Propped on his elbows amidst a wrack of snapped branches and smoldering char-patches, Beidon reached repeatedly toward his head, but repeatedly faltered. He was unanxious for tacticle confirmation of the severity of the blow that had felled him, an injury substantial enough that it was still affecting his vision. It must be. How else to explain the impossible sight he could swear to having witnessed upon first coming to?

Upon awakening flat on his back, he’d disregarded dizziness, defiantly raising his head and reopening his eyes. And it was then that, through the wooziness and the gunk obscuring his vision, between the sight-guides of his outstretched feet, past the intervening tree-trunks and out beyond the stream, he’d glimpsed a blurred flash of wafting white dress… Emlie!

Despite nausea and pain, he was on the very cusp of calling out to her. Then something happened. Something that reduced him to a state of stupefied abject astonishment. In that instant there had erupted behind the white an unnatural green flare, and the flare had revealed an impossible apparition whose flaring inhuman eyes and disproportionate grasshopper limbs could only be symptomatic of grave cranial trauma. The dark void from whose geometry-defying depths the dire figure beckoned likewise made mockery of Beidon’s vision and mental state. The crowning impossibility, though, had been saved for last, as both figures were in the next instant hidden from sight, swallowed by the snapping shut of an earthen-lipped mouth sporting tree-root-teeth!

What possible response could there be to such outright lunacy? For poor disbelieving Beidon, the only reasonable course of action lay in squeezing his eyes resolutely shut for several long moments. And sure enough, upon reopening them he’d found the bower to be empty save for the rubble of its bizarre ruination. Thusly reassured, convinced that his vision had been the result of collateral damage and dreading discovery of its full extent, the forge-boy had dithered for several indecisive moments.

Finally, however, he steeled himself and reached tentatively inward towards his head, all the while dreading what his fingertips might encounter.

They encountered… absolutely nothing of note. No obvious breakage. The first ginger touch gave way to increasingly insistent explorations, his proddings encountering nothing worse than the sort of bruised soreness than one might readily expect given a rough backwards tumble. He was, if only by dint of his famously hard head, essentially unharmed.

The forge-boy heaved a sigh of relief… that caught in his throat as the implications of his well-being hit home. If he wasn’t injury-addled, if what he had seen a moment ago was no trauma-induced hallucination, then that would mean—

Beidon sat bolt upright, scattering downed tree branches. Across the water, the root-draped rear wall of Emlie’s bower faced him squarely, solid and impenetrable. Other parts of that bower, however, had undergone radical alteration. He blinked, bemused, and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

He sat on the periphery of a zone of uncanny devastation marked by denuded trees, scorched underbrush and churned turf. Flattened grass radiated outward from a ragged crater that had been newly excavated within the larger bowl of the bower. Some remnant of the recent violence hung in the air, half odor, half tingling sensation setting the hairs of his arms on end. Beidon wondered whether lightning had struck the embankment. That would explain the damage, the electric atmosphere, the… lack of… people…. No. Forgers, no.

Before he knew it, Beidon was on his feet and stumbling out into the Glazersgush. The swiftly flowing stream rose up past his ankles… his waist… his chest… As he chinned the rising flow, Beidon gazed in despair at the far bank. He was less than a third of the way across. And he could not swim. He pushed desperately forward anyway. The water covered his mouth, then his nose. Battling down his rising panic, Beidon attempted to bull forward despite. For all of his lunging, though, he could gain little traction against the slimy bottom. The current was swift, forcing him to lean sharply into the flow. It could have been the hands of a swiftly moving market crowd, all of them grasping, tugging, yanking. Soon all of his strength was devoted merely to holding himself against the onrush, and his progress dwindled to nothing. A wavelet broke over the top of his head. The anxiety mounted, threatening to overwhelm. He took a too-hasty step. His foot skittered off a river-bottom rock, sending his legs sliding out from under him. Instantly he was tumbling head-over-arse along the streambed, madly thrashing and splashing in the throes of unsuppressed panic. The uncombattably swift current and too-slick bottom stymied all attempts to regain purchase. Beidon couldn’t tell which way was up. A hard landing on his back blew out his held breath, and river water flooded in to replace it. He gagged uncontrollably, and swallowed yet more. The world had become a tumbling blur, light-murk-light-murk-light… His terror was cut through by a streak of mordant scorn: here he was, Emlie’s would-be savior, drowning less than a stone’s throw out into a stream in his own town’s backwood, in barely head-deep water no less. How heroic.

The Glazersgush, however, was apparently as fickle as it was impassible, and the in the very next moment it chose to relinquish Beidon. Washed out of the flow by momentum at the point where the stream began its next curve north, he found himself ejected back onto its the near bank… soggy, shaken, and barely ten yards away from his point of entry. He spent a spitting and sputtering moment hugging the dirt. Between heaves, he cast a series of dour glares... first sideways at the river that had bested him (where, bizarrely, he caught a glimpse of what might have been a pair of oddly familiar pince-nez eyeglasses tumbling by…) then down at himself. What he saw evoked fresh scorn. First straw, now mud, all churned up together. Magnificent. Only fire me, I’d make a great brick.

As soon as the spasms abated somewhat, he was up and stumbling along the bankside. The Glazersgush had foiled his direct approach, sending him scrambling downstream in the direction of the Tradeway bridge. All the while he cast apprehensive glances back over his shoulder at the strange disaster site. Coughs continued to wrack him, his legs were shaky from the near-drowning, and the bank was uneven and overgrown. It was an enormous relief when he stumbled out into the clear… at least at first.

More and more, however the mundane emptiness of the Tradeway began to wear on Beidon. Coming from the morning’s spate of extraordinary experiences -from his interview with the Lord Mayor to his desperate back-country sprint, from the late aquatic misadventure to the capstone oddity of Emlie’s explosive disappearance- to be suddenly deposited back onto an everyday cart road felt odd bordering on absurd. And also, given Beidon’s mounting apprehensions, somehow ominous. Everything was so quiet, so untouched by whatever catastrophe had struck the little bower around the upstream bend. The silent normalcy seemed ripe for sudden disruption.

Fool, what are you expecting – Gordun to jump out of the bushes at you? Beidon shook his head at his own foolishness before setting off in the direction of the bridge. A short trot brought him to the matched thin patches in the border-hedges that marked the spot where the bower-trail crossed the Tradeway. He hesitated briefly on the threshold of what could be hearbreaking calamity. I have to do this… whatever I’m likely to find.

Shouldering through the hedge brought Beidon onto what at first appeared to be the same overgrown game trail he’d walked an easy twoscore times before. As he progressed towards the bower, however, disquieting divergences drew his attention. Broken branches abounded on all sides, lying in the dirt or dangling broken-backed from their parent limbs. The prevalence of the damage suggested incursion not just by a large intruder, but likely by one who’d been flailing violently about. Struggling with a captive? If you’ve hurt her, Gordun… A third of the way to the bower, there was a person-sized indent crushed into the foliage on his left. Did someone lunge off of the path here?

For the few sunlight-dappled and breeze-tickled moments of his passagethrough the greenery, it had been possible for Beidon to once again imagine… hope?... that the explosive denouement of his vision of Emlie had been some sort of hallucination. However, as he drew closer to the trail’s terminus, the accumulating dreadful telltales asserted the experience’s reality: first the damage-spoort, then a growing acrid odor, then denuded bushes and saplings, then wisps of smoke rising from the violated ground. The gradually intensifying destruction sympathetically elevated both his anxious anticipation and his foot speed. He was striding… then trotting… then dashing… Caution and the silent approach flew out the proverbial window. Instead, he found himself bellowing at the top of his lungs,

“I’m here, Emlie! I’m here to save you! EMLIE?? EMLIANA HUBBL -"

He flew down the last few yards of game trail and through the tree-break screening the bower, pell-mell and heedless – which surely explains why, when something shot out across the opening at ankle height, Beidon’s first inkling of its presence was the sudden sensation of flight as he tripped spectacularly, flying a good three yards before coming to a face-first skidding crash amidst a patch of tubular purple flowers.. 

He spit out several blooms, and had barely gotten past the “Oww. Oww oww oww.” stage of initial acknowledgement before insult had joined injury in the form of a boot… a noteworthily pointy-heeled boot… planted squarely atop his back. A wooden shaft of some sort (surely the footsnare) gave him a sharp rap on the back of his head before coming to rest against his cheek.

A gruff female voice from above growled, “Friend or fae?” in tones that were starkly threatening, gender notwithstanding.

Had he heard aright? “Friend or-? Not that it’s any of your business, whoever you are, but I’ve a girlfriend!”

“O ho, a comic bard. As it happens, Sir Bard, I laugh hardest at minstrels of the toothless variety!” The club darted ‘round to rap his mouth before returning to rest. “I’ll have your straight answer or your damned incisors: are you a faery-friend, boy?”

Poor Beidon was past all caution now. “I’ve no idea! But I DO know thay I’m certainly no friend of the sort of lunatic brigand who’d assault a stranger in the bare bright ‘o day, and then’d hit ‘em up with as outright crazy a question as that! ...does that answer you?”               

The club tap tap tapped contemplatively upon his cheek, as if the wielder were using it to punctuate her thoughts. Then it dug in, hard, and twisted back-and-forth. It hurt enough that an outraged Beidon prepared to lunge, disadvantaged position or no. At the last, though, the club abruptly vanished.               

“Get up.” The boot gave a suggestive shove, then withdrew.               

Beidon didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled to hands-and-knees and made to rise fully. As he did so, however, the wooden club smacked him across the back of his thighs, unsteadying him. “Get to that far wall and sit, back against it! No sudden moves!”               

As Beidon stumbled to obey he attempted to glimpse his captor over his shoulder, but she stepped deftly out of his line of vision. The club made a whistling pass over his head, so close that it knocked straw and mud from his hair. “No tricks, boy! I know dispellings and anticharms for things your hedge-charmer grandmother hasn’t heard of, and good stout oak fills in any gaps!” Another close pass by the club, to illustrate the point. “We’ll have the truth of you, quisling.”               

Beidon stumbled up against the bower wall and spun himself about using grasped roots for leverage. As he did so, he took a first look at his tormentor... and goggled, for he most definitely had never seen her like before. She’d demanded that he sit, but Beidon might have plopped down in any event, gobsmacked.               

Beidon’s everyday experience of females could be divided into two broad groups: the young girls of the town, some carefree and vapid, others precocious and somber, all essentially interchangeable; and their elders, who were to-a-woman either tradesmarms like Mistress Grimmel or society dames like the late Lady Hubbleton. A smattering of outliers only served to confirm the rule. And of course there was Emlie, foremost and singular, but Beidon had spent the balance of the last several years alternately obsessing over her femininity and vehemently ignoring it, in both modes utterly unable to classify it.                

But the creature standing before him, though assuredly a woman, was so uniquely unlike any he’d ever encountered as to leave him utterly lacking for any notion of who or what he faced.

She wasn’t tall… but she surely seemed to tower over Beidon. She was far from hulking… yet her strapping physique left little doubt as to which of the two of them would prevail in a physical altercation. She absolutely wasn’t naked… yet she might as well have been, for all that form-fitting leathers worn unabashedly gave Beidon an unprecedented eyeful of the adult female form. She wasn’t making any overtly threatening moves… yet Beidon felt a definite sense of peril, imminent and pronounced.

She stepped forward with a swaggering arrogance and pulled up into a wide stance, almost straddling his outstretched feet and affording Beidon his first full view of her. She wore tight knee-length boots, heeled yet ruggedly soled, well-weathered. From out of their turned-down tops, clinging black buckskins rose curving to a canted belt. The wide girdle was studded and hung round with gear, pouches, and some sort of large leathern coil. North of that belt, a broad strip of tightly muscled stomach bridged the gap to a long-sleeved leather high-jerkin that looked formidably utilitarian yet whose exceedingly low-cut neckline exposed more cleavage than Beidon had ever before laid eyes on. Crossing that remarkable chest diagonally and joining with the belt was a bandolier festooned with pouches, odd spheres, wooden blocks, bits of matter both mineral and vegetable. The bandolier’s edges were lined with an odd iridescent fringe that Beidon on closer inspection identified as dozens of overlaid (insect?) wings, translucent and freakishly large. An onyx clasp rested at the base of her long and supple neck, holding in place a full cloak that was as black as the rest of her garb. A smaller onyx teardrop gracing the center of a braided black leather headband punctuated a pronounced widow’s peak. The band wrangled a mane of raven-black hair, gathering it into two fiercely scything shoulder-length sweeps to either side of the face. As for that face, Beidon was incapable of adjudging the beauteousness of so fierce (and antagonistic) a countenance, but it was certainly striking regardless – long, sharp-edged, as aggressively formed in its way as her outfit. Gray eyes blazed challengingly at Beidon from under surprisingly full swooshes of eyebrow, which in turn arced out towards ears bearing subtle points. The thin lips sported a half-smile that mixed a modicum of interest with a world of scorn.

            Beidon looked last to his assailant’s weapons. The oaken truncheon she was backhand-brandishing at him (and the wrapped handle of a matching club poking up from over her shoulder) appeared much like those toted by the Clear Crucible constabulary. Whatever mechanism graced the bracer on her outstretched left arm, however, was less commonplace. In peering over the woman’s fist down the length of her forearm, Beidon gazed straight between the twin tines of a wrist-mounted metal fork. A taut black band stretched back from the tines to the elbow, where it was held fast by an articulated double-hook at the bracer’s rear end. At its utmost extent, the widened strap cupped a strange walnut-sized ball, waxy with a dark core. It looked eerily like an eyeball, and Beidon had the disconcerting impression that it was staring at him down the length of the woman’s pointing arm. 

And… that was it. Inventory complete. 

Beidon blinked. Was that all? Why then did he feel so threatened? Formidable or no, this was just one woman facing him. And for all that she was acting the part of an armed captor, he couldn’t see how she was any more well-equipped than he himself was… in fact, his forge hammer surely trumped her sticks handily. And really, he must be far and away the stronger of the two…

He looked her over again, looking for some concealed weapon of greater lethality, perhaps hidden in her belt or tucked into that bandolier or… oh. Before he knew it, his eyes had come to rest upon her exposed bosom. He felt his cheeks reddening, and a mounting nausea that had nothing at all to do with disgust. And then, quick as lightning, her club had darted out to spear the underside of his chin, tilting his head painfully back and forcing him to meet her own stare.

“Up here, bright boy.” The gray eyes locking his rolled theatrically. “Good Sidhe, an idiot and a degenerate. The pride of the hinterlands, no doubt!”

“I am nggghtt-“ Beidon’s protest was choked off by the judicious application of pressure to his throat via the pinning club.

“Spoke when spoken to, hinterboy; otherwise spare us both the embarrassment.” She withdrew the pointing fist and groped in a bandolier pouch with it. “Besides, you’re not likely to be around long enough to get whatever it is out.” She withdrew something and displayed it between them on her black-gloved palm. It was a small yellow flower, the variety, as Beidon recalled, that the arborists called Ser Jon’s Wort.  “Best prepare yourself, boy.” Her fingers closed over the bloom in a tight fist, which she raised high over the suddenly wide-eyed Beidon’s head. Her eyes closed, and she solemnly murmured a handful of strange words. Then they popped open, and she SWEPT her arm down to slap her opened hand against Beidon’s head, splayed fingers crushing the flower against his forehead. “Ersooyl-je, OUTSIDER BE BANISHED!” the woman shouted.

A pregnant second passed. Beidon, eyes crossed involuntarily at the hand pressed to his forehead, coughed politely. The woman gave a slight secondary shove, crushing the flower more thoroughly against Beidon’s brow. He shrugged slightly at her. 

“Well.” the woman finally allowed. She ahemed, sounding vaguely disappointed. “Well,” she continued in a slightly softer-edged voice, “clearly you’ve not been directly touched by them. Good to get that cleared up.” She patted Beidon’s head… then, abruptly, the hand withdrew and she was back at his feet, again brandishing the truncheon threateningly and gruffly declaring, “…but of course, that does NOTHING to clear up the question of just what you’re doing here, boy!”

“What I’m DOING here?? This is a bloody clearing in the woods! Madam, you seriously can’t-” Whatever else he’d been about to say, a backhand blow across the chest with the truncheon preempted it and sent him sprawling against the bank.

“‘Madam’?” She loomed over the freshly re-addled Beidon like a woman posessed, a sudden paroxysm of anger lending her a positively electric air – indeed, he could swear that her very hair stood up above its band, wild with rage or weird static charge. “MADAM??” She drew herself up to her full height, stuck out her chest, brandished the truncheon threateningly, and planted a foot on Beidon’s chest. “How DARE you? Do I look like a MADAM to you, you-”

Beidon saw his opportunity in her momentary incaution. Enough is enough! He swept his legs sideways and knocked the woman’s remaining foot out from under her. She sensed the movement and, instantaneously sobering, attempted to hop over it; however she failed to quite clear the sweep. Beidon’s toe caught her boot heel and knocked it sideways. She fell snarling, twisting in mid-air so as to fall arms-leading atop Beidon. Instantly she was grappling with him, entangling his legs while working to pin his elbows into the crease where bankside met turf.  And Beidon realized almost immediately that he was in trouble.

For starters, he was potentially overmatched. She was strong. Strong enough to lever his arms lower and lower and to pry them inexorably apart. Strong enough that, even had he not started from a disadvantaged pinned position, his prospects to prevail in this wrestle might lie in serious doubt.

Further complicating matters: as they tussled, the woman’s straining was pressing her exposed cleavage into the forge boy’s face. Given the desperate straits he found himself in Beidon wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted by that. Wouldn’t.

Lastly, there was the fact that she fought dirty. This was brought to Beidon’s attention when her out-of-position leg swept up and back behind her, then shot forward to knee him in a manner that all but ended the contest on the spot. Beidon groaned, blanched, reflexively attempted to double up. The spastic violence of the movement actually achieved what his determined efforts had not, lifting and unbalancing the woman, and an afflicted Beidon seized the advantage via the only means his condition permitted: he grasped her wrists and, as he writhed in continued agony, yanked her after him.

            Their entwined bodies rolled back and forth, contesting, the woman wrenching them just as violently as Beidon despite her lesser mass. They butted up against the curving edge of the bower and curved with it, describing broadening semicircles in the crisped grass. At each utmost extent, they hissed threats at each other.

            “Going to smash you into the dirt, boy! Going to grind you in below these roots!” Back.

            “You’re crazier than the mayor! Crazier than Gordun! You’re more bent than a copper nail!” Forth, coming to rest with his head mere inches from a huge boot lying on the bank-side, emitting wisps of smoke from a protruding stub of char-flecked… bone? “What in-?”

“Going to crush you like the interloping faetor that you are! Fae-lover! Fool! Faetor!” And back, plunging them both into the prickly embrace of a rosebush.

“YOU’RE COMPLETELY OFF YOUR BLOODY OLD ROCKER!” and forth, and-

“NOBODY CALLS ME OLD!!!” - viciously back, and... vertigo. Pinwheeling, sky-over-soil and *SPLASH*. They’d rolled clear off the edge of the bower!

The shock of hitting the water loosened both of their grips. Not again. Wrenching free of the flailing woman, Beidon brought both legs up up tight against his own chest, planted his feet against her torso and KICKED off of her. As his momentum reversed, he reached back overhead, stretched to his utmost extent, and snagged a double handful of grassy verge.

Much of what he was holding onto tore loose as he pulled himself up backwards by slow muscles-burning agonized inches, but enough held fast that he finally secured dry purchase for his head, shoulders and upper back… enough to anchor him to the bank. A further reach back and some concerted squirming, and he struggled free of the Glazersgush for the second time in one afternoon. Legs still dangling in the stream, he flopped over onto his belly with a soggy exhausted gasp and kicked desultorily at the water, SPLOOSH.

It was a testament to the utter incongruity of the next instant that Beidon registered it even through his exhaustion and bewilderment: he heard both sounds, the gasp and the splash, echoing continuously from directly behind him! He scrambled up into a crouch and spun around, and was greeted with the unexpected and absurd sight of his adversary flailing and splashing in panic, not ten feet from shore. Forgers, but she couldn’t swim either!

He crouched there on the bank, watching his attacker founder and bob. She was churning up a tremendous amount of water, expending a prodigious amount of energy, yet managing nothing more productive than keeping her head (mostly) momentarily above water. Beidon willed himself to feel satisfaction at the sight. Serves the madwoman right! …so why, then, a twinge of what could only be guilt? Watching her struggle helplessly, he cursed himself for a weakling for the discomfit he felt, the inescapable sensation of wrongness. For Forgers’ sakes, Beidon…! She’d attacked him, without provocation. She’d ranted about the most outrageous of fancies with a crazed conviction equaling even Emlie’s… and followed through on them with an aggression that had far outstripped Emlie’s at her most righteously rancorous. He would not feel sympathy for such an obviously dangerous lunatic, he would not he-

“Buh-best finish me while you-” (gulp) “...guh, while you c-can, kid! This is your big-a” (splash) “-your big chance, faetor! I-” Her head went under for an extended beat, then broke surface again. She spat out a mouthful of water. “Well? What are you waiting for??”

What was he waiting for? Flee or strike, this was his one chance to take control of this absurd situation. She’d already shown herself as an enemy and a threat. She was at his mercy. Powerless to stop him. He had only to reach out…

He drew his hammer. The woman’s eyes widened in anticipation of the blow; she covered her head with her forearms in a pathetic attempt to ward it off. Extending to the utmost, he swung the hammer down towards her… and (cursing himself for a fool) stopped it just above her head.

“Grab it!” he shouted.

The woman actually stopped thrashing to blink at him. The resultant plunge wiped the shock from her face, and when next she surfaced it was with a determined look and a hammer-ward lunge that ended with her gripping the steel head with both hands. Beidon tugged backwards, digging in his legs and straining (Forgers, but she was heavier than she looked!) to haul her up onto the bank.

Eventually she was up. She released the hammer and dropped to her knees and elbows. A perplexed look crossed her face, she made to speak... and proceeded to vomit up what seemed like half of the stream. Even after she’d purged the last of it, she huddled there heaving for additional long seconds.  “So… so THAT’S the way-” she coughed, “-the way it is, b-boy. No easy outs, huh? All r-right. Give me a minute-” she hacked savagely. Her hand reached for her stowed truncheon. It shook, badly. “-and we’ll c-continue-”

“You want to fight again?? You ARE insane! You can barely crawl! And I just drew your drowning carcass out of the rusting Glazersgush! ‘Think I did that only for the sake of some kind of rematch?”

She raised her head (somehow no less compelling, Beidon couldn’t help but note, for its soggy bedragglyness) and fixed him with glassy, bloodshot eyes. “You don’t-? …You had me dead to rights. You could have been rid of me easier than flipping a coin. Yet you... and here I...” She tilted her head quizzically. “...what kind of faetor ARE you?”

“No kind of... of... of whatever you just said, at all! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you while you’ve been knocking me about the glade!” Now it was his turn to squint in puzzlement. “‘Sides, why are you so certain I’m a what-it-calls-itself, anyway?”

“Fae traitor. ‘faetor’.” The woman rose to her knees, then, shakily, to her feet. “I heard you, boy. You rushed into this very bower shouting a faetor battle-cry. The name of an ancient, faery queen.” She leaned in with a sharp wolfen look. “Do you deny it?”

Beidon rolled his eyes at the absurdity of it. “No faery nor no queen, ma- miss! That’s her. My friend, my friend the girl. That I mentioned before.” For all his surety in defending himself, he was finding simple speech with this exotic creature to be tongue-trippingly challenging. “She’s just a girl, not a queen! ...well, not to anybody but me. And she’s no faery! ...at least, not much nor most of the time, anyway, I think. So you see-” Beidon’s face was reddening with embarrassment, intensity, the desire to get it all out.

The woman cut him off with a two-fingered wolf-whistle and a water-shedding head-shake. “Whoa, boy, take a breath. Exhale slowly, let all the babble out!” And, sotto vocce, “…and he dares call ME insane!” Yet the accompanying smirk was a trifle less easy, perhaps betokening reciprocated embarrassment, perhaps even the beginnings of re-evaluation.

“So…” she started.

Each eyed the bruised-and-dripping other. The river had quenched the violent tension inflaming the two. In its place grew uneasy détente… the kind perhaps born of dawning shared understanding, or more likely of abashment stemming from each having been observed by the other behaving profoundly ridiculously.

The woman coughed, tried again, “So, this… Emliana…”

“Emlie.”

“…right. This, ah, Emlie… you sought her… here?”

“Yes! It’s sort of our- err, that is, it’s sort of a place of hers, you see.” 

The woman glanced around at the charred and devastated spot. “Exquisite taste. Tell me, does she often loiter at the mouths of Thinnings?”

“I don’t know no ‘things’.” The woman quirked a brow at the unfortunate inadvertent pun. Beidon colored, but continued. ”She comes here to think. To escape. I guess she came here today for that. Only… I think she was seized upon!”

“Uh-huh. And what gives you that idea?” The woman had pulled out several strange implements from one of her bandolier-pouches, delicate brass-framed lenses and thin copper rods. She began poking, prodding, and observing the bower with their aid.

“At first I thought he’d gotten her. Gordun. They mayor’s man. But then I saw his, umm, his-” He swallowed and pointed to the smoking boot. The woman gave it a professional looking-over, nodded, then casually toed it into the stream. It sank with a faint hiss. “Then I thought maybe she’d… when this place went…” Beidon gesticulated helplessly.

“But, you see, I caught a glimpse. Of her. I’m sure now. Well, of her dress, anyway.” Disclosing what had to come next would surely confirm him as the lunatic of the pair. He shut his eyes in anticipatory mortification. “Her and a tall, tall man. They were carrying a strange green light, and-” he paused, realizing the bizarre nature of what he’d said, the crowning absurdity of what he was about say. He glanced up in anticipation of the woman’s stinging rebuke. Instead, he found her staring at him intently, her strange tools disregarded. Emboldened, he plowed on: “-and then the wall there swallowed them!” Then, his desperation breaking through, he sobbed out, “I have to find her!!”

Remarkably, she didn’t mock him or chastise him or call him crazy. Even more remarkably, she nodded earnestly, as if that had been the first thing he’d said during their entire encounter that had truly made good sense. Most remarkably of all, when she next spoke, it was for the first time with a modicum of civility: “I believe you.” Then, her mouth twisting sourly, “Looks like I pegged the wrong bumpkin for a faery friend.”

The woman studied the strange objects in her hands, obviously as pretext for pondering something weighty. Coming to a decision, she nodded to herself and looked up. “So, boy, what’s your name?”

“Uhh…. Beidon, it’s Beidon. My name.” Forced to converse civilly with this woman, Beidon found himself once again red-faced, tongue-tied and stumble-footed. She’s got you picked out properly, Beid – you are a lout after all!

Having decided on a course of action, however, the woman took said loutishness in stride. “Best shutter that, Beidon-boy, you’re letting in flies. And do pick up your things, you’ve scattered them all over the damn bower. Come on, move!” 

Off his confused look: “Look, we don’t have time to dawdle over details. So let me lay it out for you in hinterlander-friendly small-words fashion: my name is Laurn, my noble trade is faery-tracking, and you’re right about your little girlfriend – she has indeed been taken, by one of ‘em. What’s more, I know just which one, and however frantic with worry you’re feeling, trust me, it’s not nearly enough.”

Laurn roamed about the bower collecting her own dropped bits of gear, addressing Beidon without bothering to confirm that he was following: “Now, given free reign and kind fate, I’d just as soon leave you to your mud and your straw and your pathetic predicament. But fate mocks me: you may, as it turns out, be of some use in the tracking of said faery by dint of your connection to his abductee. Therefore, Elfhame be damned, I’m stuck with you.”

She stuffed the last bits of kit into her harness and turned away to resume her scrutiny of the bower wall, sparing only the briefest of glimpses for her gobsmacked listener. “So lift your leaden feet, shut your folksy trap, and get set to follow me quick as you can; ‘cause it seems, Beidon-boy, that we’re hunting the same damned thing.”  

Next Chapter: 8. Emlie Underground