With a frustrated shout, I yanked my boot free from a vine’s ensnaring tendrils. Even the delicate spring foliage had started to feel less friendly. Fleeced with clouds, the blue sky beamed as harmlessly as Gadfly’s smile, and squirrels bounded along the branches above me, shaking loose showers of white petals. But if I had learned anything from fair folk, it was not to trust the way things appeared.
I cleared the thicket and sat down on the same stump as the afternoon before. A breeze rattled the leaves of Rook’s tree, and a few twirled downward, scattering across my lap. I picked one up and traced its edges. Its color stuck out like a sore thumb, much like Rook himself.
Things weren’t going entirely as I’d expected. I shouldn’t have let myself get so carried away with Aster. There was no mistaking that she had felt real anger, human anger, as impossible as it seemed. Not only that—my portraits had affected some of the others, too. I’d been painting fair folk for years, and never once had I seen such reactions to my Craft. Foxglove had felt something, I was sure of it. Perhaps she had experienced emotion. Or perhaps she had caught a glimpse of what it meant not to, and found herself confronted by the emptiness of her existence, the hollowness of never having once known joy. I wasn’t certain which possibility was more alarming—or more dangerous.
All I knew for certain was that I couldn’t fail. My life wasn’t the only one at stake.
I realized I had torn the leaf apart, stripping it down to its fibrous veins. I flung away the pieces and put my face in my hands. My eyes prickled. My heart ached. Even if everything went perfectly according to plan, and I was working myself up over nothing, I faced a future I was no longer certain I could bear.
“I wish you were here, Emma,” I mumbled, wanting nothing more in that moment than my aunt’s embrace. She would know what to say. She would reassure me that I wasn’t a terrible person because there was a part of me that didn’t want to go home. Perhaps she could even convince me that I could live with myself after I buried my heart in the autumnlands and left it behind forever.
“Who’s Emma?” a cheerful voice asked, right next to my ear.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Lark! I didn’t know you were there.”
She sat perched on the edge of my stump like her namesake, smiling at me with her hands cupped around a pile of freshly picked blueberries. When she saw my face, her smile vanished. “You’re dripping!”
“Yes, I’ve been crying.” Seeing her raised eyebrows I added, “It’s what mortals do when we’re sad. I miss my aunt, Emma.”
“Well, stop now, please. I’ve brought you some blueberries—Gadfly told me you were out of things for your Craft. Here.” She poured the blueberries onto my lap, in the basket my skirts created between my legs. At the last moment she snatched a few back and stuffed them into her mouth.
I felt strangely touched. “Thank you, Lark. That was very thoughtful.”
“Yes, I know. I’m simply full of thoughts, but no one cares to realize it, and everyone treats me as though I’m the silliest creature in the spring court.”
“I don’t, do I?” I asked, concerned.
“No. And that’s why I like you so much!” She sprang to her feet. “Come along now, let’s find more berries.”
With a wet laugh, I plucked one of the blueberries from my lap and popped it into my mouth. Its ripe, tart flavor burst sweetly on my tongue.
A black-eyed raven alit on the uppermost branch of Rook’s tree.
Lark grinned, showing each and every one of her sharp, purple-stained teeth.
I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that berry—shouldn’t have considered eating that berry—even before the world spun in a kaleidoscopic wash of color. I plummeted downward as though a hole had opened up in the earth beneath me. The sky receded, growing smaller and smaller, surrounded by a warm, soft, rumpled darkness that I first grasped at frantically as I fell, then recognized with senseless horror as my own clothes.
I thrashed, smothered by fabric on all sides. My body wasn’t working the way it should. My face, my limbs, my very bones had taken on an alien assemblage that sent terror jittering up and down my spine. As I strained for any sense of what was going on, two long appendages swiveled on the back of my head. For some reason I sniffed, and my flexible nose twitched in response. My heart beat so rapidly I couldn’t identify the feeling at first—it was like a trapped wasp buzzing madly in my chest.
I kicked free of my clothes and hopped through the shoulder-high grass, half-blinded by the sun, finally grasping the nature of my transformation. Lark’s enchanted berry had turned me into a rabbit.
Her shriek rang out behind me, stabbing my tender ears. Impossibly, my heartbeat kicked up another notch. I thought my heart might burst as I raced toward a hawthorn bush that loomed above me higher than the tallest bell tower in Whimsy, and broader than a house. The forest had grown so dauntingly large it hardly bore looking at. I needed to get somewhere dark, safe, and enclosed, right now.
“Run, run, run!” Lark laughed. “I’m going to catch you, Isobel!”
With a dreadful unspooling of my memories I recalled what she had said to Rook the day before. Can you turn into a hare for me again and let me chase you about? I thought of the way Rook had been ignoring her in favor of paying attention to me instead.
I skidded under the bush, sending dirt and platter-sized leaves flying. My fur slid sleekly beneath branches that hung mere inches above the ground. I zipped forward, aware Lark must have seen me disappear under this bush, and judging by the sound of her laughter, she was already following.
There—a hole! But as I approached the burrow dug into the hawthorn’s roots, I shrank from the rank odor emanating from its depths. My instincts screamed Danger! Somehow, I knew the thing that lived in this hole would eat me if it got half a chance.
“Oh, you’re a quick one! I think I’ve lost you!” Through a space between the leaves I watched Lark’s gigantic feet stomp over to the bush across from mine. She bent and looked under it, her golden hair cascading down in a shimmering wave as huge as royal tapestry.
It was obviously a game to her. Surely she didn’t mean me any harm. By the sound of it, she used to play this game with Rook often. Yet if she caught me, would she understand I was a mortal rabbit, not a fair one in rabbit form? Might her fingers go around my little ribs and squeeze them just a bit too hard? I shuddered, recalling that if fair folk caught rabbits they ate them raw.
And what if she was truly upset with me for stealing Rook’s attention from her?
Before I had a chance to think about it too hard, she whipped around to stare directly at me. “There you are!” She bared her stained teeth again and scuttled forward bent at the waist, her arms extended, fingers curled into greedy claws. I spun and zoomed off, targeting a stand of honeysuckles. They weren’t as dense as I’d have liked, but I lost her by leaping behind a log coated in a thick growth of spiraling ferns. I couldn’t help but eye them as I passed. Perhaps, if I escaped, I could double around and try nibbling on some later . . .
“Isobel, Isobel!” Lark sang out sweetly. “Where have you gone, Isobel? You know I’m going to find you. I can hear you! I can smell you!” The ground shook, and great crashing sounds came from behind me as she thundered into the honeysuckles. “You’re just a silly hare!”
A silly hare! A silly hare! The words ricocheted between my ears, losing their meaning as my whole being narrowed down to a single primal urge: survival. I lived to run. Emerald light and leafy shadows whipped past, my body bunching and stretching straight as an arrow with every stride. I dodged to avoid stones and roots in my path. If I zigged one way, then zagged another, the beast lumbering behind me would get confused and fall behind.
I froze on top of a boulder to look back. My nose spasmed with the effort of getting enough air, flaring red. Heat evaporated from my ears. The pursuer had stopped to look under a log. Mightily, it flipped the log with its upper appendages. Even from a distance I heard soft bark crumbling, tender fe
rns uprooting and tearing. One of my ears rotated of its own accord to better take in the sounds. Then the pursuer straightened. Danger! I dove from the boulder and streaked across the clearing. One of the stumps in the clearing seemed familiar to me: it had fabric draped over it, and teacups beside it. I was unsettled by the sight, as I might be by seeing a hawk’s shadow pass over the ground.
And then, from an angle I did not expect, a predator descended.
No! No! No!
I was caught!
I kicked my feet and twisted, screaming, showing my teeth. Giant hands had seized me, and now lifted me. The sun flashed in my eyes—the world soared dizzyingly—and the grip that held me was too firm for escape. I drummed my feet against the creature’s chest, but he cradled me so close I couldn’t move my legs, and lifted some of his clothes to press my face inside.
Enclosed darkness. Muffled sounds. I stopped struggling, thinking that perhaps the peril had ended. In the sudden quiet only my heart galloped on. The sound of it filled my ears and shook my body in swift, rhythmic pulses.
“Lark,” the creature said. He didn’t shout. I sensed he didn’t have to. His voice was like a cruel wind, stripping everything in its path to the marrow. “What have you done?”
A petulant voice answered. “You don’t play with me anymore, Rook! No one pays attention to me except for her! And you’re trying to keep her all to yourself—it isn’t fair!”
Nose twitching anxiously, I burrowed farther into my captive’s garments. That voice was Danger! But the smell of the creature that held me, a crisp leaf-smell, a night-air smell, was safe.
“You little fool. Did you ever pause to consider what would happen if she escaped from you? Look.” One of the warm hands left my back. I trembled. “She’s already forgotten what she is. She would have lived out the rest of her short years as a common hare.”
A foot stomped. “I wouldn’t have lost her! I take care of my things! Rook, why are you being like this? You’re being awful, just awful. I’m going to tell Gadfly how awful you are.”
“Tell Gadfly if you like,” my captor said, “but I don’t think he’ll be pleased to discover how impolitely you’ve treated his guest.”
“Fine!” But the voice sounded uncertain. “I’m going right now!”
“See that you do,” my captor said, coldly.
Footsteps charged away across the grass. With my ears flattened against my back, I couldn’t hear well enough to determine whether the predator had left for certain. Even so, I wasn’t afraid. I trusted my captor wouldn’t expose me until the harm had passed.
He lifted me from the darkness and held me up at face level. I regarded him calmly with my hind feet dangling. I detected no one else in the clearing, no hawk-shadows, no fox-smell.
“Isobel, do you recognize me?” he demanded. A shadow had fallen over his face, and his smell acquired a bitter edge. He was angry. Even then I still thought to myself, Safe.
I wiggled my nose.
He sighed and cradled me against his chest again. “I’m going to turn you back. Try not to struggle, as I haven’t had a great deal of practice with this sort of magic. That is to say,” he added quickly, “I’m perfectly capable of doing it—I am sure you’ve noticed I excel at all enchantments—but it would be best if you remained still. So, please try.”
I sat obligingly in his arms, wiggling my nose.
At first, nothing happened. Then, just as I thought it might be a good idea to settle down for a nap, the world turned inside out, flipped over, and threw me down again as though I’d just spent a few seconds as a toddler’s spinning top. Everything shrank. My body became heavy and fleshy and slow. I blinked in a daze, orienting myself. Red leaves whirled across the clearing, and the trees swayed in a subsiding wind. When the wind gusted its last breath the autumn tree stood naked, bare-branched, without a single leaf left.
I wasn’t touching the ground. My feet hung in the air, and warm arms supported my shoulders and the insides of my knees. Rook. That was Rook, holding me.
I wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Before I could find my voice and ask him to set me down, he dropped me like a hot coal. I landed in the wildflowers with an undignified whump. Horrified, I squashed my legs together, hunched inward with my arms clamped over my chest, and stared up at him. He looked as aghast as I did.
“Why did you just—” I began, at the same moment he blurted out:
“You stopped being in peril, and I couldn’t touch you any longer! Are you all right?”
“No.” I’d just been turned into a rabbit! “But I will be. Thank you for coming to my rescue. Couldn’t you have set me down a bit sooner?”
He averted his eyes. “I was distracted,” he replied with dignity.
Oh—right.
When he started shrugging off his coat, I forestalled him by speaking. “I’m going to put my dress back on. Just . . . don’t look.” I stood and skulked over to the stump, conscious that lately I was doing an awful lot of sneaking about in the forest nude. Sporting a blush that spread all the way down my neck, I slipped back into my underthings, today’s Firth & Maester’s, and finally my stockings and boots and hidden ring, while Rook waited for me, gazing determinedly at a fixed spot away to the side. “Are they going to miss you back at the court?” I asked, hoping to dispel the tension, or at least refocus it to a more pressing topic.
“Undoubtedly.” He paused. “Isobel . . .”
I smoothed my skirts. The ground suddenly became very interesting to look at. “Yes, it was supremely idiotic of me to eat something Lark gave me. I shouldn’t have gone off on my own, either, but I’m worried the court—Gadfly especially—will grow suspicious if we spend more time together.” The leaf I’d torn up had blown into one of the teacups. “And I needed to get away. You noticed it too, didn’t you? What was happening back there?”
When I glanced up, Rook’s expression told me he would have brought it up himself if I hadn’t first. “Yes. Your Craft is affecting us somehow. Isobel, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“If I keep demonstrating, do you think it will put us in danger?”
“As I said, this is—new. My kind hungers for your work, all the more for its difference. I cannot honestly say that I believe there to be no risk, but I do think it would make the court suspicious if you stopped now, with everyone expecting you to continue. If, perhaps, we stay for just one more day, and leave after the masquerade ball tomorrow night . . .”
A long pause elapsed, neither of us looking at the other. Our alliance had progressed far past the point of mutual survival; we both wanted to buy ourselves more time together for decidedly unpractical reasons. It was no use pretending otherwise, and yet we left those words unsaid.
“But I’m almost healed,” he went on decisively, forcing himself to finish. “If you would like to leave today, even right now, we can.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, cursing my foolishness. “After tomorrow night, then.”
His gusty sigh of relief wasn’t subtle. I aimed a wry smile at him, but something else drew my attention. “Your pin’s gone! It isn’t in your pocket, is it? It must have been torn off when you dropped me.”
He patted at his chest in alarm and then ducked to hunt through the wildflowers. This wasn’t the leisurely search of someone who’d lost a pocket watch or a handkerchief. Rather, he clawed at the ground with a wide-eyed desperation that could be inspired only by the loss of a priceless and irreplaceable treasure. When he found it, he gripped it tightly in his hand. He moved his thumb to the hidden clasp. But then he stopped himself, remembering I was there, and started to put it in his pocket instead.
My heart hurt for him. It was painful to watch Rook reduced to this over something so small. He cared more about that pin than most people cared about everything they owned in the world.
“Who was she?” I asked.
On his knees, he stilled.
“I just—I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that. I suppose
I only wondered whether—how the two of you escaped the Good Law.”
I thought he might be angry with me. Instead, he looked at me as though I’d torn his heart from his chest. His eyes dulled with shame and despair. He put the pin in his pocket.
“I was in love with her, but we never broke the Good Law,” he said.
“How is that possible?”
I wished I hadn’t asked. His misery was terrible to see. “She didn’t love me back.”
Silence reigned in the meadow. After a time, a squirrel started gnawing on an acorn overhead.
He resumed haltingly. “She was—fond of me, but she knew she could not be anything more. We decided it would be best if we never saw each other again. She gave me the pin as a good-bye present. I stopped visiting Whimsy, and more time passed than I realized.” He looked at the ground. “When I returned, I found that her great-grandchildren now lived in the village, and she had died long ago of old age. Until your portrait, I never came back.” He drew in a breath. “I know it’s—wrong, that I care so much about the pin. I can’t explain it. It’s—”
“It isn’t wrong.” My voice was so soft I barely heard myself speak. “Rook, it isn’t. It’s just human.”
He hung his head. “What has happened to me?”
I couldn’t stand it any longer. I went to him and pulled him into an embrace. He was so tall I felt I barely accomplished anything; I had my arms wrapped around his middle like a child. But after a tense moment he stumbled into my touch, as though he were too crushed by despair to stand on his own.
“You aren’t weak,” I said. I knew no one had ever told him that before in all the long centuries of his life. “The ability to feel is a strength, not a weakness.”
“Not for us,” he said. “Never for us.”
There was nothing I could say to that. My words of comfort were in vain. I could say nothing to reassure him, not truly. Because here, in the forest, his humanity would be the death of him. Perhaps not now—perhaps not for hundreds of years—but in the end, no matter what, he faced murder at the hands of his kind. I steeled myself against the tears stinging my eyes and the hard, painful knot swelling in my throat. It seemed terribly, unimaginably unfair that I was going to leave him here to die alone. The unfairness of it howled within me like a storm, tearing everything apart.
An Enchantment of Ravens Page 17