Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(18)

The warrior would have gone on his way without a second thought. Sylphs, after all, are strange beings with their own customs, and while many might consider them foes, they were no danger to him or his at present. So he would have passed into the shadows and vanished from this story altogether, save that his nose caught a scent that brought him up short.

“Crescent Woman!”

The warrior turned and pursued the sylphs.

They moved in a swirling nexus, creatures of air and invisible beauty, unable to hold on to physical form for more than mere moments. In those moments, one might catch a glimpse of a face neither male nor female, of hair long and streaming, of eyes dark beyond existence, like a storm’s gale. They were huge and they were small, beings of wind and sound.

And they loved mortals with a dangerous love; as the cold moon must love the fiery sun for its heat; as the ever-changing sea must love the stolid shore for its sameness; as a man must love a woman, so the sylphs loved the dirt-bound mortals and called them into their wild games so that they might touch mortal hair, might feel mortal limbs, might hear mortal voices rising in chorus with their own.

To these aerial beings, the most inexplicable and beautiful mystery of all was mortal death. They pulled and pushed their captives in fey patterns only to watch them fall down, exhausted, battered, and, finally, dead.

The warrior had seen it before. He had come upon hosts of sylphs, each one rendered no bigger than a spring morning’s whisper, gathered about the corpse of some luckless mortal, touching its still face with their wisps of fingers and asking one another, “Why does it no longer dance? Why does it no longer sing?”

It was their foolish way. The warrior had long since learned to ignore them.

But he could not ignore the scent of the Crescent Land.

“Come, fickle, fleeting, Fiery Fair,

Come and join our dance!

We’ll run our fingers through your hair;

We’ll dance beyond all thought or care!

Come, and in our wildness share

And leave your life to chance!”

So sang the strange voices of the sylph in their manic but beautiful song. The warrior chased it, following his ears and his nose, and at length he caught glimpses of the sylphs themselves, their faces reminiscent of a man’s but more like a bird’s, or perhaps both at once. When he could see nothing else of them, he could still discern the signs of their passing: the wind-tossed branches, the trembling of the trees. The air became thick in their wake, filling with mist in the sudden stillness so that the warrior became nearly blind in his pursuit.

Then he picked up the sound of footsteps and knew he must be drawing near to the mortal caught in the center of the swirling air.

A flash of red drew his eye, red like water or like fire. He saw the mortal at last: a tall, straight figure clad in light, flowing garments that lent themselves naturally to the pulling winds. The red he’d glimpsed was her flowing hair.

“Let her go!”

A dozen unseen faces turned upon him; their unseen eyes fixed him with angered stares. The song turned to a snarl, and he felt them massing together into one great body, ready to blow the flesh from his bones in their anger.

The warrior stepped forward, unafraid. He could see little enough other than the young woman—not much beyond girlhood, he realized—who stood with her back to him, her hair and white gown beating the air behind her in the ferocity of the sylphs’ breath. He did not think she could hear his voice, but that did not matter. The sylphs could.

“This mortal is of my kin,” the warrior declared. “Born of the Crescent People in the mortal Land Behind the Mountains. You will give her back to me.”

The sylphs, wordless in their rage, flew at him. As one force they tore at his face, at his clothes. But they did not topple him, and he put his hand to his throat and lifted up the bronze stone.

“By the Mound of my master, I command you to let her go.”

He did not have to speak loudly. A whisper was enough. The sylphs saw and knew. And the sylphs, again moving as one, howled their anger. They twisted around the warrior, around his limbs, his neck, his head. They shied away from touching the stone, however, withdrawing as though stung—if anyone can sting the wind.

Then they leapt back from him, crossing once more to the woman, and their long, vaporous fingers touched her face and hair with a caressing sadness.

The next moment, they were gone.

Lady Daylily sank to her knees and collapsed on her side, deep in the heart of the Wilderlands.





7


PART OF THE LIFETIME BATTLE that comprises Growing Up is learning (then relearning, then relearning again) that you can never go Home.

Home, that ephemeral world of warm, comforting, familiar love where a place is always set for you, where the conversation ever turns to topics in which you can enthusiastically participate, where the food tastes better, and where you sleep most restfully at night . . . it doesn’t exist.

In the all-too-real world, people change. Places change.

Over and over again Lionheart had swallowed this bitter pill, and yet it never entirely ceased to surprise him. He himself had altered so much in the months—which felt like mere days to him—of wandering in the Wood Between. He’d faced the Monster. He’d died. He’d been raised up again a new, whole man, albeit with a scar on his chest where a unicorn’s horn had pierced his heart.

He had altered forever. Somehow, though he knew better, he’d assumed that the place he called Home would not.