You are in the forest that is not your own, and you know from the rough, ridged bark of the ash trees that once were smooth saplings that much time has passed here in your absence. You had not wanted to come, it is too painful to recall. But they watch you all the time, beneath the Hill and in the Greenwood, pairs of eyes gleaming with hatred and mistrust. Highborn fey whisper in angry knots at court. Even your waiting women strip the gossamer sheets of your bedchambers as though to find hidden secrets. Once you discovered a bananach’s feather teeming with lice left behind in your wardrobe. You ignore these signs, your solitary coldness mistaken for arrogance. It is all you have to make them cautious of challenging you.
You have come here on this dying day of summer to be alone, at least for a little while before they sense your absence beneath the Hill. They will not follow you here for they think it a place of no consequence, of too much sun, too close to the stink of mortal kind. They hear the sounds of the builder’s hammer and they shudder, knowing it will mean the loss of more faerie land.
You have come out of an unexpected tenderness and shame. You stand in the greening shadow of the ash trees and see the lawn of wildflowers and choking grass leading up to the wall that was not there before. You can hear the man, shouting, grunting like a gored animal, but you do not need words to understand the anguish and rage that feeds such madness. This was your doing, you remind yourself, but it could be no other way. You touch the old scar beneath your breast, the small circle of ruched skin reminding you that all three of you paid the price, though none was asked. Such is the call of power that it levels all to its demands.
The shouting has stopped and suddenly he is there, standing on the edge of the wild, forsaken lawn. He raises his head, shaggy with unkempt hair, his once fair skin mottled brown and black like old leather left to wither in the sun and rain. You are still, unmoving, though your eyes gaze keenly at the man, taking in every line of his face, the eyes black and bloodshot, the lips dry and cracked. He inhales deeply, his wolfish head swinging slowly from side to side as though scenting prey. For one moment his eyes seem to rest on you, and you see the moment of shocked surprise, before his eyes roll back into white spheres of madness again. He falls to his knees and with outstretched arms, lifts his head, howling.
And in the small triangle of skin at the base of his throat, that skin that once you warmed with your kiss, you throw your silver blade. Your aim is true as always and the point plunges deep, strangling his howls. He falls and you watch him, horror and misery mingled with the confidence of your action.
You step from the edge of the woods and enter the fallow field, wildflowers brushing your ankles as you let yourself turn back to that first moment. Blood weeps beneath your breast, the old wound torn open anew. Slowly, you approach him and he watches you, the fury in his black eyes dulling like river-washed stones abandoned on the shore. He gurgles, hiccups as the blood pools around the stem of silver. But he does not struggle, for he believes again. You lean down to him and your honey-colored hair brushes his face. He thinks you mean to kiss him farewell, and almost imperceptibly he lifts his chin amid the pain of dying to receive it.
But you will not kiss him, for you know too much about his madness. Instead you free your blade from his throat and watch him die, quickly now as the blood spurts furiously, washing his neck and shoulders crimson. You wipe your blade on his filthy shirt for not one drop of his blood must enter the Greenwood lest they should know of it.
Later, in a cool spring, you will purify yourself, pouring the cold, clean water over and over your flesh until all traces of his animal scent and the blood of your wound reopened and now sealed again have disappeared. But one last gesture you cannot resist. On a small bayberry leaf dangling close to the edge of the spring you have scratched your child’s true name with your fingernail in lines so small, not even a spriggan could read it between the green veins. And you wonder as you do so whether you have made a mistake after all.