Chapter 30
Thirty
You never know the weight of mortality until you doff it like a heavy brocade gown at the end of a tiresome ball.
The world, Thomas, everything familiar dropped away. I found myself back in that bonny glen I had first glimpsed on Beltane Eve, not entirely out of Carterhaugh but no longer within it, either.
The Veil thins on Samhain and, for a moment, the two worlds become one. The world of man meets the world of the fae, and it is possible to stand with one foot in both, perceiving little difference between the two.
I had always stood with one foot in both.
I was Una’s lost daughter, born to her from a mortal lover whose name I did not even know.
I was the Faery Queen.
My Bess-self fell to pieces around me; I cried out as my ruddy human skin crackled and curled like dry leaves then floated away.
The stench of it filled my senses like sweat and ash, but another aroma rose as well: green growth, honey, and rose.
My body stretched, bounteous curves transforming into willowy lightness whether I wished them to or not.
I held out my arm and stared in awestruck horror as the iron burns vanished; my skin tingled with renewal, and I marveled at the luminous, poreless perfection left behind.
I clutched at my hair, and the red-gold changed to the color of roses, but darker roses than I had ever seen, dipped in wine or in blood.
A prickling of wrongness flashed through me like a thousand silver needles, a sensation of discomfort running beneath my skin.
You have worn the face of another for too long.
One lives here with more right to that semblance than you.
Bess Grieve. This knowledge pulled at me and revolted me at the same time.
I touched the side of my throat and tossed aside the rose that had once been my birthmark. It fell to the ground and planted itself.
Lady, I would gladly pluck that rose. Thomas’s words echoed back to me. It seemed a century since he had first said them; so much had changed since then. He had become mine, but only for a moment.
I had believed our bond would end only with one of our deaths.
But not yet.
Fog gathered thick around us, covering the ground, and then rising, like unquiet spirits from the grave.
Though my feet were planted, I drifted like a boat on the tide, pulling away from where Thomas lay wounded upon the forest floor.
The mist rose higher and thickened, coalescing into a wall between us.
I could still see through it, but my vision blurred.
“Shepherd King!” I cried out, my eyes upon his limp body. The Hunt had vanished, to return to Faery or pursue another quarry, I could not have said. The Dark Fool disappeared as well.
Thomas and I were alone, but not together. He lay upon the other side of a curtain growing ever thicker. The Veil thins at Samhain, but not forever. Even now, when I pressed my hands forward, I felt resistance from the other side.
I had claimed my man. That did not mean Thomas was safe. He had wronged me, abandoned Faery’s queen. I did not yet understand what the rules of fae vengeance might be.
Across the Veil, hooves beat like distant thunder, and a man’s voice cried out, “My lord!” The mortal realm grew dimmer, fading from my view.
I should have known: Thomas would not set out without an entourage. No longer was he the solitary shepherd, but the baron’s heir. Thomas Shepherd had become Thomas de Lyne.
This gave me no comfort. Thomas de Lyne was a man I did not know.
He still needs me. My healing touch and medicaments, my expert hands to set any broken or twisted limbs. The shepherd king needs his wood nymph now.
But I could not be her any longer. It was impossible, even for Faery’s queen.
I breathed deep and wrenched myself forward, pushing against the Veil.
I might have tried to force my way through a stone wall.
I could not do it, though I resisted with all my strength, and tears ran down my cheeks.
My heart’s need for Thomas drowned out its need for home; every inch of my body, however new and unfamiliar, cried out for him, and I screamed his name.
“Thomas! Tell Margaret to hold you closely and never let you go!”
I did not understand my compulsion to shout these words, where they came from, what they meant. I knew only, if Thomas would sever our bond, he must sever it completely and replace it with another. Else disaster would ensue.
But the wind swallowed my words, and there was no indication Thomas had heard.
As the baron’s man reached him, the mortal forest of Carterhaugh fell away completely, leaving me without my love in a world gone wondrous strange.
I shut my eyes to the wonder around me. It was all worth nothing if Thomas was not by my side.
Something brushed against my cheek and burned against the back of my eyelids, like a moth made of flame. I blinked open, and a wisp of light licked the tears off my cheeks, softer than a caress, and lighter than a burn. I swatted the wisp away, then stared dumbstruck at what my world had become.
Neither sun nor moon lit the brilliant twilight sky.
The air around me was pure and light. Tarrans, lights formed from the ghosts of unbaptized babes, floated about like dancing stars; a scent rose like green herbs, delicate flowers, and the clarity of water, replacing the heaviness of man’s woodsmoke and hearth flame.
I had not known how constricted I was by the mortal world until I left it, light as a butterfly on the breeze.
Nothing here could hurt me, nothing but being ripped away from the life I had built, beside the man I loved.
I felt suspended, as if no ground lay beneath my feet, and never had I known how to fly.
I would have to learn.
The trees stood like tall guardians around me.
I could no longer take for granted they were empty inside.
Out of the wilderness came creatures the like of which I had never seen before: sylphs so insubstantial as to be torn apart by the breeze.
Forest goblins who blended as surely into their surroundings as Morven had into hers, yet I could see them, with my fae eyes.
“Mortal-stained” as Amadan might call me, I saw them clear as day.
Spriggans and water spirits and Aos Sith of every kind gathered, all here to greet the new queen.
Me.
The new queen was not ready to be greeted. Gladly would I have hidden myself away in a hole, to privately grieve my loss and the changes I had undergone. For eighteen years I had felt unworthy and afraid to discover my true nature, certain I was a wizened imp or a bundle of twigs.
I felt naked. Exposed. I would have given anything to be beyond notice again, to let myself vanish into obscurity and unknown.
I bowed my head beneath the crimson veil of my hair, wishing my flesh away into shadow, like the creatures I had seen upon the cruck house walls.
I ducked behind a hollow tree, hoping I might conceal myself inside.
Coward! The voice of my conscience, or something external? Doubt crawled like overlong fingers dancing across my skin.
The tree was already occupied. A green-skinned dryad first chittered at me like an angry chipmunk, then dropped to her knees in a reverent bow.
“No, please do not, it is not necessary . . .” I trailed off, bemoaning how ineffectual my protests were.
I could no longer deny who I was.
The world transformed itself around me, and I sensed deep in my bones it also transformed because of me, welcoming its lost daughter back.
Singing echoed throughout the forest, sometimes birdsong, sometimes nearly human voices, but with a purity I had never heard in my life.
The grass lay soft beneath my feet, like a carpet rolled out to welcome me home.
It could never feel like home without the shepherd king by my side.
I built that life: healing the ill, living with Thomas. So I chose for myself, and now it is all gone.
But Faery did not bear the responsibility alone. Thomas had played the greater part. I needed to remember this, not to think of him with greater fondness than he deserved.
Besides, Faery needed me, and being needed was my own need. If I had to sate that need differently than planned, so be it.
I do not actually have to be happy, if for the moment, I can simply pretend. Don a regal mask, a semblance of calm perfection, until I have made peace with all that has changed.
I had no clue then the mask must stay in place until it had become my own face.
High above me, the trees spread their silvery branches, laden with glistening fruits like apples or pomegranates, or maybe even both at once.
I hungered for a taste, and as if it heard my wishes, a single bough lowered before me, putting forth its richly golden fruit.
I accepted the offering, and it tasted both tart and honey-sweet, sating me fully yet whetting my appetite at the same time.
A far cry from my daily diet of pottage and porridge, and richer than any fruits now ripening in the mortal world.
As a weeping child may be distracted by a new toy, I grieved, but was wide-eyed with curiosity all the same.
“Is this how it is now?” I leapt at the sound of my own voice.
For I heard it for the first time, this voice belonging to only me, deeper than Bess’s and seductive, with a low richness like fine wine.
The voice belonged in the bedchamber or singing sailors to the deep.
It would not call in the sheep to supper or bargain over the price of bread.
Thomas Shepherd would never recognize that voice, yet it was my own.
Out from under the thistle bush scurried a little white-haired girl, ram’s horns on her forehead, her dress as snowy soft as down.
I smiled, charmed as I always had been by the littlest creatures, and this one was dear and sweet in appearance despite her curling horns. Then she held out a drinking horn shaped exactly like the horns on her head, offering it to me.