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Feremir
SHE WORE A CAPE THAThid her face and hair, but her elegant walk was a dead giveaway. I’d watched her for hours from afar before we’d become friends, so it was not difficult to recognize her as Aislinn pulled her cape to hide her face and entered the shadows.
I had to hurry. Perhaps that was why I did not even give it a second thought as I jolted behind her to enter the spring garden.
The moons shone brightly tonight, but the garden was still full of deep shadows to hide us both as I followed her from a distance.
Everyone was still in their beds. I was up only because I have been struggling with sleep ever since our fight with Aislinn. Her words were all I could think about. I have not had the courage to tell on her, but I could not let it go either.
Tonight, I had gone out of bed and decided to take a walk in the garden.
Now, I doubted that my decision to come here had been pure coincidence. Sometimes, diviners had visions they did not remember, and I suspected I’d had one about tonight. Running into Aislinn, who was trying to be secretive about wherever she was going, was a message from the high powers; I could not ignore it.
The spring garden was waking up from its death with the coming of a new season. The snow covering all the flowers and plants was slowly fading as the days warmed. At this time of night, it was deserted; not even the gardeners would come here.
It was a perfectly suitable spot and time to do secretive things.
Aislinn walked slowly and quietly. She was a shadow walking among the bushes and the flowers, unmoved by the windless night. When she stopped, she looked over her shoulder to ensure she was alone.
I was hiding behind a bush. She did not see me.
After looking around, she kneeled next to a tall oak tree and started to move her hands slowly as though she was digging. All I could see was her back, but I could not dare to get out of my hiding spot to go nearer since, now and again, she would stop and lift her head to listen to the silence.
I kept watching. I had done my best to ignore the things Aislinn had said. I had tried to pretend she couldn’t have been what I knew she had to be. But now, I could no longer deny it.
Aislinn was here to communicate with someone she was not supposed to.
There was only one conclusion that I could draw from that fact.
Aislinn was a spy.
My mind accepted it as the truth, but deep down, I was frantically searching for another explanation.
As I watched, she finished whatever she was doing. When she leaned forward, I guessed she had found what she had been digging for and when she straightened up, my suspicions were confirmed.
Aislinn held something. It looked like a small, white pebble, but as Aislinn worked on it, it became larger in between her elegant fingers. She worked carefully and quickly.
Soon, she was holding a parchment.
She held the parchment toward the moons and read it quickly underneath their light. Then, as though she’d done this countless times, Aislinn folded the parchment back to the size of a pebble. She lifted it up to her ear, and quickly before I could see the mechanism, she opened her earring and hid the message inside.
Something told me that she would burn that piece of paper in one of the hearths inside the palace.
My heart ached as I watched her efficiency. She was a spy. The earrings I’d seen countless times before, the ones with the golden ring wrapping around a green ball which seemed as though it hovered in the air, untouched by the ring, was a piece of equipment she was using to hide her crimes from everyone at court.
But that was not all of it. As soon as the message she had received disappeared in her earring, Aislinn reached into her other earring and pulled out another pebble. Once again, looking around to make sure no one was watching, she turned back to the ground next to the oak tree and put her message in there.
I stared at her back as Aislinn covered the hole she’d dug. She was efficient. Once she was done burying her response, she got up, cleaned her pants of dust, and covered her hair with her cape.
Then, she was gone.
I waited until I could no longer see or feel her presence and a few more minutes after that. The night was cold as I got up and extended my stiffened arms. It was difficult even to walk toward the spot where Aislinn hid her treasonous message, but I wasn’t sure if it was because my muscles were sore from crouching or because I did not want to see what I was about to see.
I started digging. I did not pause to make sure my fingernails did not break. I did not slow down until I created a big hole. Then, I realized that finding a parchment folded down to the size of a pebble wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, and that told me how many times Aislinn had done this to become so quick at it.
Realizing I’d dug too deep, I started sorting through the dirt I’d already unearthed. I checked every pebble, piece of root, or branch I found, and it took me a long time. When I finally found what I had been searching for, the moons were no longer in the sky.
The sun was coming up. The first light helped me as I quickly unfolded the parchment. In my haste, I had destroyed some small pieces, but when I finally opened the parchment and stared at its content, what I found was clear.
The diviner suspects me. His affection might stop him from turning me in, but it is time for you to share the prophecy. The hero will need our help. The Seelie should know that the prophecy exists. And if you don’t hear from me again, do not be concerned. I will die before I reveal our secrets.
Underneath the message was a long list of names, times, and places. A simple glance at them made me realize that Aislinn was sharing information about the palace, anything she could get her hands on. I did not fully understand what the names and places were, but the times had to be the changing shifts of the guards. Perhaps the places were the locations of the soldiers.
It did not matter. I wasn’t the one who would figure out the secret code behind these messages.
The queen would take care of that once I told her who Aislinn really was.
