by Paula Guran
The cat crept out from behind the firewood to investigate this new opportunity.
You’re oak, this man had said. Or more likely, of course, your oak.
“ ‘My oak,’ ” Ivy repeated softly. “Could he have seen my necklace as a symbol of the Oak King?”
The cat, staring expectantly at the can she held, opened and closed her mouth in a silent meow.
“It’s an ancient legend of the Winter Solstice,” Ivy explained softly, peeling open the pop-top of the can and spooning a little of its contents out for the eager cat before pouring the rest into an aluminum pot. “The forest god has two different aspects—the Oak King and the Holly King. As I remember it, the Oak King stands for light, growth, rebirth. He rules during the waxing year—from Winter Solstice through Midsummer, while the sun gains power. His reign starts tomorrow,” she clarified.
Rather, it would, if there really were an Oak King . . .
After some consideration, Ivy returned to her backpack for a few more ingredients. “But at Midsummer, the Holly King kills the Oak King in battle. Then he rules, through to the Winter Solstice, during the waning year, until the reborn Oak King defeats him again. The world gets lighter, then it gets darker, then it gets lighter, and so on.”
And then it gets darker. And so on. Wasn’t Midsummer when things had started going wrong in her own life?
Adding her extra ingredients, then stirring, Ivy hung the pot over the fireplace. She felt jittery, overly alert, as if she could sense the dark god of withdrawal and death lurking in the shadows . . . or even standing over her unconscious visitor in black.
Black?
Her gaze slid back to the stranger and her heightened awareness saw more than an intruder. His thick, carefully cut hair was dark brown, not black. Although his face seemed taut, somewhat angry—more likely pained, she thought charitably—he couldn’t be much older than her. She noted something of a bruised expression in his otherwise regal features.
Leaning closer, she lay her fingers on the smoothness of his cheek, relieved to feel that this man felt warmer now—and still very real. Lord and Lady, but he was handsome. Handsome enough that even she noticed. How long had it been since she’d felt physically attracted to anyone . . . ?
His dark eyes slid open again. His gaze wandered, bewildered, and then focused on her, and she reluctantly reclaimed her hand.
“Hello,” she said.
He stared at her, then sat up with surprising strength, ignoring her automatic plea to be still. After wincing only once, he examined his hands, then felt his face. Finally, his gaze returned to Ivy.
“How long have I been here?” he demanded in a crisp, authoritative voice.
“Only a short while. You’re very lucky.”
“That is a matter of opinion. Who are you?”
Her smile felt tighter than it would have been only a minute earlier, but she might as well alleviate his tension—and thus his threat? “Ivy MacDaraich.”
“Ivy.” His eyes, hardly welcoming in the first place, narrowed with speculation. “How very appropriate.”
Like she’d never heard that before, at this time of year. Considering his pentagram, she altered her season’s greeting. “Happy Yule.”
“For whom?” He spared her a scathing look before rolling to a crouch. He stood to his full, impressive height, swayed, then steadied himself by force of will. When Ivy moved to help him, he glared at her. Though she still found him attractive, he suddenly became much easier to resist. Score a big zero for Ivy’s instincts.
She stood too, then stepped back from the reality of his height over hers. Regal, she thought again. Despite that he wore black jeans and a sweater, and modern hiking boots, he could as easily have worn a black cape and armor.
She tried not to picture the Holly King. “You can’t go,” she said. “There’s a terrible storm out.”
The man studied her. “Yes,” he said, after a moment, then sank into her camp chair without asking. His next words came out so softly, she almost didn’t hear. “We were separated in the storm.”
We? “Someone else is out there?”
“It’s none of your concern.” That, she heard.
“But they might need help!”
“I have no doubt that my companion is quite safe,” he snapped, without a glimmer of concern. His next words came out soft again, as if spoken to himself. “Safer than I.”
He was worried about his safety? Ivy hesitated before spooning some stew from the pot, into a camp plate, and held it toward him. “Would you like to eat something? It will warm you.”
Instead of accepting the food, the stranger folded his arms. She could see the lines of his muscles even through the layers of his clothing. Noting her confused expression, he raised an eyebrow and said, “After you.”
He was not, she thought, being polite. He was worried about his safety.
A head shorter than him, did she look that dangerous? “Pretty suspicious, aren’t you?”
“I have cause to be.”
Ah. Without hesitating further, she blew on a spoonful of stew to cool it, then took a bite. Not bad, she thought. For what it was. Since he continued to watch, she took another bite, chewed, and even swallowed, despite her tight throat. “See? Harmless.”
When she held the plate to him again he took it and ate greedily, shuddering slightly—from the shock of its warmth against the cold that had held him, Ivy supposed. Despite herself, and his attitude, she softened toward him. He seemed so tense, brittle even, under the weight of his own suspicions. He looked like he could use a good neck rub—not that she was offering. But she did move to the other side of the cabin to dig an extra blanket from her pile of supplies for the poor, prickly misanthrope.
She noticed the tabby cat watching her from behind a box of groceries, pupils large and dark, but carefully did nothing to clue the stranger in on its silent, feline presence. Instead she said, over her shoulder, “I noticed that you’re wearing a pent. Am I right in assuming that you follow the old ways?”
She turned back—and gasped. Without her hearing him, her visitor had claimed her athame off the mantle and stepped up behind her. Now he loomed over her, the knife too near to her throat.
Its blade might only be pewter . . . but Ivy’s throat was only flesh. She swallowed. Hard.
“Yes,” said the dark stranger, his voice almost a purr. “And I honor an ancient god.”
Pieces clicked into place, subtly—but unavoidably.
“The . . . Holly King?” She couldn’t drag her gaze from the blade. So much for subtlety . . .
“Your enemy, this night,” he prompted.
“I don’t have any enemies.” She hoped her breathless words proved true. “Not that I know of.”
“You’re a Wiccan,” he accused—pretty much implying that his own brand of paganism wouldn’t follow the comforting beliefs of “Harm None” and “What ye send forth comes back to ye” that her own did. “Yes? One of those love-and-light types, no doubt, who expect nothing but goodness and growth from their magic and their traditions. And you wear the oak.”
“It’s not an oak, it’s a yew. Or an ash. It stands for—” But when he pressed the tip of her athame to her throat, she let her protest fall to silence.
He said, “Do not pretend ignorance about this night.”
“You mean about the Oak King and the . . . ?”
“Holly King,” he repeated.
This was not what she’d assumed her night of meditating on the meaning of Yule would encompass.
“You . . . ” She hated to sound crazy—but with a knife to her throat, what did she have to lose? How much less subtle did magic have to get? “Are you the Holly King?”
And he said, almost a hiss, “Tonight I am.”
It was crazy—and yet, damnably, it made sense. Especially on the metaphysical level. The one thing all pagans had in common, be they Wiccans or Druids, Shamans or Discordians, were the old gods. The Ancient Ones’ essence could permeate the pi
ne trees and the snowflakes, the wind and the sky . . . and, sometimes, their followers. Whether viewed as formal pantheons or mere metaphors, pagan gods were as immanent as they were transcendent.
If Zeus could become a swan to have his wicked way with a mortal maiden—if priestesses could “draw down the moon,” taking on the essence of a goddess for ritual purposes—then surely the Holly King could co-habit the body of a strong man to . . .
There went that unsteady foreboding again. To what?
“Why?” demanded Ivy, raising her chin slightly to add another millimeter’s distance from her ceremonial blade.
“I tire of your pretense,” he warned, as casually as if he held women at knifepoint all the time. “To do battle, of course; the same battle that has darkened each winter thoughout millennia. And preferably to win.”
“Don’t be ridicu—” With the point of the athame, he reminded her to choose her words more carefully. “Magic works with nature,” she insisted, voice lower. “Not against it. The earth’s axis will start to tip back and the sun will gain power starting tomorrow, no matter what happens tonight.”
He appeared unimpressed. “That hardly means the real light—peace and love, comfort and joy, all those saccharin ideals the Oak King represents—need necessarily return. Not if I prevail.”
And that, too, made a horrible sense.
Deal with the knife first, thought Ivy wildly. Encroaching darkness and despair later. “Just out of . . . um . . . curiosity. What’s any of this got to do with me?”
“You really don’t know?” He sounded intrigued, even amused—and still wholly in control of the situation.
“From my take on things, this is between you and Oak King, isn’t it?” Maybe the Oak King was the companion he’d been separated from in the storm, the one he’d insisted was safe. She licked her lips. “I don’t have any reason to hurt you—I don’t believe in hurting people. Or gods. And even if I did, I don’t have a weapon. So how about you save your strength for the real battle, we call it a truce, and we just get through this night as best we can.”
In a smooth movement, the stranger turned and threw her athame into the fireplace. Sparks billowed up around its engraved blade, and the carved hilt immediately began to darken.
“Perhaps,” he agreed, turning back to her.
Ivy reached helplessly toward the fire, but she did not dare take a step in that direction. She knew he could stop her.
“That’s important to me,” she did protest, voice trembling, as she raised her gaze back to this man—this apparent servant of death, of darkness. “It’s why I’m here.”
“It was why you are here,” he stressed—and slowly drew a hunting knife from his boot. This blade was obviously of steel, far more deadly than decorative. “Now you are here because of me only. Remember that.” And he casually tapped her cheek with the flat of the weapon. The cold of the metal stung. “You are all I have to ward off the boredom of this confinement. But my idea of amusement does not include my death.”
Briefly, exhaustion dulled his sharp features, sallowed his cheeks. Then his head snapped straighter, and he glared at Ivy.
She refused to imagine what his idea of amusement was. No need to give negative images power by visualizing them. “Would you like some more stew?” she offered instead, her voice a breath away from shaky.
“No.” But at least he slid his own knife back into his boot. “I do not want you near the fire.”
“But it’s cold.”
He sounded annoyed when he demanded, “What do you expect in December?”
The storm’s wail, muffled by the cabin’s walls, emphasized their words—and had Ivy wondering, again, if the Oak King were out there. For a moment, she indulged in the fantasy of a golden-haired hero bursting in, defeating the dark stranger and rescuing her. “Let me at least sit closer.”
He turned calm, dark eyes to her. She found herself awaiting the inevitable pause before he spoke. “I would rather you not.”
“You already know I’m a love-and-light type of witch.” One whose greatest hope for true magic was currently smelting in the fireplace, damn it. She told herself that survival was more important than her ritual . . . but she’d been merely surviving for a half year now. She’d hoped for so much more from this holiday. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course not. And if you were anything but a fool, you would not have trusted me. You would not have left your door unlocked. You would not have turned your back to me.” He looked almost sad as he sank again into the camp chair, his hand dangerously near the hilt protruding from his boot.
She knew for sure, then, that the crushed tranquilizer tablets she’d added to the stew were starting to take effect.
“It is annoying to be trusted by fools,” he sighed mournfully. Somehow she didn’t think that meant he’d approve of the tranquilizer.
“Why?” she challenged. “Do you feel obliged to meet their expectations?”
He shook his head. “No. They are just so terribly boring to defeat. No fight to them.”
Think again, holly boy. But she was torn. She did not like being bossed around, even by a god, much less held at knifepoint, robbed of her beautiful athame. She did not intend to play the role of victim. But . . . neither did she want to do anybody, even him, actual harm.
Why add more pain and negativity to the universe?
Instead, she settled onto her sleeping bag, wrapping her sweatered arms around her knees. Maybe she could keep him talking until the tranquilizers kicked in, or until the Oak King showed up—whichever came first. “What’s your name, anyway? Assuming you have some identity beyond being the Holly King.”
“Duncan,” he sighed, eyelids beginning to sink. “Duncan Bercilak. But for tonight, you may call me ‘My Lord.’ ”
Like that would happen anytime soon! But surprisingly, a wicked gleam in the stranger’s dark eyes seemed to acknowledge that. Darkness apparently had a sense of humor.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you, Duncan, that your timing with this little apotheosis sucks? The Holly King is supposed to die tonight.”
He frowned, seemingly miffed. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“And you planned to defeat the Oak King by going out in the middle of a blizzard?” insisted Ivy. “No offense, but I don’t get it.”
“Perhaps you do not wish to ‘get it,’ ” Duncan Bercilak assured her. And, she noticed, he took another spoonful of stew. “Perhaps that is wise.”
With her athame gone, she needn’t worry about meditating on the meaning of Yule anymore—but Ivy shrugged. “Humor me.”
“Even though your increased knowledge could increase the menace you pose, and my reasons for killing you?” Reading her blank look, he sneered—albeit sleepily. “I already told you that I am the bad guy, Ivy. Stop trusting me for your answers.”
“Yeah, well you’re the only one here.”
“Am I?”
Did he mean the cat? But no, from the intense way he watched her, he did not. “Me?”
“You’ve never heard of the Ivy Girl?”
And, like a burst of magic, she realized she had. But as with most magic, this did not truly come out of nowhere. The term, “Ivy Girl,” mixed with the smell of the fireplace and the pine boughs, channeled a memory from her early childhood, her grandfather telling her about English harvest festivals. “Some country folk bind the last sheaf of grain with an ivy vine,” Grampa had said, explaining why he called her his Ivy Girl. “It’s their superstition that the grain stands for the fallen king, who dies each autumn, and the ivy stands for a goddess who takes over for him. The holly boy and the ivy girl, they say.”
“You think I’m the Ivy Girl?” she demanded. “That I’m here to bind you or something?”
He visibly stifled a yawn. “Amusing, isn’t it? You see why my hopes for victory are so high this year.”
“But what about the Oak King?” His stare clarified things for her. The point of this struggle wasn’t whether he
fought a king or a woman, Oak or Ivy. The point was that darkness and light met, struggled—and one prevailed. Still . . . “Me?”
So much for a god-like blond hero riding to her rescue. She found herself suddenly annoyed with the Oak King for leaving her in this mess—and with the universe for not asking if she was willing to play!
Deal with encroaching darkness and despair first, she reminded herself. Righteous indignation later.
But she’d never believed in fighting fire with fire, much less darkness with darkness. “What if I don’t want to fight you?” she demanded. “What’s the penalty for forfeiture?”
“It could be your death,” he suggested, far too intrigued, and began to stand from the camp chair. “You did accept the benefits happily enough while life was going well for you.”
Without any real physical defense, she grabbed her tree pendant for the protection that earth elements—metal and wood—afforded.
Duncan swayed visibly, then braced himself against the mantle. He stared at the plate by his feet, then at her, incredulity mounting. “Damn you! You did drug me!”
He kicked the plate at her, but missed in his dizziness. She did not even have to duck.
“I did it even before I knew you were the Holly King, if that helps,” she said softly. “I didn’t trust you on a mundane level . . . and I thought you could probably use the sleep.”
He staggered back, then fell to his knees, his dark, somehow-bruised eyes still fixed on her face. “Damn you . . . ” he whispered, his voice almost as hushed as when he’d first tried speaking.
She waited to feel triumph, but all she felt was a sad relief—and the yawn that struggled to escape her, from her own share of the stew. She had not escaped yet.
“What is the penalty for forfeiture if you don’t kill me?” she asked, with careful calm.
Duncan still stared at her, shocked, even as his eyes struggled to close. He shuddered, and almost against her will, she extended a hand in his direction.
She would not have touched him, but still he winced away.
