After Midnight (Part Two of Three) Date: 14 August 2013 Time: 12.08 AM Location: The Far Gates, Faerie / London, UK Characters: Gabriel Thorne, Mairéad Description: Mairéad and Gabriel venture into Faerie, and beyond. Part two of three. Status: Private, complete (one-shot).
The first thing he became aware of was the warmth. Actually, calling it warmth was like calling a hurricane a mild breeze. This was sheer heat, searing, dry and unforgiving. He started sweating almost immediately, and gingerly opened his eyes.
They began hurting, and he closed them again.
Light reflected off everything, suffusing the world around him with an innate glow that burned into his retina. He opened his eyes again, gingerly, and had to close them after a few seconds.
"Take your time," Mairéad purred, and her voice seemed richer, fuller than it had done in the Burnt Wood. He chanced a look at her, and the wrinkles around her eyes were gone, her skin was radiant, and her eyes were bright, terrifying green. She was surrounded and filled with the power of this place, emanating from her in pulsing waves as she drank in the magic of Summer, and spun around with her arms outstretched. She caught him looking, and gave him a wolfish smile. Not for the first time, he wondered if he'd truly made the right choice, or if he was the cartoon mouse walking into the open mouth of the cat.
It took long minutes, but eventually, his eyes adjusted to the point where they weren't scorched by his surroundings. It didn't help with the heat, though, and he eyed a small brook to his left, which flowed with clear water. Mairéad followed his gaze.
"I wouldn't," she said, instead waving her hand and producing a skein of liquid from, it seemed, absolutely nowhere. "The best advice I can give is to stay away from anything but the Way."
He looked meaningfully at the water she offered, and back at her eyes, unwilling to accept it right off. She rolled hers, and sighed impatiently, even stamping her foot in a motion that was unsettlingly immature for a creature that had demonstrated such power and gravitas already. With an impatient glance, she held it out again, and he took it with a not-insignificant amount of hesitation, finally placing it to his mouth.
Once the first drops were in, he squeezed it, devouring the contents as if he'd been walking through the desert for 40 days without any water. It was gone in seconds, and he moved to hand it back, noticing at the last minute that the flask had disappeared.
"Come," she said, imperiously, and took his hand, dragging him with her as she stepped up the grassy bank from where they had crossed over into Summer, and onto the Way.
"You're taking the piss," Gabriel said in a flat tone, as he followed her onto the road, which was made entirely out of bricks. Yellow ones. "An actual yellow-brick road?" Mairéad didn't stop walking, and he started walking faster to keep pace, biting his tongue about being led around like a dog as they walked.
"Where do you think the story came from?" She said over her shoulder, as if it were one of the more asinine observations she'd heard in recent years. Gabriel, for his part, simply shrugged and walked along with her, taking in Faerie as they moved.
Calling it lush or verdant would be accurate, but also wholly wrong. Grass, bushes, and enormous trees lined the sides of the road, and the sound of birdsong rang through the entire area, but it was somehow off. Look a little closer, and you'd be able to pick out the brittle nature of the leaves, the bed of dead pine needles that coated the floor. The bushes bore shrivelled fruit, and the birdsong, far from being relaxing, was almost cacophonous if you tuned into it for too long. Gabriel was well aware of the nature of Summer from the Coven's research, in that they ostensibly represented life, but they had a darker side. This was life in its natural raw power, uncaring and unheeding, full of fire, heat, passion and fury. He could see it in Mairéad, feel it in the charged atmosphere around them. Small animals fought and scurried in the undergrowth, out of sight but definitely not out of mind, while the trunks of the trees, the more he observed them, began to look almost skeletal.
Summer and Winter, two extremes. One passion, the other order, the calm reflection of steady tempers and respect. But Winter, too, was uncaring in its worldview. It was manipulative and deadly when it wanted to be, fully cognizant of the big picture and utterly without remorse when it came to enforcing it. Titania may have resembled a fury from the stories of old, but Gabriel knew of Mab, the Winter Queen, too. She seemed just as terrifying, if not more.
He tried to push the thoughts from his mind, fully aware that even speaking the name of either Queen in his head was not necessarily the best idea that he'd ever had.
"Where are we going?" He said, by way of distraction, and Mairéad turned to look at him as they walked.
"The Far Gates," she said. "And from there, anywhere we want."
Gabriel didn't like the breathy excitement in her voice as she said that, alarm bells triggering in the back of his brain as they continued their progress. Fae, particularly Summer fae, had a reputation for unpredictability, and he wouldn't have put it past her to decide on a different course for their journey, carried away with the obvious vitality she felt here. Oh, sure, they'd get to London and back, but it might take them 50 years to do so.
"Remember our bargain," he said, his voice low. Her cat's eyes snapped to his, and she pouted.
"Fine," she said, huffing. "At least you're a touch smarter than the other witches I've come across in that city."
They didn't say much after that, walking for what felt like hours. Gabriel asked at one point how long it would take, and received a poisonous look in return, before the fae explained how time moved differently in Faerie than in the real world. By all accounts, they'd only been gone a few minutes, despite the length of time it had taken them here.
Another enquiry about placing them closer to the Far Gates received a cold silence, utterly at odds with the burning sun that was causing the witch so much discomfort. The thing with Summer, and probably Faerie as a whole, he observed, was that it was startlingly easy to lose your sanity if you thought too much about it. It was hard at first, but he reckoned that he came to that conclusion not long after he saw a herd of mushrooms stomping over the road, forcing them to stop while they passed, and engaging the giant caterpillar in conversation as they waited.
It was, officially, the weirdest place he'd ever been. And he'd been to Shoreditch on a Thursday night. On the plus side, there didn't seem to be too many beards around, and nobody wore tight jeans. The lack of gourmet coffee kiosks was a net benefit, too.
On the down side, there were giant fucking caterpillars that liked to wax lyrical on the political exigencies of Voltaire.
Faerie. Honestly.
Despite the intimidatingly hostile forest, though, the potential for the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man to come across them at the moment, titanic bugs, walking mushrooms and the heat, when they finally rounded a corner and exited the forest path, it was all worth it just to see what lay before him.
A great plain, miles in every direction, demarcated the edges of Summer and Winter respectively. In the vague distance, Gabriel could just about make out the glittering spires of Hibernis, and he shuddered to think how enormous they must have been up close, if they were this tall so far away. Even that wasn't the most impressive part of the panorama, though. On the plain, massive gates stood in the centre, arrange in a loose semicircle, around which a writhing mass of bodies gathered. The ones closest to Winter were a deep, midnight blue, shot through with amethyst and detailed with wrought silver so intricate and so beautiful that it made him choke up. Summer's were equally resplendent, carved from incredible tree trunks that arched and curved into each other. Gold inlay provided the decoration, while solid wooden doors, shot through with emerald ivy, opened and closed repeatedly. The most interesting portal was at the centre of the four gates, however.
It was solid black, so dark that it seemed to pervade the area around it. Massive, gigantic chains wrapped around it from head to foot, glittering with fire and ice as they interlinked and wove around one another. In the centre Gabriel could just make out a small keyhole, no bigger than a football. The arches were carved with runes, script and magical wards, ones of binding and sealing, ones of forbidding. The whole gate pulsed periodically, and occasionally, the doors shook ever-so-slightly, as if pressed from within.
If the terrifying image wasn't enough, the gate was surrounded on all sides by soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, gleaming in the half-light and bedecked in the liveries of both Courts, mixed units of fae that quite obviously were guarding the gate. Most faced towards it, poleaxes and spears readied, but a thin ring around the outside faced the multitude of humanoid and bestial fae milling around on the plains. Occasionally, one would venture too close and narrowly avoid the swipe of a sword or staff. Now and again, one wouldn't be quick enough. The message was clear enough: stay away.
"We're um, we're not going there, are we?" Gabriel asked, pointing at the gate.
"Nobody goes to the Obsidian Gate," Mairéad replied quietly, staring at the edifice.
"Why's that?" Gabriel asked, as they began to pick their way down from the elevated position towards the flat of the plain.
"Because... they don't," she snapped. "Stop asking questions and try not to break your neck."
"Right, but seriously," Gabriel replied, stepping around a large boulder. They were still around thirty feet from flat ground, and it did look treacherous. "What's behind it?"
Mairéad didn't answer for a few moments, and didn't seem to be struggling with the terrain anywhere near as much as he was, which struck him as dramatically, cosmically unfair. He took a moment to catch his breath, try to put his aching feet from the back of his mind, and regard himself. He looked like a mess, covered in dust, dirt, and sweat. At least the pounding sun had lessened here, with the temperature being neither hot nor cold. Just somewhere in between, like mid autumn.
"Outside," she finally said, apparently convinced that ignoring the question wasn't going to stop him in the slightest. "Others."
"Well, lah-dee-fucking-dah," Gabriel said in a raised voice, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Aren't we all lovely and cryptic. I'd call you Deep Throat, but given your gender that might have a few unfortunate connotations. Are you actually a woman, by the way? Only I'm never sure if fae actually have genders, or if it's all the glamours. Are you like a Barbie doll underneath that dress? Not that I'm asking to see or anything because, you know, happily married. Only a little scientific curiosity has been plaguing me for quite a few years, and it's not like I get the chance to ask an actual, real-life fae much-"
"Gabriel, please," she sighed, her voice plaintive. "Control yourself and for the love of the Glen, watch your tongue around my compatriots. Just be quiet."
Indeed, they were starting to near the edge of the crowd, now. Mairéad took his hand and gripped it tightly, possessively - in fact, that's exactly what it was. He was hers, according to the social mores of the fae. He felt their cat's-eye gazes slice over him until they noticed the bond, and then melt away just as quickly. She strode quickly, confidently towards the furthermost Summer gate, and he followed in her wake, trying not to make eye contact and look like he was too interested, but failing miserably.
Achingly beautiful men and women, subtly wrong in their appearances, tugged at his instincts and primal urges. One strode through the crowd, her breasts heavy and covered by foliage alone, looking for all the world like a real-life Eve. A man stopped to consult a travelling companion, the ripples of his abdominal muscles seeming as they were made from steel.
And even more, there were the creatures. Small motes of light buzzed around, and Gabriel realised that they were miniature fae, complete with wings. A creature that could only be described as a troll lumbered past them, while another with the legs of a horse, the body of a man and the head of a bull watched them pass impassively, his thick arms crossed over his chest.
Quite frankly, his brain was about to burst with the questions, but he thought it was commendable and entirely phenomenal that he hadn't said a word. Self preservation really was the strong insinct, it seemed. They joined the group awaiting passage and paused, which allowed the shooting pains from Gabriel's soles, ankles, knees and hips to come roaring back to life. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing them to calm down.
"Emissary, what a surprise," a voice came from in front of him, and he opened one eye with resignation. The fae was as extraordinarily beautiful as he'd come to expect, with long, brown hair tucked back into a neat ponytail. Cheekbones that could cut glass were framed by rich, fair skin pulled tight over them. His lips were blood red, and his eyes were wholly feline. His clothes, though, looked as if they belonged in the Elizabethan era. Knowing the fae, they were probably from then.
"My Lord Maoldomhnaich," Mairéad said, bowing her head. "A pleasure to see you."
"And you," the fae replied. "So far from home, too, and with a pet in tow, I see."
"An associate," she said. "What brings you to the Far Gates?"
"Business," he said abruptly, and Gabriel noted the cold, slightly standoffish approach that the fae man was taking to their conversation. If he'd had glasses, they would have been firmly perched on the end of his nose. "I should imagine that, given rumours about the parlous state of affairs in your Court, that this is a fleeting visit?"
Mairéad's cheeks flushed dangerously at the insult, which wasn't direct enough to take offence to (it wasn't, after all, an accusation that her Court was in a state, just that rumours said it was) but cut nonetheless.
"Oi, Macbeth," Gabriel said, motioning at the man's kilt and sporran. "If it's going to be or not to be, make up your fucking mind and stop pissing around with wordplay." For emphasis he rolled up his sleeves, and he heard Mairéad suck air in through her teeth. He ignored her.
"Hamlet," Maoldomhnaich said, after giving him the same kind of look that one usually reserved for an offending item on the bottom of a boot.
"You what?" Gabriel said, pausing for a moment.
"To be or not to be, it's from Hamlet, not Macbeth." Gabriel blinked.
"Right, but you knew what I meant, yeah?" He said in a flat voice, narrowing his eyes. "So how about we all pretend we haven't got English Lit degrees shoved up our arses for a moment?"
Mairéad's hand tightened like a vice around his arm. Her smile was thin, stretched and very forced.
"If you'll excuse us, my Lord, I have a mortal to punish and a destination to attend to," she said, motioning to where the Far Gate was opening again. The sidhe lord sniffed and turned away, which was apparently enough to excuse them. Mairéad dragged him towards the Way back to Earth.
"If you embarrass me, I'll skin you alive," she hissed, and Gabriel gulped. With little ceremony, she practically threw him through the portal, and followed after.
They emerged into a warm day, but blessedly less scorching than the one they'd left behind in Faerie. Gabriel breathed in the air and exhaled slowly, his senses thrown into disarray by the abrupt change in the feel of the magic in the air. This was more like it, he thought. He could feel its familiarity seep into his pores, touch the comforting embrace of its potency, taste its familiar flavour on the air.
Home.
He let out a whoop of excitement, and in a pique of sheer joy, turned and threw his arms around Mairéad just as she emerged from the Way, squeezing tightly. Then, suddenly, realised what he was doing, and let her go, clearing his throat.
She quirked an eyebrow at him, the corner of her mouth turned up in vague amusement, and he noticed that her eyes had reset back to their brilliant viridian, but mostly human shape.
"We have arrived," she began. "Now, we must walk for several miles until we reach the next Way, where we can-"
"No," he said, cutting her off with a wave of his hands from side to side. "No, no, no, no."
"What do you mean?" She asked, with more than a little impatience in her voice. "We are in Os-"
"Osterley, I know," he said. "If there's one fucking constant in this city, it's that if you go past Acton and look up, you'll always be in Osterley. We're not walking. We're taking the tube."
Mairéad placed her hands on her hips.
"I am not," she hissed. "Getting on public transportation." Gabriel stared at her blankly.
"Look, love," he said, ignoring the glare she gave him. "I've been walking for hours. Hours! I am not walking another sodding step further unless it's to go through a ticket barrier. I am not taking a Way to the City, we are getting the Piccadilly Line eastbound, we're going to go to Holborn, we're going to change onto the Central Line, and then we're going to get off at Bank."
"This is not a dignified way to travel," she sniffed, and Gabriel rolled his eyes.
"Listen, I just went through four or five of the most bizarre hours of my life. I talked to a giant caterpillar, I got sniffed at by a fae Lord who has his nose so far up in the air, he was sniffing God's arsehole. I'm back home, and we. Are. Taking. The Tube."
"We are not taking the Tube," she replied in a flat, dangerous voice.
Fifteen minutes and a conjured wad of cash later, they piled into the train car, listening to the automated drone of the faceless woman's voice telling them that this was a Piccadilly Line service to Cockfosters, and the next station was Boston Manor. Gabriel cast about for a seat, but settled instead for the baggage area next to the door, nipping into it quickly before the Japanese tourist acted on his impulse to put another four of his fifteen suitcases there, and pulling Mairéad with him.
"The smell of this conveyance is disagreeable," she growled, and he pursed his lips.
"Deal with it," he replied, as the car lurched forward and the fae woman's arm snapped up to the hand rail, steadying herself even as Gabriel grinned from ear to ear. The Japanese tourist went flying, making the mistake of trying to keep his precarious stack of luggage intact rather than compensating for the reckless acceleration of the driver. A tired-looking man in a rumpled suit glanced up as he jostled his legs, and shook his head, going back to his airline-issued copy of the Financial Times with the kind of purposeful ignorance particular to traffic wardens and veteran passengers on the London Underground.
They didn't say much as they barrelled through Zones Four and Two, light streaming through the murky glass of the train before Baron's Court passed by in a flash, and the train began its descent into the undercity. Earl's Court preceded Gloucester Road, and the pace of the train continued unabated through South Kensington, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Corner and Green Park. The hordes disembarked here, and the pair took two seats gratefully, Gabriel collapsing into a tired heap before the car filled up again at Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square.
The ride regenerated him, though, filled him with the electric snap of the Tube's magic, the special kind of power created by so many people alighting, boarding, moving and standing and sitting, chattering about the day they were about to have, or thinking about the day they'd just had. Men in suits ranging from 20 to 50 glided in on autopilot, not bothering to sit for the few stops they had to travel, glancing at notes or discussing how much they loathed their coworkers to the colleagues who accompanied them. Men in shirts and slacks flirted with women in tank tops and skirts, while long-suffering parents tried to quiet the baby that picked this precise moment to start building up to a tantrum of epic proportions, trying not to notice the glares from people who should know better.
The electric potential of the West End gave way to the thrill of Covent Garden, before the old-world magic, embedded in the very stones and dirt of the ground, coursed through Gabriel as they passed through Russell Square and the edges of Bloomsbury. He stood up from the seat and Mairéad followed wordlessly as they reached the tacky walls of Holborn and disembarked, following another one of Tube's constants where one would always be at one of the furthest points possible from the tunnel and staircases that would lead to the escalators, which in turn would emerge into a life-or-death struggle to cross the atrium between the Piccadilly and Central lines. This was the true test of a Londoner, one who could walk against the flow of human traffic without even the slightest bump of a shoulder. The urban knight who could effortlessly change direction to circumnavigate groups of tourists tracing the lines of the Underground map with their fingers without changing their pace even slightly. The maestro of mass transit who knew instinctively, thanks to years of experience in Underground station design, which offshoot was eastbound and who was westbound, who didn't even need to look to know which way to go, and was rewarded by beating the press of people who would eventually spill out onto the platform minutes later, after they'd picked out their sweet spot by where the doors would open.
Two minutes later, the service to Hainault (via Newbury Park) pulled up, ejecting its load of passengers, and waiting precisely three seconds for new ones to pile on before the doors started beeping. Mairéad's hair looked more out of place than usual, her eyes wide and alert as her hand gripped Gabriel's.
"Let's never do that again," she said, deadly serious, as he smirked. The train passed from Holborn to the leafy midpoint between the city and the City that was Chancery Lane, filled with overpriced pubs and gimmicky strip clubs, before the jolt of magic coursed through the car as they crossed the ancient boundary where the Roman wall had once stood. The majestic awe of St. Paul's was next, mitigated by the fact that office-block hell gave way to Old World grandeur at the point where the station's exit lay. Within a few minutes, they arrived at Bank, where they were informed that they could change for the District, Circle, Northern and Waterloo & City Lines. And, of course, the DLR.
They made their way out, and Gabriel traced the embossed relief of the City of London's dragons on the wall as they filtered through to the escalators. Anyone who spent enough time in Bank learned two lessons - one, never to bother walking up the escalators, given the two points of egress at the top. Two, unless it was a route you walked every day, there was never any chance of getting the right exit. Instead, they picked one of the eight at random, and emerged into the afternoon sunlight to see the imposing edifice of the Royal Exchange in front of them, its Greco-Roman facade looking out of place, yet entirely where it should be among the white stone of the heart of Britain's economic power. The Bank of England lay to their left, incongruous among the oddly-shaped skyscrapers that peeked over the top of the older buildings, while Cannon Street and the River lay to their right, not too far away ostensibly, but involving a walk that would take far longer than you thought.
"Alright," he said, squinting against the sunlight, and feeling an odd, powerful urge to get out of sight quickly, aware as he was of the vast number of times he'd already been caught on camera. Mairéad was looking slightly less drawn now that they were out of the Underground, but by no means impressed, or less grumpy. "Where to now?"
Wordlessly, she beckoned for him to follow, and stalked off towards Coleman Street.
The City of London, or the Square Mile, is actually a separate city in its own right. Folklore has it that the Aldermen are able to bar the sovereign from entering its boundaries should they wish, and there is old magic in that place. Deep, ingrained in every stone, every leaf, every sign and every dragon-stamped bollard. It operates its own police force, has its own government, controls how many people can live there and what kind of businesses can open. It is, essentially, an autonomous state within Greater London, and in turn, within England. It is, though, a nightmare to find your way around. Many an hour has been lost trying to navigate the underground and high-rise walkways of the Barbican, even longer trying to find that one restaurant in Farringdon that Google Maps is telling you that you've not only arrived at, but are actually inside. Mobile internet stops working at around 4.30pm, when the markets close and the old money managers and Arabic banks disgorge their workers, and continues being patchy up until the City bars close at 9.30.
Moorgate is, to many people, a place invented by the enemies of London, one that combines the mind-bending mix of old and new seen in St. Paul's with the street patterns of Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate. You can find a side street in Moorgate that looks like it belongs in Tudor London, and never find it again for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you look. Likewise, you can discover an entrance to the Hammersmith & City Line minutes before the last train, running as fast as you can, only to find that it seems to have vanished into the aether the next day.
Moorgate is the kind of place where run-down buildings host strange entrances and elevators with only one destination, leading to lobbies of private members' clubs. It's a place where you can find a working-class pub nestled in between the trading rooms of Swiss banks and American asset managers. It's a place of distinctive history and mindless, faceless office buildings that house hundreds of firms that last for a few months. It trades off the cool of Hackney and the staid, suited-and-booted doldrums of the business media.
It is, in short, a place where organisations can either be found by those who have a reason to find them, or simply exist in the background, never really perceived by anyone, where office landlords take the monthly check and never ask too many questions about exactly which shell corporation it comes from, thank you very much.
"There," Mairéad said, pointing at a grey building among grey buildings. Gabriel squinted at it.
"Doesn't look like much," he said, taking a seat on a bench bookended on both sides by a wrought-iron dragon. Then, quickly realising his mistake, he stood up. "Sorry," he said to his companion, who was keeping a healthy distance from the metal. She waved away his apology.
"Armed guards inside, electronic security systems of the highest order - although from what I understand, that shouldn't be too much of a problem for you," she said, looking straight ahead. Gabriel nodded.
"Want to do it now?" He said, and received another look that was more suited for an intransigent toddler.
"Tonight," she said. "For now, we need more intelligence. And this time, we're travelling my way."
Gabriel felt a full-scale tantrum building up, but the glare he received stopped it dead in its tracks. His mouth, he realised, was half-open. He closed it.
"You know," he said. "You looked just like my wife when you did that."
"Then you're a lucky man, Gabriel Thorne," she said, winking.
"I'll bet. Who's this source we're going to see, and tell me it's not in fucking west London again," he replied.
"His name is Box," she said, leading him towards Sun Street, and one of the many half-alleys in between the crumbling Edwardian buildings there. She cut the air with her nail once more, and the warmth of Summer flowed through. "And he lives in a place called Ealing."
Gabriel groaned, even as he was dragged through the portal.