I glanced at the precious tea and the gilded porcelain. Indeed, I feasted like the princesses in the old tales my mother used to tell me on dark winter eves. How I’d wished that a handsome prince would fall in love with me and whisk me off to his palace. How the echo of these tales had eased the dark seasons after her death. Now, the sight of such treasures filled me only with an ache; with a sharp longing for something lasting. I stomped it as quickly and furiously as my mother used to trample the wildwood spiders that crept during autumn through the window—such longings would poison and kill me just as well.
I washed down the bite of cake I’d stuffed too quickly into my mouth with a sip of scalding tea—it was not likely the baker’s fault, but it clung like ash to my tongue. Adrik had gone quietly to restore the fire with a log and a stick of incense. He must have noticed that his enthusiasm scared me. That the summers with barren rocks and books as my sole companions had turned me into an easily startled creature.
As strange as a hag and twice as mad.
“May I tell you a tale?”
I stared at Adrik, frightened and bewildered. I could not read him at all. He wore his mask of kindness and good humor so well that morning, I could not find a crack in it. I knew there hid an ugliness underneath, there always did, but he concealed it well.
“You are not the first traveler to be stranded here,” Adrik said, settling into the armchair. “I shall call it neither blessing nor curse, though I’m tempted. This town is a curious place. I know its stories and its quirks. Its people have a fondness for gossip, and so do the little items they leave unattended; their knick-knacks and their hearths, the riverside pebbles, the houses and the trees, the strange ruins near the riverbend.” He paused briefly to rest his chin in his hands. “I know their tales.”
I knew at once what he implied—understood that he suffered the same madness that had ailed my mother. The same madness whose whispers had haunted me since I was little.
“You hear the spirits.”
There were no spirits. Foolish tales to explain that which could not be explained, mad whispers that came from something wrong in the head—
“Indeed.”
I loathed the stain of hope that bloomed within—a reminder that an echo of the same madness lived in me, too. That a part of me still wished to believe my mother had possessed more sense than those who’d called her senseless. That hers had been a magic unseen, but a magic still.
Had the draft not eased when I’d turned the pillow thrice? Had the hearth not warmed when Lorell brought the offering and Adrik the incense? Had Adrik not banished the clatter in the armoire by turning the broom on its head?
And if it was true… If there lived spirits in this far part of the world… Who was to say that the folly my mother had committed that night beneath the ribbon-hung elm could not be reversed? Who was to say that someone who possessed a sliver of the same magic could not purge me of the vile power she’d thoughtlessly, foolishly asked the spirits to bestow on me that autumn eve?
I dared neither to breathe nor to look at Adrik for fear that I might reveal the excitement thrumming like a song within me; like the thud, thud, thud of a drum bringing my blood to a dance.
He might save me. He might free me forever from the hunt, if I was sharp and clever and cautious. Oh, to witness a spring in the vale, to sit in the quiet of a misty morning without hearing howls in the wind, to spend a season on the far isles and see the moonlit wilds of the south—
I swiftly trampled these hopes. How reckless to dream of such things. It was no use to beg Adrik for help, for faeries were heartless creatures. It was no use to lay on my charm, for I possessed none to speak of. I had no coin either to purchase his aid.
A favor for a favor.
Only a bargain marked in blood would grant me his binding aid. Only a bargain would protect me when I asked him to purge my magic. He would be unable to go back on his word, unable to make me his slave or sell me to his kin—
“Yes,” I breathed just to stall him, “you may tell me a tale.”
Adrik looked pleased, unaware of my turmoil as he drew his tall legs onto the chair. “Then let me tell you the tale of Wildemire’s first house.”
The air stirred with a breeze of summer warmth. A tide swept over me and carried me off into another world.
Many hundreds of winters ago, long before the wastes had turned into wastes, before the fairies had taken a liking to crowns, and when the moon-tribes still waged their battles in the clouds, this land was nothing more than a wildflower meadow in the shade of a rock. Nothing and no one ever came here, for the meadow was content to rest beneath summer skies and to watch the river drift endlessly past.
It was this river that washed the lovers ashore—entwined like vines in their rowboat, marked with scrapes and bruises. Their love was ill-fated: The girl bore the mark of the darkest moon and the boy a waxing crescent, and their tribes had been at war since their great-grandmothers were babes. Thewhywas lost to centuries of bloodshed. The old ones had forgotten to ask it at all.
The young lovers had not.
To save themselves, they surrendered their fates to the moon-river. They sailed its angry waters for thirteen days before the spirits took pity on them and guided them here. Down where the river winds past the old mill, the girl pulled the boy ashore.
The sun dipped once and rose again, and the lovers began to build their new life. From river-clay they fired a brick and placed it where they envisioned a bright house with a wild garden. The girl wove talismans from nettle and burned incense over the firepit to invite the spirits.
The spirits obliged, for she spoke kindly and warmly to them and she’d always honored them well. She must have possessed a touch of magic, or a great deal of fortune. The very next day, a mason passed with a wagon of supplies. Her workshop had burned in a fire and she liked the meadow well enough to settle.
The girl was a skilled hunter and the forest plentiful, and the boy was deft with the needle and strong enough to carry logs and rocks. A week passed, then came a carpenter whose carriage was trapped in a nearby swamp. He’d gone into the strange forest for aid and when he came to the meadow he was terribly afraid; but the girl cooked him soup and the boy offered help with the carriage, and the carpenter decided to stay.
So it continued: When they needed tools, a blacksmith appeared, when they needed wool, a shepherd came withhis flock, and when the girl spoke longingly one evening of the sweet bread her sister used to make, a baker appeared promptly the next day.
Within a few moons, the meadow had blossomed into a village.
