Witchcraft and fairies…
My eyes slide back to Clara.
The priests say you’ll know a witch by the color of her hair or eyes—one of them will be unnatural. Fairies are the same, though there are fewer fairies than witches. And, aside from their dark harvest each year, when they ride their nightmare creatures out into the human world to steal mortal husbands and wives, the Fey tend to stay far from our settlements.
But there are others who are different, too.
Or so the folk stories go.
As a boy, Da used to tell me tales of half Fey babies, harmless changelings rescued from the fairy lands when their mothers fled their monster husbands. But most of those children lived in hiding, fearful of being mistaken for witches or fairies and burned, beheaded, or drowned.
Clara must be one of those.
She has to be because there isn’t a drop of evil in her. She wouldn’t stomp a beetle crossing the kitchen floor let alone suck out a man’s soul, kidnap a husband, or work dark magic.
I try to catch her eye, to silently assure her that she can still call me “friend,” but she isn’t looking at me. She’s staring at the same mouse I was chattering at earlier, shaking her head ever so slightly.
“Before, things would have been different,” Adrina continues, pulling my attention back to her kind face. “But since our men were cursed by the Banshee, we are too… Too…” She breaks off with a sigh. “Oh, what is the word?” She nibbles her lip a moment before throwing up her hands. “I don’t know. Sad and angry, I suppose, and… Haunted!” She snaps her fingers. “Yes! That is it. We are haunted by what we have lost.” She sighs. “I’m sorry. My English was better when my sister was here to practice with me. It has grown rust in the meantime.”
I nod, wishing my head didn’t feel like it was full of steaming rotten eggs. “The Night Witch passed over your island, then?”
“Yes. Four years ago. It was…a terrible thing,” Adrina says, her attention drifting to the top of my head and then back down to her hands. She reaches into her bundle, pulling out a jar of greenish black gunk that wobbles like jelly when she gives it a shake. “But that doesn’t mean I have to be terrible. Especially not to innocent shipwrecked people who mean us no harm.” She lowers her voice confidentially. “My sister, Maria, has a friend at school. She is the same, with fairy hair from a father she can’t even remember. Her mother escaped the Fey when she was still a baby. Thank goodness.” She presses a hand to her chest. “Such a frightening thing. And it could happen to anyone. It’s always seemed so wrong to me, that people treat changelings so badly.”
“Thank you,” I say, powerfully grateful to this girl for being good hearted enough to protect Clara from being burned at the stake by a mob of witch-and-fairy-fearing villagers. “I appreciate what you’re doing for us. So much.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to thank me.” But her smile widens as she waves a dismissive hand through the air. “I want to help. I know what it’s like to be lost at sea. My mother and I took my sister to the university in Rome three years ago. On our way home, we were swept up in a storm and drifted for days.” She shudders before turning back to her bundle. “Those were the longest hours of my life. Such a nightmare!”
Clara flinches, and I turn to see her looking even paler than usual.
“Are you all right?” I whisper.
She nods. She doesn’t look all right, but whatever’s bothering her, she must not want to talk about it in front of Adrina.
I shift back to our new friend. “I have no idea how long we drifted. I was out the whole time. Do you know how far we are from Amaria?”
“Days. At least two, maybe three,” Adrina says with a wrinkle of her slightly pink nose. “And our only boat big enough to make the trip left for Rome yesterday. But don’t worry, we’ll get you home before the winter rains set in. The boat should return in a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” Clara asks, worry in her voice. “But I... I mean, Declan and I… Our families will be worried.”
“Da will think we’re dead.” My stomach cramps around the water I chugged. “It’ll rip his poor heart out.”
Adrina’s brow furrows in sympathy. “I’m so sorry. Yes, he will suffer. But soon you will return to him and he will be so grateful and happy. And maybe a fishing boat will come in sooner and be headed your way. In the meantime, my family will keep you safe. My mother will be so excited to have guests, and my little brother will be out of his mind with excitement to have another man around the house.” She nods firmly, proving she’s a look-on-the-bright-side girl. “It will be all right. I promise. As long as we ugly you first. Which we should do now, before Mother notices I’m gone and comes to yell at me for being lazy.”
She opens the jar of black ooze and scoots across the grass to sit behind Clara, gathering long, purple hair into her hands and separating it into four smaller sections before she begins to rub the jelly mixture into it, starting at the scalp and working her way down.
An aggressive musk permeates the air as she goes. The dye does smell like a barnyard—one that hasn’t been mucked out in a while—but I can tell it’s going to work. Already, half of Clara’s hair is as black as it was on my island.
Which begs the question…
“How did you manage to—” I break off, cursing my addled brain.
I can’t ask Clara why her hair wasn’t purple before. That might suggest witchcraft, and I don’t want to do anything to make Adrina second-guess her decision to help us. I’ll have to wait until Clara and I are alone.
Then I’m sure she’ll be able to explain everything.
“How did I manage what?” Adrina asks, blinking wide eyes my way.
“How did you…find the dye so quickly?” I improvise. “I’ve never seen a pot of dye in my life. Not that I can remember, anyway.”
Adrina laughs. “Ah, well, that’s because women don’t want you to see. We have to keep our beauty secrets,” she says with a wink that makes me smile in spite of my pulsing head and jangled nerves. “This is my mother’s. She uses it to cover the gray hairs my little brother gives her with his troublemaking. There is another jar, too,” she says, nodding at the bundle. “And a mirror. You can start on your own hair if you don’t mind. That way we will be done faster. I truly can’t be gone long, or Mother will worry. Just be careful not to get it on your skin. It will stain that, too.”
“All right. Sure,” I say, still not certain why I have to color my hair. It’s nearly the same color as Adrina’s, but to keep Clara safe, I’m happy to do what I’m told.
I fish out another jar of dye and a hand mirror with a carved bone handle. It’s lovely, a thing of beauty for the sake of beauty, a nicety that’s foreign to my spartan, son-of-a-priest life. It’s something I picture on a lady’s dressing table, and I suddenly find myself thinking how nice it must be to have a mother, to have a house that is a home and not just a place to store your few belongings and lay your head at night.
To have someone worry about where you are…
Da worries, of course, and he’ll be shattered when he realizes I’m missing, but I’ve always sensed that mothers feel things differently than fathers. I have never doubted Da’s love and never will. It just isn’t the vicious, tender, unbreakable mother-love you read about in fairy stories. The kind that seems to float in the air around Adrina.