Like Mist Over the Eyes
Page 15
“This sounds naught like the Loram I first met when I arrived in this town.”
Loram smiled to herself. “Denyeh has a remarkable ability to see what others cannot.”
Adren couldn’t argue with that.
“I know you say you are neither human nor magical creature, and you refuse to allow us to consider you one of ours. I care not what you are, but I have seen who you are, and thou art more than all the fairies I have every known. Deny this all thou mayest, but I will not listen to thee. Thou hast my admiration, and thou shalt always have it.”
The moment Loram switched to ‘thou’, Adren felt tears rush to her eyes. Even the fairies she’d grown up with had never addressed her that way.
“Gods, Loram.” Adren gave a weak smile. “I don’t want to cry right now.”
“Then we shall speak of other things until we part,” Loram said, putting a hand softly on Adren’s shoulder.
Illusion surrounded Hin and Nadin such that Adren wouldn’t hear anything the two said and wouldn’t even see that they had said anything.
“Hast thou any message thou wish’st me to bring to the family? News of when thou shalt return to Breim?”
“No, nothing.”
They lapsed into silence, Nadin hunched and a little pale, but not offering up any sort of explanation or apology.
“Where is thy mother?” Hin asked. “Wisheth her to be with us? I may arrange for something—”
“No, please!” Nadin said in a strained voice.
“Truly, there were whispers that some may have to find thee and her, for preparations are nearly—”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
Hin frowned, Nadin’s appearance seeming to dawn on him. “Nadin, art thou ill? Thou seem'st as though thou mayest become sick.”
“If you mean what I think you mean by that, don’t worry. I won’t. I just… don’t want to talk about this. Please.” He stared at the ground.
“An thou wish’st to return, thou needest only send word and we shall have thy place for thee in a few months.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.” But he looked even queasier than before.
“Here is where we part,” called Loram. Hin removed the illusion as they caught up to her and Adren.
“Farewell,” said Adren.
Loram gave her a hug. “I thank thee. Shouldst thou ever need my help, tell me.” Both Adren and Nadin froze. She let go. “Farewell, Nadin. Perhaps we may meet again. Hin, don’t be rude.”
“What?”
Loram inclined her head towards Adren and Nadin.
“Oh. Um. Fare you both well.”
“Better. Come on.” She put her hand on his back, like a mother directing an absent-minded child, and the two of them walked off.
“Good-bye,” Nadin said. Loram and Hin just waved.
When Loram had hugged her, Adren had been so shocked that she didn’t know what to do. When was the last time someone had hugged her? Nadin’s near-crush of her lungs didn’t count. As the fairies left and she and Nadin continued on their way, she kept her eyes straight ahead and hoped he didn’t see her flush.
“Adren, you made a friend!” Nadin wiped mock tears from his face. “I’m so proud.”
“Smart aleck,” she shot back. Her skin was too light for anyone to miss her blushes anyways. As she did, she noticed how nauseated Nadin seemed.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re lying and you puke all over your clothing, I’m not helping you clean it up.”
His response consisted of a grimace and a long, long silence. Well, she’d warned him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“For how I’ve been treating you. What you said about the put-downs… I’ve been a jerk and you’ve always been decent. You were right to ask me to trust you because of your track record instead of whether or not you’re human. I can’t promise knowing you’re part fairy won’t change anything, and I can’t promise anything about any other people we meet. It’s all mixed up right now. But, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” His queasiness paused in favour of a slow smile. “I appreciate it.”
Honeysuckle.
No more words.
They travelled like that for a while, on the springy ground of the forest, each spear of sunlight warming them for a moment as they passed through. A deer, with delicate steps, approached a bush, scaring a robin in the process. The robin shot from the bush, scolding all the way, and retreated up into the highest cedar branches. Startled by the explosion of movement, the deer drew its head away and stepped back, but didn’t run away. Slowly, it lowered its head again and nibbled at the leaves.
“I never knew how much I didn’t know about fairies before,” Nadin said. “You really didn’t mean it when you said the unicorn was a demon?”
“Demons don’t exist.”
“Oh.”
He didn’t seem convinced.
Other Books in the White Changeling series
Hidden in Sealskin (Book 1)
(available as both ebook and paperback)
In her search for a cure for an insane unicorn, a misanthropic outlaw sets out to steal a sealskin. Things get complicated. She hates complicated.
“This story is filled with wondrous things…”
~Teddi Deppner, author of The Author Collector
Hunter and Prey (Book 3)
Adren returns home to a request for help from a woman accused of being a werewolf. Meanwhile, the fairies nearby ask Nadin to find something they either can’t or won’t describe. This forest holds secrets, and all of them are dangerous.
Coming soon to an Amazon near you.
Also by Thea van Diepen
The Tree Remembers
(available as an ebook)
A young not-quite-human woman is pulled back home to confront the people she hurt when she left (including the only man she ever loved), her origins, and what she must do now that everything’s changed.
“…a leaf unfurling in the spring, opening and revealing more and more of itself until you see its true shape.”
~Teddi Deppner, author of The Author Collector
The Illuminated Heart
(available as both ebook and paperback)
A retelling of the Norwegian fairy tale ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon,’ except in Iceland and with Norse zombies. And, woven through that, the story of a girl who struggles to trust God after the untimely death and undeath of her only brother.
“I’m a cynical, crotchety atheist and was ready with all my crotchety cynicism on starting this read.
“It melted me.”
~Rachael Stephen, author of State of Flux
Dreaming of Her and Other Stories
(available as an ebook - paperback forthcoming)
An anthology of short stories and poetry, written as refreshers, reminders of what makes life beautiful. Pieces include a story of the life of a river as he discovers his true self, a poetic retelling of Daphne’s flight from Apollo, and, in the titular story, a literal nightmare as a girl comes to terms with the death of her sister.
“…a buffet of exquisite bites of literary, emotional, and devotional grace.”
~Bookloving Gal, Amazon reviewer
Help Thea Publish More Stories Like This
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About the Author
Thea van Diepen hails from the snowy land of Canada and that fairest of cities, Edmonton, Alberta. She is, of course, entirely unbiased, due to her Bachelor’s in psychology (wait, that's not how that works…) and is also obsessed with Orphan Black, Madeleine L’Engle's books, and nerdy language things.
When Thea was eight years old, she took a test in school that required her to write a story. This prospect excited her greatly, and
she decided to write an epic fantasy adventure. Upon opening the test, she discovered she had to incorporate a girl going on a hike with her family. Thinking fast, she opened the story with said hike, dropped the girl through a hole into a magical world, thereby ditching the girl's family up on the mountainside, and happily wrote whatever she wanted until the end of the test.
Her website is theavandiepen.com, home of all things that lie on the edge of the bell curve, and she can be contacted via that site, in English or French. If you do contact her in French, though, please don’t ask her to count in it as she tends to skip numbers ending in six entirely by accident.
Acknowledgements
The first thank you goes to Taryn Hunchak, the Knower of All the Spoilers (all of them), and who helped me work out plot details while I was writing the story, who gave me feedback for both the first draft and edited draft, and who continues to be a wonderful best friend.
Thank you so much to Lewinna Solwing for encouraging me during NaNoWriMo and for doing word sprints with me. You helped me keep on track and on task. Speaking of word sprints, thank you also to Amy Brock McNew for organizing word sprints over Facebook. So much fun. So many words.
Krista Walsh, thank you for your feedback on the first draft (yeah, I said early draft so I wouldn’t scare you too much, but that really was my first draft). Having input from someone with no prior knowledge of the series whatsoever was so, so helpful for my edits later.
A huge thank you goes to EJ Clarke for being an amazing editor (thanks to you, I now know that ‘shrunk’ is, in fact, the past participle of ‘shrink’, not the simple past like I thought). You keep track of so many details—complicated verb tense usage, in-world spellings and vocabulary, inter-book treatments of compound words, logic slips, mood usage—I don’t know how you do it, and I’m grateful that you do.
This book has a beautiful cover thanks to Roberto Calas. Roberto. You put so much work into this one, and I love how it turned out. Thank you a million times over.
To Polly Olito, thank you for being awake at 1:30am to answer two quick, random questions. (Or, as you put it, “Special thanks to Polly, who was able to arbitrarily choose between a central mid-back rounded vowel and an open front unrounded one,” which is a much more linguistically accurate description).
There’s one person who will be reading this page before anyone else, and that is Lara Reyes, drawer of maps and paperback formatter extraordinaire. Thank you so much for your work. I don’t even know where to begin to describe how much of a relief it is to have you take over these essential parts in the process of bringing this book to life.
Thank you to all my patrons on Patreon—your support has made this book possible.
Last but not least, thank you to God for generally being God and for specifically being around when I was certain this book was awful and broken beyond relief, reminding me that I always have this moment in every story I write and I’ll probably feel better after I sleep or have something to eat. It’s the little things.
Thank You to All the Kickstarter Backers!
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