What more could be expected? I was a half-human, half-fae abomination, with no magic of my own. No fae other than Morven had spoken to me until the Dark Fool came along, and he had found me lacking. I was left to rot among the mortals, raised beside the cunning woman’s graceless brats. Should I be found out and tossed into the fire, as Mairi told me some suspected changelings were, Faery would not even attempt to intervene.
The day grew late, though not as late as I had feared. In the forest, the trees cast so long a shadow twilight itself might have ridden in upon Amadan’s tail. It was eerie, and it was not, for twilight makes us fae feel well at home.
I fled the forest as a frightened child flees the shadows on the wall. I had no name for my fear; my vision had been nightmarish, but I knew not what it might portend. It might have been mere trickery, foisted upon me by one who did call himself the Fool. Or it might have been premonition, and I had done nothing to prevent it, only recoiled in fear.
The sound of Amadan’s piping still rang in my ears, a tune I could almost hum, though it vanished when I tried. His scent overcame me still, beguiling me like a fine wine, but try as I might, I could not recall his face. I thought instead of the shepherd Thomas, with his bright smile and riotous curls. When I thought of Amadan, I saw nothing.
No, that was not entirely true. I remembered well his cadaverous visage, the scent of dust and death, and his fungus-colored eyes.
We fae cannot lie with words but speak illusion like a second tongue. I, however, had grown up outside Faery and could not translate it. Whether the bonny forest or the barren wasteland was the truth, the elfin swain or the mask of death, I did not know. Perhaps the answer was somewhere in between. I only hoped one day I might understand.
In the meantime, I must get my pennyroyal into the house without Eamon’s notice. I paused before the threshold to array my basket, laying the herb beneath the wildflowers I’d picked, chickweed and lousewort and gorse. ’Twas hidden enough, though the fragrance carried. I hoped it was only my fae senses picking up on it.
When I arrived, Eamon was coming in for supper, and he met me at the door. I smiled sweetly and swung my basket, for what can be more innocent than a flower-picking maid?
“Bess,” Eamon said gruffly.
I inclined my head, avoiding the untruth, “Father.” “’Tis a lovely day, isn’t it? Spring is truly on her way.”
Eamon grunted, squinting at the clouds above us. “I reckon it will storm tomorrow.”
“Then it’s glad I am I picked my flowers today.” I clutched my basket, tilting my head at him. “’Twill brighten the empty house, don’t you think?” For the stink of death was gone, but the gloom of it was not. It was still lonely to live there, he and I alone.
Sometimes I wanted him to sit with me and tell me stories about Mairi, in hopes it might lessen his grief. But Eamon had sealed his heart behind walls of stone. There had never been any way I could break through.
“Hmm.” His eyes fell upon my basket. “I smell mint.”
Well, no, he smelled pennyroyal, but it was best not to let him know. “Mint is good for the ants in the pantry,” I said.
His brows lifted. “And are there ants in the pantry?” If he found so much as one, he would beat me sorely.
What had I been thinking? He and I could never comfort each other. He was more my master than my kin.
Why did I not leave him? Why did I not beg the piper to dance me under the hillside, far away from the realm of man? I felt like I’d been shackled here, like a timid sailor, too afraid to leave sight of the shore.
Faery was vast and unknowable as the ocean, and I did not truly believe I would float.
“I will make certain there are no ants,” I said, and fled to find a place for my flowers and to hide the pennyroyal from view.
“Ants in the pantry?” Morven sniffed as she swept the rushes across the floor. “D’ye think I keep such an untidy house?”
Eamon had gone to bed, and the room was silent, save for the brownie’s sweeping and the vermin rushing about in the rafters. Only the hearth remained lit, and the firelight cast peculiar shadows on the walls: horned fae, crones with hideously misshapen lips, man-like creatures with hedgehog bristles instead of hair. I kept waiting for these shadow fae to speak to me, or at least acknowledge me in some way, but they never paid me any mind.
I stood at the table, grinding the pennyroyal into a powder with my mortar and pestle. I would bring some with me when next I visited the common oven and slip it to Glenna there. ’Twas not an ideal arrangement—I would far rather mix the brew for her myself and be certain she took it properly. That is what Mairi Grieve would have done. But I saw no way I could do so without drawing Eamon’s attention to us, or Rufus Baker’s. We must be discreet.
Morven waited for my response, hands upon her scrawny hips, brows beetling beneath her thatch of hair.
“No,” I said quickly. “I did not suppose you would have overheard.”
“Hmph,” was her reply as she beat her stick broom out the front door. “Well, there’s naught what goes on inside this house that I don’t hear, even in the daylight hours.”
I stared at the shadow fae, who stretched out and distorted when the flames grew high, then shrank back down again when they were dim.Little half fae,I heard the voice of the Dark Fool say.Mortal blood will out in the end.No wonder the shadows would have naught to do with me. Morven would ever be my only friend.
“Of course there are no ants in your pantry,” I reassured her. “You have always taken care of the house so well. Much better than I could, looking after Mairi while she was—” I broke off, choking down a sob.
Morven thrust her broom into a cobweb in the corner, and began a furious, incomprehensible argument with the spider residing there. “’Tis my charge, isn’t it?” she said to me. “To look after the kin of Mairi Grieve, by blood and by choice. She were a good woman and there’s many what owes her, in this world and the next.”
I nodded in agreement. Once a brownie had the charge of a house, they could not leave it, unless the owners should offend their sensibilities with a gift or two. Household spirits they were; “Some say we used to be gods,” Morven would always tell me, with a proud jut of her chin and her hands upon her waist.
