The night before, the house was dark when Ash returned home, and there was no trace of the woman with the golden eyes. She had taken off her fine hunting clothes and folded them into the trunk at the foot of her bed with the fairy cloak, but the next morning the clothes were gone. She shook out the cloak, wondering if the clothes had inexplicably become hidden beneath it, but only the medallion clattered out, the stone as opaque as ever.
It did not seem that her stepmother and stepsisters had noticed anything out of the ordinary the day before, and once the King’s invitation arrived, all they could think of was this next ball, and the prince. They wrote to their aunt and cousins to consult on which colors to wear; they plotted over the first words they would say to His Royal Highness when they were presented to him at the ball. “One must be properly respectful and yet give a hint of playfulness,” Lady Isobel instructed her daughters over supper. “It would do you well to recall that with all the gentlemen you meet. One cannot diminish the importance of this—you must always show that you admire his wealth and stature, but at the same time you must not be in too much awe of it.”
“Why not?” Clara asked. “Do men not enjoy it when a woman is in awe of them?”
“Of course they do,” Ana put in, “but you must avoid appearing as though you are interested only in his wealth.”
“Subtlety, my dear,” Lady Isobel admonished her. “Remember to be subtle. He must know that you are comfortable with the luxuries in life, and yet at the same time you should not be too comfortable with them—after all, what will he give you if you seem to already have everything?” She laughed, and after a moment Ana joined in, but Clara seemed able to force only a thin smile.
That night as Ash was unlacing Clara from her corset and helping her prepare for bed, Ash offered, “You don’t have to do as they say, you know.”
Clara glanced at her stepsister out of the corner of her eye and said, “That’s quite something—for you to be telling me that.”
Ash frowned. “You are in a better position than I am, Clara.”
“How so? I am the younger daughter of a gentlewoman with little to her name but her name—and I doubt that you understand just where the Quinn family ranks at court. It is not a position worth envying.”
“You have access,” Ash insisted, loosening the last of the laces. Clara raised her arms and Ash pulled the corset up over her head. “You do not need to follow Ana’s method of securing a future for yourself.”
“Access to what?” Clara asked, pulling her nightgown on.
“Access to…to court,” Ash said. Seeing her stepsister eye her skeptically, she rushed on. “I only mean that you do not need to marry for wealth. You could do anything—on your own—you could earn your keep a different way.”
“How? I am a gentlewoman’s daughter. I have no trade.” She turned to face her stepsister, hands on her hips, but she did not seem bitter. “I do not deny that my mother and sister can be a bit…single-minded, but what would you have me do?”
Ash went to put the corset into the wardrobe, and said, “I—you could—you could learn a trade. You could apprentice with…a merchant.”
“A merchant!” Clara exclaimed, as if the idea were ludicrous. “Like your father?”
“I said apprentice, not marry,” Ash said sharply.
“I do not object to marrying well,” Clara said simply, and looked at Ash curiously. “Do you?”
“I simply do not believe it is right to pursue someone because—because he is high-born, or has a station above yours, or can buy you a manor house in Royal Forge,” Ash said, increasingly impassioned. “What if it does not end in the way you hoped for? You would only appear to be a grasping fool. And even worse, you would be…you would be false.”
Clara laughed. “Not everyone can be as true as you seem to be,” she said, and the words were tinged with condescension.
Ash bristled at the tone in her stepsister’s voice. She turned away to close the wardrobe door, asking tersely, “Do you require anything else tonight?”
“No,” said Clara. But as Ash left, she called out, “Don’t be angry, Ash.”
Ash paused in the doorway, her back to her stepsister, and she wanted to tell her that she was not true; half her life was spent in secret. But even though part of her yearned to tell Clara—who had long been the closest thing she had to an ally in that house—about Kaisa, about Sidhean, she could not. She only said, “Sleep well,” and left.
A fortnight after the invitation to the Souls Night ball had been delivered, Lady Isobel and her daughters left Ash at Quinn House while they went into the City. “We will be home late,” Lady Isobel said to Ash when the carriage arrived, “but I will expect you to be awake to attend us when we return.”
“Yes, Stepmother,” Ash said.
When they were gone, she went back to the kitchen where she had taken out flour and starter to bake bread. She began to work, but her mind was elsewhere. She had not gone back into the Wood since the night of the hunt, though the huntress’s invitation had been direct enough. She had stayed home partly because her stepmother and stepsisters had been home as well, and by the time they were asleep it was too late, she told herself, to go to the hunting camp. But she knew that in reality, she was simply nervous—after what Lore had said—at the idea of seeing the huntress again.
As she waited for the dough to rise she sat on the back doorstep and looked out across the garden and the meadow, but there was no sound from the Wood today. If they hunted, they hunted far from here. She had a momentary panic that the Royal Hunt had packed up their tents and taken their horses back to the City, and she might never see them again. The worry got into her bread, and the loaves that came out of the oven that day were lumpy and dry. She looked at them as if they could speak to her, and perhaps they did; she covered the bread with a cheesecloth and took out the fairy cloak and went into the Wood.
It was late afternoon by then and it would be dark soon, for the days were growing shorter. Autumn filled the air with the slightly burnt scent of drying grasses, and the Wood was colored as if it were on fire. When she reached the path that led to the central hunting camp, dusk was falling and shadows lay thick upon the ground. The torches that had been lit on the night of the ball were gone now, and the tents that had been erected on either side of the path had been packed away. Her panic flared up again, but when the path opened up into the broad meadow where the pavilion had stood that first night, there were still several marquees standing, and the hunting horses were staked out in the meadow where several men were building a bonfire. Ash approached one of them to ask for the huntress, and he took her to a marquee standing beyond the horses, calling out, “Kaisa! A visitor for you.”
“Come in,” came the huntress’s voice, and the man nodded to Ash before leaving her alone, standing before the heavy canvas flap that served as a door. Ash unhooked the rope that held it shut, and pushed it open. Inside, the huntress was sitting at a square table, where a silver pitcher sat near a goblet and the remains of a meal. A globe-shaped lantern hung from a hook on the central pole, and the floor of the tent was covered with a simple canvas cloth on which a red-and-brown rug had been laid. In the corner Ash saw a pallet, a trunk, and another chair. Kaisa seemed surprised to see her, and she put down the papers she had been reading and stood up.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” Ash said awkwardly.
“I was only looking at some notes…it isn’t important,” Kaisa said. “Come in and sit.” She moved the second chair to the table and set it across from hers, and Ash sat down, feeling as though she should have brought something—some of her misshapen bread? They looked at each other, and Kaisa’s surprise was turning into something more measured; she seemed to be contemplating what to do.
“How has the hunting been?” Ash asked, wanting to fill the silence.
“We’ve done well,” Kaisa said. “We may even finish early this season—I won’t hunt more than is necessary.”
“Does the king dem
and more?”
“He demands enough. It is his son who demands more.” A troubled look passed over the huntress’s face. “He has been too long in the battlefield and does not know when enough life has been taken.”
“Is he ready, then, to choose a bride?” Ash asked, recalling the announcement that the queen had made.
Kaisa raised an eyebrow at her. “So you’ve received the invitation to the ball on Souls Night?”
“The ladies of Quinn House received the invitation,” Ash clarified.
“Are not all eligible young ladies invited?” Kaisa pointed out, and grinned. “Do you not share the desire of so many young ladies who wish to be his bride?”
She laughed, thinking of the way Ana and Clara would react to the idea that she might marry the prince. “I would make a poor princess,” she said.
“Why?”
“Have you ever wished to be a princess?” Ash challenged her.
“That depends,” Kaisa said.
“On what?”
“On whether I would have to marry a prince,” she said, and her tone was lighthearted, inviting Ash to share her smile. At that moment the door was opened by a servant who entered to clear off the table. As he was loading the empty dishes onto his tray, Kaisa asked Ash, “Have you eaten?”
“No, but—”
“Soren, bring a plate for my guest, and another goblet,” Kaisa said to the servant.
“It’s not necessary,” Ash protested.
“It is done,” Kaisa said, and the servant bowed to them before he left. When they were alone again, the huntress asked, “How are things, then, at Quinn House? Are you content?”
Ash laughed thinly. “Content?” she repeated, and she heard the bitterness in her voice. “I am a servant….” She trailed off, feeling uncomfortable; had the huntress not just sent her servant away to serve her? The difference in their stations had never bothered her before; in the Wood, when they were alone, she could imagine that they were at the same level. But after the hunt and the ball, she could no longer deny the bald facts of it. She knew there was still a bit of flour trapped beneath her fingernails, remnants of her day’s work; across from her, the huntress wore a ruby ring on her right hand, the stone glowing in the lamp light like a tiny fire.
“I am sorry,” said Kaisa, “if I have offended you.”
She looked genuinely concerned, and Ash could only shake her head. “Oh no,” she said. “You have made me feel so welcome, as though I were the same as you and no servant at all; you have never offended me.” And then she wondered if she had said too much, and she colored a little in embarrassment. She was saved by the return of the servant, who bowed to her too—thus deepening the flush on her cheeks—and set before her a plate of food as well as a gold-plated goblet.
“Thank you, Soren,” said the huntress. “That will be all for tonight.” He nodded and left them, and the huntress picked up the silver pitcher and filled their goblets with wine. “You should eat,” Kaisa said, “before the food gets cold.” There was roast venison, of course, and flatbread, and sweet grilled onions and charred potatoes. It was so good that Ash had no trouble eating it all, and the huntress seemed pleased that she enjoyed it.
Something about the way Kaisa’s face was lit by the hanging lamp reminded Ash of the great bonfire in the City Square at Yule, and she said, “At Yule, when you and your hunters went to the Square—you sang a song. Where is it from?”
Kaisa took a sip of wine from her own goblet before answering. “That is a very old tune. Its origins are more legend than confirmed fact.”
“What is the legend?”
“It is said that many hundreds of years ago, when fairies still walked the land and the King’s Huntress was appointed to go between both courts, a powerful greenwitch was called upon to cast a spell that would ensure the huntress’s safe return each time she visited the fairy court. But in order for the spell to hold, each time the huntress went into that other world, she had to gather all of her hunters together to chant the words, for that would bind her to this world. If they ever did not say the spell together before she left for the fairy court, she might never be able to return.”
“And now it is sung only at Yule?” Ash asked, taking a sip of the wine, which was light and cool.
Kaisa nodded. “As far as I know, yes.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I am not sure. It is tradition. I believe that the huntress was called to the fairy court annually—at least this is what the stories say—and that annual visit was shortly after Yule, near the first of the new year. Perhaps that is why the song is still sung today at that time.”
“You speak of the fairy court as if you believe in it,” Ash said, taken aback.
“I will not discount anything that has endured in our traditions for so long,” said Kaisa, with a small grin.
“Does the King share your views?”
“He…he does not hold much with the old ways,” Kaisa said slowly. “But I am free to do as I must to tend the King’s Forest.” She paused, watching Ash finish the last of the venison, and then said, “On the subject of traditions…you have never told me your favorite fairy tale.”
Ash grimaced slightly. “I am not sure if it is my favorite anymore, but when I was younger I would read it over and over.” She hesitated before she began the tale, wondering if it might reveal something about her that she wished to keep secret. But perhaps the wine had loosened her tongue, for it did not seem so unusual to sit there across from the King’s Huntress and tell her the tale of Kathleen, a girl who wandered into a fairy ring and longed so much to return to that world that she left this one behind.
Kaisa listened intently, and when Ash was finished she said, “That was not a particularly happy tale.”
“No,” Ash agreed, “but I think that few of them are.”
“Why is that?”
“I think that they are meant to be lessons.”
“For children?”
“For life,” said Ash. “Do not be seduced by false glamour; do not shirk your duties; do not wander off alone into the Wood at night.” As she spoke she thought wryly, not that I’ve always followed those rules.
“Do not fall in love with those who cannot love you,” added the huntress. “Did you learn from those lessons?”
“Not all of them,” Ash said. “Did you?”
“I believe,” said Kaisa, “that I am still learning.” This time when they fell into silence, Ash did not feel the need to fill it with questions. Somehow during the course of the evening things had shifted, and it was just like it had been when they had ridden together in the hot summer. They could hear the sounds from the bonfire outside—the laughter of men and women, snatches of conversations about hunting. Ash had been fingering the stem of her goblet, looking at its fine workmanship, when Kaisa asked, “Will you come to the ball?”
She raised her eyes, and there was a warmth, an invitation, in Kaisa’s face that she had not expected. She felt herself respond to it, a flush of heat rising inside her. “The Souls Night ball?” she said, her mouth going dry.
Kaisa nodded. “Yes. Will you come?”
“I—I don’t know,” Ash stammered.
“I would like to see you there,” Kaisa said, and her voice was gentle.
Ash did not know what to say. She felt as though she had stepped into someone else’s shoes—for surely the King’s Huntress could not mean to invite her? But Kaisa did not seem confused, and she was waiting for an answer, so Ash said, “I will try.” And then she realized that it was late and she had to return home to wait for her stepmother, and she rose from the table so quickly that she banged her hip on it. “I am sorry; I have to go home,” she explained. “Thank you so much for the food, and for allowing me to interrupt your evening.”
Kaisa stood up as well, and she stepped forward and took Ash’s hands in hers and kissed her on both cheeks. “Good evening, then,” Kaisa said.
Ash was momentarily astonished, for the huntre
ss had never done that before, though it was the customary farewell practiced by the people in that country, and her cheeks burned. “Good evening,” she managed to say, and Kaisa pulled back the door for her politely, and Ash stepped out into the chilly night. Her legs felt slightly wobbly, but she told herself it was from the wine, and the cold air was welcome on her skin.
On the way home, Sidhean fell into step beside her, and for the first time in a long time, she was startled by his arrival. But when she saw him, his presence flooded into her; it was like ink being released into water, and it was a relief, for it was familiar. She put her hand on his arm and let him lead her off the path and toward the river, where the water rushed by with the half-moon wavering in the moving surface. They stood together for long moments without speaking, breathing in the cool night air. She felt him take her hand and press something into her palm, and when she looked down she saw a ring set with a moonstone.
“Why are you giving me this?” she asked.
“You are as deserving of fine jewels as any princess,” he said, and when she looked at him the moonlight skipped off his face as if it were a mirror, and she could not see his expression. She held the ring up to the pale light and it glimmered with a slow, white, fairy’s fire, and she knew that it was full of magic. There was more to this ring than mere ornamentation. He said, “I cannot allow you to forget our agreement.”
“I would never forget,” she said, her voice strained, for she found it difficult to speak when he was so close to her.
“Put it on,” he said, and she could only obey him. When she slipped it on her finger, she had the disquieting sensation that she was being swallowed by him, that he was all around her, and though it was uncanny, it was not entirely unpleasant. In fact, in some ways it was strangely exhilarating, and she shivered. He caressed her cheek with his fingers, and she covered his hand with hers so that the ring was touching him, too.
“It is too much,” she managed to say, breathless.
He was rubbing her hands between his, and he said, “It is only an adjustment. Now, you see? It is easier.” Gradually, the sensation eased a bit—she no longer felt as though all she could see was Sidhean, and his features swam into focus before her. It felt, now, as though he made more sense to her, as if the ring were binding her to him. He smoothed her hair back from her face, cupping her chin in his hands, and she was forced to look up at him, his eyes like crystals glittering in the dark. “I do not trust human girls,” he said, and there was a cruel tone in his voice that she had not heard in years. He abruptly let go of her and she crumpled down to her knees, her breath rasping in her lungs.