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“I did, my lady sorceress. Would you like to see?”
“Not necessarily. I’m just curious what the stolid and serious Larch would take from that great collage of knickknacks.”
He didn’t tease well. Just glowered at me, brows furrowed while he dug in his little tunic. The thing fit closely enough over his little round body that I would have said he carried nothing. But he fished out an object bigger than his fist and held it up for me to see. One of those jeweled pear thingies. There had been a number of them, piled in a cauldron. They were pretty, but it surprised me that the practical Brownie had selected something so…frivolous.
“A gift for a pretty Brownie back home?”
He cocked his head at me. “She would have to be lovely indeed, to rate a dragon’s egg.”
I peered at it. “Is that a euphemism or can this actually hatch a dragon?” It didn’t look organic in the least. Of course, dragons seemed the exception to many of the magical rules, so what did I know?
“Whether it hatches or no is up to the bearer, the legends say.”
“And you’re going to take a crack at it.” I grinned at him. “I love that.”
He shuffled his feet.
“I have more, right?”
“Yes, my lady sorceress—three more.”
“When you get a chance, would you get one out for me? I want to experi—play with it.”
He bowed.
I swung up into Felicity’s simple saddle, suffering grumbles from Darling about being crowded and the nasty bag smelling like ass. A fine comment from someone who regularly licked his, I thought back at him, which shut him up. But I also added a buffer envelope of air around the bag.
“Lady Gwynn!” Puck managed to make his somewhat hasty arrival seem like a grand entrance. “You’ve forgotten something important.” With a wink and a shuffle step, he affixed a set of bells to Felicity’s mane. She shook her head and they jingled merrily. “So you won’t forget to find the joy, also. I shall miss you, my brilliantly powerful sorceress.”
“Why don’t you come with us?” I asked on impulse.
His cheerful expression crumpled like celadon tissue paper in the rain. “Alas, I cannot.”
“Why stay with Falcon? You can’t possibly like him.”
Puck tossed his strawberry blond curls, using the movement to see if anyone was close enough to have overheard, then produced a sunny smile. “I can’t possibly leave the war! So much glamour and excitement! You go. Success in your quest, Lady Sorceress.”
He danced off, singing a song about pigs in the rain. Everyone watched me expectantly.
“All right, let’s head out then.”
My word their command, everyone sprang into motion and we rode away from the war camp and the sea.
Part II
Early Failures
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Chapter 8
The Crystal Cave
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Fairy stories tend to leave one with the impression that travel between the realms is solely the provenance of the fairies—but is that truly thecase?
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Magic”
