Halloween I.F. – “Something Rich and Strange” – Day 18

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Star bowed deeply to the Lindwyrm. As a fairy, he knew better than to thank the Lindwyrm—though in this case it would likely be fine, since they’d already offered him something other than words, he didn’t want to antagonize the dragon. “I’m grateful,” he said softly. “Dominic is a man I have offered control of my life to, and he has repaid me in glory. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the situation, but the risk—”

“Either a demon or a witch, and another brook horse,” the Lindwyrm said, briskly. “Lord Dandelion has explained, including updating me as more information came in. I believe I have the gist. I will not get further involved, not for any blood or words, but I will offer my hospitality and protection, as discussed.” 

Star didn’t look at Dandelion, who’d surely school his expression in front of the Lindwyrm but who hated being called Lord. “Then I’ll withdraw for a moment to reassure my human that all is well here.”

He took Dom by the shoulder, bowing again and encouraging Dom to do the same, and stepped back into the hallway, shutting the office door behind him. Dom let out a soft breath, and Star heard himself letting out an echoing one.

“How’re you doing?” he asked Dom, softly.

The silence lasted a beat too long. “I’m fine,” Dom said, then kind of gave him a rueful expression. “Sorry. Not lying, just… overwhelmed.”

“I bet,” Star said. “You want to talk about it?”

“I… I don’t know. I guess,” Dom muttered. He ran both hands over his short, tightly-coiled hair. “To be honest, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to just be actively afraid of supernatural things.”

“Even though you’re down in the Valley all the time?”

“People forget,” Dom said. “You get used to it. It becomes background. There are other fears I’m more used to.” He laughed ruefully, still low. “When I rode you the first time, I was petrified, but what you were offering me… I mean, I didn’t want to say no. I just knew that deals with monsters went bad a lot, but you seemed so legit. And then you were. I rode you and I was perfectly safe. It kind of, after that, I just kind of started to roll with it. But… maybe it’s why I’d been nervous about meeting your boss and band. Like, it’d draw me deeper into a world I was just a visitor in.”

It’s your world too, Star didn’t say. Plenty of humans stayed far away enough from the Valleys to only have the barest of interactions with otherworldly folk. He drew a slow inhalation, tasting Dom’s sweat in the air, the sense of belonging that he had when he scented Dom, someone he’d quietly added to his herd even knowing it would almost certainly be temporary. Dom would leave, or die, or some other such thing. It was natural. Still, he braced himself for rejection.

“Do you want,” Star said slowly, “after this is all done and we know it’s safe, I mean, do you want to call it off? Go back to finding work as a jockey elsewhere?”

“I don’t think so,” Dom said quickly. “I mean—” Another one of those shaky laughs. “I guess it might depend on how this all goes. If something goes horribly wrong and I get hurt or something, maybe I’ll change my mind, so I’m not going to promise, but… I don’t want to. This is the world you come from, Star. It’s the one you’ve lived in this whole time.”

What was that meant to mean? Star shook himself a little. “So?”

“So I don’t want to just walk away from the lived reality of someone who’s important to me,” Dom said, tone raw.

Star sighed, leaning against the wall, which was cool against his back. He closed his eyes.”I walked away from it myself, you know?”

There was the rustling of cloth as Dom came to lean against the wall next to him. “What d’you mean?”

“A long time ago,” Star began, and made a face. Even with his eyes closed, he could feel Dom’s eyes on him. “No, I don’t want to begin like it’s a story. I was raised in a herd. We’re herd animals; a lot of fairies are solitary, but brook horses are herd animals. For a long time, as a colt, I didn’t question what we did? Even before the gates, there were enough humans who could cross over into our world, or where we could edge out into theirs to hunt. Rivers and things like that are often between-points. Anywhere a lot of people die can be, and rivers are like that. It just wasn’t reliable, not like it’s been since the gates have opened again.” Not that he’d experienced the first time the gates were open, long before his time, back in the age of myth. They’d closed off for the intervening millennia, and had reopened around twenty-five years ago. “So they’d wander in, or we’d find a spot and slip through, and then either lure someone over to us as a human or a horse, depending on how the hunting seemed best.”

“Drown them and eat them.”

“Yeah,” Star agreed softly. Fuck, he was hungry. He hated being hungry while remembering it. “I met a boy by the river. Fell in love, though it was really a crush in retrospect. I mean, I was just a colt. It felt like the whole world, though. Spent days playing with and talking to him, until my sister saw us and forced me to drown him.”

“Forced you…?”

Star shook his head. “I was afraid of being driven out, or rejected, or beaten,” he said softly. “So I did it when I was told I had to. Of my own will, but coerced.”

Dom let out a hiss of breath.

“Then we ate him, of course.”

“So you left?”

“No. I’m a herd animal,” Star said. “And I was a child. Where would I go? So we kept on like that, which was fine until I met a girl running from an abusive father. I was a bit older then. A teenager, though of course I still considered myself a colt since I wasn’t a full-grown stallion. She found the beautiful horse by the water and sobbed against me, and I killed her father for her. I didn’t do it in front of her, and she pretended she didn’t know what I did, but she knew, and she’d ride me and hug me and whisper thanks to me time and again. I refused to drown her when the herd confronted me about being so weak a second time.”

Dom’s fingers brushed his own, and Star let him take his hand. “So you left the herd then?”

“No. Not until after they drowned her. She tasted incredible. I couldn’t do it any more. I ran as far as I could, made myself as small as possible under a waterfall and sobbed as if the fall itself were my tears. I felt like my only options were two different forms of death for my own heart. Dandelion found me there and offered me his hand and protection. As two exiles, he said. So I walked off with him and never looked back.” Star sighed softly. The old story tasted bitter on his lips. “It’s okay if you need to walk away from a situation that isn’t good for you, Dom.”

Dom lifted the hand he was holding to his mouth and kissed the palm of it, then curled Star’s fingers around the kiss for him. “You’re very brave.”

“I really am not.”

“I want to be as brave as you,” Dom said softly. “And I want to stay with you. But if I can’t, it won’t be your fault. Okay?”

It wasn’t a promise, but it’d have to be enough. Star shook himself again and pulled away with a smile. “Okay. Let’s go talk to people and learn more about this place.”

For a moment, he thought Dom was about to protest, but he just nodded, letting Star’s hand drop. “Lead on.”

Star did, taking them back to the selkie, who was packing up her harp. “Hello, miss.”

“Hello, sir,” she responded. “Finding it to your liking, then?”

“My friend here is likely to stay for a time,” Star said. “I was hoping, since you were so kind when we first talked, that you could tell me a bit about your lord the Lindwyrm.”

Her lips seemed to tighten briefly. “You surely didn’t come here knowing nothing. He’s an archivist, a collector of stories, and will offer home in exchange them, and additionally will offer protection for those who will give their blood to maintain this old house. He’s very knowledgeable about the things he has heard stories of or studied, and not about much else, as he never leaves the home. But if he’s offered to protect you here, he’ll keep his word.”

Star tilted his head. “Is it okay if someone else gives the blood and stories? My lord Dandelion offered to.”

“Dandelion?” She seemed somewhere between shocked and taken aback, and certainly had recognized his name. But then, Dandelion was a famous musician, and she was a musician as well, so it probably wasn’t that different from if Star had said something like my lord David Bowie or My liege Mick Jagger. “That’s the lordling who came in here?? Goodness.”

“It was,” Star admitted. He decided to skip the fact that he also was part of the band. “Does that make a difference?”

“Not to the Lindwyrm, surely,” she muttered. She shook her head. “It’s fine to get it from a third party; it’s still an exchange. If the Lindwyrm agrees, there’s no problem.”

“Any rules I should know about?” Dom put in.

She turned his head slightly toward him. “Violating his hospitality could cost your life. If you do something to the other tenants here, I mean. Tidy up after yourself, be polite, and treat the other tenants like expensive furniture: nice to admire and enjoy, but don’t do a thing that you’d expect to harm them.”

“Can you show us to the room Dom would be staying in?” Star asked lightly. “We’d like to take a look.”

“I’m afraid not,” she said shortly. “I can’t see the signs on the doors. I know where mine is, and one or two others, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you which rooms were empty for certain.”

“I can do it,” another voice put in, and the cat-sìth walked in. They transformed as they went, shifting into an androgynous youth in black capris and a black sweater with a white shirt peeking out from underneath. Their hair was short and fluffy black, and cat ears poked out from it, along with two tails winding behind them. “Leave it to me.”

The selkie nodded to them and turned back to her instrument, and the cat-sìth gestured. “I overheard everything you told her,” they said cheerfully. “Come with me.”

Dom and Star shared a look, but followed obligingly. “I didn’t catch your name? I’m Dom,” Dom offered. 

“Call me Miette,” the cat-sìth said, and Star updated his almost-blank impression of them to terminally online. “Don’t let Eva freak you out.” It was probably Éabha, Star realized after a moment, not Eva. “She’s overly cautious, even paranoid. Well, a demon holds her skin, so she’s been in hiding for a long time. Leaves a girl bitter boots, don’t you know?”

“Sure,” Dom said, like that was a turn of phrase that made sense to him. “Yeah, I could see that. If I had to go into hiding without half of me, I think I’d be nervous about crossing any lines myself.”

“Good man,” Miette said approvingly. “The Lindwyrm’s fine. He’s brisk, but in my experience, he treats his people as people he cares for as a liege to his subjects, not as an owner to furniture. And he’s very accommodating to the fact that different folks have different needs. Why, we keep all windows closed in here at night to keep his protection stronger, but he lets me keep mine open so I can come and go at all hours, and just puts additional warding on my room. Here we are, then, this is the most likely room.”

They stopped at one that had a blank sign on it; Star noted the ones they’d passed all either had names or symbols that surely represented the people inside. Miette opened the door for them, and gestured.

The room was nice; a bit old-fashioned, like a room in a B&B that marketed itself on its old Victorian home quality. There was a big queen-sized bed against one wall, a nice roll-top desk, a big radiator heater already humming away, and a door into an en suite bath, which was a definite nice add, Star thought. It wasn’t huge, but it was elegant and comfortable. And, yes, a window, with a lovely old oak tree outside it.

“This is lovely,” Dom said. “I… yeah. I can stay here.”

Star’s heart leaped a little. “So you’ll accept protection?”

“Like we discussed,” Dom said, “I want to help, so I want you to call me out the moment I can be useful in anything. I really don’t want to be just left on the sidelines. But it sounds like the protection will be here whenever I’m in the house, and that’s fine as long as I don’t expect to get any additional help outside.”

“That’s normal,” Miette put in, shamelessly jumping into their conversation. “Most of us have things to do, so we come and go. The Lindwyrm never goes outside, so obviously that protection doesn’t follow.”

“Then I guess we should go do an agreement,” Star said. He nodded to Miette, who nodded back, then left them, wandering down the hall like they had nothing better to do. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Dom said.

The exchange was brisk; once Dom agreed, the Lindwyrm simply turned to Dandelion, who drew a vial of silvery blood for him. He had apparently already given stories, so there was nothing else to do.

“You can begin to stay here immediately,” the Lindwyrm said. “Come and go as you please.”

“Then I’ll go pick up some of my things,” Dom said. 

Dandelion rose, fingers pressed to his bleeding wrist and sealing the wound across. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “You ought to be protected by me until you’ve made it back here. Star, what would you like to do?”

That… was a good question. He followed them out, noticing that the selkie had left the main room now, presumably having gone back to her own; he wouldn’t get any more answers from her, it seemed. He was hungry and needed to eat, so that was probably a first step. But he also needed to plan more about what he was going to do next. Where should he go? Who should he talk to, and what should he do?

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