Ash (6 page)

Fal turned into winter, and Lady Isobel had the rest of their things sent down from Rook Hil . The day the trunks arrived was a harsh reminder to Ash of how much her life had changed since the summer. When she opened her trunk, it smelled of the house at Rook Hill, and it all came back: the way her father smiled at her on her birthday. The sound of her mother’s laughter. The time she and her parents had walked into Rook Hill on a fall day, the leaves as gold as coins, the air crisp and dry. When the memories came, Ash felt her heart constrict as if she were being bound by ropes so tight she would lose al breath. It hurt in a way she had never felt before, and she did not know how to make it stop.

As Yule approached, with al of its attendant memories the smel of pastries in the oven, the spicy tang of pine boughs in the house she thought the pain might never cease. Yule week in Rook Hil was celebrated with nightly gatherings at different houses throughout the vil age, where friends and family shared stories about the years past. The week culminated in a masque, where the vil agers dressed in fantastical costumes as kings and queens and witches and fairies, going from door to door to bring each family to the bonfire in the vil age green. Ash had loved the roar of the fire it sounded like a wild beast, crackling and growling and hot as summer. She remembered her mother, dressed in a paper crown and red velvet cloak, blowing kisses across the flames to her father, dressed as a joker with 47

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gold and silver baubles hanging from his cap.

This winter, Yule would be a much more subdued affair,

“out of respect for my husband’s untimely passing,” Lady Isobel declared. She would refrain from wearing a costume, though she had ordered matching shepherdess dresses for Ana and Clara. “You must wear your black dress,” Lady Isobel told Ash one night at supper. “It is not right for you to celebrate this year.”

Al week Beatrice and the chambermaid, Sara, had been at work in the kitchen, preparing pastries and sweetmeats for Lady Isobel’s feast on Yule night. Ash and Ana and Clara waited in the parlor, watching as the musicians set up in the front hal . Shortly before the first guests arrived, Lady Isobel came downstairs dressed in a gown of black velvet and lace, with a headdress made of black feathers rising from her auburn hair. Even Ash had to admit that she was an imposing figure, and when she gathered Ana and Clara to her to kiss their beribboned heads, Ash felt like a sparrow among peacocks.

That night the house was ful of light and noise, with people dressed as soldiers and queens and dancers and chieftains. Ash watched them laughing and dancing from her corner in the front hal , and no one noticed her. Halfway through the evening there was a pounding on the front door, and when Lady Isobel opened it there seemed to be a gang of thieves on the doorstep half a dozen men dressed in worn leather with caps pul ed low over their heads, and hands that seemed to be stained with blood. Even Lady Isobel recoiled at the unexpected ferocity of these visitors, until the men were pushed 48

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aside and a woman dressed in hunting gear threw back her green hooded cloak to reveal a smiling face. “Don’t mind my men,” she said, bowing to Lady Isobel, her dark blond hair fal ing over her shoulder in a thick braid. “We come bearing new meat in return, of course, for a drink or two.” The men behind her cheered loudly and thrust forward into the room, one of them carrying the head of a stag, its dead eyes glassy, the tongue hanging out of its slightly open mouth.

Visibly shaken, Lady Isobel cal ed for Beatrice to attend them, and Ash wondered if it was customary in West Riding for the hunt to come in like that, al bloody and fresh from the kil . But Beatrice came forward without a word and led two of the men and their haunch of venison into the kitchen. The man with the stag’s head began to go into the parlor, but the huntress caught his arm and said something to him in a curt, low tone of voice, and he looked sheepish and took the head outside. The huntress saw Ash then, standing with her back to the wal . She must have had a stricken expression on her face because the huntress smiled at her and said, “I’m sorry if my boys frightened you. They mean no harm; they’ve just been in the Wood for too long.”

“I’m not frightened,” Ash said, although she had been, just a little. “Did you hunt all day?”

“Yes,” the huntress said, pul ing off her cloak and beginning to yank off her thick leather gloves. “But it’s al right if you were afraid,” she said with a sideways look at Ash. “It’s smart to be afraid of things that smel of death.” She came closer to the girl and bent toward her, putting a firm hand on Ash’s shoulder. “Just don’t be afraid to look them in the eye,” she 49

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said with a grin, and then ruffled Ash’s hair before moving on into the dining room. No one else had paid the slightest attention to her al night, and Ash felt as though the huntress had suddenly cal ed her into being. She slid out from her corner and went after her, watching as the huntress took a seat at the long table with one of her men and a masked reveler dressed as a queen. When they saw Ash standing hesitantly nearby, the man asked, “Whose child is that?”

The huntress looked over at her. “Come and sit with us,”

she said.

The woman dressed as a queen smiled at her and asked,

“Are you hungry?”

Ash shook her head but came and sat next to the huntress as Sara poured wine into their goblets. “Where is your costume tonight?” the huntress asked. Al around them the guests were dressed as princesses or lords, their masks glittering with garnets and plumed with feathers.

“I do not have one,” Ash answered.

“Poor thing,” said the masked queen. “She needs cheering up.”

“You could tell her a story,” the man prompted, looking at the huntress.

The masked queen said, “Yes, a story a hunting story!”

The huntress grinned and asked Ash, “Is that what you’d like?”

Ash colored, but said, “Yes, I would.”

“Very well, then,” said the huntress. “I will tell you the story of Eilis and the Changeling. Do you know that tale?”

Ash shook her head.

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“Eilis was one of our earliest huntresses; King Roland cal ed her to service when she was only eighteen, and many people questioned whether she was ready to lead the Royal Hunt,” the huntress explained. “The same year that Eilis was chosen, the Queen gave birth to her first child, a girl. But on the morning after the princess was born, the Queen went to suckle her child, and she would not eat. Days passed and the princess continued to refuse her mother’s milk, and yet she did not weaken. Instead, her skin turned a curious golden color, and she seemed to grow at an astonishing speed. The greenwitches were consulted, and they concluded that the princess had been stolen and replaced with a fairy changeling.”

“Fairies and greenwitches,” said the masked queen. “This is a fairy tale, not a hunting story.”

The huntress covered the woman’s hand with her own and said, “Patience. There wil be hunters.” She looked back at Ash and continued: “The King and Queen tried everything they could to trick the changeling into revealing its true identity, for that was the only way to bring the real princess back. But nothing worked, and as the months passed they began to fear they would never see their daughter again. Now, some greenwitches remembered that there might be one other way to bring the young princess back, but it would require someone to journey to Taninli and beg the Fairy Queen to return the child. When Eilis heard this, she knew that she must be the one to go, for this was how she could earn the people’s trust. She told the King and Queen of her intention, and though they were apprehensive, they longed for their daughter’s return and agreed to Eilis’s plan.”

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“What happened to the changeling?” Ash asked curiously.

The huntress paused. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I suppose the changeling remained in the princess’s place. At any rate, Eilis entered the Wood on the day after Souls Night, and though many doubted she would ever return, on the morning of Yule she was seen riding through the gates of the Royal City with a babe in her arms. The King and Queen were shocked when she came before them, for she had aged nearly a decade, though she had only been absent two months. She told them that when she entered the Wood she had ridden for a fortnight seeking out the center of the great forest, where she discovered a small trail paved with white stones. It eventually became a broad avenue lined with trees she had never seen before and ended in a set of huge crystal gates she knew she had arrived at Taninli.

“When she told the fairy guard that she sought an audience with the Fairy Queen, she was taken to a massive palace built of crystal. In the Queen’s audience chamber, Eilis knelt down and asked for the return of the princess. The Queen told Eilis that her wish would be granted only if she completed three tasks successful y: She must retrieve a gryphon’s egg from its nest; she must bring the Fairy Queen a living unicorn; and she must hunt the great white stag and bring back its head. If she succeeded, the princess would be returned.

“So Eilis set out to fulfil those tasks, and none of them was easy. But she had an advantage that the Fairy Queen did not anticipate: She was young and determined, and she did not know that she could fail. Though it took many months for her to find a gryphon for they were few and far between even in 52

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Eilis’s time she did find one at last, and she artfully stole the gold-plated egg from beneath the sleeping beast itself. Though it took many months, she did find a unicorn and lured it, with honey and sweet songs, back to the Fairy Queen. And though it took many months, she tracked down a white stag whose rack was as wide as the avenue in Taninli, and she slew him with her small human-made sword. In the end, the Fairy Queen had to honor her words, and she delivered the young princess, no worse for wear, into Eilis’s arms.”

“The princess was stil a baby?” Ash interrupted. “Even though so much time had passed?”

“Yes,” said the huntress. “Time passes differently, it is said, among the fairies. And there was always the suspicion, afterward, that the princess had become something more than human during her time with the Fairy Queen. When Eilis returned to the Royal City with the princess, there was a grand celebration and Eilis went back to her duty as the King’s Huntress. From that time onward, fewer changelings were found in the country, for the fairies don’t like to lose what they have stolen.” The huntress took a drink from her goblet when she finished her tale, and the two revelers seated with her clapped their hands.

“A wonderful story,” said the woman in delight.

“Did you like it?” the man asked Ash.

“Yes,” Ash said, and it gave her an idea. She hesitated for a moment and then asked the huntress, “Have
you
seen a fairy?”

In the weeks since her father had died, Ash’s memory of her midnight encounter with the Fairy Hunt had seemed more like a dream than reality. Sometimes she tried to remember what 53

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that man had looked like the one who had spoken to her but the shape of his face kept sliding away from her mind’s eye.

Now, looking at the huntress, she thought that if anyone could confirm what she had seen, it would be her.

The huntress seemed surprised by her question. “I am afraid I have not,” she said.

Ash was disappointed, and her face fel . The masked queen said quickly, “But you’ve said, haven’t you, that sometimes you see things in the Wood?”

The huntress smiled. “I cannot say if those things were fairies.”

“But they were… unusual?” the woman teased.

“Indeed, they were unusual,” the huntress affirmed.

“How?” Ash asked.

The huntress put down her goblet and looked at Ash intently. “Sometimes,” she said, “at twilight, or in the shade, the light plays tricks. Once I saw something that looked like a woman with wings.”

“A wood sprite,” exclaimed the woman.

“Perhaps,” the huntress said. Another hunter came into the dining room then and bent down to whisper in her ear, and the huntress stood up. “I am afraid the time for stories is at an end,” she said to Ash, and her companions also rose to leave.

“Good night,” she said, and briefly bowed her head to Ash.

“Good night,” Ash answered, feeling let down. Was that al she had seen? She watched them go, their green-and-brown hunting gear the only solemn colors among the costumed guests, and then went back upstairs. She would rather be alone in her room than alone in the midst of a celebration she was 54

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not a part of.

It was a week later that the letters came: two of them, thick and bound with black ribbon, stamped with an ornate red seal.

Ash saw them lying on the hal table before Lady Isobel took them into the parlor to read on her own. Ash was at her lessons with Ana and Clara in the library when Beatrice opened the door and said, “Ash, Lady Isobel would like to see you right now.” Ash glanced at her stepsisters, but they seemed as surprised as she was.

In the parlor, a fire was burning in the hearth, but the room was stil chil y. A candelabrum was lit at the writing desk by the window where her stepmother sat. The letters were open before her, and when Ash came closer and looked at the seal again, she thought they looked familiar.