Fear Me Not (Folk Stories #1: Tam Lin)

A Rose, But Only One

Even the priests agree that you shouldn't stray on a night like this. Stay within sight of the church, they say. Let the shadow of the cross fall on you, and you will be safe. When confronted about what, exactly, they think will happen to those who stray -- well, that's when it becomes clear that they're not immune to stories any more than the rest of us.

The woods are flame-coloured in the daylight, but as night falls they're a murky brown, indistinguishable from the dusk. The leaves beneath my feet are sodden, the mud slurping at my boots and worming its way through the holes and worn patches to squelch against my skin. I'm trying to be quiet, and the woods do their best to help me: when I tread on a fallen branch, it gives way with a dull snicker instead of snapping, intensifying the smell of leaf-mould around me. By all rights the rain ought to have robbed this place of its otherworldliness, its sharp autumnal power, but it only adds to it.

There's not much moon tonight. I can barely see where I'm going, but I know the way. I've come this way every year since I had the sense to sneak away from the bonfires and the prayers.

I'm still looking for the rose when she speaks. She always leaves me one, and the thorns scratch at my fingers until my blood tells her where I am, but there's nothing here.

"I thought you might have decided not to come." She's leaning against one of the trees, the ones that should've been dead a hundred years ago but still sprout new branches in the spring.

"No rose?"

"I knew you'd be here without your blood on the leaves."

My gaze darts to her face, her hair, her clothes. She hasn't changed. Every year I think this might be the one where she shows some sign of age, but for all the world you'd think she was fourteen and not a day more. "You look well."

"Better than you."

She's not wrong. My clothes are ripped, my hair overlong and tangled, and that's to say nothing of the weight I've lost and the way my bones press against my skin. "Well, some of us have to work for a living."

My sister doesn't laugh. I can't remember the last time I heard her laugh, and her smile, when it appears, is rarely more than a twitch of the lips meant to assuage me rather than indicate any amusement. "You don't have to," she says. "There's another way."

Six years of that argument haven't persuaded me yet. "The Otherworld's no place for me, Morag."

"And it's a place for me?"

"They chose you," I argue. "Not me. Not Eoghan. Just you. I doubt they'd take kindly to visitors."

Morag's face grows even more like a mask, and she sinks to a crouch, her back against the tree and her knees pressed against her chest. "I didn't ask them to," she says.

"I never said you did." I would crouch beside her, but I'm filthy enough as it is, and the leaf mulch is unappealing as a cushion. It doesn't matter for her -- she's got eternity of dances and glamours to rid her of the mud. "Just that I don't belong there."

"Ash," she says, very quietly, so quietly I'm not sure I've heard her right. Nobody else calls me Ash. Most folks don't call me anything at all, and when they do it's my full name, Aisling. "I don't want this anymore."

I thought her dress was the same as last year but now that we're closer I can see that it's finer, more intricately decorated. It doesn't suit her -- not because Morag isn't beautiful, but because she still looks like the child they stole, and that's a dress for a queen. A woman. "Did you ever want it?" I say, trying not to dwell on what the dress might mean.

She swallows. "They..." she begins. "They said it wouldn't be forever."

Morag should know that the fair folk don't keep their promises, not when you've caught the eye of their queen. I reach out to console her, forgetting that the girl I see is insubstantial without the moonlight to give her strength. My hand passes uselessly through her arm, and she shudders.

"I'd get you back," I say. "If I could."

"I know. I know you would."

I tried. I spent hours in the woods, shouting that they could take me if they gave her back. I begged and bargained and raged, and only the faint sound of laughter and song indicated that they heard me at all. "If there was a way..."

"There might be." She pulls at the grass. She can touch that: it hardly seems fair that the world around us gets what I don't, the chance to hold my sister again. "But it's not easy."

"Morag," I say, "you know I'd do anything for you."

"You could die."

"I'll risk it."

"You might lose me forever. Even on Samain."

I hesitate. "But I might win you back."

It's not a real smile. I know that. But I've all but forgotten what such a thing would look like, and I keep kidding myself that this is close enough. "You might," says my sister.

"What do I have to do?"

"Tomorrow night," she begins, "is when the hunt rides. This time, I'm to ride with them."