FALLEN in IT IS A FEARSOME THING TO BE FRIEND TO A SIDHE

I took Clover's quivering hand.

"The midnight hour has just begun. Time enough to teach terror to those who think themselves expert in it."

As we followed the unhinged orderly, Clover could not stop her shaking. I frowned. This would never do.

She must have some semblance of composure else she would be consumed by the next terrors I would inflict. I sighed deep.

If verse dipped in magic black unbalanced her, perhaps words of light from a long lost friend might restore some small measure of peace to her?

But which one? There were so few. So few. And none remained who still lived. I smiled though I ached inside.

Georgie Gordon. His poetry. His spirit would I use to restore hers. I would speak to her the words of another who, alone out of all his generation, could see me as I was.

I leaned my head next to hers, and though she flinched, I whispered still the words I hoped would heal,

"I would I were a careless child,
Still dwelling in my highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bouding o'er the dark blue wave.

The stiff pomp of Saxon pride
Accords not with the freeborn soul.
Which loves the mountain's craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where the billows roll."

Clover hushed in a breath, and with a sudden lunge, kissed me light on the cheek, pulling back as if the deed were done before thought could check it.

"How did you know that was my favorite verse? How?"

I touched gingerly my cheek. "Mayhap we are kindred souls."

"I - I would like that."

I turned my back to her and husked, "It is a fearsome thing to be friend to a Sidhe."

"Does it suck as much as being alone?"

Slowly I turned around and hesitantly took back up her hand. "Let us find out, shall we?"

She smiled wide, and I tried, and failed, not to hear the rest of Georgie's verse :

"I loved -- but those I loved are gone;
Had friends -- those friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone
When all its former hopes are dead;

Though gay companions o'er the bowl
dispel awhile the sense of ill,
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart -- the heart -- is lonely still."

And suddenly I was on fire with the need to be rid of this place, this foul deed ahead of me. Earlier I had not hated these tormentors. They had been merely acting out their nature.

But now hate was there hot within me. And they would rue the day they had decided to step conquering feet upon strange shores.

The unhuman orderly clicked out a series of churps as he hung onto the doorframe in front of him as if under assault by a gale. The black door hissed open. So that was how they secured their wards.

I smiled sharp. Time to tip the balance.
***