An Enchantment of Ravens Read online

  Honestly, there were multiple reasons. May had knocked over my easels on more than one occasion. March exhibited an insatiable appetite for Prussian blue. But most of all, fair folk didn’t like having them around. My theory was that the twins embarrassed them, being visible proof of one of their mistakes, and unintentionally powerful proof to boot. I knew for a fact they couldn’t be ensorcelled: March and May were their true names. If the fair folk could use that knowledge against them, they would have done so by now.

  March gave a delighted bleat and went capering over to the woodpile, but May didn’t look away. “Don’t worry, we won’t get hurt,” she said finally, soberly, and patted my knee. Then she tore off after her sister.

  My eyes stung. Busily, I straightened my skirts and shoved a few stray hairs behind my ears. I didn’t want them to see I was affected, and I didn’t want to admit it to myself, either. When I focused on keeping everything in order, I didn’t have to think about what had happened to my parents, or why the event still gripped me with panic twelve years later when I hadn’t even been there, seen or heard a single part of it. Yet obviously, I didn’t hide my fear well enough. Even May could see it.

  A raven’s hoarse croak sounded from the tree shading the yard.

  “Shoo!” I said, hardly looking up. Ravens scared away the songbirds that nested in our bushes, and Emma and I made every effort to return the favor.

  My unease faded in the warm sun and the sight of March and May scrambling on top of the logs. From a distance, the only way to tell them apart was the pattern of white splotches on their otherwise pink skin; May had one that went over her left cheek and half her nose. Their curly black hair was identical, as was the gap between their front teeth, and their startlingly fiendish eyebrows. They looked like a pair of cupids who had decided they liked shooting people with real arrows better. They were horrible. I loved them so much.

  But I couldn’t forget that the prince was coming, and apprehension lapped restlessly at the dark shores of my subconscious.

  The raven croaked again.

  This time I did look up. The raven turned its head to and fro, eyeing my frown. It ruffled its feathers and hopped smartly along the branch. When it emerged into the light, my breath caught in my throat. Its back had a red sheen, and it seemed to me its eyes were an unusual color.

  I lunged into a swift curtsy and then dove inside, torn between hoping the raven wasn’t the prince after all and the knowledge that if that was the case, I’d just curtsied at and promptly fled from a bird. The loose kitchen door went thud, thud, thud behind me.

  A fourth thud sounded, but it wasn’t the door banging. It was a knock.

  “Come in!” I called back. I looked around, and wished I hadn’t.

  At random, I seized a pot and shoved it into the washbasin. I’m not sure whether it was even dirty. But that was all I had time to do before the door swung open again and the autumn prince stepped inside. The doorframe was made for average-sized humans, and he had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the lintel.

  “Good afternoon, Isobel,” he said, and gave me a courtly bow.

  I’d never had a fair one in my kitchen before. It was a small room with rough stone walls, floorboards so worn with age they sagged in the middle, and one high window that let in a bit of light, just enough to draw special attention to the stack of unwashed dishes beside the cupboard and the sad-looking lump of peat still smoldering in our little chest-height hearth.

  Meanwhile the prince looked as though he’d just stepped from a gilded carriage drawn by half a dozen white stallions. I didn’t well remember what he’d been wearing the day before, but if it had looked like this, I would have. His close-fitting dark silk coat nearly brushed the ground behind his boots, cloaklike, lined with copper-colored velvet. He wore a matching copper circlet on his brow, and though his wild hair seemed to have developed a life of its own and swallowed much of the circlet, I made out that it was shaped like intertwined leaves and speckled green with verdigris. He had a raven-shaped cloak pin attached to his collar, no doubt a relic from a previous era. The sword from the day before still hung at his waist.

  Yes, there he was, standing mere inches from a moldy onion skin I hadn’t swept up that morning.

  I had already violated the standards of etiquette. What I said next needed to be thoughtful and poised. I blurted out instead, “What happens if you can’t bow back?”

  Occupying himself while I mustered myself, the prince had turned to stare intently at a ladle. Now, he stared at me instead. What are you? his mystified amethyst eyes seemed to say. “I don’t believe I understand.”

  The saggy floorboards were bound to give way eventually. Maybe they’d do me a favor and make it happen now.

  “If someone bows or curtsies at you, and you aren’t able to return it right away,” I heard myself explain.

  Understanding lit his expression, and his familiar half-smile reappeared. He leaned toward me and met my eyes as though confiding a great secret. Perhaps he was. “It’s terribly uncomfortable,” he said quietly. “We have to look for whoever did it until we find them, and can’t think about anything else in the meantime.”

  Oh. “I suppose I just did that. I’m sorry.”

  He straightened, seeming to forget about me in an instant. “Finding you was my pleasure,” he said warmly, though rather distantly, and picked up a meat skewer. “Is this a weapon?”

  I carefully took the skewer from him and set it back down. “Not by design, no.”

  “I see,” he said, and before I could stop him he crossed the kitchen in three great strides to inspect a skillet hanging from a nail in the wall. “This is almost certainly a weapon.”

  “It isn’t . . .” This was the most tongue-tied I’d ever been in the presence of a fair one. “Well—it can be utilized as one, certainly, but it’s for cooking.” He looked around at me. “Craft to make food,” I clarified, because his eyebrows were drawn together in polite consternation verging on alarm.

  “Yes, I know what cooking is,” he said. “I was merely astonished that so many tools of your Craft can double as armaments. Is there anything you humans don’t use to kill one another?”

  “Probably not,” I admitted.

  “How peculiar.” He paused to look around at the ceiling. Disquieted by what he might choose to comment on next, I cleared my throat and curtsied.

  With a slight frown, he turned around and bowed back.

  “Ordinarily I take clients in the parlor, which is this way. Should we get started? I wouldn’t like to take too much of your time.”

  “Yes, certainly,” he replied, but as we walked through the hall he continued glancing upward, and soon halted altogether to place his hand against the white plaster wall. I stopped too and waited for him to finish with a tight smile on my face, which was really more of a means of keeping myself from screaming in exasperation.

  “There’s a very strong enchantment on this house, and an odd one at that,” he remarked finally.

  “Yes.” I started walking again, relieved to hear the swish of his coat follow. “It was the first thing I worked toward when I began painting these portraits—it took me an entire year to earn. No fair one—”

  “May harm an inhabitant within this house’s walls so long as you live,” he finished at a murmur. “Impressive work. Gadfly’s?”

  I nodded, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder. As the parlor’s distinct smell rolled over me I adopted a more formal tone out of habit. “I’ve enjoyed his patronage for years. May I ask why you think it’s odd?”

  “I’ve never seen an enchantment like it before. Nor would I have expected something like this of Gadfly.”

  Now it was my turn to almost come to a dead halt. I kept myself moving with a physical effort, entered the parlor, and went about mechanically arranging the charcoal I’d need for the day’s sketch. Had the enchantment gone bad? Had I said something wrong to Gadfly all those years ago, left an accidental loophole in the terms of our
arrangement? The possibility was so sickening my hands and feet started going numb.

  “As a prince, I could destroy most enchantments if I wished,” he went on, still looking around at something I couldn’t see. “But when I said this one was strong, I meant it. It’s far beyond even my power. Gadfly must have spent a great deal of energy to achieve such a working, which is out of the ordinary, since I’ve never seen him so much as get up out of a chair unless he had to. He must enjoy your Craft immensely. I’m beginning to understand why he was so persistent in recommending I have a portrait done.”

  I blew out a steadying breath.

  One thing the prince had said sounded off—Gadfly had given me the impression he’d had nothing to do with this appointment—but I was so relieved the thought fled my mind almost instantly.

  “I had no idea,” I said. “You’re the first to tell me—no one else has ever mentioned it.”

  The prince brushed past, his sleeve caressing my arm. The parlor appeared to interest him greatly. It was the largest room in my house, and the most cluttered, though we took pains to keep it neat. At present the only unoccupied piece of furniture was the settee beside the window. In the corner to my left there was a varnished side table on which sat a crystal vase containing two peacock feathers, a set of imported china, a stack of leather-bound books, and an empty birdcage. The brocade chairs next to it were piled high with mismatched drapes, rugs, and curtains in every color and pattern imaginable. The rest of the room went on similarly, in each nook and cranny a different collection of curiosities, as though the parlor were a miniature, eclectic museum of human Craft. My chair and easel sat unassumingly in the very center.

  The prince seemed too distracted to reply, so I continued: “When working with human patrons, portrait artists usually travel to their homes and paint them there. Because I can’t do that with fair folk, of course, we choose furniture and decorations and arrange them to your liking here in this room.”

  “It restricts us,” the prince murmured, touching his fingertips gently to the birdcage. He ran them down the thin metal bars. I remembered the raven sitting outside and wished I’d had the presence of mind to put the cage in another room, even as I wondered what on earth he was talking about. Never once had a fair one acted anything but pleased to surround themselves with the parlor’s gaudy props.

  He snatched his fingers away and turned around. His pensiveness vanished into a smile like morning mist dissolved by the sun. “Gadfly’s enchantment, that is. Why none of us have mentioned it to you before. It feels like having a pair of shackles around our wrists, as light as spider-silk but strong as iron. No fair one enjoys commenting on their own weakness.”

  “But you’re an exception, sir?”

  “Oh, not at all. I don’t enjoy it either.” His smile deepened, and the crooked dimple reappeared on his cheek. “I just have little regard for discretion, as you might have noticed.”

  Indeed, I had. He was unlike any other fair one I’d ever met.

  “Is there a proper way to address you as prince?” I deferred, crossing the room to start sorting through the fabrics for a backdrop that would complement his wardrobe.

  “We don’t observe such formalities,” he said, and glanced at me. “I would have thought you already knew that.” How? I wondered. It wasn’t as though I had fairy royalty over for dinner. “In any case, my name is Rook.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s fitting, sir.”

  His eyes moved, searching my face, and it seemed to me his own smile grew even more familiar, confidential in a way I hadn’t known a fair one could manage. Standing next to him, I became aware that the top of my head only reached to his chest. My cheeks warmed.

  Good lord! I had a job to do.

  “I think this brocade would suit you,” I said, lifting a heavy rust-colored silk with copper embroidery.

  He paused to look at it, almost impatiently. I always found this part interesting. One could learn precious little about fair folk, but occasionally their aesthetic choices opened windows into their souls (if they had them, that is—always a controversial matter at church). Gadfly enjoyed stuffing his frames full of as many expensive-looking trifles as possible. Another patron, Swallowtail, preferred only functional objects that had been used before: half-burnt candles, books with cracked spines and feathered corners.

  Rook shook his head at the brocade and bent to inspect a row of blown-glass vases. He examined statuettes and mirrors, baskets full of wax fruit, chemistry bottles, quill pens, strangely arresting in his silence and grave concentration. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was thinking. Finally he came back to the birdcage and looked up to find me watching him. His mercurial smile returned.

  “I’ve decided I don’t want anything in my portrait,” he declared, and went over to the settee. He sat down with one arm stretched across the back and a knowing regard that told me he’d figured out exactly why I’d been watching him. “If you must stare at something for hours on end, I’d prefer it to be me alone.”

  I struggled to keep my expression serious. “How gracious of you, sir. It will take me far less time to finish your portrait with you as the sole subject.”

  He sat a little straighter and frowned, a trace of petulance darkening his aristocratic features.

  What was I doing? It was easy—so easy—for a fair one’s pique to turn to dangerous ire. This wasn’t like me. So many years of being cautious, and in a matter of minutes I’d started slipping up. Swallowing my words, I went over to my chair, arranged my skirts, and selected a stick of charcoal. I pushed every other thought aside.

  It’s difficult to explain what happens when I pick up a charcoal stick or a paintbrush. I can tell you the world changes. I see things one way when I’m not working, and an entirely different way when I am. Faces become not-faces, structures composed of light and shadow, shapes and angles and texture. The deep luminous glow of an iris where the light hits it from the window becomes exquisitely compelling. I hunger for the shadow that falls diagonally across my subject’s collar, the fine lighter filaments in his hair ablaze like thread-of-gold. My mind and hand become possessed. I paint not because I want to, not because I’m good at it, but because it is what I must do, what I live and breathe, what I was made for.

  My concerns fell away along with the scrape of charcoal across paper. I didn’t notice the soft black flakes sifting down, dusting my lap. First a circle, loose, energetic, capturing the shape of Rook’s face. Then vigorous wider lines sketching in the ensnaring tousle of his hair, his crown.

  No.

  I tore the paper off my easel, let it fall to the ground, and started in on a new one. Face, hair, crown. Eyebrows, dark and arching. A crooked half-smile. The blocky frame of his shoulders. Good. Better. There were two Rooks in the room now, both watching me. Neither was more real than the other.

  Beyond my easel, the living Rook tilted his head. He shifted where he sat. I felt him observing me and didn’t care, lost in the fever of my Craft. But with the small portion of my mind reserved for other thoughts I noted he was getting restless, and remembered what Gadfly had said to me the day before—something about Rook having trouble sitting still.

  “Wait,” he said, and my charcoal scraped to a halt. I looked at him, looked at him, my eyes adjusting back to the living world as though I’d just stared too hard at an optical illusion. Something about him seemed troubled. Briefly, I worried he was about to cancel his session.

  “Is it”—he frowned, grasping for words—“fixed? The portrait? Can you make a change to it?”

  I let go of the breath I’d been holding. So that was all. “I can make any change you’d like at this stage. Once I begin painting it will become more difficult, but I’ll still be able to make alterations up until the end.”

  For a moment Rook didn’t say anything. He looked at me, looked away, and then unfastened the raven pin and put it in his pocket. “Excellent,” he said. “That’s all.”

  I would be lying
if I claimed I wasn’t curious. The pin was, of course, an item of human Craft, like everything else he wore. Long ago, Rook had been well known in Whimsy. And one day, to all accounts, he’d simply stopped visiting. Fair folk coveted Craft above all other things. What calamity might shake one of the habit, and did it have anything to do with the article he’d just removed?

  Or perhaps—more likely, almost certainly—the pin was simply out of fashion, or he was tired of wearing it, or he’d just decided it clashed with the color of his buttons and wanted it remade. He was a fair one, not a mortal boy. I couldn’t fall into the trap of sympathizing with him. It was his kind’s oldest, favorite, and most dangerous trick.

  I fell back into my work. His likeness was filling in well, yet a flaw began bothering me as I refined the sketch. Somehow, his eyes were wrong. I dabbed charcoal from the paper with the lump of moistened bread I kept on my side table and started over, but each time I redid them they grew no closer to perfection. From the folds of his eyelids to the curve of his eyelashes, every detail was exactly true to his image—but the sum of them failed to capture his . . . well, his soul. I’d never encountered this problem with a fair one before. What on earth was wrong with me today?

  My charcoal stick broke. One half rolled across the floorboards and vanished under the settee. I started to get up, but Rook bent and retrieved it for me. Before he returned to his seat he paused and looked at my work. I thought I heard a barely audible intake of breath.

  He leaned forward to look at it more closely. “Is that how you see me?” he asked, in a quiet and marveling tone.

  I wasn’t certain how to answer. To me the unnameable flaw overwhelmed the drawing, made it unsightly. “It’s how you look, sir,” I settled on. “But it still needs a great deal of improvement. I’d like to work on it more before we’re done today.”

  Rook touched his crown, almost self-consciously, as he sat back down. He hesitated, then put his arm back where it had been before. After a pause he adjusted its placement to make it exact.