Except the Queen

by Jane Yolen

  “No, it’s where we will make our stand,” Vinnie told him. “Better than this small, closed-in place.”

  “How come I never knew about this tunnel?” asked Jack.

  Vinnie laughed deep in her throat. “And why would I tell an angry, active boy about something like this?” she said. “Do you think I was crazy?”

  “Well,” Jack said, hesitating a moment longer than necessary, “yes, actually I did.”

  That made her put her head back and laugh full out. The laugh, like a calming spell, settled us all.

  There was no light in the tunnel; we felt our way by running our hands against the smooth walls. I could smell the river and it carried the fresh tang of the Greenwood. Vinnie had chosen well.

  The smell grew stronger and, abruptly, the way led upward again, rising to a gentle slope. Ahead, Vinnie called to us to stop. Moonlight slivered into the tunnel, as she shoved a shoulder against a matted wall of twigs and branches, forcing an opening.

  We pushed out of the tunnel and were on the banks of a narrow river directly below the bridge. A cluster of ancient oaks surrounded us, and I could imagine in centuries past how they must have filled the banks on either side of the river. Now all that was left of them was a meager stand of twisted trunks.

  A rustle in the tangled branches made me glance up and I heard the krawk of a crow hiding in the leaves. And then another.

  “Awxes!”

  He cawed again, exhorting us to move along. He and the rest of his murder were here, watching.

  “Have you not lost too much already, old friend? I bid you go and be safe.” But he stayed, and with him the others of his black brood.

  Then I looked up at the bridge, where we were to make our stand. The stench of iron grabbed me by the throat and I stumbled, doubled over by the rank taste of it. Vinnie grabbed me and hustled me toward a narrow set of concrete stairs.

  “It won’t be so bad on top,” she said. “And they won’t follow us so easily this way.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Not the briared path of righteousness, nor the lily path of wickedness, but the green path to—”

  “Elfland! The road to Elfland, atop this monstrosity?” I was heaving with the stench of iron.

  Just then I heard Red Cap’s horns blaring in the distance, a call that curdled the mist and drove the stink of sweating hounds and farting Bogglemen on the winds. There was no more time to resist. Red Cap and his minions would be as incapacitated as I by the iron. Vinnie was right. We had to go up there onto the bridge.

  68

  The Bridge

  Vinnie cackled as she bullied me up the stairs. “Gotta find a way wherever you can. The old paths don’t disappear so easily, even when the mortal realm changes. They lurk behind the factory, ghetto, suburban mall. You may choose not to use them. But some do. That’s why I’m here. To watch what comes over the bridge.”

  We were standing suddenly on the bridge, a wide-open expanse that stretched like a road between the banks. Though I could feel the threaded bones of iron buried in the concrete flesh, I could stand. Suddenly the worst of the pain and illness subsided. On the far banks hung a sheer curtain of golden lights reflected in the shimmering surface of the river below. Along the edges of the concrete and metal bridge I could see the faint outline of trees, smell the pungent pine.

  It was the way to the Greenwood, to Under the Hill and Elfland. For a moment, I thought of abandoning my friends and throwing myself at the lights of home just to be living again in my woods. For just a moment.

  Behind me, I heard Sparrow sob and I turned, realizing that I was not the only one entranced by the sight. Robin had his arm around her, consoling, pulling her toward the middle of the bridge. On his face was a mixture of pain and hope. Faerie had always meant the dark halls of the UnSeelie to him. Now—for the first time in his life—he craved the light of the summer courts.

  Awxes and the crows traced slow circles in the air above us. Even Jack had lowered his cudgel to stare in wonder at the undulating lights.

  Standing beside me, Vinnie’s ancient face softened until I saw the remainder of the young woman I had once known. Is that true of my face, I wondered, here in the glimmering reflection of the Greenwood? I laid a hand to my cheek as if I might find it young and firm again.

  “Every time I come up here I can almost touch it,” Vinnie said. “I can’t cross anymore, only get close enough to remember those years ago, the infants put to my breast. But alas . . .” She laughed sharply. “No insurance or job security with the fey.” She seized my shoulder, her grip strong. “Will you open it for us?”

  “Open it?”

  “Yeah. Only you can open the way. You’re one of them.”

  And then I tasted bitter gall. I was here, but by my banishment the way would not open to me. Vinnie had miscalculated. She had thought I could save us all and so brought us here, to this bridge before a door that would never open to me.

  “I cannot,” I stammered, spinning away from her grip. I turned my back to the door.

  Vinnie glared at me. “Or maybe you’re as hard-hearted as the rest of the fey. Haven’t I done enough? Don’t I deserve this? Don’t they?” Her chin jutted toward Robin and Sparrow.

  Miserable, I looked down at my feet and whispered, “I have been banished, too. By the Queen’s own decree I can never return. There is nothing I can do here. Nothing.”

  “You can try,” Jack whispered in my ear.

  I turned, looked at him. Really looked. His honest face stared back at me. For him, I thought, I could try and fail. But I could try.

  Just then Vinnie spoke again. “Trying won’t cut it now.” She spun me around and there on the streets leading to the far side of the bridge was the Dark Lord’s Hunt riding toward us. The Highborn ranks were marked by the silver tines of horns rising above the carved death masks. The Hunt flowed across the paving, the silver shoes of their mounts leaving trails of sparks. By their sides, the hellhounds bayed, running hard. And behind them loped boogans, ogres, even snarling knucklebones, their rock-hard knuckles striking sparks on the surface of the road.

  Overhead bananachs flew, their great tattered wings blocking all sight of the stars.

  And we—a small band of misfits, two humans, two halflings, one banished fairy, and a murder of ragged crows—were alone on the bridge to face them.

  And it was my fault. My fault for meddling. The guilt of it began to eat at me again till I suddenly remembered that I had been sent here to meddle. Sent here to protect Sparrow.

  Protect Sparrow.

  “Get behind me,” I cried and thrust myself in front of them. “I may be banished but the law of the courts still applies. They dare not harm me, lest I have done them harm.”

  “But you have offered offense,” Robin said quickly, “for there rides Lankin and you struck him.”

  “The offense was his when he entered the Great Witch’s house,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

  “You still need us at your side,” Jack argued and stood to the left of my shoulder, his ash cudgel held high. Vinnie flanked me on the right. Behind me, I felt the children, imagining them still holding hands and making one another strong. Awxes and the crows drifted back and forth above us, wings brushing against the wall of light and making it ripple with the sound of chimes.

  The Hunt approached, and the huntsman blew his horn, calling the slavering pack to heel. The Dark Lord turned to the rider beside him and silently commanded him to go forth. As he approached, I saw him clearly in the glowing lamplight, his silver mask shaped like a half skull, the human side beautiful, the other twisted in pain. Around his shoulders he wore a cloak of burgundy wool, dyed with the blood of innocents: Red Cap, soul drinker, blood eater, bone cruncher, hater of life.

  “Stay,” I said. “I must meet him alone.”

  “No,” Jack argued.

  “It is the only way.”

  And I walked away from them toward the center of the bridge, towa
rd Red Cap and the UnSeelie horde.

  Oh, sister, I thought—glad she, at least, was not here—Sister, remember me. For well I knew that Red Cap’s swords and arrows could do what mortal weapons could not. Knew that only the eternal law that binds us both held in check his murdering hand.

  “You have no right to hunt those under my protection.”

  The Highborns and Red Cap broke into raucous laughter, slapping their thighs, rattling their spears and quivers of arrows. An ogre lumbered to the front, turned, displayed his huge, bare arse, and farted, loud as a trumpet.

  Removing his mask, Red Cap handed it to a rat-faced page that had scurried up on clawed feet to take it from his master’s hands. Red Cap shifted his weight on the back of his horse. Clearly he was more used to skulking than riding.

  “You! You have no power to fight me, Meteora. There be nothing you can do to stop me. Capuchon be my name. Use it if you dare!”

  That he knew my true name and spoke it aloud was frightening enough. But I did not dare show my fear. Nor did I speak his name aloud, for I knew there would be a trick in it, else he would never have given it to me so readily.

  “No power, you say?” I called back. “Ask your servant, and see where I marked him when he violated the treaty and came uninvited to the home of the Great Witch.” I pointed to the Highborn in a wraith’s hollow-eyed mask in the line of horsemen behind him.

  Red Cap turned in the saddle to look at them.

  “Hah! Show your face,” he commanded and then cursed loudly when Long Lankin ripped the mask from his face with a jerk, revealing an angry gash marring the plane of his cheek. It had festered into a ragged furrow as all ill-gotten wounds must. Obviously he had not told anyone, shamed to have been bested by an old woman. So far it was the only glimmer of hope we had. Could I bluff my way a little longer?

  Red Cap stood up in his stirrups, his eyes slitted into twin daggers. “And who, little bag of pus, gave you such power?”

  “The same goddess who awarded it to you.” The words came to me suddenly, like a gift. “Before we existed, power flowed in the heart of earth, shaping rock and soil, water and air. I have learned that even trapped in this mortal body I can find that power without the leave of Elfland. It is mine by the right of She-Who-Birthed-All.” I knew as I spoke these brave words that they were true. In part. Though aged and weakened, I was not wholly without magic. I held it in my mouth like a wintered berry, withered, but still sweet and nourishing. And I had seen that the mortals here had power, too, though we of the Greenwood scarce acknowledge it. Lavinia’s milk had had the power to suckle and sustain our infants. Clearly the gifts flowed both ways. Faerie to mortals, mortals to the fey. So when would we honor that truth?

  “What gives you the right to claim these mortals as your own?” Red Cap asked.

  “The law.”

  And then he laughed again, the Hunt following suit. The sound echoed over the water of the river.

  Red Cap broke through that laughter. “The law was broken when we were denied a tithe in blood. I have come to claim it.”

  I whirled about and stared behind me, at Sparrow, at Robin, looking small and lost in the bridge’s wide-open arms. Jack and Vinnie held their feeble weapons before them, ready to fight. For a moment, doubt troubled me, and then no more. The Highborn could kill us but they could not defeat us. Slowly I turned back.

  “Those are mine now,” I said.

  “There is no one with the power to grant such rights to you.”

  “The Queen—”

  “Especially the Queen!” Red Cap shouted. “She played her game and lost. She has no cause to tread these roads, no claim to the blood marked by my servant to be my sacrifice. That tithe be mine and I be seeing you threshed as barley beneath my heel lest you vow to serve me.”

  There was a sudden hush. The bridge seemed to ring out with the silence. Even the crows had stopped cawing. The hellhounds lay down at the feet of the horses. Everything was still.

  Once again Doubt, my old familiar, sat on my shoulder, whispering in my ear: “What have you accomplished with your meddling? Had you not always left politics to the Highborn? Did your sister not warn you to leave these children alone?” Wise words to sing in the ear of a small, insignificant fey who liked only her pleasures. But I was not that creature now. I had changed, my sister had changed, as our world had changed. All of us had changed.

  Except the Queen.

  And then it occurred to me. The Queen. Searching the streets of that iron city where Serana lived. Mandrake roots twisted like strangled lovers. A girl marked with the sign of trouble. And us, sisters of the Greenwood sent forth to meddle. Why had it taken me so long to understand what it all was for?

  “What mark?” I shouted back defiantly. I searched the skies for Serana, praying now that Serana would appear. Surely the two of us changed creatures could stand against Red Cap. But even without her, I had to try. Squaring my shoulders, I shook old Doubt off. “What mark proves your claim, you old bogie?”

  “Ho! Bring me the girl!” Red Cap demanded.

  Two of his ogre pets lumbered toward us, but before they could reach us Sparrow shoved past Jack and Vinnie and came to stand beside me.

  “Fuck you,” she shouted. “You don’t own me, asshole.” She tore off her shirt, and in the stark light of the streetlamps her pale torso gleamed, revealing the bare and flawless skin of her shoulders. She turned and showed her neck, curved like the white arch of the swan. Even the twisted knot of trouble was gone.

  Only then did Red Cap frown. The mount beneath him stumbled, quivering with the heat of its rider’s rage. “How is this possible?” he asked, turning in the saddle to glare at Lankin.

  Even I wondered. I knew the spells of unbinding. I had worked them a little. Goodywife spells. And I knew that all but this last one, the one on her neck, had faded. But how had this one been so completely removed that the Red Cap’s glare, like yeast to dough, had not raised it up again? Surely not just the fiddle, not just the stay at Vinnie’s. Surely there was something I was missing.

  “I come to claim what is mine,” Sparrow called. “I woke Robin and his blood is bound to me as mine is to him.”

  Robin came quietly to stand beside Sparrow. He was changed too. His eyes gleamed green and gold. There was no longer a hound’s shadow beneath his skin. Horns budded on his high forehead and along his neck scrolled a tattoo of briar and rose together.

  “Cast-off whelp, spittle of a mudwife’s lips,” Red Cap hissed in frustration.

  “But yours nonetheless,” Robin cried out, “and so I have made a pact already. The tithe is paid, Father. You cannot amend it.”

  Father! And then I saw what I had not before, how like they were around the jawline, around the eyes, though there was no cruelty in Robin’s face.

  “Then you own her,” Red Cap roared, “what good it be to you.” His mouth was a thin line, a frown that could bring down bridges. Then he suddenly smiled, which was infinitely worse than his frown, opening his arms, though even I could read those arms as the bars of a jail. “Come and be welcomed back into our house again. All will be forgiven. Rule with me.” Almost carelessly, he put his fingers to his lips, and suddenly he whistled, though it was so high, only the dogs actually heard it and they stood by the feet of the horses, threw back their awful heads and howled. One even shat down a black steed’s leg, and was kicked in the head for his misdeed, dying in a puddle of blood, which only excited the other dogs.

  Robin shook his head. “You mistake my meaning, Father. For there is human blood in me, no matter how hard you have tried to erase it with your iron rod. I have surrendered unto Sparrow the gift of that blood.” He held up his hand, palm toward Red Cap. “See here where the line of our bloodletting still heals. And on her the same.”

  Sparrow held her hand up, too, palm forward, but with her middle finger raised in defiance.

  “No! No!” Red Cap’s voice was a shriek now, like the wind in a storm, as high as his whistle had been,
but no longer cruel. “It be not happening thus. This bitch, this knot of grass does not command you in my place. I have no fear of her or you. For there be no law without the Faerie courts, and here on this bridge, I alone decide the outcome. There be blood yet spilled and my hat will be red with it. Ho!”

  His sword left its scabbard, and swift as lightning it flashed toward Sparrow. I gave no thought but flung myself between her and its point. Sparrow fell beneath me, screaming as I screamed and the sword exploded in my flesh. The blade bit deep below my heart, scraping against the bones of my ribs. Hot blood cascaded across my chest. Dazed, I wanted to rise, but could not find the strength. Deafened by the sound of my heart’s slow beating, I could only watch what happened around me.

  Robin, Jack, and Vinnie stood over Sparrow and me as we lay huddled within the protective cage of their legs. Jack swung his bat and the crack of the ash caved in an ogre’s skull. Then he lifted the bat once again, its light tip stained with the ogre’s green blood and took aim at the next UnSeelie creature.

  Meanwhile, Vinnie struck her iron club against the hounds that leapt at us. One and two fell, and a third raked her arm with its teeth before she shoved the club down its throat and it died a shuddering death.

  Elf darts flew like swift birds through the air and were stopped by the wailing of Robin’s fiddle. Rosin puffed in the air and the crash of the bow buckled the concrete, hurling chunks of broken road and exposing the staves of iron beneath.

  Yet I despaired, for no matter how valiant my mates were, I knew it would not be enough. Not nearly enough.

  Then through the howling and wailing, I heard a booming pair of voices calling across the river. The booming was really a strange low keening sound, almost like a banshee’s voice, though I realized that it came from two black crones afloat in the sky. They were holding hands and singing down lightning from the heavens. “Hi-de-ho,” they chanted, a sound that struck me as deeply as the sword. The lightning struck the bridge, making the hanging wires spark and those sparks hit the buckled paving and jumped to the bridles of the horses who screamed and tried to throw their riders.