Samhain #2
“Nothing dies that is not mortal,” says Janet. “This is what mortal means. And if you can die, my queen, even a little bit, you are as mortal as we.” She lifts her chin, determined. “And I cannot give up the man I love to save your life.”
I have given up my essence. I killed the man I love. I killed my other self. I have sacrificed everything I wanted, everything I love, to feed this land. Nothing that is mortal within me remains, I would swear to it.
And I did it all for Faery, my home, my land, my other self. All I have left to love.
The roses rub against me, crawl up my leg to caress my fingers. Blood drips down, and I cannot say whether it is theirs or mine.
“If you are not mortal, and I am mistaken,” says Janet. “Then neither you nor Faery can die. Tam Lin’s life is not forfeit after all.”
She pulls her cloak over him, closing it around his naked form to hide it from the world. He grins down at her and wraps her in his arms. There they stand, embracing, under the light of the rising sun.
They have worn me out.
Mere children, these young lovers seem to me.
Fair Janet—nay, fierce Janet, for we both know how much more valuable ferocity is than a fair face.
And Tam Lin, who once was mine. He loves her now, though her beauty cannot last, any more than her youth can.
I can see the love clearly; the spark was missing with all the others.
He intends to be true to Janet—whether he can keep that promise or not, it is beyond my power to say.
I have given Janet my story, as I have no other mortal. I have shown her Faery, as She is and as She may be, if the Teind goes yet unpaid. All to no avail.
Janet will not give Tam Lin up.
It has been a long time since I was as young as Janet. Mayhap I have forgotten what a mortal maiden truly wants. How she even thinks.
I have frightened her, the best way I know how. Held the darkest curses on the tip of my tongue. Let her see the storm raging ever inside me, brought forth all the hideousness Faery can hold, for it is in me as much as the beauty is. I am monstrous and powerful, dark as death and bright as hope.
But the sky grows light. I have used up my last resource and so, there is nothing more to do but permit the sun to rise.
This exhaustion I feel, the heaviness taking over all my limbs, the temptation to give up this endeavor completely, it is as mortal as I have felt in years.
I will not yield to it.
One final time, I hold Janet’s gaze. “Will you give me back Tam Lin?”
I cannot force him from her, more’s the pity. It is against the rules, which we of Faery can twist all we want, but we can never break.
The forest grows still. The breeze is no more. The dew hangs off the leaves of the rosebushes but, impossibly, does not drop to the forest floor.
All the world awaits Janet’s answer.
She lifts her chin, does not shake or moan. “I cannot,” Janet says simply. “He is not mine to give.”
This is not true. She saved his life, and so, she claimed his life, as I had Thomas’s.
My shepherd could not have refused to pay the Teind in the end.
I hold back dawn with one hand. The hand is a gnarled shadow against the light, eternal but no longer young.
Janet steps in front of Tam Lin, who pulls her mantle around them both. “Tam Lin does not choose to return to you, Your Majesty.” She leans back against him. “Not like his forebear did.”
I laugh bitterly, for when did Thomas choose to return to me? After all I had done for him, after how much he owed me, and said as much himself, Thomas de Lyne had to be dragged down by the Wild Hunt, carried away to Carterhaugh for the rade.
“Thomas chose nothing.” I scoff. “Nay, he chose to marry Margaret over me.”
Janet nods, and there is hateful pity, disgusting pity in her eyes. “And give her a child. An heir to the Barony de Lyne. And after that—”
“I took his life!” As I meant to Tam Lin’s. As I needed to Tam Lin’s, for Faery would perish else.
“Or Thomas gave it.”
I stare at her. Has she not been listening? It was I who held the dagger. I who plunged it into his chest. His blood spilled over me and over Faery, renewing the land, as only the Teind will do.
And yet she persists. “‘You were ever both, my wood nymph.’ Isn’t that what he said in the end?”
I shake my head, denying, disbelieving. How can this mere child see us so plain?
“He knew what you were, my queen. I think he always did, maybe from the time you met at Mairi Grieve’s funeral. And yes, for the sake of his birthright, he did marry Margaret of Roxburgh, and she bore his heir. He owed it to his people, as you owe the Teind to yours. You told me as much yourself.”
What can hurt more than my own words thrown back at me? This girl is too clever by half.
She swallows but meets my gaze boldly. “Once his duty was done, he came back to you.”
She lies. Well I know how mortals lie. Thomas was selfish, as all mortals are selfish. Betrayed me. I cannot bear to think otherwise.
I killed him.
Thomas always lived on borrowed time.
“The Teind must be paid!” My words are sharp and hideous, like the cry of carrion birds.
My heart is stone, it cannot feel. How then is there so much rage inside me, boiling beneath the surface?
Such rage that I reach out and grab one of the rose bushes, bare hands tearing at the stems even as I bleed from the thorns.
The rosebush bleeds as well. I feel its wound like a slice into my own skin.
I am become victim and assailant, all at once.
A wordless gasp emerges from Tam Lin, and even brave Janet backs away. She feared not the lion and the serpent, the monstrous face I let her see. But the sight of a queen losing her mind frightens the girl at last.
There is nothing human in me any longer.
To become this queen, I sacrificed the woman I was, surely as if I dug her grave myself.
It wasn’t killing Thomas, or the death of Bess Grieve, that took away my very essence, allowing me to become the queen I always must be.
It is these remnants of my flesh, which remained here in Carterhaugh, in the rosebushes blooming all around, the last vestiges of my mortal self.
Why else does it hurt even to pluck one of these roses?
Why is their fragrance slightly sweat-tinged, why are they warm as skin, why do they taste of salt?
My mortal self had become roses. But locking it away is not the same as destroying it completely. And at last, this one time only, I know how the Teind will be paid.
I hold my blade before my face, the dagger I grew from my own flesh long ago, that was meant to slay Tam Lin. “Become a greater thorn,” I whisper to it, “to take down those which remain and taunt me. Purifying flame, death as destruction, let me hold you in my hands.”
When I open my eyes, I hold a gleaming sword. Not merely gleaming, but on fire.
With a matching fire inside me, igniting like coals in the heat of my gaze, I turn upon Janet. She cowers like a child beneath the storm.
“Understand this,” I say. “I kill no semblance of myself this time. I shall pay the Teind with my own soul. A queen no longer mortal in any respect shall reign in Faery. Expect no mercy evermore.” I will have sold my compassion, any fellow-feeling I had for this girl, any kindness towards the Christians among whom I was raised.
And, if my mortality is gone, so is my pity. What good is pity to one who will never die?
My blade flashes, so brilliant the lovers hide their eyes.
I turn to Tam Lin next. “Had I known, Tam Lin, what I this night did see. I would have taken both your eyes and put in eyes of tree.”
And with the sword I turn, not on either of the lovers, but upon the blooming rosebushes.
I slice the first, and it feels like severing a limb.
I cry out, and my voice is no less terrifying than the carrion birds shrieking through Faery’s blood-red sky.
Something pulls from me, the shadow self I never saw departing from Mairi Grieve as I watched her dead body, some shimmering essence like the ghosts that haunt the changelings’ cottage, mourning for the children they have lost. For a split moment, I think something might come after death, as the mortals believe, but if it does, I have sold my part of it, and whether there is Heaven or Hell, ghosts or rebirth or something else entirely that comes when we pass on, I have sold my part of that, too.
I burn and am purified as I slice away the memory of the shepherd, of Mairi Grieve, of my mortal home.
The friendship once I had with Morven, and with Glenna Baker.
All that ever was a daughter of my unknown father, a girl trying to be Bess Grieve or at least the heir to Mairi, lies dead at my feet.
Around me, the roses that have fed on my mortal essence, my very soul, begin to die. Yet Faery Herself continues to live, and that is the important part. I am consumed, but I also consume, and when it is over, I am sated at last.
When nothing remains but a carnage of petals carpeting the forest floor, I watch the lovers departing—brave Janet, who dared to love the Faery Queen’s captive, and Tam Lin, whom I hope forever will continue to remember how lucky he is.
They leave behind a heartless queen, half-mortal no longer, standing alone beneath the pitiless sun.
Neither one dares to look back.