Ash (27 page)

She could not find a way out of the trap she had set for herself, and she was closer to despair than she had been since her mother died. She felt that the curse that Sidhean said her mother had lain on him might be the key to it al , so she took her mother’s herbal out and re-read the faded handwriting by candlelight, but it only raised more questions. The only section that seemed to be remotely related to magic was the recipe to reverse a glamour, but it was not clear if the curse were a glamour at al . Sidhean had said that what he felt for her was as real as she was, and from what she recal ed from the fairy tales, a glamour was only an il usion. If his love was real, it could not be a glamour.

She kept coming back to the pages her mother had written about love, but they were confusing. The notes on various herbs and plants seemed to be more informational than pre-scriptive, and there was no clear-cut recipe for a love spell or its reversal. There were notes on the weather “wait until the 233

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spring equinox has passed and the first rain has come and gone” and there were notes she could only guess about: “To charge someone with love is a great responsibility; there wil be an equal yet unexpected reaction.” And then, at the end, was that sentence her mother had underlined: “The knowledge will change him.” She did not know if her mother was referring to Sidhean, but she rolled the sentence around in her mind while she did her errands during her stepsisters’ fittings.

One afternoon, her head spinning with these thoughts, she passed the church on her way back to the seamstress, and the black iron gate to the cemetery was hanging open. Ash began to pul it shut, the hinges squeaking, and the bottom of the gate dragged against the ground until it lodged in place, stil partly open. She tugged on it but it wouldn’t close, so she pushed it open again to free it, and then it seemed the most natural thing in the world to enter the yard. The browning grass had recently been clipped short, and the brick path leading to the graveyard was swept clean. She walked down the path and hesitated in front of the smal , neat cemetery. There were stil only a dozen or so headstones; few had been added since her father’s funeral.

Ash went to the row farthest from the church, and there on the third tombstone she found her father’s name. She remembered, from her childhood in Rook Hil , visiting her grandpa-rents’ graves in the family plot behind her mother’s old home.

Her mother had been the last in her family, so it was usual y only the two of them who visited the graves on Souls Night, for her father was often away on business. Her mother would clean off the headstones with an old cloth and burn sage in a 234

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shal ow pewter dish. She always left a loaf of bread on the ground when they departed, and sometimes, if they had them to spare, a bowl of red apples. They would sit on the ground among the old headstones and wait until the sage had burned away, and Ash stil remembered the way she would fidget after only a few moments of stil ness. Her mother would say to her gently, “You only visit once a year, Ash. Sit stil and give them a chance to see you.”

Ash ran her fingers over her father’s name, and they came away covered with dust. She looked at the other gravestones, and some of them had been cleaned; some even had the burnt remnants of incense or herbs on the ground before them. Lady Isobel’s prohibition of the old ways had not, Ash realized, been followed by everyone. She had not visited the grave since the day of her father’s funeral, though she had passed the cemetery countless times since then. She looked up at the sky, and the blue-gray clouds were like bruises above her. She did not know how many days she had left here. She knelt down on the cold ground in front of the tombstone. The least she could do was sit still.

The weeks passed, and there was no sign of Sidhean, at least in her waking hours. Sometimes she dreamed of him: He would be walking down a long, moonlit hal , or he would be sitting in that clearing with the crystal fountain, but she could never see his face. She knew that he was waiting for her, and he was 235

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growing impatient. Sometimes she dreamed that she was walking in the Wood, passing the same stand of pine trees repeatedly; she would grow increasingly frustrated until she woke herself up, her hands bal ed into fists. Once she dreamed that she and Kaisa were lying on a blanket by the river, the sun warm on her hair, and they were laughing. She did not want to wake up from that dream, and when she did she turned her face into the pil ow, yearning to spend one more moment in that summer afternoon. But it was winter, and outside the dawn was cold.

At supper, a fortnight before Yule, Lady Isobel informed Ash that she would be going with them into the City again, to spend the week at her sister’s house. “But you wil not be attending any of the celebrations,” her stepmother said. “I’ve told my sister that you’re not al owed to leave the house and that her housekeeper is to keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t steal anything.” Ash poured her stepmother more wine and did not answer. “Did you hear me, Aisling?” her stepmother said.

“Of course,” Ash said.

“And you wil speak with respect to me and your stepsisters,” Lady Isobel said sternly. “Don’t think that your brief taste of civilized life means that you’re worth anything more than a life below stairs.”

Her stepmother’s words washed over her; Ash barely heard them. She was thinking of one thing only: At Yule, she could see Kaisa perhaps for the last time.

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Chapter XX

his year, there was no sign of
the Royal Hunt as they drove from West Riding to the City, though every time Ash T saw a rider on the horizon, she held her breath until they were close enough for her to see that it was not the King’s Huntress. In the City, the palace winked at them between buildings as they drove toward the Page Street mansion. Once again Ash shared Gwen’s smal attic room, and that night as Gwen lay asleep in bed, Ash lay awake, thinking.

Gwen was engaged, now, to a butcher’s son. Colin had left the household and gone south to find his luck in the trades, Gwen had told her before she went to sleep that night. “I never liked him that much anyway,” Gwen whispered. “Peter is so wonderful to me, I can’t believe I would ever have wanted anyone else.” She beamed, and Ash envied her. “You must let me introduce you to him tomorrow night when we go to the Square for the bonfire.”

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“I am not al owed to go,” Ash said, hanging her spare dress on a hook behind Gwen’s door.

“I heard about that,” Gwen said. “But no one wil care if you go; you know we al detest Lady Isobel, don’t you?”

“Really?”

“Of course,” Gwen answered. “She’s horrible to us when she visits, and her daughter Ana isn’t much better. It’s no wonder she can’t find a husband.” Gwen climbed into bed and continued, “I hope for your sake, though, that she does soon.

At least then you won’t have to deal with her anymore.”

“One can only hope,” Ash said grimly. She got into bed as wel , but she couldn’t sleep, and after lying uncomfortably stil for too long, she decided it was better to leave Gwen in peace.

Downstairs in the kitchen the fire was banked, but when she knelt down on the hearth, the stones were stil warm. She held her hands out to the embers for a moment and then sat down, leaning against the chimney. She wondered whether it was snowing in the Wood. It had begun to snow shortly after they arrived in the City that afternoon, and already the ground was thinly blanketed in white. It would be a cold night in the Wood, but in the morning the tracks of the deer would be clear and sharp, and it would be child’s play to uncover them.

She fel in and out of a fitful sleep, dreaming of the Wood and the clean, unbroken snow beneath her feet. She thought she saw a doe, her huge, glossy eyes peeking out from behind an evergreen, but then it was only the vanishing tail of a bounding rabbit, leaving long, trailing pawprints in the snow. She thought she smel ed the scent of pine burning: a spicy, woodsy scent from a campfire. But then she heard the cook’s voice 238

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saying, “Goodness, it’s you again—you never change, do you?

Get upstairs and get dressed; it’s time to serve the ladies breakfast.”

Ash opened her eyes, blinking in the morning light, and saw the cook looking at her with her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry,” Ash began, but the cook interrupted her.

“I’m sure I don’t know why you prefer to sleep on the floor rather than in a nice bed, but it doesn’t matter. Hurry up and get ready; Lady Isobel won’t be kept waiting.”

That entire day as she attended to Ana’s and Clara’s demands, she felt as if she were only partial y there. She worked methodical y, but her mind wandered to Sidhean, to Kaisa, to the last time she had seen her, the fairy gown on her skin like a live creature. She helped Ana dress, lacing her into the tight bodice until her stepsister gasped for breath; she braided Ana’s hair with green ribbons and strung an ornate gold choker around her neck; she listened with a careful y blank expression on her face as Ana complained about the fit and cut and drape of the gown. Every hour that passed brought her closer to the moment when she would see Kaisa. She helped her stepsisters and stepmother into their elaborate fur cloaks after they had dined with their cousins on a light meal, and she stood on the front step with the other servants as their hired carriages came to take them to the palace. And when Gwen snaked her arm into hers and whispered, “Come upstairs and get dressed you are 239

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coming with us tonight,” she did not object. She knew that the King’s Huntress would come to the City Square that night, as tradition demanded.

But as Gwen put on her costume— “I am going to be a rich merchant,” she said—Ash only sat quietly in the window. “Do you want me to find you something to wear?” Gwen asked, looking at Ash in the mirror, but Ash shook her head.

“No, thank you,” she said. “Don’t go to the trouble.”

“But you cannot go to the Square in your work dress,”

Gwen objected, turning to look at her.

So Ash took out the fairy cloak, which she had impulsively brought with her, and watched Gwen’s eyes widen as the silvery length of it spread out on her bed. “I will wear this,” said Ash, “and no one wil know that I am only wearing my servant’s dress underneath.” When she put it on, she reached into the interior pocket and felt the moonstone ring there. But instead of sliding it onto her finger, she transferred it to the pocket of her dress, where she could feel it against her hip. He knew that she was coming.

Despite Lady Isobel’s command that Ash remain at the house, none of the servants seemed inclined to enforce her directions, and they happily exclaimed at Ash’s fine cloak and made room for her in the wagon that they took to the City Square. When they arrived, Ash followed them into the center of the Square where hundreds of people were gathered around a huge bonfire; the smoke of it rose like the breath of a great dragon. North of the Square she could see the white spires of the palace lit up for the bal that was to take place that night, and al around her the voices of the revelers rang out like bel s.

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Ash wondered who Prince Aidan would choose as his bride that night, and she wondered how disappointed her stepsisters would be when it was not one of them.

She let Gwen pul her into the ring of dancers circling the bonfire, and as they whirled around to the sound of drums and pipes, each step she took brought her closer to the raucous, joyful merriment of that night. Slowly, the dazed feeling that had hung like a cloud around her for weeks began to clear away. At last she could feel the hard stones of the Square beneath her feet, the fabric of her dress as it swung around her legs, the heat from the bonfire on her cheeks. As the people swayed and stamped and sung their way around the bonfire, Ash knew that this was what the fairies were always hunting for: a circle of joy, hot and bril iant, the scent of love in the deepest winter. But al they could do was create a pale, crystal-line imitation, perfect and cold. How it must disappoint them: that they would never be human.