Gossamyr Part 20

As Ulrich's soft snores segued to a somnambulant rhythm, Gossamyr rested her head against the boulder and closed her eyes. The sun warmed her face and made her smile. This Otherside was made even more beguiling by the flaws or differences from perfection. Even the dangers appealed. For when, in Faery, had she been so thoroughly challenged?

Smiling again, she realized she increasingly found favor with the Otherside. Her side, for the time.

Better here. The thought, unbidden, flashed in her mind.

To stay would be to embrace Disenchantment. Unthinkable. Glamoursiege needed her. just beyond the fortressed walls lay Paris. Lure for the Disenchanted, and home of the Red Lady. Soon her adventure would prove itself and she would finally realize her worth.

Gossamyr skimmed her hand over Ulrich's scalp, mowing her fingers through the strands of tangled hair. Heavy and dirty, the texture intrigued. And there, she traced the curve of his ear, small and close to his head. Her fingertips moved down and across the hard line of his jaw until sharp bristles of beard set her senses to a fine alert. She toggled the pads of her fingers back and forth over the bristles, thinking their texture so much rougher than the hair on Ulrich's head. How be it not the same?

A strange murmur, like supreme satisfaction, drew Gossamyr's attention. She flashed her eyes open and looked into Ulrich's upside-down gaze. Awake? She jerked her fingers from his face.

"I thought I dreamed," he said with a sleepy smile. "Don't pull away. That felt good. First tender touch I've had in a long time. Or has it been mere weeks? Ah! Almost makes me..." He closed his eyes and turned his head to the side.

"Makes you what?"

"N'importe." He rolled onto his side and tucked his hands up by his chest, moving his head farther toward her knees. "You have no idea what you just did, eh, Faery Not?"

"I...well..." Gossamyr could but stare at the fingers that had moments ago been tracing the man's face, feeling his features as if she were blind. What had she been doing? Following her lover's abrupt banishment she had stashed away any feelings of desire or need. And yet, they strived for release with every moment she spent with Ulrich.

"So lacking in emotion, these faeries," Ulrich murmured, his words drifting to a sigh, and then to a snore.

"I..." Gossamyr crossed her arms and tilted a snarl at the sleeping soul shepherd.

I do have emotions, she thought as gruffly as she could. I just... Well, she wasn't sure what to do with them, so they were quickly pushed back. Left to wither.

Why punish yourself for your father's cruelty? Is it not your right to seek another lover? Before you tie yourself to one man? This world is bursting with men. Look at them!

She looked at her fingertips. One hand bracketed the side of Ulrich's face; a finger strayed down to the dark beard. Contact. And...connection. Of a sort that intrigued. Mortal touched, and happy to do so.

Ulrich's eyes opened to look right at her. "No time to consider romance, Faery Not?"

"Romance? You are begroggled. I am just-"

"l.u.s.ting?"

Had she been l.u.s.ting over a mortal? A man who could not care if she was half-blooded. But would he think her exotic? "That would please you?"

"Surely."

"What of the damsel?"

"You think I have a romantic connection to her?"

Gossamyr nodded.

"I no longer have connections to any, be they woman, child or lover."

The sadness in his voice clued Gossamyr he had lost a great piece of his heart. Had he loved and given so much?

A finger to the circle of violet and green that stained Ulrich's right cheek intrigued. He winced at Gossamyr's touch. "I'm sorry. Does it hurt verily?"

"It aches-" he placed a hand over his heart "-in more places than my face."

Gossamyr wasn't sure what that meant. She saw no other bruises. "How did you come by such a bruise? It looks a few days old-"

"A week, to be exact."

"And?"

A heavy sigh puffed up his relaxed gut. "You really need to know?"

"If you wish to tell."

"I received this bruise from a stone. A good-size stone that easily fitted into a woman's palm."

"A woman did this to you?"

"Indeed. My wife."

It never took longer than a day for the Red Lady's taint to extinguish her victims. Atimes but an hour pa.s.sed; other times the sun would rise and set before the tainted fee would stumble and finally collapse. The pin man preferred the event happened in privacy. The disgust or sudden shock of the public never aided his retrieval. The essence he claimed yesterday behind the stable in Juvisy had almost been witnessed.

Why did they not keel head to ground immediately? He would never understand the working of his mistress's deadly kiss. Nor must he care. Maybe? No. No reason to.

This day, the sun sat high and bright; one could not determine where the ball of light ended and where the crystal sky began. A tug to the leather brigandine he wore s.h.i.+fted the amigaut between his shoulders blades. One of the bone splints sewn into the doublet had poked through and irritated the base of his wings something horrific. He gave ichor daily for the success of his mission. Did the red b.i.t.c.h appreciate the sacrifice?

How she wounded with her indifference.

The streets bustled with midday marketers en route to purchase the rotting remains of fish from the skiffs moored on the Seine. Precious few boats tied up for no longer than it took to pillage their stores and burn the boat, but this day the English patrolled the riverbank with a keen eye to marauders. Cobbles beaten smooth by the centuries echoed with the clop of horse hooves, the call of fishmongers, and the scrambling feet of those who literally starved inside this great city of riches. For the gates were a risky leave to purchase flour for bread from the millers who would rather shelter away from the attacks.

a.s.suming a straight-shouldered pose-tall and fine-the pin man scanned the bleary day, tainted with a fine mist. The succubus's mark had meandered from her embrace early this day and had been wandering the narrow streets in a thrall. Clothed in simple black wool, the barest of lace crept out from the mark's doublet sleeves. The fee must have fallen on hard times since the Disenchantment.

The pin man shrugged at the irritation scratching his back. Hard times, indeed.

Fine rain slickened his face. He lashed out his tongue to drink in the minute liquid and tasted the sooty air and briny muck of the Seine.

Now the victim began to slow. The pin man scampered to within a leap of the Disenchanted. As the fee stumbled, a palm catching against a wall for surety, lithe shoulders swayed in an attempt to find that easy balance. He turned his head to scan whence he had dallied; red-glossed eyes sought nothing, only squinted at a bleary crimson sky.

The pin man cringed when the fee started down the ma.s.sive stone steps to the Seine. Would he attempt to drown his agony? It would make retrieval difficult, if not impossible. Even in the miserable weather so many bustled about. The silver glinting river h.o.a.rded dozens of slender boats and skiffs. The bridge, pressed with houses and humanity, verily oozed an awareness of the river so close. Someone would witness.

Tugging his hood securely upon his head, he stealthily descended behind the victim. To reveal his strange hair coloring amongst the crowd would elicit stares. It had not always been such a color- he sensed as much-but he could not recall a time when it had simply been black, as remained the lower half of his tresses. There had been a time-that time- when...

Brows furrowing and his entire face squinting, he sought the origin of...of...

Ah!

Lost the notion.

Here, along the river's edge a log bench beckoned, its rotted, warped legs coated in clinging ivy. Stench of scale and sewage crowded against the walls of the riverbank. A rusted iron ring larger than a cow's head hung a leap away, waiting to moor up a visiting skiff.

The fee folded onto the bench, a surrender to his body's loss of will. Now he noticed the pin man's arrival and managed a grim smile and gestured he join him on the bench, which the pin man did eagerly. No words were spoken. A fine pounded-gold sheath was missing the sword the pin man had remarked this morning when the fee had first stumbled out from his mistress's embrace. Most likely abandoned in a whirl of dizziness, for so suddenly the Red came upon them, choking from within, or rather, drowning its victim with thick viscous fluid. Blood? Or somesuch. Couldn't be blood, for ichor ran through the fee's veins. But the pin man never pondered the conditions of the death overmuch. He lived for but one task. Always had, always- -well, not always. Yes? Or...no? Tricksy, the remnants of memory that cloyed.

The fee, smiling woozily at him, laid his head back against the moist stone wall that fortressed the river. A seabird careening low scanned for food. The creak of moorings secured wooden boat hulls kissing against one another.

The fee blinked. A red tear slithered down his cheek. He whispered, each syllable a husky dying hush, "'Twas...a remarkable kiss."

The pin man nodded, slid his thumb along his rain-slickened braies. Memory teased him. He knew he'd had the similar experience of longing but could not place the time or face or even name.

Be gone stupid flickers of a different life! Be gone or be whole!

"A kiss, yes." He said what he knew the fee was thinking-what they all thought. "Much like... Faery?"

"I-" a sense memory appeared across his face "-miss it so..." Death relaxed the fee's neck muscles. His head lolled, dragging his body down toward the pin man. He caught the fee by the shoulders and pushed him back, taking a moment to straighten the wool doublet. Silk frogs clasped the black wool from chin to loin. Valuable. Of little concern.

Antic.i.p.ation making his fingers shake, the pin man dug into his leather sheath and pulled out a fine s.h.i.+ny pin. Pure silver, the pointed shaft, a ward against glamour-not that he need fear such from the Disenchanted. As long as a man's forearm, the shaft, but no thicker than his littlest finger. The polished iron k.n.o.b, a perfect ball, hummed in his grip. Not completely safe, the winter-forged iron, but endurable. It negated the power of the silver. Why though? He could not guess.

He held the pin poised over the dead fee's skull, and the wait began.

And he replayed her seductive voice in his head. Aaahh... aaaae...eee...mmmmmnooo. How he desired his ruthless red mistress. And how he despised her. Her song meant: Come to me. Come to me, kiss me, drink from my life. Taste Faery. And die.

Only, the pin man was not dead. He remained in limbo ever after. For she toyed with his essence, keeping it high above all the others. 'Twas the difference between the Disenchanted and those yet Enchanted. Or so he figured. The Red Lady could steal but a spark of an Enchanted essence, a portion that did not kill them, but instead dangled the hapless fee between the Infernal and the Celestial. A cruel mastery, for only death would grant relief. Mayhap her control over the Enchanted was greatest then, for it toyed for an eternity rather than granting a quick escape to Death.

Twinclian. Final.

The odd words visited briefly. Twinclian? Whatever that meant, he could not know. But should.

Ah! Banish the pesky thoughts!

A brilliant spark of corporeal property arose from the fee's skull. So brief, the moment of release, but the pin man had honed his skill. Stabbing expertly, he speared the essence. Tiny cry of death, defeated in its softness.

Tilting the needle up, he watched the blue globulus ma.s.s of undulating glimmer slide down to the iron-ball head.

Success.

A gargling yowl loosened as the revenant escaped its sh.e.l.l. Always blind to the speared essence, like a banshee the revenant soared up into the sky and flitted over Paris. Its destination, the pin man did not know. So long as the skeletal apparition did not torment him it could descend to the Infernal for all he cared. All occurred within a blink; none on the riverboats or walking the bridge took note.

Careful now to hold the pin upright, the pin man backed from the deflated corpse and skipped up the stone steps to the street. The sh.e.l.l of a former life he'd left behind would disintegrate with but a powerful gust of wind, faery dust dispersing across the Seine in a twinkle.

Twinclian? Hmm...

A bell toll later, the pin man danced merrily down the white marble floors of his mistress's lair. Along the walls clung huge white marble gargoyles bearing candles as wide as a knight's thigh in their wax-encrusted dragon-claws, brilliantly illuminating his skipping journey.

"Malchius," the pin man sang as he pa.s.sed the first stone-eyed creature. "Maximia.n.u.s, Dionysius, John." He always named the silent watchers as he pa.s.sed. A blown kiss to the fifth was caught with a void stare. "Constantine, you precious thing."

The pinned essence glittered madly, as if all of Faery had been crammed into one globulus ma.s.s.

Spinning and kicking up his feet, the pin man celebrated his triumph. Such a good puppy he was!

"Seraphion and Martimanas, amours all!"

The doors to the Collection were open, as they always seemed to be, spread in wait of his return. Forgetting the seven sleepers, the pin man entered the air filled with myrrh and citrus. The scent dived into his brain, seducing and numbing.

Twirling into the room, he eyed the Red Lady, sprawled upon a ma.s.sive bed bedecked in crimson silk with gold-tipped fringe. Her luminous white flesh enticed for but a spin-soon enough would come his reward.

First, he turned and danced his way up the two marble steps arced before the curved wall. Thrusting, he pressed the pin tip into the marble, feeling its fine point enter the cold stone as if gliding into a thick, creamy cheese.

And it was done.

He stepped back, the high of the moment dissipating as he looked over his handiwork.

Finished. Once again surrounded by so many stolen bits of life.

"A blue one," his mistress cooed deliriously from her bed. "So pretty!"

Indeed. Dozens of pins quilled the marble wall, each spearing a glimmering fee essence. Essences of white and indigo and palest violet. Coral and lime and bloodiest red. Orange. Lavender. Lucid blue. Every color danced to a rhythm that could only match its former body-vigorous, languid, proud or c.o.c.ky.

The collection delighted his mistress to giggling peals. "Come, Puppy!"

He heard her pat the bed behind him. The soft cush of Turkish silk beneath a fragile yet strong palm. Vat, pat. Lemon scent dispersing with each smear of flesh to satin. Every portion of his being pined to rush into her arms. Remove the scratchy brigandine and slither across the cool sheets. Reward so sweet.

But wait. Prolong the moment.

Admire.

The pin man stepped another pace backward and stretched his eyes up the wall. Not far above the collection-more than a stretch, but certainly less than a jump-one single essence pulsed. Pale and soft, yellow as the sky on a lazy Sabbath morning. It glimmered boldly, defiant above all the others.

Tears welled in his eyes. He clutched at his throat, then swallowed. Desire overwhelmed triumph with bittersweet sorrow.

"Mine," he whispered in the barest of voice.

TWELVE.

Gossamyr gasped. "Your wife?"

Ulrich eased his palm to the bruise on his cheek. "She was a trifle upset with me."

"You are married? Why then do you travel the road alone? I-" Touched you, she thought. Most intimately. And he had done the same.

He had a wife? And he sought a damsel in her absence? Why, the man's heart be more fickle than a fee heart!

"Lydia, my wife, would not accompany me on this quest for all the gold in the world. Just as well."