Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She found him at the edge of the wood. A wounded rabbit, white as snow, and bleeding half to death. Margaret didn’t even know he was alive until he twitched away as she knelt. One leg was badly torn, soft white stained red and shining in the light of her lamp. 

“Poor thing,” she said, although she knew very well the kind of things that came out of those woods. Margaret knelt next to it, pressing two fingers to slow the heaving ribs. Rabbits were difficult...they’d kill themselves out of fear, if given half a chance. "I don't plan on killing you," she murmured, letting reassurance spill down her arm like honey. "Still now, quiet now." The little rabbit quieted, his eyes no longer rolling with fear. Margaret found herself caught by those eyes, black as olives and bright with pain. She could have sworn she saw intelligence there too, a kind of searching look as if to ask, can I trust you?

But he laid his head down a moment later, eyes drifting shut. Margaret emptied her basket of wild parsley, down to the cloth laid at the bottom. She took a moment to survey the wound, how best to lift him without making the bleeding worse. Finally she worked one hand under his hind legs and the other under his shoulder, holding the nearly severed leg in place with her thumb and laying him quickly in the basket. Her patient only panted and snapped wildly at the air—the fact that he didn’t bite her was in itself uncanny. Even rabbits lash out when they’re certain of death. 

Margaret laid the parsley back on top of him as she carried him back to town. No one there would like the idea of saving a thing from the wood. She was only politely tolerated, anyway, for knowing as much about healing as she did. An outsider wherever she went. 

“Well, everyone’s lost these days,” she told the rabbit, knocking the door open with a twist of her free hand and a hard bump of her hip. “Everyone’s a little bit an outsider.” 

Under the parsley, her patient sneezed. Margaret smiled, able to lift him out on the cloth and lay him out on the rough table in front of a banked fire. “No? I’m sure you’re quite at home in the woods, then?” 

The rabbit sneezed again. He turned his head to watch as she gathered her things, bandages and a pot to boil water in and yarrow to stop the bleeding. Garlic to kill infection, and plantain to soothe the skin. She talked while she worked, stoking up the fire and adding a few logs. Lighting a lantern to work by. The rabbit didn’t flinch from either flame, but lay still and kept his black eyes fixed on her. 

“It’s nice to have a patient that doesn’t talk back. You wouldn’t believe the excuses some of the people around her come up with. ‘Oh Miss Margaret, I swear I fell down and got two black eyes and three broken fingers.’ ‘Miss Margaret, what’s the best treatment for lice?’ So says the bald man.” The rabbit went into a sneezing fit, so that she had to steady his torn leg as he coughed. “Are you quite done?” She gave her best doctor’s stare. The rabbit looked up at her sheepishly, ears twitching, and Margaret half expected him to nod. Still, it was a relief when he didn’t, and she went back to peeling the garlic. 

She was up half the night getting him situated, mixing the poultice and getting the leg bandaged and making a nest not too close to the fire but not too far either. By the time she went to bed the birds were singing, and then, a few hours after that...

It was the terrible cracking of bone that woke her. Margaret sat bolt upright in bed, a knife already in her hand. Only to see an overdressed man in forest-tattered clothes, his skin still rippling. As she watched, the bones of his hand clicked into place and bits of white fur melted away.

 His hair was the same shock white as the rabbit’s, and if she’d had any other doubts a single look at his eyes dispelled them. They were the same green-black of ripe olive, the pupil almost indistinguishable from the iris. He looked up at her, crouched next to the shattered remains of the basket she’d left him in last night, and smiled, much too charming. 

“Sorry about the basket,” he said, rising unhurt from the wreckage. “I’d get you a new one, but...” He shrugged, pulling out his pockets to show that they were empty. 

Mostly on instinct Margaret replied, “Well, the only polite thing to do is make a new one then, isn’t it?” And only afterward realized she was talking to a changeling. While she was still processing that, he gathered up her carefully crafted rabbit sickbed and deposited the remains on the table, tch-ing at the blood still very visible on the cloth. 

“Alas, I am not a basket maker,” he said, eyeing the bits critically. He turned on one heel and bowed dramatically, hands fluttering out to his sides. “My name is William, at your service.” He straightened, still smiling. “It was very kind of you, last night. Completely worthless, you know, but. Very kind.” 

Margaret stood up in her nightdress. She looked at the knife still in her hand, then back at the changeling. “Worthless? You would have been dead before dawn if I hadn’t been there.” As if she wasn’t at all afraid, she walked over to the table and just happened to set the knife down out of his reach. “I don’t know much about...your kind, but I know you can be killed.” 

His smile slipped, just for a moment. He regained it a moment later, but she’d seen it. “Well, it’s possible, yes. But very unlikely, as evidenced by myself on this fine morning.” 

Margaret only hummed noncommittally, eyeing her unexpected guest. The silence dragged on for a moment too long, his smile easy and sharp, her magic tugging at her heart. Finally she gave in and said, “You look like you could use some breakfast,” and was rewarded by the changeling’s shock. His face, ageless under that winter-white hair, changed from sauve confidence to a more familiar loneliness and hunger. It was gone so quick she might have imagined it—but no. 

She could hear it when he said, “Most villagers don’t offer Her people hot food in the morning.”

“I am not most people.” Margaret forced herself to turn her back on him, William Whoever-he-was, and bent to pull out her second-best mixing bowl. 

Chapter Text

She was out in the woods the next time she met him. It was summer that day, and no one else in the village was brave enough to go under the trees, despite the bargain they’d made with the Queen. Margaret was gathering blackberries, keeping one eye on the trees and the other on the thorns reaching for her fingers. 

“You know you’re trespassing, right?” 

    Margaret cursed as she pricked her thumb on the blackberries. She turned a glare on William, leaning oh-so-casually against the pale bark of an oak nearby. “I’m not , actually.” She pointed to the shrine, set about a hundred feet away and half-hidden in the shrubbery. “I’m inside the boundary, so technically it’s you who’s trespassing.” 

    William only smiled, a quick darting expression she would have missed if she hadn’t been looking. “Oh dear, what- ever shall I do.” 

    Margaret only snorted and got back to her berry-picking. There were only a few hours of daylight left, and who knew what season it would be tomorrow. “If you’re not interested in being useful—” 

    “Almost never,” William interrupted.

    “—then what are you doing here?” Margaret finished, eyeing him side-long. He was handsome, as a man. She’d barely noticed last time, too much in shock and then in wariness. The warm summer sun turned his hair to gilt, tied in an old-fashioned queue at the back of his neck. He turned, just a little, as if he didn’t notice her watching, the better to show off his blade of a nose and sharp jawline. 

    “Who am I to say the will of the Queen?” he asked airily. But the way the forest rustled when he said Her name made them both flinch. Margaret, despite her protestations, did not trust the shrines to keep her safe: she had only thought to go unnoticed for a little while. Again she glared at William, who looked almost properly abashed. “But let’s not get into all that,” he said, and with a great air of nonchalance took off his coat to spread it on the forest floor. “I’m not here on anybody’s business, if that’s what you’re asking. Too much like work.” He laid down on the coat, rolling up his sleeves and crossing one leg over the other. He had to tilt his head uncomfortably to keep looking at her.

    “I can see that.” Margaret turned back to her berry-bush, fighting to keep her amusement from her face. The last thing he needed was encouragement. “Is that what you’re doing then? Playing hooky?” 

    “I prefer to think of it as ‘alternate responsibility.’” She could hear the smug smile he was making. “After all, if there was no one out here patrolling the border. Why, just anyone could march in and steal berries.” 

    “As opposed to me, who is engaged in perfectly legitimate collecting.” Margaret said primly, putting on her old nurse’s nasal accent. 

William laughed. “Exactly,” he said, both satisfied and lazy. “And let’s face it, you’re much better company.” 

For a surprised moment Margaret was wordless. There was a truth in that throwaway statement that made her magic sing, a kind of easy generosity she hadn’t expected from the cavalier changeling.

As if sensing he’d drawn too close to real sentiment, William turned on his coat and leaned up on one arm. “Not that the bar is very high,” he added, too quickly. “I mean, I spent most of yesterday trying to talk to a turtle , if you can believe.” 

“And what did the turtle have to say?” Margaret asked. She was happy to let him draw away with words, back to where he was comfortable. Very much like coaxing a wild animal to accept her aid. And that comparison was even more accurate at night. 

“...so I told him that I totally could have won that race if he hadn’t cheated. Margaret?” 

“Yes? Oh, sorry. The race.” She had been staring blankly at the berry bush for the past ten minutes. Margaret looked back over her shoulder towards William, brushing her stubborn hair out of the way. “I was paying attention.”

William smiled again, this time more slowly and with real warmth. “No you weren’t. But that’s fine, it’s not like it was a very good story anyway.” 

“Then tell me a good one.” Margaret plopped down in the grass next to him, her half-full basket of berries next to her. She offered one to him, a great rush of daring like a river in her chest. Slowly, he reached out to take it, his dark eyes flashing green in the summer afternoon. 

“Alright...” he said slowly, with blackberry juice on his fingers. “I think I have just the thing...”