Chapter Seventeen
T hey tell me the queen has recovered, and also that I’m due a reward.
The letter that informs me so comes with surprising contents: a certificate stating I am now the owner of a parcel on the outer edge of Diarmuid’s Row; and the design for a sweet little cottage with a high roof and a loft.
Everything, from the builders to the supplies, is being paid for by a grateful crown.
Of course I haven’t quite worked out how I’ll afford the upkeep of such a place, now that I’m no longer a queen’s maid and my arm is still in a sling, but for now my savings have me living decently in my little town.
I am finally happy again, being here by the sea, and amongst family and friends. And, thank the sea goddess, my headaches have eased a great deal now that I'm enjoying the comforts of home.
Yet I would be more comfortable still if everyone wasn’t so intent on telling me something’s wrong. Not with the cottage, which is going to be perfect. With me.
"They're right, Laoise. You've changed," Niamh says one afternoon, fanning her multicolored tail onto the rocks. My little sister Unagh nods in agreement, hugging her knees.
“You’re just jealous I have my own cottage, and the two of you must live with your parents,” I say, watching two crabs meet in the tidal pools.
Niamh slaps her tail on the rocks. “You don’t have your own cottage yet. Unagh tells me you’ve barely a foundation row!” She lowers both her head and her voice. “That isn’t it, and you know it.”
The crabs in the tidal pool snap their claws at one other.
“So I’ve lost a bit of something in the bargain for the pearl,” I say, pulling the crabs apart with my usable arm. The one I hold snips at the air as I drop it in a separate pool—only to watch the two scuttle towards each other again. “It’s just as you said, Niamh. I don’t even know to miss it.”
“If we knew what it was, I bet you would,” Unagh says.
I laugh it off. “And how can we, when no one can quite agree on what it is?”
I’ve heard it all by now: I’ve lost my joy in things, my púca's sense of curiosity, my fae spark, my emotions. It’s not any of those things. The proof comes in how frequently my family and friends quarrel over the nature of it.
The crabs begin their battle again. I turn away with a sigh.
“Why did you do that?” Unagh asks me, already reaching for one of the crabs. Unlike me, she stands, her dress tied high around her legs, prepared to carry the flailing creature a distance away.
“You mean why did I pull them apart?” I furrow my brow, confused.
“No. You just looked away,” she calls back over her shoulder. “You cared enough to separate the crabs the first time. Then you just—stopped.”
“Maybe you’ve lost your compassion,” Niamh suggests.
“Then why would she bother in the first place?”
Niamh's tail slaps the rocks loudly. “That’s it!”
Unagh nearly gets her finger caught in the crab’s pincers as her head snaps up. “You figured it out?”
“It’s the bother of it all. Doing it once was well and good. But twice, when they’d simply find their way back to each other again?”
“You’re saying the faerie clam made me lazy?” I jab Niamh in the pearly scales of her arm. “I don’t think that was it.”
“It’s not that.” Niamh bats my hand away when I try to poke her again. “Repeating your actions, with no result—that would simply be foolish.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What does that mean, then?”
“I guess when you made the bargain, you lost your willingness to be foolish.”
A shadow falls over me. I glance up, shielding my eyes to view Unagh’s worried face. “That’s it,” my sister says. “That’s why you finally stopped loving Cillian Cloudtongue!”
“I never truly loved him. We barely knew one another. Falling in love as quick as all that would be—”
“Foolish.” Unagh tilts her head, the faint impression of gill slits visible on her neck. “In the letters you wrote to me, it was obvious you were head over heels in love with him.”
“You’re fifteen! What do you know about being in love?”
“I'm sixteen now."
"The question still stands."
Unagh clucks her tongue at me. "I know that it takes a bit of foolishness to make that leap.” Is it my imagination, or does my little sister blush? “Laoise. What if this means you’ll never fall in love again?”
Scoffing, I push the thought aside. But my sister has planted a seed of worry in my mind. What if she’s right?
Ah, but there’s no use fretting about it, is there? I already made the bargain. There’s no way to get my foolishness—or whatever I lost—back.
Niamh twists a tendril of kelp-strewn hair around her finger. “That would explain it, why you were devoted enough to make a bargain for High Queen Fiadh’s sake, and the next thing I hear, you’ve up and quit her service.” She’s frowning, though not quite at me. “I knew something wasn’t right. You’ve never been the inconstant sort.”
I stand up to squeeze the water from my hem one-handed. “Perhaps losing my foolishness is for the best,” I say, then laugh as I adjust my arm in the sling. “I can’t believe I was so madly in love with a bard after only a few months! I bet he had a girl in every town. It’s no surprise at all that he left to find more songs.”
“And what about the prince?” asks a voice.
Out of reflex, my back straightens immediately. I drop my hem, trying to look presentable.
Though she is backlit by the late day sun, I’d know that silhouette anywhere after so many months standing behind her during court dinners. Grasping a walking stick for support, High Queen Fiadh stands just behind my now very pale sister, her eyes darting between me and the beckoning sea. A carriage with four horses, each twice the size of a púca, waits a safe distance from the rocks and sand.
“Your Majesty,” I say, curtsying. “The reports were true. You look exceedingly well.”
“I feel much improved, thanks to you. I wonder, will you walk with me? Perhaps you can show me the location of your future cottage.”
Why is she here? Royalty doesn't just drop by Diarmuid’s Row, even if this particular royal is my cousin.
But I give the only reply I can. “I’d be honored, ma’am.”
With a backward glance at Niamh’s curious face and my sister’s shocked one, I pick my way across the rocks to join the high queen.
“ Y ou were starting to call me Fiadh,” the queen remarks as we stand before the foundation stones of my cottage, "before you left."
“It was always an accident," I reply with an almost wistful smile. "I wouldn’t dream of it now, ma’am.”
The high queen stretches her back. It’s clear the poison hasn’t left her completely. I can see the pain in her face when she walks, and the slowness of her pace. If she shifted into her púca form, I wonder if she’d come up lame.
“You seem different,” Queen Fiadh says.
“So I’m told, ma’am.”
“I’ve often asked, but no one would tell me. What cost did you pay for the faerie clam’s pearl? I fear it was steep—no, I know it was.” The corners of her eyes crinkle, even as the edges of her mouth turn down.
“It’s nothing to worry yourself over, ma’am. I’ve only lost my foolishness. I think.” My hands go to my hips as I inspect the stonemason’s work. “Perhaps it was high time.”
“Your foolishness?” The queen’s voice is so high, I cannot help but turn back to face her. Her eyes are wide, emphasizing the continued gauntness of her face, the sunken hollows of her cheeks. “My dear cousin, this cottage and land cannot begin to repay you for what you’ve give up.”
Though the back of my neck prickles at her words, I try to laugh it off. “I assure you, ma’am, I didn’t even know it was gone until today.”
“I don’t think you understand.” She takes a step towards me, her hand shaking a little as it holds the walking stick tighter. “Without foolishness, you’ll never take a risk. You’d never have come to the castle. I’d never have left the Tideling Court to marry a man I’d fallen for at first sight—and he’d never have asked for my hand. You would never have fallen for the bard, or gotten close enough to Ruairí to help him search for the poison I’d been drinking. If you weren’t foolish, Laoise, I’d be dead by now.”
“I'd like to think that isn’t so, ma’am.”
“How could it be otherwise?”
I shrug. “Truly, I don’t miss it.”
“Then let me ask you this. If you had to choose today, whom would you pick? The prince or the bard?”
“The prince,” I say without hesitation.
A furrow appears in her brow, the trait that so reminded me of Unagh. “Why?”
“Because he’s a prince.” I tick the list off my fingers. “He has some power, security, wealth. And according to him, there is more to him than meets the eye.”
“More indeed. After the revel, when he made such a fool of himself, the high king tasked him with taking charge of our security—namely with ferreting out those who would do me harm.”
I suppose this should surprise me, but it doesn't. I nod my head. That makes some sense, I think. The prince seemed so different after that night.
“He did it for you,” the queen adds.
Now I'm surprised. My brows shoot up. “What? Why?”
“He wanted to be upstanding enough to court you.”
“Why would a prince wish to court a maid?”
“You’re looking at it all wrong, Laoise. Why would a prince wish to court the queen’s cousin, despite the danger and controversy surrounding púcaí in the royal family? He was in love with you. He wanted to make the court safe for both my sake and yours.”
I almost groan aloud. This is that foolishness required by love that Unagh spoke of.
Still, I cannot quite accept that I’m missing something when I feel perfectly whole. I try to make light of it all. “All the more reason why I’d choose the prince.”
“But you didn’t choose him. You chose the bard.”
Goddess above, she’s right. I looked upon Cillian Cloudtongue and saw all the glamor and beauty of his performances. I never truly saw the man. “Because of my foolishness. Yes, ma’am, I know.”
"Everyone's a bit foolish, the first time they fall in love," the queen says gently.
I have to turn away, emotion swelling and concentrating in a lump in my throat. “I guess I shouldn't fret over it, when it seems I’m not to love again. I’ll be spending my days in this cottage alone.” Doting on Unagh’s future children, apparently.
I’m surprised when I feel the queen’s hand, far colder than mine, taking my own. “That’s not true, Laoise."
As I face my royal cousin again, there is earnestness in her eyes.
"There are other ways to fall in love," she continues. "There's the kind of love you build day by day with someone, growing a little more each time you're at their side. It may not be dazzling like love at first sight, but it is the kind of love that keeps you warm at night. It’s the love that comes through for you when you need it most.”
Tears well in my eyes. “But you can put your time and heart into such a love, only for it to never bloom on both sides. It’s a risk. A terribly foolish one.”
“Perhaps, one day, you’ll be able to try.”
Queen Fiadh leans her forehead against mine, and I’m shocked at how familiar, how comforting the gesture is. But I’m no longer her maid, after all. All that’s left is for me to be her kin.
“My dear cousin,” she says, “I owe you my life. If you’d said you'd choose the bard, I’d have hunted him down and dragged him here for you.”
I stifle a laugh. “Thank you, cousin. But I’m well and truly shod of Cillian Cloudtongue.”
Just as I am of my once-foolish heart.
“Then I pray to the gods that you’ll find the kind of love it would be too foolish to pass up.”
A lonely future in this cottage spreads out before me. I know in my bones that I’ll never risk leaving Diarmuid's Row again—at least not for long. Yet growing up here, I often wished a handsome bard just like Cillian would sweep into town and take me with him.
It’s too late for that now.
“You'll grow in love with someone again someday,” the queen says, straightening. “As surely as the tide comes.”
How I hope my sweet cousin is right.