“Whoa. It… it worked.” A laugh bubbles out of my throat. Ha. Finally… finally… something has gone my way. “Okay. I, uh, I guess that means that the circle’s imprinted on me. So now what?”
“Now I explain to you just what you’re going to retrieve for me…”
4
It doesn’t take long for me to figure out why Grimly brought me to the protective circle and then taught me how to make it work for me. It wasn’t a kindness. Like the fae, gnomes don’t do kindness.
But they sure do know how to keep the scales of a bargain in balance.
In order to clear this “debt” he believes I owe him, Grimly tells me that I have to retrieve three separate items for him. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as he initially makes it seem. Nope. It’s not like running down to the corner bodega to pick up a few things for dinner. There’s no list that I can check off, grabbing three things at random, then throwing them at the gnome.
His items are highly specific, too. I have to bring him a plum from a specific tree, a feather from a specific raven, and I don’t know what the last one is just yet, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be any easier.
And I have to do all of this while hiding out in the Shadow Realms of the Winter Court where a mysterious rider hunts in the shadows, and I’m a sitting duck the instant I leave the circle of flowers.
I think Grimly figured out that I really was weighing staying inside of my magic circle and telling him to fuck off when it came to doing his weirdo tasks. Or maybe he realized that he wasn’t being as fair as he thought he was. Either way, before I could refuse him—and pray that the repercussions aren’t so bad—he makes it more enticing.
Gnomes, I learn, don’t belong to any one court. Like the imps, they’re at home in either the Summer or the Winter Court, though they are ruled over by the high race of the fae no matter where they live. Here, the Unseelie are in charge. On the other side of Faerie, it’s the Seelie and their Summer King. Because Grimly is a nomad, he knows all the tricks when it comes to traveling between both lands.
Plus, he can see through the glamour of abandoned fairy circles without using a seeing stone. And he tells me that, as soon as I perform my favor for him, he’ll close out the bargain by leading me to a fairy circle that’ll take me out of the Unseelie lands.
It’s a bargain I can’t refuse. So I agree.
I’m really going to do this.
Even though Grimly comes by my circle the next morning—day thirty-two by my count—to lay out what he expects me to do, I don’t make my move until the next afternoon for no other reason than it takes me that long to find the exact plum tree he has in mind.
I have a terrible sense of direction. I always have. For some reason, Grimly thought that the instructions he gave me would actually have me heading straight to the tree.
Ha.
Yeah, right.
I will give him credit for one thing. When I kind of, sort of admitted that I was worried about how I’d find my way back, he offered me a tip that I refused to accept until he promised it was free of charge. Turns out, all I need to do is pull off a single petal from one of the flowers that make up the circle. So long as I have it on me, it’ll guide me back.
Of course, I wasn’t just going to take his word for it. So, after plucking one of the petals and tucking it inside of my jeans pocket, I take a few steps away from the circle, close my eyes, spin around, and, when I’m good and dizzy, I start stumbling forward.
My feet course correct. After I’ve walked for a few seconds, I peek open my eyes only to discover that it actually worked. I’m facing my circle, almost all the way back to its edges.
Too bad finding the plum tree was nowhere near as easy as that.
It makes it worse that my biggest worry came true. It might be considered “morning” here, but it’s almost as dark in the shadow-filled woods as it was before I got cozy and passed out in the protective circle. I can see a little better, though part of me wonders if that’s only because my sight’s adjusted enough. At least I’m not going in blind, even if I am still totally lost.
It’s a good thing I have the cloak from the imps. I feel better wrapped up in the strange, shadowy material, and not only because I’d forgotten how cold it was out here. With t
he threat of the horseman still real, I don’t feel so scared heading off in the woods so long as I know the cloak will hide me.
Grimly told me that I would know I had the right tree when I found one that bares dark purple plums on an empty branch. Once it becomes obvious that I totally fucked up following his directions, I just keep my eyes skyward, hoping to luck upon the fruit.
And I do. To my absolute amazement, I find the tree. And it has to be the right one because, after walking around aimlessly for hours, cursing Grimly’s name to hell and back, I find the one single tree that has anything growing on it. The fact that it’s plums? It has to be the right one.
Staring up at it, I realize why Grimly used this as one of his tasks. I don’t know how tall plum trees are in my world, but this sucker is huge. The branches are at least ten feet off the ground. No way the gnome could get up there unless he could climb.
Lucky for him, I can.
Beneath my shadowy cloak, I’m clutching tightly to my bag of apples. I couldn’t bring myself to leave it behind—just in case—and I hate the idea of dropping it to the snow-covered ground while I scale the tree. I’ve got a bad feeling about it so, trusting my gut, I thread the top of the muslin bag through my belt loop and make a really ugly knot with it. Hey. So long as I can hang onto the bag and still use two hands to climb, I don’t care what it looks like. Sure, it bangs right into my thigh, but I’ll deal.
I have to.