The Fey Quartet

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The sun was high in the sky by the time Widow Miller reached the cheerful, chuckling stream where she’d gathered herbs yesterday. She searched for the second stream—dark and hissing—and the black pool where she’d rescued the babe, but found no sign of them. Finally, she spied her basket of herbs upturned alongside a mossy log.

“Hello?” She cautiously approached the basket. “Can anyone hear me?”

Leaves rustled in the breeze and a bird sang somewhere behind her, but other than those sounds, Glade Forest was silent.

I need to find the border, Widow Miller thought, but her feet stayed where they were, unwilling to move. Finding the border with Faerie seemed as sensible as standing underneath a wasps’ nest and beating it with a stick. “But first I’ll see to these herbs,” she told the sleeping baby. “After all the effort of picking them, it’s a terrible waste to just let them lie here and rot. See? They’re only a little shriveled.” She gathered the herbs as briskly as a one-handed woman could and set the basket beside the mossy log and clambered awkwardly to her feet. “Now, let’s find your mother.”

She picked up the baby’s basket and took a deep breath—and for a moment her courage failed her. Her heart beat loudly in her ears and her feet were planted to the ground as firmly as tree roots. And then she thought of having two strong legs and two good hands and two clear-seeing eyes, and she thought of Ivy’s crutch, and she took a second deep breath and hobbled between the tree trunks.

But the Faerie border was elusive. Widow Miller walked in great limping circles, ever wider, searching for the tingle on the back of her neck. “Hello?” she called. “Hello?” An hour passed, and then a second hour. The widow’s legs ached, her arm trembled from the weight of the Faerie basket, and her voice grew raspy and weak. She began to despair of ever finding the border. I could leave the basket here. Leave it and go home. Let the forest take care of the babe. And then she imagined herself walking freely, imagined Ivy walking freely, and gathered her strength and hobbled further.

“Hello?” She entered a small glade with a patch of jaunty yellow primroses, a glade she was certain she had passed through three times already . . . and a tingling sensation crawled across the nape of her neck.

Widow Miller halted. I’ve found it. And then she thought, No, it found me. She stood, swaying in her tiredness, feeling the prickling tingle climb up her neck and crawl across her scalp, listening to the fearful thump of her heart. “Courage,” she whispered to herself, and she tightened her grip on the basket, and called as loudly as she could: “Hello! Is anyone here? I seek this child’s mother.”

The Faerie babe woke suddenly and blinked her black eyes and opened her sharp-toothed mouth and added her thin, piercing cry to the widow’s call.

“Hello!” Widow Miller called again. “I seek this child’s―”

A gust of wind bellowed through the forest, so strong it snatched the widow’s words from her mouth and knocked her backwards a lurching step. Trees groaned and swayed, branches whipped, and the air was thick with whirling leaves—and then the wind was gone as abruptly as it had come. The widow’s ears rang as if there had been a clap of thunder.

Airborne leaves drifted to the ground. The Faerie babe fell silent. No birds sang, no insects hummed, no branches rustled. Widow Miller had the fancy that the whole forest held its breath. Her skin prickled with an awareness that someone—something—was watching her.

Widow Miller swallowed nervously. “I seek this babe’s mother.” She tried to speak loudly, but her voice was thin and fearful.

Another gust of wind lifted the leaves from the ground, making them swirl wildly—and when they settled, a woman stood beside the jaunty primroses.

The widow’s heart stopped beating in an instant of sheer terror. Fey.

The Faerie woman had a cold, cruel, inhuman beauty. Her skin was paler than moonlight, her eyes deeply black. She wore a gown of blood-red velvet. Pearls glowed in her ebony hair. Her beauty was so terrible, so perfect, that the widow’s eyes hurt to look at her.

“Give me my child,” the Faerie said, in a voice as sharp and dangerous as a knife blade.

Widow Miller swallowed, and clutched the basket more tightly. “How do I know you’re her mother?”

Scorn flickered across the Faerie’s face. “Humans. Such blunt senses.”

“How do I know you’re her mother?” the widow repeated, her heart thumping loudly in her chest. “Someone tried to drown her. I won’t give her to anyone but her mother.”

“Her blood is my blood. If you had keener eyes, you would see it.” The Faerie lifted one hand, and for an instant the widow saw the sap running in the trees, saw each unfurled leaf inside each burgeoning bud on each strong, outreaching branch, saw the kinship between woman and babe—and then her vision dulled once more.

Widow Miller blinked, and clutched the basket even more tightly. Courage, she told herself. “I saved your child’s life at risk of my own. For that, you owe me.”

The Faerie stiffened. Her cheekbones became sharper, crueler.

“My daughters cared for your child all night. For that, you owe them.”

The Faerie’s black eyes narrowed. The silence surrounding them took on a brittle edge.

Inwardly, Widow Miller cringed. Outwardly, she stood calm and proud. “If you bestow wishes on me and my daughters, it will wipe the debt between us.”

“Wishes?” The Faerie’s voice was soft and dangerous.

Stand your ground, Widow Miller told herself. The Fey respect courage. “Yes,” she said firmly.

The Faerie released a hissing, snake-like breath. “Very well. Name your wishes and I shall bestow them.”

“For myself . . .” Now that the moment had come, Widow Miller was trembling. “For myself . . . I wish to be fifteen years younger than I am now, and I wish to be healed of my injuries.”

“Done,” the Faerie said, waving a negligent hand.

Hope clenched painfully in the widow’s chest. She was unable to inhale, unable to exhale. Am I healed?

But even as she formed the thought, her field of vision widened. I can see with both eyes! The widow looked down and watched her left hand uncurl itself, watched the withered claws become strong, healthy fingers. Wonderingly, she touched her nose; it was straight and unbroken. She ran her tongue along her teeth and found them there. All of them. The constant, nagging ache from her right hip was gone.

I am Maythorn again.

Joy brought tears to her eyes. Don’t cry, she told herself desperately. Don’t cry. The Fey despise weakness. She gulped back the tears and cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

The Faerie ignored the words. “Your daughters’ wishes. What do you choose for them?”

“Ah . . .” Widow Miller tried to collect her scattered thoughts. She knew what Ivy would choose, but not Hazel and Larkspur. “May they choose for themselves?”

The Faerie’s pale lips pursed in displeasure, then she gave a haughty shrug and tossed her pearled head, as if she didn’t care who made the choices. “They may. Upon their next birthdays. Now give me back my child.”

Widow Miller hugged the basket to her chest. “Their next birthdays? Can’t it be now?”

“No.”

“But Ivy needs her wish today!”

“I have demands on my time you couldn’t begin to understand, human.”

“Just Ivy’s wish, then,” Widow Miller said desperately.

The Faerie grew still. A dangerous glitter entered her black eyes. “No.”

Fear lifted the hair on Widow Miller’s scalp. Her lungs contracted. She’s going to strike me dead.

The forest seemed to hold its breath again—a moment of utter silence, utter stillness—and then a breeze fingered its way between the trees, stirring leaves and making the primroses nod on their stalks. The Faerie’s eyes lost their glitter, and Widow Miller found she could breathe again. “Very well,” she said evenly, as if she weren’t in fear of her life. “My daughters shall choose their wishes on their next birthdays.”

The Faerie inclined her head.

“How shall they find you?”

“I shall find them.” The Faerie held out her hands imperiously. “Give me my child.”

Widow Miller handed over the basket. Emotions flickered across the Faerie’s face, tenderness, relief—and a dark flash of scorn.

Is the scorn for me? But even as Widow Miller asked herself the question, she knew it was. And she knew why. I haven’t bargained hard enough.

“You still owe me,” she said.

The Faerie glanced at her. Her face was cruel, beautiful, and utterly expressionless—but beneath the impassive stare was an odd sense of expectancy.

Yes, she knows she owes me. But why?

In a flash, the widow understood. “I have returned your daughter to you. Your only child. Your bloodline will continue. For that, you owe me.”

The Faerie tilted her head in a regal nod. “Choose your wish.”

Widow Miller’s mind went blank. Think! Quickly! But she had what she wanted, for herself and her daughters.

“There’s a man you love.” For the first time, the Faerie smiled, a thin, disdainful, mocking smile. Her teeth were as sharp and white as a cat’s. “I can make him love you.”

For an instant Widow Miller saw Ren Blacksmith in her mind’s eye—the flaxen hair, the strong, gentle hands, the smiling gray-green eyes—and her heart clenched painfully. Have Ren love me?

“He will worship you until he dies.”

Worship? The widow took a step backwards, shaking her head. “No.”

“No? Are you certain?” The Faerie’s voice was sibilant and seductive. “It is easily done.”

“I’m certain,” Widow Miller said firmly. “Love should be given freely, or not at all.”

The Faerie shrugged. There was scorn in her black eyes and amusement on her face.

Widow Miller looked away from that cold, cruel, inhuman face, and gazed at the baby.

“Through your daughter, your bloodline lives,” she said slowly. “I gave you that.” She glanced up, suddenly knowing what to ask for. “I gave you that. So what I ask for in return is this: as long as your daughter’s line survives, my daughters’ lines shall receive Faerie wishes.”

The amusement vanished from the Faerie’s face. “You ask too much, human.”

“No,” Widow Miller said. “I ask just enough. Fey have but one child. Your bloodline continues because of me.”

The Faerie gazed at her for a long moment, her eyes dark and narrow, sucking up the light, reflecting nothing.

Widow Miller met those black eyes and listened to the thump of her heart and the sigh of the breeze in the trees and the chirrup of birdsong.

“Females only,” the Faerie said abruptly. “As long as my daughter’s female line survives, the females in your daughters’ lines shall each receive a wish. On their birthdays. At the same ages their mothers were when they received their wishes.”

The widow considered this carefully. Larkspur’s offspring would be twenty-one when granted wishes, Hazel’s twenty-three, Ivy’s twenty-five. Women, not flighty young girls. Old enough to make sensible choices.

“Agreed,” she said.

The Faerie gave a dismissive nod and turned away.

“Be careful.”

The Faerie glanced over her shoulder, aloof and startled.

“Someone tried to drown your daughter. Guard her carefully, lest they try to harm her again.”

The Faerie turned to face her fully. Beneath the coldness, Widow Miller saw surprise. “You care about my daughter? You feel affection for her?”

“Of course I do. She’s but a babe.”

A contemptuous smile curled the Faerie’s lips. “Humans. So soft-hearted.” Her laugh rang beneath the trees, bell-like and mocking, and then, in a brief gust of wind, she was gone. The echo of Faerie laughter hung in the air, but other than that, the little glade was empty.

Widow Miller touched her nose, her cheekbones, her jaw. “I’m whole again,” she whispered, and then, more loudly: “I’m whole again!” She spun around and started back the way she’d come, her steps coming faster and faster until she was running, as lightly and fleetly and joyfully as a young deer.

The basket of wilting herbs was where she’d left it, beside the mossy log. The widow picked it up, breathless and laughing. “I’m no longer Widow Miller,” she told the basket. “Look at me! I’m Maythorn again!”