By Greg Manuel
Word Count: 2360
Rating: PG for thematic elements
Summary: Thomas finds out his mother kept his grandfather a secret for a reason.
He stood in front of the mirror, a wan candle his only illumination. He didn’t know what he was doing, that much was obvious. He was doing what the internet and pop culture said you did in these situations. What kind of childish idiot did she take him for, anyway?! His face set in grim lines as he thought of his mother.
The source of his ire sat on the countertop in front of him. A box containing letters. Letters between his mother and a man. Now, she’d said the man was his father. She’d never told him much about his father, saying it was something she didn’t like to remember. This box was a contradiction. Why keep a box full of letters and mementos of a man you didn’t want to remember?
She’d told him a doozy of a yarn. He’d barely listened he was so incensed. It had ancient forest gods and men that dared to love Fae princesses. He was two days from his eighteenth birthday and she still treated him as a child. Telling tales to cover for a man who couldn’t have cared less about being a father – At least not his father.
He had asked why the letters were signed Ailis. His mother’s name was Deirdre. She had cut him off before he said the name. Deidre admonished him that he was not to speak that name aloud. She said it was her real name and when spoken by a child of her blood, her father would hear. The great forest deity would then abscond with the child! He snorted in derision.
So, there he stood in front of a mirror, looking like some loser about to call Bloody Mary, just to prove her wrong. He’d never admit it, but now that he was there with everything prepared, trepidation had settled onto his soul. He steeled himself though. He was nearly eighteen, almost an adult. Time to put away childish fears. He took a deep breath… then he took another.
“Ailis.”
When nothing happened, he took another deep breath.
“Ailis.”
A smile crept across his face at the absurdity of his apprehension.
“Ailis.”
His smile widened… then abruptly disappeared as the candle snuffed out.
A scent, the forest right after the rain, wafted in. In the darkness, a wan light shone. Moonlight? The bathroom was windowless. He stumbled back when two red eyes flickered into life within the reflected depths of the mirror, two red candles burning free, just floating in the darkness.
“Oh, look, me daughter’s made me another treat,” said a deep, rumbling voice.
It chortled, the sound like two rocks grating against each other.
The boy gave a short yip of terror when a hand composed of darkness reached out of the mirror. He tried to flee, but the hand caught him by his shirt and pushed him hard, straight into the wall. There were flashes of light as his head collided with the wall with stunning force. His entire body went limp and the last thing he saw as he faded into darkness was himself being drawn towards the mirror.
He woke, head throbbing, no idea how much time had passed. He looked around groggily, his head aching from the blow. He almost believed he was in his bed but his bed didn’t have a fuzzy feel. looking down, it took his brain a few moments to process what he was seeing. He was lying on a bed of moss inside a cave. No, not a cave, a tree hollow?
The familiar chortle made him jump out of his skin. A new flash of pain made him see stars, his head still woozy. His vision swam and he could only see a hulking shadow detach from the wall with two glowing, forge-red eyes. He hid his face, a primal fear driving him to believe if he didn’t see it, it wouldn’t see him.
“What’s your name, boy?” a deep voice asked, reminding him of old forests, wild ones that existed before man walked the earth. He didn’t know how he remembered ancient forests except that the memory was buried deep inside his blood.
“Thomas,” he squeaked without thinking.
“No, your real name. The one that sings inside of your soul even though you’ve told no one,” the voice said.
“D’arcy,” Thomas said, his voice distant, alien to his ears.
“D’arcy,” the gravelly voice said, tasting the name. “Yes, a fitting name for one such as you. Do you know what it means, boy?” Thomas shook his head, wincing at the remnant of pain, “It means dark one. Now, what has your mother told you of your grandfather?”
Thomas looked up at the speaker. At the movement, his vision swam once more for a second or two, but it cleared up quickly.
The creature before him was quite a sight. Standing twelve feet tall, it resembled a man in shape. Its face was ogreish, with a lower jaw that jutted out further and two huge, prominent canines in view. It had a huge, sloped forehead with a set of antlers pushing towards the sky. The antlers were thick as a man’s wrist. Its eyes were teal with no sign of pupils. The hair on its body was like hanging moss, and the lower half looked to be goat-like, even ending in cloven hooves. Thomas found speech impossible.
“Well, boy, what has she told you of me?” the creature asked.
“I haven’t told him anythin’ about you, Da,” his mother’s voice said from out of one of the shadowed recesses.
“A boy shouldn’t know his grandfather?”
“Oh, and what should I have told him, Da? How much you like to eat your sweet, little grand-babies straight outta the womb?”
“Look, Ailis, you’re scarin’ the boy!”
“Don’t act like you’re even a wee bit concerned that I’m scaring him. You love his fear,” his mother said. While it was his mother’s voice, the woman standing there in the tree hollow looked nothing like his mother. This woman stood at least nine feet tall, a far cry from his mother’s compact five-foot frame. She had violet hair that grew in patches around her body like fur, and on her head almost like flowers. Her eyes glowed purple in the dim light, and she had wicked looking claws and fangs that protruded from her upper lip. “Son,” she said, “I wish you hadn’t defied me on this. This is one genie we’ll be hard set to get back in its bottle.”
“Mo-Mom, is that really you?” he asked. He was bathed in cold sweat, barely able to get out the words, his whole body paralyzed in fear.
“Yes,” she said, trying to take the edge from her voice, “Why couldn’t you listen? You had two days left until your eighteenth birthday then I could have taught you what you needed to know about escapin’ his notice.”
“I-I’m sorry,” D’arcy said.
“Well, the milk’s spilt, as the sayin’ goes.”
“Two days, you say?” the great, shaggy moss-man rumbled, “Cuttin’ it a bit close, aren’t we?”
“You’d have been none the wiser, Da, if this fool hadn’t taken it into his head to defy me,” Ailis said, her eyes flashing a hard shade of purple.
“Why must we always fight, me darlin’ daughter?”
“Because, Da,” Ailis said, punctuating each word, “you keep eatin’ me children!”
“Me dear little Ailis, it’s water under the bridge, as they say…”
“Is that what you tell yerself, you old goat of a fool?” Ailis hissed.
“Why must you be so insufferably insolent?” her father roared back.
“Should I be more like Meaghan? The daughter you loved so much? Your favorite?” Ailis practically spat the words.
“She wasn’t my favorite…”
“She was until you ate her!”
“That was centuries ago, why’re you openin’ up old wounds?”
“Because she was me sister! I loved her, not that you’d understand that.”
D’arcy watched the verbal jousting between the two, frozen, lest he catch their notice once more.
“Of course I know how to love! You were created from me very being!”
“No, no, that wasn’t love. Not truly. If we were formed of love, it was the basest form of love: Self-love. You’ve always been obsessed with yourself and when any of us challenged that, you didn’t hesitate to eat us.”
“I’ll admit to being… rash in the past.”
“You still think you’re right, don’t you?”
“You’re me progeny. As a god, it is well within me right to dispose of you as I see fit. It’s the way of the world.”
“You backward, forgotten bastard! Not how the way world works anymore it isn’t. You’re cluckin’ and holdin’ on to ideals that haven’t existed for centuries. You can’t stand that you’re a memory of a time the world wishes forgotten. We’ve moved on.”
“I am not forgotten!” the giant forest deity stretched to his full height.
“Aren’t you though? When did Man last leave gifts in your honor? How big’s your forest, Da? Do they even fear you enough to not cut at your woods?” she said as if spitting acid at her father.
Her father’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Careful with your words, daughter… unless you wish to share your son’s fate.”
“Oh, quit your threatening, you old fool. Do it! Eat us both. I hope you choke on our bones.”
“Hey, don’t I get a say in this?” D’arcy said, his gaze swiveling between his granddad and his mother.
“No!” they both said in unison.
D’arcy bristled, his youthful anger overshadowing his fear. “Both of you talk about me like I’m not here! Well, I am. I’m here and I will have a say in my future,” he said, finding it hard to control his breathing. It became erratic and his skin felt…tight. It was the only word he could find to describe it. He looked towards his mother. “What is happening to me?”
She looked at her son in concern. He was covered in sweat and doubled over in pain.
“I might have made a small miscalculation. Now, to be fair, your grandda was off chasin’ me and your da. It was rough and tumble…so, I might have guessed at your birthday and… surprise! I was wrong,” she said with a smirk. The moss-man took one look at the boy and moved forward, but Ailis stopped him with an outthrust hand. “Don’t even consider it, ya damned old fool. I might not beat you outright, but I can stall you long enough for him to finish the Change. Then what are you going to do? Hmmm? Fight us both?”
“Maybe I will,” her father said in a slow and burbling way. Something dangerous flashed across his face.
“Is that how you want it? You’ve either eaten or chased off your daughters, one by one. I promise there’ll be no one else knocking on your door. You’ll be forgotten, well and truly. Just another mad god upon a wooden throne in his lonely hall. Is that what you want?”
“Maybe it’s exactly what I want!” The god’s powerful voice boomed throughout the hall, a hollow echo against the walls.
“Then you’d be a bigger fool than this one was for sayin’ me name!”
Her father eyed his grandson, who was still tossing to and fro, caught up in the throes of the Change. The forest lord had a thousand-year stare watching the metamorphosis in front of him. It was bringing up feelings that were written on his brutish face. How his ma had thrown it in his granddad’s face that one of her children had lived. The rush of power that had suffused his being as he took his birthright. He looked back at his daughter, expecting to see her smug face, but found nothing there but…exhaustion. He thought he understood, as drained as he was. He was tired of waiting for the day one of her children came for him and tried to take his demesne. “What do you propose, daughter?”
“That we leave you to your grand hall and forest. Me son shall find his own place in the world, far from you. We shan’t be darkening your doorstep ever again,” she said.
A howl pierced the night, torn from the throat of the boy. He was no longer human. A thick coat of silver fur covered his body. His eyes were an icy, liquid blue. He was on all fours, resembling a giant wolf, eight feet at the shoulder. He stared warily at his grandfather, saliva dripping from his massive jaws.
His grandfather returned his stare with a thoughtful look of his own. He looked from the boy to his daughter and back. “I don’t agree,” he started, and both tensed. He threw up a hand to forestall any hostilities. “I mean, I’m tired of not havin’ me daughter in me life.”
“What are you sayin’, Da?”
“I’m sayin’ that this silly feud should end. Your son has taken his part of me power, over and done. He’ll become a forest lord as I am… in fact,” he said, knocking on a wall of the tree hollow. One root snaked down and he took something from it. “You should have this. An acorn from old Barta. It’ll grow up, fast, into a tree hall of your own. A forest lord should have a proper place to rule his domain.” He gave a smile, at least he tried, but it came out more of a weird cross between a grimace and a snarl.
The boy, now a giant wolf, dipped his giant furry head in acceptance. Ailis reached out her hand and accepted the acorn. Though he didn’t understand the import, Ailis did, and it was with gravitas she took it in her hand.
They both turned to leave but Ailis stopped and turned her head. “Then, until next we meet, Da,” she said.
The old shaggy god smiled, this time better, more genuine. “Until next we meet, daughter.” He raised his hand in farewell. As they disappeared, he sighed. He looked around his lonely tree hall and hoped they both would come back some day.