[Recovered from the Wayback Machine]
A GUIDE FOR YOUNG LADIES ENTERING THE SERVICE OF THE FAIRIES, by Rosamund Hodge
This is the lie they will use to break you: no one else has ever loved this way before.
Choose wisely which court you serve. Light or Dark, Summer or Winter, Seelie or Unseelie: they have many names, but the pith of the choice is this: a poisoned flower or a knife in the dark?
(The difference is less and more than you might think.)
Of course, this is only if you go to them for the granting of a wish: to save your father, sister, lover, dearest friend. If you go to get someone back from them, or—most foolish of all—because you fell in love with one of them, you will have no choice at all. You must go to the ones that chose you.
Be kind to the creature that guards your door. Do not mock its broken, bleeding face.
It will never help you in return. But I assure you, someday you will be glad to know that you were kind to something once.
Do not be surprised how many other mortal girls are there within the halls. The world is full of wishing and of wanting, and the fairies love to play with human hearts.
You will meet all kinds: the terrified ones, who used all their courage just getting there. The hopeful ones, who think that love or cleverness is enough to get them home. The angry ones, who see only one way out. The cold ones, who are already half-fairy.
I would tell you, Do not try to make friends with any of them, but you will anyway.
Sooner or later (if you serve well, if you do not open the forbidden door and let the monster eat you), they will tell you about the game.
Summer battles Winter, Light battles Dark. This is the law of the world. And on the chessboard of the fairies, White battles Black.
In the glory of this battle, the pieces that are brave and strong may win their heart’s desire.
You already have forgotten how the mortal sun felt upon your face. You already know the bargain that brought you here was a lie.
If you came to save your sick mother, you fear she is dead already. If you came to free your captive sister, your fear she will be sent to Hell for the next tithe. If you came for love of an elf-knight, you are broken with wanting him, and yet he does not seem to know you.
Some of the friends you shouldn’t have made will already be pieces in the game. They’ll teach you how to wrap glamor around your body into the perfect uniform, bone white or black as night. They’ll teach you the weapons: knives and scythes for Black, poisoned flowers and shredding thorns for White. They’ll teach you the rules: move as your chess-mistress demands. Fight only to first blood.
They’ll show you how to cheat. How to slide the knife and angle the flower for the kill.
It’s only victory that’s rewarded on the chessboard.
Some of your friends will fight on the other side.
You will think this makes a difference.
Of course you may die there. Most girls do.
If you live, it will mostly be luck. But it will also be that you decided to win.
Your scythe and your thorns are slick with the blood of those you once called friends.
Do not believe you are broken yet. You still have that wish, wrapped around your heart. You remember it at night, as you lie weeping in your bed. As you shed blood on the chess board.
No one else has ever loved this way before. You still believe it. You still believe that you can win your heart’s desire.
These are the ways you may finally break. You may hear that your chess-mistress has a casket with an apple sweet enough to cure any sickness. That the Fairy Queen has a scroll, on which the names of those tithed to Hell are written. That your elf-knight is imprisoned in a pit of snakes, because he tried to help you.
Or you may shed one more drop of blood than you can bear, and you may try to stir your sisters to rebellion.
There are many ways, and only one breaking.
You will stumble, if you try to steal. You will be seen, if you try to escape. If you trust anyone, you will be betrayed.
You will be handed back to your chess-mistress, and she will drag you by the hair down a twisting, sightless stairway, down to a vast cavern vaulted with tree-roots, lit by winking fireflies.
There, among soft green moss and dry dead leaves, sleep a thousand heroes. Your chess-mistress will lead you among them, will show you their pallid faces and explain: they all believed they could defeat the fairies.
Some were named in prophecies. Some were born under lucky stars. Some could speak with beasts and birds. Some only had hearts that were brave and true.
They all thought that they loved as no one else had loved before.
She will whisper the truth to you, as you tremble in her grip: your love is like the falling leaves. If no leaf has twisted this way as it fell before, what does it matter?
They are old as the stars, the heartless creatures you have made your masters, and they have seen every love. They know that every heart has a crack they can use to destroy it.
And this is the law, written in the stars and seeds: in the end, all things must fail.
She may kill you then. Goodbye.
She may choke your mouth with poppies, and lay you down to sleep forever among the failed heroes. Goodbye.
Or she may ask if you’d like to be cured of your weakness.
Her star-bright eyes and your broken heart will only allow one answer.
It won’t hurt, when she slides her fingers between your ribs and pulls out the little beating bit of flesh that humans find so important. She’ll give you something to replace it: a rose, a thorn, a bit of thistledown.
She’ll lead you back up the stairs, and she’ll teach you to be a chess-mistress.
Go ahead and forget your mortal name. You won’t need it anymore.
You will hear weeping at night. You may imagine it’s your elf-knight in prison, or your sister in Hell, but truly it’s your heart, bereft of its body and not understanding.
Ignore it. You know now what mortal tears are worth.
You will have all your wishes then.
You will visit your mother once to feed her honey seasoned in starlight, and you will watch her through a looking-glass as she crawls across the earth, more shriveled each year as she grows ever older and cannot die.
Your will take your sister from the cage where she waited for the tithe, and carve her face with bloody signs to protect her, and use her as a guard for mortal girls.
You will win your elf-knight in a game, and every night he will kiss you obediently as you desire.
You will wield the chess-pieces that you once called sisters, and you will make them glorious before you break them.
And every night, you will hear your own heart weeping.
Don’t imagine that your heart will save you. Every fairy hears that weeping, and every fairy ignores it. That’s what it means to be one of them.
But this is the single crack in the fairy law: that sometimes the one they adopt are still loved. Even by those whom they have destroyed.
So it is possible—it is not likely at all, though ten thousand years should pass—but it is possible that a woman shrunk and withered into a cricket-like thing may creep upon a golden casket. It is possible that a stumbling girl with a ruined, bleeding face may pry open the lid. It is possible that an elf-knight, dazed and broken and knowing human love only by hearsay, may lift the heart out. It is possible that a scarred and bitter chess-piece, who remembers when you ceased to have compassion, may bring the heart to your chambers.
It possible that one of them may give it back to you.
This is what you will understand as your heart is returned to you, as you scream and as you weep:
You are nothing special and neither is your love. A thousand thousand leaves have fallen, and the fairies have outlasted every one. They do need to outwit or outmatch: they only need to wait, until each one destroys itself. If no leaf ever flutters the same as it falls, what does it matter?
But this is is the strength of leaves falling, the foolishness of mortal hearts: they never cease.
Every power in the world has a crack. And after a thousand thousand thousand years, one leaf, no better than all the rest, may twist and finally fall through.
This is the law, written in the stars and seeds: in the end, all things must fail. The fairies are old as the stars. But not older.
And you, who have your human heart again, know all their secrets still.
This is the truth you will use to break them, to rend both fairy courts apart and set their prisoners free: no one else has ever loved this way before.
[Recovered from the Wayback Machine]
