Page 8 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

y celwyddog yn y goeden

(THE LIAR IN THE TREE)

We part at the bridge. It’s little more than a few rocks that have landed too close together, wobbling beneath my feet and coated with enough algae to make each step unpleasantly slippery. Morgen bobs in the water and points a webbed hand toward the dark wall of trees.

“The King’s Road is a few minutes’ walk that way. Stay on it. You’ll be at the court in a day’s time, providing you stop and rest just the once. The king will then send you on to Y Lle Tywyll.”

Her other hand shoots up and clasps my boot. I think she’s going to pull me in, but when I look down, she only stares up at me with wide, pale eyes.

“She won’t be far ahead. You must go after her.”

That part of my task had been unspoken. I knew from the moment Morgen said Ceridwen had taken this stupid challenge I would be going in after her.

“Bring her back to me.”

I can’t help the quizzical look I give Morgen, and affront flickers over her face.

She really believes that Ceridwen will return to her and live this life they’ve planned.

I could almost laugh. There’s no way I’ll let Ceridwen stay here.

I tell myself it’s because she’s too ill and Gran needs her, but a twisting, selfish part of me knows it’s because I cannot bear to part with her.

Certainly not if it gets her something I’ve always wanted, while I’m left behind.

“I will,” I lie.

Morgen beams, believing me wholeheartedly even though I lied to her mere moments ago and got thoroughly caught. Clearly, no one has ever lied to her before today.

I’m delighted to be the first.

I cross the haphazard bridge and look back once I’m on dry land. Morgen watches me, unblinking, and though I turn quickly I know she’s staring until I disappear into the trees and take her last tie to Ceridwen with me.

Of course, I don’t go far. I make it deep into the woods, then immediately drop onto the nearest pile of sturdy-looking roots and stare, dumbly, into nothing.

Something brushes against my skirt and I yank it, expecting a mouse to have scampered by, but there’s nothing beside me.

Only disturbed leaves, as if something had slipped past unseen.

This is Eu gwlad, there’s worse than mice here. I shiver at the thought. Eu gwlad—their country. Their land, not mine. This is not the Wales that I know.

Fairies. My sister, away with the fairies. I laugh, then cover my mouth, trying to trap the sound. It carries further than I intended anyway.

“What’s so funny?”

I yelp and launch away from the tree.

A man reclines on a low, thick branch, swinging one leg just above my head. He wasn’t there when I sat down and I should’ve heard his arrival—not to mention his scrambling up the tree.

“I was already here.” He leers over the branch, answering a question I haven’t asked. “But really—what’s so funny, little mouse?”

He is gangly, like his limbs have been stretched on a rack, and his clothes are bizarre.

He wears puffed sleeves and equally puffy breeches in a violent purple, with an exposed corset at his waist. Stockings cover oddly bowed legs, ending in clawed paws that have burst through the thin silk.

His face is strangely human, framed by heavy muttonchops.

His eyes are covered by purple-tinted glasses, creating a void at the center of his otherwise unremarkable features.

A floppy hat sits at an odd angle atop his shaggy reddish hair, and alert, wolflike ears protrude from the felt.

When he grins, I see that his incisors are gold and far too long.

He could be a pwca. Morgen warned me that they hunt nearby.

I have only my father’s tales and untested rules to go by.

The tylwyth teg like games. The tylwyth teg bestow gifts and favors that twist themselves into curses when brought into the light.

They are childlike in their cruelty and aimless in their ambitions.

They covet beautiful mortals and steal them away—no wonder they called out to Ceridwen and not me—but, most importantly, the tylwyth teg want your name.

It binds you to them, lets them call upon you and make you do their bidding.

“I… was laughing at my own stupidity.” I carefully edge away.

“Oh?”

“Yes.” I glance around for a lie and find it on my hand. “See this?” I wave Ceridwen’s ring at him. “It’s iron. A sharp thing. I forgot to take it off when I came into Gwlad y Tylwyth Teg and now no one will talk to me. You’re the very first, sir.”

“It does smell rather… rancid.” His nostrils flare. “Take it off, then, mouse.”

“I can’t,” I counter. “It’s stuck. Could you help me take it off—Oh, you can’t touch iron, can you?”

In one deft motion he leaps down from the tree and lands right before me. There are three steps between us and for every move I make to get away, he comes closer. He smells like old dirt and rotten leaves. If Morgen is right, the pwca must want me to see him—must want something from me.

“I’ve seen you before,” he says, after sizing me up.

“I have one of those faces.”

“So does your sister.”

My eyes widen against my will and his lip curls on one side.

“My next guess was cousin.” He flicks a leaf from his shoulder.

Morgen’s words come back to my ears: a trickster led my sister astray. Could it have been him?

“I’m only surprised because I had a sister many years ago, but she died,” I lie.

The man looks me up and down, a bemused smile on his lips, and I wonder if fairies tell their children tales of tricky humans who lie and cheat and steal and take advantage of their golden honesty.

“Let’s play a game,” he says. “I’ll ask a question and if you get it right, I’ll tell you where your not-sister went.”

Likely story.

“I’m not interested.” I take another step back.

“I think you are.”

“Shows what you know.”

He says nothing, only lets his smile widen as he fixates on my face. We stand still as mountains, until he claps. “Let us begin—”

I turn on my heel and walk away. I don’t want this creature where I can’t see him, but I certainly don’t need any more attention from him, either.

“‘My first denotes affliction’”—he addresses me as if I’m not walking away—“‘which my second is destined to feel. My whole is the best antidote, that affliction to soften and heal.’”

I twitch and clench my fists. Hot anger creeps up my throat.

That’s not even a good riddle!

I glance back and find him still grinning at me like a bedlamite, like he’s won a prize already.

“That’s ridiculous.” I carry on my way.

“Only because you can’t solve it.”

I twitch again, and I know I should keep walking, I’m sure of it—but I don’t. I snap around and cross my arms, fixing him with the sort of ridiculing, lip-curling look I reserve for the boys in town.

“The answer is ‘woman,’” I snap. “And not only is it a stupid riddle, you got it from Emma by Miss Austen.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I’ve never met a Miss Austen.”

“Well, clearly you have.” I throw my arms wide. “See? You’re no smarter than I am. We’ve read the same books, and you’re a pwca and I left school at twelve, so, really, I think that makes you stupider than me.”

I turn away, but he’s in front of me. “But the game is just becoming fun.”

“It’s rather boring, actually.” I sidestep; he follows me like a hawk to a field mouse.

“Oh, come now, I seldom meet anyone even half as smart as I.” He clicks his fingers in my face. “‘What do you own, but everyone else uses?’”

“My name,” I reply sharply. “And you can’t have it.”

“Just one more—”

I back away. Too late I realize I’m doing exactly what he wants. In needing to show off, I’ve trapped myself in this conversation.

“Your game is boring.”

“‘You measure my life in hours,’” he says. “‘I serve you by expiring.’”

My foot collides with something hard, and I glance down to find a seam of shiny black stone protruding from the ground. It’s dark as pitch and bleeding into the earth, out of place.

“‘I’m quick when I’m thin and slow when I’m fat,’” the pwca continues, forcing my eyes back to his face. “‘The wind is my enemy.’ What is it, mouse?”

I square my jaw and avoid looking into his purple spectacles. “I’m not telling you.”

“You don’t know.” He creeps ever closer, until the thin strip of dark stone is all that separates us.

“I do.” Sweat builds on my palms and dampens my dress.

Measured by hours, useless when it’s done. At odds with wind. The answer is as obvious as all the rest.

A candle.

But I don’t tell him. I merely look up, hold his gaze and shrug. “It’s not my fault your riddles are so easy that it’s insulting to answer them. What kind of pwca are you, anyway?”

He tilts his head, his smile widening to a show of teeth. And the teeth begin to sharpen.

“The usual kind,” he says, and launches for me.

I run, but his legs are longer, longer than before and certainly longer than mine. He’s on me in seconds and the hand that locks around my neck is covered in sooty fur. I shriek and yank away, breaking from his grip. I dash ahead a few paces. I don’t get far.

The inhuman creature grabs for me again and sends me crashing to the ground.

I land on my front. I barely have time to scramble to my knees when the pwca seizes my shoulders and twists me to face him.

He’s no longer a man as he looms over me, a knee pressing down into my chest, pinning me in place.

His body is like an overgrown monkey’s but his face is that of a ravenous dog.

The glasses have tumbled off his snout, revealing slitted amber eyes.

The face contorts, the ears prick—and the long-toothed mouth salivates over me.

I kick my legs violently but a coiling black tail wraps around them and ties them tight.

“Clever girls should know not to challenge their betters,” he rasps.

If he wanted to anger me he picked the perfect words.

My already bruised fist balls, as it always seems to do around my betters, and I swing it straight under his chin, knocking his head up.

The pwca’s surprise gives me a second to scramble back, but my legs are still trapped.

He laughs, the manic sound echoing through the trees.

His jaw opens slowly, then unhinges entirely.

The wide chasm reveals teeth stained with blood, and hair stuck between the gaps.

I thrash against him, beating my arms and legs until I’m kicking up dry dirt and moss. If he’s going to kill me, I’m not going easily.

A spray of warm blood lands on my forehead and, for a moment, I assume it’s my own.

But the pwca has stilled.

His grip goes limp as a blade shoves its way through his long neck.

My eyes threaten to pop from my head and the blade recedes slowly, until the pwca falls upon me, his blood gushing over my face.

I lay there, chest heaving, until it hits me that a dead thing currently lies over me.

I let out a squeak of disgust and shove it hard to the side, but it’s too heavy to move completely and I have to wriggle out from beneath it, staining the entire front of my coat.

I push myself to my feet as fast as I can and find myself standing opposite a beautiful young man, with only a corpse between us.

“Well!” says the fairy boy with perfect freckles and moonlit hair, beaming. “That was fun!”