V

“What are we running from?” Kevin looked back over his shoulder at the plain of grass as the four of them, seemingly flung together by fate, rushed across it.

“Kozin,” the Pirate King said. “The creature that so rudely interrupted the faire just now.”

“What does it want?”

“He does his master’s bidding. It seems that their current goal is to give us humans glimpses of his kind—of aegis.”

“Aegis?” Kate asked softly. She looked downcast, trudging along with no regard for the breezes that pushed hair across her face. Kevin wanted to ask her how she was feeling, not because of the confidence that had attracted him to her, but because that energy seemed sapped away now, replaced by the threat of tears.

“The Japanese knew the best approximation for their nature—spirits,” the Pirate King said. “Aegis live in a world similar in ways to ours---a parallel universe, maybe. It has been known long before that concept as the spirit world.”

“Okay, but who are you? Do either of you have real names? Why are we a part of this?”

“My name is David. The aegis is my partner, Mathal. I’m just a costumer, like you’re just a performer, roped into something bigger than me.” His voice quieted, musing, then resumed its volume when he resumed his explanation.” I’m a man who tried to be more than himself and now…is. Aegis live alongside our world, but some have learned to cross the border, and are causing general mischief, showing themselves to people when they shouldn’t. We don’t know their motive, but Mathal and I, as well as others, are trying to find out.”

“Why shouldn’t they show themselves?” Kevin watched the tiger-creature’s—Mathal’s—head bobbing as he walked, and remembered it speaking to him—not mind-melding or anything fantastical like that, like what he had expected. Just speaking. Saying hello.

“There is a time for everything. The first aegis to enter our world partnered with a human boy—well, that was the way it was supposed to go anyway, but that’s another story—hundreds of years ago in Japan. An aegis at that time thought that it was time to merge their society with humans’, but he actually planned to enslave humans. Ever since then, people on both sides have been too afraid that one side or the other will react badly to the revelation. On both sides there are common folk who don’t believe that the other exists. Kozin has a…rough reputation. If he’s leading a push into the human world…” David scowled. “I don’t think it’s harmony he wants.

I know this must be hard for you to believe…”

“It’s not, really,” said Kevin. He could feel the breezes rustling his hair. There were no highway sounds obscuring the background noises, the silence and wind. This world felt as real as the rest of his life had.

But thinking of that brought his thoughts back to Kate, and he slowed his steps slightly to walk beside her. “Are you all right?”

She looked around, wide-eyed, her upper lip quivering as if she were going to cry. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

He put a hand on her shoulder, but hesitated to draw her close. She was thinking too much, and the thoughts like tears welled up in her eyes. Was it possible to be too introspective for your own good?

She said, “I think I can only barely believe this because I’m afraid to lose it.”

Mathal and David broke into a run, and, surprised, Kevin looked up to see that they were closer to the white fountain which had been visible in the distance. It was a concrete tower, fluted and decorated with curves and spirals. No basin caught the sparkling, clear water; instead the fountain’s base was sunk into a natural pool, its rocky sides rainbow-colored from the algae that grew there, sinking from bright orange to Caribbean green to deep blue. At its center, the blue-coated walls dropped away to a frighteningly abrupt depth that Kevin could not appraise the depth of, and the fountain’s thin stem sunk into the earth with it. The air above the water smelled strongly, but it was sweet, not sulfuric as he had expected. Mathal ran around the pool once as if scanning it, and then stood, looking intently at a forest in the distance. Between the pool and the forest the grass was not smooth like a lawn as it had been where the human had walked; instead there were hummocks of grass and seedy plants, possible cover for whatever was chasing them.

And indeed, a moment later, three aegis-forms burst out of the grass.

Mathal leapt, his muscled shoulders pushing his lowered head forward like a toothed battering ram. He collided and tangled with a creature Kevin didn’t recognize, something silver and winged and emitting a high-pitched cry now as Mathal pushed it against the earth. A second aegis, something fox-shaped and smaller than Mathal but sporting saber teeth, rammed Mathal’s face, knocking him away from the bird-thing and raking at his cheeks.

The third aegis was Kozin, who stalked toward the humans.

David placed himself between the aegis and the teenagers. “We mean you no harm,” he shouted.

A deep, crisply human laugh emitting from Kozin’s cat mouth was one of the eeriest things Kevin had ever heard.

Protectiveness welled up in Kevin. Was there nothing he could do, in this world of creatures, to protect the girl behind him? But “We’ll mean you harm,” Kate was murmuring, and Mathal was slamming one creature into the ground with a clawed paw while another clung to the meat of his shoulder as both shed blood like diamonds--

In the midst of all this, in the midst of how crisp and impossible this is, I can do nothing. His thoughts seemed out of his control. Clenching his fists was an ineffective as catching air, as the creatures tangled and Kate and the pirate froze and Kevin was too frightened to do anything—

Except, suddenly, he wasn’t. Fear transformed, into steel-scales and hook-claws and wings more powerful than his arms. It was as if a holographic shell had blossomed into life around him, except he could feel every sensation, air sliding across scales, his spine becoming longer and graceful and just like he had wings he now had a tail. But extraneous as these limbs were, they were perfectly coordinated. The fear disappeared. He threw himself(/itself; he could feel the aegis mind moving against his, waking up, thinking) forward.

The feeling of being overwhelmed, thoughts hazy and indistinct, had slowly faded as Kate walked along. Now a smile tugged at her mouth. Was this happening? Had she not had her priorities as mistaken as the small, niggling, frightened thoughts in the back of her head usually suggested they were? Could she really escape everything dull and confusing—social circles and phone bills and schoolwork—to this surreal world of monsters? Her eyes overflowed with hot tears. There were too many stimuli—the pirate’s explanations, Kevin’s sudden touch and concern, the aegis flowing beside them, her tentative, fledgling happiness. When the attack came, it shocked her out of her thoughts.

She watched with perfect clarity as Kevin transformed into a silver dragon-beast, its wide wings trailing beautiful spines like the tails of a kite, and collided with one of the aegis that was ripping at Mathal’s face with its needle-teeth.

Anger rose up in her, so that she wanted to fight too, wanted to change, but no change was coming. She stepped forward with “We’ll mean you harm” ready to scream from her lips, but Kozin jumped toward her before his laugh had trailed off. She heard David scream for her to get back and he was a blur of white and black out of the corner of her eye for a second as he moved toward her, and then Kozin skidded to a stop in front of her and his clawed hand filled up her vision.

Pain tore across her forehead, and she heard David cry out again, Mathal’s name this time. Silver out of the corner of her eye, and then the screams—David, and others less human—took over her senses before cancelling them out entirely. She knew no more for a time.

Kate blinked. The wooden struts of the fairegrounds’ emergency medical building came into focus far above her—she recognized them from a few visits to the building after stage combat practices. She sat up, discarding white sheets. She was still in the clothes she had worn before…before following David and Mathal into another world.

She reached up to touch her head and felt bandages, warm cloth wrapped around her head over her hair. From Kozin’s attack. But then she looked around the room again, at the wooden walls and curtain-partitions and bedside tables. Just out that door would be the reception station, where the EMTs assigned to the faire hung out until they had a job to do. There was also an on-site nurse, whose desk was the first thing one saw when one walked in…

This was the Ren faire. Not another world.

Uncertainty pierced her like a needle, eliciting a quiet, indrawn breath, as well as a dull pre-thought—so dramatic gasps do happen outside of movies.

Had any of that about the aegis and the parallel world been real?