by Jane Yolen
* * *
SHE WOKE IN THE MORNING, without panic or fear, greeted by sunlight spilling into her room. Only when she spied the glint of silver wings on her desk did she remember. Stumbling toward the bathroom and pulling off her T-shirt as she went, she stared into the mirror, expecting to see more of the snake coiling around her right shoulder. But it had not changed; if anything, the ink had faded from blue black to soft brown. Sparrow rubbed her hand over her skin in amazement.
She walked back to the bedroom, to the sight of the sleeping dog, the books scattered across the bottom of the bed and the outline of her head in the pillows. Clearly, she’d slept the night away.
But how?
She looked up at the ceiling as though it could give her answers. Sophia’s mysterious guest? The music? She was grateful for the much-needed respite, but she was cautious too, for many a sweet spell came to a bad end. Nonetheless, she had slept without harm and for that, she offered silent thanks to the unknown fiddler.
48
Meteora Insists
In the morning the sun burst forth as though to welcome this errant boy to Jack’s promise of a second summer. By midmorning the day was almost hot. I glanced out the window as I cleaned up Robin’s mess in the kitchen and saw Jack working in the garden below. Not to plant—no, it was much too wet for that—but to set and build the new paths of the maze.
I shook the boy where he lay sprawled between the two chairs. He woke with a start, saw it was only me, and then stretched and yawned languorously.
“Come on, my lad, you have work to do.”
“Work?”
I pulled him by the collar of his grubby shirt to the window and pointed down to the garden. “See that man down there?” And as if he had heard me, Jack looked up from a rock he was hoisting into place and smiled. I opened the window, and leaned out. “I have a new pair of sturdy hands to help you, Jack! He’ll be down in a moment.”
“Great! There’s plenty to do,” he called back.
“I am not a gardener. I don’t do dirt,” the boy said scornfully.
“You are now and you will do dirt if you wish to remain and eat. My sister may have coddled you but I will not.”
He started to protest. He needed his hand for playing the fiddle. He was tired after his journey. He was hungry . . .
I paid no attention, and while he was off in the water closet, I rifled through his bag until I found a clean shirt and a pair of socks that while not clean, were at least dry. When he reappeared, I thrust the clothes and his shoes into his arms, and practically pushed him out the door. I shut it hard and turned the lock, keeping his fiddle as hostage.
“Shit,” I heard him mutter, and then his feet thudded down the stairs. Lily barked as he passed the landing and he barked back, finishing with an ascending howl. Lily joined him and for a minute or two, the pair did a duet. Then he continued down to the door, clumping like a one-legged farmer.
I returned to my kitchen, grumbling and swearing as I washed dirty dishes, returned them to the shelves, wiped down the counters. Then I cleaned the house, cleaned myself, and dressed for work. Before I left, I chanced a glance out the window to see how Robin was managing in the garden. And there he was, despite his earlier complaints, laughing and joking with Jack as they moved rocks back and forth creating the low wall. After a moment or two of studying him, I softened my heart, thinking he might be a fair-enough lad after all.
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, ALONE AT my kitchen table, I retrieved my letter to Serana and reread it. It was stinging, true enough—but a fair complaint. Still I did not want this to be the last words on the matter, so finished it with more temperance.
He can stay, but he will not eat unless he works. Shutting my ears to his complaints, I sent him to work in the garden with Jack, lifting the mountain of tumbled stones and rebuilding the garden wall. It is dirty labor, but honest. Far more honest than the fiddle, which he bought with your return ticket and tried to charm me with on his first night.
But he has paid me back for this injury—as only a clever child can. Even as I finish this letter at my recently cleaned kitchen table, he is standing in my sitting room, playing his fiddle with abandon. He has tracked garden mud and wet leaves into my house, staining Baba Yaga’s red wool rug—that rug that carried Caliphs across the gold desert. He finished eating and left the dishes and now is playing a naughty reel to mock me. The strings sing like a drunken thrush and I must stifle again the longing for a time that will never come again.
Oh, I am angry with you. He will be a handful. And yet listening to him play, I know it will be impossible to stay angry—with you my blood sister or with your scare-bird. I saw Sparrow, a curious spirit, peeping over the fence to watch him work. No doubt his fiddle called to her as well. In the meantime, I will keep him toiling in the garden with Jack and let the living earth return to him some sense and humility along with love and diligence.
Fractious, but still your loving sister,
Meteora
49
The Dog Boy Scratches an Itch
At first I fought the earth, hardly damaging it with the shovel. Then I cursed the earth in the old tongue, the crows screaming back at me. But finally I surrendered to the earth, lying down in the small rutted lanes I had dug and letting the smells overwhelm me.
What smells? Sharp growing things, more white than green. Little mealy-smelling worms and the musty rankness of mole somewhere beneath. The tang of broken rootlets, the freshness of water still unmuddied running deep.
It was as if the earth herself cleansed me. I waited till no one but the crows were looking, knelt there and pissed a long stream. Now I was part of the earth, and it me.
When I stood, shaking myself all over like a dog, bits of old grass and globules of dirt and little stones scattered off me.
“That’ll do, boy,” the Jack said. “Go off and get your lunch.”
I scraped my boot casually over the stream I’d just made, covering it thoroughly, before walking away. I set my shoulders to show how little I cared what he thought, then went back to the house where I grabbed something to eat, first washing because the old woman told me to. Old women seem obsessed with cleanliness. First Auntie Em and now this one.
That was when I heard the girl. Not for the first time. But this time I heard her clearly. The dog had said her name. “Mistress. Take me with you.” But she’d left the dog behind. Still she was no mistress of mine, but something more. I didn’t know yet what. I could hear her going out of the door.
I put my head under the water tap, letting the water rain down on it. Then I shook like the dog I am, before taking off after her. I didn’t mean to catch up, just to follow. She was bent over, her shoulders hunched against a wind that was not blowing, a hood over her head. I still didn’t know what she looked like. I hadn’t yet seen her face.
The water through my hair had cleansed my ears and had cleaned away the dirt smell. And now I had her scent, a light perfume on the wind. It had heather for solitude, and some other tangle I couldn’t quite make out.
I began to whistle the tune, not to make her turn, but to make her remember me. She shrugged deeper into the hooded jacket, and by this I knew she’d heard, but she didn’t turn around.
So I stopped whistling and followed silently, from afar. If she looked back, all she would see would be a boy her age, walking along the street, behind but not behind her. Too far for fear. I am a tracker, not a killer. It’s my father who kills. And I was far from him now. Safe from his whistle. Safe to do what I wanted: my bidding, not his.
I crossed the street to put her off the scent.
She walked now with more determination, as if each step closer to where she was going gave her strength. We were well into the bowels of the city. The smell of buses and cars was overwhelming. I breathed shallowly.
The sun being out, she shrugged off the hood and I was startled to see the color of her hair. It was like an evening sky. I had not expected that from he
r scent. But still I had it in my nose now. I would know her anywhere.
Watching the back of her night-sky head move, I almost missed what her hands were doing as she stood in front of a storefront, making a strewing motion. She looked left and right but not behind where I was standing, then turned abruptly into an alley on the side of the storefront, disappearing into its depths.
I crossed the street to the storefront and drew a deep breath. On the doorjamb she’d left a scattering of protection herbs. That was a tangle I hadn’t expected: comfrey, thyme, verbena, Saint-John’s-wort. But there was something else, some strong bitter smell. It made my nose itch. And then I had it: peony, a shield against fairy mischief.
Why here?
I looked at the store window, the curtains drawn against the light. The name of the place was scrawled across the window in bloodred letters: HAWK: ORIGINAL TATTOOS. I put a hand on the window and tried to look in, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by a scent that I should have picked up before.
“No!” I said it aloud. And then again to myself. “No!” The herbs had overlaid the smell of him, had disguised it enough that I was almost fooled. I couldn’t tell how old the scent was, but there was no denying it. Father’s smell is the iron of blood and the dry odor of agaric and aminita; it’s musk and mallow, root and worm. I gagged at the thought that he was here. Had been here before me. Had sought her but not found her. I grew warm with indignation. So, he was not as good a hunter as me. Perhaps there was still time to warn her of the danger.
I turned away from the window and padded into the alley following after the girl. She was waiting in the dark and I still had so much of the protection herbs up my nose, and my father’s odious scent, that I missed her standing there until I bumped into her.
“Who are you and why are you following me?” She stood with her hands on her hips, unafraid. Her face . . . her face was glorious, shining. There was an old scar over her eyebrow. I longed to touch it.
“Me?” I squeaked. “Following you.”
“Don’t mess with me, or I’ll . . .”
“Sounds like fun,” I began to regain some measure of control over my voice. “But my old aunt, the one I’m staying with in the upstairs apartment, would probably kill me. She’s got me on a tight leash.”
“She’s your aunt?”
“She and her sister, Auntie Em.”
“You’re full of shit, you know that?” She stepped away from me, anger flashing in her eyes. Green with threads of gold. Her skin was pale as snow beneath a cap of coal-colored hair. “Just back the fuck up, asshole.” She fingered something in her pocket. I could smell the sweetness of fey silver, taste the metal in the air. There was the sharp scent of fear about her but she wouldn’t show it. Not she. She braced, ready.
Dogs jump, men coax, I thought. “Hey, really, I’m staying with my aunt who lives upstairs from you. I saw you leave and figured I could, maybe, you know meet someone a little bit younger than my aunt who must be a gazillion years old.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sophia Underhill.” Good thing I’d glanced at Auntie Em’s letters.
“What’s her apartment look like?”
She wasn’t going to give up her suspicions easily, this one.
“Red chair, rugs, kitchen table, crystals hanging in the window. Do I need to say more?”
“You’re the guy in the garden.”
“Yes,” I answered, though it pained me to be thought of as a gardener.
“Was that you playing the fiddle the last couple of nights?”
I smiled, just wide enough to charm not to threaten. “It was me.” I stopped myself from bowing to her, but only just. “Have I kept you up?” I knew full well that my fiddle brought her much-needed sleep. It was her dreams I’d felt touching the strings like rosin.
She stared a long time, considering me in silence. I let her gaze and didn’t turn away.
“You’ve got your clothes on inside out.” I pointed at the tag on her hood. “Who are you hiding from?”
Thin brows arched above the flashing green eyes. “How do you know about that?”
Before I could answer, a door slammed open farther down the alley and the scent of blood and Greenwood sap filled my nostrils. Wrong. The smell was all wrong and I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed her and pulled her down behind a pile of stacked trash, its odor rank but at least honest. I put my finger to her lips as she tightened into a ball.
“Who’s there?” a voice called and I could hear the spell of command. It was easy enough for my kind to resist. But not the girl. “Show yourself, or I cut you to the quick,” came the warning. She’d never make it against one like that.
So I stood and waved my arms, to distract him. I stepped out, away from the trash. A dog learns how to cower. A dog learns how to beg.
“Hey, don’t get all twisted, man,” I said in a whining voice. “I’m just scrounging for something to eat. I don’t have any money, man. Thought I’d check out the trash.”
“Come closer, let me look at you.” To play the game, I must obey, making my thoughts murk and mud. I shuffled forward, not meeting his eyes, but staring somewhere in the hollow of his white throat.
I knew what he was, Highborn and full of himself, but he would scarce know me in this form. In this gormless shape. Perhaps I should piss myself to make him feel more powerful. But he gave me a measured look, snarled “Bugger off,” unlocked the back door and disappeared inside.
I sauntered over to the trash where the girl waited, crouched and hidden. As I approached, I saw the flash of silver in her upraised fist, twin points protruding like fangs between the fingers. The air stank of nightshade and arsenic.
“Poison or not, you’ll need far more than that to kill a Highborn,” I chided. “It won’t do more than wound him. And make him really angry. Come on.” I extended my hand. “Let’s go back to my aunt’s where it’s safe.”
She bit her lip, but took my hand and stood up. Wariness lay like a harness on her shoulders, washed her skin with a peppery smell. But she was steady. Resolute. I admired that.
“Let me help,” I offered, suddenly glad of the chance to betray my father’s will.
“Maybe,” she answered, pulling up her hood, then shoving her hands into her pockets. “Play your fiddle again tonight, and I’ll sleep on it.”
It’s enough, I thought as I trotted beside her. A good beginning. I began to hope, always the wrong thing to do. Hope only ends in disaster.
50
Serana Has Five Days of Peace
You would think that five days of peace, alone and without my scare-bird worries, would have been enough for me to recover my equilibrium, but I worried my way through every hour of the five.
Would the boy remain on the bus? Would he get off at the right place? Would he find his way to Meteora? Did my letter get to her in time? Would she curse me for sending him? Was he the right boy? The wrong boy? Did he have naught to do with this knot?
These and other questions buzzed in my head and when—on the fifth day—a letter came from Meteora, I was forced to write another back at once. At least to share my worries. I wrote my first thoughts quickly and left the unfinished letter on the mantel:
Oh dear Paddle Foot:
I knew you would do the right thing. You always do the right thing. It is annoying, but true. Only you never know when to shut up. There. I have said it at last. And I say it with love and a certain amount of trepidation for I treasure your letters, all I have now of our old life. But really, Meteora, you are so like your name, flashing across any universe you happen to inhabit.
Shut up.
You are best when you are fixing things, mending broken boxes or heads or hearts. When you cut the strings that are binders, when you uncurdle the brownie’s milk, when you set aright a spell that has gone so miserably wrong. Then—oh then—you are what you are meant to be.
Only for Mab’s sake, shut up about it.
The memories you curse me with are so one-s
ided. Have you never understood that? The miller’s babe was a mistake, granted. But I recognized it immediately and had not the wherewithal to take it home. Only you could do it—as you did. The harper was not there for dancing nor bound by love, but to twit the Queen and oh! I can still see her face, a rowanberry red, as he went on his seventy-dozenth round of the song. And I did not need to hold my ears, dear sister, having stuck lamb’s wool in them ahead of time. Remember, I am the farseer, the visioner.
As for touching my things—do you not remember that as a little one, you burned yourself badly that way. Look at the puckered skin on your left ring-man finger. The reminder is still there. You never seemed to recall that on your own, much as I iterate. A meddler you were then and still are. A meddler and a mender.
I sent you the boy so that you can meddle and mend to your heart’s content. I have seen that you need to fix this broken thing, whatever it is. I can only clean him up but not make him better. Something eats at his heart, something coils in his gut.
I had already cleansed the house of Robin’s presence, burning the lint he left behind, throwing out any food he had touched, scrubbing the rooms on my hands and knees with a soap I made of rowan and bleach. Those first couple of nights my right leg had ached from buttock to bone being unused to such a position.
That said, I kept a bit of his hair I found in my good brush and used it for a new casting. The picture that spiraled out of the smoke was as clear as the first. There was something to come out of their coupling, the girl and my scare-bird, if ever they got down to it. Though there was also some strange blurring around the edges of the vision, which was worrisome.