An Unexpected Invitation

by Ceillie Simkiss

  Red and yellow roses climbed and covered the stone of his chimney. Moss coated the foundation of the house before giving way to Elisade ivy, its heart-shaped leaves and tiny white flowers outlining the door and windows of the tall, narrow cylinder. Behind it stood fruit trees of all sorts as far as the eye could see. I remembered some of them from when I had been here before, but there were more than I could count now.

  “Winston, your home is beautiful,” I told him, a little breathless at the sight of his home. “You’ve been hiding this kind of beauty from us? How have you managed to get all of those trees out here without anyone noticing?”

  He turned to face me while he walked, puffing his chest at the compliment.

  “Most of them are my own saplings. Some of the small folk brought me new varieties over the years and helped me to nurture them. I like to think I’ve done pretty well for myself out here. It’s finally as homey as I want it to be.”

  A smile twitched up the corners of my mouth. It was just like Winston to brag about himself while talking about his home. However it was clear that he definitely had reason to brag. His home and land were absolutely stunning in a way I’d never imagined they could be. Looking closer, I saw what looked like sheep wandering between the rows of trees.

  “You keep sheep out here, too?” I asked with a laugh. “Are they Atticus’s food?”

  The addanc chattered at me, slapping his tail on the ground behind him.

  “Don’t be silly,” he scoffed. “Atticus eats fish and birds like a civilized creature. They help me to care for the area around the trees. It’s a lot of upkeep for one person, even for someone as talented as myself.”

  “I can only imagine,” I said seriously.

  “Actually, the thing I wanted to talk to you about is nestled among those trees.”

  I looked closer at the trees, trying to figure out what he was talking about. We were almost to the house, which blocked my view of the area.

  “Are you trying to turn me into a shepherdess, Winston? I’m not sure my house is cut out for sheep.”

  He smiled secretively at me, then turned back around.

  “You’ll see. First, let’s get you that tea. I think I might still have some delicious ginger cookies from the capital. If you aren’t too sick of ginger from your remedies?”

  “I actually love ginger for its taste as well as its medicinal properties. Lead the way, old man.”

  I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was rolling his eyes at me. I grinned and followed him into his home.

  Winston unlocked the front door of his tower and left me to my own devices in order to get Atticus resettled in the pond. I stepped in cautiously, hoping there weren’t any nasty surprises hidden for unattended visitors.

  The interior of Winston’s house was not at all what I expected. A wooden staircase spiraled against the whitewashed walls to the top of the tower with two separate floors branching off of the staircase. He’d left the wood exposed on the underside of the floors, and someone had carved them to look like the vines that climbed the exterior of the house.

  I could see the age of the home in its furniture. The leather chairs and table showed their age, but it looked comfortable. Winston hadn’t left all of the plants outdoors. One section of the wall held a hanging wooden trellis that brought some beautiful, leafy ferns into the room. It was gorgeous, and so entirely Winston’s home.

  I got so caught up in looking around that I didn’t hear the door open and shut behind me.

  “Winston, your home is beautiful. How have I been entertaining us in my tiny cabin all these years when you have all of this beautiful space?”

  He shrugged. The motion looked delicate on his thin, graceful frame. He was a beautiful man.

  “I never wanted Atticus to feel unwelcome. I spend most nights I’m home out on the water with him. I still cannot believe the council just waltzed in and took him without me noticing.”

  “He seems like a good sort,” I ventured. “For a creature that could easily eat both of us in two bites.”

  “It would take at least three bites,” Winston laughed. I shook my head, a wry smile on my lips. He lit the wood stove with the flick of a finger, and put the kettle on to boil. He gestured toward the living room, unlacing his shoes before he stepped onto the wool rug.

  “I do wish you’d told me about him before all this. He’s a rather large secret to keep from your friend. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively.”

  His smile twisted and his eyes became sadder than I’d ever seen them.

  “I quit telling people about Atticus a long time ago. Humanity tends to be cruel to things they don’t understand, particularly when those things have more teeth than a fine tooth comb. It’s been… well, let’s say a while since I’ve said anything about him to anybody. I nearly collapsed when Molly met him.”

  “I can imagine, what with you being one for the dramatics,” I said dryly. “You really ought to apologize for threatening her. She’s a good kid. ”

  He sighed, rubbing the long spindly fingers of one hand against the palm of the other.

  “I know. I’ll do it as soon as she comes back from her parents’ house. But first, I wanted to apologize to you. I was… rather upset about Atticus yesterday and said some very rude and thoughtless things. I shouldn’t have said them, and I should have apologized immediately. I was an ass and I won’t ever say those things to you again.”

  “I know how you get when you’re upset, Winston. I appreciate the apology, and I forgive you. But know that if you ever do it again, I will poison every bite of food you take for the rest of your seemingly interminable life. You hear me?”

  He grinned, showing every stark white tooth in his tanned face as the kettle began to whistle.

  “I wouldn’t expect any less. Now, let’s have some tea.”

  By the time we’d finished our pot of tea, the sun was beginning its descent beyond the mountains. Winston had changed back into his “comfortable clothes” - a plum robe and lawn undertunic - and we’d both stretched our muscles out to avoid the stiffness that came with age and heavy exercise. I lay across the sofa with my stocking clad feet on his lap, his own bare feet resting on the short table in front of him while the fire crackled in front of us. It was perfectly cozy, despite the fact that I’d never been in his home before.

  “Now, you said you had a surprise for me,” I told him with a bat of my eyelashes. “Do I get to know what it is before I leave for the wedding?”

  “Ah, of course!” He patted my feet. I retracted them so he could get up. “Put your shoes and cloak back on, my dear. We have got a bit of a walk.”

  I made a face at him and he laughed.

  “I know. But I think it’ll be worth it. Come on.”

  He grabbed his own cloak from the stand near the door and tossed mine to me unexpectedly. It smacked me in the face and I started to giggle. I put it on and then shoved my feet back into my boots, lacing them lazily. If it had been warmer, I would’ve gone barefoot, as was my general preference.

  Winston always teased me that that was the way to get feet that looked like they belonged to goblins. He wasn’t entirely wrong, I just didn’t care. Nobody was looking at my feet except him, and I didn’t care that my feet were unattractive to him. I wasn’t romantically interested in anyone. Given that he was unabashedly only interested in men and nonbinary people, my feet (and all of my other body parts) weren’t attractive to him in the first place.

  The evening wind whipped around us when we stepped outside and I was glad for the cloak and boots. We walked in companionable silence for several minutes, our cloaks and his robes rustling in the wind.

  “How far do we need to go?” I asked as we wound our way through a path in the trees. “I thought this was all forest back here before you turned it into an orchard.”

  “Not much farther,” he said. “I found something that I think will interest you out here.”

  We stepped into a copse of fir trees and I ga
sped. Before us stood a small home built in the same style as Winston’s tower, though it could only be one story. I could see a small garden around the side and a fire burning in the fireplace in the center of the house. I wondered how it had been lit, since Winston had been with me all day.

  “I found this cabin last summer and have been slowly excavating and cleaning it out ever since. I don’t know who lived here before, but the house was still in exceptional condition for being… very old. It needed a good scrubbing and updating, but I thought that since your cabin was starting to show its age, and you were complaining about being so far from town…”

  My jaw very nearly hit the ground. He was offering me this house? As a gift? He was wringing his hands together and watching me anxiously. His salt and pepper hair was tucked behind his ears and I could see even in the dim light that he was chewing on the inside of his lip.

  “You want to give me a house? Winston, I don’t know if fae culture is different from human culture, but that’s huge. That’s…” My throat clenched and tears were welling up in my eyes. I cleared my throat and made an effort not to cry.

  “You don’t have to take it if it’s too much or if you don’t want it or…”

  He spoke and all my attempts at composure were shattered. I flung my arms around his bony waist and squeezed him tightly.

  “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you for even offering this, let alone taking it.”

  His smile was wide but trembling. Something made me think that this wasn’t the only surprise of the night. There was no way to find out what it was other than to look inside. Winston was lucky that I trusted him not to have brought me out here to murder me.

  “There’s no one else in the world I’d have offered this to. Why don’t you take a look inside before you make a decision either way?”

  I twisted the knob on the wooden door, which opened with a barely audible creak. I stepped inside tentatively, peeking into the corners. I fell in love with it almost immediately. The walls were made of the same rock that formed the exterior, but the cracks had been filled in. I ran my fingers over the wall next to the fireplace and found that the whole wall had been polished to a high sheen. It was stunning.

  The interior of the cabin was nearly empty. Dark curtains covered the windows and a small, rickety table stood in the center of the room. On the table sat a wide but shallow wooden box with a curly pink silk ribbon on the top. At the sight of it, I turned back to where Winston stood in the doorway, my face beginning to ache from the wide smile on my face.

  “What’s this? You actually got me a present?”

  He flushed at my teasing question. Clearing his throat, he spoke. It was nice to see him shed his aloof mask. Around others, he wasn’t so cavalier about showing his emotions, especially the ones that made him vulnerable.

  “Well, “got” isn’t quite the right word for it but it is a present, yes,” he told me, fidgeting with the wide sleeves of his robe. I could see the fraying threads of the embroidery

  “You’re going to ruin that robe if you keep pulling the embroidery out, you know,” I told him gently. It was one of his more common nervous habits. “Aislinn will throw you out by your ears if you ask her to redo your sleeves again because you can’t keep yourself from fidgeting with them.”

  “Yes, mother,” he teased, the corners of his mouth turned up in a catlike smile. My smile curved to match his. He stuffed his hands into his pockets instead, where I knew he would be twiddling with the seams in them. “Now open the box.”

  I pulled the ribbon off the top, setting it gently onto the table behind the box so it wouldn’t be damaged. I noticed with some surprise that my fingers were trembling, too. I guess I was still nervous about this even though I trusted Winston implicitly. The body, unlike the brain or the heart, never lied to you.

  Pressing my fingers into the warm brown wood, I slid the lid out of the box and gasped. Inside lay a thick handmade wool shawl. I lifted it and nearly swooned at the delight of the texture on my fingers. I shook it out in front of me and realized that the color shifted from the bright white of starlight to the blue of a robin’s egg to the deepest midnight blue I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Winston, you made this?”

  His smile turned into a beam that was almost as bright as the shawl. Tears began to well in my eyes again and I didn’t even try to stop them this time.

  “From my own sheep and with my own hands. I want you to always be warm and comfortable, both with me and on your own, which is why I wanted to offer both of these to you. I know that this house is a rather large thing to offer.” He scuffed his toe on the bare stone floor before continuing.

  “You know I don’t want anyone else living around me but I would like to spend more time with you without spending half the evening walking back and forth from that moldering cabin you call home now, especially now that you know that Atticus is here..” He trailed off, perhaps because he realized that he was rambling. I opened my mouth to reply, but he started talking again, faster this time.

  “Um, anyway, it’s yours if you want it. And if you don’t, then that’s fine. There’s no pressure for you to take it or anything. But. Um. It’s here for you.”

  Since he didn’t seem inclined to let me speak and I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be able to make myself understood with the tears streaming down my face, I wrapped my arms around his thin waist and squeezed, mumbling my thanks into his chest. It rumbled with his silent laughter under my face until he wrapped his arms around my shoulders.

  “You’re my best friend, you know that?” I told him. My heart was so full I thought it would burst.

  “And you’re mine.”

  Molly and I stood at the docks at sunrise two days later with a bag of supplies each, ready to take the ferry to the mainland and begin our journey.

  It seems like the entire island had come out to see us off, though I knew that wasn’t the case. Winston, and Atticus, stood as close to Molly’s family as Aislinn would let them. The kids were fascinated by Atticus. I watched as they kept attempting to sneak closer to pet the addanc while their parents were talking to their older sister. It didn’t quite work, but I suspected that Atticus would eventually become a normal sight at their home in the coming months. There were a few other friends gathered around, but they kept as far away from the addanc as humanly possible.

  “Beatrice, I’m counting on you to keep our girl safe,” Graham told me. I rolled my eyes. Molly could take care of herself, and me, very well. Besides, we’d be on a horse for two thirds of the journey. Molly had been riding a horse for nearly as long as she’d been walking, and was one of the fastest and most skillful riders I’d ever met. Given that I had spent the first 20 years of my life in and out of the stables at Bryn Eirian, that was saying something.

  “All she’ll have to do is speak the counter spell and I’ll be at her defense,” I promised them. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be of any use, but I’d also prepared several defensive charms for her, including a hat that I’d knitted invisibility spells into. It should be strong enough to make both her and the horse she was on invisible for long enough to find help. I hoped, anyway. It was a new format for that particular spell, but it had worked in our tests. The best defense was not needing to defend ourselves at all.

  “You have enough money to make this trip for the both of you? And to get fresh horses? You don’t need anything else?” Aislinn fixed me with a piercing look that reminded me of my mother. I laughed.

  “No, we’re all set. I live alone with minimal expenses and make magical charms for a living,” I reminded her. “We don’t need funds from you and I won’t take them if you try. I’m paying for everything. Molly coming with me is a huge favor.”

  Molly beamed down at me. A sailor tapped me on the shoulder.

  “It’s time to shove off, Miss Beatrice.”

  I smiled at him and nodded my understanding. He walked
to the boat, carrying both of our bags with him.

  “That’s our cue, friends. We will see you in about two months, but we’ll send a messenger bird as soon as we make landfall. I promise!” Aislinn raised a hand to interrupt but I continued. “And when we reach Bryn Eirian.”

  The older woman smiled nervously at me, then at her daughter, who was making almost the exact same expression.

  Atticus caught my eye from the crowd. He said something to Atticus - hopefully asking him to stay put - and made his way over to us.

  “Molly has all the instructions on how to return you to yourself, and the tea that will make you feel more human once you arrive. Everything will go perfectly. I’m sure of it.”

  “That makes one of us,” I admitted. “I’m nervous about traveling like this for so long. There’s so many things that can go wrong.”

  “And you are prepared for any of them. We worked hard to make sure you would be. Now you’ve just got to transform yourself into whatever object you’ve chosen and be on your way.” He pressed a comforting kiss to the top of my head. “Molly? Come get ready to catch her once she changes. We can’t have her getting all dusty.”

  Molly grinned and moved behind me.

  “I’m ready when you are, Miss Beatrice.”

  Well, then I guess I’d better be ready, I thought. “Here goes nothing!”

  With that, I transformed myself into the shawl Winston had made for me, and promptly lost consciousness.

  Part Four

  I came to lying on the bathroom floor, the wood underneath my cheek feeling cool and comfortable. I lifted my head cautiously. My mouth was as dry as a bone and tasted like a I had been sucking on a dry washcloth for the last week. It was a vile feeling. But I was in Bryn Eirian. I had made it in one piece.

  At least, I was pretty sure we had made it. I tried to speak but my voice came out a croak instead. Molly kneeled in front of me, a cup of tea in her hand.