She twisted her hand on the grip of her blade. Fighting something else would let off a little steam, although she had a feeling it wasn’t something strong out in the forest. If it were a powerful fae, then it would have attacked her already. Instead, it hid.
Elva slanted her eyes to the side when a twig snapped. A dark piece of fabric shifted in the shadows and then seemed to disappear.
“Come out,” she called, “and I’ll let you live.”
Another giggle from her left. “That’s not for you to say, faerie. That’s for the master of the mountain to decide.”
“Where do you think I’m heading?” she asked.
“Not to Fuar Bheinn. No one wants to go there.”
“Maybe I do.” She turned in a slow circle, watching the shadows for anything that looked remotely like a faerie. Hunting in forests was always difficult. Everything looked like a faerie in the right light.
“Why would you want to go there? There’s nothing but ice and snow.”
“Yes, I’ve heard it’s cold.”
“It’s more than cold. It’s a veritable freezing fortress, and no one who goes there comes out quite the same.”
“Is that so?” Elva asked, watching a particular place in the shadows where she was certain the creature was hiding. “Why do you think that? Have you been there before?”
“You’re really set on going there?” Another giggle drifted on the wind. “That’s a shame. You’re very beautiful.”
She hated those words more than anything else. Call her intimidating. Call her something more than just beautiful, more than just something that was pretty to put on a shelf as she’d been so many times in her life. “If you know where it is, then perhaps you’ll show me how to get there.”
“Why would we do that?”
“We?” Elva flashed a grin. “Good to know there’s more than one of you.”
The swift sound of a slap followed her declaration. She heard them whispering together, pinpointing that there had to only be two of them. Small blessing. Dealing with more than one wandering faerie was already going to be a pain in her royal rump, let alone a handful of them.
Finally, one of the faeries spoke up again. “If we show you where to go, what will you give us in return?”
Elva chuckled. “I’m not dealing with you, fae. If you want to help me, then help. I offer nothing in return.”
“Then why would we help?”
They had a point. Faeries weren’t likely to help her at all if she didn’t give them something in return. They were notoriously unhelpful creatures. And wasn’t she just following in their footsteps if she didn’t offer something up?
She was dealing with faeries already, even when she said she would never do that again.
Elva snarled. “Fine, what do you want?”
An ugly face poked out of the brush. Lined with age and so furrowed, it looked like a dog she’d seen once in a human home. The wrinkles sagged down over eyes that were barely visible and a mouth that was puckered. “A kiss perhaps?”
Before she had time to even respond to that ridiculous request, a gnarled hand reached out above its head and smacked it on the crown. “How dare you!”
The head retracted back into the thorns, and it appeared the two creatures began to fight. She could hear them rustling and swearing in the distance.
This wasn’t getting her anywhere. A bodach and cailleach bride? The faeries were hardly more than fools, ancient things who had grown so old and decrepit they didn’t know which way was up and which way was down. She’d heard of them before, but never had the misfortune of meeting one in person. They were notorious for throwing travelers off their path so they wandered.
Elva stooped down and pulled the brush aside. The two faeries were tangled around each other, both the size of a small dog. Moldy fabric covered their bodies, ugly green and black mold puffed into the air as they tore at each other.
“You said you loved me!”
“I do!”
“But you wanted her to kiss you? I ought to take off your eyebrows!”
“Not my eyebrows!” the one who had to be male said. “I just got ’em to stick on!”
They rolled close enough to Elva for her to snatch the back of their jackets and pull them apart. Holding each at arm’s length, she waited until they stopped twisting in her arms.
The female kicked her feet. “Let me down!” she shrieked.
Elva sighed heavily and told herself to remain calm. If she had believed the gods were anything more than grandparents, she would have prayed to them for some kind of patience. As it was, it took her to a count of ten before her temper calmed down.
The bodach was still trying to reach her hand where she held him. “Faerie woman, put me down,” he shouted.
“Not a chance.”
“We had a deal!”
Elva leaned closer to him, eyes narrowed and jaw tight. “We didn’t make any kind of deal. Let’s make that very clear. Now, it seems like I have a deal to make with you. I’ll put you down, unharmed, if you tell me which way the castle is.”
He pointed behind them. “That way.”
She was seventy percent sure he was lying to her. Or perhaps not lying, but that path would take her months to reach the castle. Technically, any way he pointed was the right way. If she had to walk around the entire Earth to get to the castle, which could take a lifetime, it was still a path that would take her there.
Elva looked to the cailleach in her other hand. “And you? Which way is the castle?”
The female faerie pointed in the opposite direction.
Oh, she was going to destroy them. Elva took a deep breath and looked up at the heavens as if they might help. She didn’t want to hurt another faerie. It felt wrong. But she also didn’t know how to make them talk.
Without looking at either faerie—if she looked then she was going to really hurt them—she said, “I’m going to
