Charles Bewitched (6 page)

Charles wished he could say
no—but those eyes on him wouldn’t let him. “What if she did?”

“She was repudiating his
magic. Because mine had already marked her.” The fairy lord leaned back in his
chair. “And now what, Charles Leland? If you wish, you may go back to your home
now and tell your family that Persephone is mine. Once we are bound, I will
make her a good husband, you may promise them. She will be honored as lady of
my lands—”

“Wait a minute.” It was
frightfully impolite to interrupt, but Charles didn’t care. “What do you mean,
‘once you are bound’? I thought you said Persy was already yours.”

“She is. We are…I believe
you would call it ‘betrothed’. We shall actually be wed in a few weeks, when
she has grown used to the fairy lands well enough to stay there for good. It
will also give my people time to prepare the celebration. I promised Margaret a
fine party.” He nodded to her affably.

Charles pretended to stare
down at his feet as if cast into dejection, but it was to hide the sudden wild
hope that has sprung up inside him. They weren’t actually married yet…which
meant there was still a chance that he could rescue Persy. Except….he took a
deep breath, and looked up at the fairy lord again. “Do I have to go back,
then?” he asked.

“Hmm? What is that?” The
fairy lord had turned to Persy again as if their conversation had already
ended, but he glanced back at Charles.

“Do I have to go back? Why
can’t I stay here?”

“Oh!” Margaret breathed,
next to him.

The fairy lord looked at him
curiously. “Why do you wish to do that?”

Charles scuffled his toes in
the grass and tried to look embarrassed. “It’s…it’s school, sir. They make me
study idiotic things like history all the time, and I hate it. See the sort of
nonsense they make me read?” He patted his pocket and produced
History and
Policy of the Norman and Angevin Kings
, holding it between two fingers like
a rotting cabbage leaf. “And when my parents see what my last term’s marks
were…well, I don’t want to be there. I’d rather stay with Persy. She can
continue to teach me magic, which is what I really want to study. If she can
get used to the fairy lands, I can too. And I…I….” Inspiration struck him. “I
could work for you I could be your page. It’s all the rage for kings and queen
in my world to have foreign pages to attend them.” Or at least it had been, a
century or two ago, but the fairy lord likely wouldn’t know that. “Wouldn’t a
human in your court be plenty foreign?”

The fairy lord glanced over
at the veiled woman sitting to the side. She hadn’t spoken, but from the angle
at which she sat seemed to be paying close attention to the conversation.

“Not all that foreign,” he
said. “But it might reconcile your sister more easily to her new life. Very
well, little wizard, you may stay, at least for as long as I find you useful.
You will find your new position no sinecure. I shall expect you to attend me
whenever I wish you to.”

“Yes, sir.” Charles dropped
his eyes modestly as he bowed, to hide the triumph that must surely show in
them. Once they let Persy wake up, he’d be able to talk to her and they could
figure something out together. Good old Perse could always figure things out.

“You may sit there and
watch,” the fairy lord said, gesturing vaguely to a place at his feet and
already turning back to Persy. “Pay attention. You’ll have to learn our ways if
you’re going to be useful.”

“
I’ll
teach him,
brother,” Margaret said, taking his arm again.

“Hmm.” The fairy lord
glanced at her, and a small frown rippled across his face and was gone. He
turned to Persy again and smiled into her pale, sleeping face.

Charles sat down where the
fairy lord had indicated and pretended to watch the dancing. But mostly he was
watching the spot where he had been hiding, across the clearing. Was Nando
still there, watching him back? He reached up and pretended to adjust his
collar as he nodded, trying to signal that all was well.

But no face appeared above
the undergrowth, nodding in understanding. The undergrowth itself stayed still,
not revealing by the flutter of the smallest leaf that a boy still crouched
there, watching him. Charles swallowed back his disappointment. Nando had
probably fled as soon as Margaret had given him her hand. Had he gone back to
Galiswood to report? Or had he made his way back to the road, to find his
kumpania
and shake the dust of these fairy-haunted woods from his new hand-me-down
boots?

Charles squared his
shoulders. It looked as if he were on his own. He and Persy…against a fairy
lord of extraordinary cunning and his very charming younger sister.

When the moon had begun to
slip below the trees, the fairy lord rose from his chair by Persy and lifted
one hand. Instantly the torches somehow extinguished themselves, the musicians
stopped playing and put away their instruments, and the dancers ceased their
frolics and begun to walk sedately toward him. Charles climbed warily to his
feet and watched them approach but they ignored him, only pausing to bow
respectfully to the fairy lord as they passed through the tall, dark doorway in
the side of the barrow.

Charles wanted to rub his
eyes in astonishment, but managed not to: where had that door come from? It
hadn’t been there a minute ago—

“He opened it, of course,”
Margaret said, as if he’d spoken the question aloud. Charles started; he’d
nearly forgotten she was there. “That’s one of his powers as our liege lord—to
be able to open doors.”

After almost everyone had
passed through the door, the fairy lord himself bent to lift Persy in his arms.
He looked at Charles and Margaret, lifted an eyebrow, and went through the
doorway.

“What’s he going to do with
her?” Charles asked in alarm.

“Why, bring her back to her
room and let her ladies put her to bed. She’ll wake in a while.”

“Will she remember
anything?”

“No, how could she? She’s
been asleep,” Margaret said, surprised. “But my brother went into her dreams to
be with her so that she wasn’t lonely while the rest of us rejoiced. Didn’t you
see him talking to her?”

Charles wondered if Persy
might not have preferred to be alone; it seemed rather presumptuous to invade
someone’s dreams without their permission. But Margaret was tugging his sleeve.

“Come on—it’s time to go,”
she said, and taking his hand, led him through the dark doorway. To his
surprise, they were suddenly standing in a broad, twilit field, tilting gently
downward toward what he thought might be a lake—at least, there was a darker
expanse there that might have been water. The air was soft, warmer than the
night they’d left behind.

“How’d he do that?” he asked
Margaret.

“Do you think he’d tell his
little sister?” she replied.

Hmm. Probably not. He turned
at Margaret’s urging and found himself walking uphill, away from the door,
which stood like a dark rectangle opening into nowhere in the middle of the
field, and uphill toward a great, sprawling house, two or three stories tall,
gleaming softly in the violet dusk. He looked up at the sky above it and was
astonished to see…nothing. No stars or moon glittered and gleamed in the sky of
the fairy lands, and for the first time, Charles felt a little afraid. Eton had
always seemed so far from home, but it was no distance at all compared to this.

“Is it nighttime here too?
When will the sun come up?” he asked Margaret.

She snorted. “What sun? That
is part of your world, not ours. Why do you think we come to your world for our
dances? We enjoy your sun and moon and stars. They’re so
different
.”

“Margaret,” a woman’s voice
called from behind them.

It was low and very quiet,
but Margaret stopped and turned toward it at once. “Yes, mother, I’m here,” she
said.

Charles turned too. It was
the veiled woman who had sat slightly apart from the others at the dance. She
stopped before them, and he looked at her with interest. So this was Margaret’s
mother—her human mother? “Ma’am,” he said, making a polite bow.

“Your name is Charles
Leland,” she said. The veil she still wore concealed her features, but he could
feel her examining him closely.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And my lord’s new bride is
your sister Persephone.”

Not if he had anything to
say about it, but it wouldn’t do to say that out loud. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh,” she said, and it sounded
almost like a sorrowful sigh. “I didn’t know it was she whom he…I haven’t seen
her since she was just a very little girl—she and her twin sister. You must
have been born after I….” She sighed again, but a slight smile had crept into
her voice. “You have a look of your father, but I suspect you’re very much your
mother’s son. You have Parthenope’s forthrightness.”

“You know my family?”
Charles asked in surprise. Who
was
this woman?

“I did, once. Poor little
Persephone.” She shook her head. “I wish I could help her.”

Charles blinked. “Then you
don’t want her to marry your son?”

The veiled woman drew
herself up. “I am not his mother. His father…took me after his first wife
died.”

So Margaret was the fairy
lord’s half-sister. That made sense. But who was her mother? “Ma’am,” he began,
but she had taken Margaret’s hand and was drawing her away.

“Not now. We shall talk
another day. I…I am tired now. Good-bye for now,” she said.

“I’ll come and find you
later,” Margaret called over her shoulder.

Charles started to protest
as they hurried away—they couldn’t stop now, before he’d found out who she was!
But then he saw the fairy lord striding back down the field toward him and
wondered if that had anything to do with their precipitate departure. His
questions would have to wait for another time.

He went to meet his new
master and bowed respectfully to him. If he was going to do this, he might as
well do it right.

“Well, little wizard,” the
fairy lord said, looking at him with that amused expression again. “What do you
think of my land so far?”

“I don’t know. It’s…um…a
little dimmer here than I’m used to,” Charles said diplomatically.

He inclined his head.
“You’ll soon grow used to it, and wonder how you endured the burning light of
your own world. Now, come. It isn’t good for someone unfamiliar with these
lands to linger out here alone. Especially not a human.”

“Why isn’t it safe for me to
be alone, sir?” Charles looked around him as they went up the hill toward the
house. Knowing what might be lurking out here when he tried to sneak back
through the door to get help for Persy would be helpful.

“Because there are beings in
this world who would find an unwary human an almost irresistible quarry. Until
you learn our ways and folk, you must be very careful, even if you are
possessed of magic.”

Charles nodded. “Yes, sir. I
have no desire to be anything’s dinner.”

“There are even worse things
than being eaten for dinner, little wizard.” The fairy lord’s eyes glinted. “Be
glad you do not know what they are.”

There seemed to be no good
answer to that, so Charles held his tongue. The fairy lord led him into the
house through a pair of doors guarded by two more of his warriors. Beyond the
doors was a great hall, empty just now, with columns that looked like living
tree trunks growing directly out of the stone floor. They walked the length of
this room, their shadows dancing grotesquely in the light of the few torches
left lit, and went through another set of doors with another pair of guards.
Charles eyed them curiously.

“You have a lot of guards,”
he observed.

“I do, because I just
defeated an invading force and chased them back into their own lands, and they
resent that. I won’t take any chances now that the mother of my children is
here,” he replied.

They were ascending a spiraling
staircase now, which opened onto a broad passage hung with tapestries and lit
at intervals by some sort of lamp—at least, that was what Charles guessed they
were.

“Here. You may have this
room,” the fairy lord said, pushing open a door. “I don’t think anyone else is
using it right now. You may sleep for now.”

“But—but shouldn’t I be
doing something?” What did a page do, anyway, besides standing about near his
master?

“Why? Is there something
you’d like to do?” The fairy lord looked at him inquiringly. “I have work to do
and do not wish you getting in my way, which is what you will do until you’ve
learned how we live.”

“Don’t you sleep?”

“Not very often. I am
generally too busy.”

Drat—that put a bit of a
damper on his trying to find ways to help Persy. He glanced around his small,
rather spartan room. “Am I supposed to be wearing your livery or something?”

“Would you like to? I
suppose we could find something for you to wear.” He loomed over Charles, and
fixed him with a stern look. “Sleep now, little wizard,” he said softly, and
suddenly Charles felt as if weights had been attached to his eyelids.  For a
few fleeting seconds he thought about resisting it. But it was probably better
not to give his new master any sign that he
could
resist…and besides,
the narrow bed in the corner draped in soft white blankets looked exceedingly
comfortable….

He awoke suddenly, his eyes
popping open. Where was he? He’d just been in the middle of a dusky field,
holding someone close against his chest while soft tendrils of her hair tickled
his nose. He strained to see in the darkness, and an oblong of violet twilight
some feet away made him sit up and stare.

Memory came flooding back
then. He was in his room in the fairy lord’s palace, here to try to rescue
Persy, and the fairy lord had commanded him to sleep—

“I thought all humans
snorted like beasts while they slept,” said a voice practically in his left
ear. “But you didn’t at all. I’ve been watching you for
ever
and you
didn’t snort once.”

Charles snapped his fingers
and muttered “
lux!
” A soft glow suddenly suffused the room, revealing
Margaret seated on a low stool beside his bed, her chin resting on one hand as
she regarded him. She no longer wore her feather dress, but a simple, unadorned
frock of blue linen. Her silver-blonde hair was drawn back in a plait that hung
over her shoulder.

“What are you doing here?”
he demanded. Good thing he hadn’t stopped to do more than pull off his coat
before he collapsed last night—er, whenever it was when he fell into bed.

“I told you. I wanted to
hear this funny noise humans are supposed to make when they sleep, but you
didn’t do anything, even when I went into your—” she sat back and closed her
mouth.

“Er, well…” He looked at her
and wondered what she had been about to say, but decided not to pursue the
matter. “It’s probably time I got up, anyway. What time is it?”

“What do you mean?” Her brow
wrinkled.

“Don’t you have clocks
here?” He felt at his waistcoat pocket, pulled out his watch and looked at it.
It had stopped, so he gave it a quick wind and held it out to her.

She bent to peer at it.
“It’s making a funny noise!”

“That means it’s working.
It’s counting time.”

“You can count time?
Really?” She examined the watch again. “How? I thought it just…went.”

“Well, it does…but you can
divide it into lengths called seconds and minutes and hours…” He trailed off at
the incomprehension in her face. In a world without sunrise and sunset to
divide time into day and night, maybe watches didn’t make much sense. But they
must have some way of marking time—

“Your sister is awake,” she
said, banishing thoughts of watches and time from his thoughts.

“She is? Good! Can I see
her?” He pushed the blankets aside and sat up. Something fell off the foot of
the bed.

Margaret reached over and
picked it up. “What’s this?” she said, holding up a bundle of cloth. “It looks
like clothes.”

He reached for it. “I think
it might be for me. I told your brother I thought I should be dressing more
like you if I’m going to live here.”

She frowned. “But I like you
in
your
clothes.”

“But your brother—”

“He won’t notice what you
wear. He’s too busy with everything else. I’m surprised he’s paid as much
attention as he has to your sister, except that he wants to have babies.” She
folded her arms and looked disgusted.

“These could use a wash. I
think I’d be more comfortable in something clean.” Come to think of it, he
needed to find out if there were baths in the fairy lands.

“I suppose that’s true.” But
she looked disappointed.

Charles waited. Finally he
said, “I, um, would like to change.”

“Yes, I was waiting for you
to.”

She was joking. She had to
be. But no, her expression when she looked at him was serene, maybe a little
puzzled. He took a deep breath. “Humans—at least where I’m from—like to have
some privacy when they do things like bathe or change their clothes.”

“Oh.” She stood up, looking
uncertain. “What should I do?”

He stood up too. “Maybe wait
for me outside my door?”

“Must I? Oh, all right.” She
went to the door and left. Charles breathed a sigh of relief and swiftly
changed into his new attire. He straightened his bed, folded his clothes and
left them on the chair along with the copy of
History and Policy of the
Norman and Angevin Kings
that was still in his coat pocket—there was no
escaping his summer reading, was there?—and went to find Margaret.