Ash (4 page)

Her words made him hesitate, but he said, “I had thought you were lost to me; where is this place I have come to?”

“You have stepped into fairy land,” she answered. “Three years ago, I was walking home one night when I encountered the Fairy Hunt, and they offered to take me the rest of the way. I should not have believed them. As soon as I mounted 28

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one of their horses, they took me to Taninli, their home, where they gave me food and drink. I was so hungry and thirsty that I gave in, but now I must serve them for eternity, for no humans are al owed to taste their delicacies.”

“I wil join you,” he said, “for I love you and would be with you for eternity.”

But she shook her head, and her eyes were dark with pain.

“I am but a shadow of myself and can never love you as a human could,” she said. “The fairies have taken my heart away from me.”

He could see that she told the truth, for no blood warmed her skin, and there was no pulse beating in her throat. Yet a part of him stil wished to be with her regardless of what form she had taken, and when she saw this in his heart, she led him out of the copse, fearing for his safety, and took the goblet away from his hand. “You must forget about me from now on, and if you see the Fairy Hunt riding, never approach them,”

she warned him. And then she touched his cheek and he fel down in an enchanted sleep and did not awaken until his neighbor discovered him.

But as is the way with these encounters, Thom could not forget what he had seen, and every night he yearned for Grace, his heart aching anew. At last he took to wandering near the wooded copse by the river, hoping to hear Grace’s flute. One night at twilight, Thom saw a dozen ghostly riders coming toward him, and soon he recognized them as the Fairy Hunt.

But he ignored Grace’s words of warning and gladly went to meet them. After that night he was never seen again, and no one knows if he succeeded in finding his way back to Grace.

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But a month later, the same neighbor who had awakened Thom from his enchanted sleep came across the farmer again, except this time he would not awaken, for he was dead.

The
Tales of Wonder and Grace
only sparked more questions in Ash. At night when she sat beside her mother’s grave, wondering if this would be the night that someone something came to take her away, as Maire Solanya had warned, she watched the darkness gathering in the nearby trees with equal parts dread and anticipation. What lay beyond those trees? Would she ever dare to do what Thom had done? If the stories were true, as Maire Solanya had seemed to imply, then there might be a way to see her mother again.

There were some common threads among the fairy tales she had read. Fairies were drawn to in-between times like Midsummer’s Eve, when the ful weight of summer begins to tip toward the shorter days of autumn; or Souls Night, when the spirits of the newly departed walk the land. But fairies were never seen in common daylight, and they preferred the light of the ful moon for their hunts and celebrations. So on the night of the next ful moon, Ash rose from her bed at midnight, trembling with excitement. She pul ed on her woolen cloak and tiptoed halfway down the upstairs corridor before her stepsister’s door cracked open. She heard Ana’s voice whispering,

“Where are you going?” Ash froze, turning to look at her stepsister. Ana was peering out at her curiously, holding a lit candle 30

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stub beneath her face.

“It’s none of your business,” Ash whispered. “Go back to bed.”

Ana’s eyes narrowed and she stepped out into the corridor, pul ing her door shut behind her. She observed, “You are dressed to go outside. Where do you think you’re going?”

“I can go wherever I want,” Ash said curtly.

She turned her back on her stepsister and began to walk toward the stairs, but stopped when Ana said, “I’ll tel . I’ll wake up your father and tel him you’re going out.”

Anger rose inside her—she would
not
let this girl stop her—and she glared at Ana. “Do whatever you like,” Ash said dismissively. She did not wait for Ana’s reaction but went down the stairs quickly, her heart racing with fear and exhilaration.

In the pantry, she lit the covered lantern before going to the back door. She put her hand on the doorknob and looked behind her. In the glow of the lantern the kitchen was comforting and ordinary. Ana had not followed her. Taking a deep breath, she turned the doorknob and plunged out into the night.

As she went down toward the Wood, the ful moon hung like a giant, pale eye above her, unwavering in its gaze. At the foot of the hil , she paused and looked up at the house, and the windows were dark, reflecting only the heavy moon. The lantern threw her shadow up the hil , a black ghost attached to her feet, and she shivered as the wind came rattling through the pine branches. Steeling herself, she turned toward the Wood and her mother’s grave, and just beyond it was the track she and her mother had sometimes taken to gather mu-31

Ash

shrooms or wild plants. They had never gone far enough to lose sight of the house, and Ash did not know how far the path went, but tonight she meant to find out.

Entering the Wood was like entering a vast cavern: The sound of her footsteps was magnified by the branches arching above. Her lantern cast only a tiny glow in the immense black, for now she could no longer see the moon. As she went deeper into the trees, she heard the cal of a night owl, and an animal bounded through the undergrowth—a rabbit? In the distance, the howl of a wolf raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She thought she could see eyes glowing on the trail ahead of her, but a moment later they had slid to the right, and she could not follow them as wel as keep her eyes on the path.

Her hands trembled and made the lantern bob, casting wild shadows on the ground, but she pressed on and tried to ignore the frightened voice in her head that told her to go back. Moving made her feel better: At least she could run.

She came to a tangle of fal en branches that blocked her way, and in order to continue she had to leave the path to pick her away around them. The ground was uneven, with roots protruding from the forest floor, and when she reached out to steady herself on a nearby tree trunk she felt something move beneath her fingers. She gasped in fright and hastened forward, clinging to the lantern, suddenly afraid she would drop it and be left in the pitch-black night.

She did not know how long she had been walking before she realized she had lost her way back to the path. She was standing among tal trunks of blue pine, their bark mottled gray and black in the lantern light, and this time when she 32

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turned to look around herself at the waiting dark, she was sure that she saw something glittering back at her: eyes, yel ow and blinking. She heard her own breath, quick and frantic, like a hunted creature. And then the whispering began. It came on the wind, sweeping toward her in scratchy bursts, and then was borne away again before she could discern any words. She held out the lantern like a weapon, cal ing out, “Who is there?”

There was the sound of laughter thin, distant, like bel s. Was this the sign she had been seeking? She turned toward the sound and stumbled forward, tripping over the undergrowth.

As the laughter came more frequently, the whispering began to separate out into sentences spoken in a language she did not understand. It could only be the fairies, she thought, for who else would be deep in the Wood at midnight? The thought raised a cold sweat on her skin, for if they were real, then al the consequences in those tales must be real, too. But that was the last clear thought she had, because then she saw the lights in the distance. They did not waver; they were beacons in the night. She started to walk toward them, but they always seemed just out of reach. She began to feel a deep longing in the pit of her stomach: When would she get there? She feared she would wander in the dark Wood forever, until she was only a skeleton powered by sheer wil .

That was when the drumbeat of horses’ hooves came toward her, the ground rumbling with the force of their passage.

She stood transfixed, and the wind rose, buffeting her in cold gusts. It became more difficult to see, as if there were a fog rising, and just when the horses seemed to be nearly upon her, her lantern went out, leaving her momentarily blind. But soon 33

Ash

afterward the fog began to glow with an otherworldly light, and she shivered in its damp chil . When she saw the first horse, she felt her heart leap up into her throat. This moment would be fixed in her memory forever: the moment she saw with her own eyes the creatures she had heard about al her life. They were grand and beautiful and frightening—the horses’ heads shining white, their eyes burning like a black-smith’s forge. The riders, too, were like nothing she had ever seen before: ethereal men and women with pale visages, their cheekbones so sharply sculpted that she could see their skul s through translucent skin. They surrounded her and looked at her with steely blue eyes, each gaze an arrow staking her to that spot, and she could not close her eyes though the sight of them made her eyes burn as if she were looking at the sun.

They seemed to speak to each other, but she could not see their mouths moving, and she could only hear the strange, uneven whispering she had heard before. Suddenly the riders moved in unison, circling her, and she felt like she was being spun like a limp doll held by a willful child. When the motion stopped, the riders were streaming away from her in an elegant spiral, leaving her alone with one man who looked down at her from his tal white horse. He was more handsome than any man she had ever seen, but like the other riders, he was pale as a ghost. When he spoke, she was stunned that she could understand him, and he said, “You must go back.”

She opened her mouth to say, “I came to find you.” It felt as though she hadn’t spoken in years.

He looked deeply angry, and she cowered beneath his glare.

He said: “Then you are a fool.”

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She sank to her knees and begged, “Please listen to me “

He extended his arm, pointing back the way she had come.

“Go now—the way is clear to you. And do not return.” She felt herself scramble to her feet as if he had picked her up, and behind her the path was clear through the Wood. At the end of it, in the far distance, a light in the kitchen window gleamed.

She felt the force of the air behind her, propel ing her to turn around, and her legs took her at breakneck speed down the path. It was wide open, free of pebbles or fal en branches or even the thick padding of last year’s leaves. She could not slow down, and she could not look back, either. The ground was hard and cold beneath her feet, and when she burst through the border of the Wood and came upon the hawthorn tree, it was as if she had been slapped forward by the wind and for-bidden to return. The lantern was dead in her hand, and the Wood was a stone wal behind her.

Anya was standing at the top of the hil , cal ing her name, and when she saw Ash coming up the hil she ran down to meet her. “Where have you been?” she cried. “Ana said you ran away—are you all right?” She bent toward Ash and pul ed her into an embrace. “Aisling,” she said in a ragged voice,

“your father—he is not wel .”

“What do you mean?” Ash demanded, pushing her away.

“What do you mean he’s not wel ?”

“The greenwitch is here,” Anya said. “Maire Solanya is here.

She has given him a draught to calm him, but he shouts in his fever.”

Ash ran into the house and upstairs, down the hal way lit with flaming sconces and into her father’s room, where he lay 35

Ash

in bed tossing and turning, the greenwitch chanting something unfamiliar yet unmistakably old. Lady Isobel sat in the window seat, turned away from them. Maire Solanya saw Ash and halted her chanting, coming toward her. “This is a sickroom, Ash,” she said. “You must stay away.” And she pushed Ash out of the room and closed the door.

Standing in the hal way, Ash could hear her father shouting.

It sounded like he was cal ing for her mother.

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Chapter IV

he fever lasted for two days
. But a week after it broke, Ash’s father had stil not recovered, and Maire Solanya reT turned to speak with Lady Isobel. Hovering outside her father’s room, Ash heard their voices rise with emotion.

“Nothing you have done has worked,” Lady Isobel said bitterly. “Why should I follow this new course of treatment? He has not improved.”

“You are not understanding what has afflicted him,” Maire Solanya said. “He is only now coming out of the worst of it.

He must continue to drink this.”

“It has only made him feel worse,” Lady Isobel said. “I won’t al ow it.”

“With all due respect, madam, he is too ill to decide for himself, and you do not understand what I am trying to do. You must let me make the decisions in this matter.”

“I understand that your old-fashioned ways are not work-37