Fantasy short. A shopkeeper slowly comes to fall for a weaver when he comes to town.
Slow romance and fantasy short between a shopkeeper in an isolated Scottish village, and a weaver that comes up from somewhere way down south. 12k, rated M, M/M.
Note CWs for blood and violence, spousal abuse, domestic violence, and stalking.
The shop was small and nestled in the wedge between two huge oak trees, so big that the bark parted on each side to swallow some of the building into them. It was five minutes’ walk through a small glade from the village proper — easily within reach of, but not seen from the main square.
Dirk had started working there at age twelve, helping old Mr Breathnach stock his shelves before his daughter had taken over.
They stocked the village itself, of course, sold eggs and milk and fruit and veg and toothpaste and nappies and bacon and coal and bin bags and everything else you needed from a corner shop. They had dog and cat food, birdseed, fish flakes; they sold seeds and tools; they had a modest shelf of clothes.
They sold strange puzzleboxes and ancient old ornaments, antiques that made you stop when you walked past, so you’d turn to look. They sold instruments and music books, and shoes, and wine, and jewellery, and flowers.
They even sold furniture, displayed it in the window.
It wasn’t a big shop — you definitely didn’t think so, to see it from the outside, even to walk in, but it contained a lot more than you thought it might from the outside — and that wasn’t even considering the stuff they’d order in on request.
The actual village was quite small, with less than a few hundred people in it, and when Dirk was a younger man, he’d go around and do some of the deliveries around the local houses, but that was before his hip had really started to go, when he’d still been able to ride a bike.
These days, Dirk worked at the shop’s desk five or six days a week, and Ms Breathnach — her name was Pamela, but irk valued his skin too much to try calling her that — worked on the days he had off. Dani and Michelle, the delivery girls, helped out when needed.
Theirs was the most populous village for a good hundred miles around, and therefore, they were a hot spot.
Farmers came around from leagues away for the bits and pieces they needed; tourists hiked through on their way further up the mountains or having trekked through Llallwg; travellers stopped off on their way.
Dirk had a curious affection for the strange and solitary people who lived up here in the mountains, who lived alone somewhere quiet and secretive, and bought their necessities from their little shop of everything.
The weaver was one of these.
The first time he arrived, he bought groceries, fruit and milk and honey, and a few balls of yarn. He said nothing — no pleases, no thank yous — and he wore over dungarees a mustard yellow leather jacket, matched to his boots.
He rode a little motorbike, a moped.
He was thin in that way that made him look tall from far away, but up close you realised he was no taller than you. He had white hair in thick curls that hid his eyes, and he walked on very silent feet; his skin was pale, and had a jewel-blue undertone to it, not uncommon in fae.
He didn’t smile much in the village but was always looking over his shoulder, as though someone had to be chasing him, or if they weren’t, they would be soon.
“Sweet tooth?” Dirk asked when he bought a box chocolates.
The weaver eyed him warily from behind his curtain of hair, and paid.
Dirk thought of him as the weaver because he bought yarn regularly and always had needles sticking out of his bag or his pockets; Rosie Hammond said he’d bought lambs from Harry Boyle, four of them. He’d paid as much for raw fleece from Harry as he had for the sheep themselves, so far.
“You living nearby?” asked Dirk after a few months had passed. Winter was setting in, and every thick jumper the weaver wore was brightly coloured, worn with an assortment of heavy scarves and mittens.
“And some chalk,” said the weaver in low voice. It was a tremendously sweet and delicate sound, bell-like in its quality — this was the first Dirk had ever heard it.
“Gotcha,” said Dirk, and grinned.
The weaver gave him such a cold, dead-eyed look — his eyes, it turned out, were a darkened yellow that matched his boots and his jacket — that Dirk nearly flinched.
“Chalk,” he said, and handed the weaver the box.
The weaver took great care not to brush his fingers.
It was a cold, heavy winter, and the weaver’s visits became once every two weeks instead of once every seven days or so. Dirk found himself listening out for the rumble of his bike, although the sound of it was often muffled by the snow.
He’d sigh with relief when he crossed the shop’s threshold, his cheeks pink where they peeked out from between his scarf and hat, and always linger for a moment or two next to the heater before he went to collect his groceries.
“We can deliver, you know,” Dirk offered. “Dani and Michelle, they can come out to you wherever you are.”
“And a pack of playing cards,” said the weaver.
He always paid in cash, and Dirk wasn’t even sure he had debit cards — he had a little money purse of the now-familiar yellow leather, and it wasn’t shaped for payment cards. Dirk could have made that out to be a fae thing, because the glow and colour of the weaver’s eyes definitely wasn’t human, but he met fae all the time that paid by card.
Fae banks didn’t put names or personal details on their payment cards — normally didn’t put dates either, given that the fae understanding of time did not much line up with the average one — but they did still use them.
“Could play in the pub, you know,” said Dirk. “I could teach you a game or two, if you like.”
“There is no game on this earth,” said the weaver, “that a man like you could teach me.”
It was the most the weaver had ever said, and he spoke so imperiously that Dirk was surprised. Normally he spoke in a very low voice, his head tilted down, but now he projected, and the force of his ringing voice almost made Dirk shiver.
“I’m sure I’d like to try,” said Dirk.
The weaver took his groceries, and then he took his leave.
* * *
He was probably fae, which was why Dirk thought to remind him, when he came in the second week of December.
“Remember,” Dirk said pleasantly, “we’ll be closed the twenty-fourth through to the twenty-sixth. Only three days we’re closed a year.”
The weaver blinked at him, as Dirk had somehow known he would. “Why?” he asked.
“It’s Christmas,” said Dirk.
“Oh,” said the weaver. “I see.”
“You fae?” asked Dirk.
The weaver turned away, and Dirk watched him pick up a few extra things from the shelves, holding them in the crook of his arm before he brought them over — more flour, more yarn, more candles, a few chocolate bars.
“Want some tinsel?” asked Dirk. “I’ll throw it in for free.” He rustled a silver handful enticingly, making it shine in the light.
“Is your father more ashamed of the fruit of his loins, or your mother?” asked the weaver in his clean, ringing voice.
Dirk stared at him, mouth fallen open, until the weaver tapped his coins upon the counter and reminded him to take them up.
“You’re savage,” Dirk said delightedly. “You know that?”
“Yes.”
Dirk laughed, leaning closer over the counter, and the weaver leaned bodily back.
“Not gonna hurt you,” said Dirk, softening his voice, and he leaned back with his hands up, showing his palms.
“I know,” said the weaver, packing his groceries into his bag.
“You could come into town for a drink,” said Dirk. “Tis the season.”
The weaver fastened his satchel’s clasp, and slung it over his shoulder.
“Have a good holiday,” Dirk called after him.
The weaver made no noise, but the bell jangled merrily as he left.
* * *
Dirk took his annual month’s holiday, and when he came back, the weaver didn’t react to his presence.
“I missed you,” he said playfully when the weaver came up to the till.
“Another pack of cards,” said the weaver.
“Don’t you want to ask where I’ve been?” Dirk asked as he rung him up. “Could be I’ve gone on some exciting adventure you’d be just desperate to hear about.”
The weaver said nothing.
“No eggs,” said Dirk. “Your hen start laying?”
The weaver stared at him, eyes slightly wide, his jaw tight. He snatched his groceries back, paid for them, and left on every quick — but silent — steps.
Dirk wasn’t sure what he’d said so wrong, but he felt bad anyway.
“Sorry for before,” he said when next the weaver came in. “About your chicken. You, uh, you started buying chicken feed in September, and Harry Boyle hadn’t been keeping it secret you bought four sheep, a goat, a hen.”
The weaver said nothing.
“S’not right to have one hen alone, you know,” said Dirk. “You should have at least two or three. They get sad, lonely — birds like a flock, and I know you’ve got other animals, but it’s not the same as other birds. You can drop the excess eggs here if you can’t eat ’em all — we’ll just take the value off your order.”
The weaver said nothing.
Dirk rang him up, and watched him go.
He managed to hear the bike’s rumble even through the snow, and he actually heard himself sigh.
Christ.
* * *
The weaver, to Dirk’s surprise, took his advice, and by the thaw in March, he’d bring in eggs once a month, in the cartons that Dirk supplied him.
His wardrobe was not infinite, Dirk had realised by now, only bright and varied. He’d evidently knitted much of it himself, but he didn’t use all of his yarn for clothes of his own.
“I’ve never seen leather that colour before,” he said experimentally one day. “You like yellow?”
“I have brought eggs today,” was the weaver’s stout reply.
“Matches your eyes. It’s a nice colour.”
The weaver put his money on the counter.
No one knew his name, so Dirk didn’t feel bad for not knowing it, especially because the fae could be really cagey about their names, even when living alongside humans. The nearest town was a fae one, and Dirk had grown up being taught to be careful.
But the weaver had never asked his name, nor used it. Perhaps he didn’t know it, just the same as Dirk didn’t know his.
It wasn’t all that strange that he didn’t know his name, that no one knew his name. What was queer, though, was that Harry Boyle didn’t know where he lived.
“Where does he live, that funny fella with the white hair, the fae boy in the yellow leather?” asked old Ella McGonagall, rocking in the old chair beside the fire in Rosie’s pub.
“Oh, out…” Harry trailed off. “Well,” he said, his heavy brow furrowing deeply. “Well, out… way — ” He gestured vaguely, seeming utterly perplexed by his own lack of knowledge.
“You don’t recollect where he lives?” asked Rosie, fascinated. “Harry, you’ve only brought the man half a homestead in animals. Don’t you deliver him straw?”
“He picks it up hisself,” said Harry, shaking his head. “I delivered the animals, but not the stew. Must have some ward up.”
“Funny fella,” said Rosie, clucking her tongue. “That’s not right, making a man forget like that. As if he’s worried you’ll tell all and sundry where he lived.”
“Well, he was about to,” Dirk pointed out, and earned a clip around the ear, but his point stuck.
“Must be a big enough place,” mused old Ella. “All that livestock and one man to tend ‘em.”
“Must be,” said Dirk.
“You trying to cosy up to him?” the old woman asked, and Dirk glanced at her, at the playful glint in her eyes.
“I don’t think he’s meant for cosy.”
“You ain’t neither, else you would be.” She laughed, having said this, and Dirk huffed out a laugh of his own, rubbing idly over his bad hip and reaching for his cane.
The weaver was outside when he left the pub, packing firewood onto his bike.
“Need a hand?” Dirk called.
The weaver flinched, whipping around to look at him, but having laid eyes on Dirk’s face, he raised his chin, calmed himself, and went back to packing his wood.
“You’re scared of something, huh,” said Dirk as the weaver got astride his back.
“Everyone is,” was the retort.
“Not me,” said Dirk.
“Then you are as I thought.”
“What’s that?”
“A fool.”
The bike rumbled off. Dirk’s cheeks were still warm.
* * *
It was a wet and rainy day in mid-April when the weaver entered the shop. When he came directly up to Dirk’s counter, he knew something was wrong, and he stood from his seat.
“You okay?” asked Dirk.
The weaver stared down at the countertop for a few moments, leaning forward on his feet, inhaling, his fists clenched at his sides. “Tom Duncan,” he said quietly. “He fixes tractors, and motor cars.”
“Aye,” agreed Dirk. “True enough.”
“Motorbikes?”
“Maybe. But Tom’s down in Glasgow watching the match — he won’t be back until tomorrow.”
The weaver’s clothes were sodden through where his jacket didn’t cover them, and he was shivering.
“Hey, come, come by the heater,” said Dirk, and he forgot himself entirely; he reached to put his hand on the weaver, who flinched away so fast that Dirk thought he’d hurt him, and wrenched his hand back before he could make contact. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Just… Sta there a sec.”
Ms Breathnach wasn’t a witch, but she had a few tricks up her sleeve. With just a flick of her wrist, she had the water evaporate right from the weaver’s clothes, leaving him dry and —
Well.
He certainly wasn’t grateful.
He’d pushed his bike three miles into the village.
“Dirk’ll drive you home,” said Ms Breathnach. “And Harry Boyle can bring your bike around once Tom’s fixed it, on his truck.”
“No,” whispered the weaver, showing the most emotion Dirk had ever seen him display beyond suspicion and mild irritation. His eyes were slightly wide, so that the yellow in his eyes shone like gold, and his fear looked genuine. “No. I can’t, I… no.”
“Then you’ll have to stay the night in town,” was Ms Breathnach’s simple, stout reply.
“Rosie’s has a room upstairs,” said Dirk. “She’ll let you have it for the night.”
The weaver’s fingers were twitching anxiously at his sides, pulling at his sleeve hems, and he was shuffling on his feet. Dirk had never seen him look so out of sorts, seen him look so small and so nervous.
“Yes,” he said finally, and then, “Thank you,”
Dirk felt his eyebrows raise almost into his hairline as the weaver hurriedly walked outside, across the small glade toward Rosie’s pub.
“Hope you heard that,” said Ms Breathnach dryly. “Doubt he’ll ever say it again.”
“He looks scared.”
“None of our business.”
“Hm.”
When Dirk finished his shift and walked across the square, he couldn’t see the weaver in Rosie’s at first, but she nodded across the room, and Dirk followed her gaze.
Up against one of the corners of the niche that held the fire, half in shadow and shielded from obvious view by the position, the weaver had put himself down. His shoulders were pressed back against two walls, crammed into the corner in such a way that he couldn’t be seen from the door and not from any of the windows, either. His satchel was resting on his feet.
“Tourist isn’t out until five,” said Rosie. “Thought he was gonna cry when I told him.”
“You feeding him?”
“I offered. He did everything short of spit in my face.”
Dirk paid for his drink and took a glass of water too, holding them both against his chest as he moved across the room. He had to lean his cane against the chair to put both glasses safely down.
“You mind?” he asked, gesturing to the chair across from the weaver.
“Yes,” he said.
Dirk sank into the seat anyway. “Gonna make a man with a bad leg go sit somewhere else?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Apparently not,” said the weaver through grit teeth.
“No one here is going to hurt you,” said Dirk softly. “Why don’t you eat something? You must be hungry after coming all the way here, and shivering in the cold and wet all that time.”
The weaver crossed his arms over his chest, looking into fire. The yellow in his eyes turned to molten gold, heated by the fire as well as lit by it.
“I’ll be your poison taster,” Dirk offered.
The weaver did something, then, that he’d never done before: he laughed. It was a very soft, quiet sound, a little chuckle, and he seemed shocked to have done it himself, because he clamped his mouth shut afterward, and pressed his fist against his lips.
“You have a pretty smile,” said Dirk. “Shame I never see it.”
“Not all pretty things are made to be seen,” said the weaver.
“Come on, we’ll share something.”
The weaver was quiet, and didn’t meet his gaze, but when Dirk ordered a plate of fish and chips, he took the buttered bread that came with it.
It wasn’t the meal Dirk was hoping he’d eat, but it was something. He ate in small, fastidious bites, barely ever dropping a crumb, and even as they ate, his eyes were constantly scanning the pub, keeping track of who left and entered.
“Someone looking for you?” asked Dirk. “That what you’re scared of?”
“Thank you,” said the weaver curtly as he stood to his feet, “for the bread.”
Rosie was waving him over.
He didn’t come out of the room upstairs, Rosie said later that week, ’til Tom Duncan came home the next evening.
* * *
“You have a birthday?” asked Dirk when the weaver came in next.
“No,” said the weaver.
“Fae don’t celebrate birthdays.”
“I don’t,” the weaver agreed.
“Mine’s in May,” said Dirk. “May 12th. In case you want to write it down.”
“Why?”
“So you can get me something nice.”
The weaver frowned at him, but not angrily — more as if he was confused — and put his money down on the counter. His hands looked soft.
“You do anything for a job?” asked Dirk. “Sell your weaving?”
The weaver left.
Naturally, he didn’t give Dirk for his birthday, and didn’t even acknowledge it when he came in for Dirk’s birthday week. Dirk wasn’t disappointed, and nor was he surprised.
“How old are you?” he asked later that month.
“As old as my bones,” was the reply.
“That’s no answer.”
“That was no question.”
“Why do fae have to talk like you do?”
“Ought I even pose the reverse?”
“Doesn’t it give you a headache? Talking all abstract all the time, trying to trap people in your conversation?”
The weaver was quiet, rooted to the spot with his gaze down on the floor. Through his hair, Dirk couldn’t see his eyes. “You think I’ve tried to trap you?” he asked, the question coming out in a whisper: his tone was solemn and ashamed.
“No,” Dirk said quickly. “No, never. Just — Just a stereotype, I guess. It’s not that… It’s not that there’s anything wrong with… It’s a cultural difference, right? Between fae and humans.”
“Cultural difference,” the weaver repeated blankly, his head raising slightly. His yellow eyes were staring somewhere Dirk couldn’t see.
“I didn’t meant to upset you,” said Dirk. “Look, uh, extra playing cards, on the house. The last pack must be ratty by now, all those games of solitaire.”
The weaver took his leave.
* * *
Their conversations usually went in that vein — Dirk talking, the weaver deflecting if not ignoring — but Dirk felt it was impressive that the weaver even spoke to him at all, because he barely ever spoke to anybody else.
“You really live alone?” asked Dirk.
“Don’t you?”
“Here in town — it’s not the same. Don’t you miss being around people?”
“Chalk. Please.”
“Chocolates too?”
“No. Thank you.”
The politeness was new, and it made Dirk smile. “Go on, on m — ”
“No,” the weaver snapped, his eyes flaring, his voice a sharp hiss. Dirk put the chocolates down.
The weaver paid. Left.
Dirk wondered what he’d done wrong this time.
The weaver was not polite, per se, but he said please and thank you and excuse me to Dirk and to Ms Breathnach, which was a change. Having met Rosie and Tom Duncan and a few other people in the village, he now gave barely perceptible nods instead of ignoring greetings entirely.
He continued to ignore invitations, of course, and would still turn on his heel and walk very quickly away if someone talked to him too intimately.
“Like a cat expecting a kick,” said old Ella.
“Maybe,” said Dirk.
* * *
Dirk liked to hike, when he was a kid. Nowadays, that sort of thing was just asking for injury, but he still took walks from time to time, keeping to the flatter or at least more smoothly laid sections of mountain road, and he never went far.
He was walking back into town when the weaver was coming by, and gave him a wave.
The weaver’s moped rumbled to a stop, and he looked down at Dirk’s cane, and then at his face.
“You’re walking,” he said.
“Has to be done,” Dirk said idly. “Unless you want to give me a lift.”
The weaver shook his head. “No,” he said. He looked guilty for refusing to quickly, but Dirk laughed.
“S’alright,” he said, “I don’t need a lift. Not far to walk now.”
The weaver opened his mouth, and then closed it, before he drove off. Dirk couldn’t help but grin to himself as he followed the sound of his bike.
“You live a long way out?” he asked conversationally when next the weaver was in the village.
“Long is no measure of distance. Units even less so,” said the weaver.
This, even expecting oddity, was a very strange thing to say, and Dirk took a moment to digest it.
“You never get cold on that bike of yours alone?”
“I have a coat.”
“Could do with another rider to warm you. What about when it rains?”
“Then we two riders would be cold and wet.”
“You’re gorgeous, you know,” said Dirk. “Am I barking up the wrong tree?”
The weaver looked as confused by this as Dirk had been by his distance statement. He looked up from the bread he’d been putting in his basket, his mouth slightly open. He stood there for some moments, his eyes searching the space between them.
Finally, he said, “I am no tree.”
Dirk rang him up.
Experimentally, Dirk tried to give him something else. Nothing big, nothing flashy — over the next few visits, he tried to offer a new pack of playing cards, a pack of chalk, even some yarn.
Each time, the weaver sharply, tightly refused.
When Dirk once tossed a box of chocolates into his bag, casually, not saying a word about it after he’d rung the weaver up the weaver had slammed more coins onto the table so hard that Dirk thought they’d crack the surface.
“Sorry,” Dirk said.
“Thank you,” the weaver said. His tone was vicious.
The not-touching, Dirk felt, was somehow pathological or ritual.
He thought this because he slipped in the street one evening just after work when the weaver was still loading up the cart on the back of his bike — the one he used when he was buying straw — and landed hard. His cane clattered a few metres away, sliding over the stone, but Dirk was in no state to grab for it, groaning in pain as he tried to press himself up from the floor.
“Dirk!” said the weaver — so he did know Dirk’s name — and he hovered over Dirk a second, visibly indecisive, before he stepped around him and rushed to pick up his cane. He’d given him a good berth to move around, and he held the cane out to him from the other end.
“Help a guy up?” Dirk asked, leaving up on his elbows.
The weaver’s pale lips were parted, and they moved slightly, like he was whispering something Dirk couldn’t hear, but then he shook his head.
“You can’t,” Dirk said slowly, and he tried to lean to one side as he sat up, but it still sent pain shooting up his bad hip and down his leg too.
“I can get someone,” said the weaver.
“I’m okay,” Dirk said in as mild a tone as he could manage, working to keep the pained tension out of his voice. He awkwardly flipped onto his belly so that he could use his knees to push himself up, his weight kept as much to his good side as he could manage. “Gonna have to lay myself up tomorrow though.”
The weaver worried his lip, hovering in front of him, hands awkwardly held before his breast.
“You’re okay,” said Dirk. “Nothing to be guilty about — not like you tripped me.”
The weaver hesitated a second longer, then nodded stoutly, and hurried back to his bike.
Dirk rubbed at his bad hip, releasing a tired sigh, and went home.
* * *
It was a few weeks after this that the stranger came through town. He was tall, strapping, a white Englishman with thick blond hair and blue eyes — when he smiled, it was cuttingly handsome.
He put a few fruit pots and granola bars on the counter.
“Out for a hike?” asked Dirk.
“More a long walk,” said the stranger, laughing. “Hike sounds so high-effort.”
When he handed Dirk the coins, their fingers brushed against one another, and the stranger’s hands were warm.
“We’re near to Bhaile Dún, right?”
“Not too near,” said Dirk. “Take the main road and go south about forty-five miles and you’ll find the signpost for it, then it’s another twenty or thirty on, depending on which road you take — via fae roads or human ones.”
“It’s a fae town?”
“Aye, mostly fae.”
“Thank you,” the stranger said. “You’ve been very helpful.
He was gorgeous, but there was a certain superiority to it that some English people carried — Dirk had no doubt that he’d be telling all his friends that everyone stopped speaking English just to spite him in the pub, as if everyone’s Gaelic was only there to inconvenience him. Dirk tried to imagine he was an understanding sort, though, and he didn’t say any of this. His tone was cheerful as he said, “See you again.”
“We’ll see,” was the Englishman’s bright reply.
* * *
“Sheared your sheep?” asked Dirk when the weaver was next in the village.
“Yes.”
“Washed your wool?”
“Yes.”
“Done… whatever bit comes next? Whatever you do before you weave it into yarn?”
“Yes.”
“Dye it?”
“Yes.”
“Weave anything good?”
“Yes.”
“What did you make?”
“Chalk, please.”
“Woven chalk, wow,” said Dirk, sliding the box across the counter. “That must be some fae trick, I never heard of that. Impressive.”
The weaver’s lips did not smile exactly, but they curved up at their edges as he slid the chalk into his bag.
“You have one of them big… machines?”
“Machines?” repeated the weaver, uncomprehending.
“You know, the big frame to weave things on, with the…” Dirk mimed pulling down a lever.
The weaver frowned at him. “A loom,” he said, blunt. “Yes.”
“Sorry.”
“Why?”
“For not knowing the word.”
“There are many words you don’t know.”
“Sorry for those, too.”
The weaver paid. Now, his lips did smile, but only for a moment.
“Wanna go for dinner?” asked Dirk. “I finish in half an hour. Fifteen minutes, if you say yes.”
The weaver clasped the buckle for his satchel closed, and left without saying goodbye.
* * *
The stranger, the Englishman, came back through a few days later. His name was Charles, and he was a southerner — from London — and he stayed at Rosie’s for two days.
“Have fun in Bhaile Dún?” Dirk asked, and Charles laughed.
“Oh, yes,” he said, grinning as he handed over cash, crisp mundie notes with Bank of England written on them, and pictures of the mundie queen instead of anybody important. “Didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, though.”
“Anything I can help with? We can do special orders.”
“Not this special.”
“We’ve fae contacts, can get fae produce, items,” said Dirk. “Even enchanted objects if you have specs, though that comes at a premium, of course.”
“Know anyone that weaves rugs, carpets?” Charles asked casually. “Wool, preferably — I’m old-fashioned.”
Dirk didn’t let his expression change. “I have a contact or two in Bhaile Dún. You got a preference as far goes design?”
“I think I went through everyone in Bhaile Dún,” said Charles, shrugging. “Nothing that had the… artistry I’m looking for. I don’t suppose you know of any people up here?”
“All the farmers I know sell their fleece down south,” lied Dirk, his smile just as casual.
“That’s a shame,” said Charles. His blue eyes didn’t break away from Dirk’s for a few long moments, as if searching for the lie, but then he broke their locked gazes and looked away. “The fae craft like no one else does.”
“Do they?”
“Oh, yes. They put their lives into the things they make.”
* * *
When Dirk heard the rumble of the weaver’s bike, audible as it rounded the crest of the hill when there was no snow to muffle it, he got Dani to cover the till for him, limping as fast as he could out of the glade and up the path.
He didn’t see the stranger’s nice car — maybe he’d already gone again.
“Hey!” he called as the weaver’s bike came up, and it slowed, coming to a stop. He lifted the visor on his helmet, looking at Dirk curiously, and Dirk almost wanted to take a moment to commit the beauty of the expression to memory, but he didn’t have time. “Charles was in town — he was asking about local weavers.”
For all he flinched at someone touching him or catching him by surprise, the weaver’s expression didn’t even falter. He looked past Dirk and down into the village, although there were in a dip in the road and couldn’t see the main square from here.
Almost blankly, the weaver asked, “What did you tell him?”
“Told him I knew some people in Bhaile Dún. Said all the farmers around here sell their fleece down south — but someone else could have mentioned it. He asked casually, like it wasn’t important. You know Harry Boyle has a loose tongue. And it’s not like any of us know not to say, you know, except from extrapolating.”
The weaver pressed his lips together.
“I can’t see his car,” Dirk went on. “May be that he’s gone off again — he was asking about other fae settlements nearby. You know, the girls, they can deliver to somewhere nearby, don’t have to go come all the way to your homestead. Somewhere you can pick it up, if that’s better.”
The weaver bit his lip, his knees pressing tight together on his bike.
“Or I could do it,” Dirk suggested. “If you want someone you know — I couldn’t do it every day, but I can manage driving twice a month — or Harry, I could ask Harry, and we — ”
“His car is gone?”
“Yeah. He… he’s your boyfriend? An ex?”
“Don’t trip,” said the weaver, and continued riding down the hill.
He was inside when Dirk managed the walk back to the store, although he’d secreted his bike in a narrow alley between oak trees instead of up front like usual.
“How do I arrange for delivery?” he asked.
“You have a phone?”
The weaver gave him a look.
“Got it, no phone,” said Dirk. “No signal up here anyway. You can write your order down on one of these, and give it to us when we deliver to y our nominated spot, just leave it in the — “
“You said you’d deliver,” said the weaver in his quiet, bell-like voice. “You. Only you.”
“Okay,” said Dirk soothingly. “Okay, just me. And where do you want — ”
“My home,” said the weaver, and put a coin on the counter.
“You don’t have to pay extr — ”
“Pick it up,” the weaver ordered, and Dirk stared at him, but then touched his fingers to the coin and shuddered.
It was like something popped in his head, and suddenly he’d always known where the weaver lived, six miles up the mountain and around the western path, through the woods, over the old gully.
“Ugh,” he mumbled, wrinkling his nose.
“An uncomfortable sensation,” the weaver agreed. When Dirk retracted his hand from the coin, the weaver snatched it back, and commenced writing down his order. His handwriting was spidery and his letters had extra branches — he wasn’t used to the Latin alphabet.
“Only you,” he said again.
“Only me,” Dirk promised.
He meant to say something else, to be comforting, somehow, but it was too late — the weaver was already gone.
* * *
Two weeks later, as agreed, Dirk packed the weaver’s groceries, some firewood, and some bales of straw and chicken feed onto the back of Ms Breathnach’s truck. He didn’t like to drive much, especially on the rough mountain roads, but this would be more than worth the soreness that came after.
As he went over the gully, the heavy wooded area it ran through opened out into a small patch of land that was almost housed in the crevice between two outcrops of mountain, the house and barn backed up against the craggy wall.
It reminded Dirk of the weaver in his corner.
The weaver had fruit trees scattered over the meadowland in front of the buildings, apples and pears and plums, as well as messy crops of ground vegetables; these were dotted amongst thick carpets of wild flowers and brightly coloured grasses, which came in all manner of colours and grew close together.
The air smelled sweet, of nectar and fresh dew.
When Dirk stepped over the small stile into the homestead’s main yard, the weaver’s goat approached him, and Dirk rested on top of the step, waiting for the butt of its head, but the goat just eyed him carefully and wandered off.
As he limped up, the hens bustled around his feet.
On the plain stone walls of the house, there were complicated chalk drawings the likes of which he’d never seen — a landscape with tall mountains in the background, a sea so pale it looked almost purple, glittering under sailing boats with bells around their hulls and tangled through their rigging.
The weaver had appeared silently beside him.
“Home?” dirk asked, gesturing to the chalk drawings.
“No,” said the weaver. “It is chalk dust on brick.”
Dirk huffed out a sound, trying not to make it into a laugh. “I backed the truck up,” he said. “I can pass everything over the fence to you.”
The weaver nodded stoutly.
“I’m gonna warn you whether I’m lifting from the bottom or from the top,” said Dirk as they moved back toward the stile. He was leaning on his cane more than usual — his hip was fucked from the drive, and he knew he’d be spending the rest of his shift sitting once he was back. “Then you’ll know you won’t touch my hands, okay?”
The weaver glanced at him from under his fringe of hair, and nodded. There was a ghost of a smile on his mouth.
“It hurts your leg unduly?” he asked. “To lift, to carry?”
“I’m not walking with it, so it’s okay,” Dirk said.
The weaver was looking at his cane, and eyed it all the more as he pulled himself up over the stile, leaning on his elbow as he passed his cane over and swung his legs around.
“You hurt it?”
“Fell off the mountain.”
“The mountain?”
“Just kidding. Rugby game went bad, dislocated my hip after a bad tackle. They put it back, but it tore a lot of the surrounding area — lots of scar tissue, weak muscle, you know. Physio helped, so I don’t need full crutches and I can put a little weight on it, but this is the best I can do.”
“I see,” said the weaver. “You played rugby on the mountain.”
Dirk hesitated a second, looking back at the weaver’s face. It looked completely serious, genuine, and yet —
“You messing with me?”
A beat passed, and then the weaver grinned, his eyes sparkling.
“Fuck,” said Dirk, spellbound at the sight.
“The hay,” said the weaver.
“You got it.”
As he passed crates over, Dirk asked, “Where’s your bike go in?”
The weaver nodded to a thin but well-trodden path around the edge of the fencing, which was wide enough for the bike, but not nearly enough for the truck.
“Right,” said Dirk. “You like motorbikes? Or, mopeds, I guess?”
“Yes,” said the weaver. “That is why I have one.”
“Holding from the bottom,” said Dirk, passing over a tray of fruit and veg, which the weaver took and set down. “Will you burst into flames if you touch me?”
“No.”
“Will I if I touch you?”
“Do you usually?”
“First time for everything,” said Dirk.
Once they had everything passed over the fence, Dirk swung himself over the stile again, ignoring the way his tip twinged, through already dreading the drive back down the mountain, over the paths where stone and gravel made the whole truck shudder and vibrate underneath him.
Leaving the hay bales and feed for now, he took two grocery bags and leaned on his cane, watching the way the weaver stacked all the other bags on top of the crate and carried it easily.
“You’re stronger than you look,” said Dirk.
The weaver did not invite him past the threshold, and Dirk didn’t try to cross it. After the put the bags in his arms away, the weaver took the ones from Dirk inside too, and then gestured to the cushioned bench under the wooden shade.
“Sit,” he instructed. “Rest your hip.”
“You don’t have to,” Dirk said. “No fae rules about hospitality here.”
“You think the rules that bind me cease to follow me, simply because I have walked elsewhere? Do you forget, too, what is right and wrong in your eyes, when you find yourself among my people?”
Dirk was quiet. He didn’t know how to respond to that, didn’t know what he was meant to say — and honestly, he didn’t have any defence.
“Sit,” said the weaver again. “I will feed and water you.”
“Thanks,” said Dirk, and sank down ontot the bench with a quiet sigh of relief.
The weaver brought him tea made with berries and elderflowers and a plate of soft, flat bread that had been made with spiced flour. They ate from the same plate, and Dirk took care to ensure the weaver could always see his hands.
“Do you miss it?” asked Dirk. “Where you come from?” He gestured to the chalked art as he said so, and the weaver gave a neat nod of his head.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you go back?”
“I can’t.”
“Because of Charles?”
“Sort of. Not directly.”
“He hurt you?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. He was a dutiful spouse within all contractual bounds.”
Dirk opened his mouth, and then reconsidered. After a few moments, thinking he’d perhaps hazarded a reply, he said, “Contractual bounds. That’s really how you guys think of marriage.”
The weaver sucked his teeth. “This is why everyone hates humans, you know,” he said quietly. “Always so quick to condemn that which they do not understand and do not value, unless you might twist it to your own desires. The arrogance of it, the self-centredness. It’s an embarrassment.”
After a second or two, a piece of flat bread held in his hands, Dirk said in a non-confrontational tone, “I feel like that was maybe intended for someone other than me.”
The weaver looked away.
The sheep must have been in the barn at first, because they now came out into the fenced-in area — the meadow was too colourful, too wild, to be called a paddock — and wandered up to the nanny goat, leaning up against her and then skipping away from her.
After a few minutes of watching the sheep and the goat play, Dirk asked, “You a farmer?”
“My family raises cattle,” said the weaver, chewing slowly on a piece of flatbread. “Butter Cows. Yellow leather, and gold in their horns.”
“I’ve heard of those,” said Dirk. “Aren’t they like, six feet tall?”
“Only at the shoulder. The head is higher up.”
Dirk laughed, shaking his head. “That’s too big,” he murmured, and the weaver smiled, clucking his tongue and holding out a hand until one of the sheep, shorn with its fleece still very short, came up and butted its head against his palm.
“You and Charles been married a long time?”
“Sixteen years.”
“You don’t look old enough.”
“We don’t age like you do.”
“Human years?”
“Mm.”
“Can I do anything? To help?”
“You’re helping.”
“And if he comes back?”
The weaver bit his lip. No answer.
Dirk drank a little more tea, and then asked, not without caution, “Is there — Is there some kind of rule against telling me what exactly is up with you two?”
“I wasn’t aware the concept of privacy was unique to the fae peoples.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Hmph.”
“How’d you get married?”
“Fae peoples are typically very private about our marriage rituals and our courtship requirements,” said the weaver. “Do you know why?”
Dirk exhaled. “Because fae are bound by agreements,” he said. “Humans take advantage of that.”
“Oh,” said the weaver pointedly. “So you do know.”
“That’s not why I was asking.”
“For near a year now, you’ve made your askances of me.”
“Sorry,” said Dirk. “I’ll stop.”
The weaver fidgeted his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze on the sheep, the goat, the chickens. In the warm sunlight, his eyes shimmered like water. “You needn’t.”
“What’s that?” Dirk asked delightedly, a grin coming to his face.
“I will not repeat myself for your entertainment.”
“Duly noted. I should repeat myself for yours though, right?”
The weaver gave a thin smile.
“What happens if I touch you?”
“Charles will kill you.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“It would legitimise his claim were he to kill an interluding suitor in his desire to bring me home. If I elude his touch for three years, then our marriage is dissolved.”
“Funny clause.”
“It’s intended for couples whose desire for one another fades.”
“But it’s one-sided? If he touches you only and not the other way around, it doesn’t count?”
The weaver shook his head.
“How would he know I touched you?”
“Don’t.”
“Oh, I won’t. Never, not if you don’t want.”
The weaver looked at him with his yellow eyes surprisingly soft, and murmured, “I carry a charm. He has me… Marked. I’ve sealed it, that he might not find me — so long as no one touches me, as long as the seal is contained, he cannot find me by it.”
“Like a brand, a tattoo?”
“No, no. It’s a small enchantment, that’s all — he wears one too. It’s like a wedding band.”
“So why didn’t you know where he was?”
“The seal cuts off the connection. He can’t find me: I can’t sense him.”
“Three years?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you — you can’t divorce him some other way?”
The weaver sighed mournfully.
“Right. Sorry.”
“It is not that my family would not wish to aid me,” said the weaver. “Only that they could not hide me from my spouse, nor deny that he should see me. It is our quarrel, not theirs. Their hands are tied as mine are.”
“He — You didn’t want to marry him?”
“No. I was happy where I was.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dirk. “For all of it.”
“There is no value in apologising for actions that are not yours.”
“I’m angry and sad, then, that he did this to you.”
“As am I.”
“Why does he want you so badly?”
“I am… There are conditions I must meet as a spouse. Responsibilities. To raise fine livestock, make good food, and to weave. They are vows local to my people, and it pleased him that he should have a spouse so obliged to these tasks.”
“He stole you because he wanted to control someone,” said Dirk. “Basically.”
“If you like. And there are — These are many requirements. Certain rules of three, and so on. All laws that I am bound by and that he is not.”
“We should kill him,” said Dirk.
“I can’t,” said the weaver. “I have tried.”
“Jesus. I meant… I didn’t mean — Really?”
“The blade falls from my hand as soon as I raise it with intention.”
“Shit. What happens if he finds you?”
“I expect he will compel me to return home with him. Some manner of punishment will await me, I’m sure — starvation, isolation, some further deprivation. Perhaps whipping or some corporal punishment, if he can work up the effort.”
Dirk felt sick. “You’ve escaped before?”
“You’ve escaped before?”
“Twice. Once, for a month, and once… for very nearly three years.” There was a grief in the weaver’s voice that made Dirk’s heart pang, made him ache in ways he didn’t know he could.
“You’ll get it this time,” he said. “And if you don’t, I’ll come after you. We all will.”
“Kind of you.”
“No, it’s… It’s about right or wrong.”
The weaver was quiet for a time, but then he gave a small inclination of his head.
“He hurts you?” asked Dirk.
A nod.
“Bastard,” Dirk said, and when one of the chickens came closer the weaver took it up in his arms, holding the animal in his lap. He looked sad, and small.
When Dirk drove back down into the village, there was still no sign of Charles, and he hoped that he’d gone following some other lead, that he wouldn’t be back.
He knew that hope wouldn’t do much.
* * *
The weaver had never come to the shop on a regular day each week, nor even at a regular time — Dirk tried to replicate this random scheduling when he brought the weaver his groceries, and the weaver always offered him food and drink once everything was put away.
“Is it rude if I say no?” he asked one day.
“No,” said the weaver. “But I am compelled to offer.”
“Even if you don’t want to?”
The weaver laughed at him.
“What?”
“I cam compelled because I respect you — I enjoy your company. Were I not to offer, it would be a sign of my disrespect.”
“I wouldn’t take it like that.”
“And if I called you foul names in my own language, rather than English or Gaelic, you might not know their meaning, but I would nonetheless know the insult I laid at your feet.”
A few months into Dirk driving up to the homestead, his hip was sorer than usual, and he struggled with the stile.
The next time he came up to the house, a new gate had been installed beside it, and a barrow rested against the fence.
“Would you have married someone else?” asked Dirk. “If Charles hadn’t come for you?”
The weaver looked up at him with a confused expression on his face, looking up from the fleece he’d been washing.
“In your home, I mean,” said Dirk. “Was there someone else you wanted to marry there?”
“Not in particular,” said the weaver, resuming his work. “I always wanted to travel, to see new things, meet new people. I used to like when strangers visited, that I might glimpse their life, their world, from the safety of my home.”
“And when he courted you…”
“I thought his motions at courtship were but the hapless fumblings of a charming foreigner. When he sealed his proposal, that I could not refuse him, I felt a fool beyond measure, and saw how cold he was.”
“I, um, I brought something for you,” said Dirk, the next week after they had sat down together, and when the weaver stared at him, he remembered how angrily he’d refused gifts before. “But you don’t have to, obviously, um, accept it — ”
“Show me.”
Dirk pulled out a deck of cards.
“I don’t know what you use them for, if you really do play solitaire, but I thought we could play something. Um, a game, just Rummy or something.”
The weaver was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded his head.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, very well.”
Dirk left the cards with him.
* * *
“Is your name private? I know some fae keep their names secret.”
The weaver, who had been spinning fresh, dry fleece into wool, didn’t stop working. His hands were nimble and dexterous.
“A name can seal a proposal,” said the weaver. “Among other things.”
“Oh.”
“Amongst my people my name was used every day. It used to bring me joy, the sound of my name on Charles’ tongue, ’til I realised he would cage it there behind his teeth, and with it, me too.”
Dirk’s stomach flipped with secondhand betrayal and a roiling disgust.
“I’ll knock his teeth,” promised Dirk. “One way or another.”
The weaver laughed in a painful, wooden way. “You say such pleasant things,” he said softly. “Perhaps I would have wooed a man like you, given the choice.”
“I’d have liked that.”
One evening, when Dirk came up to the house, the weaver didn’t come to meet him. He packed everything into the barrow and rolled it forward, appreciating the balancing enchantment the weaver must have done on it so it would support his weight, and found the weaver asleep.
He was lying on the cushioned bench, his head mashed into his own arm, and a hen was half-sitting on his head, as though she expected him to hatch. His eyelashes looked long like this, and he breathed slowly, evenly.
Dirk, without touching him, threw a blanket over him.
The weaver stirred, grumbling something in a language Dirk didn’t know, too thick and sweet with magic to be simple Scots Gaelic.
“Shh,” Dirk said, taking the money and next week’s grocery list off the table after he finished setting all the groceries on the step. “Sleep.”
He grinned to himself as he went back to the truck.
After the snow came again, it wasn’t as easy driving up to the weaver’s home. The snow was heavy, and although there were chains on the wheels and the main road was gritted and salted, that stopped by the time he came through the mountain glade.
The crossing over the gully felt especially precarious.
When Dirk voiced this, in a casual sort of way, the weaver put himself to work on the truck, painting enchantments over the wheel arches in a complicated script Dirk had never seen before and had no hopes of following. He’d learned the basics of enchantment at school, but none of the fae styles. Fae took it more seriously, learning enchantment, he knew that — for him it had just been a compulsory GCSE he’d never do much with, unless his fridge broke and he needed to keep it cold while he waited for someone to fix it, but fae had different kinds of electronics if they bothered to have them at all, didn’t adopt a lot of stuff in the way magical humans did.
“Thank you,” said Dirk.
“It’s nothing,” said the weaver quietly. “A gift, that is all.”
“You’ve never given me a gift before.”
“You have given me three.”
“Three?”
“The bread and butter. The first deck of playing cards, and then the second. All gifts I accepted.”
“What, so now you’ve given me one, I can give you gifts again?”
The weaver gave him a strange look, his white brow furrowing, his head tilting to the side. “If you like,” he said slowly. “But I want for nothing.”
“You like chocolates. The ones with the caramel centres.”
The weaver laughed breathlessly, steam showing in a cloud before his mouth. He was bundled in three or four layers of striped wool, and Dirk wondered how much of his outfit he’d knitted himself.
“Yes,” he said softly. “But such sweetness can be enjoyed only in moderation.”
* * *
On Christmas Eve, Dirk drove up to the weaver’s house. With the enchantments, the truck left no tracks in the snow to follow, and she moved through it smoothly and easily. Dani and Michelle had fallen over themselves saying how grateful they were for the enchantments, what a difference they made, and in his bag they’d wrapped up gifts for him themselves — Dani had bought him a pair of sunglasses, and Michelle had gotten him a quilted throw blanket.
The weaver was inside, and Dirk had to knock on the door.
When the weaver opened it, he could smell something incredible cooking in the oven, the fragrance of wild garlic and rosemary thick on the air.
“You are closed today,” the weaver said softly, but he was smiling.
“Call me Santa,” said Dirk, which earned him a wrinkled nose.
“No,” said the weaver. “Come inside.”
The weaver’s house was surprisingly large and open-plan, a big bed built on the floor, a loom to one side and a few other pieces of mechanism and machinery, and a large table upon which he had built the most incredible card castle Dirk had ever seen.
Dirk stared at it as he moved past with a box of vegetables and baking things, setting them on the kitchen counter. The caste had battlements and rested on top of a hill, with turrets and even crenelations made from carefully folded playing cards.
“A man must entertain himself,” said the weaver as he packed a pot of jelly into the spelled cold cabinet — no fridge, of course — and pushed a bag of rice against the wall. “And I never understood the appeal of television.”
“Is this spelled to stay standing?”
“No. You can knock it down if you like — knock one card from its place and they’ll all come down.”
Dirk let out a horrified sound. “I can’t do that!”
“Why not? It’s finished — I am soon to rebuild it.” The weaver spoke casually, but Dirk shook his head.
The castle must have had a thousand cards to it at least, and the weaver had even used red-backed cards to make doors and windows in contrast to the blue ones. Resting on the top of the central tower, incredibly stable, was a white chess piece, a single rook.
Dirk knew it must come down very easily, built as it was, but he couldn’t bring himself to be the one that did, couldn’t imagine enjoying being the one to tear down something so incredible.
“No,” he said again. “No, I couldn’t.”
He must have said something the weaver liked, because the weaver was looking at him with a soft smile on his face, leaning back against his kitchen counter. “You must join me,” he said. “For a meal.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It smells great.”
“I know that too.”
“It’s not one of your chickens, is it?”
“It’s a grouse.”
“I’ve never had that before,” Dirk said, putting the last of the groceries on the counter, and the weaver frowned.
“They’re very common here. Don’t you hunt?”
“No, I work in a shop and walk with a pronounced limp, if you hadn’t noticed.”
The weaver laughed, looking embarrassed, and huddled in his jumper, although the fire was crackling and it was warm inside.
“I brought you something,” said Dirk, and took the packages from the barrow, holding it out.
The weaver hesitated a moment, taking the top parcel carefully by the other corner, and holding the paper-wrapped square in his hands.
He glanced up at Dirk, askance.
“These two are from Dani and Michelle — they both wrote nice cards, they’re really grateful for the work you did on the truck, wanted to say thanks. That one, the one you’re holding, that’s from me.” When the weaver remained still, holding it in his hand, he added, “You tear the paper off.”
“I see,” said the weaver, although he sounded disapproving.
Making a minute cute at the edge of the paper with his nail, he drew back a single sliver of it before removing the whole present as if Dirk had made an envelope. In its own, very strange way, it was quite impressive
“It’s a calendar,” said Dirk. “I wrote the shop’s hours in it, and the days we’re closed.”
“And your birthday,” said the weaver, smiling as he paged through, looking with interest at each of the month’s pictures of different sheep.
Most fae didn’t have calendars — they just counted days as they passed, given that weeks and months didn’t pass reliably in fae lands anyway — so this was something new for him.
“I know,” said Dirk. “As if you could forget.”
The weaver hung the calendar in pride of place upon the wall, and gestured to the table as he cut open the packet of sunglasses, looking at them with distant fascination. “Sit,” he said softly. “Tell me what goes on in the village.”
“Bridget Duncan is pregnant.”
The weaver’s gasp was theatrical. “Again?”
The grouse tasted incredible nothing like he would have expected, but when he got up to go, the weaver said, “Wait.”
Dirk watched him move away, disappearing behind a wooden screen beside his bed, and then he emerged.
He was holding a flat wicker basket, and he held it carefully by the other corners as he held it out to Dirk, so that Dirk carefully took it and balanced it on arm.
He hesitated until the weaver said, “Do not tear it.”
“I wasn’t going to!”
Undoing the toggle on the front of the basket, he opened it, and looked at the dark green wool inside. He thought it was a blanket until he pulled it out, smiling, and saw the shine of the buttons.
“I notice you wear more tailored clothes,” the weaver murmured. “Without your measurements for me to work from, this may be looser than you prefer.”
Dirk had taken off his coat to sit down, was only wearing a light jumper underneath, and he carefully pulled it on, feeling how soft the green-dyed wool was, the sleeves perfect to his arms. It was comfortable where he pulled it closed across his chest.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worn anything made just for me,” Dirk said softly.
“I’m glad you like it,” the weaver replied, his voice almost shy.
“That’s two gifts you’ve given me,” said Dirk.
“What of it?” was the response, but it came with a secretive smile.
* * *
In the new year, before the snow had thawed away, Charles came back to the village.
Frigid from the cold and dressed in an expensive-looking puffy coat, he seemed far less charming and amiable than he had in the summer.
“Charles, isn’t it?” asked Dirk. “Out for a walk in this?”
“I’m looking for someone,” said Charles. “He might come in here for groceries, or be on your delivery docket. He might have lied to you, even, about his identity.”
Dirk feigned concern. “Oh, alright, shit. What does he look like?”
“White hair, yellow eyes. Skinny. He’s an inside, shouldn’t be much out of doors.”
Dirk thought of the weaver, shivering for the cold that he wasn’t used to, always sitting on the bench outside just so he could feel the mountain air on his skin and be with his animals. “And this fella’s… dangerous?”
“Dangerous?” repeated Charles, and to his credit, he played well at real distress. “No, no, he’s… fragile.” Charles leaned back, running a hand through his perfect hair and sighing. Even freezing from the snow, his nose didn’t run, and he looked ready to model somewhere. “He’s tender, that’s all. Can’t be trusted on his own — he needs someone to look after him.”
“And that’s you, is it?”
They stood there for a second, two liars making a measure of one another, and Dirk watched the change in Charles as the mask of concerned husband and caretaker trickled away, and he set his jaw.
He was an intimidating man, statuesque and proud. You could mistake him for the sort of stone effigy that needed dropping in a harbour.
“You’ve seen him,” he said coldly.
Dirk shrugged. “None of us know where he lives, though,” he said. “Ask anyone in town — Harry Boyle brought him his sheep, and after it was like he’d plucked it out of his head, wherever his house is.”
“Let me look at your delivery dockets,” said Charles imperiously, and Dirk laughed at him.
“You not heard of GDPR down south, mate? You can ask Ms Breathnach if you like, but she’ll say the same. We can’t go handing that out.”
“He’s not right to be on his own,” said Charles sharply, injecting a little more of that acted concern — maybe it was real, but it was definitely self-interested — into his face. “He’s fragile, as I said, and crazed. You know what fae are like. Unstable by their nature.”
“You won’t last long in Scotland, Charles,” said Dirk quietly. “Trying to say something’s nature to be held captive — that’s a far too English idea to survive up here.”
The man almost snarled, his lip curling. “He’s mine,” he said coldly. “By rights.”
“Maybe,” said Dirk, shrugging his shoulders. “But he’s his, first.”
“He comes into the village?”
“Sure.”
“When?”
“Now and then. Haven’t seen him in a long while — he comes in and out almost at random. Never the same day. Maybe Henry Boyle knows something.”
Charles’ feet stamped hard on the ground as he left. Dirk reached for his phone.
There wasn’t much signal outside of the village, once you started further up the hill or around the winding roads, but there was enough to get around: by the time Charles reached Harry Boyle’s, everyone knew the weaver had a husband out to abuse him, some blond English cunt, and no one would give him the time of day.
He met a wall of grim, disgusted silence wherever he went.
Dirk wanted to go to the weaver’s the next day, but he wasn’t stupid enough for that. He waited a few days, ’til Charles had threatened to call the police, and driven off in a huff when everyone had laughed at him.
It wasn’t as though any of the weaver’s dockets had an address on, and Dirk would just claim he left his deliveries on the road the other way, toward Bhaile Dún. He doubted the cops would buy much into the guy’s complaints — rich and English he was, but there was nothing a cop hated more than hard work, and no matter how they came at it, hard work was what this would consist of.
Too much work for them to bother.
Up the mountain path, he took a few strange turns going through the mountain glade to make sure there was no one following behind him, and when he came onto the weaver’s land, the goat greeted him at the gate, and walked alongside him to the house like she’d appointed herself as muscle.
The weaver saw his face when he opened the door.
“Were you followed?”
“I took a lot of meandering paths. Tried to make sure he couldn’t.”
“You will drive me back into the village.”
“What? No, no, just — ”
“Please.”
Dirk breathed in, gritted his teeth, and nodded his head.
“I was hoping the snow would thaw first,” said the weaver as they unpacked his groceries.
“Told everyone in town he was looking for you, told ’em not to breathe a word,” said Dirk. “Even Harry Boyle’s keeping shtum. Fucker left after throwing a tantrum in Tom Duncan’s shop, ’cause old Duncan gave him directions and they almost led him off a cliff.”
“That is unexpected,” he said softly.
“Why?”
“I am not of you,” said the weaver. “I do not speak with anyone of the village, barring yourself. I did not expect this closing of ranks for my benefit.”
“We sell you groceries, straw. We see you. Some of us eat your chickens’ eggs, buy the clothes you make. You’ve been here two years, lad — if you’d been here two weeks, we’d’ve told him to go fuck himself, carrying on like he has. Especially given that he’s English.”
The weaver considered this, and pushed the cold cabinet closed.
“I’ll put my bike on your truck,” he said softly.
Charles had blocked the road in the glade, parked his fancy little car sideways across the road.
“Fuck me,” muttered Dirk.
“Don’t worry,” said the weaver, and got out.
“Get in the car,” said Charles coldly.
In one short movement, the weaver hopped into the gully.
It was thickly packed with snow, so much so that you’d almost not know it was a ravine, up to the bridge’s height — Dirk had had to take care with the truck to line himself up and make sure he was definitely on the bridge.
The weaver had hopped, deftly and with ease, onto one of the bits of stone in the middle, and although Dirk knew the rock he was standing on, knew he must have been balancing on one foot, he made it look almost natural.
“Come to me, Charles,” said the weaver, smiling serenely in a cold sort of way that didn’t go up further than his lips.
“You think I want to dance with you in the fucking snow after what you’ve put me through? Come here. Now.”
“Please, Charles,” said the weaver breathlessly, and although his golden eyes looked hard and dead, he sounded like he really meant it. “Embrace me.”
Charles strode forward, and Dirk tried to keep his face neutral, tried not to relax, as he came up to the gully’s edge.
The ravine, cut into the mountain by centuries of rain and snowfall, was about twelve feet across, and it was easily even deeper in places. Dirk must have flinched when Charles put one foot out to step onto the snow, because he stopped, looking his way, and cast some kind of spell.
Flame exploded from his palm and melted the snow just in front of him, but the resulting flare of hot air made the weaver lose his balance and start to tumble. Dirk’s cane hit the floor as he ran forward, grabbing the weaver by the wrist and yanking him back to the edge.
His hip was screaming with pain as he hauled the weaver on top of him, and the weaver let out a sharp cry of his own as he fell onto Dirk’s chest, the two of them landing hard in the snow.
“Your hip,” he said, palm brushing Dirk’s side.
“S’fine,” Dirk hissed.
The weaver’s hand was cool, and its touch soothed.
Charles, who’d sprinted across the bridge, grabbed the weaver by the hair, dragging him up from on top of Dirk, and Dirk watched the way the weaver sharply cried out in pain, reaching up to grab at his husband’s wrists.
“Let me go — !”
“Once I have you safely home,” growled Charles.
“Let him go,” echoed Dirk, trying to push himself up on his elbows, but when he reached for his cane, Charles stood on his wrist and Dirk shouted out in pain.
“What the fuck are you going to do?” asked Charles, all but spitting.
“You stupid, rich cunt,” said Dirk, because for all Charles’ boots were expensive, they were light, and apart from having fuck-all grip, he didn’t wear clamps or chains to help him keep his grip on the snow. Dirk twisted his hand free, the snow making it easy, grabbed him by the ankle, and pulled hard.
“Aoire!” snapped Charles as he hit the ground, and the weaver rushed away from him, grabbing Dirk’s cane, but Dirk was already on top of Charles and punching him across the face, splitting his lip and staining the snow red.
“Aoire?” Dirk asked. “That’s your name?”
“Yes,” said the waver.
“It’s a nice name, I — Ah, fuck — ”
“Not the time,” said the weaver as Charles kept shoving his palm up against the underside of Dirk’s jaw, but his arm went temporarily limp when Dirk punched him in the throat.
Charles grabbed him by both hips, and when he saw which side made Dirk cry out in pain, he pressed so hard Dirk felt as thought he tissue must be tearing on the inside, and was helpless as Charles shoved him backward toward the gully.
“Dirk!” said Aoire, and when Dirk looked to him, he was already tossing his cane: Dirk had never been one for lacrosse, had always preferred rugby, but when Charles reared back as if to kick him into the ravine, he swung it as surely as he might a stick.
The handle made a satisfying crack as it slammed Charles across the face, but It tipped him sideways: Charles’ shout was muffled by the snow not yet melted as he fell hard into the ravine.
His shout cut off abruptly.
Lying on his back, Charles’ blood spattered over his face, his hands, trickling hot down his face, he lay there for a second or two and watched the blood on the handle of the cane slide down the shaft toward his hands.
Aoire was breathing heavily, staring down into the gully.
“He dead?” asked Dirk.
“Yes,” said Aoire. “He broke his neck.”
“Shit, whispered Dirk, and dropped his head back into the snow.
“I’m sorry,” said Aoire. “I know to kill is — different, for humans.”
“I’m going to jail,” said Dirk.
“No,” said Aoire. “No, you… here.”
Dirk took the coin from Aoire, stared at it, turned it in his hands. It was the coin Aoire had given him before, a southern fae coin with a white peacock painted on one side, the one he’d given to him and then taken back.
“What the fuck is this for?” he asked.
“A third gift,” said Aoire, and fell on top of him to kiss him on the mouth.
The weaver’s mouth was so warm on his that for a second or two, Dirk forgot, forgot about the body in the gully, forgot about Charles, could only think of the heat of Aoire’s lips, his tongue, his hands on Dirk’s bloodied cheeks.
After, he lifted Dirk into the truck like he weighed nothing at all.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Aoire after he’d moved Charles’ car out of the way. “To bind you like this, but needs must.”
“Bind me?”
“Dirk,” he said, in a tone of strange pronouncement, and Dirk stared at him.
“Aoire. Aaah, that fucking tickles — ” His head hit the headrest and he grabbed the handle over his head as pins and needles ran up and down his body.
“You needn’t… You needn’t honour it,” said Aoire as they kept driving down the mountain. “But it is legitimate — the treaties between Alba and the fae kingdoms, they must honour to an extent our contracts, our binding agreements.”
Dirk was painfully aware of Aoire beside him, of the beat of his heart, the rhythm of his breathing, almost as if he and Aoire were sharing them.
“You killed my former husband in a duel, hand-to-hand,” whispered Aoire. “Had already trod many of the steps of courtship — and now completed them.”
“This is not exactly how I envisioned marriage,” said Dirk as understanding dawned.
“No court in these islands could convict you,” said Aoire. “And as I said, you needn’t… You needn’t honour it, you need only not to touch me these next years, and — ”
“I want to touch you,” said Dirk. “If you’ll let me.”
The car came to a stop at the village’s entrance, and Aoire turned to look at him.
“If you don’t mind,” Dirk said. “And you know, you don’t have to stay here, you could go home, I could go… I could go with you. Or not. Or I could stay here.”
Aoire was staring at him.
“I am as he was,” whispered Aoire, voice alive with shame. “I have caged you in a union to which you did not consent — ”
“Charles married you to keep you captive. You just did that to stop me fro getting arrested. Kinda the opposite deal. Is this — binding?”
“Look at the coin,” said Aoire.
Dirk did. It was a faerie coin, plain and simple gold with a magical charge to it. The peacock had been on one side, but the other had been smooth when Aoire had pressed it into his palm — now, the plain side was engraved with symbols he couldn’t read, except for his own name.
“A third gift,” said Aoire. “It inscribes itself with an exchange of names — Charles’ gift to me was a ring, a wedding band. I’d accepted it before I realised what it was.”
“I’m serious,” said Dirk, gripping the ring. “I’ll visit your home with you, if you let me. You gotta keep me safe from the Butter Cows, though.”
“You don’t have to,” whispered Aoire.
“I know,” said Dirk. “But if it doesn’t… If it doesn’t work, I can just come back here”
Aoire smiled. It was a wonderful smile, shy, sweet.
“But first, we report the body in the woods,” said Dirk. “Unless you want your chickens to pick him apart.”
“Oh,” he said. “Alright?”
Dirk reached for his phone.
“Definitely no court on this island would convict me?” asked Dirk.
Aoire hesitated, his mouth open. “Um — ”
“If they lock me up,” said Dirk as he brought the phone to his ear, “you’re visiting me every week.”
“That’s not part of my spousal obligations.”
“I’m writing it in,” said Dirk.
Beside him, Aoire laughed, but then he reached across and touched his fingers to Dirk’s bad hip. Dirk hissed in pain, but a soothing warmth leaked from Aoire’s hand, some kind of magical painkiller.
“It’s not an emergency, no,” said Dirk. “Uh, yeah, a violent encounter that resulted in a death — self-defence, but part of, um, a legitimate spousal dispute. Under fae statutes, yeah.”
Aoire squeezed his hand, and Dirk shared a smile with him as the girl on the phone patched him through.
FIN.
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