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Night in the village, it was said, was the most beautiful sight in the world. No cloud ever shrouded the stars, no rain or mist dimmed the brilliance of the moon. And yet, as dusk fell, the men of the village would hurry back from their fields and workshops, and their families would wait at the door, ready to drive home the iron bolts and throw the shutters across the windows. For the night belonged to other things, not the people that dwelt under the sun and tended the green and growing fields.
It was on a midsummer evening that Asha, the blacksmith’s daughter, was kneeling beside one of the streams that wound through the wooded hills, pooling into calm ponds and tumbling over stones. She was trying to reach a particularly large and beautiful lily that grew on the far side of the brook: the flower had caught her eye, pale petals brilliant in the half-light beneath the trees, and she had decided it would make the perfect token to leave on the grave of her mother.
But the flower remained stubbornly out of reach, and between her attempts to retrieve it and doing her best not to slip into the stream, Asha did not notice the coming night until the lily was in her hand and she saw the new-risen moon shining reflected in the water of the stream.
The blacksmith’s daughter scrambled to her feet—she knew better than to be out after nightfall. Holding tight to the flower, she hurried away from the stream and into the trees, making for the edge of the forest and the village beyond. Every twig that snapped under her feet, every unseen bird that stirred the branches overhead seemed as loud as thunder over the sound of her own heart, and she ran through the forest, flinching away from the branches that reached out to tug at her hair.
So the trees flew past on either side, and she imagined that she saw the glow of her father’s forge through the leaves, when she felt a hand close on her shoulder. She would have fallen, if not for the steadying grip. As it was, she spun, balling her hands into fists, crushing the flower she still held, and faced her attacker.
Standing before her in the forest was the most beautiful woman Asha had ever seen. Her skin was tanned nut-brown, smooth and flawless, and the hair that tumbled loose to her waist was the color of burnished bronze. She was clad in a short green tunic, trimmed with golden thread, and a short bow and quiver were strapped across her back. When she saw the girl drop into a fighting stance, she raised her hands, laughing.
“Peace. Peace, child. My companions and I were hunting in the woods, and I’ve found neither game nor refuge. Might you know of a place where we might rest?”
Asha dropped her hands, feeling small and rough next to the woman. “Well… there’s the village. You should hurry, though: it’s dangerous to be out after dark.”
The huntress raised an eyebrow. “Indeed? How fortunate I found you, then. My companions will be most pleased to have somewhere dry to spend the night. Will you lead us there?”
Asha nodded. How could she refuse? “Of course.”
“Wonderful! I believe I left them this way…”
-x-
As the moon rose overhead and cast silver shadows under the trees, the girl trailed after the woman, letting the lily fall forgotten from her hand, away from the village and deeper into the night.
Bent over his forge, it was more than an hour after nightfall that the blacksmith realized his daughter had failed to return. He spent the longest night of his life pacing the creaking floorboards from his home to his workshop, straining to hear a knock at the door.
The next morning, he went to each house in turn, asking every family if Asha had sought refuge with them during the night. At each house, the villagers shook their heads sadly and sent him on his way. And once he had gone, they turned to one another and said how sad it was that he had lost his only child as well as his wife, for they knew that children out after dark were not seen again.
Asha’s father spent the day in the wooded hills, calling for his daughter and searching the dells and hollows for any sign of her. Once, he came upon a lily, crushed and forlorn, far from the streams in which it grew. But no trace or footprint remained, and even if they had, his work in the forge had left him with little skill as a tracker. So, as dusk fell, he returned to his home, overcome with exhaustion and grief, and his dreams were full of dead-eyed creatures darting from the shadows to drag screaming girls back into the darkness.
He awoke the next morning in a cold sweat, his mind full of stories his father had told before the fire on long winter nights. But, beneath the old fear of darkness and the things that hid in it, there was the beginning of a plan. He spent that day at his forge, making iron ring under his hammer and sparks fly from his anvil. He fashioned an iron collar, large enough to fit around his own neck, and two iron bracers to strap to his wrists. And, as dusk fell, he buckled on the makeshift armor, gathered the last supplies from his store, and walked out of the village and into the fields.
The moon rose late that night, so Asha’s father stood in the darkness, waiting to catch a glimpse or a rustle of movement. But it was not until the moon rose, full and silvery, that he saw them.
There were fewer of them than he had imagined. They moved like wolves, spread out, every step full of menace. Their eyes seemed to glow with malice, and when they smiled, he could see that their teeth were pointed. They had many names, but most were avoided for fear of invoking their wrath: if they had a proper name, it was the Fae, but when the villagers spoke of them, they called them the Fair Folk.
Each one carried a spear of hardened wood, or a short bow and quiver of arrows. Their skin ranged in color from pale as bone to dark as earth, their hair was every color from silver-white to black as pitch. When they caught sight of him, they shrieked with glee, raised their weapons, and charged. But as they drew close, the vanguard flinched and pulled away, keening: iron was their bane, and the armor the smith wore burned them by its very presence. Their glamor, too, faded under iron’s cold touch, and the Fair Folk’s true appearance was revealed. Their skin was ghost-pale, for they never ventured into the sun. Their ears, the smith saw, were as pointed as their teeth, and their hair lost its unearthly sheen. But their eyes still shone malevolently, and they grasped their spears close. Asha’s father extended his arms, palms up.
“Take me to you king.”
One of the Fair Folk, who had appeared red-haired and dark-skinned until she ventured too close to the iron, and whose head was now covered in a tangle of dull brown locks, answered him.
“You would step into our realm willingly? Are you a fool, mortal?”
The smith shrugged. “Take me to you king.”
The Fae watched him a moment longer, than shouldered her bow and turned back to her kin. Shouting orders to them in her own tongue, which no human could hope to understand, she walked off towards the hills. Asha’s father found himself surrounded by Fair Folk. Keeping just out of reach of the iron’s chilling aura, they kept their bows and spears trained on him as they marched over the fields and into the forested hills.
The Fair Folk sang as they marched, songs in their own language that echoed strangely under the trees, seeming to return from every direction. Sometimes, when the sound of snapping twigs or rustling branches could be heard over the clamor, one of the Fae, or a group, would break away from the marchers and fade into the shadows of the forest, reappearing later carrying a deer or fox feathered with arrows.
Their march followed the path of one of the streams, though which one the smith could not say, as it cut its path through the trees. They followed it until the flowing water to its source, a narrow crevasse into the hills. At the mouth of the rift, the Fair Folk halted, and the huntress who had spoken to him before walked back to the smith.
“And now, mortal,” she said, smiling grimly, the King under the Hill calls you to his court.”
As she spoke, the mouth of the crevasse seemed to expand, the rocks sliding soundlessly until it was the mouth of a cave more than large enough to permit entry. The Fair Folk fell silent, and, in double file, they led the smith into the darkness beneath the hills.
No torch or lamp illuminated the paths they followed, but it seemed to the smith that the eyes of his captors glowed dimly in the blackness of the caves. Blinded as he was, he could only stumble after them pressed forward by those behind, hands scraping against the rough stone walls to steady himself.
The Fair Folk were silent as they marched, but, faintly, Asha’s father began to catch the distant sound of music and laughter, and, gradually, the blackness before his eyes lightened to grey. The pace of the marchers increased, and, as the sounds of merriment grew louder, Asha’s father emerged, blinking, into the court of the King under the Hill.
The cavern was enormous, the ceiling stretching beyond the strange lamps that cast light without flame. Huge tables were spread across the hall, each one lined with Fair Folk in the midst of a feast. At the highest table, looking out across the chaos of the court, the king and his queen sat on golden thrones. The huntress marched the smith across the banquet to hall and halted before the high table.
“Sire,” she said, bowing, “We found this mortal in our hunt, and he requested an audience.”
A chuckle swept the hall as she spoke, and the king stood, smiling.
“It would be remiss of us to ignore so willing a subject. Speak, mortal. What business do you have with the King of the Fae?”
Asha’s father glared up at the high table. “Your hunters took my daughter.”
“Quite possibly. Many mortals enjoy our hospitality. What of it?”
“She was taken two nights ago. I want to bargain for her release.”
“Indeed. Where is our newest guest?” The king addressed his question to the hall.
A general murmuring indicated a far table to the smith’s right. Craning his neck, he saw Asha seated among the Fair Folk, dead-eyed, mechanically lifting a goblet to her lips.
“And what, mortal, do you have to offer? Not your life, of course—we already have that,” the King said with a smile.
“Of course.” The smith reached towards the huntress at his side and snatched an arrow from her quiver. He held it aloft, testing the sharpened wooden tip with his thumb. “Metal is far better for weaponry.”
“We cannot use iron, mortal. Do you think me a fool?”
“No.” The smith reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out a few shards of metal, and tossed them towards the high table. One of the Fair Folk caught the shards, flinched, then paused. He held them out towards the king. “It’s not iron, sire.”
“It’s bronze.” Asha’s father spoke calmly. “I can forge weapons and armor for you, if you bring me the metal. But only if you let my daughter go on her way, and make no attempt to lure her back.”
The King under the Hill flipped the shard of bronze from one hand to the other. “I may well hold you to that, mortal. But, if we are to release your child… there is a small matter to attend to. She has tasted our food, drunk of our wine—mortal food can never sustain her now. So, the question is:” he spread his arms and addressed the court. “What shall she eat instead?”
Suggestions flew thick and fast, shouted from the Fair Folk sitting at the tables. Both Asha and her father remained impassive throughout, one due to enchantment, the other to a will as strong as the iron he wore. Some of the ideas—such as raven’s wings—were rejected as cliche, while others, such as the blood of left-handed virgins, were turned down for reasons of practicality.
Holding up a hand to silence the court, the king turned to the woman at his side. “I leave the choice to you, my Queen. What shall the human child eat or drink of when she leaves our halls?”
The queen smiled. “If she would forsake our realm for the mortal one, she shall have more than her share of sorrow. Let her drink tears.”
“So be it. The king clapped his hands. “Take her to the edge of our realm and remove the spell. As for her father…” The smith folded his arms across his chest, iron clinking as he did so. “Take him to mountains and provide him with whatever he needs. He has work to begin…”
As he was marched through the banquet hall and deeper into the caves beneath the hills, Asha’s father caught a final glimpse of the huntress taking his daughter’s hand and leading her into the tunnel to outside world.
-x-
Asha awoke beside the pool she had been preoccupied by the night the Fae had found her. She blinked and stared around her, before the memory of her time under the hill returned in a rush. The details were foggy—she remembered little beyond following the red-haired huntress away from the village, but her last moments with Fair Folk were sharp and clear: she remembered her father appearing in the hall of the King, striking the bargain for her freedom. She remembered him disappearing down the halls into the realm of the Fair Folk. She knew, in a distant sort of way, that she had lost the last of her family at the age of twelve, and yet what she felt most was thirst.
She dipped her hands into the pool, bringing them to her lips. Almost instantly, she spat the water out—the clear spring water tasted brackish and bitter. Let her drink tears…
Asha got to her feet slowly, feeling exhausted. She trudged back towards the village, hardly noticing the clear night sky or the moon that hung shining in the field of stars. She walked until she reached the silent fields and silent streets and the home she shared with her father. The unlocked door swung open under her touch, and she was just able to climb the creaking stairs and fall into her own bed before sleep claimed her.
When she woke, sunlight was streaming through the gaps around the shutters. She sat up, listening, half-expecting to hear the ring of her father’s hammer as he worked in the shop, but there was only silence. Then the vision of her father disappearing into the halls of the Fair Folk returned and she cried, silently, the tears running down her face to pool in the corners of her mouth. They tasted, well, like tears, salty and sharp. Eventually, they dried upon her face, and she rose, turning to open the shutters and see if the new day held anything worthwhile.
But as the morning sun poured into the room, Asha flinched back, throwing up an arm to cover her eyes. The light was harsh, blinding, and she was unable to see clearly until she threw the shutters closed again. She stepped away from the window, wondering what had caused her sudden sensitivity. It seemed unlikely that the sun had changed in her time amongst the Fair Folk—perhaps her eyesight had been altered? At that thought, she remembered the words of the Queen under the Hill, and clattered down the stairs to the kitchen.
While she felt no hunger, she tore a chunk of bread from the loaf that lay abandoned on the table and bit into it experimentally. She spat it out again at once, staring at the loaf. While not particularly fresh, it was plainly good—yet she might have closed her eyes and sworn her mouth was full of ashes.
Letting the bread fall from her hand, Asha began to pace through the house. The Queen, plainly, had meant what she said: human fare no longer suited her. Tears, it appeared, might serve—not her own, of course, no more than she could drink her own sweat, but tears shed by others. The villagers, then. But she could not go to them and explain. They would think her Fae-touched, accursed, and they would be right. No, Asha realized, she would have to become like the Fair Folk themselves: something to be feared, that shunned the day in favor of the night.
For a moment, the thought almost overwhelmed her. But, as her father had taught her, life was a forge: you worked the metal you had, be it bronze, iron, or tin, and what you made of it was your own affair.
So she spent the day waiting for nightfall, doing her best to ignore the dryness in her throat. As the sun set and the villagers returned to their homes, Asha crept out into the half-light of dusk. She would have to wait until night truly fell and the villagers were in their beds, but she was sick of pacing the floorboards.
While she waited, hidden by the shadows from prying eyes, she kept her gaze on the sky. Nightfall was the time to be indoors for most, as she watched the stars appear one by one in the darkening sky, Asha began to think that life spent under them might not be so bad after all. As the silver glow of the moon rose from behind the trees, Asha thought: there was a goddess of the moon, wasn’t there? Or was it a god? The smith’s daughter knew little of the southern gods, other than that her father, when feeling pious, would invoke the name Vulcan. But that was a god of fire and forges, fit for craftsmen. It was by the moon’s light she would spend her life: it was fitting that she gain the moon-god’s favor. So, Asha offered up a prayer to the unknown deity above, then set out to slake her thirst.
She chose a house on the far side of the village, of a family she did not know. Most of the village did business with her father, but at twelve years of age, Asha was not concerned with knowing each of more than two hundred faces. As she hoped, the lock’s iron was its greatest defense: it was meant to keep away the Fair Folk, not intruders such as her. Her small fingers easily lifted the latch, and she slipped inside.
She crept across the floorboards, as silently as she could manage. She knelt by the first bed she found, through a door to the right. Its occupant was a boy, perhaps a little older than herself, face framed by blonde curls. It took Asha a moment to realize she could see clearly despite the darkness, but she had more pressing matters to think of—how to make a sleeping boy cry? She might pinch him, she supposed, but that would likely wake him—something she needed to avoid. She could whisper to him that this family had died of plague or been taken by the Fae, but that seemed too cruel. In the end, she whispered one of the old stories in his ear, one of the autumn tales, best heard on the edge of winter: a tale of tragedy and lost love.
And as Asha whispered, breath fluttering the blonde curls, she saw the first tear roll from the corner of the boy’s eye. Gingerly, she stretched out a finger to catch it before it fell to the mattress. She raised her finger to her lips, slowly. As the drop touched her tongue, her eyes widened. It tasted, not salty, but sweet as cider. She stayed in the silent house, moving her finger from the boy’s cheek to her own lips and back again until her thirst faded and she padded out of the house.
When she emerged, the moon still hung full and silvery overhead—it could not be later than midnight. Asha made her way through the silent streets to her own home, stopping before the doorway. The house, she realized, would not stay empty for long: she should take her leave of the village, find shelter in the woods during the day, and return at night. With a sigh, she entered the house for the last time.
She had planned just to climb the stairs one more time, to get one last look at her room. But, as she walked past her father’s workshop, she plucked a simple iron knife from the rack on the wall, sliding it into the cord around her waist almost without looking at it. After that, she began to see other useful things: a tin cup abandoned on the table, a few fragments of wire on the anvil. On an impulse, she retrieved the bottle of spice wine her father kept for feast days from under his bed, then, with a last glance at the empty house, she set out for the woods.
She found her way to the pool where the lilies grew easily in the moonlight. As she watched the moon reflected in the water, she thought on the night’s events. It had gone well, better than she had hoped: her prayer to the moon goddess had been heard. Clumsily, she pried the bottle of wine open with the iron knife. It was all very well, she decided, to ask for the gods’ assistance. But when a prayer was answered? That deserved an offering. She upended the bottle over the pool, letting half of the deep red wine fall, spreading across the water like a bloodstain.
Asha closed her eyes and tried to find the words, a prayer of thanks to the moon’s shepherd she offered up the wine to, but her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of music drifting through the trees. Her eyes snapped open: that was the sound of the Fae’s marching song. Leaving the bottle to lie, Asha ran through the forest, following the echoing voices.
She had never thought to see the Fair Folk again, not after she had blearily watched them disappear through the side of a hill, heard their laughter as her father was dragged deep into their realm. Now, she thought as she ran through the trees, if she could only find them, follow them back to their kingdom under the Hill, she could sneak through the warren and find her father again, bring him back into the world, not the strange half-life below. But as she ran, twigs snapping under her heels, the sounds of singing drew away, growing fainter and fainter. Until, at last, she stood before a sloping green hill, its face unblemished by cave or crevasse, and heard, echoing under the trees, the sound of distant laughter.
Asha turned away, ignoring the tears stinging her eyes, and walked back to the stream and its pool of lilies. The half-empty wine bottle still lay next to the knife, and the water was clear and unstained once more. She sat down heavily, wondering what to do next.
“All you have to do is ask, you know.”
Asha’s fingers closed on the knife as she spun around, facing the unseen speaker. Perched in a tree a few paces away was the red-haired huntress, knees drawn up to her chest. Her waist-length hair was drawn around her like a cloak, and Asha could just see the tips of pointed ears through the auburn locks.
“All you have to do is ask.” The Fae woman repeated.
Asha advanced towards the tree, slowly, holding the iron knife out in front of her.
“Ask for what?”
“This isn’t your world. Not any longer.” The huntress smiled. “Your home is under the Hill, now. If you want it back… all you have to do is ask.”
Asha walked forward, holding the blade like a talisman. As she approached the tree, she saw the huntress change, her hair receding into a mop of dusty brown, her legs looking less long, less elegant. The huntress hissed, showing pointed teeth, and somersaulted out of the tree, landing lightly outside the iron’s aura.
“Do you think” said the smith’s daughter, voice trembling with rage, “Do you think that I have forgotten who did this to me?” She threw the dagger, clumsily, but the Fae was already gone, and her mocking laughter was all that remained.
-x-
Over time, Asha acclimated to the night life. She made her home in a limestone cave, set into the side of a hill. She hoped when she found it that she had stumbled upon a way into the realm of the Fair Folk, but it was little more than a hollow in the rock, with an entrance just wide enough for her to slip inside. But it was a dark place, away from prying eyes, where she could wait out the hours of blinding daylight.
She began each night’s work with an invocation of the unknown moon goddess, then padded into the village to slake her thirst. She tried to choose a different house each night: she had learned to open with the knife and wire locks that her fingers couldn’t reach, and she repeated all the old sad autumn tales until they wore tracks in her tongue. She caught the tears in the tin cup as she spoke, and drank the sweet liquid when she was back under the stars.
Asha ended each night’s work with another prayer, of thanks this time, to the goddess who watched over her. She had built an altar from loose stones from her cave, in the clearing near the lily pool, and she left offerings there when she could. After the last of her father’s wine was gone, she had been at a loss for any suitable sacrifice, until, one night, she had succumbed to temptation and stolen a bottle of wine from the house she visited. The next night, walking past the same house on the trip through the village, she had found an iron mug filled with strong red wine outside the door. After that, similar offerings began to appear in front of more doors, mostly of families she had visited more than once. She had, apparently, become another monster in the night to be placated.
If any of the villagers had chanced to see her, stalking through the moonlight, they would not have argued the description. Two years under the stars had bleached her skin pale as a Fae’s, her brown hair had grown long and tangled, and her dress was more of a skirt, hacked off roughly just below her knees. She had grown taller, too, and more muscled, strength taken from a life outdoors.
Having finished her night’s work, Asha was kneeling before the altar, about to pour a measure of brown liquor she couldn’t identify onto the stones.
“That seems a terrible waste of a good drink.”
The girl’s head jerked upwards. A woman stood before her in the clearing, her silver dress seeming to glow in the reflected moonlight. She was taller than Asha, her skin was tan, and her black hair was tied into a simple plait behind her head. She looked, the girl realized, like the southerners whose armies (which they called legions) sometimes marched through the village, gleaming in scarlet and gold.
Before the smith’s daughter could think of something to say, the woman walked forward, plucked the cup from her hands, and took a sip.
“Hmm. Are you sure this isn’t for tanning hides?” She shrugged and emptied the cup onto the altar. As the liquid splashed onto the stones, she said. “For years, now I’ve listened to prayers—the most devoted and regular I’ve heard this far north—from this forest, and yet I’ve never once been called by name.”
With a shock, Asha realized who was standing before her. She bowed her head, averting her eyes, and replied “I never knew your name, oh Goddess.”
The moon goddess’s laugh was like a hunting horn, loud and clear. She extended a hand drew the awestruck girl to her feet. “Diana will do, never fear.”
“Diana.” Asha tested the name on her tongue. “That’s your name?”
“One of them. If you wish to hear them all, I fear we would be here for days. But I would know your name, as well.”
Asha blushed. She was speaking to a goddess, and she had not thought to do something as simple as introduce herself. “I am called Asha, Godd—Diana.”
“Then well-met, Asha. Now tell me, why do you live under my gaze and that of the moon, and not those of my brother and the sun?”
The girl hesitated. “It is a long story, I’m afraid.”
Diana shrugged. “Best begin, then.” She sat down, cross-legged, on one side of the makeshift altar.
Asha did likewise, seating herself across from the goddess, and began her tale. She had told it before, once or twice, to coax tears from those left unmoved by the traditional stories. But speaking to the goddess was different: she was awake, alert and attentive, and her bright eyes never left Asha’s own, even when the girl’s own focus wavered as she recalled one half-forgotten detail or another. And, Asha noticed, she never cried.
The sky overhead was growing pale as Asha finished her account of the previous two years of her life. “And now,” she said, letting her voice fall out of the gentle cadence she used when reciting a story, “you all know all there is to know of me. But I know nothing more than your name. Please, tell something of yourself.”
Diana laughed. “All? I think you sell yourself too cheaply, Asha.” She looked up at the sky and the creeping dawn. “I think any tales of mine will have to wait until next time.” She smiled. “Because there will be a next time, I think.”
Asha nodded her acceptance, and when she raised her head again, she was alone in the clearing. But instead of returning to her cave, she watched the sky for almost an hour, until dawn began in earnest and the moon faded from sight.
From then on, Asha hurried back to the village each night, eager to make her nightly offering and call to Diana. And, more often than not, the goddess would appear, from wherever Asha’s back was turned to, and they would while away night. Sometimes they would sit in the clearing and talk, Diana telling stories of the hunts she had lead and the affairs of the gods, Asha reciting old legends that the goddess never seemed to have heard before.
Other times, when Asha had business in the forest, Diana would walk with her, watching silently as she dug out the entrance to her cave or listened for the songs of the Fair Folk. She had asked Diana if she knew where their realm might be found, but the goddess had spread her hands with a shrug and said that she knew nothing of what lived underground, far from the light of the moon.
So a year passed, and Asha grew taller, and her skirt became more of a tunic, and her hair grew into yet more of a tangle, and it seemed to her that every night she spent less time whispering in darkness and more laughing under the stars.
One night, Diana appeared clad in a short silver tunic instead of her usual dress, a curved hunting knife hanging from the cord around her waist.
“Your hair” she said to Asha as she sat down and drew the knife “Would disgrace a satyr.” She pointed to her own lap. “Lie down and I’ll do the best I can.”
Asha obeyed, laying her head in the goddess’s lap, and as Diana trimmed the worst of the tangles away with her blade and combed the rest away with her fingers, she told the smith’s daughter of her huntresses, women who had sworn themselves to her and taken the same oath she had: to devote their lives not to a lover but to their craft, to be, eternally, maidens of the hunt.
When Asha felt Diana return the knife to her belt, she expected to be asked to rise. Instead, Diana merely kept speaking, running her fingers through the girl’s hair, telling her now of Vulcan and his constant efforts to catch his fickle wife and her lover. Asha listened until, lulled by the goddess’s voice and by her touch, she fell quietly asleep.
She awoke the next evening in her cave, unable to remember how she had gotten there. Then, recalling how she and Diana had spent the night before, she ran a hand through her own brown hair. It was shorter, much shorter, ending just above the nape of her neck in the back and lying lightly on her forehead in the front. Asha smiled: it was a hunter’s cut, meant to keep long hair from interfering with a crucial bow-shot or spear-cast.
-x-
It was just after she returned Asha to her cave, as she rejoined the chariot that drew the moon across the sky, that Diana’s brother found her.
He was clad, as always, in brilliant golden armor, and he greeted her with a solemn “Hail, Artemis Apaturos.”
Diana laughed. “Feeling formal, little brother? That has not been my name for a long time, even by our reckoning. And why do you call me Guardian of Secrets?”
“Because, sister, I believe you are keeping something hidden.”
“Well then, Apollo the Oblique, why don’t you tell me troubles you?”
Apollo spoke slowly. “The moon has been fickle of late. It wanders, and sends less than the full of measure of its light. It lacks direction. It is almost as if your chariot was without a driver, sister.”
Diana’s voice was calm, icily so. “Are you accusing me of forsaking my duties, brother?”
Apollo shook his head. “Not for the world. We are family, after all.” He stepped closer and reached out, plucking something from the front of Diana’s tunic. He held it up to eye level: a single, long brown hair. “All I ask is that you remember your oath, sister.”
Diana pushed his hand away. “I have not forgotten it. You worry needlessly, Apollo.”
“I hope so.”
Diana climbed into her chariot, and with a rattle of reins the two siblings parted ways.
-x-
After Asha’s haircut, the nightly offering became a discarded ritual. By the time Asha returned from quenching her thirst, Diana would be waiting for her. Even when, for a year, Asha decided to give her own village a respite from nightmares and wandered from camp to town to city across the roads, Diana would always be waiting in the shadowed glen or beneath the rocky overhang the smith’s daughter had chosen to shelter in.
They no longer sat across from one another when they spoke. Diana would sit cross-legged, as she always had, but Asha would lie with her head in the goddess’s lap, and Diana would stroke the girl’s hair without seeming to realize what she was doing. The told fewer tales, as well, preferring to speak of whatever came to mind. For Asha, that often meant her father.
“I never understood his hands,” the girls said one night, examining her own. They were slender and pale, and each one was scarred: her left, across the back of her thumb, her right, directly across the palm, both reminders of times her blade had slipped from a particularly difficult lock. “They were strong, strong enough to make a hammer I could never lift dance—but when he put the hammer down, when he was cutting bread or lighting a fire, he was just a sure as if he was beating iron into shape. “
“Elegance isn’t the absence of strength, Asha.” Diana said thoughtfully. “It’s knowing how much you have, and how to use it.”
Asha nodded. She could feel the muscles in the goddess’s legs beneath her head, feel the strength in her fingers, and Diana was nothing if not elegant.
“What was that?” the goddess asked after several minutes of silence.
“Nothing.” Asha said, a little guiltily, and swallowed the sound that rose in the back of her throat the next time Diana’s fingers brushed across her spine.
Asha crept silently up the darkened stairs, keeping close to the wall. She was sixteen, and had returned to the village where she was born. It had grown in her absence: houses like this one had been built at the edges, extending the streets into the fields. She reached the top of the stair and crept into the bedroom, tin cup already in hand. Two people were asleep in the bed. The man’s arm was around the woman’s shoulder, and as Asha stood over them, she wondered why the scene felt so familiar. Then, as she leaned closer, and her breath fluttered the blonde curls on the man’s forehead, she recognized him. He was the boy she had found when she was twelve, the one who had given her the first sweet tears she had ever tasted. The woman beside him had to be his wife: he was of marrying age, after all.
And that meant, Asha thought after a moment, that she was as well. She tried to think back to the boys she had known in the village, or the countless sleeping men she had knelt beside over the years, but she could not recall a single face. Instead, her mind drifted to a pair of tan arms, slender and strong, a nimble finger twining through her hair, and a pair of eyes that shone like starlight, gazing down into her own.
Asha decided to go thirsty that night. She was not so fond of the sweetness of tears that she could not bear to go one night without, and it suddenly seemed more important that she return to the altar in the clearing before Diana did.
Asha was sitting cross-legged against a tree when Diana appeared. If the goddess was surprised to see Asha there already, it did not show. She merely smiled, lifting the lily Asha had left on the altar, and took a seat opposite Asha.
She raised an eyebrow at the young woman. “Something you wanted to talk about?”
Asha shook her head. “No. I just thought… we could try things differently tonight. Reverse the usual way.”
She tensed. If Diana asked why, she didn’t think she could give a coherent answer.
But instead, the goddess nodded, stretched herself out on the forest floor, and laid her head in the young woman’s lap. Her hair was tied back in her usual plait, preventing Asha from running her fingers through the black locks, so Asha let her hands brush Diana’s neck, fingers skimming over silk-soft skin.
They spoke very little that night. Asha, for her part, found it difficult to focus on anything beyond the movement of her hands, fearful of letting her fingers slip. Diana, meanwhile, seemed perfectly contented with the silence. Her eyes were closed, her breath slow and untroubled, and Asha realized with surprise that the goddess had fallen asleep.
Just before dawn, Diana opened her eyes, blinked, and smiled up at the young woman.
“That was wonderful. Thank you.” She rose, gave Asha a chaste kiss on the crown of her head, and was gone.
After that, their nightly routine grew more varied. Diana began to wear her hair down, some nights, and they switched positions as the mood took them. Though, in truth, it was Diana’s whims that guided them: Asha was more than willing to acquiesce to the goddess’s wishes. And if Apollo noticed the moon’s wanderings, or that, sometimes, a full moon followed a crescent, or a new moon a gibbous, he said nothing.
In some ways, those years were the happiest of Asha’s life. Part of her—the part that purred when Diana’s fingers brushed her spine, and thrilled in the softness of her skin, and wanted to lean down and kiss Diana when she fell asleep in her arms—reveled in each and every night. But to another part, the part that swallowed the sound, and kept her fingers from drifting too far, and kept her from bending her head, each night was hell.
Because, Asha knew, that her feelings could never be returned. The goddess had taken a vow never to know the touch of a lover, and if she ever knew that the blacksmith’s daughter longed to be exactly that, they would part ways forever.
And so, Asha could lie in Diana’s lap, and stroke her hair, but she could do no more. For a year, Asha thought that she could be content with that. She grew no taller, and when her hair was long again, instead of cutting it, Diana taught her how to tie it back like her own, keeping it out of her eyes and free of tangles. And each night Asha tasted the tears, she found their sweetness a little less appealing, and the distant songs of the Fair Folk a little louder.
For a year after that, Asha thought she could bear it. Bear the sickly sweet taste, bear the secret she kept from Diana. And every night, the part of her that wanted to take the goddess in her arms and think of the consequences later grew a little stronger, her restraining voice a little weaker, the Fae marching songs a little louder.
-x-
It was on a frigid night in midwinter, staring up at the roof of her cave as dawn broke outside, that Asha realized she had been wrong: she couldn’t be content with what she had, couldn’t bear to keep the secret any longer. She would, she realized, have to confess to Diana: no matter how likely that was to end in disaster.
It took her the better part of six months to work up the courage to speak. Six months of swallowing the over-sweet tears, six months of listening to the Fair Folk’s songs echoing under the trees, six months to rehearse what she meant to say.
In the end, Asha chose a soft summer evening for her final night with Diana. The goddess was waiting for her when she reached the clearing, smiling as always.
Instead of going to her immediately, Asha walked to the pool, where the lilies grew thick and full. The young woman plucked seven of the pale flowers, then crossed the clearing and knelt behind the goddess. She laid a hand on Diana’s back, stopping her from reclining into her lap. Then, carefully, she began to thread the flowers through Diana’s hair, braiding them into the dark locks. When she was done, she spent a long moment, eyes closed, breathing in the mingled scents of the lilies and Diana.
Then she rose and began, nervously, to pace the clearing. Diana watched her for a moment, then stood, looking worried.
“Something’s troubling you. What’s wrong?”
Asha said nothing until the goddess stepped in front of her, stopping her transit of the grove. Then, looking up into Diana’s eyes, she whispered “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“You.”
Diana blinked. “Why? I would never harm you.”
“Because you’re beautiful. Because I want to hold you in my arms. To feel you. To taste you. Because I love you.”
The goddess stood, open-mouthed. Asha held up a hand. “Please, don’t say anything. I don’t think I could start again if I stopped.”
The young woman walked to the pool and dipped her hand into the water. “You know, I used to dream about what I would eat if I could,” she said as the liquid ran through her fingers. “Warm bread, chilled wine, smoked meat. Now, I all I really want is a taste of pure, clear water.”
She shook her head and walked back to the confused goddess. “I’m tired, Diana. I’m tired of sad stories told in the dark and cloying sweetness of tears. I’m tired of wanting things I can never have. The Fae have been calling to me. And I think I’m going to answer. I can’t have you but I can have real food. Or something that tastes like it, at least.” She looked up, and Diana could see the tears in her eyes. “Loving you is easy, Diana. And I thought that would be enough. But it wasn’t. It isn’t. Maybe I’m just greedy, but… I want to be loved, too. And I know you can’t do that. So I have to leave. Because having you so close…” Asha shook her head. Her tears were beginning to fall. “I just can’t stand it.”
“You don’t have to go back to the Fae. You could go south, become a handmaiden in one of my temples…” Diana knew her voice sounded pleading.
Asha sighed. “And then what? Lay flowers at the feet of your statue? Trade the warmth of you for the coldness of stone?”
“You could learn to fight, join my huntresses.”
“And then there would be two sets of vows separating you from me. No. I’m sorry, Diana. But I just can’t.” she turned away.
“Wait. Please.” The goddess laid a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. Asha turned.
“This is… I… I need time to think.” Diana stammered. “Will wait just one more night? For me?”
Asha’s eyes were still full of unshed tears. She nodded, once, then blinked, and when she opened her eyes, Diana was gone.
-x-
“What I don’t understand,” said Apollo, “is why you came to me. Isn’t this Venus’s field?”
Diana shook her head, pacing as she spoke. “You’re family. And I’d never hear the end of this from her. Especially not after I argued with her over the Sappho affair. “
“True. But, sister, what do you want me to say? I can’t tell you your own heart.”
Diana glared at her younger brother. “Try.”
Apollo sighed and began ticking off points on his fingers. “You’ve spent every night, near enough, of the past five years with this girl. Most of the time, you’ve been touching each other. Now, she’s told you that she loves you and, because she no longer bear to have you just out of reach, she intends to join the Fair Folk in their caves and never venture into moonlight again. You then come to me for advice, desperate to find some way to stop her leaving, delaying the moonrise to do so.” Apollo paused, then added, as an afterthought. “And you’re still wearing the flowers she braided in your hair.”
Diana blinked. “I never said Asha did that.”
“No, but every time you say her name you touch the one just above your left ear.” Apollo grinned at her, a lopsided little smile that never seemed to make it onto his statues. “I don’t know about you, but the answer looks fairly obvious from where I’m standing.”
His sister nodded, slowly. “But even I do…I can’t…” She was turning into a stuttering fool, she knew. She just couldn’t say it. “I took an oath, Apollo.”
“Hang your oath. Greater gods than you or I have broken greater oaths, and the world hasn’t ended. Besides…” Apollo shrugged. “You’ve looked happier in the past few years than I’ve ever seen you. I saw that when I came to tell you the moon had been straying.”
Diana took a deep breath. “All right. But what I am supposed to do now?”
Apollo gave her a calculating look.
“So, you know how you feel?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love her?”
Another deep breath. “Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I… I love her.”
Apollo stood, placing his hand on his sister’s shoulders. “Then love her.”
-x-
Asha leaned close to the sleeping woman as she whispered the old tale in her ear. It was an autumn’s tale, the same one that earned her the first taste of tears.
“But a storm rose in the mountains, and fell upon his ship as he waited at anchor, awaiting the arrival of his beloved. And in the night, the storm snapped the ropes and drove his ship out to sea. And when dawn came, he saw the shore receding over the horizon and cursed the ship that bore him away. And then he leapt into the sea, like an arrow from the string, and swam for shore, his hair flashing above the waves like the wings of a swan. But if he ever reached it, and was reunited with she whom he loved, no word of it ever reached this land.”
Standing outside with her half-full cup, Asha looked up at the sky. The moon had yet to rise, and the stars were the only points of light in blackness overhead. It was seven years now she had lived under those stars. She threw the contents of the cup down her throat, resenting every drop that clung to her tongue, then let the cup fall. Seven years was enough. Asha pulled the knife and wire from her belt as well. She would not need them again after tonight. Then, she trudged back to the grove and the altar, hoping that Diana would at least come to say goodbye.
Asha had expected to spend the night pacing the clearing, waiting for Diana’s arrival. But when she arrived, she found she was too tired to anything more than slump against a tree, head bowed. She looked up when she heard footsteps in the clearing. Diana always appeared soundlessly, so Asha was only slightly surprised when she looked up into the face of the Fae huntress.
She had not bothered with a glamor, this time, and her pointed teeth showed as she smiled. “Have you decided, then? To finally forsake this world for the one where you belong?”
Asha shrugged. “Not yet.”
“Ah, yes. Still waiting for your goddess. Are you hoping she’ll give herself to you yet? Well, you’re in good company.”
Asha sighed. She was too tired to argue, and she had left her iron in the village.
“She’s had suitors before, you know,” the huntress continued ruminatively. “Gods. Heroes. Men.” She emphasized the last word ever so slightly. “But perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you are different from all the others.”
Asha glared up at the huntress. “What do you want with me, Fae?”
“Before, I invited you into our kingdom. You accepted. But then? You rejected our hospitality. Rejected my hospitality. And you fled here, to this scrub of trees. But I know you remember what life was, under the Hill.”
The Fae’s eyes seemed to glow as she spoke. “The great halls, filled with laughter, the feasts with tables groaning under their burdens. And always, always, the sound of music. You had all of that, and yet you chose to spend your life in a hole in the ground.” The huntress extended a hand. Her fingers were long, as pale as Asha’s own. “Isn’t it time to end this? To return to the place where you belong?”
“No.” Asha shook her head. “I promised her I would wait one more night.”
The huntress sat down across from the young woman, smiling faintly. “Of course. What could I have been thinking?”
The clearing lapsed into silence. Asha kept her eyes on the sky, watching for the moon. But the Fae’s yellow eyes were closed in concentration. The spell she was preparing was a simple one, one that her kind had used for centuries. Time, it was said, waited for no man, but if the Fair Folk had been asked for their opinion, they would have said it didn’t need to. What mattered, the Fair Folk knew, was how time was perceived, and that was as fragile as glass and as shifting as sand.
If Asha had been watching the Fae, she might have seen her lips moving slightly as she composed her spell, seen her frown of concentration as she prepared. But Asha had eyes only for the sky. And so, when the huntress breathed out and the spell was complete, the night passed before the young woman’s eyes in an instant.
“She didn’t come.” Asha stared up unbelieving at the sky that, in her eyes, was moving towards dawn. “I waited for her, and she never came.”
“No. She didn’t. But now… isn’t it time we got you home?” The huntress stood and extended her hand for the second time in five minutes. This time, though, Asha took it, and allowed the Fae to draw her to her feet and lead her away into the night.
-x-
Her conversation with Apollo had taken longer than she meant it to, so it was after midnight when Diana arrived in the grove. The goddess was nervous, tightly wound: she didn’t know what she would say, how Asha’s hair in her fingers would feel, now. She started speaking almost before she appeared.
“Asha, I—” She stopped. The clearing was empty.
Diana walked to Asha’s cave, and found it as empty as the grove. She walked into the streets of the village, listening for the sound of the young woman’s voice as she whispered stories in the ear of a sleeping villager. Eventually, she walked back the clearing.
The goddess paced around the pile of stones in the clearing, the altar that Asha had built when she was twelve and needed the assistance of a goddess to make it through each night. The grove had been Asha’s home, the place where she belonged, far more than the cave she slept through the days in. Not seeing her there felt…wrong, like the world had shifted around her. Diana shook herself. She was a goddess, not just of the moon, but of the hunt. There was nowhere Asha could be that she could not find.
She drew in a breath, held it, tasting the air. Asha’s scent was there, and a faint trace of flowers, the same scent the clung to Diana’s hair. And there was… something else…
Diana followed the three scents out of the clearing, through the forest, until she came to the sloping side of a hill. A stream ran out from a crevasse in the rock, and the scents vanished abruptly. Diana halted, confused. The trail simply stopped, as if the source had disappeared from the face of the earth. But one scent remained, lingering: the scent of a lily.
She found the flower, lying on the ground near the crevasse, crushed as if trodden on. Diana held it to her face: there was a trace, just a trace, of Asha there: the scent of peaches. But Asha was gone. The flower remained.
The goddess carried the flower back to the clearing. She took in its scent one last time, then laid it on the pile of stones. It lay there, broken and forlorn. Diana stared at it for a long moment. Then, she fell to her knees before her own altar, and burst into tears.
For the first time, it stormed that night. The stars and moon vanished behind heavy dark clouds, lightning cracked across the sky, and the rain poured down in sheets. Under the Hill, the Fair Folk peered out into the darkness and decided, just once, it would be better to stay in tonight. In the village, people woken from their slumber by the crack thunder muttered placations to the gods and shivered behind their locked doors.
And in a sacred grove marked only by a small pile of stones, a maiden goddess wept for her lost love.