Page 21 of A Dance with the Fae (Mistress of Magic #1)
Without thinking, Faye ran forward.
‘Moddie!’ she cried; she hadn’t called her Mum since she was small. Moddie had preferred her own name; she’d been a young mother, only twenty-one when she’d had Faye. When Faye was in her teens, they had been more like sisters.
Moddie’s hair was loose and curled and reached her waist in long ringlets. She wore a white dress with a full skirt and long, bell-shaped sleeves. Her feet were bare, and she wore a golden circlet on her head. She beckoned to Faye, smiling, then turned a corner.
Faye ran into the maze and turned left as Moddie had. The hedge of the maze wall was fragrant – Faye thought she smelled eucalyptus or bay – and brushed against her legs as she ran.
‘Moddie! Wait!’ she cried again, but her mother moved fast through the turns and twists, not looking back.
Faye followed as best she could, being careful not to crush the small faeries as she passed them: ladybirds the size of cats; leather-apron-wearing, bearded goblins who carried metal tools; more diaphanous, beautiful fae who seemed to float by without touching the earth.
They were all heading for the castle, and there was an excitement among them that Faye picked up on.
As she grew nearer, her heart beat faster; she felt a pleasant sense of anticipation, though she didn’t know why.
Will I be lost? she wondered, but she felt that Moddie wouldn’t lead her astray.
There was that strange sense of familiarity again, though she didn’t understand how that could be.
And the more she breathed in the strange faerie air, the more a kind of lassitude entered her veins.
She felt the same light-headedness and pleasure at everything as she would after two glasses of wine.
Faye followed the turns of the maze as best she could, trying to stay focused, fighting the lulling influence of the air and a growing disinclination to hurry at all.
Moddie led her through long, dark, tunnel-like passages where the hedge seemed to have almost completely grown over at the top, making a leaf-hatched ceiling; on other stretches the hedge was replaced by long walls of sandy brick or red stone, and one section was made completely of a thick blue-tinted glass through which Faye could see the black ocean under her feet.
Further on, when the hedge had returned, small, winged faeries fluttered around her head, singing, and she found herself laughing, holding her hands out for them to land on.
She was fascinated with them all, shivering delightedly as four white faerie horses ran past her, their flanks covered in sweat, their hooves pounding on the flattened dirt.
Faye stopped walking and let the scented air overpower her.
There were other voices that joined in the singing; she wanted to sing, too.
She felt her eyes closing, and pleasure washing over her.
Moddie had died and left her long ago. It probably wasn’t her mother who was leading her through the maze; most likely, it was another type of faerie who looked like her. Who wanted to trick her.
Come to us, Faye, come to us, sidhe-leth , the voices sang to her, and as her eyes closed, the edges of the maze seemed to melt away, leaving Faye in a slow, soft kind of dance with all the creatures undulating around in a circle, this way and that.
Come to us, be with us, Faye Morgan, kindred soul.
She felt caressing touches alight on her legs, tickling their way up pleasurably to the inside of her thighs.
Something that felt like kisses, a mouth gently inching its way upwards.
Faye felt a pinch on her arm and opened her eyes; the dream, or whatever it had been, of the faerie dance disappeared and she was alone again. She rubbed the sore spot on her forearm, frowning; it was like a sudden hangover come way too early after the pleasant tipsiness of a moment ago.
Faye. Wake up. It was Moddie’s voice. Even though she hadn’t heard it for eight years, she knew her mother’s voice as well as she knew her own skin.
As she looked up, Moddie’s foot and the hem of her dress flickered around the far corner.
Faye’s head cleared; she knew it was Moddie, and that if she should put her trust in anyone or anything, here in the realm of faerie, it should be her mother.
The fae realm is treacherous , Grandmother and Moddie had told her so many times.
They are beautiful, but you cannot trust them.
Faye ran after her mother around the next turn, but Moddie had disappeared, and Faye didn’t know which of the three possible openings she might have gone down.
Panic replaced the giddy pleasure of just moments ago. Faye peered into each opening, but each one was empty and shadowed. She stopped and rested her hand on the thick hedge. She was lost again, and this time, it didn’t feel so good.
Moddie, please help me. I don’t want to be lost here , she thought, but there was no answer, no flickering of a dress in the distance, and no further pinches on her arm. She had to choose one of the ways forward, and she had nothing but instinct to go on.
Taking a deep breath, Faye chose the middle path. And as soon as she stepped into it, the open doors of the golden faerie castle towered, vast, above her. And slowly, they opened.
The walls of the faerie castle seemed to reach to the moon, which glowed above Faye in the coral-pink sky. Its golden towers, when she gazed up at them, seemed to lean towards each other to join under the moon, the golden petals to its glowing centre.
The moon was far larger here than Faye had ever seen it in the ordinary world.
Dimly she remembered reading once that the moon would have looked much bigger than it did now to people in the Stone Age, because it was closer to the earth then.
Was it the same moon here as the one she was so used to?
Or was this another, different, faerie moon that pulsed with a different kind of fierce and sweet power?
Intricate Celtic decoration covered the castle doors and, she saw as she walked through them, the walls inside.
Spirals and Celtic knotwork scrolled over the gold and stone, similar designs to the ones on the jewellery she sold at the shop.
There were words, too, but Faye recognised they were in Scots Gaelic, and her grasp of it was shaky at best. Yet, as she passed through the doors, she lost the thread of comparison to the real world altogether; it was like passing deeper into a dream, and whatever grasp she still had of her shop, of Abercolme and Annie and all the things she knew, disappeared.
Faye found herself in an open-air courtyard.
Faeries of all kinds milled around market stalls, which sold all manner of beautiful fruits.
Faye remembered the old poem about the dangers of eating the faerie food – Morning and evening, Maids heard the goblins cry: Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy!
But she felt thirsty, and goblets of some rich red liquid were being poured by a bearded centaur from what looked like a crystal jug on the stall closest to her, with its bright red-and-white striped awning.
The centaur held out the drink to Faye with a wink.
‘Drink for my lady , sidhe-leth ? Thy beauty surpasses all, but this drink will make thee beautiful for ever,’ it said in a seductive tone that thrilled Faye and made her shiver with pleasure.
Sidhe-leth . They all seemed to know her – or, at least, recognise that she was half faerie, which was strange.
She still had absolutely no idea if it was true – and, if she was half faerie, how that had ever managed to come about – but, clearly, there was something about her that these faerie creatures recognised as familiar.
She reached out before she knew what she was doing, then pulled her hand back sharply and shook her head.
‘No, thank you,’ she said politely, and looked around for Moddie. The throng was getting bigger and busier, and she was being pulled into the crowd. She started to feel threatened instead of delighted.
The singing, catcalling and shouting was starting to ring in her ears; it was increasingly loud, so Faye pushed through the crowd as best she could, aiming for one of the three entranceways leading off the courtyard. She couldn’t see what lay beyond, but a soft gold light shone in each one.
She managed to elbow and excuse me her way through the crowd until she had passed through the closest doorway and emerged on the other side, where the noise of the courtyard faded away quickly.
The room was lit by candles, and their warmth licked the carved stone walls from which hung ultramarine and emerald-coloured tapestries.
She couldn’t see anyone else in the room, so she approached the nearest one and stroked it with the tip of her finger.
It was soft, made of something velvety, and beautiful.
The pattern wasn’t one she recognised, but there was a sense of movement in it; as she gazed at it, she thought for a moment she could see horses in the waves, then decided they were seals on rocks.
A hand on her elbow made her jump.
‘I see you like the wall-hangings. They were made by our most talented weavers,’ a deep, musical voice said, and Faye turned to face Finn Beatha. ‘Welcome, Faye Morgan, sidhe-leth .’