Greythorne (Bloodleaf 2)

There was a dresser, too, with a mirror edged in colorful bits of river stone. Despite its prettiness, it was the only piece I left covered; one glance at my wan reflection was more than enough.

A single, west-facing window let in the forest-filtered light, and the room was scattered with souvenirs of her short life: a wreath of twigs, paper flowers, stacks of old books. Garlands of found objects—bronze keys, seashells, acorns, gold-dipped leaves, and oddly shaped glass beads—crisscrossed the steeply angled eaves of the ceiling.

I would have liked her, too, I decided, if I’d had the chance to know her.

I crawled into the bed and fell asleep quickly. It was like being swept away on a swift river; as soon as I began to slip into slumber, I was helpless to crawl back out of it.

I dreamed of Galantha.

She was sitting on the side of her bed, watching me sleep. She had long waves of blond hair with just a touch of Rosetta’s red that shone when the moonlight hit it just right, but her eyes were buttery brown like Onal’s.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

She said, “I made a choice.”

“Are you a spirit?”

“In a way. I’m more like . . . a memory.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Both,” she said. And then I saw that she wasn’t Galantha at all. She was me. Not the me who’d appeared when I was drunk with sombersweet; that girl was someone I didn’t know. This one was well and truly me. Older, maybe. Wearier, certainly . . . but definitely me.

She turned to leave.

I stood up too. “No, wait—” But the white sheet had slid from the dresser mirror, and I caught sight of us in the reflection: one girl with fair hair, the other with dark, facing each other. Two sides of the same coin. The Two-Faced Queen.

I bolted awake, but the room was still and quiet. The only movements were mine, reflected back at me from the uncovered mirror.

I heard a sound outside the window and flew to it, just to see Rosetta’s outline stealing across the homestead garden. I wrapped the blanket from Galantha’s bed around my shoulders and raced down the stairs and out the cottage door before I could lose Rosetta to the forest.

It was near midnight now, and the forest was fully settled into its second state, a world of purpling shadows and silvery strands of moonlight. I followed Rosetta past a border of twine knot spells gently waving in the chill night wind. Apprehension skittered along my spine as I hurried to keep up with her. I had not forgotten what it was like to be lost in the Ebonwilde at night.

When she stopped, it was at another clearing. This one was smaller, and the air within it felt dense and heavy and unnaturally warm, like the interior of a sanctorium on a humid summer day.

Rosetta walked to the center of the expanse, where long, curling flower stalks were in full bloom, dangling lines of blossoms consisting of two heart-shaped violet-red petals that enclosed two droplet-shaped white petals.

“You can come out now,” she said to the air. After a moment, I realized she was addressing me.

I timidly stepped from the trees to join her in the glade.

“I thought sombersweet was a spring flower,” I said, bending to run my finger along a line of the dangling blossoms, which bounced and quivered on their vine. “How are they blooming here in the fall, so close to winter?”

“They never stop blooming in the Cradle,” Rosetta said. “This is their place of origin.”

“The place wher

e Mother Earth gave birth to her child with Father Time?”

“The Ilithiya.”

“Pardon?”

“The Ilithiya. That was her name. And his was Temporis.”

The clearing of the Cradle was a near-unbroken sea of the dangling, gemlike buds. Rosetta plucked a sprig and twirled it between her fingers. “These little flowers are facsimiles of the Ilithiya’s Bell, comprising her Joy”—she touched the red-violet petals—“and her Sorrow.” She touched the white petals. Then she gave the sprig a little shake, and the flowers sprang back and forth, just like tiny bells. “This is where the first warden, Nola, was born. And this is where her mother, the Ilithiya, died. The Cradle is a sacred place. It is not meant for the eyes of outsiders.”

“Then why did you let me follow you?”