Elia closed her eyes, flattening her hands on her stomach. This would infuriate her sisters when they saw, for both would demand this artifact of their mother for themselves. Gaela because she felt she deserved all Dalat’s mementos, because they’d been the closest, because she was the eldest and would be queen; Regan because she liked to deny Elia small things, and as ever would support Gaela’s claim.
No doubt Lear had hidden it in the tiny clay jar in order to keep it to himself. And now, he set it where he willed it, upon his favorite daughter’s head. All beings shall in their proper places be set, he’d written in his letter. A sliver of worry slid coldly through Elia’s heart. But Lear’s slow, steady hands soothed her, as he twisted her hair into a long smiling roll, and her shoulders relaxed. His tugs were more tentative than Aefa’s, and the story he told as he worked was a story Elia had heard before: the first time Dalat had agreed to allow her husband to braid her hair, and the terrible time they’d both had of it, neither giving up for hours and hours, until Lear had made such an utter mess Dalat had burst into tears.
“I was devastated, of course,” Lear said, as he always did, “but not nearly so much as your mother. When Gaela was born, we learned together, though Gaela declined to sit still, and then Regan’s hair was easy. By the time you were born, I was nearly an expert, even Satiri said so.”
As always, Elia wished to ask him: if he’d been an expert, why had he never taught Aefa, or Elia, or anyone, after he sent all Dalat’s attendants away, letting Elia’s own hair go dry as gorse in the summer?
But she knew the answer, though her father would never agree: it was the depth of his grief. And she knew, too, that sometimes Lear’s version of the past was woven equally of truth and pleasant fabrication. So long as the stories harmed none, she could not bring herself to challenge them. Especially when they involved Dalat.
“There,” the king said, caressing Elia’s neck and squeezing her shoulders.
Elia lifted her hands to carefully explore the silver and crystals in her hair; Lear had set them in carefully, a web of starlight, she imagined, with a few tiny pins. Simple and elegant. A starry crown for a star-blessed princess.
AEFA
SOMETIMES AEFA OF Thornhill thought she was not hard enough to survive Innis Lear, but when such doubts plagued her, she remembered what her mother would call her, and take heart.
My little mushroom.
Mushrooms weren’t generally thought to be pretty or resilient, but they appeared overnight, kissed into being by the sweet lips of earth saints who returned to the island only for secret dancing. Or so her mother had liked to whisper when Aefa climbed into bed with her, nose wrinkled and begging for a new nickname. Mushrooms are born of the damp earth, fed by starlight instead of the sun. They are both stars and roots, and they are never alone. When have you come across a single mushroom? Never! What a lovely thing to be, my little mushroom: never alone.
Aefa missed her mother.
At least Alis was alive, though hidden deep in the White Forest. She’d railed against Lear three summers ago, calling him foolish and dangerous, mad in his obdurate grief and old age. Only the king’s love for his Fool had saved Alis, buying her the opportunity to flee. And only the star prophecy that the sanctity of the White Forest itself must be maintained saved it from the king’s soldiers. There was a refuge at its heart now, held by the witch Brona, and Alis was there, safe but unable to leave lest she be caught and imprisoned, or worse, exiled forever from the island.
That was how Aefa’s clandestine meetings with the witch had begun: to pass letters for her mother. It was just as well Elia had abandoned her companion to sneak into the Summer Seat alone, for it left Aefa free to go where she wished, unseen.
The town of Sunton was a collection of stone cottages arrayed about a square and surrounded by portioned fields and shared grazing meadows. It clung in a raindrop shape along the low, sloping moors. The tip pointed toward the standing stones perched at the northernmost bluff overlooking the Summer Seat promontory, then curved against the King’s Road that led all along this southern cliff coast toward Port Comlack and Errigal Keep at the far eastern edge of the island. Aefa made her way along the road openly under the sun, swinging a basket in her hand and humming one of her father’s more ridiculous songs about kings and snails. She skipped across the muddy furrows in the dirt. Villagers smiled at her from their yards, women mostly, hanging laundry and sewing in the bright daylight while children dashed here and there, chasing goats and chickens. It was exactly like the village in which Aefa had been born, down to the capped well in the town square, to which she headed directly. Her memories of Firstday blessings at the holy well of Thornhill were dim, as it had been twelve years since she’d attended, and nearly ten since the wells were capped all across Innis Lear, but she remembered the scent—the dank, stony smell of moss and rootwater, and the shiver as a star priest flicked drops onto her face. She’d sneezed once, and it made her mother scowl, but her father had laughed.
The cap on the Sunton well was an old wagon wheel covered with lime wash and set with small gray river stones in a spiral pattern. Lovely and simple, and no doubt those still devout considered it a symbol of the path down and down and down to the water, as if they could still touch it. At the south rim, where the spiral began, Aefa crouched. In the cap’s shadow, there ought to be a box tucked against the foot of the well. But only a small lizard darted away at Aefa’s seeking touch.
With a huff, she stood. She supposed she could circle around town once or twice, or return tomorrow and hope Brona had found a chance to come.
“Aefa.”
It was the witch, her deep voice fond and laughing.
“Ah!” Aefa gasped, twirling with a delighted smile. “I didn’t miss you after all.”
The two women ducked together, embracing. The witch of the White Forest handed Aefa a small stoppered vial before they parted. She was a powerfully built woman with strong hands and a lovely tan face; loose black curls bound under a hood of vibrant red that matched the paint touched to lips as plump as her thighs.
Tucking the vial into a pocket of her skirts, Aefa said, “The princess is already inside the keep. I wish I could have brought her here to see you. She never speaks of you anymore, or her own mother, or truly much of anything but the stars. I’ve not caught her whispering to any flowers or wind in two entire years, Brona.”
The witch’s dark brow bent with sorrow, and she gazed toward the Summer Seat. “Be sure to put the rootwater in her mouth.”
“I slip it into her wine, or sometimes her breakfast. Shouldn’t she notice?”
Brona shrugged one shoulder. “She likely does, she only refuses to admit so, for many, many reasons.”
“Is she afraid?”
“No doubt.”
“I want to tell her,” Aefa said ferociously.
“And if you did, what would she say?”
Aefa imagined Elia’s face, her bright, black eyes. You have to listen to the island, Elia, Aefa would say, and those careful eyes would lower, perhaps flick up to the sky, or to the horizon, and the princess would take one of the great, deep breaths she used to quash the overwhelming song in her heart. But then Elia would make a sad, pretty smile, and move to some other conversation, some other answer, as if Aefa had said nothing at all.
The witch touched Aefa’s knuckles, and said, “She’ll ask you, when she’s ready. You’ll make sure she knows you have the answers?”
“I snap fire sometimes, out of air, to remind her.” Aefa pursed her lips. “She disapproves.”
Brona’s eyebrows lifted.
“She is afraid,” Aefa corrected herself, barely whispering.
“That’s good, little mushroom.” Brona smiled at Aefa’s darting glance. “Alis is well. She’s cultivating a long vine of sweet peas with charming purple flowers and a tendency to giggle at bluebirds.”
“Father wants to see her.”