Customs, pt. 7
It was late afternoon before I came by Doylen’s, and at that hour, there wasn’t much in the pub except some sunlight and Doylen herself, who was all wide-eyed attention when I came through the door.
“Reed,” she said.
I nodded. “Nobody else in yet?”
She shook her head, her body on autopilot, working on the small preparations for the night. “Not for another hour. What’s up?”
Walking in a couple paces, I realized something was wrong with Doylen.
“You’ve heard by now, I’m sure,” I replied. “Making my rounds.”
My mind was grasping for what was different, but it was slippery. She looked like her normal self; short dark blonde hair, pictsie-like with freckles and a pert nose. A lot of people assumed her a changeling, but she was just human.
She nodded, folding napkins. “It’s early yet, so I haven’t heard anything. Stop by tomorrow? I might have more for you then.”
Doylen’s was a haven of sorts. To most, it was a place where a lot of the changelings came to spend time with each other, but it was also a place where the less-liked faeborn could come and enjoy themselves in peace. It had a fair human patronage too, but most of them weren’t gawkers. Many fae are horrible at being creative themselves, as a rule, so they loved to surround themselves with human innovation. It was a pretty close crowd at Doylen’s, as a result… writers, poets, and a lot of musicians.
Unofficially, Doylen’s was also a safe house for fugitive supernaturals. Not everyone has the same laws about supernaturals, and some places are vicious to all of them. You can guess there’s underground railroads of all sorts as a result, which is a great deal of hassle for people like me. Supernaturals were good hands at seeming like something they weren’t, and on occasion, something horrible slips into the country, helped by well-meaning but not well-informed hands.
Doylen was sharp, and knew enough to key me to the ones who did come through. In exchange, I arrange for her work to continue. Supernatural law, even the mundane sort, tends to be a little fuzzy at the edges.
But this time, she was hiding something from me, and that wasn’t like her at all.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t dangerous. If there were a redcap or nuckalavee or something of the sort in the place, I would have picked up on that immediately. There was nothing there that was threatening me… but Doylen was edgy, very edgy.
She was watching me, and I saw the small signs. Too attentive. Impatient, showing in the restless wrists. I could almost hear her heart fluttering.
What was she worried about?
“Sure,” I said after a moment, and that moment made her instantly nervous. I allowed my eyes to narrow. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said, and there was a pause.
It was in the store room. Whatever she didn’t want me to see was in the store room.
I locked her in place with a look, and went to the door.
“Reed, please, don’t!”
The door opened, I had myself set for a conflict even though there was no sense of the liquid tension that always prefaced one, and saw a slender man sitting at the break table, with a mug of stout and a notebook. He looked up, unconcerned, with an elegance that made his simple face seem luminous, and I could see the gold flecks in his blue watercolor eyes. Sitting there, the composition was perfect; his slight lean to the table, with its rich hardwood colors, balanced by the column of sunlight from the window above, falling around him in long, smooth brushstrokes. It was a circle, his fair skin and black hair an ink-wash, or maybe the sleekest of charcoal-
I immediately backed out of the room and slammed the door shut, my own heart thudding heavily, and looked at Doylen with the anger only fear can generate.
“This was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” I said flatly.
“Please, Reed! Please, don’t call it in, he’ll stay here, I promise-“
“No. Don’t move.” I was already calling in a retrieval team. “Don’t move, Doylen.”
She was too distraught to even try, and we stood there and watched each other until the team arrived. I directed them briefly, and they went into the store room, iron in hand and mind both.
They took the lhiannan sidhe only a few moments later, after securing him, and like any lhiannan sidhe, he didn’t resist at all. He seemed to find the whole thing a little amusing, and I was glad when they finally took him out, because all I could see when he was in the room was how much I wanted to paint again, and how good I knew I could be at it.
And I knew Doylen was the same, except every sound she heard would have been a note in her perfect song.
Lhiannan sidhe aren’t allowed out of Ireland, and for good reason. They’re regarded as a national treasure there, but even so, they are restricted in their movements. Some of them are tremendously powerful in fae magic, but all of them are dangerous for what they do. They make artists of all sorts, but they destroy those artists. It’s a process they have no control over, as natural as breathing is to us, but an artist that a lhiannan sidhe forms a relationship with eventually withers and dies. They go mad, they waste away, or whatever else, but the end result is always the same, and they never last long.
But the art they create in that brief window is brilliant.
In Ireland, if you are a citizen, you can petition to have exposure to a lhiannan sidhe. It involves a lot of paperwork, basically acknowledging that you are going to die, and that you understand that, and there’s something about willing all your proceeds from your art to Ireland. For years now, Ireland has been at the head of the arts, but the price is steep. Once, in the fifties, an escaped lhiannan sidhe started working as a director in California, and the deaths were appalling. That woke up a lot of people on how dangerous they could be, but even so, there’s a lot of romanticism about them.
I left a while later, after grilling Doylen about how she’d gotten him here, and giving her the usual noise about not leaving the city. It took a couple blocks for my pulse to slow down, and I quietly thanked the world for that lesson. Not everything dangerous feels that way, not even to someone like me.
It took several more blocks to shake the event entirely. The ache of lost inspiration made me feel hollow, and all I could remember was the look on his face when I walked in, as if he could see everything I would ever create, and he expected to love it.
“Reed,” she said.
I nodded. “Nobody else in yet?”
She shook her head, her body on autopilot, working on the small preparations for the night. “Not for another hour. What’s up?”
Walking in a couple paces, I realized something was wrong with Doylen.
“You’ve heard by now, I’m sure,” I replied. “Making my rounds.”
My mind was grasping for what was different, but it was slippery. She looked like her normal self; short dark blonde hair, pictsie-like with freckles and a pert nose. A lot of people assumed her a changeling, but she was just human.
She nodded, folding napkins. “It’s early yet, so I haven’t heard anything. Stop by tomorrow? I might have more for you then.”
Doylen’s was a haven of sorts. To most, it was a place where a lot of the changelings came to spend time with each other, but it was also a place where the less-liked faeborn could come and enjoy themselves in peace. It had a fair human patronage too, but most of them weren’t gawkers. Many fae are horrible at being creative themselves, as a rule, so they loved to surround themselves with human innovation. It was a pretty close crowd at Doylen’s, as a result… writers, poets, and a lot of musicians.
Unofficially, Doylen’s was also a safe house for fugitive supernaturals. Not everyone has the same laws about supernaturals, and some places are vicious to all of them. You can guess there’s underground railroads of all sorts as a result, which is a great deal of hassle for people like me. Supernaturals were good hands at seeming like something they weren’t, and on occasion, something horrible slips into the country, helped by well-meaning but not well-informed hands.
Doylen was sharp, and knew enough to key me to the ones who did come through. In exchange, I arrange for her work to continue. Supernatural law, even the mundane sort, tends to be a little fuzzy at the edges.
But this time, she was hiding something from me, and that wasn’t like her at all.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t dangerous. If there were a redcap or nuckalavee or something of the sort in the place, I would have picked up on that immediately. There was nothing there that was threatening me… but Doylen was edgy, very edgy.
She was watching me, and I saw the small signs. Too attentive. Impatient, showing in the restless wrists. I could almost hear her heart fluttering.
What was she worried about?
“Sure,” I said after a moment, and that moment made her instantly nervous. I allowed my eyes to narrow. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said, and there was a pause.
It was in the store room. Whatever she didn’t want me to see was in the store room.
I locked her in place with a look, and went to the door.
“Reed, please, don’t!”
The door opened, I had myself set for a conflict even though there was no sense of the liquid tension that always prefaced one, and saw a slender man sitting at the break table, with a mug of stout and a notebook. He looked up, unconcerned, with an elegance that made his simple face seem luminous, and I could see the gold flecks in his blue watercolor eyes. Sitting there, the composition was perfect; his slight lean to the table, with its rich hardwood colors, balanced by the column of sunlight from the window above, falling around him in long, smooth brushstrokes. It was a circle, his fair skin and black hair an ink-wash, or maybe the sleekest of charcoal-
I immediately backed out of the room and slammed the door shut, my own heart thudding heavily, and looked at Doylen with the anger only fear can generate.
“This was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” I said flatly.
“Please, Reed! Please, don’t call it in, he’ll stay here, I promise-“
“No. Don’t move.” I was already calling in a retrieval team. “Don’t move, Doylen.”
She was too distraught to even try, and we stood there and watched each other until the team arrived. I directed them briefly, and they went into the store room, iron in hand and mind both.
They took the lhiannan sidhe only a few moments later, after securing him, and like any lhiannan sidhe, he didn’t resist at all. He seemed to find the whole thing a little amusing, and I was glad when they finally took him out, because all I could see when he was in the room was how much I wanted to paint again, and how good I knew I could be at it.
And I knew Doylen was the same, except every sound she heard would have been a note in her perfect song.
Lhiannan sidhe aren’t allowed out of Ireland, and for good reason. They’re regarded as a national treasure there, but even so, they are restricted in their movements. Some of them are tremendously powerful in fae magic, but all of them are dangerous for what they do. They make artists of all sorts, but they destroy those artists. It’s a process they have no control over, as natural as breathing is to us, but an artist that a lhiannan sidhe forms a relationship with eventually withers and dies. They go mad, they waste away, or whatever else, but the end result is always the same, and they never last long.
But the art they create in that brief window is brilliant.
In Ireland, if you are a citizen, you can petition to have exposure to a lhiannan sidhe. It involves a lot of paperwork, basically acknowledging that you are going to die, and that you understand that, and there’s something about willing all your proceeds from your art to Ireland. For years now, Ireland has been at the head of the arts, but the price is steep. Once, in the fifties, an escaped lhiannan sidhe started working as a director in California, and the deaths were appalling. That woke up a lot of people on how dangerous they could be, but even so, there’s a lot of romanticism about them.
I left a while later, after grilling Doylen about how she’d gotten him here, and giving her the usual noise about not leaving the city. It took a couple blocks for my pulse to slow down, and I quietly thanked the world for that lesson. Not everything dangerous feels that way, not even to someone like me.
It took several more blocks to shake the event entirely. The ache of lost inspiration made me feel hollow, and all I could remember was the look on his face when I walked in, as if he could see everything I would ever create, and he expected to love it.