Part 14 (1/2)
”Did you not see his eyes?”
”All that blood?”
”It is not blood.” Itching the wimple, Gossamyr then palmed Ulrich's face and-closeness be blighted-explained, ”The Red Lady. It is her kiss that releases the revenant from the Disenchanted fee men. The revenant must come out of the body. It cannot happen before the eyes of these innocents. Do you understand?”
Ulrich's swallow was audible. Gossamyr felt much the same. For a time he simply gazed upon her, his marvelous eyes not revealing his truths, but merely a solemnity that confused.
”What are you thinking? Can you work your soul shepherding on it?”
”Oh, no.” He twisted his face from her hand. Two strides moved him closer to the crowd, a bend at the waist attempted to survey the scene between legs and shuffling children. He swung and hissed back at Gossamyr, ”I don't, I've never- You're sure he's a faery? I don't see any wings- Watch it!” Ulrich dodged to avoid a hunched man wielding a dagger. He moved with the angry crowd around the body. ”That man poked me!”
Gossamyr spied the man. She could not see his face, for a cloak covered all, including his hair, but she did see the weapon. It wasn't a dagger but a long pin of sorts. Fixing her staff under her arm, she joined Ulrich's side. ”Shall I poke him back?”
”No!” Ulrich turned her away from the crowd and shoved her to a walk. ”You've already brought enough suspicion upon our heads. Let's away from this place. It is creepy.”
”We cannot leave.” She dug her toes into the ground. ”I must keep an eye on the body.”
”They want to rip the body asunder and bury it deep for fear the plague will creep under their doors and kill them all.”
”That is macabre. He will bring them no harm. Not unless the revenant escapes. Revenant, Ulrich. An indestructible skeleton with sharp teeth and a desire to rip out one's essence with its bony hands.”
Ulrich eased a hand over his chest and winced.
”Yes,” she answered his unspoken fear, ”it will leave a mark.”
”Fine, but let's keep to ourselves until the crowd settles. Show them we have no interest in stealing their plague-ridden body. We'll keep the dead faery in sight, I promise.”
The body was unceremoniously tossed into a cart slimed with old greens and wheeled around behind the stables connected to the Pig's Snout tavern. Soaking it in oil was required, for the heavy substance would fill the sh.e.l.l of bone and coat its flesh, keeping the plague at bay until it could be burned. Old Basequin, who normally buried the unnamed dead, would have to be roused and a keg of valuable lampblack cracked open.
The man who had waited in the shadows of a dilapidated church for the last angry villager to leave now scampered across the grounds and fixed himself to the shadows that cooled the cart. A wisp of red hair slipped over his cheek and he tucked it back inside the hood of his cloak.
Very little time had pa.s.sed since the fee had fallen, and yet, flies buzzed over the dead fee's face, settling on the red-filled eyes for a few beats before taking to flight and repeating the danse macabre. The flitter of a dragonfly's wings alerted, but the man paid the large insect no mind.
Glee in his eyes, the man raised a long s.h.i.+ning pin over the fee's skull- and waited.
EIGHT.
”You are not hungry?”
”I cannot abide strange meat.” Gossamyr bit into a bruised yellow apple and proceeded to consume the mushy fruit in six more chomps. They'd slipped inside the tavern and sat near a window so dirty there was but an eyehole of sight to the crowd still looming around the body. Too anxious to sit and wait, Gossamyr had walked back outside. Now she stood next to the hay cart parked at the edge of the square, one eye on the ground where a lazy mongrel slept behind the shade of the cart's rear wheel.
”Strange?” Ulrich chomped on a thick chunk of deer. He balanced a bread trencher in his palm, not too thrilled to be eating on foot. ”Let me guess, you eat toadstools and flowers?”
”You make it sound an unnatural diet.”
”I suppose it is in the eyes of the chewer.”
The cart the fee had been tossed into was now pushed around behind the stables but two buildings down from where they stood. Gossamyr remained alert, ready for the moment when the last of the angry villagers might leave the body alone.
”So you tell me this red lady steals the essences of disenchanted faeries?”
”Yes.”
”How? And if the faery is disenchanted...why would this essence have any enchantment in it? It makes little sense.”
Gossamyr stopped chewing. As elementary as the man's mind worked, he did raise a point. Surely someone had to remove the essence. For 'twas certain it was not with the revenant when it left the body, for then the revenant would have little reason to return to Faery in search of such. How then would the Red Lady get said essence? It was not Enchantment that lingered in the essence but the body's glamour. Mayhap the essence had been removed long before the fee expired?
”Do you not know?” she entreated Ulrich. ”Surely the death of a fee is no different than your mortal deaths.”
”I cannot see a soul. No one can. It is a feeling. I connect with the remnants of life as it leaves the body or after it has already vacated. But what I don't understand...is this revenant thing the same or is it separate from the essence?”
”Separate. Why must you label things same or not the same?”
”I...well, what would you do if twenty years of your life had disappeared in a snap?”
Gossamyr couldn't even guess. Though her concept of a mortal year was midsummer to midsummer-a very long time. She supposed she might react the same. The same? Most likely she would never again be the same should she lose a portion of her life due to her trip from Faery.
”Yes, the same,” Ulrich whispered over her shoulder. The grease from cooked meat s.h.i.+ning his lower lip appealed very little to her. ”Though you are not the same.”
”You have not before met me so you cannot determine my sameness.” She stabbed her staff to ground and, with another bite of the apple, followed the billowing cloak of the hooded man she knew had poked Ulrich. What was he up to?
”True. But as a representative of your common mortal woman you are not the same.”
”What think you of me representing a fee woman?”
He poked at the gape in his teeth with his tongue; trying to dislodge food? ”No wings.”
”Not all faeries have wings, you said so yourself.”
”You do sparkle.”
”I thought this hideous headpiece covered-”
”There is a smear on your cheek. Let me get it.”
She dodged his sticky reach and instead swiped her own dirty palm across her cheek.
”Fine and well,” he offered. A chomp of the trencher filled his cheek with a bulge of hard bread. He silently offered the lump of finger-poked bread to her. Gossamyr shook her head. Ulrich tossed the morsel to the dog sleeping beneath the cart.
”I should slip around behind the building and keep an eye on the body.”
”A death watch?”
”If I see anything come out from it I must kill it before it can flee to Faery.”
”What if it is the essence you see leaving the body?”