The Church of the Wood: A Faerie Story

  Part 4

  The Wish

  Everyone who came to the Palace admired its gardens and even though he lived there and was therefore used to them, the bard was no exception. In fact he walked in them more than most; as a gypsy he was used to being outside. But whenever he was restless or worried he went out past the gardens, further down, to the rolling stretch of parkland that had once been a wood so thick it couldn’t be seen beyond.

  There was a massive boulder at the edge of this vast and grassy expanse, and it was perched on this that the lithe, black-garbed figure of the bard could often be found. Not that folk ever looked for him there, for the Palace servants tended to be a superstitious lot, and there was a feeling to this still, green park that most of them didn’t care for, a deep sadness that seemed to well up from the ground. Wick felt it too but for him it was almost a balm, a place to release his own bitterness and confusion without feeling that he had burdened a more peaceful spot.

  A land was not just something to grow crops on, the bard thought. As a lovely faerie had once told him, everything has a spirit: the essence of what it is and what it wishes to become. The park beyond the Palace gardens wished for something it could never have again and so did the bard, which was why the two got along. Wick had come here today to see his way clear of a particular problem which closely related to this.

  King Lukas’s death had presented Wick with a conundrum. While the king was alive a certain fiction had been maintained which Wick had long ago agreed to, resentfully at first, but in a way that had become second nature to him by now. If everything had gone according to plan Father Jared—who was King Jared now—would already know of this and Wick would have nothing to brood about, seated on his favorite rock.

  Matters were complicated by the fact that the young priest had never trusted him. The fretful gypsy man watched as a vulture soared high overhead, its dark wings fanning out over the pristine verdure of the park. I should tell him, the bard counseled himself. But he thought of the reasons behind what he had done and what King Jared might make of them and then shook his head. He had broken a promise; told more lies than he could ever justify. A man like Jared would never understand.

  He would take a night or two away from the Palace, Wick decided, and get some distance from the matter. The bard’s hands traveled over the rough surface of the rock, which scratched at the skin on his unmarked palm. Red as blood, he thought distantly, when a trickle of it appeared among the deep creases.

  Her hair had been red as blood, her eyes as blue as the cloudless sky...

  The King’s Table

  Amandie wasn’t surprised to find Lady Erin near the side door of the Palace, patiently waiting for her in the shadows near the trees—ordinary apple trees—as though she had expected Amandie to come out. Amandie had known the faerie was there, somehow. She had even felt that Lady Erin was coming, for several days now. What she didn’t expect was to see the faerie looking as though she’d been to hell and back. “I need a bath,” the faerie said abruptly.

  Amandie nodded at her rather stupidly; that much was clear enough. Lady Erin’s chin had a long angry cut down it, and she was holding her hand awkwardly. Her dress was torn and dirty, and her hair was oddly ragged in places. “It wasn’t a very good trip,” the faerie lady said grimly, as though this explained everything.

  “Did you walk from the Wood?” Amandie asked, glancing around.

  Lady Erin shook her head. “There was a white horse—Lily—but I think she’s gone off to join the others.”

  Amandie thought a moment, and then said, “Stay right there.” She dashed back into the Palace, surprising the other staff, found what she was looking for, and came flying out again. She threw her long traveling cloak over Lady Erin’s shoulders, and pulled it up over her head. “Come this way,” she told her. It was a wonder someone hadn’t seen her already; there were curious looks in Amandie’s direction from the side door, but they didn’t seem to focus on the faerie properly.

  Lady Erin passively let Amandie guide her around to the back of the Palace, and into a little used entrance that led more directly to the common bathhouse. It wasn’t a house really; just a large room with a sunken tub that was big enough for two or more. It was empty now; Amandie would have to heat water on the stove in the corner, and fill it. She started the process, finding Lady Erin a seat first, on one of the benches.

  Amandie hoped Lady Erin wouldn’t mind bathing here; she was a lady, after all. There were private baths in the fine rooms of the Palace for the noblewomen; each set of chambers had its own. The bathhouse was just for the servants. There was a schedule here; women in the evening and men in the morning. It was past the men’s hours, thankfully; the sign on the door had already been flipped.

  As she warmed the water, she thought about how ridiculous she was being. Lady Erin was a faerie. She probably bathed in the lake, or in streams, or some such. “This is an interesting place,” Lady Erin said, confirming her suspicion. “What is it?”

  “I’ll fill the tub with water, and then you can bathe in it,” Amandie answered. She came over to the faerie and sat down. “What happened to you?”

  “Baron Malkine happened,” the faerie lady said, and then began to shiver.

  It took quite a while to get Lady Erin through the bath, as well as to unravel all of her somewhat incoherent story. Amandie began to think, doing this as gently and carefully as possible, about what she was going to do with the faerie woman now that she was here at the Palace. Lady Erin solved this for her by saying, quite simply, “You’re going to present me to the king, of course.”

  “I’ll have to get you something else to wear,” the Village girl said, holding up the faerie woman’s dress, which had always been strange, but had never been full of holes and covered in blood before. Lady Erin sighed in agreement.

  “All right then, stay here for a moment,” she said again, wrapping the faerie woman securely in a towel. “Don’t talk to anyone—at least not yet,” she suggested, hoping the faerie wouldn’t take offense. Lady Erin just nodded, and lay down on the bench, as though she might take a nap.

  It took some doing to find a dress for her. In the end, she found one in the room of a maid who had taken one to repair the buttons, which were loose. Amandie felt guilty taking it—she had seen the maid working on it just the other day, which was how she knew about the buttons—but she told herself that she was only borrowing, and that she would give it back.

  Trickier than finding the dress was to get Lady Erin to wear it. “What is this thing?” she exclaimed pettishly, tugging at the high neck. “It’s scratchy, and suffocating. Isn’t there anything else?”

  Amandie sighed, and for the first time she began to think about what she was doing. This was going to lead to a whole host of trouble. Of that, she had absolutely no doubt. “What are you doing here, anyhow?” she asked. “You didn’t come all this way just to tell me about the Baron, did you? And to meet the new king...” Amandie’s voice trailed off, and she looked at the faerie more closely.

  Of course, she thought. Amandie had talked to the king several more times, since their first rather brief conversation. They had reminisced about the Village, and the Church, and the Wood. And she had heard the way he said Lady Erin’s name, whenever it came up. “You’ve come here for him, haven’t you?” she asked the faerie. Lady Erin blinked at her, and then shrugged.

  “We’re old friends. I thought I’d pay a visit. Congratulate him on his upcoming marriage,” the faerie woman said, her voice growing tight.

  Amandie whistled. “But you’re a faerie... and he’s—”

  Lady Erin interrupted so swiftly that Amandie didn’t even get a chance to finish her thought. “That doesn’t matter. I just need to see him.”

  The two women stared at each other for a minute, and then Amandie slowly shook her head. “I don’t think I understand, but of course, I’ll help. The king will be at the ball tonight, after the dinner...” Amandie paused. The ball wou
ld include dancing; she didn’t think the faerie would like that much.

  “I suppose I can show you into the King’s Table, where they’ll be eating.” Lady Erin nodded, apparently satisfied with this plan. The dress was actually quite pretty on her, Amandie thought, as she helped Lady Erin finish buttoning it up. It was a rich ruby red, made entirely of velvet, and it had pearl buttons that ran all the way up the front of the bodice to the high collar.

  There were pieces of white lace at the sleeves and the neck, and the skirt was full and wide. It fit the faerie somewhat snugly, but that only accentuated the slender curve of her figure. Unfortunately, it was rather short in the sleeves and the hem, but Lady Erin’s wrists were lovely, anyhow, as were her feet and ankles.

  Amandie’s gaze rested on the bare feet with dismay. Well, hopefully no one would be looking down, she thought.

  “Am I ready?” Lady Erin asked, impatiently.

  “Yes, but you should put this back on until we get there,” Amandie said, handing her the traveling cloak again. The faerie looked at her doubtfully, but then tugged it over the dress and brought the hood up.

  “They are going to know I’m a faerie eventually,” she told her, sounding slightly amused. Amandie sighed and said, “Yes, but maybe we can get close to the king before that happens.”

  The Village girl and the faerie moved quickly through the corridors of the Palace together. People greeted Amandie cheerfully, but they didn’t seem to notice the other woman at all. She wondered, not for the first time, if this was some sort of faerie magic, and if so, just how far it extended. Was the faerie invisible to everyone else? Amandie could see Lady Erin just fine and people could obviously see Amandie.

  The head server, a grumpy woman in the best of moods, passed by and snapped at her, “Why aren’t you at your post?” Amandie apologized, and they hurried on. The woman was right, she should have been there already, standing quietly up against the wall and waiting for the guests to come in. Hopefully no one else would notice her absence. Then Amandie glanced sideways at the calm hooded faerie lady walking next to her and thought that no one was going to notice anything other than Lady Erin tonight.

  The wide double doors to the King’s Table were already open, and fine lords and ladies were milling about inside the large dining hall. They were all talking and waiting for everyone else to arrive. “I’ll leave you here,” she whispered to Lady Erin, ducking in and finding her spot against the wall with the other serving girls. They glared at her for showing up late and making them look bad, but she just smiled, unconcerned now. She gazed back at the open double doors where she had left the faerie, waiting expectantly for her to throw off the cloak and emerge into the chattering throng.

  King Jared arrived first, from a smaller door at the other side of the room. This was as usual; the king had his own private hallway to the dining area, probably because it made a better entrance. He came over to Lady Odith and gave her a dutiful nod.

  Lady Odith was wearing a cream-colored silk, with blue and silver trimming. Amandie thought that she didn’t look nearly as nice as Lady Erin did, even in her borrowed clothes. The king still wore black, but there was gold trim to the edges of the robe’s sleeves, and a gold chain across the front. Underneath it, he wore a deep purple, with black at the waist.

  Amandie craned her head back towards the main entrance, standing on tip-toe because the crowd had surged forward around the king, blocking her view of it. Slowly, though, it parted, like a wave. The voices in the room died away, one by one. A path had opened to the two double doors, and Lady Erin stood at the end of it. She hadn’t spoken, but whatever aura of secrecy she had created earlier must be gone, because every eye in the entire room was turned towards her tall figure, framed in the wide doorway.

  Amandie expected her to come forward, but she didn’t. Instead, King Jared drew slowly towards her along the open path, staring at the faerie as though he expected her to vanish at any moment, like a vision. He stopped directly in front of her, barely a pace away. Lady Erin didn’t move, or speak—she just looked at him.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. Amandie could only see the back of his head now; she couldn’t tell what his expression was, but his tone was soft.

  “I came to say goodbye,” the faerie lady answered. Her sweet, unearthly voice rippled out into the dining hall, and there were audible gasps and exclamations.

  “It’s a long way to come for that,” the king said. But he did not sound upset that she had done so.

  “Then I suppose you should invite me to stay,” she replied. There was a murmur of sound, as if the room behind them was trying to shake free of its stupor.

  The king reached out and took the faerie’s hand. Then he turned around and tucked it under his arm. He addressed the company around him formally, saying, “May I present the Lady Erin. She will be joining us for dinner tonight.”

  There was another ripple of sound, but no one stirred, until a few of the ladies started to faint, and a few of the lords remembered to catch them.

  Amandie tried not to smile. It was going to be a very interesting dinner.

  If Amandie had expected the king to seat Lady Erin next to him, she was disappointed. He sat her at the far end of the table, very courteously, and then went back to the middle, settling his fiancée on his left, where she usually sat. His right was taken up by one of his advisors, a short, balding man with a squeaky voice, whose name was Lord Tomm.

  The chairs next to Lady Erin remained mysteriously empty. Amandie had noticed several frightened-looking guests slipping quietly away, so there was more than enough room now at the usually crowded table. Not everyone was seated, though; Lord Quentin came in through the double doors late, as was his wont, and looked around cheerfully for a free spot. Oblivious to the tense atmosphere, he sat down in one of the vacant chairs on Lady Erin’s right.

  Amandie became the faerie’s personal server during the meal, because none of the other serving girls would even approach her. Lord Quentin smiled at Amandie nicely as she came over with each dish, meaning he was often looking in Lady Erin’s direction. Because of this, and in keeping with his usual friendly manner, the hapless lord wound up valiantly trying to make conversation with the faerie lady. She gave him a few short nods in appropriate places, but otherwise kept her silence. Her gaze rested solely on the young king and his fiancée, further down the table.

  Despite her attention, King Jared did not appear to notice the faerie’s eyes on him. Amandie didn’t see him look Lady Erin’s way, even once. To all intents and purposes, the young king seemed to be in deep conversation with Lady Odith and Lord Tomm, and the other nobles around them.

  Finally, Lady Erin gave up on the two things at once. She turned her black eyes fully on Lord Quentin and interrupted his rambling monologue.

  “You don’t have to talk to me,” she told him.

  Lord Quentin’s handsome jaw dropped. He had missed the faerie’s arrival, and although he had surely noticed her unusual appearance, she was still a beautiful lady, dressed in a fine gown. But when he heard her voice—there was no way he could be uncertain any longer as to what she was.

  Amandie almost felt sorry for him.

  “Soup, my lady,” she interrupted, holding the ladle suggestively over Lady Erin’s bowl. The faerie peered into the tureen, lifting her eyebrows.

  “It’s... it’s very good,” Lord Quentin stuttered. His smooth manner had deserted him, but apparently he was going to bravely soldier on with being polite. “I’ve had it before. Mushroom, if I’m not mistaken?” He addressed this last part to Amandie, almost pleadingly.

  “Yes, my lord, it is,” she replied. Lady Erin accepted the soup dubiously, picking up the coffee spoon to dip into it. Amandie wasn’t sure if she could get through an entire evening of this with a straight face.

  Strangely enough, though, Lord Quentin seemed to have almost relaxed by the end of the last course. Soon Amandie was serving Lady Erin dessert—a spongy slice of le
mon cake—which the faerie poked at with a fork, as though it might do something other than wait patiently on the plate for her to eat it.

  Lord Quentin had successfully waded through an entire seven courses of the faerie’s odd replies and absent-minded manner. When she hadn’t hexed him during the fish or the meat, he had allowed himself several extra glasses of wine, to celebrate. Amandie wasn’t filling these herself, of course, but she noticed that the tall, gangling serving boy opposite her had been over with a bottle several times.

  Amandie poured some champagne for Lady Erin to go with her dessert. The faerie sniffed at it suspiciously, and took several small sips, before setting it down. Unfortunately, this caught Lord Quentin’s attention, and he said to her, “You and I must have a toast or two. Come, you’ve hardly been drinking anything at all.” Amandie stared at him in amazement as he said this; then she realized that poor Lord Quentin was slightly drunk.

  “I thought the bread came with the salad,” Lady Erin said, puzzled.

  Lord Quentin began to laugh, but then caught himself. He really was nice, for a lord, Amandie thought. “No, no, you lift your glass, like this, and we say something, and then we knock them together a bit.”

  Lady Erin just stared at him, bewildered.

  “Here,” Lord Quentin said, picking up the faerie’s glass and placing her hand around it. Lady Erin’s eyes went wide with surprise at the fumbling touch.

  “Enough!” a voice echoed from across the table. The king was on his feet, glaring irately at Lord Quentin. Amandie was just as shocked as everyone else. She could have sworn the king’s attention was elsewhere entirely.

  Lord Quentin’s hand fell back from Lady Erin. He looked utterly dumb-founded.

  “It’s all right,” Amandie whispered to him, sympathetically. “Lady Erin just doesn’t like to be touched.” She glanced over at Lady Erin as she said this, wondering if the faerie would be angry with her, but her attention wasn’t on either of them. She was staring across the length of the table at the king.

  King Jared took leave of his guests rather hastily, abandoning them to sherry and coffee without him. Lady Odith had half-risen, apparently either thinking to persuade him to stay or wishing to go with him, but he appeared not to have noticed the gesture. The king vanished swiftly through the side door and down his own private hall.

  Lady Erin got up from the table and quietly disappeared in the opposite direction. The faerie went out through the double doors she had come in by.

  Lord Quentin stared at Amandie in confusion, his expression still somewhat shocked. She couldn’t help herself; she patted his hand gently and said, “Lady Erin’s a faerie. They’re like that.” Lord Quentin slumped back limply into his chair, muttering something inaudible.

  There was a rising murmur of voices, reaching a crescendo of sound, and then Lord Tomm stood up and silenced them all. He said, in his quavering voice, “Lords and Ladies, I think it’s time to adjourn to the ballroom, for some dancing.”

  Amandie did laugh, then. They were all going to go on with their evening as planned, just as though nothing had happened. This was the Palace, after all.

 

  The Harvest Ball

  Even though they had left the King’s Table in opposite directions, King Jared knew there was no possible way that he and Lady Erin were not going to wind up in the same place eventually. The ballroom filled with people excitedly talking—most of them about the faerie no doubt—and then the music began. Its quick tempo invaded the king’s mind with restless thoughts and made him long for the evening to be over.

  Privately, he detested balls, but like everything else he did lately, he hosted them because it was expected. This one was a harvest tradition, and it had always been his brother’s favorite. The music was distracting if nothing else and he managed, quite successfully, to avoid doing anything other than idly watching while other people swirled around.

  Everyone knew that the king preferred not to dance, so he was spared the necessity of making conversation with any one person in particular. He avoided Lady Odith, though it was clear she wanted to dance with him, and he had promised to do so with her at least once tonight. The king was relieved to see Lord Leigh ask her instead, before his fiancée succeeded in determining his position behind several other nobles.

  In a far corner of the room his pushiest advisor, Lord Tomm, was involved in a conversation with several others of his advisors, which undoubtedly boded well for no one. King Jared had had a very hard time at dinner trying to convince everyone that nothing was wrong, that it wasn’t unusual for a faerie to visit the King’s Palace, or to be on good terms with a member of the royal blood.

  Lady Erin’s arrival was something of a political disaster. Unless it strengthened his reputation for being formidable merely by having survived it, King Jared thought grimly. The thought of a faerie somewhere out there, roaming around the Palace, made his head hurt—or maybe it was the volume of the music.

  He’d been trying to leave the ballroom surreptitiously for a while now, circumnavigating the roaming crowd, handing out reassurances left and right as he walked. Finally he reached the exit, and stepped out into the stone atrium that connected the semi-detached, high-ceilinged ballroom to the rest of the Palace.

  Lady Erin was standing on the open balcony, to his right, the one which looked out over the Palace gardens. She was still wearing the red velvet gown she’d had on at dinner. Although nothing could detract much from her general loveliness, it looked strangely exotic on her. He’d never seen her in anything other than her own blue and white dress, or another very like it.

  The young king came up to her, feeling as though he’d known that she would be standing right where she was, as though it was the reason he’d felt overwhelmed in the ballroom and wanted to come out. She watched him approach, calmly, her black eyes fathomless. Suddenly the young king was irritated beyond all measure. She had no idea of the trouble she’d caused.

  “What are you thinking of, coming here and terrifying my entire Palace?” King Jared demanded.

  “What are you thinking of, marrying a human?” she retorted, her dark eyes snapping. The vehemence of her answer made him take a step back. Why should she care who I marry? the king wondered.

  Nevertheless, King Jared felt something squeeze inside his chest. “It’s a political arrangement. I made a promise to my brother—and I am a human.”

  But he couldn’t stop himself from adding this time, in all truth, “For the most part.”

  “So you know now,” the faerie woman said, her manner warming. “What happened?”

  “My brother told me, right before he died,” King Jared said, remembering what his brother had said about him, and what he’d made him promise.

  “I’m sorry,” Lady Erin told him quietly. He wasn’t certain if she was telling him she was sorry for his brother’s death, or for what his brother had kept from him until just before he died.

  “I’d rather not talk about it. Clearly, you’ve guessed my secrets—even one I never realized I had.”

  Erin nodded gravely at him, her pale face sympathetic. The young king sighed wearily, and then went to stand next to her on the balcony, leaning back against the railing.

  “There are a great many duties that go with being king, including marrying for the good of Calundra,” he told her, his eye falling on the door to the ballroom, where Lady Odith was probably still dancing, and where his advisors were probably still plotting, and from which light and music spilled out.

  “Why did you come?” he asked her again, but more gently now. “To chide me for having kept things from you? Surely if you’d wanted to say goodbye, you could have done so before I left.”

  The faerie woman had been gazing at him steadily as they spoke, but now she became unaccountably shy. Her mouth drooped, and her long black hair flowed forward around her face, hiding her expression.

  “I was lonely,” she said. “The Wood is too quiet. Father Brion is gone, you are
gone too—and the new priest is scared of me.” The king started to chuckle at this, but then stopped at a plaintive look from the faerie.

  “I missed you, Father Jared,” she said, shaking back her black hair, which was strangely ragged in places, and looking up at him.

  The naked candor in her eyes made King Jared’s heart begin to ache. He looked at her face very closely, as he’d not done before, and for the first time noticed a long, half-healed cut on it. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch the place on her chin where it was. No doubt she’d been climbing trees and wounded herself—although he’d never seen her with an injury before.

  “Don’t call me that,” he said absently, still looking at the cut, and noticing now also that she had a bandage wrapped around her left hand. “My name is Cal.”

  Once he’d said this, he knew it to be true. The Dead Tree had been right. And then King Jared’s forehead creased in confusion. What was he thinking?—his name had always been Jared.

  Erin’s pale brow furrowed, as well. “And I am Erin, Lady of the Wood,” she said, as though it was somehow required.

  “I know your name,” he said distractedly. He’d wanted to ask her what happened to her hand, but he’d lost his focus. When she said her name like that, he’d felt the last of his doubts about her disappear, winging away into the swiftly setting sun.

  King Jared looked at Lady Erin and saw her as he had when he met her for the first time, before he knew she was a faerie.

  She was the most beautiful creature in the land, even in that ill-fitting gown. The sunset was casting an orange glow on her hair, but her eyes were still the color of the darkest trees in the Wood. The line of her mouth was a faint pink rosebud in her otherwise pale face; right now it looked as soft as a petal.

  King Jared, or even Lord Cal for that matter, had never kissed a woman. He had never wanted to. He’d been a priest for many years, and he didn’t even know how.

  But he leaned forward and kissed Lady Erin.

  It was not a light and gentle kiss, as a first kiss should be. It was a wild and hungry one. And once he’d begun, he found he could not stop. His lips moved from her lips at last, but they only slid to her cheek and then down to her neck. He could taste the Wood itself on her skin—tangy and sharp—and he wanted more of it.

  His mouth eventually brushed up against her high collar, a frustrating barrier of lace and velvet. The king tugged at it impatiently with a hasty hand. A handful of pearl buttons flew off in all directions and scattered to the floor, hitting it with a pinging sound. The ruby red dress fell open to reveal the rest of the faerie’s pale neck and the white swell of her bosom.

  King Jared pushed away from her in surprise.

  Erin’s black eyes were wide and her breath was coming out in short gasps. A long red scratch had appeared on her lower throat; the stone on his ring had accidentally grazed it. Tiny drops of dark red blood welled from it, and dropped down onto the faerie’s dress, red absorbing invisibly into red.

  King Jared became dimly aware of a squeaky voice that was pestering him. “What is it?” he snapped without looking. Lady Erin had backed away from him until she could go no further, and now she stood, trembling, against the unyielding stone walls of the atrium.

  “Your majesty, Lady Odith is looking for you. You promised her a dance.” King Jared realized then that the voice belonged to one of his advisors, Lord Tomm.

  “Tell her I’ve gone to bed.”

  The voice made a few more feeble sounds of protest and then a muted “Yes, your majesty” when it couldn’t get his attention. Footsteps trailed away, back into the noisy ballroom.

  The faerie and the king were alone again.

  King Jared couldn’t tear his eyes away from Erin’s startled face. He couldn’t believe what he had done. He opened his mouth to apologize, but all he could think about was kissing her again.

  The king turned and fled, in a way that was not very kingly. He strode through the Palace, pushing aside anything and anyone that crossed his path. When he reached his chambers, he shut the door, and bolted it. Then he sunk down onto his bed, and let his bewildered head fall into his hands.

  He had promised his brother that he would take care of Calundra, and that he would marry Lady Odith. Instead, he had just kissed an innocent faerie, who was not his betrothed—he couldn’t imagine wanting to kissing Lady Odith at all—and he had hurt her in the process.

  The young king was not inclined to be overly lenient in his judgments of people, even in his most private of thoughts.

  At that moment, he despised himself.

 

  The Song

  Lady Erin rested against the cold hard wall of the atrium and drew in deep, steadying breaths. Father Jared—no, King Jared—no, Cal—had kissed her. It was all very confusing.

  She did not know how humans kissed—the very idea made her nauseous—but she knew that Jared had kissed her like a faerie, and not like a human. Thinking of this, her hand drifted up to her mouth, and then back down again to her ripped collar, which still hung open. Her eye caught on something tiny and milky white that gleamed on the floor in the fading light.

  A pearl button.

  Lady Erin laughed.

  Dreamily, she began to gather up buttons, humming as she did, counting them one by one until she had reached twenty. When she’d collected them all, she straightened up and slowly walked out onto the balcony and then onward down the wide stone steps to the side.

  She wandered out into the Palace gardens, and as she did so, she began to sing. It was a faerie song, a song of love that a faerie might sing to a sweetheart. She had never thought to have reason to sing it.

  Lady Erin sang as she strolled along the neat sandstone paths, admired the emerald green bushes, smelled the cultivated flowers, and finally trailed her fingers through the water in the rose-colored fountain. When she had reached the second to last stanza, she realized something. The music coming from the ballroom had stopped.

  The faerie had been singing with her back to the Palace, but now she swung around.

  The windows of the Palace were all aglow for the evening’s festivities. In every open window and on all of the many balconies, human eyes watched her, and human ears listened. The floor-length windows of the ballroom had been flung open and ladies in fine gowns and gentlemen in fancy dress spilled out into the garden. Servants hovered around their edges in more humble attire.

  Erin searched the human faces one by one until she found the one she wanted. He was standing in a high second story window, directly in front of her, but at a distance. His hands gripped the casement and his mouth was rigid. The expression in the dark eyes that gazed back at her couldn’t be determined.

  The faerie thought for a moment, translating in her head. Then she sang the last verse of the faerie song in the human tongue, so that he would understand it.

  She sang it sweetly, and with feeling.

  The humans, who had been staring at the faerie before this, immobilized, suddenly sighed and began to drift about like leaves on a slow current. Hand reached for hand, arm linked with arm. Heads leaned on shoulders, and feet strayed off in search of someone else.

  Soon the back of the Palace garden was filled with couples.

  But King Jared stayed where he was. He did not come down. When the song was done, the faerie woman waited, but although the king’s silhouette disappeared from the window, it did not appear in the garden.

  Lady Erin stayed by the fountain until the sunset faded and the sky above darkened into full night. The moon rose and the stars came out. There was the sound of hushed human laughter, and the rustle of feet in and around the garden and the Palace. Chamber doors opened and closed, and people straggled about, mostly in groups of two, none of them as solitary as she was.

  The faerie blinked away her tears, and then walked on, leaving the fountain and the garden behind. She did not call for Lily as she left, because Lily had found company as well. She passed by the white ho
rse, standing in a paddock beside a large black one. The faerie thought she could go by foot, or find another wild horse; for her, the Wood was not so far.

  If King Jared changed his mind, he would know where she was. And if he didn’t... well, her Wood needed her, even if he did not.

 

  The Faerie’s Goodbye

  King Jared spent a long and sleepless night after the faerie left, staring at the ceiling in his chambers. The darkness finally ebbed, with excruciating slowness, and the first light of dawn crept in through the tightly shut window. Although he did not want to, the king thought of the morning that he had found the faerie on his windowsill, and argued with her about what color shirt to put on.

  And then the young king groaned, and buried his head in his pillow. He could still hear the song she had sung—the entire Palace must have heard it—and there was no doubt in his mind now why she had sung it, nor why she had come.

  It was his fault too, of course, King Jared thought as he sat up and began to pull on a random assortment of clothing, the first ones his hands happened to encounter. He had just finished straightening them, and swiping at his hair with a comb, when there was a knock on the door.

  The king frowned, and went to answer it rather reluctantly, dreading to find either an irate fiancée or an annoyed advisor on his doorstep already, with the sun just barely up, and him having neither slept nor managed to untangle his thoughts during the whole of the previous night.

  He opened the door and two breathless young people tumbled in on him. One he recognized—the Village girl, Amandie, and one he did not. This second was a nondescript-looking boy with light hair and a bashful look in his eyes. He was another servant in the Palace, that much was obvious, and he was just as haphazardly dressed as the young king, if not more so. Amandie was untidy as well; her light brown hair, usually quite neatly braided, was loose and long.

  “Your majesty,” Amandie began at a rush, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but we were wondering—since you used to be a priest—could you marry us?”

  The king’s mouth opened. He stared at the Village girl in astonishment. “What?”

  Amandie began to blush, furiously. “You see, we looked for the priest, but there are so many people missing everywhere and even the ones who are left—oh dear, well, you see...”

  “We couldn’t find him,” the boy standing next to her finished up. The king noticed now that they were holding hands.

  “Undoubtedly he’s still asleep in his bed, like everyone else,” King Jared snapped. “I’m sorry, but I’m sure this can wait for a more regular time and place...” The disappointment on the two formerly bright young faces smote the king’s conscience.

  Amandie looked at the boy, and the boy looked back at her. Then she turned to the king and said, “Please? If you don’t mind, it’s... it’s something of an emergency...”

  The king ruffled his hair, and glared at them. When neither of them budged, but only stood and gazed at him hopefully, he sighed. It appeared that the only way to leave his chambers in peace this morning was to perform a binding ceremony.

  “Join your marks together,” King Jared said shortly. If you still have them, he couldn’t help thinking. He had just noticed that the boy’s shirt was on backwards.

  Amandie’s left hand grabbed the boy’s left hand.

  “Do you promise to live a life of peace, purity, and truth together?” the king asked grumpily.

  “Yes!” they both said in unison. The boy with the slightly crooked nose beamed at Amandie, and then squeezed her hand.

  “Well then, go and do so,” the king said, gesturing towards the open door. The two stared at him uncertainly.

  “Is that all, your majesty?” Amandie asked.

  “Yes.” The king managed to say this politely, because they both looked so happy. There was great deal more to the regular ceremony, of course, but that would do it.

  The boy that he had just married to Amandie—without even bothering to find out his name, the king realized—grinned and with surprisingly boldness swooped in to plant a kiss on the Village girl’s mouth.

  The king discreetly turned his back on them. He went to open the window and looked out over the garden, where Lady Erin had sung to him last night. He hoped it wouldn’t take Amandie and the fair-haired boy long to remember where they were.

  Apparently, it did not. By the time the king had turned back around, they were both gone. King Jared blinked, wondering if he’d somehow imagined the whole thing.

  He found himself thinking something very similar again and again, as he came out of his chambers and made his way through the Palace. He tripped over a sleeping couple at the foot of the stairs—two servants whom he hadn’t known were together, and who shouldn’t be sleeping there even so—and then he nearly stumbled into Lord Quentin, who was sheepishly slinking back to his room wearing last night’s clothes.

  That wasn’t quite so remarkable, but being nearly bowled over by Lord Tomm, coming out of Lady Amelea’s sleeping chambers—that was significantly unusual. And discovering the cook fast asleep in the kitchen with the butler by her side—well, that was enough to convince King Jared to skip breakfast, though he had come down for an early morning snack, not wanting to disturb anyone.

  And that was only the beginning. Angry shouts reached him as he was making his way back from the kitchen—Baron Rogan was in the midst of challenging Lord Kade to a duel. Lady Miranda, Baron Rogan’s wife, was clutching Lord Kade’s arm and sobbing. King Jared did his best to separate the two, and then sent them all off separately to cool down. There were three more such altercations—none of them reaching the same point of deadly earnestness, but vociferous enough, with yells about whom had been found where, and with whom, and why—and by then King Jared had had enough of it all.

  He escaped out of the Palace through one of the back doors, stepping over a pair of serving boys cuddled together and slightly sprawled across the hall. He walked out into the Palace gardens, past the flowerbeds, and even past the rose-colored fountain. He took in a deep breath of clean, fresh air and began to curse all faeries everywhere—even though there was only one, really—in a loud and unfaltering tone.

  A pair of emerald green bushes to his right suddenly stirred. Lord Leigh sat up, and blinked hazily at the king. “I do say, that’s rather rude,” he began, and then Lady Odith sat up next to him as well.

  Lord Leigh’s mouth suddenly snapped shut. Lady Odith went pale. She brought a shaking hand to her hair, which was half-tumbled down and full of grass and leaves. “Where... where am I?” she asked uncertainly. Her eyes fell on Lord Leigh, whose shirt was unbuttoned and who didn’t appear to be wearing any trousers. He grinned at her self-consciously, and Lady Odith’s hand flew to her mouth. She went red as a ripe strawberry, taking in Lord Leigh’s disreputable appearance, and then she turned her gaze onto the king, in horror.

  King Jared began to laugh. He sat down on a nearby bench, and shook with uncontrollable laughter, until his eyes watered and his lungs were tired.

 

  The Outcast

  Gleason faced the moment of his death bravely. He had been trapped in the Village for some time now; the stump was no longer working. Or it could be that it just wouldn’t let him out. And there was really nowhere in the Village to hide, just the houses and the main street and the outlying farms. If the faerie wanted him, she would find him. So he stayed where he was, in his mother’s house, although it was hardly hers anymore since she’d been dead for over fifteen years.

  And yet, he still thought of it as hers. He could almost see her sitting at the warped kitchen table, cutting vegetables for soup with a sharp knife, her grizzled brown hair falling out of its bun as she did so. His little sister, Ginger, would be playing on the floor at her feet with a scrap of a doll. Gleason had kept the house in good repair all these years, humble though it was; it looked much the same as it had back then. Although recently he’d had enough coin from his work with the Baron to add a fe
w niceties to it, to replace some of the fading fabrics and supplement the much mended furniture with a few better pieces.

  Of course, he’d not meant to stay here. He’d intended to go back out into the land, and start his life over somewhere else. He thought, then, about the plan with the Baron and how it must have gone wrong. His job had been to lure the faerie out, and he knew he’d been successful; he’d seen her go. Of course, he’d also meant to follow her, and that part had not worked; that was when he’d realized he was stuck. He had waited, not exactly patiently, for something to happen since then—for the Baron to come in, or the faerie to return, or the tree to change its mind and let him out.

  He was lucky enough to be out near the old stump when the faerie finally did reappear. He had hoped she wouldn’t—that she might be gone for good. That hadn’t been a specific part of the plan—Gleason didn’t want to think he had blood on his hands, even faerie blood—but the Baron had not seemed a forgiving sort. He was not a kind or gentle man. Whatever he had done to Amandie, which she would only frustratingly hint at, had shaken up the Village girl enough that Gleason was left with a different sort of feeling about the Baron when he went back to report to him. Still, revenge against the faerie wasn’t harming an innocent. The faerie was pure evil; she deserved what she got.

  And yet, even though Gleason had made this same statement to himself many times over, when the faerie woman came in through the mysterious portal of the stump wearing a muddy red dress, and looking strangely devastated, he didn’t feel what he had expected to feel. He knew that it was only her warped faerie magic that made her seem tragically beautiful. But it wasn’t magic that told him he was relieved she wasn’t dead. It was his better self; something he’d tried hard to be rid of, but never quite could.

  The Village boy ducked behind the large red barn, his stomach queasy. He was sure that the faerie hadn’t seen him; she didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything other than her Wood. The barn behind him was something he’d been using as cover for some time now, spying on the stump whenever he wasn’t busy at the Pub washing dishes, which was the only job he could get in a place like this.

  Everyone in the Village hated him. They always had, and they always would.

  The red barn belonged to Seff, who used to be a friend of his. Maybe still was, in a way, although they had fallen out after the lake incident. Seff had blamed him for what the faerie had done; the simpleton had actually been terrified that going into the water had somehow cursed him. As though it was my fault, Gleason thought.

  Seff had refused to speak to him for years, but lately the large man’s anger had softened a bit. These days he thought Gleason was happy to spend his free afternoons helping tend to his cows, in exchange for the occasional bucket of milk. The man had always been something of an idiot, although it was good to have someone to talk to again, even if it was about crops and animals.

  There had been a time when Seff’s simple existence would have been Gleason’s dream. Seff had a wife, not too pretty but hard-working and with a decent sense of humor. He had four squabbling children, a house and a barn, and enough land to grow food for their keep and sell the remainder in the Village. It was everything his mother and his sister should have had, and never did. Gleason shook his head at the memories, glancing cautiously around the corner of the long red wall to see if the faerie was still in his range of vision.

  Yes, there she was, drifting back to her Wood as though she’d just gone for a stroll and decided it was time to come home again.

  So, the Baron had either failed to eliminate her, or he had convinced the faerie to reverse the spell on him and let her go as he’d claimed he would. Gleason had doubted whether the Baron was a man to keep his promises. Of course, he might not have had much choice in the matter. Gleason tried to get a better look at the faerie’s face, without giving away his position. If he was not mistaken, which was quite possible from this distance, she looked as if she’d been crying rather fiercely. Her eyes were swollen and red. That was good, he thought. It meant that at least part of the plan had worked.

  But somehow, it didn’t feel good.

  It can be hard to hate someone for a very long time without inadvertently growing close to them. It is not a tender closeness, nor a welcome one, and yet there it is, nonetheless. The faerie, and what she had done to him—or what he thought she had done to him—had been in Gleason’s mind for as long as he could remember. He had watched her in secret whenever he could; imagining ways he might make her suffer for the humiliations she’d brought on him.

  It had been one of the highlights of his life to see her jealousy at the news he’d brought of King Jared. And yet he had realized, even in his pleasure, that he was still spelled by her. He had wanted her to keep talking even after she left, as hurt as he’d intended. He’d wished for her to come back if only to hear the sound of her voice again.

  And for that, he hated her even more.

  Gleason considered then, as he leaned against the red barn, whether he would continue to wait for the faerie to hunt him down, or whether it would be better to just face her and get it over with. He couldn’t decide which was worse. A sudden hope, though, made him stay where he was.

  It was possible, now that she was back, that the black stump would let him pass. He waited, then, his back against the barn, until he knew she’d had enough time to reach her Wood. Slowly he moved away from the red wall, and stepped around the corner. The valley was empty, except for the people in the Village. Gleason walked quietly over to the broken tree, heart pounding, and laid his hand against the bark.

  Nothing happened.

  It was a death sentence. He was stuck in this Village, forever, with a faerie who wanted to kill him.

  Gleason went home then and put his affairs in order. He wondered, with a black humor, if he should pick out his casket now while he thought of it. At least they wouldn’t bury him in the Church cemetery, near that accursed Wood. He was unmarked; they’d put him in the plot to the side of the hill, just outside the Village. His mother and his sister were already there, so at least he’d have company. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad; nothing in his life had ever turned out right—maybe his death would.

  In the end, after several weeks of jumping at every shadow and startling at every noise, he decided to change his mind and switch to the other option: he’d rather just get it over with. He wondered if he should attempt to go out in style; after all, he might be able to chop down one of her trees, before she got to him.

  Gleason’s dark blue eyes lingered on the axe by the door, hung up on the wall by a hook, along with various other useful implements. He tried to picture himself using it on one of the tall dark trees by the lake—those would be the ones he’d choose to have a go at, if he did. And yet, the Wood had always been there, ever since he was a child. He had more memories of it than just that one day by the lake. He remembered going down the long dirt path to the Church with Amandie, when she was a cheerful little girl with light brown pigtails. Not a stuck-up flirt, like she was now, toying with every man that she could.

  Gleason forgot about the axe in his anger at his cousin. Instead of reaching for it, he stomped past and over the threshold, slamming the door of his mother’s house shut behind him. He stalked through the Village, before he began to second-guess himself, and came to the start of the dirt path, which was packed hard from the feet that trod it, without fail, once a week, to the Church.

  It was holy day, as Gleason well knew, and the service would just be ending. Most likely, she would be there. She would come out from the front door, and he would let her see him. And then, well—Gleason hadn’t come entirely unarmed. He had a knife in his boot, though he doubted very much he’d get a chance to use it.

  The path through the Wood—which he hadn’t taken much since he was a child—was not as long as he remembered. To his short legs it had seemed like forever, and the dark trees were something out of a nightmare—towering over him with their spooky green l
eaves and white blossoms and glowing red fruit.

  They were no more reassuring as an adult, but they didn’t seem quite as tall, nor did he hear them saying things, as he had often thought they did when he was a kid. Then, he imagined they whispered to him, tempting him to go off the path, murmuring of treasures that might be found. Maybe even of a wild herb that could cure a certain fever, should he enter the trees and look.

  The Wood said nothing to him now, but it pressed around the path, its branches rearing up over his head, its leafy depths gloomy and uninviting. Gleason reached the door to the Church just as the service was letting out. The Village folk gave him curious looks, some of them going so far as to say his name and nod, but they didn’t ask him what he was doing there. Probably thought he was stupid enough to try to repent, Gleason thought morosely.

  To look as though he had a legitimate reason for hanging around, he said a few words to the priest, who was anxiously glancing over his shoulder at the Church in a way that convinced Gleason the faerie was still in it. The nervous man eventually made his escape from their forced small talk, going back inside the gate and disappearing somewhere around the side of the stone building. Finding a place to cower until the faerie had gone, Gleason thought scornfully.

  Well, he wasn’t going to cower. He would face the moment of his death bravely, even if he was starting to think now that he’d done little else in his life that was brave, or good. He would never get a chance to make up with Amandie, and he hadn’t even bothered to say farewell to Seff. Well, it wasn’t as though either of them would actually miss him. In fact, Gleason thought dully, there was probably not a single soul in the entire Village who would mourn at his grave, that is, if they even found anything left of him to bury. Have I been a fool? the plain, rather unattractive boy thought, for the first time since his mother’s death.

  Everything that had happened since then suddenly seemed a blur; he hadn’t been happy, but then again, he didn’t particularly deserve to be happy, seeing as how he had failed them. He had hoped at one time, very briefly, when he’d first seen Amandie in the tavern, that things might be different. But she had never really cared for him. And she’d made it abundantly clear that she never would.

  The faerie came out the front door of the Church, and saw him. She was wearing her own bizarre dress again, made of flowers or plants or something else that came out of the Wood. Her black eyes went immediately to his stiff figure, standing outside the gate, but her wan, rather unhappy-looking face did not register any strong emotion, merely a mild distaste. Gleason was suddenly less scared of her than he was insulted. He had tricked her; she should be furious and vengeful. Surely her false loveliness would strip away and she would become the monster he’d always known her to be, as dark and hideous as her Wood.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked haughtily, coming up to the gate and laying a pale hand on it as though to open the latch, but standing just inside it, instead. She was smart, Gleason thought. It put her at the advantage, because he didn’t want to come any nearer the Church. It possessed a feeling of power that repelled him; it was just as judgmental as the god’s followers were. It did not want him.

  “How was your trip?” he asked cruelly.

  The faerie’s eyes narrowed, and then filled with recognition. “You knew...” she suddenly hissed. The fury he’d expected before suddenly filled the too-perfect features of her face. “You told me on purpose! You knew I’d leave! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The Baron is dead because of you—he nearly killed me, and harmed my Wood!”

  Blood started to pump in Gleason’s ears with a rushing sound. So the Baron was dead. But the faerie couldn’t have been the one to kill him, or she would never have been able to enter the Church. Which meant that whatever happened next, she probably wouldn’t do it herself. Gleason looked around uneasily at the Wood. She would send one of her creatures to devour him; that much was clear.

  He’d rather die at her hand. At least if he did, she would finally lose the mark. Yes, she would lose something she cared about—he would take it with him.

  “I can’t say I’m sorry to hear about the Baron,” he said boldly, coming as close to the fence as he could make himself, so that he was within arm’s reach of her. “But I am sorry he didn’t kill you first. What happened—did you use your magic to spell him, and then convince the god, with your evil tongue, that it was an accident?”

  The faerie’s hands were clenched at her sides, and he could feel a sort of wind gathering around her. Gusts of dry leaves swirled at her feet, and several threatening howls broke the stillness of the Wood. “Why?” the faerie asked him, through gritted teeth. “Tell me why you shouldn’t share his fate! Remind me about peace, and purity, and truth, Gleason—or I swear, I swear...” The faerie woman seemed to run out of words. The sky around them darkened and several large drops fell from it, splashing onto the shoulders of Gleason’s red and green jacket.

  “Because you ruined my life when you called me a thief!” he said fiercely, as he’d always wanted to say to her. “My sister and my mother died, friendless—do you have any idea what it’s like to lose the only people you care about—to be hated by everyone, because you don’t have the mark—to be forced to do something by a spiteful, meddling faerie and nearly die from it?”

  Gleason was shaking now; he wasn’t sure if it was from fear—for the faerie seemed to grow larger in her temper and the Wood felt like it was creeping up on his back—or if it was anger that was making him tremble. And yet, he didn’t reach for his knife, as he might have. If he did, she could claim she was defending herself, that she was justified in killing him.

  A thunderous rumble vibrated from the ground up into Gleason’s chest, and his body jolted. It started to pour, the water coming down in great sheets. He was doused in an instant. He wondered if the faerie meant to drown him this time on dry land. “Do I know?” the faerie yelled. “Do I know what it’s like to be hated, and feared, and cast out? Do I know what it’s like to lose someone, to have my heart be broken? What do you think I am, you foolish, foolish boy? A stone? A brick? An inanimate object?” The rain was falling on the faerie too, running off the ends of her black hair, but she seemed neither to notice nor to care.

  “Go ahead then, drown me—finish what you started by the lake!” Gleason shouted at her, too far into his rage to care either.

  “I should!” the faerie yelled back at him, as the thunder sounded again. Gleason braced himself. He faced the moment of his death bravely, with his head held high and his hands clenched at his side.

  But nothing happened.

  No creature came tearing out of the Wood to devour him. No bolt of lightning flashed down and struck him.

  Instead the rain and the rolling thunder just went on around them, like any ordinary cloudburst. The faerie was staring at him, her eyes suddenly uncertain, as if she’d said something that shocked even herself. A new look came over her, one that Gleason had never seen before. He wiped the water from his face with his sleeve, thinking he must be mistaken.

  The faerie looked as though she regretted something. “No,” she said, her voice a little ragged from all the shouting. “No, this is stupid. I wronged you, long ago, and I never apologized, because I detested you too much. And I still detest you,” she said quietly, as if he had ever doubted it, “but I won’t harm you. Not like this.”

  Her face and her voice had grown calm now, and he felt that whatever she said next, he would not be able to keep himself from doing it. “I want you to leave my Wood, and my Village. You will go out through the Dead Tree, and it will be for the last time. You can never come back.” Her words rang out into the wet and stormy Wood, final and grim.

  And then she disappeared around the side of the Church, just as the priest had done, leaving Gleason to stare at the empty spot where she had been, while the rain slanted down off of the trees and continued to douse him.

  She hadn’t killed him.

  Instead, she had ap
ologized. And then she had given him something. A thing he’d desperately wanted, and had given up all hope of having.

  A way out.

 

  The Shift

  The king had not been sleeping well. He had dreams, and after his dreams he would wake up abruptly with words still on his lips, words that he himself could not understand. The young king tried going to bed earlier, and then he tried going to bed later. He changed his bed sheets, switching from silk to cotton, and then back again. He sometimes had a snack before bed; he tried not eating anything at all. He wrote down his worries in a journal that he kept by his bed, hoping that it would give him peace of mind. When he found himself writing, “Erin,” over and over again, he stopped.

  Still, he dreamed of the faerie and he awoke to find himself speaking in the faerie tongue.

  Life at the Palace resumed, after many hiccups. King Jared was good at sorting things out, at least for other people. He managed to convince some to repair their relationships, and others to abandon them or begin new ones. There was a spate of hasty marriages—including Lord Leigh and Lady Odith—which deprived the young king of a bride. But King Jared wasn’t seen by anyone much to mind. His advisors almost immediately began proposing alternatives, but the king turned a deaf ear to their suggestions. He told them all rather sternly that if, and when, he decided to marry, he would most certainly make his own choice in the matter, without their interference.

  The king would have liked to take refuge from the Palace’s new liaisons and scandals in riding his horse, and he did so, but even being with Night was another reminder that things were different. A wild horse, a white one, had mysteriously appeared in Night’s paddock one day. Seeing the way that Night acted around her, King Jared didn’t bother to try to remove the stray animal. Before long, there was small pinto foal as well, which Night was surprisingly gentle with.

  The king was tactful and patient and the problems of Calundra’s temperamental noble families slowly resolved, but his dreams did not. He was afraid that he would slip one day and start speaking faerie in the middle of the Great Hall, but thankfully the words only seemed to plague him at night.

  During the day, his mind was clear and his judgments were sound; as a king, he was most effective, and soon his subjects began to call him things like “fair” and “just”. The king wasn’t certain that “Just King Jared” was how he wished to be remembered, but it was better than “Inconstant King Nathaniel”, as one of his predecessors had been called.

  Another thing that plagued him, apart from his dreams, was a certain song that people would hum. It seemed that the entire Palace knew the tune, and the young lords took to singing it to the young ladies whom they were fond of, which made the young ladies blush. People even seemed to know the words—though they couldn’t have heard them more than once—which made it all the more uncomfortable. Needless to say, the king banned this song, but he couldn’t entirely prevent the tune from falling occasionally from someone’s lips, when they weren’t paying attention.

  To fall under a faerie spell is a dangerous thing, and King Jared was not a fool. He did not entirely trust what he felt, nor did he believe that what he felt mattered, regardless of whether it was real or not. What mattered was the good of Calundra, and that good did not seem to him to be compatible with the substance of his dreams or, even less, the secret longings of his heart. Believing this as he did, it is quite likely that King Jared would have found a way to cure himself of his oft interrupted nights, had someone else not taken steps to assist him.

  It was Wick, the bard, who couldn’t leave well enough alone. The bard liked to tell his tales in the Great Hall, which could hold a bigger audience than anywhere else in the Palace, and so after the King’s Court one day, he approached the king with a tale. The Court was a time when any of his subjects could bring a matter before the king, for consideration. King Jared had just dealt with several farmers who were complaining of a drought, and now he was resting back on his throne, and drinking some water, for the discussion had made him rather thirsty.

  “If it pleases your majesty, a little amusement perhaps?” Wick asked the king, approaching him with a smile. The king was not partial to tales, but the rest of the hall, which always had an overflow of interested spectators for the King’s Court, murmured with enthusiasm. King Jared nodded wearily to Wick, and then tried to hide a yawn as the bard began. He was less worried today that he would find the bard’s tale disturbing, as he often did, and more worried that he would fall asleep listening to it.

  “As the story goes,” Wick began, “King Felsa was a kind and just king, well-loved by his people. But he was a king without a project, and every king wishes to do something significant with his reign, something that his people will speak of afterward, and remember him by. So King Felsa decided that he would do what many other kings had tried to do, and failed. He decided that he would be the one to clear the Wood of the Palace, and so set the Palace free of its shadowy influence.

  “Now, some of you may not remember the Wood of the Palace, for it was cut down long before many of you were born, though not, indeed, by King Felsa, as some of you may already know. Indeed, the Wood of the Palace was cut by King Pattrik,” Wick nodded respectfully to the young king, “King Jared’s father, and that is another tale in and of itself. But I digress; I meant to speak of the wood, so that all could picture it, even those who have never seen a wood before. The Wood of the Palace was no ordinary collection of trees. It was a true faerie wood—tall and thick and wild—and as black as its faerie’s heart.”

  King Jared sat up straighter in his chair, and frowned at the bard. He knew this tale; everyone knew it. The bard could only have one motive in telling it to him now, and the young king was not happy with this. But Wick had the rapt attention of the Hall, and he continued on, apparently oblivious to the young king’s displeasure.

  “It was into this wood that King Felsa sent his subjects, armed with axes and saws. His brother the prince—Prince Rhykab—went to oversee them, albeit from a safe distance and with a heavily armed escort. Prince Rhykab was known for having a tender heart; indeed, almost all of the ladies of the Palace were enamored of him, although he had yet to choose a bride.

  “Prince Rhykab saw what the beasts of the wood did to the first of the cutters and he was horrified. He went back, and told his brother the king that the project must be called off. Now, King Felsa valued his brother’s opinion; indeed, he loved him very much, so Prince Rhykab was successful in this. The project was abandoned, somewhat to King Felsa’s dismay, for it meant that he would have to find a new one to take its place. Life should have continued peacefully for all at the Palace, now that the wood was to be left alone... and yet it did not.

  “Before he had left the wood, Prince Rhykab had caught a glimpse of the faerie in it—a splotch of white behind the trees, a pair of ebony eyes. He had barely seen her; she had not come all the way out. She had been watching as the beasts of the wood howled in retribution and savaged the humans. She had overseen as well, from a safe distance. And the young prince could not get this glimpse of her out of his mind.

  “The idea of the faerie woman took deadly hold of him; the thought of going down into the wood, of seeing her more fully, had a power he couldn’t resist. One day, Prince Rhykab snuck out of the Palace in servant’s clothing, to make it less noticeable what he did. He came to the edge of the wood and, in an instant, the faerie appeared to him. The prince fell to his knees; she was hauntingly beautiful, and he was already half in love with her. But the faerie was not pleased to see him; in fact, she was so angry with him that her straight black hair seemed to stand out around her head.

  “ ‘I know who you are,’ she said in a rage-filled voice. ‘You have been very foolish to come here, and now you will pay for it.’

  “ ‘Please—forgive me, fair lady. We didn’t know what we were doing. I have told my brother to stop cutting your wood, and he has listened,’ the terrified prince said.

/>   “ ‘You have injured my Wood, and I will not forgive you for it,’ the faerie said. ‘Instead, I will exact a punishment. You have taken the lives of my trees. For every tree that you cut, you will take a human life in return.’

  “The faerie had said this in a silvery, mesmerizing voice. The prince’s eyes went blank, and then his mouth went slack. ‘For every tree that I cut, I will take a human life in return,’ he whispered back to her.

  “ ‘You will begin with the one that you love the most,’ the faerie told him implacably.

  “ ‘I will begin with the one that I love the most,’ the prince whispered back again.

  “And so he did. The first life that he took was that of his brother the king. He tried to take another, but the Palace guards had already plunged seven swords into his chest.”

  With this chilling statement, Wick brought the tale to an end. He made a low bow to the king, and then straightened up, his eyes traveling around the hushed Hall with satisfaction. They came to rest again on the king, who did not look sleepy, but rather was sitting up very tall on his throne. “Thank you, Wick,” the king managed to say, quite stiffly. “I can think of other tales that would please me more, but I’m sure that the rest of Hall appreciates your craft.” The older gypsy man smiled at the young king, and then began to speak again, but King Jared interrupted him.

  “As you so eloquently stated, few here remember from personal experience the woods or the last of the Faerie Wars. Thankfully, Calundra is at peace now, and has nothing left to fear from either. Seeing that this is so, bard, I believe that your tales of evil faeries can finally be retired.”

  King Jared meaningfully held the gypsy man’s eyes with his own, until Wick’s gaze dropped. The bard nodded thoughtfully, not seeming exactly surprised by the king’s words, but looking troubled. He waited respectfully for King Jared to dismiss him, which the king curtly did. When the bard had gone, the Great Hall began to quietly empty, and soon the king left as well, his duties for the day being done.

  Some tales are true, and some are false, and for some it can be hard to tell the difference. This is a saying that is known by practically everyone in the land of Calundra. As for the tale that Wick had told, it wasn’t purely a fiction of the bard, as much as King Jared might have wished that it were.

  The story was based on certain historical facts. A skeptical young Prince Jared had once located the unembellished account of it in the King’s Records, and read it for himself. Prince Rhykab had slain his brother the king and all who had witnessed agreed that the faerie’s magic was the cause.

  King Jared dreamt again that night. When he awoke there were tears on his cheeks and strange words in his mouth. He had dreamt this time neither of the Wood, as he often did, nor of Erin in it. He had dreamt that he was the faerie in the bard’s tale, and that he had just felt his beloved trees being cut.

  It had felt like someone was slicing off his fingers, one by one.