Chance by Nancy Springer Page B

stood bared, shrinking, like a pale mollusk bereft of its shell, biting her lip and not meeting his eyes. The chill sting of the winter air on her face made her shiver. She clenched her cold, blue-fingered hands.
    â€œLook at me,” said the stranger with no hesitation, no revulsion in his voice. “See.”
    Xanthea shook her head. “I have seen,” she mumbled, and she averted her face.
    â€œSee,” Wirral urged. “Look in my eyes. See yourself.”
    The low tremor in his voice—threat, or ardor? Xanthea could scarcely believe, ardor. Still, something in his voice made her remember courage. Made her take a deep breath of the heady forest air, made her straighten her slumping shoulders and turn her head toward him. She looked straight into his soft, vehement eyes.
    And in them she saw herself as Wirral did.
    She saw herself in small there at first, and stared, and then saw nothing but the stranger’s feral eyes and herself, in them. With a rush like heat in the blood the image filled her sight. A tall maiden with a proud bearing and long, dark hair—she had never noticed the honey-colored lights in her hair—and wearing the hair like a crested helm: a striking, strong-boned face, unlike the face of any lesser maiden, a face with flashing eyes and a wide, feeling mouth. A questing face, tender yet hawk-keen. A strange face, better than a jeweled mask for gazing on. And the hot-blooded daring that had been Xanthea’s at the masque was hers once again; Wirral had given it back to her, and she no longer felt the cold.
    â€œYou see?” Wirral gazed gravely at her and took her hand in one of his, carrying her golden mask in the other. “Come.”
    By the hand, held in courtly wise, he led her to the massive oak. A fissure showed in the trunk, puffy-lipped, large enough for a man to squeeze through, no more. He stood aside and let her step in ahead of him, into darkness, or so it seemed. Then he followed, and found Xanthea where she stood blinking.
    Outside, their tree-shelter was a wild, warty, gouty old oak with sprouts bristling from its gnarls. Inside, it was a palace.
    Halimeda was not one to weep easily. The misfortunes of her youth had hardened her. Seventeen years of holding power with Chance, and sometimes against him; several lyings in childbed, one infant boy born dead, three babies miscarried; it had all hardened her. Therefore she did not weep for Xanthea. She would not weep until the girl’s body lay in front of her, ready for burial. One long-ago night at Gallowstree Lea she had been in such callow, whimpering despair she wanted to kill herself, but she had seldom wept since.
    Therefore, she did not weep as she rode home from Wirral, where the Denizens had mocked her.
    Moreover, she had not loved Xanthea overmuch. There had been something uncanny about Xanthea.… Halimeda searched for Xanthea, not so much because she wanted this particular daughter back as because she sensed power, being one who knows the ways of power; she sensed menace. And she loved the daughters remaining to her more. And she scorned her husband Chauncey, who would sit at his cups and see to his lordly clothing and do nothing, for fear of facing the thing that was happening.
    Halimeda returned to Wirralmark at nightfall and gave commands. Then she called her daughters before her.
    â€œAnastasia, Chloe. Until I tell you otherwise you are not to venture even so far as the village. You are to stay within the fortress walls.”
    Their plain, blunt faces congealed, like hardening dough, to show their displeasure, for Anastasia and Chloe had been petted since birth and did not lack for boldness. “Mother,” Chloe objected, “it is not fair.”
    â€œYou ride out every day,” said Anastasia.
    â€œNo longer will I do so,” Halimeda told them.
    But that night she dreamed a strange, dark dream of trees. Oak and ash and elm and linden, birch and beech and fir,