The Two Weddings of Bronwyn Hyatt: a Tor.com Original Read online

  The Two Weddings of Bronwyn Hyatt

  By

  Alex Bledsoe

  illustration by Jonathan Bartlett

  “The Two Weddings of Bronwyn Hyatt” copyright © 2015 by Alex Bledsoe

  Illustration copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Bartlett

  Publication Date: Wed May 6 2015 09:00am

  A Tor Original

  Introduction

  When Bronwyn Hyatt prepares for her wedding day, she finds the perfect dress from a most unexpected source. But she should remember this: never accept a gift without knowing the consequences. Set in Alex Bledsoe's Tufa universe.

  This short story was acquired and edited for Tor.com by associate editor Diana Pho.

  Bronwyn Hyatt looked at herself in the mirror of her parents’ bedroom. That is, she would have if the white veil hadn’t clouded her vision so much. She scowled, lifted it, and said to her mother, “There’s no way I’m getting married in this. It’s too much like looking out through a tent flap. How did you even see to walk down the aisle?”

  Her mother, Chloe, sighed, the latest of millions of exasperated sighs inspired by her daughter. “We didn’t walk down an aisle. You’re the first pureblood Tufa to ever do that, as far as I know. And the dress was fine when I wore it. It was fine when your grandmother wore it, and it was fine for all the women before that.”

  “Well, it’s not fine for me.”

  “What will Craig say?”

  “Craig will say, ‘Whatever makes you feel right about this, sweetie.’ Because he’s a damn adult.”

  Bronwyn took off the veil. Her mother undid the eyelet hooks up her spine, and she shrugged out of the dress, glad to be free of both the fabric and the weight of Tufa tradition. She pulled her T-shirt back on and said, “I’m sorry, Mom. It’s a beautiful dress, and if I was marrying another Tufa, it’d be perfect.”

  “Are you going to wear your uniform, then?”

  “I’m not in the army anymore.”

  “What will you wear?”

  “You know what? I don’t care. I’ll pick a nice dress and everything will be fine. He ain’t marrying the dress.”

  Chloe carefully placed the dress on the bed and arranged it to go back into its storage box. “Honey, you’re a First Daughter, and a pureblood Tufa. What you do matters. People are watching.”

  “Really?” Bronwyn deadpanned. “I’m the best they’ve got for entertainment? There isn’t an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras on?”

  “Make jokes all you want, but this is an important decision. If you wore my dress, then you’d be acknowledging your status in the community. If you wore your uniform, you’d be saying you were proud of being a warrior. Both of those are . . .” She paused as she sought the word. “Acceptable.”

  “And what’s not?” Bronwyn challenged.

  Chloe stood upright and put her hands on her hips. “A cavalier decision. One that doesn’t take your people into account.”

  “I’m not marrying ‘my people,’ Mom. I’m marrying Craig. I could do it in blue jeans and he’d be fine with it.”

  “But you wouldn’t be. This is the sort of decision that could come back to bite you.”

  “And what in the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Let’s not fight, honey,” Chloe said when she saw her daughter’s expression.

  “How could choosing the wrong dress bite me, Mom?”

  “The night winds are watching, Bronwyn. They care. If you disrespect them, like you did when you joined the army . . . things might happen.”

  Bronwyn’s eyes narrowed. “All this because of a dress.”

  “All this because of a symbol,” Chloe corrected.

  Bronwyn looked at the dress again, but she was absolutely sure it was the wrong one for her. Surprising herself, she realized she saw it as a symbol, too, of things she could no longer bear.

  “All right,” Bronwyn said. “But I’m not using that dress. It is a beautiful dress, Mom, and I don’t mean any disrespect, but it’s just not right for me.”

  “Then what is?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  The Hyatts of Cloud County, Tennessee, lived in the part of the Appalachian Mountains known as the Smokies for the low cloud cover that clung to the trees like smoke. They were full-blooded, so like all the Tufa had the same black hair, perfect teeth, and slightly dusky skin. According to legend, the Tufa had been in these mountains when the first Scotch-Irish settlers arrived; no one knew their true origins, or at least no one who wasn’t also a Tufa. There were stories and legends, and clues could be found in paintings and songs. Some of the crazier theories said they were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, or survivors of Atlantis. But the actual tale was something the Tufa guarded closely, as closely as the truth that on certain nights, the Tufa could fly on shimmering wings and ride the night winds.

  A pureblood Tufa would normally marry another Tufa. But Bronwyn had always been rebellious. As a teen she’d joined the army just to get out of Needsville, only to be severely injured and brought home as an invalid war hero. That’s when she met Craig, a young Methodist minister from just across the county line, and if it hadn’t been precisely love at first sight, it was, as they say, close enough for government work.

  So despite the pressure from the Tufa to marry one of her own, she’d accepted Craig’s proposal, and now the date of the wedding approached. But as she walked through the woods alone, humming and wondering what sort of dress would be appropriate for her situation, she was completely unprepared for the woman who leaped from the trees in front of her, brandishing—of all things—a sword, and who cried, “Halt, in the name of the night winds!”

  Bronwyn stopped and stared. The woman had black hair tied in a topknot and braided with what looked like shells or bits of bone. She wore leather armor and a matching skirt that left her muscular legs bare above her sandals. She held the sword defensivelyand said, “I know you are a warrior, Bronwyn Hyatt. That’s why I seek you out.”

  The woman was barely three feet high, yet perfectly proportioned. She spoke in a flat, accentless way. Bronwyn blinked and said, “Uh . . . hi.”

  “Do you not know me, then?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “The Tsalagi call us the Yunwi Tsunsdi.”

  Brownyn’s eyes opened wide. These were the native fae of the New World, who had been elusive and rare even when the Tufa arrived centuries ago. The Tsalagi, known more commonly as the Cherokee, had many stories about them. The first Tufa occasionally glimpsed them but had never been able to make actual contact. Bronwyn, in fact, knew no one who’d ever seen them. Certainly none had ever sought out a Tufa by name.

  Bronwyn made the Tufa hand gesture for respect. “I’m sorry for not realizing who you were. You don’t come around very often.”

  The woman nodded and put the sword into a scabbard. “That is not a problem. But there is a problem you have, do you not? That’s why you wander the woods, am I right?”

  “I’m just thinking about things.”

  The woman reached into a bush beside the trail and produced a miniature fiddle. She tucked it under her chin and played a high, mournful note. “It is a beautiful day for thinking. What are you pondering?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s not really any of your business.”

  The little warrior laughed. “Then I’ll tell you. You’re thinking about your upcoming wedding, aren’t you?”

  Bronwyn looked at her suspiciously. “And how do you know that?”

  “The same way I know your name. And that’s the very thing that brought me to you. I, too, am taking a husband.” Her mus
ic changed to a harsher, more martial melody. “And like you, I am a warrior, one who prefers the cries of battle to those of the bedchamber.”

  “I wouldn’t say I’m exactly like—”

  She drowned out Bronwyn with a climactic flourish. “Ah, for sure both do have their pleasures, I know. But we two, you and I, have tasted the power of dispensing death to our enemies. The men we choose as mates, they are the special kind who can embrace a woman like us. They deserve more than some virgin in white standing meekly before the altar.”

  “That’s true,” Bronwyn had to admit.

  “So . . . I bring you a gift. Follow me.”

  Brownyn hesitated. The warning stories of mortals wandering off with the Little People applied just as easily between races of the fae, if both weren’t careful. “I don’t even know your name. You know mine; does that seem fair?”

  “My name is Orla.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Orla. Now how did you know my name?”

  “Oh, we keep tabs on you Tufa.”

  “That’s not reassuring. And I don’t know that I want to traipse off in the woods with someone who’s been spying on me.”

  Orla grinned. “Ah, you don’t trust me. And it is true, you don’t know me as I do you. Wait here, then.”

  She leaped into a patch of briars and vanished. Bronwyn looked around to see if she could spot anyone who might be playing an elaborate joke on her, but there was no one.

  The warrior woman emerged further down the trail, without the fiddle, in front of three equally small men. They had long, thick beards and sullen expressions, and wore bright red caps that rose to a point, like those of garden gnomes. Above them they carried a wooded frame, and from that frame hung a delicate, diaphanous gown of white with red edging. It looked both medieval and modern, and Bronwyn whistled at its beauty.

  Orla nodded in approval. “So you know quality work when you see it, eh?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It is your wedding gown.”

  Bronwyn almost laughed. It was scaled for Orla’s people, and so was no bigger than a kindergartener’s dress. “Well, I planned to lose some weight for the wedding, but not that much.”

  “Hang it in your closet this night. By sunrise it shall fit you like your own armor.”

  The sullen men raised the wooden frame so that Bronwyn could take the dress from it. She did, carefully holding it by just her fingertips.

  “It is white for the newness of your marriage, edged with red to show that you be no shrinking, untried virgin. What say you?”

  “I say, as beautiful as it is, I know it’s not from the goodness of your heart. What do you want in return?”

  Orla put her hands on her hips and laughed. “To the point, eh? Well, here’s my say. Your people and mine, we’ve been living near each other, nigh on top of each other, since these mountains rose jagged into the sky, but we’ve never bonded. And now our kings are old, and foolish, so if things are to be mended, it’ll be by those of us with the youth and vision to see it. So I propose this: you wear this gown to your wedding, and I will attend as a guest. Then you pass it back to me for my hand fasting, and you attend mine. How does that sound?”

  It sounded fine; it sounded, in fact, like something Bronwyn herself might propose to her own Tufa people as she tried to ease them into the modern world, despite their reluctance. And looking into the little warrior’s face, she saw a mirror of her own certainty that the way things had been for thousands of years was no longer workable.

  “All right,” Brownyn said. “But I want something tangible to mark our bargain.”

  “Is the gown not tangible?”

  “Oh, it’s tangible. But I want something more. Give me your sword.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “My sword? A warrior never gives up her blade.”

  “Not to an enemy, but she does to an ally.”

  Slowly, her eyes never leaving Brownyn’s, the warrior woman drew her sword and handed it over. In Brownyn’s hand it was no bigger than a letter opener. Bronwyn used the point to nick the pad of her thumb, then gave the weapon back. Orla, comprehending, did a similar thing, and pressed her tiny thumb to Bronwyn’s comparatively gigantic one.

  “We’re sisters now,” Bronwyn said. “And just like allies in battle, sisters never betray each other without losing honor and family.” Bronwyn took the sword from Orla. “I’ll keep this as a gesture of your good will.”

  “And I shall see you at your wedding, then.”

  Bronwyn nodded. Orla made the same gesture of respect Bronwyn had used earlier. Then she turned and, with her grumpy attendants, vanished back into the bushes.

  Brownyn draped the small dress over her arm, careful not to let the sword snag the fabric. Orla hadn’t asked the wedding’s location, but Bronwyn was certain she would keep her word and show up, even across the county line in wholly mundane Unicorn.

  Now her biggest problem was how to prepare Craig for the arrival of a tiny warrior woman at the Triple Springs Methodist Church.

  When she arrived back at her parents’ house, only her father, Deacon, was home. He sat at the kitchen table shucking a bucket of corn. He saw the tiny dress and said, “Your mama will be so happy you’re finally playing with baby dolls. Or do I need to bring the shotgun to this wedding?”

  “Ha, ha,” Bronwyn said flatly. “Is Aiden here?”

  “Naw, he’s out with them Bachman boys getting into trouble, and your mama went over to the Lundsy place. Why?”

  She carefully placed the dress on the back of the couch and sat down opposite her father. “Daddy, you ever heard of the Yunwi Tsunsdi?”

  He looked blank for a moment, then it registered. “Them little folk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve heard of ’em. Never seen ’em. Don’t know anyone who has. Figured by now they must’ve died out or moved on.”

  “They haven’t done either.” She told him quickly about the encounter.

  When she finished, he said, “Well, ain’t that something. Wonder what they really want?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that the whole way home. I wonder if they’re in the same state the Tufa are in: trying to figure out a way to move into the future. Maybe they think reaching out to us is the best way.”

  “They’re known to be kind of tricky,” her father said.

  “So are we,” she said with a little grin.

  “You probably should let Mandalay and Rockhouse know.”

  She scowled. “I don’t want to talk to Rockhouse.”

  “Nobody does. But you still need to do it. You can probably catch both of ’em tomorrow down at the post office.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed reluctantly.

  “So are you gonna wear the dress?”

  “If it’s big enough in the morning. I said I would. And it is beautiful.”

  “And if she shows up at your wedding, what’s Craig gonna say?”

  “He’d better say, ‘I do,’” she said as she got up and took the dress to her bedroom.

  The post office in Needsville, Cloud County’s only community, was by far the newest building around. It replaced the old house that had served for nearly a century, and its squat brick facade stood out starkly against the rest of the gradually fading town.

  Still, just as it had on the original building, the front porch sported a row of well-worn rocking chairs, more often than not occupied by one of the Tufa’s two leaders. He was an old man with white hair, clad without fail in stained overalls, and with one distinguishing physical feature—six working fingers on each hand. His name was Rockhouse.

  Today, his opposite number joined him, sitting cross-legged in her chair and playing a Nintendo DS. She was eleven years old, with long black hair and eyes that seemed deeper than the depths of the night sky. Her name was Mandalay.

  People familiar with the stories of the old fairy folk of Europe might have heard of the two opposing tribes, the Seelie and Unseelie. Those terms were never used by the Tufa; in fact, t
heir two groups had no individual names. But that didn’t mean they didn’t resemble those old-world antecedents.

  So when Bronwyn parked the family truck in the post office lot and stood in the grass below the porch, she waited quietly to be recognized just as any subject would before two monarchs.

  Finally Rockhouse spit perilously close to her feet and said, “What do you want?”

  Bronwyn made the complex gesture of the respect and obedience that all Tufa owed to the two leaders. Then she said, “I have news you’ll find interesting.”

  “You reckon?” Rockhouse said.

  “I do.”

  Mandalay looked up from her game. “Then tell us.”

  Bronwyn related the events of the previous day. When she finished, neither of her listeners visibly reacted. Finally she prompted, “Well?”

  “Deep subject,” Rockhouse said, and spit again.

  “What do you want us to say?” Mandalay asked.

  “Give me some guidance here, some advice.”

  “You shoulda asked for that before you made an alliance between our two races,” Rockhouse said.

  “I didn’t make any alliance,” Brownyn said defensively. “I made an agreement between two women about to get married to attend each other’s wedding.”

  “You think a wedding ain’t an alliance?” Rockhouse said with a derogatory snort. “It’s all about the balance of power.”

  “Says the old man who’s never been married,” Bronwyn shot back.

  “He’s right,” Mandalay said calmly. “Whatever you thought you were agreeing to, you did make an alliance on behalf of all of us. If anything happens to you, it’ll fall to us to avenge you.”

  “What? What the hell could happen to me? She’s this big.” She held her hand at her waist.

  “She appears as she wishes. Just like we do. And doesn’t it seem a little strange to break thousands of years of silence and isolation over a dress?”

  Mandalay had a point with that. Trying not to show the sudden uncertainty and fear she felt, Bronwyn said, “Well . . . what should I do?”