Chapter 3: : Part 1 – Chapter 3

The messenger came while we were seated at the breakfast table. My younger cousins fought over hot biscuits while Ione and I drank our tea. When the steward entered the hall, Ione sprang from the table, her hazel eyes alight as she tore open the envelope.

“Yessssss,” she sang through the gap in her teeth.

My aunt waved her butter knife in the air. Ione handed her the letter, the apples of her cheeks rounded, a skip in her step. My aunt perused the fine lettering several moments before my uncle, impatient at the other end of the table, demanded, “Well?”

“We’ve been invited to Stone for Equinox,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

Ione let out a triumphant squeak, and my uncle’s gray whiskers twisted, his lips curling in a grin. I folded my hands in my lap, already drafting an excuse not to attend the King’s celebration.

“Don’t look so pleased,” my aunt said, handing the letter to her husband. “We’re still behind from last year’s tax, and King Rowan is after every penny he’s owed.” She wrung her hands in her skirt. “Talk in town is that this was the worst harvest the kingdom’s seen in ages.”

Across the table, my cousins fought over the last sausage, their iron cutlery weaponized into instruments of war. “Why was the harvest poor?” Lyn asked. “Because of the mist?”

“Who cares about the harvest,” Ione said. “It’s Equinox!” She turned to her father, rapturous. “Are we going, Father? Please say we’ll go.”

My uncle slathered his bread with strawberry jelly and grunted into his meal. “Yes, Ione,” he said. “We’re going.”

Ione let free a jovial cry, punctuated by my aunt, who was coughing into her tea. “We are?”

My uncle took another bite of bread and pushed from the table. A moment later he returned, a deep burgundy light glowing from his pocket. He reached into his jacket, retrieving a Providence Card from its fold. His fingers traced the burgundy trim a moment, then he plunked it onto the table, shattering my morning calm.

My body went cold. I stared down at the Nightmare Card—the same one I had touched eleven years ago.

“There’s your tax,” my uncle said. “Worth more than we owe, and then some.”

The only noise in the room was the groaning of chairs as my aunt and cousins leaned toward the table for a better look. “Is that…?” Ione whispered.

“The Nightmare Card,” my aunt said. She looked back up at my uncle, the color in her cheeks gone. “Kings of Blunder have sought this Card longer than I’ve been alive, Tyrn. How on earth did you get it?”

“I pinched it off a highwayman on the forest road some years ago.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

My uncle cast his wife a weary look. “I’ve been saving it.” His eyes flickered to Ione. “For a rainy day.”

My uncle sat, round and gray, as he always sat at the head of the table. But there was something strange about his eyes—something about his smile that I had not seen before. Something false.

Despite my aunt’s questions, he gave no more detail of how he obtained the Nightmare Card—made no mention of the blood I had seen on his sword the day he had brought it home. I pressed my back into my chair and watched him, chilled by the thought that I knew far less about the man at the head of the table than I thought.

“What is that thing?” my cousin Aldrich said, leaning closer, his face contorting as he squinted at the creature on the Card.

“It’s a monster,” Lyn whispered, reaching out to touch it.

“Don’t!” Aldrich cried, pulling his brother’s hand back. “It’s too old. You’ll rip it.”

My uncle snorted. “Hasn’t your mother read you The Old Book enough times?” When my cousins stayed silent, my uncle reached for the Card, pinching it between his thumbs and forefingers. When he jerked his hands to rip it in half, I heard myself gasp.

But the Card did not tear.

My uncle set it back down on the table, the parchment aged but without wrinkle. “Providence Cards cannot be destroyed,” he said to his sons. “They are woven by old magic.”

Lyn leaned forward and talked into his brother’s face. Older by only one year, Lyn liked to play the tutor, Aldrich his reluctant pupil. “He means the Shepherd King’s magic.”

Aldrich swatted him away.

My aunt’s voice rumbled, as if well used. “Magic gifted to him by the Spirit of the Wood, which he then used to create Providence Cards.”

“Gifted,” my uncle muttered. “Infected with it, more like.”

The sound of the Nightmare’s teeth echoed through my mind as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. A heart of gold can still turn to rot. What he wrote, what he did, was all done for naught. His Cards are but weapons, his kingdom now cruel. Shepherd of folly, King of the fools.

Ione traced the burgundy velvet at the edge of the Nightmare Card. I flinched, remembering the feel of that same velvet beneath my skin. “It must be worth a great deal to King Rowan,” she said.

My uncle turned his gaze to his daughter. “It is, my girl,” he said, his smile no longer false, but just as unnerving. “I’m counting on it.”

My aunt’s copy of The Old Book of Alders, the one she had shared with my mother, lay in a heap on the sitting room floor. I picked it up with both hands, its faded cover familiar to the touch. The book smelled of old leather, its binding feeble, cracked with use and time. On the inside cover was my aunt’s inscription, written in the name she had once shared with my mother—the name she bore before her father had signed a marriage contract with Tyrn Hawthorn.

Opal Whitebeam. And next to it, scribed in my mother’s swooping letters, was my mother’s name. Iris Whitebeam.

I thumbed through the yellowing pages. Like my cousins, I, too, had been curious about Providence Cards as a child—about magic. My mother would let me crawl into her lap as she read to me from her copy of The Old Book of Alders. She had drawn pictures into the book’s margins in green ink, swirling images of trees, maidens, monsters. When she read to me, her black hair would fall over her shoulder and I would twist the tips of it around my little finger, lost to the lull of the book’s strange, eerie language.

One spring Equinox, my mother and I had come to visit with Aunt Opal. Curled up on a sheepskin rug like kittens, Ione and I had sat, wide-eyed, my mother and aunt answering our questions about the Shepherd King’s strange book.

“Why did the Shepherd King make Providence Cards?” I’d asked. “How did he fashion them?”

My aunt had lowered her reading spectacles, eyeing me with a solemnity she rarely employed. “To answer that,” she’d said, “we must first look to the Spirit of the Wood.”

I’d shivered despite the crackling fire. The Shepherd King’s description of the Spirit of the Wood was the sort of thing that made my childish imagination run wild with terror. An ageless deity, smelling of magic—of salt—that lurked, invisible, in the mist.

“Long ago,” my aunt had said, “before Providence Cards, the Spirit of the Wood was our divinity. Folk of Blunder sought her out, combing the woods for the smell of salt. They asked her for blessings and gifts. They honored her woods and took the names of the trees as their own. This was old magic—old religion.” Her brow had darkened. “For his reverence, the Spirit of the Wood granted the Shepherd King strange, powerful magic. He wanted to share his magic with his kingdom, and so he made the twelve Providence Cards.” Her voice had grown solemn. “But everything has a price. For each Card, the Shepherd King gave something up to the Spirit of the Wood.”

“Like his soul?” Ione had asked, gnawing at her fingernails.

My aunt had nodded. “But it was the Spirit of the Wood, in the end, who would pay. With the Shepherd King’s Providence Cards, people had magic at their fingertips. They did not have to go to the wood and beg her blessings. No longer venerated, the Spirit grew vengeful, treacherous.” She’d paused, her lips pursed. “She created the mist, to lure people back to the wood.”

I was young. But even then, I’d known to be wary of the mist. “Those who came upon it lost their way, and often their minds,” my mother had said. “The mist spread, isolating us from neighboring kingdoms. Worse, children who tarried in it grew sick with fever, their veins darkening. Those who survived the fever often carried magical gifts like those the Spirit used to bestow, only more unruly—more dangerous.” When her voice shook, she’d held a hand to her throat. “But these children degenerated over time. Some grew twisted in their bodies, others in their minds. Few survived to adulthood.”

Ione and I had gone still, absorbed by the tale, too young to fully comprehend the dangers of the world we so innocently occupied. “To lift the mist,” my aunt had said, “the Shepherd King went deep into the wood to barter once more with the Spirit. When he returned, he penned this,” she’d said, tapping The Old Book of Alders on her lap. “He wrote about the dangers of magic, and how to safeguard oneself in the mist with a charm.” My aunt had paused for effect. “On the final page, the Shepherd King wrote how to destroy the mist.”

“Read it!” Ione and I had called in unison.

My aunt had cleared her throat, raising her spectacles to her eyes.

The twelve call for each other when the shadows grow long—

When the days are cut short and the Spirit is strong.

They call for the Deck and the Deck calls them back.

Unite us, they say, and we’ll cast out the black.

At the King’s namesake tree, with the black blood of salt,

All twelve shall, together, bring sickness to halt.

They’ll lighten the mist from mountain to sea.

New beginnings—new ends…

But nothing comes free.

I’d squealed, the eerie rhythm like silk in my ears. Ione and I had peeked at one another, our lips curling as we basked in the delicious darkness that bled out of the Shepherd King’s words.

“The Cards. The mist. The blood,” my mother had said, her voice so gentle it came as a whisper. “They are all woven together, their balance delicate, like spider silk. Unite all twelve Providence Cards with the black blood of salt, and the infection will be healed. Blunder will be free of the mist.”

“But the Shepherd King did not lift the mist, nor heal the infection,” my aunt had said, her voice heavy. “The Spirit tricked him, telling him how to lift the mist only after he’d bartered his Twin Alders Card. Without his final Card, the Shepherd King could not unite the Deck. And so he never lifted the mist. No King ever has.”

“No King ever will,” my mother had mused. “Not until someone finds the Twin Alders Card and the Deck is completed. Until then…”

Ione and I had shared a somber glance. “The mist will continue to spread.”

I found my aunt in her garden, where her husband rarely visited, singing to herself. She preferred it there, among the greenery—away from the noise of the house. Her wiry gold hair rolled down her back in wild curls. Dirt under her fingernails, crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes, Opal Hawthorn was not as refined or delicate as the other ladies in Blunder. It made her and my uncle—a man of limited scruples, whose desire to be a great man of Blunder had him spending more money than he earned—a decidedly poor pairing.

I loved my aunt’s wild beauty. I saw it in Ione. Some days, I could even see the shadow of my mother’s face in their shared features.

I picked a mint leaf, crushing it between my molars. The garden birds, sensing my approach, quieted. My aunt turned and smiled, beckoning me to her collection of herbs. “I’m making a tincture,” she said.

I looked at the mossy greenery she’d ground with a chalky substance in the bottom of her mortar. When I leaned in, the scent of feverfew met my nostrils. “What’s that other bit?”

“Bark from a white willow,” she replied. “For headaches.”

I folded myself onto the grass next to her. “About Equinox, Aunt,” I said. “I don’t think I should go.”

She snorted and leaned back into her work, the pestle scraping against herb and seed and stone. “Oh?”

Aldrich and Lyn flew through the garden, shouting and brandishing wooden swords. A moment later they were gone, crashing through the yard in a vicious campaign. When they’d vanished, I lowered my voice. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to court. Besides,” I muttered, “Nerium would hate it.”

“All the more reason to go,” she grumbled, her fingers tight around the pestle. “That young man will be happy to see you—the one who writes you letters. What’s his name—Alyc?”

I groaned. Lord Laburnum’s second son, the one with eyes the color of river rocks. The boy who’d sat next to me at the King’s table and made me laugh when I was seventeen—the last time I’d attended Equinox.

The boy I’d been foolish enough, bored enough, to kiss. “Alyx. Alyx Laburnum.”

My aunt faced me, an expectant smile lingering in the corners of her mouth. “And we no longer like Alyx, is that it?”

I waved my hand through the air, a dismissal. “Maybe I never liked him. Maybe he was just… there.”

My aunt shook her head, her tongue clacking against her teeth. But the smile on her lips bloomed. “It won’t always be so. Living like a hermit in your uncle’s house is no sort of life for a young woman.”

The old witch has a point.

I jumped, accidentally beheading a nearby flower.

My aunt did not notice. She pulled an envelope out of her apron. When she handed it to me, the dirt on her hand left a print.

But it did not matter. I knew the handwriting. It was from my father. And I knew what he would ask, just as he did every year when the King opened his castle for Equinox.

“He’s trying, Elspeth,” my aunt said, watching me.

I thumbed the letter, the oil on my skin smudging my father’s scraggly penmanship. It wasn’t just him and my stepmother and half sisters I wished to avoid. There was another reason I didn’t like to go to court or Equinox or town.

Degeneration. That’s what the Shepherd King called it in The Old Book of Alders. The sickness of mind or body that came with the infection. After the fever, the infection granted strange power, magical gifts. But everything had a price. For some, that price was obvious, draining one’s life force in a slow, agonizing deterioration.

For others, like me, it was unknown, a weighted, invisible anvil that could drop at any time. And it felt reckless, being around strangers, knowing, at any moment, degeneration could ignite in my blood. I might do something horrible in front of the King and his Physicians and Destriers, and they would drag me away to the King’s dungeons. Or perhaps I would grow sick and, no matter how I tried to hide it, waste away to nothingness.

Like my mother had.

I looked away from my aunt, my fingers tracing the purple petals of an iris. “I just think it would be easier for everyone if I stayed here.”

My aunt sighed, her voice delicate as she reached to stroke my cheek. “I can never understand what it’s been like for you,” she said. “Know that you are loved, and that you always have a place here, with me. But do not let a fever eleven years past keep you from living your life, Elspeth. You’re young. You still have so much ahead of you.” She wrinkled her nose and lowered her gaze back to her work. “If not for your own enjoyment, go for mine. I would pay good money to watch Nerium Spindle squirm.”

The night before we traveled to the King’s castle for Equinox, I had a dream.

I had not dreamed since touching the Nightmare Card. Whatever his faults, the Nightmare did not disturb my wakeless hours.

I didn’t know what he did when I slept, and he did not answer when I asked. I used to think he slept, too, but after so many years together, I realized he did not sleep at all. He simply disappeared into a part of my mind I could not reach. There, it was quiet, and when I slept, he roamed freely, unhindered by the current—the utter noisiness—of my thoughts.

It was as if, for once, I was trespassing on him.

In my dream, I was in an ancient room covered in vines. The old wooden ceiling had rotted, revealing beams of light beneath a canopy of green. Birds chirped, rustling above me, the summer day warm and pure despite the cold, weathered stone around me.

I could not recall how I’d gotten into the room. Like all dreams, it lacked a beginning and an end. In the center of the room stood a stone, wide and tall as a table. Seated upon the stone was a man decorated in gold armor that had long lost its sheen. He was aged, older than my father, grisly and stern. He bore the weight of his armor without wavering—his strength deeply rooted. On his hip rested an ancient, rusted sword with branches twisted into a crook carved into the hilt.

Lost in thought, his head resting upon his gauntlets, he did not see me.

I waited for him to look up, shuffling my feet on the leaf-strewn floor.

When he finally saw me, I gasped, recognizing the sharp quality of his unnatural, feline yellow eyes—the irises wide and the pupils narrow.

For a moment he was silent. I realized I’d surprised him, intruded on a moment—a place—the Nightmare had not intended to show me.

The room vanished, the noise of birds muffling to silence. The trees were gone, replaced by tall shelves overflowing with books and tomes and scrolls. A sturdy desk forged from cherrywood replaced the stone. I stood in my uncle’s library, my breath hitching in my lungs.

The man and his armor had disappeared. In his place was a creature—more animal than man. Coarse black fur grew up the ridge of his back. He hunched over the desk, the long quality of his fingers making it impossible to tell where flesh ended and claw began. His tail, furred and long, whipped menacingly—like an angry cat’s—and his ears, pointed, twitched at me.

I watched him, fascination and dread knotting in my stomach.

His yellow eyes narrowed. “You’ve come to spy?”

I stuttered, not knowing how to answer. He was angry, I could tell. Still, I had no hand in the making of my dreams. I inhaled, searching for courage. “Who was that man wearing armor?”

He drew a claw along the desk, scratching the wood. His lips, dark and thin, curled upward. “Someone long dead, I’m afraid.”

I stood in the center of my uncle’s sheepskin rug, the familiar texture cold beneath my bare feet. So strange, to hear a voice and almost never see the face behind it. I scrutinized his features, his dark mouth and short, jagged teeth. Creature, Nightmare, man—whatever he was, he was surely made for hauntings, frightening enough to scare the skin off any man.

As the edges of the library faded, I blurted, “He had yellow eyes.”

The Nightmare clicked his tongue against his teeth and smiled. He sat, perched upon my uncle’s desk, looking down on me with those same gold-yellow eyes.

“Would you like to hear the story?” he whispered.

His words echoed, the dream already beginning to fade. I nodded, the library around me eclipsing into darkness.

All that was left was the Nightmare’s voice, silky and infinite.

“There once was a girl,” he murmured, “clever and good, who tarried in shadow in the depths of the wood. There also was a King—a shepherd by his crook, who reigned over magic and wrote the old book. The two were together, so the two were the same:

“The girl, the King… and the monster they became.”