A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

Benedict, unused to being ordered about by girls, looked as though he would put up a fight. Heloise braced herself for verbal battle. But Benedict was not entirely made up of red Cœur blood. Bellamy rationality ruled at least half of his brain. So, without argument, he did as he was told and took hold of the brim of his hat. Heloise held on as well, and they clutched it suspended between them.

  The breeze watched without eyes, tittering softly, poised to leap. Heloise glanced sideways at the sound, then focused her gaze on Benedict’s red face. “When I let go,” she whispered, “run.”

  Benedict leaned in to catch her words. “What about my horse?” he said, as though asking permission for something.

  Heloise made a face at him. “Run after the horse then,” she said. “I don’t care. Just run—not yet! When I say.”

  Benedict’s pale eyes scanned the air over her head and to either side. He dropped his voice still lower, so that she had to read his words on his lips. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No. Why would I? Get ready.”

  Benedict shook his head. “I can’t abandon you with . . . whatever it is. It wouldn’t be . . . I mean, I mean it wouldn’t be gentlemanly. Leaving a little girl alone in the forest and all. It wouldn’t . . . I mean, king and honor and country and all that.”

  Heloise wrinkled her nose at him. But she could see that, despite his babble, he was in earnest, so she said, “If you stay here, we’ll spend the rest of the day trading your hat back and forth. Maybe you have time to waste in an endless game of catch, but I have work to do. Now get ready.”

  “Um,” said Benedict, working his way up to another protest.

  Heloise didn’t give him the chance. “Run!”

  She felt the startled thrill run up his arms at the suddenness of her shout. Then, grasping the hat with both hands, he turned and fled down the path the same direction his horse had gone. His blue cloak flapped behind him, but he made good speed, she had to admit. Indeed, he might have given any of the farm boys on Canneberges estate some competition at the summer games if his dignity permitted him to join them. But then—and Heloise folded her arms across her skinny chest at this thought—fear can be quite an inspiration, and who knew how he would run under more normal circumstances?

  The wind in the boughs of the oak tree overhead laughed hysterically at the sight then plunged down and swished off after Benedict like a dog snapping at his heels. Just as Benedict rounded the bend and disappeared out of sight into the trees, however, the wind stopped, whirled up, and came tripping lightly back to Heloise.

  She could see it coming. Or rather, she could see the signs of its coming as leaves and pine straw on the path blew wildly off to either side and away, and little shreds of paper bounced along in its wake. Some small part of her brain told her that she should be afraid. But at the moment she felt more curious than anything.

  This breeze giggled to itself, a most unnatural sound considering it had no throat or mouth with which to giggle. Heloise stood with her arms folded and waited as it approached. It swooped down, picked up the broken end of the peacock feather and twirled it about as though between two fingers before presenting it to Heloise.

  She eyed it, one eyebrow upraised. “What? You expect me to take it? Like a gift?”

  The breeze giggled again and went on twirling so that the iridescent eye of the feather gleamed and winked.

  “You embarrassed me, you know,” said Heloise, refusing to take the proffered item even when it was tickled under her nose. She swiped a hand and sent the feather tossing to the ground. “You embarrassed me in front of Master Benedict. The marquis’s own son!” She snorted, and a smile wanted to tug at her mouth, so she scowled more fiercely. “Evette would have died if it was her.”

  “Died?” said the breeze, and then burst into a still more manic, “Heeeeeeeeee heeheehee! Died! Died! Would have died!”

  So, Heloise thought. So. It talks. It’s alive.

  She felt all the blood in her face rush down her neck and away, leaving her ghostly pale and light-headed. But she was able to hold onto enough self-awareness to remind herself that breezes weren’t really that scary, and ultimately wouldn’t one prefer a breeze that talked rather than one that only laughed? After all, if it talked, surely it could reason.

  Had her feet not been firmly rooted, she might have been tempted to run. “What’s so funny?” she demanded. “Do stop laughing, at once. What is so funny about anyone dying?”

  The breeze seemed to draw a long breath, which was odd considering it was made up of almost nothing but breath. Then, eager like a puppy, it wound its way along the ground to Heloise’s feet. She felt puffs like fingers touching her toes and pulling at the hem of her skirts. Once more she almost ran. But she stood her ground.

  “Mortal, mortal, mortal you are,” said the wind. “Mortal you live and mortal you die. Oh, it is a strange and wondrous thing! Have you seen it? Have you seen this death?”

  And there it came, flashing across Heloise’s memory.

  The image that returned to her every year on a certain cold night in the depths of winter, every year in that sleepless darkness: The image of her mother standing over the open hole in the ground. Her mother, who couldn’t hear her calling: “Meme! Meme! Don’t!”

  An image of hunching. Of shadows. Of grey skies overhead.

  An image that was less about the sight than the sound: the weeping of a broken heart.

  But this wasn’t night. This wasn’t winter. This was morning, morning on the edge of spring. The morning of her birthday. She wouldn’t think winter thoughts now.

  Heloise yanked her skirts out of the wind’s grasp. “I live on a farm,” she snapped. “We see death all the time. It’s nothing special. Everyone dies. It happens. It just happens.”

  Even to the gentlest of souls . . .

  “Ahhhhh!” sighed the wind, and its sigh was almost a moan. “So strange is your mortal world! So strange and so beautiful! Ahhhhhh, the mystery of it all!”

  “I’m guessing then that you’re not a ghost,” Heloise said. “If you were a ghost, you’d know about death.”

  “What is a ghost?” asked the wind.

  But Heloise did not care to answer that. She cared about what was, not what wasn’t. “So if you’re not a ghost,” she said, “what are you? An evil spirit?”

  At this the wind laughed again, and it certainly didn’t sound like something evil. Weird, yes; grotesque even. But not evil. The truth was, out here in the Oakwood, it wasn’t as entirely out of place as it would be elsewhere. Heloise had always suspected that the wood was on the verge of speaking to her. Of laughing, of whispering secrets.

  “All right, not an evil spirit,” Heloise acknowledged even as the wind whirled around her, catching playfully at her braids. “So show yourself. Show me what you are.”

  The laughter stopped. Heloise felt a strong sense that the wind was trying to think and finding it rather difficult.

  Then suddenly it darted away, dashed across the ground, and gathered up bits of leaves, pine needles, and, most of all, the torn pages it had stolen from Master Benedict’s study. With these clutched in its airy arms, it leapt high into the air before Heloise and . . . and fluttered. That really was the only word Heloise could think to describe what she saw. The invisible being before her fluttered all the different bits it had gathered and formed a sort of outline, a sort of shape. At first it wasn’t distinct enough for her to discern any specifics. But slowly the paper bits and leaves came together and created a shape, a shape just about recognizable. Leaves and papers formed a face . . . acorns and pine straw made eyes, eyebrows, even lashes . . . grasses, ferns, and bits of underbrush made skirts, limbs, and wild, curly hair . . .

  “No!” Heloise cried, irritated now. “No, no, no! That’s me. You can’t be me. I want to see what you are.”

  At this, the wind heaved a sigh and dropped everything but the paper shreds. These it held in a bundle, as though it pressed them close to its invisible breast. “I don’t
understand,” it said. “I don’t know what you mean by see me. I am me, and I am here, and this is all of me. I am a sylph, a sylph I am, and this is all a sylph may be.”

  “A sylph!” Heloise breathed the word, and her heart leapt with equal parts delight and surprise. She had heard tales of sylphs before, many times over. There were legends aplenty handed down and around Canneberges, many of them talking of wind spirits such as this. Beings that existed outside of time as men knew it, but which would sometimes venture into time to wreak havoc upon time-bound creatures. Not evil, but full of mischief. A sort of . . . a sort of . . .

  “Faerie,” Heloise said. “You’re a Faerie.”

  “Yes! Yes!” said the sylph, so pleased that it rushed at her with its paper shreds, tickling her and pulling at her hair. “Oh, clever, sweet, beautiful, dying mortal!”

  “Here now, stop that,” Heloise protested, trying to brush the creature and its paper away. She’d never tried to brush aside a wind before, and her efforts were completely unsuccessful. But her curiosity was powerful enough to drown out even her irritation. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Do you live in the Oakwood?”

  “Where is that?” asked the sylph, curling away from her, an invisible ribbon of movement.

  “The Oakwood? It’s here. Where we are right now.”

  “Where is Now?”

  Heloise, having never been faced with a question quite like this, felt her mind go blank. But the sylph persisted eagerly enough. “Is Now in the Near World?” it asked.

  Never one to confess ignorance if she could possibly help it, Heloise nodded. “Yes,” she said with much more confidence than she felt.

  “Oh no!” The sylph uttered another of its weird, manic laughs. “Oh no, I do not live in the Near World of mortals! I do not live in Now or in Time. I live in the Between, the great, the wonderful Wood Between. But I felt a curse, a wonderful curse worked by a powerful Faerie Queen. And with the curse came many gates, gates opening into your world. I have never seen the mortal world before. I have never seen death. So I came through, and I found you, and I found this mortal magic.”

  Heloise listened to this explanation, her brow knotting in a frown. Though she hated to admit it even to herself, she couldn’t understand a word. Or rather, the words were fine, but the thoughts expressed were entirely beyond anything within her realm of comprehension.

  Deciding to change tack to something more reasonable, she plucked one of the paper remnants from the sylph’s collection and held it up to her face for inspection. “What’s this?” she asked, studying the squiggling ink marks.

  “I don’t know! It is mortal. Is it not beautiful?” said the sylph.

  It must be writing, Heloise decided. If it was a drawing or an etching, she might recognize it. As it was, it looked as though some sort of tiny worm had performed a wriggling ink dance across the page, resulting in an assortment of bumps and lines.

  Yes. Definitely writing. No doubt about it. Probably words even. That’s what people tended to write, or so she was told. Words. She frowned, hoping it was an intelligent sort of frown, and studied the slip, unaware that it was upside down.

  “Ahhhhh,” said the sylph, and the way it gusted implied sudden anxiety. It plucked at the paper tentatively, as though afraid of angering her. Then, working up its nerve, it snatched the scrap out of her fingers and stuffed it back into its bundle. “It’s mine,” it said.

  “Did you write it?” Heloise asked.

  “No,” said the sylph. “Mortals did. It is a mortal magic. And it is mine now.”

  Heloise eyed the sylph. It is difficult to eye something that isn’t visible, but Heloise managed. “Did you steal it?”

  “No!” said the sylph. Then, more softly, “Yes.” Then, “Maybe?”

  “Stealing is wrong, you know,” said Heloise. She hated herself the moment the words left her mouth. She sounded just like Evette.

  But the sylph didn’t seem to mind. In fact it laughed again, and twirled about, wafting the paper around it like a swirling cloak. “That is mortal talk! Such mortal talk!” It whooshed up and down, and something caught and held Heloise’s face, like two gentle, breezy hands. “I love you, mortal,” it said. “You are so funny!”

  Heloise had often wondered what a declaration of love might be like. Evette got them all the time, of course, but Heloise hadn’t expected to receive any of her own for . . . well, years yet. If ever! Certainly never from something she couldn’t see. “Um,” she said, stepping backward out of the sylph’s grasp. “Thank you. I mean . . . well, what does it say?”

  “What does what say?” asked the sylph, still chuckling to itself and rubbing the bits of paper together to make a quiet susurrus chorus.

  “The writing. What does it say?”

  Something without a face or form cannot look confused. But the sylph certainly gave off a sudden sensation of confusion. She could almost see—well, not see, but feel—the invisible being tilting its head to one side. “I do not know,” it admitted. All the bits of paper shifted into a great, ragged fan, as though the creature were holding them up for inspection. “I do not know what it says. But the Dame will.”

  “What dame?”

  “The Dame of the Haven. She was mortal like you once. She understands the ways of mortal magic. She’ll read these to me when I take them to her. She’ll read all the little words . . . all the little memories . . .”

  Heloise had never heard of such a person. Few people in all Canneberges could read or write—the marquis, his son, and the bailiff. As far as she knew not even the marquise had the gift, and she was the most highly educated woman imaginable, at least as far as Heloise was concerned. But then, she supposed, the world probably did consist of a bit more than the breadth and boundaries of Canneberges. Besides, she’d never before encountered invisible wind-beings, singing shadows, and (though she still refused to acknowledge this as real) reflections with minds of their own. Indeed, the world was opening up to all sorts of interesting possibilities.

  “Where does one find this dame and this haven?”

  “She lives in the depths of the Wood,” the sylph answered readily enough.

  “The wood? You mean this wood? Oakwood?”

  “No!” said the sylph. Then, “Yes.” Then, “Maybe?”

  “Well, which is it?” Heloise looked about them at the tall trees surrounding. Oakwood was safe and familiar to her. She had worked within its boundaries for years now as a bark-gatherer. If there was any dame hiding in any haven anywhere within that acreage, surely she would know about it. Or someone in Canneberges would.

  “It is . . . difficult.” The sylph drifted to and fro before Heloise, trailing paper bits. “It is . . . it is all Between. And this is all so Near. And everything else so Far. I don’t know the mortal way of saying it.”

  It was only then that Heloise noticed something which should have been obvious to her at once. Later on she would try to excuse herself to herself (she found herself to be quite a desperate nag sometimes), saying she was so distracted by hearing a wind speak at all, was it really her fault she didn’t notice what language it spoke?

  She noticed now, however. As the sylph sighed out the words Near, Far, and Between, she realized that she wasn’t hearing them in her own mother-tongue. At least not when they first struck her ear. What she heard was a wild, lilting language full of depths and heights and unusual spices. A language unlike anything she’d ever heard—

  No. No that wasn’t true. It was the language of Le Sacre.

  Not the same words; not the words she’d grown up singing softly to herself as she worked, sounding out the odd assortment of vowels and consonants. But she knew it was the same. And it was the language she had, but a few minutes ago, heard sung in a voice of pure darkness; the words striking her ear even as these did, then changing shape in her head, forming themselves into comprehension.

  Suddenly she felt cold. It was a chill morning of course, and her fingers and toes were bare and numb. But
this was a cold that started in the center of her heart and worked its way out to the extremities, not the other way around. It was a cold she might almost call fear.

  “Was that you?” she demanded, her voice sharp and sudden. “Was it you I heard singing?”

  “I’m always singing,” trilled the sylph. As though eager to prove this statement, it called out a loud “Falalala!” that sent even the old fir tree cringing to its roots.

  “No,” said Heloise, pressing her hands to her ears against that cheerful howling. “No, was that you I heard before Master Benedict came? Was that you singing Le Sacre?”

  “Le Sacre?” The sylph tasted the words curiously. “What is that? Sing it for me.”

  Heloise blinked, surprised by this abrupt request. But she could see no reason to refuse. Besides, she needed practice performing for an audience, and what audience could be less intimidating than this invisible one?

  The sylph waited. It twirled in place, humming to itself, as patient as an ageless thought, never once feeling the passing moments of silence, for sylphs do not experience the world in moments. It trailed the paper shreds to and fro and waited for Heloise to sing.

  She cleared her throat. Then she opened her mouth and forced the words. They came most unwillingly, thin, staggering things, starved of all beauty. But she forced them out:

  “Cianenso,

  Nive nur nor—”

  The sylph screamed.

  I hear the song. Even from this distance, which isn’t as vast as one might suppose.

  I hear the song. It is in her heart even when it isn’t on her tongue. She does not have to sing it. The song sings her.

  And even now I wish I could scream like the sylph as the words of that song reach out to my ear. O! Lumé above! What have I done? What have I helped to do?

  FIVE

  Many moments passed before Heloise could bring her trembling limbs to pick themselves back up and put her on her feet. For a while she’d wondered if she would ever be able to move again. A sylph’s scream has that effect: It can turn a man of iron into a quivering jelly.