Meadow Faeoria's Arc

Chapter 1 of 12

Meadow Faeoria stood at the edge of the mortal world with a wand in her hand and no face to wear. Her goddaughter was crying into a hearth two miles east, and the ball began at sundown. But Meadow's skin was the color of river stone under ice. Her eyes held the flat gold of coins pressed onto the dead. Any farmer who saw her would drop his rake and run before she said the word godmother. She was the youngest child of Hades and Persephone, and she had spent a hundred years handing wishes to strangers who never saw the hand. Tonight was different. Tonight she had promised a living girl she would come in person. She could not come like this. So she went to the only person she knew who lived above ground and did not flinch at underworld things. The huntress was skinning a hare on a flat stone outside her cottage. Her red cloak was stitched from wolf pelts, uneven at the seams. Her shadow moved a beat behind her, sniffing the air on its own. Meadow had granted her a wish once, years back, and Little Red had never forgotten who signed the receipt. "You look worse than usual," Red said, not looking up. "I need a face," Meadow said. "A mortal one. By sundown." Red set the knife down. "Wands make faces." "Not on the caster. I can dress a pumpkin in steel. I cannot dress myself." Red thought. Her shadow sat back on its haunches. "Borrow one," Red said. "Not a stranger's. A shape people already trust. My grandmother lived in the woods north of here. Old woman. Bent back. Basket of bread. Everyone in three villages let her through their gate without asking. Wear her." "She is—" "Dead six winters. She won't mind." Red met her eyes. "Kindly crone. That's the trick. No one runs from a kindly crone. They offer her tea." Meadow lifted the wand. The star at its tip pulled at the drifting things only she could see. She pictured what Red described: stooped shoulders, soft cheeks, hands spotted from sun she had never stood under. She spoke the shape into the air and touched the wand to her own chest. The cold left her skin first. Her hair went white at the roots and kept going. Her spine folded down a hand's width. When she looked at her fingers they were pink and creased and warm. Red studied her. "Better. Voice too high. Drop it." Meadow dropped it. "Good. Go." Meadow turned toward the road east. Her borrowed knees ached already. The wand felt heavier in an old woman's grip, and the star at its tip had dimmed to a dull blue, spent. She had a face now. She had perhaps four hours of it before the shape slipped, and a girl in cinders waiting at the other end of the road.