismissive hand. “We hear some things. Your kind is very noisy. Noisier all the time.” Then, grumbling under his breath, “And I did know what ‘cool’ meant.”

Fira glared at him. “Cast the bones.”

He withdrew a small leather pouch from his vest, muttering, “I have wished to see their visual games.”

Brad whispered to him, “I do have Xbox. I’ll hook you up later.”

Pike regarded the ceiling in disbelief.

Twig knelt and untied the pouch, spilling its contents onto the floor of Maggie’s room. There were four multisided objects that resembled dice the color of old bone, inscrutable runes carved into each side. Twig mumbled something that sounded like an incantation then raised his empty hands upward as if he were opening an invisible window by the sash. He held them there a moment, then let them fall, taking up the bone dice in his right hand, shaking them briefly, and letting them clatter to the floor.

He and Fira bent over the dice, reading some message or portent in the runic spill. “Ah,” said Fira, pointing to one die. “This is why we could not pass through.”

“Is this magic?” Maggie asked.

“Magic is what your kind calls things whose workings you don’t understand.”

“Oh, so, for Brad,” said Maggie, “the female anatomy is magic.”

“If you would,” Fira said patiently, “please withhold the jests for a time, this requires a deal of concentration.”

“Sorry,” Maggie said.

Brad whispered, “She sounds like your mom.”

The teens watched silently as the sith, as Pike had begun to think of them, conversed in low tones, peering at the dice.

Finally Fira straightened, stretched her arms above her head, and said, “Well, children of Adam, it appears we must abide in your realm for a time. The gate has been closed.”

“Are there other gates?” Brad asked.

“Oh yes,” Fira said. “Here and there in your lands, across your seas.”

“So what if you tried a different gate?”

“It would be the same. They are one gate.”

“But you just said there are others.”

“Yes, there are several, but they are one,” Fira replied absently, eyeing the bones.

Brad gave up.

“If I am reading this correctly—and I am no adept—then our foes shut the gates to prevent our seeking allies among men. I still do not understand precisely how they were shut. It is unprecedented.”

Twig said something in the sith tongue.

“Well, yes, except for that.”

“You have allies here,” Pike said, “in our, um, realm?”

“Not for many ages,” Fira replied. She studied the teens. “But perhaps we will have them once more.”