The House Beneath the Ivy

The forest was wretchedly quiet.

It wasn’t the sort of non-silence one expected to hear when walking through the woods, the gentle murmuring of leaves in the wind and the chittering conversations of squirrels as they chased the birds away from their chosen perches. On those days the river burbled and the dragonflies sang as they whisked through the leaves and the undergrowth. Silence in the forest, most days, hardly counted as silence at all.

No, this silence had weight to it.

No birds, no rustling of leaves, no gurgling babble of the brook that snaked its way through my village and beyond. The quiet hung heavy in the air, thick and miasmic in the way it permeated every inch of the wood like a sickness.

I had no time to dawdle. I needed to find a few nettle plants before sundown, and already the sun’s last rays were slipping fleeting and golden through the boughs above. Scarcely an hour was left before night fell across the wood, and its creatures would awake. I forced myself to slow my steps even as my heart drummed ever faster in my ears, straining to hear above the pounding. Each twig that crunched beneath my boots felt as loud as a thunderclap. Other days might have brought sightings of deer and rabbits, or else of birds roosting above and beetles scuttling through the underbrush, but today there was nothing. Nothing moved in the trees around me.

And yet, the forest breathed.

It bore down on me like a hand pressing on a sick man’s chest, unwanted and unyielding. Not a branch rustled save what I myself moved; not a leaf twitched in the wind. The forest laid still and quiet, waiting.

It was watching me. They were watching me.

I did not have much time.

Courage. A voice that sounded very much like Fen’s floated up from the back of my mind, as steady and sure as I was unbalanced and uncertain. You cannae let yourself be governed by fear.

I wanted to argue that people like ourselves never did have much say at all in who governed us, but that would have been pointless without my sister around to hear me say so. I picked my way through the brambles and down to the side of the brook, where nettles grew in bunches in the spring. Springtime’s end had already come upon us and was beginning its departure, but if I had any luck, perhaps I would still be able to find what I needed.

The river laughed as I threaded my way through the reeds, searching. I tried to ignore the way my hand had grown warm and uncomfortably damp on my satchel, the way the old leather was growing slippery in my grasp. The winding brook, called Sgàthan by most of the elders, snaked this way and that, seven little waterfalls forming glittering gates from its mouth to its end. I was nearing the third when the wind picked up at last, tugging at my curls, playing with the edges of my cloak. It whispered my name, once and twice and over again.

I kept my eyes down.

There! A few sparse, brown-tinged leaves, shooting up from the river-moistened sand. It was too late in the season for the plant to produce its distinctive flowers, but I knew the rest of it well enough. The sand was coarse beneath my knees as I knelt down there, pulling my knife from my satchel. River water seeped cold and biting through the careworn hems of my dress as I sawed half-withered leaves from the plant’s stem, one after another, minding the thorns on the leaves and the stalk. Most remedies that used this plant called only for a few thin stems, but we needed as much as I could gather.

I had not been there long when a laugh rang out through the trees.

I cursed under my breath, starting so badly that I almost dropped the blade. I needed to find somewhere–anywhere– to hide. I had heard plenty of tales about what happened to the people that they caught, and I had no desire to be next. I stood up straight, abandoning the plant I had yet to finish.

Hide. Was that more laughter in the wind, or was I imagining it? I scanned the treeline, searching, hoping. Fearing.

How close were they?

No, save that. No time to ponder.

There was a cave further north, but to run for it now would be too great a risk. I would have to climb. I bolted to the nearest tree and gripped the branches, hauling myself up one limb at a time. The leaves shook and rustled, and each stray noise sent my heart into a renewed frenzy.

The voices came next, lilting and alien, speaking words of overgrown glens and Elysian starlight. First one voice, then another, a conversation I could not hope to follow. The first of them had a call like snowbells and riverbends; the other sounded like new wine and buzzing dragonfly wings.

Higher, higher– I could go no further. The next branch up would scarcely hold my weight, and the one beneath me was already swaying treacherously. I would have to stay where I was. I clung to the trunk as tightly as I dared, the sun-bathed bark warm and rough at my cheek.

You should have brought a charm, rose the venomous little voice from the back of my mind. I wished I had heeded the old women in the village, the ones who sat in the square and hawked their handmade protections to every poor fool unfortunate enough to be forced into the wood. An iron blade, a string of red berries, even a single daisy– anything would have been better than being caught like this. I had nothing.

Halfwitted fool, you knew better than this.

I wanted to say that I thought I would be quick enough. That I would be clever enough not to be caught, even if I had been too slow to outrun them. I could already hear my sisters’ despairing, furious pleas, could already feel my father’s searching, questioning eyes on me when I inevitably failed to give him a satisfactory answer for why I had been out so late. If I returned home to give an answer at all.

I had only just tightened my grip around the branches when they came into view.

To be charitable would be to describe the fae as curious creatures, beings of sun-dappled shadows and leaves crackling in the wind. These two were taller than I by far, with elongated limbs and faces that put me in mind of some stretched-out spider waiting for its prey. Their ears were long and tinged with the colors of the forest; their mouths were wide and thin-lipped, each smile exposing a predator’s sharpened teeth. The first faery wore robes in the burgeoning colors of autumn, a thousand delicate leaves stitched in patterns of green and gold and amber. This one had a sort of makeshift circlet set atop its head, brittle branches twisted into a crown with leaves and berries as surrogate jewels. Its long, buglike wings trailed out behind it like a magnificent cloak.

The second wore subtler colors, though even this felt too kind a report. Its skirts were composed of what looked like oversized flower petals, soft pinks and pale yellows turned a sickly brown where the petals had begun to wither at the edges. Its head was wreathed in something that looked more like plant growth than hair, impossibly coiled into something almost resembling a noblewoman’s elegant coiffure. The second fae’s wings put me in mind of a butterfly who had just emerged from her chrysalis, her wings yet crumpled and misshapen, still glistening from the struggle of her rebirth.

I had never considered myself charitable where these things were concerned. I thought them beasts.

They trailed through the wood so easily they may as well have been gliding, unfettered by such mortal constraints as terrain and gravity. On they went, chattering to each other, each gesturing in turn with long, sharp fingers. The blooming fae left a trail of green in her wake, grass sprouting lush and verdant in each ephemeral footstep. As I watched, flower stalks sprouted and grew from the verdure. I could just see the telltale blueish violet of new bluebells.

The fae beside her left thorns where he walked.

The tree creaked beneath me, and I relaxed my grip just enough to loose one hand. Slowly, carefully, I let my sweat-slick hand fall to my skirt, brushing it against the folds as quickly as I dared. I could not afford to slip and fall. The fae were drawing ever nearer, drifting this way and that, the careless ramble of two creatures assured of their own safety. Something about them reminded me of the noblemen I had seen in the capital, dauntless astride their horses. Many seemed to count themselves among those who could not be harmed, those who knew– for good or for ill– that the rest of us were securely within their power.

My fingers brushed against something long and hard in my pocket, and I kept my eyes on the approaching creatures as my hand closed around the hilt of my blade.

They were very close now. On they prattled and trilled in their peculiar way, each syllable caught somewhere between birdsong and the clacking of a beetle’s mandibles. Thorns sprang up and mingled with the newborn flowerbeds, trailing up the trees in foreign spirals. My own tree was not exempt as they passed almost directly beneath me, sawtoothed vines curling around sprigs of bluebells and crawling up their newfound trellis in masterless patterns. There I waited as the bravest of these brambles slowed to a stop mere inches from my boot, hoping, praying to whatever might hear me that these wild things would not.

The fae moved slowly, carelessly. I watched as they paused to cast haughty glances around the deep-shadowed glen, the lady’s eyes gleaming opal and moonlight in the dark. I could see every strand, every leaf in her complicated braid. If I’d wished, I could have reached out and tapped the autumn lord’s crown with the tip of my knife.

But I didn’t dare move.

I’d heard tell of others bolder than I, wiser than I, who had opposed the fae with bow and blade. Most had failed and been felled for their trouble, but some– when the odds were hopelessly in their favor– had managed to win. These were the names whispered with hushed reverence throughout the whole village, the ones the children filled their games with and the harkers lauded endlessly. These were the ones who would love to have been afforded a chance such as this.

I stared at the fae below me, my heart beating a painful tattoo against each of my ribs, unable to breathe.

Already, I was outmatched. The odds were against me. I had no protection, little skill with a blade, and I knew nothing of what magic these creatures wielded. It would be endlessly foolish to risk something like this.

Coward.

And what of my sisters? What of my father? If I perished here, what would become of them?

Fear welled up in my chest, an icy torrent rising higher and higher until I felt quite sure I would drown in it. It wrapped its claws around my throat and filled my brain with fog, ripping thoughts from my grasp and throwing them to the wintry haze. I forced myself to tighten my grip around the knife, trying to ignore the roiling in my stomach and the way I knew my hands would be shaking if I dared to look.

Others braver than I would have struck now. I should have struck now.

But I could not.

The faeries passed on without even a glance in my direction. The lady said something and the lord laughed again, a rough sound like oak-wood bark and cracking twigs. I waited a while longer, and they were gone. They rounded an old, knotted hawthorn tree and vanished, leaving as quickly as they had first arrived.

I did not leave my hiding place until the forest stopped waiting.

I descended the tree to a chorus of birdsong and rustling leaves, cursing myself with each step. Part of me wanted to condemn myself for my cowardice, for being so childish as to let the waters of my fear overtake me like I had. The other part of me could feel only relief.

Wading back through the new growth to the riverbank proved difficult, the underbrush conspiring with the lengthening dark to make even a single step a challenge. I looked for more of the plant I had been cutting, but I found nothing. In my satchel were but a few thin stalks, their quick-drawn roots smearing dirt and mud all over my other tools.

Curse my cowardice and my slowness both. I could scarcely see well enough to return to the village without getting lost; to keep looking for plants at this hour was out of the question. I was too late. If I were the lucky sort, perhaps this would be enough for a single dose.

But I was not foolish enough to count myself among the lucky.

I turned my cloak inside-out as I stumbled back to the well-trod path. The bluebells whispered in the breeze as I passed them, blossoming as fair and full as if they had always grown in this part of the wood. With each half-drawn breath I took, I waited to hear of the faeries’ return. I waited all the way back to the village, but I heard nothing. All that remained was the laughter in the wind.