by Beth Ball
“Just because you didn’t see her . . .” Felix frowned and looked at Persephonie. “You believe me, right?”
“Of course I do.” Her older brother made friends wherever he went and often found himself in a romantic entanglement with one of the young females of their muster or someone he’d met on their travels. A few years before, on their last visit to the Brightlands, Felix had gushed about a beautiful fae he’d met in the forest, an alseid with bright green skin and long hair the shade of fallen pine needles.
Unfortunately for Felix, when he took Velkan and Stefan to meet this breathtaking caretaker of the groves and glades, she was nowhere to be found, and they had teased him about inventing false lovers ever since.
For those whose eyes were used to the civilizations of Azuria, much of the Brightlands appeared unsettled, but this was far from the truth. Small communities covered the surface of the lands and the depths of the waters—daimon, naiada, dryads, satyrs, pixies, countless faeries, the fae—spread across four loosely divided kingdoms, each dedicated to a different season in the wheel of the year. In Persephonie’s early adolescence, they had visited the autumn court, a world filled with color, harvests, and celebration. “Not the most reliable sorts when you need something done,” Datha had told her, gesturing at the bountiful feast and revelers with his goblet of spiced wine, “but there are few so ready to relish the good of the world and the blessings of Cassandra.”
The wilds on the far edges of each kingdom were best avoided, so there was limited mixing between the four realms. The dwellers of the Brightlands told many stories about the great evils that lurked in the ancient fae forests, unchanged since Verdigris had first fashioned the three planes of life thousands of years before.
“We still haven’t seen the winter court,” Persephonie reminded her brothers and Velkan. “It’s said to be the most beautiful of the four.”
Stefan’s brow furrowed. “Do you think they each say that about themselves?”
“I can assure you, they do,” Datha said as he returned, grinning widely. His voice boomed with tremors of excitement. “But perhaps you can decide if the winter court lives up to its reputation, Sephie.” He winked. “We’ll settle along the outskirts, and, after we’ve made camp, we can pay a visit to the palace of Queen Mab.”
Persephonie’s fingertips quivered as she reached out to touch the glittering white bark of a nearby birch tree. The strips of black along its trunk glimmered like obsidian crystals, and the bark shimmered bright with frost. She gasped. It was cool to the touch, but not cold. She pulled her fingers away, their tips coated in blue-white sparkles.
The winter court was even more captivating than described.
It was full night when they arrived, the sky an onyx blanket laden with gleaming stars. High above, the sister-moons shone down, bathing the Brightlands in their ethereal light. Tiny faeries flitted between the white branches, adding their crisp glow to the pale blue and ivory of the winter landscape. Beneath the birches, dark red berries peered out from evergreen bushes, and scarlet flowers spread their petals wide.
Datha came to stand beside her and pulled her close with a strong arm around her shoulders. “I hope you like it, cher’a.” He beamed down at her. “When the sun is up, we’ll go and speak with the fae.”
The little sleep she managed was filled with dark, foreboding dreams. There would be time to think on them later, she decided. First, she would meet the denizens of the winter court.
At times when the saudad traveled, especially to a new location, the settled residents met them with fear and dismay. In moments of danger or strife, some misinterpreted her people’s timely warnings as a harbinger of the disaster they sought to avert.
But not so with the fae.
A pair of dryads were already milling about the camp shortly after dawn the next morning when Persephonie emerged from her tent. One’s bark-like skin was as white as the birches. She wore a crown of mistletoe and winter roses atop her short, silver hair. Her friend was tall, with ebony skin the texture of the black oak. Two pairs of pale blue antlers rose from the sides of her head, and her long, sweeping hair faded from raven to the same shade of blue frost.
They smiled slowly at Persephonie’s approach. “Good morning,” she called to them in Queran, the tongue of the forest.
A fluffy gray squirrel appeared on the first woman’s shoulder. The creature tilted its head at Persephonie. Three sets of wide eyes watched her curiously.
She paused a few strides away. “I hope we are not intruding on your forest,” Persephonie said. “Our seers believed that this area was unoccupied.”
“That is as you say, young saudad,” the first dryad replied. Her voice carried the crisp bite of a winter wind.
“Though it is now occupied,” the second responded. She spoke softly, the whisper of falling snow.
Persephonie believed that their words meant the saudad were welcome, but she wasn’t certain. Around them, the muster began to stir. “Might I offer you some refreshment?” It was customary for the saudad to present their hosts with food and drink.
“Winter’s bounty can be hard to find,” the second dryad said.
“But for those who seek, she will provide,” the first added.
She bit her lip. This time, they presented her with either an assent or a riddle. “Come with me.” She waved for them to follow her to Datha’s wagon. The pair and their squirrel drifted after her. When they arrived, she made a strong tea for the dryads and her datha and listened as he fell easily into the indirect parlance of the forest-dwellers.
Shortly after midday, Persephonie walked arm-in-arm with Stefan along the forest trail toward the gates of the winter court. Intermittent arches, pure white and laced with glittering frost, lined the silver path that twisted through the trees.
Behind them, Felix entertained the two dryads, and Datha and Velkan followed close after. Gleaming gates, pure silver, blocked the way ahead. The forest of birches lined the frost-covered fields on either side.
The fae didn’t use the gates to secure their realms. But stepping off the path this deep in the fae forest would send a traveler on a meandering journey from which they might never escape.
“A gift must be given to pass into the queen’s court.”
Persephonie stopped short as a raspy voice emerged from the tree beside her. She peered around it, and a grinning renard, one of the fox-folk, emerged. He stood a few inches taller than her. Large, red ears poked out from beneath a black silk hat. The renard wore a finely made, dark green coat and twirled a polished wooden cane in his furry hand.
Stefan gasped beside her.
“What sort of gift did you have in mind?” Persephonie smiled sweetly. This was the kind of fae game she liked to play.
“I can be quite flexible where gifts are concerned.” The renard raised an auburn eyebrow and winked.
“Ahem.”
Persephonie knew without turning that the low-throated warning behind her was Velkan’s.
“If the lady is already claimed, there are other arrangements we might make.” He smiled wider.
“It is not so much a question of claimed or not.” Persephonie shot a look back to Velkan and returned her suspicious gaze to the renard. She wasn’t going to let either of them ruin her chance at seeing Queen Mab’s castle by competing for affection that she had not consented to give. “But if we land upon an entertaining enough gift, what will you do for us in return?”
Datha’s chuckle behind her confirmed that this was the right path to pursue.
The renard spun his hat from his head and bowed. “Well met, intriguing traveler—an exchange would be my pleasure. Surprise me, and a handsome guide through the queen’s streets shall be yours.”
Velkan groaned in irritation, and Stefan snickered beside her.
“With pleasure, Master Renard. We have traveled from distant lands, longing to lay eyes upon the fair fae court of the winter queen.” Her eyes flashed as her fingertips extended. She cast a flur
ry of snow to fall all around them. The dryads sighed happily. “The queen’s realm has inspired a memory of an ancient story, held dear by travelers such as we. A story from the roots of the first age, of how the birch forests originally came to be . . .”
Chapter 4
“THE BIRTH OF THE BIRCH TREE”
As Cassandra taught us, at the dawn of the worlds, there was a single tree. She stood in the company of the gods and goddesses, at the right hand of Verdigris, the titan of nature. The tree watched as Fenrir created his first people, the daimon, as the waters gave birth to the beautiful naiada, and as Verdigris created the eldest of the fae.
“It is your turn to create, Tree Mother,” Verdigris said. “Whatever is in your heart, let it be.”
At the urging of the titan of nature and inspired by the wonders of the goddesses and gods, the Tree Mother blossomed, and her seeds fell. “Look after my daughters as they make their way across the world,” she said to Verdigris.
“I shall,” the titan promised. “Your children bridge the world of earth and the world of air. For that, they will be honored through the ages.”
The trees, spread across the surface of the worlds, began to branch and grow. They burrowed deeper into the earth, becoming strong, and stretched high into the air, becoming free. And as they grew, they took on quirks and qualities of their own.
Beithe, one of the oldest daughters of the Tree Mother, stretched tall and strong, with silver hair and pale white skin, but her eyes remained her most striking quality. Pure black, with a ring of bright green visible only to those brought into the daughter’s embrace.
She traveled far and wide in those early years of the worlds’ forests. Each night as she slept, she left a silver hair behind, which, in her absence, as the world warmed, would grow to become a birch tree of its own.
The daughter was lovely, but quiet. Her silver hair captivated her fellow travelers, and Beithe rarely spent her nights alone. “Take this,” was all she would say, plucking one silver thread from her hair.
Without fail, each traveler would tie the liquid silver around their finger or through a buttonhole of their coat, their hand covering the delicate bow. But no matter how attentively they cared for the thread, within the week, they would find it had left them. The silver lady’s hair was ever prone to wander.
Beithe knew when the hair drifted away to form a tree of its own. With each sacrifice, each piece of her she left to a traveler, a wound appeared, a slash on her skin. When the tree wandered off on its own, the wound healed, leaving a black mark against the glowing white of her skin.
The stories about her and the ones she left behind changed. Her remarkable black eyes appeared across the bark of the new-growth trees, dark onyx slashes said to speak of a broken heart.
There was, however, one exception to the daughter’s journeys. A beautiful song floated down to her from over a hillside, and there she found a young woman, strumming a lute and weaving a tale for the entertainment of the mountainside. Did the girl know that the ancient mountains listened? Somehow—Beithe could tell by the tilt of her head, the twist of her lip—she did.
The tree daughter held still, raising her arms overhead. Her green palms sighed in the sunlight. Her silver skin twinkled in its shadow. She closed her black eyes, letting the song drift and drip through the silver strands of her hair.
Melodies embraced by the wind drifted nearer. Beithe longed to look but kept her eyes shut, prolonging the spell.
“Who are you?” The woman with the lute leaned closer, her face inches from Beithe’s own. “It’s alright, you can tell me.”
Beithe remained still.
“What if I sing to you, then, and tell you a story?” The smirk had returned to the bard’s expression, audible in the lilt of her voice. Branches rustled overhead, eager assent granted.
The woman settled her back against Beithe’s long legs, rubbing her shoulders against the daughter’s smooth bark. Her fingers plucked over the strings, searching out a melody. “A sad song languishes on the air,” she whispered, “and it is the one I sing to you.”
Her voice picked up a tune that Beithe knew well, though she had never heard its swell outside the woodland of her own mind. The verses danced over hills and valleys, traveled mountainsides, traipsed after ice and under gales. But each time when the chorus returned, the slashes that marked Beithe’s skin deepened, spread.
The bard sang of a desperate search, an unending journey to the ends of the earth. But two lines rooted the tree daughter in place. They held the song to her heart, pressed it across the wide stretch of her limbs, her leaves, her bark:
Until the day you found me,
unending, free.
On that day of binding,
forever, to thee.
The leaves rustled in metallic whispers as the woman rose and pressed her body against that of the tree. She kept the song’s cadence as she chanted the final lines of her spell. “Be still for once, in this season with me. We’ll plant a forest, and from there, be freed.”
Beithe opened her black eyes and gasped. For the first time, a familiar gaze reflected back to her. Brilliant green, with a single ring of purest black.
She stayed not one night, but two, by the musician’s side. The woman whispered Beithe’s song over the mountains, upon the breeze. Her story drifted out from her, swelling around the trunk of each silver tree, deepening the black marks, rippling up to the canopy of silver and green.
As their second night drew to a close and the tendrils of dawn trickled over the mountainside, Beithe closed her black eyes and lowered her silver head. The wind whispered, “It is time.”
Green tears flooded her lover’s eyes, but the tree daughter knew the season had come. One by one, the musician plucked the hairs from Beithe’s head, releasing them to flutter on the breeze. The wind picked up the tears as well, anchoring a gleaming green bead to the base of each fresh growth, drawing its roots into the ground.
With the final hair loose on the wind, the mountains sighed and called the sun to see. She rose over a chilled earth, where a silver trunk stood bare at her lover’s side.
But beneath the earth, the magic continued, the charm humming with life as it ran its course. Rivers of roots grew between the young trees, latching one to another, as the single branches had once spread from a shared source.
The woman wandered the mountainsides, her lute abandoned where she and Beithe had once lain. But then, as the first warm breeze returned to relieve winter’s chill, beneath the melody of melting snow, a familiar chorus whispered its charms again, drawing her up and away from the darkness below.
A forest of birch trees had grown from the earth, their sprigs spread from threads borne on the wind. The woman’s breath caught in her chest as footsteps brought her closer, closer to the center of the valley she’d known.
On that day of binding,
forever to thee . . .
The trees whispered the words over and over again. They knew not their melody.
A smiling face appeared across the largest of the trees. A silver branch extended a lute. Dark eyes opened over the slashes in the bark, irises black but for their single ring of green.
The woman smiled in turn and settled back against the strong, slim line of Beithe’s bark, to teach the little trees to sing.
Chapter 5
Persephonie’s eyes shone as she lowered her arms at the end of her story. The renard’s grin glimmered bright. He bowed his head; with a wave of his auburn paw, the silver gates swung open wide. “May I, fair storyteller?” He extended his elbow to escort her inside.
Velkan sighed heavily behind her.
Persephonie stifled a laugh. “You may.”
“Given your readily apparent gifts, I wonder if you might perform your tale once more for the enjoyment of the children gathered outside the queen’s court?”
A short while later, Persephonie stood in the center of a sunken courtyard that had been made for storytellers such as she. Renard chil
dren whose furry heads reached her mid-thigh gazed with toothy mouths agape, holding tight to the hands of their satyr friends. Behind the children, their parents stood in a semicircle, contented smiles on their faces, and the gleaming expanse of Queen Mab’s castle stretched to fill the edges of the pale gray sky.
The palace landscape lent itself to a more dramatic retelling than she had first attempted. Ice-blue flowers covered the hard, frosted earth, and the steam of the children’s breath condensed all around them. From it, Persephonie shaped a small birch forest, its delicate branches mirroring the perfectly spun wonders of the ice and birch branches of the winter queen’s court.
She bowed her head at the close of her tale, and the fae children patted hands and paws together in applause. The children rushed forward, surrounding her with wide eyes and questions. “How do you make the trees from the grass?” one satyr asked. A short, squat renard tugged at her skirt. “Can the queen’s birch trees sing too?”
Beyond the circle of young fae, Datha’s face glowed with pride. “Well done, cher’a,” he called. He strode over toward a cluster of fae parents, undoubtedly inviting them for more fireside stories and dinner that evening.
Stefan wriggled his way through the children and extracted his sister from their admiration and grasp. “That is one of my favorites, you know.”
“Thank you, Stefan.” Persephonie leaned into her younger brother’s side. Stefan shared her fascination with their people’s stories, though he recast many of them into song. “One day, will you teach the entirety of Beithe’s melody to me?”
“Let us visit the castle first, and then we shall see.”
Velkan and the renard waited in uneasy silence on the far side of the courtyard between two white-barked trees. Behind them, twin rows of saplings darkened from ivory to slate to onyx as they wound their way to the glittering entrance of Queen Mab’s castle. A spreading chill caught in Persephonie’s throat as she lifted her gaze to the fae forest-palace. Towering white trees made up its base, interspersed by ebony glass walls of night and fractured starlight. Courtyards and terraces, formed from woven silver branches, emerged from the intertwined upper limbs, accessible by spiral staircases lit by floating faery light.
