“Elia,” she whispered. “It’s starweed.”
The princess froze, no doubt worried he’d eaten some, or meant to.
“Father?” Elia said carefully as Aefa hung back to give the king some illusion of privacy.
Lear glanced up, his expression opening like a bright dawn. “Ah, pretty spirit, do come join me on this bank here.”
Elia knelt in the damp grass beside him. “No spirit, sir, but flesh. Your daughter Elia.”
The old king frowned. “My daughter went over the sea—I sent her there. But you do look like my wife, pretty spirit.”
“Take my hands, Father. I am no spirit.”
Aefa could hear the struggle in Elia’s voice, and clenched her hands into fists, wishing to tear the difficulty away, or bear it instead.
The king frowned at his daughter. “Will you pull me into dreams? There are roots here, whispering. They would hold me under the earth forever, and as much I deserve.”
“You hear the voice of the trees?” Elia whispered. She glanced to Aefa, and Aefa did her best to smile encouragingly. It was a good sign, for the star-touched king to be listening to the wind.
But a shudder pushed down Lear’s body, and Elia grasped his cold, dry hands, bending to kiss his knuckles. The king pulled free.
“Let me wipe them,” he said, clucking his tongue. “They smell of mortality.”
Elia laughed, a small, helpless thing. “Yes, Father, they do.”
He pursed his lips. “What do the stars smell of, do you think?”
His daughter opened her mouth, but shook her head in astonishment and ignorance. “I suppose they are clean smelling, like fresh water.”
“My youngest smelled of goats,” the king murmured. He closed his eyes, holding her hand to his chest. “Or some sharp, spicy oil her mother always wore. It spread to her baby skin, and I never remember a time she smelled like her own self instead of my darling wife.”
“Bergamot oranges,” the princess said.
“Oh, I should have told you, before you died.”
“Father, I am Elia, your daughter. Not … Dalat.”
It was hard even for Aefa to hear the name; she could only imagine the impossible effort it took Elia to speak it.
Lear looked at his daughter and seemed to see her finally. “Elia? Am I dead?”
“No, Father, I’m with you in the White Forest. Come with us, stand and go with me to Hartfare. You’ll rest and be able to bathe, to eat and drink what you like. We will care for you—I will. I should never have left.”
A frown marred his brow, made his nose seem overlong. All the wrinkles of his face bent toward the upset mouth. “I forced you away. I remember.”
Elia nodded. “You did. But I … I love you.”
Lear put his long, dry hands on her face, cradling it. “That is all you said before.”
“It was not enough, then.”
Aefa ground her teeth together but did not interrupt. That was the first lesson her father had taught her at court: to judge when to speak and when to be still. The most effective Fool—and friend—understood such a thing.
“I know, my love, I know, we never say enough.” The king stared through Elia, seeing some other place. “I deserved nothing from your daughters,” he whispered. “But I wished they loved me anyway. I could not tell them what happened—What? And take you away from them again? Lost once from life, and again from memory? But I see now—I saw in the storm, cold and hungry, oh so cold with nothing but myself, no stars, no love—how in being wrong I put on a mantle of rightness.”
It was difficult for Aefa to follow his thoughts, but Elia held on to him, her expression listening, listening, as she did to the forest.
“But I loved you,” he said, hands slipping off his daughter’s face. The old king looked to the thin, trickling stream near his bare toes.
“Shh, Father,” Elia whispered, putting her arms around him. She tucked her head against his shoulder. Aefa touched her own lips to keep silent.
“You trusted yourself,” he said. “I did not trust anything but stars. I trusted them over us, over everything. Do you think they care if I trust them? Elia cares. Gaela cared, but not anymore. Regan … ah. It is too late, pretty spirit.” Lear sank back, out of Elia’s arms, and lowered himself onto the grassy hill again. “I should have trusted this, too.” He fingered a leaf of the hemlock crown. “You weren’t there, my star, but this is the island’s crown. This is the island’s star, these little white starbursts of poison. The king eats it, and drinks the rootwater. And the island keeps you alive; you belong to the island. That is how you become king. See? I have had poison, too, my love! I have had poison, too!” He laughed, shoulders shaking.
Elia drew her knees to her chest, hugging herself. For a long moment, Lear breathed and said nothing.
Aefa could stand it no more. She went to Elia’s side and sat, leaning her shoulder against Elia’s as the princess pressed her eyes against her knees. Lear had been freezing and hungry all night, Aefa thought; such suffering had stripped him to his most essential self, his nature revealed, and that nature was broken and trapped.
“He’s been alone so long,” Aefa whispered, and hugged her princess.
Elia asked, voice full of pity and raw need, “Do you think it’s true? About the crown and the island and … my mother?”
But the old king interrupted with a sigh. “I should be blind, for all I have never been able to see.”
His tender voice tore even at Aefa.
“Maybe,” Elia said gently, unfolding herself to glance at him, “this is always what the stars saw. What was always meant to be. The two of us here, like this. Unnamed and uncrowned, Father, with our feet in the mud.”
Her father laughed again, but gentler.
Elia put her palm to his cheek. “Maybe we had to go through this. I certainly did. To truly become your heir.”
Lear stared at his youngest daughter, amazed.
“Maybe you did everything you had to do,” she said. A sad smile bowed her lips: she had learned to couch the truth, and Aefa was both proud and stung by it. Elia said, “Be at peace. Maybe you did everything right.”
“Maybe,” he said, nodding his long head. The hemlock crown dragged down one temple, lopsided. He touched it carefully. “Did you know my daughter Elia … you, you would come in from an afternoon in the meadows and forest with a crown of flowers?”
Elia kissed him carefully. Then she glanced again at Aefa, and her lips trembled. Her eyelashes, even, seemed to shake. But Elia only said, “I remember.”
THE FOX
BAN THE FOX wandered his way north through the White Forest, a lightness to his step. If he could, in this dense forest, he’d run.
He might never complete his spell, but it was enough to carry the promise with him, a threat beneath his fingers instead of lodged, poisonous, in his heart.
Ban yelled his pride, leaping into the air, sharing his joy and his thanks with the trees. But instead of their fierce whispers, full of love—something darker seemed to echo back.
Wind crashed overhead, tossing the canopy. Yellow leaves rained down, and Ban stopped, closed his eyes. He could not quite grasp the words.
He swiveled, searching for water, or exposed roots: there, an elm leaned on raised earth, three roots curling through the grass like worms. Ban crouched by it, grasping the roots in both hands. He leaned down and whispered against the cool brown bark: I’m listening.
For a long moment, nothing changed. The snap of branches alerted him to the presence of a large animal. A very low crackle sounded nearby, small enough to be a slinking snake, just the brush of scale against deadfall, or a young rabbit hunched beneath ferns.
Regan.
The lonely name hissed on the wind, and Ban startled to his feet.
Regan! screamed the White Forest.
A wail came after, high and mournful.
Regan Regan REGAN!
I’m coming, he said to the wind. Show me the way.
r /> Ride, said the elm tree, and the branches shuddered. From beyond them came a gentle, curious whicker. Startled, Ban said, “Horse?” He pushed around the old elm’s roots and there it stood: the horse from Errigal Keep he’d lost in the storm. It—she—was ragged and still saddled; he ought to remove all the tack and rub her down, give her rest, but the wind snapped hard against the canopy.
Regan! The forest cried again.
Muttering an apology, Ban mounted and urged the horse after the wind.
* * *
FOR SEVERAL HOURS Ban rode, east and then slightly south, and then straight east again, galloping when he could to the farthest edge of the White Forest, where narrow fingers of it reached between high karst hills. He ate in the saddle, relieved himself only when he and the horse both needed water. In early afternoon they climbed one of the hills. The horse’s hoof clopped on the naked stone, and Ban smelled salt on the wind.
Sun narrowed his eyes as he peered for some sign to follow. The wind blew steady and wordless, but moaned through the tiny crevasses in the karst. There would be sinkholes and caves here. There was little else about this part of the island Ban knew, except that if he found the road and turned north, by nightfall he’d be at Connley Castle.
“Regan?” Ban said plainly, then again in the language of trees.
Nothing but empty wind.
He squeezed his legs, and the horse walked on, picking carefully. An hour later, he smelled smoke through the shade of the valley. “Regan?” he yelled.
And after another few minutes, “Lady? Are you here?”
He stopped the horse and climbed down, wrapping the reins in one hand to guide her with him a few steps off the graveled road. Pine trees surrounded them, spicy and crisp, and Ban walked over a soft bed of fallen needles to touch his bare hand to the soft, thready bark of one.
Sister, he said, where is Regan Lear?
Close, so close, but she will not speak to us, brother, we cannot hear her, the tree whispered sadly.
Fear took his breath for a moment, but Ban still pressed his forehead to the tree and sighed a blessing onto her grove. Still this way?
yesyesyes, all the pines shivered and danced.
Ban couldn’t think for the fear rushing through his veins to hiss in his ears. He moved on at his horse’s side, pushing as fast as he could.
“Regan!” he cried again.
“Hello?”
It was not her voice, but another woman’s. Ban dropped the horse’s reins and hurried.
Even rushing he was still quiet, and thus startled the retainer who paced along the southwest perimeter of a small meadow camp. “Ah, shit!” she gasped when Ban appeared, wild, out of the trees. Helmetless, but wearing a rusty pink gambeson of Astore and mail sleeves, the woman went for the sword at her belt before recognizing him. “Ban Errigal.”
“You came with messages from Gaela,” Ban said. “Where is Regan?” He strode past the woman, toward a wagon unhitched from the pair of horses set to snorfling at what used to be long grass and clover.
“There, sir,” the retainer said, but Ban had already seen.
Two unmoving bodies.
Regan curled beside a thicket of hawthorn roots, from which sprung a short, bent tree with no leaves, only dozens and dozens of bloodred berries. Her long dark hair was loose over her back and covering her face, spread in a fan of curls over Connley’s chest.
The duke was dead.
His lovely eyes had not closed completely, leaving a slit of blue-green to shine in the light. Blood speckled otherwise bloodless lips, and yet more dried blood cracked against the splayed-open jacket, his torn shirt still half wrapped about him, along with a surprisingly untarnished bandage. One hand hid beneath Regan; the other lay at his side, palm open and empty.
Ban could not move. Not Connley, no.
No.
“Regan,” he whispered, then noticed her shoulders shift very slightly with breath.
Sinking to his knees under the weight of stunned grief, Ban suddenly had a sick, confusing thought: his father might not be dead after all. Air passed Ban’s lips and over his tongue, filling his lungs, but he could not feel it. Ban was choking on life, gasping and dull.
“She won’t move,” the Astore retainer said, pressing. “I can’t get her to answer me, or eat or drink.”
“What happened?” he managed to whisper.
“Connley and Errigal killed each other.”
“He’s … he’s dead, then.”
The retainer put her hand on Ban’s shoulder. “Since last night. Though Connley lasted almost past dawn. Regan wanted to take him home. She was trying to save him.”
Ban struggled to his feet and moved to the fallen couple. “Regan,” he said, then knelt again, touching Connley’s arm first. It was cool, and some stiffness of death had set in. Ban shook his head, protesting. The body should have been cleaned before that, or buried in roots. Regan could have—should have—asked the roots to take him, fresh still, for the worms of dreams and rebirth to feast upon. He said so, in the language of trees, but quietly. The hawthorn shivered; its roots rippled in agreement.
Regan clutched her husband’s body, her taut, trembling arms the only sign she was aware of anything else in the world.
Ban kissed Connley’s forehead. He could not press the eyelids closed.
Tears flooded Ban’s throat. He leaned his forehead on Connley’s, smelling sour death and urine and the full, bright scent of limestone and clay. Stars and worms, Ban was sorry. He shouldn’t have left the Keep. He should have remained to see his father dealt with, remained and—and witnessed. If he had not been with Elia, might he have saved Connley’s life?
Turning, he put his hands on Regan. “Lady, you must let go. Help me put him in the roots.”
Nothing.
“Regan.” Ban shifted nearer to her, wrapped his arm around her back, and brushed her cool mass of brown hair away from her face, gathering it together gently. Her eyes tightened shut at his care. She was peaked and splotchy, her lovely cheeks streaked with blood and dirt and tearstain.
“No,” she whispered, as harsh as winter rain.
“Yes, Regan. Come with me.”
She shuddered, then looked. “Ban?” Her voice was soft and lost.
He nodded and kissed her temple. He left his lips there, blowing warm breath into her hair. She shuddered again and in one swift move thrust up and seized him.
“Gone,” she said, low in her throat. “There is no more of Connley at all, anywhere.”
“I know,” he said, holding her with all his strength. Using it to prop up his own heart.
The lady did not cry, but she held on to him long, as the sun moved away, the breeze lilted east to southeast, and shadows fell all around. Ban listened to the hush, to Gaela’s retainer trudging back to the small fire and stirring it up again, evidence of her discomfort and attempt to give them privacy. Evening birds came out to sing, against the discordant tune of crickets.
“It’s time,” Ban said finally, stroking Regan’s tangled hair.
They stood. Regan stared hollowly down at her husband, while Ban faced the hawthorn.
Take him, he said. This is His Highness, Tear Connley of Innis Lear, a part of this island born, and part of it forever.
The hawthorn shivered, tiny clusters of haws blinking in the twilight.
Regan said, He saw me. She gripped her belly hard enough to pinch her flesh through the shift she wore.
Roots lifted up from the earth, stretching, reaching for Connley. The shadows yawned, and the wind said, With us.
Behind them, the horses shied away from the trembling ground. Clay parted, roots looped up, grasping the duke’s neck and wrists, his waist and thighs and feet. They pulled him down, into the earth.
Regan cried out wordlessly, up at the first stars filtering through the twilight.
Connley vanished, embraced by the hawthorn at last.
“I’m sorry,” Ban said, staring where the duke had just been, long
ing to see that unique color of Connley’s eyes once more, or marvel at the ambitious twist of his mouth. Regan heaved and nearly collapsed, but Ban caught her.
“It’s my fault,” he said, thinking of his cowardice at having fled the Keep last night.
The lady fell still against him. Dangerously still.
Blood sang in his ears: he was at her mercy, suddenly, beholden to a wolf who’d just lost her mate.
“No,” Regan said, leaning away. In this newborn darkness, she was an eerie tree-shadow, a haunting spirit. Her crystalline eyes flicked to her husband’s shallow grave. “This is the fault of our fathers.”
The truth of it took his breath away.
And Ban could make both their fathers pay. As if everything had whispered and urged him to just this moment, with every breeze at his ear and choice in his heart, since the sun rose this morning. Or even longer. Since he’d come home from Aremoria, since he’d fallen in love with a star, since he’d been born.
Before he thought any deeper, Ban pulled the walnut from his jacket, dropped it onto the earth, and crushed it beneath his heel.
ELIA
THE KING DID not wish to leave his meadow.
Elia urged their return to Hartfare before dark, but Lear sank stubbornly back against the earth, or pretended to be asleep, or simply ignored her. His eyes drifted up and up, always toward the pale blue sky, awaiting the absent stars.
Finally, Elia asked Aefa to return to Hartfare for dinner, to gather blankets and whatever else she and her father might need to sleep under the stars. The girl began to protest, but Elia smiled sadly and promised the trees and wind would warn her of danger. It would be a clear night, and they would manage until her return.
Aefa left at a run, and Elia sat down beside the king again. She said, “My Aefa will come back with blankets, with wine and some bread, and you and I will curl up to watch the stars be born. How does that sound, Father?”
He sighed contentedly, and leaned back onto the grass, and fell truly asleep.