Shrike chuckled and slung an arm around Wren’s waist. There it rested as if it’d always belonged, its warmth suffusing Wren’s heart.
~
The twenty-first of September—or rather, Mabon, Wren reminded himself—dawned with ethereal mist. He and Shrike began their journey to the Grove of Gates before the fog dissipated. Shrike carried a basket of fresh-picked sloe berries from the blackthorn vines, which made Wren feel rather empty-handed, though Shrike assured him he needn’t worry on that head. Concern of any kind only seemed to strike Shrike when they reached the Grove of Gates and halted before a particular crumbling stone arch.
“Give me any sign that you cannot continue, and I shall bring us home again,” he said.
It took Wren a moment to catch what he meant. He’d seen how the Hidden Folk drew their strength from draining others in revels. However, “Surely it would break the bounds of hospitality for them to harm us?”
“I doubt they would intend to harm us,” Shrike reassured him. “But if they should harm you by mistake…”
Wren had no intention of falling to Felix Knoll’s fate. Still, he had to admit Shrike’s protective nature warmed his heart. “You shall be first to hear of it.”
Shrike appeared much relieved. He offered Wren his free arm. Wren entwined it with his own. Together, they strode through the gate.
Wren braced himself for waist-high snow drifts and biting wind.
He stepped into something else altogether.
Greenery erupted all around him. Belatedly he recognized the valley limned with pine forests from his prior visit. He’d never realised it could appear so verdant.
All the fae who’d crowded into the feast-hall in winter now wandered through the lush valley amidst profusions of purple wildflowers and bowers of bent branches overlaid with just enough deer-skin to shade those who dallied within from the brilliant sunshine. Fiddlers, drummers, and pipers dotted the landscape to send sweet music through the breeze, each with a ring of dancers around them.
One such ring stood rather near to where Shrike and Wren had appeared. The fiddler—or so Wren called them, for their instrument bore strings played on by a bow despite being a box clasped between the seated musician’s knees—cut off their song with a confused, discordant half-note. The dancers all spun to see what had halted the music. Their mixed expressions of bewilderment, disappointment, and irritation turned to wondrous delight as they clapped eyes on the Kings of Oak andHolly. Scattered applause, cheers, and whoops resounded. A few enterprising fae took off through the revel to bring word of the kings’ arrival to their fellows.
Shrike, looking no more comfortable with this attention than Wren felt, bowed, and Wren followed suit. Looking back from whence they’d come, Wren saw they’d just stepped through an arch of purple-flowering vine. He hadn’t seen anything of the kind when last he’d visited. Belatedly he realised it likely withered to nothing in the winter months. He gave silent thanks that his Shrike proved cleverer than him by half and had known how to find it under the snow.
The fae who’d gone to play the role of town crier left a trail of jubilation behind them as they went. Shrike led on in their wake, and Wren followed him up the winding thread of commotion to the centre of the throng.
Here a raised wooden dais stood with a familiar black walnut throne upon it. The Mistress of Revels appeared much the same as when last Wren saw her. Her strong chin held high, her broad shoulders thrown back, a crown of thistle and harebells nestled amidst her mighty antlers. The only difference Wren could see was that her gown of patchwork leathers had let down to become a mere skirt, leaving her bronzed chest bare. Wren glimpsed her breasts for but an instant before he forced his gaze literally anywhere else.
Dozens of beautiful fae flocked around the dais. Some to promenade before their mistress. Others to pick from the horseshoe-shaped banquet table laid out in front of it. Wood-carved like the throne, with its curving crossed legs carved into serpents and wolves, it held a feast fit for two kings. A flock of pheasants laid out on a wreath of their own iridescent wing-feathers surrounded the centrepiece of a roast stag decorated with its own antlered skull bleached white by the sun. Horns-of-plenty disgorged apples, pears, elderberries and lingonberries—the latter alongside pots of honey and their own jam interspersed with cheese both in wheels and crumbling piles. Links of black pudding (of all things, Wren marvelled to himself) surrounded the bright scarlet pots of lingonberry jam. Those who chose apples, Wren noted, cut them width-wise rather than length-wise to reveal pips in the pattern of a five-pointed star. And those who didn’t prefer fresh pears might partake of some preserved in lingonberry juice. For drink, he beheld fae pouring the same mead he’d seen them drink in the feast-hall in winter but also elderberry wine and lingonberry water.
Against all this, Wren began to fear the offerings of Blackthorn Briar would prove paltry—perhaps offensively so.
Yet as Shrike presented their basket of sloe berries to the Mistress of Revels, a gleam lit her eyes, and her smile grew into a grin.
Perhaps, Wren supposed, it was enough to know the meagre gift came from the mysterious court which held no subjects save its two kings.
“Kings of Oak and Holly,” the Mistress of Revels declared when they’d finished bowing. “We bid you welcome to our realm. Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Shrike thanked her for the privilege.
“Will you participate in our rite?” the Mistress of Revels enquired.
Shrike turned to Wren.
Wren cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Mistress. I know not what the rite entails.”
“We feast upon each other,” she explained.
Wren’s eyes flew wide despite himself.
“Symbolically,” she added almost as an afterthought. “We rejoice in the strength the summer has brought to our bodies and share them with one another. It honours the harvest todevour each other thus. It would prove a still greater honour if we might devour kings.”
Wren, who’d symbolically devoured Shrike more oft than not in the months since Midsummer, had to admit the idea held a certain thrill for him. He glanced to Shrike again.
Shrike inclined his head.
