Huntress

by Malinda Lo

  But she was not ready. Not yet.

  And not without regret, she turned away from the pull of the starry sky, and far below her, she saw the fortress, a mountain of white snow. She saw the azure sea broken with ice floes. She saw the beach. She saw Con kneeling on the cold ground gripping Taisin’s hands in his. She saw Taisin, her eyes wide open and looking directly at her. Her gaze was magnetic; it pulled her down, down, until she was plummeting toward the earth, toward Taisin and through her. Now, with a stunning clarity, she could feel every fiber of Taisin’s being. She could feel her pain, her excitement, her fear. There was the clenching and release of the muscle of her heart. And there was the love between them: a revelation. A way in.

  In those brief moments when she was floating free, Kaede had almost forgotten what it was like to be corporeal. Then, she was being channeled through Taisin back into her own flesh and bones again, as if she were being squeezed into clothes that were much too small. Her body was so limited, so attached to the ground. She couldn’t, at first, remember how to move, but Taisin did, and she was still within her. Kaede watched her own hand fly up; it grasped the currents of air that Elowen had wrapped around her throat and tore through them. It was like ripping a great bolt of silk, and the air fell in ragged ribbons away from her.

  Elowen stood in front of her throne with her arm still outstretched. She looked as shocked as Kaede felt. In that heartbeat, they were equals, and Kaede knew she had to act before Elowen regained her wits. She reached down to her boot, feeling her blood rushing into her fingertips, and drew out the dagger and threw it at her.

  But there was no time to even hope it would reach its mark, for Elowen flung it aside with a fistful of energy. The dagger clattered to the floor and slid until it lodged itself in the wall beneath the windows, and then Elowen began to advance on her.

  Kaede ran for the dagger, but her boots slipped. The icy floor came rushing up to slam into her hands and knees. She slid; she scrambled on all fours toward the wall. Taisin was gathering up the energy she would need for one more assault, and Kaede felt Taisin’s strength rising inside her like a fever.

  Elowen came after her, vowing that she would put her own hands around this human’s throat. But at the last moment, Kaede’s fingers found the dagger, and as she whirled around, Taisin spoke through her.

  “Elowen!”

  The woman stopped, startled by the sound of her name on someone else’s lips.

  Kaede swung her hand and slashed through Elowen’s gown, cutting into her leg. Elowen let out a scream; she looked down at the blood that dripped onto the floor. A curious steam rose from the wound, and the fabric around it curled back as if it were burning away.

  “What have you done?” Elowen shrieked. The skin of her face was nearly translucent; her veins were black rivers beneath her temples.

  Kaede pushed herself to her feet. The handle of the dagger fitted into her palm like an old friend. She felt Taisin readying herself. “Elowen,” they said together, and Kaede charged at the Fairy Queen’s daughter and plunged the dagger into her heart.

  Elowen’s eyes widened; her mouth parted. Her blood streamed over Kaede’s hand. She fell, looking as frightened as a child facing the dark.

  Kaede stared at Elowen’s body, stunned. The moment the blade made contact with Elowen’s heart, all the power that had surged between her and Taisin drained away, and now she felt emptied, unsteady. Her hands were shaking; they were wet with blood. Without thinking, she smeared them over her thighs. When she looked back, the same scene awaited her: Elowen lay there with her eyes half-open, the dagger fixed in her chest, blood pooling down on the floor. It was indeed made of ice, and it was melting.

  She forced herself to kneel down and pull the dagger out. The wound itself was burned black as if the iron had scorched Elowen’s flesh, and Kaede had to swallow her nausea as she wiped the blade on the very edge of Elowen’s ermine cloak.

  As she resheathed the dagger in her boot and stood up, the sprite who had fluttered near Elowen’s throne bobbed into sight. She was a girl, or she looked like one, except she had little wings growing from her shoulder blades. Her skin was as golden as her hair, and she looked up at Kaede with wide blue eyes that were both sad and triumphant. Then she fluttered down to Elowen’s waist, where she pushed aside the folds of the fur robe to reveal a silver key ring. She picked up the ring in her little hands and struggled to fly up to Kaede’s eye level, where she said something that Kaede did not understand.

  Frustrated, the girl gestured to the open door at the end of the throne room. Kaede heard a rising cacophony coming from the cavern beyond. The girl was shaking the keys, causing them to clink together like bells, and Kaede realized they were the keys to the cages. The fay wanted to be set free.

  “Of course,” Kaede said out loud. “You should free them.” When the girl gave her a puzzled look, Kaede pointed to the door, gesturing the act of turning a key in its lock. The girl understood, and a brilliant smile spread over her delicate features. She even bounced a little in the air before flying speedily down the length of the throne room toward the door.

  Kaede looked back at Elowen. The weight of what she had done settled over her again. She took a ragged breath.

  She could not leave the body there. It felt wrong.

  She glanced around the room for something to use as a shroud, but there was nothing. Finally she settled for folding Elowen’s cloak more securely around her. Her flesh was still warm, and it seemed unreal that she was truly dead. Taking a deep breath, Kaede dragged Elowen up and over her shoulder. Her body was surprisingly light, and though it was not a comfortable position, Kaede thought she could manage to carry her some distance this way. She trudged down the length of the throne room and through the door to the prison.

  Every last one of the fay came to watch her pass this time. Some appeared sad; others eager; but none seemed interested in avenging Elowen’s death. The sprite had already begun to unlock some of the cages, and those who had been set free started to follow Kaede and her burden out of the cavern.

  It was a long, hard walk through the many tunnels of the fortress, and several times Kaede thought she might have lost her way. Elowen’s body, which had once seemed light, soon felt so heavy that Kaede wanted to weep with the strain of it, but she would not let herself stop, and she would not accept the help of the fay who followed her. She had killed Elowen, and she had a superstitious feeling that it was her task to bring this to its proper conclusion.

  At last she arrived at the entry hall, and she went through the great doors and outside into the sunlit afternoon. She was almost surprised that the sun had not already set, for it felt as though she had been inside that fortress for a lifetime. And then she wondered if carrying Elowen outside had been pointless, for she had been intending to build a funeral pyre, but there was no wood on the beach—not even a single spare piece of driftwood. She laid Elowen’s body on a stretch of icy sand and sat near Elowen’s head, her eyes squinted against the setting sun. She wanted to give up.

  The sprite emerged from the fortress first, followed by one of the lithe, willowy nymphs with fingers like small branches. More and more of them came outside, blinking up at the blue sky, and many of them were carrying torches as though they had known what Kaede was preparing to do. They came toward her, and the first one set her torch down upon Elowen’s body, the flames flaring up as they touched the fur cloak that served as her shroud. One by one, they set her afire, and in this way, Elowen’s prisoners built her funeral pyre.

  Kaede sat still on the beach, watching the flames grow, and she felt a thick, ashen despair settle over her. She had come to this island in the far north with the goal of murder, and she had done her job, but now she only felt like a killer. There was no glory in this. She had seen Elowen’s face as she died, and she knew the memory of it would haunt her for the rest of her life. Kaede put her head in her hands and wanted to weep, but tears would not come. She felt split apart, broken, as frozen as the island
that bore the weight of Elowen’s ambition.

  Kaede looked into the flames late into the night, and forced herself to watch as the cloth curled back from Elowen’s face, as it ate through her furred mantle and burned away her flesh, until all that was left to see was an empty skull, blackened and charred.

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Taisin heard the voice from very far off, dim and faint. It was comfortable where she was: Everything was dark and soft. Her mind was empty, quiet. She felt free for the first time in weeks, and she just wanted to linger there. A cushion of nothing at all. Blankness.

  But the voice would not stop.

  Gradually the sounds formed syllables. The syllables formed a word. Her name.

  “Taisin.”

  She recognized that voice.

  “Taisin! Come back.” It was a demand. There was dust in her mouth, the taste of ashes, gritty and dry. Her tongue was thick and swollen. Her head throbbed. Her shoulder ached—and that was what pulled her back into her body at last. The stabbing, twisting pain in her muscles, where she had wrenched her arm climbing down the glacier wall.

  She gasped, her eyes opening to a star-strewn sky.

  “Taisin,” said the voice again. It was Con. He was holding her head in his lap, and she looked at his face upside down above her, filling with relief as she blinked. “Taisin, what happened?”

  The air was freezing, and it carried the smell of burning. The waxing moon was a sliver in the east. She said: “Elowen is dead.”

  When dawn broke, Kaede rowed the little boat back to the mainland. A small wind had risen with the sun, blowing drifting snow over the smoking ashes. Elowen would never leave her island.

  Taisin and Con had the camp half-packed by the time Kaede set foot on the dock. The dogs came running to greet her, barking loudly in the early morning stillness. Taisin met her halfway and put her arms around her, holding her tight. Kaede wanted to stay there forever, with her face buried in Taisin’s hair, but she could still smell the scent of Elowen’s funeral pyre, and she wondered if it would always be with her.

  When they parted at last, she saw Con hobbling toward them. She embraced him, and he said gruffly, “Welcome back.”

  She gave him a weak smile, then glanced at their camp. The provisions were already packed up; they only had to strip down the tent, and they could go. She said: “We must leave this place.”

  Con nodded. “We’re almost ready.”

  They reached the point where they had descended from the glacier by early afternoon, and though they were all exhausted, they had no intention of waiting another minute. It took several hours to make the climb back up. Con was wet with sweat by the time he reached the top, and for long minutes he simply lay there on the snow, looking up at the sky, his breath misting out above him as his leg throbbed.

  The sledge was where they had left it, perched alone in a vast white landscape. There was no sign of storm clouds in the sky. The weather, in fact, had been still all day, as though it were waiting, testing out the new balance of power in the world. It put Kaede on edge. It felt like something was unfinished. Elowen was dead, but nothing had been made right.

  Their journey across the ice field took less time than their journey out to the fortress, for the weather remained calm and the sledge was lighter now. They left the broken tent behind, and their supplies were mostly gone. Both Kaede and Taisin walked with a kind of dull determination across the snow. Taisin was so exhausted from their battle with Elowen that it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. Con watched them with an alert eye, for he was worried about them. At night he gave them more than their fair share of the rations, but they did not notice. They only ate what he handed over and slept so deeply he was afraid, in the morning, that they might never awaken.

  They did not know that in the distance behind them, the fay had begun their own journeys home. The knockers—hardy mountain dwellers accustomed to the cold—carried those who would have otherwise frozen: some of the dryads, or the winged sylphs, whose bodies were limp in the wintry air. The asrai and the undines had slipped into the icy northern sea to head south for the mouth of the Kell, where they would swim upstream to their cool lakes and rocky rivers. The sprite who had attended Elowen that last day remembered the name of the one who had saved them, and she repeated it to every fairy she set free with those keys: Kaede. So the story of the girl who had defeated their tormentor was passed from one to another in languages that had gone generations without once uttering the word human.

  Had Kaede known this, she would have told them that she had not acted alone, that both Taisin and Con had helped her. But she did not know the fay were speaking her name, so she was spared the burden of becoming their hero, when in fact she still felt like a murderer.

  When they saw the ragged line of the Wood in the distance, Con felt like a sailor long at sea, finally sighting land. Relief surged through him; he hadn’t realized how much he had feared that they would never leave that frozen wasteland behind. They quickened their pace that afternoon, the dogs running faster as though they, too, were eager to seek the shelter of the trees. Waiting at the edge of the Wood was the Fairy Hunt: the same riders who had sent them off across the ice field so many days before.

  The Huntsman took stock of their bedraggled appearance and ordered someone to care for Con’s leg and Taisin’s shoulder, and then he came to Kaede and regarded her gravely. “You have done a good deed for us all.”

  She said dispiritedly, “Have I?”

  “You have,” he said, but she was not convinced.

  The journey back to Taninli took several days. The farther they rode into the Wood, the warmer it became, until at last it was summer again, and they could strip off their furs and pack them away. But despite the warmth, a pall hung over them, and the sun remained hidden behind clouds. Kaede remembered how the Xi had seemed to glow the first time she had entered Taninli, but this time the whole world was muted. She wondered if there was something wrong with herself, for ever since leaving the fortress of ice, she saw everything through a film of ashes.

  But as they rode through the streets of the Xi city, it became clear that the same miasma was affecting everyone. Few of the Xi came out to watch them pass, and the ones who did looked haunted. At the palace, a thin layer of dust drifted over the white stone. Their horses kicked it up when they rode into the courtyard, and it floated into Kaede’s nose and throat and made her cough.

  The Huntsman did not allow them to rest. He took them directly through the quiet, dim halls to the Fairy Queen’s throne room. Kaede was shocked to see the Fairy Queen slumped over in her throne, her face as gray as the dust that drifted in ashy piles around their feet. The Huntsman seemed terribly affected by this; he went to her side and knelt down to take her hand, and Kaede realized by the way he touched her that he loved the Queen. When he turned back to them, his face was drawn with grief.

  “What is wrong?” Kaede asked, stepping forward. She put one foot on the first step at the bottom of the dais but hesitated to go farther.

  “She is not well,” the Huntsman said.

  “Should we return at a later time?” Kaede asked.

  The Queen stirred. “No.” She pushed herself upright and looked at the three humans. “Which one of you killed Elowen?”

  The question sent a chill through Kaede. Before she could speak, Con answered, “We acted together, Your Majesty.”

  “Which of you held the knife?” the Queen demanded, and Kaede flinched, for she sounded like Elowen. “Which one of you?”

  Kaede bowed her head. “It was me, Your Majesty. I held the knife.”

  The Queen sighed. “Come here.”

  Dread filling her, Kaede climbed the low steps of the dais. The Queen extended her hand, and when Kaede took it, the skin was dry as paper. The Queen pulled her closer so that she had to kneel before the throne. The edge of the seat cut into her belly, and the hard stone floor bit into her knees. The Queen’s cheeks were marked with unnaturally
bright red spots; her burning golden eyes had the same fierceness Kaede had seen in Elowen. Her hair was white and brittle. She looked defeated; she looked ancient.

  “This is what has become of me,” the Queen whispered, “for ordering the murder of my own child.”

  Kaede heard the anguish in the Queen’s voice, and guilt burned through her. She was the Queen’s accomplice in this murder.

  “You are not surprised,” the Queen murmured. “Did she tell you that I was her mother?”

  Kaede lowered her eyes to where their hands were clasped together, remembering the curl of Elowen’s lip as she said the word mother. “Yes. She told me.”

  “I thought that removing her from this world would set things right, but I find that I was wrong. Her death has killed part of me, as well.”

  A droplet of liquid splashed down on their hands, and Kaede realized that the Queen was crying. Every drop was cold as ice: hard little shards pricking at her skin. Kaede watched numbly as tiny red marks erupted on her hands where the Queen’s tears struck. She did not know how long the two of them remained there, the floor bruising her knees as the Queen wept. But at last the Queen drew her hand away and lifted Kaede’s chin so that she had to look into the Queen’s golden eyes.

  She saw the world in them. The Wood around Taninli, the trees bowed down with the weight of the Queen’s sorrow. The wind sighing over brown, broken grasses. The glacier, dry and frigid, spread all over with funeral ashes. She couldn’t look away, even though the sight of it made her wither inside. Had she done this to the Queen? Was it all her doing—because she had killed Elowen? Kaede drew in a shaking breath. She deserved to feel all the misery the Queen was feeling. She wanted to taste the dust that coated the palace. She wanted to drown in the deepness of the Northern Sea, feel its gelid water seeping into her.