Ash (5 page)

Ash

ing,” Lady Isobel said harshly, clearly frustrated. “I think it is best that I send for a physician.”

“But they will bleed him,” Maire Solanya objected. “That will only make him weaker.”

“You do not understand medicine,” Lady Isobel said deri-sively. “It wil clear out the bad blood.”

“You will kill him if you do that,” the greenwitch said, her tone low and hard. “Is that what you wish to do?”

Suddenly the footsteps came toward the door, which was wrenched open. Lady Isobel stood on the other side, her hand on the doorknob, visibly shaking. “Get out of my house,” she snapped at Maire Solanya. “Get out!”

Ash had not moved quickly enough; she stood in the corridor, gaping at the two women. Maire Solanya did not say another word, but only swept through the doorway. When she passed Ash, frozen in the hal way, she briefly touched her shoulder as if to reassure her. But then Lady Isobel saw Ash and demanded, “What are you doing there? Have you been eavesdropping? Go to your room!”

“I want to see my father,” Ash said stubbornly.

Her stepmother’s face darkened with anger and she pointed down the hal toward Ash’s chamber. “Go to your room.

Now. Your father wil send for you when he wishes to see you.” But she did not even wait to see if Ash had obeyed; instead she went back inside, closed the door, and, a moment later, slid the bolt in place.

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Ash had not slept wel since her walk in the Wood. After Maire Solanya had shut her out of her father’s room, she had lain sleepless in her bed until the sun rose. Every night since then, she was haunted by the fear that she had somehow made things worse by seeking out the Fairy Hunt. When she closed her eyes she could see the eerie grace of the riders as if they were circling her bed at night.

When she final y fell asleep, she slept deeply, and waking up was like dragging herself through mud. Sometimes she awoke gasping for air as if she had been in the midst of a nightmare, but she could not remember what she had dreamed. One morning she was pul ed out of her uneasy, thick sleep by a steady pounding that sharpened into a knocking at her bedroom door. She blinked her eyes open, her gaze unfocused, and saw her stepsister, Ana, in the doorway. The morning light coming through the window was gray and watery, giving her skin an unhealthy pal or. She said, “Mother says we must hurry and pack up our things. Your father is not wel and he must see a physician in the Royal City.”

Ash was confused. “What what do you mean?”

“We’re going home,” Ana said. “Finally.”

They packed the trunks that morning, first dragging them up from the cel ar and then loudly back downstairs again. Lady Isobel said they would return in the spring, so Ash packed her two books of fairy tales and al her winter dresses. Anya was not going. Lady Isobel had her own manor house near the City and her own housekeeper there. Instead, Anya would stay behind to close up the house for the winter, and then she would 39

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go back to Rook Hil and stay with her daughter. Al that day, Ash felt an underlying sense of surprise. She had never imagined the possibility that she might leave Rook Hil . And she was not ready to go.

By noon the carriage had arrived, and the driver helped Anya load their trunks onto the rack. After a cold, hurried lunch eaten in silence, Ash stood on the front stoop, waiting, and felt like her entire world was being erased. Anya came out and put her arms around her and said, “Lady Isobel will take good care of you.”

She hugged Anya close, with tears pricking her eyes. “I don’t want to go,” she whispered.

“Hush,” Anya said, smoothing her hand over Ash’s hair.

“It’s the best for your father.” She put her hands on Ash’s shoulders and looked down at her. “You be a good girl, Ash.”

She kissed her on her forehead.

Her father came outside, supported by Lady Isobel and the driver. Ash had not seen him in nearly two weeks, and he looked, in that noon light, like an old man; she was shocked by the change in him.

They drove for a week, pausing only to rest the horses.

Ash’s father slept for most of the journey, and when he awoke he was often disoriented. On the first day they left the Northern Mountains behind, heading south toward the King’s Highway. On the second day the land widened until al that Ash could see from one horizon to another was spreading golden fields ready for harvest. Then the broad fields gave way to softly rolling hills covered with orchards, and through the carriage windows Ash watched the fruit being plucked from 40

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the trees, red and round.

They arrived at Quinn House in the village of West Riding wel after dark, and as soon as the carriage pul ed to a halt at the end of the long driveway, Lady Isobel leapt out, cal ing for assistance. A man came to help her bring Ash’s father inside, and Clara and Ana ran after them, excited to be home. A woman wearing an apron came toward the carriage holding a lantern and shone it at her, saying gruffly, “You must be the new girl. Come inside.” Ash climbed out of the carriage in a daze; she saw a large stone building before her, the front door yawning open. The woman took Ash upstairs, leading her down a dim corridor to a dark room. “This is your room,” she said, lighting a candle for her. “You may as wel go to bed; it’s late.” She shut the door behind her.

The room was plainly furnished with simple wooden furni-ture; in addition to the smal bed there was a wardrobe beside the door, and beneath the casement window was a cushioned bench. She lay down on the bed, pul ing her traveling cloak over herself. The blanket beneath her was rough and thin; the bed was hard and creaked when she moved. Conscious of the long days they had traveled, she felt very far from Rook Hil .

The distance awoke a longing in her like a cord pul ed suddenly taut: She wanted so much to go back.

She leaned over and blew out the candle, but sleep did not come quickly enough.

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The first thing she saw when she woke up was her trunk: It had been delivered while she was asleep, and it sat locked and stil beside the wardrobe. She got out of bed and went to the window, pushing open the dark brown draperies. To her surprise, outside the window she saw a forest the southern end of the Wood. There was no sloping hil side as there had been in Rook Hil ; here the land was flat, and between the house and the trees was a meadow, the grasses golden and knee-high. She saw a kitchen garden below, planted in neat squares marked off in red brick; a profusion of herbs staked out territory directly below her window. Ash twisted the window lock and pushed open the diamond-paned glass, leaning out into the morning. It was cool outside, and the scent of the air was new to her meadow grass mingled with herbs from the garden. She took a deep breath and hoped that her father would regain his health here.

The physicians, however, were not as hopeful. They were already in the house that morning; Ash could hear the murmur of their voices coming from down the hal when she came out of her room. They drew her father’s blood and gave him a noxious-smel ing tea to drink, and she could hear him coughing. She heard the physicians say that the journey must have tired him out, but her father did not regain his strength. They let her in to see him, and he did not recognize her; his eyes were milky and distant.

He died almost two weeks later. Ash woke up that morning with her heart pounding, and she knew that something was wrong because the house was ful of noise. She threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, running down the hal way to-42

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ward her father’s room. A black-robed physician with a long, moody face was opening his door, and when he saw her approaching he said, “This is not the place for you.”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Your father does not need you now,” the physician said, trying to block her way. But Ash slipped around him and pushed through the doorway. Her father’s body was convulsing out of control, and red spittle dotted his cheeks and the snow-white sheets that were pul ed up to his chin. He was being held down by two physicians, one on either side of him, and Lady Isobel stood as far from him as possible, her hands covering her mouth.

Ash ran toward the bed as the third physician tried to stop her again, and she clutched at her father’s twitching right hand.

“Father,” she said in a frightened voice. “Father, what is wrong?” His cheeks were pale and sunken, and bandages covered his wrists. “What have you done to him?” she demanded, recalling Maire Solanya’s distrust of the physicians’ methods.

“He is ill,” one of them said. “You must leave.”

Then there were two pairs of hands holding her shoulders back, and though she screamed for them to let her go to her father, they dragged her from the room and slammed the door in her face. She pounded at the door when she heard the lock click shut, crying, “Let me in!” But they did not answer.

She stood there for what seemed like hours, tears slowly leaking from her eyes, her bare feet growing colder minute by minute. And then there was a great noise, followed by silence, and the sound of Lady Isobel sobbing.

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Two men from the vil age church came to take her father’s body away later that morning. Lady Isobel came down from her bedroom dressed in black, a veil covering her face, and announced that the funeral would take place the next day in the church at noon. Ash’s father would be buried in the cemetery, and Lady Isobel told her there was no need for an overnight vigil. “You must leave your superstitions behind now,”

her stepmother said sternly.

At the funeral, Ash wore the stiff black dress that Lady Isobel gave her; the collar felt like hands around her throat. She sat stil , looking down at the floorboards, too stunned to cry.

Although there was a service led by the vil age philosopher, Ash did not hear a word of it. She felt smothered by the church wal s, and as soon as she could escape outside she did, taking deep breaths of the muggy air.

Behind the church, a rectangular pit in the ground gaped open, awaiting her father’s body. His gravestone was not ready yet; until it was carved, his grave would be marked by the red banner that flew now, waist-high, a splash of color against the slate-colored sky. When the mourners began to throw handfuls of earth onto the body, Ash had to look away.

When it was over, they climbed back into the carriage and returned to Quinn House. The glowering sky hinted of rain, and it had grown colder. Ash went upstairs to her bedroom; the house smelled of the bitter medicines the physicians had brewed. In her room, she opened the window and curled up 44

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on the seat beneath it, waiting for the first drops of rain to fal .

It smel ed like moss and oak and the damp dark spaces of the Wood beyond the meadow. She looked out at the wide expanse of golden grass being lashed by the rising wind, and wondered whether Anya had closed al the windows in their house in Rook Hil .

She thought:
Now, I am al alone
.

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Chapter V

verything changed after her
father died. Ash had known every inch of her home in Rook Hil ; Quinn House was E strange and large and cold. In Rook Hil, everyone knew and cherished her mother and father; here, she was pitied by others:
Poor girl
.
Orphan
. Though Lady Isobel had never treated her with much fondness, now that Ash’s father was gone, she no longer tried to hide her disapproval. And West Riding itself was a world away from Rook Hil , which was smal and sleepy and content to be nothing more than that. West Riding, scarcely five miles from the Royal City, was known far and wide as the staging ground for the Royal Hunt and hunting season had already begun.

Rook Hil had its own hunt and its own huntress, of course, for hunts had always been led by women. But Ash had never seen a hunting party as grand as the Royal Hunt. Not a day went by that fal without the sounds of hunting horns in the 46

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distance. When she saw the hunters in the vil age, Ash was transfixed by the sight of them. The women, especial y, with their casual camaraderie and easy grace, seemed like entirely different creatures than her stepmother and stepsisters.