“Well enough.”
“What did he say in there, right before you helped him?” Olga was usually pretty good at getting her point across, but her English was a little . . . rudimentary. And “fish, tracks, door” didn’t make a lot of sense.
“He asked her to rescue his bones.”
I frowned. “What?”
Caedmon switched to his back, looking up at the lamplight playing on the roof of the tent. I didn’t know why he’d brought it. He gave off enough light of his own, and for a darker night than this, if he wasn’t drawing it down like he was at the moment. I wondered why he bothered. To seem more normal, more relatable? To make it easier to talk me into something?
Maybe. Or maybe he just didn’t want the neighbors to ask any questions. Of course, other than the commune across the road, who were high half the time and didn’t trust their eyes anyway, most of our neighbors were about a hundred and wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual if he’d been standing in front of them. Except to remark on how tall he was.
At least, that had been old Mrs. Epstein’s comment when she accidentally came through our gate instead of her own one day, and had a group of “such nice young men” take her back to her front door. She’d never know that she’d had an escort of royal fey guards, and they’d never know that I’d seen them, several times since, hopping the fence to help her take in her weekly groceries.
It was strange how . . . human . . . people could be, given a chance.
“It is my people’s belief that Faerie is a living thing,” Caedmon said, “an organism with a soul of its own. And that each of its children are parts of that soul, experiencing life in different ways: as a tree, a breath of wind, a person. When one of us dies, our soul rejoins the soul of Faerie, and will one day live again.”
“So reincarnation, then.”
“In a way. Although, from what I understand of your Earth religions, they view the cycle of rebirth negatively, as something to be escaped. They long for the peace of nonexistence, or at least for an end to the cycle, something that would make very little sense to my people. We look forward to experiencing everything life has to offer, in all its many . . . permutations.”
He smiled suggestively at me.
I shot him a look. “Then why do your people hate the Dark Fey, and vice versa? If you’re all part of one soul—”
“I, for one, do not hate them,” Caedmon demurred. “And I did not say that everyone believes so; indeed, many do not. But the little troll does, which is why he asked to have his bones returned to our soil.”
I waved a swan leg at him. “How would a bunch of bones help with that?”
“The fey view the soul and body as inseparable. The idea that our bodies could be one place and our souls another, separated after death as some of your people believe, is quite . . . disturbing.” He actually did look disturbed for a moment, before his good humor returned. “It is thought that the soul bonds particularly well with the bones, which are so much sturdier than the fleshy bits—”
I removed his hand from one of my fleshy bits.
“—and thus the ívieja swore to help him live again, by returning his bones to Faerie, to be reabsorbed. The fist to the chest gesture you saw is a solemn vow among her people. She would have to do as she swore, or die trying.”
“But she didn’t know him,” I pointed out. “She’d risk her life going back there for someone she doesn’t even know?”
“She is probably one of those who believe that if Faerie’s children do not return, they cannot be reborn. That their souls will remain trapped here, where their bodies lie, and be forever lost. Both to their people and to Faerie.”
“So the fey who die here . . . they’re all sent back?”
“That has always been the practice among my people, certainly.” He thought about it. “Well, most of the time.”
“Most of the time?”
“There is the story of the dastardly Princess Alfhild Ambh?fei—a cautionary tale of greed and pride still told to children.”
I put on my interested face, and Caedmon laughed. “Do you know, I haven’t told a bedtime story in some years?”
“Then you can use the practice. For Aiden.”
He sighed. “I need to spend more time with the boy. Claire is right about that.”
“But you don’t.”
“Things have been . . . tense lately.”
“Want to tell me why?”
“Yes, in fact,” Caedmon said, surprising me. “But I don’t know that I should.”
“Why not?”
He picked up my greasy hand and kissed it. And then mouthed away a little swan grease that had fallen into the well between my thumb and forefinger. It was . . . surprisingly erotic. I pulled my hand back, and he looked pleased.
“Because, my dear Dory, I do not know if I am talking to you or your father.”
“My father isn’t here.”
“Isn’t he?” He scanned my eyes for a long moment, and then he sighed. “Perhaps not. I should certainly like to think so.”
I decided not to ask why.
“Still, I think I would do better telling you about Alfhild,” he continued. “She lived what you would call once upon a time, in a kingdom at the foot of a great mountain. There were hundreds of petty kingdoms then, some barely larger than the castle walls of the main keep, others with vast lands under their control. Alfhild’s was neither particularly small nor overly large, but she—did I mention that women could rule then?”
“Must have forgotten it.”
“Well, they could. Until Alfhild. She serves as a cautionary tale for that, too.”
I considered smacking him, but I was feeling mellow and was busy gnawing some bones. I settled for a look. “I take it she was a bad ruler?”
“Oh, no, quite the contrary. One had to be skilled to survive then. The petty kingdoms were always squabbling among themselves, making treaties and breaking them, and going to war every spring as soon as the new buds flowered on the trees.”
“Did you ever fight her?”
Caedmon feigned shock. “Just how old do you think me, Dorina?”
“Pretty damned old.”
He grinned. “What is it they say? Age is but a number? But my number does not go that high.”
I frowned. “How old is this story?”
“It goes back a bit, even for us. For you . . . let’s just say, when the need arose, there were no scribes yet among you to write it down.”
I frowned some more. “‘When the need arose’?”
He patted my leg. “Alfhild was ambitious and, despite having a prosperous land, was dissatisfied with her lot. She therefore used her beauty to seduce her neighboring kingdoms into a coalition. One she planned to use to attack the large, peaceful, and prosperous land belonging to one of my ancestors. It was in the mountains then, too, but had several verdant valleys under its control that Alfhild coveted.”
“I assume she lost the war?” Otherwise, I guessed, Caedmon wouldn’t be here.
“There was no war. Her coalition members realized that, instead of attacking a well-equipped and, of course, very valorous kingdom—”
“Of course.”
“—they could attack her instead. Thus taking a smaller but more certain reward, instead of risking a war they weren’t sure they would win. And that, even if they did, might see the spoils end up more under Alfhild’s control than theirs, allowing her to pick them off, one by one.”
“So they picked her off first.”
“No, but they should have,” Caedmon said, suddenly grim. “Instead, they exiled her to an island in the middle of a large lake, and ringed the small fortress there with spells. They thought it would hold her, at least long enough for them to have the victory feast!”
“It didn’t.” It wasn’t a question. His expression was eloquent.
“No, it didn’t. The legend says that she somehow escaped, gathered her most loyal supporters, and while the five dastardly kings who had betrayed her feasted well into the night, she struck—”