What to do with Beatrix?
She stands in her clearing. The sound of her name fades into the sounds of the ancient wood around her, the forest come to life as night takes hold. She is not alone.
A woman sits on a low bough of an oak, her bare feet dangling over one side. Beatrix has seen William sit this way a thousand times, free of the weight of the world when his feet no longer touch the ground. This woman doing it puts her on edge.
Her hair hangs loose to her waist, the deep red shade of autumn leaves just before they fall.
Her dress flows around her like the river water, shimmering silver in the darkness, as if made from the starlight itself.
But it is her eyes that steal Beatrix’s breath away: one shining with the fire of a golden sunrise, the other glowing with the cool light of a full moon.
“Are you a faerie?” Beatrix asks the ethereal woman. She has no wings, but what else could she be?
“If that’s what you wish to name me,” she says. “I’ve been called far worse.”
“What do you want?”
The woman smiles. There is no joy in it, no happiness, as if she doesn’t know what it is to smile. Not a woman, then, only something pretending to be one. “I believe it is what you want that has brought us here, Beatrix.”
A shiver runs down her spine. “You know my name?”
“I know a lot of things,” the faerie says. “I know you feel safe in the forest because the rest of the village doesn’t. I know you’ve cried enough tears under its canopy to flood the banks of the Wye. And I know you didn’t get your scars by falling from one of its trees.”
Beatrix brushes her fingers against the thin, faded scar above her eye. “I fell,” she says. “My boots got tangled in the hem of my skirt.” Not a lie, just not the whole truth.
“I’ve seen the way those people treat you.” People. The faerie spits the word, as if it tastes foul on her tongue. “I’ve heard their whispers. Even your own mother.”
A cold pit of dread opens in Beatrix’s guts. “You’ve been watching me?”
The faerie considers her. “It was raining the day you were born. Did you know?”
Beatrix shakes her head, stunned speechless.
“It had been raining for days. The Wye was swollen to its banks, the path through the trees a sea of mud. Your father walked so carefully for such a large man, afraid he’d slip with you in his arms.”
“What?” Beatrix’s heart pounds against her ribs. The faerie ignores her.
“I could never understand why. What did it matter if he was going to throw you in the river anyway?”
Tears spring to Beatrix’s eyes. “You’re lying.”
The faerie treads a slow circle around her, a wolf stalking her prey. “He came to the edge. Just there. Took a step forward. The water ran over the tops of his boots. The river was rushing. All he had to do was let go, and the Wye would have taken you away.”
Beatrix shakes her head. Her throat aches. “It’s not true.” It can’t be true.
“He stood there for ages. It was your mother who sent him, you see. She laid you in his arms for the first time, and do you know what she said to him?”
Beatrix squeezes her eyes shut against the forest, against the river, against the faerie’s words. Tears spill down her cheeks.
The faerie leans close. She whispers in Beatrix’s ear. Her breath is cold against her neck. “Give her to the river.”
“But he didn’t,” Beatrix says. The words echo through her head. He didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t.
The faerie leans against the trunk of an oak.
“No, he didn’t. He left you in a hollow of a dying tree.
” She gestures to the moss-covered log slowly rotting at the center of the clearing.
“It was a test. If you were a faerie, you’d be taken away, and if you didn’t survive the night, then you must have been a changeling.
Anything to keep his hands—and his conscience—clean.
When he returned the next morning and found you alive, he took you home. ”
Beatrix’s mind spins. Was it guilt that made her father return home with her, or love? Was he relieved to find his baby girl alive in that tree, or disappointed? And how did she survive the night alone in the forest? “I don’t understand—did you care for me?”
The faerie laughs. “I kept you alive. Barely, if memory serves.”
“Why?” Beatrix asks, her voice a choked whisper.
“Because you and I are not so different.”
Beatrix would laugh, if she wasn’t so terrified. The faerie is beautiful and powerful. Free. “I’m nothing like you.”
A flash of light sears across her vision. When it fades, Beatrix stands alone on a dark, frozen moor. A blizzard howls around her, the icy snow biting at her skin, the wind stealing her breath. And on that wind, a baby’s cry, piercing her through.
She follows the sound, searches the snow with her bare hands until they throb with cold.
She finds the infant half buried in a drift.
She snatches the bundle from the brush and clutches the baby close.
She’s wrapped in rags, her pale skin tinged blue, her shock of copper hair coated with ice. She struggles to open her eyes.
“Hello, lovely,” Beatrix chokes. The baby’s eyes meet hers for a single moment before they close: one brown, one green.
Beatrix stands shaking on the riverbank, her arms empty. She sags against the trunk of a mighty oak, aching to hold her own baby. “Who was she?”
The faerie recites the words Beatrix knows by heart, whispers that have followed her since her own birth. “A changeling. A faerie. Cursed.”
“Who was she?” Beatrix demands, her voice trembling. “What was her name?” She doesn’t care about treading carefully. She needs to know.
“I was never given one,” the faerie says. “You don’t name a child you don’t intend to keep.”
Beatrix swallows hard. “That was a human child.”
“She was,” the faerie concedes. “A very, very long time ago.” She sneers at Beatrix. “I was like you. An innocent left to die by the people who were supposed to protect me. Betrayed by those who were supposed to love me the most.”
“Then how are you here?” Beatrix asks. Alive. In Lancaut. No longer human.
“The faeries found me,” she says, and something Beatrix can’t read dims the glow in her gaze, a candle flame guttering in a draft. “They made me one of them.”
“They saved you?” Beatrix’s heart thuds against her ribs, so loud she’s sure the faerie must hear it, too. “Can you save me? Bring me back? Is that why I’m here?”
The faerie scoffs. “Bring you back to your miserable human existence? After everything they’ve done to you, that is what you want?” Her voice is laced with disappointment and disgust.
Beatrix trembles under her unyielding gaze. “Please. I want—I need more time.”
The faerie gives her that perfectly mimicked smile. “Are you afraid to die, Beatrix? And here I thought you were different from the others.”
But that isn’t it. Everyone dies. It is part of life. It isn’t the dying Beatrix fears.
She is afraid of losing the life she hasn’t lived yet, afraid of letting go of the one she has.
Of never feeling the warmth of William’s arms wrapped around her again.
Of never whispering her daughter’s name as she rocks her to sleep.
Of losing all the happiness she has finally found. She is only twenty-three.
“Please. I only want a chance to live.”
“I have something far better to offer you than this death tonight. Far better than your old life.” The faerie stands in the river. No, on the river, her bare feet just breaking the surface. She beckons Beatrix to the edge.
Beatrix peers into the river she has known since she was a child. But this is not her river, not her reflection looking back at her. It is like looking through glass, into another world. Lancaut, but not. Brighter. Beautiful. Easier. Lancaut, but perfect.
“Come with me, and I will give you the life you deserve. No more glances. No more whispers. No more living in fear.”
It sounds too good to be true. “How?”
“A simple trade,” the faerie replies. She offers Beatrix her hand. “You can have an eternity here. Anyone you want to be there will be there. Anything you want it to be it will be. A world of your own making.”
“And what is it you want from me?” She peers into the crystal surface of the water at the other Lancaut. It’s what she thought heaven would be when she was a child.
“Your word and your soul, and it’s yours,” the faerie says. “You can rest. You can be happy. Forever.”
Beatrix studies the faerie, from her outstretched fingertips to her autumn-red hair to her burning gaze. A creature who is no longer human but used to be. A creature who can never suffer, never hurt. Never die. Beatrix could become that. It would only cost her everything.
“The river will take you home,” the faerie says.
But that isn’t home. Home is Lancaut. Home is William. Her William. Her daughter.
Beatrix steps away from the river. “It’s not real.”
“It’s better,” the faerie says. “No pain, no suffering, no hardship.”
“No love, no joy, no sorrow,” Beatrix counters.
“You want sorrow?” the faerie snaps. Her eyes flare bright.
“I want life.” Even the pain, if it makes it real.
The faerie is next to her now. Beatrix can feel her icy breath on her neck, like a winter wind howling across the moors. “You would refuse me?”
Beatrix tries to appease the creature. “Your offer is far too generous. I only want my own life back.”
The faerie scrutinizes Beatrix with eyes of sunlight and moonlight. “You want to live?”
Tears spring to Beatrix’s eyes. “Yes. More than anything. I want to live.”
She smiles, but this time it is not hollow. It sends a shiver down Beatrix’s spine. “If you love being human so much, so be it.”
“Thank you,” Beatrix gasps. Her knees buckle and she sinks to the ground. “Thank you.”
“Remember this moment, Beatrix. Remember that you begged me for your sad human life and I gave you what you asked for,” the faerie says. Her eyes blaze in the dark.
Beatrix swipes her tears away. “I will. I will, I swear it.”
“Remember what I offered you when you are suffering. When the pain of your pitiful human existence becomes too much to bear. When you look back at all you have lived through and all that lies ahead of you with despair, remember the moment you refused me.”
Beatrix’s insides go cold as the faerie’s words crystalize like ice around her heart.
“You will live to regret this moment,” the faerie hisses in her ear. “And then you will keep on living.”