Page 184 of The Knucker King

A memory niggled at her.

From back when she was a sick child on a pallet before the roaring hearth. When her mother had still been alive. It was within the dead of Winter, and the snowfall was deep. Avice had coughed and sneezed under threadbare blankets. Her mother had made a poppet. A small doll made of dried grass and linen scraps. She had cut some of Avice’s raven hair and wrapped it around the doll. Then, her mother had tossed it into the hearth, while begging Mother Annis to take the doll instead of her daughter.

“Annis is the Winter Goddess. So, if Eostre must be woken before Annis’s end…” Avice’s eyes widened as Queen Fawen melted into the mighty tree with a crackle of green magic. “…then Eostre must be the Spring Goddess.”

Avice watched the two Spriggan males lace their clawed fingers together.

Derrowen looked up at Pren. “Will she be alright?”

The bigger Spriggan met the smaller one’s eyes. “Nature’s Blessing, I hope so.”

“Shall we check on Eostre?” Derrowen asked. “Her roots may need watering.”

Pren rattled his skull in agreement. “First to the Goddess, and then we will return to the Birthing Tree.”

Avice watched them depart, pity drooping her shoulders. They had no idea what would happen to the Fawen, and that no Spriggan Princess would come. That there would be no one to awaken Eostre… That was until, she and Trewoofe did.

The strands of the story wove together, forming a tapestry in her mind.

The Spriggan Queen never grew her daughter. Without her, the Spriggan males could not awake Eostre, the Goddess of Spring. That was the cause of the endless Winter, until she and her Knucker King woke her up on Equinox. Using a combination of his magic, and the power she had pulled from the Good Neighbour chorus.

“But why did the Spriggan males try to change the children, and the Pillywiggin Princess?” Avice mulled. “Did they hope that by changing a female into a Spriggan she might be able to wake Eostre? But Mary was born after Spring came and Boarden is a boy.” She tightened her grip on her crystal. “And what is happening to the village? Is it because we freed Eostre?”

Mist formed around her, a swirl of emerald leaves tossed her skirts, and her vision clouded once more.

When Avice could see again, everything was black. She tried to move, and panic gripped her chest when she could not. Her arms were pinned to her sides, and her legs were forced into a kneeling position.

“No,” she whispered into the crushing dark. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and they dissipated into nothingness as they fell. “No, no, no, no.”

The root cellar was one thing. The Underneath and their nesting cavern were home. This was oppressive. Too much like the ale cellar where she was attacked all those turns of seasons ago.

“Queen Fawen, I do not like it here,” Avice hissed. “You must let me go.”

She did not expect the Spriggan to answer her, and the midwife squeaked in surprise when she did.

“To know, you must see,” she insisted.

Fawen’s voice buzzed with the fury of a thousand bees, needling the midwife’s skin, and stinging her ears.

“I do know!” Avice snapped. “I know exactly what happened to you. It happened to me. You were sliced, ripped open, violated, and cut into pieces so small you never thought you could be put back together.”

A sob echoed in Avice’s head.

“Yes,” Fawen whimpered.

“Men came. Ones who follow the Cross God,” Avice continued, weaving the last threads together in her mind, determined to get the full picture of what happened. The new cross, Father Richard going mad, and Father Peter taking over the church. The old priest must have had some form of the sight. He must have heard Fawen screaming inside the hanging cross and it drove him to insanity. “They cut down your tree, did they not?”

“Yes!” the Spriggan wept.

“They sliced you up—”

“Then…” Fawen interrupted with a sniff. “I saw they were keeping a long pole intact, so I drew what parts of myself I could from the pieces that were left. I reformed in there. Along with my daughter seed.”

Tears ran rivers down Avice’s cheeks. “My Lady?”

“Yes?”

“I am so sorry this happened to you. But please, do not make me relive your suffering. It is too much like my own. For too many turns of seasons, the man who cut and broke me stalked my nights and memories. I have only recently stopped having his image behind my eyes.” Avice swallowed the lump in her throat. “Do not make me see yours, for I think it will make my own monster come back. I promise you. I already know. I already see.”