Running With the Demon

  They walked through the rolling green of the cemetery and down its tree-shaded rows of markers to where her mother lay, out on a bluff overlooking the river and the land beyond. Her mother’s headstone was gray with black lettering and bore the words BELOVED DAUGHTER & MOTHER just beneath her name, Caitlin Anne Freemark. Nest stared at the grave without speaking, immutable and remote, borne to other times and places on the wings of her thoughts.

  “I don’t remember her at all,” she said finally, tears springing to her eyes with her admission.

  John Ross looked off into the trees. “She was small and gentle, with sandy hair and blue-gray eyes you couldn’t look away from. She was pretty, almost elfin. She was very smart, intuitive about things others would miss entirely. When she laughed, she could transport you to a better time and place in your life if you were sad or make you glad you were there with her if you were happy. She was daring and unafraid. She was never satisfied with just being told how something was; she always wanted to experience it for herself.”

  He stopped, went silent suddenly, as if he’d come up against something he did not care to explore any further. Nest did not try to look at him. She brushed at her eyes and bit her lip to steady herself. It was always like this when she came to visit. No matter how much time had passed, it was always the same.

  Afterward, they walked back through the cemetery to the fence line in the waning light, listening to the dying sounds of a distant mower and the occasional honk of a car horn out on the highway. There was no one in the cemetery this night; its tree-sheltered, rolling green expanse was cradled in silence and empty of movement. The Midwest evening was sultry, the air tasted of sweat, and it felt as if time had slowed its inexorable march to a crawl. There was a sense of something slipping away, gone like chances at love or hopes for understanding.

  “Thank you for telling me about her,” Nest said quietly as they walked down the blacktop roadway toward the park fence. Her eyes were dry again and her mind was clear.

  “Well, you remind me of her,” John Ross replied after a moment. “That helps me in telling you what she was like.”

  “I have pictures,” said Nest. “But it isn’t the same.”

  “Not if you don’t have the memories of the times those pictures capture, no.” Ross limped steadily forward, his staff clicking softly against the blacktop with each step.

  “I like your staff,” Nest ventured. “Have you had it a long time?”

  Ross glanced over at her and smiled. “Sometimes it seems like I have had it all my life. Sometimes it seems like I was born with it. I think maybe, in a sense, I was.”

  He didn’t say anything more. They reached the fence and slipped through the gap and into the park once more. They were back at the turnaround, close by the cliffs. The twilight was deepening, the sun gone down behind the horizon, leaving only its crimson wake to light the world. The family on the swings and the two cars that had been parked at the turnaround were gone. In the distance, the baseball games were winding down.

  In the shadows of the trees that bracketed the cliff edge, feeders were gathering, their squat, dark bodies shifting soundlessly, their yellow eyes winking like fireflies. As John Ross and Nest passed down the roadway, their numbers grew. And grew still more. Nest glanced left and right nervously, finding eyes everywhere, watching intently, implacably. Why were there so many? The chilling possibility crossed her mind that they intended to attack, all of them, too many to defend against. They had never done anything like that before, but there was nothing to say they wouldn’t do so now. Feeders were nothing if not unpredictable. She tensed expectantly, wondering what she should do. Her heart beat fast and her breathing quickened.

  “Don’t let them bother you,” John Ross told her quietly, his voice soft and calm. “They’re not here because of you. They’re here because of me.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly that for a moment the words didn’t register. Then she looked at him in surprise and whispered, “You can see them?”

  He nodded without looking at her, without appearing to look at anything. “As clearly as you can. It’s why I’m here. It’s why I’ve come. To help, if I can. I’m in service to the Word.”

  Nest was stunned. They continued to walk down the darkening roadway through the masses of feeders as if taking a garden stroll, and Nest fought to collect her thoughts.

  “You know about the feeders, don’t you?” he asked conversationally. “You know what draws them?” She nodded dully. “They are attracted to me because of the staff.” She glanced over immediately, eyes fastening on its black, rune-scrolled walnut length. “The staff is a talisman, and its magic is very powerful. It was given to me when I entered into service to the Word. It is the weapon I carry into battle each and every day. It is also the ball and chain that binds me to my fate.”

  His words were muted and harsh, but strangely poetic as well, and Nest found herself looking at his face, seeing him anew. He did not look back, but continued to keep his gaze directed forward, away from her, away from the feeders.

  “Are you a caretaker?” he asked after a moment. “Are you partnered with a sylvan to look after this park?”

  The number of her questions doubled instantly, and she was confused all over again. “Yes. His name is Pick.”

  “I am a Knight of the Word,” he said. “Has Pick told you of the Knights?”

  She shook her head no. “Pick doesn’t say much about anything that goes on outside of the park.”

  Ross nodded. They were even with the burial mounds now and turning in to the playground, stepping carefully over the low chain dividers. They moved across the twig-strewn grass beneath the hardwoods, solitary ghosts. Ahead, the baseball diamonds were filling with shadows and emptying of people. Nest could see lights beginning to come on in the houses of the subdivisions bordering the park and in the Sinnissippi Townhomes. Stars were beginning to appear in the darkening sky east, and a crescent moon hung suspended north across the river.

  “Did you really know my mother?” Nest asked him, a twinge of doubt nudging at her, suspicious now of everything he had said.

  He seemed not to have heard her. He said nothing for a moment, then slowed and looked over at her. “Why don’t we sit somewhere and talk, and I’ll tell you what I’m doing here.”

  She studied him carefully while he waited for her answer. “All right,” she agreed finally.

  They moved out of the hardwoods and away from the playground. The feeders that had been shadowing them fell away as they moved into the open again, unwilling to follow. They stayed on the west side of the road leading out of the park, away from the ball games that were ending and the players and fans packing up their blankets and gear, and moved to a picnic table just at the edge of a solitary spruce close by the crossbar.

  They sat across from each other in the failing light, the girl and the man, and they might have been either confidants or combatants from the set of their shoulders and the positioning of their hands, and in the vast, empty space of night and sky that closed about them, their words could not be heard.

  “This is how I became a Knight of the Word,” John Ross said softly, his green eyes steady and calm as they fixed on her.

  And he told Nest Freemark his story.

  CHAPTER 14

  He was still a young man when he began his Odyssey, not yet turned thirty. He was drifting again, as he had been drifting for most of his life. He had earned an undergraduate degree in English literature (he had done his senior thesis on William Faulkner), and his graduation had marked the conclusion of any recognizable focus in his life. Afterward, he had migrated to a series of different schools and graduate programs, twice coming close to completing his masters, each time stepping back when he got too close. He was a classic case of an academic unready and unwilling to confront the world beyond the classroom. He was intelligent and intuitive; he was capable of finding his way. The problem with John Ross was always the same. The way never seemed important enough for him to
undertake the journey.

  He had always been like that. He had excelled in school from an early age, easily gaining honors recognition, effortlessly garnering high praise and enthusiastic recommendations. While he was attending school full-time, while he was required to be there, it was never necessary that he consider doing anything more. It was a comfortable, regimented, encapsulated existence, and he was happy. But with his graduation it became apparent that he must point toward something specific. He might have become a teacher, and thus remained within the classroom, kept himself safe within an academic confinement, but teaching did not interest him. It was the discovery that mattered, the uncovering of truths, the deciphering of life’s mysteries that drew him into his studies. And so he moved from college to university, from graduate studies in American literature to funded research in Greek history, all the while waiting for the light to shine down the road his life must necessarily take.

  It did not happen, though, and as he approached the age of thirty, he began to think that it never would. His parents, always supportive of him, were beginning to despair of his life. An only child, he had always been the sole focus of their expectations and hopes. They did not say so, but he could read their concerns for him in their studied silence. They no longer supported him—he had long since learned the art of securing scholarships and grants—so money was not an issue. But his options for continued study were drawing to a close, and he was still nowhere close to choosing a career. What could he do with his English degree and his raft of almost completed esoteric studies? If he didn’t choose to teach, what could he do? Sell insurance or cars or vacuum cleaners? Go into business? Work for the government? When none of it mattered, when nothing seemed important enough, what could he do?

  He chose to go to England. He had saved some money, and he thought that perhaps a trip abroad might give him fresh insight. He had never been outside the United States, save for a brief trip into Canada in his teens and a second into Mexico in his early twenties. He had no experience as a tourist, barely any experience in life beyond the classroom, but he was persuaded to take the plunge by his growing desperation. He would be going to an English-speaking country (well, of course), and he would be discovering (he hoped) something about his substantially English heritage. His one extracurricular activity throughout school had been hiking and camping, so he was strong and able to look after himself. He had some contacts at a few of the universities, and he would find help with lodging and shelter. Perhaps he would even find a smidgen of guest-lecturer work, although that was not important to him. What mattered was removing himself from his present existence in an effort to find his future.

  So he applied for and was granted a passport, booked his airline reservation, said good-bye to his parents, and began his journey. He had no timetable for his visit, no date in mind on which he would return, no particular expectation for what he would do. He drifted anew and with careless disregard for his plans to discover himself, traveling through England and Scotland, through London and Edinburgh, south to north and back again. He renewed old acquaintances from his American university days, visited briefly at the places he had marked off on his list of must-see items, and moved on. He walked when he could, finding it the best and most thorough way to see the countryside, saving his money in the not quite acknowledged but inescapable recognition that his travels seemed to be bringing him no closer to his goals.

  In the late spring of the year following his summer arrival, the first twelve months of his visit coming to a rapid close, he traveled for the first time into Wales. His decision to go there was oddly precipitated. He was reading on the history of the Welsh and English kings, on Edward I and the iron ring of fortresses he had built to contain the Welsh in Snowdonia, and a friend to whom John Ross had mentioned his reading told him of a cottage her parents owned outside of Betws-y-Coed where he could stay for the asking. Having no better plan for the spending of his time and intrigued by the history he had been reading, he accepted his friend’s offer.

  So he traveled into Gwynedd, Wales, found the cottage, and began to explore the country surrounding Betws-y-Coed. The village sat in the heart of the Gwydir Forest at the juncture of the Conwy, Llugwy and Lledr valleys within the vast, sprawling wilderness of Snowdonia National Park. Snowdonia, which occupied much of Gwynedd, was mountainous and thickly forested, and his hikes into her wilderness proved long and arduous. But what he found was breathtaking and mysterious, a secretive world that had offered shelter and hiding, but little on which to subsist, to the Welsh during the siege of Edward Longshanks in the late 1200s. He took day trips to the castles, to Harlech, Caernarfon, Beaumaris, and Conwy and all the others that Edward had built, rebuilt, and garrisoned in the forging of his ring of iron. He visited the towns and villages scattered about, poking into their folklore as much as into their history, and he was surprised to discover that some whisper of purpose was drawing him on, that in indulging his curiosity about the past he was embracing an unspoken promise that a form of revelation on the future of his own life might somehow be possible. It was an irrational, unfounded hope, but one that was compelling in its hold over him. He passed that spring and summer in Betws-y-Coed, and he did not think of leaving. He wondered now and again if he was overstaying his welcome, but neither his friend nor her parents contacted him and he was content to leave well enough alone.

  Then, on a summer day filled with sunshine and the smell of grasses and wildflowers, he came out of a hike south beyond the Conwy Falls to a sign that said FAIRY GLEN. It was just a weathered board, painted white with black letters, situated at the entrance to a rutted dirt and gravel lane leading off the blacktop through trees and fences, over a rise and into shadow. There was a small parking lot for cars and a box for donations. There was nothing else. He stared at the sign, amused, then intrigued. Why would it be called Fairy Glen? Because it was magical, of course. Because it had a supposed connection to a fairy world. He smiled and turned down the lane. What could it hurt to see? He left a pound in the box and hiked back along the fence line, over the rise, and through a corridor of big trees to a barely recognizable opening in the fence that led toward the sound of rushing water. He stepped through the opening, went down a winding pathway through trees and rocks to the source of the rushing water, and found himself in the glen.

  For a long time he just stood there looking about, not moving, not thinking of anything. The glen was deep and shadowed, but streaked with bright sunlight and roofed by a cloudless blue sky. Massive rocks, broken and cracked, littered the slopes and floor of the glen, as if in ancient, forgotten times a volcanic upheaval had ruptured and split the earth. The water spilled from a series of falls to his left, the rush of their passage a low thunder against the silence. The stream broadened and narrowed by turns as it worked its way through channels formed by the positioning of the boulders. In some places it ran fast and wild and in others it formed pools so calm and still you could see the riverbed as clearly as if it were covered over with glass. Colored rocks littered the bottom of the stream, visible through the crystalline waters, and wildflowers grew in clusters all along the banks and slopes. The Fairy Glen formed a cathedral of jumbled rocks and trees that closed in the sounds of the twisting waters and shut out the intrusions of the world. Within its sanctuary, you were alone with whatever god you embraced and whatever beliefs you held.

  John Ross stepped forward to the water’s edge after a moment, squatted, and touched the stream. The water was ice cold, as he had expected. He stared down into its rush for a moment, losing himself in time’s passage and the memories of his life. He looked at himself in the water’s shimmering reflection, sun-browned from his year of hiking through England, strong and fit, his gaze steady and assured. He did not look like himself, he thought suddenly. What had changed? He had spent another year drifting, accomplishing nothing, arriving at no decision on his life. What was different?

  He rose and walked along the jagged rock banks of the glen, working his way over the massiv
e boulders, finding footholds amid the eddies and pools that filled the gaps between. He squinted when he passed through patches of bright sunlight, enjoying the warmth on his face, pausing in the shadows to look more closely at what might be hidden, wondering idly where the fairies were. He hadn’t seen any so far. Maybe they were all on vacation.

  “If it’s magic you’re looking for,” a deep voice said, “you should come here at night.”

  John Ross nearly jumped out of his skin, teetering momentarily in midstep on the rocks, then righting himself and looking about quickly for the voice’s source.

  “It’s more a fairy glen when the sun’s down, the moon’s up, and the stars lend their radiance.”

  He saw the man then, hunkered down just ahead in a heavy patch of shade, wrapped in a greatcoat and shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his face. He held a fishing pole loosely before him, the line dangling in a deep, still pool. His hands were brown and rough, crosshatched by tiny white scars, but steady and calm as they gently shifted the pole and line.

  “You would like to see the fairies, wouldn’t you?” he asked, tilting the brim of his hat up slightly.

  John Ross shrugged uncomfortably. “I suppose so. At night, you say? You’ve seen them, have you?” He was trying to find something in their conversation that made sense, to frame a reply that fit.

  The man’s chuckle was low and deep. “Maybe I have. Maybe I’ve seen them come out of the falls, tumbling down the waters like tiny bright lights, as if they were stars spilling out of the heavens. Maybe I’ve seen them come out of the shadows where they hide by day, back there atop the falls, within the rocks and the earth—there, where the sun breaks through the trees.”