Themselves

Fiction by Terry Edge

Iney emerged from the mound, ignoring the tug to return to the feasting and drinking and revelry going on deep below ground. Behind her, the tear between worlds quickly closed again, the scar concealed by dewy grass. She paused to sense the outside air once more, but also felt for the danger that had made her slip away from Themselves.

The near-full moon sitting just above the sea kicked up her blood, making it easier to taste the island that humans called Man. Soft, clumped rich earth tang; further off, the tart flick of bark, and beneath it the sweet surging of sap. Then the heady, insane, and intoxicating mass of human reekings, of sweat and stunted soul. 

She forced herself to push through the powerfully strange scents of this ancient worry of her people, to the workings a mile or so inland from the coast. Manx people burrowing underground on a newly-large scale had been the main cause of Themselves deciding to stay deep beneath their mound. Because--oh, there it was! The burnt orange stench of iron, and in massive amounts, to taste so strong from so far.  

She remembered the steaming iron engines they drove across the land, breaking the spirit lines, destroying Themselves' ability to fly. Let us away and celebrate our old and proper stories and songs, they'd said, until they grow tired of their iron toys or, as they so often do, destroy each other. 

But when she gathered her courage and sensed behind the iron cloud, there was the very lightning sharp aroma she'd feared to discover. Yes, they'd found it, and if so, would not rest until they had all of it.

Now desperate, she turned, intending to gather her people. But such a mass approach to those who tended to see Themselves as evil could be suicidal. No, she needed to be sure first. She had to go into the madness alone.

She pressed her desire into enough flesh to sprint the night-wet fields and skip over the gnarly, rooted forest paths, letting her fear draw her to its source. As she ran, she adjusted her features to pass as Manx: emerald eyes, straight black hair--a young girl, easy on the eye.

A half mile from the workings, she reluctantly stepped onto one of their too-wide paths of compacted earth. Then up a steep hill between reassuringly silent oaks before she stopped, stunned and terrified. She'd expected to have to skip past rows of their boringly squat and permanent stone homes to find beyond them gaping rips into the land, down which they went in their unfathomable desire for metals. 

But this . . .

A huge iron-clad wheel, higher than the tallest tree, turning slowly with grinding power, illuminated from below by powerful lamps burning huge amounts of the oil. She didn't understand exactly what it did, but knew it must be the means by which they'd reached so far beneath the earth that they'd found the most precious of the island's spirit legacy.

Anger replaced fear, and she ran to the building beneath the wheel. She opened an iron door, her near-flesh burning at its touch, then slipped inside, into a long corridor full of wavering black shadows and patches of pale lamplight. From behind doors along its length came the clashing, disharmonious sounds of humans.

She let her instinct steer her to the reason for all this unsettling power. At the end of the corridor was an open door; she went through into a large room full of heavy wooden benches, glass flasks linked by tubes, all throwing strange shadows from the flickering lamps on the wall . . . Oh! And there, on a small dish next to a pile of papers--amazing and terrifying, an acorn-size piece of what should never be naked, that should always be married to earthly substances like copper or lead to give it body and conscience. 

Frozen by the sheer audacity of making pure silver, she failed to detect the presence behind her.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

She jumped, shocked to hear the harsh-toned voice of a human after so long. When she turned, she was surprised again, for this was no ordinary man.

He was nearly half as tall again as she, dressed in a long black cloak and undershirt, with a small gold pentacle hanging from a necklace at the centre of his chest. If that and the long white hair and beard didn't tell her he traded in magic, or at least what passed for it amongst his kind, then his distant but mesmerising pale blue eyes did.

"I'm Iney, and didn't anyone tell you it's rude to stare?"

"It's also rude to break into a building that doesn't belong to you . . . How old are you, Iney?"

He stood about six feet away, but she could feel his aura exploring hers. The question was a trick, of course.

"Sixteen, sir. You must be a hundred if you're a day."

He smiled, but without humour.

"My name is Esher, and while you are small enough to be a teen, your eyes bear the canniness of centuries if I'm not mistaken."

"I do not understand, sir. I was lost on my way home to Laxey, and I wandered in here by mistake."

Esher moved closer. "You're too pretty to be a local. Most Laxey girls possess few teeth and are already ugly with the never-ending burden of their daily lives."

Her gaze flicked around the room, searching for escape. Before she could consider bolting, Esher moved more rapidly than his age suggested to snatch at the top of her head.

"Give it back!" she shouted, trying to reach out but finding that her arm would not respond.

Esher made a pass with his left hand over his upturned right palm, and a red cap appeared in it—her red cap.

"I thought so," he said. "So, what made Themselves wake up at last?"

"You know what."

Without the cap, she could not prevent him infecting her with dark forces. Her legs felt as heavy as logs, her sight blunted, and her newly thickened blood pushed hard to feed her solid heart.

Esher picked up the lump of silver and hid it in his cloak.

"I'll keep this," he said, putting her cap in another pocket. "The paralysis I've given you will wear off soon, then you can leave. Without Themselves' magic in your veins, you're no threat; just another thick-minded local like the one you pretended to be."

He swept from the room. She strained and fought to break the hold he'd placed on her body, her now completely solid and already ageing body.

When finally able to move again, she ran out into the wet black night, into a small wood, flung herself over a fallen tree, and sobbed.

No longer one of Themselves, she could not return to the mound even if she wanted to, for she had lost the power to open it or call to her family inside. 

Worse, she was powerless to stop the mine from taking the island's silver and with it the Isle of Man's very soul. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar weight and fatigue of her human form, but despite her sorrow, she fell fast asleep.

The first thing she felt on waking the next morning was jolting anxiety. 

Her green trousers and green blouse were soaked with dew. Her limbs ached not with a night's worth of dancing but with simple and devastating cramp.

Her stomach rolled with hunger. But that was not as painful as the utter lack of connection she felt from the surrounding land. Yes, there was the familiar creaking of branches in the morning breeze, and the whistle-chitter of birds, but she could not feel their inner story.

She sat up straight on the tree trunk and gathered the most important need into her heart, which was to save the island. But she couldn't stop Esher and the mine on her own.

Where to get help?

Ignoring the demands of her body, she let her memory roam across the centuries . . .

Manannan, god of the ocean, striding out of the waves to lift the seabed into his new earthly home. He and his court becoming the land itself, some of their spirit traces turning into Themselves, their more fleshy inclinations becoming humans, who, of course, claimed the island as entirely theirs; the uneasy relationship, thereafter, between the Manx people and her kind. Babies exchanged like trades of war; superstition mostly keeping the two antagonistic to each other; the rare but welcome marriage that by the law of the universe meant the finer always had to accede to the coarser, with love the only possible saviour . . . 

She smiled, remembering the one human who'd had the courage to straddle their two existences, becoming a magician and something more than a man in the process, if not quite as free as Themselves.

He might do. If he were still alive. It must be fifty human years since Themselves were about in the world of men. 

She forced her mind to empty, to fly lightly through the damp mists of her ancient memory . . . 

She stood up, breathed deeply upon the green air, and started out to the south-west, using the sun as a guide.

Yes, of course, there was really only one place he could be: at the very centre of the island.

Unable to skip lightly over the bogs and rocky fields of Man, it took her two hours to get there. By then, the summer sun burned her cheeks, and her body was an uncomfortable clutter of sweat and aches and itches. Her bark-soled shoes had long worn away, and her bare human feet bled from the miles of pebbles and twigs. 

She sat on a stone wall, just above her destination, determined to sense at least something of what existed there before calling in for help.

A circular cottage with stone walls and thatched roof; not typical Manx design, but humble enough to fit in with the rolling moors around it. A hundred yards to its left was a small church, not, she could sense even without her old knowings, disharmonious with whatever ancient magic filled the cottage. 

A garden of vegetables, containing, she was sure, every necessary herb; chickens pecking about. A thin trail of smoke waved from the centre of the roof, indicating someone was home.

She got to her feet, despaired by the bone stresses such a basic action caused, straightened her hair, and walked down the hill to the cottage. She paused outside the low door. Despite her loss of connection to the land, her head swam with subtle energies. Perhaps, then, the man inside did indeed possess the power she needed to save the island. But what if he turned it against her? Themselves had been absent from the surface for so long, the Manx people had probably forever turned them into devil figures, responsible for any mishap that befell their crops and animals and children.

Then she remembered the huge, creaking wheel and the hundreds of men with picks right this minute hacking into the deep flesh of the land, tearing out the silver that was the spark of all life on Man, both for the fleshly and for the not so dense, ready to send it away to the highest bidders elsewhere.

She knocked and pushed at the door. It opened, but she couldn't step over the threshold.

"I have to invite you in," said a man's voice, pleasantly enough.

Iney wasn't exactly sure what she'd expected the home of the island's greatest alchemist to look like, perhaps stuffed with bubbling bottles, copper vats, shriveled animal parts. But not nothing: just a peat fire in the hearth, a plain wooden table with a simple loaf of bread on it; two wooden chairs, a rug on the flagstone floor, and in a dark corner, a bed.

"Then do so," she said, not bothering to modify the impatience in her tone. For this magician, clearly no longer plied his trade and, therefore, would be of no use to her. "I doubt I shall be staying long."

He didn't even look like one. Dressed in tweed jacket, collarless white shirt, brown corduroy trousers; with a shaven head, face clear of blemishes, only the crinkles around his eyes and mouth showing any age.

"Aren't you curious about what's preventing you from entering?" 

He had a point. With her previous connection, his magic would have stopped her right enough. But without it, she should have been able to clump her way through his spirit spells like any visiting milkmaid.

"I don't--" Then she was stumbling into the house.

"Please, take a seat," he said, standing. "Are you hungry?"

She sat, wincing slightly at the unfamiliar hardness of the chair's wooden back. Her stomach growled at her to be filled, and she nodded. "My name's Iney."

He cut a large slice of white bread, buttered it, and placed it on a wooden plate along with some cheese, which he handed to her. She rammed most of it into her mouth as quickly as her throat could swallow, not caring what he thought. While she ate, he took a kettle from the range and poured hot water into a teapot.

"My name is Ambrus," he said. "I make a pretty good cup of tea. But I don't suppose you came here for that."

Mouth still full, she shook her head. Ambrus sat opposite and studied her.

"The only person who ever comes here," he said, "is the vicar. He doesn't believe in magic, so he doesn't sense any. He thinks I'm just a retired engineer who likes to argue theosophy over a few whiskies late into the night."

He poured tea into two tin mugs, reached across to hand her one. She bit into the cheese, waiting for him to continue.

"I built this cottage over the exact spot of the original Tynwald. Do you know what that is?"

Her skin shivered. Any Manx child would know the answer, which suggested he didn't think she was native, at least not human native.

Still chewing, she shook her head. 

"It's the Manx parliament. About four hundred years ago," he said, "the island's leaders were, let's say, persuaded to move Tynwald from here, further east to where the roads were better. What they weren't told was that the land's power lay here."

"Yes, at the very centre of Man. Who didn't tell them that, I wonder?"

He smiled, shrugged. "There's more," he said. "This spot is also the exact centre of the British Isles."

Themselves were not very interested in what lay outside their home. But she'd heard about the massive lands to the north and south, west and east, and rumours of the people there who claimed to rule the rest of the world. 

"How did you lose your powers?" he said, tone irritatingly sympathetic.

"How did you lose yours?"

He spread his arms, gesturing around. "I decided I preferred them to live around me rather than in me. I can alchemise enough of the land's energy here to slow my ageing."

Enough, she thought.

"So you have no need of your alchemy devices because you sit at the centre of power. It keeps your bread fresh, your chickens fertile, and you young. And I'm very pleased that you can drink whisky with the vicar. But what about the rest of Man? Do you know what they're doing at the Laxey mine?"

"Yes, digging out zinc, lead, and other minerals. They have mouths to feed, Iney, and base metals are not doing much just sitting in the ground anyway."

She shook her head. "Call yourself a magician? Even living underground and soaked in mead, I sensed they'd gone further than that. I've just come from Laxey. I met another alchemist there who stole my red cap, and who's discovered how to get pure silver from base metals."

She was relieved at his startled expression. "But he must know what that will do to the island," he said. 

The air in the cosy room seemed to tighten around them, squeezing colour and pain from their auras. She saw his gaze flare desperately, searching for solutions. 

"Do you know how the mine actually works?" he said.

"Of course not. Themselves went under the earth as soon as its big iron nonsense blocked up our noses."

"The wheel's turning drives the pistons, which suck out the water that floods the deep shafts. Without it, they could not get to the silver deposits."

"But what drives the wheel?"

"More water."

"How? The rain? Surely that isn't powerful enough."

"Lake water, to which gravity is added. No magic, just tremendous engineering. They've built a channel from Snaefell mountain to Laxey, so the water runs across three valleys, all the way to the wheel, turning it constantly. The lake is fed by the hills around it, providing all the power they need. It's over seventy feet in diameter; the largest of its kind in the world; a magnificent feat."

"I can see your admiration is clouding your perception. We have to destroy the channel."

He shook his head. "It would be easy enough to fix again, and once we've attacked it, they'll post soldiers with guns to defend it."

"What, then?"

He didn't reply, just stared out of the small window. She cursed Themselves for only ever living in the moment, unable to plot and plan further ahead than the next meal or flagon of mead. So be it. She would just have to wait. 

Three times she made tea before he finally spoke again.

"I have a plan," he said. "It's highly dangerous and requires your people to play their part. Me too."

She understood. "If you leave this place, you'll die," she said.

"We all have to die eventually, Iney," he said.

#

The moon was now full, and the absence of its pull in her blood reminded Iney of what she had lost. But she could mourn later. Hiding behind the harbour wall, she and Ambrus watched the last horse-drawn ore cart rumble away from the mine's tiny steam train.

It was around ten o'clock, the last shift over for the day. The town's pub rattled with exhausted but thirsty miners. One or two women stood in the doorways of the small stone houses, amber light from behind obscuring whatever expressions troubled their faces as they waited for their men to return home. 

The train's boiler, not much larger than a beer barrel, hissed and belched white smoke. The driver adjusted levers, about to shut it down for the night.

"Now!" said Ambrus, rushing toward the train. Iney followed, heart hammering. This was the first stage of their three-fold plan and the most crucial.

Ambrus ranged around the right side of the train, she the left.

She approached the driver, standing on the back plate of the engine, taller than the boiler, his face black with oil and shadows. She no longer had magic, but she knew what men liked.

"Hello," she said, smiling, glad for once of her beauty, letting the moon glint seductively in her eyes. Like any man, even a happily married one, he could not prevent himself from believing her lie. A moment was enough. Ambrus leapt onto the platform and pressed a piece of drugged cotton against the man's mouth. He struggled, grabbing at Ambrus's hands, but then crumpled unconscious to the plate. 

She helped Ambrus ease him onto the cold harbour cobbles, then they stood side by side in front of the controls. For once, she was pleased to be closer to human, for this amount of heated iron would surely destroy one of Themselves.

"Do you know how to make it go?" she said.

He grinned, teeth glowing dimly in the moonlight. "I should do: I helped design it." 

He pulled levers, wound flywheels. "Throw more coal into the engine box," he said, pointing at a small glass door beneath the boiler, keeping back swarms of red and yellow flames.

She turned and grabbed the shovel behind her, resting on a heap of coal. She thrust it into the black rocks, flinching at the clanging this caused, hoping no one heard. Ambrus wrapped a cloth around his hand and pulled open the glass door. She shoved the spade inside, unloaded the coal.

Ambrus pulled another lever, and the iron demon lurched forward, running along moon-shined tracks. Despite her fear of such an unnatural and soulless creature, she felt exhilarated as they moved smoothly through the town.

The track ran alongside the river to their left with a bank to their right. Once clear of the houses, Ambrus shouted above the steam-clouded chuffing, "Horses couldn't keep up with the increasing loads, so the mine owners came to me with their chief engineer, to plan a steam-driven replacement."

They passed into a tunnel, the darkness relieved only by the red glow from the engine box reflecting on the soot-covered stone walls. 

"I don't know if it was prescience," he shouted, "or just an insurance policy, but I built a little alchemical weakness into the boiler. If it's triggered by an alchemist, it will explode."

They passed out of the tunnel, heading along a stretch between two banks of grass-covered earth, round a bend, and there it was: the wheel.

"The Lady Isabella," said Ambrus. "Named after the Governor of Man's wife. The Lady herself was rather wide but not quite on that scale."

"Why would anyone want to name such a monster after their wife?" she said.

He laughed. "I suppose one bore him children and the other bore him wealth."

To the right of the building under the wheel was the black mouth of the mine, the gleaming rails heading straight into it. 

"I hope your people are in place," he said. "We need them to distract Esher long enough for us to get inside the mine."

She didn't reply. Only a hundred yards or so separated them from the shaft's mouth. If Esher was not distracted, he would show himself soon enough. And if this engine had alchemy built into it, no doubt he, too, would know how to explode it.

In case this was their end, she briefly thought about her family one last time. She and Ambrus had travelled to the mound a few hours earlier. He had looked older, outside of his home, but he also seemed more concentrated. He'd used some of the precious power he'd taken back into his body to open the mound and pass her between worlds one more time, so she could motivate her people to help save Man.

She and Ambrus remained silent as the train finally passed inside the mine. They hugged briefly in sheer relief, rocking from side to side on the old over-used tracks. Occasional lamps hanging on the walls dimly showed the way. The echoing thunder of the engine hurt her ears. Ambrus looked as if he was counting yardage.

"Jump off!" he shouted. 

They jumped then ran back the way they'd come, the pumping engine behind them still booming along the rails. With the dim entrance of the mine in sight, Ambrus stopped, turned, and raised his hands. She stopped too and saw strands of silver light spinning around his fingers. Draining his spirit store. Instinctively, she reached up to stop him, but then withdrew, knowing this was the only way.

He flung his hands forward, sending two jets of silver rushing down the shaft.

"Run!" he shouted. Just as they sprinted from the mine, an enormous rush of burning air slapped them to the ground, followed by a deep thundering crash; then another and another, the last from a long way below them.

Once the air had passed, Ambrus got to his feet and held out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet.

"The mine was empty, wasn't it?" she said.

"They don't work down there after ten," he said, although she could tell he wasn't entirely sure. "Come on, we need to get to the fight."

They ran to the road leading away from the Lady Isabella, then down a steep street, heading for the meadow on the edge of the village where Themselves would have gathered. Before they saw the battle, they heard it: shouts, cries, rifle fire, the clang of metal on metal.

A swirl of black shadows with a gold pentacle at their centre ran up the street towards them.

"Esher!" said Iney.

"He must have heard the explosion and realised what's happening," said Ambrus.

They stopped running, and Ambrus raised his hands again, once more gathering finite silver around them. Iney stood behind and to one side of him, unsure how to help.

Esher stopped running, too, to stand about forty yards away, clearly analysing the situation.

"We can always rebuild the mine, you know," he said, voice echoing unnaturally down the corridor of hunched homes. 

"Not if you can't feed the wheel," said Ambrus.

"What do you--" But Esher didn't finish the sentence because Ambrus had hurled silver fire at him. The black-cloaked alchemist threw up his own hands to block the assault. Before Ambrus could fire again, Esher threw his own magic back. Orange streams hit Ambrus in the chest, lifting him off his feet and hurling him onto his back.

Iney rushed to his side, amazed when he winked at her.

"I want him to think I'm done," he said.

"You look done," she said.

"I'm going to catch him off guard. Throw every bit of spirit fire I've got at him. He won't expect it."

She frowned. "Of course he won't because that will kill you."

"Not straight away."

He clambered to his feet, feigning grogginess. Esher strode towards them, victory sparkling in his eyes.

Turning to one side so his hands couldn't be seen, Ambrus gathered more silver. But Iney saw the power gathering in Esher's hands, too. It wouldn't be enough.

Ambrus turned and threw his fire. Iney ran at Esher, hoping he hadn't emptied his pockets. He frowned but could do nothing other than fire at Ambrus's silver, repelling it. She reached into his cloak pocket, pulled out the red cap, thrust it onto her head, felt the brief surge of her own moon-powered silver once more, then grabbed Esher's hands.

His fire was smothered and extinguished, allowing Ambrus's to crash into his chest, fill his veins, and neutralise his blood forever.

She and Esher fell to the street, groaning with fatigue and the knowledge of what they'd both lost.

Ambrus stood over them, rubbing his wrists. 

"Why would you do that?" said Esher, eyes now ordinary, devastated. "Why would you both give up your power to destroy mine?"

Ambrus didn't answer. Instead, he helped Iney to her feet, and they jogged to the meadow now ominously silent.

"Oh, no . . . " Across the moonlit grass, around a hundred bodies lay, most horribly still, some twitching painfully. Many were soldiers, killed by magic-sharpened spears; even more were Themselves.

She and Ambrus wandered into the carnage, soon noting that every non-soldier was dead. "How could they kill all of us?" she said. "You told me they just had to fight long enough to distract Esher, then they could run away and be safe."

Ambrus shook his head hopelessly. Iney knelt beside a body, stroking its cold face.

In amongst her sobs, she said, "You promised that bullets couldn't kill our people, even if they were made of iron; that they'd just pass through."

The still-living soldiers were gathering at the edge of the field, unsure what to do next, waiting for orders.

"I had them add a touch of silver powder to each charge," said Esher, who'd followed them into the meadow. "I guessed this much of your plan, Ambrus."

"It won't do you any good," said Ambrus.

"Oh, I don't know about that. As I said, the mine can be repaired. And the Lady Isabella is still turning."

"The owners might well re-build the mine if the wheel is operating, and they might keep the mine going even without the wheel," said Ambrus. "But not if one has been greatly damaged and the other cannot be made to turn again."  

"What do you mean?" Esher turned to gaze up at the still-turning wheel high above the rooftops.

"This isn't all of Themselves," said Ambrus. "I sent the rest to Snaefell. This fight was not an attempt to destroy the wheel so much as to keep your mind from sensing what we planned for the lake. Do you know what an electrolyte is, Esher?"

"Of course I do . . . oh, my God: the full moon."

"Yes, added to Themselves' magic sacrificed by them; together, making the lake water forever corrosive to iron."

Iney paused in her suffering, stood, and joined Ambrus. Together, they watched the Lady Isabella turning, turning, then an eerie silence as it stopped, followed by a different kind of creaking, closer to a forlorn shriek.

Esher ran towards the wheelhouse, gesturing for the soldiers to follow.

Iney reached for Ambrus's hand as, in a tumult of metallic screams, the great wheel lurched drunkenly to one side before crashing into the stone yard below.

#

Iney reached under the gold-feathered hen and smiled as her hand found two warm shells. Again. Their chickens laid almost every day and often with a pair of eggs. She added these to the basket, stood, and rubbed her back. She pulled aside her hair, tucking it behind an ear, no longer dismayed at its grey-white appearance.

The centre of the British Isles might be good for hens' fertility, but it did not stop people getting older; at least not those who'd lost their ability to conjure magic. Walking towards the cottage, she mentally went through the meal she'd cook for their guests tonight. The vicar would be there, of course, and he'd bring the whisky. Her family, now also without magic, would still bring the songs and the stories. And more grey hair.

She went inside, put down the basket, and accepted the mug of tea Ambrus handed her.

She loved his sun-browned, creased face. When they'd married, she'd worried that the quickness would leave his eyes. But she should have realised it was never magic that had generated that anyway. It was curiosity, and love for her, and the same sense of simple wonder that got him out of the womb in the first place.

She sat in the chair opposite and sipped her tea.

"What are you thinking about?" he said.

Unlike most folk, he really wanted to know.

"Oh, the island, and the people who left the mine to find work overseas, and the folk who stayed, and you and I."

He smiled. "All the same in spirit," he said. "All themselves."

THE END