But decisions made at midnight were best left until daybreak. So I left the tapestries to their secrets and continued wandering Dún Darragh’s labyrinthine halls like a dream. An illusion conjured from green-gold daydreams. Something with a seed for a soul, a memory for a face, and woodland whispers for a heart.
I woke the morning of Bealtaine to the scents of warm grass. The windows were flung open, letting in a bouquet of sunlight and fresh air. Wildflowers graced a hundred mismatched jars set onevery open space in my room. Cornflower and phlox, daisy and wallflower, wild carrot and milkweed.
“Corra?” I asked the sweet-smelling air. No reply came, but I sensed the edges of a sly grin flitting around the room.
I turned to my bed and met with another surprise. Laid across the coverlet was a row of new frocks, in shapes and colors wondrous as the gowns the swan maidens wore in Tír na nÓg. I gathered the soft pretty dresses up, one by one. A breezy frock made from overlapping petals of blue iris. A slender shift iridescent as a moth’s white wing. A dress golden as sunset, trimmed in translucent leaves edging from ocher to plum. And my favorite—an emerald-green gown with dainty lace whispering along the sleeves and the long, narrow train.
“Corra?” I said again—because there was no doubt who had done this. Had they somehow known about Irian’s odd request last full moon?Come dressed for a party.“Corra, these are—”
I searched for words. Excessive? Impractical? Unbelievable?
“Corra, they’re magic. Thank you.”
And finally the formless fiend relinquished their modesty and came careening into view, bursting amid the wildflowers in a flurry of petals and pollen. A grand sunflower nodded merrily.
“Dresses impresses!” Corra screeched at the top of their voice. “Dresses impresses, much worse it could be: dresses depresses, we sadly would be!”
I feigned an eye roll as the sprite hurtled loudly around my room, ruffling my hair. But a smile curled the corner of my mouth, even as the prospect of my own heartache grew heavy in my chest.
I changed into the frock Corra had conjured from evergreen dreams. The delicate lace whispered secrets against my bare skin. I let my dark hair fall unbound down my back and plucked a few flowers from Corra’s bouquets. Primrose, hawthorn, and marigold were sacred on Bealtaine. They stained my fingertips as I braided them into my hair.
My garden was adorned in spring’s bright ribbons and baubles.The greenhouse was no longer broken and battered, choked and strangled. Now its clear glass panes reflected blue skies dotted with clouds and the rustling foliage of trees in full flower. Vines burst with a flourish of blossoms—musk roses and eglantine. Plump new fruits peered between waxy leaves.
I stepped to the burbling spring at the center of the grotto and tossed a few blossoms onto the pool, whispering:
The Bealtaine fire sends flames to the sun,
The promise of summer warmth to come.
Hazel branch and hawthorn flower
I offer for Brighid’s bower.
“Chiardhubh!” Corra trilled, spinning rivulets of water to swallow up the flowers. “It’s time! Twigs, branches, and prickers, a bough of black briar. Snap, crackle, and flicker, we want that bonfire!”
I smiled past the pit yawning in my stomach. “You little firebug.”
Last week, I’d spent the better part of an afternoon dragging all the detritus of the gardens out into the open, piling fallen branches and dry underbrush and weeds into a huge heap on the lawn sloping up to the dún. Now I bent with my flint and steel, striking golden sparks to smolder in the kindling.
Whump!
I jumped back as blue flames burst from the heart of the bonfire, gathering edges of yellow and orange as they tore through the dried twigs. I stepped another long pace away from the blaze, careful with the ends of my hair and the hem of my dress.
“Corra!” I accused. “I still think that’s cheating.”
A fiendish, gleeful face grinned from the flames. “What works, chiardhubh, works!”
The bonfire roared, black smoke spooling upward as afternoon striped the long green grass with gold. And I waited—waited for the moment I had been dreading since the last full moon.
The moment was a long time coming. And yet it came too quickly.
“Changeling.” Rogan’s low voice drifted through the roar and crackle of the fire.
“Princeling,” I whispered.
For a long moment, we stared at each other across the flames. He was the first to move, rounding the fire toward me.
“I was waiting for you in the dún.” My appearance startled him. A whisper of suspicion rocked him away from me, as if he thought my enchanted dress might bewitch him too. But he recovered himself. Stepped closer. “You should have told me you’d already started.”
