Page 4 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

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(A TITHE)

No one comes to call on our two-up, two-down terraced house, though it sits squat on the edge of the village. We’re an eyesore now. It was our father who organized the riot, and though plenty of men believed in his cause and helped rally the town, the consequences have been laid at our door.

Night descends. Ceridwen is abed already and Gran dozes by the fire in the next room as I pad barefoot through the kitchen in my nightgown.

Even I think I’m daft as I pour milk into the chipped saucer; just as daft as everyone says. Silly Sabrina, the Mad Parry Girl. I’m Sabrina Parry, and I leave milk out for the fairies though I’m sixteen.

Yes, I know.

We call them the tylwyth teg here.

It means “fair family.” Dad used to tell us stories of them as if they were mad uncles from up the road, and Mam spoke like her dearest friend had been some fairy princess dancing up a mountain.

Only Gran doesn’t care for the tales. She’d shush Dad when he started, saying that he’d scare us, though he never did.

The teg lived among us, given life by our wagging tongues, but they never cared for their human kin or showed their faces at dinner.

And yet, a part of me never stopped hoping they would.

I shoulder the back door open and twitch slightly, sloshing milk over my nightgown sleeve, and curse. That’ll sour to a sad little smell overnight.

The stone of my measly garden is cold against the soles of my feet, and wind whistles down the hill—out of the woods and over our stunted wall to dance with my white nightgown.

I shiver and leave the saucer in the same place it has always been, just beside the door.

Some mornings I find it empty; more often it’s unchanged.

I don’t think it’s fairies, I promise. I really don’t, but something does crawl out of the trees at night and drink the milk, and I hardly think it’s the neighbors’ boy or the pampered kitten from the big house—do you?

I wrap my arms around myself, staring at the sheets we pegged up yesterday. They’ve been rained on and left flapping like flags of surrender. Beyond them lie the woods.

They’re distant and dark, a vast wall. Stars shine above the tree peaks, brighter there than here, and when the wind that has whipped through the boughs comes to call at my door, it smells like faraway and clean and nowhere at all.

Two forests border my town. One keeps us away from the Branshaws, who live up at the big house and own the town, the mines and the farms and just about everything a person can.

The other forest belongs to no one, no matter how hard people like the Branshaws try to claim it, to box it in with railroads and dig it up with mines.

People can hunt free and play among the trees, but no one does; the forest has a habit of swallowing people whole and rarely does it spit them back out.

No one returns from the woods unless the trees choose to give them up, and there are certainly no corpses to be found.

I’ll give you three guesses as to which forest looks over my house.

“Were you leaving milk for the tylwyth teg?” Ceridwen asks as I enter our room.

“You know I was.”

I retrieve our brush from the cabinet and cross over to our bed, where Ceridwen already sits, blankets bunching about her waist, and hand it to her.

She tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, and I catch a glimpse of a new ring on her finger.

It is battered and rather dull, with a blue stone hammered into the center of its gray band.

Bitterness coils low in my belly, even as I insist I wouldn’t want a ring like that anyway.

Perhaps she has another boy in town making moon eyes at her. If so, she should marry him. Quickly.

Women alone in the world are vulnerable, and there are three of us.

I’d have more luck catching fish with my bare hands than a decent husband and besides, I’m the only person in the family who can work.

If Ceridwen marries, that’s one less mouth to feed.

If she’s really smart about it she might even find a man who can help us.

She’s sickly, not dying—it’s never put the boys off, and I certainly don’t care if she passes the disease to her husband.

In an ideal world, this man would die before my sister anyway, and we could take his money.

I sit and we move until she is behind me. Ceridwen runs the bristles over my blonde curls, parting the thicket gently. It’s not as vibrant as hers, but it is my one beauty—tended to with the utmost care by my mam and, now, Ceridwen.

“They must be saving up something wonderful for you after all your years of service.” Ceridwen sighs. “I thought I heard a cyhyraeth wailing in the wood the night they came for Dad.”

I shiver at the idea of a cyhyraeth—a hag that shrieks to warn of death—lurking near our house. With our family’s luck a cyhyraeth might as well set up camp in our garden.

“Have you cried yet?” Ceridwen asks when the brush is laid aside.

“No. I don’t want to.”

“Tell me a story,” she says. “One of your fairy tales.”

My hand twitches on the blanket. Sometimes I repeat Dad’s stories like prayers, sometimes I make my own. Ceridwen enjoys both.

I roll my shoulders, turn to face her and fix her with a performer’s smile that I know doesn’t reach my eyes. “Have you heard the tale of the Lady of the Well?”

“Maybe.” She reclines against the pillows. “You tell so many tales. But I’ll hear it again; no one tells a story like you.”

I wonder if she knows why I’m picking this story, if she remembers its moral. As with everything, I’m bringing it up for a reason.

I shuffle down the bed until I’m perched at the end. I rise onto my knees, tossing my hair back like this is a stage and I’m some great actress. Perhaps I am—by Llanadwen’s standards, anyway.

“King Arthur sleeps, but his castle does not,” I begin.

“Three knights gather outside his chambers, around a dimming fire, and as the embers burn low and start to die, though their eyelids grow heavy, they know they cannot sleep. They’re on guard after all, and duty remains.

So they tell stories. Brave Cynon tells of a castle where a dark warden and twenty-four beautiful women live, half asleep, ever the same as time races on around them.

Cynon says it was youthful folly that sent him to challenge the warden—a folly that earned him the great scar on his cheek.

But while the youngest knight, Owain, listens, he does not understand. ”

Ceridwen burrows deeper into the cushions, her own eyes fluttering.

It’s no insult that she grows tired as I speak.

It was a gift when she was sick—one I will never stop being grateful for.

Sometimes I think the only reason I was given a tongue to tell these tales is to amuse my sister, or put her to sleep.

“The very next morning, when the other knights retire, Owain slips from the palace,” I continue.

“He saddles his mount and rides for three days and three nights, his armor no protection from daggers of rain, until he happens upon a great black castle on a hill. Owain meets no resistance as he enters, the strangeness of which he is too young to question. He doesn’t understand that the castle has been waiting for him, waiting for his blade.

The warden sits at a long table before a rotten feast, the remaining chairs vacated by long-forgotten party guests.

Their shadows still dance on the walls, though there is no firelight to cast them.

The old warden has little to say. Why would he?

A young man has come; there’s only one thing he wants, and he will take it.

The fight is ill-matched. Owain is strong—a knight to the greatest king in the realm.

His sword is another limb he uses as precisely as his hand, and the warden is slow.

He falls to Owain’s blade and dies without a word. ”

I lean forward slightly, catching my sister’s eye. She pushes herself up, reminds me that she’s listening. Good, the next part is for her.

“That’s where the trouble begins.” I shrug, tossing a hand toward the window.

“From the shadows come those twenty-four women. Each more beautiful than the last, gowned in silks of every color and heavy with jewels. Owain has not considered the truth of his prize. He’s thought only of the delight of having twenty-four pretty faces surrounding him and not the cost of protecting them, or of their happiness.

One, the warden’s widow, the Lady of the Well, catches his eye.

She’s the most beautiful, of course, and she issues Owain a decree. ”

I sit up, back ruler-straight as I adopt a voice I perfected by imitating Lady Branshaw when she comes into town.

“‘The house and all those who reside within are yours now, sir,’ says the lady. ‘You must honor both as my lord husband once did.’ So, she marries her husband’s murderer before he can wash the blood from his hands.

Three years pass, dull and static in this unchanging castle with these indifferent women, until one day, as they had for Owain, the doors open.

A guest has arrived. Owain near weeps with relief when his good old king, Arthur, sweeps into the great hall.

He cannot remember if he’s left the room at all these past years and he won’t miss this chance. ”

I jump up from the bed, sweeping my arm grandly.

“Owain leaves. He takes a spare horse from Arthur’s party and rides away without looking back.

For another three years he wanders Wales with nothing to his name but a sword and his horse.

There are adventures to be had, and plenty: beasts to slay, other maidens to woo.

But there’s this great, gaping hole in chest”—I press my hand to the same place on myself—“and no glory can fill it. Do you know why?”

Ceridwen’s lips curl up and she catches my eye. I wonder if she knows the answer and why I want her to say it.

“You tell me.” She toys with the corner of her pillow. “You have the silver tongue, Sabrina.”

She must know, I think, and she’s making me work for it.

“Because he had already found his great glory,” I say simply.

“He had found an honorable woman, a home, charges who depend on him. This is the lot of men. It stands at odds with proud natures and roaming spirits, but marriage is a duty that cannot be shirked. So Owain returns to the black castle and takes his wife, and the twenty-three women, back to Arthur’s court.

The women marry knights, bringing joy to the castle and the lives of their husbands, and years later, when the embers are low and Arthur is sleeping, Owain tells the story to another young knight, who gets his sword the next morning and sets out to find a great castle with an old warden and twenty-four beautiful women within. ”

Ceridwen grins. “Men don’t learn, do they?”

I suppose that is the other lesson to take from the tale, but I’m left wondering if she noted the parts about marriage and duty.

I’d be more interested in the haunted castle if the story was told to me, but great journeys like that are out of reach to us.

We’re only girls, after all. We don’t get to go on the grand adventure and learn it’s better for the kingdom if we get married and settle down.

For us, marrying is the adventure, and if I have my way Ceridwen will marry some rich man who can shoulder all our worries.

Dad told me to look after the family, and I will.

I have my duty, just like Owain, and Ceridwen has hers, too.

“Have you thought about getting married?” I ask as I’m putting our brush and ribbons away.

“Was that story supposed to convince me it’s a good idea?” She laughs. “I don’t see much appeal in marrying a brave knight only for him to leave me behind at the castle.”

“What else are you going to do?”

Ceridwen stiffens, crosses her arms. “You think any man in this horrid little town would make a good husband?”

That’s a point to Ceridwen. Too many men died in the mines, and the ones that are left are very young, irresponsible or just plain horrendous. The only desirable bachelor in town is John Branshaw, the earl’s son, and though he has a fancy for Ceridwen, I think he needs a good slap.

“We know how to use the train now. That opens up a whole new world. I…”

I trail off, staring at the wall. I want to let it go, to let Ceridwen carry on in peace, but I can’t. We only have so much money, and everyone needs to help.

“It would keep us afloat,” I tell her. She can try to find a different way to shoulder our newfound burdens, if she wants, but marriage is no more than a business transaction. I’d do it myself, if I could.

Ceridwen’s lips pull up briefly into the smallest, saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “I know. I’ll try.”

“But no one mean,” I assure her. “It’s not worth that much.”

She nods, and I know we’re both thinking of Gran’s long-gone husband.

Again, Ceridwen says, “I’ll try.”

My sister lies back down and I pull the blankets up to her chin—autumn is here, winter already nips at her heels, and I’ve lived enough winters to know what real fear feels like.

I remember Ceridwen last year, cold and shivering though sweat beaded on her brow.

Her eyes darted behind lids that would not open, no matter how much I begged or prayed.

But if she stays here, warm in our room and tucked tight into bed this winter, Ceridwen will be fine.

She’ll live, she’ll be strong enough to marry next summer.

Maybe, I hope in some secret part of my chest, she’ll even get better.

“Gran hasn’t cried, either,” Ceridwen tells me.

I blow out the lone candle, plunging us into dark. “She’s cried enough for one lifetime.”

Ceridwen sniffs and her hand shoots up to wipe her eyes. I pretend I don’t notice.

She drifts off to sleep first, while I lie awake thinking until her ring catches my eye.

It’s sitting between us, taunting me. It’s not fancy.

Whoever gave it to her isn’t rich enough to be her husband.

My hand shoots out and slips the band from hers.

I ram the ring onto my own finger, where it gets stuck tight and fast, but as I hide my hand and the theft beneath my pillow, a smug satisfaction warms my stomach.

I’ll return it in the morning, I will, but in my dreams I get to look like Ceridwen, and pretty things come to me, too.

Cold leaks through the bed in the dark night and my first thought is that Ceridwen is dead. I sit bolt upright, heart hammering. I promised Dad that I would keep her safe. I can’t fail the very night he leaves us.

My guilty, beringed hand jerks toward her side of the bed only to find it—for the first time in my life—empty.