Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

"Morrigan," he whispered.

"You're going nowhere," she said, a cruel smile gracing her colorless features. "The fun is just beginning."

Fun like a heart attack, Squire thought as the Corca Duibhne rushed him, and he raised his cleaver in defense. Fun like a heart attack.

Finvarra's kingdom seemed deserted, yet Conan Doyle knew it was not. The scents of a bounty of ripened fruit reached him as he strode amongst the trees and past a burbling stream along which dryads swam. But there were copses of trees that had been burned black, their charred remains a scar upon the land. The Fey were not gone, however, nor were they hiding.

They were in mourning.

There was no music in Faerie this day, only the sighing of the wind in the trees and the flapping of war banners adorned with Finvarra's crest. From time to time as he followed Ceridwen on a winding walk through the forest, he could hear cries of bereavement. She carried in one hand a staff of oak, with finger-branches at the top that clutched within them a sphere that appeared to be crystal. Conan Doyle knew better. This was no crystal ball, but a ball of ice. At the center of that frozen orb there burned a flame, flickering as though atop a candle's wick. This was Ceridwen's elemental staff, a mark of her office and her skill.

Within Conan Doyle there were many emotions at war. He felt sharp regret and giddy excitement at seeing Ceridwen, and the urge to help the Fey was strong. And yet he was aware that he was needed at home even more than he was needed here. In Faerie, death had come and gone, taking many souls with it. But in Conan Doyle's world — the Blight — the reaper still walked.

Even simply being in Faerie brought conflicting emotions into play. This was the place he dreamed when he went to sleep, it was the paradise of his heart, and yet there had been much bitterness upon his departure so many years ago, and to return to it now when such grim events were at hand was dark irony.

Ceridwen paused at a door built of three massive standing stones, two upright and one laid across the top. There was no gate to bar it, but no one would pass through that gate without an invitation from a member of the royal family. He had lived beyond that gate, for a time. The memory made him hesitate.

"What is it, Arthur?" Ceridwen asked.

Conan Doyle gazed at her a moment, then glanced away. "Only echoes, Lady. Please go on."?When he looked up again she was still watching him. Ceridwen frowned deeply and turned to stride between the standing stones. Conan Doyle followed and as he walked through that door his breath caught in his chest just as it had done that first time he had trodden upon this ground.

The year had been Nineteen Hundred and Twenty. The London theosophist Edward Gardner had accompanied him to Cottingley, a tiny hamlet in Yorkshire, to visit the home of the Wright family. Polly Wright had approached Gardner at one of his lectures with the most extraordinary story. The woman claimed that her young daughter Elsie and the girl's cousin, Frances Griffiths, had befriended a community of fairies in a glen near their homes. Not merely befriended, but photographed the fairies.

The girls' claims, and more especially their photographs, had brewed a storm of controversy, but by the time it had begun, and the world was scrutinizing the two girls, Arthur Conan Doyle had already found his proof in the glen at Cottingley. For in the glen he had seen the fairies himself, firsthand. Gardner had accompanied the girls and their parents home and Conan Doyle — who had already been a student of magic and spiritualism for some time — cast a spell of revelation.

The fairies had been wondrous, gossamer things, like lithe, flimsy women with wings like butterflies. Wherever they flew they left a sparkle, streaking the air with all the hues of sunrise. Never in his life had he seen anything so delicate, so ephemeral, and so beautiful. They had made no sound at all but their motion was music.

Then one of them had hesitated, hovering a moment, and darted across the glen to beat its wings furiously just inches from his face. Its tiny, golden eyes had widened in shock as it realized that its suspicions were correct. He could see them. He had been watching them.

The vicious little thing had clawed his cheek, drawing blood. As Conan Doyle hissed and clapped one hand to his face, they had all darted toward across the glen to a large tree that lay on its side next to a brook, its roots torn from the ground and jutting like the antlers of a monstrous stag. The fairies had disappeared amongst those roots and Conan Doyle had taken a closer look, still pressing his fingers against the scratch on his cheek.

The spell of revelation had uncovered more than the presence of the fairies. The crown of jagged roots that circled the felled tree hid a secret. The tree was impossibly hollow.

Conan Doyle had dropped to his knees and bent low to look inside. Deep within that tree he had seen a glimmer of light. And he had crawled inside.

"Arthur!"

Fingers snapped in front of his face. He blinked several times and found himself gazing into Ceridwen's violet eyes. His breath caught in his throat again and he breathed in the aroma of lilacs, the scent that came off her so powerfully it weakened him. She looked as though she wanted to strike him down with her elemental staff. It took him several seconds before he could glance away.

"You are not the magician I thought you were if you cannot enter the House of the King without it beguiling your senses," she chided him.

Yet wasn't there a hint of amusement, even affection in her gaze and her tone?

Conan Doyle dared a soft smile. "It has been a very long time. Even such sweet marvels as are to be found in Faerie fade when time and distance intervene. I confess I was so overwhelmed, simply being back here, that I did not steel myself for the way in which just breathing the air can spin one into flights of fancy… or memory."

For a moment there seemed to be a twinkle in her eye, but then Ceridwen's expression hardened, a veil of sadness drawn across her face.

"Yes, well, do not let it happen again. Flights of fancy can prove very costly, of late. If Morrigan returns, such reckless whimsy could cost your life."

Conan Doyle stood straighter and nodded once, matching the severity of his expression to hers. Yet his eyes hid the memories he had, of Ceridwen coming to him as he neared death, of her bringing him back to Faerie, showing him the herbs that would return vigor and youth to him, the same herbs that still kept him young. He had known enough magic by then to cast the illusion of his own death. Anything else would have horrified and astonished the world. He could not have continued to live the life he had before and begin to grow younger, like Oscar Wilde's fancy. And in the end there was nothing he wanted so much as to disappear into Faerie, to see the world of the Fey through Ceridwen's eyes.

There were so many things that he wanted to say to her, but none of them would be appropriate. He had given up his right to say them long ago. So when Ceridwen turned to continue on, her long linen gown and robe clinging to her lithe form, he followed.

Though he forced himself to focus, to avoid being swept away with the magic of the place, the way the air itself seemed to sparkle, he could not help glancing around several times. Ahead the hill rose up and up and the House of the King had been carved from its face. Spires of rock shot from the ground and there were barrows bulging up from the earth. Elegant arched windows seemed out of place in rocky ledge. Flowers bloomed atop the hill in such abundance that they seemed to spill down its sides.

Amongst the flowers there were fairies. Not people of Faerie, like the warriors, scholars and magicians of The Fey, but the little people, the ferociously beautiful winged creatures he had first met in Cottingley well over eight decades before. Their colors put the flowers to shame and they flitted about the House of the King as though it were their own home. And in essence it was, for Finvarra had extended his protection to all the races of Faerie who would show their faces to the sun.