Folk'd Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR) Page 10

  “A few weeks after us and you were expecting,” he said, an undercurrent of accusation in his voice.

  “And?” she replied, picking up on the undercurrent.

  “And you know what!” he said, frustrated. “Gods, Regan, you’re a Goddess famed for her ability to see the future! So what was I? Did I even have a choice in us having sex? Or was it all part of some mystic Tuatha plan? You said Glon was a surprise! Some surprise! For all I know his birth’s been preordained for centuries!”

  Synaesthesia or no synaesthesia, listening to this, Danny’s mouth was awash with the tangy taste of irony.

  “When I walked away from my people, I gave all of that up. The omens, the portents. Glon wasn’t planned,” and the Morrigan gave a short laugh, “believe me he wasn‘t.”

  “But once he was there, what? You thought you’d better hang onto the human in case you didn’t know to raise an infant one of us?”

  “If you don’t know the reason why I stayed with you,” the Morrigan replied, with the first hint of steel beneath her words Danny had been able to detect, “why I’ve spent the last ten years with you, then there’s really no point having this conversation at all.”

  “Just tell me,” he pleaded, cupping her face in his hands and bringing their heads closely together. “Please, just tell me. I need to hear it.”

  She whispered the reason to him in three words. He whispered the response in four. They kissed.

  “I’m sorry, Caderyn,” he heard her say. After that the two of them simply sat together, the baby’s crying dialling down to snuffling which changed to deep, regular breathing.

  “Are you okay?”

  The Morrigan looked up at Danny, as if she’d forgotten he was there. She jerked her head away from his eyes in a way that was so reminiscent of his mother not wanting him to see her cry that he felt a pang of longing to be home. “Yes,” she said. “Keep…keep watching. I’m just going to…to walk for a while, go see Glon and Gaim.”

  He frowned. Something in the way she’d said that hinted at an even deeper sadness, but he couldn’t find the strength to question her on it, and in a few strides she was gone, leaving just Danny at the poolside with the couple and the sleeping baby.

  Faced with what could be a long wait before the awkward silence between husband and wife abated (which going from his parents’ example back in the day, could have been a week or more) he sat down on a log about ten feet from them, first checking that he wasn’t going to Swayze right through the fuckin thing and end up on his hole.

  “Yous think yous have problems,” he said wearily to the unresponsive trio. “I’m on a fuckin vision quest or some such shite as a commercial break before I go back into Faerie Central Station and fight some queen for a sword that even if I get, I’ve fuck all clue what I’m supposed to do with it.”

  A breeze stirred the air and the pond gurgled and rippled. The sound of Coscar’s breathing was a soft white noise. Danny sighed.

  “It’s weird,” he said, not just referring to the fact that he was essentially talking to himself, “I mean, you seem worried that she’s slumming it mate. But she doesn’t look like someone who’s unhappy to me. I mean okay, she fucked off from her ones in the huff, and okay the first of the wee fellas wasn’t planned, but look at yis, ye seem happy. The two big lads…fuck, they’re great big fellas. Do yis proud.”

  He paused for barely a moment. “Might wanna watch the oul pond-duckin stuff but, when social services get invented,” he added.

  They made no reply, but he could see they were cuddling closer to one another, finding resolution and solace not from more clumsy words but from touch and physical contact. The memory surfaced of lying beside Ellie, of touching her in his sleep even after the most blazing of rows, finding themselves ensconced in each other’s embrace the next morning.

  He thought of Glon and Gaim, throwing themselves at their mother in the water. Glon and his warrior’s defiance, Gaim and his cuteness and his unashamed folding under pressure.

  Would Luke be like that in years to come? Would he get a chance to find out?

  The Morrigan’s head snapped up. Her eyes widened. He heard it as well as tasted it; a rumble in the woods that surrounded the little village, a thunderous shaking that made the earth vibrate in time as though someone were playing it like an instrument.

  “No,” she breathed, standing up and clutching her baby to her breast. “Oh no. Not here…!”

  “What is it?” Caderyn asked, even as Danny heard the villagers begin to stir and murmur in apprehension, stopping their daily chores to look nervously at the woods around them. Some of the men hefted axes they’d been using for domestic jobs in a different grip, making themselves ready.

  “Formorians. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you smell it? They’re coming,” she answered, pale and drawn and a million miles from the invincible figure he’d seen taking legions of them apart on the battlefield. “Caderyn, they’re coming straight for us…!”

  * * *

  The Temptation

  Now

  Women had always been something of a puzzler to Steven Anderson. Even as a child he’d remembered clashing with his older sister again and again as they grew up. She was five years older than he was and as such, by the time she hit the big P, he came to be regarded by her as a lower form of life than things found clinging to the bottom of things clinging to the bottom of rocks.

  But that was then. Now, in his twenties, he and his sister had moved past simple childhood resentment and had evolved into complex, multi-layered adult antipathy.

  Still, in all his years he’d never seen anything like this.

  “Ellie,” he said patiently, seemingly for the umpteenth time. “Think about it love. Eight month old kids don’t walk and talk overnight.”

  She was bouncing little Aaron on her knee. As Steve spoke, she clapped her hands over his ears as if to shield him from Daddy’s hurtful words. “Well then my little mansum wansum woo-woo is special,” she said.

  “He’s somethin alright…” Bee said mildly.

  Ellie scowled. “Please, remind me who you are again?” she said.

  “Bee O’Malley,” said Bee, dunking a biscuit into a cup of tea that Steve, thinking about it, could not remember seeing be made. Did she carry a cup in her inside pocket or something?

  “And what d’you think you’re doing coming into my house and mouthin off about my baby boy?”

  Bee thought about this. “Trying to break the changelings enchantment and make you see sense before it turns on you and kills you?” she offered cheerfully, and then swore. “Left it in too long,” she said by way of explanation, pulling out half a Rich Tea.

  Ellie looked at Steve. “Did you drink and drive and not tell me and she’s part of your community service, or what? The Help A Mad Oul Biddy Society?”

  “Mad oul Biddy!” Aaron echoed, shooting Bee an evil look. “Mammy! Want hugs!”

  “Awwww c’mere my little man for mummy hugs!” Ellie cooed, and embraced him. From behind her back, Aaron looked over at where Bee and Steve were sitting on the big sofa.

  Lifting his tiny, stubby little hand, he slowly and deliberately raised his middle finger in their direction.

  Bee choked on her digestive.

  Out in the kitchen a few moments later, with sounds of coo-ing and disturbingly two-way conversation drifting in from the living room, Steve was practically grabbing Bee’s non-existent lapels and shaking her. “What the fuck?” he demanded in a furious whisper. “What’s wrong with-“

  “She’s still under the influence,” Bee said. “When Danny left the world-“

  “Will you stop saying that, for fucks sake!” Steve exploded. “Left the world! You make it sound like he ordered a taxi!”

  “When Danny left the world,” Bee said again, with all the concern for Steve’s interruption of someone noticing a dust mite on their trousers, “as I told you, the changes started to unravel behind him. So it had to increase its influence over her or she’d
know it wasn’t her baby. That’s why she can’t tell anything is wrong.”

  “Then how come I can?”

  Bee regarded him with what he thought, with no small measure of discomfort, was far too wise a look for someone he would cheerfully have compartmentalised as a senile oul goat not a few hours ago. “Maybe because you were never fully bought into the having a child side of things in the first place?” she said. “Its focussing all of its energies on Ellie now. Bewitching her. She’s it’s protection now.”

  “Did you see him givin us the finger? The cheeky wee fucker…”

  Bee shrugged. “I thought all the kids round here could do that at eight months. Anyway,” she went on quickly, seeing Steve’s unamused expression at this impromptu piece of social commentary, “don’t worry. There’s other options available to us. D’ya think I came round here with two arms the same length?” she tapped the side of her nose conspiratorially. “I’ve come prepared, son. Prepared.”

  “With what?”

  Bee looked him straight in the eye. “Tea,” she said firmly.

  In the living room, with Steve’s incredulous stream of curses audible through the adjoining walls, Ellie was playing peek-a-boo. She covered Aaron’s eyes. “Wheresababy?” she said. “Wheresawiddababy?”

  “Still here under your hand,” Aaron replied.

  “Wheresababy!”

  “Same place as last time.”

  “Wheresababy?!”

  “Isn’t there somethin on TV…?”

  Ellie gave him an admonishing look. “Now now. Don’t be cheeky.”

  He nestled into her immediately. “Sorry Mammy,” he said meekly. “Love you Mammy.”

  She allowed him to burrow into her, feeling a little woozy as he did so. It was odd; she felt as though she’d had a few vodkas…her head felt pleasantly cottony, and that sensation was riding roughshod over an underlying feeling that she was missing something, the sort of feeling she got sometimes when leaving a house or a shop when she’d forgotten to take something with her.

  But that sense of loss was being masked by the cottony feeling of contentment, and she would have cared about that, but why should she? Everything was fine, after all.

  She kissed the top of Aaron’s little semi-bald head and he mewled contentedly and threw his arms around her neck. She was so proud of him for walking and talking like such a big boy already, and Steve…well, he was just jealous because he was out at work all day and he probably knew that the little fella’s advancement was down to his Mummy.

  “Ellie, love?” Steve poked his head around from the kitchen. “Can you come out? Bring the wee man too sure.”

  Aaron’s head was up instantly. “Don’t wanna go,” he said immediately. “Wanna stay here with you Mammy.”

  “Steve?” Ellie said, suspicion managing to form itself outside the fogginess that had descended on her brain. “What do you want us for?”

  “Help with the bottles. The wee man looks starvin.”

  Aaron opened his mouth to protest, and then appeared to think about things – such a little cute face he had when he was mulling things over!

  “I could fuckin murder a bottle,” he admitted.

  "Come on then,” Ellie huffed, standing up with him still clinging to her like a monkey.

  In the kitchen, Steve cast one more doubtful look at his co-conspirator. “How d’you know all this shite anyway?” he asked her.

  “Believe me, I’m an expert,” was all she would say, though he noted that her voice lacked any sense of levity.

  Arriving in the kitchen, Ellie made to deposit the baby on the counter-top, but Aaron whimpered and tried to scamper back onto her again. “Aaron,” Ellie said patiently, “how’m I supposed to make yer wee bottles with you clingin to me? Don’t you want your dinner?”

  Absorbing this, the child allowed himself – still a little reluctantly – to be lowered to the counter top. As Ellie moved to the other side of the kitchen and dropped to her hands and knees to fetch the big tub of formula milk from the cupboard there, Steve took the opportunity to return the gesture he’d been offered in the living room with particular gusto.

  “Up yours too,” Aaron growled softly. “Away and get a fuckin haircut. Hippy.”

  “At least I have hair,” Steve shot back, just as softly. “Ya wispy-headed wee ballix.”

  “Oh wow, what a comeback,” Aaron rolled his eyes, his little legs kicking as they dangled over the side of the counter. “Enjoy me pissin on ye this morning did ye?”

  Steve’s left eye twitched at the memory. “You…aimed?” he choked.

  “Aimed?” Aaron chuckled. “It was such a Bullseye I was expectin Sid Waddell to commentate on it.”

  “I’ll fuckin get ye,” Steve hissed.

  Bee nudged him in the ribs as Ellie, oblivious to the back-and-forth that had just taken place, got to her feet again and shot both participants a beatific smile.

  “What?”

  “What age are you, son?” Bee asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

  Steve scowled and pointed to the eight-month-old. “He started it.”

  Ellie whipped up the bottles with the practised ease of someone who could have done this blindfolded. As she did so, the muscle memories her arms and hands were experiencing were nudging other memories as they flared into life, but they were still unfocused and formless and she shrugged them off.

  Aaron latched onto the teat and began pulling in the milk on the first bottle as the others cooled in the fridge. He was cradled in her arms, forming a little patch of warmth against the crook of her breasts and forearms and palm, a fingerprint of heat that felt comforting on one level and yet felt misshapen and wrong on another; as if he were the wrong key for the right lock.

  His little cheeks expanded and contracted as he suckled greedily on the bottle of milk she held, and as ever he stared straight into her eyes as she fed him, his gaze never wavering, as if he were staring into her head and reading her thoughts, reassuring himself that yes she was still here, and yes she loved him, and yes she wasn’t going to go anywhere.

  And then. He spluttered.

  The bottle left his mouth.

  She sat him up on his little arse on her knee and rubbed his back, again in a practised do-this-in-my-sleep way (a skill honed at 2am feeds where she practically was), waiting for a belch that would settle him again. But this was no trapped wind upset.

  “Let me GO!” he bit out, suddenly writhing in her grasp, his little hands flailing out towards hers, and she exclaimed in pain – he had sharp little nails, and had just raked those on his right hand across her forearm, leaving several shallow little scrab marks. She loosened her grip reflexively with the shock of the pain.

  “Let me GO!” he said again, and twisted until he did indeed succeed in wresting himself loose. She squawked in terror and made a grasp for him, fearing that he would hurt himself as he tumbled from her knee, but somehow with a flexibility that didn’t so much as border on unnatural but lived deep inside the city limits of plain weird, he seemed to launch himself off the sofa cushions, turning in the air until he landed perfectly like the world’s most miniature gymnast on the balls of his little feet on the living room rug.

  He looked up with hatred, not at her, but past her so she turned her head to see Steve and Bee, standing at the doorframe. “Why?” he asked them. “Why did you have to spoil everything?!”

  “You’re not hers,” Bee answered quietly. She was holding one of the other bottles Ellie had placed in the fridge. Ellie glanced down at its warm cousin, still held in her numb fingers. Oh God…oh God, what had they done? What had she given her baby?!

  “Foxglove,” the old woman said, as if reading her mind. “Anything brewed with it will send them back to where they came from.”

  “How dare you!” Ellie thundered, getting to her feet, her eyes full of maternal fire. “That is my BABY! You have NO RIGHT to come into MY HOUSE and-”

  “Ellie,” Steve said, in such a quiet uncharacteristic way
that she had to stop. “Ellie, look.”

  She followed his eyes, back to her bab-

  Ellie screamed.

  Where an eight-month-old had stood only now moments before, now there was a hideous little bundle of flesh, all fatness and baldness. It looked half a millennia old; wizened and ancient, with huge tufts of white hair sticking out in random places, and a head that was out of proportion to the rest of its body, far too big, with angular eyes and a ridged nose.

  And worst, worst of all, it was still wearing the little blue babygro she’d…she’d…

  She kept on screaming, one scream following the other as each passing outburst failed to dampen the weight of horror pressing upon her.

  The strength went from her legs and she half-fell, half-stumbled, just as Steve surged forward and wrapped his arms around her and managed to pull her back to standing, dragging her back a few steps to stand in the doorway while the little homunculus thing stood there, its arse jutting out from the size 4 nappy it was wearing. It glowered at them.

  Or at least, glowered at Bee and Steve. Ellie saw its gaze shift to her and its expression changed. The last scream choked in her throat and turned into a faint cry, her lip trembling uncomprehendingly at the madness unfolding around her.

  “You showed me a rare kindness,” it said. “I won’t soon forget it. Upon my word.”

  It turned, and scampered towards the fireplace.

  “Wait!” Bee called after it, to Steve’s astonishment.

  It looked over its shoulder. “You were the one who banished me,” it reminded her. “So it’s back I shall go.”

  “Answer our questions first.”

  “Kiss my arse.”

  “I think you’d better take another look at who’s banishing who,” she said quietly.

  The little wizened monstrosity screwed up its eyes and leaned forward to look at the three people standing before it. Steve watched as its expression, if anyone could ascertain an expression from something so unaccountably hideous, changed from angry defiance to sheer terror. It took a step backwards, tripped on the hearth, and ended up flat on its backside, where it continued backpedalling until its back was pressed up against the far wall.