Except the Queen

by Jane Yolen

  When the smudge had gone—like a cloud drifting away from the moon’s face—I walked the perimeter of the field carefully. Sniffing around, I found my way past the flowers that masked the smell. How long had he lain there, his death creeping out of his throat through the dark slit? The body was not yet disturbed, the blood still running. And my nose confirmed what my eyes told me. Not long. Not long at all.

  This, too, was no accident. But not, I think, my father’s doing. His smell—that dark, dangerous tang, like the death cap mushroom—was not here. Yet this man did not die alone. I smelled another blood, sharper, still living. I smelled a heady mix of perfumes too, compounded of crocus for foresight, heather for solitude, and the strong, sharp rhododendron that signifies “beware.” I will know that scent should I ever meet it again. I followed it on the wind, and found more on a leaf of a nearby tree.

  Something written. Something hidden. Who would—who could—do such a deed? It had the look, the smell of a fey thing. I trembled, on point, like a hound.

  Taking the leaf in my hand, I shook it loose from its brown and bendy twig. For a moment I held it in my palm and then it started to die as if I had brought autumn with my touch. The tips turned inward, the color began to fade, the sides became brittle. What had been written was now scrawled into my skin. A name. Passerinia. I crumbled the dead leaf and dropped the bits at the tree’s base. And then, I pissed on it, marking it as my own. No one, not even my father, would see what had been written there now.

  But I did not howl. In the Greenwood I never howl lest he hear me.

  21

  Sparrow Under the Influence

  Standing outside the tattoo parlor, Sparrow hesitated before she went in. She studied the artwork in the window, intricate Celtic knots and the sort of tangled designs of animals and nature one saw on the pages of illuminated manuscripts. There was nothing in those designs that suggested the maliciousness of the knotted sprig now inscribed on her neck. Self-consciously, Sparrow placed her hand over the tattoo and felt the dark lines throb beneath her palm.

  She had healed in three days, which struck her as a long time, considering her nature. But at least the tenderness was gone, and the oily redness of the fresh tattoo had finally faded. Yet the last three nights she had been awoken by a stampede of continuous nightmares only to discover the tattoo oozing drops of blood on her sheets and pillows. Still, in the morning, the raw wound would heal as soon as sunlight crept through the windows.

  What have I done to myself? she wondered. What has he done to me?

  Angrily, she thrust her hand away from her neck and shouldered her way into the tattoo shop.

  “Can I help you?” A red-haired woman at the counter looked up from her magazine. She was big and full figured, and her strapless top barely concealed the prominent tattoo across her chest—a black-horned Japanese oni with fierce red-rimmed eyes glaring above the edge of the fabric.

  “Yeah,” Sparrow said, shifting uneasily. “I need to talk to Hawk.”

  “Get in line.” The woman shrugged toward a row of seats, most of which were occupied by women.

  Sparrow glanced at them over her shoulder, noting they all had the same harried look, the same anxious pale face she saw when she stared at herself in the mirror.

  “I’m not here for a tattoo,” she said, turning back to the red-haired woman.

  “I don’t care why you’re here. You’ll have to wait.” The woman returned to reading her magazine.

  Anger drummed in Sparrow’s veins and she resisted the urge to grab the magazine and strike her. But she knew the woman was only a gatekeeper demon designed to shuffle victims quietly into their seats. You don’t have to take this, Sparrow told herself. She clenched her hands into fists and rested them on the pages of the woman’s magazine.

  The red-haired woman looked up, annoyed, and Sparrow knew by her appraising stare that such defiance didn’t happen very often with Hawk’s clients.

  “Get him, or I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” a low voice interrupted.

  The red-haired woman straightened up, her expression apologetic as she gazed over Sparrow’s shoulder. Behind her, Sparrow heard the soft, murmured sighs of the women waiting in their chairs.

  Sparrow turned to face Hawk, grateful for the distance between them. It allowed her not to feel so intimidated . . . Or seduced, she thought, her resolve weakening in the sudden warmth of his gaze. That’s it, she realized. That’s how he does it. She set one hand on the desk, its firmness allowing her to resist the subtle pressure to move closer to him. From there she studied him, trying to discern his true nature beneath the handsome face.

  He was wearing a tight, sleeveless black shirt tucked into a pair of old jeans that showed off his muscular arms and lean waist. His sand-blond hair was pulled back into its ponytail, revealing the delicate shape of his jaw and high curve of his cheekbones.

  It was hard to see past the glamour of beauty he wore, but from her distance, Sparrow understood two things about him: his own skin was pure of any tattoos, and, although he smiled at her, his eyes were cold, the obsidian pupils sharp as knives in the green iris. His smile faded beneath her appraising gaze and his fingers curled into fists at his side. But his voice was still inviting.

  “Why don’t you come back to my office,” he said.

  “No.” Sparrow’s instincts alerted her to an unnamed danger. It was the only thing she had to thank the nightmares for—the foreboding, the sense of being hunted. The tattoo on her neck prickled and burned, as though her body fought to reject it.

  “Then what can I do for you?” The soothing voice was growing edged.

  “The question is what did you do to me?”

  He laughed, slowly stroking one hand up the length of his bare arm, and Sparrow’s heart skipped at the memory of those agile fingers, stroking her neck.

  “I only gave you what you asked for,” he said. “Don’t you like it?”

  “No. It’s . . . ugly,” she said.

  “Let me fix it for you,” he offered. “No charge. What do you want, roses?”

  Sparrow’s heart was pounding now. The pull toward him was a commanding current. She struggled to resist, digging her heels into the ground, gripping the desk’s edge more firmly, and biting her cheek. A burst of pain followed, then the taste of blood. She closed her eyes to clear away the vision of Hawk, opening them again quickly, as she felt him suddenly near.

  “Who are you?” he whispered sharply and reached out a hand to grab her.

  Sparrow twisted away, shouting, “Don’t touch me, you freak.”

  The parlor erupted into a brawl as the red-haired woman lunged across the desk to strike at Sparrow. Sparrow ducked, grabbed a ceramic jar of pens and pencils, and threw it at her. Hawk stepped back, getting out of the way as the other women rose out of their chairs, and physically shoved Sparrow out of the shop’s door and onto the sidewalk.

  “Fuck you,” Sparrow shouted back at them. “Fuck all of you. You deserve whatever he’s doing to you, you stupid bitches.”

  The door to the tattoo parlor slammed in her face, leaving Sparrow panting with rage outside, surrounded by a group of curious onlookers.

  “Get out of my way,” she growled, elbowing her way through the crowd. She drove her body down the city streets, trying desperately to get as far from the tattoo shop as she could. The bright sunlight glancing off the shop windows and cars hurt her eyes and she had to squint against the piercing pain. After three blocks, she ducked into a delivery alley and vomited. She waited there, a hand braced against the wall until the spasms stopped and she could breathe again. Why did I go to his shop? she wondered. What did I hope to gain?

  Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Sparrow stumbled out of the alley again, and slowly made her way home.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME SHE’D REACHED the house, she was shaking with fever. Tears poured down her face as she turned the key in her front door. The apartment was empty as Marti had gone
to work. Like I should, Sparrow thought.

  But she just needed to rest a while first. She’d call in sick before her shift at the bookstore. Lurching down the hallway to her bedroom, she threw herself down on the unmade bed, and piled the coverlets over her shivering body, clutching pillows tightly around her head to try to ease the pounding headache. Lily jumped onto the bed and tried to lick her face but Sparrow pushed her away. Undaunted, Lily stationed herself at the bottom of the bed, her head lifting with a worried glance every time Sparrow turned over with a groan.

  It’s much worse than a hangover, she thought. It was like withdrawal from a powerful drug. There was nothing to do but ride it out. Ride it out and hope for the best.

  * * *

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, SPARROW woke to find herself coiled on the floor, mouth parched from the heat of the fever, eyes burning as though scrubbed with sand. She was shaking with chills, every muscle in her back and legs contracted and screaming with pain. She swallowed four aspirins but they did nothing to ease the agony.

  “I can’t take this anymore,” she croaked, and wrestled her body to a sitting position. “Think girl, think.” Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine what might offer relief that didn’t involve killing herself. And then she remembered Marti’s wisdom teeth surgery. Marti had prided herself on using plain aspirin, hoarding the Vicodin the doctor had handed her for a future “just in case” moment.

  “Well, it’s just-in-case time,” Sparrow said aloud.

  Staggering into Marti’s bedroom, Sparrow ransacked the closet, pulled open drawers, but found only clothes. She peeked into the little baskets beside Marti’s bed. There were condoms, hair ornaments, vials of body oil. But finally, in Marti’s jewelry box, Sparrow found an envelope and when she opened it, almost cried seeing the long white pills. She quickly swallowed two without water, and stuffing the envelope into her jeans, returned to her own room.

  As the opiate coursed through her veins, the pain in her muscles gradually subsided. She uncurled her legs and stretched out, relieved at last. For a quiet half an hour, she thought she was through the worst of it. Until she started to cry.

  She couldn’t stop herself; the sobs rose in her chest, issuing forth like the cries of a wounded animal. What’s happening to me? she thought. She was very afraid, but she had no idea of what. Exhausted, she still forced herself to get up and start pacing with staggering footsteps around the room.

  Lily whoofled her concern once, then just watched from the foot of the bed.

  Sparrow didn’t want misery and grief, she wanted the razor-sharp edge of rage. But the sorrow wouldn’t leave her. What to do? What to do? As she paced for a third time around her room, she suddenly understood what her body had already known: she had to walk off the nameless sorrow that threatened to drown her. And she must cry it out until there was nothing left of it. Only then would she figure out what had been done to her. And only then could she make Hawk pay for poisoning her. Pay deeply. Pay endlessly. Pay well.

  22

  Meteora Learns About Mail

  I watched in the mornings and then again in the evenings for signs of Serana’s dove. I fretted knowing only too well how dangerous life on the wing for a simple dove can be. I fed Baba Yaga’s cat whenever I could and now it was beholden to me not to harm the creature when it returned.

  Before going out, I left a small scattering of seeds and dried berries on the bedroom balcony, hoping to glean more information from the pigeons and doves that gathered there to feed. I was aghast when returning from the Co-op to find bloodied feathers and a discarded pair of pigeon feet on the walkway. Looking up, I discovered a sharp-shinned hawk watching my balcony from a nearby roof. I could not in faith deny the beautiful creature her sustenance, but I didn’t want to encourage her to find her victuals on my balcony either. So I stopped leaving seeds, and just watched.

  I forced myself from the house in the late mornings, going to the Co-op to assist Julia in her little herbal shop. She turned out to be a good student. I had to show her only once how to combine herbs into a tea and she remembered. She had a good sense of smell, too, and with practice learned to recognize the potency of herbs from their scent. Small farmers who brought produce to the Co-op now brought us living plants and took away our lists of others we required: red root and yarrow, white sage and arnica, wild ginseng root and cinquefoil. In only a few days Julia gained confidence with her new knowledge and I was able to use the paper money to purchase fruit, cheese, bread, occasional packets of cigarettes for the hands—and food for the cat.

  I, too, became a student, though Julia was unaware of how much I was learning from her. The Co-op was a sleepy place. Especially in the late afternoon. Then only a handful of ragtag children ever seemed to wander in to buy a few items, occasionally coming by the herb store to utter small exclamations of surprise before moving on.

  “Wait ’til school starts up again, then this place will be insane,” Julia warned, carefully drawing a spire of Hag’s Taper on a card announcing one of our new remedies. “It’s still summer so most of them are home. A couple of weeks from now, the neighborhood will be jumping. Hope you live on a quiet street,” she said, looking up at me and smiling. “It can get pretty loud around here on Friday and Saturday nights.”

  “Oh, my place is very quiet,” I assured her, though not with much confidence. The inhabitants of Baba Yaga’s house continued to battle over the troll music the boys insisted on playing. I did nothing to stop it myself. Indeed, I could not turn them into puff balls and scatter their annoying dust to the wind. I could only hope that they would soon leave, migrating like noisy rooks to some other place. And recently one of the girls in the floor below me had cried at night with sobs that caused me to turn in my sleep.

  “Lucky you! I’m surrounded by three houses filled with jackasses. Two nights ago a bunch of us called the cops because they kept setting off firecrackers in the middle of the night right into the frigging street! I thought they were going to set the trees on fire.”

  Of course! That’s why Baba Yaga enjoyed her house, deep in a forest of badly behaving children. What punishing lessons had she already meted out? I wondered with a little shudder.

  “Hey, can you hand me the envelopes and stamps from that drawer?” Julia asked, looking up from her drawing. “I want to mail this out to my sister Annie. She works at a medical clinic, but I think she’ll dig it, even though she’s all about straight medicine.”

  I looked in the drawer and found the envelopes, though I could not find wax or stamp. “There is no stamp here,” I said, rifling through the papers.

  “Oh, here, they are,” she said, pulling out a sheet with little squares, each holding a picture of a bell and the word “forever” inscribed on it. She peeled one off, put it on the envelope—and it stuck there! She placed her decorated card inside and carefully wrote on the front of the envelope.

  “What are you writing?” I asked, curious. This seemed a useful way to send messages.

  “Her address at the clinic, of course.” Her blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “Sometimes I wonder about you . . .”

  “Address?”

  “Name, street number and name, city and zip.”

  “Ah,” I answered as though I understood. Best she not become suspicious. I watched as she placed it in a basket where—it appeared—other envelopes were headed for their intended readers. All of them carried the little picture of the bell, which I suddenly realized was what Julia called a “stamp.” And studying the writing, I realized that these “addresses” were the locations of the future readers.

  Quickly, I memorized the requirements: a name, a number, a street, a city, two letters that indicated perhaps a province or a shire, and then a series of numbers for which I could find no explanation at all.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s old school,” she said, and I realized she thought I had been teasing her with my questions. “I could have just e-mailed her, but you know, I still think it’s fun to get letters in the mai
l, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” I answered, thinking of Serana, and a letter somewhere perilously traveling on the wing. E-mail, another word to learn.

  While I worked, I constantly checked the basket, waiting to see what would happen to its contents. I was watering a little pot of marjoram when a man in blue came to the counter, took the basket of envelopes and emptied it into a bag on his shoulder. I was startled and then pleased to see the design of an eagle on the bag and thought it a much stronger and more reliable carrier than a dove.

  * * *

  I WALKED HOME SLOWLY THAT night, realizing that there were more children beginning to gather on porches and in front gardens. They were burdened with boxes, mattresses, desks, and lumpy chairs. They were moving in, wearing down a path in the trampled grass as they lumbered from their huge vehicles to the houses. Around me the streets buzzed like a spilled hive, their excitement palpable in the rising noise of their arrival. From opened windows music poured forth, some which made my steps lighter, others which hurt my ears.

  But I also noticed that joining the students in the activities were the glamoured forms of more sinister folk. UnSeelie folk. Fall was approaching and the crisp nights, the faint hint of decay in the leaves gave power to the Love-stalkers and Bloody-Bones who pretended to languish in the disguise of drunken young men engaged in seemingly harmless banter with clutches of doe-eyed girls. Beneath the hem of a long green dress I saw the goat hooves of a Glaistig, her beautiful human arms wrapped around an unsuspecting boy, demanding he dance with her there on the street. I averted my eyes from his adoring look, as he happily embraced his coming death. Though I saw them, my eyes still keen despite the loss of my own magic power, they saw in me only an old woman, stumbling, and weak. I could do nothing for those mortal souls ensnared by the darker clans. That was the way of it. Night and winter were coming, and only the Queen could protect mortals if she chose. And she didn’t choose, I thought angrily, scandalized by the very public and flagrant hunting of the UnSeelie host, a full two moons before the change of seasons. They had no rights yet to these streets though they seemed to claim them without consequence.