The Case of the Fairy Lord by Victoria DeLuis

Author:Victoria DeLuis [DeLuis, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Urban Fantasy, Cozy Mystery, Paranormal Cozy, With Mystery, Welsh Mythology, Supernatural Romantic Suspense
Publisher: Deryn Publishing
Published: 2019-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

We all store our lives within us: every sight, sound, and smell. Every accompanying emotion is encoded and stored away for future use. The slightest trigger can take us back in time. I was a small child of four when my grandfather passed, but to this day the slightest whiff of a certain smoky, leafy tobacco and memories of him and our time together flood my mind. I don’t even know the name of the tobacco. I don’t need to. I know the smell and what it means to me.

Some memories are harder to find than others. Maybe we weren’t paying attention. Maybe the events happened a lifetime ago and the details have faded. Maybe all you caught was a fleeting glimpse, a flash of blue in the forest, and your conscious brain didn’t have time to register what it was. But our memories are all still there, locked in our brains for safe keeping, and I needed a spell to find the memory I was looking for. A simple concoction of willow for vision, and fir for clarity, plus a strong dose of determination would take me back to the forest and allow me to see what my mind had missed, but my eyes had registered.

It wasn’t long before I was reclined on the sofa in Gwen’s sitting room and dunking a chocolate digestive into a nice hot cup of tea. Despite it being almost midnight, Gwen had been wide awake and bubbling over with excitement when we first arrived. As always, her magnificent crown of fluffy white hair shot out at all angles from her head. Along with her ruddy cheeks and her ever-present apron, it gave her the air of a batty old woman. If ever there was a cliché for a friendly witch woman, Gwen was it. She sat upright and attentive, hanging on Thomas’s every word when he relayed the events of the last few days. After which, she shook her head sadly.

“That poor man,” she said. “And the forest, what will it do to the forest? The police are bound to have brought excessive amounts of vehicles with their belching exhausts through the trees. They’ll be lights, noise, thundering treads of great big boots not caring one iota for the damage they cause.”

I nodded in agreement. It would take some time for the forest to repair itself from such an intrusion, but the winter would help. Most trees were dormant and would miss the fuss.

“To make matters even worse,” I said between mouthfuls of biscuit. “The police confiscated my sample basket. We never managed to harvest any alder, but we had a good supply of the rowan you asked for.”

“I asked for?” Gwen said with a look of puzzlement on her face.

“Yes,” said Thomas. “When you called yesterday, you asked for rowan and alder.”

“Ah, yes, silly me. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on tightly,” Gwen said, but a conspiratorial look passed between her and Thomas that wasn’t hard to miss. They were up to something.

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