Ash (10 page)

He raised one hand to her face and his fingers curved over the gash in her cheek; it burst into fiery pain at his touch. “You are bleeding,” he said, and rubbed a smear of her blood be-80

MALINDA LO

tween his fingers. The sight of her blood on his pale skin made her shudder, and yet she felt herself lean toward him instinc-tively, wanting to close the space between them.

She said: “Once my mother told me a story: There was a girl whose parents died in an accident, and every night the girl visited her parents’ grave and laid flowers upon it. But one twilight, as she was sitting at the grave, a rider came to the girl.”

As she spoke she saw his eyes grow calmer, as if her words were soothing him. She continued: “He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, dressed al in white with a horse as white as snow, and he told her that she should come with him to see her parents. She was so eager to see them again that she agreed, and when the man offered her his hand she took it, and it was as cold as death. He put her on his horse and took her away, and she was never seen again, for he had been one of the riders of the Fairy Hunt.”

When she stopped speaking he said nothing for a moment, and Ash realized that al of the Wood was silent around them she could not even hear the sound of the wind in the branches, though she felt its cold breath on her face.

Finally he said, “Is that why you sought me out? To tel me a—” He paused, his lip curling, and continued, “A
fairy
tale?”

She was undaunted. “Is it true?” she asked. “Is the tale true?”

“What is true for your people is not true for mine,” he answered.

“But can you not take me to see her?” she asked, and she yearned for him to say yes.

“Your mother is dead, Aisling,” he said, and the words felt 81

Ash

like they were physical y striking her.

She took his cold hands in hers, and she insisted, “She cannot be. I have felt her spirit alive. I know I have.”

For a moment as they looked at each other, she thought she saw him wrestle with what to say, but then the hardness returned to his eyes and he said curtly, “You must go home.”

He stood up, letting go of her hands. She scrambled up as well and said, “You know my name. What is yours?”

He hesitated, but at last said, “You may call me Sidhean.”

She tried it out: “Sidhean.” The sound of it was foreign and exotic to her.

He seemed to recoil from the sound of his name on her tongue. “You must go home,” he said again.

“Why?” she asked, and feeling reckless, she added, “Take me with you.”

“It is not time yet,” he said. In the word
yet
, she heard a promise, and it flooded her with hope.

He held his hand out to her, and when she took it he pul ed her close, wrapping them both inside his cloak. Just before her eyes closed, she realized she could hear his heartbeat beneath her ear, as quick as her own.

When she woke up, she was lying in her bed at Quinn House, a thick, silvery-white cloak thrown over her. She sat up, dazed, pushing the cloak aside; it was softer than any velvet or leather she had ever touched. She climbed out of bed and opened the shutters, and in the early morning light she mar-veled at the sheer beauty of the thing. It was made of some kind of fur that rippled like multicolored scales or iridescent feathers. It
was
white, but when she looked at it sideways it 82

MALINDA LO

seemed to glow, and sometimes it shone like polished silver.

She picked it up and wrapped it around herself, the weight of it comforting and solid.
This is real
, she thought, and a shiver went down her spine, for that meant that Sidhean—and all of his world—was real, too.

83

Ash

Chapter VIII

s the years passed, Ash came to
know the many trails in the King’s Forest very well. She often walked there at night, A the fairy cloak like a ghost around her shoulders, but she did not seek out the path to Rook Hil . As the Wood became familiar to her, she became attuned to the sounds it made: the light tread of deer, the rustling leaves, the flapping passage of night owls. Sometimes she heard footsteps behind her, but she rarely saw where they came from. Once she caught sight of Sidhean out of the corner of her eye; he was standing perhaps twenty feet to her left, but when she turned to look, he was gone. She came to recognize the slight prickling on her skin that signaled he was nearby. It felt like someone running a finger down the back of her spine.

The first night that he al owed her to walk with him, her entire body was tense with excitement; she was afraid to speak in case he disappeared again. That night everything looked differ-84

MALINDA LO

ent: Nothing seemed solid. Every tree, every stone, was merely a shadow. She felt like she would be able to walk through wal s if Sidhean were with her. Once in late spring she watched a doe and two speckled fawns come out of the shadows to bow down to him, and when he placed his hands on the heads of those two fawns, Ash said in wonder, “They do not fear you.”

“We do not hunt them,” he said simply. He did not seem to mind if she asked him about the animals in the Wood, but if she asked him about his people, he would answer in a low growl, “You know I cannot tel you.”

“If I am to be among your kind,” she said once, “should I not know about them?”

That made him angry, and she did not see him for many weeks after that. When he final y returned, she was careful to speak only of unimportant things, for while he had been gone she discovered, to her surprise, that she missed him. In this way they developed a kind of unspoken agreement: He would accompany her, and she would not ask him about who he was.

If it occurred to her that her friendship—if that is what it was with this fairy—was a little strange, she did not dwel on it, for it was the only companionship she had, and she did not want to lose it.

After Ana’s sixteenth birthday, Lady Isobel began to regularly take her daughters to visit her sister in the City, for it was time to introduce Ana to society. Each visit was presaged by trips to 85

Ash

the seamstress to fit a new dress or disguise an old one, and each time they returned there was fresh news about the royal court. Even Clara, who had never before been interested in such things, began to talk about Prince Aidan, who was in the far south leading a military campaign.

“He must be so handsome,” Clara said, sitting on the edge of Ana’s bed while Ash finished braiding Ana’s hair.

“You have never even seen him,” Ana said dismissively.

“You haven’t either,” Clara objected.

“I have seen a painting,” Ana said, “in the parlor of Lady Margaret’s townhouse, and he is indeed handsome.”

Clara clasped her hands together and asked eagerly, “Do you think we wil meet him soon?”

Ana laughed. “Sister, you cannot be harboring a secret love for the prince, can you?” Clara blushed. “Because you would never suit him, Clara,” Ana continued. “You are too young, too unrefined.” And Ana gave herself a smug smile in the mirror. Clara looked downfal en, and Ash could not resist pul ing a bit too hard on Ana’s hair while she tied a ribbon on the end.

“Ouch!” Ana cried, putting a hand to her head. “Be careful, Ash. You’re so clumsy why do you think we never bring you with us to the City? It would be an embarrassment.”

“I am sorry, Stepsister,” Ash said contritely, but the words tasted bitter. “I shall endeavor to be less clumsy.”

Ana seemed mollified. “Wel , try a bit harder, and perhaps someday you’l be al owed to come with us.”

But Ash was more than happy to be left behind. While they were gone, Ash took her books into the Wood and walked until she found a sunny bit of riverbank, where she spread out 86

MALINDA LO

her cloak and lay down, propped up on her elbows, to read.

In the fal when hunting season began, sometimes she heard the hunters riding by, and she would lie very stil , wondering if the dogs would find her. One late afternoon when the sun was spreading honey-gold over the autumn trees, Ash lay on the riverbank beneath an old oak whose limbs grew nearly down to the ground to form a splendid, secret room. She had been reading an old fairy tale that afternoon, and when she finished the story, she looked up through the leaves across the river and saw a woman there. She was kneeling on the edge of the opposite bank with a dripping hand raised halfway to her mouth, and she was dressed in hunting gear. The woman drank from the water in her hand and then flicked the rest away, the droplets scattering like crystals in the slanting light, and when she looked up she saw Ash staring at her. Before Ash had a chance to hide there was a shout in the distance and the woman glanced in the direction of the sound. She looked back at Ash and smiled at her, then rose to her feet and walked away, her tread so light that Ash couldn’t hear it.

Ash let out her breath in relief and lay down on her back, staring up at the arching branches. The sky peeked through the leaves in brilliant blue, and she could smell the rich scent of the earth beneath her: crushed leaves from last fal , acorns slowly decaying into soil. She wondered if the woman was the huntress who led the hunting party she had heard in the Wood that morning, their bugles ringing. She closed her eyes, feeling the peace of the afternoon on her skin, the warm breath of the air and the solid mass of the ground beneath her, and she fel asleep. She dreamed that she was perched on a boulder over-87

Ash

looking a twisting path in the heart of the Wood, and below her she saw the huntress walking. When the woman stopped and knelt to examine something on the ground, Ash climbed down from the rocky outcropping and dropped onto the path.

The huntress looked up at Ash with eyes the color of spring leaves and said, “You’ve found me.”

Ash woke up suddenly and scrambled onto her knees, blinking rapidly. The sun was gone and night had stripped the color from the trees, and she was going to be late getting home. She quickly pocketed her book, pul ed the cloak around her shoulders, and shoved her way out of the overhanging branches, nearly running toward the path that would take her back to Quinn House.

The winter that Ana turned eighteen, Prince Aidan and his soldiers returned home at last from a successful five-year campaign in the south. Soon afterward, the King announced a grand celebration in the City during Yule that winter, and Lady Isobel was overjoyed, for Ana was wel ready to find a husband. “Isn’t it fortuitous,” Lady Isobel gloated one night at supper, “that the prince has returned just in time to meet my most beautiful daughter?”

Ana smiled at her mother, and Ash thought her stepsister might have looked pretty then, lit by the glowing candles, were it not for the greed in her eyes. “I must have new gowns for the bal s,” Ana said fervently. “I must look like a princess!”

88

MALINDA LO

Lady Isobel reached out and stroked her daughter’s cheek, answering, “No, my dear, you must look like a
queen
.” Ana giggled then, a high-pitched squeal that startled Ash into nearly dropping the heavy soup tureen she was removing from the dining table. Her stepmother saw her fumble and said sharply,