Gossamyr. Michele Hauf

but caught herself with the staff. “You speak to the night. What is to you, man? Be you luna-touched?”

      “Get me free from here,” he growled. A flick of his head to the left and he addressed another unseen entity. “Heaven? You who takes your own life asks very much!”

      “Is it the Netherdred?” she pleaded.

      “I know not of nether dreads—only the dreads that stand before me. Ah! I must concentrate!”

      The man had stepped into a realm that frightened even Gossamyr. She could feel not a presence. No smell or sound could be pulled from the confusion of the moment. She tugged Ulrich’s arm, but resistance tensed in her grasp. And yet, the man did not pull himself from her. ’Twas is if he were bestiffened.

      Banshees? she wondered. No, they were visible figments of white wailing women. Ghosts? She had not experience with the sort; ghosts aligned themselves with wizards, witches and forbidden magic.

      “I have not the leisure for you all,” Ulrich shouted and twisted from Gossamyr’s hold. “I will die of old age to send you each in his turn. Faery Not, pull harder!”

      “I am trying,” Gossamyr said. She clutched him about the waist and planted her toes in the loose dirt. It was as if he were being held to the center of the roads, fixed with nails pounded through the soles of his soft-bottomed shoes. Yet she felt not a single presence. “What is it? A spectral creature I cannot see?”

      “Hundreds,” Ulrich cried. “Take my hands.”

      Twisting under his outstretched arm, Gossamyr seized the man’s hands. Though the darkness shadowed features, the agony on his face showed strongly. As their palms joined, Gossamyr felt cold tremor through her forearms and up her shoulders.

      Horrors! A chill greater than winter’s bite trickled through her bones. “I can feel them,” she uttered.

      Pushing with all her might, she succeeded in moving Ulrich from the center of the crossed roads while he shouted and protested with the unseen forces. Together they shuffled backward. Her toes stepped onto grass. Fancy snorted and clopped from their way. Finally, Ulrich tripped and went down. Gossamyr fell forward onto his chest, collapsing with a huff. The distinctive rip of dried leaves sounded.

      Breath wheezed from Ulrich’s lungs. Reaching back, Gossamyr felt over her pourpoint. A rent down the center, up to her midsection, she determined.

      Now even the crickets silenced. Dark surrounded; the eyelash moon ignored this little crossroad. Lying atop Ulrich, Gossamyr grew aware of his breaths, short and hot. The chill had slithered off as if it had not bitten her so sharply. The man had been assaulted in a manner she could not comprehend. But that she had rescued him from an unseen assailant seemed apparent.

      She gave a jerk of her head to swish back the heavy corner of the cloak from her face. “Are you fine and well?”

      A burst of laughter shook him beneath her.

      Gossamyr bent her legs and knelt over him, trying to assess his condition. Eyes closed, and his breathing still fast, was all she could remark. No cold—yet she had felt his flesh to be as ice when gripping his hands. She scented not blood, but when she thought to touch his face—check for wounds—she recalled the bruise. A touch would not be welcome to his tender flesh.

      Pushing up, Gossamyr stood and struggled with the cumbersome cloak. The heavy fabric twisted between her legs. “Blight!”

      Ulrich remained on his back. Short bursts of laughter continued, so she judged him safe. But sound?

      Plodding up from behind, Fancy nudged her warm nose into Gossamyr’s palm. With contact, fear flowed out from her. A glance to the crossroads sighted only stillness. Whatever had threatened was now gone. She took a breath and expelled it in a lip-fluttering blast.

      “The saddlebag,” Ulrich asked in a gasping voice as his laughter settled. “Is it safe?”

      “Exactly where it should be.” Gossamyr bent and this time stroked aside a clump of hair from Ulrich’s temple. No fear in touching this mortal. Secretly, she felt daring to do so. “What happened to you?”

      “A damned crossroads,” he said in a tone that blamed her for not guessing the obvious. Moving up to prop on his elbows, he blew out a bluster of breath. “I wasn’t paying attention, and walked right into the center of the infernal place. Hell would be most pleased to open a tavern right there.” He gestured forcefully toward the spot he had stood. “Plenty of doomed souls for the taking.”

      “What has a crossroads to do with whatever it was that tormented you?”

      “You don’t know?”

      She shook her head. “When we joined hands I felt something…so icy, I could have frozen.”

      “Ah. Yes. The chill of death. Do not faeries have their lost souls? Suicides and murders? They gather at crossroads.”

      “Who?”

      “The souls! Lost and misdirected souls wandering a purgatorial nightmare. They convene at crossroads because that is where we mortals bury the forsaken.”

      “Ghosts?”

      “Not exactly. Souls, Gossamyr. Souls. Disembodied and searching.”

      She turned to look over the place where Ulrich had battled. Souls? The revenants cannot commence the final twinclian without an essence. “Like…revenants?”

      “I know not what a revenant is.”

      “They are—”Skeletal flying beasts with wings. She clasped both elbows. Better to keep that information to herself. “Why could I not see them? Did you see them?”

      “Not in a physical way. But believe me, I felt their icy, possessive bones everywhere. Had you not dragged me away I would have been trapped until dawn guiding those damned souls to Hades. So horribly the same!”

      “Guiding them? I do not understand. Be this magic?”

      “Far from it. Let’s walk, shall we?”

      Ulrich stood. Bell-wavering forward a few steps, he turned and groped Fancy’s flanks to steady. Had she not known him sober Gossamyr would have guessed him soused. “Distance, my lady, we need to get Jean César Ulrich Villon III far from this horrific place. I can yet feel them leering at me, waiting for me to stumble back onto their domain.”

      She squinted, yet sighted nothing but gray shadows upon darkness. A chirr of crickets resumed their night symphony, and a snort from Fancy drew her attention around.