Veins so blue and eyes so bright. No star is more fair than the girl with hair like autumn leaves; for her the shadow died to let her breathe.
The bean sídhe were faeries sprung from Lilibeth's worst nightmares. They were like banshees but worse, with dark, tattered mourning gowns and veils. Their faces were wrinkled and dry, their bodies nothing more than masses of tangled limbs crafted from weathered bone.
She knew every story about those faeries, for the village women whispered them over their spindles with shivering tongues. The bean sídhe washed the clothes of those who would die soon, haunting lonely bodies of water. They'd probably come from the muddy glen river.
From beneath the hoods of their black funeral cloaks, they stared at Lilibeth with dead, milky eyes. Each one only had a single slitted, caved in nostril, which flared as they sniffed in Lilibeth's direction. In their sagging hands they held Lilibeth's tunics, still wet from the water they'd washed them in.
The dread she felt was an invisible demon, and only she could hear it sharpening its swords. Her stomach lurched, her mind numb with shock.
Oh no, she couldn't die. Fear slammed through her, undiluted and pure. There were so many things she hadn't done (and they would be very difficult to do as a ghost).
Airmid's voice wove through the trees, carried by the wind. "This is my forest, and you will tread softly in it."
Lilibeth closed her eyes again, wishing she could sink to the bottom of the pond and swim with Tam Lin and his fish friends. She tried thinking of nice things, like the ringing of bluebells, the moon on a string, garlands of sunshine.
The world will be washed clean by our chaos. We have waited, swallowing decades and centuries.
She thought of a bowl of spiced pears in autumn, throwing bread to the pond ducks in summer, goose with chestnut stuffing in winter. She thought of homemade candles that looked like blueberry pies and gardens of verbena during the spring.
The trees whisper of our sins, child. Are you not afraid?
If Lilibeth opened her eyes, she'd die of fright. And the predictions of these evil faeries would come true. Instead, she reached for a place deep inside her, a numb stillness that had allowed her to endure nearly drowning in the village pond two years ago, the raw belief that no matter what happened, she'd live. She barely had enough hope left inside her, but it was enough to give her some weak semblance of courage.
"I am not afraid," she said, opening her eyes even though her every instinct screamed at her to close them. She looked directly into their swirling white eyes.
The bean sídhe fed on mortal fear, she knew. It made them stronger. She could not give them her fear, for they could spin fear into things with their greedy hands. And that was when people started gasping out prayers between their chattering teeth.
Don't let them see you break, the Faerie Queen of Tuath Dur said. You are Lilibeth Faren, the girl who succeeded when all others failed. You are flowers and rain and curiosity, and you stand apart.
She thought of all the times the village children had mocked her, called her strange. Yes, her oddness was evident in even the smallest things she did, but was that always a bad thing? At least she wasn't like Thronel and Estha (the latter had a name similar to her maid's, for skies' sakes).
Lilibeth had always marched through life with her head held high, acting like she didn't care when on the inside, she cared too much. But why should she care? She was different, and being different wasn't always a bad thing. Contrary and sour she might be, but she was a dangerous girl.
She was Lilibeth Faren, and soon the whole world would know her name.
She wasn't going to let herself die, no matter what these evil faeries said. She'd save the Woodland King and free herself; she'd go home.
"I am not afraid," she said again. "Leave me be." She was the hero of this story, you see, and right now, she didn't need saving.
The bean sídhe turned around. She could see their spines peeking through the thin fabric of their tattered black funeral robes. Their long, cracked fingernails clicked against one another as they drifted away on a phantom breeze.
Lilibeth felt like crying, but only a broken laugh of giddy joy escaped her chest.
✥
"Why do you read such nonsense, anyways?" the Woodland King said as he and Lilibeth wandered the library shelves.
"They are not nonsense!" Lilibeth said, sniffing. "Fairytales are the best stories you'll ever read."
"I'm assuming you've read other ridiculous things like romance." He pitched his voice high and girlish, shuddering in disgust.
Lilibeth yawned. She barely got any sleep. For several days, her dreams were plagued with milky-eyed monsters, and she'd awaken with her heart pounding, her bed linens curled up in a heap at her feet.
"Romance?" she said, trying to distract herself from their ominous warnings. She didn't dare think of their names. "Well, yes, I have."
"And how old are you? Twelve?"
"People say I have a grandmother's spirit in a girl's body." It was true—the village elders, who loved to make dire pronouncements from their gardenia-veiled porches, had said so themselves.
The Woodland King picked up a thick book bound in jasmine yellow leather. "What is this?" he said, turning it over between his claws.
Lilibeth flushed three bright shades of pink—shell, coral, and strawberry. "W-well," she stammered.
"What? Is it really that awful? Stand as One," he read. Lilibeth gulped. "Skies and gods above, I've heard this book portrays dragons as savages and barbarians. Are we no better than the Ölgseir mountain trolls? What's the book about, anyways?"
"It's a trilogy about, um, a wild dragon named Urdinith the Horrendous—"
"You've got to be kidding me."
"He's the hero of the story, actually, in a manner of speaking."
"Really?" the Woodland King said. "A dragon is actually the hero? I might just live to see the day."
"He lives in a cave," Lilibeth said carefully, wiping her sweaty hands on her tunic, which was a dark shade of eggplant purple today. "A very nice cave," she added. "Jeweled goblets, golden combs."
"Why combs? Dragons don't have hair."
"Ask the author that."
"Well, I knew one," he said. "Poor devil looked more like a goblin than a dragon."
"Sounds like a fun guy," Lilibeth said, trying hard not to show her relief.
"Keep going," the Woodland King urged. "What happens next?"
"Furthermore, he was kind of . . . eccentric."
"You two would get along quite nicely."
"Of course we would," she said with pride. "His cave held many riches—"
"Ah," he said, nodding approvingly, looking like a child who had gotten sweet cream and a cherry on his ice cream cone. "A trove then."
Lilibeth reached for another book, coughing as it released fine trails of dust from the brittle pages. She returned it to the shelf. "Every Samhuin Eve, as you know, a teind is held."
"What's a teind?"
Oh. So he didn't know.
"A tithe paid by mischievous faeries to the open pits of Death's Mouth every seven years during Samhuin Eve, when the jack-o-lanterns are lit."
He flinched at the word tithe, but he said, "go on."
"And so during this particular teind, Urdinith the Horrendous feared that he would be the payment to the underworld. When the bonfires were lit, he tried to flee into his cave, but a-a human—" She paused, remembering that his brother had been killed by a human archer. "A human," she amended, refusing to elaborate more, "apprehended him. Of course, being a big, mighty dragon, he easily threw the human off."
The Woodland King plopped the jasmine yellow book down on the carpets. It fell open, the aged pages bespeckled with silky black tea stains. She could've sworn a faint smile traced his mouth.
"But the human pleaded mercy, and the dragon spared his life." Lilibeth didn't dare take her eyes off the Woodland King, who was cautiously thumbing through the book with one claw. He looked up, his cat-like eyes meeting hers. And she could've sworn light shone in those eyes.
"And then what happens? Do they go on to fight battles?"
Oh, bakeapple pie and picnic baskets, he would not like what happened next. Well, at least the trilogy ended on a good note. "Well . . . he allows the human to—to—"
"Is it really that bad?"
"Yes," she said tightly.
"Tell me."
Lilibeth loosed a heavy sigh. "The human man learned to ride the dragon and eventually tamed it."
"Tamed?"
"Do you need to sit down?"
"The idea that a man could tame a dragon—"
"It's just a story."
"Maybe I can write a story about humans with only five teeth and snot running from their noses. They'll be heretics that drink whiskey and tell fortunes by belching out tea leaves. Oh, and they sing tavern songs and play bagpipes badly."
"Tell fortunes by belching out tea leaves?"
He shrugged. "That's how people make a living in Baldridge."
Baldridge—a small fishing town in the Black Islands, famous for a sweetened ginger beer made with citron and honey. It was even dubbed "the Town of Strange Things". She wondered if Captain Omylia Saerieth had ever tried ginger beer.
"Interesting," Lilibeth said. And she secretly wondered that if, one day, they could be like Urdinith the Horrendous and his human friend, two different creatures with a bond stronger than glue.