~A Wild Heart~
Chapter Sixteen
~~~ooooo~~~
"Aeris, is it true?"
Her voice brought the other girl to a halt outside the house where Tifa had been standing in the doorway, watching her approach.
"Zack told you." Aeris' tone was frosty.
"He's really a…a fairy?"
Aeris turned her face toward the garden so Tifa couldn't see her eyes. "Fairies are not the way that we've made them out to be."
"They're not human."
"Cloud's a person."
"A person with powers that are not normal," Tifa enunciated each word slowly and carefully so her friend would hear every word. "Aeris, why didn't you say anything about...this Cloud? He's the one, isn't he? The stranger you found that night, hurt in the woods. Why didn't you tell me?"
"It wasn't important."
"Not important?" Tifa repeated. "Aeris, he's a fairy! It is unnatural and...and wrong for a human and a fairy to..."
"Don't say anymore, Tifa." There was a note of warning in the other girl's voice but Tifa was too upset to pay it any mind.
"You're under an enchantment. He's worked his magic on you! You just don't realize it. Haven't we heard of all these stories about children being stolen from their beds, never to be returned?"
Aeris' hand curled tighter around her staff. "They're stories."
"They had to come from somewhere. Aeris, they're mischief-makers! How do you know he's not just playing with you and with your feelings? Think about it. Everything he's done and said to you, they could all be lies! He could be laughing at you behind your back the whole time with the other fairies!"
"He would never do that!" she exclaimed, turning to face her and Tifa felt a stab of guilt at seeing how dangerously close to tears her friend was. She had a sinking feeling that she'd probably been on the brink of tears all day and was only hanging onto her control by a slender thread. "Oh, Tifa, I wish you wouldn't talk about him like that. You don't know what he's like at all. You've never even met him!" Feeling a bit contrite, Tifa stepped aside to let her enter and Aeris immediately swept past her inside the house. "First Zack, now you!"
"I know he's a fairy. What more do I need to know?" Tifa said, following her to her bedroom. "What if he kidnaps you?"
"It's only ever been children that have been taken in the stories. You don't hear about it happening to a grown man or woman."
"You can be the first one it'll happen to." She stopped outside Aeris' bedroom door, watched her as she poured water from a pitcher into the basin at her dressing table and dip a washcloth into the water to wet it. "Don't go with him anymore, Aeris. If you do, you'll be lost to us forever. We don't want that to happen."
But Aeris was scrubbing the day's dust and grime from her neck and face with a look of concentration on her face that told Tifa she was done with talking.
With a sigh, Tifa closed the door and went to set the table for dinner.
~~~ooooo~~~
He wasn't there when Aeris arrived at the fork by the well the next morning, but presently, she heard the leaves flutter gently in the branches near her. She would have thought it was the wind in the trees if she had never met a certain fairy, but she knew otherwise.
She was proven correct when a moment later, a figure stepped out of the trees.
The lure of the woods and the young man that dwelled within them proved greater than her fear of the unknown. Disregarding her friends' worry and the advice of her neighbors, she gave him her hand and followed him into the mysterious woods that she alone, of all humans, felt at home in.
~~~ooooo~~~
"Here you are. Got it, Patrick?" Tifa handed the basket she'd packed with eggs and zucchini back to the Franklin boys. "Lucy and Daisy will be so sad to hear they missed you," she said, reaching down to ruffle a pair of soft, furry ears almost similar to the aforementioned dogs' but for their blazing red color.
The canine everyone fondly referred to as Red for his scarlet pelt let out a friendly woof.
"They saw him last week," the youngest Franklin boy said with a wide, disarming grin that showed a gap in the bottom front row of his teeth. "We went to Benny's..."
"Davy!" Patrick clapped his hand over his brother's mouth.
Davy shoved the older boy off with a disgruntled look. "I was just 'bout to say we were gonna go visit 'em!"
The huge dog at his side gave the boys a long-suffering look that had Tifa stifling a laugh. Red was possessed of such a calm and noble demeanor, and intelligent eyes that many a farmer at one time or another had remarked that they would not have been the least bit surprised to hear him speak. She smiled sympathetically at the dog and leaned down toward the five-year-old boy to ask in a conspiratorial whisper, "Did it taste very good?"
He beamed. "It was the best! Aeris gave me her pie, it was almost whole! Peach!"
"Aeris?"
"Yeah, she was there. And she gave us both her pie to share." Patrick gave his brother a pointed look. "Said she couldn't eat the whole thing."
Tifa chuckled at the bewildered expressions on the boys' freckled faces.
Davy stuck out his lower lip in a pout. "She said it was probably best to share her pie so Dottie wouldn't have to cut 'nother one and have more pies to sell."
"Is that why she didn't bring any home for us?" Tifa asked in a plaintive tone of voice.
A look of guilt crossed the young boy's face.
Patrick wrinkled his nose. "He made himself sick eatin' so much."
"You ate just as much as me!" Davy accused. "You ate half!"
"It was my share," the older boy said defensively.
"We didn't save any for Matty either," Davy confessed. "Don't tell him, 'kay, Tifa?"
"All right," Tifa said, as gravely as she could managed. "I won't."
The boys left with Red, who immediately took up his place next to the younger boy. Tifa walked them to the gate and watched them leave, smiling as she noticed how the faithful hound made sure to keep himself by the boy's side. The Franklin family dog had been born to the same litter as Lucy and Daisy, and was the only puppy who had inherited their mother's fiery red coat while the rest of his siblings took after their father and had brown fur with burning patterns of red here and there. But like his siblings, Red's features were more feline than many other canine breeds, almost resembling a lion in some aspects, which had often made Tifa wonder if the two species didn't share a common ancestor not very far in the past—the idea was preposterous, of course, but certainly no more so than the idea of a human and a fairy.
Tifa's face darkened at the reminder of the situation at home.
The boys and the dog had been a welcomed intrusion into the troublesome thoughts that had been hanging like a cloud over her all day. Seeing the simple joys, and woes, of the young had been an immense help in taking her mind off of her housemate and her choice for a companion.
A human and a fairy, she thought, shaking her head incredulously. For Tifa, it wasn't so much that she doubted fairies were real. As Aeris had pointed out, all she had to do was take a look around her and she could not deny the existence of things that were out of the ordinary and beyond her own everyday experiences. The forest was so thick with magic, one could feel it emanating from the finest blade of grass growing within its hidden meadows to the branches and roots of its mightiest tree even when just looking at the woods from a distance. It was in the hills, in the ground under their feet, the very air they breathed—it was inescapable. Wherever one went, that great and ancient power was ever present and felt by anyone who ever came within the vicinity of the forest or hills. But it was unthinkable that anyone would attempt to cross the lines of separation that nature had intentionally set for its inhabitants and be with someone who was not of their own kind, or would even want to. Whatever tales humans had written concerning illicit affairs between their races, it just wasn't done.
But Tifa could tell her friend wanted exactly what nature had forbidden.
~~~ooooo~~~
"She's meeting with him again."
From where she stood with her shoulder propped against the doorframe, Tifa stiffened. Regardless of her own personal feelings on the matter of their housemate and the fairy, maybe she should not have set up post and kept watch as Aeris left.
"Did she say so?" she asked without turning around.
"She didn't have to." Anger and defeat, two things she'd never associated with Zack before, were evident in his voice now. "You can tell when she's about to go see him. She's met with him the last three days, too."
Tifa felt sick. "Aren't you going to go after her?"
She heard him let out a heavy sigh at her back before he trudged off to get his things and go out into the fields with the men.
Tifa finally turned her head to look back over her shoulder, gazed down the dark hallway as his door swung shut.
"I'm sorry, Zack," she whispered.
~~~ooooo~~~
She waited, turning the words from the last few days' conversations with Zack and Tifa over and over in her head, and at some point looked up and saw a pair of bright blue eyes fringed by heavy golden lashes watching her intently from under the shadows of the forest trees.
Aeris felt a hot flush stain her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I was woolgathering," she began to apologize but he held up a hand, putting a stop to the flood of words tumbling forth from her lips. She'd had things on her mind the whole week and had not been giving him her full attention whenever they were together.
"I would think you have more than enough of those."
Her eyes widened but she couldn't tell if he was just teasing her or if he was serious.
"Come." The fairy held his hand out to her, a gesture that was now familiar to her. "There's something I want to show you."
To her surprise, he didn't take her far into the forest but to a glade just within the borders.
She watched in bemusement as he went to the ground on his knees, picked up a strong, sturdy branch from the ground, and began digging into the soft earth with it.
Aeris knelt down beside him. "Why don't you try this?" she suggested, taking a small, slender object made of wood and steel out of her bag.
"A human tool?" he inquired, looking at the gardening tool in her hand.
She nodded. "It's a trowel. I use it for carrots and onions and things like that."
He took it from her.
She didn't have to show him how to use it, he already knew. Probably from previous observations of humans at work in their gardens, Aeris presumed. Not to mention he'd seen her use it on a few occasions herself. He worked quickly and deftly, the muscles in his arms flexing with each stroke and in no time at all, carved a hole big enough to fit both his hands in comfortably.
Only a few inches in, he set the trowel aside and brushed the loose dirt from the hole with his hands.
"Do you see these?"
She leaned over to take a closer look at the roots he'd uncovered. They looked like any other plant roots save for the fact that they were long, smooth, and appeared perfectly hairless, and the tips were green.
"See how close they are to the surface?" He flicked the minuscule round end of one of the roots that had to be a bulb.
"Yes," she answered. She would see them once in a while when she was out with the sheep and she had to dig deep to get at a particularly stubborn turnip or potato that had decided to grow way down in the ground. They were the bane of farmers when it came time to plow the field with the way that they seemed to grow all over the place in great tangled nests and were an incredible nuisance to clear. Her eyes widened in astonishment. "Are these…?"
Cloud nodded. "We're very close to water in this part of the woods. The land here used to be the boundaries of the hills."
He took her hands and helped her to her feet.
"Close your eyes."
Aeris immediately complied, and waited.
"All right. Now... Open them."
She did as he instructed and her breath caught in her throat.
A being of golden light with huge gossamer wings stood before her. Soft light radiated from his body and the wings at his back shimmered in the sunlight as if there were tiny crystals embedded all over them and his hair shone so bright, it should have hurt her eyes to look directly at him. She peered into his glowing face and it was the same face she loved but a thousand times more beautiful.
It seemed almost blasphemous to break the silence in the clearing, but she dared a whisper. "Cloud?"
He spoke, and it was his voice. "Look around you, Aeris."
With a great deal of effort, she forced her eyes away from the mesmerizing sight he presented.
And gasped.
They were standing in the middle of a white flower-field. Hundreds, thousands, of water lilies had sprung up where there had been only green grass moments ago. She spun around slowly, almost afraid that if she moved too fast, the flowers would vanish like a dream. And so would he. She turned back to him, and seeing him still standing there in all his glory, felt her heart fill to overflowing with pure joy.
She smiled at him. "I feel like I've just stepped into the realm of faerie."
"Didn't you know, Aeris?" He tucked a flower behind her ear and smiled back at her, and her heart did a flip in her chest. The golden light grew fainter until both it and the pair of wings disappeared altogether, and he was again the fairy she knew, back in his human form. "It's all around you." The brightness of his hair took longer to recede and she watched as it slowly returned to the more subdued blond she was used to seeing.
Aeris stepped forward, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him.