The Faceless Woman

by Emma Hamm

  “Very.” He flopped over her legs dramatically. “He’s insufferable.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

  “Yes, but now it’s affecting me, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  Aisling rolled her eyes and skated her hand over his coarse fur. He wasn’t like the other cats she’d pet. Lorcan’s fur pricked at her fingers, short spikes of fur digging into her palms.

  He rolled so she could scratch his belly. “What happened in there anyway?”

  “Hm?”

  “In the hanging tree. What happened? Did you get the dead god’s blood?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, “I did.”

  He twisted to look up at her. “Why do you sound like that?”

  She stared into the darkness, her tongue thick and slow in her mouth. “He knew.”

  “Who knew? Knew what?” Lorcan dug his claws into her leg. “Aisling, talk to me. You’re scaring me. What happened?”

  “The god. He knew every secret. He saw right through the magic hiding my face, and he knew exactly what I am.” She glanced down at him, lifting a hand to ghost over her pointed ears hidden by the curse her grandmother had laid. “He gave up his life again, willingly, without complaint because he knew I was a changeling.”

  “Not all faeries hate changelings.”

  “Changelings are a reminder that faeries aren’t perfect,” she replied. “And they will never like that reminder. Besides, it’s still not safe for me here. If there is one who can see through the curse, then how many others can? Wasn’t that the entire point of this affliction? To hide me from those who would cause me harm?”

  “Stop it, Aisling. No one knows why your grandmother did what she did. No one knows who you are, even if they know what you are. There are too many layers in this secret for anyone to unravel without help.”

  She breathed out a low sigh, anxiety settling in her stomach. “You’re right. No one could know.”

  “No one will know. Ever.”

  Lorcan curled into a ball at her side, and his breathing slowly evened out. She waited until she knew he was deeply asleep before she let her head thump back against the tree trunk.

  Aisling envied him. He lied so easily, without thought to what he was saying or why it wasn’t true. They both knew she would never be able to keep this secret. The faeries were smart folk. They’d see right through her twisted words because she hadn’t ever had to work her tongue around a lie.

  How was she going to walk among these people even for a short time and not blurt out who she was?

  Aisling curled around Lorcan and rested her head on the root. She would have to figure out something, and soon. Bran was too intelligent a man to not piece together the truth. He would figure it out, and then everything would come crashing down around her ears.

  Lorcan snorted in his sleep and wrapped an arm over hers, his paw resting on her open hand and his whiskers tickling her cheek. At least she was safe. For now.

  Mist swirled around her ankles, stroking her cheeks and playing with her hair. It was alive and wanted nothing more than for her to awaken.

  Aisling lifted up onto her elbows, staring in shock at the strange magic stroking her calves. She recognized the touch and the way it floated through the air without a care in the world.

  “Grandmother?” she whispered.

  A part of her recognized this was a dream. Everything was too foggy, pale, and not quite lifelike.

  Aisling rose from her nest in the roots. She peeled out of her body like the skin of a snake. Without color or solid shape, she was a reflection of herself but without fear or worry.

  She spared a glance back at the two men sleeping by the tree.

  They wouldn’t know she was gone. They could get their rest, and she could regret this in the morning. But family called, and she wasn’t one to deny her grandmother anything.

  Aisling slipped into the mist. It would guide her where her soul needed to travel, easily transferring her between realms if necessary. Her grandmother used magic like she breathed, never questioning how her magic was possible and using it as much as possible.

  She followed the shimmering mass of mist to a cave carved into the side of a mountain cliff. She hadn’t remembered there being mountains in this part of the Unseelie lands. Perhaps she had missed it.

  She stared up at the great monoliths and doubted herself. This wasn’t in the Unseelie-controlled lands. This might not even be Ireland anymore.

  A tiny hand tucked into hers, rough palm abrading hers.

  Aisling startled and looked down at the tiny horned creature holding her hand. There was a puff of sparse hair on top of its head, large eyes blinking up at her with blue irises filling the space from side to side. It grinned and sharp, filed teeth filled its mouth near to bursting.

  “Hobgoblin,” she grumbled. “What are you doing here?”

  “Escorting you to the mistress.”

  “I didn’t agree to be touched.”

  “Wouldn’t want you to run,” he replied. His voice was the quiet scratch of nails on flint, hard and painful to hear.

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “One can’t be too careful.”

  She wanted to punch him in his little frog-like mouth. The hobgoblin had no right to drag her into the cave like she was someone’s expected pet. This was her grandmother! She knew how to enter like a lady and not piss off the woman who cursed her.

  Water dripped from the ceiling of the cave, splashing against her shoulders in icy droplets. This was an old place, an ancient place that radiated pain and heartache.

  Was this where her grandmother spent her days?

  “Not far now,” the hobgoblin giggled. “You’ll soon see, little changeling.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Why not? It’s what you are.”

  Aisling leaned back just enough to eye him. He was about the right height to kick across the room. She might even be able to hook a toe underneath him and send him flying through the cave into the wall.

  “Granddaughter”—a familiar voice stretched toward her from the darkness—“be kind.”

  Feeling chastised even though she was an adult, Aisling shook off the hobgoblin’s hold and started toward the sound of her grandmother’s voice. “Oh, come now, that’s not how you raised me.”

  “I raised you to be human.”

  “They are not kind.”

  Her legs still ached with the burn of a bonfire set by men and women too afraid of magic to consider it to be good. Her back remembered the beatings, the thrown stones, the sticks tossed that left bruises decorating her body like a patchwork quilt.

  No, humans were not kind. They did not know how to be generous to those they deemed different.

  “Come here, child. It has been too long.”

  Light bloomed in the darkness like a rose unfurling its petals. Aisling stepped through its silver light into a small cavern lit by magic and fire.

  Her grandmother was crouched next to the golden flames, her speckled skin like that of a sparrow’s egg. She glanced up, mismatched brown and blue eyes glowing with their own power. Her dark hair was pulled away from her face, which only served to highlight the severe angles and aggressive snarl curling her lips to the side.

  “Come sit by my fire, granddaughter.”

  She could not say no to Badb, the war crow. The Tuatha de Danann could turn her inside out, upside down, and right-side out if she wished to. She was sister to Morrigan, creator of fear on the battlefield, the woman who feasted upon warrior’s souls.

  Aisling sat when she was told to.

  The warmth from the fire sank deep into her soul. Badb offered a stone cup filled with herbs that smelled of earth and healing. Aisling drank deeply, cupping the handcrafted vessel carefully with her pale hands. “Thank you, grandmother. It is a great honor to be brought here.”

  “Is it?” Badb’s lips twisted in a sneer. “We both know you don’t believe that.”

  “I couldn�
��t lie about it either.”

  “Don’t take me for a fool. Changelings can lie through their teeth once humans teach them the darkness in their souls. Your soul was darkened the moment I left you in the arms of that witch.”

  Lorcan had been a terrible father figure, but then he’d been a child then, too. Aisling bristled on his behalf. “He did his best.”

  “And his best was to turn you into one of them. The witch knew what I thought of his kind.”

  “He also knew you left me in the arms of a stranger rather than keep me where I belonged.” It wasn’t the first time she’d spat the words at Badb. “He did what he had to for our survival.”

  “Have you survived? In a sense, I imagine. You’re still alive. Your heart is still beating.” She leaned forward and rapped a long-nailed finger against Aisling’s chest hard enough to hurt. “But what’s in there is no more Fae than your cat. You have to learn everything all over again.”

  “I’m trying,” Aisling whispered. Pain shot through her body, and not from her grandmother’s harsh thump. She knew she wasn’t a faerie, never had been, never would be accepted in their arms as one of them. What she didn’t know was why she’d been left to die in the forest all those years ago.

  Changelings were unwanted faeries. Old creatures who wanted to die causing mischief with their last breath. Ugly children their parents were ashamed of. And though Aisling hadn’t seen herself in the mirror since she was a little girl, she knew she was neither.

  Her childhood self had been passably pretty, if not a little awkward. Her legs were like that of a newborn foal and her eyes as large as the moon. Perhaps she asked too many questions, her curious mind devouring information like she was starved. Or maybe it was as simple as her family not wanting her.

  “How are they?” Aisling asked quietly.

  Badb knew of whom she spoke. Aisling always asked about her family, the people who left her behind with little care to even check in on her. It didn’t matter they didn’t care.

  She would care enough for all of them.

  “Surviving,” Badb grunted. “Your mother is slowly sinking into her own madness. Your father is tearing out his hair at the loss of your sister. Your brother is still fighting everyone he can find and enjoying it a little too much.”

  “Nothing has changed then.”

  “Faeries don’t change. And that is the most important lesson I could ever teach you.”

  When the fire flared, Aisling’s eyes were drawn to the light. She saw figures dancing in the flames. Men and women, bodies lithe, twisting in a macabre dance around a woman in the center. Her head tilted back, she screamed in pain or anger, Aisling couldn’t tell.

  “Why did you bring me here?” she quietly asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  Aisling’s gaze cut across the fire and tangled with Badb’s. The patchwork woman shook her head.

  “What?” Aisling asked. “Who would have brought me here, if not for you?”

  “There are other people interested in you, granddaughter. I told you never to come here.”

  “My life changing isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it’s what we need to fly.”

  “Or to fall.” Badb slowly stood and stretched her arms over her head. The fabric of her simple dress lifted, revealing powerful thighs thick with corded muscles.

  “I don’t intend to fall, grandmother.”

  “You’ve never intended anything in your life. You have drifted endlessly in your own world and are now unprepared for what this world will throw at you. I wanted to spare you this fate, but it appears you have chosen it for yourself.”

  “At least it is a fate I have chosen.” Aisling twisted her fingers in her lap, refusing to give her grandmother the satisfaction of seeing her nerves. Tuatha de Danann were unpredictable creatures, and it mattered little that Aisling was her descendant. There were always others.

  “Little changeling, there is nothing sweet about a fate you have chosen for yourself. Fate is cruel either way.” Badb lifted a long-fingered hand and pointed back to the entrance of the cave. “Someone is waiting to see you.”

  “Then why did the hobgoblin bring me in here?”

  “I wanted to give you a chance to change your mind. I see now you are set on this path, no matter what the end might be.”

  “Have you seen the end?” Aisling asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Even I cannot see the future. But you are walking in the footsteps of many before you. I’ll protect you when I can, my favored grandchild.” She tucked a speckled hand under Aisling’s jaw, smoothing her thumb along the stubborn set of her chin. “I wish you the best of luck.”

  Aisling worried she might need it. The entire world felt as if it were holding its breath, but she didn’t know why. What had her choice changed about her life? How could entering the Otherworld so thoroughly alter her destiny?

  She stood, turned from her grandmother, and walked back the way she came.

  There was light at the end of the tunnel, dull and weak. Even moonlight was sluggish in this place between places. The rough stone abraded her palm as she used the walls for guidance. The hobgoblin did not appear again. No hand held hers to lead her through the darkness safely.

  It was how she’d lived her entire life. And though a small pang of self-pity echoed in the empty chambers of her soul, she also admitted she preferred it this way.

  Being alone was safe. No one was going to stab her in the back, throw her to the wolves, tear her limb from limb when they finally left the changeling girl whose family hadn’t wanted her.

  Her heart was safe, locked away from the rest of the world. She wanted to keep it that way.

  Stones skittered at her feet as she brushed her feet over the exit to the cave and stepped into the waning moonlight. Her soul would disappear back to her body once sunlight hit her form. She didn’t know how she was so certain of it, but it was like all her magic. The knowledge hid in the deep well of her mind, surfacing only when she needed it most.

  She should probably thank Badb for all the faerie spell books she’d stolen over the years. Aisling had absorbed the spells as if they were things she could consume. They stayed with her, although a few spells floated just out of reach.

  A chunk of stone ledge moved beside her. She flicked her gaze toward it and then flinched back. Not a stone, a person, a… thing.

  It shook its shoulders, unfurling to a height that made her stretch her neck to see its entire bulk. Gray fabric covered its shoulders, falling in haphazard pieces that were threadbare and moth-eaten. Like her, she couldn’t see its face at all.

  Gasping, she covered her mouth. Antlers stretched up into the sky from its head. They were shedding even though it wasn’t spring, bloody strings of fur hanging from the tines. It shook its head, huffing out a breath and snorting at her.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  This was what waited for her? This creature was something out of a nightmare, not faerie but something else entirely. When it stepped toward her, she mirrored its action backward.

  “What do you want from me?”

  It lifted a clawed hand to its face and pressed a finger where its lips should have been. Mushrooms grew on its shoulders, the poisonous redcaps turned toward her, shifting listlessly with a life of their own.

  The creature pointed at her, and a drop of blood fell from its horns onto its finger. She heard a croak behind her and scratching footsteps that were familiar.

  A raven hopped next to her, staring up at her with a golden eye.

  “One for sorrow,” the horned creature rasped.

  Another raven joined the other. It flapped its wings, buffeting her legs with wind so powerful they made her stumble.

  “Two for mirth.”

  She saw another land on top of the tree above her, joined by another so dark its feather’s glistened.

  “Three for a funeral and four for a birth.”

  Aisling knew this rhyme. The children used to sing it when they saw
magpies or ravens in the sky. They counted the numbers of birds in search of an omen. Little did they know, omens only fell from the lips of fell beasts such as this.

  “Five for heaven, six for hell.” The creature paused and pointed back toward the cave. “Seven for the Raven King and the toll of a bell.”

  She shivered. There was a message here, a dark message either warning her or sending her in a dangerous direction. She simply didn’t know what he wanted her to understand.

  “Is this a warning or advice?”

  The creature did not respond. It remained still as stone, staring down at her until she could feel the touch of eyes she could not see.

  Pushing such a creature was unlikely to end well for her. And yet, she didn’t understand its words. The Raven King? Who was the Raven King?

  Hesitantly, she nodded. “Thank you.”

  It sank back into its strange position, on its knees with palms placed upon its thighs. It stared up at the sky, and together they waited for the sun.

  Aisling tilted her head back to listen to the ravens crying out their unhappiness at the disappearing moon. This strange dream had only given her more questions rather than answers. Somehow, she had a feeling the Unseelie might be able to answer them.

  She blinked her eyes open as soft, golden rays gently touched her cheeks. Light filtered through the leaves and dotted the ground like will-o’-the-wisps. Smiling, she sat up and stretched her arms over her head.

  Though her dreams were strange and uncomfortable, they weren’t unwelcome. Badb hadn’t spoken to her in years. The illusive faerie was more likely to be screaming over a battlefield than reassuring her granddaughter. Aisling was pleased to know she hadn’t been forgotten.

  The other creature, however, was less welcome. She didn’t know what it was. Some forgotten beast in the Otherworld? A figment of her own imagination as a representation of the faeries themselves?

  And what was its message?

  The nursery rhyme played in her head again. There was meaning there, something she was supposed to understand and yet couldn’t.