3. Evangeline
Evangeline
The Hollow was a curious place. Spring flowers bloomed in the garden regardless of the season. Food appeared with the chime of a clock. Stairs often creaked, even when no one was stepping on them. But the sudden appearance of berries in her hand was something entirely new.
“Where did these come from?” Evangeline looked around, as if she might find a red-pawed little dragon, but the only thing dripping red was her.
Jacks glanced at the berries and shrugged a careless shoulder, as if it weren’t peculiar in the least.
And perhaps it wasn’t. Maybe the wind’s final gust had blown her out of Jacks’s arms and into the center of the room along with the berries. If there had been any real reason for alarm, Jacks would have been the first to insist they leave.
“I suppose I could put them in a pie.”
“No,” Jacks said, voice sharp and quick. “You should toss them out. They look too ripe.”
The fruit looked absolutely perfect to her.
Jacks picked up a broom, but he continued to glare at the berries as if they were part of a nefarious plot.
She imagined that Jacks was just being overly cautious, for reasons he didn’t want to say.
He did that sometimes. He was quite a lot better than when they had first moved into the Hollow, and he had seemed to think she was made of glass that would shatter if he wasn’t right there to catch her.
But she sensed that he still thought she was quite breakable.
Though it was true that humans were more fragile than Fates, Evangeline was not as fragile as Jacks liked to believe.
She’d survived curses and arrows, betrayals and poisonings, and marriage to a very evil prince.
She did not think she was going to be taken down by a fistful of berries.
But it didn’t seem like something worth giving him a hard time about.
Evangeline tossed them away and washed her hands. The berries didn’t leave any stains, just a few lingering questions.
While Jacks continued cleaning all the stray bits of nature from the tavern floor, Evangeline picked up The Happy Innkeeper’s Guide to All Things Wonderful, hoping it hadn’t been too damaged.
At first glance it looked fine, but its pages had shifted with the wind, and the cover had changed as well. Before, it had featured an image of a cheery inn. Now, a border made of swords, arrows, stars, and flowers surrounded a new title: A Guide to the North Before It Was Magnificent.
“I don’t have time for this today,” Evangeline muttered. And yet, of course, she couldn’t help her curiosity.
She opened it and, just like the cover, the pages inside were all different. Instead of advice about ironing, which flowers to put in which rooms, and how to politely deal with obnoxious guests, the top of the current page now read When There Were Fairies.
As a child, growing up in the Meridian Empire, Evangeline had read fantasy stories about fae in her region of the world. But this was the first time she’d ever read anything about them in the North, and she’d never heard anyone mention them either, which was odd, now that she thought about it.
She knew she really didn’t have time to read, but what if this page disappeared when she closed the book and she couldn’t ever find it again?
WHEN THERE WERE FAIRIES
The Age of Fae is often misremembered or completely forgotten—wiped from memories. It was both a magical time and a terrible time. Fae kingdoms were always in the hearts of forests, but at the height of their existence, a number of fairies lived among humans.
Many fairies look just like humans. The highest levels of fae are beautiful, almost painfully so.
But they can mute this beauty to pass for human.
The only thing that will always distinguish fairies from humans are the points at the tips of their ears.
All fairies have pointed ears. These points can be concealed using glamour, except for the first time a person sees a fairy’s ears.
That first time, the tips cannot be hidden.
Another weakness of fairies is that they cannot lie. But they are also experts at twisting the truth. They famously do this when making bargains with humans, which should never be entered into! Fairy bargains are notoriously dangerous and misleading.
You must always be careful with what you say to a fae. They have a way of turning words into magic, and they are easily offended.
Evangeline turned the page.
The next section was full of descriptions of unfortunate fairy bargains:
A girl who asked to be beautiful and was turned into a portrait.
A boy who received a tail in exchange for perfect teeth.
A mother who wished to improve her baking skills and found her children turned into loaves of bread.
Every bargain was strange and awful. But instead of being put off, Evangeline found herself skeptical. If all fairy bargains were terrible ideas, then why did so many people enter into them? There must have been something the book wasn’t saying.
“Jacks, what do you know about fairies?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why are you asking about fae?” And there was something about the way he said it. A note in his voice that made her imagine the word fae had left a bad taste in his mouth.
It seemed that Jacks shared sentiments similar to that of her book.
As Evangeline held out the volume, Jacks looked as if he was trying to school his features but couldn’t quite manage. He wasn’t frowning, but his jaw was tight.
“Did you ever make a fairy bargain?” she asked.
Jacks slowly ran a finger down the open page until he reached the words Fairy bargains are notoriously dangerous and misleading.
“Is that your way of saying yes?”
He looked as if he wanted to answer. Jacks actually looked as if he wanted to say a number of unpleasant things about fairies, but he simply tapped his finger against the words dangerous and misleading.
That was definitely a yes. But he didn’t follow it with a single word. Evangeline wondered then if perhaps Jacks wasn’t answering aloud because he couldn’t.
The book had mentioned something about memories being wiped.
But what if that wasn’t the only reason people never spoke of the fae?
What if all the stories in the Magnificent North about fairies were also cursed, so that even those who remembered could never mention them?
Perhaps that was why Evangeline had never heard anyone talk of fairies here before.
“Can you not tell me anything because of the story curse?” she asked.
She waited for Jacks to nod. Surely, he could at least nod.
Jacks opened his mouth. For a second his blue eyes were sharp, decisive. Then he pressed his lips together before suddenly closing the book as well. As soon as the volume was shut, the title instantly changed back to The Happy Innkeeper’s Guide to All Things Wonderful.
Jacks exhaled. “There is no need to worry about this today, Little Fox.” He ran his knuckles down her cheek, eyes softening as he seemed to silently say, If I’m not worried, then you don’t need to worry.
Except Jacks didn’t look not-worried. The line of his jaw remained tight, clenched, as if he were biting back words that were perhaps at odds with what he’d just said.
Evangeline wondered if whatever he was trying to hide was just about the fairies, or if it had anything to do with some of the day’s earlier events. The berries, or the letter he’d been reading that morning. “Jacks, love—”
“Eva darling! Are you ready?” LaLa’s voice rang out through the Hollow, interrupting Evangeline as LaLa swept into the tavern like another gust of glittering wind.