Chapter 24 Hounds & Shadows
Chapter twenty-four
Hounds & Shadows
The following dawn, I found myself face-to-face with Ceres.
Still half asleep, I sat up and watched her set a fully-laden breakfast tray on the mattress beside me, then go over to the stove.
The embers burned low, so she tossed in several small logs from a pile beneath the desk and coaxed the fire back to life.
After peering inside the kettle, she let out an irritable bleat and held her hands out, palms pressed together.
As she slowly moved them apart, a small cloud appeared, floating in midair.
She twisted her hands through the air, pulling and shaping the cloud as if she were kneading dough and causing it to darken like a thunderhead.
When it was full and heavy, she wrung it like a rag.
Water poured out, filling the kettle as quickly as any fountain or spigot would.
I jerked my quilts back and sat up, utterly amazed. “What sort of magyk is that?”
“Oh, there’s no particular name for it, darling,” the faun answered with a smile and twitch of her dappled goat ears.
They grew from the sides of her human head, just below her horns, poking through a mess of coily, silver hair.
“But my son used to call it Cloudcatching. It’s only a small gift, to manipulate water that’s already in the air ‘round us. Here, look.” She went to the far corner of the room, where the desk and shelves met to create a small, curtained-off nook.
Using her magyk, Ceres created another, larger pot-bellied storm cloud and sent it up to float above the nook, looking rather ominous.
My jaw dropped in astonishment and she laughed.
“Oh, don’t worry, dear, I’ve made the rain nice and hot,” she assured me. “When you’re ready to start, just get in and give it a wee poke.”
“But…won’t it flood the room?” I asked, searching the floor for some kind of drain.
“You sweet thing! This is a living tree, after all. She’ll drink up all the water you can give her! Now, bathe and eat your fill, then wear something practical. Lord Oberon has asked you to meet him up in the library when you’re ready.”
“A library?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “In a treehouse? With wood-burning stoves?”
“I’m afraid so,” Ceres said with a good-natured sigh. “Would ‘magyk’ be a sufficient enough explanation?”
“I suppose it must be,” I told her, grinning.
“Thank you.” Humming softly, she clip-clopped out of the room and shut the door while I eyed the rain cloud with no small amount of skepticism.
Shedding my nightgown, I stood just outside the nook and reached in to give it a firm prod.
Sure enough, steaming hot water rained down.
I wasn’t certain how much time I might have before it ran out, so I jumped in and pulled the curtain, shuddering at how marvelous it felt.
Even though I could have stayed beneath the cascade of hot water all day, it did eventually turn lukewarm and I knew I had to abandon my cocoon of steamy comfort.
Peeking out from behind the curtain, I saw that Ceres had apparently snuck back in and left a soft, linen towel beside some colorful glass bottles on the desk.
I reached up and poked the raincloud again, causing it to dissipate with a puff of vapor.
“Incredible,” I laughed, still unable to believe that this was the life I’d found myself in.
The towel felt as though it had been warmed near a fire, and the bottles were full of various oils for my skin and hair.
I took my time drying off, then combing almond oil through my hair and rubbing it over my skin too for good measure.
Once my hair was tied into a braid, I pulled on a pair of black trousers and a loose, green shirt.
Over top, I slipped a soft black bodice with brown stitching around the edges, then inspected my breakfast tray.
Two speckled, hard-boiled eggs sat on a polished wooden plate beside a pair of thick griddle cakes drizzled in syrupy fruit topping.
I swiped my finger through it and let out a low groan when the taste hit my tongue—molasses mixed with sweet and tangy blackberries.
Beside the plate sat a chipped porcelain teacup holding a beautiful golden tea strainer made to look like an acorn.
The kettle behind me began to whistle, so I poured the water into the teacup and allowed it to steep while I dragged one of the armchairs out onto the balcony, then brought out a small side table and pulled a thick quilt off the bed so I could bundle up against the crisp air.
The forest was lively in the morning, with all manner of woodland creatures, and the Fair Folk, going about their daily business around the Bower, which I could just glimpse from my vantage point.
To my surprise, I was greeted by several winged fay as they soared past me, up to one of the balconies overhead, no doubt meeting with Oberon.
After several of these encounters, a thrilling idea occurred to me, and my hands flew back to my shoulders.
“Do I have wings?!” I gasped out loud. Abandoning my half-eaten breakfast, I yanked my boots on and took the stairs two at a time, passing by several landings with closed doors until I found one with an archway instead.
It opened up into an enormous room, where the ceiling went all the way to the top of the pine tree.
Every wall was covered in bookshelves, and I stopped dead, my previous mission completely forgotten.
The far wall of the library, which was almost entirely made up of a spider-web of branches supporting a single, enormous window, led out onto a broad balcony.
The window itself had no glass, and I assumed there was some sort of magyk barrier keeping the interior warm and comfortable.
A tall fireplace sat along the curve of the wall to my right, its mantle made from a single, polished log, and the floor was cushioned by more intricately woven rugs.
Small desks, chairs, chaise lounges, and couches sat scattered around the room, and each bookcase featured a rolling ladder, or spiral staircase, allowing access to the higher shelves, some of which had narrow catwalks built onto the fronts.
Oberon stood near the floor-to-ceiling window, speaking to Antenor, who spied me across the room.
“Cousin!” he called with a broad smile. Before I could even take two steps toward them, however, something enormous and solid slammed into me from behind.
Were it not for a sofa to my right, I would have been thrown to the ground.
Oberon shouted in the fay language and stomped toward me as I fell onto the sofa and tried to flip over to see my assailant.
It was a hound, or several hounds, perhaps—I could not tell how many due to the army of snuffling noses and wet tongues blurring my vision.
“Leave her alone, you monster!” Oberon snapped, dragging the beasts away from me all at once.
When I finally managed to sit up and wipe my face, my jaw fell open.
It was not a pack of hounds at all, but a single tawny, black-splotched body with three whining, slavering heads growing from its shoulders.
“Oh, Merciful Mother, you are the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen!
” I squealed, sliding down onto my knees.
The enormous hound wrenched itself free from Oberon’s grip and bounded forward into my open arms, knocking me backwards again.
A bit too late, I realized that my sense of self-preservation might be faulty, because I truly had no idea if the strange animal was friendly or not.
“Marina,” Oberon chuckled, coming to stand over me, “can you breathe?”
“If this is how I die, then I’ll go happily,” I cried from beneath the deluge of slobbery kisses and fur.
Sissi wouldn’t allow any animals at Locksley, save for our flock of chickens and a small colony of feral mousing cats, but I’d always dreamt of having a pet.
Will’s family kept a pack of hunting dogs, and he had snuck me into the kennels several times to meet new litters of pups.
A three-headed monster hound was, frankly, my dream come true.
When I finally extricated myself from the creature’s affections and stood up, it sat obediently at my feet, tail joyfully smacking against the floor and pink tongues lolling from all three open mouths.
Oberon smiled and scratched the ears of the nearest head. “I am glad to see you getting along, since he does technically belong to you.”
“To me?” I gasped.
“Lyric gifted him to Henry when he was just a pup, but naturally, he had to stay in the Arden when they left. A faithful companion, if a bit of a menace. Your father named him…Sir Toby Belch.” He paused and grimaced. “And he will not respond to anything else.”
“He is perfect,” I laughed, bending down to kiss all three of his noses, “and so is his name. We’ll be the best of friends, won’t we, Sir Toby?”
“It seems you’ve taken quite well to the Arden,” said Antenor, who was leaning on a table nearby with an amused smile. I couldn’t help still feeling wary of him, even though he had pledged himself to me back in the Hollow, but I tried to respond gently.
“It is easy to do when you are greeted with open arms.”
“Well, I do hope to see more of you. When we were children, Lyric and I used to go—”
Oberon cleared his throat. “Another report in two days, Captain. Thank you.”
Antenor just responded with a good-natured shrug, bowed to us both, then strode out to the balcony and took flight.
“I love the boy like my own,” said Oberon, “but he does enjoy the sound of his own voice.” Absentmindedly playing with Sir Toby’s collection of long, floppy ears, I burst out with the question I’d been holding back.
“Do I have my own wings?”