Resignation settles his features, and he gives me a solemn nod. “Yes, of course.”
“Tell me why you took Cecile,” I say gently, smoothing the hair above his brow.
“I had a need. I burned.”
“Then why didn’t you take me? I was your captive, to do with as you pleased.”
He frowns, studying my face. “I hadn’t understood you yet. I needed to stop the fire. It distracted me from my work.”
“What of Cecile? You might have frightened or hurt her.”
He shakes his head. “Watching you with Wilkes, I began to learn this strange, wordless language. I knew she would receive me.”
I can’t help chuckling. “Have you ever…tried to understand Cecile?”
He blinks at me, considering. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” The mounting mysteries begin to weigh on him; I can see it in his face. I feel an aching, blood-quickening need.
What I do next—it has the same feel as the moment I told him I wouldn’t leave. I slip around him and stride toward the window. I place a hand on the sill and glance back, but he doesn’t yet understand.
I place one foot on the sill and step up, setting the other foot beside it.
“Pearl.” It’s a command. He understands now.
Bending at the knees, I leap from the sill.
Plunging, ground racing toward me, I close my eyes and feel the wind against my naked flesh. Weightless. Alive. Wondering. I’ve bet my one life on this strange hand of poker. I guess Pa was right about me.
Arms coil around me, gently redirecting, and now I’m shooting upward into the night sky, straight like an arrow. Dark wings beat the air.
Suddenly he lets go, and I fear I’ve tried him past his patience. But then I clatter onto a wooden floor. We’re above the keep, atop a slender pinnacle. A sort of watchtower, maybe eight feet in diameter.
Master Raven drops over me, covering my body, pinning my wrists to the floor.
“You could have died!” he barks.
“But I didn’t.”
“What if I’d been too late?”
My heart hammers, and his does too. I can see it in the moonlight. I can feel it through his chest. He is reachable. Touchable.
I smile, and he scowls at me. “It was very wrong, Pearl.”
I thrust my chin at him and fight his grip. Heat builds between my hips. “Punish me.”
He springs off me and I jump to my feet, but before I can take another step he grabs me and shoves me against the wall of the tower. He forces me to bend, and I brace myself against the rough stones, staring down the sheer wall at the glittering moat below.
His fingers curl around my hip bones and he enters me roughly. The stone digs into my belly as he slams against me. He grabs a handful of my hair, tugging my head backward, and my breasts jerk back and forth with his violent thrusts.
Now he raises me by my hair, and my eyes water from the shock of pain that makes me more alive to every sensation. A hand clamps over one breast, then the other, and he kneads them in circles as he pumps in and out.
I contract around him, and his arms wrap around me as my feet leave the ground. Powerful thrusts of his wings decrease the distance between our entwined bodies and the moon. My head sinks against his chest as gravity impales me upon him. My release opens me to the night. To baptism by starlight and wind.
—
He alights gentle as a dry oak leaf, arms and wings enfolding me.
“I claim you, Pearl,” he says low in my ear.
“I must see my ma,” I reply breathlessly, still ruled more by sensation than thought.
His body stiffens. It brings us both down to earth.
“Your stone,” he says.
How naïve I’ve been about that stone. It meant more to me than it ever did to her. “She needs to know I’m safe. That I’m where I want to be.”
His arms tighten. “Away from the keep, I am yours to command. Inside my workshop…”
I press my backside between his hips. “Your key is my master.”
4
The Kelpie’s Prize
ISLE OF SKYE—1893
An Irreverent Gentleman
I stand before one of the largest of the cascading Fairy Pools, near the forest of Glen Brittle, the serenity of its aquamarine surface barely disturbed by the noisy plunge of quadruple waterfalls. The light cloud cover dulls the harsh glare of midday, enabling me to follow the lines of the stones studding the pool’s bottom and sides.
Lovely as this is—so lovely, in fact, that I’ve written and crossed out several lines in hopelessly inadequate attempts to capture the vision in words—it’s the dramatic backdrop of the Black Cuillin mountains that has my attention. Or rather the slow but steady progression of thick, dark clouds over the knobby Scottish ridgeline.
Perhaps this is why I don’t notice the gentleman who’s joined me until he knocks a rock into the pool with the point of his walking stick, disrupting the surface along with my wary contemplation of the weather.
I glance up to find a finely dressed, darkly handsome fellow appraising me. “I believe you’re ill prepared for what’s to come,” he observes.
Neatly as he is dressed, there’s a wildness to his looks that makes me glance around for other visitors to the pool. I passed several on my walk, but I find that we’re alone.
“I was not expecting a change in weather, sir.”
Letting his head drop back, he gives a laugh that startles a family of crows from a nearby stone, where they’ve been feasting on picnic crumbs. “In Scotland, you must always expect a change in weather, Miss…”
“Miss Kirk,” I offer tersely.
“American?”
“You haven’t told me your name, sir.”
“So I haven’t.” He folds his hands over the grip of his cane. “Ambrose. Are you a poet, Miss Kirk?”
I lift my eyebrows. “Certainly not. Why would you think such a thing?”
His gaze roams over the dramatic scenery, and he raises a gloved finger to point at my notebook. “Noticed you scribbling.”
Pursing my lips, I slip the notebook into my satchel. He hasn’t been rude, exactly, but his scrutiny has made me feel small and foolish. At just over five feet tall—graced with a wrenlike physique and streaks of turquoise hair resulting from a brief foray into alchemy—it’s a feeling to which I’ve become accustomed, but not reconciled.
“I am a folklorist, Mr. Ambrose,” I illuminate him.
He smiles. “Collecting our Scottish tales, are you?”
The smug curiosity leeches away what’s left of my civility, and I reply rather sharply, “In fact, I am. You’re a Scotsman, sir?”
“By habitation, yes. By origin, no.”
I feel the downward curl of my lips as I study the overgrown black hair and several-days’ beard growth. His accent is thick and sounds Scottish to me, but then I’m only an American. My attention is drawn to his eyes, and as a darker cloud passes in front of the sun, further reducing the glare, I discover they’re the same shade of aquamarine as the fairy pool.
I know he’s been studying me as well when he says, “You’ve a timepiece in your headgear, Miss Kirk. How on earth do you make use of it? A charitable gesture, perhaps, for the benefit of passing seagulls?”
My hand rises to the small hat nesting in my painstakingly confined mass of flaxen corkscrew curls. “It’s meant to be ornamental,” I mutter, resenting him for the flash of heat this brings to my cheeks. It’s also meant to distract the eye from the preternatural hue of the locks around my face, but it’s less effective in this function.
He removes his own timepiece from his vest, studying it a moment before glancing again at my hat with a bewildered shake of the head. “Clearly.”
What I want more than anything is to flee, but as is often the case with diminutive persons, I feel compelled to make this irreverent gentleman respect me.
“Do you know Scottish tales, Mr. Ambrose?�
�
All the pertness evaporates from his expression. “I know lifetimes of tales.”
I overlook his sudden change of mood, along with the storm clouds edging out the last of the bright light of day, and congratulate myself on resisting the urge to vacate my post. “How fortuitous! Could I buy you a cup of tea in Carbost? The inn where I’m staying—”
The hair on the back of my neck pricks, and white light flashes between us. Thunder cracks the blackened sky, and I jump and look up, cheeks catching the first fat drops of rain.
“Tell me your name again,” says the gentleman.
Blinking to clear the moisture, I drop my gaze to his darkened countenance. “Miss Vivi Kirk, Mr. Ambrose. Have you some mode of transport?” I glance again at the storm clouds. “Or perhaps you live nearby? My driver from Carbost isn’t due for—”
“Viviane,” he says, like he hasn’t been listening. The intensity of his gaze has become uncomfortable. Shocked by his uninvited use of my Christian name, I open my mouth to protest.
But the gentleman has vanished.
No Place for a Lady
“Mr. Ambrose?” I cry. Scanning the stones and scrubby vegetation in the immediate vicinity, I see nothing but what has been here for perhaps a thousand years.
The summer shower has strengthened and taken on a wintry bite, needling into the linen of my overcoat. I mop turquoise strands of hair out of my eyes.
I study the fairy pool itself for signs of my former companion, but the rain makes it impossible to see below the surface. Could he have slipped and fallen in? Were his lungs filling with water even now? Ridiculous for a grown man to disappear in such a mysterious fashion, even one with the voice of a Scot and the face of a Saracen.
“Not at all gentlemanly,” I mutter, gathering my wet skirt in my hands.
I’ll have to find a place to wait out the storm, or the return of Mr. Gordon and his steam buggy, whichever might come first. It’s difficult to imagine the delicate carriage crawling over the newly muddied road, but I don’t expect the good-natured man will abandon me to the elements.
I’ve turned to seek what shelter I can find among the rocks when my heart misgives me, and I return to the water’s edge. Noticing Mr. Ambrose has left his walking stick, I pick it up and use it to probe the pool.
“Heavens, it’s deeper than it looks.” Crouching and leaning out over the water, I push the stick in all the way to the silver handle without ever touching anything solid. I repeat this procedure in several locations with the same result.
Teeth chattering, I draw out the stick. “I hope no harm has come to you, poor fellow, but I’ve got to get out of this rain.”
I turn to resume my search for shelter, mumbling, “My kingdom for a good, old-fashioned horse”—and suddenly I find myself nose to nose with exactly that. Only there is nothing old-fashioned about this horse.
“Saint Andrew’s beard!” I exclaim in shock. The creature before me is formed entirely of metal, with overlapping plates like a horse wearing armor. It stamps at the ground and I see that the legs are a sort of gear-and-piston affair.
“Gracious,” I whisper, taking a step backward. “Where did you come from?”
The beast doesn’t move or acknowledge me in any way, but only continues to stare at me through empty eyeholes, rain plinking steadily against its silver skin. Growing bolder, I step forward for a closer look. The two plates covering the widest part of the creature’s belly fly open like doors, causing me to jump back again.
I peer into the exposed belly and find a hollow there—the machinery that operates the animal appears confined to neck, forelegs, and hindquarters.
It’s an invitation, I realize. I’m a small creature, and it’s a large one. There’s room for me in its belly. Not a very ladylike way to travel, but a dry one. It must have been sent by Mr. Gordon, in lieu of the steam buggy. The shabby inn must do a brisker business than I surmised, for him to afford such a luxury. Or perhaps he has a sideline as an inventor. If so, I am thoroughly impressed.
What I don’t understand is how the beast has found its way here without a rider, nor how it’s to find its way back. It’s an unpublicized advancement of this sort of technology, and I can’t help wondering if it relies entirely on physics, or has in some way incorporated alchemical or even psychical mechanisms.
Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I slump where I stand. If anything, it’s raining harder now. My hands and feet are numb. My saturated garments weigh on me like anchors, and I can no longer control my shaking.
Whispering a blessing on the Gordon household, I step closer to the horse. I don’t like close spaces, and I can see I’ll be quite confined in there. But given a choice between half an hour of discomfort and a case of pneumonia, I do what a sensible person must.
I crawl into the metal cave, tugging my skirts in behind me, and the doors clang shut.
I close my eyes as the beast lurches forward.
There’s a violent rolling motion, followed by a loud splash, and I scream. The mechanical horse has plunged into the fairy pool.
—
I suppose it’s fitting that a folklorist should meet her death in the belly of a Scottish storm kelpie. But really, I should have known better.
There’s no way to steady myself inside the great metal beast, and my head knocks repeatedly against the walls of the enclosure. The rocking motion suggests swimming, but the fairy pool is no more than a dozen feet across, and I can’t imagine how this is possible. Swimming to where?
I strike my knuckles against the doors that admitted me, but I have no leverage. Wriggling and squirming inside my tomb, I manage to work my knees against the doors. As I set my back against the horse’s belly in preparation to push, it occurs to me that if we are somehow still in the pool, shoving open the doors may not be the most sensible course of action.
No sooner has this thought crossed my mind than the doors swing open of their own accord. I don’t pause to assess, but push the lower half of my body through, and the rest tumbles after.
Lying in a heap, water puddling around me on the stone floor, I endeavor to slow my panicked breathing.
“Welcome, Miss Kirk.”
Apparently, Mr. Ambrose is alive and well.
I roll to a seated position, skirts clinging in sodden disarray about my hips and shoulders hunching away from the ache in my back. “My good sir,” I breathe, “where are we? How did we come to be here?”
I glance around at the rough rock walls of what appears to be a large cavern. The kelpie stands patiently beside the pool from which we emerged.
Ambrose studies me, still as a statue but for one slow, long-lashed blink. “This is my study, workshop, and lab,” he finally replies. The fact that he is calm and clear while I am frightened and confused does not seem to bode well, but I refuse to draw conclusions without additional information. “You came here inside Llamrei,” he continues, “but I’d have thought that obvious enough.”
“Llamrei,” I murmur, staring at him. His aquamarine eyes glitter even in the dim cavern. “King Arthur’s horse.”
He shakes his head. “Only a tinplate copy.”
“You made this?” I ask, staring at the creature that brought me here, annoyed at the admiration warming my chest. “It’s almost like a living thing.” I turn to study Ambrose again. “Are you a student of alchemy, then?”
I note a slight hook at one corner of his lips as his eyes settle on my forehead. “As are you, I see.”
My hand flutters up to push away the plastered locks. “More to the point,” I reply, clearing my throat before continuing, “why are we here?”
He folds his arms over his chest, and I notice he’s removed his jacket and vest and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “I am here because I live and work here. You are here because of an ancient curse.”
I stare at him. Is he mad? “Whatever do you mean, Mr. Ambrose?”
“Follow me, and I will explain.”
He turns from me without another word a
nd walks into an adjoining tunnel.
Glancing about, I find the cavern is lit by hanging lamps, their luminous glow suggesting phosphorescence rather than flame. Try as I might, I can’t find the chain or cord that suspends them from the ceiling, even as I rise and study them from different angles.
“Come, Miss Kirk,” barks my strange companion.
My body shakes, and not from the cold. But I shall not allow fear to befuddle me. There is yet, perhaps, a reasonable explanation for these events. And if there is not, I must rely upon reason to extricate myself—with an adversary so much larger than myself, strength will avail me not at all.
The tunnel winds along a series of caverns, some large and open and connecting with other caverns, and some smaller and self-contained. I catch glimpses of laboratory, bedchamber, and even a kitchen and larder. In passing the kitchen, I hear something very like the cry of a seabird. My gaze moves quickly, catching sight of a hole in the ceiling of the cavern, which renders this chamber brighter and provides a peek at cloudy sky.
Hope quickens my pulse, and I drop my gaze lest the gentleman should turn and notice my interest. Though this natural porthole is inconveniently located, it appears just large enough to permit a diminutive person to pass through it.
The terminus of this subterranean stroll is a large cavern filled ceiling to floor with shelves of books. There’s a mahogany desk with a crimson-padded chair, and a settee of similar design. A brightly colored Turkish carpet covers the stone floor, and more of the phosphorescent lamps light the space. Comfortable and well-appointed as any gentleman’s study—a remarkable feat, considering the location.
As I follow him into the room, I note the desk is busy but uncluttered. A low stack of books on one end. Quill pen and blotter at the center. An open box of stationery next to a magnification eyepiece.
“This is your study?” I ask faintly.
“Yes. You may make yourself comfortable here.”
Glancing up, I notice he’s gesturing not at the chamber we occupy, but at the opening to a smaller cavern, between two tall shelves of books.
Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales Page 12
