Blackthorn Briar, Court of Oak and Holly
The Fae Realms
January 1st, 1846
Wren still didn’t understand what, exactly, they were hunting.
“It’s an ethereal beast,” Shrike explained—not for the first time—as he strapped on his leathers. “The rite of its capture ensures the strength of the Wild Hunt.”
Wren, who wore just the same woollen suit he’d worn through all his years as a clerk, leaned against the hollow stump in the centre of the cottage as he patiently waited for Shrike to ready himself. All had sprung into motion rather suddenly from his perspective; a starling had arrived shortly after dawn bearing a missive from Nell, who had scrawled the words WHITE HART onto a scrap of birch-bark, and this was enough to send Shrike into a frenzy to join the Wild Hunt. “And it appears but once a year?”
Shrike grunted as he tightened a belt. “Sometimes once a year. Sometimes twice. Sometimes but once in a decade. Three years have passed since last we sighted it. It appears according to its wont.”
Wren stared at him. “Itwantsto be hunted?”
“Aye.”
“Why?”
Shrike shrugged. “It presents a challenge.”
Wren had some familiarity with the figure of a white hart as the symbol of Richard II—and as the name of at least one public house in every village in England, so it seemed. It’d come up inThe Merry Wives of Windsoras well, though Wren had never thought much of the bard’s comedies, much preferring the histories and tragedies in that order. He’d made an exception forThe Merry Wivesdue to its tangential connection to theHenriad.
All this he relayed to Shrike, who listened with more interest than any of the Restive Quills had ever suffered to show Wren. Shrike had heard of Shakespeare before he’d met Wren—A Midsummer Night’s Dreambeing a vague shadowy reflection of certain historical events of the Fae Realms. He’d even humoured Wren in his reading of favourite passages aloud for amusement as they huddled together in the nest before the fire through the long cold winter nights of Blackthorn.
“But I never thought it real,” Wren concluded. “Beyond the random chance of a fawn being born white and growing up into a hart, I mean. Will you catch it?”
Shrike served him a knowing smile. “I shall certainly try.”
Wren himself had no chance of catching the white hart. Or any prey, for that matter. Still, it sounded like a most singular sight, one which he wished to witness for himself. And he never tired of watching Shrike hunt. The glint in his keen eyes, and how the sheer strength of his lithe form sprang into swift strikes, stirred within Wren a hunger which Shrike felt only too happy to satisfy afterward, with the heady musk of blood and sweat mingling with his familiar vanilla-woodsmoke scent.
All the same, Wren did carry a pen-knife in his waistcoat pocket as he went forth with Shrike into the chill January morning out of Blackthorn Briar and toward the Grove of Gates.
Unlike the fox-hunts of Wren’s youth, the Wild Hunt had no permanent meeting-place. It met wherever its prey would be found. The first time Wren had attended, when Shrike had surprised him with a stag in Hyde Park, they’d arrived late in the midst of the hunt.
This morning, however, stepping through a peculiarly perfectly-round arch of tight-packed slates held in place by their own collective weight—the moon gate, Shrike called it—brought them to the hunting grounds whilst the fae still gathered.
Or so Shrike had claimed it would. When they passed through the moon gate, however, Wren beheld a pale field of snow-drifts scattered across crystal blue ice. Pines limned the shores beside and behind them. To the north, however, the crystal blue seemed to go on forever, forming the whole of the horizon. February wasn’t particularly balmy in Blackthorn Briar, but this was an even deeper cold than he’d awoken to in the cottage garden.
Wren shivered beneath his heavy wool cloak with its rabbit-fur lining. For once, it wasn’t Shrike’s cloak. Rather, it was the one Shrike had created for him in the original’s image. Made from the same black wool and silver rabbit-fur, and running much shorter to match Wren’s smaller frame, it appeared a slightly shrunken version, though no less well-crafted. Wren had watched in fascination as Shrike sewed it in idle hours through the summer and autumn, finishing just as wintry breezes began to blow through Blackthorn Briar. Wren’s own eagerness to join the hunt stemmed at least in part from the opportunity to show off the cloak—to display his beloved’s talents to their deserved audience. Still, he found he missed the familiar vanilla-woodsmoke musk that enveloped him whenever he borrowed Shrike’s cloak.
“Where are we?” Wren asked.
“The Lake of Eternal Ice,” Shrike replied.
Wren stared at their surroundings in disbelief. “This is a lake?”
“Aye,” Shrike answered with more patience than Wren deserved.
“Where’s the opposite shore?”
“Yonder.”
Wren shot him an exasperated look.
Shrike only shrugged. “It’s a broad lake.”
Wren supposed that answer would have to satisfy.
