A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  “I am glad you have come,” said a voice like the sound the night sky would make if it could sing with the stars; deep, dark, and enigmatic beyond mortal comprehension. It was full of kindness and profound sorrow.

  “Who are you?” Heloise asked.

  “I am Princess Imoo-Alala, Daughter of the House of Night,” said the voice.

  It was the voice she had heard in her head since the morning of her fourteenth birthday. Heloise blushed, suddenly horrified that she had ever mistaken such a voice for her own. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she stood clutching her three-part branch, leaning against the door, and wishing she’d had the good sense to stay on the other side, in her own world.

  “Why do you not open your eyes?” the voice asked, but in a way that let the hearer know she knew the answer to her question already.

  “It’s—it’s all too beautiful,” Heloise admitted, suddenly ashamed of her poor, ragged dress, her dirty face and feet, her . . . her mortality. It was wrong for one like her to stand in this place. “It’ll kill me to look.”

  “If you look with your mortal eyes, perhaps,” said the voice of Princess Imoo-Alala. “Though perhaps it will only render you mad.”

  “I don’t want to go mad, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Two fingers, soft and cool, touched Heloise, one gentle fingertip pressed to each eyelid. Heloise felt her heart jolt in her breast at that touch. Then she felt a certain—she couldn’t describe it. It was as though something which had lain dormant inside her all her life suddenly stretched, yawned, and opened its eyes.

  “You may look now, child,” said Princess Imoo-Alala. “I have called up your Faerie blood.”

  The two soft fingertips left her eyelids, and Heloise stood still as if frozen for several ramming heartbeats. Then, afraid of what she might see, she opened first one eye then the other.

  “Oh,” she breathed. “It’s you.”

  Before her stood the woman she had glimpsed on the hilltop near her parents’ cottage: the woman with the onyx-black skin, with the wild mane of thundercloud hair. The gloriously tall woman, taller than any man Heloise had ever met, taller even than the beautiful Lion-Prince.

  She stood before Heloise, clad in a sleeveless gown of brilliant saffron edged in blossoms like those growing from the trees surrounding them. The hue of that gown made her skin seem even darker, even more luminous, and her eyes were the most brilliant blue, bluer than the sapphire eyes of the carved ebony lions on Benedict’s mirror.

  It was no wonder, Heloise thought suddenly, that Rufus the Red had loved her so dearly.

  Wait. Where had that thought come from, so clear in her mind, in her heart? She couldn’t explain it, and yet she knew and understood it for absolute truth.

  “I saw you before,” she whispered. “In . . . back in Canneberges.”

  “Yes,” said the princess. “In Canneberges of six hundred mortal years ago.” She bowed her head, gazing down at Heloise from her towering height. Blossoms from the tree branches draped through her hair like a veil of shining gems. “The sylph, you understand, is not bound by linear streams of time the way you are. I could not speak to it directly, but I urged it, spirit to spirit. At my urging, it caught you up briefly in its arms and carried you back to that moment long ago; that moment when I and my beloved Rufus pledged our troth and I gave to him my greatest gift . . . and committed myself to the fate before me.”

  Heloise could not speak. Her mind scrambled to comprehend that which was said to her. I traveled through time. But no, she couldn’t think about that. Rufus the Red married a Faerie princess. That she could consider, at least briefly, for she had heard of such things in stories and tales around friendly hearth fires on cold winter evenings.

  Then she thought, Benedict has Faerie blood.

  “He does indeed,” said Princess Imoo-Alala, as though reading Heloise’s thoughts. “But in the male line, the blood does not manifest in the gifts of the Fey. In the female line, however, every few generations will boast a single girl-child who has the power, or the potential power. It need only be summoned to life. As I have summoned yours. As I summoned your grandmother’s power when she was your age. And her grandmother’s before her.”

  Heloise stared at the princess. It was difficult to do anything else, for Imoo-Alala was so lovely. But as she stared, Heloise noticed something; not once, as they spoke to one another, had the princess’s mouth moved. Though they stood face-to-face, the voice Heloise heard spoke directly inside her head.

  “Why are you doing that?” Heloise asked.

  “Doing what?”

  “Talking inside my head still.”

  “Because,” said the princess, “I have no physical body with which to speak in person.”

  She was a ghost. Heloise saw this now with a clarity that might have come from her awakened Faerie vision. Or perhaps she had realized it all along but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the truth. Imoo-Alala stood before her, but her tall, powerful form was only a shade, an illusion perhaps. A trick of the many magical lights and shadows falling through the trees, shining from the blossoms.

  “Are you . . . are you dead?” Heloise whispered, wondering if she should be afraid.

  Those eyes like the morning sky overflowed suddenly with the sorrow which never fully left the princess’s face. “I am not dead,” she said. “More is the pity!”

  She extended an insubstantial phantom hand. The fingers were so long, so tapering, and each was tipped with the most delicate, polished nail shining like a small crescent moon. Heloise hesitated before accepting that hand, surprised when she did so that she felt solid substance when she knew there was nothing truly there. Perhaps it was her Faerie perceptions, or simply her own mortal brain filling in what it thought should be in place of what wasn’t.

  Or perhaps none of this was real, and she had gone utterly ever-blooming mad.

  “Walk with me,” said the princess. “I will show you this beautiful heaven to which Mother banished me for my sin. And I will take you to your sister.”

  “Evette?” Heloise gasped, her heart leaping to her throat.

  “Yes,” said Alala. “Evette, and all the lost sisters of our line. I will explain to you as much as the Law permits, and I will help you as I may.”

  They proceeded into the forest, away from the Tower door. The curtains of blossoms parted before them, and twirling petals fell at their feet, casting displays of glittering lights in their path. All was so bright with color that Heloise at first thought they moved through daylight. But the farther they walked, the more often she glimpsed the sky through the twining tree branches above, and it was a deep purple spangled with a few distant stars, which seemed to dance and whirl in their nightly patterns. So it was night. Or twilight. Or maybe the very edge of dawn.

  As they walked, Alala spoke, her deep voice filling Heloise’s head and heart.

  “I married Rufus the Red, a mortal man, against the wishes of my family. Ha! That is to put it far too lightly. When I say I married against their wishes, I mean I went against all that they hold most dear and true and Faerie. For to give my heart to a mortal was to give up my immortality. Among my people there can be no fate more dreadful nor any sin more dire.

  “Father would have killed me for my choice. In his mind it was the only right thing to do; I was doomed to die anyway, and he sought to prevent me from birthing a brood of half-blood children, mortals who might possess Faerie attributes, thus polluting the line of the Family of Night forever. Indeed, though I had no wish to die—the new mortal life granted me was so brief a span of years as it was—I could not blame Father for his fury or his actions.

  “But Uncle, at great risk to himself, stood up to Father. As a result, his face was destroyed, leaving only the skull-like visage you glimpsed in the diamond forest. A simple glamour could disguise his hideousness easily enough, but he wears his scars with pride, for he faced Father and survived, and there are few indeed who can boast as much. Uncle prevented Fa
ther from killing me, momentarily at least, and I was able to escape back into the mortal world, to the arms of my beloved.

  “Soon afterward, I am told, Mother learned of Father’s attempt on my life. In a great rage, she turned on him. The battle which ensued was mighty and dreadful; even in the mortal world, I felt the effects of it quake in the very marrow of my soul. It ended with Mother’s death—her first death, mind you, for Faerie Queens are graced with three lives and may return from death twice before their souls are taken across the Final Water. Mother died . . . and Father was imprisoned in a secret place of which even I do not know.

  “So my life was spared, and I was permitted to continue in the short existence I had chosen. I bore a daughter, then a son, then two more daughters by my husband. They retained some likeness to their Faerie kindred, being tall and strong-limbed, dark of skin and bright of eye. But they were each of them mortal, even as I had now become.

  “On the day my eldest daughter—Ayodele by name—turned eighteen and came of age to wed, we held a great dance in Canneberges. It was the last night of winter on the verge of spring’s dawning, and we wore our brightest clothes and fairest jewels—and though none of these compared to the treasures I had enjoyed in Mother’s demesne as a Princess of Night, the love I felt for my husband and my children was a greater treasure by far. Already I felt the effects of Time upon my body, the thinning of my skin, the thickening of the blood in my veins. It was a terror to me sometimes but not on that night. On that night I knew only joy, and I rejoiced in my decision to wed my love and spend my days with him and our offspring.

  “We danced that night to a mortal song, all of us joining in a series of rings, our hands clasped, our faces upraised to the sky as we sang and laughed. My eldest daughter danced in the centermost ring, held in the arms of the young man she had chosen for her husband. I saw in their eyes the same love I shared with my Rufus, and all of my heart wished for their future joy and happiness.

  “But, as you have already guessed, my wish was not to be fulfilled.

  “Before the first of our dances ended, a new song began to play. I do not know if others heard it; I do not think so. I believe it played for my ears alone. It was a song I had heard a few times before in my long, long, immortal life: the Sacrificial Dance. The one you know as Le Sacre. I recognized the pounding, pulsing, sighing beat of it, and I knew that my Family had come to Canneberges.

  “I stumbled in the dance. When Rufus asked me if I was ill, I made some excuse and slipped away into the shadows on the outskirts. I searched the night surrounding us, feeling the nearness of my Family but unable to see them.

  “Suddenly Mother’s hand slipped into mine. I knew it at once as hers; no child forgets the grip of her mother’s hand. She was alive again, reborn to her second life. How glad I was to see her! How glad and how horror-struck all in the same instant.

  “‘My daughter, my Alala,’ she said to me even as the music of the Sacrificial Dance filled the air around us. ‘I have come to rescue you.’

  “‘I’ll not return to Nivien,’ I told her, though I did not withdraw my hand from hers. ‘I will not leave my husband or my children.’

  “‘No indeed,’ said she, and her expression was one of deepest sorrow. I have never seen another face so sad, though sometimes I wonder if my own face reflects her sadness now. I saw then how she had changed. Mother was always the most beautiful of our people, a Faerie Queen incomparable among the queens of the Far World. But the sorrow of her second life had changed her. I saw that she had shaved away her glory of bountiful hair, leaving her scalp bald and even scarred where the knife had cut her skin.

  “‘No indeed,’ she said to me, ‘for you may never be what once you were, my darling child. But I will save you from the very jaws of Death. I will not let you go down to the Final Water at the end of your mortal life. I will rescue you. I will keep you forever safe. My own . . . my daughter . . .’

  “Her words struck fear into my heart, for I suspected even then what she had purposed to do. ‘Mother!’ I cried, ‘I chose this fate willingly! I am not afraid of Death, and I will gladly pay the price of my mortality.’

  “It was too late. She had slipped from my grasp, melting into the darkness. I sensed rather than saw her moving through the night toward the dancing circles. And suddenly I felt my Family around me—Mother, Uncle, Aunt, Brother, my many cousins and kindred. All were gathered, invisible to my mortal eyes. They could not disguise, however, the intensity of their souls, which shouted to me above even the swelling music of Le Sacre.

  “I knew what Le Sacre meant. I wanted to pretend otherwise, to lie to myself. But I had heard the same song used for similar purposes in the past. I myself had helped to perform it, helped to sing it in ages long forgotten.

  “Nevertheless, as I ran through the darkness toward the laughing voices of my family and the gathered celebrants of Canneberges, I lied to myself again and again.

  “It was all for nothing. Even as I came within sight of the dance—even as I gazed out from the shadows into that central circle where my oldest daughter whirled in the arms of her true love—I saw the shadows of my people surround her. The music reached its climax; my daughter turned and saw those who set upon her. I heard her scream . . .

  “The next thing I knew, I was waking in my husband’s arms. Rufus begged me to tell him what I had seen, what had frightened me, his fearless wife, so that I should fall down in a dead faint. I would not answer him. I demanded only to know where our daughter was.

  “‘Our daughters are here,’ he said, indicating my youngest two.

  “‘But where is Ayodele!’ I cried.

  “‘Who,’ said my husband, ‘is Ayodele?’

  “So I knew the worst had come to past. The Family of Night had stolen away my child, leaving behind not even the memory of her in the hearts of her family. I alone recalled her existence.

  “Such a fury came over me then, a fury I know you have felt yourself, mortal child. In this rage, I could have torn down all of Centrecœur with my bare hands! Instead I made my way to the Oakwood, which stood even then in the south of my husband’s great estate. I passed into those trees, shouting for Mother, for Uncle, for Brother, shouting their Faerie names, which I will not tell you, for they are sacred among my people. I did not care for their sacredness just then. I shouted them as loudly as I could, for all the ears of Canneberges to hear if they liked!

  “Brother appeared before me, massive and young and beautiful as ever. Looking at him, I felt the full weight of my mortality upon my shoulders, for I was no longer young, though I was still beautiful.

  “‘Why do you call my name, Sister Alala?’ he demanded.

  “‘I want my daughter back!’ I growled and wished that I still had the power to take my other shape so that I might claw him across the face. ‘Give her to me!’

  “‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘She is ours now by right.’

  “‘By what right?’ I demanded. ‘You know as well as I the Law of the Lumil Eliasul. He will not allow Faerie-kind to prey upon the mortals He so loves. You will bring His wrath down upon your heads. You will bring about the destruction of Nivien. I myself will journey to the Farthestshore, and I will plead for justice!’

  “I want to say Brother looked ashamed. I want to say that perhaps he even felt a true sorrow for me in my anguish. We had been close once, bonded in both rivalry and affection.

  “Nevertheless, he said to me only, ‘Mother has provided for a cursebreaker. The Law is satisfied.’

  “He would say no more, though I pleaded, cajoled, and threatened him with violence. At last he left me weeping in the Oakwood, alone.

  “But I knew Brother had not lied. He would never lie to me. And I knew that a cursebreaker would be found among my own children, for this is the way of Faerie and Faerie law. So I watched my son and my two daughters. I watched for the power of Nivien to manifest itself in one of them.

  “My youngest daughter, on the morning of her fourteenth bi
rthday, discovered she could understand the languages of trees. She also remembered, suddenly and painfully, the sister she had lost. She came to me at once, telling me of her new abilities and wanting to know what had become of Ayodele.

  “My youngest daughter, my sweet Adanna, my pride and my hope. What joy it was to see the powers of Nivien reborn in her body, giving her strength and purpose beyond that of her two remaining siblings! How I longed to see her break this curse, to restore my eldest daughter to me, and to spare me the fate Mother had planned . . .”

  The princess’s voice faded inside Heloise’s head as they journeyed on through the forest. Heloise, who had been so intent upon the story that she had scarcely noticed the landscape through which they passed, found her gaze now wandering. She realized that they had not progressed very far, though they had walked all the while Princess Imoo-Alala talked.

  But when Heloise turned her head to look back over her shoulder, she saw the Tower door still half hidden by the flower-laden boughs. They did not wander or journey in circles. They simply made no progress, no matter how far they went.

  It struck Heloise then that perhaps this world was very small.

  “Yes,” said Alala, once again reading her thoughts. “It is a small world indeed. Nothing more than a pocket world crafted with secret, powerful magic. Its existence depends on the curse Mother set in place, and its boundaries fit within the realm of her mind. It is a world of her imagination, you might say.”

  Heloise almost tried to understand this but thought better of it. Instead she asked the question which throughout Alala’s tale had burned upon her tongue. “Where is Evette?”

  “We are coming to her soon.”

  “And Cateline?”

  “Her as well. My Ayodele is with them too, and many more besides. You will see.”

  At this, Heloise frowned. “But you said your youngest daughter was going to break the curse that snatched away Ayodele. You said—”