Inkwell Guest: Madeleine Drake and Faery’s Bargain

See, I told you I’d be back today with a very special guest and here I am! Today, I would like to welcome my awesome critique partner, Madeleine Drake! She’s celebrating the release of her new urban fantasy (and SUPER hot Fae story), Faery’s Bargain! And now without further ado…

Faery Evolution: From Tuatha De Danann To Tinkerbell
By Madeleine Drake

The tooth fairy, Tinkerbell, Cinderella’s fairy godmother, the fairy who opened the book at the beginning of Fractured Fairy Tales…like most modern readers, the first Fae I was exposed to were miniature people with wands and delicate little wings. Imagine my surprise when I learned that it was only recently — the 18th century — that this image of fairies became popular.

Whether we’re talking Celtic Fairies, Teutonic Elves, or some other version of European fairy, the oldest tales describe them as extraordinarily beautiful humans with magical abilities, like glamour (the power of illusion), healing with herbs, and reading the future (the French word that is thought to be the source for the word “faery” is derived from the Latin word for “fate”). The oldest version of the Fae resemble our modern conception of witches and wizards more than they resemble Tinkerbell and her kin. Early stories of the Fae describe a people with a complex culture, extraordinary powers, and an agenda that isn’t always compatible with human society.

The Fae often lived among or alongside humans, who often didn’t recognize them unless the fairies had cause to exercise their powers; there are numerous stories, in both the classical and medieval eras, where a human who interacts with a fairy doesn’t realize it until after the fact. Men and women took fairy lovers, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unwittingly, and bore halfling children who looked perfectly human but inherited their fairy parents’ otherworldly abilities. A changeling (a fairy infant switched with a human one) could only be identified by its unusual behavior, not by its appearance. On the occasions where fairies are depicted as smaller than human, it’s usually due to the fairy shapeshifting, assuming a smaller form for a specific purpose.

Literature featuring fairies mirrors the folk stories: Spencer’s Faerie Queen, Shakespeare’s Titania and Oberon, Thomas the Rhymer’s Queen of Elfland, and Gawain’s Green Knight all appeared as extraordinarily-attractive humans with inhuman abilities.

But at some point before the Renaissance, our conceptions of fairies changed, and we started thinking of them in smaller terms. By the seventeenth century, fairies become cute, dolls-sized creatures and by the eighteenth century, they’d been granted wings by human story-tellers. Popular Victorian art solidified the image of the tiny winged fairy, especially Cicely Mary Barker’s flower fairy illustrations, and this image has continued to the present day.

Not everyone liked the revisioning, though. Rudyard Kipling, in Puck of Pook’s Hill, lets Puck complain about the way humans portray his people. Puck says:

“Besides, what you call them are made up things the People of the Hills have never heard of — little buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze petticoats, and shiny stars in their hair and a wand like a schoolteacher’s cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ones! I know ’em!”

“We don’t mean that sort,” said Dan. “We hate ’em too.”

“Exactly,” said Puck. “Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don’t care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of imposters? Butterfly wings indeed!…”

Why, after centuries of describing fairies as a supernaturally-endowed versions of humans, did we suddenly feel the need to diminish our Fae friends? To answer that question, you have to remember that something else was happening in Europe during the period where the Fair Folk were becoming the Wee Folk…the witch hunting craze.

Faeries in pre-Christian Europe were closely associated with magic and were often partnered with human witches and seers. Faeries had their own moral code and were said to worship their own deities. As witch-hunting hysteria began to spread in the fourteenth century, starting in southern France and Switzerland, anything and anyone associated with magic was viewed with suspicion. For the next three centuries, anyone who admitted to believing in fairies could be, and often was, accused of practicing witchcraft.

The only way for those tales to survive was for them to be seen as harmless. Diminutizing fairies, making them small, cute and kid-friendly, was a way to keep those stories alive without being burned at the stake. When was the height of the Inquisition? The 17th century. When did fairies reach their smallest size ever, a mere ten inches tall? The 17th century.

But some older descriptions of the Fae survived through academic efforts — Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth described how Scottish seers perceived the Fae world; Norse poems, like the Volundarkvidha and Thidrek’s Saga, reveal the world of elves as they were viewed in northern Europe; Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz’s The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries preserves a great deal of faery lore from the UK; and Thomas Keightley collected legends from all over Europe, organizing them by region and theme in The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves & Other Little People.

The nothern Fae were reintroduced to the popular imagination by J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a scholar of the Norse sagas and who based his elves (and other fantasy creatures) on the old poems. Tolkien’s fiction gave rise to a spate of imitators, and for a while, faeries and elves were so numerous on the shelves that they became fantasy cliches. Recently, urban fantasy authors like Laurell K. Hamilton and paranormal romance authors like Karen Marie Moning have put new twists on the old myths, bringing them alive once again for today’s readers.

Don’t get me wrong, the tooth fairy will always have a special place in my heart, but I’m so grateful that the original versions of the Fae have been preserved future generations.

How about you? Who was the first faery you met as a child? When did you become aware that not all Fae looked like Tinkerbell?

Leave a comment and be entered to win a copy of Maddy’s new release, Faery’s Bargain!

Madeleine Drake writes feisty, fast-paced paranormal romance and erotica that spans the space-time continuum. aised by a pride of cats, a friendly mutt, and the Sonoma County library system, she loves to read about ancient history and mythology, anthropology, gender roles, and sexual archetypes.

Her current releases include Blood Hero (Excessica, 7/9/10) and Faery’s Bargain (Cobblestone Press, 10/8/10); her short story First Date is available as a free read on All Romance Ebooks as part of their “Just One Bite” contest.

Her homeworld is located out past the constellation Orion, but she currently resides in Texas. You can find her online at http://www.madeleinedrake.com.

Faery’s Bargain

Kane has what Tara wants — how far will she go to get it?

Tara’s witchcraft has failed to save her naga-bitten nephew: the only cure is a rare Faery herb, impossible for a human to obtain.

Kane, a warrior of the Morrigan tribe, is bound to a baigh-duil. He needs a witch to help him send the soul-devouring monster back to its own realm, and he’s willing to bargain.

It seems like a fair trade — the herb for help with a single spell. But what will Tara do when she realizes Kane can only perform sex magic and death magic?

Excerpt:

First time in a thousand years the oracle’s been wrong, and it’s my question she blows. Kane glowered at the occult shop across the street — a refurbished Victorian painted lemon-drop yellow and trimmed in white, with all the hand-carved flourishes picked out in gilt. Its windows swarmed with faceted crystals that sparkled like drunken pixies in the San Francisco sunlight.

It was too damned cheerful for a woman reputed to have faced down a naga in its own lair.

He stomped down his frustration, focusing on the cool air against his face and the scents of the ocean and car exhaust. The witch inside that candy house might not be the one he sought, but Kane had to admit she was skilled for a human. He could feel the thick, electric buzz of her wards even from across the street. She’d layered the shielding into the walls and powered it with the ley line that ran right beneath the building. Clever, but also dangerous. Tapping straight into the line for spell-work was like drinking from a fire hose. It required excruciating precision to siphon off just the amount you needed without drowning and heroic strength of will to resist the temptation to drink too deep. Kane had seen a mage lose control of a ley line in mid-spell once. The mage had suffered an agonizing death, and the damage wreaked by the botched spell had taken weeks to clean up.

Pain seared through him. The amulet tucked under his shirt flared hot against his skin, its fiery glow visible through the fabric. He hissed out a cantrip, repeating the chant until the pain dulled and the amulet cooled. I won’t be able to maintain the binding much longer.

If the witch in the lemon-drop house couldn’t help him, he was dead.

* * * * *

Time-yellowed pages slithered against each other as Tara folded the grimoire closed, letting her fingers explore the arcane symbols embossed on the cracked leather cover. Another ancient tome, another chunk out of her rapidly dwindling savings, another dead end. Meanwhile, Jimi continued to weaken under the care of his confused doctors. She didn’t blame them, of course. Even if she could make them believe her, what could they do? My nephew was bitten by a half-man, half-snake monster straight out of Hindu mythology. What do you mean you don’t have the right anti-venin?

Even more frustrating, she’d found a cure for the naga’s poison — crith-siol, a plant rumored to be cultivated by the Tribes of the Fae — but it had proven impossible to get. For the last three months, she’d scoured book after book, hoping to find a substitute for the faery herb. As she searched, Jimi grew weaker. Tara had snatched the boy out of the naga’s coils before the monster could eat him, but she hadn’t saved him. She’d merely postponed the inevitable, and now she could do nothing but watch her nephew deteriorate, his body shutting down one system at a time. The last doctor had given Jimi a couple of months more, at best.

I wish Gran was alive. Gran would have found a cure by now. Or she’d have found a way to get the crith-siol, no matter what it cost.

Gran wouldn’t have let Jimi get caught by the naga in the first place.

The brassy jangle of bells signaled the arrival of a customer. The jangle was cut short by a loud thump and a metallic crash — the front door slamming shut. An impatient customer. Tara sighed, caught between irritation at the interruption and guilty relief for the distraction. She stepped into the front room of her shop.

The man in the black leather duster frowned at a rack of hand-crafted candles as if he found the colorful cylinders of beeswax offensive. He was tall, dark, and too beautiful to be called handsome. His long black hair was pulled back into a sleek braid, the severity of the hairstyle contrasting with the sensual planes of his face — sloping cheekbones, amber-brown eyes under upswept brows, and a wide, full-lipped mouth over a strong chin. He was the sexiest man she’d met in ages, and if the humming in her head was any indication, a powerful mage. That delicious hum reverberated down her spine, lighting up her nerves as it went.

He looked up, and his frown evaporated in the flash-fire of another emotion — something so intense it made Tara want to squirm.

Can I help you? she meant to ask. But when she opened her mouth, what came out was, “Mine.”

Horrified, she barely managed to stop herself from clapping her hand over her mouth. Mine? Where did that come from? It had been a long time since she’d dated, but was she so lonely that the mere presence of an attractive man was enough to scramble her brains?

Apparently so.

The corner of his mouth twitched as if he were fighting the urge to laugh.

Tara flushed. “I mean, I make them. The candles.”

He licked his lips, a deliberate, sensual motion, and Tara found herself mirroring the action before she could stop herself. What’s wrong with me?

“Um.” She cleared her throat and tried again. “Can I help you?”

The stranger smiled. “I believe you can, Bandraoi.”

* * * * *

The oracle had been right after all. The witch’s aura had responded to him at once, flaring in intoxicating reds and purples the moment she’d emerged from the back room. Her eyes widened with surprise, and the power he sensed sleeping within her stirred, brushing against his aura like a curious cat. He fisted his hands against the near-overwhelming urge to reach out and pet her. She had a touch of the Tribes in her. His body’s reaction to it was sharper than a knife to the heart and hotter than a Beltane bonfire. It was like his first fight and his first orgasm squeezed into one frenzied moment.

His witch was short and curvy, and she’d wrapped her luscious figure in a clingy black dress that emphasized her hourglass shape. When she pursed her lips, his cock expanded as his imagination burst open, spilling one wicked fantasy after another into his brain. He pictured her moss-green eyes half-shut with delight, sweat gleaming on her skin, while her wavy gold hair clung to her bare shoulders. He imagined all that power crackling through him as she trembled in the throes of it, her silken voice raw with ardor.

She’d sensed the rousing of her Fae nature; he could tell by the slight quiver of her shoulders, the heat that bled over her cheeks, the pink tip of her tongue wetting her bottom lip. She was perfect — except for the wariness that glimmered across her face when he’d addressed her by her proper title. Surely she knew Bandraoi was a term of respect among the Tribes? Or hadn’t she recognized him for what he was yet?

Tara blinked. Bandraoi. The stranger had called her “Witch,” in the same liquid tongue Gran used to mutter when working charms. But when he said the word, it sounded like an endearment. “Who are you?”

“Foilsim.” I reveal. The room pulsed, the air thickening and shimmering around the stranger like a mirage. The tugging sensation in her guts and the pins-and-needles tingle at her nape signaled the presence of unfamiliar magic. He hadn’t even introduced himself, but he presumed to raise power within the confines of her wards?

Tara’s vision shifted as if her eyes were refocusing — a glamour dissolving, she realized. He looked exactly the same without the glamour, except the tips of his ears had gone pointy, a sword hilt peeked over his shoulder, and now she could see the golden torc encircling his neck, its ends capped with glittering emeralds.

Hel’s tits. He was Fae.

If Gran were here, oh, the scolding she’d have given Tara. A man too lovely to be true walks into the shop, and you’re so busy ogling him that everything I taught you falls out of your head?

She should have been terrified, but she wasn’t, in spite of all the stories Gran had told her about Fae treachery. Her heart was pounding with anger, not fear. Be honest. Not just anger. Lust, too.

That made the Fae even more dangerous. She wasn’t thinking straight, and his kind were masters of manipulation.

How had he gotten inside? The wards were designed to keep out anything with the slightest intention of harm. She checked them, found them solid, with no sign of damage or tampering, and scowled. No way did she believe a warrior of the Tribes was harmless.

“Nice wards,” he said. “A little risky plugging them right into the ley line, though.”

What do you want? Her mouth wasn’t working again. He’s enchanted me. Something to make me more malleable. A lust spell, maybe? That explained her insane attraction to him, overriding fear and common sense, which in this case should be the same thing. She had to find a way to break his spell so she could think again.

But the only thing that disrupted Fae magic was cold iron — iron from a meteorite — and she didn’t have any. It was too expensive, especially when she needed every penny the shop brought in to find Jimi’s cure. Besides, this warrior wouldn’t require magic if he wanted to hurt her. The body under his leather duster was solid with muscles. Her imagination teased her with a guess at what he’d look like naked, and the swirling warmth in her belly went lower, settling between her legs. She gulped. Focus, Tara. “Leave.”

He smiled as if her dismissal was exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. “No.”

She snatched up a protective onyx fetish from the display near the register and passed it through the air before her in the shape of Algiz, the rune, Algiz of protection. “Stay back.”

The Fae didn’t look the least bit worried. If anything, he looked amused. He took a step closer.

Tara willed her traitorous arms not to reach for him. It had to be a lust spell. How in Hades had he enchanted her without her noticing? She drew the protective rune in the air again, visualizing a barrier between them and pushing power into it. A ghostly but impenetrable wall did not appear before her.

Damn it. Why wasn’t it working?

He laughed and licked his lips again. Tara couldn’t help imagining that tongue against her own lips, teasing them until they parted. She inhaled, an attempt to calm the excitement dancing through her. Mistake. He smelled like leather and musk and sunshine on fresh-cut grass — and something else, something smoky she couldn’t identify. Faery pheromones? Her pulse quickened. She tightened her grip on the stone fetish, clutching it so fervidly her hand hurt.

“Third pass activates the spell.” Could he tell she was bluffing? “Get out of my shop while you can, elf.”

“There’s no need for that, Bandraoi. A simple proposition would do.” He captured her hand with his own and turned it around so she could see the intricately carved stone she’d been waving at him.

She blushed so hot her skin practically sizzled. It wasn’t an amulet of protection; in her panic, she’d grabbed a fertility charm. Good plan, Tara. Maybe you can arouse him to death.

The Fae stroked the inside of her wrist with one thumb, crossing back and forth over her skin in a soothing pattern. “Any way you want me, you can have me, Bandraoi.”

The burn of humiliation was a blessing. It helped dampen her near-overwhelming attraction to him. Tara stepped back and yanked her arm out of his grasp. “Who are you?”

“My name is Kane Donal mac Roich,” he said. “I claim respite under the Treaty of Danu.”

Giving his full name was a gesture of respect, and it was a dangerous insult not to return the courtesy — grounds for him to claim offense and demand restitution, if he chose. But there was also power in a name, and she didn’t believe the Treaty would protect her if this Fae decided to use hers against her.

“You can call me Tara.” She’d barely managed to keep the tremor that constricted her throat from weakening her words. “What do you want?”

“I’ve come to bargain for your assistance.”

Yeah, right. “Why should I help you?”

“I have something you want.” He reached inside his duster, producing a tiny red vial. “Crith-siol.”

* * * * *

Available from Cobblestone Press:
http://cobblestone-press.com/catalog/books/faerysbargain.htm