No. No. No.It couldn't be him. But there was no mistaking that scent.
This was the human male version of the bear from the woods.
The High King smells like rotten celery.
I hadn’t had a plum before. But occasionally, the smaller St. Ailbe community gardeners planted a celery-like fruit. One that tasted both sweet and sour, depending on how you cooked it.
Rhubarb.
This bear smelled like rhubarb, not plums.
The bear I’d been spilling my guts to this entire time wasn’t the High Prince.
He was the High King.
Wedding
The High King—therhubarb-not-plum bear—stood before me in a midnight-blue velvet robe heavy with silver knotwork and sapphire-lined cuffs. The bear-shaped medallion on his chest gleamed under the room’s dimmed lights.
And he was holding out his hand… to me.
I was too stunned to take it, but then it turned out I didn’t have to.
The Shadow King placed my hand into the upraised palm of their supreme ruler.
The next thing I knew, I was on the dais with him.
And a minister appeared out of nowhere.
No—not a minister.
He carried a staff topped with a scepter made of twine twisted tightly around a green orb that seemed to pulse faintly with light. And though he wore long robes like the Presbyterian clergywolfwho oversaw Tara’s wedding, his cloak was deep green—green as evergreen moss—with the hood pulled up high.
And on top of that hood sat an animal skull.
A pale, bleached thing with a distended upper jaw that cast most of the clergymale’s face into shadow.
All I could really see was a long, gray beard and a heavy mustache that extended down to the middle of his chest, where a round medallion rested, embedded with a green stone inside a carved bear paw.
Was the skull a deer? An elk, maybe?
It had a full rack of antlers, chipped and wide. But its canines were long—disturbingly long.
I didn’t know of any herbivore with teeth like that. And it occurred to me… this might be an animal I’d never seen.
It might be an animal that no longer existed. Some extinct creature from a time unknown.
The wall’s lake view abruptly dissolved into one of the hedge woods, dark under the gray morning light and steeped in shadow.
The scene was so vibrant and resolute, it almost looked like whatever kind of clergymale this was had emerged from those dark woods.
I could nearly hear the strings and drums of ancient music in the air.
Hold on—notnearly…actually.
A quick glance to my left revealed a small collection of musicians playing instruments wholly unfamiliar to me.
After a lifetime of ceremonies soundtracked by nothing more than a lone piano—or more recently, an entire troupe of bagpipes—the sight was surreal.
