I sat before my mother-of-pearl vanity,its mirror surrounded by sea nymphs etched in a frame of gold. The little nymphs moved as living creatures, strumming upon tiny harps of gold, or chasing each other’s tails as they swam—magical, but the view in the glass itself transfixed me more. Blood-red hair spilled in a torrent past my hips; my eyes were either black or brown or red, depending on the angle of the light. Like all the Aos Sith, I had cheekbones high and sculpted, and lips perfectly shaped, deep red, and swollen as if they had just been kissed.
It was a beautiful face. An inhuman face.
And, for the first time ever, my own.
Did my mother look like this?I wondered.Was Una fair-haired or dark? Did she have dimples, the same arch in her brow? Will my people see her in me? Will they even know who I am?
But if Una had left her mark in my features, it was Mairi Grieve who left her mark on my heart.
“Do not squirm so, Your Majesty,” said the tree-wight now styling my crimson locks. “The plaits will be crooked if you do.” Her skin was wood-dark, fingers rough as bark; I marveled that they did not snag upon my hair.
In my memories I heard another voice. “Och, don’t ye wiggle, bairn,” Mairi Grieve would tell me while she plaited my hair, “lest ye end up with one plait sticking out like a pissing cow’s tail.” She had made me giggle and her calloused hands were gentle while she smoothed out the knots.
I had become a different person since then. Lost Bess’s round curves and red-gold hair, cast aside her birthmark to become a rosebush blooming deep in Carterhaugh’s forest.
I had returned to the place I belonged, but it remained unfamiliar and new.
My handmaid passed her hand over my nightclothes, and they changed into a flowing gown. The silky fabric, the same shade as my skin, clung scandalously over my bosom and shoulders, making it difficult to tell where I ended, and the gown began. From the hem up, branches grew all around me, over my hips and waist, along my arms up to my shoulders, here and there dotted with glistening gems. I might have stood amid a wintry forest when the snow has not fallen, but the tree limbs shimmer with a hit of frost.
My garnet hair she adorned with pearls, and my pearly throat she encircled with a garnet-encrusted torc, that opened like a rosebud as it dipped towards my breasts. I touched it in wonder, for the shape reminded me of the birthmark I had once borne, though not so warm or soft.What would the shepherd think if he saw me thus?
A thorn caught upon my finger, and the drop welled up like the garnets at my throat.
“Oh, be careful, Your Majesty!” the tree-wight cried, and caught my hand in her own. Gently she cupped it, then brought her thumb to her mouth. With sharp little fangs she bit into it, and sap welled up instead of blood. Then she rubbed the sap into my wounded finger, which stung for a moment. Then, to my wondering eyes, the wound disappeared.
I raised the hand before me, flawless, perfect, no sight of any injury, recent or no. This skin had no history, no past.
“You healed me,” I breathed in awe. “I do not feel the pain.”
The wight tittered. “And what sort of attendant would I be if I let you feel pain? If you bled all over your beautiful dress?” She went back to tucking in a wayward plait.
She took away my pain.Faerytook away my pain. And if the land could do that, what other wounds might it heal? Even ones I could not see?
I envisioned dark curls and grey eyes, then, with a violent push inside me, banished the vision from my thoughts.
“You look wondrous.” The tree-wight smiled. “Are you ready to claim your crown? The land craves ceremony, and its people need to celebrate.”
I smiled in the mirror and at the tree-wight, this time taking comfort in how inhuman it all appeared. “Yes,” I said finally. “I believe I am.”
It would only sting for a moment, after all.
Faery has no chapel or priests. It gives no place to the glory of God, for our only glory is ourselves. To mortal reasoning, we have no sense of the sacred or the divine. This mortal reasoning, like all other mortal things in my experience, lies.
Nothing could feel more sacred than the oak grove where I was to be crowned queen. The trees shone with dancing tarrans, flickering lights that rendered the twilit sky as bright as day. Every flower bloomed at once, impossibly, but was it not also impossible for any of these plants to grow without sunlight? The cunning woman in me struggled to understand.
I was the cunning woman no longer.
I had become Faery, and Faery was me.
“Is it not magnificent, Your Grace?”
My thoughts were interrupted by the knight Lyel, who stood by my side and offered me his arm. He cut a handsome figure today, garbed all in ivory and gold, with his buttery hair flowing down his back. He still reminded me of his kinswoman, the chatelaine Lileas. Would that she might stand beside me today as well.
I smiled as I took Lyel’s arm. “It is lovely indeed.” The scents of calendula and primrose, cowslips and rich green earth rose upon the breeze to fill my senses and lift my spirits. No sunlight shone upon us, and yet I felt a rich warmth, as one coming in from the cold to sit by the fire. The lightness, the joy, the pure happiness seemed strong enough to lift me airborne, did I not cling to the arm of my escort beside me.
It was all new, but somehow familiar as well, as though I had passed through the world I had known and saw it from the other side. The green grove and deep-blue sky recalled fair Carterhaugh, where twice I had saved a man’s life.
I would not be able to do it again. From now on, Thomas Shepherd—or, I should call him, Thomas de Lyne—would have to save himself.
