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Long-Term
1.Find out about this cabal—discuss w/Rogue
2.Conception field trip
3.Deal with possibility/probability that Rogue remains under Titania’s influence
4.Plan strategy for Titania’s surely imminent attack
My last two long-term goals loomed at the bottom of the list, daunting in their size and unpredictability. But I left them there. Conversely, I resolutely removed “Deal with pregnancy” from the list as my nod to inevitability. Besides, I had no doubt Rogue would deliver Miss Nancy—by hook or by crook, as the saying went, which brought up amusing images, though hopefully he wouldn’t actually employ any of them—and thus I’d done all I could. The baby would, as Rogue pointed out with flawless logic, arrive on its own. Not so much the wedding.
First things first, indeed.
Tired of sitting, I paced as I mentally looked for the mass-mind web. Without Rogue’s guiding touch, I fumbled around a fair amount, finding instead various startled minds careening around the castle on their errands. Clumsy me. To my surprise, however, my mental reach extended much farther than I’d have predicted, based on past experience. In fact, as I paced toward the center of the dome, minds even more distant popped up on my mental radar.
The crystal dome—why hadn’t I realized before?—acted to amplify my abilities, much as the scepter did. Rogue hadn’t mentioned this, which likely meant he’d meant for me to discover it on my own. I could see why. Our very bedroom gave us an edge on the competition.
Hopefully it wouldn’t exact a similar price. Somehow I didn’t think it would, but that would be a thing to watch for.
Standing in the exact center of the room, I focused my virtual gaze out from the minds themselves to the delicate strands running in and out of them. Connected, yes, like a web, a fiber leading from each to the next. The threads also spiraled out, attaching to the earth, the trees, even the castle walls. That big null spot must be the dragon. Curiously, similar blank lines emanated from her, too, ending abruptly, as if encountering other unseeable walls. A network of dragons? Hmm.
It was a mistake, however, to see Rogue’s mental metaphor of a spiderweb in geographical terms, however. While physical proximity mattered to some extent, power of the mind involved factored in more. Rogue, for example, stood out to me like a tower of blue-black flame, the connections between us flowing like tributaries to a great river that flowed in both directions. He noticed my passing with a fond thought.
Titania, too, blazed through the network as a supernova of magical power, scintillating, in constant motion. Through the icy aura, however, black holes drilled down, much as sunspots on the moving surface of a star. Her wounds, no doubt. So, this was how Rogue had known her level of recovery. I stayed far back from her.
Especially because, all around her, the web seemed to fold and double back. It put me in mind of graphics I’d seen depicting the way wormholes and other singularities bent the fabric of space. The sheer number and variety of interconnections overwhelmed me. It frightened and nauseated me to attempt to get my brain around the phenomenon.
Rogue—all the fae—would have developed within this framework, understanding how to move within it reflexively, as a human child learns to put babbling sounds into words. No—as a human child learns to walk upright would be a better analogy. For me, this felt like moving in a new form of gravity, one where my muscles worked all wrong.
What I needed to do was reframe it to a more workable metaphor for my mind. Imagining the mass mind more like folders and subfolders on a computer, I wrestled the unwieldy concepts into an order I understood. I breathed easier, having tucked Titania’s blaze into an essentially locked folder. No sharing properties. Ha!
After that, it became easier to find and sort the people I wanted to access regularly. It seemed rude to knock directly on people’s minds, but in lieu of going out and searching—and possibly getting lost again—I fixed on Larch as someone who might not mind. I’d located him easily, his solid blue feel familiar to me, and tried the telepathic equivalent of ringing the doorbell.
He answered immediately and without rancor, promising to send a page—as I asked, since I figured Larch’s promotion meant he wouldn’t fetch for me anymore—to ask Starling and Athena to come visit me. I could have asked them directly, but I seriously didn’t want to get in the habit of summoning my minions to me from the remote loft of my tower.
Way too Snow Queen.
Starling arrived first, which didn’t surprise me. Athena likely had to retrieve the scepter from wherever she’d stowed it. She might even be sitting in on Fafnir’s interrogation, unflinchingly interested as she was.
Looking me over, Starling nodded in satisfaction, and I felt as if I’d passed a pop quiz. “Will I do?” I asked her in a dry tone.
“Yes, actually. Though the dragon is a bit outré,” she replied in a saucy tone. “You might have warned me. Your seneschal needs to know these things.”
“The next time I’m abducted and unexpectedly acquire a gigantic house pet in the process, I’ll be sure to send you a memo.”
“That would be very thoughtful of you. See that you do.”
“Someone is feeling feisty this morning.”
“Afternoon, that is, Lady Gwynn.” She winked at me, her hair shining in the sunlight. “And yes—Ilikehaving a staff. I’ve already started amassing the pages to send invitations. Winter solstice for the ceremony then?”
“I don’t know why anyone bothers asking me.” I frowned at her.
“Form only. I know how you dote on protocol.”
“Okay, so, two questions—if this amazing event is three days away, how can the pages possibly invite everyone in time for them to travel here? Why don’t we just announce via the mass mind?”
“Everyoneknows,of course. The invitation by page is more a formality.” She went on from there, explaining who should be invited and in what order.
