Meteora, sister, oh fool, fools both of us. Me to write the word arum in a letter when I already knew that someone—even someones—could read what I wrote. And you for leaving the letter about.
Why did you not move forward against the arum the moment you saw it? Surely you could have guessed that if there was arum—the Wake Robin—in the garden, that you should root it out, burn it, bury it, cut it into a million pieces and scatter those pieces into dry sea sand. You were bright enough to know what the mandrake root meant, but not this? Sister, I weep. It is not only Robin the plant will awaken. Someone else is waking, too. Not just your Red Cap. He is dangerous, true. But we both know what the true danger is.
The crows know it. The stars know it.
The sleeper wakened is someone more twisty, more devious, more cunning than we can guess. And how did I discover this? I read all this in the tea leaves—spearmint for settling my already unsettled stomach—upon receiving your latest letter. The leaves formed a kind of crown, though, when I turned the cup around, I saw that it was not a crown but a fence, a hedge, a knot of vines.
I am so horribly afraid, sister. We have meddled in something larger than we are prepared for. It is a Matter of Kings, of this I am sure. What are such homey tricksters as ourselves doing in this hedge? Surely we will not come out of it whole.
And here I was just thinking we knew what we were about. And I playing with falling in love with an old man. I, who am still young in my heart and giddy.
Fool you, but more fool I not to warn in the letter both top and bottom in code.
Wait! The above was written but an hour ago. An hour. Sixty small minutes. A tick of the human clock. Outside the wind has ceased its moan. The stars are looking coldly down, except for the Red Star. It alone shines like an ember in a long-banked fire.
I have been watching out of my window and feel rather than see something below, coming through the spindly trees. Time is stilled, my sister. The clock that came with this place, stands with its hands clasped at midnight and does not move.
I hear the bells on her horse’s bridle. Just the one horse I think, not the entire Fairie Rade. And what is odder than that—the Queen riding alone along a human street? What is she thinking? Who is she seeking? I am so afraid, I am like a mountain shivering through an avalanche.
So I do the only thing I can. I am sending this message stuffed into a wooden locket, tied with twine to a pigeon’s neck. The hawk did not stay for an answer. In a moment I shall whisper your name and your city and your street in the bird’s ear.
If you do not hear from me again, or if I write and do not say the name of your favorites, consider me dead. She comes now through the trees as if down a straight road. She has already crossed the river of blood, and her coming has stopped all the clocks of Christendom. Even the recorded holy man on the mosque down the block no longer calls out.
It is a moment of reckoning. I shall not give her your name. I will not tell her where you stay. Not even if she plucks out my too human eyes and replaces them with eyes of wood.
Sister, speak of me with love. It is something the Queen will never do. I send a kiss for eternity. I will not mind the pain as long as you are safe.
Serana