I plucked and picked, weakening it, though the banishment held: I couldn't cross the border myself. When I was sure of its weakening, I gathered myself together again, reshaping my form to the faery I had once been, and went into the Border Kingdom with news that the human border had finally begun to fail.
It could hardly be thought of as an invasion. Fae whose memories were long and whose pride stung at having been pushed back by a human army merely went to see for themselves, and, where they could, edged into Irindala's country. Elsewhere, where the border fell between Irindala's country and other human realms, there were invasions. Irindala's people had lived in undisturbed peace for seventy years or more, under the guidance of a queen believed to be a witch; invasion was inevitable. Having spread my knowledge, I returned to the border to sit and shiver with delight at each new piece of gossip about the slow fall of Irindala's country.
She fought for seven years, an ancient unaging queen struggling to retain her country, and in the seventh year, in a lull, retired from the field. That, finally, was when the faery king attacked, pushing hisy kingdom forward like an arrow meant to pierce the heart of Irindala's country. I thrilled to it, feeling my banishment weaken as the king advanced: I could not be kept from a conquered country whose land no longer belonged to its former queen. I thought her too old, too defeated by the long-ago loss of her son, to rally, and yet somehow, I was wrong.
Irindala returned to the battle as an implacable shield to her people. Everywhere she went, the border strengthened again, strengthened as it had not done in the previous seven years of war. Strengthened as though the aged queen re-cast the spell I had taught her nearly a century ago, though to do so was impossible. It required royal blood and royal bones, and unless she plucked the very bones from her own body, I could not see how she managed, for she had never again married, and had sworn for all this time to hold the land for the prince's return.
I entertained the glorious idea that she had sacrificed him, her beastly child, but I would have known that in my own bones, and knew it to be untrue. I had never tested the spell I'd given her, though, and thought that perhaps after all this time, her own blood renewed the magic after all. It did not much matter, perhaps; what mattered was that she pushed the Border Kingdom back, and back again, until the bloodiest battle of the war was fought at the Rose Border, and I, architect of it all, nearly died beneath a mortal's steel blade.
It was not that I was a female that stopped him; there were women a-plenty amongst Irindala's army, and the blood on his blade said he'd killed without hesitation before. Nor was it that I was not obviously a combatant: innumerable of the fair folk went into battle with no visible armor, relying on their magic to protect them more thoroughly than metal ever could. No: it was something else, a sudden focus in his gaze, and then a far-away look that ended with his sword lowering, and his deep voice saying, "Go."
I rose, and ran, and that night reshaped myself, for the first time in decades, to a mortal form. I kept those aspects of myself that I was most fond of: the slight asymmetry of my face, my height and my bosom, but I squared my jaw and cast off the white fairness of my hair for a honey gold, making of myself a creature that Irindala would not recognize if she met me face to face—
—though, remembering that she had known me in my sweet Helen form, I thought it best that I never encounter the queen again. Nor did I need to; all I needed was to find the man who had not slain me. And so I did, by putting myself to work in the roving hospital the queen's army had set up on the faery kingdom's side of the border. I listened and watched and waited, and soon enough he came in with an injury he said was no more than a scratch. He smiled at me as if I might be someone familiar as I tended the wound, and ten weeks later when Irindala closed the border for the second time in her long life, I returned to her country as Jacob's bride.
I finally knew, when Jacob carried me across the border into the country I had been banished from, how Irindala had survived a century and more. I put my feet into the soil, and felt how the earth, while fit for crops and building, had no magic in it. All life had magic, and we faeries, more than that, but Irindala's country had been drained of its power. The only place I felt any at all was along the re-established border, and that was new magic, fresh, recently cast. It had not yet spread into the land, and I thought it never would, not with Irindala drawing on the land to sustain her life. Here and there the earth was even spoiled, barren with too much having been taken from it. A thrill shivered through me. Irindala might well be her own undoing, and never know what horrors she had wrought. But that was only probable, and I intended her downfall to be inevitable.
I had no excuse to ask my new husband whether witches abounded here, but it took little enough time to confirm what I suspected. Witches were almost as unheard of as faeries, and even those who fought in the Border Wars only half believed in the fair folk at all. I dared not draw attention to myself as a witch, then, though I had been known as one while at Irindala's side. I did what I could, growing lush roses along the walls of the merchant's mansion Jacob earned his way to owning, and when he shook his head at them, I laughed and said, "Our own rose border, my love. Did the last one not bring us together?" We seduced one another amongst the roses, in the heart of my power, and I, forgetting caution in my hunger for a long-absent touch, became careless, and thus round with our passion.
Jacob's reverence at my swollen belly surpassed any love or awe Irindala had ever held me in, and I loved him for it. A daughter we called Pearl was born, and when it became clear to me that her hair would come in as white as my own naturally did, I worked the smallest enchantment on her, that it should be strikingly sable: worthy of attention, but not accusations of witchery. I set it to last so long as she wished to confine herself to the expected and the ordinary, which was as close to forever as any spell could be set, and was satisfied to see her grow up a cool and quick child who judged with a scathing glance.
Time and again I returned to lie in the roses with Jacob, and from those unions came the second daughter, Opal, who even at birth was so mild and ordinary that I lost interest in her immediately, and in due time, the third, Amber, whose golden gaze earned her the name and upon whom I cast a spell like Pearl's, softening the gold with green so she should not be thought a witch even in childhood. Unlike with Pearl, the spell seemed to reduce her fire and ambition, but she was the only one of the girls who loved the roses as much as I did, and so I was fond of her despite her dullness.
Irindala discovered me when Amber was two.