Two and Twenty Dark Tales Read Online Free

first.”
    And he continued:
    “I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was not home;
    Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow-bone.
    “Arawn used to give the hound a meaty marrowbone after a good day’s hunt, so I stole one for her the same time I stole her. Oh, but here you are, my dear girl.”
    “I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was not in;
    Taffy came to my house and stole a silver pin;”
    He closed his eyes, picturing something from long ago. “You were in a silver cage. Over the years, somehow that became a pin in the rhyme. Which is why I had to take your friend’s pin when I saw it, even though it burned my hand. Arawn thought the silver cage would deter me from taking you. He had no idea what I was willing to endure. For he loved you best. He hasn’t slept since I took you.”
    He read on.
    “I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was in bed,
    I took up the marrow-bone and flung it at his head.”
    He slammed the book shut and gave her a wolfish smile. “That might work for the hound, but it won’t work for you.”
    A bird, a roebuck (that was a kind of deer, wasn’t it?), and a hound. The book of Welsh myths held a vague tale about a hero stealing those same three prized possessions from the King of the Otherworld in order to start a war. The humans had won, ending the King’s rule over this world and banishing him forever to the Otherworld.
    “But the name of the thief wasn’t Taffy,” she said aloud. “And it wasn’t Matthew.”
    He shrugged, tossing the books back onto the bed. “They called me Amaethon then, one of the Children of Don, brother to Gwydion the magician, cleverest of thieves who stole the secrets of the King of the Otherworld.”
    He stood up and paced away, then restlessly back again, as if the memory had bloodied an old wound. “I had to get him to fight a war with us somehow, didn’t I? I saw how your songs lulled him to sleep, how possessively he stroked the red ears of his best hound, how he delighted in hunting the great white stag. If I hadn’t taken what he loved, he never would have thought us worthy of battle. He never would have left his own world to array his forces against us. And he never would have lost. I won this world away from him! I saved humanity from enslavement and what thanks do I get? My own enslavement—to hunt the three of you over and over, dying only to be reborn to the chase again. It’s as if I never left the Otherworld. Do you remember how it was? No one dies or ages there, and you would have stayed forever singing mournful songs in that cage had I not stolen you back.”
    Like a dragon in its cave, a memory stirred within her. Of a bright silver cage, of an angry man sent into peaceful slumber by her songs, of a blond head and blue eyes peering at her with a covetous smile. A flurry of movement in the dark, a dog’s bark, the hooves of a stag brushing through the grass.
    “He kept us for so very long to serve him,” she said, unsure where that thought had come from. “You promised us freedom if we came with you.”
    “You would have roused the guards if I hadn’t.” He ceased pacing and returned his gaze, still angry and affronted, back to her. “After Gwydion changed you all into girls, the only way to keep you out of Arawn’s hands forever is for a human man to taste you.” He reached for her. “As I will taste you now.”
    She backed up toward the door and nearly tripped over the shirt he’d left on the floor, but righted herself just in time. “Where are the other two?” she asked. “The hound and the deer?”
    He shrugged. “Helgi’s down in Lima, and Cara’s somewhere in Bengal. I’ll get them next. Your locations change every time. That and the fashions are the only things that do.”
    Helgi and Cara, she thought. Lima and Bengal. There were two others, like her yet not alike. Helgi and Cara. Lima and Bengal. “You are going to rape us.”
    “Only if you say no. Don’t you see?” He opened his arms wide, as if making her