Weak Heart

WEAK HEART

Ban Gilmartin

To my best friend.  You’ve saved me more times than I can count.

Pick up your sorrow, this is not who we are.

I won’t cry uncle having come so far.

— Blood Under The Bridge, Frightened Rabbit

1. THOMAS

This isn’t real.

The nightmare creatures sitting in front of me may look like my students, but they aren’t; not really. This isn’t real.

I just have to work through this nightmare vision and it will be fine. I just have to stay normal so I don’t scare the two thirteen year-old girls who are actually here, hidden somewhere under the fucked up monsters my brain is currently showing me. I do this all the time. Half my conversations these days are conducted with nightmares. I can get through this.

“So I have some questions about this paper you wrote for me,” I say, taking deep, even breaths. I pull my attention away from where Rimi’s pure white eyes are staring unblinkingly at me. I don’t know what’s worse: the filmy white of Rimi’s eyes, or the oily black of her twin sister Resha’s.

It’s fine. It isn’t real. Their ashen skin and plaster cracked lips aren’t real. My growing migraine pulses against the back of my eyes, and I bite back a curse. Just a wee migraine. Just a small nightmare. No problem. Piece of piss.

“Right, so,” I continue shakily. My fingers grip the paper in my hands so tightly it creases. “You’ve titled it The Anthropological and Historical Practice of Bee Mourning, or, Colloquially, Talking to Bees. Why bees?”

The rain patters against my window, a horn honks outside, my neighbour blares his tellie, but inside my cramped flat there’s silence. The twins don’t answer.

I make the mistake of looking back up. The nightmares are still there. Rimi’s cheery pink hijab is still dark and sopping, wet rivulets of water running down her too-pale skin. Resha’s round glasses still missing, making her face look pinched and unnatural.

Fuck acting normally, this is terrifying. I want to absolutely book it out of here and keep going until I hit the River Clyde and pitch myself in.

But Fadwa would say that’s dramatic and probably wouldn’t be pleased if I offed myself in front of her sisters. So I guess drowning is out.

“So, bees?”

Normally when I ask questions I get two sets of rolling brown eyes and a cheeky answer. My students are brilliant magicians — I’m twenty-two and I can’t cast anywhere as easily as Resha can — but they’re also nightmares. Of the figurative, behavioural kind. Not the literal kind in front of me.

My head is thrumming and I want to take off my glasses and rub the spot between my eyes where the paracetamol-immune migraine is building, but I don’t. Even without the soaking hijabs, cracked plaster skin and unnatural eyes, I’m not willing to be blind around the twins.

I clear my throat. This isn’t real.

“In your paper, you wrote that you think there are bee rituals. What—” I glance at Rimi, with her tilted head and white eyes, and flinch, “—what gave you that idea?”

Nightmare Resha blinks once, twice, then opens her mouth to speak. Water runs down her dark blue hijab and into her open mouth.

“Trust her. Follow the water. Ask the bees.”

Water dribbles out of the corner of her mouth, and her words echo with the unmistakable buzzing of bees.

The sound — not her lovely, chipper voice, but the low humming of a swarm of insects — is what makes me break, jerking in my chair and nearly tipping backwards with a loud grunt of surprise. I barely avoid face planting into my floor.

“Thomas?” calls a worried voice from the kitchen as I hesitantly look back up at the girls.

A loud rushing sigh of relief spills out. My students are back. The nightmare is over.

“Are you having a fit or something?” Resha asks, squinting. Her hijab is dry, her glasses back. There’s no buzzing accompanying her words, just her thick Glaswegian accent. She’s judging me, and it’s a lovely thing to see.

“Thomas?” Fadwa appears around the corner in a clash of colours. I didn’t even know she was here; she must have let herself in while I was having a meltdown. “I thought I heard something. Are you alright? Did they set you on fire again?”

“No, we were, uh, just talking about bees,” I answer, hoping that will satisfy her and she won’t notice my shaky voice and slightly puffy breathing. She’s like a bloodhound for anxiety.

“I told you not to write about bees,” she barks, coming fully into the room to stare down her sisters. “I have you studying with Thomas to learn your herbs and theory, not to focus on this pish.”

Her bright yellow hijab clashes hideously with the ugly red patterned jumper that’s swallowing her slender frame, and it’s hurting my eyes. She’s brilliant, but she dresses like an old man made love to a traffic cone.

“It’s no pish, we’re researching!” Rimi argues. “We’ve been studying bees’ patterns to see if there’s magic in them a magician could use.” An image of the nightmare Rimi and Resha commanding an army of killer bees pops into my mind, and I suppress a shiver. My migraine thrums happily; it seems to enjoy the obvious carnage this idea would come with.

“How are you studying bees? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bee in this part of Glasgow,” I ask, horrifyingly curious despite myself. “I’d figure all the gulls had eaten them.”

“We found a way,” Resha answers in a tone that makes me fully convinced they have a beehive hidden behind their father’s electronic repair shop.

I like the Hussain twins — despite their skill with fire — but at this moment I’m deeply relieved that this is our last tutoring session before I leave for America. Fadwa heard about a man in the Pacific Northwest who can peer into souls and eat out the evil inside, so here I am: finishing my last lesson and preparing to pack up the few things I have in this manky, cold flat so I can travel halfway around the world again after what will probably be another dead end.

I just hope this newest miracle cure doesn’t involve ram’s blood. I’m really over ram’s blood. It always manages to get in my shoes and dry out my curls.

And it tastes awful; it’s more sour than human blood. Sticks to your teeth.

“I need water,” I mumble, pushing myself away from the table and toward the kitchen. Fadwa steps back to let me pass, and her large handbag smacks into me. I fight the urge to ask her for the millionth time what she keeps in there. Usually it’s books. But once it was a skull, and I don’t think it was fully human.

“Happenin, wee man? You look like death warmed over,” Fadwa says cheerily, reaching out to pat at my head. I can’t help myself; I flinch as her arm comes near me. She pulls it back immediately, the smile falling from her face.

“Thomas, are you okay?” she asks, her eyes creasing with worry behind her large glasses. I take a deep breath, then another, then nod.

“Fine,” I say, reaching out to pat her arm in a pathetic failure of a reassuring motion. “Just another migraine.”

She easily interprets what I’m trying to convey: that I had another nightmare during waking hours. For the third time this week. Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to my fucked up visions, but they’re getting more and more frequent, and I have absolutely no idea why.

Neither does Fadwa for that matter, which is only mildly terrifying, as she’s the best magician I know. Far better than me — probably even better than Cormac Macrae, my old guardian. (Though, I suppose there are a lot of magicians out there who are better than Cormac was, but when I was a kid, isolated on the Isle of Mab and being taught by the only other magical human I knew, he seemed like the most powerful person on earth.)

Sometimes I think I’d be dead by now if it weren’t for Fadwa and her patience and her magic. My visions brought me to her. Scared, homeless, terrified and on the verge of sobbing, they led me to her.

It’s the only good thing these visions have ever done for me, really.

She thinks it was a sign. Some great indicator from the universe trying to point me to the person who can heal me. I think it was more about balance: the universe has shit kicked me six ways to Sunday, but it was nice enough to pause for a moment to lead me to someone who keeps me fed and moderately sane.

“Maybe you should go lay down,” Fadwa says as I fill a glass of water from my sputtering tap. “I can whip up a sleeping draught.”

The concern lining her eyes and the compassion in her voice puts me on edge, and I want to fight her on it, but she’s right. I’m exhausted. I’ve barely slept this week because every time I close my eyes, the creatures show up. (Or he does. I’m at the point where I’d happily choose to see the creatures instead of having to deal with him.)

“I’m fine,” I repeat, downing my water in one and pushing past her to return to where the girls are. “I’m just tired, it’s nothing.”

The twins smell weakness and are on me in a flash, abandoning their seat at my table and advancing menacingly. Rimi walks like she’s made of air, and Resha is the bruiser. Her footsteps always shake my floor.

“Are you sick?” Rimi asks, a bit too eagerly.

“You kind of look like a skeleton,” Resha says.

“A skeleton with shite hair,” Rimi adds with a sly grin, ducking as Fadwa swats at her. Fadwa has her watch on the wrong wrist and facing the wrong direction, and it clunks against the two large bracelets next to it when she reaches out for the smack.

“You two are terrible people,” I say, feigning offence. “Really, genuinely terrible, and I won’t miss you. I think I’m glad I’ll never see you again.”

It’s a lie. We all know it’s a lie. I’ll be back by December, dejected and depressed after another failed exorcism attempt. Fadwa will have me over for a shitty dinner and the girls will try to resurrect the chicken or something and I’ll sit there, silent and stressed while her father makes threatening eyebrow gestures at me and I think of all the different ways I could go drown myself.

Fadwa can tell I’m spiralling, because she rounds on her sisters, taking the attention off me.

“Get your things together and wait here, alright?” she says, snapping her long fingers to get her sisters’ attention. “I need to talk to Thomas.”

She drags me into the cramped hallway, and I allow her, despite the fact that I’m almost half a foot taller than her. But she could probably break me like a twig if she tried, and I learnt long ago that it’s easier to go along with Fadwa. Her soft edges and round face are misleading.

“Are you alright?” she whispers, and I shrug. Fadwa loves to ask questions, but I dislike talking about these things. It’s only ever her who I talk about it with these days, but it feels uncomfortable. Like the truth of it itches underneath my skin.

“I’m fine,” I lie. “Really, I’m fine, don’t worry about me. You’re too busy for all that.”

She gives me a look that makes me wonder if she’s about to pull a skull from her purse and beat me with it.

“Aye, right. I’m not too busy to help you,” she says, but we both know she’s lying as well. Between raising her sisters, helping her father, and researching for her magical thesis on Seelies, Fadwa barely has time to breathe. Her busyness is half the reason I tutor the twins; I’m knowledgeable at folk magic and remedies, but not enough to justify being a teacher. I just do it to lighten her load.

“I’m fine,” I say again, softer. “The visions are getting worse, but I have a good feeling about this soul eater bloke or whatever he is. I think this could really be what I’m looking for.”

I don’t think that. I don’t think some weirdo living in the woods and eating evil is going to cure me. I’ve been halfway round the world to try to fix it, and nothing has stuck. Not potions or exorcisms or even psychiatry.

Last year I tried to manage them through therapy, and all I succeeded in doing was discovering that I apparently have trust issues, a cynical defence mechanism, and anxiety.

“Are you sure you wanny go through with this? No one will judge you for staying back.” Fadwa looks up at me through her large glasses. She has beautiful eyes, and she uses them like a guilt weapon.

“America was your idea,” I say with a sigh, leaning back against the wall that leads to my bedroom. It’s the only room in this flat that actually has a door. Not even the bathroom has a door, because housing in Glasgow is its own kind of fucking nightmare.

“We could revisit the idea of a blood curse. You don’t know anything about your mum’s family, not really,” she says, her words coming fast. I have to cut in soon if I want any hope of heading off a tangent. “You may be better off going to Hungary to track them down. I was just reading about these stories of Hungarian creatures who—”

“My mum was just a magician,” I remind her, just like I’ve reminded her dozens of times. “And my dad was as well. Perfectly normal. No blood curses. Cormac would have told me.” I sigh and close my eyes. When it comes to my nightmares and visions, it seems like it’s always the same conversation. “Faz, thank you, but I’ve done about sixteen rituals to cleanse a blood curse, and none of them worked.”

“Maybe we’ve been approaching it the wrong way.” She chews on her bottom lip and avoids eye contact, and worries at a bangle on her wrist, and I can tell that she’s thinking six steps ahead of this conversation. “You know, some of the most powerful magicians in history have had visions and visitations. Maybe this isn’t necessarily a curse. Maybe it’s just a way of expressing your power.”

“We both know when it comes to active magic I’m mediocre at best,” I argue, trying to keep my exhaustion and annoyance from my voice. “And those magicians were crackpot weirdos who drank Seelie blood for breakfast and did that shit to themselves. We both know I didn’t.”

“You always insist it’s not Seelie blood, but I really think—”

“Fadwa,” I interrupt. “It’s not Seelies. It’s never Seelies.”

Everything comes back to faeries with Fadwa. She lives and breathes them: she’s spent years researching Seelies and Seelie blood and Seelie myths for her thesis, so now she sees them around every corner. I know she means well, but I’m sick to my fucking oxters of having everything bad in my life blamed on fucking faeries.

For three months after I first met her, she wouldn’t even tell me her full name. When we met, I genuinely thought her name was Hermione. She just let me believe it. For three months. And she wonders why I have trust issues.

“I really wish you would just let me—”

“What’s going on with me is different, and you know it,” I say softly. “Thank you, but it’s not faery stories. You know this is something else, and it’s getting worse.”

“Is it just the visions?” Fadwa asks, lowering her voice. I can clearly see Rimi and Resha watching us from the other room, craning their necks to hear. A small tendril of smoke is rising from what appears to be the ashes of their paper. The smoke twists and turns in on itself until it takes the loose outline of a bee. “Or are you seeing Kit again?”

I try not to flinch at Kit’s name. He shouldn’t scare me still. But it’s hard to move past the terror and pain associated with him when I’ve had to deal with visions of him every night this week.

“This has nothing to do with Kit,” I sigh, pulling off my glasses and running a hand through my hair. Nervous ticks, the psychiatrist told me. Ways of expressing my anxiety. “I’ve telt you a million times, what happened with Kit was unrelated. I really wish you wouldn’t—”

A knock on the door interrupts our conversation, and a low groan escapes me. It’s always like this before I leave. Everyone who comes to me for tinctures and tisanes and charms suddenly starts pounding down my door when they hear I’m leaving the country for a few months, like they just absolutely can’t survive without some shitty, bitter tea.

Holding my hand up to Fadwa to gesture that I’ll finish in a second, I put my glasses back on and cross to the door to yank it open.

A short, stocky black woman I don’t know is stood in the hallway outside my flat, scowling at a piece of paper in her hand. Her mass of curly dark hair flops out of her eyes when she tilts her neck to look up at me, and she squints as her gaze roves over my body. She doesn’t seem pleased by what she sees.

“Are you Thomas Madigan?” Her raspy voice is high, her accent thick and definitely Northern. I nod.

“Aye, that’s me.” Fadwa tries to peer around me, and I push myself further into the gap of the open door to block her. “What do you need?”

The woman in the hall shoves the paper into her pocket, hitches her canvas rucksack higher up on her shoulder, and fixes me with an even look. “I’m hoping you can help me.”

I do my best to survey her in the dimming light let in by the hallway’s dirty skylight. She’s short but not petite, and even still she’s swimming in her clothes. Her jeans are cuffed up at the ankles and shoved into a pair of heavy work boots, her thick jumper sleeves rolled up several times to hit her wrists.

My eyes fall on the rucksack again. She looks like a hitchhiker. Brilliant. People who are new to the city are always a mess, and my life is cluttered enough.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not really available at the moment. There’s another bloke three streets down who might be able to help you, his name is Reid, lives above an O2 shop,” I say, going to close the door.

“Wait,” she exclaims, catching the door with her hand. “Hold on, no—”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat curtly, looking up and down my hallway to check for neighbours. They’re all normal, and I try not to be obvious about my magic, even if they wouldn’t believe it. “I’m about to leave the country, so I’m not taking on any work right now. If you’re looking for a tonic or love potion, I could probably make that quickly, but otherwise—”

“I don’t need a love potion,” the woman insists, staring at me with large, dark brown eyes. “I need your help because Kit Macrae is missing.”

My body tenses up and my hand falls, and the door slams into my shoulder.

“My name is Isla,” she continues, her tone even and brisk. “I’m Kit’s friend. He’s gone missing, and I need your help.”

Adrenaline has shot through my body, washing out my veins and leaving a cold, throbbing anxiety that pulses in time with my migraine.

The weight of the heavy oak door is lifted from my side as Fadwa yanks it open and steps forward into the hall. Her upside down watch clasp catches at my jumper, but I barely notice as the thread snags and comes loose.

“You need to leave,” Fadwa hisses. She towers over Isla, but Isla doesn’t seem fazed.

“Just hear me out,” Isla answers, looking away from me to address Fadwa, her round face set in grim determination. “I need a magician, and Thomas is my best bet. Kit would want me to get him.”

“Absolutely not,” I say, shaking my head. Jesus, I should have known. The visions. The dreams where Kit keeps showing up. Of course this was coming. The nightmares as good as told me. “No. I have no interest in helping you, and especially not Kit Macrae.” My voice breaks slightly. “I haven’t seen him in four years and that’s perfectly fine by me. Like I said, there’s someone down the street who can help you.”

“I don’t want just some magician!” Isla insists, her voice echoing off the walls of my hallway, and I wince. “Here, let me come in and I’ll explain it all, alright?”

“You’re not coming in here,” Fadwa says, folding her arms. “We’ve no idea who you are.”

“I’ve telt you, I’m Kit’s friend—”

“Kit Macrae is a pure psycho, so that doesn’t exactly help your case—”

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but my business is with Thomas, so could you bag out?”

“Thomas isn’t letting you into his home—”

“Thomas is right here,” I say weakly, closing my eyes. My migraine is pounding and I feel like I’m about to pass out, and Fadwa and Isla argue like they’re the same person. “Just come on in and stop shouting.”

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