“Stop.” A soft, wispy voice spoke. Barely anyone noticed. Its owner stood at the edge of the crowd, hands knotted into fists at her side.
“Aster,” I gasped. I strained toward her, but couldn’t get anywhere with so many fingers grasping at me, so many bodies crowding in close.
She noticed, and gave me a small nod. “Stop,” she repeated, turning back. “Leave Isobel alone now, everyone. I will be the one to prepare her for the ball. I will be the one to prepare her for the ball!” Her voice rang out like a gunshot. All heads turned, and everyone went silent. For a second, only a second, a hot ember of true anger flared in her eyes. I think I was the only one capable of recognizing it. But even though the fair folk couldn’t put a name to what they saw, it affected them still. They shrank back, uncertain.
Yanking my hands from the two fair folk who gripped them, I managed a clumsy curtsy. “Why do you think you should be the one, Aster?” I asked. My voice rasped, dry and desperate. I hoped they couldn’t sense my fear. “Please tell me.”
She raised her chin. “I drank from the Green Well. None of you can say the same. Tonight, the privilege belongs to me.” And she held out a fragile hand.
My scrabbling fingers met hers. For some reason, it startled me that there was nothing human about her steely grip. She pulled me free of the throng, toward the stair. The other fair folk sighed wistfully. “Oh, dear. Perhaps next time . . .” “It would have been such a pleasure . . .” “I’m ever so fond of your work . . .” I suppressed a shudder as each one purred their regrets at me while I stumbled past, their breath caressing my cheeks like feather plumes.
Aster silently led me up the stair. And while we went, I counted. One raven, watching us silently from the banister. A second peered out of the dogwood throne’s flowers. A third flickered across the clearing, as liquid as a shadow, and a fourth and fifth hopped bright-eyed along a branch. None of them showed signs of dispersing. If there was a sixth—
But Aster’s hand tugged on my wrist, and I couldn’t stand there exposed on the stair’s landing. Together we passed into the labyrinth. Whether it was my imagination or otherwise, the unfamiliar bend she chose looked stranger, wilder, its clutter less friendly. I didn’t recognize the rocking horse positioned at the corner, its paint peeling and faded with age. I stepped on something, and would have turned my ankle if not for Aster’s hand steadying me. It was a carved bird figurine, partly enveloped by the floor. We passed a giant church bell grown over with bark, sticking out of the wall at an angle. Farther on, a doll’s hand protruded from the leafy ceiling. The collections of Craft must have lain here so long untouched that the labyrinth had begun enveloping them, where they would remain for eternity, forgotten.
Finally Aster drew me around another corner and stopped. She peered back the way we had come, with the hushed alertness of someone listening. “We were not followed,” she murmured to herself.
“I must thank you,” I said, “for coming to my—”
She turned, eyes wild. “Do not thank me!” Each syllable of her fraught whisper struck me like a slap across the face. I froze, stunned.
With a trembling hand, she tucked her hair behind her ear. A smile plucked at the corners of her mouth. She darted another look behind us. “Come along,” she said, as though nothing had happened, and pulled me into the room waiting beyond. “I must prepare you for the masquerade.”
Thoughts awhirl, foreboding yawning darkly in the pit of my stomach, it took me a moment to process what I had stepped into. I stood in a chamber completely lined with books. Stacked books stretched up the walls like bricks and paved the floor like cobblestones. Gilt titles winked at me from scuffed spines. A musty smell of leather and yellowed paper filled the room.
“You’ve collected all of these?” I breathed. “Have you read them all?”
Aster hesitated. Her free hand fluttered uselessly, then alit on a book. She slid her fingertips down it, but didn’t pull it from the wall. “They are Craft.” She spoke softly. “The words—they don’t always make sense, but I need them anyway, you see. It’s as though there’s something I’m looking for. I always think, once I have just one more, it will be enough . . .” Her words dwindled.
“But it never is,” I said.
She didn’t seem to hear. “Follow me. We cannot take too long.”
Her hand fell from mine. Glancing repeatedly over my shoulder, I trailed her into the next room. The sun must have tipped behind the trees, because gloom had fallen over the labyrinth, leaving its contents vague with shadow. My heart skipped a beat when I mistook the figures lined up beyond the doorway for fair folk standing in rigid expectation, waiting for us. But they were only mannequins arranged in two long rows along either wall, wooden faces devoid of expression. Aster had brought me to her wardrobe. She made a gesture, and an amber fairy light appeared above us, drifting upward toward the ceiling. A standing mirror on the opposite side of the room reflected its illumination, shifting over my uncertain countenance as I looked around.