“…And this is Magdalena,” the object of, well, not my heart’s desire, but definitely the desire of something anatomical and inconveniently located offered a passel of other names for the girl she was introducing.  The names passed by me like so much exposition, and I smiled in vague attention, my focus on Binah, and her slightly exotic accent.  I passed one of the drinks I had just purchased over to her, on general principles.

“We’ve passed each other on campus,” Magdalena said, her voice perfectly modulated over the music and sound of the crowd.  She knocked back the shot and then extended her hand to me.  “Magda.  My mother’s side of the family adds the baggage, but since she also gave me the good looks, I tolerate it.”  I shook her hand on automatic, and took a moment to stop watching and listening to Binah as soon as our palms connected.  There was something…

She was fairly tall, but more importantly, most of it was leg.  She had on a pair of cargo shorts that showed them off, and a white tank top with a handful of gold necklaces that were a lot more subtle than anything that phrase should suggest of the 1970s.  Her hair was pressed back with some kind of ancient secret hair care product of which straight men are not meant to know.  She repressed a smile.

“A fellow artist,” she said, her other hand curling around mine.

I started to protest, as stick figures were high concept to me,  but then she wrote a symbol of light in the air between us.  I looked around, but she had been extremely, well, crafty, unlike my guilty glance.  She smiled, and I liked her lips.

“How do you know Binah?” I asked, blandly.

“Isn’t that my line?” she asked, releasing my hand with a certain grace.  “Honors Program, of course.  I’m looking to move to a Psychology degree, not convinced that this is the college to do it at,” she shrugged.   “And you?”

“Officially this is our first date,” I laughed.

“And you took her here?” she referred to the flashing lights and loud music.

“Her favourite local band,” I defended myself.

“What do you think?”

“Can’t stand them,” I shouted back, and Binah bumped back into me from talking to the other people she’d introduced me to, and I had just as quickly forgotten.

“What was that?” she yelled.

“Still trying to appreciate the music,” I yelled back at her.  Actually, to be honest, I didn’t think there was any music.  No melody, lots of screaming that had gotten louder in the last few minutes, and I was far away from the literal crush of people up near the front of the stage.  It was probably an acquired taste.

“It’s great, isn’t it?  They had an opportunity to get one of their songs on the radio,” she just about blasted my ear drums at that point, “but they stuck with their principles!  They’ll never sell out!”

“Great!” I responded, although I guess the ethics of the matter confused me because it sounded pretty idiotic, all things considered.  Still, Binah was bopping to what I guessed was the beat, and it was fabulous to watch all the movement under her black t-shirt.  Her smile was a flash of white against the darkness of her skin, and I had to expend effort to hold back the images that brought to mind.

“Should we move up?” she asked at a volume that may have been discernible from a passing jet, yet still something I had to strain to hear from back here near the bar.

“Do you want to?” it would be suicide, my leather jacket being poor protection against that much in the way of muscle and metal spikes.  Still, a slow death being ground (literally) against Binah had potential compensation.

“I asked him to stay back with me,” Magda said, in a conversational tone.  Binah and I had no troubles hearing it.

“You moving in on my man?” Binah asked, without blinking, but still quite loudly.

“I’m using him as an umbrella,” Magda said back.

“Oh.”  I thought it sounded as confused as I felt, but it seemed to be fine with Binah.  “I think I see Dezi down in the front.  I’m going in after her,” she said.  She gave me a quick, almost professional kiss on the cheek, and then jumped into the fray, quite literally.  On both counts – the jumping, and the fighting.

“I wanted to talk to you some more,” Magda explained.

“I kind of guessed.  I’m not a…” I waved my hand in some lame gesture of Hollywood wizardry.

“But you knew what I meant.”

“I’m also not an idiot,” I can actually say that in sign language, but the ironic thing is, I wouldn’t understand the response, provided it wasn’t obviously vulgar.

“Are you preter or super?”

“What?” I tried to make it sound more indignant than confused.  I might have managed it.

“Or are you natural, meaning human?”

“Oh!  No, I’m not anything, um, I’m human.”  I figured “anything crazy” sounded kind of racist.

“So what do you do?”

“One trick pony, and this isn’t the sideshow, sister,” I said, finally, normal voice and frustration leaking out like any just-about-to-be-a-dropout slightly post-adolescent male.

“Isn’t it?” she smiled.  She gestured around us.

“Huh.”  I grunted.  “Bitter, much?”

“It’s the name, mister.  I’m a myrhhbearer.  Bitter and used for gifts and funerals.”

“Is that like a ringbearer?”

“There were more Disciples than Ringwraiths.”

“I never saw Sauron’s resurrection as particularly biblical.”

I didn’t remember walking out of the bar and down the road.  Bye, Binah.  Bye visions of her writhing over me, on top of me, pretty much wherever she wanted.  I was hooked on Magda, who while still pleasing to the eye was far more intriguing to me, maybe even despite the attitude.

“What about Gandalf’s?”

“I read Narnia just thinking that Aslan was one heck of a neat lion,” I had to admit.  “And the voyage of the Dawn Treader I somehow have mixed up with Darwin and the finches.”

“Stars and angels.  Whether it is a wrinkle for our time or maybe even just a Babylon 5 reference,” she sighed.  “Where do you stand?”

“I like to think I’m on the side of the angels,” I decided.

“Well, yeah, but have the ones around us fallen?” she asked, cynically.

I remember kissing her, then.  Her mouth was sweet, the taste of her breath somewhat bitter.

“Have hope,” I told her.

“Oh, I do,” she smiled, and I decided I liked what her smile did to her face.  “I do.”

My bedroom was the one with the moss green carpet.  Or was it olive drab?  It was this green-but-not-a-real-green-carpet (that’s cruel.) It was the first room on the left of the long hallway.  On the right was a bathroom and then my folks’ room, and there was a room for my sister and a guest room at the very end again on the left.

There was always something wrong about that last room on the left. Besides sounding like the name for an excrutiating drama (aren’t they all?) or horror flick, it started with a bad feeling.   Nothing specific, just a discomfort, like I wasn’t supposed to be there.  It was never off-limits, exactly (except to keep it nice for guests) but there was something wrong with it.

I tried, like a kid does, to tell my parents.  From your perspective, it makes sense, right?  You know, because you’ve been reading, that there are things Beyond that try to intersect with our world, our reality, and they really aren’t good for us.  Most people have at least one ghost story they can tell, and that’s my rule of thumb there.

So from the perspective of a kid, absolutely, let’s look into this.  Let’s get an exorcist in and let them do their thing, just in case.

Do you know what an exorcist costs?  You can get a lot of services over the internet, but you’re going to try to bargain-watch this one. Someone who is going to want you to give their organization a donation is probably your best bet, but remember the size of that donation should reflect the fact that they are pitting their soul (loaded word, remember) against the evils of what  is there.

Yeah, as a grown-up, you’re not so quick to listen to this.  Besides, you’ve been in that bedroom.  You’ve made the bed.  You’ve been in the closet.  There’s NOTHING THERE BUT YOUR  IMAGINATION, and why are you so worried about the guest room anyway?  Do you not want Grandma to come?  Is this some kind of bizarre repressed sibling rivalry?  Did you do something disgusting in there?  Do we have any clean sheets that fit that bed in the cupboard?  Go look in the cupboard for clean sheets.  I don’t believe you’re making me make the bed again and I have to go pick Grandma up from the airport and she’ll be waiting another fifteen minutes and she’s going to tell me all the stories about all the times I’ve been late in my life, and it’s all because of you.

As a kid, you’re not likely to make that mistake again. 

You could go all Frog Brothers, or even Monster Squad if you’ve got friends.  Or even just forget that cold chill your Grandma complains about every morning even though it’s 85 degrees before noon.  After all, it isn’t your problem.  Probably an overactive imagination, or so your school shrink says when you come visit on Wednesday afternoons because your 3rd grade teacher wasn’t so hot on your story about the vampires living in your basement.  (That one was totally made up, but it was good urban fantasy, and you don’t know why they confiscated the picture you drew with the best blood colour you were able to make with the bleak selection of coloured pencils you stole from the 6th graders doing their yearbook assignments.)

If it weren’t that you had bad dreams.  You really resonated with that line from Hamlet, and even though the shadows seem wrong (how can a place without much light have shadows?) you sneak into the guest room while Grandma is fussing about the kitchen with your mom.

Grandma has her own smell, but so does this room.  You like Grandma’s smell, it reminds you of visiting her and the little bathroom she had on the right with the National Geographic magazines and the crocheted toilet paper containers, and the funny saying on the wall that you didn’t get until you were older.  It reminds you of firm kisses on the cheek and that she’s always been nice to you.  The smell that competes with it is a dusty smell, even though you know your mom went crazy with the cleaning, and it smells like something old.  Grandma may be old, but she’s not like this smell.  Or maybe it’s the sound, the sound of slithering, if slithering was music that set your spine on edge.

It’s coming from the closet, of course.  You move around Grandma’s suitcase, careful not to touch anything in there.  You want to turn on the light, but you just have this feeling that if you do, you’re going to lose this tenuous connection with the wrongness, like light really chasing it away.  Your mom said you were too old for night lights, but you know this is why you want them, even if your sister says it just lets you see monsters better.

It’s that moment, the moment in your dream that you can’t turn away, that the veil is pierced. 

I can’t tell you I saw anything.  But I brushed aside Grandma’s coat, and there was a something there, a darkness within a darkness that sounded like sadness and tasted like neglect, and smelled like something forgotten so long that it no longer had a scent.  Something in it moved and I gave serious consideration to screaming or wetting my pants, but instead, I felt a flow of anger.  Anger comes from fear, and instead of flight, this once I chose fight.  It reached out from my left hand, and I gestured with the flow as if just closing a curtain, smoothing something down, wax-on, Daniel-san, a curiously non-obscene repudiation of the evil of the moment.

To my great surprise, it went quiet.  My hackles (wherever they are, just about the gills that turn green, I guess) lowered, and real silence, combined with the sound of mom yelling that she did too add the orange juice to the cranberries, and the smell of turkey roasting, and my sister laughing because of something on TV, and it all filled the room like it had been a vacuum.

The smell of Grandma.

I took a moment to breathe it in, and then made my way back out.  But I guessed then, even if I hadn’t known for sure.  It felt kind of like being a hero.  I had faced the darkness and won.

The laws of Hospitality are such that generally speaking, not having an invite to the party meant that the dwarf (for that is the word to best describe him in your mind) was no longer covered by the implied protection of the party’s hosts.  While Vasilisa had split most of the outright carnivores to strut and clash in the upstairs loft, Kievan’s struggling if valiant friends were left mostly to admire the art in the living area downstairs.  There was still some uncomfortable mingling around the dining room table.

“Hi, I’m Claire, I’m a friend of Kievan’s.”  Claire started talking to the tall woman with wet-looking, deep golden hair.  Claire would have described herself first as a vegetarian, then as a young woman complete with cat, and maybe mention that she hoped to make it big as a graphic artist despite feeling that she didn’t have much in the way of natural talent.

“I am Roo,” the woman said.  She smiled and flashed what might have been rows of sharp, pointy teeth.  She would have described herself as hungry.  She fiddled with a gold comb in her hair, after selecting a small hors d’oeuvres.

“Uh, hi.  So you must know Lisa.  I’m in the publications department where Kievan works.  What is it that you do?”  Claire was fascinated by something about the rusalka’s mouth; watching Roo nibble at a turkey roll was very disturbing.

“I am a dancer,” Roo suggested.

“Really?  Are you with the ballet?” Claire tried.

Roo put a lovely pale hand on Claire’s arm.  “Would you like to see a performance?” she asked.

Claire stared at the slightly damp hand on her arm.  She noticed how it had an almost greenish tint, and at the same time, a translucency that reminded one no less of the water in a fish tank gone mostly to algae.  She looked up at Roo’s fiery green eyes and backed away.

In the back of her mind, Claire knew she would never go swimming again.

Not all of the encounters were those between predator and prey, however.  There were a group of sylph musicians who took on all requests.  There’s nothing like listening to Tool being played on a sylphic viola, but you will have to trust that my tale of byliny is true.  Such music can drive men mad.

So there was drinking, and dancing, and general socializing continued until Vasilisa got tired of her little ploy to avoid the dwarf, and instead suggested they play a game.

“We will split into two groups.  I recommend you play with someone you haven’t met before, as this is the type of game where everyone wins, but especially those who meet someone new.”  Her wisdom knew that couching it in the terms of a game, no matter how frivolous could mean it was a sacred rite, and thus those in the competition were protected from inadvertent hungers.  Kievan’s friends moved quietly into the room and slowly two groups sorted themselves out.

The dwarf unknowingly found himself on the other side from Vasilisa.  This was a piece of her wisdom working.  Some powers are driven by will, and some wrapped up in fate, or destiny if you would have it be so.  She is what she is, but then, so are most wizards.  I don’t claim to understand them, for to do so takes a wizard.  I am the son of a lesiye, and that is enough for any one man to manage.

The dwarf did find himself on the same side as Kievan.  This was also on design, because while Vasilisa may be wise, that does not mean she is never a little petty.  She considered it a good lesson against Kievan trying to surprise her again.

“The rules of the game are simple.  One of you has lost something, perhaps a purse, or a host,” she smiled directly at the dwarf, “or even a small piece of jewelry.  It has not been stolen, but you must ask questions of the person you pair up with of its identity, and then each team needs negotiate its release with the other team, for someone on the other team may unknowingly have it on his or her person.”

This had been easy enough to arrange, and may even have come up in conversation throughout the night.  Now, those without the birthrights or sight are not concerned.  Things lost are never lost forever, and things stolen would be an insult worth injury, so they did not complain.  Those of the modern world are more attached to the things they think they must own, and there was some muttering as women went back down to the gallery to check their purses, and touch their ears where they wore jewelry, and men checked their back pockets for wallets and eyed their hosts a bit suspiciously.

Of course there was no theft, and they quieted quickly, some being quite eager to play the game.

Claire had chosen to be partnered with one of the sylph musicians.  In her mind she tried not to finish the sentence with, “Anybody but Roo,” but it was still true.  This was the sylph who played what looked to be a bass made of light, but which Claire thought must have been a very expensive and experimental new plastic.

“I have brought only this,” her new friend Sadko said, referring to his instrument.

“I have my purse,” Claire suggested, but a quick dive into the organized insides showed no loss.  “I have my keys, my wallet, my earrings,” she touched her earlobes in a way that the sylph found amusing.   She looked around.    “But I have misplaced my drink,” she decided.

“I am no gusli player,” Artur explained, “but let’s catch our breath here in the raskovnik, and I’ll see if I can tell you the story.”

I sat up, ready to protest.  “Do we have time for this?”

Artur raised a bushy eyebrow.  “Either she’s dragonchow, or she’s fine and Nellie is waiting for something else.  A negotiation, because just biting down on someone else’s magic is likely to give you several different kinds of indigestion.  I think she’s waiting for us.  Ivan had to have told her somehow.”

I didn’t like the idea but he had a point.  Either we were too late, and we were just going to get et ourselves, or we were a pivot of sorts.  Peredur had just about said it, so now that we had played with the Watcher on the Threshold, we had a few minutes.  Of course, if I’d known that, I’d go catch a shower, maybe a last meal… listening to the lesiye boy in a field that if it had been in our world would have given me allergic reactions, while a spell that was turned into a dog came over to have its ears scritched…well, this wasn’t likely to be the most surreal thing that had or would happen to me.

He seemed to take my consideration as assent.  “So, once upon a time in a land, far, far away… or, to be more precise, about three years ago in New York City…”  He had gone from the sing-song beat of tradition to something I knew to be a translation, but while there was still a trace of attitude, Artur was no longer “Sullen Boy” to me.  I only hoped I had grown up a little in his eyes, too.

I paid attention to the story.

“Vasilisa the Wise was recently married to a young computer programmer we’ll name Kievan for the sake of the story, and, really, to kind of give him the benefit of the doubt.  Kievan and his father are born to this country, but his mother was an immigrant and told him tales of Grandmother Yaga scary enough to make him kind to old women and suspicious of cabins where he can’t find the front door.  Two important things to teach a young boy.

“Vasilisa was going by the name Lisa this decade, and I forget what she does for money, but I think she supplements with writing advice columns on the internet.  Still, she is a wizard, if not zduhaći,” he paused.

“Hence `the wise,'” I nodded.

“And it means her social group is similarly somewhat curbed.”  He gave me a Look.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I grumbled.  I could meet normal people.  I do, every day I go out and work, but maybe I need to rethink my bigotry when it comes to my attitude about the fey; even for me, non-practitioners do seem to fall into the background.  I mean, some friends stand out, like Ed, who knows what I am, but for some of the echelons above me, telling people your little secrets about how you view the world poses its own risks.

He nodded.  “I really do have a girlfriend,” he said, defensively.

I didn’t know what to say, but “I believe you,” sounded patronizing, and “I did,” sounded pathetic, so I didn’t say anything, and just nodded, instead.

“When he wanted to hold a small reception for their friends, she had to tell Kievan something.  She had learned from her time as a frog, another story about her, to be careful in advertising her relationships.  Kievan, of course, expected her to have a great number of friends.”

“I sense a geek social fallacy coming on,” I sighed. Artur didn’t seem to catch it, so I continued.  “Sounds like a number four, `All my friends will be friends, too.'”

“That’s…” he thought it over, “dangerous.  Wisdom suggests otherwise,” he said, carefully.

“It’s an easy thought, after all, they all have you in common, and you like them, so why wouldn’t they like each other?  Of course, then you find out that your best friend slept with your other friend’s wife’s sister, and it’s been Word War Three ever since that patio party last summer… but anyway.”

Artur grinned.  “Except with wizards there are the occasional assassination attempts, and don’t forget the sacred quests.”

“I can’t forget the sacred quests.  Every time I go to the grocery store I feel geased to make sure I have bread, milk, butter, AND eggs.”

He chortled, and continued his story.  “So Kievan, not being given the nom de plume `the Wise,’ continues to push in the classic way fairytale spouses are known to do, until Vasilisa relents and agrees that she will invite some of her friends.  She does, of course, have to avoid known eaters of mortals, and those who are not yet comfortable with this century.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I thought I told you I watched a lot of television.  It makes the transition easier.  Anyway, so Vasilisa goes over the guest list a couple of times.  It does not occur to her that she needs to cross the ones she doesn’t want sent out, or that her husband’s plan was to make it a bit of a surprise party.”

“That’s some contact list,” I interjected.

Artur looked confused.

“I mean, don’t most wizards have, `Arachne, address: any silver spider web under the full moonlight,’ and `Troll, bridge over troubled waters,’ kind of in their personal Rolodex?”

“How would you expect them to get their mail?  They take the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes very seriously in some places.”

I looked for signs to see if Artur was joking, but he kept a straight face as he went on with the story.  “She was wise, and many of the names were in code, but Kievan was not discouraged by the lack of contact and the many envelopes that came back returned.  It had, however, gotten notice in a certain segment of those who share our knowings that there was a party to be held.  You may have noticed in this day and age…”

“That there’s a certain lack of balls… um, dancing and big parties with lots of unusual creatures… so to speak?”

“That the festivities have gotten much tamer, yes.”  Artur pinched his nose, trying not to laugh.  I’d say his face went a bit wooden, but I’ve been trying to avoid the pun.

“What about the thirteenth fairy?” I asked.

“The…?” he shook his head.

“Comes in and curses the maiden because her invite was lost?  Briar Rose, Sleeping Beauty and all that?”

“I always thought Malificent had it won if it weren’t for the stupid analogue of the Lancelot situation.”

“Yeah, one asbestos shield didn’t a dragon-repellent make.  I’m with you there, but good has to defeat evil, and all that.”

“Well, she had some pretty incompetent hirelings, too.  I did wonder what she was wearing under the robes, though.”

“Nothing,” I said, quickly.  “That makes her wicked, and she was certainly that.”

He chuckled. “Agreed.  And in this case, there were a few people who figured on stopping by, invite or not.  After all, the wording was done by her husband, and he wanted it to be as open-ended as possible, wanted to meet her friends, and don’t tell her because it’s a surprise, well, you see the kind of disaster it started to be.

“So, Vasilisa is wise, and not at all outside the loop entirely, but as wise as she is, she is still somewhat hampered by the fact that you have to deal with imperfect interpersonal relationships, and she really doesn’t feel she can confront her husband.”

“I can imagine the conversations.  `Um, honey, you remember that surprise party?  Do you think it was a good surprise to invite both my blood sucking cousin Harry and your virgin sister?'”

“It’s just not done, really.  Some immortals are really the worst feminists.”  Artur shrugged, and it sounded like wood creaking.  “So she makes some plans to counteract all of it, and, day of the party, it’s working.”

“Logistically speaking, that must have been one huge cups-and-ball trick.”

“She’s a wizard, and that one is famous all over the world.”  He pauses.  “But then there’s a problem.    There is an uninvited guest.”

“A party crasher.  Heard about it from a chatty sylph and thought he’d score some chicks, right?  Brought some kegs of pilfered Vanir mead and a smile?”

“Who’s telling the story?” it was a guffaw, this time.  “Close enough.   And he kept calling out for Vasilisa.  The problem is, he kept refering to Vasilisa as the man of the house.  Which, of course, gave her an idea…”