palm. Stabbing it into the bogie’s eye, the applewood met with little resistance. The body shuddered, jittering the staff in her sure grip. The ground shook. The mule brayed. Yowls to stir up a slumbering swamp beast from a bed of muck assaulted the air. With a final shudder of stout hairy limbs, the bogie gave up the ghost. The stench of such finality coiled into the air, wilting the freshness with a heavy veil.
Brown matter oozed from the skull. Gossamyr tugged out her staff and tamped it on the ground to clean it off. The ooze clung.
“Nasty bit of business that,” Ulrich commented.
Heavy breaths panted over her lips, but a smile stole Gossamyr’s disgust. She had done it. Her first challenge—alone, without Shinn looking over her shoulder—and she had been successful. The thought to retreat hadn’t even occurred. Danger had approached and she had stood at the ready.
“Yes!” Gossamyr said in an elated whisper.
Crossbow tilted against his shoulder, Ulrich stomped over and studied the oozing carnage. “Now that shall leave a mark.”
Spinning on the insolent, Gossamyr landed her staff with a click aside the crossbow. “I am going to leave a mark on you should you persist in interfering.”
“My lady.” He pressed out a placating hand. “There was a challenge to be met!”
“Expertly mastered by me!”
“You? Ha!”
“You laugh? I—”
“It was my quarrel brought down the thing.”
“I killed the beast!”
“Yes, and with great savor, I note. The thing is dead as a doornail.” Ulrich strode to the mule and, flipping open a tattered saddlebag, poked about inside. Drawing out a small horn, he uncapped what Gossamyr guessed to be cleaning oil for the weapon.
The fetch fluttered down from the sky. She offered it a smart bow. Danger annihilated. Shinn would be pleased. Circling the beast to take in the carnage, the fetch then alighted into the crystal sky to twinclian in a shimmer of dust.
Unaware of the exchange, Ulrich tucked the oil horn inside the saddlebag and strapped the crossbow across Fancy’s back. So he had assisted. Next time she would not allow him such opportunity.
“I cannot promise to stand idly by should such need again arise.” Ulrich strode by Gossamyr, finger to lips in thought. “It is my manner, fair lady, to help when a damsel requires saving.”
Damsel? Gossamyr slid a look to the left then the right. Where be this damsel? She was the only—Ah. So he thought…?
She spread her shoulders back, lifting her chest. Fisting her fingers before her, she hissed, “Do I look like I need saving?”
Dancing blue eyes took in her obstinate pose in a quick cap-à-pie flight. “Actually…no.”
“Just so. In the future keep your mortal weapons to yourself.”
“Indeed? Mortal weapons. Ahum.” He assumed a haughty pose, thumbs hooked at the waist of his striped hose, one foot stretched forward and his body cocked at an angle. “So says the damsel with the sparkly throat.”
“I—” Gossamyr slapped a palm to her throat.
“I suppose I must thank you,” he added.
“For saving thee?”
He chuckled. “No, for reminding me of which I forget. There is a damsel in need of rescue. And she will not argue my help. I must be off.”
“Saving damsels? What sort of pitiful, unoriginal quest—” She stabbed a proud thumb into her pourpoint. “I’ve a mission to save the—”
“The what?” Mirth tickled Ulrich’s lips into a slippery smile and now his tone danced teasingly. “The world? Is not such a quest reserved for armored knights and champions wearing their lady’s favor on their sleeves?”
“I am not here to save your world. It is my world I…must save.” Bogies and blight! Very sly, Gossamyr. Really blending well. Why did she not simply reveal her fée origins and hold out her wrists for the chains?
“Ah! I see. There is a separation between our worlds. But since you claim not to be a faery, I can only then assume you speak of the minuscule world that populates the inside of your skull.”
Ulrich approached and made show of tilting his head this way and that as he looked into her eyes. A vicious preening. The look was so familiar, like that of a fellow fée who deemed Gossamyr lesser because of her half blood, and yet, the rank of her father elevated her above all. Fluttering beringed fingers near her head, he insulted with silent menace. “My master once treated a victim of psychomachia.”
“Psycho-what?”
“It is one who lives within their own mind. Entire worlds are invented. An extraordinary life is led walking through the imaginary world, while the victim’s very feet tread the earth of reality.”
Gossamyr stepped right up to the man to meet his mocking stare. The embroidered trim of his cape brushed her knees. Must and earth surrounded his air. No longer did anything about him appeal, not even his fine white teeth. “You. Are rude.”
“And you are most snappish. And much too close. Have you no sense of propriety? Back off, warrior woman.”
She hooked her hands at her hips and fixed him with the mongoose eye.
“Not at all the same,” Ulrich muttered as he stepped away and drew a glance down her form. A sorry shake of his head shook his loose curls. “In twenty years women have truly lost all their graces. Pity.”
“What do you mumble about now?”
“Nothing that concerns you, Faery Not.”
That moniker, most cruel, set Gossamyr to a stomp.
“Very well.” Ulrich slapped his arms across his chest and faced her again with that preening expression. “I promise to stand back and allow you all the glory next time we are set upon by supernatural beasties.”
“It was a bogie.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
Next time? Hmm…Very possible, considering they walked the edge of the Netherdred, and would soon have to cross through it to reach the mortal city of Paris.
A scan of the horizon sighted a line of lindens and a wispy ghost of smoke, likely a fire roasting a family’s evening meal. The distant yowl from a night creature gave her wonder to the rampant wolves her mother had documented in the bestiary. Not so vicious as a Netherdog, frequently found wandering the sandy borders of the marsh roots, but certainly ferocious. She’d had no time to gather expectations of her journey, but already it proved more perilous than she might have imagined.
Adventure? Yes, please. She could stand down any threat that challenged.
I hope, a small voice deep inside
