So it had magical powers, too. Matt nodded again, still holding the creature’s eyes with his own.
Its lip curled in derision. “What’s the matter, then? Have ye never seen a bauchan before?” It pronounced the word “buckawn.”
Name magic thawed Matt; it was irrational, but having a word for the species reassured him. “No, I haven’t. Are you a male?”
“That I am, and it’s long since I’ve seen a female of my kind, I tell you. Centuries. Don’t fear, though—I’ve no yen for human women. No yen for any kind of coupling, if no female bauchan is by me and in heat.” It paused, but Matt didn’t comment, so it said, “We do get lonely, though.”
Suddenly, Matt felt sorry for the creature. To be the only one of his kind—as he must have been, if it had been hundreds of years since he’d seen a female—must have been very lonely indeed. “I can see that you would. But aren’t there any other bauchans around?”
“There is one some four miles distant.” The bauchan pointed north. “And one some ten miles east.” He pointed another finger, looking like a semaphore. “But we have little biking for each other.” He dropped his hands.
“Oh, great!” Matt said. “Two more near enough to do some good, and they’re both grouches.”
“Oh, nay.” The bauchan grinned. “They’re no worse than I am—but no better, either. Bauchans do not like other bauchans, you see.”
Matt had read his share of folklore in his studies of comparative literature. “You mean you’re solitary fairies?”
“Fairies!” The bauchan sniffed. “Why do ye mortal folk always lump all us magical folk together as fairies? We’re spirits or spirks or pooks, nothing else! But solitary, aye, at least as regards our own kind. We’d much rather have mortal folk for company.”
“Oh?” Matt felt the first tendrils of dread reaching out for him. “Tell me, why is that?”
“Because we’ve no wish to suffer one another’s tricks and whims.”
“Yes, I can see that would be a problem.” Mentally, Matt tried to fight off the dread; he was a wizard, he could handle one country spirit! “But if you’re so sociable, why are you hanging around this abandoned hut?”
“Because it belonged to my last family.” The bauchan wiped away a tear. “They were good folk, grandfather and father and daughter, but none came to marry her, and she dwelled alone in this cottage until she died, a good old woman of three score years and ten.”
That was the Bible’s allotted life span. Matt wondered if she’d forced herself to hang on until she turned seventy. “Rough life.”
“Aye. She had few friends, fewer who came to visit her.”
The vagrant thought drifted through Matt’s mind that the bauchan might have had something to do with that.
“She did try to slay herself once or twice,” the bauchan said, his eyes glittering, “but of course I could not allow that.”
“Sure, you wouldn’t want to be lonely.” Matt shivered. “What happened to the rest of her family?”
“Oh, they died, too. They were a very nervous lot.”
“I’m beginning to see why. No one else has ever tried to stay the night here, huh?”
“Nay, they have not. The place has a bad name among me villagers.”
“Gee, imagine that.” But Matt and his friends had flown over the village, not ridden through it and heard the warning. “How long ago did she die?”
“Thirty years.”
“Yes, that’s a considerable length of time. Why have you stayed?”
“Why, because I’d adopted her family, do you see. There was no point in leaving without another family to go to.”
“Very loyal of you, I’m sure.” But Matt’s doubt sounded in his voice. “How does a bauchan find a new family?”
“He waits until someone stays the night in his old family’s house, men adopts that person and stays with him and his family.”
The tendrils of dread whipped tight around Matt. Ever the optimist, he said, “And you’ve chosen the sergeant here.”
Grinning, the bauchan turned its head from side to side.
“The knight, then.”
Again the bauchan slowly shook its head.
“You can’t be thinking of—” Matt swallowed. “—me.”
The bauchan lifted its head up and down, eyes glowing.
Matt stared, frozen, while a chill passed over him. He gave himself a shake, cleared his throat and said, “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Oh, but it is,” the bauchan assured him. “I’ve adopted you, you see.”
“I’m not up for adoption,” Matt said firmly.
“Ah, but you’ve no choice there.” The bauchan’s teeth glinted in the firelight. “I’ve adopted you, and there’s no more to say.”
“How about ‘no’?”
“You could not; you’d regret it.”
“I think I’d regret ‘yes’ even more.”
The creature’s eyes flashed. “Do you refuse the gift of my company, then? You’ll rue it if you do, mortal!”
Those eyes really were like those of a stag. Matt cleared his throat, resolved to straighten out this presumptuous creature. “Now look here, Buckeye—”
“Buckeye I am!” the creature crowed with delight. “You’ll never be rid of me now, mortal! Buckeye you’ve named me, and Buckeye I shall be, as long as I stay with you and your family! That’s the way the spell works, you see!”
The dread sank in around Matt and pooled in his belly. “Then I’ll make it work backward.”
“You cannot, for you’ve chosen to name me of your own free will! Try to break that bond, and you’ll regret it sorely!”
“If I do,” Matt said, “you’ll regret it even more.”
“Do ye not ken who brought yon pallets for your sleep?” The bauchan pointed at the piles of straw under the companions’ blankets. “Do you not think I can make you rue the night you slept on them?”
“Maybe, but I can make you rue your threat.” Matt pointed a finger at the creature and chanted,
Far away there was a sound like distant hooves that went on and on, coming nearer.
The bauchan frowned. “What is that?”
“Your exit approaching,” Matt told him.
The sound grew louder.
The bauchan grinned, but a bit uncertainly. “Oh, is it now! And what do you think you are—a sorcerer?”
“No,” Matt said, “a wizard.”
With the thunder of a cavalry regiment, something unseen and unseeable swept through the cottage, darkening the firelight for a minute. The sound was so loud that Matt could scarcely hear the bauchan’s angry squall of surprise. Then the cottage lightened, and the creature was gone.
Matt felt a twinge of conscience, but it only lasted a second—he hadn’t specified that any harm come to the bauchan, only that it be relocated far away from him. He let himself smile—he had turned the tables neatly, using magic to banish a magical spirit. He just hoped Shelley wouldn’t mind his making a few modifications.
Matt let himself relax, surveying the room, once again on watch, noting Stegoman’s sleeping bulk outside the doorway and the slow rise and fall of the mounds that were Sir Orizhan and Sergeant Brock. The bauchan hadn’t been joking about its own magical powers—whatever sleep spell it had cast on Matt’s companions had certainly worked well.
Then Matt felt a sting in his left buttock. He spun off the pallet and onto his knees, brushing at every part of his anatomy that had been in contact with the blanket. Looking down, he saw that the straw had come alive with bedbugs, and very large representatives of their species at that. He swore softly. Sleep wasn’t the only spell the bauchan could cast. He hadn’t been joking about his power over the pallets.