“He made a most challenging subject. For some reason, he is a very suspicious person.”
Celine turned an uncertain gaze on her small companion. This sweet-faced ten-year-old had a surprising array of tricks up her sleeve. It wasn’t difficult to understand why she frightened people, especially the other children. Celine was more than a little unnerved herself. “Fiara, I’m not so sure—”
“Milady, we must go. There has been no snow for almost five days, so the roads will be more passable, but it will still require several hours to make our way to the village afoot.”
Celine knew she couldn’t afford to hesitate, but the dangers involved here were starting to sink in. The two of them would be going beyond the safety of the castle gates, alone—and she had no idea what might be waiting out there in the medieval gloom. “Are you sure it’s smart of us to go off through the woods at night, on foot? And unarmed? I mean, aren’t there wolves and who knows what else prowling around?”
“They will not be a problem,” Fiara said confidently. She turned to lead the way down the corridor.
Somehow, that was exactly the answer Celine had expected.
She stood up, resolutely forcing aside thoughts of wolves and cutthroats and other risks ... such as facing Gaston when she got back. When it came right down to it, she had no choice about this. She would just have to deal with the consequences later.
With one last, worried look at Royce, she followed her diminutive guide.
***
Walking through a medieval forest after midnight, Celine could easily see where tales of spooks and Halloween and werewolves and headless horsemen had gotten their start.
The winter wind sliced through her fur-lined garments, numbed her feet, made a white mist of her breath—which she could barely see in the pale thread of light from the night’s half-moon. Darkness and threat seemed to emanate from all sides, even from the bare tree branches that clattered overhead like bony fingers. The moon’s tentative glow barely penetrated the black woods, shimmering on the snow. She could just make out Fiara’s small shape trudging forward down the trampled path.
Deep drifts blanketed the edges of the uneven road, which hardly lived up to the term. A superhighway it was not. Celine tripped on deep ruts and killer potholes more than once. In some spots the trail opened wide and straight, but in others it twisted and narrowed so tightly she doubted a horse and rider could squeeze through—though apparently several had. The snow was covered with hoofprints. And footprints and wheel marks.
And paw prints. Big, canine-looking paw prints.
Several times they heard a wolf howl, and the eerie sound sent an icy shaft of primitive fear through Celine. She couldn’t tell how far away the hungry-sounding beasts were, but once she thought she saw a pair of huge shadows moving through the trees beside them. Fiara appeared unconcerned.
It wasn’t until the first rays of morning light had brightened the uppermost branches that they came in sight of their destination. Exhausted, the muscles in her legs tingling with fatigue, Celine breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The small hut, nestled in a clearing, looked as welcoming as the posh Plaza Hotel in New York. There were no other huts to be seen, but curls of smoke rising above the trees showed that the village was only a short distance away.
The humble little home had the same construction as the outbuildings at the castle: walls made of mud and sticks and a thatched roof. The straw had a few bare patches, though. A lone chicken strutted about the yard.
A woman came to the door with a startled look on her face, even before Fiara had broken into a run.
“Maman!” the little girl cried. “Maman, maman!”
The woman’s look of surprise dissolved in a burst of tears. She fell to her knees to sweep her daughter into her arms.
When Celine caught up with them, the woman gazed up at her openmouthed. “By all the holy gods,” she whispered, straightening with Fiara still clasped in her arms. She was in her late twenties, as beautiful as her daughter, with the same golden hair—and the same laser-blue eyes. “Y-you are ... you are—”
“A moon-lady!” Fiara chirped happily. “Oh, maman, I am so glad to be home. I could not stay with Aunt Marithe. No one liked me, and I was so unhappy, and I do not care if we have little to eat, if only I can stay here with you!”
The woman stroked her daughter’s hair, but her wide eyes were still on Celine. “From ... from when have you come?”
The bizarre question sounded completely rational at the moment. “From seven hundred years in the future.” Celine swallowed hard, weary and hopeful and above all relieved that she was finally speaking the truth to someone who believed it. “From 1993. My name is Celine Fontaine. I guess I don’t have to explain to you how I got here?”