Chapter 7

“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.”