Page 114 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
“She likes you,” said the deofol plainly. “I don’t know if the notion has made its way into what you call your brain.”
Osric could find nothing to say in response.
“Not that you deserve her regard,” continued the deofol, with a discontented sweep of its tail.
“Does anyone?” asked Osric, to mask the sudden swell in his heart.
“No,” said the genet. “But then again, I’m biased. We’ll be seeing less of each other after this. You should be pleased. This little game of reciprocities is coming to an end. Aurienne thinks that this may be the last healing.”
This should have been good news for Osric. Instead, it saddened him. There would be no more reasons for Fairhrim to see him, once she had upheld her end of the deal.
“It’ll be for the best for all parties,” he lied.
“Will it?” asked the genet. Its unblinking red eyes looked deep into his.
Osric made no answer.
The genet faded away.
On the day of August’sThunor moon, Osric took a waystone to the Rummy Thing. He and Fairhrim had last visited the place in April, during one of their early healing attempts. The pub looked much the same, shack-like, choked with ferns. Today its door was open, however, and light and voices streamed out of it.
The waystone at the Rummy Thing was a geological oddity. Instead of a standard menhir, it was a large wide stone with a hole through the middle of it. In form and proportion it was familiar. It took Osric a moment to place it: it looked like a large version of the stone Fairhrim wore around her neck.
Fairhrim materialised on the other side of the waystone a moment after Osric did. They saw each other through the hole in the waystone, Osric pulling on his gloves, Fairhrim straightening her skirts.
When they had last met, she had come on his tongue, and he had masturbated under her dress, so, naturally, they treated each other with inane formality instead of discussing it.
Osric found himself nervous. He managed a firm Hello.
“We’re to meet the Leyfarer inside,” said Fairhrim. “Shall we go in?”
“After you,” said Osric.
A Haelan and a Fyren walked into a pub. It was the start of a joke.
That the Fyren was a bit in love with the Haelan was the punch line, probably.
The Rummy Thing served a clientele consisting mostly of beautiful, curiously ageless individuals who blew in and out of the pub with gusts of sea air and bits of moss upon their boots. Many of them seemed familiar with Fairhrim and greeted her with waves. Osric was ignored, as one ignores something unpleasant on the pavement.
“Hedgewitches?” whispered Osric.
“Yes,” said Fairhrim.
The witches were dressed in green-brown tunics and trousers attached with oddly placed belts at the forearm and below the knee. Their boots were high, muddy, and tightly laced. At their waists hung curved silver billhooks. Every one of the witches was tattooed; thistles and marigolds and mint climbed up their forearms and necks. Some had nicknames inked across their knuckles, which Osric read as they passed;MycoslutandBulbbabeandDirtdiva.
He caught glimpses of their Order’s tacn of three green hares. Some bore it on their left hands, and others on their right.
He eavesdropped on a conversation betweenFungifaeandDtchbtch.
“I should like to be buried in a bluebell wood.”
“Tch. No. Feed me to my mushrooms.”
The witches fell into a discussion about the Kentish queen, whom they called the Kentish Quim.
Every table in the pub featured a low, wide bowl with coals in it on which the patrons grilled oil-drizzled potatoes and other veg. The drinks were served in hollowed-out vegetables, which, Osric surmised as he watched a Hedgewitch munch upon a pepper, you were expected to eat afterwards.
He and Fairhrim went to the bar and chose drinks haphazardly. Fairhrim ended up with a grapefruit with a cucumber straw poking out of it, decorated with curling pea tendrils. Osric received a large mushroom cup. A sniff of the cocktail therein hinted at dark rum and fig. A few delicate white oyster mushrooms clung to the rim.
