Dragonswood

by Janet Lee Carey

  The current slowed where the river grew wider. In this quieter spot where the glassy surface mirrored the blue sky, I saw him. The will-o’-the-wisps flew off when I did.

  My father stood with his back to me, shin-deep in the river, a net dangling from his left hand. He pointed at the sparkling surface and wriggled his finger. A trout jumped in an arc and fell with a splash. More movements, more jumping, till Onadon chose one he liked, pointed to his net, and the fish leaped in. I leaned on a willow, watching him, a fey man, strong and trim and merry (or so he seemed when he danced), and nothing like the oily blacksmith.

  Speak. Say something. I did not move. I lingered by the willow tree, watching him use his fairy power to fish. The river’s current wedged around his legs making clork, clork sounds. Midges buzzed about his curly head. He swatted a little.

  I stepped away from my tree, opened my mouth, closed it again, my voice caught like a rabbit in a trap. Still, he turned and saw me. Wading to shore, Onadon stood barefoot on the strand while I peered at him from the grassy riverbank. Sand stuck to his wet feet like sparkling boots. I need only jump down and run to him. A sudden shyness held me.

  “Tess.” His voice was deeper and smoother than I’d imagined and filled my cupped ear like cream. More than this, he’d said my name.

  “You are my father, I think?”

  Instead of responding, Onadon clicked his fingers. A boy sprang from the air, startling me.

  The fairies have been watching me all along, Poppy had said, gathering what news they might from the will-o’-the-wisps, or spying invisibly from Dragonswood, waiting for me to grow up and fulfill their wish for me…

  A second child appeared in the shallows. How many more fey folk skulked by the river where my father fished? I whipped my head around, peering through the greenery.

  Onadon spun the net and knotted it above the trout. “Take this to the kitchens, Branki. Hurry on now and earn your due.” Branki fled up the bank and vanished mid-leap, boy, net, fish, and all.

  “You too, Susha. To the kitchens now. Go on.”

  She vanished.

  Father brushed sand from his legs and called his boots. They walked over to him, black and wrinkled from use, the tops waiting, openmouthed. Fingering the sand out from between his toes, he slid them on and climbed the riverbank. “Shall we walk?”

  “Are we alone now?”

  He laughed. “A former fairy king is rarely alone, but you can speak freely.”

  I saw more footprints on the sandbar. How many would follow us?

  Father took the grassy trail along the bank, walking in long, even strides. I matched his pace in my full skirt. The grass blew where the wind tugged. Trees let go their leaves in red and yellow swirls.

  Onadon asked, “How is your mother?”

  My cheeks burned. He could have known the answer to that anytime he wished to, couldn’t he? Why had he stayed away from her, from me, seventeen years?

  “She is well.”

  He glanced at me with a wary look, or was it mocking? “Good for her.”

  I won’t be angry. I don’t want to be. He’ll tell me why he had to stay away so long if I ask him. We turned at the river bend, keeping to the narrow trail along the edge. I cleared my throat. “Is it true fairies do not marry?”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Mistress Morralyn said so last night. I came to the feast. Did you know?”

  “I learned so, but you were gone by then.”

  “I saw you dance with Poppy,” I added bitterly.

  Onadon ran his hand through his hair. The bangs pulled back showed a receding hairline that bespoke his age, though he had no gray. Fey folk live longer than humans. I could not guess his age.

  “Poppy is a lovely girl,” he said.

  “All men think so.”

  He laughed at that, and clapped his hand against a trunk as we passed. “It’s true we do not marry, Tess,” he said, returning to my earlier question.

  “Is that why you abandoned my mother?”

  “Listen to yourself, Tess. ‘My mother,’ you humans say. ‘My father.’ ‘My child.’ Do you own her? Does she own you?”

  “No. But we…” A lump caught in my throat. “We belong together.”

  “Still, you left her.”

  “You left her, Father! I didn’t.” I took a long breath, eyed the river loping and curling below, and tried again. “I had to run.”

  “I know.”

  “How is it you know?”

  “We know much of the goings-on in the human world. I kept an eye on you.”

  “Kept an eye on me? You saw me running from the witch hunter. Then why didn’t you intervene?”

  “I couldn’t intervene. You had to be drawn to us by your fey blood, by your longing. We could not make you come.”

  “I heard voices.”

  “Still, it was up to you to decide to follow them and try to find us.”

  “But the will-o’-the-wisps flew me in.”

  “We could help once you’d made it to the border of DunGarrow. Until then it was up to you.”

  “Some kind of test of strength?”

  “You could call it that. You took a while, but you got here, didn’t you?”

  “What about Poppy?”

  “She reached here before you.”

  “And Tanya?”

  “Inquisitive, aren’t you,” he said with a sidelong glance.

  “Some think so.” The blacksmith slapped my mouth for my outspokenness, but I’d learned to speak more freely with Garth.

  “Tanya would have died if Lord Kahlil hadn’t flown in and rescued her. She stays here, Tess, but she’s of no use to us now.”

  No use to us now? Bitter words. I tried to calm myself, listing to the river talk, the birds calling from the trees as I followed Onadon’s steps. We nearly died on the road. It still hurt to know the fey had watched us and done nothing to help us. Think of something else to say. “Why is it you’re no longer king?”

  “My throne was challenged. Elixis won.”

  “Is a fairy kingship so easily lost?”

  “Easily?” Father gave a little whistle. “There was some danger in it.”

  “So there was a battle?”

  “Not with swords, if that’s what you imagine, Tess, but with magic. Still, one of us could have died.”

  Men and their battles. I thought of the elks I’d seen in Dragonswood clashing horns in mating season. I had to ask, “Could you challenge him again and win back your crown?”

  There were excited sounds behind us, fey folk whispering over my question, I supposed.

  Onadon flipped a stick up with his foot and snapped it. “I could challenge Elixis if I wished.”

  Louder whispering behind us and above us in the trees.

  “I don’t want to,” he added, tossing the broken stick in an arc toward the river. It landed with a gentle splash. The voices fell silent.

  I turned about. By the saints! Couldn’t a girl speak alone with her father? “Who follows us?” I challenged. “Come out. Show yourselves.”

  “Let them be, Tess. Would you leave me unguarded?”

  “Who would harm you?” I felt my waist for my knife, but it wasn’t in its usual place. I’d forgotten I was in my new red gown, not my old black kirtle. My hand dropped empty to my side again, but Father had seen me reaching for a blade.

  “You’re a strong lass, Tess.” He flashed me a smile. Glory! If I could hold such a thing and keep it, I would.

  Onadon went on, “I think now Aisling might have judged wrongly by choosing Poppy for the next Pendragon queen.”

  So their plans for Poppy were true.

  “Aisling didn’t know I was also half fairy,” I suggested confidently.

  “She knew,” he corrected.

  I sped up. My red gown caught in the thorn bushes. Beelzebub! In my urgency to free it, I tore the hem. “Aisling… knew?”

  “She was fairly sure when she met the two of you. But she bided awhile
, healing the man, Tom, and waiting to see.”

  “See what, Father?” I liked saying the word father walking here with him. I’d let all the poison go out of the word now I was free forever from the blacksmith.

  “Aisling knew the half-fey maidens would be drawn to us. That each must follow their yearning and come. She is half fey herself, though more than twice your age.”

  Half fey too? I’d sensed something different about her from the first. Now I knew why.

  Onadon continued, “Aisling was not surprised when Poppy told her how she longed to go north.”

  How his words hurt. “I was drawn to DunGarrow. I’d longed to go deeper into the wood. Only I couldn’t come until my friends were safe and settled.” And because I’d wanted to be with Garth, only I couldn’t say that.

  “You took much on yourself, Tess, looking after them.”

  “Would you have had me abandon them?”

  He didn’t answer that but noted, “You say you were drawn to us, but Aisling saw you willingly ride south, away from us, not toward us.”

  “To fetch Alice! That’s why I went.” I’d heard the voices whispering, Turn around, Tess. You are going the wrong way, but I’d ignored my urges.

  Onadon paused and turned. “Shall we try, then, Tess? It would be interesting if you should win.”

  I looked up, torn hem in hand. “Win what?”

  “What have you been told thus far about why you were drawn here?”

  “I was drawn here—” I could not say the rest. Because I sought you, because I wanted to find my true father once I knew I was fey, to find a place where I might belong.

  He tipped his head in the slanting light. “Do you know anything of our plan?”

  “Only what Poppy said last night.”

  “Very little, then.”

  “Because you are holding back from us.”

  “Because the girl’s head has been full of dance steps and pretty gowns since she came here.”

  I had to smile at that.

  “Tell me what you’ve learned from your friend thus far, Tess.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ONADON CONFIRMED POPPY’S story, even supplying the song “Fey Maiden” in its entirety. He sang it in a rich baritone, the invisible fey trailing us, harmonizing with him so it was as if the river also sang. I knew the first two verses well, but I’d forgotten the last verse until he sang it.

  O bring this day unto us soon,

  And forfeit weapons forged in strife.

  Sheath sword, and talon, angry spell,

  And brethren be for life.

  The fey had high hopes indeed. Onadon smiled at me once when the song was done. I returned the smile politely but not wholeheartedly. A fey maiden marrying a prince, was this the sole reason I’d been born? And Poppy and Tanya as well? Were all men the same, whether human or fairy? Must they all use women for pleasure or some scheme?

  Not all men. Garth had fed us and sheltered us with no gain to himself that I could tell. He risked the ride all the way to Harrowton just to bring Meg her little girl. He didn’t seem at all annoyed to travel with me as a wife, and Alice as his daughter. I stopped myself. Garth wasn’t who he said he was.

  “Well, Tess, what do you think?”

  I didn’t know what to think of my father’s elaborate plan, whether I fit into it or didn’t. I needed time. “How old is the song ‘Fey Maiden’?”

  Onadon pulled a holly leaf. “It wasn’t a song to begin with. We added the melody to the prophecy written by King Ambrosius, who was our fey ruler in King Arthur’s day. But we’d kept it to ourselves for hundreds of years. Merlin believed in it. Still, even the fairies could not see Ambrosius’s vision ever coming to pass until recent times. Wilde Island is the only land whose sovereigns have dragons’ blood. A Pendragon need only marry a half-fey girl for the prophecy to come true.”

  “Why half fey, why not a fairy maiden?”

  “We don’t marry, Tess. We already discussed that.”

  “Not even to wed a future king?”

  “Not even then. It’s not in our blood to marry. Wedlock is for humans. We live free here.”

  Wedlock—a telling word, women were locked in, the husband kept the key. I’d said those words myself. The fey lived free. Hadn’t I always said I wanted that, to live without need of attachment to any man? Because you feared he’d beat you. Beat your children. I sighed.

  “What if that’s what I wish too?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not to marry.”

  “You’re half human, Tess. You’ll long to be some man’s wife. Why not let it be a king?”

  Father tossed his holly leaf and used his finger to guide it higher till it settled in a treetop. I wanted to ask, Did you love my mother? She loved you in a way she can never love my stepfather. Do you have any idea how cruelly you treated her by sending her away?

  He turned to me. “We had hoped Queen Rosalind’s son, Kadmi, might choose a half-fey wife.”

  “Did the fey hope Aisling might be queen?”

  Onadon laughed. “You’ve a quick mind. She might have won Kadmi, but the man chose Lucinda.”

  I was glad to hear the fey hadn’t used magic to force a match, that they’d let King Kadmi choose. “So you had to wait for Kadmi’s son.”

  He nodded. “For Arden to become a man, or Bion if something should happen to his older brother.”

  “Nothing’s happened to Prince Arden, has it?” I said, alarmed.

  “No, the prince is on his way home. A long sea journey to be sure, but he should be here soon.”

  “Poppy said Lord Sackmoore hanged the troubadour who sang ‘Fey Maiden,’ and he’s outlawed the song so no one can sing it now.”

  Onadon kicked a pebble. “The hanging was just one of Lord Sackmoore’s many crimes.”

  He also funds Lady Adela’s bloody witch hunts, I thought. We’d entered a stand of fruit trees growing alongside the river. I peered up, spying what I’d thought were peaches and found I was mistaken. A will-o’-the-wisp flew inside an orb, lighting it up from within. More lit up as wisps entered; some glowed yellow, some blue, some cherry red.

  Seeing my wonder, Onadon said, “Wisp dwellings,” as he plucked a few blackberries.

  The glowing orbs were like no houses I’d ever seen in the human world. The orchard seemed hung with hundreds of colored lanterns. I took in the sight, breathed in the forest air. How I loved it here. Why should I have to leave?

  My father offered me the first handful of berries, a thing the blacksmith never would have done.

  Farther along the trail, Onadon jumped down from the embankment and led me back to the water’s edge. The shore was strewn with round gray rocks the size of goose eggs and larger. I steadied myself to traverse it in my slippers. Reaching the narrow sandbank at the riverside, I ate the berries Father picked, savoring each.

  “I once brought my friends over the wall to pick blackberries in Dragonswood.”

  Onadon popped two into his mouth. “You were seen that day.”

  I nodded. “A dragon with a fey rider came to boot the blacksmith and the leech out of the wood,” I said with some delight. I appreciated how dragons and fey worked together guarding their sanctuary.

  “Do the dragons want a half-fey queen?” I asked.

  “This is their wood as much as ours.” Onadon skipped a stone along the surface. “You know they live long, more than a thousand years, and they are mighty creatures all. But dragons have one or two clutches at most in their lifetime, and that’s if they even find a mate. Their kind would have died out without this stronghold. Here they have caves to raise their young in safety, and a hunting range expansive enough for such large creatures to survive.”

  I knew it was true. Hadn’t Grandfather told me? Hadn’t I felt it myself? The last of their kind were mostly here on our island, in the safety of Dragonswood and some caves on our smaller sister island, Dragon’s Keep. Some renegade red dragons were said to live far south on Mo
unt Uther. The live volcano was much too fiery a place for men. “The red breed?” I asked.

  “They’re few enough. They keep to themselves.”

  “And the fey?”

  My father turned. “You’ve seen us, Tess. By looks alone you must have noticed we’ve come here from every corner of the world. The fairy folk have been driven out of every land no less than the dragons. But Wilde Island was ours long before England conquered it. We returned home thanks to Queen Rosalind.”

  “The Pendragons still protect you.” I knew King Kadmi had done his best to guard the wood.

  “Our hope is less secure with each new generation. Prince Arden was never as fond of dragons or fey as his younger brother and sister.”

  Princess Augusta, the one with scaly face and dragon eyes. Father didn’t notice my shiver.

  “We’ll see where he stands once he’s crowned. Until then, Lord Sackmoore and those like him want to reclaim Dragonswood. One of Sackmoore’s troops felled part of the boundary wall out along our western border. Armed villagers raced in, killing game and cutting trees.”

  “When?”

  “Just days ago.” Onadon stared at the water’s surface. Shadows from the trees on the far side sent dark spires across the river that wavered in the swift current. I knew my stepfather would have relished such a raid, stealing in to kill a deer and fell the trees so he’d have venison for his table, free firewood for his blacksmith forge.

  “They tried to keep the raid secret, breeching the wall in the west where there are fewer folk. But it’s only the beginning. Plenty of men want the walls down.”

  I told him of the riot I’d seen, the men racing into Dragonswood shouting Meat! Meat! after Lord Sackmoore issued the grain tax.

  He nodded. “I’d heard of it.”

  “What will you do?”

  Onadon skipped another rock, but he was angry; the rock bounced but once before it sank. “Rebuild the walls when they’re breached. Double our patrols.”

  “And you have magic,” I reminded.

  “That we do, but too many men breach our walls and come to take what’s ours. How many do we turn to Treegrims or send home fey-struck before the whole island turns against us?”