by Diane Zahler
Ennis snorted and pulled his hand away. “A brother! That is what every suitor longs to hear, to be sure. And do you think I don’t know the name of your beloved? The whole town knows, and they laugh at you for it. A penniless half-witch, and a prince of the realm—it is absurd!”
“That is beneath you, Ennis,” Riona said coolly, and she turned away from him. Her eyes met mine, and I lowered my gaze to the shirt under my needle as Ennis stormed down the stairs and out of the shop.
As evening fell I stopped my sewing briefly to rest my stiff hands, and Master Declan closed the shop. His long white apron, spotless when he descended the stairs in the morning, was streaked with vivid colors and odd substances by the time he came back up, grunting with the effort, at suppertime. He brought me a tincture of sage for my strained eyes, and it soothed the ache. Then I went to the window and looked out at the life of the town below, which I had never had the chance to observe before. People passed to and fro, from butcher shop to cooper’s, from blacksmith’s to chandler’s, finishing their day’s errands. They met in the street with cries of pleasure, exchanged handshakes and kisses, stopped to chat and were on their way again. It was like watching a mummers’ play, endlessly entertaining.
Liam joined me, and we gazed down at a young couple whose hands brushed as they walked up the street. I thought of how Ennis had brushed Riona’s hand in just that way as they sat together, before they argued.
Do you know that the apothecary’s son loves Riona? I asked him bluntly.
He nodded, still looking out the window. “Until last summer, we assumed they would marry,” he said. “But then . . .”
Oh dear, I said, thinking of Cullan and his long, unfortunate history with girls.
“I probably should not ask you this, but . . . do you know your brother’s intentions?” Liam’s expression was intense.
I do not, I said regretfully. But even before the enchantment, he seemed far more devoted to Riona than he had been to any other.
Liam looked thoughtful. I gazed out the window for one more moment before resuming my work and noticed Davina below on the street. She was approaching a dog that wagged its dark tail as she came closer. The dog’s ears were back against its skull, which I had never before seen in a tail-wagging dog. Usually our hunting dogs drew their ears back only when they were at the chase, or when they growled in anger. I looked closer as the animal turned its head and saw the glint of gold. Its eyes were gold.
Liam! I cried silently. Look at that dog!
Liam stared down at the street for an instant and then turned and ran. I hammered on the window as loudly as I could, hoping to catch Davina’s attention, as Liam clattered down the stairs and out the shop door.
Just as Davina’s hand reached out to pet the dog’s silky fur, Liam grabbed her and spun her around. I could only see, not hear, what happened. Davina’s mouth fell open in protest, and as she and Liam argued the dog—or whatever it was—slunk quietly down the high street and disappeared. It did not turn into an alleyway or doorway. It simply was and then was not.
Davina was still complaining as Liam hurried her back into the shop and up the stairs. “It was lost!” she insisted. “It was a lost dog and it wanted to come home with me, and how can you say you help animals? You let it stay lost! I was going to help it! Now it will starve to death!”
Liam took Davina’s hands in his and said, very calmly, “It was not a dog.”
Davina was silent with surprise, but only for a moment. “But it looked like a dog,” she pointed out.
“Yes,” Liam acknowledged, “but it was not. It was a púca.”
Madame Eveleen came out from the kitchen when she heard that. “A púca!” she exclaimed. “Are they real, then?”
“Well—as real as any ghost is,” Liam said. “I am sure that’s what it was. It had golden eyes.”
“And Davina—,” Madame Eveleen began, a belated look of alarm crossing her face.
“She did not touch it,” Liam assured her. “It’s gone now.” He turned back to Davina. “You must stay away from animals you don’t know,” he instructed her. “Horses, goats, dogs, even rabbits. Do not touch them unless I say it’s all right.”
“Why?” Davina asked, ever curious. “What will happen if I do touch them?”
“I’m not sure,” Liam admitted. “But I think it is best you don’t find out. It . . . it might hurt.”
Davina thought about this for a moment and then nodded. “I will ask you next time,” she said to Liam, and he smiled at her. But the look he exchanged with me was anxious. The door to Faerie was opening wider.
That night, as we slept uncomfortably on pallets in the apothecary’s examination room, flakes began to fall from the sky. By the time I awoke, the snow was ankle deep on the street outside the shop, and the air was frigid.
My brothers! I thought in a panic, leaping up. The lake will be frozen! I was still dressed in my clothes from the day before, so I pulled on my shoes and was halfway through the shop to the front door when Liam caught up with me.
“Where are you going, Meriel?” he demanded, trying to slow me with a hand on my arm.
To the lake! I cried mutely. My brothers will freeze or fly away to save themselves. I must help them!
“Let me go,” Liam suggested swiftly. “You have to stay here and sew—and there may be guards. I will do what I can.”
But I was frantic. I had to see for myself that they were still there. Come with me, then, I said, and we ran out of the shop.
The snow was a curtain of white, and we slipped and slid through it toward Heart Lake. There was no sign of the queen’s soldiers, but when we came close, my spirits sank. The wide part of the lake that formed the two rounds of the heart was covered by a glaze of new ice. There was a slender corridor of open water leading to the tapered end, where the spring from Faerie fed the lake. My brothers paddled on that narrow path. It was clear that as the lake continued to freeze, they would be pushed closer and closer to the spring and whatever evils lurked below it.
We must break through the ice, I commanded Liam. It can’t be very thick yet. If we open up the water at this end, they won’t be forced to swim toward the spring.
I picked up a stone and stepped out onto the ice. Liam gave me a doubtful look, but he found a heavy rock and moved gingerly after me. We pounded on the ice with our rocks, but it would not crack.
Carefully we made our way farther out onto the frozen lake, testing the weight of the ice with each footstep. The swans watched us intently.
Liam gave a great shout, raised his rock, and slammed it to the ice with a crash. For a moment nothing happened. Then the ice cracked, and he scuttled backward. Quickly cracks radiated outward from the place where the rock had landed, overtaking him as he tried to escape.
I leaped desperately toward the shore, and with one great jump landed on firm ground. But Liam had been out beyond me. As he scrabbled back, the ice disintegrated beneath him, and with a wild cry and a splash, he plunged into the water and disappeared below the surface.
Searching frantically, I grabbed a stick and tried to walk back out on the ice, but it shattered and I splashed ankle-deep into the lake. Instantly my toes went numb. I could see no sign of Liam in the open water, so I tried to get to the spot where he had fallen through the ice. From there to the place where I stood, the ice still remained, riddled with cracks but whole. I threw myself full-length on it, hoping it would hold me, and, lying on my stomach, tried to inch out to the hole where Liam had disappeared. Then I looked down.
And to my utter horror, I saw just below me—beneath the ice I lay upon—Liam’s upturned face.
11
The Chase:
And How They Fled
Liam’s desperate eyes looked up into mine, with just a knuckle’s thickness of ice between us. Frantically I hammered on the ice with my fists and my stick, and he hammered from below, but we could not break through.
All at once, I felt the brush of feathers on my neck.
Three of my brothers were there beside me, their webbed feet slipping and sliding. They pushed me away and pounded on the ice with their hard beaks. The other two worked in the open water at the edge of the ice, shattering it with their strong wings. The three swans beside me quickly pecked a large enough hole that one of them—Aidan?—could reach down and grasp Liam’s hair in his beak, pulling him upward.
As soon as Liam took a breath of air, he gave a wrenching gasp and began to cough and retch. It took only a few moments for the other swans to beat away enough of the ice to free him completely. With the aid of my stick—and my brothers pushing from behind—I pulled Liam to shore, and he sprawled nearly insensible on the ground, his matted curls freezing. He coughed and shivered so hard that I feared he would fly to pieces.
He had just begun to regain his breath when I heard a shout and looked up to see a contingent of the queen’s guards in their red uniforms marching toward us. I pulled Liam to his feet, and we staggered back toward town, the guards gaining on us with every step. I supported his weight as well as I could. The second time we fell in the slippery snow, I wasn’t sure I could get him up, but he struggled to his feet and stumbled onward.
As we neared Tiramore, I noticed a group of townspeople at the gate in the stone wall, watching us and pointing at the soldiers behind us.
Run! I cried silently to Liam. The guards are almost upon us!
I do not know how he did it, but Liam broke into a run, and I had to sprint to keep up with him. We dashed through the gate, and just inside the townspeople circled around, hiding us from view. They led us down the high street. I heard the sound of boots on cobblestones and did not dare glance at the shop windows as we sped toward the square.
It was market day, and despite the cold and snow, the marketplace was filled to overflowing. Buyers and sellers, dogs barking and snatching up dropped morsels of food, children playing hoops, mummers hoping for tossed coins from onlookers in payment for their performances—all turned to stare as we rushed by. Still surrounded, Liam and I wove through the makeshift wooden tables displaying the goods of late fall: honey, cabbages and potatoes and apples, braided breads and sweet cakes. It seemed to me—or was I imagining it?—that everyone we passed looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. Many mouthed the word “Courage!” But then I heard a voice shout, “Halt!” and I knew that the guards were fast upon us.
In my fear I stumbled and went down, dragging Liam with me, and as our protectors surged around us, we crawled beneath one of the tables ringing the square. We crouched there in terror. I breathed in the scent of cloves and cinnamon for sale above, trying to calm myself as the polished boots of the guards marched by. Then I heard one of them cry out, “There! Down that street!” I knew that voice. It was Ogan, and he was sending the men away from us.
When they were gone, we struggled out from beneath the table. Hands lifted us up and set us back on our feet. Then the townspeople led Liam and me down a cobbled street, away from the guards. Liam fell and rose and fell again, weakening with every step. Just as I heard the sound of boots starting toward us once more, someone pulled us into a tiny alley that branched off the street. The alley was curved and twisted, so narrow that the upper stories of the houses on each side nearly met overhead.
“Here!” cried the man who had plucked us away. “Duck in here!” He led us through a doorway into one of the houses. Gasping and shivering, Liam and I huddled in the entryway, and the man silently urged us into the main room.
Like the house itself, the room was narrow and high, and a fire blazed in a stone hearth at the far end. A tall, gray-haired woman stood there. She motioned us to stand before the flames and warm ourselves. Placing a finger over her lips, she warned us to be still, and we nodded.
We heard the sound of the guards’ jangling swords outside, but they passed by the house, following the crowd who had helped us. A moment later, all was quiet.
“Take these,” the woman whispered, handing us two rough blankets. We were both dripping wet; icicles hung from Liam’s hair, and his lips were blue. I rubbed my head and then Liam’s, trying to warm him. He was racked with shivering, and I wrapped both blankets around him.
The man, whom I now recognized as the cobbler who sometimes appeared at the castle to fashion my shoes, came into the room. In a low voice, he said, “You must stay until the guards have searched the apothecary’s shop. Then you can go back there.”
“The boy needs tending,” the woman said softly.
“It is not safe yet,” her husband replied, and she nodded.
I tried to convey my gratitude with my eyes. That these people, whom I did not know, would risk so much to help me—it showed a courage I could hardly imagine. The woman smiled grimly at my expression and said, “Our hearts are with you, Princess!”
We sat as close to the fire as we could without scorching ourselves, until the cobbler came back to tell us the guards had left the town. Then we followed him through a rabbit warren of alleys, emerging on the high street just a few shops down from the apothecary’s. At the shop door I curtsied to our rescuer, knowing no other way to express my thanks, and he flushed with embarrassment and repeated his wife’s words: “Our hearts are with you!”
Brigh and Riona pulled open the door at my knock and caught Liam as he collapsed into their arms. Ennis brought Liam upstairs, peeled off his wet clothes, and wrapped him in blankets. Master Declan said, “Goodness gracious!” over and over again, shaking his head hard enough to make his jowls quiver, as Madame Eveleen heated water and poured it into a copper tub. Brigh pushed Riona, Davina, and me from the room as Liam climbed shivering into the steaming water.
I washed my knees, bloodied from my fall in the market square, and changed into an old overdress of Madame Eveleen’s that was far too big for me but dry and warm. We sat on the top stair, Davina clutching Coinin the rabbit, as I told Riona what had happened. She relayed the story to Davina, whose mouth seemed stuck in a little O of astonishment and fear. When Riona, her voice trembling, got to the part about Liam beneath the ice, Davina’s eyes opened as wide as her mouth, and she exclaimed, “Goodness gracious!” in a tone so like her father’s that I almost wanted to smile. But when the story was done, I said miserably to Riona, I am sorry. I bring you nothing but danger and hurt. We should not have gone.
Riona pursed her lips and did not reply, and I began to feel anxious. I could not bear it if Riona was angry at me.
At least, I added, almost begging, the swans know now how to break up the ice and keep the water open. They will not have to fly away. But still she ignored me.
Ennis came from the room, his face troubled. “He has stopped shivering,” he told Riona, a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“The guards came here,” Davina informed me. “One of them had an enormous mustache that made me want to laugh. They stomped around and made a great deal of noise, and they frightened the poor stoat half to death. But not me—I was not afraid at all! And then they went off, and they stopped at the cooper’s, and at the blacksmith’s. I think they went everywhere in the whole town!”
And they would return, I knew. How much time did I have before they found me?
“Children!” Brigh called to us. “You can come back in.”
Riona helped Davina up, for the girl’s arms were full of rabbit, and I stood and followed them in. Warmed by his bath, Liam sat cocooned in blankets in a chair by the fire, sipping a tisane his mother had brewed. The thrush chirped cheerily on his shoulder. I sat beside him with my sewing and apologized again. Indeed, I was getting quite good at asking forgiveness. It seemed I had done little else for days.
“There’s no harm done,” Liam assured me, but his eyes were bleary and he gave a worrisome cough.
No harm, unless someone who saw us spreads the tale, I pointed out.
In a nearby rocking chair, Brigh shook her head. “It appears that the townspeople do not want to help the queen,” she noted.
It seems not, I agreed, recalling how the peop
le in the market had cheered me on and come to our rescue.
“Nevertheless,” Brigh said, “we daren’t put Master Declan and his family in danger. I think that we—”
“Nonsense!” Master Declan interrupted her. “I said you could stay, and stay you will! We’ll have no more of that talk—now I must open the shop.” And that, it appeared, was that.
I jumped each time the bell on the door downstairs tinkled, but it was always just a customer. We heard patients talking about the guards; one had seen them returning to the castle. By evening, as I finished my third shirt, I felt I could relax a little.
But it was not to be. Liam had slept uneasily through most of the afternoon in Ennis’s bed, and by nightfall he was flushed and feverish. The cold had gone to his lungs, and he was racked with painful coughing. Brigh, Riona, and Master Declan were up and down the steps with licorice tea; tinctures of hyssop, ground ivy, and chives; and mustard plasters for Liam’s chest. I brought my sewing to his bedside so I could watch over him.
As the hours passed, his fever rose, and he began to mutter wildly to himself. I heard words about a lady with green hair, and he sang a snatch of the song the merrow had sung: “‘Upon the brimming water among the stones / Are five once-human swans.’ Upon the brimming water . . . upon the water . . .” Suddenly he sat bolt upright in the bed, flailing wildly and throwing his blankets to the floor.
“Trapped!” he cried out hoarsely. “I am caught beneath the ice! Oh, help me—I cannot breathe!” We tried to hold him down, to soothe him and quiet him. Then all at once he sank back onto the mattress, insensible.
Pale with worry, Brigh and Riona brought damp cloths, and I abandoned my stitching to cool Liam’s hot face. We did not stop ministering to him all night, and all the next day and night as well. I got almost no sewing done as I held his burning hand and tried to calm him when his fever dreams made him believe he was once again trapped below the ice.
