Page 32 of The Faerie Handmaid

“Yes, but that’s a—what’s the word—that’s a prejudice. They want everyone to be like themselves. They resent—or fear—anyone who is different.”

“No wonder they’re bored,” Idhri said.

“That is very wise, Idhri,” she said, and added,

The one who has everything

Possesses nothing.

He puzzled over that for a while, then gave up. “What is that? I don’t know what it means.”

“It’s one of the stanzas recited in the Temple. Its meaning will come clear to you in time.”

He wasn’t sure that was true, but it gave him something new to think about as he walked. Absorbed in their conversation, he didn’t notice when they left the cultivated fields behind and wandered down an overgrown path through a meadow of grass and some yellow flower. “Yarrow,” Braithe said, pointing. “And over there is a patch of juniper. Those berries are almost ready to be harvested. I wonder if anyone comes out to forage? Juniper berries are good for stomach upsets.”

Idhri looked ahead and abruptly stopped. “Braithe. What’s the priestess doing?”

Braithe, pausing beside him, followed his gaze. Not far ahead, Morgana stood beneath a holm oak. A short-billed sparrow perched on one of her shoulders. A fox sat at her feet, gazing up at her, black tongue lolling. Her hand was extended, the palm turned up, and Idhri narrowed his eyes to see what she held.

The long tail of a wood mouse hung, gray and smooth, from her hand. Its small, pointed snout was lifted so she could gaze into its eyes. They were two disparate, mismatched creatures, the tall, lean priestess and the tiny gray animal, frozen in some sort of mystical communication Idhri couldn’t guess at. His scalp prickled with wonder.

He glanced down at Braithe, but Braithe was gazing at the priestess, her lips a little apart, her eyes shining. When Idhri moved a foot, she put her hand on his arm. “Wait, Idhri,” she whispered. “Let us stay right here for now. This is what she came for.”

“Oh.” Idhri had thought the whole outing was about fresh air, a nice walk, a change of atmosphere. As he looked more closely at Priestess Morgana and the creatures around her, he saw that the priestess’s face was alight with joy. She wasn’t smiling—she rarely did, in truth—but she looked blissful. He had not seen her features so relaxed, her shoulders easy, her whole attitude one of peace. He murmured, “Isn’t she afraid that mouse will bite?”

“No.” Braithe spoke confidently. “It’s her way of communing with the Lady, our patroness. She will have learned something when she’s done.”

“The animals are speaking to her?”

“In a way, yes.”

Idhri asked, a little fearfully, “Do you do that, too?”

Braithe stifled a laugh with her hand. “Oh, no, not me. I’m just a handmaid.”

Idhri made no comment, but he had heard the councillor warn Braithe not to use her magic in the council chamber. She had denied having it, but Emerlyn had dismissed that quite casually, as if it were obvious Braithe possessed her own magic. He wondered if Braithe was even aware of it.

And then there was Adamo, a half-blood, who evidently had at least enough magic to speak a cantrip. Did that mean that he, Idhri, might have some magic?

There was so much he didn’t understand, so many confusing ideas swirling around him. They made him feel slow and stupid, though he knew he wasn’t. If he could just draw back the black curtain hiding half his mind, perhaps he could make sense of it all. Maybe remembering would set him free.

11

When Morgana gently set the wood mouse onto the blanket of leaves beneath the holm oak, the sparrow flew up from her shoulder into the branches overhead. Braithe murmured to Idhri, “We can go to her now.”

“But the fox?”

“He will be gone in a moment.”

It was true. Morgana bent to look into the fox’s bright dark eyes and said something. He seemed to laugh up at her before he flicked his ruddy tail, whirled, and scampered into the woods. Braithe felt Idhri’s bewilderment, and she understood. It had been the same for her when she first knew Morgana, before she became one of the Nine. He would get used to it if they had to stay long in fae country.

But they couldn’t do that. The king needed them. The Blackbird was counting on them.

When Braithe felt a hand on her arm, she thought it was Idhri, and she turned to encourage him to walk with her.

It wasn’t Idhri who had touched her. He had fallen back a step to allow one of the laborers, a woman with wispy gray hair tied back in a scarf, to approach. Her wrinkled hand bore the spots of too much sun, and her fingers on Braithe’s arm were work-roughened and dry.

Braithe, startled, pulled her arm away, then regretted the abrupt movement. “I’m sorry, grandmother,” she said. “You startled me. Can I help you?”