C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“You followed me?”

Half-apologetic guilt slid across his features, still easy to read despite his changed aspect. “I followed you and I had Natalie look up what she could online. You have a degree in psychology. It made me think yes, perhaps you were what I was looking for. Does it help you understand people who see the world so differently than you do? I hope so. But I needed to know, Lara. I needed to know if you were a truthseeker. I’m sorry, but I’m running out of time.”

A band of pain sprang up across Lara’s forehead, throbbing in time with her pulse. She sank down to the floor, eyes closed and fingertips pressed against the thin skin of her temples. “What does that mean?”

“There are limits to the power that brings me here. If I tarry beyond one hundred of your years, the door will close. I’ll be unable to open it again from this side, except perhaps at great personal cost. So I either return home with you—with one such as yourself—now, or I remain an exile here forever.”

“Now?” Lara looked up sharply, trying to ignore the ripple of lights that followed when she opened her eyes. “What do you mean by ‘now’?”

“I have a few days, perhaps a week. Within the scope of a century, the need is immediate. Will you come with me?”

“No! Go, get out of here!” Lara shoved to her feet, headache intensifying with the strength of her emotion. “I don’t understand any of this and I don’t want to!”

“I wouldn’t ask if I had any other choice.” Infuriating truth rang through Dafydd’s quiet words, but he retreated, wafting a hand over his belongings on the kitchen counter. “I’ll go,” he said after a moment, quietly. His form shifted as he spoke, glimmers of change blunting the bones of his cheeks, the length of his fingers, the fineness of his form. They were lies, the things he pulled on over his elfin shape, and they danced and shimmered, making him hard to look at now that Lara knew the truth. She closed her eyes, and waited until his footsteps faded before she looked again. Waited, in fact, until all that was left were his words, echoing in her mind.

“I’m not difficult to find if you should change your mind. I hope that you do. You are my only chance, Lara Jansen. I am lost without you.”

She was still sitting against the wall, head cradled in her arms as she tried not to think, when the others returned. Laughter preceded them, filling the stairwell and offering enough warning that she might have gotten to her feet, straightened her clothes, and greeted them with a smile.

With a lie.

It was the thing done in society, by polite people eager to keep others comfortable. Lara knew it, could do it if she had to, but with Dafydd’s absence it seemed even more absurd than such rituals normally did. She could offer no easy explanation for why he’d left, and so to let her friends find her worn down was as simple an answer as she might find.

Rachel broke into raucus song— for they are jolly good fellows! —as she bumped the door open, all four of them trying to crowd through at once. Laughter and singing fell away as Lara lifted her head, wincing at the overhead lights’ brightness.

Kelly gave Dickon an accusing, angry look and thrust an ice-cream cake box into Sharon’s hands. Dickon protested, “What’d I do?” and the other two women turned half-suspicious, half-apologetic expressions on him as Kelly ran to Lara’s side.

“What happened? What did he do? Are you okay? Where is he?”

“I’m …” Fine was inadequate; fine had variable definitions. “I’m not hurt, Kel. A migraine came on all of a sudden.”

“Oh.” Kelly thumped down on her butt. “Did David go to get medicine? God, you scared me there, Lara. I thought he’d hit you or something.”

“David would never—!” Dickon’s voice shot up in outrage and the women who weren’t Lara hissed shhh s at him as Lara winced again. Dickon muttered, “Well, he wouldn’t,” sullenly, and Lara pulled a pained smile into place.

“I imagine you’re right. It’s nothing like that.”

“Here, I always carry migraine medicine.” Sharon handed the ice-cream cake off to Dickon and dug into her purse. “Why don’t you call David and tell him to come on back, we’ll save some cake for him.”

“Yeah, all right.” Dickon put the cake on the counter and Sharon offered Lara medicine and a plastic cup of water, asking, “Do you think you’ll want cake?” beneath the sound of his call.

“Maybe a little piece.” Lara took the tablets and watched Dickon over the edge of the cup as she drained it. His eyebrows crinkled into a frown, but he nodded, shrugged, and hung up to say, “David thinks he won’t come back since he’s already on his way out. He offered to pay for the cake.”

“Well that’s silly.” Sharon stalked toward Dickon, a hand extended. “Give me the pho—Oh, he’s already hung up? Well, for God’s sake, what are we going to do with an entire cake?”

“Eat ourselves sick,” Rachel suggested. “There’s no such thing as too much ice-cream cake, a statement I will regret making about half an hour from now. We can all manage a fifth, right?”

“Well, give Dickon a third and we can split the rest among the girls. Lara’s not going to want to eat an entire fifth of a cake.”

“I already ate an entire sundae and you think I can eat a third of an ice-cream cake, too?”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Kelly asked under their good-natured arguing. “You look awful, Lar.”

“My head hurts. The medicine will help.” Lara leaned against Kelly as her friend settled down beside her. The racket of discussion over portion sizes, of disappointment at David’s abrupt departure, of concern about Lara’s headache, washed over her as thankfully ordinary commentary. Dafydd’s image still lingered, elfin form too bright and uncontained to make sense within the context of a very human kitchen filled with entirely human bickering. “Kelly, do you ever wish fairy tales came true?”

Kelly shifted like she was trying to get a good look at Lara, who was too close to be seen. “That must be a doozy of a headache if it’s sending you on flights of fancy. What do you mean, like dragons and princesses and heroes? Yeah, I guess, except I’d kind of like to be the one who fights the dragon.”

Laughter escaped Lara’s lips in a release of tension and pain. “And woe betide the dragon. I just wondered.”

“You never just wonder anything. What?” Kelly nudged her. “Suddenly believing in love at first sight, are we?”

“No. No,” Lara repeated a little less certainly. Curiosity and attraction didn’t equate to friendship, much less love. Intrigue was the only word that came close to describing her feelings toward Dafydd ap Caerwyn. Her anger and fear had faded into something manageable while she’d waited for the others to return. Bewilderment still rang through her, but it was underscored by the talent and curse that defined her life: she was bewildered, yes, but she didn’t disbelieve . She had not, as someone else might have, convinced herself that what she’d seen hadn’t been real.

For a moment she felt painfully distant from other people, even Kelly, warm at her side. Most people would, she imagined, be able to explain away Dafydd’s transformation as some kind of trick, but it had sent such a song of truth through her that she couldn’t doubt it even if she’d wanted to.

And now, with the initial shock fading, she wasn’t certain she wanted to doubt it at all. He was something extraordinary, beyond the bounds of possibility and yet existing within it. She, of all people, had been given the ability to see that. A small, incredulous smile crept across her face, and Kelly snorted triumphantly. “Told you. Love at first sight.”