Ice Shards - By Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,12

all along?”

I shook my head, deciding I might as well tell her the truth. “No, my name was Pirkitta, but I was afraid that my reputation might have filtered down from the Northlands. News from the temples often did. So I picked my favorite flower, and then when I came over to the States, I used the Western form for it.”

“So how did you go about working for the Kuusis after they caught you hiding in the barn?” Smoky paused by a tree that had fallen across the path and, with a nod from me, lifted me over it like he might lift a baby out of a crib. He did the same for Camille, then lightly leapt over the trunk.

Smoky had traded in his trademark ankle-length white trench for an ankle-length white fur cape that billowed around him. Rozurial was wearing a black fur cape, and beneath these they wore their elfin cloaks. I had my cloak over my parka, and Camille wore hers over her robe made out of the black unicorn hide.

When we were all on the other side of the deadfall, I answered. “I told Kustaa that I needed a job, that I had lost my family in a tragedy and was on my own. He recognized that I was a house sprite and offered me a place in his family, helping his wife with the children and gardens. He had such a kind demeanor . . .”

I closed my eyes, remembering his gentle voice that seemed so out of place against his gruff exterior. “I couldn’t help but say yes. They had ten children, and his wife’s parents were living with them, and a maiden sister and an unwed brother.”

“That’s a lot of work,” Camille said.

“Oh, it was, but they treated me fairly and never raised a hand to me. Kustaa and the men would go hunting for weeks at a time, while the women watched the home fires. I was used to hard work from the temple—we had to shoulder our own weight there as well as learn all our magic, so it was no stretch to help out the Kuusis. And so I stayed.”

“You became part of their family,” Roz said, a gentle smile on his lips.

“Yes, and had I wed there and had children, we would be bound as a family to them. That’s the way it works when you belong to one of the house sprite races. We love helping out, we’re homey folk in general.”

“You stayed for a long time, Mistress Iris.” Howl glanced at me. I hadn’t realized he’d been listening and felt slightly self-conscious.

“I did. As time wore on, the children grew. One of the daughters wed, and her husband moved into the house, and they raised their children there . . . and I stayed on after Kustaa and his wife died. I stayed for over four hundred years until the last of their line passed.”

Camille bit her lip, looking like she wanted to cry. “When did you leave?”

“I left in 1875, after burying Kustaa’s many-times-over great-granddaughter. She’d died unmarried, the last of her line who had stayed in the village. There are others of the family, no doubt, but long scattered. I buried her in the family plot, and then I took the money that she had left, and a few treasures, and I left the door unlocked for anyone who might need a home, and I walked away.”

I remembered that day—I had felt both free, and sad. Sad to see a family come to the end. Sad to say good-bye to the sturdy house I’d lived in for four hundred years—a house I’d helped rebuild and renovate time and time again.

“From there I traveled to Spain and caught a boat to London, and from there I immigrated to Canada. I stayed in what’s now British Columbia for over ninety years. In 1970, I began to feel a pull—as if I had to pick up and move again. And so I came to Seattle and settled in, living as one of the little people—the FBH little people. And then the portals opened and I was able to come out of the closet. And I met you.”

I glanced up at Camille and smiled, my eyes teary. So many things had passed through the years, but I was barely entering the prime of my life as far as my people went. I was still young and considered pretty, even though so much had passed through my life. My