“And of course, my freeing you does not count toward this price,” Mouse scoffed. “What could I have that is of any interest to you?”
“It depends on the size of the task you need me to complete. Rearranging a bookshelf might cost you a fingernail clipping. Killing a man might cost you your heart.”
“Charming,” Mouse said with a grimace. “This has been a delightful conversation, but I am exhausted. You’ve miscalculated. You are too late. Once I would have been fascinated by a deal with you, but now I have more pressing matters than Faeries. I will need all my organs to finish my work. Now, either turn me into a snail or let me go.”
Her mother would be appalled at the tone she was taking with such a dangerous creature, but she could not find it within herself to care.
“I think I would prefer you as a rabbit,” the Faerie said, baring his teeth. Despite herself, Mouse shuddered. “However, I am aware that my offer is unconventional. You need some time to think things over. Meet me in the clearing where we first met tomorrow night when the moon is highest. I will have your answer then.”
The wind shook the trees. Everything leaned toward them, and the earth thrummed with desperate energy. It reminded Mouse of the feeling when waiting for a bomb to drop from a zeppelin.
“I will be waiting,” Thornwood said. The energy lifted, and he was gone.
5
Mouse made herself walk and not run screaming the rest of the way to John’s cottage. In the distance, she could see puffs of smoke drifting out of the chimney, bright and merry against the darkening sky. John’s cottage always seemed separate from reality—a Neverland or secret garden to Thistlemarsh’s gloom. She was grateful for that now more than ever.
Briefly, Mouse reentertained the idea that she’d gone mad under the stress of Thistlemarsh’s restoration. However, the sting of her palms and her dirty trousers from where the vines dragged her were proof that what happened was real: She had seen a Faerie in Thistlemarsh Wood in broad daylight. The Faerie had been Dante, a statue she’d seen nearly every day growing up.
Not only that, but the Faerie spoke to her and offered her one of his kind’s infamous bargains. It was impossible, but there it was. For the sake of her sanity and Thistlemarsh, she had to believe it and treat the situation accordingly.
She did not know how he knew the details of her predicamentwith the Hall, but the strange feelings that had lingered with her during the day took on new meaning. She remembered the movement at the window during her meeting with Carlyle. Was the Faerie spying on her?
He could not have done it from inside Thistlemarsh, she reassured herself. All stories indicated that Faeries needed invitations to enter mortal dwellings, and she certainly had not invited him in. And he said something about the difficulty of moving as a statue.
Why the creature suddenly approached her, she could not say. Still, she remembered the strange shock to her finger from her first encounter with the statue, and she shuddered.
Mouse dug through her memory for information on deals with Faeries. In general, Faerie bargains were spoken of in the same disdainful whispers as market speculation and making one’s fortune through trade. EvenBlakeney’swarned against them, in tales like “The Faerie Bridegroom” or “The Name of the Helper.”
Her mother always scoffed when she heard that kind of talk from the other people in their tenement building, but Mouse would catch her father crossing himself. If her mother had loved Faeries, her father feared them just as much.
“Nothing in this life is so important you need to make a deal with a Faerie for it.”
Mouse had heard him, though, years later, pleading with the Faeries for her mother’s life. No one answered. Still, Mouse had done the same for Bertie and Roger.
Where was this Faerie back then? Where was he when Bertie was dying on the battlefield? Where was he when her brother screamed more often than he spoke?
No, she decided. She would not accept the Faerie’s help. It was just too dangerous, even if he was her only chance to save Thistlemarsh.
Duringthe war, in moments of intense anxiety, she would introduce something new and unexpected to the senses to distract herself. Then, she was limited to gulping down weak tea or running her hands along starched linen. But here, on the path to John’s cottage, she had options. Bursts of wildflowers decorated the ground in yellow and pink. As far as Mouse could tell, they had sprung up overnight.
They were not forbidden Faerie-protected flowers, like bluebells, so she knelt next to a vibrant bunch and plucked a single flower. Twisting the stem between her fingers, she lifted it to her nose and breathed in slowly. The scent shot through her panic like an arrow, clearing a path for her to think of her next decision.
Should she tell John about the Faerie and his offer?
The meeting was just too improbable. That was the problem. To Mouse’s knowledge, the last record of a Faerie interacting with a mortal was in the 1790s. It was a famous tale, as central to understanding history as the Battle of Waterloo or the Hundred Years’ War.
Not long after Madame Guillotine removed King Louis XVI’s and Marie Antoinette’s heads from their bodies, an elegant Faerie man materialized on the execution block, draped in silver and gold finery. Of course, the revolution was in full swing at that point, and Faerie nobles had expressed their contempt over human violence when events turned gory. Within years, the revolution was cited as one of the key events that drove the Faeries away from the mortal world.
The Faerie looked at the crowd, the furious mass of unhappiness and bloodlust, and laughed. His laughter enraged both the revolutionaries and the line of doomed aristocrats waiting to join their monarchs. The crowd screamed, and the Faerie cackled more. He snapped his fingers, and the guillotine contorted in on itself. In itsplace was a tiger made of wood, steel, and blood. Despite, or perhaps because of, its egalitarian origins, the creature did not differentiate between citizens and lords, setting first upon the executioner.
In the panic, the Faerie extended his hand to a woman who had been waiting her turn for the kiss of the blade. The ropes binding the woman’s hands disappeared, and she threw herself at the Faerie. He caught her, and before their lips could meet, they vanished, never to be seen again.
Perhaps they had been in love. Or perhaps the Faerie was merely trying to add to the chaos.
The tiger guillotine took days to subdue, terrorizing Paris. Mouse had seen remnants of its wooden leg, still marked with tiger stripes, and its silver blade teeth at the British Museum.
Even if John did believe Mouse about the encounter, what would he say? He would call her a fool for even considering the Faerie’s offer, considering their history.