Chance by Nancy Springer

nearby, in a comfortable hollow, the prince of the small forest people lay dallying with his longtime love. She would not live immortally as he did, but while she lived her sap would run quick and merry. She was one of the human-born ones, a dainty, chestnut-haired beauty, and her name, though she no longer remembered it, had been Iantha. She smiled in amusement, hearing not far away the humble beseeching of her mother’s voice, and she broke away from her lover’s arms to peep.
    â€œThese foolish humans,” she grumbled, bright-eyed. But then her look turned wistful as she gazed upon the beautiful mortal woman in her garb of ivy green.
    â€œVery foolish,” the prince of the Denizens lazily agreed with his lover. “But the fortress lady is not as foolish as her mate.”
    With butterfly quickness Iantha’s mood turned from wistfulness to glee. She smiled, foretasting the joke. “How so?” she asked.
    â€œChance has let us gift him with his own doom.”
    â€œPlease!” Halimeda’s tone turned sharp, and she abandoned rhyme. “I want to ask you about my daughter!”
    Laughter chirped yet louder. “Which one?” a voice cried from the oak.
    Halimeda paled as white as the ermine that trimmed her sleeves, as white as the snow. Anastasia and Chloe were safe at the fortress, she told herself fiercely. The mocking questioner could not threaten them. The voice meant—no. She would not think of—that other. They could not make her think of—that other.
    She paled, but she did not crumple. A Denizen had spoken to her. It was a start.
    â€œChance thinks he can keep us away,” the prince remarked to his mate. “Cutting the trees. The more fool, he.”
    The voices in the oak had started a chant.
    â€œWhich one, which one, which one, we say?
    Wirral will take back its own one day,
    Wirral will take back its own!”
    â€œAnd Wirral is worse than we,” the prince added darkly.
    â€œTell me where Xanthea is,” Halimeda begged the forest. Though she deemed she knew. For the trouble between her and Chance was this: that both of them knew well enough where Xanthea was to be found. Xanthea, or her body. At the heart of Wirral. But neither of them would say it, or venture there.
    The prince of the denizens squirrel-leaped past his mate and out of his hollow to stand on the winter-stripped branch of the beech.
    â€œWhere is Xanthea?” he mocked. “Where can she be?”
    Halimeda’s gray-green eyes turned to him. He vaunted and strutted on the bough where he stood, and he sang.
    â€œWith bone of deer and outlaw’s skull
    And fur of wolf and fox she lies,
    With limb of oak and linden leaf
    And all that in Wirral dies!
    But Wirral lives.”
    Halimeda heard the taunting menace in his voice. She felt her throat fill with terror, and she turned her horse toward the fortress and fled, floundering, through the snow. Chanting voices followed her.
    â€œWhich daughter, which one, which one?
    Wirral will take back its own, and soon!
    Wirral will take back its own.”
    Xanthea stretched her long limbs and sighed with pleasure. The canopied bed, piled with silks and furs, was soft, and sizeable enough so that her tall body need never be cramped, even with that other tall body lying beside it. From one bedpost, hers, hung a golden mask with peacock feathers streaming down. From the other one hung the furred wolf mask.
    Smiling at the masks, Xanthea remembered.…
    Fleeing her father’s great hall with the stranger. The night had not felt cold, for her blood ran so hot and strong that it seemed to her she could warm the whole wintertime world. A horse waited close at hand, saddled, with a pillion. Wirral had known when he came what he wanted, the rascal. He picked her up by the waist—and there were few men who could have done that—picked her up lightly, for he was very strong, and set her sideward on her cushion on