“Balance,” I repeated, the word curling a secret against the contours of my thoughts.
“Tír na nÓg follows the laws of nature,” Chandi told me in a low tone. “Nature is not good or kind or clean. But it is fair. Day demands night. Summer demands winter. Life demands death.”
My fingers itched with brambles, and the place where the starling had pecked me suddenly ached. “What does that have to do with conjuring gowns from thin air?”
“Everything. We—the swan maidens and I—aren’t meant to behere. We were taken against our will and have not been allowed to leave. We’re powerless mortals in a place of great power and near-infinite life. Nature demanded a balance to that inequity. And so the flowers grant us magic.”
My Greenmark pulsed within me. I’d always loathed it—my unwanted magic, my Folk stain. But to my knowledge, I was the only one in the human realm who possessed such innate magic. I had never imagined the opposite—never imagined what it must be like to live in a world of magic yet possess none.
“They give us some small measure of autonomy,” Chandi continued. “But they demand their own kind of balance.”
She unfurled her hand. It was lacerated with tiny bleeding cuts from where she’d held the flowers. Beneath the wounds were hundreds of older scars, little white stars crisscrossing her skin. The jarring sight made me reach reflexively for my own scarred and ragged wrist. But my bracelet of thorns and nettles had been magicked away with my fighting leathers.
“Nothing here is free, Fia. Power is pain, and pain is power. Everything must be in balance. If you remember nothing else I tell you tonight, remember that.”
I shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold. But before either of us could say more, we stepped beyond the tree into a spectacle of frost and starlight.
The clearing was a bowl carved out of the forest. A dusting of frost shimmered down between icicles sharp as fangs. Low braziers roared with flames, and high above, small mirrors strung between the branches caught the light and tossed it back like a thousand earthbound stars. And thronging the space… werethem.
The Folk host was more dream than reality. They moved half-corporeal between the trees, their slender figures flickering like fireflies at dusk. They laughed and sang, and their revelry was the clamor of crystal bells, the heavy drift of snow, the wind through high trees.
I stepped forward.
Chandi caught my arm and pinched me, hard. The dart of pain rendered the Folk less strange and more real than a moment before. They were still the most beautiful beings I’d ever seen. But they ate with their hands and laughed with wine-stained mouths and shivered in the chilly wind.
Lower Folk thronged the revel. Red-capped leipreacháin gamboled between the stomping thighs of enormous Fomorians. Hairy gruagaigh with wide, wicked smiles teased moss-haired ghillies, holding flaming tapers too close to their birch-bark skin. But they were nothing compared to the Folk Gentry, with their kaleidoscope eyes and horns of spiraled glass and wings like streaming fire. They were dangerously, incandescently beautiful, and I struggled to tear my eyes from them.
“Welcome to the Feis of the Nameless Day,” Chandi whispered in my ear. “Stay close to me, don’t eat anything strange, and try not to get yourself killed.”
I did as I was told, staying close by her side as we edged around the feis.
“Here.” Chandi shoved a goblet of frothing pink liquid into my trembling hands.
Drinkingstrange things was not off-limits. Apparently. I stared at it askance. More than one Folk story started like this and ended much worse.
“Won’t this make us stay in Tír na nÓg forever?”
“You’re not strictly human, are you? You should be fine.” She threw her own cup back with the relish of a thirsty sailor. “And I’m stuck here anyway. So drink up.”
I took a small sip. The liquid caressed my throat, tasting like iced blackberries and borrowed joy. I loved it. When Chandi looked away, I poured it out.
I followed her along the edge of the clearing, staying within a few paces of the forest. She and I weren’t the only ones masked, and we weren’t the only ones keeping to the trees. Deeper in the dark forest, lithe bodies writhed against one another, languorousand lustful, even as more fearsome things seethed in shadow. I glimpsed a dearg due’s long claws, slick with blood; the dark, dripping shapes of horses with glinting sharks’ teeth; the flashing scales of a huge ollphéist coiling, sinuous, between snow-draped trees. I walked a little faster, heart accelerating.
“The Nameless Day separates one year from another,” Chandi told me softly. “It marks the end of the Elder month and the start of the Birch month. It is a time to release that which no longer serves us; to welcome new beginnings. It is a time to bid farewell; it is a time to offer greetings. It is a time to remember the dark and to anticipate the light. But most of all, the Nameless Day is a time to make new friends.”
Chandi’s intonation changed on that last phrase, and the look in her eyes was suddenly intent, despite the intoxicating beverages she was steadily imbibing. A moment later, I was struck dumb by the sight of a girl turning toward me beside a roaring brazier.
It was Eala, regal and serene. She wore a crown of starflowers in her hair and a snow-shine gown sighing around her like pale feathers. The other ten swan maidens clustered nearby, looking at me with interest.
“Hello, Sister,” Eala said. “It’s time you and I have a conversation.”
Chapter Fourteen
Eala smiled at me—a broad, gentle smile hiding secrets and laughter and trust. It was a sister’s smile, meant to be returned. And despite the sudden breathless panic making a briar of my lungs—Eala,Eala, Morrigan help me, it was Eala—I couldn’t help but smile back.
“Oh!” Her voice was also breathless. “Let me look at you.”
She reached up to take off my mask. The unexpected touch startled me—but her fingers against my cheeks were cool and gentle. Her eyes—the same bright, pale blue as Mother’s—studied me, eager and appraising. I was suddenly and fiendishly grateful for Chandi’s daydream dress. I already felt rough, awkward, and dim before Eala’s glittering beauty—it would have been so,somuch worse to face her in dirty boots and worn leathers.
