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How handsome he had grown to be, I reflected, with his hair the color of harvest-time wheat and his eyes green as bay water. All the villagers loved him and were proud that he could kick a ball farther than any of the other boys, and drag a boulder farther in the harness, too.
When he was gone, the guests whispered together and stared at me with long faces. They were disappointed, of course, having come for a funeral gathering. Some of the men, who’d been good friends with Grandfather when he was alive, had told stories of the forest and of all the people they’d known who had been killed by its treachery. Now, at intervals, one or another would look up at me and shake his head in wonderment, as if I had defied all the wisdom of great age.
Gossip was obviously disappointed when I appeared whole and alive, but when others began to look sidelong at me and whisper of fairies, she cheered up.
Grandmother’s gaggle of friends, who had been there to cluck and clean and comfort, had brought bread and meats to make a funeral meal, even if there was no body to mourn over. Now they grudgingly turned the food into a celebratory meal.
Relatives were there, too, and more came as the news spread of my return—cousins and second cousins and great-aunts and a step-uncle. I wondered where my friends Gretta and Beatrice were. Most of all, I wondered where my true love was, whoever he might be, and if he was among my mourners.
Ben Marshall, a man of marriageable age who had of late made an effort to speak to me at doings, smiled at me. Though I had at times ventured to return his attentions, I had had reservations. He was tall and toothsome, but he had a great love of food, and already one could see signs of future portliness in him.
My deepest reservations had to do, however, with a long Marshall tradition.
Marshalls were known for their prizewi
The best gardens and the Best Cook in one household meant that their tables were the envy of Lord Temsland’ s lands, but it was well known that Marshall children were nursed on business, not love, and I, I would have love. Still,
I encouraged my hopes that I could have both Ben’s garden and his heart for my very own, and that he might be my true love. Perhaps my new reputation as the one who had been stolen by fairies would be overshadowed by my reputation as the one who cooked the best pies in Tide-by-Rood.
Also in the house was Tailor. I thought of what Lord Death had said about him half sorrowing unto death, and my heart went out to him. He was a bo
There was Choirmaster, too, perhaps the richest bachelor in the village, but God had given him so many gifts in music that there had been none left for his face. Worse, he played only gloomy music and seemed afraid of girls. Still, I had never seen him be unkind, and I wished that Death knew him not so well. I knew that Beatrice admired him; perhaps I could persuade her to comfort his heart.
There was Tobias, Gretta’s brother, but he was a year younger than I, and still a dog boy who cared more about horses than about girls. There was Locky Jones, who was hopelessly cystic in the face, and one of Soor Lily’s great sons, who loved only their mother. And...
“Keturah, are you missing the fairies?” It was Tailor’s little daughter. The crowded room fell suddenly silent.
“There are no fairies in the wood, Naomi,” I said, “only trees and beasts and bugs that bite.”
Everyone whispered among themselves. Naomi said, “Even though you are bug-bitten, Keturah, you are still beautiful.”
I gathered her into my arms.” ‘Tis a curse, child,” I said, thinking of Lord Death.
“But how did you get lost, Keturah?” she asked, the first one to do so.
“I followed the hart into the wood, Naomi.”
“She followed the hart, she followed the hart,” the others whispered.
One of the older men nodded knowingly. He spoke to me. “I have heard that the deer and the forest beasts are of the kingdom of the fairies. Don’t all the tales tell it? Speak true now, Keturah. Did you see the fairy king?”
With my mouth full of meat pie again, I said, “Not a fairy king, sir, nor a common fairy neither.”
“And yet the hart lured you.”
“Forgive me, sir, but he did not lure. It was my own curiosity that made me follow him.”
The man shrugged his shoulders as if to say he did not believe me, and it was clear from the way all eyes turned away that they did not believe me either, preferring the stories I had told of the hart around the common fire. “Well,” the man said, “there’s something devilish and sly about the beast, and it is not just for the sake of winter hay that I say he must be hunted down.”
These words brought me no happiness. The great hart loomed in my memory—tall and proud and fearless. I thought his beauty something I would be willing to sacrifice a haystack for, though lack of hay meant a hungry winter for both people and stock alike. The men’s talk became louder, and soon a group was dispatched to the manor to solicit Lord Temsland about the matter.
I could taste the three days’ staleness in the meat pie, suddenly. The crust was gritty between my teeth, the meat greasy and gristly. I winced to swallow and put down my spoon.
Just then, Gretta and Beatrice burst into the cottage and threw their arms about me. “We could not summon an appetite to eat at your funeral, but when we heard you had been found...,” Beatrice said.
“Thank goodness and mercy that young Sir John did not give up,” said Gretta.
I hugged one and then the other: Beatrice, with the voice and face of an angel, who saw the good in everyone and everything and met life with good cheer, and Gretta, whose hair was always perfectly coifed, whose clothes were perfectly clean and pressed, and whose loyalty and love were perfectly constant. They kissed me, each on either side of my face.
“Eat, eat,” said Gretta, sitting beside me.
“How beautifully pale you are,” said Beatrice, sitting on the other side of me.
While my friends and I talked, the villagers continued to whisper, and one by one they departed. Grandmother gathered the leftovers to take to Hermit Gregor, who lived poor. When all had gone, Beatrice said, “Undoubtedly they will hereafter cross themselves every time they see you.”
“I care not a bit what the villagers say,” I replied. “Not a speck, not a whit, not a jot, not a tittle. My only care is to wed my true love.”
Gretta and Beatrice looked at each other a moment.
“But you don’t have a true love,” Beatrice said with a puzzled expression.
“Of course I do,” I said. “I just don’t know yet who he is.”
Again they exchanged glances.
“You don’t even like anyone very much,” Gretta said.
“I like everyone,” I said vehemently. “More than I ever have in my life.”
I looked down the slope to the village huts nestled like a clutch of gray eggs by the bay.
“Well, yes, but not, perhaps, in a romantic sort of way,” Beatrice said.
“We mean you don’t love any men,” Gretta said in her even, matter-of-fact voice.
“You know very well that I adore all men,” I said. “I have always thought them to be the dearest of things.”
Beatrice sighed. “In the most general sense—” she began.
“—but not in the specific sense,” Gretta finished.