by Faith Hunter
“I wasn’t sure if I preferred that Silla would convince you to behave yourself or if I wanted you to keep fighting,” he said, tugging on her boot. He dropped it on the ground along with her sock. He slid the shackle over her ankle. She kept struggling, making it difficult for him to close it. “I confess I look forward to making you bend to me.” He smiled at her. “It will be my pleasure.”
She didn’t hear the Elvim. Neither did Proctor. A blue hand closed around his throat, lifting him and throwing him against the side of her house. He crumpled to the ground. The Elvim followed. The boy squatted beside Gray, his forehead furrowed as he gently touched her cheek. His skin was nearly clear now.
By now the Elvim had grasped Proctor by his collar. He held a knife in his other hand, the same one she’d used to cut herself with. Gray didn’t try to stop him, but only watched as he drove the blade into Proctor’s forehead. It was just, Gray thought. The Wardman was a cancer in the settlement. Killing him wouldn’t cure anything, but it might help the other neffs. It might help Silla.
The Elvim came to help Gray stand. She listed to the side to ease the pain in her ribs. The Elvim scowled.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Your people would chain you,” he said, and she could hear the question in the statement.
“I’m a neff. They don’t like me much,” she said. “I... don’t fit.” Vague, but true enough. “Now that Proctor is dead...” She gave a lopsided smile. “Let’s say they won’t be wanting to chain me now.” They’d stone her dead. “Anyway, I knew they were coming for me. That’s why I was in the forest. I was trying to escape.”
“You would live in the wild?” His brows rose.
“I like it,” she said simply. She wouldn’t say that she felt a vast presence there, one that welcomed her. He’d think her mad. Not that it mattered what he thought. “But I won’t survive it like this.” She gestured at her left arm and ribs.
The Elvim folded his arms over his chest and scowled at the sky. Gray gingerly bent to retrieve her sock and boot. The boy made an apologetic sound, snatching them up and handing them to her.
“Thank you,” she said. She gripped them tightly in her good hand. She needed two hands to pull them on.
She didn’t know how to suggest that they should leave soon. She didn’t know how long before the elders and other Wardmen would come looking for her and Proctor.
The elder Elvim rattled something off to his son. The boy hesitated and glanced at Gray, then nodded and returned to the house, shutting the door behind him.
The Elvim looked down at her a long moment. Gray couldn’t read anything about what he was thinking. Suddenly he dropped to his knees, taking her sock and gently pulling it up onto her foot. She set her good hand on his shoulder for balance, hissing at the sparks of pain the movement caused. A moment later he pulled the boot on. She stepped back, expecting him to stand. He did not.
Gray didn’t know what to think. What did he mean? She fisted her good hand inside her pocket.
“You saved my son. For that alone, I would serve you forever.” He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, they were full of regret and dreadful guilt. “I must take you back to my people. Many are ill.” He shook his head. “I can never earn forgiveness for such betrayal of your gift to me, but I will—”
Gray held up her hand to stop him. “I knew you’d take me when I gave you my blood. You needn’t feel bad. It only makes sense.”
He flinched as if struck. “Feel bad?” he repeated hoarsely. “I damaged you. Then I steal you from your home, from your people, and demand you give your blood. For such evil I should be flayed and left for the animals to gnaw the flesh from my bones.”
Oddly, Gray found she wanted to comfort him. “It’s no different from my life here,” she assured him. “They keep me because I’m useful to the settlement. I’d rather give blood than— Well, it’s no different,” she said again, not letting herself think of what Proctor had planned for her. “Better even.”
If anything, her reassurance only infuriated him more. He spat out words she did not understand. Breathing deeply, he collected himself. When he looked at her again his eyes glowed faintly, like the blue flames inside a hot fire.
“I will not permit you to be harmed more than necessary,” he vowed. “Though nothing I do will ever equal what you have already given me, I will spend my life repaying the debt.”
Gray shook her head. “You don’t owe me. But if you want to give me something, you could show me the wild. I’d like to see some of it.”
He stared a moment and then laughed, the sound harsh. “You ask little enough. Hardly worth the life of my son.”
“It’s what I want,” she said tartly, irritated at his laughter. “Besides, nothing’s worth the life of family. I wouldn’t put a price on it.”
He sobered and nodded. “That is truly spoken.”
“All right then. If it’s settled, I’d like to gather a few more things. My arm needs a splint and we should probably bandage my ribs up tight.”
He frowned again. “I would heal you if I could.”
She shrugged. “Well, you can’t, and that’s that. If you could, I couldn’t have helped you and your son, so no sense regretting it.”
He stared at her for a long moment and finally nodded. He rose to his feet. Finally. Gray didn’t like him on his knees, not in front of her. She wasn’t due that kind of thing. After all, if the settlement had been a kinder place, if Proctor hadn’t been so loathsome, she might not have helped the Elvim.
She glanced at the Wardman. His eyes stared blindly. Flies had already started to settle on his wound. The chickens ignored him, circling her and the Elvim, pecking the ground. It appeared they liked him well enough.
The Elvim followed her glance. “What are these creatures?”
“Chickens. Of a sort. They changed when we brought them to the settlement. Like me. I’ve got goats, too.” She tipped her head at him. “I don’t suppose I could take them along with me?”
“If you desire it.”
He said it simply. Gray blinked at him. She’d expected refusal. He held out his hand.
“Come. Let me care for you.”
She stared at his outstretched hand. Let him care for her? What a curious thought. She met his gaze and read kindness there. And... respect.
Hesitantly she put her hand in his, feeling like she was reaching for rainbows and half-expecting him to pull away or slide a chain around her wrist. Instead, he smiled at her. It wasn’t arrogant or cruel or pitying or scared. It was friendly and warm. His fingers closed around hers.
“You may trust me. I will not hurt you again.”
And even though she knew his people would cut her for blood, she believed him.
The Faery Wrangler
Misty Massey
Mémé pulled out the cards before Durango finished her evening tea. She let her own cup go cold, paying all her attention to shuffling and laying out different spreads, commenting under her breath before shuffling the cards and doing it all over again. Durango lit the lanterns as the shadows of night filled the corners of their tiny home, and still Mémé concentrated on her tarau cards. The old woman turned a card and laid it on the table with a sharp snick. “Ah, ma petite...” She patted the chair next to her. “Come, sit.”
“I’m sorry, Mémé. Tell me about it in the morning. There’s work to be done,” Durango said, strapping her leather belt tightly around her waist. If she didn’t get out on the hunt soon, she’d miss the clouds of faeries that always gathered around the glowstones on Reedy Creek.
“This one, it spells your destiny,” Mémé said, her dark eyes clouded with worry.
“Does it say my destiny will be to catch a dozen faeries tonight?” Rain the last two nights had put her behind on her agreement with Katy Holder, the woman who owned and ran the general store in town and sold the faeries she trapped. “How about if I promise to gather a basket of honeysuckle for you just before dawn? It’ll be s
weet with the morning dew, just the way you like it.” Durango reached up to the low rafter where her ash wood hoop and faery cages hung. She dropped the hoop into her pack, and tied the cages to her belt with a strip of cotton. “Where are the candles for my sparkle wheel?”
The old woman shrugged her shoulders. “You leave your toys all which-a-ways and I should know?”
“It’s not a toy,” Durango grumbled. Although Mémé was right—it was a toy. It was a painted wheel as wide across as her open hand, with a dozen flat metal paddles affixed to the outer edge and a square of tinder paper attached to the long metal rod it hung from. When a lit candle was placed below it, the wheel would spin, and the paddles rubbing against the tinder paper created silver sparks. It was the kind of thing town boys would buy to celebrate whatever war they were most proud of their ancestors winning. She’d spent good money on it some months back in town. Katy claimed she’d gotten it from a Chinese sorcerer, and that it would bring good luck. Durango wasn’t sure about the luck, but it definitely attracted faeries when she lit it. Digging in her rucksack, she located the candles. Only two left, but that would be enough for tonight.
Her tiny lantern was on the hearth where she’d left it, but Mémé stepped in front of her, waving a card in her face. “I beg you seat yourself and listen, ma belle. Or does you want to have an argument be the last words between us?”
Mémé reached out and took Durango’s brown hand in her own, darker one. She always insisted that their parting words be loving and kind, in case they were the last they ever shared. Durango loved the old woman like she would her own grandmother. Mémé had been the first to arrive the night Durango’s parents were murdered, holding Durango’s father in her arms while he breathed his last. She’d made him a promise, to keep his child safe. She gave up a life of power and comfort in New Orleans in order to spirit the baby away from danger and into the frontier. In sixteen years, she’d never once complained about it. Durango sat down. “I can spare a few minutes for you, Mémé.”
The card lay face-up on the table, waiting for her. Mémé’s tarau were hand-painted and featured symbols that were personal to Mémé herself. This card displayed a long, delicate hand reaching out from the card, a purple-stone ring encircling the middle finger and the skin dark as night. Behind it ran a stream of bubbling water over an otherwise desolate wasteland. Mémé stroked the card, then tapped it three times.
“Someone, he offer you a choice. He likely don’t let you know what you truly getting ’til the deed be done.”
“He? A man, Mémé?” Durango rolled her eyes.
“This card, it don’t speak of romance, ma petite. It’s a warning. Beware the man you meet. Accept nothing from him, not his hand, not his belongings.”
“I’m not afraid of a man, Mémé.” She patted the knife she always carried strapped to her leg.
Mémé pushed herself up from the table, and walked to the pantry cupboard. Opening the door, she began rummaging in its depths, emerging moments later with a small bag. “Take this.”
“What is it?”
“Sea salt. I brought it with us from New Orleans. You feel a trap closing around you tonight, you pour this on the ground, and come home to me.”
“Pour perfectly good salt on the ground?”
“Do as I say, ma petite.”
Mémé had been a priestess and a practitioner of magic in New Orleans before the war, but she was cautious out here on the prairie. The war might be long over, but dark faces remained rare and suspect to the white settlers in town. Other than reading the cards, Mémé never did anything that couldn’t be explained. That didn’t stop her from telling Durango all sorts of fantastical tales. Sometimes she spoke of the loa, supernatural beings that granted their believers power. Other times, it was the fae, who lived under a mountain somewhere but took walks in the real world to entertain themselves with unwary humans. Mémé had more warnings about the fae than Durango could possibly remember. Not that she believed any of it. How would salt be able to rescue her from any sort of trap? If she chose to argue the point, she’d be even later getting out onto the prairie, and there were faeries to trap. She smiled, and took the bag, tucking it into her rucksack.
“I’ll be home around dawn, Mémé. I’ll take great caution around any gentlemen I might meet tonight. And when I come home, I’ll have your honeysuckle with me.”
The old woman threw her arms around Durango, embracing her with an unusual strength. “See that you do.”
Durango hefted her sack onto her shoulder, lit the tiny lantern, and headed for the door.
“Remember what I said,” Mémé called. Her voice was strangely shaky, as if she was holding back tears. Durango looked back and smiled.
“I’ll remember.”
~*~
The prairie was quiet under the stars. Some nights the wind tossed and blew, filling her ears with the rush of rustling grass and sending the faeries to ground, but tonight was peaceful and perfect. The stars shone in the cloudless dark above her. A sliver of quarter-moon offered just enough light that she hardly needed her lantern to find her way. If she hadn’t waited too long, the faeries would be gathered around the glow stones that always fetched up on the banks of the creek. They only kept their shimmer for an hour or two after full dark, and the faeries loved to flock around them. If the glow had gone out by the time she reached the creek, she had her sparkle wheel to attract her prey.
The little creatures everyone called ‘faeries’ were about the size of moths and they shone bright with a light of their own. They had arms, legs, and faces like people, with delicate, lacy wings on their backs, and needle-sharp teeth that stung like a wasps’ sting if a human hand came too close. Pretty though they might appear, they were dreadful pests. Faeries swarmed light sources, whether lantern flame or glowstones, their tiny voices chiming like faraway bells as they flitted around each other, shoving and pushing to get closer. They’d been known to stampede cattle herds when the cowhands’ cookfires attracted them, and more than once they’d accidentally set barns blazing when a farmer left his lantern wick too tall. The townsfolk had learned to plant primroses in boxes below their windows or screen their doors with rowan leaves to keep the faeries from coming too close. It had been Mémé who suggested catching them in cages woven of ash wood, to provide light for their little cabin after the sun fell. As long as they were fed and cared for, they were no danger inside their cages.
Durango hadn’t considered catching and selling them until one afternoon in the general store. Katy Holder had noticed she wasn’t buying nearly as many candles or lantern oil, and demanded to know why not, so Durango explained. Katy had tossed her red-gold hair and walked away. But the next week, when Durango returned to town for supplies, she discovered that Katy had tried to catch a few faeries herself, unsuccessfully. She’d told some of her white customers, who wanted faeries of their own. Since Katy had caught nothing but a few nasty bites from the little creatures, she suggested a partnership with Durango.
They’d been in business together for almost a year now. It was a lucrative arrangement, and she’d nearly earned enough to purchase two train tickets to New Orleans. Mémé wasn’t getting any younger, and whatever danger had threatened them so long ago, surely no one remembered now. With any luck, she’d be able to take them both away before another winter.
Off to the west, she caught sight of a dancing glimmer. Faeries. And right about where the creek bed ran, so she wouldn’t need to light her wheel. Shuttering her lantern to protect the flame, she took to her heels, running softly through the knee-high grasses, slowing to a careful walk when she was a few feet away. She dropped to a crouch, setting her lantern to her side and letting the grasses hide her.
A soft glow illuminated the edge of the creek, and above it danced a cloud of faeries. There had to be forty of them, all whirling and spinning around each other. The water gurgled and the faeries chimed, in a natural music. She’d never seen such a flock and for an instant, wondered if this
was the trap Mémé had spoken of. Faeries bit, but they had no venom, and the injuries they inflicted weren’t usually more than an annoyance. This many, though...could they do enough damage to harm her? It was a risk she’d have to take. The likelihood of seeing this large a flock ever again was too low.
She reached into her pack and withdrew the ash hoop. All she had to do was sweep the hoop through the flock, gently enough not to strike any of them. For some reason, ash wood confused faeries. Close exposure to it sent them spinning in slow, tight spirals, as if they’d been surrounded by an invisible bubble. Moving slowly that way, she’d be able to open the top of the little ash cages and capture the addled faeries before they regained their senses. She’d catch as many as she could, and thank her good fortune while the rest flittered away. She licked her lip and took a breath.
Something knocked into her shoulder, sending her sprawling in the grass. She’d lost her grip on her hoop, but she couldn’t look for it now. The faery flock rose in the air and zipped away from their fading glowstones. Twisting her legs under her, she scrabbled to her feet and dropped into a defensive crouch, letting her hand slip down to the knife on her thigh.
A man stood near her, breathing hard. He was taller than most of the men she knew in the town, thick-bodied and broad across his shoulders. His black hair was drawn up and stiffened into a scalp-lock that looked like a horn. Shadows blurred his features to her eyes, but the scalp-lock told her he was Pawnee. The biggest Pawnee she’d ever seen. He extended his hand to her. “Are you injured?”
“No,” she said, keeping a cautious distance. “You speak English?”
He shrugged, and let his hand drop. “You speak Pawnee?”
She shook her head. Brushing her hands against her britches, she stood straight. “Why’d you knock me over?”
