Ash (15 page)

“Good morning,” Ana said.

“Did you sleep well?” Ash asked.

“Does it matter?” Ana replied.

Ash looked over her shoulder at her stepsister; she was staring out the window with a bitter expression on her face. Ash shrugged. “I was merely asking.”

“I’m fine,” Ana snapped.

Ash stood up when the fire was lit and turned to face her stepsister. “I gather that you did not dream of who you wished?” she said.

Ana glared at her. “If you are insinuating that I used that ri-126

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diculous poem you gave me yesterday to divine for my future husband, you are sorely mistaken. I was simply feeling unwel .

Today I am much better and would like you to bring me my breakfast.”

Ash looked at her stepsister steadily and said, “It’s not surprising it didn’t work—you can’t see what you don’t believe in.”

“Get out of my room,” Ana said in a cold voice. “I’m not interested in your rustic explanations.”

Ash couldn’t help it she laughed at her. When Ana shot her a furious look, Ash put a hand over her mouth and mumbled,

“I’m sorry—”

Ana stood up, fists clenched. “Yes, ‘rustic,’” she said angrily.

“What do you know of anything but the country? Isn’t that where those stupid fairy stories come from? I know you still read them crouching al covered in soot on the hearth because you’re too
rustic
to know how to sit in the parlor. You must stil believe that they are real and not merely tal tales for children.”

Ash opened her mouth but did not know what to say. She could show her stepsister the medal ion in her pocket, but Ana would only think she had stolen it. Her stepsister continued,

“You traipse around the house thinking you’re too good for us—I know you do. I’ve seen the way you look at us, the way you look at
me
. You think I’m a spoiled little brat only looking for a rich man to buy me jewels, but you don’t know
anything
, Aisling. How else are we going to live? How else is my mother ever going to pay off her debts unless I marry well? If your father hadn’t left so many debts, we wouldn’t have to live like this, with you waiting on us with your clumsy hands and ugly 127

Ash

manners.”

Ash snapped, “If your mother stopped spending al her money on furs and jewels and new gowns, perhaps you wouldn’t be so desperate for a rich husband.”

Ana lunged at her and slapped her across the face. Ash recoiled in shock, her hand covering her pink cheek. “How dare you insult my mother,” said Ana. “You are nothing more than a low country girl who believes in archaic superstitions. You’l never become more than that, Aisling. Never. Now get out of my room.”

Furious, Ash turned and stalked out of her stepsister’s room.

Ana slammed the door behind her, and the force of it shook the house.

For the rest of that week, Ana took it upon herself to be particularly unpleasant to her. Ash went about her work in silence as Ana upbraided her about her poor cooking skil s, the invisible layer of dust on the dining room table, the unevenness of her stitching on their stockings. The constant criticism grated on her nerves, and as soon as she could escape on an afternoon when Ana and Clara and Lady Isobel went into the City she fled the house.

She was halfway across the meadow, stomping down the grasses in frustration, when she saw the buck standing at the edge of the trees. He seemed to look at Ash for a long moment, his ears perked forward, and then turned to go back into 128

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the Wood. Without thinking, Ash went after him, pul ing her cloak more securely around herself. It calmed her to follow him, his delicate hoofprints marking a way out of the maze of her thoughts. By the time she lost the trail it was midmorning, and she had gone farther than she expected. She thought that she was likely near the edge of the King’s Forest, where it blurred into the greater Wood. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the smel of the forest, and perhaps because her eyes were closed, she heard the approaching footsteps more clearly. It was from a very light tread—this person knew how to move quietly in a forest ful of fal en twigs and leaves—and when the sound stopped, Ash knew the person had seen her.

She opened her eyes and looked at the King’s Huntress, who was standing where Ash had come from. “You were following the buck,” the woman said.

“I lost him,” Ash said.

The huntress looked past her and raised an arm to point at a spot in the distance. “He’s gone that way.”

“How do you know?”

The huntress walked in the direction that she had pointed and gestured for Ash to follow her. She squatted down next to a sapling and said, “You see here: how this leaf is broken, and if you look careful y, you can see the smudge of a hoofprint.”

Ash stared down at the ground and perhaps, yes, there was a broken leaf, but the hoofprint was so faint that it was hardly visible. “How could you see that?” she asked.

The woman grinned. “I know where he’s going. He beds down for the day in a grove just up there.” She tapped her 129

Ash

hand on the sapling and said, “You did a good job, though, tracking him this far. It was a difficult trail to follow.”

“Thank you,” Ash said.

The huntress looked at her curiously and asked, “Who taught you to track?”

“No one,” Ash answered. “I don’t know how.”

“Then how did you follow the buck?”

She said simply, “I looked for him.”

“Well,” said the woman, “you have sharp eyes.”

“I’ve seen you before,” Ash said impulsively, and blushed.

“And where was that?” the woman asked, amused.

Ash hesitated. “At . . . at Yule, of course.”

“In the City?” the huntress said.

“Yes.”

“But you do not live in the City, do you? What are you doing wandering around the Wood?”

“I . . . like the Wood,” Ash said.

The woman reached out and fingered the material of the cloak Ash was wearing. “And wearing a king’s ransom on your back as wel ,” she observed.

Suddenly self-conscious, Ash pul ed the cloak more tightly around herself. “I didn’t steal it,” she said sharply.

The huntress frowned. “I didn’t say you did.” There was an awkward silence between them, and Ash looked down at the ground, studying the gradations of brown and the pattern of veins in the fal en leaves. Eventual y the huntress said, “All right then, wel , have a good walk,” and turned to go back the way she had come.

But Ash reached out and grabbed her arm and asked, 130

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“Please, will you show me the way back to the path? I think I’m lost.”

The woman looked down at Ash’s hand on her and Ash quickly withdrew it, but the woman merely nodded and said,

“This way.”

They walked through the Wood without speaking, but their steps seemed as loud as an advancing army. Walking behind the huntress, Ash watched the rise and fal of her shoulders as she moved, her green woolen cloak flapping behind her with each sure-footed step. When they reached the trail, the huntress paused and asked, “Where are you going?”

“To West Riding,” Ash responded. “I think I know where I am now, thank you.”

The huntress said, “Then I’l bid you good morning.” She extended her gloved hand, and Ash reached out with her bare one and they clasped fingers firmly, and the huntress looked a bit confused. Then she said, “I’ve seen you before as well.”

“You have?”

“Yes,” she said. “Last fal , on the riverbank. Wasn’t that you?”

Ash remembered the light on the water that day, the way the sun sparkled off the droplets fal ing from the huntress’s fingers. “Yes,” she said, “that was me.”

The huntress laughed suddenly. “Then we are old friends, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know your name,” said Ash.

“I’m Kaisa.”

“I’m Ash.”

A bugle sounded in the distance, and Kaisa said, “I’m 131

Ash

called.”

“Do you hunt today?” Ash asked.

“No we’re heading back to the City this morning, actual y.”

She sounded regretful. “And the deer are not in season yet.”

“Why are you here today, then?”

Kaisa looked surprised, but answered, “I cannot go too long without this forest.”

“Nor can I,” Ash agreed, and they shared a smile.

The huntress nodded to her and said, “I must go. Good day to you.”

“Good day,” Ash replied, and then, because it did not seem polite to watch her walking away, Ash turned down the path toward West Riding. As she walked, she touched the trees one by one as if she were marking the path, as if her handprints left glowing traces on the bark. She felt a little guilty because she had lied to the huntress, and she wondered if the huntress had known, for Ash had not been lost that day.

Ana returned from the City that evening with a gleam in her eye; she even seemed to forget that she was angry with Ash.

That night while Ash was helping Clara undress for bed, she asked what had put her in such a good mood, and Clara said,

“Ana believes she has found her husband.”

“Really?” Ash said, surprised. “So soon?”

Clara smiled slightly. “Lord Rowan is his name. They met at Yule, but today he paid her a great attention.”

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“What is he like?” Ash asked.

Clara shrugged. “He is wealthy,” she said, and would say no more.

Later that week a letter arrived for Ana, and Ash saw her stepsister’s face light up with excitement as she handed it to her.

“It
is
from Lord Rowan,” Ana said, examining the seal. She tore it open eagerly, running her eyes down the page.

“Wel , what does it say?” Lady Isobel demanded impatiently.

Ana looked smug as she reported, “He has invited me and you, of course, Mother, and Clara as wel to visit him at his country house in Royal Forge. For an entire week!”

“That’s wonderful,” Clara said, though Ash somehow doubted her sincerity.

But Lady Isobel was beaming. “He is a very generous man,”

she said proudly. And then she glanced at Ash and said curtly,

“Go and fetch us some writing materials. We must respond immediately.”

A week later, Ana, Clara, and Lady Isobel drove off to spend a week at Royal Forge. Ash was left behind, for Lord Rowan had assured Ana that she would want for nothing during her visit. Lady Isobel, who viewed it as a punishment for Ash, did not object.

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Chapter XII

he evening after her stepmother
and stepsisters left, Ash wandered through the Wood until she came to a mas-T sive, low-hanging oak limb. She settled down on the mossy surface, and as dusk fel she saw a doe and two fawns emerge from the underbrush on legs as slender as reeds. The two fawns were stil young enough to have speckled coats, but as the summer went on they would lose their spots and become as brown as their mother. They were browsing slowly down the path to the river, but then the mother stopped and raised her head, her large ears perking in two different directions. She swung her head around and looked straight at Ash, her eyes huge and glimmering, and then she took off, leaping away. The fawns followed suit, their hooves crushing the dried leaves as they bounded through the Wood.

Ash shifted on the branch, feeling the tree move beneath her, and she wondered if she would see Sidhean that night. She 134

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took the medal ion out of her pocket and cupped it in her hands, looking at it, but the stone was opaque and revealed nothing. It was as beautiful and inscrutable, she thought, as he was. Then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and she looked up, hopeful, but it was not him. Instead, she saw Kaisa coming down the path slowly, as if she were looking for something. At the fork in the path she dropped down to examine the ground, and Ash realized that she was following the trail of the deer.

Ash said, “They went down to the river.”

Startled, Kaisa stood up swiftly and looked for the source of the words. “Where are you?” she asked.

Ash climbed down off the branch, and the movement in the dim light caught the huntress’s eye. “Here,” Ash said. She came onto the path, and it took a moment for the huntress to recognize her, for most of the daylight was gone.