Page 33 of The Faerie Handmaid

“You’re with them, yah?” The woman pointed a gnarled finger first at Idhri, then at Morgana. Idhri stepped farther back, as if he was afraid the woman would seize him.

Morgana glanced up and started toward them. Braithe said to the woman, “I am with them, grandmother. Why do you ask?”

“You’re not fae.”

“No.”

The woman leaned closer, and Braithe saw how reddened her eyes were, how lined her cheeks. “Don’t trust ’em,” she said in a hoarse voice. Her eyes flicked to Idhri and then to Morgana. “Don’t trust ’em, pretty girl like you. They promise things, but then—” She pointed behind her at the fields, where so many like herself labored in the sun. “Then this is what they give you, yah?” She gave Morgana a nervous glance and began to back away.

Braithe said, “These are my friends, grandmother. They wouldn’t—”

“Oh, they would.” She gave Idhri and Morgana a narrow-eyed glance, full of resentment. “Take my word, yah? Don’t believe a thing they say.”

Just as Morgana reached Idhri’s side, the woman spun away and marched back to her work. The overseer shaded his eyes to see what was happening, and the old woman scurried along the row she had been weeding, bending low to hide herself from him.

Morgana said, “What did that woman want?”

Idhri said, “She thinks we will hurt Braithe.”

“Why would she think that?” Morgana’s relaxed expression began to tighten as she looked out among the tilled rows, searching for the woman in the scarf.

“It’s all right,” Braithe said. “She thinks you’re like the fae in the White City, you and Idhri. She took a terrible chance, coming to warn me.”

“Did she ask for anything?”

Braithe shook her head. “She wanted me to be careful.”

Morgana frowned. “I see. That is never bad advice, I suppose.”

“Priestess—”

“What?”

Braithe could still sense the sorrow in the old woman, the terrible resignation. The surrender, and the fatigue. “Never mind. I just wanted to say—she meant well.”

“You could feel that.”

“Yes,” Braithe said, remembering the grief that emanated from the woman. “She didn’t want me to end up the way she has.”

“That’s very sad,” Idhri said.

“It is.”

“Well,” Morgana said, “I can assure you that is not going to happen. Come now, we should start back. You both must be hungry. I thank you for this, though. I feel much more myself.”

As they set out to walk back the way they had come, Braithe averted her eyes from the people pursuing their backbreaking work under the hot sun. She couldn’t bear to watch them labor, knowing they had no choice in the matter.

They found Councillor Emerlyn waiting for them at the house, and her usually impassive features gave away her relief at seeing them. All she said was “Your breakfast is waiting,” but Morgana understood she had been alarmed to find them absent.

Idhri and Braithe eagerly set upon the boiled eggs and bread and fruit awaiting them. Morgana felt little appetite, but she joined them at the table. Emerlyn sat, too, her hands folded in her lap.

“You have breakfasted, Councillor?” Morgana said, before beginning her own meal.

“Yes. I eat very little.”

“I find it hard myself sometimes,” Morgana said, but she reached for an egg to slice onto the piece of bread she had taken. “Especially when there are things on my mind.”

“Where did you go?” Emerlyn asked.