She was sitting in the swing underneath the huge tree in the front of the house, the one slightly out of sight, but where you could still have a good view of the drive. As children they used to play here in the summer. They would climb up into the tree and spy on all her parent’s guests at their fancy dress balls. Her brother would push her higher and higher at her request, much to their nanny’s dismay. A lady should act more refined, Nanny would always tell her.
When she was thirteen they were separated. Her brother was sent off to school to train to become a warrior and to serve their King in his later years. She was kept here, at the family’s country home, away from any threat of danger and was groomed to be one of the Queen’s Ladies in Waiting. She was also betrothed to one of the fancy lords in the King’s court.
She was sent to the court to serve her Queen when she was barely fifteen. There she and her brother were reunited and would spend every free second of their time together, as twins are want to do. She served her Queen until her eighteenth birthday and the time of her wedding to Lord Tyler. She had only met him once, on her first day at court. He smiled politely and kissed her hand, then left her standing on the outskirts of the ballroom to dance with another lady of the court.
The days before her wedding seemed to come upon her in a flash. One moment she was a carefree girl, giggling and dancing around her rooms with her twin and the next moment she was a grownup, facing grownup responsibilities.
It wasn’t that she was unhappy with the life her father had set up for her, she just wished that she had been giving a say in the matter of her husband. But she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her father, much less had a conversation with him on any subject. He had wanted a house full of boys, instead he got the twins, killing his much loved wife in the process of birthing them.
Thus, she grew up feeling she was the outcast. As the last born twin, and a girl to boot, the blame was laid upon her shoulders. She the reason her mother died. She a breach, the midwife had to push up back up into her mother’s womb and twist her around. She was the reason for being born from a dead womb.
She sat in the tree, the day before her wedding, waiting to see her father come down the drive of their country home. She had been sitting there since breakfast, waiting patiently. Now she wondered if he would even bother to show up. The wedding was in the morning, she still had fittings to attend, for her troussie. She didn’t want any of this, her husband to be was a known rouge, he had slept with just about every lady in the court, save the Queen herself – and it wouldn’t surprise her if he had tried to woo the great lady. She was afraid of him. He towered at least a foot taller than herself. He was a glutton of a man, he smelled and he drank to slovenliness. Surely, her father would never force her to marry such a man; he would bring shame upon her family sooner or later. Thus, she sat. And she waited. And she hoped.
At dusk her brother joined her in the tree. He had seen her in the boughs earlier in the afternoon, when everyone had been looking for her and getting worried – well, everyone but him. He could feel the sadness radiating off her, sitting in the tree all alone. He knew for whom she waiting and watched, and knew it was not her husband-to-be.
“Do you remember,” he said in his quiet, gentle way, “when we were children and we would run off down to the woods to the fairy circle and make wishes as we held hands and danced until we would get dizzy?”
She smiled, the memory was one of her favorites. “I used to have to talk you into going down there. You were afraid the fairies would catch us and take us home with them as their prisoners.” She turned and looked at him, with tears in her eyes. “That was one of the few differences between us, even back then. I was hoping to be taken away from our family, and you were afraid of it.”
“You now have your wish. Tomorrow you will be taken away to a household of your own.”
“But I will still be under a hateful man’s thumb. I will be the new toy for a while, then he will go back to all the women of the court, and I will be, once again, left behind in a drafty old house to sit and wait.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to her. How to comfort her. He never had been. As children he had had fantasies of standing up to their father when he would lash out against her, but that was all they were, fantasies. He could never bring himself to stand up to their father, for fear of learning that he hated his son as much as his daughter.
Suddenly he laughed, thinking of a wonderful idea. He smiled at her bewilderment and climbed out the tree, holding his arms up to help her down.
“Let’s go back to the glade and dance one last time. It will help cheer you up, and hide you from the servants at the same time.”
She laughed as they raced across the lawn toward the forest, as they had done as children. She cared nothing for the sopping hem of her new gown. She had almost forgotten about the fairy circle and the wishes she had made as a child. She vaguely remembered the dreams she would have at night, after their secret visits. The wonderfully kind fairy folk who would whisk her off to their world and the happiness they surrounded her with when she was with them. But she always awoke in her bed the next morning, convinced it was all a cruel dream. That such happiness was never meant to be hers.
