{"id":3640,"date":"2011-05-01T04:21:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-01T08:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/2010\/12\/16\/"},"modified":"2011-05-01T04:21:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T08:21:21","slug":"immortal-blues-part-eight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/?p=3640","title":{"rendered":"Immortal Blues: Part Eight"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Greg Bullard<\/p>\n

Welcome to part eight of the nine part fiction series \u201cImmortal Blues\u201d by Greg Bullard. The end game approaches. Motivations are revealed, as well as the blues man. If you need to catch up, here is Part One<\/a>, Part Two<\/a>, Part Three<\/a>, Part Four<\/a>, Part Five<\/a>, Part Six<\/a>, and Part Seven<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I took comfort in the sound of hastily retreating feet as, slowly, my breath returned to me. Each gasp was like a fresh dagger wound in my side. Gingerly, I reached down and probed the area where I had been shot. The bullet, hot to the touch, was pancaked to my surcoat, just over my ribs. I wedged my thumb nail under it, pried off the flattened chunk of lead, and then sucked at my burning fingers.<\/p>\n

Probing at the dent in my side, I found it extremely tender. An ungodly pain was spreading from that area. Wincing, holding my side, I struggled to my feet. Reorienting myself, I stumbled on towards home.<\/p>\n

Every few blocks I paused, leaned against a wall and caught my wind. The act of breathing was horrific. The pain I could stand, but the stench of refuse and soured garbage, which clung to my clothes, rose up with each intake of air, filling my mouth and nose, turning my stomach. <\/p>\n

At my hobbled pace, I figured the ninety minute walk was going to take me twice that long. This left me a lot of extra time to think. What the hell had I gotten myself into? How had I started down this path? I let my memory wander.<\/p>\n

The centuries piled one on top of the other and everywhere I turned, I kept seeing her. She was mostly known as Breo-Saighit in those days \u2013 the Flame Arrow of the Isles. Long before the split, when our people, the Tuatha D\u00e9 Danann, were one, I could survey any battlefield and see her there. In a time when giants and gods walked the Earth, we waged war constantly. Her fiery mane was a beacon, a rallying point when we crushed the Fir Bolg. We fought back-to-back for a time when we rose up and threw off the yolk of the Fomoriai. All those years, all those battles, yet we never really spoke. We were too different, her and I.<\/p>\n

When the split came, she represented the worst of what I hated. She let them strip her of her place and turn her into a puppet of their surrender. Saint Brigid they dubbed her, Muime-Chriosd \u2013 Foster Mother of Christ, or simply, Saint Brigid B\u00faadach \u2013 Brigid the Victorious. <\/p>\n

She and those like her embraced the new religion and heralded the slow descent of the old gods and the rest of the People of Dana. Like the mid-summer sun, falling slowly to the horizon and the inevitable cloak of night, so too did we fall into the dark. The Unseelie they called us. We fought, but we were few to their many. I led the 100 in battle and we were never defeated, but neither were we able to achieve a real victory. One by one those around me fell further to embrace the darkness they had been cast into. Their forms grew hideous as their souls warped. I just grew more stubborn, but otherwise never changed. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know when it happened, but at some point, I came to realize that the flame-haired wisp of a girl, who had fought and killed by my side, still haunted my memories. Time turned to the present decades, and change came rapidly to the world. The moon bridges were fading and more and more our people sought shelter in the comfort of T\u00edr na n\u00d3g, rather than face the banality and decay of Earth. <\/p>\n

I visited Earth though, often. I could not bear knowing that I lived in the basement of the heavens and would never see the red-headed seductress of my memories. More and more, it gnawed at me that, once before, one of my kind, one of the fallen, the Unseelie, had crossed to the light and joined the Seelie court. If he could, I could. <\/p>\n

The process is not so simple as asking though. At the least, there is a sacrifice required of any who choose to ascend the stairway and join the light. The same is not true of the trip down \u2013 one need simply fall. We don\u2019t get many takers on our end. <\/p>\n

The most significant sacrifice is two-hundred years in exile. I have spent the lion\u2019s share of the last two-thousand years frolicking on Earth. I have spent decades without feeling the need to return to the courts. And yet, now that absence is voluntarily required of me, each morning and evening twilight, the bridge of stars is created to the otherworld and it pulls at me. Turning away from that bridge is a steadily growing pain that I will endure twice a day for the next 198 years, if I am to succeed. Worse, I can only try this once, and if I am to court Breo-Saighit, I must not fail.<\/p>\n

That all brought me to that early, April, New York City morning, hours before dawn twilight. Each breath was still painful, but most of my range of motion was back. I could move quickly if I had to do so. Still, nothing explained what had happened to me. I slunk through the shadows, pouting like a petulant princess, fighting a losing battle against the temptation of telling myself that this couldn\u2019t possibly be happening to me \u2013 others, perhaps, but not me. <\/p>\n

I am inviolate. I am first born of the Sidhe. I am nobility. I am immortal. I tried hard to believe myself, but whispered in my thoughts, along with these statements of feigned-certainty, were little, dreary clouds of doubt. I am in pain. I stink of garbage. I want to go home. <\/p>\n

As I neared my home though, I grew tense and troubled. Something was amiss, but I couldn\u2019t put a finger on it. To all of my senses, the world was as it should be. In my mind\u2019s eye, everything appeared fine, but again, there was that doubt. <\/p>\n

I had almost convinced myself it was paranoia, when I crossed the street half a block from my door and heard him \u2013 the blues man. In two steps, I had oriented myself to the sound. It was coming from my bedroom window. <\/p>\n

Snarling and shrugging aside the pain, I quickened my step until I had broken into a jog. I had just poured out of the staircase into my living room, while the last notes of Robert Johnson\u2019s \u201cLove in Vain\u201d were falling down around me in a puddle of heartbreak and agony. My eyes fell on the face of the blues man, and I understood.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>About Greg Bullard:<\/strong>
\nGreg currently resides in Austin, TX, trying to do his part to Keep Austin Weird<\/a>. While his wife, Julia, and daughter, Emily, both work hard to keep him on his toes, it is Julia\u2019s red editing pen that does the most work. When he is not muddling his way through some fiction, he usually writes about What Greg Eats<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"