Laurel giggled, trying to dissipate the tension that enveloped them. “It’s so weird to think of faeries having kids when they’re a hundred years old.”
“That’s barely middle-aged, here. After we reach adulthood, most of us don’t change much until we’re a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty. But then you age fairly quickly — at least by faerie standards. You can go from looking like a thirty-year-old human to looking like a sixty-or seventy-year-old human in less than twenty years.”
“Does everyone live to two hundred?” Laurel asked. The thought of living for two centuries was boggling.
“More or less. Some faeries live longer, some shorter, but not usually by much.”
“Don’t they get sick and die?”
“Almost never.” Tamani leaned over and touched the tip of her nose. “That’s what you’re for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not you specifically — Fall faeries. It’s like having the world’s most perfect…shoot, what do you call them. Hostels?” He sighed. “Help me out; where people go when they’re sick.”
“Hospitals?” Laurel suggested.
“Yeah.” Tamani shook his head. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I lost a human word like that. I mean, we all speak English, but human-only lingo really is like another language sometimes.”
“You weren’t speaking English earlier, to those guards,” Laurel observed.
“You really want another history lesson today?” Tamani teased.
“I don’t mind,” Laurel said, savoring a spear of perfectly ripe nectarine. Harvest time never seemed to end in Avalon.
“Those were Gaelic words. Over the years we’ve had a lot of contact with the human world, through the gates. Am fear-faire, for example, is basically a Gaelic word for ‘sentry,’ but we borrowed it many years ago, when the humans we encountered still spoke Gaelic. These days it’s mostly a formality.”
“So why does everyone speak English? Aren’t there gates in Egypt and Japan, too?”
“And in America, lest ye forget,” Tamani said, smiling. “We’ve had some contact with your Native Americans as well as with the Egyptians and Japanese.” He laughed. “In Japan, we had extensive contact with the Ainu — the people who lived there before the Japanese arrived.” He grinned. “Though even the Ainu never quite comprehended how long before them we were there.”
“Hundreds of years?” Laurel guessed.
“Thousands,” Tamani said solemnly. “The fae are far older than humans. But humans have reproduced and spread much faster than us. And they are just plain heartier. Certainly more capable of surviving extreme temperatures. It’s only with the help of Fall faeries that our sentries manage to survive the winters at the gate on Hokkaido. Because of that, humans have come to dominate the world, so we have to learn to live among them, at least a little. And language is a big part of that. We have a training facility in Scotland, where, as you know, they speak English. Every sentry with dealings in the human world must train there, at least for a few weeks.”
“So you and Shar trained there?”
“Among others.” Tamani was growing increasingly animated, speaking without the hesitation that always clouded his behavior when he set foot in Avalon. “Covert operations are usually performed by Sparklers, and very rarely a Mixer will need an ingredient that doesn’t grow in Avalon. The manor is built around the gateway, in the middle of a sizable game preserve, so it guards the gate as well as forming a safely controlled connection to human affairs. It was acquired centuries ago, in much the same way we’re working to acquire your land.”
Laurel smiled at Tamani’s enthusiasm. He clearly knew more about the human world than other faeries, not simply because he lived there but because he’d spent his life studying humans.
And he did it so he could understand me. He’d dedicated literally years to understanding the person she would become as a human. She’d sacrificed her memories and left Avalon at the former Queen’s bidding and Tamani had followed her in more ways than one. It was a startling realization.
“Anyway,” Tamani concluded, “the manor has been our main connection to the world outside Avalon for centuries, so it’s only natural that we would speak the language of the humans who live nearby. But even the experts at the manor get some things badly wrong, so I guess I can’t feel too bad about forgetting a word here and there.”
“I think you do great,” Laurel said, running one finger along Tamani’s arm.
Almost instinctively, Tamani reached up and covered her hand with his own. Laurel’s eyes fixed on that hand. It looked so harmless sitting there, but it meant something and Laurel knew it. She looked up, and their eyes locked. A long moment of silence stretched out between them, and after a few seconds Laurel pulled her hand out from under Tamani’s. His expression didn’t change, but Laurel felt bad nonetheless.
She covered the awkwardness of the moment by pouring herself a drink from the first pitcher she saw and taking a big swallow. It tasted like liquified sugar as it coursed down her throat. “Oh man, what is this?” she asked, peering down at the ruby-red liquid in her glass.
Tamani glanced over. “Amrita.”
Laurel studied it dubiously. “Is it like faerie wine?” she asked, already feeling the drink going to her head.
“Kind of. It’s nectar from the flowers of the Yggdrasil tree. They only bring it out at Samhain. It’s a traditional way to toast the New Year.”
“It’s awesome.”
“I’m glad you approve.” Tamani laughed.
Laurel sighed. “I am stuffed.” Only the food in Avalon ever pushed Laurel to eat to discomfort. And she had just reached that point.
“All done then?” Tamani asked, hesitation creeping back into his tone.
“Oh, yes. Totally done,” Laurel said, smiling and settling down a little more into the pile of pillows.
“Would you…” He paused and looked out into the middle of the meadow. “Would you like to ask me to dance?”
Laurel sat up abruptly. “Would I like to ask you to dance?”
Tamani looked down at his lap. “I apologize if I was too forward.”
But Laurel scarcely heard him in her anger. “Even at a festival you can’t just ask me?”
“Is that a no?”
Something in his tone turned Laurel’s frustration into sorrow. It wasn’t Tamani’s fault. But she hated that even with her, he felt bound by the ridiculous social customs. She raised her chin and pushed back her indignance. She didn’t want to punish him. “Tamani, would you like to dance?”
His eyes softened. “I’d love to.”
Laurel looked out at the dancers and hesitated. “I don’t really know how,” she said tentatively.
“I’ll show you…if you want.”
“Okay.”
Tamani stood and offered her his hand. He had relinquished his cloak but still wore the black breeches and boots, paired with a loose white shirt with the strings loosened in the front, accentuating his tanned chest. He looked like a hero out of a movie; Wesley from The Princess Bride or Edmond Dantès from The Count of Monte Cristo. Laurel smiled and took his hand.
They wandered closer to a group of musicians; most were playing stringed instruments Laurel could not have named, but she did recognize the woodwinds — flutes and panpipes and something like a simple clarinet. Tamani led her skillfully through dance steps she almost seemed to remember, her feet moving with a grace she didn’t know she had. She bounced and kicked and skipped along with the other couples and, even if she wasn’t quite as graceful as everyone else, she could have held her own at a similar gathering of humans. She danced to another song, and another, until she had lost track of how long they’d been dancing. The sweet-smelling meadow grew more and more crowded as others left their meals to join in the dance, and soon Laurel was awash in a sea of lithe limbs and graceful bodies, rolling and swaying and even crashing to the rhythm of the Summer faeries’ intoxicating music, gauzy clothing fluttering in the temperate air of Avalon’s eternal springtime.