Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre (7 page)

    "It's been a while, Megan agreed, "but it all goes by so fast. I can't keep track," she admitted, shaking her head and leaning back against the stall.

    "Anyway, this isn't entirely a social call. Rabbit would like to choose some stones from your excellent selection."
    "I would, would I?"

    "Have a look and see if there's any that take your fancy," Megan gestured across the selection. "It is a test of sorts. You cannot pass or fail, but it may tell me something," said Blackbird.

    "Is it something you should know?" Blackbird appeared to have my interests at heart, but there were still too many unknowns for me not to ask the question. "Well said, Rabbit, and by your choice I will do you no harm." She said it as a promise or a vow, and I believed her. After all, if she lied to me I thought I would know. "How many? "
    "As many as you will, and no more."

    Megan gave me a complicit smile but offered no help. I turned to the semi-precious stones set out on the table, searching for obvious clues. They were all nicely shaped, though not completely regular. Megan plainly had a gift for selecting ones that were attractive because they were imperfect.

    A stone in a cotton-lined rectangular box caught my attention. It was a lozenge with brown and gold stripes that glowed with an inner light. I lifted it from its box and was slightly startled when Megan held out a black suede pouch for me to drop it into. I let it fall into the soft pocket and she retracted it, waiting for me to choose again.

    The second choice was easier as I had more idea as to what I was looking for now. My gaze settled on a lump of minty rock with a sparkly surface. I collected it and dropped it into the proffered pouch. I glanced at Blackbird but she had a watchful withdrawn expression. My third choice leapt out at me when I spotted it amongst the stones at one side. It was stratified like the first, but had verdant green hardness that stood out amongst the others. It joined the rest in the black pouch. For the next one I struggled, scanning the rows of boxes for some minutes until I lit upon a dark red stone, deeply embedded and sulking in its nest of cotton fibre. I found myself curiously hesitant to touch it. Instead, I lifted the box and emptied it into the pouch. Megan nodded, knowingly.

    I would have ended there, but there was a sense of incompletion, of things left undone. I went over the table again, sifting through the boxes with a fingertip, until I passed over a box and felt a nerve-tingling jolt. I came back and hovered over a stone that hummed under my finger.

    "What's that one?"

    "It's a green fluorite," Megan answered. "Most of them are purple, so the green ones have a rarity value." I picked it out and dropped it into the pouch with the others. "I'm done then, I think," I told her.

    She walked back around the table and laid out a black velvet cloth, tipping out the pouch. She fell into a rhythm and recounted the stones, placing each at five points of a circle.

    "Tiger's eye to see beyond and pierce the veil, actinolite for balance and healing, malachite for connection to the spirit, red jasper for grounding and connection to the earth, green fluorite for guidance and self-knowledge."

    "You choose well. These will be well received." Blackbird offered the compliment with something of a degree of respect that had been absent before. "I just chose the ones that felt right. "
    "Just so."

    I turned back to Megan, pulling out my wallet.

    "No cards," said Blackbird. "This is a cash transaction between you and Megan. There is to be no intermediary."

    "For a friend of Blackbird's–" Megan began.

    "It is for a gift and for that it must be Rabbit's to give," Blackbird told her.

    At that Megan nodded her understanding and scooped the stones back into the pouch. "How much do I owe you?" I asked her.

    "You owe me nothing, Rabbit, but I will accept ten pounds if you agree?"

    I smiled and offered her a tenner from my wallet which she squirreled away in a cash box after handing me the black pouch. It felt weightier than it should. "Thank you, Megan." If this was a test, maybe I had passed it.

    "If I may?" She scanned quickly across her wares and plucked a stone from a box. She held out her closed hand for me to put mine underneath.

    I glanced at Blackbird and there was the slightest indication of a nod. I put my hand out, palm underneath her fist. She dropped the stone into it. It was shaped into a tiny pear in a deep glossy blue and had a silver ring attached where the pear-stalk would be. It felt initially cold in my palm but it pulsed into warmth in my hand as if fuelled by some inner heat. It didn't look any different, but it felt somehow alive in my palm. "Megan, we're not…" Blackbird started to explain then halted. She blushed very slightly. I looked from her to Megan, waiting for some explanation.

    Megan looked thoughtful for a moment then offered, "Lapis will aid your physical awareness and perhaps enhance the focus of your power. It has other properties, too, but those are the ones that are important for now. "
    "Why does it go warm like that?"

    I was talking to myself, but Megan thought the question was for her. "It does?" she said, surprised. "Hmmm," added Blackbird in a tone that told me she wasn't going to elaborate.

    "Here, let me." Megan held out her hand for the stone. I gave it her back she took it and turned away for a moment. When she turned back she had threaded a leather thong through the loop, which she tied deftly in a knot.

    She passed it back to me. "Wear it close to your heart and may it bring you good fortune."

    I didn't know quite what to say so I slipped the loop over my head, loosening my tie slightly to allow it to fall down inside next to my skin. I felt it rest cold against my chest then flare to warmth again before slowly cooling to skin temperature, confirming what I had felt before.

    "Thank you, Megan." It felt odd to start wearing rocks around my neck, but the warmth emanating from it told me there was more to this than I had thought, and I needed all the good fortune I could get.

    "Megan, it has been a pleasure to see you again, but we must go. Rabbit, it's time we were moving on." I nodded, acknowledging the gift once again and slipped the black pouch into my jacket pocket. Then I followed Blackbird through the random swell of people out of the market and back onto the cobbles. "Is she Fey?" I asked Blackbird as we moved out of earshot.

    She glanced sideways at me but then continued walking and, for a moment, I thought maybe she hadn't heard me. Then she spoke.

    "Megan is an interesting person because she is sensitive to our kind. She can usually tell if a person has Fey blood – she knew you did straight away. And you've seen the skill she has with stones." We were momentarily separated by an American couple with broad Western drawls delighting over the ancient monument of Covent Garden, reminding me that what people considered ancient was all relative.

    "But she has no power as far as I am aware," Blackbird continued as if she had not been interrupted. "I came across her when I was looking for a gift for someone and she had the ideal thing for me except that when she searched for it, it wasn't there. Some very light fingers were pilfering her stock. She knew they weren't the run-of-the-mill thief as this wasn't the first time things had gone missing from under her nose but she had not found a way to prevent it from happening. "
    "And you helped her."

    "I placed a simple ward on her stall making it uncomfortable to steal from her, then spread the word that if I caught the thief, I would have the price of the thievery out of their hide." She smiled a grim smile and for a moment there was something predatory there. "Couldn't you just have them arrested?"

    "The Feyre live outside of human law and human law enforcement. There are no Fey criminals. If you've done wrong, you've done wrong. Fey justice, when it is served, is immediate and personal. If someone transgresses against one of us then that one has the right to satisfaction, in blood if necessary. It is our way. "
    "Your way, you mean."

    "No, I meant what I said. It is our way whether you like it or not, and it is a way you will learn if you want to survive. Others will not make the allowances for you that I have."

    "I hadn't noticed you making allowances for me."

    "That's what's worrying me. Here, we're going down." Blackbird made for the entrance to Covent Garden underground station and waltzed through the barrier without validating a ticket. I fumbled for my card, then waved it at the machine and followed her. "How did you do that?" I indicated the barriers where the attendant watched people passing through but had completely failed to notice Blackbird walking through without a ticket. "Do what?"

    "You just walked through the barriers without paying."

    "The barriers aren't meant for me," she explained as the lift door opened. Thankfully at that time of day most of the people were coming up in the lift, not going down and we had the lift car to ourselves.

    "So you just walked through the barriers because you thought you could? Everyone else has to pay. "
    "I don't, though, do I?" she explained, as if I were a two year-old.

    I found myself trying to argue with the obvious. I had just watched her walk through the barrier, so I knew she could do it. If the reason she could do it was because she thought she could then perhaps that was reason enough. It occurred to me that there was an underlying arrogance to the Feyre. They believed they were privileged and because they believed it, they were. It was an arrogance I was familiar with amongst human beings, especially at senior levels within companies, but it translated to the Feyre well enough.

    The lift reached the bottom and the doors rolled open to the empty corridor. Blackbird exited and I followed her out and towards the platform, except that she swung right after the lifts. I followed her into the passage that joined the platform entry and exit passages. She halted outside a door marked
Staff Only – No Entry.
"Here we are." She tapped on the door and entered. "It said Staff Only," I pointed out, in case she hadn't noticed. "I know. It's to keep people out. "
    "Should we be in here then?"

    "No one comes in here unless they're entitled to, trust me. And if they did, they would regret it." Inside we took the spiral stairs leading down. A little way down, a passage led off to the base of the lift shaft but the steps spiralled on down. "Where does this lead to?"

    "I think it used to be a service tunnel, but it's been adapted for other purposes now. Here we are." The stairs ended in one of the circular tunnels that are common on the underground, except that this one looked as if it hadn't been used in years. The floor was smeared with something dark in places. Worryingly it looked organic in origin, as if something had decomposed there and left a stain.

    Blackbird passed me the brown sack with the pigeon sleeping in it and stepped slowly down the corridor away from the spiral stair. I hung back. The hairs on the back of my neck slowly lifted until I could feel them prickling down my neck. Some instinct was telling me it wasn't safe here and that my best course of action would be to flee back up the stairs as fast as I could. She paused and cocked her head as if listening for something. The light illuminated only the first fifteen feet, then slowly merged with the darkness beyond, vanishing into featureless grey.

    "Are we going down there?" I spoke softly to her back as the distance slowly increased between us. She held up her left hand with one finger raised to indicate that I should be quiet. She paused then stepped forward again into the edge of the darkness. As she did, a huge shaggy figure coalesced out of the grey and reached out for her. "Blackbird!" I shouted a warning.

    The long shaggy arms closed around her, sweeping her up. I was torn between trying to rescue her and running back up the stairs. My cowardice shamed me, but the thing was immense. Huge hairy arms grasped Blackbird's slight frame. It had swept her up off the floor as if she were weightless and was crushing her against its chest. What could I do?

    A long low growl came from the tunnel echoing from the walls as Blackbird kicked her legs helplessly, caught in its grasp. Why didn't she zap it or something? Torn between staying to watch Blackbird's fate and saving myself from a similar one, I stayed at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the rail ready to run for it when my laggard brain made sense of the low growling emanating from the creature.

    "Bbbbrrrraaaacckkkbiiirrrddd." The sound rolled like a glacier grinding gravel.
    It knew her name?
    I hesitated as I heard another noise. It was muffled, but it came from the figure pressed into the creature's chest.
    Blackbird was laughing.

Four

    The scene transformed as my perceptions shifted. The arms became a hug, though on a scale that was hard to believe. Blackbird's thrashing became her return of the enthusiastic greeting she was receiving. The growl was speech, though it was slowed and so low that most of it was wasted on my ears and found rest somewhere low in my gut.

    The creature was still half-concealed in darkness, though it filled most of the tunnel. Grey shaggy hair covered it completely, sweeping down its shoulders and arms and hanging in loose dark curls where Blackbird was pressed against its chest, her arms buried up to her elbows in fur. Its head was wide where creamy tusks emerged from the darkly lined lips. Its eyes were black inside a ring of burnished gold and they were watching me.

    Blackbird's feet descended slowly to the floor, though she clung with her face pressed into the fur for a moment longer before stepping back.

    The creature swept its hand up then extended its palm, turning upwards.

    "My apologies, Gramawl, I am losing my manners in the joy of seeing you again. He is called Rabbit. Rabbit, this is Gramawl." As she said this, she made a complicated gesture, rotating her middle finger downwards and then indicated me and made a little rabbit with her hands. As she was signing, I realised that the last sentence spoken was meant as a cue for me.