A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  She didn’t say, “After all, I cannot journey with you into the worlds beyond.” But it was there in her eyes.

  Evette was the only person Heloise had told of her impending departure. Everyone else . . . well, she didn’t see much point. They wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t want to understand. They would learn soon enough, and Evette would smooth things over as only Evette could. After all, it wouldn’t be for very long. Heloise would return in two years, no more.

  So she smiled at Evette and said, “I hope you’ll take the job then. I hope you’ll enjoy working at the Great House . . . even if you have to share a room with Alphonsine.”

  “Lights Above us!” Evette gasped, and her eyes sparkled momentarily with mischief. “Do you realize we’re probably related to Alphonsine now? Our great-aunt just married her grandfather, so that makes us—”

  “I don’t want to know!” Heloise declared, throwing up her hands. Then she darted away and grabbed Clovis for a dance. After him she found Clement and then Clotaire. Last of all she took baby Clive from Meme’s arms and swung him about on her skinny hip while he giggled and shrieked with delight and Meme called out warnings for her to take more care.

  This dance complete, she deposited Clive back in her mother’s arms, paused . . . then, on impulse, bent and kissed her mother’s cheek. Meme blinked, startled. But after a brief hesitation she smiled and patted Heloise’s head. “Madcap girl,” she said, and there may have even been a trace of fondness in her voice.

  Before she could disgrace herself with tears, Heloise laughed as wildly as a sylph and darted away. She passed through the dancers, quite close to Cateline and her new husband, who held each other close and didn’t try to dance the wild paces of the young folk around them. She passed near her Papa and right by Evette, who had graciously agreed to give Gy Pigman a dance.

  Evette caught Heloise’s eye. Just for an instant. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t nod or smile. She simply looked. That was all the goodbye they would have.

  For that’s what this day was, Heloise thought as she left the cottage yard and forded the stream. While the wedding music played brightly behind her, she climbed the hill to the little graveyard and, from that vantage, paused to look back. Today was a day of goodbyes. Nothing public. Nothing spoken and nothing drawn out. She couldn’t bear it and feared that if she tried, she would never actually leave.

  At Hélène’s grave she knelt and placed her hand on the spot where the three-part branch was buried. This was as close to an embrace as she could come. Then she stood and descended the hill on the far side and entered the field beyond. She stepped through the rows of newly planted flax and saw signs of its growth. She progressed on through the bogs and took the road, the familiar road that would lead her up to the Oakwood. Only this time she carried no basket or peeling knife. She carried nothing at all. Her feet were bare, her hair was loose, and she would enter the Between as poor and shabby as ever a mortal could be. She hoped it would be enough.

  The sound of pounding hooves caught her ear. Heloise smiled even before she looked around, a silly, small, foolish smile.

  The lord of the estate’s son would not attend a peasant’s wedding. But he would have received an invitation in the form of some shuffling farm boy’s verbal message delivered at the scullery door and conveyed to him by the housekeeper or bailiff if they deemed it important enough.

  Heloise had wondered if Benedict would receive his invitation. She turned and shaded her eyes to watch the horseman approach. She saw the feathers and the one broken feather-stump in his cap. He spotted her and lifted a hand to wave.

  The horse slowed and tossed its head as Benedict reined it in. He dismounted, almost losing his hat in the process, and stood rather awkwardly before her. “I—I’m sorry I didn’t come to the wedding,” he said. “I would have, you know, but I didn’t think it would, well . . .”

  “It’s all right,” Heloise said, scowling to disguise her smile. “They managed to get married without you, not to fear.”

  “Oh, well, it’s not like I thought . . .” His voice trailed off, and he scratched at his ear uncomfortably. “I haven’t seen you since that day. How . . . how are you?”

  “Well enough,” said Heloise. “How are your innards?”

  “Much better!” Benedict smiled ruefully. “You were right, of course. I think I’ve made steady improvement these last few days of not taking Doctor Dupont’s medicine. A more solid diet has helped as well, I should think. I feel I might even be, as it were, on the mend.”

  It wasn’t entirely true, and he knew it; Heloise saw it in his eyes. The Winter Fever still held him, deep inside. It wasn’t gone entirely, and one day it would return in full strength. But one day might be many years down the road. Who could say what would happen in the meanwhile?

  “I’m going away,” Heloise said suddenly, surprising herself. Until she said it, she hadn’t known she was going to tell Benedict about her departure.

  “Away?” he repeated. “Away where?”

  So she told him about the Dame of the Haven. She told him about her Faerie powers and about the gates that remained open to this world all around the estate. “I’ll return soon enough, and then I’ll guard the gates,” she said. “I’ll make certain we’re not plagued with Faerie beasts and the like, and . . . and I’ll protect Canneberges. And the kingdom.”

  “When are you leaving?” Benedict asked.

  “Right now.” Heloise nodded her head in the direction of the Oakwood. “I’m to meet the Dame up there by sundown. She will lead me to the Haven. She says it will be a long journey but that time will not matter. And she says my training will take a long while but that I’ll be back here in no more than two years as mortals count.” She ducked her chin but looked up at Benedict from beneath her snarl of curls. “Two years isn’t so long as all that.”

  Benedict nodded. His face was very pale under his pale hair. “May I escort you to the wood?” he asked.

  “Um. Yes?”

  So Benedict, leading his horse, fell in alongside Heloise, and they walked together up the road, taking their time and saying little. At one point he told her that he planned to return to university in the fall, so long as his health continued to improve. At another point Heloise asked him what the guardsmen had done following the events with the sylph and Doctor Dupont. At this Benedict laughed.

  “I think they’ve decided the wind-spirit never happened. I don’t know whether they discussed it among themselves or if each came to the same conclusion on his own. One way or the other, no one is talking about it! As far as the folk of Canneberges are concerned, Faeries and other worlds can remain in stories, at least for the time being.”

  “For the time being,” Heloise murmured, thinking about what the Dame had said of the open gates and the various beings of the Far World eager to find access to the mortal realms. She wondered how long “the time being” could last.

  They came to the edge of the Oakwood. Though she did not ask him to, Benedict stopped. He would not follow her inside. This was to be her adventure and hers alone.

  “Well,” said Heloise and wondered what to do with her hands and elbows. This was why she’d avoided goodbyes with her family. It was just too . . . awkward. And a little bit unbearable. “I wish you all the best, Master Benedict.”

  He looked at her. That is, he didn’t merely look at her—he looked at her. Rather boldly, she thought afterwards, particularly coming from him. His eyes were full of things he wanted to say. Things she hoped he wouldn’t say, things she didn’t think she was ready to hear or ready to understand.

  But then he smiled and took the peacock-feathered hat from his head. To her surprise, he swept her a low and very elegant bow. “May the Lights shine bright upon your path,” he said.

  She didn’t wait for anything more, nor did she try to speak. She turned on heel and darted into the welcoming, familiar shadows of the Oakwood, leaving him and his horse and his hat behind. If there were tears in her eyes, she i
gnored them, so they might as well never have been.

  It was strange, walking these familiar paths. She knew the Oakwood so well, had come here so many times alone or with her brothers. If anything, she felt this might be the most painful goodbye. “But it’s just two years,” she said aloud. “It’s just two years, and then I’ll be back. And I’ll take care of . . .”

  A shiver ran through the forest, touching her skin and shuddering down her spine. She felt a presence. A huge, dark, angry presence. Very near, in the shadows. Heloise kept walking, following the path into the deeper reaches of the Oakwood. Still the presence pursued, close and watching her. She knew who it was, but she didn’t like to acknowledge this. Acknowledging him would be to acknowledge fear. This was a concession she could not make, not now, not after everything she’d been through.

  So she drew long breaths and let them out slowly as she walked, and she pretended she didn’t wish for her peeling knife.

  At last she came to a place where the path faded away and only thick, untamed forest stood before her. She had come here many times in her life, always to turn back, to return home. Now she would wait for the Dame, and she would continue out of this wood and into another, much greater Wood.

  The lurking presence was near. No breath, no warmth, nothing to give him away. But he was near all the same.

  “Prince of Night,” Heloise said, “why are you still in Canneberges?”

  The sound of footsteps, soft but pronounced, filled her ears. The Lion-Prince, wearing his man’s form, stepped out from among the trees before her where only shadows had loomed a moment ago. He wore fine garments of a strange cut and design, more elegant than anything Heloise had ever seen from her own world, even Benedict’s jackets and embroidered cloaks. But his hair was loose, not tied back in the usual elegant queue. It fell in long braids over his shoulders, past his waist. His sky-colored eyes gleamed at her from the night blackness of his face.

  “Cursebreaker,” he said, approaching her. Through Heloise’s mind flashed the knowledge that with the curse broken and the law satisfied, he no longer had any reason not to kill her. She could not help herself; she cast about, searching for a branch she might take up in her hands, some sort of weapon. She saw nothing, nothing that would serve against so formidable an opponent. So instead she drew herself up as tall as she dared, squared her shoulders, and looked him in the eye.

  The Lion-Prince stopped. He stood but three long strides away from her, and she could see every detail of his face, so clear, so real. More real than all the reality around them, and far more beautiful. Though she looked for it, she saw no death in his expression, not even her own.

  “Cursebreaker,” he said again, “you are stronger than we thought.”

  She found her voice with difficulty, and still it creaked as it came up through her throat. “So I’ve been told.”

  “You have liberated Sister,” he said. “You freed her according to her long sought-after wish.”

  Heloise nodded. Her heart rammed like madness itself in her throat. She hoped he could not see the pulse of it from where he stood. He probably sensed it though, like a cat senses the mouse’s fear.

  But her heartbeat sped even faster when, to her tremendous surprise, the Lion-Prince suddenly swept her a bow. It was completely different from Benedict’s bow. This was a wild movement like a wildcat crouching in respectful submission before the pride master. His hair brushed the ground, and the cloak he wore swept back like a bird’s great wings. It was the most graceful, the most elegant gesture Heloise had ever before witnessed, and it completely took her aback.

  “I loved Sister,” the prince said even as he straightened. “It pained me to see her in pain. So, cursebreaker, for the sake of Princess Imoo-Alala, I thank you for your deeds.”

  Heloise could not speak. She was fairly certain that if she tried she would probably croak or giggle or do something absolutely appalling for which she would never forgive herself. It was all she could do to stand there large-eyed and silent.

  “As a token of gratitude,” the Lion-Prince continued, his rich voice filling all that space around them, “I wish to give you a gift: my name. I entrust it to you along with my respect. I am the Prince of Night, Son of Nivien, firstborn of Mother and Father. I am Imoo-Tau.”

  A sacred gift. Heloise, ignorant though she was of the doings beyond her world, knew at once that she could not allow such a moment to pass without returning some gesture of her own. She rather doubted the Dame of the Haven would approve of her giving her name so readily, but what else could she do? Before she could talk herself out of it, she said, “I am Heloise. Heloise Oakwoman.”

  She blinked, startled at herself; startled at the ease with which Oakwoman slipped out in place of Flaxman. But here, standing among her own oak trees in her own beloved Oakwood, how could she give him any other name? After all, he had entrusted her with his. She must give him the truth, for he would recognize a lie.

  “Heloise Oakwoman.” The prince spoke the name slowly. It was as strange to him as Imoo-Tau was to her. “Heloise Oakwoman, I thank you for your gift. Now I must tell you that I will never forget the crime you have committed. I swear upon the lost life of my mother that I will hunt you down. I will find you again one day, and I will make you suffer for what you have done.”

  “What?” Heloise drew back, her eyes flashing. “What do you mean? I thought—I thought you wanted your sister saved! You—didn’t you—I mean—”

  The Lion-Prince growled. The sound was completely animal, full of power, full of the promised doom he had spoken. He took a step toward her, covering that already small distance. “You have broken Mother’s curse,” he said, and he was more lion now than man, and equally magnificent. “In so doing, you have destroyed the second of her three lives. For this I can never forgive you. For this you must pay the price. Not today. Perhaps tomorrow. Someday, for certain, Heloise Oakwoman. Someday, sooner than you think, you will find me at your door. And then we will see just how strong you are.”

  He leaped. For a terrifying heartbeat, Heloise thought he sprang at her. Instead, transforming mid-air into his leonine form, Prince Imoo-Tau passed over her head and darted away, his massive bulk disappearing into the thick-grown foliage without a sound, as though he were made of no more than smoke or shadow. The last she heard of him was the echo of his growl, which rang in her ears for some minutes and haunted her memory for many nights.

  Heloise stood beneath her oaks at the end of the path and stared in the direction he had gone. His final words rang clear in her memory, terrible words full of terrible accusation.

  She whispered softly, as though speaking a confession, “I killed Mother.”

  The world was silent around her. In her chest she felt her heart beat a steady rhythm. It was like the beat of the Le Sacre drum.

  She was a murderer, a cold-blooded killer, and yet here she stood. What did she hope for? Some absolution? Some softly spoken promise that she’d had no other choice, that she hadn’t known what it was she did when she did it?

  But nothing would change the truth. Nothing ever could.

  “She has three lives,” Heloise whispered, remembering what Princess Alala had told her in the pocket world. “She will return one day.”

  Did that, even for a moment, clear Heloise’s name of the charge laid at her door?

  Heloise drew herself up. She felt the enormity of her actions like a burden on her shoulders, but she was strong. She knew she was strong. So she drew herself up as tall as possible, supporting that burden and setting her jaw. “I will never kill again,” she said. “I vow upon the blood of Nivien in my veins. I vow upon the life of Mother, which I took, the life of Alala, which I freed. I vow on the sisters of my line who died by my deed—I will never kill again.”

  The Wood heard her. She felt its listening ears pricked. More than that, she felt her own blood and spirit respond to the vow even as it fell from her lips. She wondered suddenly what the Dame would say to such rash declarations
. She wondered what repercussions vowing on Faerie blood might entail.

  None of this mattered. Heloise faced her actions, faced her response, and she knew she could do nothing less. She had dealt enough death in her short life, and she would deal no more.

  It seemed a long while that she waited for sundown, waited for the Dame to arrive. But this may have been only an impression, not the truth. At last, even as the sun set on Canneberges . . .

  . . . even as the dancers at the wedding grew tired and the celebrants departed . . .

  . . . even as Cateline and her miller slowly made their way to their new life, their new home . . .

  . . . even as Meme asked Evette where Heloise had gone off to, and Evette drew a long breath and said, “Well . . .”

  . . . even as Master Benedict de Cœur pulled off his riding boots, sat down at his desk, and drew forth a sheet of paper full of Corrilondian verbs . . .

  . . . the Dame of the Haven appeared in the Oakwood. She stepped from a path Heloise had not seen, a path full of sunlight, though Heloise stood in the gloom of deepening twilight and forest shadows.

  “Are you ready to begin?” the Dame asked.

  “Yes,” said Heloise. “I am ready.”

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  Anne Elisabeth Stengl makes her home in North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, Rohan, a kindle of kitties, and one long-suffering dog. When she’s not writing, she enjoys Shakespeare, opera, and tea, and practices piano, painting, and pastry baking. Her novel Starflower was awarded the 2013 Clive Staples Award, and her novels Heartless, Veiled Rose, and Dragonwitch have each been honored with a Christy Award.

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