SWNOVELS Prince of Then: Chapter 2
Holly
enfolds my village is not only my oldest friend but has an abundance of comfrey, my favorite herb for treating burns and swellings. This morning, I’ve gathered so much that its leaves spill from my basket, obscuring the plants resting beneath it—spotted St John’s Wort to keep the devil from our door and foxglove for my mother’s weak heart.
On the whole, it has been a successful foraging trip, but I cannot leave the forest until I have the root that eases Mother’s nerves and brings her restful sleep, which means I must go deeper into the woods to where a patch of wild valerian grows in the damp soil near the river’s edge.
With the sun warming my shoulders, I cut through tangled vegetation and hasten down a gentle slope, calling greetings to robins singing from gnarled branches.
It’s a perfect spring day, yet worry dampens my mood. My sweet, gentle mother grows weaker with each day that passes, and when I look into her wise gray eyes, it’s clear she knows she’s running out of time.
“It’s all right, my darling Holly,” she told me this morning. “We’ll meet again one day in the Otherworld.”
A comforting notion, but in reality, a gigantic pile of pigs’ swill.
As the daughter of the village wise woman, I have faith in the healing power of plants and herbs and respect the spirits that imbue them, but I don’t believe in a faery tale land beyond the grave where our loved ones wait joyously for us to join them.
Life is too unfair.
With all that Mother has suffered—my father’s death in a riding accident when I was a babe, losing her two sons to malignant fevers three years later, the constant bellyache of poverty—it’s beyond me how she still believes that with her last breath, she’ll be transported to some misty island to dance and feast alongside ancient kings and queens forevermore.
All Mother has left in the world are her daughters; me and my older sister, Rose. Not that good-hearted Rose is much help since her main interests are flirting with her beau, Liam, and collecting pretty threads and ribbons to decorate her well-worn gowns. These pursuits occupy her days and seem to satisfy her, but I can’t imagine a greater waste of time than kissing the baker’s son in the storeroom for an entire afternoon.
The young men of our village are loud and foolish and rarely speak a sensible word. My black hen, Nellie, has more sense than all of them put together, so I count myself lucky that whenever I stand next to Rose, most don’t spare me a second glance.
The trees begin to thin out, a bright sail of blue sky appearing above thin alder branches as I gather my damp skirts in my fist and pick my way down a hill to a section of boggy grass and wildflowers near the riverbank. Squinting in the dappled light, I peer around the lush vegetation, spying the white flower heads of my quarry above a patch of wild carrot and hemlock.
I hurry over, pick a leaf, and crush it between my fingers, a strong earthy smell releasing. Bending, I put my basket on the ground and harvest the valerian plant, roots and all.
A crack sounds, followed by a high-pitched piping noise, the leaves to my right shaking as if an animal passes through the scrub, then a strange, heavy silence falls over the forest.
I glance around the gold-lit trees, listening for movement. If a bird or a creature is injured, I aim to find it, take it home, and nurse it back to health.
A silver mist appears from nowhere, swirling along the forest floor. It eddies and forms a thick column, a tall blonde woman stepping out of it—a young noble lady by the fine fabric of her billowing white dress and clear, glowing skin.
“Good morning,” I say, covering my shock at her sudden appearance with a friendly smile.
She gives me a brilliant smile back, and a silver aura vibrates around her body as if she’s back lit by bright sunshine. But that doesn’t make sense—the sun is behind me, not her.
“Good day, child,” she says. “How fortunate I am to meet you here today.”
Child? I am almost twenty years old. Perhaps her eyesight is defective.
“I’m very glad to find you passing. I need your assistance. My sister has fallen, and I cannot manage alone. Your basket is full of healing herbs, so I assume you are the type who longs to help others. Assist me and your efforts will be rewarded with something all humans seek but cannot easily find.” A graceful arm beckons me forward.
This woman speaks strangely, which makes me wonder if she’s a wealthy traveler from a town very far from ours and perhaps a poet or philosopher. The ways of the rich are a mystery, but if I help her sister, she may pay in gold coin that will see us through next winter.
“Do you live nearby?” I ask. “Or have you a cart waiting?”
The road back to the village is long, and there aren’t any houses on this side of the forest. Between the two of us, we won’t be able to move her sister, but I can ease her pain at least before going for burlier help.
“No, girl, I live far from here in another time and place. My sister has arranged return transport but needs assistance to rise.”
I wonder if this sister might have fallen and hurt her head. She sounds moonstruck and is possibly mad. Regardless, I will never refuse to help the injured, so I follow the white lady into a small clearing.
She links her arm through mine as we walk. “See over there? My sister rests beyond the hawthorn tree.”
A woman lies under a dark cloak, a cloud of white hair and long limbs protruding from the material.
“Yes, I see her.”
The injured girl sits up, then stands, her movements slow and graceful. Brushing leaves from her clothes, she walks toward me, her bearing regal, the light behind her dazzling, and her steps too sure to be injured.
A cold tendril of fear curls through my stomach as I realize I’ve made a terrible error of judgment.
The woman’s smile is wide, but her dark eyes glitter with something inhuman and frightening. She looks unhinged, not entirely normal, and I have a sinking feeling that following them into this glade was not only a silly mistake, but a fatal one.
Rose always warned me that my desire to save all creatures, be they vicious or friendly, would be the death of me. Right now, I really hate to think she might have been correct.
“Hello,” I say as I take two steps backward, stumbling over stones. “How is your ankle? Are you in much pain?”
Her laughter echoes through the trees. “Thank you for coming. Look down and check the path you tread upon.”
“Pardon?” My gaze drops to my brown boots positioned in the middle of a ring of gilled, white-capped mushrooms that glow beneath the hawthorn tree. A faery tree. Fear tightens my throat muscles.
Still smiling, the lady offers her hand. “Come, my name is Ether. You can trust me. I will ensure you arrive safely.”
“Arrive? Arrive where? I can’t leave here.”
“Talamh Cúig, the Land of Five. A girl like you is needed, and what is owed must be paid.”
Paid? Good grief, what nonsense this demented woman speaks. My heart pounds as I shake my head and try to lift my feet to flee for my life—first one foot and then the other—but my boots are stuck in the mud and I cannot move an inch.
“I’m trapped,” I say, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to tamp down panic.
“Yes,” she says calmly, pointing at the circle of mushrooms. “Indeed, you are.”
Unlike most residents of my village, I don’t believe in the stories of faeries dancing in the moonlight. I’m practical minded, and most of my fears are based in reality—the pain of hunger, the grief of losing a loved one. But I do believe in humoring lunatics if it will keep them calm and buy me time to escape their delusions.
“But the ring is broken, you see? When I entered it, I trampled on an edge. Doesn’t that break its power? You have no authority to take me anywhere. And besides, my mother is sick and needs me to return home.”
“It matters not, human. Our hawthorn tree secures the boundary of the sacred circle, and your mother’s time is nearly done. There is not a herb or tincture in the seven realms that could divert her from her course.”
Eyes shining with as much compassion as flat, black stones are paired with a soothing smile. She touches my cloak, hand delving underneath the rough material until she finds bare skin at the base of my throat. This close, she is beyond beautiful. Unearthly. But her grip is merciless and choking.
As her fingers squeeze my neck, the birds begin to chirp, the song wild and frantic.
The lady’s hand tightens.
I cough but find I have no strength to fight. My vision darkens, sweat beading my skin. “Please… My mother…”
Then the voice of the first lady who approached me, the golden sister, wafts over me. “The girl is not as horrible to behold as I would wish but certainly no great beauty. She will do fine. The bargain I made was a good one. What is your name, girl?”
My name… my name.
What is my name?
I do not know it.
Perhaps I never had one.
The light grows dimmer, and the other sister speaks. “Aer, are you absolutely certain this girl is the one you seek? I would not like to seize the wrong mortal.”
Nausea overtakes me, darkness unfurling in my mind and swallowing me whole, then a wash of starlight bathing me as I fall into a spinning tunnel.
Down.
Down.
Down.
White light explodes inside my head, and I remember… I remember who I am. “Holly,” I whisper. “My name is Holly…”
“Oh, yes, Sister,” the lady called Aer says. “She’s most definitely the one.”
The wave of blackness crests, slips over my head, and pulls me under, drowning me in midnight.
And then I’m no longer Holly.
I’m no one.
No one at all.