by Callie Bates
Sophy picks up the wooden box that Oonagh also brought in. She removes its lid. “You don’t get a mask. You wear a crown.”
My question dies on my lips as she lifts it out. Woven from cut branches, softened with pieces of moss, it springs to full height in Sophy’s hands, more than a foot tall. I reach for the branches, feeling the buds under my fingertips. They’ve woven the crown from willow, and life lingers in the wood, the memory of being a tree.
Sophy lifts it onto my head. It sways, then settles. It seems to weigh nothing.
Victoire and Sophy both stare at me. I’ve raised my hands, and I turn them over with a start. The pads of my fingers are turning green-brown, a streak like bark running up the insides of my arms, changing the very color of my skin. As if I am becoming a tree.
I hope it doesn’t stay this way.
There’s a noise at the door: Oonagh, coming in with gowns. She slows to regard me with a curious expression—not quite a smile, not quite reverence.
“Caveadear,” she says simply, inclining her head.
Sophy also bows.
I feel strange already—off balance, powerful without knowing what power I am touching. The land pulses within me. The willow branches seem to whisper to themselves, and the moss knows secrets far older.
“We have a story about the Day of the Dying Year,” Oonagh says. “They say it is one of the days when the Caveadear could wed the land.”
“Wed the land?” I repeat. Sap seems to pulse through my veins. I am disconnected, inhuman—more than human. I blink myself back into reality. I don’t have sap in my veins, but somehow the willow’s memories are twining with my own. I force myself to think clearly; I read about Wildegarde wedding the land back in Cerid Aven, before my father was captured. “What does that mean?”
Oonagh shrugs. “No one knows anymore.”
“It’s just an old story,” Sophy says, as if she senses my fear. “It’s nothing, El.”
But it’s not nothing. The Day of the Dying Year is not an ordinary day, and the crown on my head is no simple creation of wood. The stories I’ve read were written for more than simple amusement. I feel the truth of it, now, in my body. The hair is standing up on my arms, and heat flushes through me.
Victoire lunges for the gowns in Oonagh’s arms. “How marvelous! Green silk. That will look wonderful on Elanna. This lovely yellow will do for me, and for you, Sophy, I think blue.”
That quickly, we lose ourselves in selecting gowns. But I cannot forget what Oonagh said. It’s the day the Caveadear can wed the land, which must mean it’s the day Hugh wanted me to wed Finn. Except I am not going to wed Finn.
I wish I understood my power better, and the customs around the Caveadear. Maybe they would tell me I don’t have to marry anyone, either, just like Jahan. Like Wildegarde.
Maybe this is why Rhia wanted to get me to the mountains before this day. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her no, even if it would mean leaving the others temporarily.
And maybe I am reading too much into an old story. Maybe nothing will happen at all. Maybe we will just dance around the bonfires and laugh, and that will be it.
—
WHEN WE WALK down to the great hall, I know I’m wrong. Everyone in the room turns to me: to the streaks of green blending into the skin on my bared arms, to the crown weaving itself higher and higher upon my head. I hear it hiss and creak as it grows taller. It has sprouted roots, tucking around my ears, forming a tracery of lines over my forehead. It’s as if touching me makes it grow, faster than should be possible, into a tree.
They have not finished donning their masks yet. I glimpse Alistar Connell swiftly hiding his face behind a dog mask. Rhia Knoll glowers from behind a bear’s face. She hasn’t spoken to me since I told her no yesterday, just glared from a distance.
Far in the corner, I glimpse a lean, olive-skinned man tying a raven’s face over his. Jahan. Sophy was wrong—there are birds.
Finn approaches me. Like me, his face is uncovered. Antlers sprout above his ears, worked with cunning into his hair, so that they appear to be part of his head. He looks golden, as if the antlers are a crown and he the future king.
“You look,” he leans down to whisper, “extraordinary.” I smile. The antlers swing a bit with his movement. They’re not part of his skull, then. That’s somewhat reassuring. I don’t know what I would do if Finn turned into a stag. It’s strange enough—extraordinary, indeed—that a tree seems to have rooted itself on top of my head.
He takes my hand in his warm one. We exchange glances. I give him a small nod.
Alistar Connell walks up to us. “We begin with the cuach.”
Hooking our arms through each other’s, Finn and I each take a sip of the whiskey, which burns and burns down into my stomach. Into my legs. Is this liquor, or is there something else in it? I am burning into life, glowing into a brighter existence. Across the room, the raven looks up and meets my eyes.
Finn gestures me toward the door. “Light the fires!” he calls out. “The Caveadear is come.”
—
THE BONFIRES ROAR around me, burning hearts of fire, orange flecked with blue. My eyes sting when the smoke blows into them, but I’ve begun laughing when it happens. Somewhere I lost my propriety and my dress, but I don’t care that I’m almost naked in my chemise. The tree’s roots have crawled down my back, and its branches have begun to grow out from my head like a bush.
It shouldn’t be possible, but it is. It’s the night of the Dying Year, the night when the horned god Kernone rides with his hounds, pulling the moon backward in its path across the sky to reveal the bridge to the world beyond this one. It’s the night when anything is possible.
I’m running between bonfires, the moonlight streaming through the branches of my tree-crown, the wind cooling the sweat between my breasts. From every direction, a beast’s face lurches toward me—deer, wolf, cow, fox. They dance and leap and laugh. I throw open my arms and stamp my feet. My shoes are gone, too. Is it the whiskey or the ritual, sending the wildness coursing through me, the full moon on the night when the dead walk?
A group of dancers explodes toward me, swinging a black bear from their midst. The bear nearly collides with me before rocking back on her heels. The mask quivers and falls, and I glimpse Rhia’s pale gaze. I offer a smile—we must be reconciled!—but she glares and says, “This isn’t how it’s done in the mountains. You lowlanders don’t understand anything.”
I glare back at her. We swing around each other, back into the dancing crowd.
A man comes toward me, clad only in a length of cloth twisted around his hips. Finn has lost all his clothes. The stag’s antlers loom like wings on either side of his head.
I laugh and hold my hands out to him. His grip is hot and damp, and when he comes closer, I smell the earth on him, the scent of the fires. His eyes appear black and almost hungry.
We’re moving back out now, toward the topiary that borders the woods. His hands are rough on my arms, my stomach, the curve of my hips. He leans in to kiss me and I twist away, one arm knocking into an antler so that it begins to tumble backward. Finn lifts his face, swollen with ecstasy and lust. “El—”
“No.” I feel strange, disoriented, almost betrayed. He’s not the one who should be holding me like this.
My raven. Where is my raven?
Finn is trying to say with his hands and lips that we belong together. I press my palms to his chest and shove him back. He staggers. A woman swoops from the crowd—a fox. Victoire.
The woods call to me, to the tree. Finn and Victoire have already swung away into the crowd. I crawl through a gap in the hedge, digging the dirt up under my fingernails. I inhale the heady scent of loam. My feet meet the coolness of new-fallen leaves. I follow the call of an owl into the forest.
The sounds from the fires fade quickly among the old pines, mingled with oak. The trees stand black against the pearly sky, silent as any sentries. I walk from one to another, trailing my fingertips over their
cool bark, though it does little to cool the burning in my body.
I seem to be in a kind of grove. The trees make a circle around me, and the land pulses under my feet, up along my legs and into my body. I am burning hot. The simple weight of the tree is becoming too much for me.
I lift it from my head, scooping the growing roots into the duff beneath an oak. My nostrils flare at the smell of dirt. My body sparks with awareness.
Water is running over my foot. I shuffle backward in surprise, crouch to look closer. From the freshly planted roots of the willow, a spring has burst into life. The water pools between my feet, wanders away into the forest.
Overhead, the tree branches sway and dance. The night has been still until now, windless. The moon appears between the tossing limbs, round and brilliant. I feel as swollen as she is with possibility.
Bracken crunches. I startle, bracing myself to run.
But it’s a raven who glides into the grove, a blacker shadow in the night. My breathing is loud in my ears.
He sweeps back the mask. It falls to the ground. The moonlight is silver on his face.
We meet in the middle. He’s wearing a cloak and a pair of breeches but his chest is cold to the touch. “My poor southern raven,” I murmur. I wrap my arms around him. His cloak falls over my back, so I am wrapped in the embrace of its warmth—and his.
His hands press along my spine, drawing me closer. His breath is hot and soft in my ear. “I thought I’d lost you.”
I look at him. His face is full of shadows. “You can’t lose me.”
Both our bodies are hot now. I remind myself that yesterday he accused me of wanting to marry him because he’s the Korakos. But right now we stand in the silence of the grove, and my body is heavy with yearning. The land is waking beneath my feet. I don’t care about my confusion or Jahan’s secrets. I don’t care about Finn. I don’t care about responsibility or my people.
I pull his head down—he’s talking, of course. “Be quiet.” I cover his lips with mine.
He doesn’t seem to mind.
Our mouths work together. His lips trail toward my ear. He’s tucked one hand between us, rubbing his thumb over my nipple. I gasp. My own exploration grows bolder, and he arches against me.
Around us, the trees shift on their roots. The willow is growing up into the embrace of the oak. The trickling spring turns into a stream. The pulse of the land matches the throbbing in my body.
I reach for Jahan’s hips. He pulls back, breathless: “Are you sure?”
I can’t for the life of me imagine why he’s hesitating—he’s as ready for this as I am. I pull down his breeches; he unties my shift so it falls to pool around my ankles. Somehow we’re on the ground. Wet leaves push against my back. Jahan heaves me up and throws his cloak down to protect us. I’m kissing him—his jaw, the dimple beside his mouth. He pushes me back gently so I land on the cloak. His hands are hot on my thighs. I dig my fingers into his shoulders, his hair. He’s kissing between my breasts, working his hand between my thighs. I’m whispering his name; I wrap my legs around his hips. He pushes into me. I throw back my head.
And I’m unraveling from within. Our bodies are moving together and suddenly the land roars around me—into me. It floods into my body, shuddering through flesh and bone. My breasts arch into hills. My belly is the bowl of lakes, my ribs the striations of rocks, and my face is the moon. Jahan is the wind, the heat of the sun, moving urgent against me. I’m crying out. The sound is not human—it is wild, feral, earthy, redolent. All of Caeris must hear it. And I do not care.
Then I am shrinking—squeezing back into trembling, sweat-slick human flesh, shuddering with pleasure. Jahan’s lifted me up against him. He’s saying in my ear, “What was that? What’s happened?”
I open my eyes. Wet leaves are stuck to my naked back. Jahan pants against me, his heartbeat slowing.
The trees have stilled now, but they are…different. I hear the water surging from the spring. I don’t want to let go of Jahan, but I force myself to peel my arms off him. On trembling legs, I stand and look around the altered grove.
All the trees have moved. And the energy of it, the bolt that shook up through the earth into me, makes me feel as if my skin shines with stars. My naked body is not cold.
“They wanted you to do this with Finn. That’s why they wanted you to marry him.” Jahan’s standing, shivering already, pulling the cloak around himself. “I’m not Caerisian. They won’t like that I—”
I stop his protests with my lips. I put my arms around him, kissing him until his mouth softens and relaxes. I refuse to argue with him about Finn right now. “I’m the steward of the land,” I say against his mouth. “I get to choose who I do this with.”
At least, I hope so.
“I was not the one to choose.” He’s still shivering.
“Yes. You were. You are.” And I realize I am more certain of this than of anything else in my life. “You are, Jahan Korakides.”
“El…” he says.
“It’s done. It can’t be undone.” As I say it, I begin to shiver, too. Not exactly with cold. With a kind of terrified realization.
I have wed the land.
But what does that mean?
What have I done?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I wake up with my face plastered in a pile of damp leaves. Beneath me the earth is pulsing and I seem to hear everything—the trees drinking water from the soil, a squirrel chittering above me, the press of a deer’s hooves in the forest, the cool movement of a stream. The slight breathing of someone standing over me, the rustle of leaves as they nudge me again with their foot.
I have wed the land.
I lift my head, expecting Jahan. I stretch out my arm to him. The green streaks linger on my skin, bright against the tawny-brown color of my wrists.
But it’s Rhia Knoll. She looks disgusted. And annoyed. She’s also dressed for travel—buckskin breeches, a heavy woolen coat. It boggles the mind that someone so short can look so tyrannical.
“Get up.” She throws a pile of clothing on top of me.
I sit, clutching it over my bared breasts. My ears are ringing, and my stomach aches. “Where’s Jahan?”
Rhia shrugs. “I brought you some cider and a butter pastry.”
I eye her. There’s something she’s not telling me, but my mind is too scattered to quite make sense of it. The lack of sleep and the noise of the land distract me.
The cloak—Jahan’s—slips off my shoulders, and Rhia smirks. I may as well get dressed—I’m wearing almost nothing and a chill’s starting to creep over my skin. I wriggle into the shirt and trousers she’s provided, while Rhia paces to the perimeter of the trees, looking back in the direction of the castle.
“Where did Jahan go?” I ask again. It seems impossible that he would have left, unless he was angry with me. I don’t want another argument, especially not over Finn and marriage and whatever happened last night. I just want us to be.
Rhia’s shoulders hitch. “I sent him back.” A glare in my direction. “Hurry up.”
I don’t like the look on her face. It makes all the hair on my body stand up. I quickly lace the boots and button up the coat, wrapping Jahan’s cloak over the top. It smells of him, the lingering scent of the spiced tea he drinks. Rhia throws me a hat and gloves.
A bell begins to ring, back at the castle. We both still.
It’s the warning bell. Clang-clang, clang-clang-clang. They code patterns into the rhythm, and this one is saying—
Rhia grabs my arm. “This way.”
Everyone to the castle. Danger. Everyone to the castle. Danger.
The ringing sets off an echo in my ears, leaving me wildly disoriented, so I follow Rhia up the shoulder of a hill, where a break in the trees gives us a view of the castle, smoke rising from its chimneys and the bell still clanging.
I start toward the castle.
“No,” Rhia barks. “This way.” She points up the hill.
I swing
back to face her. The pleasant lassitude I felt when I woke up is all but gone, and I am in no mood for Rhia Knoll’s dictatorial manner.
“Do you want to walk right into whatever danger we’re in?” She puts her hands on her hips. Her tone has softened, but not by much. “We go up higher. We’ll have a vantage point. We can see what’s happening.”
She points at a rock outcropping some distance beyond us. It will take us a long while to get there, and thus longer still to get back to the castle, but I hesitate all the same. I feel rather wary of putting my life in danger yet again.
Rhia sees my hesitation. Without waiting for me to agree, she turns and begins to march over the hill.
I sigh and go after her.
We hike down into a hollow between the hills, a benign mossy place that nevertheless sets my teeth on edge. The land seems to mutter around us, and I grip my witch stone, which I knotted yesterday in a cord about my neck. The faint humming I hear can’t be coming from witch hunters—can it? We clamber up the ridge. I cast a glance over my shoulder, anxious for the sight of the castle or the river, any familiar landmarks to tell me we’re circling around.
We climb higher—strange, this ridge didn’t look so high from the other hill. When we reach a rock outcropping, Rhia turns to look back at last. I clamber up beside her, panting, and turn to see.
It’s not there. The castle is not there.
Come to think of it, I haven’t heard the bell since we went down into that mossy hollow.
The river’s gone, too.
But the mountains are there. When I look to the other side of the ridge, they rise behind us, snow-peaked and sudden.
We weren’t this close to them before.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Rhia,” I say slowly.
She’s pulled out a map—to avoid looking at me. “The land shifted. It does that, this far north. It still remembers the old ways.”
“It shifted in that hollow, didn’t it?” I am pleased at how calm I keep my voice.