Her father had been back for nearly a week when Maire Solanya came to see him. Ash almost missed her visit entirely, because she had been forced to go into Rook Hill with her stepmother and stepsisters. When they returned to the house, a horse was tethered in front of it. Lady Isobel looked at it suspiciously but merely herded her daughters upstairs and called for Anya to attend them. Ash dawdled behind, stroking the horse’s nose, hoping her stepmother would forget about her. When she went back inside she heard voices coming toward the front hall, and she ducked into the parlor to hide. As they came closer, she realized one of them belonged to the greenwitch, and she sounded upset.
“I think you are making the wrong decision,” said Maire Solanya angrily.
“You have no evidence to support your claims,” Ash’s father objected in frustration. “What you are saying is simply—they are simply tales told to children.”
The greenwitch snorted. “Very well,” she said coldly. “If you do not believe what has been true for thousands of years, I cannot change your mind now. But you have to watch out for her—your only daughter. Her mother would have sent her to me in time. Without her mother here to watch over her—”
“She has a stepmother now,” William interrupted.
“That woman knows nothing of this,” Maire Solanya hissed. Ash peered into the hall and saw the greenwitch standing just inside the front door. “You have lived in Rook Hill long enough to know better,” she said, lowering her voice. “Letting her sit out there at her mother’s grave every night—they will come for her.”
Ash’s father did not seem convinced. “Elinor may have shared your fancies, but I do not,” he said. And then he put his hand on the doorknob in a clear indication that the greenwitch should leave. “Have a safe journey home.” After he closed the door he sighed, rubbing his eyes. Ash slid back into the parlor before her father turned around, and she tiptoed to the front window. The courtyard was empty; the greenwitch had already left.
Ash wanted to know what Maire Solanya had meant—who would come for her?—but she did not dare ask her father. He was restless and aggravated for the rest of the day after the greenwitch’s visit. What she had overheard reminded her of the argument he had had with her mother, and she wondered, not for the first time, how many of those tales told to children were true.
Her mother had told her plenty of fairy tales, of course. If they were to be believed, any fairies who still walked this land were most likely to be found deep in the Wood, where no one had traveled for generations. Sometimes at twilight, when Ash was sitting at her mother’s grave, she thought she saw things—a silverish shadow, like heat waves in the summer, or the movement of a creature who did not quite set foot upon the ground—but it was only out of the corner of her eye. Whenever she turned to look, there was never anything there. She knew her father would tell her that it was only the fading light playing tricks on her.
So she had been surprised when the book that he brought back for her was a volume of fairy tales. It was bound in dark brown tooled leather, and the frontispiece was a painting of a fairy woman, elegant and pale, wearing a beautiful golden gown. The title of the book was lettered in bold, dark calligraphy: Tales of Wonder and Grace. Each story was preceded by a detailed illustration, hand-painted in royal blue and crimson, silver and gilt.
“Thank you,” she said to her father. “It is beautiful.”
The tales were not all about fairies—some were hunting stories, some were adventures—but many of them were. When her father saw how she was transfixed by the book, he allowed her to skip Ana and Clara’s lessons with Lady Isobel. “She is young,” he said to his new wife, who frowned at this indulgence. “And she misses her mother. Let her be.”
Ash recognized some of the stories in the book as tales that her mother had told her: “The Golden Ball,” “The Three Good Advices,” “The Beast and the Thorn.” But the lengthiest story in the book, “The Farmer and the Hunt,” was unfamiliar to her, and she stared often and long at the illustration that accompanied it. In the picture, a ruddy-faced farmer stood at the edge of a broad field, and riding across it was a ghostly host of hunters outlined in silver paint, their horses’ eyes glinting gold. The riders were as pale as the fairy woman on the frontispiece, and their faces were hollow skulls, their mouths gaping open.
In the tale, the farmer, a well-liked man named Thom, vanished on his way home from a village tavern. He was found three days later when one of his neighbors discovered his horse tethered near a wooded copse down by the river. Within the copse, Thom was fast asleep on a bed of dried leaves. Although he was very confused when he awoke, after he had been brought home and fed a good supper, he remembered what had happened. On the night he had disappeared, he waited until the full moon had risen before leaving the tavern, and then he took his customary route home. He was walking past the fallow field west of the Wood when he saw lights dancing in the copse by the river, accompanied by the most beautiful flute music he had ever heard. Because his sweetheart, who had died several years before, had played the flute, Thom was drawn toward the music and wondered who was behind it.
Within the copse he came across a scene so beautiful it made his heart ache. There were sparkling lanterns hanging from the branches, illuminating the clearing where dozens of finely dressed men and women were dancing, their bodies as graceful as blossoms bending in a spring breeze. At first they took no notice of the farmer standing on the edge of their circle, and as his dazzled eyes adjusted to the light, he finally noticed the musicians playing along the sidelines. There was a violinist who played a gilded instrument with finesse, but whose face seemed strangely weary for someone who was making such sweet music. And there was the piper whose flute had called to the farmer; she was a young woman wearing a relatively plain gown in comparison to the dancing ladies. As the farmer gazed at her face, it was as if a glamour slowly fell away from it, and he recognized her as his sweetheart, Grace, who was believed to be dead.
When she looked up and met his eyes, the illusion disappeared, and she put down the flute and came to him. In wonder, he took her hands in his, and her hands were as cold as death. She said to him: “You must go back, Thom. I am lost to you forever, but you can still leave.”
As she spoke, the dancing people began to notice him, and one of the women came toward them, her eyes great and blue, and offered him a goblet of wine. “Will you drink, sir?” she asked sweetly.
He took the goblet without thinking, and the girl departed, but just as he was about to take a sip Grace said urgently, “You must not drink of that wine. If you do you will be trapped forever in this world, never to see your family again.”
Her words made him hesitate, but he said, “I had thought you were lost to me; where is this place I have come to?”
“You have stepped into fairy land,” she answered. “Three years ago, I was walking home one night when I encountered the Fairy Hunt, and they offered to take me the rest of the way. I should not have believed them. As soon as I mounted one of their horses, they took me to Taninli, their home, where they gave me food and drink. I was so hungry and thirsty that I gave in, but now I must serve them for eternity, for no humans are allowed to taste their delicacies.”
“I will join you,” he said, “for I love you and would be with you for eternity.”
But she shook her head, and her eyes were dark with pain. “I am but a shadow of myself and can never love you as a human could,” she said. “The fairies have taken my heart away from me.”
He could see that she told the truth, for no blood warmed her skin, and there was no pulse beating in her throat. Yet a part of him still wished to be with her regardless of what form she had taken, and when she saw this in his heart, she led him out of the copse, fearing for his safety, and took the goblet away from his hand. “You must forget about me from now on, and if you see the Fairy Hunt riding, never approach them,” she warned him. And then she touched his cheek and he fell down in an enchanted sleep and did not awaken until his neighbor discovered him.
But as is the way with these encounters, Thom could not forget what he had seen, and every night he yearned for Grace, his heart aching anew. At last he took to wandering near the wooded copse by the river, hoping to hear Grace’s flute. One night at twilight, Thom saw a dozen ghostly riders coming toward him, and soon he recognized them as the Fairy Hunt. But he ignored Grace’s words of warning and gladly went to meet them. After that night he was never seen again, and no one knows if he succeeded in finding his way back to Grace. But a month later, the same neighbor who had awakened Thom from his enchanted sleep came across the farmer again, except this time he would not awaken, for he was dead.
The Tales of Wonder and Grace only sparked more questions in Ash. At night when she sat beside her mother’s grave, wondering if this would be the night that someone—something—came to take her away, as Maire Solanya had warned, she watched the darkness gathering in the nearby trees with equal parts dread and anticipation. What lay beyond those trees? Would she ever dare to do what Thom had done? If the stories were true, as Maire Solanya had seemed to imply, then there might be a way to see her mother again.
There were some common threads among the fairy tales she had read. Fairies were drawn to in-between times like Midsummer’s Eve, when the full weight of summer begins to tip toward the shorter days of autumn; or Souls Night, when the spirits of the newly departed walk the land. But fairies were never seen in common daylight, and they preferred the light of the full moon for their hunts and celebrations. So on the night of the next full moon, Ash rose from her bed at midnight, trembling with excitement. She pulled on her woolen cloak and tiptoed halfway down the upstairs corridor before her stepsister’s door cracked open. She heard Ana’s voice whispering, “Where are you going?” Ash froze, turning to look at her stepsister. Ana was peering out at her curiously, holding a lit candle stub beneath her face.
“It’s none of your business,” Ash whispered. “Go back to bed.”
Ana’s eyes narrowed and she stepped out into the corridor, pulling her door shut behind her. She observed, “You are dressed to go outside. Where do you think you’re going?”
“I can go wherever I want,” Ash said curtly.
She turned her back on her stepsister and began to walk toward the stairs, but stopped when Ana said, “I’ll tell. I’ll wake up your father and tell him you’re going out.”
Anger rose inside her—she would not let this girl stop her—and she glared at Ana. “Do whatever you like,” Ash said dismissively. She did not wait for Ana’s reaction but went down the stairs quickly, her heart racing with fear and exhilaration.
In the pantry, she lit the covered lantern before going to the back door. She put her hand on the doorknob and looked behind her. In the glow of the lantern the kitchen was comforting and ordinary. Ana had not followed her. Taking a deep breath, she turned the doorknob and plunged out into the night.
As she went down toward the Wood, the full moon hung like a giant, pale eye above her, unwavering in its gaze. At the foot of the hill, she paused and looked up at the house, and the windows were dark, reflecting only the heavy moon. The lantern threw her shadow up the hill, a black ghost attached to her feet, and she shivered as the wind came rattling through the pine branches. Steeling herself, she turned toward the Wood and her mother’s grave, and just beyond it was the track she and her mother had sometimes taken to gather mushrooms or wild plants. They had never gone far enough to lose sight of the house, and Ash did not know how far the path went, but tonight she meant to find out.
Entering the Wood was like entering a vast cavern: The sound of her footsteps was magnified by the branches arching above. Her lantern cast only a tiny glow in the immense black, for now she could no longer see the moon. As she went deeper into the trees, she heard the call of a night owl, and an animal bounded through the undergrowth—a rabbit?In the distance, the howl of a wolf raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She thought she could see eyes glowing on the trail ahead of her, but a moment later they had slid to the right, and she could not follow them as well as keep her eyes on the path. Her hands trembled and made the lantern bob, casting wild shadows on the ground, but she pressed on and tried to ignore the frightened voice in her head that told her to go back. Moving made her feel better: At least she could run.
She came to a tangle of fallen branches that blocked her way, and in order to continue she had to leave the path to pick her away around them. The ground was uneven, with roots protruding from the forest floor, and when she reached out to steady herself on a nearby tree trunk she felt something move beneath her fingers. She gasped in fright and hastened forward, clinging to the lantern, suddenly afraid she would drop it and be left in the pitch-black night.
She did not know how long she had been walking before she realized she had lost her way back to the path. She was standing among tall trunks of blue pine, their bark mottled gray and black in the lantern light, and this time when she turned to look around herself at the waiting dark, she was sure that she saw something glittering back at her: eyes, yellow and blinking. She heard her own breath, quick and frantic, like a hunted creature. And then the whispering began. It came on the wind, sweeping toward her in scratchy bursts, and then was borne away again before she could discern any words. She held out the lantern like a weapon, calling out, “Who is there?”
There was the sound of laughter—thin, distant, like bells. Was this the sign she had been seeking? She turned toward the sound and stumbled forward, tripping over the undergrowth. As the laughter came more frequently, the whispering began to separate out into sentences spoken in a language she did not understand. It could only be the fairies, she thought, for who else would be deep in the Wood at midnight? The thought raised a cold sweat on her skin, for if they were real, then all the consequences in those tales must be real, too. But that was the last clear thought she had, because then she saw the lights in the distance. They did not waver; they were beacons in the night. She started to walk toward them, but they always seemed just out of reach. She began to feel a deep longing in the pit of her stomach: When would she get there? She feared she would wander in the dark Wood forever, until she was only a skeleton powered by sheer will.
That was when the drumbeat of horses’ hooves came toward her, the ground rumbling with the force of their passage. She stood transfixed, and the wind rose, buffeting her in cold gusts. It became more difficult to see, as if there were a fog rising, and just when the horses seemed to be nearly upon her, her lantern went out, leaving her momentarily blind. But soon afterward the fog began to glow with an otherworldly light, and she shivered in its damp chill. When she saw the first horse, she felt her heart leap up into her throat. This moment would be fixed in her memory forever: the moment she saw with her own eyes the creatures she had heard about all her life. They were grand and beautiful and frightening—the horses’ heads shining white, their eyes burning like a blacksmith’s forge. The riders, too, were like nothing she had ever seen before: ethereal men and women with pale visages, their cheekbones so sharply sculpted that she could see their skulls through translucent skin. They surrounded her and looked at her with steely blue eyes, each gaze an arrow staking her to that spot, and she could not close her eyes though the sight of them made her eyes burn as if she were looking at the sun.
They seemed to speak to each other, but she could not see their mouths moving, and she could only hear the strange, uneven whispering she had heard before. Suddenly the riders moved in unison, circling her, and she felt like she was being spun like a limp doll held by a willful child. When the motion stopped, the riders were streaming away from her in an elegant spiral, leaving her alone with one man who looked down at her from his tall white horse. He was more handsome than any man she had ever seen, but like the other riders, he was pale as a ghost. When he spoke, she was stunned that she could understand him, and he said, “You must go back.”
She opened her mouth to say, “I came to find you.” It felt as though she hadn’t spoken in years.
He looked deeply angry, and she cowered beneath his glare. He said: “Then you are a fool.”
She sank to her knees and begged, “Please—listen to me—”
He extended his arm, pointing back the way she had come. “Go now—the way is clear to you. And do not return.” She felt herself scramble to her feet as if he had picked her up, and behind her the path was clear through the Wood. At the end of it, in the far distance, a light in the kitchen window gleamed. She felt the force of the air behind her, propelling her to turn around, and her legs took her at breakneck speed down the path. It was wide open, free of pebbles or fallen branches or even the thick padding of last year’s leaves. She could not slow down, and she could not look back, either. The ground was hard and cold beneath her feet, and when she burst through the border of the Wood and came upon the hawthorn tree, it was as if she had been slapped forward by the wind and forbidden to return. The lantern was dead in her hand, and the Wood was a stone wall behind her.
Anya was standing at the top of the hill, calling her name, and when she saw Ash coming up the hill she ran down to meet her. “Where have you been?” she cried. “Ana said you ran away—are you all right?” She bent toward Ash and pulled her into an embrace. “Aisling,” she said in a ragged voice, “your father—he is not well.”
“What do you mean?” Ash demanded, pushing her away. “What do you mean he’s not well?”
“The greenwitch is here,” Anya said. “Maire Solanya is here. She has given him a draught to calm him, but he shouts in his fever.”
Ash ran into the house and upstairs, down the hallway lit with flaming sconces and into her father’s room, where he lay in bed tossing and turning, the greenwitch chanting something unfamiliar yet unmistakably old. Lady Isobel sat in the window seat, turned away from them. Maire Solanya saw Ash and halted her chanting, coming toward her. “This is a sickroom, Ash,” she said. “You must stay away.” And she pushed Ash out of the room and closed the door.
Standing in the hallway, Ash could hear her father shouting. It sounded like he was calling for her mother.