Gossamyr Part 27

"I...will. Thank you, Monsieur Armand, I will dress right now." She stepped inside the cove of the doorway and within a leap of the man, tugged the brown wool from her body.

"My nephew tells me you quest?"

Dress spilling over her arms, Gossamyr nodded eagerly in response. "Yes. I seek..." Vengeance, valor, truth. "Truth?" The word had sprung from her mouth, unthought. Since when had she claimed truth over valor?

"Looks like it has already found you."

She returned to the table, preening over the soft fur at her wrists. "I don't understand."

"Sometimes the truth can be in your hands, yet you see only the dust from the road. Your past."

"You see nothing, old man." Then she blanched. Of course he could see nothing.

"I see Faery, splendid and bright."

"Truly?" Had Ulrich told him her origins?

Armand smiled. "I have been there. The last thing I looked upon before the Faery prince took away my sight was the emerald water flowing down a falls amidst a rocky outcrop glittering like diamonds."

The falls at midcenter of the Spiral forest. Many times she had swum in the waters, always fearful the rush of current would tug her under, but loving that fear for the adventure it proved. Of course, there were surely other falls throughout Faery.

"Why were you punished so? Did you enter Faery of your free will or fall into it?"

With a throaty chuckle, he explained,"I plotted and planned for decades, since I was a young boy. Finally I caught me a faery and bade him bring me to his home." He clasped his arms and brought them to embrace across his chest. Reverent in his memories. "He did. I lived there for what seemed like years. I would learn later, here in this mortal land but a day had pa.s.sed. He indulged me in sweets and kept me as his pet. Then as recompense for his showing me the delights of Faery he took my sight and banished me."

That word-banished-how it etched at her heart. Like red p.r.i.c.ks to flesh.

"I remember his name...s.h.i.+nn."

Clutching the gown between tight fingers, Gossamyr looked to the floor.

"The Faery prince showed me the dark side of Faery. 'Tis a far cruder place than Paris will ever be. I fear not the Armagnacs nor the English." The old man laid a finger aside his nose, sniffing. "But should I smell a faery I will turn and race far away, blindness be d.a.m.ned."

If he could smell a fee... Had Disenchantment taken the scent of Faery from her?

Troubled he was not struck by her presence, Gossamyr put it off for a more immediate worry. She knew s.h.i.+nn was generous with his favors and ruthless in his repayments. That Armand had tricked him required return punishment. And that s.h.i.+nn had granted Monsieur LaLoux the pleasures of Faery before stealing his sight was his manner-his very right as a Faery lord.

"My nephew tells me you are the child of a mortal and a faery."

Gossamyr traced her neck; the blazon was no longer there, having been washed away in the stream by the windmill. So far from home. Lost... "Yes."

"But you are more mortal than faery?"

"You...do not scent me?"

Armand tilted his head, appeared to be sniffing the air, then shrugged. "It has been a time since I have been so close to one from beyond. Wicked place, that."

"There is a balance between right and wrong. Good and Evil. You cannot have one without the other, old man. Faery is no more wicked than this mortal realm is pristine."

"Indeed."

She strode to the door, but clutched the frame, unwilling to dismiss him as would s.h.i.+nn. "I am sorry for the loss of your sight. Where is Ulrich? We should be off."

"He is in a dark mood. He sits up the ladder dwelling on the past." As she pa.s.sed by, Armand grasped her wrist. His fingers were cool and veiny, loose with age. "Listen to Ulrich, and do not judge. Do not be blind to what he can offer you, child of the faeries."

SEVENTEEN.

Skirts tugged to her knees, Gossamyr ascended the narrow ladder to the attic room mired with a dull light from the waxed window set into the gabled peak of the roof. She paused on the top rung and knelt on the floor, sure Ulrich remained unmindful of her presence. A fine sheen of dust coated the warped wood-slat flooring. It smelled like the musty underside of a toadstool. Simple this home, crafted of wood and bare of luxury, far from the cold elegance of marble. But she felt comfortable here.

Or was it the entire atmosphere that embraced with welcoming lightness?

Ulrich's footsteps made marks across the floor. Peeking around the corner, she spied him in shadow for the sunlight blurred dimension, but his hosen called out in bold defiance-yellow and black now; the left leg yellow, the other black-for he'd found replacements for the pair the werefrog had destroyed. He caught his forehead in his hands and let out a keening moan.

Gossamyr stiffened. Oh, these mortals and their delicate emotions!

"Gossamyr?" He snapped a yellow knee up to his chest. "I should have known. Only you could sneak up that creaky ladder without a sound. That gown!"

"Your uncle gave it to me. But see." He nodded as she revealed the braies-but she noted his lack of enthusiasm for her secret fortune. "Do you wish to be alone?"

His sigh settled heavily in her heart.

"I was thinking of her."

She tiptoed across the floor and crouched beside him.

Shrugging his fingers through his hair, a restless motion, Ulrich smirked. "I owe Rhiana twenty years."

"You missed those years, but yet...she did not."

"Logically, I should accept that truth. But logic has served me no boon of late. Hades, I should have remained in St. Renan and...I don't know...slayed the b.l.o.o.d.y dragon! I might have saved her, Gossamyr! Don't you understand?"

"Dragon slaying be a miserable task." Rarely did the beasts come to Faery. And should they, they were revered and welcomed.

Ulrich gasped, clutching at nothing before him, but his shoulders sank as if a giant stood upon them. "Do you have no feelings? No emotions? Don't you know what it is like to feel guilt? Remorse?"

"Unnecessary feelings." Feelings she had known, surely, but would not succ.u.mb to their crippling force. She turned and tried to focus out the waxed window but it only allowed in the light, not a clear view.

Behind her, Ulrich rose and beat a fist into his opposite palm. Within a heartbeat he'd gone from agony to a strange anger.

"A man's greatest fear is loss of his family. For without people to love you, what can a man be?"

The time has come to release you from a father's protective obsession.

"To have family ripped from one's grasp, it is...devastating."

"Yet still you live." She spoke the statement, but thoughts of her father's devastation filled her vision. Still he lived...but for how long? Why did he rush her to marriage?

"What?"

"Your greatest fear has come to fruition, yet you remain standing. The fear did not defeat you, so it cannot be a true fear." A frustrated clench of fingers shuddered near Ulrich's cheek. "How to make you understand? I have been changed, and I don't like the change, for it finds me standing alone, without hope."

"You've hopes of finding the unicorn. Your family may yet be returned to you."

"Never again the same, Faery Not. Never again."

Likely not, for a man's wish could not reverse time and place his wife at his side and his infant daughter in his arms. For would not the entire universe have to move widders.h.i.+ns, as well? A monumental event. Surely even a unicorn's Enchantment could not make it so.

Ulrich's only hope was to save his daughter from death. Twenty years must remain a sacrifice for what? A reunion with a child who might never recall her absent father's face?

"What do you fear, Gossamyr?"

"Hmm? Me, fear? Oh. Well...I... Nothing." Toying a fingertip in the soft fur circling her wrist, she attempted to dredge to light an answer. Despite his disbelief in her capacity to feel, Ulrich's fear was understandable. Loss of family? Not ever seeing her father again? Her heartbeats increased even to consider such. "Mayhap... losing a limb?"

"That is a ridiculous fear."

"Not so! A champion cannot-" That she claimed that t.i.tle with such ease. Who be she but a lost bit of fee dust? Lost. Without family.

The prinkle returned to her spine. Ever there, that unease and uncertainty.

"You throw up physical walls of protection against your true emotions, Gossamyr."

He stepped beside her. Now she could verily feel the blood of him rus.h.i.+ng through his veins, furious and bright. A match to her own inner turmoil. Fear?

"I think you fear feeling."

"Nonsense." How had he come to know her very depths in so little time? "I can feel."

"No."

"Yes!"

"She is dead, and I am not," Ulrich hissed. "And...it hurts. I made promises to Rhiana. That I would care for her, see to her education and upbringing. Now she is gone from me, I can never have her back. And I cannot imagine what it must have been like for her, to wake one morning to find the one man who should have been there for her gone. Do you know what it is like to love? To have loved and lost? Do you?"

"I have loved!"

"Oh? Ah, yes, your parents. The mortal mother who abandons her own for her pleasures, and a Faery lord who blinds an innocent man for his trickery!"

"How dare you!"

"Who would have thought I would meet up with the very child of the faery who destroyed my uncle's life."

"It was mischief that destroyed your uncle Armand's life!"

"That is his penance, not mine. But do you see? Just as me, you fear loss of family. And look: Now they are lost to you."

He approached, stepping too close for her comfort. The angle of the roof prevented her from moving back. The length of her skirt was too long; her heel stepped onto the hem, jarring her to the side. "How does it feel, Gossamyr?"

She did not like his tone. She did not want this conversation. Not this thread of misery to be stretched out before her and plucked like a lute string. He thought to know her fears? Yes, and what are they?

Believe and you Belong.

Where did she belong now?

"Step back," she warned.

"No." He shoved her shoulder. "Does it hurt? Can you feel it? Right here." He laid a palm over her chest, between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Here is where it all coils up and simmers, yes? Tell me you have emotions, Gossamyr. Tell me you are not some freak faery who masks her feelings and blinds men to satisfy their l.u.s.t for mischief. Do you want to push me away?"

"Yes, blight you!"

"Bone! That is anger. What of pain? What will you do to show me your pain? Kick me? Knock me down with your mighty staff?"

"I-I will do you no harm."

"Nor will you step from your safe past to be. To feel! Gossamyr, feel! Be! Dare to be like me, a mere mortal who wants and needs and aches. What if I were to kiss you? Right now?"

"You speak nonsense." She stumbled but caught herself against the rough wood wall and slid to the right, closer to the ladder. The man followed, relentless in his futile mortal ramblings.

A kiss? That had naught to do with the angry emotions of which he spoke!

"I hunger, Gossamyr." He gripped her. His fingers splayed about her shoulders-revealed by the low-necked gown-claiming her in a way that added a s.h.i.+ver to her frightened heartbeats. "I hunger to take you right now. To pour my grief into you. Just...to share a part of me that aches. Can you understand?"

She shook her head. What had mortal l.u.s.t to do with pain and grief? He was acting the devil he appeared.

"You hurt, Gossamyr. You ache. You weep. You can love. Show me! Show me your loss!"

"I have loved! And I have vowed never again to cry for such a loss!" She slipped from his touch and rushed to the ladder.

"All that pain," he called as she exited the room, "it gets caught up inside you, Gossamyr. It must come out sooner or later. It should have been sooner for me,"he cried. "Mayhap Rhiana would still live."

Skirts lumped up about her waist, Gossamyr thundered down the ladder and outside. She did not break stride until her palm connected with the rough bark of a chestnut tree coved into the miniature courtyard out back of the house.

Huffing and blinking, she forgot to keep back the stream of tears relentlessly stinging. Salty liquid splat her nose and lips and seeped down her throat.

What had he done to her? She was not like Ulrich. He carried useless emotions for an event that could not be changed. The past would ever remain untouchable. He could never bring back his daughter. And yet he punished himself with hopeless desires. There was no sense to that!

Smearing the back of her palm over her cheek, she then stared at the wet on her flesh. Crying? No! She had expended that fruitless emotion long ago.

I know how to feel. I have loved!

And she had vowed to never again feel for someone so strongly...