Fae Hunter (Tangled Fae Book 1) Page 3

  “You know it’s my job to play music around town. I’ll be Chanter when my father is done.”

  “Sure. That mandolin is already getting on my nerves.”

  He picked out a little riff that I was sure was just for me. “You don’t think we just play music to entertain the town, do you? That doesn’t really sound like a valuable job.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to mention that ...”

  “The music keeps them back – the Fair Folk. It blinds them – almost like our own kind of glamor. What my father and I do is like guard work. We’re guarding all of you against the Shining Ones. Against the spirit world.”

  “Well, I’d say that I can see you’ve done a fine job, only I can’t see on account of having not being guarded very well.”

  His spirit shrugged. “You can’t protect people from their own stupidity.”

  “I guess I deserved that.”

  But that didn’t mean it didn’t sting.

  “I had a dog once who got a thorn in his paw. He’d always been the most gentle creature.”

  “Blackie,” I said.

  “Don’t interrupt. He slept in my bed. Ate from my hand. But when he stepped on that thorn, he snapped at everyone until it came out. Bit me and left a mark. I’d show it to you if you could see.”

  I snapped my reply. “But I can’t see. That’s worse than a thorn.”

  “I know.” He sounded like he actually meant it. “I just meant to say that I won’t take all that snapping personally.”

  “So, what are you doing here?” He was starting to irritate me with all his understanding and acceptance. It was making it too easy to cry. And I didn’t want to cry. “Looking to get bit?”

  “I was going to offer you a job.”

  I barked a laugh. “In case it hasn’t been made clear, I’m blind.”

  “Here’s my last guess,” he said, and his words were slow, like he was almost worried about this guess. “I want to get Hulanna back. And I think you’ll want that, too.”

  Chapter Five

  I swallowed. That was all I wanted – to get her back. That was even more important than my sight. But would she even want to come back? Did I care what she wanted when her choices had already hurt my parents so much? She was an idiot to go.

  I felt a little guilty at thinking that.

  I’d been there, after all, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy to say no to that Shining One when he said she was his fated mate. Maybe she was off in an enchanted world of gemstones and magic and fast-beating wings, enjoying sweet-tasting kisses with that gorgeous winged creature, threading her fingers through his hair and running them over ...

  “Allie,” my mother said a little breathlessly as she joined us. I could hear the small scuffling sounds of Olen standing up and backing away. He was always shy. He’d be trying to make himself shorter and hide his limp. I knew that look he always had when someone noticed him.

  I glanced at him, but in whatever world I was looking at, he was tall and straight, and his smile was confident.

  “Goodie Hunter,” he said gently as his mandolin quieted. “My deepest condolences on the loss of your daughter. I’ll take my leave.”

  “Chanter,” my mother acknowledged, and her voice hitched a little. Maybe she hadn’t heard many honest-sounding condolences yet. Chances were pretty good that Heldra’s mother was as good at rubbing salt in the wounds as her daughter was. “I thank you for your condolences.”

  He left to join his father as they set out on the road again. My gaze trailed after them. I wanted to go, too.

  Our village – Skundton – was in the shape of a cross with the important things like the inn and tavern, bakery and smithy at the crossroads and everything else moving outward on the four roads according to importance. Edrina and Heldra’s parents’ shops were close to the center, while our small home and goat pens were at the furthest end of the North Road. There was no one past us – not even farms since the soil turned hard and rocky here and the thorny bushes made clearing anything a nuisance. Only the graveyard lay further north and west.

  And yet, Olen and his father were not headed south to town, they took the narrow trail to the north. Would they go to check the Star Stones? Would they play music there like Olen suggested they did?

  “Any improvement, Allie?” my mother asked gently.

  I turned my head to her, blinking painfully at the way her image flickered in and out of sight. She was holding something bright – so bright that I couldn’t make it out easily. I could see her kindly smile through the flickering and blurring and a tear formed in my eye. I blinked it away rapidly.

  “Not really,” I admitted. “I can make out some blurry things, but ... no. No improvement.”

  Should I tell her about the Fae I thought I saw? What would they do with me if they thought I was crazy as well as blind?

  Would they send me to the healers in the lowlands? The rumors suggested that they were not kind to those who were mentally afflicted.

  “Give it time, love,” she said, kissing me on the forehead.

  “I’m so sorry, mother,” I said, trying not to break into sobs as my lips trembled at my admission. “This is all my fault. I should have stopped Hulanna. I should have – “

  She cut me off with the press of a finger to my lips. “Hush now, love. There will be no more talk of that. What happened, happened and can’t be taken back and we all bear the blame together. Here. I’d almost forgotten that I had this, but I remembered when Goodie Thatcher was going on in my ear about your sight. It was my grandmother’s – something that belonged to her people, the Travelers – and it’s yours now.”

  I reached out and took what she handed me It felt sleek and smooth and long. “A scarf?”

  “You can’t see the pattern, of course, but it’s beautifully made of some fine fabric we’ve no access to here. My grandmother always said that the wearing of it brought second sight.” She laughed with chagrin. “A foolish notion, of course, but I don’t know. With Fair Folk and magic and loss of sight ... well, maybe the idea of a magical scarf isn’t so strange, eh?”

  “Thank you, mother,” I said, stroking the scarf. It felt beautiful to my touch.

  “Given her the magic scarf, have you?” my father asked, joining us. He flickered in and out like a faint ghost of himself and he carried something in his hands. It was so frustrating that objects didn’t make more of a mark in this new vision of mine. “Good. Well, I’m off. Stag is hanging in the shed. If you have time, you can deal with it.”

  “Off?” my mother said, and I could hear the fear and worry in her tone.

  “We’re not the only ones to see losses today, Genda.” His voice was heavy. “We’re down a goat. And Crofter has lost a cow. And Fisher says he lost two big fish right out of his smoker.”

  “What does that have to do with you?” my mother asked. “We just lost a child! You need to stay and grieve with me, Hunter.”

  “And the Earthmover family lost their baby. Just two years old, she is. Gone.”

  My mother gasped and I felt like the air had been sucked out of me, too.

  “Their baby?” I asked in a small voice. “But a baby couldn’t get up to the Star Stones on her own.”

  “The poor little mite,” my mother said grimly. “The poor, poor little darling. It’s the old things come back. In my mother’s day, you kept your kiddies close and nailed horseshoes on the door and left out milk for the Fair Folk.”

  “That sounds crazy. What could milk do to protect anyone?” I scoffed. I’d seen the Shining Ones. I didn’t think they’d be too impressed with saucers of milk.

  “More than one baby was carried off in those days. Stolen by the Shining Ones. But I still don’t know what that has to do with you, Hunter.”

  “I’m Hunter for this village, Genda,” my father said grimly. “And I must push my grief aside and do my duty. I can hunt anything and bring it down. There’s a price to that.

  “You know I found that Ice Bear last year
after he killed old Crabtree. Took me four days in a blizzard, but I brought him down. When you’re Hunter for the village, you hunt what the village needs hunted, be that meat or be that threat. That’s the price.”

  “But alone? It’s too dangerous!” I could hear the fear in my mother’s voice. She’d just lost a daughter. She couldn’t bear to lose a husband now, too. And yet, he was right. We were the Hunters for our village, and I had been chosen by lot to follow my father in the responsibility. If honor and duty meant anything, then it meant doing the jobs that had to be done even when they were too big for you to do.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m coming, too, father.”

  Chapter Six

  “Absolutely not.” My father’s voice was as hard as the rock under our feet. “This is dangerous. And you are blind.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I can hunt blind. This is my fault, Father. I went with Hulanna up to the Star Stone ring. And when she went in ... something came out.”

  “You saw it?” His tone changed. Now he was all business. A hunter looking for sign.

  “It chased me, and I ran into one of the standing stones. That’s when I lost my sight.”

  My mother made a sad sound in the back of her throat, but my father was still intent on the details.

  “What kind of a creature did you see?”

  “He looked like a man, but he was thinner and more beautiful with perfect features,” I said. “He had wings, but he wasn’t flying.”

  My father’s tone was considering. “Did he wear boots or shoes?”

  I tried to think back. I hadn’t been looking at his feet, had I?

  “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that I saw him steal our goat.”

  “You’re blind, girl,” he said, and his tone was almost harsh – but it wasn’t harsh with me, but more harsh for me – like he wanted to shove that aside as badly as I did.

  “I see some things,” I protested. “I can’t explain it. Some glimmers of people – but they look different than they do for real. I saw the Shining One who chased me stealing our goat. I can see this scarf that Mother gave me. I see some things.”

  “Second sight,” my mother said with wonder in her voice. “She lost her first sight, but she still has second sight – the ability to see things on another plane. A different dimension than ours.”

  “Plane?” my father’s tone was as cynical as mine would have been a few days ago. “Dimension? That’s all nonsense. Magical nonsense.”

  “It wasn’t nonsense to my mother or her mother.”

  “Because they were crazy. Travelers. Magic lovers. Crazy people. You know I love you, Genda, but you come from a line of dreamers and fools.”

  “Well, explain what she’s seeing then,” my mother said, boldness in her tone.

  “She’s seeing what she wants to see. Imaginings. Wishes.”

  “I didn’t wish the goat away,” I said firmly, crossing my arms. “And I’m coming with you. After all, I am a Hunter, too. If this is your responsibility, then it’s mine, too.”

  My father sighed. “If you come, you’ll have to keep up. And you’ll have to do it on your own. I have a predator to track and hunt and no time to lead you around.”

  “She can’t!” my mother began, but my father cut her off.

  “Do you think you can manage to follow me by sound and this imaginary sight of yours?”

  “Yes,” I said bravely. Of course, he didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me, either.

  “Well. Alright then,” he said. He kissed me roughly on the forehead. “Bravery is a good thing to have. Now, kiss your mother while I find you a staff. We have ground to cover and daylight is wasting.”

  Chapter Seven

  The staff, it turned out, was a good idea. I grabbed it tightly as I tripped – again! – over a root I couldn’t see. Trees had shadows in this world – ghostly, faint things that glowed green, but they seemed to move and twist whenever I looked right at them crossing my eyes and giving me a headache and that made watching for their roots nearly impossible. Fortunately, I could follow my father’s bright glow ahead of me.

  “Stay five paces or more behind,” he’d said. “I’ll keep an eye out for you, but I want to spread out. We’ll see more that way. Tell me if you see any sign of the little girl or those Fair Folk. We’re going to get these Shining rats.”

  We were more alike than most people realized. I wanted to get the Shining rats, too. And then I wanted to see them hang in my father’s shed like that stag.

  I didn’t see signs of the Fair Folk. What I mostly saw were strange things. The ghostly trees were ringed by tiny stars in drifts like snowflakes in winter. Little trails of smoke-like color swirled up from the trail or around the trees in almost indiscernible clouds. My familiar woods of velvet shadows and warm autumn light had transformed into a dark fairyland where stars replaced autumn leaves and strange glowing strands replaced hard-packed dirt trails.

  Other trails wove through the ghost trees in colored ribbons– red or purple or gold. I was sure they each led somewhere, and I felt the urge to follow them, almost as if I was being drawn to the ribbons. Had they always been here in the woods and high mountain plains near our village or were they new things? Someone ought to follow them and find out where they led. Just not today. Not with the Earthmover baby missing.

  Movement flickered just outside my line of sight.

  What was that?

  I took another step toward my father, feeling outward with the staff. I was sure I’d seen something. If only I was carrying a bow like he was! Not that it would be very safe with my vision the way it was, but I’d feel safer.

  There it was again. So fast that I could barely see it at all.

  I swallowed, choking down fear. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face them again. I could almost feel the brush of fingers on my back like I had when he was chasing me from the Star Stone circle.

  “Father?” I called quietly. He wouldn’t want me calling too loudly. Not on a hunt. Even this might be too loud.

  Nothing.

  Another movement in the trees.

  And then he stepped forward. Not my father. Him.

  I could see him clearly – unlike the shadowy world around us.

  His unearthly beauty marked him as Fae, though not the Fae who had chased me out of the circle – unless they could change how they looked. Huge wings almost half again as tall as he was – black swirling woodsmoke – shot out from his shoulders and his long raven hair swirled around sharp, pointed features and delicate ears. He was utterly beautiful. Non-human. Otherworldly. Heart-meltingly gorgeous. Everything about him screamed to me, You aren’t worthy, mortal. I will take what I want from you because you never deserved to have it in the first place.

  He smiled slightly, tilting his head to the side with a glitter in his gorgeous green eyes. He gathered his hair up between his fingers and tied it back into a tight knot.

  “Want to play, mortal girl?” he asked.

  I could just imagine what kind of games this Fae would want to play – they probably involved taking things from me one by one.

  “Oh look, you said my name in your head, mortal,” he said with an eager smile. “‘Fae.’ Don’t you know that calls me? It opens your mind to me. Do you want me to read your thoughts, little mortal?”

  I tried to think of him as small and weak. Tried hard to project the idea of me being invulnerable and strong while he was nothing to me. Nothing. Nothing.

  “Oh, that’s cute, little mortal.” He laughed and for a moment his image flickered. For just a half-second I saw him as a feral creature. A red gleam tinged those beautiful green eyes. His clothing wasn’t finely tailored trousers and boots and coat. They were rags and bones and feathers. And those wings were nothing but bone with scraps of skin hanging from them, like when a stag sheds his velvet. His teeth were pointed like wolves’ and his face was far too narrow to be beautiful and around him, there was some sense that even now I wasn’t really seeing him as
he was. That something even darker and more twisted lay beneath this second surface.

  And then it was like an iron curtain slammed over my view and his beauty was back – maybe even more intensely than before. It left me breathless.

  I would do anything for him. Anything at all. Deny my family. Flee my sense of self. Give him everything. He was worth everything. I’d give all I had, all I was, for him, for him. My heart felt like it was dancing.

  I stepped forward, my heart soaring forward with me, pushing me further at the thought of him, just wanting to be closer, just wanting to feel that glow for another moment.

  His smile deepened.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  Musical strains of a mandolin – faint, but there – tickled the edges of my hearing.

  “In the moonlight...” the faint song being sung tickled the edges of my hearing “... in the noonday ...”

  The Shining One frowned. I was careful not to even think the other word anymore. Why was I being careful not to think it? When I wanted nothing more than to give him my whole mind? My whole self ...

  The mandolin was growing louder. And now I could hear it was Olen singing.

  “Noonlight, Moonlight, Noonday moonlight!”

  It was ridiculous. A folk song that didn’t even make sense. And yet the glorious being in front of me stood still, eyes glazed over as if he was stunned by the ridiculous folk tune. As if it captivated him like he captivated me.

  “Allie?” Olen called. He paused his playing as he asked, “Why are you just standing there? Allie Hunter?”

  As if the spell was broken, the Shining One winked at me and then crouched, bunching his wings, before leaping into the air, wings spread out and gliding away through the ghostly branches of the trees.

  I let out a long breath. He’d almost had me. He’d almost seduced me from reason like Hulanna had been seduced.

  “Olen?” I croaked through a dry throat.

  “We found the Earthmover baby, Allie. There’s no threat after all.”