Irving had been forced to grow up too soon; maybe it was time he did, too. He couldn’t really help Ti, but he owed her, and particularly he owed her protection, loyalty, and a very loose leash.
He had started to doze in his musings in spite of himself, but something suddenly stirred him awake. His hand went automatically to his sword, but he did hot draw it or wake the others, not yet. It might just be nerves or a figment of a dream.
It might be, but it wasn’t.
There was definitely something out there. Many somethings. He heard the horses stir nervously and, slowly, he withdrew the great sword from its scabbard. The great sword had a life of its own and, awakened by being drawn, pulsed with energy, as if eager to be put to use. He felt its power, as if arm and sword were one, and he was never quite sure who was boss.
Well, they weren’t firesprites or they’d light up the night; and they weren’t banshees, because they weren’t howling, but that only left a few million other possibilities. He feared zombies the most’; you had to hack zombies to pieces and, even then, get away from the pieces. Damn him for thinking with his emotions and not sorting out this business with Tiana when no harm could be done! How dare he put Irving in such danger?
Filled with rage at himself, he stood to face his attackers.
Suddenly he made out a figure, about the size of a small child, over to his right. It was odd, but he wasn’t actually seeing the creature; rather, he was seeing a kind of glowing soft, green outline of it. It looked, somehow, familiar, as if he’d seen it somewhere before, but he couldn’t place where or when.
Now, suddenly, he could see other figures in front of him— two, three, no, four of them, all nearly identical as only fairies might be, yet, somehow, he could sense a very slight difference in each one.
Wood nymphs! They were being surrounded by wood nymphs! And that was why this spot had attracted him, had somehow sent a signal that it was safe. The great sword in his hand changed its humming pitch to sound much like a disappointed, metallic Bronx cheer. There were things to fear from wood nymphs, but the most threatening was dying of exhaustion.
He sheathed the sword, literally feeling its irritation, and stepped forward to meet them halfway. He didn’t want his son to meet a bunch of wood nymphs in their usual full heat right now. Still, he found going to them and meeting with them more unnerving than fighting a horde of homicidal zombies. The sight of them brought back memories he’d been trying to forget, and it unsettled him that he could not only see their fairy auras even now but also tell them apart, something virtually no human could do. As he drew close he could make out their full form and detail, although he was still not seeing in a normal sense. They stared at him, wide-eyed, looking less their insatiably lustful selves at the sight of a naked human male than completely confused.
“What manner of fairy are you, who has the husk of a human man and handles iron, yet glows inside with the aura of our Sisterhood?” one asked in that cute, sexy, seductive voice they all had.
He stopped. “I—what?”
“What kind of sorcery puts a wood nymph in the body of a big, handsome, human hunk?” another asked.
“I’m a man, not a wood nymph,” he retorted, not knowing why he suddenly felt so cold in the damp heat.
“Your soul and aura are as ours,” a third maintained. “It burns through the oversized husk.”
“This husk is my body.”
“The soul is hid real good,” the first one agreed, “ ’cept’n it’s plain to us. Were you changed by some sorcery or did somebody make you f’get your real self?”
“I was born like this. The Master of the Dead took my soul once and put it in the body of a wood nymph, but the most powerful magic of all wished me back in my original body,” he told them. “I really don’t like to discuss it.”
“Oh, I see,” the first nymph replied. “Your soul was in a husk of the Sisterhood, and it didn’t get put back the same way. You were a human who became a fairy, not by nature or Rule or birth, but it happened. You were fairy. You are fairy. No mere magic or sorcery, no matter how strong, can change a fairy soul, only hide it like the leaves hide the ground.”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that, deep down, I’m still a wood nymph? I don’t feel like a wood nymph. I feel like my old self. I bleed, I bruise, I handle iron, I like girls, and I don’t want any time in the grass with any man.”
“The flesh magic protects and shelters you,” she replied. “The magic is real strong, too. It made you a body like your old one and gave you all that you knowed ’n’ felt ’n’ should feel. But it couldn’t change the fairy soul inside. Your flesh makes you look ’n’ think ’n’ act like a mortal man, but only to mortals. You get turned on by us?”
He didn’t want to hear any more of this, but he had to, and he had to answer honestly. “No. Not a bit.” And come to think of it, Irving had his tongue hanging out for those water nymphs on the ferry, but he’d felt nothing at all. These living refugees from a Playboy cartoon would turn on almost anybody, but, somehow, to him, it would be like, well…
Like kissing your sister.
“Are you telling me this is all a fake? That I’m not really a human man?”
“Oh, no. The magic is real strong, strongest I ever seen, and I been around a couple thousand years. You’ll live your life as you are. But when the flesh is gone, your soul will still be of us. Only if iron stabs your fairy heart would you really die—and forever.”
Although it was close to his worst nightmares, he knew, somehow, that it was true. He was Joe de Oro; nothing had changed about that. And he would be Joe, in every way, until death. But when death came, he would not pass on, or be reincarnated, or whatever happened to human souls; instead, he would be one of these once again, forever until Judgment Day.
It was the most unsettling certainty of a hereafter he could have imagined.
This was something to take up with Ruddygore, if they ever got there.
Unfortunately, it also explained some of his own changes since returning here. His sudden liking for the outdoors and outdoor living, for one thing. His strange, unsettling dreams, for another, and his otherwise uncharacteristic lapses in selfcontrol such as the one that got them stuck here now. If Ti wasn’t Tiana anymore, he wasn’t—quite—Joe, either.
Still, he felt anger at finding out this way, in the middle of nowhere, in a situation still fraught with dangers. “Who other than wood nymphs could tell this about me?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Of course, any of the Sisterhood right off. You can’t hide from your own. Any other fairy could see it, if they was lookin’ for it, but most wouldn’t. Most times folks see what they expect to see, not what’s there. Same as fairy sight. You could see like we see if you knowed you could and really wanted to.”
He tried to dampen his emotions as best he could, though, become Joe the Barbarian. There was nothing at all he could do about this now, and, at least, he was no longer ignorant of it. The fairy soul might panic at this news, but Joe would accept it as something to be dealt with later and, for now, something to be used. If wood nymphs saw him as one of their own, then they were potential allies. Not in a fight—wood nymphs were totally passive, as he well knew—but that wasn’t what he needed right now. And this head nymph, while no Einstein, talked smarter than any other one he’d known. Maybe if you lived long enough you had time to learn something. Or, possibly, the clan leaders were always a bit smarter. Although he’d been one of them, he’d, never lived among them, and he was totally ignorant of their ways when they were among one another. No matter now.