Page 20 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

F or my own sanity and Niall’s and Una’s, I promise myself I will not go into Faerie until the three days have passed, and for good measure, I will wait until late morning.

That evening, Blain doesn’t enter the village itself.

Perhaps he realizes my two friends and I are not the only ones dwelling here who would not be pleased to see his face.

When I watch his and the two other wagons bounce down the path into the setting sun, the remaining heaviness eases from my chest.

With the animals tended to and dinner eaten at Una’s, I am back sharing her bed. She wants to know details, and I cannot blame her.

What does his voice sound like?

Like a soft sigh in a quiet morning. A creek running peacefully over river stones.

Does he more resemble a human or a faerie monster?

Human in all his bits and pieces, monster when taken in all at once.

Does he have magic?

Yes, but I am unsure precisely what it is.

Have you discovered what has hurt him?

No, and I don’t believe he shall ever tell me.

Will the others arrive soon to save us from the hounds?

Tomorrow, hopefully. If we can, we must try to discover if anything is causing their anger.

Thinking of them has me shivering. Still, I haven’t mentioned the hounds’ closeness to either Una or Niall—I don’t want them throwing a fit next time I go to the library. And I will. I was trying to tell myself I would not, but I cannot deny it any longer. Better to embrace what I know to be true.

I am going to visit the strange faerie again, and I will continue to until he does not need help and I no longer feel the need.

Running my tongue over my teeth, I imagine the folktales of all the ways a faerie curse can twist one’s soul and body.

I dreamt of my teeth falling out that first night after meeting him—the image has stuck in my mind, but they are healthy and smooth as ever.

Stop being paranoid, Niamh.

We must try to discover if anything is causing their anger.

I try to run through all the things that have happened in the village in the past few months.

Fields are being grown and harvested. Houses are being rethatched.

Cows and sheep are being moved from pasture to pasture.

The river is being fished. Midsummer is being prepared for. The same has been done every year.

Perhaps it is truly a circle of faerie mushrooms that has been trampled by the careless foot of a child.

Rolling over, I twine a strand of Una’s hair between my fingers while she sleeps.

In the morning, Una and I trek around the fields. Cara is in tow, stomping down the lanes and picking flowers. We don’t generally beware faerie things on this side of the woods, as those that exist are rather obvious, but I watch my steps.

There are mushrooms, of course, but no faerie circles.

Instead, I pick the edible ones and think of making Aidyn something heartier, like a soup.

Or perhaps something simpler—butter and garlic.

Neither of those things are sweet, but so far as I know, fae do not eat exclusively sweet things. Either way, I suppose I shall find out.

“ You’re smiling to yourself,” Una says dryly, picking an early fruit from a huckleberry bush and wrinkling her nose at the unripe sourness.

“ No, I’ m not. ” Her severe expression has me admitting, “ I’m just thinking of what I can make with the mushrooms.”

“ Something for your new friend?”

“ Perhaps,” I say primly, pretending to be very interested in the fact that Cara has caught a frog.

“ Are you certain he hasn’t done anything threatening?”

“ I am certain you have both asked me that eight times now. Do I seem cursed to you?”

“ Well, no—”

“ And I don’t feel it.” I loop my arm through hers.

“ You’re being careful of faerie mushrooms, aren’t you?”

I manage not to roll my eyes. “ I’m always careful of that. Sometimes I wonder if it was my own foot that stepped on one those years back.”

She is momentarily quiet. “ It could’ve been anyone.”

“ Hmm,” I agree. “ But yes, I’ve always been careful since. And besides, I don’t think he has any intentions of cursing me. I think he merely likes having some company.”

Una wrinkles her nose again for an entirely different reason, but eventually there are other duties to attend to than looking for disturbed mushrooms.

Three days is not so much when I am glancing sidelong at the woods, wondering if hounds will appear in the twilight shadows, or jumping at anything rustling in the undergrowth, which always turns out to be a rabbit or a deer or anything else safe and of the human world.

It is not so much when I spend the time assisting Una with her dress, helping Cara make dolls for the other children at midsummer, and helping the men in any way possible with the preparations.

Blain and his kin even stay away for the remaining days, which leaves me in a considerably finer mood.

It is much longer when I am still or quiet for any length of time.

Or in the hot afternoons when the spring heat shimmers over the grasses and a chill finally descends into the air, the world not yet full of summer.

When I think about how, if Faerie were not only accessible through becoming lost or getting taken, the top of the library would likely be visible from the top of the village, if from a distance.

For all three nights, I expect to hear the hounds’ shrill barking or to find signs of the Keepers, as Aidyn called them, dispatching of the creatures.

All three nights are suspiciously quiet.

Perhaps this is a good thing; perhaps it means the fae have done their duty and driven the creatures from our lands and we are none the wiser.

After all, we are not to see the fair creatures outside of midsummer—at least not the kind like Aidyn, tall and strangely human yet as far from it as a creature could possibly be.

I consider what he must do when not being entertained by my lack of knowledge and human talent at cooking.

To consider he thinks of me at all is arrogant, but it fills my mind nonetheless.

He is bewitching as any of his kin, but it does not mean I am bewitched myself .

If I know it and can consider it with such logic, it cannot be true.

Still, it is barely midmorning on the third day by the time I’m hiking up my skirts and bolting for the trees through the hot grasses.

Emma glances my way, but she’s the last person to stop such behavior. She’ll judge me, certainly, and I’m worried for the next time I bump into her, but I don’t mind being caught. If anything, she’s likely shocked this is the first time in days I’ve done such a thing.

This time around, I am much more careful when I first step into the honeysuckle, and I waste no time in sprinting into the library. No more lazy wandering for me, even in the safety of the sunlight.

I’m not catching him at a strange hour of the day, but I make my footsteps heavy on the stairs and call out, “ Hello? ”

There’s a creak of a door farther down, and I follow it to find Aidyn has pushed open the back door of the upper balcony where he’s seated himself. I see the silver of his eye through the crack.

“ Hello, Bluebell. ”

Ignoring the heat in my cheeks, I nudge my way out. “ I’m not wearing blue this time.”

“ I’m scandalized.”

He’s stretched himself out parallel to the door, seated on the top step, back against the wall. The basket of kittens is out, and he has three of them circled between his two long hands. Still with the rings. I’ll need to ask about them.

“ You waited three days,” he says with a note of amusement.

“ Is that so shocking?”

“ Well. ” He shrugs a shoulder. “ There’s a reason we can sing humans into Faerie. Once you step foot in, you don’t appreciate going back out.”

I match his shrug. “ I’m accustomed to it.”

He grins.

“ Feeling better?” I ask, sheepish to bring it up but likewise wondering.

He doesn’t appear remotely offended. “ Yes, very fine.”

It must be true enough. I glance around the Faerie woods.

No signs of a struggle or action of any sort; it all remains perfectly calm and pristine, leaves drifting gently in the lack of wind.

I attempt to imagine others like Aidyn nearby and the hounds themselves, though I did not see them truly the first time in the dark.

Picturing it is difficult—I can barely imagine Aidyn perfectly when I am not before him, as if such a strange creature is not meant to be remembered by the mind of a simple human girl.

“ They are gone?”

Something flickers in his expression, but something does in mine as well each time someone brings up the beasts.

“ I . . . do not know.”

My eyebrows bundle together.

There is a distinct downturn to his mouth. “ I do not believe the... others came. Neither did I hear hide or hair of the beasts, but I cannot say for certain they have been dispatched of.”

“ Could they have come without you knowing?”

The twist in his expression is barely readable. “ That is a decidedly small possibility.”

Folding my hands, I wander nearer, uncertain where to go from here. Finally, I settle on admitting such. “ What happens now?”

He takes a long, deep breath, eyes on the kittens. “ Hopefully they have gone on their own. I shall keep listening at night, and you shall keep telling me if there are signs of them in your trees. Do not go into the woods at night and nothing shall harm you.”

I’d smirk at how everyone keeps warning me away from the night woods if the reasons weren’t so dire. Truly, it isn’t needed. I haven’t had ideas about Faerie in the dark since the hounds first stepped into our little village.

“ You and my best friend keep telling me that same thing,” I say in an attempt to lighten his expression once more.

It works... barely. “ Your best friend is obviously the wisest of the group.”