Chapter One: Ffion

Foxhall Forest, Powys, Wales

Spring Equinox, AD 796

The Mercian soldier couldn’t see me when he fired the shot. But I saw him. I saw his arrow fly through the cold, wet dawn.

The stag was grazing down the ridge, crowned head low. And the soldiers were much, much farther into our territory than they should have been. I dropped into a crouch behind a holly bush, putting a hand on Cadno’s scruff.

Maybe the soldier was fooling around, or maybe he was just a bad shot. But his arrow flew wide of the beast’s torso and buried itself in its right hind leg.

Whether the hart lived or died, it would suffer.

The forest felt as it always did, close and full of secrets. But it felt a little less secret, a little less magical, as the animal let out a bellow of pain and ran crashing through the tree line.

I wondered what the Foxhall would have to say about this. Not the hart; they wouldn’t care about him. But maybe they’d care about Mercians straying farther into our kingdom than I’d ever seen them.

Probably not.

The Foxhall—the coven for which our town was named, for which the forest was named—was untouchable. They wouldn’t trouble themselves over a few Mercian soldiers, or read anything into their presence here. And the stag was just a stag, after all.

If he’d been a magical creature, they might have cared. But those had all gone to ground. After I’d seen them once as a little girl, I’d never seen the pod of dragons again, or any other uncanny beast.

Ordinary animals like the hart limping deeper into the woods were all we had left.

“Should we chase it?” the soldier called to his mates, voice coming harsh down the ridge.

No, I thought, you shouldn’t.

“Cadno,” I hissed. “Rocks. Hurry.”

Wales favored a hedge to mark a boundary. But a wall would do.

“A wall, a wall, a wall,” I chanted under my breath, panting a little, pushing tangled red hair out of my eyes. “A wall, a wall, a wall.”

As Cadno darted away, quick and neat from his pointed fox’s nose to his well-groomed red tail, I dropped to my knees just inside the tree line, scratching a ditch in the dirt with my nails. When Cadno returned with a mouthful of stones, I scraped them hurriedly into the trench.

And then I began to sing.

Ravens and crowns, sweeties and gowns

Are out of my reach, are out of my reach

Treetops and roof thatch and castle walls high

Are out of my reach, are out of my reach

Thistles and nettles and beetles and stones

Are under my feet, are under my feet

But you, o my true love, lady so fair

Raven of hair, who moves on the air,

Are out of my reach, are out of my reach

A line of crocuses popped out of the ground alongside the trench.

Boots pounded closer down the hill, one soldier trampling a patch of gorse and swearing when it snagged his trousers, another laughing at him.

They didn’t hear me singing. They didn’t notice anything about their surroundings. In fairness to the soldiers, most people didn’t.

Sleeping beneath hedges and surviving off the gifts of the forest, having left my mother’s home behind—I’d learned to notice.

I scrambled backward on my hands and knees behind a tree, pushing all my magic and my song about untouchable things toward the little trench I’d dug directly in their path.

“It can’t have gotten far,” said the soldier who’d fired the shot. The toe of his boot nudged a stone on the trench’s edge, sending it clattering inside.

I held my breath, clinging to Cadno. My magic was always stronger when he was close.

“Leave it,” another said suddenly. “We need to get back to the watchtower. Don’t have time to chase some beast into the woods because you can’t shoot properly.”

The first one drew up, offended, and made to push through the trees. “I can shoot—” He paused. “Stop. Is this the place they told us about?” He dropped his voice. “The witches’ wood?”

Just one witch, actually. The Foxhall only came to the forest when they needed a grove or a meadow or a herd to sacrifice.

The soldiers were too casual as they talked over one another, overexplaining why they needed to get back and away from the forest. When they finally trooped up the ridge, I dropped my forehead into the dirt, heart hammering.

It had only been a song my mam-gu, my father’s mother, had taught me, sung beneath my breath. Only a little line of stones a couple feet wide. It was nothing like Offa’s Dyke, the wall of earth their watchtower guarded. Eight feet tall and three kingdoms long.

But I’d built a wall here on the edge of Foxhall Forest, and it had held.

After a moment, I hauled myself to my feet and dove into the trees, Cadno at my heels. Twilight was coming. And I’d sent the soldiers off, but there were more where they’d come from.

The stag had left a path of broken branches and crushed bracken leading into the forest. I followed his tracks across the clearing and through the trees on the far side, toward the brook that ran a mile or so from the forest’s edge. The water was edged with rocks and lichen-covered ash trees large enough to hide behind to lick your wounds; and there, beside the brook, behind a boulder taller than me, lay the stag.

Though spring had come, he had yet to shed his crown of antlers, and his coat was a rich red-brown. The arrow still jutted from his leg.

At Cadno’s soft whine, the stag wheezed a cry of distress and rose—or tried to. His forelegs jerked up, but his back right leg buckled beneath him as he tried to dart away. I felt a stab of pity. “I’m here to help you,” I said softly. “It’s all right.”

He watched through liquid brown eyes as I crossed to his side.

“I’m here to help,” I said again, gentler still, and he let himself collapse.

When I reached for the arrow in his leg, the stag wheezed again. Again, I shushed him, one hand pressed to his muzzle as if he were a dog and not a king of Foxhall Forest.

Maybe he could sense that the forest trusted me. Maybe he’d just lost too much blood to fight.

The job was hideous. When I’d finally worked the arrow free of muscle and gristle and fur, the stag lay defenseless in front of me, ribs appearing and disappearing as his side heaved. But I wasn’t done. I rinsed my bloody hands in the brook and reached for the pouch at my hip.

A feverfew charm, first, for the wound. I always carried my grandmother’s spellbook, the one Dad had passed on to me, but I didn’t need it for this any more than I had for the wall I’d built. I held the stag’s leg firmly; but when I began to sing, he fell still and silent.

It was a different song than the one I’d sung earlier. This was the song I’d sung to the forest the day we’d come to our understanding.

Foxhall Forest was more my home than the town had ever been. It was where I’d taken Mam-gu’s spellbook the day I’d found out Mam was expecting my little brother Hywel, and I was five years old and jealous and miserable right down to my guts.

I was a curmudgeonly little thing, even then. So when Arianrhod and Gareth, my older sister and brother, had told me to find a friend in town, I’d asked the woods for a friend instead.

The spell had called for a poppet—a little doll to represent the person being summoned—alongside a few of the person’s belongings. My mother was a Foxhall covenwitch, and therefore able to read and write; but I was five, only slightly literate, and not at all attentive to detail. I’d twisted together a clumsy poppet of twigs and grass and offered alongside it a pair of mushrooms and a fistful of foxfire I had found on a log.

The foxgloves had grown thick and tall that summer, so I had offered a bouquet of them, too. I hadn’t known any better.

In later years, I would realize that the summoning charm I had performed that day, with the poppet and the childish little song I made up on the spot, might have—should have—gone horribly, desperately wrong.

Anything could have happened. But the forest had been gentle with me.

A fox kit had come trotting out of the bracken toward me, nose down, tail up.

He had followed me home. He’d been with me ever since.

As I sang the panting stag the song that had summoned Cadno so many years ago, a butterfly began to push out of its cocoon on a branch beside me.

My mam-gu had always sung as she worked. Foxhall witches like my mam and sister never did; they didn’t need to. But singing lent rhythm to my work, helped me gather my focus and make the best use of my lean resources.

Besides. I was alone so much, it was good to hear a voice, even if it was my own.

The hart stayed calm as I circled his wound with amber to encourage it to seal itself, then wrapped his leg in felt and linen smeared with the white of a lifeless egg I found beside the brook. When my work was done, he laid his head against my knee with another weary huff. Cadno watched with mildly jealous eyes as I stroked the stag’s neck, humming and murmuring words of comfort.

Finally, I got to my feet. It was almost full dark, and my stomach felt as empty as my pouch.

I had more work to do.

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