The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1

"Besides,” she told him as he cautiously drew nearer. “If you don't marry me, you’ll just end up being a slave to some other girl. Only it will be worse.”

Leradien’s voice, like a silk thread spun from the darkness, wove its enchanting spell around the boy’s thoughts.

“How do you figure?” he asked, interested.

“Well! If you marry any other girl, you’ll have to feed her and clothe her and take care of her and build her a house and be a father to her children. And you can’t ever leave her. If that’s not slavery, what is?”

Leradien did have a point there. He could not have made the same argument better himself.

“You know, I never thought of it like that,” he said. “But I also never said anything about marrying her–just sort of thinking about getting to know her better. But supposing I did marry her. Isn’t she supposed to cook for me and clean my house in return?”

“You provide what she cooks, including the firewood, and you provide the house she cleans.”

Oh! Yeah! Right. That was true.

Now the idea of getting married was beginning to sound a lot more like work to the boy than it had ever sounded before and, if there was anything he didn’t like, it was work. To him, a smart person can avoid work by using the time instead to think. It’s only the dumb ones that can’t think that have to work. And Leradien did offer the promise of no work.

She did have her advantages even if she was scary four times over. He didn’t have to build a house for her or find food for her and, if he were to live with her, he’d have no more reason to go to school. Leradien might just be a bargain, after all. There were times he thought he ought to someday make an agreement with her to someday reach an agreement, preferably one that didn’t involve any manual labor on his part.

“Maybe you’re right,” he mused.

“Of course I’m right. So tell me this elf girl’s name and I’ll go kill her for you. That solves your problem. You won’t feel attraction to her anymore if she’s dead. Then we’ll both be happy.”

“But that’s murder.”

“When your aunt eats this rabbit I caught, that’s murder too,” she said. “What’s the difference?”

“I don’t know the rabbit.”

“I don’t know the girl.”

“You get me all confused.”

“What’s to be confused about? I love you. She doesn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean I want her dead.”

“Who said anything about you wanting her dead?” Leradien said. “I’m the one that wants her dead!”

“But, if I give you her name, then I’d be a party to you killing her.”

“I’m going to find out her name anyway, sooner or later, and then I’m going to kill her just to prove how much I love you.”

“I don’t know. Somehow that just doesn’t seem right.”

“It is right! Everybody knows that if you love someone enough, you’re willing to kill for them. What more proof do you need that I love you?”

“I think it’s supposed to be, if you really love somebody, you’d be willing to die for them.”

“Well! Now, that's pretty foolish,” scoffed Leradien. “If you die for someone, how are you supposed to ever get to love them? You can’t love them if you’re dead! It’s better to let that somebody else die so you can have the one you love!”

That was true too.

“I got to think about that. You’re a drow and they say you can’t trust a drow.”

“You can trust me to kill the girl. I promise.”

“Well, don’t you do it without me giving you the final say!”

“Well then, don’t think too long on it or I’ll have to start killing all the girls in the village just to be sure I get the right one!”

“Don’t you dare do that!”

“Then tell me her name.”

He decided to talk her out of this.

“Well! Now that I think about it,” he said, studying her. “You are more beautiful than she is.”

“And?” she asked.

Now the boy knew enough to keep his compliments to women above their neck, so he’d just used them all up right then and there and had none left. Yet she was still fishing for another. He didn’t have much choice but to move lower.

“You do look really nice,” he reluctantly admitted, deliberately dropping his eyes to her figure.

“And?” she asked again.

“And what?” he wanted to know.

He’d already moved below her neck–something he shouldn’t have done, but she’d forced him. Any lower and he’d be complimenting her spider-half, and which would be a whole new other level of awkward.

“And I have the better personality, don’t I?” She corrected his mistake. “I like the same things you do! Does she? You and I share more in common than anyone else. We should always be together. Who cares what the others think?”

The boy nodded in agreement. That was true. Leradien was always right.

“Then it’s settled,” she said. “You’ll be my slave. It’s just a question of whether you come willingly or if I have to capture you.”

“So how much time have I got to think about it?” he asked.

“I have lots of time. I’m a drow. But you’re a satyr and your life is short, so you don’t. So I wouldn’t think about it too long if I were you–no longer than it takes for your head to get sore from it.”

The boy nodded again and then asked. “So you want to do something together?”

“Sure!” she said. “After it gets dark and I can come out, I’ll give you a ride on my back.”

“You won’t capture me?”

She laughed darkly. “What? You want me to promise not to? What’s a promise to a drow?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is a promise by you to me.”

Leradien tossed her flowing hair for him at that, her red, piercing eyes gazing at him like she wanted to capture him right then and there. She was obviously thinking about it.

“Oh! All right,” she reluctantly conceded. “I promise not to capture you tonight.”

It hardly seemed a convincing reply, but she’d had her chances to catch him before and hadn’t.

“Shall I come here or you come to me?”

“I’ll come to you. You’ll just stumble around in the dark forever if I wait for you.”

“Okay. You do that. I’ll wait up tonight in bed for you. Oh! By the way, do you know anything about crows?”

“Just that their very blood tastes black. They’re creatures of the Fell. Why do you ask?”

“I have a friend with one as a pet.”

“Does he use it with spells?”

“I don’t think Light Elves know any spells.”

“Light Elves don’t know anything, but you do.”

“I don’t know any spells either.”

“You know one. All satyrs do. Maybe you don’t know it because no one has ever learned you.”

“Can you learn me?”

“Sure! But not now–we drow lose our powers by daylight.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s Lolth’s way of telling us to stay underground.”

“So why aren’t you living in the drow underground cities like you should be?”

“I don’t like drow.”

“That’s a headful that you’re a drow but don’t like drow. But that’s what I hear about driders. That they’re all in rebellion to Lolth. I can see you not liking Lolth, but how can a drow not like drow?”

“Drow fight drow all the time,” she said. “So, evidently, drow don’t like drow either and especially me, but I know what I do like.”

“What’s that?”

“Fairies,” she said.

“Oh! I know you do,” the boy shot back. “You’ve got your web traps out for them all over the place.”

“And I’d catch them too if you’d stop freeing them all the time!”

“You know what fairy blood does to a drider,” the boy said, knowing the magic blood of fairies just makes a drider grow bigger and hungrier. “Besides,” he added. “I figure you’re still catching your share. You’re looking pretty good-sized to me from here. You drink any more fairy blood and you won’t be able to fit inside your own cave. Anyway, those fairies are friends of mine.”

“I know they are. I see you playing with them. They even kiss you! You don’t know how jealous and envious that makes me! But since they’re friends of yours, I let them go.”

“You?” asked the boy in disbelief. “You let them go?”

“Yes.”

“Then why catch them if you’re just going to let them go?”

“Oh! I take a little nip before I release them–just a little taste.”

“You really let them go?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?” she asked.

“Probably not,” the boy replied, knowing she was a drow.

“Then maybe I let them go or probably not,” Leradien told him indifferently. “Anyway, all except those two that kissed you, of course. If I catch them, I won’t let them go.”

“How’d you see them kiss me?”

“I was there,” she answered, her eyes growing hard in remembrance.

“So how come you won’t let those two go?” he wanted to know.

“I’m not going to let some other girls kiss you!”

“How come?” asked the boy.

“Because that’s just the way it is.”

“But we’ve never kissed.”

“That doesn’t matter. A girl doesn’t have to kiss a boy to love him or to not want other girls to kiss him.”

“Has anyone ever kissed you?”

“No.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to be kissed?”

The boy listened close, unaware of how she'd answer.