The effect of this speech on the Briton was electrifying. He started forward, forgetting his damaged leg, stumbled and half fell; then he forced himself back upright, his face dewed with sweat. Something new had awoken in his pale, cold eyes.

“My brother!” he gasped. “You know about my brother! Tell me!”

“Ah—ah—ah—not so fast,” said the Bright One, slyly. “No information comes free, not down here. Besides, it’s she who can tell you, not I.” He flicked a long finger in my direction. “That’s why you want her, isn’t it? Not because she’s alone, and helpless, and needs protection; but for the information she can give you. And give it she can; she saw him, she talked with him, and he gave her the thing you guard so jealously in your pocket there. Ask her, she’ll tell you all you want to know about your precious brother; aye, and some you don’t want to know besides.”

“The girl cannot talk,” said Red, and I could tell he was fighting to keep his voice under control, “or will not. You say she spoke with my brother; she does not speak now.”

“Oh, she speaks well enough,” said the Lord lightly. “We hear her. She asks us to stop tormenting you. She says you’re too stupid to be dangerous.”

“But I can hear nothing,” said Red. “She is silent. She is always silent.”

The Lady looked at him. “That is because you have not learned how to listen,” she said. “But she will speak to you one day. Are you good at waiting?”

Red looked wildly from one to the other.

“Just tell me,” he said. “Does my brother still live? Will I find him?”

But the torches were starting to fade, and the bright folk with them, and the traces of laughter and rustling silk and the faint notes of the harp seemed to dissipate upward in the cool dampness of the cave, fragile as the perfume of an autumn flower.

The Lady stood before me, when all others had gone.

“Take this to light your way, daughter of the forest,” she said. “You told me you were tired of being strong. Maybe you will not need to be so strong, now.” She placed a tiny around candle, herb scented, in my open hand. She turned to the Briton.

“You hurt her with your unthinking words,” she said, and her eyes had lost any warmth they had once had. “Make sure she is not hurt again.” And before he could draw breath, she turned and was gone.

We made our way up to the surface in complete silence, our hands touching so as not to lose one another in a profound darkness, relieved only by the dimly flickering candlelight. I held the tiny light in the palm of my hand; it smelled of rosemary, of meadowsweet and caraway. Like the sharing of an apple, it too was full of hidden meanings. I wondered, not for the first time, just what game the Fair Folk were playing.