by Jocelyn Fox
“Would you like to bathe?” Allene asked.
I put a hand to my hair and grimaced. “Yes, please.”
Allene guided me to a small room off to the side, really only an alcove in the wall with a heavy curtain partitioning it from the rest of the room. To my surprise, it concealed an intricately wrought shower-head. Allene showed me how to work the levers and dials, and then explained the different soaps and creams laid out in small dishes on a ledge. She left two towels folded on a chair just outside the curtain, along with a set of fresh clothes.
I didn’t waste any more thought on wondering at the existence of the shower. Obviously the Sidhe were a sophisticated people, not stuck in medieval times or anything of that sort. Awkwardly, I managed to pull the nightgown over my head. I still had my elastic pony-tail holder in my hair, which somehow gave me a little bit of comfort as I turned on the stream of water, slipping inside the curtain. Turning the dials so that the water steamed, I let the hot stream sluice over my body, easing my aches. My arm hurt a little, but nothing like the hot pain that had radiated from it before, and there was no cast, just the cloth sling that I reasoned would dry eventually.
Washing my hair one-handed proved to be frustrating, but the sweet scent of the hair-cream that served as a shampoo mollified me. I scrubbed my face and then washed my body, noting the fading bruises across the right side of my ribs. I hissed when the soap got into some half-healed scrapes—the worst ran up the side of my right leg. The thought of the garrelnost surfaced suddenly in my mind and I jumped a little at the clarity, the precise reality of the image in my head. I could see the beast’s glistening fangs and evil eyes as plainly as if I were looking at a photograph. I shook my head a little, putting my face under the hot water to wash the thought away. If this world affected my dreams, then perhaps it would affect my waking mind as well, I thought. The idea made my stomach twist uncomfortably. Photographic memory had never been on my wish list.
I wrapped one of the towels around my body and the other around my hair. Allene had politely left the room, leaving a set of fine new clothes laid out carefully on a chair. The blue shirt, embellished with Allene’s remarkable embroidery, fit loosely over a plain white undershirt, reaching halfway down my thighs. I carefully took my right arm out of the sling, grimacing a little at the tender pain as I slipped my arm through the sleeve. The dark pants fit snugly, and they were made of some slightly elastic material that reminded me a little of my favorite blue jeans. A belt the same color as the pants nipped in the volume of the blue shirt at my waist, and there was also a pair of soft, boot-like shoes that fit as though they had been molded onto my feet.
“Good,” said Allene from behind me. “You’re dressed.”
I tried not to show that she had startled me. No sound that I’d heard had betrayed her return to the room.
“Here,” she continued, “if you sit down I’ll braid your hair.”
I sat down in the chair that had held my clothes. Allene picked up a comb from the bedside table and came to stand behind me. Her hands were gentle and methodical as she combed my hair.
“How does your arm feel?” she asked as she worked through a tangle.
“It’s sore,” I admitted, “but a lot better than I expected.”
“Mortals are very slow to heal,” Allene said, “but you healed more quickly than we expected as well.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Going through the Gate didn’t kill me, and I healed more quickly than you expected. I’m two for two.”
Allene began braiding my hair. I could feel her twisting and weaving the strands together, much more gently than my mother had ever braided my hair when I was younger.
“You’re lucky,” Allene said seriously. “It may not be my place to say…” She hesitated.
“What? I won’t be offended.” I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of her fingers working through my hair.
“I don’t think the other Knights would have saved you,” Allene said softly. “Since the Gates began closing, since you…your kind…began wreathing your world in smoke and fire, we haven’t exactly looked charitably upon mortals.”
I thought of the alien beauty of the night landscape that I had glimpsed after Finnead brought me through the Gate. “I think I can understand that.”
“You say you understand,” Allene said gently, “but I do not know whether you do.” Her voice changed. “And we love your world, though it seems like we might not. You are all…fascinating. So warm and fiery.”
I sat silently for a few minutes, thinking. The Sidhe, though they weren’t too happy with the modern turn of the human world, did really like humans. And though Allene only looked a few years older than me, I supposed she was…ancient. Literally. When I finally found the words to speak again, I said, “Is it impolite to ask a Sidhe’s age?”
Allene laughed, a musical sound that spilled like water over everything in the room. “Some things don’t change from world to world after all, saell doendhine. Yes, it’s considered slightly rude. But I think no one would fault you for it, because after all…” She checked herself, trailing off.
“After all, I’m only a mortal?” I asked, unable to help myself.
Allene began sliding silver pins in my hair. “Yes.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Why do you need Molly so badly then? She’s half mortal,” I pointed out.
“Why the Queen summoned your friend, I do not presume to know,” Allene said with a cool, aloof tone. She went on braiding my hair and when she was finished, she left me alone for a few moments. I took a few deep breaths, willing myself to hold it together. This was, after all, the adventure that I had wanted so badly. But the constant ache of my arm and the horrible weak feeling in the pit of my stomach illustrated very clearly that Molly had been right; this reality was not a charming fairy tale, told to children before their parents tucked them in at night. The Sidhe world was beautiful, yes, but it was real and dangerous—perhaps fatal. I felt very certain that if I died here in Faeortalam, I would still be very dead in my own world.
Allene announced her return by clearing her throat. A delicious smell wafted through the air, reaching me before her, and my stomach rumbled loudly. Allene handed me a bowl and a spoon. The bowl held what looked like very ordinary oatmeal with a liberal topping of brown sugar and dried fruit. I balanced the bowl on my lap and ate with relish, as fast as my awkward left-handed grip on the spoon allowed. Allene watched me eat and I was so hungry I didn’t care at all.
After I finished, Allene took my bowl and said, “Now I will take you to see your friend.”
I felt a new strength suffusing my body, and I thought that the bowl of oatmeal probably hadn’t been ordinary at all. I stood and Allene helped me place my arm in a new, dry sling. She held me at arm’s length, like a mother or older sister, inspecting my hair and the fit of the clothes. After a moment, she nodded, and said, “Follow me. Stay close.”
What would happen if I didn’t stay close? I wondered, feeling like a very large and awkward duckling trailing after the gliding Sidhe, who seemed not to touch the ground as she walked.
The door to the small healing room opened silently, without even a slight squeal to show that it even had hinges. A slight cool breeze swept over me, the air from the passageway as fresh and light as if it had just swept over a grass-covered hillside. The walls of the hallway sloped outward, meeting above our heads in a smooth arch. They were made of a smooth gray material that looked almost like marble, shot through with veins of a white substance that pulsated softly with the same light I had seen in the stand of silver trees. The veins of silvery white formed an intricate pattern on the walls, reminding me of Celtic designs. I reached out a hand to touch the glowing white substance, intrigued as I followed Allene further down the passageway.
“You might not want to touch that,” she commented without
even turning around.
I let my outstretched hand fall to my side, feeling once again like a child caught drawing on the table by her teacher. “Why not?”
“Because,” Allene said, “that is the taebramh, the stuff of dreams.”
“What would happen if I touched it?” I took a few quick steps to catch up to Allene, who continued gliding onward down the passageway.
“The taebramh is powerful,” Allene said. “I cannot say for sure.”
Allene stopped, and turned to one side of the hall. If I squinted a little I could make out the bare outlines of a door in the silver-veined smoothness of the wall. She looked at me. “That is one of the differences between the Sidhe and the Doendhe. You humans, you cannot look at a tapestry and say, it is beautiful.” Her moon-silver eyes stared into the distance as she gestured with her delicate pale hands. “You have to bring it close to your face, and look at it under a lens, and finally start to pick the tapestry apart to find out how the very wool was spun into thread.” She looked at me with an inscrutable expression on her cool, beautiful face. “You cannot look at it and admire its beauty and think it is enough.” Her mouth thinned, just a fraction, but I was getting used to picking up on Sidhe facial expressions. “You have to tear it apart, thread by thread.” Allene smiled mirthlessly. “It has been many years since a mortal has done anything of worth for either Court. We do not expect much of you anymore. It is easier to think of you as children who do not know any better so we are not disappointed.”
“Finnead didn’t treat us like children,” I said. My argument sounded feeble even to my own ears. Why was it that I felt so…adrift? I needed something solid to anchor myself in this new, strange world. I felt as though I was sliding down off the deck of a sinking ship, into inscrutable waters. I suddenly became aware that there were other Sidhe in the hallway, passing noiselessly by, no doubt hearing every word of my clumsy protest.
“A knight of the Court must…treat Doendhe differently. The Named Knights are the hands of the Queen in the mortal world.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Why did the Fae get to meddle in our world, yet there was such mistrust and dislike of humans here in their world? I saw the glances directed toward me by the passing Sidhe; I clearly did not look as though I was carved from polished white marble, and my blonde hair, even though it was on the darker side, stood out among the raven tresses of the Unseelie Court. Would the Seelie Court have golden hair, then? Perhaps we should have waited for them, I thought in annoyance, waiting for Allene to open the door with a secret password or whatever Fae charm they used. But she merely put her hand out and pushed, and the door swung noiselessly inward.
Chapter 9
The room beyond the door felt different than the healing room: freer, less constricted, less…powerful. But I felt a little cold, and I realized the power of the healing room had felt like a thick blanket wrapped about my shoulders, cushioning me against the alien feelings of the Fae world. Allene motioned for me to go through the door. I stepped into the room, glimpsing a window above a desk, candles set in tall elaborate holders, and a low bed against the far wall, just visible behind a dark blue curtain. Molly sat with her back to me at the desk, her dark head bent over what looked like a scroll. Then she turned and stood when she saw me.
“Tess!” she said joyfully, crossing the room in a few quick strides.
Despite the pain in my arm and the unanchored feeling of drifting about in this alien world, I couldn’t help but grin when I heard Molly’s exclamation. She hugged me carefully but happily, mindful of my arm in its sling. When she drew back, I noticed the change in her face. Her skin seemed a bit paler, her eyes brighter; and when she moved to the side, the light played on her hair, shimmering in auroras of deep blues and greens and purples like a raven’s wing. She was still Molly…but somehow more like herself than I had ever seen her. I couldn’t find the words for it, even in my head. It was like there had been a fog around her, when we had been in the human world, or a veil of filmy gauze, and the power of the Fae world burned the fog away, ripping the veil in two to reveal Molly as she should have always been.
“Tess, it’s so good to see you out of bed,” she said. “Here, you can sit at the desk.”
I took the chair by the desk, glancing out the window. A copse of those strangely glowing trees crowned the slight hill beyond the glass, except these trees were not silver but a dark gray, with softly shimmering green leaves. Somehow they looked more like earthly trees, and the sight comforted me.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Molly said.
I looked at her. She was gazing out the window, the strange light in her eyes that I had seen at Crownhill, and when I had first told her about my dream with Wisp. But here, in Faeortalam, the light was not strange anymore. It fit with the trees and the wildness of the land, the beauty of the Sidhe and the danger behind their grace. I felt a quick stab of loneliness: Molly truly and completely belonged here. She knew it, and I could see it.
Then Molly looked at me again. “Not your arm, or any of that.” Her lips turned downward in a familiar expression of distaste. “I still need to talk to the Bright Knight about that.”
“The Bright Knight?” I gave Molly a blank look.
She shook her head and smiled. “I keep forgetting you’ve been asleep all this time. Sorry.”
I blinked and said, “Well, would you mind enlightening me?”
Molly laughed a little. Along with the fog, some of her serious nature had lifted as well, I thought. “The Bright Knight. We know him as Finnead.”
“Oh,” I said intelligently. “That’s his title, then?”
“His official title, in the Sidhe tongue, is Vaelanbrigh, Knight of the Bright Sword. He bears the sword called Brighbranr.”
Something deep in the back of my head clicked into place. “That’s what Wisp said, when he told me to help kill the garrelnost. He said, if Finnead lost the Brighbranr, the garrelnost would kill him.”
Molly tilted her head to the side for a moment, looking at me silently with her eerily illuminated eyes. It was as if she was looking into the moon above me, and I saw the light reflected in her face; but she was gazing at me, and there was no moon, only the wall of the room behind me. “It would’ve been hard to kill the Vaelanbrigh,” she said finally. “He’s the strongest of the three named Knights at the Court.”
I held my tongue and didn’t ask what named Knights meant. I’d had enough of asking questions and feeling uninformed. If I needed to know, I would somehow find out on my own.
“So it was Wisp in your ear, then?” Molly continued. “I wondered how you knew to use the iron.”
I shrugged. “I would have figured it out anyway,” I said. “Wisp just nudged me in the right direction.”
“It’s good he did,” said Molly, “because even if the garrelnost hadn’t killed the Vaelanbrigh, it would have killed me and probably you too.”
I smiled mirthlessly. “And then the Sidhe would have been disappointed. What a shame.”
Molly perched on the edge of the desk. “You know, Tess, they’re not all bad.” She suddenly sounded a lot more like college student Molly, and less like half-Fae Molly. “Finnead almost drew his sword on a Gatekeeper, when he wouldn’t let you through at first.”
I shivered a little at the memory, the sickening pain of my arm blended with the silver light and the unbearable noise and the cord cutting me in half. “Corrigan. That was the Gatekeeper.”
Molly nodded. “They have a very strict code of honor, the Sidhe. Especially the Knights. They can’t be in anyone’s debt, because their loyalty has to be wholly to the Queen.”
I felt my heart fall a little. “So Finnead had to discharge his debt to me because that’s part of his job. I saved his life, or helped anyway, so he had to save mine.”
“More or less,” Molly agreed.
&n
bsp; I crossed my legs and looked at the room. The walls were different in this room, made of dark bricks and mortar that were nearly the same color; I touched a finger to the wall near the desk and found the stone to be strangely smooth. Long embroidered wall-hangings, too small to be properly called tapestries but still stunningly beautiful, covered most of the walls. The one window was opposite the door, and there was no fireplace as there had been in the healing room. I slid in the chair and looked at the books on the desk, idly flipping a few pages. I rubbed a finger against one corner of the heavy material. “What’s this? It’s not any kind of paper.”
“I think it’s some kind of vellum. The Librarian wouldn’t exactly say.”
I glanced up in surprise and interest. “They have a library?”
Molly shook her head and smiled. “It’s not the kind of library you can just check out books. It’s more like a record-hall. Like…the Library of Congress or something.”
Looking down at the book beneath my hand, I examined the strange letters. It looked like something of a cross between Russian and Arabic, with flowing lines and dashes and diamond-shaped accents all running across the page smoothly. “And you know how to read this?”
Molly nodded. “Glira taught me a little, back at school. The rest I learned from Godric. He’s the record-keeper.” She smiled a little. “He’s very old, even among the Sidhe.” She tilted her head to one side. “Actually,” she continued, “he reminds me a little of Professor Black.”
Molly and I had taken a history class together our sophomore year to fill our elective slots. I couldn’t help but grin at the memory of Professor Black, an incorrigible professor well into his seventies with a shock of white hair and an old-fashioned cane, with which he would famously awaken sleeping students in spectacular and humorous fashion. “Does he slam his cane onto dozing students’ desks like Black did?” I asked.
