Chapter Twenty
The rest of the day was taken up with preparations for the wedding. Taz had thought they were done once they had decided on the time, the place, and the type of ceremony. Then when they chose the rings. Then once they had chosen the borrowed garments that the fae insisted were totally necessary.
Ligard was firm. “You shall only have one wedding, if the One blesses you both with a long life. Your Rose deserves it to be as beautiful as we can make it. And that includes your clothing, Owl.”
When he looked at it like that, dressing as finely as he could was essential, and in the end he enjoyed choosing something that a medieval prince might have gloried in. It would be something to tell his children, if he and Sephie ever did adopt children.
In the early afternoon, when both his party and Sephie’s met up for a snack and a drink, she reported a similar discussion.
“They are right,” she said. “When those children we talked about ask, ‘Mama, what was your wedding like,’ I want to be able to describe a beautiful dress.” She blushed, and added, “You must think I am silly.”
How adorable she is when she blushes. Taz had a strong urge to kiss her, but settled for kissing her hand, since they had company. “Not silly at all. I had a similar thought when Ligard reminded me that we’d have only one wedding, if God blesses us with a long life together.”
Not that he could imagine marrying again if he lost her.
The glories of making music with her already hinted at further glories to come, once they were fully intimate.
He could readily understand why the bard in the old ballad had thrown himself off a cliff after he’d taken revenge on the villain who had killed his bard mage partner.
The rest of the afternoon was no more peaceful than the morning. The fae were planning a feast to follow the wedding, and everyone involved wanted Taz’s opinion and Sephie’s.
At least they managed to stay together, hand in hand, as they tasted one person’s tiny, iced cakes and sipped another’s summer wine. And Taz managed to snatch enough privacy to tell her his idea and to snatch a kiss when her enthusiasm for it splintered his sense of what was proper.
Late in the day but in plenty of time, Bridei, dressed in full celebration finery, arrived with the rings, which had been inscribed with the message and resized to fit. He gave Sephie’s to Taz, and Taz’s to Sephie, and promised to be there to witness the wedding.
Not long after that, their self-appointed bridal parties came to take them away, separately again, to be dressed. “When you see your beloved again,” Ligarth told him, “it will be in the meeting circle, just before your wedding.”
Taz’s heart was in his mouth at the thought of it. Tonight, in no more than an hour or so, he and Sephie would be joined in marriage.
*
Red was apparently the traditional color for fae weddings, and Sephie had nearly chosen a red gown, until she saw the green one.
To call it green was to do it the disservice of understatement.
It was every imaginable green, or gave the impression of being so, as well as quite a few golds and yellows and touches of other colors, plus the bright sparkle of jewels and beads.
In fact, it was embroidered all over with flowering plants, so that, when she put it on, she looked as if she was wearing a garden.
It was, in fact, a perfect gown in which to marry a plant mage.
Although, it wasn’t actually a gown. It was, rather, a full ensemble of undertunic, tunic, overdress, sash, and robe. Only the undertunic was opaque. The other garments increased in transparency so that, when all were on, an impression of the other layers showed through the whole.
Even that description was not quite right, for only the undertunic was a made garment, with a shaped bodice and an attached skirt.
The tunic and overdress were constructed on her body, with intricate folds and tucks, and a judicious use of pins, brooches, sashes, and ribbons, and the robe was perhaps better described as a cape, except it was sheer where the embroidery did not cover it.
It gathered to fasten at each shoulder, and was long enough to trail even further behind her than the gown itself.
Acha and the other fae attending her would not allow her to look into a mirror, insisting that they wanted her to see herself as Owl would see her. Sephie liked that idea, but as she sat in her undertunic as they braided, twisted, and pinned her hair, she longed to catch just a glimpse.
“There,” said Acha, with satisfaction, stepping back from placing yet another jeweled pin. “Any more would be too much. Please stand, Sephie, and we shall dress you.”
It didn’t take long. Magic helped, as it had with the hair, with a ribbon, a bow, or a fold of fabric spelled to stay where it was put for long enough to be fastened. The fae used magic as easily as they breathed, and for such ordinary purposes.
At last, they turned the wall in front of her into a reflective surface, and she could see what they had turned her into.
A fae princess stared back at her, and if the rational part of her that insisted on accuracy said the fae did not have princesses, and did have pointed ears and green eyes, Sephie ignored it.
She looked beautiful. She felt beautiful.
She sang her pleasure in a few short verses.
The fabric of her skirts and sleeves moved in graceful eddies around her, in time to the music.
Sephie felt she was all the things Father, Granny and her governesses had agreed she could never be.
Graceful. Clever. Talented. Competent. Enough.
“The Owl’s eyes are going to pop out of his head on stalks,” said Acha, chuckling with delight, and all the others laughed, too.
Her bridal party sang as they walked to the meeting circle, and other fae lined the path and called out wishes for her happiness as she passed.
Some of them were familiar now after their weeks here, and some were strangers—come, so Acha told her, to see the marriage of the bard mage pair that the forests had chosen to shelter.
They entered the circle just as the groom’s party approached from another path.
Taz stopped when he saw her, and if his eyes did not quite pop out on stalks, the dropped jaw and the heat in his gaze were decidedly pleasing.
Her own jaw was just as slack. If she was a fae princess, he was her counterpart—also in green, and also in layers and layers of robes over a tunic, everything decorated with embroidery and glittering with jewels.
And if she was wearing a garden, he was clothed in a forest. How apt.
Just as the cut and drape of her garments emphasized the curves and grace of her figure, so his made him appear even more alluring than he normally was—his broad shoulders, his narrow waist, his strong, shapely calves which appeared moment by moment as he walked toward her.
They had spoken during the afternoon about songs that the fae might know, and had chosen one for their entrance that was a prayer for blessings on a marriage. Taz nodded to her and began a count with a moving hand. On three, they both began singing, and the bridal parties joined in.
In the next moment, she was surprised by the swell of sound. She had been aware that others were waiting in the clearing, but had had eyes only for Taz. A quick glance around confirmed that there were more than double the number of fae she was accustomed to seeing, and more arriving.
Even as she glanced around, she walked toward the center of the clearing, where Uradech waited for them with two other people, one a woman of his age and the other an even older woman.
They stepped in time with the song, and arrived together, stopping on the last words of the last verse. Perfect.
Even Granny could not have rightfully found anything to criticize about her appearance or her performance. Though she would probably have called the one heathen and the other shameless.
Granny has no place at my wedding, she scolded herself. I’ll try not to think of her again tonight.
One by one, the three elders stepped forward and spoke a few words about the nature, importance, and meaning of heart-bonding. Sephie tried to listen, but Taz stood beside her and held her hand, and all her senses, including her mage sense, were absorbed in him.
As they spoke, the sun set, and all around the clearing, the watchers sent up mage lights, until hundreds of them danced overhead, making the clearing bright.
The eldest, whose voice was still powerful, though her body looked frail, called for those gathered to ask the One for blessings on the couple, and from around the clearing, people called out, both in English and in the fae language.
“Bow to the One,” said the younger of the two women. Sephie and Taz bowed to the stone set up in the middle of the clearing, which was inscribed with, or so Ligarth had told them, the story of how the One had called first the universe and then the world into being with a Word.
The story was similar to the tale in Genesis, and—or so the fae said—to other accounts around the world where people remembered that the One came before all created things, including most of the gods worshipped outside the forests since the races of the outsiders—according to the fae account—went their own way.
Sephie and Taz had agreed their God, the God of the Christians, sounded like one and the same as the One to whom the fae looked, so they had no hesitation in bowing.
The eldest commanded them to bow to the family, which they also did, bowing to their hosts, many of them now friends. And the last command came from Uradech—to bow to one another.
After that, it was time for the handfasting. The cord was made up of smaller cords of green, creamy-white, and gold, woven into a flat decorative band. Taz took it from Uradech and laid it over their joined right hands, and stepped back to join the other two elders.
“I, Taliesin the Owl, take you, Persephone the Rose, as my wife and heart-bonded,” Taz spoke the words from their own wedding tradition quietly, so his voice reached no further than the two of them.
Sephie replied. “I, Persephone the Rose, take you, Taliesin the Owl, as my husband and heart-bonded.”
Each of them grasped the cord, one on each side.
They crossed it over and wrapped it around the other’s wrist. As they each brought their end back to form the knot under their clasped hands, it was time for the surprise she and Taz had added to the ceremony.
They began to sing, and Sephie felt the seed she had hidden in her palm tickle as the shoot inside broke open.
Feeding off the magic in the music, it grew into a green and living binding, wrapping around her arm, then their hands, and then the matching vine from Taz’s palm, and around them the fae sighed with awe and pleasure at this surprise addition to the binding part of the wedding ceremony.
Joined by both cord and vine, they changed the song to their promises to one another, feeding the promises with their magic.
Loyalty and respect for a lifetime. In good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer.
They promised to love and cherish all the days of their life, and to be faithful until death.
Sephie felt the bond firm and strengthen with every vow, and the magic rise, pouring out of them in a blend of their two scents, the tingle of it so strong that it became a buzz through every fiber of her being.
She wanted to cry out, though whether in pain or ecstasy, she could not have said, but instead, she continued singing her vows, her voice blending and harmonizing with Taz’s.
The song ended as the vine burst into flower. It had wound up and down both their arms, and the rich perfume of honeysuckle filled the clearing.
The watchers were quiet, and so still that she and Taz might have been alone. It was into the silence that Taz said, “With this ring, I thee wed.”
They’d practiced that, too, for their joined right hands were bound and invisible under a coating of green leaves. Sephie rested her left hand on the leaves, and lifted her ring finger, so that Taz could slide the ring into place.
Then she reached into her waist sash for the pocket that Acha had sewn into it, and Taz put his left hand on the leaves, so that Sephie could put his ring in place.
Granny would be horrified. It was the man who put the ring in place, and the woman who accepted it. But Granny would be wrong, and she had promised herself that Granny did not belong here. She and Taz were bound to one another, and partners in music, in magic, and in love.
Uradech said something in the language of the fae, his voice booming out over the clearing. The meaning was the same, he had told them earlier, as the English words he spoke next. “Brothers and sisters, welcome the heart-bonded, Owl and Rose.”
The silence held for a split second more, and then people cheered, sang, whooped, and whistled.
Colored sparks flew up from some of them, making patterns and pictures in the sky—fireworks, Sephie supposed she could still call them, though they were made by magic rather than from gunpowder.
One would not wish to use real fire in a forest.
A few sung words loosened the binding of the honeysuckle, and Sephie and Taz each slipped their hands free.
Acha stepped forward to accept the tangle of plant and cord.
“I shall extract your binding cord so you can keep it, my friends, and plant your plants, if it pleases you. I have never, in all my eight score years, seen a more beautiful wedding. Thank you.”
“Shall we plant them by the cave entrance?” Ligard suggested, and when Sephie and Taz agreed, the other couple went off to see to it, their personal lights following them in a crowd.
The elders offered their congratulations, giving each of them a hug, and those who had spent the most time with Sephie and Taz were next in line to do the same.
Some of the crowd melted back into the forest and then returned a few moments later carrying trays.
Soon, the feast was set up on tables that materialized for the purpose, translocated from somewhere else, and Sephie and Taz were escorted to two chairs set near the stone that marked the center of the clearing.
Chairs were placed for the very old, too, but everyone else remained standing, walking from table to table and group to group. In between bites, they were all laughing, singing, and chatting.
From time to time, as a girl, Sephie had imagined her wedding. She could never have imagined one as wonderful as this.