The Unready Queen

by William Ritter

  “I’m great,” Cole wheezed. He came to a rest at Tinn’s elbow, breathing in short, shallow gulps.

  Tinn let the back of his head sink down against the cold, rocky ground. Fable was gone. The queen was gone. It was just the two of them left on the battlefield. And the monster Hill.

  A bellowing roar echoed across the clearing, triumphant, cruel, and cackling. The creature that had once been Jacob Hill returned his attention to the twins. In a single step, he was looming over them, burying the boys in his shadow. He raised a knee to crush them, like insects, beneath one enormous foot.

  Tinn held his breath. Cole held his brother’s hand.

  Tinn glanced at him, and the two of them tightened their grip. There would be no running. No fighting. There would just be the two of them until the end.

  A deafening crash followed . . . but not the crash the twins expected.

  The hulking Hill was stumbling backward, and he was suddenly not the only giant on the field. A second massive figure had appeared. This one was earthen and covered in moss, muscular, but not quite as large as Jacob Hill. The spriggan colossus cried out in fury and drove a hard blow into Hill’s chest before the man could properly regain his balance.

  Hill swung a wild punch as he stumbled, smacking the mossy giant back a pace just as a second spriggan sprang up beside it, covered in a hide of thick brown bark like wooden armor. One of the wooden giant’s legs moved stiffly, and Tinn squinted up at it to see that its enormous calf appeared to have been set into a splint the same color as the creature’s skin.

  “That one’s injured,” Tinn whispered.

  Cole breathed in through gritted teeth. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “I think maybe I had something to do with that.”

  The two massive spriggans charged toward Hill together, the ground shaking with the force of the ensuing blows. From either side of the clearing, eyes widened as humans and forest folk alike watched the giants slug it out. It was two against one, but Hill was easily ten feet taller than either spriggan, his chest bulging and his arms as thick as tree trunks. Again and again, he brushed off their most brutal attacks. Again and again he drove the towering brawlers to their knees. As powerful as they were, it quickly became clear that even they could not subdue Jacob Hill.

  The forest parted ahead of Fable. The soil beneath her feet swelled with each step to support her, propel her, and launch her with royal rage back into the fray.

  A crowd of shellycoats and dryads lingering near the forest’s edge gave out startled gasps as the girl rocketed past them and emerged once again on the desolate battle­ground. A rippling wave of lush moss and green grass spread out in her wake, ferns and flowers sprouting from each footstep—but Fable did not notice the fresh growth. Her eyes were on the monster that loomed ahead.

  Jacob Hill—or what was left of Jacob Hill—laughed as a mossy spriggan crumpled under his attacks. The power flowing through him was everything. They had tried to keep this from him—and now they were trying to take it back. But the power was his now, and he would make them pay for interfering. The whole world would bow before him.

  “Hey, stupid!”

  Hill looked down. The girl did not come up to his knees. His grotesque lips curled back in a smile.

  And then Fable clapped, just once.

  The result was not a spark so much as a blast of lightning. The crackling explosion sent Hill spinning backward. He landed hard on his chest, draped over the Grandmother Stump. The smell of burnt hair hung in the air.

  “Hold him.” Fable’s voice was calm and even.

  The spriggans were on Hill in an instant, pinning him down. He struggled, growling like a trapped beast.

  The stump beneath him shuddered. All around him, the wood began to grow.

  Hill threw an elbow at the mossy giant, who endured the blow and kept a solid hold. They secured Hill in place as Fable and the Wild Wood poured all of their energy into that tree.

  The old oak grew. Its trunk rose, pressing into Hill’s chest, tentatively at first, and then wrapping around him like a river pouring up into the sky. Branches sprouted, and the wood creaked and groaned as it expanded.

  Hill shouted and shook, but his limbs had less and less room to move as the tree grew dense and wide around him, encasing him in a natural prison. The spriggans did not waver. They held firm, even as the wood encased them, too. First their arms and then their bodies were enveloped by the oak. Gradually, they began to fade, their outlines flickering into mist, but by then the tree had imprisoned Hill beyond escape. A miniscule mossy figure flittered down one side of the new oak tree, and one with skin like bark flittered down the other side.

  The tree was even thicker now than it had been before it was cut down. Leaves sprouted above them in a dense green canopy, and the whole clearing was suddenly washed in cool greens. Hill’s face, a mask of rage, hung in the center of the trunk like a grotesque, lumpy knot.

  “You—” he grunted, but the bark closed in over his mouth before he could finish the thought. His nostrils flared as he glared at Fable.

  The field fell quiet at last.

  “That should hold you,” Fable said softly. “Until the powder has time to wear off.”

  “He won’t be the same,” a raspy voice from behind her declared. Fable turned to see Evie stepping over a fresh bed of lush green moss. On her shoulder sat a flinty spriggan. “Not ever,” Flinty continued. “It makes you wrong. Makes you not yourself. He took too much. Went too far.”

  Fable nodded. Everything had gone too far. And nothing would ever be the same again. Her feet began moving before she knew where they were taking her. Numbly, she crossed in front of the new Grandmother Tree. Her mother’s body was still there at its roots, somehow untouched by the chaos of the fight.

  Her mother looked as if she could be resting. Fable could almost believe she was still breathing. A knot rose in her throat and the world suddenly blurred with hot tears.

  “Are . . . are we still fighting?” a voice called from somewhere in the hills to her left.

  “No more fighting!” Fable cried. “Everybody lost. You all lost because you’re all angry and stupid and . . . and . . .” She swallowed.

  All eyes turned to the girl. Her mouth felt dry. Her mother would know what to say in a moment like this. The Queen of the Deep Dark would have stood with her chin up and her cloak waving in the breeze, and she would have spoken firmly and eloquently, and then everything would have been okay. Fable didn’t know how to make everything okay—she only knew how to get everything wrong.

  Suddenly her mother’s words hung in the back of her mind. She sniffed, and lifted her chin. “And in the end, maybe we can all learn more from how we got it wrong than we might have learned from getting it right.”

  The collected masses were all staring at Fable. She had never felt smaller.

  “It’s okay to have your own special places and to be your own special selves,” she pressed on. “Everybody needs that. But you can have that and still be a part of something bigger.”

  General Pholon took several steps out of the forest. At his hooves, the gnomes crept forward as well.

  “Look, spriggans and trolls and centaurs—you have never exactly gotten along, but you’re here now, aren’t you? You all belong to your own groups, but you are also a part of the Wild Wood, and the Wild Wood is a part of you. It’s not just a bunch of stupid trees. It’s a place to belong.” The leaves rustled in the wind. “That is what’s worth protecting.”

  “We will defend it fiercely,” Flinty grunted, “as we always have.” He slipped down from Evie’s arm and landed on the ground at Fable’s feet. “It is the humans who do not belong.”

  “You’re wrong.” Fable drew a deep breath. “Endsborough—and all the humans in Endsborough—are a part of the Wild Wood, too.”

  Murmurs erupted in the crowds to either side.

 
; “They’ve always been a part of us,” Fable continued. “A long time ago, someone drew a bunch of imaginary lines, and somehow we all forgot they were imaginary. We forgot that those people are a part of our world and they forgot that we’re a part of theirs.”

  Flinty’s beady eyes narrowed. “The queen has always respected those lines,” he hissed. Fable’s chest tightened. “The Old Queen even helped draw some of them.”

  “Maybe,” said Fable. “But she crossed them, too. Right here. That’s what this place is.” The light filtering through the leaves of the new Grandmother Tree caressed Fable’s face. “This was not a place to look out for enemies—it was a place to look out for one another. It was a place where my grandmother could belong to both worlds. And maybe it can be like that again.”

  Fable’s eyes swept from the fair folk and the wildlings to the humans, timidly emerging from the rolling hills. “You do belong here. All of you. And because you belong here, you’re going to need to learn how to belong together. You’re going to have to learn how to respect each other—even if you never understand each other. You’re all going to need to respect each other’s imaginary lines, and be patient as they learn how to respect yours.”

  “What does that mean?” someone yelled.

  “It means we might not always like each other, but humans had better be a lot nicer when they see a pixie stuck in a shop window, and forest folk better be a lot nicer when they see a human lost in the woods. It means that, from now on, we remember that if something threatens Endsborough, it threatens the Wild Wood, and if something threatens the Wild Wood, it threatens Endsborough. We look out for each other. I can’t promise monsters like Mr. Hill won’t try to hurt the forest again or that forest creatures won’t threaten the town, but from here on out we deal with them together.”

  “Hm,” Flinty grunted, unsatisfied. “And what will become of the villain Hill?” He nodded up at the parts of the grotesque giant that still stuck out of the wide oak. “Once the magic has worn off, who will have the honor of delivering his death?”

  “Nobody,” said Fable.

  Flinty narrowed his eyes again. “Do you lack the strength to finish this?”

  “Violence and strength aren’t the same thing,” said Fable. “Besides, you told me yourself—that powder makes you wrong. It makes you not yourself. Well, you didn’t tell Mr. Hill that, did you? He didn’t know what he had found or what it was doing to him. Maybe if we had just talked to each other and helped each other understand instead of keeping secrets and smashing things, then none of this would have happened. Everything Mr. Hill did today was wrong, yes, but his death won’t make it right.”

  “The man will never be right,” said Flinty.

  “Maybe not. But I still forbid any of you from killing him. There’s been enough violence.” Her eyes flicked to the place where her mother’s body lay, and her throat tightened.

  “She forbids it?” Flinty said. His brow rose.

  There was tense silence across the field, and then, slowly, the flinty spriggan took to one knee.

  “The queen forbids it,” he said.

  The queen. The title ran through Fable like a stab of electricity. It felt prickly and wrong and it made her shoulders tighten. All the confidence she had mustered for the speech suddenly wanted to leak out through the corners of her eyes. Fable did not want to be queen. She wanted her mother.

  Thirty-One

  A bullet is such a small thing with such a short life—but all lives are short in the end. So little time to get it right.

  From the moment the bullet left the barrel of Old Jim’s rifle, it had done everything right. It had been aimed directly for the woman’s heart. She had been a bear when it found her. That might have surprised the bullet, if a bullet knew the difference between a bear and a woman—but it was the same heart in the end. It was the same life.

  The bullet had flown straight and true, the wind parting on either side of it—and for just a fraction of a second, it had come alive. In that fleeting fragment of a moment, the bullet had awoken, and it had felt something.

  And what the bullet had felt . . . was a nudge.

  Chief Nudd’s magic could not bend the forest to his will. He was no Witch of the Wood, after all—he was only a humble goblin. But a goblin could give a small thing a small nudge.

  At exactly the right time.

  Raina opened her eyes.

  The world was a blur of harsh light and confusing shadows. The first thing she felt was pain—a sharp throbbing ache in her chest. Close on the heels of pain came confusion.

  Where was she? Where was Fable?

  She could feel soft sheets around her and a pillow under her head. The air smelled like wool and cat hair and freshly baked bread. She took shallow breaths, her chest impossibly tight. Slowly, Raina’s vision slid into focus. Sunlight filtered into the room through pale curtains. A room. She was in a room, on a bed. Her bearskin cloak hung over the back of a chair beside her.

  She sat up—tried to sit up—and was immediately overwhelmed by a piercing pang like a lance being driven through her chest. She fell back on the soft mattress again until the room stopped spinning and she could think.

  Where was Fable?

  The door creaked and Raina turned her head weakly toward the sound. Annie Burton crossed the soft carpet to her bedside.

  “Good morning,” she said, relief in her eyes. “You’re going to be okay—but I wouldn’t try to get up just yet.”

  Raina drew breath to respond, but the soreness pulsed through her lungs and she said nothing instead.

  “Dr. Fisher says the bullet missed your heart by about an inch. It grazed a rib and planted itself snug against your lung. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Unh,” Raina managed.

  “Well, as lucky as a person can be when they’ve just been shot in the chest, I suppose. Probably helped that you were a bear when it happened. The bullet might have done more damage if you had been human at the time.”

  Questions swam around Raina’s mind. How long have I been sleeping? How did I get here? Where is here? Where is Fable? She managed a wheezy “H-how . . . long?”

  “You’ve been sleeping for two days. I’ll be putting some soup in you as soon as you feel up to eating.”

  Two days? Raina reeled. Two days! She couldn’t afford to leave the forest for two minutes, not with everything spiraling out of control. The pixies and the spriggans and—

  “Stay still.” Annie put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere right now. You need time to heal.”

  “F-Fable,” Raina managed. “Where is . . . Fable?”

  “Fable is fine. More than fine, actually; she’s doing remarkably well. You should be proud of your daughter. She turned that field in the hills into a sort of neutral meeting place—not exactly part of the woods, but not properly part of the town, either. She’s spent most of the past two days supervising things—whenever she isn’t right here watching over you, that is. She checks in every few hours to see if you’re up yet.”

  “She’s there now? Alone?”

  “Never alone. The boys have been with her nonstop, and Chief Nudd lent a few goblin guards to help her keep the peace, just in case anybody decides to get ornery—but as far as I’ve seen, they’ve all been on their best behavior. She made it pretty clear that she wasn’t going to tolerate any sort of mischief. You should’ve heard her threaten the gnomes. She reminds me of you, actually. Heck, she’s even kept my boys out of trouble for two days straight, so I suspect there must be some sort of magic involved.”

  “Fable . . . is giving orders?” Raina said.

  “Lots of them,” Annie chuckled. “Smart ones, too. She’s good at it. And having a chance to meet the so-called enemy face-to-face has taken the edge off of a lot of people’s fear and panic. Evie Warner has been particularly popular up there, the
darling. She showed some pixies a few of the pictures she had drawn, and they insisted on posing for better ones. All manner of creatures have been taking turns sitting for portraits all day. The girl’s quite an artist. A troll called Kurrg seemed particularly pleased with how his came out. Evie let him keep it.”

  “Kurrg?” Raina breathed. “Kurrg the Ruthless?”

  “It all sounds mad, I know, but two days ago Endsborough and the Wild Wood were at each other’s throats, and yesterday I watched Albert Townshend teach some sort of hobgoblin how to play marbles. Jim Warner apologized to a pixie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that man apologize to a human. Your daughter did that. I’m still not sure how she managed it—but she did.”

  “They’re . . . listening?” Raina said. “To Fable?”

  “More than listening. They’re calling her Little Queen.”

  Raina laid her head back on the pillow. The trees rustled contentedly in the breeze outside. She smiled. It had been a long time since Raina had slept on a proper mattress in a proper house. Little Queen. Perhaps the forest really could manage without her—at least for a while.

  Thirty-Two

  A cool breeze carried the gentle breath of pines and wild lavenders across the field. The remains of Mr. Hill’s equipment had been reduced to dark lumps that hugged the earth, already overtaken by ivy and moss, thanks to Fable’s strong encouragement.

  Leaves rustled high in the branches of the Grandmother Tree. Fable’s tree. Mr. Hill was no longer trapped within it. It had taken hours, but the powder had finally worn off and he had shrunk back to his regular size. He had been moved—pale, shivering, and mumbling incoherently—to a cell in the town’s jailhouse. The spriggans had not been happy about that. A crime had been committed against them, after all, and they felt they should have some say in the consequences—but they had not pressed the matter.

  Great big knots scarred the tree where the giant had been. They would heal eventually, but in the meantime, children from the village had already discovered that a good round rock tossed in at the top would come rattling out through one of the leg holes, and they had wasted no time designing games based on guessing where objects might emerge. While digging around in the grass for good tossing stones, Peggy Washington found a smooth, polished moss agate. The unexpected treasure brought a smile to her face.