Gossamyr. Michele Hauf

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      Shinn reached for her staff and drew it between the two of them. One toise in length, the steel-hard applewood had been carved by the Glamoursiège sage and fire-forged by dragon’s breath. Intricate ribbons weaved into a crosswork of roses and flame about the rich wood.

      “I will not bid you farewell,” he offered as he pressed the staff into her hand. “Because you are unable to twinclian, you will have to Passage. There is no way to place you immediately in Paris, so a journey awaits. Take this purse of coin, purchase a swift horse and make haste.”

      Slipping a leather pouch from his hip, he then tied it to her belt. His fingers lingered on the coat of arms before relenting and stepping back.

      Gossamyr spread her fingers around the ample pouch, feeling rich with its weight. Never had she required coin, for her father’s steward and Mince had seen to her needs and desires. How she would miss Mince!

      Shinn touched her forehead with his thumb and closed his eyes, imprinting the whorls of his life upon her flesh, connecting with her hidden eye, the all-seeing and all-knowing. No lack of glamour could dispel intuition.

      “Come back to me,” Shinn whispered.

      A sudden hollowness in her chest forced her to swallow back a strange sense of loss. It wasn’t as if she would never again see him. And Mince, the fretful matron, would only worry should she seek her for a farewell. Such discovery waited her on the Otherside!

      “I will,” she promised. “Set me off, and I shall succeed.”

      “I send you forth with my blessing, child of mine. Make right what you shall, and may you discover the solace to the ache that has been your nemesis.”

      With a nod, Gossamyr silently vowed that ache—the mortal passion—would not defeat her.

      The soft press of Shinn’s lips replaced his thumb. Gossamyr lifted her head and in the violet gaze looming over her she found all the strength she would ever need. “I am off, then?”

      Shinn stepped back and nodded.

      “Very well, but I’ve no twinclian. How shall I enter—”

      TWO

      France—1436

      “—the Otherside?”

      The droning alarm of a cicada announced her arrival. Wobbling off balance, Gossamyr swiftly recovered. She bent her knees and, hands spread, scanned her surroundings.

      Every pore on her body sensed the world had changed. The air smelled verdant. Tightly sown moss, plush in density, cushed beneath her bare toes as they curled into the thickness. The musty vapor of earth rose about her. ’Twas a muted aroma of decaying wood and fetid bracken, similar to Faery but…different.

      Gone, the Glamoursiège castle of blue marble.

      Gone, the crystal Faery sky devoid of cloud or shadow.

      The Spiral forest, why…it was gone. She stood on horizontal ground, not a mass of forest and marble and reticulated roots all twined and flowing at the slightest of angles.

      A squeeze of her fingers reassured her staff was to hand. The carved ribbons pressed into her palm tingled with glamour. She had not natural glamour, but over the years Faery had seeped into her being, imbuing her with a latent glamour that could be briefly utilized.

      Gossamyr touched her hip belt, clasping a narrow arret string. Scanning the ground she sighted within the brushy grass bright red toadstools dotted with white warts, closing her into a complete circle. Amanita muscaria; long ago her mother had taught her the strange name for the mushroom; Latin, she’d named the identifying language.

      Names possess power. A litany fed to her every day since she could remember. Use that power wisely.

      The toadstool circle had risen up below the castle tower overnight. Gossamyr had marveled that the peacocks had walked a wide berth about it. She had been standing in the tower immediately above the circle—indeed, a Passage.

      A copse of pendulous cypress rose to her left, shadowing the thick grasses with a silky gray lacing. Pine and earth and grass flavored the air in a pale mist. Gossamyr drew in a breath. Gone, the sweet aroma of hyacinth. Shinn did not stand beside her, his hands clasped before him. The glimmer in her father’s violet eyes was but a twinkle in the air, a breath of fée dust shimmering to naught.

      She reached out, grasping at the absence of all she knew, all she had come to depend upon—Faery. Opening her palm upward, she spread her fingers. Gone.

      But still there.

      Faery was neither here nor there but betwixt and between. Though she could not see him Gossamyr knew Shinn could see her. I will send a fetch. She looked about, but sighted not a hovering spy.

      According to what she had read in Veridienne’s bestiary, mortals did have ways of peering in to Faery.

      Indeed?

      A mischievous tickle enticed Gossamyr to test that theory. Tilting her head forward, she peered back through the corner of her eye. Swiftly, she jerked her head the opposite direction and narrowly stretched her gaze.

      Hmm. Not a glimmer or vibration in the sky. No flutter of iridescent wings, not a single flicker as fellow fée twinclianed elsewhere.

      A trickle of panic tittered in Gossamyr’s belly. She rubbed her palms up and down her bare arms—the quilted pourpoint stopped at hip and shoulder—and turned about, eyeing the ruffled canopy of treetops. Grapelike clusters of bright yellow laburnum flowers speckled the greenery. ’Twas clearly the edge of the same forest that limned her father’s castle. There! She recognized the hollowed-out yew stump—a youngling’s favorite hiding spot. But this forest edge was no Edge. There was no risk of falling to a crush of bones amidst the marsh roots should she step off the Edge, for the land beyond this forest stretched on. The Bottom. Everywhere.

      Gossamyr gulped. The Bottom was a dangerous place. But where there were no marsh roots there would be no kelpies. No kelpies meant no werefrogs. Blessings.

      But what situation was she in now?

      She had asked for this mission. And wonder upon wonders Shinn had relented. What was once forbidden now lay before her. The Otherside was hers to explore.

      But not to forget: the fate of Faery relied on her success.

      A decisive nod stirred courage to her surface.

      “Champions are made. I will return to Faery the victor.”

      Until then—“Achoo!”

      Spreading her arms to adjust her balance, Gossamyr settled a few steps from where she had landed. “Achoo!”

      What tickled her senses?

      Sniffling, she thought briefly her watery eyes were tears. Tears were a sign of weakness, of unfettered emotions. One could not Be amidst a fury of conflicting emotion. She had once cried enough tears for a lifetime, so it surprised now there should be any left.

      Mayhap they were tears caused by the mortal atmosphere?

      “It СКАЧАТЬ