How (Not) to Soothe a Siren (Cindy Eller Book 9) (5 page)

I
had worried, wept, and wondered about the fate of my familiar, but never in my greatest launch of creativity had I expected to see him here, and like this—in, almost, human form!

I pinched myself when no one was looking, just in case I was in the middle of one of those crazy dreams brought on by too much ice cream and not enough sleep.

Nope. He was still there, smiling away behind that ridiculous beard. He had slapped his hat back on his head, either not noticing or not caring that it was still mashed and in decidedly worse shape than when he had removed it.

I wanted to groan. How was I going to be able to take him seriously in a hat like that? Or with that bushy, spikey beard of his? The Merlin I had known had been staid and handsome in a feline sort of way. He had been the epitome of fastidious felinehood.

I had so many questions.

Mom, of course, took Merlin’s reappearance, and as a man, without so much as a hitch in her step. Her face even turned a little pink when my former-familiar bent over her hand and kissed it, like any Elizabethan-era gentleman. He grinned impishly up at her and twirled his mustache like any silent movie villain.

I wondered if it was time to question my sanity. I was the only one who apparently was having any issues with Merlin’s abrupt transformation… and reappearance.

“Ki-ki,” Asher babbled, reaching towards Merlin. “Kiki! Kiki!”

Timothy and I exchanged a look. My stomach squirmed. I might not have been a mother for very long, but I was pretty sure Asher was jumping the gun on the whole talking thing.

I looked down at my son with new eyes. Was he growing up… too fast? I couldn’t be sure. He looked just like any four month or so old baby to me. He had round cheeks and chubby thighs, with those adorable inverted dimples in his hands where his knuckles should be.

The talking thing had to be in my imagination. I was worrying too much. That, at least, I knew was part of the whole motherhood package.

I caught my mother looking at me. She gave me one of her pointed looks—the kind that I could never read. What was that raised eyebrow supposed to mean? ‘You’re in trouble for breaking curfew’ or ‘never trust a vacuum salesman’? Obviously, on top of needing to learn Old Norse, I needed a few lessons on ‘interpreting facial expressions of maternal persons’.

Her eyebrow rose again, this time with emphasis.

“Hey, Mom,” I said. “Did you want to talk to me about something?”

She sighed deeply through her nose. “Fine. Yes, Cindy. I would like to speak with you. Alone. OK?”

Timothy raised his eyebrows at me.

I shrugged.

He nodded his understanding.

Why couldn’t I do that with my mother? Was I missing some kind of decoder ring?

I snorted softly as I followed my mother back up to the level of the inn where the rooms were kept. She opened her door and ushered me in.

“Let me see the baby,” she said, holding out her arms with no preamble.

I hesitated only a moment before handing Asher over. Not because I didn’t trust my mother—I did, completely—but because, if there was something wrong with him, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

Our bond was so new, so precious. I didn’t want to let anything change that. Not that I could ever love him less—I knew deep in my heart that nothing could change how much I loved him—but, that it might change? That something might alter the shape of that love? I wasn’t ready for that.

Mom hummed a little under her breath, grinning and playing with Asher as she undressed him, all the way down to his diaper. He squirmed in a mass of giggles as she poked his belly and made a silly face at him.

She snapped her fingers at me, so I hurried to my room, two doors down, to get him a fresh diaper and some wipes.

When I returned, she was holding him up in the air, blowing bubbles on his stomach. Asher shrieked in glee, stretching his soft chubby shape into a flying arc of glee.

She gave him another little bounce and his giggle filled the air.

I had to smile. The sound of Asher’s laughter made an answering giggle bubble up inside of me. It was infectious, in all of the best ways.

Mom took the diaper from me and made short work of changing my son. I had to hand it to her—she was an expert diaper-changer. She had Asher clean and dry in no time, without any of the sad faces he usually made when I changed him. He hadn’t even had a chance to scrunch up his nose.

Diaper clean, she put him on her shoulder and patted his back as she did the kind of swaying-dance all mothers seem to instinctively know. He let out an enormous belch and relaxed into a boneless lump in her arms.

“He’s advanced for his age,” she said, after a long moment, her voice showing no signs of anxiety. Her voice gave no indication of whatever she might be feeling. “I’d guess, physically he’s about six months old. Mentally, older than that. I wouldn’t worry, though. We knew that we didn’t know his bloodlines. We know he’s part Fae. Fae children grow faster than human children do—you were talking early, too. You scared the living daylights out of people, holding conversations when you had just learned to walk.”

“So,” I said, hesitating for a moment. I was still on the fence about how much information I wanted to have. “Asher is going to be fine?”

“Asher is just
perfect
,” she said, her voice slipping into baby talk with the last two words. “Absolutely perfect. Aren’t you baby bunny?”

Asher crowed and clapped his hands, turning his whole body so he could look up at her face.

“So, he’s not in any danger?” I asked, reaching to take him out of her arms.

Mom shook her head. “Not at all. My Magic says that all of this is just normal—his normal. We can’t expect to measure him by our standards. He’s a very healthy little boy. And… his Magic is quite powerful.” Her grin widened at that.

I laughed. My mother had always wanted her children to excel. It didn’t surprise me that she wanted the same thing for her grandson.

“What kind of Magic does he have?” I asked. I slid him back into the onesie his Aunt Tansy had given him. It was one of the only winter-appropriate outfits we had for him. It was already looking pretty snug on him, even though it said it was size ‘nine months’.

My mother’s gaze grew distant as she considered. Her lips made a thoughtful pout. Her pause didn’t worry me overly much. My mother wasn’t the type to rush into things. Except, I supposed, sneaking into Faerie, meeting my dad, and having me. Maybe that was why she was so cautious now.

“I’m not sure,” she said, after due consideration. “And, no, I’m not holding out on you. It’s complicated. It’s easier to define Magic when you know the general parameters, you know. We know so little about his past, whether he is game, fish, or fowl, so to speak. Knowing that would go a long way for narrowing down his Magic.”

I nodded.

“He has a sort of… electricity about him, doesn’t he?” She leaned forward to bop his nose with a fingertip. “And something that’s like fire—but not quite like yours.” She flicked the fingers of her free hand with a shrug and her inability to pin it down.

I stiffened. “Fire Magic?”

It was a well-known fact in the Magical world that fire Magic was the most dangerous form of Magic. The life expectancy for a Fire Mage was… painfully short.

“No,” my mother said quickly. “That’s the strange thing. It’s almost as if one of his great-grandparents… or somewhere down the line, was a fire elemental or some such creature. He doesn’t possess it—he
is
it. It is part of his fundamental makeup. I don’t think you need to worry about fire ever harming
him
.” She poked his nose again. “I expect that he might be immune to it, entirely.”

I looked down at my son. Fire elemental blood? I supposed that could be good news or bad news—like my mother said, fire wasn’t likely to hurt someone with elemental abilities. On the other hand, Asher could very well grow up to set fires—whether he wanted to or not. It all boiled down to what kind of blood was in his veins. There were thousands, if not more, types of fire elementals, each with their own abilities and dangers.

Every time we fit together another piece of the puzzle, it seemed we discovered that the puzzle was much more complicated than we had suspected.

Well, better prepared than shocked in the event that anything actually happened. I could… fireproof the nursery or something.

“What do
you
think he is?” I asked, curiously, knowing that my mother would have only shared information she felt was fact, or close to it.

My mother’s smile spread slowly over her face. “Why, my grandson, of course.”

*~*~*~

T
he storm cleared out by the time the sun rose, and I found Timothy and the rest of our small company gathering our things together so we could set out on the road again. Madi came into the main room of the inn, stamping the snow from her feet, to announce that the horses were ready.

The cold air nipped at my nose as we stepped out of the inn. I whispered to my Magic, letting it flow through Asher and me. Would he be able to do this, when he was older? I wondered. One of the gifts of fire Magic was never having to be cold.

“I don’t feel right leaving like this, and not doing anything to help Grace, Kate, and Hannah,” I said, looking back over my shoulder at the inn, while Timothy helped me get Asher’s baby sling settled properly on my chest. “I hate to just abandon this place, with no one to look out for it. They’ve put such care into everything.”

“You’re going to help them,” Merlin said, from where he was comfortably perched on a giant of a black shire. With the knobby knees and mish-mash of odd clothing, my former familiar made a puckish sight. I had to choke back my giggles, especially with the way that giant horse of his dwarfed him completely. His legs stuck out from the sides of the horse, nearly straight, as they tried to reach around the horse’s massive barrel.

“Plus, the Huntsman is waiting for us,” Timothy murmured, tilting his head towards where the dark shape had appeared, shortly after the sun. “I don’t think we want to disappoint him.”

I shuddered. I could think of a thousand things, off the top of my head that I would rather do than leave the Huntsman waiting. “You’re right.”

Mounting a horse with a baby strapped to my chest was a bit of a challenge, but I managed with just a little help from Timothy, in the form of giving my bum a shove at the perfect moment.

I looked down at him, once I settled in the saddle. He didn’t even try to hide the smirk on his face.

“You enjoyed that a little too much, didn’t you?” I asked.

He said nothing, but his smile widened even further.

Brat.

I couldn’t help but look back at the inn as we rode away. The faces of Grace, Hannah, and Kate floated before my eyes. Silently, I whispered to them that I would do my best to save them. I would not forget them. I would not let them just slip away, with the rest of their people.

No vows. Not ever. Never again.

I’d been raised with the idiom ‘never make a promise you can’t keep’. I hadn’t realized just how serious such advice could be. Magic was dangerous to play with.

The ice giants had wanted to have a touch of spring in their world.

But, because they couldn’t fulfill their end of the deal, now they were all gone. I had only met the three, but that was enough to know that the loss of the ice giants was a terrible one for Faerie.

I would never make a promise in haste again. I would never take for granted that breaking a promise was a victimless crime.

So, I made no vows or promises, but I headed forward, knowing that I had to find a way to make everything right again.

T
he roads of Faerie went where they willed, so I had no way to measure just how far we had come from the inn of the ice giants before I could smell the sea on the air. Over the span of the day, we had ridden through dark wooded hollows, and wide snowy glaciers. Now, the land had changed again, bringing with it everything that spoke of the seaside.

I inhaled deeply. Despite my many years as Seraphim, I had yet to see any of the many seas that lay within and around Faerie. I felt a child-like bubble of excitement rising in my chest. I had to remind myself that this was no vacation visit to the shore.

Gulls winged overhead. At least, I thought they might be gulls. They cried out, shrill and raucous, as if they mocked us earthbound creatures. The sound raised the hair on my arms.

“Stupid birds,” I muttered.

“’Pid bu,” Asher agreed, waving his fists at the gulls.

I glanced over to see if Timothy had heard our son’s words, but he was glowering down at the front of his saddle with such a serious expression that I knew something was weighing heavily on his mind, something miles away from our physical location.

I reached out and brushed my fingers against his arm.

He jumped, nearly startling his horse. She craned her neck to look up at him in disapproval, letting out a deep snort as she settled back into her walk.

Timothy smiled slightly as he looked up from his saddle at me.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s bothering you?”

Timothy sighed as he dragged both hands over his scarred face. He left his reins crossed over the front of the saddle. With the current state of his mind, Whisper was better left in charge.

“It’s this mess that Owen Dark left behind,” he said, at last. “I don’t know how I can sort everything out without all the clans screaming for war. He had so many plots, so many schemes… I’m barely scraping the surface as it is.” He sighed again.

I knew it wasn’t Owen’s mess that was bothering him, or at least, not just the mess.

“He was your friend,” I said softly. “Your advisor. You trusted him.”

“Like a fool,” he bit out. “How could I have been so blind to his manipulation? Ten years, Cindy! Ten years of listening to his lies. How can I trust anything I learned from him? How do I even begin to sort out the true from the false?”

“You’ll find a way,” I said, confidently. I wished I could give him a reassuring hug, but horseback riding was not conducive to cuddling, no matter how much romantic literature might try to convince readers otherwise.

“How?” Timothy shook his head. His face was still and stoic. Only his eyes fully showed the agony he was going through. They looked haunted, the gold of his irises dulled by the depth of his emotions. “I don’t know what I’m doing! Owen set factions against each other in such a strange balance, that it’s like all of Dark Faerie is booby trapped. One wrong move, and the whole thing will explode in my face.” He groaned. “Where’s a reset button when I need one?”

“Believe me, I do understand that one,” I said, thinking wryly of my aunt and the lost period of time during which she had ruled Faerie through me. I, too, knew what it was like to be betrayed by someone I should have been able to trust. She had done so much harm to Faerie, through me. I still felt like I had more to atone for than I would ever be able to manage.

Timothy’s lips twitched in an almost-smile, though this one twisted with rueful appreciation. “I know you do. And it’s not like Owen did this to me alone—he did it to you! To Asher! To all the people of Faerie who look up to us.”

“’People’ including creatures,” I murmured, borrowing my sister, Goldie Locke’s, famous mantra.

“Naturally.”

We smiled at each other. Some of the stress seemed to leave Timothy’s shoulders.

“I know we have Asher now,” I said. “But, that doesn’t mean that I can’t help. If anything, he’s another reason why I should try to help clean up this mess. He deserves to grow up in the Faerie it was always meant to be.” I reached over and brushed my fingers against his dear, scarred cheek. “I believe in us, you know.”

His face softened. “Yeah. I know. I believe in us, too.” He squared his shoulders. “I just have to keep that in mind when I feel like I’m drowning.”

Beneath us, our horses drew to a stop.

Timothy and I looked up and around, trying to absorb this place, where the Huntsman had guided us.

It should have felt like paradise, this isolated land on top of the world. We were surrounded on two sides by long, deep cliff edges of red stone that dropped abruptly down into the sea below.

The water was dark and turbulent, hissing in dangerous roars and whispers as it thrashed itself against the broken rocks of the shoreline. Before us, a rambling and broken-down structure stood. I thought, perhaps, it might have once been a lighthouse. Certainly, it had not been used in living memory; even the long memories of the Fae had forgotten this place.

The construction was strange to my eyes. Macedonian perhaps? A great bronze—at least, I assumed it was bronze—mirror stood, hanging from the highest tower, it’s surface dark with time and neglect. Unlike the stones of the cliffs surrounding us, the tower built of glistening white stone. Even fallen and abandoned, its surface polished by wind and time, the stones let off a subtle glow.

I bit my lip. I usually loved discovering places like this one—places that time had forgotten. But, this one… this one felt haunted, and not by anything good or nice. It felt as if blood had spilt here, tainting the land with some wrongdoing.

The wind whistled through the broken stones, a weary song that wept and meandered meaninglessly against the counterpoint of the raging waters below us.

Asher squawked and buried his face in my neck. I couldn’t blame him. This was not the sort of place to inspire lingering.

The Huntsman stood next to his massive steed. He stared out at the ocean for a long moment, before he bent his hand to his face.

Large, glistening tears rolled from his face, sliding into the massive hand. The Huntsman let seven tears fall into his hand. He straightened back to his enormous height and cast his tears out into the waves below.

The motion stunned me. In all my time in Faerie, I thought I had learned that anything was possible, but those tears—glistening pearl-like in that giant fist—shook me to the core. It dragged the Huntsman from the legends and made him real, made him… vulnerable. Vulnerable with a kind of strength that astounded me.

As if he could hear my thoughts, the Huntsman turned his feral eyes in my direction. I couldn’t look away. I found myself pressing my hand against my neck, a gesture of something that felt like… empathy. Red rimmed his eyes. I did not doubt that everything about those tears had been genuine.

A shout sounded in the distance, startling my eyes away from the Huntsman. When I glanced back, his gaze focused back at the water below.

My heart thudded as if I had been racing.

I had learned something. Something that felt significant, even as it threatened to wisp away through my fingers and vanish altogether.

It left me feely vaguely uneasy.

The sound of voices came again, this time closer. Timothy caught my arm and nodded his head down at the water’s edge.

There were people down there.

Naked people.

I felt my face flame. I might have spent more than the last decade in Faerie, and spent most of that time married, but casual nudity was one of those things that reverted me to a thirteen-year-old girl.

The people below, wading out of the waves as if they were in no danger of crushing to death on the stones, were particularly muscular-looking nudists. My sister, Iris, would have sold her hair for the chance to sketch them. There were seven in number, four male and three well-endowed females that made me glance over at my husband, just in case he was enjoying the view too much.

I felt a little better about my reaction to their nakedness when I saw how red Timothy’s ears and the back of his neck had become.

Each of the seven nudists reached the land and, thankfully for my juvenile embarrassment, promptly wrapped some kind of heavy fabric or fur around themselves. They looked up at us.

As if they had been expecting us.

“We’ll meet you at the village,” a deep, thickly accented voice called in what sounded like a variation of a dialect of Ancient Gaelic. Why, I wondered, not for the first time, was my Magic able to cope with translating every language but whatever it was Freyja spoke?

Magic, as always, played by its own rules.

“Where’s the village?” Timothy asked.

The Huntsman pointed one long finger, towards where the land dipped away from the cliffs, promising to come down to a less drastic meeting with the water.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked, before I could tell myself to hold me tongue.

For the briefest of moments, he turned those oh-so-sad eyes back in my direction. He shook his head once, slowly, with an air of finality.