Allison Rohan's Blog

Hello, my dear friends!  I hope you and your family are having a lovely Christmas.  I am blessed to be home with my entire family, gathered from opposite coasts.
This won't be a long post, because writing emotive blog posts is not what Christmas is about.  Suffice it to say that I am grateful for each and every one of you, my friends, and that I'll be back with a book review hopefully before New Year's.
Merry Christmas!


From Pinterest

From my bed, I can see a sliver of pure blue sky through the window.  The leaves of my myrtle tree are so red they're almost purple.  The colors are quite magical together.

I have bronchitis.  I am lying in my bed, where I have been for three days now.  My art history midterm is in forty-five minutes, and even though I have a doctor's note excusing my absence, I keep having pseudo-guilt for not being there.  Fortunately, my university regards difficulty breathing as an excellent reason for not attending an exam.

I have not written on this blog for a while now.  College requires adjustments.  Some days it feels like a dog I have taught to heel; other days it feels like a slavering monster that has eaten my sketchbook, my writing notebook, and has been chewing on my lungs for a few days now.

The worst news is that some demon has possessed my library account and is not letting me request books from my sickbed.  So instead I watched four seasons of Parks and Recreation in four days like a reasonable sick person.

Convalescing in bed is dangerous because, while half of my brain is dedicated to Netflix, the other half is browsing the multitude of book websites online.  In the past two sentences, I have spent three dollars on books.  Send help.

So, here I am!  Bed-ridden, maybe.  Bronchitis-afflicted, perhaps.  But back in the blogging world?  Yes.

Step one: Start a Pinterest board.  It should look something like this.

 
Or this.

Or this.


Step two: spend $9867678986 on dorm decorations.

Step three: leave most of them at home because you don't have the deep inner strength needed to face carrying them up a bazillion stairs.

Anyway.  Here's the final product.


Before I say anything else, I have to fangirl a little about my dorm.  It has crown molding.  And beautiful real floors, and beautiful yellow walls, and a gigantic window looking out on the oak tree-lined quad.  I.  Love.  My.  Dorm.


Immediately on your right is the dressing room, where I prepare my flawless daily outfits.  As you may notice, there's some artwork.  Here's the first:


It's a quotation by John Muir, the famous explorer.  I love its adventurous spirit and wanderlust.  (Text: the mountains are calling, and I must go.)


This quote is from a song written for Beauty and the Beast when it became a Broadway musical.  The original phrase:
No matter what the pain,We've come this far.I pray that you remainExactly as you are.
I love having a daily reminder in my room.

Here are my books!  I have since added quite a few more, including a beautiful copy of Grimm's Fairytales, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (my favorite illustrator).


Likewise, I have since added more art to the wall above my bed.  It seems a little sad and bare in this picture.  And hopefully, they'll be even more to come!

Beneath my bed is my modest kitchen.

Here's my desk.  It is absolutely this neat everyday.  Yeah.  Totally.

Remember the big, lovely window I promised?  Here it is.

And that's my dorm!
I really am loving college.  For those who don't know, I'm a double major in English and Classics.  I'm brushing up on my Middle English and Latin this semester, which is terribly fun.  I love the girls on my hall, too.  So far we've watched the Lego Movie, the Emperor's New Groove, and Shrek.  During the scene in Shrek where Fiona sings to birds, one of my neighbors turned to me and said, "That's you, Allison."
I'm off to seek my fortune.

I don't like buying movies.  It boils down to the same reason I don't like buying books before I've read them.  If I finish it and don't like it, it's either back to the used bookstore, or I'm stuck with it.

With books, the solution is simple: go to the library.  But if you're like me, your library doesn't supply movies.  If I can't find it on Netflix or Amazon, I have two choices: buy the movie, or go without.

This struggle is worse because movies usually cost more than books.  And it's worst of all with Miyazaki movies, which you can order now from Disney for the low price of $30 and your soul.

So when I heard of this must-see, delightfully fairytale-savvy movie, did I pawn my antique book collection?  Did I sell my hair?  Did I wait at the crossroads at midnight to cash into some soul money?

No.  I did without.  For years.

(Tangential note: the greatest thing about getting older is that I can make dramatic statements like that and they're actually true.  Tangent out!)

That is, until Amazon lowered the price to $20.  My resolve crumpled, and I snatched it up.  It's a great deal.  I even get to keep my soul.

Thus concludes the epic saga of my Spirited Away purchase.  Now, enjoy the review.

Ten-year-old Chihiro feels her life is over when her family moves to the countryside, far away from her friends and school.  But when her parents imbibe food meant for spirits and are transformed to pigs for their greed, Chihiro must navigate the tricky politics of the spirit world to change them back.  Selling her name in exchange for a job, Chihiro, now renamed Sen, becomes a bathhouse attendant.  Armed with only bravery, courtesy, and questionable allies, she must barter for her parents' freedom and her own.

(To avoid confusion, Chihiro and Sen are different names for the same character.)

First and foremost, I must compliment the exquisite storytelling of Spirited Away.  Mr. Miyazki uses the "pantsing" plotting method, wherein he improves much of the plot.  Although I must take his word at it, this seems almost impossible when I marvel at the extreme deliberateness of every plot element.  I can tell that Miyaki is a student of fairytales.

Although western folklore traditions are visible in the narrative-- especially when crossing the river of the dead, when Chihiro must force herself not to look back, in the style of Orpheus-- most of the imagery and symbolism comes from eastern mythology.  The movie takes place in a sort of mirror-image universe, the nighttime spirit world, supplied by the Japanese tradition of leaving food and houses for the spirits.

The excellent plotting method of Spirited Away segues well into another element of the movie: the character development.  Chihiro begins the movie very much a child whose whole way of life was ripped away.  She is popularly described as sullen and bratty.  Perhaps it is become I am young, but her behavior was much more sympathetic to me.  She has little reason to be happy.

Emotional credibility aside, this extreme provides an excellent contrast for her progress throughout the movie.  Losing her family and way of life and working in backbreaking conditions oddly suits Chihiro.  It teaches her humility.  It shows her the value of courtesy.  By the end of the movie, when she is called upon to save the bathhouse from the ominous visitor No-Face, the courage and integrity she shows are completely believable after her emotional journey.

This struggle brings me to the darkest issue of the movie: the character No-Face.

When taken only in the context of the movie, No-Face makes absolutely no sense.  His otherworldly shape resembles no other character in the movie.  In his natural state, he is incapable of dialogue.  We learn little of his motivation and even less of his origin.  In fact, the only true desire he shows is for Chihiro, now named Sen.

Perhaps to combat this lack of detail, Mr. Miyazaki commented, somewhat ambiguously, that Spirited Away has to do with-- of all things-- sex.  It took some digging and a second watching to understand what he meant, but I now feel prepared to have an opinion on it.

Historically, bathhouses were disreputable establishments that sold sex as much as a spa experience.  The first time I watched it, I did not pick up on this at all.  The second time through, I became aware of certain elements indicative of the bathhouse's purpose.

To be clear, Spirited Away is not by any stretch of the imagination a graphic movie.  But the knowledge that Miyazki intended it to have double meaning did color my second viewing and answer
Why are they here?a few questions.  It explains, for example, why Chihiro is at least a decade younger than the other female workers in the bathhouse.  It also explains the presence of several dozen women workers who seemingly have no purpose.

And this darker element leads back to the presence of the character, No-Face.  As his name suggests, he literally has no face, only an expressionless mask that does not even correctly indicate his features.  He is the ultimate blank slate, which perhaps explains why he reacts so violently once inside the bathhouse.

No-Face goes from being a passive but essentially sweet character to a greedy, carnivorous beast upon entering the bathhouse.  Chihiro even audibly notes this change, describing him as "crazy".  No-Face is the most enigmatic character of the movie.

I think he represents a lot about the spirit of refusing to compromise, a persistent theme throughout Spirited Away.  While her parents glut themselves, Chihiro refuses to eat a single bite.  When the bathhouse workers accept even a single nugget of gold, it lowers their defenses and sets them up to be devoured by No-Face.  Only Chihiro, who will not accept it, is totally safe.
I adore this picture.
So does the atmosphere of the bathhouse effect No-Face.  He, as a blank slate, cannot enter the lustful environment of the bathhouse and remain untainted by it.  Only when he parts completely with it, and remains far away, can he return to his benevolent state.

You cannot eat half the forbidden fruit and remain whole.  You cannot accept dishonest coin without becoming dishonest yourself.  You cannot sacrifice your ideals-- ever-- without becoming something worse.

I think this ties in a lot to Chihiro's interactions with her parents, way at the beginning of the movie.  All of her growth as a character takes place without them.  They do not behave well as parents; most of their interactions with Chihiro are condescending and degrading.  They also demonstrate a lack of wisdom by eating food for spirits.  Only when they are removed from Chihiro can she grow into her full potential.  It is another example of how your environment can effect you in Spirited Away.

Before I close the curtain on the sometimes uncomfortable elements of physicality and lust in Spirited
Away, I will say that I was somewhat uncomfortable with the main romantic relationship.  Considering the age of the participants, it felt like an awful lot of hand-holding and touching.  But it was not a major element of the movie.

Spirited Away is a beautiful, complicated, and sometimes disturbing movie.  The theme of anarchy and confusion appears in the art, which is often lurid and chaotic.  That does not mean it is not also lovely in its wildness.  But sometimes it came across as overly raucous to me-- just as the story of Spirited Away, and many of Miyazaki's movies, crosses my line of comfort sometimes.

There are many compliments I could give to conclude this review.  Suffice it to say that Spirited Away inspired me to write a thousand words.

Lin:  What's going on here?

Kamaji:  Something you wouldn't recognize.  It's called love.

Don't look back.

Welcome to the last post in the YA Tropes I Hate, readers!  If you haven't read these yet, do give the first three a try:

1. YA Tropes I Hate
2. Angry Girls
3. Caste Systems
She's beautiful.  She's popular.  She's flawless in every way, except for her poisonous personality.

She is the Other Girl.

There are a number of theories as to why the Other Girl appears so frequently as a foil to the Angry Girl.  Classically, evil often appears in the form of beauty, like the femme fatale.  In YA, she has a lot to do with our preconceived notion of popular high school girls.

Mostly, though, I think the Other Girl has a lot to do with insecurity.  The traits
that make her so eminently hate-able-- her beauty, her grasp of fashion and cosmetics, her social skills-- also make her exceptionally competent.  She gives off an extreme aura of having her act together.

And speaking in generalities, young women-- myself included-- don't feel this way.  Everyone has one aspect of their appearance that they're constantly trying to tame.  Everyone, that is, except the Other Girl.  She has already conquered the art of looking fabulous.

But the Other Girl's attack goes way beyond the average insecurities.  It is based on a simple assumption: that readers and writers are intrinsically more insecure than other people.


This may at first glance make sense.  Readers are traditionally considered socially awkward outsiders, who certainly could never master fashion or cosmetics.  They identify pretty heavily with the Angry Girl.  Readers would never indulge in a beauty as artificial as the Other Girl's.  Instead, they have their own inner beauty that has nothing to do with hygiene or cosmetics.

This possibly explains the sheer over-the-topness of the Other Girl's dour personality.  She's the antithesis to the reader.

And this is a stereotype just as narrow-minded and implausible as the Other Girl.

I am a reader and a writer, and I don't leave the house without mascara on.  I have a hair-makeup-clothes board on Pinterest as well as storyboards.  I know I'm not the only one like this.

Ultimately, that's the beauty of stereotypes: that they're not real.

Jemma from the Sherwood Storyteller tagged me!  I thought it would be a lovely way to end my accidental hiatus.  Thanks for tagging me, Jemma!



1. What book are you currently reading?

I've just cracked the spine of The Glorious Cause, by Jeff Shaara.  I'm a history nerd, and I'd love to brush up on the Revolutionary War, but textbooks can be so boring.  This novel will be a fun way to study.

2. What's the last book you finished?

A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans, by Michael Farquhar.  Double-nerd!  Actually, I'm doing research for a writing project.  Nothing inspires me like history!

3. What's your favorite book you read this year?

Ugh, hard question!  After perusing my Goodreads list, I would say either The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, or The Raven Boys, by Maggie Stiefvater.

4. What genre have you read the most this year?

Definitely fantasy, with a side of the classics.

5. What genre have you read least this year?

Does graphic novel qualify as a genre?  If so, definitely that.  I love a well-written graphic novel as much as anyone else, but I'm fussy about the art.  (My taste in art is much more exclusive than my taste in writing.)  The three webcomics I follow are The Silver Eye, by Laura Hollingsworth; The Dreamer, by Lora Innes; and my absolute favorite, Daughter of the Lilies, by Meg Syverud.  I'm obsessed with it.

6. What genre do you want to read more of?

I'd like to read more nonfiction.  I consistently forget how well-written and entertaining it can be.  Whenever you attach the concept of 'improving yourself' to writing, it strikes me as less fun.

7. How many books have you read this year, and what's your goal?

I've read 82 books this year, with the rough goal of reading 100.  I don't buy into number-of-books goals; it adds stress to reading.  I only set one on Goodreads to track the number of books I read.

8. What's the last book you bought?

I have been very good and not bought any recently.  The last book I bought was Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande.  It's the summer reading for UNC Chapel Hill.

9. What books do you have out from the library?

Approximately sixty books on American history.  I'm excited about this project.

10. What books can't you wait to read?

The Cursed Child, by J. K. Rowling, comes out in two weeks!  Not to mention I've already reserved The Creeping Shadow, by Jonathan Stroud, and Ghostly Echoes, by William Ritter.

UPDATES!!

I've been squashed getting ready for school.  I've bought dorm supplies, signed up for classes, gave notice at work, and am ready to move in-- let me check my phone timer-- twenty-six days, not that I'm counting.  I'm a declared English major, but I plan on switching to the classics or double-majoring.

Good things, all.  But it does put me seriously behind in blogging.  I know I've said this before, but guys?  I promise I'll blog more during the school year, when I have a reliable schedule.

Anyway, I tag Hannah at the Writer's Window, Ghosty at Anything, Everything, Emma Clifton at Peppermint and Prose, and Sarah at Dreams and Dragons.

Alas! the final chapter.  For those of you who haven't yet begun my retelling, Of the Wood, start here!  For those of you who have, I'd like to tell you about the final element of this story: the heroine, Elizabeth.

I knew right away that I wanted Elizabeth's character to drive the plot.  After all, the story takes place in a sleepy village.  There is no quest, no coveted magic object, no conquest-bound overlord a few counties over.  I wanted this to be a deeply personal story about the place-- this magical wood that connects different worlds in its shadowy waters-- and this confused, unhappy girl who inherited an ancient position just as the world was coming into its modernity.  This is, above anything else, the story of Elizabeth.  (Its original title was Elizabeth of the Wood, which I changed to Of the Wood for reasons still obscure.  I'm thinking about changing it back.  Thoughts?  I also considered Wychwood and Under the Wood.)  (Fun fact part deux: Elizabeth's original name was Evienne before she became so resolutely English, and Anaïs was originally Laetitia before I decided on a theme for the Faire names.)
 So I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the character development.

And hit a wall.  Almost immediately.

I have a theory as to why I struggle so much with characters.  I am a reserved person.  I infrequently answer direct questions about myself, and when I do, I generally give a cursory answer.  (I blame my Myers-Briggs personality profile for this.)

Which makes creating believable characters difficult for me, because the only tried-and-true way I have found is to foist on them whatever nastiness is currently in my life.  I like to keep this nastiness private, and the thought of sharing it makes me want to hide under my covers.  Forever.  (So, naturally, I'm posting it on my blog like a properly petulant teenager.)

However, I had another major character who could use some personality: Elizabeth's younger sister, Anthea.

People quite familiar with my family will observe something here.  My name is Allison.  I have an older sister, whose name is-- well, for the sake of her privacy, suffice it to say it is a classical English name that begins with an E.  Those who know my sister and I personally may realize that both of our personalities play a prominent role in this story, passed between the characters of Elizabeth and Anthea.  I am meticulously organized with a family background in accounting, whereas my sister is more assertive than I.  My sister is an excellent musician, but I'm the one who sings.  If we weren't sisters, people would probably call the cops on us during one of our fights.  But at the end of the day, like Elizabeth and Anthea, we still love each other!

My sister probably isn't reading this.  I don't think she ever reads my blog.

Love you too, sis.

Anyway.  On with the story.

Seven:
The music stopped.The dance whirled to a halt.The fragile, spun-glass thing that was her mind crashed off its pedestal and shattered on the floor.            “Who are you?” she managed to say, because she did not believe in miracles, and one was holding her cold hands in his warm ones and smiling at her like Lochinvar at his sweetheart’s wedding.            “Elizabeth,” he said quietly, and he was smiling until he thought he would break with the joy of it.  “I’ve come—“            He didn’t finish, because she leaned up and kissed him.            It was a shockingly inappropriate thing to do at one’s wedding to another man.  The townsmen would talk.  She didn’t care.  She did not care at all.            “Please don’t say anything,” she said quietly.  “Because I’ve just been handed a miracle.  And I d-don’t see how this can be r-r-real—“            “I don’t, either,” he said softly.  He reached up and wiped away the tears on her cheek.  “But Elle”—he grabbed her hand in his warm, living one—“it is.”            He glanced over her shoulder, and something tightened in his face.  “For about five more minutes.  Elle, the Faire are here.”            “I know,” she whispered.  She was rattled by joy and shock, but she forced her brain through its paces.  “How can they be here?”            “Anaïs says—“            “Anaïs!”            “It’s a sort of long—“            “That harpy!”            “She’s not, really,” he said desperately.  “She’s just—it’s complicated—she says the Faire are dying.  There’s too much iron and disbelief here, and hardly any magic left.  They need us, Elizabeth.  They’re coming back tonight, using your curse as the pathway.  So.  What’s the plan?”            “You always came up with the plan!  Why am I supposed to—“            “Excuse me.”            Elizabeth dropped Abelard’s hand guiltily.            “Fulgence,” she wanted to say, “I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t possibly marry you because my true love is back from the grave, and he hasn’t drowned, and we’re going to marry and live happy ever after, yes?”            She almost said it.  She wanted so badly to say it.            But she couldn’t, she realized.  There were times when the truth was all you could give.  And there were times when the truth was far too extraordinary and time-consuming, and too unbearably real for words.  And there were some people, like Fulgence, who spent their whole lives looking for a prettier, simpler lie, because they wanted prettier, simpler, uncomplicated lives.            She opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it.            “Elizabeth,” he said.  “I don’t mean to frighten you.  But this room seems to be eliding with the Faire Court.”

“Anaïs!” Abelard hissed, ducking through the crowd.  He glanced up into masked faces.  All had the square angularness of the Faire, but he needed one in particular.  “Anaïs!”            “Be quiet,” she whispered back, dragging him into the dance.  Her green skirt billowed around them as they spun.  “All right.  Not going to according to plan.”            “We don’t know what to do.”            “She’ll know when the time is right,” Anaïs snapped.            “Well, it had better be right in the very near future!”            She tossed her head but didn’t pull away as they danced.  Abelard watched the Faire over her shoulder.  They hadn’t moved yet; they were still dancing.  Things would be all right as long as the Faire kept dancing…            His eye landed on another couple in the throng: Elizabeth and Fulgence.  They were dancing in the same, half-focused manner as Anaïs and Abelard; she gazed up into his face, and they both talked rapidly and almost silently.            Fulgence’s eyes flicked over her sleek head and watched the dancers.  The same way Abelard did.            He stopped dancing.  Anaïs stumbled, tripping on her skirts, and two other couples nearly collided with them.            “Sorry!” he said.  “Ah—cramp.  In my foot.  Carry on.”            “What is it now?” Anaïs said snappishly.  She was never this short-tempered, never this out of control.  She was afraid, Abelard realized, and his breath almost stopped.            “After you pulled me from the bog, you said I had a gift,” he whispered, dancing.  As long as the Faire still danced…  “You told me I could see the Faire, and that I would need this to save Elizabeth.”            “Yes, but do we have time—“            “Fulgence can see the Faire, too.”            She didn’t answer.  Her face was solemn behind her forest-green mask.            Abelard’s heart sank.            “You don’t know if I’ll save her.”            He had stopped dancing again, but they were on the edge of the crowd, so it bothered no one.  He felt his thin, fragile eggshell of hope crumple into airy nothing.            “The future never reveals itself that fully,” Anaïs said at last.  She wouldn’t look at him.  “Not even to me.  I only know that she can be saved, and I will provide every opportunity for someone to do so.”  She gave him a hard look.  “Even if he’s isn’t you.”

“Explain,” Elizabeth said.  “Now.”            “I was awoken early this morning by a woman in my bedroom,” Fulgence said.  “She said if I wanted to save you, I had to leave now.”  He sniffed.  “It was rather inconsiderate of her, seeing as I got here hours early and haven’t had any call to save you yet—“            “What did she say?” Elizabeth demanded.            “She said the Faire hated your family and would be at the wedding tonight.  She touched my face and said I would be able to see them.  And”—he sounded nauseous—“I can see them, Elizabeth.  They’re horrible.”            He broke off as Abelard burst through the crowd, Anaïs scarcely a step behind.            “Hello, Anaïs,” Elizabeth said coolly.  “It’s been a long time.”            “I gather,” Anaïs said.  “What were you playing at, saying my name over and over?  I could tell it was you.  No one else knew to do it.”            Elizabeth blushed.  “I wanted to hurt you,” she said, feeling a twinge of shame.  “I wanted you to suffer.  And I remembered what you said, how the Faire need belief because they’re only as real as we let them be.  And I remembered how saying a word over and over again makes it meaningless.  So I did it to you.”  She swallowed.  “I’m sorry.”            “It made my time in my mother’s prison much harder.”  Anaïs grunted.  “It was clever, at least.  You’re forgiven.”            “And you,” Elizabeth said, eyes flashing.            She gazed up into Abelard’s face and thought, this is wrong.  Everything was so wrong.  They should have time together, time to celebrate their love.  But they didn’t have time.  They’d never been given much of it.“How long do we have?” Elizabeth asked, instead of words of radiant love.            “The ball always ends at midnight,” Fulgence observed, looking deliberately at the clock above Abelard’s head.  “And it is your wedding, after all.”  Abelard tried to ignore the bitter irony in his tone.            “But what if I don’t get married?” she said.            Abelard glanced around the ballroom, at the swirling, dancing Faire.            “I don’t think they care,” he said.  “I think it’s gone far enough already.”            “So I’m going to prick my finger on a spindle soon,” Elizabeth said, turning pale.  “And sleep for a hundred years.”            “No,” Abelard said firmly.  “I’m not going to let that happen to you.”            “Elizabeth, go to the stables,” Fulgence said, as calmly as he could.  He and Abelard stood side by side: one fair, the other dark.  One big and towering, the other small and slender.  “Take a horse, and ride to my home.  My family will take care of you.”            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Elizabeth said.  “This is my own kettle of fish.  I’ll boil in it if I have to.”            That hit a chord, somewhere in the deep, primordial part of her, the part that had been sitting patiently in the tower all evening, turning the problem over in her hands and spinning.            “Kettle of fish,” she said aloud.  Not fish.  Eels.            Her gaze landed on the banquet table, and sure enough, there was a platter of eels in wine sauce.  It was, impossibly, steaming.            There are times when the story takes over, and I’m not writing it anymore—it’s writing me.  Like the force of the story is so great it can tell itself.  It only needs me to hold a pen.            Your story isn’t over yet.            All right, Elizabeth thought.  If this were a ballad, how would it end?  There would be hints along the way, clues dropped at every turn.  And even if she had missed them, the deeper, older part of her had been patiently gathering them and now held them up for her inspection.            Ballads were predictable creatures, once you’d sung them long enough that they’d gotten into your blood.  They might seem random and insensible, but they weren’t, really; they were perfectly logical, as long as you knew what rules they were following.  And it was a rule in ballads that there were always second chances, but they only came once.            Elizabeth knew she could save the town.  She knew she could save herself, if she tried to.  And she knew the solution would be simple and poetic and that she was holding it her hands already, and she just couldn’t see it.            And then she remembered the last rule of ballads: they never wasted anything.  Every detail was important.  And there was one massive detail in Elizabeth’s life that hadn’t been resolved yet.            Slowly, she raised her eyes.  They met Anaïs’s.            She knew exactly what to do.            The great clock in the hall, the clock that Maelӱs had made with Anaïs’s help and this night in mind, pointed only a few minutes ‘til midnight.            “We’re too late,” Fulgence whispered.            “No,” Elizabeth said, and she laughed.  “We’re too early.”            Because the final rule of ballads was that they always came full circle.  And they practically sang themselves, so that the singer only needed to hold the tune.            “Fulgence, Abelard,” she said.  “Thank you so much for trying to save me.  But I don’t need it now.”            She spun around, hiked her rosy skirts above the knee, and ran up the stairs to the tower.

Eight:
She locked the door behind her, fingers shaking on the key.  She’d had nightmares like this, where things were rushing up the stairs and she had to struggle to lock the door before they reached her.  Never in her most fevered nightmare had they been Abelard and Fulgence.            “Hey—what—Elle, you’ve gone and locked the—“            “Elizabeth,” Fulgence said sharply, voice muted by the wood.  “Unlock the door.”            “Can’t.  Sorry, boys,” Elizabeth called desperately over her shoulder.  She picked up her skirts and hurried to the spinning room.  There, turning serenely with only a hiss of gears, were the Spinning Jeannies.  Papa’s pride.  The only things that kept the town from sinking into a gloom of magic and despair.            “All right, how do you turn these things off,” Elizabeth muttered, hunting through the controls.  She was embarrassed that she had no idea how they worked.  She still did all her spinning on a treadle wheel because it was wonderfully distracting.  Her fingers couldn’t work the latches and gears.            “Elizabeth!” Fulgence yelled, pounding on the door.  Abelard had gone silent.  “Open the door!”            “I can’t!” Elizabeth said hysterically, and she was crying after she had promised herself that this wouldn’t be hard, it wouldn’t hurt.  It did hurt.  She saw now more clearly than ever that she had never really intended to leave the town with Fulgence.  It would be like cutting off her hand to escape the manacle.  Maybe in a hundred years she would be glad she’d done it, but she still wouldn’t have a hand.            She cried over the machinery, because she didn’t know how to stop it.  She cried for herself and Abelard, but mostly she cried, ridiculously and inexplicably, for the tower room, because she knew she couldn’t stay there much longer.            “You won’t be able to turn them off in time,” someone said.            If Elizabeth had a fingers-width of space left in her heart, she would’ve been surprised.  But she didn’t.  So it felt perfectly natural when she looked up to Anaïs.  She had left her mask downstairs, and her face was raw and bare like a boiled egg.            “Anaïs,” Elizabeth said, and her voice cracked.            “I’m sorry, Elle,” she said, and Elizabeth realized that she was uncomfortable.  She, Anaïs, the Faire princess.  “I’m really sorry.”            It was a day for miracles.            There was a lot they would’ve liked to say.  In a way, they did, only silently—or perhaps it all came out in Anaïs’s words: “There’s a shovel in the closet.”            “I’ll get it,” Elizabeth said, rising.            “No, I will,” Anaïs said.  “You have something else to attend to.”  Her eyes were unfocused, past Elizabeth.            Elizabeth steeled herself.  “All right,” she said nervously.  She ran to the door and called, “Abelard?  Fulgence?”            “Elle, if you could possibly hurry with whatever you’re doing in there, because the Faire have—“            She unlocked the door, and Abelard tumbled out in a graceless heap.  He was, she realized with a pang for lost time, slightly shorter than her; she could see the top of his dark head.            “Stopped dancing,” he finished.            “We three need to have a talk, and I’d like it to be very sensitive and kind and worthy of forgiveness, but I don’t have time,” Elizabeth said, pushing them into her sitting room.  “First of all, Fulgence, I’m sorry, you’re a good man, but I can’t marry you, because I’m in love with Abelard.”            “Sorry,” Abelard said.            She had been dreading this part of the conversation.  She did not know how he would take it.  She could see in the shape of his eyes that he was both surprised and not, that he had both seen it coming and never believed it would come to pass.            He shrugged.  It was not quite so graceful a gesture as he might’ve wished.            “Ah, well,” he said, after too long a pause.  “It’s been fun, Elizabeth.  But there are plenty of fish in the sea.”            “Yes,” Elizabeth said, “and I wish you the very best of luck with them, and would you mind exiting via the window?”            “Best of—what?”            “There’s ivy on the wall.  You should be able to climb safely; I know Anthea’s done it when we were littler.”            “Oh.  Right.  Didn’t know you wanted me to leave quite so—“            “That is not the reason, and you know it, Fulgence,” she snapped, feeling close to tears again.  She had never felt so much as she had in the past day.  “I’m about to make a terribly unfair decision for all the people in this keep, and I don’t want to make it for you, too.  So—you’re a wonderful friend, and I’ll miss you, but the very best thing you can do now is return to Brittany and forget this ever happened.”            He lumbered to the window and was gone.            “Did I miss something?” Abelard said.            She had forgotten something.  Elizabeth froze and thought hard.  What had she forgotten?            Someone tapped on the door.            “Elizabeth,” Anthea said.  “Could you open the door?”            “Anthea!” Elizabeth cried.  “What are you doing?”            “Dying.”

She realized that the events thus far had been a game.  A warm-up match.  The Faire had shown their hand: they had her parents.  They had her lover.  They had her curse.            She’d thought they had played their entire hand.  But they had one ace left, the one that could’ve ended the game at any time but that they’d saved for last.            She didn’t move as Abelard darted to the door and carried her in.  Her little figure in white.  Her little ice maiden.  The white was red and red all over, but it couldn’t be Anthea’s blood, because Anthea was made of ice and ice didn’t bleed…            Anthea’s dance partner had carved the roast.            She sat down in a billow of pink skirts and moved so that Anthea’s head rested on her lap.  She looked down into that serene face, white as paper except for red, still as death but for a fluttering of butterfly wings at the throat.            It was like life had been a dream, and she had woken up.  Like a veil had been lifted from her eyes and she saw light.  This was real.  This was truth.  There had never been anything but her sitting on the floor with Anthea’s head in her lap, their dresses running with blood.            Her little sister, whom she’d believed she’d hated.  Whom she’d believed had hated her.            “Anthea,” she whispered.            Abelard was saying something to her.  She didn’t pay him any mind until he reached up and slapped her.  “Stop, you’ll hurt her!” she cried, and she realized she hadn’t said anything at all.            But he caught her attention.  “Elizabeth,” he said, “if you have any plan at all, we need it now.  Please.  Let me carry Anthea, and do whatever you have to do.”            She had to stand.  That was what she had to do.  Abelard lifted Anthea out of her lap like she was the skin of a paper doll or a bird resting from flight, and Elizabeth gathered her legs under her and stood.  The world did not end.  It would not end for—she checked the clocks, but they were dead and gone—until midnight.  However far away that was.            The ball always ended at midnight.            Carefully, Elizabeth slipped the dreamlike veil over her eyes again so that she could bear the moment.  Anthea was hurt, yes.  But she could handle that.  Wasn’t that what she had always done?            “Your shovel, my lady,” Anaïs said.            “Thank you.”  She accepted the shovel.  It was heavy and glinted silver in the dull light, like a sword.  It was her sword.  “Anaïs, you understand that I want to destroy your people’s claim on mine, raze their holdings, and salt their fields?”            “Yes, my lady,” Anaïs whispered.  “I would do it, too, if I had the strength.”            Elizabeth knew she had to hurry, but she asked, “Why?”            “Because we were not meant for this,” she said simply.  “No creature was.  We were not meant to live this long or this emptily.  We were not meant to have the power to move stars.”            “Some would say that everything is already in perfect order.”            “And I do believe that, my lady,” she said.  “But we are not meant to be anymore.  We must step back from this place.  You must grow without us now.”            She took a deep, shaking breath.  “If it means anything to you, we only did it because we wanted to be loved.”            “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth whispered.  “And I do love you.”            Anaïs glanced up.  Elizabeth caught one last glimpse of her green eyes through her veil of pale hair, gleaming with something she could never say but now thought was, perhaps, humility.  “Thank you,” she said, then she was gone, and the tower was empty save for Abelard, Anthea, and Elizabeth.            Elizabeth took a deep breath to keep her heart from breaking.            “Abelard,” she whispered, “do you know what I mean to do?”            “Yes, my lady,” he said, and she could not tell what was in his gaze.  “Do what you must.”            “Flavie is in my household.”            “I know.”            “Abelard, I’m afraid.  I’d just decided that I wanted to stay, and now I have to leave again.  I hate to leave everything.  And I’m scared.”            “I’d like to tell you there’s no reason to be,” Abelard said finally.  “But there will always be something for us to fear, Elle.  It’s better that way.  Else we’d have no reason for courage.”            “Life has been unkind to us,” Elizabeth whispered.            Abelard leaned forward and kissed her.  “Don’t say that,” he whispered back.  “We haven’t seen the ending yet.”  His breath was warm against her cheek.  “Do what you must.  I love you.”  She felt more than saw his smile.  “See you in a hundred years.”            And he turned away from her, to the splintering remains of the door.  He set Anthea down gently on the loveseat and plucked down Papa’s sword from above the mantle, the one he had never wanted to use.  It glittered red in the firelight as though already stained by blood.  He gave a wordless cry and rushed from the room as, on the landing, the door splintered and gave.            Elizabeth wrung the remaining strength from her muscles, holding nothing back.  With a cry, she brought the shovel heavily down on the first Spinning Jeannie.  It cracked and snarled as it kept spinning, splinters hurled through the room.  Elizabeth stood so her body shielded Anthea.  Then she raised the shovel again and, howling with bloodlust, pummeled her Papa’s pride and joy until it was useless splinters on the carpet, the room was silent, and mankind was undefended.            A sliver of wood lay on the floor.  Elizabeth snatched it up and, with only the smallest hesitation, drove it into her hand.  It cut deeply, drawing blood.            She tasted the snap and curl of magic as the curse came upon her.            Her vision dimmed until the twilight looked golden like a summer’s evening.  Almost overcome with weariness, she staggered over to the loveseat and curled up beside her sister, her arms around her neck, as she had when they were both little girls.  Through her haze, she could hear Abelard’s cries, the ring of steel on steel, the humming of magic—but it dimmed and slowed into a lullaby.  Elizabeth lay her head on the pillow beside Anthea’s.            A hundred years may pass, but they would only be a moment to her.  She had only to close her eyes.  Then Abelard would wake her, and they would have all the time in the world.  A lot could happen in a hundred years.  There was so much to look forward to.  There would be iron, of course; more iron than she could dream of now, heaped and strung like jewels in a dragon’s horde.  And iron meant there would be no Faire, no wolves and no bog, no babies lost on winter evenings.            And iron and no Faire meant progress, and progress meant wonderful medicines.  It meant that people with terrible wounds would not die but would live on, healed by something far greater than magic, for when had magic ever brought life?  There was a whole new world just beyond her fingertips, and in her last moment in the time wherein she had been born, Elizabeth wondered if they would have sheep there.            I’m ready, she thought.  I’m ready to see it.  I want to see the time in which I’m meant to live.
            The voice of Maelӱs’s clock sang out midnight.  In her tower room above the moorland, the last Lady of the Wood fell asleep.

Hello, readers!  Welcome to the third part of my retelling, Of the Wood.  If you're lost, pop back to this post to start at the beginning!

I told you yesterday how those strange, lovely little border ballads inspired the plot and particularities of this story.  Today I'd like to tell you of an adventure that tied these elements together into the final part of the story, the climax.

I love dancing.  I love dancing with other people, especially when it's an actual dance, and we're all not just jumping and flailing about.

I love it most when it is a costume ball.  I got to attend one last summer, at-- you guessed it-- Governor's School, when James Joyce's strange poem and the even stranger border ballads were swimming around in my head.  I wore a black dress and a silver mask shaped like a crescent moon.

It.  Was.  Magic.

All my friends were there, turned weird and unfamiliar in the masks and half-light.  We had lemonade and cheap cookies, turned to nectar and ambrosia in the candlelight.  (There were no candles, but there was still candlelight, such was the extreme magic of the evening.)  We were dancing in the dining hall with the chairs pushed aside.  My feet were bare and stuck to the disgusting carpet.  It was still magical.

And thus I learned the third part of my story.  Like any good fairytale, it concluded with a ball.  But it would be a ball in costume, with the guests disguised.

Enjoy.

Five:
She didn’t know what to do.  Her path, so straight this morning, was no longer clear.  So she did what she had always done: she sat at Papa’s desk, beneath the red-gold flame of Papa’s sword, and she worked her way through pages and pages of paperwork.  Here was a report on the sheep flocks; she read it quickly, then signed it.  You shouldn’t be signing this, a voice whispered.  You’re not the lady anymore.  But she needed something to do with her hands.There was a new-fangled theory in the city that men were descended from primordial apes.  Elizabeth didn’t know enough about science to believe or disbelieve it.  But she could easily believe in the hidden brutality of mankind.  Humans were refined creatures of morals and wool and jewels.  But if you scratched the surface, the raging, uncertain creature was there, just beneath.            Perhaps it was because she thought this.  Or perhaps her own instinctive center was closer than she believed it to be.  But even while her brain worked, the part of her that was more than her brain said: Something’s wrong.            She looked but couldn’t see.  She listened and couldn’t hear anything, but that was what was wrong, because the clocks were above the mantle, and they-- weren’t—            She’d felt grief before.  She’d lost before.  She’d buried her loved ones before.            It hadn’t felt like this.            It hadn’t felt like the world had jarred on its axis and came to a screaming halt.  And stood and stood endlessly, staring as she did at the two clocks above the table who, in the same breath, had ceased to beat.            I wound them this morning.            I’m sure I wound them this morning.            But this morning her world had ended.            And, because the universe will always kick you when you’re down, this was the day that Flavie finally cooked lunch and decided to bring it up herself, and now was the moment when she opened the door to see Elizabeth, crouched before the mantle, staring at the two clocks, too miserable to cry.            “What are you doing?” Flavie asked, which took just enough of the edge off the misery for the tears to flow in great gulping sobs.            I must now take a moment to give Flavie the credit she is due.  She truly did not like Elizabeth.  She hated her, even, because nothing is as strong as absolute love that has been betrayed.  But enough of that love lay in a cold, dormant corner of her heart for her to lead Elizabeth to the armchair, sit her down, and hand her her own handkerchief.            “There, there,” she said unconvincingly.            Elizabeth had never cried this hard before.  She sat there, rigid, until Flavie grew genuinely concerned and bustled off to fetch her a glass of water.  She sat patiently on the bed beside Elizabeth, as she had when they were young, and she continued to be patient even when the tears showed no sign of slowing.  She glanced at the clocks on the mantle to see how long this took, and her eyes widened.            No matter how deep their grief, a person has only so many tears to cry, even though the number is far greater than one would imagine.  When the afternoon had worn to golden shadows and the handkerchief dripped glumly onto the floor, Elizabeth stopped crying, although each breath still hitched and hiccupped in her chest.            “This is where I would normally say something like ‘are you okay?’” Flavie said conversationally.  Elizabeth had half-expected her to leave when the storm abated, but instead she tucked her feet up into her skirt like she planned on being there for a while.  “But at this point that would, I feel, be redundant.”            “Yeah,” Elizabeth said.  She felt like her insides had been hollowed out, like a peach without a pit.            “Those clocks.  Maelӱs made them?”            “Yeah.”            “Out of your parents.”            “We looked and looked for them, through the bog and the wood and the moorland.  And just before we gave up hope, we found these on the front steps.”            “And today they stopped ticking.”            “I think I forgot to wind them.”            “I see.”  Flavie was quiet for a long time.  “Elizabeth.  You know those weren’t your parents, don’t you?”            “No.”  Elizabeth looked up at her hopelessly.  “Nobody knows that, Flavie.  The Faire killed so many people to make their art.  How can we say if they died, or if they’re lingering still?  We can’t know… so all I could do was assume it was them, that there was something still worth loving and guarding in these clocks.  But… I forgot.”            Her eyes landed on the delicate twists of gold and the stern lines of silver.  She thought of Anthea.  They never talked about their parents.  It seemed like picking a scab, prying open an old hurt for the world to spit on.She had never told Anthea about the clocks.She wished she had drowned in the bog, too.Elizabeth fumbled in one sleeve for her handkerchief.  She only had the one, which was a gift and bore the initial A.  It was a large, scarlet A, and Flavie could not fail to see it.  A flush rose in Elizabeth’s skin.  She had been selfish.  She was far from the only one who had cause to grieve.  She was far from the only one who had loved Abelard.“Flavie,” she said, her voice thick with tears.  “I’m sorry.”Flavie’s orange eyebrows vaulted up.  “I beg your pardon?”“I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth whispered.  She felt like she was drowning in misery.  “I’m sorry I didn’t save him.”At worst, she’d imagined scathing words and a quick exit.  At best, a tearful scene of forgiveness.She was surprised, then, when Flavie picked up a pile of papers from Elizabeth’s desk and threw them at her.“Sorry?” she screeched.  “That’s what you want to say, you harpy?”“Yes,” Elizabeth said, amazed.  “Don’t—those are sorted!”But something had sprung lose in Flavie, like a breaking dam or a falling tree.  She shoved Elizabeth, who tripped, off-balance, and landed on the floor in a poof of skirts.  Flavie gathered up the stacks of papers and threw them about the room so they fell, fluttering like snow, papering the carpet, drifting out the window, and sizzling in the fire.  It was insanity.  It was beautiful.Something uncoiled in Elizabeth’s throat, and she thought she would cry again.  But instead laughter—warm, slippery laughter—spilled out, until she was clutching the back of the chair and howling, eyes streaming.“Um… Elizabeth,” Flavie said.  “It’s not that funny.”“It is,” Elizabeth howled.  She had never lost control like this before.  “I put so much work and care into those papers.  They were alphabetized, color-coded, perfectly assembled, and you just threw them out the flipping window, how is that not funny—“She gasped for breath.  She couldn’t breathe.“All right,” Flavie said.  “Sit down.  Sit down, and don’t move.”It took the better part of an hour for Elizabeth to calm down.  Flavie sat her down in a corner, facing the wall and quietly sipping tea.  Then she gathered up the papers, the books, and the records and hauled them downstairs.  Elizabeth was glad she couldn’t see it.  More than ever she had the sense of picking a scab so the blood stung and ran again.Flavie didn’t let her turn around until the room was clear.  It was amazing what a difference the lack of papers and the clocks could make.  She could see the bones of the study it had once been, a space for reclining in the evenings and writing down one’s thoughts.  It was a pretty room.  But it left a bitter taste in Elizabeth’s mouth.  She wondered, suddenly, if she had spent too much time here, if she had ruined it forever.Flavie sat down on the floor next to her, holding her own mug of tea.  For the first time in years, Elizabeth properly looked at her.  The bones of the childhood face were still there: a certain boniness that excluded prettiness, the freckles on her fair skin, and of course her indomitable orange hair, tucked and braided into a semblance of order.They sat in companionable silence for a while, drinking their tea.  Then, as Elizabeth had known she would, Flavie broke it.“Elle,” she said, “why did you apologize?”Elizabeth blinked, astonished.  “Why?  You know that I loved Abelard.  And… I failed him, didn’t I?  If I’d loved him enough, I would’ve found him in the bog.  But I never did.  I searched and searched, and I almost drowned.  But I never found him.”“But why did you apologize now?” she asked.  “Why here?”Elizabeth was still astonished.  “I thought,” she said slowly, “that it might mean something to you.”“Mean something to me?” Flavie asked.  “But Elle, you’ve apologized before.  To me.  To the town, the county, the Faire—to everyone.  And we’ve all forgiven you.  You were the one who could never let it go.”“But—no!” Elizabeth cried.  “You can’t—don’t pretend the townsmen don’t hate me!  I can see it in their eyes.  They blame me for not saving him!”“They do,” Flavie allowed.  “And it’s wrong of them.  But Elizabeth, they don’t blame you the way you blame yourself.  And it’s easy to hate someone when they never talk to you, never leave their tower.  It’s not your fault.  It wasn’t your fault that your parents died or the town went hungry or Abelard d-- was lost.  But Elizabeth—“  She set down her mug with a clunk.  “It’s your fault that you never forgave yourself.  It’s your fault that you never picked up the pieces and moved on.”“I’m trying to,” Elizabeth said, stung.  “I worked so hard for this place.  And now I’m working so hard to leave it.  I think—I think that if I can just get out of here, I can be happy.  Somehow.”“Maybe that’s so,” Flavie allowed.  “But if Brittany can turn back the clock and heal old wounds, I think more people would go there.”“I hate it here,” Elizabeth whispered.“No, you don’t,” Flavie said.  Her eyes blazed.  “You hate yourself, and you think that’s the same thing.  But Elizabeth, if you go to Brittany, you’ll be bringing yourself with you.  It won’t change anything.”Elizabeth opened her mouth.  She closed it again.  She could think of nothing in this world to say.“I get that you’re unhappy,” Flavie said, staring down into her mug.  “I get that you’re sorry, and that you think no one knows how you’re feeling right now.  But Elizabeth… if you can’t forgive yourself, if you can’t love yourself, then how is anyone else supposed to?“Try it.  Forgive yourself.”“I don’t know how,” Elizabeth whispered.“Just say it.  Humor me.  Say, I forgive myself.”Elizabeth reminded herself that she did not believe for an instant that Flavie had found the root of her unhappiness.  But, for the sake of her childhood friend, she said experimentally, “I forgive myself.”A shiver ran down her spine.“Good,” Flavie said, pleased.  “Thank you.  Now, miss, I’ll fetch your dress.  You’ll want to get ready soon.”Elizabeth watched in amazement as Flavie bustled out, apron floating behind her.  She said one more time into the silence, “I forgive myself.”She’d picked the scab clean off, but it didn’t bleed as much as she’d supposed.  In the end, it had been more like lancing a boil or picking off a tick.  Ridding herself of something that she didn’t need anymore.

Six:
The whisper of those words still ran through her head while she sat in front of the mirror, Flavie’s brush running through her hair.  It was washed and scented faintly of roses.  Her dress was a dusky, shimmering pink, because she didn’t want to wear white again.  It wafted and billowed at the slightest movement until she was surrounded by twining, petal-like fabric.            The roses crowning her hair weren’t pink.  They were red as blood against her dark hair.            She stared at her reflection for a while after Flavie left.  Her face looked raw and untested, like half-baked bread.  Or like clean white sheets, scrubbed clean and bleached fair.  Like something that had been uncovered.            She’d never realized it before, but she really did look like Mama.  They had the same bones, the same width across the cheekbones and narrowness of her chin.  But she could see Papa in her dark orange eyes, and she could see the townsmen and Anthea there, too.  But mainly she saw Elizabeth, and the thought did not disturb her.            She liked the look of her face.  She did not consider it the ideal of beauty.  But she liked it just the same, because it was hers.  It was with reluctance that she picked up the delicate mask, with its curved angles like rose petals, and placed it above her cheekbones, the ribbon sliding through her hair.            Her mouth tugged in the barest shape of a smile.            “Miss!” Flavie was calling.  “Master Fulgence is here to take you to the ball!”

Fulgence was in the first sitting room, reading a heap of papers.  His coat was scarlet and his mask was a tin soldier, or something similarly shiny.  He didn’t look up when he said, “I found these out on the lawn, but I can’t imagine what they were doing there.  I say, the double structure of your accounts is truly…”            He looked up.  He stopped talking.            Elizabeth’s face tugged again as she smiled, and then she laughed.            “That,” she said, squeezing his hand, “is an acceptable response.”            “Is that linen?” he said, dazed.  “Or—no, it can’t be—“            “It is,” she said, smiling.  “Wychwood wool.  Thank you for noticing.”            “Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it,” he said, and the look of wonder in his face was glazed over by a sharp, analytical eye that unsettled her.  “Spring quality, but the heft in the weave leaves a little to be des—“            “I think it’s perfect,” she interrupted him.  “Absolutely lovely.”            “Well, if you like it,” he said, offering her his arm.

Abelard gazed at his face in the mirror.  Cobwebs streaked it and dust covered it, but then, the same could be said for all of his old cottage.  No one had moved in in the four years he’d been gone.            His mask was an eagle, with real brown and white feathers and a hooked, flashing beak.  It drew out the sharp angles of his cheekbones.  It made him look, curiously, more human.            A simple mask, green like pine boughs, appeared beside his.            “They’ll be in masks, too,” Anaïs said.  “You can recognize them because their masks are too good.  They’ll become the creatures they’re imitating.”            He fidgeted with the ribbon on his mask.  “Anaïs…  Why are you so sure the Faire will be there?  I thought they were gone.  There’s no more magic left.”            “Yes, there is,” Anaïs said unhappily.  “There’s Elizabeth’s curse.”            His heart stopped.  “She’ll prick her finger?  Tonight?”            “No,” Anaïs said quickly.  “But it leaves a trail of magic between two worlds.  And they can use it to find their way back.”            “On the eve of her wedding,” Abelard said, not without a pang.  He’d always imagined that he would play a more prominent role than gatecrasher at Elizabeth’s wedding.  “Did you know?  Did you see, that long ago?”            “I have known that the Faire must be stopped,” Anaïs said quietly.  “Even if I am one of them.  I knew there was a curse, and two young men.  And I knew that it wrapped around Elizabeth as tightly as wool around a spindle, and that I couldn’t separate her from them no matter how hard I tried.”            She looked at him.  Her eyes were green like glass.            “I’m sorry,” she said frankly.  “My mother tore you out of this world and threw you into another.  There are consequences to that which you are only beginning to understand.  There are years of your life that you will never get back.  This struggle has not used you fairly.  Neither have I.  And I’m sorry for that.”She took a deep breath.  “But when you want to blame me for this, please remember that my home is a thousand years away, and I will never see it again.  I’m too human for them and too Faire for you.  I have a gift and a purpose, but I don’t know why.  I don’t know what to do.”            She lowered her head.  Rain pattered on the long-closed, long-covered window, open to the dim grey light for the first time in years.            Abelard said, “This is rotten, isn’t it?  For everyone.”  Without looking at her, he held out a handkerchief.  Her metal fingers closed on it.  She blew her nose.            “Yes,” she said.  “But it finishes tonight.  One way or another.”            As though heeding her words, the clock in the town square rang six times.  Maelӱs had made that brassy, deep-voiced clock.  She’d made every clock in the town.  He wondered if she’d had this night in mind.            Anaïs raised her head.  “Time to go.”

It would not do for Elizabeth to be the first to arrive at her own ball.  The guests needed time to simmer, spicing up conversations and moods until the moment would be right for her to descend, led like some toy poodle by Fulgence.            She waited on the landing, fidgeting with the fan looped about her wrist.  It was heavier than it looked; she felt she could hit someone with it quite easily and was disturbed by the path of her thoughts.            “Are you ready?” Fulgence asked.            Elizabeth didn’t answer at first.  She gazed out the picture window, where the amber light of the setting sun flamed into bright gold.            I don’t think I’m ever ready, she wanted to say.  I don’t think I’ve ever been at the right place in time.  I’m the last traces of a dying tradition.  I’m a lady and the guardian of a town that does not need watching anymore.  I am the last in a line of kings, and I will be the one who loses the crown.  I do believe there is a time and a place from me.  But Flavie was wrong.  I don’t think it’s here.            I don’t know where it is.            That was what she thought, and what she might’ve said.  But she looked up into Fulgence’s face and saw the beginnings of dread and non-curiosity.  He did not want to know what she thought.  He did not want to know what she believed.  He asked if she was ready, but only so he might receive assurance that she was fine.            He does not want to know me, Elizabeth thought.            I can’t marry him.            It was like a floodgate had opened in her heart and relief poured out, spilling through her veins and bubbling intoxicatingly.  She felt revitalized; she felt alive; she felt like she’d opened her eyes and saw the light.  The past few years were stripped away, and she felt like the girl who had been a shepherdess, and who had loved and lost and lived despite this.            She was Elizabeth Lawley.  The last guardian of the flock.  And the one who would see it safely into the future.            She wanted to laugh, because she was not going to marry Fulgence of Brittany.            Then she wanted, desperately, to be sick right there on the landing, because he was offering his arm to escort her down to the ball that would celebrate their marriage, and she was, at some point, going to have to break it off.            She saw the future in a glance then.  She saw herself as the lady of Brittany, in a house by the sea, not busying her hands with work because she didn’t have to anymore, raising children to be just like their father and never speaking her mind.            This is not what I want for myself, she realized.  I want so much more than this.            “Fulgence,” she said, “I really think we need to—“            “It’s time,” he said, and they swept down the stairs into the ballroom.

It was like magic.            Elizabeth had been in the ballroom hundreds of times before.  It was not technically a ballroom.  For the majority of her life, it had been a school room.  There were hundreds of years of memories ingrained here.            But this evening, they were all swept away.            A chandelier crowned the room, and from it swirled sewn ropes of braided roses, their thick scent overriding all others: the braised mutton on the high table; the rich perfume the ladies wore; even the faint crispness of the string quarter, which seemed to throw off a precise aroma of its own.  It all swam and drowned and curdled in the scent of roses.            There’s something about roses, Elizabeth thought.            But even more magical were the people.  There was the mayor in a crimson mask; his wife trailed behind him, a bluebird.  Fans swung and clacked from the wrists of swans, luminaries, mice, princesses, warriors.  Elizabeth was amazed at the variety and decadence of the costumes.  She bloomed as a quiet summer rose, and she felt as tawdry as if she were a mushroom.  They did not look like the townsmen tonight.  They were too strange and otherworldly.            It reminded her of Wychwood in the days when the Faire guarded it, when she could slip from her lessons into the heady summer evenings, thick with the heaviness of the bog and the lemony sharpness of magic.  And there had been roses there, too.            Someone was saying her name.  She looked up to see Flavie.            “Elizabeth,” she said, “I think something’s—“            But the clack-clack-clack of fans awkwardly batting together as their owners applauded drowned her out, and then Fulgence was leading her to the high table.  She felt drunk and confused by the perfume lingering almost visibly in the air, and she couldn’t remember what Flavie had said.            Then everyone was quiet, and she realized that she was expected to speak.  She seriously contemplated palming it off on Fulgence, but it was, after all, her house.            It’s a good thing this is a long skirt, she thought practically.  They can’t see my knees shaking.            “F-friends,” she said.  “Thank you v-very much for coming tonight.”            Could that be it?  She paused for applause.  None came; she must continue.            “This evening has been a long time in coming.”            That was not the right thing to say, and they certainly had not expected it.  It brought everything too close to Abelard.  She could see it in their veiled eyes as some half-turned away.            And suddenly it crashed down on her that they were never going to forgive her.  She could be the perfect guardian and administrator; she could lock herself in a tower for untold years until she grew grey and withered, and at her funeral they would say, “Nice girl, but a shame about Abelard, isn’t it?”            I’m sorry! she wanted to say.  I’m sorry I’m not sorry enough!            She was practical.  She was sensible.  She was just the sort of person you would trust to do paperwork.  She was, in short, a nice girl.  She was not the type who would be plunged into a tragic, romantic adventure, spelled and ensnared by danger and magic.  She was a cold lady.  She wasn’t supposed to be one who could mourn and move on.            I’m not sorry, she thought.  I’m not sorry that I never was the girl you wanted me to be.  I loved him, and he died, and I’m not sorry, because I couldn’t have prevented it.She remembered the night in the bog.

She was in Wychwood Bog on the night that ought to have been her wedding, drowning in the dark water, pulled down by yards and yards of pearly silk.  Her feet struck only mud when she tried to stand; branches tore the veil from her hair.  Water filled her mouth.  She sank…            And there, every night, the dream ended.  But in life, it had kept going.            Because someone had grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her from the dark water.  She coughed and spat out the brackish water, blinking.  She looked up into the face of her rescuer.            Her heart stopped, because it was Anaïs.            Elizabeth pulled away, not only because she found the Faire’s touch repugnant, but because she genuinely believed that Anaïs could not support her weight much longer.  She looked ghastly.  Shadows ringed her eyes, fluid crusted her mouth, and she held her arms like they brought her pain.  Elizabeth looked more closely and gasped.  They ended at the wrist.            “I hate you,” she said slowly.  “I hate you more than anyone else in the world.  But I would not have had that happen to you.”            “It is my punishment,” Anaïs said sardonically.  “For not giving you the curse my family wanted.”  She asked, “Where are you going?”            “She took Abelard,” Elizabeth said, and the icy, furious bravery in her broke, and she started to weep.  “I have to get him back.  But they’re nearly gone; I’m afraid I’m too late.”            “You are,” Anaïs said.  “The Faire are gone from Wychwood.”            It struck her heart like a stone.            “Then I’ll break them!” Elizabeth cried.  “I’ll break the Spinning Jeannies!  I’ll let them come back, I’ll let them hurt people again.  I just want him back!”            Anaïs fixed her with a stare.  It was so reminiscent of the ones she gave when Elizabeth failed to attend to a lesson that Elizabeth shivered with the memory.            “Do you trust me?” Anaïs asked.            “Do you expect me to?” Elizabeth answered bitterly.            Anaïs smiled.  Elizabeth expected her to point out, with her usual, prim logic, that this was not an answer.  But she was merciful and did not.            “Go home, Elizabeth,” she said gently.  “The townsmen have the same idea as you.  Don’t let them destroy the Spinning Jeannies.  You do not want the Faire’s protection.  You are better off without them.”            “But I’ll never see him again,” Elizabeth whispered.            “No one knows the future,” Anaïs said.  “Not even me.  Go home, Elizabeth.”            So she did.  She left Abelard in the bog and walked home, barefoot and sodden, Papa’s sword dragging in the mud behind her.  She saved the Spinning Jeannies and the town, and she hated herself for it.

But Elizabeth said none of this.  If she did, her audience would be shocked, but they would still clap politely.  She didn’t say it because they, in the end, did not want to know.            She lifted her chin.  “Thank you for coming.”            She sat down.  There was an awkward silence before people realized she was finished, then they clapped politely and mindlessly and sat down.            “You have a way with words, milady,” Fulgence said, smiling cheekily.            “Fulgence,” she said tightly.  “Be.  Quiet.”            He obeyed, surprised.  She’d never managed to silence him before and marveled at the power of it.            The soup course sailed out in the arms of maids hired for the evening.  Flavie, naturally, catered to Elizabeth’s table.  She set the soup down hard enough for some to smear on the edge of the bowl.            “She doesn’t like you very much, does she,” Fulgence said thoughtfully.            Elizabeth stared at him in astonishment.  He noticed!  He’d only just noticed!            “No,” she said honestly.  “She doesn’t like me one bit.”            “Why ever not, when you’re so charming?”  He’d already started on his soup.            It was a trademark Fulgence remark.  It could be a compliment.  Or it could be a barb, so fine and lethal-sharp that she’d never feel the cut.            She swallowed.            “She thinks I hurt her brother,” she said, voice husky.            “And did you?  I say, good soup.  A little too salty.”            “No,” Elizabeth said, “I didn’t,” but he wasn’t listening anymore.            She couldn’t remember the rest of the dinner very well.  The mayor, in a mask of crimson feathers, carved the roast, and all partook.  When the last course had been cleared away and the guests were drowning the last of the sparkling wine, Fulgence said, “I suppose we’d better dance now.”            “I suppose we should,” Elizabeth said.  She stood and let him lead her clear of the tables.  She was a competent dancer, not graceful or showy, but she knew the steps.  He looked at a spot over her shoulder while they danced.            It was the last night Elizabeth would spend in her home.  She had anticipated sorrow, at least; she’d deliberately stuffed a handkerchief up her sleeve in case she had to step out and have a cry.  But she didn’t feel sad, only tired.  So tired it pushed all the other feelings out.  So tired her bones ached.            I’m sick at the heart, she thought, and I want to lie down.            Her skirt billowed around them as she spun and twirled.  She had danced before, but not like this.  Not on a magical night, when the twilight came indoors and draped across the dancers like stoles, when it gathered in heavy corners, and the thick musk of moonlight filled the hall.            It was a partner’s dance, and Elizabeth lost hold of Fulgence’s hand as she twirled into the arms of another man.  He had the face of a fox; it was the most exquisite mask she’d ever seen.  Every hair was picked out in minute detail; a dark light hung in his amused eyes.  His pale lip curled just slightly at her touch, and his breath huffed the fine hairs on his muzzle.            It was perfect.  It was unreal.            Elizabeth’s hand went cold.            She knew only one type of creature that could craft a disguise that cunning.            The dance swept her into the arms of a goat; he leered at her, head bobbing and warm, animal breath huffing against her face.  It was terrible, unnatural to see the face used so; Elizabeth stumbled, but the next dancer jerked her up as he passed.  She was buffeted and twirled and thrown between dancers, staggering through the movements of the graceful dance.  She caught a glimpse of Anthea in the arms of what she had thought to be the mayor, but the dance swept her away.            This can’t be! she thought, then instantly scolded herself, because it clearly was.  She’d thought the Faire were gone for good, but here they were at her wedding.  They’re not gone, she thought.  They were only sleeping.            She needed a plan.  She needed to think, and she needed to plot how to expel these creatures from her home.  Her mind latched onto scattered details: there was salt in the kitchen and iron nails in the stable, and the priest would have brought Communion wine for the wedding ceremony.
            Then she stopped thinking entirely, because she spun into the arms of the next dancer, and it was Abelard.

Hello, readers!  Happy 4th of July!  I have been a little intensely frazzled lately, working and getting ready for college.  I promise the last post in the YA Tropes I Hate series is coming!  But until then, be sustained by my 18k-ish word novella, Of the Wood, spread out over four days.

I started writing this early last summer.  It began as a simple concept: I wanted to write a Sleeping Beauty retelling that focused on the spindle, namely how it could prick someone without having any sharp edges.  So I did a tedious amount of research about sheep and the medieval wool industry.  When I felt I could talk about the wool-making process from start to finish, I launched into the story.

And hit a wall.  About two chapters in.

I'd forgotten a key part of the storytelling process: namely, ever step that isn't research.  I struggled some more with the story, but finally, with Governor's School a few days away, I shelved it, I thought semi-permanently, until the muse struck.

Oh, she struck, readers.  She struck hard.

One day in choral class at Governor's School, we sang this .  This strange, weird, curling-in-on-itself poem by James Joyce, set to the odd, sad music of Eric Whitacre.  It's noisy, cacophonous, atmospheric, and utterly lovely.  And as I sang its half-mad words, I saw a very clear image: a green, drizzling swamp; a silent voice calling endlessly through it; and a body floating beneath its dark waters.

For those of you who distrust links, here are the words to James Joyce's incomparable poem, She Weeps Over Rahoon:

Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,Where my dark lover lies.Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,At grey moonrise.
Love, hear thou,How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling,Then as now.
Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and coldAs his sad heart has lainUnder the moongrey nettles, the black mouldAnd muttering rain.
Singing these words, I learned something vital.  My story took place in a swamp, filled with the silent calling of trapped spirits.
But who these spirits are, and how they came to be trapped...  Well.  That's a different story.
Enjoy, dear friends.
Of the Wood
“O where have you been, Lord Randall my son?O where have you been, my handsome young man?”
--Lord Randall
Prologue:
Every night, the Lady of Wychwood had the same dream.Her body lay in her four-poster bed, swathed by woolen blankets.  Rain lashed the walls of her tower.  The floor hummed with the sound of machinery.            But in her dream, she was back in the bog on the night of her wedding, floundering through the dark water in a tangle of creamy silk.  Her bare feet sank into the mud as she tried to run, and branches caught at her hair and veil.  Her hands were cold and locked around the hilt of Papa’s sword, the one he never used.            She wasn’t scared, not yet, because she still thought she could save him.  She hadn’t realized there had never been hope, not while the Faire still lurked in the reflection of moonlight on water.            From somewhere in the bog there came a voice, drifting through the silences, as pale and grey and nonexistent as cobwebs, so soft she couldn’t tell if she only wished its presence.            Elizabeth….            She knew that voice.            “Abelard!” she screamed and threw herself forward.  Chains as fine as spider webs trailed from the branches, and small, delicate watches hung from them.  But they were rusted shut, barely ticking.  She was almost too late.            Part of her was not afraid.  It stood back and watched as the young bride slipped, and the dark water caught her.  Her hands struck the surface; she screamed, water gargling in her mouth as she sank in billows of silk.            Every other night, she spent a few horrible minutes drowning before she awoke in a cold sweat.            Lightning crashed, deafeningly loud and frighteningly close.  The lady stirred uneasily, eyes moving sightlessly behind closed lids as, for the first time in years, the dream changed.

A few miles away, rain fell on Wychwood Bog, glimmering in the moonlight.              The bog was lovely on the surface.  Beneath it, strange, many-legged creatures scuttled through the hidden currents of rotting leaves and drowned sheep.  It was torpid and gross—but above, it was peace.  Even the stagnant water seemed to hold its breath.  Not a night owl or marsh bird cried.  All was still.            Until the water exploded into black mist, and what had only moments before been a bleached, floating corpse sat up and took a deep breath.            He spat out a mouthful of water and felt less dead than he had any right to be.  He was in the bog, sitting in the too-warm water.  It was either late winter or very early spring; a raw, bitter cold nipped at him, but decay warmed the bog.  He couldn’t remember being here before, but then, he realized he could remember nothing at all except moonlight, shadows, and dancing.            “What happened?” he asked.  Moonlight spilled across the dark water.  It didn’t answer.            But a woman in green, perched high and dry on a half-fallen marsh tree, did.            “So you’re awake,” she said.  “I wondered how long it would take.”            She stood, green dress fluttering in the motionless air.  She looked human only shallowly, like if you rubbed hard you could catch a glimpse of whatever lay beneath.            “I hope you can walk,” she said.  “We have a way to go before morning.”            “What,” he said experimentally.  Then: “Who?”            “Am I?”            “No,” he said and shivered.  “Am I?”            Her cold face softened.  “We’ll get to that.  You can call me Anaïs, and you may as well call yourself Abelard.”            “Is that my name?”            “It was.”  But he’d already lost her attention; she hopped to the next tree, skirts trailing in the water, and he saw that she didn’t have hands.  Dead, beaten skin ringed her wrists.            He looked up to her raised eyebrow.            “I’m sorry,” he said, blushing.  “I didn’t mean to stare.  W-what happened to your hands?”            He could see her weighing the question, tossing it from one bruised and beaten, nonexistent hand to the other.            “I was in a prison,” she said.  “For a long time.”            “What did you do?” he asked apprehensively.            Her smile was a white slash in the darkness.  “I cursed someone.”            He stammered, “Please, can you tell me—how did you find me?”            “You were hard to miss.  A mortal, trapped in a Faire bog, always calling out soundlessly, repeating the same name over and over?  You cried out—“            “Elizabeth,” he said softly.  He had stopped, his eyes raised to the moon.            Anaïs stopped as well and looked back at him.  He shivered when her gaze pierced him.  It was like she had snatched his soul from his body and was running it through her lost hands.  But no matter how intently she gazed, he sensed it was not he she was looking at.            “Come on,” she said, deciding something.  “We need to go.”            “Go—wait!” Abelard said.  “How did I come to the bog?  I can’t remember!”  He staggered after her, but he did not know the way; he sank deeply in a hidden marsh, tangling in the weedy grass with his face near the water.  For a moment, instead of his reflection, he saw a ballroom, full of creatures with nocturnal eyes, strange, hungry mouths, and too many knuckles on each finger to count.  He cried out and drew away, but the reflection had already faded, and only his own face watched him.            “There are people in the bog,” he said in a strangled voice.            “There were,” Anaïs agreed, glancing curiously at the pool, but the vision did not return.  “They are the Faire, and Maelӱs is their queen.  They were shepherds of men once, long ago.  You won’t see them again.  That was their last gasp, and now they’re finally gone.”  Almost to herself, she said, “Unless they find another way back.”            “Who are they?” he said.  “Why can I see them?”            “That’s a complicated question,” she said.  “The people here call them the Faire.  They’re craftsmen, master artisans.  They devour people in ways they think no one notices.  And you can see them because you spent four years of this world’s time in the Faire Court.”            Abelard made a strangled noise.            Anaïs added thoughtfully, “But they can’t come here.  They’re creatures of magic, and there’s too much science now, too much innovation in this world.  When men have iron weapons, they can keep the wolves away.  They don’t need the Faire to do it anymore.  So they die out, slowly.”            “I don’t understand,” Abelard said, shaking his head.  “Who are you?  Who am I?”  He staggered through the peat after her.  “Please tell me; I have to know.  Elizabeth—I loved her, didn’t I?”            “Oh, besotted,” Anaïs agreed.  “You two were positively nauseating to be around.  Watch your step; there’s a hole.”            But he had already stepped past it, as his body remembered the subtle details that escaped his brain.            “Elizabeth was my love,” he said softly.  “Did… she betray me?”            Anaïs hesitated.  It had not been in her plan to talk with him.  But she felt that he deserved an answer.            “I don’t think it’s my place to say,” she said.  “It’s complicated.”            “Well,” he said.  “We’d better go ask her, then.”            He slogged through the deep water, Anaïs climbing beside him.            “Yes,” she said.  She stopped and gazed, unfocused, at something the young man could not see.  It sent cold whispers up his spine.  There was something wrong with the air where she looked.  It bent and wavered as though an unseen hand held a flame to it, and it burned.            “We’ll definitely have to see Elizabeth,” she agreed.  “After all, she’s in grave trouble.  Her sister’s dying, she’s lost her ancestral home, and the Faire are trying to kill her.  Oh,” she added, “and she thinks she killed you.”

The Lady of the Wood gasped, jerking awake among sweaty wool blankets, the taste of magic sharp in her mouth.            She sat up in bed, nightmare forgotten, dark water and dank trees curling from her mind.  She would never forget that taste: the sharp acidity of lemon that somehow crept through her mouth, into her thoughts.  But it was impossible.  There was no more magic.  Papa had driven it away.            The two clocks on her mantle both read four in the morning.  She couldn’t go back to sleep now.  She stumbled out of bed and into her study, where a treadle spinning wheel waited amid the desk and papers.            The lady felt raw and bleached, like a shorn sheep.  She dropped down beside the wheel, gathered up wool in the grease with shaking hands, and began to spin.  Some part of her whispered, you ought to be afraid, you’re cursed, you’ll prick your finger…  But the greater, more sensible part of her retorted that it was the silliest curse she could imagine.  You couldn’t prick yourself on a spindle.  It didn’t have sharp edges.            But that didn’t matter anymore, because the magic was gone.            Her hands danced across the wool as the hours crept by until morning.  And under her breath, she muttered, “Anaïs, Anaïs, Anaïs….”

One:
“And that, Lady—pardon me—Miss Lawley, will be all,” the mayor said, gathering up the paper.  “On behalf of Lawley-under-Wychwood, I thank you for your—Miss Lawley?”            You’re making a mistake, Anthea had said.            “Miss Lawley?”            She had been so furious with her sister that she could taste blood and tears.  You’ve known about it for months.  Did you have to speak up now?  On my wedding day?            It’s not too late to back out, Anthea had said.            But it was.  Elizabeth didn’t understand why everyone had such trouble grasping that.  It was years too late.  Four years, to be precise.            The nightmare curled through her mind, all dark water and magic.  She would need to check the Spinning Jeannies to be absolutely sure--            “Elizabeth.”            She realized she had been staring broodingly out the window, toward the bog, and forced herself to relax.  What she looked for could not possibly be there.“I’m sorry, Mister Mayor,” she said.  “Where do I sign?”            “Here.”            She did.  The swipe of her pen felt innocuous for the massive change it wrought.“Very good, my lady,” the mayor said.  “You have officially ended the title of the Lords of the Wood.  The power associated with that position now reverts to the town of Lawley-upon-Wychwood.  And may I wish you well in your upcoming marriage.  I must say, it will be good to see you out of mourning clothes.”            Now that the decision was made, she was tired.  Her head was heavy.  She wanted to let it sink to her chest, fall out of the chair, and lie unmoving on the floor.  In a way, she was relieved that she was disappointing her sister.  Maybe now Anthea realized that any trust placed in Elizabeth had been foolish.            “Thank you, Mister Mayor,” she said.  “I trust I will see you at the ceremony tonight?  Fulence and I hoped you would carve the roast.”            “I would not miss it,” the mayor said.  He hesitated, and Elizabeth’s chest tightened.  “Elizabeth—it is not too late, nor will it ever be, to change your mind.  You are the last in a line of ancient warriors, dedicated to keeping Wychwood safe.  Do you truly wish to lose that heritage?”            “Ancient is the right word,” Elizabeth said, forcing a laugh.  “The Lords of the Wood are an antiquated tradition.  There are no more Faire, Mister Mayor.  Papa drove them out, and they are never coming back.”  With a stamp, she sealed the document.  “Thank you.”            “It’s your decision,” the mayor said, shaking his head.  “I’ll leave you to your tea.”            “Good day.”            Shaking out her black skirt, she moved to the window until she heard the quiet click of the door closing behind him, and then the click again as Flavie came in with tea.            Once upon a time, there was magic in Wychwood Bog.  The Faire, one-time guardians of Wychwood County, dwelled just beyond every reflection.  Their poison crept into the water, until sheep who grazed by it died, and shepherds who gazed in too long thought that it became green pastureland, led their flock in, and drowned.            Now, years after the Faire had finally succumbed to the iron in the air and water, the bog was a fertile green place: a spot of color and growth among the miles of moorland, scrubby with purple heather and flocks of the famous Wychwood sheep, grazing on the endless grasslands.            And closer, just down the sweeping lawn of Lawley Place, was the town, Lawley-under-Wychwood.  For hundreds of years, the town trembling in fear of the enchanted bog, slave to wolves and the protection of the Faire, constantly frightened of the world beyond the town.  For a considerably shorter time, Elizabeth’s home.            But everything changed.  Even the immortal Faire.            “Tell me, Flavie,” she said, because the study was too quiet, “will you stay when I’m gone?”  She added weakly, “Please put it down—“            She heard the scrape of china as Flavie slammed down the tea tray with enough force to slosh the tea and stain Elizabeth’s papers.  She winced.  Lightly.            “Yes, miss,” she said.  And then surprisingly, because Flavie did not pretend to enjoy Elizabeth’s company, “The mayor says he wants to turn Lawley Place into a museum about your father.  They’ll still need someone to clean it.”            “I hadn’t known that.”  Elizabeth glanced around the small room.  It had been her father’s study, and his father’s before him, on and on through all the Lawleys back to a knight-errant who styled himself Lawless.  Papa would’ve been disappointed that she’d given it away, had he known.  But then, Papa would have ample disappointments to choose from.            Flavie excused herself with her arms full of books, ready to pack for the move to Brittany, and the door slammed shut.  The study was now empty of personal effects, save for a sword above the fireplace, Elizabeth’s treadle wheel, and two mismatched clocks on the mantle.  It would’ve been unbearable if they ticked on slightly different beats.  But they, as in life, worked perfectly in sync.  The Spinning Jennies spun quietly from the floor beneath her.  It was a soothing sound, straight from her childhood.  They had been Papa’s pride.            He’d been so proud when she’d taken to the practical side of defending a town.  She liked accounts and figures.  She had a natural head for numbers, especially when arranged in tiny columns with a sum at the bottom, especially when the sum was money.  She could make numbers jump through hoops with a defter hand than Papa could.            Sometimes, at his big desk in the tower office with Elizabeth on his lap, he said that she was teaching him.  And she had believed him, which was foolish, because her Papa was the wisest, best man she’d ever known, and the proof of this was on the wall behind them, where his sword of office hung above the fire.            It was the sort of sword that was made by banging one piece of metal to another and sharpening the result.  Looks could be deceiving, Elizabeth knew; she had a dim idea that the quality of a sword was judged by the balance, but she never had a chance to find out, because in her lifetime, that sword never left its place above the fire.            “It’s a symbol, Elle,” Papa explained when she badgered about fencing lessons and warrior-like portraits.  “We live in a civilized world.  The wars here are fought with paper and numbers and words, not with steel.  But I keep my old sword, because it reminds me how lucky I am to have this world.”He glanced sadly at the sword.  Something about the firelight always made it glint red, even though Elizabeth knew Papa had not used it for years.  “And it reminds me of the cost it took to win this.  And how far we still have to go.”            He never talked about the days before he’d married Mama, when he had to use that sword against the Faire of bog and wood, to hold back their slow, insidious creep into the town and the wolves that inevitably followed for the spoils.  By the time Elizabeth was born, those days were long past, and the sword hung unused above the fire.  When she was young, the peace Papa had brokered with Maelӱs, queen of the wood, still held firm, and the town profited from the Faire’s exquisite craftsmanship.  It was never absolute—people still went missing in the bog, babes in winter were snatched from their cradles, and sometimes men brought home brides with strange golden eyes and predictably short, unhappy, and bloody marriages.  But the old days were gone.  They didn’t have to fear the Faire anymore.            That was what they’d thought.            There had always been a lord at Lawley Place who could hold back the Faire.  Until today.            She had almost finished the stack of papers when a furious knocking rained on the door.  Her flinch left an enormous blot on a particularly diplomatic letter and bled onto a beautifully worded report.            “Yes?” she snapped, dabbing at it with her handkerchief.                 It was Flavie, unexpectedly.  Her voice was high and panicked when she said, “Your fiancé, miss!  He’s here!”

Two:
Fulgence! Elizabeth thought, dragging a surcoat over her head.  Of course it would be Fulgence, her husband-to-be, whom she did not love, but whom she was prepared to marry if it meant leaving her town and tower.  She found significantly more love in her last engagement, the one that ended with her as an unhappy spinster and inspired the plot of a particularly popular ballad.  She was prepared to bet that even a loveless engagement would be better than that.            But she really wished Fulgence had not sprung himself on her when she was not ready.            “Where is he?” she asked Flavie as the other fixed her hair.            “In the teahouse,” Flavie said.  She brushed Elizabeth’s hair with enough force to pull her head back; Elizabeth bit down on a complaint.  “He said he wanted to absorb local color.”            Elizabeth stared at her in horror.  “And you let him!”  With her luck, someone had already sung the Cold Lady ballad to him.            “There wasn’t much I could do, lady,” Flavie said despairingly.  “He’s a lord.”            Well, yes.  There was that.            Elizabeth stuffed her feet into boots.  She knew she was a mess.  She had ink on her nose and calluses on her hands, some from the pen, some left over from shepherding, because even the lord’s daughter was not spared at shearing the prized Wychwood wool.  She was not a perfect figurine of a lady, like Fulgence’s mother and sisters.            Despite this, he still wanted to marry her.  She had no idea why.            “Flavie, please do something in the way, shape, or form of lunch,” she said, squaring her shoulders.  She doubted Flavie would.  Most of the time Elizabeth felt as though she were waiting on her.  She wished she had fired her long ago.  But she let her stay, because the townsmen already thought her cold, and they would’ve said it was typical that the lady fire the girl who had been her best friend.Elizabeth froze when she thought this.  It had been many years since Flavie had claimed that title, and she’d nearly forgotten.  But yes: once she and Flavie had been the closest of friends.  The girl had practically adopted the lord’s daughter, who was unapproachable to the other children.  They had spent all their time together, bringing food to the shepherds, standing together at shearing, moving their looms side by side.  How had she forgotten?“I’ll be back soon,” she said muzzily.            The sonorous clock in the ballroom rang the breakfast hour, and she ducked her head and ran from the ancient rooms of Lawley Place, down the long, straight drive to the main road.            The town was made of the same yellow-brown stones as Lawley Place, piled and mortared into place over a century ago.  The sloping-roofed homes and the narrow stone lanes had been worn by countless feet, countless families passing into obscurity to be replaced by others.  It was so old and comfortable and worn that it looked like another copse of oaks or another streambed, part of nature.            Elizabeth’s breath rose in the crisp air.  Just once, she thought.  Just once I would like to have something that is mine alone.  That hasn’t been passed up from Anthea, or down from my parents, or down through the centuries like Lawley Place or the bog.            I want something new.            It was too much that she expected the townsmen to pay her their taxes and look to her for leadership when she was so much younger than they, and small wonder they only did half.  There were no quarrelsome neighbors or peasant insurrections anymore.  They did not need a lady in Lawley Place; they could live their lives without her clumsy help.  She was an antiquity, as sure as the old pews in the church or the treadle spinning wheel in her study.            In Papa’s day, men had needed a lord.  First he was a warrior, and he fought off the wolves, cleared Wychwood, and made it safe to farm and hunt.  Then he was a diplomat, and he made peace with the Faire and set up the careful restraints that let Lawley-under-Wychwood thrive without subjugation.  And then, of course, that peace had proven false, and he’d had to be a warrior again.But they were gone now, Faire, wolves, and Papa all.  Wychwood County could jolly well get on without her.She swallowed, slowly and deliberately.  Her memories tasted bitter.  They bothered her more than she cared to admit, but she couldn’t think about it now, because her hand was pushing open the door to the teahouse.Silence descended on the merry tea-drinkers.            They couldn’t forgive her for it, she thought.  None of them can.  The heroine of a ballad can’t just stroll into the store and buy milk.  She has to gallop into the sunset and live happily ever after.  You can’t step out of immortality and come back to practical things.  But you had to, or there’d be no milk for breakfast.            It was only because Mama and Papa died, and then Abelard.  And someone had written The Cold Lady ballad, and her life went downhill from there.            She felt cold now.  Cold, protected, and not caring, not really, what the townsmen thought.            She put her coat firmly on the coatrack and ignored them.            The bronze glittering of guitar music streamed through the teahouse.  Elizabeth allowed herself to enjoy the crisp, warm sound for almost a full moment before another joined it: a high, cutting voice, not unpleasant but certainly unusual.  It was the voice of Anthea, Elizabeth’s sister.            Her heart sank.  She should’ve known this day could get worse.            A thin, treacherous voice whispered, she loves ballads.  They’re her life.  And she’s written ever so many of them.  What’s to say it isn’t in her repertoire?            Stop, Elizabeth told it firmly.  There were any number of horrible things she was prepared to believe about her sister, but that was not one of them.            Anthea perched on a tea table, guitar cradled in her lap.  Her head was tossed back so her dark hair fell away from her face for once, and she was smiling gloriously at a townsman playing the violin and another with a hand drum.  Anthea tossed her head back even farther, gulped down air, and sang a ballad.  Irony of ironies, it was the one about Papa, commemorating his work as Lord of the Wood.            And there was Fulgence, lounging at the nearest table, with a wide smile like the cat who hasn’t got the cream yet but knows it’s coming.  He was not particularly handsome, but there was something about his smile that made her forget that.  Elizabeth liked his smile, despite herself.  It was not nice, but certainly interesting.            Elizabeth was proud of her home, but she wished it did not show off its local color quite so proudly.  Red-faced, she sat down, ordered a cup of tea, and listened while the wicked Faire caught souls and fed them into their work, giving their gold that beautiful luster, their gems that sparkling radiance.  Then Papa emerged and put together a rather good speech about justice and iron and progress, which he certainly had not been capable of composing in life.  But it got the part about him building hospitals, schools, roads, and, above all, those clever Spinning Jeannies, so that the new progress and iron might drive off the Faire.  That wasn’t entirely right, Elizabeth thought.  He had also done that because he was a good man and loved the county more than reason.  And he had done it because, no matter how foolish her curse, he had not wanted it to come true.            The lemon in her tea tasted like magic.            Anthea’s high voice sang the final stanzas, how Papa lived forevermore in happiness and prosperity.  Not quite forevermore, Elizabeth thought sadly.  Papa had struck too solid a blow against the Faire for him to ever live, he and Mama both.  They had disappeared on a fine summer’s day, long after the Faire had faded away.  But there could be no doubting it was Maelӱs the Clockmaker’s work.  She left her signature as a present for Elizabeth.            She breathed a sigh of relief when the last chord died away.  Fulgence, only a few seats away, heard it and laughed.            “Why the long, long face, my own, my love?” he said, grabbing her hand.  “Aren’t you proud of little sister?”            “Of course I’m proud of Anthea,” Elizabeth said patiently.  They seemed to have this discussion every time they met.  He was much more pleasant in his letters.  “I am a little less proud of the subject material.  I don’t like dwelling on it.”            “You should be!  Proud, that is,” he amended.  “Although even Lord and Lady Lawley can’t measure up to their daughter’s exploits, eh?”            She stiffened.  Something in her eyes must have changed, for Fulgence dropped her hand.            “What are you doing here?” she asked.  “You weren’t supposed to come until tonight.”            “Oh.  You know.”            Coolly, Elizabeth expressed the fact that she did not.            “Well, I found myself in the county.  I woke up early.  Was woken, in fact.  And who’s to blame a man for wishing to gaze upon his beloved’s face?”            A tongue like molten gold, had Fulgence.  Elizabeth knew this was not the reason, but she didn’t pry.  She didn’t want to turn into a nagging wife before she was even married.            “Well, you’re here,” she said, forcing herself into cheerfulness.  “I’ll set Flavie to cleaning out one of the guest rooms.”            “No, no fear,” Fulgence said hastily.  “I’ve already found lodgings elsewhere.”            A line creased Elizabeth’s forehead, but Fulgence grabbed her hand again.            “Come on,” he said, “I want to compliment Anthea.”            “You want to flirt outrageously, you mean,” she muttered, but she allowed him to tow her to the table.            Anthea laid her guitar in its case.  Any softness which had come into her face while she sang was gone, replaced by her usual blank expression, slightly touched with either annoyance or anger.  It could not be pleasant, Elizabeth thought, to look upset all the time.            “Oh, hello, Fulgence,” Anthea said.  “You’re early.”            “Only to see you, darling sister-in-law,” he said gallantly, bowing over her hand like he would kiss it.  “You play gorgeously.  And your voice!  It’s like the chorus angelorum!”            “Thank you,” Anthea said patiently.            And there went all the civil conversation Anthea and Fulgence were capable of having on their own.  Normally, Elizabeth would have mercy and chime in.  But today, she let her attention stray through the teahouse.  While Anthea played, it filled up with townsmen, but they slowly trailed back to their work as shepherds or weavers.  A young man sat at a table in the back with a woman whom Elizabeth didn’t know.  The first time she glanced at her, she thought she was old; but then she looked again and saw she was mistaken.  Her pale hair looked silver in the lamplight.            Fulgence distracted her by taking her hand.            “What are you doing today?” he said, gazing down at her.  When he gave someone his full attention, those golden-brown eyes were mesmerizing.            “Working,” she said automatically, but that wasn’t true, because she didn’t technically have a job anymore.  She swallowed down something that felt like loss.  “Packing.”            “Do you want to come with me to the inn for lunch?”  His grip was tight.  “Or for a walk?  I think we ought to talk before tonight.”
            Her stomach fluttered, and now, unhappily, she had precisely no idea how she felt.  She missed Abelard keenly, but she liked Fulgence.            “Thank you,” she said, feeling ill.  “But I need to finish packing before tonight.”            His breath smelled like cloves and was warm on her face.  “You’re not nervous, are you?  After all, you’ve gone through this before, not too long ago.”            Their relationship was a war, each encounter a battle for dominance, and there were very few barbs Elizabeth couldn’t believe Fulgence would say.  This was one.  For a long moment, she couldn’t breathe.            “Abelard and I were never married,” she managed to say.  “He disappeared right before the ceremony.”            “Well, I assure you I’ll be present for it.”  Fulgence grinned cheekily at her.            The clock in the town square, bronze and glass glittering in the sun, rang midmorning.  Maelӱs had made that clock, Elizabeth thought dimly.  Even now her presence lingered.            She managed to say something about needing to pack, gathered up her coat, and headed for the door.  Her hand barely touched the knob, however, when the song started.            Someone who was clever with words and could write a melody so lively it practically sang itself had written a ballad about Elizabeth, called The Cold Lady.  They sang it in the town when they thought she couldn’t hear.  It was too good a story not to put into song alongside True Thomas, Isobel and the Elf Knight, and the Cruel Sisters: a little girl pushed into power, her gilded romance, and then the shock when everyone realized that she had never deserved him.  She should’ve been flattered by it.  It lumped her in with Margaret and Isobel and Janet, none of whom, when you thought about it, had really had happy lives.
            This was how her ballad went.

Welcome to the second part of this retelling, readers!  If you haven't started yet, do please pop one page back and read it from the beginning.

I spoke some yesterday of how singing She Weeps Over Rahoon, by James Joyce, set to music by Eric Whitacre, inspired the atmosphere and setting of this retelling.  Today I'd like to talk about the strange, queer little songs that inspired the plot.

The Anglo-Scottish Border Ballads.

You have likely heard of them, either in their retold or original forms.  The most famous include Tam Lin (my favorite version here), Lord Randall (favorite version here), and The Twa Sisters (favorite version here), as well as Thomas the Rhymer (I don't have a favorite version of this one).  Their retellings include Chime, by Franny Billingsley; Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones; and Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean, fabulous books all.

Historically speaking, they're popular folk songs of the English-Scottish border, compiled by Sir Francis James Child.  Artistically speaking, they're a different kettle of fish entirely.  They're strange, freakily-paced, frequently gruesome tales of jealous mothers, poisonous sweethearts, hideous murder, and true love.  I absolutely adore them.

And at Governor's School, with the first draft of Of the Wood shoved to the back of my computer and a dream of fairy bogs running through my head, I found a book of them in the library.

These ballads shaped my narrative in many ways, both overtly and subtly.  Overtly, the story kicks off with a direct quote from Lord Randall: "O where have you been, Lord Randall my son? / O where have you been, my handsome young man?"

I hope, however, that as you continue to read, you see the more subtle side of it.  Two feuding sisters.  The woods where we dare not tread.  An interrupted wedding.  The rich, constant presence of stories and their power.  And most importantly, a missing young man, who cannot answer the question, "O where have you been?"

What I wanted, in the end, was a story that was equally rooted in fairytales and border ballads, both grim and dark, but both with their accompanying flickers of light.

(Note: It's not an official border ballad, but I must mention that Canto V of Sir Walter Scott's "Marmion," about the dashing hero Lochinvar, heavily inspired the character Abelard and is even mentioned by name later on.  Look for the reference!)

Enjoy, dear friends.

Three:
There was one among the Faire called Anaïs, and she was the daughter of Maelӱs’s and a mortal man.  She wandered before the court, into the dark, wild places where even the Faire feared to tread.  Until one day she met something older than the Faire.  Whatever passed between them, only Anaïs could say.  And she never did.            She returned to the Faire Court, but she was changed.  She saw hints of the future in the movement of air and the turn of seasons, and they drove her mad with wonder.            The Faire seemed to think, well, if she can’t sew, paint, or weave, we might as well give her something unimportant, like a human child.  So they sent her to the Lord of the Wood to raise his wayward daughter.            Elizabeth, pulled away from Flavie, the sheep, and the wild freedom of the moors, had determined to hate her.  She deliberately put on her oldest leggings and thickest rural accent and ate tea smugly with her mouth open.            She half-expected Anaïs to lose her human visage, possibly sprouting tentacles.  But Anaïs was not at all what she expected.  She looked like any dairymaid, with her fair hair plaited in a crown, bright green eyes demurely downcast.“So,” Elizabeth said, squinting at her.  Anaïs didn’t say anything.  Elizabeth cocked her head to one side, studying her.  If she could get the right angle, perhaps the human guise would drop, and Elizabeth could see her as she was.  “What do you—“            Anaïs smiled.  Inexplicably, Elizabeth’s stomach prickled with fear, and she leapt to her feet with a strangled yell.  Anaïs was pretty, apple-cheeked, harmless—but she looked empty.  Like the girl she saw was a screen, and now the light shone through, and she caught glimpses of the figure beyond.            She suddenly did not want to know what it was.            As soon as she thought this, Anaïs was sitting in her chair again, demure.  But she didn’t look down now.  She watched Elizabeth, a smile in her shrewd eyes.            Elizabeth didn’t sit back down.            “What do you want to know?” Anaïs asked.  “Ask me anything.”            Elizabeth squinted at her, but she couldn’t read her face.  She said guardedly, “The Faire Court.  What’s it like?”            “Pleasant.”  Anaïs shrugged.  “I liked it a lot when I was young.  It’s harder when you’re old and tired.”            “Where is it exactly?” Elizabeth asked.  “In the bog?”            “No.  It’s—you could say—“  She stopped.  “Come here.”            Elizabeth followed cautiously as they left the cool, manicured hallways into the gusty warmth of a northern spring.  A breeze carried the scent of bog and heather, with a stiff undertone of sheep.  The town was lively with spring cleaning; Elizabeth had to duck beneath clothes-lines, although Anaïs never seemed to need to.            “Think of it like this,” she said, stopping before the old well, so suddenly that Elizabeth walked into her.  “Look at the tree.”            Elizabeth studied the oak tree shading the forgotten well.  Tucked away from the busy town, it was still and peaceful.  The leaves swayed in quiet, shimmering rustles, shadowed on the ground.            “Now,” Anaïs said, “look at the tree in the well.”            And there was the reflection of the tree—grey and glassy in the still water.            “You can see it,” Anaïs said.  “You can move the water or shake the branches and change it.  But you can’t touch it.  It’s not real to you, not exactly.”            The tree swayed.  The reflection shimmered.  Anaïs stared at it blindly, every muscle in her neck pronounced.            Elizabeth shifted her weight, rubbing the back of her prickling neck.  Anaïs watched the reflection.  She didn’t breathe.            Then she sighed, a tired but welcome sound.  Her chin dropped to her chest.  She murmured something that sounded like, I’m sorry.            “What-- are you all—“  Elizabeth bit down on the question.  She knew what she had seen; she’d heard too many tales of Anaïs to be unsure.  She had seen a sliver of the future, broken off and presented, for some reason, to Anaïs.  “What did you say?”            Anaïs didn’t answer.  She stared at the well like she’d seen her doom.  Now, years later, Elizabeth wondered if she had.            “You know,” she said timidly, “dinner will be ready soon.  If you’re hungry.”            Anaïs blinked like a sleeper waking.  “I would like that,” she said finally.  “I amhungry.”            They walked home through the grey clouds of dusk.  Anaïs shuffled like an invalid, and Elizabeth matched her pace.  Shepherding had made her rangy and lean; she longed to run.            It wasn’t until after the mutton had been served, the plates cleared away, and they sat before the fire, listening to Anthea practice the harpsichord in the other room, that the forgotten well felt far enough away and sufficiently dreamlike for Elizabeth to speak.            “Anaïs,” she said timidly, “do you mean that the Faire are like trees?”            Anaïs’s face was blank for a moment.  Then it cleared, and she laughed.            “No, lamb,” she said.  “You’rethe trees.”  She smiled, and Elizabeth shuddered.  “We’re the woodcutters.”            She touched Elizabeth’s shoulder.  Her hand was as cold as the grave.            “I’m sorry,” she said simply.  “But you will understand someday.”            And she cursed her.  On the eve of her wedding, Elizabeth would prick her finger on a spindle, and she and her household would sleep for a hundred years.  The air swam with the taste of magic, and Elizabeth fainted.            Her parents had been understandably dismayed when Anaïs disappeared, never to be seen again, never to answer their questions.  Leaving Papa alone to try to solve his daughter’s curse.  She would sleep for a hundred years.  No matter how far she ran, as long as magic could reach her, the curse could, too.            Another man might’ve sought to destroy the spinning wheels.  But instead, Papa decided to destroy the magic.            He used the Spinning Jeannies.

It started to rain on Elizabeth’s way home.  A cold, crying sort of rain.Elizabeth paused in the ballroom to hang up her coat.  Faint conversation stirred the air, but it came from the kitchen, so Elizabeth hesitantly stepped toward the great clock.  Sunlight caught on its face, peering down at her.  It was a sphere of glass, edged with flashing bronze, and its ticking crept through the ballroom, counting down the minutes to tonight.If she hunted through her oldest memories, Elizabeth could remember Maelӱs assembling the clock, fitting the gears together with her many-knuckled fingers.  She had seen little Elizabeth watching and paused to smile at her.  She had a nice smile, Elizabeth remembered, and she looked nearly human.  How could someone with such a nice smile, who had spoken so kindly to a little girl and showed her the turning gears, have wrought such evil?On the day the clock first ticked, a scullery maid died.  And that was when Papa wondered precisely how the Faire made their lovely art.There came from beneath the door the gentle chuffing of the Spinning Jeannies, and Elizabeth slipped through it, into the low-lit room full of the quiet swish of wool skirts and wool thread.  And there were the Spinning Jeannies, standing proudly shoulder-to-shoulder, heads held high.  Each had eight of the deadly spindles that could sever her existence with this time, assuming she managed to prick herself on one.            “Good afternoon, my lady,” a spinster said.            “Good afternoon, madam,” Elizabeth said absently.  Soon they wouldn’t call her lady.            And here, she thought, was where the rest of the ballad took place.            Four years ago, when Elizabeth was Papa’s assistant and not the lady, she had been engaged to marry the shepherd Abelard.  Abelard, whom she had loved.  Abelard, who had known about the curse, about the Faire, about her family, and still, impossibly, wanted to marry her, and she him.            Elizabeth did not particularly believe in fate or predestination.  But even she would admit that it was rather unlikely that she and Abelard would meet.  She was the lord’s daughter, he a shepherd.  She only met him because of Flavie.            No one had been overly concerned when Abelard was lost in the bog.  Of course it was dangerous; of course Maelӱs had stolen him.  But it always worked out: at least, it had for Mama and Papa, another couple who’d been as doomed as Margaret and Geordie.  Surely it would work out for Elizabeth and Abelard.            They were more concerned when Abelard stayed lost, though.  Janet had boldly rescued her beloved.  But Elizabeth, the new lady of the tower, stayed in her office.  She was a more than capable administrator.  But the townsmen wanted a heroine.  And that, in the end, proved not to be Elizabeth.            The night Abelard went missing, the night Maelӱs stole and presumably drowned, was the last night the townsmen could taste magic in the bog.  And when they crashed through its dark, hungry shadows, the luminous reflections of faraway worlds had faded to nothing.  Papa had done his work too well.  The Faire were gone, and they had stolen Abelard with them.            When the townsmen had tried to destroy the Spinning Jeannies, to bring back the Faire long enough to rescue Abelard, the Lady of the Wood had held them back at sword-point.  It wasn’t enough that she couldn’t save him.  She wouldn’t let anyone else, either.            They might’ve forgiven her.  They were, after all, ridiculously fond of flawed heroines.  Janet, Margaret, and Isobel had certainly made mistakes.  They would’ve forgiven her if she hadn’t come down twice a week to the town to see the mayor and buy milk.  They would’ve forgiven her if she’d obligingly died or been boiled in lead or some other awful punishment.  But the ballad finished and Elizabeth didn’t, and they could never forgive her for that.            I’m sorry! Elizabeth thought.  I’m sorry I don’t pine away in my tower by day and haunt the moors at night, calling out in broken tones for my lover.  I loved him, and he’s dead.  But I’m not.  You’re not.  Someone has to keep the numbers turning and the economy going and the sheep moving from pasture to pasture.  I’m sad.  I’m beyond sad.  But I won’t let that sadness dictate my life.The Spinning Jeannies rattled and hummed.  The yarn—so important in a thriving textile town like Lawley-under-Wychwood—churned into white waves.  It was soft beneath Elizabeth’s fingers.            It occurred to her that this room could solve all her problems.  Eight spindles a Spinning Jeannie, and who knew how many of those?  She could sleep.  For a hundred years…            Her finger tightened.            “No,” she said aloud.  “Not yet.”            “Pardon me, Lady Lawley?” the spinster asked.            “Nothing,” the lady said.

Four:
He found Anaïs just beyond the town, where the roads faded into paths and trees erupted from the moorland.  He struggled through the thorny underbrush, crashing where he could not creep.  Fine, rusted chains trailed across his face like spider webs; but they were old now.  It had been years since Maelӱs had dwelt in these woods.            He slowed to a walk, panting.  He could only remember snatches of his time in the Faire Court.  He remembered music, and dancing until he thought he would die from weariness, and dancing still.  But the nearer the memory was, the more it blurred, until something happened and it was gone.             Something had happened in the Faire Court.  He was sure of it.  But he could not remember what.            The Faire had left Wychwood because Lord Lawley had driven them out.  And he had done that because they had cursed his daughter.            A Faire cursed her.  Her Faire godmother.            No sooner had he thought that when there she was, perched in the curve of a low-flung limb, idly picking at the bark with her silver fingers.  She spent all morning making them, nudging the parts into place with her forearms, until the little silver pieces clicked together.  They should not have been able to move so dexterously, he thought.  No machinery was that clever.            Soundlessly, she joined him.  They walked side-by-side, out of the reaching shadows into the town.            “Believe it or not, I’m not really in the mood to talk right now,” Abelard said.            A grey rain fell.  It soaked his heavy wool collar and seeped against his neck.  The moors would be lovely and still today, the colors clear and muted.  He wished he were out with his sheep.  He wished he were anywhere but here.            “It’s not so bad,” Anaïs said.            “She’s getting married.  Tonight.”            “She doesn’t care a fig for Fulgence.  She’s mourning you.”            “Funny way of showing it.”  His voice echoed through the town, silent in the rain.  A corbie leapt off the fence in a flurry of dark wings.            Anaïs said nothing.  Her hair was plastered damply to her face.  She looked young and human, not like the otherworldly Faire.            “I… I thought she would wait,” he said at last.  “I thought she would always be here.”            “She’s worn black for years,” Anaïs said gently.  “She buried herself in work and barely left her tower.  How long would you have her grieve?”            Abelard was embarrassed to realize the answer was forever.  He slumped against the fence and watched the rain fall.            “I don’t know why I trust you,” he said quietly.  “You betrayed her.”            She was watching the rain.            “Anaïs?” he said, suddenly afraid.  “Why did you curse her?”            She looked down at her hands.  They weren’t there.  Strange, lovely silver things were in their place, but they weren’t the same.  Not at all.            “You know that Maelӱs is my mother,” she said to the rain.  “I’m… different from the other Faire, but I still must obey her.  She told me to curse Elizabeth.  I did.  I gave her a curse that could never come true.”            “You can’t prick yourself on a spindle,” Abelard whispered.  “It doesn’t have any sharp edges.”  He looked at her.  “She loved you.  You betrayed her.”            “So did you,” Anaïs said coldly.            He stopped, because it felt as though someone had ground his bones to powder.            “I’m sorry?” he managed to say.            On the surface, Anaïs resembled a small woman.  But sometimes, when she was angry, he could see things swimming beneath, like the drowned sheep in the bog, and they frightened him just as surely as the water did.            “You left her,” Anaïs said.  “She loved you, and you disappeared for years and years, and then you’re hurt when she tries to pull her life back together.”            “That doesn’t—I didn’t mean to go,” he said weakly.  “I would’ve given anything to stay.  But I didn’t have a choice.  I was taken.”            “Were you, Abelard?”  Her eyes were greener than grass, greener than envy.  “Can you remember that night in the bog, when you were taken and Elizabeth nearly drowned?  Do you remember why she did not save you when she had the chance?”            He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.            “No one can,” she said.

Elizabeth walked up the stairs to her study slowly.  She hated the bit on the stairs, at the landing with the sea-blue wallpaper Mama had brought from Brittany with her, where the staircase jumped to one side to accommodate some unseen beam of the house and there was a small room, tucked away.  It had previously been the second sitting room, but now it was nothing so much as Anthea’s lair, where she’d dragged the harpsichord and her guitars and stewed all day, doing something with music.            She was halfway up the steps, black skirts gathered in both hands, when she noticed something awry.  The door to the second smallest sitting room was cracked open.  A sliver of lamplight shone through, and the coppery tapping of guitar strings.  A page turned, a papery rustle.            Elizabeth stood in an agony of indecision on the landing.  She raised one hand, buried it deeply into her skirts, and turned as if to go.  But still she lingered.            Her hand moved, almost without her volition.  Treacherously, it knocked on the doorframe.            The music stopped.            “Come in,” Anthea said.            Elizabeth had never set foot in the study.  She had seen it, fleetingly, when Anthea came out for meals, in the instant before she closed the door behind her.  She knew that it was covered with papers, the drapes drawn to block out the light, lit only by the tawny glow of lamps.            It felt wrong to step in here.  Like she was treading on sacred ground, where mortals were not meant to pass.            A shiver ran down her spine.            Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself.  Anthea’s as mortal as they come.  You were there when she was born, so stop gaping at her like that.            But it was hard to deny that she could pass as a nymph or a goddess, lit from behind with a golden glow, her soft black hair hanging around her face.  She did not put down guitar but raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth’s stare.            “What?” she said, jangling her hand on the strings.            “Um—well.”  Elizabeth cleared her throat.  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”            “I know.”            “For good.”            “Mmm.”            “We are never going to live in the same town again,” Elizabeth hedged.  “We’ll hardly see each other.”            “Yeah.”            And finally, the last dregs of Elizabeth’s temper ran out.  She wanted to scream.  She wanted to slap Anthea.  She wanted to leap up, grab the guitar, and club her sister with it until she either passed out or gave a polysyllabic reply.            She compromised by bursting into tears.            Anthea did not offer her a handkerchief.  She didn’t ask, “What’s wrong?”  She shifted her weight on the stool and glanced back at the sheet music, like she wished to return to it.            Elizabeth went on determinedly bawling for several minutes.  Finally, finally she would shake Anthea out of her coolness!            Her tears ran out long before Anthea’s will.  They sat across from each other, one swabbing her face with a grubby handkerchief, the other clacking the strings of her guitar worriedly.            “So I suppose you came in here to talk?” Anthea said, with a glimmer of understanding.            “Yeah.”            Anthea sighed.  “All right, then.  We’re sisters.  We’re never going to live together again.”  She struck a harsh, dissonant chord on the guitar, suddenly losing her temper.  “Buck up, Elle!  Worse things happen.”            “It’s not just that,” Elizabeth said, finding herself sniveling again.  “Everything is changing, and I don’t know what to do.”            “Um.  Get married?”            Elizabeth didn’t answer.            “Elizabeth.”            She stared.  It was rare for Anthea to call her by her full name.            “Tell me this means you are contemplating pulling off your wedding to this pompous brat.”            “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said unhappily.  “I don’t know what happened to Abelard.  I don’t know if they stole him, or if he left me, or if he drowned.  It’s not like our parents; I know they’re dead, because Maelӱs left a message.  I don’t know if I can marry someone without knowing that he’s dead.  But I’m afraid to cancel a wedding, and I don’t know what to do now, and I don’t know if—“            She froze.            “If what?”            “Anthea,” Elizabeth whispered.  “Did you write the ballad about me?”            She knew the answer as soon as she saw the worried crease in Anthea’s brow, identical to her own.  As soon as she heard the faint exhalation.  And suddenly Elizabeth, who wanted to know everything, did not want to know the answer.            She jerked away.  “Never mind—I—“            “Elizabeth,” Anthea said tiredly.            “—stupid question, and it’s all water over the—under the—“            “Elizabeth, come back and sit down.”            She did.  She was trembling faintly, like a fawn startled into flight.            Anthea stared intently down at her hands, cupping the guitar.  She didn’t speak for a long time, so long that Elizabeth feared she would change her mind and not answer.  But at last she said, “You’ve never written anything, have you?”            “Yes, I have,” Elizabeth said indignantly.  “I write pages and pages of reports.  Every day.”            “Not like that,” Anthea said, but without animosity.  “Writing creatively, I mean.”            Elizabeth thought that some of her reports portrayed bad numbers in inventively positive ways, but she did not presume that Anthea meant that.  “No.”            “Then you don’t understand the power stories have,” Anthea said, eyes blazing.  “It’s… it’s hard to explain.  There are times when the story takes over, and I’m not writing it anymore—it’s writing me.  Like the force of the story is so great it can tell itself.  It only needs me to hold a pen.”            “Is… that a yes?” Elizabeth said, heart thudding.  “You wrote it?”            Anthea met her gaze levelly.  “Yes.  I did.”            “But it’s terrible!” Elizabeth cried.  “It makes me look awful, and everyone hates me because of it.  How—how dare you!”  Her eyes were brimming again.  “You’re my sister!  You’re supposed to stand by me no matter what!”            “Was it untrue?”            “It was—“  Elizabeth jerked to a stop.  “I beg your pardon?”            “Was it untrue?  Did I lie?”            “No,” Elizabeth whispered.  Her eyes were pricking, and she could hear her heartbeat.  She felt cold.  “No, you didn’t lie.  But you did not know the full truth.  And you colored it so darkly that you can barely see for all the—all the fog, and moonlight, and rhymed couplets and—and not lies, but things that pulled the truth so far it stretched the meaning out of it.  You didn’t lie.  But you did me no favors, sister.”            Anthea bowed her head.  For a long moment, Elizabeth thought she would not say more, and she was almost relieved.  Then she said,          “Your story isn’t over yet.”            “But I wish it were,” Elizabeth whispered.  “I’m ready for my happily ever after.”            She stood up.  Tears were leaking into her hair.  She had thought that today couldn’t get any more awful.  But that was the thing about stories.  It could always get worse.  It did always get worse, on and on until the day you died.            She wanted to say something that rang with truth, so true that it seared itself into Anthea’s bones, and she would remember it until the day she died.  If she were in a proper story, it would spring to her lips; she would not have to search for it.            Her life was many things.  But it had never been a story.
            No words came.  She turned on her heel and left.