The Treachery of Beautiful Things

by Ruth Long

  “When I woke up, when he had to kiss me like that…”

  “Shh…” Puck pulled his head away, his eyes bright with grief. “He’ll come back. Jack must patrol at night. That’s in his nature. Surely you’ve realized that by now, lass.”

  A childish need rose inside her, a need to hide from everything, to make the world normal again, to pretend at least that none of this was real. It was what people had tried to tell her for the last seven years, wasn’t it? That she’d been hallucinating, dreaming, that somehow losing Tom was all her fault and if she just told them the truth—their truth—it would magically make everything better.

  She could try one last time, to pretend everything was normal, couldn’t she? To pretend this wasn’t happening and make it go away. “And the—the creature?”

  “What creature?” A hint of impatience entered Puck’s voice with the word.

  She bit her lip and pressed on. “The beast he’s hunting, or that’s hunting us. The thing that killed the Woodsman, the”—she had to whisper the word—“the greenman. Is he—is Jack holding it back from us?”

  There was a long pause as Puck scanned the trees with catlike contemplation. Was that disappointment in his face? Whatever it was, he decided to veil the truth, if not lie outright. He sighed. “You could say that, lass.”

  Jenny paused. “What is it? I saw it before, when Tom was taken. A monster.”

  “Aye.” He smiled as if he were talking to a child, or an idiot. Perhaps that was what he thought of her. And perhaps she was. She wanted to think that. To hide for just a little longer, to be normal, to be sane, not someone who was falling for a— Puck’s voice trembled just a little with regret. “A fairy-tale monster. Nothing more.”

  Jenny sagged forward, her chin against her chest. She was an idiot indeed if she chose to believe that.

  She drew in a deep breath. Puck would lie to her, for her, but she couldn’t lie to herself. No matter how badly she might want to.

  “But it isn’t. Not really.” She closed her eyes and let her head tilt back against the bier. Jutting from among the neatly piled layers of sticks and stones a stray twig poked into the back of her neck, snagging her hair. She pulled it free, twisting it in her hands. She couldn’t hide any longer. She couldn’t be a child in this world, or it would swallow her whole. Hers was not the truth of psychiatrists and drugs, of her parents and their world. Their truth—human truth—had never been enough. Her truth was Jack’s truth and everything that couldn’t be real. “Jack is…it’s him, isn’t it? Somehow? The greenman. He turns into it at night.”

  Puck didn’t stir. She could sense him watching her. “That…that is perceptive, Jenny Wren,” he said at last.

  She sighed, the sound wrung out of her body. Puck would lie to her as long as he felt it comforted her. “Not really. I should have realized. That’s what you meant, isn’t it? When you told me about the jack-in-the-box. A Kobold.”

  “Yes. That’s the truth of it. A curse, or something as near as like it. They were tree spirits once. Wild creatures, reveling in that wildness in the moonlight, but hidden in their trees by day. Jack was the strongest of them. Their leader. Their king. Oberon took them prisoner one by one, and broke them, carving the wood of them into the semblance of men. He breathed new life into them and they are his servants, his knights, some might say”—his voice grew strained—“his slaves. The last one, the strongest of them all, the Oak King was Oberon’s eternal enemy. But even he fell, at the last, alone, the wild king of the wild places.” Puck breathed deep. “Oberon didn’t just subjugate him. First Oberon destroyed all his people, and then took him as well. He carved his wood into the same figure as all the rest, made our Jack one of so many slaves, took away all that made him different. His spirit, his fire, his heart. Oberon took them all. Oberon made Jacks of them all. His slaves. All the fearless trees.”

  Jack’s tree flashed through Jenny’s mind—the May Tree, Puck had called it—tied all over with fluttering white. “You said he wished for freedom,” she breathed. “Not just freedom for him. For all of them.” She turned to look at Puck, a hope rising behind her eyes. “Then he…he wasn’t there that night, when Tom was taken? It was one of the others.”

  “No.”

  That single word crushed her.

  Puck looked at her sadly, intently. “It was Jack,” he said. “He guards the Edge. The others guard other edges. But the forest is still his. Even when he isn’t Jack, when he’s in his natural state, the trees are his, Jenny. And they took your brother. Jack…Jack found him a home here rather than leave him lost.”

  Tears needled her eyes but she pushed them back. “I don’t believe you.”

  He shook his head slowly, so sadly. “Then you must ask him.”

  “But he’s helping me.”

  Puck didn’t answer at first. When he shifted his eyes to look at her, she caught the flash of guilt across his face. “He wants to help you, lass.”

  Puck pulled away from her then, getting to his hoofed feet and stretching like a cat waking from sleep.

  Jenny’s heart stuttered. “Jack is bound by vows. To him. To her. To do what, Puck? And why? Why would he make such vows?”

  “You must ask him that, Jenny Wren.”

  Lines wrinkled Puck’s face and suddenly he looked old, as old as the stones on the riverbank. Sorrow lined his features and changed him from a mischievous sprite to something ancient and unfathomable.

  “Only he can give you an answer to that. I’ll tell you this, though: I’ve never known Jack—I’ve never known any of the Jacks—to do for another as much as he has done for you. Though I was the one who begged our master’s protection, he crossed to your world, walked the Ridgeway between, and risked himself before our master’s enemy to get that sword. I imagine it burns against his back every second he wears it. Even setting foot in your world could have killed him, for without the protection of Lord Oberon, it is fatal to us. And Oberon exacted a price from him too. A terrible price for a forest king. His freedom, any chance of winning it for himself, and his kingship too. But he gave all that. For you.”

  Dawn crept through the trees and fell, dappled, on her face. Jenny woke and there he was. Jack. Sitting across from her, watching her, his gaze troubled. She tried to smile at him, tried to give him the thing he needed most—proof of her trust.

  But her smile wavered. She felt it, right before she saw the effect on his face.

  And in that instant she knew the damage was done.

  “You came after me,” she said. Her eyes stung. There was a tingling across the bridge of her nose, tightening her skin and closing her throat.

  I will not cry, she told herself.

  “I’m bound to protect you,” Jack said. Nothing more. The words were unspoken but hung between them. She was nothing but a weight around his neck. He’d told her as much already.

  She tried to think of something to say but Jack beat her to it.

  “We wouldn’t have got out if it hadn’t been for you. You thought quickly, and you were strong.” He hesitated, staring down at her, his features emotionless. “You did well.”

  Jenny swallowed. His gruff praise should have made her proud, but instead she felt wretched. All she could think of was the expression on his face a moment earlier, and the stiffness there now.

  Silence dragged out between them, the long, agonizing death of Jack’s trust. She had to say something. Anything.

  “Where did you get the sword?”

  Jack flinched at the mention, glancing behind himself at the weapon still strapped across his back. It looked old, even by the standards of the Realm. Saxon, perhaps. She’d seen them in the British Museum on various school visits, studied them in history class, and they had fascinated her. This one was different, more ornate, special somehow. She’d seen what it could do.

  Well, not seen, exactly. But she knew; she had watched it all unfold before her, through his eyes.

  “Wayland,” he grunted, looking away from her.
>
  “Wayland’s a legend.” Her laugh made its escape and he glared at her. But the sound made that expression melt to a smile.

  Such a wonderful smile. It sparked in his eyes, crinkled the skin around them, and made him handsome.

  “Yes. He is. And more.”

  She shook her head, still smiling. Well, why not? Why not any number of old gods and forgotten stories? She looked at him again. “Can I see it? The sword?”

  His face fell again into that stone-cold seriousness, and her heart fell with it. He pulled the sword out of the scabbard. Though he held it out to her hilt-first, she hesitated to take it. Light glinted off its edge, razor sharp. Most of the weapons she had ever seen—apart from being safely locked behind glass—were blunted and marked, nicks taken out of the edges, the metal tarnished and dull. This sword didn’t just gleam, it dazzled.

  “Is it magic?”

  “It’s one of Wayland’s, so…” He shrugged, and came closer, hunkering down beside her, back to the bier. They sat there, side by side, studying the weapon. “I suppose it is,” he said finally.

  “And this?” Jenny uncurled her fingers to reveal the tiny star of iron he had given her. She lifted it in her palm and, seeing it again, felt a smile overtake her face. It was the smile she should have given Jack in the first place. She raised her eyes and offered it to him now.

  But he was staring at the thing in her hand, eyeing it as if it might jump from her palm and bite him. “I’m not sure what that is. But Wayland said it would make you smile.”

  It did. Or rather he did. “It’s a jack,” she said. “That’s probably what he meant. You play a game with them. Throw them on the ground, bounce a ball and see how many you can pick up before the ball stops bouncing. But you need more than one.”

  Jack dipped his head, dark hair hiding his eyes a moment. Then he turned to face her. “Puck told you what I am. There are always more than one of me.” One green eye, one blue. Both searched her face now. “Jacks…Jacks are endless, identical. Someone’s creations.”

  Oberon’s. He couldn’t say the name.

  Jenny looked at him steadily. “What is a Kobold, Jack?”

  He drew in a breath and his eyes grew distant, as if focusing on something far away. “I’m a…a servant. What he made me to be. A slave.”

  “A slave?” she asked.

  His eyebrows drew in, the skin between them knotting. “I don’t know what else to call it. He made me. I live on his whim, act according to his will. I’m bound to obey him. He has power over whether I guard the Edge or toil beneath the earth, or if I’m simply locked away for the rest of my days. What else would you call me?”

  Jack looked up at her and Jenny’s heart twisted. She reached out, her fingertips touching his cheek. His skin was warm, smooth over the cheekbone, speckled with a faint roughness across his jaw. He shuddered and turned toward her again. His mouth was inches from hers, her fingers millimeters from his lips. So very warm. His skin moved, tightening beneath her touch, and he stared at her, eyes blazing, blue and green rings encircling his pupils, huge and black. Her face was reflected there.

  Jenny leaned forward, pressed her lips to his. A startled breath warmed her skin, but he didn’t pull away. The sword fell between them, forgotten now.

  “Jack,” she whispered, and he kissed her, making her head swim, making her want to press closer. No, not want. Need. She leaned in against him and his hand closed on her shoulder, his thumb brushing the skin at the collar of her shirt.

  Deep in his throat Jack gave a muffled groan, something between submission and resignation, and he gathered her into his arms, deepening his kiss, while his hands moved to her hair, her shoulders, the curve of her side. She could smell him—forest and sunlight—taste him—salt and sap. Her body melted against him, something unknown awakening within her. It unfurled at the base of her stomach, spreading through her body like electricity until her fingers tingled against his skin.

  “Jenny…” His lips fumbled against hers. “We can’t…We shouldn’t…”

  No. Something in her rebelled. Something she didn’t want to control. And for that one moment she would have done anything. A blinding disappointment crashed over her, and the longing in her sharpened to a point of pain.

  He was right, or at least determined enough. And it almost broke her heart.

  “You came for me,” she said, though her voice wavered, betraying her. She tried to smile. “Don’t I even get to reward you with a kiss?”

  Jack withdrew a few inches, his manner at once chivalrous and profoundly cold. The fire inside her dimmed. She stared at him. He couldn’t be doing this to her. Not now.

  “Beware a kiss,” he told her. “Kisses are powerful things. You expose part of your soul. Have you learned nothing?”

  Of course she had. She’d kissed the Nix.

  A weight around my neck.

  His words were meant to hurt her, to drive her back. She knew that. Her fingers still lingered on his face and as she pressed them a little closer, he shuddered, his eyelids half closing until his will reasserted itself and he opened them. She looked into those fascinating eyes, steady, asking him to believe her. “I know what you are, Jack. I’m not afraid of you.”

  The frown came back, with eyebrows raised. Such a strange combination of an expression—infuriated and confused—and the same feelings flooded her in a second. Was he going to deny it, then? Was he going to deny what he was feeling too? Because he had to be feeling it. He couldn’t kiss her like that and not—

  “You may not be afraid now, Jenny Wren. But you will be. I saw your face. I saw what you felt in those moments, before…before I lost all knowledge of myself. Because that’s what happens. I’m not me anymore. Or rather I am…the real me. I’m not this. Not a sentient, feeling creature but a—a wild thing.”

  Jenny wrapped both hands around his and found them trembling. “I’ve been in your mind, Jack. I don’t believe that.”

  “But you must. For your own safety. I hurt you already. I attacked Puck.” He swallowed hard as he said the words. “I could have killed him. Or you. And you came after me, and anything could have happened. I could have hurt you—worse, I could have killed you, Jenny. Don’t you understand? I didn’t want to, I didn’t even know it, but…”

  He brushed his fingers over the cuts and grazes on her arms and hands, and her skin shivered. She’d almost forgotten they were there. She’d almost forgotten the encounter with the greenman that had sent her running to the river.

  She narrowed her eyes, as if focusing more sharply on him would help her understand. When she lifted his hand to her mouth, he didn’t resist, but he shut his eyes, as if he couldn’t look. Jenny kissed his fingers while still holding them. His grip tightened, almost to the point of pain, but not quite.

  “But you didn’t. You’d never hurt me, Jack. I know that.”

  “I don’t know that. How could you?”

  She pressed his hand to her cheek and he relaxed. “I just know. It wasn’t you, that night at the Edge. Puck was lying.”

  He gave a growl of frustration, even as he put his hand over hers. “It was me, Jenny. That night. It must have been. Because when I came back to myself the next morning, there was Tom. His music had woken the forest and it took him. He was too dangerous to leave walking around, so I took him to the queen. And that’s where he’s been ever since.”

  Jenny flinched, pulling her hand away. “Puck told me—” she whispered, her voice failing her.

  “He told you the truth.” Jack let his arm fall to his side, but kept his eyes fixed on her, like shining knots of polished wood. He stared at her, watching her reaction. “It was my duty. And Oberon had no use for him. He isn’t—he isn’t kind to those he has no use for, you see?”

  “But he— I saw it happen. I saw you. You! Jack, it—it destroyed my life. It shattered my family. It—” She drew back. Then reached for him again. It couldn’t be real, but what else made sense? Only he patrolled the Edge, that’s what
Puck said, its guardian, its Jack. She wanted it to be a lie, or a mistake. But no. It had been him.

  It had been him.

  Oh God, it had been him.

  Jenny scrambled to her feet. She wanted to hit something, wanted to scream, wanted to—

  “It was for the best,” he said, bowing his head, unable to look at her.

  She turned, her shoulders sagging. With an effort, she straightened. “Then keep your promise. Take me to him and help me get him back.”

  chapter nineteen

  They stepped out from among the trees, and the forest fell away. The sky stretched everywhere, so brightly blue, and meadows dotted with wildflowers unfurled before them. The long grasses swayed and butterflies danced at their tips. In the distance, where the river ran down to a lake like a pool of molten silver in the sunlight, the glittering towers of a palace rose.

  It was so beautiful, she should have gasped, but Jenny couldn’t. After a day of walking through dark tree cover and brambles and briar, under a leaden silence that not even Puck dared disturb, she could only stare at the fairy-tale structure before her, squinting in the bright sunlight. So impossibly graceful, it hardly looked real; rather, it appeared to have been spun from dew drops and gossamer. Ash trees lined the path leading toward it, slender and pale as beautiful maidens bending as if to tend it. Jenny and Jack walked between them, like vagabonds coming to the feast.

  It hadn’t taken long to get here, and in truth, she wasn’t ready for it now that she’d arrived. Her stomach twisted with dread, and Jack wasn’t helping. He kept his gaze straight ahead, or looked past her, never meeting her eyes. Not that she helped either. She didn’t know what to say, or how to feel, or how she’d explain it if she did.

  It didn’t matter. She would get Tom and get home. That was it. That was everything. That was all that mattered now.

  The gates to the palace stood open, and Jack hurried her inside, nodding at the guards as he did so. He seemed to dart from place to place, moving almost too fast for the eye. Puck clung to the shadows, trailing behind them. Perhaps he blamed himself for telling her. Jenny didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything now but Tom.