On days like this one, when the warm sun beat down upon our heads, and we brought new life into the world, when Mairi Grieve herself had said I was a good help to her, it almost felt like enough.
The chicken pecked me, and I tried to get my arms more comfortably around it, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something pass beside Mairi’s face. Long fingers stroking her cheek. I breathed in the scent of musk and loam and green things gone to rot.
The world seemed to go still, a heaviness filling the air. Wicked laughter hovered around me, turning to birdsong when I listened close.
Then Mairi stumbled, fell to her knees upon the dirt path, dropping her basket of simples and herbs.
“Goodwife Mairi!” I cried out, addressing her as my mistress since calling her “Mother” would have been a lie. The chicken leapt out of my arms. I let it wander free as I dropped down beside her, my kirtle dragging in the dust.
Mairi’s face drooped on the right side; her eyes were staring and wild. She murmured words I could not understand, interrupted with the occasional word I could. “The queen... the babe!” she cried out. “Where is the babe? Where is my little Bess, my child?”
She is right here,I longed to say, but the words caught in my throat.
We of Faery cannot lie.
“Raise your arms,” I said instead, as I had heard Mairi herself command her apoplectic patients. “Can ye show me a smile?”
Mairi’s left arm rose to her shoulders; the right hung limp and weak. She bared her teeth, but her lip hung down on one side, and she drooled. The shadowy goblins that danced across our walls appeared comely in comparison.Oh, Mairi.
She was stricken. Faery-struck, they call it, though neither Mairi nor I much liked the term. And yet—
And yet there had been that peculiar green scent. Heavy. Intoxicating. The overly long fingers that touched the side of her face... then vanished.I shook these memories away, as I could not understand what they meant.
Instead, with great care, like she was naught but dust and skeleton leaves, I helped Mairi to her feet, let her lean upon me as I walked her home to bed.
And not once did she leave it for the next five years.
Samhain
“You are telling us astory?” Janet says incredulously. “The hour is late; the night is cold. We wish to go home.”
Only three of us stand now in Carterhaugh, by the ancient well, where the roses grow wild and the ferns do droop: Janet and I, and Tam Lin, who was my favored knight and consort. Once I held his heart like a pebble in my hand. Now she does.
I do not think Janet will want him, once I am through.
I hold my head high beneath my branched crown, pretending it has no weight at all. “You would take away the bonniest knight in my company. The least you can do is give me a moment of your time.”
“A moment of my time?” Janet pulls her mantle closer around her young lord, then looks me in the eyes. “I have freed Tam Lin. And I have saved his life. I demand you let us go.” There is iron in her spirit, a determined set to her chin. I sense she is not accustomed to being told no.
Neither am I.
I saunter around her like a hawk circling its prey. “Demand, you say? Such foolhardy words to use to the Queen of Faery herself.”
To her credit, Janet drops her gaze. “I am sorry, Your Majesty. But we are nothing to you. Please let us leave.”
I only wish they were nothing to me. Yet somewhere in Faery a tree falls. The ground cracks, opens a fissure where nothing can grow. For want of the Teind, our seven-year sacrifice, the land is dying. It will be on my head if it does.
The land will take me with it when it goes.
I cannot allow them to leave.
I ignore Janet’s pleas, and look down my nose at Tam Lin. With a finger, I push him out of my way. “Do you know, I knew his ancestor? A long, long time ago. And let me tell you, loyalty does not run in the family.” Those grey eyes, though, they do.
I should never have let Tam Lin keep them.
The lordling opens his mouth to protest, but I flick my finger in the air and he grows silent. I am done listening to him. He is only the prize we fight over.
Color rises in Janet’s cheeks, and her spirit burns hot, despite the chill of the autumn night. “I do not care how well you knew his ancestor. Tam Lin isnotlike him.”
