The Owl Prince by Alex Faure

Author:Alex Faure [Faure, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-20T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

He awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep to the sound of footsteps.

Darius’s hand went instantly to the knife he had placed by the bed. The footsteps were coming from the empty attic above his head. Yet that was impossible—the attic had been empty when he entered the cabin, and surely if someone had come through the door, passed by his bed, and gone upstairs, he would have awoken.

His hand tightened on the knife. A wan grey light leaked through the shutters of the cabin—it was morning, or close to it. The cabin looked different than it had last night—there were two chairs rather than one, and ash in the hearth that before had been clean. Someone must have been there, moving about unnoticed as he slept. But how? He was a light sleeper.

Darius’s throat was dry. The stairs creaked, and a figure made its way down. She—for it was a woman’s voice he heard—was singing softly in a language he now knew. Fionn’s language. The language of the forest.

The woman smiled at Darius and set her lantern down on the table. Her age was impossible to guess, and she was pretty in a well-fed, red-cheeked sort of way. Her hair was a dark cascade down her back, brushing her generous hips.

“Good morning,” she said calmly, and busied herself with several baskets and bowls that also hadn’t been there the previous night. “I’ll make you some breakfast.”

Darius glimpsed a dark loaf of bread, a bowl of goose eggs, and a bundle of apples. The woman arranged some kindling in the fire and set it alight with a single strike of her flint.

“I apologize, my lady,” he said at last, warily. If this woman could speak Fionn’s language, he had to assume she was like him—dangerous. “I didn’t mean to impose myself upon you. I assumed this place was abandoned.”

“But you’re my guest.” She turned to him with a smile on her round face. “How could you impose upon me? Would you care for some tea?” A pot had appeared out of nowhere. She placed it over the fire.

“Thank you,” Darius said, discomfited. “But I must be on my way. Though I offer my thanks for your hospitality.”

He rose, gathering up his blanket. He was unnerved to find that it had been topped with a blanket of the softest fox fur, and that beneath him was another fur blanket, just as soft. How had the woman placed a blanket beneath him while he slept? The woman made no further protest, merely hummed to herself as she cracked eggs in a pan. Darius moved towards the door.

Only to find it gone.

He ran his hands over the place where the door had been, finding only smooth wall. His pulse thrummed. He turned, only to find that the door had appeared in the opposite wall. He dashed towards it, but in the second before his hands touched it, it vanished. He turned again and found it in its original place.

“What do you fear?” the woman said, still in that calm, musical voice.

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