by Jane Yolen
Vivid fever dreams haunted me. I saw carts running along iron tracks. I heard the rustle of paper dresses. I watched pictures moving on the front of wooden boxes. I thrilled at humans leaping off cliffs, shaking huge and oddly shaped multicolored wings before catching an updraft and flying over the flat land. All of it beyond any magick humans could possibly ever have, or so I thought. But fever dreams are not meant to be read plainly.
I slept through most of the day and night and solidly into the next morning. Things rustled around me, but my eyelids were too gummed up to try and see what they were. Nor did I have the energy to rub my lids free of the stickiness. I just lay there, listening.
In between dreams, I tried to guess what was happening by the sounds. Was Solange borrowing a hairbrush? Willow sneaking about the hallway? Were the twins playing a trick on Dusty? Was Father coming to check on me, or Great-aunt Gilda here for a scold?
The strangest dream of all was one in which Mother came into my room to sit beside me, crooning a lullaby. A lullaby! How odd. She hadn’t sung to me since I was small.
In my dream, she laid a cool cloth on my forehead and left a fresh tisane in our best cup by my bed. Then she kissed me on both cheeks, saying in a soft voice, “Sleep well, little one.” Though I wasn’t very little anymore and, as she knew only too well, I wasn’t the One.
Yes, a very strange dream indeed.
And then she was gone.
• • • • • • • •
When I woke, the best cup was actually sitting there, on the table by my bed, filled with a minty-smelling tisane, cold but still effective.
Had Mother actually been beside me, and not just in my dream?
Or had one of the Aunts come by and left it, and I mistook her voice for Mother’s?
I didn’t know, and at that moment it hardly mattered. I drank the contents down in quick gulps before falling asleep again without tasting either the peppermint or the spell.
What I didn’t know was that, while I slept almost around the clock, Father had apportioned out the implements, leaving nothing in the spell trunk but an old linden spindle knotted about with the thread of a long life that was hidden by a tatty cloth.
Possibly he left it because the instruction sheet was in tatters, having been severely mouse-nibbled and shredded for nests. Or perhaps he’d never noticed it. Or perhaps, having apportioned out the best gifts for a baby princess—beauty, riches, sweetness, wit—Father hadn’t given a single thought about an end-of-life spell spun out on a wooden distaff.
Or perhaps he left it there for me, in the hope that I’d be up in time.
All I knew was that, while I slept away my fever, the Family had gone off to the christening without me.
Since I’d been included in the Bidding, there was real danger not just to me but to the Family. We could individually or all together burst into a thousand stars if the king or queen noticed. I wondered briefly that no one had wakened me or carried me off to the palace wrapped in a blanket, so I would at least be there to be counted, whether I could make a gift or not.
But Aunt Galda, being an occasional far-seer, must have known I’d be up in time. I refused to think that this might be one of the moments her far-seeing fluttered and failed. She’d evidently been more reliable when young, according to Solange, who got all her information from the Aunts.
However, as I was still alive, I supposed that there was nothing more that could be done, except hope that neither the king nor queen were able to count.
• • • • • • • •
When I finally woke again, I felt cool but extremely parched and whimpered for some more peppermint tea.
No one but the three doves in the rafters answered me. Co-co-roo, they said together softly, in their apologetic voices. Co-co-roo.
Now, my brother Arian is the one who really understands doves. I think it’s because he’s slow and quiet and so doesn’t frighten wild things the way the rest of us do. I’m not too bad on Crow and Jay, and love to converse in Hawk, but for one reason or another, I’ve never really learned Dove. They have hardly anything interesting to say, and they say it slowly. Still, I understood enough. They were telling me that the Family had gone.
“Gone?” I sat up groggily. “Gone!” I rubbed my sticky eyes, suddenly awake enough to remember where.
And why.
So I rose from my sickbed and slipped on a silvery, glittery party dress. It had once been Solange’s and didn’t fit me particularly well, as I was not so full-figured as she. But I didn’t care. The dress shimmered, and that was all that would matter to the king’s court, though the Family would know at once that the shimmer came mostly from the spiderweb patches. Solange is so hard on her clothes. But none of that mattered. All that mattered was that I get to the castle before the king or queen started to count.
When I looked in the glass, my hair seemed startled into place. I combed it down with my fingers, not having time to search for my brush. Then I ran into Solange’s room to borrow her silver hair bow. She must have worn it to the christening herself, so I raced back to my own room and took one of my red ribands and tied it quickly around my hair, managing an almost-presentable mare’s tail, and then started out of the house.
The doves co-co-rooed again, nannylike in their warnings, their message very clear. It was one word, over and over and over again.
“Gift!” I’d almost forgotten the most important thing. I began to shiver, not from fever but from fear.
What if I’d arrived without a gift? The king would probably order Father exorcised by his priests, since elves don’t burst from broken Oaths. Only the fey do. But bursting into stars is not nearly as painful as exorcism, or so I’ve heard. In exorcism, the elf’s essence is drawn out and then captured in a bottle. And Father would have to watch as the rest of us burst into stars.
I tried to imagine my dear, gentle Father corked up in a bottle for as long as the king or his kin liked. One of Father’s brothers had been exorcised by a Kilkenny abbot long before Father ever married Mother. He was still locked up in a dusty carafe labeled Bordeaux, ’79. That bottle sits on the back shelf of a monastery wine cellar and, as Father explains, whenever he tells us the story, “ ’79 was a terrible year for wines.” Since only a human can uncork Uncle Finn, and no one will want that particular debased wine, we all thought he’d remain corked up for . . . well, forever.
I tried to imagine Father that way, peering out of a green glass bottle, looking peaked and lonely and very, very sad.
Sometimes an imagination is a Curse.
• • • • • • • •
I ran down into the storeroom in Great-aunt Gilda’s belvedere, where the trunk with the Old Magick implements stood. Sturdy and oaken, it had a fine-grained pinewood key, but the key was only for show. The trunk was bolted with a family spell, one we’d all been forced to memorize in childhood.
Come, thou, cap and lid,
Lift above what has been hid.
All out!
Of course, the last two words were done in the Shouting voice, though not a full Shout, which could have brought down the roof on my head or at least covered me with a fine dust and dove droppings. Not a good look for a christening. Still, as with all magick echoes in the storeroom, the spell made my head hurt even more, though when the final note of the Minor Shout died away, the trunk snapped open with a loud click.
I peered in and at first thought it was actually empty, But when I felt around, my hand touched something long and wooden. I picked it up and realized it was the spindle on which the Thread of Long Life was wound and that there was a rather large piece of cloth hanging from the bottom end. Briefly, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed either spindle or cloth before. Just then, as if it were a trick of the light, the cloth began to disappear and so did the bottom part of the spindle.
Suddenly, I realized what I was holdin
g. “Banshee’s Cloak of Invisibility!” I whispered in awe, though it was only a piece of it. Just as I had that thought, the Cloak began to fail around the edges, turning a brown color as if it had been scorched in a fire, and suddenly I could see both the cloth and the tip of the spindle again.
“Blessed Loireg,” I said with a sigh, praising my long-dead Great-great-aunt, patroness of Hebridean spinners and spinsters.
Clutching both spindle and Cloak to my breast—you never know when an Invisibility Cloak will be helpful, even if it’s only an unreliable rag—I ran out of the pavilion and along the winding paths toward the castle. Since it was morning and I was still weak with fever and now had a headache as well, I didn’t dare fly. Especially with all the family healers off at the christening.
As I ran, I said a small Foot Spell to speed my feet. And a tiny Calves Spell to keep my legs strong. And a minuscule Heart Spell to keep me happy. And a teensy Lung Spell that I should not run out of breath. I was magicked from one end to the other, which only served to intensify my headache. But it had to be done. I needed speed. And even though I knew it was Forbidden, I headed off onto the Wooing Path because, after all, it was the straightest line to the castle.
I’d wrapped the Cloak about my head and shoulders for warmth, and so—on and off—I was invisible as I went along. A cacophony of cows in a field near the Path noticed me, a scramble of squirrels did not. A bear pawing honey from a tree startled when I suddenly popped into view, and he dropped the bit of honeycomb he was holding onto his foot, which annoyed him very much. He growled as if to chastise me, but I didn’t speak Bear, and I didn’t stop running, since I feared I was going to be late. He stopped chasing me when I went invisible again.
The sun already sat high in the sky, the morning hurtling towards noon. The christening would have begun closer to cock’s crow. I thought to make up some of the time with a small spell and was just figuring out which one, when I tripped over the old iron bar that Dusty had magickally shoved against a tree so very long ago. As my leg touched the bar, it burned me.
Suddenly I remembered what I’d forgot: a spell for concentration. Without concentration, a disastrous fall had been all but inevitable. Especially for one as accident-prone as I.
As I tumbled down, I lost my hair ribbon, tore a piece off Solange’s silvery dress, kept hold of the spindle and Cloak, and never hit the ground. Instead, I fell into a hole at the bottom of the tree.
“Curses!” I cried, without actually Cursing anything, since Father had all but forbidden us that, though he’d never said why. All the while, I was thinking that it was surely just a small hollow in the tree. I worried more about breaking the spindle or losing the Cloak, as well as being late to the christening and ruining Solange’s silver dress, when I should have been worrying about something infinitely worse.
As I fell into it, the hole yawned open, and suddenly I knew I’d been caught by a magick trap. But now it was far too late to fight my way out. I thought with a heavy sigh: no wonder the Wooing Path had been forbidden.
And no wonder none of the Uncles ever came back to us. It wasn’t lack of love that kept them away, or the fact that human men don’t live as long as the fey. It was suddenly clear that most—if not all of them—had been caught in this trap. Or maybe another just like it.
I bet the entire Wooing Path is catacombed with such things, I thought. As soon as I get free, I’ll have to tell the Aunts. And so I dropped end over end over end over end through the blackness.
I tried to unfurl my wings, but they—of course—were caught up in the Cloak around my shoulders, and I was holding tight to the spindle and only had the use of one hand, so when I finally hit bottom, out I went once again, not with fever this time but with a bang.
Part II
UNDER THE HILL
Under the hill, the faerie kin
Sing their chants, weave their spells.
Their hearts are full, their souls are thin,
They live in caves and deep, dark wells.
They eat the honey, ’void bee stings,
They drink from cups of morning dew
They dance all night in faerie rings
And sleep the day when night is through.
Do not come near, or hear our calls,
Or you’ll be gaoled within our walls.
—Traditional Song
• 6 •
CAVE WORT
The thing about wings is that if you have them, falling never worries you. Of course landing badly does.
And I landed very badly, hard on my right side with my right wing folded awkwardly under me.
When I woke—seconds, minutes, hours later, how was I to tell?—it was to total darkness. No stars, no moons, no fireflies, not even cave luminescence. Just pure, unrelieved blackness, a burned leg that hurt, a numb right wing, and a headache that wouldn’t stop.
I wondered briefly if I’d hit my head when I landed. However, it didn’t hurt to the touch, just an ache as if a band of cold iron encircled it.
The blackness was what the poets mistakenly call “ebon.” A night sky is ebon. The feathers of a raven are ebon. Certain tribes on the continent of Africa are ebon. I have seen pictures of them in the A section of one of Father’s encyclopedias. All have a sheen, a shine, a bluish tint, an elegance, a grace.
Someone not particular about words might even call my hair ebon. Except my hair is just straight, inelegant, and black.
My surroundings were simply black as well.
That was how I knew two things for certain: I was now underground, possibly in a cave, and I was surrounded by magick. Only a Great Magick can make things that black. And only a Great Magick can give me that particular kind of headache.
But Father had said we were tied to the land, and of course I’d thought he meant I could never leave the world that ran between our pavilion and the castle, all those dear, familiar running, flying, soaring places.
Yet here I was, certainly no longer in Shouting Fey territory. And just as certainly, I hadn’t burst into a thousand stars. So maybe that “tied to the land” thing had a little slack to it. Or else, the land under the king’s land still legally belonged to the king. I knew I’d have to think about that some more.
But not, I assured myself, until my head stopped hurting. The leg would take a few hours to start to heal, but the wing was what was really troubling.
Sitting up slowly, I reached back to feel my wing to find out if anything had been broken, for it had begun to throb with pain, though not as badly as my head, which was why I hadn’t noticed it at once. With wings—like little toes—you don’t actually know until you check. So I was pleased that my fingers found everything intact, no knobs or bobs sticking out awkwardly.
The Cloak may have kept the wing safe from breakage, for the primaries were still flexible and strong; the secondaries, too. I’d lost a few feathers, but they were probably loose anyway. We always lose feathers in the autumn, like trees their leaves, and new ones grow in the spring, so I wasn’t really worried about them. But if any of the hollow wing bones had been broken, they could take many seasons to heal properly, even with one of Mother’s spells or a trip to see the Faerie Doctor who lives in the bole of the ancient sycamore and knows more about wing bones that any Shouting Fey. Still, the pain was a worry, and until that stopped, flying back up the trap was not going to be an option. I would have to find another way out.
I guess I was lucky with that tumble. Except for the head and wing pain, and the burn where I’d tripped over the iron, I was remarkably fine, and I thanked the Magick Lords under my breath. I thanked Aunt Gardenia, too, who protects and looks after lost children, dogs, and the unfortunate traveler, of which I was two. Protects them when she remembers, that is. Which isn’t all that often.
I got to my knees carefully, making sure I still had the Cloak aroun
d my head and shoulders, for it was perishing cold down in the underground, and only then did I realize that I had nothing in my hands.
“Mab’s bones!” I whispered. I must have dropped the spindle somewhere in the blackness. At least, I hoped I’d dropped it in the blackness and hadn’t left it up above where anyone human might carry it off. I was in enough trouble already without adding that to the count.
I felt around the floor carefully. After a few tense moments, I found the spindle, and luck was still with me because it was unbroken. But my hand had touched nothing else but stone. Cold, uncaring stone.
Better than coming upon a cave beast, I thought. Better than something hugely muscled and ravenously hungry and . . . I was beginning to frighten myself. Think of your luck, I scolded. After all, nothing’s broken, nobody’s burst into a thousand stars.
Yet.
That was the only thing that kept me from sinking down and sobbing uncontrollably. It never occurred to me at that moment that everyone else might have already turned into stardust and I was saved by being miles underground and away from the awful power of the Oath.
I made a sudden wry face that I was glad no one was around to see. What kind of luck sets a person down at the bottom of a cave full of magick, in the dark, with a horrible headache? My kind of luck—all bad!
Bad, bad Gorse!
I knew I had to stop that line of thinking before I frightened myself out of any magick I might employ to get me home, since flying was out. But I sent up another small prayer to the Magick Lords who were surely watching over me because, after all, I still could walk, I still had the spindle, I still had the Cloak to keep me warm. And thinking about how fortunate I was, I stood, turned, and walked into something that was big, hairy, and smelled rather like the tail end of a sick cow.
The Something put its hairy arms around me, picked me up, and growled, “Gargle, McGargle,” or something like that. Then it squeezed me till I had a hard time breathing and took off at a big, walloping gallop that shook every bone in my body and made me almost drop the spindle, my Cloak, and the rest of the loose feathers from my wings.