by Jane Yolen
The king knew this was so because Father was an elf, and everyone knew about elves being Cursed into telling the truth.
The queen burst into a torrent of tears, and the king clutched his hands to his heart and fell back into his chair. Talia started crying again, but Solange surreptitiously rocked the cradle with her foot and that quieted the baby at once.
“Do something!” the king commanded. “I Bid you do something now!”
And as it was a Bidding, Mother had to obey.
“Luckily,” she said, her voice purposely silky, “I have not yet given my gift, sire, so I propose to do that now.”
I’d never heard her use that voice, and it made me suddenly suspicious. Mother must have guessed that I might mess up my gift-giving, and she’d just made a prudent decision to wait till after I, as the last of the children, offered my present. The right decision, as it turned out.
Father cleared his throat, a sure sign that he was letting her know he didn’t believe in that kind of luck, even though the king might.
Mother ignored him and continued. “My gift was to have been a happy marriage, but this must take precedence, of course.”
“Of course, of course,” said the king, waving his hand impatiently. “If the child is dead at fifteen, what use would a happy marriage be?”
At this, the queen’s sobs increased to such a pitch, I thought she might actually have some Shouting Fey in her.
So Mother took the spindle and the forlorn bit of broken thread from Father. I bit my lip and tried to think of Grey outside, lonely and puzzled, but it was no good. I was fixated on the scene before me.
There was Mother, holding the thread in her right hand, the spindle under her left arm. With a quick movement of her fingers, she tied the thread back to its broken mate, knotting it securely. Then she mumbled a spell, which was really just a recipe for quick-rise bread. Everyone in the Family knew this, and there were suppressed smiles and held breath all around.
But the royals and the other guests and the guards were oblivious to what she was actually saying, since the spell was said in the Old Fey tongue and sounded rather grand and promising.
Meanwhile, Mother carefully unwound the now much-longer piece of thread. Next she measured it slowly with a calculating eye. Finally, she bit through the thread with a loud, satisfying snick.
“There,” she told the king, the queen being too busy sobbing to hear. “Talia shall have a long, long life now. But . . .”
“But what?” the king asked.
Between sobs, the queen heard the king, and echoed him. “But what?”
“But there is still this rather worrying large knot at her fifteenth year.”
The king shouted at her, “Get on with it. Get on with it.” Angry spit spattered from his mouth. He waved his hands about. “You fey are really the most exasperating lot. Say it plainly. Make a spell. Do not let my child suffer. And, you nurses, get her to sleep. And, you fey, none of your riddles. Make it simple. Make it fast.”
Mother was almost ready to Shout back at the king, which would have been disastrous in the extreme, when Father elbowed her, and not at all gently. Swallowing hastily, Mother said, “As you will, majesty. This knot means that instead of dying, Talia shall fall asleep on her fifteenth birthday.”
“Give or take a month,” Father inserted.
“And she will sleep for as long as it takes for this knot to be unraveled.” Mother smiled at him in a very strange way. Any one of the Family would have immediately distrusted her, but not the king. I tried to figure out what she was doing, and failed.
“And, your majesty,” Mother continued, “as she should not sleep without companions, nor would you want to be without her all that time, you and all in her castle shall sleep with her.”
The king looked relieved. “Sleeping is so much better than dying. That’s a good spell. Make it so.”
The queen smiled, smoothing out many of her worst wrinkles but adding several new ones around her mouth. “Oh, that should take no time at all.”
Mother smiled back—she had no wrinkles—and said nothing. The queen was not the one who was doing the Bidding, so the smile never reached Mother’s eyes.
However, Father, ever honest, opened his mouth to explain what was about to happen, and Mother elbowed him in the side. He swallowed hastily, and this time, he was the one to shut his mouth.
Lies take spoken words, at least according to the strictures of his family Curse.
Just then I became visible again, but at that point, no one really cared.
• 17 •
ADOPTION
I left them to their arguments and good-byes, and went outside to find Grey. He was lying on his stomach, watching ants run up and down a blade of grass.
I sat down next to him and told him a shortened version of the story of his life in the cave as best I remembered.
He listened quietly, then said, “I remember Prince Orybon. He seems nice.” He bit his lip. “Seemed?”
I said, “Tenses are hard.”
He laughed. “Memories harder.”
I laughed with him. “We are going to be great friends, both now and in the future.”
“I’d like that,” he said to the ants, his cheeks reddening. “Especially the part about actually having a future.”
We watched the ants run in and out of their hole for as long as it took for the Family to leave the castle, and then we went home with them. By the time we got back to the pavilion—walking not flying, because we were all much too exhausted from the christening to chance the air—we’d adopted Grey.
Or rather Great-aunt Gilda adopted him. After all, he was the only one of us who had known her Mother and Father, Fergus and Maeve, having been part of the Unseelie world as they courted and were Cursed.
“I’d always wondered what happened to that scoundrel Orybon,” Great-aunt Gilda said to Grey. “Mother and Father didn’t know, of course.”
So then I had to give her all the details of how I’d met both Orybon and Grey. Great-aunt Gilda listened with special concentration when I got to the Shouting parts and how I thought I’d killed Gargle. At that point, I burst into tears, and Grey tried to comfort me.
“I’m not crying because I’m sad, Grey,” I told him. “But because I’m happy.”
He looked puzzled at that. I suppose boys are often puzzled by girls. Great-aunt Gilda just looked amused.
So I explained about the cave trolls and how I’d merely given Gargle a permanent shave with my Shout.
“I suppose it’s time to teach you Shouting Proper,” Great-aunt Gilda said. “With your obvious talents, it’s past time, actually.” Then she sighed deeply. “Though from the sound of it, there are some parts you’ll have to teach me as well.”
• • • • • • • •
Father mounted an expedition through the caves with the older boys, to seek out the Unseelie Court. They came upon a passage on the far side of the fallen Gate that led down and down into deeper, darker passages where at last they found a few of the older fey men who still dwelt there in be-glamoured splendor.
The old ones seemed a bit puzzled by the explorers. When questioned, none of them even remembered the names of Orybon and Fergus, much less their parents.
Father tried to persuade them to return above ground with him and the boys, to live with us in their own whimsies and belvederes, but they were horrified at the suggestion and too set in their ways to even come for a visit.
“How far they have fallen,” Father said on his return. “They spend their days chewing on the ends of their mustaches, which have grown seven or eight feet long. And their nights quarreling over who said what to whom.”
“But the stories, Father . . .” Dusty urged. “Tell them about the stories.”
Father shook his head and
looked sad. “They recount adventures that sound like little more than the tales children tell, not real at all. It was sad.”
“Sad,” Necrops and Carnell echoed.
Dusty looked down at his feet. “I liked the stories,” he said.
“I did, too,” Grey told him, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. But later he’d confided in me, “I didn’t recognize anyone there. They didn’t recognize me.”
Great-aunt Gilda sent down fresh apples in season to tempt them, but they lived on in the dark cave, eating only glamoured mushrooms, which they clearly preferred. After one or two more attempts, we left them alone. I think we became part of their stories as they had become part of ours.
“Perhaps it is easier that way,” Grey said to me. “Less agony all around.”
I wasn’t convinced, and said so. It was one of the only times we argued.
Oddly, Mother had looked pleased at the old feys’ response. “We’ve been lucky in our exile.”
“Even with the Biddings?” I asked, astonished.
She nodded. “Even with.”
• • • • • • • •
As for Grey, he fit right in with the boys, playing mumblety-peg and sneaking squibs in the tree house. He was very good at both. Dusty and he became all but inseparable. The times they weren’t together, Grey was in the library with Father and me. He was especially fond of mechanics and read lots of manuals that Father let him borrow. Once he made a thing called a Self-Driving Mobile Cart that ran on magick rather than being pulled by horses.
“Though,” he said, “in the future, according to this book”—and he showed me a copy of a book called Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress—“there will be many such carts and they will run on horsepower without the actual steeds.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“With something called ‘gas,’” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not quite sure how it’s done. At least not yet. Gas”—he grinned—“and oil.”
“Like the oyl in the cave?” I leaned over his shoulder, and he showed me where it was written, spelled in a way that I thought positively stupid.
“Possibly,” he said. “Though, again, I’m not yet quite sure how.”
Later on, he made a better model of the Self-Driving Mobile Cart and hauled it to the end of the Wooing Path loaded with kitchen utensils, where he gave the whole thing to the McGargles. I went with him, and there was a lot of hooting and dancing. I brought along my silver shears and cut everyone’s hair. Excepting Gargle’s, of course. His fire-cut never grew back.
Grey and I also read lots of poetry together and faerie tales, and when we grew up . . . well, that’s another story.
• • • • • • • •
But we did grow. Fourteen human years went by, though it was more like a half dozen months in fey time.
Princess Talia, she of the bright eyes, perky nose, good teeth, strong legs, small feet, and extremely loud voice, spent those fourteen years as though she’d an eternity to enjoy herself, learning little but how far the bad temper she’d inherited from her father could take her. The other gifts we’d given her—wit and patience and quickness—she spent prodigally with the bad company she kept. She was always short on gratitude, kindness, and love, which take rather longer to bestow than a morning’s christening. Besides, those attributes hadn’t been on our list, since no royal father ever thinks to ask for such things.
I spent much of the fourteen human years—when not with Grey—reading through the L section of the library. Since there wasn’t a lot in I–J–K except stuff about Indians, meaning the first people in the realm of America and Indians from India—which confused me at first—and, in J, the planet Jupiter and jam making, which I tried with Aunt Glade in her kitchen, where we made a mess, and I ate so much, my stomach hurt after for two days. Oh, and a place called Japan, where people slept on mats on the floor and huge men wrestled in rings to the delight of the onlookers. As for K, most of the books we had were about katydids and building kitchens, neither subjects of any interest to me. But the L books were legion. I discovered I had an aptitude for Logic, which surprised everyone but Father and Grey. I also studied Liturgy, Lepidoptery, and Linguistics, which meant I could do spells that involved butterflies in fifteen different dialects. It was rarely useful but always pretty.
Solange questioned my accomplishments and Grey’s as well. “If we can never leave this land, why do we need motor carts or more than one language?”
We tried to explain love of learning to her, but it was like trying to explain paint colors to a wall.
Father showed up in the middle of our argument and tried to mediate. At last he said, “Remember, when fifteen human years are up—”
“Give or take a month,” I added.
“—things may be very different around here.” He wouldn’t elaborate.
I discussed this later with Grey. We were sitting in the meadow, covered by the Cloak of Invisibility so no one would disturb us.
“How different do you think Father means?” I asked.
He shrugged, his eyes full of wondering. “It will be a lot quieter with the princess asleep?” he ventured. “Fewer Biddings.”
In the time since he’d been adopted, there had been Biddings that involved a small war to the east of the kingdom, two lords falling in love with the same young woman, and seven different demands that we spin straw into gold after the queen read a book of faerie tales to her daughter. It was Aunt Gardenia who managed it, but of course, being fey gold, it disappeared back to straw by the next morning. The queen was furious, but the king just laughed and said, “You should have spent it at once instead of staying up all night counting, my dear.” Of course, Aunt Gardenia had to make herself scarce for two months, until the queen got over her dangerous grump.
There was also a Bidding of such stupendous stupidity from Princess Talia about building a bathing pool in the throne room: it ended up flooding out two sessions of the king’s meetings with his advisers. After that, the king Bid us not to take any more Biddings from Talia until she’d grown into her majority or moved into a place of her own.
• • • • • • • •
On her fifteenth birthday—her majority—Talia Bid all the local fey to come to her party, with the exception of me. Nobody wanted me around, tripping over the royals and possibly killing someone with an accidental Shout. I’d been left off of every guest list since the princess’s christening, as had Grey, since he wasn’t officially on the kingdom’s birth rolls to begin with. In fact, outside of the Family, no one knew he was here. I made sure of that with a silencing spell, so no one—especially not Cambria, Arian, or Thorn—could by mistake tell a human, for as everyone knows, humans can never actually keep secrets.
My sisters and brothers and cousins were all jealous that we didn’t have to go, but there was nothing they could do about it.
Grey and I planned to spend the party time in the library, drinking lavender-laced dew from Great-grandmother Banshee’s crystal goblets and reading poetry to each other. At midnight Father promised he would read us ghost stories by the fire, because Grey had conceived a passion for a writer called M. R. James. It was Father’s present to Grey because this day was not only Talia’s birthday, but in a way it was Grey’s birthday, too, for in just a few days, it would be fifteen years since he’d come to the Family. Of course, he was only about sixteen in fey terms.
Though we were having a quiet time, Talia was not. She’d invited all the neighboring royals and toffs to her party, which she called a “Sleepover Ball.” The invitations said that everyone was to come in nightclothes. She herself had ordered a special new gown for the occasion that resembled a peignoir, which is a very grown-up nightgown with peekaboo lace and little pink ribbons sewn in strategic places. I’d read about such things years ago in a
soft-bound book called The Bedtime Boutique in the B section. Silly things, I thought then, and still do.
Great-aunt Gilda had said that under no conditions could any of the Family go in such costumes, except Solange managed to turn one of her old nightgowns into something that was so pretty and at the same time so unrevealing that Mother let her go in that.
Now, Princess Talia was very precocious in some ways and absolutely thick in others, and she had a genius for a kind of innocent-seeming seduction. There was not a male member of the royalty for hundreds of miles around who was not pining after her, as well as several fowlers, the two stable boys, and the pig keeper, all languishing for love of her.
Even Dusty, who at eighteen usually had rather common tastes, was smitten with her and planned to go to the party with a handful of crushed basil in each pocket as an aid to making her fall in love with him. Father absolutely forbade any love potions or spells. The twins sneakily substituted pepper grains, and Dusty spent much of the early evening snuffling and sneezing into a handkerchief coated with the tiny black specks till the princess Bid him go home at once, which almost broke his heart.
Father would never have been invited because elves simply don’t party, and Mother and all the Aunts were allowed to beg off, as this was an event just for the young folk.
Grey and I had watched from the pavilion steps along with Mother and Father as my twelve siblings and ten cousins flew into the moonlight, the wind feathering their wings. As usual, Cousin Alliford was trailing the pack. Granta had clumsily let her legs droop instead of keeping them straight behind, toes pointed like a rudder, so she was flying wobbly. Whey-faced and whiny, Mallow kept yelling at the others not to go so fast. Maribel, who’d recently had a conversion to vegetarianism, had tucked a bag of edibles in her pocket because she knew the royals served mostly piles of bloody butchered meats at their parties and she would have starved otherwise. And sweet Arian flew loop-de-loops like an angel yet still managed to keep up, smiling all the while.