Page 37 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

G ashes line the fields and grasses, great claw marks of upturned earth.

Small shrines are being assembled around the borders of the trees.

I move past them numbly, toeing at the loose soil.

It took each and every one of us hours to venture into the sunlight, and I doubt anyone else received much sleep.

The rest of my night was plagued with more dreams, Blain and Aidyn and different faces of everyone I’ve ever known morphing together. I rub my eyes.

Niall wanders near me, watching the closest shrine.

We’ve never had much to offer Faerie. A small village hasn’t much to give, not to such creatures, but we try.

We saw the fae drag the monsters away with our own eyes, and suddenly the trees are lined with more offerings than I’ve seen in my lifetime—dozens of little piles of stones with scraps of food and pretty cloth.

A piece of Una’s lace sits beneath the stone of the nearest one.

Last night shall be added to the hundreds of stories that exist in our minds, yet another time a faerie monster came from the trees and was chased away by the other creatures of its kind.

Of all our myths and tales that have become one being, one mist lying over this valley—last night will, for a time, be a full tale for parents to tell their children when warning not to tread too close to the woods of Faerie.

If I could force my legs to move correctly, I’d run straight into the trees.

It hardly seems right to stand here, let alone go farther. A few of the men are taking their farming hoes and shovels and filling in the gashes of claws. There’s no reason to, not in the fields where we don’t plant and rarely walk, but they wish for no reminders.

The woman’s song still sits in my ears.

“ Una says you saw something,” Niall murmurs, leaning his arm against mine. “ I looked out the window but only heard the screaming. Barking.” He shivers.

“ I climbed onto the roof,” I mumble, voice faraway, as if words are incorrect in the quiet morning. “ I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t help it. There was a hound. They cut it to pieces.”

“ Aidyn? ” he asks, and the sound of his name spoken aloud startles me.

“ No, most definitely not. A woman. There was a man with her... It didn’t look like him at all.”

“ You could tell in the dark? From that distance?”

I consider Aidyn’s shape, the slope of his shoulders, the slight sideways tilt of him as he finds different ways to lean casually against his walking stick, the way he carries himself. “ I could tell.”

He nods, slumping, perhaps relieved the creature I have been spending so much time with is not one of the wild monsters who appeared among the trees to drag the hounds away.

“ The woman,” I say, aware of Emma glancing our way. I’m surprised she joined in on the efforts along the forest edge, but perhaps she is the most likely to do so, as I am. “ I feel I have seen her before, but I could not have; Aidyn is the first I ever met.”

Niall glances sidelong at me, a frown bunching his eyebrows. “ Perhaps it is only the magic? Who knows how the fair folk affect us. Only Emma’s ever met one. Well, other than...”

He shrugs, and I’m glad he doesn’t mention it. Though my friendship with Aidyn is perhaps the only reason the Keepers appeared to chase the hounds away, I don’t believe anyone should know.

I’m almost surprised they came from their borders to help—I wonder how Aidyn has taken this development.

Given how irritated he appeared when they did not first arrive at his calling, I’d suspect him to be pleased.

But I am not entirely certain how he should feel when calling to his kin for help while hiding away in an old library at the same time.

Not that I suspect he’ll explain it to me, but I’m more determined to ask.

Emma is looking at me still.

Even her interactions with fae are funny little things of myth in our village, more a gossip that started long before I was born than any fact or significant situation.

She does not appear terribly flustered by last night’s circumstances.

When Niall returns to his parents, I wander Emma’s way.

She hasn’t taken her eyes off me and raises her brows when I get close.

I don’t very much know what to do, but my own grandparents are no longer with us—I hug her about the shoulders.

She is shorter than me by some means, so it’s an easy task.

She huffs a little, amused, patting my back.

“ What did you see?” she asks.

Releasing her, I repeat in low tones what I told both Niall and Una. We are a ways from the group, but I wish for my words to be private. Una’s eyes stay fixed on me across the grass, but I don’t expect her to stop staring for a long while.

“ Did you see anything?” I ask.

“ No,” she muses, pulling her shawl about her even though it’s warm. “ I know better than to be climbing onto roofs.”

She gives me a dry gaze, and I look at my feet, toes bare and dirty.

“ Are you going back in?”

For no good reason, the question startles me. “ Probably. Not today.”

I don’t bother asking why she wishes to know—it’s rather obvious I’ve been wandering the woods and will be more obvious to her I’ve been going into Faerie.

I glance at the path through the village, toward the opposite end where, if I were to walk far enough, I would pass where the wildcat lay.

Perhaps now it is gone. I hope they’ve done for it whatever fae do for one another in death.

“ Hmm,” she says in a way the reminds me all at once of Aidyn.

I follow her gaze through the village, where I was just looking, at a few wagons making their way down the path. Midsummer approaches. I’d forgotten. Blain may very well be with them, since he and his relatives appear to be nosing their way back into my life.

You know what happens to silly girls who like to venture into Faerie. Their clothes are torn as their minds. Maybe I should protect you—

My nose wrinkles before I can wipe the look off my face. Emma is staring at me deadpan.

I attempt a smile.

“ Would you like me to cane him?”

I blink. “ Excuse me? ”

“ Your old admirer,” she says mildly, giving her walking stick a shake. “ Would you like me to hit him? No one will mind. I’m old.”

I imagine Aidyn giving the man a good smack with his own cane, and I don’t know which scenario I’m laughing at as I giggle nervously into my palm.

“ No... Well, I mean...” Covering my face with my hands, I tell her, “ Don’t suggest such things to me.”

Emma shrugs, unbothered.

“ I should check on my animals,” I mumble, not daring to look at her scheming expression. “ I’ll be by later and cook you something?”

“ If you’d like. Bring your other two ducklings. They’re not subtle, you know.”

Whipping my head around to glance at Una and Niall, then back at Emma, I manage to close my mouth. “ They’re trying.”

“ Not well. Lucky for them, everyone in this village is a little too innocent for their own good.”

I snort too loudly, glancing at the shrines with their ribbon scraps and eggshells and little bits of honey combs in jars. It seems incorrect to laugh so close to the border with all that happened the night before and all that is being set up in honor this morning.

“ Did it frighten you?” I ask softly, not knowing why. Perhaps because she is the only other who has seen the same side of the woods, and I both feel as if I should not be so afraid as I am and much more terrified as to never step foot within the trees again, neither alone nor with another.

I have been in the woods with another many times now.

Emma regards me for a long moment. “ Yes. ”

I nod and give her another quick hug before heading for home, arms around myself, glancing at the woods and feeling chill in the hot summer day. Niall trots after me, apparently not intent on letting me leave his sight, hands in his pockets but bumping his arm into mine. I’m glad for it.

It’s cooler than yesterday, but we are not fully into the warmest weeks of the year. Some spring chill still makes itself known every now and again. The air smells of rain.

Aidyn, what are you doing right now?

Perhaps he needs help.

Probably not from me, but I am the only one he appears to have.

Unless he left with his kin.

He would not, would he? Not without saying goodbye.

Niall heads to the chicken coop, casting me a glance as if he’s worried I’ll run off into the woods. I match his mild glare, then make a face, disappearing into the barn as dramatically as I can while he scoffs.

Our cow is lowing to be milked, and I trot in, mumbling, “ Sorry, sorry,” under my breath.

She’s giving too much milk for me to drink—I’ll bring some to Emma, or to Olivia, since I’ve been eating her food more than I should.

She seems happy to let me in on their stores as long as I’m the one cooking for hours.

We are both content with the arrangement.

Still, I should bring her today’s eggs as well, and whatever our garden spits up this early in the year.

It is not as if I will be bringing them to Aidyn today. My stomach twists.

I am doing as he instructed; there is no reason to feel guilty. It has not been a week yet, after all. If I hadn’t had such a fright, I might’ve ignored him and been sprinting off into the trees by now, eyes closed, a basket of food in hand.

“ Coward,” I mutter, glaring at the frothing milk as it splashes into the pail. It isn’t a very convincing argument, even to myself. “ He told you to stay a week, and he knows better. There’s no reason not to do as he says—”

“ You still talk to yourself, I see.”

I jump up, knocking the stool aside. Primrose moos and bumps her flank into me in complaint.