Read The Falconer (Elizabeth May) for Free Online Page A

steal from anywhere. But it’s my ready stock of honey and constant need of stitched clothing that keep him happiest. The small fae are menders, compulsively so. They’ve been known to steal worn clothing just to use their fingers – Derrick says it keeps his sword hand quick. Honey is simply what he requests for services rendered, even though I tend to provide it whether he sews or not. He adores it that much.
    ‘I’m perfectly wonderful to live with and you know it,’ I say. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to borrow your home to undress.’
    Derrick rises from my shoulder and flies back to the table. I assume he’ll steal more parts while I’m distracted.
    I shut the dressing room door behind me and press the button for the light. Hardly any dresses remain on the shelves. The scent of roses clings to the air. I grudgingly admit that Derrick is right – it does smell rather heavenly.
    Deftly, I untie the bow around my chest. Blood sticks to the fabric and I wince as I step out of the many layers of petticoats and undergarments that have constrained me all evening. The thigh holsters securing my pistol and sgian dubh go next.
    My inspection reveals five superficial cuts and four deep others, running across the freckled skin just below my bosom. The deeper ones will require stitching.
    I brush my fingers along the healed welts elsewhere across my ribs. No one knows that underneath my beautiful dresses I hide a body that is scarred and cut and bruised. Old injuries are scattered across my thighs, my stomach, my back. They’re my badges. My secret tokens of survival and victory. And vengeance. I can name the faeries that inflicted every scar, and I remember how I killed each one of them.
    With a sigh, I pop open the lid of my trunk and pull out my stitcher kit. I lie amid my scattered dresses and twist the key at the bottom of the box. The tiny mechanical spiders crawl across my chest and abdomen, mending my torn flesh.
    I close my eyes. I listen to their bodies move, the whisper of wee mechanical pieces interworking as tiny legs creep across my skin. They puncture me over and over, cauterising and threading gossamer tendon through my sensitive flesh. Finally I feel them finish and crawl back into the box.
    The dressing room is silent when I open my eyes and place the kit back in the trunk. My midsection is smeared with blood around four stitched wounds that will become new badges.
    I reach for fabric to wipe the blood away and draw an old, tattered tartan from beneath the dresses.
    Then I can’t breathe. My eyes are wet and my chest aches.
    I shove the tartan inside the trunk and shut it with a loud thump, gasping for breath.
    Derrick must have dug out the tartan from the back of the dressing room. I wish I could burn it, even if it is the last memento I have of my mother. I managed to salvage it before my father ordered her most personal belongings removed from the house. He said he couldn’t look at them any more, as though their presence gave him some hope that she’d return.
    I understood. Even this last reminder of my mother’s life just makes her absence all the more glaring. So the tartan stays hidden, where I won’t be tempted to hug it or sleep with it or wear it in a poor attempt to pretend she’s still alive. The pretending would only make reality all the more painful.
    I snatch a small handkerchief off the floor and dip it into the bowl of water Derrick leaves out for me next to my rows of slippers. He always anticipates that I’ll come home with an injury that requires cleaning. He’s always right.
    I gently mop the blood from my skin and change into my nightdress. When I step out of the dressing room, Derrick is sitting cross-legged on my work table, sifting through metal pieces, no doubt choosing which to steal next.
    ‘Get away from there,’ I say, flipping the switch for the fireplace. A spark under the coals sends flames bursting upwards. I toss the bloodied fabric into the