Poison Kiss

by Ana Mardoll

  "Yes," she agrees firmly, conviction leaping into her soft voice. "We don't remember, but it's the only thing that makes sense. We're fully grown, not like the little ones that the Ornamentals sometimes have. We know how to do things, like wash and sew and cook. All of that has to come from somewhere," she insists. "That means we could go back there, somehow, if we walk far enough."

  I nod, hesitating. "I don't know if it's a matter of walking," I say slowly. "I had an... assignment." My mouth stumbles a little over the innocuous description of such ugliness. "Three galas ago. He had an older face, with silver hair and kind eyes, but he seemed tired and sick at heart." My voice trails away, lost in painful memory.

  "I remember," Lavender says. I look at her in surprise, my eyes wide. "I was on body-cleanup," she explains simply.

  I shudder at the thought, remembering his mottled purple face, lips stained with vomit and blood. It's a privilege of my position, I suppose, that I am forced only to spend a night with the rapidly-cooling corpse in my room. I've never before thought about the people tasked with clearing away the evidence after the morning comes.

  "His master sold him to the May Queen for a song," I whisper, my throat tightening unexpectedly. "He'd grown sloppy in his work and wasn't deemed useful anymore. She bought him for me to kill. I think she wanted him dead before his master could change his mind and put him to work again." My voice turns bitter now. "I don't know which are worse: the ones she buys to die, or the ones we're sent to lure during the balls. Flirting and fishing, kissing and killing, all to break a rival faery's toy."

  "They do it to us, too," Lavender says softly. "Marigold was killed by a visiting servant, five parties back. No one ever found out who did it, just that all her blood was taken. We found her lying in the hallway afterwards, the floors spotless and not a single drop left in her."

  I'm silent for a moment, digesting this. I've never feared the servants who visit during the balls, having rather been afraid for them. If I'd been a Fragrant like Lavender, or one of the Ornamentals, the shape of my fears would have been entirely different. "I'm sorry," I say numbly, the apology sounding empty and hollow in my ears, almost laughably insufficient for what this girl has been through.

  "It isn't your fault," she murmurs, squeezing my hand gently in the dark. "I interrupted you," she prompts, and there's a kindness in her voice, almost cheering despite the painful subject. "Silver hair and soft eyes?"

  I squeeze her hand back, and pull us carefully around a hard left turn, skirting dark thorns that are almost invisible in the weak moonlight. "He somehow knew what I was," I tell her, my mind drifting back to the memory of him waiting in my bed, the rueful smile he'd given me when first I entered. "They usually don't. Half the time, I don't have to do a thing; they initiate the kiss that kills them." Other memories threaten to flood in: the violent ones, the ones driven with lust and anger, the ones who thought I was prey for them and not the other way around. I drive the memories away, push my breathing down, maintain a deliberate calm.

  "He said he was a hunter," I explain quietly, trying to keep my voice detached. "Not like the ones who hunt animals for the feast, but a people-finder. He would go to another world in order to hunt. I don't know how else to describe it," I say, looking back at her with apology in my eyes. "I didn't understand it all. But he went there to get people, and brought them back here to be servants; regularly, he said. He was good at it, but it made him unhappy," I add. "He said he was willing to confess his sins and die. When he kissed me, he knew exactly what would happen."

  Lavender is staring at me with wide eyes, hardly remembering to look down at the treacherous ground that threatens to tear at our slippers. "Did he say how to get there, to this other world?" she breathes, excitement and hope suffusing her voice. Her need to believe his tale—told second-hand, with none of the beautiful flourishes of the original—stabs through my heart with almost physical pain; how can I bear to destroy her hopes if it turns out he was wrong, deluded, or lying?

  I shake my head, feeling helpless. "Crossings. Borders. He said there were soft spots in the world here, places where you could pierce through to the other side if you knew they were there and were concentrating when you passed from one side to the other."

  She nods her head, accepting this as somehow perfectly sensible. "And that's why we're going to the river," she says, "to cross from this world to the world on the other side."

  "That's one reason why we're going to the river," I say, biting my lip, wanting to be honest. "The north, east, and west borders of the estate are ringed with guards; living willow trees." She's walking beside me now, no longer at my elbow, and I have to pull her gently away from a wrong turn. "No, not left; see the darker orange stripe on the yellow? They're hard to catch in the darkness, I know."

  She frowns at the flower and then grins at me as we hurry on. "Not as easy as I'd thought, even when you know the signs," she says, wry amusement in her voice. "I'm lucky you're here, Rose." I blink at her, amazed by her resilience, and find myself smiling at her compliment. "Sorry—living trees?" she says, prompting me.

  I turn back to the task of navigating, picking up the pace again, along with the threads of old memories. "Well, all trees are living, I suppose," I correct myself sheepishly. "But these are different; they move. They have these long thin vines that brush the ground. They wrap around people—trespassers, escaped servants, or would-be assassins—and restrain them. Occasionally the mistress goes out to collect them, but some of them starve to death out there, or the trees throttle the life from them."

  I close my eyes briefly at the memory of thin vines, deceptively strong, snaking around my ankles to pull me down, twining around my neck to constrict the air from my lungs. "I only got through because she'd ordered safe passage for me, and even then it needed to be... convincing."

  "Convincing?" Lavender whispers. The excitement has fled her voice.

  "She'd, uh, sent me out those times with the intention of killing a faery lord," I murmur. "They needed to be caught off-guard, to think that sleeping with me was their idea and not hers. I was sent out on foot, playing at being lost and lovely. That's when she taught me the secret of the maze, so that I could dawdle at the edges of the estate away from the main road."

  I take a deep breath. "I 'accidentally' ran afoul of the willow guardians, and both times a lord saved me. It was very romantic for them, I'm sure," I add, my voice suddenly tight. I hadn't had a choice to participate, not when it was my mistress' will. And neither of the two men had asked my permission either. They never did, these faeries. We were toys to be played with, nothing more. It was perhaps a miracle that either had bothered to kiss me at all, save that the embrace played into the chivalric fantasy they were acting out.

  Lavender's hand grows warm in my own and she squeezes me again, comfortingly this time. I look over to see her sympathetic eyes studying my face and I smile for her, suddenly ashamed of my own weakness. I clear my throat softly, feeling my cheeks burn in the cool night air. "Anyway, that's why we're making for the southern river; no willows there, only water too deep for us to ford easily. When she sent me out on the last assignment, we drove over a bridge. I think I can find it again."

  "In the pumpkin-carriage," Lavender comments quietly, her tone subdued as she watches my face.

  "Yes. The third time, I was sent out in the carriage," I confirm, keeping my voice low and steady with some effort. "I was being loaned out as a pleasure toy, pretending to be one of the Ornamentals. That might have been why he was more on guard than the other two: because the Queen had arranged the tryst, rather than it being all his own idea."

  I sigh quietly, pushing aside a thick branch that has overgrown the path, ignoring the scrapes it leaves on my hands. "At least the carriage saved my life, in that he sent me back in it." Broken and bloodied and more meat than human, sent as a testimony to his strength and a warning to the May Queen, but he did send me back.

  "Rose, I'm so sorry," Lavender whispers after a long
moment.

  Her voice is low and soft in the darkness, full of sympathy undeserved by a murderer like me, suffused with sorrow that would be better saved for herself. She's the one who has been compelled to clean up the broken bodies I leave behind, the one who has been forced to dodge assassins who visit with the intention of breaking the May Queen's toys. Nothing that I have suffered can compare to the dangers she's had to endure.

  I'm turning my head to face her, the words already forming on my tongue—that she doesn't have to be sorry, that it isn't her fault, that she's the one who deserves to be safe and happy, that she smells so beautiful in the moonlight, all honeysuckle and hope and warmth—when our hurried pace takes us through a tight archway of vines and white roses and suddenly the path opens up around us. No longer a maze, the hedge-walls widen into a long curving hallway, the outer ring of the rambling estate garden. And there, shining in the moonlight, is an opening in the foliage; silver leaves and silver vines forming a frame, and beyond that the rush and babble of a wide river, flowing fast with the largesse granted by the morning's torrential downpour.

  "There it is," Lavender breathes, the excitement in her voice contagious. "And we just cross it? From one side to the other and then we'll be in the world we came from?"

  "I-I don't know," I say, hesitating now that our goal is in sight. Navigating the maze was the easy part of our escape; I knew the paths and patterns and could guide us by the light of the moon. But the hunter had taught me no magic words, no special key to memorize and repeat. He'd said it was a matter of will and concentration, of knowledge and trying. I don't know if that's something I can replicate, even if his story was true. "If we continue southeast for a while, we should come to the bridge," I say doubtfully. "It would be safer to try there—"

  My words are cut off by a sound that turns my blood cold and sends shivers of fear down my back: a long, low howl of gleeful fury and dark hatred that rings out from the center of the estate behind us. I can feel a lump of terror forming in my throat, even as my breathing quickens with anxious energy.

  "The mansion," Lavender gasps, her face turning ashen in the darkness. "They're hunting us."

  Chapter 4

  At the sound of the howl Lavender and I whirl to face the mansion, glowing behind us like a bleached bone in the moonlight. The hedge-walls of the maze stretch up towards the sky, reaching higher than the tallest faery. Yet from this angle beside the swollen river it is possible to see the source of the scream: a giant spider, black as night and big as a carriage, frantically climbing over the walls in a scrambling chase to reach us.

  For precious seconds I am frozen in place, staring with unseeing panic at a creature that my mind insists ought to be no bigger than the size of my hand. This behemoth isn't one of the May Queen's creatures, I am sure; she never keeps predators so near her pretty flowers. It must belong to one of tonight's guests—a steed or favored hunting pet—and if the guests have been alerted to our absence, then there will be other dangers out here beyond this most obvious one.

  We need to flee; yet still I stare, watching the creature blot out our view of the mansion each time it reaches the apex of a climb. In those brief moments, moonlight splashes down to illuminate the arachnid, its myriad spindly legs black and shiny and wet as they cling to the vines that make up the maze walls. Then it disappears back into the maze, traveling in dips and peaks, not bound by the twisting paths; our pursuer will be on us in a fraction of the time it took us to navigate by foot. There is something else, too; a speck of white color on its back, like a predator's marking or a piece of armor, but I can't quite make out the edges of the lighter shape from this distance.

  Beside me, Lavender smells of sour lemons and sharp fear. "Rose!" she hisses, breaking through my stunned paralysis. Her voice is quiet and low, drawing me to face her so that I can read her lips over the rushing water behind us. "Rose, what do we do?"

  I blink at her. She looks so pale and fragile in the dark night. I'm struck with a sudden desire to lean through the short space between us and press my lips to hers. A single kiss, a moment's painful thrashing, and she would be free of all this; no longer a captive, and safe from whatever elaborate torments and creative execution methods await us back at the mansion. Her lips would be as soft as her hands were when they worked gently through my hair, and she would taste as sweet and eager as she smells.

  She takes my arms in her hands, her sharp thorn-green nails digging into my skin, and shakes me twice, hard. "Rose!" she says, her voice louder now, snapping me out of my mental fog. "Think! How did the hunter pass between worlds?"

  I shake my head, trying to concentrate, failing to block out the howls of inhuman rage that echo over the garden lawns. It's impossible to chase from my mind the image of the spider coming closer with every passing second, one corner of my brain uselessly obsessed with trying to work out which is worse: watching it close the distance between us or turning away from the sight only to imagine that every second may be my last one. "I-I'm not sure," I stammer. "He said the crossing was important; border-places, concentration, and intent and—Lavender, I'm not sure!"

  I've failed her. I've failed us. I look around wildly in the dark night, but there's no escape that I can see. The bridge is visible from here if I squint, maybe a hundred yards south down the river, but there's no way we could get to it in time. Even at a full run, we can't hope to outdistance a spider the size of a horse. Beside us, the river roars at full strength; its banks engorged with fresh rain from this morning's torrential downpour. "Can you swim?" I ask her, my voice high and urgent in my ears.

  She stares at me for a moment, not liking the question even though no other options present themselves. "I don't know," she finally admits, the air around her twisting with a fresh infusion of lemon. "I can hold my breath in the bath."

  I feel my teeth grit tightly together. I don't know if I can swim either; I have an ardent belief that I can, a sense that it can't possibly be hard, but no memories to corroborate that stubborn certainty. We don't have time to vacillate, however, not when the creature pursuing us is getting closer by the minute and with no other choice available to us. "Hold on to me!" I tell Lavender, grabbing her hand in mine. "We don't get separated, okay?"

  She nods, her hand gripping mine tightly, and we wade into the fast-flowing river. The coldness of it shocks me into heightened alertness, then sets my teeth to violent chattering. Almost instantly I realize what a terrible idea this is; the currents pull hard at my dress, threatening to knock my feet from under me and drag me away. I can feel Lavender fighting the same losing battle, and I wonder whether I'm helping or hindering by holding fast to her hand.

  Concentrate, I think, the voice in my head high and panicky as we wade deeper. We aren't going to escape by crossing the river or swimming downstream; the lands on either side are owned by faery lords just as brutal as the May Queen. This will be for nothing if we can't cross to the other world, the one Lavender believes in and that the hunter said he'd seen so many times.

  But I don't know what to concentrate on. With my head just above the rushing water and pursuit so close behind us, the effort required to stay on my feet occupies all my available thoughts. I still have a grip on Lavender's hand, yet I can no longer feel her fingers twined through mine; my extremities are becoming numb in the icy river. Despite the panic throbbing through my veins I feel sleepy, a stumbling introspection that leadens my every step.

  I'm supposed to be remembering the hunter's words, but I only see his face in my mind, weathered with sun and sorrow. I wish he were here now, escaping with us. He'd been gentle with me when he didn't have to be, and I'd have liked for him to have a chance of gaining freedom. I can feel the softness of his graying hair as I'd held his head in my lap and listened to his whispers in the darkness of the room. The whiteness of his scalp had surprised me, forming a sharp contrast to the soft brown of his face. I'd known somehow that sunlight had caused his face to darken like that, which made no sense. The suns don't have
the power to do that; our colors are set by the whim of the May Queen, and only she can alter them.

  Was that why a part of me believed him, enough to risk our lives out here? Because he had lived under a sun that made more sense to me than the only ones I know? As confused and muddled as I am right now, I'm sure I remember a bright yellow sun that burns those under it. I know that it is steady and dependable, that the seventh hour chimes only once per evening, and is always followed by the eighth hour, never by the sixth or fourth or ninth. And I know that there is only one sun in the sky and only one moon, that they chase each other yet never meet or dance or collide. I don't know how I know these things, only that I know them in the same way I know words, or how to breathe.

  A strange white mist is forming on the water around us, hovering on the surface and wrapping tendrils around my arm as I fight to stay upright. I stare at it in confusion, my thoughts lethargic as I try to work out when it arrived and what it could signify. The May Queen has strangling vines, and I wonder if one of the guests brought a sentient fog to bind us with misty tendrils. If we're dragged from the water, we really will be lost. "Lavender, do you see that?" I ask, shouting to be heard over the roar of the river.

  Beside me, she nods her head, her long purple hair sticking wetly to her face as she moves. "Is it because the river is so col—" Her question is cut off suddenly as she loses her footing on the rocks, disappearing with the tiniest of splashes as the current drags her instantly under. I feel the yank on my hand, the shock of the impact shooting up my arm. Bracing my feet, I dig into the stony bottom, my free hand flailing around to reach her wrist. I still have a grip on her, just barely; if I can get her standing again, we have a chance.

  "I've got you!" I shout loudly over the roar of the water. No, not the river; when my numbed brain catches up with my ears, I realize that I'm shouting over the howls of the giant spider. Its furious screams echo closer now but I can't focus on that; there is only enough space in my mind to concentrate on holding Lavender's arm. She's thrashing wildly, trying to get her feet under her. I pull as hard as I can, upwards and towards myself, trying and failing to lever her upright against the rushing current.