Mac and the Little People Ch. 12

Tia recoiled in horror when she saw Mac's face. His eyes seemed to repel the morning sunlight coming through the window. The queen had him, or part of him. Tia tried forming a light bomb with a hand held low so Mac wouldn't see it, but some other magic mixed in. The bomb was unstable. She closed her hand and squeezed the energy back into herself.

"Do you want to help Fifi or not?" he asked.

"I do, but not like this!" said Tia.

"This is the way she chose. It's on her, not me," said Mac, jerking his thumb at Cuttystool.

"That doesn't mean you have to choose it too! What happened to making friends with everyone?" asked Tia.

"She made herself an enemy," said Mac.

"What happened to the sweet boy I knew?" Tia's vision blurred with tears.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Mac. He turned back to the brownie. "The only thing I know how to do with this brush is cause pain. Until I hear of a better way to use it I'm going to stick with what I know." He jammed the brush into Cuttystool again. She winced. "Start talking," Mac growled.

"Mac, you don't have to do it that way. You can catch her and make her answer."

"I'm through playing damn guessing games!" Mac shouted, half at Tia, half at Cuttystool.

"Thoo thinks it hurts? I soofered warse," said Cuttystool.

Tia tried making another light bomb, but the same magic interrupted her. She could feel something all over her. It wasn't evil, just strong and wild, and male. Something masculine was in her hair and all over her skin. Then she realized it was Mac. It was the real Mac, not this monster in front of her. She had been in contact with his body all night and absorbed something from him. Maybe it was the orange stuff that Fifi showed her. But how to deal with male magic? It was in her body, but it was not hers. That's how it was with males, those seemingly bottomless sources of energy looking for something to desire them. Then Tia realized that desire was the key. She made another little magic orb, but this time out of her most feminine feelings. The male magic rushed in to fill it.

"Mac, Look!" Tia shouted. He turned just in time to get shot between the eyes with a ball of orange magic. Mac collapsed against the wall. The hairbrush and brownie fell out of his hands. The static roar of the hairbrush faded to silence. Cuttystool wiggled her way into a sitting position beside Mac's unconscious body. The elf and brownie stared at each other for several seconds.

"I know thoo face, but canna recall thoo name," said Cuttystool.

"Call me Tia," said Tia.

"I see she dinna waste the effort to give thoo the eyes."

"I don't work for that bitch," said Tia.

"Canna call her that!"

"I call her what I want. I have my freedom and my real name back."

"How?" Asked Cuttystool.

"Mac got it back for me."

"That monster?" Cuttystool jerked her head toward Mac.

"He isn't a monster. Most of the time," said Tia.

"Canna say that to my achin wood. Oonly sommat hellbent on hurtin me can do that."

"It's because you hurt Fifi. From what you did it looks like you are a monster too," said Tia.

Cuttystool didn't have an answer to that. She sat motionless and regarded Tia and Fifi with disdain. Tia held Fifi and tried to comfort her. The gremlin felt strange in her arms. Tia was accustomed to other elves. The little silver people were trim and toned, but Fifi was soft and chubby. It almost made Tia pull away from the sloppy little green woman, but she felt needed.

"Thoos wastin' time with that boggart. Her an the human. Just drag them oot and leave them," said Cuttystool.

"They are my friends," said Tia.

"You donna belong with them. You belong with the elves."

"No I don't!" Tia shouted.

"Then where? Not with a broken human an a half goblin," said Cuttystool.

"I belong with people who care about me."

"Mac donna care. He will leave again like he did lasstime."

"He didn't have a choice. You know what happens to humans."

"He left, an let her do this to me!" Cuttystool pointed at her wooden head.

"He couldn't know that, it happened years after he left."

"It happened because he left. He retreated, and she won," said Cuttystool.

Mac groaned and stirred. He pushed himself into a sitting position and leaned against the wall. "What happened?" he asked.

"You almost became like Drochide," said Tia.

---

Mac was shocked. "How?" he asked.

"Remember last night you talked about making friends with everyone? You did the opposite just then." said Tia.

"I lost it," said Mac.

"You changed. You grew up. When you talked about rescuing everyone I thought you were the same Mac as before, but you turned into a grown up human; all cruelty and selfishness."

"I still want to. I want to be kind. I just don't think I can any more," said Mac.

"Thoos finally seen reason. Canna do nothin but stir up trooble. Take your boggart an' goo away," said Cuttystool

"I'm not leaving that easy. I'm not beat yet, and I'm not leaving at all until whatever thing you did to her gets removed,"

"So iffen I take the trap offa her, thoos go away and never return?"

"I'm not ready to make that deal. I already have an agreement with my cousin."

"Thoos think it oover. Thoos get thoo boggart back, I get my peace back. All us win," said Cuttystool.

"Don't do it, Mac. You are the biggest hope we have, even if you are a monster. If you give up, we all lose. Maybe permanent this time," said Tia.

"What do you mean this time? You keep talking about it like I did this all before. Is this a groundhog day thing where I have to keep getting in fights with short people the same day forever?"

"I don't know what a groundhog day is, but you were here either twenty or twenty one years ago. Nobody can remember which."

"I came for a few days when I was seven, but that was just for my great aunt's funeral."

"More like two months," said Tia.

"How two months? I would have remembered two months here," said Mac.

"You don't remember. You can't remember. What season did you get here?"

"I think I missed the last few days of school to come for the funeral. Early summer, but I can't remember the date."

"And when did you leave?" asked Tia.

"I don't know. But I remember when I left we shopped for clothes the next day, then the day after was the first day of school. Wait. Where did that time go?"

"Don't feel bad. It's a human thing. Once you get grown up you don't remember us, and you can barely see us. You grown up mind is too distracted. But I remember you."

"I think I would remember hanging out with a naked pretty elf all summer."

"I wasn't naked then. I had a spider silk dress and some really nice shoes. You can't remember us, but you remember what I taught you. You still walk the way I taught you. You still have the willpower you learned that summer. I hope you still kiss like I taught you," said Tia.

"I don't remember anything. It's like you are talking about somebody else."

"Oh! I forgot. The last day you were here I knew your memories of us would fade away, so we made a memory together."

"Did we, um, have sex when I was seven?" asked Mac. Tia blushed.

"No, nothing like that. It's in a penny. It's out on the king's grave."

"What king?" asked Mac.

"Seamus O'Neil. King of this land. Everything from one ridge to the other was his and ours," said Tia.

"I think he was a great grand something, but he was no king," said Mac.

"Noot to humans, but to oos," said Cuttystool.

"That still doesn't make sense," said Mac. The two little women looked at him as if he was stupid.

"Yoo doon't knoow thoosoown history..." said Cuttystool.

"Don't just act like I'm stupid, tell me," said Mac.

"Back during the biggest part of the change you humans had a war, and the king came here and protected us," said Tia.

"Ain't the half oof it. You want the whoole stoory, ask Roose," said Cuttystool.

"Where is the king's grave?" asked Mac.

"It's the opposite direction from the creek. Theres a little hill northeast of here. His corpse is buried at the top of that hill, under a cairn of quartz." said Tia.

"I'll go there after I eat something. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday," Said Mac

"I don't need to eat every day like a human, but if you make something good I want some too," said Tia.

"Thoo best not be makin a mess oo my kitchen," said Cuttystool.

"Or what? you'll shout at me?" said Mac. The brownie glared at him harder than what is normally possible for a carved wooden scowl. He continued, "You are in no position to make demands. But if you behave yourself I'll untie your hands and make you something."

"Donna want noon o thoos nasty cooking," said Cuttystool.

Mac pushed himself to his feet. "I'm going to shower up before I handle food. I feel kinda gross."

"It doesn't look like it will rain," said Tia.

Mac was puzzled for a moment, then remembered that the elf hadn't spent much time inside a house.

"Doesn't need to. I have indoor plumbing," he said.

"Then take Fifi and me. She needs a bath and I want to see what indoor plumbing is," said Tia.

Mac picked up Fifi and led the way into the bathroom. When they entered the room Tia hid behind his leg.

"What's wrong?" asked Mac.

"That curtain looks dangerous."

"Do elves have the same aversion to cloth as gremlins?"

"No, but that particular lace thing bothers me," said Tia.

"I'll take it off. Hold Fifi," said Mac. He handed down the gremlin and started work on the curtain. The convoluted pattern of flowers and vines seemed to writhe at the corners of his vision, but when his eyes were drawn to the movement in one place it ceased, only to resurface elsewhere in the pattern.

The longer he worked on it the worse it became. Before Mac was halfway done unsnapping the curtain he couldn't bear looking at the thing. It swam with visions of vines and nets and little people being trapped. Mac shut his eyes. The visions only got worse. Hallucinations of Fifi and Tia trapped in the shower curtain forced themselves into his mind. They screamed silently as they were wrapped up like flies in a spider's web. Mac finally unsnapped the last ring and let the shower curtain fall to the floor. He kicked it into a corner.

"Did you see it too?" Tia asked. Mac nodded.

"Why now? I couldn't see it before," said Mac

"I think it has something to do with you and Fifi laying together all night. From what I saw she sure had a lot of your magic smeared on her body," said Tia.

"I still don't think I have magic. Theres some orange stuff, but it's not really useful for anything."

"Your orange stuff is almost too much for me to handle." said Tia.

"Did some rub off on you too?"

"A little bit" said Tia.

Mac parted the plastic curtain and turned on the water.

---

Tia watched Mac turn the brass handles. The sudden flow of water out of the shower head startled her. Rain was coming out of a brass bell mounted on a pole.

"How did you make it rain in that one place?" she asked.

"If you think that's something, in a minute it will be warm." said Mac.

"What do you mean warm?" asked Tia.

"Try it out. I can make it whatever temperature you like."

Tia leaned over the tub and put her hand into the downpour. The driving rain was comfortably warm. She climbed in. The rain beat against her body, but instead of driving cold like a storm it warmed her skin. She put her face into the spray and let the pressure drive off the dirt and blood she picked up in her travels. She turned around and let the pounding water massage her back. It felt like the best of a waterfall, a rainstorm, and lying in the sunshine.

Tia shut her eyes and let the water pound the back of her head and flow through her hair. Mac got in with Fifi and sat down in the end of the tub opposite the shower. Tia felt his eyes on her but only for a moment. It was just long enough for her to feel attractive. She turned around in anticipation of feeling his gaze on her backside, but Mac's eyes didn't make the return journey up her body. Instead, Mac was focused on Fifi. The blood spattered little woman wasn't whimpering any more, but didn't look any closer to unrolling.

"You really love her," said Tia.

"Yes. Even though she is a mess and I have been in one jam after another since I met her, she is somehow easy to love. And now she's messed up because of me." said Mac.

"You didn't attack her," said Tia

"I let her in first. I should have been first. I should have faced that hairbrush myself."

"You didn't know. I didn't know," said Tia.

"But I should have. I know how to enter a building without getting anyone killed or hurt. I have spent months getting it right. Now I lose the one person who loves me to a marionette with a hairbrush. At least she isn't dead. I should take Cuttystool up on her offer."

"Fifi isn't the only one who loves you. I love you. Rose loves you, or at least lusts for you, and I'm sure plenty of others here would love you. Or at least they would be your friends. You can't just give up on them."

"You are all wasting your love on me. Everything I have done ended in failure. My career, my marriage, my fatherhood. This is going the same way. I try and I fight, sometimes for years, but it all ends shitty."

Tia refused to believe it. She grabbed Mac's hair and pulled his head up so she could look in his eyes. She immediately covered his face with her palms. She had never seen that much anguish in her life.

"What happened to you?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"How did you go from a hero to a broken human?"

"I built a life around raising my family and the army. I probably shouldn't have. When my wife left and took the kids I didn't have a reason to get out of bed any more. I started drinking first thing in the morning and showing up late for duty looking like trash. That kind of thing doesn't work in the army, so they got rid of me. I lost my house. Soon all I had left was myself. After everything that mattered to me was taken away I had to face the fact that I was a bunch of nothing. I built all that stuff up in my life that didn't matter in the end. It was just stuff."

"You are more than nothing to me." said Tia.

"That nice of you to say."

"You are. Somewhere in there is our hero."

"You keep saying that, but I remember nothing, and I don't see any evidence I was ever here."

"You aren't looking hard enough. The royal bitch doesn't have as strong a hold on the refuge as it looks. That's because of what you did to stop the worst of her. Go get the penny off the king's grave and remember who you are under all that hurt. Remember us," said Tia.

"Did I have more elf friends than just you?" asked Mac.

"I meant us, you and me," said Tia.

"Was there us?" asked Mac. Tia couldn't see his eyes under her palms but felt the question in his voice.

"There was. I heard humans always remember their first kiss. Do you remember yours?" asked the elf.

---

Mac thought it over. He remembered a kiss outside a school dance once with a standoffish girl who seemed like she was more interested in bragging about kissing a boy than getting the actual kiss. He also recalled how it was too quick for his liking. Hardly a kiss at all. He knew what a kiss was from his first. The first was slow, and tingly, and sweet, and just beyond his ability to remember.

"Almost. I almost have it. I remember the tingle that went down to my belly but nothing else. Will that penny help?

---

Tia was disappointed that he didn't remember. She knew that humans were doomed to forget and go blind as they aged, but she hoped Mac would be different.

"It has to help. There is more to you than all the pain you have stacked up in your soul. At least that's how was for me. Not having a name attached to me for so long made it hard to think about then, but now I understand that there is a me deep inside that is too strong to be hurt. Nobody can get to it unless I let them. If you can just find the penny you can be like that again."

"I'll go. But after breakfast," said Mac.

"One more thing before you get up," said Tia. She removed her hands from Mac's eyes and held the sides of his head. "Keep your eyes closed," she said.

Tia touched her lips to Mac's then opened her mouth to invite his tongue in. When he did so she squeezed it between her lips and let the tip of his tongue rub against hers. Adult Mac somehow retained all she taught him, but had refined his technique. Tia leaned into the kiss in hope that Mac would hold her. Her knee bumped Fifi, who was still curled up in Mac's arms. She broke the kiss and held onto Mac's head to steady herself.

"You remembered how to do it. Even after all this time you still know. That can't be taken away."

"So you really taught me that?" said Mac.

"Yes," said Tia. Mac looked at her in disbelief.

"How does a seven year old learn to do that?" he asked.

"You grew up a lot that summer. Not from the kiss, but from all the fighting. You were mature enough. At least I hoped. I wanted...Never mind. It was a dumb idea."

"What did you want? It's probably not stupid," said Mac.

"Don't ask about it," said Tia. She put a hand on Mac's mouth.

---

Mac could see the sadness in Tia's eyes. He could tell she wanted him to remember her. Two months with a woman like her should be unforgettable.

"I want to remember," he said. He shifted Fifi in his lap and reached out to hold Tia. She guided his hands to her waist. Mac was almost able to encircle her well toned middle.

"You are so strong," said Tia. She ran her hands up his forearms, squeezing slightly.

"You are beautiful. And sweet. If I could remember you I would. If I wasn't dragged off to school I would have stayed with you forever."

Tia's eyes filled with tears. "You said something like that a long time ago," she said. She stepped over to lean against Mac's shoulder. He put an arm around her. He expected it to be like holding a child, but Tia was every bit a woman. She was probably older than him by several years. Her little hands caressed his muscles in a way that suggested she knew what she liked and was pleased to have so much of it in one place. "I want to stay like this all day, but we have to help Fifi, and fix the door," said Tia. She let go and stepped back.

Mac got to his feet and stood under the water with Fifi. The water ran brown-red off them. He reached into the green ball of misery and scrubbed her belly and breasts with his hand. When the worst of their adventure was rinsed off Mac turned off the water.

Drying Fifi proved to be a challenge. Mac was unwilling to use cloth on her now that he understood why she had such an aversion to it. The lace shower curtain in the corner still made the hairs on the back of Mac's neck stand up. He managed to find a hair dryer in a drawer. When he turned it on Tia put her hands to her ears and screamed. Mac turned it off.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I hate that noise. Let me dry her off," said Tia. Mac helped her out of the tub. Her body was unusually warm to the touch. Water vapor rose off her. A moment later she shook the remaining droplets out of her hair and was completely dry.

"Do you think you can teach Fifi that?" asked Mac.

"I don't know. But I can dry her off without making a horrible noise."

Mac knelt down and held held Fifi so that Tia could reach her.

"Think warm," instructed Tia.

Mac tried, but found his mind wasn't disciplined enough to think of such a simple concept as warmth. It got easier when he began to feel Fifi heat up in his arms. Soon the three of them were dry and the room was filled with warm vapor.

"Do you think you can do something with her hair too?" asked Mac.

"What do you think I can do? Her hair is a mess," said Tia

"Yours is always so pretty and neat so I thought you had some kind of elf thing to take care of it."