Page 7 of The Yuletide Fairy's Curse
Dalla’s parents nodded, and Puck disappeared in a cloud of pollen.
The vision ended there. Dalla shook her head, clutching her own arms. Inhabiting her mother’s consciousness was ungrounding.
“What do you know about him?” Kolfrosta asked.
“Puck?” Dalla said. “I know he is your summer counterpart to the seasonal cycle. He helps with the crops. On the summer solstice, we celebrate with him and then you come and kill him for the year. And then on the winter solstice, he’s…reincarnated, I guess, and he comes to you and kills you.”
Dalla had never witnessed this death; she’d only observed Puck imbibing excessively on human wine, dining to his heart’s content, receiving presents and prayers like a god the last day of his half of the cycle.
“Revisit that second point,” said Kolfrosta. “He helps with the crops? Is that what you saw just now?”
“I don’t understand their conversation,” Dalla admitted. “Or why he was sitting in the sovereign’s chair. When he met with me,Isat there, and he had no problem with it. We did not discuss anything of consequence.”
“Did you not?”
“It didn’t seem so,” said Dalla. “He asked me about my plan for this year’s harvest. I told him to support all of the staple crops—we need it. We have had some rough years lately.”
It was hard to talk with Kolfrosta watching her, rapt, but Dalla pressed on.
“He told me his magic was not strong enough to make every crop flourish. I asked if he could spread out the prosperousness of certain vital crops—potatoes and wheat and whatnot. He said yes. And then I asked him if he knew a way to stop you from taking my younger brothers after you kidnap me. And he said he had nothing to do with that and could not help.”
Kolfrosta smiled at this last part. “Did he follow through on his promise about the crops?”
Dalla hesitated. “He did, but I could tell he was displeased during our conversation. Not like the one from my mother’s memory.”
Kolfrosta approached Dalla, and Dalla stepped back. She was close, as though she meant to touch her. Dalla felt for the dagger under her cloak.
If Kolfrosta noticed Dalla going for her dagger, she made no move to stop her. Instead, she reached with both hands for the sides of Dalla’s head. Dalla forced herself to be still.
“May I?” asked Kolfrosta, and Dalla suspected she was asking permission to do more than touch her.
The proximity unarmed Dalla. They were close enough to kiss, and Dalla badly wanted to.
“Yes,” she breathed.
Kolfrosta placed her fingers gently on both sides of Dalla’s temples. Dalla closed her eyes as Kolfrosta pressed her forehead against Dalla’s. Kolfrosta’s breath came in light puffs, smelling of wassail and cinnamon.
What happened next was something like an unspooling. A sensation like a wound ribbon being pulled out of Dalla’s ears—not painful, but slightly uncomfortable. And then it was over. Kolfrosta stepped back and extended her arm. A mist rippled around her fingers and coalesced into more and more of a sphere until it resembled the other baubles on the tree.
“You speak the truth,” Kolfrosta said. She handed the bauble back to Dalla. Dalla peered down at it, seeing flashes of the tapestry, and realized this was her memory, contained.
Which meant the other one had been her mother’s actual memory. Kolfrosta had put her forehead to her mother’s forehead and extracted it, the same as she did for Dalla.
Something about this made Dalla ill. She still held the memory in her own head, at least, but who knew what the fairy was capable of if she could take anything from Dalla’s mind like that? What secrets about Dalla’s family did Kolfrosta know?
Did she know things about Dalla’s own family that Dalla didn’t?
Dalla set the bauble on the tree, disturbed by its existence. The memory she’d watched played over in her head. The way her parents seemed cold, righteous, like they’d been wronged and they were going to do something about it.
“The Wolves and the Bears,” said Dalla suddenly. “They were talking about the other nobility, referring to them by their sigils. They were asking Puck to…punish them for not being obedient enough. By making their crops suffer.”
“And keeping the poorer farmers beholden to assistance from the nobility by killing their crops. Yes.”
“So, Puck was really asking me who should live and who should die this year. How bad the harvest should be.”
Dalla clutched her stomach. The sweets were not sitting well anymore. Her breaths were coming too fast, and her heart rate was spiking. One of her attacks, and she was about to have it in front of a fairy murderer.
“He was,” said Kolfrosta. She placed a firm, grounding hand on Dalla’s shoulder. “You don’t approve, I see.”
