by Maya, Tara
A crack appeared in the light. Darkness, jagged like a gash in the fabric of the world, crackled toward Dindi. An overpowering sense of Being Watched by something terrible and hungry filled her with terror. Her stomach clenched; she wanted to vomit.
Run! Run! Run! her mind screamed.
Umbral
Umbral watched as the Lay of Beiro’s Bane illumed the cage of emerald longing surrounding Finnadro himself.
And now I know your weakness, Henchman. The Green Lady may have given her Henchman great power, but she had blinded him in other ways. A mortal who kissed a fae fell under her command as surely as if a love spell ensorcelled him. To love a faery was to pour a jug of fresh water into the ocean. It added nothing to the ocean, and all that refilled the jug were saltwater tears. Finnadro’s need for his Lady would grow like a drunk’s need to swig, until he could no longer eat, drink, or breathe without touching her. He would waste away like a starved man, and die from his insatiable need.
How long until Finnadro disintegrated? He was young and strong. He might last several years. Was there any way the man could break free? Perhaps. From what Umbral had heard, a fae hex must have a physical manifestation; he suspected the link was the Singing Bow. Break that, and Finnadro’s bond with his Lady might be sundered.
Finnadro must have known all this. Why had he let her kiss him? The Green Lady would not have ensorcelled a man against his will. She had not the inclination. Therefore, Finnadro must have embraced this doom knowingly, willingly.
What an idiot.
“C’mon boy,” he said to the black hound. “There’s nothing for us here.”
Then he tasted it.
A strand of magic so pure, so sweet, so finely braided, possessed of every Chroma…her magic.
She lives!
She is HERE!
He grabbed the strand of her magic and sucked it into the void of his own. He had only to reel in the hook, and he would have her.
Dindi
Dindi’s feet were rooted to the ground. She could not flee, despite the strain in every muscle to tear from the Lodge. Some terrible power, some Thing searched for her, squeezed and immobilized her.
The predator was closing in and there was nothing she could do about it.
Even the smallest movement felt like torture. Sweat poured down her face. Clenching her teeth against nausea and pain, she inched her hand under her blouse and gripped the corncob doll.
The otherlight of a Vision exploded the Darkness slithering toward her, and she fell to the floor.
Umbral
The strand of light fell apart in his hands.
She had escaped.
Impossibly, insanely, she just had just…disappeared.
He punched a wooden post so fiercely the wood caving splintered. Several people backed away from him, dismayed and frightened.
She had been here. In this room. Dancing. He would stake his life on it. No one had left the Lodge. How could she have escaped?
By the Dark Lady, how?
His fists still curled into stone-hard balls. At his feet, the black hound raised its hackles and growled. Umbral had been here the whole time. He had watched every dance. Yet she had waltzed right by him, deluding him, eluding him, evading him, teasing him, taunting him.
She was much, much more powerful than he had realized. No wonder Obsidian Mountain wanted her dead.
Rainbow Dancer, I will find you, if it takes me to the end of time, he swore. I must destroy you. Or you will destroy me.
Even though she would hate him for it, he knew he would not, could not, let her alone. Whether it would be her doom or his he risked, it almost didn’t matter to him.
Perhaps every man had his lorelei.
Finnadro
After his performance, Finnadro refixed the strings of his Singing Bow to turn it from instrument back to weapon. He found a pile of warm fur clothes and tied them into a bundle, which he swung over his back. He left his well-wishers with promises he would sing again when he had the chance.
It was dusk. Snow was falling outside.
He left the tribehold and waded through the new drifts to the tree where he had tied the wolf.
A naked man was tied there now. He huddled miserably on himself.
Finnadro tossed the pack of clothes to the man. The prisoner dressed in silence, awkwardly putting on the garments despite the cord around his neck.
“Your name?”
“Paro.”
“Has it happened before, Paro?”
“Only when I was a child. I thought…I thought I had it under control.”
“You were in a fight over a woman. Even a man with no wolf might have lost his control.”
“I can never return, can I?”
“Maybe. If you learned to control the wolf once, you can do it again. But you learned as a boy; now you must learn as a man.”
Finnadro cut Paro free. “You can’t go back to the tribehold tonight, I’m afraid. You’ll have to live in the wild until you learn to live without the wild.”
Paro trudged away into the snow-thick wind. Finnadro hoped the wild would not turn Paro feral. He did not want to have to kill him.
Finnadro had no desire to go back to the tribehold himself. Instead, he climbed an oak at the edge of the Orange Canyon camp. They had built themselves platforms in the trees, like giant nests, where they pitched their tents. He let himself be seen, so they would know he watched them. With so many outtribers, and avowed foes, and now a new wolfling, gathered in one place, his only goal was to make sure no one killed anyone else.
A clap of flapping wings stirred gusts of snow up into the air. Finnadro did not twitch a muscle, even to look up. He guessed who it was.
A shadow fell over his tree just before a Raptor landed. Amdra the Toad Woman dismounted. The bird shimmered and shifted shape, into a powerfully built man. However, he knelt before the petite woman and allowed her to fasten a leather blindfold around his eyes. She also held a leash to a collar around his neck. She drew him behind her like a pet.
“Spare branch?” she asked.
Finnadro gestured to the branch on the other side of the trunk. “As you like.”
She climbed up nimbly. Her big blindfolded pet crouched at the base of the tree. She tucked her end of the leash into her belt.
Finnadro watched the woods. He saw a man-shape moving under the trees. Paro had not reverted again to wolf. It was a hopeful sign.
“I thought it would bother me to meet someone whose thoughts I could not eat,” Amdra said. “But being next to you is strangely relaxing. There’s no bitter tang of resentment. You really don’t fear me. Or if you do, you hide the taste superbly.”
He tried not to insult her with obvious surprise. “Do so many fear you?”
“Thought eaters are the most feared of our people. Though at least in Orange Canyon, I am not the only one. In my birth tribe, there were no thought eaters besides my mother. I could not stand being in a room with my age cohort. It was like being trapped in a room of rotting eggs, so great was the stink of their fear.”
“Was there no way you could ease their fears?”
“Why should I? It was their weakness, not mine. I chose to go where strength was valued. In Orange Canyon, I learned to hone my talent, not hide it.”
“I don’t pretend to understand your talent,” Finnadro said stiffly. “We have nothing like it.”
“Really? Isn’t your magic much like mine? Only you taste emotions rather than thoughts. I’ve heard you can catch out liars, just as I can. How far can you go? Can you plant as well as reap?” Her grin grew proud and sly. “I can, you know. And thoughts are stronger than mere feelings. Thoughts generate feelings, whereas feelings only muddle thoughts. My power is greater than yours.”
When Finnadro said nothing, she added, belligerently, “You don’t believe me? I can show you.”
She snapped her fingers. “Hawk!”
The big slave stood up. “Yes, mistress?”
“Climb
to me.”
The slave complied. For one blindfolded, he moved swiftly. He groped, but with grace.
When he reached her, she unfastened his blindfold.
“Look at me,” she commanded. “Am I beautiful?”
Hawk gazed into her hatchet, pox-marked face. “You are the most beautiful woman in Faearth, mistress.”
She laughed edgily. “You see?” she asked Finnadro. “He really believes it. And because he believes it, he desires me, as much as any man desires a beautiful woman. I know because I can taste the truth in his thoughts. I know, also, because I planted that thought in him. He has no choice but to believe it.”
“Then he doesn’t really believe it,” said Finnadro. “Even you don’t believe it.”
“Are you calling me ugly then?” She pretended to ask it lightly.
“Yes,” said Finnadro. “Though not because of your face.”
She fumed and he regretted his bluntness. Before she could explode, he apologized. “That remark ill-befitted a host’s hospitality to his guest. I would unsay it if I could.”
“But not unthink it.”
“Doesn’t it tire you to garden everyone else’s thoughts? I’ve always found my own to be burden enough.”
“Most people make a mess of their own thoughts. They benefit from my help.”
Finnadro wondered if she truly believed that; he decided she did.
She began to tie the blindfold back onto Hawk.
“Please don’t,” said Finnadro. “Let the man enjoy the sunset.”
“Hawk doesn’t care about sunsets,” scoffed Amdra. “Do you, Hawk?”
Hawk hesitated. Amdra flicked her tongue in the air. Finnadro could see how she had earned the Shining Name Toad Woman. She said sourly, “Apparently Hawk would like to see it. Very well, Hawk, you needn’t put on your blindfold for now.”
“Why the blindfolds?” asked Finnadro.
“It’s necessary,” she said. “Hawk is more wild beast than human. In the Orange Canyon tribelands, the wildlings that once took the shape of animals forgot how to return to their own human form. Hawk lived as a bird most of his life, before I captured and tamed him. He would kill me in a flash, if I did not keep his thoughts leashed. This—” she held up the leather leash to his collar, “—and the blindfold do not really bind him physically, but they make it easier for me to leash his thoughts.”
Finnadro closed his eyes, picturing his Lady, the first time he had seen her.
“Let me ask you a question,” Amdra said. “Since I have answered yours. How did you win the Singing Bow?”
Perhaps Amdra could eat his thoughts, for he had just pictured that day. The idea of her prying at the weave of his private visions unnerved him, and he began to sympathize with Amdra’s peers who loathed and feared her.
“The Singing Bow is legendary in my tribe…”
“In all tribes.”
“…Yes. But in my tribe, we had a legend that only a man or woman who could hunt down the Jade Hind would be given a Singing Bow by the Green Lady. This winged faery deer, which gleamed all the colors of spring, ran swifter than water and leaped higher than wind. Dozens of hunters sought her every year, but none brought her down.
“Like the others, I was young and stupid, and out of my pride, wanted to shoot the Jade Hind and win the Singing Bow. I had no other thought than my own gain. But perhaps I had more patience than others. I went to the deep of the wood, and over a year, learned to listen. I met a wolf there, who, once she trusted me, revealed that she was also a maiden when she chose. She taught me hunting tricks only wild things know. From her, I learned everything I needed to bring down the Jade Hind.
“Then one day, the Jade Hind crossed my path. She sparked like an emerald. Her wings were like a dragonfly, her tail was like a peacock, and she had the sleek body of a deer. Three days I tracked her before I had my shot. I drew my bow; I knew my arrow would fly true. And then…”
He lapsed into so long a pause, that Amdra prompted, “And then?”
“I could not kill her. I lowered my bow. I let her go.”
“But you must have resumed the hunt the next year.”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When I lowered my bow, the Jade Hind transformed. First, into a wolf. Then into a woman. She looked like the maiden I had met, but with skin like moss and hair like a willow tree. It was the Green Lady. She gave me the Singing Bow.”
“That makes no sense.”
“All the other hunters who sought her had not failed because they could not shoot her. They slew her. But the faery only returned to life and eluded them. I succeeded because, when you love something, you let it go. The Green Lady did not care about my skill. She wanted my love.”
Amdra’s lip curled. “That is the stupidest story I have ever heard. And I don’t believe a word of it, by the way, Wolf Hunter.”
“You said our talents are similar, Toad Woman,” said Finnadro. “I say they couldn’t be more different.”
A green glow darted through the air toward them. It was a deer with a brilliant turquoise fantail and the wings of a dragonfly. Finnadro leaped from the branch, and the deer alighted on the ground beside him, becoming a wolf when he patted her head. The wolf looked over its shoulder and growled at Amdra and Hawk. They both stared with slack jaws.
Finnadro climbed on the wolf’s back and she raced away through the trees.
When they had gone a mile or more, the wolf slowed to a trot, and Finnadro rolled off. Laughter spilled from his belly. The wolf transformed into the beautiful woman he had once known as Thar. She looked human enough at the moment, tawny skinned and flaxen haired, though the inhuman brilliance of her emerald eyes gave her away.
“Wonderful timing, Lady,” chortled Finnadro. “Did you see their expressions?”
She wrapped her arms about him. “Never mind them. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!”
He pushed her onto her back in the snow. The cold meant nothing to her, or to him when he was with her. Her hair fanned out beneath her. She did not wear a shred of clothing. He spread his hands over her breasts, lowered himself onto her, and kissed her, kissed her, kissed her.
Chapter Five
Possession
Tamio
From the other side of the Great Lodge, Tamio saw Dindi faint.
Muck and mercy, was the girl drunk? Or had the heat in the packed Lodge, combined with the excitement, just overwhelmed her?
Poor Dindi. No one else even noticed her slumped on the floor. Two drunk men nearly stomped her as they passed by.
He would never have a better chance to make her his.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized he could not bear to wait another day, another hour, another second before he possessed her. He needed her tonight. Now. He had waited too long already.
Even the journey across the room felt too long. He resented every obstacle keeping him from her, and pushed men and women out of his way without a care for their yaps of outrage. He crossed the room like a bird of prey and scooped her into his talons.
Something had tumbled from her when she fell: a tiny jar. He unplugged the stopper and saw a green power—it was the henna Kemla had told him about.
Perfect. He picked that up too.
He carried Dindi out of the Lodge in his arms.
The thought of sharing her with anyone repelled him. He wanted to take her far from here, out of the tribehold, but night had fallen, and he dared not take her into wolf- and raptor-infested forests outside the wall. He did not want to take her to his little hole of a dwelling, nor to hers. Where else could they be alone?
It hit him: the kiva beneath the Great Lodge. No one would be there. It would be perfect. This whole night would be perfect.
There were two entrances to the kiva, one a trap door in the stage and the other a trap door at the back of the Lodge. He used the back door.
The room below was still scattered with gifts to the Tavaedies. Tamio created a
soft pedestal of furs and pillows, where he lay Dindi down. Her dark hair cascaded over the pillow like liquid night. Her skin was so pale, her form so still, that she looked like a virgin sacrifice stretched out on a bier.
He did not want to possess her in her sleep. He needed to see love infuse her face when she looked at him.
Restless and impatient despite his resolve to wait, he paced the room. He found some lemons, and decided to mix the henna himself. A bowl, the green powder and some lemon juice, and he had usable paste. He spooned the paste into a sausage-like gutskin tube.
Still, she lay still, like one dead.
He began to worry. Why did she not awaken? What dreams haunted her?
Mayara
The loneliness didn’t hit Mayara until next day, when Joslo didn’t show up for archery lessons. Though often he had annoyed her, she realized she had grown accustomed to his presence. What would she do? She felt so confused. The one person she wanted to beg for advice, Umka, couldn’t tell her what she wanted to know. Does an Aelfae dare love a human?
Mayara tried to broach the subject one snowy winter evening as they both huddled for warmth close to the hearth. If she could trust the truth to even just one person, then perhaps she could trust the world again. Perhaps she could trust love. Perhaps she could trust Joslo. If she could never be herself, even to Umka, who had saved her from extinction, she felt something would die inside her as well. She had to try.
“There’s a secret.” She struggled for words. “Something I should have told you long ago. I need to say it. I owe you the truth.”
Umka’s eyes were cloudy these days, but her glance still felt sharp.
“Don’t,” said Umka. She smiled toothlessly, and reached out to pat Mayara’s knee. “Don’t you know I love you?”
“But…”
“Don’t argue.” Umka would have continued but she began to cough, and the cough turned to a splatter of blood.
“Mommy!” Mayara cried. “You need a healing dance. I’ll fetch the Tavaedies.”
