Take away my impurities, Regan replied, splashing water up onto her face. It dripped down her neck like icy fingers, spotting her shift so it stuck to her collar and breasts. The creek water pressed around her hips and at her belly, finding the curves of her bottom and tickling the soles of her feet.
For a moment, she wished she’d brought Connley here to bury his seed deep inside her, under this oak and in this creek.
Regan dragged her hands up her thighs, pulling the wet shift high. One hand moved up to press between her breasts, over her heart. The other slid into the darkness where her pleasure lived. She opened herself with her fingers, whispered coaxing words to the forest, calling on the Tree of Mothers, the Bird of Dreams, and the Worm of Saints. Bending over herself, Regan shook and gasped, never stopping her prayer, until she rattled with passion and her words were hoarse, hissed in the language of trees and sounding exactly like wind through branches, on long moorland grass, against the rough peaks of the mountains. It was a plea pushed through her teeth, heavy with desire and love and longing.
Regan became more than she was: a piece of the forest, with roots and branches for bones, vines of hair, flowers where her lips should be, lichen hardening her fingers, and a black-furred bat unfurling its nighttime wings inside her womb. It fluttered and scratched, then shrieked as Regan shrieked, spilling her magic and her delicious pleasure into the creek, into this vein of the island.
Water covered her body as she stretched on her back, only her lips and nose and eyelashes above the water, and her toes. She was river rocks, around which the creek slid, shaping her smoother, polishing her skin to a luminous brown-gray.
Tell me where to find the forest’s navel well, she said, her voice echoing in her skull beneath the sound of water. Or tell me how to see what is wrong with me, I ask you, roots of my mothers, trees and birds of this island, please, that I may bear a child who will love you, rule you, and be yours in return.
Ban!
Regan frowned. The name sounded sharp in the language of trees.
Was this her answer?
The Fox is coming.
Beneath our branches, in the shade of our voices.
Iron and smoke, teeth and longing.
The Fox!
Regan sat abruptly. Water sluiced off her, and she got onto her hands and knees, crouching. She stared all around at the blue-green-gray light, at the trees and bold late flowers crawling up toward the sunlight, embracing some linden and rough ash nearby. Three bluebirds danced, teasing each other; a squirrel chittered at her; there a flash of shadow from some other silent bird, a ghost owl, she thought; a soft buzz of insect life. Neither fox nor man to disturb her solitude. Then—
Flickering pale gray.
She stood, watching a line of several moon moths fly southwest, toward Errigal Keep. Too many to be natural, and as she studied them, three more arrived, flitting down from the canopy like snow.
Regan climbed out of the creek and the water painted her linen shift to her body, an earth saint rising from summer sleep. Quickly she took up the long jacket she’d arrived in, sliding her damp arms into the sleeves, pulling up the hood around her heavy wet hair. She left her leather-soled slippers here, nestled in moss, and followed the moths in silence.
They led her on a brief, easy path away from the oak and the creek, toward a clearing that sloped between two gnarled cherry trees.
A man stood in the center, his back to her, his shirt discarded with his sword belt and short black jacket. Scars etched his tan skin, carving his muscles into war-strong weapons. Sweat glistened in the curve at the small of his back. His hair was half in tiny braids.
Two dozen moon moths, white and creamy gray, perched upon his shoulders, and he allowed it, remaining still as a deep-rooted tree. They gently brushed their wings up and down, bestowing tiny kisses. Like he was an earth saint, too.
So the forest had answered her.
Regan smiled as he tilted his head, listening to the moths. This young man was a witch. She pushed the great hood off her head so the cool forest air could kiss her wet hair.
Ban turned in one smooth motion. Half the moths rose on a breeze, fluttering around his head; the others remained clinging to his skin, and flourished their wings.
This was the Ban Errigal she only remembered as a scrap of a bastard child, loving her baby sister. Now grown handsome in a wild, tight way, like a hungry wolf prince. One arm slowly streamed blood from a slash just above the elbow.
Ban the Fox, they called him at the Summer Seat.
Ban the Fox, who was beloved of the forest.
Ban the Fox was her answer.
Lady Regan, he said softly in the language of trees.
Ban … the Fox, she replied in the same.
The cherry trees all around them giggled, dropping tiny oval leaves like confetti.
“You’re a witch,” he said, awed, “as well as a soon-to-be queen.”
“And you a soldier as well as a witch.”
He bowed, unable, it seemed, to take his eyes off her.
Regan glanced again at the mantle of moths he wore, sending her own few to alight on his shoulders.
Shrugging as if their tiny feet tickled, Ban said, “They bring a message from my mother. She reminds me I’ve been home weeks, and not visited her.”
For a moment Regan peered at him, as if he were a trick of the White Forest, and then she remembered: “Brona Hartfare is your mother, and I was near when you were born, for my sister Elia was born that same day, while both
