For the next several hours, there was no further resistance, only further cleaning. The Paecsie drove us hard, and, when we faltered, Ai’Ilyn was there to tongue-lash us back into motion. She didn’t use her hands now, I noticed; she didn’t need to. She’d proven her point, and no one, not even the momentarily broken Tristan, wanted to test her. But as the night went on, and as we cleaned more and more floors, scrubbing off layer after layer of dead top-layer wood grain, I kept shooting glances down the line toward him, as did Faolan. I think we both knew that he was dangerous, and we both saw the fire rekindle in his eyes as the night wore on. By the time we were done, when our hands were cracked and bleeding and Fal finally released us, his tears had dried and that fire was fully stoked once more.
I wish he had learned his lesson that night. I really wish he had.
We followed Ai’Ilyn down through the halls, using different passages and stairways, something I half-suspect she did just to confuse us. We passed by a window and I saw that the moon had shifted and was nearly at its zenith, something that made no sense to me. We had woken at moonrise what felt like hours and hours ago – how was it possible that the moon was only now cresting the height of its arc?
And then I remembered what had happened the night before, what the other children had done when the moon was high. My heart began to beat faster, knocking against the inside of my ribs with an insistent beat.
We emerged from a side passage into the great Hollowed Hall and my pulse began to pound throughout my body. I’d never felt like that before. I’d felt the pulse-pounding that comes with fear, the heart-screaming that comes with pain and loss, but I’d never felt this before, this lifting feeling that made me want to run toward something and not away from it. I was alive with true excitement for what might have been the first time in my life. To be part of that wild dance – what would it be like?
But we didn’t go outside. Ai’Ilyn led us across the room to the area we’d visited that morning, down the wooden stairs, and into the small room where more bowls of food were laid out for us. I was astonished. Two meals of such proportion in one night? That was close to the longest streak I’d ever had in my whole life.
I had stopped in the twisted entryway, shocked by the sight, but, as I was the first in line, my abrupt cessation had bottlenecked the rest of the group behind me.
Someone pushed their way past me with a sour grunt. I staggered to the side as the biggest boy of the group, the one who already looked as though he was entering the beginning stages of pubescence, moved for the table. He sat with a simple, unassuming air, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about what was happening.
I moved forward, broken from my trance, and sat in front of my own bowl, the one in the same place on the left side of the long table that I had eaten at when we’d first arrived here. Faolan sat across from me, and I did my best not to acknowledge that he had done so, because Ai’Ilyn was looking straight at me. I bent down to my bowl and started picking out long twists of root and crunching into them with my back molars. Even they were delicious – full of flavor and snap. How was that possible? Faolan went through his fruit first. Soon the small room was filled with nothing but the sound of children eating their way through dinner.
I caught motion to my right, at the entranceway to the room. Seated where I was, I could see through the strangely twisted doorway to the area just outside, where Ai’Ilyn waited, leaning against the wall. She wasn’t alone anymore; there was a second Ilyn now, with skin a darker red with less pink, and who stood several inches taller.
“Ai’Ilyn.”
The new Ilyn’s voice was deep, and it made me look closer. The creature’s shoulders were wider, and the muscles on its bare chest and arms were larger and better defined. There was also a thin trail of a bony ridgeline located above each of its eyes that went up and over its head; when it turned, I saw that the ridges went down its back, disappearing into the long vertical spine-divot of his back.
“Zal’Ilyn.”
I very cautiously watched Ai’Ilyn as the newcomer approached. She inclined her head toward him – I realized that I had started thinking of him as a male – and then watched him nod back to her.
“I set aside meat for you,” Zal’Ilyn said in his deep voice, smiling easily at her, revealing filed teeth that gleamed white. “It’s outside.”
“Thank you,” she replied, her face turned away so I couldn’t see her expression. “I had trouble with the black-haired one with copper skin.”
Zal’Ilyn grunted and looked in through the doorway. I immediately relocated my gaze to my bowl and became very interested in a piece of carrot.
I heard them both enter the room fully, but didn’t look up.
“Which one,” he said, all business now.
“That one.”
She motioned to Tristan, and, right on time, he took the opportunity to turn around with mock innocence and shrug in a babyish “who me?” way, the picture of perfect innocence, a look ruined only slightly by the evident bruising that covered the sides of his face. Two of the girls who saw it giggled before remembering to be silent and I immediately wanted to punch them in their stupid faces.
Ai’Ilyn must have been thinking along similar lines. She left Zal’Ilyn’s side and was behind Tristan in seconds. She’d grabbed a handful of his hair with one hand and the underside of his chin with the other and twisted his head painfully up toward her, cricking his neck and making it hard for him to breathe. Zal’Ilyn strode behind the two girls, one of them the beautiful blonde who’d called out to Tristan earlier, and grabbed handfuls of their hair. They screamed, and then went silent, as the male Ilyn forced them to look at the boy.
“Do not play that cute game with me,” she hissed into Tristan’s ear. His eyes were wide but defiant. “I hate feigned ignorance. It is a way of lying – and I will not tolerate it.”
She yanked back on his hair so hard that his neck cracked and he cried out in shock and terror, thinking she was trying to snap his spine, but when he realized he was still alive his defiance returned, even as she forced him to stare up into her eyes.
“There are other ways to punish you. Do not make me try them.”
She released him, and he crashed down against the tabletop, where he whimpered from the pain of smacking his forehead against the solid wood. She turned and strode away, not even looking back. The other Ilyn released the girls and followed her as far as the entrance, where he stopped and turn back toward us. He folded his arms across his bare red-white chest, the muscles in his arms rippling beneath his skin, and gazed at us each in turn.
We all looked away. Even Tristan.
We finished our food quickly – me fastest of all – with no more incident. Honestly, I don’t think Zal’Ilyn needed to stand there to enforce discipline; I probably would have done his job for him. The Ilyn had now fed me twice in the same night the best food I’d ever eaten – fresh fruit with honey drizzled over it; honey! – and if anyone so much as stepped a toe out of line that might cause said food to be taken away from us, I’m quite confident I would have beaten them myself.
And though I was a girl, I wouldn’t have used girly slaps like Ai’Ilyn had.
When she returned, she told us to stand. One of the children hadn’t finished yet, the dark-haired boy with the round belly who’d made trouble with Tristan the night before, and he continued trying to shovel the food into his mouth even after Ai’Ilyn had ordered us to stand. She strode over to him, knocked the bowl away, then slapped him on the back so the food he’d stuffed into his cheeks went flying across the table in half-chewed bits.
“Eat faster or not at all,” she growled.
I was, once again, the first one out, and Faolan was right behind me. Ai’Ilyn led us back through the scullery, where other children labored feverishly to clean and sort a dwindling stack of soiled earthen cookware. Many more of them were flowing out of the scullery both before and behind us into the Hollowed Hall.
We turned left, toward the opening tha
t led out onto the field.
My heart skipped a beat and then began to thump out a rhythm double-time. I looked past Ai’Ilyn, out of the Bower, and saw that the other children were all gathering there in the shadows of the root-hills, the various Ilyn in their multitude of hues arranged behind them. The moon was rising up over us, and I saw that it was only inches away from its zenith. It was even less full than before, which at least confirmed for me that time was still passing, even though I had yet to see a new day dawn.
We were led to a spot just outside the Bower, barely even on the grass. I dropped my gaze and looked in the direction of the forest through which we’d arrived. I wondered vaguely if it was even possible for one of us to find our way through it if we managed to escape, and decided that the chance was so remote as to make the idea of running that much more ridiculous.
I looked over at Tristan and saw he too was scanning the trees. I think it likely that he came to an entirely different conclusion. When Ai’Ilyn turned to glance at him he looked down immediately, just before she caught him. He was getting smarter.
Now that I was close enough, I saw that the other children groups had formed up in lines in front of their Ilyn with the large carrying bags slung over their shoulders. Every time I was sure that Ai’Ilyn was looking elsewhere, I snuck glances. Some of them were talking to each other in low voices and their Ilyn didn’t seem to care. Others were looking straight ahead, standing at attention, almost like soldiers. But all of them, even the ones forced into that unnatural stiffness, radiated fevered excitement like a fire on a cold night. You could see it in the way they held their hands, fingers restlessly ticking back and forth where the Ilyn couldn’t see; could see it in one of the girls chewing her bottom lip, ignoring the two boys talking in hushed tones beside her; in a boy barely older than me trying to keep his restless legs from shaking.
I flicked my gaze to the bags the closest group of children had slung over their heads and down their sides. They were made of a black leather material, and bore traces of shimmering stitching along the edges, and a strange pattern of gold along the top, where was the opening through which the moonlit dew would be sluiced off the fingers of the children gathering it.
I glanced toward the grass and saw that the dewdrops, glistening in the night, were fat and full of moonlight. The humid heat in which we’d woken had again faded somewhat, and the cold had condensed the water in the air, making the drops look like ripe fruit hanging from the trees of the tall grass stalks.
A glimmer of gold caught my eye to my left, somewhere toward the ground. I looked and saw that the Ilyn in the group beside me – a male with green coloring splashed along his too-white skin – had brought an extra bag, one that looked as though it had been recently repaired.
Ai’Ilyn turned back to face us. My head snapped back to looking forward and down, my gaze just high enough that I could see where she was and who she was looking at, but just low enough that there would be no way for her to think I was looking her in the eye. After what felt like a very long time, she spoke:
“Listen very carefully to what I am about to say. I will not repeat myself. One of your duties as a member of this Bower is to collect the moonlight captured in the dew. Each night there is a moon, you will come here and do so. When you are here, you are not to speak to anyone in any other group but yours. You are not to make eye contact with them. You are not to involve yourselves with them in any way.”
She paused to let this statement sink in, but I was already nodding internally. I’d expected as much – I wanted her to get on to what it was that we were meant to do. How did we “collect the moonlight”?
“Every drop of dew is precious,” she continued, still standing perfectly still save for her head, which swiveled back and forth, her eyes roving over us as she looked for any flaw, real or perceived. “When you run through the field, you are to catch the dew and run it into the carrying bag you are given.”
Dozens of questions were burning my mind now, itching the tip of my tongue, but I stayed silent. I would not endanger my chances of running through the field by speaking out of turn. I would give her no reason to hold me back from it.
“The Bower is not like the world you came from. The moonlight here is not the same as the moonlight you grew up with. In this realm the moon rules all, and the power of its beams is beyond your comprehension. When you enter the field, you must not pause, you must not turn, or you will be consumed. You will be burned out – and there is nothing we can do to save you from it.”
My heart was beating painfully, crashing so hard inside me that I felt every vein and vessel inside my body throbbing with anticipation. I needed to be out there. I needed to be a part of this.
“You will catch the moonlight every night – once I deem you ready.”
It took several seconds for this statement to crash down on me, and when the realization of what it meant – the realization I’d have to wait even though I was on the very cusp of something so amazing I could barely contain myself – was disappointing that I almost whimpered in agony. It couldn’t be right – she couldn’t be making us wait another night. It had to be tonight, it had to be!
“Tonight you will only watch,” she repeated, eyeing us each in turn. Her tone was adamant, her gaze boring into us, and I realized she knew. She knew exactly what she was doing to us, making us wait – she knew that she was denying us something that was calling to us in our very bones.
“You will stand here and you will watch. See how they run – see how they dodge. Learn well. By the next full moon you’ll be there as well – and you’ll either live or burn.”
She turned away, done with us, and as a group we shifted for a better view. I glanced to my right and saw the others with clenched jaws and drawn brows, staring out at the unfolding scene before us. I glanced to my left and saw again the other children and the group nearest to us. There were seven of them – and their Ilyn had brought an extra bag.
The Ilyn said something I couldn’t hear to one of the boys of the group, prodding him on the shoulder so that he turned around. The boy nodded and responded with an affirmative, and then the Ilyn moved off, dropping the extra bag to the ground, where it lay crumpled in the shadows.
I followed his movement with my eyes, watching the deep green-and-white skin until he was on the other side of the group, antagonizing another of the children. When he was out of sight, I dropped my gaze.
The extra bag lay beside me, barely two strides away.
My hands began to sweat.
“READY!”
The same boy from before, the tall one with the long hair, was pointing at the moon, his sharp chin drawing a shadow along his neck in conjunction with the angle of the light.
My bare feet hugged the dewy grass as I flexed my toes in the soft dirt beneath.
The moon shifted into position, and the night exploded in silver light.
The children on either side of the clearing took off running, yelping and crying out to each other. My heart was pounding in my chest as my eyes followed first one and then another back and forth as they ran. Ai’Ilyn was right: they followed a pattern of some kind, a dance that had them dodging and weaving along lines that were never straight. It was chaotic, like boiling water, but something deep inside me seemed to know that it made sense – there was a pattern to it that lay just out of my reach.
I glanced to my right, down the line of my group, and saw that Ai’Ilyn had drawn back behind us, watching warily, through slitted eyes, the falling moonbeams.
Not watching us.
In a dream, I walked forward. I felt someone grab at the back of clothing, but I didn’t stop, and with a quick twist the offending hand was gone. I think someone said my name, but I can’t remember. Nothing was making sense – it was all a jumble of sights and sounds that fit together all wrong, distorting my thoughts. I grabbed the bag off the ground in a single smooth motion and stepped into the silvery light beaming down from above us, the shouting voice of Ai’Ily
n fading behind me until there was nothing but a ringing through my entire being.
I gasped and shivered.
Pleasure coursed through my body followed by waves of pain, the sensation of sitting by a fire just at the point between warmth and burning. I stumbled forward as blood surged through my body and filled my extremities with boundless energy. I moved forward another step and the pain dipped while the pleasure spiked, but then as soon as I came to a stop the opposite occurred; immobility was pain, motion pleasure.
I started moving forward again, gaining speed, and then passed seamlessly into the rush of the other children. They shouted and whooped, rushing around me like wind or a gushing stream, and I realized dimly I was laughing.
I bent to the ground and ran my hands through the dew that had filled with silver light, and shivers of ecstasy ran through me, coursing from the tips of my fingers through my body, down to my toes, back up to tingle along the skin of my lips.
I slung the bag over my shoulder, shook my hand into the gold-embroidered opening, and began to run.
I ducked down again and grabbed another handful of dew, a bigger one this time, and once again shook it into the bag. Pleasure rolled through me, so intense that I felt my toes trying to curl up even as I spread them to catch my balance. The other children were still rushing around me, and some of them were shouting taunts in voices I could barely hear. My head was still filled with a strange ringing that I couldn’t understand, but one thought rose above the chaos, clear and bright:
I had to catch the moonlight.
I laughed and ran alongside the other children, all of us united. I ducked and weaved around them, and the pattern of their movements came to me, blazing through my mind like a series of steps learned long ago. I filled my bag with more of the dew; I licked my fingers clean of what remained, every droplet down my eager throat like the first drink a dying man tastes as he emerges from the desert.
We danced through the moonlight, and my soul exulted.
It ended as abruptly as it had begun. I threw my head back, still laughing, and saw that the moon had passed beyond its zenith. The other children moved off to their Ilyn, many of them watching me with smiles that were quickly fading. I realized I was still laughing, almost manically, and that tears were running down my cheeks.
With a force of will I did not know I possessed, I pulled myself back from the edge of insanity, and realized what the true danger of the dance was. Ai’Ilyn hadn’t meant just that we would be burned by the moonlight if we stood still – she’d meant the pleasure might drive us to madness.
On the heels of this thought, and as the ecstasy of racing through the silver light died away to memory, I began to comprehend the full extent of what I’d done. My heart began to beat quickly again, but this time it was fear that motivated its frantic beat; the sensation of spreading heat that had so recently suffused me retreated and reversed, leaving my fingers and toes cold, the dew upon them suddenly icy.
I turned to look at Ai’Ilyn and saw her staring at me with eyes like distant thunderheads. I realized that the other children had stopped moving as well, that the Ilyn who they’d returned to hadn’t spoken a single word to them but were watching me and Ai’Ilyn and the space between us. I saw her swell with indignation and pure, unadulterated rage, and realized this time I may not be so lucky as to escape with only bruises. She crossed to me in the field, picking up speed with every step; her hands were extended and grasping, reaching for me like the twisted branches of wind-blown trees; her eyes blazed with fire that held me immobile even as I knew I should run. A foot away from me she drew back her arm, her hand balled into a fist –
“Stop.”
The single word rushed through the clearing like an eager wind. It tore my hair and played through the leaves of the Bower tree, and as soon as the soft syllables rang out, Ai’Ilyn froze where she was. Everyone froze – even the cicadas that had been chirping in the trees and the crickets making music among the grass of the field ceased their calls.
Everyone and everything stood silent.
I looked over Ai’Ilyn’s shoulder toward the sound of the word, every muscle in my body tense, as some force, real or imagined, tried to stop me and hold me still. But still I turned my head, insistent, until I focused my eyes on the entrance to the Bower tree, and the figure that stood there.
He stepped forward from where he’d been watching in the shadows of the Hollowed Hall. The moonlight, still strong, though the peculiar effects of the zenith had passed, shone down upon him and threw his face and silver-leafed crown into bas-relief, making him look like a statue come to life. Another figure emerged from the shadows by his side with flashing golden eyes and a smile wide and sardonic.
“Come here.”
Again, the words were spoken at no more than conversational volume, but still the whole of the Bower responded to the request. All the children leaned in, and some even took unintentional steps forward; the Ilyn looked ready to restrain them, but their efforts would have been half-hearted at best for they too were captivated by the Erlking’s presence.
There was no question that I would obey him, not even in my own mind. My bare feet whispered through the grass, the cool dew slicking down my skin, the bag of moonlight hanging heavily over my right shoulder and under my left arm. When I was only several yards away from him, I stopped. I felt every eye on me, including his.
“Robin, take the bag.”
Robin came forward, his wolfish grin firmly in place, and extended a hand towards me. There was blood beneath his fingernails.
I slipped the bag over my head and gave it to him, noticing how heavy it felt. The top of the bag had sealed itself somehow, the stitching along the sides stretching with the weight until the top was shut tight. Robin took the weight of the bag and I saw his eyes widen the slightest amount. Anxiety rushed through me – what did he have to be surprised about?
Robin returned and passed him the bag.
“An eager one indeed,” the Puck said, his mocking voice at odds with the ease of the Erlking’s. The jarring note of it broke the trance that held the others spellbound, and they shifted from foot to foot. But as soon as the Erlking held up the bag and pulled it open, they stood stock still once more.
“Full,” he said.
A murmur passed around and through the gathered children, a wordless sighing as of relieved pressure. He lowered the bag and held it out behind him. Immediately, the huge shape of an Urden appeared from the shadows and grabbed it before the creature bowed and retreated.
He looked at me with his gray-green eyes and I couldn’t think.
He took a step forward, and then another. My heart was beating so quickly it felt ready to burst from my chest. Air seemed to have been caught in my throat and was somehow unable to pass into my lungs. Stars appeared at the edges of my vision; I quickly blinked them away.
He stopped barely an arm’s length away from me.
“What is your name?”
He was staring at me as if he already knew, but I knew that was impossible. He wouldn’t have asked if he already knew. I opened my mouth to speak the word, but found I couldn’t. The whole of my identity rebelled against the idea of telling him that name – the name of a soft orphan who lived a life of ignominy.
“Choose one for me.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could consider them. Gasps punctured the silence, but murmurs died on the lips of the speakers as everyone waited for his reaction.
He studied me for a time, and then he smiled.
I didn’t know what else to do: I smiled back.
His eyes lit up with a fiery excitement, and then he laughed. The sound of it was rich and deep, like loamy earth ready for seeding. My smile widened, and a thrill rushed through me.
“She can catch the moonlight whenever she wishes,” he said, looking toward where I knew Ai’Ilyn must be standing. “The rest of the regimen stays the same.”
He turned, and in a swirl of his long sable cloak, di
sappeared into the hall. I stared after him, mind blank, until I realized that Robin had approached me. He leaned over me, bending down so that his lips were against the outer curve of my ear.
“He favors you.”
The words were barely more than a whisper. I swallowed hard and tried to control my breathing; my head was still spinning.
“Why?”
I felt him grin; that was his only reply. He pulled away, disappearing into the shadows, and when he was gone, the last evidence of Oberon’s presence, the children and Ilyn behind me remembered to breathe and moved back into motion.
I stood where I was, staring after him, until Ai’Ilyn approached me from behind. She rounded me until she was standing right before me, blocking my vision and forcing me to focus on her. I couldn’t read her expression, and perhaps that was for the best.
“Follow,” she hissed, her voice low.
I did.