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Gentlemen Send Phantoms
Laini Taylor
1. A Dreamcake
Once, when the moon was younger than it is tonight and not as plump, three girls gathered by a hearth to bake a dreamcake. It was St. Faith's Day, the sixth of October, and everybody knows that on St. Faith's Day a girl can lure forth the phantom of the man she'll marry, see his face and know some of what life holds in its basket for her. That's what their mothers and nans taught them, and they'd all seen their men on St. Faith's Day and married them in the spring.
As it happens, all three girls were hoping to glimpse the same phantom, the one belonging to Matthew Blackgrace, whom they called Matty in that singsong way that girls have. He had fierce red hair and a grin like the devil, but his hands were good hands; he could braid his baby sister's hair and gentle a horse. And couldn't he sing like an angel?
The girls were fast friends—they lived in the cottages scattered through the apple orchards above Mosey Landing, and had grown up together—but that didn't mean there weren't some sharp thoughts between them that evening, with each nursing the same hopes, and in the same small room.
Ava was oldest; near eighteen already, and, as she claimed, "ripe to be plucked." She had yellow hair with a hint of strawberries, and such a bosom on her that the boys scarcely knew what her face looked like anymore, so fixed were their eyes elsewhere. It was a nice face, in any case, if just the littlest bit blank. Truth be told, Ava's thoughts were like those tethered ponies at the fair: slow and placid, ever going in circles, and with children never far off.
Ava was more than ready for babies, and more than ready for the making of them. Her eyes watched the orchard tots run and tumble, and she hummed and dreamed, and at night sometimes she held her pillow between her knees and blushed in the dark, imagining love.
She wanted Matty Blackgrace for his house as much as anything. He was already building his own—a tiny pretty thing up on Century Hill, overlooking the wide green Mosey. It didn't have a roof yet, but he'd already painted the shutters blue for luck, and planted bare-root roses that would bloom come summer. Ava wanted to get a babe on her hip as soon as may be, and start baking pies to set on those sweet blue sills. And Matty himself, well, he fit just fine in the corner of her daydream, thank you very much.
Elsie was next, and she was the colors of a fawn—golden, russet, and brown—and freckled as though the baker sneezed over his cinnamon and she got the brunt of it. "Sweet" was what she called herself, and she was—in nature and in tooth. She planted honeysuckle every year for her nan, who'd turned hummingbird on her deathbed four years past and came around all summer long for sips of nectar. And there wasn't a market day that went by but Elsie was sneaking down to Mosey Landing to fetch herself a treat, a striped lick-stick or a cone of sugar-ice or maybe a maple toad rolled in spice.
Lucky thing, she could eat all the treats she wanted and stay slim, because she was the tallest girl around—tall enough to pick apples without a ladder—but Matty Blackgrace was taller, and so Elsie thought she ought to get him for that reason if no other.
Catherine was the last, and some would say the least. They called her Pippin for being small as an apple seed. Hazard Root the Younger, whose phantom she was desperate not to see, had threatened once to put her in his pocket like a newt, and she said if he tried it she'd sting him like a scorpion, which was no idle threat. Pippin was small, but she was no newt, and she had troubled herself to learn witching from Nasty Mary before the old lady turned owl and swooped off in the night. Or at least, Pippin said she had, and she said it in this glittering-eyed way that made even the big boys wary of her.
But not Matty, oh never. Witch she was or witch she wasn't, he knew he'd nothing to fear from Pippin.
She didn't have bosoms like hummocks, and she couldn't pick apples without a ladder, but her face was the shape of a little heart and her shoulders were set and straight, and her laugh could make its way from one side of the orchard to the other, shivering leaves and spinning blossoms as it went.
Not that her life was spilling with laughter, sad to say. Her mother had died birthing her—so sudden she hadn't even had time to turn creature, and this was a bruise on Pippin's heart. She could almost have stood it, she'd think, tending her garden all alone, if that kestrel on the branch could have been her mam watching over her. She'd try and pretend it, just for the feel of company, but it was no good. Nasty Mary had told her in no uncertain terms that the blood had been like a river, and Pippin like a little otter slipping out on it, and just like that, her mam was gone and really truly-and-forever gone.
Her da never married again, so theirs was a quiet home, but the Blackgrace house was near, and she could always go there for a fill-up of elbows and clamor. Sometimes she even got to be part of a sticky kid-pile and fall asleep with all the others, cocoa on her breath and the fiddle floating in at her ears, her and Matty both in the tangle someplace—maybe that was his hand and maybe it wasn't, but it was enough that it might be.
That was done with now, of course. He and she were nearly grown and no longer kids to be tangling together like kittens! And sure she knew that wasn't the kind of arm-and-leg tangle that she was supposed to wish for now she was nearly a woman, but she missed it just the same. Woman or girl or in between, Pippin was lonesome, and when she dreamed of the end of being lonesome it was Matty's face she saw, and that was all there was to it.

2. Wishing and Firelight
"Remember," cautioned Elsie, "after this, no talking." The rules of a dreamcake were clear. It was to be baked in silence, with just firelight and wishing, wishing and firelight, and not a peep from any girl until morning—not even when their phantom came, no matter what.
"One last thing first," said Ava, her voice breathy with excitement. "Whoever we see, we've got to tell each other first thing in the morning. Promise!" She spoke with the easy eagerness of a girl used to attention. She's that sure she'll see Matty tonight, thought Pippin, jealous of such confidence. Herself, she wasn't sure on anyone's behalf—not Ava's or Elsie's or her own. She didn't know who Matty fancied. He was so nice to everyone there was no way to know.
"I promise," said Elsie.
"I promise," said Pippin.
"And if you see nobody, it means you're to be an old maid. So don't be slamming the door on any phantom!" Ava looked sternly at Pippin. "Even if it is Hazard. Would you really rather be a spinster than a Mrs. Root?"
"Yes by a thousand," declared Pippin. "I'd rather be the Roots' old mule, by the green god's mercy, than marry Hazard." She was thinking to herself that if she couldn't have Matty she'd vanish in the woods and live like a fairy. Once, he'd told her she looked like one, and he might have meant it because she'd had briars in her hair, wild from tumbling through a thicket, but she'd always thought he meant something sweeter.
"Ready now?" asked Elsie. "It's time."
They were at Ava's house to bake their cake. It was a queer recipe and nothing you'd want to eat; it wasn't for eating. The flour was just plain flour, but the water stank from a bundle of cloud roses going to rot in it for more than a week. The salt had been buried in the garden and dug back up, and the goose egg was laid under a full moon and shadow-spelled for three nights running, first with an owl feather, then a rowan branch, and last of all a lock of hair from a pregnant woman—Mayfair Tanzy, who said that she'd go bald if one more girl came to her begging locks.
Pippin had earlier wrinkled her nose and declared the batter to be "all druidy-smelling," and it only got worse as it baked. The girls were quiet and wishful as they knitted by the fire, each dreaming of Matty's good hands unpinning her hair on their wedding night. Many a stitch was dropped and a count forgotten, and three crookeder socks you never saw than came of that night's work.
After the cake was done, Ava took it from the oven, let it cool some, then cut it in three. Each girl took her portion and scratched her initials in its surface. At sunup, if all went right, there should be another set of initials scratched beside their own.
They hugged each other, shared nervous grins in silence, and parted ways.
Ava went right up the ladder to her loft bed. She pulled her braid over her shoulder and unwove it, wondering: would the phantom just be a glimpse, or would it linger with her awhile?
Suppose it talked to her. Could phantoms talk? Not that she could answer if it did!
Could they kiss? Or maybe there was nothing to kiss, just air and dreams.
Ava shivered, hugged her arms around the deliciousness, and then—after a hot-cheeked hesitation—unlaced her dress, yanked it off, and dove under the quilt in her best slip to wait.
As for Elsie, she lived right across the way, so she had only to dart out Ava's door and into her own. Like Ava's, her house was empty—no family crowd to put fright to skittish phantoms. There was a fair down at Mosey Landing tonight to keep folks happy, and casks of drink and a cakewalk, and for a special treat some music-makers from across the Big-water. All strange they were, handsome and dark-eyed and clad in patterns, with scythe-billed birds perched on their heads that made their own shivery songs in tune to the drums and chimes.
Elsie's hand shook lighting her candle, and unlacing her bodice she fumbled about as bad as if she'd got frozen fingers from making a snow troll. Finally, though, she was in her sheets, coverlet to her chin and long feet poking out the bottom. She waited, trembling and fidgeting as the flame teased shadows up and down the walls, and every single minute she thought a phantom was come, and almost died of nerves.
Now, Pippin, she was out alone in the night. She lived all the way on the far side of the orchard, no small walk, and she set off quick with her wedge of dreamcake cradled to her chest, her heart tight and sore from all her big wishing, not just tonight but all her life. Little life, big wishing. That doesn't go easy on a heart, and she thought maybe she'd stretched hers all out, how a sweater neck gets when you've shown the poor judgment of dressing the goat—though that, she consoled herself, was long ago, and had been all Matty's idea in any case.
She hurried. If Matty was at the Blackgrace house, his phantom wouldn't have far to go to get to hers, and she'd better not miss it if it did! But if he was in his own unfinished house, where he liked to go and work or just sit sometimes to dream, he'd have to send his phantom down Century Hill and that would give her a little time. She could get back home and fix her hair at least. . . .
But Matty liked her hair all fairy-tangled, didn't he?
Pippin hesitated for only a second. She crouched and set down her dreamcake on a tree root, then unpinned her hair. It tumbled to her waist, as shadow-colored as her eyes were sky, and the wind zoomed in at once to get it. This breeze tugged a strand here, this one there, and it was a snatch-grab dance of wind and hair fit for a queen of fairies.
Pippin closed her eyes. She loved the feeling—the stir of it, and the ache as her tame hair came wild-alive. Hairs got used to lying one way, so that it hurt the scalp to muss them up, but it was a good hurt—like the ache from too much laughing, or the tightness low in your belly when your eyes sparked together with someone special and lightning zinged all through you.
And then, before Pippin could pick up her cake to rush home, she heard voices and froze stock-still.

3. Gentlemen Send Phantoms
Now, magic was a true thing; a certainty. No one who had seen their nan turn creature could doubt it. They'd be wrinkled old biddies one minute, just about to gasp their last, and—blink!—they were gone, and owls or hawks were shaking off their nightgowns. Once in a while a cat or a fox, but it was flying they mostly wanted, and so they went with birds. It was a one-time, one-way change, and only women could make it, to the bitterness of the boys and men, who got up to the end of their lives just to die.
There were other bits and bobs of magic too: cures and curses; fairies and treelings dashing stealthy at the edges of sight; sweet moon milk and shadow castings and such like that. Nothing like what the Ancestors had brought here with them on their carved ships, but some things still remained.
As for phantoms on St. Faith's Day, a lot of folks thought they weren't real foretellings at all, but just the dreams girls had when they nodded off waiting and saw who they wished. And sure there was reason for doubt. Often enough it happened that two girls claimed the same phantom and argued over it till the red-faced boy in question had to speak his wishes plain, and maybe it was neither girl at all!
Pippin didn't know what to believe. She hoped, was all, but when those voices came clearer and she heard what they were saying, she got a sad insight into the nature of boys, and more than a spark of a doubt as to phantoms.
"I'll have Ava Gentry, all three of her," said one with a lecherous laugh.