Because You Love to Hate Me(68)

Soon he was following a stream, where iridescent fish were swimming. Their teeth were needles jutting out of their turned-down mouths. He waded in and cupped his hands, saw his own image in the water. The same face he had seen in the glass but happier, with bloodshot eyes.

He blinked, and he was standing before the mouth of a cave. Giddy, he lurched into it. His gloved hands rasped against stone. He breathed in an ambrosial scent.

Isaac, someone was calling. Isaac. The wind itself was whispering his name.

“Marigold,” he said.

Isaac.

He forced his body through the cave, scrabbling at its walls, splashing through the stream. Blind and deaf, he dashed his head against a low rock, but the pain was washed away by the realization that Marigold was close. He would have her back. She would be his to love again.

When he emerged, he shielded his eyes. Light was streaming from above him, glorious sunlight, softened to amber where it fell through a canopy of ochre leaves. Birds were chirruping from low branches, which were laden with rainbows of fruit. Had it not been nighttime on the other side?

He was standing in a sheltered glade, an Elysium in the depths of the forest—and all around him there were women and girls. A child with golden ringlets was laughing on the grass, her cheeks and brow flecked by the sunlight. Older girls, no more than fourteen, were fishing with spears. Others were dancing or picking fruit or making chains of wildflowers. One woman had a prune for a face and silver hair, and she held a newborn baby in her arms.

They wore simple clothes. Many wore trousers, like men, or had their skirts bound up around their knees, while others were clad in dresses that looked for all the world like they were made of butterflies. He had never seen so many girls together without a chaperone. Was it a mirage? He was drunk on the cloying scent of flowers . . .

And at the end of the stream, where water pooled deep and clear beside a waterfall, was a woman with hair that shone like the finest lacquer. She wore a gown of emerald-green silk, hitched up to bare her slim brown calves. She poured water over her hair from a jug, renewing its luster. Her head was tilted into the sunlight, and her eyes were closed. He could have stared at her forever, so peaceful did she look.

“Marigold,” he breathed, because he could not bear to be silent. Then, louder: “Marigold!”

Her head flicked to face him. Her eyes grew wide, and Isaac’s face broke into a smile. She was alive. He should admonish her for dressing so improperly, but instead he ran toward his treasure, arms outstretched to grasp her.

She screamed.

Isaac stopped dead. Marigold scrambled away from him, slinking down the rock until she was knee-deep in the water. “No. No,” she said. To the girls, she shouted, “Fetch the Erl-queen! Why on earth did none of you stop them?”

The children in the glade sprang to their feet. “Mother,” they chorused. “Mother, help Marigold!”

The plea was taken up all around them, until it echoed like a cry into the mouth of a bell. Isaac hardly noticed. All he could do was gaze at Marigold, and it seemed all she could do was gaze back, but there was nothing familiar left in her eyes. He looked upon a changeling.

“Leave me, Isaac Fairfax,” she said in a tremulous voice. Her skirts drifted on the surface of the water. “Let me go.”

“Marigold, you are bewitched.” He held out his hand. “The Erl-queen stole you. I can take you back.”

“Back to what?” Marigold shook her head. “Back to a life as a scullery maid, rented for profit?” She sank deeper into the water. “She says he’ll murder me. George. He’s always longed to do it, you know. If I return to that world, I am not long for it. I pitied you once—you were deceived—but I cannot forgive you. I cannot forgive you for not seeing through George’s lie . . .”

She had never spoken like this to him. The quake had left her voice. Now she sounded so cold, so hardened.

“Lie,” he repeated. “Marigold, what on earth do you mean? Nobody rented you.”

“Look to George. Look to your own heart. Did you never realize that when I wept, I wept because I was afraid—not happy?” She crossed her arms over herself, as if to shield her heart. It made her look so young, so fragile. So like his Marigold. “I know now. I know that I am whole, that I am strong, and I am free to make my life what I will. You will not take me, as Queen Victoria took Alice. As my father took me from my mother.”

“Marigold, enough of this.” She must be addled by the Erl-queen’s feast, but he was beginning to feel angry. All this way he had come for her, and all she could do was call her own brother murderous and talk about the mother she had never known. “You are confused, my love. You are not yourself.”

She raised her chin. “I believe I am best-placed to decide what I am. I am more myself than I ever was.”

“You were perfect before.” His throat was full. “You are perfect, Marigold.”

“No. I was compliant,” she said bitterly, “because that was what you wanted. He knew what you wanted, Isaac. My brother knows you like your women to be soft-spoken, to flatter you and simper for you!” Her hand struck through the water in frustration. Isaac flinched. “He blackmailed me. He saw me as his ruin, his mother’s death—in my cradle, I was poison to his name—and he meant me to pay for it. To pay my debt by marrying you, even if I had to spend the rest of my days in misery. He cared nothing for my happiness. Only his reputation.” Her face was contorted. “Oh, Isaac—do you still not see?”