Page 24

It would stand as a memorial to my anam cara.

A smile pulled at my lips as the world began to fade around me.

Chapter 10

Cricket

The funeral was planned for the next day, straight after the morning meal. I stayed behind, too uncomfortable with both my role in the necessity for one, but also with the idea of performing grief for a man I didn’t know. My three companions went though, Violet because she said it was bad luck not to honor the dead, Green Man because he didn’t want Violet to go alone. And where Green Man went, Emerald found a reason to follow.

It was strange to wander the village alone, the sensation of eyes watching me following me everywhere I went. Every turn I made, building I passed, felt like I would discover the hidden watcher. And I never did. Leaving me on edge and twitchy.

Even the disconcerting sensation of being watched by disembodied eyes paled in comparison to the idea of observing something as deeply human as a graveside service in Magh Meall, of all places. I should have gone. That would have been the smarter choice, the more Fae choice. Blend in. Allow them to believe I was one of them and infer from that whatever level of comfort they would have gained from it.

I was still just human enough to know that if I did that, I would be no better than the bastards we had escaped.

My wandering along well-tended and hard-packed dirt rows was not unfruitful though. I found strange things, things that had no business being in a human settlement. Like the copper ring of runes embedded into several of the tall rough timber logs lining the boundaries of the village. They were no bigger than a large dinner plate and hammered nearly flush with the bark of the logs near the base of each. The runes reminded me of the iron rune circle my mother had been held in, but they were off. A flourish on one was turned the wrong way. A line on another was missing. Two dots that had been on the top left were now on the bottom right. Just close enough that it brought me back to the hum of power coming from them, but not enough to feel the exact same.

On the contrary, though these all looked like that same circle, none of them hummed with power. None of them sparked with an unseen jolt of magic when I dragged my finger over them. They were simple adornments.

And then there were the bottles in the washing house, the same bottles with the etched-in crest that I had served or been served in the palace.

Curiosity and opportunity pushed me into the cabins closest to our own. Not to steal, not to pilfer through their things, but to stand in the most private of places afforded to a human. It told you a lot about them, about their inner selves. If someone had stepped into my apartment back in Human, they would see exactly who I was, someone who had nothing and was just barely scraping by. I was nothing and nobody then, and my house reflected that. Each home was different of course, some with blankets, some with herbs drying on racks. One had a whole rack of sausages drying over a low smokey fire.

The strangest thing I found was the small bowl of wax paper wrapped candies I found in several of the homes. The bowls were all different, set up as high as they could be. Some were simple cups, some handwoven baskets. All of them had the same daffodil yellow candy twisted into pale white waxed paper.

I reached for one, curious about what candy they had managed to make in this peculiar land and what it would taste like with Fae ingredients. I wanted to try something new, feel what it would be like for the children growing up in Havenhome. Static electricity jolted up my arm, leaving my fingertips numb the moment they brushed the waxen wrappers.

Hours later, when the village started trickling back inside the walls, my fingertips still stung occasionally, making me suck on them to try and get rid of whatever was on the wrappers. I met them at the gate, not wanting to be in the lonely, empty village any longer. The eyes had become more insistent. More invasive. I could almost feel their owner’s breath on the back of my exposed neck.

“How was it?” I asked, not really interested, but the luxury of conversation with another human eased the tension in my shoulders.

Green Man shrugged, and Violet dabbed tears that would never fall from her large eyes. “It was beautiful. Olivia sang a hymnal I haven’t heard since my mam sang it at my pa’s graveside. She’s from two counties and eighty years over, you know.”

I tilted my head over the strange way Violet described the distance relationship to her and Olivia. Two counties over, physical distance, and then eighty years. Did that mean Olivia had been here longer than Violet? Or that Violet had?

I was too busy puzzling it out to notice the presence of a young woman at my shoulder. It was only when Green Man ticked his eyes over to her that I turned slightly and nearly jumped out of my skin.

Behind me, just outside of the small gate that rimmed the village entrance, was a Fae. Her long, mouse-brown hair pooled at her ankles, flowing down her cloak-covered back. Speckled brown feathers framed the center of her face, rimming large orange and yellow eyes that were rounder than they should be. She watched me, her gaze fixed and unmoving, as she tilted her head to either side, examining me.

“Lady, you almost just got punched into next week,” I exhaled, lowering fists that had instinctually come up to defend myself.

“Ooh, thaat would have beeen a verrry bad ideaa,” she whispered in a breathy voice that was high-pitched and elongated her words.

My eyes traced down her small frame to the owl on the tabard she wore over her simple dun brown dress. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“To sstrike a messaanger oowl is sscertain deatthhh,” she exhaled each word as if it was almost a struggle for her to form them, like she was hunting every syllable and was out of breath from the hunt. “Aand I like youu. It would bee a shaame for the Crrosssroadss to claaim you.”

I frowned, knitting my brows together. “Thanks? I think?”

“Yoou’re wellcome, laaady.” She made a soft, trilling sound in the back of her throat and clicked her lips together before snapping her attention to something by my side.

I was really getting tired of things sneaking up on me.

Cora, clad in head-to-toe faded black approached our small gathering, Rook in tow. Both of them gave me thin-lipped smiles and a nod of their heads as they looked past me to the strange Fae at the gates.

“Messenger,” Cora acknowledged the woman before ticking her attention to me, “You staying?”

The question could be so simple. Was I staying at the gate with them? Or it could be so much more complicated. Was I staying in Havenhome? That question hovered unspoken but present in every interaction with every human I encountered in the village. Even an unspoken question like that would not go answered until I was well and properly ready. I knew better. I knew what I wanted to tell her, but for the sake of my human companions I was giving them time to decide without my influence.