Chapter 10: Practitioner (1)

Manhattan, NY

***

We waited inside the lobby where it was warm, even close to midnight.  I wondered just what kind of Landlord kept the heather on this late; New York City Landlords rank a little bit higher than loan sharks and mafia bosses in my opinion.  Maybe Emyrith hit the jackpot with this one.

Through the glass doors, I saw the violent blizzard underway.  Snow clung to the asphalt streets and carpeted the sidewalks with coats of white.  Snowdrift blocked out the LED glow of New York City street lights, casting a ghostly orange hue over the entire block.  I took a step closer to the chill-radiating-glass, steamed it up with my breath, and drew a sad face on it.

“It’s arrived.”  Emyrith said a moment before the headlights pierced through the falling snow.

Taking a step out past the double doors meant braving the full might of winter.  Pulling my hood over my head and hunching my shoulders so that the collar rode up over my mouth, I tucked my hands in my armpits and followed after him.

The wind was howling.

Immediately, the cold froze my brain into a numb piss-puddle of singular thought: Cold.  I instantly hopped in little steps, trying not to freeze to death.

Then the love child of a military enthusiast’s wet dream and monster trucks rolled through the foot and a half of snow, mercilessly crunching snow, ice and asphalt alike beneath its snow-chained tires.  The lights punched through falling snow, lighting up the next half block in glaring white beams that would be pompous asshole-ery in any other circumstance.  I squinted at the it.  Emyrith was already opening the Hummer’s door, so I hurried after him.

Once I got into the backseat, I peered to the front, which definitely had its own zipcode. The driver was the doorman who greeted me when I first got here.  While fixing the rearview mirror, he caught my stare and smiled.  The wipers which could be used to clean off Kaiju gave no sound as it shoveled snow off of the front windshield.

Unlike the outside, the inside was cozy and warm.  You could fit a fireplace in here and I could’ve just melted into the backseat.  We headed south immediately, the silence broken by chomping chains on ice.  New York was in for hell of a snowstorm and I knew that even without Emyrith’s reassurance, I wouldn’t have to worry about school tomorrow.

Feeling myself starting to doze, I thought of things to say.  To keep my brain going, so to speak.

“Sooo,”  I trailed, “If I wanted to scoot over a seat, do I need a passport? Or just my Real ID?”

Emyrith gave a pained smile.  His eyes were too busy tracking the weather outside.  “You should rest, Mr. Hallow.”

“Can’t.”  I lied.  “Too wired.”

“Mmmm.”  Emyrith said.  “Then perhaps it’d be a good use of our time for me to go over the next steps.”

I nodded, eager for more explanations.

“As you have heard, the first of the trials will take place a week from now.  Until then, you have been granted temporary access to your family’s books, albeit with limited access.  Luckily for us, the Queens foresaw this event and have transported the necessary books ahead of time.”

“In Staten Island,”  I said.

“Correct.”  Emyrith confirmed.

“What about the Trials?”  I asked, “Can you tell me a bit about them?”

“They will be magical in nature.  Hence, the access to your family’s books.”  He answered.

I scoffed.  “I’m surprised they allowed that at all.  Thought they were nuclear weapons or something.”

“It would make a poor showing to the Queens presiding over this matter if they rendered you completely incapable of proving yourself.”  He said simply.

I tilted my head to the side, “You guys kept talking about the Courts this, Queens that.  Can I ask you to elaborate?”

“The Fae… there is not an explanation that I could give which would do justice to the Fair Folk and their ways.”  Emyrith said, “They are beings which exist outside of mortal memory, unbound by Mortal Laws.  Their preternatural nature makes each tribe, clan and individual different from the last.”  After a pause, he said, “Then there are the Queens.”

“Queens.  Plural.”  I latched onto parts of the word that I could understand.  “How many are there?”

Emyrith glanced at the driver’s side mirror, not quite looking up before answering me.  “Many.”  He said, “But the ones who have an interest in this matter are clear.  Three.”

“...And which one do you serve?” I asked quietly without looking at him.  It came out more accusatory than I had wanted it to.

Emyrith’s reflection went absolutely still in the window.

This stillness, it wasn’t natural.  I could tell you that much.  When someone goes still, our mind picks up on subtle clues that this thing is a natural, living thing.  Maybe the slight way that their chest rises and falls with each breath or the way that their fingertips might tremble.  There’s some clue that our subconscious picks up on and tells our conscious mind that this being in front of us is just staying frozen.

Emyrith had none of that.

For an entire two seconds, Emyrith was still like a statue.  No breathing.  No slight movements.  The wind could have blown and I doubted his hair would have rustled in response.  A deathly silence of the body and mind that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in response.

His reflection stared at me, eyes inquisitive and hauntingly bright in this frozen landscape.

I shuddered.

And just like that, the moment was over.  He smiled, a bit too dim to be genuine.  He slightly turned and opted to stare out the window.  Message clear.  Our little Q&A session was over.

In the silence, I mimicked Emyrith and stared out the window.  It was warm inside, enough to melt the frost so that water streaked down.

Jesus.  Just take a gander at the things I was thinking about.  Magic.  Faeries in little tutus with wings.

Isounded fucking crazy using words like magic trial and faeries flying around in tutus and wings.  With all this and a penny, I’d have a one-way ticket to the looney bin.

Yet, every bit of it was real.

Even if it wasn’t did I have a choice?  If I wanted to the last thing left on earth that might give me a clue to who my parents were?

Truth be told, I didn’t care about the money.  I didn’t care whatever this thing that my parents left me was.  But what I did care about was that it was rightfully mine.  You grow up like me without anything to your name and you get pretty fiercely protective of what’s in your pockets.  I never liked giving away anything that I could use, never liked being in debt to somebody and never ever wasted food.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but Emyrith’s voice roused me from sleep.

“Mr. Hallow, we’re here.”

I’d never been to Staten Island before.  Someone told me once that there were wild turkeys there.  It’s also barely considered a part of New York.  People make fun of it all the time.  I’d never looked into it much but apparently there’s a lot of contention in the populace.  The purebred Staten Islanders who are at odds with Brooklyn-ers who recently settled down there, especially with weekend visitors becoming more of a common thing after the Verazzano Bridge was built.

My own imagery of Staten Island is a lesser version of Long Island –basically a somewhat rundown suburb.  It’s been colored by hearsay.  The snow wasn’t helping it.  In the middle of the night, the neighborhood we were in looked abandoned.  None of the buildings had their lights on and even the street lamps seemed dimmer than they should have been.

We drove by a sign that said ‘Staten Mobile Home Park’, entering through the open gates.

That woke me up more than it should have, dragging the last dredges of sleep out of me.  It was a Mobile Park home and I rubbed the tiredness out of my eyes, taking a closer look through the chain-link fences that were covered in snow.  RVs, trailers and manufactured homes littered the lot in small clumps.

“I didn’t know there are trailer parks in New York.”  I said in wonder.

It didn’t take long for the baby monster truck to stop in front of one of the larger mobile homes in the entire place; an actual motor coach.

The motor coach was the size of a small school bus.  The snow had piled around a foot high and the whole thing had been transformed into an alpine peak.  I spied bits of gray metal shining out from underneath, reflecting the eerie bluish night illumination.  Unlike the other RVs in the lot, which were parked near each other in pairs of twos, threes and fours, this one was parked by itself.

But something was strange about it.  I can’t put an exact finger on it, but I had to take another look to reassure myself that it was indeed there.  Then I realized that it was bigger than I initially thought.  More of a coach bus than a school bus.  The ones with cabin space bottom below.  The metal sheen wasn’t gray so far as it was black-blue.

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”  Emyrith replied.

“So…”  I drawled, “What do we do now?  Do we go in?”

“There is no we, Mr. Hallow.  It’s just you.”  Emyrith said softly.

I frowned, unspoken questions hanging in the air.  When Emyrith made no move to acknowledge them, I spoke up.

“Like, by myself by myself?”  I repeated, “Or there are already people inside and I’m going inside by myself?”

“There can be no other being in there.  Except you.”  Emyrith said gravely.

“Um…”

“Inside, you will find everything you need.  Books.  Food.  Clothes.”  Then he added, “Your mother’s letter, which was promised to you this morning.”

The reminder of the second-half of the letter from earlier this week jolted me awake.  I sat up and put a hand on the hummer’s lock, hesitating.

“The door will be unlocked.”  Emyrith said.

“What should I do once I’m inside?”  I was stalling.  I think.  But it was a valid question.  Where would I start?

“Read.  Study.  Equip yourself.”  He answered tersely.

Right.  My father’s letter had said the same thing.  I had almost forgotten.

“You can’t come in with me?”  I asked dryly.  Not because I was scared.  But because I wanted to make sure.

“No.  I cannot.”  Emyrith said, “There are… certain protections in place.  Rules.  And unfortunately, I am no exception.”

I had no idea what that meant.  But I got the message.  I was alone in this.

“Ok.”  I sucked in a breath, steeling myself for the inevitable cold and the mental weight of going through with what was akin to insanity.  For all I knew, there were organ traffickers waiting for me inside that trailer.

Turning the handle, I left the warmth of the hummer and into the windy wastes of the trailer park; excited and scared, hopeful and skeptical, with the jittery sensation of fingers tapping on my chest in the undoubtable assumption that my life was going to change forever.