by Ruth Long
“It’s all going to be fine. You’ll see.” Jack got to his feet and smiled at her brightly. The forest’s hues seemed to fade when he smiled like that, all the wondrous color absorbed into his face alone. Jenny found herself returning it and felt strangely better. Jack held out a hand that folded around hers in a grip at once overpowering and comforting. “I’ll take you to my friend’s house. He’ll see you home.”
With her last hope of finding Tom fading, what could Jenny do but accept? She followed Jack, the smile slipping from her mouth as he released her hand.
chapter four
They must have walked for an hour or more, Jack leading the way along the narrow woodland paths. He never spoke, and Jenny had begun to wonder if he was ignoring her. The dog trailed behind them sullenly. Jenny glanced back at it from time to time, struck with the uncomfortable feeling that it was muttering under its breath. She had almost managed to ignore it and focus on the path ahead when Jack stopped abruptly, his body still. Jenny stumbled off the path to avoid walking into him, and she was sure the dog laughed. Almost sure. Because dogs didn’t laugh.
Jack lifted his head as if he was smelling the air.
He was certainly odd.
“What is it?” she asked.
He held up his hand, like a soldier signaling for silence.
And he was certainly bossy.
Then his body twitched as a noise like distant thunder came from ahead of them. Muscles tensed all across his back. He cocked his head to one side, listening intently.
A figure stepped from between the trees ahead of them, a girl, dressed in a pale green sundress. She moved with quick, delicate movements, her sharply pointed face strangely beautiful and yet not—too thin, the features too narrow and long. She started and turned, stared at Jack and Jenny, her pale green eyes moist with fear. Her tiny mouth opened wide—too wide, as if her jaw detached. Jack jerked his head to the side urgently, an unmistakable signal to get out of the way, and she darted off, quicker than a rabbit, vanishing from sight. Before Jenny could say a word, Jack had grabbed her arm and was pulling her into the bushes, the dog darting ahead of them.
“Stay silent,” he hissed. “Stay down.”
Jenny opened her mouth to argue but thought better of it. Jack seemed…not scared, exactly. But his eyes had deepened to a hard green and blue, almost metallic. His pupils widened to deep black circles. She lay in the dirt under the bush and stared ahead, wondering what on earth was going on now. A smell filled the air then, the heavy aroma of flowers and overripe fruit, a thick stew of sweetness. It filled her nose and mouth, making her throat close with the need to gag, and then slowly faded to something perfumed and fragrant but bearable once again. Beautiful, in fact. Her head swam in it.
Just a few seconds later, horses galloped into the broad and airy clearing ahead, slowed and finally stopped, milling about as their riders chatted and laughed. Long-legged and elegant, the horses were the color of milk and cream. Their harnesses hung with bells that had been drowned in the noise of their hooves, but now made music as the creatures twitched and stamped.
And the riders.
Jenny stared, all thoughts of Jack and his strange mood forgotten. There were twelve of them, so beautiful they held her gaze like light glinting off the edge of a blade. They sat on their pale horses, almost human, almost angels, with a hint of something wicked shadowing every gesture. The men were all tall and broad-shouldered. The women laughed like birds and had eyes like hunting cats. They were all dressed in silks and velvets, flowing robes that could have graced the halls of Camelot.
In their center, a woman—more wondrous and terrifying than any of the rest—lifted her face to the sunlight and closed her eyes. She swayed slightly, like a snake scenting prey, but otherwise sat very still, as if listening to the air around her. Jenny felt an uncanny surety that the sounds of the forest were familiar to her as a childhood melody, that they told her far more than Jenny could ever decipher from them. The woman sat sidesaddle on her horse, her green-and-gold gown sewn with glistening threads in a pattern of flowers and vines. Her golden hair had been twisted in intricate braids and knotwork and studded with gleaming jewels. Her eyes glistened in the sunlight, two diamonds, harder and colder than any she wore. As she turned her gaze toward the bushes where Jenny and Jack hid, Jenny felt herself shrink back instinctively, a rising need to escape making her squirm in the dirt. Jack reached out silently and enfolded her hand in his. The gesture surprised her, and her instinct was to jerk out of his grasp. But she didn’t. Instead her muscles turned sluggish and unresponsive. Why weren’t they running? Why was Jack, so eager to get rid of her, preventing her now from fleeing?
Jack whispered something and glanced at the dog, who shrugged—how could a dog shrug? The thought shrank away from Jenny’s mind as quickly as it came, and the air around them shimmered, as if sealing them off from the rest of the forest. Jack sighed, but he didn’t let Jenny go. The warmth of his touch made her fingers feel even colder.
One of the men slid from his horse’s back, moving with the grace and innate strength of a dancer or an assassin, and knelt down, pressing his hands to the soft earth. “He came through here, my queen, without a doubt. Probably less than an hour since. And others, more recently, something—”
“Which way did he go?” Despite the sharp interruption, the queen’s voice sang rather than spoke. Jenny couldn’t tear her eyes away. Her senses seemed to burn with an intensity so extreme it hurt. She was both attracted and repelled by this figure, wanting at once to escape and to throw herself at the queen’s feet and beg the woman to look with pleasure on her.
“I—” The tracker faltered. “I know not, my queen.”
“Fool,” she sighed, as though his failure did not concern her, and yet, when the man turned away and Jenny could see his face, he looked stricken, terrified. “Maybe I should send you as tithe instead of the piper. You’d do just as well, if they’d deign to have you.”
Jenny started at the words—the piper. Tom was the piper, wasn’t he? Who else could it be? The boy in the tree had recoiled when she said he was her brother. She remembered the boy. Why did it feel like she’d forgotten him? And what was a tithe? She glanced at Jack, but he stared ahead, his eyes dark, burning with some strange emotion she couldn’t place.
Then the queen began speaking again and all thoughts of Jack or Tom slid from Jenny’s mind.
“No, not you,” the queen told her tracker. Her tone was sharp as a needle. “No one but the dogs would have you.” The man glanced back at her, his whole body stiffening, his eyes widening. And then he ran, sprinting from the clearing like something flung from a catapult.
The queen lifted her chin and let out a very high, undulating whistle. Jack’s hand tightened on Jenny’s and the urge to pull away flared again. But she couldn’t move. Fear held her more firmly in place than Jack could.
For a moment there was nothing. Then, from the distance, Jenny heard a pack of dogs barking. They burst into the clearing and through it without pause, a host of white hounds, fleet as racing dogs but double their size. Jenny saw little more than a blur of white fur with patches of red, and their teeth. It was impossible to miss their teeth.
Beside her, Jack recoiled unexpectedly, his other hand clamping tight on her arm, and Jenny almost cried out. She bit back the sound just in time and turned to find herself face-to-face with the forest boy, clad once more in leaves, his blue and green eyes inches from her face. Her own gaze flicked back and forth from eye to eye, her mind scrambling to keep up, to process this new information in the face of something even more damning—the knowledge now rising up as if from the ground itself and filling her, the knowledge that somehow he’d tricked her. He’d lied to her. He’d wanted to get rid of her at any cost, even if it meant taking her hope and strangling it with a spell.
He’d made her believe she was crazy.
Black rage welled up inside her like a volcano about to blow, but before she could open her mouth or dra
w back her fist, one sound made her freeze with dread.
A scream rang out amid the snarls of the dogs, just beyond the clearing where the hunter had fled. And then silence.
Jenny looked back to the clearing where the horses and their riders still gathered. The queen sat, undisturbed by the sounds, and then gave a second whistle, less shrill this time. The sound of the white hounds faded until a single howl rang out in the still forest.
The queen smiled and Jenny caught a glimpse of her eyes, darkly shadowed and ancient. No longer beautiful. Something else lurked behind the stunning exterior. Something dark and hungry. Something not human.
But then, nothing here was human, was it? Jenny looked back at Jack, at his leaves and his wildwood eyes, at the stone blade strapped to his hip, at the odd cast to his features. He met her stare impassively. Nothing was human here but her. And anything to the contrary was a lie.
The queen’s presence pulled Jenny’s gaze back around. She didn’t fight it this time. The sight of Jack filled her with a contempt and sorrow she couldn’t explain.
“South,” the queen declared. “My pets have him cornered, I believe. Soon my piper will be returned to our home. If he fears the blood tithe, he should think better of incurring my wrath. No amount of magic will draw another as well-suited as he is, no matter what he thinks. Follow me.” She urged her own mount forward and the horse flattened its ears before tearing out of the clearing and along the forest path ahead of the others. Her companions, just ten of them now, were only a moment behind her. The horses thundered from the clearing, the earth beneath Jack and Jenny trembling with their passage. And then all was still.
They waited, their harsh breath the only sound around them.
“Come on,” Jack said at last. “Let’s get you to safety.”
“Really?” Jenny burst out. “What— Who was she? Who are you?”
“You don’t need to know. You just need to get home.” He wriggled out from under the bushes and then bent to help her. She ignored him, struggling to her feet herself, cold and wet, her clothes streaked with mud.
“Come on, Puck. Get out and let’s be going.”
Puck.
Jenny stared.
The creature that emerged from the bushes was no dog. Jenny flinched at a sight that couldn’t be true. Had to be a dream but wasn’t. What was this place? She shifted her gaze to Jack, anger brewing again. He was clad not in cargo pants and a T-shirt, but in leaves. Leaves! Just as she had first believed. Her heart hammered. She swallowed. It was all real. All of it. No matter what they had tried to make her believe, all those psychiatrists she’d been paraded in front of. And even Jack himself. He had lied to her, tricked her, and now he told her she didn’t need to know?
Jenny folded her arms across her body and planted her muddy feet on the ground.
“He isn’t a dog,” she said, making each word as sharp as glass.
The little man with goat’s legs grinned at her. Jenny chose to ignore him. Ready as she was to face this reality, she wasn’t sure about willingly speaking to a mythological creature just yet.
“Yes, he is,” Jack replied, without so much as a glance at her.
Jenny had never taken well to being dismissed. Out of habit, she stood a little straighter, the muscles across her back and shoulders tightening. She twisted the end of her shirtsleeve, knotting her fingers into the soft cotton.
“No,” she replied, biting off the word. “He isn’t.” So, Jack was going to continue the lie, was he? Fine. She would address the creature itself. “What are you?”
The little man bowed, still grinning that filthy grin. “Robin Goodfellow at thy service, lass.”
Something inside her balked, but she kept her stance. She had known, of course, had known all along. She had seen him before she’d blacked out, hadn’t she? She balled her hands into fists until her nails bit into her palms. It would have been so much better if he was just a fever dream.
But would it?
If this was real, if it was truly real—
What had Jack done to her? She remembered the warmth of his hand on hers, the way her doubts and protests had faded away when he touched her. How had he made her see things? Anger now warred with a fierce exhilaration. It was real!
She lifted her chin, waiting.
“Puck!” Jack exclaimed.
“It’s worn off, lad. She knows it, and you should admit it too. You can’t influence her when she’s not elfshot.”
Jack turned to Jenny now. She met his eyes.
His stubborn expression mirrored her own back at her. The urge to slap him made her grit her teeth until they ached.
“All right. Fine.” He scowled at her even as he acquiesced. “But no one is going to believe you when you get home.”
She met his words with silence at first. Then a sound punctured the air. It took Jenny a moment to realize it came from her. A laugh, brief and broken, almost like a bark. Another slipped from her lips. And another, growing and growing until she had no choice but to unwind and let it go free. The sound rang out across the forest and birds took flight. She couldn’t stop. She ought to. There was every chance the hunters would hear and come back. But she couldn’t. She threw back her head and let the laughter gasp out of her in waves, tears streaming down her face, her body hurting from the lack of air.
A furrow had formed between Jack’s eyes. He put a hand out, but Jenny slapped it away. Puck grinned, dancing from foot to foot, reveling in this madness. And slowly, gradually, Jenny regained herself. After the absurdity of it, reality swept in on swift and heavy wings. The weight of it fell over her, forcing her onto her knees. She gasped for breath, crippled and bent double, the laughter fading as she struggled to breathe. Oh God, she was going to have to go through it all again. All the snide remarks, the sidelong glances, the psychiatrists, her mother’s accusing eyes, her wringing hands, Dad pacing back and forth for hours, the still face of Tom in all those photographs—
But this time…this time at least she knew it was real.
“You think I don’t know that?” She gulped, glaring up at Jack, smothering her hysteria. “Of course no one will believe me. They never did. They nod and smile and then talk behind your back. And they laugh. There’s nothing you can do to stop them from laughing. Isn’t even worth the effort. Have you ever had people laugh behind your back?”
Of course he hadn’t. Look at him.
His scowl, if possible, got even harder. “Then you understand,” he said to her, “that there’s no point in discussing these events when you get home. And home you must get.” He glanced at the sun hovering just above the treetops, the shadows of the leaves passing over his eyes. Jenny looked away, afraid she would punch him otherwise. “If you stay here any longer,” he said, “your danger will deepen, Jenny Wren. You saw the queen. You don’t want to attract her attention, do you?”
For a moment Jenny almost said yes. It was a wild and reckless need, like standing on the edge of a tall building with the urge to jump coiling through her body. Now thoughts of the queen consumed her, greedily filling her mind.
“Why should I attract her attention at all?”
Jack approached her warily, animal-like again, and reached to take her hand. She snatched it away, putting both arms behind her back where he couldn’t reach them. She wasn’t making that mistake again. Jack’s expression didn’t change, but his outstretched hand fell back to his side.
“Because you’re a mortal, and she sees any mortal in this Realm as hers to take, her prize, her prey. You’re outside her power, independent of her. She has no hold over you and no way to bend you to her will unless you agree to it. And she hates that. She is Titania, the queen, who was once called Mab. They are one and the same, power upon power. Because somehow, and I don’t know how, you can see through our illusions. You can see things in the Realm as they are. Which makes you a threat.” Jenny opened her mouth to interrupt, but Jack continued. “Listen to me. I can get you to safety, but we need to go now.”<
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“He speaks the truth, lass,” said Puck, suddenly solemn. “Mab is old and hungry.”
Jenny rolled back on her heels, the forest seeming to close around her. The Realm? Titania? Mab? She’d seen the darkness lurking beneath Titania’s beauty, the flash of evil. Was that Mab? She shuddered, staring up at the trees around them.
And Jenny herself, a threat to someone—something—like that? The world seemed to twist around her. How was that even possible? Jack had deceived her, but for a reason. To get her home. Still, she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to find Tom. As far as she was concerned, the reason Jack had lied was no better than the lie itself. No, she would not go home.
But then Jenny remembered the look in that woman’s eyes…and she knew Jack and Puck were right. She did not want to encounter the queen again. The pull the woman seemed to exert over everything around her…Jenny had felt it. Like a drug in physical form.
“Who were they hunting?” she finally asked. “That girl?”
“No. She was just…she was just hiding, like us.”
“What was she?” And how would she have looked without Jack’s spell warping the world, Jenny wondered with a shiver.
“Only a Dame Verte. Simple souls, tree guardians, gentle and kind. She was just trying to avoid the hunt. The Dames are no threat to anyone.”
“And the boy in the birch tree?”
Jack smiled, a gently amused expression. It suited him, but she wasn’t particularly pleased to see it there. It irked her.
“Most likely a birch-boy,” he said with a laugh. “They’re all over the forest. A tree spirit, like her. Harmless.”
“The Folletti weren’t harmless,” she muttered.
“No. Probably not. They like their tricks. But they aren’t malicious.” Jenny narrowed her eyes dubiously and Jack’s face grew a little pained. “They’re like children with a toy. They don’t understand that sometimes it can break.”