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The words were weighted with meaning, and Serilda frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Come inside. I haven’t been able to eat all day, but we’ll have a right feast now you’re home.”
Once they had seated themselves by the fire, two bowls of barley gruel topped with dried apricots in hand, Serilda told him all that had happened. She did her best not to embellish—a near-impossible feat. And perhaps, in her telling, the overnight journey had been fraught with a few more dangers (who was to say that a river nix hadn’t been watching the carriage from the icy waters as they passed?). And perhaps, in this version of the truth, the stuffed creatures decorating the Erlking’s castle had come to life, licking their lips and watching her with hungry eyes as she walked by. And perhaps the boy who had come to help her had been most chivalrous, and had not made her give up her necklace.
Perhaps she left out the part where he took her hand and pressed it, almost devotedly, to his cheek.
But as stories go, she recited the events of the night more or less as they had transpired, from the moment she had stepped inside the skeletal carriage to the long ride home being tormented by plump, feathered fiends.
By the time she finished, their bowls were long empty and the fire was craving a new log. Serilda stood, setting her dish aside as she went to the stack of firewood against the wall. Her father said nothing as she used the end of a log to rearrange some of the coals, before settling it neatly on top of the smoldering flames. As soon as the fire began to catch, she sat back down and dared to look over at him.
He was staring into the flames with distant, haunted eyes.
“Papa?” she said. “Are you all right?”
He pressed his lips tight together, and she saw his throat struggle with a hard gulp. “The Erlking believes you can do this incredible thing. Spin straw into gold,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “He will not be satisfied with one dungeon’s worth. He will want more.”
She lowered her gaze. This same thought had occurred to her—of course it had. But every time, she stuffed it back down into whatever dark place it had come from.
“He can hardly send for me every full moon until the end of time. I’m sure he will tire of me and move on to terrorizing someone else soon enough.”
“Do not be flippant, Serilda. Time has no meaning to the dark ones. What if he does send for you again on the Crow Moon, and every full moon after that? And what if … what if this boy does not come to your aid the next time?”
Serilda looked away. She knew how narrowly she had escaped death, and that her father had, too. (Which was another small detail she might have left out of her telling.) She felt safe for now, but that security was an illusion. The veil kept their world divided from that of the dark onesmostof the time, but not when there was a full moon. Not during an equinox or a solstice.
In four short weeks, the veil would once again release the wild hunt into their mortal realm.
What if he summoned her again?
“What I can’t understand,” she said slowly, “is what the Erlking could want with so much gold. He can steal anything he desires. I’m sure Queen Agnette herself would give him anything he asked for in return for merely being left alone. It doesn’t seem like he would be concerned with material wealth, and there was no sign of … of pretentiousness in the castle. The furnishings were sumptuous in their own way, but I sense that he has no one to impress, that he cares only for his own comforts …” She trailed off, her mind circling on itself. “Why would he care about a plain village girl who can spin straw into gold?”
After a moment of pondering her own unanswerable questions, she glanced at her father.
He was still gazing into the hearth, but despite the cottage’s comfortable heat, he looked strikingly pale.
Almost ghostlike.
“Papa!” Serilda launched herself from her chair and came to kneel beside him, taking his hands. He squeezed hers back, but could not look at her. “What’s the matter? You look ill.”
His eyes shut, his brow wrinkling with what emotions she couldn’t name.
“I’m all right,” he said—lied,Serilda was certain. His words were tense, his spirit subdued.
“No, you are not. Tell me what’s wrong.”
With a trembling breath, he opened his eyes again and met her gaze. A soft, worried smile touched his lips as he reached down to cup her face. “I won’t let him take you again,” he whispered. “I won’t let him—” He clenched his teeth, but Serilda couldn’t tell whether he was stifling a sob or a scream.
“Papa?” She took his hands into hers, tears brimming in her eyes to see the fear so plainly on his face. “I’m here now. I came back unharmed.”
“This time, perhaps,” he said. “But I could think of nothing but you being trapped by that monster, unable to come back to me. And I can’t do it again. I can’t spend another night like that, thinking I’ve lost you. Not you, too.” The sob escaped this time as he hunched forward.
Not you, too.
It was as close as he ever came to mentioning her mother. She might have left when Serilda was just a baby, but her spirit had never gone completely. Shadows always clung to her father, especially as Serilda’s birthday approached in the fall, around the time when her mother had vanished. She wondered if he even remembered telling her when she was little the story of how he’d made a wish to a god that he would marry the girl in the village he’d fallen in love with, and that they might have a healthy child together. Serilda may have been young when she’d heard the tale, but she remembered her father’s eyes dancing with firelight at the memory. He’d glowed on the inside to mention her mother, but the moment had been brief, snatched away by the pain of her loss.
Serilda had known that he was probably making it up. After all, her father was many wonderful things. He was kind and generous. He thought always of others, putting everyone else’s needs before his own. He was hardworking and patient and always kept a promise.
But he was not bold.
