A Proper Folk Woman
The fire sputters, the wind sighs, the rain weeps; even the hogs, bedded down in their sty, squeal and moan all night. Nature itself plays a dirge for me on the eve of my wedding.
There must be something I haven’t thought of, some way to wriggle out of Hugh’s promise. But although I fidget and fret for hours, dawn’s pale light finds me no closer to a solution than before. Ashen smudges beneath Mum and Dad’s eyes reveal that they’ve slept no more than I, and even Hugh looks wan and weary when he lifts his head from the nest of hoghide blankets I’d made for him on the floor.
He might be a prince, but he threatened my parents; I wasn’t about to give up my bed for him.
“Time to wed, Miss Smith.”
I wind my scarf around my neck, but not so I can go to the chapel. “I have chores first.”
“You always say that,” Hugh grumbles. “Be quick about it, then.”
I toss on my cloak and let myself out. He’s in pain. It’s obvious from the pallor on his face, the clumsiness of his movements, the rasp of his voice.
And, annoyingly enough, I feel bad for the fellow.
I don’t have to particularly like something to recognize when it’s out of order; I don’t care for snakes, but I still pity one that’s injured or dying. That sort of disgusted compassion beats in my own aching heart now. Whatever his origins, Hugh was made to sparkle, to gleam, to dance, and his foolish vow has caused him to shrivel and fade. The promise was his fault, and I’m not going to forgive him for threatening my family, but I don’t wish to harm him further. I just need to break his vow, somehow, and he can go back and live his glimmering, chaotic life.
Somewhere far, far away from us.
The cold morning welcomes me with a sparkle of frost and the hogs writhe with joy when I enter their sty. “I’d appreciate your enthusiasm more if you weren’t spilling the water on my hem,” I mutter when they begin nosing at my buckets. Hungry Murt butts his curly head against my knees, and I pause to scratch his ears. I wrinkle my nose. “You lot need baths.”
Though I’ve agonized over Hugh’s vow all night, I can’t think about anything else. He claims I’m part Folk—can I use that to my advantage? Can I out-bargain him? Do I have any power to compel him?
I give the hogs their slop slowly, buying as much time as I can before going to the chapel with Hugh. Prince Inglebert—the hog—snuffles at my boots, and I pat his woolly neck. “You’re going to miss me, I know.” A fresh spasm seizes me. I gasp and bend over double, clutching at my heart as Hugh’s promise squeezes. If it’s this bad for me, it must be worse for him. I’m worried he’ll go crazy with the pain.
Mind, I’m not saying Hugh doesn’t deserve every bit of this unpleasantness—I’m only worried about the mayhem he’ll cause if it lasts much longer.
I trail my fingers through Prince Inglebert’s soft wool one last time before hurrying back into the house. Hugh’s still curled on the floor, but looks up, hissing, when I enter.
“Will your vow be satisfied by marriage alone, or do I have to live in the palace with you?” My wet hem swishes against the doorframe. I push my hood back, but don’t bother taking off my cloak or scarf. May as well get this over with.
“I don’t know.” Hugh grimaces. “I said I’d make you a princess, so I suppose I’ll have to officially present you at court.” His lip curls in disgust.
“Then you’ll leave money with Mum and Dad, and as soon as the terms of your promise are fulfilled, I’ll come back here to live.” I keep my gaze fixed on Hugh. I don’t want to see the despair on my parents’ faces.
“What, you’d rather live here than stay with me in the palace?” Hugh eyes the ramshackle cottage.
“Precisely.” I fold my arms across my chest. Mum stirs the porridge over the stove, the spoon making shaky little thumps against the sides of the pot. I hope she didn’t make much; I, at least, have no appetite. “And yes, I mean that as an insult.”
The corners of Hugh’s mouth turn down. He unwinds himself from his woolly nest. “You shouldn’t insult your betrothed,” he grouses. “It’s not couth!”
“You threatened my parents and told me you’d be tired of me before long—in fact, I suspect you already are—so don’t lecture me about being couth!”
“You’ll eat before you go, at least?” Mum’s trembling voice is barely audible over the crackle of the fire.
Hugh shakes his head. “I’ll get you something better than porridge for our wedding feast after it’s all official. But we really must be going. I am very uncomfortable.” He wipes sweat off his lined forehead.
“You don’t have to do this, Hester,” Dad says.
“She does, actually,” Hugh huffs. “I can compel her.”
I smile brightly at Mum and Dad, trying to mask my terror, even though my stomach is in knots and my legs are wobbling. “Let’s make the best of it. Your daughter can be a princess.” My voice breaks on the last word.
Hugh, shaking nearly as much as I am, leads me out of the cottage and whistles. Kelpie comes trotting up from wherever she was roaming. Hugh lifts me up on her—“She isn’t a normal horse, is she?” I ask, but Hugh only laughs—and then he jumps behind me and we’re flying back up the hill and toward the chapel.
There is no time to think, and yet I must think. How can I outwit one of the Folk? How can I out-bargain or trick or manipulate one whose very nature is based around all those things?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
Yet there must be something— !
Kelpie’s hooves tear up the ground beneath us. Lower Splott is too small to have its own chapel, so we have to travel all the way to Upper Splott. The only benefit to the longer journey is that I have more time to stew over my fate and all the ways I’m helpless to prevent it. Which, upon review, may not be a benefit anyhow.
“Tell me something, at least,” I say over my shoulder. The wind whips my curls around my face, and I spit one out of my mouth.
“What do you want to know, my love?” Hugh sits behind me, arms wrapped tightly around my waist as he holds Kelpie’s reins.
“Don’t call me that.” I scowl. “Why didn’t my ward protect me?”
Hugh laughs. He reaches up to my neck and fingers the pouch of herbs. “Who told you these would keep Folk away?”
I swat his hand. “Everyone knows it,” I say. “We’ve been using folkbane as a ward for generations.”
“Folkbane, as you call it, is what first drew me to you. All the Folk love it,” he says. “It will never work as a ward.”
I twist to face him. “That can’t be true! It’s the only thing that works!”
“You’ve been tricked there.” Hugh’s chest shakes with laughter. “Some clever old Folk—maybe the same one that somehow got mixed into your bloodline—must have started that superstition a long time ago. Nice of you to bury some by your boardinghouse, by the way. I felt very peaceful there.”
I turn forward again, limp. “What wards do work, then?”
“That’s a lot of information to give for free,” Hugh says, a malicious undertone in his voice. “You’d pay for it later.”
I snap my mouth closed as we barrel past Lower Splott and give a half-hearted wave to a cluster of villagers.
“Why weren’t you discovered before? I’ve never heard of a changeling who lived all the way to adulthood.” I know people in the city aren’t as concerned about the Folk, but it’s still odd that no one ever questioned Hugh’s eccentricities, especially his own parents!
“You wish I died as a child?” Hugh’s breath is hot on my neck.
“I’m complimenting your great skill in blending in with the real humans.”
Hugh snorts. “Real humans? Have you forgotten that you’re part Folk, too?”
“I can lie,” I argue. “Everyone knows Folk can’t lie.”
“Folk inheritance is unpredictable,” Hugh says, hugging me closer. Is he teasing me, or does he actually need my support to stay on Kelpie’s back? “The children of a Folk-human union can seem fully Folk, fully human, or anything in between. You might be able to lie, but I know you’re more resistant to favors than any real human—to borrow your eloquent words!—would be.” He coughs. “Our children could be as bland as Lucas or as wild as my own grandmama—who knows?”
I blanche and shut my mouth for the rest of the journey.
By the time we reach the chapel in Upper Splott, my nose and cheeks are chapped from the wind and my teeth are chattering, despite Hugh’s embrace. Hugh pulls Kelpie to a stop in front of the whitewashed chapel and leaps off her back with inhuman grace. How did I never notice it before? Or has his nature gotten more obvious in the wild air of Ramsfeldshire?
He reaches up and grabs my waist to help me dismount. I shrink away from his touch. “Come, come, my love!” he says. “Do not be missish with me now!”
“I’m not your love.”
“But you will be my wife, very soon!” Hugh twines his fingers with mine and pulls me to the chapel door. He grins, a ghastly imitation of the sunny beams I remember from the first time I met him. Now I see the otherness behind it.
I’ve never disliked our vicar, but I do hope that he will be ill today, or sleeping late, or perhaps visiting some dying Upper Splott matriarch—anything to delay this farce of a marriage. To my chagrin, he’s inside the chapel, kneeling in front of the boxy pulpit. “Ah—Hester Flanders!” he says, a gentle smile curling over his wrinkled face. His knees creak when he stands. “I’d heard that you left for Wellington-upon-Chesbury. And who is this?”
Morning sunlight filters through a stained-glass window high in the chapel wall and paints Hugh’s sickly face blue and green. “I am going to marry her.”
“Oh,” the vicar says faintly. He looks at me. “Congratulations.”
“Now,” Hugh adds, his smile never faltering.
“Oh,” the vicar says again. “Well, we really should read the banns and wait a fortnight—”
“ Now .” Hugh’s teeth seem to grow slightly more pointed.
The vicar’s bushy eyebrows crawl together. “You are sure, Hester?”
“She is sure. Marry us.”
The vicar ignores Hugh, waiting for me to answer. Now is the moment to say something, anything that can get me out of this—
I think of nothing.
I swallow and nod. The vicar frowns, but withdraws to retrieve the ceremony things.
I have only minutes—maybe seconds—to think. I bite my lip, frantic to come up with something to stop this.
“You can’t do it,” Hugh says, reading the desperation on my face. “You’re looking more Folksy by the moment, but you can’t out-bargain me. ”
“I have to try ,” I say.
“You’ve done very well.” He chuckles and pats my hand. “Shall I take you to visit my grandmama and make a proper Folk woman out of you?”
“Please,” I say, very quietly. “Please, come up with something.”
Hugh’s eyes flicker, just for a moment, before the wildness returns. “I made a promise,” he hisses. He breathes quickly, chest rising and falling, and a spasm of pain passes over his drawn face. “And it hurts .”
The vicar returns. “If you’re ready,” he says doubtfully. Hugh nods, sharp and commanding, so the vicar takes out his ceremony book and lays it open on the pulpit. He tells us to face each other, then sprinkles crushed lavender and folkbane around us.
“Join your hands and state your intentions.”
Hugh’s fingers, stronger than they look, wrap around mine. “I intend to marry this woman,” he says. “I made a promise.”
“I didn’t,” I mutter. The vicar’s brow wrinkles in concern.
Hugh squeezes my hand harder, his lips curling in a snarl. A bead of sweat gathers on his forehead.
“I didn’t make any promise,” I say again, slowly. I tilt my chin up and look at Hugh. Light from the window behind him shines around his golden head. “And I didn’t receive any promise.”
“It doesn’t matter ,” Hugh says. “I’m bound by my vow! Let’s get on with it!”
“Your intentions?” the vicar prompts.
A slow smile turns up the corners of my lips. I know what I have to do. I’ve spent all night and all morning trying to think more like one of the Folk—trying to bargain or bluster my way out of this—
but the answer has been in me all along.