Chapter Twenty-One
When I wake, I find myself sunken into a pool of luxurious textiles—silks and velvets, satins and cashmeres. For a moment, I simply relish the textures and the exquisite warmth, like being wrapped in a cocoon.
Then I bolt upright, remembering.
The portal. The wood. My aunt. The monstrous, wolfish spiders.
There’s no sign of any of it now. I’m in an ornate room, every wall a burnished mirror.
The ceiling is peaked, and from it hang many chandeliers—all broken, chipped, and faded, but a few candles burn between them.
The bed is a nest of blankets and cushions, most of them frayed.
But despite the raggedness of the objects, the room is elegant, a shabby memory of grandeur. And it’s drenched in cobwebs.
On a silver-plated credenza, a small music box plays an endlessly repeating melody, and with a start, I realize I know the song. I’ve heard it recently, sung in the sweet voice of Carolina, my former student:
In the shadows ’neath your bed,
She spins her spells with spider’s thread,
Her hair is black, her eyes are red,
If she sees you, you are dead.
I swallow hard and draw up my knees, feeling itchy all over. Spiders are everywhere, in the curtains around the bed, in the corners, swinging from chandelier to chandelier. It is their silken strands which form the translucent canopy overhead.
“Do my pets unsettle you?” asks a voice.
I jump, then spot her—sitting so still in the far corner that I’d completely missed her at first.
She is dressed in a thin silvery gown, cobwebs in her black hair, and watches me with eyes as green as polished emeralds—not red at all—smiling as if she knows a terrible secret. I do not have to ask to know at once, with dreadful certainty, who she is.
I sit absolutely still and watch the faerie queen watching me.
Her face is pale as milk, her features all slightly more elongated than a human’s would be, her cheekbones thin and swooping like filigree to ears that arch to graceful points. Blue shadows pool beneath her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks and throat.
I remember her in the cursed wood, banishing my nightmares with a flare of white light. But I cannot believe she did it to save me. She must want me for something else.
If she catches you in her realm, Lachlan’s warning sounds in my mind once more, she will make your death painful and slow.
Her head cocks. “Little witch, little witch, do you know what laws you’ve broken, coming here?”
“W-what?”
In a singsong voice she recites, “Saucy mortals must not view what the queen of stars is doing, nor pry into our faerie wooing.”
She rises, smooth as silk, and glides toward me, her fingers wrapping around the bedpost. They are gray tipped in black, as if she’s been dipping them in ink.
Her eyes are larger than a human’s, more pupil than whites, and her teeth and ears are as sharp as a cat’s.
And for all her strangeness, she is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.
I find myself staring half out of terror, half out of awe.
Is it some spellknot which makes her seem so alluring?
Or is it an older, stranger magic, something beyond my mortal ken?
“Yet here you are, saucy mortal,” she murmurs. “Insatiable and bold and so very, very stupid. Why are you here, in Morgaine’s realm?”
Morgaine.
It is a name which stirs at the bottommost depths of memory; a name whispered in a storybook, glimpsed between the lines of myth. Morgaine, Morgana, Morrigan, Mag . . .
I open my mouth, remembering suddenly why I came here and intending to demand to see the Dwirra Tree. But my voice fails, and I can only gape like a fish.
Her fingers close on my jaw, shutting my gaping mouth for me. Then they linger, tracing my cheeks, my brow. She studies my face as if she is about to either kiss it or devour it.
“How frightened of me you are,” she says. She smiles, displaying each of her pearly teeth. “Like a butterfly caught in a web.”
“Please,” I whisper, but I cannot seem to summon more than that.
“Don’t you mean thank you? I could have let you wander the Wenderwood until you were old and gray, but I did not. I could have turned you into a spider on the spot, but I did not.”
I nod wordlessly, sensing the best course now is to play along, to show her I am no threat. Which is, of course, the utter truth. She perches on the bed and tilts her chin, her inhuman eyes studying me.
“Little witch,” the queen says again. “Why have you come here? What do you seek? Who sent you, or are you merely a witless lamb lost in the dark?”
I want to ask her what her connection is to Conrad North, and why he is Weaving wards around her doorstep.
I want to demand that she show me this Dwirra Tree Lachlan craves.
But I lack the courage for any of these queries.
I feel like I am dreaming; the surfaces around me are all slightly blurred and indistinct, nothing quite real, as if the curtains or the mirrors or the chairs might turn to mist if I reached out to touch them.
“Are you—” I whisper, then pause to collect my voice. “Are you enchanting me?”
“Why?” she asks breathily. “Do you feel enchanted?” She pulls back with a soft laugh. “It is easy to forget how young you humans are. Your passions run right beneath your skin.”
She rises and goes to a gilded sideboard, where she pours something from a crystal pitcher into a burnished brass goblet.
This she hands to me, and I take it but do not drink.
The liquid is coppery gold and smells of acrid smoke.
I stare at it, wondering if it’s poisoned, if I will transform into a goblin if I taste it.
Morgaine watches me while she pours her own glass. “Go on. Ask me the question tingling at the tip of your tongue.”
“The Wenderwood,” I blurt out, though that’s not at all what I’d intended to say. “I saw things in there . . .”
“What did you see, witch?” She drains her wine in one long draft; I realize I’m staring at the muscles in her graceful neck, working as she swallows. I look away, my face hot.
“Nightmares,” I mutter. “That’s all it was.”
“Was it?” She lies down beside me, on her side, head propped on one hand while the other reaches out to stroke my forearm. I pull it away, the hairs rising on end.
“My watchers were real enough,” she says.
“And they would have torn you limb from sinew if I had not stepped in. Naughty girl, leaping through portals, tossing herself into people’s lands as if she had any right.
My watchers watch, and they defend my borders.
But they were not all you saw, were they? ”
I shake my head, my mouth dry. “My aunt.”
“Ah.” Morgaine grins. “That is the nature of the Wenderwood—to reveal your deepest fears and most shameful secrets. I know the heart of every mortal who enters my lands. For when you know what a person fears, their will becomes yours to control.”
She grabs my hand suddenly, so fast and tight I cannot recoil. Her nails dig into the tender skin of my palm. Her eyes spark like green fire. “You are trembling still. How very afraid you are.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“You’re afraid of being afraid, and that’s the most powerful fear of all. Haven’t you heard? Magic is not for the faint of heart.”
I shiver with recognition at the simple phrase, which had once seemed so banal printed on the opening pages of The Westminster Weaving Primer. On her lips, the words are insidious, a dark prophecy spoken by a cruel oracle.
With a sigh, she rises and pulls her hair over one shoulder, studying me as if disappointed. “Come, then. I will show you my realm, and you will see what becomes of mortals who trespass here.”
My stomach drops. “Are you going to kill me?”
Her expression never changes as she steps backward through the door, her nails trailing on the frame. “Come, now. Hurry!”
I clamber out of the bed, and when my feet hit the floor, I see I’m still in my muddy dress, and my feet are bare. My threadkit is sitting by the wall, seemingly untampered with.
Dragging my fingers through my hair, I find it tangled with ribbons and white feathers and strings of pearls. With a shudder, I realize the faerie queen must have been playing with my hair while I slept, as if I were her doll.
“Is this . . . spider silk?” I ask, pulling fine, sticky strands from my hair.
Looking up, I see Morgaine has already gone, through a mirrored door on the far side of the room. I grab my threadkit and run after her.
“Hurry,” she says. “You must change at once. The others are waiting.”
“Change? The others? What—?”
She snatches my hand and tugs me out of the bedroom and into a large dressing room, the walls hung with ornate burnished and warped mirrors.
Chandeliers hang overhead, all jumbled together, cooled wax hanging from their arms like icicles.
The air smells of sweet jasmine and honeysuckle, a heady scent that soon becomes cloying.
Three large wardrobes, each looking plucked from a different century, line the furthest wall, and Morgaine throws each of these open.
She settles on one garment and flings it at me, her eyes gleaming.
“Put it on,” she says.
Then she sits in an armchair upholstered in a patchwork of fabrics and waits.
I clutch the dress, my head whirling and cheeks hot. “N-now? Here?”
She raises one hand, and I spy thin silver threads tangled in her fingers. “Do you require encouragement, little witch?”
“You’re mad,” I whisper.
“Darling,” she says, “I am the queen of madness.”
Gritting my teeth, I begin removing my torn dress, trying to cover myself with the other, which is an awkward affair. Morgaine seems to have no concern for modesty and watches with open interest.
Cursing beneath my breath, I wriggle into the dress she forced on me and glance around, looking for exits. There is only the one door, and I find I lack the courage to make a run for it, not with her ten paces away, staring straight at me.