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CHAPTER TWELVE

In the morning, Sawyer was back and had lined up three dead mouse spies for my inspection on the rug beside my bed. It was a good thing I hadn’t had to get up in the wee hours of night to use the bathroom.

“I can take your word for it, you know.” A glowing green tendril opened the nearest window and chucked the mice outside. “You don’t need to display them like that.”

Seated on my chest, the tabby cat licked his paw and cleaned his face. He was still sooty from sneaking back into the bedroom via the chimney. “How else will you know what a good mouser I am?”

As I wormed myself into a sitting position, the cat was forced to pause his bath until he could resituate himself on my lap. I scratched his scruff then gently pulled on one of his ears. “I’m glad you’re back, little cat. How did it go?”

“That fungus tried to eat my tail, that’s how it went.” He swept his tail around for my inspection; the black hairs on its tip were missing, nothing but a nub of flesh like a pencil eraser remaining. “But I assume it worked. I didn’t exactly stick around to find out. I had to get back here before dawn, and it’s a long way. Also, I’m starving.”

“You could’ve eaten the mice.”

“After they’ve been tampered with fae magic?” Sawyer crinkled his nose in disgust. “No, thank you.”

“And . . . my family?”

He stopped cleaning himself to give me a solemn look. “You were right about me being a cat giving me some immunity with the wards. But the illusions . . .. I didn’t see the witches, nor any evidence that they were or weren’t there. I, um, did move a bunch of wood inside, just in case.”

“Thank you, kitty.”

After another quick nuzzle, he dropped down from my lap and padded over to the chair by the window. A soundless leap brought him to the armrest. From his new perch, he gestured with a paw down at yesterday’s dress where it was heaped on the seat cushion. “And how did your day go? There are tears in the skirt, Meadow, and your blood on the fabric. You told me you weren’t going to get into any trouble when I was gone!”

“I got in a fight with the bear.” Even now, I refused to say his name aloud. It was still too risky. “I had to have an excuse to talk to him, and, well, he does have six-inch claws.”

The tabby tomcat’s frustration with me vanished, and an excited gleam shone in his amber eyes. “And?”

Hope fluttered like a caged bluebird in my chest. “And there’s still enough of him in there to understand me.” I smiled. “He’s not lost.”

“Yet.” The cat climbed the back of the chair and nosed the curtains aside just enough to see out the diamond-paned window. The gray light that heralded another dawn glowed in his ears and slanted across the rug. “I don’t mean to be a realist with pessimistic overtones like Ame, but Lewellyn said the longer he stays shifted, the more the beast takes over.” His nub-tipped tail flicked. “How do we do everything faster?”

“By doing first things first and second things second,” I replied with more calm than I felt. Honestly, there wasn’t a better way to tackle such a huge problem—if I concentrated on the vastness of the forest I was lost in, despair and hopelessness might set in, and I’d be too paralyzed to take the steps on the path out of it.

So first things first: I dressed and armed myself for the day with my trusty Celtic shield, amazonite pendant, and foraging bag. Sawyer dutifully settled himself into the bag, and then we were off to second things second: feeding the sourdough starter.

I’d never come down to the kitchen while Mrs. Bilberry was preparing our meals, and for good reason. The badger zipped this way and that with the speed of a roadrunner. Dale and a few of the other woodchucks acted as her line prep cooks, dicing mirepoix and washing tomatoes, stuffing the game hens with pears and herbs, melting butter with garlic and parsley for the roasted mushrooms. The communication was constant, the woodchucks calling out updates and Mrs. Bilberry giving them the next task. It all paused for a moment of deafening silence—even the butter in the waffle maker refused to sizzle—before Mrs. Bilberry barked, “You’ve seen milady bake before. Back to work!”

Holding my bag up above my head so I wouldn’t knock it and the cat into anything, I danced through the open spaces left in their wake to where my sourdough starter fermented in the corner. Unlike traditional starters, I didn’t discard any of the fallen dough. I just added double the amount of what was in there, gave it a thorough mix and a little zap of green magic to speed its growth, and that was that.

Just as I was covering the jar with its tea towel, the stone in the wall directly opposite me started to move. Push out , actually, and as magic sprang to my hand, a familiar face appeared.

“Roland?” I exclaimed. My attention quickly shifted from the woodchuck to what was behind him: a secret tunnel.

The woodchuck flung up a paw against his lips. “Shhh! I don’t want Mrs. Bilberry hearing. We’re not exactly allowed to talk to you.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Bilberry would mind,” I whispered back, especially after her mutterings about the dishwasher. But I still leaned forward to hide my head and torso behind the curve of the ovens. “What is this?”

“Servant passageways. Woodchuck size,” he replied. “We can’t manage stairs very well, so they’re all ramps. They lead all over the place.”

He hunched low, as if he wasn’t already out of sight. “Did you mean what you said about Cernunnos taking care of the hobgoblin?”

“Yes, of course.” Whether or not Ossian actually did anything about it another matter entirely. Wystan was his supplier, after all.

“Can you, um, persuade him to hurry up?” He wrung his hands as if his suggestion was treasonous. “It’s just . . . Ricky was taken last night.”

“ What? ”

“Oh, he’s got enough spite to keep him alive for a while yet—an ear-biter, that one—but he is only a woodchuck. We’ve been sleeping in the stable with the horses at night, you know, for safety in numbers? Except Joe came down with a cold and so Ricky went to check on their latest batch of cider by himself. When he wasn’t around this morning, we found his tracks and others outside the distillery shed.”

Whatever composure Roland had mustered to tell me this all without his voice wavering broke. He shuddered, his paws tightening into fists. “It’s sacrilege,” he spat, more to himself than to me. “The King of Beasts has a sacred duty to protect his subjects, and, and— I’m beginning to see why Callan threw him out!”

His paws flew to his mouth. “Oh, lass, I didn’t mean—” His eyes widened at the familial term. “Oh, milady, I didn’t mean, I-I—”

He’s remembering!

I quickly put my hand on the woodchuck’s shoulder, partly to reassure him but mostly to keep him from running off into the warren of the servant passageways and slamming the door in my face. “It’s okay, Roland. Calm down. I don’t mind you calling me that in private. Now, what was this about Callan?”

The poor woodchuck looked supremely uncomfortable, wringing his paws and looking for a way to slip my hand and escape. “I-I only know the old legends, milady. I was a storyteller before I, um, was a server and housekeeper assistant.”

Before you took over as leader of the hobs and Sweet Cider Farm’s apple business. “Go on.”

“Milady, the old legends are banned for a reason. Talk of them would brand me a dissenter, maybe even a usurper—”

“Tell me about Callan and Ossian, Roland,” I commanded.

He chuffed an unhappy sigh. “Only the broad strokes and nothing more,” he said resolutely. “But the stories are murky, there are conflicting details, and—”

“Then tell me both versions.” I glanced over my shoulder to find the kitchen still in the height of its hustle and bustle, but it didn’t take someone long to feed a sourdough starter. We would be attracting notice any moment now. The woodchuck jumped when I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Quickly, Roland.”

“Basically, one legend says Callan accused Ossian of shirking his responsibilities to the realm and banished him. But only after Ossian tried to steal Callan’s betrothed, Shannon of the River Court.” He lowered his voice even though he was already whispering. “Banished him and cursed him to become a beast himself.”

That tracked with what Ossian had revealed to me, but I knew the fae was an expert in twisting tales to suit his own ends. “And the other legend?”

The woodchuck checked that the coast was still clear before hurrying on. “The other says Callan was jealous of Ossian’s success as heir to the Court of Beasts and the rare gift of having a fated mate. So he usurped him, took his mate Shannon for his own bride, and banished him.”

“Did he curse him too, in this legend?”

Roland nodded, his fluffy woodchuck jowls wobbling.

Both of these legends centered around the line of succession to the Court of Beasts—a historical cliché no matter the culture—and Shannon, a fae bride. She brought more to the table than an alliance through marriage; she brought power to her husband. And she had magic in her own right. Surely she had a say in all this?

“Shannon seems to have gotten the raw end of the deal both times—abduction and coercion into a marriage she didn’t want,” I pressed. “Couldn’t she just get divorced?”

Roland barked a laugh. “There is no such thing as divorce in Elfame. It’s too risky. When a couple weds, a portion of magic is not only shared between the couple, it is amplified. It knits them together. To divorce, to cleave apart that which has been made one, would kill the weaker spouse, if not both of them. And the survivor would lose all that he or she had gained, not to mention be rendered incapable of ever marrying again. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. That’s why it’s taken so seriously, why other fae merely partner for a season then go their separate ways.”

He shook his head. “No, if Shannon was forced into a marriage to either one of the high fae brothers of the Court of Beasts, her only freedom from it would be death. ”

“Wh-what happens if Shannon dies? By her own hand or natural causes? What happens to the magic Callan has acquired through her?”

“So long as Callan does not take Shannon’s life with his own hands, her power stays with him.”

My stomach hollowed out and suddenly I couldn’t find any air. I staggered against the counter, my fingers blanching as I gripped the edge to keep upright. That’s why Ossian was taking Shane with us through the portal. He wasn’t there for my protection—not that I’d ever believed it. He was there to be my executioner.

“Milady,” the woodchuck exclaimed.

‘You are mine, Meadow Ní Violet, body and soul.’

It’d been one thing to scheme to take my magic for himself—that had been his intent behind teaching me to bond with my magic like a fae instead of a witch, so he could eventually have access to it and amplify his own power.

It was another thing entirely to take my magic and then kill me.

“Anything of Violet Ní Dara?” I croaked. She had seen the death trap that awaited for her in a marriage with Ossian and had managed to get away. Perhaps I could be as wily as my ancestor and do the same.

“The sister to the Green Mother herself? Um . . ..” As deeply as Roland furrowed his brow, as tightly as he squinted his eyes, the storyteller couldn’t remember a single thing about one of the most powerful females in Elfame history. “No.”

Another effect of Ossian’s illusions, no doubt.

“What about magical artifacts, Roland, any stories you know about them?” I asked, that strange antler I’d seen on the bear’s collar coming to mind.

“Plenty,” the woodchuck gushed, relieved for the change in topic .

“Anything like this?” I fished out a smoldering stick from the cook ovens and drew the double-pronged bone thing I’d seen on Arthur’s collar. No sooner had I finished the charcoal drawing than Roland smudged it out with his foot.

“Milady!” he chastised. “Are you trying to get us both into trouble?”

“What is it?” I pressed.

“Where did you see it?” That question sounded more like it was meant to satisfy his own curiosity than have anything to do with the nature of the bone.

“Roland.”

He threw up his hands. “It’s a heretic’s fork, milady, and you want nothing to do with those. It’s usually bone or antler taken from a fairy and inscribed with runes. It’s powerful, arcane magic, milady, and not for the likes of either of us.”

“But what do they do ?”

“They change or suppress things, and that’s all I know about it.” He flung a look over his shoulder as we both heard voices filtering down the passageway ramp. More hobs, most likely en route to pick up the silver platters with my breakfast.

“Stay away from those,” he told me sternly, shooing me away. To the passageway: “Got the door open, fellas!”

I didn’t budge. “How do you stop one? Can you break it?”

“You can’t break a heretic’s fork,” he snorted. “And I don’t know anything else, other than if you see one, you get away as fast as you can, or you bury it where not even a tree’s roots can find it. Now git, lass.”

I nestled my bubbling sourdough starter back in its corner out of the way of the incoming hobs and threaded my way back through the pre-breakfast mayhem for the stairs. Slowly. I had a lot to think about.

Ossian’s plot to kill me was a problem for another time. He couldn’t do that until the key was charged, so I focused on the heretic’s fork. Roland had seemed pretty certain that I couldn’t break it. But there was more than one way to skin a cat (sorry, Sawyer). Placating the pixies had taught me that. Nullifying the scorch marks on Flint’s chest, too.

What if the runes inscribed into the bone could be etched away? Like with an acid? That witch’s butter potion had proven caustic enough as evidenced by Sawyer’s tail. It was a ward dissolver, after all. But was it strong enough? Since this was old fae magic, I had my doubts.

Although . . . I’d heard a tale from Aunt Hyacinth when she’d returned from her sabbatical that in sleepy Savannah, Georgia, there was a certain flower emporium that employed a special kind of land snail that was a voracious slug eater. In addition to its gastropod and foliage diet, it was fed a supplement to increase the acidity of its saliva—the better to attack other harder-shell pests like aphids and beetles.

And wouldn’t you know it if witch’s butter combined with three of the ingredients I knew to be on Brandi’s worktable were the perfect substitute for that supplement?

“Mrs. Bilberry,” I announced shrilly—more from excitement than anything else. “I want escargot and freshwater mussels for tonight’s supper. Is that possible?”

“They’d have to be garden snails, milady,” the cook apologized. “Not the big fat ones you’re accustomed to. Is that alright?”

“Perfectly fine. I want them fresh. Like, alive. And I want to inspect that freshness before supper.”

I’d never doubted her cooking before, so she looked a little affronted but still agreed.

“Fantastic. Well, keep up the wonderful work, everyone,” I said, darting into the stairway.

Sawyer squirmed around in the foraging bag until one amber eye glared up at me. “You couldn’t steal me a snack, why? And I don’t want snails for dinner.”

“They’re not for you. They’re for Arthur.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t want snails either.”

“Not to eat, little cat. To free him.”