My body flushed and I struggled deeper into the Heart of Stone until my pulse slowed and I could force the thought of her from the front of my mind.
I could remember four stories where men had come back from the Fae alive, all of them cracked as the potter’s cobbles. What manner of madness did they exhibit? Obsessive behavior, accidental death due to separation from reality, and wasting away from extreme melancholy. Three died within a span of days. The fourth story told of the man lasting nearly half a year.
But something didn’t make sense. Admittedly, Felurian was lovely. Skilled? Without a doubt. But to the extent that every man died or went insane? No. It simply wasn’t likely.
I don’t mean to belittle the experience. I don’t doubt for a second that it had, quite naturally, deprived men of their faculties in the past. I, however, knew myself to be quite sane.
I briefly entertained the notion that I was insane and didn’t know it. Then I considered the possibility that I had always been insane, acknowledged it as more likely than the former, then pushed both thoughts from my mind.
Eyes still closed, I lay there, enjoying a quiet languor of a sort I’d never felt before. I savored the moment, then opened my eyes and prepared to make my escape.
I looked around the pavilion at silken draperies and scattered cushions. These were only ornaments for Felurian. She lay in the middle of it all, all rounded hip and slender leg and lithe muscle shifting underneath her skin.
She was watching me.
If she was beautiful at rest she was doubly so awake. Asleep she was a painting of a fire. Awake she was the fire itself.
It may seem strange to you that at this point I felt fear. It may seem strange that only an arm’s length from the most attractive woman in the world, I was suddenly reminded of my own mortality.
She smiled like a knife in velvet and stretched like a cat in the sun.
Her body was built to stretch, the arch of her back, the smooth expanse of her belly going taut. The round fullness of her breasts was lifted by the motion of her arms, and suddenly I felt like a stag in rut. My body reacted to her, and I felt as if someone were hammering at the cool impassivity of Heart of Stone with a hot poker. My control slipped for a moment, and a less disciplined piece of my mind started composing a song to her.
I couldn’t spare the attention to rein that piece of myself back in. So I focused on staying safe in the Heart of Stone, ignoring both her body and that nattering part of my mind forming rhyming couplets somewhere in the back of my head.
It wasn’t the easiest thing to do. As a matter of fact, it made the ordinary rigors of sympathy seem simple as skipping. If not for the training I’d received at the University, I would have been a broken, pitiful thing, only able to concentrate on my own captivation.
Felurian slowly relaxed out of her stretch and looked at me with ancient eyes. Eyes unlike anything I had ever seen. They were a striking color . . .
. . . a sort of twilight blue. They were fascinating. In fact . . .
. . . there wasn’t any white to them at all. . . .
I clenched my jaw, split that chattering piece of myself away, and walled it off in a distant corner of my mind, letting it sing to itself.
Felurian tilted her head to one side. Her eyes were as intent and expressionless as a bird’s. “why are you so quiet, flame lover? have I quenched you?”
Her voice was odd to my ear. It had no rough edges to it at all. It was all quiet smoothness, like a piece of perfectly polished glass. Despite its odd softness, Felurian’s voice ran down my spine, making me feel like a cat that’s just been stroked down to the tip of its tail.
I retreated further into the Heart of Stone, felt it cool and reassuring around me. However, while the majority of my attention was focused on self-control, the small, mad, lyric part of my mind leapt to the fore and said: “Never quenched. Though I am doused in you, I burn. The motion of your turning head is like a song. Is like a spark. Is like a breath that billows me and fans to flame a fire that cannot help but spread and roar your name.”
Felurian’s face lit up. “a poet! I should have known you for a poet by how your body moved.”
The gentle hush of her voice caught me unprepared again. It wasn’t that her words were breathy, or husky, or sultry. It was nothing so tawdry or affected as that. But when she spoke, I couldn’t help but be aware of the fact that her breath was pressed from her breast, past the soft sweetness of her throat, then shaped by the careful play of lips and teeth and tongue.
She came closer, moving on her hands and knees through the pillows. “you looked like a poet, fiery and fair.” Her voice was no louder than a breath as she cupped my face with her hands. “poets are gentler. they say nice things.”
There was only one person I’d ever heard whose voice was similar to this. Elodin. On rare occasions his voice would fill the air as if the world itself were listening.
Felurian’s voice was not resonant. It did not fill the forest glade. Hers was the hush before a sudden summer storm. It was soft as a brushing feather. It made my heart step sideways in my chest.
Speaking thus, when she called me a poet, it did not raise my hackles or make me grit my teeth. From her, it sounded like the sweetest thing a man was ever called. Such was the power of her voice.
Felurian brushed her fingertips across my lips. “poet kisses are best. you kiss me like a candle flame.” She brought one of her hands back to touch her mouth, her eyes bright at the memory.
I took her hand and pressed it tenderly. My hands have always seemed graceful, but next to hers, they looked brutish and crude. I breathed against her palm as I spoke. “Your kisses are like sunlight on my lips.”
She lowered her eyes, butterfly wings dancing. I felt my mindless need for her slacken and began to understand. This was magic, but nothing like what I knew. Not sympathy or sygaldry. Felurian made men mad with desire the same way I gave off body heat. It was natural for her, but she could control it.
Her gaze wandered over my tangle of clothes and belongings strewn messily at one corner of the glade. They looked oddly out of place amid the silks and soft colors. I saw her eyes settle on my lute case. She froze.
“is my flame a
Felurian scampered off and brought back my lute case like a child with a new toy. As I took it, I saw her eyes were wide and . . . wet?
I looked into her eyes, and in a flash of understanding I realized what her life must be like. A thousand years old, and lonely from time to time. If she wanted companionship she had to seduce and lure. And for what? An evening of company? An hour? How long could an average man last before his will broke and he became as mindless as a fawning dog? Not long.
And who would she meet in the forest? Farmers and hunters? What entertainment could they provide, slaved to her passions? I felt a moment of pity for her. I know what loneliness is like.
I took the lute from its case and began to tune it. I struck an experimental chord and carefully tuned it again. What to play for the most beautiful woman in the world?
It wasn’t hard to decide, actually. My father had taught me to judge an audience. I struck up “Sisters Flin.” If you’ve never heard of it, I’m not surprised. It’s a bright and lively song about two sisters gossiping while they argue over the price of butter.
Most people want to hear stories of legendary adventure and romance. But what do you play for someone out of legend? What do you sing for a woman who has been the object of romance for a mortal age? You play her songs of ordinary people. So I hoped.
She clapped delightedly at the end of it. “more! more?” She smiled hopefully, cocking her head to make it a request. Her eyes were wide and eager and adoring.
I played her “Larm and His Alepot.” I played her “Blacksmith’s Daughters.” I played her a ridiculous song
