…or, That’s What Sidhe Said
The mysterious lady with the blue roots landed sideways, which meant she wasn’t entirely in Iolana’s lap. To be specific, her legs weren’t. They were in mine. To be more specific, her feet were in the part of my lap where I kept my balls.
To be most specific, ow.
I’m not sure whether Iolana yelled louder or I did. After a second, the strange girl joined us. Iolana pushed her off into the center of the tub, and she briefly submerged before her face bobbed up. She remained crouching and half-floating.
“What the shit?” Lisette said.
“Well, this is new,” the girl said. “When did we get a little swimming pool?”
“Who are you?” Iolana asked.
“You tell me,” she said, and she laughed. She turned around slowly, looking at the other girls in the tub. “Is somebody having a party?”
“That’s a cute trick,” I said. “Transportation student?”
“I learned about airships while traveling in a wagon,” she said. “So I guess you might say that I am a student of transportation twice over.”
“Oh great fucking Khersis in a little glass egg!” Bobby swore from up on the higher deck. I turned to see him vaulting over the railing. He landed amidst a pair of thorny looking shrubs. He paid them no attention as he hurried over. “What are you doing out?”
“Learning,” the girl said. “Do your parents know you’re having a party, Robert?”
“What exactly’s going on?” I asked Bobby. “What is this, your gifted but eccentric sister?”
“Yes,” the girl said. “They keep me in the cellar and feed me nothing but uncooked rice. I have to catch mice and roaches to survive.”
“Yeah, no,” Bobby said. “When my grandparents bought this land, they got it for cheap, but for a good reason. It’s haunted or cursed or something, by her. She’s some kind of sidhe spirit.”
“Technically, it’s a hex, not a curse,” the girl said. “Curses are infernal.” She turned and looked at Iolana and me. “You can learn a lot by paying attention during exorcisms. Which incidentally tickle, but in a good way.”
“Why does she keep appearing in my lap?” Iolana asked.
“She’s stuck on you?” Bobby asked. “That means you set her free.”
“I didn’t do anything! I was riding in the hay wagon,” Iolana said.
“And the hay wagon freed me,” the girl said.
“So why are you following me?” Iolana asked.
“I have to follow someone and you seemed interesting,” she said. “I’ve never seen skin like yours on a human.”
“Look, there’s an easy fix,” Bobby said. “Just name her and order her into a vessel, and then we bury it in the fields. She’ll get out again. It doesn’t matter where we bury her, she can move around until someone stumbles over her, but it’ll get her off of you and keep her away for weeks or months, sometimes years.”
“A vessel?” Iolana repeated.
“It can be anything,” Bobby said. “Anything that opens and closes, anything with a lid.”
“How about a beer bottle?” I suggested. The one in my hand was already half empty and it had a screw-off top.
“Um, not a good idea,” Bobby said. “She seems to be affected by whatever we stuff her into. When we buried her in a coffee can, she came back all manic and hyper. The last time we used my mom’s empty hair dye bottle.”
“You should have let me out sooner, before my roots came in,” the girl said. “I bet I looked awesome. The absolute worst was the peanut butter can, though. I have allergies. Seventeen months of itchy hives are no fun.”
“I’ll go get a canning jar,” Bobby said. “That seems neutral enough.” He looked at Iolana. “If she’s stuck on you, you’ll have to name her.”
“What do I name her?” Iolana said.
“Anything she hasn’t been named before,” Bobby said. “Once you’ve given her a name, she has to answer it and do what you say. Just don’t tell her to do anything bad, though, because she’s a lot easier to manage if she’s not pissed off. I’ll be right back with the jar.”
Iolana stared at me, then looked at the girl, then turned back to me.
“This is pretty surreal, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“They told me Prax was in the middle of faerie country, but I thought they were all dead.”
“There’s at least one old sidhe man hanging out in the woods,” I said.
“This old man, he played one,” the girl sang loudly and off-key.
“Kekona,” Iolana said to her.
“Who’s that?” the girl asked.
“The younger of my two sisters,” Iolana said. “Also you. I doubt anybody’s used that name on you before.”
“Nope,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Not yet.”
“Get out of the tub, Kekona,” Iolana said. The girl disappeared with a pop. The water sloshed around a bit in her wake. “Well, that was easy enough.”
The other girls climbed out of the tub one at a time, Lisette included. Their eyes told the story with a mixture of guilt and fear: no one wanted to be too near a hex victim. Even once custody of “Kekona” was passed from her into a jar in the ground, the stigma would probably stick to her.
Bobby came back not a minute later.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“I told her to get out of the tub, to test it, and she disappeared,” Iolana said. “So I guess it worked?”
“Huh,” Bobby said. “Usually she does exactly what she’s told and no more. Well, call her back.”
“Kekona!” Iolana called. When there was no answer, she said, “Kekona, appear! Kekona, come forth! Kekona, get back into the tub!”
“It’s not working,” Bobby said. “Are you sure that’s the same thing you said when you named her?”
“Yes,” Iolana said. “It’s my sister’s name, too. Does that matter?”
“No, we’ve used every name in our family,” Bobby said. “Including mine. She must have been called Kekona before. When she comes back to you—and she will—just give her a different name and then tell her to get in the jar. You can bury her anywhere, she’ll end up back here. She’s tied to this land.”
“What is she, exactly?” Iolana asked.
“I told you, some kind of sidhe spirit,” Bobby said. “The way I understand it, they can’t die for real unless they want to, or the right things are done when they die. The only way to keep them from coming back is to bind their spirit into something, and even that’s not perfect.”
“And you just let people come over without warning them?” I asked.
“Do you know what the odds are of someone stumbling over her bottle and letting her free?” Bobby asked.
“Pretty good, apparently,” I said. “This seems like some kind of negligence.”
“Jamie, let it go,” Iolana said, touching my arm. “It’s kind of funny, I guess. Or it will be when it’s over.”
“I guess I’ll leave you two alone,” Bobby said. He put the jar down on the edge of the tub. “Keep that handy. Take it with you if she doesn’t show up again tonight.”
“Thank you, Bobby,” Iolana said.
He left, and the two of us were alone in the hot tub.
Iolana slid sideways, bouncing along the seat until she was across from me. Her face was wet. It shone in the flickering light of the illusory torches. I was very aware that my dick had been hard since she got into the pool.
Her tongue flicked up and licked a drop of water off her upper lip.
“Well,” she said.
“Well?” I said.
“Was it just me, or did that guy have a really big thingy?”
“Bobby?” I asked.
“Oh, I wasn’t checking Bobby out,” she said.
“I wasn’t checking Bobby out, either!” I said. “I thought you were talking about him.”
“No, in the pool,” she said. “The one with the curly dark hair.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “He was pretty hung.”
“And muscled,” she said. “I thought he was pretty hot. Kind of scary, but hot. Did you like him?”
“You know, I’ve got kind of a rule about commenting on straight guys,” I said. “It’s a respect thing. And a health thing.”
“It’s just us girls here,” she said, and she giggled. It was fun to watch her throw back her head—and throw out her chest, but the feeling that I wasn’t going to do anything more than that was getting stronger all the time.
There were up sides and down sides to being the hot gay guy on campus, when you were trying to attract girls.
“So, do you even like big guys?” she asked. “I guess if I were a gay man, I’d probably want someone small and slim, so it would hurt less. Actually, I think if I were a gay man, I’d stay a virgin forever.”
“Uh, right,” I said.
“Not because I think it’s gross or anything, but because I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to pain,” she said. “Though I do think it’s gross, too. But I wouldn’t if I were a gay. I don’t think it’s gross for you.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be offended,” she said.
“I’m not even actually gay,” I said. “Since coming here, I’ve had sex with exactly one guy, and four girls.” That was counting Violet. Fudging things, maybe, but for a good cause. “And you watched me flirting with Lisette.”
“You turned her down, though.”
“Because I’d like to keep having sex with girls,” I said.
“I’ll admit I wasn’t paying a lot of attention,” she said. “I was kind of looking at your penis.”
“Uh huh,” I said. Was that because she thought I was harmless, or because she was interested? “I really do like girls,” I said, going for broke. “In fact, I like you.”
“I really do like boys,” she said. “But I’m also really a virgin.”
“That’s a temporary condition.”
“For some people,” she said. “For some people, it’s a choice. For me, it’s a commitment. It’s not always easy—”
“Then why bother?” I said. “If you want to do something, you shouldn’t let some stupid cultural—”
“Calling a girl’s culture stupid is a great way to get into her pants, Jamie,” Iolana said. “Really. Brilliant.”
“Hey, you’re the one who called gay sex gross,” I said.
“Oh, right, and now my commitment to virginity has been completely negated by our mutual insults,” she said.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “It’s just, it’s stressful, being all wound up and not actually doing any—doing. If you want to keep your virginity, that’s cool, but there are other things we can do.”
“If it involves me touching you and orgasms, then no, there aren’t,” she said. “I’m committed to virginity, not to paying lip service to the letter of it while finding as many ways as I can to violate the spirit of it. I’m sorry. I’ve seen at least one guy and at least one girl come on to you tonight, though, so I don’t think you really need me.”
“I don’t,” I said. “But I kind of want you.”
“Even if I weren’t a virgin, Jamie, do you really think I’d want to have sex while I’ve got some kind of obnoxious sprite bound to me?” she asked.
“Good point,” I said. “Okay. I’ll drop it. But maybe you could tell me more about why you’re a virgin, just so I can understand.”
“I don’t see why you have to understand,” she said. “It’s my choice.”
“I know!” I said. “I agree. Totally. But I want to understand. I’d like to be your friend, Iolana.”
“Well, it’s mostly something I decided for myself,” she said.
“Mostly?”
“My mother encouraged it,” she said. “But as far as I could tell, she did the same thing for my sisters, so I feel pretty safe in thinking that it was my decision.”
“You said before it was kind of a cultural thing,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I—there’s pressure, but there are also prospects that a virgin has that, um. Look,” she said. She blushed, but her eyes also narrowed. “I know what you’re getting at. I know why you’re so interested in this.”
“You do?” I asked. It was really half friendly interest and half hoping I’d see some kind of crack in her armor, some light at the end of the tunnel. It couldn’t be that hard to guess, but it was hardly worth the dire look on her face.
“Yeah, and let me just tell you straight out: it’s a bunch of bullshit,” she said. “I don’t know who started the stupid rumors about a lottery and human sacrifice, but when I find them I’m going to hang them from a coat hook by their assholes. That is really not cool.”
“Um… yeah. I hadn’t actually heard all that,” I said.
“Seriously, it’s fucking racist,” she said. “We may not be all modern like the Imperium, but—argh. We don’t even have a volcano you could throw someone into, not like on the movies. There are some nice lava flows on the side, but the crater is a freaking lake! If anybody bothered to learn anything about anywhere, they’d know that!”
“That’s pretty weak,” I said.
“Honestly, Jamie, what kind of person just makes up ignorant, racist shit like that?”
“Iolana, I’m going to level with you,” I said. I could see the pain on her face. She wasn’t just angry. She was hurt. I knew there was no way I could keep any kind of a relationship with her, as a friend or more, and not come clean about my complicity. You could never go wrong with the truth. “I, um, I know where those rumors came from.”
“What?” Her eyes blazed as her mind filled in the blank with the obvious. Now she was just angry. I knew there was no way I could keep any kind of a relationship with her if she knew about my complicity.
“It was Marlot,” I said. “Marlot started them.”
You could never go wrong with the truth.
Tuesday: Jamie gets kicked in the balls. Again. And meets a boy.
Discuss this story on the Livejournal feed.
« « ~106~ Eye of the Beholder ~108~ Random Acts Of Violence » »