Gossamyr

by Michelle Hauf

  "My, my mortal name." The knowledge landed her, light as a feather, to her shoulder. So precious, and she had held such all this time.

  He lifted her hand and pressed it to his cheek, which momentarily brightened the tear trail. Not warm, Shinn's flesh, but neither cold. Drawing her hand away, he clasped it between both of his. "Now you have the truth. All of it. You must not worry for the world, Gossamyr. Think of yourself."

  "Myself?" Verity d'Ange. Mortal. "Yes, so much I have wanted. So much I have received."

  But there were others. "Can Avenall ever remember?"

  Shinn shrugged. "I could make it so. Do you wish it?"

  "I'm not sure." Not the same. "What if I Named him complete?"

  "You might try. The Red Lady's power over him is great with the essences that feed her."

  "What is her complete name, Shinn? You must know."

  "I do, but the Naming will not command her. Circelie made a pact with a witch for her Naming. A foul mix of glamour and magic shield her from any Enchantment I might wield against her." Now he touched her forehead, connecting. Lowering his head, he kissed her in the wake of his thumbprint. "If I could have used the truth, I would have. Never forget I love you. I do not know how to hate you."

  "I cannot forget something that lives in my heart. Thank you and. ..curse you."

  With that, Shinn shimmered through the curtain that separated the Otherside from Faery. And Gossamyr fell to her knees and caught her hands at the edge of the stream.

  A wavery reflection of a woman stared up at her. Silver light

  330 Michele Hauf

  glinted in the purling waters sparkling like a crown about her blowsy tresses. Perhaps a remnant of her bath to wash away the glamour. If only she had known then she might have clung to the Enchantment a bit longer.

  "No," she whispered to the woman in the stream. "This be who I am. Mayhap I have always known. Only now can I accept the truth." She speared a finger into her reflection, dispersing the regretful moue on the woman's lips.

  There were things to do. Action to be taken.

  But.

  "Is my path now the same?" she wondered as she rose and scanned the wall of the city that had kept attacking enemies at bay for countless mortal moons.

  The enemy was already inside the gates, safely shrouded within walls of marble. Walls undulating with the stolen lives of the Dis-

  o

  enchanted. Shinn's lover. A vindictive succubus who would make her Faery father suffer for deeds he could not undo. How he must have felt to look upon his newly born child, a changeling cursed by the Red Lady. Then was when Shinn's heart must have broken.

  Had it ever healed? Or had Gossamyr's difficulties in adjusting to Faery, and her ultimate mutiny, ripped Shinn's heart to irreparable shreds?

  Had the man the capacity to love as only Gossamyr knew she could love? / kept the truth to keep you in my heart. You are my mortal passion.

  Yes.

  Gossamyr smiled at the voice inside her head. Shinn's voice. He was with her. And that knowledge comforted.

  o

  "Faery might not be my home, but it is in my heart. I will not step away from my quest."

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The shimmer was as a fallen star, or a portion of moonlight hovering in the mute shadows between two buildings. Ulrich, clutching the saddlebag covetously, stepped forward, his mouth agape. The brightness softened and he was able to look directly at the image for more than a few blinks.

  Slowly the brilliance shimmied and moved and began to form. A man?

  But of course. He doubted no strange creature. Had he not seen, in the past se'nnight, more than any sane mortal should see for a lifetime?

  Thinking to turn away from witnessing, from pressing further into his memory visions of Faery, Ulrich splayed his hand before his face.

  Yet a male voice, calm and rimmed with the remarkable jingle of Faery, stirred him to look fully into the face of a most marvelous being. A head taller than he, the creature. Glints of bronze and crystal gleamed with the illumination of Faery there at his brow and on his shoulder and lower, rimming his cloak. Streams of sil-

  332 Michele Hauj

  ver hair listed in the breeze. Small horns sprouted at his temples, glittering with so much Faery glamour. Regal, spoke his carriage; melancholy spoke his face.

  Ulrich knew without thinking who stood before him. Impulsively he clutched the saddlebag tighter until he could feel the hard form of the alicorn cleave into his ribs.

  The lord of Glamoursiege extended his hand. Ulrich flinched and stepped back.

  "Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III."

  "You—you know my name?"

  "You see me?"

  Ulrich nodded effusively. If he ran, would the Faery lord give chase? What was he doing here in Paris when Gossamyr had been emphatic regarding her father's aversion to the city, his risk to Disenchantment? And hadn't she just gone to seek him?

  Remain, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III.

  The Faery lord had named him complete. Ulrich could but stand. And admire.

  Do not move.

  The urge to run slipped away like rain purling over a blanched skull.

  Moving more upon a glimmer than actually stepping, Shinn swayed closer.

  His fingernails digging into the leather bag, Ulrich felt the inexplicable urge to bow, to coil into his torso and prostrate himself. But as his knees wobbled and his stomach roiled, he found the fortitude to remain standing.

  "A strong mortal. You are not afraid?"

  "You are...Gossamyr's father."

  The Faery lord tilted his head. Violet eyes touched Ulrich mere— his heart pulsed madly—just on the chest, before moving up and meeting him eye-to-eye. A vision of the Dance flashed in Ulrich's forethoughts and he spat out, "They made me dance! For so long."

  Gossamyr 333

  Shinn nodded, an understanding parent. "You are the soul shepherd who accompanies my daughter."

  Huffing out a breath of the ages Ulrich felt, for the first time in over a week, a strange calm. "I am. I didn't mean to step into Faery. It was merely an accident. I was not looking where I wandered. I meant thee no harm!"

  "The Dance is long past."

  "Long past? It has been but a se'nnight! You stole so much from me!"

  Shinn inclined his head. The slight movement straightened Ulrich and he sucked in a breath. Settle. It is the past. Mustn't anger a being whom he had learned was quick to temper and even more vile when doling punishment.

  "You carry the alicorn?"

  Ulrich looked aside to the ground.

  "I will not take it from you, mortal. It is yours to command. You must study your heart and decide whether or not your original intentions will bring certain improvement or sure failure."

  "I— Just want to see my daughter. One last time. And... I want Faery from my eyes." He clutched the shape of the alicorn in the saddlebag. Did he smell flowers? The scent seemed to drift from the Faery lord himself. "Gossamyr tells me to return the alicorn would seal the rift. If such an event occurs, she will not then be able to return to Faery—"

  "You know far too much, mortal."

  "—to you!"

  The Faery lord bowed his head and the gleam of the bronze band about his forehead momentarily blinded Ulrich.

  Ulrich touched his right eye, smoothed a finger over the ache, but with a blink he focused on the faery. "I want my daughter back."

  "As do I," Shinn said loudly and abruptly.

  "We both love a child not our own."

  "Do not presume to compare two opposite beings."

  334 Michele Hauj

  "Mayhap in flesh and the internal soul we are opposite—" Ul-rich pressed fingers to his chest. They shared much! "—but not in heart. I know you love Gossamyr. This alicorn, it is the key to my love."

  With a disdainful sniff the Faery lord resumed composure and nodded. "It is not for me to command you, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III."

  Quiet acceptance swept over
Ulrich. Glamour seeped into his pores. "Know only I love my daughter as you love your daughter."

  The gleam surrounding the faery brightened. When Ulrich thought Shinn would flitter away, his light softened and he stood immediately before him. He hadn't seen him move. So close, these faeries, so close.

  "Tell me, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III..." Shinn's voice oozed through Ulrich's conscious, touching the resistance and softening with a sigh. "With which eye do you see me?"

  "What? I see you plain as any man, standing far too close for my comfort."

  "You but see me with one eye, mortal. Which one?"

  Shaking his head, for he did not understand, Ulrich shrugged, but then thought to test the faery's suggestion. He closed his left eye. Shinn's calm countenance remained before him. So close he could feel the man's breath, warm as a summer breeze and tinged with—the scent of a flowered meadow? Not too close for Faery. So Ulrich opened his left eye and closed his right. He turned his head. Where had the man—opening both eyes, he saw Shinn had not moved.

  "My.. .right," he offered. "I but see you with my right eye—"

  Before he could finish, Shinn's fingers moved over Ulrich's face. Gripped in the faery's hold, he felt a cool touch of breath as Shinn blew into his right eye.

  A blue ache crackled across his eye and moved around and behind into his skull. Cold, so cold. A momentary wave of pain, and

  Gossamyr 335

  then it dissipated with a jingle of the Dance, a remnant of all that had irrevocably altered Ulrich's life. Never again the same.

  But do you desire sameness?

  Shinn released him. Ulrich wavered then righted himself. Still there, the saddlebag. He could not see the Faery lord standing before him. Had he glimmered off so quickly?

  "Shinn?"

  "Never call me by name," the faery's voice answered from what seemed to be right before Ulrich.

  Cupping a palm over his right eye, he searched the dimming light with his left. Shinn was not to be sighted. But his presence; he could verily feel the faery's presence in his blood.

  "I cannot see you. My eye., .what.. .1 cannot see with my right eye!"

  "Fair fall you, Shepherd to Lost Souls."

  "No." Ulrich lashed out with a clawing hand and touched nothing but air before him. At the periphery of his vision he saw the flash. "You bastard! You have taken half my sight but you'll not take my determination. I will have my daughter back!"

  Basking in the illumination of the multicolored essences, she stretched languorously along the silk linens soaked in myrrh. Puppy tended her desires. Perched at the end of the bed, he lapped at her bare toes, sucking each one inside his warm bud of a mouth. She neared the edge; release shimmied in her groin. Oh, but the lash of his tongue tip along the high arch of her foot!

  "Oh, Pup-eeeeeeee..."

  He knew not to speak, but to tend her unceasingly until the climax overwhelmed. Clenching thick wodges of silken sheet and pillow in her fists, she began to surrender. The moans of the pinned essences chanted an eerie background. Ah, there. A high, shimmering note vibrated from afar...

  "What?" Snapping upright on the bed, she pricked her ears for

  336 Michele Hauf

  the neuma of tone that clutched her passion and thrust it to the side. "Cease!" She kicked at Puppy, drawing out her largest toe from his mouth in a tooth-scraping tug. "Listen."

  Her lover cowered at the bed's edge, his fingers clawing into the scarlet sheets, his eyes underlined by the rumpled linens.

  Drawn from the manic magic that should have enthralled her, she slid off the bed, her parted robe scouring over Puppy's stream of hair. But the tips were black; soon he would be red complete. Red. Then gone. She disliked them after the transformation for

  o

  they were so obsequious.

  Stopping before the marble wall, she splayed out her hands, as if to command the essences to silence. They continued their dirge, unmindful of her efforts.

  Tilting her head, she managed to fix upon that unique but so familiar vibration.

  "Shinn?" she gasped, unbelieving if it were true. "In the Other-side?"

  Sprinting out the door and down the marble hallway, she was aware the pin man followed like the puppy dog she'd named him. He remained silent. Good puppy. Passing by the seven sleepers, their murmurs halted and the candle flames heightened. Attention drew to her, as it should.

  Had the Faery lord come to Paris? To become Disenchanted? No. He would not risk such a fall.

  Mayhap he sought her? Could it possibly be after all this time her lover wanted her back?

  Flinging wide the doors to the outer streets, she stepped onto the cobbles. The night air gloved her bare flesh, raising prickles upon her belly and arms and neck.

  "Mistress, come back inside!"

  Ignoring his pleas, the Red Lady sent out a call. An answer. Come take me, I am here. I have never stopped loving jou...

  "I will retrieve a dress and call for the carriage," Puppy muttered.

  Gossamyr 337

  * * *

  Ulrich paused just off the courtyard that preceded the Petit Pont. A torn banner whipped in the breeze, belatedly marking the Monday market. It was difficult to navigate with but one eye, but he was determined. Avoiding a fast carriage, he skipped backward and barely managed an inelegant jump over the center gutter. Thrusting an angry fist in the carriage's wake, he suddenly paused. He tilted his head to focus on a sound that did not fit amidst the shouts and brays and clanks of metal.

  Insinuating himself between two close buildings, he shuffled the length of them to the opposite end where he stood alone upon the twilight-shining cobbles. There echoed the most elegant note, wavering and rising and finally settling into his chest.

  So lovely the sound. It seemed to say, "I am... here... loving you."

  Ulrich searched the sky, one-eyed as he could, unable to determine the direction of the call.

  You are being pisky-led!

  Pixies—or piskies, whatever the Hades they were—did not possess such beautiful song.

  It is the Red Lady.

  Well, she must be very beautiful, for her voice rivaled an angel's song. Or so Ulrich wagered. And she sang to him of love. Loving him? How he desired a kind, loving touch, a kiss to erase the bruise that yet colored his face with the sting of an accidental betrayal. This faery song was not the same and never to be the same.

  Do not listen! She is evil.

  Ulrich ignored his conscience, which sounded much like Gossamyr of Glamoursiege—daughter of his cruel tormentor—and sought out the origin of the compelling song.

  He was not blinded fully and kept a wall on his right side, gliding his palm across the plastered limestone to support, for his lack of vision caused him to waver and stumble. Cold, the area surrounding his eyeball. Blinking at the brimming moisture that

  338 Michele HauJ

  pooled in his blinded eye, he shook his head to fling away the wet, then proceeded onward.

  The sonorous song filling his ears led him down a narrow passage darkened by buildings, four levels stacked one upon the other. Ulrich homed in on the music, succumbing to the heady surrender to ecstasy. She awaited him. A lover. Her kisses promised passion. It had been so long since he had known such. Twenty years. Or merely a week. He did not know anymore.

  Sliding a finger under his right eye, he wiped away the stinging moisture.

  The hunger for love grew. Already he could verily taste her, slipping across his tongue, gliding like fine wine down his throat and easing the ache in his belly.

  Around the corner he spied a black lacquered carriage parked outside a manor stable. Not yet set out on journey, he suspected, for a coachman did not sit upon the driver's high perch.

  Ulrich pushed aside the iron gate and walked up the crushed-shell path to the stable. His leather soles crunched the pearlescent shards in squeaking outbursts. If he kept his arms splayed and hands flattened, such did not tax his balance.

  Drops of the sti
nging liquid running from his eye slipped into his mouth. Tasteless, unlike tears. Would he cry a saltless river from this day forth? Damn the Faery lord, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III would not for one moment longer aid his daughter's quest. A mere mortal woman who could no more attract a unicorn than she could fly?

  All for Ulrich now. He must focus on his wants.

  A lava of pale velvet skirts spilled out of the dark-bodied carriage. The elegant twist of a feminine hand, gloved in softest gray kid, beckoned him forward. Alabaster and clouds and fresh clean eggshell, those were the colors of her gown. Yet— he could not see flesh. Or even a face. 'Twas the costume but no body!

  Gossamyr 339

  The glove reached for his face. The touch of her, so delicate, shimmered through Ulrich's being, startling him madly. Like a bang to an elbow that vibrates shock waves, but this touch pleasured with its lightning path of pain. Pulling away, she held her finger between them, coated with the saltless tears that glimmered with the sheen of Faery. Shinn's trail? The finger moved in a fanning motion before what should have been her face—mon Dieu, but the wake of her movement showed red eyes and nose and smirking red lips! Wherever his tears touched revealed that part of the faery he could not see. She pushed the finger into her mouth and closed her eyes. Jubilation.

  Strange as the vision was, to stand before him, partly seen, her costume draped in places where he should see flesh, Ulrich could not deny her beauty.

  Banished for loving the cruel Faery lord? He reached to touch the blossom of vibrant red mouth that curled into a smile. His movement dislodged the leather saddlebag from his shoulder. Oblivious to the contents that spilled at his feet, Ulrich held out his hand, pleading for one touch of the delicious skin—so exquisitely pale—and to trace the dotted marking. To recompense for love lost.

  Suddenly her crimson eyes widened and she drew in a hissing breath.

  Ulrich looked dowrn the shell path to where his seducer's eyes focused. Tilting his head, he spied what held her fascination. The alicorn lay unbound from its wrapping.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Gossamyr strode toward the city walls where she knew Ulrich's uncle lived, her heels barely touching the cobbles. The wound on her knee stung. It was a struggle not to limp, but yet the air lightened her steps. An ever-flowing stream of her mortal tears for a bit of glamour right now—though the tears be valuable only to the fee. Anything to make her less vulnerable. She should have remained in the