Between The Night And the Morrow

This is the current Jane Austen fanfic which I’m continuing on Saturdays.  For past chapters, look here.  And for the immediate last chapter look two Saturdays back, before the holidays rudely interrupted by flight of fancy.  This Jane Austen fanfic thing is becoming quite fashionable, but rest assured that unlike “respected authors” this mere word-hack is not using Miss Austen’s work to score political or gender points.  Instead, I’m content to add elves, shake well and see what ensues.  (sigh)  I’ll never be a darling of the literary establishment. .

“Lizzy?” Jane asked.  “Are you well?”

“Very well, Jane,” Elizabeth said, but even the voice in which she said it seemed odd to herself, as though it came from someone else and some place else, faraway.  She was sitting in her room looking at the rose that the elf? Magical being? Had thrown her while she was at her window last night.

When she’d woken, from a restless sleep interwoven with nightmares, she’d thought it was all a dream, but there was the rose, shining gold and seeming full of life and vitality.  Like a living thing, she thought, as she caressed the petals.

She could sense Jane looming over her shoulders, she could sense Jane’s concern and her slight pause in breath as though hesitating.  “Only,” Elizabeth’s gentle sister said, at last.  “Only you’ve been here looking at that rose for ever so long.  And you aren’t dressed to go out.”

“Go out?” Lizzy asked.

“To my Aunt Phillips, remember?  There is a militia come to town and Aunt Phillips is holding a card party and musical evening, to allow local girls to get to know the officers.  Very handsome of her I call it, since she does not have any daughters of her own to find husbands for.”

“And perhaps that’s why she does it,” Lizzy said.

“Lizzy!  I’m sure she does it out of the kindness of her heart.  Or a genuine liking for people.”

And Lizzy, who did indeed think her aunt did things out of a genuine liking for people, or perhaps an earnest desire to be the center of attention, found herself at a loss as to why she’d said what she’d said, and in such a malicious and spiteful tone, too.  What was wrong with her?

She shook herself.  “I’d quite forgot,” she said.  “I shall make haste to dress.”

Later she wouldn’t be able to say what she’d thrown on, in her haste to be out the door, but it didn’t signify since when they got there all the people attending were quite the usual, except for a few officers far too young to have any interest in her or she in him.  Between those young officers and Lydia and Kitty, they’d convinced Mary to play a dance tune and were making quite a spectacle of themselves.

And then he walked in.  He was quite the most handsome man she had ever beheld.  No.  Beautiful.  He was beautiful.  Moonlight-blond hair and eyes of the same hue, which did not seem possible or natural, and a mobile, expressive countenance, graced with a mouth disposed to smile.  All this atop a tall, well-shaped male body.

And as soon as he entered the room, his eyes sough her and found her.  His smile became more pronounced and she remembered.  He was the man on the horse, throwing her the rose.

**************

“No, there can be no question of bringing them into fairyland,” Oberon snapped at Darcy, as though Darcy’s question were beneath contempt.  “Now that I’ve examined them better I can tell you that they have not that essential part of fairyland that will allow them to survive among us and be happy.  Oh, they have magic right enough, but not sufficient for them to be able to function as one of us.  And they will not function either as the humans who live among us, forever unaware of the magic currents around them.  Therefore it will be like seeing water within their reach and never drinking.  The human mind is not made for that.  they would go mad in short order.”

“But then what can you want me to do?”

“I want you to protect them,” Oberon said, his voice echoing thunderous.  “I want you to keep them from falling to the rebel’s schemes, Darcy.  If the rebel gets hold of them, or even one of them, they have enough magic and a link to my blood to allow him to strike magically straight at the heart of fairyland, and take out myself and your grandmother too, in one single attack.”

“But…” Darcy said, slowly.  “Aren’t you afraid that I too will somehow be seduced to the mortal world, as my mother was?”  He didn’t know why he asked it, unless it were for the wishful feelings brought up in his mind by the remembrance of what he now knew was his childhood in the mortal world.

Titania laughed and Oberon gave him an indulgent smile.  “Not you, Darcy,” he said.  “Of all our descendants you’re the one most proud of the blood of fairyland.  I know we can trust in you and be sure you’ll remain loyal.  Carola will see to it, too.  No.  Our only concern is that you warn these girls before the traitor has one of them wholly in his power.