Grey Folk

Chapter 17

The day was warm and breezy; Midge heard comments from passing villagers that it was too warm, but not for her taste. She loved it, felt as if she expanded in it, like that deep, cold part of her that had always been there was fading away. 

She inhaled the passing breeze, and felt with it the soft warning of approaching danger. Her fingertips lifted to toy with the green gemstone dangling at her earlobe; a gift from Rubius that would summon Emory instantly to her side. But she did not call him. Not yet.

Her eyes narrowed and she began to look around the village, biting her lower lip as she surveyed the people who had grown so familiar to her in these past weeks. Sometimes the new relationships she was forming made her feel guilty, as if she'd abandoned Cricket, Flea, and her other grey folk friends. But everything she felt here, in this world, was so much more than it had ever been in the Faewild. She already felt as if she loved Rita and knew her more deeply than she had ever known Cricket, a fae she had worked with for nearly eighty years.

Even the sensation of danger was exciting, a frisson of fear and anticipation shivering up Midge's spine as she let her leg fall into the water and idly began to kick and splash with her toes in the sparkling swimming pool. The soft turquoise began to creep up her leg, filling her with that sensation of growing power.

Randolph and his granddaughter were harvesting vegetables in the little garden outside their cottage. Ulviir was just outside the village, the sounds and smells of her hide-tanning work an unpleasant herald of her activities. Midge perched alone upon the decorative stone at the side of the pool and watched all their quiet and not-so-quiet movement, and wondered at the tingle in her spine, the adrenaline that flexed her fingers.

Rita had decided to go on a walk to check in on one of the older druids who lived outside the village, isolated hermits by choice. She ought to be returning soon. Perhaps she would come with news of danger. Midge glanced over her shoulder, and sure enough, there was Rita's tiny furred figure, her hand curled in that of a much taller, cloaked druid of stooped stature. The pair of them made their way slowly but surely up the path through the center of the village.

Midge blinked, rubbing her eyes and squinting harder at the tall figure. There was some sort of shimmer, a haze around the top of the figure, that seemed to almost flicker in the pure sunshine. As soon as she turned her gaze down to Rita, she could see through the haze in her peripheral vision, to the heart of the illusion magic that shrouded the tall, cloaked figure.

It was the Shadowfae.

The Queen's Blade.

The Hand of Chaos.

Her heart raced and she picked her feet up out of the water, smoothing her rustling skirts down about her ankles. Though her body readied to flee or fight, a strange sense of calm washed over her, and she knew the danger had arrived. It was here, and it was holding her Rita's hand.

Midge straightened to her full height and walked across the warm stone edges of the pool, ignoring her sandals where they lay near the steps and ascending to the soft grass, then the dirt road itself. Once she neared Rita and her companion she stopped, smiling in welcome.

"Rita, I've been looking for you. I need to speak with you about something privately, if you don't mind. Right now." She sent Rita an insistent look, stepping back a bit more as the Shadowfae's form stepped forward, and the cloak lifted enough to expose more of the wavering illusion that must have been fooling everyone else. A gentle, elderly woman who smiled benevolently from beneath her green hood.

Midge's eyes, however, found the truth in the hidden form of the Shadowfae. His build was slender, his skin pale and his long mane of black hair fell in slick waves down his back, from a receding hairline that exposed too much of his manically grinning face. Long, knife-like ears rose straight up from the sides of his head, and they were punched with a myriad of rings and studs that lined all the way from stretched earlobes to the pointed tips. His eyes burned bright blue with menacing delight, and he stared right at Midge while his illusion face spoke in a husky woman's voice.