Samhain
“You are telling us a story?” Janet says incredulously. “The hour is late; the night is cold. We wish to go home.”
Only three of us stand now in Carterhaugh, by the ancient well, where the roses grow wild and the ferns do droop: Janet and I, and Tam Lin, who was my favored knight and consort. Once I held his heart like a pebble in my hand. Now she does.
I do not think Janet will want him, once I am through.
I hold my head high beneath my branched crown, pretending it has no weight at all. “You would take away the bonniest knight in my company. The least you can do is give me a moment of your time.”
“A moment of my time?” Janet pulls her mantle closer around her young lord, then looks me in the eyes. “I have freed Tam Lin. And I have saved his life. I demand you let us go.” There is iron in her spirit, a determined set to her chin. I sense she is not accustomed to being told no.
Neither am I.
I saunter around her like a hawk circling its prey. “Demand, you say? Such foolhardy words to use to the Queen of Faery herself.”
To her credit, Janet drops her gaze. “I am sorry, Your Majesty. But we are nothing to you. Please let us leave.”
I only wish they were nothing to me. Yet somewhere in Faery a tree falls. The ground cracks, opens a fissure where nothing can grow. For want of the Teind, our seven-year sacrifice, the land is dying. It will be on my head if it does.
The land will take me with it when it goes.
I cannot allow them to leave.
I ignore Janet’s pleas, and look down my nose at Tam Lin. With a finger, I push him out of my way. “Do you know, I knew his ancestor? A long, long time ago. And let me tell you, loyalty does not run in the family.” Those grey eyes, though, they do.
I should never have let Tam Lin keep them.
The lordling opens his mouth to protest, but I flick my finger in the air and he grows silent. I am done listening to him. He is only the prize we fight over.
Color rises in Janet’s cheeks, and her spirit burns hot, despite the chill of the autumn night. “I do not care how well you knew his ancestor. Tam Lin is not like him.”
How would she know? I speak of one who died long before Tam Lin was born.
“Nor was Thomas Shepherd like his kin, not at first,” I tell her. “Or, excuse me, you would know him as the baron, Thomas de Lyne.”
Tam Lin makes a strangled noise deep in his throat. I wave my hand and free his lips, but throw him such a dark look he stays silent in any case.
“Let us go home, Your Majesty,” Janet pleads. “It must be close to dawn.” Her teeth chatter, with cold or with fear, it is impossible to say.
“Oh, I shall let you go home,” I tell her, though I give no specifics as to when. “And I shall give him his freedom, assuming you still want it for him after I have told my tale.”
Janet opens her mouth to protest; she does not wish to listen to what I would say.
Anger bubbles inside me, threatens to break to the surface.
I could silence her as well, at least until I have said my piece.
I do not. Instead, I wrap myself in a familiar glamour, let the proud queen soften into someone humbler, plainer, and closer to Janet in age.
My body both shrinks and grows broader, rounder; my hair pales to ruddy gold, and a rose-shaped birthmark forms on the left side of my throat.
This time, the rose has thorns.
I wave my hand, and the forest itself softens around me; the sky, once dark of moon and ominously mirky, now gentles into a sweet summer twilight. The air becomes more temperate and the breeze stills. Carterhaugh has one foot in the realm of the fae, after all, and I?
I am Faery itself.
“I will not keep you long,” I tell Janet. “Certainly not until dawn.”
All Saints’ Day it will be on the morrow. I must be off before then—with my prize. But it is still Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, and as I rule Faery, I hold command here as well.
It will be All Hallows as long as I say it is.
I smile gently at the lass. “As I was saying, I knew Tam Lin’s forebear. My shepherd king, I called him once.”
I do not add, He was the only man I ever loved.