Chapter Nine #2
“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.
I was pretty sure the instrument was called a pan flute.
It was handheld and consisted of hollow tubes made of reeds of varying lengths all bound together with twine.
Each tube was tuned to a specific pitch, and the musician played it by blowing air directly across the open top edge.
The young man playing it was pretty good, and I lay there enjoying the tune, which was something that sounded old and almost mystical—even otherworldly, which of course, I suppose it was.
The young man had dirty-blond hair, soft looking and longish, and a handsome face.
He winked at me when he noticed me watching him, and I thought that was a bold move, considering that I was married to his king.
Most of the other soldiers were keeping well away from me down the riverbank and were making sure their eyes didn’t stray in my direction or if they did, that they didn’t linger on my body too long.
The young man finished his little song and looked over at me with a brilliant smile.
“Did you like my tune, pretty one?” the young man asked and gave me another wink. “Should I play you another one?”
“Why not?” I called back to him, feeling suddenly relaxed and happy.
This time it was a livelier tune, and I swayed along with it.
It was lovely and almost hypnotic. By the time it ended, I felt loose-limbed and totally relaxed.
He finished it with a little musical flourish of notes and smiled at me.
“Why aren’t you swimming like the others?”
“I don’t really feel like swimming tonight.”
“But we’re all going to go diving to see the bottom. Wouldn’t you like to come too?”
That odd, prickly feeling at the base of my spine came back and I shivered. “No,” I said in a firm voice. “I need to go back to the fire.”
“But it’s fun to swim under the stars,” he said, cajoling me now. “Cool and refreshing after this warm, dusty day.” He stood up and laid his flute on the bank and held his hand out to me. Since he was naked, and I was nearly so, I blushed and turned my head away, but he only laughed.
“Come and play with me in the water, sweeting,” he said and this time his voice sounded a bit deeper. More commanding. He held out his hand to me. “Come with me. Don’t you want to feel good?”
I looked back up at his handsome face, and for the first time noticed his eyes, which were an odd shade of amber or was it gold? It was hard to tell in this half-light, but it seemed there was also a slight red cast to them.