Chapter Eight
It was clear that she wasn’t going to give him a straight answer, and the more important his questions seemed, the less she was going to divulge.
“I see,” he said. “And where do I fit in that. Do I get to choose?”
She smiled. “Are you so anxious to leave?”
Garlon laughed. “It is only natural that I would hold concerns for my world, for my fellow shipmates. That galley was bringing us home from a long campaign. It was the last lap of a harrowing journey over land and sea. The knights were battle weary, longing for home. Is it any wonder that I would be anxious?”
“You were not so anxious before. This is the first you speak of their fate, Garlon Trivelyan,” she pointed out.
“Because you have enchanted me,” Garlon said.
“I granted your wish,” she murmured, “and honored you with my favor, but as I said—only for a little…until the dawn. I have said so from the start. I promised no more, or no less. Is your arm healed?”
“Yes, but—”
“Have I not given you my favor?” she interrupted him.
“You have, my lady, yes,” he responded.
“Then I have kept my word, Knight of the Realm, and I owe you nothing more.”
“But the dawn has not yet broken,” Garlon persisted, “and as you have so often said, time grows short. I would know how short, my lady? It is not an unreasonable request.”
The goddess smiled a smile that chilled him to the bone. “Like I’ve said,” she purred, “and I do not like repeating myself: That, my impetuous knight, does not depend upon me. It depends upon you. Come now, the best is yet before us.”
• ♥ •
Garlon said no more. He was at the mercy of the Goddess of the Cootie Well. Everything he’d heard about the Otherworld was coming back to haunt him, things he considered as naught more than myths or children’s tales.
They walked through the forest among the thinning trees, toward a little clearing beyond the thicket, where a blanket had been laid among the sleeping wildflowers. It was no ordinary blanket, but a thin veil of transparent film sprinkled with the morning dew. Bowls and platters set upon it were heaped high with apples, plums, and grapes along with fragrant breads and cakes glazed with honey. There were slabs of soft cheese, flagons of sweet wine, and crocks of mead—a veritable feast for the gods. She waved her hand and a ground-creeping mist rose like fog surrounding them.
Garlon was suddenly very hungry. His mouth was watering over the array of food spread out before him. Above, the moon was slowly sinking toward the horizon. Soon, the sky would lighten and he would finally have the answer to the question he so longed and dreaded to hear all at once: What would become of him when dawn broke?
Analee knelt upon the shimmering cloth and beckoned to him to join her. Garlon dropped to his knees, watching her examine the food. As good as it all looked and smelled, something nagging at the back of his brain brought a constricting lump to his throat. It was knowledge that one must never accept food from the Fae. To do so meant captivity in the Otherworld for all eternity. Was this what the goddess meant when she said it was up to him? If that were so, he knew what would happen to him if he did eat the offered food. The question was, what would happen to him if he didn’t?
“None for me,” he said, as she offered him a succulent grape from the bunch in her hand. “I am sated on your love alone.” Why did the word love taste so bitter on his tongue? There was no love in her, only lust. There was more love in the soft flipper of the strange little Selkie than there was in the goddess’s whole voluptuous body.
And why did the word evoke the little seal’s image?
The goddess bit into the grape she’d offered him. A rivulet of the juice trickled over her lower lip, glistening in the moonlight. The moon seemed to have frozen in the sky. Its position hadn’t changed since he crawled up on the shore.
Garlon nodded toward the heavens. “We seem to be frozen in time,” he said, as casually as he could manage.
“You mortals—always so obsessed with time,” she returned. She caught a drop of the juice on the tip of her finger and sucked it clean. “If you only knew how much better you would fare in your world without it.”
Garlon couldn’t imagine a world without time. Nonetheless, he was held captive in one now, and if he wasn’t very careful, very clever, he would find himself a prisoner in the Otherworld forever.
He laughed. “And you, I fear, could never become accustomed to the restrictions of time were you in my world, my lady,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” she admitted. “But then, I will never have to.”
Of course she wouldn’t. There was no entity powerful enough in the mortal realm to bind her there against her will, as she was going to attempt to do to him in her world.
“And yet, time must exist here for you to have stopped it,” he served.
“All here is illusion, Knight of the Realm. Like my pool, which is fathomless, your mortal boundaries have little meaning here.”
“Even you, my lady? Are you merely an illusion?”
“Does your body tell you I am such?” she asked, her smile salacious.
Garlon was about to reply, when the whiz and twang of an arrow, finding its mark struck the cloth dangerously close to his left thigh. He vaulted to his feet, searching the drifting mist for some sign of the bowman who had launched it. But all was still. He snapped up the arrow, broke it over his knee, and tossed the pieces aside. No sooner had he done so another arrow whizzed past him to bury itself in the ground exactly where he would have reclined.
Analee laughed as Garlon disposed of the second arrow as he had done the first one. “Mòhr is anxious for the dawn as well, I think,” she tittered, rocking back on her heels.
A third arrow sailed through the air. This time it struck close to Analee, and her demeanor darkened. All trace of her levity disappeared as she surged to her feet.
“Perhaps he is the one in need of tethers,” Garlon said, as the centaur pranced out of the mist, his dark glower menacing them both.
“I will deal with this,” the goddess said. Swirling her transparent cloak about her, she strode toward the creature, who had notched another arrow in his bow.
“Put that down!” she commanded the centaur.
“You mean to keep him!” the creature said, waving his arm toward the sky. “This is not like the other times. I saw you in the wood.” He thumped his chest with a scathing fist. “I am your consort. Him, never! He will taste my arrow if you detain him here.”
“You overstep your bounds,” she warned him.
“I am trapped thus!” the centaur said, rearing out of her reach. “I am denied you while you lie with that…that human!”
She had tampered with time—his time, at any rate. Garlon had his answer now. His worst fears were realized. She did not mean to let him go, she never did. She had tricked him—bewitched him—beguiled him with her Fae glamour, and he was at her mercy. Cold chills riveted him to the spot where he stood.
That was the other thing he should have remembered: The Fae could never be trusted. They were tricksters and pranksters, and no matter how sweetly they seduced a man, he was doomed if he were to succumb to their wiles.
“You do not rule here, Mòhr!” the goddess raged.
“Keep him, and I will kill him, Analee. You were right when you told him my aim was true, that if I wanted to hit him I would have done so.”
“You heard that, then?”
The centaur nodded. “You forget that I hear everything! You go too far. Keep in mind that I can redeem myself with the gods by exposing you. Annis would not take kindly to the way you have abused your office were she to learn of it. She has dominion over all the wells—and you, my sweet! When she learns of the cage…”
“You wouldn’t dare!” she challenged.
“Oh, wouldn’t I? Do not think to put me to the test! And as to your human, I do not want to kill him. He is just as much your victim as I am. But take no comfort in it, for I will if needs must.”
“Be still, I said!” the goddess demanded, leading him away.
Though they spoke still, they were out of earshot, so Garlon sank back down on the cloth. Analee was definitely up to something. The quirk of fate that had pitched him into the Otherworld had left him ill prepared to deal with whatever that might be. He would have to rely upon his guile to outwit the goddess, and what details of faery myths he’d been fed at his mother’s knee. So far, the latter had served him well enough. He knew not to trust any entity, or accept food in the Otherworld. The trouble was most of his Otherworldly edification came in the form of prevention, rather than cure. He knew what to do to avoid captivity, but not how to escape from it—if there even was a way to escape. It did not bode well.