Summerkin (2 page)

Two

The Lady Tree was where the Lady of the Summerlands lived, an immensely tall beech with a straight trunk covered in silvery-smooth bark. At the base of the tree, the trunk was so wide that six badger-men could hold hands around it and still not span its girth. It was so tall that it towered over the rest of the forest. Overhead were spreading branches tipped with leaves, turning the light a dappled green. In the lower branches perched the wood-shingled tree house where Fer lived, and other houses, and ladders hanging from branches down to the ground, and swaying rope bridges leading from one platform to another. A whole tree village.

If she closed her eyes, Fer could feel a faint thread of connection to every one of the people who lived in that tree village and in the rest of the Summerlands, a thread just like the connection she felt to the land itself. It was her belonging; it meant she was home.

As Fer stepped out of the forest, one of her wolf-guards came bounding over the grass toward her. It was Fray—brown-haired, sharp-toothed, and rangy tall. All of the people of the Summerlands were people, but they had a wild part—a tree part, or a flower part, or an animal part. Fray was a person, but she had a little bit of wolf in her too, and it made her fierce and brave and loyal, perfect for guarding and fighting. Fray was only a little bit older than Fer, but she wasn't a friend. She was way too serious about her duties for that.

“Lady Gwynnefar!” Fray panted, coming to stand before Fer. She bowed. “You've returned!”

Fer felt a smile bubbling up, and she grinned at Fray. “I have!” It was so, so good to be home. But then the weight of the deep-forest kin's disappointment settled onto her shoulders. “Fray, I saw the deep-forest kin.”

Fray's eyes widened. “They came all this way to swear their oaths to the new Lady, didn't they?”

Fer nodded and pulled her long braid around to tug at the end, nervous. “I didn't let them.” She held her breath, waiting for Fray's reaction. Had she done the right thing?

Fray stared. “They asked to swear their oaths and you said no?”

Fer's heart sank. “That's right. I said no.”

“But Lady,” Fray protested. “You must take their oaths—and ours, too.”

“Fray,” Fer said, frustrated, “it doesn't make any sense. When you had to swear oaths to the Mór, it was a terrible thing.” Really terrible. All of the people in the Summerlands had been slaves to the Mór, bound by their oaths to serve her, even though she was evil. “Why do you want to be bound like that again? It's
wrong
.”

“No,” Fray said stubbornly. “It's right. We need oaths to keep us together.”

Fer shook her head. “But I feel connected to all of you!”

“No,” Fray repeated. “It's supposed to be the other way.”

“What way?” Fer asked.

Fray stared mutely at her, as if Fer was just supposed to
know
.

And maybe a true Lady
would
know.

Frustrated, Fer turned away and headed toward the ladder that led to her tree house. Fray trotted after her. At the tree, Fer started up the ladder, then paused, looking down. Fray looked up beseechingly at her, and Fer felt the wolf-girl's confusion. “I'm sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I just can't take oaths the way the Mór did.”

She hurried up the ladder, Fray following. As Fer reached her house on its platform, a swarm of fat golden bees swirled out the door and buzzed loudly around her head. Startled, Fer flinched away from them and felt Fray's strong hand at her back, keeping her from falling right off the platform. A bee zipped past her nose; another one bumbled into her ear, buzzing loudly. Fer gasped a very unladylike
“Eep!”

“It's all right,” Fray said. “They're the Lady's bees.”

Fer brushed a bee away from her face. “Mine?”

“They were your mother's bees,” Fray explained. “The Lady Laurelin's. They never came for the Mór, but they're here for you. They can talk, but the only one who can understand them is . . .” She paused and gave Fer a significant glance. “. . . the Lady. You, that means. You see, Lady Gwynnefar?” Fray went on. “The bees showing up like this, it means you're the Lady, and you need to let all your people swear our oaths to you.”

That was
not
what it meant. Fer shrugged Fray's hand off her back and ducked inside her house to drop off her bow and quiver full of arrows. Then she headed up the ladder that led from her house platform, climbing higher and higher into the tree where nobody would follow.

When she got to a high branch she swung off the ladder and, balancing carefully, crawled out a little way and lay down. Closing her eyes, feeling the branch solid under her back, she reached out to feel the land.
Her
land. It was mostly forest, the trees like a leafy ocean washing up over hills, pooling in shady valleys. She felt the Lady Tree itself, stretching its graceful branches up to catch the summer sun's rays, pushing its roots ever deeper into the ground. And it was wild, all of it—a wild and untamed land that would never be turned into neat, square cornfields.

She heard the sound of buzzing and opened her eyes. The bees had joined her, swirling lazily over her head. “Hello, bees,” she said.

The bees swarmed around her with a sound like drowsy summer afternoons in her grandma's lavender fields. But these weren't honeybees, not like Grand-Jane's bees. In the greeny-gold light of the tree, the Lady's bees looked like plump golden bullets, each with a vicious stinger at its back end. Fer strained to listen, trying to hear words in their humming.

Hmmmmmm-zzzm-zzm-zm
went the bees, round and round. Fer closed her eyes. Nothing. She listened harder. A breeze blew and the leaves whispered, but if the bees said anything, Fer couldn't understand what it was.

Hmmmm-zmm-rrrm-zm
, the bees grumbled.

From way down below came the faint sound of growling, a shout and a shriek, and then three fierce barks.

Fer's eyes popped open. Did she know a dog who barked like that? A dog who might be down there fighting with the wolf-guards?

The bees spun out of their orbit around her, and Fer let them go, sitting up and peering down. She was so high in the tree that she couldn't see much, just a few of her people moving around, two of them at the edge of a platform looking up at her. The fox-girls—Twig and her sister, Burr—both of them short and thin as saplings, with reddish hair. Fer waved at them, and they waved back, then pointed at the tree's wide trunk. She looked over at the ladder and saw a dark form coming up, the top of a black-haired head. The form became a person, who swung off the ladder and onto the branch above hers.

“Rook!” Fer hadn't seen him since she'd become the Lady back in the early spring.

He crouched and glared down at Fer. “Stupid wolves,” he growled.

Rook wore ragged shorts and nothing else; his hair was tangled, and his bare legs were muddy and scratched, as if he'd been running through a bramble patch. He had scars on his arms and shoulder from the wolf bites he'd gotten while serving the Mór. They looked like jagged white slashes against his tan skin.

Without saying hello, Rook lay down on the branch. He glanced at her, and she grinned at him.

“Don't be looking at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?” she asked, still smiling.

“I don't know. As if you're glad to see me.”

“I
am
glad to see you,” Fer said. “You're my best friend.”

He stared at her. “No, I'm not. I'm a puck.”

Before, when she had first met him, Rook had been oath-bound to the Mór, the false Lady who had ruled this place after she killed Fer's mother—and that meant he'd been like the Mór's slave and had to obey her every order. Rook had sworn those oaths to save his puck-brother Phouka's life. Even so, he had found a way to help Fer defeat the Mór, though he had almost died doing it. With the Mór defeated and gone from the Summerlands, Rook had been freed from his oaths—he was a puck unbound. Grand-Jane had warned Fer that this Rook would be a different creature entirely from the Rook Fer had known before.
Don't trust him
, Grand-Jane had said with a dire frown.
He is a puck, and that means it is his nature to be false, a liar and a trickster. He is not your friend
.

“I missed you,” Fer found herself saying. “What have you been up to?”

Rook shrugged.

She shrugged back at him, crossed her eyes, and grinned.

He turned his face away, but she caught a glimpse of a smile.

Fer had heard Grand-Jane's warnings, but she couldn't help the happiness that bubbled up inside her. He could be surly and rude, but that was what made him Rook, and the Rook she knew was a true friend. “Well,” she went on. “Why have you come back?”

He looked as if he was weighing a decision. Then he dug in the pocket of his ragged shorts and pulled out a packet of paper. “I met a messenger,” he said, “and I offered him a ride in my horse form.”

As a puck, Rook had a shifter-tooth that turned him into a black dog when he put it under his tongue, and he had a bit of shifter-bone that turned him into a horse.

“So where is this messenger now?” Fer asked.

“He accepted the ride,” Rook said, shooting her an evil grin.

Uh-oh. “What did you do with him, Rook?” she asked sternly.

Rook shrugged. “He's all right. If he can swim. He was bringing you this.” He tossed the packet of paper toward her.

Fer reached out to catch it and felt herself slipping. She grabbed the packet out of the air and with her other hand clung to the branch; her head spun, and her stomach lurched, and below her she saw a whirl of branches and leaves and empty space. It was a long way to the ground. When she righted herself, she found Rook was watching her, a gleam of mischief in his flame-bright eyes.

He'd done that on purpose, thrown the paper so she'd reach for it and almost fall. Grand-Jane's warning echoed in her head:
He is not your friend
.

“See?” Rook said. “Puck.”

“Puck or not,” Fer grumbled to herself, “you're still my friend.” With shaking hands, she unfolded the paper and saw that it was a letter that had been sealed with a blob of scented golden wax stamped with a foxglove flower. A good medicinal herb, foxglove, if used properly, but deadly poison in larger doses. A strange choice for a seal. She wondered whose it was. The seal was broken and the paper smudged and wrinkled. “You read this?”

Rook lay back on his branch again and closed his eyes. “So what if I did?”

Fer took a deep breath and didn't answer. She read the letter.

 

To Gwynnefar of the Summerlands, greetings from the High Ones.

We have received word that you defeated the Mór, who was your mother the Lady Laurelin's betrayer and who stained the land with blood, and that you have cleansed the land of this stain. We have been told, too, that your father was one Owen, a human man.

We are aware that you have the ability to open the Way between the human world and our own lands, and a Lady's glamorie, and that you have a Lady's power to feel the Summerlands and its people. And we hear also that you are a healer of some note.

You would claim to be Lady of the Summerlands, yet you yourself are a human usurper until you have proven yourself worthy to us, the High Ones who rule over all the Lands.

Thus we summon you at once to the nathe, where you may compete with those who would also claim the right to rule the Summerlands. Should you fail to win this competition, you will be cast back into the human world and the Way to our lands closed to you forever.

 

“Wait,” Fer muttered. “They say I have to prove myself?” She read the letter again. It sounded bad. As if the High Ones, whoever they were, didn't believe she was really the Lady, even though the Summerlands sang in her blood, and she felt a spiderweb thread of connection to every one of the people who lived here. “What's the
nathe
?” she asked Rook, not sure if he would answer or not.

Rook hopped from his branch to crouch next to her. “It's the High Ones' court,” he answered. “It's where they live.”

And the High Ones ruled over all the Lords and Ladies and all the lands on this side of the Way, it sounded like. Fer frowned. If she ignored the letter, she risked losing the Summerlands and its people, and she couldn't bear that, not after all she'd done to free them from the Mór, not when being here felt so
right
. But proving herself in a competition? She shivered. Still . . . “I have to go, don't I?”

“You do, yes,” Rook said, his voice quiet, without a trace of mischief in it.

She looked over at him, straight into his eyes. She could easily see the wildness in him, and the darkness. He was a puck, yes. He followed no rules but his own. But that didn't matter. She'd saved his life three times, and he'd risked his life again to help her defeat the Mór. He was the best friend she'd ever had. “Will you come with me?” she asked.