She laughed again, at some private joke, then made a gesture that sent Frog fluttering from her shoulder to Fola’s hand.‘I am glad that you found us, Fola.’Afanan tilted her head thoughtfully, her black and silver hair draping over one shoulder.‘I had been thinking of the City.Of returning.This seems the right time and opportunity.’
‘Why didn’t you stay before?’Fola asked.‘I can’t imagine Tan Semn failed to convince you.’
Afanan’s smile turned sad.‘At the time, I felt unworthy.I have spent these last decades trying to prove that I deserve what it offers.First, by gathering power.Secrets and relics to add to your library.Now, and for near the last decade, by caring for this girl.Trying to protect her from the power and horror thrust upon her.Maybe I have earned paradise, after all that effort.Or maybe that feeling was always foolishness.Maybe I am simply wiser, now, and know that wealldeserve goodness, if we can learn to accept it.’
She shrugged, playing off the melancholy in her voice.‘Now, if you will excuse me, it has been a very long day.I will need some rest before we continue our little plot to lure Siwan and Llewyn to paradise.We will talk more tomorrow.’
The wagon groaned as Afanan stepped down, and the door creaked as she closed it behind her.Sounds she had suppressed when she had entered and appeared behind Fola like a ghost.Now, Afanan left her alone in this, the trove of her secrets and her power.
The black gem lay on its nest of pillows, its red light trapped in a faceted cage.If Fola took it, she might pull the thread it offered and begin untangling the puzzle of Siwan’s powers on her own.At some risk to the girl, of course.
She shut the trunk and latched it.As she did, the hairs on the back of her arms tickled up.Through the loupe, the knot of magic had reappeared, as though it had been waiting for Fola to do the right thing.
Perhaps the path to earning trust was to offer trust in turn.Risking betrayal was the price paid to build the bridge from one person to the next.A strategy that seemed to work for Afanan, at least.And, now that Fola thought of it, a strategy that worked well for Arno, too.
Fola left the gem in its trunk.She stroked Frog’s wing as she walked back to the Garland Inn.At the first blush of dawn light he started to softly coo.
A Girl on the Road
YC 1189
My mother taught me well and good
T’fear the faeries of the wood.
‘They’ll eat your hearts,’ so we were told,
‘And take ye so ye’ll ne’er grow old.’
Parwysh Child’s Rhyme
Jareth had endured enough.
He was never built for the life of a travelling trouper, meandering from place to place, hoping the next inn on the road would accept entertainment in lieu of coin.Nor for hard beds and harder crowds, with little taste for true drama and an overenthusiasm for slapstick and bawdy jests.No, he had been born for silk and sensitivity, and at last fate, or the Old Stones—or whatever powers shaped the stage and direction of his life—had seen fit to match his resources to his nature.
The heavy purse jangled and thumped in his saddlebag, louder than the clop of Bess’s hooves on the road.Louder, even, than the lingering screams of the terrified and dying.He had been willing to endure a difficult life, so long as it provided the opportunity to spend some nights on stage disappearing intotruthandbeauty, performing the soliloquies and monologues of the great poets.Tensirr of Alberon’sThe Descent of Caius, with its famous speech plumbing the depths of despair, pondering the questions that plagued every mortal life.The oft-quoted final conversation between Polon and Bithia in Martinette Martin’sHow Soft Blows the Eastern Wind?full of heartfelt longing masked by stinging wit.A true encapsulation of tortured love long denied, if ever he could find a proper partner to perform it.
That one night, when he was ten years old, summoned from the brothel’s vulgar scents into the elevated perfumes of The Rose—Afondir’s great theatre—Jareth had seen his mother infuse Bithia with a sublime reluctance, glimpses of honesty showing through a mask of barbs and innuendos.Nothing he had seen since—nothing he had performed in his entire life—had ever matched that golden memory.
If only she had raised him instead of abandoning him upon her ascent to the stage.A child had been a burden better left behind in a nest of frayed silks and cheap perfume with the other pleasure women of the Daisy and Drake.He might have matched her.He had the potential—had always had it, he felt in the marrow of his bones—but never a chance in twenty-seven years to truly unlock it.A seed of talent unwatered, a sprout untended, forced to grow tough and stunted merely to survive among the weeds of the wild world.
No longer.With the gold in his saddlebag, he could start anew.Rent decent lodgings—Stones, perhapsbuylodgings—in Afondir, in the entertainment district.Attend performances every night.Learn at the feet of the greatest thespians in the world.Refine his craft, work his way up from the satellite stages until he, at last, strode the ancient boards of The Rose and threw his voice to be caught and conveyed by its wondrous, swooping rafters.
There had been a twinge of shame when the thought had first occurred, in the moment that woman had opened her hand and he had felt the weight settle in the bottom of his hat.The nightmare that had followed, however, had settled his mind and soothed his heart.The girl Siwan, no matter how lovely her voice and deliciously tragic her past, was a danger.Afanan knew it.Even Llewyn knew it.Travelling with her was like living with a knife to your neck.In the four years since the last time one of her fits had called ghosts down from the sky and soaked a field in blood, Jareth had often woken from nightmares.He had spent more than a few days watching the girl from the corner of his eye, wondering when next she might tumble over the edge of sanity and control.
In all likelihood, the girl had killed the rest of the troupe that very night.Or she would, eventually.It was inevitable.Better—not just pragmatically but morally better in some sense that Jareth felt but could not put words to—that he take the gold and start afresh for himself.Some good deserved to sprout from that midden heap.
He rode into the depth of the night, passing Bryngodre, the branches of its ancient oak like a dark hand reaching to grasp at the night sky.It would have been safer and faster, he knew, to ride south towards Halway into Forgard, and thence east to Afondir, but he and his horse had panicked in the chaos.To traverse the Windmarsh by night was to gamble with Bess’s ankles, to say nothing of the risk of bandits emerging from the hills, or the unburied dead rising from ancient battlefields.A possibility he hoped he had left behind, but he had never expected to find himself in the company of a young girl whose weeping could rouse wraiths to begin with.The memory of hands reaching down, of silhouettes standing at odd angles in the sky, of bodies coming apart like paper, made it difficult to discount any possibility.
At the place where the old First Folk road vanished beneath the marsh, he dismounted and sought a campsite.An old, time-worn wall of mortared stone stood atop a nearby hill.Not true shelter, but enough to shield him from the wind for a few hours until dawn.He dismounted, tied Bess’s reins to a jutting bit of the wall and gave her a hurried rub-down.Sudden, unplanned flight left little time to gather such things as a firebox or a bundle of kindling, and so with no material for a fire he merely wrapped himself tight in his cloak and sat with his back to the crumbling ruin.Drowsy memories carried him to sleep and became hazy dreams: of The Rose; of golden curls bouncing; of old Alma pointing up from the commoners’ pit below the stage and whispering, ‘There she is, little one.There’s your mother.’
He would join her, finally, soon enough.
Whickering and stamping hooves drew him out of sleep.Bess tossed her head, her eyes as wide as coins, the reins taut between her and the wall.Jareth scrambled to his feet, blinking sleep from his eyes, searching the sky and the scant vegetation clinging to the hills for sign of unnatural wind, or dark silhouettes against the stars.Surely Siwan’s terror would not have followed him this far.Unless she had somehow learned of his thievery and treachery, and sent her wraiths to hunt him down.
A silly thought.The girl could no more control them than control her seizures.Still, he regretted having shown Llewyn the hat of coins.The troupe might well come after him, if any of them survived.
His gaze lit on a silhouette crossing from the First Folk Road towards him.Panic, fear and drowsiness made it seem a wraith at first glance, and he reached for Bess’s reins and began untying them with quaking fingers.
