Tithe A Modern Faerie Tale Page 0,23

a little afraid of her, but this time she felt nothing but relief. The

Thistlewitch had kind eyes, and her scratchy voice was sweetly familiar. She was as unlike Roiben and his demon-horse as anything could be.

"Hullo," Kaye said, not sure how to address her. When she was a child, most of the times she had spoken to the faerie had involved a splinter or a skinned knee or an apology for dragging one of her friends Ironside for a prank. "Spike said you had something to tell me."

The Thistlewitch regarded her for a long moment, as if taking her measure.

"So much focus on the egg—it is life, it is food, it is answer to a hundred riddles—but look at its shell. The secrets are writ on its walls. Secrets lie in the entrails of things, in the dregs." The Thistlewitch poked a pin into either side of a tiny blue egg and put it to her lips. Her cheeks puffed out with air, and a trickle of clear, thick snotlike liquid drizzled into a copper bowl in her lap.

Kaye looked at the eggshells, still bobbing down the stream. She didn't understand. What secrets did they hold, except a spider and a pin?

The Thistlewitch tapped the damp earth beside her. "Would you see what I see, Kaye? Sit beside me."

Kaye looked for a dry patch and crossed the stream with an easy leap.

A tiny being wearing a moleskin coat slithered onto the Thistlewitch's lap and poked its head inquisitively into the bowl.

"Once, there were two courts, the bright and the dark, the Seelie and the Unseelie, the folk of the air and the folk of the earth. They fought like a serpent devouring its own tail, but we kept from their affairs, kept to our hidden groves and underground streams, and they forgot us. Now they have made truce and remembered that rulers must have subjects. There is such a habit of service among us." The Thistlewitch stroked the gleaming fur of the little faerie's coat absently as she spoke. "They have brought back the Tithe, the sacrifice of a beautiful and talented mortal. In the Seelie Court they may steal away a poet to join their company, but the Unseelie Court requires blood. In exchange, those who dwell in Unseelie lands must bind themselves into service. Their service is hard, Kaye, and their amusements are cruel. And now you have drawn their notice."

"Because of Roiben?"

"Oh do speak his name again," Spike hissed. "Shall we invite the whole Unseelie Court to afternoon tea while we're being daft?"

"Hush," the Thistlewitch soothed. Spike stomped his foot and looked away.

"You mustn't even use their speaking names aloud," the Thistlewitch told Kaye. "The Unseelie Court is terrible, terrible and danger- ous. And of the Unseelie Court, no knight is as feared as… the one you spoke with. When the truce was made, each of the Queens exchanged their best knights—he was the offering from the Seelie Court. The Queen sends him on the worst of her errands."

"He is so unpredictable that even his Queen cannot trust him. He's as likely to be kind as to kill you," Spike put in. "He killed Gristle."

"I know," Kaye said. "He told me."

Spike looked at the Thistlewitch in surprise. "That's exactly what I mean! What perverse ovation of friendship is that?"

"How… how did he do it?" Kaye asked, half of her dreading the answer, but needing to know nonetheless. "How did Gristle die?"

Lutie flitted to hover in front of her, tiny face mournful. "He was with me. We went to the knowe—the faerie hill. There was cowslip wine, and Gristle wanted me to help him filch a bottle. He was going to trade it for a pair of pretty boots from one of his hob friends.

"It was easy to find the way inside. There's a patch of grass that's all brown and that's the door. We got the bottle, easy-peasy, and were on our way out when we saw the cakes."

"Cakes?" Kaye was baffled.

"Beautiful white honey cakes, heaped on a plate for the taking. Eat 'em and you get wiser, you know."

"I don't think it works that way," Kaye said.

"Of course it does," Lutie-loo scolded. "How else would it work?"

Continuing, the tiny faerie gripped onto a thin twig and hung from a low bush as she spoke. "He swallowed five before they caught him."

Kaye didn't point out that if these cakes were supposed to make him wiser, it should have occurred to him to stop after one. It didn't