by Jane Yolen
When I got to him, he looked up at me with such adoration and poverty of soul, that I took him by the hand and he did not resist.
“Who are you . . .” I began
He was mute, but his eyes, the blue-black of a peaty lake, were voluminous in their conversation.
“What are you . . . ?” I wrinkled my nose. Rank as a badger, he smelled as if he had been rolling in a farmer’s midden. Or the contents of the black bags. “You need a bath.”
Taking him by the hand, I brought him up the stairs, stood him in the water room, and began to fill the big white tub. While the water ran, fast and hot and pure, I hastened back to where I kept the herbs. I pinched seven basil leaves from their stems, shook chamomile from the bottle, took a bit of sage and rubbed it between my hands till it warmed. Then I stirred in lavender, peppermint, and thyme all together widdershins with my left forefinger. I would have loved to have added clary and geranium to the mix, but did not have any to hand. I would need to visit the Man of Flowers again. But not now.
The scare-bird had not moved from where I had put him, but watched as I dropped the herbs into the tub that was now quite full of water.
“Now you,” I said.
Perhaps he thought I meant to strip him, for he crossed his arms over his chest. His clothes were as rank as he and I did not want to touch them. Instead, using a shower cloth to cover my hands, I pushed him, fully clothed, into the bath.
He sank immediately under the water. I left him for one, two, three long shuddering breaths on my part, then thought the better of it and reached in to pull him up into a sitting position. I did not mean to drown the poor thing, only clean him and his clothes of their toxins.
But when I got him sitting, his eyes were closed and he hardly roused. I knew then that the poisons I had noted in his dreams must have run very deep in his veins.
While he soaked, I got out the stone I had found outside under the tree, the aquamarine for deeper cleansing.
“I give thee thanks,” I whispered to whoever or whatever had dropped it there.
Then I went into the cook room and got out salt as well.
Once again back in the water room, I held the stone up to the light. Its very color seemed just right for soaking up hot, fevered blood. I wrapped it in three strands of my hair—that hair that was lately golden and fine and now is white and coarse—then stuck it beneath his knees. Then I sprinkled him with the salt.
Afterward, I said the words. I may be stuck here in a body like a moldering toadstool—but I did not forget the words. This I wrote later to my sister.
Much later.
Standing there looking down at the boy for a long time, I saw the water was now gray, heading toward black. There was too much iron in the bones of this building for magic to work as it does in Faerie.
If it works here at all.
* * *
FINALLY THE BOY WAS STRIPPED down and asleep under my covers, the stone carefully clasped in his hand.
But do I really want him here? Even cleaned up, there was a stink about him, like a wolf in a sheepfold or a dog in a farmer’s manger.
Still, I thought, he is here. And I have made him clean and made him mine though it has taken hours and all of my hot water to do so.
At the last moment before he fell into sleep, the scare-bird opened his eyes. I was stunned. Those were surely fey eyes. Not the peaty ones I had seen out on my steps, but a deep bronze shot through with haze, the lozenge-shape of a cat’s eye. Or they were for a moment. And then one blink later, they were human again.
As I wrote to Meteora:
I do not know what this means, darling M. I doubt anyone except the Queen knows the whole of it. Not even the Great Witch. But as you say, there is something else going on. You are right. I believe we have been dropped into this cesspit for a reason.
Surely we are not meant to bring the girl and boy together. Surely not. For that would be too simple. And the Queen has never been simple, whatever else she may be. But what if it were so, and we too cunning to allow it to happen? What if we out-puzzled the prime puzzle maker? What then?
The question that simply will not go out of mind: are we walking this maze of our own volition, or are we being walked through it by a greater player?
I send a kiss for courage. I need one, too. Or something stronger. Magic, mayhem—or a drink of honey mead though I know not where such might be found.
Your sister, loving always.
Serana
37
Hawk and Aileen
I know well the sounds of my shop, even sequestered in my room: the metallic hum of machines, the chime on the door as it opens, the low conversation of the women waiting their turn. But my ear is also tuned to a deeper sound, the quiet crackle and decay of women’s bodies as charmed inks turn their spleens black as gall. I delight in their febrile pulses as my spells invade the marrow. I hum to the noise, shaping it into a death song so sweet that even the hollow-eyed girl I am working on offers me a hopeful smile. I stop tapping the needle into her skin and stroke her cheek. She closes her eyes, grateful for the soft touch of my hand, as tears escape from beneath her pale lashes.
They will all die of course; some quickly of an unnamed illness, others by their own hand. And some I help, like Jenna, whose skin was covered with my runes. I refused her, angry that the girl she brought me did not return. I went with Jenna down by the river, holding her hand while she stumbled and wept. I promised her peace, but did not tell her it would come in the grave. I summoned the monstrous Jenny Greenteeth to the bank and bid her feed. Hungry as always, Greenteeth made short work of the woman, taking her by the ankles as she waded into the river and dragging her beneath the dark current. What harm was there in that? Let her death offer nourishment to even the least of our kind who are still better than any mortal woman. The water churned as I watched from the bank, and only when I saw the thick, ruddy foam rise and float on the swirling eddies, did I turn and leave.
I look up from my work, suddenly aware of the silence. I hear nothing; not even the ordinary sounds of the street and the shop. I reach to draw back the curtains of my private room when they are drawn for me with the fierce jerk of a gloved hand. I curse that I have become so used to the mewling of weak women that I have not thought to keep my dagger close at hand.
A woman fills the doorway, wrapped in a full cloak of gray with a hood that hides her face. I step back, into the room, opening wide my arms and bowing my head just enough to acknowledge the power of the woman who has silenced even my own song. The girl on the table turns on her side, curling her knees up toward her wounded heart where I had placed a tattoo of a bell that she may know only the clang of calamity.
Flushing with anger, I am outraged at the impertinence of my visitor. I was once Hugh, son of Etar, clan leader of Inver Chechmaine, though now I am known as Long Lankin, the knight of blood and death. No one enters my rooms without permission. Not even here in this mortal realm.
But the silence holds me bound. I cannot speak or spell until the unknown woman releases me. My mind rushes like water spilling over a dam. Can it be the Queen? For the first time a prick of fear invades my blood.
The woman stands on the threshold of the narrow room, and I know that from beneath the hood, she is surveying it, seeking to know what I have kept hidden from the Greenwood and the courts Under the Hill.
Though frightened, I am defiant, my rage burning with the righteousness of a Highborn Lord. Let her look, I fume, fists curling around the poisoned needle still in my hand. Let her feel my power in the branded girl on my table. Let her smell it in the caustic stench of my inks. Suddenly, I do not care anymore that she knows. That any of them know.
She turns to me and pushes back the hood to reveal her face. It is in fact not the Queen, though the breath catches in my throat. It is Aileen, sister to Gwenth, my lost wife, and the only one who offered herself to me when I near drowned in sorrow. Despite my anger, I soften at the familiar sight of her face, the milk-cream sk
in framed by wings of black hair. I remember the feel of her breasts, and the comfort of her arms holding me while I grieved. But that was long ago and the bright gold eyes stare at me now with a mixture of pity and contempt.
“Is this how you honor the memory of my sister and your wife?” she asks, glancing at the girl coiled in pain. “How many have you marked, Hugh? How many have you doomed before their time?” She steps closer to me and I weaken at her scent—rosemary and betony—so like my wife’s. “This is not our way.”
“Aileen, why are you here? I did not send for you.” I close my hand on the needle to feel its prick, thinking that the pain will destroy her glamour. I have no concern for the poison, for it is mine and it knows its master. Still, it leaps like fire in my veins.
“I heard rumors that Long Lankin was abroad again, come to the mortal realm to bleed a sacrifice for the tithe, even though you were forbidden to do so by the Queen. I prayed it was not true, but I could not ignore the warnings of my own heart.”
Angrily, I look away, refusing all memory of our brief time together, when our mourning made a kind of marriage between us. “Curse the Queen. Have not our kind suffered long enough? Did not Gwenth suffer enough? We deserve better.”
“And this is better?” She stretches a gloved hand to the girl who is rocking in silent weeping. “Gwenth would not have wanted her death celebrated with such . . . cruelty.”
“Perhaps, if I had acted sooner, she would not have killed herself. There would be a child of our blood between us. There would have been a light in our hearts.” I turn to face her. She dims the harsh glare of her golden eyes.
“Hugh, grief has made you into a monster. You must stop this. No good can come of it. When the time of the UnSeelie rises, all must join to help the Queen in holding back their hunger for death and misery. This time it promises to be the Battle We Most Fear. The Queen forgave you once but she will not a second time and we need you at the court. We cannot do this without you, old love. Come with me and leave this dark sorrow behind.”
Her words move me; awaken a longing for the joy I thought destroyed with Gwenth’s death. But my jaw sets against another injury. One she has forgotten to mention.
“I too hear rumors, Aileen. The Queen has whelped a child.”
Aileen purses her lips in annoyance and her eyes flash like sunlight striking water. “It is mere tale-telling, spread by boogans with no wit nor wisdom to separate truth from lies.”
“What says the Queen of this charge?”
“Nothing, and why should she? She is above reproach. There is no child.”
I cannot help myself, I reach out and touch her cheek. Impatience with me spreads a rosy blush across her face and slender neck. Her skin is warm and she shivers at the caress of my cold fingertips. I want to go with her, but it is too late. There is no mercy for me, not even the Queen could cleanse my honor so stained as it is with mortal blood. I have no choice but to follow the path I set for the future of my house and my clan.
“For all that you know, the Queen has birthed and murdered her offspring like any miller’s daughter, hiding her crime beneath the stones. She has too much power and no one to temper her wanton desires. Perhaps it is her lust for power that has—”
“Enough, Hugh,” Aileen snaps, and I stop, knowing I have put my finger into an open wound. As Highborns, we trust our clans but never the Queen. We serve her, but do not love her.
I turn away so as not to see the tears brimming in those golden eyes. “One day, there will be a child of pure blood born to the House of Inver Chechmaine again. The blood tithe will give us back our future. And were you to ask, you would find many a Highborn lord hopes for just such a resurrection.”
I lay a hand on the wretched girl and she uncoils at my command. Her eyes are red with weeping but she is submissive as I dip my needle into the bowl of ink and stab its point under her skin. A bead of blood rises to the surface. I wipe it away to show Aileen. I am in no hurry to collect the blood.
It is only when ordinary noise erupts again that I know she has left. A phone rings, the overhead lights buzz, the door to the shop opens with a chime of artificial bells. I listen for the sibilant hiss of the ink penetrating the girl’s skin and force a smile as I hear her moan.
* * *
LATER, AFTER EVERYONE HAS GONE, I think about the Queen’s bastard child. Aileen’s dismissal does not ring true. How old would such a creature be? I wonder. And what sort of mongrel’s face does the child have? For the Queen is a cold bitch, and I cannot imagine her gifting one seed of her own power or beauty, even to an offspring.
But—I think—how valuable might such a creature be in a game of blood and politics? I know that answer: for rumor has it that the Dark Lord has sent his servant Red Cap abroad in the world to find the child, to make it his own, and thus taunt the Queen and weaken her more.
I touch the lid of the casket that holds my precious vials of blood and reflect on the girl who challenged me not too long ago. She was difficult to subdue, and her blood rolled away from me, refusing to enter the pipettes. I thought her nothing more than the unexpected descendant of an old throwback; the distant child of a goody wife who once wet-nursed a fairy child with her own and mingled faerie blood and milk into her veins.
I shall find her again, for I laid the trouble knot deep into her skin. And when I do, I will strike a bargain with Red Cap, dupe him into believing she is the child he seeks—for she carries enough of the sap of the Greenwood to feel true. In exchange, I will demand the UnSeelie court grant me the fertile power of the tithe and I will use her blood and these collected vials to pay the price. There will be no shortage of Highborn women willing to conceive an infant, even if it is under the dark of a withered moon. Light will come from dark, and pure blood will rise again from the polluted springs of mortal veins.
38
Meteora Meets Red Cap
My hands trembled as I lifted and swallowed in one gulp a small glass of the fortifying spirits Baba Yaga kept in the back of her icebox. I let the strong flavor of anise sear my throat, praying it would settle the frantic racing of my heart. Then I poured a second glass. This time I drank more slowly, sipping the fiery brew until my belly was warm and my pulse had slowed. I had not thought to see him out here in the mortal realm. And yet there he was, his cadaverous face reflected in the window of a shop as he strolled down the street. I watched, half hidden in a doorway, as people instinctively avoided him, leaning away as he passed by, as if he were a harsh wind. Or perhaps it was the carrion reek that emanated from his withered skin. Glamour can hide most terrifying things, but not the stench of decay.
I hurried home, frightened and perplexed. For what reason could Red Cap have come here? To this city? To any human city before the turn of the season? I could not help but sense the world unraveling at the borders. The Greenwood was far away, and yet, I could hear the echo of its dissatisfaction even here. My fey bones beneath the mounded flesh felt a tremor in the joints as power shifted from one hand to another. Red Cap abroad in the streets! It was the worst of many signs I had been noticing for almost a week now.
The only comfort I had was the grass green envelope in my hand that carried a new letter from my sister. I prayed for her words to bind me to the earth. As I read the letter, my eyes grew wider, my hands more steady. “We have been dropped into this cesspit for a reason,” she wrote, and with that sentence, she had given me hope that all the pieces of this unruly game of power were not yet in play. Mayhap a few still waited, hidden and quiet, while the pawns cleared a space for them on a board growing crowded with treacherous foes. I needed her to know just how treacherous they really were.
My dearest Serana,
As always we are of one mind; even the distance cannot change the concordance of our thoughts. But we tread a muddy path. These wounded birds may have been drawn to us, seeking champions in a game of power. But why us? And where do we seek for truth?
As to the girl—since handing me the bag with mandrake
roots and seeing my displeasure, she has been reluctant to approach again. When I work in the garden she is a slender shadow leaning against the railing of her balcony. Sometimes I catch the sharp reek of her tobacco and sometimes the animal musk of fear. How can she possibly confront those fears with that mark on her neck? She is searching for an answer without knowing the question. As we surely do, sister, as we surely do.
It rained today, and under the shelter of an umbrella I ventured out to the street where the students gather in shops drinking bitter brews. Tucked between the shops are “parlors” where some of the children are changed into walking spells. Their ignorance astounds me. How little they realize the spells of undoing and confusion they allow to be inscribed upon their arms, their shoulders, their legs, bellies, necks. I saw a boy with wings etched on his back—did he know that he has damned himself seven years to be tortured as a bird lost in a wood? Yes, I saw a few with blessed spirals, may their lives be always turning toward the mysteries, but most were dull and stupid, a heart that will always be broken, a butterfly for a short and meaningless life, a snake that devours the will, and barbed wire, proclaiming a life of pinpricked sorrows.
But now I must reach for the courage to tell you what near-crossed my path. Hold steady your hand upon the letter and pray that it will not flame up at the mere writing of his name. From across the street, this very afternoon, I saw a monster entering the door of one of these parlors. The hand that turned the knob was black and clawed, thorns breaking the skin at the knuckles. Yes, you know that hand, for have we not always feared it? While at court, kept ourselves well clear of its vicious cuff? He sniffed and I pressed my bulk into another doorway, terrified of his gnarled face. There was a glamour of course, a mask that hid the rotted wood of his flesh. But he wore the glamour badly and I saw him clearly even though others did not.
Who summons Red Cap to the game before Solstice? Has the Queen struck a bargain with this servant of the Dark Lord? Or has he all on his own crept out of his hole to caper in the light of the human city? How has he the strength to do it? And why?