Demon Hero: Dark Fae Hollow 1 (The Dark Fae Hollows), page 10
My mind wandered to the confrontation with Talon and the subsequent flight that had led to our current position. For being a person who was skeptical about the potential dangers of their subconscious forces, Sol showed a remarkable level of composure. The entire time I was around him in his wolf form, I could have been taken down. The level of power within him was not contested to my mind. He was brutal, and could likely do a lot of damage to anyone if he wanted to take direct action. However, there was something holding him back. It helped him keep a hold of the anger. Whatever the motivation was, I was impressed.
“You’re a natural leader, Sol. Talon’s missing out.”
He stopped, turned, and regarded me through the darkness of the trail. Inside me was a pull and warmth. I was attracted to him.
“What about yourself?” he said.
“Well, I did pretty well too, though I think I was more thrust into those situations and had to respond.”
“What you did took a lot of courage. I was beginning to think that responding appropriately in tricky situations was a better measure for courage than enacting one’s personal agenda. Though the jury’s still out on that.”
The slight lines around his eyes indicated a smile had passed over his face. It relaxed me, and he clasped my hand.
“We’re almost there.”
We turned and walked for another fifteen minutes or so when Sol suddenly stopped. Something wasn’t right about his body language. The warning pushed me into the present. I reached out with my attention to try to understand. The sounds of the wilderness had stopped.
My eyes dilated, and sweat began to form on my body. The heat of my adrenaline flowed into my upper body. With exquisite silence, Sol turned and placed a finger to his lips. I nodded, and he gestured that he would lead the way off the path.
As we had been moving closer to the wilderness, the vegetation around us had transitioned more steadily into a forest environment.
Sol’s eyes scanned the area for a way out. His attention quickly landed on a thick branch above our heads. It belonged to a nearby oak tree, and it was thick enough to support weight without making too much commotion. Debris and shadow similar to that of a forest floor littered the ground. Unless we moved into the canopy, we would likely flag our position just by the sounds of our feet moving through the leaves.
Without more than an exhale, he pulled himself onto the branch, and then poised on his feet. The shadow that was Sol’s body moved deeper into the canopy, closer to the trunk of the tree. Wasting no time, I jumped up and climbed the branch, following in his footsteps.
While Sol climbed further up the tree, I remained crouched at the base, near the branch we had climbed onto. When he paused and threw an acorn at my head, I had to go see what was going on. The tree was taller than I expected. There was not a straight line of sight through the forest to the park clearing that marked the end of the bike trail, but that wasn’t necessary. The floodlights were visible all the way through the forest canopy.
Immediately, my mind grew paranoid. “They’re waiting for us…”
Sol exhaled and shook his head. “Look,” he said and pointed along the sides of the wilderness.
Stretching in either direction, as far as my eyes could see, was a row of set-up lights.
“They’re blocking off the perimeter of the forest. They don’t want anyone to leave.”
I couldn’t even respond. That type of movement seemed draconian to say the least, but there it was.
“I’d wager that they have formed a perimeter around the entire Hollow.”
“Well, if that’s true, we can’t assume it’s going to be something that we can just break through.”
Sol shrugged.
“If they are spread throughout the entire perimeter, then it stands that their resources will be spread as well. The government has a fair amount of investment in militarization, but it does stand to reason that we might be able to break through at a weak point.”
It was all too much for me. Something about the whole situation felt wrong.
“You don’t set up this many resources just to catch a couple of ‘criminals’. That’s crowd control…”
“What do you want to do about it?”
My heart beat fast as I faced the decision ahead.
“We can’t leave, Sol… We need to help the Hollow.”
The decisions to follow were treated with care, unlike our earlier impulsive response. The air was cool around my skin, and the sight of the police floodlights guided the course of my thoughts. Sol’s body and mine were by nature close to one another. Our voices were little more than whispers in each other’s ear. Given the police inhabitation of the immediate environment, it was probably a good thing.
I was the first to break the reflective silence.
“The Hollow deserves better than this.”
“Not sure what you mean by the Hollow. The place is made up of a huge subset of different people.”
“I’m more concerned about Talon’s group than anything else to be honest. When you have a group of people who feels so strongly that they will respond with violence, everyone is going to see that as a threat. The problem with that is the cops are totally going to see this as a war.”
“That’s how Talon sees it, so I’m not sure it would be inaccurate.”
“We’ve already seen way too much collateral damage… I’m just not sure it’s worth it.”
At first, it seemed like he would respond, but instead, something caught his eye. He diverted his attention toward the trail where we came through.
“Someone’s coming. Look, see the movement in the shrubs?”
I peered over and then nodded. “Do you think somebody followed us?”
He shook his head and continued to stare intently at the path. While he was focused on where we came from, I turned and watched the other direction.
“They’re coming from both ways.”
“Better keep quiet.”
We sat together, holding one another with one hand and the trunk with the other. Within a matter of minutes, voices came from the side where Sol was watching. The voices were not what I had expected to hear, and the apparent dissonance caused a twisting sensation in my gut.
Chapter 16
“Haha! Going to get you good this time. You’re nothing more than a stinkin’ tricky Fae!”
“Never!”
The sounds of sticks banging against one another, grunts, and intermittent laughter met my ears. I shook my head, turning in the other direction.
“Hey, show yourselves!”
Silence.
“Get down on the ground, or I will shoot!”
“We didn’t do anything!”
“Drop your weapons!”
“Officer, it’s just sticks,”
“I said drop your weapons!"
A group of booted feet came tromping down the trail from near the park. The poor little kids who huddled on the littered bike path were crying and praying the police wouldn’t shoot them. Sol’s face darkened as we continued to eavesdrop on the situation below.
“Weapons are a negative,” one of the officers said. “Fae appears to be negative as well, though they don’t have papers.”
The officers patted down the two kids, who had to be no older than eleven. Their voices had been so high pitched they couldn’t be teens. I thought about jumping down to attack them - to set those kids free from the tyranny of the police state. I was furious, and none if it was making any sense.
“Are you two alone? Speak up, I said. Are you two alone?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, sir!”
“That’s right.”
“So, when my partner goes walking down that road, we’re not going to find any friends of yours in the bushes or anything like that?”
“No, sir!”
“We’ll see about that. Chuck, why don’t you and Frank see if you can rustle up any resistance fighters in the bushes?”
“Nobody’s there, we swear!”
“Do not speak unless spoken to! I run the ship around here. Do you trust police officers?”
Silence.
“I asked you a question. Do you trust police officers?”
“Yes…”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Yes, sir!”
The voices cracked under the strain, and one of the children began to cry again.
“Didn’t your parents tell you how important it was for you to have your papers with you at all times?”
“We forgot,” said the one who could maintain their cool despite the officer’s confrontational manner.
The voice sounded like a little girl, which got to me more than anything else about that whole situation.
Sol and I sat there, our moods as dark as the night would be without those floodlamps. I hated them… every single government official. I wanted them to burn for doing this to our youth. I wanted nothing more than to watch each one of them turn into husks. Those same feelings of hatred, that very source of anger, was what Talon felt.
I could have blamed the police. After all, that was what Talon had done. He had found a limited form of success, at least in the sense that the rhetoric he used tugged at the heartstrings of the Fae who had decided to follow him.
Time would tell if Talon’s approach was useful for much more than increasing exponential governmental retaliation.
Then it dawned on me.
“They think we are part of Talon’s resistance.”
Suddenly, everything was clear. The officers on the trail below actually thought they were doing society a favor by treating the kids that way. That they were protecting them from the real corrosive and dangerous elements of our society.
The real enemy was not the oppressive state and all its xenophobic trappings. The enemy wasn’t even the police with their brutish devotion toward enforcement of whatever public policy deemed the ruling paradigm of the day.
“It’s us,” I whispered to Sol. “They are looking for us.”
“You don’t know that. We can’t be sure that they saw us come this way. Otherwise, they might have used our descriptions.”
“You don’t get it… We are the problem.”
I was out of my mind. Some part of me wanted to fly down and take the shameful treatment that the officer was giving those two children. After all, I was the catalyst for everything terrible that was happening here. I was at the bar when this started. I’d initiated the aggression against those people… they were only drunk and expressing their opinions.
The investigative officer came back to report.
“All clear. Might just be kids out for a night hike.”
“Well, keep an eye out regardless. I don’t want those rebels making a run for it. They’ve caused enough damage in this city. As for you two… you got lucky. A lot of dangerous people are out at night these days. You would be better off staying at home with your parents. Frank, why don’t you escort these kids home?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, officer.”
The little one had such composure, while her friend was still recovering with tears. The sniffing sounds of childhood trauma continued while the scene cleared out from beneath our post in the tree.
Sol and I stayed lost in our own thoughts. The moon was nearly full, and the light showered down onto the thin canopy of leaves that sheltered us from view. Then I started crying. The tears were not for myself, or even for the kids we had just seen. My tears were for the hundreds of thousands within the city who would continue to be affected by this systemic oppression.
Everything was wrong about this entire situation. It was wrong for the officers and the government to treat Fae like second-class citizens. It was also wrong to need papers just to walk outside. The Fae shouldn’t need to run around in disguises or limit the usage of their magic for the purposes of not alarming a handful of sheepish citizens.
On the other hand, it was wrong that so many innocent humans had to deal with the negative impacts of a divided social state. I could no longer truly understand where the fear of the Fae came from. On one hand, the bureaucracy, and by proxy, the police state most definitely had a hand in perpetuating the fear in the way that they responded to incidental escalations.
My mind bounced back and forth between the two poles of responsibility, until I finally caved.
“Innocent lives are at stake,” I said, “and those people don’t deserve this. Regardless if it’s right, it’s real, and we need to recognize that.”
“You feel responsible for those kids?”
I nodded, and Sol responded by giving me a hug around the trunk of the tree. I savored his touch, feeling a form of acceptance.
“I keep thinking about the people we passed on the motorway today, or the officers who were killed in the line of duty when Talon, Onyx, and I escaped from the bar.”
“It’s one thing to mourn the loss of a freedom fighter, or even an officer; they signed up for that kind of shit. I understand what you are saying about the casualties. Victim-blaming the persecuted is a hard line to tow.”
“If we don’t take responsibility, I’m not sure who will be able to de-escalate.”
Sol paused to reflect on my words, and then he gave my shoulders a reaffirming squeeze with his strong hands.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well, it’s simple really. I think we should warn the police about Talon’s attack. We can have them shut down the entire operation on a preemptive basis. They are the ones who are being aggressive in this whole situation. We should have them shut down.”
“I’m not sure you’re seeing the entire picture.”
“Look, Sol. I don’t want to betray Talon, but if that attack goes off, there are going to be casualties on both sides that I don’t want to see happen. We have to turn him over.”
“What if they think we are a part of that movement?”
“They probably do.”
“All right, so your plan is basically to turn yourself in. Well, you can just walk right over to that officer over there. Just make sure you address him as sir. I’m sure that will work out well for you. They would probably just capture and question you. You’d probably spend the rest of your days in a jail cell, and then they would naturalize you. Is that what you want?”
“I’m not sure if that’s what I want, but I don’t want any more innocent people to suffer for something I could have done something to prevent.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“We’ll go downtown and try to bargain with them.”
“Never met so brave a fool.”
We made our way along the canopy of the trees until we were well out of range of the officer’s barricade.
Chapter 17
Probably the most thrilling part of that whole journey on the treetops was the sensation of balance as we moved from one tree to another. The reason I enjoyed it so much was because every bit of my attention was given to an activity that didn’t require any emotional stress on my part.
I was in the zone.
I was a squirrel.
All the speculative fiction in my own mind could stop for those moments, and I was able to focus on nothing more than the task at hand.
I might have to intentionally make things more difficult for myself in the future, I thought as we were finally descending from the canopy.
Our feet touched the ground. We were still on the bike path, though we had managed to clear the better part of a mile in the shelter of the trees. On the way, we saw a fair number of officers. Four to be specific, all armed with headlamps and rifles. They didn’t appear to be focusing on anything, but instead seemed to be doing patrols. They were the scouts at the edges of the periphery.
When the coast was clear and we had a moment to ourselves, I brought the issue up with Sol.
“I had no idea there were this many officers in the police force.”
“They’re not all police. A lot of them are either para-military or National Guard. You can tell by the way they hold themselves. The government is not taking any chances on the upcoming attack. I don’t think this bodes well for Talon.”
We continued in silence as I processed this latest information. I couldn’t see how extraneous police was a good thing for any citizen of the Hollow, but I couldn’t put my finger on why they were there in the first place. If my fear was correct, then it seemed like the democratic will of the people was to exterminate the Fae. I couldn’t understand how so many people could be in favor of tactics like that, but I supposed that the draconian policies were only magnifications of fear.
The fear of the people became the pass that gave the policy makers permission to continue forward with an extermination plan. I held no illusions. The Naturalization of the Fae was an extermination of a race that was different than the presumptive majority. It was a form of cultural genocide against all things magical. The worst part about it was that the ignorant fear of the people who inadvertently supported this policy was also accompanied by a vulnerability to the very thing they were afraid of — magical retaliation.
I laughed as Sol and I walked down the silent streets that led toward the nearest subway station. My thoughts had become either too painful or too absurd to remain in my mind.
“Private joke?” he asked.
“Not too private to share.”
“Okay, go.”
The thoughts that had been in my mind came out for Sol’s benefit. To my surprise, he listened to me intently the entire time. I was shocked.
“I thought for sure you were going to interrupt or talk over me at some point,” I said.
“I don’t see any reason to do that. You’ve been working hard on coming to a few conclusions here about these social dynamics. It was worth my time to listen and hear you out before responding.”
“Well, thanks… what do you think?”
“I think you’re hitting on a key component of this entire social dynamic, and that is just how much the general populace knows about the Fae situation. I mean, we have a situation where the Fae are basically subservient to the whims of the masses.”
