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“Everything has a price. What price will you pay for it?”
“Don’t you do it,” a high-pitched female voice says right next to my ear.
Floating in the air next to me is one of the small fairies I saw darting around the leaves earlier. She has silvery hair that floats around her head almost like a halo.
She wags her finger at the gnome. “She’s not here to make deals with the likes of you. You let her be.”
“Bah,” the gnome says. “She asked.”
“And you can go on your way. Now,” the fairy says.
The gnome grumbles but turns and stomps away. Puffs of dirt poof with each pounding of his feet.
“Thank you,” I say, unsure what else to say.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” the fairy says, flitting up and down like a hummingbird darting between flowers. “You don’t want to make deals with him. He’ll hold you to the letter and that’s never good. Don’t trust him.”
“Okay,” I say. “But I do need to get back.”
“Back is a state of mind. Maybe you need to go forward,” she says. She talks as fast as her wings are moving, a mile a minute.
“Maybe?”
“Dugald brought you,” she says as a statement. “We’ve been waiting for you. If he’s right, you’re the one. Or you could not be the one. You could be a deceiver.”
“I don’t think I’m the one anything.”
“Isn’t that what the one would think? Yes. Yes, I think it is. If the one thought they were the one, then what would be the point of being the one? They’d be too full of themselves to be the one.”
I’m having trouble keeping up with her train of thought, which is circuitous enough on its own, but the speed she talks is ridiculous.
“Okay, can you help me?”
“Of course I can. Any of us can. Depending what it is you need help with there will be someone here who can help. For now at least. Soon we won’t be able to help anyone. We can’t help ourselves, of course. If we could, we wouldn't need you, now would we?”
I blink and shake my head. “Sure.”
“You need to see Caill. She’s the one for you.”
“Where do I find her?”
She points in a direction and then she frowns and points in the opposite direction. “Good luck.”
She smiles and flitters off.
“But—!”
She’s gone. I turn in a circle, sucking in a breath. No one is paying any particular attention to me. The different creatures do their work and only once in a while do I catch any of them so much as casting a glance in my direction.
Never mind the stranger lost in your midst.
Something moves towards me, coming into my peripheral vision fast. I duck, throwing my arms up for protection. A bird flies over my head then it caws loudly. Straightening, I turn around and see the raven sitting on one of the tree limbs. It tilts its head, one beady eye staring, and caws, opening and closing its wings.
“You are a jerk,” I growl, and it bobs its head as if in agreement.
The raven’s wings flutter then it lifts into the air and flies over my head again. I duck and turn with it as it passes. It flies in a circle as if waiting. I look around in a vain hope that someone else, anyone else, will offer some help or advice but no, I’m left to follow the bird.
Sighing, I do. It pauses fifty feet ahead and circles, apparently waiting for me to follow it. I have my doubts about this but having no other options, I follow. It stops every fifty feet or so and circles, making sure I’m with it, then resumes flying. It leads me past the tiny huts, out of the marketplace setting, and towards the dark that lies at the edge of the tree’s branches.
