Summary: Tilla finds a message arranging a secret rendezvous between members of the Seelie and Unseelie Court, and her curiosity leads her to make a discovery about her own life.

Nothing was as it seemed in the Unseelie Court, and Tilla made sure to remember that fact every day. She held up a clear green bottle and considered the stopper holding the message inside. Was this another trick? She couldn’t sense any curses or magic on it at all, and the temptation was too much to bear. She carefully worked the stopper out and unfurled the message.

            “Elmyra is sending me on a quest. Already I dread our days apart, my love. Meet me at the Wishing Tree on the dawn of the first day of spring, so that we may say our farewells.

            Yours,

            Maerad”

            Tilla’s jaw hung open. Who around here would have dealings with a vassal of the Seelie Queen? She hurriedly closed the message back into the bottle and placed it on the moss bank where she had found it. It was dangerous to trifle with the Seelie Court for fear of breaking the treaty that had long stood between the two realms. Tilla wouldn’t be caught with such an incriminating message.

            She went back to her patrol of her section of the wilds. As a wood troll, it was her duty to ensure that no Seelie fae trespassed through the part of the wilds on the border of the Unseelie Court that the king had given to her. As she stepped over roots and dodged carnivorous plants, she couldn’t help but wonder who on Unseelie lands was having a love affair with a Seelie fae. She had heard all the stories, of course, about how Seelie fae were grace and beauty personified. She supposed that would be enough to lure a fae in, but what hold did that fae have on this Maerad? Seelie fae typically looked down on Tilla’s kind, or feared them.

            Tilla had always quietly dreamed of an easier life in the sun-soaked lands of the Seelie Court, where she didn’t have to defend herself so frequently from threats to her health and well-being. The Unseelie wilds were a dangerous home, though she knew it well. The Seelie Court had always seemed like some far-off, unattainable dream, but one mysterious Unseelie fae had managed, somehow, to attain a part of it. Tilla burned with curiosity.

            As the days grew longer, and the Unseelie Court’s power waned, Tilla couldn’t stop thinking about the mysterious message. She returned to the spot where she had found the bottle, but it had disappeared. Sometimes, her discovery seemed like an odd daydream, but she remembered the feel of the parchment in her hands and the look of the elegant cursive.

            On the night before the first day of spring, Tilla set her husband’s dinner before him and decided, then and there, to go out and see this mysterious meeting. “I’ll be out all night hunting,” she told Normor. It wasn’t really a lie, she reasoned to herself. She would be hunting answers, and fae couldn’t tell lies, anyway.

            Normor scratched at the base of one of his tusks. “Ok, Tilla. Thanks for dinner.” He tore off a chunk of the raw kelpie meat with his sharp teeth, chewed, and swallowed. “May you make a good, clean kill.”

            Tilla placed a hand on Normor’s shoulder. “Thank you, dear.” She went to gather her weapons. Had she grown up in the Seelie Court, she may never have needed to learn how to kill. She checked her battle axe’s edge and sat to sharpen the blade. What an odd life that would have been, she mused. Would she have been beautiful? Would she have married some handsome, noble lord? Would she have smiled and laughed and danced the days away? What would that have felt like?

           She pressed her thumb against the axe’s edge, and a line of black blood seeped from her skin. That would do. She took a deep breath, hefted her axe, and set out. She would have to sneak past the Bonebreaker to get to the Wishing Tree, which was no small feat.

            As she traveled, the forest grew quieter and quieter, until it became still and silent in the dark. The walls of a canyon rose around her, and she ventured farther on the path past the Bonebreaker’s lair. Discovery would mean her death, so she stepped with care and used all of the stealth she had learned in her life. White bones started to gleam out at her from the dark earth, shattered and bent at odd angles. There were teeth marks where the Bonebreaker had chewed and sucked out the marrow. Tilla didn’t look too closely. She had learned in her life that some things were not worth seeing and remembering. She bet that there were no Bonebreakers in the Seelie Court.

            A dark void opened up to her left, where even the moon didn’t shine, and Tilla held her breath as she crept past. She thought she heard a rustle, but then she had gone back into the moonlight, as safe and sound as she ever was. The stars twinkled back into being, and she sighed softly in relief.

            The Wishing Tree was a weeping willow that grew along the river that divided the fae and mortal lands. It was known as a place where the impossible just might happen. A faint rustle of magic sounded in the air as the branches swayed in the breeze, and Tilla settled in behind a boulder to wait. She had learned patience over her long life on many hunts, so she wasn’t bothered by the long stretch of time before dawn. She kept her senses sharp and enjoyed the stars. Another thing she had learned in the dangerous Unseelie realm was to appreciate beauty when she saw it, even amidst suffering. She had learned that after eating a poisonous mushroom as a child. As she had lain curled on the forest floor, dry heaving, she had rolled onto her back and seen the stars. It might have been the last thing she saw, for all she had known, and she remembered thinking that it was not a bad last sight.

            Eventually fingers of salmon pink, purple, and light yellow stretched across the sky, and the sun dawned on the horizon. As the sun rose, a knight in gleaming golden armor came over a crest in the other direction like a character out of a tale. Tilla stared as he walked beneath the tree and only then noticed the green-skinned pixie waiting for him. Her wings were iridescent in the soft morning light, and her hair was as black as night. She was beautiful too, Tilla thought, in her own Unseelie way. The knight removed his helmet to reveal a perfectly symmetrical face and flowing golden hair.

            “Maerad, you came,” the pixie said in a light voice.

            The knight nodded grandly and said, “I have. Queen Elmyra has set me upon a great mission that I cannot divulge to you. We must part, and I know not for how long. My task is vital to the well-being of the Seelie Realm.”

            “Oh,” the pixie sighed, “can’t you take me with you?”

            The knight tossed his hair over his shoulder. “You know you would never be accepted in my court, dearest. I wouldn’t foist that unhappy fate upon you.”

            “I wouldn’t mind, I-”

            “I won’t hear of it.” The knight cupped her cheek. “Send me off with a kiss, won’t you, dearest?”

            The pixie and knight kissed, and Tilla sat back on her heels with a furrowed brow. While the couple grew more amorous, Tilla crept away on silent feet. She thought the whole way back about the strange couple, about how the pixie wanted to go to the Seelie Court, and about how the knight wouldn’t let her. He had said it was for her sake, but it sounded to Tilla like it was more for his own sake, in the end.

            She got back to her cave, hung her cloak by the entrance, and set her battle axe down. Normor looked up from his spot by the fire as she drew near. “Did you have a good hunt?”

            Tilla thought about it. She looked at her husband’s honest, plain face. He didn’t shine in the sun like the knight, but he was a little like her stars, twinkling steadily at her and guiding her way. He wanted to know about her night. He let her travel wherever she wanted to go. He wasn’t ashamed of her, far from it. In fact, he would often boast to his friends about her skill with the axe. She smiled at him and said, “I learned something surprising tonight.”

            “Oh?” Normor set down his whittling. “May I hear about it?

            Tilla settled in to tell her odd tale. She thought, this has some beauty to it, too, and she felt a small glow of appreciation. After all, nothing was as it seemed in the Unseelie Court, and Tilla would make sure to remember it.