Page 57 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

As the deer retreated from the meadows for their thickets (about an hour past dawn), the golden leaves of the paper birch grove quaked in the wind of Rhydian’s wings.

Camouflage was a draining act, so the dragon would hide himself in the autumn-inspired foliage while we journeyed on foot to the tavern and inn.

To our surprise, the Green Mother accompanied us.

Or me, rather. She gave little attention to my friends, preferring to remain at my side and, at the risk of sounded exceedingly conceited, bask in my presence.

I knew it was the similarity of my magic signature to her sister’s that drew her to me, but I had to admit I found her nearness reassuring.

One, because she was a high lady of Elfame, and two, because she was a missing link in my heritage.

An answer to a question that had been needling me since birth.

“You were whimpering in your sleep last night,” she commented. “Did you not find the rocking of Rhydian’s wingbeats soothing?”

My dreams had brought me to the elm tree clearing Gwyn had shown me where Arthur and the older bear continued to fight.

Other Coalition enforcers had joined them, taking turns trying to separate the Stag Man from the elm tree to no avail.

Arthur was relentlessly stubborn, refusing to break off his attack to eat or drink or even rest. The Brotherhood had arrived just before I’d woken up, leaving me sick with worry and angry that I could not do more to help.

“I’ll find peace when I’m back in Redbud,” I muttered. I hoped.

When the forest thinned, Lori broke through the birch trees first. She sprinted for the tavern and cried Ruben’s name in a breathless voice.

“Oh my,” Daphne whispered when the rest of us caught sight of The Happy Hound.

Wood replaced glass in every window and the buttercups were more like butter weeds in the flower boxes—wilted and sludgy as if by frost. The heather hedge had withstood the effects of the angered Erusians’ power, but the pixies were nowhere to be found. Hiding, hopefully.

Cracks as wide as my hands ran through walls like fissures through a glacier. The sign with the cheerful honey-eyed hound dog swung at an angle above the door on one hook.

Smoke drifted on the breeze whipped up from the river, mixing with the fragrance of freshly hewn pine.

Was that a saw I heard? And whistling?

By now Lori had shouted for the half-ogre at least a dozen times, and her voice had taken on a shrill pitch in her mounting panic.

From the look the Crafting Circle ladies and I shared, we had all expected Ruben to come bursting out the front door the moment the first syllable of his name had left Lori’s lips.

Instead, a portly figure in a homespun frock rounded the corner from the backyard, mopping his forehead with a damp handkerchief. My sight flickered between the illusion of the exceptionally handsome high fae with long white hair and the grandfatherly antiques dealer.

“Beaver!” Emmett whipped around and waved the handkerchief back and forth like it was a signal flag. “Light the beacon!”

The sawing paused. “What? Speak up!”

“The beacon ! Oh, I’ll do it myself.” Emmett hustled out of view.

The moment he disappeared, we all broke out into a run.

Thistle and Sawyer rounded the corner first, neck and neck, then Kian, then me.

The backyard was no longer a pit master’s dream workstation with that monster smoker and heaps of seasoned fruit wood and every accoutrement in existence.

It was now a carpenter’s staging site. The remnants of two tables were sawbucks for wooden planks; another held all of Cody’s tools, laid out on a scrap of fabric; a third table with a chair seemed to be Emmett’s personal domain where he restored this and that, made repairs to lanterns, straightened out the tines of forks, glued crockery, hammered out a dent in a big soup cauldron.

Brown hens perched on everything, giving inquisitive pecks with their beaks.

Now, the two old men in their frocks argued how best to soak a prepared pyramid of deadwood with a small jug of oil before lighting it.

“Like this.” Shari plucked the jug from Emmett’s hand and sluiced the oil over the wood in a wide arc. Scrunching up her brow and puckering up her lips, she concentrated until a tiny red flame burst from her fingertip.

“Jehoshaphat!” Cody stumbled back, tripping over the hem of his frock and landing on his tailbone.

With a grin, Shari set the flame to the nearest stick and jumped back as fire engulfed the pyramid with a violent whoosh . Herbs and tangy-sweet vinegar perfumed the air.

“You can take those amulets off now, gentlemen,” Daphne said, arriving with the garden gnome to embrace our friends.

Thistle’s hackles rose as the high fae became mortal old men again, but she didn’t hiss this time. Fiachna did, then crawled into Kian’s overcoat to grumble his malcontent at all the magic hinkery.

“Was that salad dressing?” Flora asked with a sniff.

“Italian, I think,” Shari answered. There was an excited glint in her eye and a smile curving her lips as she watched the flames grow higher. They weren’t the natural yellow-orange color one would expect, but much redder. Hotter. “Maybe Greek.”

Emmett wiped the fog from his glasses formed from the sudden change in temperature. “Why, you’re a regular ol’ bottle of lighter fluid, Miss Cable.”

“You’re never allowed in my workshop ever,” Cody told her, rubbing his backside. “And I mean that.”

“Oh shush.” Emmett flapped his handkerchief at the carpenter before stuffing it down the front of his cowled frock back into his overalls.

Then he took one of Lori’s trembling hands into his own and gave it a placating pat.

“Now don’t you worry, Miss Lori. Ruben left us in charge of fixing up the place while he went out to look for you.

Said he’d stay in sight of the River Neave, work the local Erusian haunts and whatnot, unless he picked up your trail.

He’ll see that signal and come back before you know it. ”

“We can’t wait that long,” I muttered to myself, reflexively glancing to the sky to gauge the position of the sun. It was only right to wait and see Lori safely reunited with Ruben, but he could be hours if not a day’s journey away and midnight ticked ever closer.

“We could use the Hunting Spell,” Sawyer suggested, wisely using the bond to communicate. “We could find him quick with that.”

The Hunting Spell would never lose him in inclement weather or through any magic trickery. It would maintain a golden thread weaving through the world until my prey came into sight. Until it was dead or another target named. While it was the ultimate tracker, it was not the ultimate transporter.

I didn’t know any magic like that, except for the strongest of summoning spells (that were always frightfully specific and I didn’t have memorized) and…

The black butterflies.

My need to get to Sawyer had been so strong that they’d taken flight from my skin, wreathed me in shadow, and deposited me at the exact spot I’d been looking at in the castle courtyard. If I could’ve seen Sawyer, I wondered if they would’ve transported me clear across the Field of Black Stars.

Was it possible to locate Ruben and transport myself straight to his position and back again?

I never got to find out.

Snapping branches and thundering steps punctured the air.

There was a crack like the report of a large caliber rifle—that could only have been a tree trunk splitting in this realm—and the resulting bellow was either one of pain or excitement.

Had I not known better, I would’ve thought a rhinoceros was rampaging through the woods.

When Ruben destroyed another tree in his path, the high lady cursed quietly, “Eru’s Tits,” and flung up her hand. Every pine tree, rhododendron, and fern immediately parted for the thundering half-ogre.

I did a double-take at the Green Mother. In that moment, that little impatient curse, all I could picture was my cousin Rose.

“Ruben!” Lori hiked up her skirts and bolted down the newly formed path.

The half-ogre had the forethought to slow his pace so he didn’t smack into the human changeling like she was a fly and he a car going ninety on the freeway.

He scooped up his woman and carried her like a damsel towards the tavern, all the while smothering her with sloppy half-ogre kisses. At least he was gentle with his tusks.

Sawyer gagged. “Gross.”

Thistle cuffed him in the head before I could, then flung me a wink over her shoulder. That little tabby tomcat was young in the ways of love, and I wouldn’t have him disparaging others’ joy. And apparently neither would the fairy cat.

Ruben, so lost in his happiness and spurred on by Lori’s return kisses, moved to press the changeling against the nearest tree and hike her skirts a little higher, but the woman protested with a laugh.

She gestured to us milling in the backyard, cheeks all tinged with embarrassment, and declared loudly, “Kian saved me.”

“Kian?” the half-ogre echoed, guiding Lori’s slide down the trunk to her feet.

“I had help,” the junior scholar mumbled. The tips of his ears flushed cherry red.

“Flung his quill straight at the Blade’s eye,” Lori said proudly. “It let me escape to safety.”

“ That was my best quill too,” Kian muttered. “But, Lori’s important to you, which makes her family, and?—”

Ruben crossed the yard with great booming steps of his clunky leather boots and scooped up his cousin into one of those bear hugs Kian absolutely loathed. This time, the junior scholar didn’t protest about his books or his spine or anything else. This time, Kian returned the hug.

“We must celebrate!” the half-ogre roared. “It’s not every day my cousin grows a backbone and a high lady visits my humble abode. Coon, Beaver, tell me you haven’t let the coals of the smoker go out.”

“Absolutely not,” Emmett replied, hooking his thumbs into his rope belt.

In the minutes that followed, Emmett and Cody gave Ruben a tour of all the repairs they had made in his absence.

And as impatient as I was to return to the carriage, I didn’t rush these prolonged good-byes.

Daphne, an empath if she was a druidess, came to stand beside me and slipped her hand into mine for a little squeeze.

Shari left the pyre to join us, as did Flora, and it was the formation of this little group that alerted the menfolk that there were more good-byes to be had. Mainly, us from these immortal lands.

“I’m sorry, Ruben, for the trouble my quest caused you. Please accept my apology.” I raised my hand and let the Tree of Life finish the repairs.

The walls shuttered into place, splinters knitting into seamless wood; the boards lifted from the windows as the broken glass swirled out of the flower boxes, heather, and surrounding lawn and fused themselves into their original frames.

The buttercups bloomed, the lanterns were hung, the furniture scuttled into place, and a fire kindled in the hearth.

It was over in a matter of minutes, and I leaned against Daphne for support when it was done.

“You are welcome at The Happy Hound anytime,” Ruben bellowed.

He rushed forward to give each of the Redbudians a classic Ruben-style hug.

For me, he gripped my shoulders and pressed his forehead against mine.

To his cousin, he said, “Surely you’ll stay for dinner.

High Lady? Have you ever tried ogre beer? ”

“It’s my favorite, actually,” the Green Mother said, much to Ruben’s delight.

“I can’t stay this time,” Kian replied. As Ruben’s face fell, the junior scholar quickly lifted his hands, “No, no! I’ll be back, I swear it.

I just must finish this journey with Misty Fields first.” He beamed.

“When you see me again, I will be wearing my master’s robes, and the whole world will know the truth of the Twilight Court. ”

The half-ogre wouldn’t see us go without raiding his larder first—untouched by the Erusians as it was underground.

We were refilling our canteens from the pump when he emerged with laden arms. Ruben gifted us the last of the season’s strawberries and five rings of sausage the size of steering wheels.

He even brought a teacup of water for Bonny.

The Green Mother drank her ogre beer as fast as a frat boy on his first weekend away at college—again, so Rose —yet remained the epitome of poise and refinement.

Afterwards, she wiped the corners of her mouth with a delicate dab of her fingertip and handed the empty tankard back to the stunned half-ogre.

Then it truly was time to go, but Shari lingered to approach Lori.

She held the woman’s hands in hers as she asked one last time if the human changeling would like to return with us to her world.

“My home is with him,” Lori said happily. “I just didn’t truly realize it until it’d all been stolen from me.”

Stolen . I rubbed at my chest, at that hollow spot in my heart. Sawyer leaned against my legs and purred.

“Make it a good life,” Shari told her, squeezing her hands before releasing them. “I know I will too.”