Page 1 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

unwaith ar y tro

There are two sisters—aren’t there always?

One sister is as fair as summer. Fairer, even, because she’s more temperate.

Pretty, controlled, with no chance of burning.

She’s born special, this girl, with eyes as polished as new marbles—eyes that see things that others cannot.

Tylwyth teg—those fairies of old—gather on the ledge of her crib and hide in her hair on the way to school.

She goes with them eventually, when her old life is a rock at her back and the whisper of the woods becomes a shout.

In the dead of night, without so much as a creak upon the stair, she’s away to the forest, slipping from our world to theirs and closing the door behind her.

She finds pretty creatures and castles of air, and a prince who marries her the moment he can.

He is honest and gentle, in the way the boys she’s known all her life aren’t.

They are happy. They stay young longer than we are dust. It’s a well-worn tale—one we keep telling each other. The story ends; she does not.

But neither does her sister.

The one who is as changeable as the tide and shocking as a summer storm. The one no one expects to remain behind, but who is left anyway.

She goes on, too. She hangs laundry in their garden and she waits. She learns to stay, to linger. She waits for her sister until she’s gathered cobwebs in her hair and her spine is curved like a talon. For her there is no good man, and there are certainly no castles.

The other sister waits, or so say the stories. She waits, and she wonders.