The Fey

Legend: The Fey

By

Erin Dameron-Hill





© copyright by Erin Dameron-Hill, November 2010
Cover Art by Eliza Black, November 2010
ISBN 978-1-60394-471-7
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.





Chapter One

The waiting is the hardest part. Waiting for your future to shift, waiting for your death, waiting for a sentence to be passed; it is the waiting that destroys a heart. At least in combat your actions move along swiftly, you do something rather than sit and wait. You have control of the situation when you’re allowed to move, to react, to become. Time passes both eagerly and gently when you’re not watching it. Life moves on and changes and grows. You, too, change and grow during the constant shifts of time.

But the waiting…

As nervous apprehension runs up and down my spine like tiny currents of lightning, I sit on a white IKEA folding chair and wait for the command. All I can do is wonder what will become of me, if I can survive this. Thoughts of mortality trail through my mind like rivers coursing through the mountains, changing the very terrain over which it flows. Will I live to see another day? Is this what the fates had in store for me, to sit and wait for the command?

I’m born of action, born to be a warrior, to be a hunter--not to sit and wait. I understand that it may be in a hunter’s repertoire to wait for its’ prey to come into view, but I do not hunt like most hunters. I do not bide my time and allow the prey to come near me, instead I rush in, shocking my prey and they freeze. Hesitation will kill a man within a few seconds and that is what I count on. Instead of pulling a trigger or shouting some curse, they are dormant, still. I count on their slowed reactions and it has never failed me. I have never failed to catch my prey. Some prey, however, can be more difficult than others, but they all hesitate. When they take a moment to size up the situation, they are left vulnerable. They are left open to my attacks.

That is why I am nervous because action is not needed yet. I am caught inside of my own hesitation, forced to wonder about my future while it is decided in another room by people who do not like me, by people who have longed to cast me out. All my life I have been treated as an outsider, as a freak. No matter how many times I prove that I am worthy of their respect, they would still dance joyously on my grave. They would light up the night sky if I ever died, cheering and celebrating. I know it sounds like I’m being melodramatic, but the truth sometimes is.

I heard him take a deep breath beside me. My Keeper was becoming anxious. He always becomes anxious when the Council calls upon me because he never knows when he will be told to end me. I look over at him and wonder why and how he can act so human. He even looks human.

His large green eyes were trying their hardest to see through the white stone of the room we were kept in. I don’t know if he can see through walls, he probably can’t when he is in his human shell. And it is a fine shell, one that attracts too much attention from time to time. When we go out for supplies, women turn their heads and unsure men clench their fists.

He wears his long, silken auburn hair in a ponytail that ends at the small of his back. Modern men wear their hair quite differently, usually it’s cut short and spiky, but Fyre is not a modern man. In fact, he is not a man at all but rather, something quite special.

Although his shell is proud, muscular, tall, and definitely a body I would want to ravish, I would prefer to see his true form. But I am not allowed to. No one here will show me their true form because I am not one of them no matter how hard I try to be. For centuries they have treated my kind with disrespect and hatred and for centuries we have protected them, guarded them, and never leaked the truth for mortals to hear.

I carry a secret, one that must never be told.

Fyre, my Keeper and the creature who I constantly fantasize about, turned to me and smiled, not showing any teeth, more of a reassuring smile that told me everything was going to be okay. I hate those smiles…they lie.

Even though Fyre is my guardian, my keeper, the man who keeps me from revealing my secret, he is also the closest thing I have to a friend. At times I want him to be more, then again, his kind would never find me attractive. In fact, I have been told on numerous occasions that my stench is so unbearable that many of them have vomited and passed out on account of me just walking by. Trust me, that really doesn’t help my self-esteem. Hearing those criticisms when I was teenager did nothing but hinder my social skills. No wonder I am friendless since I was raised to protect myself, and to keep the words of others from hurting me. Sticks and stones my ass.

In the human world, however, outside of these walls, outside of this garden, I know that I am quite pretty and I don’t smell bad. I have light blonde hair that I keep tightly up in a bun so that it doesn’t get in my way. Being a fighter I need to keep my hair from falling into my black eyes. Yes, my eyes are black, the color of a midnight sky during a new moon if all the stars were blotted out, or in a less romantic way, I have the eyes of a cracked out junkie--just black pupil, no iris. If you think black eyes and blonde hair seems an odd combination, then you are correct. I am not truly human. Only my mother was human. My father, on the other hand, he cursed me. Not literally, but because of him I am treated like an outcast. He betrayed their kind, to be with my mother, a human, which is unspeakable to them. They cast him out and stripped away his immortality and then ripped out his tongue so he could never reveal the secret. Sometimes, when I am forced to sit and wait, I wonder why I still serve them when they show such animosity and discrimination towards people like me. This is the reason I like to keep moving, because if I stop, I begin to question my motives, question my duty, question my promises, and question my loyalty.