Trickster Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 2) by Sanderson Cedar

Author:Sanderson, Cedar [Sanderson, Cedar]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Stonycroft Publishing
Published: 2014-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Raven Interferes

The long twilight of an Alaskan summer night had begun when I walked onto the porch with a towel around my hips. I wanted clean clothes. Raven, sitting in his rocking chair with the foul pipe, waved the stem of it at my feet.

“Take your boots off, boy.”

I raised an eyebrow. I’d shoved them back on after the shower over my bare feet to keep them from injury walking in his unkempt yard.

“Why?”

“What did I say about questions?”

“Are you Yoda?” I growled, kicking them off.

“Now, go fetch an armload of wood.” he instructed calmly.

“It’s not cool enough...” I objected.

“Go.” Raven could pack more punch in a single word than anyone I’d ever known.

I started down the steps. He called after me.

“Take off towel.”

“What?!” I was fairly sure he wasn’t wanting to look at me, although he’d had no issue with my skin showing at various shirtless afternoons. Alaska got surprisingly hot.

“Don’t worry, I prefer girls. Drop towel, boy.”

With a sigh, I mooned him and left the towel slung over the handrail. His chortles followed me as I gingerly picked my way out into the yard. I knew, from my work earlier, that there were pieces of wood, rocks, and splinters everywhere. Oddly, though, I didn’t encounter one, and I started to feel warm, light-headed, and tingly.

I stopped dead in my tracks, barely breathing. Placing both feet flat on the bare earth, I felt... a slow thrumming, like a string having been plucked. Raven, in great bird form, landed next to me, startling me.

“Steady, boy.”

“What is it?” I had forgotten temporarily that I was naked outside with an ancient spirit. Only the sensation rushing through me had my attention.

“You don’t believe in a connection to the Earth?” He cocked a sharp grey eye at me. In human form, black eyes. As Raven, grey ones.

“Spare me the mumbo-jumbo.”

“But you are a being with an affinity for earth. And Bella, for the air,” he pointed out gently.

“Only if I have my magic...” I slowly stopped on the last word.

“Yes?” He prompted, a twinkly eye tilted at me. I was grateful for the form change, less uncomfortable than standing here naked talking to him in human form.

“I lost my magic.”

He shook his head. “You were very damaged.”

I closed my eyes and hesitantly reached for Sight, remembering how it had hurt the last time.

“Your medicine worked.” I kept my eyes closed. He glowed, vastly, brightly, with a rippling shift of colors like the aurora.

“Medicine?” He laughed, a loud, cawing laugh that went on and on. “That was just to see how much you’d take! Was joke! Bwahahaha!”

I opened my eyes slowly to see him rolling on the ground, flapping his wings. Gathering what was left of my dignity, I marched back to the porch to put on clothing, wondering if the naked communion with the earth had also been his idea of a joke.

Over the years I had learned to be comfortable naked when needed, but oddly, that one patch of skin exposed left me feeling completely vulnerable.

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