Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

The Glass Mountains

I woke up with a start and winced at the bright light streaming in from the window. Shielding my eyes, I sat up as last night’s events reeled vividly through my mind. I did not know whether to be unashamed or embarrassed at how I had eventually played along, as fervent as the fae. It had not been wholly of my own will; the grove had its own magic, and it had seeped beneath my skin. I could still feel it clinging to my body.

I shoved off the blankets and discovered I was still dressed in last night’s gown. At least Casamir had not undressed me, I thought. Though what would that have mattered? He had already seen me naked more than any man.

I moved to stand, and as I put weight on my feet, it felt as if they had been speared by a knife. I collapsed onto the bed again and lifted my foot to inspect my soles. They were red, swollen, and covered in blisters.

Fuck.

How was I supposed to meet the selkie today?

A growl of frustration left my mouth as I stood again. The pain was awful, and each step was like walking on needles. I should have guessed the consequences of dancing with the fae, should have known this would happen. I thought about how Casamir had thrown me into the fray, how he had remained out of sight until the very end.

I wondered now if he knew of my true plans with the selkie, if he had intentionally tried to sabotage me.

I held on to the bed until I came to the end of it and then hobbled across the floor, one slow step at a time, grinding my teeth until my jaw hurt.

I did not bother to change and slipped out the door, entering the hall, unable to use the wall for support as it was covered in poisonous flowers.

I made my way to the portico and sat, sliding down each step slowly. The relief it gave my feet was short-lived because soon I was standing again and making my way into Casamir’s forest garden.

The dirt was no better on my feet, and I noticed that each footprint I made bore blood in the depressions, but still I continued. If anything, this horrible pain fueled my desire to make it to the Glass Mountains and learn Casamir’s true name so I could be rid of this place.

Just when I felt as though I could not walk any farther, I saw the selkie ahead, perched on his rock, his curls a burnished crown beneath the sun.

I made my way to the bank of the pond and sat, shoving my throbbing feet into the cool mud.

The selkie raised his brow.

“Get caught in a fairy ring?”

My lip curled at his question. “Take me to the Glass Mountains,” I said.

I saw no reason to make conversation. I had a bargain to win.

“I am afraid you will have to wait. Your escort grew hungry but will return.”

I looked away from the selkie, over my shoulder, uneasy, and quickly looked back.

“Are you lying to me?”

“Are you accusing me of lying?” His eyes darkened, hinting at his fury.

“Who is this escort?”

“A trusted friend.”

“There is no trust within these woods.”

“He owes me a favor.”

My shoulders tensed. I did not trust the selkie, and I would not trust him at all, even if his friend turned out to be real.

“Dip your feet into the water, terrible thing. It will soothe your soles…and your woes.”

Again, I felt that dreadful sloshing in my stomach. I kept my feet in the mud and my knees pressed against my chest.

“How much do you know about Casamir?”

“So you are on a first-name basis?”

“He commanded it.”

“And you listened?”

I glared at him. “You don’t know anything about him, do you?”

The selkie narrowed his eyes.

“I know about him like we all know about him,” he said. “But there is danger to speaking rumors as truth, especially in Fairyland.”

Fairyland? Was that what they called this place?

“Then speak what you know as truth,” I said.

His mouth was pressed into a hard line. “The prince is cursed like all his brothers. Some are cursed to despise, some are cursed to pine, but only one is cursed to die.”

I considered the selkie’s words and then asked, “Who cursed them?”

“Who didn’t?” he countered, and his words made me angry, but I also knew that anything could become a curse if spoken close enough to magic.

“And you? What did you do to end up in the prince’s pond?”

His jaw ticked, and I knew he did not like my prying question, but he answered.

“I lured a fair maiden to the edge of the sea, and she fell so deep in love with me, she died from longing. The fair maiden was a fairy queen, and when I left the safety of my sea, her people came for me. They stole my sealskin, and I wandered the land in search of it until I came to a cottage where a witch lived. I told her my woes, and she promised to help if I labored for her for seven years. So I did, and at the end, she offered a red-tipped thorn and said, ‘Speak your wish to the thorn, and bury it beneath the full moon.’”

She gave no other instruction, and I did as she said.

“The next morning, I woke up beside my sealskin, which had grown from the ground. I had not felt such joy in seven years, but as I plucked it from the ground, the elven prince appeared—the one you call Casamir. ‘Your sealskin belongs to me for it was made with my thorn,’ he said. And I have lived in this pond since.”

I remained silent following the selkie’s story. It reminded me of the cruelty of the Enchanted Forest and renewed my wish to escape my own looming imprisonment, not that I lacked desperation.

“And if you were set free? What would you do?”

“Return to my home,” he said. “Return to what is left.”

I squeezed my knees tighter to my chest as I thought about what I would return home to—my empty cottage, the full well, the geese who wandered in and out of the Enchanted Forest.

There was nothing else, no one else.

“And what if there is nothing left?”

“Then I suppose I will die,” he said.

A gurgling caw caught my attention, and I tilted my head to the sky, finding a large black bird circling overhead. He swooped down and landed near me, sweeping into a bow.

“Thing, meet Wolf the Raven.”

“Wolf is an odd name for a bird.”

“Thing is an odd name for a human.”

“Thing is not my name,” I said.

“Wolf is not my name,” the raven said.

We stared at one another, and a smirk curled the corner of my lips.

“It is nice to meet you, Wolf.”

The raven’s eyes glittered. “It is nice to meet you, Thing.”

“Wolf will take you to the Glass Mountains,” said the selkie.

I looked from the selkie to Wolf. “How are you going to take me to the Glass Mountains?”

“You will climb on my back, and I will fly you there.”

“But I am far too large to ride on your back.”

“Drink from the selkie’s pond, and you will become small.”

I hesitated. “And when I return, will I drink again and return to normal?”

“What is normal?” asked the selkie.

I glared, and he answered, “Yes, you have my word.”

His word was binding, so I knelt by the pond, dipped my hands into the water, and drank.

I stood to my full height and then felt the world grow larger and larger around me. The pond was now a vast ocean, the flora now a dark and deep forest, and the raven a monster. My feet did not hurt, and when I lifted my foot, I found that they had healed.

“Now then,” said Wolf as he bowed. “Climb, Thing.”

My fingers sank into his feathers, and I gripped them as I clambered onto his back.

“Hold tight!” he said, stretching his large wings and lifting off the ground.

The beat of his wings was loud, and the wind felt like a physical thing, cutting across my face as we ascended into the air and took off toward the mountains, which I could see in the distance now that I was above Casamir’s castle. There wasn’t much I feared, perhaps because I was not afraid of death, but seeing the mountains in all their splendor made me afraid.

They curtained the horizon, glittering in bright, blinding flashes of light. Their brilliance was almost too much to behold, but I squinted against the splendor, making out their sharp, needlelike peaks and harsh edges, realizing that without the sun, the mountains were nothing save slabs of cold rock.

Though that did nothing to lessen the dread boiling in the pit of my stomach.

I peeked at the world beneath my feet, which was thick with forest and cut through by streams, but my eyes held on the rounded green and gold roofs of what looked like a palace.

“Who lives below?” I asked the raven, though I was not certain he could hear me.

“That is the Kingdom of Nightshade. It is ruled by one of the seven.”

“One of Casamir’s brothers?”

“The third one, Prince Lore.”

Lore. I remembered him, the one who had taken my knife.

What kingdom had the dead brother ruled? Who ruled it now?

“If there are seven princes, is there a king?”

“The Elder King is dead.”

“And he left no heir?”

“He left seven.”

“That is not what I mean. Why are there still seven princes? Why is there no king?”

“The king could not choose between his sons, so he declared upon his death that whoever reassembled the Magic Mirror shall be king of the Enchanted Forest. One piece to each brother and there has been no king since.”

“That seems like a horrible way to choose a king,” I said.

Though having met all seven princes, I was certain the king recognized that none of his sons would make suitable kings.

“Or perhaps it is a perfect way,” said Wolf.

The raven continued to glide through the air until he soared over the Glass Mountains, and then he began to circle and descend.

I shielded my eyes as the sun reflected off the surface of the mountains and watched in wonder as we landed on a slope between crests that rose like great pillars and kissed the sky.

“Off, Thing,” said Wolf, and I shifted my leg over his back and slid off the raven’s back.

My feet slipped as I hit the ground, but I steadied myself before I could fall. Still, my legs felt fragile and shook with my weight after my flight through the sky.

“What do I do?” I asked Wolf.

“Knock,” he said.

Gingerly, I bent and rapped my knuckles against the smooth surface of the mountain and was surprised by how the sound echoed around me, vibrating the air, but then silence fell like a shroud, pressing against my body like a heavy weight.

“Hello?” I called as I stood.

“Speak!” Wolf commanded. “The mountains are listening.”

I watched the raven for a moment, hesitating, feeling silly only speaking to the wind.

“I’ve come to learn the true name of the Prince of Thorns,” I said.

Wolf and I stood in the silence again, and as it blanketed us, I scanned the glistening slopes of the mountains as if someone or something might appear at any moment and eat me alive.

But then the mountain spoke, and it was as if its voice were inside my head. The sound resonated, rumbling throughout my body.

“What will you give me in exchange?” the mountain asked.

My heart beat harder in my chest.

“What do you want?”

The mountain paused and then spoke, “Bring me three hairs from the head of the Prince of Thorns, and I will tell you his true name.”

Then the weight that had fallen on me when we landed dissipated. My body slumped, no longer on edge, and I could breathe once more.

I turned to the raven, expecting something more.

“Come, Thing. We must return.”

Climbing onto the raven’s back was harder with the slippery floor beneath me, and I yanked on his feathers as I mounted him. Wolf squawked in pain, but once I was seated, he took flight. I stared down at my hands, tangled with Wolf’s feathers, reminding me of Casamir’s thorns. My vision blurred, mind whirling with ways to secure three of Casamir’s hairs.

Perhaps I could sneak into his room while he slept and pluck them from his head, but where did he sleep in his vast castle? I thought I had been there once, when I first arrived, but his castle was like an endless forest and felt impossible to navigate.

Though I should not care, I wondered what the mountains wanted with his hair. Worse, what if I gave it and received the wrong name?

I tried to recall the exact words I had used when I had told the mountains what I wanted but could not remember.

“Why would the mountains ask for Casamir’s hair? And only three strands?”

“It is not for me to wonder,” said Wolf, whose help, I realized, only extended to his wings, which I supposed was enough.

The selkie still lounged on the rock, and when we landed, he straightened.

“Well, do you have a name?” he asked in a bored tone.

“I have a task,” I said. “But you knew that.”

“Nothing in this world is free,” said the selkie.

I looked at Wolf. “Thank you.”

I was sincere, grateful that the bird had not tried to trick me or leave me on the mountains. Though, I was far more suspicious that he hadn’t done anything at all.

He swept into a bow, one wing to his breast. “My pleasure, Lady Thing.”

“I am not—”

But the raven sprang into the air and flew away before I could finish, and I was left with the selkie, who gestured to the water.

“Drink,” he said. “And you will grow big again.”

The pond was a vast ocean, and my feet sank into the mud as I neared the bank, but I scooped the water into my hands and sipped. As soon as it touched my tongue, my head spun and my world was righted once more.

My stomach revolted, and before I could stop myself, I bent and vomited into the grassy bank.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said. “The fairies will not like that.”

I spit, trying to remove as much of the sour taste from my mouth as possible, and wiped my mouth with the back of my head, glaring at the selkie.

“Why?”

“They are not fond of anyone who mucks up their space.”

“What was I supposed to do? Swallow it?”

“That would have been better than what they will likely plan for you.”

My stomach churned with dread at his words, but I turned and left the pond.