Time Bomb Commentary, Director's Cut (Part 2/2)
I left River at my place, with Mouse, and a firm order to 'stay' for both of them. Then I grabbed Bob and went back to downtown Chicago, and the Underground.
A lot of old buildings sunk underneath Chicago as they were building; the residents just built on top of them. The city burned, they built over it. They even did testing for the Manhattan Project down here at one time, during WWII. As a result, the stuff you find down here tends to be strange, even for Faerie, and even for magic. I figured it would be the best place to start looking for Mab's toy.
"Did she say what it was for?" Bob asked as I took him out of my knapsack when we hit the first turning down into the Underworld. It is *not* the sort of place you go without a guide. "That might give us a place to start."
I thought back to our conversation. "She said it would leave a trail, that mortal blood created it, and that I alone could find it. Other than that, all I can tell you is it looks like a crystal piano and is the size of my hand."
[I left the 'trail' thing in because again I had no idea where I was going with this. I planned on figuring out how to tie it up later. It wasn't necessary, as it turned out, to have a string of coincidence or time-distortion following it, but it was there as a possibility if I needed it. I decided that River went one way, and the time-trippy thing went another, and Mab had a pretty good idea that if you found one, you'd find the other. I never found a good place to explain that, though. Mab does not explain. Ever.]
"Not bigger than a breadbox, then." I gave Bob a withering look, and he blinked back at me, unrepentant. "So you're trying to find someone who'd recognize the description, give you a lead?"
"It is the place to buy and sell stuff. Although who the hell would have the stones to steal from Mab…" I paused. "Wait. She didn't say stolen. She said 'lost.'"
"Fine distinction," Bob agreed. "So, we need a way to track a lost pretty… hey." He sounded thoughtful. "Mortal blood. And only you can find it."
I stopped in my tracks, wondering. "That's too easy. Besides, where did she get my blood, if she created it from me? "
"It's Mab," he pointed out. "And it's not like you haven't bled all over the place, Harry."
"Point," I muttered. "Right, so… gimme a sec to set this up."
[Harry actually is usually pretty careful *not* to leave his blood around for people to use on him, but he also has a distressing tendency to get the crap beaten out of him on a regular basis. And it's Queen Mab; if she wanted his blood, she'd get it somehow.]
I repeated the basics of the finding spell I'd used on River earlier in the day, only substituting my blood for the basic components. I drew one of the symbols I remembered from the crystal piano on the inside of the bowl, then repeated the word "Illumine" and held my breath.
Power, will, and blood. You don't get much more powerful conjurings than that. The glow from this spell made the blue-white searching glow I'd constructed earlier look like a nightlight compared to a neon tube. "Fabulous. We are in business, Bob."
"Let's just hope no one else already found it who wants to keep it." Bob stared at the light in front of me cheerfully. "You're really annoying when you get your ass kicked."
I stuffed Bob back in the knapsack in lieu of commenting on that.
Our LightSaber of Searching (TM, Bob - I swear he likes D&D more than all the werewolves combined) lead us to a long gallery of jazzed-up shacks in what might have started out as a subway shaft, but now resembled the Pier at full blast. Chili lights and Christmas lights were strung between stalls, fairies of every description were selling food, magic equipment and ingredients, novelty items like Mickey Mouse clocks and Adidas trainers; one tiny music box would easily get lost down here. A couple people noticed me, and edged out of my way; a couple others whispered as I went by.
It's tough being a celebrity.
[Harry is by now fairly well known in Sidhe for having worked for the Winter Queen once, and dealt with the Summer Court on several occasions. While he gets his ass kicked a lot, he's not someone you want to mess with if you're not a heavy hitter, or aspiring to be one.]
The LSofS finally lead me to a tiny stall overgrown with glowing crystal flowers; it looked like Tinkerbell's hideout, with a couple dozen of the littler pixies zooming in and out, whispering to the proprietor, then heading behind the scenes.
Said proprietor looked like a harmless little gray-haired old lady, knitting in a rocking chair. And I have this pier you can buy, right on Lake Michigan. Dirt cheap.
The light in my hand was pointing to a locked chest on which she'd put her feet up, and the shrewd red-eyed gaze she gave me didn't look like she was interested in anything I had to sell. "Harry Dresden."
"Glad we can skip that half of the introductions." I gave her my best smile, the one that doesn't even hint I want to bite someone. "I'm here to purchase something I think you might have found."
"Can't say as I have anything like that." She kept knitting, needles clacking away like Madame Defarge, but her nostrils flared, fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a stupid hu-man. "I trade in glow-flowers. Nectar. Fairy dust. Nothing anything the illustrious Dresden would be interested in."
"Save it for the tourists," I said, letting the LightSaber point at the box again. "Whatever is in the box? Is not your property. We can talk purchase, or we can talk seizure. Your call."
She gave me a thoroughly nasty, pointy-toothed, haven't-flossed-in-years smile, and I readied my shield bracelet and staff. Crap. I hate it when people aren't reasonable.
I was ready for her to go for my throat, or throw power at me, or do something else violent and straightforward. Instead, she muttered a single word under her breath, and tied a knot in her knitting. The first hint that I was off-base came with a pinch to my gluteus maximus. "Ow!'
Then they were swarming me, a horde of pixies with gold eyes, all of them pinching and biting and poking, high-pitched voices screeching, so fast that they were gone by the time I aimed at them. "Damnit!" I raised my staff and roared, "Forzare!"
All of the little ankle-biters fell back about ten feet, stunned and mewling, and I felt like the world's worst person. Damnit. They can be deadly when they want to, but they're so damn small. What kind of bully beats up on pixies? I dabbed at a bite behind my ear, and swore at the blood trickling down my neck.
[He really does worry about crap like this. Chivalry is gonna kill him some day.]
Which was when the glow vines reached out and wrapped around me, squeezing hard enough to make ribs crack. My staff fell out of my fingers, and before I could say another word, the vines were twisting around my throat, cutting off my air. I thrashed and twisted, and the vines just got tighter.
"Can't have you taking the shiny back to Mab," I heard as my vision started to gray. "Far too special. Too powerful. Yes, yes. Mother Odile can see her way to a nice tidy dominion, with this toy."
[Deliberate callback to the Odette vision of River's in the soulgaze; Odile is the black swan in the Swan Lake ballet, an impostor that gets the heroine killed by impersonation. No deeper meaning, except as a hint to those familiar with the material. Mama Odile is an OC, not a canon character.]
I reached out, triggering my ring, and the vines around one hand unspooled. I reached up to yank on the vines around my throat, pulling them away long enough to draw in one breath of air. But they curled around my fingers, pulling my hand back to my throat, and I hadn't even thought of a counter-spell-
WHAP.
"Eeeeee!"
I turned my head to see what was going on, drawing in another desperate breath, and saw a very determined-looking River throwing things at Mother Odile. Chairs. Chests. Spools of cloth. Jars of nectar. The 'whap' I'd heard was her laying about with my staff, catching the fairy on the head, to judge by the blood. Odile's knitting was on the other side of the stall, but she still shrieked, "Attack!" to the pixies, and they dive-bombed River. I choked out a warning, and River whirled to meet the new threat.
She picked one out of the air-then a second. Then a third. A fourth. Fifth? Sixth.
And started juggling them. After about a minute of that, the pixies were hiding behind Odile.
"Let. Him. Go." River ordered, picking up Mama Odile's knitting. "Or this burns." She held it close to the nearest lantern, and waved it around like she was going to incinerate it.
Smart girl. I chuckled with what little air I had, then felt the vines loosen, and drop me to the ground. "Nice. Timing."
"You're welcome." Somehow she managed to combine know-it-all with pleased-with-herself very well there.
"Supposed to stay at my place. With Mouse."
There was a sheepish 'woof' from outside the stall, and I peered over the edge. "Some guard dog you are."
"We had better things to do," River said, shrugging, still holding up the knitting. "Never go without back-up. It's a rule."
[neonhummingbird said she could hear Mal shouting this at River when she did something crazy, and River blinking, assimilating it, and making it part of her internal coding in two seconds. I am finding this entirely too likely.
Harry really sucks at the back-up thing. But he's getting better.]
Odile was giving her a baleful look of pure hatred, but River was glaring right back. I picked up my staff and knapsack, then crossed to the chest River had thrown during the proceedings. Please, let Mab's stupid gewgaw be in one piece. I carefully sorted through the broken bits, and drew a breath of relief.
Frabjous day. It was intact. I pocketed the piano, and turned back to River. "Time to go."
"She'll follow. Hurt us. Steal it back." She glared at Odile. "Nature of the scorpion."
"Oh, I don't think that'll be a problem." I took the knitting away from River, and Odile quit glaring and started looking afraid. "You get this back when Mab has her pretty. Until then? Think about what I could rebound on you, if you decided to push this. Got it, Mother Odile?"
She gave me a look of poison, and settled back down into her chair. "Someone should pay for the mess you've made here."
"Charge your customers a 'got caught with stolen goods' fee. Not my problem." I whistled for Mouse, who stuck his head in the door, and Odile shrank back a little further. "Pleasure doing business with you, Odile." Then I turned to River, wrapping a hand around her wrist as we stalked down the alleyway. "You did a good thing. And you could have gotten killed down here. Never, ever, ever do that again."
River stuck her tongue out at me, and somehow twisted her hand around so she was leading me by the wrist, instead of vice versa. Mouse thudded along beside her, panting happily. "Life is risk. Learned that in the future. Friends need to be saved. Could tell, feel…" She slowed down, searching for words, then pointed at my dog. "He agreed."
[And the author amuses herself again, a little too much. Mouse's level of sentience is an ongoing question-mark in the series anyway. I'm quite certain he and River had a nice telepathic conversation.]
"Oh, and we always listen to the dog, don't we." I rolled my eyes, letting her tug me along, interested to see that she seemed to know exactly where to go to get out of Underground. "So. Believe in magic now that you've seen all this?"
She hmm'd, almost skipping as we went by a few more stalls. "Irrelevant. Labels. Reality is not defined by them. Will. Focus. Purpose. Those are definitions."
I thought about that, realizing she'd just defined how magic works, even as she denied it. It's not the words or the incantations or ingredients that make magic; it's the ability to force reality to bend to your will. To imagine something new. Maybe that's what she'd been doing all along? Maybe half her gymnastic skills was applying her own magic to the world around her, through her body. Hmm. Well. After Mab got her toy back, then I could concentrate on finding River's Simon, and getting her some help with her magic.
[Fantasy/Sci-Fi idiom crossovers are a pain in the ass. The mental viewpoints on how the universe works are very difficult to resolve. Fortunately, I have River, and she's an insane genius, so it all works out.
River's skills in canon are also just bogglingly unlikely based on the pure limits of the human body, no matter how upgraded or reconditioned. If she was magic as well as semi-psychic and assassin-trained, I'd find her victories against scores of attackers that much more likely. Magic in Harry's universe expresses itself in a number of very individual ways, so this is not totally impossible.]
But first, pizza. I was starving. And I wanted Toot-toot's help in tracking the pixies River had juggled. Some of those little guys can really hold a grudge.
It was sundown before we got out to the most deserted part of the forest of Lake Michigan, in order to summon Mab. Yes, we. If I'd left River in the apartment she would've just followed me again. Probably hitching a ride with an ax murderer she'd have to subdue on the way there. I wasn't taking any chances.
[*more quiet Authorial giggling at poor put-upon Harry. He so wants me to buy him a beer for this mess.]
I placed the music box on a stone near the lake, and then took a deep breath. "Mab. Queen of Winter. Queen of Air and Darkness. Queen of the darker Fae. Come and claim that which you asked me to seek."
It's always good to be very, very specific when summoning fairies. They don't just pick up spare towels and silverware when they leave a place.
The waters of Lake Michigan swirled, parted, then rose into a fountain around Mab, who glided across the water in a garment made of all the colors of the sunset, frozen into ice around her. She alighted on the beach in front of the stone I'd chosen, and smiled at me. I swallowed, fighting back the usual surge of desire and fear, and indicated the tiny trinket she'd asked me to find for her. "It doesn't seem like it was worth the trouble. But here you are."
Instead of looking at me, or the music box, though, she was looking at River. "Ah. Your missing child."
[And the implications go riiiiiight over Harry's head. He's got a blind spot when it comes to family; he's an orphan, so he tends to think of family as relating to everyone but him. Otherwise, the blood-magic part should have made him realize what was up right way.
Well, that, and the chivlary again. Silly Harry.]
Crap. Crappity crap crap. "She's not part of this, Mab. Leave her alone." I tried to push River farther behind me, and muttered, "Do not mouth off at this woman. You will not win." Do what I say, not what I do. I didn't want to see River gasping in pain, the way Mab had left me a couple times.
River ignored me the same way Mab had, staring from Mab to the music box, then back. "You constructed it. It was your song. The frequency was attuned precisely."
"Correct." Raspberry-frost lips curved into a wicked smile. "I wished to ascertain its efficaciousness. I thank you for participating in my little quest."
The hell? "Wait. Wait. Back up. Construct. This? You made this to bring River here?"
"I was searching for a particular desirable outcome. Her presence facilitated it." She shrugged cloud-white shoulders, and gave me a faintly amused look. "And without having to use one of the favors you owe me, still."
"Now wait a minute! You said-" She'd said maybe. She hadn't guaranteed anything. Damnit. I'd been too worried about River to pay enough attention to what we'd bargained over.
[neonhummingbird pointed out that he lets her get away with this earlier in the story a little too easily; Harry is much more aware of Mab's adherence to the letter of her promises in the books. I tried to make him distracted enough for her to slip this by him, but if you stumbled on your suspension of disbelief on this at that point in the story, I apologize.]
With fairies, the letter of the law always wins. "Fine. Whatever. Just get River back where she belongs, okay? Her brother has to be worried sick about her."
"And why would I do that?" Mab asked idly, one finger reaching out to stroke the crystal toy.
"You owe her," I said through gritted teeth. "She's been in a strange place without her family for over a day, she's been scared and found out about magic, and she didn't ask for any of this. You used her to prove some esoteric eccentric whim of your own. I'm calling you on it. Pay her back. Take her home."
[Fairies adhere to not owing anyone anything too, so Harry's got a good point to hold Mab to here. He just, again, doesn't have all the info.]
"Wait." River stepped forward, and laid her palm over the crystal piano. "It isn't enough. She has to promise."
"River." No, no no no, Mab was not someone a kid like River should be taunting. "Stop. Let me handle this. It's not your problem."
"Is," River said, a mulish expression spreading over her face. "She cheated. Used your blood to bring me here. Didn't ask." She cocked her head, then smirked at Mab, who blinked at her, slow and cat-like. "Won't tell. If you promise: never again. One time only." She blinked at Mab in eerie mimicry, and for a second, her face had a fey cast to it that made me wonder how human her family was, and if maybe she had more than human magic working through her. "Schrodinger's cat stays alive. And dead."
[River, on the other hand, has pretty quickly grasped all the info, synthesized it, realized that Mab could *possibly* do this to others of Harry's descendants -- like Simon -- and found this unacceptable. She's also realized that there's a strong possibility of some connection to Mab or her people there, too; and that Harry probably would be very, very unhappy about this. It's not exactly blackmail, but I think Mab respects her for playing the game the way she would, in the same position. As long as Harry doesn't know, the possibility of a fairy/human Harry kid is possible.]
Mab gave her a thoughtful look, which unnerved me even more than if she'd lost her temper at River's demands. "You comprehend the implications."
"She comprehends." River nodded. "She understands."
"I wish I understood. Is anyone going to explain it to me?" I asked.
"No," River and Mab chorused in sync, and I shivered.
"Say your good-byes, little dancer. Then I'll return you home." Mab's smile was almost indulgent. Creeeeepy. "Our bargain will hold."
River turned to me, then surprised me with a fast hug. My arms went around her on reflex, then tightened. "Won't be able to call," she said into my shoulder. "Too far away. Won't be able to find me." She shook her head hard, then pulled away. "No explanations. Sorry. No words. And the math is too complex." She frowned, then her expression cleared, and I could see her struggling to be clear and direct. For once. "I will be fine. Simon takes care of me. And others. Friends. The Blue Hands-" she gulped. "Won't find me. I get stronger all the time. Safer." She squeezed my hand. "Don't worry?"
I squeezed back, and shook my head. "Comes with the service. But I'll try." I tapped her chin with a closed fist. "Try to stay out of trouble?"
She snorted and rolled her eyes. "Just as much as you will."
[ I still want a decent story with Simon and River's parents finding out what their kids have been up to the last couple years. I really, really do. *whaps Mr & Mrs. Tam upside the head*]
She let go of my hand to bend down and hug Mouse, then straightened and crossed over to the stone and the crystal piano. "My blood, yes?"
"Yes," stated Mab. I watched River cut her palm open on the jagged edge of the rock, and then place it on the crystal construct.
For a second, I saw stars. Nebulas, planets, moons, constellations spinning out of control, the zoom of satellites going by, an infinitely huge and crowded universe, and one star zipping by and then winking away like a firefly-
Inside my mind, soft as the brush of an eyelash, I heard:
Good-bye, Harry. I'll remember you. Someday you'll understand. Mab doesn't know everything.
And with that final somewhat cryptic statement, the light and the stars and the universe collapsed into the crystal piano again, with a tiny, final, plink.
[Pretty happy with that imagery, and the firefly reference that Harry doesn't grasp the implications of.]
I drew a slow breath. "Are we done here?"
Mab picked up the box, and smiled at me. "For now."
I couldn't get away from that pretty smile fast enough. "Good. Let's not make the next time any time soon, okay, Mab?"
"I am inclined to overlook your attitude today, Harry Dresden." She caressed the box. "In payment for future favors."
I took a step back. Then another. "You do that."
With a final ice-cream headache of a smile, Mab melted back into the water, and disappeared.
I headed to MacAnally's and bought Murph a beer, telling her the whole story. She frowned as I got to the end, sipping her own drink. "So Mab just sent her home? No conditions, no contusions? That doesn't sound like the Queen you've described to me before."
"No, it doesn't." That eerie resemblance that I'd noticed came back to my mind, and I took a pull off my bottle. "Except. Well."
Murph poked me in the shoulder. "Well, what?"
"I was thinking about what Mab said. About having created the box. And the trail it would leave."
I tapped my fingers on the glass. "And the way River acted. Maybe..." I stopped. "Nah. It's crazy. Forget it."
"I swear you get more frustrating every time you deal with the fairies, Harry. They should pay the rest of us for putting up with you after one of their gigs."
"You go and try to collect that. I'll stay here and drink."
I just can't help but wonder: if you're going to pull someone across a zillion miles, well. You have to have a connection. You can't just reach out and grab anyone. Magic has rules. So I'm thinking: somewhere in the world-- hell maybe Taiwan, or Hong Kong, or China; River's slipping into Chinese points to that-- there's maybe a girl who's related to Mab. Or whichever fairy whose blood she used to make that box; she might not have wanted to use her own. That's a huge risk. Blood calls to blood. And Mab couldn't get to her any other way than this. Pull her out of her life, and into Chicago. Why? Why pull me into it? Just to see if the spell worked? To see if she could call any mortal, if she had the blood of their relatives?
Damned if I know.
[Like I said, Harry's got a blind spot. He *should* be a lot more worried here; it's possible that Mab messed with his head a little, to make him forget or accept this more easily. Just enough to not worry about his blood being part of the spell. He also didn't even think of time travel as part of the problem; it breaks one of the Seven Laws of Magic, so it's not one of his first thoughts, though I played fair and had Bob mention it. River not mentioning 'Oh hi, I'm from 2537' would have meant he didn't worry about it either; she just didn't think it was relevant.
Enh. Six of one, half-a-dozen of authorial speed-writing of the other. It probably kept him awake wondering, on odd nights when he could actually see stars in Chicago night sky (probably due to the latest magic crisis taking out the light pollution).]
But if Mab's leaving her alone, I'm going to leave her alone too. I just hope her friends and family can cope with a crazy genius gymnastic magician when she gets home.
I lifted my bottle to Murph. "To no place like home." And she clinked hers against mine.
[added into the second draft, since it really needed a better ending than the paragraph above it.]
Coda: Somewhere across space and time…
[Suggested by darklightluna as a way to tie up the loose ends, and explain what was perfectly clear to me and River, but probably not everyone else. It breaks the Dresden idiom, but there was just no way around it.]
River stepped back into the cargo hold from the folding pocket of space she'd traveled across, and paused, listening.
Serenity was still asleep; she could feel her brother's sleeping thoughts, Inara's, Mal's, Jayne's. Zoe was drifting along the edges of a dream of Wash; her baby was turning in a circle, sucking its toes inside her womb. Mab had returned her mere hours after her departure. Good. Simon need never know, or worry; she could feel the edges of his dreams, worry-tinged, but not aware. Not yet.
Kaylee was awake, and in the engine room. River tip-toed in, and settled down next to her. "I had a dream." Better to lie than be thought mad again. "Of Earth-that-was."
"Didja? Was it shiny?" Kaylee wiped her hands on a rag, and gave River a sleepy, happy smile. "All blue and green? Or was it all abandoned and dead and all?"
"It was itself." Hard to explain, even with the dream-excuse. "Huge city, on a lake. Tall tall towers; I danced on one. People living underground, with glowing flowers that choked." She stretched out one leg, poked Kaylee on the knee with her toe. "A wizard came to rescue me."
[Again, I'm very pleased that River's craziness and mode of talking means she can tell the exact truth, and it sounds like a fairy tale.]
"Ooooo. Was he handsome?" Kaylee gave her a conspiratorial grin, and River grinned back, laughing inside that Kaylee always thought of the same thing first.
"A little. Smart. Tired. He worked too hard." She bit her lip, remembering Mab. "There was a wicked sorceress. She pulled me there with my blood. His blood. He was our ancestor, one of mine and Simon's. He didn't know. Not any of it. Still tried to protect me."
Kaylee gave her an understanding glance, and River didn't need to read her mind to know she was thinking of their parents, and how Mama and Baba had let Simon and River go without even trying to help them. If Harry had known that, whichever one was his descendant would have felt the full force of his wrath. Even across five centuries. It had been weirdly comforting to realize that, and hug someone besides Simon in her family again. "Well, of course he looked out for ya." Kaylee reached out to pat her foot. "That's what family does."
"Yes." So she was not going to tell him what she had perceived in Mab's mind. Her plans for Harry, the hope of a fey child with Harry's powers to seal Mab's power. Fairy magic; mortal blood. Success possibly confirmed by River's presence, product of Harry's blood and fairy blood, five hundred years later. He'd been blind to the possibility. To the risk of Mab doing this more than once. At least she would retire satisfied with her little game, and keep her promise to River. She thought her victory inevitable.
But who knew how it came about? Mab might think she knew the outcome. River knew Harry. Schrodinger's Cat was not dead yet. And Harry would protect any child of his, and its mother, no matter if they were human, crazy, magic, or not. Mab might have bitten off much more than she could chew.
[Awkward. But the best I could do. Unless I write a sequel. Which I'm not. Probably.]
"That's what family does."
[I've written better endings, but that's not too bad.
Again, big thanks and applause to my beta-readers, Ladies & Gents & others! Questions answered below, omissions in the next post.]
Omissions from canon that weren't in this story.