by Jane M. R.
“Tis probably better. Mayest I bother ye with assisting in a hunt at the moment? Methinks venison wouldst doeth me body sound.”
She slides off her stool, appearing for all reality as a beacon of gaiety and lightness. For the first time since I laid eyes on her, I don’t feel quite so inferior.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BRINELLA
He manages to find a crossbow and some bolts in a weapon closet. The cable snaps when he pulls it back. A second fish into the closet reveals an extra cable which he strings with minimal difficulty.
We onto the bridge. “I saw some deer on my way in.”
“Nary a soul hath frequented this area since I wast confined.”
“So, that reminds me, if someone were to climb over that mountain, would they see your castle?”
“Nay.” We walk side by side across the bridge. His boots make a more impressive sound than mine do across the stone. “Ye canst only see me castle if ye cometh through the Fae door, like ye didst.”
“Why is that? How does that work?”
He shakes his head. “That twill upon be answered in yonder time. Twill only confuse ye if I telleth right now.”
“You just want to make sure I come back to see you.”
He avoids looking at me. “Tallyho!”
It’s a doe with her back turned on the hill side, oblivious to the concerns of what Zadicayn might impose. He gets close. The doe looks up at him, curious. He pulls the trigger. The bolt plunges into the doe’s chest and she panics and scrambles up the steep hillside. Her legs give out and she collapses.
It takes both of us to drag the doe off the perilous climb and we’re exhausted by the time we pull it through the broken entrance doors.
“Oh, widdershins.” He’s looking at the doe, her hide disheveled from the drag. “We hath ruined my new trousers.”
“So you’d have brown hair instead of black?”
“Cease thy speech!” Zadicayn pulls a knife off his belt and hacks at the hide, slicing a hunk of meat off the rump. He hands me the bloody mess. I gag. “If ye shalt start the cooking, I shalt move this massacre away from thy pretty sight.”
I want to reference him calling me a troll earlier but I only stare at the blood pooling around the animal, certain my reaction should not be so well contained given how my society grooms ladies.
I nod and vacate with the meat.
Blood drips into the fire as the meat sizzles. It is done cooking by the time he comes into the kitchen, panting and splattered with blood.
“If ye… needeth more venison… just follow… the blood path.” He slumps onto the stool and puts his head in his arms.
I used the salt I found on a shelf and some dry leafy stuff I thought might be parsley to season the meat. I boiled more water, too, and serve both in front of him. He tears into the meat like a rabid dog, not even bothering with the silverware I went to great pains to find and then clean and polish.
“Tis fit for a King’s banquet!” he exclaims with his mouth full.
“I’m just glad I didn’t burn it. I’ve never cooked like this before.”
“What dost ye mean, ‘liketh this’?”
“Me and my cousin roasted vegetables and fruits over our campfires, but never meat.”
“I hath already supposed ye wast smart, so tis no wonder ye hath understood it so swiftly.”
“Thank you.”
“Nay. Thank ye.”
Zadicayn eats my leftovers like he’s still starving.
“Do you need more?”
“Nay. I art certain me stomach hath reached capacity but I hath nary an understandable way to knoweth for certain. I best nary let it burst. Howeverso,” he looks out the window darkening to evening, “perchance ye mighten learn me thy speech this eve before sleep accepts us.”
I’m not a teacher. I couldn’t even learn how to play the violin, so how am I supposed to teach someone the simple task of talking?
But I try anyway for the next hour. He listens aptly and laughs at himself when he repeats what I say, as if my dialect is the weird sounding one.
“Say, ‘the sun is setting.’”
“The light over yonder valley –”
“Nay. I mean NO! NO!” I throw my fork at him. “Now you’ve got me saying it!”
“See? Mine tis the more noble of speech.” He’s grinning beneath his beard and I can’t help but smile even if I suspect now he is doing it on purpose.
I withdraw my lessons and he goes to collect the blankets. I stoke the fire in the hearth while he lays them down for two beds on the now sanitized floor.
I remove my boots and socks, hoping they don’t smell as bad as they certainly feel. I tuck myself in with a long sigh.
“Brine?”
For some reason, my name spoken out of him brushes shivers down my back. I look behind me without completely rolling over. His eyes are downcast. “Yes?”
When he finally looks at me, his eyes are burning gold. Another question I keep forgetting to ask. I still have so many questions.
“I wish ye to promise meself, that ye shalt tell me if I say or doeth… something ye think be strange, for me concept of what tis appropriate tis still broken and sometimes I tis nary sure. Promise ye shall tell meself? I shan’t offend.”
I shrug. “Sure.”
He takes in a deep breath. “I tis scared to sleep, for I dost nary want to wake and think upon I be back in the vault, or that me vault tis on fire. Wouldst ye be offended…” There is that gaze of his again, looking toward the kitchen door. “If… I asketh to sleep thither close to ye this night? To…” Now he’s looking at the floor. “To toucheth ye so upon my wake, I shall at least believe that someone tis in the vault with me? I… do not want to wake up thinking I am alone again.”
He says the last line so perfectly that it pulls a deeper sense of sincerity out of him that hits me like a tree branch.
He’s not looking at me, and I have to calm my racing heart. He’s asking to sleep with me? I’m going to say no because it is awkward and weird and… and… is it wrong? But how is this so different than a formal sleep over?
To have a formal sleepover with a stranger I just met yesterday and have it not be Jaicom would edge on scandalous. But the plea in Zadicayn’s downcast eyes rivals my first instinct to say no and that thought fills me with shame. After all he had been through… He is the exception for everything, I decide. But that still didn’t soften the creep of awkwardness. I’ll just consider it as sleeping in the same room where he’d be laying close enough to touch me.
My downfall, I remind. Being over kind to those I don’t even know with no thought to my safety.
I should say no. I should say no.
“That will be okay,” I finally choke out. I hope he won’t notice the knife I also slept with last night.
He exhales, as if he’d been holding his breath for a long time (he probably did), and gathering his blankets with stiff movements he shuffles closer to me. I face the window, stiffening as he slides a hairy arm around my waist. I want to change my mind on the basis of my nervousness, but he says, “Thy hair smells of rosemary,” and his next sound is a snore.
So I stay, though, don’t fall asleep as quickly, realizing with surprise that I don’t mind his touch as much as I convinced myself I did. I’d have a hard time getting up anyway. He’s laying on my cotton mattress stuffing mess of hair spread out behind me.
I sleep on the hard stone better than expected.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ZADICAYN
For the first time in three hundred and forty-two years I don’t dream. I just sleep. And when I wake, tis to the presence of another human. Something warm. Alive. My final relief over this wrestles out any shame I had about asking to sleep next to her in the first place. I only don’t cry for joy because I’ve resolved to cease crying in front of her for my quest to restore my dignity.
I lay there a while longer before sunrise, selfishly drinking in her presence and her touc
h. Someday I’ll repair from my abyss-like imprisonment. Some day. If twasn’t for her touch and her presence upon my vacating the vault, I would have gone mad.
It’s just a shame she doesn’t find me as equally attractive. I don’t know why. All this hair gives me a sort of stuffed-animal-toy kind of feel. My sister had this nervous habit even at eleven years old of stroking the long hair on the stuffed toy horse my father made her. Now, how to convince Brine that doing such as that to my face would be alluring to her…
I feel her shift beneath my arm and I feign sleep. Only when she stops moving do I open my eyes again.
Daylight brushes cold blue paints over the mountain tops. Old, unreasonable sensations are also waking up in areas that do me no good right now, so I roll away from her before things get awkward for both of us.
I’ve got breakfast on the cook by the time she wakes, taking a second to look around as if surprised to find herself sleeping on the kitchen floor of a castle.
“Morning to ye,” I say with a cheerful grin she probably doesn’t see through all this hair.
She sits up, scrubbing her eyes with dirty palms. “Good morning.” She’s pulling at her mess of brown hair that has managed to wrap around her neck and bunch at the back of her head like a noose. My sleeping on it probably didn’t help.
“Hey… yesterday I found a hair brush in the same room where I got the soap to clean the kitchen. Might I borrow it?”
“Twas my mother’s. It wouldst honor me if ye keeps it, after all ye hath done for me.”
“Thank you.” She stands and I’m watching the cloths pull against her body as she stretches before I remember my manners and focus on my cooking. I don’t think I’m eighteen like she guessed. I think I’m twelve with how my thoughts betray me; less honorable and raw with energy.
She gathers up the blankets of our shared bed and leaves the kitchen. Given the silence, it triggers three hundred twenty-four years of habit out of me and I begin to recite:
And all was conscience and tender heart.
Full seemly her wimple y-pinched was;
Her nose tretis; her eyen gray as glass;
Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red;
But sickerly she had a fair forehead.
It was almost a spanne broad I trow;
For hardily she was not undergrow.
Full fetis was her cloak, as I was ware.
Of small coral about her arm she bare
A pair of beades, gauded all with green;
And thereon hung a brooch of gold full sheen,
On which was first y-written a crown'd A,
And after, Amor vincit omnia.
The venison is done. I’m even able to salt it a little from the remains of what Brine used. I divide the shares and set them on the table, waiting for her to return.
She comes back into the kitchen and her hair is brushed and pulled back into a braid, framing her face better. I also catch a stronger scent of Rosemary. I hope she took a bar of my mother’s soap for herself as well.
She looks at the food. “You didn’t have to wait for me.” She sits down and picks up her fork.
“Ye didst nary have to let me sleep with ye, either.”
I see her shiver a little. I don’t know what that means.
“I have to go after we’re done eating.”
I’ve already torn into my meat like I’ve seen dragons do – not helping my appearance, I know – but upon her declaration, I slow down.
I see her realize her mistake. Not my problem. I wait until I finish eating to say, “Ye nary stay upon another night?”
“If I have any hope of coming back here, no.”
My body suddenly pains me. But I’m trying to be more noble and dignified, so I stand and bow to her. “If tis what me lady wishes, I shall escort ye to the gate.” I don’t look up to see how she registered my referencing her to being my lady. I really should stop trying to flirt with her because as is, coming out of my ugly face, it’s just bound to creep her out.
She gathers her blanket, looks around, and follows me out. We don’t speak all the way to the Fae Gate. Me, because I will probably cry and I’m really trying not to. Her, because she’s likely glad to be ride of me. It’s hard, but I’m keeping some doubt in my heart as pertaining to her return.
I touch the tunnel with my hairy finger that is now, thank the knights, not so skeletal now that my body finally has food. With my finger I draw a pattern over the rock. It dissolves as if it had been mist in sunlight. I hold out my arm to her. She hesitates, but ends up taking it. Together, we walk through.
Her steps are somewhat halting, as if she’s being taken to a place she only must go to because of obligation. This gives me better hope that she will return.
My ears and the burn in the back of my nasal passage alert me to the telltale pop that indicates swift, untraceable travel across a short distance. It looks like the tunnel is only a hundred feet long, but the mountain is much thicker than that. Roughly, the base is five miles thick. Plus, we are traveling through three Fae layers to enter back into the Human Realm. The Fae set up this tunnels. Which is why it hasn’t collapsed yet.
On the other side of the tunnel we step out onto a boulder hanging like a snaggle tooth over a valley. I remember this valley and that brings me peace, even if I have not the slightest idea what that giant black snake puffing smoke out of its head is in the distance. It’s moving very fast.
Brine gasps and I almost grab her in my anxiousness to discover what is wrong, but she’s only looking about in shock on the boulder we are standing on.
“Tis nary the canyon road on the westmost side,” I say, “like twas when ye came through the Fate gate. This be a backdoor.”
She’s still looking at the boulder beneath her feet, holding her body tight. I sense there is more than shock making her react so. Her voice does not betray what is in her head, however. “How did you change it without your amulet?”
“Tis nary magic. It be manual.”
She doesn’t believe me. The shake of her head says so.
“When doth ye return?” My words fail at delivering my plea, hoping instead my desperate green eyes are enough to root her to the spot. I don’t know why I ask. Even if she says, “yea,” I can’t afford to believe her. But it’s refreshing to feel hope again.
She points at the tunnel. “Can I make it back through this same… you called it a Fae Gate?”
So maybe I failed at giving her proper instructions on how to return. The numbness in my head convinces me I don’t want her out of my sight. “Knock upon it ten times and it shall open for ye.”
She’s staring at me again. But today it is not in curiosity or pity. It’s sympathy. “You’re sure you’re going to be okay?”
I want her to ask that question a hundred more times. “Yea. I shall.” I hope that is not a lie. “When mayest ye return?”
She touches her wrist. “I don’t know. As soon as I can. I have to go now.” She turns to maneuver down the pathway there snaking around the boulder.
“Fare thee well,” I say behind her. I keep watching that spot I saw her last, even though it’s been twenty minutes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BRINELLA
Now that Zadicayn is out of site, it’s hard to believe any of it ever happened. It is just so… unbelievable? Overwhelming? I can’t tag the right word to what I feel. Only that I can’t get his sad green eyes out of my head.
With Durain’s ruck sack over my shoulder, I walk in the concealment of the forest until I hit the road, dash across, and walk preciously near the edge of trees close to my house. I drop my bag, pulling out the hair brush he gave me, rubbing my thumb over the ivory carving of a pegasus surrounded by flowers. I retain the brush, hide the bag, and continue to the river at the spot where Corden said he’d be waiting.
He is waiting. And watching me expectantly as I approach, prying curiosity bubbling out of his old gray eyes.
“Miss Frondaren,” he says, “h
ow was your trip?”
“It…” How to explain it to a stranger I’ve only met once? But, from behind Corden, Joseara joins our company and all the details spill out, willing, desiring that someone tell me it was all a dream. But both of them are nodding.
“I’m overwhelmed.” I press my hand to my sweaty forehead. “What does all of this mean?”
“It means,” Corden starts a hesitant smile. He steps closer to me and puts hands on both my shoulders. “It means you have freed an innocent man, that the three families will be held accountable for the crimes they’ve been committing these three hundred some years. It means that maybe magic might be allowed once again to help the rest of us live just a little easier, like they used to do.”
“So what do we do from here?”
“We need to keep Zadicayn as secret as possible until we can figure out a way to introduce him to the church. It might take a while. For now, we need to protect him. You should bring him to meet us, some time. Let him know who is on his side.”
I don’t know who is on his side aside from myself and Joseara, but I look at the thief and she nods. To trust Corden, then.
“I will.”
“Now,” Corden smiles like a grandfather might to his granddaughter, “Let’s get you presentable for society again. Where did the blood on your blouse come from?”
“Fish.”
Corden produces my carpet bag and hands it to me. All my items are accounted for. I pull out the tiable dress and look at Joseara, who shrugs. “I can try.”
Corden leaves us alone as Joseara helps me into my dress, attempting her best knot.
“If anyone looks closely,” she says, “they will see it’s not a real tie.”
Which will be another complication because Varseena will be the one taking me out of the dress. Joseara throws my hair up in a chignon and covers it with my bonnet. I put on my gloves.
The task done, I give Joseara my trousers and bloody shirt. I can’t take those back with me. I ache as she bids me a farewell and carries them out of sight.