When Sham took off running toward his home, she sat down on the grass. Charlie didn’t know what to do, not now that she’d been told he was coming here. Her plan was to hide here, to hide herself in shadows until he’d moved on. But with him coming here, she’d have to work harder at becoming unknown to him. She really didn’t want a mate.
No one knew what Charlie knew. Few would have believed her anyway. It was about her mom and dad. She had seen her parents, both of them, with the biggers off and on over the last decade or so. They were as alive as she was. There could only be one reason for them to just leave her behind, leave her for the others to see to until she was old enough to fend for herself. They had hated her, didn’t want her.
They had left her all alone in the world of leprechauns so that they could live with the biggers, the humans. Knowing that they’d had no use for their baby daughter, Charlie had made sure and cultivated the fact that she wasn’t wanted by anyone in either world by being mean and hateful to everyone. Pushing people away was much easier, she’d discovered, than being pushed away by them. And this man, her supposed mate, he’d be no different than her parents had been. Still were, she supposed.
Getting up, she decided that she’d take to the mountains. It would take her time, she thought, but it was the perfect time of the year for her to be gathering some herbs for some of her mixtures. And while she was gone, if it took her longer than it would have any other time, then so be it. The man, whoever he was, he’d just have to move on with his life. Just as she was going to do.
Packed with just what she’d need to start out with, Charlie knew that she’d have the rest available to her as she wanted it. There was plenty enough game there, and she’d have enough vegetables in her little garden when she finished that it would take her all summer to eat. By then, she’d have more coming on.
As she started out on her hike, the faeries of the glen came to see her off.
“I’m going to the lake for a few days.” Lying to the little busy bodies, she knew that before she was in the darkened wood, they’d be rushing back to tell Sham that she’d run off. “I’ll be catching me some fine meat to dry out, and if you wish, I’ll bring you back some hollyhock too.”
“Oh yes, mistress. That would be fine.”
They buzzed off, talking about how they’d enjoy the treat she’d be bringing them back. She would, but not anytime soon. Making sure they were all gone, she turned at the fork in the path and made her way to the top of the mountain.
“Aye, and I’ll be sleeping in my nice bed alone tonight.” Charlie thought of the poor man she was deserting. Yes, she supposed that’s just what she was doing. “But he’ll be fine there in the world of the biggers. I know I will be here too.”
~*~
The mess took much longer to clean up than Dominic had thought it should have, more than likely due to the fact that the little people were making more of a mess than they were helping clean things up. As he set the boxes of laundry detergent up for the third time, he told O’Reilly, for the fifth time, that he had it under control now.
“Aye, you sure do, but we have to help you too.” The boxes fell over again when one of the helpers decided that it might be fun to do cartwheels over the shelf. Of course, it knocked over not only the boxes he’d set up, but also several bottles of window cleaner. “You surely have a great many things here to clean your house. I’d think you’d just use what the world gave you.”
“And what would that be?” Dominic pulled the three little people off the shelf and asked them to take the trash out. As soon as the words left his mouth, he heard the cans fall over and laughter. “I really think I can handle this on my own.”
“Well, there be water. I use that when I’m having to. My missus, she don’t care much when I have a wee bit of drink and I come home smelling of it. I have taken my nose to my clothing and I’ve never smelled it. But then she’s a good deal smarter than meself.” Dominic wanted to ask why she wasn’t the one in charge but decided that O’Reilly would have a long story to tell about that.
Dominic started cleaning up the dog food that hadn’t been to the little peoples’ liking. It seemed that the only thing that they liked was sweets, and anything that resembled beer. But not root beer. That had made them burp, and they had it in their heads that it would make them explode. It was another in a long line of things that he didn’t understand about them.
“Oh, and by the way, Charlie, she’s taken off again.” He’d been hearing about this Charlie person for several days. But a great deal more so today. “I’m thinking that she’s thinking to avoid her impending mating.”
“I think I would too if you guys had anything to do with finding her one.” Something occurred to him, and he turned so quickly that he dropped dogfood on the floor again. “Just who is it you have planned for this mating of Charlie?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you? I must have forgot. I’m good at that, forgetting to tell ya something. Why, you’d not believe it if I told you, I have to write me a little note down when I have something that I have to remember.” He started backing away. “And then there was the other time that I had to find me note by making me another one to pin to me shirt. It was a—”
“Who?” Dominic hadn’t meant to yell, his voice thundering all over the nearly empty store. “Who do you have planned for this mating with this famed Charlie?”
“I didn’t tell you? I was sure—” Growling at the man had him nodding. “Nay, I didn’t tell you. It’s you, my dear boy. And the way that you’re an acting, it makes me think that the two of you are more suited than not. You’ve shown that you have yourself a hot temper too. And you not even being a red head and all.”
“I told you before, I’m not looking for a mate at the moment.” O’Reilly said that he did remember him saying that. “And you chose to ignore it, as you have so many other things that I’ve said to you? I do not want a mate. I’m doing just fine as I am.”
The little faerie, no bigger than a dime, came from nowhere and landed on O’Reilly’s shoulder. When he stiffened and said that he had to go, Dominic almost asked him what was going on when the little man was suddenly gone. All of them were.
Cleaning up took no time at all. But in the back of his mind, he had a feeling that whatever was going on that caused O’Reilly to leave, it was going to have to do with this Charlie woman and him. Taking the trash out, he stood there in the near foot deep snow thinking about his life right now.
“If one more thing goes wrong today, I think I might go home and not venture out until spring thaw.” Dominic locked up the store and started for the building that Tyler and Jazzie had gone to. Halfway there, he was stopped by one of the little people.
“King O’Reilly wishes to know if you’ve your heart set on Mistress Charlie. He wants me to go back and answer today.” Dominic asked him what had happened. “Well, sir, she’s gone and got herself in trouble again. She canna go to the mountains without a trouble or two following her.”
The man smiled, but it was strained, and he looked nervous. Before he would answer him, Dominic had a few things of his own he wanted to say. But the man was joined by a woman that he knew. Mistress Mildred.
“What do ye be doing here, Crocker? I telled you, thrice, that you’re not to venture past the gates or I’d have your bottom.” He nodded and started to explain why he was here. “I’ve no use for you telling me things I already know about. Charlie and that bear, they be friends. And there was no blood, was there?”
“I don’t know, mistress. I was told to come here and to find out if Lord Dominic is set on having her as his mate.” She asked Crocker if Dominic had seen Charlie yet. “I don’t know, mistress. I was told to come here to find out if Lord—”
The crack to his forehead with a wooden spoon had Crocker yelping. And when he looked as if he might reach for the offending spoon, Mildred only had to raise it a bit and he put his hands behind his back.
“Did he meet Charlie?” Crocker looked at him and
Dominic shook his head. Then Crocker did the same to Mildred. “Then how are you supposing that he’ll know if he’ll take her to be his mate if’n he don’t have no prior meeting of her? I swear to you, you’re all daft. Where is my husband? Is he the one that put you up to this tomfoolery?”
“I was told to—” Another crack to his head and the man looked murderous. “I was only doing what he told me to do. I was to repeat it all back to him so I’d not muss it up. And now you’ve rattled my brain pan so I don’t know what I’s to say.”
“That might be the smartest thing you’ve said since the day you were born.” Crocker opened his mouth. “You shut it right now, Crocker Dan. Or I swear to you that I will poke you so hard that you’ll be a wearing my spoon in your noddle until the day you have daisies over that puny chest of your’n. Now, be gone with you while I try and clean up this mess.”
“But—”
This time when she hit him, Crocker did jerk the spoon from her hand, and when he broke the thing over his knee, Crocker look self-satisfied. For all of two seconds. Mildred only put her hand in her apron pocket and pulled out a second one, bigger than the first, and hit him several times with it until he disappeared.
When she turned to him, Dominic only had to put out his hand and she put the spoon in his much larger one. She laughed as they both looked at the dance-like footprints in the snow.
“I wondered how long it would take the fool to know that he could have left me here all along. Some men, they just don’t deserve someone around to remind them that they have a noggin too.” Dominic asked what was going on. “I’ve only heard a wee bit of it. Charlie, you’ve heard, has herself a temper, and she’s gone to the mountains. Stupid faeries think she’s gone to the lake, and that’s where my fearless leader of a king has gone, to the river.”
“How do you know that she’s gone to the mountains, and why does it matter?” She told him. “I see. She’s gone to hide from me. Since I’ve only just found out about her and her being my mate, I was contemplating the same thing. Not to the mountains but hiding away. Why does it matter that she’s gone there, and what about the bear?”
“Bear—that’s his name—he’s her friend. A good bear by all accounts. But the two of them, they get into mischief all the time. Anyhow, she’s gone there to hide, as you said, but she’ll come back with all sorts of fine things that will make it all right that she’s hiding away from you.” He asked her what that would be. “Charlie has a way with animals. They’ll do just about anything in the entire world for her. Bringing her honey, that’s what Bear does for her. The squirrels, they’ll horde her away some fine nuts that she’ll use in the best desserts. She’s got herself all sorts of gardens there too. And she has a drying shed that makes the whole of the town jealous.”
Mildred came into the empty building that belonged to his brother. He didn’t know if she was cold or not, but he was and had invited her to join him. As soon as he entered the building, he had to laugh. They had not just a table that he could sit at, but a beautiful tea pot, tea cups, and an array of little cookies and sweets on a platter.
When he was served the best little nut bread and homemade butter he’d ever eaten, along with a good stout cup of tea, she started talking. The first thing she told him was that these were things that Charlie herself had made.
“When she was a wee babe, there was a terrible storm that came through the town. I don’t know that it was an omen, as O’Reilly said, but her home was swept away, as were her parents. Most believe that they were killed. Their bodies never turned up in the creek dam at all.” Dominic asked if she knew they were dead. “They’re not. I think that’s what has our Charlie so set against someone loving her. Because she doesn’t feel that she can be. Loved, I mean.”
“So, you believe that she’s aware that they’re living as well.” Mildred nodded. “Do you also know why they left her to fend for herself?”
“Oh, aye. They were a selfish pair, the two of them. While they wanted her, to be sure, they didn’t want to have to care for all that came with having a child. Not that she was like other children, but they’d not known that when they pretended to die.” Dominic almost didn’t want to know what made Charlie so different than the other children. But he asked. “She’s able to live in both worlds. With the biggers, as she calls them, here in this realm, and with us, as a leprechaun. But unlike me and the others, in this world, she can go between the two worlds and not have to use up her magic to make herself big like you are. She just is. And if you were to be her mate, then you’d be able to do the same. Go between the two worlds as easy as it would be for you to drive that loud contraption that you call a truck.”
“Then why does she need me? As her mate? O’Reilly made it sound as if Charlie didn’t get a mate soon, something would befall her.” Mildred nodded and said that it would. “What? And why does she need a mate to help her with that? When I’ve heard that she’s quite capable of caring for herself.”
Dominic didn’t think she was going to answer him. As she gathered up the plates and forks, he helped her with the other items. The table disappeared just as Mildred stacked the pretty little desserts that they’d not eaten into his palm. Then she stood up, her chair going with the table, and Dominic stayed just where he was, waiting for an answer he was sure he was going to hate.
“It’s not all that bad, my boy. It’s just that if she doesn’t find her a mate and marry by the time she’s two hundred, then she must choose which world she wishes to stay in. Either place, I’ve heard her say, is very meaningful to her. But choose she must.”
When she asked him to stand, the chair he’d been in was gone as well. Mildred—a kind woman, he’d come to realize, and not the harpy that her husband secretly called her—kissed him on the cheek. Dominic stood here, chocolate and other pastries melting in his warm palm, when he realized that he was all alone.
There were questions he should have asked, he realized once he was home in his bed. The pastries had been a mess when he’d gotten there, so he’d had to throw them out. The sticky mess that had been theirs was now in the snow, where the good faeries, he’d been told, would enjoy them. Who had told him that he hadn’t a clue, but he knew it.
Just as he did a few other things, like Charlie was short for Charlotte. And her last name was O’Farrell. Another fact he knew but couldn’t remember who had told him. Dominic stared up at the ceiling in his bedroom, thinking about all the facts that he knew as compared to the ones that he didn’t.
When would Charlie be two hundred? Would he be able to find her in either world if he missed her birthday? Why did her parents leave her, an infant, all alone? Being selfish could have been the answer, but he had a feeling that it was more than that. Much more.
Getting up, knowing that sleep wasn’t going to come to him, he made his way to the kitchen. He stopped just inside the door when the refrigerator glowed.
Well, glowing wasn’t quite right. It was shimmering. He stared at it, not even sure if he was afraid or just marking it up as another thing on his long list of shit to his day, when he could see her.
“For the love of Christ.” She wasn’t pretty, nor would he consider her to be beautiful. Dominic was sure that words had not yet been invented to describe the woman that was standing next to his expired milk. She was exquisite. Nay, that wasn’t right either. She was...well, she was his. Then he saw the great bear.
Bear, his name was, stopped moving toward Charlie and stared in his direction. Dominic found himself standing in front of the fridge, his things inside just visible around the scene at the other end of the portal.
His eggs were a part of her home. The tomatoes that he’d gotten and didn’t like were now a part of a stone. At least it looked like it. Then Charlie looked at him.
“You be the mate.” He nodded. “I don’t have any use for you, human.”
He told her what he was. And that he had magic of his own. “You’re beautiful.” She told him that flattery wouldn’t get him in her pa
nts. “No, I didn’t think it would. But if you were to flatter me, I’d be more than willing to allow you into mine.”
He felt her hand around his throat. The cold of the mountain, where she was, swirled around him. And before he knew it, Dominic was standing next to Charlie, his body suddenly freezing standing in the deep snow.
Chapter 14
“Do you think it be working?” He waited on Mildred to answer him. She was stubborn like that. He’d not rush her along because, like Charlie, she had a streak of meanness in her that hurt him to the core. “I was thinking that he’d be going up there by now.”
“He’s already there. Here, taste this soup. I think it be close to that of Sally Mae, don’t you? She adds something to hers that I canna figure out.” He sipped the spoon and nearly gagged when it tasted of nothing but garlic. “When will you learn that I have the right of it? I swear to you, O’Reilly, there are times when I swear that you’ve been dropped on your noddle more than most.”
“You could have warned me.” She asked him how that would be fun to her. “You’ve turned mean in your olden age, my wife. Old and cranky.”
As soon as the words left his flapping mouth, he braced himself for the hit of the spoon. And when it happened, he was sure that it had gone plum clean through his noddle. Holding his head, making sure that it hadn’t, O’Reilly moved as far as he could get from Mildred and asked her, as politely as he could, why she thought he was already there.
“I said he was there, not that he might be there. You try the patience of a hog, you know that? I swear, I should have hit you more when we first wed.” He tried to think how to ask a question without setting her off again. “Dominic saw her. Today after he got himself up and out of his lonely bed, he did. I wasn’t sure that I had enough magic to make it work, but I put him a portal in that thing in his kitchen. What is that monster anyway? And why does he feel he has to keep his eggs cold in it? They come right out of a chicken’s ass warm—why do they need to be chilled before eating? Humans. They sure have an oddness about them, don’t they?”
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