Dreams of a Stolen Child
A Stolen Child Story
By Anna Mayle
Resplendence Publishing, LLC
http://www.resplendencepublishing.com
Resplendence Publishing, LLC
2665 N Atlantic Avenue, #349
Daytona Beach, FL 32118
Dreams of a Stolen Child
Copyright © 2011 Anna Mayle
Edited by Andrea Grimm and Venus Cahill
Cover art by Les Byerley,
Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-442-0
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including
infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable
by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Electronic Release: November 2011
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product
of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.
Dedicated to my Aunt Donna, who has ever believed in me.
She is the woman in the shadows, polishing my work even before my
editors see it. Her comments can build my ego or cut me off at the
knees, but one way or the other, my stories are made better by her
attentions.
Thank you for pushing me and never letting me give less than my all.
Chapter One
Gentle stood alone in the dark, unsure of how he’d gotten there. A road lay solid beneath
his feet, it twisted into the distance in fits and starts under the sparse glow of streetlights. His
head was cloudy. He was lost. He wanted his mommy and daddy.
“Hello?” he piped, his child’s voice, small with fear, broke on the word and he tightened
his small arms around his teddy bear. Gentle didn’t think about it until after raising his voice, but
maybe he didn’t want anything answering from the nothingness that surrounded the road.
It was fine; no one answered him.
If someone had, he guessed that would be something, and something would spoil the
nothing.
Slowly, a sense of familiarity oozed through his haze-filled mind. The road shouldn’t
have been so dark, but he knew it. He should be standing by the drive to their house. Gentle tried
to turn in the direction where home should be, but he couldn’t go that way. His feet didn’t want
to. They wanted to follow the road.
So he did.
The dark didn’t let up as he walked. The lights were no help. Every time his eyes started
to adjust to the gloom, he’d come to a bright circle of light beneath a lonely lamp, and his eyes
snapped back to focus as if it were day. They were helping the blackness to keep him blind. It
was scary, but he’d started walking already, and now his feet wouldn’t stop. His footy pajamas
made soft shushing sounds against the blacktop, but there were more sounds now, getting louder.
Ahead, Gentle could hear music—light and energetic—commanding people to be happy,
forcing the most closed soul to play. Blindly, led by the sounds, he walked. The closer he got, the
clearer the song. In the background, a cacophony of various other tunes blended with the loudest.
They called to spectators and participants, invited people to distractions and treats, like a mad
pied piper with too many flutes.
Gentle crested the rise and the streetlights instantly lost their hold over him as rows of
brightly colored orbs came into view. They were strung over tents, trailers and wagons, up and
down poles and rides. Those bulbs lit up painted signs that advertised wild and wondrous
sights—Seth the Snake-man, The Bird Creature of Brazil, Boneless Ben, The Strongest Man
Alive, Madam Fortuna and her magic, so many names and paintings.
Mesmerized, he stepped under the large sign that welcomed all to the Carnival Du’nan.
Laughter echoed from the riders, and Gentle smiled widely. Along the thoroughfare,
candies, games and brightly clad barkers reached out to him. However, it was an old school bus
painted purple and red that caught his eye. Through the narrow, dusty windows lined in a row
along the side of the vehicle, he could see a skinny agitated man pacing in and out of view while
he gestured wildly to the smaller figure seated at the front of the bus. The calmer of the two—a
short man with bare muscular arms, curly red hair and stubble across his chin—stood and opened
the doors to the bus.
Both walked out into the night air, still arguing.
They headed right toward Gentle.
He flinched and shrank back, the shadows closed in protectively. He didn’t understand
what was going on, but something deep inside him said those men were frightening, and so they
were. He clutched his teddy bear tightly, held his breath, and waited. Once they were well past
him, Gentle crept carefully in their wake.
“What’s wrong with it? Usually it gives more of a showing,” the taller of the two
complained. “It keeps moping like this, and someone will start making noise about abuse.”
The shorter man scoffed at the first. “And what’ll they charge us with then? Not human,
is it? Not animal, neither. It’ll be fine, I’m thinking. Just having an off day.”
“It hasn’t been looking so good lately. There’ve been a lot of off days.”
“Bend an ear, yeah?” the redhead coaxed as they ducked into a large tent. “It’s not that I
don’t feel sorry for the creature. My heart goes out to it, it does. But those sweet little fairy
stories you Americans tell yourselves, they’re just that—stories.”
The door flap closed behind the carnies, and Gentle stared at the striped panel for a long
moment, listening to the conversation going on beyond it. He knew he shouldn’t be here. He
should be out under the carnival lights, amongst the crowds eating cotton candy, playing games
and riding rides. Something though—the same instinct that had told him to hide—told him that
he needed to be in the tent.
Gentle slipped carefully under the canvas wall and crouched down low to watch the two
men. They walked up to a wagon with a big, wooden box built on top of it, painted in the same
style as the signs out on the midway. In the darkness, with only the barest hint of light peeking in
through the tent flaps, the picture on the side remained mostly hidden in the gloom, but Gentle
made out one word, “Prince”, in a swirled carnival scrawl.
The calm man fiddled with latches and locks around the box as he continued. “This one’s
been locked up for hundreds of years in this cage, so it is. It’s been passed on from generation to
generation of Fynn’s family, all traditional like. Thing’s a feking heirloom. I’d love to be rid of
it, scares the shit outta me, but what do you think a monster would do to its captors once freed?
Hmm? I might be scared of it now, but I’m more terrified of what it might become once on the
other side of those bars.”
“It looks so helpless.”
“Right, that’s the seventh face I’ve seen it wear since Fynn got the damned inheritance.
Looks like whatever it wants to look like, don’t it? That’s one of its tricks; every face is more sad
and pitiable than the next. Word of advice, just learn to look beyond it. You travel our circuit
long enough, and it’ll show you its real face. The thing can’t control it constantly. It flickers
sometimes, so it does. Like a broken telly.” The shorter man took hold of a large handle on the
box’s side and tossed his head at his companion. “Heft that side, would you?”
The nervous man curled his fingers around the wooden panel, and the other one was on
him almost instantly, jerking the hand back into view.
“Use the handles! Put your hands round the bars like that, and it’s like to bite them
fingers off!” the redhead spat. “Ain’t you sharp as a feking beach ball.”
“I got it, I got it,” the taller man mumbled, staring at the wooden planks as if monsters lay
behind them.
Gentle stayed quiet and watched them with wide eyes as the panels were lifted off the
sides of the wagon. The bright blue letters shifted a bit into the light, and he could finally see all
of it. The inhabitant of the wagon cage was billed as a “Fae Prince from the darkest glens of the
Emerald Isle”.
What Gentle saw though, was a boy about his age with dirty black hair that fell in long,
lank tresses over eyes the lightest blue Gentle had ever seen. He looked too thin and too pale. His
patched and mismatched clothing hung too large on his slender frame.
The short, redheaded man tossed a bundle of cloth into the cage and motioned to it. “Get
dressed quick like. Fynn won’t go lightly on you if you keep up this act.”
The child stared at the men, eyes vacant. “You cry foul, an act? I have felt unwell for a
fortnight. This land is strange to me. It spits venom into the veins directly and works in tandem
with my prison to render me well and truly weakened,” the boy spoke clearly, but his voice
tripped and bubbled, like it was flowing, instead of breathed, full of water.
“Can’t say as I’m too fond of the Americas myself, but Fynn is the boss. Come on, it’s
not so bad as all that.”
“If this is so, perhaps you would like to try living your life within confinement.”
The short man shooed the nervous one out of the tent then turned back to the cage.
“Look, it’s not my fault you went and got yourself caught. Don’t take it out on me.”
“You have made the choice to prolong my imprisonment,” the boy accused.
“Himself is the one making choices. Fynn’s the one what keeps you. I’m just doing my
job. ‘Sides, I said before, your folk aren’t known for their mercy,” the redheaded man fired back.
“Neither are yours. Give me the knife then. If you fear me so, let me go in one way or
release me in another.”
“Put on the costume, your public awaits.”
Tears gathered at the corners of the boy’s blue eyes. “A public who condemns me to this
mockery of a life by paying you for my captivity. Mayhap they could go to Hell.”
“Oh, drop the royal airs,” the man scoffed. “In six hundred years I reckon you’ve learned
enough to speak like a one of us.”
“Very well,” the caged boy breathed out in a wet whisper. “My public can kiss my lily
white ass.”
For one frozen moment, Gentle thought the captive prince would be punished in some
horrible fashion, but his jailer just laughed and turned to go.
It was crueler than a beating, that dismissal. The proud shoulders hunched, the head
bowed. At first Gentle thought the boy was crying. Then it began to rain, backwards. Large drops
pulled themselves out of the ground and soaked his pant cuffs, rolling up his legs. It wasn’t the
drops the carnie should have paid attention to.
The caged boy lunged at the bars. One slender arm reached through to grab the collar of
the grown man and lifted him off of the ground. The boy began to grow, arms gained muscle and
body gained height. His pale skin looked almost blue in the darkness, and his eyes…
The carnie hung there without flinching. “This ain’t smart. Those bars must be hurting
fierce like.”
Eyes alight with shifting colors, the boy stared at his tormentor. “There are some pains
which are worth enduring.”
“And in this case, then? What’ll that be worth? The shirt’ll rip before my skin.”
“Your grip upon myself is as tenuous as my hold upon your person. You cannot keep one
immortal captive for his entirety any more than you may clasp an ocean in your hands. I shall
have my freedom and my revenge. Remember this. I shall revisit these words upon you the
moment before you die.”
“Well then, may the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat,” the redheaded carnie grabbed
hold of the small hand tightly, wrenched it from his collar and squeezed brutally. When his rings
touched the boy’s flesh, a sizzling sound hissed through the tent. “We’re done here. Save it for
the customers, Tinker Bell,” he mocked and lashed out with a metal cane.
The ragged child dropped the man and grew frail again, but the man didn’t let go.
Instead, he held tight and gave the small arm a sharp jerk. The boy was pulled into the bars. The
impact didn’t seem hard enough to really hurt, but the boy screamed a high and musical note of
anguish. He fought away from the metal frantically. Tiny wisps of smoke rose where his flesh
met metal, and a cloyingly sweet burning smell filled Gentle’s nose.
Gentle clamped his teddy bear over his mouth to muffle a squeak of terror, but those pale
eyes sought him out unerringly. The two boys stared at each other for an eternal moment. Fear
and desolation spoke clearly between them. Then the man let go, and the little prince scuttled
back into the cage’s center, curling in on himself to hide behind the thick black curtain of his
hair.
The man spit at him, lip curled in a sneer. “Be little lord rags for the crowds if that’s how
you like it. But you’ll give your performance, mark me, or you’ll be dancing your jig on the end
of Fynn’s prick, so it is. One way or another, you’ll entertain us,” he promised then left the tent
with a swish of his metal cane.
“You should not have had to see that,” the boy whispered quietly.
Gentle’s gaze darted around the tent.
“We are quite alone,” the little prince sighed and crept carefully to kneel near the bars
without touching them. His skin was blackened in stripes where he’d been pressed against them.
It flaked and cracked and looked more painful than anything Gentle had ever seen. “Do not be
afraid of me…please.”
The last word sounded foreign, as if the prince didn’t use it often. “I’m not scared,”
Gentle insisted. “Not of you. I’m scared of the grownups.”
“Yes. They scare me too, at times.”
Gentle moved forward cautiously and reached a tentative hand to touch the bars. “They
burned you.”
“It will heal. James knows better than to permanently damage me. My keeper, Fynn,
holds them fast with threats and payment.”
Gentle was drawn to the cage with the same pull that had led him under the sign and into
the carnival. Something pulsed between him and the boy, and just as he knew the men were
frightening, he knew this caged being was his friend.
Gentle brushed a finger over his lips and reached into the cage to press the secondhand
kiss against one of the blackened burns.
The boy cocked his head to the side like a confused dog, or maybe a bird. “I do not
understand this ritual,” he spoke with almost no inflection. He was simply stating a fact, there
may have been the barest hint of curiosity, but that was all Gentle could see.
“My mom kisses my hurts to make them better.”
Pale blue eyes narrowed in concentration a moment before the caged boy declared sadly,
“This is not true of my race. The pain has not lessened.”
Gentle frowned. “Maybe it doesn’t count if you pass it along with your fingers.” He
studied the cage a moment. “Give me your hand.”
“My hand?”
Gentle nodded and watched a drop of something foaming and white fall from the boy’s
palm. “I think it’s bleeding.”
The strange boy blinked as he uncurled his fingers, four crude crescents were cut into his
palm from the man’s jagged fingernails.
Gentle held his hand out for the other boy’s. “Your blood doesn’t look like mine.”
“That is because I am not like you, little human,” he explained patiently. “And I can see
no reason for your ritual to be effective.” Nevertheless, he reached his arm out toward Gentle.
As carefully as he could, Gentle placed a kiss upon the bleeding palm of the captive
prince. The strange blood pooling tickled his lips. He licked them unthinkingly and made a face.
It tasted of cold lake water.
Those pale eyes stared at him, confused.
“It didn’t work,” Gentle guessed.
The captive smiled slightly; it almost made him glow. “Not in the way you meant it to,
but I do feel…better. Thank you…”
“Gentle, but my mom calls me Gent, unless she’s mad at me.”
“Both names suit you well, gentle one.”
Gentle smiled back at the boy and asked. “What’s your name?”
“You could not pronounce it, I fear. However, James calls me Little Lord Rags.”
Gentle didn’t want to use such a mean name for his new friend. The distaste must have
shown on his face because the hand he was still holding turned to squeeze his softly in comfort.
“Ronan. You may call me Ronan.”
“Ronan.” The name sounded so familiar on his lips. It was that familiarity that forced him
to realize he was dreaming.
It was that name that woke him up again.
Chapter Two
Gentle woke up feeling disoriented and too big for his skin. He was too tall. His feet
dangled a little over the edge of the childhood bed his parents had never replaced. The mattress
that had held him so well as a child just didn’t fit his adult frame. His life didn’t fit his adult
frame.
The curtains were thick gingham, but somehow every morning the sun found a way
around them just enough to shine upon his eyes. The light slowly pulled him from the dark
comfort of sleep and back into the real world, or at least someone’s interpretation of it. He knew
he’d been dreaming something he’d dreamt before, but the sun washed it from his mind. All he
could remember was a particular shade of blue and something…a name…
A soft click preceded the illumination of his old flip number alarm clock, and a crooning
voice joined the sunlight in its campaign to wake him. “Now, you say you love me, you cried the
whole night through…”
It was gone, the way dreams often left him, and Gentle gave up trying to bring it back. He
blinked and stared up at the water-stained ceiling of his childhood room. Was it his imagination,
or did the rusty orange edged stain look more and more like a gaping mouth hanging over him?
“Eat me,” he challenged, but the mouth just hung there, hiding in the guise of a water
stain. Waiting.
He hated mornings.
“You drove me, nearly drove me out of my head…” the radio continued its singing.
The thing had to be possessed. Out of his head…that was too near to the truth for
comfort. Having had enough of his personal soundtrack and the thoughts it led him toward,
Gentle slapped a large, work-roughened hand down on the snooze button and flicked the alarm
off.
Before he could settle back to sleep, a lively collie bounded into his room. The dog
circled the bed, barked happily to have found his boy, and when said boy didn’t respond, the
large beast tried a different approach. With a great leap, he launched himself onto Gentle’s
stomach.
“Oof!” he grunted, but still raised his hands to dig deep in the wriggling creature’s fur for
a good scratching. “Good morning, Chance.”
Chance nipped at his nose and licked his face.
“I’m awake! I’m awake!” Gentle laughed.
“Gentle,” a voice called from downstairs. “You’re burning daylight.”
He pushed Chance away playfully, holding the excited creature at bay with one hand
while he snatched up a pair of jeans from the floor with his other, sniffing them to make sure
they were clean-ish.
“I’m up!” he called.
Chance danced around him, nearly tripping him a few times while he struggled to don his
jeans. It was too early for coordination. Sleep hadn’t let go of him all the way just yet.
Shirtless, with his dark auburn curly mess of hair still tousled by sleep, Gentle paused a
moment to consider sliding down the banister instead of facing the stairs when they seemed to be
mocking him with their complexity. Just getting his pants on had been a study in concentration.
Trying to walk down stairs in his morning fog was down right dangerous! Having to face his
mother’s worried scolding pre-coffee though… It would not be worth the saved effort. Instead,
he took slow, deliberate steps until he’d reached the foyer and resisted the urge to grin proudly
when he made it without injury.
Unlike his cozy, dark room, the morning sun lit the entire downstairs. Every curtain was
pulled back, every window open to the fresh breeze. The polished wooden floors and happy
yellow walls shone the sun’s rays right back to it. Gentle couldn’t help but wonder if he were in
the middle of a signal light conversation. “I don’t speak sunshine. I can’t understand you,” he
murmured just in case.
“Who are you calling sunshine?” his father asked, walking inside and toeing off his mud
covered boots.
“The sunshine.”
Worry lines creased the aging man’s forehead as he cautioned, “Now son, don’t let your
mom hear you talking to sunlight. She’s still not sure bringing you home was for the best.”
Gentle knew that. He saw it in the way she folded her arms when she talked to him, the
way she always took a step back, even if it was just in her eyes.
Somehow sensing his sorrow, his dad patted his shoulder and suggested, “Give her time
Gent, it’s only been a few months, and you were gone for fifteen years. We didn’t think they’d
ever let you out.”
“That wasn’t because of anything I did.”
“Son, you stabbed another student in the eye with a pencil. Then you tried to ram his face
into his desk,” his dad offered up the facts in a bland voice that was almost mocking for all its
even tone. “And when he fought back, you threw him through the window.”
“He wasn’t human.”
“Gentle…”
“I’m not crazy, Dad.”
“Don’t use that word in this house, young man,” his mother called from the kitchen in her
I heard that voice. Gentle wondered if it was pre-programmed by the doctors during one of the
prenatal visits, because every mother he knew had that voice in her repertoire. Maybe they took
lessons.
“Joseph, is he even listening to me?”
“He would like coffee before he talks anymore. He pleads the pre-coffee defense for
anything he has said in the past ten minutes.” Gentle was only half-teasing.
“You’ve only been up for five,” his father corrected him quietly, casting a sidelong
glance at the doorway to the kitchen.
“And again I plead the pre-coffee defense.”
His father nudged him in the direction of the kitchen and rolled his eyes. “Well, if you
want your coffee, then get your lazy ass to the table.”
The kitchen was his mother’s domain, and Gentle treaded carefully when it didn’t smell
like a slice of down-home heaven. If his mother didn’t have something cooking, it meant
something was wrong. This morning though, everything was as close to all right as his family
ever got because the smell of frying bacon and eggs complemented the freshly brewed aroma of
liquid awaken. Coffee. The smell was almost enough, but not quite.
It wasn’t until his first sip, when he could feel the thick brew splash down to coat the
inside of his empty stomach, when the energy pooled there began to spread throughout his
system, that he was able to focus enough to realize that he wasn’t alone at his mother’s kitchen
table.
“Hello, Gentle,” the interloper said.
He blinked at the cheerful man with a blank expression on his face. Gentle momentarily
thought he was looking at a negative of himself. Instead of Gentle’s soft, loosely curling hair
nearly the same shade as the blond collie at his side, the man in front of him had dark black curls.
Instead of the green eyes so pale they were nearly white, the other man had dark blue eyes the
color of cornflowers in twilight. Instead of Gentle’s healthy, farm-earned tan, the visitor was the
kind of pale earned through a lifetime working in a florescent-lit office. Then other differences
occurred to him. Gentle’s muscles were tight and defined, built through sweat and honest labor.
His face was built of sharp patrician features. The man opposite him was lanky and too slim to
have much in the way of muscle, and his face lacked Gentle’s defining angles.
The world snapped into focus, and the strange doppelganger suddenly made sense. It was
his psychologist. They’d been friends once, back in school. Then Gentle had gone crazy, and
Ben had gone to Harvard.
Gentle liked Benjamin James sometimes, but by the look on his face and the pen in his
hand, Ben was here professionally. Just another reason to hate mornings, along with the sunlight,
they brought social workers.
“No greeting?” the psychologist asked.
“Hi, Ben,” Gentle answered by rote and drained his coffee in one long pull. He stood to
get another cup but was pressed back into his seat by his mother who took his mug and set a
plate of toast in front of him with a big smile. She loved Ben. For some reason she thought
talking to Doctor Ben would make her little boy all better again. Suddenly, Gentle wasn’t all that
hungry.
Ben didn’t seem at all put out by the dismissive attitude. “Sleepy?”
“I’ve been home three months now, that’s ninety sunrises. You’ve been here enough of
them to know I’m not a morning person.”
“Have you been having those dreams again?” Ben asked in a concerned voice. “You
don’t look well, and your mother says you wake up randomly throughout the night.”
“If she hears me, that means she’s up randomly at all hours too.” Gentle glanced at his
mother out of the corner of his eye, but she just set the eggs and bacon on the table before him
and left the room. “Does that make her insane?”
“I’m not saying you’re insane, Gentle. I’m only concerned about your health.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
Ben didn’t look reassured. He wrote something down and glanced up at Gentle from
beneath his abnormally long lashes. If it wasn’t for the fact that in Ben’s book Gentle was one
plate short of a picnic, Gentle might have accused him of flirting. Then the look changed to one
he knew too well. It was the look Ben wore when Gentle had said or done something he
considered too strange to pass as a normal quirk.
“Now you’re questioning my sanity,” Gentle accused.
The psychologist smiled. “You’re very argumentative today.”
“Woke up on the wrong side of the sun.”
Ben looked like he wanted to question that but didn’t want to be suspected of calling
Gentle insane.
“It shined in my eyes.”
“Get thicker curtains,” Ben suggested.
Gentle would have none of it. “The sun will find a way.”
“Gentle, I don’t want to upset you but–”
“If you don’t want to upset me, then why are you here questioning me? I’m fine. I
haven’t hurt myself or others. I’m able to function in society. So I have a few quirks, everybody
does.”
Ben laid his pen down on the legal pad and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You know I
can’t just let this lay, Gentle. It’s mandated by the state as a stipulation of your release from the
institute. I have to question you.”
Gentle sighed in surrender. “Fine.”
“So have you–”
“I like you better as Ben. Doctor James is an ass.”
“Gent…”
“Just get this over with, so Benjamin can come out to play, okay?”
“Okay,” Ben smiled kindly and asked once more. “Have you been having the dreams
again?”
“No,” Gentle lied calmly. “I dream of walking, when I remember them. Sometimes it’s
day, sometimes it’s night, on a beach, a road, a field, I’m just…walking.”
Ben made a note on his legal pad. “Looking for something? Or someone?”
“No, just…watching the world go by.”
Ben tapped his pen against his lip in a thoughtful manner. “Is there ever anyone else with
you? The fairy prince? Your parents?”
“Just me,” Gentle assured him. “I haven’t dreamed of the prince in a long time. I guess
childhood fantasies fade after a while.”
“You believed in him strongly once.”
“I was a child. I also believed a Big Friendly Giant brought my dreams to me in a bottle.”
That earned him a smile.
“Sometimes in my walking dream I trip. That’s what wakes me up.”
“Ah.” Ben jotted something on his notepad.
A breakthrough, the crazy man dreams of tripping. Eureka! With an aborted laugh at his
own thoughts, Gentle scratched Chance’s head and amused himself by watching the wagging of
the animal’s tail change rhythm depending on how hard he dug his fingers into the thick fur.
The cadence almost sounded like the music of a carnival. He could hear it over the hill,
calling him to walk the road, under the streetlights that would keep him in the dark with their
light. He could smell the popcorn and funnel cakes and spices. He could hear the laughter.
Over the laughter, there was a soft, bubbling voice. Gentle one. His heart sped up and a
presence, large and insistent, pulsed and grew inside of him. There was something he needed.
Someone–
“Are you listening to me?”
With a small start, Gentle noticed the shadows on the floor were shorter, and Ben looked
annoyed. Gentle had lost time again.
“Blah, blah, blah, not crazy, blah, blah, special, blah, blah, blah, just takes time,” he
guessed, keeping his tone bored to hide his confusion and worry.
“I am trying to help, you know.”
Giving an inner groan of relief, Gentle leaned back in his chair, Chance at his side. The
dog watched Ben, head canted to one side, as the social worker tried to convince Gentle he was
sane, but special, and in need of guidance for that special, but sane, part of himself. The
psychologist talked with his hands a lot, as if he needed to sign in some way just in case Gentle
suddenly lost his ability to hear. Those hands contradicted his words. While Ben said sane, his
hands said borderline. When he said guidance, the hands said incarceration. Gentle liked Ben,
but he trusted those hands more, and their message made him nervous.
“Listen, I want you to succeed in this. I think you’re a great guy, Gentle. You don’t
belong in the institute. But to keep you out of it, I need you to talk to me. Your mother says
you’re keeping up with your medication. I’m the second part of the process of healing. You need
both to improve.”
Gentle tried to look sincere when he responded with a soft, “I know.” He tried not to
think of the many pills buried in his mother’s flower garden. Sometimes it was like Ben could
read his mind and guess at things he didn’t want anyone to know, but he couldn’t help wondering
how the flowers would grow on whatever the hell they were trying to force on him. Will it give
them good dreams? Do flowers dream?
“Gentle?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not all here today.”
Ben smiled and put away his notepad. “We all have days like that. You have a lot of work
to get done today?”
Gentle nodded, glad to be off the topic of his mind and onto something easier. “I have to
put in a new line of fencing down by the road. The old one got damaged in the last big storm,
and we need to replace it before the goats realize they can ram through it.”
“They have machines to make it easier, don’t they?”
“If that’s your subtle way of asking if I’m operating dangerous machinery, I’m not.
We’re a poor farm; we dig post holes by hand.”
Ben looked a little sheepish, but not quite apologetic. He was only doing his job, Gentle
knew that, he didn’t have to like it though.
Gentle stood and offered his hand. “It was nice talking to you, but I really should get to
work before the sun gets too high.” He smiled again; he smiled a lot when Ben was visiting. It
just seemed like that was what the social worker was looking for. Well-rounded people smiled.
He had no idea why. Smiling so much made his cheeks hurt.
“Will you be all right for another week?” Ben asked.
“I’m fine,” Gentle repeated.
Chapter Three
I’m fine. I don’t want to talk. He’d said that so many times the phrase was becoming his
mantra, or possibly his motto. It should have been no surprise then when he caught a motion out
of the corner of his eyes, his first response was, “I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The words might have been effective if the motion hadn’t been Chance.
“Sorry, Chance,” he apologized sheepishly and shoved the posthole digger into the
ground as deep as it would go. “I thought you were someone else.” He was sweating under the
early sun, but he relished the feeling of his muscles being pushed. The labor took his mind off of,
well…his mind.
Gentle pulled off his t-shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his face.
The scent of sweat and cotton filled his nose, and he could see the inside of the tent. It
was just the way he remembered it from his childhood, bright colors muted by the dark. That
smell, salt sweat and musk had come from the men opening the wagon. Gentle hid, terrified, and
watched the rivulets of sweat roll down their necks to soak into their grimy shirts. He saw the
wagon pulled apart and the cage sitting behind its playful camouflage. There had been a boy
behind the bars, a boy with long black hair and blue eyes, very blue. He was young, like him,
young like Gentle had been…
“If I’d known there was a show, I would have brought popcorn,” a gravelly voice teased
from behind him.
Gentle started and stared at the shirt in his hands, unsure of how long he’d been standing
there. Chance growled and placed himself in front of Gentle’s legs, hackles raised and snout
wrinkled, teeth bared ferociously. The friendly dog only reacted so strongly to one person.
Gentle wiped the sweat off of his brow once more, and tucked the corner of it into his
back pocket where it hung like an oversized handkerchief. A little cooler and a lot more
comfortable, he turned to greet his neighbor. “Simon.”
The slim brunet looked to be walking home from town. Simon Moore and his twin
brother had moved into town a few weeks after Gentle had gotten out of the asylum. Since the
brothers lived a scant mile or so to the south of his parent’s farm, and thanks to his extended stay
at the institute, they were all sort of new to the area. They’d become acquainted if not friends.
Neither brother was very social. They chose to stay by themselves most of the time. And Simon
scared the hell out of Chance.
“Your dog is about to bite off more than he can chew.” Simon frowned, staring at the
upset animal intensely as he passed them.
Gentle shrugged. “He’s a bit protective. Sorry about that. How are you two getting on?”
“I miss my garden.” For some reason the statement made Simon grin. Even as normal as
the smile appeared, Gentle could almost see those white teeth sharpening and multiplying. He
shivered and wondered if he really should start taking the medication the doctors gave him.
As Simon walked further away, Chance settled again.
“Yeah, you’re a fierce guard dog.” Gentle laughed.
Chance made a small huffing sound and laid in the grass, eyes still glued to the road.
“Good boy.”
Five hours later, the new fencing was in place, just in time for the hottest part of the day.
Wiping his brow again, Gentle patted his thigh and called, “Come on, boy.”
Chance was at his side almost instantly.
“You know,” he confided in the dog as they walked down the old dirt road. “I think I
might be backsliding. I keep feeling like someone needs me. Like he’s calling for me. I could
take the medicine, start forgetting, but I know he’s real, and putting blinders on isn’t going to
make him less real. It’ll just take him away from me. Is it crazy to fight against that?”
Talking to dogs about not taking his medicine was probably not his best course of action
if he wanted to convince people he was sane.
But, when he wanted to say what was on his mind, Chance was his only safe companion.
Everyone else was worried by his random thoughts. They psychoanalyzed him, wanted to change
him, to make him more normal, as if something like that could be measured to an accurate
stationary scale. He talked and they worried, which made him want to talk less.
With the harsh restrictions placed upon him by his unique circumstances, his thoughts
were the only interesting part of his day. Everything else was regulated: wake up, eat, talk, work,
eat, work, rest in a constructive manner, write in the mandatory journal, sleep, repeat until fully
rational or more deeply disturbed. It was mind numbing, but that may have been what they were
going for.
“You know, I couldn’t get a straight answer from any of the doctors at the asylum,” he
told the collie at his side. When the animal shook his head and snorted, Gentle decided it was a
response he should answer. “Sure, they call it an institution, but I was inside of it. I know what it
is. They never told me why they had us do what we were doing, what it was meant to help. All
they would say was that they would help me, and that I was going to be okay. Living like this
day in and day out, thirty years old and dependent on my parents. This isn’t okay. I never felt
crazy before, but I’m starting to feel it now.”
He walked the pastures and fields, checked fences and soil, made sure the irrigation
system was clear, pulled up some persistent weeds here and there, looked for signs of
infestations on the crops. It was duller than the dirt. At least the dirt made things grow, hid things
beneath the surface. Compared to dirt, Gentle’s life was cardboard—flat, compressed, not even a
box that might hold things, just a scrap torn off from something that might have meant more.
He’d been torn off of his life and stuck on a treadmill, running in place.
“I’m depressing today, Chance,” he mumbled.
Chance circled his legs until Gentle knelt down so the dog could lave his face with tender
licks. The animal might have been trained to do that, trained to love him and keep him happy,
but Gentle couldn’t resent him for it. For all he knew, Chance had been torn off of his
meaningful path too.
“Gentle!”
He glanced up to see his father coming down the road in their old work truck.
“Load up the tools. I have to go into town, you get to come with,” the older man
explained. “I need a strong, young back to do the heavy lifting.”
Joe Carver was only fifty, and because he’d worked the farm his whole life, he was
weathered, strong and solid. But he also knew that Gentle was going stir crazy stuck in the same
routine. As much as he was wary of his mother, Gentle loved his father dearly for these little acts
of kindness.
“Give me a second.” He nodded and swung his toolbox and the digger up into the truck
bed. “Come on, boy!”
His father smiled, but his brow was creased with concern.
Chance jumped into the truck before him, and Gentle settled in for the ride.
It wasn’t until they were halfway into town that his father spoke again. “Did you know
that someone rented Whendon’s field?”
That was news to Gentle. Whendon’s field was barren. Mark Whendon hadn’t been able
to do anything with it for as long as Gentle had been alive. “That’s odd.”
The older man nodded. “Your mother heard Gertie say something about a fairground.”
Gentle didn’t know what to say to keep the conversation going. He sat in silence until
they pulled up to Ogden’s Feed, only then answering, “It would be something to do.”
His father nodded and climbed out of the truck. He made his way up to the old screen
door of the feed shop, entering without another word.
Gentle followed his dad and held out a hand to catch the rickety door he’d passed
through, but the door closed behind the older man, Gentle’s numb fingers unable to grasp it. He
couldn’t follow his father inside; his limbs wouldn’t listen to his commands. The hair on the
back of his neck was prickling. A pressure settled around him, like fate catching up and shoving
itself down his throat. Like destiny.
The ground beneath his feet shook a little, and Gentle felt himself turning through no will
of his own. The large mirror of a wide bus nearly clipped his head, and Gentle’s vision went
white for a moment, his mind unable to process what it was seeing. He knew the bus. He’d seen
it years ago at a carnival, and he’d walked past it in every dream he’d had since, dreams he
hadn’t remembered until that instant. Next came a wagon pulled by a rusted truck. It was
followed by a van, then more trucks and wagons, each one painted more garishly than the next.
One particular blue wagon rolled up and by, no brighter than the others, but something
caught his attention. Its passing must have only taken seconds, but to Gentle it was as if he had
spent hours studying it. He knew every detail of the wide side panel in front of him. The bright
blues and the curving letters advertising, Fae Prince from the darkest glens of the Emerald Isle,
made his heart beat hard against his ribs. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
His dreams knifed sharply into focus. Gentle’s skull was too full, a piercing headache
built as twenty-five years of smiles, touches, conversations, all came bursting to life at the same
time. He staggered at the weight of them, fell to his knees, the world slipping into black and
white and getting darker and darker. He wondered if he was passing out.
“Ronan,” he whispered.
A familiar bubbly voice replied, “Gentle one.” Then it was gone, and he was staring at
the tailgate of the last truck.
The carnival was back.
The captive Fae who’d haunted his entire existence since he was six years old was back.
“Ronan.” Gentle tried the name upon his tongue. It tasted like salt water.
An older, earthier voice responded this time. “Gentle.”
Gentle pushed himself to his feet and spun around to the doors of the feed store where his
father stood, watching him with concerned eyes. “Dad?”
“Let’s go home, son,” the older man climbed into the truck and waited for Gentle to do
the same.
Gentle’s mind felt full of cotton, but something didn’t seem right. “Your supplies…?”
“I paid to have them delivered.” His father’s voice had a hard edge to it—one of those no
nonsense tones Gentle knew better than to ignore. He didn’t understand why until he was in the
car, and a handkerchief was thrust under his nose. “Wipe your eyes. You’re crying.”
Shocked, Gentle touched a finger to the corner of his eye and stared at the moisture there.
“Son…”
Gentle shook his head to try to clear it, but that soft voice wouldn’t leave him alone.
Ronan, that was the prince’s name. He didn’t know how he’d forgotten it. Something pressed
against the inside of his ribs and ached. He remembered a dream…
“They’ll be the ones setting up in Whendon’s Field. Which wagon was his?”
Snapped out of his musings, Gentle’s head jerked up, and the blood drained from his
face. “How did you–”
“I saw them drive by,” the older man cut him off, forestalling any lie he might have tried
to think up, “and your reaction. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I did. Dad, I…”
Chance whined and licked Gentle’s hand.
“I’m okay, Chance,” he soothed.
His father put the truck in gear and headed toward home. His work-worn hands rested on
the wheel with no force, no angry or worried grip. Gentle’s mother would have cajoled and
coaxed until Gentle assured her he wasn’t crazy, wasn’t thinking of the Fae, wasn’t crazy. He
waited for a similar reaction from his dad, but honestly he should have known better.
Five miles later, Gentle was the one to break the silence. “Dad?”
“Your mother will be worried.”
“I know,” he acknowledged. More silence and a question built in Gentle’s mind, until it
was too big to ignore. “Are you worried?”
“I’m a parent,” his dad responded.
Gentle kept his eyes forward, straining to catch even a glimpse of the cavalcade on its
way to Whendon’s Field. “What if I wanted to go there? To see with adult eyes what I saw as a
child?”
His father shrugged. “You’re thirty years old. That’s old enough to know your own
mind.”
“Even if my mind is broken?”
“Son, we’re all broken,” his father explained with a soft, understanding look on his aged
face. “We’re not going to fix ourselves, but we can try to put ourselves back together in ways
that catch the light and make rainbows.”
Gentle smiled in appreciation. “I like that.”
“Just don’t tell your mother I said so. Or I’ll be broken, and no rainbows will come of it.”
They laughed together and stared out at the innocuous country road that had delivered
Gentle’s past and possibly his future nearly to his front door.
“Dad?”
“Yes, son?”
“Do you believe me?” Gentle had never had the courage to ask his parents that before.
He’d probably never have the courage to ask his mother and face her disappointment in him, but
his father… “Do you believe that I saw him?”
“I believe there are more things to life than I will ever know. I’m a farmer. Who am I to
say something doesn’t exist because I don’t know about it? If I thought like that, half the world
would be a figment of everyone else’s imaginations. If you say you saw a faerie, then you could
have seen a faerie.” His father frowned and looked at Gentle out of the corner of his eye. “That
doesn’t mean I think you should have attacked that boy in school because you said he was one.
Meeting a faerie? Possible. The kid you beat up being one? Possible too. But that doesn’t make it
right.”
“I was a kid!” Gentle argued. “I was terrified. What I saw…”
“Fear is never a good reason for violence. It’s an ignorant man’s scapegoat. Speaking of
goats, do you think the new fencing will hold?”
“Yes, Dad.”
His father nodded, pulled into their driveway and up to the house. “Good man. Come on,
your mother will have dinner ready.”
“Another round of the I’m fine game,” Gentle groused half-heartedly while his mind
wandered to Ronan.
“Yes, and for your mother’s sake, if not your own, you’ll deal with it.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“And Gent?”
“Yes, Dad?”
“Your mom’s talking about the flowers in her garden looking odd lately. You should find
another place to hide those pills.”
Gentle stared, open-mouthed, after his father. He’d thought he’d been so cunning and
careful. He felt like a teenager who’d been caught sneaking out. Then again, he guessed with his
childhood spent locked up in a mental institution, he’d missed out on the life lessons that would
have taught him to hide things more competently from his parents. Reality swam a little and he
closed his eyes tightly, trying not to see his past dancing around him.
Fifteen years away, treated like he was crazy, like he wasn’t really seeing the lithe,
shining creatures hiding underneath human skins. They were rare, he’d admit that, but they
seemed to like human suffering. The Fae had constantly been to the institute, sometimes as
patients, but once one had even been wearing a doctor’s skin. They’d been amused by the fact
that he could see them.
At first, Gentle had tried to tell them about the prince. If anyone could help him, it should
have been his own magical kind…but they weren’t interested. Even the Fae thought Gentle was
crazy. By talking to them though, he’d piqued their curiosity. It didn’t take Gentle long to realize
that making a Changeling curious was a horrible, painful mistake.
Changlings were Fae who traded places with and masqueraded as humans. They’d told
him that much, they told him about what they did to the humans whose faces they wore. They
loved telling stories, none of them comforting. Fifteen years of torment as various Fae visited the
asylum. Fifteen years of being lock up alone as punishment for defending himself, of being
labeled paranoid when he could see them waiting to get him. The marks their play left on his soft
flesh had been called self-mutilation.
And he’d forgotten the dreams. He’d forgotten the only good moments he’d known there,
asleep and with Ronan, so he’d had nothing kind to hold on to except that one brief meeting
when he’d forged a connection with a wounded boy in a cage.
The wind blew across the road, raising dust and leaves in its wake. Gentle looked up to
the unlit light posts along the way. They led straight to Whendon’s Field, straight to the boy.
Gentle didn’t know if it was magic, mystique, or fate, but something was calling to him to walk
that road.
“Gentle.”
He jumped nearly out of his skin and spun toward the house. His mother’s voice had
broken the road’s spell. She stood in the doorway a wooden cooking spoon in one hand and the
telephone in the other. She had a dark, shamed flush to her cheeks, and she wasn’t meeting his
eyes with hers. She looked guilty.
“They’re home. Thank you. We’ll be happy to see you tomorrow.” She was holding the
receiver as if she had to block the tiny voice on the other line from being heard.
“You called Ben,” he guessed.
“Come on in and wash up, it’s time to eat,” she ignored him. “Did you hear there’s a
carnival setting up in Whendon’s Field?”
Yep, she knew.
Chapter Four
The roads held a familiar roughness to them, the air a certain tainted purity. Even through
the deadly bars, which sapped him of strength and will, he felt something tugging at his
consciousness. A piece of himself that he’d left behind long ago was nearby. It woke him from
his pained lethargy and invited him to live again. Though the joy was short—trapped as he
was—the burst of feeling still rocked him to the core. He knew this place.
In a land full of poison, he liked this place.
Because a gentle soul lived near.
A wisp of something had brushed his ear. A breath carried on the wind through the
wooden and iron walls of his prison whispered to him, “Ronan.”
Yes, that was the voice. That was the boy he watched and waited for, his Gentle human,
the one fresh breath amongst the putrid filth that had kept him so long caged.
“Gentle one,” he’d whispered back, casting the name out with a small push of his gift. He
wanted his human to know he had remembered him.
Once he had been a proud creature. Once he’d held the oceans in his sway; he’d held the
waves more tightly than the moon could ever hope to. Once Ronan had watched kingdoms rise
and fall, he’d led armies, he’d been someone feared and loved, and neither of those sentiments
had ever touched his heart, so far above them had he trod. Then he had seen a human mother and
her baby.
He’d watched her coo over the wrinkled little thing in delight, and he’d scoffed at the
noises it made in return. The creature was so helpless, and yet wasn’t intelligent enough to know
it. It was pathetic. All it knew was that someone would take care of it, and it was happy for the
gift of its mother. Happy to need someone so utterly… It was…interesting. He, who had never
known emotion, felt something grow in the center of his chest. Something pulled and burned at
him; something called to him.
Ronan had wanted to know the reason that helpless creature, that baby, smiled so
serenely. He had wanted to feel.
So he’d found another Fae to steal the noisy infant creature away, and Ronan had taken
its place. He couldn’t laugh though; he’d never tried it before. He couldn’t smile innocently with
ages upon ages of wisdom behind his eyes. He couldn’t become near enough to the child he’d
replaced, and so he was discovered. Caged. Beaten and starved and tormented, he had finally
learned emotions. Ronan learned anger and fear, despair, hate, sorrow, hopelessness.
Then, six hundred years later, a little human boy had kissed his palm, and Ronan had
finally learned the emotion that human baby must have felt when looking at its mother. He’d
learned adoration and love.
The cost to his human, though, had been too high.
He needed his human to forgive him.
The dreams weren’t enough. Gentle’s mind fought the Fae’s intrusion by hiding away
each dream’s revelation in the boy’s subconscious. They only served to confuse and confound
the dreamer. Ronan wasn’t strong enough to do more though. Gentle would have to come to him
of his own volition.
“Please, my Gentle human, time is a cruel master who I fear has tired of my company.
Please hurry.”
* * * *
Dinner had been brief and tense. Gentle spent most of it staring at his plate and trying not
to say anything he would regret. His mom had called Ben. The carnival was so close—Ronan
was so close—and instead of letting him handle his own life, she’d called in his psychologist,
hoping that Doctor James would be able to talk him back into life’s box like a good little boy.
Gentle had given no more than a mumbled, “I want to see the carnival,” before he’d been
sent to his room, while his mother raved at his father, and his father took it with either soft
spoken words or complete silence. Gentle wasn’t sure which, since he couldn’t hear his father’s
voice.
Gentle flipped his radio on, squeezed his eyes shut tightly and frowned.
The dreams were still jumbled in his head. In most of them he was a child, he was in the
tent, at the carnival. Where he’d met his prince. As a child it had been innocent, a want for
contact and friendship. Gentle had never thought of what that might translate to as a man. Not
until the dreams when he was a man.
The first time he’d dreamed as an adult, he’d been twenty years old. Fifteen years had
passed since the carnival and their first meeting. Gentle had been in the asylum for five of them.
The doctors said he was schizophrenic; they didn’t see the Fae walking around in human masks,
and so they called him insane. The medicine they gave him made him sick. It settled like lead in
his stomach and spread there, a poison. He got nauseous just from turning his head, and so he
tried not to move much, but that made the doctors worry about him, so they’d try to make him
join in group therapy, where he’d throw up. They’d medicate him, and the process started all
over again. He’d been miserable. At times, he’d wondered how hard it would be to find a way to
die—anything to escape the Fae and the doctors and that increasingly sad look in his mother’s
eyes each Friday when his parents were allowed to visit.
The patients in the asylum had outdoor time when they were good, and seeing as Gentle
had been too drugged to be bad, he got to sit on a bench and be queasy there instead of in his
room. The joy of the treat had escaped him, until he’d fallen asleep in the sun.
In his dreams then, he’d seen his prince again.
And his prince was not a child.
He’d been standing in the sun, smiling up at the sky like it was a blessing he cherished
just to stand beneath it. His long smooth black hair was pulled into a neat ponytail at his nape,
and his eyes were so blue Gentle imagined the sky they were watching so avidly was going to get
jealous.
Then that bright gaze turned upon him, and the soft, sculpted mouth curved around the
words that broke his heart and healed him all at once.
“Gentle one.”
Gentle had smiled then, the first smile he’d given in a long time, and asked, “Where’ve
you been?”
The prince’s smile lit up the asylum, and for just that moment all had been right with the
world.
Of course the prince hadn’t been able to stay. And after so many years, so many dreams
hidden from Gentle’s memory, he began to believe the doctors, to think he’d imagined the
Prince. But the voice that afternoon, the wagon, the name…
Ronan.
“I didn’t imagine you,” he said out loud, testing the feel of it on his lips, the echo of the
words off his bedroom walls, the taste on his tongue, as he lay alone. “I love you, and I didn’t
dream you up.”
He almost expected a response, but of course none came. Ronan wasn’t here; he was in a
cage, at the carnival.
Waiting.
Gentle rolled onto his stomach and sighed, remembering the touch of his prince’s hands.
Stolen moments lived inside of his dreams were all they’d had. It hadn’t been enough, but it was
all his prince was able to give.
“I’m not strong enough to stay,” he’d apologized and traced Gentle’s lips with the pad of
his thumb.
Gentle had pressed close and licked at the questing digit. “Then I’ll have to be strong
enough to find you.”
The sadness in his prince’s eyes had torn Gentle apart inside.
“You do not have to be anymore than what you are, a kind soul in a hateful world,”
Ronan had whispered, cool breath teasing Gentle’s curls. “And you will not ruin yourself
anymore than you have for me.”
“It will be worth it.”
“Nothing is worth your unhappiness, my Gentle.” The prince had laid a hand on Gentle’s
chest and pressed the other delicately to Gentle’s forehead. “Forget me, and heal.”
And Gentle had…
Almost.
He’d stopped seeing Faeries then, sometimes something would change in someone’s
face, or some part of a person might just seem…off, but they weren’t clear anymore. Nothing
had been clear to him anymore, least of all the reason for the hole that had opened up in his
chest.
Closing his eyes against frustrated tears, Gentle curled up as small as he could and
begged sleep to take him.
* * * *
He was a child. He was on the road again. Gentle could see the streetlights ahead,
mocking him with their promise of blindness. No matter how many times he was brought back
there, no matter that he always reached the carnival, it always began on that dark road with those
damn lights. He knew he should turn around, or he could stay where he was on the shoulder of
that lonesome, disconnected road and wait until he woke up. He knew those things as surely as
he knew what waited over the crest of the hill. With equal conviction, he knew he would always
walk the road blindly, enter the carnival and meet the boy in his cage. Because no matter how
strange and frightening the boy and the dream would become, it was worth it, worth it to see the
small, bemused smile on the boy’s face.
Gentle had passed three circles of light before it occurred to him that something was
wrong. He wasn’t blinded. The glow of the lamps was too dull to do much more than make a
vague imprint on the ground beneath them. A rough wind hit him, splitting around his child self,
but it brought no smell of cotton candy, no hint of salt and spice. He walked a little faster, but the
sounds weren’t there, no music or barkers, no crowds.
Gentle ran ahead, eyes wide, his mind whirled, and his heart hammered to the beat of his
thoughts no, no, no, no, no, no.
Over the hill, the carnival stood dark; its sign listing to one side. The bright paint on the
posters, wagons and buses was faded and peeling, chips of it curling up to be broken by the harsh
wind and blown off to nothingness.
The dreamer turned in a circle, looking for anything familiar, anything untouched by the
blight that had hijacked his subconscious. A faint glow caught his attention, broken and wavering
like a light filtered through restless waters. A soft song was playing in that direction. The barest
plink of a music box about to completely unwind.
“No,” he begged, but the wind stole his words away. He sprinted forward so fast that
when he tried to stop outside the familiar tent, he slid and hit the ground hard. Ignoring the sting
in his palms and elbow, Gentle reached for the tent flap and ducked inside.
The cart sat before him, its sides still in place, hiding the cage inside. A glimmer of that
same watery light was barely visible through the slats of wood. Gentle lifted the heavy panels
aside, only absently noting that he wasn’t a child anymore. The boy in the cage was though.
Ronan was lying in a heap of flesh and rags, his black hair fanning out around him like
grasping shadows. He looked so small, so fragile to Gentle’s adult self.
“Ronan?” he whispered softly, tugging ineffectively at the padlock on the cage door.
“Little Gentleman,” Ronan breathed in a gurgling sigh. “You’ve grown up.”
“I can’t get the cage open.”
The boy shifted in a jerky, broken manner. Each movement must have been agony, but
finally he sat upon his knees and lifted his head proudly, a shattered and glued together version
of the boy Gentle had first met. “Neither can I. It is not your fault, Gentle one. Please understand
that.”
“What isn’t my fault?” It wasn’t fair. His body was grown up, and Ronan still made him
feel like a frightened child. “What did they do to you?”
“Nothing they have not done before.” Ronan shifted about and tried to hide, but Gentle
could see bloody stains on the crotch and inner seams of the ragged pants the Fae was clothed in.
“They ra—”
“Please,” Ronan stopped him. “Let me pretend that my dignity is still my own. Please
Gentle one, do not say that word.”
Gentle reached between the bars and cupped the prince’s face in his hands. “I can help
you. I’ll tell the sheriff. He’ll–”
“What would your sheriff do, Gentle? The other humans do not even believe I exist, and
my captors have become very adept at hiding me away. Your sheriff will only think you insane. I
will not see you caged trying to set me free, never again. I have given up much to see you free of
that place.”
Gentle ran his fingers over the fragile skin. “There has to be something I can do.”
“I am fading. Caught in cold iron and far from home, I grow weary of this world. All I
crave beyond my freedom in this life is the equally sweet freedom to be found in the next.”
“No,” Gentle clasped his friend’s hand. “No, don’t give up on me! I’ve been looking, and
you’re so close now. I can get you out!”
“I have been a stone around your neck and a world of weight upon your shoulders. I have
nearly driven you to madness. This final step shall release us both.”
“Don’t release me! I don’t want to be free of you!”
“Gentle,” the Fae placed a soft kiss to the scraped and bloody skin of his palm, “Little
Gent, I love you dearly. You have given me hope in your species, whereas most I’ve met have
stolen it away. How then can I continue to repay you with pain and empty dreams?”
“Dreams drive people! It’s like kissing injuries; it doesn’t have to make sense to make us
feel better. It just does.”
The boy in the cage closed his eyes and trembled, his body rippling like a reflection in a
pond. By the time the ripples calmed, the Fae holding Gentle’s hand was full-grown, and the
human mask had washed away. His skin glowed white as porcelain. His hair held an
impenetrable darkness that might only loosely be described as black. Those once blue eyes
looked crystalline and nearly clear, but shades of blue danced through them like waves. The
fingers holding his hand had become long, thin and elegant, the nails held the same prismatic
effect as his eyes.
Ronan’s real form was solid with muscle, but like a swimmer would be, lithe and
graceful all the same. He was beautiful, even in his pain. Lips of pure white opened on a sigh and
were pressed once again to Gentle’s palm. Gentle could feel the scrape of sharp fanglike teeth for
a moment, but they didn’t bite.
“Will you kiss me now, my human? Make it better,” the Fae pleaded.
Hesitant and awed at the sight of the prince in all his glory, Gentle curled his fingers
around the man’s hand and carefully moved it through the bars. It folded in, the fingers curling to
cup Gentle’s face while he kissed the palm tenderly. He ran his tongue over the cool skin, traced
and nipped at the delicate webbing between the long fingers.
Ronan shivered, his sharp inhalation broken and needy. He reached his other arm through
the bars and stroked the side of Gentle’s face almost urgently. The Fae pulled him closer.
Gentle’s cheeks rested against the cold metal of the bars. Ronan hovered close as he
could. The touch was feather light, the bars too thick to allow anything but the barest brush of
their noses. Gentle pressed nearer; their breaths twined together where their bodies could not.
Frozen, so close with no chance of getting closer, Gentle buried his hands in Ronan’s hair
and leaned into the fingers that cradled his head so possessively. “Please, Ronan. Please don’t
leave me,” he begged.
“I can deny you little, though it leaves me in agony,” the Fae whispered, and Gentle felt
the exhalation of those words upon his lips. “Come to me, my Gentle human. I will strive to be
alive when you do.”
A taste of moisture at the corner of his mouth told Gentle he was crying. Then he felt the
moisture in his ear and on the tip of his nose.
He woke to Chance bathing his nose with his large, slobbering tongue while Gentle’s
salty tears slipped down the sides of his face.
“Gentle?”
He blinked in confusion at the tear-blurred form of Ben in the doorway.
“Are you all right?”
“I… No,” he whispered, too shocked to offer comforting lies.
“Do you need to talk?”
“No.”
“Can you say anything but no to me?” Ben teased.
The joke fell flat as Gentle began to cry in earnest with great heaving sobs. “N-no.”
Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Gentle leaned into the embrace, trying to
settle enough to catch his breath. He couldn’t remember what he’d dreamt, but it hurt. Whatever
he’d seen or done while he was sleeping, it felt like it had broken his heart.
Ben whispered words of support, rubbed his back and continued to hold him. The longer
Ben held him the less real the dream felt.
A rumbling growl startled him, and he pulled out of the doctor’s arms and stared at
Chance. The dog’s fur was bristling in anger, his teeth bared and threatening. The moment
Gentle leaned away from Ben, Chance was on his lap, facing the psychologist and snarling.
Ben ignored him completely, instead focusing his whole attention on Gentle.
“No!” Gentle ordered the protective creature.
The collie spared only a quick glance back to him, snarl gone and face innocent, before
he faced off with Ben once more, growling and vicious.
“Gentle?” Ben asked, sounding confused.
“I’m sorry.”
“We’re all worried about you.” Ben was quick to forgive.
“Mom called you.”
“She told me there’s a carnival in town. And that it claims to have a Faerie Prince in
captivity.”
“I saw the wagon,” Gentle admitted.
Ben nodded. “Get dressed. I’ll wait for you in the kitchen.”
The door closed behind the doctor, and Gentle sat beneath the covers, cheeks flushed,
staring at the door. Chance licked his face tentatively.
“I’m okay, boy,” Gentle whispered. If only he was telling the truth.
“I only just remembered him again,” he told Chance. “I miss him. Like all the years I
should have known to miss him has caught up to me at once. And he needs me, I know he does.”
The collie whined in sympathy.
“Well, come on.” Gentle gave the dream up for lost and searched around for some clean
clothes.
Chapter Five
They were all there when he came downstairs. His mother and father and Ben sitting
around the kitchen table waiting for him, from the sour look on his mother’s face, he guessed
they hadn’t waited to start talking about him.
“I need to go back, Mom.”
“No, you need to forget the carnival and move on.”
It was frustrating, trying to talk to her when she got like this. She wouldn’t listen to a
thing he said, and Gentle didn’t know how much more he could take. He sat in his chair at the
kitchen table, hands curled around a cup of coffee, and tried not to get angry at his mother. She
wasn’t making it easy.
“I can’t move on until I face this,” he reasoned. “Ask Ben.”
Unable to sway Gentle, she turned to Ben and tried again. “You don’t understand,
Benjamin. You didn’t see him after that first carnival. It changed him overnight. My sweet and
innocent baby turned paranoid and violent. It wasn’t a gradual change. It was instant, and that
place did that to my boy. How can I be expected to allow him to go back? How?”
“He does present a valid point though, Mrs. Carver. The key moment in any
rehabilitation therapy is when the patient is able to face their past.”
“But he can face this mentally. That’s where his problem is after all, right? He doesn’t
need to be physically there,” his mother insisted.
“On the contrary, I believe this is exactly what he needs. Gentle is making progress in
leaps and bounds. It’s time to let him take the next step.”
“No,” she insisted. “I’m his guardian, and I have the right to refuse on his behalf.”
It was all too much for Gentle. “I’m a grown man, Mother.”
“On the outside, but–”
“And on the inside. I know you’re scared. You have to be because I’m terrified. But
that’s why I have to do this.” Because if he was terrified, how must Ronan feel? Ronan was the
one in a cage.
Chance licked his hand and kept him from zoning out. He ruffled the dog’s fur in thanks.
“Darcy,” his father finally stepped into the conversation. “Back off and let the boy grow
up.”
“I’m not going to lose him again.”
“We won’t lose him…”
“No, we won’t,” his mother agreed. “Because he isn’t going to that damned carnival.”
Gentle stood abruptly. “Mom!” A hand squeezed his shoulder, and he glanced behind
him in time to see his father shaking his head. “Ben?” he tried once more for support.
“I’m sorry, Gentle.” The psychiatrist lowered his gaze. “She is your legal guardian; she
has final say.”
“I’m a grown man.” He meant to be strong, but instead the words came out broken,
almost a question.
“I know.”
His boots sounded too loud on the wooden floorboards as he walked away from their
worried gazes. “That’s not good enough.”
* * * *
The air in the house was thick with tension. It had been for the two days since Gentle had
pleaded for understanding and been met with solid pigheaded determination. He’d tried again
and again to move his mother to reason, but that only made things worse. Now, every time they
were in the same room it was like she was shooting little shocks of lightning at him, beating him
into submission mentally. He hated it, hated being so weak.
And he really hated the fact that his last attempt had gotten him sent to his room without
supper like some recalcitrant child!
Stretching out on his bed, Gentle tried to sleep, too angry to focus on anything. It took an
hour for him to realize that he was also too wound up to rest. Frustrated beyond all reason, he
squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think relaxing thoughts.
Chance curled up around his head and licked his nose once before settling in, muffling
the sound of his mother and father fighting across the hall.
“Gentle, I am sorry.”
Gentle woke to a familiar softness against his cheek and a voice so quiet it barely reached
his ears. “S’okay,” he mumbled and reached up to Chance, but his hand closed on long strands of
hair.
“Mom?” Forcing his eyes open, he stared up at the mouth shaped water stain. It was
fuller, almost real, but it was also upside down.
So was the rest of the face attached to it.
Ronan was looking down at him from his ceiling, his hair forming curtains on either side
of the bed.
“Hi,” Gentle whispered with a small smile.
The bed beneath him shifted, and for a moment the world went strange. Then he was
lying on his back, his head in Ronan’s lap while the full-sized adult Fae leaned over him.
“Hello, my Gentle.”
“I didn’t walk the road this time,” he noted absently, playing with the gossamer strands
between his fingers. “I don’t think I even fell asleep.”
“Before, I was far away and trying to guard you from me and my kind. I fought so hard
and yet you kept coming to me. No matter how I tried to hide it, you always found the road.
Now, I am closer, and you have broken the seal I placed on your dreams, the harm has been
done. My strength is waning. My time is short. In all honesty, I should not have expended such a
great amount of my meager energies. However, I could not let you alone. Not even after the vast
sadness I have brought to you and yours. One word from your lips and I had to hold you again.”
“It’s okay,” Gentle soothed.
“It is most assuredly not,” Ronan disagreed. “It was the height of selfishness to do what I
have done to you. I am able to see that now.”
Those radiant eyes locked on Gentle’s, the shifting colors full of resignation and resolve.
Gentle wasn’t about to back down though. “You haven’t brought me sadness. You’re one of the
few people who brings me joy.”
“Yet I am a burden to you.”
Gentle shook his head and smiled. “You’re a blessing, Ronan.” He tugged carefully on
the lock of hair in his grasp, pulling the looming face down to his. “I love you.”
The Fae sighed, his breath cool and moist against Gentle’s mouth. “You are too kind for
the likes of me.”
“You deserve more kindness than I can give,” he whispered and lifted that little bit
closer, allowing their mouths to meet.
After an instant of shocked stillness, the Fae’s lips parted to Gentle’s kiss. The opening of
his mouth caused Ronan’s chin to brush Gentle’s nose awkwardly. Then something smooth and
slick slipped between Gentle’s lips, and he lost his ability to think past the sensation. It was like
being in the ocean, he felt waves swelling and settling inside of him. He could taste salt, and yet
when that silky surface tangled with his own rougher tongue, it left a freshness behind that defied
explanation. Something tingled deep inside of him, a heat pooling in his belly and spreading out
into the rest of his body.
He broke the kiss and turned around to press himself fully against the beautiful Fae.
Ronan shivered and grasped Gentle’s arms. The Fae’s delicate bone structure hid a deep strength.
The long, slender fingers shouldn’t have been able to grip Gentle’s arms so tightly, and yet he
was positive that there would be stripes of bruises lining each bicep upon the morning.
Gentle was a big man, solid and strong from working the farm, but he got the feeling that
lithe, willowy Ronan could snap him in half with very little effort. Gentle’s breath hitched and
his groin tightened. The thought shouldn’t have been a turn on, but someone had forgotten to tell
his body that.
Ronan pulled Gentle in as close as he could be without one of them being inside the
other. As full, hard and aching as his cock was, Gentle thought that inside sounded like a great
place to be.
“Ronan,” he groaned. Breath coming forth in panting huffs, Gentle pressed kisses to the
Fae’s long and slender neck as he rocked his hips against him helplessly, the grind and pressure
wonderful but still not enough.
Then they were both nude instantly, and Gentle moaned in pleasure as his hard flesh met
the Fae’s own turgid length. He held them together, afraid that if he moved, it would be over too
quickly.
“God,” Gentle laughed. “I love dreams.”
Ronan shared his laughter. “I’m a faerie, my Gentle. Dreams and daylight hold little
restrictions upon me either way.” He panted and bent to lick and nip along the delicate shell of
Gentle’s ear. “I could do the same while you were wide awake, I assure you.”
The breath teasing his ear had Gentle grinding against Ronan again, unable to control
himself. The excited fluids leaking from both of them slipped down their lengths and made each
motion slick and smooth, easing the way for more.
“God, I love magic.”
Ronan laughed again, the bubbling sound trailing invisible fingers up Gentle’s spine. He
arched his back, pressing harder against the Fae.
Cool lips sought Gentle’s again, and he could do little but follow where they bade him.
He’d belonged to Ronan since he was a child. Gentle loved his captive prince; he’d loved him
even before he knew what that word could mean. Now, as an adult man, he lusted after him as
well.
“God, I love you,” he breathed into that strange mouth.
It was as if he’d flipped a switch. Ronan pulled away, his ambient coolness turning truly
cold, his eyes downcast.
“Ronan?” Gentle asked quietly. Their clothes were on them once again, and he flinched
at the harsh feeling of cloth against his oversensitive skin.
“I also love you, gentle human. It is why I must let you go.”
Gentle’s heart hit his stomach in one sickening drop. He opened his mouth to protest, but
found his lips quickly covered by one insistent finger.
“I will watch over you as long as my life allows; however, you need to forget me. You
must live on as you were meant to.”
“I was meant to be with you!”
The changing blue eyes were sad. “Oh no, my beloved human. As is the habit of my kind,
I have stolen you from your life. Even caged as I am, I have managed to steal you away, and this
was so very wrong of me.”
“I don’t mind,” Gentle insisted.
Ronan smiled wistfully. “I know. And for that I love you even more. Now however, it is
time to wake up.”
Gentle sat up in bed, Ronan’s name on his lips and an uncomfortable wetness in his jeans.
But Ronan wasn’t there. He drew his knees to his chest and laid his head in his hands, trying to
feel normal again. He couldn’t though. He didn’t remember how.
“I wanted you to steal me away,” he sighed.
* * * *
Blue, shifting orbs opened slowly to take in the bars above him, the planking above them.
His prison, and he was alone. Once again he lay trapped in his childlike form. Dull, human hair
stuck to the wood beneath him by his own dried blood and tears. His hands ached less from the
beating they’d taken trying to protect his face and more from the knowledge that they’d held his
human, even in a dream. His heart ached with a more bitter knowledge.
He’d done the right thing. For the first time in his dealings with the human race, he had
acted for the enhancement of one of their short lives. Finally, six hundred years after seeing that
woman and her child, he truly understood that deep and lasting emotion called love. When he’d
first met Gentle, he’d thought he knew the emotion well. He had been so very blind.
It had taken six hundred years to learn something humans had a bare hundred, if that, to
comprehend. “And yet we think ourselves so far above them in our emotionless ivory towers.”
He shook his head at his own folly.
Closing his eyes, he opened his consciousness in a new place. His human was upset,
pacing and staring out of the window. So alone, but if Ronan had learned anything in all of his
years, he had learned how well a human heart could heal after being broken, given time. He’d
done the noble thing.
And a moment later, he watched in wonderment as Gentle returned that noble act with a
gesture of his own.
“Ah Gentle, Gentle, my joy, my light.”
Chapter Six
The tree outside of Gentle’s window blew in the summer wind, claw-like branches
reaching toward him where he sat on his windowsill, watching the last faint colors of sunset fade
into black. He was grounded. It was demeaning.
He scratched Chance behind the ears without looking down at him. All of his attention
was focused out at the world, toward the carnival. A deep urgency had been building inside of
him. Something he’d dreamed? Something he’d imagined? He couldn’t say anymore.
The branches became hands in his mind, beckoning him to jump to them.
“There are different levels of crazy,” he told no one in particular. “I haven’t reached that
one yet.”
Still…
It wasn’t too far to jump, and his parents’ room was on the other side of the house, so
there was no chance they could see him.
Gentle’s heart raced at the thought. Since he’d gotten out of the institute, he’d done little
to disrespect his mother’s wishes. Not taking his pills was the height of his rebellion. This—he
looked from the tree to the closed door of his childhood room—this would be a more solid
betrayal.
But the prince, Ronan, needed him. His mom wasn’t going to understand. She’d never
believed him to begin with, so how could she?
He stood up to pace, looking back to the window time and again. He heard the siren song
as if it were a physical voice. Ronan was calling him. It wasn’t so simple though. With this
choice, he could be giving up his family or killing the prince. He could go back to the institute.
He might not get out again.
An emaciated child, hidden behind curtains of lank, black hair flashed in his mind, along
with the look of wonder that had washed over the lovely face at the clumsy kindness of a little
boy’s kiss. The same look he’d seen on the face of an adult prince, staring into the sky in the
garden of a mental hospital—desire and wonderment with a heartbreaking twist of resignation to
the fact that this too would pass. That look had stayed with Gentle, even when the prince’s name
had been forgotten.
“I have to go,” Gentle realized at that memory. He looked back at his closed door again.
“Mom will forgive me, right?”
Chance whined.
Gentle swallowed down the lump of doubt that had lodged itself in his throat. “Right,” he
choked out and swung a leg over the windowsill. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone. Okay,
buddy?”
A soft bark followed him out of the window, almost as if the dog knew it needed to be
quiet.
“Good boy.”
Gentle propelled himself from the sill, arms outstretched. The thick branch he’d aimed
for was farther away than he’d thought. The rough bark broke free, and Gentle scrabbled at it
furiously, bracing himself for a fall. At the last minute, his hands found purchase, and he
slammed hard against the trunk. Wrapping his legs around it to steady himself, he hung there—
heart hammering, breathing fast and eyes squeezed shut, riding out his terror.
“Never thought I’d see the day a grown man had to sneak out of his bedroom window.”
Gentle dared a quick look down and found the dark silhouette of Simon Moore. The
man’s sharp white teeth were the only details visible in the night.
“A little birdie told me you might need help. You planning to hang there all night? Or did
you want to see a faerie?”
There was a distinct snort at the end of that question that Gentle found odd, but he
ignored it in favor of climbing down to the solid ground.
“Question is,” Simon announced, looking up the tree and to the dark window, “how will
you get back in?”
Gentle blanched. He hadn’t thought of that, and after the jump out, he knew he wouldn’t
be able to get back in the way he’d come out.
Simon grinned in amusement. “Come on. We have a carnival to see.”
They walked down the road toward Whendon’s field. The streetlamps were oddly spaced
for walking. Gentle’s eyes were never allowed to get used to the darkness before he was blinded
again by the next light. The walk was so eerily similar to his dreams that it unnerved him.
Simon’s company didn’t help the creepy pall. Gentle kept noticing a subtle shifting out of
the corner of his eyes. Simon’s hair would stiffen and take on a dirty reddish hue; his smile
would sprout fangs.
It was just a trick of the light helped along by a touch of nervous delusion, but it was
unsettling no matter how Gentle reasoned it away.
A car sped by, and Gentle tensed in surprise.
“Jumpy, Carver. Nervous?”
“Ah…no, just…” He tried to think of an excuse, but none came to mind quickly enough.
“Okay, yeah, a little nervous.”
Simon shrugged. “Well, either you’ll prove you really are insane, get caught and get
locked up, or you’ll prove you really are sane, get caught, and get locked up. So, no pressure.”
Sarcasm fairly dripped from his tongue as he replied, “Gee, thanks a lot, Simon. I feel so
much better now.”
His neighbor just smirked at him. “Glad to be of assistance.
“Why didn’t your brother come with you? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
The brown haired man snorted again; it seemed to be his catch-all response. “He’s from
the States originally, but he spent so long away that his grasp of the language is less than great.
And for other reasons, he’s not a fan of crowds.”
“Ah,” Gentle didn’t pry further. It sounded like a very personal story. Of all the people in
their little town, Gentle could most clearly understand how damaging the telling of personal
stories could be.
A familiar smell teased his nose. A cacophony of well-remembered songs and sounds
danced about his ears. He focused all of his attention on the hill looming ahead of them. It was
there, just over that rise.
The carnival. The prince.
“They should be closed soon. We can mill about, then sneak in to see him after hours.
You ready?”
Gentle had been ready most of his life. “Yes.”
“Good. Because I think you might be sane after all. I smell Fae.”
Gentle had no idea what Simon was talking about, but it didn’t matter because they were
cresting the hill to Whendon’s field. There was the sign, the lights, the old school bus. There was
the blue and white striped canvas tent. Nothing had changed, except him. He knew that tent like
he’d known the wagon. Ronan was waiting for him inside.
“You want to see his show?” Simon asked, smiling as if it were a treat for himself as
well.
“No,” Gentle couldn’t bear to see Ronan forced to entertain like that. Besides, he vaguely
remembered something the prince had said when he was a child. “The people who pay to watch
him justify his captivity.”
“Killjoy,” Simon groused. “Fine then, let’s go see the human freaks.”
Even in the short time they’d known each other, Gentle had lost count of the number of
times he’d asked himself why he was friends with the rough, tactless man ahead of him. So,
instead of asking again, he simply followed, hoping he wouldn’t be too horribly embarrassed by
closing time.
Maybe he could convince Simon to keep watch outside while he went in to see Ronan.
* * * *
“Step right up folks, step right up. I tell you Lady Fortuna will wow you with shades of
the past and answers to the present.”
“Hey man, give it a try! Knock over the bottles win a prize!”
“All you have to do is get the ball in the basket!”
“Get your candied apples! Get your elephant ears!”
“Step right up! Nothing better in a carnival than a ride on the Ferris Wheel!”
“Young man, I said young man, go no further, our lovely Lily lady will wow you with
dances so sensuous we need to see IDs before letting you in. This little beauty can…”
“Doyle Fynn, ladies and gents! The man with no bones, contortionist extraordinaire!”
“Big Ben! Strongest man in the world! Once he even lifted the famous clock tower
itself!”
“Doyle sounds interesting.” Simon smirked and slipped into the tent before Gentle could
stop him. Following nervously, Gentle stood in the crowd and watched in morbid fascination as
the man on the raised platform folded himself completely in half, popped his ribs, spine and hips
at extreme angles, tied his arms in knots, literally stood on his head, with both feet…then bent
further to sit on his own neck. All the time the name danced over and over in his mind. He
couldn’t remember where he’d heard it; something just struck him as familiar. Doyle, where had
he heard…
“Now for his final act, Fynn will fold himself up small enough to post!”
The memory came back in a rush, the dreams, Ronan’s blood, the angry carnie. Fynn, it
wasn’t Doyle he remembered, it was Fynn.
Fynn won’t go lightly on you…Fynn is the boss.
Gentle edged out of the tent carefully, his mind whirling with things he’d forgotten.
“Hey! Carver!”
He blinked up at Simon holding his face and screaming his name. “Wha–”
“You’ve been standing there staring at nothing for five minutes. What’s wrong with
you?”
Oh God, he’d lost time again. He couldn’t remember what had been going on in his head,
the last thing he did remember was being inside the tent watching… “Fynn!”
“Yeah, he was very flexible, but I’ve fucked better.”
“I…what? Eww, no!” Gentle tried to organize his thoughts again. “Fynn runs this
carnival!”
“Aye, I do, and how did you come to know that.”
Gentle spun so fast he tripped and fell backward into Simon.
“Well?”
“I, um…”
His neighbor rolled his eyes and smiled one of his too-white smiles. “Gent’s a big fan. He
saw your carnival last time it was in the States.”
Fynn looked impressed. “That was around twenty-five years ago. We came over right
after I inherited the business. You have a keen memory, so it is.”
Gentle tried not to look ill. “You made quite the impression.”
The carnival owner fished in his pockets and handed them a bunch of crumpled ride
tickets. “It’s on me, lads, have fun. I’m thinking it’s not every circuit I meet such a dedicated
fan.”
Simon took the tickets and nodded with a flip salute and smile. “Thanks!” he managed to
sound nearly chipper.
When Fynn left and Gentle could breathe again, Simon led him to one of the green metal
benches lining the outskirts of the makeshift fairground. “You’re a horrible liar. It’s a good thing
I came along.”
“He’s the one. He beats him, cages him, he even… I think he ra—I hate him.”
“Good. Hate’s healthy sometimes. Now look, he’ll be watching, after your little
performance, so you’re going to make yourself puke, so he thinks the green look you had was
from too many sweets. Then we’re going to ride rides, play games, and generally act like we’re
blind and stupid. Then we’re going to see your prince. Can you handle this?”
Gentle nodded.
Simon stood back and blocked him from the lights. “Finger down your throat, make it
convincing.”
Throwing up was the easy part. Going back in there under the watchful eyes of an Irish
monster…that would be Hell. “Thanks, Simon.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come on. I wanna ride the Centrifuge and the Pepper Shakers and the
Hurricane! Can’t forget that!”
Even watching the ride was enough to turn Gentle green again, and his time it had
nothing to do with the memories. “I’m going to throw up again, aren’t I?”
“Probably,” Simon acknowledged, and happily marched him into line.
Two hours later the last of the carnival’s shops and games had closed and the final
stragglers had gone home. Simon had even sought Fynn out to shake his hand and thank him
before they left with the crowd.
Once they were well out of sight, the two men quietly doubled back around and made
their way to the blue and white tent Gentle had slipped into all those years ago.
“I’ll stand watch,” Simon whispered. “Be quick.”
With a grateful nod, Gentle lifted up the side panel and slipped beneath it.
The tent was dark, just as he remembered. It smelled of wet canvas and freshly turned
soil. The wagon was still in the center, its occupant still a boy with long black hair weighed
down by oil and grime. It was too similar, for a moment it left Gentle feeling too big for his skin,
like he shouldn’t have grown tall enough to look down on the caged Fae before him.
“Why are you still so young?”
Ronan glanced up sharply, shock flashing through his eyes before his features settled into
a nearly aristocratic calm.
Another jolt of wrongness hit Gentle. When he’d been a child hiding in the shadows of
this same tent, Ronan had known where Gentle was with almost preternatural accuracy. The
smallest of sounds had been enough to give Gentle’s presence away. Now, the Prince was dazed
enough to miss the tent’s panel being lifted directly in front of him.
“My prison is a small one,” Ronan spoke softly, his bubbling voice barely audible. “I
have found that a smaller form aids in expanding these walls, if only in my mind. Does this form
trouble you, Gentle one?”
Gentle reached his large, rough hand through the bars and ran his palm over the still
childlike face of the Fae. The exact same face he’d seen all those long years before. “Yes. I’ve
changed, but you…”
“Ah, my Gentle.” Ronan smiled and took his hand in cold little fingers. “You fear that
you have unintentionally left me behind.”
“Yes.”
“If it would please you, I will change.”
When he’d been a child, the cage had seemed large. Now though, Gentle couldn’t
imagine how horrible it must be to live like that. “No, you’re fine.”
“I am most decidedly not, Gentle,” the Fae’s voice broke, and Gentle wanted nothing
more than to comfort him.
“Pst. Carver. You stay in there too long, and they’ll catch you. You want to get
thrown…” Simon froze just inside of the tent and stood staring at the caged boy in open
disbelief.
Ronan’s form rippled, for a moment becoming something beautiful and menacing, but
settled quickly again into his human skin. “Lu,” Ronan whispered, the name musical upon his
tongue.
“You live.” Simon’s words held a strange, growling quality that Gentle had never heard
before. For a moment, Simon’s hair seemed to redden while his skin went gray.
“When I last saw you, Lu, you shone so brightly. Now the scent of blood and ash follows
you. Your light has burnt to cinders. The Moor felled you then.”
“Only days after the third great war.” That growl deepened, and Gentle stepped between
Simon and the cage hesitantly. He didn’t understand why his action earned a small chuckle from
the Fae in the cell.
Simon snorted.
“Gentle one, his hatred is not directed upon my person,” Ronan explained. “It has been
born of a wound long unhealed.”
Strange, lilting words danced from Simon’s lips interspersed with sounds like the
crackling of burning wood and rattling of a snake’s tail.
Ronan answered him in kind, and everything fell into a strange sort of sense.
“You aren’t human,” Gentle whispered to Simon.
Simon gave another snort and grinned, showing off the fangs that Gentle had thought
he’d imagined.
It was Ronan who finally gave him a real answer. “Simon is Fae. He was a general in my
mother’s armies then he became a king and Blade Dancer. Only, he was killed in his prime by
the Moor whose name he carries presently. But Gentle, you have seen hints of his true form for
quite some time with the sight I gifted to you.”
“I’m not crazy at all,” Gentle realized.
“No, my human, apologies will never be enough to balance the injustice I have done to
you, but I fear I have gifted you with something too sane for humans to comprehend.”
“I’m so sane they think I’m nuts.”
“A cruel irony, but yes,” Ronan agreed. “It happened when you tried to mend my wounds
with a kiss. You drank in a bit of my blood and opened yourself to my world. I have tried to be
there for you, to aid you in the horror I’ve awakened you to… However, my strength is waning
and with it, my ability to reach out to you.”
Simon said something that sounded like “Kshrone”, but held that odd rattling quality
which made it an impossible name for Gentle to try to reproduce.
“Lu, I wish to be addressed as Ronan now, in deference to my Gentle one’s human
tongue.”
A deep growl, like that of a lion, bubbled from Simon’s chest. “Lu died by the spear of
the Moor. I am Redcap now. Simon, to the humans.”
“Redcap,” Ronan entreated. “Please take my Gentle home. He should not be here.”
“He’ll be nowhere else,” Simon scoffed. “You above all people should know that.”
“I am taking back my actions,” the caged Fae persisted.
Simon snorted. “You are a fool.”
Gentle studied the lock, tried to pry the ancient looking thing open, tested the bars for
weaknesses. Nothing.
“Gentle, go home. Please do not allow myself to be the death of you. I would never be
able to forgive such a transgression.”
“Ronan…”
The Fae reached out carefully, took Gentle’s hand and kissed it with such tenderness that
Gentle wanted to cry. “For my sake, go.”
The tears he held in check blurred his vision as Simon led him away. Gentle blinked them
back futilely and froze.
“Carver!” Simon muttered angrily.
He knew what should be in front of him, he knew Simon should be there, but he wasn’t.
The road wasn’t even there. He should have been standing on a road looking out onto rows of
streetlights, but the road was gone. The lights were broken, some toppled over completely, their
iron shells barely glinting in the dim moonlight.
Gentle took a step and stumbled over something. He bent down and squinted in the
blackness but still couldn’t make it out. Whatever it was, there were more of them, all around
him. He stood, took another step, and shuddered when a chilling numbness stole up his leg and
over his spine.
He ran.
Gentle tripped, stumbled, crawled and pushed his way through to the hill. To the carnival.
To Ronan, because Ronan would be at the end of this thing that had once been the road. He had
to be. He always was.
Over the hill lay a wasteland, a perfect circle of nothing in a field of dead corn stalks.
“Carver!” Simon yelled in his ear, bringing him out of his waking dream and back to the
road. The real road. The lights were strong as ever, exposing his pale face. “You saw
something,” the disguised Fae noted.
“We have to get him out,” Gentle insisted. “Tonight.”
Simon nodded and tugged him back toward home. “You get your dad’s bolt cutters. I
have to talk to Loam. Meet me back here in half an hour.”
Gentle nodded, clasped the other man’s arm. “Thank you…Redcap.”
A smirk grew over the face until it seemed too wide for human lips. “Oh, don’t thank me
just yet.”
Chapter Seven
Like most of his waking dreams, the specifics of what he’d seen were already faded and
insubstantial. It was the emotion that remained. Gentle wasn’t sure he wanted to know what had
instilled such an urgent terror in him. He was paranoid; he knew it. That didn’t stop him from
hiding from oncoming cars and ducking into shadows when he passed a house or streetlamp.
When he reached his house, the yard was flooded with light. Every window held a
jaundiced yellow glow that subtly threatened him. You’ve been caught, it said. You’ll go back
now. Back to the white rooms and white uniforms and white lights. We could be the last color
you see.
Heartsick at the thought of it, Gentle gathered his determination around him like a shield
from reality. He snuck into the barn, keeping out of the light. The bolt cutters weren’t hanging on
the tool wall so he searched as quickly and as quietly as he could.
“Welcome home, son.”
He froze.
“Are you looking for these?”
Guilt burned his face.
“Gent, through all of this madness, you’ve never been too ashamed to face me. Even
when you attacked that boy, you met my eyes squarely and told me why. Tell me why now,
Gentle.”
Stealing himself against his father’s disappointment, he turned around and answered.
“You raised me to care when another creature is hurting. I don’t want to be the type of man who
would let what they’ve done to him pass. I haven’t fought you on any of this. I’ve taken Mom’s
controlling and Ben’s wheedling. I’ve taken people talking about mad Gent Carver even when
they know I can hear them. I live with it, all of it, because it isn’t worth starting a fight. I don’t
like fighting, but Ronan is worth it. I’ll fight for him.”
His father smiled and tossed him the bolt cutters. “Good man.”
Gentle stared dumbly.
“A man came by to see your mother and me. Mister Doyle Fynn. He said he recognized
you from a news article that mentioned his carnival. Said he’d seen you there, said he was
worried about you. He said a lot Gent, but…”
“He’s worried about what I know.”
“And what you might do,” his father finished. “He’ll be expecting you. And a person who
could cage someone, beat someone, as long as you’ve said he has…”
“Simon will be with me.” Gentle walked out of the barn with his father.
“That doesn’t reassure me,” the older man grumbled. “Take the truck. It’ll get you there
quicker. Say goodbye to your mother?”
Gentle’s eyes darted to the porch where his mother stood, staring at him and wringing her
hands.
“Mom…”
“Hello, again.”
The Carvers all looked to their driveway. There was a man walking down it toward the
house. A bright red and purple truck parked on the roadside.
Fynn’s gait was slow and leisurely, but Gentle couldn’t see his hands. Like Ben’s, the
carnie’s hands spoke more to Gentle than the man himself. Now, they were concealing
something.
“Enjoy the carnival, did you?” he asked.
Gentle nodded slowly while he tried to look like he wasn’t staring at the hands resting in
the man’s jacket pockets.
“Good. See the prince?”
Gentle shook his head.
Fynn’s gaze dropped to the bolt cutters in Gentle’s fist. “Going to see him now, are we?”
“Now, look here,” Gentle’s father warned. “This is private property, I’m going to have to
ask you to leave.”
The carnie shook his head slowly. “Can’t do that, my good man. This conversation is
about my property. Listen, I’m not unreasonable like.”
Gentle bit the inside of his cheek to keep from responding.
“Not like I can let the little blighter go, now is it? He’s all wound up from being cooped
up so long, so it is. We’d all be dead now, wouldn’t we? I’m honest, hard-working, gentleman
like. Lookin’ after my people, I am.”
He was no more than five feet away from Gentle by the end of his speech, grinning and
personable. He set off alarms inside Gentle’s head.
Around Gentle, the colors of the night shifted and dulled until they were blocked all
together by canvas. He was back in the carnival tent again, and there was blood dried and
matting dirty black hair, sticking Ronan’s rags to his skin. The cage stank of piss and feces.
There was something carved into the Fae’s back. Gentle couldn’t tell what it was, so he carefully
pried the shirt from the wound. He choked on rage and tears.
Freak, it said in big jagged letters. Whore had been carved there too, but that word was
older, already scabbed over.
“They need to justify my confinement, my Gentle. They needed to make me lesser,
inhumane, a monster.”
Monster, he traced the healed but visible scar of that word as well. “I hate them,” he
hissed.
“Do not hate them, Gentle one. You were not meant to hate.”
“Be you listening to me, lad?”
Gentle snapped back to the present, staring down the barrel of a gun. “No. I wasn’t
listening.”
“Thought not.”
Ice raced down Gentle’s spine as he watched the trigger finger tighten.
A furious ball of auburn fur shot from the house. Chance latched onto Fynn’s arm and the
gun went off. A bright flash of pain bloomed across Gentle’s thigh. He fell to one knee, his
father instantly at his side. Fynn’s guttural cries caused both men to look up, neither could look
away.
The collie had Fynn on the ground; his impressive jaws locked down on the carnie’s
throat while the man wailed in pain. The arm that had raised the gun was snapped, almost bitten
in half, the skin torn from the bone.
“What…?” Gentle’s father gagged, unable to finish his question.
“Chance,” Gentle breathed in relief.
“There’s more than chance at work here,” the older man argued.
Gentle was about to answer when he caught the glint of the yard light shining on metal in
the carnie’s hand.
“Chance! Come here, boy!” Gentle ordered.
The dog wouldn’t let go, it was holding on for dear life. For Gentle’s life.
Gentle lunged forward, but the knife was faster. Chance yelped and bit down hard in his
pain. Gentle brought the bolt cutters down at the same time. With a growl and a horrible tearing
sound, the carnie stopped screaming.
“Chance!” He pressed his hand to the gash in the animal’s side. “Mom! Dad! Help me!”
“Son,” his dad put a hand on his shoulder, “there’s nothing there.”
Gentle pulled his shirt off and wrapped the dog tightly in it. “Yes, there is. Fynn stabbed
him. Look at the blood! We have to get him to a vet.”
“No, Gentle, you don’t understand…” his father tried again.
It was his mother’s hand, though, that finally got through to him. He looked up at her in
shock. “Mom…”
“Your father doesn’t mean there’s no wound. He means there’s no Chance. Honey, we
just watched that man get torn apart by nothing.”
“But Chance…”
The fur beneath his hands receded, leaving only pale skin. The bright blue eyes glowed
and shifted; black hair pooled over Gentle’s arms where he was holding Ronan.
“Ro…”
“I told you I would watch you as long as I could. I have always watched over you.
Chance was the largest form I could project through your mind without opening the blocks I’d
placed there and sentencing you to captivity once again. He was the best I could manage from so
far…”
There was still blood on his hands. “Ronan, you’re bleeding.”
“I do love you, my gentle human. Do not mourn…” Then the Fae faded to nothing in
Gentle’s hands.
“Gentle?” his mother asked carefully.
He stood, wincing at the motion. She tried to help him, but he held out his hand to keep
her back. “It’s only a deep graze. I’ll live.”
“Honey, I’m so sorry I didn’t…”
Gentle gave his parents both a tight hug then tossed the bolt cutters into the truck. The
door closed with a loud slam, and he smiled tightly out the window at them. “Do yourselves a
favor and tell the town that a wild dog got him. No one will believe the truth.”
The dust kicked up by the truck’s tires didn’t hide his parent’s tears nearly well enough.
* * * *
Simon didn’t wait for an invitation when Gentle pulled up to him on the roadside. He just
jumped into the cab and slammed the door.
“Stealing trucks now? Momma’s little boy is growing up.” He smirked.
Gentle wasn’t ready to joke about it. “Did you know that Chance was Ronan?”
Simon shrugged. “I knew he was a Fae form. He was never real, just a twist in your mind
to make you see him. It’s an old trick. Knowing that, it wasn’t hard to guess which Fae he could
be.”
“Did you know that he could tear a man apart in that form?”
The grin vanished. “Finally believe you, do they,” he made it more of a statement of fact
than a question.
“If he was just in my head, how could he do that?”
“A lot of power,” Simon mumbled. “He didn’t have a lot to spare.”
“Fynn hurt him,” Gentle explained as they sped toward the carnival. “Fynn stabbed him
when he was Chance. He turned into Ronan in my arms then faded away like nothing.”
Simon didn’t say anything for a long while.
Finally, Gentle stopped the truck a quarter mile from the carnival, worried that the noise
of the old engine would wake the carnies. He couldn’t risk someone catching them, not when
they were so close.
Climbing out with the cutters, he finally noticed Simon’s unusual silence and asked.
“What?”
“Was the handle black?” Simon asked.
“What?”
“The knife Fynn used to stab him, was the handle black?”
“Yes.” He nodded as they walked. “What does that mean?”
“You didn’t read many Faerie stories as a kid, did you?” Simon growled. “It really
doesn’t matter which half is black, but you humans misheard the advice as black hafted, so most
men in the business of killing Fae carry one with a black handle. We may be too late.”
Gentle didn’t wait for Simon to explain any further. He ran, fast as he could, toward the
dark shapes of the carnival tents. There wasn’t a single sound as he crossed into the ring the
carnival had marked out for itself. All the carnies had been asleep for a while.
Ronan’s blue and white tent sat undisturbed in the shadows, its door flaps closed and
occupant silent. Gentle had never feared peace so much. Inside the tent was even worse. The Fae
lay motionless in the center.
“Ronan!” Gentle whispered urgently.
Ronan didn’t respond. He didn’t even try to move. A trickle of blood trailed out from
him, from the same spot he’d been stabbed as Chance. It stained the wood and looked so final.
Like Ronan’s spirit may have taken that little bloody path to a place Gentle would never be able
to follow.
“Don’t do this!” he pleaded urgently, keeping his voice as soft as he could. “I
remembered. I just got you back! You can’t leave me…”
A soft huff of breath escaped the prisoner, and Gentle put his arm through the bars and
clasped the fallen creature’s hand. It was cold as ice, but twitched slightly at his touch.
“I’ll get you. Hold on.”
The thick click of the bolt cutters severing the lock was loud in the silent tent, and Gentle
flinched, glancing around in alarm. When no one responded to the sound, he slipped the lock free
and pried open the cage. The door had not been opened in hundreds of years. It squealed
alarmingly at the hinges.
Gentle gathered the battered and weakened Fae into his arms quickly. “Be strong, I’m
getting you out of here.”
The small figure released a soft groan and shifted against him. The child’s body
elongated and filled out. The skin took on a more unnatural kind of pallor and the hair a deep
blackness. The Fae hadn’t even enough energy left to keep his human disguise.
“Hold on,” Gentle begged and shouldered the tent flap open.
A blow to his cheek caught him by surprise. He stumbled sideways and only just
managed to twist so that Ronan landed on top of him, and not under him, when he fell hard to the
ground.
“Now then.” A carnie stood over him, ticking a long metal cane back and forth in his
hands.
Short and redheaded, Gentle remembered him. It was James, the man he’d hidden from
as a child. The man who’d hurt Ronan, spit on him. He was older, but the cane was the same, and
so was the smile. It still made Gentle want to hide.
“Be a good lad and put the dangerous Fae back in its cage before it wakes up and
slaughters us all, yeah?”
A blur in the darkness behind the man was all the warning Gentle had before four claws
punched out through the carnie’s chest.
“The dangerous Fae was never in the cage, idiot,” a low voice growled. The claws curled
closed and yanked, pulling the wide-eyed man into the tent in one smooth movement. A cracking
sound raised gooseflesh on Gentle’s arms then something stepped out into the moonlight.
It was short with gray skin that rose in thick lines across its surface, forming some kind of
tribal patterns. Its eyes were pure black with no whites to them, and its hair was a dull reddish
brown gathered up in sharp spikes.
Gentle shivered as it raised one gore-covered hand to card through the stiffened strands.
It wasn’t red naturally. The hair was coated in blood. It opened its mouth displaying sharp jagged
teeth and spoke. “A little bird told me you might need help.”
Fear slipped into shock. “Simon!”
Simon grinned. “Redcap to my kind. Wake up, River Prince. Your human is
hyperventilating.”
Ronan chuckled weakly. “I am aware, Lu, and thanks be to you. Blade Dancer or Shadow
Touched, you are yet a creature of honor.”
“I seek no honor in killing, only entertainment.”
“Simon.”
The creature’s pitch-black gaze focused upon Gentle once again.
“When he said you were Fae, I thought…”
The monstrous thing snickered, fangs glinting between amused lips. Its mouth was so
wide it nearly stretched from ear to ear. “You thought I was a pretty, shiny Fae like your Ronan.”
Gentle nodded and tried not to stare.
“I was, once upon a time. You see though, I’m what happens when a Fae dies by a
human. They call us Shadowed where we are from. Here we are Darklings, Unseelie, Fear
Forms, What-Might-Happen. Humans tend to give a lot of names to things that scare them.”
A strange sound came from behind the tent.
Simon looked back, said something in return, and hauled Gentle to his feet. “Get him
someplace natural, somewhere with clean water. Let him soak off the taint of your kind, and
he’ll be fine. You should go now though.”
“Why?” Gentle asked, even as he realized that he might not want to know the answer.
More of the odd language came from behind him, and Gentle jumped, holding Ronan
fiercely, as if he had a chance in Hell of defending him from the towering golden creature before
him. Outside of coloring, it looked nearly like Ronan himself, but there was a fierce air about
him, something sharp and honed, like a weapon.
“I called in reinforcements.” Simon grinned. “Just in case.”
Something else slipped from behind the tent. Loam, Gentle realized, Simon’s quiet twin.
Unlike his brother, he still looked human, but the two large double bladed axes he was carrying
were streaked with blood.
“Why aren’t you…?”
“He isn’t Fae.” Simon gave Gentle a hard shove away from the carnival site, urging him
to walk while he explained. “He’s a stolen child, much like you.”
“There was blood on his axes,” Gentle whispered.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be quiet about the killing. Don’t want to be discovered.”
“Killing?” he gasped.
Simon glared at him. “Look at what they did to him. Even if they weren’t witness to our
existence and what harms us, they shouldn’t be allowed to live. Go.”
“Lu…” Ronan reached for the little creature.
“You are not my prince anymore. I am beyond your control, and now all my debts to you
are paid,” Simon growled. “Steal your human away, good prince. He will be the one blamed for
this.”
Gentle clutched Ronan tighter, eyes wide. Simon was right. The prince was gone, the
whole town knew about Gentle’s time in the institution, and a good number of them knew why
he’d been sent there. Everyone would suspect him. He could never go home. Who would believe
him?
“Go! They’ll be a whole lot more sure of it if they catch you here.”
Simon was right, and Gentle had no choice. Once again, he ran.
Behind him, a musical voice spoke up in English. “By calling for me, you have forfeited
our game.”
“We can play another game,” Simon replied. “I met a very flexible human earlier. He
gave me some ideas.”
“No writing the instructions on my chest this time.”
“There are other places to write.”
Gentle didn’t want to know.
Chapter Eight
Gentle’s headlights shone on the empty road heading out of town. The police hadn’t
discovered anything yet, or they would have caught him by now, but it was only a matter of time.
His father’s truck would be too easy to trace.
“Ronan, will you be okay if I carry you? It’ll be rough, but we have to ditch the truck and
go off road, or they’ll find us.” He didn’t mention his fear that they were going to find them
anyway. Gentle was no criminal. He couldn’t run from the law, didn’t know how to hide.
“My strength has already begun to return, gentle one, now that I have been removed from
those horrible bars. You will not injure me.”
Gentle stopped the truck, half in and half out of a ditch. He jumped out and made an
effort to trample the ground leading into the field in front of him, bending corn stalks as he went.
It was clumsy and obvious, but the police were looking for crazy Gent Carver. A clumsy trail
leading into the field wouldn’t be suspicious at all. Hopefully, it would buy him some time.
Once he was far enough away that he couldn’t see the road, he returned down the same
path and carefully lifted Ronan from the passenger’s seat.
“The drainage ditch on the other side of the road is down far enough that if anyone
passes, they’ll have to be looking for us to see us. And in the movies, water throws dogs off the
trail, so maybe it’ll work. Danvish Forest is about a half a mile down. There’s a river that runs
through there. I’m not sure how clean it is, but…”
“I am sure it will suit just fine,” Ronan smiled tiredly.
Gentle stared at the beautiful face of his prince, the soft little upturning of his lips, the
heavy lidded eyes. He bent his head and pressed their lips together. The Fae in his arms gasped,
and Gentle couldn’t help but take the opportunity. He delved deep into the open mouth and
groaned at the touch of that too slick tongue against his. It was just like in the dream, only better,
even more solid. His breath caught, and his stomach clenched as he felt himself stirring to life.
Pulling back reluctantly, he stared at the one in his arms. “I’m sorry, I…”
“Thank you,” Ronan sighed.
Gentle nodded with a smile of his own. “You’re welcome.”
With a small grunt and a splash, they slid into the ditch and were gone.
* * * *
The river was too close to the road for Gentle’s liking. He could see the glow of
headlights from their hiding place, but at least they were distant, and the leaves and underbrush
were thick this time of year. He kicked off his boots and sat on the bank with the tired, injured
Fae in his lap. One arm tight on Ronan’s chest to keep him steady in the current, Gentle slid
them into the river, sitting with a chilled gasp.
Ronan made a small, high-pitched sound of shock at the first touch of the rushing water.
It was followed by a coo of relief, and he stretched, letting the cold flow over and around him.
Quickly, his skin began to regain its glow. The tension that had tightened his shoulders since the
day Gentle had met him eased.
“Ronan.” Gentle dipped a hand down into the cool water and trailed it up under the
ragged shirt to coat Ronan’s chest.
The Fae groaned and arched into the touch sensuously. He turned in Gentle’s hold and
straddled his legs with a strong grip, using his arms to push them farther out into the water.
“Ronan, the current!” Gentle worried.
“Do not fear, Gentle human. I shall protect you ever. This water will not harm us.”
True to his word, though the river raged around them, the two of them didn’t move with
it. They sat in a calm pool amidst the rush and stared at each other, Gentle in awe and Ronan in
fondness.
The Fae flowed forward and captured the human’s lips, nipping gently, begging entrance
while he undulated upon Gentle’s lap. Gentle could do nothing but let him in. He craved the
Fae’s touch like Ronan had craved freedom. Gentle couldn’t live without it.
“Take these rags from my body. Please, my human, I need to be myself again.”
Gentle obeyed gladly. The fabric was so old. It tore like paper. He ripped the soiled shirt
away easily, trailing soft, moist kisses upon each bit of skin revealed. Gentle’s hands played over
Ronan’s back, the sharp shoulder blades, so prominent they could have been wings, the dip of his
spine tapering down to a slender waist, followed shortly by the round, soft swell of his ass.
“All of it,” Ronan urged.
Gentle’s hands trembled on the waist of the Fae’s trousers. He teased a couple daring
fingers underneath the cloth, but didn’t dare go further.
Ronan reached between them, long, tapered fingers playing across Gentle’s jean clad
groin.
Gentle yelped then looked up to the road in alarm. They couldn’t make too much noise.
During his panic, the Fae had popped the button of Gentle’s jeans and pulled the zipper down.
Ronan delved into the open fly. Gentle bucked up against him helplessly. The Fae used the
motion to slide the jeans down Gentle’s legs to be carried away by the river.
“Ronan!” he whispered urgently.
“Shhh, Gentle one. I have waited nearly your entire life for a chance to hold you so.”
Ronan purred and trailed a sharp fingernail over Gentle’s boxers. The material split as if it had
been cut open with a razor. The tails of his plaid shirt flowed against his hips and thighs, teasing
his suddenly free manhood. The river itself teased him with its rush and flow.
He obediently took one side of Ronan’s trousers in each fist and tugged, ripping them
away. Ronan closed his eyes, threw his head back and trilled happily, the moonlight bathed his
glowing form through the trees and his long void-black hair trailed around them both as if it was
trying to preserve their modesty.
There was nothing modest about the large, curved cock standing up proud and interested
between them. Ronan was magnificent. The dark, mushroomed head leaked a pearlescent fluid
the likes of which Gentle had never seen. It glistened down the ridged shaft temptingly and
Gentle’s own manhood rose at the sight of it, as if the chill of the river had never touched him.
“You will enjoy my magics, Gentle. Let me show you wonders.”
Gentle nodded, wide-eyed and scrambled for a hold, as Ronan turned them around in the
current and settled under him.
“Hush, my Gentle, this water will not take you. It bows to its Lord. I alone shall carry you
upon my currents; wash you clean of human taint. I alone shall hold you.”
“Yes,” Gentle agreed readily, the push of the water into his entrance and up his body
almost too much, but Ronan’s hold never wavered.
“Ah, my Gentle,” the Fae sighed and trailed cool fingers across his cheek, over his lips.
He dipped one into Gentle’s welcoming mouth while the other made short work of the buttons on
his shirt and tore the t-shirt beneath in a single deft sweep.
Ronan latched onto one pert nipple as Gentle suckled the questing digits happily, riding
out the sensation of the river.
“Mmm, but I want more of you,” Ronan whispered against his chest.
The liquid flowing into him gained a type of sentience. Instead of the soft tease of its
currents, Gentle could feel a thick, almost solid mass of water press past his teased and wanting
entrance, holding there, then moving out again. He struggled and choked, but he couldn’t shake
it away.
Ronan reached down and cupped Gentle’s waning hardness with cool, moist hands. He
slid down Gentle’s body and went under the water.
Gentle froze, worried he would hurt the Fae, but staying still allowed the water to thrust
deeper into him. It slammed against something inside of his body and lights went off behind his
eyes. He lifted one hand to his mouth, biting his knuckles to stifle the scream building in him.
Then lips suckled at the tip of his penis, and he was harder than ever.
He gasped and tried to keep his head above water, but his attention was elsewhere. Ronan
lowered his head, taking all of Gentle inside. The Fae hummed, delicious vibration traveling
through Gentle’s groin even as that slick, smooth tongue wrapped tightly around him, moving in
a way a tongue had no right to move.
As Ronan sucked at him, the river current dragged his long, long hair up Gentle’s body to
tickle and tease his nipples. Giving up on trying to steady himself, Gentle plunged both hands
through that mass of hair to pull Ronan up and out of the water. The shifting blue gaze that met
his from behind the curtain of black locks was hungry and feral, and Gentle’s heart jumped
before the slight creature launched itself into his arms, grinding them together in need. The water
that had been pounding into him flowed away, and Gentle whimpered for its loss.
“Mine,” Ronan warned him, then lifted Gentle onto his lap, piercing the tight ring of
muscle and pressed into him in one swift motion.
Gentle screamed, the water had stretched him and the shimmering fluid Ronan leaked
was smooth, but he’d never been taken like that before, and full and wonderful as it felt, tears
stung his eyes.
“Hush, Gentle human. I will take your hurts and create for you rainbows and diamonds
and dreams. I will give you such wonders,” Ronan soothed, petting Gentle’s hair and back,
allowing the Gentle time to adjust. “I will give you love, my human. I will give you love.”
Gentle nodded against the Fae’s strong chest. His muscles clenched at the touch of the
Fae’s hand upon his stomach. It trailed slowly down, and he felt himself rise up to meet the
questing fingers. At the first touch to his awakened interest, Gentle whimpered in need and
bucked into the sensation. He wanted more, wanted it all.
And Ronan gave it to him.
Red and blue flashes filled Gentle’s vision as the Fae rode Gentle from beneath, thrust
into him and pulled out, the erotic ebb and flow building into a tidal wave. Red and blue…
Gentle’s eyes opened wide at the sound of doors slamming. He couldn’t stop. He was so
close, and Ronan was solid and alive, and Gentle was being claimed in a way he could never
ignore, but policemen had entered the woods.
“Ronan,” it came out as a keening, need-filled plea, not the warning he had meant it to
be.
Ronan understood just the same. “Do you trust me, my Gentle?”
“Yes,” he replied helplessly, a puppet on the flesh of his master.
“Then breathe out,” Ronan ordered, and he lay them down, under the river’s surface.
Gentle’s eyes were wide, but he did as he was commanded. All sound became muffled,
muted, and the world was bright even in the darkness. Ronan glowed like a beacon; the police
would see him without a doubt. But they walked up to the river’s edge, looked around, looked
right at them and saw nothing.
Ronan sealed their lips together, and Gentle breathed deep. Something pooled in the
center of his being and grew steadily there. It built with every continued thrust of his Fae. He
stared up through the water at the policemen conversing above them, he bucked helplessly into
Ronan’s thrusting, unable to get the force he craved while floating, with nothing to press off
from.
Like it had sensed Gentle’s frustrations, the river’s currents changed, molded against
them, pressing them tighter and tighter together. Ronan cried out into Gentle’s mouth, and
Gentle could feel his own scream building along with his climax. They bucked and pushed
together until everything else lost any meaning. They gyrated and heaved into one another,
knowing nothing but the thick lust tightening and rising between them.
When finally he had taken so much in, when his whole body had gorged upon Ronan’s
attentions, he came with a great eruption, arching so strongly that his lips were pulled away from
Ronan’s by the sheer desperate force. He choked and gasped and screamed out his need, and
Ronan’s own cry echoed around him, carried on the water itself. He arched one more time then
shattered happily, waiting to be put back together again by his lover’s deft touch.
Above them, the policemen were gone, having found nothing of interest.
Gentle broke the surface with a gasp and cough. It was all he could do to pull Ronan with
him to the shore. They lay there, half in and half out of the water, clinging to each other and
panting hard, exhausted.
“Oh, my God, Ronan,” Gentle whispered.
“Yes,” Ronan agreed breathlessly.
Gentle laid his forehead against the Fae’s and smiled tiredly.
“Come away with me, my Gentle one. I cannot promise the freedom you have given me,
but I can promise you love and dreams, even eternity if you so desire.”
“Away where?” Gentle asked. “I can’t live in a river.”
Ronan laughed. “The Veil has dry land too.”
Eternity with Ronan sounded wonderful, but… “I wouldn’t be free?”
“In my world, you will be a pet,” Ronan explained. “A beloved creature, but a pet all the
same.”
Gentle tucked an errant lock of hair behind the sodden Fae’s ear. “What do you do with
pets in your world?”
“Shower them with affection, trinkets and tokens. You will live in splendor and want for
nothing,” Ronan assured, licking and suckling at Gentle’s throat in affection.
Gentle gasped and canted his neck to the side. “Wow, and all you got was a leaky dog
house.”
Ronan pulled back to smile fondly. “I never had to use it. Your bed was most enjoyable.”
“Well, you were my pet before,” Gentle reasoned and pulled his Fae into a tight embrace,
thrilling at the renewed hardness he could feel between them. “I guess I can take my turn.”
“Ah, my Gentle,” Ronan sighed.
Gentle caught his lips and breathed his answer into them. “Yes, my prince.”
About the Author
Brought up in the woods and wild, in a place almost forgotten by time, I learned that the best
moments in life are the ones filled with the spirit of the earth and family around you. Second best
to that is the moment I got an Email saying ‘Bedtime Story for a Stolen Child’ was being
published. My name is Anna Mayle.
Anna loves to talk to her readers and can be found at www.annamayle.com or reached by Email
at annaemayle@gmail.com.
What to read more from the Stolen Child Series?
Also Available from Resplendence Publishing
Bedtime Stories for a Stolen Child by Anna Mayle
Stolen away from his cradle as a child, Leinad has been a plaything of the Faerie for thirty years.
He has been broken and put back together so many times that he cannot even remember what he
used to be. He has given up all hope of escape, until a soft breeze through his cell leads him
home, only to find out that home has gone on without him. A man with Leinad’s face is there in
his place, with his siblings, acting out his life. A changeling. The creature who enabled his
imprisonment and torture for all those years.
Daniel Tessel is a thirty year old folklorist. He is meeting his brother and sister at their family
cabin, to spend the anniversary of their parent’s deaths together. His biggest worry is the séance
his little sister is insisting on, and trying to stave off her inevitable disappointment. That is, until
he looks up during the ritual to see his own face watching him from the window. He is pulled
into the consequences of a plot he cannot even remember, accused of stealing his own life.
Confused, angry, and frightened beyond reason, Daniel tries to escape from Leinad, but there is
something pulling them together.
Revenge and passion are two very similar things. Blood sings, lust and tempers rise, and before
they know it, neither is quite sure who the real monster is anymore. Or if it will even matter in
the end.
Lullaby for a Stolen Child by Anna Mayle
They steal them away as children, drawn to their short but vibrant lives. They use them as dolls,
slaves, entertainment of every kind, tasting the fierce brevity of human life through their
captives. But there are times when a taste is not enough.
Where is the boundary between hate and love, love and lust, love and hate? Where do you draw
the line between jealousy and longing? Is the passion of a killer the same as that of a lover?
And how can a human man hope to understand the ways of the two Fae who have turned his
captivity upside down?
Also Available from
Resplendence Publishing
Mitch by Dakota Rebel
Baine Family Series, Book One
When mortal Bounty Hunter, Mitch Baine, decides to spend one night breaking all the rules with
a sexy masked vampire, he has no idea that the stranger is Jarrod Axlerod, lead singer of the
famous band Heartstrings, or that he will be contracted to kill Jarrod the very next day. Mitch has
been trained to believe that the only good vampire is a dead on—a lesson cemented into his brain
after years of killing them on contract for the US Army.
But his feelings toward the creatures begin to change after spending an incredible night at the
masked ball. When he receives his newest contract, he is horrified to see that the vampire he has
been hired to kill is none other than Jarrod Axlerod, the sexy vampire he has just broken every
one of his personal rules with.
Midsummer’s Dreaming by Simone Anderson
Hayle St. James’ refusal to continue living a lie when he is confronted by his family about being
gay finds him on the back of a motorcycle riding through a forest in the middle of the night.
What he finds will either make everything worthwhile or break his heart.
Leife O’Neill has finally found the perfect man. A man who loves him for him. Hayle is
everything he could want in a partner. Too many things stand in their way. On the night that
Leife wants to declare Hayle is his, reality and responsibility collide with anger and jealousy and
more than one heart is on the line.
Stopping in the middle of the forest to make love under a full moon seemed romantic, however,
Hayle and Leife quickly learn that they are not alone and not everything is as it seems. One man
watches and waits for the opportunity to confront the man he loves, while another is forced to
face the consequences of his actions…
Feral Lust by Mia Watts
As a third son of an Earl, Mr. Michael Hastings hasn’t a title or lands. Since a title comes with
responsibilities, Michael needs only money to leave the prying eyes behind and live a quiet
life—with another man.
Country recluse Viscount Lord Atherton is the bearer of a family curse. He must wed and
conceive an heir before his birthday, or live with the painful physical changes that turn him from
man to wolf, several times a month. But Atherton has another dangerous secret. His attraction to
men could place him at the end of the hangman’s noose for sodomy.
Atherton pays Hastings to help him find a wife by Christmas. Yet the more time Atherton spends
with Hastings, the more he wants to know. And when Hastings displays a lust for sex play that
rivals his own, can Atherton trust Hastings enough to share the truth behind his quest? As
Atherton loses his heart where he least expects it, he wonders if he can fulfill his destiny, or face
a lifetime of pain from the curse?
Duck! by Kim Dare
Raised among humans, Ori Jones only discovered he was an avian shifter six months ago.
Unable to complete a full shift until he reaches his avian maturity, he still can’t be sure of his
exact species.
But with species comes rank, and rank is everything to the avians. When a partial shift allows the
elders to announce that they believe Ori to be a rather ugly little duckling, he drops straight to the
bottom rung of their hierarchy.
Life isn’t easy for Ori until he comes to the attention of a high ranking hawk shifter. Then the
only question is, is Ori really a duck—and what will his new master think when the truth
eventually comes out?
Ash Swan by Amber Kell and Stephani Hecht
Cob Brothers Series, Book One
When Prince Landon Cob sees Brian Dawson, he's not sure what to make of the bicycle courier
with a pierced nose and green streaks in his hair, but the man's gentleness in feeding the water
fowl strikes a chord with him. In this story of Swan Prince meets Cinderfella, two men from
different backgrounds have to find a way to counter magic and divergent lifestyles to find their
happy ending.
In the Shadow of a Hero by Anna Mayle
A cop dies in the city, life goes on. For one little boy, though, it changed everything. Haunted by
his past, Maxwell Thomas has grown up homeless and friendless, trapped by his guilt. Prowling
the city, the small man guards the Church District like a vigilante, trying to make up for his
crime. When he rescues the wrong rent boy, he is pulled back into the madness that destroyed
him as a child. And now, another cop's life is on the line...
Nick Kenna is a beat cop with dreams of being a detective. When he stumbles across a murder
and the very unusual suspect, he finds himself caught, not only by the mystery of the vagrant he's
apprehended, but something deeper that sparks between them.
Will Nick be able to save Maxwell, from his past and himself? Or will love be lost as the broken
man fades into the shadow of his hero?
The Mark of Cain by Cash Cole
After a night of hot sex with an elusive Native American, Gage is left with a bullet wound and a
scarred shoulder from where a panther slashed him. The New Orleans police tell Gage that his
lover morphing from man to beast is highly improbable and that whoever broke into his hotel
room left no trace evidence, but Gage knows he hasn’t imagined any of this. He starts with the
only clue he has, the name of a town in Oklahoma where his lover said he was born. But can he
track down sexy Cain, who is in witness protection, before the assassins find and kill them both?
Possession by SW Vaughn
Devlin Island Series: Book One
Sully Shaw is one of three – a coven of gay male witches on Devlin Island, charged with
protecting the place from the ancient gate between worlds, deep in the woods, that sometimes
lets evil things escape. Sully’s job is to banish demons and spirits – which works for him,
because after his last disastrous relationship, he’d rather not deal with people. Until a gorgeous
stranger crashes on his private beach and needs his help.
Troy Landry was just out for a vacation, and maybe a fling, on Devlin Island. What he didn’t
bargain for was crashing his boat on the beach, finding a hot naked man who claims to be a
witch, and getting possessed by a demon who takes over his body when he falls asleep. The
demon can’t be driven out until dawn – so Troy and Sully have to stay awake all night long. Lots
of sex helps. But when they start falling for each other, incredible sex might not be enough to
overcome Troy’s insecurities, Sully’s past trauma, and a demon bent on releasing its brethren
and killing any mortal who stands in its way.
Moon Princess by Suzanne Graham
As Celina Maddock left the office on a Friday evening, her coworker jumped into her car and
demanded she get on the highway and drive fast after their sizzling kiss in the parking lot. She
never imagined she’d get the gorgeous Barrett Osborn ordering her around; however, when he
starts talking about Shadows, werewolves, and werebears, she becomes a little worried about his
mental health.
When Barrett’s lover, Stan Varka, offers his assistance in escaping the Shadows, Celina goes
along with their strange story about shapeshifters, because finding herself the center of their
attention becomes extremely erotic.
Once they’ve finished their night of playacting, Celina doesn’t think she could possibly have a
future with these two amazing lovers¼until they convince her that she really is the Moon
Princess and the only hope for establishing peace between the wolves and the bears.
Ryland’s Sacrifice by Kim Dare
Principles don’t pay tuition fees. When Ryland’s math scholarship disappears overnight, he has
two choices. He can borrow money from fellow student Jason Burrows, who has very interesting
ways of collecting debts. Or, he can volunteer to be thrown to the werelions.
One night spent playing the part of a willing human sacrifice will give him enough money to
finish his PhD. It seems like a good deal-right up until the moment he finds himself naked,
blindfolded, bound and surrounded by lions.
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