Chapter Samhain
Samhain
“You saved my life as well,” says the boy. He stands shivering in Janet’s cloak, dark hair clinging to his cheeks and shoulders, lips trembling. He is a pretty one. I always choose the pretty ones, because for so many years the pretty ones did not choose—did not even see—me.
I try not to meet those damned grey eyes.
“Don’t you recall?” he persists. “Five of us hunting, a dark winter day in Carterhaugh?”
Of course I recall. Not just any dark winter day, but Imbolc, in fact. The Veil between the worlds lay open, and all sorts of Unseelie nastiness could get out. Including Faery’s own queen.
“Five idiots,” I agree. They had more wealth than sense, those five little noblemen, none of them more than sixteen years old.
There were reavers about Carterhaugh, as there often are, and rumors of an ungodly boar who was raging about the forest, which is probably why none of their elders had gone with them.
I smile with no small amount of pride; that boar was one of ours.
“No one should have let you out of your cozy manor houses alone.”
He does not deny it, old enough now to realize how foolhardy he was then.
“We were full of drink and high spirits and had obviously caught nothing. Probably scared off the prey.” He ducks his head.
“Then suddenly the hair rose on my arms and prickled at the back of my neck. We heard unearthly grunts and squeals, and the horses were spooked, all the horses. None of us could control them.”
“There is ample to fear in Carterhaugh,” I say. “Your horses knew that better than you.”
Tam Lin stares into the depth of the forest, eyes gone misty as cloud.
“The boar, I think it was, or some other Unseelie wight that set them alight.
The horses bolted, and we had no hope of reining them in.
A hare darted out in front of my steed; he reared, and I was thrown.
My companions did not stop; I do not think they had time to notice.
I was in the rear. I believe they made it out of the woods and regrouped.
“I lay on the forest floor, leg broken, my head fallen on a rock. Without your help, it is unlikely I would have waked.”
He is right about that. I recall it well: The spindly youth lying with limbs all akimbo, even more like a broken poppet than my Thomas had been.
He was so pale, his breath so shallow. Such a waste, I thought.
Dead humans do naught for us but fill the Unseelie blood-marsh.
I bandaged his head, splinted his leg, and took him under the hill to heal.
I had no thought of making him the Teind, not then.
“I heard the tale, growing up,” says Janet. “How the Sheriff of Roxburgh lost his grandson to a hunting accident. Most said he died, but Roxburgh, ’til the end of his days, insisted the boy had disappeared, and that sooner or later he would return.”
Like Peggy the Cottar, when she was missing her man. Like Mairi Grieve when she lost her little Bessling. But Roxburgh was wrong; Tam Lin shall never go home.
Faery needs him too much.
I remember my anger, thinking how careless the humans are with their young.
Poor little lordling, left behind in the forest, all his friends gone.
I cradled his bandaged head in my lap, stroked back his hair behind his ears.
I let the forest grow denser around us, thick as stone walls, so the humans could not penetrate or even see in.
Then I thinned the Veil and took Tam Lin back to my home.
The midwife’s urges remained inside me; instinct compelled me to save Tam Lin, nothing more. But I am the Faery Queen, no midwife, and his debt is now coming due.
I spread my arms wide around me. “It was for this,” I say, indicating the roses that bloom so recklessly around the well. The gorse and fern, and bits of Faery that have leaked out or remain from the rade: thistle pixies, dancing tarrans, shy ghillie dubh hiding among the trees.
And the dagger I have sheathed in my girdle.
I repeat, “All of it was meant for this.”
Tam Lin raises his eyebrows. “You always intended to sacrifice me?” He points at the knife. “You never once acted from mercy—a desire to save my life?”
I want to deny it. I want them to see my wickedness, to forget there was this kindness in me even then. I am the queen gone cold, and I can never let them forget it.
For I cannot be allowed to forget that myself.
“A consort makes for a stronger Teind,” I say. “Faery must feed.”
“I was a beardless boy!” Tam Lin protests.
Janet wrinkles her pretty little nose.
“The fae do not care about that.”
“But you did.” He does not look at me, instead turning an apologetic gaze to the girl beside him.
“I served as her cupbearer for four years, I would warrant, before she so much as touched me in that way.” His cheeks grow red, and his gaze drops like an innocent maid.
As if he didn’t spend years seducing maidens who happened by the well at Carterhaugh, nearly as bad as Amadan himself.
As if the lass who takes his hands now doesn’t go great with child. They smile sweetly at one another, making me slightly ill.
“What does it matter if I saved your life then?” I ask, hands in the air. “I need it back now.”
In the depths of my kingdom, I sense it, a crack in the surface of the world. Forest turning to desert, dry, lifeless, and hard. Even here, I can sense what is coming, do I not convince Janet to give up her prize.
Janet drops Tam Lin’s hands and steps towards me, locking her gaze in mine. I am the taller by far, but she does not cower or shrink down. “It matters because there is mortality and kindness in you yet, Your Highness. And in the end, I know you will let us go.”
I do not disabuse her of that notion, trusting my own tale will do the job.