Stranger

by Zoë Archer

  “Glastonbury Tor has been called the entrance to the realm of faerie,” Catullus mused. He took the land in long strides, which, through force of will, she just managed to match.

  “Can’t go back there. It’s too far for our purposes—and the place is probably still crawling with pixies.” She hoped she would never have to encounter one of those little monsters again.

  “There must be other ways of entering Otherworld. Hollow hills, or other portals.”

  “Maps don’t exactly show such places.”

  “Not maps, but …” He glanced around, then, seeing something that she could not, strode off the bridle path. She jogged to follow.

  Gemma trailed behind him until he reached a cluster of birch trees. Pushing back the undergrowth, he uncovered a tiny puddle of water, then crouched down beside it. She watched with open curiosity as he plucked from one of his pockets a single brown-and-cream bird feather and held it over the water.

  “There has to be some explanation for what you’re doing.”

  He shot her a grin so full of boyish exuberance, she thought a brass band would pop out of the bushes to play a rousing tune, celebratory fireworks would pinwheel with color, and any of a dozen foolish but wonderful things to happen. His happiness made her happy purely for its own sake.

  After the disenchantment of Richard, Gemma had taken lovers, with varying degrees of duration. She expected nothing from them, only distraction and temporary assuaging of her body’s needs. Not a one of them ever made her feel as she did now with Catullus, as though his sorrows cut her deeply, his joy feeding her own. She hadn’t felt that, even with Richard. Now, with Catullus, she did. It was terrifying and wonderful.

  “Birds are exceptionally sensitive to magic,” he explained, bracing his forearms on his knees and twirling the feather between his fingertips. “Blades often use them to help identify Sources, since they react strongly to its presence. For years, now, I have been trying to create a device that utilizes this sensitivity in order to locate magic. So we can be more precise instead of, as we sometimes are wont to do, blundering around using a haphazard mixture of scholarship and conjecture.”

  He held up the feather. “I keep one of these handy, just waiting for the proper opportunity to use it. The device that I have in mind would work along similar lines as a compass.” With surprising delicacy, given the size of his hands, Catullus set the feather onto the puddle. The feather immediately glided across the water’s surface, coming to rest on the edge to Catullus and Gemma’s left. He picked the feather up and repeated the experiment twice. Both times had the exact same results.

  “That’s where we’ll find magic,” said Gemma. She pointed in the direction which the feather moved.

  Yet he shook his head. “It’s a negative reaction. The closer a bird comes to magic, the more it becomes agitated.”

  “Which means that we go in the opposite direction from where the feather is aiming.”

  “You’re a quick study, Miss Murphy.”

  “I’ve got a good teacher, Mr. Graves.”

  Their gazes held, a wordless communion. They drew closer. Their mouths met in an open, consuming kiss.

  Heat washed over and through her, and she clung to him as if by instinct, her body knowing without her conscious understanding that she had to hold tight to him, drink in his kisses, because this, he, nourished her.

  The kiss turned hungry as he met her with his own demands, and her breasts grew sensitive, heavy. A slick warmth gathered between her legs with each sweep of his tongue against her own. She would have pulled him down on top of her, but he broke away with a growl.

  “Can’t,” he rasped. “I shouldn’t have … not when we can’t take this to where it needs to go.”

  “Insanity’s starting to look mighty appealing.” But she knew he was right. They had important business to undertake. Everything else was, unfortunately, a distraction.

  So Catullus marked the opposite direction from which the feather pointed, put the feather back into his coat, and they both rose up on limbs grown clumsy with unfulfilled desire. Gemma wondered if she’d ever before lived in such a state of frustrated need. She thought she wanted him greatly before they’d made love. Now that she knew the pleasure of his body, that desire increased a hundredfold.

  When they might have the time and security to give in to that desire … she did not knowyr.

  “I keep picturing it,” Gemma said as they wended their way down into a tree-lined vale. “The entrance to the realm of magic.”

  “And what do you see in that fertile writer’s imagination of yours?”

  “A moss-covered stone arch, the surface of the stone covered in arcane carvings.” She plucked a tall grass and began to chew on it thoughtfully.

  “Reasonable assumption.” Catullus wore his thoughtfulness with the comfort of a man who was happiest when thinking, a born scholar. “So, in this conceptualization, does one simply walk under the arch to be transported to Otherworld?”

  “Seems too easy. All the fairy tales my granda told me made it seem a bit more complicated than that. It wouldn’t be right to have humans just waltzing in and out of fairyland whenever they feel like it.”

  “Get a bit crowded.”

  “And drive up the prices of real estate.”

  “Or lower them—humans can be awfully annoying.”

  “All of them?” she asked.

  “Others are quite … pleasant. And by ‘pleasant,’ I mean one human in particular drives me mad with desire.”

  His words heated her, but she felt compelled to note, “You were crazy before you met this certain human.”

  “She took me from the boundaries of merely being eccentric into being verifiably insane.”

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “We’ll keep each other company in the sanitarium.”

  “Then I will be a happy man in my straitjacket.”

  They smiled, and she didn’t realize until that moment that she had been just a little worried. She’d given him her body, and he had come to mean a great deal to her, but the truth was that she hadn’t been quite sure whether or not she and Catullus actually … liked one another.

  As she and Catullus smiled at one another, walking comfortably side by side, she saw that this most extraordinary man suited her, and she him. She was pretty damned content just to be in his company.

  A friend, she realized. He was her friend. They were hard to come by, especially given the choices she’d made over the course of her life. Richard had not been her friend. Nor had the men who’d come after him. And she knew few women, still fewer who liked and respected Gemma and her line of work. Now that she had that which she’d lacked for so long, nothing would be taken for granted.

  Chill insight pierced the warmth this understanding brought her. They had nearly been killed that very morning, and the risks that lay ahead were even more hazardous. Everything was tenuous. Everything could be lost. Not just her own life, but his. In the span of several days, he had come to mean so much to her. Losing him terrified her.

  He saw her expression darken, and, with his usual quick comprehension, he grasped its cause.

  Sobering, he returned to the topic they’d been discussing. Within the riddle of the Otherworld lay the slim possibility of victory over the Heirs. “So, it shan’t be easy to cross into the realm of magic. Perhaps it will require some variety of incantation. Or an offering.”

  With her spirits lowered, Gemma shrugged. “We won’t know until we get there. Right now, all of this is conjecture.”

  He wouldn’t let her sink, so he said, almost cheerfully, “I happen to enjoy conjecture. Just as I like postulation, theory, and speculation. If life was reduced to simply dealing with what we conclusively know, it would be a dull business indeed.”

  She nodded her agreement, but felt herself torn between her enjoyment of his company and the real possibility that it wouldn’t, couldn’t, last.

  They crested a small rise, and their steps slowed. All spe
culation on the portal to Otherworld soon ended abruptly and, actually, a bit disappointingly.

  “This isn’t what I was expecting,” Gemma said. “Are we sure this is what we’re looking for?”

  “No ruins, no arches, nothing but this … this …”

  “Old well.”

  For that’s what it was. In the shelter of trees and bracken stood an old stone well, nothing more than a low circle of rough stones forming its walls. It had no roof, not even a cranked windlass for raising and lowering a bucket. A rusty metal eyebolt gouged into the top of the wall held the tattered remains of rope. No inscriptions. No fanciful carvings or altars. As far as Gemma could see, this was a perfectly ordinary, entirely uninteresting well that hadn’t seen use in decades.

  “There’s an old, old book in the Blades’ library,” he said as they approached the well. “Must have read it a score of times. All about faerie lore. Blaiklock’s Faerie Miscellany. In it, I saw that, over and over again, the entrances to the faerie realm often lie within the circle of toadstools, or within the stones surrounding a well.”

  It wasn’t a small well—its diameter roughly five feet across—and the wall that encircled it came to her waist. Weeds poked up through the stones, nodding in the faint breeze.

  They peered over the wall, looking down into the shaft of the well. It was very dark.

  He picked up a pebble and dropped it down the well. After what felt like a long, long time, a faint splash echoed up the shaft. “It’s not dry.”

  Not precisely a comfort. Someone might drown at the bottom of the well, instead of having their neck broken.

  “This doesn’t look much like the entryway to the realm of magic,” she said doubtfully. “Maybe the feather misled us.”

  “Don’t be too hasty.” He braced his hands on the wall and continued to gaze down into the well, as if answers could be drawn up from its dark waters. “Bodies of water often served as boundaries between the mortal and enchanted worlds.”

  “And we just jump into this?” If she had to, she’d do it, but the prospect of leaping into an old well, with no real way to get out of the well, didn’t strike her as very appealing.

  “Not precisely.” He snapped his fingers. “Remember how we were thinking one might have to make an incantation or something similar to open the portal?” When she nodded, he continued, his voice growing animated as he reasoned out the conundrum, “One thing that remains consistent in faerie legend is the love and importance of music. In the tales that mention toadstools and wells, to get to the land of faerie, you’ve got to sing and dance around the circle. That opens the door.”

  “Widdershins,” Gemma said suddenly.

  “Pardon?” He blinked at her.

  “That’s what my granda said. To get to the other realm, you had to walk or dance widdershins. Backward, or counterclockwise,” she explained, twirling her finger.

  “Against the movement of the sun. Which makes sense, since many legends of faerie involve its existence as a complement or opposite to the mortal world.”

  “Contrary little buggers, those faerie folk.”

  He straightened, then held out his hands. “Shall we?”

  It was her turn to blink. “Now?”

  “Might as well get to it.”

  Gemma didn’t believe herself to be a coward—she had leapt off a moving train, been in battle only that morning, and acquitted herself pretty well, if she did say so, herself. But she wasn’t entirely eager to plunge down into some crumbling, dank well. A deep, dark well. With no way out.

  Chapter 14

  Crossing the Boundary

  Catullus watched Gemma stare down into the well. Trepidation left its tight mark upon her face, yet, despite the fact that she was frightened, she would do what she must to complete the mission. Courage meant doing something in the midst of fear, and she had courage in abundance.

  He wanted to crawl inside her mind. He wanted to learn every part of her, from her earliest memories to the secret joys of her heart and even the most mundane thoughts she might have. Charles Dickens or Jane Austen? Or perhaps she favored some American authors—though he couldn’t think of a single one. Did she prefer raspberry jam or orange marmalade? Everything of hers was wonderful to him, all of her precious.

  He couldn’t believe he was waxing rhapsodic over what type of jam a woman preferred, but that’s what he’d come to. Making love with Gemma had been one of the most magnificent experiences of his life, if not the most magnificent. She was giving and responsive and passionate and aggressive, and all of this, all of her, enabled him to become more fully himself. He’d never let go with any other lover the way he’d been able to with her.

  Touch yourself, he had said. Ride me. And she had. The sight of her on him, finding and giving pleasure, filled him to repletion. Not once had he ever spoken thusly to a woman. He had not trusted any of them enough to allow this kind of exposure.

  But he didn’t want to think of anyone else. He allowed the slate of his sexual history to be wiped clean. Everything before had been mere biology, two components fitting into one another until a desired result was achieved. With Gemma, it was not simply carnal, corporeal—although, God knew, that aspect had been wonderful—but something much more profound. This woman knew him, intimately, deeply, as he knew her. She alone allowed him to venture into the unknown, without fear, giving him room to learn not only her, but himself. She was the only woman to see him as more than an intellect, more than a maker of machines. A man of flesh and life.

  They had found one another, but perhaps too late. Danger, the prospect of disaster surrounded them. He had so much more to lose, now.

  They had to reach Merlin, stop Arthur. And the only way to get to the sorcerer was through a gate to the Otherworld. Down the well.

  They stared down into the well’s depths. Somehow, at the bottom, they might find an entrance to Otherworld.

  “You’ll need to open the portal,” Catullus said.

  “Maybe I can open it from here,” Gemma mused. She closed her eyes, deep concentration knitting her brow together. After some time, she opened her eyes. “I can’t feel anything.”

  “Perhaps because nothing yet exists down there.” “Can’t open something that isn’t there.” “So we make a door.” Catullus sounded a good deal more confident than he felt. “Call it into being.”

  “And we do that, how?”

  “Dance counterclockwise around the well, singing.”

  He held out his hand, as if asking her to waltz. The irony of the gesture was not lost on him. They would have never met in a ballroom. “Shall we?”

  She did not want to jump into the well, yet she put her hand in his easily, comfortably, as if that’s exactly where it belonged. It surely felt that way.

  “What should we sing?” she asked.

  “How about ‘Au fond du temple saint’?” he suggested.

  She stared at him blankly.

  “From Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles,” he explained. “Granted, it’s for a tenor and baritone, but I think your contralto should work.”

  Gemma continued to look at him.

  “All right. Let’s try ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen,’ from Die Zauberflöte.”

  “I had to review operas,” she said dryly, “not memorize the librettos. Do you know ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’?”

  “Not familiar with it.”

  “It’s popular in all the music halls.”

  “Of which I am not a habitué.”

  “How about ‘The Little Brown Jug’? Everyone knows that.”

  “Except me.”

  “Damn it.” She frowned, frustrated by the impediment. “We’re from such different worlds.”

  Now that he had found her, Catullus refused to surrender. “Not so different that we cannot learn from one another. Teach me the words to one of your songs.”

  Her brows raised. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  A smile slowly blossomed. “All right.�
�� And then she began to sing. Her voice was, as he’d suspected, a lovely contralto, warm and low, untrained, but clear. So pleased was he by the sound of her singing, he did not pay full attention to the lyrics, until …

  Wait, she couldn’t actually be singing about a— “’That’s why we call her Susie, the Seventh Street whore,’” Gemma warbled as the song drew to a close.

  “Gemma!” Even to his own ears, he sounded like an outraged vicar.

  She blinked at him, a look of pure innocence. “Yes?”

  For a moment, he simply looked at her. Such a lovely face, those crystalline blue eyes, the sweet, soft mouth, and, of course, the dainty freckles stippling her nose and across her high cheekbones. No one would ever suspect that such beauty hid a wicked soul.

  Surprises could be quite wonderful.

  He asked, “Was the second line, ‘She threw her skirts in the air,’ or ‘She threw her drawers in the air’?”

  Her mouth quirked. “Skirts.”

  “Ah. Very good.” He sang the song back to her, putting extra emphasis on the words thrust and bang. “Think I’ve got it.”

  She tugged on his hand, and he allowed her to pull him close, wherein she promptly, thoroughly kissed him within an inch of his sanity using her delightfully vulgar mouth. “Hearing you say things like pump with your gorgeous accent,” she breathed, “makes me want to throw you to the ground and bite your clothes off.”

  He couldn’t stifle a groan. She may very well destroy him. And he would be happy in his destruction.

  “You’ve only yourself to blame,” he rasped. “Where on earth did you learn such a crude song?”

  “Chicago slaughterhouses aren’t hotbeds of propriety.”

  He shook his head. “The company you keep.”

  “My taste is improving.”

  Drawing a deep breath to steady himself, he yet again cursed time and circumstance, because everything within him wanted her again, and again, however he could have her, and everything outside of him—with the notable exception of Gemma, herself—demanded otherwise.