This is the second lesson:

The fair folk are like crows -

they covet most that which is beautiful and has no use at all.

You, youngest daughter of the family, golden child, had hardly known true hardship until that year - even when the long winters grew longer, even when Hart Harrowe succumbed to them himself, even without all the gilded trappings of Mama’s house, which, when we’d left it, you’d been only two. Aislin, you were always our most beloved, and it is little wonder that I - and your sister Eire, too - sacrificed the most for you in particular.

That night that Eire’s arrow pierced the fae beast, you were in the corner, huddled by the fire, where the meager flames burned warmest and brightest, wrapped up in all the last of Eire’s hunted furs.

By summer and spring you kept a garden, sparse as it was - and at best it could hardly even be called a garden; more a patchwork of little flowers and a handful of herbs and roots - out back of our little hovel. You sold bouquets at the market for money when you could, and you ground the roots into flour that we’d use for bread in colder months. But this year the flowers had all wilted before they’d even really had a chance to bloom and the roots were thin and tasteless. All that was left of the favorite heirloom strains Mama had kept in the resplendent grounds of the old mansion was a sorry bunch of dried seeds, and these you kept close by you while you tended the fire, letting the smoke carry their fragrances through the house - that you might trick our bellies into thinking themselves a little sated - while you dreamed of warmer days. Eire would have chided you for that. Dreams never filled anyone’s stomachs.

“She still isn’t back,” you said.

You didn’t mean to whine. You loved Eire, even though you knew what she thought of you: that you were a baby, still, that it was foolish of you to think you were doing any good for the family, you and your flowers - as if selling those flowers come spring would be enough to keep us all warm and fed, that it never would be. You would have learned the way of the hunt alongside her - honest - but Niamh didn’t let you; Niamh was fierce and strong and hard, everything that you weren’t, and got between you and your middle sister anytime she started shouting at you about how little you ever did to help. Aislin’s done nothing to you , Niamh would shout back, you bitter, jealous mongrel . You aren’t our father’s daughter and you never will be, and you have no right to speak to her as if you are - as if it isn’t by our mercy that you’re still here at all, chattel bitch.

Niamh shouldn’t have spoken like that to Eire, you always thought, even if it was true that Eire wasn’t of the same full blood, no matter how she loved and doted on your father. It was apparent from the strange dark glint of red in her loam-brown hair; the tilt of the corners of her eyes, the high planes of her cheeks; the clear gray of her gaze, which none of the rest of you shared. Papa’s hair had been (in youth) the black, his eyes bright green; his face was round, not sharp. Mama had had more delicate features, true, but her hair had been the mild brown-gold of yours and Niamh’s - not burnt russet - and her eyes were your own warm, dark hazel. You’d seen it in the portraits of her, even if you barely remembered what she looked like yourself.

Eire had never said otherwise whenever Niamh accused her of being a cuckold’s child, besides. She’d only stood there, jaw working, face tight, and then turned and stormed out once Niamh got loud enough, and that was that.

You knew you should’ve said something. But that look on Eire’s face made guilt twist your gut, and you, shrinking and fearful, never liked to speak up when you already felt bad. So you’d stayed quiet and let Niamh keep insulting her, and when she had finished, you told yourself the little sneering smile on Niamh’s face was out of love for you, not hatred for your other sister - that it was alright, as long as you were still loved.

Now, you looked at Niamh’s face and saw nothing but stony, drawn silence. The winter had grown so long and cold that even Niamh’s usual complaints about Eire had been cut short. Now she shivered by the fire alongside you, though she let you have the warmest, best spot right in front of it the way she never would’ve for her sister.

You’d hoped she’d at least have comforted you, though - not comforted, exactly, since this was Eire you were speaking of; more of an insult coming from Niamh. She’s always out this late - she probably forgot about her poor hungry sisters at home, or With luck she’s been eaten by wolves. But even now Niamh said nothing.

“It’s late,” you said. “The moon’s rising out there - I know it.” And, for good measure, you added a pout, which you knew how to make just so - very sweet, very pleading - that it would always get your Niamh, queen of snow and ice that she was, to crack and give you love.

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But Niamh only sighed and said nothing.

This was new to you. Niamh was never this quiet, not even on bellies as empty as yours. Not when you were unhappy and in need of a good cheer. Niamh loved you; Niamh wouldn’t forsake you like that.

You’d only seen Niamh this quiet once before: when Papa had fallen ill the winter prior, and not even the Harrowes’ concoction of ginger root and wort and beef skin had wakened him from his long, deep sleep. When he finally came to, he didn’t talk right anymore; his words all ran together and he couldn’t make the sounds of even his own daughters’ names quite right. “Ey-reh,” he’d say, “neeve, ash-leen,” slow and loping and strange, and even Niamh couldn’t meet your eyes then, knowing how wrong it all was.

It struck you, then, why she’d fallen silent this time. She was afraid.

That meant you couldn’t be afraid. If you were afraid, then both of you had no courage left - you had always had so little to begin with - and Papa was asleep, of course, so could do nothing to help. The two of you would be rooted there in fear and starve and waste away with nobody to find you before spring unearthed your little hovel from the snow.

You said, “She must have stopped in to visit the millers’ boy again.”

You had heard Niamh sneer about this many times (how the millers’ boy wasn’t even very handsome, rather more pretty, too foppish for any kind of proper man, that maybe he wasn’t a boy at all, even - that something was wrong with Eire that way, a way she couldn’t quite voice), and you had learned well the tone she took on when she talked about it. You made sure to mimic it the way you spoke to her now, for surely if you talked like Niamh always did, she’d suddenly remember to be her usual brave, cruel self and sneer along with you.

“She hasn’t,” Niamh said.

The flatness of this startled you.

“You don’t know that,” you said. “Eire’s reckless, and - and stupid. You’ve always said so. Maybe she - ”

You stopped, for Niamh had whirled and put her hand over your mouth.

You wouldn’t have kept talking anyway, though. Your heart was thundering in your chest and your mouth was suddenly dry. It wasn’t just the sudden tense set of Niamh’s shoulders that made you stop, nor the chill that swept through the room and snuffed most of your little fire along with it. It was something else, something deep and ancient, something with no name, that had crept into your bones and settled into your hollow gut, and you knew: something was wrong.

At the door, there came a knock.

You looked at Niamh, whose gaze was fixed on the door. She didn’t move. Part of you wanted to struggle, to ask her why not - what if it was Eire, what if she was back? - but then the knock came again, a loud, sure rap that cut through even the noise of wind and snow, and you understood that it was not Eire, for Eire never knocked like that, and every hair on the back of your neck stood up.

Very slowly, Niamh’s hand crept toward the iron spit over the hearth.

If it was not Eire, it was nothing good. No neighbor of yours came by - in weather like this - to say hello, not since what happened to the Harrowes. (Fae curses wrought upon the forsaken and motherless, the rest of the village muttered.) And you were weak, and your sister hardly stronger, and your father was sleeping, and the iron spit was so small, so dull, so useless.

So you never knew why you did what you did then, knowing the danger of it.

You shook off Niamh’s hand and stood up. And - before she could stop you, for she was still with disbelief - you opened the door.

There was only snow. No - there was a shifting of shadows, a break in the wind, a man-shaped blur…a man, you saw, though so dusky he seemed to blend into the night at first. A man, and he was breathtakingly beautiful, and when he smiled, you saw that his teeth were even and sharp.

“Hello,” he said. “Your sister has done something terrible tonight. She’s broken the Covenant.”

The Covenant, you remembered from Niamh’s lecturing, was the thing the fae had promised to uphold all those ages ago when they had finally stopped warring with mankind and withdrawn into the wilds, far away from here. Only you didn’t ever really think any of that had been real - that the fae were real, that the Covenant was any more than ancient myth, fireside legend.

But here stood this beautiful man, neither old nor young, with a long, thick mane of thrush-brown hair and eyes like twilight and a grin like coins, bright and cold. And though you wanted to ask him who he was and what he meant about Eire, how he knew her and if she was alright, all that came out was a whimper.

Behind you Niamh said, “Go away. We have nothing for you.”

You didn’t dare look at her, but the man said in a lilting voice, “Sweet little darling, put down your iron twig and parley with me. I’m here to offer you a deal - to save you.”

Niamh said nothing.

The man spread his hands. “Your sister pierced one of our own,” he said, “with ash and iron, and his flesh has fallen silent. Your word says we are owed a life of yours in turn. My brothers will want to take your sister as their price, and they won’t be merciful.”

So this was the Covenant? Niamh had never made it sound so immediate, so sharp, so final.

“You’re lying,” said Niamh.

The man laughed. “You know better than anyone that we fae cannot lie, bright one,” he said. “I speak the truth. Why wouldn’t I?”

You saw suddenly that he was - despite the cold - wearing only a deerskin slung around his shoulders and a pair of soft hunter’s trousers, somehow untouched by the snow. And, from his brow, there grew a pair of spreading, massive antlers: you had thought them part of the deerskin for a moment, but no, there was his own flesh puckered around their roots. So the fae are real, you thought, and might’ve wet yourself a little.

“Here is my offer,” he said. “Come with me and let yourself be considered the life-price in your sister’s stead. My brothers will take the trade if I am the one asking for it.”

“You want to kill us,” said Niamh, who sounded cold and faraway.

“No,” said the man. He looked at you. “Beautiful one,” he said, “I want you for my bride.”