Gadfly inclined his head to us.
One foot in front of the other. That’s all it took. Yet the descent seemed to stretch on for minutes rather than seconds, and the crowd waited in complete silence, the only sound the susurrus of my gown’s fabric slithering over the steps behind us. The closer we grew, the more unnatural the multitude of fair folk looked. The flawlessness that only nagged at me a little in the presence of one or two of their kind amplified to a sensation of dread when I was confronted by so many, as though I were beheld by an army of living dolls.
As soon as my first shoe touched the grass, a delicate chime of laughter, sighs, and whispered conversation rippled outward through the crowd. And so the introductions began.
When Gadfly turned around, scrabbling ensued among the fair folk in the front. A woman with arresting hazel eyes emerged victorious. She adjusted her hat back into place with a queenly smile as she swept forward, placing her hand in Gadfly’s. She wore a lilac dress with a high lace collar that strangled her slender neck, and the flaw in her glamour, unnaturally sharp cheekbones, was more subtle than most. Like many of the other fair folk present, she was fair-skinned—a common spring court characteristic, whereas the autumn and summer courts tended toward richer complexions like Rook’s, every shade of sunlight-gold and acorn-brown and deep umber.
“Isobel, I’d like you to meet Foxglove,” said Gadfly. I curtsied deeply. “Foxglove, this is Isobel, though you already know her by reputation.” She curtsied back.
I knew her by reputation too. She was the fair one who’d stolen Mrs. Firth’s vowels. I had always counted myself lucky that she’d never come calling on me.
“I am utterly thrilled by your visit,” she said, leaning close enough that her breath tickled my hair. It had a sweet flowery aroma over a base note of some rich and deadly spice. “I’ve followed your work ever since it began appearing in the courts. I would so love to have a portrait done while you’re here.”
My jaw already ached from smiling, and the ordeal had only just begun. “Thank you. It would be my pleasure.”
“You’re a darling,” she replied, with hunger in her eyes.
Fair folk came forward in an endless stream. Soon my knees creaked from curtsying and pleasantries numbed my brain. The whole time Rook and I stood side by side as if we were strangers, never meeting each other’s eyes. Many of the fair folk I greeted were current or former patrons, like Swallowtail, who loudly engaged me in a conversation about his past commission as others in line peered jealously over his shoulders. All of them were familiar with my Craft.
As the afternoon dragged on, I grew increasingly impatient. I needed time to gather supplies before dusk. More importantly, I needed to send word of my situation to Emma—in writing—now that I was at last in a position to do so. News delivered verbally by a fair folk messenger, if indeed Gadfly could spare one from a tea party, would only leave her stewing until the sun came up, trying to figure out if I was really dead or injured and they’d figured out some twisty way to make it sound otherwise.
So I was distracted, wondering how I could escape before it grew too late, when Gadfly pulled forth another fair one and introduced her as Aster.
“I think you will be particularly delighted to meet our Aster,” he said, with an extra veneer of enthusiasm. “She was a mortal once, like you, and drank from the Green Well. When was that, Aster?”
“It must have been some centuries ago now—though it seems like just yesterday,” she replied in a soft, wispy voice, like willow branches stirred by a breeze.
My attention snapped back into focus at once. Had I not known, I wouldn’t have been able to tell Aster apart from the rest. She was perhaps a little less tall, but not remarkably so. Flowers were woven into her wavy, waist-length black hair. Her skin looked starkly pale in contrast, which only accentuated her glamour’s flaw: she was inhumanly gaunt. Her collarbones and ribs protruded from her chest above her gown’s neckline, and her shoulders looked as fragile as a bird’s bones. She watched me closely with brown eyes nearly as dark as mine.
We exchanged curtsies. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Aster. I hope to drink from the Green Well one day myself.” The ability to lie had never seemed as useful or necessary. “How do you find being a fair one?”
She gave me a flickering smile that didn’t reach the rest of her face. “It’s lovely, you know. There are so few things to worry about—I hardly ever have cares these days. I remember getting sick, or the way I used to feel pain, and there’s so much . . . less of it now.” Her smile faded and came back.
“That sounds wonderful.” I was aware of everyone watching me, and made sure my expression didn’t change. “The forest is so beautiful compared to Whimsy.”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”
“Were you a master of the Craft?” I inquired.
Her wan smile lit her face like the striking of a flint. “I was! One must be to drink from the well, of course. Let’s see—I was”—she faltered horribly—“you know, I seem to have forgotten the name for it. Ha ha! How strange!”
My skin crawled, a thousand many-legged insects skittering from my scalp all the way down to my toes. I desperately hoped the fair folk couldn’t see my hair standing on end. “Perhaps you could describe it to me,” I suggested, “and I’ll find the name for you.”
“Well, I made words. I made words for books, the ones that tell stories that aren’t true. Isn’t that odd? I used to do that myself!”
“You were a writer,” I said.
Her pupils swallowed up her eyes. For a heartbeat I had the terrifying notion she was about to leap at me and tear my throat out. Then I saw her hands fisted so tightly, gripping the fabric of her dress, that her knuckles bulged white and her fingers looked fit to break. “Yes, that’s it. I was a writer. Ha ha! A writer! Silly me—one does forget such things. We all forget things from time to time.”
“Yes, we certainly do.” I kept my voice steady with an effort. “May I ask, did you also have the pleasure of visiting the spring court before you drank from the well?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “How splendid that would have been. I only came here afterward, once I’d transformed.”
How many fair folk had Aster met before she made her decision? How much had she understood about the consequences of her choice? I couldn’t continue my line of questioning without risking suspicion. But it seemed to me that she might not have known what was in store for her, not truly, the same as everyone back in Whimsy.
“I see,” I replied. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Aster.”
“I’m so glad we had the chance to talk. I do hope you follow in my footsteps. It would be lovely to have you here in the spring court, just lovely.” Her fingers gripped and loosened. “Perhaps we might speak a second time before you return to Whimsy, so you can remind me of that word again. Oh, it’s amusing how forgetful I am.”
My smile felt carved onto my face as she took her leave. Rook shifted beside me, but I dared not look at him. I was chilled to the marrow of my bones. The wintry calls of the Wild Hunt’s hounds rose again in my ears, and I saw Hemlock’s white, wild-eyed face receding into the darkness. I recalled the hunger tearing forth from behind the polite, cold smile of every fair one I had ever painted. How was it that we had ever come to admire the fair folk—even hope to become them?
“Gadfly,” Rook said cheerfully, “I believe Isobel has had enough for the day. You know how mortals are, hardly able to stand up for an hour or two before they collapse from exhaustion. If we’re to have any hope of seeing her Craft tomorrow, she will require her remaining energy for—well, whatever it is she needs to do this evening.” I heard, rather than saw, his charming half-smile.
“Good gracious. We mustn’t interfere with her Craft!” Gadfly raised his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen of the court, you will simply have to wait. We will convene again at supper.”
Unhappy exclamations engulfed me. Murmured conversation followed. Numbly, I took Rook’s o
ffered arm and allowed him to lead me away from the bottom of the stairs. Lark gamboled after us, waving at her friends, who watched us go with resentful scowls, which to all appearances Lark enjoyed immensely.
“Now we have you all to ourselves,” she said, coming around to take my other arm. Rook grimaced, struggling to contain his frustration. He couldn’t speak freely in Lark’s presence—but her company was a blessing for the same reason. We couldn’t be seen alone together too often without drawing suspicion.
I nodded at him, hoping it would tell him everything he wanted to know. I was all right. I was grateful for his intervention. But it didn’t make him look any happier.
Lark swung our arms back and forth. “You’re awfully quiet, Isobel! You really must be exhausted. What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Being exhausted, of course.”
Even after spending years in their company, fair folk still had the capacity to surprise me. “It makes you want to sit down, I suppose, or go to sleep. Anything that doesn’t require you to move or think.”
“So it’s like having too much wine,” Lark said knowingly.
I raised my eyebrows, thinking that if Gadfly were human, someone would need to have a talk with him. “Yes, but without the good parts. And, um, most of the bad parts, really,” I added, recalling my first, and last, experience with Emma’s holiday brandy.
Lark shrieked straight into my ear. “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” she said once she’d recovered. “What are we going to do now? Please don’t take a nap, it would be ever so dull.”
“No, I’d like to get started gathering materials for pigments. Do you think the two of you could help?” I shot Rook a sideways glance. “Or is that chore beneath a prince?”
Finally, he smiled—a real smile this time, dimple and all. “Ordinarily I’d say so, but I find I can’t pass up the chance to get stains all over Gadfly’s wretched clothes. It may not matter to Lark but it certainly does to him. So tell us what to find, and we are at your service.”
They took me some distance from what I had begun to think of as the spring court’s throne room, to a place that looked more like normal forest, and sat me down on a stump. There I described to them what I needed. Blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, mulberries—any berries they could find. Wild onions and apple bark for yellow; walnut shells for brown. For black, I could use soot.
“But what are the eggs for?” Rook asked indignantly, looming above me at his full height.
“I need something to bind the pigments into paints. Typically one uses linseed or spike lavender oil, but egg yolk is a readier alternative.” Seeing his expression, I added, “Just don’t collect raven eggs, for heaven’s sake. Oh, and get fresh ones—I can’t have chicks popping out of them.”
“I’ll eat those for you,” Lark assured me, the very image of a proper young lady.
“You’d get along with my . . . never mind.” God, how could I sit here enjoying myself while my family waited at home, thinking me dead or worse? Rook glanced at me, but fortunately Lark didn’t notice anything amiss.
“Let’s see who can get them first!” she cried, and vanished. A bush’s leaves trembled nearby as though something had whipped past them at a high speed.
“Isobel,” Rook said softly. “When you spoke to Aster—”
Lark’s voice interrupted from far away. “Hurry up!”
He hesitated, torn. I glanced around to make sure we were alone, then took his hand. Right away he looked down at our intertwined fingers as though they contained the secrets of the universe.
“Go on,” I said. “I’m the one who came up with this plan, remember? Right now I could really use your help.”
Conflict played over his features. But Lark called for him again, and he didn’t linger.
That evening the fair folk gathered to watch the preparations for my Craft. We’d set up in the same clearing so we didn’t have to go back and forth, and it wasn’t long before the court arrived, more ethereal lords and ladies appearing unnervingly from thin air whenever I turned my back. Fascinated, they watched me grind up the berries, shells, and bark on a flat stone, then scrape them into a collection of porcelain bowls and teacups Lark had brought from the labyrinth. I cracked the tiny songbird eggs, strained the whites out with my fingers, and mixed the yolk and pigments using a twig. A campfire’s sticks popped and shifted nearby, producing the charred wood I’d need for soot.
Pigments were expensive. Before gaining the fair folk’s patronage I’d only used charcoal along with whatever colors I could make myself, and as I worked, my childhood experiments came back to me. Blackberries made the deepest, richest red. Elderberries dried with an ocher tint. Mixed with walnut shell, mulberries created a pleasant medium brown with wine-purple undertones. And blueberries often went on pink, only to darken to a deep indigo over the course of a day. Perhaps ironically, green was the most difficult of all colors to achieve from nature—I would need to experiment with the yellows cooked from onion skin and apple bark, and see what they looked like mixed with my blues.
So absorbed was I that for a time I forgot my audience, focusing on the rapture of color alone. The sun slanted lower and lower, casting a golden edge on all my makeshift tools and feathering my hair with light.
Finally I finished crushing the charred wood from the fire. “I think I’m done,” I said, meaning to address Rook and Lark, but found I spoke instead to an entire crowd of fair folk clustered around me.
“Marvelous,” Gadfly declared, as though I were a court alchemist transmuting lead into gold, while I sat looking up at him with egg slime all over my fingers. He offered me a square of peeled birch bark, and I wiped my hands off on the ground before I took it.
“Thank you,” I said. “This looks like it will do nicely. Would it be all right if I requested a favor?”
Gadfly inclined his head. “I did tell you you would want for nothing.”
“If I write a letter to my family in Whimsy, may I have it delivered? Even by bird, if that’s something that can be arranged. The earliest date possible would be ideal,” I added hastily, aware that otherwise it might arrive at the front door of our abandoned, tumbledown cottage a hundred years late.
“Certainly. I give my word that your letter will reach your home by sunrise two days hence.”
“And my aunt Emma will receive it?” I pressed, sensing another loose end.
He gave me a knowing smile. “Never one to forget a detail. I promise it shall be delivered directly into Emma’s hand. Now, I confess I’ve never had the good fortune to watch writing Craft!” And with that he seated himself next to me cross-legged to watch.
“Oh. Er, I’m happy to demonstrate,” I replied, trying to ignore his close attention. He peered at the bark in my hand as though I were about to wave my hand and transform it into a dove. I reached for the soot bowl but halted halfway with a sinking realization. “I haven’t anything to write with,” I said to myself aloud, casting about.
Wind stirred my hair, and Rook hopped onto the stump beside me in raven form, twisting his head to preen his tail feathers. Just when I was about to shoo him off, he seized the longest feather and yanked it from his body. This he handed to me with courtly aplomb. It was warm, and the end of the translucent shaft contained a bead of his amber blood.
I turned the feather in my hands, running my fingertip along its silky edge, to buy myself a little time. I wasn’t certain why I felt so touched by the gesture. The feather was one of many, and Rook could grow it back in an instant. When I could stall no longer, I cleared my throat and dabbed its tip on the ground to clean it.
That was, perhaps, a mistake.
Right away the grass bulged and a sapling pushed forth from the wildflowers, rapidly straining upward into a young tree, unfolding branches like a stage prop. Vivid scarlet leaves burst forth in glorious bloom. Its foliage spread across the spring glade triumphantly, and a bit obnoxiously, in what struck me as a truly Rooklike
fashion.
“Have a care!” Gadfly exclaimed. “I won’t see you defacing my court, Rook. That’s terribly unsightly.”
Rook spread his wings and released a series of belligerent croaks. I hid a smile.
“Thank you,” I whispered to him, rolling the feather’s stem between my fingertips.
Gadfly soon forgot the offense as I began scratching out my letter in wet soot. Fair folk might not be able to write, but they could certainly read, so I needed to be careful about what I revealed.
Dear Emma, March, and May, I wrote. I am safe and well. It pains me to think of the distress my disappearance must have caused you. The truth is that I have been on an unexpected adventure—I knew Emma would understand how I felt about being on an “adventure”—and haven’t had the opportunity to write you until now. Presently, I’m demonstrating my Craft in the spring court. I was brought here by Rook, the autumn prince, who spirited me away quite suddenly. I look forward to seeing you all again soon. With love, Isobel.
This would give Emma more questions than answers, but I was running out of room on the little square of bark, so it would have to do. I waited for it to dry, then handed it to Gadfly.
He brought the letter close to his face, examining it with remote fascination. “So simple an act,” he said eventually, “and yet, do you know that if a fair one were to attempt what you have just done, he would crumble to dust?”
“I’ve—heard that, yes.”
Gadfly’s pale gaze flicked to me. “Make no mistake, it’s a small price to pay for the power and beauty of immortality. Yet it does make one wonder, doesn’t it? Why do we desire, above all other things, that which has the greatest power to destroy us?”
A chill brushed my spine. Never before had I known Gadfly to wax philosophical about anything more profound than lemon curd. I resisted the urge to look at Rook, wondering if he shared my unease.
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