Chapter 9 Faron
FARON
I ris whined, refusing to cross the rapid little stream. She would not even let her paws touch the water. Despite the late hour, the hills were clearly visible all around them. The grass seemed to shimmer with their own innate light.
“It will be safe, I promise,” Faron said from the other side. It was no deeper than his heel and no wider than the length of his arm, but Iris was not afraid of the crossing itself. She feared what she sensed on the other side. He sensed it, too.
The stream marked the fairies’ territory, as did the line of stubby blackwall mushrooms that grew on the eastern, and only the eastern, side.
Iris lowered her head, raised it, and then scooted toward the water before immediately retreating.
Her paws wore a circle in the soft soil as she spun in place in her frustration.
Faron crossed his arms, debating if he should carry her across, but then quickly dismissed the idea.
He would not demean the coyote in such a manner.
“Do you trust me, Iris?” he asked.
The coyote paused to meet his gaze. He sensed her answer. Not yet a “yes,” not quite a “no.” Faron drew his sword and scraped away the mushrooms that formed a perimeter along the water, then knelt with his knees in the center of the stream and extended his arms to her.
“I have met their kind before,” he said. “They will not harm you. At worst, they will pet your fur a bit too aggressively… and maybe see if you will play a game of fetch.”
Her nose wrinkled. The lone thought was so strong he practically heard it in his mind.
Fetch?
“A game of retrieval,” he said, and laughed. “Do not worry. I will not expect you to chase sticks for their amusement, nor mine.”
Iris lowered her nose to the water, sniffed it a few more times, and then batted it with a paw.
When she suffered no ill effects, she retreated a few paces, turned about, and then sprinted across the stream as if her heels were on fire.
Faron winced as she splashed his face and chest with her passage.
“Fair enough,” he said, and stood. He took in a long breath and then let it out slowly.
If only he felt as confident as he sounded when speaking to Iris.
True, he did not anticipate the fey would harm the coyote, for their love of nature was unmatched.
But as for their ire? Well. It was not reserved for humanity alone.
Iris kept close when they resumed their walk following a naturally formed path where the hills touched. At least, it seemed natural, though Faron had his doubts. The grass was smooth and low, and rows of yellow and purple roses formed faint lines to either side of them.
As a test, Faron brushed one with his foot.
The purple rose’s petals burst like shattered glass, violet light wafting like smoke into the night sky.
An unnatural rose, one of their own creation.
Beautiful, he had to admit. He wondered what a full field of them might look like, and how lovely the eruption would be if Iris took a wild sprint through their center.
The hours passed, quiet and entrancing in their beauty.
The hills broadened, the gaps between them growing, until they walked through the heart of a valley overwhelmed with flowers.
It seemed Faron need not have to wonder.
A rainbow of color exploded with their every movement.
The air sparkled with light, shimmering, ephemeral, and shifting like smoke.
The coyote’s nerves eased over time, and twice he caught her playing with the flowers, purposefully nudging them with her nose or tail to make them dissolve.
They reached the first of the bushes near the center of the valley, black thorned and taller than Faron.
They were clearly trimmed, and though they grew in a continuous line, it waved and curled like a serpent’s tail.
Little red fruits grew amid their blue leaves, the size of raspberries but perfectly spherical and swollen like cherries.
Feyberries, to those who knew of them. Poisonous, even to Faron, but not lethal.
Should one be willing to endure the stomachache and chills come morning, the berries promised wondrous dreams so vivid they felt like they lasted days.
Faron followed the bushes until finding a sudden gap. Within were more walls of bushes, curling and looping together to form a maze. Iris looked at it, looked at him, and then whined.
“I promise, the only way out of the valley is through that maze,” Faron said. “Should we try to go around, we will find this maze waiting for us after every hill we crest. It’s either turn back or go through, and so we go through.”
Faron entered the maze, and he trusted Iris to follow. She did, but only after one last longing look behind them. He patted her head, and she did not recoil from his touch.
The entrance was sealed off, blue leaves and black thorns forming a wall.
Faron did not try to map the maze in his head, nor give any serious thought to its twists and turns.
There was no solving a fey maze. Either they chose to let you out or you remained lost within it.
Not forever, not unless you had committed a serious crime against the faeries.
Just until you realized you were completely at their mercy… or they got bored.
Faron held no desire to wait that long. He walked until he found the heart of the maze, marked by a circle of gray mushrooms around a small patch of grass. He placed his sword and sheath just outside the ring and settled into its center on his knees. Iris sniffed at the mushrooms, then sneezed.
“Stay free of it,” he ordered her. “This risk is my own.”
She seemed all too happy to agree. The coyote plopped down, crossed her front paws, and then put her head upon them to watch.
Faron pretended not to notice the nervousness in her eyes.
He had to remain calm for what was to come.
He bowed his head and rested his hands on his knees.
A bit of exhaustion tugged at his eyelids, but he had many, many lifetimes of learning how to push through tired limbs and a need for sleep.
“A stranger, I come into your lands,” Faron whispered, trusting the faeries to hear him. “A friend, I would leave them. Are you near, masters of bush and vine, flower and thorn?”
Iris whimpered. The grass rustled on a nonexistent wind. The light of the moon shone brilliant.
Faron opened his eyes, and he did not hide the radiance within them.
“There you are.”
A dozen of the little creatures hovered in the air around him, unseen to any eye lacking the eternal blessing.
Their wings buzzed like those of dragonflies, their faces insectoid, their eyes slanted and colored a solid red.
Their bodies were long and lean, covered with chitin that shimmered all colors of the rainbow depending on the angle at which the moonlight struck them.
Their feet dangled beneath them, dainty and three-toed.
Little antennae poked out above their eyes, blue-white light glinting off the edges, as if they ended at tiny stars.
“You see us?” one of them asked. She pointed, her three fingers black and clawed. “How?”
“His eyes,” another said, hovering closer. He scrunched his face unhappily. “Radiance. You are one of the cyclical, the eternal, the ever-living.”
“I am,” Faron said. “And though it has been many years since I met your kind, I am ever grateful to be in the presence of your beautiful valleys and flower-crowned hills.”
“Flattering words,” a third said. She was larger than the others, and her colors did not change with her flight. Instead she remained a regal purple from head to toe, all but her eyes, which blazed a red deeper than blood. “We listened to such words before, and it cost us dearly.”
Iris barked and sat up, looking supremely confused.
Two faeries hovered to either side of her, and though she looked, she could not find the source of the buzzing in her ears.
Even their scent would be disguised, if they so wished it, for they were masters of deception.
They possessed the power of radiance, but the manner in which they manifested it was unique, just as the abilities wielded by Faron and his siblings were unique to them, as the powers of prophecy were to the dragons and the manipulation of stone was to the elusive qiyan.
“But were those words from my mouth, or were they from the short-lived humans?” Faron asked, focusing his attention on the purple faerie. It marked her as the eldest, and the valley’s grove-mother. The others would listen to her and honor her decisions.
The grove-mother hovered closer, her arms crossing over her chest.
“From the one named Mitra Gracegiver.”
Faron failed to hide his disgust. Mitra, the alias taken by Eder during Faron’s sleep.
“Mitra is my brother, whom I seek to punish for his transgressions,” he said. “What crime did he commit upon you?”
The faeries began shouting in a sudden flurry.
“Banished us!”
“Tricked us!”
“Lied, and schemed, and killed us!”
The grove-mother lifted her arms, silencing them.
“He came to us and called us friend,” she said. “But his words were poison, and his fingers scorpion stingers. His church declared us wretched. His soldiers came with fire, and sword, and heavy nets.”
She lowered her head, and her voice became a whisper.
“They captured my friends. My family. Captured them and put them in jars.”
Faron’s stomach twisted at the thought. The sight of insects within Preacher Russell’s jar had been vile enough. To place the mischievous but kindhearted fey within? To subject them to such torture, all to gift radiance to Eder’s loyal followers?
Unforgivable.
“Do not trust him,” the other faeries began arguing.
“He is like his brother.”
“He will bring the nets again.”