Gossamyr (23 page)

"Seraphion and Martimanas,
amours
all!"

The doors to the Collection were open, as they always seemed to
be, spread in wait of his return. Forgetting the seven sleepers, the
pin man entered the air filled with myrrh and citrus. The scent dived
into his brain, seducing and numbing.

Twirling into the room, he eyed the Red Lady, sprawled upon a
massive bed bedecked in crimson silk with gold-tipped fringe. Her
luminous white flesh enticed for but a spin—soon enough would
come his reward.

First, he turned and danced his way up the two marble steps arced
before the curved wall. Thrusting, he pressed the pin tip into the
marble, feeling its fine point enter the cold stone as if gliding
into a thick, creamy cheese.

And it was done.

He stepped back, the high of the moment dissipating as he looked
over his handiwork.

Finished. Once again surrounded by so many stolen bits of life.

"A blue one," his mistress cooed deliriously from her
bed. "So pretty!"

Indeed. Dozens of pins quilled the marble wall, each spearing a
glimmering fée essence. Essences of white and indigo and
palest violet. Coral and lime and bloodiest red. Orange. Lavender.
Lucid blue. Every color danced to a rhythm that could only match its
former body—vigorous, languid, proud or cocky.

The collection delighted his mistress to giggling peals. "Come,
Puppy!"

He heard her pat the bed behind him. The soft
cush
of
Turkish silk beneath a fragile yet strong palm.
Vat, pat.
Lemon
scent dispersing with each smear of flesh to satin. Every portion of
his being pined to rush into her arms. Remove the scratchy brigandine
and slither across the cool sheets. Reward so sweet.

But wait. Prolong the moment.

Admire.

The pin man stepped another pace backward and stretched his eyes
up the wall. Not far above the collection—more than a stretch,
but certainly less than a jump—one single essence pulsed. Pale
and soft, yellow as the sky on a lazy Sabbath morning. It glimmered
boldly, defiant above all the others.

Tears welled in his eyes. He clutched at his throat, then
swallowed. Desire overwhelmed triumph with bittersweet sorrow.

"Mine," he whispered in the barest of voice.

Gossamyr gasped. "Your wife?"

Ulrich eased his palm to the bruise on his cheek. "She was a
trifle upset with me."

"You are married? Why then do you travel the road alone? I—"
Touched you, she thought. Most intimately. And he had done the same.

He had a wife? And he sought a damsel in her absence? Why, the
man's heart be more fickle than a fée heart!

"Lydia, my wife, would not accompany me on this quest for all
the gold in the world. Just as well."

Ulrich stood and stretched his arms high above his head. His hose
bagged behind his knees; he gave a tug to them just over his
buttocks. Behind them, Fancy snorted. No patches of clover to be
found here on this plot of beaten earth. A glance at the surrounding
people, mired in miserable wait, and Ulrich beckoned she follow him.

Gossamyr remained on the ground, unsure.

"My lady, do you want to hear my sorry tale? It is my final
truth."

"I had thought all our truths out?"

He shrugged. "Oops."

"Oops?" She stood and walked beside him, her bare feet
padding in pace to his. "Blight these mortals and their puzzling
words."

They strode toward the end of the convoy, Fancy in tow. Gossamyr
kept a keen eye on the horizon and the forest that edged the hill for
marauders. Why did the city not post guards outside the gates?

"That dance stole two decades from me,"Ulrich said. He
kicked the cracked wood wheel on a cart piled higher than his head
with chopped ash logs. "Lydia had twenty years to mourn me.
Rhiana, a babe in infant skirts when I left, could never remember me.
Yet it was but an afternoon to me. What if you returned to Faery and
all had changed?"

"Faery time is so mutable. This is my first journey away..."

Would it all be so different upon her return? How to know she
would not lose Time as Ulrich had? "So Rhiana, the damsel, is
your daughter?"

"Yes, you thought otherwise? Silly faery!"

"I am no such thing. I merely—" Had suspected he'd
a lover. But she'd never thought the lover to be a wife. Blight!
"Tell your tale, soul shepherd."

"Very well." Leaping around to the back of the cart,
Ulrich leaned against the gate that barred the wood from tumbling to
the ground. "I passed but a few hours of dancing in Faery. But
here in France, er—the Otherside, for those of us unfamiliar
with the terminology—twenty years passed. I had returned two
decades after stepping into that evil circle."

"That is quite remarkable."

"Yes, and I had aged not a moment. So many things change,"
Ulrich said, "and yet, much remains the same."

That is why you are always muttering about things being the same
or not?"

"I am in a constant state of befuddlement."

"Sure madness."

"Is it mad to wish it back? Twenty years." He groped the
air between them and made to fling it away. "Stolen! I did no
harm to the fée." Checking that those waiting to pass
through the gates were not eavesdropping, Ulrich then lowered his
voice. "I did not covertly enter that damned toadstool ring. I
was but wandering along, whistling a tune, when I stumbled into it
with little knowing." He gripped her by the upper arms and
entreated, "Why did they do it to me?"

The shimmer in his eyes looked to be tears. Gossamyr prevented
herself from reaching to touch his face, from further connecting when
the connection could only feel so illicit. Yet so strongly it
intrigued. She ignored propriety more and more.

"I have always been told the Dancers are returned," she
offered, "without harm."

"I was not harmed physically. But here!" He tapped his
skull and swung around in a circle of outrage. "My thoughts, my
memories, my
very life
has been altered." He wrung his
fist in a useless gesture before his face then punched the air. "It
is as if a chunk has been cleaved out from me—right here."
He thumped his chest. "A chunk of time, of love and life that
should have been mine."

Gossamyr pressed a palm over her chest. Not missing, but...slowly
falling away?

"Lydia remarried!" Ulrich again checked his volume, and
then hissed, "Upon my return to St. Renan a strange man stood in
the doorway to my home. Just stood there! Protecting it from
my
entrance. Lydia's new husband had taken over my home!"

Swallowing, he caught his forehead with shaky fingers. The ruby
ring flashed like the glossy eye of a succubus's victim. "And my
Lydia...she had aged. Still lovely, you understand. But lines had
creased into her forehead. And her eyes—those glass-blue eyes—
they had dulled. She recognized me immediately, but...such horror in
that pretty blue gaze that had before looked upon me with love. Most
likely she thought me a spirit, one of the very souls I have all my
life shepherded onward. Can you imagine?"

"No." Gossamyr crossed her arms over her chest, the
nubby wool gown still moist under her stroking fingers 'Twould be as
if her mother returned to her, but aged beyond comprehension.

Gossamyr had been aware of a few of Shinn's brief visits to the
Otherside. He never changed physically. Yet, the fée lord
always reminded, to visit the mortal realm too often taxed all fée.
Time would have its due.

Propping her shoulder against the corner of the cart, Gossamyr
observed the soul shepherd pace before her. Remembering. Reliving.

"To Lydia I had been absent two decades, and yet I looked the
same. But the worst of all?" Ulrich looked to her for permission
to continue. "Rhiana was gone. Lydia screamed at me, 'She has
been sacrificed to the dragon this day!' This day!"

Dragons were as unfamiliar to Gossamyr as mortals were. She did
know the creatures usually ate mortals offered as a sacrifice. They
were creatures of such old and enduring Enchantment they did not rely
upon Faery for survival.

"I was that close to saving my daughter. And I will have her
back! I will."

"What cruel fate your Dance has granted," Gossamyr
whispered as the man paced off toward the woods. "It is not
right." And now, far from Faery, she could not summon argument
in favor of the fée. Tricksy, be her kind. But to the
detriment of one who had only shown her kindness? "I will help
you to make it right, Ulrich."

The gates were pulled wide to admit what had now become dozens.
The final cart of provisions had been counted and covered and rolled
on into Paris. Gossamyr had let Ulrich wander off, sensing his need
to grieve. But soon the gates would again close.

She tromped through the fallen twigs and tall grasses edging the
forest, making no effort at stealth. If the soul shepherd still be in
a sad mood her noise would alert him, give him opportunity to adjust
his demeanor.

Where had he got to? Mayhap he was off with the alicorn to serve
himself. Or had he been set on by brigands? The alicorn was a beacon.

"When I find him, I am going to track the nearest toadstool
Passage and shove him in."

Ulrich swung around a wide oak trunk. He flicked an acorn at her,
missing by an armshot. "Shove me in? That, my lady, is
positively evil. You should be nicer to me. I am grieving."

Yet his smile compelled her to wonder might his thoughts be more
flirtatious.

"You shouldn't...disappear."

"I was answering nature's call."

"For so very long?"

"My thoughts were dark." He tossed another acorn at her.
Gossamyr caught it and clutched it to fist. "I needed to be by
myself."

"Sorry."

"No worry. I won't let this out of my sight." Ulrich
patted the saddlebag. "I can feel it draw in power. The unicorn
must be in Paris."

"You understand you cannot bring back the dead. Well, you
can, but in exchange, Faery will lose something. It is like when
magic drains the Enchantment."

"I care naught. Rhiana should be alive as we speak. She is an
innocent, Gossamyr, a little child simply needing me, for her mother
had not really loved her."

That statement peaked Gossamyr's attention.

"Nor had she opportunity to get to know me or her real
father."

"Her
real
father?"

Shuffling a handful of acorns in his palm, Ulrich turned and slid
a shoulder against the tree trunk. A sigh and he tossed the acorns to
the ground. "I am not Rhiana's blood father. The child was...
queer-gotten. Unsure parentage. Doesn't matter; I loved her as my
own.

"You have embarked on a harrowing quest, rife with evil that
wishes you dead, for a child not of your blood?"

"Yes!"

Flinching at his emphatic outburst, Gossamyr twisted the tip of
her staff in the ground. The acorn dug into her palm. "Impressive."

"Think you?"

"I don't know I could risk my life for something not my own.
My father, Faery—they mean so much to me. That is because they
are a part of me, my very blood."

"It may surprise you the things a man will do for someone he
loves."

"Will you tell me who your daughter's father is?"

Ulrich stared off toward the gate where the tired travelers filed
through. "When I lived in St. Renan, there was rumor a madman
stalked the forest that edged the sea. He wandered the night naked,
moaning and shouting insanities. All were cautious when passing
through the wood, and never would any broach the forest after
nightfall. Lydia was late from market one eve—but a se'nnight
after we had wed. She arrived home well after moonrise, frantic and
shaking. The madman had violated her."

Gossamyr sucked in a breath.

"Rhiana could be mine, but she is—was—pale of
hair. Dragon piss, it was stark red sprouting unnaturally wild like a
witch's broom from her scalp." Ulrich tilted his head to look at
Gossamyr. "Lydia never did take to the child. So distant she
kept, almost as if she feared to touch the poor thing. I could not
fault her; she had suffered for that child. Mayhap that was why I was
drawn immediately to her. I fell madly for her wide green eyes. Such
a gem, she was, and so innocent of her coming to this wicked world.
Do you believe a man can love a child not his own?"

"Such a man would have to be selfless, honed of impeccable
integrity. If you say that you can, then I suppose I believe you."

"Such trust I've gained in so little time from you, Faery
Not." Hooking an arm about the tree trunk, he swung forward,
dipping his head to peer up into her face. "Not so quick to
brush me off now. Must be the Disenchantment. It has made you more
susceptible to we mortals."

Gossamyr touched her throat. She had abandoned the wimple
somewhere along the way. "Do I yet sparkle?"

He stroked two fingers across her brow and pushed back a loose
strand of hair over her shoulder. "Not so much. Actually..."
He tilted up her chin. "I don't see the pattern at all. That
bath in the stream must have washed it away. Nice."

His breath swept her cheek and Gossamyr blinked open her eyes to
look upon his face. He smiled. "You are difficult to resist, you
know that?"

"Resist how?"

"From kissing."

"But, your wife..."

"Never again to be mine. Condemn me naught, I still love her.
Or maybe it was but the child I truly loved. Indeed, it was difficult
atimes to withstand Lydia's blatant refusal to love Rhiana. Ah!
Mon
Dieu,
it has been but a week! And yet, already I look to my
fancies. You can steal the marriage from the man, but you cannot take
away his desire."

Desire, Gossamyr knew. Desire, she had felt under Ulrich's
scrutiny. But to know now that he was married and had a child...

"What will you do if you
can
bring back your daughter?
It has been very long; she will not remember you."