Gossamyr (29 page)

Of course the fée knew love! Gossamyr had loved. She had
been loved. She was
still
loved.

It could become romantic, should you allow.

So the man did favor her? And why had she not immediately set him
to right last night? Tell him there was not an inkling of interest in
him on her part.

Could she Be here in the Otherside? If you Believe you will
Belong. Surrounded by this air! Falling into the nuzzling warmth of
the hearth fire. Holding hands with a mortal man...

No time! The Red Lady lurks and gains more power with each moment
that she won from Time.

Peering at the top of her hand, Gossamyr traced the area where
Ulrich had kissed her. Mortal touched. So fine. The voice that had
initially bothered her now whispered inside her thoughts, deep and
gentling—ever present. The weight of her braid, trailing down
the center of her back, reminded of his careful attention. She would
keep it so.

"You wish more, my lady?"

The old man held out a splayed hand. He sat at the end of the
table. Ulrich was not to be seen yet this day. Bone. For she wasn't
certain what reaction she would make to seeing his pale blue eyes,
offering promises of romance.

"I've had enough, thank you, Monsieur Armand."

"Ulrich tells me you are in dire need of proper attire."
He gestured to a chest near the hearth, where a soft yellow gown had
been lain across the curved lid.

"Oh, but I couldn't," Gossamyr said, even as she stepped
over for a look.

The fabric slid smoothly under her brushing fingers. Some sort of
silk, though it did not possess the iridescence of arachnagoss. The
neckline and bell sleeves were trimmed in a thin swath of brown fur.
She could not guess at the animal, but sleek gold highlights glinted
as she petted the softness.

"It is old," Armand offered. "My wife's. She passed
decades ago."

"It is gorgeous. But—" Far from practical for the
fight that yet waited her.

"Please, you must wear it for an old man's memory. I thought
to sell it at the Monday market, but those greedy hawkers would never
pay the coin it is worth. Ulrich tells me you would wear it well."
He stroked the soft white hair of his beard. "I will take it as
an affront if you do not accept."

Already holding the gown before her and checking its fit—the
shoulders looked to span exactly to match hers—Gossamyr stepped
over to Armand, gown held to her chest, and leaned in to kiss him on
the forehead. "I accept. On one condition."

"Anything."

"I require braies, as well."

Armand chuckled. "Yes, Ulrich did mention your penchant to
fight. He placed braies aside for you, but I'm afraid you'll still
require the gown."

She thought of the saddlebag, where her purse yet rested. To give
this man her mutable faery coin would be worse than his receiving an
unfair price at market.

"Help him," Armand said.

"What?"

"My nephew. Help him to move on, is all I ask in repayment."

"To move on...where?"

"You know he has suffered. And now he seeks. You can help him
find that solace."

I
hope you discover the solace to the ache that has been
your nemesis.

It could become romantic, should you allow.

"I...will. Thank you, Monsieur Armand, I will dress right
now." She stepped inside the cove of the doorway and within a
leap of the man, tugged the brown wool from her body.

"My nephew tells me you quest?"

Dress spilling over her arms, Gossamyr nodded eagerly in response.
"Yes. I seek..." Vengeance, valor, truth. "Truth?"
The word had sprung from her mouth, unthought. Since when had she
claimed truth over valor?

"Looks like it has already found you."

She returned to the table, preening over the soft fur at her
wrists. "I don't understand."

"Sometimes the truth can be in your hands, yet you see only
the dust from the road. Your past."

"You see nothing, old man." Then she blanched. Of course
he could see nothing.

"I see Faery, splendid and bright."

"Truly?" Had Ulrich told him her origins?

Armand smiled. "I have been there. The last thing I looked
upon before the Faery prince took away my sight was the emerald water
flowing down a falls amidst a rocky outcrop glittering like
diamonds."

The falls at midcenter of the Spiral forest. Many times she had
swum in the waters, always fearful the rush of current would tug her
under, but loving that fear for the adventure it proved. Of course,
there were surely other falls throughout Faery.

"Why were you punished so? Did you enter Faery of your free
will or fall into it?"

With a throaty chuckle, he explained,"I plotted and planned
for decades, since I was a young boy. Finally I caught me a faery and
bade him bring me to his home." He clasped his arms and brought
them to embrace across his chest. Reverent in his memories. "He
did. I lived there for what seemed like years. I would learn later,
here in this mortal land but a day had passed. He indulged me in
sweets and kept me as his pet. Then as recompense for his showing me
the delights of Faery he took my sight and banished me."

That word—banished—how it etched at her heart.
Like
red pricks to flesh.

"I remember his name...Shinn."

Clutching the gown between tight fingers, Gossamyr looked to the
floor.

"The Faery prince showed me the dark side of Faery. 'Tis a
far cruder place than Paris will ever be. I fear not the Armagnacs
nor the English." The old man laid a finger aside his nose,
sniffing. "But should I smell a faery I will turn and race far
away, blindness be damned."

If he could smell a fée... Had Disenchantment taken the
scent of Faery from her?

Troubled he was not struck by her presence, Gossamyr put it off
for a more immediate worry. She knew Shinn was generous with his
favors and ruthless in his repayments. That Armand had tricked him
required return punishment. And that Shinn had granted Monsieur
LaLoux the pleasures of Faery before stealing his sight was his
manner—his very right as a Faery lord.

"My nephew tells me you are the child of a mortal and a
faery."

Gossamyr traced her neck; the blazon was no longer there, having
been washed away in the stream by the windmill. So far from home.
Lost... "Yes."

"But you are more mortal than faery?"

"You...do not scent me?"

Armand tilted his head, appeared to be sniffing the air, then
shrugged. "It has been a time since I have been so close to one
from beyond. Wicked place, that."

"There is a balance between right and wrong. Good and Evil.
You cannot have one without the other, old man. Faery is no more
wicked than this mortal realm is pristine."

"Indeed."

She strode to the door, but clutched the frame, unwilling to
dismiss him as would Shinn. "I am sorry for the loss of your
sight. Where is Ulrich? We should be off."

"He is in a dark mood. He sits up the ladder dwelling on the
past." As she passed by, Armand grasped her wrist. His fingers
were cool and veiny, loose with age. "Listen to Ulrich, and do
not judge. Do not be blind to what he can offer you, child of the
faeries."

Skirts tugged to her knees, Gossamyr ascended the narrow ladder to
the attic room mired with a dull light from the waxed window set into
the gabled peak of the roof. She paused on the top rung and knelt on
the floor, sure Ulrich remained unmindful of her presence. A fine
sheen of dust coated the warped wood-slat flooring. It smelled like
the musty underside of a toadstool. Simple this home, crafted of wood
and bare of luxury, far from the cold elegance of marble. But she
felt comfortable here.

Or was it the entire atmosphere that embraced with welcoming
lightness?

Ulrich's footsteps made marks across the floor. Peeking around the
corner, she spied him in shadow for the sunlight blurred dimension,
but his hosen called out in bold defiance—yellow and black now;
the left leg yellow, the other black—for he'd found
replacements for the pair the werefrog had destroyed. He caught his
forehead in his hands and let out a keening moan.

Gossamyr stiffened. Oh, these mortals and their delicate emotions!

"Gossamyr?" He snapped a yellow knee up to his chest. "I
should have known. Only you could sneak up that creaky ladder without
a sound. That gown!"

"Your uncle gave it to me. But see." He nodded as she
revealed the braies—but she noted his lack of enthusiasm for
her secret fortune. "Do you wish to be alone?"

His sigh settled heavily in her heart.

"I was thinking of her."

She tiptoed across the floor and crouched beside him.

Shrugging his fingers through his hair, a restless motion, Ulrich
smirked. "I owe Rhiana twenty years."

"You missed those years, but yet...she did not."

"Logically, I should accept that truth. But logic has served
me no boon of late. Hades, I should have remained in St. Renan
and...I don't know...slayed the bloody dragon! I might have saved
her, Gossamyr! Don't you understand?"

"Dragon slaying be a miserable task." Rarely did the
beasts come to Faery. And should they, they were revered and
welcomed.

Ulrich gasped, clutching at nothing before him, but his shoulders
sank as if a giant stood upon them. "Do you have no feelings? No
emotions? Don't you know what it is like to feel guilt? Remorse?"

"Unnecessary feelings." Feelings she had known, surely,
but would not succumb to their crippling force. She turned and tried
to focus out the waxed window but it only allowed in the light, not a
clear view.

Behind her, Ulrich rose and beat a fist into his opposite palm.
Within a heartbeat he'd gone from agony to a strange anger.

"A man's greatest fear is loss of his family. For without
people to love you, what can a man be?"

The time has come to release you from a father's protective
obsession.

"To have family ripped from one's grasp, it
is...devastating."

"Yet still you live." She spoke the statement, but
thoughts of her father's devastation filled her vision. Still he
lived...but for how long? Why did he rush her to marriage?

"What?"

"Your greatest fear has come to fruition, yet you remain
standing. The fear did not defeat you, so it cannot be a true fear."

A frustrated clench of fingers shuddered near Ulrich's cheek. "How
to make you understand? I have been changed, and I don't like the
change, for it finds me standing alone, without hope."

"You've hopes of finding the unicorn. Your family may yet be
returned to you."

"Never again the same, Faery Not. Never again."

Likely not, for a man's wish could not reverse time and place his
wife at his side and his infant daughter in his arms. For would not
the entire universe have to move widdershins, as well? A monumental
event. Surely even a unicorn's Enchantment could not make it so.

Ulrich's only hope was to save his daughter from death. Twenty
years must remain a sacrifice for what? A reunion with a child who
might never recall her absent father's face?

"What do you fear, Gossamyr?"

"Hmm? Me, fear? Oh. Well...I... Nothing." Toying a
fingertip in the soft fur circling her wrist, she attempted to dredge
to light an answer. Despite his disbelief in her capacity to feel,
Ulrich's fear was understandable. Loss of family? Not ever seeing her
father again? Her heartbeats increased even to consider such.
"Mayhap... losing a limb?"

"That is a ridiculous fear."

"Not so! A champion cannot—" That she claimed that
title with such ease. Who be she but a lost bit of fée dust?
Lost.
Without family.

The prinkle returned to her spine. Ever there, that unease and
uncertainty.

"You throw up physical walls of protection against your true
emotions, Gossamyr."

He stepped beside her. Now she could verily feel the blood of him
rushing through his veins, furious and bright. A match to her own
inner turmoil. Fear?

"I think you fear feeling."

"Nonsense." How had he come to know her very depths in
so little time? "I can feel."

"No."

"Yes!"

"She is dead, and I am not," Ulrich hissed. "And...it
hurts. I made promises to Rhiana. That I would care for her, see to
her education and upbringing. Now she is gone from me, I can never
have her back. And I cannot imagine what it must have been like for
her, to wake one morning to find the one man who should have been
there for her gone. Do you know what it is like to love? To have
loved and lost? Do you?"

"I have loved!"

"Oh? Ah, yes, your parents. The mortal mother who abandons
her own for her pleasures, and a Faery lord who blinds an innocent
man for his trickery!"

"How dare you!"

"Who would have thought I would meet up with the very child
of the faery who destroyed my uncle's life."

"It was mischief that destroyed your uncle Armand's life!"

"That is his penance, not mine. But do you see? Just as me,
you fear loss of family. And look: Now they are lost to you."

He approached, stepping too close for her comfort. The angle of
the roof prevented her from moving back. The length of her skirt was
too long; her heel stepped onto the hem, jarring her to the side.
"How does it feel, Gossamyr?"

She did not like his tone. She did not want this conversation. Not
this thread of misery to be stretched out before her and plucked like
a lute string. He thought to know her fears?
Yes, and what are
they?

Believe and you Belong.

Where
did
she belong now?

"Step back," she warned.

"No." He shoved her shoulder. "Does it hurt? Can
you feel it? Right here." He laid a palm over her chest, between
her breasts. "Here is where it all coils up and simmers, yes?
Tell me you have emotions, Gossamyr. Tell me you are not some freak
faery who masks her feelings and blinds men to satisfy their lust for
mischief. Do you want to push me away?"