The Changeling (8 page)

SIX

FULL DISCLOSURE

“The rud a aireachtáil bheith? Really?” Billy stretched the muscles in his chest and shoulders before taking a deep breath and settling back into the chair. “Don’t think of it as being born the way physical creatures enter the world. The rud a aireachtáil bheith is remarkably similar to a human waking up from a deep sleep, except that for the Fae it takes a century or more to fully awaken. It’s as though we’ve woken up for the very first time. No stirrups, no breaking water, no womb.” He paused, staring at his hands.

“I recall very little about my own—only a few scattered images of being conscious, followed by periods of darkness. And, of course, the others.” His face was placid.

“The others?”

“Yes. As each new Fae begins to reach consciousness, others are always there, guiding and teaching, until the conscious state becomes permanent—if it becomes permanent. There are new Fae who drift in and out of consciousness forever, never reaching full sentience. The Marbhghin Fae, as we call them.”

“So, do you just appear?”

Billy’s expression didn’t change. “Yes and no. We are not simply energy that grows a consciousness over time. Rather, our
existence
begins with a core essence, which over time draws enough energy to eventually take form. The origin of the core essence, the unique part of each Fae, separate and different than every other, is a hotly debated mystery. There are core essences, or Croífae, that have existed since time immemorial, but remain nothing more than that—core essences.”

“Are there new Croífae?”

Sara nodded her head. “That deepens the mystery. New Croífae emerge every century, but we do not know from where. Some believe they are Fae who have perished over the centuries, returning to us to be reconstituted.”

“You mean like in reincarnation?”

“Yes, Maggie, the human belief in reincarnation is not unique in the world.”

“But if each Croífae is unique, then you’d recognize the departed Fae, right?”

Billy smiled and nodded his head. “That is precisely the reason that most Fae do not subscribe to such superstitions.”

Sara nodded her head in agreement. “Some of our kind
subscribe
, as Billy put it, to the theory that the Croífae have always existed, that there can be no more than there were at the beginning of time. Adherents to that theory believe that there must be a pre-Croífae state that we are unable to detect until the essence evolves into a state closer to consciousness,” she said evenly.

Seeming a little more cynical, she added, “Still others believe that we are universal travelers, created elsewhere, drifting through the infinite expanse of space until we are drawn to a planet. The Fae on Earth, the theory holds, found this world, as countless others have surely been drawn to other planets throughout the universe, and that when a new Croífae emerges in our realm, it’s little more than a sign that its journey has ended. Advocates of that theory believe that we are a part of a larger race of Fae with universal roots.”

The explanations were fascinating, and telling. Neither Billy nor Sara said they knew which theory was correct, and for half-an-hour they recounted several additional theories that were equally plausible and equally fantastic. I learned that the Fae beliefs concerning their origins were as varied and diverse as mankind’s—creation stories for the most part, to explain the unknown.

After he thought I was satisfied with those answers, and with a reserved quality in his voice, Billy asked, “What’s next?”

“What do Fae do when they’re not experiencing the physical realm? Surely you haven’t just floated around aimlessly for hundreds of thousands of years?”

Sara laughed aloud. “No, we don’t just float about. When we first reach permanent consciousness, we are treated by older Fae much like a growing child—we are educated.”

“Educated? Like Fae K through 12?” It wasn’t the answer I expected.

“Of course we’re educated. We don’t reach consciousness pre-programmed with all we need to know. Honestly, though, it’s more like Fae K through multiple PhDs. Older Fae teach us the history of Fae experiences, from our realm and yours. My own education lasted two centuries—there was a lot to learn. Through that process we find our path or more precisely, the first of many paths that we will take in our existence. After your Earth trial, I told you that we have our own forms of artistic expression, remember?”

“Yes.”

“Some Fae devote their existences to such pursuits. Some Fae spend centuries studying the intricacies of Naeshura, and still others fill centuries studying and debating the very philosophical questions about our existence that you’ve asked tonight. The paths are innumerable. Well, that’s hyperbole of course, but you get the picture.”

“So you have teachers, philosophers, and artists?”

“And Fae following a myriad of other pursuits,” she said. “In many ways, humans are similar to Fae. Your species engages in particular vocations to earn things of value to trade for other things necessary to sustain your lives. If you strip away the bartering, the
occupations
that neither expand your mind nor heighten your experience, and your proclivity to acquire objects, what you have left—at least with the most evolved of your species—is a quest for betterment, knowledge, artistic expression, and what you call a
love of living
. We are both, Fae and human, very curious about the world we live in. It is that curiosity that drives us.”

“As immortals, don’t you get bored?”

“I am never bored learning about existence, or experiencing it. That is why some of the people who have known about us come to the erroneous conclusion that we are simple beings with a penchant for beauty, spending all of our time wandering about aimlessly. It is the same mistaken belief you were laboring under tonight, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I’ll admit that. The Fae in the garden seem mesmerized by the smallest things. I’ve seen a Fae spend an hour with one flower only to move on to the next identical flower and study it as though she had never seen one before.”

Billy nodded his head at me much the way Aunt May used to when I said something ignorant. “Identical. That’s a myth. No two flowers are exactly alike. For that matter, no two flower petals have ever been identical. Each and every single thing on this planet, whether it’s a bird, a grain of sand, or a drop of water, is unique. Whether by volume, shape, or composition, no two objects in the physical world have been anything more than merely similar, and to the careful observer, the similarities are most often superficial. The Fae spend hours studying similar objects—not in an effort to discover like qualities, but instead to learn more about the objects and therefore about existence. We attempt to understand what makes them unique by learning how they’re dissimilar. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we have unlimited time to conduct our investigations.” He tilted his head slightly.

“You, like your aunt, are more like the Fae in that regard,” he said with an approving smile. “One of the reasons we have provided the Stewards of your family with the means to support themselves and their families, is to allow you to more fully understand the beauty of existence. I know you miss your aunt, and you felt sadness at the manner by which her existence ended, but ask yourself, was she happy here?” Billy’s gray eyes locked onto mine and he paused to let me consider it.

I knew the answer—she was the happiest person I’d ever met, despite the tragedies she’d experienced. I nodded.

Like a beautifully written manuscript, Sara took over for Billy and continued their nearly seamless explanation. “The kind of happiness she experienced only comes through a true appreciation for living. She was a devoted student of life, never tiring, never satisfied with what she knew. You are on the same path as her, of course. You’ve matured only a year in age since you arrived here, but you’ve grown so much wiser than that.”

It was true. I said, “Don’t be alarmed,” as I threw my shield up around the three of us. They stared, and allowed me to do it without moving a muscle. “Can we take a ride? I have other questions that I don’t want the Fae in the garden to overhear.”

“Certainly,” Sara said, her black eyes flickering in the low light of my bedroom.

“Will Drevek be all right alone in the cottage with my parents?”

“He is powerless,” she said.

I dropped my shield and walked to the window. Billy was beside me as I stepped onto the sill and readied myself to jump.

“Do you need help? I don’t want you to break anything.”

I smiled and jumped. I caught myself with my mind and gently landed on the garden path below. They followed, Billy landing silently like a big cat springing from a ledge and Sara floating down gracefully, spinning once but never touching the ground.

“Nicely done, Miss O’Shea,” Billy whispered quietly.

“Yeah, I’ve been practicing,” I whispered back.

We moved quickly to the barn, or the Toy Box as my family called it. I disengaged the alarm and moved the huge door open with my mind, passing the Seelie guards without looking at them, my thoughts well hidden. I took the keys to the ’65 Thunderbird and climbed behind the wheel. Turning the ignition to release the steering wheel and shifting it into neutral, I didn’t start the car. My invisible fingers found the back bumper and pushed us silently up the drive until we were far enough away that I could start the engine.

“You’ve been practicing a lot of things, apparently. Your parents would have a heart attack if they knew how easily you could sneak out of the house,” Billy teased.

We drove south as I began asking a few simple questions—I was saving the dangerous ones until we were far away from the Weald and Ozara, who’d returned from Alaska with the Council last night. They’d intervened and stopped the flow of oil, protecting the area from an environmental disaster. Their actions had made me curious.

“Tell me this, if the Council has the power to clean up an oil spill, why allow things like wars, famine, or even reckless deforestation to occur?”

The engine thrummed in my ears as Billy spoke. “The event in Alaska was an exception. The potential devastation was too great to ignore.”

“But could you intervene more often?”

“Yes, we could,” he said.

“I don’t understand that. Gavin once told me that the Fae had a strong relationship to the native people, like the Osage, but you didn’t intervene to protect them when American armies rode west and stole their land. If you could avert war, and thereby prevent the deaths of people that you…well…like, or compel people to make better decisions to protect us from ourselves, why don’t you do it?”

“Some of us wanted to protect the Osage,” Billy said. “And we could have, certainly. I’d venture to say that even with man’s technological advancements during the last century, the most powerful among us could destroy any army on earth. Ozara could. We could certainly have stopped the armies as they swept westward two hundred years ago, but that has never been our way. As a matter of principle, we have always sought to avoid getting involved in human territorial struggles, political and economic battles, and yes, even the wholesale extermination of one group of people by another. That isn’t our place. We are not of this realm, Maggie. We simply visit and use it as a human does an amusement park.”

“You mean the Fae could have stopped…say…World War II, 9/11, all wars for that matter, but they chose not to?”

“Maggie, what side were we to take in any of those conflicts?” He paused for only a moment but he let those words sink in before he continued, “While that may sound like an easy question to answer, it proved impossible for us. For each great deed a human empire has accomplished, be it Rome, Persia, Britain, America, China, take your pick, it has invariably done so at the expense of another group of people. Some empires were more barbaric than others, that’s true, but we’ve seen too often the oppressed take power and become as brutal as their former oppressors. Even the native people made war with one another. The Osage, the Kiowa, the Sioux, they are all incredibly beautiful cultures, but each was capable of incredible brutality at times.” I could just make out the nearly imperceptibly anxiety on his face when I glanced at him.

“There is another reason, too. You must also realize, now that you know as much about us as you do, that there are Fae who
feed
on human barbarity in the same way a child enjoys a violent video game or a horror movie.”

We rode in silence as I drove us further away from Eureka. It all made sense to me, but I disagreed with their reasoning. I remembered Aunt May saying she wished that the Fae would take a more pronounced role in the world. She thought the Fae could teach mankind to be more responsible.

I drove to Fayetteville and followed a winding street to the top of Mount Sequoyah where I parked in a little place that overlooked the city. I searched the area for Fae. There were none except the two in the car with me. I extended my shield around the car and turned to them. They were relaxed, staring out the windshield and admiring the city lights below.

“So, why are we here?” Billy asked.

“Two reasons, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near Ozara or the Council.”

“Okay,” he said.

“First, I want your honest opinion on what’s going on with the Unseelie and my family. Why do they want us removed so badly? You have to have a theory or two.”