To my reviewers

Kitty-at-heart - thank so incredibly much...i hope you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoy writing it

LaurieH - thanks for the tips! enjoy

Aedyn Star - yeah Dom is pretty sweet...as for Gwen's background...she lives in a village...lol...maybe it's just me...but people who live in a village aren't usuallyall that wealthy...

ON WITH THE SHOW...

Chapter Four

Three weeks passed and the quality of the air didn't lessen in thickness, a thickness that only seemed to affect Gwen and Dom. They were together as often as they could be, silently protecting one another. On the third day of the fourth week, frantic, hoof beats drew the guests from Gwen's house.

Mitchell, grim, and weary, hadn't stopped his horse when he was on the ground. His face fell even further as he eyed the crowd, rushing toward Sara. He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Where's Henry? Is Henry here?"

Sara eyed him. "No, Mitch. He's at the fair. He's not due home for another week."

"He's not here?" Mitchell's eyes widened. He cleared his throat and took Sara's hands. He sighed and closed his eyes wearily. "Henry…never made it to the fair."

Sara took her hands from his. "What?"

Mitchell rubbed his eyes. "He never made it."

Sara put a hand on her chest. Gwen watched with horror. Sara's speech faltered as she said, "Wha…what do you mean? Where could he have gone?"

Deanne stepped forward. "What are you saying, Mitchell?"

He held out his hands, palms, pleading. "I looked everywhere for him. He never showed up at the fairgrounds. I couldn't find him, not even a trace."
Sara glared at her husband's companion. "Where is he?" She violently shrugged off Deanne's comforting hand on her shoulder.

A tear slid down Mitchell's weathered face. "Sara, I don't know."

Late that night, after tears were shed and every possibility overturned, Gwen and Dom met behind her father's barn.

"Dom, what are we going to do?" Gwen paced back and forth, biting her nails. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest. "Mama can't leave the farm."

"What about Jason or Eric?" Dom watched her with solemn eyes. Henry had been like a second father to him. There had to be something he could do.

Gwen shook her head. "Jason is heading north and Eric will take a westward route, but…but neither of them is taking the route he took to the fair." She sat down on a nearby hay bale heavily. "I just don't feel right about that." She laid her head in her hands, tears slipping down her cheeks.

Dom hated hearing the despair in her voice. He sat down next to her, and placed a hand on her shoulder. Shaking, she leaned in his embrace. She turned and buried her face in his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck. He closed his eyes and rested his lips against her hair. Suddenly, he was hit with an idea.

Without pulling away, he asked softly, "What if I went, Gwen?"

Gwen pushed herself out of her arms. She stood, sniffling, and waving her arms emphatically. "No! No, Dom. I can't let you do that."

Dom frowned. "I can't take the exact route your father took, tracing his footsteps."

Gwen shook her head. "No, Dom. Please, I mean, what if you get lost? What if something happens to you?" Her voice strained past the lump in her throat.

Dom stood and went to her and took her hands in his own. "Gwen, I can find him. I promise. I promise," he enunciated, "I'll find him. Please." He brushed a stray hair back from her eyes. "Let me go look for your father."

Gwen stared up at him with wide eyes. His green eyes glowed in the moonlight and Gwen couldn't think past the tingle from his hands against hers. She swallowed hard. Slowly she nodded. She shrugged. "Bring him home, Dom." A single tear streaked down her cheek.

"Dom brushed away with his thumb. "I'll leave at dawn. Meet me here, then. No one need know."

Gwen nodded reluctantly and turned. Facing the moon, she shivered and said, "He's out there, Dom. I can feel it."

Dawn came too early for Gwen. She woke quietly as the first rays of sunshine streamed in through her window. She groaned softly, and pushed back her coverlet, placing her feet on the cold wooden floor. Dressing silently, she made her way to the kitchen, passing her parent's room with silent feet.

Grabbing the saddlebags she had hidden underneath the stove, she filled it with bread, cheese, and dried fruit, and a large water skin. She wrote a quick note to her family, telling them she'd gone to town for an early start. After placing it where she knew they would see it, she races out the door, lifting her skirt as she ran to meet Dom.

He was waiting silently for her, grooming his family's gelding behind the barn. She reached him, winded and tense. The saddlebag bulged with its contents. He grinned at the sight of her. As she neared, however, she saw the anxiety in his green eyes and the frown in his forehead.

Dom gestured toward the saddlebag. "You expecting me to be gone for a year?"

Gwen blushed. "I didn't know how…how long you'd be gone." She giggled nervously. "I think I packed the entire kitchen." She tried a smile.

"I won't be long." Dom tried for optimism, but by the look on her face he knew he'd failed miserably. He cleared his throat and put the curry comb away and finished saddling his gelding. Turning back to her, he sighed. The look on her face just about broke his heart.

"I'm sorry, Gwen. I'll bring him back." He smiled. "I promised, remember?" He held out his arms and she went into them gratefully.

"It's not just that, Dom. You're going to be gone for…who knows how long." She glanced down at her feet. Suddenly she was very interested in the leather lacing up her shoes. "I, uh, I'll miss you. A lot."

"I'll miss you too, sweet."

Gwen looked up at the nickname. Her gaze caught with his and she found she couldn't look away. Her heart pounded in her chest.

"I'll be back soon." He pulled away abruptly. Watching her face intently, he suddenly leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. "I'll be back."

Mounting his horse, he trotted swiftly into the forest, down the very same path Henry had taken several weeks ago. Gwen watched him go, left with more than her missing father to think about.

Dom only stopped once to eat that morning. The small waterfall he found gave off a refreshing spray, cooling him against the hot autumn sun. He tethered his mare, Piper, and took a seat just out of reach of the waterfall's spray. He dug into the saddlebag Gwen had given him. With each bite he took of dried fruit or cheese, he felt the weight of his hasty decision.

Doubt seized his very being. Here he was on a wild goose chase trying to find a man who hadn't been seen in four weeks. Henry could have gone anywhere! And Dom was just supposed to scour the countryside until his last breath? What if Jason or Eric found him first? Or Henry made his way home on his own? How would Gwen get word to him way out here in the wilderness? He could be out here for years and never see another living soul. He bit into an orange, bitterness filling his mouth. Why had he agreed to do this?

Only one thought penetrated his mind: because he loved her. Dom sighed. He had loved Gwen for years ever since she'd gotten the nerve to get him back for one of the many pranks he'd pulled on her as children. She had dared him to walk the length of the barn – on the roof. Proud boy that he had been, he'd let the girl goad him. Halfway across the treacherous slope of the barn roof, a sound behind him startled him. He looked back over his shoulder to find that Gwen had followed him and was making her way across the roof toward him.

Fear for her safety had plummeted through him and he'd turned too swiftly. Dom fell as Gwen laughed. He'd fallen, as planned he later learned, into a large pile of hay. He had lain on his back for several minutes gazing up at Gwen as she stood solidly on the roof, clutching her stomach with laughter, her strawberry blonde hair turning gold with the glint of the setting sun.

He hadn't realized it then, but Dom couldn't pin point that very moment in his life. He'd fallen in love that day, with Gwen, his best friend.

She had never given any evidence that she felt the same way. In recent weeks, she had certainly softened toward him, giving Dom hope that they might still be able to forge a life together.

Dom put a hand to his mouth. He'd finally done what he'd been dreaming about for years and he hadn't even stayed long enough to see her reaction. Dom sighed and finished his meal. Gwen was counting on him to find her father. No sense in dwelling on what could only be solved once his mission was over.

Mounting his mare once again, he galloped swiftly through the dense forest. His father was forever warning him against it, but he knew this forest almost better than he knew his own lands. Stopping only once in late afternoon by a small stream refresh his horse, he couldn't help but notice that the air was becoming increasingly oppressive the farther he traveled through the trees. He traveled more quietly after that. Until he noticed something. Reigning in Piper, he dismounted. He hardly dared breathe.

Not a sound echoed in the trees. Everywhere he looked, not a bird stirred. In fact there were no birds. The trees blew in the wind, but Dom could feel no breeze. The sun gleamed through the branches, but created no shadows. The forest was deathly beautiful in it's distorted reality. Dom hardly dared to breath, lest he break the spell. No bird's song lit the air, no insect wing moved the autumn air, no deer skittered across his path.

He shook his head, trying to clear a sudden ringing in his ears. "What is going on around here?" he said a little too loudly. Suddenly alert, he spun around. Voices drifted through the branches, from all around. They whispered around him, with words he couldn't understand. The trees, lush with fruit and bright green leaves just a moment ago, suddenly died. The barks became twisted and black. The branches hung low and cracked, as if they had been dead for hundreds of years.

Piper snorted and reared in protest. The reins were flung from Dom's hand and in his haste to grab them up again, he fell face first into the dirt. Cursing under his breath, he tried to follow the horse, but found his legs were too heavy to move. He couldn't even move his arms. He lay there in the dirt, breathing heavily as fear pinpricked his very soul.

The forest air changed subtly. The heavy loneliness that had haunted his life for weeks dispersed, leaving an ominous blanket of evil across the forest canopy. A sound, like the tinkling of bells and rushing water echoed in his brain. It was as if he hadn't heard them at all.

The sun suddenly dipped and glared Dom in the face. Suddenly, he could move again and he scrambled away until his back was up against a tree. The sun followed so closely he felt he could reach out and touch it, for all its blinding glare.

As quickly as if had appeared, it was gone and a woman, the tallest woman he had ever seen, stood before him.

"Who…who are you?" Dom whispered after a moment. Snow began to fall. But it's only autumn, he thought faintly.

The woman smiled as if she had heard Dom's thoughts. Her skin was perfectly white, too white, too perfect to be human. Her full lips were as blood red as the deepest rose. Her blonde hair, flowing as if in water around her, almost touched the ground and her sapphire eyes pierced him.

"You…" she began.

Dom raised a trembling hand to shield his eyes against the light that flowed from her. "I come looking for Gwen's father. He came this way."

The woman raised a single brow. "An old man passed this way long ago." Her voice sounded like rocks, beaten by ocean waves. "Perhaps it he for who you search."

Dom stared wide-eyed, unsure of what was happening. "Where is he?"

"You are not welcome here," she answered. "Why should I let you pass?" She held out a hand and let it float there. Green light streamed from her fingertips. The light flowed through Dom's skin, in his eyes, in his nose and mouth until he couldn't breathe. He gasped and choked.

"I have…to find…him," he gasped out. He struggled to stay awake. He was tired, so tired. He heard something growl.

The woman gripped his chin with her long fingered hand and held it fast, forcing him to look into her eyes. "Three hundred years have passed since I was placed in this realm," she cried, her eyes blazing. "I was forced to wait, watching as the portal between this world and yours shimmered and flickered until finally it was broken." She laughed harshly. "You fool humans, passing this way year after year, weakening its strength. How upset I was to find that the one who finally broke the portal's power was a being that I couldn't trade life forces with. No, he was too old."

She reached with her free hand to stroke Dom's hair. Shards of pain slashed his body from his head to his toes. "Now, thanks to you, I have finally been set free. I do not know what Fate has for you. Your Fate will be different from the one I was forced to serve, just as mine was different from the one before me. Now, I can return to the world, free at last to die in peace."

She looked him over, an odd, frightening look in her eye. "My keeper has granted me one wish, before I die. My wish is this – to leave you, my dear," The endearment came out like a curse, "to leave you suffering ten fold what I had to endure. Kept away from civilization, awaiting the day my true love would set me free," she snarled.

Faint flickers of his own mind pushed through the fog that had enveloped him. Dom couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd heard tales of this forest, of wicked forest fairies, of a long forgotten kingdom, but he had never put much store in legends. This couldn't be happening!

"Oh, yes, my dear, it is happening," the woman spat. The force of her grip tightened with a jolt of pain that forced all thought from his mind. Energy flowed from her hand and through Dom. He writhed it pain; it was eating him alive! Pain flowed through his body, tearing, wrenching, distorting.

As the pain finally, blessedly, flowed away, Dom opened his eyes. The woman still stood over him, holding out a long-stemmed blood red rose. "I give this to you," she snarled and thrust it into his suddenly outstretched arm, "This same perfect rose that has held me captive. It will bloom eternally." She paused. Dom couldn't take his eyes from her.

"It will bloom until your true love sets foot in your castle. After she does," she shrugged, her face twisted with malice, "who knows what might happen." She leaned down to whisper in his ear, grabbing a handful of hair, "Don't count on it." She thrust him away. He fell, hitting his head with a smack.

The woman closed her eyes. The blackened ground shook violently, and with a thrust of her arms, a great castle made from the purest of ebony escaped from the earth. Its towers and foreboding form loomed over the enchantress and the peasant boy. She turned steel eyes to the boy cowering at her feet.

"The portal opens, the earth, it dies. Poor little human – no time for good-byes." The woman's laugh rang out through the trees and Dom's eyes widened in fear. He stared helpless as she shoved him back and screamed, "Unless you find someone, my dear, who loves you for the hideous creature that you have become, forever will you remain a beast."