Curse of the Thirteenth Fey

by Jane Yolen

  “Stop!” I cried with what little breath was left me, but the creature didn’t stop. It ran on and on through the dark as if it could see, as if it knew where it was going. As if it didn’t mind crashing into stone walls, which might not hurt the creature but certainly wouldn’t do me and my poor wing any good.

  “Stop!” I yelled at the Something, though I hadn’t enough voice to do it as an actual Shout, which might have worked to drop the creature or at least slow it down. Or it might not. I’d no idea if I could Shout loud enough to affect such a creature or if indeed my magick would work if I were not above on Shouting Fey soil. And then I would have wasted this day’s Shout.

  That thought, along with the bouncing, the headache, the throbbing wing, the aching leg, and the growing fear, was enough to make me feel sick again. And sick, I knew, would not serve me well.

  Think, Gorse, I told myself, think. But in that position, it was very hard to think. So I gave myself over to fear, panic, horror, terror, and curiosity, in that order. Luckily, curiosity outlasted them all.

  • • • • • • • •

  Since I couldn’t stop the creature, I tried to see where I was. After a while, the dark seemed less black. I could distinguish gray areas between the pitchblende, a sort of mushroomy color. Of course I couldn’t figure out if that gray signified stone walls or entrances between the walls, whether it was the presence of a thing or the absence. But at least I could see a difference.

  I squirmed a bit, and then a bit more, though careful to hold on to both the spindle and the Cloak. As soon as I win free, I promised myself, I’m going to get out of here. Wherever here was.

  The hairy, smelly Something never dropped me, but it moved me into a more comfortable position where—as if a shadow were passing by—I could just about make out its shape whenever we raced by the gray walls. I remembered a book on Art in the A section of the library that explained “negative space.” That’s what it looked like each time I caught a glimpse of the creature.

  I decided the monster was a him, because of the smell, if nothing else. A little like my brothers after a game of All-Out Tag. In my mind, I called the creature Wort, a strong, ugly name. He was about twenty hands taller than Father, and Father is tall by elven standards. Wort had a large, roundish head, with startling, curly hair that stood out in all directions. Occasionally his yellow eyes gleamed, round and big as skipping stones. Occasionally they slanted down into cat’s eyes. When Wort opened his mouth to McGargle again—not frequently, but several more times as we raced along—I thought I could distinguish gray teeth.

  But that was all: just big hair, gleaming eyes, gray teeth, and a body that was almost as tall as the first floor of the pavilion. Or at least that’s what he looked like in negative space. Not a comforting companion, but once named and shadow-seen, not quite as frightening as before.

  We galloped on and on, through the twisting, winding corridors of stone.

  I didn’t know where we were going or how long it would be till we got there. But we certainly were eating up the underground miles. For the first time, I began to worry about actually finding my way back. Back to the hole I’d fallen into. Back into the bright air. Back along the Wooing Path to the castle where the bawling, grizzling princess waited and my parents counted on me to be the thirteenth fey.

  Back home.

  Because finding the wrong exit might be as dangerous as never getting out at all.

  • • • • • • • •

  As we went along, I pretended I was riding Wort, rather than think about how he was carrying me off. Oh, not like a girl on a horse riding pillion ahead or behind as in the old stories, but rather like a leech on a sick person’s body. I’d seen one of those when the Faerie Doctor came to cure Aunt Goldie’s gout.

  Curiouser and curiouser, as I’d learned long ago in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when I was still reading in the A section of the library. But it was likely a curiosity that was going to end badly. Especially if Wort continued to hold me that tight and run that fast through the darkness of the cave.

  I was all but rocked to sleep by the constant motion, which was fine for the headache but not the rest of me, when of a sudden, Wort turned sharply and the cave suddenly seemed to take a steep, downward direction.

  I was brought to full and fearful awareness by the sudden turn. What had I been thinking! What had I not been thinking? I was being as slow as Arian, without the gift of his sweetness and smile. It must have been because of my poor head, dull and achy. Or maybe I was still way too sick for this kind of adventure.

  Or maybe this was all just a nightmare brought on by the ague. It was certainly odd enough to be one. But if it is, I thought, it’s a marvel of detail. I’d never before had a dream that smelled.

  At a guess, I was not just underground, I was Under the Hill, somewhere either in Seelie or Unseelie territory. Since no one in the Seelie Court, with their elegance and affectations (as Father had often enough described them), would pal around with something like Wort, I felt I knew where we were headed. And it wasn’t a pleasant thought. If I was right, we were heading into the depths of the Unseelie Court, where they ate little Shouting Fey like me.

  And while being eaten would certainly fix my headache, wing, and leg, it certainly wouldn’t get me home in time for the christening or save my Family from bursting into a thousand stars. So I began to struggle, twisting and turning and shifting and wriggling.

  All that did was give the McGargle permission to hold me even more tightly, which made me cry out in pain. The cry encouraged him to hold me all the closer, until it felt as if I were bound up with iron chains.

  Stupid, stupid Gorse, I told myself. And if you had gotten free—where would you go? You can’t see in the dark. You’d probably run right into the nearest wall or another cave wort and still be delivered to the Unseelie Court.

  “Packaged for dinner.” I spoke the words aloud, and they became true as soon as I said them. So, with that fearful notion embedded in my brain, I tried not to think anymore, lest I make it worse. Despite Father’s often-repeated “Think, Gorse, think,” I simply stopped all thought until the strange orange flames of a large hearth suddenly came into view. I promised myself then that thinking bad thoughts was something I’d never do again, if the Lords of Magick let me live. And that was a very big if indeed. But for some reason, the headache, at least, was gone, though the wing still hurt like stink, and now the burn on my leg felt hot and sore.

  I kicked one foot at Wort. The one not attached to the burned leg. It was the only part of me I could move.

  “Hey!” I said. “Slow down. Or put me down.”

  He did neither, just kept running toward the light, toward the hearth, toward what was surely the dinner fire. And there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  Except . . .

  Except . . .

  Except Shout and hope it would work.

  Now, I’d never attempted a Real Shout before. Just small ones.

  Once I brought down a whole basket of apples from a tree too tall for me to climb and too crowded with fruit for me to fly into.

  Another time I’d Shouted a snake out of a hole where a family of mice were cowering.

  Of course I was technically still a child and had not been properly trained yet. Training starts on one’s fourteenth birthday, and I was thirteen. However, I’d listened to Shouts all my life, heard the Aunts talk about how they were done. Eavesdropped and sneaked about enough when my brothers and sisters were learning. And Dusty told me all about his training. In those days, Dusty told me everything. So, I could only hope that this time I knew enough.

  Not all of the Family actually have the gift, especially those of us with Father’s blood coursing through our veins. Arian certainly has no Shout, and we’re all lucky for that, because he’d have no control. Cambria, likewise, and her silliness
is partially to blame. Bobbin and Robbin share the power but can hardly ever cooperate long enough to make it work. And I hadn’t yet been trained, so no one—especially not me—knew if I’d a real talent for it or was, as Father put it, “only a dabbler.”

  Still, if ever there was a time for me to push out a Shout, the kind that comes on its own accord and is probably never repeated, this was the moment. Not apples, not mice this time, but my own life depended upon it.

  So I drew in a deep breath, in between one bumpy Wort step and the next. Then I opened my mouth, and from the hollow spot down below my breastbone, what Great-aunt Gilda calls “the Sweetened Spot,” I breathed out something big. Something enormous. I could feel it push into my throat, into my mouth, and rest for a moment on my tongue, where it felt hot as fever, cold as snow.

  Then I gave that Shout one last push. It was, without doubt, the loudest sound I’d ever made in my life. Though of course just sound isn’t enough. There’s still timbre, temper, and tension, the Three T’s, as Great-aunt Gilda calls them. And each of them has to be just right.

  At the same time there’s the Wish. It has to be a rhymed Wish. That gives it the power. And I should have taken time to construct it well. But I had no time.

  I thought as hard as I could about that Wish. I Wished . . . I Wished . . . that the fire, the hairy wort, and the Unseelie Court would all go out at the same time, just as if an entire river had washed them all away.

  Hairy monster, and your glare,

  Be done, be gone, caught unaware,

  Fire singe you, fire light you,

  Fire ring you, fire fight you.

  And to be extra sure, I pictured Wort in my mind, with a wildfire lighting up his entire hairy body.

  The Shout whooshed out of me, burning my tongue, my lips. It felt as if I’d thrown up hot tea—not chamomile or mint, but something much stronger. Ginger tea, probably. The Shout echoed off the rock walls, off the rock floor, off the rock ceiling. It doubled back on itself, redoubling and trebling as it went. I shook with the Shout, exalted with it, felt as if I were floating on the sound of it. Burned with it.

  Then, slowly, the Shout died away.

  Wort was on fire and dropped me, and then he and the strange orange fire went out simultaneously.

  Two out of three, I thought, not bad for a first major try.

  Then I hit the floor with a thud, and I wondered if I’d go out, too, thinking, This is getting to be a really bad habit. But this time I managed to stay awake. Just. It was the pain in my right wing, banged again when I hit the ground, that kept me from fainting.

  • 7 •

  BOUND

  After rolling around on the cold floor to try and assess my hurt wing, I managed to get up. The orange light had come back on again, so I shuffled toward it. I was careful to go slowly so as not to trip over anything—or anyone—this time, and hoped no one would see me.

  The fire was seductive, and I was so cold, I curled up by it to get warm. The warmth seemed to soothe my head and seep into my hurt wing as well, so I shut my eyes—not to sleep, but to let the fire work its small magick on my battered body. But I kept alert for any sound of someone—or something—trying to sneak up on me.

  I woke still lying by the fire with my arms bound behind me, both Cloak and spindle gone, and a bright light in my face from a globe worm held in a massive hand. Not a massive hairy hand like Wort’s, but a massive leather-gloved hand.

  “It lives,” someone remarked with neither kindness nor care at the core, only a lingering weariness, as if he were too tired to say anything else. Then he spat out two more brief words. “Now what?”

  Another voice, drier than the first, with a hint of cold laughter behind it, said, “We ask its name and then we eat it.”

  “If you ask my name,” I said with a bravado I hardly felt, “and I give it, you can’t possibly eat me. It wouldn’t be polite. Pudding—Alice.”

  “Pudding Alice,” said the first voice. “What kind of a fey name is that?”

  Silently, I vowed to say no more. I’d meant Pudding Alice as a reference to Through the Looking-Glass, the second book about Alice, where Alice and the Pudding are introduced and then she, being a polite child, knows she couldn’t possibly eat something or someone she’d just met. Clearly these two world-weary men had never read the book. Or possibly any book. Fey rarely do read, as the Family proved. And if, as I suspected, these were Unseelie, they would be the least likely of all fey to find enjoyment there. So, if these two wanted Pudding Alice to be my true name, it would slow down any magick they might try on me.

  Or so I hoped.

  “Politeness,” said the dry voice, now almost smothered in laughter, “has never been a part of my makeup.”

  “Unseelie,” I said, totally forgetting my vow of silence. Luckily I hadn’t made the vow an Oath by speaking it aloud, or I would have been bursting into stars at that very moment. “Dry, unfeeling, they hold little sacred.”

  “Shouting Fey—silly, useless, powerless misfits,” the voice behind the globe worm countered. “And you’ve been tutored by elves.”

  “By my Father.” I sat up too quickly, which made my head spin, and the ache from the residue of my Shout and the Unseelie Court’s stone walls returned. I was suddenly aware that the place was throbbing with magick. And my headache wasn’t helped by the fact that I was now also terrified I’d already given too much away.

  The globe worm was lowered just enough so I could see behind to the fey eyes that now crinkled with humor. I wondered why. Father never mentioned that the Unseelie folk had a sense of humor, only a hot anger that burned them dry from the inside out, until they were only walking husks.

  “Finn’s Get?” the distant Dry Voice hazarded.

  “Close,” I answered, thinking of Uncle Finn, whom I’d never met and now probably never would. It seemed silly to hide the connection. And it hurt my head too much to try. The Unseelie might torture me otherwise and find out the same thing, so why not tell this interrogator right out? Surely he could see I was only a child. That might soften him a bit. “My Uncle.”

  Just as I had that thought, he moved close and laughed full in my face.

  “An elven child is as dangerous as a full-grown one. And a damned Shouter!”

  Really? I thought. Me, dangerous? That hardly seemed likely. But I decided to let him think that. It could be useful. Or dangerous. I decided to go with useful.

  The one holding the globe worm set it onto a rock jut and the worm crawled away, but the glow it had given off still wavered around us. I’d no idea how long that glow would last. A minute? An hour?

  But in that lingering light, I looked more closely at the man with the dry voice, who was clearly the leader of the two. Father always says that knowledge will set us free, which is why he reads so many books. Though from what he’d told me about our being tied to the land, knowledge hadn’t actually freed any of us yet. Still, I thought it best to assume that it could help me somehow with these most recent bonds, those holding my arms behind my back. I’d nothing better to hope with anyway. So I looked directly at my captor but tried at the same time to seem totally disinterested in anything he had to say.

  Dry Voice was most certainly a princeling. Maybe even a king. Both his stature and clothing argued for it. His strong face bones were almost elfin in their sharpness. His shining eyes, yellow in the fading light, were cat’s-eye bright. Tight leather trews and high boots set off his legs, and a leather jerkin over a bloodred blouse lent him the appearance of a long-legged insect. A handsome, long-legged insect. The pin on his shoulder probably signified his house or class or rank, though I’d never seen one before except in a book. The pin bore a crest that looked something like a flying dragon, something like a dragonfly. As I watched, his hands folded together as if in a prayer, but that was probably just a show of confidence. His
thumbs beat against each other. He wasn’t frightened of me one bit.

  But he scared the sweetness out of me!

  “Shouter indeed,” I said. “But I don’t think we’re damned.” I smiled slowly at him to show a confidence I didn’t really have. Headaches do that to me. “Only exiled. In the Light. Above the Hill.” It was fine to tell him this. He’d already guessed it.

  “That’s not what some of our other . . . visitors . . . have told us. They have had a different slant.”

  That’s when he smiled back. It wasn’t a comforting smile, but it didn’t frighten me further. Perhaps like certain great witches, Prince Dry Voice liked feisty children. Perhaps he even liked Shouting girls. Though if that were so, he’d much prefer Solange, who is the great beauty of our Family. Or perhaps he was just thinking of a private joke. Or an old pain he disguised with a sinister smile.

  Or perhaps, I thought suddenly and shivered, he was remembering a recipe for cooked Gorse.

  “Pudding Alice,” he said, “I have a proposition for you.”

  I nodded. A proposition could put off dinner for long enough. Long enough for me to figure out a way to get free. At least so I hoped.

  “I’m listening,” I said carefully.

  “You will listen more closely with your hands unbound,” he said, which was certainly true. He signaled to his leather-gloved underling.

  “Majesty.” The henchman’s voice was full of warning.

  Prince Dry Voice ignored the warning and laughed. It was a real laugh, not a sinister one this time. His laugh was handsome, too, in an insecty kind of way.

  “Child,” he said, directing all his considerable charm at me, “I am sure you are listening. It delays dinner.” Then he turned to the henchman. “Grey, where’s Gargle? I want to congratulate him for catching this little elven princess. I want her to see him in the light. After all, she may be just what we need, and if she sees Gargle, she may become more . . .” He looked for the word, then suddenly found it: “Cooperative.”