by Nick Lake
She smiles her ghastly smile again, and points to the dish, to the still-beating heart.
It’s easy, she says. You eat that, and I die.
Chapter 69
My eyes go from the hole in the Crone-mother’s chest to the heart on the plate, and back again. I think I’m in shock—my mind feels like one of those desk toys made using magnets, where something spins in the air, weightless. Gravity, in my head, is suspended.
Eat it, says the Crone. I could make you, you know. I made you sit down.
As I watch, the silver knife and fork stand up, magic-trick smooth, and kind of walk the short distance over the pockmarked wood to my hands. They settle there, like cold living things.
When the heart beats, blood oozes from one of the tubes, then trickles slug-like down the side of the organ. I gag.
It will kill me, she says. And you will have won.
No, I say.
Of course! She claps her hands. I have not given you anything with which to wash it down. She clicks her fingers and a teapot appears on the table, covered with a tea cozy in the form of a sleeping cat. A teacup and saucer swoop down from an old dresser set against the wall, bone china too, decorated with blue flowers. The saucer lands near the teapot, and the cup jumps onto it with a rattle. Then the teapot tips into the air, all of its own accord, and pours tea into the cup.
The cup, in its saucer, jiggles across the table to me.
Drink, then eat, she says. This is not a trick I am playing on you. I will be dead forever. You will truly have won.
I look at the heart again. If it would destroy her, get back at her for what she has done; for the elks, for Coyote …
(for stealing you, says a voice very far back in my mind)
… then perhaps I should do it?
What would Mark tell me to do?
If you don’t, of course, she says, then you must remain with her, with me. You have no knife, as you admitted yourself.
I look at the knife in my hand, the silver one, but even as I do so my hand moves, and the knife darts and pricks my other hand; blood wells up wormlike.
That knife serves me, says the Crone. It is of my house. As I was saying, you have no knife. You have no choice.
I eat that, and you’re dead? I say.
As a coffin nail.
I am trying to work out the angle, the trick—because of course there is a trick, no matter what she says.
Coffin nail.
Coffin.
I look up at her, fast. That’s it, I think.
What? she says. What is it?
I eat this, and you die, that’s what you said.
Yes and I am not lying to—
I know you’re not lying, I say. But what do I become? What does that make me?
A look almost of nervousness comes to her face, like gray clouds come to an open sky. I don’t— she begins.
It makes me your coffin, I say. It makes me your tomb. You die, but I carry you around with me always. You own me always. You never let me forget you, or forgive you.
That’s not true, she says, but that gleaming seam of cruelty is back in her voice.
Yes, it is. You would be dead, that’s true. That’s one hundred percent true. But I would not have won. You would have won, because if you get your heart inside me, if you get your flesh inside me, then you have stolen me forever, you have marked me forever, and made me yours.
A wide smile, now, from the Crone, and for the first time her teeth show, and I see how they have been sharpened to points.
Well, she says. You are smart. But tell me, clever girl, how are you going to leave? How are you going to defeat me? I am Crone. I am the lurker in the forest. I am death to all unwary children. I can make you eat my heart.
And my hands move, against my will, and the fork skewers the heart, and the knife in my right hand begins to cut me a slice.
Chapter 70
I feel tears begin to form, as I sit there, powerless. But they don’t come. I don’t cry easily.
I feel sick, though. The Crone is going to turn me into her tomb, and I’ll never be free of her. The knife has almost finished cutting me a thin slice of heart, and it glistens sickly.
She told me she was the bane of unwary children, and I believe her.
No—wait.
Two of those words snag on briars in my mind, get caught there while the rest of the thought goes on like a disappearing deer, ghosting into nothingness.
Children.
Believe.
My hand is going back and forth, cutting into the heart while my other hand holds it still with the fork, but my mind is churning.
I remember Mark saying, Remember you’re an adult. At the time I didn’t understand. I still don’t, not totally, but …
I remember him touching that iron, by mistake, not even being aware of it, and nothing happening, no scorching sizzle, no burning, magical or otherwise.
The people of the Dreaming can’t touch iron because they believe they can’t, I think. I bet if Mark had reached out and touched it, knowingly, it would have hurt him, because of the strength of his belief.
Belief, I think.
Children.
Belief and children …
What are you doing, child? says the Crone, and I look down, and see that the knife and fork are not moving; they are perfectly still in my hands. There is strain and tension in her face; veins show in her forehead.
I stare at her.
And then it all clicks into place, all bolts together. She said it herself, even, didn’t she? That Crones are the bane of unwary children.
Children.
Child.
She called me child.
But that’s just it, I say, out loud.
That’s just what? she replies.
I’m not a child, I say. I’m an adult. As I say this, I know it’s true. Sure, in my world, there’s like a month to go before I’m legally not a child, before I can live on my own. But here? I’m fully grown. I have gone through puberty. The Dreaming is older than the stars; in the Dreaming, the laws of the United States of America are less than nothing, and in the Dreaming, I am not a child, not anymore.
Fear distorts the Crone’s features, as if her whole face is clenching around something bitter.
And your magic only works on children, doesn’t it? I say.
No, not just—
On children who believe, I add. It only works on children who believe.
Storm clouds burst behind her eyes, darkness falling there, cold, shot through with lightning. But she doesn’t scare me anymore.
I remember my (mother), sounding so impotent in the hospital, saying she told me to stay at home, that I knew what could happen to me out there in the world if I strayed. But that only works on kids, doesn’t it? The spell of telling children what to do is this: they believe that if they don’t do it, they will be hurt, they will fall prey to the monsters under the bed, they will be lost.
They believe.
Like I believed that without my (mother) to protect me, I would be nothing but another weak victim, a morsel for the men who roamed outside the circle of firelight that my (mother) created for us.
But look what I have survived.
Like Mark believed, Coyote, with that iron cage: he believed it would cause him pain, and who knows, maybe it even would have, if he had touched it knowingly.
But it didn’t hurt him when he didn’t know he was touching it.
The spell of telling children what to do: that is what the Crone is doing to me, I realize; she is telling me to eat the heart, telling my hands, only she is doing it in some way that doesn’t involve speaking, some older way, and because I was thinking like a child, because I was believing I couldn’t stop her, it worked.
I don’t believe you anymore, I say. I don’t believe anything you say. I don’t believe you can force me to do this.
The knife trembles in my hand.
Nonsense, says the Crone. I can make you do anything. I can—
She snarls. Curse him, she says. I will feast on his entrails.
He’s dead, I say. You showed me, on your embroidery—him falling from the bridge.
She nods quickly. Oh, yes.
And I think: no, you idiot, you are believing again. What if he isn’t dead at all? Just like in those books, in the Flagstaff store, what if he can come back? What if I manage to kill the Crone, and rescue the Child somehow, and he can make it rain again?
I push my chair a little back from the table.
Stay right there, says the Crone.
No, I say. And I stand up.
The Crone’s face is twisted into a mask of anger. How dare you disobey me!
Shut up, I say.
Blood drains from her skin; she is white with shock. Nobody speaks to—
How do I free the Child? I say. How do I break the ice?
You can’t, says the Crone, sneering.
I bet I can.
She shakes her head, but I don’t believe her, so I begin to turn, to leave her behind and return to the grass outside, to the prison of ice. If I can hold firm against her spell, then who knows what magic I can work?
Maybe I can break the ice with my mind.
Oh no, says the Crone as I move. If you will not eat the heart, I must kill you. I cannot let you leave me.
Your magic doesn’t work on—
But then she draws a dagger from the folds of her clothing. It is literally like something from a fairy tale—shiny, tapering to an incredibly fine point, vicious looking. It’s like it was made for cutting out hearts. Then I see a streak of blood on it, and I know it was used for that. Recently.
You are still unarmed, she says. Unless you count that thing in your hand. But that’s not a knife. Not like this. I will have slit your throat before you even raise it to defend yourself.
She moves toward me, still with that surprising grace, like her body wastes no energy at all, like her every step is precisely calibrated, economical, and she is raising the blade.
Time turns to ice; invisible, solid.
I reach for the feather and pull it out.
Please, says the Crone. Eagle has no power here. But is that a shiver of fear in the smallest muscle beside her eye?
No, it’s not, because she’s still coming forward. She lifts the blade up high, and it flashes through the air as she brings it down, hard, toward me, stabbing me.
For the second time in like ten minutes I am about to die.
Shit, I think.
Chapter 71
The Crone swings the blade, its edge flashing in the air. For a moment, the weirdest thing: she has my face, she’s me, and then she’s the Crone again, my (mother).
But then I remember something else: something about fairy tales. How the Crone always brings about her own downfall, inadvertently. Like in Hansel and Gretel, they trick her into looking in the oven, and she ends up pushed in there, broiled alive.
I don’t have to eat her heart. But I can still stop it. And she has given me the way to do it.
I look down at the pulsing thing on the plate, and then, very deliberately, I stab the knife in my hand down, right into the center of it, as hard as I can.
The heart bursts—blood rains over me, hot and sticky. The Crone stops fractions of a second from taking my head with the dagger—doesn’t just stop moving, like of her own accord, but is stopped, like a film frozen on a single frame; her foot is up and by all logic of gravity she should fall forward on her face, but she hangs there, immobile. The knife shimmers, still, the light from the fire playing on it like waves.
I think for a moment: she’s going to explode, or something.
But she doesn’t. Nothing happens at all.
I don’t move, for a while. Then I get up and touch her. She is cold and hard, like stone. A statue defying physics.
I have killed the Crone, I think. I have zero point zero feelings about it. It’s like I might not actually have feelings again, ever. Slowly, I go to the broken door, and walk out into the corridor. I keep glancing behind me, thinking she’s going to pop up, and be like, Ha!, I’m a Crone, or did you forget?
But she doesn’t—she stays dead. Or frozen. Or whatever.
I go through the big main door, and out onto the dead grass. I feel invincible, like I’m walking on air. I am the Maiden, and I killed the Crone.
Then I realize something.
I can still hear crying.
I walk away from the castle, back toward the ravine, half hoping that with the Crone dead the box of ice will have melted, just like that.
It hasn’t.
It’s still sitting there, gleaming in the permanent starlight. And the Child inside it, I see as I approach, standing now, hands against the ice, crying out for me.
I walk forward. My heart is heavy in my chest. The Crone is gone but what about the Child?
What am I supposed to do about the Child?
I am at the little ice castle now, a miniature in light, in crystal, of the dark castle behind me. The Child looks up at me, banging her little fists on the wall of ice impotently. I look around me, desperately, hoping for Coyote, hoping to see him climbing up from the ravine to help me.
But he doesn’t come.
Maybe this time he is really dead, and is never coming back.
The Child’s cries are pins through my whole body. Twisting. I reach out again for the ice and hammer it with the side of my hand—instantly, pain explodes down my arm, impact and coldness rolled into one sharp bolt of agony.
Okay, I think.
Okay, change the plan. I remember the cottage in the castle, the idea of belief. I think to myself: believe you can do this. Believe it. I look right into the Child’s enormous eyes and I steel my will.
I believe that this ice is going to melt, I think.
I think that this ice is not here.
It’s like when I was a kid, and I thought that if I concentrated hard enough I could make a book fall from my desk—I tense my mind, try to force the ice through sheer power of belief to break, to melt away.
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t and I can’t take it anymore.
Screw this, I think.
I kick out, start to rain blows on the thing, with my hands and feet, it hurts like you can’t believe, every nerve in me taut and resonating like wire, transmitting pain like white noise, pain that fuzzes everything else—the sound of the Child, the darkness around me, the ravine—into nothingness.
I keep going, shouting, cursing, willing the thing to break under my barrage of blows.
My hands are bleeding.
My foot may be broken.
Eventually, my movements slow. I can’t go on—I’m exhausted, and wiped out by the burning cold of the ice prison. I slump against it, still on my feet but only just, crying now too, overwhelmed. My head rests on the roof of the structure, burning my cheek, but I don’t care. I have come all this way, I have killed the Crone, and now I’m here and I can see the Child there on the other side of the thin ice wall, but I can’t get through to her.
Slowly, I reach out my hands, and put them on the ice, where the Child has hers, so that we are almost touching each other, palm to palm. I look into her eyes, her desperate eyes, her tear-filled eyes, and I cry even harder.
I’m so sorry, I think. I’m so sorry. I can’t get to you.
I’m so—
Hands.
Hands on my shoulders, shaking me, invisible hands, gripping, shaking, and the Dreaming disappears and I am—
Chapter 72
—In the climbing store, standing in the aisle. The counter guy is obviously back from his smoke break—I can smell the tobacco almost before I register anything else, and then I process his face, his eyes looking into mine with concern; he has long d
irty white hair and a cute face, maybe twenty.
He is also holding my shoulders; it was him shaking me, I realize.
I blink at him and he whisks his hands away, quickly.
Can I help you? he says. Are you okay?
What? I say with my mouth.
You were … I don’t know. Having a fit or something. Kicking and punching and stuff. Then you stopped.
Oh.
So … you need anything? Are you … I don’t know, epileptic or something? He glances down at my CAM Walker, he’s maybe figuring me for someone who was in an accident and has a head injury. Maybe.
I just want to run out of there, run as fast as the CAM Walker will let me, but I know that will only make him more suspicious, so I force myself to look right at him, and shake my head.
I’m okay, I say. Honestly. Just … letting out some frustration.
I can see that he’s not convinced. My warped, deaf-person vowels are presumably not helping. At the same time, like most people, he’s not going to blatantly go against what I say. You don’t want me to call anyone? he says.
No.
He frowns. Let me help you to a seat, at least.
I nod. I had better let him sit me down, go through the motions of recovering from some passing fugue type thing.
He leads me to the desk, where he lowers me into a surprisingly comfortable office-style chair.
I was watching you, he says. He gestures to a CCTV screen below the desk, I hadn’t noticed it. Black-and-white footage, grainy. Old-school style.
I nod, like, okay.
You stood in the aisle for, like, a half hour, he says. With like camming wedges and stuff. I thought about calling an ambulance, like you’d had a stroke or something.
Inside I’m thinking:
Wtf? I was in THE DREAMING. I wasn’t standing in the store for a half hour. Was I?
Was I?
I realize he’s looking at me, waiting for me to say something.
Just … came in here to think, I say slowly. Problems with my mom.