DANCING WITH THE STARS ... in AVALON!

DANCING WITH THE STARS … in Avalon!

Hush! Can you hear it? The iron tongue of midnight is tolling in the darkness.

It is Friday … time for another glimpse of my heroes dancing with death …

{from BLACK ROSES IN AVALON where Fallen, the Last Fae, and Blake, son of Adam, have interrupted the Sidhe Ball of Boshet.}



The silence in the great ballroom before us was even more a physical force than the earlier darkness. And the stares we were getting should have thrust out of our backs a foot.

Remembering the words of the Cradle of Tears, I said so loud it was almost a shout,

“I know we’re early. But we didn’t want to be late for the Ball of Boshet.”

It was as if I had uttered a spell that had frozen them to the spot. It gave me time to take in the enormous ballroom which seemed to go on and on forever before us.

It was a chamber of twilight with long three-sided stained glass windows hanging impossibly in mid-air as they slowly turned to reveal all three sides.

They depicted scenes from Fallen’s past. Some I recognized from my mind-link with her. Others I didn’t. Those made me blush.

I saw Fallen go pale. I reached out with my will, focusing images of our shared time together onto them.

Her head in my lap as she was bathed in moonlight. Her standing over me on the frozen slab in the river Sambatyon, daring to fight The Wild Hunt alone to defend me.

Fallen crying over the dead body of Dinselle of the Golden Skin. Her astride a racing Epona, Queen of Unicorns, charging in with both guns blazing, a wild look of a lioness protecting her mate hot in her fae eyes, her wheat-gold hair a flying mane.

Her hugging an embarrassed Epona, the tears filling her green fae eyes. Fallen, her head flung back in impish laughter at one of Deirdre’s tall tales.

And my favorite memory of all :

Fallen sitting side-saddle astride Epona and singing the long lost lullaby of her forgotten youth as gossamer wings of faerie dust glowed from her back.

With a sigh of relief, I saw those images take the place of the other lewd ones on the stained glass windows nearest me. I heard a hush of disbelief ripple through the assembled Sidhe.

Fallen squeezed my hand. “When all else fades from my mind, this will I remember : how you defended me in the midst of enemies.”

Angry, outraged muttering began to buzz through the milling Sidhe. I shivered. Not at them but at the chamber itself.

It was eerie. The air of the place was black fire, and electric white mists slowly rose from the intricate black and scarlet tiled floor. And the partiers seemed to float upon the surface of the mists. They were so elegant, so beautiful, --- so deadly.

They were tall, all dressed in elaborate, colorfully designed costumes. All the colors known to man, and many I had never seen before, blazed from their courtly attire.

Long gowns of richest silk flowed from the bodies of the nightfall creatures with ethereal bodies and predator eyes. They had been dancing some complex interweaving pattern when we had barged in. And from the looks in their arrogant eyes, I would say we were as welcome as a muscle cramp.

Fallen’s green, slanted eyes began to sparkle again. A smile slowly spread across her lips.

“What need have we of parents, Blake? Orphans both are we. We need but each other.”

Her eyes grew larger as she stared at me until they seemed to swallow my world. “Beyond life. Beyond death. Beyond oblivion. We are one -- together and always.”

And then, she started to sing her long lost lullaby. This time it started with such sadness it near tore my heart in two. But it didn’t stay that way long. She flowed up to me, and together, we swept across the dance floor, moving graceful as one.

The long days of practicing with Kirika aboard The Bladeless Samurai paid off. Fallen and I danced smooth and certain across the mists, sending trails of it flaying out around our ankles. We didn’t take our eyes from the face of the other.

Her song rose in waves of love triumphant, in lilts of souls intertwined beyond death throughout eternity, connected though severed by death and darkness. Her voice trembled with so much beauty it snatched me up in such rapture nothing existed but the emerald depths of her eyes, the soft feel of her arms around me.

And as we wheeled and spun through the silent Sidhe, the gossamer wings, sparkling with stardust, made of the energy of sheer love, shimmered and grew from her back. They were beautiful, in radiant colors that took my breath away.

“No!,” sobbed Ogygia, Fallen’s once scornful mother. “She is redeemed. Redeemed! Damn DayStar! He knew. He knew! And I am bound to my accursed pact by my unbreakable word.”

Fallen and I stopped dancing to turn to her as Ogygia balled her fists and hunched over in agony. As if released by a steel spring, her head snapped back, and she screamed.

“DayStar!”

A voice out of my nightmares spoke to my right. “He is delayed, but he sent us to prepare his little rasha.”

I turned.

Nyx. Tall, regal, in a black, skin-tight, breast-revealing leather gown.

And next to her, short, elegant, Maija, looking every inch the Dragon Lady she was.

I forced my throat to work. “W-Well, there goes the neighborhood.”

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