Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

It took him a long moment to realize what had happened: The Glasduine had taken all his strongest emotions, using them as the fuel it required to manifest in this world. What was left behind were only the parts the creature couldn’t use. Donal was now like the Other, that lone wolf who dogged the Gentry, a shadow made up of the discarded portions of the hard men’s leader who had gained a more substantial existence by acquiring the body of a deceased native spirit. Musgrave, in a rare expansive mood, had explained it to him one day when he asked about the straggler who always seemed to be hovering on the periphery of the pack’s enterprises. The leader of the Gentry himself refused to acknowledge the Other’s existence, giving Donal a cuff across the back of his head the one time he’d asked who that was, so often following them.

This separation between himself and the Glasduine… it wasn’t how it was supposed to be, how Musgrave and the Gentry had promised it would turn out. Either the hard men and the hag in the cottage had lied to him—a distinct bloody possibility—or he’d changed the rules himself by using the old broken mask. Perhaps control could only have been his with the mask Ellie was supposed to make, a new one, imbedded with her potent geasan, and lacking any previous history.

Though that would have probably turned to shite as well. The Greer luck, after all, was rarely good. But this… this was unacceptable. Was there even a chance that he could regain some semblance of a physical self? Perhaps he could appropriate some recently deceased body the way the Other had. But he knew that wouldn’t be enough. Even with the intensity of his emotions stolen from him, he burned with a need. He wanted his own body back, his own passions. He was supposed to be standing there in all his power and glory, Lord King Shite of all the Green Wood, not huddled here on the floor like some pathetic worm.

He sat up slowly and was immediately disoriented as the trivial motion sent his bodiless form floating up towards the ceiling. Flailing his limbs didn’t provide any sort of control and panic reared in him. He forced himself to be calm. To think. He let himself turn in a wobbly circle while he considered what exactly had set him drifting up in the first place. He hadn’t moved the way he’d normally do in a physical body. He’d simply thought of sitting up and that had set him floating.

He willed himself to stop turning like some bloody balloon and was instantly rewarded with success.

That was more like it. Being able to move like this could almost make up for not having a body, though being unable to drink in this form was definitely shite. Jaysus, but he had a thirst.

One thing at a time, he told himself.

He directed himself towards the Glasduine just as the creature crashed its way through the windows, taking down huge chunks of the stone walls with it as it pushed its way out onto the lawn.

Now that was subtle, Donal thought, the great big stupid git. Tell the whole bloody world you’re here, why don’t you? Though he supposed the Glasduine wouldn’t care. After all, what could hurt it? Nothing in this world, that was sure.

It didn’t slip on the ice outside—either it was too heavy of foot and deliberate in its movement or, more likely, too grounded, too much a part of the heartbeat of the world to be inconvenienced by ice and slush.

As it lumbered across the lawn, he willed himself to its side, sticking to one of its enormous shoulders like a burr on a wolfs pelt. Contact made the Glasduine aware of him, but it also opened the creature up to him and his mind filled with the roil and burn of its thoughts.

No! he thought, breaking away to float in the Glasduine’s wake. I never wanted any of that.

But even as he denied it, he knew the images he’d seen were based on the endless fantasies he’d carried around in his head. Of revenge for a life of hurt. Of a final payback to all the shites who’d done him wrong. Of wallowing in oceans of Guinness with any woman he bloody well fancied to be had for the bedding.

Inside the Glasduine’s mind, Donal had seen it viewing itself awash in blood and gore, creating some huge fresco on the side of a building with body parts and organs, blood, and the tears of the dead and the dying while the sky rained whiskey and Guinness. Some mad reel played dissonantly against the sound of a stonn and all around the Glasduine’s feet lay naked women, broken and weeping, discarded now that the creature was done with them. Donal had recognized familiar faces in amongst those of strangers. Ellie and Bettina and—

Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.

Miki.

If he’d had a body, Donal would have lost the contents of his stomach at that moment. As it was, he reeled in sick disbelief that he’d brought such a thing into existence.

Where was the wonder, the calm power, the majesty of the Green Wood captured in human form? Not in this monster.

His gaze followed the Glasduine as it lumbered on through the woods, its passage quieting as it grew more assured with its new physical form.

I never wanted any of that, he thought. I only wanted my due, for the world to play me fair for once. Not that. Never that.

But it didn’t matter what he’d wanted before he picked up the mask, or what he wanted now. Regrets never solved anything. The Glasduine was born, brought into this world by his own small-minded arrogance, and it was up to him to set things right before the monster ravaged the world. If even one innocent was harmed, Donal knew he was damned forever.

But sweet Jaysus, where did he even begin to stop it?

Contacting that foul mind again was the last thing he wanted, but he knew he had no choice. He had to confront the Glasduine. So he followed after, steeling himself for what was to come. It would not be an easy struggle, he knew. The chances were bloody good that he wouldn’t survive it either. But that didn’t matter so much anymore. He didn’t matter at all. Only that the Glasduine was stopped.

Because perhaps the worst thing of all was that the Glasduine had also discarded parts of itself when it was born and these lay inside Donal’s spirit now, dormant, sleeping, never to waken. They were all the things the Glasduine could have been. Prosperity for the natural world. A presence in the wild that would rekindle the awe and wonder that mankind had once held for the forests and hills that had lain unclaimed and untamed beyond their farm lots and city walls. An old magic that Donal had quenched with the raw torrent of his angers and hatred.

Fergus and his cronies had lied, Donal realized. The Gentry, that hag in her cabin. All of them. What the Glasduine should have been wasn’t some chess piece to be moved about on a gaming board. It was an echo of the life spirit itself, of all that was good in the world. If it was to be reawoken, it would be to bring an echo of that grace back into the world. But just as he’d allowed rage to corrupt himself, he had corrupted that old magic. Others might have lied to him, but he had actually called it up and fed it with his despair and rage. He was the serpent in the garden and he had no one to blame but himself.

He could see the Glasduine ahead of him again, moving silent as a ghost through the trees, each of them covered with a frozen sheath of ice. The creature didn’t dislodge a single icicle or twig as it moved. Neither did Donal, though he would have given much to be able to do so. He’d rather turn back the clock, he’d rather be stumbling around in these frozen woods in his own body, risking hypothermia, with the Glasduine never woken. But wishes were shite.

He launched himself at the Glasduine, not clinging to its shoulder this time, but plunging deep into the morass that was its mind. And there they fought for control of Donal’s transformed body. The Glasduine had the advantage of the greater strength, but Donal had the stubbornness of a Gael. The more he was beaten and pushed away, the harder he clung, the deeper he burrowed into the miasma of the Glasduine’s mind.