Little does he know, I am no stranger to prices – no stranger to pain. There’s nothing they can do to me that has not already been done in the most appalling of ways. If fae could break, I’d be snapped like a green branch. If we could be leveled, I’d be smooth as a planed board. But I have learned the lesson of suffering – I have learned to seal my heart.
I care nothing for their Mayfly Seer, or their mayfly lives, only for the passing entertainment they offer me. If they bore me, I will snap my fingers and step back into the Iceheim, my home among the frosty mountains that hold up the Roof of the World.
For now, the wind is balmy and warm where it drifts through my long black hair. It makes the tiny silver bells I’ve sewn into my locks tinkle as the wind shakes them. The sea smells of verdant life, and I am pleased by the rocking of the boat beneath my feet. For now, I am young, my wings not yet grown and my taste for adventure still ravenous. For now, I will humor them. After all, I am also in good humor.
For now.
“Remembering the prices you’ve paid, kinsman?” Precatore asks me lightly, but that he says no more and that he keeps his tone flat rather than gloating is as close to compassion as our kind gets.
I offer him a tight-lipped smile of gratitude. We are almost friends. I would like to keep that arrangement.
“Speak to me, mortal, of this price,” I say, lifting a single brow to ply him. Perhaps this will distract me from bitter memories.
“She takes the moments of your life – sifts them, weighs them, turns them inside out and upside down,” the mortal says with excited horror in his voice.
“I have no great knowledge of your sordid history, mortal,” I say lightly, “but there is no dark streak in mine I do not know or hidden part I fear to bring to light.”
All true. I know the depths to which I’ve fallen. I will never recover.
He laughs as if I’ve told a joke and Precatore laughs with him – or more likely at him.
I don’t notice the mayflies at first. Something touches my cheek and I brush it away and then another and another and by the fourth I realize they are everywhere. They descend on us so lightly, so effortlessly. There is no frantic flap of wings or buzzing cloud. One moment, our ship and bodies are bare and the next clothed in winged forms. They cling to us with sticky feet, their feather-soft wings caressing us. I care not. A fly is a fly and these neither bite nor sting nor buzz.
But the mortals around me curse and make the signs of their false gods, and my eyes narrow in interest as I watch them. This is entertainment. It is why I have come. I cannot keep one corner of my mouth from curling up into a smile.
Watching mortals play at life is more fun than reading it on a page or watching it performed upon a stage. It is just as transitory – and just as precious for its brief appearance.
“If you brought us here to be mauled by vermin, you could have just invited us to stay in your home another night,” Precatore complains.
Our ship rounds the island and on the other side is our goal. A gasp fills every throat when we see it and I think I might gasp, too, immortal though I am. Precatore makes a sound of approval in the back of his throat. This is what we’ve come for.
An ebony cage rises from the mist, looking as if it has been birthed from the sharp shards of this island’s rock rather than built. It ripples slightly in the light in a way that tells me it has been formed of an ancient magic. At its base, tentacles wrap – jet black. They grip the bases of the cage bars and hold them tight and motionless. I do not know if they are carved of the black stone or if they are of a living squid. If it is alive, it is steeped in dark magic that holds it motionless. The bars of the cage jut upward, morphing from crystal sharp shards to a dark smoke-like etherealness that twists and eventually joins to meet in a dome at the peak of the structure.
There’s a shoal of midnight shale that butts up to the cage and set in the shale are steps, carved by the tools of men. There’s even a post or two there to tie the ship’s boat. They’re made of rock and carved with ancient warnings. And rolling over all of it is the scent of magic so thick that I almost choke on it. All thought of the bauble I have come to collect has vanished and there is only this ebony cage in the swirling pale mist over the pewter waves.
It is empty.
I glance at the mortals, wondering if they will be shocked or horrified by this, but they wait, breath held, and as they watch the mayflies descend. Their bodies are pure white – whiter than any mayfly I’ve ever seen – though their wings are of the normal variety – magical until you look closely and realize they are anything but. They fall upon the cage like thick bridal lace, turning jet black to feathered white and I find that even I am holding my breath.
We are silent and the waves are still. My heart beats loudly in the quiet.
And then she is there, coated head to toe in mayflies so I can hardly make out the color of her hair or what she wears – or even if she wears anything at all.
Our boat is silently docked and the mortals scramble to tie it up, but I ignore them. I ignore their warding signs. I ignore their signs to me to wait.
Precatore is cursing behind me.
I leap from the boat into the shallow sea and stride up through the brackish water to climb the terrible ancient steps to her cage.
And when I reach it, I stay utterly still as if by the force of my refusal to move, I can bid her closer. My breath gusts across the mayflies, and their wings flutter in response, making very pale rainbows across the whiteness of the air.
She opens her eyes and catches a little fragment of my soul in their depths, shearing it off as the waters have broken the isle into shards of black.
Her lips part, but she does not speak. Mayflies pour from her mouth and swarm over my eyes. I fall to my knees, panic seizing me for a bare moment before I realize what is happening.
I am seeing.
And what I see is so much that I tumble into an abyss of sight, all other senses shoved aside so that I lose track of where I am or who is with me and see only the sights she offers me.
