Ash (16 page)

“Oh,” said Kaisa in surprise.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” Ash said.

Kaisa shook her head. “It’s al right.” She paused and then said, “You must live nearby.”

“Yes,” said Ash. “The house on the far side of the meadow.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, separated by a body’s length of the deepening darkness, and Ash suddenly felt self-conscious, not knowing what to say. But then there were footsteps coming down the path toward them, and another woman appeared, carrying an armful of kindling. She was dressed like Kaisa, in riding clothes, but in the low light, Ash could not see her face. “There you are,” the woman began, and 135

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then saw Ash. “I thought you were going to gather some wood,” she said to Kaisa.

Kaisa turned toward her and answered, “I was.” She looked back at Ash and asked, “Can you find your way home?”

“Yes,” Ash said, and then Kaisa went to the woman, taking some of the kindling from her. Ash stepped back off the trail, looking down, as the two women passed her, taking care to pul her cloak out of the way. As they moved out of sight, Ash heard the woman ask who she was, but she could not hear Kaisa’s reply.

She waited until the moon rose before she went home, but though she looked careful y around her, she met no one on her walk back to Quinn House. The disappointment inside her was thick and heavy.

She was in the garden the next day, weeding, when she saw the rider out in the meadow. She straightened up, shading her eyes from the noonday sun with one dirt-smeared hand, and slowly the rider came into focus: a green cloak, a bay horse, a shock of dark hair. It was the King’s Huntress, and when she reached the iron gate she cal ed out, “Good afternoon!”

“Good afternoon,” Ash replied, surprised, and before she could think, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

The huntress laughed. “I am sorry—I did not mean to interrupt you. I was just out for a ride and I admit I was curious about whether this was the house you spoke of last night.”

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“Oh,” Ash said, and then stammered, “it—it is, yes. This is where I live.”

Kaisa dismounted from her horse and asked, “May I ask you for some water for my horse?”

“Of course,” Ash said, and brushed the dirt off her hands onto her apron. “Please, wait just a moment—I’ll be right back.” She went inside the kitchen for the water bucket, and then came back outside to the pump.

“Thank you,” said the huntress.

The cool water splashed over the edge of the bucket as Ash lifted it. “It’s nothing,” she said, and carried it to the back gate.

The huntress undid the latch and pul ed the gate open for her, and then Ash set the bucket down on the ground for the bay mare.

Kaisa gestured toward the garden and asked, “Are you the gardener?”

“In a way,” Ash answered, feeling uncomfortable. “I—I am the housekeeper, of sorts.”

“I see,” said Kaisa, and smiled at her. Ash felt slightly flus-tered.

“Are you are you hunting today?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

Kaisa shook her head. “No. It is too early in the season.”

“Of course,” Ash said, and was embarrassed.

The huntress gave her a rueful smile and asked, “Would you mind if I came inside and drank some of your water as wel ? I admit I did not bring any with me, and it has been a long ride already—I am not sure why I was so forgetful today.”

“Of course,” Ash said again, surprised by the request. “Will 137

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your horse need to be tied up?” she asked.

Kaisa shook her head, taking off her riding gloves. “No, no, she’l be fine here.”

Ash led the huntress up the garden path and into the kitchen, and she poured some water from the pitcher on the scarred kitchen table into a clean goblet. When she handed it to her, she took care not to touch Kaisa’s hand with her own dirtied one. She watched the huntress’s throat as she swal owed, and she wondered if Kaisa could hear the pounding of her heart.

She was nervous, afraid that she would do something wrong; would the huntress report it to Lady Isobel? She turned away and went to the sink, plunging her hands into the dishpan and trying to scrub off some of the soil that had lodged beneath her nails.

“This is a pleasant kitchen,” said Kaisa.

“Thank you,” Ash said, continuing to wash her hands. Her mind raced: What did one do when the King’s Huntress stopped by unexpectedly? Should she offer her something?

“Would you like anything to eat?” she asked, and then she wondered for a panicked moment if she even had any food to offer her.

“I don’t want to trouble you,” Kaisa said.

“It’s no trouble,” Ash said, and turned to look for a kitchen towel, only to find the huntress holding one out for her, a slight smile on her face.

“Then I would be happy to eat,” Kaisa said, and Ash blushed, taking the towel.

She found a loaf of bread that was only a day old, and a wedge of cheese that she had been saving for her own dinner, 138

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and a couple of apples the last ones from the previous year. As she sliced into the bread, the huntress set her gloves down on the table, then sat down on one of the benches. She picked up the book that was lying open near a candle stub and asked,

“What are you reading?”

“Just an old book,” Ash said, trying to keep her tone light.

She didn’t understand what interest the King’s Huntress had in this household or in her.

Kaisa turned the pages of the book curiously. “Fairy tales,”

she observed.

“It is a book I had as a child,” Ash said.

Kaisa looked up at her. “Do you have a favorite tale?” she asked.

Ash shrugged, and put the bread on a plate alongside the cheese. She began to peel an apple. “I’m not sure,” she hedged.

“I have a favorite,” Kaisa said, and she did not seem to think it was anything to be embarrassed about. “Do you wish to hear it?” Once again Ash was surprised, and the paring knife slipped and nicked her finger, leaving behind a thin line of blood. “Be careful,” said Kaisa, and reached out to take the knife away from her. Ash relinquished it, raising her finger to her mouth, and the huntress slid the blade under the rosy skin of the apple, peeling it off in a single smooth strip.

“I think of it as more of a hunting story than a fairy tale,”

Kaisa said, “though there are fairies in it. Another huntress told it to me, when I was a little girl.” Ash sat down across from her and put the bread and cheese between them, and the huntress began to slice the apple as she spoke.

“It is about one of the earliest huntresses in the kingdom, 139

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Niamh, who was the daughter of a powerful greenwitch. When the King chose Niamh as his huntress, he asked her to teach his daughter, Rois, to hunt, for he valued Niamh’s knowledge and wanted Rois to know his lands as wel as Niamh did. Rois was a beautiful young woman, sweet and strong, and Niamh was impressed with her abilities. As they rode together week after week, month after month, Niamh found that she was fal ing in love with Rois, and her heart ached, for Rois was promised to the prince of a neighboring kingdom, and she loved him, it is said, with a purity of heart that Niamh could not change.

“So Niamh went to her mother, the powerful greenwitch, and begged for a potion that would change Rois’s heart. But her mother knew that such a potion would be a dark magic, and though she wanted her daughter to be happy, she told her,

‘If you wish the impossible, you must be wil ing to give up everything you hold dear.’ She told Niamh that the only way Rois could be made to love her was if Niamh sought out the Fairy Queen and asked her to grant this wish.

“Because she yearned for Rois to love her, Niamh saw no other choice. She bid farewel to the King and to Rois, and rode off in search of the road to Taninli, the city of the Fairy Queen. She rode for many days through the deepest parts of the Wood, and at last, driven by her desire to claim Rois’s heart, she found the crystal gates leading to Taninli. When she rode through the gates al the fairies looked at her in wonder, for few humans had ever walked their streets.

“When Niamh came to the Fairy Queen’s palace, she presented herself at the great diamond doors and asked for admis-140

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sion, and the doors opened. The Fairy Queen, they say, was more beautiful than any creature in the land, and every human who saw her would fal in love with her upon first sight. When Niamh saw her, she did indeed think her very beautiful, but she remembered why she had come, and she asked for her wish. The Queen, who admired Niamh’s courage in coming to seek her out, agreed to grant her wish on one condition: If Niamh remained in Taninli for ten years and acted as the Queen’s own huntress, then at the end of that time she could return to the human world, and Rois would love her as she had loved no man before.

“So Niamh, of course, accepted the condition. Ten years was nothing compared to a lifetime, she thought. But she had not counted on the effect the Fairy Queen would have on her, and as the years passed, she discovered that she loved Rois less and less, and the Fairy Queen more and more. The Queen herself found, to her surprise, that her admiration for Niamh was turning into love. So at the end of the ten years, she asked Niamh if she truly wanted her wish to be granted, and Niamh wept openly and said that she loved the Queen and no longer wished for Rois’s heart to change. And the Queen took her in her arms and kissed her, and Niamh spent the rest of her days in Taninli, happily at the side of the Fairy Queen.”

When Kaisa finished the story, the food lay untouched between them, but the apple had been sliced neatly into six wedges, the skin coiled like a ribbon around them. “Please,”

said the huntress, “will you eat?”

Ash picked up a piece of the apple and bit into it, and the flesh was crisp and sweet.

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Afterward, as they walked back through the garden to Kaisa’s horse, the huntress said, “Thank you for the water and the food.”

“You are welcome,” Ash replied, and opened the gate for her. Kaisa’s elbow brushed against Ash’s arm as she passed through the gate. As she mounted her horse, Ash looked up at her and said, “I do have a favorite fairy tale.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Perhaps someday I will tell it to you,” Ash said.

The huntress looked down at her with a grin and said, “I hope that you wil .” Ash felt herself smiling as well. Then the huntress turned her horse toward the Wood and left Ash with her hand on the gate, watching as the horse and rider were swal owed by the trees in the distance.

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Chapter XIII

he huntress’s horse was tethered
at the edge of the vil age green on the next market day, but though Ash swept T her eyes around the green, she did not see Kaisa herself. Impulsively, she went to the horse and held her hand out; the mare sniffed at her empty palm and then looked at her with gleaming brown eyes that seemed to reproach her for not having an apple to share. Ash laughed out loud and stroked the horse’s neck; her black mane was soft as silk.

“Have you ever ridden a hunting horse?” said a voice behind her, and Ash turned to see the huntress walking toward them.

Ash felt herself tense up nervously, and she answered, “No, I haven’t.”

“Would you like to?” Kaisa asked, swinging a saddlebag off her shoulder and buckling it onto the back of her horse’s saddle.

“Oh, yes,” Ash said eagerly, and then it occurred to her that 143