A fairy light bloomed above his upraised hand. It was purple, the same color as his eyes, and about the size of a fist, vaporous and shimmering. It floated down to skim along the ground, edging the leaves with a spectral glow. My mother telling me to never follow such lights numbered among my earliest memories.
On and on we trudged.
“Um.” I’d gone for as long as I could without bringing this up. “I, um, need to relieve myself.” When he didn’t show any indication of hearing I added, “Right now.”
His head turned a fraction, his profile lined with fairy light. “Do it quickly.”
I certainly wasn’t going to linger with my underthings down in a dark forest next to a fairy prince. He seemed to expect me to squat down and pee where I stood, which I suppose made little difference; we weren’t on any sort of path. But I still wanted to maintain some semblance of dignity, so I crashed a few steps through a stand of honeysuckles and settled down on the other side. The light bobbed obediently at my heels.
I almost screamed when I glanced over my shoulder to find Rook looming behind me.
“Turn around!” I exclaimed.
Again that mystified look he’d first given me in the kitchen, but it vanished so swiftly I couldn’t be sure I’d truly glimpsed it. “Why must I?” he asked, in a cold and princely tone.
“Because this is private! You’ve spent the entire walk with your back turned, surely you can manage it again for a few seconds. And I won’t be able to do anything with you watching.”
That, at least, got through to him. But as I wallowed there in the underbrush like a nesting hen with my skirts piled up around me, Rook’s fine coat fabric brushing my hair whenever he shifted, my bladder simply wouldn’t cooperate. Even more so when I glanced around the woods for a distraction and saw a mushroom circle nearby. Each toadstool cap was as wide as a dinner plate, the moss between them peppered with tiny white flowers. Legend had it that fair folk used portals like these to travel the fairy paths. The thought of a second fair one appearing suddenly out of thin air made my insides clench tighter.
A horn sounded. All the hair stood up on my body at the high, quavering melody, and I’m not proud to say I ended up watering the honeysuckles right then and there.
Rook seized my arm, pulling me to my feet as I wrestled my clothes to rights.
“The Wild Hunt,” he said. He drew his sword in front of me and dragged me back through the bushes with the other arm across my chest as though he were holding me at ransom. “It shouldn’t have found us here, especially not so quickly. Something’s wrong.”
Complaining wasn’t in order at a moment like this, so I kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help clawing at his arm in protest. He was wearing his raven pin again, and it was at just the right height to stab me in the back of the head.
“Stop that. As soon as the hounds lay eyes on us they’ll go straight for you. Slaying them alone is child’s play, but protecting a mortal at the same time . . . you must do whatever I tell you, without hesitation.”
Throat dry, I nodded.
A spectral shape bounded toward us through the undergrowth, emitting a faint light of its own. This was no living hound, but a fairy beast. It took the guise of a white hunting dog with long legs and flowing fur, but I knew to look beyond the surface, and soon enough its glamour flickered, so quickly I was left with only the impression of something old beneath the illusion, something dead, dark and clotted with vines and dead leaves. Silently it launched itself over the honeysuckle, its soft liquid eyes fixed upon me. I caught a stench of dry rot before Rook’s sword darted out and reduced it to a clattering rain of twigs entangled with human bones. A quiet, musical sound rose from it when it died, almost like a woman’s sigh.
A chorus of howls swelled through the forest. I shuddered in Rook’s arms. The wintry lament was so lonely, so hauntingly sad I found it difficult to believe those voices belonged to beasts that wanted to kill me.
Listening to this, Rook made a contemptuous noise; I felt the vibration of it in his chest. He sheathed his sword and turned me around.
“There are over a dozen of the creatures, and they’ll all be upon us at once. We cannot fight. We have to run.” It was obvious the idea of fleeing rankled him.
“I can’t—”
“Yes, I know,” he said, casting me an unreadable glance. “Stand back.”
Wind crashed through the trees, sweeping a dizzying flurry of leaves through the forest that broke against Rook like a wave. Then he was gone, and a massive horse stamped and snorted in his place, watching me with unnervingly pale eyes. It was unmistakably him in the same way the raven had been. The fairy light now hovering above my shoulder revealed a hint of auburn in its otherwise black coat. Its mane and tail were wild, thick and tangled. It lowered itself to its knees beside me with an impatient toss of its head.
I was about to break yet another rule of life in Whimsy.
If an unfamiliar dog follows you at night, don’t stop to look at it. If you wake up to find a cat you don’t recognize sitting in your yard, watching your house, don’t open the door. And most of all, if you see a beautiful horse near a lake or the edge of the forest, never, ever try to ride it.
As Emma would say, Oh, hell.
I yanked my ring off and returned it to my pocket. As eager as I was to revenge myself upon Rook, forcing him back into his normal form just in time for the hounds to devour me seemed rather counterproductive. I paused just long enough for a fortifying breath, then climbed astride his broad back with my skirts bunched around my thighs and buried my fingers in his mane.
He lurched upright, powerful muscles bunching beneath his coat, and took off at a ground-swallowing canter. Even clinging to him as if my life depended on it—well, my life did depend on it—I barely stayed on: I lifted clean off his back every time his hooves struck the ground, then slammed down afterward with such painful, tailbone-jolting force I already felt my rear going numb. Whenever he dove sideways to avoid a tree, I slid precariously. He breathed between my legs like a forge’s bellows, and with each shift of his ropey muscles I was reminded that I sat atop a creature ten times or more my own size. The ground was very far away.
I didn’t like riding horses, I decided.
The howling followed us, growing ever closer. Soon I made out elegant white shapes darting through the forest on either side. The two nearest hounds sped up and angled inward to cut us off. A gap in the canopy admitted a shaft of moonlight, and when they bounded across it, their spectral fur gave way to the emaciated bark-skinned frames beneath. Thorny jaws gaped and empty pits stared where their eyes should have been.
Rook gave a brash snort and lunged forward, eating up the distance between us and the hounds. They turned, teeth flashing, far too late—he trampled them to kindling beneath his hooves.
I sensed a trace of smugness in his loping stride and the way he eyed the other hounds, now falling behind us, with his ears flattened to his skull, daring them to come closer. As they say, pride goeth before a fall. We entered a clearing and Rook lurched to a halt before he collided with the figure standing at the center of it, directly in our path.
I had never seen a fair one of the winter court. They didn’t visit Whimsy. Sometimes I wondered what they looked like without any use of human Craft, not even clothes. Now I had my answer.
The being was extraordinarily tall, taller than Rook, and wore no glamour. Its bone-white skin was stretched tight across a thin, angular face surrounded by a weightless corona of equally white hair. I formed only this vague impression of its features, for its eyes drew my attention and kept it. They were jade green in color, like polished stones, and at once inscrutable and magnetic, animated with the cruel, luminous interest of a house cat watching an injured mouse die. I knew at once that I looked upon a creature so distanced from anything human it wouldn’t be able to imitate our ways even if it wanted to.
From toe to collar it was clad in black bark armor that appeared to have simply grown over
its body, whorled and ridged with age, leaving its head alone exposed. It made a stilted, courtly gesture, drawing attention to its yellowed, inches-long claws as it swept a hand before its chest. Rook jerked his nose down in what I supposed passed for a bad-tempered bow.
“Oh, Rook!” it exclaimed in a high voice not unlike the hounds’ unearthly howling. “I didn’t know you had company! This is interesting, isn’t it? What do you suppose we should do?”
Those terrible eyes fixed on me and the fair one smiled, but though its mouth moved, the rest of its face remained exactly the same.
Rook pawed at the ground, then reared up halfway, taking me by surprise. His head snapped back and I managed to keep my seat by wrapping my arms around his neck. His pulse pounded against my arms and sweat dampened his silky fur.
“Don’t worry, I shan’t do anything now.” My paralyzed brain noted belatedly that it—she—was female, or at least sounded that way. “The game’s changed, after all. We simply must come up with a new set of rules. It wouldn’t be sporting to fight to the death here in this clearing, not after you’ve been held up by a mortal. Hello there,” she added, leaning to the side for a better look at me. The gracious smile still hung in place unchanged, as forgotten as a hat tossed onto a coatrack.
“Good evening,” I returned, aware that aside from Rook, fine manners were my only protection.
“I am Hemlock, of the house of winter.” Quieter than an owl’s flight, hounds rushed inward from every corner of the clearing. They milled around her legs and pressed their narrow heads against her hands. “Since before the oldest tree in the forest put forth its first root, I have been master of the Wild Hunt.”
Was it just my imagination? Or did I really hear the hounds whispering among themselves—a gentle murmur that sounded like women speaking in hushed, anxious tones behind a closed door?
I swallowed, trying not to think about what was inside them. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Isobel. I’m, um, a portrait artist.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what that means,” Hemlock replied, smiling. “Now, Rook—”
Rook danced sideways and gave her a bloodcurdling equine scream.
“Oh, don’t be rude! We mustn’t carry on just because we’re at war with each other. As I was going to say, before you interrupted me, I think we should even out the odds by giving you a head start. If my hounds catch up with you again, then I can have a proper go at ripping you to shreds. How does that sound?”
He snaked his head forward and snapped at the air between them. I realized with dread that he wanted to stand his ground. I turned my face into his mane so Hemlock wouldn’t see me speaking to him.
“Please go,” I breathed. “You might be able to survive this, but I wouldn’t make it through, and without me you’ll never mend your reputation.”
The skin twitched on his shoulders as though dislodging a fly.
“Are your court feuds truly worth it?”
His head turned. One of his eyes fixed on me, and it was awful seeing the intelligence in it, an intelligence that didn’t belong anywhere near the animal’s shape he wore.
“Please,” I whispered.
Rook jerked as if I’d taken a crop to him, and veered around Hemlock and her hounds to gallop into the waiting darkness.
“Do hurry, Rook!” Hemlock cried behind us, a shrill, almost desperate call. “I’ll be after you soon! Run as fast as you can!”
I wrapped Rook’s long mane around my wrists and risked a glance over my shoulder. Hemlock’s armor blended so well with the forest I saw only her ghastly pale face receding until the branches and leaves obscured even that. The Wild Hunt’s horn sounded again. It occurred to me I’d gotten quite a good look at Hemlock, and she hadn’t been carrying one.
Rook ran like the devil chased at his heels. I focused only on not falling off, blind to the scenery whipping past. For a time all I knew was the pounding rhythm of his hooves and the furnace heat rising from his back, the hard, stinging chunks of dislodged earth that pelted my legs. Then a bright shape tore past my face and lodged in my collar. At first, I didn’t recognize the fluttering yellow scrap as a leaf. When I did, everything changed.
I raised my head. My breath caught. Wonder poured through me, brighter than a sunrise spilling over the horizon, headier than a glass of sparkling champagne.
We were in the autumnlands.
Dim as it was, the forest glowed. The golden leaves flashing by blazed like sparks caught in the updraft of a fire. A scarlet carpet unrolled before us, rich and flawless as velvet. Rising from the forest floor, the black, tangled roots breathed a bluish mist that reduced the farthest trees’ trunks to ghostly silhouettes, yet left their foliage’s luminous hues untouched. Vivid moss speckled the branches like tarnished copper. The crisp spice of pine sap infused the cool air over a musty perfume of dry leaves. A knot swelled in my throat. I couldn’t look away. There was too much of it, too fast. I’d never be able to drink it all in—I needed to absorb every leaf, every chip of bark, every flake of moss. I clenched my fingers in Rook’s mane, ravenous for my paintbrush, my easel. Sitting up straighter, I let the wind rush over me and fill my lungs to bursting. It still wasn’t enough. After seventeen years of living in a world that never changed, I felt as though I’d just flung off a stifling wool sweater and felt the breeze on my skin for the very first time. Nothing would ever be enough again.
When his pace slowed, the absence of the wind tearing at my clothes and the sound and motion of his pounding gallop left me strangely bereft. My thoughts whirled, and the blood buzzed in my veins. Every sound seemed muffled after the wild ride—his hooves barely disturbed the cushioned forest floor; steam gusted from his nostrils in perfect silence. Finally, he lowered himself to his knees in the middle of a glade. I slid off on legs weakened to the point of trembling and turned in a slow, unsteady circle.
No horn sounded in the distance, no baying of hounds disturbed the misty air. No droning grasshoppers here—only the music of crickets, the liquid peeping of frogs, the quiet plop of acorns falling from trees. Not a single raven roosted above me. The danger had passed.
Therefore, when I completed my revolution, I froze at the sight of Rook back in his normal form, standing with his sword drawn.
And I forgot to think altogether when he turned the blade upon himself.
Six
I DIDN’T protest. I didn’t scream. Whatever he was doing, I was neither willing nor able to stop him.
He didn’t look at all weary or disheveled as he knelt with his right sleeve rolled up to the elbow, the sword laid across his hand. A curl of damp hair clinging to his forehead was the only sign that remained from our reckless flight, the sweat that had previously soaked his neck and shoulders. Calmly he looked aside, and then he drew the blade across his palm in one vicious stroke. Blood spattered the moss below. It was a paler color than human blood, and thicker, as though mixed with tree sap.
Once the shock wore off I understood Rook was working some fairy magic. Whatever it was, I hoped it hurt. Perhaps it would even weaken him in a way I might use to my advantage.
“You said there were only two other fair ones as powerful as you,” I said, curtsying for his attention. “I thought you meant the regents of the spring and winter courts. But is Hemlock one of them?”
He wiped his hand off on the moss, bent over his knee in a seamless bow, and stood. The cut had vanished—though I had no way of knowing whether it was truly healed or merely disguised by his glamour. The latter struck me as something he would do out of pride.
“All of us have different gifts, some more than others. I can change my shape and as prince I command the power of my season. Hemlock is known for her prowess in battle, but she is no winter lord. Perhaps—if all my magic were exhausted, or if I chose not to use it—I might meet her in physical combat as an equal.” His lip curled. I wondered how often he wished he could lie.
“Her fairy beasts must be a danger to you, then,” I ventured, s
ensing an opportunity to learn more about his weaknesses. “If not one or two at a time, the entire pack fighting at her side.”
He sheathed his sword in a violent motion and strode over to me, stopping only when we almost touched, staring down. I felt his breath on my upturned face. My heart skipped a beat. He was a little winded, after all.
“They are a danger to you, mortal, not I. You saw how I fared against the thane. How many times do I have to remind you? I am a prince.”
“Yes, I know!” I didn’t budge an inch. “It’s not as though you’ve given me a chance to forget it.”
He squared his shoulders and bared his teeth as if I’d just slapped him.
I schooled myself, resisting the urge to reach for my ring. “I just don’t understand any of this. Fairy beasts, the conflict between your houses, why on earth the Wild Hunt’s been after you for centuries if Hemlock knows she can’t win. I suppose it’s too much for my foolish mortal brain to take in.”
Rook relaxed. Annoyingly, he didn’t register the sarcasm.
“Hemlock is the Huntsman,” he replied. “She obeys the call of the winter court, which ever seeks to spread its frost across the autumnlands.”
“The horn,” I murmured. “It commands her. She doesn’t have a choice.”
He nodded. “For her, the Hunt is everything. It is her only purpose. She will hunt until she dies and at last must hunt no more.”
Wind rustled through the canopy, and leaves pattered like rain across the clearing. I thought of Hemlock’s ghastly face receding into the dark, the way she’d screamed at us to run. A shiver coursed through my body. The chill bite of the autumn air was finally catching up with me.
Or was it? For then I wondered if I had shivered at all, because the trembling went on and on, heaving the ground beneath my feet. I staggered back, but there was no escape from the peculiar quickening that followed. Beginning at the point where Rook had spilled his blood, a tide of moss starred with tiny, pale blue flowers no bigger than the tip of my little finger surged forward, unfurling across the glade, foaming partway up the tree trunks—and my own legs. I yelped and pulled my boots free, sending clumps of moss flying as I gave my skirts a vigorous shake.
An Enchantment of Ravens Page 6