Dragonfly came singing in, breaking the sensual daze.
Fully awake, I now felt the deep bruising in my breast. The surreal horror of the night before. And here I lay, drowning in erotic fantasies about the man who was probably my greatest enemy here.
Well, tossup between him, Falcon, the Dog, the Monochromatic Sadistic Twins. So many nemeses to choose from.
Rogue hadn’t stopped playing me. He’d found those dark fantasies hidden in the corners of my heart, the raw wounds still bleeding from my trainers’ attentions, and was using it all to try to control me.
Dragonfly brought me a dressing robe I didn’t remember ever trying on and I slipped into it. I made myself use the chamber pot, fitting the lid tightly afterward. I thought about taking it somewhere to empty myself but still had no idea where to go. Not exactly a glamorous lifestyle.
I kicked pillows aside as I made my way over to study the Rogue Lily, resplendent inside the glass, dewy fresh and luminous as ever. I sniffed the air, but the scent of lilies and sandalwood had faded. The dusky blue of the flower’s throat drew my attention, reminding me of the slow burn in Rogue’s eyes watching me in the lace lingerie. Waiting for me to hand him that dammed silk sash.
With a sharp thought fueled by the anger, I shattered the glass.
Dragonfly squealed and I ignored her.
A feeling of power surged through me. Bright and jewel-toned. The daylight side. My own magic. I was no one’s pet. No one’s sex slave. If I wanted to remain my own person, then I needed to take steps.
Starting with destroying Rogue’s “gift.”
I understood the gift-thing now. By accepting the lily, I had opened a door between us. By keeping it, I allowed a connection between Rogue and me. One that just happened to be toxic to my well-being. At least Rogue hadn’t tried to convince me that it was all about love. There was an honesty in that, I supposed.
This would be my honest answer.
Hopefully Falcon wouldn’t be checking up on me too soon. It was possible Dragonfly reported back to him. I thought I could be convincing, however, that all my work was research into light-emanating objects. Lord knew that sort of shell-game worked with grant agencies.
I set Dragonfly to clearing one end of the tent—while I grabbed something from the breakfast tray she’d brought—piling the pillows into neat columns, removing the broken glass. Some of her fellow worker bees brought in more tables to be my workbenches. While I disliked the helplessness of having to ask for everything I needed, the assistance was definitely a perk.
With the ceiling flaps pinned back, I had good light to work with. I laid the lily in the bright sunbeam and studied it. It lay there, sultry and sweet. I twisted my hair into a knot and studied the treacherous flower. I had always been most myself when working out a problem.
“My lady sorceress, would you like to bathe and dress?”
“Later.”
“But my lady…”
“Dragonfly,” I said, not looking away from the flower. I tried to think of something better than “go away.”
Failed.
“Go away.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Go outside of the tent and don’t bother me until I’m done, okay?”
It must have worked because she stopped talking to me. I examined the lily without touching it. More and more I thought the wise course would be to incinerate the thing. My reluctance to do so was probably part of the magic. But first, there were things I needed to know.
Ironically, the dream had worked me up so much that I had plenty of power to draw from.
I stilled my mind, seeking that quietness that had become my greatest refuge, and dipped into the flower, sinking into the scent, falling through the blues, letting it sweep me up—though I kept my right hand on my left pulse, anchoring to my body, to what was real. Not sure what I was looking for, I drifted through the blossom, feeling the aliveness of it, the magic—oh yes, now that felt like Rogue, the black wings brushing my mind in front of the fire. Not my own light-filled idea-bubbles of magic, this seemed wilder, a beast running beneath the surface.
Sexual, strong, feral and primitive.
Fire with fire, then. I summoned up the arousal he’d cultivated, that desire for him, for the poisonously dark candy he offered. I matched my stride to the beast magic, luring it with my scent, feeling it turn to me as if it was already tuned to me, follow me, follow my lead up into the blaze of light where it suddenly shied. But I had it then, I wrapped it in glass from the bell jar. This one a crystal bubble of magic, unbreakable and pristine. The magic roiled around inside it unhappily, deprived of its quarry.
Bedraggled on my workbench, the lily lay faded and limp, its sweet scent slipping into rot. It was only a flower, long past its bloom, robbed of its sustaining power. I felt as if I’d carelessly plucked it only to let it die out of water. Its beauty gone over to death.
It grieved me to see it dying there and I didn’t understand why.
Next to it was a sphere of glass, like a living marble. It was warm to the touch, the smooth surface flawless. Inside, ebony swirled with midnight highlights, freckles of dusty twilight breaking off only to fall back into the black. Fangs and ravens’ wings.
Probably best not to stare into it too long. When I stood, my body creaked in protest and I realized the sun was now past midday. Hours had passed while the lily and I mesmerized one another.
But I felt more myself than I had since I’d come here. All the feelings of desire and anger were gone now. I felt drained, in a good way, as if I’d bled out a poison.
Digging through my trunks, I found the wooden box Blackbird had given me with my dress and shoes. I wrapped the marble in a piece of silk and tucked it into a corner of the box. A little bargaining chip, should Rogue decide he needed that piece of himself back. Careless of him. Tut tut tut.
Dragonfly slid her tousled head through the flaps of the tent entrance. I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t been looking in her direction.
“May I return, my lady sorceress?”
“Sure, come on in.”
She held the flap out and turned diagonally to come through without snagging her wings. Hallelujah, she’d been practicing.
“I stood guard the whole time you were spell casting, my lady sorceress. Both Lord Puck and Lord Falcon came to pay a call, but I told them you were deep in work and had forbidden me to allow anyone to disturb you.”
“You did? Good initiative—thank you.” Okay, I’d been a bitch to her and she hadn’t deserved it. “I’m sorry that I was grumpy to you before.”
She looked a bit puzzled but pleased.
“So,” I asked casually, “did Falcon ask exactly what I was working on?”
“No, my lady sorceress, he seemed satisfied and said he looked forward to having his new non-burning lights this evening. Is that what you’re making? How wonderful that will be! No one else has a master as eccentric and powerful as you are. The others were so jealous that I had to sit still outside the tent and not move until you were done.” She looked around puzzled. “But where are the lights? Oh! They’re invisible until dark? How especially wonderful!”
Okay, we needed to work on communication with the initiative thing. One step at a time.
Right now I needed to eat something. I let Dragonfly brush out my hair while I ate fruit, cheese, nuts and some kind of cold meat from the breakfast tray, not arguing while she fussed that she could have put my hair up for me so that I didn’t knot it like that.
“Something out of my face, but not tight,” I told her. “I have to finish tweaking the new lights.”
She came up with a modified soft ponytail that suited us both, and got me dressed to her satisfaction. Then I sent her off to wash the blankets and clothes, along with chamber-pot emptying, which at least made her h
appy, even if I still fretted about it. I also suggested that she needed to relax after her guard duty this morning.
I felt good, free, the last dregs of sex and fear clearing from my mind.
But what to do with the dying flower? If I had a book, I’d press it. I decided to dry the flower, hanging it upside down over my workbench with a thread pulled from one of the ubiquitous pillows. I didn’t know why I felt the need to preserve it. Something to do with my soft chewy center. After all, it was still a flower from a gorgeous man—and the last gift I could accept from him.
Now to my commissioned project. How to make non-burning lights?
I paced around the tent, ruminating about all the fairy tales I’d read. “Fairy lights” were a common theme, blamed on phosphorescent gases by scientists. Various wizards and so forth had little balls of light they carried on their palms or sent winging around in the air. But that seemed impractical as a long-term solution. It would be better to find some physical object and alter it to emit light.
On my umpteenth circuit around the tent, kicking away yet another pillow that tumbled off a pile and into my path, I considered taking a walk outside. The possibility, however, of running into any number of several someones I didn’t want to talk to seemed high. It wasn’t that I was hiding out, so much.
What kind of object could I use to make light around the camp?
I didn’t want to mess with the existing candles and torches because I already associated them so strongly with fire. And besides, Falcon might believe I’d ducked the assignment, and I couldn’t afford that. I needed something innocuous, something readily available. I kicked another pillow aside, which hit one of Dragonfly’s towers so a rainbow of pillows tumbled down in whispers of silk, catching the light.
I laughed.
Glowing pillows. Every tent had too many. The fae loved them. They’d be bright and colorful. You could increase light by adding more, play with the effect by using different colors. Perfect!
But how exactly?
I grabbed a knife from Dragonfly’s little buffet table and slit a rectangular lime-green pillow down one seam. There had to be thousands of hand-sewn pillows in this camp alone—who was making them? I pictured a pixie sweatshop, downtrodden gnomes and Dragonfly-girls hunched over pillows, working to earn bizarre body modifications.
The stuffing in the pillow seemed to be some sort of silk floss. Possibly a plant material?
What I wanted was for the pillow fill to glow, like a phosphorescent organism. Ideally it would be light-sensitive in the same way—glow brightening in dusk, perhaps recharging in the light. Except what about when you were ready to go to sleep and you had all the damn pillows radiating away around you?
Though I wasn’t exactly sure how phosphorescent organisms emitted light, I remembered a talk at the Neuroscience Convention that discussed how nerve impulses changed the polarity of the membrane around the light-bearing cells. So, I could maybe transform these fibers to do that, so that some kind of action changed their polarity. But then they’d need to be living tissue, which would require nutrition. And excretion.
Feeding and changing the pillows—I don’t think so.
I needed something like the clapper—clap on, clap off—but how to make something sound-sensitive?
Okay, I was overthinking. Just experiment with one pillow. Give up trying to control it all and just let the magic find a way. I thought about what I wanted, the fill to glow as a fiber-optic might, pulling warm light from the sun, lining up to glow when the pillow was clapped, depolarizing to dark with a second clap.
Finally I drew on the sexual charge Rogue had so thoughtfully provided. The little orgasm had barely taken the edge off. How convenient that my poor love life all those years gave me so much practice at sublimating. At least doing magic gave me something productive to do with all that energy. I fed it into the idea I’d constructed. Connected them.
The pillow looked just the same, lime silk sagging around the wound I’d made in it, gray-white silky guts spilling out. I pulled the fabric taut and smacked the pillow. Soft green light shone in the bright sunlight, a purer white from the spilling material.
Eureka!
I strode over to the tent flaps, stepping outside for the first time that day. The camp whirled in the same merry activity, birdsong and music intertwining. I clutched my glowing pillow triumphantly.
“Dragonfly!” I called. “Come see the light I made.” Darling—come see! I sent him a picture of glowing pillows piled on the floor and heard his lazy response. He sounded unimpressed.
“I’ll fetch her, Lady Sorceress.” A little guy, one of the hip-high gnomey-looking ones in a ripe blueberry color, sat perched on a tree stump at the corner of my tent.
“Who are you?”
“I’m your page, Lady Sorceress.”
“Since when?”
He pulled off his little peaked red cap. That and a red tunic seemed to be all he wore. “Begging your pardon, Lady Sorceress, but I hoped you might take me on. We all heard how you tried to save poor Loden. I’d like to return the service as he was my friend, you see.”
“I didn’t do anything to save him,” I said.
“Not every sorcerer is as powerful as Lord Rogue.”
Oh. Eep. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss.”
The blue guy looked sorrowful. He didn’t say anything about glory.
“So do I pay you?” Do I pay Dragonfly? I’d forgotten to ask.
“As my lady sorceress wishes.”
Puck would know what I should be paying them and how. Maybe Blackbird as my seneschal should be doing it. I was acquiring quite the household. I didn’t really need another servant, but I hated to turn him away.
“You’re on. Please tell me you have a name already.”
“I’m Larch, lady. If it pleases you.”
“I’m Gwynn, Larch.”
“Yes, Lady Sorceress.”
“Have you just been sitting out here all day, waiting for me to come out?”
“Dragonfly set me to guarding the tent. She told me to make certain no one interrupted your amazing magical feats.”
His face was completely deadpan, but I was pretty sure that had been sarcasm under there.
“Look at this, Larch.” I smacked the pillow and it went dark. Then smacked it again and it lit up, though it was hard to see in the bright sunlight. Larch looked at me quizzically.
“You try it.” I held out the pillow to him. He poked it with a pudgy finger. “No, no. Smack it. With the flat of your hand.” I demonstrated. He slapped the silk and the pillow went dark. “See? No more fires in the tents.”
He looked at me solemnly, blinking his catlike eyes, the same shade as his skin. Not exactly the enthusiasm I had been looking for.
“Maybe we could name them Loden Pillows?”
He nodded gravely.
“Now, if you would, find Dragonfly and tell her I need needle and thread. I don’t suppose you can sew?”
“Yes, all my people can. It’s one of our main industries, besides serving nobles such as yourself.”
“I’m no noble, Larch. Oh, never mind,” I added when a worried look crossed his face. “Is there a name for your people?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, proudly. “We are The People.”
Of course. Just like everyone. “Say it again, slowly.” I concentrated on hearing the sounds, not the sense. “Brooh-nayz?” I tried.
He frowned. Silly me. It wouldn’t work for me to ape the sound without the intention behind it and if I put the intention in, he would hear only that and not the sound I made.
Then it hit me— “Wait. Brownies? Are your people Brownies?”
He cocked his head in that appearance of listening for distant music. Then nodded slowly. “That could be right. In another place and time
, we’ve been that. Shall I bring others to sew, Lady Sorceress?”
“Yes—great idea. Tell them to bring pillows from their tents. Lots of pillows.”
Chapter Seventeen
In Which I Prepare for War
Evening found my tent converted to my own third-world sweatshop full of busy Brownies, all in various colors like the pillows. Dragonfly had also fetched several look-alike friends—none with wings, however. Clearly she was a little queen amongst them. Complete with preening.
They all gaily sewed and sang. It could have been a scene from the animated Christmas specials that had populated my childhood. Now I wondered how much of those stories pulled from this world. I asked Larch if any of his people lived in a place that was always ice and snow. He just gave me the standard puzzled look and bent back to his work. At least I had the sense not to ask him about the jolly fat guy in a red outfit.
I’d tweaked the spell a little, so that the stuffing-floss would transfer its properties to like material. Larch assured me it was standard stuffing, made from a shrub that was good for little else. To make a new Loden Pillow, the Brownies took a strand of floss from the mother-pillow—their term, not mine—opened a seam in a daughter-pillow, and tucked the strand deep inside. Once the pillow was resewed, they smacked it hard and said “Loden” three times. The small spark spread from within, replicating outward until the whole pillow glowed. The Dragonfly girlies were allowed to sew seams but not touch the stuffing. Seemed sexist to me, but since the girls didn’t protest Larch’s arrangement, I stayed out of it.
I hoped the Brownies’ belief in the spell might help to sustain the magic in the pillows so it wouldn’t wear off when I wasn’t around. The philodendron and the pedestal had faded away at some point. Had they become pillows again or just kind of dissolved when I wasn’t looking? During my training, whatever I converted or created was usually gone the next day—I never knew exactly what became of it.
Something else to chase down if I was to understand the limits of my own abilities and up my chances of defeating Rogue. And finding a way out of this freakish world. I really needed to start keeping notes.
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