Chapter 3

When Sheila did come home it didn't take long for her to realize that there was a horse in her back garden. She came to her back door and looked out in dismay at the horse that was nibbling her Japanese Maple, then she saw Kristabell. Sheila looked spooked at first then she almost yelled, “Kristabell! Sprite! You're supposed to be dead!” And Kristabell was enfolded in a sudden tight hug.

“Where have you been? Are you alright?” Sheila asked in a tone of incredulity and relief placing her hands on Kristabell's shoulders as if for further confirmation of her reality.

Kristabell was tongue tied, unsure of where to start or what to tell Sheila. “I've been stuck . . . Away,” she said uselessly. “I've had a little trouble. I was wondering if you could give us a ride to my parents house?”

Sheila stared at her in dismay, “You don't know do you.” It wasn't a question.

Rowan came to Kristabell's side. She was teetering and getting paler. He put his arm around her waist and looked at her with concern.

“Who are these people?” Sheila asked in a tone of suspicion.

“This is Rowan,” Kristabell told Sheila trying to settle on how to clarify her relationship with him without feeling awkward calling him her husband. “He's my boyfriend. And this is his brother Leif. Their English isn't so good,” she said, and she could hear her voice getting thinner and thinner, then she asked, “What don't I know Sheila?”

“Oh God,” Sheila said heavily, then, “You'd better come in.” She stepped to the side and let them into her kitchen. “I'm going to make some tea. Make yourselves at home. Take off . . . Whatever you need to take off to be comfortable.” She glanced at the swords and armour, “And don't worry about the horse.” There was a note of forced nonchalance.

Once they were all settled comfortably around the kitchen table with cups of milky tea in their hands and a giant pile of weapons and armour stacked on the back porch Sheila was ready to talk. She looked at Kristabell. Sheila, Kristabell realized, was not entirely unlike an older plumper version of Fenna and it made Kristabell feel suddenly homesick. Homesick for where? She wondered.

“There isn't any way I can say this that will make it easy to hear.” Sheila looked at Kristabell sympathetically. “The day that I sent you home from work early, there was a fire. Your parents are dead.”

Sheila passed Kristabell a newspaper from five weeks earlier. The front page read, “Family Dies in House Fire. Police Suspect Arson.” There was a picture of a burned out shell of a house surrounded by a lovely, somewhat charred garden. Kristabell stared at Sheila in disbelief, unable to speak or move.

“Your parents were positively identified. There was a third smaller body in the house and you left no dental records so it was presumed to be you.”

Kristabell's breath was coming in great gasps. She didn't know what to do. They were dead. Her parents were dead. Rowan and Leif were in the dark but she couldn't talk. Suddenly she jumped up, ran to the sink and vomited. “No,” she gasped leaning on the counter. “Why would anyone do that? They didn't do anything to anyone.” Rowan was beside her trying to hold her hair out of the sink. Sheila ran the water and turned the garburater on which made Rowan and Leif jump, then wet a clean cloth and passed it to Rowan. He nodded a 'thank you' and wiped Kristabell's mouth for her.

“Are you Okay?” he asked her.

“I don't know,” she answered, tearing up.

“What's happened?” he asked her holding her face between his hands.

“My parents are dead,” she sobbed. “Someone set fire to my house the night you found me. They've been dead all this time. They didn't deserve that.” He put his arms around her and she sobbed into his chest with her legs threatening to give way beneath her. Breathe, she told herself, just breathe. You can't fall apart right now. She tried to get herself to stop crying, tried to get her breath to come steadily instead of in hiccuping little gasps.

“I'll fix dinner,” Sheila said quietly. “And you can stay here as long as you need to.”

Sensing that they were in the way Rowan moved Kristabell to the old loveseat that was at the other end of the kitchen and sat there with her, shhing her and stroking her hair, waiting for her to stop shaking. After a while she leaned her head back with her eyes closed, took a deep breath and listened to the sound of Sheila moving around in her kitchen. A fridge opening, the glass bottles and jars in the door rattling as it closed again. The crunch of a knife slicing through celery, the creak of an oven door.

“So, what language are you speaking?” Sheila asked after a time.

“It's not so much another language. More an alternate English.”

“Is it some strange British or Irish dialect?”

“No,” Kristabell sighed. “If I tell you . . . If I explain this, you'll think I'm crazy.”

Sheila laughed, “There is a horse eating my climbing roses, I've got Sir Lancelot and his brother Beowulf in my kitchen, and don't think I haven't noticed that you and your Boyfriend,” she emphasized the word, “Are wearing what look to me like matching wedding bands.” She looked up from the vegetables she was chopping. “At this point the only kind of explanation I'm gonna believe is a crazy one.”

“Okay. Here goes.” Kristabell explained as best she could, starting at the beginning. Rowan could understand her but she had to do a bit of translating to keep Leif in the loop, but it wasn't as if he didn't know the story so the big man mostly sat at the table drinking tea.

Sheila whistled long and low when Kristabell finished. “It makes sense in a way. It fits with all the old Celtic legends and old fairy stories. My old Scottish granddad used to claim, with the utmost seriousness, that he had spent a night dancing, drinking with, and being pleased by fairy women. His brothers always said he was three sheets to the wind but he always believed it was real.”

Kristabell got up off the love seat. “Are your plates still in here?” she asked, opening a cupboard and finding the plates and taking four down. She needed to do something to make herself feel normal. The cutlery was where she remembered it being as well, so she set the table.

“I have to say it, you've managed to find yourself an awfully nice looking husband.”

Kristabell blushed and looked over at Rowan who seemed to have picked up on the fact that he was being talked about. “He'll do,” Kristabell said smiling.

“So how old are they?”

“Leif's twenty two. Rowan's twenty three.”

“Shit. They're younger than I thought they were.”

“Yeah,” Kristabell nodded. “I think people grow up a little sooner in that world.”

“Like you.” Sheila looked at her.

Kristabell nodded. Her brain was starting to work again. “Sheila? Did Evan leave any clothing behind that these guys could borrow? I have something that I need to do tomorrow, and I need them to blend in a little better.”

“Sure, yeah. He never takes everything. Let me get this lasagna in the oven then we can go up and have a look.”

Evan, it must be said, for all that he could be very academic, and a bit of a jock, was very much a punk and, what with Leif's waist length dreads and Rowan's long hair, it was probably just as well. Sheila passed Rowan an old Pixies concert T-shirt, black jeans and a purple hoodie. “I'll have to hem those jeans. Tell him to try them on,” Sheila said sticking her head back in the closet then passing Leif cargo pants, a black turtleneck, and a really bad ass leather jacket. “I don't have shoes that will fit you.” She said to Rowan as she passed Leif a pair of Vans, “But at least this way your foot wear won't match.” And with that done they went back downstairs and ate dinner.

After the entire lasagna, salad, and a whole loaf of kalamata olive bread had been consumed Sheila announced that she needed to do something mundane, so they loaded the dishwasher, which amazed Rowan and Leif, but if they thought that was cool it was nothing compared to the television. “So much for mundane,” Sheila commented dryly as the two men sat transfixed by the eight o'clock news. When it was over, and Leif and Rowan had gone out to put the gear and the horse in the garage, Kristabell said to Sheila, “I don't want to stay in your house any longer than I need to. Someone killed my parents and faked my death. I don't even want to think about that too hard and I don't want to put you in any danger by being here, so if you don't mind giving us a ride downtown tomorrow morning, there is something I need to do there, then we'll find our way back here during the day, get the horse and the gear from the garage before you get home from work, and then I'm going to try to get us back home.”

“So you won't stay in this world?”

Kristabell shook her head. “In Rowan's world I have a family and a home and a chance at happiness.”

“I was planning on semi-retiring next year. I was going to ask you to manage the garden centre for me.”

“I would have liked that,” Kristabell smiled. “I'm sorry about your garden.”

“It's alright. It's fall. It wouldn't have been nice much longer anyway. I'll just think of it as free fertilizer.”

*

Sheila gave Kristabell and Rowan the spare bedroom. Leif was sleeping in the living room armed to the teeth. Rowan's sword, for that matter, was propped up against the night stand as they lay there talking.

“I keep telling myself that if I hadn't been with you I would have died with my parents and that at least they died too soon to really worry about me. But I still feel so cold and hollow inside. I'll never see them again. Hear their voices . . . all those little things. They loved each other. I can't imagine them together anymore. They're just gone.”

Rowan ran his fingers over her cheek and stroked her hair, “I know. I know how you feel. I think you talked to Brian a few times over the last two days.”

“I did,” she confirmed.

“When I was young I was his squire. He taught me to fight. Taught me to be a gentleman. He was like a second father to me. He was a good person. That's why he took an interest in you. He told me that he liked you, that he thought I'd made the right decision in asking you to be my wife. After all the flak I took from Leif over it, that felt really good. It meant a lot to me. And he died today. He'll never meet our children. Right now I can't even guarantee that we'll . . . I feel . . .” he paused, took a breath. “It's like your parents. I want a life where we know that the people we love are going to be there to go through it all with us and I can't even keep you safe. If I'd gone straight to the fairies with you instead of taking you to my home, maybe we could have helped your parents.”

“You couldn't have known the kind of trouble we were going to run into today. It's a wonder that you stayed as clearheaded as you did, what with the trees screaming in our heads like that. And you couldn't have known that someone would go after my parents.”

“We would be prisoners right now if you hadn't opened a door into your world,” he said flatly.

“This isn't my world anymore, and we would be prisoners if you hadn't kept me safe long enough to get us out of there, and now, even though everything feels really horrible, at least we're together.”

“I know . . . I know . . .” he whispered. “But today was different. I've lost men before. It comes with the territory. I'm a soldier in a war but today, I had a personal agenda.”

“So what are you saying?” Kristabell whispered.

“I don't know.” She could hear the agony in his voice, could hear him breathing hard in the dark, trying to quell emotions that were threatening to overrun him. “Kristabell, I'm confused and I'm not used to it.”

She could tell that he wasn't used to talking to someone like this, to being this open. Admitting that he was angry with himself to Leif was one thing, but to admit that, for the first time, he doubted himself, was different and if he couldn't admit it to her then who could he admit it to? She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could and buried her face in his neck hard. She held on to him like that for a long time until eventually they slept.