Charles Bewitched by Marissa Doyle Page B

sister more easily to her new life. Very
well, little wizard, you may stay, at least for as long as I find you useful.
You will find your new position no sinecure. I shall expect you to attend me
whenever I wish you to.”
    “Yes, sir.” Charles dropped
his eyes modestly as he bowed, to hide the triumph that must surely show in
them. Once they let Persy wake up, he’d be able to talk to her and they could
figure something out together. Good old Perse could always figure things out.
    “You may sit there and
watch,” the fairy lord said, gesturing vaguely to a place at his feet and
already turning back to Persy. “Pay attention. You’ll have to learn our ways if
you’re going to be useful.”
    “ I’ll teach him,
brother,” Margaret said, taking his arm again.
    “Hmm.” The fairy lord
glanced at her, and a small frown rippled across his face and was gone. He
turned to Persy again and smiled into her pale, sleeping face.
    Charles sat down where the
fairy lord had indicated and pretended to watch the dancing. But mostly he was
watching the spot where he had been hiding, across the clearing. Was Nando
still there, watching him back? He reached up and pretended to adjust his
collar as he nodded, trying to signal that all was well.
    But no face appeared above
the undergrowth, nodding in understanding. The undergrowth itself stayed still,
not revealing by the flutter of the smallest leaf that a boy still crouched
there, watching him. Charles swallowed back his disappointment. Nando had
probably fled as soon as Margaret had given him her hand. Had he gone back to
Galiswood to report? Or had he made his way back to the road, to find his kumpania and shake the dust of these fairy-haunted woods from his new hand-me-down
boots?
    Charles squared his
shoulders. It looked as if he were on his own. He and Persy…against a fairy
lord of extraordinary cunning and his very charming younger sister.

Chapter Six
     
     
    When the moon had begun to
slip below the trees, the fairy lord rose from his chair by Persy and lifted
one hand. Instantly the torches somehow extinguished themselves, the musicians
stopped playing and put away their instruments, and the dancers ceased their
frolics and begun to walk sedately toward him. Charles climbed warily to his
feet and watched them approach but they ignored him, only pausing to bow
respectfully to the fairy lord as they passed through the tall, dark doorway in
the side of the barrow.
    Charles wanted to rub his
eyes in astonishment, but managed not to: where had that door come from? It
hadn’t been there a minute ago—
    “He opened it, of course,”
Margaret said, as if he’d spoken the question aloud. Charles started; he’d
nearly forgotten she was there. “That’s one of his powers as our liege lord—to
be able to open doors.”
    After almost everyone had
passed through the door, the fairy lord himself bent to lift Persy in his arms.
He looked at Charles and Margaret, lifted an eyebrow, and went through the
doorway.
    “What’s he going to do with
her?” Charles asked in alarm.
    “Why, bring her back to her
room and let her ladies put her to bed. She’ll wake in a while.”
    “Will she remember
anything?”
    “No, how could she? She’s
been asleep,” Margaret said, surprised. “But my brother went into her dreams to
be with her so that she wasn’t lonely while the rest of us rejoiced. Didn’t you
see him talking to her?”
    Charles wondered if Persy
might not have preferred to be alone; it seemed rather presumptuous to invade
someone’s dreams without their permission. But Margaret was tugging his sleeve.
    “Come on—it’s time to go,”
she said, and taking his hand, led him through the dark doorway. To his
surprise, they were suddenly standing in a broad, twilit field, tilting gently
downward toward what he thought might be a lake—at least, there was a darker
expanse there that might have been water. The air was soft, warmer than the
night they’d left