“Bergamot oranges,” the princess said.
“Oh, I should have told you, before you died.”
“Father, I am Elia, your daughter. Not … Dalat.”
It was hard even for Aefa to hear the name; she could only imagine the impossible effort it took Elia to speak it.
Lear looked at his daughter and seemed to see her finally. “Elia? Am I dead?”
“No, Father, I’m with you in the White Forest. Come with us, stand and go with me to Hartfare. You’ll rest and be able to bathe, to eat and drink what you like. We will care for you—I will. I should never have left.”
A frown marred his brow, made his nose seem overlong. All the wrinkles of his face bent toward the upset mouth. “I forced you away. I remember.”
Elia nodded. “You did. But I … I love you.”
Lear put his long, dry hands on her face, cradling it. “That is all you said before.”
“It was not enough, then.”
Aefa ground her teeth together but did not interrupt. That was the first lesson her father had taught her at court: to judge when to speak and when to be still. The most effective Fool—and friend—understood such a thing.
“I know, my love, I know, we never say enough.” The king stared through Elia, seeing some other place. “I deserved nothing from your daughters,” he whispered. “But I wished they loved me anyway. I could not tell them what happened—What? And take you away from them again? Lost once from life, and again from memory? But I see now—I saw in the storm, cold and hungry, oh so cold with nothing but myself, no stars, no love—how in being wrong I put on a mantle of rightness.”
It was difficult for Aefa to follow his thoughts, but Elia held on to him, her expression listening, listening, as she did to the forest.
“But I loved you,” he said, hands slipping off his daughter’s face. The old king looked to the thin, trickling stream near his bare toes.
“Shh, Father,” Elia whispered, putting her arms around him. She tucked her head against his shoulder. Aefa touched her own lips to keep silent.
“You trusted yourself,” he said. “I did not trust anything but stars. I trusted them over us, over everything. Do you think they care if I trust them? Elia cares. Gaela cared, but not anymore. Regan … ah. It is too late, pretty spirit.” Lear sank back, out of Elia’s arms, and lowered himself onto the grassy hill again. “I should have trusted this, too.” He fingered a leaf of the hemlock crown. “You weren’t there, my star, but this is the island’s crown. This is the island’s star, these little white starbursts of poison. The king eats it, and drinks the rootwater. And the island keeps you alive; you belong to the island. That is how you become king. See? I have had poison, too, my love! I have had poison, too!” He laughed, shoulders shaking.
Elia drew her knees to her chest, hugging herself. For a long moment, Lear breathed and said nothing.
Aefa could stand it no more. She went to Elia’s side and sat, leaning her shoulder against Elia’s as the princess pressed her eyes against her knees. Lear had been freezing and hungry all night, Aefa thought; such suffering had stripped him to his most essential self, his nature revealed, and that nature was broken and trapped.
“He’s been alone so long,” Aefa whispered, and hugged her princess.
Elia asked, voice full of pity and raw need, “Do you think it’s true? About the crown and the island and … my mother?”
But the old king interrupted with a sigh. “I should be blind, for all I have never been able to see.”
His tender voice tore even at Aefa.
“Maybe,” Elia said gently, unfolding herself to glance at him, “this is always what the stars saw. What was always meant to be. The two of us here, like this. Unnamed and uncrowned, Father, with our feet in the mud.”
Her father laughed again, but gentler.
Elia put her palm to his cheek. “Maybe we had to go through this. I certainly did. To truly become your heir.”
Lear stared at his youngest daughter, amazed.
“Maybe you did everything you had to do,” she said. A sad smile bowed her lips: she had learned to couch the truth, and Aefa was both proud and stung by it. Elia said, “Be at peace. Maybe you did everything right.”
“Maybe,” he said, nodding his long head. The hemlock crown dragged down one temple, lopsided. He touched it carefully. “Did you know my daughter Elia … you, you would come in from an afternoon in the meadows and forest with a crown of flowers?”
Elia kissed him carefully. Then she glanced again at Aefa, and her lips trembled. Her eyelashes, even, seemed to shake. But Elia only said, “I remember.”
THE FOX
BAN THE FOX wandered his way north through the White Forest, a lightness to his step. If he could, in this dense forest, he’d run.
He might never complete his spell, but it was enough to carry the promise with him, a threat beneath his fingers instead of lodged, poisonous, in his heart.
Ban yelled his pride, leaping into the air, sharing his joy and his thanks with the trees. But instead of their fierce whispers, full of love—something darker seemed to echo back.
Wind crashed overhead, tossing the canopy. Yellow leaves rained down, and Ban stopped, closed his eyes. He could not quite grasp the words.
He swiveled, searching for water, or exposed roots: there, an elm leaned on raised earth, three roots curling through the grass like worms. Ban crouched by it, grasping the roots in both hands. He leaned down and whispered against the cool brown bark: I’m listening.
For a long moment, nothing changed. The snap of branches alerted him to the presence of a large animal. A very low crackle sounded nearby, small enough to be a slinking snake, just the brush of scale against deadfall, or a young rabbit hunched beneath ferns.
Regan.
The lonely name hissed on the wind, and Ban startled to his
