Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [77]
Her skin changed under my lips.When I lifted my head, I found myself holding a corpse.Nita’s lovely brown skin had gone pallid and cold, and her gaze was flat. Empty. Her lips moved, and a maggot crept out of the corner of her mouth.
I might have pushed her aside and scrambled to my feet in horror, except somehow I managed to remember Miki’s cryptic reminders about the old ballad. So I held her closer. Even when the flesh fell apart in my grip and all I held were bones, attached to each other by bits of dried muscle and sinew. I held her even closer then, tenderly cradling the skull against my chest.Wisps of what had once been her thick brown hair tickled my hand.
I still didn’t really see the connection between the ballad and our situation. I was the one in peril with faerie, not her. I should be the one changing shapes. But I knew I wouldn’t let her go, never mind the gender switch from the ballad.
None of this made much sense anyway, from the butter spirit’s first taking affront to me, through the years of petty torment to this night, when the tithe he owed the Grey Man was due. None of it seemed real. It was all part and parcel of that same dreamlike state I felt I’d entered back on the stage inside the pub. I suppose that was what let me continue to kneel there, holding the apparent remains of Nita in my arms, and still function.
“This man is yours,” I heard the butter spirit say. “My tithe to you.”
Before the Grey Man could do whatever it was he was going to do, I lifted my head and met his flat, expressionless gaze. I still felt disconnected, reality floundering all around me, but I knew what I needed to do. It wasn’t Miki’s advice I needed to take, but my dad’s.
“I’m honored to make your acquaintance, sir,” I said, falling back on the formal speech patterns I remembered from Dad’s stories.
For the first time since he arrived, I saw a flicker of interest in the Grey Man’s gaze.
“Are you now?” he said.
His voice was a voice from the grave, deep and husky, filled with cold air.
I gave a slow nod in response. I was no longer trying to figure out what Miki’s plan had been. Instead, I concentrated on the stories from my dad, how in them, no matter how malevolent or kind the faerie spirit might seem to be, the one thing they all demanded of us mortals was respect.
“I am, sir,” I said. “It’s a rare privilege to be able to look upon one so grand as yourself.”
“Even when I am here to eat your soul?”
“Even then, sir.”
“What game are you playing at?” he demanded.
“No game, sir. Though in all fairness, I feel I should tell you that your butter spirit actually has no claim to my soul. That being the case, it puzzles me how he can offer me up as his tithe to you. It seems to me—if you’ll pardon my speaking out of turn like this—rather disrespectful.”
The Grey Man turned that dark gaze of his to the butter spirit. “Is this true, Fardoragh Og?”
The butter spirit spat at me. “Lies,my lord. Everything he says is a lie.”
“Then tell me, how did you gain a lien on his soul?”
The butter spirit couldn’t find the words he needed.
“Well?”
“H e . . . I . . .”
“If I might speak, sir?” I asked.
The butter spirit wanted to protest—that was easy to see—but he kept his mouth shut when the Grey Man nodded. I explained the circumstances of the butter spirit’s enmity to me, and how when I’d realized my mistake, I’d tried to apologize.
“And where in this sorry tale,” the Grey Man asked the butter spirit, “did you acquire the lien on this man’s soul?”
“I . . .”
“Do you know what would have happened if I had taken it in these circumstances?”
“N-no,my lord.”
“For the wrongful murder of their son, I would have been in debt to his family for eternity.”
“I . . . I didn’t . . . I never thought,my lord . . .”
“Come here, little man.”
With great reluctance, the butter spirit shuffled to where the tall figure of