she felt she couldn’t walk another step, she stopped.
“I’m tired,” she said in the sharp, nettled voice that back home would have gotten her a pat on the head from Mother and a silly face from Barthy. “Let’s stop. Let’s stay here for tonight. We’re not getting any closer to that dumpy old house and I want to sleep.”
The faery kept walking. He didn’t even glance back.
She bounded after him. “You know, what if someone lives in that cottage? Have you thought about that? And what if they don’t like us? What’ll happen then?”
The faery kept his eyes locked straight ahead. “I suspect we’ll die. Of boredom. I’ve heard tell there’s a little girl in these woods, and she follows folk about and jabbers at them until their ears shrivel up and they go deaf.”
Hettie slowed, frowning at the faery’s back. She hoped he would drown in a bog.
She thought about that for a while. If he did—drown in a bog—it would be frightening. He would lie under the water, and his long white face and white hands would be all that showed out of the murk. And perhaps his green eye, too, glowing even a thousand years after he was dead. She wouldn’t want to see it, but she didn’t suppose she would object much if it happened. This was his fault, after all.
Finally, when even the faery butler was breathless and dragging his feet, they stopped. Hettie collapsed in a heap in the snow. The faery butler sat against a tree. The woods were dead-dark now. On her first night in the Old Country, Hettie had slept against a tree, too, thinking that the roots might be warmer than the ground, trees being alive and all. She soon learned better. The trees here weren’t like English trees. They weren’t rough and mossy like the oak in Scattercopper Lane. They were cold and smooth as polished stone, and she had woken with the ghastly feeling that the roots had begun to wrap around her while she slept, as if to swallow her up.
The snow was cold, but at least she was not in danger of being eaten by a tree. She curled up for the seventh time and went to sleep.
The sound of footfalls woke her.
At first she thought the faery butler must be up again, pacing, but when she peered around the tree, she saw he was lying still. His gangly legs were propped up akimbo, long white hands limp in the snow. He made only very small sounds as he slept, little wheezing breaths that formed clouds in the air.
Hettie sat bolt upright. Something was moving through the trees, quickly and stealthily toward them.
Tap-tap, snick-snick. Hard little feet on roots, then on snow, limping closer.
She remembered the faeries she had seen the day they had arrived in the Old Country, the wild, hungry ones with their round, bright eyes. They had all leaped and swarmed around her, poking and prodding until the faery butler had chased them off with a knife. For a few nights they had followed, slinking along at the edge of sight, darting around the trees and giggling, but after a while they had seemed to tire of the strangers and had vanished back into the woods.
Only the cottage remained.
Hettie crawled around the tree trunk. The faery butler was still asleep. She poked him in his ribs, hard.
He grunted. Slowly his face turned toward her, but his eye remained shut. The green-glass one was dull, tarnished lenses loose across its frame. Hettie shivered.
She looked back around the tree.
And found herself staring straight into the red-coal eyes of a gray and peeling face.
“Meshvilla getu?” it said, and placed one long finger to its lips.
Hettie made a little noise in her throat. The skin of its cheeks curled like ash from a burned-up log. Its breath was cold, colder than the air. It blew against her, and she could feel it freezing in a slick sheen on her nose. It smelled rotten, wet, like a slimy gutter.
“Meshvilla?”
She wanted to run, to scream. Panic welled in her lungs. She couldn’t tell if the gray thing’s voice was threatening or wheedling, but it was without doubt a dark voice, a quiet, windy voice that prickled up her arms.
“No,” she squeaked, because back in Bath that had always been the right answer for changelings like her. “No, go away.”
The creature pushed closer, eyeing her. Then its horrid hands were feeling over her cheeks, running through the branches that grew from her head. Bone-cold fingers came to rest on her eyes.
Hettie screamed. She screamed louder than she had ever screamed in her life, but in that vast black forest it was just a little baby’s wail. It was enough to wake the faery butler, though. He sat up with a start, green clockwork eye clicking to life. It swiveled once, focused on the gray-faced faery.
The faery butler jerked himself to his feet. “Valentu! Ismeltik relisanyel?”
The gray face turned, its teeth bared. Hettie heard it hiss. “Misalka,” it said. “Englisher. Leave her. Leave her to me.”
Hettie began to shake. The long, cold fingers were pressing down. An ache sprang up behind her eyes. She knew she should fight, lash out with all her might, but she could not make herself move.
The faery butler had no such troubles. A knife dropped from inside his sleeve and he swung it in a brilliant arc toward the other faery, who let out a grunt of surprise. It was all Hettie needed. She threw herself to the ground and began to crawl desperately around the base of the tree. Once on the other side, she wrapped her arms around the trunk and peered in terror at the battling faeries.
They moved back and forth across the snow, swift and silent. The faery butler was fast. Faster than rain. She had seen him fight back in London, seen him use that cruel knife on Bartholomew, but right now she was glad for his skill. He moved his long limbs with grace, whirling and slashing, liquid in the moonlight. The blade spun, streaking down over and over again toward the other faery, who barely managed to get out of its path.
“No!” it screamed, in English. “You fool and traitor, what are you—?”
The knife grazed it. Bits of gray skin flew away on the wind. Hettie saw that underneath there was only black, like new coal.
She turned her face into the tree, squeezing her eyes shut. She heard a shriek, a dull thud. Then a whispering sound and a long, long breath fading away. After that, there was nothing.
It was a long time before Hettie dared peek around the trunk. She listened to the faery butler, pacing in the snow and panting. She wondered if she should say something to him, but she didn’t dare do that either. He seemed suddenly frightening and dangerous. After a while she heard him lean against the tree, and after another while, his slow, whistling breaths. Only then did she inch from her hiding place.
The faery butler was still again, his green eye dark. The snow between the roots was trampled. At the faery’s feet lay what looked like a heap of ashes and old clothes. Already they sparkled with frost.
She edged over to the heap. It didn’t look like a faery anymore. It didn’t look like anything, really. Nothing to be afraid of. She nudged the pile with her toe. It rustled and gave way, the jerkin and boots collapsing over a delicate shell of cinders.
She
