Page 10 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

A lone in the cottage, the kittens gone, I chew the ham I didn’t manage to take to the strange monster and consider the cruelty of the people who have passed through my life.

What a morose topic, Niamh.

I’ve finally managed to rid myself of the fear of the place, the strange chill of the library at night. A hot bath helped, as does the smell of soap still lingering instead of honeysuckle and book dust.

I have the best people here—Mam and Da, Una and Niall, and others less close but loving nonetheless.

The singular things stick out. The sensation of being abandoned, a cold shaft of ice that never melts in the warm summer heat of the people who are near to me.

Any little thing reminds me, even a strange and terrifying faerie I have no attachment to screaming at me in the dark.

I curl up on the cushions beside the hearth, pulling the blankets nearly over my head, feeling the heat of the flames and the comforting scent of crackling wood.

I may as well tell Una and Niall tomorrow since it is all over.

It is all over.

A little thing as it was, it is all over.

I wake late in the morning. The cow is lowing, and I go stumbling out of the house barefoot with hair askew, bucket in hand.

There are no kittens to check on, so I’m returning to my usual chores at their usual hour—if I’d awoken at a reasonable time.

The air is hot. My breath is clean in my lungs.

Someone waves to me from the edge of the village, and I wave in return.

Once in a dress not slept in and my hair reasonable, Primrose happy and the chickens fed, I start down the path, intent on finding Una.

She is not in her cottage, and neither are her mother and father and little sister. I wrinkle my nose, looking around their garden. It is not a large village, so many out of their cottages at once is unusual—

Someone is running down the path, and people are gathering at the far side of the edge of the whitewashed cottages, near the faerie side of the trees.

Ice floods my veins, but it is more for the memory of the creature and his scream than any tangible threat.

They are not even near the path that would lead to the hawthorn.

Still, I trot down, glad for the gentle overnight rain so the path does not kick up dust. A few too many people offer me sympathetic gazes when I pass, and that sets more of a chill into my bones.

Two dozen people are clustered, and half as many children.

Niall is closest to whatever they’re looking at, and so is Una, seeming to perch behind him as if he’ll protect her from the gashes in the upturned soil.

When I push my way through, her hand grabs mine and drags me closer.

There are indeed breaks in the soft earth, doubly as long as me and distinctly animal in pattern but much too large to be from wild pigs or anything else in this area.

No wonder everyone is clustered and quiet.

The fragile skin on my hand suddenly feels raw.

Una’s slim fingers wrapped around it is comforting.

I give her a slight squeeze in return and feel the lack of Mam and Da in the village.

It is not as if they can protect anyone from faerie monsters—but I’d feel safer than I suddenly do in our cottage, alone.

“ No one saw anything,” Athol says, scratching the back of his hair. “ We ’ll just keep a better eye out. If they came too close, the animals would have been braying. Maybe they aren’t here for us.”

“ Perhaps the fae will do their duty and protect us on their side of the border,” someone else mumbles, and I think of the wounded creature in the library, his hand gripping the cane too tight, the high pitch of his voice in the night.

It is said hunt hounds only emerge to enact revenge.

Ages ago, when they attacked me and the boy I’d been foolish enough to kiss in the forest, it hadn’t been about us.

Some small child—it must have been a child, for everyone knows to walk with care where mushrooms grow—had kicked down a faerie circle with no one the wiser.

If the little girl or boy had been out at night instead of me, they would’ve been killed. Eventually, the mushrooms regrew and the slight passed, the hunt hounds along with it. No one’s heard their haunting barks since.

Apparently, something else has offended the fae. A little blood at the border is nothing; claw marks in the field outside of the village is too much.

“ They got through before,” another says as the crowd begins to disperse, and a comforting hand touches my shoulder.

I look up into one of the familiar faces I’ve grown up with and smile, hoping it says, I am well.

I receive a few more pats on the shoulder and squeezes of my hand not currently being crushed in a death grip by Una.

Once, it irritated me, but the protective sympathy is now rather comforting.

I dig my toe into the unoffensive upturned earth.

In the village, a few are already sprinkling salt along the edges of the paths, away from their gardens, a ward against malevolent creatures of Faerie.

For hounds, I doubt it will be of much use.

Cara runs past, casting troubled gazes at the gouges in the earth. She skids to a stop, glances at her sister, and then tucks herself under my other arm.

“ All right, Ve?” she asks. I can hardly stand the sight of her near the marks in the soil, imagining those claws in her instead.

“ Yes,” I say, combing back her hair, hoping my voice isn’t shaking.

“ Will you spend the night with us?” Una asks, her hand still wrapped around mine.

It’s more a relief than I’d like to admit. “ Yes. ”

“ I took the kittens back to the library,” I admit to Una.

They have enough space that I could’ve taken a spot on the floor by the hearth with its thick woolen rug and some extra blankets and pillows, but Una insisted I share her bed.

Perhaps she is as frightened as I am. It was only a few years ago now, and we have been friends since we were little things.

She sat by my bedside then and followed me around when I was up and about, constantly worried.

A few times, Niall told her with a laugh and a smile not to smother me, but he did nearly the same thing.

It is dark, and the moon is outside, and Una’s bed is not quite large enough for the two of us to fit comfortably, so we’re squished back-to-back.

“ I knew it,” she mutters, then reaches back to slap me in the thigh as hard as possible. Only the blankets keep the noise from sounding sharply through the house.

“ Ow ,” I hiss, then smack her back.

“ Why are you such a fool all the time?”

“ He said he would take care of them, and what was I supposed to do, let them starve?”

She sighs and rolls over, her shoulder jabbing into my back. When I squirm onto my back, she’s facing me, hands under her cheek, giving me a dirty look in the dark room.

“ What? ”

“ Don’t ever do that again without telling me.”

I grimace. “ I admit that occurred to me.”

“ Oh, you admit that occurred to you , wild woman. Don’t do it again without telling me.”

“ All right , heavens.”

She pinches me hard on the arm, then hugs me.

I roll my eyes, but her concern is heartening, and I’d be just as—if not more—worried for her under the same circumstances.

Next time I venture into Faerie, even if just to pick berries on the edges, I’ll only go in the daylight, when nothing threatens the edge of the trees. It is frightening at night anyhow.

Hounds are awake at night.

We lie there for a time, warm, staring at the dark ceiling, until she finally says what I assume she’s been considering for a while.

“ Do you think he has something to do with it?”

It passed through my mind a dozen times today, along with something else. “ Actually, I was wondering if it’s the opposite.”

She rolls back onto her side, watching me. “ How? ”

“ He doesn’t seem well. I wonder if he’s hiding out from those hounds. One faerie wouldn’t be much of a deterrent if they decided to attack him.”

“ You think fae attack one another?”

Well, they are certainly different types of fae. “ Faerie is violent, isn’t it?”

“ Hmm,” she agrees, propping her head up on her hand. “ Well, I’d ask if he needs help, but I don’t want you to go back there. You brought him honey, and he wasn’t too thankful, was he?”

“ I...” I pause, unsure how much detail I should give of the last encounter. “ I tried to bring him more yesterday. I don’t think he expected me to come. He screamed at me.”

In the dark, Una’s eyes widen. “ Please tell me you didn’t tell him off for it.”

I scoff, then clap a hand over my mouth so no one else in the cottage is woken. Una has her own small bedroom, but it isn’t a large house. Cara is in the other room just over—or more likely, she is tucked in between her mam and da, needing the safety.

If Una met the strange creature, she’d have no illusions of me reacting how I would if one of the village men tried to yell at me.

“ I ran for my life,” I admit. “ He’s not... human, Una. I know how that sounds—of course he isn’t—but you have no idea what it’s like to stare one of them in the eyes.”

“ How? ” she whispers again.

On this side of the border, safe in her bed, having no memories of Faerie and having never stepped foot past its borders, such creatures are only pretty stories.

Mysterious and a little romantic, she may be frightened of it in theory, but it’s equally as fascinating.

Even she knows this is not the same as the hounds.

I understand. Even having been there, even having been frightened out of my wits, just speaking of the place brings a dull ache behind my ribs, a speeding up in my heartbeat.

We are lying in a cottage not a mile away from a few lost steps into Faerie, and I’ve been there.

“ He’s probably the most beautiful man I’ve ever met,” I admit, and Una giggles. “ But I think I might even stare into the eyes of those monsters and be less frightened.”