Stranger

by Zoë Archer

  Gemma fought down the swell of fear that she and Catullus might get trapped in this other world. Beautiful and fascinating it might be, but her home was not here.

  “Only the most dire of circumstances has brought us to Otherworld,” Catullus said.

  Bryn nodded as he held out the cap for another drink. “It’s the talk of Otherworld. The summoning of Arthur. Fey beings crossing back and forth as bold as you please.” He bolted down his drink, then looked skyward with a frown. “All the courts are worried. Seelie. Tylwyth Teg. Tuatha Dé Danann. We are to be enslaved, should the Risen King touch the Primal Source. Our magic would belong to the hard, cold men of Brightworld.”

  “That’s why we’ve come,” Gemma said. “To stop that from happening.”

  “Two mortals holding back all the magic of Otherworld?” Bryn’s frown deepened. “Can’t be done.”

  “There’s one here who can help,” said Catullus. “One who can reach Arthur and keep the worlds apart.”

  “Not a creature I do not know in this forest,” Bryn answered. “From the tiniest sprite to the biggest Fomorian.”

  “Then you can help us find who it is we’re looking for,” said Gemma.

  Bryn doffed his miniature hat and scratched his head. “Mayhap.”

  “His name is Merlin,” said Catullus.

  The pixie only shrugged. “Names are not often given. Or, if they are, they’re false names.”

  “Why?” asked Gemma.

  “To know someone’s true name gives you power over them.” Bryn smiled, but it was a feral little grin, and not particularly friendly. “And now I know the name of who you seek, whoever this Merlin may be.”

  “He is a sorcerer of great power,” said Catullus. “Or he once had power and hasn’t it any longer.”

  “You just described near half of the sorcerers wandering around here.”

  Catullus strongly hoped they didn’t meet one of these roving enchanters. Doubtless they were mercurial creatures, and Catullus had no desire to be turned into a bespectacled toadstool should he inadvertently cross one of these sorcerers. “This one is special.”

  “They all say that.” Bryn snickered.

  “This sorcerer truly is,” Gemma insisted.

  “And he wouldn’t be doing any wandering,” Catullus added. “Given that he’s trapped within an oak tree.”

  The pixie grew alarmed. “You mean the Man in the Oak!”

  Catullus and Gemma shared another glance, the thrill of discovery.

  “That’s the one,” said Gemma. “Can you take us to him?”

  “Oh, no.” Bryn’s wings fluttered in agitation, and his tiny face paled. “No, no, no. I’ll not go near him.”

  “Why ever not?” Catullus demanded.

  Bryn looked appalled at the idea of seeking out Merlin. “Because I want to keep my wings, that’s why!” He lowered his voice to a piping whisper. “The Man in the Oak is mad. He was mad when he came to Otherworld, and he’s grown even more mad since he’s been trapped in the tree. He plucks the wings from pixies for sport. He turns fey into slugs and takes their tongues.”

  The more he spoke, the more distressed Bryn became, until he quivered in fear.

  “We’ll protect you.” Catullus tried to soothe the pixie. This only made Bryn more upset.

  “You can’t! You’re only two mortals with just a scrap of magic between you! I’ll lose my wings, and you two will be turned into beetles. No. No, no, no!”

  Sending them one final glare, Bryn flew away as fast as his wings could carry him.

  Gemma and Catullus stood by themselves in the middle of the huge forest. They turned in slow circles, gazing at the seemingly endless woods.

  The enormity of their situation hit them at the same time. Otherworld stretched all around them, an infinite place neither of them knew. The task of locating one sorcerer within this vast world felt almost impossible.

  “I don’t know how we’re supposed to find Merlin,” Gemma said. She struggled to keep herself from acknowledging hopelessness. “Or if we should. He sounds dangerous.”

  Catullus gazed around, determined. “Dangerous or not, he’s the lynchpin in our strategy. We have to locate him.”

  A boom of thunder nearly smothered Catullus’s words. Moments after the thunderclap, the skies opened up. Torrential rain soaked both Gemma and Catullus in seconds.

  “This day isn’t going very well,” she said above the noise of the downpour.

  He peered through the rain, searching for what, Gemma did not know. Seeing something, his face suddenly brightened. “It already has gotten better.” Taking her hand in his, he led her, sprinting, through the now-marshy forest. They found themselves laughing, laughing like lunatics, as they ran.

  It was strange to laugh, considering the circumstances: lost, wet, a quest of infinite scope looming before them. The task daunted. But she and Catullus would explore this world. Face its dangers and strive toward their goal. Together.

  Chapter 15

  Shelter

  A cottage nestled at the base of a tree. Either the house was exceptionally small, or the tree was huge, or perhaps a mix of both.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” Catullus called above the rain. “But its roof appears intact, and that’s all we need.” He felt oddly giddy. Getting caught in torrential rain happened more often than he cared for, yet there was something thrilling and stimulating about sprinting through the rain with a laughing Gemma. Regardless of the situation.

  “As long as it isn’t an outhouse, I’m happy.” She squeezed his hand as they ran.

  They neared the cottage. Closer, Catullus saw that it was, indeed, tiny, resembling a child’s playhouse more than somewhere an adult might actually live, its steep shingled roof like a book lying open upon a set of walls. No smoke came from the chimney. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in the dark, plate-sized window.

  “Anyone home?” Gemma asked.

  “I cannot see much in there, but it seems unoccupied. I’ll go in first and make sure it’s safe.”

  He tried the door. Unlocked. In order to get himself through the minuscule doorway, he bent almost double. When he crossed the threshold, he slowly uncurled, fully expecting to slam his head against the low ceiling. Yet he straightened, and straightened, until he stood at his full height.

  “Blimey.” He couldn’t understand it. From the outside, the cottage appeared diminutive. Inside told another story.

  The cottage was a single room, but substantial in its size. It contained a hearth, a table and chairs, several cupboards, a bookshelf, and, incredibly, a large four-poster bed that looked as though it was fashioned of living trees, one for each post. A wooden bathing tub sat in front of the hearth. Everything was full-sized, proportioned for adult mortals.

  “Is everything all right?” Gemma asked from outside. “Is it too small for us both?”

  He poked his head through the doorway, holding out a hand. “I think we should find this more than comfortable.”

  She looked puzzled but took his hand. He led her inside, both ducking to keep from knocking their heads against the lintel. Once she’d crossed the threshold, she, too, rose up slowly to stare at the interior of the cottage.

  “How …?”

  He spread his hands. “Otherworld has its own logic, I am discovering. Physics do not seem to apply.”

  A small smile curved her mouth as she walked through the cottage, running her fingers over objects scattered throughout. She held up a fingertip. “Everything’s clean. Someone must live here.” She strode toward the cupboards and pulled them open. “Damn. There’s plenty of dishes and cups, but nothing to eat. Maybe no one has been here for a while.”

  Catullus pulled off his sodden coat and draped it over the back of a chair. Several logs nestled in a basket next to the hearth, so he piled them high and set them ablaze with a spark from his flint. “Whomever they are, I fully intend to take advantage of their hospitality. At least until the rain stops. Sit here and
dry off.” He pulled out another chair, setting it near the hearth, and waved her toward it.

  With a grateful sigh, Gemma sank down into the chair. She stretched her legs in front of her and pulled her skirts up to her knees, warming herself. Beneath lowered lashes, her eyes were fire-kissed sapphires. “I like the way you’re staring at my legs.”

  “Am I staring?” He was transfixed by the sight. Yes, he’d touched her legs, and been between them, but never fully saw them, not until now. Long and slim, but, beneath the dark knit of her stockings, the curves of muscles formed elegant shapes. A small hole in her stocking revealed a cameo of pale flesh. He wanted to run his hands up her legs, looking at them in the firelight as he did so. He wanted to touch his tongue to that oval of exposed skin.

  “Come here.” Her voice stroked him like velvet. “You can do more than stare.” To demonstrate, she ran a caressing hand from the top of her ankle-high boot up to her knee.

  It took supreme effort to resist this siren call. “Best not. Once I get started, I won’t be able to stop.” God, his voice sounded deeper than a canyon.

  “And time is of the essence.”

  “Once the rain stops, we have to find Merlin.”

  Dropping her hand, she sighed again, this time with disappointment. “Damned timing. The Blades better be grateful. We’re making a hell of a sacrifice.”

  He pulled another chair toward the fire, yet kept a safe distance between himself and Gemma. Lowering himself down to sit, he told himself to focus on the cheerful fire and not on the large, soft bed beckoning in the corner. Don’t think about scooping her up in your arms and tossing her onto the bed. Don’t think about peeling off her stockings and her wet clothing. Don’t think about her nude body beneath the covers, and laying your own naked body atop hers, and kissing her until her legs opened, and pinning her wrists down onto the mattress, and …

  “You haven’t heard anything I just said.”

  His attention snapped back. “What’s that?”

  She smiled, wry and knowing. “I can’t stop thinking about it either.” Her eyes, full of meaning, strayed toward the bed.

  He pulled off his spectacles and scrubbed at his face. “You aren’t helping,” he gritted. He fought the need to adjust his painfully aching cock straining within his trousers.

  “Fine. What should we talk about while we wait? Something dull and chaste. What’s that boring English game called? Cricket? You can explain the rules of cricket to me.”

  “Some people happen to find cricket very exciting.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  He replaced his spectacles. “More of a rugby man, myself. Though I make a point to learn about and play different sports—helps keep the mind sharp as well as the body.”

  “If you don’t want me dragging you to that bed, then don’t talk about bodies, especially your own.”

  Her words and heated gaze did not help tame his rampant erection. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “I’ll … avoid that topic.”

  She cleared her throat. “So, in cricket, a man swings at a ball with a paddle in order to do … something.”

  “It’s called a bat. And the striker is attempting to score a run by hitting the ball with the bat and running between the popping creases.”

  “I am definitely not aroused by that,” she said. “Tell me more.”

  The next twenty minutes were spent in as dry a discussion of cricket as Catullus could make it. Which, he discovered, wasn’t much of a challenge. Assuming his most professorial air, he talked at length about the history, rules, and strategies of the game. So successful was he in eviscerating any excitement from the sport, Gemma almost nodded off. Twice.

  Midway in his analysis of pace bowlers and swing bowlers, he glanced up at the roof.

  “Rain’s stopped,” he noted.

  Yawning, Gemma stood and stretched. He pointedly focused on dousing the fire rather than watching her. Once the fire had been fully extinguished, he also rose and donned his coat. The garment was marginally drier than before, but decidedly worse for all the rigors it had endured.

  “I doubt anyone in Otherworld will be willing to lead us to Merlin,” he said, checking to ensure his shotgun was in working order, “if he’s as volatile as Bryn claims.”

  Gemma shook out her skirts, the hems of which now boasted a goodly bit of mud. Adventuring was not for the overly fastidious. “Merlin’s very powerful. There should be some strong energy around him,” she mused. “A kind of imprint.”

  “All we need to do is keep ourselves as receptive as possible to change in the atmosphere. Then follow it.”

  “Guide or no guide, we’ll find Merlin.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.” He buoyed himself up on their shared optimism. Bryn’s abandonment was merely a temporary setback. Blades faced far steeper odds. Catullus, himself, had thought himself utterly lost more times than he cared to recall, yet he’d persevered and prevailed. As he and Gemma would now. He strode toward the door and opened it. “Madam,” he said with a sweep of his arm, “shall we?”

  “Indeed, let’s,” Gemma said in a rather ridiculous English accent that made him smile.

  With a regal tip of her head, she ducked to go through the door. Then stopped midway through and clutched either side of the doorframe. “Uh, Catullus? We might want to consider an alternate plan.” She backed up until she was fully back inside the house. “Take a look.”

  Puzzled, Catullus bent over so he could look through the doorway. “Bloody hell,” he breathed.

  The cottage no longer sat at the base of a tree. It was now up in a tree. Somehow, the little house found its way off the ground and into the branches of an extremely tall tree. They must be at least a hundred feet up.

  Had this been their only impediment, Catullus would have devised some means for him and Gemma to climb down the tree and continue on their search for Merlin. Yet their sudden height was only a fragment of a much bigger problem.

  The tree in which they now found themselves wasn’t in the Otherworld forest. It was, in fact, the only tree for miles. The tree stood alone. In the middle of water. Not a puddle, or even a lake. But a sea. As far as Catullus could see stretched an infinite ocean, sunlight glinting off its endless waves until he was dazzled.

  Even if Catullus and Gemma could find a way down, there was no place to go. He might attempt to fashion a boat, but, if he did, he had no idea in which direction to sail or what they might find, if anything. This sea could truly be endless. Otherworld defied all reason, all geography.

  “I think we’re trapped,” Gemma said.

  Catullus crouched inside the doorway, staring at the limitless sea. His mind turned and worked, seeking a solution, for surely there had to be one. They couldn’t be trapped. Not truly. They had journeyed so far, and so much hung in the balance, that he refused to believe there was no way out. Failure was impossible. The Blades needed him and Gemma. Countless lives relied on them.

  With his forearms braced across his knees, he dropped his head into his hands. He simply did not know what to do, and this shook and angered him.

  The Graves family always knew what to do. They always found an answer.

  “Catullus.” Gemma’s hand lay softly against the back of his neck, her slim fingers gently stroking him. “We’ll figure something out. A way out.”

  He rasped a mirthless laugh. “There is no way out. Or, if there is, my goddamn brilliant brain cannot think of a single solution.” He backed away from the door to stand inside the room. “My foolish choice led us to this cottage, and now everything’s going to hell.”

  “No—”

  But the anger had him now, a lifetime of expectations dashed. “I prided myself on the fact that if I had anything, it was a sterling history of service to the Blades. And a momentary decision threw it all away.”

  Her own anger blazed, indignant. “We both made the choice to come in here. This isn’t your yoke to bear.”

  “I—”
/>
  She marched up to him and placed her clenched fist in the center of his chest. “No. Enough. If we are trapped here, it’s because of a decision we made together. You and I. There’s no blame. No fault. A place like Otherworld takes away cause and effect. And,” she continued, her voice gentling, “if it means being here with you forever, then I can’t regret our choice.” Her fist uncurled so that her palm spread over his heart.

  Anger dissolved as he stared down at her.

  What made her so beautiful to him? More than the loveliness of her face, with her soft, clever mouth and gemstone eyes and scores of freckles. She had been pretty when he first saw her in that rough Canadian trading post. Now her beauty surpassed everything. Not simply for the attractiveness of her exterior, but who she was within. Her spirit. Her courage. Her audacity.

  “Gemma.” He cupped the back of her head with his hands, weaving his fingers into her damp hair. “I wanted more than this for you.”

  “And I don’t want more,” she answered immediately. Her expression changed, becoming heavy-lidded, alluring. “We’re trapped in a cottage with a very large bed. There are better things we can do besides assign blame and argue.”

  There was logic, and then there were truths too significant and substantial to ignore. And the truth was that he wanted her. More than the pleasure of her body. All of her. Within and without. Everything else burned away—or, more accurately, was washed away in the waters of an endless sea. Leaving him with a need so great, it became its own force.

  He pulled her closer. Whipped off his spectacles, stowing them God knew where. Then kissed her. A fever overtook them as they consumed each other, the slick and hot contours of their mouths, the slide and stroke of tongues. And with each taste and touch, desire ripened further, until they panted into one another, hands roaming over backs, shoulders, bodies pressed tightly.

  His coat slid to the ground. They worked at their clothing—frenzied, clumsy movements that frustrated as much as aroused. An energy pulsed between them, rising up from the movement of muscles and limbs and hunger.