Fae class

It was gloomy, out. Typical English weather. I sighed. That’s the problem with trains. Sure, you get to kick back – by which I mean sit as straight as a board – in an inadequately cushioned chair that you paid half a limb for, instead of being stuck in a chain of glares – by which I mean you and several dozen other people in your cars – waiting for that red light to turn green so that you can do it all over again twenty seconds later. The downside is that you have to walk to and from the station. On a sunny day, awesome; on a gloomy day with endless bouts of intermittent rainfall, not so much.

Another man squeezed his way down the aisle, doing his best to avoid catching people with the red laptop bag hanging by his side. I took a dim note of this one because he went into the lavatory, and I recalled seeing a woman go in there a minute before. I wasn’t on a stakeout or anything; my dad just taught me to always be aware of my surroundings.

I smiled, remembering the countless occasions he’d cried out, blaming everyone except himself when he trod on a plastic toy when I was a kid. Parents are allowed a degree of hypocrisy – they want us to be better.

I naturally assumed, without any conscious decision to do so, that the woman had vacated the lavatory while I was admiring the grey clouds. If she hadn’t… well, who am I to judge?

I’ll skip the next thirty minutes, partly because it’s boring, but mostly because I’m irritated that it took me so long to realise that the people going into the on-train toilet weren’t coming back out. I also feel a little guilty.

People don’t tend to notice extremely bizarre things. Bizarre things, yes; extremely bizarre things, no. They rationalise them to fit with the world they know exists. People like me, on the other hand, know better. Yet, we still often fall into the same trap. To be fair, I’m fairly new to what is referred to by the blissfully-unaware as the supernatural scene.

A man took an interest in something he saw about me and offered me an old chronicle. I read it, and now my eyes are open a little more. Since then I’ve learned some sorcery and had a few dealings with our less conspicuous neighbours, but I’m about a thousand years behind on events.

While it turns out that the creatures in mythology are real, the things that happened according to mythology are largely fabricated, so suddenly believing isn’t the same as suddenly knowing. You just become a little more aware.

It’s complicated.

Anyway, something was clearly going on, and since no one else with more experience seemed to be around, the obligation to do something fell to me. When the Big Guy said love thy neighbour and to protect his temple, there wasn’t an exclusion clause for when danger was involved. I’m not religious, but the notion is annoyingly ingrained in my psyche for some reason.

Like any new arrival to a trade that has to solve problems, the list of potential issues that I was aware of was pretty small. So, naturally, I found just one item that fit the situation and decided that that had to be it. That was that some idiot had used the mirror in the lavatory to communicate with a faerie creature, creating a doorway, and gotten themselves pulled through it, leaving it open, turning the toilet into a hunting ground for whatever beastie had been on the other end of the line.

In my defence, it is actually quite a common occurrence.

Now, I’d like to say I did the smart thing and alerted the Order of Merlins, but at the time I had no idea how to do that, and my… let’s call him my sometimes mentor… was unavailable. The Watchers Guild, which was somehow still going, like mythology’s own brand of cockroach, only tended to make things worse, so they were out, too.

I rose up out of my seat. I didn’t need to ask the lady beside me to let me pass; she got up wordlessly, smiling. I smiled back, muttered “Thanks,” and shuffled sideways out into the aisle. I had to wait for her to retake her seat because she’d stepped to the side where I wanted to go and was blocking my path.

Her long and vibrant brown hair caressed the sides of her cute round face. Her eyes were an immensely deep blue, emphasised by a generous application of mascara. She was exactly the type of woman I’d have leapt at the chance to strike up a conversation with, not so long ago. No woman wanted the complexities of my new life, though, and to be honest, I wouldn’t wish it upon them, so I did her the biggest favour. I smiled again and moved on past her.

I was a little surprised to find a big out of order sign on the lavatory door. I frowned at it. Either the people who went in couldn’t read, were really desperate, or knew something I didn’t. Either way, it didn’t matter. Something had happened to them, and I wasn’t about to let some life-leeching fae prey on my train.

Magic creates everything. People think that there are two flavours of thing in this world – natural and supernatural. The truth is, nature is magic, so there is actually only one flavour: existence. This is important to understand when dealing with the fae because they don’t just invoke magic, they are magic. They feed on the ambient energy in their environment, which is the natural flow of power throughout the physical plane.

A sorcerer, on the other hand, can tap into the reservoirs of power that is the universe’s lifeblood and use that to create spells which manipulate the other energy in the world around them, such as to levitate a rock.

Allow me to translate. Basically, as a sorcerer, you have to go to Dominos, place your order, wait for it to be cooked and then collect it, while the fae get a van full of pizzas dumped at their doorstep whether they order them or not. Yes, the pizzas in this analogy are the power.

So, a confrontation between a sorcerer and a faerie creature is like a contest between a martial artist and a body-builder. You need to make sure they don’t take you out in the first few seconds, and if you can manage that, you have a chance at wearing them down enough to come out on top.

Knowing all of this, I began to invoke magic through my connection to the world around me, gathering it about myself in a tightly condensed shield against whatever might be waiting for me on the other side of the lavatory door. I was prepared to send it exploding outward, offensively, if need be. I didn’t know what I’d be dealing with, so I had to give myself plenty of options.

When I reached for the door, the fourth finger on my right hand twitched, but having spent most of my adult life working on a keyboard, I was familiar with the sensation and ignored it.

I opened the door.

I was met with what looked like a normal lavatory. Actually, it didn’t look normal at all. It was clean. I frowned at that, made somehow more uneasy. The only thing in the mirror was my own reflection.

Subscribing to the school of thought that making a train full of people suddenly aware of the existence of magic, the fae and, well, everything, was a bad idea, I closed the door. The moment the latch caught, my finger that had previously twitched grew suddenly hot. I glanced down at it in surprise but was more shocked to see grass beneath my feet.

Well, hell. The door was an actual door. Go me and my fountain of wisdom.

It turned out that it wasn’t my finger that was hot, but the silver ring I was wearing. I took two uneasy steps back, away from the door, pondering that revelation as I turned around.

My extremely blatant focus on the ring on my still-lifted hand unfortunately drew the attention of the local smeagle.

“Shiny!” a shrill, high-pitched voice cried out, and I was tackled by a heavy weight slamming into my legs. I toppled over, my shield cushioning my fall but doing nothing to actually prevent the impact.

Before I could figure out what the hell was going on or what had just happened, a tiny dirty-looking man with saucer eyes snatched the ring from my finger and made a run for it.

“Hey!” I yelled, shifting the energy about me to focus at my palm before sending it hurtling after the little creature. It was supposed to trip him up. Instead, I scrambled back to my feet only to get thrown back onto the ground by my own damned spell. “What the hell,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

When I got back up for the second time, I took notice of the fact that I was definitely not in the lavatory anymore. What was more, it wasn’t gloomy, here, either. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen in the brilliant blue sky. The sun shone down, warm and bright, giving me an excellent view of the garden

 My mouth fell open. The freaking sun was visible in the sky of the water closet of a train. This was new territory even for me.

The previously-thought impossibility aside, the scene was quite quaint. Five groups of six comfortable-looking chairs rested on the flawless grass, separated by cobblestone paths. There was a cafeteria off to one side, managed by a beautiful woman who, from the shimmering aura around her, was definitely not human.

I scanned the occupied chairs and spotted the red laptop bag belonging to a man I’d seen enter, only it wasn’t a man, anymore. The thing with the red bag was gangly in every sense of the word. His hatchet face, body, limbs and fingers were all too long. He was definitely a goblin.

I saw two people who looked like were probably human, and they were sitting peacefully, which allayed some of my concerns. I think I was still more taken by surprise at this point.

“Ticket, please,” a gruff voice said from behind me.

I whirled, bringing my hands up, ready to defend myself. It wouldn’t have done me much good. The man was huge, and he had a friend. The man that spoke had dark hair, longer at the sides, while his friend was bald. I dubbed them curtains and baldy, respectively. They both looked to be in their thirties and wore what had to be tailored suits, given how broad they were. They had the sort of mass that could only be acquired through intensive training, or genes from an otherworldly parent.

“What?” I managed.

“Ticket, please,” curtains repeated.

I stared at him in disbelief. “Ticket? As in, my train ticket?”

He eyed me like he was trying to assess whether I was an idiot or someone caught trying to sneak a free trip. I held up my hands, placatingly. “Sorry, I’m just really confused.”

His expression softened somewhat, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “First time travelling fae class?”

I blinked at him. “Wait, are we still on the train?”

Curtains laughed, and baldy grinned. “Of course. If we could easily teleport people to another location, we wouldn’t need the train, would we?”

I opened my mouth, frowned, then closed it. “I guess not,” I said a moment later. “So, how are we not all crammed into a small cubicle?”

“Spatial distortion,” baldy offered. “That’s the extent of our ability to explain it, though. We just work here.”

“Right,” I said. “What is this place, exactly?”

“Fae class,” curtains told me. “We run it on all south-eastern trains. It’s a hidden section where those of us who have to go about our business in this world shrouded in a glamour can let it go and relax while we travel.” He gestured at the faerie creatures of varying shapes in the sitting areas. “Maintaining a glamour during rush hour is tiring. You’re constantly worrying about someone bumping into you and wondering why they passed through part of your torso, for example.”

I nodded. “Wow. Yeah. I suppose I just never really thought about the fae living in this world using public transport. So, can just anyone stumble down here?”

“Nope. You need a ticket,” curtains said, raising his eyebrows, meaningfully.

“Right,” I said again, reaching into my jacket pocket to retrieve my train ticket. “So, anyone in possession of a regular train ticket, then?” I asked with, I believe, quite reasonable concern. I handed my ticket over.

“No,” curtains said, his look of suspicion returning. “You need a fae class ticket.” He looked up at me with narrowed eyes. “This isn’t a fae class ticket.”

“Uh, well,” I stammered. “Hang on, I wouldn’t know, and you did just say a special ticket is needed to get here, right? And I got here, so doesn’t that reasoning, in and of itself, qualify me to be here?”

“If that were so, we would be redundant,” baldy said, taking a step towards me. “You wouldn’t be the first sorcerer who tried to sneak in without paying.”

“Wait,” I said, not wanting to draw in power in case they could sense it and took it as a sign of violent intent. “I’m happy to leave. I found this place by accident. I don’t even know how…” I trailed off, remembering the way my silver ring had reacted. “My ring!” I blurted. “My mentor gave it to me, said it belonged to an old friend who used it as a skeleton key of sorts. It lets its wearer pass through minor shields and wards.”

Baldy eyed me. “Sounds like the sort of thing a person wouldn’t want to part with. Either your mentor hasn’t been around the block enough to be a mentor, or he doesn’t have a need for highly useful trinkets.” He folded his massive arms across his barrel chest. “Neither sounds as likely as you trying to talk yourself out from between a rock and a hard place.”

I glared at him. “I am trying to talk myself out from between a rock and a hard place, with the truth.”

“Alright,” curtains said, “where is this ring?”

I reached for it, then remembered a little man had stolen it from me. “Uh, about that…”

“Finch clobbered him when he arrived,” baldy mused as if just remembering.

Curtains grunted. “Was it gold?”

“Silver,” I said tentatively.

“Finch!” curtains shouted.

I almost flinched at the sudden outburst, then started glancing about, unsure of what to expect. The ground between me and the two… I’ll go with half-giants... caved in, and the saucer-eyed man popped his head out.

“Gnomes like shiny things,” curtains advised. “Finch, give back what you stole.”

A gnome. That made sense. I remembered being told that magic was unpredictable around them.

Finch, rather comically, narrowed his eyes and jerked his head toward the giant man in a decidedly aggressive glare.

“Don’t make us ban you again, Finch,” baldy said. “You know we will.”

The gnome let out a shriek and gibbered under its breath before producing the silver ring. Curtains took it, examined it, nodded, then handed it back to me.

“Thanks,” I said, sliding it back onto my right fourth finger. “Does this mean I’m off the hook?”

“This time,” curtains warned. “Next time, have a ticket. We’ll remember you.”

I nodded vigorously.

“Who is this mentor of yours, then?” baldy asked.

I told them.

Their faces went slack, apart from their eyes which widened slightly. Curtains cleared his throat, “Well, I wasn’t expecting to hear that name this side of Faerie, or, hell, even in this age.”

My brow drew down. They clearly recognised my mentor’s name, and apparently knew things about him that I didn’t. I opened my mouth to start firing questions, when a loud announcement from no apparent source interrupted me. “We will shortly be arriving at London Bridge.”

“Damnit,” I hissed, “that’s my stop.”

“Safe travels,” baldy told me.

I nodded politely, “Thanks. See you next time, maybe.”

“With a ticket,” curtains said, pointing his index finger at me.

“With a ticket,” I confirmed, turning for the door which I discovered was built into a tree trunk on this side.

It wasn’t until after I’d left the mystical water closet and was about to step off the train that I realised I hadn’t thought to ask where I could buy a fae class ticket.