Page 26 of Wicked Things

We’d had a big argument the night before about Crow. I had been riding him every day that I could since we’d arrived and going down to the stables to give him an apple or talk to him every day. But he was undoubtedly shorter and smaller than the other horses in Fionn’s stable and noticeably different from the big Fresians the others rode. It didn’t matter to me one bit, but Fionn said the Gorian people might think that he had deliberately given me an inferior horse.

I bristled at the word “inferior,” but I conceded that the size difference was substantial, and I agreed that I’d ride a different horse on this trip. One of the men led out my horse, a Fresian mare, and I took one look at her and fell instantly in love.

She didn’t feel the same about me at first, but it was the same way as Crow had treated me at first. She was suspicious and shied away from my hand when I first touched her, but after a couple of the delicious apples I gave her, she realized I was safe.

“Oh, she’s so beautiful,” I gasped, and I meant it. She had a Faery-tale appearance, with her solid black coat and feathered legs—and a mane that was long and straight and flowed down her neck. She looked regal and like she knew how beautiful she was. How could she not?

“What’s her name?” I asked, walking up slowly.

“Bramble,” Fionn replied, and I thought it was perfect that she was named after the delicious blackberries that grew wild in the tangled, thorny thickets along the sides of the roads and deep in the woods. I used to help my grandmother pick berries in the forest and the blackberries and red berries that grew in those thickets were usually sweet and made the best pies.

I approached my new mare slowly, giving her plenty of time to get used to me. Mares could be temperamental and “prickly,” unless you knew how to handle them. If you were patient with them and asked, rather than told them what to do, they could be lovely to ride.

“She’s a moody girl,” Fionn said, “but she’s intelligent and sensitive too, and she can be a good partner to you if you treat her well and she learns to trust you.”

“Of course, I’ll treat her well,” I said, a little insulted that he thought I wouldn’t. I drew closer to her to gently stroke her nose and told her how pretty she was. She tossed her head at me to let me know that she already knew she was beautiful. I looked back and smiled at my lord. “Thank you for letting me ride her.”

“Not only ride her. She belongs to you now, so get to know her.”

“I’ll try. And thank you, Your Grace.” He smiled at me then and leaned in as if to kiss me. But Bramble had other ideas and snorted as he came closer, nudging into my side to knock me off balance. Fionn murmured something under his breath but then laughed and shook his head.

“Someone’s jealous. I guess it’s time we got started. Come and I’ll give you a leg up.”

We rode the whole of three long days, stopping only to rest the horses and let them feed at midday. We stopped to water the horses, too, and to eat quick meals. I thought not for the first time that if I lived here with these people for a long time, which I supposed I would, I’d grow much too fat and lazy, because even the camp food was delicious.

When we finally stopped at evening of the third day, it was almost dark, and the woods were pressing in all around us. It looked like more of the endless forest, only with even more shadows. It was cool, but not cold, thank goodness, and the dark trees now stretched endlessly in every direction. The sky held a bright gleam of stars overhead, and the river—the one we’d been riding beside most of that day—was fast running and as black and shiny as glass in the dusk.

The soldiers set up camp quickly, and before long, there were warm, bright fires built to help keep the shadows at bay. We had been staying in simple wedge tents which were triangular-shaped and made of waxed linen or animal hides draped over the center ridge pole, supported by upright poles at each end Waxed linen or animal hides, depending on the weather, were then draped over that and pegged to the ground. It would usually hold two people or more comfortably, depending on the length of the ridge pole. All of the poles were precut and brought along with us on the pack animals, as were the coverings, so erecting the tents didn’t take much time. Fionn and I had the largest of the tents, and it was located in the middle of all of the others.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been amazed at how quickly they were all put up, considering the Faeries’ almost casual use of magic, but I still was.

Before long, the soldiers were all sitting by their individual fires, casting dice or eating and drinking. They drank heavily and Fionn was drinking too, though none of them ever seemed to get drunk, no matter how much wine they consumed. After a while, Fionn said he was hungry and I helped unpack the food and wine we’d brought along with us. We still had plenty of the dark, nutty-tasting bread, with delicious honey to spread over it if we liked, and various creamy cheeses and vegetables like carrots and fresh, whole tomatoes, so ripe and juicy you could bite into them like an apple and let the juice run down your chin. There were cucumbers and celery and white asparagus, and all of it was good. As always, there was the goblin fruit, along with many bottles of the sweet nectar wine the Sidhe seemed to favor. And there was manna, a favorite dish of the king’s. It was like coriander seed, but white, and the taste of it was like sweet wafers made with honey. The cook had even packed some little cream cakes for me, and I made a sound of joy when I saw I had some of them and that made Fionn smile at me indulgently.

The men Fionn had brought with us consisted of strong young soldiers who were all excellent horsemen. I was gratified to see that they took good care of their horses too, rubbing them down and using their curry combs in a circular motion after they took off their saddles and feeding and watering them before they fed themselves.

His army was exceedingly well-trained, and they should have been, since they spent all their time either training or hunting or fighting some incomprehensible battle or other with the other creatures who inhabited this world. When I had once asked Fionn who they fought so often and why, he quirked up an eyebrow at me.

“We live in a dangerous world here, Braden. Thieving trolls live under bridges to demand tolls to cross the bridge or to rob travelers when they cross, threatening to eat them if they aren’t paid their extortion money. Demons haunt the crossroads, trying to kidnap travelers and drag them to hell, or making bargains to steal their souls. Ogres take livestock from farms and kidnap people too and will eat them if they get half a chance. They’re shapeshifters, which can make them even more dangerous. Then there are the goblins, who may grow delicious fruit and vegetables, but that doesn’t make them benevolent. Because they’re small, they fight in large numbers, and rely on traps, ambushes and dirty tactics rather than facing their enemies in a fair fight. I try to keep the roads safe for travelers in my kingdom, and that’s a big undertaking all by itself. And that doesn’t even count the number of land disputes I have to settle, and the incursions on our borders from Falias and Fenias. Even when we go to the mortal world, we have to look out for thieves, like the ones that accosted your uncle.”

“What? My uncle? Did you get word of him then?”

“Oh. Didn’t I tell you? I guess I forgot. He was robbed on the way home that night, but he wasn’t hurt. My men saw him and even spoke with him, though they didn’t approach him about you, because they didn’t want to get all that started. But he was working in his shop and they posed as customers. He seemed fine.”

Here’s another thing about Faeries—they obviously had no feelings at all, because they were Faeries, and didn’t understand or care about mortals in any way. He guessed he had forgotten to tell me? Even knowing I’d been worried sick about him? Unbelievable.

What I was coming to realize more and more each day was that the people in this realm were not at all like I was. Oh, they gossiped as much, and loved a good scandal, but they weren’t at all offended by the things that would infuriate a mostly mortal like me and perversely they might be heartily offended at something I wouldn’t have cared about at all. For example, their king was now married to a younger man, and they seemed to take it in stride. In fact, I knew many of their men were married to women, if they bothered to marry at all, and if they decided to take more than one wife at the same time, no one seemed to mind in the least, except for the wives, I guess. There were same-sex marriage too, and the soldiers and courtiers in the castle thought nothing of casual caresses and even kisses with their male friends, and nudity didn’t bother them in the least.

Fionn’s soldiers undressed and bathed down by the river and a few of them even jumped in naked to take a swim, as it had been a long and dusty ride. It had been for me too, so when Fionn went off to speak to his captain, Darragh, to make plans for the next day, I decided to take a couple of drying cloths from our packs and go down to the river’s edge to wash, before turning in for the night.

When I got close to a part of the bank that was relatively free of naked or half-naked soldiers, I thought about taking a swim, but I didn’t like the look of the dark, almost black water, though no one else seemed to have any qualms about it. Still, it gave me an odd, prickly feeling down my spine to think of swimming in it, so I knelt by the river instead and gave myself a sponge bath, taking off my shirt, washing my face and hands and upper body and dipping water out onto a cloth and using soap to clean my more private parts. I had taken off my riding boots and stockings to soak my feet in the cool, gently running water too, and I leaned back on my hands to enjoy the cool breeze and the nice evening.

The whole time I knelt there, however, I felt a bizarre, magnetic pull towards the water, and a little voice in my head telling me to go ahead and jump in. Swim in the nice, cool water… It was perfectly safe. It would feel wonderful and there was no way I’d get in any trouble in the fast-flowing current. After all, the soldiers were only a few feet away on the banks in case I happened to need any help. Fionn had told me the water wasn’t deep in this area, and I was a strong swimmer. After the way my mother died, I had insisted on learning to swim at an early age, and the idea of drowning was an old childhood terror that I’d mostly overcome. I’d made sure of that.

It was that last thought that I might need help that decided me something was wrong. Why on earth would I need help? I suddenly realized that little voice in my head wasn’t my own; those were alien thoughts in my mind. Where the hell were they coming from?

I looked up and down the banks and out into the river but saw or heard nothing suspicious. I decided I was overthinking this, as usual, and since I was tired from riding all day, I decided to rest there for a moment. I lay back on the bank, looking up at the stars that were just beginning to come out.

I was enjoying my time alone here by the river, and I hadn’t had much chance to be alone since I’d been taken by the Faeries. Except, I wasn’t alone, was I? A young man was sitting perhaps six or seven feet away, blowing on a small set of pipes. I don’t know how I missed seeing him come to sit there so near me.