Page 14 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
cymdeithion
(COMPANIONS)
As Neirin promised, it seems to take only a few minutes to find the road.
The long cobbled street winds through the trees, bordered on each side by lamps, and between each post there are strings from which fabric lanterns dangle.
The sky blushes while the lilac lights bob erratically, each one bearing strange crests embossed in gold and silver.
Some bear familiar animals—foxes and lambs and such—but others are decorated with dragons and great wolves.
I follow Neirin until he stops in a halo of light and pivots to face me.
He’s so fluid and quick in his movements that I almost walk into him.
He smiles when I jump back, the lights catching his dark eyes and making the amber flecks within spark.
“One last thing before I call the hunt,” he says.
I square my shoulders, preparing myself for more nonsense. “What now?”
Neirin takes a step closer. He looms, eating up the world around me until it condenses just to him. Then he takes my face in his hands, forcing me to look up at him. My cheeks burn hot beneath his touch and, though I cringe back, his fingers have wound into my knotted hair and I am held in place.
“You’re softer than you look.” He strokes a fingertip over a stray curl against my brow.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
And that’s when Neirin spits in my eyes.
I stagger away from him, scrubbing at my face, making an aggrieved, near-animalistic noise. My first thought is horror at his imposition, his rudeness, and my second is that I’m so embarrassed I think my skin is about to peel off. Then my eyes start to sting.
No, that’s not the right word. It’s like when dirt gets stuck in your eye. An itch at first that you try to blink away but can’t. A soreness that any attempt to fix only worsens.
Just as quickly as it begins, it’s over.
I blink rapidly, expecting the unscratchable itch to return, but it doesn’t, and when my eyes finally focus on the lanterns it’s like I’ve needed glasses all my life without knowing it.
There are flecks of glittering dust—raw magic, I realize—hanging in the air inside the glass lamps.
Better than that, better than the freckles of magic that grow clearer with each passing second, I can see tiny fairies resting upon the string of lights.
Proper fairies—the sort with butterfly wings and petals for skirts, the sort everyone dreams of finding at the bottom of their garden.
It takes me a moment to realize they’re drunk.
Each fairy clasps an acorn full of golden liquid that they drink from greedily.
They rock the lanterns, making high-pitched noises like bugs buzzing.
They’re as oblivious to me as I was to them mere seconds before. One zips past my ear, veering drunkenly off course and almost crashing into a post as her glassy dragonfly wings struggle to keep her in the air. I laugh, unable to stop the smile that spreads over my face.
“You’re welcome,” Neirin says.
The candle of delight in my chest sputters but doesn’t go out. How could it? I may be here by accident—none of this is intended for me, and I only have it by Neirin’s will—but still, I got to see it.
My attention flicks to him, and I hate to tell you this, I really do, but with sight Neirin is somehow even prettier.
The silver carefully streaked through his hair is exactly that of the stars; his mouth is a perfect pink bow.
The angles of his face seem all the stranger and more unearthly and his ears seem more pointed.
A shiver rips through me, but I don’t think it’s fear.
I fold my arms, indignant. “You could’ve warned me.”
“It was funnier this way.” Neirin shrugs.
I should thank him, but he’s only upheld part of the bargain; Neirin will earn no sweet words from me until I emerge from Y Lle Tywyll with Ceridwen in tow.
I gesture toward the road. “A horse, if you please.”
Neirin responds with a sardonic bow and, when he straightens, he holds his hand out flat, palm to the ground, then slowly turns it until it faces up.
The flecks of gold that hang in the air flock to his hands, taking shape, meeting, forming lines and curves and a shining body, until a solid hunting horn appears in his grasp.
My mouth opens in astonishment and Neirin smiles like he’s very pleased with himself. He waves away the excess dust, wiggling his fingers through it to cause ripples in the dissipating shimmer.
“It’s an enchantment left by Matilda,” he says, answering a question I’m too stunned to speak.
“She and the king are old friends. Matilda wanted free rein to hunt in his lands; the king wanted a simple way for his people to travel to the palace at his beck and call. Or to leave when he tires of them.”
My brow furrows. “You said the king hates you. How can you access this magic?”
“It doesn’t matter if he hates me.” Neirin’s mouth barely moves, like his teeth are gritted. “I’m still ellyll. He cannot remove me from his court.”
“But you have your own court.”
“I do. So do the other ellyll. Our courts all answer to his.” His grip tightens on the horn. “It’s through the king that we get our magic, our lands, our wealth. He never fails to remind us.”
I snort without thinking. “Not so different from home, then.”
His smile is more like a grimace. “Indeed.”
Neirin lifts the horn to his lips and blows, and a strident blast sounds through the early morning. The moment the sound ends, the horn turns to dust that dances around us like dandelion seeds. I reach for them as I wait for approaching hooves, feeling Neirin’s eyes on me all the while.
“You have magic in your hair,” he tells me.
I touch a pale curl absentmindedly and sparks of gold leap from it. “Is that bad?”
“No,” he replies, before his eyes dart up the path. “Behold, your horse.”
I watch in open-mouthed awe as its body, legs and tail form from the same golden specks of magic but, unlike the horn, the creature never quite becomes solid, never manages to look entirely real. But it stands there, the largest horse I’ve ever seen, muscled and impatient as any stallion back home.
“No visit from Matilda?” Neirin asks it.
Matilda is busy hunting, says the stallion. Lots of things need killing at the moment.
I start and almost collide with Neirin. The horse’s mouth doesn’t move; his voice just fills the air around us, echoing from every direction.
He sounds like a pub landlord. Warm and gruff, and not to be trifled with.
It should make the whole thing even stranger but, somehow, it’s exactly how a great big horse like this is supposed to talk.
Neirin makes a hum of assent as he deftly swings himself up onto the horse’s back. “She’s up north, I take it?”
Why do you need to know where my mistress is? The horse looks at me as I take a tentative step closer, pausing beside its massive neck.
“I’m merely making conversation.” Neirin gestures to me. “Look, you’re scaring my new friend.”
The horse’s head swings around to look at me and I flinch back, though I don’t want to. I want to be brave and bold, but everything in Eu gwlad is so bizarre, so much stronger than me. The talking horse is only the beginning of the strangeness. I can’t imagine what’s to come.
Forgive me, lady, I must be firm with his lot. The horse’s ears twitch back toward Neirin. My mistress is allied with their king and His Majesty is a paranoid creature.
I nod. “I’d be paranoid too if I had to deal with him regularly.”
Neirin leans over, his head mere inches from mine. “What was that, Habren Faire?”
I crane my neck up to meet his eyes, our noses near touching. “Just a reminder that I trust you about as far as I can throw you.”
“You can’t throw me. I’m much stronger than you.”
I stare at him blankly. “Yes, Neirin, that’s the point.”
“Ah.” He nods sagely and sits up straight.
The horse puffs air out through his nostrils. I have many other places to be where I don’t have to listen to children squabbling.
Neirin offers a slender hand. I reluctantly place my hand in his, and though I try to be light and ladylike, I squeeze his fingers tight.
He grasps me back firmly, his hold warm and certain.
I pull myself up onto the horse and swing my legs over on each side.
I’ve ended up sitting in front of Neirin.
His thighs bracket my hips, too close for me to ignore the press of him against me—especially when he reaches around to pat the horse’s neck.
My nightgown rides up awkwardly to reveal the frilled cuffs of my bloomers just below my knees and, no matter how much fidgeting I do with it and my coat, I can’t hide them.
My cheeks burn as his chest presses steadily against my back.
I stay rigidly upright. Refuse to lean into the touch, refuse to acknowledge how solid and comforting his grip his, and how much I like it when his chin rests atop the crown of my head for a moment.
“Now,” he says, “don’t feel bad if you faint. Happens to the best of us.”
My blood goes cold and, before I can even turn around and hurl a heartfelt “What?” at him, the horse shoots off into the dawn like a bullet from a gun.