“When I get back to Whimsy I’m not going to find that everyone I know died a century ago, or that I’ve suddenly become an old maid, am I? Because if that’s the case you need to put it to rights.” I said this firmly, trying to tamp down my rising alarm. “I just noticed the way we’re traveling. Each few steps we take must add up to fifteen minutes or more of walking.”
“No, the autumnlands are merely doing my bidding and hurrying us along. You mean to say you haven’t noticed it until now?” I frowned. Indeed, I hadn’t. “I give my word that time has passed normally since we entered the forest. What you’re thinking of is an ensorcellment, and quite a nasty trick to play on humans. Which is precisely why it’s done, of course,” he added.
“You had better not have done that to anyone,” I warned him.
“I haven’t!” he said, with feeling. He proceeded to ruin the effect by continuing, “It’s always seemed tiresome. All they do afterward is leak a great deal, and then come back to the forest to shout at you.”
I shook my head. God, what a menace.
We walked on. One moment I was admiring a stand of fiery rowans, and the next I stepped into a different forest altogether. Everything was green. Not the rich simmering greens of summertime, but pale greens, lacy greens, delicate gold-greens, all layered up on the trees like icing and chiffon. Knee-high wildflowers parted around my legs. A bee droned sleepily past my face.
Delighted laughter bubbled up in my chest. We were in the springlands!
“Can we stop for a moment?” I called out. Rook hadn’t paused and was now halfway across the clearing. “Only if it’s safe, that is. This is wonderful. I’d like to try to paint it once I’m home.”
He halted and gave me a furtive look.
“It’s nearly as lovely as the autumnlands,” I added loudly for the sake of his pride.
That seemed to mollify him. “There’s a place over here to sit down.” He ducked beneath some branches. When I caught up with him, he was sitting on the lip of a squat stone well halfway covered up by moss. Bluebells and feathery-looking ferns sprouted all around it. I sank down on the opposite side with my back turned to his, as that morning’s events made keeping a distance seem wise, and considered taking my shoes off.
Then I looked at the well and forgot all about wiggling my toes in the ferns. The well was small, old-looking, and unremarkable in every way. I looked at it for a long time.
Rook said quietly, “I’ve brought you to the Green Well.”
I shot up as though my buttocks had just landed on a bed of hot coals. A slushy sound filled my ears, and my vision darkened around the edges. Desperate to get away, I tottered over to a tree and leaned myself against it, breaking out in a clammy, crawling sweat. I’d never fainted before, but the feeling of being on the verge of it was unmistakable.
He spoke again with his head angled, not quite looking at me over his shoulder. My abrupt movement puzzled him; I don’t think he saw the extremity of my reaction. “Nothing will happen unless you drink from it. But I understand the opportunity to drink from the Green Well is many humans’ dearest wish.”
I slid down the tree trunk and sat uncomfortably on its gnarled, jutting roots, wildflowers tickling my legs. He was right. Of those mortals who vanished into the forest, the majority sought the Green Well, hoping to find it on their own despite the insurmountable risk. Masters of the Craft toiled for years in pursuit of this end. Only perhaps one human every hundred years was bestowed with the honor. It was lusted after more than any enchantment, any glittering quantity of gold. And of all the things on earth, it terrified me most.
“It occurred to me,” he went on, “that this might be an ideal alternative for you under the circumstances. You would no longer require my protection, or fear any of the forest’s dangers. You could come and go in the autumnlands—and any other fairy court,” he hastened to add, “as you please. And of course, you would live forever.”
Somehow, I found my voice. “I can’t.”
This time he did look at me. Absorbing my expression, he stood up halfway. “Isobel! Have you taken ill?”
I shook my head.
A pause. “Are you starving to death?” he asked nervously.
I briefly squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing a painful laugh. “No. It’s the Green Well. Rook, there’s something you must know about me. My Craft isn’t just something I do. My Craft is who I am. If I drank, I’d lose myself and everything I care about. I know it’s hard for you to understand, because you’ve never been mortal, but the emptiness I’ve glimpsed within your kind frightens me more than death. I wouldn’t consider the Green Well even as a last resort. I’d rather get torn apart by the Wild Hunt than become a fair one.”
He sank back down, absorbing my words. I’d expected to offend him, but he only looked a bit dazed, as though something had struck him over the back of the head. Perhaps the effort to comprehend what I’d said left him reeling. From his perspective, after all, human emotion wasn’t a blessing—it was a misery and a curse. Why wouldn’t I want to be rid of it?
After a long hesitation, he gave a faltering nod. “Very well. I will not ask it of you again. But now, there is something else we must discuss before we continue on to the spring court. It’s a matter of great importance.”
“Please go on,” I said. The frigid terror gripping me melted away bit by bit, leaving a trembling weakness behind. Seeing the Green Well and denying it aloud made it seem less threatening somehow. I had faced it, and emerged unscathed.
The ferns rustled. I looked up to find Rook pacing across the clearing. “Fair folk don’t bring humans into the forest lightly. In fact, you will be the first mortal to visit the spring court in over a thousand years. To avoid suspicion, we must invent some explanation for why we’re traveling together. But . . .”
“It can’t be a lie, or else you won’t be able to talk about it.”
He glanced at me, and nodded tightly.
“I’ve always heard that the best lies are the ones closest to the truth. What will they assume first, seeing us together?”
“That we’ve fallen in love,” he said, in an utterly neutral tone.
“And it wouldn’t be your first time.” He froze. “I saw what’s in your raven pin—by accident, when you were unconscious. I’m sorry, Rook. I’m not going to pry, but it is relevant to our predicament. Naturally they’d draw conclusions, however far-fetched . . .” His stillness sank in. Dread resounded within me like the striking of a gong. My skin tightened and prickled.
“Are you in love with me?” I blurted out.
A terrible silence followed. Rook didn’t turn around.
“Please say something.”
He rounded on me. “Is that so terrible? You say it as though it’s the most awful thing you can imagine. It isn’t as though I’ve done it on purpose. Somehow I’ve even grown fond of your—your irritating questions, and your short legs, and your accidental attempts to kill me.”
I recoiled. “That’s the worst declaration of love I’ve ever heard!”
“How fortunate,” he said bitterly, “how very fortunate you are, we both are, that you feel that way. We aren’t about to break the Good Law anytime soon.” I looked away from the raw anguish in his eyes. “The love must be mutual, after all.”
“Good,” I said to my hands.
“Yes, good!” He paced back and forth. “You’ve made it quite clear how you feel about fair folk. Now stop making me feel things,” he demanded, as though it were as easy as that. “I must think.”
My face felt hot and cold at once. His words rang in my head. This wasn’t anything like how I’d ever imagined a romance would go, if I were to have one in the first place. God, how close we’d come to disaster. If only our sentiments for each other had overlapped . . .
But would it have mattered? I was no longer certain that what I’d felt for Rook back in the parlor truly had been love. It had felt like it at the time. I’d never experienced anything like it before. But I’d hardly known him, ev
en though in my feverish infatuation I’d felt as though we’d been confiding in each other for years. Could you really love someone that way, when all they were to you was a pleasant illusion? If I’d been aware he would kidnap me over a portrait, I dare say I would have changed my mind.
And yet—I did feel something for him. What was that something? I picked at my emotions like a snarled knot and came no closer to finding an answer. Was I enamored with what he represented—that wistful fall wind, and the promise of an end to the eternal summer? Did I only want my life to change, or did I want to change it with him?
Frankly, I had no idea how anyone knew if they were in love in the first place. Was there ever a single thread a person could pick out from the knot and say “Yes—I am in love—here’s the proof!” or was it always caught up in a wretched tangle of ifs and buts and maybes?
Oh, what a mess. I planted my face in my skirts and groaned. I only knew one thing for certain. If even I couldn’t figure myself out, the Good Law wasn’t about to do it for me.
Rook’s shadow fell over my tumbled hair. “Your behavior is extremely distracting,” he announced. “I need to come up with an idea soon, or we’ll be stuck here overnight.”
My reply came out muffled by fabric. “Whatever it is, it should have to do with Craft. That’s the one thing we can count on to properly distract them.”
Belatedly, it occurred to me that Rook wouldn’t know where to begin. He didn’t possess the barest inkling of what Craft entailed. I snuck a peek at him through my hair, and found him standing over me looking predictably frustrated, a muscle flickering in his cheek as he clenched his jaw.
That left solving things entirely up to me—which, I had no doubt, would turn out far better for both of us in the end. I mentally arranged our problems like dabs of paint: my presence in the forest, Rook’s company, and even the dilemma of his portrait, news of which might have already reached the spring court. And like blending a new color, I began to see that something not only satisfactory, but perhaps even extraordinary could be done with them.
“Listen,” I said, lifting my head. “I have an idea.”
Eleven
MY PLAN required some discussion to ensure that Rook could say the necessary lines. We rehearsed it as we walked, and he was well pleased with how it sounded. I was more than a little pleased myself. I felt the glowing satisfaction of having negotiated a particularly twisty enchantment, or stretched and framed a month’s worth of new canvases in advance. My world was in order again, and finally I had some measure of control over what happened to me next. Moreover, there was a chance I might even put my accidental sabotage to rights.
“Do you really think it might repair your reputation?” I asked, lifting my skirts to step through a meadow of nodding yellow cowslips. Whenever the breeze changed directions it brought a different fragrance—some I could identify, and others I’d never smelled before.
“At this point, I doubt anything can,” he replied with a crooked smile. “But the portrait . . . yes, I believe so. I’m relieved I’m no longer on the receiving end of your schemes. You’re a great deal more devious than you look.”
Try as I might to block it out, I heard an echo of Rook’s confession in everything he said since leaving the well behind. Now that I knew to look for it, I perceived the warm admiration in his tone. While our mood might have lightened, the perfumed air hung heavy with tension. I forced out a laugh, focusing on my steps through the tall, tangled flowers.
“I’m not devious, I’m just practical. But I suppose fair folk don’t have much to do with the latter.”
He frowned, trying to figure out if I’d insulted him.
“Look,” I said quickly, hiding my amusement as I waded over to a great mossy stone, “this blossom’s as large as my hand. I wonder what makes them grow so large?”
As soon as I bent down and plucked the flower, a trouser leg appeared next to me. It was made of shimmering rose-gray silk, and another, matching trouser leg followed. I started back and fell on my rear in time to watch Gadfly finish stepping out from the space between the two halves of the cracked boulder. This was made even stranger by the fact that—and I was completely certain of this—he hadn’t emerged from the other side. Somehow, I’d stumbled upon the entrance to a fairy path.
“Good afternoon, Isobel,” he said pleasantly, straightening his impeccably tied cravat. He didn’t seem at all surprised to find me sitting on the ground in front of him, alarmed and clutching a cowslip.
As the shock wore off, I found I was terribly happy to see him. The homesickness I hadn’t had time to indulge in these past few days struck me like a runaway carriage. I’d spent years with him in my parlor, and though his pale blue eyes betrayed not the slightest genuine warmth, his face was more familiar a sight than anything else I’d lain eyes upon since leaving home.
I nearly exclaimed his name, but caught myself at the last second. My manners had deteriorated appallingly during my time with Rook.
“It’s wonderful to see you, Gadfly,” I said, standing up to curtsy. “Did Rook inform you of our arrival?” If he had, it was news to me.
He swept me a bow, then sent Rook a pointed look. “Does our dear Rook ever bother with common courtesy? No, I simply knew you were coming. Very few things escape my attention in the springlands—even the plucking of a flower.”
I looked at the cowslip guiltily.
“Do keep it,” he urged, “as a welcome to my domain.”
While I digested his curious words he swept past me and walked a circle around Rook, who withstood the inspection with a lifted chin and a set jaw. Comparing them, I was oddly proud to note that Rook was several inches taller. His dark, tousled hair and striking eyes set him apart like night from day in contrast to Gadfly’s refined pastel pallor. Though by far the younger of the two, he was in every way Gadfly’s equal.
“Those clothes are at least fifty years out of fashion,” Gadfly was telling him. “No one wears copper buttons in the spring court. If you insist on staying we’ll have to find . . .”
Whatever he said next, and whatever Rook said in reply, was lost to me as I finished digesting that phrase—a welcome to my domain.
I cleared my throat. Gadfly looked around. “Sir, are you the spring prince?” I asked.
He smiled. “Why, yes. None other! Surely I’ve mentioned that to you before?”
“No, I can’t say you have.”
“How remiss of me. I’m so forgetful with mortals—I simply assume everyone already knows.” While Gadfly spoke, Rook studied him with an unreadable expression. “Well, fear not, Isobel. Your manners are beyond reproach. I always felt welcomed as a princely figure in your home. Now, before I forget another detail, would you care to tell me why you’re roaming about in the forest, and in such distinguished company?”
“Actually—” I glanced at Rook. I was grateful we’d planned on having him explain, because the revelation about Gadfly’s rank had left me quite speechless.
“Let’s discuss it as we walk,” he suggested, yanking his coat straight and tightening his sword belt, rather crossly, I thought. I wondered if he’d taken Gadfly’s criticisms to heart. Then he set off through the meadow, leaving us to catch up.
“He’s a singular fellow, isn’t he,” Gadfly said.
How could I possibly answer that without giving anything away? I settled for the blandest reply I could think of. “Indeed, sir. I find all fair folk to be quite singular.”
“Oh, how I wish that were so! But we’re all the same, I’m afraid.” He gave me a smile as subtle and chilly as a spring thaw. “Most of us. Now, Rook—you were saying?”
Pacing along in front, Rook was clearly growing tired of all the cowslips. “As you know,” he said impatiently, “Isobel is the most distinguished Crafter in Whimsy at present. The portrait she painted for me was unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the autumn court.”
“So I heard,” Gadfly replied. It took a monumental effort of will not to look at him an
d gauge his reaction.
“It shocked us, myself most of all. At first I imagined it to be an act of sabotage for which Isobel should stand trial. But on the way to the autumn court I discovered that she had no harmful intentions. She merely painted a human emotion on my face, and skillfully, without understanding what she had done.” This was all true—in a manner of speaking. “Now, Isobel is interested in replicating her newfound Craft.”
“Human emotions, Gadfly,” I said to him, my confidence swelling the further we got without slipping up. “You’ve sampled everything Craft has to offer—tea cakes and china, silk suits, books, swords. We keep coming up with different versions of the same old things, but I think what I’d like to try is completely new. I could put true joy on your face. Wonder on someone else’s. Laughter, or wrath—even sorrow. Rook has informed me your kind will find this most diverting.”
“So I’ve brought her to the spring court, where she might demonstrate first for her most dedicated patrons,” Rook finished grandly. “If the results are satisfactory, I do believe such Craftsmanship deserves a just reward. I propose that should she choose to take it, Isobel’s payment will be a trip to the Green Well.”
My smile radiated innocence. A trip to it, not a drink from it.
“Something completely new,” Gadfly mused in a faraway voice. Briefly he looked much older than his apparent age. The bees stopped droning in the honeyed air, and all the songbirds stilled. I held my breath along with the rest of the world. “Yes. Yes, I think that’s just the thing. Isobel, Rook, I would be delighted to host you. For as long as you’re in the spring court, you will want for nothing.”
We reached the court much sooner than I expected, and I almost walked straight in without realizing we’d arrived. Birch trees wider than a man was tall grew around us, soaring to impossible heights. Craning my neck, I saw that their branches were woven together much in the same way as Rook’s shelters, with songbirds and jewel-bright hummingbirds flitting among them. The only tree that stood apart from the rest was an old, knotted dogwood in full bloom, elevated on a mossy knoll. It had grown into a strange shape, and puzzling over this, I realized it was no normal tree, but in fact a throne.
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