Chapter 2 #2
The faerie struck the ground with her crook once more, and the horse was outfitted in a saddle cloth of green velvet embroidered with diamonds and rubies, a matching saddle, and a bridle of pearls.
“Comrade eats only once a week, and there is no need to groom him. He can see elements of the past, the present, and the future, and whenever he offers you counsel, you must take it.”
I flinched at the word “must.” Faerie speech could bind a mortal, and many human oaths had taken the same turn.
“Now,” she said, and her shining eyes roamed my body, “your costume is not to my liking. I shall give you one that suits you better and conveys the ruse you must play. Above all else, you must be charming—the most charming knight this realm has ever seen.”
I dropped to my knees. “Please, madam, I welcome your assistance but I must ask that it be temporary. You may replace my clothing to be more suitable, just please let me keep my locket.” When faeries decided to meddle in human affairs, they did not always seem to understand the importance of the passage of time to us.
A joke played on a mortal, to give him the head of an ass, might last days or years.
I wished to ride to my king’s assistance looking like a man, but I did not wish to become one.
Nor did I wish to lose the only item I had left of my mother’s.
She cocked her white-haloed head, considering me.
“You are wise as well as brave, child. It shall be so.” She struck the ground with her crook once again, and a big trunk, with inlaid Moorish mosaics on the leather, emerged from the earth.
She bent over, moving as quickly as a striking serpent, and stood up with something glistening in her hand: a golden key.
She used it to open the box. Inside were twelve coats, twelve cravats, twelve swords, twelve ostrich plumes, and more, everything by the dozen. I leaned forward in awe; surely there was no way that all those things could fit in one box, let alone one box that I could never hope to lift.
At the faerie’s urging, I reached in and trailed my fingers along the sleeves of one coat; it was embroidered with gemstones. If the entire coat were adorned thusly, I doubted whether I could stand up in it for very long.
“You have but to choose which coat you wish to wear, and close the trunk, and it will follow you invisibly. You have only to stomp your foot on the ground and say, ‘Leather trunk, come to me full of coats,’ or, ‘leather trunk, come to me full of lace and linen,’ or, ‘leather trunk, come to me full of jewels and money,’ or whatever you desire. It will come to you, bearing whatever you wish it to contain, no matter where you are.”
Dumbfounded, I nodded.
She pointed at the trunk and shook her finger. "You obey her every word, or I'll turn you to kindling!" She kicked it for emphasis, and I could not tell if it shuddered in response, or if that was only my imagination.
“And then there is the matter of your name. I do not think Belle-Belle suits your new role. But it is only right that if you have a new name, you should make my acquaintance as well.”
The faerie drew herself up to her full height.
Her limbs lengthened in front of my eyes, as her white hair turned into a starlike silver.
Her old skin fell off—sloughed right off, falling to the grass, and I suppressed a shudder—replaced by youthful, glowing skin underneath.
Her eyes remained the same penetrating, colorless, shining hue from earlier, while she stood tall in a royal blue dress trimmed with ermine, a pearl cap calming her locks.
Simultaneously, the meadow erupted with white roses. They grew on the grass, on the trees, on the thorny bushes rimming the ravine, which had surely not been rose bushes when I had been close enough to inspect them.
“It seems to me that you might have called yourself the Chevalier Fortune,” she remarked, using the formal word for knight as my title.
It did not escape my notice that she did not give her own name; I had never heard of a faerie doing so willingly.
But the stories said that they tended to favor the same jewels and colors even if they shed forms as often as they liked, so I had a hope of recognizing her again.
“I would advise you to choose the green and gold coat,” she continued. I reached into the trunk and drew it forth: forest-green brocade was herded into intricate patterns by gold thread, with buttons made of gold thread looped around brass knobs.
I put it on and found it amazingly lightweight. I tucked the old locket on its leather string inside the shirt; it hung low enough that no one would suspect it was there, which is how I preferred it. There were pants and a belt and boots to match. Everything fit as though it was made for me.
I turned around in front of the faerie for her approval.
“Your face is still a bit feminine, my child,” she said, and I froze, fearing what might come next.
“But since you have been so polite, I will enchant your clothing, not the rest of you. Whenever you don attire from the trunk, you shall appear to all other humans as a man, the most noble and handsome Chevalier Fortune. Your voice and demeanor shall carry the illusion for as long as you wear the coats or shirts, and when you cast them off, you shall look and sound like you do now, child.”
I bowed as low to the ground as I could, and when I straightened up, she was gone.
The sheep were gone, too. But the horse remained. So did the white roses, one of which was now intertwined in the horse’s mane. The trunk had disappeared to wherever it went when it was not needed, I assumed.
Grateful for the bizarre events that had just transpired, and wondering at why the faerie had chosen to test me with the retrieval of a sheep, since she could clearly have rescued it herself, I mounted Comrade and rode onwards.