Grey Folk

Chapter 20

"Do you believe them?" Emory asked, staring at the space the fae creatures had been.

The dryad glanced down at Rita. The little faun had regained some of her composure by now and was brushing her fur down with clammy palms, but she darted a glance up at the question, and they shared a smile.

"Yes," the dryad said, and knelt down in the torn-up, sandy earth. The jasmine vines were shredded and ripped away, leaving once more an open patch of land, as if a giant had simply scooped up a palmful of the landscape and walked away with it.

"Fae creatures can't lie, not in so many words," Rita explained quietly. "The queen said, 'I will release the grey folk.' If she does not do so now, she will be cast from the Faewild itself, and dashed from her seat of power."

The dryad sat back on her heels and glanced over her shoulder at Emory. He looked puzzled, this man who claimed ownership over her island. Puzzled, but after another moment he shrugged, and a small, pleased smile slid across his lips, barely visible beneath his thick hood.

"That's a rather handy trait for an entire plane of creatures to have," he said, sitting down next to the dryad and curling his legs together. "I shall have to remember that, the next time I go."

"Are you planning to go again?" Rita asked. The last fading bits of light and color from the sun made her golden fur glow with muted pinks and purple. "I thought you didn't like to go on adventures anymore."

"I don't," Emory said. "I suppose I assumed the Raven Queen would send me back, sometime. But..." He looked at the dryad, daring to slide his hood back just enough to reveal his dark eyes, and she smiled at the warmth she found there. "You're still mine to protect, right? The Raven Queen said I should keep you here, on this island, and she would allow me freedom and peace. That hasn't changed."

The dryad allowed the idea of Emory protecting her to wash over her skin and roll down her back like water, pleasing to the touch. She knew she was the one expanding to fill this space, this island. She was the one who heard the calls of the birds, miles away, who felt the waves tickling the sand on every shore, whose awareness stretched into every leaf of every tree.

She was the one who would protect them all, now. As long as they stayed on her island, she would watch over them. She would thank them for their parts in her freedom by allowing them to stay as long as they wished.

"You don't have to leave anymore," she agreed finally, meeting Emory's tentative smile with her own. "But you don't have to worry about me, either. I'm safe, now."

"Midge, we're always going to worry. That's what friends do," Rita said, snuggling down into the sand at the dryad's other side.

"I don't think I want to be called Midge anymore," the dryad replied, turning her focus to the ground below her once more.

A final severing of the connection between her and the one who created her felt necessary in this moment.

"What should we call you, then?" Rita asked. 

"I don't mind Midge," Emory protested.

"You just hate all change," Rita said, reaching around the dryad to smack Emory's shoulder. "Midge is an awful name given to her for an awful reason by awful people."

"Yes," the dryad said. But the anger that had surrounded that knowledge was gone now, replaced by a single name that crystallized in her mind. It was hers. "Briony. I am Briony, now."

"Briony." Emory tested out the name on his tongue, repeating it in a soft whisper that rolled out over and over, until he gave a satisfied little chuckle. "It suits you."

"I know," Briony answered, and bent down to thrust her fingers into the sand.

Ropes of jasmine vines crawled from beneath the earth, surging forward to tumble over the carved out earth, filling in the space ruined by the portal, and enveloping all three of them with the soft scent of jasmine flowers once more, and the tickle of leaves against their bare limbs.

Briony sat up straight, and sighed with pleasure in the knowledge that all was right in her world.