“Youlet go,” she said stubbornly, her tiny voice not wavering in the slightest.
“You ate all my apples, Miela!” he insisted, trying to wrestle his antenna from her clutches with two of his many hands, the fourth one gesturing angrily at the box of ruined apples. My racing heart began to slow as I watched the interaction between them, the hammering in my chest easing from sprinting panic to concerned confusion as my hands dropped from my face.
The kid had an iron grip on him as she dangled a good six feet in the air, completely unconcerned about her situation. “I didn’t eat all of dem!” she insisted. “I only tasted dem.”
He finally managed to pry her hand free, but his antenna was bent oddly and all the little fluffy bits stood askew. “Now look what you’ve done,” he grumbled at her in a low buzz, trying to smooth it back to rights and redirecting her attention to the apples. “Why did you taste every one? I’d have given you a whole apple if you’d asked!”
“I didn’t wike dem,” she stated matter-of-factly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“So you just kepttasting them?”
As he spoke, his long, thin tongue flickered between his fangs, protruding just enough for the tiny fist he wasn’t grasping to dart out and snag it. The outraged yelp he gave as she yanked it toward herself was accompanied by the mothman’s frantic buzzing sounds, causing the tiny tot to erupt with further peals of delighted laughter. Her husky giggles were contagious, and seeing that she was manhandling him instead of the other way around caused the relief in my chest to bubble out in my own disbelieving chuckles. I couldn’t help it. It was just such an absurd sight, seeing this hulking, furry beast of a monster beingworked over so skillfully by this fireball of a toddler. Given how comfortable she was bossing him about, I realized the child must have been his, and I felt silly now for having reacted in fear based on his size and fearsome appearance.
My laughter was a mistake, and I cringed internally as he followed the sound of it to stare at me glumly, his tongue still pulled taut from the side of his mouth by the child. “I’m so sorry,” I stuttered out, suddenly horribly embarrassed by my earlier outburst when I’d thought he was going to harm her. “I didn’t realize she was yours!” My cheeks were hot as I raised my hands again, this time holding them in front of me in a placating gesture in the hopes that he would disregard my previous panic. Even though I was still mildly panicking as he turned his focus on me. Those eyes made the prickling feeling on the back of my neck feel like pins and needles.
The mothman reached out to pry his tubular tongue from the toddler’s grip, never taking his eyes off of me, all the while. She giggled again as his tongue was freed, but I couldn’t remove my gaze from the dark-fringed, red eyes he had trained on me, wearing a decidedly unimpressed expression.
“Mine? Like my child?” he asked incredulously, his wings flaring dramatically as his voice moved from its buzzy rumble into a higher octave.Oh, no.“She might only be a quarter orc, but look at these tusks!” He wiggled her in the air with the hand that gripped her scruff, causing her to squeal with laughter again as her pigtails bounced to and fro. She did, indeed, have the tiniest of tusks peeking above her bottom lip. My eyes snapped back to the mothman. “Mothchildren haven’t even got anybones,” he continued indignantly, “let alone teeth.”
“I have teef!” the little one declared cheerfully, opening her mouth to show them to everyone as I glanced at her quickly.
But the mothman wasn’t finished as he continued in a huff. “I know you elves must think every green child is a caterbaby,but she hasn’t even got the right number of limbs!” He sounded positively perturbed, and I didn’t know what to think, so I just apologized profusely for the assumption and started to retreat slowly from the table, my hands still held aloft. The child was clearly fine, and I needed to make an escape. I would just send Artem to buy whatever trees he thought would sell well.
“Sir, are these mushrooms for sale?” An oblivious old goblin man stepped up next to me with a ceramic pot full of the same mushrooms the tusked toddler had been digging up earlier.
“My mushwooms!” she squealed, darting her hands out toward the pot as if she could snatch them back from the man.
“The low-fae are not for sale,” the mothman stated sternly. “They go wherever they want. Miela,” he said, addressing his tiny captive, “you have to stop pulling them up or they’ll bite you.”
“They bite?” the old man asked in a bewildered tone, blinking down at the little red and white fungi.
“You, come with me,” the mothman instructed, pointing one of his many long-clawed fingers at me.
I froze in my tracks, five steps away from the table already. So much for sneaking away. “Who, me?” I gestured at my chest, my eyes wide in panic. “Oh, no. No, sir. I’m good… I’m just gonna—” I started to gesture over my shoulder, indicating that I would head back the way I came, but he cut me off.
“You wanted to try a Moon Blush, didn’t you? Come this way. These are my best apples, if I do say so myself. You’ll never be the same once you try one. Yousimplyhaven’t lived.” He snapped his enormous gray wings together forcefully, leaving a shimmering mote of dust behind him as he ducked into his grove of trees. He shifted his hold on the little girl to carry her against his chest while she howled loudly about wanting her mushrooms back.
The little old man continued to stand next to me, staring at the little pot of strange fungus he held. “These are low-fae?” he asked aloud, though he sounded like he was speaking to himself.
Suddenly, the elderly elvish woman was there, gently taking the pot from him. “Best to put those down or that little girl’s mother will have your hide, Arnold. Miss,” she said, waving me toward the trees, “you go follow Alistair now, and he’ll get you some of those pretty apples. They’re our most popular,” she said with pride.
I had just wanted to look at them! Augh!I practically stomped around the table and ducked into the first row of trees, immediately aware of how dim the light was under the low canopy of leaves. Hadn’t my mother always warned me about stranger-danger? Wasn’t it unsafe to go off into the woods? Granted, the tidy rows of neatly pruned apple trees could hardly be termed “woods,” but I thought the same principle should apply. I was a city-girl through and through. I could just imagine myself getting lost in the orchard and wandering for hours. I’d never live it down if my uncle heard about it.
Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to follow the arguing duo—Alistair and Miela, I reminded myself—as they bickered and squabbled on their way down the rows of trees. The toddler wanted down, and the mothman wasn’t having any of it. “No! You lost your walking privileges,” he stated when she squirmed in his many arms. “If you can’t make good choices, then you have to stay with me.” She quieted as he stopped at a tree laden with glossy white fruit, just beginning to show the pink hue at their tops, and reached clear into the upper branches to pluck one off.
“I want one,” she squeaked.
“You’ve had plenty,” he muttered, barely loud enough for me to hear as I tripped over my own feet in my effort to catch up to him. I tried to hide my stumbling misstep as he turned to face me, towering over me as I drew nearer. His largesilhouette against the canopy above cut a menacing figure, but something about the copious tufts of soft-looking fluff covering his chest and body reminded me of a silk moth. His eyes had become a muted maroon color under the shadowed leaves, much less shocking than the brilliant crimson they’d projected in the late afternoon sun. The long dark fringes surrounding them—as well as the tiny child held carefully in his arms—softened him somehow. I was still unsure of him, but the absent way he rubbed circles between the girl’s shoulder blades as she began to suck her thumb and snuggled into his fluff melted my anxiety clean away.
I raised my gaze to meet his when he hesitated with the apple in his hand, holding it carefully with the pads of his fingers so that his sharp, black claws didn’t mar the perfect skin. His feathered antennae bobbled above his head, and his expression appeared uncertain. “These are my favorites,” he said in his rumbling buzz. “But it’s okay if you don’t like it.” He extended the apple to me slowly, as if he was aware of my nerves, and I took it carefully from him, marveling over the glossy texture. Alistair’s head seemed to shrink into the mounds of fluff around it as he hitched his shoulders up to his ears. I didn’t understand the gesture since there was no way a creature like this could beshy.
“Should we take it back to the tables so the lady can cut it up and share it?” I asked, glancing back to where the evening sun still played at the edges of the trees.
“I can get more,” he answered quietly with a descending click, his fluff levitating even higher around his ears. “I want you to have it.”
Chapter 2
Lilith
