“I was thinking more of you without your ‘lectrics. I’m not even sure how I’m meant to get you back to Herot’s Hollow after weeks with hair curlers and ‘lectric lamps.”
“Ah, but what we really ought to do is bring them a power-saver. Maybe by the time we made it back, the world will have advanced so much we’d be living on the moon.”
“Now that’s a place that’s more suited to you. Being made of cheese, after all.” Keir tugged playfully on Alison’s plait. “I do like your idea, though. Either we manage to bring Leo back, or we just have a nice bonfire on an autumn night and try something else later.”
“With a bonus ancient ritual that’s sure to have at least three professors losing their minds,” said Alison. “I do worry that Leo’s usefulness for their research may lead to their sabotage of our efforts to bring him back.”
“I wouldn’t be too concerned,” said Keir. “There’s absolutely no way Ceri lets that happen.”
He had a point. If there was one thing Alison had learned, it was that nothing could stand in the way of Ceri. Not curses, not school rules, not her royal status.
Not even time itself.
Chapter Thirty
SAMHAIN
Leo
On the morning of Samhain, Leo found an unexpected visitor lurking among the trees.
He had seen the shadow of it for several days, but the fairy villagers kept scaring it off. From what they had shown them in paintings they had done on their huts, there were a number of fearsome beasts stalking about in the woods, many of them incredibly dangerous judging by the violence of the images.
And this visitor was unquestionably one of those, or it had been once.
It was the tarasque. Leo had no idea how it had gotten there. Had it followed him through all of his journey? Was it bonded to him somehow? He didn’t even know if it was real or just some strange remnant of magic that only existed in this place because of whatever was keeping him there.
But he was happy to see it, nonetheless.
The villagers flew down with their spears in hand as Leo approached it.
“Tak,”he said to them. It meant “no.” He held his hand up. “Friend,” he said.
“Friend?” asked the grey-haired matriarch. She was their leader and the person who had been the most interested in learning Loegrian.
“Yes, friend,” said Leo. He reached out a hand to the tarasque. It licked him with its lion tongue, which felt a bit like it was taking the flesh off his hand.
The matriarch gestured to the others and spoke some words Leo had learned related to food.
They brought out a slab of deep red meat: the hind-quarters of an aurochs, a fine cut that honored Leo’s declaration of the beast as a friend.
Leo bent his head in gratitude at their offering. He had learned that many of their interactions involved subtle gestures of the head and wings, and while he couldn’t replicate the wing movements, he mimicked the head movements as closely as he could.
The tarasque took a sniff of the meat, looking at it skeptically.
Then it devoured the entire thing, a slab roughly the size of a goat, in a single bite.
The fairies murmured in their language.
“Friend?” asked the matriarch again.
“Friend,” Leo reassured her. Truthfully, he wasn’t certain that the tarasque posed no threat to them, but he seriously doubted their ability to defeat it even if it did, so he saw more promise in diplomacy.
Leo led the tarasque back to his hut and reread the description of the Samhain ritual he’d written into the journal. It had taken a great deal of convincing to get the matriarch to divulge the ritual in advance. They had been happy to have him watch, but they weren’t as keen on having him participate. But insisting that he really wanted to had been the only way to get the matriarch talking, and in the end, their culture respected the wishes of guests too much to refuse him.
Leo had been tasked with beating a certain drum, a task that he suspected was generally given to children due to their laughter when they saw him practicing with it, but either way, his hands wouldn’t be free to use his magimeter.
Once, the missed opportunity to take measurements would have filled him with anxiety and pre-emptive regret.
