“Perhaps I do.” Amadan shifted his weight and gestured at the basket of pennyroyal. “At least she knew who to go to in her time of need. Mairi Grieve’s daughter.”
Ugh. I had no time for faithless elfin swains. “You’d never give the bairn your name.”
Amadan wrinkled his nose in amusement. “She can call him ‘fool’ if she wants to. Seems like a pixie telling a brownie ‘You’re wee,’ but what business is it of mine?”
His manner called forth the storm beneath my skin. Humble changeling I might be, yet I met his eyes, while anger roiled inside me like a cauldron bubbling over. “And when her father learns she’s with child, where will you be then? When he kicks her out of her own home, where will she go? Glenna knows naught but the baking of bread. How can she support herself? How can she raise a child on her own? Did ye even consider that?” I spoke as if I were defending myself.
Amadan’s lips curled, but he made no other response.
“I thought not.” Such is the way of faery swains in all the ballads and stories. “Glenna would have to do it all on her own.”
Amadan did not argue but glanced again at my basket. “It may not be so easily dealt with.” His eyes were downcast, his tone surprisingly mild. I almost wondered if he spoke from experience.
Pennyroyal was hardly easy. I could kill Glenna if I mistook the dose.
I crossed my arms before me, but the storm inside me subsided, to be replaced with mere bluster. “Are you going to stop me, then?”
Amadan tilted his head and considered me for a moment. “Come stand beside me.” He held out his long-fingered hand. “I have somewhat to show ye.”
These werenotinstructions one should follow, when accosted by a stranger in the woods.
“So, I’m not too plain for ye, after all?” I retorted. But I saw no lust in Amadan’s eyes.
He beckoned again, and for all my reservations, I placed my hand in his. He pulled me against him, putting an arm around my shoulders. Not flirtatious, not the gentle invitations I had known from the shepherd; something pressing upon me with far greater need. I breathed in forest moss, woodsmoke, deep animal musk, and the hint of something holy turned dark and profane.
Amadan whispered against my ear, sending goosebumps rippling across my skin. “Look out and tell me what you see.”
I saw the forest of Carterhaugh, the bonny woods between Faery and the realm of man. But bonny it was no longer, nor woods anymore. The loam had turned to rock, dry as bone and full of crevices. Flowers drooped their heads like hanged men, the gentlest of breezes ravaging them into dust. The rust-colored sky filled with the cries of carrion birds, and the baying of unearthly hounds.
With a start I cried out, for all the life gone to ruin and all the beauty turned to death. I looked up at Amadan’s face, the fragrance which had once been so seductive now choking me like dust. His hair lay sparse across a mottled scalp, and his skin stretched too thin over the bones of his face. I thought it might tear at the slightest touch. His green eyes had gone pale as fungus.
I pushed away from him, my belly churning, a scream choking in my throat.
All at once Amadan was bonny again, and the forest verdant, as if my nightmare vision had never been.
“You saw it,” he said. “You saw what many others miss. How the land starves, while the Teind we pay in blood yet goes unpaid. How can you be only the midwife’s daughter?”
My cheeks burned. “You know I am not, but a changeling left in her place.” I shook my head in confusion. “And I know nothing of this Teind.” The only teind I knew was what Eamon grumbled to pay the churchmen once a year. “Or the land starving. We had a fine harvest, this year past.”
Amadan stared at me again; his eyes seemed to strip me bare, not only of clothing, but of skin, and my own sense of who I was. Without a touch, he poked and prodded at me, taking my measure and finding me lacking.
Finally, his gaze dropped. “If you know nothing,” he said, “then you are no use to me at all, little half fae. I suppose mortal blood will out in the end.”
So had Morven said.
It stung a great deal more coming from him.
Amadan sighed and swiped a hand across his face. In that moment, he looked mortal, and very young. Almost did I place my hand upon his arm, like one might comfort a tired friend.
But Amadan was the barest stranger, with an emphasis upon the strange.
He moved away from me, in spirit, if not in physical space. “Run along home, Bess-you-seem. You are not ready, or you are not the one. Either way, we have no business here.” Was it disappointment in his voice? What had he expected of me?
I did not dare to ask.
Eight
Faery’s call was second tomy human fear.
