“Don’t, D,” he begged. “That isn’t a fly! Can’t you see her?”
Dmitri looked at Brendan as if he were mad. “See who?”
“He can’t see me,” BLT announced around a mouthful of cake. She rolled over onto her back in the icing and smiled drunkenly up at them. Her whole body began to glow. “He sees a big hairy fly. We protect ourselves with illusions. He sees what I want him to see.” Her eyes lit up. “This is good cake. Sweet! Sweeeeeet! ”
She commenced a frenzied, erratic flight, buzzing here and there around the kitchen, causing Dmitri and Brendan to duck their heads to avoid a collision. She banged into cupboards and knocked over a jar full of wooden spoons by the stove. Brendan managed to reach up and snatch her out of the air. With great effort, he held BLT as she wriggled. It was like holding on to a shooting star. “How can I make him see you as you are? I need him to understand. I need him to believe me.”
“If you let him see me, he sees all of us. When that happens, he won’t be able to go back. What’s done is done.” She licked some icing off her fingers and wriggled, desperate to spend her energy. Dmitri was watching this exchange. He looked at Brendan as if he was sure now that Brendan had lost his mind. Brendan knew he would have thought the same if he found Dmitri talking to an insect. He was torn. If he could take back everything and just be a normal person, blissfully ignorant of the secret world that had materialized over the last two days, he imagined he would do it in a heartbeat. Should he subject Dmitri to the kind of craziness that his life now contained?
I know I’m being selfish, but I can’t do this alone. I need some help and I have no one else I can trust.
“Brendan? Are you okay?” Dmitri asked, his face filled with concern. “You’re talking to a fly.”
Brendan groaned.
“All right. How do I do it?” he asked the struggling BLT.
“Are you sure you want to?” BLT managed to ask.
“I have no choice,” Brendan replied.
“Okay. All you have to do is say it. But you have to say it with sincerity. Will is everything. That’s what makes the magic work.”
Brendan let her go, and she recommenced her blazing circuit of the kitchen. Brendan turned to Dmitri and grabbed him by the shoulders. He looked into the smaller boy’s blue eyes and said earnestly, with all the honesty he could muster, “Dmitri, I need your help. I need you to see what I can see.”
Dmitri shivered. As Brendan released him from his grasp, the smaller boy blinked and rubbed his eyes then looked up into Brendan’s face. His jaw dropped. “What…? Brendan… you look… you look different.”
“Different how?”
“I can’t describe it,” Dmitri said softly. “Oh. You aren’t wearing glasses. And your pimples are gone. And… you shine!” Dmitri laughed.
BLT, her energy finally spent, fell to the tabletop exhausted.
“It worked,” BLT said wearily. “He has the Sight now.”
At the sound of her voice, Dmitri whipped his head around to stare at her. His mouth dropped open. He pointed at BLT. “There is a tiny person on the table.”
“Dmitri Krosnow, meet Basra La Tir, Lesser Faerie,” Brendan made the introduction. “I call her BLT.”
BLT hopped lightly down onto the tabletop and bowed with a flourish. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.” Dmitri stared for a moment in dumbfounded shock. BLT frowned and cocked an eyebrow. “Got any sweets?”
Brendan swept her up in his hand. “No more sweets.”
Brendan waited for Dmitri to run screaming, lose his mind, and freak out. He was ready to clap a hand over the boy’s screams for help. Nothing like that happened. Dmitri turned to him with shining eyes and a huge grin on his face. “My mind blows!”
Brendan grinned back. “It blows your mind, you mean. Yeah, I know. I can hardly believe it myself.”
Dmitri grabbed his arm and pulled Brendan down into a chair. “Tell me how this is possible. Tell me everything!”
So, for the next hour, in the quiet kitchen, by the light of the small lamp, Brendan told his friend everything that had happened to him over the last few days. He told him of Greenleaf and Deirdre, the concert and the dream. He told him of Kim and her secret self. He told him of their flight through the Undertown, Borje and Orcadia, the Kobolds and the Silkies, and about the Swan of Liir. It felt so good to be able to tell someone everything and to share the burden. Dmitri interrupted with questions and the occasional exclamation of amazement, but mostly he watched and listened, trying to take it all in. Throughout the conversation, BLT flitted about the kitchen sampling bits of food and exploring the shelves. Brendan made sure she didn’t get hold of any sugar, which earned him a few curses and angry glares.
At last, Brendan reached the end of his tale. Dmitri sat in silence, processing what he’d heard. Brendan could almost hear the cogs turning in his friend’s mind.
“So, you must find this amulet or else you will be vulnerable to those who wish to hurt you?” Dmitri asked.
“From what I understand, that’s the deal,” Brendan said. “Once I’m initiated or whatever, I’m off limits and I get certain rights. Not that she seems to respect the rules. Once I’m initiated, I get all my powers and I may be able to defend myself. At least I’ll have a fighting chance. The problem is, I have no idea where to look for this thing. It could be anywhere.”
“They say you had it when you were a baby,” Dmitri said thoughtfully. “When your real father…”
“Briach Morn,” Brendan offered.
“Him. When he dropped you off in the Human world. And only another Faerie could take it from you.”
“That’s what I understand,” Brendan agreed. He was amazed that Dmitri had just come on board this whole business. He didn’t know how he would have reacted in Dmitri’s shoes, but he doubted he would have been so calm.
Dmitri’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh my! I understand now.”
“What? You know what to do? Tell me!”
“No, not exactly. But it’s something about my babka. Remember the other day when you asked me about dreams and we talked about my babka?”
“Yeah,” Brendan confirmed.
Dmitri’s face coloured. “I kind of downplayed that a bit. You see, it is a bit embarrassing. She is a sort of… I don’t know the exact word. She claims to be able to see things. In Polish we call such a person a vrooshka. Do you know what I mean? A psycho…”
“She’s a psychic?”
“That’s it! That’s the word! People, mainly Polish people, friends of ours and other people who have heard about her, come to visit her. They bring her gifts, sometimes money, and she tries to help them by using her special sight.” Dmitri grimaced. “My father doesn’t like it. He thinks it is hopelessly old-fashioned and makes us look like ignorant peasants, but the truth is we can use the extra money.”
“Do you think she can help?”
“It’s just that for the last little while she’s been acting a bit strangely,” Dmitri explained. “Well, she’s always been acting strangely, but she’s been oddly focused in her weirdness. Last week, she insisted that my mother take her out to the hairdresser. She wanted a perm and her hair dyed.”
“That doesn’t sound weird to me.”
“She lost all of her hair about five years ago.”
“Gotcha.”
“We got her a wig and she seemed pleased. When I asked her why she needed her hair done so suddenly, she said that she had to look pretty for His Highness.” Dmitri paused to let this sink in. “She has been babbling in her sleep, too. She keeps saying things like ‘He has been hiding.’ And last night she woke up shouting, ‘He rides beneath the waves! He rides beneath the waves!’ My parents have been talking about getting her some help. They think she’s going senile but now I see that, as impossible as it seems, she was describing what was happening to you.”
Brendan thought about this for a moment. “Maybe I could ask her about this amulet. Maybe she knows where it is.”