Chapter 16
Sixteen
’Twas closing in on June, the air warm, and the flowers all in bloom.
My blood waked to the joy of midsummer, to the new growth blossoming all around the village, even while my thoughts churned with curiosity and puzzlement: Did Mairi Grieve serve as midwife to the Faery Queen?
Was I, as the wolf implied, the queen’s secret heir?
Perhaps I gave too much credence to gossip and mockery. And why did I care? I was happy in the shepherd’s home. Yet the questions inside me would not rest.
I must away to Carterhaugh, to see what answers I could find.
I made my way down the path to the well, and the purple pennyroyal flowers seemed to mock me, reminding me how I had failed Glenna Baker. For even as Mairi Grieve’s true heir, I had not been able to help her much at all.
Unless, of course, she needed help with the birth. For my not-mother Mairi had taught me well.
A heaviness settled in my breast, a grief not lessened for the months since Mairi’s demise. I glanced down at the well, staring at the clear surface of the water. “Will ye show me the truth?” I asked aloud. “Was Mairi Grieve the Faery Queen’s midwife?” I dared not ask the rest.
Was the wolf right to call me his queen?
The well only showed my own reflection. That I knew was a lie.
I waited, but no visions came, until at last in irritation I spun away from the well, picked up my basket, and turned to go home.
“There walks a lass with great purpose,” came a voice from somewhere, pulling me from my thoughts.
I recognized that voice. It wrapped around me like a serpent entwining around its prey, tongue sliding into my ear.
Amadan.
I looked around but did not see him, nor anything that might be him, not even the twitch of a butterfly’s wing. Laughter rang out, deep and thick like velvet as I squinted into the brush around me. Yellow gorse bloomed at the foot of the well; the riotous ferns crept up the stone.
“Show yourself,” I commanded.
“One who does not look deep for her answers does not deserve to find them,” came the response.
I had looked deep. And I had waited. It earned me nothing but the Fool’s mockery.
I wished I was a mightier fae, a redcap, who might dye their hat with his red blood. A fachan, whose hideous appearance would stop his heart; the Cailleach Bheur, who would freeze the ground where Amadan stood.
The very queen of the fairies, who might command him to reveal himself. But I dared not claim that title. Not yet.
I squeezed my fists tight, and demanded, “Do your beastly manners betoken a beastly nature then?”
I could not get Beltane out of my head, the enormous wolf with its glistening dark fur. The creature I suspected was him.
The Dark Fool made a rumbling growl deep in his throat, as the shepherd sometimes did when we were making love. “Stay and you might find out.”
I did not want to. I had faced down the beast once; I felt no need to do so again. Yet I kept thinking, What if the trickster has the knowledge you seek?
Mairi’s gifts. Mairi’s deeds. Anything that might reveal whether the rumor was true.
I clutched the basket in my hands. One who does not look deep for her answers does not deserve to find them. There was a riddle in there, was there not? Tricksters adore riddles. Deep—as in, deep into the forest? Deep in the ground? Must I dig my way into the very Underhill to find him?
Deep into myself? I was not certain I could face what would meet me there.
A glint of sunlight reflecting off the water caught my attention, and I turned again to the well.
There was a face reflected there, and this time it was not my own. It was too male, hair too dark, features a hint too sharp to be human, but handsome, and fine.
Except where his cheek was marked, as though burning fingers or branches had stroked his face.
This was my handiwork, and my proof: Amadan had indeed been the wolf.
“Come forth, Dark Fool,” I called.
A chuckle. “Oh, and look who is making demands now? You speak as more than peasant girl, Bess-you-seem.”
A flash of sunlight hit the water just so, and the reflection blinded me. I turned my head and threw my hand in front of my eyes.
When I dropped it, the Dark Fool himself stood before me. He wore a cotehardie of leaves again, snug and short, but the leaves were larger, darker, no longer the new leaves of gentle spring. We were in full summer now, after all, and the ends of his dark hair seemed tipped with gold.
“What a commanding manner you now have,” he observed. “I like this new confidence of yours. You were such a little mouse before.”
My impulse was to lower my gaze, shrink into myself, slide back into that cloak of unnoticeability I had once worn. I would not give in to it. “It is nice to see you standing upright,” I said instead. “When last we met, you were on all fours.”
His lips quirked and he scratched his chin. “Really? You would think I would have remembered that.”
I’d swear, my entire body went red as a burning rosebud then. I had no time for either his innuendo or my own embarrassment. “You hunted the shepherd. You were the wolf.”
He grinned and made a wolf whistle, not as his beastly self or in fact a mortal wolf would have done, but rather the sound cruder men do make at beautiful women.
“Stop that!” I protested. “You know very well what I meant.”
“I do.” Amadan circled me slowly like a predator, causing chills whenever his shadow fell across my skin.
“One might think a shepherd would have more experience dealing with wolves. But yours was in the forest after nightfall while the Veil was thin.” He tsked and shook his head slowly.
“Even the dullest of mortals should know better. On Beltane, it belongs to us.”
We were too close. He loomed over me, and my gaze fixed upon the smooth perfection of his jawline. Through his clothes, his flesh seemed cool and pliant, flora, not fauna. His breath ruffled my hair, cool and scented of green herbs.
I took a step back. “Thomas would not have been in ‘our place’ if not for you. You beckoned him with your song.”
Amadan shrugged. “He chose to follow.”
“He broke his leg!”
He held his hands wide in innocence. “As I recall, he tripped.”
“Because you were . . .” I trailed off. This was getting us nowhere. I wanted to slap the smirk off Amadan’s face. Push him headlong into the well, and if it would then give me no more visions, well, it would have been worth it.
I did neither. I ignored his scent of moss and loam and holiness gone most seductively profane. “Why did you summon him thus?”
“I will give you one answer, little changeling. Is that what you wish to waste it on?”
“Yes. No.” Oh, my derision for him burned! I chewed on my lips, scowling.
His brows lifted. “You could command me to say more, did you know the right way to ask.”
My cheeks flushed and my pulse quickened. The right way to ask. He teased me. He challenged. He mocked. If I rose to the bait, I sensed it would cost me, dearer than I was willing to pay.
Instead I leaned in close; a dizzying warmth filled my belly. “You endangered Thomas Shepherd’s life. You will not do it again.” I backed away slowly, nostrils flaring and with rigid spine.
“I cannot endanger Thomas Shepherd’s life,” Amadan repeated dully. “You have claimed it yourself.”
“Good. I mean, what?” Was it really Amadan’s touch that caused madness, or was it only speaking to him that did the thing? I did no such thing, I wanted to protest, but I could not get the words out.
They would have been untrue.
“To save his life, to make this claim upon him, it is more serious business than you understand. Even when you choose to, you will find it hard to let him go.”
I lifted my chin, set my jaw, and did not speak. Never will I choose to let him go.
The Fool’s expression went hard, devoid both of its usual mischief and occasional flirtatiousness. “Little changeling, you are not the lass you were before.”
I was never the lass I was before. I kept turning and changing, like a gemstone holding different facets up to the light.
Still, I feared I might yet prove to be mere paste after all.
“But your ignorance remains. You value your words too lightly, entering arrangements you do not yet understand. I knew one other who made the same mistake, and it cost her dearly in the end.”
The blood rushed to my face, and it was all I could do to meet his bold gaze.
Yet I forced myself. “If I am ignorant, then enlighten me.” I wet lips gone suddenly dry. “You said ‘One who does not look deep for her answers does not deserve to find them.’ I have looked deep, and so answers I am owed.” Whether I could trust his or not was another matter.
Amadan crossed his arms, looking bored. “I promised you a single answer. What is your question?”
Who am I? Who was my mother, really? Why did you name me your liege?
I could not bring myself to ask any of these. I was not certain I could, in good conscience, remain with the shepherd if I knew.
I swallowed uncomfortably. “Did Mairi Grieve serve as midwife to the Faery Queen herself?”
Something unreadable crossed his face: pity, mayhap, or disappointment.
“Yes,” he finally said. “Mairi Grieve did attempt to deliver Queen Una’s child.
We took her into Faery, and put ointment upon her eyes, that she might see past our glamour.
We hosted and fed her and treated her as one of our own.
” He snorted. “For all the good it did us. You see, we thought we needed a mortal midwife. The queen’s consort had been a mortal man.
” He bit the last off, as though it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“He was?” His words swam around in my psyche, questions giving birth to further questions, until they all tangled like unkempt yarn inside me.
Yet somehow, I had already known.
The Fool rolled his eyes, as if this were the least interesting tale he could impart. “The mother died and, they say, so did her child, mongrel she might have been. Some would have sworn to depose her in any case, for that mortal stain.” Amadan stared at me so long it burned.
At last he looked away. “Perhaps it is just as well she met her fate. Now if there are no further questions . . .” In a flurry of summer foliage, he spun widdershins around himself, like a whirlwind of green and gold. In an instant he had disappeared.
I stared in wonderment in his wake, noting as I did that never once had the Fool said the child too was dead.