Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

John Ross stepped forward to the water's edge after a moment, squatted, and touched the stream. The water was ice cold, as he had expected. He stared down into its rush for a moment, losing himself in time's passage and the memories of his life. He looked at himself hi the water's shimmering reflection, sun–browned from his year of hiking through England, strong and fit, his gaze steady and assured. He did not look like himself, he thought suddenly. What had changed? He had spent another year drifting, accomplishing nothing, arriving at no decision on his life. What was different?

He rose and walked along the jagged rock banks of the glen, working his way over the massive boulders, finding footholds amid the eddies and pools that filled the gaps between. He squinted when he passed through patches of bright sunlight, enjoying the warmth on his face, pausing in the shadows to look more closely at what might be hidden, wondering idly where the fairies were. He hadn't seen any so far. Maybe they were all on vacation.

"If it's magic you're looking for," a deep voice said, "you should come here at night."

John Ross nearly jumped out of his skin, teetering momentarily in midstep on the rocks, then righting himself and looking about quickly for the voice's source.

"It's more a fairy glen when the sun's down, the moon's up, and the stars lend their radiance."

He saw the man then, hunkered down just ahead in a heavy patch of shade, wrapped in a greatcoat and shadowed by a broad–brimmed hat pulled low over his face. He held a fishing pole loosely before him, the line dangling in a deep, still pool. His hands were brown and rough, crosshatched by tiny white scars, but steady and calm as they gently shifted the pole and line.

"You would like to see the fairies, wouldn't you?" he asked, tilting the brim of Ms hat up slightly.

John Ross shrugged uncomfortably. "I suppose so. At night, you say? You've seen them, have you?" He was trying to find something in their conversation that made sense, to frame a reply that fit.

The man's chuckle was low and deep. "Maybe I have. Maybe I've seen them come out of the falls, tumbling down the waters like tiny bright lights, as if they were stars spilling out of the heavens. Maybe I've seen them come out of the shadows where they hide by day, back there atop the falls, within the rocks and the earth–there, where the sun breaks through the trees."

He pointed, and John Ross looked in spite of himself, peering through a glaze of sunlight across the jumble of rocks to where the falls fell in a dazzling silver sweep. Bits of light danced atop the surface of the water, and behind the shimmering curtain shadows seemed to move…

Ross turned back suddenly to the man, anxious to know more. But the man was gone. Ross stared for a moment in disbelief, then glanced hurriedly from one bank to the other, from one place to the next. He searched the shadows and the sunny patches with equal care, but the man was nowhere to be found.

Shaken, he left the glen and walked back up the dirt and gravel lane to the blacktop, and from there back to the village. That night he pondered what he had seen, hunched over his dinner in an alehouse close to his lodgings, nursing a pint of Welsh beer and trying to make sense of it all. There was no way the fisherman could have disappeared so swiftly, so utterly. There was no place for him to go. But if he hadn't disappeared, then he wasn't there in the first place, and Ross wasn't prepared to deal with that.

For several days he refused to return to the glen, even though he wanted to. He thought about going at night, as the fisherman had urged, but he was afraid. Something was waiting for him, he believed. What if it was something he was not prepared to face?

Finally, three days later, he went back during the day. It was gray and overcast, the clouds threatening more of the rain that had already fallen intermittently since dawn. Again, the parking lot was deserted as he made his way off the blacktop and down the ratted lane. Cows looked at him from the pasture on his left, placid, disinterested, and remote. He tightened his rain slicker against the damp and chill, passed through the opening in the fence, and started down the trail. He was thinking that it was a mistake to do this. He was thinking that it was something he would come to regret.

He continued on anyway, stubbornly committed. Almost immediately he saw the fisherman. It was the same man; there was no mistaking him. He wore his broad–brimmed hat and greatcoat and was fishing with the same pole and line. He sat somewhat farther away from the falls than he had the previous day, as if thinking to find better fishing farther downstream. Ross walked carefully across the rocks to reach him, keeping close watch as he approached, making sure that what he was seeing was real.

The fisherman looked up. "Here you are again. Good day to you. Have you done as I suggested? Have you come at night?"

Ross stopped a dozen yards away from him. The man was sitting on a flat rock on the opposite bank, and there was no place close at hand to cross over. "No, not yet."

"Well, you should, you know. I can see in your eyes that you want to. The fairies mean something to you, something beyond what they might mean to an average man. Can you feel that about yourself?"

Ross nodded, surprised to find that he could. "I just…" He stopped, not knowing where to go. "I find it hard…"

"To believe," the other finished softly.

"Yes."

"But you believe in God, don't you?"

Ross felt a drop of rain nick the tip of his nose. "I don't know. I guess so."

The man adjusted the pole and line slightly. "Hard to believe in fairies if you don't believe in God. Do you see?"

Ross didn't, but he shook his head yes. Overhead, the clouds were darkening, closing in, screening out the light. "Who are you?" he asked impulsively.

The man didn't move. "Owain. And you?"

"John Ross. I'm, uh, traveling about, seeing a little of the world. I was in graduate studies for a number of years, English and Ancient Civilizations, but I, uh … I needed…"

"To come here," the man said quickly. "To come to the Fairy Glen. To see if the fairies were real. That was what you needed. Still need, for that matter. So will you come, then? As I suggested? Come at night and see them for yourself?"

Ross stared at him, groping for an answer. "Yes," he said finally, the word spoken before he could think better of it.

The man nodded. "Come in two nights, when the moon is new. Then's the best time for catching them at play; there's only the starlight to reveal them and they are less wary." His face lifted slightly, just enough so that Ross could catch a glimpse of his rough, square features. "It will be a clear night for viewing. A clear night for seeing truths and making choices." '

Rain was spattering on the rocks and earth, on the surface of the stream. Shadows were deepening within the glen, and there was a rumble of thunder. "Better take shelter now," the man said to John Ross.

Then the skies opened and the rain poured down. Instinctively Ross lowered his head and pulled up the hood to his slicker, covering himself. When he looked back again, the fisherman was gone.

The rain continued all the rest of that day and into the next. John Ross was paralyzed with indecision. He told himself that he would not go back to the Fairy Glen, that he would not put himself at such obvious risk, that what was at stake was not simply his life but possibly his soul. It felt that way to him. He stayed within his rooms reading, trying not to think, and when thinking became inescapable, he went to the pubs and drank until he slept. He would have run if there had been any place left to run to, but he had exhausted his possibilities for running long ago. He knew that he had come as far as he could go that way, and that all that was left to him was to stand. But did standing entail going to the glen or staying clear? He drifted in increasingly smaller circles as the hours passed and the time of his summoning drew closer, and he despaired of his life. What had he done to bring himself to this end, to a strange and unfamiliar land, to a ghost who drew him as a flame did a moth, to a fairy glen in which magic might be possible, to the brink of madness?