King of the Woodlands

Chapter 2

On the day of the tithe, everyone in Brightleaf were wary as cornered cats.

Lilibeth woke bright and early, finding Esta standing in the kitchen, bent over a white bowl of garden strawberries and vanilla cream, a silver spoon in her hands.

She could hear the two house brownies, Tuin and Fagh, churning milk with vigor, but aside that, the cottage was silent.

"You're still here?" Lilibeth said, breaking the silence.

The maid's lips pressed into a thin line.

Silence fell over her usually-loud home again. Lilibeth hated silence. She wanted to shout, cry, throw something. When there was silence, her thoughts ran awry.

Lilibeth tried to distract herself, focusing on the china plates set on the worn kitchen table, the red peppers dangling from the ceiling. There was something empty about the cottage, like something was missing.

It took her a minute until she realized what, exactly, was amiss.

Father wasn't there.

Usually he'd be up early, baking strange foreign desserts for breakfast: cherry clafoutis and little honey-pistachio palmiers cooked in the style of the Black Islands. "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach," he'd say. It always made her smile.

Not wanting to be sad this morning, Lilibeth searched everywhere—in the kitchens, the main room, her bedroom, Mother's old bedroom, his bedroom. She even checked under the beds and in the flowerpots, wondering if he'd been magicked to the size of a mouse with faerie mischief. But he wasn't there.

Immediately, Lilibeth thought of the worst. He'd stupidly gone out to market and had gotten captured by the Woodland King. He'd been stolen away by changeling faeries that snatched babes from their cradles. He'd been—

"Where's Father?" Lilibeth said, her breaths ragged.

Fresh tears gathered in Esta's eyes. Even when crying she was still beautiful, her freckled daisy-bud nose splotched with a hint of redness. "I still don't know."

The tithe. He'd been chosen as the Woodland King's next slave.

No. It couldn't be. Maybe he'd learned to fly and couldn't come back down. Maybe he would come back with the moon on a string. But it was the day of the tithe, where jars of golden fleece and baskets of fat berries were left as offerings for a terrifying dragon. Where the Woodland King flew over Llewellenar to pick his next slave. There was no other possible reason for Father to be gone.

"No," she said to herself as panic crowded in, black and heavy, crushing her. "It can't be—"

The tears that pooled in the maid's eyes slowly overran, spilling down those lovely cheeks. "My dear girl, your father would want you to be safe. Please don't do anything foolish."

"He could die out there!" Lilibeth burst out. She let her tears run. Stories of the Woodland King flooded back to her. His eyes turned skin into a sickly pallor; his heart was so black and evil that even the pits to the underworld spat him back out. "But I can't let him!"

"Lili, please. There's nothing we can do—"

"You're wrong!" Lilibeth screamed. "And I'm wrong, too! Just watch. He's going to come back any minute now."

The words felt false. But she waited anyways.

To pass time, Lilibeth washed peas in Father's favorite wood bowl. She looked outside through the gaps in the wooden boards nailed to the windows, watching the sunlight sneak through. Around this time, she liked to help Father grow strawberries and flowers in the garden.