by Molly Ringle
“How we are blinded by a handsome face and a warm body in our bed.”
“Is that from Rabbie’s poetry?”
“No, you ass,” Larkin laughed, “it’s just an observation.”
What felt an hour later, as Larkin was almost falling asleep on his feet, Merrick reawakened him by mumbling, “I wanted to kiss you when I was fifteen. Like in Sleeping Beauty. Is that creepy? It probably is. I meant to say I’m glad I finally got to, and I’m glad you were awake for it. That’s all.”
Larkin traced his fingers up and down the embroidery on Merrick’s back. “I’m glad I was awake for it too.”
They drifted to the edge of the clearing. The fae bounded around them in limitless energy. Larkin’s shoulder met a tree trunk, and he slumped against it. He shut his eyes, and his balance teetered, his mind gently trying to rock him to sleep. Merrick drooped in his arms, a cozy weight. From across the clearing, amid the music, came ecstatic shouts and gasps.
Larkin felt Merrick’s head lift from his shoulder, then Merrick made a pained sound. “They’re trying the rose quartz. Don’t look.”
Larkin’s eyes had already disobeyed. He quickly shut them again. “Oh dear. I wish I hadn’t.”
“They’re not going to make us take a turn, are they?”
“Don’t even say it. There’s a great deal I’ll do for my country, but a public exhibition of that sort would be too much.”
“Enough dancing!” Sia Fia announced. The noise fell to a murmur. She floated to them, beaming. “We are quite enjoying your gift of the crystal.”
Larkin drew himself up. “We are delighted to hear it.”
“For the next part of our celebration,” she said, and paused, a most dreadful pause during which Larkin and Merrick dared not even breathe, “let us sample your perfume. And you may tell us more about how you create it.”
Relief washed through Larkin.
“It would be my pleasure,” Merrick said.
Thus for the next uncountable set of hours they reclined upon fur rugs on the ground while Merrick discussed perfume. Since he insisted it must be worn upon skin rather than cloth, Sia Fia made their tailcoats melt away to nothing, and they rolled up the sleeves of their white linen shirts to open testing spaces on their arms. Soon the air was filled with the enticing sensual honey fragrance, and Merrick began describing the “notes” that made up the medley of each perfume he and Cassidy created.
While the fae crowded round to take turns spraying each other, Merrick said in Larkin’s ear, “Try sleeping a little. We’ll take turns. I’ll handle this one.”
Too fatigued to care about the danger of falling asleep in the midst of fae, Larkin lay on the fur, shut his eyes, and immediately began to drift. Merrick’s voice with its lyrical perfume descriptions soothed him into a dream of walking through a fantastical garden with his arm around Merrick’s waist: Turkish rose, fig leaf, tobacco, lemon, vetiver, elemi, frankincense, gardenia, labdanum, violet, grass, plum, cardamom.
Merrick woke him some time later—Larkin could not judge how long, except that the sky was still dark—and lay down and closed his eyes while Larkin took over the helm as the performer of human arts. Sia Fia, finding he knew little about perfumes, demanded another story. “Surely you know many from your time that we would not have heard,” she said.
Yawning, Larkin pondered. “This story comes from Jin Troia, an Eidolonian playwright. She created social comedies, to make fun of the antics of the nobility. Naturally we in the nobility adored them.”
While Merrick slept, Larkin delivered an abridged rendition of the plot, with all its love triangles and absurd coups. The fae howled with laughter at points that seemed ordinary or sad to him, and stayed quiet at lines that were supposed to make one laugh. They were a puzzling audience, but at least they did pay attention, especially to the parts involving romance—those held them rapt.
Toward the end of Larkin’s recitation, Merrick awoke and lay on his back, watching with a lazy smile. It was coming to the final resolution, the duchess’s daughter about to throw over her human fiancé for her part-faery lover, and the fae were breathless with apprehension.
Deciding Sia Fia’s cooperation was best guaranteed by the most amusing spectacle he could provide, Larkin pounced on Merrick as he said, “And she leaps upon him, her half-fae musician lover, shielding him from the spears of the household guard! ‘No, I love him!’ she protests. ‘You must not harm him.’ And before the eyes of all, she kisses him.”
While Merrick laughed, the fae began chanting, “Kiss! Kiss!”
“Forgive me,” Larkin told Merrick with a wry smile. “I did not think that over sufficiently.”
“I don’t mind.” Still sprawled on the fur rug, Merrick tilted his head, clearly inviting Larkin to fulfill the challenge.
Were they falling under the influence of the realm again? No, Larkin could feel the weight of the lucidity perfume’s vial against his chest; could smell its odor mingled with the other fragrance in the vicinity. They were safe yet.
Still, it was not simply to satisfy an ally that Larkin lowered his face and kissed Merrick. Despite the resolution not to be distracted by amorous matters, his pleasure was palpable, a sweet giddiness that eased all pain as soon as their mouths touched. He settled his elbows next to Merrick’s head and sank against him. Merrick’s arms twined round his back and he slipped his tongue teasingly between Larkin’s lips, sending a ripple of heat down Larkin’s body. The fae did not cheer so much as sigh collectively, a sound of pure satisfaction, and Larkin could have sworn an additional layer of mimosa blossoms fluttered down onto them.
He did not open his eyes to find out. He was so comfortable, lying atop Merrick, and their kiss was making the fae happy, and besides, he was quite fatigued. Really, continuing like this was all right if it entertained them.
Except that he was soon falling asleep again, and he felt Merrick doing the same, even as they kissed—their mouths going increasingly slack, their breathing becoming deeper, passion blending easily into slumber, the way lust interwove itself into dreams. Exactly as Sal had warned.
Larkin blinked himself awake. “We mustn’t both sleep at the same time,” he said, rolling off Merrick.
“Mm. No.” Merrick rose onto one elbow and rubbed his eyes. “Does this … revel go on all night?” he asked Sia Fia.
She looked as wide-awake as the worst of the nocturnal dancing-and-card-playing set at the palace. “But of course. Until dawn. Share with us more of your arts.”
“Right,” Merrick said. “I could … um … what’s a human art. Sing?”
Larkin once more was allowed to nap while Merrick thought up a song. “My niece likes this one. It’s by a group called Electric Light Orchestra. I’ll do my best.”
The strange tune he proceeded to sing was accompanied in improvisational fashion by the voices and insect-like instrumentation of the fae, but Larkin heard little of it, falling quickly asleep. When Merrick woke him for his turn, he was still groggy and the sky was still dark. Larkin managed to think of nursery songs he had learned in childhood, and sitting slumped against a tree he sang these, what seemed a hundred times apiece, while Merrick slept and the fae chirped along with the melodies.
Back and forth they went, one sleeping, the other singing or telling a story or dragging oneself up to demonstrate a dance step. How the sky could not yet lighten in dawn was beyond Larkin. This had to be an enchantment. The minutes he stole in sleep were nowhere near enough. His eyelids burned, his balance wobbled, his temper drew near to snapping; he was on the verge of offering the fae the entire island if only they would be quiet and let him sleep. Merrick felt the same, to judge from the darkening half-circles under his eyes and the way he kept rubbing his face.
When the eastern sky, glimpsed through the trees, finally showed a glimmer of pale blue, and Sia Fia declared that dawn was near and that “all may rest a while,” Larkin nearly wept in relief.
“I should check this,” Merrick mumbled, pull
ing out his phone as they shambled toward their cave.
They still wore their magically-woven garments, though as the dawn brightened, Larkin found he could see through the fabric to their original clothes, as if the formal tatters were a mist that the sun would burn away.
In the cave he dropped onto the heap of silk blankets that served as a bed. “Okay,” Merrick said in relief. “I used one of the glimpses. It’s only been five days—at least it was when Cassidy sent this—which isn’t too bad for one night in here. And Ula Kana hasn’t done anything too awful in that time. Just some ongoing stuff like the Miryoku plants. I told them we’re all right too.”
“Thank the powers. One can rest better knowing that.”
“Hurray!” cheered one of the small fadas swinging from the vines in their doorway, and Larkin found himself pelted with a handful of golden-green grapes.
He laughed, relieved enough to be amused, and licked his lips—one of the grapes had bounced off his chin and spattered him with juice, which tasted wondrously sweet and not quite like any grape he had ever eaten. He gathered up the rest of the grapes from the bed to move them so he would not lie upon them, and ate one. When Merrick looked up, Larkin fed another to him, then tossed the rest on the floor.
Merrick chewed the grape, hummed in pleasure, and yawned. “We’ll take turns sleeping again, just in case. You start.”
“Thank you.”
This cycle, however, took as long as the night had, for they were both exhausted. Larkin was awoken, and sat in a stupor with his back to the bed while Merrick slept, then they switched places again because Larkin needed yet more sleep, then once more because so did Merrick …
And Larkin lost track of who was meant to be awake when, and Merrick must have too, for somehow they wound up lying together, again kissing lazily when their energy could be roused, and mumbling to one another that it was daylight and they were safe and it was all right. Then they were riding a horse together, and wearing silk gowns like Sia Fia’s, and they talked fanatically about plays they had seen, and jumped their steed in and out of waterfalls, which all made perfect sense, because this was what one did when one took a holiday in the fae realm.
CHAPTER 32
MERRICK WAS IN A LARGE SAUNA GOING through Nye’s record albums in search of songs to sing for the fae, while arguing with Nye about whether vinyl, chantagram, and CD should all be shelved together in alphabetical order by artist or if each format should have its own section. A headache spread its roots through his skull, sending lightning flashes to the top of his head with every movement he made. The sauna began dissolving, and he started to understand he was dreaming, but everything in his body felt too heavy to rouse.
A voice squeaked in his ear, “Wake! You must wake,” and a burst of herbal scent invaded his nose.
Screeches and scuffles ensued, and with the startling sense that someone had touched him, he forced his eyes open.
Irregular splashes in their waterfall signaled a faery or animal jumping into the stream to escape. Three fadas swung from the vines over the doorway. One casually threw a rock at the waterfall, as if to chase off whomever had told Merrick to wake—the creature who had, presumably, dosed him with his lucidity. The fragrance clung strong in the air. Groping with one hand, he found the vial still hung around his neck.
Had a fada taken pity on them, knowing they needed to awaken and continue on their quest? Did they know what the lucidity was for, even though Merrick and Larkin hadn’t told them? And was Merrick dying for some reason; was that why everything hurt so much?
The sky outside was dark. It had been full daylight when Merrick last remembered being awake. They’d slept the entire day away. Shit.
He was lying on the stone floor, his head on his crumpled T-shirt, which he didn’t remember taking off. He wore only shorts. The torches burned in the walls. He shoved himself to a sitting position and groaned. Pain flashed up his spine and through his head, flaring at every nerve ending; and when he lifted his hands to massage his eye sockets, the muscles in his arms cramped in protest. He opened one eye long enough to look at the bed and verify that Larkin still slept, similarly half-clothed, then shut the eye again and sat taking careful breaths. The headache throbbed and brought nausea on its heels.
He scraped up the tiny bit of magic he could gather and sent it through himself to self-heal, but the improvement was only minor and soon dwindled, counterbalanced by the loss of that bit of energy. He had crossed the threshold every endo-witch dreaded: where his energy was too low to heal himself. That happened rarely, only in the worst hours of an injury or flu or food poisoning, or beyond a certain point in a fatal illness.
Sleeping on stone would result in waking up sore, but this felt far more horrible, like the worst hangover he’d ever experienced—another time his self-healing didn’t work for a while. In fact, as with hangovers, his mouth was sticky-dry and his lips chapped. They hadn’t drunk anything but water, and only from the bottles with the enchanted galangal root. This shouldn’t be happening.
He opened his eyes again, and his glance fell on a scattering of shriveled grapes on the floor. And then he remembered. Before falling asleep, Larkin had eaten one and had fed Merrick one too. Oh, gods. Faery food. If a day of pain was all they suffered from it, they’d be lucky.
“Stupid,” he moaned, rubbing his face. His stubble, he found, had grown in thicker than it should have for a single night.
He traced his fingers down his trembling arm. The texture of his skin scraped oddly; it was too dry. He set his fingertips on his wrist. His pulse was fast and weak. Dehydration, his confused mind finally labeled it. He was severely dehydrated.
He crawled to his pack to get his water bottle, though moving made his head pound and his stomach lurch. “How long did we sleep?” he croaked at the fae.
They went on swinging on the vines, one twirling upside-down. “There was a night, and a dawn,” the upside-down one said, “and another night, and a dawn, and here again is the night. How sleepy mortals become.”
Merrick found his water bottle, which was empty except for the galangal root. He opened its top and thrust it under the waterfall while he pieced together their answer. “Wait, two whole nights and days? Almost three? We slept at least forty-eight hours, maybe more?”
“It happens to mortals,” the fada said.
“It happens when you drug us with enchanted grapes.” He tipped up the bottle and drank several mouthfuls. His stomach nearly rebelled. He crouched, gagging, until successfully willing himself to keep the water down. “Why didn’t you wake us before now?” he demanded when he could talk again. “We could have—”
Terror clutched his throat. He scrambled over to the bed, seized Larkin by the shoulder, and rolled him onto his back. A shadow of scruff darkened Larkin’s jaw. Larkin cringed, eyes still shut.
Merrick gasped in relief. “Larkin, wake up, wake up, man. We need water. You need to drink.”
Larkin made a moan that might have been “No” and tried to roll away from him.
“Yes.” Merrick took hold of Larkin’s lucidity vial and spritzed him on the neck. Larkin winced. Merrick tucked his arm under Larkin’s head and lifted it to tip water into his mouth.
Larkin coughed, losing most of the water onto his chin, but Merrick coaxed a few sips into him. After swallowing, Larkin groaned and brought both hands to his skull. “My head. Oh, I’m quite sick.”
“We’re dehydrated. We ate those grapes and they knocked us out for three fucking days.” Merrick slumped to sit on the floor.
“Three days?” Larkin’s voice creaked in disbelief. “Sweet Spirit. My beard’s half grown in. You’re right.”
“Get us Sia Fia,” Merrick told the fae in the doorway.
“Oh yes, she will be delighted you are awake again!” one said. “Silly mortals, so fragile. Humans, woodstriders, animals. You simply die like butterflies if one looks away for a short time.” All the fada darted off, presumably to fetch Sia Fia.
“
No, we die of thirst if you put us under a spell that knocks us unconscious for days on end,” Merrick shouted after them, then wished he hadn’t, as shouting made him dry-heave.
“I remember thinking of the lucidity.” Larkin lay immobile, his words mumbled into the heap of silk. “Reminding myself. Noticing it. How could we have forgotten to use it?”
“We got tired. I thought of it too, but guess I didn’t actually apply it. Thinking of it isn’t enough.” Merrick pulled up his knees and set his face on his arms.
“Oh gods, Highvalley. Then how long has it been in the human world?”
“I don’t know. Not even sure where my phone is. It would help if I could move without my head exploding.”
“I cannot recall the last time I felt this sick. I’ve always had healers about to ease such things. Do you suppose the fae would heal us?”
“I’m not asking them for another favor,” Merrick said. “No more deals.”
“No. Wise point. We must simply leave as soon as we’re able, move on to Arlanuk’s land. Give me the water.”
Merrick handed it up. Larkin drank, grunted in nauseated fashion, and flopped back down.
Sia Fia came in. Their interview with her was short. Merrick asked directly if she or anyone in her troop had been acting under Ula Kana’s orders or influence. She said no, of course not; she would never allow such a thing in her own land. Those guards who had flown away with Ula Kana the other day had been swayed into following, but she had not seen them nor Ula Kana since, nor did she particularly care what they were all doing as it did not affect her.
Fadas could not lie, so this at least must have been true. A few more questions, taut with anger on Merrick and Larkin’s side, drew casual answers from her that showed that their neglect of their mortal guests had happened merely through carelessness. Humans who found their way in here tended to go languid and dull after a time, she said, and then often failed to wake up, and their remains had to be thrown in the river for the carrion-fish fae to eat. It was tedious and puzzling.
Merrick asked, in almost a growl, if their deal remained intact regarding the containment of Ula Kana and the sealing of the border. But of course it did, she said. Deals were deals.
