And she climbed because she had not been born a lynx, and because she would certainly not die as one, not here.
The Mountain leveled off sooner than she had expected, and she wondered if it was because she was climbing so fast. She was too exhausted to question it. She dragged herself over the edge, gasping, claws tearing through the glass.
She lay flat for a few moments, catching her breath. Then she got to her feet, muscles aching, and took stock of her surroundings.
Stunned, Ren took a step back.
The Glass Mountain was covered with golden trees. Oddly enough, they emitted the same eerie light as dragon bones. Ren glanced behind her, back over the edge, but snow-white clouds gathered and hid the fight below. The rest of the range surrounded the Glass Mountain like a purple sea, and beyond, the trees were green.
It was beautiful.
Almost hypnotized, she entered the copse of golden trees. She recognized them from her forest, all spruce and oak. Golden apples on their branches. Below the glass surface, golden roots intertwined, dancing and twisting under her feet. Fallen apples littered the ground.
Except for the click of her claws on the glass, the mountaintop was silent.
The trees yielded to a courtyard of sparkling, faceted glass. Two delicately wrought glass chairs faced each other, next to a floreted table with a glass chess set. Overhead, a weeping willow, with a thousand fronds of tinkling glass, swayed in a nonexistent breeze. And beyond the courtyard, glowing against the night sky, stood the most beautiful castle Ren had ever seen. And this, too, was glass.
It had tall ramparts and one turret that stood higher than the rest.
The mountain was unnervingly still. It struck her suddenly that the sky should have been lightening in preparation for dawn, but instead it was a strange dull gray. It looked like impending rain. There had not been a sunrise. She shuddered. It took a powerful enchantment to change the sky like that.
She crossed a glass drawbridge. Twin dragons, also wrought of glass, reared on either side of the castle’s entrance. Its glass doors were open.
It began to rain.
Carefully, Ren wound around the door and entered the silent hall.
A banistered staircase coiled into the upper floors. Overhead, a chandelier swayed gently. It was all made of glass. Although, here at least, there was a tint of color. A flicker of life. Almost like a reflection—of what, Ren did not know, for she was completely alone—but it diminished the overall stillness of the place. The soullessness.
Curiosity stirred in Ren’s bones. What use could the Dragon have for a castle? She glanced behind her. It couldn’t possibly fit through that front door.
Ren climbed the staircase, feeling, oddly, that she was on familiar ground. Then she was on the second floor. She padded past another silent doorway, pausing to look inside.
The room was multiple levels, filled with shelves. Here, the glass was particularly lifelike. Especially filled with movement. Always in the corners of her eyes. Ren found her head swiveling in every way, trying to catch a clear glimpse of the blurred images. And when she was finally able to ignore the flashes of movement, she felt her eyes widen.
A glass chandelier, in the shapes of different animals, hung from the ceiling.
It was a library. And not just any library.
My library.
Ren turned slowly. Behind her stood a glass suit of armor, in the exact same place that Ryś had knocked it over, two years ago. Ren sprinted down the hallway. The alcove—where Czarn liked to sit—was flanked with shimmering glass banners and filled not with a black wolf but with a picture frame made of glass.
Ren ran past. It was all the same. The doors were in all the same places. The stairs led to the same empty hallways. The towers in the same precise locations. It was her castle. A perfect replica, on the top of the Glass Mountain.
And if I am right . . .
Ren was at the bottom of a set of spiral stairs, leading up a narrow tower. A strange feeling washed over her.
Familiarity? Relief?
She didn’t know. She climbed the staircase, felt her legs growing more slender. Her spine easing out.
I am monster, she thought.
She felt like herself. She felt more like herself than she had since all this had started. She felt like the girl who had run wild through human streets and lain to sleep among lynxes. She felt like the girl who had feared nothing, had loved everyone, had defied all odds in an evil forest.
Ren kept climbing.
I am animal, she thought.
The fur rippled, disappeared. She entered a narrow hallway, rose to two legs. The glass sword must have looked ridiculous, hanging against her bare skin. Light, dull from the overcast sky, filtered through the windows.
This was the same passageway where she had kept a different room, in a different castle. Her hand closed on the doorknob.
I am human, she thought.
When she caught her reflection in the glass door at the end of the hallway, she saw herself as they must see her: magic eyes and wild hair and edges never quite substantial, never quite real. She was more than any of them expected. She was far more than any one thing. She existed beyond the witches or the monsters. She existed outside the realms of possibility.
I am queen.
Ren opened the door and walked inside.
52
“WELCOME, IRENA.”
A woman sat on the other side of the room, behind an enormous desk of carved glass. It was supported by golden antlers instead of regular table legs. Snow-white furs covered the floor.
It was the first nonglass room in the whole castle.
Ren stared.
Whereas the castle was pale, the woman was pure intensity. Long, mahogany-colored hair cascaded over her shoulders, parting around a face of sun-kissed skin. At the point formed by the angles of her cheekbones, her lips were shellacked red. Her eyes, fringed with depthless black, were gold. She wore a silver-white gown with a high collar and sleeves that reached to her wrists. The gown sparkled, as if faceted, and Ren knew, instinctively, that somehow—some way—it, too, was made of glass. Its paleness only enhanced her color.
Into the silence, Ren asked:
“Who are you?”
The woman in the chair stood up. The gown chimed. She walked around the desk, the gown rippling like waves. Her hair caught unseen lights; like the Mountain, like the castle, it glowed.
“My name is Dagmara,” she said. Like her gown, her voice chimed. Red lips over white teeth. “Irena, I am the queen.”
Ren’s stomach plummeted the entire length of the Glass Mountain. Probably hit the bottom of the valley floor.
“You’re—”
“Yes,” said Queen Dagmara. “Your mother.”
She smiled. It was radiant. It bit Ren right to the core. Ren could hardly believe her ears. Her eyes. Shock had a hold on her, and everything else was pushed out.
Then Queen Dagmara said: “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to tell you that, Irena.”
Ren swallowed.
“Someone else told me,” she said. Then amended: “Well, something else.”
Queen Dagmara’s lashes fluttered. She produced a soft, liquid smile.
“Ah, yes,” she said. “The Leszy.”
Ren was too surprised to speak. Queen Dagmara seemed to wait for her to gather her wits, reaching out, readjusting an inkwell on the desk. The gown was more like a cape, with tight, fitted sleeves and gossamer-thin glass between the sleeves and the bodice. It reminded Ren of the wings of a dragon.
The Dragon.
“So,” said Ren, voice trembling with fury. “You’ve chosen the side of the monsters?”
The queen burst out laughing.
It was loud and beautiful, and with another ripple of glass, she raised her hand to her mouth. She smiled around the hand, eyes glittering. She looked . . .
Feline.
“Certainly not,” said the queen. “You’ve got it all wrong, Irena.”
; Ren spoke through gritted teeth. “Enlighten me.”
She didn’t trust herself not to transform. Not to leap across the table and tear the queen to pieces, right then and there. She wouldn’t have cared. Any sympathy she’d had for this queen was long gone. This wasn’t her mother. Her real mother was home in the castle, mourning the death of her brother.
Ryś.
Unperturbed, Queen Dagmara smiled warmly.
She didn’t seem to notice that her daughter’s skin was rippling with suppressed fury. That fur was dancing in and out of sight. That her nails were slipping out, shifting back in. That her eyes were twitching between animal and human, wanting to be animal, not ready to change.
Yet.
First, Ren had to know.
“You’ve grown up to be a warrior,” said Queen Dagmara. “So much more than we could have dreamed.”
We.
Gold flashed outside the window. The Dragon was circling. Ren wasn’t afraid of it, or if she was, then the fear rolled straight into fury. Became indistinguishable. Fed the roiling, burning storm inside her. The queen reached out, as if she was going to touch Ren’s cheek. Ren twitched back, like a cat. The queen’s hand fell away, and for the first time, her expression faltered.
Ren hung back. She’d seen enough monsters. Played enough games. Slipped through enough loopholes, made enough enemies. She prowled before the desk.
“I think,” she said levelly, “I should hear everything.”
The queen sighed. She gestured to one of the chairs near the desk, draped in more white fur.
“Very well,” said the queen. “Sit down, Irena.”
Ren did not sit. The queen did not seem to mind. Instead, she rested her chin on one supremely elegant hand and smiled. Her mouth was thin and feline. It took Ren a moment to realize it was her mouth, too.
“A little over seventeen years ago,” began Queen Dagmara, “the evil crept in. It came from below ground. It was as if hell had opened beneath our feet. It started with small monsters—with nocnica and psotniki. I was concerned, but my husband reassured me. He said it would get better.” She paused. “He said I was too beautiful to worry.”
Queen Dagmara’s lip curled. It was somehow elegant. It was an expression learned in schools and in ballrooms and in worlds lit by more than moonlight and shaped by more than fear.
In a different life, Ren might have learned the same expression.
“Then came the strzygi,” murmured the queen, still staring out the window. “They came in such numbers, out of those pits. Evil spirits, wandering my world and hurting my people. They grew so numerous, and so quickly. They gathered like fog below the foundations of our kingdom. And they destroyed us.”
Ren waited, silent.
“And no one did anything,” continued Queen Dagmara. “My husband tried at first, but not very hard. He said there was nothing we could do.”
What have the humans done? the Baba Jaga had asked. They have given up.
“But I loved our kingdom, Irena,” said the queen. “I loved our village, with its Sunday markets and its houses, with their yellow and blue paint. I loved celebrating Christmas Eve with you and your father, and our villagers. I loved that castle.”
Her face had become clouded, her lashes low on her cheeks. It was almost as if she was looking back seventeen years, into a world that Ren could not imagine existing. Beauty and color, she had learned, were for other cities. That warmth, that feeling of being home: that was for the magic halls of Hala Smoków.
That was for the Baba Jaga’s cabin.
Those feelings were not for an angry village. A besieged castle.
“I tried to save us,” said Queen Dagmara, and turned abruptly to face Ren. Her eyes were the most piercing gold. “But no one listened to me, because I was just a queen. And then came the Dragon. She warned me that ours would be the first kingdom to fall. The first battleground in a great war, a war that might sweep across this country, if we did not stop it here. I decided to go with her. Together, we would raise an army. We alone would fight. We would save this kingdom.”
Ren stopped pacing.
“You listened to a dragon?” she demanded. The words came out harsh, spitting. “It’s the worst evil—”
“When you met the Wolf-Lord in the river,” said Queen Dagmara smoothly, “didn’t you notice that the Dragon burned the psotniki in the trees? Or later, that she only burned strzygi? Filled those pits with flames? Did she not follow you every step of this journey?”
Ren stopped dead.
“And through all these fires,” continued Queen Dagmara, “did you ever burn?”
Ren was reeling. She gathered her wits only enough to sputter:
“It’s a dragon!”
Queen Dagmara smiled.
“You’ve been talking to Wolf-Lords.”
She got to her feet. The gown chimed, and Ren took a step back. The Dragon had never touched her castle. Never hurt her animals. Never even the village.
“The Golden Dragon is not evil,” said Queen Dagmara, closing the space between them. She was much taller than Ren, almost as tall as Lukasz. “She was made by something else. We don’t know what exactly. Perhaps something trapped down there, in hell? Or maybe she was born from darkness and just couldn’t bear to live in it.”
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real. Lukasz’s brothers couldn’t have died for this, for nothing. . . .
“You destroyed my forest. You destroyed this kingdom—and Hala Smoków. They all went to save you, and your Dragon killed them.” Ren could barely speak, she was so angry. “My brother is dead because of you.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” replied the queen evenly. “The Dragon gave me a chance to do good.”
She waved a hand. A small, clipped gesture that she seemed to think could negate thousands of ruined lives. Could negate eight brothers. Her dead brother. It was the gesture of a woman who had spent most of her life waving away servants. Giving orders and having them obeyed. A woman who had been born into power, and who had never truly had to fight for her life.
“I was the queen of this kingdom,” said Queen Dagmara, when Ren did not speak. “And still no one listened to me. You don’t know what that’s like, Irena.”
Ren threw up her hands.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s like, to be born into royalty. I don’t know what it’s like to come into the world with power and wealth. Do you know why? Because it was taken away. I was just a baby. I was the weakest, most defenseless creature in that forest, and I still became its queen.”
Queen Dagmara was suddenly quiet.
“You left me,” said Ren, and her voice cracked. “You left me all alone.”
The dim shapes on the wall began to resolve. The blurred reflections focused. They stayed pale, ghostly. But Ren saw them: A white eagle swooping across the glass ceiling. Her younger siblings skidding along the glass floor. Faint painted flowers trailing over the walls. A broken blue crib. An old spotted mirror.
A black wolf, head on his paws, lying on the ghost of a blue bed.
“You were never alone,” said the queen.
Ren gasped. They weren’t just memories. They were reflections of her castle.
“I was always there,” said the queen. “We protected you.”
Ren swallowed hard.
“We—?”
Ren broke off. Her eyes widened. How could she be so stupid?
It was all glass. The Mountain, the castle, the sword—everything was made of glass. Lukasz had mentioned the Leszy’s forge, with its stained glass windows . . .
Ren’s heart skipped a beat.
. . . he would have done anything to save his forest. He was its god. He had told them where to find that sword, and only after Lukasz had bound him with the cross.
“The Leszy?” breathed Ren.
The queen had a strange look of pride on her face.
“Yes,” she said. She motioned to the sword at Ren�
��s side. “Like you, he doesn’t trust my Dragon. He made that sword and this castle—a weapon in case the Dragon ever turned, and a refuge in case I was in danger. We . . . we were surprised your Wolf-Lord asked how to kill the Dragon. We thought he would ask about his brother.”
Ren knew her mouth was open. She closed it and asked: “Why bring me to the top of the Mountain? Is it true that the Dragon can only be killed here?”
Queen Dagmara spread her hands.
“The Wolf-Lord compelled him to tell you how to kill our Dragon,” she said. “The least the Leszy could do was to ensure that we meet first, so I could explain.”
The queen waited. Ren was dirty and bruised, but at least her skin had stopped rippling to fur.
“Wait,” she said suddenly. “But I’m not human—”
The queen laughed again that. Her shiny lips were stark against the pale walls, the gray sky outside.
“Once again,” she said, “the Leszy’s idea. We thought you’d be safe with the lynxes, until you attacked a grown huntsman. After that, the Leszy thought it best to give you some claws. I think he rather likes you better that way.”
The rain had thickened outside, and beyond the tower window, the sky was a wall of gray cloud. When Ren spoke again, her voice was quiet. It rasped, as always, because she had been born a human and because she had not been raised as one.
“What was the point?”
Queen Dagmara had moved back around the desk, trailing long white fingers along its surface. Ren wondered if they looked alike. She hoped they didn’t. Then the queen said:
“To save the kingdom.”
“You didn’t.”
Ren’s words were harsh, made worse by her ugly voice, but she didn’t care. Fury and pain had combined inside her, twisted around. Made her say the truth.
“People are dying. The Wolf-Lords are dead. No one has been saved. You sacrificed everything. Your throne, your husband, your child. And for what? The monsters are still taking over. Nothing is better. Nothing is saved.”
The queen’s eyes dropped to the desk. Rain rushed in to fill the void. The sky swirled, dull gray and stormy, outside the queen’s tower.
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