Solstice Wood

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Either of you!” Her eyes were suddenly shiny, under water. “It’s secret because they’re dangerous! Not little Tinkerbells and brownies— they’re powerful and nasty and the Fiber Guild keeps us safe.”

  “They’re just shy,” the Coyle argued stubbornly. “And the Fiber Guild keeps them trapped. Now come on, I don’t have all day to spend here. I have work to do.”

  “I’m not going home.”

  “Well, okay, if you want to spend some time with Tyler, here.”

  “Ever!”

  He blinked, then smiled. “Ever’s a long time. You’ll find your way home soon enough. Maybe Tyler can make you see what—”

  She turned away from both of us and ran.

  The Coyle followed a few steps, then stopped, puffing. “Tyler—”

  I nodded, trying to look worried. “I’ll find her.”

  “Try and make her see what I’m doing, will you? I’ve got a vision, boy, and it’s a doozy. Tell her to call me when she wants to come home.”

  “Okay.”

  He went back into the yard. I followed the Undine deeper into the woods. I could hear her cracking twigs, stirring up dead leaves, running like a startled deer, with no direction but away.

  “Judith,” I called. “Please stop. I’m sorry. I’m just confused about all this—Please.” I put some panting in my voice, then I pretended to trip over something, and yelled, “Ow!” Then I really did trip. Some tree put a gnarly root out between my feet and I went flying, just like the Coyle said we did. I landed so hard my breath went somewhere. When I caught it finally—a little snatch of air, another snatch—the wood was quiet around me.

  The Undine stood in front of me. Her tears glittered on her face, in her eyes; all the beautiful color was everywhere under her skin. She was panting, too. But her wet eyes weren’t angry, and when she knelt beside me, neither was her voice.

  “Oh, Tyler. Are you hurt?”

  “No.” I made a sound like a laugh. “Just clumsy.”

  “Why did you—why did you encourage him like that?”

  “I don’t know.” I pulled myself over to the tree, leaned against it, dragging in big gulps of air, entire cauldrons. “I mean, I don’t know anything about any of this. You told me some of it, but I didn’t understand much then, either. How do I know what fairies do or don’t do? Or what the Fiber Guild knows or does or doesn’t do? I wouldn’t recognize a fairy if it bit me on the nose.”

  “You said they might be dangerous.”

  “I was just saying what you told me before. I never thought about them. I don’t even know where to begin. I mean, what did he mean about openings in the wood where people might see them? Are there really places like that?”

  She sighed. “They’re what the Fiber Guild guards. And my dad wants to—-just open them all up and see what comes out. It’s like opening up all the cages in a zoo and waiting to see if a hummingbird or a grizzly bear comes out.”

  “What kinds of places?”

  “Like the pond. Hollow trees. Springs. Places where the worlds touch.”

  “Here?” I asked skeptically. “In my Gram’s wood?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come on.” She tugged at my sleeve as she stood. “Get up. I’ll show you.”

  “Is it far?” I asked. “I told Gram I’d be home for supper.”

  “Just come on, Tyler. You’ve never worried about time before. Anyway, it’s not far at all.”

  But it was: she led me there, and then I led her farther than she had ever gone in her life, even in her dreams.

  16

  Owen

  I went to Leith’s place first. I had been there a couple of times with Dorian. That’s how I knew things had gotten disturbingly serious between them, when Leith invited me to dinner. Being welcomed under a Rowan’s lintel was tantamount to becoming a member of the family, after you passed the rigorous test of locating the lintel in the first place. Iris had been right not to come with me. After I drove down dirt roads that splintered off one another in maddening groups of three, none ever suggesting, by so much as a roof shingle nailed to a stump, who might live down those goat-paths, I had to park where the road ended, walk over a fallen trunk across a stream, and then down the stream bank until I came to a two-room cabin with a fire pit in front of it, and a couple of chairs made of unstripped birch on the porch.

  Of course no one was there.

  I stood on the porch, trying to eke a clue out of the landscape where to look next. The stream flowing lightly past me under the mossy trunk told me nothing. Neither did the pair of crows watching me from the branches of a hemlock. I heard no human voices, nor did I see any other signs of human habitation. Leith might have been the only Rowan living within that private corner of the world. Except that there was no sign of him, either.

  The eerie, flickering face of the changeling eating cookies at Iris’s kitchen table stole into my thoughts. Its eyes, human one moment, hard little seed pods the next, dark and empty as a hollow in a tree the moment after, had nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. Fortunately, I don’t change expression easily anymore; neither Iris nor the changeling seemed to notice my shock. That I saw it so clearly could mean only one thing: it was a danger to those I was born to protect. I feared for Iris if she did recognize this imp of unpredictable power and obscure motives, and I had no time to waste before I got back to her. I would have to drive all the way to the village before I could call her on my cell phone, and even then I could tell her nothing that wouldn’t add to her worries. I could only hope she had followed my advice and summoned a few seasoned veterans of the Fiber Guild, armed with needles and pins, to stay with her.

  The thought that Sylvia herself might have been taken, lured away into twilight realms, gave me a moment of blank, unreasoning panic. I had no idea where else to look for her, but how could I look for her there? The world around Leith’s tiny porch, trees edged close to his cabin, boughs brushing tenderly against his windows, birds flitting through the long, dusty-gold, late-afternoon light, a squirrel scolding my intrusion, the ceaselessly chattering water, seemed at once mysterious and utterly prosaic. It did not admit to any possibilities except its own lovely and intractable habits. I couldn’t see within the wind; I couldn’t understand the language of water.

  But, I remembered with relief, I knew someone who might.

  I didn’t know where to find Rue, either, but I knew a place to start looking. I managed to make my way out of Rowan territory with the dumb luck of desperation; all the roads I chose led me out, rather than in tangles. I made a quick trip back to my house to call Iris before I continued the search.

  “Owen,” I said when she answered. “Is she back yet?”

  “No.” She bit the word off explosively, sounding exasperated in the extreme. “And there’s more trouble.”

  “Tyler?” I suggested obliquely, in case she hadn’t noticed the changeling.

  “You noticed,” she answered bitterly.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, even that’s not everything.”

  “What—”

  “The rest can wait—-just find Sylvia. Did you see Leith?”

  “No.”

  She spat a word I didn’t know she knew into the phone and slammed it down. I turned, trying to think through the echo in my ear, and found Dorian watching me. I hadn’t heard her come into the house, but I was relieved to see her.

  “At least you haven’t vanished. Are there any customers in the nursery?”

  She shook her head, frowning. “No. I was about to close the shop. Who’s missing?”

  “Sylvia, apparently. Iris hasn’t seen her for hours. Would you go over there when you’re finished? She could use some help.”

  Dorian nodded vigorously, holding my eyes in that way she had when she knew she hadn’t heard everything. “What’s wrong? I mean, Syl’s a big girl; she might just be out shopping or visiting or something—”
>
  “When last seen, she had followed Leith into the wood behind Lynn Hall to talk to him for a moment. According to what Iris told me, that was over five hours ago.”

  Dorian’s eyes grew wide; her fingers, kneading the crooks of her elbows, had slackened. “Leith?”

  “You haven’t seen him this afternoon, have you?”

  “No.” She paused, added slowly, “He usually comes by on Saturdays to help me in the nursery. He calls when he can’t make it.”

  “Did he call?”

  “No.” Her fingers got busy again, untied her work apron. “I’ll find him. He might be at the cabin. Or Dr. Caddis might have had an emergency somewhere.”

  “I stopped by his cabin. He isn’t there. I doubt that he’s been with Sylvia all this time; I just wanted to ask him if he knows where she might have gone. We don’t need Leith, and I really wish you would go to Iris.” Her eyes were on my face again, the flecks of color vivid in them. I nodded. “There’s trouble. Iris will explain.”

  She swallowed. Then she said tightly, pulling her apron off, “I’ll lock up the cash box and go over.”

  “If I run across Leith, I’ll send him to Lynn Hall.”

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mouth tightened; she breathed, before she turned, “Be careful.”

  I waited until I saw her pickup heading toward the hall. Then I drove half a mile back down the road, parked, and began to hike down the old mill road, while all around me the dazzling light, the deeper shadows, the serene stillness of the wood warned me of that gray old man Dusk walking the path through the wood behind me.

  I remembered the place where I had first seen Rue as vividly as if I’d been there yesterday. I walked a double path toward it: the one under my feet, the one through memory. One imposed itself upon the other; the leaves crowding around me pushed into my thoughts. At the road’s end, where it dwindled away beside the mill wall, I clambered over the ancient, fallen oak into the pathless trees. Mossy stones marked the flow of underground water; I followed that. Rowans hunted all year in these woods; because of their poverty and sheer stubbornness, local law looked the other way. More than one indignant hiker had been hastened out by random bullets careening off the trees; the hunters were never caught and rarely seen. Leith had told me that they only discouraged strangers that way; they were careful around the rest of us.

  The underground stream led to a grove of birch growing in a circle. The first time I found it, I’d been following a path of gigantic pastel mushrooms growing along the stream, under the hemlock. It had been spring, then; the birch had put out young leaves of such sweet, fiery green that seeing them in a shaft of light had taken my breath away, for all the many springs I’d seen. Within the shaft of light, within the circle of slender trees, something moved. Someone. I had stopped, transfixed, watching a slender figure emerge out of leaf and light, and look my way.

  This time, as I reached the circle, I saw the last shaft of daylight vanish into dusk, and the face that looked my way was Leith’s.

  I stopped, trying to put this and that together and growing profoundly uneasy. Leith wore an expression I’d never seen on him before, and wished I hadn’t then: he looked uncertain, grim, and vaguely guilty of something.

  “Owen,” he said, nodding briefly, without surprise.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked incredulously, wondering for an instant if he, too, had a lover among the wood-folk.

  “I’m—I brought Syl here.”

  Astonished, I joined him within the trees. In the dusk, the birch leaves hung so still they might have been the jeweled leaves of fairy tale. “Well, where is she?”

  “She went looking for Tyler.”

  “Tyler. Tyler’s at—” I stopped. Tyler wasn’t at Lynn Hall. And Leith knew it, and so, apparently, did Sylvia. I heard my voice rumble out of me, like a roar from a provoked bear. “Where is Sylvia?”

  “She went—she went—” The unflappable Leith grew incoherent; he waved a hand at the trees around us, and finished unhappily, “She found a way in.”

  “In.”

  “She’s part—” He drew breath, held it, while I stared at him. “I know you understand,” he said finally. “I’ve seen you with—with the woman you love. I can see you because a part of me is—is fay. And so is Syl. We saw it in each other when we were schoolkids. That’s why she moved so far away, so no one else would see it. That’s why I’m drawn to this place. This doorway. I brought Syl here to see if someone would come to her, and tell her why they took Tyler. But she—she found a way in, herself. She walked into the light, and after a while— she wasn’t there. I’ve been waiting for her.”

  I was staring at him again. “Sylvia?” I heard myself say from a distance. The heir to Lynn Hall had just walked out of the world into fairyland. The heir to Lynn Hall, born to guard, and watch, and keep all passageways locked against the wood-folk, was one of Them herself. And one of us.

  And so was the young man who had stolen my daughter’s heart.

  I wanted badly to sit down. I wanted badly to bellow at Leith until his hair streamed in the wind of my wrath, and his face turned the color of water. But when the shouting was done, the facts would still be there. I wasn’t fay; I was Avery, born to use whatever magic that name had given me against the Otherworld. But I had never recognized anything Other, any danger in either Leith or Sylvia. And I had crossed a boundary, too, loving whom I loved. Like Sylvia, I had lied to Iris.

  I leaned against one of the birch trees in lieu of sitting and tried to put my wits in order. First things first. “We’ll get into this later. Right now, I need you to go to Lynn Hall and—”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere near Lynn Hall,” he protested. “I can’t tell Iris I know where Syl is and not tell her where. I’ll wait here for Syl. You go.”

  “Dorian is there.”

  He regarded me silently for a breath. “You don’t care? About what I am?”

  “Of course I care. But she loves you, and I think you love her, and considering whom I love, I can’t put up a case for the deceit and treachery and lovelessness of the entire folk of the wood.”

  “What will she think?” he murmured uneasily.

  “I have no idea. You’d better ask her.”

  He didn’t answer. He was looking over my shoulder, past the ring of trees; the gentle wonder on his face made me turn abruptly.

  Rue stepped into the circle beside me. In the dusk, her smooth hair glowed an eerie, buttercup gold; her dark eyes warned of night. As always, she left me mute in that first moment I saw her: something of the wood that had taken a human form, yet could not disguise its own wild beauty, its Otherness. She stepped to my side, laid her hand on my shoulder.

  “I heard you call me,” she said softly. “You should not have come looking for me.”

  “I had to.”

  “I know.” Her eyes went to Leith. “Red cap. A Rowan.”

  He smiled a little, said breathlessly, “Yes.”

  “I’ve seen you.”

  “I’m Leith.”

  “And you’ve seen me. More than Leith, I think. More than human.” Her fingers tightened a little on my shoulder. “You must leave these woods. It isn’t safe here tonight.”

  I didn’t dare touch her; I would have lingered there all night, just to feel the pulse in the crook of her elbow against my lips, just to hold her long, light bones. “I’m looking for Sylvia,” I told her. “Leith saw her disappear into your world. She’s searching for Tyler.”

  Rue shook her head, her brows tilted with a very human worry. “I haven’t seen your Tyler. If one of you has been taken, you must deal with the one who has taken. That is no simple matter.”

  “Can you take me where Sylvia has gone?”

  She shook her head again. “I have brought you as close to our world as I dared, so close our boundaries have blurred…”

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  “I dare not bring you cl
oser. We have been one another’s forbidden secrets. I could not bring you into our world without revealing that.”

  “Sylvia—”

  “She found her own way in; she left nothing for us to follow. It’s a journey out of time, into an ancient, complex realm. Humans who stray into it sometimes never find their way back.”

  “I’ll risk it,” I told her recklessly. “Why would anyone have taken Tyler? Only because he’s a Lynn? Or does your queen want to use him as a bargaining chip? Would she keep Sylvia instead?”

  Rue’s hand covered my mouth, swift and moth-light. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t keep saying names. Don’t keep thinking, wanting. Just go, now, quickly.”

  I couldn’t help it; I took her hand, to feel her long, delicate fingers within mine. “Come with me. Or come to me later—”

  She said something, made some small sound. Her face turned away from me; she was staring over my shoulder. So was Leith, I realized belatedly. Then a sound thundered out of the woods around us, unfamiliar and overwhelming. It sounded like a crazed human shout, its echoes overlapping but increasing in force instead of fading. My bones froze. Rue wavered in the sound like smoke shredded by wind. Leith gave a hoarse, shocked shout back at it. But he didn’t run; maybe, like me, he couldn’t move. I could only turn my head slowly, reluctantly, afraid to see, but unable not to look.

  I saw them at the edge of the trees across the little clearing: a dark line against the twilight wood. I couldn’t see their faces, or their mounts clearly, yet they were more than shadows. The Wild Hunt, I thought instantly, and knew we couldn’t outrun that. The figure in the center was crowned; I saw the watery ripple of silver as some fay light struck it. Here and there a piece of harness glinted, a tiny bell shook, a black ribbon took to the wind, a bird riding a shoulder or the antlers on a helm, caught that stray glittering in its unblinking eye.

  “It’s the wrong time of the year,” I heard the prosaic woodsman whisper.

  “You Rowans hunt in any season,” I said unsteadily, as Rue’s fingers, still human in my hand, trembled, cold as ice. “Why shouldn’t they?”