She had not true glamour, though by merely living in Faery she had absorbed a bit of the skill. With a decisive nod, Gossamyr closed her eyes and began to concentrate, to summon her latent power of glamour. If she simply thought plain that would mask the blazon.
“Ho!”
Drawn prematurely from her attempt, Gossamyr twisted at the waist. There he was again. The man with the eerie blue eyes and clinking silver charms about his neck. Had he traveled a circle? This forest, dense and large, would surely require any casual traveler much time to circumnavigate—even should his journey spiral. Was mortal time so spectacular then?
Time is the enemy.
“What sort of witchery be this?” the man said as he heeled his mount beside Gossamyr.
Her fingers toyed with the carvings on the staff, and one hand flattened to her throat. “You jest with me.”
“I beg that I do not, my lady. I traveled straight; there was not a turn in the road. And yet—”
“No time passed?”
“Exactly.” Pressing a hand over his brows to shade his view from the setting sun, he peered at her. A flicker of ruby flashed in his ring. “I do not believe your sparkle is merely the sun—”
“Impossible you did not turn and cut back through the forest.”
He shrugged, and the hood of his cloak fell to his shoulders to reveal a scatter of tangled hair and a trickle of crimson running from temple to ear. Might have been scratched by a branch, so small the cut. Yet there, to the side of his right eye, a bruise the color of crushed blackberries tormented the flesh. What had the man been to? Fighting? Defense?
“Be gone with you, stranger,” Gossamyr said. She had enough to sort through without him tangling her thoughts, making her wonder when wonder was best abandoned to focused attention.
The buzz of the fetch zoomed past her face, too quick for a mortal to regard as any other than an insect. Shinn kept watch.
“Ride straight and do not look back.”
With a surrendering splay of his hands, the man huffed out a grand sigh. “As the lady wishes. I’ve my own sorrows to keep me this day.” He again heeled the mule. With a bristle of its dirty hide the beast carried its master onward.
Over the rise in the road, Gossamyr watched and listened keenly for his return, for a signal he veered from the path and into the underbrush that paralleled the pounded dirt. A bluefinch soared overhead, chirring a greeting that made her smile. Exactly as the birds in Faery. The bird verified the traveler neared the edge of the forest—
“’Tis a spell!”
Behind her, Jean César Ulrich Villon III reined the beast to a halt and jumped to the ground. Fists planted akimbo, he looked over the mule, then up the verdant wall of the surrounding forest. Gossamyr thought she heard him mutter, “The same.”
“Be you a witch?” he called.
“Most certainly not.” That would imply she dabbled with forbidden magic! She stomped over to him and jabbed her staff under his chin. “Tell me true, you traveled straight?”
He nodded, raising his spread hands to his shoulders to keep them in view. Small cuts gashed his palms and wrists. Had the man battled his way out from a prickle bush? Where then had he found such a nasty bruise?
Gossamyr scanned the forest, seeking a tear in the curtain to Faery where perhaps a sprite might be seen spying on his mischievous deed. Wide hornbeam leaves remained still as stone. Tree trunks gripped the earth, silent stately sentinels. Pale ivy twisted about the grasses and journeyed toward the toadstool circle. Not a dryad in the lot.
Gossamyr could not be sure if it was because she no longer stood in Faery, or simply, the Disenchantment befell more quickly than expected. She saw nothing out of sorts. Save that everything was horizontal.
“Pisky led,” she decided, then snapped the staff away from the man’s chin.
“What?” Ulrich followed her as she turned and stalked down the rough path away from him. “I’ve not seen a pixy.”
“Pisky,” she corrected sharply.
“Piskies, pixies, what have you!”
“They are very different. Piskies fly, pixies…they trundle. As well, pixies do not glimmer.”
“Only thing I’ve seen that glimmers of the enchanted is you, my lady. On your neck there—Oh, Hades!” He clamped a palm to his forehead. The action resulted in a yelp, for obviously his bruised face pained him. “Not again! Pray, tell you are not a damned faery.”
Gossamyr winced at the unfamiliar word. Not a favorable oath, she guessed from his tone.
“You are not? You cannot be. Dragon piss!” He pressed beringed fingers between them in an entreaty. “Have they sent someone to bring me back? Where are they? Do they lurk? No! I will not go. I refuse!” He curled his fingers and wrung the balled fist at Gossamyr. “Your kind have done enough to foul my life.”
“I am n-not a faery,” Gossamyr managed. She pressed a hand to her throat where the blazon was visible. They keep them chained in cages. “No, not faery,” she reiterated more confidently.
“You lie, trickster! Your sort never speak the truth, only in circles.” The man drew tiny frantic rings in the air before him. “Circles, circles, circles. Oh, but those damned circles! It is not the same! Changed, damn them all. It has all changed!”
“Believe me or not,” Gossamyr said over his ranting. “I am m-mortal, like you.” A quick twist of her fingers clasped the highest agraffe on her pourpoint, closing the vest to an uncomfortable tightness.
“Mortal?” He jerked a sneer at her. “My lady, we mortals do not have occasion to call ourselves mortals. We are men, women, coopers, bakers, fishermen—but never do we say mortal. Tavern keepers, tanners, magi and—”
“Enough! I am…a woman then.” Yes, he must see that! She managed an awkward curtsy—a quick bend of one knee—and forced a smile. “Are you well pleased?”
“Pleased? To stand in the presence of a faery?”
“I am not!”
“What of your clothing?”
“What of it?”
He peered closely at her. Gossamyr controlled the urge to reach for the discoloration on his cheek. Did it feel hot? Tender? What did a mortal feel like? His face was such a display of movement and lines and sighs and outburst. So emotional!
Oblivious to Gossamyr’s curiosity, Ulrich eyed the sleeveless pourpoint, slid over the applewood sigil propped on her hip, then stretched his gaze back up her neck. Stuffed with arachnagoss and sown in a fine quilting, the garment protected from sharp or slashing weapons.
He finally said, “Are those leaves sewn together?”
Clutching the rugged fabric fitted snugly to her body, Gossamyr lifted her chin. “Mayhap,” she offered stubbornly, thinking a lie would be just that—so obvious. Lies served nothing but to prolong the inevitable bane. But the truth of her was a necessary misappropriation, lest she find herself in a cage rotting in a market square.
“Leaves! Marvelous!” A brilliant smile revealed white teeth and he clapped his hands together—but the smile straightened sharply, as did his mood. “Well, I am not going with you.”
“I did not ask your accompaniment, mort—er, Ulrich.”
“So be off then.” He shooed her with a flip of his fingers. “Back to Faery where you belong.”
“Do you not hear well?”
“Perfectly.”
“Mayhap you are daft? I said I am n-not