•   •   •

When she thrashed her way up from the darkness the next time, it was to find a face hanging over her, a young mortal woman, features pinched tight with fear and her hands pulled tight against her breast for fear she might accidentally touch the sick creature lying in the bed.

“Get . . . healer . . .” was all Tanahaya could say. “Need . . . healer . . .”

The woman stared at her in horrified fascination for a moment. Tanahaya realized she had spoken in her own tongue, not in the common speech of mortals. She tried again. “Bring . . . the healer.”

That was all the strength she had. The dark, the heat, and the rot reached out and dragged her back down into boiling black depths.

“Why do you put water on plants, Aunt Tia-Lia? Why don’t they drown? I saw a mouse drown in the moat once. I couldn’t reach him, and Grandfather Osric wouldn’t help me get him out. He swam for a long time, but then he died.”

“You drink water, little Lillia, and yet you don’t drown. A little water is good for living things—in fact, it is necessary. Too much, though, is bad. Now hold that candle a little closer, please.”

The princess thought about this. “How much is too much?”

Aunt Tia-Lia was still looking at the plants, not at Lillia. “There is no single answer to that question.”

Lillia loved Tia-Lia, but she didn’t always like the answers she gave. “Can a plant drown?”

“If you give them too much water, yes. Now, please, my darling, let me finish this, then you can help me draw pictures of those flowers I told you about.”

Princess Lillia’s next question was forestalled by the noisy arrival of a young serving maid at the door of the forcing shed. The maid seemed to have run a long way, because her face was red and she was gasping. “Oh, Lady Thelía, are you in there?” she cried, leaning on the gate. “Merciful Rhiap, I didn’t know what to do. Brother Etan is gone down to the city, and she’s in a terrible way and I just don’t know! She says to bring a healer, but I don’t know anything about that!”

“Calm down, girl, I can’t understand you. Who needs a healer?”

“The strange woman. The one upstairs in the Residence that Brother Etan helps you tend! She was moaning and carrying on, and I went to see what was wrong, and then her eyes opened up—just like that! Scared me witless! And she kept saying she wanted a healer, a healer. But Brother is gone down to the city.”

Thelía looked up to the heavens. “Not even one day to tend my garden?” she asked, then set down her watering can. “Calm yourself, girl. I will come. Let me just wash my hands.”

•   •   •

Lillia didn’t really understand why Uncle Timo and Aunt Tia-Lia were married, because they were so different. For one thing, Aunt Tia-Lia was much taller than her husband, which struck Lillia as very strange. Also, Uncle Timo’s skin was brown, but his wife’s skin was pale, except on her hands and the back of her neck where the sun had darkened her. Uncle Timo was quiet and shy and had a limp, but Aunt Tia-Lia wasn’t ever shy about anything, and she walked so fast that Lillia could barely keep up with her—like now, as they made their way swiftly across the Inner Bailey.

She had once asked her mother why people married each other. “Because God sends you someone, then you have children together,” had been her mother’s answer, but that didn’t explain Uncle Timo and his bride either, because they didn’t have any children of their own. Lillia’s own father was dead, but he and Mother had still had children, Lillia and her big brother Morgan. “Are there other reasons people marry each other?” she had asked, but Mother had only told her, “I can’t imagine any,” and Lillia had recognized from the tone of her mother’s words that it also meant, “I’m tired of talking.”

Now, as she hurried to keep up with Aunt Tia-Lia, she was wondering about it again. “Why do people get married?” she asked.

“Lots of reasons, I suppose.” She turned to look past Lillia to the maid. “Hurry yourself, girl. I understand why you had to leave her alone, but that doesn’t mean we should dawdle.”

“I am hurrying, Lady Thelía,” said the maid. “It just doesn’t look like it, because my legs aren’t so long as yours. I wouldn’t have left her alone, but Brother Etan said that Martha wasn’t to watch over her anymore, so there’s just me . . .”

Aunt Tia-Lia made a face. “Enough explaining, dear, just keep a good pace, will you? As to your question, Princess Lillia, sometimes people marry because their parents want them to. Other times they marry because they want companionship—don’t frown, that’s a very unbecoming face. ‘Companionship’ means having a friend to keep you company. Do you understand?”

Lillia nodded. “And what about lovers, like in the stories? Do they get married?”

“Oh, yes. And sometimes they stay in love, but sometimes they don’t. I would say it’s one of the more untrustworthy reasons for marriage.”

“Why . . . ?” Lillia was feeling out of breath. “Why did you marry Uncle Timo?”

Aunt Tia-Lia looked a little surprised by the question. “Why? I suppose . . . well, companionship, certainly. But mostly because I had never met a kind man—a good man—who also asked so many questions, who was more interested in simply finding things out than in telling other people how things were or how they should be.”

“I don’t understand.”

Her aunt (who was not really her aunt, just as Uncle Timo was not really her uncle—Lillia called them that because that’s how they felt to her) shook her head, but with a little smile to soften it. “I really think we will have to talk about this another time, dear. We’re almost there and you are all red in the face. Now save your breath for climbing.”

Lillia could hear the groans of the maid as she struggled up the stairs behind them, but she did her best to stay right behind Aunt Tia-Lia. “I saw the lady before,” she said as they reached the landing. “The one who’s ill. I think she’s a witch.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t look right. She’s scary.”

Aunt Tia-Lia didn’t say anything, but pushed open the door. The lady on the bed wasn’t tied down as she had been the last time Lillia had seen her. She looked much sicker than before, the golden color of her skin beginning to turn a bluish-gray, her face covered in drops of sweat. “Is she going to die?” Lillia asked in what she thought was an appropriately quiet voice. “Brother Etan said she was a Zither.”

“A what?” Her sort-of aunt stood beside the bed, staring down at the woman. “No, she is a Sitha. The people some call fairies.” She carefully seated herself on the bed and began to touch the woman in different places, on her face, her neck. She even leaned forward to put her head against the woman’s chest, which made Lillia a little anxious. She still didn’t know what either a Zither (or a Sither) was, so she was by no means sure you couldn’t be one of those and a witch, too. The woman’s eyes opened just enough that Lillia could see the whites, then closed again. Then the fairy opened her mouth and let out a long, shuddering breath but nothing more.

“She is burning up with fever!” Aunt Tia-Lia said. “Tabata, you should be bathing her face and forehead with cool water—wrists, too. I see no water here at all.”

“There was some, yesterday . . .”

“Oh, for the love . . . ! Go and get some more, quickly. A bucket from the well, and a clean cloth. Now!”

The maid scurried out. She did not seem sad to have been given an errand, which seemed odd, because Lillia would have been furious to be sent away.

Aunt Tia-Lia found a bowl that still had a bit of water in it and used her own sleeve to dab it on the woman’s brow. The eyes came the rest of the way open, and for a moment the strange golden stare locked with Aunt Tia-Lia’s lovely, ordinary brown one. Then the woman licked her lips and said, in a whispery voice, “P-p-poison—” Her slender fingers closed on Aunt Tia-Lia’s hand and she spoke again, in a voice so tiny that even Lillia, for all her worry about this strange person, leaned closer to hear. “Need . . . !”