A Red-Rose Chain

“No?” Ceres raised an eyebrow, looking at him. “Can we be so sure of that? Many are the methods to force sleep, and I would not be surprised if at least one came complete with unquiet dreams.”


“My niece is an oneiromancer, and she hasn’t said anything about people who’ve been elf-shot having nightmares,” I said. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Nightmares are ordinary things that can happen to anyone, and I guess you could make a type of elf-shot that forced them.” It seemed like a form of torture to me—and it was, really. There was no other word that described being trapped in a realm of unending nightmares, with no way of waking up.

“I haven’t forgotten them,” said Walther quietly. “I’ve never forgotten them. I’m keeping my word, Aunt Ceres.”

“Good,” said Ceres.

I looked between the two of them, frowning. “Somebody want to fill the rest of us in? Because I have no idea what’s going on right now.”

“When I left, I promised Aunt Ceres that I’d find the counteragent to elf-shot,” said Walther. “There’s always a counteragent. It’s just a matter of figuring out what it is. I’ve been working for the last hundred years on a way to wake the sleepers up. I’m almost there, I am. If I could just find someone who knew who brewed the original tincture—”

“Eira Rosynhwyr,” I said, without thinking. Walther and Ceres turned to stare at me.

Tybalt took another sip of tea.

A moment passed, and then Walther asked, slowly, “What do you mean?”

“Eira Rosynhwyr is the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn, and she was the first person to make elf-shot. The Luidaeg said so.” She hadn’t mentioned Eira—better known as “Evening”—by name. I’d been forced to put the pieces together myself, a little bit at a time, due to the geas the Luidaeg was laboring under. She couldn’t tell lies, but there were things she couldn’t say out loud. “She’s the reason the stuff’s fatal to changelings. According to the Luidaeg, it didn’t have to be. Eira’s just a bitch.”

“You . . . I . . .” Walther stopped. Then he started to laugh, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “Of course you know who created elf-shot. Of course. And why would you have told me? It’s not like I ever asked.”

“You didn’t,” I said.

“I don’t suppose the Luidaeg also told you what Eira’s magic consisted of, did she? What the elements of it were?”

It had taken me years to realize that most people in Faerie weren’t as sensitive to the distinct elements of a person’s magic as I was. Knowing someone’s magic was part and parcel of knowing their bloodlines, which made it as easy as breathing for me. “She didn’t, but I’ve met the woman. Her magic smelled of roses and snow.”

“What kind of roses?” Walther leaned forward, expression eager.

“Red ones,” I said. “Not wild roses—cultivated ones, although they don’t smell like the kind of hothouse roses you can get today. It’s like they’re an early kind of garden rose? Walled gardens. Ones where people could breed and breed their flowers, and not worry about how they would thrive in the outside world.” I stopped, unsure how much further I could go—and how much further I would want to.

Tybalt had put down his tea and was looking at me, eyebrows raised. “I’d always wondered how it was that you could insist that everyone’s magic was so different, when you said the same words over and over again. Roses and pine trees and all the flowers of the forest. But if you know them that intimately, then there really is no wonder.”