Page 73 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
I rub my hands and sigh, glancing up past the fire into the empty woods, but I’m no longer alone.
I go rigid, hunching in on myself, my hands still barely warm enough to close around the sword hilt.
A spirit stands between two trees. It’s taller than two men and cloaked in pure white, and the antlers that crown its head are bedecked with bells and dried flowers. The head itself is, of course, little more than a horse’s skull with cloudy glass marbles for eyes. Rows of large teeth are set still, enigmatic, as those eyes stare at me.
“Mari Lwyd,” I greet her.
The spirit inclines her head, as she’s done at my door every Christmas. There are no men in black coats carrying her this time, and there’s certainly no one beneath the cloak, puppeteering the skull.
I lift my chin to meet her glassy eyes. “Isn’t it a bit early in the year for you?”
“My journey is long,” she replies, the snap of her bone jaw echoing in the silence, “and I’m traveling backward to you.”
Some rules are the same in my world and Eu gwlad. At home, Mari Lwyd is a wassailer, a puppet carried by the gamest men to be found down the pub. She speaks in rhyme, and you respond until you’ve both tied your tongues in knots. If you lose, Mari enters your house and takes your beer. If you win, your new year will be lucky.
Mam usually spoke to her for us, and I would cling to Mam’s skirts. Until last year, when there was no Mam to hide behind. I spoke to the puppet for an hour, and the neighbors got tired of waiting, and the puppeteers gave up. I refused to lose, though you can see how much luck it brought me.
“Why did you find me out of the blue?” I ask Mari, joining the rhyme.
“It is your fire drew me to you.” Mari Lwyd inclines her head, closing out the rhyme before beginning another: “I think you wanted to be found.”
I bite back a curse, and when I glance at the fire I almost jump out of my skin. The whole thing has frozen. The flames have paused in the act of licking higher, and they’re no longer bending or crackling. It’s completely still, like the rest of the woods. Like the two of us, locked in this strange tableau. Unease creeps up my spine.
“I thought no one was around,” I say, finding the rhyme slowly, cautiously. Now it’s my turn to start. “I only wanted to get warm.”
“And so you found my port in a storm.” A beat, and then: “Where are you going, little dust child?”
“I…” I allow myself a minute to pause, wondering how much I should say. I may know Mari Lwyd, or her representations back home at least, but she’s still teg. “I seek something important, out in the wild.”
“What lies in your path has left others reviled. Is what you’re seeking worth the cost?”
“Yes—” I say, almost forgetting the rhyme. “Yes, I must find what has been lost. Are you the one that froze the fire?”
Mari tilts her head. “Is that not what you desire? I’ll hold back time for a good game.”
I shake my head. I want to rise and walk away, but I can’t. The world must be going on around us, but just like the fire I’m frozen in place, held by Mari and her challenge.
“I’m sorry, but it’s not the same,” I protest. “And I have somewhere I must be.”
The skeletal jaw snaps in a braying laugh. This is unearthly—from the sickened forest around me to the spirit across the fire, holding the flames and time itself still around us—but it feels like Christmas Eve.
“You know best how to get free. If you don’t like the game, you can always refuse.”
I reach toward the fire, every motion piercing my fingertips with frozen needles, but when I get close, there’s no heat.
I think I understand what she wants. I’ve drawn her here—the light of my desperate fire leading her close—and Mari has done what Mari will always do: she started a game that one of us must finish. She can go forever, that’s the point of her, the point I missed last Christmas when I held the wassailers hostage at my door as long as I could, refusing to give in, to let them win. I could do that again, keep the game going, all so I don’t have to admit defeat, but life goes on outside this bubble that Mari Lwyd has trapped us in. My sister’s life goes on, marching her deeper into danger.
“Will you free me if I lose?” I say quietly.
Mari Lwyd inclines her head. “The story’s end is for you to choose.”
The skull warps into a crooked smile. Or maybe it’s just shadows, but I smile back, certain of what I must do. Knowing, for once,that it’s time to let go. I reach into the pocket of my coat, and my hand lands on an apple, one of the ones I picked on my journey with Neirin. I’m surprised to find it there, intact, after changing my clothes in Neirin’s court and falling in the river, but stranger things have happened—perhaps this is magic, or fate.
“Would you take an apple?” I ask, breaking the rhyme.
“From you?” Mari says. “Of course.”
The spirit is an honorable victor, unlike me. I always crowed and waved my wins around like a flag. But I’ve lost now, to Mari, and it hasn’t shamed me. I’ll try to be honorable, too.
