The Silver Locket

Arwyn was lost. She hadn’t left the castle, but three moons of living there weren’t nearly enough to memorise the endless tunnels, halls and chambers that riddled the hill. It wasn’t so much the rooms themselves, than the ways in which they sometimes disappeared, reappearing elsewhere, or led to someplace completely different. There were certain patterns to their wandering; however, each place had a different pattern, and Arwyn hadn’t figured all of them out yet.

Usually, finding her way around was a question of willpower. The will of the castle could be overpowered with glamour, just like a living being, as long as one remained alert. Arwyn, however, had come to the Glimmerlands with a dangerous tendency to let her mind wander, which would have made her excellent prey to certain rare species of man-eating fairies, had she truly been human. As it was, it meant that Orren had spent much of their first moon home fetching her back from secret courtyards and hidden wine cellars with fast-waning patience.

Since then, she had learned to glamour her way back from wherever she found herself, although Orren would have been alarmed if he’d known how often she still had to do it. Lack of incentive had a lot to do with it: secretly, Arwyn liked getting lost.

Today she found herself wandering down a tunnel so long that she couldn’t see either end of it. She walked down it for a little while longer, but it didn’t lead anywhere interesting so eventually she put her hands on the earthen wall and asked the castle to take her back. The trick was to try to sound like a brownie, as they were the guardians of hearth and home, and homes obeyed them. She’d met some of the castle brownies, but they didn’t talk much. They were always occupied with some task, and got irritated if you kept them from it.

“Hello Castle,” she said, making her voice a little deeper and more gravelly than usual. “Take me back to the moonlit courtyard please? I’d much appreciate it.” She stroked the wall, and it hardened into a wooden door. “Many thanks,” she said, opening it.

The circular moonlit courtyard was Arwyn’s favourite place in the castle so far. It was usually empty and always brightly lit, even on moonless nights, by floating spidersilk lanterns that drifted here and there like so many brightly-coloured ghosts. The courtyard also held a series of odd wood-root statues that in turn held small mirrors, probably sneaked in from Cat’s Court by an inventive ancestor. These placed in such a way that, depending on what phase of the moon it was, the light they reflected cast shadowy images on the walls. Orren had told her there were stories behind the images, but these had been lost in time, when writing had been banned and before tellers began to learn the lesser histories.

The statues rose from gaps in the mosaic that covered the ground, the image of which shifted according to the mood in the castle. Today it depicted a tall yellow beauty surrounded by bowing subjects, all lined up to with gifts: Arwyn had accidentally introduced her to the notion of birthdays, and Yorwen had decided to overlook the fact that it was a human tradition and adopt it as yet another excuse to have a party. Today, she had decided, was her own birthday, and every one of her Borderland subjects had to give her a present. Gifts had indeed been arriving since moonrise, and piles of them now littered the entrance hall. Orren had managed to persuade her to have them displayed in store rooms, where she could open them later, and was now occupied giving orders to the team of servants charged with carting them away.

This suited Arwyn. Her brother had barely left her alone of late, and she was getting tired of his company – and that of Echo. It was good to be alone again.

Movement nearby caught her eye. She turned as though to walk away from it, then spun when she saw it again – to find Tarendal facing her.

“Ah,” he said, a little ruefully. “I didn’t expect to find you here, my lady.”

“Nor I you,” she said. “But it surprises me more that you tried to sneak out without greeting me. Are we not supposed to be lovers?” She smiled at the surprise on his face.

“Not that I’d refuse should you choose me to be your lover, lady,” said the elf, licking his lips, “but I fear I might get you into trouble, should you be found with me, ah, right now.”

She frowned as she noticed how his glamour flickered, leading her eyes away from… where?

“What’s that in your pocket?”

For a second she doubted that she’d seen anything in his pocket, but then his glamour dropped altogether.

Arwyn stared at one of the first unglamoured fairies she’d ever seen, and wondered what she was about to hear. Fairies dropped glamour on the rare occasions when they took oaths, for though they couldn’t lie, it was traditional to show one’s true self as proof of honesty in such times. Nervous under her gaze, Tarendal glanced around before pulling her to a bench in the shadow of a statue.

“Please forgive me for even thinking of hiding this from you, my Lady, but I didn’t know how you… how I should…” He stopped. Without glamour, his long, thin fairy traits were exaggerated, and yet his awkwardness made him look almost human. He took a deep breath.

“I know I said I couldn’t find anything about the identity of the girl you used to be,” he began, “but what you said about her reminded me of a – no more than a rumour, really – about a child who had been found in the woods one day and adopted into a certain household. What struck me was that when I went in on a routine mission for artefacts to sell, I asked around, and the humans of the village all seemed to have forgotten about it. They did mention a young lady who had disappeared into the woods quite recently… that would be you.

“One of the humans was particularly talkative, and she showed me where the girl had lived. I went back in the night to see if I could find out anything else, and while I was searching I came across a woman… and this woman could see me for what I was. She didn’t seem alarmed. On the contrary, she looked like she’d been waiting for me, and before I could speak, she said ‘I know you’re not the one who took her. I know…'” he stopped, troubled. “I… can’t remember all of it. She made it clear that she knew where you were, and who had taken you, and she asked me to give you this.”

He opened his hand.

Arwyn clapped her hands over her mouth. She reached out her hand to touch the silver object, making sure it was real, then withdrew.

“There is glamour on this.”

“It is not mine,” said Tarendal. “That’s what I found curious. I could feel a fixed glamour on it – an unbreakable one, if you will, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were magicked, too. But the oddest thing was that I also felt glamour on the woman who gave it to me, and yet there wasn’t another fairy in sight.”

On Mother? Arwyn thought. Somebody was lending her their glamour, the way Orren had lent Arwyn his? Who? And why?

She picked up the locket and opened it. In one side was a cracked mirror, in the other, a watch. Leah had often let her play with it as a child. She remembered playing in the forest with Kieran and John, and…

…and?

The names surprised her, coming so readily into her mind after three moons of them slipping through her fingers like water. If only the rest would come as easily… there had been something special about this locket, she remembered. The watch never worked, but it had been an essential part of their games.

Questions spun in her mind. She picked one at random.

“Can humans use glamour?”

“No,” said Tarendal. “But they can lie without consequence, which is a much better power, if you ask me. Glamour can be sensed, whereas lies cannot.”

“My father… her father, he always knew when I was lying.”

“But he is a wordsmith, is he not?” Arwyn looked at him, surprised. “The woman who showed me where your foster family lived mentioned it. A man who writes lies and sells them for a living must surely be an expert on the matter.”

Arwyn nodded slowly. It was fairy logic, certainly, but she had learned that fairy logic was far more often applicable in Cat’s Court than its inhabitants would think – the grown-up ones, at least.

The memory of a dream fluttered through her consciousness. She strained to maintain her glamour over the blush that warmed her cheeks, then felt oddly guilty for maintaining it before Tarendal’s pure honesty. She hesitated, but had to know.

“Tarendal, did you meet a dark-haired boy called John? He was a chandler’s son. We were… friends.”

Tarendal shook his head. “I spoke to several people, but most of them were of higher rank than a chandler would be, or else house slaves.”

“Servants,” she corrected him.

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“Servants are paid. They can leave for better employment if they wish to.”

“So they are allowed to choose their masters.” Tarendal seemed to consider this, then shrugged in the face of what appeared to him to be a purely human distinction.

Another question pushed its way to the front of her mind.

“The person who showed you the house… what did she look like?”

“Quite fairy-ish, actually, for a human,” he said. “Long, silver hair, pale, delicately pointed features. If you don’t mind my saying so, Lady Arwyn, you look more human sometimes with glamour than she did without it.”

Arwyn frowned, and Tarendal’s smile wavered. “Sorry,” he added, “I didn’t think you’d take that badly, since you grew up there and all…”

“Oh! I’m not offended.” And she laughed, because after three moons of trying to fit into fairy society, she still clung to her own humanity. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know who you’re talking about. She was called Lucy, am I right?”

“Miss Farrel was the name I addressed her with.”

“We didn’t get on very well, so I’m not in the least surprised that she would gossip about me. What does surprise me is… Tarendal, when you are in Cat’s Court, who do you pretend to be?”

Tarendal grinned. “A historian,” he said proudly. Then he added, “Or an explorer, or an auctioneer, depending on where I am. But in Edgewood, I’m a historian.”

“How can you be a historian without knowing how to read?”

Terror flooded his face for an instant before reflex kicked in and he glamoured it over. “Lady Arwyn, such topics are taboo,” he murmured.

“Sorry,” she said, even as she wondered if he had indeed taught himself to read. Tarendal was fascinated with all things human; that was part of what had drawn her to him in the first place. Another part was his refreshing disregard for fairy rules. It wouldn’t be surprising, she realized, if he could read.

She looked at the silver locket in her hands again. “How does it work?” she wondered.

“It looks to me like a finding or scrying device,” Tarendal said, visibly glad to change the subject. “They’re quite common in the Seelie Court, as true magic is permitted there. This one is unusual in that it has both magic and glamour on it, though I can’t tell what the glamour is supposed to be for…” He bent over her hands, peering at the locket. His hair tickled them and she wondered if he’d done it on purpose.

He straightened. “It doesn’t seem dangerous. I recommend experimenting with it.”

“How?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Tap it, shake it, throw it at things. Speak to it. Ask it questions. Try to glamour it as something else and see what happens. Sleep with it under your pillow… but glamour your room first, and lock your door.” He chuckled. “Don’t show it to Orren, whatever you do. I hesitated to give it to you in case it put you in danger somehow, and I came here to think alone, but I’m glad you found me. You asked me to help you, and you are not a child to be coddled. I can only trust your judgement in this.”

Something about him in that moment sent a rush of nostalgia for Cat’s Court through her, and suddenly she wished she could return there, if only for a day, to embrace the people who had once been her family. And John. Loneliness filled her chest.

“Arwyn? You seem upset.”

Tarendal touched her face, and she leaned into his hand. “I miss them,” she whispered. “I understand that my whole human identity was a lie from start to finish, but the bonds I shared with those people… they were real, Tarendal. I loved them. I loved Edgewood. I didn’t know it, but I loved being Darcy Sullivan.”

Tarendal pulled her into his arms, and she let her glamour drop the way he had before. Oh, but it felt good to cry real tears! She buried her face in his shoulder and tried to sob quietly as he stroked her back and murmured reassurances, like a father to his child.

After a while she pulled back and wiped her eyes, then looked up at him, smiling ruefully. He looked troubled.

“Arwyn,” he said. “Did you love being Darcy Sullivan more than you love being Arwyn of the Border?”

Yes, she thought. Of course she did. But she couldn’t say that aloud in her mother’s house. Not after the trouble and grief both Yorwen and Orren had gone through after her disappearance. Not now that she was back home, and everything was alright again.

“I’ll be fine,” she said instead. “I just need to get used to it. It’s harder than I thought.”

He smiled back at her then. “That’s alright, then,” he said, just the way John would have, and she wondered if he’d managed to lie to her after all.

Magic lessons

I know this is late, I’m sorry… but the article was foremost in my head on Monday, yesterday was spent feeling “off” and today I woke up feeling so dizzy I actually thought I might have an inner ear problem until I got some salt and magnesium in me and realised it was just low blood pressure caused by yesterday’s stress (I nearly had a panic attack when a queen wasp came into the living room and burrowed into a duvet, and I had to get her out… I’m not phobic, she was just HUGE and I don’t even know if I’m allergic because I’ve never been stung). Short excerpt today, it’s not exactly about what I wanted it to be about, I’ll have to try and insert those parts of the story in elsewhere.

 

Over the next few days, between lessons, parties, and other activities, Arwyn got the distinct impression that not only was Orren watching her more than usual, but he was deliberately trying to keep her occupied. He woke her early and insisted she stay up late practising dances and glamour and all sorts of strange etiquette. Her lessons redoubled and became far more difficult – “You’re the one who wanted to learn true magic,” he reminded her when she complained – and she couldn’t shrug off the feeling that this was Orren’s revenge for proving that she didn’t need him. He was as patient and gentle as ever – more so in fact – and despite the fact that she knew he was doing it for his own purposes, she had to hide her smile every time he turned down Echo’s advances in her favour.

Echo was Orren’s lover and she hated Arwyn, but had Arwyn not spent so much time in Cat’s Court, things might have been different. Indeed, the first night of their triumphant return to the Borderlands, after the tearful reunion with their mother, Echo had sat next to Arwyn during the feast. Arwyn, her head still full of Cat’s Court manners and principles, had been relieved to have such a friendly neighbour – although a little disturbed by her dress (or lack of it). Only once the feast was over and the dances had begun did she realise that Echo’s friendliness was, in fact, flirting. Her reaction – influenced as it had been by her human upbringing – had, in retrospect, been more than a little hurtful, and Echo had never forgotten it. Even now, she still did her best to make Arwyn’s life miserable.

Luckily for Arwyn, Echo’s tricks no longer bothered her as much since the night she’d turned into a dragon. Echo’s usual game was to drag Orren away from his sister, who had been wholly dependant on him in the beginning and prone to panic when he wasn’t there. Now though, Arwyn grabbed the opportunity to seek out Tarendal – who people were starting to refer to as “Arwyn’s lover” and who Echo seemed to hate even more – and pester him for information about Cat’s Court. Her aim was to find out who she had been before she’d become Arwyn of the Border, but Tarendal – though delighted with the attention – knew very little about the girl called Darcy who haunted Arwyn’s dreams.

Echo was disappointed to find that not only did Arwyn not come looking for her brother any more, but the opposite happened: after a while, Orren tired of her, and insisted on searching for his sister, becoming more and more irritable the longer it took. After a while, he refused to see Echo at all.

Foiled, Echo tried a different tack: remembering how Arwyn had strived to fit in with Unseelie society, she did her best to humiliate her in public. This did not go down well with Orren either – he had become exceedingly protective of his sister since the incident with Rayth. Besides, even fitting in didn’t matter quite as much to Arwyn any more – finding out what Orren had hidden from her and mastering enough magic to prevent him from controlling her again had become her priorities.

She couldn’t let Orren know that, though. He was her teacher, after all, and if what he’d told her was true (and he’d said it plainly enough that it couldn’t be a lie), true magic, though not illegal, was feared and hated enough by the Unseelie that she would have trouble finding another.

“Why do the Unseelie hate true magic?” she asked one evening after another long, exhausting lesson.

“Because magic is what the Seelie used to create the Border between our lands, and steal the twilight from us so that we must live in perpetual darkness. It’s their fault we need esbats to keep us from wasting away.”

“Is this another story that everyone knows but me?”

He frowned. “You do know this one, I told you it when we were children.”

“I’ve forgotten it, then,” she said. “Tell me again.”

Orren’s face was drawn with fatigue, but he sat back down on her bed anyway.

“It’s a long story…”

Possession

Redlox M’wintir called a halt, sniffed the air, and poked at the ground with his stick. The M’wintir pixies had been wandering the plains of Nout for nearly a quartermoon now, searching for a safe resting place. Their friend-tribe, the Sheelyu, had assured them that they themselves had wintered in these plains without being disturbed, the place would surely be ideal for a few days’ rest.

Either the Sheelyu had deceived them, or something had changed on the plains. Something was wrong, Redlox knew, he could sense it in the air. Not a smell, exactly, and he could sense no trace of glamour or magic other than those used by his own tribe. It was a texture, perhaps, only not – the air felt slimy somehow.

“Chief.” It was Shora, his eldest son and head of the small guard that protected their large family. Redlox could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “We need to stop.”

“I know, son,” said the M’wintir chief. “I just… it’s everywhere. Can’t you feel it? I’d rather we kept going.”

“Hothel sleeps on his feet, and Feather has collapsed. We have no choice, Chief.”

Redlox scanned the wan faces of his ragged, glamour-drained family. Tribe pixies were exceptions in the Unseelie lands, because despite their diminutive class, they lived and moved close together, as a family. They knew that safety and strength came in numbers, and never forgot it. But such groups needed a chief, and Unseelie chiefs were, as a rule, chosen for their power, and therefore had a tendency to be overthrown unless they made themselves well-loved. Redlox had not been deaf to the grumblings of his fellows, nor had he ignored the rumours that age had him jumping at his own shadow. He’d have a rebellion on his hands if he pushed too far – something far more worrying than “slimy air”.

“Rest here then,” he grumbled eventually, and the entire tribe breathed a sigh of relief. As they began sculpting earthbeds in the short grass, he added “I want eight of you on guard, the ones that are still awake. Short shifts – eight on moonrise, eight on moonset, and so on. I’ll take first shift. Who’s with me?”

It took him a while to assemble seven other volunteers willing to stay awake another half-night while the rest slept, but Redlox was firm.

“Why eight?” yawned Heather, Feather’s twin who had volunteered. “Four is usually enough.”

“Something is wrong with the air here,” he repeated. “I don’t trust it. Stay alert, don’t let sleep get the better of you.”

But the moonrise was uneventful, and so was the moonset, which Redlox stayed up for, too. When only the stars lit up the sky, he let his children persuade him to take a nap.

“We’ll wake you the minute anything happens,” Heather assured him.

“The second,” Shora said, and Redlox reluctantly gave in to weariness.

The wrongness woke him.

He sat up, alert as he hadn’t been in a week, and stuck out his tongue. There was a taste to it now, faint but nauseatingly bitter. He saw Shora to his left, sitting in a slump, and cursed.

“Wake up, dolt of a boy! Can’t you feel the air?” He shook Shora by the shoulder, and his head fell back.

Redlox screamed.

When a fairy screams, it is always an unearthly, horrible sound, but when an Unseelie scream, it is the kind of scream that curdles blood and freezes souls. If a human had heard Redlox’s scream that night, they would have died, ears bleeding, or gone mad.

As it was, the whole tribe came running, then fell back, their own screams echoing his.

Shora’s eyes had been ripped out, his face shorn to ribbons. Blood congealed under his sharp black nails, some of which were broken. His fingers were twisted in ways that shouldn’t be possible, and those who looked closer saw that his legs, seemingly crossed, had their feet turned backwards.

The wails of the tribe continued long into the night, followed by an even longer and terrible silence.

Finally, Redlox buried his son in the earth and ordered his tribe to move on. This time they headed back the way they’d come, to the pine forest that was the home of many bothersome brownies and a goblin or two, but nothing as terrible as whatever had killed Shora.

They hadn’t fully recovered, however, and before they were half-way back, four of their number collapsed into a deep sleep and couldn’t be woken. Redlox called a halt and ordered ten guards per shift, in groups of two.

He was woken by Feather shaking him frantically, in tears.

“Father, come, please, it’s Heather, she’s – she’s -”

Heather was eating her own fingers. Her eyes were blank and terrified, like those of a cornered animal, and when Redlox tried to stop her, she twisted in his grip until her arm snapped. Horrified, he backed away, and she went back to eating her fingers.

They tied her to their only wagon with spidersilk rope, and fled the place, to no avail. Heather pulled on her ties until her arms and legs all snapped, then shook her head from side to side until even the spidersilk chafed and cut into her skin, and even then she didn’t stop. When Feather tried to hold her head still, she turned with ferocious strength and bit her.

“She’s not ill,” Feather insisted. “Look into her eyes, she’s still there! She knows what she’s doing, but she can’t stop herself!”

But nobody dared look into Heather’s eyes. They avoided the wagon and Heather’s increasingly empty gaze. Only Redlox could bring himself to look at her, and all he saw was pain.

“This reminds me of his work,” said one of the elders, an uncle of Redlox’s who liked to glamour himself to look even older than he really was. “You know who I’m talking about, Chief. You remember the tithe?”

Redlox glanced uneasily towards the wagon, then looked away. “They took my brother Coren,” he said quietly. “Of course I remember.”

“Coren was a good lad,” said the elder.

“Coren was stronger than me,” said Redlox. “He would have been chief in my place. Mayhap he’d have had the sense to stop and rest before our guards were too worn to keep watch.”

“Mayhap he would, and mayhap it wouldn’t have made a difference. There’s no sense in dwelling on what might have been. If this is what we think it is, then there’s only one way to get rid of it.”

They left Heather tied to the ground and fled once more. Once the tribe had been told what it was, noone protested. Only Feather needed three of her brothers to drag her away.

“Heather! Sister! You can’t do this to her Father, please, she’s still in there, she’s suffering, please-”

“Could we not kill her at least?” asked Pol, Redlox’s second son.

“The Thrumli stays in her as long as she amuses it,” Redlox murmured back, glancing behind them. Heather’s silence was somehow worse than if she’d been screaming. “If we kill her, it’ll look for another victim, and we need time to get away.”

Pol looked as disgusted as he felt, but he nodded. Redlox pushed them on, determined to get out of the plains before they next had to sleep.

They never made it.

Feather’s screams turned to hoarse sobs, which faded in their turn. She stumbled between her brothers, no longer resisting, and noone noticed quite when her mourning silence turned into something else, until she turned around and slit her brother’s throat.

The shouts of her other guard turned to an animal scream, and before anyone had time to react, Feather had stabbed five of them and was after more. Redlox saw the terror in her gaze as she came at him, and promptly broke her neck.

There was a moment when those who saw it told the others, and everyone stopped running and turned to look, waiting. For a moment nothing happened.

Then a child started singing.

Everyone turned to look in confusion as one of Redlox’s younger nephews walked out to Feather’s inert body, slowly singing the Song of the Dead. They watched him kneel before her, clasp his hands in prayer and close his eyes. His voice was high and clear, and the song mournful, but noone joined in.

When he had finished the song, the boy looked into Redlox’s eyes, and Redlox almost thought it was alright.

Then the boy smiled sweetly at him, bit off his own finger, and stabbed himself with it.

The Thrumli let him scream this time, before taking control again and turning the screams to tearful laughter. The boy rose and stumbled towards the others, but they were scattered, and the Thrumli let him collapse. Redlox killed the boy quickly and saw another of his sons change direction and start killing those around him, then twist his own neck and collapse, to be replaced by another, and another. They ran, in vain. Redlox chased after the Thrumli, staring around him, but the nightmare creature was playing with him, taking those who were behind him so that he had to keep turning. He killed it each time, slaying his own with his bare hands or whatever weapon happened to be close, before throwing those weapons as far as he could before the Thrumli could possess him and make him turn it against them all.

By moonrise, they were all dead. Bodies littered the plain, the grass stained blue in the moonlight. Redlox stood in the middle of his fallen tribe, knowing the thing was there, knowing it was waiting for just the right moment to possess him, too…

Someone wimpered.

He turned, staggered ten paces, and found the body of a child – scarcely more than a babe – her body covered in blood and her throat cut. He could not remember if the Thrumli had killed this one, or if he had.

The babe looked at him, her eyes glazed with pain, and he dropped onto his knees before her and cradled her little broken body, and for a second she gazed at him with her own eyes, before the Thrumli possessed her once more, the last of his kin, and he gave up.

“Get on with it, then,” he said to the thing inside his granddaughter.

The Thrumli smiled at him with her mouth and her eyes, and then she died.

And it was gone.

Redlox’s scream could be heard all the way back in the pine forest they’d been heading for. When the Sheelyu tribe found him, surrounded by the bodies of his kin, the dagger that had cut his throat was still in his hand.

Lavender and chamomile

Having no excuse to put it off further, and since my cover designer (yes I have one) needs it in order to design the cover of my book, I’ve finally found a title for the first tome of the Glimmerlands trilogy! The title will be Wingroots. I hope I don’t regret this.

Unseemly as it was for a young lady of marriageable age to prefer books to people, having a writer for a father gave Darcy certain privileges that others of her sex and status did not have. Thus it was that instead of being stuck in the sewing room practising her embroidery, that particular Monday afternoon found Darcy curled up on the nursery window ledge, reading from a book of fairy tales. These newly translated Grimm tales had been a present for her birthday yesterday, and she had been looking forward to being able to read them.

She hadn’t gotten very far, however, when movement in the garden below caught her eye. The nursery was in the top half of an old water mill bordering a stream, which was connected to the main house by a covered bridge constructed by her grandfather. The nursery window had a good view of the kitchen garden, so Darcy could quite clearly tell that the dishevelled figure pulling out all the lavender was her mother.

She was across the bridge and down the main stairs in a matter of seconds. Ignoring the pain in her feet from landing badly – she’d done quite a lot of growing since she’d last been caned for jumping the bannister – she burst into the kitchen and darted outside past the startled cook.

“Mama!”

Leah looked up, startled. Had there been that much silver in her hair last night? Darcy realised she hadn’t seen her mother in the light for day in over a year.

“Who are you?” Leah tried to stand, but tripped on her nightgown. The stains were painfully clear in daylight, too. “Where’s my daughter?”

“Mama, I am your daughter. It’s me, Darcy.” Darcy tried to smile, but she knew she must look nervous.

“You glamour-fiend!” Leah shouted. “What have you done to my daughter?”

“Nothing! I’m fine! Mama please…” This was the third time Leah had refused to recognize her. She couldn’t say she was used to it yet. “Come inside. Shall I get you some chamomile tea?” She glanced into the kitchen. Cook was hovering nearby, uncertain what to do. Catching Darcy’s eye, she nodded and fetched the kettle.

“Don’t! Not the chamomile! They’ll come after you if you take any!” Leah tried to stand again. Darcy approached slowly, the way she would a skittish colt.

“Mama, it’s alright. This chamomile’s ours, we grew it ourselves. Nobody’s taken it from anybody.” She helped her mother to her feet. She’s so thin…

“Is that you, Darcy?”

Darcy smiled tentatively, and her mother smiled back. For a moment she looked almost normal. Then she saw the lavender and gasped. “Who did this?”

Darcy sighed. “You did, Mama.”

“I most certainly did not! Who do you think you’re accusing, girly?” She jabbed Darcy in the ribs.

“Ouch!”

“That didn’t hurt! You always were sensitive, Kieran. Your sister would make a far better boy than you.”

Darcy gave up the idea of reasoning with her mother and helped her into the kitchen. “Mama, why can’t you walk on your own?”

“Because they’ve taken my foot, obviously,” Leah replied. Darcy glanced down. Leah’s feet were both working, she was just leaning heavily on her daughter. She frowned as she noticed something else. The door to the drawing room was closed, and she could hear voiced coming from inside. She tried to shuffle along a little faster, but it wasn’t easy with her mother hanging onto her.

“You’ve grown, child,” said Leah, looking half-sane again as they started negociating the stairs. “We’ll need to get you a few new dresses. What colour would you like?”

“Blue,” she murmured, hoping her mother might speak more quietly too.

“Oh, not blue, sweetpea,” Leah said, loud as ever. “Blue’s a sneaky colour. I’ve always loved green, myself. Is that red in your hair?”

“No, Mama, it’s still brown.”

“I can see some red. I think we can call it auburn now, don’t you?”

Leah’s room stank. Darcy undressed her mother, sponged her down and dressed her in a clean nightgown, and opened the windows wide. Cook knocked and entered as she was wondering how to change the sheets.

“I’ll do it,” Cook said. Darcy led Leah to the frayed armchair her father often slept in and handed her the tea, hoping she wouldn’t spill it. Leah continued to chatter about colours. She wished she could go and help Cook with the sheets. She should learn how to change them herself. Cook was loyal as a rock, but she suspected Anna might gossip.

Too late now, anyway, she thought. Leah was yawning. Cook must have slipped something stronger into the tea. When the sheets were changed, she helped her mother into bed. Leah fell asleep immediately.

She thanked Cook as they left the room, having locked the windows again and shutting the door firmly.

“That’s all right,” said Cook, “but I didn’t get to warn you. Miss Farrell is in the drawing room with Master Kieran.”

Darcy stopped. “Lucy Farrell? She’s the guest in the drawing room?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Darcy thought furiously. The best thing to do would be to pretend nothing was wrong. Go back to what she was doing before. What was Lucy doing here, anyway? She’d never liked Darcy much.

“Did she say why?”

“No…” said Cook.

“But you have an idea?”

“I think Miss Lucy might have taken a shine to your brother,” said Cook. “Not that you heard it from me, of course.”

Darcy groaned. “Of course. Thanks, Cook. I’m going back to my room. Or maybe I should stay with Mother? Keep an eye on her.”

“I think she’ll sleep a few hours,” said Cook confidently.

Darcy thanked her again and hurried back to the nursery. Don’t cry, you sissy. Today was a bad day, that’s all. She’ll be fine tomorrow. She hoped Lucy hadn’t heard anything. The general consensus on Donall Sullivan’s wife was that she was of a fragile disposition. The parson came round every Sunday after church to pray with her, but apart from him, the only outsider she ever saw was the doctor.

If Lucy says one word, I swear…

The front door opened and Lucy herself stormed out, her face red. Darcy could almost see the lines of tears in her make-up. Kieran followed and stood on the porch, saying something. Lucy stopped, but didn’t turn. She stood straight, wiping her face with her hankerchief, composing herself. Her mouth formed the word “no”. And she walked away.

As she advanced along the path, she looked up towards Darcy’s window. Their eyes met, and Darcy could see the pain in them. For a moment she felt sorry for her.

Then Lucy smiled, a smile full of hate. She nodded and looked away.

Oh, no, Darcy thought. We’re in trouble now…

Cruel memories

When Arwyn had first come returned to the Glimmerlands, the rules and morals of Cat’s Court still engrained in her humanish mind, nothing had shocked her more than her first esbat. On the way home she had seen fairies devour other fairies, but these had been grotesque, like the monsters in tales. Though it had frightened her, as Orren had explained their story and long-lost memories had crept back, she had stopped being surprised. Like wolves and sheep, this world too had it’s predators and prey, she’d thought then.

She had been completely unprepared for the ritual dance of the sacrificial fae. Like everyone, when she’d first seen it, she had been entranced by their beauty. The dancers’ movements were so fluid that it was difficult to see where one stopped and another began. Difficult to care, also. Their voices intermingled in an ethereal song that seemed to come from inside her head the more she listened to it, and it had taken Orren’s nails piercing the skin of her upper arms for her to come back to herself. Only then had she seen how the ones in the middle seemed to vanish in a starbound shower of light; how, every time it happened, she felt a little less of the hunger for sunlight that had haunted her since she’d returned from Cat’s Court.

She had denied it at first. The Glimmerlands were full of glamour and illusions. Perhaps these fae were simply pure manifestations of magic. But when she had asked Orren, he’d told her they were prisoners.

“Those child-like things?” she’d asked. “What was their crime?”

He’d laughed. “Being human.”

She’d stared at him in disbelief. He had gestured towards them nonchalantly and turned away to speak to someone else. She turned her gaze back on the sacrifices, scrutinizing them now. Sure enough, this time she’d noticed the small, round ears, the short limbs, the lack of a third knuckle. The panic in their eyes.

Orren had grabbed her in time. Glamouring them invisible, he’d carried her, struggling, back to the castle, to her tower, and locked her inside without saying a word. She’d banged on the door, tried to escape through the window only to find he’d somehow managed to place a barrier around the entire room; screamed at his silhouette walking back across the gardens to one of the exits. When she’d exhausted herself trying to escape, she’d curled up on the floor and sobbed her soul to sleep.

In time, she seen the sense in letting go of the human rules that kept her from reintegrating fairy society. Orren had helped her. He’d explained that the humans in question had been caught trying to catch fairies, and she knew what happened to captured fairies from tales both human and fae. Children were cruel – even the human in her knew that. The ones that tried to catch and torture fairies would often do the same to insects, small animals, and even other children. Neither did their youth make them more precious: children could be birthed whenever they were needed, but elders were rare and should be valued for their wisdom. And the children in question were replaced by changelings, so it wasn’t as if their families suffered from their absence.

Everything he said made sense. It wasn’t his fault she still felt for them.

In an attempt to distance herself from these humans, she pelted Orren with questions.

“If they are human, why is their blood blue?”

“It isn’t,” he told her. Sometimes he had the air of a teacher she’d once known as a human, minus the beard. “The esbat dance transforms moonlight into ether, and when they die, the energy dissipates into the living things around them. The concentration of ether turns everything blue. You didn’t notice it because of the darkness, but once your eyes finish adjusting, you’ll be able to see these things, too.” He smiled mirthlessly. “If you meet our Queen one day, you’ll see what I mean. She holds so much power that the very air around her is blue.”

“I’ve only ever seen fairies evaporate like that, when they die,” she said. “You told me this was because fairies are lighter than humans, and humans that die here die the normal way.”

“The normal way for humans,” he corrected her. “Here, evaporating upon death is what you call normal. In fact, ‘normal’ is one of the human concepts the Seelie prize themselves on having, and the reason we Unseelie despise them.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

He sighed. “Esbats always take place in fields of songrass. That’s where the song comes from, if you hadn’t noticed. It’s not the same kind of song it usually uses to lull people; the esbat song is one that agitates and calls to dance. Humans, especially feeble-minded children, can’t resist it. Their bodies move on their own. The dance boils their blood, which excites the songrass further until they reach a point of exhaustion that kills them, one at a time. Their spirit rises the way ours do, and their bodies are absorbed into the ground very quickly. The energy released by the death spreads to all other energy sources, including the sacrifices themselves, allowing them to continue a little while longer.”

Arwyn shuddered. “How can you not pity them?” she murmured. “What a terrible way to die, being trapped in a body you can no longer control.”

Orren raised his eyebrows. “There are far worse things that could happen in such a case than to be danced to the point of exhaustion. Don’t you remember the Thrumli?”

Something about the way he said that word – Thrumli – told her that they shouldn’t be talking about this.

“You look nervous, brother.”

“Do I?” He reinforced his glamour. “I’m just checking the sound glamour. Mother doesn’t like us talking about him.”

“Him?”

“Thrumli means ‘nightmare’ in one of your human languages. Nobody knows who named it that, but it fits.”

“It? You said ‘him’ just now.”

“Him, it, we’re not sure. It’s… a bad spirit. One that possesses fairies. Our Queen keeps it trapped in a room in the palace, but there are rumours she can’t control it well. Sometimes it escapes.”

“It possesses fairies? Like a ghost?”

“You might call it that. It’s a mad thing, anyhow.”

“What does it do that would be worse than dancing to the point of exhaustion?”

Orren’s laugh was high and mirthless. “You really can’t think of worse?”

Arwyn frowned. “I suppose I can, but if it possesses fairies, then it feels their pain, too, doesn’t it?”

“That’s the whole point, sisterling. The Thrumli likes pain. It revels in fear. It is a trickster of the worst sort. No fairy, Seelie or Unseelie, does not fear it. Even our Queen would admit it. She tries to keep it under control, and she has sufficient power to resist possession, but she cannot destroy the thing.”

“How does she control it?”

“By appeasing it as best she can. Don’t you remember this, sisterling?” Something was wrong. His glamour was flickering. “This is why you got trapped in Cat’s Court. Don’t you remember?” Do I have to tell you? She heard the words as though he’d said them.

She closed her eyes. She remembered playing with him and the others as a child, she remembered him leaving her in the forest in Cat’s Court. He had told her Mother was waiting for her there, but the woman that had found her had not been her mother, although she’d gradually forgotten that.

“I’m sorry, Orren.”

He attempted a smile. “Mother had managed to offend Queen Morgana. I don’t even remember how, now, I was too young to understand at the time, but it was common knowledge that you didn’t offend the Queen because of the tithe. In recent years, the tithe had become less and less frequent. The Queen was surely gaining control on the monster, we thought. We ought to have feared her power.

“Mostly the children were abandoned, or came from poor families. Sometimes they were given. Some were kidnapped, of course – it was said that the Queen would reward families who willingly gave up their children for tithe. That it was a sacrifice for the entire people. In the Seelie Court they’d say it was worthy of honour, but honour isn’t one of our concepts over here.

“So Mother insulted Morgana, and Morgana, knowing how much Yorwen loved her daughter, decided that she should be the tithe this cycle. In her mercy,” – he laughed – “she gave her a week to say goodbye. Mother charged me with a mission.”

“I remember the part where you left me,” Arwyn said. “I don’t remember any other little girl, though. No human.”

“You never saw her,” he said. “She met the Thrumli. She may have died… but we know that since then, we haven’t had a tithe. Perhaps her heavier body allowed her to stay alive, being forever possessed by the Thrumli.”

Arwyn gasped. “But… she didn’t do anything wrong! We have to save her!”

Orren shook his head. “You’re mad. Take on the Queen and the Thrumli? Morgana was merciful when she realised the sacrifice was human, because she saw the advantages. It didn’t take her long, despite the glamour. The girl’s probably dead. If she’s not dead, then even if you somehow managed to free her, she’d be mad from all those years of possession. Killing such a child would be a mercy.”

Arwyn felt tears prick her eyes. Sighing, Orren pulled her into his arms.

“It’s so awful,” she sobbed. “That little girl was tortured and killed so I could live. How am I supposed to live with that?”

“She’d been caught in a fairy ring,” he murmured into her hair. “Probably trying to catch us.”

“I don’t care!” She pushed him away. “You should have just let me die!”

The look on his face wrenched her heart. There was no trace of glamour left on him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She stared at her hands in her lap, doubling through tears. She knew it wasn’t his fault. “Mother made you, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Why did I let you do that?”

“You didn’t understand,” he said. “You were very young, and we didn’t tell you.”

“Everyone is so cruel in this world,” she spat. He didn’t reply.

Eventually she asked, “Is there anything else I should know about this place? Things you’re not telling me, that everyone assumes I know?”

He hesitated. “There have been rumours recently that the Thrumli is back. Some went as far to assume it had somehow been slain by its human host, but the Queen has denied it bluntly. So we know it still lives, if such a thing can live. There have been what seem like Thrumli attacks on a few remote families and solitary fairies. Though of course, you can never be sure it was him unless there are witnesses, and there never are.”

“Great,” Arwyn said. “An innocent child is sacrificed in my place and I spend years thinking I’m someone I’m not, and as soon as I get back I’m in danger of the same fate anyway.”

“Not really,” he said cheerlessly. “The Thrumli usually attacks only children and poorer families. It has never been known to attack rich houses. It is said to prefer the more primal emotions of simpler minds.”

Arwyn snorted. “It has an easier time possessing less powerful fairies, more like.”

Orren nodded. “Of course. Speaking of which,” he added, “as cruel as this world is, you do have allies. I am here to arm you, and that is why I push you so hard. I want you to know how to defend yourself.”

Arwyn glared at him. She wanted to scream at him, punch him, hug him, find Yorwen and scream and punch her, too. She wanted to find Queen Morgana and kill her. She wanted to destroy the Thrumli, avenge all the children it had tortured and killed and save all the ones it would have.

She wanted power.

“Teach me,” she ordered.

Roses and Twisterthorns

Darcy had had enough of Orren and his pranks. She’d had enough of Mimic and Milkthorn and she’d had more than enough of Bell-O’-Blue. The pixie had spent an hour tying knots in Darcy’s hair, and when that hadn’t seemed to bother her, she’d started pulling the hairs out of her head, one every minute or so, aiming for the sensitive ones at the nape of her neck and around her ears. Darcy had threatened her, chased her, burst into tears and begged her to stop, to no avail. The fairy knew no pity, and Orren had offered no help: he’d laughed at her.

She ran. Blood beaded at her temple where Bell-O’-Blue had pulled out several hairs at once. Tears blinding her, she stumbled as the undergrowth thickened. She had the feeling it had thickened on purpose, and was no longer surprised when a thorny tendril snaked around her ankle. This time she didn’t move, and the thing stopped. Then the thorns disappeared into the stem like a cat’s retractable claws, and were replaced by soft, downy fur. The plant curled a little further up her leg, squeezing gently, like the hand of a comforting friend. Darcy slumped to her knees and cried fresh tears. My only friend in the world is a tornado plant, she thought bitterly. She shifted so that she was sitting on the ground, careful not to move too quickly lest the plant think she was trying to escape, and buried her face in her tattered skirts to cry.

How long she stayed like that was uncertain. It could have been five minutes or sixty, but after a while she noticed that her ankle was strangely warm. The plant seemed to be trembling just a little, a low vibration she would never have noticed had it not reminded her so nostalgically of her cat, Puddles. She reached down and stroked the plant gently, and the purring became audible.

Just like a cat, she thought. A lonely wildcat.

“You just wanted a bit of affection, didn’t you?” she murmured, the way she’d heared Mama talking to strays. The vine rubbed up against her. She wondered if it was capable of meowing.

“I’d cut it off while it’s still loose, were I you” said a raspy voice next to her ear.

Darcy turned her head, but all she saw was a rose bush.

“Don’t be silly,” said another, more feminine voice, “it’d stick the thorns in soon as it smelled the knife. No, tease it off, then run for it.”

Darcy frowned at the roses. The voices had come from there. She looked around to see if maybe it was some other plant, but the third voice definitely came from a rose.

“Running away will never work” it said, “tease it off, and back away slowly, like nothing’s wrong.”

“Have you no meat? Meat would distract it,” said yet another rose with a voice eerily like her mother’s.

“No, I haven’t,” she said apologetically. The roses sighed, murmuring things like “pity” and “ah, well”. Now she could see their petals forming words of commisseration. Beads of cristalline dew danced between them in dextrous patterns as they spoke, petals curling and unfurling, moving in ripples and waves, so much more graceful than human lips and tongue. It was hypnotizing, but not in the way glamour was hypnotizing; rather, it was like watching the tiny silver fish swimming in the shallow pools by the river at home.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I’m lost. Where is Cat’s Court please?”

The entire bush jumped back, raining dew as the roses gasped in horror. “Cat’s Court! Now whyever would you wish to go there?”

“I live there,” she said timidly.

“Good gracious!”

“A human! Here!”

“Why, we haven’t seen humans round here since…”

“It doesn’t matter, because she’s going anyway. Shoo! Get out of here!” rasped a withered old rose at the top of the bush. A thorny branch whipped towards her, stopped short by another.

“We’ll have none of that from you, grandfather!” scolded the motherly rose. “There, child, don’t pay attention to him, he doesn’t like anybody. I’m afraid we can’t help you, although you can take a bit of dew if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” said Darcy dutifully, ” Um, what should I do with it?”

There was a surprised pause. Then one of the roses snorted, and the others all burst out laughing, until the whole bush shook with a dozen giggles, chortles, sniggers, titters and guffaws, there was even one rose who brayed like a donkey.

The motherly rose was the first to recover. “Why” she said, “truly you are young… rose dew is the finest perfume in the world, and very magical, oh yes.” She giggled. “One drop at the base of your throat, and you’ll have all the boys at your feet, whatever court they’re from.”

The bush giggled again. Darcy nodded politely, making a mental note to pour the dew over Lucy’s head. Lucy hated boys.

“If we’re giving her the dew, let her collect it and be gone!” said the one they’d called grandfather, still wheezing.

“But I’ve nothing to collect it with,” Darcy said.

“Nothing?” mocked the grandfather, “And what’s that on your head?”

Darcy lifted a hand to her head, but all she felt was her tangled hair. “Yes, that,” said the grandfather. “That knotty stuff, there, can it hold water?”

“Um…” said Darcy.

“It’ll do,” huffed the grandfather impatiently.

“Leave her be, grandfather,” said the motherly rose. “Don’t worry, pet, as long as you’re in the Glimmerlands, rose dew won’t dry. And it’s very clingy, so it won’t drip either. It’ll just stay there until you find a vial or a jar to put it in. Come now, give us a lock of that hair.” A thousand dew drops ran from all over the bush to the motherly rose, who stretched out towards Darcy expectantly. Darcy wasn’t certain she wanted one strand of her hair to stay wet until she found a vial, but she couldn’t refuse without seeming impolite. She tore at the bird’s nest her hair had become until a large section of it pulled free, and held the end of it out until it gently brushed the roses petals.

The dew flowed off the rose and onto the lock of hair in a stream of cristal beads. It felt cool under her fingers, and by the time it was over, her lock of hair was soaked – but strangely, not a drop spread to the rest of her hair, or slid down her neck, or even wet her fingers. She let the lock drop, and it hung there, soaking wet.

“Thank you,” she said to the rose bush.

“You’re very welcome,” said the motherly rose. “Still, it’s strange that you didn’t know what rose dew is. What do they teach you in Cat’s Court?”

Darcy thought. “They told me that fairies don’t exist,” she said finally.

The bush gasped. Then all the roses started shouting at once.

“They what-?!”

“Scandalous!”

“The cheek of her!”

“I knew she was the bad sort,” said the grandfather knowingly.

“How dare you!” scolded the mother. “And after we gave you all that dew!”

Darcy didn’t understand. “But it’s true!” she said, scared again.

“The truth, she says!”

“So you believe this nonsense they teach you?”

“No!”

“Evil child!” A thorny branch whipped across her arm, drawing blood. “Out of here! Out!”

“Out! Out!” The rest of the bush took up the chant, and a second branch whipped across her back, and a third, until they were raining down on her.

Darcy struggled to rise, but the branches caught in her clothes and skin, and she stumbled twice before she managed to take a step, and a third time when she remembered the vine around her ankle. The step had taken her out of reach of the vines, except for her leg, which was still getting a beating, until suddenly the entire bush recoiled, and she heard screams of pain and rage. The vine around her ankle had uncoiled itself, and was lashing back at the rose bush with its own deadly thorns, clinging to her ankle by its unearthed roots.

Freed, she ran gracelessly through the woods until her foot landed in a stream, and she fell flat on her face. She lay on the ground for a moment, stunned, listening to her own heartbeat, until she decided she was probably well out of reach of the rose bush, or any of it’s friends.

She pushed herself up onto her hands, turned around so she was sitting on the muddy bank, her feet still in the water, and inspected the damage. Scratches criss-crossed her arms and legs, and she could feel one or two on her face. Her leg was a bloody mess, with the vine still wrapped around it, thorns biting into her flesh. The sight of it made her panic for a second, but she remembered what Orren had told her and closed her eyes, trying to breathe slowly. She reached out a hand and gently stroked the vine, as she had before. This time it seemed to hesitate, but after a few minutes, the thorns retracted themselves all at once. The pain made her gasp and she opened her eyes.

Some of the cuts were quite deep, and all were bleeding profusely, but the pain was lessening by the second. The vine seemed to be pulsing, somehow, and she could feel it clinging to her…

It was drinking her blood.

Her heart leapt into her throat, but this time she didn’t panic. The pain was almost gone, after all. Fear and curiosity mingled in her chest. She stroked the vine again with a trembling hand, and felt it purr.

Once, a circus had come to town with a whole menagerie of exotic animals. The grand master had shown them lions leaping through rings of fire, elephants that could stand on one leg, seals playing ball, and a “snake-girl”: a girl no older than ten, with skin like midnight, who walked rope with two snakes across her shoulders. Afterwards she asked if someone would like to hold one of the snakes. Darcy had volunteered, and before her father could stop her, the grand master had led her out to the snake girl. Darcy remembered the sparkle in the dark girl’s eyes as she passed the smallest of the snakes to her, and showed her how to hold it, one hand under the head, the other under the belly. The snake was heavier than she’d thought it would be, and its skin had been cool and slightly pebbled, but not slimy like she’d expected. Its tongue tickled her as it slowly wound itself around her arm, but when it had finally settled down, the grand master asked for a round of applause, and then the dark girl took it back, and she had to go back to her father.

He had smiled at the time, but later on he had hit her for it.

A sucking sound brought her back to the present. Her eyes refocussed, surprised: the blood was nearly all gone, and the cuts seemed to have stopped bleeding. She sat up a little, and her head spun. She must have fallen asleep. The vine was still there, leeching on her ankle.

She slipped one finger under what she judged to be the head of the thing and gently unwound it. The suckers – for there were suckers – came off with a series of little pops, and recoiled inwards to reveal the tiny points of thorns. The vine tried to twist its way around her finger, but she kept passing it from hand to hand as she unravelled it, and it couldn’t get a grip on her. Finally she lifted it off, one hand under the head, the other close to the roots, like a snake, and set it in her lap. The vine fidgeted, searching blindly for something to cling to, until she stroked it again, and it settled down.

Her leg was almost clean of blood, and the cuts had clotted, but Mama had said that cuts should be washed, so she took off her sodden shoes and socks, and set them down next to her on the muddy bank. As she bent to clean her ankle, though, she saw that the cuts were covered in a strange, jellyish substance. She wiped one cut clean, and it stung, and started bleeding again. Hissing in pain, she cleaned the cut, but it didn’t stop. Finally she took a little jelly from the other cuts – there wasn’t much to spare – and put it on the cut she’d cleaned. It stopped the bleeding immediately.

Darcy cleaned around the other cuts, and looked for something to use as a bandage. Once they’d been on the road to Cambry, and Kieran had tripped getting into the coach. They’d set off anyway, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding, so Mama had torn a strip off her underdress to tie around his head. She thought of using her apron, but it was a good thick apron and her little hands weren’t up to the task, so she tried with her dress instead – tearing a much bigger hole in it that necessary – and clumsily knotted it around her leg. Mama hadn’t used knots, but she couldn’t remember how the bandage had held without one.

The thing in her lap was fidgeting again by the time she was finished. She stroked it and let it wind itself between her fingers, wondering what to do. It has uprooted itself, and might die if she didn’t replant it. Drink blood it might, but the plant had saved her life.

She dug a little hole with her hands, close to the water, just deep enough to cover the roots. Then she picked the vine up gently, like a snake, and place the roots in the hole.

The plant jumped. It landed back in her lap and wrapped itself around her arm, clutching her. She could feel the thorns pricking at her skin, just the points of them, not enough to hurt, and at the edge of her hearing, she heard a whine.

“But you’ll die if I don’t replant you,” she told it. To her surprise, the plant lifted its leafy head and shook it vigourously. Darcy stared. “Do you understand me?” she asked it. The plant nodded.

Darcy hesitated. “Do you want to stay with me?”

It nodded.

“Are you going to drink all my blood?”

The plant seemed to pause, as if thinking. Suddenly a vine lashed out at the ground, faster than lightning. Then it uncurled to show her a tiny, squealing slug, impaled on a thorn. The thorn retracted into its sucker, and the slug seemed to shrivel, before dropping into her lap. Darcy flipped it away gingerly. She wasn’t used to slugs that squealed.

“Alright,” she said. “You can stay with me as long as you don’t drink my blood.” She grinned, happy with her new friend.

The tornado plant curled itself around her arm, purring, all thorns and suckers well out of sight. When it had settled its head close to her’s, and its roots around her wrist, Darcy stood.

Her shoes and socks were gone.

Her eyes swept the clearing, and she saw one sock, on the other side of the stream, at the foot of a tree. The leaves were rustling, and she was sure she heard a giggle. Darcy was weary, though, and decided it wasn’t worth it. Orren went barefoot, after all, why shouldn’t she?

She opened the pocket watch and nearly dropped it when she saw her reflection in the broken mirror. She had mud and scratches everywhere. One crossed her eye without touching it, a near-vertical red line from chin to hairline. The other crossed it diagonally across her forehead, and ended on her bloody temple. She frowned, examining them in the mirror and touching them gingerly.

They don’t hurt, she thought, so it probably doesn’t matter if I don’t wash them.

“Orren” she whispered. The mirror clouded and cleared again, and his face stared up at her, eyes wide with fear. He shouted, his lips forming her name silently, and suddenly she felt bad for leaving him. “Find Orren” she whispered again, and the hands of the clock moved until the shortest was pointed at her, and the longest to her right, towards a nettle patch. She sighed, skirted well around the patch (which tried to catch her anyway), and set off with the pocketwatch to guide her.

The Esbat – Glimmerlands 1

Apologies for the lateness of this post, but as you’ll see, it’s a pretty long one.

Arwyn hated to admit it, but she loved esbats almost as much as she loathed them. In spite of the danger they represented, in spite of the sorrow she always felt, and the terror, and the constant pressure to keep her glamour in check; esbats were the only nights when she was allowed out of the castle.

Of course, “night” was a relative concept here in the Unseelie court. Even her mother’s domain, the Borderlands, from whence you could see into Seelie territory and the semblance of an eternal sunset on the horizon, was perpetually drenched in star-speckled darkness. Only the phases of the moon marked the passage of time, and their cycle was so complicated – especially compared to the small, white, sage little moon of Cat’s Court – that they still appeared random to her.

Still, she didn’t need to know the phases to feel the moonlight in the air and know that tonight was esbat. The space between her shoulderblades – her wingroots – had been tingling for days, and the air was positively crackling now.

She took a deep breath and stepped through the gateway to the land outside the castle. The dance was there, under the huge silver moon, spinning in its centre and turning slowly towards the ends, like a galaxy. The air felt warm and electric, like just before a summer storm, only the electricity seemed to be coming from the glowing centre of the dance, the naked bodies of sacrificial fae illuminated from the inside where it snaked and writhed in their veins and shone through eyes already lost.

She could feel it, a faint itch in her muscles that no amount of stretching would relieve. She would have to dance, she knew, or it would spread first to her stomach, then up, through her heart to her brain, filling her with a wild, terrifying joy that would pulse through her, connecting her to the others and throwing her straight through logic and reason into the throes of helpless ecstasy-

“Arwyn.”

Of course, everyone knew she was weaker to it than them, out of practise from so much time away. But only Orren seemed to realise just how vulnerable she was.

“I’m here,” she said tonelessly. That afternoon’s episode had made her sulky.

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll make sure you are.” His protectiveness annoyed her, and distracted her from the itch – she focused on it, stoking her gut into grumbling ire, perfectly aware that she was doing exactly what he wanted. That made her even angrier.

“I don’t need a wetnurse,” she snapped, snatching her hand back and glaring at him. The glare turned to a blush as she remembered that he had come shamelessly naked. She kept her eyes stubbornly on his face – people were watching them, and she shouldn’t show weakness – and he smiled at her. “Catnurse is the term you’re looking for,” he said.

“That neither!”

A catnurse was a human whose child you replaced with a changeling. This was supposed to be sore subject for Arwyn – only Orren would have the guts to tease her about it in their mother’s presence.

Speaking of which… “Where is mother?”

“Flirting with the other leanan sidhe.” Orren pointed towards a group of humanish fairies standing a little apart from the others and not watching the dance at all. Her beauty distracted Arwyn from her anger, and the urge to dance resurfaced.

“How can she just ignore it like that?” she asked, fidgeting.

“Practise, sisterling,” Orren sighed. “Practise and glamour. She’s craving it terribly, but she always lets the others go first.”

“Because it’s her duty as Lady of the Border?”

“Ha! No. Because it makes her look stronger than the rest of them, which deters comptetition for her title.”

Arwyn was still having trouble getting her head round the way things worked in the Unseelie court. There were so many rules of etiquette – and they all seemed there just so people could slip round them. Glamour always, but no outright lying. Don’t ask anybody’s true name, but do all you can to find out. Never give your own true name, unless forced, in which case giving it is better than attempting to lie. No smuggling catspawn products – but catspawn sweets are a delicacy to be sought and treasured.

No reading whatsoever. That rule, at least, had no contradiction.

She turned back to where a group of noble unseelie were watching the dance. She had more or less gotten used to seeing other fairies naked, although she still avoided the quite regular orgies. She didn’t particularly care to expose herself in the same way.

At least in that she wasn’t the only one.

“Good esbat, lady Arwyn, lord Orren,” said a tall half-elf who, it appeared, had taken a liking to her over the past few weeks. “I see I’m not the only one who chose to come dressed.”

“Good esbat Tarendal,” Orren said. He sounded friendly, but Arwyn knew he didn’t like Tarendal, although he wouldn’t tell her why. “What’s your excuse?”

“Pure rebelliousness, my dear Orren.” Tarendal bowed. “I shirk the conventions of fairy society and their squeamishness around humans.”

“By dressing as one?”

“Indeed. In some parts of Cat’s Court that I’ve visited, humans have a Hallow’s Eve custom of dressing up as monsters – some of which quite resemble us – in order to scare their neighbours into giving them sweets. I think we ought to start something similar – ideally with humans, our neighbourhoods being quite close of Hallow’s Eve – but until legislation permits such a thing, I’ll have to be content with scaring fairies.”

Orren laughed. “Fairies aren’t afraid of humans.”

“Oh?” Tarendal raised an eyebrow. “We censor most things relating to them. Most of us would do anything to gain control of one, but the gates are heavily guarded because we fear them gaining control of us. Changelings have become rare – no offense, my lady – and it is a common belief amongst humans now that we and our world do not exist at all.”

Arwyn felt her eyes open wide as saucers. True as that may be, it was generally unwise to voice such things, even in private. Orren couldn’t help but throw a furtive glance about them to see if anyone else had heard.

“You forget where we are, Tarendal,” he murmured. “Not everyone here is as open-minded as we leanan sidhe. Esbat is not the best time to make a target of yourself.”

Tarendal inclined his head. “Of course, I shan’t speak of it any more. Still, lady Arwyn, tell me at least: what do you think of my costume? I tried to find something subtle.”

Tarendal’s clothes were a pair of very human-looking trousers tied with a very fey-looking scarf, and that was it.

“I’ve never seen a human dressed like that,” Arwyn said, glad of a distraction. “That’s not spidersilk, is it?”

“Actually it is, but like your outfit, it has been treated with moonsnail slime.” He looked incredibly pleased with himself, despite her answer. “Wonderful stuff for esbats.” He gestured towards her outfit. She had glamoured the ribbons to form a sort of dress over the moonslime costume, through which the moonslime patterns were now visible, and turned the spidersilk scarf and feathers into wings. “Those are particularly ingenious,” he complimented her. “You almost look like a human disguised as a fairy. I would have never thought of that.”

She laughed, scrutinizing him through half-shut eyes. He looked sincere, but then so did all fairies. She wasn’t good enough yet to sense the small changes in glamour that signalled treachery and lies.

Not lies, she thought. Fairies don’t lie. Or they can’t. Not outright.

She wondered how long it would take for her to stop being capable of lying again, and quashed that thought immediately.

“Lord Orren, I believe Echo is looking for you,” Tarendal said.

Orren smiled. “She can’t be looking very hard.”

“Well no,” conceded Tarendal. “It is Echo. She’s a lot like Rayth in that respect.”

“And like Rayth towards my sister, her tricks do not work on me,” Orren replied, to which Tarendal chuckled appreciatively. Arwyn thought she felt her brother relax a little.

“Speaking of which, isn’t that Echo’s kid sister?”

A small halfling was approaching, the bottom half of whom was indeed the body of a kid. The rest was human, barring the tiny stumps of horn poking through her thin blond curls. Arwyn was surprised to find that she couldn’t feel any glamour coming off her at all.

She bowed before Arwyn.

“The ladies have sent me to petition you to dance with Rayth,” she murmured.

Arwyn looked in the direction she had come from to see a crowd of impatient-looking female fae of several sorts, all purebred, surrounding a type of fairy she couldn’t identify.

“He’s a lankin,” said Orren, seeing her frown. “He asked you to dance last time, remember? You refused because you’d already stepped on Tarendal’s feet so much that he had to go home limping.” There was amusement in his voice, and Tarendal chuckled.

Arwyn scowled openly. She wasn’t as bad at dancing as all that, but the esbat dance required a level of self-control she hadn’t attained yet. She stepped on her brother’s bare foot, regretting that she hadn’t thought to bring shoes. “Sorry, brother. I’ve obviously made no improvement.”

Orren cursed. “Obviously not,” he muttured through a grit-toothed smiled.

“Why do they want me to dance with him anyway?” she asked Tarendal.

“He won’t dance with anyone else until you do, my lady,” said the halfling.

“You’ve really no choice,” Tarendal said. “Unless you want to incur the wrath of most of the ladies of our court.”

Arwyn groaned and looked down at the girl. She really was quite small.“What shall I call you?” she asked her.

“I am called Sylvali.” The girl paused, and added “But they call me Syl.” She didn’t look very happy about it.

“Sylvali. Such a pretty name. It would be a shame to shorten it.” Arwyn smiled at Sylvali’s surprised expression, then sighed. “I suppose I had better get it over with, then.”

She stood, took her leave of Orren and Tarendal. As Sylvali escorted her across the room, she said, “Tell me, Sylvali. Does Rayth have the same effect on you as he seems to have on everyone else?”

Sylvali seemed to look terrified for a second, before smoothing her expression to one of polite interest. “He is beautiful and fascinating,” she said. “His conversation is entertaining, his family is noble, and his bloodline pure enough to be Seelie.”

“That wasn’t what I asked,” Arwyn murmured. Sylvali slowed. They were approaching the group, who were pretending not to notice them. “I asked how he affected you. Do you understand why they flock around him, like bees to honey?”

Sylvali hesitated, then gave the tiniest shake of her head. Arwyn smiled.

“Neither do I,” she said. “And I’d be immensely grateful to anyone who could enlighten me.”

With that she left the girl standing on the edge of the crowd, tapped one of them on the arm, and glamoured herself to composure.

“I believe you sent for me?”

They turned to look at her. The tall, snarky-looking fairy she’d spoken to, said “So you’re the cause of all this fuss?”

“I apologise if I’ve caused any distress,” Arwyn said. “My dear lord Rayth, I don’t believe it is fair to refuse to dance with the ladies of the court just so that you can make fun of my clumsy steps.”

He grinned at her. “Oh, but Rowan was telling me he’d seen you dance with Tarendal, and that your skills had much improved – although I can’t imagine how he could tell when you had such a poor partner.”

“Perhaps you might test me?” she smiled sweetly at him. “My brother is a strict teacher, but I fear I’ve made no progress at all.”

He stood and held out his hand. She took it, knowing that everyone was watching them and judging her, and stepped out onto the floor to pretend it didn’t matter.

Moonsnail slime and Spidersilk – Glimmerlands 1

I’m back! You can sort of tell I’m still a bit out of it from the holidays though. Tomorrow’s entry will be more eventful.

Arwyn had glamoured the room again, but it turned out she didn’t need to.

“If you’re going to go clothed, you need to make an impression. You’re going to anyway, so use it.”

“Why? Why can’t I just wear whatever I like?”

“Because you are the only daughter of this house, and we’ve been back only a few moons, and people still watch you and gossip. Now take that drab thing off.” Orren was getting impatient. He usually did when it came to dress.

“You’re so fussy,” Arwyn grumbled, pulling the long dress over her head. She ignored the urge to hide her body from him. He’d only lecture her again.

“And you are far too human!”

As usual, this was supposed to be the ultimate insult, and as usual, it didn’t affect Arwyn one bit.

“So?”

Orren looked perfectly calm, but she knew that he was concentrating to maintain his glamour. She sighed and hugged him. He was tense.

“Please, please control yourself tonight,” he begged, putting his arms around her. “I won’t always be able to clean up your messes.”

She snorted. “That’s a vulgar way of putting it.”

“The mess may be political rather than physical, but it is no less a mess. And I’m always the one who has to deal with it.”

“Mother is preparing you to rule.”

“I rather wonder if she’s trying to get me killed,” he grumbled.

That reminded her of the book. Part of her was relieved that he’d managed to get rid of it, but part of her longed to have it back.

She pulled away to look at him. “What did you do with… you know?”

He tensed again. “I put it somewhere you won’t find it,” he snapped. “Nor anyone else. Now let’s get back to dressing you, since undressing you is out of the question.”

Arwyn scowled, but turned back to the wardrobe her mother had gifted her with. Like many things in the castle, it was larger outside than inside, and the back of it led to an emergency escape tunnel. She had given up wondering how, since it was against the outside wall of her tower. Not that there wasn’t an explaination, but Orren wouldn’t tell her yet, since it had to do with magic.

The wardrobe also contained all the dresses she could ever wish for.

“I want to be beautiful, stand out, impress,” she told it. There was a rummaging noise, and seven outfits appeared on the rail. Orren rifled through them.

“This one,” he turned, smiling, with what looked like an empty human skin.

“Eugh. What is that?”

He handed it to her. She was relieved to find that it felt like spidersilk. Looking at it closely, she could just make out thin, intricate patterns in the fabric. She could feel them better than see them.

“That’s moonsnail slime,” he told her. “Don’t look like that, it’s not dirty. It just looks like a second skin most of the time, but in the light of the full moon it glows. You’ll be clothed and naked, and definitely beautiful.” He looked satisfied.

“I don’t like it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Choose something else, then.” He gestured towards the wardrobe. “I’m not going to help you this time, no matter what Mother says. You need to learn to get yourself out of your own messes.”

And he left.

Arwyn blinked, surprised. Why had he been so determined to pick out her dress before if he was letting her do it now?

She turned back to look at the other dresses, and groaned. For once, her brother had picked the most modest of the lot.

She’d just have to work with what she had, then.

“I want a shimmering spidersilk veil,” she said. “And a length of thick blue ribbon, and three pegasus feathers…”

 

Tamlin’s youth and the courting of Oonagh – Glimmerlands 1

“Once, back when the courts were united under the One Queen Maebh, she had a son, who was named Oberon. He was to be the Crown Prince, and the future Queen’s consort when the time would come for Maebh to retire the throne. All went well since Oberon fell in love with fair Titania, and Maebh approved, and promised that when the time came she would cede the crown to her.

“One day, however, an old god wandered in from Cat’s Court. He had goats’ feet and horns, and green skin that glowed in the twilight, and his voice was as deep as the forest, but he had been gravely injured by the very humans that had created him, and was dying. Maebh took pity on him and kept him in the forest that so reminded him of his home, and fed him the best cakes and sweets from her own royal kitchens, and Cat’s Court goods too, and she used magical herbs from all the worlds, and gathered healers from every corner of the Glimmerlands, but he did not get better. One day she went to see him, and the god said “Dear Queen, I am dying.”

The Queen wept and wept, and begged him not to leave her. He said, “I used to crave the day I would return to the peace of my earthly womb, but the pain of leaving you is greater than peace. I would do anything to remain by your side forever, but even I have not such power.”

The Queen Maebh then said, “At least give me something to remember you by!” And so the god made love to her, and gave her a child, and then he died.

The child was named Tamlin, and he grew quickly in his mother’s womb, and even quicker out of it. It became evident that the boy was very special indeed; he didn’t seem to be an elf, like his mother, but neither was he a god. Somehow his body had combined the two species, and so we had a prince that was half-god and half-elf.

Maebh doted on the child, and taught him everything she knew and more, and the court found him delightful. He had the best teachers from all over the Glimmerlands, even places outside of our court, and so he grew strong in all the arts.

Only Oberon was jealous of his younger brother, afraid that he would take his place as Crown Prince. Several times he attempted to kill the boy, but each time young Tamlin turned the trick on his older brother, and for him it was so easy that never did he suspect that Oberon wanted him dead. He grew to admire his older brother, and little by little Oberon’s tricks became tests, as he saw how useful it might be to have such a strong and clever servant. Maebh was relieved with her sons’ reconciliation.

All was going well until Tamlin met Oona. He had grown into a tall and handsome prince, and she was a lady of the court. Tamlin began to court Oona, and according to tradition, Oona set him three tasks in order to win her affection. All the court ladies longed for Tamlin’s affection, so they expected the tasks to be easy, but not so proud Oona. The first task she set him was this: “Bring me something that is both present and absent, but not a gift.”

The court wondered at the difficulty of this task; however Tamlin, being the son of a god with incredibly powers, found it easy. He waved a hand in front of her and created a window into Cat’s Court.

“There,” said he, “is what is going on at present in another world that is absent from ours.” And he waved his hand again, and the vision was gone.

Impressed, Oona took a moon to think up the next quest, during which time Tamlin continued to court her. The court was intrigued, because all evidence suggested that they were courting in the way of humans, in an intimate dance without touching one another, the aim of which was to find out which would give in first to the other.

Finally she presented him with his second task: “Bring me something that is both old and new, but not made with hands or magic.”

Tamlin seemed a little troubled over this one, but after three days he brought her a vineplant cutting, and said “This is new, from and very old plant, and it created itself.”

“Ah,” said Oona cunningly, “but the new plant has been cut from the old, and is no longer old.”

Tamlin then went to the oldest member of the court, a hag who didn’t even bother to glamour her wrinkles any more, and asked her for a drop of her blood. The lady cackled and fed the plant from her hand, and then Tamlin brought it back to Oona, and she approved.

“When will you give me the next task?” he asked, already eager.

“Right now,” she said. “But you have as long as you need to accomplish it.” And this was the final quest: “You must find me, and bring me to me.”

The court wondered at the impossibility of this test. She had not said “shadow” or “reflection”, but “me”, which meant that there had to be more than one of her for the task to be accomplished. Everyone then thought that Oona had decided to reject Tamlin, and he went away sadly.

A moon later, he burst into court where she was talking with the other ladies, holding an iron knife, and confronted her with it.

“The only way I can find you is if I lose you,” he said. The rest of the court gasped, someone called the guards, but their magic was no match for his, and they couldn’t get to him. Oberon was arriving, when Oona held up a hand.

“You are right,” she said, “I see you have found the solution to this task. Please see it through. I am counting on you.” And she smiled at him, and he smiled at her, but it was the saddest smile you’ve ever seen, and then he killed her.

Oona’s family wailed in despair and bewilderment, and Oberon chased Tamlin out into the woods surrounding the castle, then lost him. Tamlin was ever good at hiding, and after a while they gave up the search. The entire court was disgusted with him. Only his mother, Queen Maebh, insisted that they trust him, since Oona had let him kill her, and she prevented everyone from chasing him into the woods where he was. As the child of a noble family, Oona’s body was kept in an enchanted glass coffin to keep it from disintegrating, so that her family might visit it until they could let her go.

After that, however, three young girls went missing. The first two were court ladies, and a search was mounted, which eventually found them dead, with swollen bellies. Someone had taken them and put children in them, and then they had died. Some speculated that Tamlin, or even the ghost of his father, was in the forest, kidnapping the girls and raping them until they died.

The third woman, however, was of little consequence. A simple pixie girl, a servant, and only her family worried when she went missing. However, several moons later, she returned in tears. She told them that she had met a horned god in the forest and fallen in love with him, and lived with him until she had a child. But on the third moon after the child’s birth, she had woken up to find her lover and her child gone, and no amount of searching could recover them.

Another search party was mounted, for this story was of some consequence, but neither god nor child could be found. The girl despaired, and eventually died in her misery.

A year and a day later, a man in rags entered the court. His face was covered, but he was tall enough to be at least an elf, and would have attracted the guards had he not been carrying on his shoulders a pixie-child the likes of whom you’d never seen. Despite her young age, her glamour was such that she only had to smile at you and your heart melted like butter in the sun. He carried her very carefully, and requested that she be allowed to see the princess in the coffin. Of course, nobody called Oona that, since she had never become princess, but the child’s smile was such that nobody minded much, and her family let them in.

Then the man put the child down on the floor, and lifted the lid off the coffin in spite of the enchantment keeping it in place, and he put the child’s hand in Oona’s hand, and then the child fell and died instantly, and Oona – who had been killed by iron – rose from the coffin.

The whole family gathered, and when Oona got up and pulled the rags off the man’s head to kiss him, revealing him to be Tamlin, the whole court gathered too. And the hue and cry went up that they should be married, and so they were.”

“And they lived happily ever after?” Stranger said.

“Dear gods, no,” the elf laughed. “But if you will sleep with me tonight and protect me from harm, then I will do the same for you, and tell you the rest tomorrow.”