Michele Hauf - Gossamyr

Gossamyr gripped her throat. Was it noticeable? Is that why curious blue eyes fixed to her?

“You are alone, fair lady of the strange costume?” Not so grating as the initial tones.

“I am,” she replied. Strange costume? Her arachnagoss pourpoint? It was certainly very average. Mayhap he did not notice the sheen of glamour on her flesh. Better even, mayhap her blazon was concealed?

Two steps took her right up to the mule’s side. She gazed up into the mortal’s hooded visage. Musk and earth and a curious scent of sweetness intrigued.

“Remarkable,” the rumble-toned man said. “And most bewildering.”

“Why so?”

“My lady, do you not fear attack?”

A short burst of laughter preceded Gossamyr’s cocky grin. A spin of the longstaff cut the air in a swift gulp and she stabbed the tip to ground near her foot. “As you have remarked, I carry a big stick.”

“Indeed. As well you could take a man’s eye out with that spinny thing.”

“It is an arret,” she explained, then tucked it away on her braided amphi-leather belt. “Achoo!”

“Bless yo—my lady? Did—did you just…twinkle?”

“What?” Twinclian? She hadn’t moved. Well, the sneeze had shaken her fiercely—

“You just glimmered!”

Impossible—ah! So her blazon was visible!

A step back was necessary. A tug of her pourpoint did not lift the soft fabric any higher than her collarbone. The blazon started under her chin and flowed to the bottom of her collarbone, wrapping around her neck to under her ears.

The fée did not reveal themselves to mortals. Nothing but ill could come from discovery. Another step placed her in the shade of a fat-leaved mulberry.

Yet another startling thought unsettled: this mortal could see her. Mortals were not capable of seeing the fée. Not unless they possessed the sight. Hmm…Unless—no, she knew the fée visited the Otherside completely unseen.

Mayhap a half blood was visible to mortals?

So long as he did see her, she had better distract attention from her blazon, the only telling sign of Faery.

She summed up the man’s attire, long dark cloak, striped hose and an open white shirt with blue peacocks embroidered around the neck. About his fingers danced colors of ruby, sapphire and gold. Various silver symbols hung from a leather cord about his neck. Alchemical symbols, she surmised. A sure sign of the sight. And that she must beware, for surely he dabbled with magic. “You are…a wizard?”

“Far from it.”

“A mage?”

“Are they not two of the same?”

“What are you?” That you can see me!

“Why, I am a man.” Still sitting upon his mule he bowed to her and introduced himself. “Jean César Ulrich Villon III.” Casting a wink at her, he said, “But you may call me Ulrich.”

Ulrich. Who saw her. And whose voice blasted inside her skull and rippled through her body like tiny sparkles of sunlight heating her flesh. Everything about him called to her attention.

Was it the same for him? Did she sound so different? How soon before her blazon faded? Surely the Disenchantment would wipe it away?

And until it did, and she could walk undetected by mortal eyes?

“I shall call you gone.” Gossamyr nodded over her shoulder and made show of spinning the staff in a twirl of defiance.

“The lady is not a conversationalist. And I must heed she is well armed.” The man heeled his mule and ambled past her. “Very well. This forest remains the same. The trees are the same. All…is well.” His hood did not conceal the curious eyes drinking her in from crown to toe. Bare toes, Gossamyr realized as she turned her toes inward. “Fair fall you, my lady. Good…day.” He paused, blatantly staring at her, then, snapping his attention away, nodded. He muttered to himself, his parting words low but audible, “Could she be?”

Gossamyr watched until the man disappeared beyond a rise on the red clay path and the whistles of his renewed dirge became but a figment. Only then did she release her held breath. And only then did she realize she had been holding her breath.

“What sort of skittish maid am I? He presented no threat. He was but a man. A mortal man. I should have…asked him things. Questioned him!” She kicked a tuft of grass.

For all her frustration she had not been trained on mortal relations. Shinn had ever made it clear a trip to the Otherside would never occur. Martial skills served well against the spriggans, hobs and werefrogs of Faery. One did not have to converse with the rabble, merely lay them out.

So what hindrance had befallen her tongue? ’Twas not as if she had never before stood so close to a male. So close as to once kiss, she thought wistfully.

You are exotic…A Rougethorn’s wondrous declaration to love.

Yes, I can love. It is the mortal half of me who loves, I know it!

My lady, did you glimmer?

Ah! ’Twas the man’s notice of her blazon that had thrown her off! That is why she had sent him away so hurriedly. She had not expected to be seen. And if so, she required time to plot how she would move about in this new and alien world.

Yet, for as strange as she suspected her surroundings, the man had made an odd remark about the sameness of the forest. Verily, in a stretched-out, horizontal manner. And yet, far removed from all she had ever called home.

Fact remained, the mortal had seen her. Mayhap they all could? Her half blood had never before been tested by unEnchanted eyes. And if all could see her then all would remark the blazon.

A disguise must be summoned to cloak her fée shimmer. Shinn had told her of those mortals who would keep fée as pets. A caged spectacle to be presented at fêtes and in market squares, forced to wallow in the Disenchantment until they literally shriveled to bone.

She had not true glamour, though by merely living in Faery she had absorbed a bit of the skill. With a decisive nod, Gossamyr closed her eyes and began to concentrate, to summon her latent power of glamour. If she simply thought plain that would mask the blazon.

“Ho!”

Drawn prematurely from her attempt, Gossamyr twisted at the waist. There he was again. The man with the eerie blue eyes and clinking silver charms about his neck. Had he traveled a circle? This forest, dense and large, would surely require any casual traveler much time to circumnavigate—even should his journey spiral. Was mortal time so spectacular then?

Time is the enemy.

“What sort of witchery be this?” the man said as he heeled his mount beside Gossamyr.

Her fingers toyed with the carvings on the staff, and one hand flattened to her throat. “You jest with me.”

“I beg that I do not, my lady. I traveled straight; there was not a turn in the road. And yet—”

“No time passed?”

“Exactly.” Pressing a hand over his brows to shade his view from the setting sun, he peered at her. A flicker of ruby flashed in his ring. “I do not believe your sparkle is merely the sun—”

“Impossible you did not turn and cut back through the forest.”

He shrugged, and the hood of his cloak fell to his shoulders to reveal a scatter of tangled hair and a trickle of crimson running from temple to ear. Might have been scratched by a branch, so small the cut. Yet there, to the side of his right eye, a bruise the color of crushed blackberries tormented the flesh. What had the man been to? Fighting? Defense?

“Be gone with you, stranger,” Gossamyr said. She had enough to sort through without him tangling her thoughts, making her wonder when wonder was best abandoned to focused attention.

The buzz of the fetch zoomed past her face, too quick for a mortal to regard as any other than an insect. Shinn kept watch.

“Ride straight and do not look back.”