“I…yes,” Ash said. She was not sure if she could speak of it, not directly.
“It frightens you,” Kaisa observed.
Ash knew she could not conceal her fear; she felt a prickling sensation along her limbs where the fabric of the dress touched her, as if there were fingers prodding her to move. This gown and this night were the last she could ask of Sidhean; his magic was impatient for payment. She could feel him waiting, as if he were lurking just around the corner, watching her.
Kaisa came closer to her and took her left hand, the one that was not wearing the moonstone ring, for Ash had curled that one away behind her. The mask dangled between them, the cord twined in their fingers. “Let me help you,” Kaisa said. “You don’t need to face it alone.”
Ash heard her speak the words, but it was as though she heard them very distantly, for the dress was still pulling on her, tugging her mind’s eye back to Sidhean. Then the huntress drew Ash’s right hand from behind her back, covering the moonstone ring with her warm, human fingers, and at last Ash felt her there, so close that she could feel the heat from her body. And she said, “You cannot help me; I must finish this on my own.” There is nothing you can do, she thought. I am the debt; not you. For the first time, the consequence of her choice was devastatingly clear: fulfilling her contract with Sidhean meant that she would never see Kaisa again.
“Is it your stepmother?” Kaisa asked.
Ash laughed, for her stepmother’s demands were insignificant in comparison to the enchantment she had tangled herself in. “No,” she answered. “It is nothing so simple.”
“Then what is it?”
“Please,” Ash said, “I must do this alone. You do not need to concern yourself with me—I know you have more important things to attend to.”
Sadness washed over the huntress’s face. “Ash,” she said, “I would do whatever I could to help you. How can I make you understand that?”
“But why?” she could not help asking. “I am no one—a servant in a poor household. What could I give you?”
Kaisa seemed taken aback. “You don’t need to give me anything,” she said. “I offer because I care for you. I thought you felt the same way.”
“I do,” Ash said, and as she said it she knew that it was true. It frightened her more than the dress did, more than the bargain she had struck with Sidhean. It made her skin flush and her hands feel cold, and she had to look away from the huntress, whose eyes were so green at that moment it was like looking at leaves on a tree. Below the balcony, in the ballroom, the dancers whirled in their dresses that had been spun from ordinary human-made looms.
They heard the tolling of a bell, ringing slowly and deeply, and as the hours struck, Ash remembered that the time she had been granted that night was coming to an end. “I must go,” Ash said, and she stepped away from Kaisa, pulling her hands away. When Kaisa’s skin was no longer touching the moonstone ring, it flared into life again, burning as though it were angry with her.
Kaisa lifted her hand to Ash’s chin, turning her face so that she had to look at her, and she was both hopeful and resigned. “You would owe me nothing,” Kaisa said. “But it is your decision to make.” Then she stepped back and took the mask out of Ash’s hand, helping her to fit it back over her face.
They walked together in silence down the corridor, and when it opened into the great hall filled with revelers and laughter and light, the palace doors yawning open at the far end, the huntress stopped. “I will bid you good night here,” she said. Once again she kissed her on both cheeks, but this time Ash kissed her as well, and she wondered when—or if—she would see her again.
“Good night,” Ash said, and then Kaisa turned away and went back into the ballroom. Ash walked the length of the great hall slowly, and as she passed the entrance to the ballroom she turned to look in on the sea of people, a blur of color beneath the flaming chandeliers. Within the crowd she saw Kaisa, the sole unmasked celebrant, turn back to look at her, and it was as if another world was laid over the one she was in. She could see Kaisa and the dancers and the solid heft of the marble pillars, but over it all she could see another ballroom. In this one, the revelers were all dressed as she was, in gowns as light and filmy as butterfly wings, with jewels as delicate as cobwebs slicked with droplets of morning dew, and the music was wilder, as if played on instruments that had not yet been invented. Anchoring the two worlds together was Kaisa, who stood there for one moment looking back at her, and then continued on into the ballroom.
The two worlds slid apart again, and Ash could only see the palace that she stood in. The present rushed back into her as she saw, coming up the steps from the ballroom to the great hall, Lady Isobel, Ana, and Clara. Ash’s stepmother was not wearing a mask, and she looked extremely vexed as she herded her daughters out toward the courtyard and the carriages. With a feeling of panic rising in her, Ash began to run toward the courtyard, realizing that she would need to overtake them in order to arrive home before they did. Outside there was a crush of people waiting for their carriages, and Ash pushed through them, disregarding their comments about her rudeness. But when she could see the line of carriages waiting to drive up to the palace doors, her heart sank, for she could not see hers. She stood there looking desperately into the crowd until someone dressed in royal livery approached and asked if he could help, but then she saw the little white carriage, inexplicably, at the head of the queue. The footman leapt down from his perch and opened the door for her and said, “Hurry; we have very little time.”
She climbed into the carriage and he slammed the door after her, and there was scarcely time for him to jump back onto the driver’s seat before they were moving again. They drove quickly, and once again she could see nothing more than a black square outside the window, but this time she could feel the road beneath them. The carriage jostled uncomfortably as they sped out of the City toward Quinn House, and she had to cling to the edge of the seat. The drive took longer this time as well, and she felt as though the magic were draining out of this night far too quickly. When the carriage came to a stop at last and the footman opened the door for her, they had arrived in the courtyard in front of Quinn House, which loomed dull and stony before her. She stepped out and began to thank the footman, but he was already jumping back up into his seat with the driver, who told her, “Go quickly; they are almost here.” The driver chirruped at the horses, and within the blink of an eye they were gone, and Ash was left standing alone in the dark. She heard, quite distinctly, the sound of ordinary carriage wheels approaching.
She ran toward the front door and fumbled with the knob, but her fingers slipped on it in her haste, and for a moment she could not open it. Just as she managed to push the door open, the carriage rolled into the courtyard, and the carriage lantern shone into the dark doorway. She heard the carriage door open and her stepmother say, “Who is that?” Ash turned around to face them, and her stepmother was standing beside the carriage, the look of surprise on her face turning into anger. She came toward her, her black cloak flying back as she came into the house. “Aisling,” her stepmother said in a cold voice, “what are you doing?”
Ash felt as though her body had just gone numb, and she did not answer. She backed away from the front door, retreating into the dark hall, and her stepmother came after her, blocking the beam of light from the lantern that had thrown their shadows across the wall. “Clara, come and light the candles,” Lady Isobel called to her daughter, and in a moment Clara came into the house. When the match flared up, Ash saw Clara looking frightened and uneasy. Ana was behind her, and when she recognized Ash, her curiosity twisted into a look of fury.
“What are you wearing?” Ana demanded, coming closer to her. Ash tried to back away but Ana reached out and grabbed her wrist, digging her nails into Ash’s skin.
“Where did you get those clothes?” her stepmother asked.
“Mother,” said Ana, “she is the one that they were talking about all night. She is the one who danced with
Prince Aidan and then disappeared.”
“That can’t be possible,” Lady Isobel said.
“Look at her,” Ana insisted. “I recognize the gown. Look at it—look at this necklace!” Ana reached for the diamond necklace and yanked at it, pulling it from Ash’s neck, and the delicate strands broke, the large sapphire clattering onto the floor.
Lady Isobel bent to pick up the jewel. “Did you steal this?” she demanded. “How did you get these jewels and this gown? Have you been stealing from me?”
“No,” Ash said.
“She must have been stealing,” Ana said. “These are diamonds, Mother! How else could she afford a gown like this?”
Her stepmother came toward the two of them, and in the dim light she took the strand of diamonds from Ana’s outstretched palm. She held them up to the candlelight and they glittered, cold and hard. She looked from the jewels to Ash, and then said, “Where did you get these things?”
Ash did not answer. What did it matter if her stepmother thought she was a thief? Her time here would come to an end soon enough. Even when Ana put her hand on the collar of Ash’s gown and ripped it from her, Ash did not feel her stepsister’s nails against her skin. “She has more jewels in her hair,” Ana was saying, and her stepsister began to pull at the silver rope braided into her hair. “I can’t get it out,” Ana said in frustration, and Ash put her hands over her head, backing away until her hip struck the doorway to the kitchen. Her stepmother came toward her and grabbed her by the shoulders in a bruising grip and propelled her through the doorway.
“Sit down,” she commanded her, and pushed her toward the kitchen table. Ash knocked against the bench, wincing where it struck the backs of her knees. Her stepmother pulled out a pair of kitchen shears. “You have no respect for me or for what I have done for you,” her stepmother said, her voice hard. “I have fed and clothed you for so many years, and this is how you repay me—by stealing from me. You are an ungrateful bastard, and I wish I had never married your father.” Then she pulled at Ash’s hair and began to cut out the jewels in savage, uneven slices. When she had extricated them all, she handed them to Ana, who was watching with a triumphant smirk on her face. Clara stood behind them both, and in the light of the single candle Ash could not tell whether Clara was happy or horror-struck. She looked down and saw that her hair lay in clumps all over her lap and on the floor, and she began to pick them up with slow, clumsy fingers.
“You can clean up later,” said her stepmother, who went to take the square mirror down from behind Ash’s door, and held it in front of her. “There—see how much better you look now that those jewels are gone? You were always too plain to wear anything so grand. You should never have tried to rise above your station.”
In the mirror, Ash saw a pale, expressionless face with wide brown eyes, and where there had once been a smooth length of dark brown hair, now she saw ragged edges pointing every which way. She looked like a madwoman. She glanced up at her stepmother and said deliberately, “Thank you. I think it suits me.”
Her stepmother exploded with anger. She slammed the mirror down on the table so hard that it cracked, and when she saw the crack she reached out and slapped Ash across the cheek. She caught the edge of Ash’s lip with her signet ring and Ash knew that she had drawn blood, for she tasted it as it ran into her mouth. But she was not afraid anymore, even when her stepmother yanked her up again and pushed her out the back door and down the cellar steps. Before her stepmother locked the door after her, she said, “You’ll starve in there before you speak to me like that again.” She heard the turn of the key in the lock—the well-oiled click of the tumbler falling into place—and then her stepmother slammed the kitchen door shut above her, and her footsteps retreated until, at last, there was silence.
Chapter XVIII
In the darkness, Ash pressed her bruised face against the back of the cellar door, feeling the wood smooth and cold against her skin: such a thin and porous gatekeeper between herself and the outside world. She moved away from the door and felt her way across the cellar until she came to her father’s trunks pushed against the far wall. She sat down, leaning against one of them, wrapping her arms around her knees. The cellar smelled of dirt and musty air and this year’s apples.
She was finally beginning to feel the sting of her stepmother’s slap across her cheek, and when she prodded at the corner of her lip with a careful tongue, she winced. Her stepmother had never locked her in the cellar for more than one night, for she needed Ash to work. But she was especially angry this time, and Ash was not sure how long she would be left there. She put a hand up to her hair and touched it gingerly; her head felt much lighter now. She ran her fingers through the uneven remains of her hair and noticed that she was still wearing the moonstone ring; Ana must not have noticed it. Turning the ring around on her finger, Ash decided that when she was out of the cellar she would finish what her stepmother had begun and cut the rest of her hair off. She felt buoyed by this thought, and wondered why she did not feel angry at her stepmother. She felt, instead, strangely indifferent. Her life upstairs did not matter anymore. It wasn’t real to her. It wasn’t what she had ever wanted.
Her mind was racing with memories of that night, and she did not expect to become tired. But eventually she grew drowsy, and she did not know she had nodded off until she awoke to the sound of the cellar door opening. She scrambled up in alarm, thinking it was her stepmother. But the doorway was empty, and moonlight spilled down the steps and flung a rectangle of watery white light on the cellar floor. She got up and went to the door, wondering if this were a dream, and when she stood in the doorway she saw a path laid out in moonlight, glowing, up the steps and across the kitchen garden and out into the meadow. She decided to follow it.
It led her into the Wood, and she saw the path winking far ahead of her like crushed diamonds. It wound through the trees and did not follow any ordinary trail that had been broken in by hunters or the deer they chased. This path meandered like a river of light, and as she walked, her feet kicked up tiny flecks of silver dust that hovered in the air. The path came to an end in a circular clearing, where she saw a crystal fountain in which a hawthorn tree made of diamonds rained clear water. Standing by the fountain was Sidhean.
He came toward her and lifted her chin in his hand, and she was reminded, painfully, of Kaisa. He said, “She has hurt you.” At first she did not know who he was talking about, and she wanted to say, no, she would never hurt me. But then she realized he was only referring to her stepmother.
“It is nothing,” she said shortly. “It will heal.”
He seemed to be somewhat surprised by the tone in her voice, but he only said, “Come and eat, for I know that you are hungry.”
He gestured behind him to a small round table and a comfortable round chair—they looked like they had been carved whole out of ancient tree trunks—and on the table was laid out a feast for one. There was bread and cheese and fruits that looked so ripe they might be bursting with juice, and what looked like dark sweet cakes laced with cobwebs of sugar. She asked, “If I eat that food, will I die?”
“No,” said Sidhean. “That is not my wish.”
So she sat down at the table and picked up the crystal goblet and drank; it tasted like wine, but it was sweeter and lighter than any wine she had ever drunk before. She took a piece of bread from a loaf shaped like a clover leaf, and it was salty and rich and studded with nuts. There was a sharp, pungent cheese that crumbled when she bit into it, and there was a soft, creamy one that she spread over the bread. There was a knife with a smooth wooden handle, and she used it to peel the skin of a round, red fruit; inside was juicy orange flesh that tasted both sweet and tart. The cakes were light as air, with a heady, liquid center that stuck to her fingers so that she had to lick them clean, and when she had finished eating there was a bowl of water and a cloth at her side with which to wash her hands.
“This is fairy food,” she finally said, after she had dried her hands.
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br /> “Yes,” he agreed, and now he was sitting in a similar chair across from her.
“Is it real?” she asked.
His face was in shadow, but she saw his lips curve as he smiled at her. “Of course it is real. We are real, you know. We simply do not live in your world.”
“Am I no longer in my world?”
“Not right now, no. When you took the moonlight path you came to my world.”
“You brought me here,” said Ash. “Why?”
“You told me a fairy tale once,” he said, “and now I have one to tell you.” He flexed his fingers and folded them on his knee before continuing. “Once, a long time ago, when magic was stronger in this land, our two races were much closer than they are now. In those days, there was a reason for us to take humans into our fold, because together we created a kind of balance that was good and necessary. But over the centuries, almost all the magic within your people has disappeared. We do not know why. At the same time, your people often chose to ignore their mortality. No one is more impressionable than young humans. They are fooled into thinking they can live forever, when in fact they are about to die.”
“I am not fooled,” Ash said.
“No,” he agreed. “You are not. And once there was another girl who was not fooled. She was no ordinary girl; she knew all the old stories. I could feel her more clearly than any other girl I had encountered in many years, for the old magic was alive in her. It was slight, but it was enough to awaken my interest. I have taken countless human girls, but not for many of your lifetimes. There has been no reason, for your kind does nothing for my people anymore, and my people are reaching the end of our own time. I cannot deny that we are not what we once were.