Ifra soaked in the warmth of the place, hoping he could store the feeling. When the stew was done, Etana brought it to the table. Sery settled into her chair, holding on her lap a doll made of cloth scraps and buttons. Keyelle poured hot water into a teapot, stirring up a memory of Hami’s coffeepot.
“You look sad, Ifra,” Etana said, sitting across from him.
“I’m fine.”
Etana smiled faintly. “That’s what I say when I’m not fine at all.” She hesitated. “If you don’t mind me asking… I know jinn aren’t supposed to age, but are you as young as you look?”
“We do age,” he replied. “And yes. I am as young as I look. We only age while we’re actively granting wishes. Our bodies might live a very long while, but we will only experience a normal life span.”
“In captivity?”
“Well, we hope to die free. If we’re lucky.”
“I don’t know much about jinn,” Keyelle said. “Do you have parents?”
“Of course.”
“And where do they live?”
“My mother is a servant in a wealthy man’s house.”
“Is she free?”
“No. The wealthy man is my father.” He didn’t talk about this much. “I wasn’t raised by her, of course. Free jinn always take in young jinn whose parents aren’t free. But she wrote me many letters.” He realized how strange this must all sound to a family like this, where children never had to be taken from their parents. “There are a lot of myths about jinn. It’s part of the magic-once people make wishes, they forget what they wished and how it worked. It would be chaos if people were too informed. Not that we’re capable of some of the great feats we’ve been credited with in tales either. We can only manipulate the world as it is. We can’t remake it.”
“But you can find the missing fairy prince?”
“I can, although he does have a confusing spirit. King Luka told me his spirit is trapped in a clockwork body, and I can pick up the trail of that spirit, but it’s weak.”
Etana looked alarmed. “Weak? Why?”
“I don’t really know. Maybe his tether on the world is weak. But then I sense a connection between him and King Luka. The king said it must be because he died there, and it wasn’t a proper death, but… it’s unusual.”
Keyelle sat straighter in her chair, almost rising. “That would certainly fit the suspicions of the other Green Hoods. There have always been rumors that the king did something to Erris-that he didn’t die properly.”
“Green Hoods?”
Keyelle motioned to a pair of green capes hanging by the door. “That’s what we call ourselves. Supporters of the Tanharrows.”
“I saw lots of people wearing green capes in the capital,” Ifra said. “Are they all Green Hoods?”
“No,” Keyelle said. “Most people own a green cape, but that doesn’t make them a Green Hood. Hundreds of years ago, in the troubled times in the old country when the human king’s men were after us, a group called the Green Hoods used to protect the people. We’ve taken cues from those stories, using ballads for code and such. We see a parallel with those times and now, only it’s our own king causing the trouble.”
Ifra glanced at the green capes once more, intrigued by the idea of rebellion. If only his people had such a concrete enemy to rebel against. At the same time, he thought of King Luka and felt a curious sense of pity for the man who looked so frail beneath his glamour.
“I can’t alert anyone of my mission,” Ifra said. “It’s part of the magic of the wish. I’ve been wiping the memories of everyone I pass. But I’m not going to wipe all of yours. You’ll remember me, even if you don’t remember exactly why I was here. I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 8
Weeks passed, and we settled comfortably into our new lives. I helped Celestina pick apples and turn the uglier ones into pies and jars of apple butter. Erris couldn’t bear the sweet comforting smell, but he was happier outside anyway, roaming the forest hour upon hour, or sitting with Violet on the lawn, telling her stories of the fairy kingdom. Sometimes I sat to listen, but mostly jealousy crawled up my spine within moments and I returned to my business. I knew I shouldn’t be jealous, and I lay awake at night trying to reason myself out of it but never quite managed.
Autumn broke out in earnest, and it was no wonder Erris wanted to be outdoors, as the woods erupted in shades of furious red and cheerful gold, dotted with the permanent green-black fringe of fir and spruce.
Early one morning, Celestina and I laced each other into our corsets and donned our best dresses and hats and gloves so we could go to town for supplies.
Violet raged that she could not go. I stayed out of her way, but I heard her throwing things, and Celestina emerged flushed from the effort of calming her down.
“Usually she likes staying with Lean Joe,” she said. “He’s happy to take the day off and play games with her. I guess it’s just been too much excitement.”
“Maybe we should take her,” Erris said.
Celestina’s mouth opened. “But she’s sick! And even with the enchantment as protection, we can’t risk the townspeople seeing her.”
Erris shrugged, apparently thinking it not worth arguing about. He fussed with his ponytail. “Do you think I should cut my hair? None of the men in town wear it long like this. I worry they’ll recognize me as a fairy.”
“I saw men with hair longer than yours in New Sweeling,” I said.
“This is hardly New Sweeling,” Celestina said.
But in the end, we decided it was better not to take the time to fuss with Erris’s hair. Celestina loaned him a bowler of Ordorio’s to make him look more respectable. Lean Joe readied the horses, and we rode to town piled into a rattling cart. Celestina became quite businesslike at the reins, her gloved hands capable, her back straight as a tree, with a fine little hat atop her head, but I knew going to town made her as nervous as it made me.
In fact, Erris seemed the most relaxed when he should have been the biggest oddity of all, a clockwork fairy with the hair of a city aesthete. He made most of the conversation on the trip, effusively complimenting Ordorio’s fine brown pacers, although I was sure they must have been nothing compared to the royal fairy horses, which were known throughout the world. But then, I suppose he hadn’t seen those horses in an awfully long time.
Cernan was a larger town than I had realized from the train station alone. To be sure, it was no city, but it was, as my old dancing troupe manager used to say, “worth a dime, not a penny.” Two streets ran parallel with a plaza in the middle, where merchants set up booths of wares like fruit and even birds in tiny cages. I had often passed a similar plaza in New Sweeling, only it had a statue in the center instead of the gloomy obelisk Celestina told us was to commemorate the casualties of some shipwreck.
Celestina marched into a shop without any word for the craggy old men milling about in front, smoking pipes and muttering to one another in some unfamiliar language. Erris and I hurried after her.
Inside, the shop was lit by spacious windows but no gaslight. Two younger men lounged at the counter, almost identical in their worn hats and vests. When they stared at us, Erris adjusted his bowler to a jaunty angle. No one else in town seemed to be wearing bowlers. I nudged him to move along.
“Celestina,” one of them said, leering, while the other one snickered. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Still rattling around that old dungeon?”
She ignored them in a practiced way, consulting her list and picking up an empty basket from the counter to fill.
Naturally, their attention turned to us next. “Who’s your company?”
The shopkeeper, a plump man with an impressive black mustache, ignored all of us to help another young woman select cloth.
“It’s those people who came on the train a little while ago,” the snickering one said. “What’s your name, ponytail?”
Erris looked at them, not quite nervous, but gauging the situation.
“I don’t give my name out to just anyone,” he said after a moment, and although he said it about as politely as
