Gossamyr (16 page)

"If you will allow it, my assistant—" she cast a
stern reprimand toward Ulrich, who looked ready to protest"—and
I will dispose of the body."

"No!"

"We know naught of you!"

"I am a Sister of your church. Er...my church."

"The Catholic church!" Ulrich shouted. And then he
sternly said, "Gossamyr."

"Be you God-fearing?"

"You want him for yourself!" someone called. "We'll
keep the body."

"You cannot!" She straightened, meeting the man who had
spoken boldly. "You think to challenge me?" Certainly a
proper challenge would require him to recognize her position by first
kneeling into a bow.

But he merely tilted a queer gaze upon her. "Do I face down a
woman of the cloth in a challenge?" He eyed her staff. "Or
a blasphemer in want of her own suspicion?"

"Come along, Sister. Vespers to be said." Ulrich gripped
the back of her wool gown and tugged. Gossamyr choked, and was
literally lifted from her feet. "So sorry to have interrupted
this gleeful, er,
dire
event. Go along. God grant you all
peace and safety." He nudged Gossamyr. Hard. "We 're off."

"You stand too close." A tug of the wimple unloosed it
from the tight choke about her throat.

"Times like this we're both too close—to an imminent
uproar that may likely involve pain. To us. Now move!"

Facing the crowd, she drew her finger across her chest then swept
it down her stomach. It wasn't right, she knew, but on occasion she
had witnessed Veridienne doing something of the sort.

"What was that for?" Ulrich hissed in her ear.

"I need that body."

Another tug swung her around behind a cart parked but ten long
strides from the scene. Ulrich pressed a palm over her shoulder to
the wooden body of the vehicle, effectively pinning her. "You
need a change of religion."

"I don't understand you."

He nodded over his shoulder to the thick circle of naysayers.
"They think you wish to sell the body."

"Why would I do that?"

"For coin! Why else would you want it?"

"Did you not see his eyes?"

"All that blood?"

"It is not blood." Itching the wimple, Gossamyr then
palmed Ulrich's face and—closeness be blighted—explained,
"The Red Lady. It is her kiss that releases the revenant from
the Disenchanted fée men. The revenant must come
out
of
the body. It cannot happen before the eyes of these innocents. Do you
understand?"

Ulrich's swallow was audible. Gossamyr felt much the same. For a
time he simply gazed upon her, his marvelous eyes not revealing his
truths, but merely a solemnity that confused.

"What are you thinking? Can you work your soul shepherding on
it?"

"Oh, no." He twisted his face from her hand. Two strides
moved him closer to the crowd, a bend at the waist attempted to
survey the scene between legs and shuffling children. He swung and
hissed back at Gossamyr, "I don't, I've never— You're sure
he's a faery? I don't see any wings— Watch it!" Ulrich
dodged to avoid a hunched man wielding a dagger. He moved with the
angry crowd around the body. "That man poked me!"

Gossamyr spied the man. She could not see his face, for a cloak
covered all, including his hair, but she did see the weapon. It
wasn't a dagger but a long pin of sorts. Fixing her staff under her
arm, she joined Ulrich's side. "Shall I poke him back?"

"No!" Ulrich turned her away from the crowd and shoved
her to a walk. "You've already brought enough suspicion upon our
heads. Let's away from this place. It is creepy."

"We cannot leave." She dug her toes into the ground. "I
must keep an eye on the body."

"They want to rip the body asunder and bury it deep for fear
the plague will creep under their doors and kill them all."

"That is macabre. He will bring them no harm. Not unless the
revenant escapes. Revenant, Ulrich. An indestructible skeleton with
sharp teeth and a desire to rip out one's essence with its bony
hands."

Ulrich eased a hand over his chest and winced.

"Yes," she answered his unspoken fear, "it
will
leave a mark."

"Fine, but let's keep to ourselves until the crowd settles.
Show them we have no interest in stealing their plague-ridden body.
We'll keep the dead faery in sight, I promise."

The body was unceremoniously tossed into a cart slimed with old
greens and wheeled around behind the stables connected to the Pig's
Snout tavern. Soaking it in oil was required, for the heavy substance
would fill the shell of bone and coat its flesh, keeping the plague
at bay until it could be burned. Old Basequin, who normally buried
the unnamed dead, would have to be roused and a keg of valuable
lampblack cracked open.

The man who had waited in the shadows of a dilapidated church for
the last angry villager to leave now scampered across the grounds and
fixed himself to the shadows that cooled the cart. A wisp of red hair
slipped over his cheek and he tucked it back inside the hood of his
cloak.

Very little time had passed since the fée had fallen, and
yet, flies buzzed over the dead fée's face, settling on the
red-filled eyes for a few beats before taking to flight and repeating
the
danse macabre.
The flitter of a dragonfly's wings alerted,
but the man paid the large insect no mind.

Glee in his eyes, the man raised a long shining pin over the fée's
skull—and waited.

"You are not hungry?"

"I cannot abide strange meat." Gossamyr bit into a
bruised yellow apple and proceeded to consume the mushy fruit in six
more chomps. They'd slipped inside the tavern and sat near a window
so dirty there was but an eyehole of sight to the crowd still looming
around the body. Too anxious to sit and wait, Gossamyr had walked
back outside. Now she stood next to the hay cart parked at the edge
of the square, one eye on the ground where a lazy mongrel slept
behind the shade of the cart's rear wheel.

"Strange?" Ulrich chomped on a thick chunk of deer. He
balanced a bread trencher in his palm, not too thrilled to be eating
on foot. "Let me guess, you eat toadstools and flowers?"

"You make it sound an unnatural diet."

"I suppose it is in the eyes of the chewer."

The cart the fée had been tossed into was now pushed around
behind the stables but two buildings down from where they stood.
Gossamyr remained alert, ready for the moment when the last of the
angry villagers might leave the body alone.

"So you tell me this red lady steals the essences of
disenchanted faeries?"

"Yes."

"How? And if the faery is disenchanted...why would this
essence have any enchantment in it? It makes little sense."

Gossamyr stopped chewing. As elementary as the man's mind worked,
he did raise a point. Surely someone had to
remove
the
essence. For 'twas certain it was not with the revenant when it left
the body, for then the revenant would have little reason to return to
Faery in search of such. How then would the Red Lady get said
essence? It was not Enchantment that lingered in the essence but the
body's glamour. Mayhap the essence had been removed long before the
fée expired?

"Do
you
not know?" she entreated Ulrich. "Surely
the death of a fée is no different than your mortal deaths."

"I cannot see a soul. No one can. It is a feeling. I connect
with the remnants of life as it leaves the body or after it has
already vacated. But what I don't understand...is this revenant thing
the same or is it separate from the essence?"

"Separate. Why must you label things same or not the same?"

"I...well, what would you do if twenty years of your life had
disappeared in a snap?"

Gossamyr couldn't even guess. Though her concept of a mortal year
was midsummer to midsummer—a very long time. She supposed she
might react the same.
The same?
Most likely she would never
again be the same should she lose a portion of her life due to her
trip from Faery.

"Yes, the same," Ulrich whispered over her shoulder. The
grease from cooked meat shining his lower lip appealed very little to
her. "Though
you
are not the same."

"You have not before met me so you cannot determine my
sameness." She stabbed her staff to ground and, with another
bite of the apple, followed the billowing cloak of the hooded man she
knew had poked Ulrich. What was he up to?

"True. But as a representative of your common mortal woman
you are
not
the same."

"What think you of me representing a fée woman?"

He poked at the gape in his teeth with his tongue; trying to
dislodge food? "No wings."

"Not all faeries have wings, you said so yourself."

"You do sparkle."

"I thought this hideous headpiece covered—"

"There is a smear on your cheek. Let me get it."

She dodged his sticky reach and instead swiped her own dirty palm
across her cheek.

"Fine and well," he offered. A chomp of the trencher
filled his cheek with a bulge of hard bread. He silently offered the
lump of finger-poked bread to her. Gossamyr shook her head. Ulrich
tossed the morsel to the dog sleeping beneath the cart.

"I should slip around behind the building and keep an eye on
the body."

"A death watch?"

"If I see anything come out from it I must kill it before it
can flee to Faery."

"What if it is the essence you see leaving the body?"

"I know what it looks like. It is remarkable."

"Well, you'll not be able to feel the essence, that is my
talent."

"Then you must come along." The more she thought on it,
the more she realized she had no idea how the essence was removed. It
could be long gone, or it may yet have been released.

"To the body. Quick!"

The color was beautiful, deep scarlet and speckled with luminous
pockets of palest pink. It hovered above the dead fée's head,
lingering, undulating, as if adjusting to the atmosphere outside the
body. Or perhaps preening. The essence generally behaved as it had
when enclosed within the body. Cocky, elegant and proud, as were most
fée.

"Another prize for my mistress's collection. Come, pretty
one." The man stabbed the essence with his silver pin. A shriek
of death accompanied the action. And following, the howl of the
revenant as it began to clamber out from the fée's body.

Even as the skeletal fingers emerged from the core of flesh and
muscle, the pin man scampered off. No need to remain and witness the
hideous event. Or risk decapitation by an angry revenant.

"Do you see?"

Ulrich looked where Gossamyr pointed. What he saw stopped him
cold. The blood slowed in his body and a shiver curled up his spine.
Let the bold faery charge into danger, he had come to his limit
battling supernatural beasties. Current supernatural beastie being
half in, half out, of the dead faery's body. A skeleton, animated and
jaws yowling, pushed out of the chest. Boned wings stretched wide in
a
whoosh.
The tattered membranes between the wing bones
shrilled a vile note through the air.

Gossamyr reached the cart, staff wielded for fight. The revenant
had completely emerged and crouched upon the boneless shell of flesh
and fabric, an incubus newly birthed from its host. It glanced to
Gossamyr. Deep red glowed in the skull's eye sockets. Fangs glinted.
Fingertips clattered, bone against bone, in a challenging gesture.
Yowling to the heavens, the creature leaped into the air.

Gossamyr swung her staff, nicking the revenant's foot. Dust of
bone and faery glimmer spumed from the connection point.

"She's going to be killed by a dead thing," Ulrich
murmured. Clinging to Fancy, and to the saddlebag, he contemplated
rushing to assist. A glance about ensured no witnesses. Another swing
doubled the creature. Gossamyr stood tall. "On the other hand,
Faery Not is little afraid of anything. I would hate to interfere.
Once already been chastised for that."

With each swing of Gossamyr's staff, the revenant's bones were
broken and crushed. Faery dust veiled the air surrounding the battle.
But the thing did not attack—more like it tried to defend so
that it could...leave.

"For Faery," Ulrich gasped in realization. "Just
let it go! Don't risk your life, my lady!"

"My life is to defend my own!" she shouted and took
another swing. A bend of her waist, and she swung the end of her
staff up behind her and knocked the thing's legs off just below the
knee. "Did you see the man?" she shouted.

"What man?"

"The one who stood at the cart as we arrived? I saw him
earlier."

Gossamyr's yelp put Ulrich to his feet. The revenant's fangs
gashed open her wool sleeve. The half-bodied creature flapped its
wings and soared too high for Gossamyr's swing to connect. And with
another flap it was gone in a twinkle and a froth of glimmer.

"Take this vision from my eyes," Ulrich hissed. So much
he did not wish to see! And all because of his dance.

"Blight me!" She swung furiously up through the air,
fighting but the shade of the creature. "It is on to Faery."

"But only half of it," Ulrich reassured as he tugged her
toward Fancy. "Come, we must be away from here. The entire
village will be upon us after that ruckus." He shoved her up
onto Fancy's back. "Let's be off!"

Mounting behind her, Ulrich heeled the mule, and was delighted the
beast kicked into a gallop.

Gossamyr tugged off the wimple and tossed it to the ground.
"Wait!" She pulled the reins and turned Fancy toward the
cart. "What of the essence? That man with the pin took it. I saw
it leave the body before the revenant broke out."

"Why did not the bony creature go after the thief?"

"I don't know. Mayhap, the essence was injured by the pin."

Fancy plodded by the dead fée. It lay there, literally a
bag of bones tossed onto the cart. Above and behind, Gossamyr sensed
the flight of the fetch. With little fanfare the empty body suddenly
fizzled to a fine dust. But a glimmer glinted at the bottom of the
cart. Not the final
twinclian,
such was much more spectacular.