A Glimmering Girl (4 page)

Sir Ross of Tintagos had jumped off a cliff, all right—but for himself.

The boat emerged from the mist rowed by its muscled female crew and steered by its fierce-looking, tattooed boatman. “Here’s Velyn,” she said to the infant. “You’ll be home soon.”

The boatman strode to the bow of the craft and extended his hand. Igraine steadied herself on his strong forearm and settled in with the baby on the centermost bench. The boat set out to the open Severn Sea and into the mist.

Igraine had never loved, but she’d spent the past summer in an extended tryst with Velyn. He’d awakened her to the promise of love’s delights, and she liked him still, but their desire for each other had abruptly died with the bonfires of
Nos Kalan Gwav
, the eve of the first day of winter.

Silent, he stood behind her and guided the boat through the mist. She remembered his muscle and sweat and hands and tongue and the shimmering heat they’d made together. All wonderful and exciting and somehow necessary, but the passion of it was over. She would likely seek his touch again, just for the pleasure and release of it, no romantic notions involved. But Velyn would never ride off a cliff for her—and neither would she for him.

The baby fussed, and Igraine rocked her. “We’ll have a wet nurse for you soon, dear one.” Perhaps one day she’d tell the baron’s son he had a daughter alive in the world. Perhaps not. At all events, it was likely that Sir Ross would never return to Dumnos.

“You are a daughter of the high gods, and your name is Lowenwyn,” Igraine said. And she would ensure the girl’s life embodied the name’s meaning—
shining joy
. 

Within the hour, the mist parted and the boat entered the calm lagoon of the lush island. Avalos, the sacred home of the wyrd. As usual, the evening sky was clear and the early stars twinkled cheerfully. Igraine felt certain later tonight she’d see the northern lights.

She thanked Velyn and set off for the island’s center on the path past the freshwater lake and the sword in the stone. She headed directly for the holy sanctum. There would be no begging, no need to implore the abbess to take in the child. A daughter of the high gods was always welcome at Avalos.

As Igraine well knew. 

« Chapter 3 »
Wandering Aengus

21st Century. The cliffs near Tintagos Castle

L
ILITH BAUSINEY STOOD
at the cliff above Tintagos Bay and scanned the Severn Sea’s mist-obscured horizon.
It’s there, I know it is.

But she didn’t know, did she? She only believed.

She sighed and leaned against the tree at the cliff’s edge. “Where is the island, Igdrasil?” she said aloud. “You could tell me if you wanted to.”

But Igdrasil no longer spoke to her.

The world tree was completely healed from being cleft down the middle—some said by lightning; some said by the high gods themselves. That was nearly a year ago, and for a while Lilith had believed she too was healed. The two spirits who’d tried to possess her and Cade had been set free. The dreams which had called her to Dumnos in the first place had ended.

She’d come for a vacation, to get away from a bad relationship gone very bad, and she’d been transformed.

No longer Lilith Evergreen, insurance adjustor from Indio, California. She was now Lilith Bausiney, Lady Dumnos, a countess in a real world fairy tale, married to the love of her life. A wonderful husband, practically perfect in every way. Except that he was late for lunch.

Her Mini stood alone in the parking lot—
car park
—and there were but a few vehicles on the Ring road, none his that she could tell. No surprise; the day was lousy for a picnic. But she and Cade didn’t care about that. They’d just wanted to get away for an hour or so before the gang invaded Faeview later this afternoon for the big game.

The mist shifted somewhat, and the horizon beyond the bay came more clearly into view. She half dreaded she’d see a tell-tall dark bump sitting on the line between sea and sky.

Don’t let it be real.

Dumnos was a land of mist and rain.
Right.
And of wyrd and fae, of gods and goblins and magic rings and tether jewels. A land where trees channeled the energy that animates all things and where mothers traveled through time.

Like Lilith’s mother. When Lilith was an infant, her own mother had brought her from the eighteenth century to the twentieth to escape a bad fairy. She’d grown up in a desert on the other side of the world. Then after her mother had supposedly died, strange dreams had called Lilith back to Dumnos.

Dreams of Igdrasil and Tintagos Castle, dreams of a wyrding woman named Elyse.

Thank the high gods she’d answered Elyse’s call. It had led to the weirdest, most unbelievable adventure of a lifetime. And to Cade.

Now last year’s drama was over and Igdrasil restored. You’d think she’d be allowed to get on with her life. But no. New dreams, terrifying dreams, threatened her lovely new world. And that wasn’t all of it, not even half.

Again she looked for the island. In her dreams it was so clear, so real. But the mist again thickened, and the horizon disappeared. Certainty and doubt played checkers in her mind.

The chill had already seeped into her bones. If Dumnos were a normal place, she’d call or text Cade and suggest they have their picnic at the lake near the Temple of Joy and Wonder instead. It would be a risk to meet so close to Mudcastle, but the lake was nearer home, and the mist rarely made it that far inland.

She couldn’t text Cade if she wanted to. In Dumnos cell phones—
mobiles
—were inoperable due to
atmospheric conditions
, as Marion’s daughter Sharon put it.

Lilith went back to the Mini and retrieved the basket and quilt she’d put in the trunk—
boot.
In a grassy spot between Igdrasil and the Lovers, she spread the quilt and laid out lunch—Hobnobs, cheese and pickle sandwiches, and a blended red wine. Nothing she would have eaten living in California. The wine was too expensive and the cookies and sandwiches too foreign.

Yet the foreign felt so familiar. This is where she belonged. In California she’d been the stranger in a strange land. She loved the thousand iterations of green in England, the constant rain and sudden surprising sunshine, and how in this rediscovered world so many things had names. Trees, for instance. Even her house had a name.

Two names.
Faeview
, the estate’s real name and the one Lilith preferred, and
Bausiney’s End
, the nickname laid on years ago by locals when they feared their lord would never produce a son. One way or another, the former Lady Dumnos had at length delivered Cade.

Igdrasil wasn’t the only tree in Tintagos with a name. The Lovers, a hazel tree entwined by a honeysuckle, had volunteered from the ground at the far end of Igdrasil’s visible roots and had grown to full maturity within minutes. The Lovers were said to embody the spirits of a cursed prince and princess bound to the mundane realm until Cade and Lilith had set them free.

Lilith knew better.

Galen and Diantha hadn’t escaped the gold and silver prison of the oracle’s ring only to be bound in hazel and honeysuckle. These plants had sprung up spontaneously, as if set by the mystic to mark the event. The real lovers had been accepted into heaven by Brother Sun and Sister Moon—along with Elyse, who had bound them. The high gods were merciful.

High gods!
Until she’d come to Dumnos, Lilith had never heard of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Now she realized her mother’s favorite oath—
great gods!—
had an actual source.

A horn bee-beeped from the road.

“Cade!” She waved as her husband parked his DB5, one of the actual Aston Martins used on the film set of
Goldfinger.
It had been a gift from Cade’s human father to his mother. Silly man, he had the top down on such a day.

“I’ve brought the biscuits.” He held up a tube proudly.

“Great!” She darted to hide the ones she’d brought. She was on her knees, slipping the cookies back into the picnic basket, when Cade came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Mm…” He nuzzled her neck and held the Hobnobs in front of her.

“Ooh, chocolate,” she said. “That will be good with red wine.” She pressed her back against his chest and his warmth. So good, so safe. She never wanted to lose this.

“My wife, the gourmand.” He sat down and opened the tube. At her questioning look he said, “Pudding first, sandwiches after. Biscuit?”

“Thanks.”

She ate the cookie while he opened the wine. It was nice, being with Cade alone. They were developing their own personal rituals and traditions as a couple. Eating Hobnobs at Igdrasil. Drinking Paraduxx wine on the rooftop at Faeview—or just about anywhere.

“I’m glad we decided on this.” Cade poured out two glasses. “I’m looking forward to the game, but I wanted to have you to myself a bit today.”

Lilith had always been wary of people in general, but Cade loved them—his family in particular. Having Marion and Ian and Sharon and Jimmy up to Faeview to watch soccer—
football—
later was just an excuse to spend time with them.

“Yes, well, it’s our turn to play hosts,” Lilith said. “So nice of them all to be our guinea pigs.” They hadn’t had any guests at Faeview since their wedding—unless you counted fae, and Lilith didn’t. Until last week, she and Cade hadn’t lived at Faeview since the fairy coronation, right after they’d learned they were both faelings.

Half human, half fairy.

Cade was not the natural son of the earl of Dumnos but of a fairy prince, and he was nephew to the queen of the Dumnos fae. Lilith’s parentage was even harder to believe. Her mother was a fairy, and her father was Donall James Utros Cade Bausiney, earl of Dumnos in the late eighteen hundreds—she’d been born over a hundred years before the date on her birth certificate!

They’d awakened to their fae natures when they went to Mudcastle, an enchanted fairy cottage which existed in liminal space between the fae and mundane realms.

The headaches had begun when they returned to the human realm, growing gradually worse until neither of them could take it anymore. They’d stayed at the Tragic Fall Inn in the village until all the cold iron at Bausiney’s End could be ripped out and hauled away.

They had developed an aversion to hard angles, and any steel not made of Dumnos iron brought on headaches and intense irritability. The windows and doors of Faeview had been built with such cold iron frames precisely in order to repel the fae, and now the lord and lady of the manor were both faeling.

Were the high gods having a laugh?

She and Cade hadn’t spent even a day at Mudcastle, and the cottage lay only partly in the fae realm. But just seeing the place had started the transformation, and being there in the company of so many fae at one time had seemed to accelerate the business.

At least, it had with Lilith.

It felt different now being in the mundane realm, as the fae called the human world. Being near non-Dumnos iron caused the headaches. Touching it brought on flu-like symptoms. Even thinking about right angles made her feel like someone had just scratched a chalkboard.

Everything tasted too salty. She could not believe how much salt people added to their food.

“Thank sun and moon the Paraduxx tastes the same.” Cade refilled their glasses and raised his. “To my glimmering girl. I love her with all that I am.”

“Have you always been such a romantic?” she said.

“Always,” he said. “It’s my creed. I could recite a romantic poem for you if you like.”

“Pfft! That’s nuttin’:

Antonio, Antonio
Was tired of living alonio…”

“Oh, nonio!” He put down his wine and lunged for her, covering her neck with kisses. “You know that poem gets me hot. I had something more tender in mind.”

“More tender than
Antonio
? I’m hurt. But never mind. Tell me about your tender poem.”

“I was fourteen when I went on a poetry kick. I had a crush on Mrs. Crandall.”

“Mrs. Crandall of Tea & Tins in the village?”

“Where do you think I picked up the Hobnobs?” Cade said. “I only knew her as Sheila then, the counter girl. She loved poetry. To impress her I figured I’d recite a poem, and I knew just the thing. Dad and I had recently watched
Peggy Sue Got Married—”

Lilith laughed. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“I know. It sounds daft. But James was a sucker for romance—and for anything about time travel. Remember the part where Peggy Sue goes off with the beatnik writer—”

“And he seduces her with poetry,” Lilith said.

“Just so. I asked James if he knew where I could find the poem from the film, and he pointed me to Yeats.” A soft look came over Cade. “I can still hear him.
Yeats is always your go-to for romance, lad.
”