Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

  Taking power from this pool disturbed it a little, leaving ripples as she touched it, and she waited, heart in her throat, for retribution, or at least alarm. But nothing came. So, while the little lizard waited (patiently? Impatiently? She couldn’t tell), she followed Aunt Jinny’s instructions for molding the power into a ball between her hands, then sketched the glyph for “light” over it.

  It didn’t blaze up—she’d taken care not to have it do that, because the last thing she wanted to do was to blind herself in here. Instead it increased in brightness slowly, hovering in the air just above the lizard, until she could see the area around the critter clearly. Clearly enough not to fall in a hole, or trip over something, anyway.

  She waited again, but there was still no sign that anything or anyone cared that she had helped herself to power. With a sigh, she addressed the lizard.

  “Can y’all take me t’ the Queen? Or if she ain’t here, t’ Josh? But y’all gotter go slow. I ain’t so spry in th’ dark as y’all are.”

  The lizard skittered off, ball of light following along above its head.

  She followed, picking her way carefully. It was warmer in here than it was outside, except for the cave floor. In no time at all, her feet, which had warmed up enough buried in Bear’s fur to be comfortable, were aching with cold again.

  The walls of this cave were close enough to touch, so she did, steadying herself as she picked her way carefully along the rocky floor. At first, it had been dirt, littered with small rocks, but the deeper they went, the more the floor changed. First came the dirt and rocks, then mud and rocks, then mud, and now she walked on smooth rock, as if it had been polished by water. And then there were little puddles. Everywhere, she heard the sound of dripping water.

  Then the walls pulled away from each other. She kept her hand on the left one as long as she could, but the lizard wasn’t obliging her; it kept taking a path that led away from the walls. And far too soon for her liking, she couldn’t even see the walls, nor the ceiling. Not without increasing the brightness of her guide.

  “Wait a minnut, please,” she told the lizard, which obligingly paused. She raised the ball of light up above her head and increased the brightness. And gasped.

  She found herself somewhere in a vast cavern, with a ceiling and walls and floor that looked as if the stone had liquefied and then become solid again, but not before it had formed pillars and gigantic wax-like drips. Or perhaps the structures were more like stone icicles. She couldn’t make up her mind, and the sight momentarily drove all of her fear and sadness from her. Pa surely had never described anything like this. Perhaps neither he nor the other miners at the Soddy mine had ever seen anything like this.

  There weren’t just pillars and icicles either; here, the stone had formed into a kind of wavy, draped curtain. There it had been formed into a sort of gigantic mushroom. And there, icicle and pillar had fused into a ribbed column.

  In the center was a lake, and they appeared to be walking along the “shore.”

  The color of all this stone was a sort of soft cream, with a hint of translucence. It almost seemed to be alive.

  “All right, le’s mosey,” she said to the lizard, which was the only touch of color here.

  She kept her light at its brightest as they traversed the length of this cave, heading for a narrow passage ahead. It was with some regret and a lot of trepidation that she dimmed her guide and brought it down to about waist-height again as they entered another narrow tunnel.

  * * *

  Anna had lost track of time, and the big caverns with their stone formations had ceased to amaze. Fear drained away, grief dulled, and all she was really aware of was the untiring little green lizard scuttling in front of her and her utter weariness. She hadn’t slept at all last night, and hadn’t eaten since—was it dinner, yesterday? She just put one foot in front of the other in a mental fog, until she nearly stepped on the lizard and it chirped angrily at her.

  She jumped back and went to one knee. “I’m sorry, liddle feller! I didn’ mean it!” she said pleadingly. “I were jest so a-weary—”

  She held out her hand. The lizard regarded it suspiciously for a moment, then stuck out its tongue, licked its eyeball thoughtfully, and scuttled up onto her open palm. It raised itself up on its forelegs and jerked its head sideways. When she didn’t react to that, it did so again, punctuating the movement with a chirp.

  She looked. And realized that, for the first time, there was light in here that wasn’t from her little floating ball.

  She put her hand down and the lizard scuttled toward the light, taking her source with it. She followed.

  She hadn’t had time to raise the light and strengthen it before the lizard slithered off, so she had to pick her way carefully across flows of stone so cold and polished they felt slick.

  The light source ahead was behind one of those stone curtains. Whatever the source was, it was bright enough to light up the entire curtain from the other side; other than that, there wasn’t anything distinguishable. At another time she’d have stopped to admire the ripples, waves, and layers of subtly different colors—now she just wanted to get to whatever was behind that stone. Was it Jolene, at last? While majestic in its own way—this didn’t seem grand enough to be the setting for a queen.

  She edged around the sheet of stone, led by the lizard.

  There was a formation of four of those stone icicles, close together. Tucked up among them was a light that she instinctively recognized as just like her own, only the size of her head, and too bright to look at directly.

  Under that formation was a beautifully crafted workbench, at least ten feet long and three wide; part wood, part stone, and part metal. It was so beautifully constructed that her jaw just dropped when she saw it. Cream stone, pale wood, gray metal.

  Sitting on the workbench was the only spot of color in the room—a huge chunk of malachite.

  It looked familiar.

  So did the canvas roll on the workbench beside it.

  Something moved slightly at the back of the room, in the shadows. She ventured past the workbench on tiptoes. There was a platform back there . . . a platform covered with what looked like a tumble of soft blankets and pillows in various creams and pale browns. And there was something—no, someone under those blankets.

  “Josh!” She wasn’t aware she had spoken until the sound echoed in the room. She wasn’t aware she had run to him until she was sitting on the platform at his side.

  He lay on his back, one arm thrown over his head. He still looked utterly exhausted, thin and drawn, and her breath caught as her heart ached. “Josh?” she repeated, leaning over him.

  “Jolene . . .” he murmured. And her heart went from aching to breaking.

  With tears streaming down her face, she got up, backed away, then turned and ran. Somehow, the little lizard with her light had gotten in front of her again, and she followed it, half-blinded by the tears that scorched her cheeks, too wracked with heartbreak to think of anything else to do.

  * * *

  How long she wandered, she couldn’t have said. She just followed the lizard, sobbing silently, eyes and heart burning together, throat closed, chest tight with grief. And when the lizard stopped, so did she, insensible to what was around her, until a polite cough made her raise her eyes. And her breath caught in her throat, despite her despair, because what lay before her was the most beautiful place she had ever seen in her life. Nothing even in her imagination came close to matching this.

  Now she was in a “room” fit for a queen.

  A sheet of that waterfall-like stone, three stories high and lit from behind, formed the backdrop for a platform of stone that had clearly been carved out of the native stone that had been there before. So had the throne that stood on it—or was the throne a part of it? In any event, the throne was marvelously carved, covered with sinuous, entwining representations of
lizards, of the same sort that had brought her here. More of the lizards—live ones, this time—twined their metallic green bodies among the creamy stone of the carved ones. They were joined by a new set of lizards—and these were copper-colored. Green fer th’ malachite, red fer th’ copper hereabouts?

  The throne was also illuminated, not from above, but from below and within. And sitting on that throne, glowing golden with her own power, was Jolene.

  But this was not any of the three versions of Jolene that Anna had seen before.

  Her hair looked like red, spun copper, and in it she wore another of those odd, half-moon-shaped crowns, but this one was in the form of a snake that twisted around and back and through its own coils, and it could only be what the old songs called “pure red-gold.” The copper-colored lizards had entwined themselves in her hair, their shining hides hard to distinguish from her shining hair. Her green eyes glowed—actually glowed, in what Anna guessed was yet another manifestation of how powerful she was.

  But what she wore was more astonishing, in its way, than anything else about her! There could be no dress like this anywhere on the face of the earth.

  In style, this gown was not unlike the first one that Anna had seen her wearing: a kind of whole-body apron with wide shoulder straps, over a chemise. But the chemise was of the thinnest, whitest, softest material that Anna had ever seen; the incredible gown was like no fabric she had ever laid eyes on. It looked like hammered copper, but it moved like silk. And the wide trim that formed the straps and the neckline and ran around the bottom hem of the gown was four inches wide, and sewn so thickly with genuine gems that nothing of the fabric beneath was visible. The gems winked and gleamed softly in the indirect light, sending off rainbows of color, daring her to disbelieve that they were genuine. So many gems, so many colors, and she couldn’t have put a name to more than a handful of them. From reading her Bible, she knew rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires, but what were the tawny yellow ones? And the pink and pale blue? What were the purple and the ones that were half pale purple and half light green?

  She found herself speechless in the face of this display of wealth and magical power. And yet all of it paled beside Jolene’s beauty. All Anna could do was stare, rooted in place. And she might have stood there for an entire day, unable to make a start at addressing Jolene, except for the noise that interrupted them, the sound of a human voice, a man’s voice, that came faintly from somewhere above and echoed down through the mountain.

  “Jolene!” bellowed the distant voice. “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene . . .” cried the echoes.

  “Tha’s Billie McDaran!” Anna gasped, both hands spasming into fists, as fear gripped her once again.

  “So it is,” Jolene said casually, leaning on one arm of the throne and raising her hand to stroke a lizard on her shoulder. “I doubt that he has the wit to follow you—I doubt he has the wit to think you would come here. So he must be looking for my help in finding you.” She raised an elegant eyebrow. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with McDaran? Really, Anna, I am greatly disappointed. I went to very great pains to arrange that the two of you should make a pair of it.”

  “What?” Anna gasped again. “No! Thet col’-hearted snake? I wouldn’ go with him if he was th’ last man on earth!”

  The hand petting the lizard paused. For a moment, Anna was afraid she had made Jolene angry, but the green eyes did not flash, and the perfect lips only frowned a very little. “Really?” Jolene asked. “Whyever not?”

  “’Cause I’m in love with Josh!” she responded with spirit. “An’ he’s in love with me!”

  Jolene waved that off with one hand, as if it mattered nothing. “Mortals say that all the time, and it’s seldom true. Think of all the advantages you’ll have with McDaran! McDaran is much richer than Josh. He’s quite handsome. He’s in a position to make you queen of the Ducktown Basin, and if that isn’t enough, between the two of you, you have the power, if you choose to exert it, to undo all the damage that the mine has done to the valley.” She held out a hand and examined a ring on it critically. “I should think that last, at least, would interest you a great deal, since you seem to share your aunt’s propensity to want to heal everything that is in need around you.”

  Anna paused at that last, thinking of all the good she could do, if that were true. No more choking air. No more dead babies. Green things would grow again and the rain would soak into the grateful, grassy earth instead of running off in poisoned rivulets . . .

  And then she shook her head violently. There was not a chance in hell any of that would come to pass. Billie McDaran never thought about anything but himself, would never move an inch to help anyone but himself, and would never, ever share his power with her. He was far more likely—if that was possible, as Aunt Jinny seemed to think—to steal her power to make himself stronger. “McDaran’s pizen, Jolene! He’s as pizened as th’ Basin. He don’t he’p people, ever. Not with his money, not with his power, not with nothin’. He thanks all them dead babies in Ducktown is funny. He beats th’ men when they ain’t workin’ hard ’nuff for him! He laid one man out fer a week!”

  Now she had Jolene’s interest. “What?” she asked sharply. “Why do I not know of this?”

  “On account’a he does it ’bove ground,” Anna replied—guessing, but pretty sure the guess was correct. “Reckon at some time y’all must’ve tol’ him what Great-Granpappy knowed, thet y’all pertect miners. So he niver does thangs where yore critters’ll git wind of ’em.”

  Now the eyes flashed, and the mouth turned down into a decided frown. Looks like I done got all her attention now.

  “Thet ain’t all,” she continued. “He’s got two wimmin already, closed up in thet house’a his with him. He says they’s is sarvants, but Josh’s Pa reckons he’s—” she blushed at her own indecency, but it had to be said, “—reckons he’s a-lyin’ with ’em both. An’ folks in Ducktown reckon thet, an’ thet he’s a-beatin’ them too.”

  “What?” demanded Jolene, half rising from her throne. “Why does—”

  Then she settled back down, the frown turning into a snarl. “You need not answer that. Even in my land, women are of no account, and men may beat them if they will.”

  Anna decided to go further still. “Y’all reckoned t’ set me up with him. But thet ain’t th’ way he sees it. He tol’ me to m’face that he might marry me iffen I played my cards right. But once he finds out about Pappy’s debt, he ain’t a-gonna.” Quickly she explained to Jolene what her aunt had explained to her, about the debt to the Company, and how she would be expected to pay it, as the green eyes darkened with anger. “ . . . so you bet, oncet he finds out ’bout thet, he’ll buy it up, an’ he’ll hev me all legal without ever havin’ t’ marry me. I jest bet thet’s how he got them other two wimmin. He’s got their debt, an’ iffen they run off, he c’n set th’ sheriff on ’em.”

  She had no idea how she had managed to put together such a convincing argument, much less where she had gotten the courage to say it all to Jolene’s face. But it was clear that the arguments had all hit home.

  Jolene was simmering with rage; Anna had never seen her like this before, and if that rage had been pointed in her direction, she’d very probably have fainted in terror. Power coruscated around the Queen of Copper Mountain, and the look in her eyes promised much, much worse than mere death. And just at that point, McDaran’s voice rang through the caverns again. “Jolene!” he shouted . . . and the inflection was not that of a man who was entreating someone. “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene . . . .” the echoes came, only reinforcing that.

  C’n I git her t’ the boil?

  “No matter what y’all wanted fer me,” she said, steadily, “no matter what y’all thunk or planned, it’d niver be ’bout what y’all want. It’ll on’y iver be ’bout what he wants. He don’ reckon y’all’s a Queen. But he sure do reckon he’s a King, an’ he reckons y’all’s a-ser
vin’ him.”

  The eyes not only flashed . . . so did her power, in a soundless, but contained, explosion of golden light. Anna shaded her eyes with her hand, and when her sight cleared and she looked back at the throne, Jolene was standing.

  She looked terrifying. Something in her cold, anger-darkened eyes, something about her expressionless face, both these things were more frightening than the halo of pure power around her that radiated actual golden light. “Get behind my throne,” she said in a flat tone of voice. “And may your God protect you if you have been lying to me.”

  Anna skittered behind Jolene’s throne and crouched there, to find herself surrounded by a mound of copper and green lizards that were so quiet with fear that they could have been metal statues. Instinctively she gathered some of them into her arms to comfort them; when she did that, they all swarmed over her, tucking themselves as close to her body as they could.

  “Jo—” the distant bellow rang out for the third time. But this time there was a flash of light that illuminated the entire cavern like a lightning flash, a sound like someone falling from a trivial height, and McDaran’s voice finished, “—lene?”

  “What is it?” Jolene’s tone could have put ice on the pond in midsummer, but McDaran either didn’t hear her tone or didn’t heed it.

  Likely don’t care.

  “Thet Anna May Jones y’all promised me!” he growled. “She done sassed me, disrespected me, turned me down flat, an’ run off! Y’all git her fer me right now!”

  “Are . . . you . . . ordering me, McDaran?” If Jolene’s tone could have put ice on the pond before, it would have frozen it to the bottom now.

  McDaran snorted with actual contempt. “Damn right I am, woman! Y’all promised me, now y’all make good on it!” Anna could scarcely believe her ears. She had known McDaran was stupid, but she had no idea he was that stupid! Jolene was standing there in all her power right in front of him! Couldn’t he see it? Couldn’t he see the danger he was in?