Spells

TWENTY-THREE

“THAT WAS AMAZING,” LAUREL SAID AGAIN AS she and Tamani lounged on pillows beside low tables heaped with fruits, vegetables, juices, and dishes of honey in a dizzying array of colors. Music filled the air from a dozen directions as faeries across the green lounged, and danced, and socialized. “I had no idea theatre could be like that. And those fireworks at the end! Those guys were incredible.”

Tamani laughed, much more relaxed now that they were spread out in a meadow where the faerie classes mingled a little more freely. “I’m glad you liked it. I haven’t been to a Samhain celebration in several years.”

“Why not?”

Tamani shrugged, his mood turning somber. “I wanted to be with you,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Coming to festivals didn’t seem as important when it meant leaving you behind the gates. Especially considering the revelries at sundown.”

“What revelries?” Laurel asked, half distracted as she dipped a large strawberry in a dish of bright blue honey.

“Um…well, you’d probably find it rather distasteful.”

Laurel waited, her attention piqued now, then laughed when he didn’t continue. “Keep going,” she prodded.

Tamani shrugged and sighed. “I think I told you last year: Pollination is for reproduction, and sex is for fun.”

“I remember,” Laurel said, unsure how that related.

“So at big festivals like this, most people…have…fun.”

Laurel’s eyes widened and then she laughed. “Really?”

“Come on, don’t people ever do anything like that in the human world?”

Laurel was about to tell him no when she remembered the tradition of kissing at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Though, granted, it wasn’t really the same thing. “I suppose.” She looked at the crowds around her. “So nobody cares? Aren’t most of these people married?”

“For starters, you don’t get married in Avalon. You get handfasted. And no, most of them aren’t. In Avalon, the main reason to get handfasted is to raise seedlings. Typically faeries aren’t ready to do that until they are”—he paused, considering—“eighty, maybe a hundred years old.”

“But—” Laurel cut off her own question and turned her face away.

“But what?” Tamani prodded gently.

After a moment of hesitation she turned to him. “Do faeries ever get handfasted young? Like…like at our age?”

“Almost never.” He seemed to know what she was asking, though she couldn’t bring herself to be completely forthright; his eyes bored into her until she had to turn away. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t entwined. A lot of people have committed lovers. Not a majority, but it’s common enough. My parents had been entwined for over seventy years before their handfasting. Handfasting is a little different from human marriage. It is not just a sign of a committed romance but an intention to form a family — to create a seedling and become a societal unit.”

Laurel giggled, trying to dissipate the tension that enveloped them. “It’s so weird to think of faeries having kids when they’re a hundred years old.”

“That’s barely middle-aged, here. After we reach adulthood, most of us don’t change much until we’re a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty. But then you age fairly quickly — at least by faerie standards. You can go from looking like a thirty-year-old human to looking like a sixty-or seventy-year-old human in less than twenty years.”

“Does everyone live to two hundred?” Laurel asked. The thought of living for two centuries was boggling.

“More or less. Some faeries live longer, some shorter, but not usually by much.”

“Don’t they get sick and die?”

“Almost never.” Tamani leaned over and touched the tip of her nose. “That’s what you’re for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not you specifically — Fall faeries. It’s like having the world’s most perfect…shoot, what do you call them. Hostels?” He sighed. “Help me out; where people go when they’re sick.”

“Hospitals?” Laurel suggested.

“Yeah.” Tamani shook his head. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I lost a human word like that. I mean, we all speak English, but human-only lingo really is like another language sometimes.”

“You weren’t speaking English earlier, to those guards,” Laurel observed.

“You really want another history lesson today?” Tamani teased.

“I don’t mind,” Laurel said, savoring a spear of perfectly ripe nectarine. Harvest time never seemed to end in Avalon.

“Those were Gaelic words. Over the years we’ve had a lot of contact with the human world, through the gates. Am fear-faire, for example, is basically a Gaelic word for ‘sentry,’ but we borrowed it many years ago, when the humans we encountered still spoke Gaelic. These days it’s mostly a formality.”

“So why does everyone speak English? Aren’t there gates in Egypt and Japan, too?”

“And in America, lest ye forget,” Tamani said, smiling. “We’ve had some contact with your Native Americans as well as with the Egyptians and Japanese.” He laughed. “In Japan, we had extensive contact with the Ainu — the people who lived there before the Japanese arrived.” He grinned. “Though even the Ainu never quite comprehended how long before them we were there.”

“Hundreds of years?” Laurel guessed.

“Thousands,” Tamani said solemnly. “The fae are far older than humans. But humans have reproduced and spread much faster than us. And they are just plain heartier. Certainly more capable of surviving extreme temperatures. It’s only with the help of Fall faeries that our sentries manage to survive the winters at the gate on Hokkaido. Because of that, humans have come to dominate the world, so we have to learn to live among them, at least a little. And language is a big part of that. We have a training facility in Scotland, where, as you know, they speak English. Every sentry with dealings in the human world must train there, at least for a few weeks.”

“So you and Shar trained there?”

“Among others.” Tamani was growing increasingly animated, speaking without the hesitation that always clouded his behavior when he set foot in Avalon. “Covert operations are usually performed by Sparklers, and very rarely a Mixer will need an ingredient that doesn’t grow in Avalon. The manor is built around the gateway, in the middle of a sizable game preserve, so it guards the gate as well as forming a safely controlled connection to human affairs. It was acquired centuries ago, in much the same way we’re working to acquire your land.”

Laurel smiled at Tamani’s enthusiasm. He clearly knew more about the human world than other faeries, not simply because he lived there but because he’d spent his life studying humans.

And he did it so he could understand me. He’d dedicated literally years to understanding the person she would become as a human. She’d sacrificed her memories and left Avalon at the former Queen’s bidding and Tamani had followed her in more ways than one. It was a startling realization.

“Anyway,” Tamani concluded, “the manor has been our main connection to the world outside Avalon for centuries, so it’s only natural that we would speak the language of the humans who live nearby. But even the experts at the manor get some things badly wrong, so I guess I can’t feel too bad about forgetting a word here and there.”

“I think you do great,” Laurel said, running one finger along Tamani’s arm.

Almost instinctively, Tamani reached up and covered her hand with his own. Laurel’s eyes fixed on that hand. It looked so harmless sitting there, but it meant something and Laurel knew it. She looked up, and their eyes locked. A long moment of silence stretched out between them, and after a few seconds Laurel pulled her hand out from under Tamani’s. His expression didn’t change, but Laurel felt bad nonetheless.

She covered the awkwardness of the moment by pouring herself a drink from the first pitcher she saw and taking a big swallow. It tasted like liquified sugar as it coursed down her throat. “Oh man, what is this?” she asked, peering down at the ruby-red liquid in her glass.

Tamani glanced over. “Amrita.”

Laurel studied it dubiously. “Is it like faerie wine?” she asked, already feeling the drink going to her head.

“Kind of. It’s nectar from the flowers of the Yggdrasil tree. They only bring it out at Samhain. It’s a traditional way to toast the New Year.”

“It’s awesome.”

“I’m glad you approve.” Tamani laughed.

Laurel sighed. “I am stuffed.” Only the food in Avalon ever pushed Laurel to eat to discomfort. And she had just reached that point.

“All done then?” Tamani asked, hesitation creeping back into his tone.

“Oh, yes. Totally done,” Laurel said, smiling and settling down a little more into the pile of pillows.

“Would you…” He paused and looked out into the middle of the meadow. “Would you like to ask me to dance?”

Laurel sat up abruptly. “Would I like to ask you to dance?”

Tamani looked down at his lap. “I apologize if I was too forward.”

But Laurel scarcely heard him in her anger. “Even at a festival you can’t just ask me?”

“Is that a no?”

Something in his tone turned Laurel’s frustration into sorrow. It wasn’t Tamani’s fault. But she hated that even with her, he felt bound by the ridiculous social customs. She raised her chin and pushed back her indignance. She didn’t want to punish him. “Tamani, would you like to dance?”

His eyes softened. “I’d love to.”

Laurel looked out at the dancers and hesitated. “I don’t really know how,” she said tentatively.

“I’ll show you…if you want.”

“Okay.”

Tamani stood and offered her his hand. He had relinquished his cloak but still wore the black breeches and boots, paired with a loose white shirt with the strings loosened in the front, accentuating his tanned chest. He looked like a hero out of a movie; Wesley from The Princess Bride or Edmond Dantès from The Count of Monte Cristo. Laurel smiled and took his hand.

They wandered closer to a group of musicians; most were playing stringed instruments Laurel could not have named, but she did recognize the woodwinds — flutes and panpipes and something like a simple clarinet. Tamani led her skillfully through dance steps she almost seemed to remember, her feet moving with a grace she didn’t know she had. She bounced and kicked and skipped along with the other couples and, even if she wasn’t quite as graceful as everyone else, she could have held her own at a similar gathering of humans. She danced to another song, and another, until she had lost track of how long they’d been dancing. The sweet-smelling meadow grew more and more crowded as others left their meals to join in the dance, and soon Laurel was awash in a sea of lithe limbs and graceful bodies, rolling and swaying and even crashing to the rhythm of the Summer faeries’ intoxicating music, gauzy clothing fluttering in the temperate air of Avalon’s eternal springtime.

Tamani guided Laurel under his arm in a long string of spins until her head whirled and she collapsed against his chest, laughing and breathing hard. It took her a moment to realize how tightly she was pressed against him. It was different from being close to David; for one thing, Tamani was much nearer to Laurel’s height. Standing so close, their hips met snugly.

She felt his arm tight at her back, holding her in. He would probably let go if she pushed away, but she didn’t. His fingers ran through her hair, then cradled the back of her neck, tilting her face back. He let his nose rest softly against hers and his breath was cool against her face as her fingers curled against the bare skin between the laces of his shirt.

“Laurel.” Tamani’s whisper was so quiet she wasn’t completely sure she’d heard it at all. And before she could think to protest, he kissed her.

His mouth was so soft, gentle, and tender against hers. The sweet taste of him melted into her. The dancing around them became a leisurely waltz as the earth seemed to slow in its orbit, then stop, just for her and Tamani.

Just for a moment.

The illusion shattered as Laurel turned her head, breaking contact, and forced herself to walk away. Out of the green, away from the dancers. Away from Tamani.

Angry, confused feelings spun through her as she walked out of the clearing. Tamani followed but said nothing.

“I should go,” she said vaguely, not turning to face him. And it wasn’t an empty excuse. She wasn’t sure just how long she’d been dancing, but probably too long. She had to get back. She headed in what she guessed was the general direction of the gate, hoping she would start to recognize her surroundings. She waited, optimistically, for Tamani’s hand to touch her waist, gently guiding her in the right direction as he had so many times before.

No such luck.

“You could at least apologize,” Laurel said. Her mood had turned sullen and she wasn’t quite sure why. Her head was a mess of confusion.

“I’m not sorry,” Tamani said, his tone not apologetic in the least.

“Well, you should be!” Laurel said, turning toward him for just a second.

“Why?” Tamani asked, his voice annoyingly calm.

Laurel turned to face him.

“Why should I be sorry? Because I kissed the girl I’m in love with? I love you, Laurel.”

She tried not to go breathless at his words, but she was completely unprepared for them. He had made his intentions known — very bluntly, at times — but he’d never told her straight out that he loved her. It made their flirtations seem too serious. Too consequential. Too close to being unfaithful.

“How long am I supposed to sit back and just wait for you to come to your senses? I’ve been patient. For years I’ve been patient, Laurel, and I’m tired.” He gently held both of her shoulders, leaning over just a little to look her full in the face. “I’m tired of waiting, Laurel.”

“But David—”

“Don’t talk to me about David! If you want to tell me to back off because you don’t like it, then say that. But don’t expect me to worry about David’s feelings. I don’t care about David, Laurel.” He paused, his breath loud, heavy. “I care about you. And when you look at me with that softness in your eyes,” he said, fingers pressing just a little more firmly, “and you look for all the world like you want to be kissed, then I’m going to kiss you, David be damned,” he finished quietly.

Laurel turned away, her head aching. “You can’t, Tam.”

“What would you have me do instead?” he asked, his voice so raw and vulnerable it was all she could do to keep looking at him.

“Just…wait.”

“For what! For your parents to die? For David to die? What am I waiting for, Laurel?” he asked, his voice plaintive.

Laurel turned and started walking again, trying desperately to leave his words behind. She topped a steep hill and instead of seeing a slew of faerie homes, she looked out onto a pure white beach with sapphire blue waves lapping at the shore. Something was off about that — it didn’t smell like the ocean — but she couldn’t turn around, Tamani was behind her. So she kept going, her feet slow in the glittering, crystalline sand.

She crossed her arms over her chest as she stopped. She’d reached the water. There was nowhere else to go. The wind blew at her hair, throwing it back from her face. “I don’t like having you so far away,” Tamani said after a long pause. His voice sounded normal again, without the bitter edge. “I worry. I know you’ve got guards, but…I liked it better when you were at the land. I don’t like trusting other faeries with your life. I wish…I wish I could come out and do it myself.”

Laurel was already shaking her head. “It wouldn’t work,” she said firmly.

“You don’t think I could do a good enough job?” Tamani asked, looking at her with a seriousness Laurel disliked.

“It wouldn’t work,” she repeated, knowing her reasoning was very different from Tamani’s.

“You just don’t want me in your human world,” Tamani said quietly, his words carried to her on the light breeze.

The truth of the whispered accusation stung, and Laurel turned away from him.

“You’re afraid that if I was part of your human life you might actually have to make a real decision. Right now you have the best of both worlds. You get your David.” He spoke the name scornfully, anger creeping into his tone. It was better than the pain she heard in his voice before. She almost wished he’d just yell. Anger was so much easier than sadness, hurt. “And then you come out here and have me whenever you want me. I’m at your beck and call, and you know it. Do you ever consider how that makes me feel? Every time you leave — go back to him — you tear up my emotions all over again. Sometimes…” He sighed. “Sometimes I wish you would just stop coming around.” He let out a frustrated growl. “No, I don’t actually want that, but, I just…it’s so hard when you leave, Laurel. I wish you could see that.”

A tear slipped down Laurel’s cheek, but she rubbed it away, forcing herself to remain calm. “I can’t stay,” she said, happy that her voice was solid, strong. “If I come here…every time I come here…I have to leave, eventually. Maybe it would be better for you if I stopped coming back at all — easier.”

“You have to come back,” Tamani said, concern laced through his voice. “You have to learn to be a Fall faerie. It’s your birthright. Your destiny.”

“I know enough to get me through for a while,” Laurel insisted. “What I need now is practice, and I can do that from home.” Her hands shook, but she folded her arms across her chest, trying to hide it.

“That’s not the plan,” Tamani said, his voice just short of a reprimand. “You have to come back regularly.”

Laurel forced herself to speak calmly, coolly. “No, Tamani. I don’t.”

Their eyes met, and neither seemed able to look away.

Laurel gave in first. “I have to go. It’s better for me to be in my house after dark. I need you to take me to the gate.”

“Laurel—”

“The gate!” Laurel ordered, knowing she couldn’t bear to hear whatever he was going to say. Somehow she’d spoiled their whole day, and now all she wanted was to end it.

Tamani stiffened, but there was defeat on his face. Laurel turned away from it. She couldn’t look. He put his hand at her back and prodded her forward, his fingers at her waist, guiding her from his position one step behind her.

When they reached the stone walls that surrounded the gates, Tamani made a hand signal to the guards standing at the entrance and one of them left at a run.

After a few seconds Tamani spoke. “I–I just want you to be safe,” he said apologetically.

“I know,” Laurel murmured.

“What about that Klea person?” Tamani asked. “Have you seen her again?”

Laurel shook her head. “I told you I wasn’t sure if I could trust her.”

“Does she know about you?” Tamani said, turning sharply to face her. “Does she have any idea you’re a faerie?”

“Yes, Tamani. I spilled everything to her the instant I met her,” Laurel said sarcastically. “No, of course she doesn’t! I’ve been very careful—”

“Because the second she finds out,” he continued, talking over her again, “the instant she knows, your life is in jeopardy.”

“She doesn’t know,” Laurel yelled, drawing the attention of the guards. But she didn’t care. “And even if she did, then what? Is she going to change her mind and start trying to kill me instead? I don’t think so.” It was strange to be arguing the opposite side she’d taken with David a few weeks ago, but logic seemed to be slipping away. “I’m fine!” she said in exasperation.

Their heads both turned as the sound of footsteps approached — a group of guards. Tamani’s head dropped and he stepped backward, taking his place at Laurel’s shoulder. But she could hear his breath heavy with frustration.

The group of soldiers parted to reveal Yasmine, the young Winter faerie.

“Oh,” Laurel said, surprised. “I thought they would send…someone else,” she finished lamely when the girl’s soft green eyes turned to her.

Yasmine said nothing, just turned toward the wall.

“Can she open it by herself?” Laurel whispered to Tamani.

“Of course,” Tamani said, his tone clipped. “It’s not a skill. You just have to be a Winter faerie.”

Sentries led them down the path to the four gates. Tamani followed silently behind Laurel, not touching her at all. Laurel hated being like this with him, but she didn’t know what else to do. Her two worlds, two lives that she tried so hard to keep separate, were crashing together. And she felt helpless to stop it.