Wildcat Fireflies by Amber Kizer Read Free Book Online

your abilities? I can’t imagine it matters, but is your gift temperamental? I wonder if it says anything in my Nain’s papers about that. I’ll check, shall I? How long have you known this? What brings you to town? Unless, do the Spirit Stones work that well? Can they beckon out of town? Are there more of you coming? Should I go to the market? How about accommodations? Do you take care of that, or shall I?” He went on with his questions, clearly not needing, or waiting for, a response from either of us, his childlike enthusiasm irresistible.
    With each question, Tens melted a degree. I picked a chair of wrought iron made to resemble ivy leaves and vines. This place felt magical, but not in a weird, fictional sense, more in the inexplicable.
    “Who is Nain?” Tens stood behind me, his legs spread and his weight balanced for anything, arms uncrossed but ready. His face had shuttered to blank.
    Rumi sat on floor cushions and crossed his legs in an unnaturally limber configuration. “My apologies. You’re a starlet for me. Well, not in the current pop-culture sensebecause they’re people, not even terribly glamorous anymore. I’ve created glasswork for their homes. This and that. But you? You’re amazing. A gift to all that is beautiful and right in the world. Honestly, I never thought it would come to fruition.” He started squinting again, drawing shapes in the air with his fingers like he was trying to capture a fly and outline my form at the same time.
    “What would work?” Tens asked.
    I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t feel threatened, like I might end up as a person-suit Rumi wore on special occasions. It felt more like I was watching a badly subtitled movie where I caught every other phrase but couldn’t manage to put them in any order.
What the hell does he keep rambling about?
    “Sorry, sorry. I keep apologizing, don’t I? Please bear with me. You sure you don’t want anything?” He gracefully unbent, poured himself a huge mug of coffee, added more than half milk and what seemed like enough sugar cubes to build Giza’s pyramids. He sipped it and sat again. Mumbled to himself.
    Finally, he nodded as if he’d figured out where to begin. “My grandparents, on Da’s side, came to this country from Wales. They came as children; their families were lifelong friends. They grew up together, married young, began having children. Thirteen.” He paused and smiled at my expression. “Only six survived to adulthood, my father being one of them.”
    He shifted, sipped, continued. “My ma’s family came over from Ireland during the potato famine. Her motherlost siblings, parents, and a husband. Started over here in the land of opportunity, in Chicago. My parents married at the turn of the last century.” He drank, and gazed past both of us for a moment, but when I opened my mouth to question he ignored me and continued. “We come from a people who knew story as an intangible power, a way of manipulating energy and reality. My ancestors measured time over generations, not in years. My people are intimate with death, not fearful of it, but accepting. My nain and taid, my grandparents, both loved a marvelous story.”
    I seeped deeper into the chair, letting his words roll over me. He didn’t look nearly old enough for the dates he threw around, but my gut said he was friend, not foe. I felt Tens exhale tension behind me, not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough I knew he felt it too.
    Rumi’s eyes teared up. “My da worked the mines; Ma raised us kids. Da died in his fifties from black lung, but Ma, she lived to be in her nineties. She told us stories as kids of the fey folk and mermaids and selkies, of battles of good and evil. She would have made a wonderful baird of the elden days. The doctors told us it was Alzheimer’s at the end.”
    He shook his head. “I’m not so sure. She had what the medical establishment called hallucinations, delusions. She was never agitated or upset; her visions