The queen’s lips curled upward at the corners, but it wasn’t a smile I saw. “You’d best be on your way, dear Mollie. Tiarnach is happy with us.” Her smile froze my skin. “What a pity to come so far and return empty-handed.”

  The queen turned to Guest with a sneer. “Take this filthy toad with you, unless you wish to leave him here to die in the forest—​which would be for the best.”

  As she spoke, I felt Guest’s heart beat fast and hard against my side.

  I forced myself to meet her eyes, although it was all I could do not to turn away. “I won’t leave until you release my brother from the spell you’ve cast upon him. Then I’ll take both him and Guest home with me and never bother you again.”

  Aidan turned his head away as if he couldn’t bear to see what would happen next.

  The queen simply shook her head. “My, my, Mollie, what a foolish child you are. Normally I’d order my guards to kill you for such impertinence, but come now, I’m curious. How else will you entertain me? Tell me. I’ve never met such a comical fool.”

  My knees shook, and I held Guest’s hand as tightly as he held mine. “You may laugh, but I love my brother, and I will take him from you.”

  Turning to Thomas, the queen said, “What say you, Tiarnach?”

  Thomas drew himself up proudly. “This is my land,” he said again. “I will not go with her.”

  The Kinde Folke laughed and vanished into the dusk. The sky turned black, and the wind rose into a roar. The tall stones seemed to grow even taller. They tilted and bowed and whirled around us as if they danced to the wind’s music, creaking and groaning with every movement.

  “Thomas,” I cried. “Thomas!”

  But he was gone. Still holding Guest’s hand, I fell with him into a dark, cold, silent place where nothing moved.

  10

  * * *

  I OPENED MY EYES TO find myself lying on the mossy ground at the foot of the tallest stone in the circle. It towered over me like a robed figure from a dimly remembered story, dark and foreboding.

  Guest squatted beside me, stroking my face with his cold hands. “Mollie, wake up, wake up,” he begged.

  Aidan stared down at us. “On your feet,” he said. “This is no place to linger.”

  Without any help from Aidan, I struggled to stand. My legs ached with fatigue, and I was weak and dizzy. The Kinde Folke had gone and taken Thomas with them, leaving no trace of themselves behind.

  Clinging to Guest’s hand to steady myself, I followed Aidan slowly down the hill, trying not to slip on the damp, mossy stones. How long had I lain unconscious? Was it dusk or dawn? It was impossible to tell. The gray light and misty rain cast a perpetual twilight in the woods.

  Once we were on the path, Aidan found shelter in a shallow cave and set about making a fire. Guest and I huddled together and watched the flames sputter on the wet wood.

  “What should I do now?” I asked.

  Aidan didn’t bother to look at me. Frowning into the fire, he said, “You heard what she said. Go home. Your brother’s not of a mind to leave the Kinde Folke. The longer we stay here, the more the danger.”

  Aidan laid two potatoes on the fire.

  “You need to roast another,” I said. “There’s three of us.”

  “I count two. Me and you.”

  “You’ve left out Guest.”

  “Why should I cook for him?”

  Taking a third potato from the sack, I laid it beside the other two. I half expected Aidan to remove Guest’s potato, but he left it where I’d put it.

  After we’d eaten our potatoes and what was left of the apples, cheese, and bread, I heard a noise in the dark beyond the firelight. Alarmed, I looked at Aidan, but he was already on his feet.

  “Where have you been?” he shouted. “The Kinde Folke near killed us all.”

  Madog stepped out of the woods. “I didn’t know how close you were to the stones. It’s glad I am to see all of you unharmed.”

  With a smile at Guest and me, he turned to Aidan, and the two spoke together in low voices.

  Madog shook his head, frowned, and then sat down beside me. “Aidan tells me you were less than courteous to Her Royal Kindeness. Why must you speak your mind without giving a thought to what you say? If the queen hated you before she met you, she hates you even more now.”

  Aidan glanced at me. “I doubt anyone has ever spoken to the queen as that saucepot did. Someone should stuff a rag in her mouth. She’s made things worse for us all.”

  “What did you do to help?” I asked. “Nothing, nothing at all. You stood there and watched, even after she hit you. You don’t care what happens to Thomas or me or anyone else.”

  “And why should I care? Your brother can stay or go, it’s all the same to me. And the toad—​”

  “Enough, Aidan,” Madog said. “It shames me to hear you speak so.”

  Aidan poked at the fire, his face lit by the flames. He said nothing, but anger steamed from him.

  Guest sat down beside Madog. “I miss you. I happy you back.”

  Madog grinned and looked him up and down. “You’ve grown,” he said, and leaned closer to speak softly to Guest in the language they shared.

  I sat alone and stared at the glowing odds and ends of the fire. I was tired, so tired, of living like a traveler with no bed of my own and no roof over my head, always hungry, always cold, always wet from rain and fog. This was a dreadful place, and I was sick to death of it.

  Madog leaned toward me. “Such a sad little face you have. Surely you’ve not given up hope.”

  I fidgeted with the locket, turning it this way and that, watching it catch the light of the fire. “Thomas wants to stay with the Kinde Folke, where he is a prince.” I sniffled and rubbed my eyes, determined not to cry, but a tear escaped and another one followed, and soon they were running down my cheeks and my chest was heaving with sobs.

  “Perhaps Aidan is right,” Madog said. “Since Thomas wants to stay, perhaps you should let him. If we sneak away tonight, we might escape the wrath of the Kinde Ones.”

  “You know I can’t do that. I must bring Thomas home to Mam and Dadoe.”

  Aidan spoke up from the other side of the fire. “The halfwit will be the death of us all.”

  I jumped to my feet. “If you hate me and Guest so much, why don’t you leave? We don’t need you now that Madog is here.”

  “I say you and me both should be on our way,” Aidan said to Madog. “You have business to attend to, and there’s a certain lass waiting for me.”

  Madog looked long and hard at Aidan. “My business will wait,” he said, “and so will your lass.”

  Aidan lay down with his back to the fire. Guest was asleep under his blanket. Madog and I were the only ones awake.

  “Why does Thomas want to stay here?” I asked him. “Why doesn’t he remember me? Has the queen cast a spell on him?”

  Madog gazed into the dark forest where no light shone, not even moonlight. “Thomas has lived in her kingdom so long he remembers no place else. Spell or no spell, he believes he’s one of the Kinde Folke now.”

  “He was a baby when they took him. Why does he look older than he is?”

  “Surely you’ve heard tales of mortals who join the Kinde Folke for a night of dancing and wake to find themselves old men in a changed world.”

  Yes, of course I’d heard those stories, but I’d never known such a thing to happen in real life. I looked down at myself. Was my dress a little tighter now? Certainly my hair was longer. “Am I older than I was when I left home?”

  Madog shook his head. “You must bide with those ones in their dwellings to feel time as they do.”

  I sat back, relieved. For how was I to know? I’d no mirror to look in to. And just as well, I thought, for I was dirty and ragged, and my hair was a tangled mess. I wouldn’t care to see my reflection.

  “But Guest—​he’s bigger than he was when we started,” I said.

  “He grows at his own pace, faster than you it seems.” He smiled. “And glad you should be, for how could you have carried him all this way?”

  Madog turned his attention to Aidan. “Get up and make yourself useful,” he said. “Fetch all the wood you can carry. You know as well as I the value of fire on a dark night in a dark land.”

  Long after Aidan had vanished among the trees, I heard him crashing through the bushes, a sure sign he was still angry.

  “Why do we need wood?” I asked Madog. “We always let the fire go out at night.”

  “Did I not say you’re in danger here?” Madog asked. “We must build a ring of fire around us. None of their kind dare to cross over flames.”

  I shivered. “It’s me they want, isn’t it?”

  “Mostly,” Madog said. “But they don’t care for Aidan or me, either. They detest Guest, but they can’t harm him because he shares their blood. They simply leave his sort to die alone in the forest. Or they trade them for fine babies like Thomas.”

  Guest sighed in his sleep and snuggled closer to me. Half Kinde Folke, I thought, and half what else?

  Madog touched Guest’s head lightly. “I’ll keep him safe, and you too. I promise.”

  I looked at the changeling’s sleeping face. It shamed me to think how much I’d once hated him. In those days, I was no better than Aidan.

  “Homely he is,” Madog said. “But he’s a spunky one, do you not agree?”

  “Oh yes, indeed. He helped me chase away the Tinies and escape from Granny Hedgepath.”

  “Did he, now?”

  “He did, but I saved my own self from False Thomas, the crying baby who changed into a wolf and tried to kill me.”

  “And how did you escape from the wolf?”

  I pulled the locket from my dress and waved it in Madog’s face. He scooted backwards so fast, he almost fell into the fire. His face dark with anger, he said, “Never do that again, Mollie. Do you hear? Never.”

  “Oh, please don’t be angry. I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  “Try to remember the next time you reach for that locket. Use it on them, not me.”

  “What are you, Madog, that you fear the touch of iron? You can’t be one of them, but you and Aidan are not like me.”

  “I told you. I’m a traveler.”

  “But what are travelers?”

  I don’t know what he would have said if Aidan hadn’t come back with a huge armload of wood. He dumped it on the ground by the fire, which had almost burned itself out.

  “I hope that’s all you need, for it’s not to my liking to stumble around the Dark Lands, hearing voices and strange sounds and almost losing my way.”

  Madog and Aidan laid the wood in a circle around our sleeping place. “A good fire will protect us from whatever the Kinde Folke send our way,” Madog said.

  When the fire burned strong and warm, Madog told Aidan to stay and tend it. “I’ll collect more wood.”

  “What about her who’s to blame for our plight?” Aidan asked, with another scowl at me. “Does she not collect wood too?”

  “It’s Mollie’s place to watch Guest.” Madog plunged into the shadows beyond the fire. He went as quiet as a deer and left no noise behind him.

  Aidan sat at a distance from Guest and me. “How do you bear to be so close to that toad? Does not his stink fill your nose?”

  “Why do you dislike Guest so much?” I asked.

  Aidan spat into the fire. “Everyone despises his kind. Except you. And you are clearly a simpleton.”

  “Madog likes him.”

  Aidan spat again, harder this time, and the gob sizzled in the ashes. “He’s a bigger fool than you are.”

  “Tell me something, Aidan.” I wanted an answer, so I tried to speak like a grown woman, not a child to be lied to. “What are you and Madog? Who are your people? Where do you come from?”

  Aidan poked a log back into the fire. “We’re travelers from over the hills and far away.”

  “You’re more than that.”

  “Ask Madog.” Aidan rolled up in his blanket and turned his back on Guest and me.

  Left to my own thoughts, I watched the fire. Smoke blew in my face and made my throat choky, but Guest slept on. Every now and then, his eyelids quivered as if he was dreaming. He grimaced, he moaned, he twitched, but he screwed his eyes tight shut and didn’t wake.

  “What is your other half?” I whispered. “A goblin? A troll?” I studied his face. Surely, he was none of these. Yet his father must have been a homely specimen, for Guest had not one speck of the Kinde Folkes’ beauty.

  When Madog returned, he carried enough wood to last several days. I watched him build up the fire. When he seemed satisfied with its size, he glanced at Aidan. “Sound asleep,” he muttered.

  “I’m awake,” I said.

  Madog smiled and came to sit beside me. “What keeps your eyes open?”

  “I’m wondering when they’ll come and what they’ll be and what they’ll do.”

  Madog sniffed the wind. “We’ll soon find out,” he said. “They’re already on the way.”

  I opened my mouth to ask my question again, but he raised his finger to his lips. “Something’s coming. See the deer?”

  As he spoke, a herd of deer burst out of the woods and ran past us, maybe ten, maybe more, their eyes wild in the firelight. I turned and watched their white tails vanish into the dark behind us. Two or three owls followed on silent wings. Then came badgers, foxes, and a bevy of small creatures, all as frightened as the deer.

  “Animals know when danger’s near,” Madog said. “Storms, earthquakes, fires, Kinde Folke on the move.”

  I huddled beside him and waited, my breath shallow with fear. At first, I heard nothing, but gradually I became aware of rustling leaves and twigs snapping, heavy breathing, murmurs and whispers, a thickening of the darkness outside the ring of fire.

  Gradually a shape emerged from the darkness, a man I thought, neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. Behind him were shadows that moved as trees would move if they were not rooted to the earth. Although I couldn’t make out the man’s face, his appearance was familiar, but it wasn’t until he spoke that I knew him.

  “Mollie,” he called. “At last I’ve found you. Come, let me take you home.”

  I rose to my feet. My legs trembled. “Dadoe, how did you find me?”

  “Oh, my poor dear child. You must be weary and cold and hungry.” He stretched out his hand. “Come with me. Mam weeps for you and rues every unkind word she spoke.”

  Madog pulled me gently back from the fire’s edge. “No, Mollie, it’s a trick—​like Granny Hedgepath and the wolf.”

  My whole self yearned to leap the fire and run to Dadoe. I’d missed him for so long, and there he stood—​almost close enough to touch.

  “Madog, you must believe me. It’s no trick. I know my own father when I see him.” I struggled to free my hand from his, but he was much stronger than I was.

  “Mollie, stay with me,” he whispered. “Don’t cross over the fire.”

  Another figure joined Dadoe. “Mam,” I cried. “Mam.” I struggled with all my might to free myself from Madog. “That’s my mother!” I was crying now, fighting Madog with all my strength. “Mam. Mam!”

  “Mollie,” she called. “The Kinde Folke have given Thomas to us. We can go home now, all four of us, a family again.”

  Madog held me so tightly, my wrists felt numb. “You must see things for what they are. It’s not your father or your mother, but two Kinde Ones glamorized to look like them.”

  “Do you think I don’t know my own parents?”

  My shouts woke Guest. He jumped up and grabbed my waist. “No, Mollie. Don’t go! Trick, trick.”

  From beyond the flames, Mam cried, “Please, Mollie, we’re here to take you and Thomas home. Do you not want to come with us?”

  “Don’t believe that traveler. He’s a liar and a trickster,” Dadoe said. “Be strong, daughter, break away from him, run to us.”

  My father was right. Madog was a liar and a trickster. My true parents had come for me. They had Thomas. I was going home. No one, not even Madog, could stop me.

  In anger, I yanked the locket from around my neck and thrust it into Madog’s face. With a cry of pain, he sprang back. I jumped the fire and ran toward my parents.

  Behind me, Madog yelled, “The locket, hold fast to the locket. Save yourself!”

  Mam and Dadoe waited with smiling faces and outstretched arms. “Dearest Mollie,” they crooned. “Sweetest daughter. You’ll be safe with us.”

  When I was almost close enough to touch Mam and Dadoe, I saw the shadows in the forest move and shift. I heard rustlings and whispers and the clink of metal.

  In front of me. Mam and Dadoe slowly changed into a pair of Kinde Folke.

  Horrified by my stupidity, I turned to run back to Madog and the fire, but dozens of Kinde Folke sprang out of the forest and formed a circle around me. They were beautiful, each and every one of them, man and woman both, but their eyes were cruel and their smiles wicked.

  Terrified, I held up the locket, but they were too far away to touch, and I was too frightened to move closer to them. “Stay away,” I said. “I have iron.”

  Laughing, they joined hands and began to dance slowly around me. Moving in a strange rhythm of fast and slow steps, they chanted.

  Cast away the locket

  Let the locket go

  Come, Mollie, come

  Cast away the locket

  Let the locket go

  As the Kinde Folke chanted, they danced faster until they became an endless spinning blur shining in the dark. Each flowed into the other as if they were one, not many.

  My ears filled with their voices. I forgot my fear, I forgot the queen’s angry face, I forgot Thomas, I forgot Mam and Dadoe and all that I’d ever known. Slowly my fingers lost their strength. My grip on the locket loosened. I grew dizzy, lightheaded, tired.

  The circle shrank; the dancers came closer. Closer. And closer. Their cloaks brushed against me like spiderwebs.

  “Let the locket go,” they crooned. “Let the locket go.”