by Ameriie
Marigold. Sweat sealed his hair to his brow. His flesh ached for her touch. Her absence tore at his soul, leaving a wound where his heart had been.
Short breaths cut between his lips. His fingers were stiff on the buttons of his waistcoat, but he didn’t call for a servant. No one was to know that he had left the house.
His head was throbbing. Why, why did it have to be her? How had Marigold caught the eye of the Erl-queen? She was quiet as a doll, and delicate, too, more of a household spirit than a living girl. Even he would never have noticed her had George, her elder half brother, not shown her to him. He had been hers from that first moment, when he had seen her through the window of the Sinnetts’ house. She had been kneeling beside the stove in the kitchen, scrubbing the floor with care, never rushing in her work. Her hair had been tumbling from its cap, obscuring most of her face, and her hands had been raw.
That hiddenness about her, the sense that she could never be known, was what made her such a desirable maid. Employers did not like to know their servants as people—it was an uncomfortable thing, to imagine them as more than silent pairs of hands—but he had known her. He had known her more times than he could count. And every time had been a risk. Forbidden in the eyes of proper society.
His gaze had cast a light on her, elevated her from obscure to divine, and, oh, he had worshipped her. Her skin had been his altar; her lips, his confession.
Yet there had been other eyes on her, too, watching from the deep forests of Britain.
Isaac walked to the chest at the end of his bed. Inside was his sword, polished to a star-bright gleam. He would have Marigold back, and he would have her tonight—even if it meant taking her from the Erl-queen by force. Even if it meant facing whatever lay in the Forest of Erl, which swallowed all who entered it.
There was no enchantment on the weapon. There was no need for that. The Erl-queen feared steel. And iron, and clockwork. It was why she abhorred industry and, by extension, the industrious men with whom she shared her land.
His fingers skimmed the blade; he caught his own eye in it. Why had the foul creature wanted her, of all people? Why his Marigold? She was sixteen, far older than the girls the Erl-queen usually took, but they did say that her son had an eye for human women. Rumor had it that he frequented London’s brothels, disguised as a man—but Marigold was no common whore. She would never have been unfaithful to him, never. She loved him—she had said so. No virtuous woman would allow an erl to court her, in any case, knowing their insatiable lust for mortal captives of the fairer sex. The Erl-queen’s son might have known who she was, but she could not have known him.
His heart was all aquiver. In the coffeehouses and supper rooms of London, it was whispered that the Erl-queen’s son was taller than any natural man. Instead of teeth, there were thorns in his mouth, hidden behind petal lips. His ears were gently pointed, like the tips of willow leaves. The moon was always in his hair. He moved like water, and his eyes were black through, without so much as a glimpse of white. They glistened in a face as ancient as Stonehenge.
They said Marigold had wept when Queen Victoria agreed to the exchange. That she had begged for mercy. Heartsick, Isaac closed his eyes. She must be terrified. She was terrified of almost everything in the world. And he, the man she loved, the man she trusted, had let that Erl-prince steal her away.
“Good evening, Isaac.”
Sharply, he turned. When he saw the familiar smile, so like hers, he let out his breath.
“George,” he said, and smiled back. “My friend.”
George Beath stood in the doorway. Tall and fine of feature, with a head of golden curls he must have purloined from an angel, he might have been the most eligible bachelor in London if not for his name—Beath, a name that reeked of scandal. Everyone with ears knew about his late father’s affair and the child he had brought back from India. His wife had chosen to take poison rather than live with the shame of his infidelity, and the man himself had soon followed her to the grave. George had been six years old at the time.
Now he was nineteen, and although he shared blood with Marigold, he was nothing like her physically. Marigold took very much after her mother; he took after his. Where she was dark and brittle, George was broad-shouldered and fair as a snowdrop. His clothes were always a little behind the fashion, and he often wore the same attire for several days at a time.
Isaac had long since forgotten to mind. Londoners had remarkable memories when it came to scandal, but George Beath was his dearest friend and had helped him countless times throughout their three-year acquaintance.
“The Erl-queen has had my sister for long enough.” George showed him his pistol. “Let us teach her what we do to thieves in England.”
Isaac nodded silently.
“You look pale.” George clapped him on the back. “Better have a little brandy before we leave. Marigold won’t want a milksop saving her from the Erl-queen, will she?”
“No. Yes, of course. But I shan’t need brandy.”
“Come, now, Ise. We all need a little brandy now and then.”
“No. Thank you, but no. My head must be clear.” He risked a glance at George and found a look of faint disappointment on his face. How he hated to turn down his counsel. “We are about to enter the Erl-queen’s lands,” he said with a nervous laugh. “And I doubt very much that her warriors drink brandy before battle.”
“Oh, of course they do—or some preternatural cousin of it, in any case. Elves are hedonists.” George took his hip flask from his coat. There were shadows under his eyes, mirrors of the ones beneath his own. “Come. Her Majesty will forget about the treaty once her nemesis is defeated. Put some fire in your belly.”
The hip flask was presented a second time. Isaac looked at it weakly before gulping a little. It burned him to the navel.
He had never cared for brandy.
“How can you be so certain?” Already, he felt light-headed. “Even if Queen Victoria remains ignorant of our plan, the Erl-queen will know. They say she can feel every movement in every forest. She knew as soon as Princess Alice entered.”
“Princess Alice was not armed with steel.” George grasped his shoulder. “You are no child. You are no woman. You will be the one to slay the Erl-creature, Ise. For Marigold. You will be a hero of the empire, and to her, you will be king of it.”
A handkerchief was presented. Isaac used it to smudge the perspiration from his temples.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes. For Marigold.”
George extinguished the oil lamp before he peeled apart the curtains and gazed at the street. Now the only light in the house was from the streetlamp outside.
“The cab is waiting for us at the end of Gower Street. Remember,” George said, “when we arrive, we must resist the sounds of the forest. Everything there is a siren call.” He faced Isaac with a weary smile, a smile that promised an end to their suffering. His eyes were forget-me-not blue, so unlike hers. “By dawn, Marigold will be back in your arms. Imagine how much more she’ll love you.”
George always filled him with such surety. Isaac glanced at the glass one more time, feeling a streamlet of warmth in his blood. His sword was at his side, and he wore a simple black coat over his clothing, the better to disguise himself in the shadows of the forest. He had turned eighteen in April, but for the first time in his life, it seemed to him that a man was looking back.
Princess Alice had disappeared from a forest in Scotland, where the royal family had been staying at the time, but the Erl-queen’s territory was in all forests. It was what had been agreed to when the first railway had been built, when the Erl-queen began to steal the girls in revenge for the destruction of the natural world, for the vapors and the blackened trees and the scars of industry. The elves preferred to dwell in savage ignorance than embrace the nineteenth century. It was said that their queen felt every footstep in every forest in the country, as closely as a man felt the heartbeat in his chest.
“Tell me,” Isaac ventured, o
nce they were safely ensconced in the hansom cab, “is it true what Princess Alice said when she returned?”
George sighed. “The child is a fool. The Erl-queen’s feasts must have rotted her mind.”
“But it is true.”
His friend looked through the window. All was quiet on the streets of London.
“So a servant told me,” he finally said. “The princess was weeping when she returned. She made it perfectly clear to her mother that she did not want to be back with her family. That she wanted to stay with ‘the other queen of England.’ ”
Isaac shivered. “Why do you suppose the child would have wanted to stay with the elves?”
“Why, I just told you, Ise. The Erl-queen’s feasts. She lures the children with crumbs of seedcake, and once they eat, they are bewitched. That’s why she only takes girls, you see.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“A boy is far less likely to be tempted by cake. Boys think. Present a female child with something pretty or sweet, and she’ll take it without question.” He shook his head pityingly. “Did you notice that the Erl-queen always sends her son to make her bargains? She knows that sons can’t be so easily tricked.”
It must be true if George believed it, though Isaac had been fond of seedcake himself as a child and would probably have followed a trail of it anywhere. He had no sisters to measure himself against, but his mother adored purposeless knickknacks, and it was true that a boy had never been taken by the Erl-queen, and it had always been easy to soothe Marigold with little trinkets . . . When she had been most fretful, afraid that she would be ruined if he left her, a pendant or a comb would ease her mind. Girls, it seemed, were just like magpies.
Had the Erl-queen’s son offered her more than a comb—some treasure of the forest?
No, he must not think of Marigold with that beast.
“Still,” Isaac said, if only to divert his mind, “for the princess to say to her own mother—”
“Her Majesty was aghast, naturally, and has hardly looked at Alice since. Nobody dares speak of the Erl-queen in her presence, not even Prince Albert.” George chuckled. “If she remains as ill-disposed toward the elves as she is now, you might emerge from this with a knighthood.”
Other young men might have gloried in the thought, but for Isaac, it was painful. A knighthood would make it even more difficult for him to see Marigold. Every one of their trysts had been dangerous, both to his public dignity and to her reputation. George, who always kept watch outside, had protected them both.
“So might you,” Isaac said, affecting a jocular tone. “You introduced me to Marigold. Neither of us would be in this cab if not for you, George Beath.”
He allowed himself, briefly, to savor the memory of when George had brought her out from the Sinnetts’ house. How she had looked at him with such awe and uncertainty, her eyes ignited by the moon. He had whispered her name and looked into those eyes—such eyes, all darkness, promising a thousand secrets. He still dreamed of that first night they had spent together.
“Oh, all I did was put you in touch,” George said gently. “I would have been a poor brother if I had watched her waste away. All she wanted, from the moment she laid eyes on you, was to be your wife.”
This made Isaac rather warm under the collar. The only thing he had never given Marigold was a proposal.
It was not to be. It never could be. She was too far below him: an orphaned scullery maid, born to an officer of the East India Company and his Indian mistress. George was all that was left of her English family, and he was so poor now that he could not support her. Only the compassion of people he had helped had kept him off the streets. All he could afford was some squalid garret on Earlham Street. How unjust that such a kind fellow should live in such a wretched state.
Isaac rested his brow against the window. His mother wanted him to marry Anne Crowley, who came with a large dowry and a respectable name, but even if he married her, he knew he would not be able to let go of Marigold. She was all gentleness and innocence, and she knew when to be silent. Anne was handsome, but too cold and too forthright.
If only the Erl-queen had taken her instead.
The cab stopped when the woods were in sight. George banged on the roof.
“Drive on, man. What’s the matter?”
“I shan’t go any farther, sir,” the driver said. “The Erl-queen will see us.”
“Oh, the devil take you.” George clicked his tongue. “Come along, Ise. No time to lose.”
They took leave of the cab. Isaac paid the driver a pound, over twice what he was owed. He could earn far more if he sold the story of the eligible Isaac Fairfax breaking the law, but they would have to hope that he was a half-wit.
The woods were clad in bonfire gold and red, yet the colors were somehow cold—hollow and illusory, like rich clothes left to rot on corpses. Isaac had the sense that looking at them was what it must be like to be lost in opium, seeing things that were not quite there.
“Isaac,” George said, “remember what I told you. Don’t follow the music. Ignore any peculiar lights or sounds.” He placed a hand on the pistol at his side. “The Erl-queen steals little girls. She won’t be ready for men, now, will she?”
Isaac nodded. “God be with us, George.”
A wry smile curved George’s mouth. “God does not walk in the Forest of Erl.”
Together, the two men stepped toward the trees. As they crossed the boundary, a dark fog gathered around them and thickened in their throats. Isaac turned cold to his soul, but he pressed on. Marigold was waiting for them.
When a man entered any wooded place in England, he passed into one great Forest of Erl. So the tales claimed, in any case. Only Princess Alice had ever returned from the Erl-queen’s realm, and she had said nothing about her imprisonment. This forest existed in a kind of spirit country of its own, and if he wandered too far into it, he would never find the way back out. If he was fortunate enough to emerge, he might find himself somewhere miles away from the place where he had entered. One could make the crossing in Hampshire and stumble out in Galloway.
When the fog cleared, Isaac shuddered. A bitter wind slashed at his face, unnerving him, before it stopped abruptly. As if the wind were the breath of the forest, and its mouth had locked closed.
They stood on fallen leaves in a silence so deep it was almost too much to bear. Their boots sank to their ankles. George hefted up the lantern he was carrying. Isaac hardly dared speak, but he forced himself.
“Did Princess Alice say where the Erl-queen hides?”
“No, but elves have an affinity with yews.” George handed Isaac the lantern. “If we strike the bark from one, we will soon hear from the sprites. They will lead us to her.”
The thought of damaging the forest chilled him—there was no greater insult to an elf—but George knew best. Being a man of varied interests, with an insatiable hunger to learn, he knew more about the Erl-queen than many scholars did.
They walked a little farther. Every footstep crackled, scraping at Isaac’s nerves, and when he stepped on a hidden twig, it let out a sound like a gunshot that echoed through the forest. Sweat trickled from his hairline. He was certain he could see green eyes among the foliage.
“I see no yews,” he murmured.
The trees, whatever sort they were, were impossibly tall; even their lowest branches were higher than Isaac could have reached, even if he had thrown a stone. At first glance, it was an ordinary forest, aside from the colossal trees, but when his vision sharpened, he found the imperfections. The trunks bled golden sap. The cracks in the bark glowed lambent red. He saw that the forest was only a mask, and the poison beneath, the poison of the Erl-queen, was oozing through the fractures. Everything was washed in a queasy greenish light, and it all seemed to curve—as if he were peering through a glass bottle, or all of it was a picture printed on a newspaper and he was pulling its edges toward him, warping it strangely. It made him giddy and breathless and frightened all
at once.
He had only taken a few steps, and already he was disoriented. As if he had taken the whole bottle of brandy.
George wavered, too. His path had been straight at first, but now he veered to and fro, making the lantern sway. Watching it made Isaac feel as if he might be sick.
“She must know now,” he whispered. “She must know of our coming, George.”
She knows.
Isaac turned on his heel, drawing his sword. The voice had been so close to his ear that he had felt breath fluttering there, and it did not belong to George, but no one was behind him.
A shadow scuttled in the corner of his eye, and a titter, high and childlike, sent a cold draft down his nape. He spun to face it with a hoarse cry, just in time to see a ribbon of scarlet disappearing behind a tree.
“What is it?” George hissed. “Isaac?”
Sprites. They had come already. Their blood-red hair was famous—what Alice had followed into the woods. A lesser sort of Erl-folk, but no less dangerous. They would be carrying word of the strangers’ presence to their queen.
“I heard—” His tongue was clumsy. “A voice.”
The voice of a son, a servant, a sentinel.
This time, George also flinched. His eyes reflected the lantern.
All around them, dead leaves shifted and danced, resurrected from their grave. They reeled into a churning column; it moved the way a dancer would cross Pandemonium’s ballroom, and it flickered with the vestige of the autumnal red. Dizzied by the sight of it and frightened half to death, Isaac tightened his hold on the sword. As he watched, the column gained sharp edges and corners, firmed and whirled itself into the shape of a man: pale, barefoot, and almost naked. All that protected his modesty were frayed breeches, palest silver-green and coated with fine hair. More flaxen hair poured over his shoulders in abundance and streamed to his waist, clinging to his skin as if he had risen from water. His entire body was knotted and gnarled with muscle.
