Just Believe Read Online Free Page B

few
well thought-out curses accompanied Eochy's words.
    Gaelen's mood soured.
    It didn't get any better when he
entered the Council chamber.
    His feet froze on the stone floor of
the cave. His voice froze in his throat.
    The circular table, nearly forty feet
across, a cross-section cut from a single tree--no one knew how
long ago--occupied the middle of the chamber. Seated around the
table were ninety-nine members of the Council of One
Hundred.
    "Take your seat, Gaelen."
    Though he heard the leader of the
Council very clearly, Gaelen was still rooted to the spot where
he'd stopped, staring until his eyes hurt.
    "Gaelen?" Eochy stood and came toward
him with his bandy strut. "Why aren't you prepared?"
    "No one told me."
    "You've lost track of time out there in
the Otherworld. You should call home more often." Eochy grabbed his
elbow and pulled him to the only empty chair at the table. "Now,
get 'em out."
    "No."
    "What?"
    "I'm not going to parade my private
parts for the entire assembly," Gaelen insisted.
    "We've all got ours out," Eochy
said.
    They did, indeed. Each and every person
at the table had them out and the iridescence caught the light from
the stones mounted in the smooth chiseled walls of the
sidhe.
    "Gaelen, we can't begin the convocation
until you get your wings out."
    There, somebody said the W-word. Damn.
Damn.
    "Look," he pleaded, "I haven't had them
out in years. They'll be all wrinkled and..."
    Eochy waved to the doorkeepers. Two
strapping lads, selected for their brawn and lack of humor, came up
behind Gaelen, each one taking a sleeve of his heather tweed
jacket.
    R-r-r-i-i-i-i-p-p-p-p-p!
    "Hey! That's my favorite jacket,"
Gaelen protested.
    "It's ugly," one of the brutes
muttered, with what might have been a smile on a less stony
face.
    Then off came his shirt. His one
hundred dollar, hand-made dress shirt. It wasn't fairy-tailored, so
they had to pull harder, but off it came.
    Gaelen sat, humiliation bubbling with
the stomach acid, and waited. It would only get worse.
    The chill of the room and the prickly
feeling of all eyes on him made his wings pucker and swell. He
thought he could control himself until...
    Oh, no. Not Carly. Anybody but
her.
    Carly O'Malley smiled at him from the
gallery, and her wings--Oh, Bridget, what wings the woman
had--shimmered three shades each of red and gold. The snickering
around the table had Gaelen's already rough temper near to
boiling.
    "Ah, Gaelen, me boyo, you've a lass
interested in seeing your wings."
    "I've seen 'em," Carly said, "and a
sight worth waitin' for they are."
    Women tittered at Carly's
words.
    A sharp snapping pain twisted in his
shoulders. Biting his tongue, he winced as the thin skin unfolded,
first on the left, then on the right.
    Not good to keep them packed away like
that, his ol' da had said. Gotta shake 'em out and stretch 'em once
in a while, boy.
    The men on the Council and in the
audience grimaced in amused compassion. The women were not so
kind.
    They watched, eyes widening, tongues
flicking out to moisten their lips, their anticipation
palpable.
    Gaelen was a tall man and he'd been
told by women--most recently the exquisite Carly O'Malley--he was
extremely well-formed. In all his parts. Of course, he'd kept his
wings folded as he always did unless he'd had warning of some
ceremonial occasion like this one, but everybody knew that a man's
wing-span was precisely equitable to the size of his...
    "Ohhhh," he moaned, unable to control
them as they spurted faster, fuller, taller.
    "Oooooh." The women echoed his moans
with their own.
    "Just look at the coloring!"
    "Wouldn't you just love to see those
things sprout over your head in the dark?"
    Sprout.
    "Aren't you finished yet?" Eochy asked.
His own wings wagged impatiently, the fairy equivalent of a tapping
toe.
    And just as irritating.
    Gaelen tried to relax, but he couldn't
resist a quick comment. He was ticked and hoped Eochy knew
it.
    "If you'd give people some notice,
Eochy, and not spring