An Enchantment of Ravens

by Margaret Rogerson

  The Alder King’s height remained, but he was gaunt and emaciated as a corpse, his moth-eaten robes swaddling his withered frame like the raiments of a once-great man eaten away by sickness. His eyes were sunk into deep hollows, and his colorless skin had a soft, frayed quality like rotten cheesecloth. The antler crown turned black with tarnish, hideously spiked where pieces of it had broken off over time, its rim grown into the flesh of his forehead. A nauseating stench rolled from him. When he toppled over, a carrion beetle scurried from his ear and vanished into his beard.

  His lips moved. “I am afraid,” he whispered, in a tone of dawning wonder. “I feel—”

  His eyes drooped shut. Moss foamed up from the rug to engulf him. He’ll ruin the floor, I thought, strangely practical. We ought to move the body. But as soon as the idea occurred to me Rook threw us both aside, shielding me with his back and arms. The world heaved. A barrel-thick root bulged from the floorboards beneath me, splintering the wood like an axe. Flowers surged across the rug and the easel and the settee, over me and Rook, crashing like a wave against the far wall. Glass shattered. Branches scraped the ceiling. Nails creaked, giving way beneath the strain, and then the house shook with a wrenching crash, and loose shingles pelted down all around us. Light sheared through the devastation, blindingly bright.

  That seemed to be the end of it. Rook lay atop me a moment longer before he looked over his shoulder, bits of plaster dropping from his hair, and rolled off. He helped me to my feet amid the ruin of my parlor. It was more forest than parlor now: a colossal alder tree had grown in the center of it, breaking through half the roof and felling the southern wall. Dappled light shimmered on an undergrowth of moss and ferns and flowers that gave no hint of the furniture beneath aside from oddly shaped bulges here and there. We had won, but for the moment I felt utterly numb. It was strange standing right in the middle of my parlor, looking out across the wheat field beyond the sagging remnants of Rook’s thorn barricade. In the distance, figures fled back into the forest—moving faster than any human, some of them on all fours.

  A gust of wind blasted us. Rook shifted, a shingle scraping beneath his boot. Then he stumbled and fell. Panic clutched me. I had a vision of a wooden splinter impaling his back while he protected me with his body. I dropped to the ground beside him, seizing his arm, wondering if he could survive a grievous wound without magic.

  He looked more stunned than hurt, however, and as I ran my hands over him, searching for any sign of injury, his glamour flooded back over him. He caught my hand in his. “Look,” he said, but it was the expression on his face that made me turn around.

  Wind swept across the field, bending the wheat in shimmering waves. As it spread outward, the colors changed. The leaves on the trees turned golden and scarlet and fiery orange. Soon the transformation set the whole forest ablaze. Stretching far into the distance, the only green that remained belonged to the grass verges bordering the fields and a handful of lone, tall pines poking through the canopy. I laughed out loud imagining how confounded the people of Whimsy must be—Mrs. Firth scrambling out of her shop, appalled; Phineas considering the painting hung beside the door. A single red leaf drifted down from the kitchen oak.

  “It’s so quiet,” I marveled. The breeze ruffled my dress, its sweet, longed-for coolness raising gooseflesh on my arms. Birds sang sweetly in the trees. From the edges of the forest, crickets chirped a liquid melody. But the grasshoppers had all gone silent.

  A lone figure distinguished itself from the wreckage in the yard, fastidiously picking through the thorns strewn across the ground. His blond hair shone silvery in the sun, and he had changed his clothes since I had seen him last—he wore an eggshell-blue waistcoat and an immaculate, freshly tied cravat.

  My gut clenched. Buried somewhere in my parlor, I still had an iron dagger.

  Gadfly called out to us in a mild, pleasant voice. “And so the rule of summer is ended, and autumn has come to Whimsy. I do regret that spring is so far away, but that’s simply how the world works, and I trust that one day the seasons will turn again. Good afternoon, Rook. Isobel.” He halted several yards away and bowed.

  Frowning, Rook returned the courtesy. I was bound by no such obligation, and glared.

  “What a happy welcome,” Gadfly said. “I merely wanted to congratulate you both on a job well done.” His gaze shifted to me alone, and he smiled, a warm, courteous smile that wrinkled his eyes while revealing nothing. “You made all the right choices. How splendid. How singular. The moment you slew the Alder King, you destroyed every mandate he has ever made. You and Rook are free to live as you please, unburdened by the Good Law. The fairy courts will never be the same.”

  Somehow I found my voice. “But you—you wanted . . .”

  What had he wanted? Abruptly, everything fell into place.

  Before I’d made my first bargain with him all those years ago, perhaps even before I’d been born, he’d already begun scheming. Placing my home under a powerful enchantment to gain my trust and ensure that no harm came to me before he set his plan into motion. Arranging Rook’s portrait. Bringing us to the Green Well. Planting the iron dagger, which was never meant for Rook after all, but for the Alder King all along. And worse—knowing exactly what to say that would make him my bitter enemy, and set me crashing through the woods, away from my predestined path toward the impossible course of destroying the Alder King. Astonishment and fury washed over me in equal measure. My voice hardened, choked with emotion. “I don’t appreciate being used as a pawn in your game, sir.”

  He looked at me a long moment in silence. “Ah, but you were not a pawn. All along, you have been the queen.”

  I took a breath. His inflection was laden with some hidden meaning I didn’t have the patience to decipher. “And you are treacherous, and I’ll never forget the pain we endured by your design, no matter what came of it in the end.”

  “Spoken, if I may say so, like a true monarch.” He smiled again. But a shadow passed over his countenance, and this time, his eyes didn’t crinkle. His portrait room sprang to my mind unbidden. All those patient centuries of collecting portraits—not out of desire for them, but because he was waiting for me, for my Craft, a spider at the center of a vast web he’d spun for hundreds of years in solitude.

  “I do believe that is for the best,” he went on, watching me intently. “Trusting one of my kind is quite enough foolishness for a lifetime. Mortals are always better off not forgetting what we are, and that we only ever serve ourselves.”

  “Gadfly,” Rook said, in a tone that suggested the spring prince was overstaying his welcome.

  “Just one last thing, if I may.” Gadfly brushed some invisible dust off his sleeve and raised his eyebrows at Rook. “You are aware, I trust, that you are not yet named king? That there is a certain something you must—”

  “Yes, I know!” Rook interrupted crossly.

  I shot him a curious glance and discovered that he was nervously avoiding my eyes. He looked relieved when tentative footsteps crunched within the house, liberating him of the burden of explaining this “certain something” to me, and for the moment I was happy to forget all about it.

  “Emma!” I called. “We’re safe! We’re in the . . . parlor.”

  “I can see that,” Emma said calmly, picking her way into the room with the twins clutching both her hands. “There are holes in the walls. March, whatever you just picked up, don’t eat it.”

  “Too late,” said May.

  Emma shook her head. She scanned the parlor, and then the yard, and saw Gadfly, whereupon her eyes narrowed appraisingly. “Now who’s going to clean up this mess?”

  “Oh, dear,” said Gadfly. “I’m afraid I must be off.”

  Epilogue

  I WRAPPED the bandage neatly around Rook’s injured hand, pleased to see that this time, he didn’t hide a wince. Two weeks later, his finger was nearly healed. We sat at my kitchen table beneath the wavering amethyst glow of his fairy light, still shining brightly after the
two dozen enchantments he’d dispensed that day as payment to the workmen rebuilding our parlor. It didn’t escape me that he had not yet mentioned returning to the forest, or said anything about taking up the role of king, so the moment he started fidgeting restlessly in his seat, I had a reasonable idea of what he was working up to.

  “Once,” he said, “I mentioned to you how succession works among my kind. How one prince is replaced by another. Or at least, how it used to work—the law can be different now.”

  “Yes, and it’s awful,” I said with feeling. “Killing one another like . . . oh.”

  Rook hadn’t been prepared for me to start figuring it out myself. He paled and continued quickly, “So, technically, as you are the one who defeated the Alder King, you’re now—well—the queen of the fairy courts. And I . . .”

  I took pity on him. He was turning rather green. “Rook, I would be delighted to marry you and make you king. But first, I have one demand. It is of the utmost importance.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he looked more relieved, or more frightened. “What is it, my dear?”

  “I’d like another declaration, please.”

  “Isobel.” He swept down to his knees and kissed my hand, gazing up at me in devotion. “I love you more than the stars in the sky. I love you more than Lark loves dresses.”

  I startled myself with my own yelping laugh.

  “I love you more than Gadfly loves looking at himself in a mirror,” he went on.

  “Surely not that!”

  Our laughter carried across the darkened yard, past the chicken house full of sleeping hens, the red-leafed oak, and the autumn wheat whispering in the field, half cropped for harvest. The wild wind swept our voices all the way to the forest, where crickets sang a new song to the crescent moon. Somewhere, fair folk were having a feast. Others swirled in the midst of a ball. Others still traced the edges of a piece of bark, gazing at their portraits in quiet contemplation. A thin mortal woman packed her books, assisted by a girl with sharp teeth and a well-dressed man with silver-blond hair. Yet no matter what they were doing, everyone in the forest waited with an indrawn breath, waiting for the taste of autumn, the smell of change, the first news of a king and queen unlike any the world had known before.

  And we wouldn’t live happily ever after, because I don’t believe in such nonsense, but we both had a long, bold adventure ahead of us, and a great deal to look forward to at last.

  Acknowledgments

  I wouldn’t have had the courage to pursue publication if my family hadn’t believed in me. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for your unwavering encouragement and support. You had confidence in me when so much of the world doubted the validity of my dreams—including myself—and I couldn’t have done it without you. By the way, I love you most times infinity.

  Sara Megibow, my agent, is a superhero. I can’t imagine what this journey would have been like without her, in large part because it wouldn’t exist. Gratitude alone is inadequate—Sara, you deserve an eight-thousand-dollar ring made of a dozen tiny Fabergé eggs, and also a private island. I’m working on it.

  My editor, Karen Wojtyla, is not only a joy to work with, but understands my writing on a level that constantly surprises and delights me. Karen, it’s a privilege to work with you, even if you did have me take all the pockets out of Isobel’s Firth & Maester’s dresses (you were absolutely right, as usual). Thank you for believing in this book.

  I’d also like to thank everyone at Simon & Schuster, including Annie Nybo, Bridget Madsen, Sonia Chaghatzbanian, Elizabeth Blake-Linn, and Barbara Perris, for all your help and hard work.

  Thank you to my brother, Jon Rogerson, and also Kate Frasca, for making sure I have a place to stay, feeding me, and buying me the comfiest sweatpants.

  I wouldn’t be who I am without my friends Rachel Boughton and Jessica Stoops. You have my eternal gratitude for never being more than a message away, for knowing me like no one else does, and for putting up with some truly questionable writing over the years. I don’t deserve you. Write your books.

  Kristi Rudie, thank you for dragging me out of the house for TV marathons. It helped more than you can ever know.

  Thank you to the Swanky Seventeens, a community who provided invaluable support during the journey to publication, and connected me with my friends Katherine Arden and Heather Fawcett. You two are an endless source of inspiration and encouragement. Here’s to many more really, really long e-mail chains.

  Nicole Stamper, Liz Fiacco, Jessica Kernan, Jamie Brinkman, Katy Kania, Desiree Wilson—thank you for being my partners in crime.

  Jessica Cluess, for your advice, even as I fangirled deliriously.

  Allison, for calling this book “moist.” You understand.

  Finally, a huge thank-you to Charlie Bowater, who did an absolutely incredible job bringing the cover to life.

  About the Author

  MARGARET ROGERSON has worked a variety of jobs ranging from canoe livery counter girl to graphic designer. She has a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology from Miami University. When not reading or writing, she enjoys sketching, gaming, making pudding, and watching more documentaries than is socially acceptable (according to some). She lives near Cincinnati, Ohio, beside a garden full of hummingbirds and roses. Visit her at margaretrogerson.com.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Margaret Rogerson

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2017 by Charlie Bowater

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  Interior design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian and Irene Metaxatos

  Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian

  The text for this book was set in Sabon LT Std.

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4814-9758-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-9760-2 (eBook)

 

 

 
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