Fourteen
THE LINE of fair folk waiting for a portrait stretched so far down the tree-lined approach to the throne that I couldn’t see the end of it. No evidence of last night’s feast remained. Try as I might, I couldn’t spy a single grape or crumb on the mossy lawn. The entire evening might as well have been an illusion.
Presently Foxglove sat across from me, wearing a smile that suggested her tight collar was slowly asphyxiating her. I wondered how she had achieved the coveted first place in line, and then decided not to think about it too closely.
Queasiness curdled my stomach. Formulating my grand plan had been one thing; executing it was another. What if Foxglove saw the results and flew into a rage as Rook had? She had no reason to, I told myself—the context was completely different—but the fact remained that if they turned on me, I had only my wits and one iron ring for protection, now a hard lump inside my tightly laced boot. And, I thought . . . and Rook.
I knew, with the same unshakable certainty that sunrise came at dawn, that Rook would defend me from the other fair folk even at the cost of his own life. The thought was not romantic. Rather, it was grim. If this scenario ever came to pass, I couldn’t think of any way it might end without both of us dead.
I spared a glance toward where he sat near Gadfly’s throne. He looked elegant but uncomfortable on the brocade chair that had been brought for him, bent over restlessly with his elbow resting on his thigh, half-listening to whatever Lark was prattling into his ear. He caught me looking, and our eyes met. I noticed, for no particular reason, that a lock of dark hair had fallen over his cheek. Quickly, I returned my attention to my work.
For Foxglove’s portrait, I had chosen human joy. It seemed to me that what passed for joy among fair folk came in two varieties. The first was something akin to the self-righteous, frigid gladness a cheated-on wife might feel upon hearing that her husband’s mistress had taken a fatal fall down a flight of stairs. The second was a vain, selfish, and indulgent pleasure: a rich nobleman calculating that his silver mine had earned so much money he could survive on caviar alone for the next three centuries, were he to live long enough to enjoy it.
And so as I inked Foxglove’s features in blueberry pigment with the tip of Rook’s quill, I gave her the swelling, radiant joy of being swept up in a lover’s arms; of seeing a beloved figure coming down the road after months apart, and recognizing his silhouette against the morning light. Without the crisp and glossy perfection of oil paint on canvas there was something raw about my work, less beautiful, less realistic, but stronger. A stray line by Foxglove’s mouth that I couldn’t correct suggested she was holding in a smile. Laughter welled up behind her crinkled eyes. Working in this imperfect medium made it easier to transmute humanity, the court alchemist turning gold back into lead.
When I was finished, I rose and curtsied. Foxglove approached to take the sheaf of bark from the stand. All around, the court held an indrawn breath. No one spoke, and I sensed an unusual stillness from Gadfly’s direction. Though only a heartbeat passed, a lone heartbeat in which Foxglove expressionlessly scanned my work, the pressure built and built in my chest until I felt like screaming.
“Oh, how quaint!” she exclaimed in a high, clear voice like the ringing of a fork against a crystal glass. She turned the portrait just long enough for the waiting fair folk to have an unsatisfying half-second look, and then whipped it around again to resume her own perusal. The quality of her smile had changed. She had an empty look in her eyes. While the court whispered gaily behind her, the prior tension diffused, she stood there frozen, staring at a version of herself that felt human joy. No one noticed the oddness of it but me.
No one but me and Gadfly, I corrected myself, and Rook, glancing toward the throne again. They too watched Foxglove closely.
Lark’s words came back to me: Just like how Gadfly knows things before they happen.
Earlier that morning, he had declined the honor of sitting for my first demonstration. I hadn’t made anything of it at the time, but now I wondered. Was he waiting for something? Something he had seen?
Movement fluttered in the corner of my eye. I looked back in time to see Foxglove walking briskly out of sight, the portrait held in front of her as though she’d unwillingly been given an infant to hold for the first time in her life.
Finely, almost imperceptibly, the feather shook between my fingers. I held my breath, seeking calm.
Swallowtail approached next. His flaw was his hair, which was spider-silk blond and so impossibly fine it floated about his head like milkweed fluff. He looked to be between Lark and Rook in age, and his large eyes and youthful features lent themselves well to an expression of human wonder. He dashed away clutching his portrait when I was finished and went down the line boastfully showing it to everyone, particularly those who had several hours left to wait.
The day stretched on. Each portrait was a single stepping-stone, the sum of which would form a path home. I lost count of how many portraits I did, marking them only by the emotions I used: curiosity, surprise, amusement, bliss. The pigments dwindled in their teacups.
Throughout it all I felt Rook watching me, and firmly avoided sorrow.
Every fair one reacted differently to seeing themselves transformed. Some laughed, as if at a delightful joke. Some flinched and giggled skittishly. Most of those, I observed, were younger-looking fair folk. Others, usually the older ones, stood and stared like Foxglove. And a few more went and sat down, gazing quietly into the distance, with such an inhuman expression I couldn’t begin to guess at their thoughts. Though fair folk ceased aging once they looked about like Gadfly, it seemed to me these were the oldest ones of all.
Painting straight through the day was as arduous as running a marathon. My right elbow ached from being held for hours in a bent position. My buttocks and knees became sore from sitting. My fingers—cramped around the quill—first grew stiff, and then painful, and then numb, joints spasming whenever I straightened them. Most of all, my face hurt from smiling. My frozen expression must have eventually become rather horrific, but none of the fair folk appeared to notice.
After a time, many of those who had had their portraits done gathered for games on the lawn. I was relieved to find myself no longer the sole focus of attention as the courtiers played shuttlecocks and ninepins nearby. A spirited atmosphere overtook the gathering. Behind me I heard, rather than saw, Rook shift in his chair. My smile grew genuine as I imagined how much it taxed him to stay put for so long.
Finally he exclaimed, “I must say I don’t see the point of sitting here any longer!” and trotted off to beat Swallowtail at lawn billiards. He then lost a game of blind man’s buff to Foxglove, but rallied and defeated everyone shamelessly at both ninepins and shuttlecocks. Lark fluttered behind him like an inquisitive butterfly as he proceeded to win every match in his path.
The fair folk played at a human speed, I noted with interest. Perhaps this was the only rule that provided a challenge. On several occasions, I saw a feathered projectile fly past a player at a distance they surely could have reached with little effort.
Rook had left his coat behind. Every time he twisted his body, an inch or two of his white shirt showed beneath his tightly fitted waistcoat, accentuating his slimness. His rolled-up sleeves put his muscular forearms on display, and the faintest sheen of sweat gleamed on his throat above his unbuttoned collar. Having seen him slay fairy beasts without perspiring, I recognized the exertion of holding himself back. With each swing, each strike, he struggled not to flaunt his power like a war-horse prancing stiffly in a flimsy parade harness.
Without warning, heat rushed through me. The morning before last—had he broken a sweat then, too? I remembered the way his hands had felt lifting me as though I weighed nothing, running down my sides, pressing me against the tree . . .
With burning cheeks, I finished contouring the lines of my subject’s hair, whipped it off the easel, and passed it on. He ran off laughing at the expression of befuddlement on his portrait’s face and settled into a game of ninepins. My next subject sat down, smoothing her skirts over bare, bird-frail knees.
The heat died like coals dashed across winter flagstones.
It was Aster.
“Good afternoon, Aster.” I scraped up the last of my reserves addressing her as though nothing was wrong—as though merely looking at her didn’t make my skin crawl. “Do you have anything in mind, or would you like me to choose an emotion for you?”
“Oh, you choose, please. I’m certain you can choose better than I.” She gave me a wan smile. But her eyes . . . her eyes were ravenous. Twisted in swaths of muslin, her hands trembled. I knew what she wanted, and I wasn’t sure I could give it to her. Or, more importantly, whether I should.
She wanted to see herself mortal again.
I dipped Rook’s quill. A bitter smell of crushed acorns rose from the bowl as I made my first line in dark ocher. I felt as though I were pouring a glass of water that I was about to show, from the other side of prison bars, to a person dying of thirst. In that moment, I hated the Green Well more than I ever had before. I hated that it existed, and that people wanted it. I hated that I had sat on the edge of it and not felt the vileness radiating from its mossy stones. How dare it look the way it did, an evil thing, a hollow thing, surrounded by ferns and bluebells and singing birds. Had Aster had any way of knowing the eternal horror to which she was agreeing? The tip of the feather quivered with the force of my anger.
I outlined her features in bold, violent strokes. The ink spattered as I worked, giving the sense that her portrait was coalescing onto the page from particles of darkness. Her sharp chin, hollow cheeks, and overlarge eyes took shape beneath my hand, raw in form, but true. I changed the angle of her face so that it was slightly lifted; her eyes gazed directly at the viewer. How dare you? they blazed. Her mouth was shut, but her upper lip curled. How dare you do this to me? Where are your consequences? She looked as though she were about to spring forth from the page to enact vengeance—to wrap her fingers around someone’s throat. I shall deliver them to you!
Thus I gave Aster my rage. Ugly rage, human rage, the rage she deserved to feel but could not, because it had been taken from her forever.
When I finished, I was breathing heavily and a strange energy buzzed through my veins, as though my blood had been replaced with a howling wind. As I met the eyes of Aster’s portrait, a thrill sparked through me. She was alive on the page in a way even my Craft rarely achieved. She was real again.
I needed to stand. The gale force within me demanded movement. I rose painfully from the chair, unable to feel my thighs or buttocks, my knees creaking. I brought the portrait to Aster, who watched me approach with polite confusion. The bark shook in my hand. At the last moment, I remembered to curtsy. Across the court, dozens of elegant forms bobbed obligingly back.
“I needed to get up,” I explained in a harsh voice. I cleared my throat. “Mortals’ bodies aren’t designed to sit in one place for long periods of time.”
Murmurs of understanding rippled through the line. Everyone had been observing me, trying to make sense of my actions. Yes, of course; mortals were so fragile . . .
I handed Aster her portrait.
She studied it. A curtain of long, dark hair fell over the side of her face, so I couldn’t see her expression. Finally she raised a finger and traced the still-wet ink, smudging it. She dragged the smudge all the way across the bark, to the edge of the canvas, pressing hard enough that I thought she might crack my work in two. When she reached the edge and released it, the bark flipped up to its original position. She turned her stained fingertip over to look at it.
“I remember,” she whispered. And she angled her head just slightly toward me, enough for me to catch a glint of her eyes through her hair.
A bell might as well have tolled through the clearing—a bell only I could hear. In Aster’s eyes rage, true human rage, struggled like a fire guttering wildly in the night. Gooseflesh rose all over my body.
So quietly I almost didn’t hear her, she said, “Thank you.”
The spell broke. She stood up, her expression blank, so blank I almost wondered if I had imagined that angry spark, but I knew I couldn’t have made it up or mistaken it. She wandered onto the lawn with her portrait dangling limply from her fingers, apparently without a care in the world. But when she sat she kept the portrait angled downward against her lap, like a secret she was determined to keep.
I steeled myself and turned around.
“Sir,” I said to Gadfly, “my Craft has wearied me, and I’m running low on pigment. May I take a break?”
He clapped his hands together. “Of course, Isobel. You needn’t even ask, you know. You’re the guest in our court, and deserve every courtesy I can offer.” The fair folk waiting in line sighed as one, whispering their disappointment. “Now, now,” Gadfly chastised them before his attention sprang back to me. “Would you like someone to escort you through the forest? Rook, perhaps?” He suggested this without a hint of guile.
I glanced toward the game of shuttlecocks and found Rook standing there watching me, chest heaving with exertion, his game forgotten. A birdie whizzed past his head, ruffling his hair.
“No, I’ll do quite well on my own.” I spoke evenly, hearing my own voice as though it came from someone else speaking around a corner. “I plan to remain close by, and I wouldn’t wish to trouble the prince over something so small.”
I had no way of knowing whether Gadfly’s question truly was innocent. If he were to suggest anyone to accompany me, Rook was the natural choice. But I couldn’t shake the scrambling paranoia that he knew. Perhaps that he had even seen something—something in the future—
I smiled at Gadfly and curtsied my leave. Then slowly, deliberately, I gathered up the teacups and walked away toward the glen, where the top of Rook’s autumn tree spread its scarlet leaves in the distance. I felt Rook’s gaze searching me, but I didn’t once turn to look.
I had to accustom myself, after all, to leaving him behind.