Maybe not always so solitary. Maybe not entirely strange.
“I want to save Wren,” he says.
“A little bird,” she says. “Caught in a storm.”
Oak gives her a steady look. “You have a daughter. One you wanted to marry to the High King. You told me about her.”
Mother Marrow gives a small grunt. “That was some time ago.”
“Not so much time, I will wager, that you’ve forgotten the insult of the courtly Folk thinking that a hag’s daughter wasn’t fit for a throne.”
There’s a growl in her voice. “You best be careful if you expect to get something from me. And you best not try honey-mouthing me, either. I enjoy sweet words, but I will enjoy eating your tongue even more.”
He inclines his head in acknowledgment. “What is it you want in exchange for Bex?”
She snorts. “You found no girl. What if none is here?”
“Give me three guesses,” he says, though he is far from certain he can succeed at this. “Three guesses to where you put her, and if I’m right, you give her to me.”
“And if you fail?” Her eyes glitter. He knows she is intrigued.
“Then I will return here at the new moon and serve for a year and a day. I will wash your floors. I will scour your cauldron and trim your toenails. So long as it harms no one, I will do whatever you ask as a servant in your household.”
He can feel the air shift around him, feel the rightness of these words. He isn’t using his charm in the usual way, but he allows himself to feel the contortions that power urges on him, the way it wants him to reshape himself for Mother Marrow. The gancanagh part of him knows that she will believe herself to be more wily than he, that her pride will urge her to take the bet.
“WhateverI ask of you, Prince of Elfhame?” Her grin is wide and delighted at the anticipation of his humiliation.
“So long as I guess wrong three times,” he says.
“Then guess away,” she says. “For all you know, I’ve turned her into the lid on a pot.”
“I would feel very stupid if I didn’t guess that first, then,” Oak says.
Mother Marrow looks extremely pleased. “Wrong.”
Two guesses. He’s good at games, but it’s hard to think when it feels as though there’s no time left, when he can hear the storm in the background and the rattling of the . . .
He thinks of the white walnut cottage and Tiernan. And he recalls who gave Wren that gift. Getting to his feet, Oak walks to the cabinet. “She’s trapped in one of the nuts.”
Rage washes across Mother Marrow’s face briefly, only to be replaced by a smile. “Very good, prince,” she says. “Now tell me which one.”
There has to be a half dozen in the bowl. “I guessed correctly,” Oak protests. “I got the answer.”
“Did you?” she says. “That would be like saying I turned her into a flower and not being sure if it was a rose or a tulip. Choose. If you’re wrong, you lose.”
He opens the cabinet, takes out the bowl, then goes to her kitchen for a knife.
“What are you doing?” she shouts. “Stop that!”
He selects a filbert and jams the point of the blade into the seam. It bursts open, scattering an array of dresses around the room, each in a different diaphanous color. They drift gently to the floor.
“Put that one down,” she says as he reaches for a hazelnut. “Immediately.”
“Will you give me the girl?” Oak demands. “Because I don’t need you to get her out now. I will open every one of these and destroy them in the process.”
“Foolish boy!” Mother Marrow says, then intones:
Be trapped inside with no escape
