“No. Absolutely not,” I said.
Dyisi just stood there, with that implacable look on her face, a calm little smile, as if she’d expected this answer from me.
“Ochi, akribos mou,” she said— I can never follow her when she talks Greek— “It’s just that you are needed. Magic of a different kind, growing magic, building magic, and there can be no affiliation.”
“No,” I repeated. “I’m not going back there.”
“It’s for a rose bower,” she said. “Some kind of rose that’s… interconnected with the Fae Lands.”
“Well, well, well,” I said. “Her Majesty wants me to transplant a Sithen Rose.”
Dyisi mmed. “She does. The King asked her to have it placed in the bower… hm, a few nights ago?”
“And why am I the one chosen to undertake this?” I was cross, but I couldn’t hold back my curiosity.
“I told you before,” Dyisi said. “You have … no affiliation. You are not loyal to the Seelie or to the Unseelie. And … in her own way, she trusts you.”
I nearly laughed out loud at that. “She trusts me,” I said.
“Nai, she does,” Dyisi asserted. “And she asked me to come and fetch you back to Faerie, you and the boys, your whole caravan if you want, to make a grotto for this rose, and ward it well, and make it… oh, you know, she likes things pretty.”
“How long would I have to stay?” I sighed.
“Just until the work is done, akribos mou, and that pace is up to you,” Dyisi replied.
She turned away from me: I imagined it was to hide a triumphant smile. “Very well,” I said, and I gathered the boys and the caravan and explained to them what I was doing. “I’ll go ahead with Dyisi,” I said, “and you take the Gypsy Roads back to Faerie: you all know how to get there.”
One of the old men laughed in my face. “You fool,” he said. “You got away from her once; going back there would be suicide.”
In the end, one of the men agreed to lead the caravan back to Faerie. “It’s not like we haven’t been there a dozen times before,” he said. Another dig at me. I ran my fingers through my hair: the “man-bun” as the boys call it was beginning to annoy me.
As we’d done before, Dyisi reached out her staff to me, and I held on to both the staff and her hand.
Now the Gypsy Roads are quick and clever, but no mode of transportation is faster than Dyisi’s real-walking trick. I watched this time, hoping to understand how she did it, but I never can catch that realm she walks you through, the nothingness of it, the deep cold of it. In the end, I closed my eyes, because the dizziness overtook me and I feared I’d pass out if I tried to examine it further.
Once we got to the Seelie Bower, I quickly grabbed some food up in the kitchens. Luckily, she wasn’t around, so I didn’t have to deal with what I’m sure would have been her smug assurance that of course I’d come back. It was hours later when the boys arrived, and by that time I’d already begun construction on the bower arch. The boys came round quickly and laid some cobblestones, but I back-pedalled eventually and changed them for another path.
Here’s the big bower arch: you can tell how tall it is in this picture.
I admit I was proud of the arch work.
The boys joked about what a pretty boy I was, so I let them take a few more photographs. It doesn’t matter: they’ll eventually disintegrate if we spend too long in Faerie.
I think this is my favourite shot of me with the arch. We used Gypsy magic to braid the thick vines and grew them a bit so they looked as if they’d always grown that way.
That was the point at which I decided the cobblestones had to go: we’d just pull up the ground covering and smooth the ground out as had been done for the other pathways in the Bower. No need to make this one look as if there were something special about it: the sithen rose, when it’s transplanted, will be special enough on its own.
Even in October, this kind of work gets hot. Here I am pushing a story stone into place beside the path.
As chilly as it was when we started, as the afternoon wore on I got hot and had to remove my shirt and cardigan. By this time, a crowd of young Sidhe girls had gathered around, and— you know, I didn’t ask for their attention. Of course, I didn’t mind it, either.
Planting the last of the rosebushes finally happened around dusk. We were all dead tired by this point and decided to wait on constructing the actual grotto wall until the next day. It would be a simple job, after all. I’d had some of the boys gather some good stones for the wall, and we began work early the next morning.
I ended up pretty proud of the circular grotto wall we constructed. Now, we can park the vardo in the forest and wait til it’s time to transplant the rose itself. That’ll have to be done very carefully. My hope is we can just hide out in the Great Seelie Forest and I won’t have to see her, not once, not at all, and then we can get the fuck out of Faerie and back on the Road where we belong.
Style Cards:
Farm Pictures:
The Gypsy Davey:
Body, Hands & Feet: SLink Physique
Skin: 7 Deadly s{K}ins, October Group Gift (available at the 7 Deadly s{K}ins Main Store —Join the group quick, while it’s only $50L!). SLink body appliers are also available at the Main Store.
Hair: Besom, Derek
Eyes: Poetic Colors
Ears: Mandala, Steking Ears Season 5
Shirt and Cardigan: Body Factory, Ace (Available at Fashion Fair Autumn!)
Jeans: AR2 Style, NY Jeans (Available at Fashion Fair Autumn!)
Boots: 22769, Jika-Tabi
Bower Pictures:
Body, Hands & Feet: SLink Physique
Skin: 7 Deadly s{K}ins, October Group Gift (available at the 7 Deadly s{K}ins Main Store —Join the group quick, while it’s only $50L!). SLink body appliers are also available at the Main Store.
Hair: No Match, No Perfection (Available at On9)
Eyes: Poetic Colors
Ears: Mandala, Steking Ears Season 5
Shirt and Cardigan: Body Factory, Ace (Available at Fashion Fair Autumn!)
Jeans: AR2 Style, NY Jeans (Available at Fashion Fair Autumn!)
Boots: 22769, Jika-Tabi
Thanks, as often, to Dyisi Oppewall, for letting me drag her around and photograph her avatar, and for letting me make her part of the Gypsy Davey’s story.
Spiffy photos taken with the indispensible aid of my LumiPro. I never leave home without it!
Three Twisted Knots 
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