Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (25 page)

“I see!” Edvard nodded. “Well, thank you ever so much, Widow Merryweather. You’ve been most helpful . . . by the way, have you seen Ariela Soliandrus? I’ve something urgent to speak with her about.”

“Mistress Soliandrus?” The Widow Merryweather laughed lightly. “Oh, she never comes to this.”

“Never?” the Dragon’s Bard asked in surprise.

“Not as long as she’s lived here.”

Ariela Soliandrus sat on the back steps of her little home with her chin propped up by both her tiny hands as she looked out over her garden without seeing it.

Ariela had heard the sound of the trumpets coming from far up the river and the merry sounds of her fellow townsfolk making their way to the landing above the falls. The horns called to her, too, but in a different way. So she locked the doors of her home and hid inside until everyone had passed and gone their way. Then, as she had done every year, she sat on her back porch and waited.

“There, now, my love . . . did you think that I would not come?”

Her tiny heart jumped at the sound, as it had done for uncounted years before. She took a breath and counted as far as four before she felt she could reply.

“Coming was never your problem,” Ariela responded, folding her hands as she sat up. “As I recall, staying was more the question.”

The small, lithe figure emerged from the dark line of trees beyond the garden. He was tall for a fairy—nearly as tall as a gnome—but he had a strong body and a beautiful set of wings. His hair was the color of a summer sunset. His shirt was a deep shade of turquoise, while his vest was a profusion of colors patterned after a peacock’s feathers. His hat was pushed back casually from his forehead, and his eyes were a brilliant green. He had no beard—few fairies could grow them well—so his face was smooth. Yet Ariela noticed the lines at the corners of his eyes and knew that time could catch up with even the Fae.

“And yet here I am now in your very garden once again, Ari,” the fairy said with a slight bow as he drifted toward her in the cool of the autumn evening. “Same old garden, same old flowers, and all stuck in the same old ground, are they not, Ari?”

“Right as always, Lord Obsintia,” Ariela said without enthusiasm.

“And here I find you planted right along with them, my dear,” the fairy king replied. “Stuck with your feet in the same unmoving ground. But the water, Ari, the water! How could you set aside the motion and the challenge and the change of a world full of rivers to explore? How could you leave it, Ari?

“It left me,” Ariela replied, her voice quiet. “I wanted a garden—a nice piece of ground filled with all the flowers that I loved. Storms come to the garden, but they pass, and the garden remains. There’s peace in my garden.”

“Well, I’ve ridden the waves of the Staymark River, sailed the glass surface of the Underground Sea, and shaken my fist at the Furies in the Lake of Souls! Now I’ve returned down my old friend the Wanderwine just so that I could see you, Ari! Just so I might float above your garden and hear your voice!”

“Quindonalas Obsintia, if that were true,” Ariela replied, “then why are you doing all the talking?”

“Ah, and you have me there,” he answered with a brilliant smile. “And you used to call me Quin. Couldn’t you go back to calling me Quin?”

“Calling you Quin was what got me in trouble in the first place,” Ariela sighed.

“Nonsense! You were a great queen to our clan!”

Ariela looked away. “But they were not that great to me.”

“There you go again!” Quin said with affected hurt. “I’ve come for your help, and all you want to do is bring up old hurts.”

“Help?” Ariela laughed. “When did you ever need anyone’s help?”

“Well, I do tonight, my love, and you’re my last hope.”

“Me?” Ariela ran her fingers through her hair. “Please, Quin, it’s hard enough having you here.”

“I mean it,” Quin said, fluttering nearer.

“I won’t go,” Ariela shouted at him. “I came here to get
away
from all that . . . away from you. I’ve built a life here with these people.”

“A life with these people?” Quin scoffed. “What kind of a life can you have with these dull-witted giants? You dress like them, you talk like them, you’ve even got your pretty little garden, but what do they know about riding the wind? Do they understand you at all? Do you even understand them? You can try to fit in all you like but you’re not one of them, Ari, no matter how hard you study them or try to mimic their lives. You cannot be one of them, Ari!”

“I
am
one of them, Quin!” she cried. “I love these people and I do my best to serve them the only way I know how. Maybe it’s
you
who doesn’t understand.”

The two fairies sat on the back porch stairs for a moment in silence.

“Say, where’s that largish servant girl of yours?” Quin said at last.

Ariela sniffed. “At the landing, probably, with everyone else.”

“Look, Ari, I’m sorry about all this—what I’ve said and all,” Quin said, putting his arm around her. “I miss you, is all . . . and I do need your help, just for tonight. And then in a few more days I’ll be gone.”

“What kind of help, Quin?” Ariela asked as she dried her tears.

“I need you to do the Dance of the Leaves for—”

“NO!” Ariela said at once. “I’m a respectable woman of this community! I will most certainly not—”

“It’s a masked dance, Ari, you know that,” Quin said, holding her shoulders so that she could not move away. “No one will know it’s you, and there’s never been anyone better at the dance than you were . . . than you
are!
Listen to me, please!”

Ariela looked sideways at Quin.

“Libithania tore a wing at our last camp, and Murialana is expecting again,” Quin pleaded. “No one else knows the dance and none of them can perform it as well as you can.”

“Quin, no, it’s just not who I am anymore.”

“I know,” Quin said with a one-sided grin. “But just for one night, Ari . . . it could be you again. Think of it, Ari! Dropping those stays and corsets for one night and thrilling everyone in the town—in
your
town—with a dance that they’ll be talking about for the whole year! It will be you behind that mask, behind their applause, and they never have to know, Ari, that it was you—their own garden-loving prim little neighborhood fairy—who made it happen!”

Ariela gazed thoughtfully over her garden.

“This town has looked forward to this night the entire year,” Quin whispered. “Would you disappoint your entire village?”

Ariela fluttered unseen among the bushes just beyond the edge of the Fae Grotto, smoothing out a costume she had kept carefully hidden away for many years.

The gown was elegant even by fairy standards. The base of the skirt was woven specifically for her form and her skin tones so that the lines of the dance would be uninterrupted to the audience’s eye. Over this was a diaphanous patterned cloth in fall shades nearly as light as the air around her, with carefully weighted hems that shifted the cloth around the base of the gown so that it could wind and unwind around her as she moved. The effect was suggestive but never revealing in performance—the conveyance of a dream far better than reality. She had known the Dance of the Leaves since she was a child and had still occasionally pirouetted some of the more complex movements in her home when the shutters were well secured.

Ariela looked out into the Fae Grotto. The pixies—unusually cooperative tonight—had formed a ring about the clearing, their light shining down on the faces from the town. Nearly all the adults were there, seated in a semicircle at the edge of the fairy encampment. The tents, Ariela knew, were for the benefit of the humans present—the Fae had no real use for such things, preferring to find their beds under open skies.

Ariela picked up her mask and gazed at it. She, too, missed sleeping under the stars, and there was a part of her that longed for the feel of the river. She had been a queen and revered among her kind, but something within her had grown weary of the constant course of rivers with no purpose and no end. She longed to
mean
something to someone somewhere beyond the blind adoration and the fawning of the fairy court. She wanted to make a difference in the world and not simply fade away to be forgotten and to have left no mark on the river that claimed them.

So she had left the river and taken up a new life. It was hard for her to fit in among the predominant humans of the town. There were nuances to human society that she still found baffling. Yet she had discovered that the women of the town loved to hear about each other and about themselves in turn. Ariela knew that she had a talent for telling a story and that unembellished truth did not make for interested listeners. So she gave the truth a little more structure and color and interest whenever she passed on the news of the town. Soon she found herself accepted into most of the homes in Eventide and invited to all the social events. She felt hurt and often a little confused that some of the people in the town looked down on her or considered her a menace or a nuisance or, worse, laughable. She kept all those stings to herself because she genuinely loved Eventide and the people in it. She had her home, she had her garden, and she was serving her friends in Eventide in the best way that she knew how.

Now she fluttered at the edge of the clearing with the mask of her old life in her hands. She could not disappoint them. They had to have their Festival, and she could bring it to them.

She pulled the mask down over her face and, reaching down, picked up the two silk leaves with wicker stays that were made to match the cloth of her gown.

“They will never know,” she whispered to herself, then fluttered into the grotto. Through the mask she looked out on the faces of her friends and foes alike all looking back at her in wonder as though they had never seen her before.

And they all cheered.

The Dance of the Leaves performed in the Fae Grotto that night was talked about for many years to come. Those in the town who missed it counted themselves cursed. The youth, who were not allowed to go, speculated wildly on what was seen that night, making up their own visions because none of the adults would tell them. The men in the town who were present spoke of its passion, its power, and its aching beauty. The married women in the town spoke of its grace, its poetry, and its perfect expression of longing.

The women of Cobblestone Street, when they gathered like hens about Widow Merryweather in her parlor, had their own view of the event.

“Wanton exhibitionism, if you ask me,” the Widow Merryweather sniffed. “Wanton exhibitionism!”

“I would not be the least surprised,” stated Winifred Taylor with arched eyebrows, “if this results in an unfortunate jump in the population of Eventide.”

A murmur of agreement ran about the circle of women in the room.

“Shocking, indeed, that such a display should take place so near our town,” voiced Livinia Walters. “And that it should happen every year and next year as well!”

The women in the circle all sighed. “A whole year . . .”

Through it all, Ariela nodded her agreement with the Widow Merryweather and her companions as she sipped her tea and smiled politely.

And when the day was done, as she would for many years to come, Ariela went into her proper little house, climbed her miniature stairs, and opened her small closet to gaze with a smile on the jeweled mask, the gossamer gown, and two silk leaves that she kept in the back.

“Jarod!”
the urgent voice whispered from below.

Another pebble bounced off his window.

Jarod Klum pushed open his window and stared into the dark plaza below. “Who is it?”

“’Tis I,” came the dramatic voice. “The Dragon’s Bard!”

“What now?” Jarod whined. “I’m sleeping!”

“There is work to be done and fortunes to be won!” Edvard said sotto voce.

“I don’t gamble,” Jarod said in a hoarse whisper back down the wall from his room above the countinghouse.

“No, you asked me to find you a business proposition that would reward you well,” the Bard replied.

“Business in the middle of the night?”

“It’s business best done in the middle of the night!” the Bard replied. “Get dressed—you’re going to be rich!”

• Chapter 17 •

Battle of the Five Pies

On the mantle above Livinia Walters’s kitchen hearth sat an oversized, ornate chalice.

It was too big to be of any use as a cup and too small to be of any use to hold flowers. It was heavy in its construction and not of particularly lovely lines. It was too strange to sell and too useless to give as a gift. As to practical uses, it might best be put to use as a doorstop.

Yet, for five women in Eventide, it had become the focus of their desires, attention, efforts, and time.

The Fall Festival was being celebrated with dances being held in the Guild Hall, feasts being sponsored by the Griffon’s Tale Inn, songs being sung once again by the Flag Four Troubadours, and a number of contests of skill and strength taking place. Evenings were filled with all manner of magical entertainments in the Fae Grotto, where the dream-smoke tableaus, fortune-telling tents, and the fairy dances and music continued for six nights. All this was organized around the chore of hoisting the seven fairy ships out of the Upper Landing and moving them across Charter Square and Bolly’s Bridge, then down Cobblestone Street so that they could be launched again into the Wanderwine River just below the confluence.

Yet, for these five women, the sounding of the fairy horns signaled not so much the start of the Festival as the first blow in an annual battle. The useless and unattractive chalice was the embodiment of the most fiercely contested prize in all of Eventide.

The Fall Festival Pie Competition.

Now, eschewing the parties and the joy abounding outside her kitchen door, Livinia stood in her kitchen, her arms folded tightly across her chest as she concentrated on the chalice and how she might retain it for yet another year.

Both Livinia Walters and Daphne Melthalion had, since their youth, been locked in a seemingly endless battle over ownership of the prized pie chalice. For long years, other challengers were counted of little consequence, until some seven years ago when the combat was joined in force by Marchant Merryweather (the local widow who joined the contest after taking umbrage at a rumor that Daphne Melthalion had once fixed a lunch for her husband), Winifred Taylor (who submitted her own pie after Livinia had refused to attend her thrashing party), and Orlynda Klum (who, it appeared, simply submitted a pie because she thought it might be fun . . . and thereby found herself in the middle of a withering crossfire from which there was no hope of escape).