The Chestnut King

by N. D. Wilson

  A large bald faerie with a purple eye patch leapt at Henry and brought a heavy mace down onto his head.

  There were too many dreams that wanted to be. They struggled with each other, images colliding. Shapes twisted and colored and disappeared. Stars stared down at Henry, daring him to stare back, to see who would blink first. Trees grew, bent beneath a storm, and were gone. Hyacinth smiled at Henry, reached for his face, and cried. Fire grew around her, and she became sky-climbing smoke.

  Coradin stood over Uncle Frank in the cathedral, his knife raised. Dotty was on her knees, too, beside her husband. Her hair was straggling away from her head like it always did when she baked. There was flour on her face and a bowl of peaches beside her. She was rolling dough on the floor. The girls were lined up as well, all of them kneeling, and Coradin’s knife grew into his sword. Monmouth was yelling for Henry, telling him to run. Where was he in the darkness? Two bright aspen trees stood in a garden and Monmouth hung between them, his fingers gone, his hands grafted into the silver bark. Ten men in black lay on their faces in front of him. A city was burning. Henry was kneeling in a Kansas field, ripe for the harvest, watching a storm building above him. Green lightning struck him, and he was fire, running through the fields, burning the world.

  Henry tried to make it stop. He tried to direct his mind, to focus on a single thing, even a nightmare. But the barrage didn’t slow. The images quickened, the horror grew, until Henry sat alone in a cold, dark crypt, sealed in, undying, consumed by madness. A stone slid on the floor and a shape crawled out, carrying a ball circled with white fire. The shape was Mordecai, laughing, stroking the Blackstar, gibbering in a woman’s voice.

  Stop. Stop. But Henry had no eyes to squeeze shut, no way to shut it all out. Grandmother? Where was she? Everyone Henry loved died or became evil while he watched, and she didn’t come. He suffocated on his own dandelions, and she wasn’t there. The scar on his face gnawed at him like a creature digging into his mind, draining his life, his sanity. And Henry began to cry.

  He woke suddenly, sobbing in a dark room. Hot tears cooled on his jaw while his body quaked and his lungs struggled for air. Lights hung on the wall, three small, glowing circles in a cluster. Where was he? The bald faerie had hit him on the head with a chestnut. The fingerlings were gone.

  His body calmed, his breathing leveled. He tried to sit up, and his head nearly exploded with the pain.

  “You are a dreamer,” a voice said. “But in this room, any horror is your own. No mind or spirit can reach through these walls. No mind or spirit can escape them.”

  The light on the wall grew, and Henry squinted around the room. It was a small bedroom, and it held exactly one bed and one chair, with the lights on the wall between them. There was no door. The light was a steady flame burning three large chestnuts, or burning around the chestnuts. Nothing was happening to them, and there wasn’t any smoke. The large, bald faerie sat in the chair across from Henry. Leaning back with his thick legs crossed, the faerie adjusted his eye patch and pulled on the ends of his mustache. His head glowed almost as much as the chestnuts.

  “I am Jacques,” the faerie said. “Green whelpling, you are where you should not be.”

  Henry pressed his fingers against his temples and tried hard to keep his eyes focused. What had his father said? You have bullied faeren before. No bowing. “I am Henry, and I am where I’m supposed to be. I have a gift for the Chestnut King from Mordecai Westmore, green man to the northern faeren.”

  Jacques snorted. “Green man to the lesser faeren of several districts, and a seamstress, too, no doubt. Has he made the king a scarf?”

  “I must see the king,” Henry said.

  “You must see me,” Jacques said, smiling. “And that is all the must you need.”

  Henry leaned forward, trying not to look like his skull was screaming pain. “I don’t think you understand. I’m not asking to see the king. I’m telling you what will be. The king must see me. I have a gift for him.”

  This time, Jacques laughed. “The sparrow thinks himself no smaller than the rooster and cocks his doodle-doo. The potatoes are in need of composting. You are more likely to offer up your life in their service than to offer up your gift to the king, or even see his face. The child acts a bravado, but I have seen him weep.”

  Henry pushed himself up off the bed. The little light in the room vanished as the blood drained from Henry’s head. He braced himself against the wall as it returned.

  “I wept for the faeren people,” Henry said. “I am fond of chickens.”

  Jacques stood as well, facing Henry, his glistening scalp almost reaching Henry’s shoulders. His one eye sparkled. “You set a flame to one of the ancient three-mace trees, little greenling. You owe us gratitude for every breath your lungs draw.”

  Henry looked down at the faerie. “Thank you for not murdering me while I slept. And thank you for knocking me over the head. I only set the flame to draw you out.” Henry smiled. “Actually, I really am grateful you came, even with the head-knocking. I had raced those fingerlings from Hylfing.”

  “Fingerlings?” Jacques cocked an eyebrow. “Truly?”

  “Truly,” Henry said.

  The big faerie tugged at one end of his mustache. “Their resilience is explained. We were unable to kill them, and several of our own were struck down.”

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said. “They’ve been after me for a while. They might even be able to find me here.”

  Jacques shook his head. “No. No one finds here. Not even the lesser faeren. Not you. Not your father. All are brought.”

  “Is my dog okay?” Henry asked suddenly. “And where’s my raggant?”

  “Your dog? We believed it to be your uncle’s.”

  “Right,” Henry said. “Beo is my uncle Caleb’s, but he sent him with me.”

  Jacques nodded. “We have a fondness for your uncle here, though none for your father. Caleb, Amram’s son, has a love of the wilds, and all growing and breathing things obey his kindness. His dog has been made happy. The raggant’s injuries have been tended, though he has been made to sleep or he would have broken his skull on these walls in search of you.”

  Henry crossed his arms and blinked slowly. The faerie’s face was blurring. “Where’s my sister? And my little cousin?”

  Jacques turned away.

  “They were with my friend, a skinny kid named Richard,” Henry continued. “And Fat Frank. I know you brought them here.”

  A doorway opened in the wall, and Jacques stepped into it. “They are as well as you,” he said. “Rest now. It is late. The moon climbs high. You have slept long but not well. Your head is weak. Give it peaceful dreamings. I and others will return.”

  “The king,” Henry said. “I need to see the king. And Nudd needs to see me.”

  “Do not speak his name,” Jacques said. He waved a hand at the chestnuts, and Henry blinked as they snuffed out.

  “Leave the light,” he said, swallowing down a faint taste of panic. “I prefer the light.”

  “You fear the darkness?” Jacques laughed. “Your grandfather’s line has truly failed. From the great Amram to Mordecai to you, a weed at the foot of a mighty tree.”

  Henry leaned against the earthen wall. “Give me light!” he yelled. Anger hammered at the inside of his skull.

  The dim outline of the doorway began to vanish, but not before glowing dandelions rimmed it and spread through, surrounding the big faerie. Jacques blinked in surprise, and the door was gone. Henry sank slowly and carefully back onto his bed, watching the dandelions line the walls and cover the ceiling. Their sweet smell replaced the scent of dirt, and each one spun and swung in the same bright dance that sat on his palm. The light was better. Even when he shut his eyes, knowing that there was light was much better.

  His ears were ringing like his old doorbell in Boston, and he pressed his knuckles hard against them. With his eyes shut, he breathed slowly and tried to think. He doubted that the faerie was right about all dream
ing in this room being in his mind, but it was definitely an attractive idea. That meant he could change things. There would be no horror. Just his grandmother, and if she couldn’t make it, baseball.

  His eyes shut, and his mind fell into nothingness.

  Tilly Johnson sat nervously in her vinyl chair, twisting the sleeve of her oversize sweater with one hand and holding Grandmother Anastasia’s cold hand with the other. The old woman’s skin was smooth to touch. Her wind-weathered face now seemed soft and strangely young, even beneath the plastic mask and the terrible, flickering hospital lights. Her white hair was bright, whiter than the hard, bleached pillow beneath it. Her breaths were slow and small and far apart. A heart monitor drew pictures of low mountains, one lonely peak at a time.

  A glass door slid open, and a nurse in pink scrubs slipped in. “Mrs. Johnson?”

  Tilly sniffed and looked up. The nurse gave her a sympathetic smile and cocked her head.

  “How old is your mother?”

  Tilly shrugged and shook her head slowly. Reaching up, she gently brushed back the white hair with her fingers and fanned it over the pillow. “I don’t even know.”

  “Has she lived a good life?” the nurse asked. “Clearly, she’s loved.”

  Tilly’s eyes shot up to the nurse’s. “What are you saying?”

  “The scans are all clean. No clots, no blockages. Her lungs are fine. Her heart is strong.”

  “Then what’s wrong? What can you do?”

  The nurse sat down on the end of the bed and put her hand on Grandmother’s leg.

  “All lives end,” she said. “We can make her comfortable for as long as she holds on.”

  Antilly Johnson began to cry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Henrietta shivered. Clouds sailed in silhouette across the face of the moon. Distant white lines of surf crawled toward unseen cliffs.

  “Do you think he made it?” she asked. “We should have followed him.”

  Zeke looked at her. The two of them sat on the roof of the inn. They were supposed to be watching the square, but Henrietta’s eyes kept drifting toward the sea and the galley in the harbor. Zeke was holding a bow that Zeb had given him, and a quiver hung over his shoulder. She had wanted only a small knife, now tucked into her belt.

  “We couldn’t follow him,” Zeke whispered. “I’m no Indian tracker, and we don’t know where he went.”

  “We should have followed the finger-men.”

  “If we had, we would both be dead in the hills.”

  “With Henry,” Henrietta said slowly. “Dead in the hills with Henry.”

  Zeke shook his head. “He’s tough. And he had Beo.”

  “There were three of them.” Henrietta sniffed and twisted a finger in what she now thought of as her horrible hair.

  Zeke elbowed her and pointed. A group of soldiers were moving across the square. More than fifty. They’d come out of the hall and had almost reached the fountain.

  “Just patrolling,” Henrietta said.

  Zeke shook his head. He tucked one leg up and baseball-slid down the roof, grabbed on to a dormer, and swung his legs into an open window. He tossed his bow through, then leaned back and stuck his arm out for Henrietta. She slid down and caught his hand, and he dragged her halfway into what had been their room. A candle burned low on the table. BACK SOON, H was carved on the door. A rickety cupboard peeked out of a backpack on one of the beds. Together, Zeke and Henrietta tumbled down the stairs and into the crowded dining room.

  “Soldiers,” Zeke said. “Fifty, maybe more. Coming from the hall.”

  Tonight, the men were harder. No one was drinking, and the anger crackled ice-cold. Men, friends and brothers, had been lost as well as the city. Sailors and guardsmen and merchants had spent the evening sitting quietly, whispering quietly, sharpening swords and small boarding hatchets, fletching arrows and oiling bowstrings, waiting for the appointed time.

  “Lanterns,” Zeb said. “Archers to the windows.”

  In an instant, the lights in the dining room died. Bowmen crept to the blanketed windows. In the blackness, Henrietta felt Zeke begin to move forward, but she grabbed his arm.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “Archers,” he said quietly, and crept to a window where one man already crouched, painted with moonlight through the barely lifted blanket. Henrietta followed Zeke carefully, and when he crouched, she crouched beside him.

  Gray shapes moved silently to surround the house. Crossbows, pikes, and swords spread themselves in a fence. Sparks stood out in the dark as someone struck a flint, and then an oily flame came to life on the end of a torch and quickly spread to a dozen others. A man walked to the door.

  The pounding of his fist echoed through the inn.

  “Rebels and traitors!” he shouted. “Weapons to the floor! Crawl out in a line or burn together!”

  The voice of Zebudee, strengthened by years of barroom ballads, boomed a reply. “Servants of the snake! Back to the sea on your bellies, or a merry good-bye to you and your souls!” And then quieter, to the room, “Torches first, lads.”

  While Henrietta watched the torch-bearing soldiers step forward, the room filled with the sound of shattering glass. Zeke and the man next to him both forced arrowheads and fists through panes and then let fly. The torchmen in the ring all fell, but while the flames flickered on the cobbles, a swarm of crossbow bolts ripped through the windows and blankets and rattled through the beamed room. Glass and wool fell onto Henrietta’s head as the soldiers rushed forward, pressing at every window, forcing the door. Throwing the blanket away, she saw the flame and moon shadow that was Zeke draw his bow and release it inches from a climbing soldier’s belly. The man folded over and tumbled into the inn, two others still alive behind him. Henrietta staggered backward, pulling her knife.

  It was then that she saw the three shapes beyond the rushing soldiers, the three men in black with the moon-silver helmets. One of them drew his long sword and began to move forward through the clattering mayhem. It parted around him like so much mist.

  “Zeke!” Henrietta yelled. “Zeke!”

  As if he knew her voice, the fingerling turned and walked toward her window. The others walked behind him.

  Throughout the dining room, the shouting grew triumphant. The soldiers had broken. Armed men leapt out of the windows, running survivors down. Three men jumped out over Zeke where he knelt, shrugging off a soldier’s body. All were cut down with the fingerling’s long blade. The dark men had reached the window and were climbing through. Zeke found his feet and staggered backward, notching another arrow, drawing his bow. The long blade flicked, and Zeke’s bow leapt out of his hands in two halves. The man raised his sword above Zeke like an executioner, and Henrietta ran forward, yelling. She jumped into the man’s chest and threw her arms around his neck. For a moment, she hung on him, groping with her little knife, trying to slide the blade up the back of his helmet. And then, for the second time, the man’s fingers found her hair and forced back her head. The butt of his sword cracked against her temple, and she slipped away, floating in a pool of darkness.

  When Henrietta opened her eyes, her body was folded over something big and moving, squeezing against her stomach and chest. Her breath wasn’t coming easily, and her ribs ached. Her quick pulse drummed in her temples. The only light came from the moon and some distant orange flickering.

  Groaning, she tried to straighten up, but she couldn’t. She was draped over the back of a horse, and a tight rope ran between her hands and feet beneath its belly. A man rode bareback in front of her. Craning her head, she could see a broad metal belt and silver chains running up his back to a collar, and from the collar to the rim of a silver helmet. A long sword was sheathed on his back. Two other horses rode nearby. A second shape drooped behind one of the riders.

  “Zeke?” Henrietta said. “Zeke?” The man in front of her shifted slightly.

  “If that is his name,” the man said, “the queen knew him. She requi
res you both.”

  “Who are you?” Henrietta asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I am called Coradin. My father was also Coradin. We have always carried swords.”

  “Did you want the finger?” Henrietta asked. “Does she make you do everything?”

  When the man said nothing, Henrietta arched her back as far as she could and tried to see where they were. Hylfing was below her, at the bottom of a long, smooth slope. The square was full of tiny torches, and a huge bonfire blazed near the center. While she watched, the bells began to ring. She knew this slope well. She and Eli had galloped down it on Caleb’s horse, with lightning falling around them. The fingerlings were taking her to the wizard door.

  “What happened in the city?” she asked.

  “Do the bells not tell you? The soldiers were slain or captured. The galley was taken. The slaves were freed.”

  “Did the inn burn?”

  “How many more questions await me?”

  “Did it?”

  “No.”

  Henrietta wished that she could laugh, that she could be happy, that she could taunt the man with failure. But she didn’t think that he had failed. If he had wanted to burn the inn, it would have burned. He had wanted her. And Zeke. Why? What did that mean about Henry?

  “My cousin got away, didn’t he?” Henrietta strained to look up at the back of the man’s head. “I mean, the witch wouldn’t care about me if she had him.”

  Coradin said nothing.

  Henrietta forced more air inside her aching ribs. Talking hurt, but she didn’t care. “We’re going to the old wizard door, aren’t we? I’ve been through it before. With my uncle. But where then? Where are you taking us?” Pausing long enough to know that the man wasn’t going to answer, she continued. “You know you’re going to die, don’t you? When my uncles kill the witch, you’ll probably go, too, right? Because of that finger. My uncles will kill the witch. She might make a big mess first, but they’ll kill her just like they killed Darius.”

  “I do not know Darius,” Coradin said. “But the queen has no life to lose. Still your tongue. No more words.”