Wystwood

Prologue

Wistful winds raised leaves from the ground and swirled them towards the stars. The Spring Equinox had swept wolfbane skies across the pastures, yet the nights still held a chill that caused Rosamund Kavanagh to draw her cloak up and around her shoulders.

Little Crestbury had finally fallen silent after days of celebration, with clovers scattered across the cobblestones and candle wax sealing the cracks within flower pots. Lamb's blood dried in scrawling shapes above door frames, sure to appease any malicious fae that may come hunting in the final turn of winter, and the heady scent of spring wine lingered in the air.

Each tap of Rosamund's shoes echoed through the empty square as she hurried towards the edge of town, passing a patch of new season daffodils and the sandstone fountain that burbled a thousand thoughts away. She hastened down Fig Street, between a row of whitewashed houses with roof slates that spilt past rounded chimney pots. They were draped in the darkness of the westerly Wystwood forest, whose churning depths had been known to turn back many a merchant fearing to lose not only their goods but themselves amongst the thicket.

Four days prior, Rosamund had taken the forest road back from the old river city of Bristol, but tonight her feet felt for the fragments of the second route out of town. It was a crumbling path that wound through Little Crestbury's surrounding wall, into the farmland beyond it, and then up the hill for which the town was named.

Cresthill sloped above the town like a wave frozen seconds before it could come crashing down upon the housetops and chimney smoke. In the warmer seasons, its banks ran rich with wildflowers, and in the winter the soil slept beneath blankets of frost. Myths still held from the old days that the hill contained faerie magic within its stones and that a giant slumbered just below the earth, waiting to one day wake and level the ground beneath its feet.

Rosamund was not usually known to hold stock in faerie tales, let alone ones of magic and sleeping giants. But tonight was no usual night. Tonight she would place her hope in anyone and anything she could. Her fingers found the locket tied around her neck, its gold warmed through from her touch.

It was fortunate that the equinox celebrations had lasted so long into the night, for there was now nobody out of bed to witness Rosamund slip through the town gate and steal across the pastures. No torches marked her way, though she didn't mind the darkness, as the shadows wrapped her in a cloak more deceptive than her own of deep velvet.

At Cresthill's base, the path began its incline, stepping stones not yet slick with morning dew. Spring grass cushioned her unsteady footfalls, and within minutes she had climbed half the way. She chanced a glance over her shoulder at the town sprawled out below. In a few more steps she would reach the bowed back of the hill and lose sight of the town. Her fingers flickered toward the locket, and then away again. She continued to climb.

Little Crestbury was smothered by undergrowth as Rosamund rounded the hillside, but she didn't turn her head as she pushed through the bushes. And then, there it was. The well sat secluded within the hillock, built into the very soil of the slope as if inspired by the alcoves of St Paul's Cathedral. Ivy sprung and spread from holes between the well-stones, and a rope without a bucket dangled down one side. Patches of bluebells clustered around its base, swaying slightly as Rosamund approached.

Stories of the Wishing Well were as common amongst the townsfolk as tales of Cresthill, many claiming that they were linked in their connection to the fae world. Rosamund's uncle had sworn that the Faeries' Well held not water but magic within its depths, and indeed, as she peered into the circle of stone, the well seemed to fall far deeper than any hole in a hillock surely could.

For the third time that night, Rosamund reached for her locket, and she trailed her fingers along its worn curves. Then her hand curled into a fist and she snatched its chain from her neck. She clicked the latch open, and swinging into two half-hearts, the locket revealed the fading pictures of a smiling man and woman.