On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (24 page)

“My lady does desire a child to care for. Her lord would give her one to make her happy, but he has been unsuccessful. I would bring your child to my lady, and she would be eternally grateful to your kindness of heart, from one woman to another.” The spirit laid a hand on his chest, where his heart ought to be.

Corvina did not like the simplicity of this. Spirits were usually the opposite of simple. There was more he wasn’t telling, but her mind was reeling; consequences were distant and difficult to grasp now. “And I’ll be safe, and unharmed, and alive?”

The spirit nodded somberly again. “Yes, of course. I know an island not far from here. We can go there long enough to let you bear your child, and then I will take you wherever you like in the world, and you’ll be safe for the rest of your days. So help me,” he added, making a foreign-looking sign over his chest with his fingers.

Corvina closed her eyes for a moment. She had been raped, that was true. And if she was to bear a child, she may as well pay for the spirit’s rescue with it. She could do little to care for a baby now. Perhaps if things had gone differently with the duke and duchess . . . but they hadn’t. And in the end, if she refused the spirit, she would die a slave, whether aboard this ship or in some colony.

A bargain with a spirit was never ideal. But it was an option, and it was theoretically better than staying in this godsforsaken place, waiting to give birth as a slave.

“All right,” said Corvina quietly. “All right. Take me to the island, and after I’ve given birth, you can have the child.”

“Thank you,” the spirit answered softly, moving closer to her again. “Thank you for letting me help you.”

Corvina didn’t like the way he said that, but the next thing she knew, he had wrapped her up in his arms in an embrace, his whole brightness covering her and making her shut her eyes. A crash of thunder rang out. She kept her eyes shut tight, felt a warm, gentle wind passing them by, and the sounds of the storm faded away into the dark.

* * *

Corvina startled awake.

“Shhh,” soothed the voice of the spirit beside her. “You’re safe. Relax now.”

Corvina exhaled slowly, feeling the warmth of the sand seeping up through the blanket she lay on, and closed her eyes for a moment. The air was fresh, the breeze was warm, and dawn was coming, the sky already beginning to lighten and change its midnight shadows for rose and gold. She relaxed, stretching the faint aches in her feet and arms and neck.

The spirit hummed something faint and soothing, and Corvina opened her eyes again with a yawn.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you for saving me.”

“Oh, you’re very welcome,” replied the spirit lightly. “Do hold still.”

“Hold . . . still?” Corvina tried to sit up and found she could not. “Spirit . . . what are you doing?”

A bright light shone just out of her line of sight, the glimmers of it dancing below her chin. The spirit crouched beside her, and appeared to weaving the very air itself while he hummed quietly.

“Spirit,” asked the witch again, her voice cracking. “What . . . are you doing?”

“Helping you give birth,” replied the spirit, turning to smile at her widely. “Isn’t it funny? You were a midwife, and now I’m your midwife.”

He laughed, and the light shimmered brighter. Corvina tried to lift her hands, but they were heavy as dead weights in the sand.

“I don’t understand,” she said hoarsely. “I’m not full term.”

“You weren’t full term,” corrected the spirit. “You will be in a few more minutes.”

“But . . . no, you can’t . . .”

“I can
,
” whispered the spirit, still smiling in the dark. “And I am. Just lie still. He’ll be out in no time.”

“Please . . .” Corvina felt the pressure growing in her abdomen. Spirit magic was unruly at best, but powerful in most cases, and if this spirit was speeding up her pregnancy. . . . “Please be careful, I—” she cried out as the pressure in her abdomen peaked.

“Be still,” scolded the spirit, still moving his hands over her body.

Corvina gasped. “Have you ever done this before?” she demanded, straining to keep her eyes on him.

“Quiet!” His tone was harsh, but he did not turn to look at her. “It’s coming.”

Her lower half was mostly numb, but she could feel the pressure within it coiled like a spring wound far too tightly, ready to burst. The pain took her breath away, but it was over as suddenly as though she had fallen from a great height and slammed into the ground at full force. The light snuffed out, and the voice of an infant screeched and gasped for air.

Her skin gleamed with sweat. Her vision was blurry, and there was a pounding in her head that might have been her own heartbeat.

“What . . . what did you do . . . ?” she panted, trying to sit up. Her limbs felt too heavy to move, but she could roll her head to the side a bit, and saw through her haze the shape of the silvery spirit, crouched in the sand near her, holding the infant in his hands. He muttered in a foreign language she could barely hear. “What are you doing?” Corvina coughed.

The infant writhed and flailed its little arms, crying aloud, and then Corvina saw the impossible—its legs stretched, its hands widened, its head bobbed, and the baby grew before her very eyes. As the sun rose over the strange and foreign island, the infant sprouted up like a morning glory, unfurling and speedily blooming into a toddler by way of a magic she could not even begin to understand.

The baby, still half-infant, blinked and breathed and wiggled in the spirit’s grip, staring up at the silvery, grinning creature whose magic conducted this affair. It burbled and laughed and hiccupped in a tempo faster than that of normal life, and Corvina tried to catch her breath on the sand. The magic did not appear to be hurting the infant-thing, so she did not speak. Darkness crept in at the corners of her vision.

The spirit grinned like a cat who’d caught the fattest fish in the pond, the glowing magic poured from his hands into the baby, and Corvina began to slip into unconsciousness.

“Grow on, grow on,” hummed the spirit to the child. “Grow on, grow up, you ugly thing, and away to my lady I’ll take you to be a Frankish boy . . .”

Corvina’s eyes slid heavily shut, overcome by her exhaustion.

Lightning struck the sand at the spirit’s back.

“
Aurael,
” intoned a voice like heavenly thunder. “
What have you done?
”

The spirit nearly jumped from his skin, hastily steadying the child in his hands and halting the process to turn and look.

A tall, bald-headed man stood behind him on the sand, looking down his nose at Aurael. When he moved, lightning-bright patterns and sigils danced over his dark skin, gleaming from his round skull and reflecting in the dark depths of his eyes. He was impossibly handsome, and more imperious than any lord of men. He wore a garment with tailored shoulders and straight-legged trousers, pale, pin-thin stripes running vertically throughout the fabric.

The silver-blue spirit held the toddler in his hands like a half-eaten sandwich and stared up at the King of the Faeries.

“My lord,” he breathed emphatically through a wide, plastered grin. “How nice to see you . . . So unexpected!”

“
Aurael,
” boomed the king, barely moving his lips. “
You are much discovered, spirit. Speak truth now and your punishment—though inevitable—will be less harsh. What have you done?”

“Done, my lord? I have not done
—
”

“
DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME,”
bellowed Ouberan, grabbing the spirit hard by the throat. The half-toddler, still in Aurael’s arms, began to cry again.

“My lord! I did this for you, my lord, all for you! Let me explain!”

The mutated infant bawled, and the Faerie King stared at it a moment. He released Aurael, who slumped, coughing, on the white sand, and took the child from him, studying it carefully.

“
What is this,”
asked Ouberan flatly.

“A mortal child, born of this woman here and a mortal man on a ship at the bottom of the sea,” gagged Aurael, touching his throat tenderly.

Ouberan turned the sniffling infant over the way one might turn a broadside or a news pamphlet over, to glance at it from all sides. “
It is hideous. Not all mortals are this hideous,”
said the king. Aurael sat up, clearing his throat violently.

“Yes, indeed, my lord, for I have not done fixing it yet,” he piped up. “I was speeding it up a bit that it may resemble better the Frankish boy my lady has adopted and would raise in her train. Thus, we can change that boy for this boy here, and you will have the lovely Frankish boy, and she will have this changeling.”

The King of Faeries made a low sound of contemplation, which distracted the oddly-shaped infant from its sniffling and made it look up at him in curiosity, its hand in its mouth.

“
Aurael,”
began Ouberan,
“How am I to be sure that once you have worked your magic you will not give me this changeling and leave the real boy to my wife?”

He widened his eyes. “My lord! I had not even thought of that!” he protested in soft, earnest tones. He paused. “I do not suppose you would be so easily fooled,” he observed, tapping his finger to his mouth. “My lord is much too clever to be wooed by such illusions as I, a lowly air sprite, might muster . . .”

“
But my wife . . . ?”
prompted Ouberan, with interest.

Aurael shook his head heartily, his flyaway hair bouncing. “Oh, my lord Ouberan, your wife would be as easily fooled as a sheep to give suck to a lamb that is actually a goat’s kid. Or vice versa. Or a cuckoo to nest the wrong eggs. Or a dachshund to mother a Great Dane!”

Ouberan smiled like moonrise—silver-white and perfectly aligned. He chuckled a little, looked down at the deformed child in his hands, and laughed a little more. Then he looked at Aurael, held up the baby, and guffawed to his heart’s content, and Aurael laughed his own broken-glass wind-chime laugh.

Then lightning struck the airy spirit’s feet, and Aurael shrieked and shot backward across the sand, grabbing for his singed toes.

Ouberan was not laughing anymore. He glared down at Aurael, his eyes full of anger and insult.

“
Aurael,
” growled the King,
“You are hereby exiled from our realms to this island indefinitely for the plotting of treason against myself and the queen, for insulting my wife’s intelligence, and for sticking your turned-up nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“What!” Aurael squealed, pig-like, and scuttled back further in the sand. “But you can’t! I was trying to help! I wanted to help you, my lord!”

“
I think you wanted a promotion. In fact, I really don’t doubt that part of it,”
said Ouberan with a sigh, lowering the toddler-sized baby down to its mother’s sleeping arms. “
But really, Aurael, you should know better than this. You shouldn’t have tried to get involved before anyone asked you to.”

“But no one was going to ask me to!” protested the air sprite. “No one ever asks me!”

“
Exactly,”
growled Ouberan, advancing on him.
“You’re selfish and cannot be trusted. You always pick the wrong battles, and look where it’s got you now. A lovely desert island with a mortal woman and a misshapen, magic-molded baby.”

Aurael’s brain raced. He could beg and sob and play the tragic card while the king was still here, and then as soon as he’d left the island, Aurael would simply run. Run away, far away, and never return. Easy. Banishment was a blessing, he thought darkly, as he allowed tears to begin to shine in his large pale eyes.

“
Now hold still,”
said Ouberan, reaching for him with an arm that seemed to stretch infinitely.

“No, my lord, please, please don’t—”

“I said, HOLD STILL.”

Aurael squirmed, but could not slip through the Faerie Lord’s fingers. “I beg you, Lord, don’t—” He made a squishing, squawking sound when the king’s hand closed around his throat. “HfngAK! . . . pleeeease,” he croaked as Ouberan walked, carrying him by the throat. “What . . . gughhfk . . . my king, please!”

Ouberan stopped walking at last, holding Aurael up by the neck, the air sprite’s pale hands clutching and clawing at the king’s, to no avail. His gleaming eyes leveled with Aurael’s, and Aurael felt the rough bark of a tree dig into his back.

“Welcome to your own private island, Aurael,
” said the king. “
If you’re very, very good, and I’m in a better mood, perhaps I’ll change my mind later and let you out.”

“Good?” gasped Aurael, “You mean, quiet?”

“
That’s precisely what I mean,”
purred Ouberan, his smile cold. “
Very, very quiet.
”

“But King Ouberan,” sputtered the air sprite. “If I’m very, very quiet, how will you know if I’m very, very good? If I’m quiet, won’t you just . . . forget about me?”

Ouberan’s smile widened, and Aurael felt his last little burst of craftiness slip out of him like water from a drainpipe.

“
Perhaps I will,”
agreed the King of the Faeries. “
Perhaps I will forget all about you. Goodbye, Aurael.
”

“No, no, my lord! My—”

Ouberan pushed Aurael against the tree trunk hard, and there was a tearing sound like a sail slashed apart by a sharp and jagged blade. Aurael squeezed his eyes shut and screamed. It was an exquisite, splintering pain, and he felt as though he’d been shoved into a coffin too small for even his slender form.

As the throbs of pain subsided gradually, he opened his eyes. The king had vanished. A little ways down the beach, he could see the prone form of the woman and the smaller form of the child, both sleeping soundly. The sun was rising to the east, painting the island in strange, rosy colors. It was a peaceful scene.

Aurael moved toward the mother and child. He’d wake her and force her to undo whatever his lord had done. Surely she had some power left, even if it killed her to do it—he stopped, finding that he hadn’t moved at all. He was still exactly where he was. He could see everything around him, but there was a hard boundary between himself and the world that he could not understand.