Prologue
Charlotte did not build up the nerve to approach Weldan House, her childhood home, until the third Winter Solstice after she fell over the nearby waterfall to her supposed death.
In the first weeks after she fell, she had thought of the whole thing as a bit of a joke.
Not that she hadn’t been terrified when she went over. She had, of course. Not of dying—that was something that happened to old people, people who were at least thirty, not to little girls. No, she was afraid of getting hurt, of breaking her arm again and having to wear a sling for weeks. She was afraid that the trees she so loved to climb would be out of her reach, that she wouldn’t be able to pay ball with the other kids in town.
She did not think of drowning, not until it happened.
Charlotte had been able to swim for years. Her brother Keir took her down to the lake beneath the manor and out into the water before she’d even started school. They had learned to swim from the Lady Willana, an elf from the town on the other side of the woods. The old lady was uniquely beautiful and graceful, and having no young children of her own, she had taken an interest in caring for Keir and Charlotte whenever she had the opportunity. Charlotte couldn’t picture her own mother, her having passed shortly after Charlotte was born. But when she read about mothers in children’s books and heard about them in nursery rhymes, it was Lady Willana that she pictured.
Lady Willana had taught them well despite not having the most captive audience. Charlotte had been more interested insplashing her brother than listening to the elf’s instructions or her stories of life in the city. But Lady Willana had persisted, and ultimately, both of the children learned all their basic strokes.
So when the water from the falls plunged her down into icy darkness, Charlotte did as she had been taught—she kicked and thrashed her arms, reaching for the surface.
But the surface didn’t come.
Charlotte’s eyes stung as she pried them open under the water. The air burned in her lungs as she fought the urge to take in a breath. Lady Willana had warned her about this feeling. She said that giving into the temptation to breathe would be the death of her. That if she found herself trapped under the surface, she must do anything she could to reach the air. That she could not wait for someone to save her. She would have to save herself.
Lady Willana’s advice had been well intended, but it had also been wrong.
Someone did come to save Charlotte in the end. Charlotte was drifting out of consciousness by the time the tiny korrigan pulled her from the depths and to the shore, so she never saw which of their number was her savior.
But she guessed it was Nolwynn. All of the korrigans were brave and kind, but none so much as Nolwynn. The woman barely came up to Charlotte’s waist, even though she clearly had decades on the little human girl, but she had the biggest heart of anyone Charlotte had ever met.
She was infinitely patient as Charlotte struggled to come to terms with what had happened to her, not just when she fell, but what had been happening to her for the years that preceded it.
Charlotte knew her childhood wasn’t ordinary. She hadn’t known her mother, but she had grown up in the grandest house for miles around, so it wasn’t a surprise to her to realize that the other children in the village lived very different lives from hers.But it took being given the option to live somewhere else for her to realize that her life wasn’t just unordinary.
It was wrong.
By the time Charlotte had recovered from her near drowning, the search for her had begun. Keir had looked for her himself first. Charlotte hadn’t seen him, but the korrigans told her when she woke that he’d been up and down the shore, above and below the falls, shouting for her. He'd waded into the water at the base of the falls and had come so close to going under the surface, the korrigans thought they were going to have to save him too.
But he’d eventually given up and gone back to the house for help. Charlotte could hear them in the forest around her, calling her name. Not “Charlotte,” her true name, the name she had taken for herself. Her other name, the one she had been born with.
“Danny.”
The korrigans had seen the way Charlotte had reacted to the voices searching for her. They had seen her fear, a feeling Charlotte couldn’t name for herself.
And so they hid. They hid themselves and Charlotte with their magic, a magic that made them blend into the streams and the reeds and the woods. The men and women from Weldan House and Fossholm came within inches of Charlotte without ever seeing her.
And so she stayed with them as the weeks turned months turned into years. They seldom asked her questions about her life in the manor. This, Charlotte came to realize, was their way. Many others came to live with the korrigans during her time with them. Some stayed only for days, others for decades, but the korrigans rarely asked questions. The korrigans understood that there were some things in this world that didn’t need to be spoken of. That there were some pains too great to share.
It took Charlotte many years to share hers. The innocence of childhood had offered her some degree of protection from it. Keir’s efforts had offered her even more, although she wouldn’t realize that for decades. She saw him sometimes, months after she fell. He seemed half of the boy he had been even as he grew taller. He walked the grounds and the woods silently, far too sullen for his years.
Charlotte couldn’t understand then why that was. The Keir she had known had hated her. He had resented sharing with her, had taken things from her, had ruined her games and spoiled her fun. Worst of all, he had forced her to keep who she was secret.
Charlotte’s fascination with dresses and dolls had been a cute little quirk of hers in the eyes of most of the household from around the time she could walk. But her father had no patience for it. He would not listen to reason about how normal it was for a child to try different things. He flew into a rage whenever he spotted Charlotte wearing a bonnet or pretending to embroider pillows as her mother had loved to do.
Keir had told her that, about their mother. He was young when she died as well, but he knew a few things about her, and Charlotte made him tell her the stories of their mother over and over again, every night before bedtime.
That was how she came to know that her mother had been certain that she was a girl when she was still in her belly, that she’d been so certain she had named her and bought her a doll. Keir told her the doll’s name was Charlotte, the name their mother would have given her if she had been born a girl.
Charlotte could not explain it then, but later she would understand the feeling she had when she heard the story: she knew, deep down, that her mother had been right. Shehadbeen born a girl. Her true name was Charlotte.
Charlotte began to play games of pretend with imaginary friends who knew her true name. That was how Keir found outwho she was. He caught her out near the river curtsying to a fairy prince, introducing herself as the Princess Charlotte of the Riverlands.
Keir hadn’t been angry. But he had been afraid. He had looked all around, making sure no one had heard her, and then he had grabbed her by the shoulder. “You can’t say that,” he’d said. “You can’t let Father hear you. Don’t ever say it again.”
