“What were ye doin this mornin?” Kirrin demanded as she came in for breakfast a few days later.

“The chores.” Lara looked at him, puzzled.

“When ye walked out into th’ cornfield,” he clarified.

“Singing to the corn.”

Her voice was so reasonable Kirrin had to shake his head. Looking at her she could pass for human now, even if her bones were a little finer than they ought to be, and eyes so light were a rarity on this part of the continent. She still didn’t act human, though.

“It’s not a very human act to sing to the corn, is it?” she asked, chagrined.

“No, not very human at all.” Kirrin sighed. “Is that why th’ harvest looks t’ be better than it should be? Because ye sing t’ th’ corn?”

“Plants just grow better when they know they’re cared for…”

Kirrin waved her explanation aside.

“Humans just don’t talk t’ their crops, Lara. Or t’ their gardens. Or t’ anythin else except humans and maybe domesticated animals.”

“Domesticated?” She spoke the word as though it were in another tongue. “But how do I tell the domesticated from the others?”

Kirrin thought a minute.

“Don’t talk t’ anythin that doesn’t have its own name.”

Lara considered this gravely, nodded, and walked away to wash her hands.

“And no singin t’ anythin but people!” he shouted after her, visions of Lara serenading some townsperson’s pet dancing through his head.

“Who’s singin t’ what?” a new voice intruded from behind Kirrin. Kirrin spun around, grinning.

“Aeric! Ye’ve been missed!” He pulled his son to him, and hugged the boy, who after all remained a boy only in his father’s eyes. He held his son’s shoulders and looked up into his eyes. “It’s not been easy w’ out ye.”

“I’m glad t’ be back.” Aeric’s brown eyes twinkled at his father for a moment before rising expectantly toward the kitchen door. “Sounds like ye’ve found some help while I was gone, though…”

Lara stepped lightly into the room with the scent of the dew still clinging to her. The pale green of her skirt was wet at the hem, and her sleeves were drawn back to the elbow. At the presence of a stranger in Kirrin’s kitchen, she did not so much pause but freeze, as a deer will freeze at the indrawn breath of the hunter.

“Aeric, this is Lara,” Kirrin spoke into the sudden silence. “Lara, this is Aeric, th’ son I’ve told ye about.”

Lara watched Aeric’s smile die on his lips, and the light in his eyes fade to darkness. With a dull pain he kept hidden behind opaque eyes, Aeric recalled trailing after that skirt as his mother gathered wildflowers. He heard her laughter echo through some long-closed corridor of his memories, and fought the urge to attack this stranger in his mother’s clothes.

He let his gaze travel slowly down to her feet and up again, with a slight measured pause at her chest, before dismissing her and turning back to his happily oblivious father. Accusation tightened the corners of his eyes and clung bitter to the back of his throat.

“I found her hidin i’ th’ barn one mornin,” Kirrin went on. “Her place was lost in a fire. I’m givin her a hand t’ get her life t’gether.”

Disappointment and betrayal strangling his heart, Aeric choked out, “I’ll bet ye are,” and fled from the house.

Kirrin turned a blank face to Lara, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him what his son must have thought.

“It’s just the surprise. I’ll talk to him,” she blurted, and was out the door before Kirrin could argue. He was left to add Aeric’s place to the breakfast table alone, throwing a concerned glance through the window every now and again.

Lara found Aeric in the barn rubbing down his horse. With her sensitive ears, she caught him mumbling. “…only twelve year old…wrong…”

“Aeric?” she asked tentatively.

He made no acknowledgment and simply moved to the far side of the horse. Lara watched for a moment from the doorway, and then made a decision. She walked deliberately across the barn and stepped directly into the stall, laying one calming hand on the horse’s nose.

“I’m not sleeping with your father.” She delivered the line in a flat, precise tone that left no room for misunderstanding.

Aeric jumped to his feet and stared down at her, but she didn’t back away.

“What Kirrin told you is true,” she said, meeting his angry gaze with hers. “I came here with nothing. He offered to help me on my way in return for a hand on the farm while you were gone, nothing more.”

“Ye expect me t’ believe that,” he frowned.

Lara laid her head against the horse’s body, for a moment silent. When she spoke, it was with such gentleness that Aeric had trouble understanding her through his fury.

“He told me of your mother. He said it was for her sake that he’d help me. You must know how dearly he still loves her.”

“Why would he tell ye anything?”

“Perhaps because I lost my family to that fire.” Some deep emotion flickered across her face, and Aeric could almost feel her fresh grief. She held his eyes as she kissed the horse and backed away.

Aeric watched her critically. She gave no sign of tension or fear in the way she moved. Her face was open, her eyes clear. If she was lying, Aeric decided, she could lie to a god and get away with it. When she turned away to walk back to the house, her back was straight and her steps light, unhurried. When he called her back, she displayed no reluctance.

“How did ye get [name of horse here] t’ let ye come close?” Aeric found himself asking in spite of himself.

“Maybe horses are more discerning than humans.” He could swear there was a hint of laughter under her words.

“Ye mean he could read yer intent?” he asked, curious. “He’s normally leery o’ strangers.”

“I meant,” the girl said with a bright smile, “that maybe he’s only leery of liars.” She started back to the house again.

“Ye can’t use my own horse against me!” Only light laughter floated back on the morning breeze.

Back in the kitchen, Kirrin added a third plate to the table anxiously. He wondered bleakly if his own prophecy was already beginning to come true. Lara’s musical laughter as she stepped inside dispelled his fears. No one could be bleak with such infectious merriment in the air.

“Am I t’ take that as a good sign?”

“Sign? Since when have humans taken to reading signs like some Talasian witch?”

Now he knew everything was all right. Her heritage was never something to banter about unless she was in the best of moods.

“Ye mock me i’ my own home? I should ha’ ye flogged,” he jested.

“And ye might, if ye so please; but a funny picture we would make walkin’ int’ th’ village like two cats screechin over a rat.”

Kirrin’s shock erupted in heartfelt laughter at Lara’s attempt to sound human. Each syllable from her mouth was so quick and precise that the deeper, smoother dialect sounded absurd.

“What?” she queried with a look of such innocence that Kirrin laughed even harder.

Lara took her place at the table with a mirthful curl of the lips that proclaimed her perfect control of the conversation.

When Aeric strode into the room his father was finished laughing, but the merry air lingered, infecting the meal with a lighthearted charm that would forever tint Aeric’s first memories of Lara.

It was later in the day, when Aeric thought he was alone with his father, that he finally spoke of her.

“She’s older than I thought, in’t she?” he asked, trying to see how much his father would volunteer. His uncertainty about the girl was plain. Kirrin smiled. “I asked her, and she said she’s four and twenty.”

“It’s deceivin, how little she is, and how quick.”

Mindful of the secret that had yet to be aired, Kirrin made a noncommittal noise.

“There’s somethin botherin me about her, but I can’t figure it out.” Aeric paused, and his brow furrowed. “She could be almost pretty, but somethin doesn’t match…” He snapped his fingers. “It’s her hair. That dull brown doesn’t fit her somehow.”

A shadow moved between them. Lara was there.

“Your son has an eye for artifice.” There was a queer, sardonic undertone to her voice that Kirrin hadn’t heard before.

Aeric looked sharply at her, and his eyes widened. “Ye dyed it.”

“With your father’s help, I did.” She nodded.

“Th’ fire,” Aeric spoke as if to himself, the little he knew about her coming together suddenly. “It wasn’t an accident?”

“Not quite.” Again there was a strange bitterness to her words.

“Ye fled, and hid here?”

“I did.”

Aeric remembered the flash of pain in her eyes from the barn, and wondered. “It was set apurpose.”

Again, she nodded.

“Ye’re afraid whoever it was is still after ye?”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know if they know I still live.”

“Then why? If ye don’t ha’ t’ hide who ye are, why?”

“I don’t have to hide who I am, no,” she admitted. “Not who, but what…”

Again, like in the barn, her grave eyes were locked to his, awaiting his decision. Slowly, comprehension dawned. Aeric felt behind himself for the chair, and sat down before his legs failed him. He looked back and forth between Kirrin and Lara, but both waited in perfect stillness for his reaction. In a few seconds that seemed to last forever, Aeric found himself wondering when he missed the world turning upside down.

“But…” he sputtered, “ye’re not nearly pretty enough!”

Denouncement Lara was prepared for. Disgust she could have handled. Aeric’s reaction staggered her. She grabbed a table for support.

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“What do I mean?” he asked incredulously. “I’ve been t’ enough fair days t’ ha’ heard a faerie story or two.” He barked a laugh.

“I’ve heard tales o’ th’ fey cities…how e’en now ye can walk past buildins that seem t’ ha’ been abandoned only yesterday. How everythin’s tall and graceful and white, like it’s too beautiful t’ be real.”

Lara had heard tales, too. Her eyes glazed with longing.

“Th’ same ones who built those cities murdered people i’ th’ Great War,” Aeric went on, his face darkening. “That’s th’ point o’ every faerie story, i’ th’ end. Beauty hides evil. Every child knows that.”

Lara’s mouth dropped open. With three words he had just condemned everything she had ever believed. She cast her glistening eyes to the floor.

“Sometimes,” Kirrin spoke quietly, “th’ tales they tell t’ children-or don’t tell-mean somethin else entirely.”

“What do ye mean? Th’ moral o’ those tales is always plain.”

Kirrin nodded. “All tales o’ evil are tales o’ fear, and they’re all th’ same.”

“What’s not understood is dangerous and must be destroyed,” Lara broke in bitterly, looking up at Aeric again.

“Faerie witchery killed thousands o’ people,” he retorted. “Their fear’s justified.”

A glimmer of anger slid over her eyes. Her eyebrows rose and she glanced around herself. “Well then what are you humans doing here?” she asked, eyes wide. “Weren’t you driven off by all that evil magic?”

“Evil’s weak i’ th’ end,” Aeric responded, ignoring her sarcasm. “Th’ tales tell us that, too.”

Kirrin sighed and shook his head. “Ye know where fair days get their name?”

Aeric and Lara both shook their heads.

“A long time ago, long before th’ war, they used t’ be called faerie days. It was th’ one time o’ year that humans and elves and fey all came together t’ celebrate. Th’ faerie stories then were accompanied by faerie magic.”

“Really?” Lara asked, smiling, her anger forgotten.

“It’s what an old man told me once, when I was small.”

“More faerie stories,” Aeric scoffed hypocritically.

Lara and Kirrin both chuckled.

“Well,” Kirrin said brusquely and slapped his thighs. “I guess I’ll help ye get yer things together and ye can start on yer way.”

Aeric gaped at him. “I can’t believe ye’re helping her, knowin what she is!”

Lara leapt to her feet and advanced on him, a summer thunderstorm in her eyes. “Forget old tales. You have seen me. You’ve spoken to me. Do you believe me evil?”

Aeric glanced uneasily toward his father, who seemed unimpressed. “She’s been honest w’ ye?”

“Every word,” Kirrin affirmed.

“Then for now I’ll trust ye.”

Lara smiled and offered her hand. “Thank you.”

Aeric noticed a glint of light on one finger as he took her small hand in his.

“I’ll take ye as far as th’ village and point ye on the way,” he offered.

Her smile widened to a grin. “I’d be honored.”

The light played in his eyes. “O’ course ye would.” He smiled. “Not everyone gets such a privilege.”

She laughed her silver laugh and raced up the stairs to pack.

While Lara was adjusting Flight’s saddle, Aeric pulled his father aside.

“I want ye t’ know I still don’t entirely trust her. I’m only goin w’ her t’ make sure she’s on her way w’ no mischief.”

Kirrin nodded, resigned.

“I thought as much.” He glanced away over his fields and looked back at his son.

“Just remember,” he said. “yes mat was a beautiful woman, without an evil bone in her body.”

“That doesn’t make th’ stories about the fey a lie.”

“No,” he conceded, “but it doesn’t make them true, either.”

Kirrin raised his voice as Lara came near. “Ye’d better get goin if ye want t’ get there and back before th’ storm hits.”

Aeric cast a worried eye toward the darkening sky, and mounted [name of horse here]. Lara looked up at Kirrin with tears in her eyes.

“You’ve given me so much. I hope I can repay you someday.”

“I hope ye can, too. ‘Twas a joy t’ ha’ ye.”

Impulsively, Lara threw her arms around him.

“I’ll miss you,” she whispered, her face buried in his chest.

Kirrin hugged her back, kissing the top of her head gently. He caught a whiff of her scent as she let go: rain and new grass.

Lara swung lightly into the saddle and gave one last, lingering look to Kirrin and his farm before turning her back and riding away.