She snorts. “You found no girl. What if none is here?”
“Give me three guesses,” he says, though he is far from certain he can succeed at this. “Three guesses to where you put her, and if I’m right, you give her to me.”
“And if you fail?” Her eyes glitter. He knows she is intrigued.
“Then I will return here at the new moon and serve for a year and a day. I will wash your floors. I will scour your cauldron and trim your toenails. So long as it harms no one, I will do whatever you ask as a servant in your household.”
He can feel the air shift around him, feel the rightness of these words. He isn’t using his charm in the usual way, but he allows himself to feel the contortions that power urges on him, the way it wants him to reshape himself for Mother Marrow. The gancanagh part of him knows that she will believe herself to be more wily than he, that her pride will urge her to take the bet.
“Whatever I ask of you, Prince of Elfhame?” Her grin is wide and delighted at the anticipation of his humiliation.
“So long as I guess wrong three times,” he says.
“Then guess away,” she says. “For all you know, I’ve turned her into the lid on a pot.”
“I would feel very stupid if I didn’t guess that first, then,” Oak says.
Mother Marrow looks extremely pleased. “Wrong.”
Two guesses. He’s good at games, but it’s hard to think when it feels as though there’s no time left, when he can hear the storm in the background and the rattling of the . . .
He thinks of the white walnut cottage and Tiernan. And he recalls who gave Wren that gift. Getting to his feet, Oak walks to the cabinet. “She’s trapped in one of the nuts.”
Rage washes across Mother Marrow’s face briefly, only to be replaced by a smile. “Very good, prince,” she says. “Now tell me which one.”
There has to be a half dozen in the bowl. “I guessed correctly,” Oak protests. “I got the answer.”
“Did you?” she says. “That would be like saying I turned her into a flower and not being sure if it was a rose or a tulip. Choose. If you’re wrong, you lose.”
He opens the cabinet, takes out the bowl, then goes to her kitchen for a knife.
“What are you doing?” she shouts. “Stop that!”
He selects a filbert and jams the point of the blade into the seam. It bursts open, scattering an array of dresses around the room, each in a different diaphanous color. They drift gently to the floor.
“Put that one down,” she says as he reaches for a hazelnut. “Immediately.”
“Will you give me the girl?” Oak demands. “Because I don’t need you to get her out now. I will open every one of these and destroy them in the process.”
“Foolish boy!” Mother Marrow says, then intones:
Be trapped inside with no escape
Your fate is cast in acorn shape
In the shadows, you’ ll dwell and wait
The world seems to grow larger and smaller at the same time. Darkness rushes up and over him. He does, in fact, feel quite foolish. And very disoriented.
Inside of the nut are curved walls, polished to a high mahogany-like shine. The floor is covered in straw. Thin light seems to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once.
He hears a sharp gasp from behind him. His hand goes automatically to his sword as he turns, and he has to force himself not to draw it from the rag sheath.
A mortal girl stands among baskets and barrels and jars, against the curved wall of her prison. In the dim glow, her skin is the pale brown of early fall leaves, and she wears a white puffer coat, which swallows her up. Her arms are crossed over each other as though she’s holding herself for comfort or warmth or to keep herself from coming apart.
“Don’t scream,” Oak says, holding up his hands to show that they’re empty.
“Who are you, and why are you here?” the girl asks.
Oak takes a breath and tries to think of what he ought to say. He doesn’t want to frighten her, but he can see from the way she’s looking at his hooves and horns that it’s possible that ship has already sailed. “I’d like to believe that we’re going to be friends,” he says. “If you tell me who you are, I will do the same.”
The mortal girl hesitates. “There was a witch, and she brought me here to see my sister. But I haven’t seen her yet. The witch says she’s in trouble.”
“A witch . . . ,” he echoes. He wonders how aware the girl has been of the passage of time. “You’re Wren’s sister, Bex?”