Gossamyr (41 page)

"A strong mortal. You are not afraid?"

"You are...Gossamyr's father."

The Faery lord tilted his head. Violet eyes touched Ulrich mere—
his heart pulsed madly—just on the chest, before moving up and
meeting him eye-to-eye. A vision of the Dance flashed in Ulrich
's
forethoughts and he spat out, "They made me dance! For so
long."

Shinn nodded, an understanding parent. "You are the soul
shepherd who accompanies my daughter."

Huffing out a breath of the ages Ulrich felt, for the first time
in over a week, a strange calm. "I am. I didn't mean to step
into Faery. It was merely an accident. I was not looking where I
wandered. I meant thee no harm!"

"The Dance is long past."

"Long past? It has been but a se'nnight! You stole so much
from me!"

Shinn inclined his head. The slight movement straightened Ulrich
and he sucked in a breath.
Settle. It is the past.
Mustn't
anger a being whom he had learned was quick to temper and even more
vile when doling punishment.

"You carry the alicorn?"

Ulrich looked aside to the ground.

"I will not take it from you, mortal. It is yours to command.
You must study your heart and decide whether or not your original
intentions will bring certain improvement or sure failure."

"I— Just want to see my daughter. One last time. And...
I want Faery from my eyes." He clutched the shape of the alicorn
in the saddlebag. Did he smell flowers? The scent seemed to drift
from the Faery lord himself. "Gossamyr tells me to return the
alicorn would seal the rift. If such an event occurs, she will not
then be able to return to Faery—"

"You know far too much, mortal."

"—to you!"

The Faery lord bowed his head and the gleam of the bronze band
about his forehead momentarily blinded Ulrich.

Ulrich touched his right eye, smoothed a finger over the ache, but
with a blink he focused on the faery. "I want my daughter back."

"As do I," Shinn said loudly and abruptly.

"We both love a child not our own."

"Do not presume to compare two opposite beings."

"Mayhap in flesh and the internal soul we are opposite—"
Ulrich pressed fingers to his chest. They shared much! "—but
not in heart. I know you love Gossamyr. This alicorn, it is the key
to my love."

With a disdainful sniff the Faery lord resumed composure and
nodded. "It is not for me to command you, Jean Cesar Ulrich
Villon III."

Quiet acceptance swept over Ulrich. Glamour seeped into his pores.
"Know only I love my daughter as you love your daughter."

The gleam surrounding the faery brightened. When Ulrich thought
Shinn would flitter away, his light softened and he stood immediately
before him. He hadn't seen him move. So close, these faeries, so
close.

"Tell me, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III..." Shinn's voice
oozed through Ulrich's conscious, touching the resistance and
softening with a sigh. "With which eye do you see me?"

"What? I see you plain as any man, standing far too close for
my comfort."

"You but see me with one eye, mortal. Which one?"

Shaking his head, for he did not understand, Ulrich shrugged, but
then thought to test the faery's suggestion. He closed his left eye.
Shinn's calm countenance remained before him. So close he could feel
the man's breath, warm as a summer breeze and tinged with—the
scent of a flowered meadow?
Not too close for Faery.
So Ulrich
opened his left eye and closed his right. He turned his head. Where
had the man—opening both eyes, he saw Shinn had not moved.

"My...right," he offered. "I but see you with my
right eye—"

Before he could finish, Shinn's fingers moved over Ulrich's face.
Gripped in the faery's hold, he felt a cool touch of breath as Shinn
blew into his right eye.

A blue ache crackled across his eye and moved around and behind
into his skull. Cold, so cold. A momentary wave of pain, and then it
dissipated with a jingle of the Dance, a remnant of all that had
irrevocably altered Ulrich's life.
Never again the same.

But do you desire sameness?

Shinn released him. Ulrich wavered then righted himself. Still
there, the saddlebag. He could not see the Faery lord standing before
him. Had he glimmered off so quickly?

"Shinn?"

"Never call me by name," the faery's voice answered from
what seemed to be right before Ulrich.

Cupping a palm over his right eye, he searched the dimming light
with his left. Shinn was not to be sighted. But his presence; he
could verily feel the faery's presence in his blood.

"I cannot see you. My eye...what...I cannot see with my right
eye!"

"Fair fall you, Shepherd to Lost Souls."

"No." Ulrich lashed out with a clawing hand and touched
nothing but air before him. At the periphery of his vision he saw the
flash. "You bastard! You have taken half my sight but you'll not
take my determination. I will have my daughter back!"

Basking in the illumination of the multicolored essences, she
stretched languorously along the silk linens soaked in myrrh. Puppy
tended her desires. Perched at the end of the bed, he lapped at her
bare toes, sucking each one inside his warm bud of a mouth. She
neared the edge; release shimmied in her groin. Oh, but the lash of
his tongue tip along the high arch of her foot!

"Oh, Pup-eeeeeeee..."

He knew not to speak, but to tend her unceasingly until the climax
overwhelmed. Clenching thick wedges of silken sheet and pillow in her
fists, she began to surrender. The moans of the pinned essences
chanted an eerie background. Ah, there. A high, shimmering note
vibrated from afar...

"What?" Snapping upright on the bed, she pricked her
ears for the neuma of tone that clutched her passion and thrust it to
the side. "Cease!" She kicked at Puppy, drawing out her
largest toe from his mouth in a tooth-scraping tug. "Listen."

Her lover cowered at the bed's edge, his fingers clawing into the
scarlet sheets, his eyes underlined by the rumpled linens.

Drawn from the manic magic that should have enthralled her, she
slid off the bed, her parted robe scouring over Puppy's stream of
hair. But the tips were black; soon he would be red complete. Red.
Then gone. She disliked them after the transformation for they were
so obsequious.

Stopping before the marble wall, she splayed out her hands, as if
to command the essences to silence. They continued their dirge,
unmindful of her efforts.

Tilting her head, she managed to fix upon that unique but so
familiar vibration.

"Shinn?" she gasped, unbelieving if it were true. "In
the Otherside?"

Sprinting out the door and down the marble hallway, she was aware
the pin man followed like the puppy dog she'd named him. He remained
silent. Good puppy. Passing by the seven sleepers, their murmurs
halted and the candle flames heightened. Attention drew to her, as it
should.

Had the Faery lord come to Paris? To become Disenchanted? No. He
would not risk such a fall.

Mayhap he sought her? Could it possibly be after all this time her
lover wanted her back?

Flinging wide the doors to the outer streets, she stepped onto the
cobbles. The night air gloved her bare flesh, raising prickles upon
her belly and arms and neck.

"Mistress, come back inside!"

Ignoring his pleas, the Red Lady sent out a call. An answer.
Come
take me, I am here. I have never stopped loving you...

"I will retrieve a dress and call for the carriage,"
Puppy muttered.

Ulrich paused just off the courtyard that preceded the Petit Pont.
A torn banner whipped in the breeze, belatedly marking the Monday
market. It was difficult to navigate with but one eye, but he was
determined. Avoiding a fast carriage, he skipped backward and barely
managed an inelegant jump over the center gutter. Thrusting an angry
fist in the carriage's wake, he suddenly paused. He tilted his head
to focus on a sound that did not fit amidst the shouts and brays and
clanks of metal.

Insinuating himself between two close buildings, he shuffled the
length of them to the opposite end where he stood alone upon the
twilight-shining cobbles. There echoed the most elegant note,
wavering and rising and finally settling into his chest.

So lovely the sound. It seemed to say, "I am... here...
loving you."

Ulrich searched the sky, one-eyed as he could, unable to determine
the direction of the call.

You are being pisky-led!

Pixies—or piskies, whatever the Hades they were—did
not possess such beautiful song.

It is the Red Lady.

Well, she must be very beautiful, for her voice rivaled an angel's
song. Or so Ulrich wagered. And she sang to him of love. Loving
him?
How he desired a kind, loving touch, a kiss to erase the bruise
that yet colored his face with the sting of an accidental betrayal.
This faery song was not the same and never to be the same.

Do not listen! She is evil.

Ulrich ignored his conscience, which sounded much like Gossamyr of
Glamoursiege—daughter of his cruel tormentor—and sought
out the origin of the compelling song.

He was not blinded fully and kept a wall on his right side,
gliding his palm across the plastered limestone to support, for his
lack of vision caused him to waver and stumble. Cold, the area
surrounding his eyeball. Blinking at the brimming moisture that
pooled in his blinded eye, he shook his head to fling away the wet,
then proceeded onward.

The sonorous song filling his ears led him down a narrow passage
darkened by buildings, four levels stacked one upon the other. Ulrich
homed in on the music, succumbing to the heady surrender to ecstasy.
She awaited him. A lover. Her kisses promised passion. It had been so
long since he had known such. Twenty years. Or merely a week. He did
not know anymore.

Sliding a finger under his right eye, he wiped away the stinging
moisture.

The hunger for love grew. Already he could verily taste her,
slipping across his tongue, gliding like fine wine down his throat
and easing the ache in his belly.

Around the corner he spied a black lacquered carriage parked
outside a manor stable. Not yet set out on journey, he suspected, for
a coachman did not sit upon the driver's high perch.

Ulrich pushed aside the iron gate and walked up the crushed-shell
path to the stable. His leather soles crunched the pearlescent shards
in squeaking outbursts. If he kept his arms splayed and hands
flattened, such did not tax his balance.

Drops of the stinging liquid running from his eye slipped into his
mouth. Tasteless, unlike tears. Would he cry a saltless river from
this day forth? Damn the Faery lord, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III
would not for one moment longer aid his daughter's quest. A mere
mortal woman who could no more attract a unicorn than she could fly?

All for Ulrich now. He must focus on his wants.

A lava of pale velvet skirts spilled out of the dark-bodied
carriage. The elegant twist of a feminine hand, gloved in softest
gray kid, beckoned him forward. Alabaster and clouds and fresh clean
eggshell, those were the colors of her gown. Yet— he could not
see flesh. Or even a face. 'Twas the costume but no body!

The glove reached for his face. The touch of her, so delicate,
shimmered through Ulrich's being, startling him madly. Like a bang to
an elbow that vibrates shock waves, but this touch pleasured with its
lightning path of pain. Pulling away, she held her finger between
them, coated with the saltless tears that glimmered with the sheen of
Faery. Shinn's trail? The finger moved in a fanning motion before
what should have been her face—mon Dieu, but the wake of her
movement showed red eyes and nose and smirking red lips! Wherever his
tears touched revealed that part of the faery he could not see. She
pushed the finger into her mouth and closed her eyes. Jubilation.

Strange as the vision was, to stand before him, partly seen, her
costume draped in places where he should see flesh, Ulrich could not
deny her beauty.

Banished for loving the cruel Faery lord? He reached to touch the
blossom of vibrant red mouth that curled into a smile. His movement
dislodged the leather saddlebag from his shoulder. Oblivious to the
contents that spilled at his feet, Ulrich held out his hand, pleading
for one touch of the delicious skin—so exquisitely pale—and
to trace the dotted marking.
To recompense for love lost.

Suddenly her crimson eyes widened and she drew in a hissing
breath.

Ulrich looked down the shell path to where his seducer's eyes
focused. Tilting his head, he spied what held her fascination. The
alicorn lay unbound from its wrapping.

Gossamyr strode toward the city walls where she knew Ulrich's
uncle lived, her heels barely touching the cobbles. The wound on her
knee stung. It was a struggle not to limp, but yet the air lightened
her steps. An ever-flowing stream of her mortal tears for a bit of
glamour right now—though the tears be valuable only to the fée.
Anything to make her less vulnerable. She should have remained in the
Red Lady's lair, waiting to end it, to take her out.

Had it been fear for Ulrich that had hastened her away from the
marble-lined walls? Nay, fear for herself.

Blight, that was it. She was afraid.

The realization stalled Gossamyr in her tracks. Fear? Ulrich would
be most pleased. She pressed her knuckles, half staff in hand, to the
stone wall at her right. Heavy breaths huffed from her lungs.

You are not f
é
e.
Not even half-blooded!

Believe and you Belong.

Shaking her head, Gossamyr struggled with voices crying out from
her past and the future that beckoned with a strange crook of its
bony finger.