Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
With every step I took away from my mortal life I grew colder and harder, and encompassed my Unseelie side more and more.
It was necessary to feed my people, to save them, but that does not mean there was no cost. Lileas became a stranger to my bed.
She served me still, fed me breakfast and combed out my hair, but the companionship we knew once had long passed.
Amadan could not or would not provide the same companionship.
When he saw my spirits were down and I was lonely, his solution was to throw another party, get me drunk out under the trees, and make love to me out under the stars.
An adequate distraction, but afterwards I was always left wanting.
At last, I grew too frustrated with the flippancy of the Dark Fool and the apathy of my other companions.
There was muttering again of dissent among the Aos Sith, the juniper nymphs had an overabundant harvest and kept trying to foist off their latest vintage on me, and Jamie was at an awkward stage where he did not wish to spend time with me indoors.
I needed advice, from someone who would neither tease nor flatter, who would be honest and not hold back her thoughts.
I needed Morven.
I wandered out to the scrying pool, idly running my fingers along the knife I now kept at my waist until I drew blood.
The wound stung more than I had expected, for who can cause us as much pain as ourselves?
I resisted the urge to lick the blood from my finger and, without a moment’s thought, let the blood spill into the pool.
The drop of blood floated for a moment on the surface of the water, ribboning out in lazy spirals, far more than I had surely bled. Then, like a stone, it began to sink.
My sacrifice accepted, I spoke.
“Show me where the brownie Morven now dwells.”
The roseate liquid swirled in the depths, and an image coalesced: a cottage on the edge of the village, with a thatched roof and a yard to grow herbs and vegetables out front.
Round the back, I knew, one would find a sheepfold, abandoned now, and with no leaping Cullen to tend the flocks.
My eyes stung at the recollection, and something caught in my throat, but I did not look away.
The door seemed to disappear, or I passed beyond it somehow, to see the bare dirt floor inside the cottage and a hearth overly filled with smoke. Sparse bachelor quarters, these were, though once I thought love made them big enough for two.
I could hardly believe the shepherd and I once lived here.
My eyes passed over the mattress where we had slept, its blankets pulled up to cover its current occupant, though a single red-gold plait peeped out.
I could not bear to look at her and moved my attention to the cabinet Thomas had built to put my herbs in.
The hearth where I had prepared my pottage and brews.
And the copper pot hanging just over it, out of which dangled two scrawny legs.
“Morven,” I cried out, though she could not hear me, as I was not there. “Oh, she is still at the cottage, looking after it even now I am long gone.”
Envy filled every corner of my being. I had given up my place to the true Bess, for it should have been hers all along. But I never intended to give up my friend.
Friend? Have ye not all but forgotten her since ye moved to the realm of Faery? She is naught but a subject to you now.
No.
I closed my eyes and pulled all the magic that belonged to me in this world to the core of my being, clasping it tight. “Hawthorn and alder, ash and yew, bring me again to the home I once knew.”
The magic came as a rush of wind, a sudden gust, and I stood in the shepherd’s cottage, just as Morven’s copper pot fell to the ground, landing with a thud on the dirt floor.
She rocked it back and forth, tipped herself over like a tortoise for a moment, then threw the pot back and away. It was then she noticed me.
For a moment, we froze like thieves in the night, hearts pounding, eyes wide. But Morven recovered first, slowly backing away from me, and would have crawled back into the pot had I not caught her arm.
She blinked.
Smoke assaulted my senses, I tasted iron, shut away in the cabinet, locked up in the kist, it did not matter. I had no tolerance for it anymore.
And that insistent pushing and pulling, sharp as knives and crackling like lightning, the sensation of being in the same place as the woman I had once been.
Bess Grieve.
Lying on the mattress behind us, she must have felt it too, for she tossed and turned in her sleep, moaning softly, sweat beading upon her forehead as she exposed the red birthmark on her throat.
I touched the side of my own throat, where once that rose had bloomed, but felt only the torc I wore, its sharp silver thorns.
“Dinna wake the mortal,” Morven hissed.
“Of course not.” But her concern roused a pang inside me, an ache that she had taken True Bess as her charge instead of me. I swallowed deep. “Thistle and broom,” I murmured. “My words to your ears only. Your words only to mine. Let there be silence in this place.”
And silence fell like a curtain dropping. Eerie silence. No gusts of early spring battered at the door. No sound of Bess’s rough breathing echoed behind us, which threw my own breath into sonorous resonance.
The room suddenly felt too close.
“That’s not enough,” Morven grumbled. “She feels ye here, even in her sleep. My queen, ye was never meant to be both in the same place. Ye must go soon.” She peered up at me through the thicket of her shaggy hair.
The passing years had not changed her—like all the fae, she wore them lightly, remaining as scrawny, hairy, and scraggly as ever.
I could hardly speak for looking at her so.
Morven glanced down at where my hand still held her arm.
I released her, shrinking back in a fashion I knew no longer suited me. “I am sorry.” The words were wrong, not enough. I didn’t know how to speak to her anymore.
Morven shook her head and snorted. “Och. Ye can’t help it.” If I didn’t know her so well, I would have imagined pity in her voice. “Ye’re not the girl ye were before.”
I never was the girl I was before. I glanced at the silent sleeper behind me. She is.
So, what did that make me?
An intruder upon this mortal plane.
Like pins and needles it felt; sharp points my flesh wanted to shrink away from, but at the same time the threads grew taut and pulled me close.
Morven crept up to me, nose pressed forward, face twisted beneath her shaggy hair. “Ye’ve gone skinny,” she said. “Used to have prettier hair.” Then she pulled out her little stick broom and began attacking the cobwebs in the corners, as if I weren’t even there.
Such had always been her way. But I could see past her hard shell to the softness inside. “I missed you, too, Morven.”
“I never said that, did I?” And she batted at the cobwebs so hard I thought the cottage walls might cave in. “Far as ye know, far as ye care, I never even noticed ye was gone.”
“That cannot be true. I . . .” But how could I finish? I had not the time to miss Morven while I was in the Faery realm, learning how to be queen. A most un-faelike shame washed over me, and I was grateful when Morven snorted and would not meet my eyes.
“You know, I am queen now,” I blurted.
At last Morven paused, putting her hands on her hips, scrawny elbows sticking out. “So Mairi Grieve did save our queen after all.”
I could only nod. The memories of the time I was Bess Grieve had gone distant now, like a story I had been told many, many times but never actually experienced.
I raised my chin, imagining the crown upon my head. “I it is who holds sway in Faery. I get to say who comes and goes. Who belongs there and does not.”
“Hmph.” She opened the front door, swept the dirt outside, did not meet my eyes.
“I still need you,” I blurted out. Morven would ever keep me humble. Would speak the truth to me with no niceties about it. Keep me humble, however powerful I had become. “I have always needed you, Morven, even if I did not know at the time.”
Morven sniffed. “Well, and do ye think I dinna ken that before?”
A smile crept across my face. Dear, sweet, ornery old Morven.
I could not have Thomas any longer, but I could have Lileas and Lyel. Jamie. And now Morven. This was all the companionship I needed.
“Come back to Faery. Come home with me.”
Morven stared at me, standing straight, her face for once not twisted in a grimace or a scowl. There was something almost human about her now. “Do you so command, my queen?” Her voice, too, was without its usual grumble, eerie in its flatness and casual tone.
Sharper than thorns were these simple words. “No.” I put my hands to my breast. “I would never ask you to do anything you did not want. I thought—”
“Ahh, child.” Sympathy from Morven at last. It hurt worse than her scorn. “It is good to see ye. I’m not saying it’s not. But I can’t go with ye.”
My lips parted, I wished to protest. I am the Queen of Faery. There should be nothing I cannot do.
But to treat my old friend as a mere subject—nay, to order her about like a servant—that was beyond me.
Morven shook her head. “Mairi Grieve, she did serve our queen Una, and saved her daughter’s life. For this, I have sworn to serve her kin ’til the end of my days. Once that was you, by love, if not by blood. But now?”
Now I have no place in this world.
I’d torn it off like an offending garment, a troublesome vine wrapped around my throat. The price I paid to become Faery’s queen. And whether it was too dear, whether I sold my mortality too cheaply, who could now say? It seemed a necessary loss at the time.
Bess Grieve sighed in her sleep. Bess Grieve. Mairi Grieve’s true kin.
I was only the cuckoo, long flown from her nest.
The cuckoo who was also queen. Who was learning now to lock her emotions away. “It is your decision, of course,” I told her coolly. “And so, I must bid you farewell.”
Farewell not only to Morven, but to all I had ever been on this side of the Veil. All my mortal allegiances were now broken.
And so, I returned to Faery, my true home.