Oberon's Children

by Hal Emerson

  Chapter Ten: Run

  Life went smoothly after that, now that we were all running the moonlight. The work to which we’d been set was still terribly hard, and the skin of our hands, which had begun to crack and bleed during the first few weeks, was now thick and calloused, what Tristan began to call “heel hands” to gales of laughter from Celin and Igrin, and exasperation from Faolan and me.

  Ai’Ilyn watched us carefully and still expected perfect discipline. She was clear in her instructions about when we could talk and when we had to be silent, when we had to rise and when we had to sleep. Her punishments never altered, and they were as inevitable as a force of nature, and dealt with by us in much the same way:

  You can’t fight rain, but you can stay indoors.

  Because, harsh and unyielding as she was, she was also fair. Not once did she punish someone who was innocent of wrongdoing. A few times I thought she had – until, in the middle of the punishment, the offender had begun to sputter out an apology for lying to her. Lying made it worse – to be caught doing something wrong was bad. To be caught lying about it was suicide.

  I don’t know how she knew, but she always did. She would watch us speak with those red-rimmed eyes of hers, and when we were done explaining ourselves and stood there awaiting judgment, she would very calmly stand up straight, look us up and down, and tell us exactly what she was going to do and why she was going to do it.

  Not once did she lie.

  Those of us who followed the rules lived a generally good life. Tristan was the one most often chastised, and it was a rare day when he wasn’t limping, cringing, or bruised during our daily tasks. Still, those like Faolan and me avoided most punishment. I was beaten twice over the course of that first year, both for failing to complete a task I was given, and both times the pain had only been short – a quick reminder that I was not allowed to slack off. Faolan’s two beatings had come because Ai’Ilyn had caught him lying awake at night and staring at the night sky from the corner of the room, where it was just possible to see the tops of the trees and a sliver of the moon if you craned your neck just right. When I asked him why he’d done it, he told me in his soft, intense way that he didn’t know; he’d just felt like he needed to.

  I began sleeping through the night and waking refreshed. I looked forward to the food, which now came in a few varieties, though always in a root vegetable, fruit, and nuts combination. I had never really eaten meat – at least not meat that wasn’t rotten – and so I didn’t have much to miss. Faolan said he missed it, and Brandel too, but neither complained more than a single conversation about it. What they gave us was plenty, and we thrived on it.

  I should have known it was too good to last, because it was. And one night, inevitably, it all fell apart.

  That moonrise, as we ate our breakfast – we’d all begun to call it that, even though it did not occur in the morning, if there even was morning in the Bower – I noticed that Tristan was moving slow and ungainly, almost like he’d been dipped in something sticky and was forced to make extra effort to move his limbs. When he sat down at the table in front of his bowl – in the center of his group, where he loved to be – I saw that there were deep circles under his eyes and that the corners of his mouth were turned down in an exhausted frown. His gaze, however, was just as sharp as ever.

  Every one of my senses was suddenly on guard and focused.

  No one else seemed to notice – everyone was focused on his or her food, as we often were when we woke. The novelty of being allowed to talk at meals had worn off, particularly since we only had a bare handful of time to wolf down as much as we could. We’d learned the hard way that anything left in the bowl once Ai’Ilyn came to take us away would stay there.

  Tristan took a deep breath and settled a smile on his face.

  “I have a plan.”

  Everyone stopped eating. Some of them looked up at him; others looked at each other; Faolan and I caught each other’s gaze across the table.

  “I have a plan,” he repeated, “to get us out of here.”

  His voice was breathless, the sound of a child revealing a present he’d received – one that was only for him, but that he was magnanimously willing to share with his lessers so that they too could appreciate his good fortune.

  “What do you mean?” Igrin asked, also breathless. Her blonde hair still glowed with a halo of radiance from its most recent washing on the night of the last Calling, and her green eyes were eagerly bouncing from Tristan’s eyes to his lips and back.

  “I know when we can run – I’ve figured it all out.”

  He cut his eyes to the portal door through which we could hear the movement and din of the refectory, playing up the conspiratory aspect of what he was saying. There was no real fear or worry in that look – he was too full of excitement to leave room for anything else.

  “We can’t run,” Faolan said. He was looking up at Tristan, examining him, which in and of itself meant that he’d been thrown off-guard. Rarely did Faolan spare a glance for anyone. “The Ilyn are always watching. Even if there are no other Fae around, they are always there. We are never alone.”

  Tristan smiled, and I tried not to scowl.

  “Except at night.”

  The pieces of the puzzle came together for me: his tired expression, the sluggishness of his movements. How long he’d been staying awake at night I didn’t know, but I was certain beyond a doubt that he had found a way to wander the Bower while the Fae slept.

  “After Ai’Ilyn puts us in bed, she goes away,” he continued, speaking quickly, keeping one eye on the door. “I stayed awake all night, and even went outside to check. There’s no one there. The hallways are empty. All the Fae are sleeping when we sleep!”

  His excitement had infected some of the others, and even Pinur Fe was following the boy’s words with intent interest. I felt pressure building up inside my chest and realized I had to speak, had to say something. Maybe if I spoke up I could convince the others not to do this. I took a quick breath and tried not to think about what I was doing, tried not to think about the fact I’d be revealing myself.

  “You put all of us in danger,” I said. The words sounded better than they had the first time I’d spoken; I was getting used to stringing them together, though they still sounded like half a croak. “Don’t ruin what we have.”

  He sneered at me.

  “What we have isn’t good enough for the lowest dog in my father’s house. If you’re too much of a coward, then that’s fine, Croaker.” That was his newest name for me – Celin giggled when he said it. “Stay if you want – I won’t be treated like a servant. I’m not a maid. I’m going home – and when I get there, I’m going to my father. When I tell him about what’s happened, he’ll lead his men here and kill everyone.”

  Tendrils of energy shot from my heart to the tips of my fingers.

  “Who is your father?” Igrin asked, looking awestruck.

  “Someone important,” Tristan said with a smirk, “and he’ll lead his men here by the hundreds and burn this tree and the Fae, too.”

  A dreadful cold settled over me, and suddenly my whole perspective changed. I was no longer worried about the safety of the other children or myself; I was worried for the safety of the Bower. I’d lived in the world outside where men with power took what they wanted and burned what they didn’t. I’d seen walls torn down, and once an entire city put to the torch, all of it sent up in flames. I’d smelled the terrible stench of burning flesh and heard the piercing cries of those trapped inside the blaze. One of them managed to escape in the end and run into the countryside, burning like a torch. He threw himself into the river where those who’d escaped had taken refuge. When he came out, his skin was sloughing from his body, and I could see his bones. The memory alone made my heart beat against my chest like a caged bird, and my hands were icy cold and sweating.

  Fire destroyed everything. Fire was more powerful than men could ever be. What good was the strength of the Fae against someth
ing like that? Hadn’t Ionmar said that the Fae had been driven to the Bower for safety?

  Could Tristan manage to do that to the Bower?

  “Stand.”

  All of us jumped, save Tristan, who looked like he’d been expecting an interruption all along. Ai’Ilyn had returned – breakfast was over. There was work to do.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tristan said in his baby voice. “Leh’s go-ah work!”

  Loathing, the blind, all-consuming hatred of childhood, boiled up in me so strongly that I almost flew at him. I could see myself doing it – could feel my hands grabbing his coppery cheeks and slamming his head against something – something hard. My jaw cracked, and I realized I’d been grinding my back teeth together as I watched him leave at the head of the group, the spot I usually took.

  I fell into line at the back, my mind whirring with activity.

  Faolan and I were against him, that I knew. But the others … would they listen to him? Would they help him? Igrin would. I knew that instinctively – she hung on his every word, and the one time Aelyn had teased her about it she had blushed bright red and been unable to stop giggling. She and he talked all the time. They always objected to everything with the kind of obstinacy that to this day sets my teeth on edge. Everything was always about how much better it was in the world outside the Bower, as if that mattered. Even the ones who lent a sympathetic ear – Celin, Durst, and Aelyn– knew that there was nothing that could be done. They could grouse all they wanted – it wouldn’t change where we were or what we had to do.

  But Tristan was charming, and Tristan was cunning. If he tried to go, some of them might try to go with him.

  Maybe … maybe that was okay.

  I thought about a life in the Bower without Tristan, and then expanded the thought, thinking about life in the Bower without Igrin or Celin or Durst. The rest of us were meant to be there – we knew we were. Brandel and Gwenel, for all their quirks, knew it as well as Faolan and I. Pinur Fe would look interested, but he wouldn’t leave … Aelyn would be the same. What if it was just us? What if it was just us and we did so well for Ai’Ilyn that she let us talk all the time?

  Images of talking openly with Faolan ran through my head, though no specific conversations came to mind. Images of him watching me, and me saying something that made his eyes light up like they did sometimes. It might even be nice to talk to Brandel and Gwen. My heart began to beat faster as we ascended the Bower toward the room we were working in that day, and not all of the beating was because of physical exertion. No, now there was a new thought, one that had never occurred to me before.

  I could belong not just to a place, but to a people.

  I barely saw where we were going. The smooth wooden walls and the strange Fae creatures – the creatures that were becoming less and less strange and more and more familiar and welcome – all blurred around me and seemed to cup me in an embrace. If it was just us … if it was only us and none of the others …

  But what if Tristan failed?

  The beautiful image in my mind curdled. Images of Ai’Ilyn’s snarling face when she found out that the others were gone, images of what she might do to us if she found that some of us had tried to escape, that the others had known and never tried to stop them. Would she stop us running the moonlight? Would she come up with a worse punishment?

  And what if, instead, Tristan succeeded, and he came back with fire?

  All of the original fear came back to me, flooding into my chest, wave after wave of emotion roiling up in my stomach, filling me, rising in my chest, making me choke.

  This strange kind of war consumed me the rest of the day. Every time I saw him talking to one of the others, every time I saw him smiling like he knew a secret I didn’t, I became more and more certain that I couldn’t let him go. I knew that Tristan leaving was wrong – it was wrong for him, it was wrong for us … it was wrong, wasn’t it? I was so confused. Perhaps I still am.

  At dinner, no one broached the subject, and that was when I knew that things had already been decided. Tristan ate his meal in silence, as did we all, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that somehow he’d picked his people and was making his move that night. I knew it in a kind of full-body certainty, the same way I knew that I belonged in the Bower, the same way I knew we all belonged here, for reasons I couldn’t put into words.

  I wanted to say something to Faolan, maybe even to Brandel or Gwen, but I didn’t. Some shred of self-doubt clung to me and kept me silent even when I had the chance to speak to them, to whisper something that might warn them about what I was sure I knew. But it was that certainty that I doubted. How was it possible to know something like that? How was it possible to know when I also felt so confused?

  Ai’Ilyn led us to our nestles after we ran the moonlight, and when we settled into bed I knew that I wouldn’t sleep. I had to know. Someone had to be watching in the night in case … just in case.

  When I knew she’d left, when the room was breathing deeply, I looked up over the side of my nestle and stared across the room at all the others laid out before me in their cut-out beds.

  It felt like I stayed that way for hours, watching, my heart pounding in my throat, but nothing happened. They all appeared to be asleep – how was that possible? Had I been wrong after all? I rested my chin on the edge of the wooden rectangle and continued to watch, but despite my fear and my anxiety, my heart began to slow. I caught my eyes narrowing, and then my eyelids feeling heavy. They closed once, briefly, and I pried them open with a force of will that seemed enough to move mountains, but as soon as they were wide again they began to shut. It was like lifting lead weights – there was nothing I could do. I told myself I was still awake, I told myself that I was alert, I told myself that I needed to stop them for their own good …

  I woke with a start in the middle of the night. Lightning rushed through me with crackling intensity, and I was up and looking over the spaced-out nestles before me, looking at the far end, looking at where I knew Tristan should be sleeping.

  My eyes fell on the empty nestle and it was like a bell had been rung somewhere deep in my core, a deep swelling vibration that tingled down my arms and legs.

  I was on my feet before I knew what was happening. I raced across the room in a flash of movement and stood staring down at the empty space where Tristan should have been – and the spaces empty on either side of him, where should have slept Celin and Igrin.

  I raced for the door.

  I had to stop them – I had to – maybe I could find Ai’Ilyn and warn her – maybe she already knew – maybe she’d been waiting outside the room the whole time, aware that they would try something tonight –

  There was no one in the hall: no Ilyn, no child, no single living soul.

  I ran through the Bower blindly. I took turns that looked even the smallest bit familiar, hoping against hope that I would find my way down, hoping against hope that I could get to them before … before …

  Before what? Why was I doing this?

  My mind was knotted and there was no untangling it. I heard distantly the part of me that had survived in the outside world shouting at me, yelling that I should abandon this, that I should go back to the nestle, that I should never have left, that this was insanity –

  But I raced through the Bower regardless, turning through corridors that all looked the same, trying to find the turnings that made sense, trying to move downward, always downward, toward the distant Hollowed Hall –

  I fell across a final staircase and saw the long spaced tables, the unlit braziers, and realized I had made it.

  I didn’t stop – I threw myself down the stairs, taking each step so fast that my legs were a blur, so fast that I should have tripped and should have killed myself, but all such thoughts were out of my head and I was running against some unknowable clock that was counting how long it took me to get down there, to get to Tristan and Igrin and Celin –

  I hit the level floor of the Hall and raced toward the distant op
ening that led to the field, knowing they’d gone that way. What would I do if they were gone already? What would I do if it was too late? What would I –?

  I reached the large opening and stopped where the smooth wood floor met the dense grass of the clearing. I looked out, scanning madly – and saw three distant figures. My heart leapt into my throat as I realized they were almost all the way across the field, running for the trees – they’d almost made it there –

  I was rushing through the clearing where we held the moonlight ceremony as fast as my legs could carry me. There was a stitch in my side that pulled with every gasping breath I took, and my feet and hands felt like numb, formless loads attached to the long, ungainly poles of my arms and legs. I had to get to them –

  They disappeared into the forest and I let out a sob I couldn’t understand. That other part of me was howling still, telling me to stop, shouting that it didn’t matter, that I needed to get back inside before the Ilyn found me there, before they found me trying to escape –

  “Stop!” I yelled after them, my voice a hoarse and panicked whisper. “Stop! You have to stop! Tristan – Igrin – Celin – they’ll find you! You aren’t supposed to leave!”

  Something clicked into place as I ran, some piece of the puzzle I hadn’t been able to understand until that moment. I wasn’t worried about the Ilyn finding them – I wasn’t worried about breaking Ai’Ilyn’s rules, or any of the Ilyn’s rules. I’d broken those rules before – the second full night here I’d run the moonlight ceremony against Ai’Ilyn’s direct orders, but nothing had come of it because there was a deeper set of rules, rules like the moon rising and the rain falling, and it was one of those rules that they were breaking, one of the rules that permeated the Bower like the air itself – his rules. The rules that sang to me in my blood, that told me we needed to be here because … because …

  “AHH!”

  I slapped myself across the face and the stinging pain blocked out the train of thought, derailing it and sending it crashing away. I was almost at the forest – I needed to think – how was I going to bring them back?

  “COME BACK!”

  I pulled up short, peering into the shadows of the trees, breath wheezing in and out of my chest.

  “COME BACK! YOU NEED TO COME BACK!”

  I realized I was sobbing, and the thought idly crossed my mind that I’d actually gone insane, that all of this was just the beginning of me losing my mind. Or worse – maybe there was no Bower at all, maybe I’d been insane ever since I’d arrived.

  Why are we here?

  “COME BACK!!!”

  Something ripped in my throat and I choked on a warm gush of something that tasted metallic and salty. I coughed and hacked and spat up a warm glob of bloody phlegm that slapped against a tree branch and glimmered darkly in the light of the setting moon and winking stars. I clutched a hand to my chest and gasped, then fell to one knee as my vision spun, skewing the world sideways and blacking out large circles that I couldn’t blink away.

  “Come back,” I croaked again, but the words rasped in my throat and I could only speak barely louder than a whisper.

  Movement in front of me.

  I drew in a wheezing gasp and tried to focus. I fell forward, bracing myself with my hands as I did, trying to brace the shadows that hung draped from the bows and branches of the wooden sentinels that lined the clearing.

  The movement came closer – it was a figure, oddly lopsided, with one huge shoulder that made no sense – a second figure next to it, and … a third? Somewhere behind it?

  Silvery light flared into existence from the shadows and I threw a hand up across my face to protect against the glow. I squinted and peered past it –

  There were three Ilyn before me, each carrying a squirming child.

  I blinked over and over again, some strange reaction I couldn’t control, as if my brain thought the sight I was seeing was dirt caught in my eye, not an actual representation of reality. But between the shuttering blinks of my vision, I began to put the pieces together and saw that the Ilyn out in front was carrying a boy with coppery skin and black hair. The Ilyn had red-and-white skin with pink around the eyes and across the chin –

  Ai’Ilyn carrying Tristan.

  – and behind her was an Ilyn with so much green and so little white that it almost made him look like a walking piece of the forest; he was carrying a girl with blonde hair that covered her face, the left side of which was coated in a layer of smeared red –

  Ite’Ilyn carrying Igrin.

  – and next to her on the left was another red Ilyn, this one taller with deep red skin, broad shoulders and muscled arms, carrying a darker boy –

  Zal’Ilyn carrying Celin.

  – and they all stopped when they saw me kneeling there on all fours.

  Ai’Ilyn was the first to come forward, holding the struggling Tristan over her shoulder like an awkward sack. She knelt down in front of me and held me with her alien eyes, her face curious but still threatening.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, and I knew that she was reading me – doing whatever it was that she did to see if I was telling the truth. There was no chance to escape now – there was no choice but to speak.

  “They have to come back,” I said, mind still reeling, unable to put into words all of what I was feeling and the strength with which I was convinced of it.

  “She was the one yelling,” Zal’Ilyn said, looking at me with a much more open version of the curiosity that Ai’Ilyn was showing.

  “She is the one that ran the moonlight the second night,” Ite’Ilyn said, coming up and seeing me. “I’m not surprised she’s here.”

  “Why do they have to come back?” Ai’Ilyn asked me, ignoring the others.

  “Because,” I said, all the thoughts from before crashing through my head again, none of them making sense. But I felt the rightness of it – I felt it in my gut. There was a reason we were there – there was. “Because they need to be here … they … there’s a reason. There is! But I can’t … I can’t …”

  I caught my head in my hands and shook, head to toe, unable to bring the thought fully to consciousness.

  “Has she changed?” Zal’Ilyn asked suddenly, and the alarm in his voice made me look up at him, squinting against the light of the bright moonstone he held in his palm. Celin was still and silent under the Ilyn’s other arm, and I wondered distantly what had happened to him to stop his perpetual movement.

  “No,” Ite’Ilyn replied. “But she’s gifted. She’ll be one of the first.”

  Ai’Ilyn grunted and stood up straight.

  “Follow, nestling,” she said, attempting a sneer but not quite getting there. Something else looked to be warring against her tough mask, making it hard. I fell into step behind her, in front of the other two Ilyn. They walked to the center of the field, where she turned to the others.

  “I’ll hold them,” she said simply. “Bring the others. Spread the word.”

  I stood numbly while Zal’Ilyn handed Celin to Ite’Ilyn, who took him easily, like a sack of barley. The boy didn’t protest, didn’t even squirm. It was odd, seeing him this still, seeing him so quiet. His eyes were big and wide as if he knew that he’d crossed the line he wasn’t supposed to cross and was wondering how he’d done it. Igrin looked like she’d seen a ghost. Ite’Ilyn set her on the ground so she was sitting, but continued to hold her by the collar of her shirt. She looked like a kitten grabbed by the scruff of its neck.

  I don’t know how long we were there, but it was enough time for the moon to truly set. I’d never been out this late before – and when the light dimmed I was immediately afraid that we’d miscalculated and it was the night of the new moon, the night of Gwyn ap Nudd –

  But the soft sight of the stars above me, watching coldly from high up in a cloudless sky, was enough light when added to the lit moonstone that we could see a fair distance. It was not the true darkness of the new moon – this was just a temporary twilight, a crepus
cular transition.

  Finally, there was movement at the mouth of the Hall. Zal’Ilyn had returned … and there were others with him. Children, it looked like – dozens of them with their associated Ilyn. And still more – not just dozens, hundreds, all pouring out of the Hollowed Hall with bleary eyes and stupefied expressions that turned to understanding and apprehension when they locked on us.

  Ai’Ilyn waited until they all were present, and then I realized there were others as well – Fae who had come to watch. I expected sneers or glimmers of eagerness, even open excitement, but there was none of that. As if of one mind, all of the Fae had stony masks of disapproval and disappointment set firmly in place, their grave expressions silencing all conversation.

  Last of all came Oberon.

  The Erlking looked the same as ever, and when he stood at the entrance to the Hall the Fae on either side of him parted as if he exuded a metaphysical pressure that made being too close to him painful, like heat off a fire. Robin was with him, as he always was, and the Puck crouched down by the king’s side in a squat, his golden eyes blank and dull. Even he found nothing funny in the situation, and that made me truly begin to worry.

  “We are gathered,” Oberon said quietly, though loud enough for all to hear.

  Ai’Ilyn nodded.

  “Three nestlings chose this night to run away,” she said simply, her voice emotionless and unnaturally flat. “With the help of Zal’Ilyn and Ite’Ilyn, they were saved.”

  Oberon nodded slowly, and then his eyes fell on me.

  “What about the fourth?”

  All eyes turned to me and the concentration of energy was so intense that I felt as though I might go up in flames. I tried not to cower away from the stares, but I did, unable to help myself. I ducked my chin and let my long black hair cover my face, hoping it would hide me.

  “Somehow she knew they were leaving, or at least suspected. She ran after them, shouting for them to come back. Shouting that they needed to come back. Shouting that they belonged here.”

  The way she quoted me forced me to look up, peering through the curtain of my hair. Ai’Ilyn was staring straight at Oberon, and I could tell that she expected her words to mean something. Why would they mean something?

  I shifted my gaze to the king, whose eyes had widened just enough to show surprise. After a respectful pause, during which he said nothing, Ai’Ilyn continued.

  “As such, I recommend that she not only be left unpunished, but that she be rewarded. She is not a perfect nestling – but this is only the latest in a long line of events that show great promise.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “The decision is yours,” Oberon responded. He didn’t deign to notice me now – he continued to watch Ai’Ilyn.

  “The others?”

  “You caught them?”

  “Yes, all trying to escape. All confessed … one of them very proudly.”

  “Very well. They were given warning? They were told what would happen?”

  “Yes. They were told. On more than one occasion.”

  “Then proceed. They are responsible for their actions.”

  I thought I saw a grimace pass over his face, but it must have been the shadow of the two shapes that emerged from behind him. They were two huge Urden, towering over the other Fae, their gray and green skin turning them into walking shadows. They each carried a leather whip.

  A chill ran through my body and the words Ai’Ilyn had used came back to me.

  If you run, you will be beaten within an inch of your life.

  The three runaways saw the whips as well – and finally found their voices.

  “No – no – no I didn’t – no, I didn’t run!”

  “Please,” Igrin said, dissolving into tears. “PLEASE no! I didn’t mean to do it!”

  “Stand away,” Ai’Ilyn said to me and motioned to the side. I moved numbly the way she had motioned, stumbling over my own feet and catching myself with a hasty hand. The sudden movement jarred me from my stupor, and I took my reprieve and rushed away, realizing that Ai’Ilyn had motioned me to the others of my group, standing all in front of Zal’Ilyn who must have brought them. Faolan was among them, and his wide eyes were scanning me, looking me up and down. Beside him, Brandel and Gwen were staring with open mouths and horrified looks as the Urden crossed the field.

  “They won’t do it,” Brandel whispered, completely unaware he’d spoken out loud. “They won’t – no, they won’t.”

  I slid into the last place on the line, next to Pinur Fe whose bulk blocked me from the others. All of the other children were watching too, but I saw grim looks on some of their faces and realized they were the older children, those who looked like they’d been here for some number of years. They weren’t looking away, and they weren’t surprised.

  “Give the whips to me.”

  I turned back to see the Urden had reached Ai’Ilyn and Ite’Ilyn, both of whom were fighting against the children they held in their hands. Panic had overtaken Celin and Igrin completely, whom Ite’Ilyn held, and they were both screaming and crying, sounds that seemed both far too loud and terribly muted in the Bower field.

  “You cannot do this to us! I am the son of a lord – you will regret your actions!”

  Tristan was fighting against Ai’Ilyn’s grip, but fighting in an effort to strike her, not to get free. She was holding him with both hands, almost embracing him, trapping his hands and legs against her body. His face was red and his eyes were wide; his lips were pulled back and he was sneering and spitting, shouting over and over again that they couldn’t do this, that he would go to his father and bring back men and fire and burn them all.

  One of the Urden picked up the boy by his shirt, cutting off his words in an indignant squawk as the fabric cut off his breathing. The gray-green Fae passed Ai’Ilyn the whip it carried. The second Urden went to Ite’Ilyn and calmly took the other two children, holding them just as easily. Ite’Ilyn walked away into the crowd as soon as the transaction had taken place, but Ai’Ilyn stayed where she was.

  The two Urden turned so that they were facing the crowd of gathered Fae and children. Without hurry or any sense of their actions besides that they were doing them, the two giants held up the children so that their backs were to the gathered crowd and their feet were just barely touching the ground.

  Ai’Ilyn came forward, rolling the leather whip in her hands. Her red eyes were focused on the black material with such intensity she could have been trying to memorize the contours of it.

  Abruptly, she dropped the end of the whip, turned, and cracked it out.

  The sound of it exploded across the clearing, accompanied by three shrill cries of terror, all combining in an echo that bounced off the high root-walls around us and assaulted us like a physical blow. We all cringed back as if it were us that had been whipped. It was Igrin who received that first blow – I remember seeing not the whip but the evidence of the strike. She was shaking, trying to get her footing, and a deep rent had appeared in her shirt where the whip had ripped through the fabric and struck a red line across her back.

  Ai’Ilyn pulled the whip back and cracked it again, this time aiming at Celin. He cried out in pain as the whip slashed through the thin Caelyr fabric and struck the skin of his back.

  “You were warned,” Ai’Ilyn said, her face stony but lit from beneath by the glow of anger. “You were warned repeatedly.”

  The Ilyn cracked the whip again, and another line of bright red skin appeared in the ripped Caelyr clothing, this time on Tristan’s back.

  “You cannot leave,” she continued, slashing another rent into Igrin’s back. “You cannot – you cannot.”

  Another crack – a new line of pain across Celin’s back, leaving a torn ‘x’ in the back of his shirt and angry red weals puffing up his skin.

  “You must learn that there are consequences to your actions.”

  Tristan cried out in pain.

  “You were told what would happen – now it is happening.�
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  Igrin cried out and broke down in the Urden’s hand, hanging limply as she sobbed. I felt bile rise up in the back of my throat.

  “You are not above the way the world works.”

  Celin sobbed a choking cry.

  “You cannot choose to participate in only what you like.”

  Tristan shouted.

  “You were given rules, and you have broken them.”

  Igrin cried.

  “I hope you learn.”

  Celin howled.

  “I really hope you do.”

  It continued like that, over and over again. I couldn’t look away, though I wanted to. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – I couldn’t believe the brutality being shown to children.

  And yet I could. I’d seen this done in the world outside. I’d seen much worse than this … I’d seen what the world itself did. I saw what people did to each other. And in the end, life always won. In the end, the world did what it did, and you suffered through it. Wasn’t that what these three were learning? Wasn’t that a rule they’d never mistake again?

  But if it was good, why did I feel so sick watching it happen? And if it was bad, then why was it necessary?

  Finally, Ai’Ilyn dropped the lash.

  Caelyr came forward out of the shadows. I don’t know how long they’d been waiting there in the opening of the Hollowed Hall, but when the whipping was over they moved into action immediately. Two of them came to each of the children directly, and I felt a stupid kind of primal fear tell me that they were going to eat them, that this was what the final punishment would be; but all they did was pick them up, already tying off-white pieces of cloth around their torn backs, staunching the trickle of blood that now flowed from the few weals that had gone deeper and ripped the skin instead of bruising it.

  They took them away, all alive and conscious and sobbing uncontrollably. I lost sight of them as the Caelyr retreated into the crowd, but the sound of them echoed in the clearing for a long time.

  When they had all gone into the Hollowed Hall, Oberon turned and disappeared without a word. Robin stood slowly, looking with unfocused eyes at the spot where the whipping had occurred, and then he disappeared into the shadows too. The other Fae left after them, filing back into the Hall with a simple shuffling stride that held a strange measure of contemplation in it. Zal’Ilyn motioned for us to go in as well, but then stopped me before I could join the others.

  I looked up at him and he slowly motioned with his chin toward the center of the field. I looked that way and saw Ai’Ilyn standing there, slowly curling the whip in her hand. She grabbed the leather hard, squeezing as though it were a living thing and she was pressing the life out of it, and then slowly pulled it in a tight circle around her shoulder and elbow before starting the process again. The others left and I was alone with her in the field, alone and unsure of both myself and her.

  Should I have helped them escape after all?

  “You are to be rewarded.”

  Ai’Ilyn’s voice was soft and quiet, but the sound of it snapped at me as if she’d decided to strike me too. She didn’t look at up, though; she just continued coiling the whip, running her hand down the leather, grasping it tight enough to make her knuckles strain against her red-tinged skin, and then wrapping it around her shoulder and elbow.

  “You have one question,” she continued. “Any that you want. I would offer you more, but …”

  She stopped and seemed to come back to herself. Her back stiffened and she turned to look at me, her eyes scanning me, piercing me, trying to see what I was thinking. I can quite honestly say that I was in shock. I didn’t know what to think – didn’t even know if I could think.

  She spoke after a long pause, and again the words seemed unnaturally large and loud in the clearing. “Ask your question.”

  “Why can’t we leave?”

  Her expression never changed, but she stopped coiling the whip. Her hand had grasped the end of it now, the braided bit that gave it just enough weight to make it nearly deadly. Out of nowhere, heat rushed through me. I couldn’t understand what was going on or even where I was. I felt as though I’d been disassociated from my body.

  “Why can’t we leave?”

  Ai’Ilyn watched me for a long time, the corners of her mouth turned down in a frown and her thin nostrils flared. It was an ugly look, but somehow it turned her from the distant, strange creature I knew her to be into something almost human. Something about that frown and that glint in her eye, a look that swirled together anger and disappointment into a mask of resignation, made her human to me, if just for that second.

  “Because it’s my job to keep you alive. And here … here you’ll live.”

  She coiled the final length of rope around the circle of elbow and shoulder, and raised the whip to point toward the Bower.

  “Time for sleep; tomorrow is a full night, as always.”

  But I didn’t go.

  “You need to watch him,” I found myself saying. “He won’t stop.”

  “He will.” She looked completely certain, and that brought back the flutterings of fear. I had to convince her.

  “You need to watch him,” I repeated. I knew I was crossing a line, but knew too this was the only time I’d be allowed to say any of this. “He isn’t like the rest of us, he’s darker. He’s not just misbehaving, he really wants to hurt things and hurt us –”

  “Stop speaking,” she said with the tone of firm finality. I closed my mouth with a snap and stood there, trembling, watching the whip in her hand. She seemed to consider it as well, drawn to look at it by the strength of my own concentration. She looked back at me.

  “We’ve dealt with his kind before. Rare, but not unknown. We are always watching, and it is not your concern. Go to sleep – I will see you when the moon rises.”

  I went without protest then, the momentary strength gone out of me. She said she had it under control – maybe she did. Maybe she really had dealt with Tristans before. I had to trust her.

  What other choice did I have?