Page 43 of The Deer and the Dragon
Crossing the threshold meant stepping into a cloud of incense. I blinked against the smoke while searching trinkets and bobbles and shelves for the source, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. Bundles of juniper and sage, rows of candles, and stacks of crystals lined the window. Every wall was cluttered tightly with brown, green, blue, and clear bottles containing muted liquids, oils, powders, leaves, and herbs. Enormous, thick curtains had been draped from the ceiling in bundled tufts, giving me the sensation that I was somehow under deep, dark waves. I’d barely had time to take in the store as the shopkeeper came out from the back. The tight curls of her short, peppered hair were a shock of silver on warm features. Warm, brown skin was lined with her years, speckled with spots from age and the sun alike.
Fauna whipped off her sunglasses just as the shopkeeper’s face dissolved into a smile as radiant as the sun itself.
“Fauna!” She gasped, weathered hand clutching at her heart.
“Betty, you beautiful, perfect butterfly!” Fauna ran to the woman’s side and snuck behind the counter, wrapping her in a hug.
“My goodness, what are you doing here?” Betty asked. “I haven’t seen you in…what’s it been?”
Fauna looked off into the distance while she calculated. “Has to be…one hundred and thirty years?”
Betty’s eyes widened incredulously. “Has it really been that long?” She stepped out of the hug and beamed, slapping Fauna on the arm. “And yet here I am looking like an old bag of bones while you’re even lovelier than the day I met you.”
Fauna turned to me and said, “See? That’s how you talk to me.”
“She hit you too,” I muttered as I approached, fingers still wrapped around the cardboard box of fruit and sugar.
“I brought you presents!” Fauna said, glowing. She wiggled her fingers for me to hand over the box, then opened the top for Betty’s appreciative gasp.
“You remembered!” The woman sounded like she might cry while she eyed the strawberries.
“As if I could forget a single thing about you.” Fauna said, looping her arm through the woman’s bent elbow. “Betty, this is Marlow, my human tag-along. Marlow is a nitwit and has no hope of surviving in the world yet has somehow found herself in something of a conundrum. Marlow, this is Betty. Betty is perfect, has never done anything wrong, and is cooler than you’ll ever be.”
Betty’s eyes sparkled as she said, “You’re exactly as I remember you.”
I struggled to understand the sight before me, but that was nothing new. I’d had trouble coping with most of what had occurred over the last several days. “How do you two know each other? Does she also…?” I stopped myself from asking if Betty had fae parentage. I didn’t know what was and wasn’t polite.
“Betty freed one of my sisters. She was running her craft in a seaside town in…Svalsbard?”
“Tórshavn.”
“Gods and goddesses,” Fauna exclaimed, “that’s right! Time flies. Betty was in Arran two centuries ago. We are inluckthat such a flawless treasure made it to your sorry city, Mar. Tell me, mythologist, why didn’t you include selkies in your first book?”
I blinked in surprise. “Your sister was a…selkie?”
Fauna made a show of frowning at me. Not just her mouth, but her brows, the shake of her shoulders, the pucker of her cheeks all underlined her glare. “Selkies! The firstPantheonnovel was all about Norse mythology, but you couldn’t be bothered to include selkies?”
“They’re more Scottish folklore…” I began to argue but snapped my mouth shut as Fauna’s eyes became unimpressed slits.
“You’re bad at your job,” she told me matter-of-factly. “The Faroe Islands are every bit as part of the Nordes as I am. And if you know anything of selkies—”
I nodded, recalling the lore. “A human can hide their seal skin so they can’t return to the sea. It’s an old folktale people told to explain feelings about women being forced into marriages. It was a feminist tale.”
The matching faces of disappointment looking back at me had me biting my tongue.
“See, Betty? She’s hopeless. Yet here I am. And in need of a favor.”
Betty patted Fauna’s hand as she went to the shelves, scanning her bottles. “Anything for you, dear. Do you need something for your friend’s intelligence?”
Fauna snorted.
I opted to speak up for myself. “I’m looking for someone.”
The smug, self-assured look faded from Fauna’s features. She watched my face thoughtfully.
“A…a friend. No, he was more than that. He was…is…so much more than that. And I asked him not to come back, and…I need to undo it. I didn’t believe he was real when I said what I said. Not truly. I need…”
Betty turned to me, kindness in her eyes. She reached for me, clasping me in warmth as she held my hand with one of her own and covered it with the other. Tenderness coursed from her to me like the same warm honey I liked to stir into my coffee, turning bitterness into something sweet.
