A second glint burst on and off just off my cheek, more like a firefly than crystalline water, then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth in the shadows of the trees.
The lights popped on and off like fireflies, and so quickly I wasn’t getting a strong sense of magic around them. They had to be magical. The storm should have killed all the insects and sunlight could only catch so many flakes.
And the only thing I could think of capable of causing twinkling in Alfheim’s air was uncontained low-demons like the ones Dracula used. Low-demons the elves eradicated.
Ellie stopped walking. “Frank…” she said as she stepped in front of me.
I pulled her close to my side. “My cabin is on the other side of the trees.” The side of the house and the path’s access to the deck were no more than fifty feet ahead. But we had deep snow to deal with, and running wasn’t really possible.
“Marcus Aurelius! Go!” If Maura was home, he’d bring her down the path. “Bring Maura!”
My dog barked once and ran for the cabin.
“I don’t think we’re dealing with low-demons,” Ellie said.
What else could they be? Enchanted gnats?
One of the flickering points of light manifested directly in front of my face, then flitted to the side to give me a clear view of the snow-covered brambles and low-hanging tree limbs between us and my home.
Two willowy figures stood on each side of a large red oak tree. They were fae, but not just any fae.
We had dryads in full armor between us and my cabin.
Chapter 7
Red oaks don’t shed their leaves in the fall, and this particular tree held onto its hand-sized leaves in abundance. Each one had curled and dried to a warm, leather-like bronze that rustled in the winter wind. Those leaves sheltered many a small critter.
The oak towered over the path as one of the brilliantly grand guardians surrounding my home and lake.
The two fae standing on either side of its trunk carried the same sturdy, tall strength. Their armor shimmered with the white of the snow and the gray-blue of the sky even as it carried the roughness of the tree’s bark. The rough surface coiled down the plating over their thighs, onto the worked leather of their boots, and into the snowpack as if the fae were as rooted to the ground as the oak.
Their helmets shadowed blue-rimmed eyes and carried magnificent racks of antlers textured more like the leather-ish winter oak leaves than anything produced by a stag. Their magic danced close to their bodies like snow blowing in the wind. It hid their true heights and gave me the sense that the two bodies in front of us might well have been optical illusions created to trick our senses.
The fae were objects at a distance reflected oddly in reality’s mirror.
These were not simple dryads. Nymphs were female but these two melded the duality of male and female into a steadfast singularity. They also carried the magic of an oak’s animals—the deer, the jay around their eyes, the squirrel in the softness of tunics under their armor—which regular dryads did not.
“Can they see us?” I asked. Ellie’s concealments hid her from magicals but I had no idea if they worked on other fae.
She backed toward me. “My concealments work on other fae. I think it’s to keep my stepfather or his minions from finding me.” She spoke in a way that made me think she wasn’t so sure of her answer.
The dryads’ armor radiated in service of the high-born but not which high-born King or Queen. Not that I had enough experience—any experience, honestly—with fae to be able to read anything beyond the presence of their magic. The only fae other than Ellie I’d ever been near was the one disturbed by the Civil War. He’d been a fae of the valley, probably a type of Green Man, and not in service of royalty.
Samhain chaos drew them to this land. They’d come to learn from the trees.
I blinked. How…
I knew they were here to question the forest in much the same way I knew what Sal wanted me to know, but this seemed more like a broadcast than a statement.
Ellie gripped my hand and looked up at my face. “Did you hear that? They’re here to speak to the trees?”
“Sal talks to me the same way.” I nodded toward the forest. Which made some sense, since I was pretty sure they were some type of warrior dryad. “They’re here for this place, not us.”
I hoped. Me breaking Ellie’s enchantments was very much a part of last night’s magical blizzard.
Ah, Ellie mouthed, and nodded twice. She twisted in such a way to keep her backpack next to my side and out of the possible line of fire.
I’d seen mentions of lieutenants who managed a royal’s mundane interactions, and of how one should never underestimate the mercurial nature of the fae. But never dryad warriors who came to speak to the trees.
The two fae held perfectly still like two statues built from winter itself.
And I knew more: Veils were pierced under the Samhain moon. Mingling occurred. The wind shrieked and lightning illuminated what hid in shadows. They’d come to gather acorns of truth.
I understood under language, in memory-thoughts, as if the two dryads were giving the world information and not me.
“What does that mean?” Ellie asked.
The two fae spread their arms and… the world flowed toward them as if reality itself was whispering secrets to its closest confidants.
Secrets about the slime left by St. Martin’s footsteps through these woods. Tales of magicals as they traveled between the winds of the blizzard. Recountings of magicks worked. Of the determination and anger of elves and the bright, quick wolfness of Axlam and the Pack.
Of the steadfast one who had found his way to this land.
Me, I thought.
“The land is telling them about last night.” The memory-thoughts were clearly linked to the web
