Chapter Sixteen #2
“Are we…speaking metaphorically, or—?”
“Oh, metaphors,” said Meredith in disgust. “Nah, I mean, my mind wanders and I always lose track of where I was at.” He tossed away the denuded flower and took up three more, beginning to braid a daisy chain.
“Move over, would you?” Without waiting for an answer, David took a seat next to him upon the table and studied Meredith’s face in the waning twilight. “Don’t know what Todd’s on about.”
Meredith didn’t look up. “Hmm?”
“Of course you haven’t broken your nose.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t,” said Meredith. “I said, I didn’t.”
#98: He makes such incomprehensible distinctions.
Before David could follow that thought any further, Meredith said, “Anyway, you don’t have to go trying to make me feel better.”
“I wasn’t, particularly.”
“It’s all right, I know I’m not much to look at.”
David frowned, but before he could respond, Meredith added, “Not like you.”
“I—what?”
“It’s true,” he insisted, finally looking up from his daisy chain. “Anyone can see how big and strong you are, you’ve got a good profile, and your eyes are that lovely color, like smoky amber.”
Smoky amber. David was taken aback. He’d received his share of compliments, certainly, but never had anyone told him a thing quite like that. “I—er—really?”
Meredith nodded. “You’re quite good-looking, David, aside from when you go around scowling at everything. Well, at me, usually, but I suppose I can’t much blame you there.” He returned his attention to his daisy chain and fell into a pensive silence.
David watched him for a long moment in growing concern, then said, more abruptly than he meant to, “Meri, are you all right?”
At that, Meredith looked up at him in surprise. “What?”
“I said, are you all right? These last few days you’ve seemed a bit off.”
“Off?” he repeated.
This was unfamiliar ground, but David pressed on. “You’ve not been yourself lately.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said Meredith. “Kinley’s gone and put the idea into your head, hasn’t he? Don’t pay him any mind.”
“I mean,” David tried again, “one could hardly blame you if you weren’t.
The past couple of weeks have been…a lot.
” There was one other thing he needed to make sure of, but if he went about it the wrong way—no, it was best to be direct.
“Are you all right after what we did the other night? I mean to say, I wouldn’t like for you to feel as though I’d treated you badly.
I mean I wouldn’t like to have done. I mean—” David was floundering. “Did I?”
“Course not,” said Meredith. “I’ve had much worse.”
If ever anyone was damned by faint praise—
At David’s expression, Meredith hurriedly amended, “Oh, no, I mean to say I had quite a nice time.” He finished twisting the ends of the stems into place and held aloft his creation to admire it before setting the daisy crown upon David’s head and looking quite pleased with himself. “There you are.”
David found that he was not as exasperated with this as he might have been. Carefully, he removed the circlet of daisies and studied its construction, impressed in spite of himself.
“I think,” he said gently, placing it on Meredith’s head instead, “it suits you better.” Then, struck by inspiration, he went on, “Besides, I could hardly usurp the throne from the rightful reigning monarch of the Midnight Wood. You’d have me executed for high treason in a heartbeat.”
“Nah, what do you think? I’m a merciful king, I’d just throw you into the dungeons for a bit.”
“Would you.”
“Maybe let the Mice nibble your toes until you’re properly remorseful.”
“I see.” David found himself holding back a smile. King of the Midnight Wood indeed, in a tartan skirt and flower crown. He nudged Meredith and stood. “All right, Your Majesty, collect the royal hound and off to bed with you both. Tomorrow’s going to be an early morning.”
To his relief, Meredith giggled at that. He caught David by the arm for balance as he hopped down from the table. “C’mon, Bianca, did you hear that? You’ve gotten a promotion!”
Behind him, the darkness at the edge of the Midnight Wood seemed to have softened, speckled with the fuzzy green glow of fireflies; the sound of insects had faded from a menacing hum to the occasional reassuring chirp that felt almost friendly. It had become a forest at twilight, nothing more.
But looking down at Meredith’s hand, David couldn’t tear his eyes away from that carved obsidian ring.
“David, aren’t you coming?”
“You go on,” he said, reaching a decision. “I’ve got an errand to run.”
—
“What have you done to my—my—” David gave up on trying to classify the relationship. “Meredith. What did you do to him?”
“Your what?” From across her table at the Night Market, Sylvania Holland regarded David with her infuriatingly serene smile. “Oh, yes. The charming Canadian.”
“He isn’t,” said David, “but yes, that’s the one. Whatever hex you’ve put on him, whatever you’ve done to him—undo it at once.”
Sylvania rose with a swish of brocaded silks and beckoned David to walk with her along the row of stalls beneath garlands of greenery and the soft twinkle of stardust lanterns. “Whatever do you mean?”
“That ring,” said David. “You said it reveals what’s concealed, but it’s defective or—or cursed or something. He’s not been right since you gave it to him.”
Surveying the offerings of a nearby booth whose wares appeared to consist primarily of live frogs, she inquired, “Oh, yes? What’s the matter with him?”
David opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. He’d come storming into the Night Market to confront her the moment he’d figured it out, but hadn’t thought through the precise nature of his complaint. “Well. For instance. He doesn’t insult me anymore.”
“That hardly seems anything to complain about.”
“No, no, I mean it’s—” He waved a hand. “A sort of back-and-forth. It was. But it’s no fun if he doesn’t come back at me.” David frowned. “Feels rather like kicking a puppy.”
“Is that all?” she asked.
David found himself momentarily distracted by a stall offering artesian waters of oblivion, and nearly crashed into a bay centaur having his hooves polished, who flicked his tail in annoyance and gave David a look of disdain.
Hurrying to catch up to Sylvania, he said, “It is not. He has these moments where he seems so down and goes saying such awful things about himself.” It was most disconcerting, and quite out of character. “Just put him back to how he was before, would you?”
Sylvania Holland picked up a jewel-encrusted amulet from the next table, examined it, and returned it to nestle in a swathe of rumpled velvet. “That ring does no more nor less than what I told you. If he says such things, then it’s only because he already thought them.”
“Nonsense,” insisted David. “He doesn’t think anything of the kind.” Meredith was confident to the point of arrogance. She wasn’t listening to him at all. “Now, you look here. I want my friend back. No more of this magical funny business, do you hear me?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Friend?”
David’s face grew warm, and he had the distinctly unpleasant sensation that she was riffling through the contents of his mind like a stack of photographs, including his recollections of recent activities that were decidedly more than friendly in nature. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
Sylvania nodded to the proprietor of the next booth, who raised a tentacle in greeting. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just that when I was there, you told him you hated him.”
“That was just—” David stopped. “Of course I don’t, not really.”
“Does he know that?”
Of course Meredith knew.
Didn’t he?
“Look, perhaps I get a bit fed up with him sometimes,” admitted David, “but you don’t understand.
You and everybody else think he’s so charming and quirky, but you don’t realize what it’s like to actually live with such a person all the time.
” Maybe that frustration manifested as the occasional barbed remark, but that was just a way of letting off steam.
“But we are friends, and I won’t stand by and see him hurt by you or those neo-Nazis or that wretched Erlking person. ”
“I see,” said Sylvania solemnly, though David was not sure that she did.
“Yes, that does complicate matters.” They’d now passed the last row of market stalls and stood at the edge of the inky shadow cast by an ancient and towering oak in the adjacent lot.
She turned to David. “Tell me, has he said anything out of the ordinary lately? Any startling confessions, for instance?”
“Well—” David hesitated. It felt almost too personal to share, but, he reasoned, a psychic was like a doctor: one must tell them the truth, no matter how embarrassing the ailment. “The other night, he was going on about being in love with someone, supposedly, but I couldn’t get him to tell who.”
“It would seem he’s remarkably strong-willed.” She darted an appraising glance at David, and murmured half to herself, “I wonder whether I didn’t give it to the wrong one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Clapping him on the arm and ignoring his question entirely, she said, “Now, there’s no need to lose hope. Just give it a bit more time, and it’ll all work itself out.”
“But—”
“If I were you,” said Sylvania Holland, “I’d go home and get some rest. You’re going to need it for tomorrow.”
David was halfway back to Midnight Cottage before it sank in that she hadn’t told him anything at all.