#you do so much with so little
a short, strange faerie tale by me
——
It was on a pale clear morning, silent and strange, that Lars Tiefen returned.
No one was watching for him. They all knew that the calling of the Fae could not be broken. One had to be careful not to live too freely, burn too bright - or they would find you, catch you with swift words and unblinking eyes and razor-sharp mind. Lars had known this, and yet he had sung songs like living flame and played notes that pierced like swords. He said he drew the music from the woods and rivers, from roaming and looking where none should dare to tread.
He should have known that the Fae would send for him, bind him, winnow his body, soul, and songs away to their dread Court forever.
So no one was watching for him on the morning he came walking over the hill - no one but Desdemona. She had loved him, long - once in hope, now hopelessly. His songs had stirred her soul. She adored him from afar, and then one perfect day he had come upon her, alone at the edge of the fields, singing a song of her own - one long hidden and shaped, shyly brought to light.
Beautiful, he had called it. Beautiful, he had called her, too. Her golden-red hair in the sunlight made him glad, and the deep, glinting gaze of her brown eyes stirred in him another song to be written. Perhaps a song they would sing together.
But first he wanted to show her the glade, the place his best songs came to him. She would not come. She knew of the faerie ring there, the sleepless danger. But he had gone anyway. The risk, he said, was worth the beauty that he found.
He came back with eyes dazed, strangely touched. One glance, and you could tell they had him. One day allowed to say goodbye, and then he was gone, forever.
But now, only seven years into forever, he came walking through the long grass over the hill’s brink. He leaned on a staff, and he came slowly. Frozen, she stared at him, breath gone.
It was surely a trick of the Fae. But she no longer cared. With that thought, she was moving, rushing up the hill toward him. In a moment, she was there - yet she hesitated to touch him, afraid he would vanish like the morning mist.
“Lars,” she cried, and then could say no more. “Desdemona,” he gasped, almost like a question. She stepped back to look at him, to drink in the morning’s strange miracle.
His pale blue eyes stared straight at her - no, through her. Sightless.
“You cannot see me,” she cried out, and the pain in her voice was very hard for him to bear. “No, my love, I cannot,” he said softly. He seemed calm, but she caught the note of sorrow in his voice and the tightening of his jaw. “Yet believe me when I say, Desdemona, that your face is as clear in my mind as when I left. No vision can be fairer than that.”
She could hardly speak or think. Her hand went fluttering over her mouth, and then to her jaw, and then she wrung her hands together to stop the trembling.“Did they do this to you?”
“No.” He paused, long. “I bought the enchantment before I left.” Her mind went winging back to the bright and horrible morning, seven years ago, when he had kissed her one last time and run swiftly over the hill’s brink to the woods, where the faerie ring awaited.
Wait. The jar that he’d quickly put away when he saw her coming. The jar with Florian the enchanter’s seal upon it.
“I- I thought-“ Anger flared inside her, sudden and strange. “I thought you’d bought something to protect you, something to keep you safe from the Fae! But this…” Words failed her. “Why?” she whispered.
He extended his hand, reaching for her, but she could not take it. Not yet. A flicker of quick emotion passed through his face. He dropped the hand, curling the fingers in toward his chest.“It was to protect me. The Fae are master of many enchantments, beauty not least.”
She waited, not understanding. His voice finally choked on the next words.“Desdemona, I didn’t want to forget your face.”
She broke, and tears came. He reached for her again, and this time she let him pull her into his arms and clung tight.
“I’m weak, Desdemona,” he faltered. “And they’re beautiful, and they can make you see what they want you to see. And I was afraid - I was afraid they’d show me something to make me forget…” His voice trailed off.
“..how much I love you,” he choked out in a whisper.
He just held her, quiet, as she wept for grief and joy and grief again. Finally her sobs turned to little choked sounds and the shuddering calmed in her shoulders. She took a deep breath and pulled back.
“But…I’ve changed, Lars. Life has not been kind to me while you’ve been gone.”
He lifted his hands to wipe her tears and ran them over her face, feeling the new lines marked by long sorrow and pain. “It’s not the face you remember,” she whispered thickly.
“No,” he said softly, “it’s not. But it’s yours.”
—–
It would be long before he could tell her the twisting tale of seven years’ bondage, of tricks and promises and winning his freedom, long before he could even bear the sound of his own music. But she sang to him often, in themes springing from that first song of hers in the field.
Beautiful, he called it. Beautiful, he called her.
And when in time he began to make music again, he no longer needed the sight of the woods and the rivers to craft songs of living flame and piercing swords. He thought of brown eyes and golden-red hair and a hill watched often, beyond hope. And he sang with her a sorrow-won song more beautiful than all before or since.
Sometimes, beyond the field, over the hill, perhaps even in the faerie glade, you can still hear an echo.
