I turned and stood face-to-face with the true Bess Grieve.
Thirty-Eight
I had worn her face foreighteen years.
I had seen that snub nose and those round cheeks every time I caught a glimpse of my reflection. When Bess bent to speak to the injured girl, she tossed her ruddy-gold plaits over her shoulders. I had done that, too. She looked exactly as I had in the mortal realm but younger, ’round about the age I was when I first had my women’s courses. I wondered if Bess were a bit taller than I had been at that age, and if I too had had a tiny freckle next to my right eyebrow.
It is alarming, the details you forget about your own face.
What happens to identical bodies when they do not lead identical lives?
Something hovered in the air between us, crackling like sparks from the fire, pulling me towards her and yet repulsing me at the same time. I could not tell whether Bess, the true Bess, felt the same.
I stared too hard. Amadan let out a hiss, and I tore my gaze away.
Bess ignored Amadan and me in favor of the injured girl, giving her a kerchief and showing her how to pinch her nostrils closed to stop the blood. “It will be all right, Aggie,” she said softly. “Go inside now and wait. I will only be a moment.”
The little girl nodded and ran into the cottage.
Bess locked eyes with one of the minders, the pale peasant girl I attempted to speak to before. “Watch her and let me know if the blood flow increases.” She wagged her finger. “It is not for you, understand?”
The ghost maid nodded and floated her way into the cottage.
Sweet Mab, BessisMairi’s daughter. She has the instincts, even never having met her. What couldn’t she have become if she was raised by Mairi herself?Guilt left a foul taste in my mouth. I had deprived her of so much.
Bess turned to us, gesturing after the ghostly minder. “She is a newer one. The hunger is not so heavily upon her yet. Aggie should be fine.” She clapped her hands together, then put them on her hips. “Now, what do you have for us today, then, trickster? Cake full of worms? New clothing filled with fleas and mites, hmm? Mead from poisoned honey?”
Dear Mab, we sound just alike.Had sounded just alike. She was a great deal saucier than I had been as a mortal, talking back to the Fool in such a way.
Wait. Cake full of worms? Poisoned mead?I glared at Amadan with eyes fit to burn. Jamie lived among these changelings. I had promised he would be safe.You, Dark Fool, will not make me forsworn.
Heedless of my disapproval, Amadan rolled his eyes, lids heavy with disdain. “Her Majesty wished to see the changelings.” He sounded like one of my mortal brothers when Mairi asked them to clean their filthy boots outside. “And now we have seen them, and no one is starving, no one is freezing, and so on and so forth...” He trailed off, turning back to his steed.
I placed my hand on his arm. “Not yet.” There was still so much I wanted to say to Bess. Yet the words stuck in my throat.
I wanted to touch her skin, to stroke the cheek that had once been mine. I wanted to embrace her, as if the love once given to me by Mairi Grieve still clung to me and I could transfer it to her. She should have had it all along.
Most of all, I wished to cause her no further distress, and I feared I had no control over that. I had no doubt she must feel the same combination of attraction and revulsion as I did, now we were both on the same side of the Veil. The land felt her presence like a bur under a saddle, now I had returned. It was clear she did not belong.
“Bess Grieve.” I spoke it soft, almost like a Christian prayer.
Her eyes narrowed as she tilted her head. “You know who I am.” She sniffed. “Well, of course you do. Here I stand among the changelings, the oldest one by a decade at least. Most changelings wear out their welcome long before.”
She was not old, even by mortal standards, but there was much of life she had missed. Knowing her mother and her father. The harvests and holidays, feasts and saints’ days. Falling in love.
Would it have been with the shepherd as well?
No. That was ours alone.
The ground beneath me began to frost over, the hungry blades of grass turning into sharp prickles of ice. I could tell myself it was winter returning, that gentler version of the mortal season, where the children had all run and played. But the cerulean sky dimmed, sharp icicles formed on the tree branches around us, and I could not see the sun.
“I should have returned to Faery sooner,” I admitted. “I became too comfortable in my—in your—mortal skin.”
“My mortal skin?” Bess stroked the birthmark blooming at the side of her throat. “I do not understand. Are you my changeling? On the other side of the Veil—you were me?”
She does not feel it. Not the sense of revulsion, nor the mystical drawing together. I am as nothing to her.Of course, she didn’t feel it. Bess Grieve was only mortal, after all.
“Not by choice,” I said quickly. “Your mother stole me. To protect me from the ones who slew the queen.”
