It is a rare thing for a fae to claim a
name. But I have used the name of Dana for some years, worn the
glamour of her form for so long that it is the easiest glamour I
know. I almost died, in ways fae do not die, and I can no longer let
go of this glamour. It may be that the wandering magician did
something to me, or it is simply a result of the entity named Jay
binding me into life. I have been told I am not Dana, even though I
am. I travelled with a magician, when that is not a thing fae do. I
am moving between states, shifting into new thought-forms, and I do
not know why.
Fae are. We have a Duty, and we follow
through with it until we are not. To be fae is to be magic, to be
power in a way foreign to almost everything else in the universe. We
do not have limits as they have limits. But we can die. There are
Outsiders potent enough to tear the magic that we are apart.
Magicians who might, with great skill, impede us. Magicians who can
give up their magic to become powers even we do not like to face.
We are not immortal. And I do not know
what happens to the piece of magic that we are once we are gone. It
is not a thing fae speak of: glamour are our illusions so deep their
fool the universe. We are not creatures of certainty, and that is why
the arrangements with make with monsters and Outsiders can fail. We
bind them with our glamour, trading protective illusions in return
for favours, hide them from magicians in turn for limits on what they
will do in the world. But we are rivers more than stone, and there
are ways to flow between our bindings. Ways to evade, if one has will
and means.
I cannot believe the older fae do not
know this, but they allowed it to happen.
Which means they had a reason.
There is a fae bound under a tree for
crimes so terrible their name has been stricken from memory.
I seek answers, when I should know
better. Seek enlightenment, when I should be far past such needs. I
follow rumours and whispers, moving from place to place across the
world. The wandering magician is busy with Charlie and Jay, too busy
to wonder where I am. I have regained enough strength to act if I
need to, though fae seldom need to act.
I can trap enemies in the folds of the
Universe, bound outside space and time until freed. I can make
glamours that cannot be broken, can bend reality and unreality with
nothing more than a wish. But there are forces from Outside far
beyond even that. Powers that magicians can banish while fae can
barely touch them. The reasons for this are probably stepped in
irony.
I push open the door of another cheap
motel room. There are a dozen humans piled about a bed in states of
saitated exhaustion. The Walker of the Far Reaches slips off the bed,
and it shines. Beauty, need, desire: power burns in the air realer
than any glamour, stronger than any force I could bring to bear
against it. But I know the shape of illusion when I see it, and do
not move at all.
“My name is Dana. I have come to
speak with you.”
The pull fades slightly; I can feel
power testing the edges of my nature as the Walker smiles coldly.
“Why?”
“I would ask what you know of the
wandering magician?”
The Walker blinks, and is off the bed
and in front of me between moments of my awareness, and there is
little a fae is not aware of. “Be very specific, little creature,”
it says flatly.
“It is said that Walkers serve the
Lords of the Fae Reaches, the true powers Outside the universe. That
you are to the Outsider what magicians are to the universe.” The
Walker nods once; I relax a little inside. “Then you know what the
child named Jay is.”
“I do not. Nor do I know of any who
do,” the Walker says softly. “You think Jay will be his death,
fae? it is possible: magicians are human, and dying is a part of
being human. You are concerned for him?”
“I am concerned with what Jay will do
when the magician dies.”
The Walker sighs, the sound almost
human. “I am disappointed. You ask all the wrong questions and seek
all the wrong answers. You should wonder why Jay was sent to
the wandering magician, and why this wandering magician. He is not
the only magician to wander in this age.” And the Walker smiles, a
baring of impossible teeth. Too sharp, and too many as it laughs. “I
would suggest you seek out Mary-Lee, but she would be far less kinder
to you than I.”
“I have no idea
who that is,” I manage to get out. The edges of my self are fraying
without the Walker doing more than existing. I don’t even know how
it’s remaining in place right now without the universe dissolving
around it.
“Learn. And do
not seek me again,” the Walker says, and
the voice is like a
magicians, a binding and a loosing
and I am bound. I,
fae, a power of the universe, bound to silence about the Walker
between one moment and the next.
I
raise up glamour, calling power recklessly, but the Walker is
unmoved. The Walker is too
far beyond me, too much more
than even fae can be, and
between one moment and the next I am left with unconscious bodies and
an empty hotel room.
I leave them to
their fates, draw glamour about me, and limp out back into the world.
The wandering magician bound the Walker once, it is said, and I am
certain that cannot be true. But I have no way to ask, no way to
speak of this. I am chained, in ways I have never been, not in this
life or before it, and all I can do is move and try to escape the
weight of my new shadow pressing down against me.
I sought
enlightenment, and I thought I could simply accept what I found.
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