Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [57]
Those feet, no longer made of gold, climbed the pasture gate and set out for the woods beyond. I raced forward, trampling damp grass until I came to the top of a rise. I stopped for a moment to look back at the great house below. Inside its sleeping windows were old songs, music that was dead to me, other people's dreams. I tossed my head, like a mare slipping its bridle, and flew into the morning, running as if I would never stop.
Diamonda
When I first saw her, the name caught like a prayer bead in my throat: Diamonda. I have never called her that out loud, of course. While she was in hiding with us, she used a simple maidservant's name, and now the troubadours have christened her Snow White. But those gossips were not there when we found her, arms and wrists smeared with blood, lips the color of crushed violets. She was not white as snow then, but I have spent my whole life prying gems from a mountain's belly. I don't need to see their faces cut and polished to know how they will shine.
Her tap on our door might have been the wind, or a branch in its fall, so soft was the sound she made. When at length I opened the door that night, she fell across the threshold, one arm landing so that her fingers nearly reached the fire in the hearth. Clotted with mud and covered with blood, she might have been old or young, man or maid. But then I found a cloth, stooped to wipe the dirt from her eyes, and saw what she was.
As I freed her face from the filth that hid it, my brothers' sighs were like the moans of souls raised suddenly from damnation to paradise. For the seven of us, grown to manhood without the scent or touch of a woman, she seemed a goddess, some glory streaming sprite who'd taken a wrong turn and stumbled into the real world, where goddesses could cut themselves on thorns, wander lost for days, take sick and shake with chills. How I wanted to rush outside and tear the dead roses up by their roots. How I yearned to bathe her in the pond at Fairny, to hold her until the water caught her fever and she lay sleeping in my arms.
Instead, I made a pallet beside the hearth and we stretched her along it as best we could. She lay, her head against our bundled cloaks, and stared at the ring of twisted faces, tiny bodies above her. Sometimes I wake in the night, as if an old wound is itching, and see again the horror that widened her eyes.
It was only seconds before her breeding asserted itself and the look of revulsion faded. "I am afraid I have lost my way." She wrapped the vestige of a skirt around her poor bruised legs. "I must ask your pardon and your charity." We all drew closer, our forgiveness palpable. She glanced at Corwyn and then at me.
"I am Erin," I told her. I stood posturing grandly while Dynll, more sensible in his adoration, grabbed the cloth from me, dipping it in the bucket of water we kept by the fire. "These are my brothers, and though we have dwarf bodies, our minds are as sharp, our hearts as stout, as any man's." Dynll pressed the cloth to her head, and I added a deep flourish.
But as I bent to her, I was consumed with a sudden, shameful jealousy and wanted nothing more than to wrest the cloth back from my brother's hand. I stood there twisting my belt like a simpleton, lusting to feel her hair against my hand, to wipe sweat from the glistening hollow above her lips. "My lady," I managed at last, "we are at your service for as long as you wish."
"You are kind," she said. "And I am blessed to have found such gentle hosts in this accursed wood." Her cheeks flushed and her dark fawn's eyes rested on me. Had she known then how many years she would stay with us, how long she would shine in the midst of our deformity, she might have chosen to brave the snow and forest again, instead.
Her fever lasted three days. On the last