Page 31

Autumn

Mother and I did not talk much in the days that followed Rose’s departure, for our loss was raw.

She kept me busy. Too busy to give way to grief. I was glad of it. I knew if I let grief have its head, it would charge away, out of control; better to work hard and be too tired to think. Better to be weary and fall asleep at the end of the long summer days.

Life went on as usual. We foraged, I milked the goats, gathered eggs, brushed Jenny, tended the garden, chopped wood, cooked, and studied.

Mother went out on her solitary walks, checking the border.

In the evenings, I read aloud while she spun goat’s hair and smoked her pipe.

Sometimes she told stories, but not Rose’s favourites.

Outwardly, all carried on as usual, but inwardly, everything was different. Several days passed before I could speak Rose’s name for the first time. I still could not speak Beran’s name yet.

“I wonder if Rose has reached the palace,” I mused one evening, letting my knitting drop into my lap and watching a moth fly in through the window to dance around the faerie lamp on the table beside me.

“If she was taken up by carriage, she would have arrived some time ago,” said Mother. She glanced over at me from her chair. “You miss her.”

I sighed. “Nights are the worst.”

I had never slept alone. Rose was always there to talk to before we went to sleep.

“Fetch me the book.” Mother nodded at our two bookshelves. “The one at the top.”

“The locked book?” I said in surprise.

As children Rose and I had wondered about The Book , imagining what lay in the pages of the mysterious tome that we were not permitted to read. Rose had imagined it full of secret beauty recipes. I imagined it full of stories with pictures too scary for us.

We had attempted to look inside it once.

We dragged the table across the room so I could stand on it and reach up.

But the book had a little lock on it. We marvelled at such a thing as a locked book, the lock so neat and tiny that we knew it must be fae-made.

I had kept an eye out for a tiny key, but I never saw one.

“How did you know it was locked?” asked Mother, but I could tell by the little twinkle in her eyes that she knew the answer.

“I was a very inquisitive child, was I not?”

I looked around for something to stand on to reach the top shelf. My eye fell upon the margool.

“Help me,” I said, picking it up. “It’s about time you did something useful. All you do is lie around snoozing and eating oatcakes. Take hold of that book.” I put the margool on my shoulder.

“She understands you very well,” observed Mother, when the margool stretched out its neck and used its muzzle to inch the book from the shelf, fluttering its wings to gain a little extra height. I caught the book as it slid into my arms.

“She?” I said, handing her the heavy book and pulling up a stool so I could sit beside her. “How do you know it’s a she?”

Mother took a little key from one of her many pockets, and the lock opened with the softest of clicks. I held my breath, feeling like an inquisitive child again as I watched her turn the cover. Long years of curiosity were about to be satisfied.

She searched through a section, then laid the pages flat so I could see, pointing to an ink drawing.

“A margool,” I said, examining the drawing. I read aloud the description beneath, written in a careful hand:

Maior-ghaol. A sanguine, omnivorous creature, frequently mistaken for a juvenile member of the draco family, bearing metallurgical properties, and a powerful negater of untoward magic.

The male maior-ghaol is discerned by its red eyes. The female is smaller than her male counterpart, with amber eyes. Only one or two eggs are laid in the maior-ghaol’s lifetime, thus rendering it a rare creature, not commonly seen.

The maior-ghaol habitually bonds with a mortal who is marked. The chosen one enjoys the benefits of the maior-ghaol, such as protection from untoward magic and the discernment of precious metals, frequently employed to gain wealth.

I lifted my eyes from the book to look with fresh interest at my margool. She had resumed her spot on the rug, curled up like a sleeping cat or a long-tailed fox.

“ A mortal who is marked ,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“Fae-marked,” said Mother .

“Am I fae-marked?”

“You are a Rose Daughter.”

“So is Rose, but she does not have a margool. Nor does she have any roses.”

“Her roses were temporal. For her protection. And she did not save a margool’s life.”

“Are mine temporal?”

“They are yours as long as you abide here.”

“Why would I ever leave? You could never leave either.” I looked up at Mother. “Could you?”

Mother took out her pipe and tobacco pouch. I watched as she packed her pipe bowl. I knew she was packing it slowly because she wanted to gain time as she decided how to answer me. A sinking sensation began to stir in me.

She sat back in her chair.

“Before my assignment as guardian to Princess Elaine,” she began, “I was assigned as guardian of the woodlands along the border.”

I already knew this.

“It was a humble posting. It did not require much of me. My guardianship over the princess was far more weighty. Now it is completed, and the Council is promoting me.”

I waited again while Mother lit her pipe. She did not light a twig from the embers but ignited it with a flicker of her fingers. I watched in fascination, wondering again how I could have missed all the little signs of magic around me as I grew up.

“Are they going to give you a wand?” I asked, thinking of Amara and how she had wielded stolen magic.

“I already have one. ”

“You do? Where?”

She waggled the pipe in her mouth.

I stared at it. “You smoke your wand?”

“I smoke out of it. It is usual for godmothers to disguise their wands. Unless they are royal or great-godmothers, who are prone to showiness. Most godmothers turn their wands into a walking stick or staff. I knew one who kept hers as a rolling pin. She said it made the best pastry.”

“Do they mind?”

“Who?”

“The Council. Do they mind you turning your wand into a pipe?”

Her eyes twinkled. “How would they know? It makes an excellent pipe. It was Mother Vetch and her rolling pin that gave me the idea.”

I brought the conversation back to the most important part, though I was apprehensive of the answer.

“So, how is the Council promoting you?”

Mother shifted her pipe to the other side of her mouth, her words twining with little spirals of smoke.

“With a new assignment. In the north. I shall have the honour of studying under Great Godmother Angelica, a renowned healer and guardian of the northern forest.”

“That certainly sounds like a promotion from a woodland cottage,” I said quietly. “When do you leave?”

“Soon.”

I felt a flash of irritation. Why could Mother never give me a straight answer?

And why was I so easy for everyone to leave?

I closed the book in my lap, intending to go out for a solitary walk, for there was a full moon, and my thoughts and feelings were too loud for sitting still. Mother’s hand on my arm stayed me.

“I do not want to leave you, Lily. But I cannot refuse the Council. I am subject to their orders. That was the choice I made as a godmother. But as my ward, you can come with me. If you choose.”

I glanced up, the crinkling of the lines around her eyes visible to me at such proximity.

I met those steady eyes with irises the colour of acorn shells tinged with mossy green, holding that unusual blend of humour, wisdom, and cool detachment.

I had never entertained the thought of living anywhere else.

But then, I had never thought I would be alone.

“What about the border here?”

“A new guardian will come.”

“And live here? In our cottage?”

Mother leaned back again. “You could be the new guardian, if you wish it,” she said quietly. “The queen has acknowledged you as a Rose Daughter. The Council will accept you on those grounds.”

“Because it is only a humble posting,” I said dryly. “I am not a godmother. I have no magic.”

“You have grown up eating and drinking in the midst of magic. And you were always very sensitive to it, even as a baby.” She leaned forward again to lift a strand of my long, white hair. “You have not met many people in the world, Lily. You do not know how unusual you are.”

“Is white hair so unusual?”

“It is not common. Neither is your affinity with the woodland, nor your sensitivity to magic. It would not surprise me one whit to learn that you have woodland fae in your ancestry.”

I stared at her. This was a new thought altogether.

I did feel a strong affinity with the woodlands.

I loved every leaf, every stone, every shift in the seasons as the land shed one garment and put on another.

But if I was the result of a forbidden union between mortal and fae…

Mother seemed to read my thoughts, for she interrupted them, saying, “Whatever the circumstances surrounding your birth, Lily, it does not change who you are. You are good, and you are loved.”

We sat in silence for some minutes. The air felt heavy with change.

“You can go to Rose,” said Mother. “You will always have a home where she is, if you choose it. And… Beran is there.”

I winced at his name.

“Three choices lie before you, Lily.”

I turned these three choices over in my mind. Pain lay in all of them.

“If I were to leave here,” I said slowly, “it would be like uprooting a tree. One that does not survive being planted in foreign soil.”

Mother nodded. “I have thought the same about you.” An uncommon look of sadness passed over her face.

“I did not know it would end like this, Lily. I have thought over and over whether I should have done differently by you. Perhaps I ought not to have kept you. Perhaps I should have given you up to some village woman to raise. You might have had a family then. A real family.”