Storm Warrior

explain his strange task. He decided right away to keep quiet about the barrel of rusty iron nails he’d already used up. Nor was he going to reveal that unnatural creatures had watched him as he did it. Or that they’d crept and slithered, flown and trudged around the perimeter of the farm, leering and hissing at him from the other side of the fence as he hammered nails into the top of every wooden post on the property. More than likely, the small fae beasts had been the unwilling forerunners of the bwgan. Rhys imagined that even the Tylwyth Teg had needed to practice a little before they could successfully send the monstrous salamander over such a distance. He wondered how many failures there had been, how many lesser fae had perished in the attempts. Of course, the Fair Ones would neither notice nor care.

No, Rhys wasn’t going to talk about any of that to Leo. Nor mention that he’d buried nails deep in the hard- packed soil between gateposts so that there was a perfect ring of protection around the farm. Nails even studded the corners of the roof of Morgan’s house, and Rhys had pounded two or three nails into the trunk of every tree on the property. The trees would be unaffected, but they were now poisoned against lesser fae. The Tylwyth Teg would be unable to send any more minions to the farm. If they wanted to cause trouble, they’d have to do it themselves.

“You call that a few? I counted about twenty or so horseshoes. And how come they’re all on their sides? Looks like the letter C or something.”

Rhys looked at the horseshoe and back at his friend. “They’re just as they should be.”

“My dad always said horseshoes were for luck, kind of like four-leaf clovers. And if you didn’t hang them with the opening at the top, all the luck would pour out. But maybe it’s different in Wales.”

Rhys considered what to say. He wouldn’t talk of the Fair Ones to Morgan at present—she would equate that with madness for sure, and who knows what she would do? Perhaps even call Officer Richards again. Leo, however, was different. “The Welsh hang their horseshoes like this so they look like the crescent moon. The sign of the moon plus the iron will repel faeries. The very presence of iron weakens them, and its touch will burn or poison them.”

“Never heard that one before. Seems like a mean thing to do to a cute helpless faery.”

“In Wales, faeries are neither cute nor helpless, and often humans must protect themselves against them. There are many different kinds of fae—the greater ones, the Tylwyth Teg who rule over all, cannot be repelled by the presence of iron, though they can be injured by its touch. All of the lesser fae and the darker ones, now, they’re the faeries that cannot abide iron at all. They’ll not come near it.”

“All this faery stuff reminds me of my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Farnsworth. She was English, and if we behaved and got all our work done, she’d tell us faery tales. Stories about sprites and brownies and pixies and such, and all the squabbling they did with each other. Used to be that I couldn’t wait to get to school in hopes we’d hear a story that day.” Leo sighed and picked up a horseshoe from a stack. “So if I put this up over my front door, I’ll have no more trouble with the little people?”

“Take two. You need to cover both doors, front and back,” said Rhys, then did a double take. “No more trouble?”

“A couple days after you left, I started finding things out of place. Books, knickknacks, that kind of thing. They’d be on the shelves when I left the house and then there’d be a dozen on the floor when I came back. And no way was Spike responsible—he can barely get around. But nothing was ever broken.

“And then it started happening with the plates in the kitchen. Again, nothing broken, just taken out of the cupboards and stacked on the floor every morning. Never any doors or windows unlocked, no sign of anyone having gotten in, so I couldn’t blame it on a prankster. Almost had it figured for some kind of damn poltergeist, like in the movies. But today I finally saw the little guy. All brown, about two or three feet high, dressed in leaves and with leaves in his hair. He was throwing my tools around my workshop like he was having some kind of tantrum.”

Rhys frowned. It could only be the ellyll. “I’m thinking I should be paying a visit to your house then,” he said. “I’m done with my tasks here for now. I’ll just be checking on Lucy and changing her dressings and then we can go.”

Leo looked relieved. “I’d like that. I’d appreciate a second opinion.”

Rhys thought Leo might come with him to the barn, but he said he wanted to spend a little more time on Morgan’s large and comfortable porch swing. That was fine with Rhys—he needed to think. He’d spotted the ellyll briefly while in Leo’s garden, but he’d expected that any creatures working for the Tylwyth Teg would follow their target to the farm. After all, the bwgan had come directly here—and thank the gods for that. Why had the ellyll lingered? Perhaps it had expected Rhys to return and was simply making a nuisance of itself in the meantime.

He unwrapped the old gauze and applied new, his fingers deft and sure yet gentle. The mare twitched and lashed her tail, letting him know that she didn’t like having the dressings touched where the wounds were the worst, but still she permitted him to work on them. “Fy un hardd,” he murmured. My beautiful one. A fresh outer layer of cloth bandaging protected the dressings. As he finished the last, he heard Morgan’s car drive up and hoped she had brought more from the clinic—

Morgan. Leo. Together. Rhys cursed and left the barn at a jog, hoping he could interrupt their inevitable conversation before Leo could call her attention to the horseshoes—or, worse, mention what creatures they were meant to keep at bay. He found Morgan sitting in the chair beside his friend. “Lucy’s looked after now,” he announced, more brightly than he felt. “Afternoon to you, Morgan.”

“Same to you.” She smiled at him, and was it his imagination or was there just a little more warmth in her gaze than had been there yesterday?

Leo cleared his throat. “I was just telling the doc that I found some more work for you to do, so I need to steal you back for a little while.”

Rhys relaxed. “I’ll be pleased to help, as always. I won’t be gone long,” he said to Morgan.

“No worries. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.” She waved at a thick folder of papers in her lap. “Have a good time, you two.”

A good time? A strange thing to say to a man who was about to turn his hand to a task. His puzzlement must have showed because Leo leaned forward and cupped a hand to his mouth in a stage whisper. “I may have let slip there was a baseball game on TV tonight.”

“Your secret male plans are known to me,” said Morgan with a laugh. “Make sure you order pizza from Gibby’s. They’ve got a special one with nachos. Don’t worry about coming home early to check on Lucy—I’ll do that before I go to bed. Happy bonding!”

As she went into the house, he followed Leo to his car, grateful that the subject of faeries hadn’t come up. “What does she mean by bonding?”

“She’s just referring to a fancy new catchphrase: male bonding. Don’t know why somebody had to go and give it a name. It’s just guys getting together and having a good time doing guy-type things without women around. You know, like watching sports and drinking beer and eating a lot.”

“Men have been doing that for many centuries.”

“Exactly. But now it’s got a damn title,” said Leo as he turned the car onto the highway. He was quiet for a long moment, then sighed. “So it seems I got a few questions to ask. I never saw anything like this faery creature in my whole life. For a moment, I thought I was seeing things, that maybe my mind was finally starting to go. Then that little guy looked right at me and asked me where you’d gone to and when you were coming back. Asked for you by name, that is.” The old man looked meaningfully in Rhys’s direction. “So I’m thinking, is there anything you’d like to tell me about where you’re from and what you’re doing here?”

There was no help for it. Rhys took a deep breath and told Leo his story. The old man didn’t say much as he drove, just listened, asking only a couple of brief, clarifying questions. On Rhys’s advice, they stopped to pick up supplies for the ellyll. Leo said little even then, simply paid for the purchases and got back into the car.

After his experiences with Morgan and with the police, Rhys was all too well aware of how insane his story sounded to the people of this time and place. He hated the idea of losing Leo’s friendship, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. The truth was the truth. But by the time the car turned into the old man’s driveway, he fully expected to be ordered off the property.

Instead, Leo turned to him, his face a curious mix of expressions—but none of them hostile. “Rhys, I used to think that people got smarter as they got older. Turns out, it doesn’t quite work that way. The longer I live, the