Chance

by Nancy Springer

  The Denizens had gifted him with manhead, and he hated them for it.

  Halimeda knew Lord Chauncey’s secret. And since the matter of Xanthea, Halimeda scorned him; he felt it. Sometimes even before the matter of Xanthea she had scorned him, and he never failed to sense it, though she said not a word. Halimeda was proud, and would not rail.

  The boy standing before him bore Halimeda’s face.

  He loved her. Hidden, like his secrets, pushed out of sight, like his past, was his love for her; but it held him and entrapped him as did his memories. He lived trammeled, helpless in the grip of that love. It was the reason he had not killed her for her scorn. It was the reason he had not killed her long ago for the secrets she knew.

  He suspected she had been riding to the edge of Wirral, but he would not ask her, though he had heard her footsteps as she came in. He had not spoken to her, or she to him, for these many weeks. The winter days were lengthening toward springtime. It must be late, that she had returned. The room seemed dark. No one had lit the lamps or offered him supper. Lord Chauncey did not care, so long as someone kept his cup filled.

  The boy Justin stood shaking in the chill of the damp and darkened room. Justin. What a weighty name for such a waif. The face was Halimeda’s, but the boy’s thinness reminded him of Roddarc at that age. It was a reminder Lord Chauncey did not like.

  “Bow,” Lord Chauncey commanded.

  Eight-year-old Justin bowed, promptly and low, though he had already done so upon entering the audience chamber to stand before his father. Perversely, Lord Chauncey was not pleased by the boy’s compliancy. He would have liked to toughen Justin by beating him. Lord Chauncey remembered his childhood as a whipping boy sufficiently so that he kept no whipping boy in his own court. But he also remembered, proudly and bitterly, that the whipping boy had become the lord. And he knew a lord only held power as long as he was hard and cruel. He knew he should beat Justin.

  Instead, he drank from his golden cup, as he had been doing for some hours. “Justin,” he said.

  The boy looked up at him with Halimeda’s eyes.

  “It is a shame on both of us that you, the heir, cower here in the keep when your sister is missing, Justin. Where is your valor?”

  The gray-green eyes widened. The boy had never in his life done anything valiant. He had never done anything but what he was bid. And like his sisters, he had been bid to keep within walls.

  “Someday you will be a man.”

  The scrawny child had thought it hardly possible, but his father said it was so. Justin listened intently.

  “It is time you began to think like a man.” Lord Chauncey lifted a hand unsteady with drinking. “It is time you began to act like a man.” The hand wobbled through an imperious gesture. “Go. Ride to Wirral. Find your sister.”

  With great difficulty Justin moved his lips to wet them with his tongue. He swallowed and spoke. “May I have my supper first?” he whispered.

  “No whit.” Chauncey felt annoyed at the thought of anyone’s having supper when he had not yet had his. He was the lord, was he not? His fierce glare sent the child a step back from him. “Go! At once.”

  Justin bowed, backed awkwardly away from his father’s presence, then turned and ran.

  Down the stone corridor toward the courtyard door he ran. Was there permitted enough delay to fetch his cloak? His father would be angry. He had not said “Yes, Father.” He was supposed to say, “Yes, Father,” when Lord Chauncey commanded him something, but his mouth was always so dry that he could scarcely manage the words, and he was always so terrified he forgot. Better not risk taking time to find the cloak. God only knew what Lord Chauncey would do to him if he dawdled. He felt no assurance, such as Xanthea had, that he would not be killed.

  In tunic and breeches, with no other covering, Justin ran out into the snowy courtyard and across it to the stable.

  “Saddle Ebony,” he ordered the first groom he found. His voice sounded clear. He was not afraid of servants.

  The man raised his eyebrows. “Young my lord, it is growing dark! You’ll not be riding out now.”

  “My father commands it,” said Justin.

  This was not a saying lightly to be questioned. The man looked anxiously at the sky, at the snow lying thick on the ground, at Justin’s bare head and cloakless shoulders, but he brought the pony Ebony. It was not truly a black pony, though Justin, who had named it, liked to think it black as a black knight’s warhorse. But in fact it was sooty brown, round, short-legged and sour-tempered, and so small that its back rose not much above the groom’s waist.

  He saddled and bridled the beast, and the young lord mounted. The pony balked at leaving the stable, for it wanted its supper at least as much as Justin wanted his. But the boy was determined, and set his slender lips in a hard line, and kicked and urged Ebony for all he was worth, and rode out at the postern gate. Night had fallen, very clear, full of frosty stars, and very, very cold.

  Lord Chauncey awoke in the morning with a thundering headache and a dim memory of having said something foolish to his son. In the morning also, the pony came back riderless to the stables, trotting into its stall and looking with bright eyes and searching muzzle for food. The groom who had saddled it stared at it a moment, then ran and hid in the hayloft, but it was no use. Lord Chauncey found him and killed him, and the man was counted fortunate that rage made the lord kill him quickly. Lord Chauncey killed the pony, also, hacking its head asunder from its body with his sword. Then he roared for his own steed and rode to find his son.

  This time the trail ran clear. Justin had found his way straight across snowy fields to the shadow that was Wirral. The pony had taken him under the trees. Chance ventured in far enough to find the place where the boy had fallen. He saw the depression in the snow, exactly the shape of Justin, as if the boy had been playing at making snow-angels but had fallen asleep. There was no blood. There was no sullying of the chaste white surface of the snow with signs of struggle. All lay still. Chance noted the tracks of the pony where it had turned back toward the fortress. No other tracks led away.

  Yet no body lay there.

  Chance felt the small hairs at the back of his neck prickle. He felt the amused stare of many small eyes. Grief made him more than ever hate-possessed. With a madman’s roar, he snatched out his sword and slashed again and again at the forest which surrounded him on all sides. But the wood of the trees did not yield to his weapon as softly as had the flesh of the groom and the pony. Its resistance maddened him. He whirled his horse as if beset on all sides; he trampled his son’s image into mud. He charged Wirral.

  But the horse, frightened by its rider’s passion, took opportunity and ran, like the pony, back toward the fortress, back toward its stable and safety. Chance had not been reared a horseman; he could not control the runaway beast. Or perhaps its fear agreed with his own. And as he fled Wirral, the sound of high-pitched, trilling laughter followed him.

  “Wirral is harsh and Wirral is fair,

  Sweet as the fragrance in springtime air.

  Wirral is soft and Wirral is stark

  As shadows blooming in the dark.”

  The voices woke Xanthea from her sleep. She could hear them clearly, piping and trilling in the night, and though around her she saw only the richly-draped canopy of her soft bed, she knew that the Denizens were singing in the branches of the oak that formed her refuge.

  She turned at once to the one who lay next to her, for she loved and trusted him, and joggled him awake. “Listen,” she told him.

  “Come to the mushroom ring,

  Xanthea, our oddling!

  Come to the revel ring,

  Xanthea, our own.”

  Wirral sat up in bed, his fox-red hair shining in moonlight—for the moon shone down through high palace windows, or the crevices of the oak. “It must be the night of the quarter-year,” he said. “Come, array yourself.” He took her by the hand and led her out of the bed, but she stood naked in the chill room, questioni
ng.

  “What do they want of me?”

  Xanthea had seen Denizens more than once, for dawn, dusk and daytime she and Wirral wandered, and he showed her many wonderful things she had never seen in the forest melting toward spring; the scaly stems and barbaric blossoms of callow-come-early, the coiled fronds of bracken lifting the leaf litter, the hiding places of newts under stones. And the tough, thin, bark-skinned Denizens would come out of their tree hollows and speak to her with such impertinent courtesy as they could. Pranksters that they were, it was hard for her to tell whether they wished her ill or harm. And as many times as she had looked on their narrow, large-eyed, wide-mouthed faces, both grotesque and beautiful, she had never seen her own face in theirs. For it is not in the nature of anyone of human kind to see self truly.

  Wirral gave her a soft glance, not unkind, but did not answer her question, and slowly she put on a gown he had given her, a silken gown of oak-leaf green.

  The night was damp and chill, though smelling of treebud and earth; most of the snow had melted. Soon violets would be blooming. Wirral stepped out first into the darkness, hearkening for danger, then gave his hand to Xanthea. The oak stood silent; the Denizens had gone on before. A gray squirrel scampered down and turned to a horse, saddled and caparisoned for their mounting. But this one did not fly. By the forest ways it took them quickly to the wild meadow where the revelers awaited them, and shrill cries of joy greeted them as they drew near.

  “Welcome, Wirral!”

  “Welcome, Wolf-face!”

  “Welcome, Xanthea of golden grace!”

  The moon was waxing near the full. And though the snow still lay in patches under the holly and laurel, the mushrooms stood in their ring on the meadow, each one as plump and white as the moon. Xanthea gazed at them, for they seemed to shine. And she stared at the crowd around them, the Denizens as many, it seemed to her, as there were trees in Wirral. Numbers beyond counting. The cock-proud males, and the twiggy females with their hard, protruding breasts, and those other females, the dainty ones, humans in small, but fairer than any woman who ever walked.

  One of them scampered up to Xanthea: a handspantall beauty with hair of red-gold, wisping finer than any babe’s, and eyes of vivid green. And with her, by the hand, she brought—a boy?

  A tiny, delicate youth with—she scarcely knew him, because of his look, unaccustomed, so merry. Nevertheless—Justin’s face. Xanthea gasped, swaying where she stood with the shock of seeing him there, naked and joyous, ready to join the dance. A hand caught her arm to steady her; Wirral stood by her side.

  “My—my brother!” she blurted.

  “I found him!” declared the green-eyed beauty, gazing up at towering Xanthea. Justin paid no heed to his sister—either of them. Blithely he wrinkled his nose at the one, he broke free of the other and scampered away into the swirl of revelers.

  Xanthea begged of the night, “But—how?”

  “Look into my eyes,” said Wirral softly by her side, “and I will show you how it was.”

  So she looked into his eyes, and saw.

  The boy, riding the soot-black pony, his lips blue, his face ice-pale. Riding into Wirral, through the deep snow beneath the trees, and the pony growing slower with every step, and Justin, numb with cold, not noticing. Swaying on his small mount’s back. Until, scarcely caring, he slipped sideways off his saddle, slipping into the sleep that comes before death by freezing, falling softly into a bed of snow, whiter than any bed of pillows and linens. And the pony turned and galloped back to the warm stable where death awaited it.

  Then the girl, the tiny damsel who had once been named Iantha, peeping from her tree-hollow like a wary forest creature at the small human lying in the snow.

  It took her a long time to come down, for it is not in the nature of the Denizens to leave their trees, their havens, and walk on the ground, except in numbers at the revels, and then the risk is part of the thrill of those nights. But on this winter day Iantha was alone. Sense told her to stay hidden. But despite sense she came out, risked thin boughs for a closer look at the boy, and something in his still face and his lidded eyes caught at her heart, tugging at memories she no longer owned.

  So by hesitant degrees she went down to him, walking on top of the snow, her feet leaving no more impression than the feet of butterflies. She stood by Justin’s cold face, gazing at him, feeling the tug in her heart for which she had no words, and after a time her mate found her there.

  “Come away!” he called from the trees overhead. “Folk from the fortress are likely to come for that one, any moment!”

  Iantha did not move. “Is he dead?” she breathed.

  “Maybe not quite. But soon he will be, whether they come for him or no. Love, come away!”

  She said, “Can we not take him for our own, as—as—” And she could not go on, for she had small comprehension of how she had been taken as a babe.

  And the prince of the Denizens saw the ache in her heart, and slowly replied, “As we sometimes take those who are left in Wirral. Never a boy, before. But he is fair. Very well, my lovemate. Kiss him.”

  Was that all? It was so simple a thing to do. Iantha leaned forward and kissed Justin’s cold cheek. And the boy opened his eyes, blinking, and got up, for he no longer felt cold. Nor did he any longer feel the fear of his father’s command. He did not remember his father, or miss him, or miss his mother or sisters: he felt nothing but a fey joy. Just being alive was enough, though he did not know he had been near death. He stood a scant foot in height, a little taller than the slender, shining-eyed maiden who faced him, and he laughed and followed her as she skipped away, and she led him to the dwellings of the many other small folk in the trees.

  All this Xanthea saw in the eyes of Wirral, for Wirral knew all that went on within the forest, even to the mouse’s cry in the hawk’s claws.

  Xanthea took a deep breath and steadied herself, then looked away, seeing the revel once again, seeking out another sight of Justin in the crowd of those who waited to dance. “He is better off now,” she said softly. “He was always afraid. Now he is bold and joyful. He need never cower before my father again.”

  “Are you also better off now?” Wirral asked her.

  She looked up smiling into her lover’s eyes. “Assuredly.”

  Wild, skirling, piping music began. Justin caught hands with a female Denizen, her skin, the color and texture of cherry-tree bark, in odd contrast with his that was pale and smooth. They slipped between the mushrooms of the ring, joined the whirl of dancers within.

  “Is that what they want of us,” Xanthea asked Wirral, “that we should dance?”

  He looked at her with a hint of smile showing at the corners of his keen, feral eyes. “I think not,” he said. “That for the sake of which they dance, we have been doing for some months now.”

  She gazed up at him. “What, then?”

  “Listen,” he said.

  Birdlike voices were singing with the piping and thrumming of the instruments.

  “Welcome Xanthea, Wirral’s bride,

  Welcome Xanthea, golden one!

  One with Wirral, one with woodland,

  One with cousins who have died.”

  “What do they mean,” Xanthea whispered to her lover, “cousins who have died?”

  “Trees,” said Wirral starkly. “Cut down. Made into lumber, or burned, or lying rotting. All trees are beloved. Some were—more than trees.”

  “Welcome, Xanthea, Wirral’s bride!

  Golden fate, of Wirral born.

  By Wirral loved, with Wirral one;

  Avenge the cousins who have died.”

  “More than trees?” Xanthea murmured.

  But Wirral told her no more, for the prince of the Denizens stood before her, and a graybark who might have been his father, and many others, standing formally ranked. The music fell silent, and the dancers stood still and looked on, and the graybark spoke to Xanthea gravely, with no attempt at pun or rhyme.

  “Dau
ghter of Chance, your true name is Fate. You were conceived here, in our mystic circle, by an act of our magic. Your face is like our faces.”

  Xanthea gasped, seeing it for the first time, but the elder Denizen spoke on.

  “For a while Chance and his lady tried to keep you from us, but now we have taken you back. You are at one with Wirral, and we are the spirit of Wirral and the flesh of Wirralwood. When we gifted Chance with you, we gifted him with Fate.”

  The speaker fell silent, and the Denizens all stood bright-eyed and silent, awaiting some response from her.

  At first Xanthea could not think what the graybark had meant by gifting Chance. Then she remembered some whispers she had heard about her father’s provenance, his change of name. All such talk was forbidden, and the matter had never been made clear to her. This matter of which the elder Denizen spoke seemed even less clear.

  “I do not entirely understand,” she said to him, speaking as formally as he had to her.

  “You will understand,” he replied, “When the time comes.”

  “Time for what?” Xanthea queried. But the music had begun again, the dancers had whirled away into their lightfoot circling, and the prince and his elder and their retinue turned away in like wise. The prince flashed a wide, fey grin at Xanthea over his narrow shoulder, then frisked away as featly as a coney. Xanthea looked at Wirral, and Wirral looked back at her with his marvelous eyes, dark as oak-shadow, soft as dew, fierce as a falcon on the wing.

  “They are done with us for now,” he said.

  Already the dancers were pairing off and slipping away to private places.

  “Between them and us,” Wirral remarked, “the forest will grow mighty this year, hack your father as he will.”

  He laid his arm lightly around Xanthea’s shoulders, and the two of them walked away like the others.

  Halimeda in a sense did not know that her little son was gone, the boy who bore her face. Lord Chauncey had not told her, for they were not speaking, and he saw no reason to share his shame with one who scorned him already. He took his sorrow to his golden cup, and stayed with it. The servants were afraid to tell the lady what had happened, and as she rode out every day early and returned late, for some days there was no need to do so. And bound up in youthful self as they were, even Anastasia and Chloe did not notice for several days that their brother was missing. When finally they found out, they spent their long, tiresome day in the fortress questioning the servants, hearing the tale over and over again. Then when their mother returned, pale-faced, at dark, they ran to her and shouted to her what had happened, jostling each other and fighting to be the first to tell, for it was the most exciting news that had ever been theirs to impart.