by Lily Silver
“No,” Riley answered. “We cannot interfere with his grief, it is a natural response and must be released. We don’t wish him to forget Tara. She may yet come back to us.”
Adrian felt a familiar presence lingering near his chair. Mick was like a brother to him. At each phase of his life, Mick was there—as a child, an adolescent—always mirroring Adrian’s age. A hand touched his back, and he somehow managed to rein in his emotions.
“We can do something,” Mick said softly. “Wash your face, shave, and put on some clean clothes. We’ll go to the bank and sort out your money issues. We can gain funds and buy a nice house for you and Dan. We’ll find something grand, for when she returns.”
“I want to stay here. What if she comes back here, and we’re gone? I can’t leave. This is all I have left of Tara, this little place we decorated for her.”
“Even so, let’s get out of the house for a little while,” Mick coaxed. “You have money in the bank, and they are damned well going to give it to you.”
Two hours later, Adrian and Mick were standing in the foyer of the Bank of France. They were waiting to talk to the bank manager responsible for his old, inactive account.
“Good day, M’sieur Dillon. M’siuer Javais will see you now.” The assistant led them to the wide double doors and ushered them inside the luxurious office. It was set up like a grand salon in a mansion, with the coffin sized mahogany desk at the far end near the windows, and elegant chairs and settees set about. Potted plants the size of small trees surrounded the expensive furnishings. A high chandelier glittered with cut glass and gold above their heads.
“M’sieur Dillon, a pleasure. Please sit down,” Javais said in greeting. He gestured to the two chairs before his desk that faced the window, and took his chair with his back to the sunshine filtering in.
They took their seats across from him. The fellow looked from Adrian to Mick and then said. “I understand your frustration, sir. I truly do. I regret to inform you that nothing has changed since we last spoke. I still will need some identification papers before I can release the funds to you, or at the very least the word of a French citizen who can verify your true identity by testifying before the investors that you are indeed the great grandson of Lord Adrian Dillon, whom we know was born in the year seventeen-sixty-eight.”
“I beg to differ,” Mick put in. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Michael Atticus Hadrian Gilamuir, a an ancient prince of Ireland.” He rose slightly from his chair and extended his hand across the large desk to connect with the man.
Javais took Mick’s hand, shaking it vigorously as he looked up into Mick’s eyes. Adrian knew the enchantment was working as the bank manager’s eyes became distant and dreamy.
“The funds we speak of belong to Mr. Dillon.” Mick said in that sultry, seductive voice that had a queer ring of bells following after it. He continued to hold the man’s hand in a firm grip.
Adrian felt woozy as he listened to his companion’s bewitching tone. He shook his head and knocked at one ear with his palm.
Javais nodded. Mick continued. “It is not necessary to prove his identity. You know him, your fathers were longtime friends, you played together as children. You don’t need any papers from him. Say it with me,”
“I don’t need any papers from him. I know him. We played as children together.”
“Good. Now we will set up an open account for Lord Dillon with the funds from the old account transferred in full to the new one.”
They left the bank an hour later. Mick walked alongside Adrian as they headed toward the north, toward Montmartre Hill and their lodgings. The air was hot in the early June sunshine. Bees and other insects buzzed around them, reveling in the summer heat.
“That was amusing, wasn’t it?” Mick said in an attempt to make conversation. “You are wealthier now than when you first transferred those funds back in ‘98. Your wealth has increased almost three times in the past century.”
“Yes. Money is no longer a concern for our future,” he agreed. Without Tara, they had no ability to move to another time. Mick and Riley didn’t possess that gift. “It doesn’t matter. I’d rather be a pauper with my sweet Tara beside me.”
Before leaving the Incas, who seemed to be arguing about whether to enslave her or make her a goddess, Tara tried to focus on the date she left Paris in order to return to Adrian’s present. She concentrated on the Eiffel Tower, a large monument rising to the sky to pinpoint the exact location she wished to arrive at.
It didn’t work. She ended up in the future, but at the Paris Expo of 1900 instead of 1889.
Hungry, tired and without the needed energy to time jump again right away, she holed up in a hotel, waited a few days and tried again. This time, she landed in France, but not in Paris.
This time travel gig was not precise, just as Mick warned her.
Tara thought it was just a point and click deal, like going from the Pont Neuf bridge to the tower of Notre Dame. Actually, time travel took a lot more thought and energy than translocation, and trying to get back to a ‘right place and right date’ in time was just about impossible.
On the good side of things, she was in France and the year was 1889. It was June 8th, she noted, from the newspaper at the cafe. She had no money, but used her gift of acquiring to survive.
The seaside town of Calais was north of Paris by a stretch. Tired and weak. she didn’t have the energy to try translocation. Fingering the French edition newspaper that allowed only the basic reading and mostly a story by pictures experience, she noted an advertisement for the railroad. Looking closer, it appeared to be a train schedule. Paris was listed as a destination from Calais.
Ok, Paris by train. That would be more precise than a time jump or translocation trip.
Hopefully when she made it to Paris, she’d still have a family. Tara didn’t know what happened to the men after she was seized and had transported herself into the past.
Did they survive the fight? Did Riley survive? She didn’t see him at all once the stills started blowing up. A couple of hours by train and she should know the answers.
Mick and Riley, with Dan’s help, were chiseling away at the garden walls that Artemisia was trapped behind. Dan suggested getting work horses to pull the stones down on one side of the wall. It was harder than they thought it would be. The stones were cemented well and reinforced by vertical iron rods every eighteen inches.
They tried to pull the stones free with the horses, but ended up chipping at them with pix-axes in the warm June sun instead. Dan was all for helping the lost fairy girl, but his heart was heavy at the realization he couldn’t help a certain fairy girl who meant the world to him. Adrian’s dour outlook had worn down his hopes. He now felt a great, gaping grief just as keenly for a young woman he’d come to love as a daughter.
He and Gisele were to wed, but they decided to postpone their wedding for a couple of months. Gisele was his darling. He didn’t know what he’d do without her to comfort him. Adrian was turning into a recluse, refusing to leave the apartment even to look at houses now that he had the money to buy a grand mansion.
The poor man was lost in grief, and worried constantly that if he left the apartment, he’d miss Tara’s return. Mick and Riley were secretly fearing for the man’s mind, as a love bond between a fey and a human was incredibly strong, particularly for said human. So, they managed to focus on something else, a project that would get them out of the apartment for a while, and one that would aid another fey woman in desperate straits.
Of course, Riley was the one pushing this little Free the Green Fairy endeavor. The guy was in love with her. Now that they knew she wasn’t helping the dark ones, Mick agreed to try to free the lady his brother fancied.
Dan handed stone after stone to Riley, and then swung his pick-axe to loosen the mortar surrounding another. It was tedious going. This wasn’t a simple stone wall. It was fortress meant to keep the fey woman within. Mick was on the other side of the gap they’d broken thro
ugh, swinging his tool like a man ready to take on the world.
Their joint efforts started to pay off as the cement holding the stones started to give way.
The iron rods shot up in the air like prison bars between the two layers of stones. Now, they just had to break one of those down so the woman could pass through the bars. Iron trapped the fey, and this poor lady’s human husband made her a cage that would keep her imprisoned for centuries without outside aid.
“The horses, Riley,” Dan directed as he swiped at his brow with his shirt sleeve and then tugged at his glove with his teeth. He hopped down from his perch on the wall. Mick stepped back. He hadn’t climbed the wall as the iron affected him. He had stood on the ground chipping away at the stones about four feet from Dan so they formed a crude trough in the wall with their efforts. The draft horses were brought close. Dan took the iron chains and wrapped them around the bars. He whistled, and Riley led the horses forward.
The bars bent forward, but still remained firm in the ground. The lady on the other side watched them. She held out a cooling glass of water to him, seeing the sweat running over his face like a waterfall. Mick took the glass from her and sniffed it. He tasted the water, and then handed it to Dan.
Okay, so the dude was still suspicious of the Green Lady. Even so, the woman didn’t deserve to spend centuries of her life trapped in a fifty foot walled garden with an iron gate.
Dan signaled for Riley to back up the horses again. This time, he put a chain on one rod and another chain on the other, each with a horse of its own. He had Mick and Riley guide the horses away in the hope of widening the gap between the bars so the lady could step through them unscathed.
The iron rods were bowing apart at the top but the lower end still remained tight and true. This could take the rest of the day, and they’d been here a good four hours already. With a sigh, Dan replaced his glove and climbed over the stone garden wall. He was inside with the fairy lady. “How about I hand her up and lift her over the bent rods. There should be enough leeway with that gap to let her through. Can you boys reach over and help her on your side?”
“I’ll fly up and grab her arms, if you can lift her between the parted rods,” Riley replied.
“Seriously, you couldn’t have thought of flying earlier?” Dan scoffed.
“I cannot pass over the barrier of the bars. I’ll be trapped inside this iron cage with her.”
Dan shrugged, and looked to the lady in question. “Ready? I’ll lift you up over the gap, and toss you at Riley. Say, don’t you have wings?”
“I’m only one hundred and fifty years old.”
“Yeah, bummer.” He lifted the dainty woman about the waist, and then jostled her so he had one hand under each arm. “Ready, Romeo, I mean—Riley?”
He tossed her. She shrieked as she passed over the bars with the narrow gap, as if stung by potent energy. The poor woman was weeping. Obviously, she’d been hurt by the iron barrier.
“Is she okay?” Dan looked at her through the bars as the two fey men held her between them. She was writhing a little and her skin looked as if it had been severely sunburned.
The men ignored him. They were chanting together, using some magic trick to soothe her pain as both waved their hands in the air over her with wild, broad gestures.
He should be used to this stuff by now, but apparently he wasn’t. Dan whistled low as he watched her skin return to a pale shade again. She stopped writhing and moaning. Riley placed and arm about her to support her as she still seemed a little weak.
Dan climbed over the wall to join them.
“Thank you,” Artemisia said in a breathless whisper. “Thank you sir! We could not have done this without your aid. May your years be prosperous and full of joy.”
“You too, little lady. You too.” Dan winked at her. She was free, after seventy-five years of imprisonment in that little garden, Artemisia was finally free to roam the earth again.
Tara stepped off the train in Paris. She caught an omnibus to Boulevard Clichy, at the bottom of Montmartre Hill. Then she made the climb up the stairs to Montmartre proper. Once at the top of the hill, she wiped her brow, removed her jacket and ignored the women staring after her as she walked down the Rue Lepic in dirty men’s attire.
Her heart started to hammer like a piston machine, and not from climbing the stairs.
Did Adrian survive? Did Dan, and her brothers? What happened after she left?
What if the place was empty? Deserted.
The four flights of stairs at the apartment did not ease the pounding of her heart. The pressure moved up to pulse at her temples. She opened the door to her apartment. The hinges needed oil, she noted.
The place was the same as when she left last week.
It was quiet, deathly quiet. She glanced about the room, surprised to find no one present. And then her eyes caught the silhouette of a man standing at the window with his back to her.
“Did you succeed in freeing the Green Lady?” Adrian asked without turning away from his view of Paris at the window.
“No, but I did endure a train ride and a hot walk up Montmartre Hill to be with you.”
He turned about with a jerk, and the long gasp echoed throughout the room. He just stared at her, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Tara moved toward him, her arms open wide.
Adrian turned with a jerk and screeched with joy.
They met in the middle of the apartment. He lifted Tara up and swung her about the room.
“I thought I lost you forever,” he said in a tight voice. Adrian set her down and then kissed her brow, her cheeks, and then her lips. Softly at first, reverently, his lips brushed over hers in a searching kiss. The gentle kiss gave way to a more demanding, devouring embrace.
“Easy, wild beastie,” she teased, pulling back from his possessive kiss. “I’m hot and tired. And hungry!”
“Here, my pet.” Adrian started to walk away and then turned quickly to take her hand and pull her behind him as he hurried to their tiny kitchen as if he feared she’d disappear again if he didn’t hang on to her. “I’ve just the thing for you.” He pulled a bottle of milk from the icebox. “Riley can’t get enough of this, or of honey. Sit, love, I’ll make you a honey sandwich.” He pulled out a chair, and guided her to sit as he plunked the bottle of milk in front of her.
“I’ve missed you.” Tara said between sips of the creamy white beverage. “Did everyone make it?”
“Yes, love. Dan and your brothers are out on an errand.” Adrian was working fast as he stood at the table next to her chair. She watched his quick movements as he slathered butter on two slices of bread and then spread the golden honey over it and put the slices together. He grabbed a china plate, and handed the sandwich to her. He plunked down in the chair next to hers. “We all cleared the building in time, and once you had their leader taken out of the way the remaining three went down quickly with our combined efforts. Here now, let me hold you.” His arms wrapped about her waist as he pulled her onto his lap. “Please, my darling girl, don’t leave me behind like this again. I’ve been in hell these past ten days.”
“Deal,” Tara murmured with her mouth full of honey, butter and bread. “I won’t use my gift of traveling again, not unless you are with me when I jump through time. I’ve grown too attached to you to live in a world where you aren’t beside me.”
“I plan to buy us a house in Paris. A big house for us and for Dan and Gisele, as well as your annoying brothers. We’ll settle them in, my fair one, and then perhaps you and I can go on a short journey together, a sort of honeymoon time jump.”
Tara leaned back slightly, away from him with her milk bottle in hand. She looked at Adrian with surprise. “You can’t be serious. Another time-jump?” She took a swig of milk, and luxuriated in the sweet, satisfying taste of the creamy liquid. “We’re in Paris, the most romantic city in the world. Where else would you rather spend a honeymoon?”
He started to speak, and Tara put her fing
er over his lips to stop him.
“Slow down, mister! I’m still recovering from three times in little more than a week. I jumped too far ahead in trying to get back here. I need time to recover.”
“Aye, in a couple of months, then. After Dan and Gisele take their vows. They can have the house to themselves while we go on a much deserved honeymoon. We never had one, what with the rebellion in Ireland and this chaotic trip to Paris in this ‘peaceful time’ you promised.”
Yes, a couple of months and by then maybe he’d forget about a honeymoon time jump. Paris was a wonderful place in this time. They could settle here and be completely happy. Suddenly, his earlier words dawned on her. “You have money now?”
“Your brother talked to the bank manager for me.” Adrian’s eyes lit up with pride. “I’ve enough funds now to buy you several mansions and pay them off in full. My stash of funds increased in value over the decades while it sat in the bank.”
That was a relief. His main worry in all of this was not being able to provide for her, even if it seemed a little old fashioned. At that thought, Tara was inclined to indulge him a little, too. “You never answered my question, sweetheart. Where else would you like to go in time?”
“Ireland, in the future. I long to see the time when my country gain her freedom.”
Tara scrunched up her face. “I don’t know. Let’s think on it. After we’ve made love at least a dozen times.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. He leaned forward and kissed her with hungry lips.
Epilogue
Tara and Adrian bought a mansion on the river the week following her return.
They made certain to choose a home with enough space for their extended family and their newly made friends. Delacroix House boasted sixteen bedrooms and six separate salons with lovely views of the river from the windows and from brick terrace in the back of the house.
George the watchman, came to live with them. They gave him the little guest cottage out back where he could devote himself completely to his art and not worry about watching the skies for the dark fey. Mr. Bellows was given a room in their home as well. He wanted to finish out his year in Paris and then return to England and his family.