Chapter Three

I sighed, unsure which was the least pleasant prospect, being lost alone, or being lost with this dark-haired mage. I did not argue his control of the reins and let him steer us into the trees.

“I did have other plans for the night,” I muttered under my breath.

“Not important ones.”

“You don’t know what I was about, so how can you judge?”

“Well, perhaps I should say, my needs are more important than yours.”

“Excuse me,” I took the reins back from him, annoyed. “My horse. It is awfully dismissive of you to assume your needs are more important than mine when you don’t know what they are.”

“That spot over there,” he pointed as we entered the trees. There was a space between the trees that I would have normally avoided, its circumference uncomfortably round, too similar to a fairy circle for me to step without unease within it, although I could see that it was not marked as such. The trees grew heavily around this spot, but one had fallen, creating a gap in the canopy through which the moon shone like a beacon.

“You’re a village girl on a horse riding to the neighbouring village during the night at a walk,” he continued. If someone were dying, you would ride at speed. Therefore, my guess is that you intended to see a witch or a warlock for a love spell. As I said, my needs are more important.”

“I was riding to a good-witch. My mother is convinced that my baby brother is a changeling.”

“Unlikely,” he replied as I drew Coryfe to a stop. “Your mother will get over it.” He slid from the horse. “We should start a fire.”

I was tempted to urge Coryfe on and leave him behind. However, he was a mage. I did not know what other spells he had that he might use against me if I tried to do so, and that same magic might be useful in keeping me alive until I found my way back home.

“Just be wary,” I cautioned him. “This spot is very circular. Perhaps the foliage hides a fairy circle?”

“Nonsense,” he dismissed my concerns. “I would sense the magic if it were so.”

I dismounted and unsaddled Coryfe as the mage sat on one of the branches of the fallen tree and drew from a bag he wore under his cloak, a small book, bound in leather, with curls of metal protecting the corners and clasping the covers shut.

“We need a fire,” he said to me, his fingers stroking the cover reverently. There was no writing on the cover or binding, but I could see something had been embossed into the leather. Perhaps the embossing was the shadow of writing that had once been picked out with ink, but which time had faded or flaked away.

“Then you should gather some wood,” I suggested. “If you wish me to use my bow to catch something to eat.”

He looked up at me and arched his heavy brows. “Is that right?” I met his eyes and raised my eyebrows back. He returned the book to his bag. “Very well,” he agreed standing and began to collect the dead wood off the forest floor.

I hesitated, unwilling to leave him with Coryfe whilst I hunted. I might return to no horse and no mage.

“I feel we have a trust issue,” he observed.

He flicked his long black locks back over his shoulders. The tips of his ears parted the hair, delicately pointed. There was some Fae or Elven heritage in his lineage, I realised. It would explain the wild beauty of his features. I had never seen someone with brethren so recently in their line that their ears retained the points, however.

There had been a time, in the past, where the fairy brethren and mankind had intermingled more freely, and there were many families who held a strain from somewhere in their past as a result. More recently, at least according to tale, the Fae were more likely to take a child sired with mankind back into their realm, thus seeing someone with Fae heritage amongst us, was becoming rarer.

I knew this only through story, there was no one of brethren heritage in my village that I knew of. But, according to the stories, they were usually identifiable only by their unusual beauty, a certain grace of movement, or a light in the eye. This mage certainly possessed all of those charms.

“How do you propose we surmount that?” He asked me.

“How about you give me that book, and I trust you enough to leave you with Coryfe?” I suggested boldly.

He considered me for a long moment. “I went to a great deal of effort to get this book,” he said slowly, reluctant to part with it.

“Then you’ll be less likely to ride off on my horse,” I held out my hand.

“Don’t open it,” he cautioned me bringing the book out of his bag. “It’s magic.” I put the book into my bag. He watched the transfer suspiciously. “What is your name, girl?” he asked me.

“What is yours?” Names were tricky things. In the wrong hands, they could be used for mischief.

“Rivyn,” he met my eyes with his. I did not think he lied.

“Siorin.”

His lips curled in something that might have been a smile on another face, but on his was just a baring of teeth. His premolars were the same length as his canines, and both were sharply pointed. He was definitely not all mankind, I noted warily, wondering if I had fallen into a brethren trap of some sort. He had, after all, well and truly lured me from my path.

“Well, now that we’re officially acquainted, how about you find us something to eat?”

I took my bow and arrow deeper into the trees, keeping my ears pricked for the sound of hooves, not quite trusting Rivyn would not make off with Coryfe despite the book in my bag. I reached inside in order to feel it’s binding, reassuring myself that it was truly there. It had occurred to me that the mage might magic it away somehow.

Not a Fae forest he had said, however my stalking through the undergrowth scattered a family of stick-like imps, sending them scurrying away in a wild rustling of leaves, and further along, what looked to be the floating of thistledown in the breeze, was actually a flock of fairies harvesting the sweet sap that oozed from the trees.

I had just felled an unfortunate rabbit when I noticed something glinting, suspended between the trees. I drew closer, suspiciously.

There was a fairy entangled in a spider web. I could not tell its gender as it was trussed so tightly, with only its little feet and part of its face visible. Its struggles had attracted the attention of the web’s owner, and the fat spider was making its way towards its victim.

“It’s my night for rescues,” I commented to it. It hissed at me. “Come now, that’s no way to treat someone who’s trying to help.” I used my dagger to slice it free of the web, sending the spider scurrying, and knelt to carefully unwind the sticky gossamer from the captive.

It took some time, and I heard the mage call my name in the distance.

“Fool of a man,” I muttered to the fairy. “He will alert the whole forest to our location.” I worked the last of the web free as I heard the crack of sticks beneath Rivyn’s step.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Freeing my little friend, here,” I told him, leaning back so he could see the object of my efforts. “He was stuck in a web.” It a fairy man, with a cap of golden hair, his trousers and tunic sewn from leaves. He had stopped fighting me and seemed content to sit whilst I eased the last threads away from his delicate wings. He inspected himself with the air of someone much put out by his adventure.

“Oh dear,” I sighed, and took a scone from my bag, pulling off a crumb and offering it to the little man. He accepted it, and ate ravenously, his sharp little teeth making quick work of the crumb. I gave him a second. “His wing is broken.”

His wings reminded me of a dragon fly, so fragile and sheer that I could see through them, threaded with delicate veins, and possessing a pearlescent sheen. The tip of this fairy man’s wing had become folded in the spider’s tangle and did not straighten. It did not appear to hurt the fairy, but I could not see how it would be possible for him to fly.

I looked up at Rivyn. He was watching me with the oddest expression on his face. “You’d have been better off leaving him to the spider,” he replied, “he won’t survive with a broken wing.”

“Will it heal, do you think?” I wondered.

“Do I look like a fairy healer?” He arched his brows at me.

“I can’t leave him here to die,” I watched the little man stand and brush himself off. He fluttered his wings, perhaps in an effort to straighten the damaged tip, but it continued to sag. He inspected the damage trying to straighten it between his hands. He made a squeaking sound that might have contained words but was pitched too high and from too small a throat for me to understand. “Will you come?” I asked him, showing him my bag. He regarded me suspiciously. “Do you understand me?”

The mage reached into my bag and plucked out his book. “Most fairy creatures speak the common tongue,” he told me, smoothing the cover of the book beneath his fingers covetously. “He should... ah, see.” The little fairy man stepped onto my hand and let me transfer him into the bag. “He’ll eat whatever you have in there,” Rivyn cautioned me. “Fairies are always hungry.”

“I caught a rabbit,” I reclaimed it from the grasses.

“Oh, good,” he looked pleased. “I am hungry.”

We returned to Coryfe. There was a good pile of wood ready for the fire, but the pieces were small - fallen wood, without any density – and we would burn through it in the time it took to cook the rabbit. If we had an axe to chop with, the trunk of the dead tree would have enough wood for a hundred fires, but, unfortunately, we did not have anything between us. Luckily, the weather was milder than my village. We would not feel the lack of fire overnight and our cloaks would provide sufficient warmth.

I cleared an area, and began building a little fire, using my fire striker to start it.

Rivyn returned to his log and angled to capture the moonlight across the pages of his book as he opened it. I saw his hair lift in a draft of magical energy.

“How can you read in such poor light?” I asked him.

“It’s magic,” he was distracted. “It’s not written in ink. You wouldn’t understand.”

“What’s so important about that book?” I prepared the rabbit to cook, skinning and gutting it.

“It has power. Every little bit counts.” He looked at me. “I am trying to read,” he reprimanded.

“Sorry,” I grumbled, spitting the rabbit and propping it over the flames. I checked on the fairy man. He had helped himself to more scone, and seemed content to sit and eat, his wings pressed against an apple. He looked up at me and said something. “I’m sorry, I can’t understand.”

“He compliments the cook.”

“Ah,” I smiled at the small man. “I’ll pass it along.” If I ever made it back home. I watched the sun rise over the trees, and noted the direction thinking I could use my lode stone to direct our travels. “How far from where we were could we be now?”

“Unlimited,” Rivyn didn’t look up from his book.

“Unlimited as in...”

“We could be anywhere,” he replied with complete indifference.

“Anywhere in the land?” I qualified.

“Anywhere in the world.” He looked up at me. “Don’t worry so much. We will continue into the forest, and sooner or later, we will work out where we are. If it is not somewhere useful, I’ll collect some spell components and cast another portal.”

“That’s all very well for you to say,” I pointed out. “I’ve been taken against my will to an unknown location by a man I met on the road. There are stories that begin this way, and they never end well.”

He snorted. “Fool’s tales designed to scare maidens and housewives into obedience.”

“How is that so?” I rotated the rabbit. It was starting to smell good. Like the mage, I was hungry.

“Beware the Fae man who will steal you away,” he laughed derisively. “What use has a Fae man for a mankind girl when he has Fae women? It is more likely to be the other way around. Is that rabbit done yet? I am hungry.”

“If you like your meat raw, it is done.”

“Throw me one of those scones, then,” he ordered. “Preferably one that hasn’t fairy tooth marks in it.” He was fussy, I thought, for someone without his own supplies, but I threw him a scone. He caught it, easily, one handed, and took a bite as he turned the page. He frowned slightly as he read.

“You speak as if you know the Fae,” I commented thinking that a parent would explain the origin of his pointed ears and teeth, and unusual beauty. Was he a stolen child, like from story? The result of a romantic dalliance between a Fae man and a mankind woman, taken back after birth to be raised by his Fae-parent? But then, if that were so, surely, he would not be so derisive of Fae men taking mankind women, and why would he be out of the Fae Forests and lands?

“And you speak as if you do not,” he replied. “I’m trying to read.”

We sat in silence broken only by Coryfe’s movements, the crackle of flames and sizzle of roasting rabbit, and the occasional turn of a page. “So, what is more important than my changeling brother?” I asked him as I took the rabbit off the fire and divided it. “That justifies stealing me from the roadside?”

He put the book back into his bag. “Magic power. Mine was stolen from me. I need to reclaim it before the month’s end, or it will be gone forever.”