by Annie Bellet
Áine clutched her pack to her chest and sighed. “I do not like this. But I have a knife of cold iron, and if it must be so, I will do what is needed.”
Bran turned back to her with a melancholy smile. “Yes, you likely will. Shall we go?”
“More flying?” Áine took his blue-black hand in her own milk-pale one.
“Rather walk, would you?” Bran’s smiled warmed slightly.
“More like hobble. And no, thank you.” She hesitated, looking up at him. “Thank you, Bran.”
He chuckled without mirth and shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet,” he murmured, but before she could respond, he lifted them into the air and they flew out over the forest, back toward the lake.
Bran brought them down in a slow spiral beyond the lake, along the banks of a little stream. Áine knelt in the thick, soft grass as the world to stopped spinning and her stomach unclenched. When she finally felt somewhat close to normal again she looked up and gasped.
Across the stream was a huge weeping willow. Its bark was the grey-blue of the sea just before a storm and the leaves shimmered silver and gold, trailing down into the water. Áine had to crane her neck to see the crown of the tree and she thought that it would take five or six grown men to span the trunk that leaned out over the stream with their arms. Beyond the willow was a circle of white stones, a fairy ring within the shade of her giant canopy.
Áine took a deep breath. She did not like the idea of harming anything, but this was only a tree, albeit a magical one. I eat the flesh of animals, I sit on wooden chairs in front of warm fires; cutting into a tree is no different from these things. And I’ll make the cut small as I can.
She reached into her pack and drew out the knife. She unsheathed it and picked up the horn bowl.
The stream was shallow and Áine forded it by stepping on the half-submerged stones. She went to the base of the Yfwr’s trunk and chose an exposed root. With a silent prayer and apology, Áine drew the knife blade quickly across the root.
It did not cut. The knife failed to even score the wood. Áine did it again, this time putting all her weight behind the blade. Nothing, not a mark, though the blade sparked against the surface.
Áine touched the root and found it hard and cold like metal. She raised her hand to brush against a clump of leaves and found they too were cold and hard as though formed of actual silver and gold.
She turned and looked back at Bran who stood just across the stream watching her, his expression unreadable.
“I don’t understand,” she called out. “I can’t wound it, the blade does nothing.”
“Áine,” Bran said. “Come to me and I will try to explain.”
Áine limped back across the stream and sank down in the grass to take the weight off her sore leg. Bran settled across from her.
“The Yfwr changed into what you encounter now to prevent herself from ever feeling pain again. The tree cannot be harmed.”
“But I have to wound her to get her tears,” Áine said. “This doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Think, Áine!” Bran hissed. “There is more than one way to wound.”
Áine stared at him with wide, confused eyes. I don’t know what he means. Well, that’s untrue. I know what he means, but how would one hurt the heart of a tree? I do not understand.
“Her children,” Bran said finally, “her three children are her last weakness. If they come to harm, she will wake and weep.”
Áine wrapped her arms around her chest. “You want me to wound children?”
“No, you cannot merely wound them. They have powerful gifts of healing; momentary pain would not wake their mother.” Bran pulled his feather cloak tight to his body. “To make the Yfwr weep, you must kill them.”
“Kill them? But. . .” Áine rose to her feet and winced. “No. No, I won’t do that. I cannot do that.”
Bran stood with strange, intense expression on his face. “You want to free these men you love, do you not?”
“Aye. And I will. But there has to be another way.”
“There is,” he said simply and Áine remembered what Trahaearn had told her when he made a gift of the knife she now held in one hand.
“Kill Seren,” she said.
“Kill Seren,” he echoed and took a step toward her, his eyes bright.
“Why do you want her dead? That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve stayed with me, helping me all this time in hope that I’ll make that choice. You knew before we flew here what I would have to do, how to make the Yfwr weep. You could have said something back there, couldn’t you? But you wanted me face her, to see the impossibility of all this so that the other choice would look more attractive, didn’t you?”
She pulled out of reach of his arms as he moved toward her and threw the knife down at his feet. “No! Don’t touch me. If you want her dead so much, kill her yourself.”
“Áine,” Bran said sharply, then more softly, “Áine. Aye, I want her dead. The Lady took offense to my father paying her court a long time ago. For his apparent insult she drowned him in the drychpwll and to this day hunts down my people for sport with her hounds. Do you not think I desire nothing more than to take that knife and thrust it into her cold, vain heart? But I cannot set foot in her clearing, and if I could she’d still never let me near enough to do harm.”
Áine took a deep breath and willed her shaking hands to still. “I’m sorry Bran. I know that my coming here must look like salvation for you, but it isn’t. If I kill her, I break the curse and yes, free your people from her ire. But I would become the new Lady, trapped forever in the boundaries of her domain. Emyr and Idrys would be free of the curse and lost to me. There must be some other way, some path that doesn’t involve killing anyone.”
Bran laughed and it was not a pretty sound. “Cowardly Áine, driven from her quest by a little blood. If your love falters so easily, you hardly deserve it.”
He swirled his cloak around himself and turned into a raven. Heedless to her calling his name, Bran leapt into the air and flew off over the lake.
Áine sank to the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees.
You can free them.
Follow your heart.
The words whispered in her mind, once a comfort but now their own kind of curse. “Tesn,” she said to the empty field. “You taught me never to cause harm. I’ve come so far.”
She pulled her pack to her and groped around inside it for the tiny wooden horse. She sat for a long time as the sun slowly sank toward the water, stroking her fingers over the horse’s body, memorizing each nick and cut.
“Idrys,” she murmured. “Do I only imagine that you made this thinking of me? What would you do?”
But her mind pulled away from that answer. You’d kill Seren, wouldn’t you? He’d do anything to free his brother of this curse if he knew the way. Tears stung her eyes. But he isn’t here, is he? He wasn’t the one chosen, the one given this chance.
She curled into the grass and fell asleep as the sun set, her hand clutching the little horse.
* * *
It was the same dream as before. Emyr and Idrys stood, hand in hand, parted from Áine by a sheet of falling water. This time it was Áine who backed away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “forgive me. I just want to be with you. To have a home. But not like this.”
The twins came toward her, moving as one. As they touched the waterfall it turned to blood, soaking them both and turning their visages into something alien and terrible, something Other.
“Áine, my love. Why do you abandon us? Don’t leave us.”
Áine felt movement in one hand and something horribly cold and still in the other. She looked down. In one palm the little horse came to life and squirmed, soft and warm between her fingers. In the other, she held Trahaearn’s blade.
* * *
Áine woke, her throat raw and her face hot from crying. She still clutched the wooden horse, but in her other hand she grasped the knife. With a cry she sat u
p.
Three slender sprites surrounded her, peering down at her with curiosity in their wide silvery eyes. They each stood about the height of her waist, with perfectly hairless bodies and long limbs. In the moonlight they looked like tiny tree sylphs with branch-like noses, sharp chins, and smiling pink children’s lips. Their eyes, too big to be human, were without pupils or irises.
One slender hand brushed her cheek; another child stepped in and stroked her hair. Áine stared up at them, realizing they must be the Yfwr’s offspring. The knife was a cold, hard weight in her hand and she pulled away from their touch.
“I’m Áine,” she said. “I greet you.”
A sound like a muffled harp issued forth from one child’s mouth and the other two joined in, speaking a musical language Áine could not comprehend. She shook her head. They pointed to the fairy ring and Áine saw that it was lit up by the moonlight. One slender child danced away from the others, moving in hypnotic spirals over the ground toward the ring of glowing stones.
“I cannot dance with you,” Áine said, guessing at their intentions. “My ankle, it’s injured.” She motioned to her wrapped ankle.
The child who had touched her cheek bent over her leg and laid a warm hand on her skin. Heat suffused her leg, spreading down into her ankle and foot. It lasted only a moment, followed by a sudden cessation of pain. The sprite rose and smiled at Áine.
Áine worked her ankle around slowly and then stood carefully and put weight on it. There was no pain. Áine smiled down at the children as they waved to her again and danced away toward the fairy ring, their singsong voices drawing her along with them.
She looked down at the knife in her hand and a sickening thread of fear twisted within. Pushing that fear away, Áine tucked the knife into her belt and followed the children across the stream, letting the little wooden horse fall from her hand.
She hesitated and then stepped within the fairy ring. Music greeted her as she crossed the threshold, unlike any she’d ever heard before. It sounded as though a hundred harps and wooden flutes played in glorious harmony, the music nearly alive around her, a tangible thing that pulled at her skirt and hair, begging her body to move with its power. The children brought her into their spiraling dance, grasping her hands and turning her this way and that with their little faces turned upward to the stars that winked between their mother’s leaves.
The sprites spun and spun, the music growing louder, faster, wilder. Áine danced with them, her mind emptying of its cares, her heart light with joy. Every ache and pain, every ounce of exhaustion in her weary body fled in the whirl of the dance until only the rhythm mattered and all she felt was the beat of her own heart and the warmth connecting her to these strange children. Her mind sank into the bodies connected to her and she found only joy and a weightless power. There was nothing to be healed here, no sickness or wound, just the delight of sharing in connection with another.
They danced until the moon set and the sky turned grey with false dawn. The children slowed their steps and moved in close to Áine. As if it were a natural end to the mad dance, she sank to the ground, her skirt spread out around her, and the children curled with their heads in her lap. She watched sleepy eyes close and their thin bodies settle into slumber.
The carved bird on the hilt of the knife dug into her ribs, a harsh reminder of her purpose here. Not my purpose. I cannot do this. They are so little, so trusting.
Does not Idrys trust you? Is not Emyr waiting for your return? Did you not tell him as you slipped away that you would come home?
Her mind warred with itself and Áine felt torn apart from within.
She counted the days slowly. Not even a fortnight. It felt like so much longer since she’d lain in Idrys’s warm arms, teased Emyr, and seen the responding love in their eyes. Two weeks. They are waiting for me. I could just go home.
Go home? What home? A chief is not free to marry without thought for the future. Look at you, silly girl. They call you halfling, they call you Other.
“No,” she said aloud. One of the Yfwr’s children shifted and Áine jammed her fist in her mouth. Emyr and Idrys don’t care about that. They love me. I love them.
Is love enough? If they learn that you could have freed them but walked away? Or will the guilt of the curse and your failure here pull you all apart?
You can free them.
Follow your heart.
“Which heart?” Áine murmured.
A memory came to her then, an image as clear as if it played out again right in front of her. She stood in the snow, her body half-turned away from the forest. An owl alighted on a branch, catching her attention. Áine remembered she’d almost given up before the journey even started.
She remembered her vow not to do so again.
What price, love?
Her body shaking, her hands cold, Áine slid the knife out of her belt. She laid one hand on the forehead of the first child. Tiny green veins threaded through the sleeping child’s lids and Áine choked back a sob as she bent forward and brought up the knife.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, “I must follow my heart.”
She drew the knife across the child’s throat.
Blood bloomed around the blade in a scarlet flood. The dying sprite made no sound, just opened its silvery eyes and watched her with an ancient sadness at odds with its youthful appearance. Áine stared down at it in horror and then twisted away, stabbing the second child through the neck and then the third, her eyes pressed shut, her lips bleeding as she bit them. Blood soaked her skirt, climbing up the bodice of her dress and turning the sky-blue linen dark crimson.
With a cry she rose, flinging the knife far from herself. The dead children’s heads dropped from her skirt and they lay in a strange parody of their own sleeping forms; bodies curled and eyes half-shut.
She stumbled away from them to the stream and fell into it, dry heaving. Her stomach, empty for lack of food the day before, had little to bring up but acidic bile. She scrubbed at her bloody hands and then her skirt. The blood washed from her hands, but the scrubbing only seemed to spread it on her dress.
Behind her, the willow began to shake and scream.
Áine looked back and saw the tree sweeping its arms through the air as it cried out in pain, the sound like the smashing of a thousand harps, the wail of a thousand suffering throats. She crawled from the stream to where she’d left the horn bowl and snatched it up.
Rising, she walked back across the water to the tree. Its leaves were hard and sharp and cut into her body as she pushed through its raging branches. Her dress was cut to rags and her flesh marked with hundreds of shallow wounds. Áine blinked through the blood that seeped into her eyes and pressed the horn bowl into the Yfwr’s bark.
Thick, glistening tears flowed from deep cracks in the skin of the tree and ran down, caught in Áine’s bowl. She stood there, sick with grief and guilt, barely feeling the leaves that lashed her skin, the cuts on her face, back, and arms. When the bowl brimmed with the sap-like tears, Áine turned and walked toward the lake.
At the shore she paused and looked back. The tree still thrashed and wailed, and the rising sun shone down on the crumpled bodies of the children. Stuck upright into the earth beside one of the standing stones, the Trahaearn’s knife sparkled in the light and Áine recalled her promise to return it to him.
She moved toward it and another spear of nausea and horror stabbed through her. She set down the bowl of tears carefully on one of the standing stones and walked to the bodies of the children. Bending, she laid the children out straight and closed their filmy, staring eyes.
Her hands were slick with her own blood, but she managed to unknot her belt. The red leather slipped off her hips and fell into the grass beside their bodies, a crimson gash on the stained ground.
Áine left the knife where it lay and picked up her bowl of tears. She walked to the lake and stepped into the water. Her foot did not sink; instead it rested on the surface, the lake giving like soft moss und
er her weight. She hesitated and then stepped forward. Her heart was a stone in her chest, her mouth a determined line. Áine stared straight ahead, placing one leaden foot after the other.
Empty and aching with grief, she walked out over the lake, away from one heart and toward another. Far above her drifted the shadow of a raven.
Twenty-five
The trees pulled back their branches, the ferns curled away from her ragged skirt. The forest itself recoiled from Áine, laying a clear path to where Seren waited. The grieving woman hardly noticed. Her green eyes were hot and damp with tears but focused as though seeing something always just ahead. She held the horn bowl steady in both hands in front of her body as one might carry an offering or a shield.
The sun slid over the sky and sank again. Áine did not waver in her step but called on the glowing fairy light. It ringed her, casting terrible shadows in the trees. The myriad tiny cuts on her arms, back, legs, and face ceased to sting and the blood covering her body dried, making her dress stiff and coarse against her raw skin.
She reached the drychpwll and Seren’s cottage in the middle of the night. The cottage window was dark and no light shone from beneath the heavy door. Áine kicked the door hard with one foot, holding the horn bowl high above her head to keep it steady.
“Seren! I have completed your tasks here,” she yelled in the still clearing. “Arise, Lady, and finish this that I might go complete the final task and free them.”
Soft white light bathed the clearing suddenly, limning the branches of the trees and reflecting off the pond. Áine blinked and Seren appeared. The Lady’s hair hung loose down her back and she wore only a thin undergown of the lightest green. No rings or combs adorned her this night, but the eerie light shifted her features as far from human as Áine had ever seen.
Her silvered eyes glinted and her skin glowed as though it had taken the moon into itself. Her hair was a ruby cascade over her shoulders and when she smiled there was something predatory and sharp hiding within.