Chapter 7 #2
Marian steps onto it because refusal would only make her smaller.
The quartermistress circles once, twice, silent as a hawk.
A coil of twine floats from a peg and settles around Marian’s ribs.
The twine tightens with a quiet tick as if the knotted ends were conferring with one another. Marian’s body goes rigid.
‘Well fed,’ Niamh murmurs, more to herself than to Marian. ‘Good. Sherwood is no place for hollow bones.’
Another length of twine slides from a hook as if nudged by an unseen hand.
It loops Marian’s hips and cinches with a soft click.
A pinned seam skims the line of her waist, vanishes, then returns lower to test the fall of a skirt.
Her fingers tap against themselves aimlessly as she tries to ignore the way the hairs along her arms have risen.
‘Hold still,’ Niamh commands, already turning toward a bank of shelves.
Bolts of cloth seem to breathe when she touches them.
A deep green ripples like the surface of a pond when wind skims it.
Bark-grey fibres pebble under her palm with the faint pattern of lichen.
When she pulls thread, it does not unspool so much as follow, attentive as a trained hound.
‘I am holding still,’ Marian answers, teeth tight.
‘On the outside, perhaps.’ Niamh flicks her wrist; the twine around Marian’s waist hums and slides a finger’s breadth higher of its own accord. ‘Inside, you carry a storm beneath your ribs.’
The twine’s touch isn’t painful, but it is intimate in a way that makes Marian’s skin crawl.
‘I don’t like being measured by invisible hands,’ she grumbles.
Niamh lifts her gaze just enough to take in Marian’s clenched jaw. ‘You don’t have to like it,’ she says. ‘You only have to stand still.’
‘I prefer sharp things I can see.’
‘Hmm.’ Niamh’s mouth curves, not quite a smile, as she walks toward the back room. ‘Mortals prefer a great many things that do not suit them.’
Marian resists the urge to swat the measuring magic from her ribs as the twine twitches and shifts.
Her skin prickles where power passes. It smells faintly of crushed cedar and the warm metal tang of a summer storm.
Awe and discomfort wrestle under her breastbone.
The awe shames her. The discomfort makes her righteous.
She clings to the second because it is easier than admitting the first.
‘Magic that touches without asking feels like a kind of theft,’ she mutters to Allen once Niamh is out of earshot.
He opens his mouth to answer, but Niamh responds even from the other room.
‘I asked you to stand there and you chose to stay.’ The quartermistress charges back in, bolt of cloth in arm, and tucks a needle behind one ear.
‘The world takes liberties with our bodies every day. Weather. Hunger. Hands. The trick, mortal, is to choose when to surrender and when to bite.’ She tips her head toward the green dress that has already started to assemble itself in the corner.
‘I will make you clothes to fit your teeth when the time comes.’
Marian presses her lips together. Her retort dies before she can spill it. The dress is exactly what she would have chosen if she had been allowed to. Simple, fit for work, free through the chest.
She hates that Niamh’s magic learned the shape of her so well.
‘You can go,’ Niamh says without looking up. ‘I will send everything to your quarters.’
Allen nudges his charge with an elbow that is more suggestion than touch. ‘Come on, Mare. Before she sews your feet to the floor for being ungrateful.’ His grin is swift and bright. ‘Kidding. Mostly.’
He leads her along another winding walkway, higher this time, where the air smells cleaner.
Marian’s body feels every rung, every turn, the ache at her temple a steady pulse.
She keeps her face flat because she has no other armour left.
Eventually, Allen stops in front of a rounded doorway set inside a knot of the great trunk.
‘Your chambers, milady,’ he says with a flourish, pushing it open.
The room beyond is small and round, a hollow held in wood. A low bed waits against one side, layered in quilts that smell faintly of cedar and sun-warmed wool. There is a window cut in the shape of a leaf, veined with thin stained-glass, and beyond it the canopy spills like an ocean about to break.
Marian lingers at the threshold, taking it in despite herself.
‘I’m sure it’s not the manor halls you’re used to,’ Allen starts, leaning casually against the frame. ‘But it’ll keep the cold rain out and good dreams in.’
Marian doesn’t answer. She steps inside, feet whispering against the packed earthen floor. The glow softens the edges of the room until it feels almost tender. It tempts her to loosen her shoulders, to sink into the quilts that smell of things she’s always loved.
Allen clears his throat. ‘I’m sure today’s been overwhelming enough. Best thing you can do now is rest. I’ll have dinner sent up to you.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she answers quickly.
‘Tell that to your stomach,’ he chuffs. ‘I heard it grumbling louder than Gobnait’s hives.
And trust me, those pesky pollinators don’t buzz quietly when they’re temperamental.
’ He snaps his fingers in thought. ‘Speaking of which, remind me to sneak you one of Maela’s honey cakes tomorrow.
Fresh from the comb, sticky enough to glue your jaw shut.
The perfect way to keep you from snapping at me. ’
‘I won’t be eating anything you give me,’ Marian snaps before she can stop herself. Her voice comes sharp, cutting through the warmth of the space. ‘I know the stories . . . Eat fae food and I’ll never see a mortal hearth again; drink fae wine and I’ll dance until my bones turn to dust.’
Allen freezes for half a heartbeat. His grin wavers, almost vanishing, before he pastes it back on. But she sees the small hurt flicker in his eyes, the way his shoulders stiffen. He exhales through his nose, a breath that’s half-laugh, half-sigh.
‘Mortals have been taught many things about us. Some true, most twisted until even the roots wouldn’t recognize them. But if your fear makes you feel safer, then starve a little while you learn the difference.’ His tone is easy again, but his gaze cuts sideways.
Marian folds her arms across her chest, anchoring herself against the guilt that creeps in. ‘I’ll fend for myself.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he says, but the words rings hollow. His hand fiddles with the strap of his lute. ‘It’s just as well; tonight’s feast will be mainly plain fare in honour of the Hollowing.’
‘The Hollowing?’
‘If you want the long-winded Elder version, it’s called The Night of Emptiness Before Fullness.
Tonight we eat simply: barley broth, oat bread, maybe a wedge of hard cheese and a few berries if you’re lucky.
No sweets, no spice, nothing rich. The Elders tell the story of how Sherwood came to be, and we listen with empty mouths so the legend can fill us instead.
A night of plainness, to remember what it is to hunger, so that tomorrow when the true feasting begins, the fullness has meaning. ’
Her pulse ticks up at the memory of what the Sheriff has planned in the coming weeks. The thought gnaws like a worm through fruit. If the fae gather here each year, if they lower their guard to celebrate, then his timing is no accident.
Her chest constricts as if the woollen gown she left home in still strangles her ribs.
‘It’s clear you want nothing to do with us,’ he starts, folding his arms. ‘Our magic, our rituals, our histories – it will all just unsettle you. I suggest you stay indoors, and be sure to shut that window too.’ He tips his chin toward the leaf-shaped window in the room, the corners of his mouth tugging faintly.
‘It overlooks the village centre where tonight’s festivities will be, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to catch so much as a glimpse.
‘Of course,’ he adds, ‘if you were foolish enough to perch on that ledge and let your ears wander, you’d hear us sing of how the first roots rose from ash and bone to weave Sherwood into a living thing.
You’d see the glow that threads through bark when the forest remembers its own birth.
’ He scratches at the stubble on his jaw, feigning indifference.
‘But our little ceremonies are thick with magic. Best to stay tucked in here, wrapped up in those quilts, whispering mortal prayers until it’s over. ’
Marian presses her lips together, refusing him the satisfaction of an answer.
Allen watches her wrestle with silence. ‘Rest easy, little mortal. Pretend it’s all smoke and superstition. Safer that way.’ He lifts something and a flash of metal flies through the air when he tosses it.
She catches it on instinct and winces instantly as a fine point presses into her flesh. Her mouth falls slightly open at the sight of her mother’s pin in her palm.
‘After all,’ Allen adds, ‘the fae are just uncaring monsters, right?’ He sweeps into a bow, exaggerated and mocking, before stepping back through the door.
She stands rigid, the silence settling heavy in her chest. Yet the window tugs at her like a thread on a hem. She knows she should lie down, bury herself beneath quilts, and shut her eyes tight against the pull. But her feet betray her, inching closer to the window.
Her palm brushes the cool curve of the leaf-shaped frame. Beyond it, Sherwood stirs with lantern-glow and the soft swell of voices woven together.
She tells herself she is only curious enough to peek. To listen only enough to confirm how foolish they look, singing to trees. She tells herself many things, each excuse thinner than the last, as she leans closer to the window, the pulse of the forest thrumming faint against her skin.
And outside, the first note of a song older than the bones of the earth curls upward to her waiting ear.