Pretty Peg

by Skye Allen

  Laura was still talking. “He bragged about it. He was, like, proud of it. Oh, ugh, it was so scary. It’s about their weird gamer thing. There’s supposed to be two more kills, two more of, they called it a prize or something….” And her eyes widened as she realized exactly what was going to happen to us. How we were going to die.

  Robert killed Margaret. He killed her and cut out her heart and left her body by the side of the road seven thousand miles from home. I couldn’t talk him out of it. What was I thinking to even try? We need to get out of here before it happens to us.

  And I remembered the knife in the sheath on his belt, and a thin animal sound burst out of my lungs. I had been worried about the gun, but you needed a knife to cut out someone’s heart. A hunting knife like that would work just fine.

  Chapter 16

  “IT IS nearly dawn! Transport the prisoners!” called the throaty voice of the Winter Queen’s bald servant from below. There was a rustle in the underbrush like the sound of rats scuttling up to the cave mouth, and the triangular head of a corn goat appeared between my feet. My stomach twisted in revulsion. The creature’s paws reached for me, black claws extended. A metal bar swung from a chain attached to its wrist, like a billy club. I didn’t want to find out what that was for. Laura squeaked and hugged her knees tighter.

  “It’s all good. I can handle these guys,” I said. I kicked out at the concertina folds of its face.

  “Mortal!” The creature’s voice was a hiss I could barely hear. “Up!”

  I couldn’t tell if this was the same corn goat I’d bribed with an apple. I wished I had an apple for this one. A whole bag of apples.

  Something bulky poked me in the side. I looked down and saw my jacket splitting open with a gigantic bulge that had not been there before.

  Startled, I patted my pocket and then felt inside for—there it was. The burlap sack the ring-around-the-rosy girls had given me at Fern’s. I extracted a bag heavy with apples.

  “Corn goat, I’ll give you this whole bag if you help me,” I said.

  The fey animal might have been surprised. I couldn’t tell. It snatched the bag with one paw and with the other extended a closed fist, claws in a shiny row. “Take!” the creature insisted. Glittering eyes rolled toward the paw and back to my face. I held out my hand, and an oblong pellet dropped into my palm.

  “Will remove pain. Death hasty. Not give them satisfaction,” the corn goat whispered, and it slid backward through the thick branches. I looked at the thing it had given me. It was clear glass, about an inch long, filled with smeary liquid in rainbow colors.

  I slid the poison carefully into my jeans pocket and gathered myself up to climb down. Great. I give up my fairy treasure, and all I get is a quick suicide. “I better go first. There’s not really enough room for you to get out otherwise,” I said to Laura. Her eyes were closed, and she was moving her lips. “Are you praying? Get it together!”

  “F-sharp C-sharp, D. F-sharp C-sharp G-sharp, A.” I knew enough about music to know that was the circle of fifths. She was reciting it to herself like a rosary.

  “Mortals coming down!” announced the corn goat from below us.

  “Laura. Move your skinny ass,” I said. I wanted to grab her legs, but I was afraid the damage to her ankle was worse than it looked.

  “I’m going crazy.” Her voice was small.

  “Maybe, but we can talk about that later. Can you move? Don’t put weight on that arm.” I cajoled her out through the cave mouth and down the six feet or so to the ground. She could only hang on to branches on her left side and kept her right hand on her stomach with the sleeve of her sweater pulled down around it. It was slow going, and I winced every time she winced, but eventually she stood on the ground beside me, facing the bridge.

  The sky was gray now, making the small white fires in their pots look insignificant under the towering redwoods I hadn’t been able to see clearly in the dark. Beside the bridge was the bank where the Winter Queen had disappeared. When there was water, the creek would flow on the other side of the bank. It was light enough now to see the dirt on Laura’s skirt and the leaves in her hair. Her right eye was fat-lidded, half the size of the left one.

  “You look like shit,” she said, giving me the up-and-down.

  “You should see the other guy.”

  “Juicy gobbets, you will march.” That was the bald man, slapping the rounded back of his hand into his palm. His flaking red eyes lingered on Laura’s breasts.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” Laura sounded like a little girl. She clapped her good hand over her mouth as soon as she spoke.

  The bald man answered, “Sunburn Lady made your little sister here bound to the Realm. That makes today a special day, because every immortal that comes to the battle will be easy to kill for once. So what we have cooked up is for you to sit nice and still over the hill there and get dead when the sun comes up, before any sunburnts can get through the wall and pick a fight. One stone, a couple birds.” His tongue flicked out, and I shuddered.

  We marched, prodded in the back now and then by the bald man when Laura stumbled on her sore ankle or I tripped over a rock. My mind wheeled through the same two thoughts. We’re going to die in a few minutes. And if we don’t, my being there is going to make it so all the Fair Folk can die. I thought I had understood what it meant to be bound to the Faerie Realm when I drank from the Summer Queen’s cup, but I hadn’t, not fully. I realized now that I was totally trapped. There was no way for me to stop whatever was going to happen. My sister was going to die because I couldn’t keep her safe. And if my friends died, it was going to be my fault. That’s who I am in this thing. I’m not the Summer Lady’s favorite mortal. I’m the Angel of Death.

  The walk wasn’t long, but we had to go slowly because Laura was hurt. She mumbled to herself, and I didn’t try to shush her. I told myself Blossom can peck their eyes out. The bark woman and the scary fur man, they’re on my side. We’re going to get out of this alive. We have to. I was queasy with fear and adrenaline and having been up all night. My stomach and my brain kept exchanging squirts of danger chemicals. Warning! Trouble ahead! I told my jittery, bone-tired body to hush.

  The thing the Winter Fey had been building was on the other side of the bank. It didn’t look like much, just a totem-pole-sized beam pointing to the sky from the center of a plywood stage and propped up by boards that were nailed to the beam at an angle like guy wires. It reminded me of a gallows from a cowboy movie, but there was no place for a noose. Behind it, I saw three faint stars in the gray-blue sky.

  The group of Winter fey who had followed their Queen away from the bridge were gathered in a rough half circle around the platform. A deep thrum in the air, almost too low to hear, made me turn my head. I instantly wished I hadn’t. It was the harpy, looming taller than the post on the platform. The monster’s wings beat slowly, stirring the air and the hair and feathers of all the creatures in her radius. She was part bird of prey, part human woman. Greenish human eyes flashed in a face that was feathered around the eyes and in sharp lines along the cheekbones, surrounding a black beak. Her eagle-like wings lifted away from her shoulders, and I could make out swinging breasts that looked like leather above the lighter feathers of her curved belly. Her legs ended in smooth hands with bird’s talons. Her head, maybe ten feet above me, jerked forward and back on her massive neck. One peck of that polished beak could probably sever a major artery. I shivered in the breeze her beating wings made. Beside me, Laura hummed a panic hum and dug her exposed neck into her grimy white sweater.

  The sun was rising. I couldn’t see it yet, but the harpy’s dark wing had caught the light. The wind carried the wet smell of redwoods and fresh mud and sawdust. I looked at the menacing wooden beam again. Plain, for the fey and their pretty ways.

  But of course it wasn’t designed by the fey. Robert clomped onto the platform on his hard boots, and the rustle and clink of the Winter Folk around him stilled.

  He gestured with
a stern nod, and the bald man behind us oozed forward to bow. Bowing to Robert? That sight scared me as much as anything else I’d seen tonight. Robert didn’t look at Laura and me. Brother. Don’t let this happen to us, I thought hard in his direction, but I was afraid to say it out loud.

  A movement out of the corner of my eye made the gathered company suck in their breath. At the last second I spotted it: the Winter Queen, in the center of a clump of very tall ash-colored creatures, her long arms thrusting upward with the fingers of one hand splayed. The knotted staff was in the other hand, angled toward us. Her eyes looked like stones in her hollow face, and her hair formed a wild black halo.

  In one soundless motion, a chain like the one that had held Laura’s ankle wrapped itself around my wrists. I did not see where it came from. I looked at Laura and felt a stab of sympathetic agony as her pale left hand curled away at the wrist from the blue-red ham of her broken right one, chained together now. Her eyes were squeezed shut. The bald man kicked at my feet until I shuffled, and he directed me toward the upright beam. When I moved, Laura jerked forward, and I realized we were both tied up with the same chain. She tripped over her long skirt as she was dragged over to the beam. The bald man slapped the top of my head hard, and I sat down. I had no balance without my hands, and my feet scrabbled so I could scoot myself upright. The chain snaked around the beam, crossing my chest and then, I could feel, Laura’s behind me. We were back-to-back. I wished I could see my sister. I didn’t know exactly how that would make me feel better, but not being able to make eye contact made me feel sick with fear. We were back-to-back, but we were each going to die alone.

  I realized then what the wooden beam actually reminded me of. Not a gallows. A stake. This was where Robert was going to kill us. My mind delivered that news from some distant place. This is where Robert is going to kill you. The words scrolled across the screen of my mind. I felt cold and afraid, and there was a pocket of sadness in my throat, but all my sensations were sealed up, like I was the girl in the glass column in that Winter snow globe now. Laura and I were going to die in a few minutes. There was nothing I could do to stop it, not anymore.

  When I looked up, all I saw were monsters. The unicycle boy leaned in to gape at us, and my stomach turned at the sight of the gummy fringe in his eyelashes. He made a deep gurgling noise and then shaped his chapped lips into a U, and in the second before it happened, I thought He’s going to hock. It hit me on the ear, hot and then cold. Acid filled my mouth, and I turned my head to avoid throwing up on my jeans, but nothing came up.

  Robert paced into my field of vision. The knife was in his hand, and the empty sheath slapped against his army-green pants as he moved. He tested the blade with his thumb and looked at the Winter Queen. In the slanted light of dawn, all the Grant family resemblance in his face was gone. My brother was a killer now. A monster, no different from the Winter Folk who were all leaning in around us now, craning for a good view. A fresh stab of fear leaped up my throat.

  “This is the day my champion truly becomes one of us.” The Winter Queen spoke, and despite already being sick with fear, the hairs on my wrists went stiff. “I challenged him to bring me the hearts of three mortals as fee. His loyalty is proved today. With twin strokes of this fey blade”—and she inclined her dark head toward the long knife—“he wins his place at my side, and I, at last, the territory that is rightfully mine. Our people will rejoice this day!” The cheers sounded like the cackles of playground bullies. She pounded the staff in her hand on a rock and silence fell, except for the thin wail that had to be coming from Laura.

  I heard muttering from behind me. “B-flat, E-flat, G minor.” So she wasn’t the one making that terrified sound.

  Then the wailing stopped, and Professor Hill’s voice called out, “Laura! Child! I never wanted this!”

  There was a sound like something hard thwacking into a watermelon, and a gurgling noise, and I knew without seeing it that Professor Hill was dead. The Winter Queen lifted her arms again with triumph on her face, and she crowed out a syllable I couldn’t understand.

  The smell of blood clouded the air, filling my throat with pennies, and I vomited a puddle of water. That’s going to be me soon, steaming just like that. The whole inside of me is going to be on the outside. Please kill Laura first so she doesn’t have to hear the sound of me dying.

  “The sun rises,” the Winter Queen shouted. “Let my sister witness the full glory of her defeat!” And I heard a great cracking sound, like all the mirrors in the world were being smashed. The invisible wall that divided the Summer Court camp from this side of the creek was coming down.

  I was facing the creekbed, with the woods behind me. I heard the clop of hooves and a whooshing thrum and the rough-sweet blare of a trumpet. It’s the carriage. The Summer Lady is here. Please, please do not be alone. Please have warriors with you.

  What I saw wasn’t the carriage. It was a glittering red-and-gold horde. Horses came tearing around the bend in the dry creekbed, fast and single file, and each one had a fey rider. I saw flashes of metal on spears and arrows. Slender banners in the Summer Court’s colors formed a wake high in the air behind the first riders. I caught the furious face of an elf I didn’t know, riding head-down over her bloodred saddle. She was dressed in a stiff jacket of deep orange leather that looked like armor, with the sleeves in overlapping layers like an armadillo’s back. A long spear was held low in one hand, and her hair streamed behind her in purple ribbons under a hard leather cap.

  She let out an ululating cry that made my blood soar, and all the warriors behind her echoed it: brown and black and tan horses with riders in every Summer color, all seated in the same bloodred saddles and all aiming weapons at the Winter Folk. I saw long metal spears, swords, sticks with sharpened tips that gleamed wetly in the white sunlight. And in the back, behind the first group of elves, I saw the game people. Three of them ran on foot, as tall as the elves on horseback, and their fur was silver and then brown as they ran, alternating like sunlight on water. The one nearest to me carried a weapon in both arms like a baby: a smooth club with a round serrated blade like a pizza cutter mounted on one end. It’s coated in poison, I thought, and I was filled with relief that this awe-inspiring army was on my side.

  Then I turned my head and saw the Winter Court warriors.

  The crowd of Winter fey that had gathered around the beam had maybe doubled in size, but even so it didn’t look like they had as many numbers as the Summer side, and at first they didn’t look organized. The boy on the unicycle wheeled forward with a mocking yell in answer to the Summer battle cry, and laughter surged up as the Winter Folk seethed forward to meet the Summer riders. A girl with dark green skin opened her sharp-toothed mouth and threw her head back in a joyful gesture, exposing the white eye tattooed on her throat. She had wicker wings, like the sprite Nicky had shown me that first day in the Realm. I wondered if the green girl had started out in the Summer Court and had crossed over.

  But then the sun glanced off a long metal thing in her hand, and the wolf with the man’s head was crouched at her side, growling loud enough to be heard over the yelling.

  And then I heard a sound like a million spiders skittering behind me, and I turned around and saw the Winter warriors boiling over the bank, low to the ground, in hard jackets the colors of motor oil and dirty snow. I lost count at ten when they kept moving forward, fast, way too fast. That was their plan, I realized, and my stomach sank. The Winter side had been waiting for the Summer fighters to come to them.

  Tall gray creatures surrounded the Winter Queen with spears that looked like sharpened glass in their bony hands. I tried to take a breath and felt it break in pieces through the filter of terror in my throat. Any one of these Winter Folk would be killing me and Laura any second. Why hadn’t they done it yet?

  And then the harpy struck. I heard the screaming first, and I caught a burst of motion as a brown horse at the side of the column tumbled to the ground, and then the sun was blotted out
, and the air was full of the helicopter feel of the harpy’s wings. She hovered over the mounted elves. Something wooden clattered to the stony ground. Did she still have the fey soldier in her talons? Oh God. I looked away before I had to see.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it to be over. I heard the slide and crash of metal grinding on metal, fast, heavy footsteps, harsh yells, and then, nearby but behind me, a shriek that ended in a burbling gasp. The sound of fabric being ripped. Laura, whose shoulder blades I could just barely feel where they touched mine on either side of the beam, muttering: “F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp….”

  We were going to get killed right here. We weren’t in the center of the battle—that was still concentrated maybe a hundred feet away on the creekbed, and a little downhill, but it was moving closer all the time as quick Winter fighters flanked the Summer fey who couldn’t move as fast on horseback. I was sure not even five minutes had passed yet. I opened my eyes and saw that the sun was still just half a red coin on the horizon.

  The woman with the wooden armor—Shira—swung a twist of bark above her head like a lariat and lassoed the wolfman. She was the first Summer fey I recognized. Fur legs flashed by me, and I heard a fury of barking and snarling as another Winter creature lunged at a horse, and then a short scream that made my eyes water, and then a second of ringing silence. I’m going to die right here. Don’t let it hurt. Don’t let Laura have to see.

  I shut my eyes again, and when I opened them, I saw the Winter Queen through a gap in the forest of legs. She stood a little distance away from the platform Laura and I sat on, with a frail candle girl for company. Of course she wouldn’t be in the battle herself. Her eyes seemed to flare green for a moment when she frowned. I wondered where the Summer Queen was. That scar on her cheek made me think she did fight her own battles.

  The Winter Queen’s bald man rolled up near a blue Summer creature who was busy loading what looked like a big slingshot. The man’s uneven gait was fast. He unhooked one of the darts from his shoulder belt as he approached. A swift, muscular jab. The tall soldier crumpled as her war cry turned into a shriek.