Gar froze. Then his brain thawed and kicked into overdrive, a dozen conclusions racing through it in an instant. No wonder both fairies and elves had been able to find him whenever they wanted! No wonder they knew he had come in a spaceship, and no wonder they were sure of his good intentions. They were telepaths!
Then was also the matter of his relationship with Alea, but he shoved that issue aside quickly. “You do not hesitate to read people’s minds, then, do you?”
“Why should we?” a fairy asked. “All your kind are like open books to us. Wherefore not read?”
“Do you think we break some sort of trust, fellow?” an elf asked, and laughed.
“The New Folk trust us not at all,” another elf explained, “nor should they.”
“As we should not trust them,” a fairy added. “If it were not for the fear we have inspired in them, I doubt not that they would shoot us out of the air for sport.”
“We would shoot back well enough.” An elf caressed his crossbow.
“Aye, if you could take aim while dodging their boots,” a fairy retorted.
Gar sensed that an old, old rivalry had surfaced. To shove it back under, he asked, “Can you not trust some New Folk simply by the good will you read in them?”
“We have done so now and again,” a fairy hummed. “We have become keen judges of character.”
Gar knew he shouldn’t, but couldn’t resist. “What is there about my character that lets you trust me, then?”
“Why, we have told you,” a fairy replied.
“No, you have told me of my circumstances—descending from a spaceship—and of my intentions, which are to forge a peace,” Gar corrected. “Have I no defects of character that make you mistrust me?”
He was astounded when the whole assemblage burst into laughter. He waited it out, somewhat numb, trying not to be resentful. As they quieted, he said sardonically, “I am glad I serve as such a source of mirth.”
“No, you are not, and you are highly indignant,” an elf said, “as indeed you should be.”
“We all can see your defects, New Man,” a fairy said, wiping tears from its eyes, “but they are not such as to lessen our trust in you.”
“Indeed!” Gar tried to quell his indignation. “May I ask what my defects are, then?”
“A dangerous question,” a fairy warned. “No matter how we answer, you will take offense.”
“I shall not, by my hand!” Gar held up a palm as though taking an oath.
“Well sworn.” An elf nodded approval. “But there is no creature who can fail to take offense when told his defects.”
“Why then, I shall strive to remember that I brought it upon myself.” Gar felt inspiration strike. “After all, you may have been adding me to the believers in your supernatural abilities, and your unwilling dupe in carrying them to the clans. You have not yet told me anything that you could not have learned by observation, and by a certain empathy born of centuries of watching my kind.”
“Oho! It’s proof you want, then, is it?” an elf hooted. “Learn, then, New Man, that we know you for the coward you are!”
“I am not a coward!”
“A coward of the heart,” a fairy explained, “and with good reason—for five women broke your trust and mangled your feelings.”
“Yet those five women were all one,” an elf amended. “One in various guises—and skilled indeed she was at disguising.” Gar felt a chill run through him. How could these creatures have peered so deeply into his memories so quickly?
But it hadn’t been quickly, of course. They had been tracking him for days, no doubt studying him in depth as he went. Nevertheless, how could they have discovered that all five women—the ugliest witch in the north country, the wild fey girl, and all the others—had been only one emotional assassin in several disguises? He hadn’t known that himself until … Until Gregory had told him the other night. The fairies no doubt had eavesdropped on that conversation.
Anger surged in him; he held himself rigid, waiting for it to pass. What right had these strangers to inspect his most intimate thoughts? Had they no ethics, no standards of telepathy?
No, of course not. They were faced with aliens much larger than themselves, and very violent in the bargain. They felt no compunction in using whatever weapons they had.
They were tense now, elves with crossbows raised, fairies with hands cupped (for what? telepathic beams?), knowing his anger, braced for his wrath—but as the rage began to subside, the Wee Folk began to relax.
“You are angry,” one said.
They still held their crossbows at the ready.
“Even as you said,” Gar answered in a level tone, “none can hear their detractions without resenting them.”
“True,” said a fairy “but it is not that which angers you—it is our invasion of what you perceive to be your privacy.”
“Even so.” Gar bent his head in acknowledgment. “It is a primitive reflex—but I asked for it. After all, how can I mend my faults if I do not know them?”
“He swallows the bitter pill,” an elf said, staring.
“He does indeed,” agreed a fairy. “It sticks in his craw, but he swallows it down.”
They were all gazing at him in surprise, almost in awe, and Gar realized they had been testing him. Anger boiled up again, but he stood still, waiting for it to crest and subside. If he had passed the test once, he wasn’t about to fail it now!
The Wee Folk had tensed again, reading his anger, but as it began to recede once more, they relaxed a little and stared at him with more awe than ever.
“Never have I seen self-control so thorough among one of the New Folk,” said a fairy.
“Aye, the more amazing because it stems from his beliefs of what is right and wrong,” an elf answered. She made a swirling motion with her hand, saying, “Yet how will he fare when he must stare his fears in the eye?”
The air seemed to thicken into a fog, out of which came the cry, “A rag, a bone!”
A chill coursed through Gar. He knew that voice.
The fog condensed further into a body, one that took on colors—and Gar found himself staring at a portly man dressed like the driver of a Victorian hackney cab in a threadbare taped coat, dented top hat, patched trousers, and Wellington boots, his nose and cheeks ruddy with the tiny broken veins of the chronic drinker, who gave Gar a boozy, cheerful grin. “What of your heart, ardent lover?” the apparition demanded. “Do you hear it knocking to leap free of its golden box yet?”
Superstitious fear seized Gar, though he knew the man for nothing but a projection of his own deepest drives. It wasn’t his heart that heaved against its restraints, but his anger, anger that built and built into rage as he realized that the elves had conjured the rag-and-bone man out of the recesses of Gar’s mind to test him. He trembled with the strength of the emotion but controlled it with an iron will, saying in a hard level tone, “It has not, praise Heaven! My heart lies quietly, content to rest in security.”
“You lie to yourself.” The ragpicker waved a finger. “You long to have it out of its prison, to be able to love again.”
“Love is a dream,” Gar said, his voice still level. “It will come when it comes—but when it does, my heart will swell till it bursts the lock of its own accord.”
“There is no breaking that lock,” the ragpicker jeered. “Only one with a key can open it.”
“Then I am forever safe, for you kept the key,” Gar said with a sardonic smile.
“Did I say I kept it?” the ragpicker asked with feigned surprise. “Dear me! If I did, why, I lied—for there is no key!” There was no surge of anger, only a wave of relief, and Gar was appalled, but he took advantage of the surprise and smiled. “Then I shall wait for a woman with a lock-pick, devious creature, or for one who can forge me a key.”