Mad Maudlin Read online

"Ah, good. You're here. A moment, please." She withdrew.

  Eric occupied himself until her return looking at pictures of gold faucets and hand-painted French porcelain bathroom sinks, not to mention Jacuzzis big enough to seat the entire Elven High Court, and made a mental note to give Kory and Beth a subscription to this thing. The elves could find some way to get this stuff shipped Underhill, and both his friends were bonkers for bathroom gadgets of every kind. Hell, actually all things considered, the elves could probably make every bit of it. If they hadn't already—hadn't Kory said something about there being an Elven casino in Vegas?

  Still, the last time he'd been on a visit, all that he'd seen was an old claw-foot bathtub (okay, it was solid alabaster, but still) straight out of a Victorian mansion. Most of the time the Underhill crowd seemed to go for hot springs in grottos—nice for atmosphere, but not exactly Jacuzzis. I'll be remembered throughout history as the man who brought modern plumbing to Underhill.

  A few moments later Oriana was back. "I'm ready for you now."

  Eric got up and followed her down the hall to her study.

  The room was small and intimate and even more heavily shielded than the rest of the apartment. The walls were fully paneled in red pecan, and folding shutters covered the windows. Eric preferred them closed, and so Oriana always shut them before he arrived.

  Between the shuttered windows was a range of shallow shelves, on which were a variety of enticing knickknacks for nervous patients to fidget with: glass globes, small toys, seashells, ornamental boxes—the sort of souvenirs any traveler might acquire. There was a chair for Oriana, with a small table beside it that held a clock, her notepad, and a box of Kleenex. There was a wastebasket, and a dimmable torchiere in the corner to provide light if the shutters were closed. Aside from that, the only furniture in the room was a large grey couch—"a non-directive couch," she'd said once, making a rare joke, "as you may sit, lie, sprawl upon it. Whatever you like. The couch does not care. And neither do I."

  As always when he arrived, the room held a strong indefinable spicy smell. It seemed to fade during his session—though whether it faded, or whether he got used to it, was something Eric had never quite decided.

  He took his place on the couch. Oriana followed him in, closing the door behind him, and seated herself in the chair, picking up her pad and pen and waiting for him to begin.

  She was somewhere in her late sixties, Eric supposed, one of those lucky blondes whose hair simply went silver with age. She was wearing an expensive, nubbly, cowl-neck sweater in ash-taupe shades that flattered her complexion—nobody who had spent any time at all Underhill could help having a good eye for clothes—paired with a pencil-thin tweed skirt and designer pumps. She looked like a psychiatrist in a movie, down to the half-glasses she wore on a chain around her neck, and he was pretty sure that she consciously dressed to play up the image.

  "Do I pass muster?" she asked.

  Eric grinned, refusing to feel guilty for checking her out.

  "And how are you feeling this week?" she asked, prodding him to begin their session.

  "I'm realizing that I have decisions to make," Eric admitted. "I graduate in the Spring. I could just coast. The money's there. But it feels dishonest."

  "Good," Oriana said noncommittally.

  "I know that I want to do something. Something worthwhile. But I know that whatever it is, it has to be something that will leave me the freedom to do the things that need to be done—as a Bard. And those things show up on awfully short notice."

  Oriana pursed her lips, and absently tapped once on her notebook with her pencil. "Yes, they do. And they're things that can't always be explained to Worldlings, even when they find themselves involved. And, reasonably enough, you don't want to put yourself into a position where you might have to let someone down who depended on you, or hurt their feelings, even if that were necessary for the greater good."

  Eric nodded ruefully. "And I know there has to be a way to do both—to do something meaningful and still have that freedom . . ."

  For a few minutes he discussed all the various alternatives he'd considered—going back on the RenFaire circuit; playing solo freelance gigs in the New York area; finding work as a session musician; working as a tutor. All of them sounded attractive as he spoke of them, and all of them would give him the freedom he needed.

  Oriana raised her hand, silencing him.

  "Eric, I am not a placement counselor at Juilliard. I have no interest in your future employment opportunities. You're blowing smoke at me. Stop it, and tell me what's bothering you."

  Eric sighed, feeling guilty and relieved all at once.

  "I have no idea what I'm going to do when I graduate," he admitted. "I try to feel drawn to some particular course of action, but I don't. There must be something that's right—but I just can't see it. Am I ever going to be able to see it?"

  Oriana took a moment to page through her notes.

  "Eric, you've been coming to me for almost a year now. And you've made a great deal of progress in dealing with your emotional baggage in that time. But you're still holding back. Oh, not consciously. But let's review your background a bit.

  "You were born with the gift of Bardic magic, into a family that had no understanding of your Talent and no idea of what magic is. Since Bardic magic is linked to music, you presented as a musical prodigy. Since your parents were ambitious, they perhaps placed too much pressure on you to excel in an arena that was not entirely suited to your actual Gifts. Yes, you're a talented musician, perhaps even a gifted one, but talent and Talent are two very different things, and young magicians should not be forced into the public eye. However, what's done is done.

  "When your Talents made an explicit presentation of themselves at puberty, you began seeing Otherrealm creatures, which were drawn by your magic. Naturally, you had no idea of what was occurring. Your parents were . . . not supportive, insisting that you continue with your course of studies. Eventually, you had what amounted to a nervous breakdown upon seeing the Nightflyers at your recital at age eighteen."

  "I ran away from home," Eric said sourly.

  "Certainly we could see it in those terms," Oriana said, looking up from her notes. "It is equally valid to suggest that you ran toward your own self-preservation in the only way you knew to do it. However, you continued to make bad life choices. You became an alcoholic, a drug abuser, and a drifter, in an attempt to shut out your perception of the Otherworld."

  Eric winced. It was an accurate, if very unflattering, assessment of his life before he'd met Kory.

  "When you met Korendil and were forced by circumstances both to acknowledge and to take up the use of your magical Gifts, a great deal changed for you. For one thing, you received external validation of your world view—in layman's terms, you discovered you weren't crazy, and never had been. You received proper magical training from an Elven Bard. You acquired a replacement family, one that loves and supports you. You terminated your addictive and avoidance behaviors, which is a very important step in the healing process.

  "But the damaged child created during the first eighteen years of your life, when our first perceptions and assumptions about the nature of the world are being formed, is still within you, and he is not lightly set aside. You have acknowledged in our previous sessions that your parents saw you less as a child to be nurtured than as an accessory to their own life-style: a trophy that would enhance their own consequence. A child derives his first image of self through his parents' image of him, and your parents, as you have told me on several occasions, never saw you as anything more than an object and a playing piece.

  "I do not believe you will ever truly be able to understand what it is that you, Eric Banyon, actually want out of life, until you have fully externalized this image of yourself and set it aside once and for all."

  "You mean I have to stop believing them?" Eric said.

  Oriana nodded.

  "But I don't!" he protested.

  She said nothin
g, forcing Eric to think.

  Was it true? He hated to think so. He hadn't thought about his parents—or his childhood—for years.

  But, as she'd warned him, there were ways of not thinking about a thing that were just as poisonously obsessive as thinking about it constantly. From the moment he'd walked out of that concert hall with nothing more than his flute and the clothes on his back, he'd built a wall between himself and his past, one that he'd allowed nothing to breach. He bit his lip, feeling himself start to shake.

  In silence, Oriana passed him the box of Kleenex.

  "I hate this," Eric said thickly, around a wad of tissues.

  "Nobody said this would be either easy or fun," she answered quietly. "We defend the damaged parts of ourselves fiercely. It takes courage to confront our scars, and bring the shadowed parts of our deepest selves into the light so that they can be healed. Until you no longer see yourself as an object and a playing piece, you will not be able to accurately identify what you are feeling now."

  He hated it, but he knew she was right. Because an object couldn't feel. A playing piece couldn't make decisions. And he had to do both. Right now he didn't know what he felt about so many things—Aerete's death, Aerune's imprisonment, Jimmie's death, Jeanette's transfiguration—there was so much to think about and get straight in his mind before he could move on. And he had responsibilities. There was Hosea to teach, and Kayla to keep an eye on, just for two. He was managing both of those responsibilities adequately so far, but if there was one thing Eric knew about any situation, it was that nothing ever stayed the same. Things always got better . . . or worse. And if he didn't deal with this ticking time bomb in his past, he knew which direction he was going to put his money on. And he had his own future to plan for.

  "I think we've made some progress today," Oriana said gently. "And now, our hour is up. Call me if you need me sooner, and we'll set something up. Otherwise, I'll see you next week."

  * * *

  Back home, Eric paced his apartment, a cup of tea in his hand. He felt restless and agitated, the way he always did after a particularly good—or bad—session with Oriana.

  It was as if she'd opened a door in a wall, and things he hadn't thought about in years were boiling out. Sick, bad, frightening things.

  But they had only as much power as he was willing to give them. Oriana had taught him that, had proved it to him over and over. Confront them; drag them into the light—painful as that was—and most of them would simply wither away.

  He could do that now.

  Inspiration struck, with a force that nearly made Eric drop his mug. So his past—his long-entombed image of his parents—was the root of his present problems, was it? Well, they'd just see about that. He'd confront his problem directly.

  He'd confront his parents.

  He'd been tying up all the loose ends of his life, hadn't he? Finishing up at Juilliard? Well, he'd been working his way backward to the beginning of his problems. That made sense, in a way. But now it was time to deal with the beginning.

  Boston wasn't that far away—especially on his elvensteed Lady Day. He could get up there and back tomorrow, and it would be a good run for both of them.

  Even though it had been twenty years by the world's time since he'd left, he was sure they were still in the same place. You didn't give up a house in Cambridge lightly, and they were both undoubtedly still at Harvard.

  And if they had—unthinkably—moved, they wouldn't be that hard to find. Not with magic to help.

  Determined on a course of action—if not in the least settled in his mind about it—Eric was about to go in search of another cup of tea when he heard a knock at his door.

  He went to open it, without bothering to first perform the New York ritual dance of peering through the peephole. For that matter, his door had far fewer locks on it than the usual door in even the best neighborhoods. Eric lived in Guardian House, and the House had its own unique security systems.

  Hosea was standing on the doorstep, which was pretty much whom Eric had expected to be there, given the time of day and day of the week it was. Everyone else he knew was either at their mundane jobs or in class.

  "Come in," Eric said, stepping back. He knew Hosea wouldn't come around on a Monday unless it was for something important. Everyone who knew about his sessions with Oriana—and that was everyone close to him—knew to give him a little breathing room after them. Though from the look of him—Hosea was still dressed for the outside, and still had Jeanette slung over his shoulder—Hosea had come straight from the shelter with something serious on his mind.

  "Tea?" Eric asked.

  "If it's no trouble," Hosea said, and Eric went to get him a cup.

  Hosea was sitting on the couch when Eric came back with two mugs of fresh tea. He was frowning at nothing, Jeanette propped against his knee, still in her case. Hosea was normally as sunny as a spring morning; this must be something bad, or at least pretty complicated.

  The last thing in the world Eric wanted to do right now was think about somebody else's problems, but he forced himself to take a deep mental breath and turn his thoughts outward, away from his own troubles. Hosea was his apprentice. That meant Eric had responsibilities toward him.

  Responsibilities. There was that word again. Life had been so much less complicated when he'd been irresponsible—

  "Want to tell me about it?" he said, handing over the mug.

  "It might be nothin' but a bag o' moonshine," Hosea said, after a long hesitation. "Ah don't rightly know."

  But whatever it is, it was important enough for you to come by on a Monday, wasn't it?

  "Well, maybe we can figure it out together," Eric said. "Right?"

  Hosea grimaced, and took a deep breath, preparing to begin. Slowly he explained to Eric all that he'd pieced together about the Secret Stories that the children in the shelter told—and that it wasn't just the kids at Jacob Riis telling them, but children in every shelter Hosea visited, and that all the children seemed to know them. He explained about Bloody Mary, and how belief in her extended far beyond the very young children who believed in the Secret Stories—that, in fact, Hosea feared she might almost have an independent reality.

  "So . . . one of the things Ah was wondering, Eric, was . . . is that possible?"

  Eric considered, choosing his words carefully.

  "Well, I know that belief can compel magic—or a creature of magic—to take a particular form. From what little Master Dharniel told me about the way humans and elves used to get along—or not get along, more to the point—together in the old days—the really old days—there used to be a whole school of human magic, now mostly lost, that could actually compel the Sidhe not only to appear, but to appear in certain forms. That's one thing. But it's not too likely that there's a Sidhe running around New York that somebody's twisted into a knot. Too much Cold Iron here—it weakens their magic, and makes it go all funny. They'd have to be seriously crazy in the first place—like Aerune was—to come here at all. And the creatures of magic that can stand up to Cold Iron aren't quite as vulnerable to the power of human belief.

  "The other possibility is, if there's a pool of untapped power out there—and belief is power, if enough people believe hard enough, and you throw a few Talents into the mix—that much belief could take form and become what magicians call an Artificial Elemental."

  "A mythago," Hosea said.

  "You've been listening to Paul," Eric said with a faint grin. Paul Kern was the Guardians' researcher who, like Giles on Buffy, knew the pedigree and history of most of the Otherworldly threats the Guardians faced. "The label—ghost, mythago, Artificial Elemental—doesn't matter. What does matter is that as soon as it has any kind of a defined shape at all, it becomes a lot more efficient at absorbing belief energy and using it to define itself. It can begin to appear—manifest—and that, of course, encourages more and stronger belief, and sets up a whole feeding cycle. Hard to break, if it turns out to be something you don't happen to want ar
ound.

  "So . . . yes, if your shelter kids are believing in something hard enough, it might start showing up. Might," Eric said firmly.

  "Well . . . Ah'm not quite sure whether she is, or whether the gangs are jest ridin' on her coattails, so to speak. Either way, Ah'd like to do something about it. And it wouldn't hurt none to give the little'uns a hopeful spark in their lives," Hosea said thoughtfully.

  "By making Bloody Mary a little less . . . bloody?" Eric suggested, thinking carefully. "That way she wouldn't be any more use to the gangs, and the children wouldn't have to be afraid of her any more. It would be a delicate task." He thought about it carefully. "In fact, it would be a Bardic sort of task. A perfect apprentice piece for you, in fact." Eric grinned wickedly, enjoying himself now as he thought the matter over more thoroughly.

  "Why don't you write some songs—the kind that kids would sing themselves—that shape the Bloody Mary story toward a happy sort of ending? When you've got some that you think will work, show them to me so I can approve them as your great and powerful Bardic Master. Then you can start sneaking them out into the shelters and let them work their way out among the kids on their own."

  Hosea thought about it for a moment and then smiled slowly.

  "Now that's a right sneaky plan, Master Bard. And if it works, Bloody Mary will dry up and blow away on her own, and maybe the little'un's'll be able to conjure themselves up a bit o' help now and then," Hosea said thoughtfully.

  "It's worth a try," Eric agreed.

  Hosea finished his tea and set the cup down. "If you don't mind mah bringin' it up, Eric, you look like a feller with more'n usual on your mind tonight," he said hesitantly.

  "And here I thought I was doing such a great job of being the original Great Stone Face," Eric said, with a rueful sigh.

  Hosea raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

  "Yeah, well," Eric said after a pause. There wasn't any reason not to tell Hosea where he was going, and several good reasons to come clean. "You know I saw Oriana today . . . and, well, I just realized I've got some major unfinished personal business to take care of, and school's over for a few weeks, so . . . tomorrow I'm going to go up to Boston. To see my parents."