It is not over yet.
From the well emerges a wet and naked Tam Lin. He stoops and shivers, water drips from the ends of his dark hair into his bonny grey eyes.
I wish I had ripped those out. Given him eyes of tree, that he should never have seen this Janet, who even now covers him with her mantle green.
Something breaks inside me. It cannot be my heart.
I am meant to yield now. Janet has won Tam Lin.
I do not remember how to yield. It is a skill I lost long ago.
Faery still needs him. The Teind must be paid.
I let no show of desperation cloud my face, but calmly dismount my horse. My green gossamer skirts settle around me, bedecked with garnets like drops of blood. I raise my arms as I stand before the procession. “My people,” I say. “Our rade is ended. All Hallows is nearly through. Do you now return beyond the Veil.”
A mist rises around the creatures of the fae: riders and walkers, Sluagh and Aos Sith alike.
My seneschal looks at me in confusion, suspicion, concern. My words are his command, but he would act as my conscience and seems reluctant to leave us alone.
A conscience is a luxury I cannot afford.
I smile sweetly, reassuring him. “I will be safe. What danger can they possess, a pregnant woman and a naked man?”
Although I know his worry is not for me.
For Samhain is not over yet. And I am no worthy ruler of Faery if I give up Tam Lin without a fight.
And so, I begin my tale.
One
Selkirkshire, Scotland
Imbolc, seventy-five years before
My mother always wept thatI was not her child. This wounded me far less than knowing she was right.
She lost her wits when I was but thirteen years old.
We had just delivered the child of Peggy the Cottar, though ’twas born out of wedlock and Peggy had not the coin to pay. Her family never did. Eamon, Mairi’s husband, frowned upon such acts of charity and upon his wife’s cunning woman skills; at least, after he’d spent time with our parish priest, he did. But Mairi had never paid that any mind.
“Peggy should have come to me long before now,” she confided in me as we walked home together. “The moment she first knew her courses were late. I could have helped her better then.”
There was no sick person Mairi Grieve would not help. I deeply admired her for that.
“Anyway, Eamon was wrong,” she continued. “Peggy paid us, didn’t she?” And she gestured at the ailing chicken I now carried in my arms.
“Some fee,” I muttered. The bird was like to die any moment now; its feathers were molting and bedraggled; it sat a half-starved bundle in my arms. “We shall have to nurse this one back to health, too.” And by “we” I likely meant “I.” As the youngest of the household, my job it was to look after the chicks.
Mairi laughed and tugged upon one of my plaits. “’Tis good practice for you, my cuckoo!” She always did call me that, the little stranger who had been reared in her nest, like a cuckoo’s egg. Back then, she meant it with affection; had never said it with any malice, only a bit of wistfulness coloring her tone. “Ye were a good help to me today, lass. I was glad to have ye by my side.”
Not so glad as if I were the true Bess, your daughter.I pressed my lips together that the words would not come out.
I did not know why the true Bess Grieve had been taken by the faeries, and I left in her place. The Grieve household was riddled with fae, from the shadows who danced upon the walls to the Cait Sith who curled up before the fire and chased away the occasional mouse. I could sense these fae as none of the household’s mortal members did, but never would they speak to me. Only the brownie Morven acknowledged me, when I stayed up late to watch her scouring the pans and sweeping out the hearth.
“Blood will out,” was the explanation she gave. “I can smell the mortal in ye, lass. I warrant yer blood is tainted, and ye were too sickly to remain in the Faery realm. Consider yerself lucky ye found a home here.”
I did consider myself lucky, in some ways. Eamon was not a warm person, but he was prosperous enough to feed and house me and my siblings—nay, Bess’s, really—a noisy and ungrateful throng. Mairi’s work as a healer was not needed to supplement the household income, nor did Eamon welcome it as his status in the village rose, but she was generous in her healing and teaching and far kinder to me than I deserved. Despite this kindness, inside my head the refrain echoed:Not True Bess. Not wholly fae. You are Mairi Grieve’s cuckoo, and that is all you will ever be.
