oakandash

These past days with the Dark Lady have not been pleasant. Time has passed, faded by. Sometimes it's moved quickly and other times it's inched by so agonizingly slowly he thought he'd never make it. Either his cousin will do a deal for him or not, but he thinks not. And then the Lady will have him killed and his story will be over. He tends to think that's exactly what's going to happen and he's thought it since he learned her terms, so he's suprised when he's moved.

With the hood over his face he can't tell where they are; part of the Lady's plan is to keep him disoriented. But the magic binding his hands behind his back is strong and there's so little he can do but try to maintain his balance. Wherever they are, two of the disgusting and icy creatures bring him forward and force him to his knees once more. Something is about to happen. When the Queen of the Unseelie Court pulls the hood off his face, he doesn't even do her the honor of acknowledging her with a glance. The dried blood is still caked on his face but he won't do anything about that, either. Let her see him this way. For all he knows, she's going to kill him now. She twines her fingers in his hair and yanks back sharply, and that's when he sees them: Eddi and Phouka, and realizes they're in the Conservatory. Hope rises in his chest. Is his cousin really going to cede the battle just for him?

He wouldn't do it. To keep the surprise off his face, he closes his eyes again.

"Do you know, I shall miss you."

He could spit at her. "I'm afraid that I can't say the same about you." He pulls his hair out of her grip, fierce determination all over his face.

And then it's Eddi's turn: "Now!"

In his long life, there's one thing he's noticed over and over again: in a battle -- any battle -- things happen more quickly than any single person can account for them. A handful of berries, Rowan, he thinks, sprays from Eddi's hand; the queen stumbles. And that's all it takes; it's her magic that's bound him and when it falters, he's finally able to free himself. And once his hands are free, he can use his own brand of fighting power; snapping the cord around his arms, he lets his hand blaze with intense white light. When he takes aim it's not at the queen herself but at the lamp over the pond. It falls with a splash and a buzz of electricity, sending sparks everywhere, and now's his opportunity: he leaps down off the terrace to join his friends.

His friends, who've come to rescue him in a stupidly brave way but he can admonish them later. Through who knows what magic being worked on either side -- the only thing he has time to recognize is St. John's Wort -- the three of them rush toward the double doors. One of the queen's consorts, a gray thing like those who escorted him in here, drops from the ceiling at them. He hits it with a blast of lightning and the creature explodes, raining down on them. There's nothing left to him but ashes.

"No more of that for a while." He rubs his palm, his wrists, looks frantically around the room. "Hope you've got reinforcements."

"Not until we get outside." The phouka's doing an admirable job dispatching a red cap into the pond where it's sucked under by something that doesn't care what it eats as long as its fed. Oh, he's no fan of the Unseelie Court.

They're on the terrace, and then they're in the palm house, and the fight rages on, and he doesn't have the time to admire its variety or difficulty. All he knows is he's moving on his own, and he has to protect Eddi and Phouka, and he's out of weaponry without the time to recharge, and...

There's Hedge with a tire iron.

There's Carla with a pair of drum sticks.

There's Phouka with... sunglasses for all? No time to question anything; he puts them on and doesn't understand until they're out of the building, into the sudden white glare of carbon arc lights mounted on top of Carla's station wagon. That's brilliant; the dark creatures can't face it.

"Move your ass!" It's Dan in the car; next thing he knows Phouka's shoving him onto the back of Eddi's motorcycle with an I'm faster than he is to quell Eddi's objection. She swears but rides like the wind to the Seelie Court's stronghold: down the hill, across the grass. He leaps off, swats her appreciatively across the shoulders. "Go get him! Hurry!"

As soon as she moves off, he allows himself a moment, but only one. Then he joins his fellow riders: there's a lance with his name on it, even if the horse he used to ride is gone.

---

Standing tall and proud, he refuses to wear the armor of the horsemen. He wears the blood on his white t-shirt as a badge of honor and of survival, but he wears it also in defiance of his cousin. This isn't the time to make a stand or a political statement, but honestly. He's her cousin. Her own blood. And there aren't so many of them any more, and now that he's free again he's angry. But he takes his lance in his hand and stands tall with the rest of the Sidhe horsemen. Eddi and the rest of the band went so far as to free him. The least he can do is repay the favor by fighting his heart out. The Seelie Court will win Como Park.

---

"Good." The whole band is present and accounted for.

Phouka sighs. "Good. I am saved from certain death, and all he says is 'Good.'"

It's too hard not to smile at that, so he doesn't try to keep it off his face. "That, and 'Thank you.'" The words sound so strange on his own lips; he's avoided saying them for centuries. They carry too much weight, enfold too much debt. He means them, though. "The bitch-queen said that Hedge had spied for her." He's more curious than accusing.

Eddi's answer is swift. "She wanted him to help capture you. He refused."

That much he figured out. "Something about the way she told me made me think that he hadn't been all she'd hoped." Now he has to laugh: that was quite the assault on the Unseelie Court. "And where did the St. John's Wort come from?"

Now it's Eddi's turn to look smug. "Hairy Meg."

"Meg the brownie?" He can't help the incredulity, even when Eddi's yeah cuts through his realization. "You shame me." He looks down, then shakes his head and meets her eyes. "No, you shame us all. I hope we have the sense to recognize it."

"Showtime, children." The phouka's' voice rattles and sits heavily in the air: it's time. Eddi puts on the helmet again as they follow the direction of Phouka's pointed chin: the line across the field starts moving toward them.

If only he hadn't lost the horse.

---

Battles are always difficult things to qualify and describe. He starts out with his fellow horsemen, but things degenerate quickly. At one point he finds Hedge being attacked by a creature that looks like a man and a bear; the quarters are too close for the lance but he can end things with his lightning. A blast of white light puts a swift end to that fight and it's good: there's no animosity for what Hedge did. Only relief for what he refused to do and now, they're even. Hedge even smiles at him.

Around them, there's so much fighting. So many things going on. It's only accidental when he glances up and sees a clearing on the Unseelie Court's side, almost as if the creature standing in it is backlit. But it's not backlighting at all. It's a flash of something from his hand. He steps forward to get a better look, and...

Lance still in hand, he stumbles through the door to the portal room. The door slides shut behind him with a hiss, but it takes him some time before he realizes what's happened.

What kind of being was that just now in Como Park?

It's late afternoon in Minneapolis, two evenings before Midsummer, just like it was last time he was here. And as if no time at all has passed, Eddi picks up their conversation from where they left things, on long-term pause.

"What?"

He remembers only too well where this was going; they were talking about the phouka. "Do you love him?"

There's merit in understanding, and he's trying. He's trying so hard; Phouka told him it would take lifetimes but how can a mere phouka know what time means to a Lord of the Daoine Sidhe? How can he say, without having followed him on his life-long quest for understanding? And he doesn't ask Eddi to pin her down or to make her confess to anything: he's really just curious.

Her silence is telling.

"You tell me that I can't judge by appearances. But if I had to gamble, I'd bet that the phouka is in love with you. And you were very different with me than you are with him." He looks into her face, all earnesty, because he wants to know. He wants to understand. "Tell me what all that means."

She rises, pacing restlessly around the room; she won't look at him. She's not beautiful, Eddi. There are too many quirks for that, in her appearance, in her behavior, in her innate outspokenness. But there is something magical about her, something compelling. "If you were just a goddamn guitarist, I'd tell you to mind your own business."

"Maybe you ought to, anyway." With a shrug, he turns back to his guitar but he's not that good a liar and Eddi keeps talking.

"Well, as long as you're feeling insightful, what should I do about him?"

There's a certain discomfort in the conversation; he's the last person to go to for relationship advice. But she asked, and he considers his answer before giving it. "I think... what you did about me."

"Namely?" Her voice is sharp now, accusing. And there's no call for that. He didn't really force her into giving away anything she wasn't prepared to give. He doesn't take people hostage; her accusation almost stings.

His answer takes its toll in ways he didn't quite know people could pay. "What you think is right."

Time is a curious beast; in the moment he hears every breath, can almost see every drop of sweat from every pore, every grain of dust in the air. Eddi's swift movement causes a shift in the room; she heads directly to the door without a thanks (thankfully; she knows better) and without any further questioning for insight or help, not that he's prepared to give it. "Don't forget to lock up," she says, her voice curt.

He won't forget; he never does. Not that simple locks could keep him out. It's the lock on her heart that has him baffled. Turning back to the guitar, he begins to play with closed eyes. Maybe this time he'll understand the meaning inherent in the song. Love or death, love or death: it's always one or the other or both with these people. Why are these two concepts so hard to understand?

As I walked under London Bridge one misty morning early,
I overheard a fair, pretty maid lamenting for her Geordie.

"My Geordie will be hanged with a golden chain, 'tis not the chain of many.
He stole sixteen of the king's royal deer and he sold them in Boeny."

"Go saddle me my milk white steed, go saddle me my pony
That I may ride to London's courts to plead for the life of Geordie."

"My Geordie never hurt a man nor calf, he never hurted any
He stole sixteen of the King's royal deer and he sold them in Boeny."

"Two pretty babies have I borne, the third lies in my body,
And I would part with them every one, if you pardon my dear Geordie."

But the judge looked over his left shoulder; he said, "Fair maid, I'm sorry,
I cannot pardon the one you love: he has been hanged already."

It's the sound of a single person's applause that forces his eyes open just in time to see the Dark Lady, dressed today in a camouflage jumpsuit -- very funny -- and dark sunglasses with two people by her side. One he recognizes as her usual cohort and the other... oh, there's an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. He knows this man. They've met before, and it didn't go well then, either.

Stuart.

Eyes wide, he barely has time to react: he drops his guitar and aims at the Lady, letting loose with a bolt of lightning. She laughs, though, and the mocking sound of it rings in his ears, and she ducks out of the way and shouts NOW and before he can do anything her cohort's got the microphone stand in his hands, the base of it swinging right at him. It's with a sickening realization that he tries to duck out of the way, knowing that the one person who can actually cause him to come to bodily harm is right here in this room, and why didn't he see this coming? He figured it out the last time he and Stuart met, or he couldn't have been wounded then either, and he reaches out for something, anything at all, to steady himself: his hand meets one of the sheets draped over the overhead beams and at that moment the base of the microphone stand meets his forehead. He falls back, bringing the sheet down with him, and feels the heat of blood covering his face.

And in the moment this is what he knows and this is all he knows, and his guitar buzzes through the amp as it's kicked out of the way and the Lady laughs again and it all goes dark.

In all the years he's been alive, he rarely remembers dreaming. Oh, there have been the odd occasional things to be sure, but he's rarely been privy to the kind of epic dreams he's read about in books, seen on film, heard described. Maybe it's just a difference in species, or maybe it gets back to the differences between species. Not being human has its perks, to be sure, but there are still those things he wishes he could experience and can't. He's got desire in spades, but understanding? That's elusive.

So when he wakes up from a vivid dream, it takes him a moment. Where has he been? What has he been doing? And who was there? Little by little, the dream comes back to him in all its glory: it was a retelling of the last battle, the one where he lost the horse and he still can't believe he lost it. His cousin was so disappointed but so was he. Although for once, his own survival was not assured and that made things a lot more interesting. It gave a whole new appreciation to the phrase the stakes are high.

In his dream he feels the jolt as the lance pierces his horse's chest. He feels those proud, powerful hooves stumble and fall; he feels his own armor-clad body -- the three crescent moon crest on his shield glinting in the light of the nearby bridge on fire -- as it's thrown from the horse's back. He lands against a nearby tree and only rolls out of his horse's way at the very last moment so his legs aren't crushed. Reaching up, he grabs a nearby branch and steadies himself, swearing beneath his breath, rushing to the great beast's side as it draws its last breaths. The steed looks up at him with a mournful and critical eye then falls silent.

To lose a horse is a grievous error. It's close to the worst thing he could have done. To lose this horse... it almost pains him. But the moment passes and he picks up his own lance again and resumes the charge on foot: a warrior does what he must do and in this case he must keep fighting.

This night has forever changed the tenor of his peoples' battles. There's no time to look for the human on either side, although he did see Eddi earlier safe (what a joke) at Phouka's side. Out of all the beautiful, lyrical creations to have sprung from humans, he believes Shakespeare has defined it best: What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Now there's a human being who had a way with words. One might think he, too, was touched with a gift from faerie.

Shaking off the dream, he reaches for his guitar and strums softly. It's such a human thing to do, to take comfort this way, but no law of his people says music can't be appreciated and shared and used in times of trouble as well as times of joy.

I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

(It's time to go home.)

Dear Willy Silver,

I am leaving for a short period of time. I am not certain when I will be back, as I do not know how time passes here and then back at home. But before I depart, I wanted to...thank you. Your friendship has been invaluable and I do not know how I would have coped during my first few days here. And if I do not find my way back, I hope that you will be well and happy and find the things that you are looking for.

~ Rose

He's not a morning person; he has to read the note three times before it actually sinks in. It's a good-bye letter, the kind people get in movies and in romance novels; at least she didn't ask if they could still be friends. All the times Rose has mentioned home, he's never once gotten the impression it's a place she wanted to return to.

File that under "I don't understand women."

It's curious: the letter smells of her perfume and he has a moment of nostalgia remembering her beneath his arms, the look of pleasure mingling with regal haughtiness on her face. Naked, everybody's equal. There are no princesses with crowns, no lords and ladies. There are only bodies. Bodies and passion, bodies and lust, bodies and laughter. He'll miss that. He'll miss the pleasure and the company. He'll miss her touch.

With great purpose, he opens his guitar case -- the electric -- and folds Rose's note, slipping it in among string packets and picks and an old napkin with a Detroit address on it and a bottleneck and a weathered newspaper clipping and a blue jay feather he's had since Tennessee. Shrugging, he closes the case and heads off into the bath for a shower, singing Prince's Take Me With U beneath his breath.

To be around u is so-oh right
You're sheer perfection (thank u)
Drive me crazy, drive me all night
Just dont break up the connection

I dont care where we go
I dont care what we do
I dont care pretty baby
Just take me with u

For hours, he's awake: not being a composer he doesn't create anything new but he does play. He plays without singing, just to have something to do and he goes through his entire repertoire before deciding that tomorrow he's going to drag his guitar and amp down to that lounge and set up and play, because there's no way he can do justice to a lot of this music unplugged.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: finally he undresses, discarding clothes casually and without the least hesitation, and climbs into his bed. Before he reaches over to turn out the light, he stares up at the ceiling as if memorizing some pattern only he can see.

I can't go home.

If he thinks logically, logic dictates that this place becomes home but the word home carries special significance; it's not to be used lightly. There are some number of words that can't be used lightly and there are some that carry such weight he rarely if ever uses them. With a sigh, he turns off the light, trying to revel equally in the darkness.

Sleep is evasive. Finally, his eyes shut out the rest of the world and he sleeps, and when he sleeps he dreams, and his dream is full of his court, being called before his cousin to explain his actions. It's a dream based heavily on recent experience, full of accusatory phrases like you displease us, Willy Silver and for that, you belong here in name and blood only but if he's intended to cave and cower, he doesn't do it. Instead, his chin takes on a haughty tilt all its own and he looks her straight in the eye and speaks in one of the old languages: slán, banríon before standing and walking away. In a matter of court, one doesn't turn one's back but in a matter of pride one does and he hears her words: pride will be your downfall.

Maybe that's true. In his dream all he knows is that he steps away and into the arms of a woman, vital and alive, with dark hair and huge hazel eyes and a voice that likes to catch in her throat and a heart that likes to race against his chest as if it's never had a chance to beat before. In his dream he doesn't stop at the idea of a kiss. In his dream, he stays by her side. In his dream, she invites him under the covers with her. In his dream, things are perfect and there's no guilt, no shame, no hesitation, even as their sweat and bodies cling to one another. In his dream he stays the night to wake up by her side.

It's only a dream.

Willy Silver has not always conducted himself as we would like.

So, I hear, says The Lady.

I have no problem risking her displeasure.

---

Traveling alone can be lonely, but it's also intensely fascinating. It's dropping a stone into a still woodland pond and watching the ripples move out and away: nothing stays in the center forever. When a fledgling is ready to leave the nest, does the mother bird hold onto it and tell it to stay? No; she encourages it. She teaches it to fly. She wants it to learn.

Not so my cousin, for all her wisdom. I neither seek nor need her approval for what I do. If she wants to disown me she can try; that's not a concept that frightens me. In point of fact, the only concept that frightens me is losing a horse and that, luckily, hasn't happened yet.

Even traveling alone from the wooded hills and graceful rolling mountains I call home, there are rumors. I can't go far without the rumors whispering to me from the wind, from the rustling of the leaves in the trees, from the hissing of snakes underfoot. All these things, these emissaries, lead me to the inevitable conclusion that almost disowned or not, she's up to something. All of them are up to something, and I may be their youngest but I'm far from dense about the way things work. I can smell trouble on the breeze; I know what happens next. It's an intimate knowledge born of years of study and this is where I have the advantage. I know how to look at more than exists to the mere eye. I know how to read the signs. I know exactly what might happen, what we're capable of causing, what we're capable of doing. All I need do is follow those signs. And they've all pointed to this place, this convergence, this land of watery hideaways. The street sign says Washington Avenue, but the scent on the breeze tells me I'm too early; the time is not quite ripe.

Not quite yet.

And because I travel light, I only have the few items in my arms: the guitar case, as always. The amplifier. The accessory bag because, as the saying goes, don't leave home without it. And last but never least, the violin case. If I've learned anything in my travels, it's to always, always, always be prepared.