Gossamyr (2 page)

"It has never been in my mind, Gossamyr. Until recently.
There are none who can name the reason for the rift cleaved between
Faery and the Otherside; only we know it exists. Such a tear in the
fabric that separates our worlds allows the revenants to return with
ease. I am sure I mentioned it when I explained the revenants to
you."

"You did not." Hand to her hip, she paced in short
turns, pointing the floor with the tip of her staff. Shinn had
explained the revenants two midsummers earlier when she had witnessed
a natural fée death. Normally the fée essence leaves
the body and experiences the final
twinclian.
But there are
those fée—those of darker natures—who do not
twinclian
to the Celestial. Instead, their essence merely
pops, and the revenant follows, its destination—the Infernal.
It is a rarity.

The sudden appearance of revenants in Faery—not newly
emerged from a natural fée death—had given clue someone
on the Otherside was stealing the essences. And so was discovered the
Red Lady.

As frustrated as Gossamyr was to just now learn something she
should have known about, she took it all in. Knowledge was required
for a successful mission. "Still, I do not understand why, or
how, those skeleton creatures return to Faery. Are they not dead?"

"Did that creature
look
dead?"

Actually, yes. However, not if death implied stillness. "So
it was alive, yet... I don't understand."

"That thing I killed—"

"We killed."

"Yes. We." A nod verified her participation in the
event. But too brief, Shinn's reassuring smile. "The Red Lady
stole its essence, leaving the revenant in limbo. Somehow she can
feed off the essence of another—the essence holds the former
body's glamour—delaying her Disenchantment interminably. The
revenant is a shade of the fée that cannot find final rest
without the essence, so it returns to Faery in seek of a new
essence."

"But why Faery? Can it not locate a fée on the
Otherside?"

"It is compelled back to Faery. The rift literally sucks them
back home. I don't believe it could remain in the Otherside if it
wished."

"This essence..." Gossamyr leaned against a blue
machicolation, tapping the cool marble with a thumb. "When I
witnessed the fée death something blue rose from the body. Is
it something the Red Lady can draw out and...possess?"

"Yes and no. Inside the body it is our very being. Outside
the body, well, it either
twinclians
or it pops." The
elegant fée lord tilted his head to look upon his daughter. A
sigh hung in the air between them, a resolute pause. "The
essence is akin to...a mortal soul."

"Ah."

There was so little Gossamyr understood about mortals. About that
part of herself.

Her mother had been mortal, but Veridienne's sickness—the
mortal passion—had kept her focus from her family and
eventually lured her home to the Otherside, leaving Gossamyr alone to
comfort her heartbroken fée father. And to ever wonder. Why
had not her mother taken her daughter with her? Surely she might have
wished to raise her own child? Had it been so easy to leave her
family behind for the mortal world? She had once begged to stay in
Faery—but that desire hadn't lasted long.

Of course, in terms of emotional distance, Veridienne had much
over Shinn. Likely, she had not seen beyond her own self-satisfying
desires.

Following her mother's abrupt departure, Gossamyr had vowed not to
become mired in her own selfish wants. And what better way to prove
it than to track the Red Lady and protect Faery from further torment?

So this sought-after essence was like a mortal soul. What did it
mean to have a soul? And mortal, at that. Gossamyr had known no other
way but of the fée. Fathered by Shinn, would she possess both
a soul
and
an essence?

"There are things I would have liked to give you," Shinn
said, looking off into the sky, avoiding her gaze. "Truths."

"I don't understand."

"There is no time for confessions. The revenant is
single-minded," Shinn said, "focused on obtaining that
which was stolen from it. So much so, it will kill to obtain the
final
twinclian."
He focused briefly on her cut cheek,
but gave her injury no verbal regard. The fée were not so
emotionally delicate as mere mortals. "They are becoming more
frequent, the encounters. Streklwood was attacked last eve."

"The cook?"

Shinn nodded.

A lump the size of an uncooked goose egg formed in Gossamyr's
throat at memory of this morning's still-shelled offering. She'd
thought to complain, to send her maid, Mince, marching down to the
kitchen...

"The revenant must be reduced to a fine glimmer," Shinn
continued. "For to leave a single bone intact will not defeat
the creature's quest for wholeness. They are difficult to kill."

"I noticed. But it felt good, the challenge."

Avoiding his daughter's enthusiastic declaration Shinn strode the
curve of the tower, hands akimbo, his raven-feather cape flitting
gently above the length of his folded wings.

This demesne of Faery was not so much ruled by Shinn as protected
and guided—a position Gossamyr knew she would one day fill.
Descended from a long line of trooping fée, Shinn had once
commanded the Glamoursiege musters. He'd become lord over
Glamoursiege following his father's death. And he'd trained his only
daughter to follow in his footsteps, should he cease to stand upon
the Glamoursiege throne.

Much as she did not like to consider that fate, Gossamyr realized
it would happen some day. And she was prepared to take Shinn's place,
physically. Mentally, she wondered if her lack of battle experience
would make her a weaker ruler. She could sit council and talk
politics with the best. But would they respect one without time spent
in the musters?

Pressing her palms to a cool marble crenel cut into the tower,
Gossamyr leaned forward. A swirl of white cottonwood kites billowed
out from the dense forest spiraling the castle. Laughter smaller than
a bird's tweedle glittered in the air like sunshine upon purling
waters—a few skyclad piskies clung to the tails of the
seed-kites, stealing a ride.

Despite the fees' frustrating lack of regard for Time, she did
know it governed the Otherside. Veridienne had been the one to
explain to her how the mortal realm used Time to measure everything.
During that conversation, she'd told Gossamyr she was eight years in
measurement, and that a year could be marked once every mortal
midsummer. Which meant Gossamyr was twenty-one mortal years now. It
filled her with pride to know that one mortal measurement, but she
did not mention it to Shinn. The fée did not measure a
lifetime with tangible numbers of years. Once on the Otherside, the
fée struggled against Time, Veridienne had said. Time stole
Enchantment.

To race against Time would afford a challenge.

Faery needed a champion to defeat this vicious succubus.

A thump to her chest thudded against the arachnagoss-stuffed
pourpoint Gossamyr wore when practicing—which was more often
than not. "You know I am fit for this mission," she said
with conviction.

She had absorbed Shinn's lessons on the martial arts until he had
declared her more skilled than he. Since childhood her father had
honed her skills to counter the true glamour birth had denied. (She
had a bit; her blazon shimmered as bright as any other.) But she knew
he would balk. Always Shinn had forbidden her from visiting the
Otherside.
(Forbid
was a favorite word of Shinn's.) Forbidden
to journey beyond the marsh roots, forbidden to take the sinister
curve to market, forbidden to court a Rougethorn, forbidden to even
suggest a visit to the Otherside.

Mortals who left Faery could return, but their swift loss of
Enchantment—and the fact they could never again regain such
Enchantment—made their return visit to Faery dangerous and
unthinkably fleeting.

Time, Gossamyr thought, the true evil.

But Gossamyr was only half mortal. Might she risk a trip to the
Otherside and then return without fear of never regaining her
Enchantment? Shinn
twinclianed
there often.

"And if you look beyond my skills," she said, "there
is the obvious—my mortal blood. The Red Lady is not interested
in mortals, or females, for that matter."

"But—"

"I am not a man. I can easily—"

"Gossamyr."

"—gain her lair and take her out!"

Gossamyr twisted her neck to find the glint in Shinn's vivid
violet eyes. The trace of a grin bracketed his pale mouth. Always his
emotion manifested in small measure.

Reaching for the applewood staff—her
vade tnecum
—she
turned from Shinn, spun the weapon in her fingers, then swung it out
before her, spanning a full circle before she snapped it back to rest
against her shoulder. She may not be able to shape-change or
twinclian
at sign of danger, but Shinn had made sure his
half-blood daughter could stand and fight. Much as he forbade her to
participate in the Glamoursiege tournaments, she had managed a few on
the sly.

Gossamyr had developed a penchant for adventure. Danger even.
Unfortunately danger had eluded her. Until now.

The thought of this mission verily sizzled inside her. She wanted
this! For many reasons. But fore, she wanted to protect her homeland
from the threat of the revenants.

"It is the mortal passion, be that so?" Shinn's quiet
words made Gossamyr wince. "It blinds you to the real danger."

"But I crave danger!"

He caught the end of her staff as she swung it in declaration. The
tension strumming from end to end of the staff—Gossamyr's grip
to Shinn's—felt palpable. Unwilling to concede, she lifted her
chin defiantly.

"You have not experienced real danger." Her father's
stern tone curtailed her swagger a bit. "Bogies and hobs—"

"And that
core
worm a few days earlier! The thing spat
dirt balls the size of a spriggan's head."

Shinn turned a wry smirk upon her. "Gossamyr, core worms do
not spit."

"It was spitting at me."

"Think about it, daughter. How is it a worm exudes dirt from
its body?"

"Well, it—" Throws up casts. Oh. She hadn't
thought of that. So the thing had been— Ah. "Don't you
trust I've the ability? You have trained me for this opportunity."

Her father released the end of her staff with a gentle shove. "You
are skilled, this I know."

"Then I am ready. I will return to you—"

"Will you?" So much unspoken in those two words. And the
sigh that followed.

"Yes. Of...of course I will return."

Did he worry that her mortal blood would prevent her safe return?
Gossamyr had ever coached herself to resist the mortal passion. If it
had seduced her mother, she, as well, risked such temptation, for
Veridienne's blood coursed through her veins instead of Shinn's
ichor.

Or was it that he could not abide her to leave him? The pain of
losing Veridienne had changed Shinn, closed his heart. Emotion was
difficult to mine from the stalwart fée. Gossamyr would not
bring further heartache to her father.

And yet, Shinn had bruised her heart with his own cruel
indifference. The memory of a Rougethorn's kiss would for ever live
in Gossamyr's being, and for evermore close her heart to the mutable
love faeries feared.

But it was all for naught. Love was not to be hers. Shinn had
already announced her engagement to a most frustrating man, his
marshal at arms, Desideriel Raine. Frustrating to Gossamyr's heart,
but certainly deserving where skill and knowledge of the Glamoursiege
musters were concerned. When Shinn had first suggested such over a
meal the diffident fée had suppressed a sneer as he'd looked
across the table to Gossamyr. She had read the young warrior's
look—
she is not true fée.
The humiliation had
prompted her to excuse herself before the final flower course.

She was perfectly capable of ruling Glamoursiege on her own, but
tradition required marriage—marriage being reserved for royalty
and the upper-caste lords and ladies. And, Gossamyr suspected,
Desideriel would represent true fée blood when all in
Glamoursiege merely tolerated Gossamyr's half blood.

"Truth," Shinn said.

Drawn from her troubling thoughts, Gossamyr approached Shinn.

Truth? Studying the sun-laced tower floor, the blue veins purling
through the marble like cold blood, Gossamyr vacillated on admitting
the truth. A truth that sat in her heart like the pulses of mortal
Time that fascinated her so. How to do it gently?

"Truth," she murmured. An exhale released reluctance. "I
do long to visit the Otherside. You know that." She met Shinn's
gaze, half-concealed by a fall of his long raven hair. He sought the
truth of her, and yet he would hide behind his own hard emotions. "I
want to understand that part of my heritage most alien to me. I want
to...experience."

She followed Shinn's pace to the tower's edge. The evening
primrose that grew in the roots attracted night moths, which then
attracted frogs. He nodded. "And find."

Frustration, muted and held back far too long, oozed throughout
her. He would not close out her desires. Not this time. Even more,
Gossamyr would have her father know her heart. She whispered, "Love
never dies, Shinn."

"You think to know love?"

"I...yes." And not the fickle love faeries know. "I
know the fée cannot truly—"

Too fragile, the memory of Veridienne, to speak of it. And so
Gossamyr would not. But what of
her
lover? The one her father
had banished from her very arms? Then, he had claimed she could not
begin to know love. Did they both fool the other with their secret
longings for fulfillment?

To continue would gain her no ground.

"Here is my home, Shinn."