by E.J. Weber
Part 5
The Beggar’s Bridge
Gleason made it to Queen’s Hollow before his money ran out. He’d drifted badly since leaving the Village, wandering here and there without much purpose, but eventually it became apparent even to his scattered senses that unless he stopped and replenished his funds, he’d be in serious trouble. Accordingly, he took a cheap room in the least fashionable quarter of the great city and began to look around for a job.
He’d been turned away from numerous promising establishments already when he felt a faint tug at his trousers. Immediately, he glanced up to see a quickly fleeing shape in the crowd. The Village boy didn’t need to check his pocket to confirm that his purse was gone and he didn’t waste time shouting “Stop thief!”
Gleason took off.
The urchin was swift on his feet but Gleason had a longer stride and was well conditioned by his time on the road. He pursued the boy down bustling cobblestone streets, through a busy square, and into a hidden alley that split off in several different directions. It was partially obstructed by overflowing bins of refuse, stacks of empty crates, and crisscrossed items of laundry which hung from eccentrically strung lines. It was no doubt the perfect place to lose a pursuer, but the thieving child never got the chance.
Gleason sprinted forward and pounced on him.
The small boy wasn’t about to give up without a struggle. “Get off!” he hollered, his childish voice muffled by Gleason’s constricting arms.
“Give me back my purse,” Gleason answered through gritted teeth, “and maybe I’ll think about it.”
“I didn’t take nuthin!” the little boy squealed, thrashing around wildly. They wrestled heatedly for a few minutes longer until the Village boy managed to pull the slippery child’s overcoat off. Ignoring the boy’s loud protests, Gleason patted the jacket and then held it upside down.
“Hey, that’s mine,” the disheveled child whined, but it was already too late. The contents of the coat’s numerous pockets fell to the ground. Gleason spotted the striped red and green drawstrings of his leather purse and snatched it up. “Not a thief, huh?” he said coolly. “And I suppose this is your first time borrowing a man’s coin?”
The dirt-smeared face before him suddenly lost some of its belligerence. Gleason pegged the child at about eight or nine, unless his growth was particularly stunted. “Please don’t turn me in,” the little boy begged, changing his manner completely. “My sister would be so mad. I told her I had a job at the fish market, but they don’t need anyone. I won’t do it again—I swear.”
The little boy’s eyes filled with tears, a few of which rolled down plump cheeks that had yet to lose their babyish look. Gleason shook his head, torn between irritation and amusement. The child had a winning act, if he could cry on command. “And I suppose the rest of these are yours as well?” he asked dryly, indicating the litter of objects on the ground.
The boy hung his head and mumbled something about other people in the crowd dropping them. With an effort, Gleason made the corners of his mouth turn down. “Your sister, huh?” The boy’s head shot up, a hopeful look in his eye. “Please, sir, my sister works really hard. She doesn’t know. I—I don’t usually do it, but she always looks so tired. I just wanted to help,” he finished, sounded appropriately miserable.
Gleason stared at the child for a moment, and then sighed. “I’ll tell you what; if you’ve told me the truth—if you do have a sister who takes care of you—I won’t turn you in. And if you’ve lied to me, well, then you can spend some time in the poor house and maybe they can teach you a safer skill than picking pockets,” he finished, feeling more than a mite hypocritical.
The boy shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. For a second Gleason was sure he would make a run for it. The Village boy had almost decided to let the child go; he was probably well-habituated to this sort of life, but then the small boy asked, “What about these?” Gleason followed his gaze back to the other items on the ground. One was a lady’s silk handkerchief and the other was a brightly jeweled bracelet, which looked to be made of rhinestones, and the rest were assorted petty coppers. None of it was very valuable and turning it in would only look suspicious. Gleason had no desire to mix with the City Watch. “Best leave them where they are,” Gleason advised.
The boy’s lips trembled. “But someone else will only take them,” he protested.
“So let them,” Gleason retorted. “Now, are you going to show me this sister of yours, or am I going to take you to the Watch, so that you can hand them back in person?”
The boy pushed back a thick shock of honey blond hair from his eyes, which traveled from the stolen objects to Gleason’s set expression, and then over to the dark corners of the alley. “All right,” he said, “but only if you promise not to tell her what I done.” Gleason raised his eyebrows and then nodded. Maybe the child was telling the truth. At the very least, it would be interesting to find out.
The little boy darted away but then paused, clearly expecting Gleason to follow. They moved through the city at a good pace, though nothing to compare with their earlier frantic run. There were several times when he almost lost the child, zigzagging in and out of back streets, through the side doors of a neglected garden, and down an endless pair of steps that terminated in an apparent cul-de-sac with a concealed opening behind the last somber-looking house.
Soon enough, the Village boy had become well and truly turned around. It crossed his mind that following a thief, even a pint-sized one, could very well become dangerous. But then again, he wasn’t exactly a refined gentleman himself. He could hold his own in a brawl, he thought nervously, as they traversed yet another square, this one with a sluggish fountain in it, and then came to a quarter of the city that was even more rundown than the last.
A single wide street let out from the far end, sloping down to a wharf at the water’s edge. He hadn’t realized they were this close to the Demya, the bright blue, slow-moving river that ran the length of Queen’s Hollow, neatly dividing it in half. Its sparkling depths were spanned by a multitude of bridges, some large and well-traveled, others barely wide enough for a person at a time to cross. But the bridge they came to now, by following the river’s edge to what appeared to be its southernmost point, was one that Gleason had only ever heard about.
The massive crumbling structure had been designed on a grand scale at one time, when its stones were white and gleaming, but over half of it had fallen into the river and now the stones were dull and gray, covered in a creeping grime. What was left of it was entirely covered in tents and makeshift shelters, as though a large party of local residents had whimsically decided to camp out for the night.
Gleason gaped at it in awe. “This is the Beggar’s Bridge, isn’t it?” he asked, trying not to sound too impressed. There were many tales about the bridge, ones that he had listened to as a child. As the main story went, a magnificent bridge had once been built by an ambitious king who had taxed his subjects mercilessly to pay for it.
Many of them had lost their homes and livelihoods, unable to keep up with the rising costs. When the bridge had unexpectedly collapsed several years after its completion, the people all said it was a sign from the god. The king had eventually been made to relent, but many of the inhabitants of the city were already ruined and had no recompense. These penniless people claimed the bridge as their own, re-naming it Beggar’s Bridge, in caustic tribute to king who had made them so.
“Aye, it is,” the boy pronounced. “Best place in the city, other than Queen’s Hall,” he said with a modest grin. Gleason snorted at the thought. Queen’s Hall was an imposing building in the finest district of the city, one which held fancy dress balls that were as exclusive in invitation as they were lavish in entertainment. The Beggar’s Bridge might be a landmark in its own right, but it was hardly one that made the tour when visiting noblemen came to town.
Gleason followed the child cautiously as the boy picked his way through closely
pitched tents and lean-to’s, waving at several other grubby urchins and making respectful hellos to a series of ragged-looking adults. Eventually they came to the far left of the bridge, about three-quarters of the way down.
The child stopped in front of a worn woolen flap, and then glanced back at him worriedly. “Promise?” he asked. Gleason nodded and the child drew back the tent flap, disappearing inside. After a moment of debate with himself, Gleason followed.
“Jimmy! You’re back early,” a soft voice said. Gleason blinked in the dim light of the cramped shelter, waiting for his eyes to adjust. “Who’s this?” the voice asked, sounding surprised.
“I brought a... friend home,” Jimmy answered, gesturing at the Village boy, whose vision had finally cleared enough to make out a slim shape in the far corner of the dome-shaped room, sitting on a patched wooden chair that had several rungs missing from its bottom half.
The girl was younger than Gleason had imagined, though she must be nearly as old as he was. She shared the boy’s honey blond hair—on her it was neatly braided to one side—and her face was clean and unblemished, apart from a set of slight purple smudges that lay beneath her questioning eyes.
“A friend?” she repeated dubiously.
“More an acquaintance,” Gleason clarified. “Actually, I was just making my way through the city, and your brother offered to show me around.”
Jimmy had gone to stand by his sister’s chair, half-shielding her with his short body, but now he smiled back at him, clearly pleased by this.
“And you brought him here?” the girl asked her brother incredulously. Her lips were nearly colorless, Gleason noticed, but her eyes were a bright sea green, and they had just turned suspicious.
“I asked to see the parts that normally get left out,” Gleason quickly replied. Clearly the child had been telling the truth, he thought; there was no point in reneging on him now. “Here boy,” he said rather imperiously, pulling a coin out of his purse, “as we agreed upon.”
Jimmy didn’t need to be told twice. He danced over to the Village boy and pocketed the coin with alacrity, grinning all the while. “No problem, mister,” he said cheerfully. “Anything else you’d like to see?” Gleason shook his head, feeling the incident hadn’t exactly made the right sort of impression on the child. He probably should tell the sister what Jimmy had been up to, but he didn’t have the heart. And it wasn’t really his business, after all.
“Jimmy, you haven’t introduced us,” the girl said reprovingly. She looked as though she was still trying to figure the whole thing out. “I’m Bethany,” she offered, getting up from the chair and setting a delicate piece of sewing on the small round table in front of it. “But most people just call me Beth.” The table and several falling apart chairs seemed to be the only furniture in the tent, other than two bedrolls and a crate full of foodstuffs. “Would you care for a drink?” she offered, as though he was a guest now.
Gleason was starting to feel more and more uncomfortable. He didn’t know why he’d come in the first place, and he certainly had more important things to be doing with his time. He declined the offer quickly, telling the slim, weary-looking girl that he’d best be getting back before it was dark. Indeed, the only light in the tent came from a flickering lantern that hung down from a central pole, and the space was barely illuminated by it now.
He ducked outside, letting the woolen flap settle back into place, only to discover that the sun had already gone down and a swollen white moon was rising over the water. “Wait a minute,” the girl’s soft voice called, and Beth stepped out after him.
He glanced around, noticing how crowded it had become on the bridge. Several more residents seemed to have come out of their shelters or just returned to them, and a group of rough-looking men were gathered around an open fire, taking lusty sips out of various earthenware jugs. Loud voices drifted over to him, a harsh edge to their indistinct words.
“I’ll walk you back a ways,” the girl said quietly. “Folk don’t take to strangers around here.”
Gleason met her eyes briefly, discovering that she was significantly shorter than he, although he wasn’t a tall man himself, and far too thin, or so he thought. He remembered the coin he’d given the boy—which he could hardly afford—and suddenly wished it had been more.
“All right, then,” he replied doubtfully.
There was no point in trying to find his way back alone through an unfriendly crowd, but neither was he entirely comfortable with the escort. The girl took the lead, keeping close to his side. They moved slowly through the dying light, along narrow lanes formed between tents, skirting several rowdy groups which had congregated around large communal fires.
Several people called out Beth’s name or nodded to her in a neighborly manner, but they stared at the Village boy disapprovingly as the two of them passed by. When they neared the edge of the bridge, Gleason suddenly realized she would be walking back by herself and came to a quick halt.
“If you point me in the right direction, I’m sure that’ll be enough,” he said hastily.
The girl looked at him intently, as though she was having trouble seeing him in the fading light. “Where are you staying?” she asked.
“In the miner’s district, on the east side,” he answered. There were no mines in the city, of course, but that was what people called the area full of jewelers, craftsmen, and pawnbrokers where there were also a few affordable inns nearby. Beth gave him detailed directions, helping orient him to where the bridge was in relationship to the rest of the city, and then they both fell silent. The Village boy turned in the direction of the wharf where he and the boy had come from, and opened his mouth to bid her goodbye.
“Did you really ask Jimmy to show you around?” she interrupted. She must have been turning the question over in her mind for a while, Gleason thought.
“In a way,” he answered, feeling guilty at the lie. The girl’s already waxen lips pressed together, becoming nearly white. “He seems a good lad,” he offered, trying to distract her.
The lips came apart and Bethany sighed. “He wants to be good, but there’s more temptation to do otherwise right now.”
It was a statement that Gleason understood perfectly. For some reason, it touched him more than anything else had in a very long time. “Don’t give up hope,” he murmured. “I’m sure things will turn out.”
The girl just stared at him. “And is that your experience of it?” she asked crisply.
“No,” he admitted, rubbing his eyebrows at a mounting tension behind his eyes. “Actually, I believe I’ve made a right mess of my life.”
Suddenly, the girl laughed. It was a surprisingly pleasant sound, one which bounced off the rolling surface of the water and the decaying stones of the bridge like an unusual occurrence. “Better luck to you then, traveler,” she answered softly, reminding him that he’d never given her his name.
“Gleason,” he said, with a crooked smile.
“Gleason,” she replied, her sea green eyes shimmering in the moonlight.
“Thanks for bringing my brother back,” she added, and then her slim form vanished around the dark bulk of the nearest tent, before he could come up with a suitable reply.
The Words
Sometimes interference can be a good thing, such as when one is about to make a terrible mistake, like marrying for duty instead of for love. Other times it can backfire. The bard’s cautionary tale had the opposite effect on King Jared than the bard no doubt intended it to have.
Instead of continuing to struggle with his dreams every night and sleep-walk through his mornings, the young king appointed one of his advisors to manage the Palace in his absence, saddled up Night for a good long trip, and told everyone who needed to know that he was taking a much needed vacation.
A king does not usually travel alone, and King Jared was no exception. He had a small retinue which accompanied him to one of the royal country estates—the easternmost one, which was near to Olcasse. Once
in the country, the king let his housekeeper know that he would take a few weeks to himself, to rest and relax, and would prefer not to be disturbed by anyone. He sent his retinue back, and kept only a few servants in the house.
And then, one day, the king did not show up for dinner. As King Jared usually ate breakfast and lunch in his rooms and it wasn’t unusual for him to skip meals, at first his absence was not noted. Finally, when someone did get the courage to knock on his door, there was no answer. Eventually, the housekeeper came herself and found a note on the king’s desk, telling her that he had taken a small trip, and that he would be back in good time. The king also requested that she keep the matter to herself and go on about her duties as though nothing was wrong, as nothing was wrong.
This was how it happened that Night got another chance to graze in the old farmer’s fields, and King Jared once again heard the Dead Tree welcome him. The young king approached the valley, and the Village in it, with a cheerful heart. In fact, every step that he took seemed to remove some care from him, until by the time he had reached the Wood, and the Church, he felt practically weightless.
King Jared did not waste time wandering in the faerie’s Wood, now that he knew where he was going. He found that the faerie had been right; her house was barely fifteen minutes from the Church. And yet, although he arrived there with an ease and a speed which he’d hardly expected, the king halted at the thorn bush entrance, thinking that he was not yet ready to enter the faerie’s house.
He felt certain that she was at home, although he could not say exactly why this was so. Still, he looked at the evening blue of the flowers, and the wicked-looking needles of the thicket, and he did not go inside. He could have called out to her; in fact, he could have called her name at any time, and she would have come. But his mouth was dry, and his throat seemed to be strangely constricted. He had not actually planned what he would say to the faerie, when he saw her again. He didn’t know if she would welcome him, or if she would be upset.
In the end, he decided that there was nothing to do but go on. King Jared steadied his nerves, and entered the tunnel that led through the thicket. The scent of the roses was not as overpowering this time, nor did the sharp thorns try to catch on his clothing.
He emerged unharmed into the yellow grass-carpeted room, with the dark woven branches over the top. The faerie was not resting in her tree root chair, nor was she lying on her mossy stone bed. She was sitting on the ground, next to her mirror-like pool and she appeared to be looking into it at something, although all that the young king saw was a reflection of the trees and the sky above.
“You didn’t knock,” the faerie woman said, without looking up.
King Jared laughed, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “There’s no door,” he reminded her.
Erin looked up then, and smiled. She was wearing her faerie dress again—white, with flowery blue dots—and the pieces of her hair that had been so oddly cropped when the king had last seen her, had grown back again.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked him, as he stood awkwardly in front of the entrance to her house. Without waiting for a reply, she scooped up a cup of water from the pool in front of her, and brought it over to him. King Jared took the cup without protest, and drank the faerie water. It was ice cold, and it tasted like the first snowflake of winter.
“How is everyone at the Palace?” the faerie woman asked politely, when he had finished drinking and handed her back the cup. “You can come in and have a seat, by the way,” she said, indicating the tree root chair where he had once found her, still and silent. The young king sat down rather tentatively, and Erin took a seat on the mossy bed, tucking her lovely pale legs underneath her white and blue dress.
“The Palace...” he began slowly, as though trying to remember what it was. “Well, I suppose the Palace is finally recovering from your visit,” he finished. He had been feeling immensely content a moment ago, perhaps an effect of the faerie water, but now Lady Erin’s question brought back to him all of the troubles which he had so capriciously left behind.
Erin’s eyebrows rose. “What does that mean? Surely spending one rather tedious dinner with a faerie hasn’t permanently harmed anyone?” She snorted slightly upon saying this, as though humans were entirely too ridiculous.
King Jared, who had only a moment ago been overjoyed to see her again, after having missed her rather intensely for over a year, suddenly remembered why the faerie annoyed him so much. “Dinner was not the problem,” he snapped. “The problem was afterward, when you set a spell on everyone!”
Erin’s soft pink lips parted, and she stared at him. “A what?” she asked incredulously.
“The song—the song you sang, that made the entire Palace act like lovesick fools!” he exclaimed, leaning forward in the tree root chair, and coming to his feet for emphasis. The faerie’s pale face was frustratingly smooth and untroubled. After all of the difficulties he’d been through because of that one night, the young king was close to losing his patience with her at this show of indifference.
“It was only a song,” she replied, having the effrontery to seem actually amused.
“Only a song?” he repeated. “Only a song?” he said again, beginning to stride around the faerie’s house. “Do you know how many people lost their marks because of that song?” Erin’s mouth turned down a bit, but she did not interrupt him to apologize. “Do you have any idea of the trouble it caused?”
She was frowning now, in earnest, but her manner was hardly apologetic. “It’s not my fault, what foolish humans will do,” she said, with a defensive shrug.
“Then I suppose it’s not your fault that Lord MacAlister nearly killed one of my stable boys,” he went on, furiously, “because he was found with Lady Rebecca! Nor that Lady Rebecca has since run off with that same stable boy, and been disinherited by her family. Nor that this ruined an otherwise perfect alliance between two noble families of Calundra who have been feuding since the half century mark!” The young king was standing directly in front of the faerie woman now and she had calmly risen from the stone bed to face him.
“No, it’s not,” she said fiercely. “It was only a song. They didn’t have to listen! And I didn’t even sing it for them!” At this point, if the king had been paying more attention, he would have noticed that despite the vehemence of her protest, the faerie woman was close to tears. But he was not; he was too frustrated for that.
“Only a song!” he fumed, reaching out to grab hold of her arms, as though he might shake some sense into her. But when his fingers closed over her bare skin, he felt his anger evaporate, and whatever else he had been going to do fled from his mind. For a moment, they were both silent, and then he found himself saying something very passionately to her, something which unfortunately did not come out in the human tongue, but instead came out in the language of his dreams. Whatever it was, the Wood echoed with it, and Erin’s coal black eyes went very, very wide.
“I’ll get my things,” she said abruptly, gently disengaging his hands from her arms.
The faerie woman turned and looked around her house, seeming a little lost. The young king was more than a little lost himself; he felt ashamed of himself now, for losing his temper and shouting, and he had no idea what he had just said to her nor why she didn’t seem to be angrier with him than she was. In fact, Lady Erin was humming to herself as she randomly picked up a feather, a stone, a beaded necklace, and a small wooden hair brush and set them carefully into a bag which had been lying near her stone bed.
King Jared watched this in bemusement, and then finally asked, “What on earth are you doing?”
Erin smiled at him—a very sweet, breathtaking sort of smile—and came back over to where he stood, slinging the bag over her arm. “All right, I’m ready,” she said happily, gazing into his eyes. The young king felt like he had missed something very important. “Ready?” he repeated. “Ready for what?”
The faerie tipped her
head to one side. “You told me you couldn’t stop thinking about me after I left. You said I was your heart’s desire, and you begged me to come back to the Palace with you, and be your Queen.” She smiled again, more shyly this time. “It was quite a pretty speech.” Then she looked puzzled for a moment. “I didn’t know you spoke faerie.”
King Jared stared at her. He noticed, for the first time, that she was wearing a strange sort of necklace, one that appeared to be made up entirely of white buttons. Slowly, he reached out and touched it, and then his hand traveled up to the faerie’s cheek. It moved around to the back of her neck and tangled in her long black hair.
“Did I say I loved you as well?” he asked softly.
And then he pulled her into a deep kiss, and the Wood seemed to sigh.
So that was what he’d been saying in his dreams all this time.
The Untold Tale
“Well, old friend,” Wick said to the strange green mound that was once Father Brion’s body, mopping a kerchief across his brow to catch the drops of perspiration that not even the Wood’s dark shadows had managed to dry. Wick had been on the road for a significant span of time. He was dirty and tired and right now he longed more than anything else for the cool and comfort of his chambers in the Palace again. He couldn’t call himself a true gypsy anymore, the bard wryly thought, to even entertain the idea that somewhere else might be better than where he was right now.
Gypsies don’t settle; home was something that you carried around. When he’d packed his traveling bag, which could still hold all of his possessions, he knew that he’d be gone for a while. Most of the reason for this trip was a promise to himself that he’d pay his last respects to Father Brion and see what sort of a refuge the unhappy priest had found out here in the east, in a place that wasn’t supposed to exist.
Father Brion had written to him of the Church of the Wood, of course, and Wick had intended to visit him here all along. Just as he’d intended to do something else, he thought somberly. Something he’d tried to do already and failed at, more than once, which was the remainder of the reason he had finally come.
Wick looked up at the tall dark trees, where broad leaves fluttered in a breeze that he could neither hear nor feel, and then around at the stone walls, where Father Derek was no doubt spying on him out of the windows of the back door of the Church. Then he knelt down at the side of the grave, unfazed by a possible audience. Nothing could be more natural to a storyteller, after all.
“So,” he said to the mound, flicking his long gray hair away from his hot neck, “have we righted a wrong at last...” The sharp gray gaze considered the Wood again, wondering if he had just seen a flicker of eyes or if it was only a trick of the light that had gleamed yellow, like a giant cat’s iris. “Or have we only made a new one?”
Stories were never quite as simple as people thought, the bard mused. For every tale of victory there was another tale of loss, depending on which side one had taken or the comrades one had chosen in the strife. For every tale of love, there was an opposite tale of heartache, for love was a thing that by nature chose one and excluded others, casting the luckless behind.
Wick considered the mound more carefully and then pulled an item out of his patched brown bag, a bag that had seen just about as much travel as he had over its lifetime. He cradled the object in his palm, revealing a small scrap of fabric with an unusual weave to it, and then opened up the cloth to expose a fluffy bit of scarlet inside, the sight of which brought an involuntary glitter to the gypsy’s eyes.
“Ah, Rose...” he whispered, unabashed by the tears that rolled down his sun-darkened cheeks. “Forgive me, love. I should have done this long ago, but I couldn’t bear to be parted with it.” The bard’s gaze remained on the grave, his hand slowly lowering to his lap. His fingers suddenly closed around the square of fabric and the red gleam that shone out from the wispy object in its center was momentarily extinguished.
He closed his eyes, postponing the moment. He sat hunched over the grave, for a long while, as the Wood lay motionless around him. Then he opened his eyes again and unclenched his hand, setting a single lock of red hair down in the lush green grass. He gazed at it for a few minutes and then stood up, dusting off his black trousers, noticing how old they were and how ragged the hems had become.
He took a few irresolute steps towards the cemetery gate and then paused, turning back again. His eyes searched the green mound for the lock of hair he had so reluctantly parted with and a feeling of relief washed over him when he spotted it. I can’t do it, he thought, returning to the grave. I can’t just leave it here like this.
He knelt back down and stretched out a hand to pick up the lock of hair again. A cool breeze came suddenly out of nowhere, stirring the bright feathery ends before his fingers could make contact. She had been so beautiful, he thought, his hand pausing in the action and falling back to his side. In his mind’s eye a vision of the Silent Queen rose up, a smiling faerie with vivid hair and blue-speckled eyes.
Of course, they had known what she was. She had secretly spoken to all of them—the priest, the king, and the bard—but she had also told them how good she was, how she had come to bring an end to the pointless wars and to unite Calundra. And they had believed her, enchanted by her loveliness, by the beguiling words that fell so sweetly from her mouth...
Wick’s face tightened, as if in pain.
Her death had been beyond horrible to watch. Father Brion had not gone to the execution, but Wick had. It was a moment he would never forget; one that still haunted his nights. The necklace of stones, which none had dared to remove, had split with the force of the axe and the blue rocks had flown out in all directions, creating more commotion from the crowd than the actual beheading itself. He had found one later, after everyone else was gone, and brought it back to Father Brion, letting him know that the deed was done.
Wick’s remembrance was abruptly interrupted by another cool breeze, which seemed to whisper almost lovingly against his neck. It was then that he noticed the lock of hair moving again in the wind, twisting as though it had a life of its own. The flame-like ends seemed to grow longer.
The bard flinched, but held his ground.
The hair had shaken loose from the scrap of fabric and now it began to change, transforming from something soft and insubstantial into something solid and hard. The separate strands came apart and then thickened, reaching down into the earth like roots, and then up into the sky. The upper parts became branches, which continued to grow and weave around themselves—until where a simple lock of red hair had been there was now a bush, with shiny green leaves so dark that they were almost black. The red branches of the bush were covered in bright blue berries, tiny and iridescent, as though fragments of the sky were trapped inside.
The bard let out a soft sigh. With a trembling hand, he reached out to touch one of the dark shiny leaves. His fingers made contact with the smooth surface gently, stroking the delicate veins that ran down its center. Then he shuddered and his hand dropped away from it. “Roselyn...” he said again. The bush contained something of her essence.
Instead of comforting him, it only brought back more fully the sense of having lost her.
Without warning something swooped past his shoulder and he cringed away from it, his heart jolting painfully in his chest. But the movement was only a bird, a tiny thing with a brown-capped head and prickly little feet. It landed on a bright new branch and began to peck at a berry with its sharp beak, eventually fluttering off in an opposite direction, back into the Wood. Wick laughed then, a humorless self-mocking laugh at himself and his nervousness.
It was time to be going now, he told himself firmly. He gave the mound and the bush that now graced it one last look, and then strapped his bag on his shoulders, his lined face determined. He retraced his steps through the cemetery’s back gate and around the stone Church, then onto the long dirt path. His heart was still beating a little too fa
st, but he strolled purposefully beneath the dark arch of the Wood’s branches, trying not to think too much about what might be concealed in their depths.
Trees like these ones would make anyone nervous, but they were also magnificent, the bard thought, even taller and darker than the ones near the Palace had been. Thinking of that wood still broke his heart, although he had to admit that the grounds around the massive quartz walls had felt freer after its cutting, as though a great weight had been lifted from the center of Calundra.
It is difficult to both love and fear a thing in equal measure; eventually one or the other will win out. Roselyn had been like that, and not even Father Brion had been impervious, although the priest’s feelings for her had always been more disinterested than either the king’s or the bard’s. Wick had hoped, at one time, that the priest might recover from what had happened. But some roads, having once been followed, can never be turned back on.
The bard tried to shake off a growing emptiness, just at parting with a lock of her hair, which he feared could never be filled. Even by the knowledge that he’d finally kept his promise.
He sighed then, quickening his pace on the path, which broadened slightly as it neared the leaf-bound door of the valley. It was a door made of light and warmth, and the bard stepped through it into the sunshine with a feeling of relief. The dark Wood lay at his back; he felt like he could breathe again. The sharp smell of its bark and the oppressive odor of its blossoms were quickly left behind.
His pace quickened as he came into the Village, his spirits more buoyant than they’d been for some time. He had discharged a duty—let go of his part in a troubled past—and now he was ready to purchase a frothy pint and congratulate himself on a job well done. Or at the very least, drown my sorrows, he thought.
The only pub in the Village was inconveniently narrow on the inside, so much so that the bar was split between its two longer sides, with the main portion in the middle serving drinks and the stools pushed up against the remaining walls. Wick had been in here already to learn the whereabouts of Father Brion’s grave, so he greeted the barkeep with a friendly smile and was rewarded by a pint of the same weak variety of ale that he’d suffered through the night before.
The bard was a sociable man, though, and not difficult to please, even if the Village Pub was nearly empty at this mid-afternoon hour. He took a seat next to the only other customers around, an elderly man with a curly white mustache and a sunburned fellow with his arm in a sling, who was wearing a pained expression that indicated the injury was either recent or its healing was somewhat troubled.
“Afternoon,” Wick said graciously, enjoying the wetness if not the flavor of his beverage. “Lovely day, now.”
“Aye, and so it is,” the old man said, introducing himself as Neals the Weaver and his associate as Paint, a name which intrigued the bard.
“Are you a painter, then?” he asked the man curiously.
The sunburned fellow shook his head. “No, but I tumbled into a bucket of paint when I was a child, and they’ve never let me forget it.” He looked down at his arm and said a bit ruefully, “’Fraid I’m rather clumsy, as you can see for yourself.”
The white-mustached man, the one called Neals, clapped the injured man on the back. “You should’ve seen him—white as a ghost he was—head to toe.” The bard was confused for a minute about whether this referred to the former or the latter incident, but the old man went on to say, “and when his mother tried to bathe it off him he started clawing like a wee kitten. Climbed right out of the tub, paint and water everywhere. By the god, what a mess it was!” Neals shook his head, chuckling at the memory.
“Aye, you do delight in telling me so,” Paint answered, rolling his eyes. “I’ve no memory of it,” he explained to the bard. “Not sure it happened myself. Granddad is ornery enough to have made it up one day just to pass the time,” the younger man said with a wink in Wick’s direction.
“Couldn’t have been more than two or three,” the old man continued, as though his grandson hadn’t spoken. “You were a bonny lad though, once we got the paint off.” He chuckled again and then took another sip of his drink. “And don’t you believe him either—his mother will tell you so—and half the Village saw him running round like a banshee, all shrieking white.”
The bard liked a story better than anything else, and this one brightened his day considerably. He eyed the sunburned man, who looked a bit sheepish now, and filed the snippet away for his own re-telling later on.
“Is it true what they say about the king?” Paint suddenly asked. “Folks said that you talked of a wedding to come...” The young man’s voice fell and his brown eyes became fearful. “Can it be that King Jared would marry her, knowing what she is and where she comes from?”
The bard shifted on his stool, considering how to respond. He had been unfortunate enough to be away when the mysterious faerie woman had showed up, but certainly King Jared’s longing for her had been in the air at the Palace long after she was gone. He was only surprised at how well the young man had resisted it. But he’d seen defeat in the king’s eyes that day, when he’d begun the tale of King Felsa and the impatient young man had cut him short.
If the stubborn boy had not interrupted the telling, he might well have heard the story that remained untold now. Although to be fair, Wick could see at first how his tale seemed to be weighted against the matter. But then again, for some people a nudge in the wrong direction was better than a shove in the right one.
The bard took another sip of ale, staring at his brown hands as they pressed against the warm glass. “Aye, it appears that he would. But if anyone can handle a faerie, it would be the young king,” Wick replied pleasantly, looking up at his companions. It was Kip and Corella who had told him that King Jared was bringing the faerie back to the Palace; like the rest of Calundra, they had already heard the rumors that he intended to make her his bride. Wick knew that he should return as well, come clean and finally tell the king his long, sad tale. It was a truth that needed to be told.
“What will become of us?” the old man with the white mustache was mumbling, shaking his head at his grandson, who looked rather unhappy now as well. “It’s a madness, for sure.”
“We’ll be all right, granddad,” Paint comforted him. “Nothing ever changes here. You should know that by now,” the younger man teased him. “You’ve been telling the same story every night for the last twenty years, I reckon.”
Neals grinned a grin that was missing several teeth. “Well, lad, a good tale is worth telling again. As I’m sure you’d agree,” he appealed to the bard.
Wick smiled and nodded. He took another drink of his watery ale and thought of the many tales he had told, and the many others that he had not.
He suddenly realized that the two Villagers were expecting something more from him than a distant gaze; an answer, perhaps, or more news about events that were still going on. The bard launched belatedly into a string of gossip about the staunch young king, freely mixing his facts with opinions, appreciative of the rapt audience. The pub started to fill as the day came to its close and soon he had a ring of faces around him, and a scattering of entranced eyes. Faeries weren’t the only ones who could weave magic, he thought with a certain satisfaction.
The older gypsy man finally finished his stories, picked up his bag, and waved farewell to his listeners at the pub. As he walked down the main street of the Village, he thought of Roselyn, and of King Pattrik, and of young Prince Lukas. He thought of a lock of hair from a beautiful faerie, and of a tall dark wood with a hidden menace at its heart.
He told himself, as he climbed the path up the hill to the Dead Tree in the early hours of evening, that he had only waited to see what manner of king Father Jared would turn out to be, before entrusting him with the truth about his past. He had waited to know what the young man felt about the faerie of the Wood. He had waited...
...for courage, the bard finally admitted to himself. Courage to let
go of his most painful and precious secret; a secret which had come to define him.
The tale of a lock of hair which had grown into a red bush.
The mystery of why an innocent faerie had been willing to shoulder the blame for a terrible crime...
The tragedy of how one woman could be loved by three men—in such different ways—only to be betrayed by them all.
The Ceremony
The king’s subjects did not welcome Lady Erin back with open arms. They stared at her and whispered; some of them decided to be brave and others decamped from the Palace in the middle of the night. The only one who whole-heartedly embraced the faerie was Amandie and that while kindly meant was also an unfortunate shock, as the Village girl momentarily forgot the faerie lady’s dislike of being touched.
But the sight and more particularly the sound of a faerie have their own fascination. Lady Erin tried not to use this indiscriminately, aware of its possible side effects, but there were only so many frightened glances she could take in at one time. So if there were words that she murmured to people who might not otherwise have accepted her, and if there were moments when she made herself seem meeker than any faerie was—well, may the god forgive her and may King Jared continue not to notice. Because there was no conceivable way she was ever going to give him up.
Fortunately, not everyone in the Palace was terrified of her; many had listened to her song in the garden, which by now had become a favorite tale in and of itself. The spell that she had unintentionally cast had haunted not only the king’s dreams. The magic of its sweet words still lingered by the rose-colored fountain, a soft shimmer of longing that made one of the nearby wooden benches a common trysting place for lovers now.
The king may have spent a woeful year of his life sorting out tangled affairs but there were many at the Palace who owed to the faerie’s words a long coveted sweetheart, or who had stolen away a prize that was already secretly theirs, under cover of that night. It turned out that none who had heard the song could bring themselves to question her place at the king’s side, whether they liked it or not.
And King Jared was not formerly a priest for nothing. Once the faerie had settled into Palace life as much as possible, he arranged for her to swear an oath, in a room full of edgy witnesses. It was meant to be a vow of eternal peace with Calundra, although it did not go exactly as planned for several reasons. Even so, in the end it limped passably along.
“If you would raise your left palm, my lady,” the High Priest began, his wary blue eyes only too willing to focus away from the faerie’s enchanting face and onto her outstretched arm. “Very well, repeat after me. I, Lady Erin, do solemnly swear—” The High Priest’s heavily jowled face suddenly blanched. “By the god,” he whispered, his richly decorated prayer book slipping to the ground.
Lady Erin looked down at her hand to see what had caused the older man to flinch. Ah, of course. Three circles still glowed brightly from her palm, but they were bisected now. A white ridge ran through two of them and in the place where it did, there was no light at all.
Her hand had been permanently scarred by the Baron’s knife.
“I am sorry, but—but this—this is most irregular,” the High Priest stuttered, glancing helplessly around at the hushed crowd, who looked ready to lift their skirts or hitch up their trousers and run. King Jared, standing protectively at Lady Erin’s side, practically glowered at the priest.
“The mark still glows, does it not?” This came rather unexpectedly from the bard, who had been lounging against a pillar looking bored but now suddenly came forward, his lean darkness a stark contrast to the priest’s formal light green robes. The gypsy’s gray eyes met King Jared’s dark ones briefly and then came back to rest meaningfully on Father Ibri.
“Why, y-yes,” Father Ibri—for that was the High Priest’s name—was forced to answer. He had come to the Palace from a noble family in Olcasse, being a cousin of the late Count Olcay, and had been appointed by King Jared himself. No doubt the once grateful priest now wished that he was safely back in his last church, where things were always quite regular and no man of the mark ever brought home a faerie woman to be his wife.
“Then I see no problem,” the king swiftly pronounced, his gaze sweeping across the room to include the noblemen and advisors, and a few of the staff in higher positions who had also wished to come. The gathering of witnesses shifted uncomfortably, but none opposed him. Father Ibri pulled himself together and the ceremony went on.
Lady Erin dutifully repeated the oath, not that it was one she would have chosen, and of course her mark remained true, as was seen by all. In fact, it appeared to pulse more brightly with the end of the ceremony, bathing the priest’s prayer book with its slightly deformed shape, which now made one full circle and four semi-circular lines. At this, the tense human faces could be seen to relax and even the High Priest seemed reassured of the legitimacy of his part.
“Sorry to put you through that,” Cal told her softly afterward, lifting the inside of her hand to his mouth and kissing the broken lines around the mark. After savoring this for a moment longer, Erin gently tugged away her hand. There was no one else around to see them, which was a good thing; then again, in another way it was not. Several long weeks stretched between a drowsy afternoon in the Palace gardens and the wedding itself and purity was not a thing to be trifled with; no, not with all that rested on her keeping whatever remained of her poor mangled mark.
A troubled gloom fell over the faerie’s face but despite the king’s repeated inquiries, she did not share with him its source. They’d discussed the cause of the scar on the way back from the Wood, which was several months ago now. That is, Lady Erin had told him the facts of what happened, glossing over them some. She doubted the Baron’s demise would prevent Cal from wanting to kill him again if she spoke too plainly about what he had done.
It was the scar itself that caused her the worry, not the memory of what had made it on her palm. The mark had felt different since that day. Erin had not felt the god turn away from her when the Baron died, and yet somehow there was a distance. It made her uneasy, as though the knife had sliced through something more than just her skin; taking a little peace with it, possibly some truth as well. Lady Erin shook her head at the thought and told herself not to be fanciful. The god was still with her regardless of what had happened to the mark.
But she was glad she had taken her hand away from Cal’s mouth when a dark figure appeared in the Palace gardens, and she recognized the now familiar shape of Wick the bard. King Jared stood up from where they had both been seated, on the bench by the fountain, and came forward to greet him eagerly. “I wanted to thank you,” the young king said, “but then you disappeared.”
“You might not thank me when you hear what I have to say,” Wick grimly replied. His eyes rested on the faerie for a moment and then returned to the king, who now looked puzzled. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” the bard continued, “but it never seemed to be the time.”
The young king’s easy manner grew colder. “Is this about my mother, again?”
“Yes,” Wick replied, “But it’s not what you think. I began to tell you of her guilt, long ago, because that was the story that everyone was told. What I never got to—because your father didn’t wish it—was the tale of her innocence.”
Lady Erin made a small sound which neither man noticed, intent as they were on each other. King Jared was staring at the bard, his entire body tense.
“Tell me then.”
The bard made it all the way through to the end this time—to his mistaken belief in Rose’s duplicity, to his horrified discovery, only after her death, that she’d been guiltless. It couldn’t change anything now—no amount of remorse could change the past—but she would have wanted her son to know.
And now he did.
The Bride
The ceremony with the High Priest was only the first of many such tests
that were subtly devised for the faerie. There were informal salons and formal dinners; there were endless structured events and countless last minute introductions. Some days Erin barely saw the king at all, which meant he was either closeted with another set of worried nobles or in session with his disapproving advisors.
“You’d think I wanted to burn the Palace down,” he grumbled to her late one evening, “instead of having a wedding in it.” The faerie, who had missed him for most all of the day, had given up ideas of purity and was lying on the floor of his sleeping chambers with her head in his lap. She had snuck in, of course, and it was late enough in the night that no one would be disturbing them. The king’s hands combed absently through her tangled black hair and when his fingers hit a snarl, they deftly teased it out.
“We could get married in the Wood,” she suggested, not very hopefully.
The king let out a small, amused snort. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he grinned. “And who would stand up with you? The wolves? An owl?”
Lady Erin yawned. “It would have to be at night, if we wanted an owl.” The faerie was getting sleepy, and the king’s lap was warm. “I thought mornings were more traditional.”
“They are, my love,” the king murmured. “Would that tomorrow were the one...” Erin felt his lips touch her forehead, but she had already slipped away into a dream of the Wood. Her Wood, that she missed so much, in darkness. The night birds flew out from the trees, and the bats swooped down on a horde of unlucky insects. A porcupine clicked its hollow warning against a badger, as it lumbered by...
Over the next few days, she did her best to appear both complacent and docile. She let a bevy of twitchy ladies give her advice on the wedding, and used a few very honeyed words to soothe them into feeling they were utterly essential in helping her know what to choose for this, or for that, or for something else she hadn’t even known about. There was talk of flowers and rings, of food and decorations.
She sweetly deferred to everyone else’s opinions, as she cared for none of it, shamelessly garnering their approval and support in the process. Not even a faerie bride could keep a room full of noblewomen from the full enjoyment of plotting a royal wedding. That is, until the conversation came around to the Dress, which seemed to be regarded as some sort of holy object.
“Oh, you must have Lucille fit you,” Lady Amelea breathed, as though this was a treat to be greatly looked forward to and not an idea that made the faerie’s stomach curl up into a ball. She glanced around at the collection of brightly colored silks and velvets on the humans that surrounded her, and couldn’t hold back a shudder.
“I have something already,” she said firmly, watching their disappointed faces fall. There was no way she was going to spend an entire day wanting to shred her own wedding dress with her nails, the better to get it off. Her pretty, pastel-colored parlor went quiet, and the ladies, who had previously been twittering so happily, like a great flock of songbirds, grew silent—as though they had just seen the shadow of a hawk.
Despite her confident rejection of their assistance, the faerie found herself putting off the matter of the dress until it could be put off no longer, unless she wanted to wear the one she already had on. She escaped into the garden one day after breakfast to see what there was to work with, and found it even more depressing than she had thought. The over-vigilant, rather unfriendly gardener would be sure to notice if she raided his flowerbeds or clipped up some of his beloved grass. Besides which, the colors and textures were all wrong.
Lady Erin went back inside and rustled through her new chambers, which were far too numerous and much too large, until she found what she wanted. The bag she’d packed earlier had been nearly forgotten, but there it still was, kicked halfway under the bed but otherwise unharmed. She pulled out a ruffled black feather, and smiled.
The faerie woman went over to the window seat, and opened up a pane of glass. Holding her small token out into the breeze, she sang a swift little song, and then let it fall down. Following this, she retrieved a book from her dresser, and then sat down patiently to wait. She knew that it wouldn’t take long. It couldn’t; there were only three days left before she’d need to wear it.
At least she had only to worry about the one dress, she thought, as there would be no coronation to follow the wedding. A faerie woman might have been accepted as the king’s bride, but she would be queen in name only, with no official power. This was despite the fact that King Jared was generally believed able to resist faerie magic, as the tale of her song had spread a rumor of his immunity both far and wide, courtesy of Wick the bard.
And if it made the humans feel safer, she was willing to overlook the insult.
Not everyone gets their wedding dress delivered by ten black crows as Lady Erin did, later that night, nor should they necessarily accept it, if that was the manner in which it had come. But this was exactly what the faerie had expected, of course.
Years afterward, people spoke of the glory of that particular wedding gown. For anyone who has ever walked through an orchard in springtime, and thought that no other place could ever be as vibrant or alive, such was Lady Erin’s dress. And if the weave was strangely reminiscent of delicate star-shaped flowers, bearing the sugary aroma of wild plums, and if the jewels that glittered from it resembled a scattering of morning dew drops—well, it was glorious nonetheless.
The real treasure, however, was the diadem, a circlet of golden leaves which shed a sunlit splendor over the faerie’s midnight black hair, and cast a murmuring glow over her pale brow. The only jewelry that she wore was a single blue stone threaded on a humble string, which fell just to her collarbone. After what the bard had told them about Cal’s mother, she wore it proudly.
Lady Erin sighed and straightened to her fullest height, holding her head up high. She might be the most feared and dreaded bride in the history of Calundra, but she was also a faerie. None would ever again see the like.
It wasn’t the best-attended wedding to grace the enormous columns and the smooth marble floors of the Great Hall. That honor had already gone to King Halak’s wedding to Lady Vilette, when after seven long years of persistent courtship, the diffident noblewoman finally ran out of ways to tell him she’d rather not.
The Palace was so full, the day that Reluctant Vilette graced the bride’s corner, that several people were accidentally shoved out of open windows when the king at last arrived. Hence the tradition to leave all the windows closed in the Great Hall during weddings; even summer ones, which were resultantly hot and oppressive. A little sweat was nothing compared to getting one’s finest clothes torn apart on a bank of emerald bushes just outside.
It may not have been the biggest of weddings, but it was definitely the quietest in recent years, and the one with the driest eyes. Not a whisper of air stirred as the king and his bride said their vows. Not a tear sparkled on a single curved cheek—although this was only because Amandie, who proudly stood next to Lady Erin, was smiling too much to cry.
None of this made even the slightest impression on the faerie. All that Erin saw were Cal’s dark eyes as he walked towards her, burning like a faerie wood fire. All that she heard was the beating of her own heart, singing a rushed staccato song.
And all that she felt was the touch of his hand against hers, a different sort of heat than a human’s touch, one that seared without pain, that made her dizzy but not ill, and which let off a burst of brilliant light from between their clasped palms. It was a light that did not come exactly from the god, but from something deeper and more primitive, a force in Calundra that the land—and certainly its people—had nearly forgotten about.
And that was more than enough.
The Faerie Queen
Jimmy had climbed up on the base of the statue to see out over the heads of the jostling crowd. Gleason glanced up at him nervously, but was reassured to see that the boy had a firm grip on the pitted surface of the stone man, who represented one of the former kin
gs of Calundra, King Felsa the Slain. The present king of Calundra was out there somewhere amidst the crowd, approaching in state along the city’s broadest avenue in the company of his new bride. It was the Mayday Festival, and by tradition the royal entourage led a procession through Queen’s Hollow and up to the steps of the great cathedral, in honor of the god’s renewal of springtime. The faithful believed that if the god was not honored for the passing of the seasons they would fail to come, but Gleason was sure that this was just a superstition.
Bethany, however, seemed to think it was possible, at least judging by the pains she had taken to clean out her small tent and pin flowers on the woolen flap which served as a door. The slim girl stood close by Gleason’s side, an unusually warm spring sun beating down on her fair hair and touching her cheeks with the faintest hint of color.
She looked up at him excitedly, and Gleason couldn’t help but feel a little more cheerful. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d become such good friends with the impoverished siblings, but by now he was a well-known figure at the Beggar’s Bridge, easily recognized by a wide circle of their destitute friends.
The brother and sister still eked out a living sewing and running errands—Jimmy’s new job—but Gleason’s luck had changed for the better since they first met. If anything, the more he visited them the less he looked like a man liable to frequent such a spot. This was because he’d found himself work with a reputable jeweler, first hawking the older man’s wares on the street and then eventually helping design some of the trinkets himself, something he’d discovered an unknown talent for in his deft fingers. He dressed better now in honor of his new occupation, whereas Beth’s clothes were even more carefully mended and Jimmy, despite his sister’s best efforts, was just as scruffy as ever.
“Do you see the faerie queen?” Beth asked him. He was reminded of how much shorter she was as she stood on tiptoe and tried to peer around a large man’s back. They’d all been waiting patiently in the square for nearly an hour as various parts of the procession went by: gypsy dancers, children’s choirs, carts of early fruits and vegetables that were handed out to needy people in the crowd, and finally the Queen’s Hollow orchestra, which had just favored them with a selection of popular tunes as they marched by. “They say she’s lovelier than anything anyone’s ever seen,” Bethany added hopefully.
Gleason scowled at the thought. “She’s magic, if that’s what you mean, but I don’t think she’s any lovelier for it.”
Bethany’s eyes flew over to him, oblivious now to the clamor around her, even though the king’s guard passed chanting a battle hymn and then stopped to flourish their swords. “You’ve seen the queen?” she breathed in astonishment.
“Aye, well... we grew up in the same parts,” the Village boy replied evasively. All at once his remark seemed very injudicious. Bethany clearly thought he was a better person than he actually was. The last thing he wanted to do was admit to her he’d once plotted against the faerie’s life. “I don’t know her all that well, but I used to see her around.”
Thankfully, Beth’s attention was distracted from him by a loud shout from the crowd. Gleason watched as a large carriage turned the corner and then rolled into the square, drawn by two unmatched horses, one black and one white, both equal in strength and height. The open carriage had gold trimmings and a dark red interior.
In it sat a tall, serious-looking man wearing a blue and white robe, with the king’s crown on his dark brown head. Next to him was a slender woman sitting up very straight. Her pale face was rather stiff, in sharp contrast to the black hair that cascaded loosely about her head, stirring in the light breeze that ruffled the flowery garlands in the square all around them.
The volume of the crowd surged with enthusiasm at the sight of them and a spontaneous showering of flowers was thrown out at the royal couple, most to be trampled under the horses’ hooves, but some of which landed in the carriage itself. A few of these were well-aimed enough to wind up in the faerie queen’s lap.
“Oh my, she is beautiful,” a soft voice next to him sighed. Gleason looked down at his friend’s plain face, noting how wistful it was.
“In a fine gown, you would look just as well,” he said loyally.
Beth’s lips curled up into an unexpected smile. “No, I could never look like that. Nor do I need to,” she said firmly. “I’d be happy for Jimmy to have a pair of britches that fit and myself a new apron. But at least we’re free to do what we want; fine folk like that, well, I’m sure they pay a price to be as lovely as they are.”
At this, Gleason smiled back at her. He’d been dreading the Mayday festival, which Jimmy and Beth had both begged him to come to, but now he felt like it was going to be all right. Once the king and queen had entered the cathedral, the crowd would spread out and then the real party in the streets would begin. People were still calling out the king and queen’s names, embellished with many kind compliments, but Gleason looked up hoping to find that the royal couple had already moved on.
Instead the carriage was as close as it could get, albeit separated from them by the noisy throng. From the red velvet seat a pair of dark eyes gazed out expressionlessly over the multitude of heads and then fastened deliberately on the Village boy’s eyes. Gleason felt all of the air leave his lungs. The faerie queen was staring directly at him, and there was no doubt that she had recognized him for who he was.
She is beautiful, he thought despairingly. Her eyes were as black as the resentment and anger that used to choke his heart. The queen held his gaze for what seemed like an unpleasant eternity, and then Gleason felt a small hand creep up protectively to rest on his arm. The coal black eyes flickered, following the motion. Gleason looked down too and saw that Bethany’s face had gone rigid. Her lips were white again, in that way of hers, pressed together by some strong emotion.
The faerie’s expression changed almost imperceptibly and then Gleason heard Jimmy holler, “Hey, pretty lady!” from up above. A scattering of laughter broke out in the crowd. The little boy was waving energetically at the slow-moving carriage, a huge grin on his dirt-streaked face. The queen’s tense manner suddenly dissolved into a sweet smile.
She reached down into her lap, selected a yellow rose, and then tossed it in the boy’s direction. Jimmy leaned out from the statue with one hand and caught it in a grubby fist. The crowd went wild with cheering. The carriage lurched and then rolled along, and Gleason breathed a sigh of relief.
When the moment had passed, he couldn’t help but notice that Beth had left her hand where it was on his arm. He was tempted to claim it for the rest of the day, and wondered if he dared to do so. The sense that things would turn out all right came back to him again, in full measure.
“You’ll tell me the truth of that, sometime?” Beth asked quietly, her soft voice barely audible over the rumble of the crowd. Gleason looked down on the honey-colored head, unable to bring himself to answer the question all at once.
“Aye, I will,” he finally said, vowing it was a promise that he would actually keep this time.
The Dark Trees
Amandie brought the tray in to Queen Erin and set it down on the mosaic table that stood next to the large bay window, where the queen habitually sat. The young queen looked up at Amandie from her comfortable place on the well-padded seat, and gave her a friendly smile. “You know you don’t have to do that anymore,” the faerie told her. “You’re a lady’s maid now. Not that I particularly need one.”
“I don’t mind,” Amandie replied, taking the cover off of the tea pot and getting ready to pour. But when the queen shook her head and patted the blue and pink flowered cushions rather insistently, Amandie dutifully sat down. “Anyway, it gives me an excuse to visit with Hawk,” she continued. “And you do need someone to take care of you, you know—especially now,” the Village girl concluded, drawing a strangely woven green blanket up over the queen’s lap, so that it covered the gentle slope of her stomach.
The que
en laughed and patted the bump fondly. “Well, I suppose I could use a little pampering. But I don’t ever think I’ll get used to being fussed over,” she said, resting her head back against the wall. The queen sighed, then, and her gaze drifted out to the vista that lay beyond the sparkling panes of glass. It was much the same attitude that Amandie had found her in when she first entered the queen’s chambers. The light from the window turned the queen’s dark hair glossy and highlighted the shape of her nose. Her soft pink lips were pressed together, which might have made her appear displeased to some, but Amandie knew this only meant that the faerie was probably thinking about something, and didn’t want to talk.
When the queen remained silent and apparently distracted, Amandie looked out into the garden herself. Although the Village girl wasn’t quite sure that “garden” was the right word for it anymore. A wall of dark trees had grown up almost to the edge of the Palace; some had even pushed their way in between the emerald green bushes of the garden itself.
Black roots snaked across several of the neat sandstone paths, and the carefully manicured flowerbeds no longer possessed flowers that grew all to the same height. Amandie had heard the head gardener complaining that they had become unmanageable; more like weeds than flowers these days, she’d heard him muttering to himself.
In fact, the gardener wasn’t the only one complaining about the mysterious trees, which seemed to have grown up over night and were gradually encroaching on the Palace. Amandie had heard more than one heated discussion on the matter; some had even made their way into the King’s Court. Farmers came in to complain that tall dark shade trees had sprouted up in their fields and lords came also to lament that their orchards were being invaded by wild fruit trees with snowy white blossoms.
King Jared listened to them all patiently, but his response was inflexible; the trees were not to be cut. In fact, he had even set a punishment on it; anyone found guilty of trying to harm the trees was subject to banishment, a dire consequence that many dissidents took to calling both harsh and unjust.
Amandie got up quickly, feeling like she needed to do something useful with herself; she couldn’t get accustomed to just sitting around. She poured out a cup of strong, brown tea and firmly handed it to Queen Erin, testing the pot first to see that it had not grown cold. The queen accepted it graciously enough, but showed little interest in actually drinking it. Amandie offered the faerie a small plate of delicately frosted cookies, ones that she had coaxed the cook to make fresh this morning, knowing that they were the queen’s favorite. Queen Erin took a brown bell-shaped one with an almond-flavored glaze.
“What you really mean is that you’ll never get used to being fussed over by humans,” Amandie said suddenly, going back to their previous conversation. “When your trees fuss over you, you don’t mind,” she said, perceptively.
Queen Erin nibbled at the cookie and gave Amandie a secretive sort of smile. “They are lovely, aren’t they?” she murmured, looking back at the window. “You like them too, don’t you?” she asked, with a worried little frown.
“Of course,” the Village girl replied, wistfully. “They remind me of home.”
The queen nodded and ate the rest of the cookie absently, turning back to the window again. It was tempting to slip into the queen’s mood of quiet contemplation herself; to let the hour pass by without actually getting anything done, but Amandie eventually roused herself. She began to tidy the queen’s sleeping chamber, pulling the sheets smooth on the bed, and picking up assorted shirts and dresses off the floor.
She straightened up the queen’s dresser, putting necklaces back into boxes and rearranging a whimsical collection of objects—a golden leaf, a black feather, a small wooden knife. She set upright a stack of ancient-looking books that had pushed over their bookend, righting them and putting them neatly into alphabetical order.
“Stop fiddling and come sit down next to me again,” the faerie chided her softly. “And have something to eat yourself,” she said, waving an indolent hand at a bowl of fruit on a nearby stand. Amandie obediently went over and picked out a dark, red fruit and sat down next to the queen. She took a bite of it, and a bright red liquid gushed down her chin, with several drops managing to fall onto her neat lavender and gray trimmed dress. “Oh, dear, not again,” Amandie sighed, rubbing at the spot. “This juice just doesn’t come out when I wash it.”
The queen merely laughed, and then shook her head. “That’s what happens when you wear human clothes.”
“And I suppose your dress never stains?” Amandie replied testily. But the queen did not appear to be paying attention to the conversation anymore. Instead, she leaned forward unexpectedly and took one of Amandie’s hands into hers. “You won’t leave me, will you?” she asked the Village girl intently. “Cal says there’s talk that some of the people in the Palace might go, because of the trees. I know you say you don’t mind them, but will you stay, even if others go?” The queen searched Amandie’s face carefully as she said this, her expression anxious. Amandie felt a possessive sort of glow, thinking that the queen both cared about her and relied on her company.
“Of course not, my lady. I mean, my queen,” Amandie soothed, giving her a reassuring smile. The queen’s black eyes, which had grown very pensive, brightened immediately. “Hawk and I are very happy here,” she continued, gently squeezing the queen’s hand. It was true; she had never felt so happy, although she wasn’t quite certain that the dark red fruit she had just eaten wasn’t a part of that. But she could hardly be a lady’s maid to someone she couldn’t even touch, so she had been eating the fruit regularly, ever since King Jared had brought Lady Erin back to the Palace to be his bride.
“That’s good, then,” the queen replied, seeming satisfied with her answer. The queen’s long, pale hand drifted back to her blanket covered stomach, resting lightly on it, and her gaze returned to the window. It really was a sweeping view of the Palace gardens, Amandie thought again, even if it didn’t seem to be much of a garden anymore. Not with all of those wildflowers springing up in odd places, and with those songbirds frolicking in the rose-colored fountain, where no birds had ever bathed before.
She took another piece of fruit and tried to eat it more neatly this time, but the juice still managed to drip down onto her dress. They really were rather addictive, she thought, licking her fingers to catch the last of its tart sweetness. She tucked another piece into her dress pocket, to give to Hawk. She knew that the queen didn’t mind if she shared it with him, or whomever else she might want. In fact, Amandie rather felt that it was important to do so, although the faerie woman had never told her such.
The door to the queen’s chambers opened, and King Jared came in, his handsome face looking both vaguely irritated and tired. Amandie stood up again quickly and began to bow, but the young king waved it away. “Sit, sit down,” he said, “Surely we don’t need to stand on ceremony here.” He patted Amandie on the shoulder, and then came over to Lady Erin, who had perked up greatly at his arrival. She reached out a pale hand in her husband’s direction, and the young king’s face grew tender. “How are you, my love?” he asked, kissing her gently on the lips and then sitting down in the section of the window where Amandie had been sitting with the queen before.
“I’m fine,” the queen replied, becoming suddenly cheerful. “Amandie takes very good care of me,” she said sweetly, giving the Village girl a warm smile. Amandie smiled back at her, and began to pick up the tea things, clearing them away. She shifted over the plate of cookies to accommodate the empty teacup, and placed the lid back on the sugar jar. As she did so, the king settled back against the inset wall of the window, and drew a loose cushion under his right arm.
“How was your Court?” the queen asked, leaning forward to smooth back the king’s rich brown hair and tuck it under his crown.
“More trouble with the trees,” he sighed, taking the crown off as though it was uncomfortable, and resting it on his knee, where it looked in danger of tumbling
to the floor.
“They’ll get used to them,” the queen said, sounding a great deal more positive than she had before, when she had spoken of it with Amandie. Amandie balanced the tray carefully and walked quietly to the door of the queen’s chambers, carefully opening it with her free hand.
“Mmm...” the king replied, his voice fading away as Amandie let the door swing closed behind her. “I certainly hope so...”
Some tales are true, Amandie thought, as she made her way to the kitchen, tea tray in hand. She set it down near the dishwashers, and took the plate of uneaten cookies over to share with Hawk. Hawk smiled at her and reached for a cookie shaped like an oak leaf, with a coffee-flavored glaze on it. “And how is the queen?” he asked, taking a large bite. “Well, enough,” she replied, taking a star-shaped cookie for herself and licking at the cherry-flavored sugar on it.
“That’s disgusting,” he told her, around his next bite. Amandie made a face at him, and then went over to where a black crow was resting on a branch near the kitchen window, begging for scraps. She opened the sash and crumbled the rest of the cookie onto the windowsill, waiting for the crow to grow bold enough to flap over to the sill and gobble it up. For instance, it’s true that every faerie has its wood, and every wood has its faerie, Amandie thought. Even a faerie that has yet to be born.
“You should leave the poor bird alone,” Hawk put in, interrupting her thoughts. “Everyone knows that crows can’t be tamed.”
Amandie just shook her head at him. “You’ll see, one day he’ll come and get it,” she cheerfully replied. For it’s a false tale, the Village girl thought, that you can never tame a faerie creature—that it will always be wild. And then she smiled, as the crow hopped closer on the branch.
Ah, but then... she thought, coming over to Hawk and resting her head against his arm, which was a good height for it, and which made him put his arm around her properly even though the rest of the kitchen was busy getting ready for the Ladies’ Luncheon. Then there are the other tales, the ones where it’s hard to tell the difference...
The Last Tale
There is a land that has neither rolling green hills, nor fertile croplands, nor bountiful sunshine. And yet, it is a strangely beautiful land, in its own dark way. It is a land that is all woods, full of tall graceful trees that blot out the sun. The woods there are endless, black, and deep. Humans once foolishly named this land Calundra, but it has no need of that name now, because humans no longer live in it, only faerie folk.
No one knows exactly what became of the humans that used to live there. Some say that they grew unhappy with the trees and built great boats and sailed across a wide sea to a treeless land. Some say that the beasts of the wood grew angry and devoured them. And some say that not all the faeries in the wood were always faeries, but that certain of them were once humans, who ate of the fruit of the trees and told the woods their names, and lost their humanity, in doing so.
There is a tale about this land, a tale that is often told. They say that in the heart of all of the woods there lives a terrible and beautiful Faerie Queen and her half-faerie consort. In the ruins of a great Palace, long ago built by human hands, they have many faerie children and laughing faerie grandchildren, who play in its roofless rooms and scramble over its crumbling walls. They dabble their fingers in its rose-colored fountain, and flit amongst the trees of the wood, pale and wild. They eat the trees’ red fruit and make crowns of its snowy white blossoms.
But the truth of this tale cannot be known, because no humans have ever dared venture into the woods.
And certainly if they did, they would never come out.
The End
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