Abigail looked down at her teacup. “Miss Fernside has gone on to the Other Side,” she said quietly. “She will not be coming back.”
“Good,” sniffed Lucy. “It’s only what she deserved, isn’t it?” She had paused herself at the little table, looking around at the empty chairs. Abigail wondered for a moment just what Lucy was waiting for—until Mercy gave another heavy sigh and gestured with her hand. One of the chairs pulled itself out for Lucy—whereupon she settled herself into the chair with a mildly gratified expression.
“We met Mr Jubilee on our way here,” Dora said, as she glanced around the cottage with detached interest. “I have his nightshade remedy with me. He has suggested that we should all make a visit to Blackthorn later, in order to bring him the lilies. I thought that you would not mind, Miss Mercy?”
Mercy smiled at that. “I’ll be delighted,” she said.
Dora rummaged inside Abigail’s reticule. As she did, a little straw arm wriggled stubbornly free.
Mercy froze, staring at the bag. Lightless backpedalled for the open door, with the two other sluagh hiding behind him. Black Catastrophe disappeared, suddenly replaced by the indigo raven—the bird flashed for the window, cowering with an angry hiss.
Dora shot the straw arm’s owner a look of mild reproval… and it disappeared grumpily into the reticule once more.
The sluagh in the cottage slowly relaxed once more. Black Catastrophe scrabbled her way down from the window with a last, suspicious croak at the reticule. She cleaned her feathers briefly, as though to prove how little the straw doll had frightened her, before transforming back into an indigo faerie.
“Aha,” Dora said, as she found what she was searching for in the bag. She closed the reticule firmly, and offered something out to Mercy, who considered it quizzically.
“A bean?” Mercy asked.
“So it would seem,” Dora agreed. “Mr Jubilee has advised that Abigail should grind it up and take it with tea. And so, we are already halfway there.”
Lucy had begun to tap her toe impatiently, during this particular exchange. Her face grew darker and darker—and finally, she burst out: “I have waited long enough! I am here in Longshadow, precisely where I was advised to come. I would like my formal audience now.”
Mercy blinked at Lucy. “You what?” she asked incredulously.
Abigail pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Were you not listenin’ at all, Lucy?” she asked. “Mercy is Lord Longshadow. You’ve talked to her a dozen times now.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes. “I have not made my formal petition,” she said. “I was promised that I would have a chance to plead my case to Lord Longshadow.”
Lightless glanced over at Lucy with a look of such serene patience that Abigail knew he could not possibly be human. “But I did not promise you anything of the sort,” he told her. “I said that you might have an audience with Lord Longshadow, and that you might have the chance to plead your case.”
Lucy crossed her arms furiously. “You implied—”
“Oh yes, I certainly implied,” Lightless agreed pleasantly. “But implications are not binding contracts.”
“You’ll sit down an’ have your tea an’ be quiet,” Mercy advised Lucy shortly. “I won’t hear a word from you until Abigail’s safe an’ sound.”
Lucy opened her mouth hotly—but though her lips moved, no sound came out. She blinked in shock.
“Oh, good,” Black Catastrophe sighed. “I was about to remove her tongue.”
Lucy shut her mouth again with a terrified snap.
Dora headed to one of the counters with Mercy. The two of them chatted amiably in quiet tones while they ground up the strange bean. Elias settled himself at the table directly between Hugh and Abigail, openly checking them over for injuries. They did not have any injuries, of course, being ghosts, but Abigail allowed him to do so all the same.
Eventually, Mercy mixed the powdered bean with a fresh cup of tea and brought it over to the bed. Abigail had the most peculiar sensation of heat along her throat—followed by a strange, chalky taste. She winced and tried to wash away the flavour with the tea just in front of her… but it did nothing to dispel the taste upon her real body’s tongue.
“Is it working?” Dora asked.
Mercy tilted her head at Abigail’s body, considering. “I think it is,” she said. “She was minutes from death before, but it’s startin’ to look more like hours. Oh! She’s not dyin’ at all now. I should have expected as much. Blackthorn knows its business when it comes to plants.”
Abigail sighed with relief. “Well, I suppose I’m just a bit cursed now,” she said. “I won’t complain about sleepin’ for a year, instead of dyin’.”
Mercy shot Abigail a bemused look. “Psh,” she said. “You weren’t ever goin’ to sleep for a whole year. True love’s kiss breaks most faerie curses—an’ you’ve got far too many people who love you.”
“Oh yes,” Dora said. “I had nearly forgotten about that.” So saying, Dora leaned down to brush her lips across Abigail’s forehead…
…and Abigail woke up.
Abigail blinked a few times, feeling bleary. Her head still hurt, and her tongue still tasted as though it had been coated in chalk… but the awful shivers and the nausea had gone entirely.
Mercy offered Abigail a hand off the bed. Abigail took it gratefully, dragging herself back to her feet.
“What a relief,” Dora said. And though her voice was flat and toneless, as always, Abigail knew that she meant it.
“I’d have kissed you myself, you know,” Mercy told Abigail seriously, “but I’m more powerful than Black, an’ I could break any curse of hers, so it wouldn’t prove much.”
Black Catastrophe scoffed and crossed her arms. “You could not,” she said. “You were clearly too scared to try, so you cheated instead.”
Lucy thumped her hand emphatically on the table. Her face had now gone red with frustration.
Mercy shook her head. “Annoyin’ as she is,” she observed, “Miss Kendall has reminded me…”
Mercy reached into the pocket of her laundress’ apron. When she pulled her hand out again, there was a small silver apple sitting in the hollow of her palm. Longshadow’s twilight glimmered upon its surface, in shifting hues of pink and blue. Abigail stared at it for a moment, unable to speak.
“This is the apple of life,” Mercy said. “I am a woman of my word. I will trade it now, in return for an end to the bans which still bind me.”
Elias watched her with a careful, closed-off expression. Abigail noticed then that he had yet to touch his tea.
“After all of this time,” he said softly, “I am loathe to trust you. You have not ever given me much reason to do so.”
Mercy looked away from him. “I know,” she said. “An’ I am… truly sorry for that. There were things which I never understood before—things which you yourself left faerie in order to find.” She hesitated. “But I have led a thousand lost souls to the Other Side. I have heard all of their stories, an’ accepted all of their payments. An’ I think… that bein’ a laundress, an’ losin’ my friends, an’ losin’ my power were all things that I needed, in order to learn the last important bits about bein’ human. By takin’ my power from me, Lord Sorcier, you gave me a gift—whether you meant to do it or not. An’ now, in return for that, I must give you somethin’ which is equally priceless.”
Elias watched Mercy’s face as she spoke. His own near-ageless features betrayed very little. But finally, he glanced at Abigail and Hugh.
Abigail inclined her head. “I’m very fond of Mercy,” she said softly. “I would like to give her feathers back to her.”
Hugh nodded too—though that old, lacklustre weariness was back in his manner. Abigail knew that Hugh was thinking again how unlikely it was that he should get another chance at life, no matter how close at hand it seemed to be.
Elias reached slowly into his jacket, to retrieve three long black feathers.
“I will rele
ase you from your bans then, Lord Longshadow,” he said, “in return for the apple of life.”
A reddish golden flame flickered along the feathers in Elias’ hand, licking at their edges. Slowly, the feathers withered away into a fine white ash, which drifted away to the floor.
Mercy sighed with visible relief. Elias closed his eyes, and Abigail saw a similar sentiment reflected in his manner, as his magic finally returned to him.
Mercy offered out the silver apple to Elias… but as he opened his eyes, he shook his head slowly. “That goes to Hugh,” Elias said quietly. “We are all agreed.”
Mercy turned to offer the apple out to Hugh instead. He took it tremulously, with a worried glance at Lucy—and Abigail remembered far too late that Hugh had promised the apple to her instead.
“No,” Abigail said shortly. “Don’t you dare, Hugh. That apple is yours.”
“I know,” Hugh said, in that familiar, weary tone. He slumped his shoulders. “It’s mine. An’ I’m givin’ it to Lucy, so that her an’ her mum don’t have to be sad anymore.”
At this, Dora turned her mismatched eyes upon Hugh.
“Oh,” Dora said softly. “Oh dear. I am so badly suited to being a mother.” There was a distant grief in her eyes as she considered Hugh. “Did you think that I was not sad, Hugh? I am so sorry if I have not shown it before now. I have such trouble crying, as a normal mother might.”
Hugh cast a suddenly stricken look upon his mother. “What?” he said. “No, I… of course not, Mum. You’ve always been wonderful. An’ I… well, I know you must be sad, but at least you get to see me sometimes. It’s just that Lucy’s mum won’t ever see her again. An’ doesn’t that seem… well, unfair?”
Elias looked away. “I would love to see you regularly too, Hugh,” he said, in a pained tone. “You deserve to grow up with us, as the other children do.”
Hugh wavered uncertainly—and at first, Abigail was hopeful that their parents had swayed him. But after a moment, Hugh took a deep breath and set his jaw, and he said: “You all told me I was allowed to make my choices. Didn’t you mean that?”
Abigail clenched her fingers into her palms. There was, she thought, very little that she could say to that. Oh, there was plenty that she wanted to say to it, certainly: that Lucy was using Hugh’s goodness against him; that Lucy would not have done the same for him in return in a hundred years, if she were ever given the chance. But Abigail knew in her bones that none of these things would sway Hugh at all. He had made his decision—as terrible as it was.
Lucy still could not speak—but she shot Abigail a look of silent triumph. There was no gratitude on Lucy’s face, Abigail thought; but her eyes glittered with spite, and with deep satisfaction at having got her way.
Hugh offered the apple out to Lucy, who reached out to take it…
…but as she touched it, there was a cold flicker of shadow.
Lucy dropped the apple with a silent cry, clutching her hands to her chest. The very edges of her ghostly fingertips were blue with frostbite.
Abigail glanced towards Mercy. A cold, inhuman smile had appeared upon her lips.
“Miss Lucy Kendall,” Mercy said softly, “you had your audience with me—in fact, you had several. But you thought I was a laundress then, an’ you treated me accordingly. Had you ever read a faerie tale in your life, you might’ve known better.” Midnight gathered in Mercy’s eyes—and for just a moment, the twilight in the cottage turned to evening. “I rendered my judgement upon you, though you didn’t notice it. I said that Lord Longshadow would not bring you back to life. An’ since I cannot lie, I also cannot let you have that apple.”
Hugh turned a furious look upon Mercy. “You said you’d let me make my own choices!” he accused her. “Why are you stickin’ your nose in the middle of this?”
Mercy’s pale face was calm and terrible as she looked back at Hugh. “You have made your choice, Hugh Wilder,” she said gently. “But Lucy has made her choices, too. An’ now, she must pay the consequences for them.”
Hugh stared at Mercy helplessly. Just behind him, Lucy lunged for the apple on the floor once again, as though another attempt might end differently from the first. But she could not seem to grasp the apple, no matter how many times she tried. Shadows crawled all the way up her arms, leaving painful blue welts in their wake.
Finally, pained and defeated, Lucy sat down on the floor and cried.
Hugh’s face took on a heartbroken expression as he watched Lucy’s tears. But Mercy’s countenance remained perfectly unmoved.
“That is a consequence too, Miss Kendall,” Mercy advised her. “I wish I could say that someday you will learn how consequences work. But I’m not sure that you ever will—an’ I haven’t the time to teach you.”
Mercy leaned down to pick back up the silver apple, brushing it off with her long, delicate fingers.
She offered it out to Hugh once again.
Hugh took the apple listlessly. After a moment, he sighed, and stuffed it into his pocket.
“I won’t eat it,” Hugh said stubbornly. “You’re doin’ this for nothin’.”
“I’m doin’ this for my own reasons,” Mercy corrected him. “Eat it or not. My business with you is done—except for the tea, that is.”
And with that, Mercy Midnight poured them all a fresh cup.
Epilogue
Abigail knew without having to ask that her reputation among the ton was in tatters—or rather, that it was even more in tatters than it had been before. It hardly mattered that Abigail had risked her life to catch a black magician, given the crimes that she had otherwise committed by wearing her mother’s oversized gown and chasing after a little straw doll in the middle of a party.
This tattered reputation, however, did not bother Abigail in the least: for she had earned herself quite the reputation in faerie. Faeries of all shapes and sizes and titles had begun to whisper that the Lord Sorcier’s daughter was an even more powerful magician than he—and besides which, they said, she was far more polite. Abigail did little to disabuse the faeries of this notion, for she continued watching her words very carefully—and often outright lying—such that she made new friends out of dangerous acquaintances wherever she went. More often than not, of course, Abigail travelled with her best friend and lady love, Miss Midnight, who had a habit of glaring down any other faeries who thought to pull one over on the Lady Sorcière.
Abigail did return to England on occasion, in order to see her family. And while Abigail never did entirely warm up to her Aunt Vanessa’s charity teas, neither did she ever fail to attend them—for while Abigail herself found it difficult to imagine a better world, she was always grateful to lend her presence to those who could imagine one.
And perhaps you will find it surprising to know that eventually, Abigail walked into one of these charity teas to discover a black-clad Lady Pinckney at Aunt Vanessa’s right-hand side, calmly calling the tea ladies to order and chastening them for their gossip. And while Abigail and Lady Pinckney never did learn to get on very well, Abigail still found it strangely reassuring to know that certain people could change, even just a little bit.
Sadly, Miss Lucy Kendall did not change at all. Rather, she lingered on and on, sitting stubbornly beneath the silver tree in Longshadow, waiting for another apple to grow. Mercy often noted to Abigail when she visited that someday Lucy would surely grow roots and turn into a tree herself. But one day, when Abigail glanced out the window of Mercy’s cottage, she saw that Lucy was no longer sitting at the base of the tree. Perhaps, as Mercy had surmised, Lucy had finally grown into the tree and become a part of it… or more likely, Abigail thought, Lucy had decided that being so roundly ignored was simply intolerable, and she had crossed to the Other Side in pursuit of other people to give her their attention.
Hugh Wilder kept the apple of life, fully intent on giving it away to one of the other children in Hollowvale. But while he had managed to endure his mother and father’s sadness, Hugh could not endure his
Other Mum’s wild tears when she heard that he would not be coming back to life after all. Thus, after many difficult arguments, did Hugh Wilder give up the last of his fear and uncertainty and finally eat the silver apple that he had been given.
Hugh Wilder grew up in a loving home with wonderfully affectionate parents, surrounded by other children. For the first few weeks of his life, Hugh baked several batches of tarts. Many of these, he took to the workhouses, to hand out to the other children there. But upon one of these visits, Hugh happened by chance to meet a charitable physician named Mr Albert Lowe—and while Hugh had never imagined that he might give up his dream of baking tarts, he soon asked for an apprenticeship with the good doctor. Years later, Mr Hugh Wilder became a physician himself. He did not bake very many tarts after that—but he did fix several bruises and save several lives, which otherwise would not ever have been saved.
As for Abigail Wilder: regardless of what the dark night had claimed, she did not ever die. Rather, Abigail still wanders both faerie and the mortal world, using her magic to fight unfairnesses both large and small. And behind her, death shall always follow: for Abigail walks in the loving shadow of Mercy Midnight, who will never leave her side.
THE END
Thanks for reading Longshadow! The Regency Faerie Tales are over for now—but the Tales of the Iron Rose will soon begin, with the release of Echoes of the Imperium in 2022.
* * *
You can also keep reading to get access to The Lord Sorcier—a free, exclusive novella that tells the story of how Elias Wilder became the Lord Sorcier.
* * *
If you enjoyed Longshadow, I would be greatly obliged if you left a review. I promise—I read them all.
Afterword
I am not fond of death. I feel strange that I even have to write those words, but apparently, I do. For some reason, we are surrounded by stories which romanticise death, and which imply that people who refuse to accept death are doing the world some sort of moral disservice.
Longshadow Page 25