Chapter 7 #4
“Yes you did, and because you’re stubborn, and because whatever higher power watches over reckless young men with bows decided you had more work to do here than there.” She squeezed my arm briefly. “I’m allowed to be proud of the boy I raised. It’s in the contract. Page three, paragraph twelve.”
I laughed despite myself, and the sound carried across the square, and for a moment the weight of the morning lifted, and we were just a man and a woman walking through a village on a summer morning, and the war was something that had happened to other people in another life.
The old man lived in a cottage at the village’s eastern edge, where the path began its climb toward the ridge.
He was exactly as Angelina had described: older than the trees, or so he claimed, with a face that had been carved by weather and time into something that resembled a particularly expressive walnut.
He sat on his porch in a rocking chair that had seen better decades, a pipe in one hand and a cup of something that smelled aggressively alcoholic in the other, and when he saw Angelina his face split into a grin that revealed approximately three teeth, all of them holding on through what appeared to be sheer force of will.
“Angelina,” he said, his voice carrying the rasp of someone who had been smoking since before my grandfather was born. “And the famous boy. The one who came back. Sit. Both of you. The chair’s got room if you don’t mind sharing.”
We declined the chair. Angelina set her basket on the porch step and got straight to the point. “We’re looking for Lyra. The fairy. The one who treats … not bodies. Minds. You used to trade with the fairies before the war. We were hoping you might know where she is.”
The old man took a long, considered pull from his pipe, the smoke curling around his head in lazy spirals. His eyes, surprisingly sharp for a man his age, moved from Angelina to me and back again, and something knowing passed across his features.
“Lyra,” he said. “Pretty thing. Wings that shimmer like dragonflies. Smiles like she knows a joke you haven’t heard yet.
” He set his pipe down and reached for his cup.
“Lives on Whisper Isle. Northeast of here, about an hour by pegasus if the winds are with you. Small place. You’ll know it by the garden.
She grows things that have no business growing together, roses next to nightshade, healing herbs beside things that’ll put you to sleep for a week.
The cottage is at the center. Can’t miss it. ”
I committed it to memory. Northeast. Whisper Isle. Blue roof. Garden of incompatible plants. “Thank you,” I said. “This means a great deal.”
The old man chuckled, the sound like gravel shifting in a bucket.
“It might mean a great deal less once you meet her.” He raised his cup in my direction, his eyes glinting with the mischief of someone who was about to deliver news he knew would be entertaining.
“Fair warning, war hero. Lyra has a weakness for handsome young men. Has had for a long time, and time hasn’t diminished her appetite.
She’ll flirt with you shamelessly. She’ll make you squirm.
She’ll tease you until you’re the color of those apples Angelina grows, and she won’t answer a single question until she’s had her fun.
It’s how she operates. Consider yourself warned. ”
I dismissed it with a smile. Old men and their stories.
Every village had one, the resident exaggerator, the keeper of tales that grew taller with each telling.
A flirty fairy healer was the least concerning thing I’d encountered since coming home, and after the morning I’d had, a little harmless teasing sounded almost relaxing.
“We appreciate the help,” Angelina said, retrieving her basket. “And the warning, exaggerated though it may be.”
The old man laughed again, harder this time, and raised his cup as we turned to go. “Exaggerated! She says!”
Angelina rolled her eyes with the fond exasperation of someone who had known this man for a long time and had long since given up on expecting dignity from him.
We walked back through the village, the morning warming around us, and when we reached the farmyard I put two fingers to my mouth and whistled, the sharp two-tone call that Valen had been responding to since he was young.
He came from the east, breaking over the tree line with his wings pulling tight, his white body brilliant against the blue, and when he landed in the yard his hooves struck the packed earth with a solidity that felt like coming home.
Someone had brushed him thoroughly. His mane gleamed, his coat caught the light like fresh snow, and when he looked at me his dark eyes held the combination of dignity and mild accusation that pegasus faces were designed to convey.
“Someone’s been busy,” I said, running a hand along his neck. I mounted, settled into the saddle, and gathered the reins. Valen braced beneath me, his wings half-extended in anticipation.
“Ride safe,” Angelina said, her hand on my boot. “And Gabriel? Whatever you find on Whisper Isle, whatever this fairy tells you … remember that healing takes time. For all of you.”
I nodded, and then Valen was lifting, his powerful wings driving us upward, the farm falling away below. I turned northeast toward an island I’d never seen and a healer I’d never met and the weight of wanting, more than anything, to fix something that had been broken for too long.