Part 39 (1/2)
”-to you!”
The Faery lord bowed his head and the gleam of the bronze band about his forehead momentarily blinded Ulrich.
Ulrich touched his right eye, smoothed a finger over the ache, but with a blink he focused on the faery. ”I want my daughter back.”
”As do I,” s.h.i.+nn said loudly and abruptly.
”We both love a child not our own.”
”Do not presume to compare two opposite beings.”
”Mayhap in flesh and the internal soul we are opposite-” Ulrich pressed fingers to his chest. They shared much! ”-but not in heart. I know you love Gossamyr. This alicorn, it is the key to my love.”
With a disdainful sniff the Faery lord resumed composure and nodded. ”It is not for me to command you, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III.”
Quiet acceptance swept over Ulrich. Glamour seeped into his pores. ”Know only I love my daughter as you love your daughter.”
The gleam surrounding the faery brightened. When Ulrich thought s.h.i.+nn would flitter away, his light softened and he stood immediately before him. He hadn't seen him move. So close, these faeries, so close.
”Tell me, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III...” s.h.i.+nn's voice oozed through Ulrich's conscious, touching the resistance and softening with a sigh. ”With which eye do you see me?”
”What? I see you plain as any man, standing far too close for my comfort.”
”You but see me with one eye, mortal. Which one?”
Shaking his head, for he did not understand, Ulrich shrugged, but then thought to test the faery's suggestion. He closed his left eye. s.h.i.+nn's calm countenance remained before him. So close he could feel the man's breath, warm as a summer breeze and tinged with-the scent of a flowered meadow? Not too close for Faery. So Ulrich opened his left eye and closed his right. He turned his head. Where had the man-opening both eyes, he saw s.h.i.+nn had not moved.
”My...right,” he offered. ”I but see you with my right eye-”
Before he could finish, s.h.i.+nn's fingers moved over Ulrich's face. Gripped in the faery's hold, he felt a cool touch of breath as s.h.i.+nn blew into his right eye.
A blue ache crackled across his eye and moved around and behind into his skull. Cold, so cold. A momentary wave of pain, and then it dissipated with a jingle of the Dance, a remnant of all that had irrevocably altered Ulrich's life. Never again the same.
But do you desire sameness?
s.h.i.+nn released him. Ulrich wavered then righted himself. Still there, the saddlebag. He could not see the Faery lord standing before him. Had he glimmered off so quickly?
”s.h.i.+nn?”
”Never call me by name,” the faery's voice answered from what seemed to be right before Ulrich.
Cupping a palm over his right eye, he searched the dimming light with his left. s.h.i.+nn was not to be sighted. But his presence; he could verily feel the faery's presence in his blood.
”I cannot see you. My eye...what...I cannot see with my right eye!”
”Fair fall you, Shepherd to Lost Souls.”
”No.” Ulrich lashed out with a clawing hand and touched nothing but air before him. At the periphery of his vision he saw the flash. ”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You have taken half my sight but you'll not take my determination. I will have my daughter back!”
Basking in the illumination of the multicolored essences, she stretched languorously along the silk linens soaked in myrrh. Puppy tended her desires. Perched at the end of the bed, he lapped at her bare toes, sucking each one inside his warm bud of a mouth. She neared the edge; release s.h.i.+mmied in her groin. Oh, but the lash of his tongue tip along the high arch of her foot!
”Oh, Pup-eeeeeeee...”
He knew not to speak, but to tend her unceasingly until the climax overwhelmed. Clenching thick wedges of silken sheet and pillow in her fists, she began to surrender. The moans of the pinned essences chanted an eerie background. Ah, there. A high, s.h.i.+mmering note vibrated from afar...
”What?” Snapping upright on the bed, she p.r.i.c.ked her ears for the neuma of tone that clutched her pa.s.sion and thrust it to the side. ”Cease!” She kicked at Puppy, drawing out her largest toe from his mouth in a tooth-sc.r.a.ping tug. ”Listen.”
Her lover cowered at the bed's edge, his fingers clawing into the scarlet sheets, his eyes underlined by the rumpled linens.
Drawn from the manic magic that should have enthralled her, she slid off the bed, her parted robe scouring over Puppy's stream of hair. But the tips were black; soon he would be red complete. Red. Then gone. She disliked them after the transformation for they were so obsequious.
Stopping before the marble wall, she splayed out her hands, as if to command the essences to silence. They continued their dirge, unmindful of her efforts.
Tilting her head, she managed to fix upon that unique but so familiar vibration.
”s.h.i.+nn?” she gasped, unbelieving if it were true. ”In the Otherside?”
Sprinting out the door and down the marble hallway, she was aware the pin man followed like the puppy dog she'd named him. He remained silent. Good puppy. Pa.s.sing by the seven sleepers, their murmurs halted and the candle flames heightened. Attention drew to her, as it should.
Had the Faery lord come to Paris? To become Disenchanted? No. He would not risk such a fall.
Mayhap he sought her? Could it possibly be after all this time her lover wanted her back?
Flinging wide the doors to the outer streets, she stepped onto the cobbles. The night air gloved her bare flesh, raising p.r.i.c.kles upon her belly and arms and neck.
”Mistress, come back inside!”
Ignoring his pleas, the Red Lady sent out a call. An answer. Come take me, I am here. I have never stopped loving you...
”I will retrieve a dress and call for the carriage,” Puppy muttered.
Ulrich paused just off the courtyard that preceded the Pet.i.t Pont. A torn banner whipped in the breeze, belatedly marking the Monday market. It was difficult to navigate with but one eye, but he was determined. Avoiding a fast carriage, he skipped backward and barely managed an inelegant jump over the center gutter. Thrusting an angry fist in the carriage's wake, he suddenly paused. He tilted his head to focus on a sound that did not fit amidst the shouts and brays and clanks of metal.
Insinuating himself between two close buildings, he shuffled the length of them to the opposite end where he stood alone upon the twilight-s.h.i.+ning cobbles. There echoed the most elegant note, wavering and rising and finally settling into his chest.
So lovely the sound. It seemed to say, ”I am... here... loving you.”
Ulrich searched the sky, one-eyed as he could, unable to determine the direction of the call.
You are being pisky-led!
Pixies-or piskies, whatever the Hades they were-did not possess such beautiful song.
It is the Red Lady.
Well, she must be very beautiful, for her voice rivaled an angel's song. Or so Ulrich wagered. And she sang to him of love. Loving him? How he desired a kind, loving touch, a kiss to erase the bruise that yet colored his face with the sting of an accidental betrayal. This faery song was not the same and never to be the same.