Glass Maker: A Fairy Tale

Chapter Six

The pavilion hung quietly for all of a moment, and then the bubble burst, and the townspeople surged at Katherine, their eyes reflecting the fire of the torches on the outskirts of the gathering. She leaped out of the way of their grabbing hands, their running feet, their questioning eyes, but knew she could only avoid it for so long. Without the other-worldly glow of the fae above her, the gold of her skirts, of her skin, looked more burnished than gilded and she saw herself how they must see her.

Before them, they saw a young woman tarnished by the very beings they'd hid from for so long. The fae who stole children and livelihoods, were to blame for all of their troubles, may it be the sickness of livestock or a turn of the weather. Katherine may have dismissed the folklore as superstitions once, but now, she saw them when she looked in the eyes looking back at her.

It is one thing to fear the fae; it's quite another to make a deal with them.

She backed away from the townsfolk, an angry and confused mob at her front and darkness at her back. She searched the crowd for her parents once again, searching for them though she knew they wouldn't help her. Her vision blurred with her anxiety, and she found them not at all. Either they'd become one with the mob, or they'd abandoned their last daughter once and for all. They already had in every sense before this evening, but she hadn't imagined it becoming quite so clear.

Her heart pounded in her ears, but her veins filled with lightning-quick adrenaline. She turned on her heel, dashing from the pavilion, and her blood sang with foam, magic, and fear. The spell of the fae had broken, and now the townsfolk remembered their hate, and the grudge that came with it.

"She's a witch!" A woman shouted, distant in the crowd but echoed by the others.

"She'll curse us or help them sing away our children."

"If the king discovers she was here, we'll all burn."

Bile rose in Katherine's throat, stronger than the wave of nausea that crashed over her as she slipped through the fingers of the cobbler and then the grasp of the flower seller. Did the flower seller remember her as the glass maker's daughter who traded a vase for lilies a day before? If she did, the recognition was gone, replaced by the instinct to purge everything misunderstood. A moment ago, Katherine had been glistening with the stars, now, if she were caught, her skin would be nothing but embers in a matter of hours. In no version of her nightmares had her fate turned so quickly.

But in no version of her wildest dreams would she be the sort of woman to make a deal with a Fae king, either. What had she been thinking? Did she think or was this all a curse caused by the fae— a punishment for attempting to trick their King into a different agreement?

Katherine fled from the square, from the garden, from the people chasing her. Her feet pounded against the cobblestones, and her body shook as she cast around for a way out. The gates to the town would be closed, but Katherine had grown from a precocious child into a young woman who remembered rather than regretted her childish adventures. In the east of town, behind the back garden of one of the wealthier dukes who lived more often in Ecrivenia than Cairn, there was a gap in the outer ramparts.

For once, it would do her well that Lakesedge changed slower than the other towns and cities with more people than places to put them.

She sped down a side street, her steps knowing the way more than her mind did. She ran past the storefronts frequented by the wealthy, by the dressmakers she could never hope to afford, and didn't stop as some of the crowd caught onto her path. They trailed her, some stumbling from drink and heaving with the effort, although some of the youths gained faster as their young joints and sure feet were familiar with the way to the mansion in the same sense that Katherine was.