Chapter 49 - Hush-A-By Mountain

that is

A Short Tale of a Favor, a Hamadryad, a Name, Ornaments, Pictures, Establishing Tradition, Lullabies, and a Vicious Question

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Nuada and Wink stopped in front of Aso's tent at the Troll Market and waited. Near the outskirts of the Market, they didn't have to worry about being seen loitering in front of the weaver's shop. Not that the Elf prince would've cared if anyone had seen him. He had his father's blessing - and was that not a wonder? - to do what needed to be done tonight. To extract vengeance, to pay out justice, and to end a human beast's pathetic life. To finally obtain a little peace for his mortal lady. But to make sure the debt this Westenra owed was paid out sufficiently, Nuada needed to speak to the Nyame Elf who had once been a member of the lethal Anansi.

The crunch-shuffle of weary booted feet on the dusty path caught the prince's attention. He turned to see a familiar, white-garbed figure trudging through the eerie, rushlit gloom. A wisp of some dark emotion shivered through the Elven warrior. Aso had to have what he needed. He knew no one else who would.

"It is late, Wako Mtukufu," the ebony-skinned weaver grumbled when she saw the prince and the troll. "I'm closed."

"I need a favor, Aso," Nuada said. His voice was as soft as a dying man's sigh.

Jet black eyes locked on the prince's and the weaver frowned. She had never heard Bethmoora's prince speak so before. As if she were not the warrior-woman he'd known for more than two dozen centuries. As if she were a stranger. The words were the words of a friend, but the voice almost made such friendly sentiment a lie.

Cautious now, the Elf of Nyame slid her hands into her pockets and rocked back on her heels. The necklace of copper beads and razor-sharp kishi fangs jingled. Rushlights glinted off the obsidian hourglass pendant around her neck.

"What sort of favor?"

When he told her, she broke out into a cold sweat, but she let him into her tent. With a few brisk words she sent her apprentices home to their families. Children had no part in what Nuada wanted this night. Once behind the counter she reached beneath it and pulled out the teak wood box inscribed with the spider and web insignia of an Anansi. Then she opened it and withdrew the contents.

Unlike the Butcher Guards of Bethmoora, the Anansi of Nyame were not simply royal guards. They were spies, assassins, torturers; the Nyame Queen's most trusted soldiers, and her most deadly. They specialized in poisons, traps, swift deaths, and the extraction of information from enemies of the state. One of the best spells for such an extraction was the Anansi's specialty. Those new to the Nyame guards called it the box-web - a harmless enough moniker for something that had the potantial to be extremely lethal. Veteran guards called it the Widow's Bite, which was its true name. Those who'd retired from the guards - like Aso - called it what it was: torture.

Aso Assase Ya gave Crown Prince Nuada Silverlance the palm-sized obsidian glass box, which the prince stowed somewhere. Aso did not see where. She was in too much shock. For what purpose could the Elven warrior use that spell? Who would he use it on? And what would King Balor do to him for using it?

She asked none of these questions. She merely watched the Elf prince walk out into the night once more.

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Music jingled cheerfully from the radio as Dylan, Becan, and the three ewah shoved the chair, footstool, and lamps to the edges of the living room in preparation for the great migration about to commence.

Dylan knew she had a few hours - it was only seven-thirty - before Moundshroud meant to arrive. He was always punctual, arriving on the edge of midnight. Until then, she wasn't going to fret herself to death worrying about Nuada. She was going to be a productive person.

Which meant only one thing.

Since she probably wouldn't get a chance to do this according to her usual schedule, since they were going to return to Findias sometime in the first or second week of December, and since she had nothing really to do right now (she'd already gone over her patient files, checked the budget, written a grocery list, done her journal entry for the day, double-checked her lesson plans for Nursery next week, and finished baking both chocolate chunk cookies and apple pie) she was going to put up the Christmas tree. Besides, she needed something festive and fun to do or she'd tear her hair out.

But first she had to get the Christmas tree. And to do that, she and the children had to go outside. In the freezing cold. Ah, well.

"Okay, everyone, get your coats," Dylan ordered once the furniture was in its proper places. While A'du and 'Sa'ti rushed to obey, Tsu's'di got Dylan's coat where she'd laid it on the back of the armchair earlier and helped his lady into it. What surprised the human woman was when A'du brought Dylan her boots and 'Sa'ti brought both her scarf and gloves. Although she informed the cougar cubs she was perfectly capable of tying her own boots, the little boy insisted on helping her put her gloves on because "your arm's hurt." 'Sa'ti helped with the buttons on her coat while Tsu's'di put on his own.

Once outside, Dylan led them deep into the Park. She knew exactly where she was going. It didn't take long. Near the faerie metal playground, she stopped and looked around, scanning the dark woods. The moon was heavy in the sky, nearly full. Its silver light illuminated the snow, almost giving it the luster of midday.

"Well, this is pretty nice," Dylan said in a voice that carried through the playground clearing. "So, I'm looking for Lena, of the daughters of Balanos. She wouldn't happen to be here, would she?"

"As if you didn't know," a shivery rustling voice called, like wind through the trees. A'du'la'di and 'Sa'ti jumped when a slender woman in a pair of dark green jeans and a brown hoodie stepped out of the shadow of the trees and smiled. Her teeth were the pale green-tinted brown of acorns. Her eyes were the rich viridian of oak leaves. Despite the shadows of the night-shrouded Park, all three ewah and Dylan could see her clearly. Her dusky, Mediterranean skin held faint undertones of pale green. Acorns were sewn up the outside seams of her jeans and jingled almost like bells. Her hoodie glittered here and there with bits of metallic green in the shapes of oak leaves.

The girl - she looked to be about fifteen or sixteen - stepped close enough that Tsu's'di instinctively put himself between her and Dylan. The mortal woman laid her hand on the cougar youth's shoulder.

"It's all right, Tsu's'di. I know her. She's a friend."

Reluctantly, the youth stepped aside again.

The faerie girl - Lena, of the daughters of Balanos, first of the hamadryads - gave Tsu's'di an appraising (and approving) look. Her lips curved into a wicked smile. "Oh, wow. He is so cute. Can I borrow him?" She winked at the youth, who blinked and stared at her. "You're a cougar," she added in a sultry voice. "That's so cool. We should go on a date. Wanna catch a movie?"

"Can't loan him out," Dylan replied with a shrug while Tsu's'di blushed against his will. "He's my bodyguard. He's busy. Anyway, I know I'm a bit early, but I'm probably not gonna have another chance to decorate this year, so I was wondering if you'd already chosen-"

Lena waved a dismissive hand. "Yeah, yeah, we chose already. Those fir trees are so vain. They love you dressin' them up all fancy. Twits." But Lena was smiling fondly at the fir trees surrounding the playground. "But we'll get to that in a second. Gotta ask you a question, girlfriend. I heard the most interesting bit of gossip from these girls a few weeks ago. Something about you getting some, uh... hot Elf liplock action?"

Dylan snorted. "I wish. We almost kissed, but my phone went off." So she hadn't been the only one to think Nuada had been about to kiss her. It hadn't just been wishful thinking. Well, what did that mean, exactly? Trees, even ones without fey beings living inside them, were fairly astute observers. They had to be; what else was there for them to do but watch the world and chronicle its history while they spread life through that same world? So if Lena's fir trees said Nuada was about to kiss her, she believed them. Which meant she had a lot of things to think about.

But not right now.

"Oh, tough acorns," Lena groaned. "Hate it when that happens. You mortals and your cell phones. They're such a waste of space. If you just listened to the wind and actually used your ears... eh, whatevs. Right? So, uh... who's 'we,' exactly?"

"You haven't heard the gossip?" When Lena shook her head a little dejectedly, the mortal grinned. "Guess who Crown Prince Nuada Silverlance is paying court to?"

Those oak-green eyes widened. The hamadryad's jaw actually dropped. Finally, after several seconds of stunned silence, Lena cried, "Get outta town! Really? How the heck did you manage that? I always thought you'd hook up with one of us eventually, but the Silver Lance? Son of Balor One-Arm? Heir to the throne of the Tuatha de? That Nuada Silverlance?"

Dylan nodded. Lena whistled.

"Shoot. That's... shoot. You happy with this?"

Dylan nodded again. Nuada made her happier than she'd ever been in her life, even as a little girl before the institution. She hadn't known then that this kind of happiness even existed. So even though she knew that one day she would lose him, he made her happy while he was there.

She would just hold onto him until... until the day he had to leave. And then she would hold onto the memories of him just as fiercely.

"Well, then, congrats. Lucky girl. You might be a princess soon. Cool. Okay, then. You answered my questions, so my fir gets to take up residence in your house for the next month or so. Fun times." With a sharp whistle, Lena beckoned to the dark treeline.

A ripple of movement. A creaking groan. Crunching sounds as something punched through the crust of ice covering the snow. And then the three ewah's mouths dropped open as a fir tree - barely more than a sapling, really, about seven feet tall, but thickly branched - picked up its roots like a lady would pick up a daintily slippered foot. As they watched, a few of the fir's higher branches lifted the lower branches like a lady lifting her skirts over a puddle. Then the fir moved off in the direction of the cottage.

Dylan grinned and inclined her head towards Lena.

Lena just laughed at the stunned expressions on the cougars' faces. Then, walking up to an oblivious Tsu's'di, she stood up on tiptoe and planted a peck of a kiss on his cheek, startling him enough that he jumped. His fur bristled sharply before laying flat again. His ears slicked back against his head. Lena laughed again.

"Oh, he's so cute! I'll see you later. Don't forget - I like rom-coms and anime movies." And the hamadryad sashayed off into the trees, Tsu's'di staring after her, slightly pole-axed, with another blush burning through his cheeks.

"Come on, you guys," Dylan said, smiling. Tsu's'di forcibly wrenched his attention back to her. "Our Christmas tree is getting away."

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Doctor Lucian Westenra glared at the file on his desk. That girl, that Ramirez girl. She was out of Iso now, thanks to Hollis putting his oar in. Interfering brat. Didn't the young psychiatrist know that Westenra outranked him in years and experience? So Hollis was a genius who'd graduated college at fourteen. He, Doctor Westenra, was still head of Psychiatrics at Saint Vincent's and deserved the little punk's respect!

But Hollis was a friend of Myers, the little witch. She'd infected another one of Westenra's people. She was always getting involved in the hospital's business - in his business. She should know better. She should know not to infringe on another doctor's territory. Didn't she have any professional integrity? Didn't she have any respect? But of course not. She never had. Not even when she was a kid. Only now, finally, had he managed to put the fear of God - and Westenra - into her. Now Myers knew to be afraid of him. Knew what he could do, and what he was willing to do, if she got out of line again.

There were so many ways he could hurt her. So many ways he could punish her for her disrespect. He could let it spill that one of the NYPD's favorite shrinks to work with had been in a mental hospital herself for eleven years. That after she'd gotten out, she'd become a drug addict. Abusing prescription medications was not looked on favorably among the common people. It was even worse in their eyes than regular drugs because these were medicines that other, more deserving people needed. And little Miss Myers had been popping them for fun and giggles. Only half a year's stint in drug therapy had managed to get her clean. But the question could always be asked, couldn't it, if she was actually clean? As a psychiatrist, she had access to a lot of prescription drugs. How did Doctor Myers handle the stress of her career without chemical help?

And wouldn't that rumor ruin the little slut's day? She could lose her retainer position with the police, lose her access at Saint Vin's, lose her job with Atwaters and Rhodes, the therapeutic offices where she worked on a regular basis. She could even lose her license if he pushed it far enough.

Or he could spill the beans to her new boy-toy. Stupid girl. She should've known better than to open her heart to a man, a weakness. Didn't she know that that just made her more vulnerable to Westenra himself because now - oh-ho, now - she had something she didn't want to lose? Something that he could take away with a single phone call. All he had to do was tell Dylan's boyfriend, Mr. Big-Suit Blondie (what was his name again? Nick? Nathan? Norman?), what kind of woman his cute little bunny really was. Westenra could even show the new stud his girlfriend's file. Or maybe the session transcripts from when she was a kid. That would convince him quick enough that she was a raving lunatic.

He could do all of that to her if she crossed the line even once. Wonderful.

Westenra didn't look up from the irritating file on his desk, complete with the little witch's last photo before she left Saint Vincent's as a legal adult, when the door to his office opened. "Miss Cottingley, is it at all possible that you could get me a decent cup of coffee? Or is even that beyond your pitiful skills?"

There was no answer. Only the door shutting with a gentle click. Westenra's head shot up, a snarl on his lips and fury on his face. The anger died away as his eyes met a savagely cold gaze the color of blood. His first thought was, Why is he wearing colored contacts? The second thought was, Where is security? How did he get in? And then the sound of the lock clicking into place penetrated his thoughts like a gunshot.

"Who are you? What are you doing in here?"

The tall man in black studied Westenra with sanguine eyes for a long moment before cocking his head. A feral, alien look glittered in those eyes. "You are what she fears. How interesting."

"Who are you?"

"You should know my name," the man said. The fluorescents brought out blue highlights to his moon-pale skin and turned his long, blond hair nearly bone-white. An odd sense of familiarity pricked Westenra the longer he looked at the odd, death-pale man. "You have heard it before. Last night, in fact."

Impossible. Doctor Westenra's chair clattered to the floor as he jumped to his feet and stumbled back against the wall of his office. That voice was soft and almost sleepy, but the psychiatrist would never mistake it for harmless. Not with the hellfire burning in the depths of those black-rimmed, blood red eyes. "Who are you?"

Black lips curved into a vicious smile. "I? I am Nuada."

Westenra's bowels turned to water and his guts to ice as the lights went out.

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"The pink one! The pink one!" 'Sa'ti cried, pointing at the glittering icing-pink orb of frosted glass in its nest of tissue paper. "Put it there, please?" Dylan lifted the Christmas ornament out of its box and hung it from its impossibly thin, impossibly strong silvery chain on the fir tree. Just like it had with the first however-many ornaments, the fir tree shivered with delight at the new accessory. "Oooh," the cougar girl cooed happily. "These are so pretty. How do you get them to stay up?"

"Spider silk chains," Dylan said, and hung up one of the jeweled ornaments that Francesca had bought her from Sears ages and ages ago. "The jorōgumo weave them and sell them at the Floating Night Market. Becan uses them for... stuff."

"What are... jorōgumo?" A'du'la'di asked a little nervously. After breaking the a'ge'lv's snowglobe, he was being very cautious around the fragile glass ornaments sparkling on the fir tree that had literally walked into the cottage and taken root (with a combination of Becan's magic and whatever Lena the hamadryad had done to it) in the floor near the one corner of the living room where there were no bookcases. The only thing A'du had been willing to help with was putting up the tiny multicolored lights that now glittered among the boughs.

He'd smiled, though. Especially when the fairy lights - which were technically alive - flitted around Lady Dylan before alighting on Tsu's'di's face in the form of a beard and mustache in bright green. 'Sa'ti, A'du, and Dylan giggled. The ewah youth had rolled his eyes and blew a puff of air at the lights, which then zipped over to the tree and found comfortable places to roost.

Now Dylan answered the cougar boy's question. "The jorōgumo are the spider women from Onibi. They're fantastic weavers. They can even weave metals - silver, gold, all kinds of things. My brother's pocketwatch chain was made by a jorōgumo. You have to be careful of them, though - they're not very fond of males. And they're poisonous."

"Poisonous?" Tsu's'di cried. "Yet you buy from them?"

Dylan shrugged. "Unlike the Troll Market and other fae bazaars, fighting at the Floating Night Market is strictly forbidden. Anyone who fights there - anyone - is killed. Immediately. And painfully. Lady Door ensures that." Hanging another glass ball (this one of pale frosted glass sprinkled with blue starbursts) she added, "Only an idiot would go up against her."

"Or someone very powerful," Tsu's'di replied. "Like His Highness."

His new human mistress shook her head and hoisted up 'Sa'ti so she could place a ivory figurine carved in the shape of a leaping stag, its antlers pressed along the curve of its back - a gift from one of the Bright Ones, like most of the other unusual Christmas ornaments in Dylan's vast collection. "One of the strongest Other Kin in the Twilight Realm tried to kill Lady Door. Lord Islington. Didn't work out so well."

"What happened to him?"

"Sucked into some kind of magical void without any oxygen or something. I don't know. It happened in London, which I've never been to, personally. I've never been out of the country. I heard about it from Lord Richard, Lady Door's bodyguard, when they came to visit a friend of mine."

Ignoring the adults, A'du'la'di knelt down and carefully reached into a box packed with tissue paper. He pulled out a stained glass disk. Each bit of colored glass was so small and so finely done that the disk, which was the size of his palm, showed a detailed picture of a small baby in a brown box full of what looked like straw. The baby held a gray... was that a mouse? A glowing mouse? Something about the ornament drew his curiosity. It was pretty, and interesting. And since it belonged to the a'ge'lv, it probably meant something special. "What's this?"

Dylan glanced over as she set 'Sa'ti back on the ground. "Oh! The Stable Rat." She watched with an encouraging smile and an attentative eye as A'du carefully hung the stained glass ornament on a middle branch, well away from Bat's cat-like inquisitiveness. "My parents gave me that for Christmas when I was nineteen. That one there," she added, pointing to the other stained glass ornament in the box, "is the Christmas Mouseling." The other disk showed a similar image, except this time of a fawn-colored mouse wrapped in blankets in a brown box with a baby, and a bigger mouse cuddling the little mouse. "My brother John bought me that one along with the storybook a couple years ago. I can read it to you guys later tonight before bed. How does that sound?"

"Yeah!"

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Lucian Westenra blinked awake to a skull-splitting headache and a fuzzy, numb feeling in his mouth. He opened his mouth to call for that Cottingley girl (she'd replaced his secretary while she was away on maternity leave) but when he tried to speak, he found that his lips would not obey his silent command to open. The psychiatrist tried to shove his tingling lips apart with his tongue. His tongue would not obey him either. Watery brown eyes scanned his office. What had happened? Why was he lying on his back on his desk?

The last thing he remembered was studying the Myers witch's file. Studying the picture of the eighteen-year-old in her ripped up tank top made of blue scrubs, her frizzy hair in her face, a sunrise of a bruise marring one eye. Such an ungrateful child. Always so difficult, always so disrespectful, never giving him his due... but now he was splayed out on his desk, lacking any real feeling in his limbs or even in his lips and tongue. His throat worked to allow him to speak but nothing would come.

"Do not bother calling for help," a cold voice said. Westenra flicked his gaze to the man sitting in his office chair, black boots propped on the desk, flipping through Myers' file. Black lips were compressed in a thin line on that bone-white face as he turned a page. "No one can hear you."

Who are you? The words filtered through Westenra's mind. Scarlet eyes pinned the old man.

"I am Nuada." Something vengeful kindled in that blood-red gaze. "Dylan Myers is my... 'girlfriend,' is the term you might understand." When Westenra's eyes widened, the pale man's mouth curved into an expression too savage to be a smile. "Yes. I was the blond man in the business suit that day Dylan brought the girl, Lisa, down from the roof. And just so there are no misunderstandings, I am fae." The old man's breathing hitched. "Yes. Fae. As in, faerie. The thing that you insisted to a little girl did not exist; here now is proof of the existence of such magic and supernatural things in the world. A shame that you did not learn the truth sooner."

I've seen you before, Westenra realized with a jolt. She's shown you to me. I've seen you before. Those feral eyes narrowed. In the file, the old man cried when the narrow eyes flickered with obvious fury and a dark hatred. It's in the file. Then pale man turned back to the file in his hands.

After a few minutes of flipping through the thick stack of papers in the manila folder, Nuada found what the piece of vermin was referring to. Near the back of the file were dozens upon dozens of children's drawings. Each bore the name "Dylan M." in crayon or black pencil at the bottom. Many of the pictures were of various fae - blue- and white-robed, childlike yukinko; a wolf-headed Scottish wulver (and where had a child seen one of those?); several crude drawings of merrows and demi-merrows; tiny, vampiric jenglot; even a painstakingly pristine drawing of a herd of gold-antlered zlatorog. Even so young, she'd seen such beings? Even as a little girl, she'd been exposed both to the benign and the malevolent of his world.

Nuada even found a drawing of an autumn-withered tree sporting several round orange things that he realized were jack-o-lanterns - the Samhain Tree. This drawing was better, though, and the prince was fairly certain she'd been quite a bit older when she drew this one. How early had she learned of that particular place in Faerie? How intricately had her life twined with the Twilight Realm, even so early in that life?

But that was not what Westenra had been referring to. What the pathetic wretch had been referring to was near the back of the stack of drawings. Despite thousands of years' practice at schooling his expression, Nuada's mouth fell open when he saw the last of the pictures.

They were all of him.

That first punch of recognition was tempered by reason. Of course they weren't of him. Dylan had never seen him before that night in the subway, and she possessed no psychic abilities beyond that connection between herself and her cowardly brother, John. These were of another Bethmoora Elf. It was entirely possible that she, as a child, had seen some of his people during her many forays into the misty borders between Faerie and mortality.

Except for the details of these pictures. The blond Elf wore the familiar black clothing Nuada favored, complete with the crimson sash and both the Aiglin and Eildon crests he sometimes wore, colored with metallic gold crayon. Black crayon formed the mouth and rimmed the golden eyes. Darkly but thinly applied graphite pencil formed the royal scar that carved across Nuada's face and the face of the Elf in the drawings. In the drawn Elf's hand were either a sword (complete with the notch at the tip of Nuada's own blade) or a black-handled spear.

This isn't possible, the Elf prince thought, shock momentarily making him forget the human on the desk. It wasn't possible. He'd never met her before that night, yet she had drawn him countless times as a little girl. Why hadn't she told him?

He immediately cursed his own foolishness. Doubtless, she did not remember. Most of her time in this place was a blur of pain and furious grief. What few good memories she had, she'd never shared with him. He sincerely doubted any of those happy memories included anything that could be taken by the adults in charge and used against her in some way. Dylan most likely did not remember drawing any of these pictures.

But what did they mean? How had she known about him so early in her life when they had never seen each other before?

"What are the drawings from?"

The pitiful human tried to keep his filthy mind blank, but lacking any sort of discipline, there was no chance of him hiding his thoughts - or the images that came with those thoughts - from the Elf prince. After the shock therapy, she almost always had seizures. She would see things. She liked to draw, so we asked her to draw them. She always drew that man. You.

Seizures. Shock therapy. Disgusting, what this man had allowed to be done - in truth, had ordered to be done - to a child. He had never done such things, even in war, even to his enemies. Fae did not torture their enemies. They were merciful and killed them quickly. If information was needed, one of those with mind magic would extract that knowledge from the opponent's skull before slaying them. Only during execution was the death drawn out to ensure the debt paid by the execution was paid in full.

Nuada shoved the memories swimming in Westenra's mind away so that he would not have to see the way Dylan's young body trembled under the onslaught of burning electricity. It sent fury surging through his blood, but he needed to keep his thoughts (and himself) calm and controlled.

He carelessly dropped the file onto the grand desk and dropped his feet to the floor. "Well, sir. You are probably wondering why it is I am here." Nuada deliberately turned the monster's words back on him. Westenra's eyes widened at the words. "I am here to kill you. To make you pay for what you have done to that woman, and to the other children you have tortured and brutalized, or allowed to be hurt. I will make you reap every drop of pain you have ever inflicted, and each one will burn like acid in your belly. I will break you to pieces before the night is done. You will beg for death before the end."

The death-pale man with hellfire in his eyes the color of arterial blood stood briefly and reached into a pocket. He withdrew a small box of glittering obsidian. Flicking the catch open, black-gloved fingers reached inside and withdrew a palm-sized, bright blue spider with a white-speckled abdomen and glistening fangs. Westenra began struggling against the constraints of his numbness-heavy limbs. Tiny sounds of panic managed to escape the chapped lips.

"Do you know what this is?" The black-lipped man's voice was nearly a croon. "Of course not. You are merely a spineless, gutless, heartless wretch. This spider is not actually a spider." He allowed the poisonously blue arachnid to crawl over his palm and then make its way to the back of his hand. "It is a spell given tangible form. One bite and it will suck your pathetic little mind into a hell so vicious and bleak your sanity would shatter in its confines were it not for the safeguards woven into the magic. You will pay for every moment of fear, every sorrow, every hurt and each tear shed. And then I will end your life in a shower of blood and pain." Was that a tear rolling down the old man's face? "I tell you this to ensure that you understand why I am here and what your actions have brought down on your own head."

And he held out his gloved hand and the blue spider leapt upon Westenra's chest. With pricking, needle-sharp steps it skittered up his torso, over his throat to settle against the mortal man's mouth. Several jet black eyes stared into the human's own for a long moment. A sudden movement from the blond man wrenched Westenra's lips apart. The spider crawled inside the open mouth and those venom-slicked fangs pierced the vein beneath Westenra's tongue.

Nuada dropped back into the chair and propped his boots on the desk. Flipping open Dylan's file, he began to read as Westenra started screaming.

.

By eleven-thirty, the Christmas tree was finally decorated, and never had the ewah children seen anything prettier. The fairy lights twinkled amidst the evergreen boughs in pale greens, icing pinks, holly reds, silvers and golds and starry blues. Glass orbs patterned with star bursts, crescent moons, snowflakes, and even pixie shapes hung from the branches by tiny chains of iridescent spider silk. Figures from myth carved of yellowed ivory also hung from the tree branches - leaping stag lords, wild boars with savage tusks, cream-colored wolves loping across the green of the fir tree. Several disks of stained glass showed stories that Dylan had told the children as they put the ornaments in appropriately high places: the Stable Rat, Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, the Little Drummer Boy, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and several others. Jeweled holly berries and mistletoe also decorated the tree.

Now the children were all snuggled down in their proper places in the den - 'Sa'ti on the sofa beneath her bevy of blankets, cuddling Neytiri the Stuffed Mountain Lion; A'du'la'di and Tsu's'di both stretched out on the futon. A'du was still nibbling on the last bit of snickerdoodle and 'Sa'ti was nursing a cup of milk. Dylan settled in the chair between the futon and the sofa and opened the Christmas Mouseling.

"Wait, A'ge'lv," 'Sa'ti cried, pulling back from the cup of milk. Tiny white drops dewed the fur around her mouth. "We can't have a story without the prince."

Dylan opened her mouth. Closed it again. Finally, she said, "His Highness won't be back until dawn, honey. You guys will be asleep."

'Sa'ti and A'du looked at each other across the open picture book. A'du'la'di's ears flicked back and forth a few times. 'Sa'ti's whiskers pricked forward and her brother nodded quickly. Clearly the two cougar children were communicating silently about something. A'du took a moment to finish off his snickerdoodle before he said, "Would... would it be okay if we had the story tomorrow, then? Maybe during breakfast or something? Once the prince comes home?"

"Yeah," 'Sa'ti said softly. "We should wait. It doesn't feel right to read the story without him here. We're all supposed to be here for the story." She drained her cup of milk. Becan took it and carried it into the kitchen.

"How will you guys get to sleep, though?"

Both children exchanged another glance and then A'du asked, "Maybe... could you... sing to us?"

Dylan closed the book and set it aside. Becan came back into the den. Clearly he'd heard the cougar boy's request, because with the brownie came his tiny black pipe. He popped onto a footstool beside the chair. Putting the pipe to his lipless mouth, Becan blew a few slow and haunting notes. His lady recognized the tune. She motioned for A'du and 'Sa'ti to lie down the way they did during a story. The brownie played some introductory measures before Dylan began to sing.

"A gentle breeze from Hush-a-By Mountain
Softly blows on Lullaby Bay.
It fills the sails of boats that are waiting,
Waiting to sail your worries away.

"It isn't far to Hush-a-By Mountain,
And your boat waits down by the key.
The winds of night so softly are sighing.
Soon they will fly your troubles to sea."

She'd known the children would fall asleep very quickly. It was three hours past their bedtime, for one thing. They had wanted to help with the tree and they'd been picking up on her nervousness, so she had let them stay up late enough to get it done - just this once. Now A'du was already snoring, sprawled across his half of the bed with both arms and his head hanging off the edge of the futon. 'Sa'ti blinked sleepily at her human mistress. She yawned like a sleepy cat, all teeth and pricked whiskers and stuck-out barbed tongue. Tsu's'di, who'd been helping clean up around the cottage as well as practicing several knife moves Nuada had shown him earlier, slept the sleep of an exhausted and well-fed teenage boy beside his little brother.

"So close your eyes on Hush-a-By Mountain.
Wave goodbye to cares of the day,
And watch your boat from Hush-a-By Mountain
Sail far away from Lullaby Bay."

By the end of the last verse, 'Sa'ti was also asleep, cuddled against her stuffed mountain lion. Dylan rose to her feet. She brushed back the wild mane of tawny hair with its dark spattering of baby spots and kissed the little girl's forehead. She offered the same smoothing motion to A'du'la'di's tufty mane, though it did little good. She kissed his forehead as well. Then she and Becan quietly left the room.

.

Westenra was a sobbing, twitching mess on the cheap wooden desk now. Tears ran freely down his cheeks and he continuously sniffled and whimpered. Every time Nuada moved so much as an inch, the human cried out in terror.

The Elf prince allowed himself a brief smile of grim satisfaction as he paused the spell. Before his eyes, Nuada had seen bruises bloom across the paunchy body before fading and then blooming again. Blood ran from cuts and gashes and scratches that split the skin for brief moments before sealing up again. Sharp Elven ears caught the snap and crunch of breaking and shattering bones that fractured before healing again. And the magic of the Anansi's spell kept the wretch from going into shock and dying of his injuries. He could only writhe and scream. No one was there to hear him beg for...

"Did you just ask me for mercy?" Nuada demanded in a snarl. He slapped the two-inch thick file onto the desk beside Westenra's head with a sound like a palm impacting flesh. The human flinched and moaned. "How dare you? How dare you ask for mercy after what you've done?"

"She... she would give me mercy," Westenra moaned, and Nuada went very still. "She's Christian; she'd forgive me. She wouldn't want you to do this. She'd want you to let me go. Please, please, for the love of G-"

Nuada's open-handed blow cut off the words and split Westenra's lip. The old man choked on the blood leaking into his mouth for a moment before remembering to swallow it. "How dare you?" The prince asked again. This time the psychiatrist didn't dare answer. "You wish to speak of mercy? To ask for mercy from me? Where was your mercy - where was your common decency, you puling scum - when you left four children in the dark to be tortured and raped?"

"It wasn't rape," he moaned. Those blood-red eyes zeroed in on him and Westenra cried, "It wasn't rape! She was asking for it, they all were. She enjoyed it." Anger burned the edge off the fear as the human gasped out, "Little slut wanted it. If you'd heard the things she was saying, the sounds she made... it wasn't rape."

"And what," Nuada demanded between teeth clenched so tightly he was probably in danger of cracking a molar, "did she say?"

"Kept saying 'please,'" Westenra mumbled. "Begging for it. Little whore was begging for it, it wasn't rape, it was all legal. She was perfectly willing. I don't know what she told you, but she was willing. It was just childish fun. Nobody got hurt. Please, nobody got hurt, she just had a case of buyer's remorse after, that's all. Please let me go, please don't kill me."

Nobody got hurt. For a second the only things that penetrated the odd, crystalline clarity around Nuada's mind and the awful silence in his skull were memories. Dylan's memories that he'd made a part of himself in a way he'd never done before. Hot blood slicking her thighs. Pooling between her legs. Blood in her mouth, choking her as she fought to scream for help. Blood burning in her eyes. Nobody got hurt. Couldn't breathe around the sweaty hand covering Dylan's mouth. Couldn't breathe with the animal's weight pinning her to the stairs. The sharp edges of the steps biting deep into her neck and shoulders and back with every savage thrust. Nobody got hurt.

Wasn't rape? That obscenity, that abomination, wasn't rape? Lie. Filthy lie. Rage boiled in Nuada's blood, burning in his chest and scorching his throat, blazing in his eyes. Filthy, filthy lie. Oh, he would pay. He would pay for his actions and for his lies. The lies that had woven a trap around Dylan and kept her locked up in this place because she fought against the hands always touching, always touching, or allowing other hands to touch.

"Did she beg you?" Nuada hissed, and the human flinched and whined like a dog. "Did she beg you, you stinking coward?"

Westenra shook his head. "I didn't touch her. Didn't touch her, I swear, I didn't do anything-"

"You hit her," the prince said in a voice like jagged ice. His words were sharp enough to make the air bleed. "Hurt her. I know you did. Did she beg you to stop?"

"It... it was self-defense," he whimpered. "She attacked me. She was always attacking people. Scratching, biting. She nearly killed me. It was self-defense, she was trying to rip my throat out with her teeth. With her teeth, for Chri-"

Nuada bared his teeth in a feral smile and Westenra abruptly choked off his words. "I know what you are," Nuada said. "So making excuses and lying to me is pointless." With a snap of gloved fingers, the spell resumed. The human's body convulsed with vicious agony. If the Elf prince had planned on letting him live beyond the dawn, he'd have been hurting sore in the morning. As it was, eyes like freshly-spilt blood watched with savage pleasure as Westenra began to cry again, keening like a wounded animal. Before Nuada's eyes, countless slashing lines of razor thinness ripped open the doctor's forearms and bled for a handful of seconds before healing, then splitting open again. Healing. Splitting open. Healing. Ripping open. Blood had long ago saturated the white button-down shirt the mortal wore. Now it pooled on the desktop and glistened in the dimly flickering fluorescent lights.

The prince turned back to the file and studied the transcripts from one of Dylan's so-called "therapy sessions" that had taken place a week after the first rape. Fools. Blind, incompetent fools. She wouldn't speak to them. Not after trying to tell them what had happened. They assumed she'd gone down in that basement to meet up with those boys (and curse it, they were only mentioned by first name, which he already knew, and no surname in the notes scribbled in the margins of the transcripts). They assumed she'd wanted sex to cope with her brother's "death." He knew that because this, too, was hastily penned in bright red off to one side of the paper.

She'd been punished for that. Punished. Not just her, either. The other girls - Allison and Ruby. The boy, Gunter. All four of them punished for "engaging in inappropriate conduct with fellow patients." What had these adults made of the blood? The bruises? The broken bones? How had this gone unnoticed?

It hadn't, Nuada realized. It had simply been covered up. That was the only explanation. Was this pathetic little nothing-man so powerful, then? No wonder Dylan feared him. He was not just the nightmare out of her childhood. He was her chief tormentor and nothing she or anyone else had done had ever managed to touch him. Westenra must've had a powerful friend. Maybe even more than one.

There were photographs. He couldn't bear to look at any beyond the first one. Of Dylan at twelve years old, lying so still and small in a hospital bed, her flesh nearly black with bruises in some places, leather straps clamped around her already-bruised wrists and ankles. She'd been asleep. Or maybe unconscious. It didn't matter.

She was right, he thought somewhat numbly. His mind barely even registed Westenra's cries of agony. She was right. It was worse before. She'd nearly died. All four of those children had nearly died and by the gods didn't their parents care? And Dylan had told him that there were other children besides those four. The boys who'd done this preferred brunettes with curly hair but the torture had applied to others, to any child too weak to protect themselves or lucky enough to find protection with one of the bigger children.

He studied her medical files. She hadn't given him permission, but he was looking for something specific. All that trauma, all that damage... was it possible that the brutality had stripped Dylan of even the possibility of her most cherished dream? She wanted to be a mother so badly. Wanted children so much. But could she even carry them? She'd never given any indication that she couldn't, but maybe she hadn't allowed herself to find out the truth in case it was too hard to bear.

And even if she had known she could not, why would she share something so personal with him? You've already trusted me with so much but not with yourself. If she thought he did not trust her, why should she trust him?

The sudden silence jolted him from his study of the medical records. Nuada's eyes slashed like garnet knives to the human on the desk. Westenra was still breathing, and was still conscious. But the pain had stopped. Nuada glanced at the clock; after two in the morning. The spell... was it over? Had the mortal truly experienced everything in the last six hours that he'd inflicted on his victims? Or was the shock-prevention component of the Anansi's spell kicking in?

"Please," Westenra gasped. "Please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, please. I'm sorry, just please let me go. I'm begging you. Please."

His voice wove in and out of the fog of memory that was never far away from Nuada; not since he'd walked into this building with death on his mind, in his eyes. Now the Elven warrior could hear Dylan weeping, begging as Westenra now begged. He remembered the shared dream where he'd raced to find her, her sobs and vicious words echoing off the walls. Little slut likes it. Best thing that ever happened to her. She likes it. C'mon, babe, hold still. And Dylan pleading with them to let her go, just please let her and the other children go, before the monsters got fed up and covered her mouth and wrapped choking hands around her vulnerable throat to silence her tears and pleas and screams-

- Black bruises around her pale neck
Necklace of choking shadows
They want her silenced, they don't want to hear
Choking, choking, choking
Can't breathe he can feel her panic
Feel her pain her terror
Taste the scream building in the back of her throat
Hands wrapping tight brutal grip
Pressure lights blinding blood roaring in her ears
Heart pounding
Can't breathe can't breathe can't... -

Nuada came out of the flashback with his hands clenched tightly around Westenra's throat. Weak mortal fingers scrabbled weakly at the Elf's grip. Watery brown eyes bulged from their sockets. Westenra struggled to gasp for air beyond the crushing grip of black-gloved hands. With a snarl, Nuada yanked his hands away. The human choked and gagged as air flooded his lungs.

No, the prince reminded himself. No, this wasn't how he wanted the putrid animal to end his pitiful existence. No, he had a better way.

Drawing his twin-dagger from the sheath inside his sash - black for once, instead of his customary red - Nuada let the light play along the blade. Westenra's eyes widened as the silver blade glinted like pain. Like ice-cold death. Nuada flipped the dagger, catching it by the blade. Flipped it again. Caught it. Flipped it. Caught. Those watery eyes grew wider and wider with every toss. So far the Elf prince hadn't hurt the human himself beyond the ensorceled spider bite. But now... now the spell was over, or the agony would've resumed by now. Which meant it was time to call in the last of the debt and kill this vile creature.

With a sudden, sharp movement that cut off Westenra's yelp of terror, Nuada drove the dagger into the human's chest. A yank on the hilt wrenched it back out again. Westenra coughed and gasped at the pain. The prince wiped the blade on his trousers and sheathed it again. Blood welled up and spilled across the liver-spotted torso.

Nuada dropped back into the chair and propped his feet on the desk once more. "You're not going to bleed to death, human. At least, not exactly. I just barely knicked your right lung. At this moment, your lung is slowly filling with blood. Once the right one is filled, the blood will spill over into your left lung. You'll drown in your own blood over the course of the next four hours and I intend to sit back and enjoy."

"Please," and now there was a faint wet rasp to the words. "Please, you can't do this. You can't. Please, help me, you can't do this. Please. I'll do anything, I beg you, please, please have mercy. Show some mercy."

"My apologies," the prince said with a distinct lack of sincerity. "I seem to be fresh out. But I do have a question, Doctor." Nuada leaned in and tapped the top of the blue spider's abdomen with a forefinger. The venomous fangs bit deep again. Westenra cried out and sobbed weakly. The bone-white Elf hissed in the old man's ear, "Do you believe in fairies now?"