Read The Church of the Wood: A Faerie Story Page 4

The Silent Heart

  It was the little blond girl that made him search for the faerie. On every holy day, after the service, the little girl with the white blond hair would come up to him and ask, “Where is the faerie lady, Father?” She was the only one of the congregation who had seemed to notice the faerie woman’s absence, and the only one who apparently cared. So Father Jared put her off. He told her that he didn’t know where the faerie was, which was true; she was out in the Wood somewhere. Eventually the little girl became more insistent. She could not have been more than four or five, and Father Jared wasn’t used to children.

  The last time, she actually had tears in her eyes. “I think the faerie lady’s hurt. I think that’s why she can’t come,” the little girl—who had finally introduced herself as Irena—had told him. “Little one,” Father Jared said kindly, “A church is no place for faeries.” He had said this before, but Irena didn’t want to listen.

  “Faeries belong in their wood. It’s dangerous for everyone involved if they leave it.” He didn’t want to scare the girl, but she really shouldn’t be so attached to such a wild creature.

  “But the faerie lady always comes to the Church. And then she smiles at me. Once...” Irena’s childish voice fell to a whisper, “she even spoke to me. But that wasn’t in the Church. That was in the Wood, when she saved me from the wolf.” The little girl said this with simple confidence, as though it was an everyday occurrence. As though a faerie had ever been known to rescue a human child from anything. Father Jared felt as though he had just been told that north was south, or that the moon was the sun.

  “She saved you?” he asked carefully. The little girl had been talking to him while her mother was busy chatting with a gray-haired man, but now the mother swooped over as though she had been listening.

  “Irena, don’t you dare lie to the priest,” her mother said reprovingly. Irena cringed away, grabbing a fold of Father Jared’s green robe, as though to hide behind it. “There, there, it’s all right,” Father Jared said soothingly. “At her age it’s hard to tell truth from fantasy,” he told the mother calmly.

  The mother—whose name he couldn’t remember—had put her hands on her wide hips and she was glaring at the child. The priest had often found the child’s repeated inquiries to be rather tiresome, but this made him feel oddly protective of her.

  “She insists on telling people that the faerie saved her, when everyone knows that she set the wolf on her in the first place,” the stout woman exclaimed, exasperated. “And all because poor Irena strayed a foot from the path, to pick some daisies.”

  “And how does everyone know that the faerie set the wolf on the child?” Father Jared asked evenly.

  “The faerie controls the creatures of the Wood. Everyone knows that. And just because she called the wolf off before it could eat my poor baby up, doesn’t mean she’s not to blame for frightening her with it.” And with this, the mother snatched Irena away from the priest’s robe and pulled her into a smothering hug, nearly taking the ends of the priest’s yellow belt with her.

  “’S’not true,” the little girl protested, in a muffled voice. “The faerie lady is beautiful. She wouldn’t hurt me. She told the wolf to go away. I heard her! I saw it!”

  “Shush, child,” the mother said sternly, standing up and grabbing Irena’s hand. “Forgive me, Father, but we’ve taken up enough of your time with this foolishness.” The mother began to pull the child away from him, but Irena resisted. “You’ll find the faerie lady, won’t you Father?” she begged. “You’ll make sure that she’s okay?”

  He was saved from having to answer when the mother succeeded in marching Irena from the Church.

  Father Jared slowly doused all of the torches in the sanctuary, and then closed the front doors. He went into the back of the Church, into his living quarters. He sat down at the table, and then he stared at the golden leaves which he had taken from the offering bowl, when he had first come to the Church of the Wood. He considered the little girl’s story, and the mother’s, and then he remembered the pure sorrow on the faerie’s face as she had sung to Father Brion’s body. He thought of the mark that had shone from her delicate long-fingered hand, and of what he had said to her about the church.

  He picked up a golden leaf, and it seemed to speak to him.

  It told him that although he had thought to do something right, he had done something very, very wrong, instead.

  It is not easy to find a faerie in her Wood, when she has not invited you to come. Father Jared discovered this as he roamed aimlessly through the dark trees, and a day passed, and he found no one. If there were creatures in it waiting to devour him, he did not see them. He heard the lone cry of a wolf, and the twitter of a songbird, but that was all.

  He stumbled around in the Wood, feeling like a fool, and then he came back to the Church of the Wood again. If the superstitions of the Villagers were true, he should be dead by now. He would never have set foot into the Wood if he really believed them, but even so he had been nervous. He had tried not to think too hard ahead of time about what he was doing; he knew it was the right thing to do, so he did it.

  Now he was just plain exhausted, and he felt even guiltier than he had before he’d left. He’d mistrusted the faerie because of old tales and the Villagers’ stories against her, not because of anything it was proven she had done. He’d judged her unfairly. He had sent away a woman with a mark, and denied her the comfort of the Church. If the beasts of the Wood had torn him apart, he would have deserved it.

  Of course, she could still be evil. All the things said against her could be true. But he had not given her a chance and that, in and of itself, had been wicked.

  So he set out once again the next morning. This time, for no clear reason, he brought the golden leaves with him. They had seemed to wink at him from the dish on the table as he passed and so he had put them in his pocket, almost without thinking. He had been wandering for hours in the Wood, in which every tree seemed so alike that he couldn’t imagine how he’d ever found his way out again, when he remembered the golden leaves and pulled them out of his pocket.

  He felt a slight vibration in his palm and then a whisper of sound, as though the leaves had begun to hum. He walked a little and the hum disappeared. He reoriented and walked in another direction. It started again.

  Palm out, he followed the route that strengthened the sound. Things in the Wood began to change; he saw knots in trees that he was sure hadn’t been there before, he saw vines creeping around others, marking them as different. The Wood was alive with noises, crickets chirping and crows cawing and the pitter patter of tiny forest creatures.

  The first animal he saw was a woodpecker. He came upon it hard at work, a rat-tat-tat of sound. It was a fabulous bird, with a plumed ivory and red-striped head and a giant beak that seemed to threaten to burst the tree in half. It flew away at his approach, and he watched it wing through the trees in awe.

  The next creature he saw was a fox. It had a tawny gold pelt and a black tipped tail, and it stared at him before it darted off. The priest had forgotten about the leaves in his wonder, and he realized now that he’d gone off course, because their humming had lessened.

  He moved around until it got stronger again, and then came across something else that was new in the Wood, or at least new to him. He stumbled over a root, and into a section of the Wood that was filled with wildflowers. They grew in a thick purple carpet around the base of the trees, which had thinned out a bit. It was a sight that made him suck in his breath.

  He sat down to rest and admire the flowers, taking a drink of water. Their pleasant scent was like lilacs and violets and sweet peas all rolled together into one. He felt himself growing sleepy; he tucked the golden leaves carefully into the knapsack he’d brought, leaned back, and closed his eyes. He told himself it was only for a moment.

  He awoke to find a pair of great yellow eyes staring back at him. It was pitch black in the Wood. The eyes blinked and hooted, and the w
ings of a brown barred owl brushed a current of air across his face.

  Father Jared stared at the Wood, his heart pounding. It was night, and it was cold, and he had no idea where he was or where he was going. He thought of how foolish he’d been to ever go into it. The faerie woman had probably been spying on him all along, watching with amused disdain as he trampled stupidly through her Wood.

  The priest pulled out the leaves from his bag, fumbling with the clasp. They glowed golden in the darkness, casting a faint aura all around them. He stood up and stretched his body, which felt remarkably well rested. Perhaps the flowers hadn’t cast a spell on him; maybe he’d simply needed the extra sleep, after his lengthy walk.

  The night wasn’t as black as he’d first thought. His eyes were adjusting to it, and he had the leaves, which shed a small sort of light.

  He considered then whether he should try to find his way back to the Church, or whether he should carry on. The leaves were humming strongly in his hand; it felt like a shame to go home, and then come all the way back out again. The priest shouldered his knapsack, remembering to take out something to eat before he did. He chewed on a piece of dried beef, and then swallowed it. It wasn’t satisfying, but it was enough to keep him going.

  As though they’d sensed his thought, the golden leaves guided him into a low-hanging branch. It almost knocked him over before he saw it. On the branch hung a deep red fruit, which the golden leaves lit to a crimson brilliance. Father Jared stared at the fruit, and then slowly reached out, and plucked one. It came away easily in his hand.

  Everyone knows that faerie fruit is cursed, thought the priest. But then again, he told himself, everyone also knows that faeries are evil. If he had chosen not to believe one, why should he believe the other?

  The priest raised the fruit to his nose, and sniffed. It smelled like the faerie woman’s hair. He blinked. He hadn’t even realized he knew what the faerie woman’s hair smelled like. But then he thought of the first time he had met her; how unwittingly close he had stood, and how beautiful she had been.

  He bit into it. The deep red juice ran down his chin. The inside of the fruit was seedless and ripe, and it was the most amazing thing he’d ever tasted. Sweeter than cherries and juicier than apples. He ate it all and then laughed. He felt like he’d spent his entire life on a diet of stale bread and musty water; that he’d slowly been starving himself.

  He wanted to run swiftly through the Wood until he could run no more and had to stop. He wanted to climb its trees and gaze out across its leafy rooftop. He wanted to sing—he never sang—and he felt like he already knew the song. He wanted to shout his name to the trees and have them shout it back at him.

  It was only after the initial rush of euphoria ebbed that he began to feel doubt. This was not a safe way to behave. Evil or not, this was dangerous.

  He leaned against a black trunk, and waited to come back to himself. When he did, he felt changed, but not panicked; he was in control again. He uncurled his fingers from the golden leaves, and their glow spilled out, once again lighting his path. The priest closed his eyes for a moment, and then moved forward, feeling the vibrations grow stronger. He would do what he’d started out to do; he would find the faerie—and then he’d leave this strange labyrinth Wood and never come back again.

  Dawn was breaking, what little dawn could break through the tall dark trees, when he stumbled onto the golden tree itself. It was a thing of unnatural beauty, not tall like its fellows but shorter, glowing and wide. He stood underneath it, and suddenly the golden leaves in his hand floated upwards and re-attached to its branches.

  The priest stared at the golden tree in astonishment, and then looked down again at his empty palm, hardly believing they’d gone. He felt a crushing sense of disappointment. Somehow he had thought that the leaves would lead him to the faerie, but what they’d wanted was to come back to their tree, all along.

  Still, the priest carefully came closer and laid his hand against the tree’s peeling white bark. It did not speak to him, but it hummed contentedly under his palm. He didn’t know what he had expected from the golden tree, but this was not it. Father Jared was lost, bewildered, and tired. He thought about sitting down under the tree, and taking another nap, but instead he walked slowly around it to the opposite side.

  There he discovered another new thing in the Wood—a dense thicket of thorn bushes tall and wide enough to form a barrier to any further passage.

  Its forbidding menace was softened by flowers with soft round petals. They furled and layered into themselves like roses, but they were not red or pink or yellow, but a midnight blue, the color of the evening sky after the sun has just gone down. In the center of the thicket was an open space like a door, just as high and wide as a very tall person, and through it he could see, at its tunnel-like end, a shadowy sort of clearing.

  The priest walked cautiously into the thorny doorway, feeling it catch slightly on the folds of his robe as he passed by. It was deeper than he expected, and the heady scent of its flowers pressed around him, making him feel claustrophobic. The thorns scratched at his cheeks and lashed at his arms; the abrasions stung when he pulled away. With some relief, Father Jared finally stepped out from the thicket and into the strange clearing beyond.

  The clearing was roughly rectangular in shape. It was surrounded by trees, their trunks growing so close to each other that they were almost like walls. They had woven their branches together, forming an airy roof with spaces between it that showed glimpses of an early morning sky. Short yellow grass covered the ground, like a sunny bright carpet.

  At the back of the little house—for that was what it seemed to him to be—was a flat stone, slightly indented, and grown over with springy green moss. A pillow and a blanket woven from leaves of all shapes and colors, like a patchwork quilt, rested upon it.

  Directly in front of him, to the left, was a still small pool, mirroring exactly the overhanging branches and bits of sky. To his right, at the base of one of the trees, crowded roots had formed into a wide chair—and in it sat the faerie woman.

  She was just as he had seen her last, pale and dark and beautiful. Her forearms rested limply at her sides, her hands spread out on the living arms of the chair. Her bare feet were planted on the ground and the yellow grass grew thicker around them. Her eyes were closed.

  She was like a marble statue, still and unmoving. The priest came closer to her, the tempo of his pulse quickening, looking for any sign that she was alive. For all he knew, this could be the way that faeries napped, but he had a terrible feeling that it was not.

  He was near enough to touch her, to smell the sweet scent of her hair, but he could see no sign that she breathed or that her heart pumped in her chest. Tentatively, he knelt down in front of her and reached out. He laid his hand where he knew her heart should beat, setting it against the white and blue dress. He could feel the coldness of her body beneath it.

  There was nothing but silence.

  And then the faerie woman opened her eyes.

 

  The Plan

  Gleason repented of leaving Amandie in the field almost immediately, but he did not turn back. He justified this by telling himself that she obviously didn’t want his company, and could do without his protection as a result. Anyway, he made much better time without her as the horse wasn’t nearly as burdened down, and he didn’t need to worry about someone else’s comfort.

  His delivery of the letter to the king went smoothly, and the return trip to Baron Malkine’s holding seemed to fly by. It was only as he neared the Baron’s manor that Gleason began to have doubts about what he was doing, and why. There were several good hours of daylight left and, miraculously, Molasses did not seem to be tired. But the Village boy decided to stop anyway when they reached the hamlet of Abbott’s Cross.

  The many stone buildings of this small village all seemed to share a similar structure, with orange-shingled roofs and tall white chimneys. As Gleason approached it on the wide san
dy road, the sky shone a sunny blue over the top of a large hill which rose dramatically up behind the rows of neat rectangular houses. The crest of the hill was barren rock, but the slopes down its side were green with grass and a scattering of short trees ringed the base and sheltered the far side of the town. It made a pleasing picture, as so much of Calundra did, Gleason thought.

  Abbott’s Cross was well-known for its monastery but Gleason avoided this area, loathing to meet more people of the mark, and reined up at a restaurant on the outskirts of the village instead. He needed a hot meal and a drink to clear his head, which was foggy from days of travel. As he gave the gray dappled mare over to a stable boy, Gleason wondered again at the contents of the important letter he now carried, one which bore the royal seal on its outside. He was uncertain as to whether the Baron would share its information and his curiosity tormented him. But there was no way to open it without breaking the wax, so Gleason was forced to be honest in undertaking to bring it straight to the Baron’s hand, untouched.

  The lower windows in the restaurant were all opened. The inside was busy, with most of the tables filled, especially in what appeared to be the most popular section around a giant fireplace. This was glowing dimly and held a decorative collection of painted plates on its wide mantle. A serving girl approached him at once and Gleason highly approved of the table she showed him to, grateful for the warmth of the fire and the mouth-watering scent of simmering soup and fresh-baked bread.

  The meal was just as good as it smelled, and Gleason chased it down with several mugs of smooth black cherry ale. By the time he stumbled out the front door of the restaurant to find a place to stay for the night, his head was even foggier than it had been, although his stomach was pleasantly full and his mood was expansive.

  The restaurant had no beds, but the serving girl had pointed him in the direction of a nearby inn and told Gleason that for a few coppers he could leave his horse in their stable for the night. The streets were dark, lit only by the scattered lanterns that folk had left out by the doors of their businesses or houses, and Gleason realized that he’d left it rather late to find shelter in an unfamiliar village. The place that the serving girl had recommended was full for the night, and the next one he came across gave out the same reply.

  He was having very little luck in his search when a grumpy innkeeper mentioned that the monks were trading and what did he expect, asking for a bed this late at night. Apparently, the monastery had a strict schedule of contemplation and only sold its wares—mainly barrels of the same black cherry ale that he’d drunk at the restaurant—at set times. And he was unlucky enough to have come here during one of them, which meant that the tiny village was already over-flowing with visitors, most of them traveling merchants.

  In the end, Gleason found himself wandering around the village green with nowhere else to go. The short-cropped grass was home to a few sleeping cows, which made brown and white humps on its otherwise even surface. There were a few large cherry trees and several wooden benches throughout.

  Gleason sat down on one of these and drew his traveling cloak around him. He put his bag under his head and lay down, feeling more than a little forlorn. He should have gone on; he could have been to the Baron’s holding by now. Instead, he was shivering and miserable, the night steadily dropping in temperature and the ale having given him a headache after three glasses of the stuff.

  For some reason, as his head swirled and his hands shook, Gleason’s determination to carry out his original plan, which had weakened somewhat during his time with Amandie, began to harden again. It was the monks’ fault that he did not have a bed tonight, Gleason reasoned.

  People of the mark, they always thought that their ways were better than anyone else’s, and they didn’t give a care about how many people they inconvenienced with their harsh rules and stupid regulations. The monks could have chosen to sell their goods at anytime, and then he might have been comfortable, but they had to make it so that the merchants came flooding the town whenever they saw fit to trade with them.

  Controlling people, just like the faerie, he thought.

  The two situations had very little in common, other than Gleason’s discomfort and the fact that the monks also bore the mark, but in his head they began to merge and the Village boy started to go over all of his grievances with the faerie again, as though it had all happened only yesterday. He hadn’t meant to beg her for a kiss that day at the lake, he thought, squirming on the hard bench and trying to find a position that didn’t make his arms ache. The idea had just popped into his head, all of a sudden.

  What he’d intended was to scare her, to make her pay for having branded him a thief and caused him to lose his mark. No matter that he might have lost it anyway. The god was as pitiless as his followers; the god didn’t care that his mother was too consumed by nursing Ginger to have noticed their food for the month was almost all gone, and too poor to be able to send him to the Village Shop to buy more even if she did.

  All he’d stolen were things that people didn’t need, from plump and prosperous Villagers who couldn’t be bothered to count the change in their pockets. And a few pieces of candy for his feverish sister, who loved licorice. Of course, he knew she wouldn’t be able to eat it until she got better, but it was something for her to look forward to, something to encourage her to drink the weak broth that his mother spooned into her mouth with a gentle persistence.

  It didn’t occur to Gleason not to lie; he’d been too guilty and scared. He already felt like an outsider because his mother had lost the mark when she was young—to his father, before they were married. People looked down on her for that, and when his father had died in a drunken accident soon after Ginger was born, it didn’t exactly change their feelings towards the new widow.

  Gleason had tried, for a little while, to please everyone. His mother had sent him to the Church to take the mark, and he had dutifully gone, although he had always hated leaving her. She’d sold the farm, unable to afford to take care of it, and taken the house in the Village. She did laundry for people, and they scraped by on what she earned.

  But it was never enough, he thought dully, just as this cloak was never going to be enough to keep him warm tonight. The Village boy sat up awkwardly. He imagined Molasses in a cozy bed of hay, and abruptly climbed off of the bench.

  He would go back to the restaurant and sleep in the stables. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before.

  And then he would go to the Baron, deliver the letter, and see what else could be done. He would find a way to make the faerie pay for her interference in his life. And then she would know what it felt like to be powerless, at the mercy of someone else.

 

  The Debt

  Lady Erin knew that she had nearly been gone. She had sat down in her chair and closed her eyes. She had apologized to the trees, and let her spirit wander. And now there was that unfriendly priest, staring at her. He was kneeling uncomfortably close and he had just snatched his hand away from her chest.

  Lady Erin frowned. What in the name of the god was he doing here?

  She shifted in her chair, feeling unbearably stiff and frozen. More importantly, how in the Wood had he called her back?

  She supposed it was possible that his human touch could have jolted her awake again. Although she didn’t remember it happening, she supposed it might have been painful enough. Perhaps her spirit hadn’t wandered quite so far as she’d thought.

  She didn’t want to think that this priest, who had been so unkind to her, had actually helped her.

  “Are you okay?” Father Jared asked. He hadn’t stood up yet, and he looked ridiculous kneeling there on her yellow carpet as though he was proposing.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. “What are you doing in my Wood?”

  His fine dark eyes traveled from her bewildered expression to her cold shaking hands, which she tucked under her legs to hide from his gaze, and to warm them.

  “You weren’t brea
thing,” he said.

  “I didn’t want to breathe,” she retorted. She wasn’t going to thank him, whatever he had done. He was still an awful man.

  “I’ve come to apologize,” he said, civilly enough. It was the very last thing she would have expected. She tried to gather her thoughts, which were divided between him and all of the trees of the Wood, who were yelling at her for having almost deserted them. It was making her ears ring.

  “Go on, then,” she told him.

  The young priest sighed, and stood up. He towered over her chair. He clasped his hands behind his back and lifted his chin, like a little boy making a confession. “I should not have kept you from the Church. The god gives the mark. The god should decide.” He said this sincerely, if a bit stiffly. She supposed that when she’d last spoken, she had not been very nice.

  The faerie woman felt her left palm grow warm, as though an invisible hand had taken it. She felt the wind, like the god’s breath on her face. She felt a sense of hope again.

  “Very well,” she said graciously. “You may go now.”

  The young priest blinked at her. He looked around him, as though uncertain where he was, and then his gaze fell on her thorn bush entryway.

  “Is there any way you can send me back quicker?” he asked. He ran a nervous hand through his short brown hair, ruffling it so that the edges stood up.

  “My house is fifteen minutes walk from the Church,” Lady Erin said with a frown. “Surely that is quick enough?” She didn’t know what kind of magic he expected her to possess. I can hardly transport you through my Wood, silly human, she thought.

  The young priest stared at her blankly, as though she had said something incredible. “Then you won’t mind walking me back,” he said at last.

  Lady Erin wasn’t sure she could walk at all, she was so weak, but she did a very good job of making herself. It was only as they strolled casually back through the Wood—it was the fastest pace she could manage—that she began to realize the full extent of what he had done.

  Not only had he saved her, he had saved her Wood. It was inescapable; she owed him a debt of gratitude. She glanced sidelong at him, stumbling noisily along; his green robe was torn and dirty, and there were scratches on his face and hands. His handsome face was weary and drawn. Now that she thought of it, her house might not have been easy for a human to find. And he had come into her Wood uninvited; in doing so, he had risked his life.

  She saw him safely back to the stone church, but stopped outside the gate in the back. The markers in the cemetery were gray and bleak in the light of early morning, and the long grass mound where Father Brion’s body rested no longer bloomed with red flowers, but lay green and quiet. Lady Erin turned to the priest, and said formally, “Father Jared, I am Erin, Lady of the Wood.”

  Nothing happened. She had expected the Wood to stir, to recognize him and be recognized in return. That was the way it had been with Amandie.

  Father Jared stared at her, puzzled, and said, “All right.”

  He was the oddest human she had ever met.

  It is not easy to repay a debt to someone who doesn’t want you around. Lady Erin came to the Church on holy day, and Father Jared pretended that she wasn’t there, just like all the rest. She made a point of trying to converse with him, asking how he liked the Church, and the Village, and the Wood —she probably shouldn’t have asked that one because he winced—but his answers were short and stilted.

  The only one who welcomed her back with open arms was Irena, who made the mistake of throwing her chubby arms around the faerie lady’s dress the first excuse that she got. Lady Erin disengaged herself, careful not to touch the child’s rosy pink skin. She reassured the little girl that all was well, and then the child’s overbearing mother came to snatch Irena away, terrified.

  Still, although they may not have missed her, she had missed them. She saw that the baker and his wife were still arguing—they were always arguing over something. The mark didn’t seem to have granted much peace to their marriage. The man who ran the Village Shop had a new vest, richly embroidered in green and red, and one of the young men was courting one of the young women, walking hand in hand with her down the long dirt path after the service’s end. Noticing these things gave contentment to the faerie; everything was just as it had been. The Wood would go on, and so would the Village.

  Needless to say, the Wood wasn’t very happy with her. She spent a great deal of time repairing their relationship. She picked up the dead branches from off of the ground and stacked them outside the stone church for the young priest to use for firewood. She removed borers and moths from the saplings, and encouraged them to grow. She sang a Song of Renewal to the Wood, and watched as the trees that had grown brittle, in anticipation of her death, began to harden and flow with sap.

  The Wood was easy to please, in comparison with the young priest. When he didn’t burn the firewood she had left for him, she knocked on the back door of the Church and loaded it into his arms.

  “What are these for?” he asked crossly. It was possible she’d woken him; it was just past sunrise and he wore a hastily tucked tunic and trousers, instead of a robe. His hair was mussed.

  “To burn,” she said. “Don’t worry, the Wood doesn’t need them.” Its living wood you couldn’t burn at all, but the dead pieces should be fine.

  The priest stared at her as though she was mad. “I’m not burning faerie wood,” he snapped.

  “Then do something else with them,” the faerie woman retorted, and left.

  A great many of their exchanges were like this. She went inside the Church one day, when she knew he’d gone to the Village. She went to the kitchen corner of the modest living space, to tidy it up. She had meant to leave before the priest came back, but being there brought back an overflow of memories from her life with Father Brion.

  When the young priest discovered her, she was mistily drinking a cup of foul-tasting tea, and staring at the clock on the wall. It was just about to cuckoo when it reached the hour. She had loved this clock as a child, giggling with delight whenever the little door would open and the small wooden bird would suddenly dash out.

  “What are you doing in my kitchen?” Father Jared asked, setting his bags down. He looked enormously displeased to see her. “This is my house, you know. You can’t just come in and out.”

  “You came into my house,” she pointed out.

  “That was... different,” he said. But he protested no further, focusing on his supplies instead and arranging them haphazardly on the shelves next to the deep sink and the cast iron stove. Lady Erin went gracefully over to the cabinet that held the dishes, and fetched him a mug. She brought it back to the table, and poured him a cup from the teapot, which was still warm. Then she left it in front of the seat opposite her, as she had done so many times for Father Brion.

  The young priest finished unpacking, and noticed the mug. He picked it up and drank from it, but he did not sit down. “Have you changed something in here?” he asked suspiciously, his eyes moving from the floor, which she had swept, to the dishes, which she had washed.

  “I was just leaving,” she sighed. There was no point in waiting for him to order her out.

  That was the way of it between them. She cleaned the windows in the Church one afternoon, and he didn’t comment. She tended the garden to the side, pulling the weeds and humming to the flowers. He came out and asked her to stop singing faerie songs to them. She fetched him water from the well, and he never thanked her. He told her he could do it himself. She wove him a shirt from the snowy white blossoms, and embroidered it with elaborate patterns of green leaves and red flowers. He accepted it, at her insistence, but never put it on.

  She was determined to repay him, but no matter what she did, he was impossible to like.

 

  The Touch

  The service of the new year required Father Jared to place his hand on each member’s forehead and pray a lengthy prayer. It was a duty he had done his best
to avoid during training, and later at the Palace he had delegated it to other novitiates. At the Church of the Wood, there was only him to perform it.

  By the time he was halfway through the foreheads of the faithful, he was gritting his teeth. By the time he had finished the service entirely, he was dizzy and nauseous. Why it affected him so, he didn’t understand. But indisputably it did, and that was why he usually avoided touching other people, as much as possible.

  He was leaning back against the stone altar for support, seeing the last of his congregation off with a forced smile, when he realized that he’d forgotten someone. The faerie woman had risen from her bench. She was standing in the aisle now, observing him closely. Father Jared braced himself for one more blessing. Slowly she came forward, a worried frown on her pale face. She halted at arm’s length and stared at him.

  He reached out his left palm to place it on her forehead, but she shied back away from it.

  “You’re not well,” she said. “You should go and rest. Besides, this is one ritual I’m content to skip.”

  “I’m fine,” Father Jared answered testily. “I’m not ill, and I don’t need to lie down.” And then the Church heaved around him, and he slid down against the cold stone altar and onto the ground, landing in a sitting position. The faerie lady crouched down in front of him, her coal black eyes concerned. “You’re not well,” she repeated. “You must let me help you to your pallet.”

  Father Jared tried to wave her away, but the room spun around him instead. “That won’t be necessary,” he answered, wishing his voice would keep steady.

  “Believe me, I’d rather not,” the faerie lady said crossly. Erin, that was her name, wasn’t it? He supposed he should call her that. Father Jared closed his eyes, hoping that maybe when he opened them, she would be gone. Miraculously, he did hear her leave, but then he also heard her return. With a sigh, he opened his eyes again.

  He no longer thought of her as evil, but now she made him uncomfortable in a different way, one he didn’t fully understand. Most of it centered on the impropriety of having a beautiful young woman skipping in and out of his church, doing things for him. Like she was doing right now.

  “Here, drink this,” she said, holding a mug against his lips as though she meant for him to passively sip from it. He lifted an unsteady hand to take it from her, and his fingers closed over hers.

  The feel of her skin was shockingly pleasant.

  Both hands let go of the mug at the same time. The water splashed down and soaked the priest’s chest.

  “I can touch you!” the faerie exclaimed. Her face glowed with an intense look of wonder.

  And touch him she did. She cupped his face in her hands, and then ran her fingers over it, like a frantic blind man. She muttered all the while about how strange it was, how impossible, how he must be different.

  He was different, in fact. He should have hated it. Instead, her fingers were achingly sweet. It could only be some sort of seductive faerie magic.

  “Stop... that... now!” he managed.

  Lady Erin froze, and then gathered her hands together into her lap. Her pale face was slightly flushed and her dark eyes were shining. “You’re a faerie!” she breathed. “You must be... you... you could even be my kin!”

  This was too much. Father Jared sat up straighter, and barked at her. “I am not a faerie!”

  Undoubtedly this was some new sort of trick, some bedazzlement. “I am human,” he growled at her. “And a priest! And you will kindly keep your hands to yourself!”

  The devastation that replaced the blazing hope on her face made him want to say something else, almost at once. Perhaps she was only confused. Maybe she was even mad. Could faeries go mad?

  He didn’t get a chance to soften his words. She fled the Church, quicker than he had thought possible.

  The next day he was recovered, and she was back again. She appeared inside the fence, as he was nailing broken slats back into place on the trellis at the side of the Church, which separated the cemetery from the garden. Roses were out of season, and nothing was blooming on it; it was covered in dead vines that he’d had to pull off in order to replace missing pieces.

  “Did you eat from the fruit of the Wood?” she demanded. He nearly fell from his perch, on a small stool. He hadn’t even noticed her come up.

  “I may have,” he replied unwillingly. He thought of the dark red fruit, and the euphoria that had come over him. He shivered.

  “How many times? Are you still eating it?” she asked, her dark eyes flashing.

  “Just the once. And no, I wouldn’t again,” he answered, annoyed. What right had she to interrogate him? But then again, it was her Wood. And he had trespassed in it, he thought guiltily, and eaten from its branches.

  The priest felt a sudden apprehension. He wondered if the faerie woman—Erin, he told himself—would grow vengeful and do him some harm. It seemed possible, although he couldn’t quite imagine it. Not after she had poured him tea, and swept his floor, and done his dishes.

  The faerie woman was shaking her head and muttering to herself. “It shouldn’t have been enough.” She raised her pale face, which was below him, and told him firmly, “You must not eat from the trees again.” The faint pink of her mouth pressed into a thin line.

  “I’d not planned on it,” Father Jared said calmly, hoping she would go away now.

  Erin paced back and forth underneath him, looking alternately up at him, and then out into the Wood. The young priest imagined her summoning a fantastic beast from amongst its dark trees, to come out and devour him.

  “Well, then,” she muttered to the ground. “Well, then,” she muttered to the sky. She tossed her long, tangled black hair and tapped her slender bare feet.

  “See that you do not,” she muttered to him.

  They were easier with each other after that. He was fairly certain now that she would never hurt him. But in another way, they were edgier than ever.

  She still did chores that he didn’t need done, and he still stubbornly refused to thank her for them. She tried to have conversations with him, which he didn’t want. She was always underfoot, trying to be helpful. He couldn’t escape her.

  And then one week, she was gone for several days in a row. Unconsciously, he began to look for her. His eyes scanned the Wood while he watered the thriving vegetable plot. His feet wandered back into the cool emptiness of the Church, after she had failed to appear, and he found himself staring at her bench. He went into the kitchen and poured himself tea. His hand automatically picked up the leaf-patterned mug, the one she usually drank from. Quickly, he set it back down.

  In the midst of the sunny warmth of the next day, which was strangely bright for the Wood, he sat on the bench in the flower garden, and gazed off into nowhere. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he was bored, and a little bit lonely. He was used to the bustle of Palace life, and all of its intrigues and affairs. The Wood was too quiet and the Church was too calm.

  As if these unwanted thoughts had summoned her, the faerie woman suddenly came around the side of the Church, and sat down. She had taken a seat on the ground in front of his bench, at a fairly comfortable distance. She smiled—an actual smile—which was oddly breathtaking, and then tilted her head to one side, as if considering him.

  “I could tell you a tale,” she offered. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered. Her pale skin glistened in the light of midday like fresh snow. Her eyes were so black that they seemed to pull the sunshine into them.

  “I don’t like tales,” he said shortly.

  “Then you can ‘not like’ this one,” Lady Erin returned, her smile fading. The faerie woman stared off into the Wood, for a moment, her face growing gradually pensive. “It’s a sad tale, anyhow,” she said.

  The priest said nothing more. Which was how she knew he was listening.

 

  The Tale of the Dead Tree

  “Once upon a time, there was a wood. And in that wood, th
ere was a faerie. She had skin like the hidden pearl inside of a clam, and long black hair that fell to her knees, and eyes like two wet pebbles. Beyond the wood, there was rich farmland, and beyond that, there was a small town. In the town, there was a priest, and he cared for the people of the town, and the people of the farms. He blessed the faithful on holy days, and he even went out from the church and prayed over those who had the mark, but couldn’t travel.

  One day, a member of the church told Father Tobas—for that was the priest’s name—that he had seen a woman wandering in the wood. He thought she might have been a faerie. The poor farmer was terrified that he’d been cursed, but Father Tobas reassured him. The priest did not believe in faeries; he thought that the farmer must have seen an ordinary woman, wandering along.

  The farmer left at peace, but Father Tobas’s mind was disordered. The priest tossed in his cozy bed, and thought of a lost woman, shivering out in the cold. He ate his piping hot oatmeal, and thought of that same lost woman, hungry and alone. At last, he decided to go down to the wood, and discover for himself what the farmer had seen.

  The wood was more than a half day’s journey from the town, and the priest stopped at several houses on the way—to tend to the sick, and give coins to the poor—so he arrived there later than he’d intended. Shadows were falling amongst the tall dark trees, and the sun was already going down. In the purple light of dusk, he stood outside the wood, and wondered if in coming here to help, he’d finally gone too far.

  He saw a whisper of white in the trees, like the flash of a smooth long arm. He saw the hint of a black tumbled curl, and the shine of gray-black eyes. “Lass, are you lost?” he called out to the shadows. The wood held its breath.

  The priest knew at once the mistake he’d made, but he could not bring himself to run.

  A woman stepped out from between the trees, the loveliest woman that the well-meaning priest had ever set eyes upon. She didn’t leave the boundary of the wood; she peered out at him with a frown. “Who disturbs my wood?” she asked. Her voice was like a blackbird flying away. It was beautiful and wild.

  “I meant no harm, fair maiden,” the priest carefully replied. “I heard perhaps you were in need of some help.” He reminded himself that she was possibly a poor lost woman, after all.

  And then the priest saw the other eyes. The yellow ones, and the slitted ones, and the ones that glowed like fire. They moved behind the faerie, deep in the trees, and they rumbled a low, warning growl.

  “I have no need of a human’s aid,” said the faerie woman, her voice growing hard.

  The goodly priest gave up his pretence of bravery. As fast as his legs would run, he bolted back to his church. He made it in less than half a day, running all through the evening, and into the night.

  The priest sought valiantly to go back to his priestly duties and put the faerie lady out of his mind. And so he thought of her when he tended the sick, and pondered her when he gave coins to the poor, and pushed her image away when he met a woman with unusually dark hair, and gave her the mark. The poor priest was bewitched; he could not drive the faerie from his mind.

  He thought of the dress he’d seen her wear. It had been lacey and strange, like it was woven from plants. It had reminded him of pink and yellow lilies; it could not be very warm. The next time the priest went out, meaning to buy flour, he bought a warm woolen dress instead. He kept it for a long time in a cupboard at the church, and tried not to think of what it meant. But eventually, he took up his staff, and made the half day’s walk to the wood. When he got there it was still afternoon, for he’d left at the first break of dawn and journeyed without stopping.

  Cautiously, the priest went up to a tree, and laid the warm woolen dress, which was striped and red, as well as a pair of brown socks, which he’d also brought, in a neatly folded pile. He didn’t know the size of the faerie’s feet, so instead of shoes, he’d brought her socks.

  The next thing he thought to bring the faerie was food. Surely she must be famished, with only the fruit of the wood to live upon. He brought along a loaf of fine white bread, and a jug of sweet cherry wine. He laid these also at the foot of the tree. The red striped dress and brown socks still lay nearby, seemingly untouched.

  Not a branch had stirred, either time.

  The generous priest almost left it at that. He told himself he’d been lucky not to see her, and that to go back again would be to invite trouble. But the priest was shopping one day in the town, and he saw something that he couldn’t resist. It was a delicate comb, made of fine white bone. It was meant for hair that fell past the knees, that was black as night and curled like the smoke rising from a pipe.

  When Father Tobas brought the comb to the wood, the faerie lady had finally had enough.

  “Why do you leave these things near my trees?” she hissed, coming so swiftly out from the wood that she made the somewhat besotted priest start.

  “I thought you might need some food, and a dress. And that the comb would look very nice in your hair,” the poor priest stuttered. He felt a fool now, seeing her again. Her lacey dress fit her perfectly, and her hair was lovely as it was, dark and unbound.

  “These are human things!” she said angrily. “Take them away, and do not come again, or I will let the beasts of the wood do what they want with you.”

  At this, Father Tobas picked up the warm woolen dress, and the moldy remains of the bread, and the untouched jug of wine. But he left the fine bone comb, for he could not bear to bring it back again.

  Years passed, and the priest’s memory of the faerie lady faded. She no longer haunted his thoughts. The priest returned to tending his church, and making the people happy. Everything was as it had been.

  And then one day, the king issued a command. Land was scarce and the people were crowded. The Wood to the East must be cleared, to make way for a manor and more farmland.

  The priest left his church and traveled all the way to the Palace, which was a very long way without a horse, something which the poor priest did not possess. He spoke to the king, and begged him not to touch the trees. He told him that a faerie lady lived in them, and that if they were harmed, he feared that the lady would die.

  But the king was greedy, and he would not listen.

  By the time Father Tobas came back to his church, there was news that much of the damage had already been done. Many men had died, but trees had also been cut. And the more trees that were cut, the less men died. This was the way of cutting a particular wood—it grew weaker with every tree that was successfully cut. In time, eventually, the magic of the trees would sink back into the ground, and slowly they would leach into another wood, the nearest one that remained in the land. That wood would be strengthened, and helped, but only after a certain span of time had passed. And so it was that the faerie in the Wood of the East was weakened by every tree that was cut, and eventually her wood became easy prey to axe and saw.

  The priest could not bear to hear of this happening, but there was nothing further he could do to make it stop. So he took a bag from the church, and went down to the wood himself. It was nearly decimated; a fifth of what it had once been, when he’d been there last—when the faerie had refused all of his gifts, and told him never to come back again.

  Father Tobas tried to talk to the woodcutters, but to no avail. They had all bound scarves tightly around their heads, so as not to be swayed by any faeries that might come. Still, he used gestures to plead with them to leave the rest of the trees alone. But they had been hired by the king, and they had a job to do. Finally, the priest chose a single black tree—if he could not save them all, at least he could save one. He bound himself to it with many ropes.

  The peasant folk laughed at him, and cheerfully cut around. Eventually, there were no more trees, other than the one which Father Tobas had so faithfully protected. The peasants shook their heads at him and proclaimed that the priest was mad. They left him where he was, and went home to their other jobs.

  A great wide fiel
d lay where the forest had once been. The stumps of the trees had all sunken into the ground. There was nothing left of the wood, but one lonely tree.

  And that was not enough.

  Father Tobas didn’t know where the faerie had gone. No one had seen her in the wood while they were cutting it. It was as though she’d disappeared. He began to wonder if the peasants were right; maybe he had imagined her, after all.

  He fell asleep uncomfortably, as he had for many days. He was so tightly bound to the tree that he’d lost most of the feeling in his arms. He was also hungry and thirsty, for his food and water had run out. But he hadn’t the strength to loosen the ropes and set himself free.

  When he awoke, it was to singing. The faerie stood in front of him, crooning a mournful song. Her black hair was shorn, and her pink lacey dress was in tatters. There were long cuts down her legs and bruises on her arms; there were wounds all over her body.

  She had a fine comb, made of bone, tucked into her lacey yellow sash.

  “I’m dying,” she told the priest, her beautiful voice sad and low.

  “I’m sorry,” he said faintly. His own strength was almost gone. “I tried to help.”

  The faerie came closer, and he saw something in her hands. The skin was blistered and the nails were broken, but in each palm she held a dark red fruit. “Eat this,” she told the priest, lifting it to his mouth.

  When he had bit into the fruit, and then swallowed both of them, he felt his courage return to him. But he was still too weak to unbind himself from the tree.

  The faerie woman dipped into a pocket of her dress, and pulled out a sharp wooden knife. She sliced through the ropes that wound around the priest’s arms, and Father Tobas slid slowly to the ground. Then she knelt in front of him, and her head sagged forward, as though she was too weak to do anything else.

  “You are weary. Here, let me hold you,” the priest offered. The faerie woman looked up at him, and nodded. He pulled her into his arms.

  The two of them stayed like that, for a very long time. “My name is Susannah,” she told him at last. “I am the Lady of the Wood.” The priest had not known that faeries could have names, but he told her his name as well.

  “I misjudged you, priest,” she continued. “I thought that all humans were alike. When I am gone, you must press your hand to the tree. It will take you to my sister. Tell her that my wood is gone, and that she must keep hers safe.”

  And then the faerie lady grew very still. The priest’s salty tears ran down her face, and through her dark hair. Slowly, he bent, and kissed her mouth.

  The tree that remained died with her. It did not sink into the ground, though. It rotted from the inside out.

  The priest dug a grave at the base of the tree. He put Lady Susannah’s body in a coffin, and he laid it in the ground. Then he placed a tombstone on it, with only her name.

  He went back to the church, and packed up all his belongings. He said farewell to the members of his church, and arranged for another priest to come. Then he went back to the Dead Tree, and placed his hand against it. When he came out to the other side, he saw an empty valley, and a great dark Wood.

  He went down into the Wood, and he called for the faerie to come. He was not afraid of the Wood, or of her, for when Lady Susannah had told him her name, his fear had gone. He told the faerie the story of her sister, and gave her the wooden knife. When she saw it, she wept, and thanked him. The faerie told him to stay in her Wood, far away from the evil of human hearts.

  The priest built a small stone Church, in a clearing of the Wood. The dark trees moved aside, to make a path out into the valley. But a church is not a church without people. So Father Tobas went back into the human land, and he found a group of people of the mark, people who—for one reason or another—also wished to hide. Between them all, they built a Village. The faerie watched from the Wood, but she did not stop them. She owed a debt of gratitude to the priest, and she would do him no harm.

  The priest lived in the Church of the Wood for many years, until he was old and gray, and could no longer carry on. And then he sat down at the base of one of the trees, and closed his eyes. With his last breath, he called Lady Susannah’s name.

  “A whisper of white flashed in the wood. The priest’s spirit walked away from his frail body, and reached out for a long pale arm...”

  After Lady Erin finished her tale, the faerie and the priest sat silent for a very long time.

  “That is not such a sad story,” Father Jared said at last. He was still sitting on his bench, watching the breeze blow through the flowers.

  “I think you miss the point of it,” Lady Erin said bluntly. “The humans cut the wood. They were the evil ones. And even the priest, who thought to help, did the faerie lady harm. He buried her like a human. He carved her name into stone, and doomed her to wander the earth, her spirit forever restless. Otherwise she would have been at peace, in the grass of the wood where she died.”

  “I think you miss the point,” Father Jared returned. “The priest did his best to protect the wood. And clearly, he loved Lady Susannah.”

  Suddenly, the young priest was embarrassed. A priest should not love a woman, even a faerie one. He stood up quickly, and Lady Erin looked at him curiously from her spot on the grass.

  “I have work to do,” he said abruptly, and went inside.

 

  The Gypsies

  Amandie was more cautious now that she traveled alone, even around the faithful. She had grown up around people of the mark, after all—she knew its loopholes. She knew that even in truth, words can be used to wound, and information can be withheld. She knew that even in purity, people can be kept at a distance and not cared about. And she knew that even in peace, there can be many disagreements and small coercions. Finally, to her own shame, her time with the Baron had shown her that much innocence could be lost without one losing the mark.

  So Amandie walked with the hood of her cloak pulled up over her head, even though it was early summer, and she stayed away from other folk that she came across. Ironically, this was exactly what Gleason had wanted, and what they had fought about. She could hardly be less sorry he had gone, but she did find herself wishing their journey together had been more productive. She still didn’t know what the Baron’s letter had held; Gleason would never speak of it.

  All she knew was that the Village boy hated the faerie, and therefore wished the Wood ill. Amandie had tried to tell him the truth about the Baron, without exactly revealing what he’d done to her—she was too embarrassed by it—but the boy wouldn’t listen. He told her the Baron had been wronged by the faerie, the same as he’d been, and he took the Baron’s side.

  Whatever her reservations about the faithful, Amandie stayed in churches whenever she could, to extend her coin. It was a priest’s duty to take in travelers with the mark, and most did so kindly. Some were less welcoming, however, and lectured her about traveling alone, which she could hardly help. Walking the distance to the Palace, the days stretched out, until Amandie felt that she’d been on the road forever.

  Her boots were worn and scuffed, and she was forced to sleep on the ground, rolled up in a blanket, when she couldn’t make it to a nearby village or town. Still, the land of Calundra was a beautiful place; sunny and bright, with rolling green hills and fertile croplands. Despite her troubles, Amandie still had a merry heart.

  It was this that led her to finally speak to the gypsy couple. She had crossed their path several times, now that they were both on the broad well-marked Queen’s Road. The road led to Queen’s Hollow, and from there to the Palace; she and the two gypsies were headed in the same direction. She listened to their pipe playing at night while she ate her bread and cheese all alone, and knew that they were only camped around the bend from her.

  They had a horse and covered wagon, but they stopped much more frequently than she did, earning money in the towns. She’d seen them dancing and playing songs for folk in the village greens and town squares.
They were there in the last town she’d come through; the gypsy woman limber and alluring, and just like the gypsy man, brown as a chestnut.

  The gypsy man was the one who piped so sweetly, lulling her into strange dreams of the Wood. In her dreams, she and Lady Erin ran laughing along a surging riverbank, one that otters pranced upon. When they were both tired, they ate dark red fruit that dripped bright red juice down their chins. It made Amandie feel as though she could fly.

  When she awoke, she was disturbed. She had never heard Lady Erin laugh, nor had she, a human, ever eaten from the fruit of the trees. It wasn’t a bad dream, but it had felt unsafe. The careless laughter and the feeling of being airborne clung to her as she tucked her blanket into her pack. It made her uneasy; it made her crave human company.

  She was up earlier than the gypsies, so she pulled ahead of them on the road, but they had a horse, which gave them the advantage. Before the sun had arched its way very high up into the sky, they had caught up with her again. This time, Amandie couldn’t hide her curiosity. She had left her hood off to enjoy the morning sun, and the gypsy man waved at her cheerfully. The gypsy woman frowned, but when Amandie waved back, her eyes went to the mark, and then her pretty oval face thawed out a bit.

  They were both dark-haired and tanned, no doubt from being outdoors so much. Amandie wondered if it was because of their coloring that they were gypsies, or if it was inconsequential. Dark-haired people were often viewed with suspicion—but the gypsies lived an unsettled life which many folk viewed with suspicion anyhow. Perhaps it did not matter to them much, what people thought.

  Amandie knew that to judge folk by their appearance was a stupid superstition. She was friends with a faerie, after all, and no one could ever mistake a human—no matter how dark their hair or eyes—for something such as she. And more than that, a faerie could always be known by its voice. So Amandie had no qualms about the gypsies because of how they looked. Nor even because they were unmarked, for she’d expected as much, living their sort of life.

  That was how she came to take a ride in the gypsy wagon, and meet the friendly gypsy man—Kip—and the more reserved gypsy woman, whose name was Corella. They were not kin, as they looked, but man and wife. And they were young, and interesting, and full of conversation. Amandie had been starved for company, so she spent the afternoon in the wagon learning as much as possible about the gypsies, while telling them as little as possible about herself.

  They all had the same destination—the Palace. She told them that she was hoping for a job there, and they told her that they were going to visit Kip’s uncle, who worked there as a bard. Amandie was bursting to know more about the Palace, but hadn’t wanted to inundate them with questions all at once. After they stopped for the day, she helped Kip with making the fire and then Corella with cleaning the dishes. And then she asked them to tell her everything they knew about Palace life.

  Kip settled against a wheel of the wagon, which was pulled horizontal to the fire, and gazed out into the early evening. The night sky was lit not only by the dying fire and the moon, but also by a constantly shifting field of fireflies. A multitude of the tiny bugs winked on and off, creating a bright tapestry of motion. Amandie thought it was one of the loveliest sights she’d ever seen.

  “The latest news I’ve had of the Palace wasn’t from my uncle, it was actually from Olcasse. Folk in the city said they’d heard the young prince, Father Jared, had left the Palace for some little known country church in Baron Malkine’s holding. Now that must have caused quite a stir with the royal family.”

  “The prince is also a priest?” Amandie asked curiously.

  Corella stopped stitching up a hole in a pink flowered skirt that was heaped on her lap, and stared at Amandie. “I thought everyone knew that by now. Where was it you said you were from, girl?”

  “I live in a little known country village myself,” Amandie said with a smile. She didn’t know how the gypsy woman could see by this light; it didn’t seem bright enough to do needlework. But maybe gypsies were used to doing things in the dark. “The last we’d heard of, King Pattrik was still alive. It’s only since I’ve left that I heard news of Prince Lukas’s coronation.” In fact, she had proudly relayed this information to the Village folk herself, at one of her few visits.

  “Well, then, you do come from afar,” Kip replied lightly. “I suppose then, I’d best be thorough in what I tell you.”

  With this, he launched into a detailed account of the lives of King Pattrik, and the two young princes, and even the Silent Queen herself. Amandie listened, fascinated. The Village had heard of the Silent Queen from old Father Brion, who had told the town of her death when he first arrived. But he’d not spoken of the manner of it, nor of the scandal.

  Folk had just assumed that the Queen died of natural causes, but now Amandie found out about the treason, and the execution, and the brown-haired baby she’d left behind. She thought it must have been hard for young Prince Jared to grow up in the shadow of this; maybe it was even why he’d become a priest. She said this much to Kip, when he came to a pause.

  “Maybe it was,” Kip replied. “Certainly a way to prove his own goodness, not that I reckon it was openly in question. He was only a baby, after all. Could be that his brother encouraged him to take the mark. Young Prince Lukas took charge of the babe, though he was but eight years older himself. A good thing too—they say King Pattrik would barely look at his brown-haired son.”

  “Is King Lukas fair?” Amandie asked. “Not that such things matter,” she added quickly. After all, her hair was a shade of brown as well, even if it was a light one.

  “Aye, King Lukas is fair, as was his father before him. Uncle Wick says the Silent Queen had red hair, so the boy took after neither. But my uncle always thought King Pattrik had other reasons than just his coloring for disliking the lad,” Kip finished, poking at the fire with a stick to bring a half-burned log over the hottest part.

  “Your uncle was always partial to the Silent Queen,” Corella inserted. “And look where it got him.”

  Amandie glanced inquiringly at Kip, patiently waiting for him to lean back against the wagon wheel and get comfortable again.

  “Uncle Wick was always fond of a pretty face,” Kip said, with a wink at Corella that Amandie assumed meant his uncle approved of his young nephew’s choice of a comely wife. “He was one of the few who spoke out in favor of the Queen.”

  “Told a story, you mean,” Corella snorted.

  “So he did,” Kip said with a grin. “Well—it is the way of a bard,” he directed this to his wife, who had set aside the mended skirt and pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them. “Uncle Wick told the king a tale—one of a nobleman who suspected his wife of being untrue and had her killed for it, only to discover that the rumor was false. And then, of course, the nobleman could never forgive himself.”

  Kip paused dramatically at this last part, and Corella rolled her eyes. “You’ll never make a bard, telling a tale like that,” she teased him.

  “Well, the king was less than happy with my uncle’s story, not that it changed anyone’s mind. Uncle Wick nearly had to leave the Palace over it—almost fled with the Mad Priest—but it blew over in the excitement of the Silent Queen’s execution,” Kip continued. “My uncle kept quiet after that—told silly tales of romance, as he calls them—and managed to keep on the right side of the royal family for nearly a decade. Before he went off again.” Kip chuckled at this, and then reached down to pull his cloak up over his arms.

  Amandie had already done the same. The night was getting cooler, and the fire was mostly embers now. “What happened then?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t being too curious. But the gypsy man seemed to be enjoying the audience, and his wife was stretched out sleepily on a blanket now, half-listening to them while she gazed drowsily at the field of fireflies.

  “Then—why then he got himself in trouble telling tales to the young Prince Jared,” Kip said.

 
“The man will never learn,” Corella murmured.

  “Did the king punish him?” Amandie asked.

  “Naw, he couldn’t catch him. Uncle Wick took to the road with the rest of us gypsies, for a while. He’s only been back since the death of the king.” Amandie nodded, as though she had known this. She must seem very ill-informed to the two of them, despite the things she’d overheard at the tavern.

  “No doubt when we finally get to the Palace, your uncle will be climbing down from the right tower on a rope made of sheets,” Corella said from deep in her blanket, with an audible yawn. Amandie giggled slightly, picturing this, and then quickly glanced over at Kip, hoping she hadn’t offended him. His expression was still good-humored, at least what she could see of it in the near dark.

  “My uncle’s getting on in years,” he returned. “I think he’s finally learned discretion. Besides, he knows now that he was a fool about the Silent Queen. He was taken in by her beauty, same as the Mad Priest was. You know what they say about her, eh? How she bewitched people, even without the use of her tongue. Some even said she was—”

  “That’s enough of that tale now,” Corella said sharply, suddenly waking up. “You know what nearly happened to your uncle when he said that, and what happened to those who were foolish enough to repeat it.”

  “Aye,” said the gypsy man after a long pause, “I suppose you’re right.” He stood up suddenly, shaking out his long legs and going over to stamp out the fire.

  “Please, you can finish,” Amandie begged. “I won’t tell anyone.” She felt as though she’d been on the verge of hearing something very interesting, and having Corella forbid it only tantalized Amandie more.

  “No, Corella is right,” the gypsy man said, with a note of finality in his voice. “Better not speak ill of those with the power to harm ye, as they say.” He went over to his wife, and offered her a hand, pulling her easily up off the ground.

  The two gypsies slept in the covered wagon and Amandie slept outside, although they’d told her there was room enough for her as well. Amandie was too bashful to sleep in close company with a married couple. She tucked her cloak around her, and then her blanket as well. She fell asleep wondering what people had whispered about the Silent Queen, and why King Pattrik had punished them for it. She thought of the young priest, and wondered if she might possibly have met Father Jared, on his way to some unknown little village. A place with a Church, and a Village, and a Wood—a place that few ever visited, if any at all.

  There had been several other priests, according to the older Villagers, who came after Father Tobas’ death and didn’t take to the place, but left within a year or six months of each other, saying they’d send someone else back. Until Father Brion had come, that is, and stayed on. He was the only priest that Amandie really remembered. When the others had been there, she was only a babe. She thought about the story that Kip had told her, and how in it Father Brion had been known as the Mad Priest. She had always thought Father Brion to be very kindly, and more than sane enough.

  Though the Village folk had called him mad as well, when he took in the faerie child.

  The gypsies were a pleasure to travel with; in their company, Amandie thrived. True, they went along at an unhurried pace, going out of the way to play and dance for folk, but their slowness didn’t chafe her, as Gleason’s had. She became used to singing while Kip played his flute and Corella danced. Soon the gypsy woman became friendly enough with her to tease her, as she often teased her gypsy husband. One day she told Amandie that the increase in coin they received from the towns was due less to Amandie’s fine voice, and more to the lads who fell mooning over the Village girl’s bright hazel eyes. Amandie blushed and protested that her singing was fair, but Corella just smiled a wicked smile.

  The days passed swiftly and the length of the Queen’s Road dwindled. Eventually, they came through impressive Queen’s Hollow, the biggest city that Amandie had ever seen. On their last day of travel, before they were due to reach the Palace, she almost wished they could go back and do it all over again. She mentioned this to Kip, who grinned and replied that if she felt that way, she might as well stay on the road. When Corella offered, quite suggestively, to find her a nice gypsy lad to take up with, this time Amandie just laughed.

  The Queen’s Road had ended at the city, and now it was the King’s Road they followed, although it was really all the same road. The traffic around them was busier than it had been, though much less crowded than in the city streets. Amandie had tried in her mind to picture the Palace many times, but when she finally got there, she found that her imaginings had been weak and hollow, in comparison with what she actually saw.

  The King’s Palace rose like an eccentric gem, made from an unpolished stone. It was long and low, for the most part, but it had high sudden towers that were irregular, crystal and shining. As they drew nearer, Amandie discovered that the walls were actually made of quartz—some nearly transparent, some veined with purple, others a cloudy white. Its decorative edgings were quartz as well—pink or ruby-colored. They ran along horizontally, separating different stories of the building. When Amandie and the gypsies were close enough to be nearly in front of it, she saw that it couldn’t be said to be low at all, but that she’d simply misjudged its massive size from far away, fooled by the height of the towers.

  Of course, Amandie and the gypsies did not take the circular drive to the grand front steps; they were humble folk, so they went round the back. To the left side of the Palace there was a servant’s entrance, not quite all the way in the rear, for that would have put them in the Palace gardens. This was where they gave their names to several impeccably attired servants who told them rather disdainfully to pull the wagon over to the side, out of sight, and wait for Kip’s uncle to come out.

  Amandie hadn’t expected to feel quite so shabby; she rarely thought of her dress, since people hardly seemed to notice it. She supposed she’d become a bit conceited by all the flattering little attentions she’d received in her travels. Here, clearly more was expected; these folk had style. Her plan to ask for work suddenly seemed very foolish. What would they make of her, a Village lass, with barely any training at all?

  She was brooding over this, fitfully untying and re-tying her green scarf—the prettiest item she owned, when a man whom she judged to be somewhere in his fifties, and who looked like an older version of Kip, came barreling out the side door.

  “Kip, my lad—my favorite nephew—I’ve been waiting for you to come!” he exclaimed, pulling the younger gypsy man into an enthusiastic hug. Then he turned to Corella, who—despite the cheeky things she’d had to say about him earlier—was beaming at Kip’s uncle as though he was a welcome sight. Uncle Wick picked her up off the ground and spun her merrily around. “My favorite niece too! You haven’t got tired of this lazy fellow, then?” he said, jerking his head in Kip’s direction.

  Amandie stood back shyly, feeling as though she’d stumbled into someone else’s family reunion. “Well now, who have you two kidnapped?” Uncle Wick asked them wonderingly, when his attention finally came to rest on her.

  “I’m Amandie, of the Village,” she told him formally.

  “And what village might that be?” Uncle Wick laughingly asked.

  Amandie didn’t know how to respond.

  Kip saved her by saying, “She’s a bit of a thing we picked up on the road, a real country lass.” He smiled at her fondly as he said this, and Amandie suddenly felt even grubbier than she had earlier, when the Palace servants had practically turned them from the door.

  “I can see that now...” Uncle Wick said, more slowly. “But possibilities... yes, possibilities,” he said, walking around her, as though fitting her for a dress. “I presume you have a purpose in coming to the Palace?” he asked more kindly.

  “She’s looking for work,” Corella put in. She had put an arm around Amandie’s shoulder, as though to defend her from some of the sport. Amandie appreciated the gesture, but she felt she’d
rather speak for herself. “Aye, I met a priest who told me I might do well for the Palace. I think he may even have been the young prince,” she said. Kip and Corella both looked at her curiously; she’d not told them this before, in case she was wrong.

  “Well, then, we must find you a place here, mustn’t we? We wouldn’t want the young prince to be disappointed,” Uncle Wick said with a grin. Amandie blushed and stammered, “I don’t know that it was, for sure...” but Kip’s uncle waved this off.

  “I know the job for you, lass. Cook’s been looking for another girl to serve at table. We’ll clean you up a bit, and she can try you out.” Amandie wasn’t sure whether she was overjoyed or slightly disappointed at this very modest appraisal. The bard noticed, and chuckled. “No worries, lass—if you’re a quick study, you’ll move up in no time.”

  Uncle Wick herded them back towards the Palace’s side door, exclaiming that the servants who manned it would hear about making his kin wait out in the yard. Amandie let herself be pulled along with them, grateful that she had not, after all, come here alone. She was sure she would never have got through the servant’s entrance on her own, or be walking eagerly down the Palace hallways, as she was right now.

 

  The Change

  Father Jared had not meant to make friends with the faerie; in fact, he had resisted it all along. He had hoped that by keeping her at arms’ length—quite literally—he could avoid acknowledging the unwanted friendship and the problem might just go away. There were so very many reasons that she was dangerous, however tame she might pretend to be. And they were so very significant that he could hardly think of anything else, whenever she was around.

  First, of course, was that she could spell him with her voice; her voice, which was like nothing else he’d ever heard, utterly compelling and beautiful. Second was that she was unpredictable. He was used to being in control—he was a prince, after all. He always had been. She made it clear to him that he was not. And third—well, even her tale had told it. If he wasn’t quite careful, he’d be leaving foolish gifts under the trees himself.

  Yes, being her friend would be dangerous for both of them, he reasoned. It would be like keeping a mountain lion as a pet.

  What was even worse was that he had brought this on himself. He’d gone into her Wood—though only out of an overpowering sense of duty—and invited her to come back out of it again. But he had never failed the god before. He knew that what he’d done, in excluding her from the Church, had been an unworthy action. It had to be rectified.

  The experience of searching for her in the Wood had been both exhilarating and disturbing, probably in equal measure. Once he’d finally stumbled out of it for good, all he wanted was to go back to the normal, non-threatening existence he’d always had; the one he’d so unwisely taken for granted.

  The Wood may have succeeded in making him a believer in faerie magic, but it did not reassure him of its intentions. And so, the young priest’s thoughts churned in confusion; he struggled to determine which of the tales of faerie were true, and which were false, and which might fall somewhere in between those two options.

  The faerie woman didn’t give him a chance to think things over. Instead, she invaded his life completely, making it impossible for him to fully relax.

  But after she told him the tale of the Dead Tree, he found himself giving in to it. He realized that there would be no moment when he woke up, and found that this was all a dream—possibly a nightmare. In one very dark, uncharted part of his being, he had felt like he belonged out there in the Wood, overwhelming as it had been. In another secret, unacknowledged part of himself, he felt like he belonged—but no, he would not even think that. There were boundaries to maintain, like the fences around the stone church itself.

  But he lived in the Church of the Wood, and now he had a faerie—despite all of his best efforts to the contrary—as one of his closest friends.

  So, he finally thanked her for doing the dishes, and gave up on doing them himself. He let her fetch water from the well—as she told him she’d often done for Father Brion—though the young priest was hardly an infirm old man. And he burned her accursed faerie firewood. He made her cups of tea, and let her tell him about the animals in the Wood; he tried not to yawn when she carried on about her problems with aggressive red ant hills. If other humans had any idea how prosaic faerie work could sound, they’d think very differently of them.

  To be honest with himself, he let her lull him into security. He even put on the faerie shirt that she’d given him, the one that was woven of a strange white plant. To his dismay, it was the only thing he’d ever worn that didn’t itch. But he tried not to wear it all the time, nevertheless. Lady Erin would notice; she could be unbearably smug, when she wasn’t being bossy or ingratiating.

  He knew it couldn’t last. He knew the Villagers would begin to whisper about the priest and the faerie woman. He’d had this happen before; he’d befriend a stray noblewoman at the Palace, one with a modicum of wit or a strong common interest. Pretty soon the servants were taking bets on whether he’d abandon his vows and be married instead.

  He knew that this was so because his presence often went unnoticed when he was feeling antisocial, and he had caught them at it. The idea had been ludicrous at the time, beneath his dignity even to acknowledge. He was a priest-in-training, not to mention being entirely uninterested.

  That had changed now, like magic. And not the good kind, that Lady Erin insisted she mostly possessed. Thoughts he’d never struggled with before now possessed him. And Lady Erin was oblivious. He thought that he might include that in a new definition of faerie—a magical creature who was oblivious, stubborn, and eccentric.

  “You should wear the blue one,” the faerie said. He had been trying to shoo her out of his sleeping chamber without actually shouting at her, ever since he’d opened his eyes and found her sitting on his open windowsill. Her feet and legs were hanging into the room and her long black hair was dangling out of it. He would know better next time than to leave his shutters unfastened, no matter how humid the night air.

  “I can pick out my own clothes,” he snapped, and then regretted it. He reminded himself that he was trying to be nicer.

  “Blue is my favorite color,” she went on, as though he hadn’t spoken. She’d woven him a new shirt, made entirely of what looked like giant bluebells. He reached for the white one with the red and green trim, instead. He knew he was just being contrary, fighting the power of her voice, proving to himself that he was still acting on his own decisions.

  “A color is a color,” he said, more graciously, as though he simply didn’t care.

  “But blue is the color of the water. And sometimes the color of the sky,” the faerie said sweetly. Father Jared found himself reaching for the blue shirt, and then caught himself again. He scowled, and tugged the other one impatiently on. Really, what was she doing in his bedroom while he dressed? It was entirely beyond him.

  “Listen, Erin, you can’t be here. You have to come back later, okay? Maybe once I’m up...” There, that was nice enough.

  The faerie woman’s soft pink mouth drew into a pout. “But you take so long to get up!” she protested. “I’ve been awake for hours, ever since the sun rose.”

  Father Jared sighed, and ran his hands through his knotted hair. He knew a comb was somewhere in all this mess, but he was too sleepy to hunt for it.

  “You know, you could let me tidy this up,” the faerie offered, wrinkling her pert nose at the disorder on his bureau and the open, overflowing chest.

  He might still be tired, but Lady Erin was vibrantly awake. And far too beautiful to be sitting on his open windowsill, criticizing his house-keeping again.

  “There are certain boundaries,” he told her sometime later.

  “Like the edges of the Wood?” she asked. Her round face, with its perfectly pointed chin, was turned up towards the sky, which was flowing with clouds above them. They were lying on the pebbly shore of t
he lake, letting the sun soak into their skin. He had been swimming, and she had come out to watch him. Eventually he’d joined her here on the coarse sand. He was meaning to get up at any minute and walk back to the Church. They were well in sight of the Village, and he shouldn’t be seen in her company like this.

  But he felt content, and strangely peaceful. He decided to take this moment to talk to her about his room.

  Maybe even his life.

  “The next time you want to see me, you must come to the Church door, and knock, like anyone else,” he instructed her. “If I answer it, you can come in. If not, I’m either not there, or I’m preoccupied, and you should come back later.”

  “Okay,” she said tranquilly.

  He felt that this had been too easy.

  “No peering into the windows,” he clarified. “No coming in the sills, even if they’re open.”

  The faerie turned over onto her side, and leaned her head against her hand to look at him. “Then why do you have windows?” she asked. “Aren’t they just like doors? Aren’t they meant to be looked into, and out of, and to let things in?”

  Instead of answering, Father Jared noticed how damp her hair was. She must have been swimming sometime before him. Of course, it was a blistering hot day, which was why he’d come here himself. He imagined her floating underwater, her hair moving like a black thundercloud. She might not even need to hold her breath.

  “Can you breathe underwater?” he asked, distracted.

  The faerie blinked and he saw that her lashes were slightly curly at the edges. “Of course. Can’t you?” she asked. And then she seemed to think of something and said, “No, I guess not. That would make sense.”

  Father Jared had no idea what she was talking about. In fact, he couldn’t remember what he had been talking about either. It was too hot to think, let alone discuss things properly with someone who didn’t have the first idea of what it meant to be human. He lay back down on the shore of the lake, and watched the clouds move across the sky.

  “This is nice,” Lady Erin said softly, at one point.

  “Mmm...” he replied. And so it was. A faint sound from the direction of the Village, like a rustle of bushes, reminded him that he should get up and go, in just a minute, for propriety’s sake...

  But he didn’t.

  The reason she became one of his closest friends was mostly because he wasn’t very successful at finding other companions. The Village men his age were intimidated by him; they had all noticed his ring. They knew by it that he was a nobleman, even if he didn’t choose to make public his status.

  The royal stone was a clear crystal quartz, but he had designed this ring himself; he had chosen a purple one instead. He preferred the anonymity it gave him. It kept people who didn’t already know from immediately recognizing him as a prince, and then fawning all over him.

  In vain the priest tried to moderate his usual manner, but his early training made this difficult, and his own unyielding temperament was another hindrance. So many formalities were observed at the Palace that these Village folk seemed untutored to the point of being without social graces, not that they could be blamed for it.

  He had no trouble in conversing with them, but he didn’t come to feel attached to any one person, at least no more than a priest would normally become to one who attended his church. Father Jared performed his priestly duties with a scrupulous goodwill, but outside of them he fell into a habit of keeping to himself, apart from the faerie and her whimsical attentions.

  Erin was different from the Village peasants, in more ways than being a faerie. She had read all of Father Brion’s books—granted, there weren’t very many—and she remembered them all word for word. She told him that when she was a child, the old priest had taught her out of them. Many of the Village folk couldn’t even read, and those who did, apparently did not read very well. Their ideas and conversation were limited, whereas Lady Erin’s were boundless.

  She asked him endless questions about Calundra, all of which he answered patiently. She asked him endless questions about himself—of which he answered less, patiently redirecting her attention to almost anything else. Most importantly, he didn’t tell her that he was a prince. He made his excuse to the god that this wasn’t a deception; it was a form of self-protection.

  There was another tale—a tale that he could have told her—and yet one that he probably never would. It was a tale of one of the many kings who warred with the Wood of the Palace. The young priest thought of this tale, and of what it might mean for anyone who felt too intensely drawn to a faerie, and he regretted once again that he had not been more prudent, somehow. Although he could hardly think now of what he might have done differently, or in what other way the situation might have turned out.

  The young priest suddenly remembered what he was doing, and looked down at his hands. They had been cleaning the Church’s tarnished candlesticks, but now they were trembling instead of polishing. In his mind, he had been picturing the tale, the sort of tale about faeries that the bard had delighted in telling. It was the kind that made the fine ladies of the Palace swoon, and let the fine lords catch them.

  As if on cue, the priest heard a slight rap on the door. He set down his rag and went to answer it, although he already knew who it was. Only Lady Erin came to the back door, which let out onto the cemetery. The cemetery had a gate in the fence at the far side, behind the tombstones, and through that gate was the Wood. The other members of the Church used the front gate and the front door of the Church; they would not willingly go so close to the thick trees, not if they could help it.

  The faerie woman smiled at him—her breathtaking smiles were a regular occurrence now—and came in with a basket of berries. She set them down on the table after greeting him, and began pulling things off of the shelves. “What are you making?” the priest asked curiously, sitting down again at the table and watching her as she set out flour, sugar, butter, and salt. She meticulously arranged a wooden spoon, a bowl and a cup, and began measuring.

  “I’m making you a tart,” she answered, beginning to hum to herself. Father Jared inspected the basket of berries closely; they looked like freshly-picked strawberries, small, red and ripe.

  “Don’t worry,” Lady Erin reassured him, “I found them outside of the Wood. The berries in the Wood are different. Better of course, but I don’t think you’d want them.” She said this with an unconscious superiority, as though his human tastes were faulty, and flashed her perfect, almond-shaped eyes at him.

  The priest just shook his head at her, picking up a berry by the stem and biting into the other end. “Not too many,” she scolded, “or I won’t have enough.” He ignored her and picked up another, selecting the juiciest one he could find; he preferred them uncooked, anyhow.

  “Erin, what would you do if someone harmed your Wood?” he asked her.

  He couldn’t keep himself from staring at the basket as he spoke, which he realized now was probably made of faerie cane. There were glowing azure patterns on it, ones that he couldn’t imagine being made by anything else. The faerie woman paused in the act of rolling out the dough; she had her sleeves pushed above her elbows and powder on her cheek where she had wiped it with a floury hand.

  “They wouldn’t. They know better,” she said.

  “And if they didn’t? What then?”

  “The beasts would eat them,” she said simply. She avoided his eyes after she said this, and began fitting the finished crust into a ceramic pie plate, carefully crimping the edges. He could tell that she was uncomfortable. “I could hardly prevent it,” she protested, when a meaningful silence had fallen between them. He knew that this wasn’t a full truth; after all, she had prevented the wolf from devouring Irena.

  “Couldn’t you?” he asked. He had picked up another berry, but now he put it down again. He was no longer hungry. “You have the mark. It would be your duty to make peace. You must know that.”

  “If they hurt the trees, they would
deserve it,” Erin said angrily, her pale face becoming openly defiant.

  She moved the basket of strawberries away from him, and picked up a wooden knife that was lying on the table. She began to slice them with uncanny swiftness. “You’re just a human,” she said fiercely. She sounded close to tears at even the thought of her Wood being hurt. “You wouldn’t understand.” Her knife was miraculously efficient. She had cut the strawberries in an instant, and was spreading the pieces into the tart, covering them afterward with extra strips of dough in a crisscross pattern.

  He watched her finish making the tart in silence. She was right, he did not understand. The life of a tree could never compare to the life of a human.

  It was another note of tension between them, to complete the symphony that was already there.

  After service one week, the gossip he’d been anticipating earlier—and been relieved to avoid hearing about—finally caught up with him. A senior member of the Church, Richard the Mason, a stoneworker by trade, took Father Jared aside. The young priest had been lingering on the threshold of the front door to watch the rest of the congregation scurry back down the little dirt path to the Village. Irena was skipping alongside her mother, and humming something that sounded suspiciously like a tune that Lady Erin liked to hum.

  “Father, might I speak to you a moment?” Richard Mason asked, looking uncomfortably like a man who has been delegated to perform an unpleasant task. Father Jared sighed and stepped out further, motioning the older man to the bench at the side of the Church. “Let’s sit outside, if you don’t mind. The day is fine, and the Church can be a bit confining, after the service,” the young priest said to him.

  They sat awkwardly next to each other and made casual comments on the weather and the Village, although he held out little hope that this was Richard Mason’s actual purpose. The Villagers always walked back together in a group; safety in numbers, he supposed. The older man was intent at first on his hands as they talked—the priest noticed that they were rough and scarred. Then he straightened his broad shoulders, so that they strained against the green and red of his vest, and took a deep breath.

  “I’ve a mind to approach you about something, Father, but I want you to know that I don’t mean any disrespect.” The young priest nodded at him diplomatically, encouraging him to continue. It would be best to get this over with. “The other members of the Church,” the mason began, stressing “other” so that Father Jared knew this wasn’t coming only from him, “are worried to see ye spending so much time with the faerie.”

  Richard the Mason looked over at him cautiously, to see how he was taking this. The priest kept his face smooth and untroubled, and met the older man’s eyes fully and—so he hoped—without embarrassment. “The faerie is a member of the Church as well,” he said quietly.

  “Aye, Father, so she is—though none of us were too sorry when she decided not to come for a bit. Father Brion was a good man, but he was overgenerous, giving her the mark the way he did.”

  “The god gives the mark,” Father Jared admonished.

  The man dipped his head in acknowledgement, but said, “Even so, the mark has always been for humans. There’s no way of knowing how well it might work on a faerie.”

  “Do you think the god’s power is less than the faerie’s magic?” Father Jared asked him, displeased at this.

  “Ah, well, now—I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” the large man stammered, rubbing his right hand against his left in his lap. “But she’s more than a faerie, too. She’s a woman. And you’re a young priest, if you don’t mind my saying so. When Father Brion took the faerie girl in, he was like a father to her; but now—well, the ladies of the Church feel it’s inappropriate for ye to be spending time alone with a lass, even a faerie one. I’m not saying I agree with them,” he continued hastily, “But it’s fair that you should know what’s being said.” The mason halted in his speech, and looked anxiously over at him for his response.

  “I’ve tried to curb her careless ways myself, but I’m afraid she isn’t exactly amenable to all the social conventions of humans,” the young priest said cautiously. “She misses the old priest, and so looks for company in me, as the new one. It would be cruel to push her away, especially when she’s grieving for Father Brion, so I’ve allowed her to seek comfort in the Church. That’s all there is to it,” he concluded, adding formally—and a bit sarcastically, because he couldn’t restrain himself, “You may pass that along to the ladies of the Church who are so concerned, and ease their worries.”

  Richard the Mason nodded several times at this and opened his mouth to say more, but then quickly shut it. He was staring out past the fence, into the Wood, where there had just been a flash of movement. The nervous mason suddenly took his leave with an alacrity that Father Jared was hard-pressed not to laugh at, watching the older man set an admirable pace down the winding dirt path.

  “You can come out now,” Father Jared said to the trees, suppressing a grin. He had risen from the bench to bid the mason farewell, and now he stood under the rose trellis, which had lately come into bloom. It held neither red, nor pink, nor even yellow roses, but startlingly deep blue ones. Father Jared had a feeling that these were not the same roses originally planted in the garden of the Church, but he didn’t ask.

  The faerie woman edged out from behind a wide, dark tree, and slowly walked over to him. Her clear black eyes were unusually clouded. They put him in mind of a fog which had risen at midnight, obscuring the moon and the stars.

  “Do I trouble you?” Lady Erin asked him. Her eerie faerie voice was uncharacteristically hesitant. Father Jared wanted to reach out and clasp her hands to reassure her, but he suppressed the traitorous urge.

  “A bit,” he admitted. The god loves truth, he justified to himself, seeing her crestfallen expression. After all, he had been trying to set limits. “But only when you act like a faerie,” he added impetuously, unable to keep from smiling. Lady Erin looked up at him in confusion, then read his face and laughed.

  Father Jared was shocked. He had joked with her.

  He never joked.

  He shook his head, feeling a chill, despite the suffocating warmth of a long summer day.

  No, he thought suddenly. I didn’t want this. But it was too late.

  She had already changed him.

 

  The Palace

  Amandie settled into her job at the Palace, and found that it wasn’t so very different in some ways from working at the tavern, after all. It appeared different, of course. Everything around her was fine and beautiful, with a luxury and splendor like none she’d ever seen before. There were halls full of portraits, and halls full of mirrors. There was a Great Hall, where the King’s throne was, an immense dining room that was known as the King’s Table—to differentiate it from where the servants ate—a lofty, many-windowed ballroom, and a two-story library full of more books than Amandie had ever known existed. That was not to mention the countless bedrooms, sitting rooms, studies, and parlors.

  It took her some time to learn where everything was, and get used to the number of other servants, which was more than triple the size of the Baron’s staff. So at first it seemed to her as though everything was different, and that she would never completely adjust. Most of her duties centered on bringing trays to the king’s betrothed, as well as the woman who was rumored to be his mistress, the noblewomen in residence, and any other various guests. She also served at formal meals and regularly held events and parties. She found that she was exhausted by the end of the day just from running down endless corridors, and standing on her feet whilst ladies in glittering dresses removed tiny portions from the dishes she offered them.

  She discovered that at the Palace, by tradition, only a woman could serve another woman, and only a man could serve another man. She found this to be an unexpected relief, for she was even shyer around the fashionable lords and the king than she was around the fashionable ladies. But it meant that every function was
attended by a bevy of servants, to divide the work properly between them.

  What Amandie found to be similar to the tavern was the work itself—fetching from the kitchen, balancing trays, dealing with dissatisfied customers in a humble manner. Another less pleasant thing, that turned out to be like the tavern, was that there were eyes here that followed her as well, and tongues that sometimes went with them. Disdainful countesses made fun of her country accent, which she was trying hard to mend, and overly familiar barons looked at her in much the same way that Baron Malkine had—as though she was something to eat, much like one of the chocolate-filled pastries that were the cook’s signature dessert.

  The head cook, whom everyone called Bonny, though her full name was apparently Bonita, had an iron fist in the kitchen. Otherwise, she was actually very nice. The kitchen staff in general was fairly pleasant, although they could also be peevish when things were busy or when a dish didn’t make it out as hot or cold or tepid as it was meant to go out. Not so the lady’s maids and the valets and the butlers, who made it clear that they were far above Amandie, even though they were only servants themselves. There was a strict chain of command, and she was on a lower tier of it, though not so low as the kitchen girls or the chambermaids or the gardener’s boys.

  The gypsies helped make her first month an easier one than it might have been, considering all this newness. They camped in the park-like grounds behind the Palace gardens, coming in and out of it frequently to visit with Uncle Wick. Amandie used her free time, which was very little now, to go and talk with them. In the evenings, they would still light a fire sometimes as they had on the road, and sing songs after eating a simple meal outside.

  Wick of the Road—for so all gypsies were called, being thought to hail from no fixed place—was a master storyteller. All three of the gypsies had performed for the king in the Great Hall many times during their visit, enlivening the Palace with their carefree entertainment. But Wick plied his craft for them in private as well, telling tales so compelling that Amandie almost forgot where she was, as she sat back and listened to the rhythm of Wick’s deep, mellifluous voice. She loved most all of his tales, but she took exception to the fact that in the scary ones, which were often about faeries, the faeries were always wicked and conniving.

  “But that can’t be so! I happen to like faeries!” she finally exclaimed one night, after he had finished telling a particularly gruesome tale about the Wood of the West. The faerie in this tale had been a man, and he had sang a song so falsely tender and loving that it had drawn all of the young women out from a nearby village. They had wandered off into his wood, where he had enthralled them all and kept them as his slaves. “A faerie doesn’t need humans for servants!” she added, indignant. “They just want to be left alone, and for humans not to harm their woods.”

  Wick just stared at her, his lined face baffled. His skin was not so tan as the other gypsies, no doubt from living indoors, but it was still surprisingly brown. The bard sat cross-legged around the fire facing them, and Amandie had just interrupted the respectful silence that falls at the end of a well-told tale. Kip and Corella were on either side of her and they both stirred; they had been listening quietly as well. For whatever reason, Wick did not wear the Palace uniform, but his own clothes. They tended to be black, with occasional silver accessories such as rings or bracelets. The only note of color to relieve this was a strip of brown leather decorated with multi-colored beads, which he used to tie back his long gray hair.

  “Well, child, I’ve rarely heard that one!” Wick replied, with a merry laugh. Amandie relaxed a little; she had been afraid he would be angry with her for what she had said. “It’s an interesting opinion you have, but I’m afraid the evidence is against you, lass. Don’t make the mistake of doubting the moral of a tale, simply because it’s only a story. Humans and faeries were ever at war; neither could live in harmony with the other.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Amandie declared stubbornly. “If we had respected them, they would have respected us.” She wasn’t going to tell anyone about Lady Erin; not after learning that, compared to the outside world, the Village was positively friendly to faeries. Not to mention that Lady Erin had made her promise to keep the Wood and the Church and the Village a secret.

  “It’s like oil and water, Amandie,” Corella said, unexpectedly. “They just don’t mix together; they’re always fighting to keep apart.”

  “Aye, lass,” Uncle Wick said, his voice sounding suddenly sad. “That was always the way of it. But it’s no matter now, one way or the other. The faeries are all gone.” The older gypsy man gazed off into the fire for a moment, and then shook his head. “You’ve never met a faerie, or you’d not speak as you do,” Wick said gravely. And then he got up rather suddenly, kissed Kip and Corella on both cheeks, and bid them all a goodnight. Amandie did not walk back with him to the Palace, though he graciously offered her his arm. It was Kip and Corella’s last night before going back on the road, so she declined the escort. Instead, she stayed out as late as she could at the fire, postponing the moment of goodbye in the morning.

  When the gypsy couple had left, Amandie tried hard not to feel too lonely. She shared a room with several other girls, whom she’d tried to befriend, but so far they seemed to be either falsely polite or frankly uninterested. Eventually she took to seeking refuge in the Palace chapel at off hours, when it was quiet. She came there regularly for holy day as well. Holy day in the chapel was more elaborate than in the Church of the Wood, but folk dispersed from it quickly afterward to go back to their duties. In the Village they had always walked back together and lingered to talk, often sharing a common meal.

  Amandie missed this, but she appreciated the beauty of the chapel, with its stained glass windows and gilt-edged altar, and she came to find contentment there. Yet despite this elegance, she still thought wistfully of the plain stone benches in the Church, and of its dim, forest-filled windows and brightly burning torches. She thought that the calls of the songbirds which punctuated the services at home were even sweeter than the choir that sang special cantatas here. But the familiarity of being in a place of the god eased her mind, even if there were ways in which it couldn’t compare.

  There were two things at the Palace that Amandie didn’t pay enough attention to—as it turned out—until it was too late. One was that a certain lord—Lord Quentin was his name—seemed to crop up anywhere and everywhere that Amandie went. He was charming about it; he commented on her newness and asked her name, then another time he complimented her on how steadily she walked with a heavy tray. He picked up a napkin that she dropped on the floor, when she was clearing up after dinner. He just happened to have an extra flower, when he was finished handing them out to all the ladies going in for afternoon tea; he gave it to Amandie as she went by with a plateful of finger sandwiches.

  The other thing that she failed to notice was that there was often someone else in the chapel with her when she went to meditate. There could be any number of people in it at any given time, but one face showed up more often than all the rest, at least when she happened to be there herself. He was a nondescript boy who wore white, instead of the Palace uniform, which meant he must work in the kitchen. But this was a surmise that she made later about him, because for the most part her eyes just registered another benign-seeming person of the mark, and left it at that.

  Lord Quentin did not have the mark, however winning his smile might be, so Amandie didn’t think any more on him than she ought. She couldn’t escape knowing that he was an unusually nice nobleman, with a courtly manner which seemed to extend to almost all of the ladies in the Palace, even the ones who weren’t particularly young or pretty. This gave her a better opinion of him, rather than not, for it seemed to make his manner more habitual, and less aimed at her. Amandie had resolved that she would never be fooled again by a markless man. Indeed, even back when she had thought the Baron loved her, she would have been giving up a great deal to be with him.

&n
bsp; A woman of the mark usually married a man of the mark; the reverse was true as well. What often happened was that an unmarked person would convert, for the sake of a sweetheart’s favor, and all was well. But the god didn’t grant the mark to a man or woman simply because someone else loved them, so there was no guarantee that this would work out so well. Amandie had decided that she wasn’t even willing to think about someone who was unmarked as a candidate for her affections; that way, she would know someone’s attentions were honorable ahead of time.

  These two things that she had not paid enough attention to collided one day, when she least expected. She had been sent out to the herb garden to pick rosemary for the cook. This was really a kitchen girl’s job, or a fetch boy’s, but Amandie had volunteered, since Bonny was in a tizzy over the Lords’ Luncheon. Amandie couldn’t serve at the table, being a woman, and she’d felt useless watching people hustle around with preparations. They were so intent on what they were doing that they didn’t even bother to give her a job, even though she still had a half hour of potential work, before her afternoon off.

  She was selecting the freshest of the sprigs that she could find—Bonny was very particular about her ingredients—when Lord Quentin happened to stroll by, just in her line of sight. He was walking by himself in the formal Palace gardens, which adjoined the kitchen garden by a small brick-lined arch. There was a low brick wall that attached to this, which one could see over, and served more as a decorative border than anything else. Lord Quentin saw her and waved, and then ducked in through the arch.

  He bowed cheerfully, greeting her as though she was a fine lady and not a Village girl crouched down on the ground, with mud on her dress. It had rained late in the night yesterday and the ground of the garden’s herb patch was soft. The rosemary she had bundled into her apron was still wet; it gave off a scent more powerful and fresh than any of the perfumes which Amandie had smelled on any of the disdainful countesses, the ones who liked to comment on her “quaint” country accent.

  “Here, let me help you,” Lord Quentin said, offering his hand to her as she awkwardly tried to rise, without causing the herbs she’d just picked to tumble out of her apron. She was the one who was supposed to curtsy to him, as well as the one who should be offering him assistance, Amandie thought, dismayed by the situation. But she could hardly refuse, so she accepted his help with a shy murmur of appreciation.

  “You have the mark, I see,” Lord Quentin said, forgetting to let go of her hand. Instead, he tilted it so that the three circles caught the light, and seemed to dance on her palm. “I’ve always thought it such a pleasant thing—peace, truth, goodness—what a lovely idea,” he said, smiling tranquilly at her. Amandie thought first that he had got it wrong—it was purity not goodness, and second that she wanted her hand back—but didn’t want to be rude about it. Not when he was apparently entranced by the glowing mark.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said demurely, and then added, “There are many servants in the Palace with it,” hoping it might encourage him to stop looking at her as though she was particularly special.

  “I know I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Lord Quentin continued blithely, “but the other day a group of young noblemen were trying to determine who was the loveliest of all the ladies in the Palace—silly, I know—but most of them are, I’m afraid,” Lord Quentin digressed. “Anyway, they kept throwing out names, but I couldn’t come up with one myself, because...” he paused, and his habitually sweet expression grew even sweeter, and at the same time, more serious, “... well, because the only one I could think of was you, you know.”

  Amandie felt her heart falter for a second. She was standing in the kitchen garden with a dirt-smudged skirt, and the handsomest lord in the Palace—for she couldn’t help knowing that he was—and also the most charming—for who could fail to admit that either—had just told her that she was lovely. It was rather like one of the wistful daydreams she’d had, before she left the Village, and met the Baron, and been abused by him instead.

  Amandie never knew what might have happened next—it seemed very likely that Lord Quentin would have kissed her, by the look in his eyes—because a brusque voice suddenly called out, quite loudly, “Amandie, you’re wanted in the kitchen! Bonny is having a fit—she needs to put that rosemary in her sauce!” A short, nondescript boy wearing kitchen white followed this rather forceful voice. He came out into the kitchen garden and stood with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Lord Quentin, or Amandie, or possibly the fact that Lord Quentin was holding Amandie’s hand.

  “Ah, I’d not meant to keep you from your work,” Lord Quentin said apologetically. He did not let go of Amandie’s hand guiltily, as she might have expected, but instead brought it to his lips in a cheerful kiss. “I’ll be running along then,” he said, with another very nice smile, which even included the disapproving kitchen boy. He disappeared back through the arch and out into the Palace gardens, singing to himself the second chorus of a popular love song.

  Amandie was floored. She felt giddy; she didn’t know what to do with herself. She stared at the kitchen boy, and then started to laugh at his expression, and then she stopped again, realizing he thought she was laughing at him. She wasn’t, though; she was laughing at life, which was just too peculiar sometimes.

  “Be careful,” the unknown kitchen boy said more softly, his face less forbidding now that Lord Quentin was gone, but still troubled. “He may be one of the better ones, Lord Quentin, but he’s still a lord.”

  “And I’m only a serving maid?” Amandie said, offended—though she’d been thinking the same thing herself. She breezed by the plain-looking boy, saying pertly, “If I’m wanted in the kitchen, I’d best get going, then.” The boy didn’t try to follow her, at least not that she saw. After she brought her herbs to the cook, who did not seem to be frantic at all, and wasn’t even working on a sauce, Amandie left for her room and her time off. She spent the afternoon taking a much-needed nap; she’d been up late the last night, waiting on ladies at a fancy ball. And she was more than happy to temporarily escape thinking about what had happened, through the medium of sleep.

  The end result of her little tête-à-tête with Lord Quentin was not, as one might think, that Amandie fell desperately in love with him. She really was too sensible for that. Although Lord Quentin seemed to be a fair way to falling in love with her. He continued to pay her endearing compliments, whenever a chance presented itself, and he often regarded her with a certain tender affection, so much so that she would have had a hard time not thinking of him, had she not been thinking of someone else.

  Hawk wasn’t bird-like, nor was he usually commanding, although he had stood up to Lord Quentin quite manfully, or so Amandie thought. He might better have been named Sparrow, but apparently his mother had thought to give him a prouder name than that. Despite this, he was an ordinary sort of fellow, even-tempered and, as it turned out, usually quite bashful. Amandie discovered that the latter quality was very prominent, once she knew him better. It must have taken a great deal of courage for him to have come out into the herb garden like that.

  She had looked for him around the Palace after the incident, and she had thought she didn’t see him. Then she realized she had seen him and simply overlooked. She’d been more impressed by his voice than his appearance, and after she’d taken umbrage at what he had said, she’d hardly even glanced at him as she left. It turned out that he wasn’t a kitchen boy at all; he was one of the junior chefs in the kitchen, a position just under the cook.

  In fact, he turned out to be no less than Bonny’s son. Amandie had been bringing the serving trays to and from the kitchen for months now, and he had been in it. Not to mention that she’d eaten with him at every meal, though there were a great many other servants, and she didn’t know them all by name, even now. Still, she was annoyed with herself for not having known he was there. He was also the boy that was so often in the chapel, she realized.

  So, the end result of Lord Quent
in’s interference in her life was not that she fell in love with Lord Quentin, but rather, that she developed a rather frustrating crush on Hawk, the junior chef.

  When she finally tracked him down and took him to task about it, he apologized profusely for what he’d said in the garden, telling her that she’d taken the opposite of what he meant. In fact, he went so far as to say that Amandie was too fine a lady for even Lord Quentin, who didn’t have the mark. “I’ve seen you in the chapel, so I’m sure that’s important,” Hawk concluded. And then he blushed, and wouldn’t talk to her again for several days.

  This was a shame, because Amandie had instantly forgiven him. In this, she surprised even herself. But the apology was so nicely given, and she’d been quite relieved by Hawk’s interruption, upon reflection, though she admitted she was slightly disappointed at the time. All in all, she was touched that he’d thought to protect her honor. And now that she knew he was there, she took notice of him.

  She made a point of talking to him whenever she was in the kitchen. This seemed to make Bonny happy as well; apparently Amandie wasn’t the only one who had ever overlooked the junior chef. And the more she talked to him, the more she liked him. He was sensible and quiet—and when she complained about not being able to get rid of it, he told her he liked her Village accent.

  Pretty soon, Amandie couldn’t help wishing that Hawk had been the one to take hold of her hand in the herb garden, and refuse to give it back. Unfortunately for her, whereas Baron Malkine had been relentless, and Lord Quentin was obviously still interested, Amandie couldn’t even get Hawk to pursue her. The junior chef’s comment about her being a lady, which she’d thought of as only a nice little speech, turned out to be what he actually thought. He treated her as though she was leagues’ above him, as though she was being nice to him only because it was in her nature, and she couldn’t help it.

  To make it worse, since nothing in her kitchen escaped her attention, it wasn’t long before Bonny guessed Amandie’s secret inclination. Soon the cook was silently laughing at both of them.

  “You and that lad of mine circle around each other like little boys learning to wrestle,” Bonny told her one day, when they were both alone in the women’s bathhouse. Amandie had been leaning back into the large common pool, enjoying the scalding hot water, but now she sat straight up. “I don’t know what you mean,” she answered primly. “Hawk and I are friends. And we’re hardly fighting.”

  Bonny was a big woman, and her laugh was big as well. “Well, my dear, I wish you luck on it. I’m like you—I know what I want and I go after it—even if my son’s too thick in the head to do so himself.” Amandie protested uselessly at this, because Bonny just went on with, “I’ve told him to take you into Queen’s Hollow on your day off, but who knows if he’ll listen to me. No grown man likes to be told to do something by his mother. And he’s that certain a pretty thing like you would never look his way twice.”

  Amandie was mortified. She hid it as well as she could, soaping herself up and then playing with the bubbles. “I’m sure that Hawk isn’t interested in me,” she said, with what she thought was a convincing show of diffidence. “And I think he’s nice, but that’s all, really.”

  “Mind, I’m rather astonished myself that you like him,” Bonnie continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. The cook wiggled around a little, making a large splash, “Even if I am pleased at it. You have good taste, lass; you’ll not find another boy like my Hawk.” Bonny nodded at the tub, and Amandie realized that she had just been given permission to like a young man by his mother; a retiring young man who gave no sign of returning her affections. She tried hard not to groan, or to laugh.

  So, Bonny had noticed her little flirtations, even if Hawk had not. Indeed, Amandie’d never tried so hard—or so unsuccessfully—to invite a man’s attention. She should probably have been more subtle about it, she thought to herself. If she wasn’t careful, her friendly behavior alone would scare him off; that’s if being practically instructed to like her by his mother didn’t accomplish the same end first. Amandie sunk her head down under the water in shame. When she came out of the bathhouse later, with burning red cheeks, she blamed it on the heat of the tub.

  But even though she got her hopes up about her day off, because of what Bonny had said, Hawk didn’t ask her. As it turned out, he was either entirely too bashful, or truly uninterested.

  “I need you to fetch me a jar of pickles from the storeroom,” the cook said to her one day, when Amandie came into the kitchen with a half-empty breakfast tray. Amandie looked at Bonny curiously; the head cook was in the middle of baking a cake, and the junior chefs around her were working on other desserts. But the large, blonde-haired woman just winked at her and went back to beating a frothy batter with brisk, even strokes. “It’s for later,” she said cheerfully.

  The storeroom was anterior to the kitchen, and down a short flight of stairs that led underground. It was cool and dark down there, but several high-set windows let in enough daylight that Amandie didn’t need a lantern. The door to the storeroom was open, and she went directly over to the sturdy wooden shelves at the back of it, which were covered in jars and boxes, and began to hunt for pickles. She heard a slight noise behind her and to the left, which made her swing around, pickle jar in hand.

  Hawk was sitting on a large barrel, one in a collection of barrels that were pushed against each other at the far wall. The tops of these formed a sort of bench, and they were directly underneath the rectangular window, so that the sunlight slanted down onto them. Amandie hadn’t looked in this corner of the room when she first came in; she hadn’t expected anyone else to be in here. “Oh, hello,” she said, when her surprise had finally passed. Now Bonny’s wink made sense to her. “What are you doing in here?” she asked Hawk.

  The young chef was frowning at the jar of pickles in her hand, as though they were an odd choice, and then said, “I like to come here on my break, to read.” Amandie noticed then that there was a well-worn leather book in his lap. “You don’t want those, you know,” Hawk continued. “They’re spicy. If they’re wanted for the sweet potato salad, for the picnic tomorrow, they should be sweet.”

  “Oh, thanks,” she replied, feeling rather silly. Bonny hadn’t bothered to specify a particular type. Amandie went back to the shelves, and located a different jar. Instead of leaving, though, she sat down on the barrel next to Hawk, putting the jar down in her lap. She shifted on the barrel uncomfortably, wondering how he wasn’t bothered by its hard, bumpy surface. Their knees touched.

  Hawk drew his away. He moved his body back against the wall, giving her more space.

  Amandie tried not to take this personally. “What is it?” she asked, indicating the book that he was nervously clutching. She wasn’t particularly fond of reading, herself, but clearly Hawk was, if he spent his spare time in a dimly lit room with only a book for company.

  “It’s... um... nothing really. Just some... poems,” he answered. Amandie watched him tuck the book away to one side, and considered him. She didn’t know how she’d ever thought his face was nondescript. His nose was slightly crooked, and his eyebrows were startlingly dark compared to his platinum streaked hair. These were definitely distinct, she concluded, although his exact features did seem to fade from her mind when she was away from him.

  Amandie didn’t know anyone else who read poetry. “Read one for me,” she suggested. Hawk glanced over at her, but didn’t reach for the book. “They’re... they’re not really appropriate for reading aloud,” he said quickly. A slight red stain crept onto his cheeks.

  Her interest in the book quickened, but she only shrugged and said, “Oh, well. No matter then.” Both young people were quiet for a moment, and then she began, “I was thinking of going into Queen’s Hollow on my next day off...” Amandie pressed her hands tighter around the pickle jar. It was practically an invitation.

  “Oh, that’s—that’s nice,” Hawk stuttered. “To—to do what?”

  H
er mind went blank. There had been many interesting things at Queen’s Hollow when she passed through it with the gypsies, but she couldn’t seem to think of an answer to this, as it hadn’t been her purpose in bringing it up. Frantically, she searched her mind, and then blurted out, “I need a cream... for my face,” she finished lamely.

  Hawk looked at her face, and Amandie was suddenly conscious of the faint freckles that had appeared on it during her pleasant ramble with the gypsies. Judging by his mystified expression, he was considering whether she had a hidden skin disease, or was just expecting a case of the spots. “Well, that’s good,” he finally answered.

  Amandie sighed, and picked up her jar of pickles, to bring to the cook. She bid Hawk a good morning, and left him to his reading. Face cream—of all the things to think of, she chided herself, as she climbed up the short stone steps. She had never used face cream in all her life; she’d never even remotely needed such a thing. Now Hawk would either think her paranoid, or vain.

  I should have told him I was looking for a book, she thought wistfully.

  Bonny took one look at Amandie’s face when she set down the jar of sweet pickles on her work table, and then shook her head. “Little boys wrestling...” the head cook muttered to the fancy cake she was decorating.

 

  The Dream

  King Lukas considered the Baron’s letter carefully. He had sent the messenger on his way swiftly, as the Baron had suggested, so that the lad—Gleason it had been—could help keep an eye on the situation. Gleason would go home to this Village of his, and report back about what had happened during his absence. This was news that King Lukas desperately wanted. He needed to know for certain whether his brother had been compromised by the faerie, like the rest of the folk of the Village. His brother was a fool to go there, King Lukas thought bitterly. Then again he thought, And I was a fool to let him.

  If he’d had even the smallest suspicion that his brother would ever find the place—that it even existed—he never would have let him go. Although it was difficult to stop him from doing as he pleased, once he’d attached to an idea, short of locking him up. Jared had never been one to do as he was told. And he was also hard to refuse, King Lukas thought, as he settled wearily into his bed for the night. He had dismissed his servant, and the large bedchamber that in the daylight was brilliant with rich colors—with purple and red silk fabrics on the walls that perfectly matched the patterns on the upholstery and the bedspread—now was dim and extremely quiet. It was the perfect setting for an entire host of unwelcome thoughts.

  Yes, Jared was hard to refuse, but not impossible; that was the difference. And if one had Jared on one’s side, other people tended to listen. His brother was very useful, in more ways than one. He settled disputes that the king couldn’t; he convinced the nobles to do important duties, ones that they had no vested interested in doing, of themselves. King Lukas had assumed his brother would find the Mad Priest, retrieve the medallion, and come back to the Palace, all in good time. Jared would have had his little adventure, and be ready to settle down and become High Priest, in earnest.

  But he had not. Instead, he had wandered into a faerie Wood, and probably fallen into a faerie’s trap. King Lukas had no idea exactly how much danger a faerie might actually pose to his willful brother, but it was still not good. The king contemplated what he might have to do, if news of his brother’s defection was confirmed. The Village was another problem, of course, but it was a hidden one, and well-contained. He might have to deal with it, eventually. But Jared—well that was a different matter. Jared was King Lukas’s brother. And King Lukas wanted him back.

  Preferably, alive and unharmed.

  It was probably these thoughts that led him into the dream. The dream that he hated, above all others; the one that he knew, no matter how hard he pushed it away, would always come back to haunt him.

  In the dream, he was eight years old again, small and defiant and inquisitive. He had come into his brother’s nursery, which connected to the queen’s chambers, and he was peering into the bassinet. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to be doing this by himself; the queen would always chase him out. But Prince Lukas was fascinated by having a brother, after being an only child for so many years.

  The baby was pale and dark and—even to a slightly jealous sibling’s eye—perfect. He reached out a tentative hand, wanting to touch the sleeping child and to stroke the soft, strangely woven blanket. Then he heard a sound, and snatched his hand guiltily back from the crib.

  Footsteps were coming down the long hall, and he wasn’t supposed to be in here. The young prince dashed into a closet, filled with shelves that held clothing and blankets. Then he peeked out through the large keyhole, which framed his view of the nursery in an hourglass shape. The queen came into the room, closing the door firmly behind her. She sat down in the chair next to the slumbering baby, and began to hum a sweet, simple tune.

  Prince Lukas stiffened from behind the closet door—he had never heard his stepmother make so much as a sound before. Everyone said that she was mute; that she couldn’t speak at all.

  The nursery door opened again, and suddenly his father came in. The king was fair and bearded, and wore a heavily brocaded blue and purple robe, lined with a rich brown fur. His wife looked up from the bassinet with a smile of welcome, and he went over to her, putting his hand on her shoulders and gazing down at the baby himself.

  The queen flinched away from him.

  “Are you all right, my dear?” the king asked, surprised at this.

  The queen smiled at him reassuringly, and then said, “You look hungry, my love. Here, eat this.” She pulled a piece of fruit from her dress pocket, as though it was a perfectly normal thing to store it in there. Prince Lukas was astonished. He was always getting scolded by his nursemaid for leaving crumbs in his pockets. It wasn’t something that he imagined adults did.

  The king took the piece of fruit, which was a deep dark red, and just looked at it. It was shaped something like an apple, but it was too small to be one. “Eat this,” the king murmured absently, bringing the fruit to his lips. He finished it in two bites, and a bright red juice dribbled down his chin, staining his beard. When he had finished, the queen leaned in closer to him and wiped the juice away with her fingers. Then she went back to the baby’s crib, and started humming again.

  The king stood where he was for a moment, and then slowly turned. Prince Lukas caught a glimpse of his father’s eyes, which looked unfamiliar now, and overly bright. He passed a hand across them, and it trembled slightly. He said to the queen, rather abruptly, “We should name the child, my dear. It’s been too long. People will begin to wonder.”

  The Silent Queen turned her blazing blue eyes on him, and flicked back her long red hair. “He already has a name, but I suppose you must call him something,” she said tranquilly. “What do you suggest?”

  The king regarded her with confusion. “Jared, I thought... an old family name. What do you mean he already has one?” he asked her.

  “Nothing, my dear,” the queen replied, soothingly.

  “Well, then,” the king answered, “I must get back to the Great Hall. There’s been trouble about the trees, again...” The queen’s attention, which had gone back to baby, snapped over to the king again. “What trouble?” she asked sharply.

  “Oh, just a few extra ones, growing out of the boundary. The royal steward wants to trim them back.”

  “You won’t harm the trees?” the queen asked, coming to her full height, which was nearly as tall as a man.

  “Well, my love, cutting them back seems like a sensible idea,” he protested.

  His wife’s face grew hard. “You will not cut the trees,” she stated, in a low, even voice.

  The king’s eyes went wide, and then grew unfocused. “I will not cut the trees,” he repeated quietly. The queen sighed, and then moved her hands against her dress, smoothing it down. “That’s good,” she said approvingly. And then she bent forward and
straightened the collar of his shirt.

  “What was I doing?” the king asked her, confused.

  “You were going back to the Great Hall,” she prompted him gently.

  “Ah, of course.” The king smiled genially at her, lifted her hand to kiss it, and then left the nursery. The queen went over and closed the door behind him. Then she came back to the bassinet, and began to hum again.

  Prince Lukas moved his eye away from the keyhole, and sunk back into the blackness of the closet. He felt frightened and almost sick. The Silent Queen wasn’t silent at all. She was controlling his father with her words.

  The dream faded, and King Lukas sat up in his bed, his heart racing. He was covered in sweat. It was over now, but the horror of it still lingered in his mind. His body convulsed in a sudden coughing fit. He reached over for a glass of water from the jar on his bedside table, but knocked it to the floor instead. He gave up and leaned back in the bed, wiping his mouth with his night sleeve, and leaving bright red flecks on the white fabric.

  Yes, he needed his brother back, the king thought dully.

  Jared was useful to him, in more ways than one.

 

  The Royal Seal

  Father Jared’s cup had grown cold while he read the letter that the Village lad had brought him. It was not a good sort of letter, with happy news of home; no, it was the kind that made one’s tea grow cold in the reading of it. Its words invaded the little stone church like a brooding rain cloud, one which appeared on an otherwise sunny day. As the young priest read them over one more time, Lady Erin came in quietly through the back door, as though she had sensed trouble. “Knocking, remember?” he murmured, without looking up.

  The faerie went back to the door, which she had already closed behind her, and rapped smartly on it from the inside. Then she took a seat across the table from him, just as he sighed again. “I wouldn’t trust a letter brought by that person,” she said unexpectedly. Father Jared finally glanced up, taking in her worried frown.

  “It was just a Village lad that brought it,” he replied, trying to remember what the boy had looked like. He had been a plain sort of fellow, rather unattractive, but hardly sinister. “Besides, it was sealed,” he said, unthinkingly showing her the red wax dot that he had cut open. Lady Erin’s eyes narrowed onto it, but the young priest was too preoccupied to notice.

  Instead, he looked around the living space of the Church, which had grown to feel like home in the past several months, perhaps even a home he’d never had. A thick traveling cloak hung by a hook from the back door, and a pair of black boots sat underneath it. The fireplace was next to this, along the wall facing him; right now it was cold and empty. The days were not yet autumn, although the weather hovered on the brink of it. He had come at the beginning of summer, and now it was nearing its end.

  By now he knew every detail of this room, even in the dark, or with his eyes closed. Next to a small desk there were two chairs in front of the fire, on top of a handmade hooked rug. These chairs were more comfortable and padded than the chairs at the kitchen table, where he and Lady Erin sat. A small crate, standing on its end, served as a bookcase, and a cabinet to the side held a set of mismatched dishes. To the far wall, perpendicular to the door, was the cast iron stove and the low sink, along with the shelves that held boxes and jars of food and cooking spices. An intricately carved clock hung on the wall behind the kitchen table, and the doorway next to it led down the hall and into the other private room of the Church, a rather untidy sleeping chamber.

  This held a simple bed, a bureau, and a half empty chest—half empty only because most of its contents were littered about the floor. There was generally a vase of flowers on the bureau, which seemed to appear there by magic, meaning they undoubtedly came from Erin. This was the self-same faerie who was patiently waiting for him to focus back onto their previous conversation. She was uncanny in this; she could be companionable for hours, only to vanish back into her Wood in an instant, with very little warning.

  “I’ve had a letter from my brother,” the young priest said, finally. He took a sip of his cold tea, and grimaced. “He’s not well, and he’s asked me to come back.” Father Jared watched Lady Erin’s face as he said this, trying to gauge her response. The faerie said nothing, nor did she stir for a bit. Then she stood up and went over to the fireplace. Kneeling in front of it, she began to lay down kindling. “You don’t need to do that, right now,” he protested gently, wishing she would come back again so that he could see her face. “It’s not even chilly.”

  Erin just ignored him and waved her hands over the branches, singing a snatch of a tune, so that they flared up into a merry blaze. She didn’t back away from it when they had caught fire, as she usually did, which rather surprised him. The faerie had never seemed to like being near to the fireplace before, although the dead faerie wood burned without smoke, seemingly endlessly. It didn’t burn as hot as the grass bundles did, but it smelled a thousand times better; like tree sap and fresh spring leaves.

  “Will you go, then?” she asked at last, keeping her back to him.

  “I think I must,” he replied, moving restlessly out of his chair and coming over to her, in front of the brightly burning fire. She straightened back away from it as he approached, and sat down in one of the armchairs. He warmed his hands briefly, and then took the chair next to hers.

  “What does your brother do?” she asked quietly. He hesitated, and then told her, “He manages a large estate.”

  “Does that mean you’ll do it for him, until he recovers?” she asked, her eyes on the fire.

  “Possibly. At the very least, I’ll help take care of him, until he’s better.” Which was a great deal more complicated than it sounded, he thought. There were any number of things that could come of this letter, and not many of them were ones he predicted liking.

  “Where did you say you lived, before you came here?” Erin asked, still not looking at him. Her typically pallid profile was tinged with a warm glow from the light of the flames.

  “Just outside of Queen’s Hollow,” he answered uncomfortably. It was all true of course, even if it was misleading. Lady Erin nodded, as though trying to picture this on the map of Calundra, the one that happened to reside in the leaflet of one of Father Brion’s books.

  “When will you be back?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Father Jared didn’t really want to think about leaving, let alone returning to the Palace and then trying to convince his brother to let him journey out from it again.

  “You still don’t really trust me,” she said, her expression growing tenser.

  “I don’t think it’s possible for a human to fully trust a faerie,” he answered, a bit more bluntly than he intended. But there was no point in pretending he was being open, when it was clear to both of them that he was not. And after all, he’d hardly promised to tell her everything about himself. He hadn’t even wanted to get close to her, Father Jared thought, with a sudden pang.

  Erin got up from the chair, in that quick way of hers, and crouched down in front of him. Her black eyes were fierce. “That’s because you haven’t told me who you really are! I know that letter held the royal seal; I recognized it.”

  The young priest’s heart skipped a beat. He wasn’t quite sure if it was fear he felt, or something else. “I’ve told you as much as I can,” he defended, somewhat feebly. Erin just looked at him, the fire making a halo around her black hair.

  Then she gently laid her palm against his cheek.

  As it had been the last time, the soft feeling of her fingers on his face was shocking, but pleasant. He held his breath, but Erin breathed softly, not moving, letting her hand rest where it was.

  And then she said, “Maybe you don’t even know yourself.” It was almost a whisper. Her fingers moved away from his skin, leaving it cold where their faint warmth had been.

  And then—as swiftly as she’d come—she left, before he recovered himself enough to speak.
<
br />   It took him some time to get the Church in order, and to tell its members of his decision to leave. He promised to send them another priest, if it turned out he was unable to come back, and he bid them all farewell, for the time being. He took his time shutting up the living quarters of the Church, and packing up his things. When everything was done—so much so that he was ready to pull on his cloak and boots and leave the Church of the Wood for what might be the last time—he realized that he was waiting for something.

  Erin hadn’t reappeared, after their last conversation. Since then, he had expected her to drop by at any moment, but she had not. She hadn’t even come to the Church for the last holy day. Thinking of this, the young priest distractedly tugged on his heavy outerwear, and then slung his knapsack over his shoulder. He walked out through the front door of the Church, and passed out through the front gate.

  As he walked, his eyes scanned the dark trees that bordered the dirt path. He saw nothing between them, not a hint of motion. The Wood was abnormally still; blacker spaces than usual seemed to have fallen between the trunks, replacing the filtered sunlight that had shone between them less than a week ago, before he and Erin had last spoken.

  The faerie was nowhere to be seen. The Wood was completely unrevealing.

  Still, he lingered at the last portion of the path, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He passed slowly by the lake, where he couldn’t help but see an image in his mind of the two of them, half-dozing on its shore. He reached the first of the houses of the Village, and then turned all the way back around, gazing off into the Wood.

  She wasn’t going to say goodbye, he realized. This was it.

  He told himself that he blinked his eyes because of the angle of the sun, as he made his way through the Village. Certainly, he managed to wave and smile at everyone who waved and smiled at him. And if his steps were heavy, well—he told himself—it’s always hard to leave a place where one has been happy for a time.

  Father Jared thought of Night, then, as he climbed through the valley, heading for the stump at the top of the hill. Night would have gone feral by now; the cantankerous beast always been on the verge of it. He was pretty sure that Night had not been troubled at being left behind, unsaddled, with no bridle or burdens.

  He’d thought of going back for him, but he was fairly certain that a normal horse would never tolerate the Wood, even if one could be brought through the Dead Tree. He had a feeling, though, that Night would not have gone far; the farmer’s over-grown fields had been good grazing. The young priest grinned, wondering if he would be able to catch him.

  Father Jared placed his hand against the bark of the Dead Tree. This time it only sighed, and did not speak to him. He stumbled through, coming out the other side and into the old farmer’s fields. Night was nowhere to be seen, but there were plenty of other horses, and men on them—men with swords—all pointed at him. There were even a few crossbows, trained at his head.

  The young priest stared at them all, bemused rather than scared. It didn’t occur to him that this was anything other than a mistake, until he saw the Baron. Father Jared’s gaze focused on Baron Malkine, who should have known better, and suddenly he felt outraged. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  “You must forgive me,” the Baron said, in a pleasant drawl, “if I don’t tell my men to step down right away. You see, I know where you’ve come from; I’ve had some experience with it myself, though only from a distance.” Father Jared shifted in front of the tree, feeling more vulnerable at these words than he had at all of the weapons that were trained at him.

  “My brother won’t be pleased when he hears you’ve been threatening me,” the young priest said tightly.

  “Actually, your brother was the one who asked me to threaten you,” the Baron replied, seeming to find this amusing. Then his handsome, bearded face grew colder. “The king thinks it enough if you swear by your mark that you’ve not fallen under the faerie’s evil influence. Myself... well, I’m not so certain.”

  Father Jared pulled his shoulders back, trying to think on his feet. If the Baron’s instructions had been anything other than a precaution, he’d be dead already. Unless the man was just playing with him. The young priest tried not to feel betrayed—he’d not make any judgments against his brother based solely on anything this man said.

  “Then I’m happy to reassure you that the faerie has no evil influence, at least none that I’ve ever experienced.” The young priest held up his left palm, and he saw the eyes of the men around the Baron go to the mark. “I swear by the god, I am free of sorcery. I make my own decisions.”

  “And would one of those decisions be not to hurt me and my men—and not to kill your brother the king? I don’t know... after speaking to a faerie, I’m not sure we can trust you not to go on some mad spree of destruction...” the Baron said. But he did not appear to be too concerned, despite these words, unless it was an all act.

  “I’m a priest,” Father Jared snapped. “And a prince, in case you’ve forgotten. I serve not only Calundra, but also a god of peace, truth, and purity.” There was a moment of silence after this, and every eye remained on his marked hand, as though expecting it to suddenly go bare. When it did not, there was an easing of stance from the Baron’s men; swords and the bows lowered, pointing to the ground instead.

  “A pathetic god, if you ask me,” the Baron replied rudely. “I didn’t,” Father Jared growled. The men on the horses shifted uncomfortably, and there was a murmur from one of them about disrespecting the young prince, aimed in the Baron’s direction.

  “Well, I’m content to offer you my services, then,” Baron Malkine replied, with a sudden show of civility.

  “Would that include removing yourself and your men from my path?” the young priest asked belligerently, losing his temper with the situation.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. You see, I’ve been asked to escort you back to the Palace. You’re right, you know, your brother wouldn’t be pleased if I let anything happen to you,” the Baron said, clearly relishing this.

  Father Jared steamed quietly for a moment, and then told himself it could be worse. He hardly needed an armed guard, but it wouldn’t do to fight about it.

  “Very well,” he said, as ungraciously as possible. “But first I need to locate my horse. He should be around here somewhere...” He wasn’t sure why he was so certain Night would have stayed in the vicinity of the Dead Tree, waiting for him to come back, but he felt that it was so, nevertheless.

  “If you mean that vicious brute over there,” Baron Malkine replied, inclining his head in the direction of the farmhouse, “I thought I recognized the animal.” The Baron moved his mount aside, and Father Jared saw Night come around the side of the farmer’s broken-down fence, shaking his head curiously at all the commotion. Father Jared smiled; the horse’s coat was covered in burrs and his long black mane was tangled with leaves and dirt. He looked healthy, and unusually happy, as though he’d just been rolling on the ground.

  The huge black horse saw the young priest, and whinnied. It was a much better welcome than Baron Malkine’s.

  His welcome back at the Palace was also significantly better than his near death and interrogation at the Dead Tree. “So, brother, have you come to kill me then, and put me out of my misery?” the king asked him humorously, leaning back into the bed after another coughing fit. King Lukas’s usually ruddy face was almost as pale as the young priest’s. After greeting Father Jared, and being reassured as to the state of his mind, King Lukas had dismissed the servants that had been hovering about him with cool cloths and pungent medicines. Now it was only the two of them.

  Father Jared settled wearily onto a chair by his brother’s bedside. He was tired from his journey, which he’d kept at a merciless pace—partly to spite the Baron and partly because of a growing sense of worry about his brother, after hearing the details of King Lukas’s condition from Baron Malkine’s gossip. Father Jared had rather hoped the king h
ad exaggerated his illness in the letter, in order to have an excuse to bring him back; but hearing the Baron talk of it, the young priest feared that he had not.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said now, pouring a glass of water for his brother and lifting it to his lips. The change in him was shocking; this illness must have been progressing rapidly for many months. King Lukas grinned slightly, as though humored to have a young priest as his nursemaid, but accepted the assistance. “So, tell me about your Wood, and your Church,” the king said, when he had finished drinking. Father Jared watched anxiously as his brother closed his eyes and rested his head back against the pillows. “Did you find the Mad Priest,” at this his brother glanced over at him briefly, before closing his eyes again, “and was he still as mad as ever?”

  “There’s not much to tell. Father Brion was already gone when I got there; I never even got a chance to speak to him.” Father Jared wondered if it was his imagination, or if his brother’s drawn face hadn’t suddenly relaxed a bit at these words. “The Church is small, and the Village is too, though many of the folk have the mark, more than one would expect for its size. The Wood is...” Father Jared’s voice failed him. A sudden image of Erin had overwhelmed him; he took refuge in smoothing out his brother’s bedclothes. “The Wood is a large collection of trees, that’s all,” he finished.

  “No need to fuss,” his brother said, pushing his hands away, with a show of peevishness. “Do you mean to tell me, then, that the Wood isn’t enchanted? I was assured by that boy—Gleason—that it was. Even the Baron thought so, and he’s not a man to be fanciful. Well, at least not about trees,” the king chuckled.

  “There’s a type of magic there, I suppose,” the young priest replied, carefully. “But none that should worry us. Not here.” His brother opened an eye—a bright blue, keen one. “And the faerie?” King Lukas inquired.

  Father Jared was silent for long enough to make the silence itself sound significant. “The faerie is part of the Wood. I don’t quite understand it myself. But she bears the mark, and as far as I know, she’s done no harm to anyone.”

  King Lukas’s other eye opened as well now, and he gazed at the young priest with intense concentration. “Just because she’s done no harm yet, doesn’t mean she’s not capable of it. You mustn’t go back there, you know.”

  The young priest shifted in his position by the bed, as though the chair he’d drawn up to it was uncomfortable. “We don’t need to have this conversation right now. We can wait until you’re better,” he told his brother calmly. It was only as he said this that Father Jared realized he had every intention of going back to the Church of the Wood, and just as soon as possible.

  “No, brother, that isn’t going to work. You won’t convince me this time.” King Lukas laughed, as though at a private joke. “I’m afraid you can’t make me live, just by telling me to do so.” As if to illustrate, the king fell into another coughing spasm that lasted several minutes. When the fit had finally passed, Father Jared tried to tell his brother to sleep, and that they’d talk in the morning, but he wouldn’t listen.

  “Now,” he said weakly. “Now is all I have left. You must promise me something.” He had sat up in the bed very earnestly. His face was flushed, and his eyes looked feverish.

  “Of course,” Father Jared replied soothingly. “Just sit back and rest, and don’t worry about it.”

  King Lukas shook his head, adamant. “You know I’m fond of Selena, enough so that I’ve allowed her to persuade me to postpone my marriage to Lady Odith—several times, in fact,” the king struggled with another brief, rasping laugh, “but she hasn’t given me any heirs, even illegitimate ones.”

  Father Jared tried to control his face, which he knew was registering disapproval; Selena was the king’s mistress, and they’d fought over this issue, many, many times. “Which leaves you my heir, of course,” the king concluded. When Father Jared began to shake his head, his brother groaned at him. “Choosing someone outside of the direct line, from amongst the quarreling factions, that would be a terrible mistake and you know it. Enough to start a civil war.”

  The young priest didn’t want to admit that this was true, but it was. His brother continued, with a look as though the words were costing him the last of his strength. “You must promise to be king after me, and to marry Lady Odith, as I should have done. It will bring her family back in line with the royal blood; anything less, and I fear there will be blood shed.”

  After this speech, King Lukas finally sank back against the silken sheets of the bed, his face white and his body trembling. He reached out a hand towards his brother, and Father Jared clasped it. The young priest suppressed the automatic feeling of distaste at the contact and took the king’s hand in his own.

  “Promise,” King Lukas insisted.

  “I promise,” the young priest replied, in a low voice. “But only so that you will stop worrying, and go to sleep, so you can get better.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t like it,” his brother replied faintly. “You always were a difficult man. Tell me, brother, which are you less happy about me leaving you—my kingdom, or my fiancée?” King Lukas laughed then, once more, and coughed until his breathing grew ragged. Father Jared anxiously watched his brother’s chest rise and fall until he was certain that the feeble young king was asleep, and then he finally let go of his brother’s hand and sought his own chambers, which seemed to have grown strangely drafty and foreign to him after the close snugness of the Church.

  Several weeks passed and despite his brother’s faithful companionship the king seemed to grow no better. If anything, his condition worsened and Father Jared spent more and more time by his bedside, reminiscing about their boyhood scrapes, reading to him, or simply keeping him company while he napped.

  “Brother, I need to ask you something,” Father Jared said at last, once the king’s breathing had evened out after another bout of coughing. He’d not meant to bring this up now, but he was beginning to fear that Lukas was right; it looked as though the king actually did have little time left.

  King Lukas breathed quietly, but did not answer. Father Jared decided to go on. “I need to know if the rumors are true—the rumors about my mother.” He wasn’t sure why he was certain his brother could tell him, when he’d never been willing to speak of it before, but he felt strongly that this was something that the king had been withholding.

  “What do you think?” his brother whispered. He had closed his eyes again, and he didn’t open them.

  “I think they must be,” Father Jared whispered, his heart sinking. And yet he had been convinced, at one time, that they were only malicious lies.

  His brother sighed. “She was, you know. Father made me swear never to tell you, but it hardly matters now. You must believe me, though—you aren’t like her. She was just as evil as people say. I’m sorry that it was so.”

  Father Jared bowed his head, which felt now like it ached with an incurable headache. “Why did you protect me? Why did Father, knowing what I was?”

  His brother moved restlessly on the bed and opened up his eyes again. “I’ve watched you very carefully, brother. You’ve always been more human than faerie. By the god, you’re a better human than I am,” he exclaimed softly, gazing into his brown-haired brother’s eyes. “I would have had Baron Malkine kill you, had you come out of the Wood different. I couldn’t have risked peoples’ lives...”

  “I know,” Father Jared said quietly. “You don’t need to fear that, ever.” His brother nodded, and said, “I do know. I have your promise.” King Lukas gripped his hand and the young priest did not take it away, despite the feeling of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. “It never mattered to me, you know. I’ve always loved you, brother,” the king said faintly.

  “And I you,” the young priest whispered back. The sick king’s grip finally relaxed, and his eyes blinked closed, this time for good. Father Jared made his brother as comfortable as he could, and watched him closely while he fell i
nto a fitful slumber.

  It wasn’t until morning came, and the young priest awoke from an awkward position, half-reclined in a straight-backed chair, that he realized his brother had mocked him for the very last time.

 

  The New King

  The Palace was astir with news of Prince Jared’s return, and King Lukas’s death. Amandie found that some of the servants in the Palace had been quite fond of the ailing king, whom she did not know very well herself, whereas others gave a token of respect to his passing, or were clearly indifferent. She had seen the young prince for herself and recognized him immediately as the priest she had met in the tavern, but Amandie had not been noticed by him, nor had she approached him. It didn’t seem right to disturb him with such a tenuous acquaintance, especially when the entire of the Palace was involved in preparations for King Lukas’s funeral, and the entirety of Calundra, perhaps, was involved in preparations for Prince Jared’s coronation afterward.

  Several weeks had passed since Prince Jared’s return, from a little unnamed Village where he had been serving as priest, and the swift arrival of these two momentous events consumed everyone’s attention. But Amandie did want to talk to the young prince—young king now, she reminded herself, for the coronation had been yesterday. Not to pick up on their last conversation, which was inconsequential to anyone but herself, but to ask for news of the Village, and possibly even of Lady Erin herself. For the young priest must surely have met her in the Church. Amandie had felt a sense of concern about the faerie lately, a vague unease that she couldn’t quite shake.

  It is not easy to approach a king. Despite his friendly manner earlier, the new king’s handsome face was habitually sober and, for the most part, his demeanor was forbidding now. He set the Palace in a flurry, turning away King Lukas’s mistress. She left in style, going to live at one of the royal country estates which people said that the new king had generously given to her; still, on the whole it was unsettling. He also wound up changing the fashions at court, which had been given to bosom-spilling dresses; suddenly all the ladies of the Palace were wearing high collars, and sending for their seamstresses. This made Amandie laugh; she’d found the revealing cuts a shock herself, when she first came here. The young prince may have given up his priesthood to become a king, but he still bore the mark; clearly purity would be a new kind of regime here.

  Black was also in evidence, in respect for King Lukas’s passing. Amandie and the rest of the servants wore armbands, but the King himself wore black entirely. This fact made Wick of the Road stand out less, or so Amandie thought, when she came across him in Lady Odith’s room. Lady Odith was not alone with the bard, of course; they were having a cozy chat with many other ladies present, all crowded into the medium-sized parlor of the Yellow Room, as Lady Odith’s chambers were called. This was for the canary-colored curtains, and the splotches of yellow in the fleur-de-lis on the unusually thick rug.

  Amandie brought in a silver tray full of snacks, light fare such as fruits and cheeses, cut daintily into pieces. She set it on the low table in the midst of the couches and chairs. The ladies’ eyes immediately fell on the tray, exclaiming how famished they were, and how lovely the fruit looked, but Uncle Wick’s attention fell on her. “Well, lass, I haven’t seen you in a bit,” the bard said cheerfully, reaching for her hand and pulling her over. Lady Odith glanced over at Amandie in the act of taking a delicate bite from a buttery cracker topped with creamy herb cheese, as though seeing her for the first time.

  “Lady Odith, may I present Amandie of the Village. Amandie is an honorary gypsy,” Wick said, with dramatic flair. The introduction was hardly necessary, since she had been serving Lady Odith and the others for months, but the lady regarded her closely and said, “Are you new here, girl?” as though it was the first time they’d ever met.

  Amandie curtsied gracefully, privately cursing Wick for pointing her out. The bard didn’t let her reply; instead he answered Lady Odith smoothly by saying, “Amandie comes from the same Village that King Jared lately returned from—isn’t that so, lass?”

  The young Village girl tried to hide her surprise. She wasn’t sure how Wick had made this connection, as she never talked about home with anyone, but apparently he had. Perhaps the coincidence of two nameless villages was all that had drawn them together in the bard’s mind; but looking at Wick’s sharp gray eyes, Amandie wasn’t certain. “I’m not sure,” Amandie replied. “I haven’t had a chance to ask him.”

  The attention of the entire group fell on her now and one of the women—dressed in a tightly laced black and white dress, tittered at her. “No, I don’t imagine you have,” Lady Odith said, her face struggling to keep back a condescending smile. Amandie felt her cheeks begin to glow red; she hadn’t meant it to sound as though she had a right to chat with the king—though come to think of it, hadn’t she? She was one of his subjects now, and just as good as anyone else. Amandie kept her head tilted proudly, refusing to be made shy.

  “Ah, I’m certain that it is,” the bard said casually. “And I’m also certain that the lovely Lady Odith,” and here the bard picked up Lady Odith’s heavily ringed hand, and kissed it decorously, “would love to know more about the king’s travels, since he’s been too busy to share them with any of his friends.” Amandie couldn’t help wondering if Wick had decided to humiliate her because he was bored, or if there was something else going on. The gray-haired older man could be thoughtless, but he had always been kind to her, at least he had been before.

  Lady Odith was wearing full black, apparently in heavy mourning for her intended’s death, even though the rumor was that she would soon be betrothed to the new king. Her golden hair was sleekly braided onto her head in an elegant coronet, studded with flashing black diamond pins, or so Amandie assumed they must be, from the way they sparkled. The dress contrasted nicely with her peach-colored skin, rather than washing her out, as black robes seemed to do for the young king. All in all, Lady Odith was young and beautiful, though her expression right now was far from pleased.

  Amandie couldn’t help wondering if she resented being handed over—like a pair of used slippers grown too tight for an eldest child—or if Lady Odith had secretly preferred the serious brown-haired prince to the fair and jovial one. She tried to remember that the lady might be grieving, so she said nicely, “I can tell you a little of my Village, if you like, but it’s not very interesting. It’s just small, and the folk are hard-working. Most of us have the mark, and we do our work honestly, and try to live in peace.” She self-consciously held up her palm, hoping that it might distract some of the ladies from the topic of her home, and lead on to another discussion. Preferably it would be one that she might escape from quietly.

  Lady Odith lifted her hand as well, with a small smile of satisfaction; the mark glowed out brightly from the smooth skin of her palm. “I’ve only just taken it,” she said calmly, “at the king’s request, of course. I must say, it is different from what I expected.”

  Wick’s face grew mischievous. He ignored Amandie’s mark, and instead reached out for Lady Odith’s hand, pretending to inspect it.

  “Just making sure it’s genuine, my lady,” he said when she raised her eyebrows at him. Lady Odith laughed, and then pulled her palm away. “You are incorrigible, Wick. Have no fear, it’s not make-up; it won’t wash off.” Some of the other ladies nearby, who had been watching them with interest, laughed at this; some were too busy eating or having their own muted conversations to give their full attention to Amandie and Wick and Lady Odith.

  “Aye, so you’ve passed, then,” Wick said, his gray eyes twinkling at Lady Odith. “I assume you do know it was a test?” he inquired. The bard’s tone was frivolous, but Amandie heard a slight edge beneath it. Lady Odith sat up straighter, and frowned.

  “Nonsense. You speak too freely, bard,” she said reprovingly. “I have no need to prove myself to the new king. The house of Penth has always raised its ladies in the strictest manner, regardless of religi
on.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Wick said smilingly. “It was only a joke, my lady; no one doubts your honor. Certainly none who’s aware of Lord Leigh’s prowess with a sword, nor of his unforgiving temperament.” Amandie was beginning to hope, now that the conversation seemed to have moved beyond her, that she might edge away without drawing anyone’s attention. Wick seemed to be determined to bait the lady, and Amandie had no desire to be associated with it.

  Lady Odith frowned, her lovely face marred by the rather prominent wrinkles that it made in her forehead. “My cousin would not duel with a man for no reason. And now that I have the mark, he hardly needs concern himself any longer with my reputation. The mark speaks for itself—isn’t that right, girl?”

  Amandie had nearly made it to the door, but now she turned around. “Yes, my lady,” she replied, curtsying again.

  “Bring us some sparkling wine, as well,” Lady Odith said in response. It was a clear leave to go.

  Amandie sped down the hall to the kitchen, not bothering to look back to see whether Uncle Wick would have preferred her to stay, in order to ask her more uncomfortable questions. In her haste, she rounded a corner blindly and walked smack into someone.

  “Ooof!” a familiar voice exclaimed. It was the voice of the young priest from the tavern; it was a voice that was hard to forget.

  “Your majesty, I’m so sorry—it’s all my fault—I wasn’t looking...” she babbled, trying to right herself at the same time as she tried to bow to the king. Amandie succeeded only in wobbling all the more dangerously. King Jared gripped her elbow, and set her upright with an easy motion. “No damage done,” he began, and then he stopped and stared at her, letting go quickly. “I know you!” he exclaimed, with a look of dawning recognition. “You’re the girl from the tavern.”

  “Yes, your majesty,” she said, making the bow she had failed to make before, and then hardly daring to look up at him.

  “So, you came to here to show off your skills,” the young king said, pleasantly. His face, which lately had seemed very different from the eager face of the young priest she had once met, lost some of its new restraint.

  “I thought, after what you said, that it sounded like a good idea.” She did look up then, and she smiled. The king smiled back at her; the first she could remember seeing since his brother’s untimely death.

  “Well, then, how do you like the Palace?” he asked her. “Here,” he said suddenly, “walk with me to the ballroom. I have to meet my steward there—he insists he needs my input into the next event,” the king added, heading down the corridor in the direction he’d been going before Amandie almost knocked him down. The Village girl trailed along next to him, since he obviously expected her to follow.

  “I do like the Palace,” she said a bit breathlessly. “But I miss... the Village.” She glanced over at him as she said this. The young king came to a dead stop, and then stared at her. “Which village?” he demanded.

  “Well, there’s only one, where I come from,” Amandie replied uncertainly. Perhaps it was too forward of her to ask the king for news of home, she thought.

  But King Jared’s face lit up. “Ah, so that’s it. I thought there was something about you—the red and green ribbons, I suppose,” he said, his eyes traveling to the braided bracelet that was tied around Amandie’s wrist.

  “Yes, your majesty,” she said, curtsying. The young king looked for a moment as though he was trying not to laugh, and she remembered that she had already bowed, and didn’t need do so again until he dismissed her.

  “I wondered if you might tell me how they are—the Church, and the Village...” Amandie’s voice fell, even though there was no one else around, “...and the Wood?”

  The young king’s smile faded; he didn’t answer but his face grew pensive, and then sad. “They were all well, when I left them,” he said, at last. “And I will see that they stay that way,” he vowed suddenly, his dark—almost black—eyes gazing past Amandie to the wall behind her, as if at something that wasn’t there.

  Amandie felt a certain tension ease away from her; she had feared, deep down, that this nice young king was no different from the rest of Calundra: hungry for power, greedy for land. “Thank you, your majesty,” she said in a whisper of gratitude—mostly for Lady Erin.

  King Jared blinked, as though only just remembering that Amandie was standing there. “We must speak more of this later,” he said, his face settling back into its more habitual expression; sober, and slightly melancholy.

  Amandie took this as it was meant, as a dismissal, and bowed to him correctly. Then she turned around and sped back down the corridor towards the kitchen, this time taking care to look where she was going.

  “Everything all right?” Hawk finally asked, when she had come in and stood by him for a while. She was fiddling with an apple corer he had left at his right elbow. He was working on the topping for what appeared to be a strudel. Everyone else in the kitchen was busy, and for some reason, Amandie wanted to be close to someone who was quiet, and who didn’t make her feel overawed or awkward.

  “I think so,” Amandie said. The junior chef looked over at her, but didn’t move away, even though Amandie was slightly crowding him.

  “Want a piece?” he asked, indicating another bowl in front of her that held apples coated in several different spices.

  “Mmmm,” she replied, reaching for one.

 

  The Baron’s Revenge

  Heartbreak was just as good an excuse as any for being foolish enough to get captured—or so Lady Erin thought.

  It all began when she watched the young priest walk calmly away from the Wood and into the Village, probably for the very last time. He had stopped and looked for her before he entered it—she had seen him—but he had not called her name.

  If he had, she would have come.

  It wasn’t merely pride that kept her from saying goodbye to him. It was also defeat; she had tried to befriend him, and she had failed. He was not what he said he was and without the truth, he was right; he would never trust her. She knew he couldn’t be lying to her consciously—not him, a priest with the mark. Oh no, his story must run deeper than that. She was fairly certain that she had just not said goodbye to a prince of Calundra; of which there were only two, and one was the King now.

  She had noted the similarity of name; but “Jared” was common enough. And who would imagine that a man of royal blood would become a priest or—what was more unusual—a humble country priest, at that?

  Ah, the faerie thought, with a pang of betrayal. She knew now why Father Brion had requested this man to come. It made her wonder why the old priest had not spoken to her of it. But he had never wanted to talk of his life before the Church of the Wood. It had pained him, Lady Erin thought, remembering the blue stone; she had not wished to make him sad by insisting he talk about it. Now, though—now she would have liked to demand that he tell her the whole story, from start to finish, leaving no details out.

  And she would have, if his body had not rested in the Church cemetery, a long green mound that she often grew flowers upon.

  Even as she did so now, singing a scattering of day lilies over it, part of her resented her discovery of Father Brion’s secrets. The young prince could not be her kin even so—although half of him must be faerie—there was no other explanation left. But the Wood of the Palace had not been related to her Wood; it was younger, and the two faeries that had lived in it—twins, her mother once told her—had not been the best sort of faeries. No, Lady Erin mused, not the best sort of faeries at all. They were some of the ones who had grown embittered by the Wars; they sought to meddle in human affairs, to bring an end to them by subterfuge or possibly even violence.

  Lady Erin’s family had always believed in leaving humans alone—in fighting a purely defensive war. She didn’t know what the faeries from the Palace of the Wood had done, or why, but clearly this part-human young priest was a result of it. It was a thought to make Lady Erin
shudder.

  Nothing could be worse than marrying a human, she thought.

  Lady Erin lovingly contemplated her numerous dark trees, thinking that—to be fair—her family had been able to stay separate from the Faerie Wars, in a way that other faeries had not. The Wood was the first wood of all Calundra, it was secretive and ancient. It protected itself better than all the other woods had, in a way that only it knew how. The faeries of the Wood—which had dwindled to her alone—could afford to follow a more peaceful path.

  She had not been given any specific set of instructions on how the Wood’s magic worked. It was not the way of faeries to write things down, and her parents had died when she was very young. Perhaps there was more to it—more that they never had a chance to teach her. But Lady Erin wasn’t one to worry. She knew that the Wood was her Wood, and that she was its faerie; that was the heart of the magic. The rest was intuitive.

  She tried to go back to life as usual, after the young priest left. She swam in the lake, and sat dripping on its pebbly shores as the clouds blew by. She tended to the trees, and she conversed with the animals. When a new priest eventually did come into the Wood, she even went back to attending the Church. He was a timid man, by the name of Father Derek, and he had clearly been briefed by the Villagers to leave the faerie strictly alone. Lady Erin wasn’t bothered by this; it was many weeks before she even felt the need to speak to him, considering how nervous he was.

  But speaking to the new priest was also part of her downfall. It wasn’t actually Father Derek that she was interested in; she desperately wanted news of Father Jared, and the Villagers just weren’t talking about him enough. The death of the king—who must be his brother—she had overheard that, and something about a coronation. Then people would look her way, without looking at her fully, and the conversation would stop. It was extremely frustrating. News of the outside world was hard to come by in the Village, if not nearly impossible. It was clear that everyone else knew something that she did not.

  The faerie approached the timid new priest just outside of the Village, as he was coming up along the dirt path. She thought that he might be less frightened of her here, out in the open. She did her best to appear harmless and insignificant.

  “Hello,” she began.

  The timid man fell to his knees and covered his ears with his hands.

  Lady Erin sighed.

  “Hello?” she said, again, trying to motion him to get up, without actually touching him. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. Look—remember?” She held up her left palm, and pointed to the mark with her right finger.

  The priest scrambled away from her. Then he turned and pelted back into the Village, which was only a few feet behind him, especially going at a run. The faerie thought to herself that her approach seemed to have been something of a disaster. Then she heard a short, unpleasant laugh. A familiar figure stepped out from behind one of the nearest houses, and walked down the Village street to the start of the dirt path.

  “Making friends with the new priest, I see,” Gleason called out, putting on a show of coming bravely forward, especially considering that he had been skulking behind a house only a moment before.

  Lady Erin was tempted to make a rude gesture and vanish into her Wood, but she didn’t. Gleason had brought Father Jared’s letter, which meant that he had been outside. As unpleasant as he was, he might have information.

  “Maybe,” the faerie answered. “At least I’m not as mean to people as you are—I actually do make friends.” This was not a good way, perhaps, to lead up to a request for news, but she couldn’t quite help herself. The very sight of him made her skin crawl.

  “And I suppose you’re wondering what’s happened to one of those friends?” Gleason guessed. He had paused at a safe distance from her, but he was close enough that it wasn’t a struggle to talk. The houses of the Village now sat squarely behind him; they were both standing on the dirt path, and the Wood was at Lady Erin’s back.

  “If you have news you want to share of the outside, I wouldn’t mind hearing it,” she replied cautiously. Gleason hadn’t spoken to her since the accident at the lake. If he was talking to her now, it was because he wanted something, and that couldn’t be good. Lady Erin shivered, feeling cold, although the early autumn wind had never bothered her before.

  “Well, then, I bet I know which news you’re looking for—news of Father Jared. Or King Jared, I should say now.” Lady Erin’s eyes widened. So, he had taken over the management of his brother’s estate.

  No wonder the Villagers hadn’t wanted to mention this in front of her. To them, she would always be some evil faerie woman, one who might have a wish to sway the new young king to some dark purpose of her own. No doubt they feared this even more, considering the amount of time they’d spent together while he was here. That is, assuming they’d figured out who Father Jared was. Apparently Gleason had—and he’d probably told the rest of the Village already, as he was telling her right now.

  “And Father—King Jared—is he well?” She couldn’t help asking this; it was all that she could think of—he had looked so sad when he left, and she hadn’t even said goodbye.

  Gleason grinned meanly at her, looking very satisfied. “Oh, aye, he couldn’t be better. In fact, he’s to be married soon, to the Lady Odith.”

  Lady Erin felt like someone had just hammered a nail into one of her trees, to put a sign up.

  No doubt the sign read, “Fool.”

  “Do you... do you know this Lady Odith?” she stammered. Why would a boy like Gleason know a lady from the Palace? she chided herself. Nevertheless she continued, “Is she... is she nice?”

  “I’ve met her myself,” he said proudly, folding his arms across his chest and puffing it up. “She’s loved by all, for her kind ways. And she’s very beautiful.” The plain, mousy-haired boy couldn’t contain his smugness at Lady Erin’s troubled expression.

  “She can’t be,” Lady Erin said, without thinking, and then caught herself. “Oh, you mean for a human.” She hadn’t meant to be rude, although Gleason made her think rather ill of most humans. Now she knew why he had come out to speak to her; he was gloating.

  “Yes, well, that’s what King Jared wants, of course,” he retorted triumphantly. “A human bride.”

  Lady Erin didn’t answer. She just turned her back on the unpleasant boy, with his unpleasant news, and went off into her Wood. But the words haunted her as she ran, dogging her quick steps.

  “What good are humans, anyway?” she said softly to the brown spotted rabbit who was sitting on the ground next to her, almost in her lap. The rabbit quirked its long ears, and then took another piece of clover blossom from the flat of the faerie’s palm. The little doe swiftly chewed it down, the fluffy purple end sticking out and twitching with its chewing motion, until all of the purple had vanished, along with the rest of the stem.

  Lady Erin sighed and stood up, shaking out her crumpled dress. “A human bride,” she muttered to herself. It must be an arranged marriage. It must be something that someone had forced upon him, ostensibly for the good of Calundra. It must be—

  Lady Erin told herself to shut up. She wasn’t going to waste her time thinking about this again.

  He will hate it, she thought as she climbed to the top of the tallest tree in the Wood. She found a sturdy branch, and hung upside down, hoping that the unwanted thoughts would somehow magically fall out. He couldn’t even stand touching people, although she doubted it was as bad for him as it was for her, since he could stand touching them at all. And that made her think of touching his cheek, and she almost lost her purchase on the branch and tumbled off.

  It took several weeks of this to wear her down. She didn’t go back into the Church, nor did she go back to the Village. She didn’t want to give the timid new priest a heart attack, and she didn’t want to hear any more from that horrid Gleason, who would probably enjoy torturing her with further news about how wonderful and beautiful the Lady Odith was, and how happy King
Jared would be with his... human bride.

  It might have been those words alone that drove her out of the Wood. One day, in her faerie house, she discovered herself packing a bag. And the next morning, she quietly took a walk—just a walk, she told herself—into the Village at dusk. She passed through the long main street as unobtrusively as possible, and then climbed up the sloping green hill to the Dead Tree. She had been meaning to talk with it, after all.

  Why are you letting Gleason out? she asked it sternly. He can’t mean well.

  He’s only a human, the Dead Tree sighed. I doubt he means any harm.

  What do you mean? she asked it incredulously. Those aren’t your instructions! Most humans are cruel, and unkind. You’re supposed to know better than that!

  The Dead Tree quaked under her hand, confused and afraid. That isn’t what the other faerie said.

  What! What other faerie? Lady Erin demanded. Now she was growing afraid herself.

  Lord Cal. He touched me with his palm. I’m sorry... it was confusing. But his touch said that humans were safe.

  Lady Erin could feel the tree’s allegiance; it was divided. This man—was he dressed as a priest? Did he have brown hair? she asked it swiftly.

  Yes, the tree breathed, grateful that she had understood.

  You must not let anyone else in or out, for the time being, she told it. Do you understand? I am closing the portal. I am going outside.

  I promise, the Dead Tree answered.

  Lady Erin had to be satisfied with this, despite her lingering misgivings about the tree’s reliability. It would still respond to another faerie, of course, and perhaps to one with faerie blood—as it had with Father Jared—but to a human it would be nothing more than a great black stump.

  The faerie took a deep breath, preparing herself to enter the human land.

  You should not go out, the tree said. There is danger.

  What danger? she asked. Of course there is danger, was what the faerie thought.

  You know I do not see with faerie eyes, or even human ones. I only know what I feel where I am touched. The ground complains of humans to me; it tells me that there is something bad.

  At this, Lady Erin dismissed the Dead Tree’s warning. It was a wonder that the ground could stand the humans at all. And of course the Dead Tree didn’t want her to leave. The Wood was angry with her as well; it sulked in the back of the faerie’s mind in stubborn leafy protest.

  This was the culmination of Lady Erin’s downfall. She emerged from the Dead Tree into the human land, and hands immediately grabbed her. She opened her mouth to tell them fiercely to leave her alone, and something hit her on the forehead. There was a sharp pain...

  And then there was nothing at all.

  Yes, heartbreak was as good an excuse as any for getting captured; Lady Erin thought when she awoke with an aching head, feeling foolish. She was gagged, and bound, but not in a dungeon or prison cell, or any other place that was dank and dark. There were tight ropes binding her arms and legs to a sturdy chair, and she seemed to be in a bedroom, judging by the other furniture. There was even a certain amount of sunlight. She was someone’s captive, she thought, looking around as much as she could, thankful she could still move her head from side to side.

  It was definitely not the sleeping chamber of a peasant. There was a massive bed, with a square canopy over its top and pillar-like wooden posts. The posts were carved into the shapes of men—what looked like warriors, holding swords. These sentinels defended a bright blue satin bedspread, with long golden fringes hanging off the sides. There were curtains attached to the canopy bed, white ones with a diagonal blue pattern. There was a marble fireplace on the far wall, and several square tables with bulbous legs. Lady Erin searched the room for something to tell her where she was, but she had a feeling she knew already. If she was very unlucky—and lately it seemed that she was—this would turn out to be one of the many fine rooms in Baron Malkine’s manor house.

  He was the only one she could think of who would have any special reason to want her although it could be that she had randomly happened to stumble into a particularly brave and unfriendly group of people. But she doubted it—someone had known she was going to come out of the Dead Tree. They had been ready to silence her, before she spoke. They had expected a faerie—and they had captured one.

  But they wouldn’t be able to keep one, Lady Erin thought grimly. She struggled with her ropes for a while, and then she tried to tip herself over in the chair, but it felt like it was bolted to the floor. In the end she gave up and conserved her energy. She would wait for her captor to come back. She craned her head around for anything she might have missed in the room. To her right was a window and to her left was the giant bed. Behind her—Lady Erin wrenched her neck around—behind her there seemed to be a very large, very wide mirror. She caught a glimpse of her reflection, of her head trying vainly to spin like an owl’s.

  There was the sound of a heavy tread, and of a key in the lock. The door opened slowly, and Baron Malkine came into the room. He turned and shut the door behind him, bolting it from the inside.

  “Well, my dear faerie,” the Baron said, “I hope you like your room. You see, the last time you were here, I didn’t get a chance to invite you to stay for the night.” The Baron gestured as he said this, as though he was a gracious host, showing his guest around. Then he pulled up a chair directly in front of her, and sat down in it cheerily, as though they were going to have a cozy chat.

  “I apologize for tying you up like this. I know it’s not very nice.”

  The Baron reached out and stroked her cheek. Lady Erin’s body went rigid. “The thing is, the last time you were here, you took something away with you—something that I rather enjoyed having.” His fingers skipped over the fabric that was painfully wound around her mouth, and then moved down to her chin. “I’d prefer to have it back again, so we might reach a deal—you and me. Or, I might just kill you. I haven’t decided yet.” The Baron’s fingers were scalding her; the faerie thought it was quite possibly worse than being killed, to be touched by him.

  Lady Erin tried hard to think about something else, to focus her mind.

  “So then,” the Baron said, finally removing his hand from her face, and dropping it casually down on one of her bare, rope-encrusted forearms. He pressed down on it gently; it was excruciating.

  “I can see this happening in several ways. One, you can promise not to spell me in any way. I know that you bear the mark; I even know how precious it is to you, or so I’ve been told. So you won’t lie. Not if you want to keep it.” The Baron’s florid face was still smiling, as though he was making light conversation, but his eyes were flat and cruel. “If you do promise, then maybe I can loosen that gag, and you can bring back my ability to enjoy life.” He finished this by pressing down somewhat harder, his fingers pinching into the bare skin of her arm.

  The Baron’s touch alone, regardless of his words, was making her dizzy with agony; but Lady Erin was still conscious enough of what he was saying to be furious with him. He did not deserve to be set free from her enchantment. If he had promised to change, if he had shown that he had learned something—but no, he was as ruthless and unkind as ever. She shook her head defiantly at him, and kept shaking it, for good measure.

  The Baron set aside his falsely pleasant manner, apparently for good now.

  “I think I might be able to change your mind about that,” he said. “You know, you told me I could never harm another woman—or love one, for that matter—but you didn’t say anything about faeries.”

  Lady Erin felt suddenly sick, and very, very frightened. If only he would move his hand away—if only he would stop touching her.

  The Baron’s grip suddenly released, and the faerie felt as though she might faint with relief. But it was only because he had found something else cruel to do with his hands. He proceeded to pull out a sharp-looking knife from a sheath on his belt. He held in front of her, and looked into the faerie’s ey
es, which glared defiantly back at him. The faerie still felt a dull ache where he had touched her; the knife didn’t scare her nearly as much as his hands had.

  Then he roughly grabbed a handful of her hair, and sawed it off. The black ends fell to the ground. Somewhere in the Wood, a handful of dark trees splintered in half, as if from a lightning strike.

  “Now, if you want to cooperate with me, just nod and I’ll stop,” the Baron told her politely.

  Lady Erin fought briefly against the gag and her unyielding bonds, and then shook her head at him. She wouldn’t help him—not now, not ever. She hated him.

  The Baron took hold of her chin, and drew a long cut down it.

  This was the Baron’s first mistake: harming a faerie.

  Lady Erin gritted her teeth, and wrenched her face away from his hand, not caring if the knife nicked her even further.

  “You aren’t making this easy,” the Baron said. “But then again, easy isn’t fun,” he said, with a new sort of smile. He reached out and turned over her left palm. He had to wrench it to do so, as it was still tightly bound to the chair, and she was resisting the motion.

  Swiftly, he cut a line through the three interlocking circles, marring them forever.

  This was the Baron’s second mistake: insulting the god.

  Lady Erin felt the god cry out—she felt her own faerie blood boil—and she made an inarticulate sound deep in her throat, a wail of outrage and distress.

  The window to her left shattered.

  The mirror behind her broke.

  The pieces flew through the room like a hurricane. Half of them landed in the Baron’s chest, and he dropped the knife, staggering backward. Lady Erin grabbed hold of one of the jagged edges of the mirror with her good hand as it flew by. Awkwardly, she tried to use it to saw at the ropes. The Baron clutched at his chest, his eyes wide with horror, and then suddenly crumpled to the ground.

  A piece of the faerie’s mind was still in shock, that this was what she had done. But the greater part of it was working frantically to escape, as the Baron gurgled, and groaned, and slowly died. She could hear footsteps in the corridors, and voices yelling; then someone was shaking the locked door.

  Lady Erin tried to calm her mind. She was getting nowhere with her one tiny shard; she couldn’t maneuver it. She thought of the sound she had involuntarily made, and then she thought about what she wanted. She pictured it very clearly, humming a wordless tune, as much as she could hum with the gag still on.

  Vines started to creep in through the broken window. They were pretty ivy vines that grew outside the Baron’s house. Lady Erin remembered seeing them the last time she was here; they covered almost all of the back side of the manor, though the front was free of them. The vines crept up to Lady Erin’s chair, and then began to unknot her ropes. When they had loosened them sufficiently, the faerie pulled off her gag and then nearly fell over, trying to stand up.

  Her face and her hand were bleeding, her arms and legs felt useless, and the Baron was still dying. Lady Erin did not attempt to get any closer to him, to check on whether he was still alive. Peace, she reminded herself unwillingly, and then thought, someone might be able to save him. She went over to the door on unsteady legs, and unbolted it with her right hand. Before anyone had a chance to thrust it open, she had darted out the broken window, and was climbing shakily down the ivy on the back of the house.

  A worried manservant burst into the Baron’s room to find it in utter chaos. An empty chair was covered in half-knotted ropes, and a fragmented mirror showed him a small portion of his own stupefied face in its few remaining shards. A shattered window lay in pieces on the floor, with strange vines climbing over the sill and into the room, apparently from the outside.

  Baron Malkine lay gasping for breath in a corner of the room, his chest embedded with huge, wicked-looking spears of glass. He was bleeding profusely.

  As the manservant watched, the Baron took one last shuddering breath, and died.

 

  The Wild Horse

  Lady Erin knew by touch that Lily had magic in her. The great white horse snorted softly and nudged again at the faerie’s hand. Happily, she reached up to stroke the broad ivory-colored neck.

  The faerie woman had limped away from the Baron’s manor on foot, still in a state of shock, without even thinking of taking a horse from the stable on her way out. But the Baron’s horses were likely domestic creatures anyway, ones that would have been finicky and nervous to ride. She might have soothed one enough to manage it, but Lily was a much better prospect.

  Lily had come when she called.

  Lady Erin’s hands traveled to the white forelock and brushed it aside, tracing a deep whorl in the top of the horse’s head. Ah, she thought, that was the reason. Lily was a wild horse, a descendant of the unicorns that had once roamed freely throughout the dark woods of Calundra. Over time they had bred with the humans’ horses and a beast like Lily was the result. She was larger and stronger than an ordinary horse and, by reputation, practically untamable. It was said that a wild horse was too swift to be caught and too fierce to want to keep. But Lily had told Lady Erin that she would take her where she was going. The horse was young and eager; indeed, with her unicorn blood she might well outlast many generations of men, before she ever felt old.

  In the company of the lively white horse, the journey became less of an ordeal and more of an adventure. The faerie’s hand still throbbed and a clutch of horror wound itself around her chest whenever she thought of what had happened, but she was also entranced by the new sights and sounds around her. There was a strangely commonplace feel to the rest of Calundra, with its vast sunlit farmlands, drowsy little villages, and oxen-drawn wagons that rumbled noisily along pitted dirt paths. The faerie stayed clear of these other travelers, keeping Lily cloaked in a spell of semi-invisibility. If anyone were to notice them they would only see a humble peasant girl and an over-sized plow horse; for the most part human eyes passed over them as though they weren’t there at all.

  It was tiring, though, maintaining this illusion, so eventually Lady Erin persuaded the horse to leave the beaten track she seemed so keen on following. The horse and rider deviated from the main road onto a narrower path that tended to curve around and become indistinct in spots. Lily knew the route better than the faerie did and she balked some at this, but Lady Erin was insistent.

  The faerie woman was exhausted, even if the horse was not. Their new road rambled along through a handful of barren fields and neglected barns until it finally came to a pause at a ragged patch of land with only one small tree in it. The trail could be seen to pick up and widen on the far side, but for now its impression was all but gone.

  The misty afternoon made this abandoned lea seem even lonelier and more unattractive than it was, but Lady Erin told her opinionated mount that it was a perfect place for them to rest before moving on. She climbed down off of the tall horse rather stiffly and then walked slowly over to the diminutive tree, feeling relieved to be on her own two feet again. She wasn’t used to riding, bareback or otherwise, let alone for days at a time. The faerie had seriously considered giving up and going back to her Wood several times, but the thought of her original purpose was enough to keep her going. Even so, she missed the Wood intensely, and she knew it missed her just as much. This sojourn in the human world would be but a brief one, if her current feelings were anything to go by.

  Lady Erin glanced down at her battered clothing as she stumbled along, and realized dimly that she should be taking better care of herself. She had halted to eat and sleep, of course, but only out of sheer necessity. There were orchards where she’d harvested fruit, tasteless and dry as it was, and mushrooms she had eaten, which held a fuller and earthier flavor, discovered by the side of a jumping brook. She’d even woven a bandage from a field of wild flowers and wrapped it around her aching palm, with an herb and mud poultice to help with the healing.

  But she hadn’t felt safe enough to stop anywher
e for very long. The open meadows and blazing sun were alien to her, and the idea of approaching a human settlement made her skin crawl. As intriguing as the towns and villages were that she saw in the distance, she was unwilling to risk making contact with anyone who might be unfriendly. Her opinion of humanity in general had recently plummeted.

  Lily was chewing contentedly on something behind her, a blackberry bush of some type. Lady Erin stood underneath the sad tree and considered it closely. Poor thing, she thought, sympathetically laying her uninjured hand against its peeling bark. The faerie closed her eyes and spoke to it gently, hardly hoping for a response, but deep within the tree there was a faint stirring and then a whispering answer from the leaves above. She opened her eyes and glanced up at them. The leaves were plentiful but their coloring was anemic, and a scattering of lacey holes broke the flat surface of their toothed silhouettes.

  The faerie sighed. The tree was dying a slow and painful death, but it was not a magic tree. She didn’t know if she could help it, especially since the tree’s spirit seemed to have mostly given up. But then the bark beneath her hand trembled slightly and Lady Erin identified a yearning in it that hadn’t been there before. Maybe there was something she could do, the faerie thought. Humans had planted these trees, but they were rooted in the soil of Calundra. It wasn’t impossible that it would respond.

  Lady Erin began to sing under her breath, not wanting to overwhelm her patient before she could get a feel for what it might want.

  Loose strips of bark began to reattach to the trunk of the tree. The sickly leaves shook and then grew larger and more succulent, the lacey holes closing up. Finally, the branches stretched upwards until the entire tree had grown several feet. Its leaves now fluttered high over her head instead of limply drooping down around her.

  The faerie stepped back and began to sing in earnest. She watched with satisfaction as the entire tree straightened up proudly, as though it had been hunched over all this time. The bark darkened from a light brown to a deep chestnut interspersed with thick black lines. The bright sun, which had been beating down uncomfortably on her head, was suddenly obscured by lofty round branches and healthy green leaves which gave off an exotic shine.

  Lady Erin lay down under the shade of the one enormous tree which now dwarfed the scraggly landscape of the untended lea and the deserted farmlands beyond. She took a blissfully long nap, breathing in the comfortingly familiar scent of living wood, while the great white horse grazed peacefully nearby.