“We were days in the pit,” the girl repeats, sharper this time, “and then days in the manor house before you could be bothered to turn up.”
“Bothered?” I flinch. “No, it wasn’t like that! It — ”
“And now you don’t even believe me.” The green girl turns away. “You don’t think any of this is true.”
I plan carefully what I want to say, even though I’m quiet for too long. “It’s a lot to consider, is all. But I know you . . . your kind, they do not lie.”
The girl’s lips twitch, like she’s trying not to smile. “That’s right. They don’t. They hate lies.”
“How do you know it’s me? I’m different from when I was a baby.”
“You heard me calling from the pit, didn’t you?” the green girl asks. “When no one else in all of this place did? Nobody else heard me because no one else could.”
The rotty smell hangs like a fog. Glory thought the crying was a tale. Believing was hard, so she decided not to. I scratch at my leg, where it stings a little. Last summer, Glory would have believed. Even if she hadn’t heard the crying herself. She’d have taken my word for it and we would be here together.
“Think on it. Just do it quickly. We’ll take sick from the salt and iron if we stay away from the mountain too long.” The green girl nods at Martin on the pallet. “He’ll get the worst of it. This is his first time out. He hasn’t built up defenses. There’s a chance he could die.”
“Then why did his ma and da let him come with you?”
“He begged them. He wanted to play the hero. Besides, they were sure you’d come right away.” She sighs. “I promised to keep him safe.”
Martin looks so small curled there. I can’t be the one to cause him any suffering. He’s here because of me, whether I’m his sister or not. “I’ll think on it. I promise. But if I stay, will you grant me the favor that you owe? For saving you and Martin from the pit?”
“Only you didn’t save us, did you? The reeve’s daughter is the one who brought the harvesters. She brought the rope. It’s she who gets the favor, if there’s a favor to be granted.”
Glory’s favor will have something to do with being pretty. If I want her to be the kind of friend she used to be, I’ll have to make it up to her some other way. All on my own.
“You going to tell them?” The green girl gestures to the big bed.
I touch the fiery line of raw skin across my collar. My ma and da will not hesitate to fetch the reeve if I repeat any of this. They cannot be seen to coddle me. Not after baby Hugh.
They’re not your real parents.
“No,” I tell her.
“Good. Best to say nothing till you’ve decided whether to go away under the mountain or stay here.” The girl smiles shyly. “I hope you decide to go home, though. All of us will be so much happier.”
As the green glow fades, I curl up tight on the bench for a long time in the cool darkness, thinking on what she said, like I promised. I may tell stories, but I’m no liar. The pig bite on my leg aches in dull waves as if it’s trying to get me to think of nothing but Mother, but I pay it no mind. I could be anyone’s baby, and Those Good People do not lie.
I just might be the lost princess of the kingdom under the mountain.
The haze of dawn promises a blister of a day. My head aches from directing the boy-thing’s glamour, but at least he didn’t wake up and catch me at it. If he knew I was trying to convince Agnes to believe, to nudge her with something that isn’t mine to use, he would do things to make this ma and da ask questions no one could answer. He would cause them to turn us out.
He might do it anyway. That would be most pleasing to those like him who find struggle amusing, and he is here for no other reason.
Agnes kneels by the fire to eat her porridge, but before she can begin, this ma bids her to go pick beans for us. Beans touch neither sun nor earth and grow in their own kingdom hidden from the light. They keep me bound while they keep me alive.
Before long, Agnes brings the beans in her apron. The boy-thing lifts an eyebrow, and this ma is glamoured enough that she portions them out unevenly. Agnes pauses in front of us with two unequal shares. She will see them as the same, and she will give the bigger one to him. She lingers over the idea of a brother and he knows this. He won’t even eat what she gives him, but he does not want me to have enough.
I say nothing. If she even suspects, all is lost.
But Agnes blinks, touches the back of her leg, then shakes beans from one palm to the other till the shares are even. She motions for each of us to hold out cupped hands.
The boy-thing’s eyes narrow.
“Do you have enough to eat, Green Agnes?” this ma asks, and the gentleness of it, the kindness, sets my roots in deeper.
I hold up my hands and smile and nod. She pets my hair and bustles away, calling for this da who is in the yard trying to find the pig.
That pig has no liking for me, though I’ve done it no ill.
Agnes crouches by the fire, eating her porridge with her fingers. “If he is my brother, and if I am one of your kind, surely I can know his name. Yours as well. Your real names.”
My mouth falls open. It’s like she shoved an apple there.
“I know why you gave my parents false names,” Agnes goes on, and there’s a smugness in her voice, like she’s patting herself on the back. “You don’t want them to be able to ask a favor. But I can know. Can I not?”
No. No. Everything is in motion. The first thing of hers is already mine. I have taken Agnes from her. But none of it will matter if she does not believe. All she has to do to ruin everything is shrug and ignore me. All she must do is let All Hallow’s Eve come and go.
I’ve been quiet too long. My mouth open and flapping. Already a veil is falling over her, and she is making a decision about me. About the story I’m telling her.
“Senna.” It’s out before I can call it back. Before I can reclaim it and keep it where I can protect it. The last of me, before I made that foolish, foolish bargain.
Agnes licks the porridge off her fingers. Every time I decide she is the gods’ greatest fool, she does something that makes me wonder just how clever she is. She turns to the boy-thing and asks, “What about you?”
He buzzes a series of swears that make me cringe, but he says them with a smile, one Agnes cannot help but return because she has no idea that she’s just been insulted.
“He hasn’t learned your tongue,” I tell her. “Don’t worry, though. Once you’re under the mountain, you’ll be able to understand each other just fine.”
“But you and I have no trouble — ”
“It’s best if you keep calling him Martin,” I cut in. “He likes the name. He says it makes him feel more like your brother. You lost one brother named Martin. Now you have another.”
It works like I mean it to and Agnes drifts away on it, her face going vacant like a cloudless sky. I have survived under the mountain by listening especially well when voices are lowered. I’ve secured this chance to leave because I’m willing to do what’s necessary, never mind the cost.
The boy-thing makes a cackle-cough sound, but all his glamour can do is make things seem like something else. He cannot change one thing into another, he cannot speak, and he cannot simply snatch me back into the Otherworld. Not until All Hallow’s Eve. Not unless I fail.
There are conditions, after all.
“Senna.” Agnes repeats my name, and in a blink it’s like this house isn’t here, nor this village. None of these things that have been built by those who came after us. It’s a meadow again like I remember, and Acatica is calling to me and we are running and laughing with all the day ahead of us. “It’s a strange name. But I like it. It makes me think of trees on a blowy day. What sort of name is it?”
“An old name.” Dust now. Like everything that once lived here. “A very old one.”
“Are you my sister?” Agnes asks hopefully. “Like Martin is my brother?”
&nbs
p; “More . . . a friend of the family. Someone who’d like nothing better than to help you make your way under the mountain.”
“You should tell Ma you can talk,” Agnes says, as this ma is coming back in with a bucket of water. “Ma, guess what? The green girl can talk !”
This ma gives her a stern look. “No stories, Agnes Walter.”
Agnes turns to me, waiting, but I slit open another pod with my thumbnail and pry out the beans.
“Go ahead. Show Ma.” Agnes says it gentle and encouraging.
“Enough.” This ma is different from my last ma, but a ma voice is a ma voice.
“But she can!” Agnes flings her hands around like she’s trying to say something, but it must be caught in midair. “Like we can. With words. Words we know!”
“Stop it!” This ma is tossing wilted greens into the bucket she just emptied. “Don’t you think that if she could talk, she’d tell us who and where her parents are?”
I smile outright because I already know where my parents are. They are right here, preparing to harvest wheat. This ma is speaking of my old parents, though. The lord of this place will never find them. He would have to dig for a thousand years.
“If she could speak, she’d have done so when Glory Miller first found her in the wolf pit.” This ma shoves the bucket of scraps at Agnes. “Mother hasn’t come along this morning. Go put that out for her, and I’d best not hear any more of this rubbish again.”
Agnes starts to say something. It comes out all in a hash and she presses both hands against her face. Then she hangs her head and shuffles out the door. I curse myself. I should have jumped up the moment I saw this ma with the bucket. Agnes loves that pig dearly. But no hurry. Soon enough that chore will be mine as well. So will the pig, and it won’t be a pet much longer.
There’s a dull chime from outside as Agnes comes back in. She turns to me while securing her hood. “That’s the horn. We have to go. Are you ready?”
“Don’t be foolish,” says this da from the doorway. “Green Agnes and Martin will be staying here today. They’ve been through a lot. They need their rest.”
“What?” Agnes’s round face is turning red. “But it’s the harvest and no one — ”
This da grabs her by the arm and marches her outside. She stops shouting as soon as they leave because he is talking now, reminding her that we are guests and she won’t have any harsh words for us. This ma puts a hand on my cheek. Her skin is rough but I’m melting beneath it, sniffling, because it’s been a thousand years and more since someone has touched me with anything like kindness.
“Oh, sweeting, don’t cry.” This ma wipes my tears with her sleeve and that makes me weep all the more. “Stay close to the house, all right? Don’t lift a finger. If you need anything, Fair Agnes will be along at midday to see to the evening meal.”
I nod. This ma hovers her arms around me for a hug, not sure what I’ll do if she pulls me close. I can’t help it. I fling myself up and into her arms and I have her, I have a ma again, and I might never let her go.
Over her shoulder, I catch sight of the boy-thing on the bench. He lifts a single eyebrow, taunting, but I don’t open my arms until that dratted horn sounds again and she’s gone, trundling in her too-big leather shoes, promising she’ll try to convince the reeve to let her come home early to check on us.
The moment we’re alone, the boy-thing is off the bench and into the yard. He has no liking for being indoors, but he’s also toying with me. With glamour, he can make anything seem like anything else. He can put ideas into people’s heads with just enough of a whisper that it’s like the thought was their very own.
I can do none of those things, and he will win the bargain.
All Hallow’s Eve will come and I will not have done what I must do. He will wring every drop of misery he can out of me and Agnes both, and then he will snatch me away, back to the kingdom of the fair folk under the mountain. There will be no exchange and I will look upon the rats with envy.
I peek out the front door. The boy-thing is far off down the yard, poking around the shed where this da was looking for the pig earlier today. Then I go to the shelf at the back of the house and pull down a parcel. Two needles, poorly forged but iron nonetheless.
There are conditions, but one of them is not that I must play fair.
The story is going like this: Those Good People do not lie. Senna said I was the lost princess under the mountain. I was brought to my parents as a foundling, and it’s never sat right with the Woolpit mas. There’s no reason it’s not true, and several reasons it is. The end must be that I truly am the lost princess under the mountain.
It seems like forever before it’s midday and the reeve blows his horn. The grown-ups head for their bread and ale and I set off for home to put on the supper. I still don’t see why Senna can’t put the pot of beans on the fire, since she’s not being made to help with the harvest or do anything, really. I asked Ma, but all I got was a slap across the mouth and a warning not to be discourteous to our guests.
A princess under the mountain would never do chores.
There’s a smear of green in the doorway of my house. Senna is sitting on the step, her head in her hands, shiny hair spilling across her shoulders.
“This is worse than I thought,” she whispers, and it’s hoarse and helpless and she says it to the ground just like I did, trying to get the words out to Glory’s ma about baby Hugh. I wriggle past her into the house and bite back a shriek.
Martin is folded in a pale, twitching lump on my pallet by the fire. The leaf-rot smell is weak, like a dead mouse in your neighbor’s wall, but it still stings the back of my throat.
“What happened?” I sink down and shake him gently, but he’s barely breathing and his eyes don’t open and he’s icy to the touch — oh saints, like baby Hugh.
“He’s in a bad way.” Senna follows me in and stands beside me.
“But you said he’d only get a little sicker the longer he was here!”
“That’s how it’s supposed to be.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“Is it that smell making him sick?” I ask.
“No!” Senna whirls to face me. “You—ah—what smell?”
I sit back on my heels, gnawing my fist. Baby Hugh was fine until he wasn’t. I should have noticed the iron poker had fallen off the cradle, only I was trying to get Glory to play a guessing game and she was giving one-word answers because it was right after the Maying and she had given me her pardon for what I did, only she hadn’t, not really, and it was all I could think about. How if Glory wasn’t my friend anymore, I’d have no one.
Martin clutches his middle, moaning softly. Not moaning. Buzzing. He makes a weak grasp at Senna, his fingers like claws.
“I could get him some chamomile.” I flutter my hands over him uselessly. “My ma sometimes brews it in hot water when her insides are hurting.”
“Nothing’s going to help but going home,” Senna replies. “Will you take him?”
“Now?”
“Yes, now!” Senna snaps. “You’re really going to make him suffer like this? Your own brother? Who risked his health to come save you?”
Martin is dying before my eyes and I’m not sure how exactly I’m in need of saving but none of those questions will come together right.
“I can’t manage him alone. Not in this state. He’s too heavy. We’ll have to carry him together.” Senna gives me a searing look. “Don’t worry. The king and queen would never keep you with them if you’re unwilling. It’s not as if they’ve been hoping against hope you were somehow still alive all these years and not long dead from the salt and iron. They’ll deny you nothing, even if what you want will break their hearts.”
Keep a respectful distance, Granny would say. If they want you near, they mean you harm.
But Granny also said Those Good People do not lie. It must be true that I can bring Martin to safety and the king and queen will let me go if I cho
ose. It must be true that Martin will get sicker if he’s kept above the mountain.
It must be true that the king and queen want nothing more than for me to come home. You are our baby, they will whisper, and they will mean every word, even when I ask a simple question that deserves a reply and not a slap to the face. They will hold me so close I will never worry whose baby I am ever again.
“Right. Right.” I swallow hard. “I’ll help you. Let’s hurry.”
“He’s too sick to walk. We’ll have to carry him in the blanket.”
There’s a whisper of that rotty smell, and a story tries to happen — funeral procession open grave mothers crying all mothers everywhere — but the pig bite throbs once, deep and wrenching, and the story-bits fall away, more confusing than anything.
“Are you coming?” Senna’s voice is raw.
I grab one end of Martin’s blanket and heft him up. Crumbs of dirt fall from the underside of the wool. The ground beneath him is all torn up. There’s dirt under his nails, too, but I dare not hesitate over my brother one moment longer. He’s the same pale green as the beans I keep picking for him, shiny and waxen, and already it might be too late to save him.
He won’t be like baby Hugh. Not if I can help it.
Senna and I hurry along paths and through fields toward the heath. I’m not even sure Those Good People can die, but one look at Martin and I don’t want to find out the hard way. I couldn’t face the king and queen under the mountain knowing their son — my brother —was dead because of me.
The wolf pit is just as I remember. Cold and dark and deep, not a stone’s throw into the greenwood. Every hair on my arms is standing up. That dank smell hangs like a soaking blanket.
There are bones, Granny would say, because there is sacrifice. Pity the wolves if you will, but they do not pity you.
Senna leads me stumbling to the edge of the pit and lowers her end of the blanket-sling so I must do the same. Martin lies folded on the ground. He’s still buzzing faintly, eyes in slits, and he doesn’t seem in his right mind. I hang back. My skin is crawling.
The Green Children of Woolpit Page 5