Ash Page 4

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Your father does not need you now,” the physician said, trying to block her way. But Ash slipped around him and pushed through the doorway. Her father’s body was convulsing out of control, and red spittle dotted his cheeks and the snow-white sheets that were pulled up to his chin. He was being held down by two physicians, one on either side of him, and Lady Isobel stood as far from him as possible, her hands covering her mouth.

  Ash ran toward the bed as the third physician tried to stop her again, and she clutched at her father’s twitching right hand. “Father,” she said in a frightened voice. “Father, what is wrong?” His cheeks were pale and sunken, and bandages covered his wrists. “What have you done to him?” she demanded, recalling Maire Solanya’s distrust of the physicians’ methods.

  “He is ill,” one of them said. “You must leave.”

  Then there were two pairs of hands holding her shoulders back, and though she screamed for them to let her go to her father, they dragged her from the room and slammed the door in her face. She pounded at the door when she heard the lock click shut, crying, “Let me in!” But they did not answer.

  She stood there for what seemed like hours, tears slowly leaking from her eyes, her bare feet growing colder minute by minute. And then there was a great noise, followed by silence, and the sound of Lady Isobel sobbing.

  Two men from the village church came to take her father’s body away later that morning. Lady Isobel came down from her bedroom dressed in black, a veil covering her face, and announced that the funeral would take place the next day in the church at noon. Ash’s father would be buried in the cemetery, and Lady Isobel told her there was no need for an overnight vigil. “You must leave your superstitions behind now,” her stepmother said sternly.

  At the funeral, Ash wore the stiff black dress that Lady Isobel gave her; the collar felt like hands around her throat. She sat still, looking down at the floorboards, too stunned to cry. Although there was a service led by the village philosopher, Ash did not hear a word of it. She felt smothered by the church walls, and as soon as she could escape outside she did, taking deep breaths of the muggy air.

  Behind the church, a rectangular pit in the ground gaped open, awaiting her father’s body. His gravestone was not ready yet; until it was carved, his grave would be marked by the red banner that flew now, waist-high, a splash of color against the slate-colored sky. When the mourners began to throw handfuls of earth onto the body, Ash had to look away.

  When it was over, they climbed back into the carriage and returned to Quinn House. The glowering sky hinted of rain, and it had grown colder. Ash went upstairs to her bedroom; the house smelled of the bitter medicines the physicians had brewed. In her room, she opened the window and curled up on the seat beneath it, waiting for the first drops of rain to fall. It smelled like moss and oak and the damp dark spaces of the Wood beyond the meadow. She looked out at the wide expanse of golden grass being lashed by the rising wind, and wondered whether Anya had closed all the windows in their house in Rook Hill.

  She thought: Now, I am all alone.

  Chapter V

  Everything changed after her father died. Ash had known every inch of her home in Rook Hill; Quinn House was strange and large and cold. In Rook Hill, everyone knew and cherished her mother and father; here, she was pitied by others: Poor girl. Orphan. Though Lady Isobel had never treated her with much fondness, now that Ash’s father was gone, she no longer tried to hide her disapproval. And West Riding itself was a world away from Rook Hill, which was small and sleepy and content to be nothing more than that. West Riding, scarcely five miles from the Royal City, was known far and wide as the staging ground for the Royal Hunt—and hunting season had already begun.

  Rook Hill had its own hunt and its own huntress, of course, for hunts had always been led by women. But Ash had never seen a hunting party as grand as the Royal Hunt. Not a day went by that fall without the sounds of hunting horns in the distance. When she saw the hunters in the village, Ash was transfixed by the sight of them. The women, especially, with their casual camaraderie and easy grace, seemed like entirely different creatures than her stepmother and stepsisters.

  Fall turned into winter, and Lady Isobel had the rest of their things sent down from Rook Hill. The day the trunks arrived was a harsh reminder to Ash of how much her life had changed since the summer. When she opened her trunk, it smelled of the house at Rook Hill, and it all came back: the way her father smiled at her on her birthday. The sound of her mother’s laughter. The time she and her parents had walked into Rook Hill on a fall day, the leaves as gold as coins, the air crisp and dry. When the memories came, Ash felt her heart constrict as if she were being bound by ropes so tight she would lose all breath. It hurt in a way she had never felt before, and she did not know how to make it stop.

  As Yule approached, with all of its attendant memories—the smell of pastries in the oven, the spicy tang of pine boughs in the house—she thought the pain might never cease. Yule week in Rook Hill was celebrated with nightly gatherings at different houses throughout the village, where friends and family shared stories about the years past. The week culminated in a masque, where the villagers dressed in fantastical costumes as kings and queens and witches and fairies, going from door to door to bring each family to the bonfire in the village green. Ash had loved the roar of the fire—it sounded like a wild beast, crackling and growling and hot as summer. She remembered her mother, dressed in a paper crown and red velvet cloak, blowing kisses across the flames to her father, dressed as a joker with gold and silver baubles hanging from his cap.

  This winter, Yule would be a much more subdued affair, “out of respect for my husband’s untimely passing,” Lady Isobel declared. She would refrain from wearing a costume, though she had ordered matching shepherdess dresses for Ana and Clara. “You must wear your black dress,” Lady Isobel told Ash one night at supper. “It is not right for you to celebrate this year.”

  All week Beatrice and the chambermaid, Sara, had been at work in the kitchen, preparing pastries and sweetmeats for Lady Isobel’s feast on Yule night. Ash and Ana and Clara waited in the parlor, watching as the musicians set up in the front hall. Shortly before the first guests arrived, Lady Isobel came downstairs dressed in a gown of black velvet and lace, with a headdress made of black feathers rising from her auburn hair. Even Ash had to admit that she was an imposing figure, and when she gathered Ana and Clara to her to kiss their beribboned heads, Ash felt like a sparrow among peacocks.

  That night the house was full of light and noise, with people dressed as soldiers and queens and dancers and chieftains. Ash watched them laughing and dancing from her corner in the front hall, and no one noticed her. Halfway through the evening there was a pounding on the front door, and when Lady Isobel opened it there seemed to be a gang of thieves on the doorstep—half a dozen men dressed in worn leather with caps pulled low over their heads, and hands that seemed to be stained with blood. Even Lady Isobel recoiled at the unexpected ferocity of these visitors, until the men were pushed aside and a woman dressed in hunting gear threw back her green hooded cloak to reveal a smiling face. “Don’t mind my men,” she said, bowing to Lady Isobel, her dark blond hair falling over her shoulder in a thick braid. “We come bearing new meat—in return, of course, for a drink or two.” The men behind her cheered loudly and thrust forward into the room, one of them carrying the head of a stag, its dead eyes glassy, the tongue hanging out of its slightly open mouth.

  Visibly shaken, Lady Isobel called for Beatrice to attend them, and Ash wondered if it was customary in West Riding for the hunt to come in like that, all bloody and fresh from the kill. But Beatrice came forward without a word and led two of the men and their haunch of venison into the kitchen. The man with the stag’s head began to go into the parlor, but the huntress caught his arm and said something to him in a curt, low tone of voice, and he looked sheepish and took the head outside. The huntress saw Ash then, sta
nding with her back to the wall. She must have had a stricken expression on her face because the huntress smiled at her and said, “I’m sorry if my boys frightened you. They mean no harm; they’ve just been in the Wood for too long.”

  “I’m not frightened,” Ash said, although she had been, just a little. “Did you hunt all day?”

  “Yes,” the huntress said, pulling off her cloak and beginning to yank off her thick leather gloves. “But it’s all right if you were afraid,” she said with a sideways look at Ash. “It’s smart to be afraid of things that smell of death.” She came closer to the girl and bent toward her, putting a firm hand on Ash’s shoulder. “Just don’t be afraid to look them in the eye,” she said with a grin, and then ruffled Ash’s hair before moving on into the dining room. No one else had paid the slightest attention to her all night, and Ash felt as though the huntress had suddenly called her into being. She slid out from her corner and went after her, watching as the huntress took a seat at the long table with one of her men and a masked reveler dressed as a queen. When they saw Ash standing hesitantly nearby, the man asked, “Whose child is that?”

  The huntress looked over at her. “Come and sit with us,” she said.

  The woman dressed as a queen smiled at her and asked, “Are you hungry?”

  Ash shook her head but came and sat next to the huntress as Sara poured wine into their goblets. “Where is your costume tonight?” the huntress asked. All around them the guests were dressed as princesses or lords, their masks glittering with garnets and plumed with feathers.

  “I do not have one,” Ash answered.

  “Poor thing,” said the masked queen. “She needs cheering up.”

  “You could tell her a story,” the man prompted, looking at the huntress.

  The masked queen said, “Yes, a story—a hunting story!”

  The huntress grinned and asked Ash, “Is that what you’d like?”

  Ash colored, but said, “Yes, I would.”

  “Very well, then,” said the huntress. “I will tell you the story of Eilis and the Changeling. Do you know that tale?”

  Ash shook her head.

  “Eilis was one of our earliest huntresses; King Roland called her to service when she was only eighteen, and many people questioned whether she was ready to lead the Royal Hunt,” the huntress explained. “The same year that Eilis was chosen, the Queen gave birth to her first child, a girl. But on the morning after the princess was born, the Queen went to suckle her child, and she would not eat. Days passed and the princess continued to refuse her mother’s milk, and yet she did not weaken. Instead, her skin turned a curious golden color, and she seemed to grow at an astonish-ing speed. The greenwitches were consulted, and they concluded that the princess had been stolen and replaced with a fairy changeling.”

  “Fairies and greenwitches,” said the masked queen. “This is a fairy tale, not a hunting story.”

  The huntress covered the woman’s hand with her own and said, “Patience. There will be hunters.” She looked back at Ash and continued: “The King and Queen tried everything they could to trick the changeling into revealing its true identity, for that was the only way to bring the real princess back. But nothing worked, and as the months passed they began to fear they would never see their daughter again. Now, some greenwitches remembered that there might be one other way to bring the young princess back, but it would require someone to journey to Taninli and beg the Fairy Queen to return the child. When Eilis heard this, she knew that she must be the one to go, for this was how she could earn the people’s trust. She told the King and Queen of her intention, and though they were apprehensive, they longed for their daughter’s return and agreed to Eilis’s plan.”

  “What happened to the changeling?” Ash asked curiously.

  The huntress paused. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I suppose the changeling remained in the princess’s place. At any rate, Eilis entered the Wood on the day after Souls Night, and though many doubted she would ever return, on the morning of Yule she was seen riding through the gates of the Royal City with a babe in her arms. The King and Queen were shocked when she came before them, for she had aged nearly a decade, though she had only been absent two months. She told them that when she entered the Wood she had ridden for a fortnight seeking out the center of the great forest, where she discovered a small trail paved with white stones. It eventually became a broad avenue lined with trees she had never seen before and ended in a set of huge crystal gates—she knew she had arrived at Taninli.

  “When she told the fairy guard that she sought an audience with the Fairy Queen, she was taken to a massive palace built of crystal. In the Queen’s audience chamber, Eilis knelt down and asked for the return of the princess. The Queen told Eilis that her wish would be granted only if she completed three tasks successfully: She must retrieve a gryphon’s egg from its nest; she must bring the Fairy Queen a living unicorn; and she must hunt the great white stag and bring back its head. If she succeeded, the princess would be returned.

  “So Eilis set out to fulfill those tasks, and none of them was easy. But she had an advantage that the Fairy Queen did not anticipate: She was young and determined, and she did not know that she could fail. Though it took many months for her to find a gryphon—for they were few and far between even in Eilis’s time—she did find one at last, and she artfully stole the gold-plated egg from beneath the sleeping beast itself. Though it took many months, she did find a unicorn and lured it, with honey and sweet songs, back to the Fairy Queen. And though it took many months, she tracked down a white stag whose rack was as wide as the avenue in Taninli, and she slew him with her small human-made sword. In the end, the Fairy Queen had to honor her words, and she delivered the young princess, no worse for wear, into Eilis’s arms.”

  “The princess was still a baby?” Ash interrupted. “Even though so much time had passed?”

  “Yes,” said the huntress. “Time passes differently, it is said, among the fairies. And there was always the suspicion, afterward, that the princess had become something more than human during her time with the Fairy Queen. When Eilis returned to the Royal City with the princess, there was a grand celebration and Eilis went back to her duty as the King’s Huntress. From that time onward, fewer changelings were found in the country, for the fairies don’t like to lose what they have stolen.” The huntress took a drink from her goblet when she finished her tale, and the two revelers seated with her clapped their hands.

  “A wonderful story,” said the woman in delight.

  “Did you like it?” the man asked Ash.

  “Yes,” Ash said, and it gave her an idea. She hesitated for a moment and then asked the huntress, “Have you seen a fairy?” In the weeks since her father had died, Ash’s memory of her midnight encounter with the Fairy Hunt had seemed more like a dream than reality. Sometimes she tried to remember what that man had looked like—the one who had spoken to her—but the shape of his face kept sliding away from her mind’s eye. Now, looking at the huntress, she thought that if anyone could confirm what she had seen, it would be her.

  The huntress seemed surprised by her question. “I am afraid I have not,” she said.

  Ash was disappointed, and her face fell. The masked queen said quickly, “But you’ve said, haven’t you, that sometimes you see things in the Wood?”

  The huntress smiled. “I cannot say if those things were fairies.”

  “But they were… unusual?” the woman teased.

  “Indeed, they were unusual,” the huntress affirmed.

  “How?” Ash asked.

  The huntress put down her goblet and looked at Ash intently. “Sometimes,” she said, “at twilight, or in the shade, the light plays tricks. Once I saw something that looked like a woman with wings.”

  “A wood sprite,” exclaimed the woman.

  “Perhaps,” the huntress said. Another hunter came into the dining room then and bent down to whisper in her ear, and the huntress stood up. “I am afraid the time f
or stories is at an end,” she said to Ash, and her companions also rose to leave. “Good night,” she said, and briefly bowed her head to Ash.

  “Good night,” Ash answered, feeling let down. Was that all she had seen? She watched them go, their green-and-brown hunting gear the only solemn colors among the costumed guests, and then went back upstairs. She would rather be alone in her room than alone in the midst of a celebration she was not a part of.

  It was a week later that the letters came: two of them, thick and bound with black ribbon, stamped with an ornate red seal. Ash saw them lying on the hall table before Lady Isobel took them into the parlor to read on her own. Ash was at her lessons with Ana and Clara in the library when Beatrice opened the door and said, “Ash, Lady Isobel would like to see you right now.” Ash glanced at her stepsisters, but they seemed as surprised as she was.

  In the parlor, a fire was burning in the hearth, but the room was still chilly. A candelabrum was lit at the writing desk by the window where her stepmother sat. The letters were open before her, and when Ash came closer and looked at the seal again, she thought they looked familiar.

  “Do you recognize something?” Lady Isobel inquired as Ash sat down in a stiff-backed chair next to the desk.

  “They look like my father’s seals,” Ash replied.

  “This one is.” Lady Isobel picked up a letter and held it up to the light. “It is from your father’s steward in Seatown.” She picked up the second letter and said, “This one is from the King’s treasurer in the City.” Her face wore a look of grim decision. “Do you know what this means?”