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The rider remained astride, unconcerned the proper greeting should see him bowing before her. Green-and-black horizontal-striped hosen, tight as spriggan-skin, emphasized his long legs; a shock of pattern weeping from the blur of black wool cloak and hood. His pale face was severely scored by a thin beard and mustache the color of burnt chestnuts. Following the length of his blade nose, Gossamyr focused on his blue eyes filled with more white than color. Eerie. She had not before looked into eyes of such color.
“I…offer you no bane,” she tried. How to address a mortal? “Er…kind mortal.”
“Oh?” He leaned forward, balancing his palms on the saddle pommel. “And do all ladies fair welcome a weary traveler with such a big stick? And wielded in a manner as to appear threatening?”
Gossamyr stabbed the staff into the moss at foot and shrugged. “You offered no answer to my query, so I cannot be sure if I face friend or foe.”
“I am neither,” he said and stroked a hand over his bearded chin.
Those eerie eyes assessed her from head to bare toes, a gaze that boldly brushed her being. The sensory assault unnerved her for she was still startled by the tone of the man’s voice. So rough. Not at all melodious. The urge to step forward and scent him was strong, but she remained. Caution, her instincts whispered.
“What is that dangling from your hand?”
She gave the arret a twirl; the sharpened obsidian tip cut the air with a hiss. A simple weapon she fashioned herself. Not fire-forged, but deadly in its swift and accurate flight.
“Looks like that device would hurt,” the man bellowed in notes that knocked at the insides of Gossamyr’s skull. “At the least, leave a mark, should a man find it lodged in any portion of his anatomy.”
Amused by his jesting tone, Gossamyr agreed with a smirk. She had never placed an arret to any part of a man’s anatomy—mortal or fée—but there was always a first time. She lowered the weapon but kept it in hand.
She hadn’t expected to encounter a mortal so quickly. She had just been getting her bearings! Nor was she prepared in any way to converse with him. Did all mortals emit such raw and echoing sounds when they spoke? Gossamyr was accustomed to the musical lilt of fée speak; she had never guessed that mortals would not sound the same.
Well! Her first mortal. (If she did not tally Veridienne—whom she did not—for she, too, had worn a blazon of glamour). The fascination with standing so close to one did stir her blood. She had only ever dreamed to meet another mortal besides her mother. There wasn’t much physical difference between mortal and fée in body height or appendages, save the fée’s defining swish of wings, horns, scales and the occasional spiked spine. And the telling blazon.
Gossamyr gripped her throat. Was it noticeable? Is that why curious blue eyes fixed to her?
“You are alone, fair lady of the strange costume?” Not so grating as the initial tones.
“I am,” she replied. Strange costume? Her arachnagoss pourpoint? It was certainly very average. Mayhap he did not notice the sheen of glamour on her flesh. Better even, mayhap her blazon was concealed?
Two steps took her right up to the mule’s side. She gazed up into the mortal’s hooded visage. Musk and earth and a curious scent of sweetness intrigued.
“Remarkable,” the rumble-toned man said. “And most bewildering.”
“Why so?”
“My lady, do you not fear attack?”
A short burst of laughter preceded Gossamyr’s cocky grin. A spin of the longstaff cut the air in a swift gulp and she stabbed the tip to ground near her foot. “As you have remarked, I carry a big stick.”
“Indeed. As well you could take a man’s eye out with that spinny thing.”
“It is an arret,” she explained, then tucked it away on her braided amphi-leather belt. “Achoo!”
“Bless yo—my lady? Did—did you just…twinkle?”
“What?” Twinclian? She hadn’t moved. Well, the sneeze had shaken her fiercely—
“You just glimmered!”
Impossible—ah! So her blazon was visible!
A step back was necessary. A tug of her pourpoint did not lift the soft fabric any higher than her collarbone. The blazon started under her chin and flowed to the bottom of her collarbone, wrapping around her neck to under her ears.
The fée did not reveal themselves to mortals. Nothing but ill could come from discovery. Another step placed her in the shade of a fat-leaved mulberry.
Yet another startling thought unsettled: this mortal could see her. Mortals were not capable of seeing the fée. Not unless they possessed the sight. Hmm…Unless—no, she knew the fée visited the Otherside completely unseen.
Mayhap a half blood was visible to mortals?
So long as he did see her, she had better distract attention from her blazon, the only telling sign of Faery.
She summed up the man’s attire, long dark cloak, striped hose and an open white shirt with blue peacocks embroidered around the neck. About his fingers danced colors of ruby, sapphire and gold. Various silver symbols hung from a leather cord about his neck. Alchemical symbols, she surmised. A sure sign of the sight. And that she must beware, for surely he dabbled with magic. “You are…a wizard?”
“Far from it.”
“A mage?”
“Are they not two of the same?”
“What are you?” That you can see me!
“Why, I am a man.” Still sitting upon his mule he bowed to her and introduced himself. “Jean César Ulrich Villon III.” Casting a wink at her, he said, “But you may call me Ulrich.”
Ulrich. Who saw her. And whose voice blasted inside her skull and rippled through her body like tiny sparkles of sunlight heating her flesh. Everything about him called to her attention.
Was it the same for him? Did she sound so different? How soon before her blazon faded? Surely the Disenchantment would wipe it away?
And until it did, and she could walk undetected by mortal eyes?
“I shall call you gone.” Gossamyr nodded over her shoulder and made show of spinning the staff in a twirl of defiance.
“The lady is not a conversationalist. And I must heed she is well armed.” The man heeled his mule and ambled past her. “Very well. This forest remains the same. The trees are the same. All…is well.” His hood did not conceal the curious eyes drinking her in from crown to toe. Bare toes, Gossamyr realized as she turned her toes inward. “Fair fall you, my lady. Good…day.” He paused, blatantly staring at her, then, snapping his attention away, nodded. He muttered to himself, his parting words low but audible, “Could she be?”
Gossamyr watched until the man disappeared beyond a rise on the red clay path and the whistles of his renewed dirge became but a figment. Only then did she release her held breath. And only then did she realize she had been holding her breath.
“What sort of skittish maid am I? He presented no threat. He was but a man. A mortal man. I should have…asked him things. Questioned him!” She kicked a tuft of grass.
For all her frustration she had not been trained on mortal relations. Shinn had ever made it clear a trip to the Otherside would never occur. Martial skills served well against the spriggans, hobs and werefrogs of Faery. One did not have to converse with the rabble, merely lay them out.
So what hindrance had befallen her tongue? ’Twas not as if she had never before stood so close to a male. So close as to once kiss, she thought wistfully.
You are exotic…A Rougethorn’s wondrous declaration to love.
Yes, I can love. It is the mortal half of me who loves, I know it!
My lady, did you glimmer?
Ah! ’Twas the man’s notice of her blazon that had thrown her off! That is why she had sent him away so hurriedly. She had not expected to be seen. And if so, she required time to plot how she would move about in this new and alien world.
Yet, for as strange as she suspected her surroundings, the man had made an odd remark about the sameness of the forest. Verily, in a stretched-out, horizontal manner. And yet, far removed from all she had ever called home.
Fact remained, the mortal had seen her. Mayhap they all could? Her half blood had never before been tested by unEnchanted eyes. And if all could see her then all would remark the blazon.
A disguise must be summoned to cloak her fée shimmer. Shinn had told her of those mortals who would keep fée as pets. A caged spectacle to be presented at fêtes and in market squares, forced to wallow in the Disenchantment until they literally shriveled to bone.
She had not true glamour, though by merely living in Faery she had absorbed a bit of the skill. With a decisive nod, Gossamyr closed her eyes and began to concentrate, to summon her latent power of glamour. If she simply thought plain that would mask the blazon.
“Ho!”
Drawn prematurely from her attempt, Gossamyr twisted at the waist. There he was again. The man with the eerie blue eyes and clinking silver charms about his neck. Had he traveled a circle? This forest, dense and large, would surely require any casual traveler much time to circumnavigate—even should his journey spiral. Was mortal time so spectacular then?
Time is the enemy.
“What sort of witchery be this?” the man said as he heeled his mount beside Gossamyr.
Her fingers toyed with the carvings on the staff, and one hand flattened to her throat. “You jest with me.”
“I beg that I do not, my lady. I traveled straight; there was not a turn in the road. And yet—”
“No time passed?”
“Exactly.” Pressing a hand over his brows to shade his view from the setting sun, he peered at her. A flicker of ruby flashed in his ring. “I do not believe your sparkle is merely the sun—”
“Impossible you did not turn and cut back through the forest.”
He shrugged, and the hood of his cloak fell to his shoulders to reveal a scatter of tangled hair and a trickle of crimson running from temple to ear. Might have been scratched by a branch, so small the cut. Yet there, to the side of his right eye, a bruise the color of crushed blackberries tormented the flesh. What had the man been to? Fighting? Defense?
“Be gone with you, stranger,” Gossamyr said. She had enough to sort through without him tangling her thoughts, making her wonder when wonder was best abandoned to focused attention.
The buzz of the fetch zoomed past her face, too quick for a mortal to regard as any other than an insect. Shinn kept watch.
“Ride straight and do not look back.”
With a surrendering splay of his hands, the man huffed out a grand sigh. “As the lady wishes. I’ve my own sorrows to keep me this day.” He again heeled the mule. With a bristle of its dirty hide the beast carried its master onward.
Over the rise in the road, Gossamyr watched and listened keenly for his return, for a signal he veered from the path and into the underbrush that paralleled the pounded dirt. A bluefinch soared overhead, chirring a greeting that made her smile. Exactly as the birds in Faery. The bird verified the traveler neared the edge of the forest—
“’Tis a spell!”
Behind her, Jean César Ulrich Villon III reined the beast to a halt and jumped to the ground. Fists planted akimbo, he looked over the mule, then up the verdant wall of the surrounding forest. Gossamyr thought she heard him mutter, “The same.”
“Be you a witch?” he called.
“Most certainly not.” That would imply she dabbled with forbidden magic! She stomped over to him and jabbed her staff under his chin. “Tell me true, you traveled straight?”
He nodded, raising his spread hands to his shoulders to keep them in view. Small cuts gashed his palms and wrists. Had the man battled his way out from a prickle bush? Where then had he found such a nasty bruise?
Gossamyr scanned the forest, seeking a tear in the curtain to Faery where perhaps a sprite might be seen spying on his mischievous deed. Wide hornbeam leaves remained still as stone. Tree trunks gripped the earth, silent stately sentinels. Pale ivy twisted about the grasses and journeyed toward the toadstool circle. Not a dryad in the lot.
Gossamyr could not be sure if it was because she no longer stood in Faery, or simply, the Disenchantment befell more quickly than expected. She saw nothing out of sorts. Save that everything was horizontal.
“Pisky led,” she decided, then snapped the staff away from the man’s chin.
“What?” Ulrich followed her as she turned and stalked down the rough path away from him. “I’ve not seen a pixy.”
“Pisky,” she corrected sharply.
“Piskies, pixies, what have you!”
“They are very different. Piskies fly, pixies…they trundle. As well, pixies do not glimmer.”
“Only thing I’ve seen that glimmers of the enchanted is you, my lady. On your neck there—Oh, Hades!” He clamped a palm to his forehead. The action resulted in a yelp, for obviously his bruised face pained him. “Not again! Pray, tell you are not a damned faery.”
Gossamyr winced at the unfamiliar word. Not a favorable oath, she guessed from his tone.
“You are not? You cannot be. Dragon piss!” He pressed beringed fingers between them in an entreaty. “Have they sent someone to bring me back? Where are they? Do they lurk? No! I will not go. I refuse!” He curled his fingers and wrung the balled fist at Gossamyr. “Your kind have done enough to foul my life.”
“I am n-not a faery,” Gossamyr managed. She pressed a hand to her throat where the blazon was visible. They keep them chained in cages. “No, not faery,” she reiterated more confidently.
“You lie, trickster! Your sort never speak the truth, only in circles.” The man drew tiny frantic rings in the air before him. “Circles, circles, circles. Oh, but those damned circles! It is not the same! Changed, damn them all. It has all changed!”
“Believe me or not,” Gossamyr said over his ranting. “I am m-mortal, like you.” A quick twist of her fingers clasped the highest agraffe on her pourpoint, closing the vest to an uncomfortable tightness.
“Mortal?” He jerked a sneer at her. “My lady, we mortals do not have occasion to call ourselves mortals. We are men, women, coopers, bakers, fishermen—but never do we say mortal. Tavern keepers, tanners, magi and—”
“Enough! I am…a woman then.” Yes, he must see that! She managed an awkward curtsy—a quick bend of one knee—and forced a smile. “Are you well pleased?”
“Pleased? To stand in the presence of a faery?”
“I am not!”
“What of your clothing?”
“What of it?”
He peered closely at her. Gossamyr controlled the urge to reach for the discoloration on his cheek. Did it feel hot? Tender? What did a mortal feel like? His face was such a display of movement and lines and sighs and outburst. So emotional!
Oblivious to Gossamyr’s curiosity, Ulrich eyed the sleeveless pourpoint, slid over the applewood sigil propped on her hip, then stretched his gaze back up her neck. Stuffed with arachnagoss and sown in a fine quilting, the garment protected from sharp or slashing weapons.
He finally said, “Are those leaves sewn together?”
Clutching the rugged fabric fitted snugly to her body, Gossamyr lifted her chin. “Mayhap,” she offered stubbornly, thinking a lie would be just that—so obvious. Lies served nothing but to prolong the inevitable bane. But the truth of her was a necessary misappropriation, lest she find herself in a cage rotting in a market square.
“Leaves! Marvelous!” A brilliant smile revealed white teeth and he clapped his hands together—but the smile straightened sharply, as did his mood. “Well, I am not going with you.”
“I did not ask your accompaniment, mort—er, Ulrich.”
“So be off then.” He shooed her with a flip of his fingers. “Back to Faery where you belong.”
