by Robin Jarvis
With a quick, furtive glance through the trees, back at the caravan, Nanna Zingara placed her hand upon the silver talisman at her throat once more and tore the red scarf from her head.
The air around her shimmered.
She shook her hair, and the dwarf’s greasy grizzled locks were transformed into a dark cloud that reached down her shoulders. The plum-colored jacket and skirt flickered like a guttering candle flame, and their merry colors poured like paint to the ground. With a shrug, the gypsy straightened her back, growing taller with every moment until, at last, Rhiannon Rigantona, High Lady of the Hollow Hill, was standing before the campfire.
Dressed in a sparkling black gown, she stretched her slender white arms and twisted her elegant neck as though wearing the disguise of the gypsy woman cramped and ached her.
In the avenue of standing stones, Tollychook let out a woeful shriek and fell backward into the dewy grass, breaking all the remaining biscuits in his satchel when he landed on it.
At once the High Lady whirled about and saw the small, terrified werling boy, staring across at her with horror in his disbelieving eyes.
No surprise registered on her lovely face, but a cruel, hate-filled smile spread swiftly across it.
“Master Umbelnapper,” she declared in a voice of ice that froze him to the spot. “What a large troublesome nose you have to be sure, always sticking it where it does not belong.”
Tollychook was trembling. “I doesn’t understand,” he whimpered. “Who be you? Where’s old missus gypsy gone?”
A faint mocking laugh was his answer.
“She were there!” he cried. “Then she were gone! You popped straight up out of nowheres … just as if … just as if she’d wergled into you.”
Rhiannon’s fine arched eyebrows lifted slightly. “There never was any Nanna Zingara,” she said, touching the silver talisman. “Fikil the fire devil was one of the more useful toys the Puccas wrought for the children of my dear dead father. But you have seen too much. I cannot permit you to live now; you must not alert your sleeping friend. I may yet have need of her goodwill and assistance.”
Tollychook tried to yell, but the High Lady quickly drew a sign in the air and the boy’s voice caught in his throat.
Like stars reflected in a cascade of black water, Rhiannon’s gown glittered as she made her way toward the avenue.
Tollychook shook his head wildly and tried once more to call out. Only a choked gasp left his lips. His little heart was kicking against his chest, and he flailed his arms and legs as helplessly as an upturned beetle.
Reaching the entrance of the stone circle, the High Lady looked down at him with a murderous expression upon her face.
“My spriggans assure me that hedgehogs roasted in the fire make excellent eating,” she taunted. “I wonder if the same is true for gluttonous shape changers? As one who takes such an unhealthy delight in food, you can appreciate my curiosity.”
The boy’s face drained of all color, and his frantic movements ceased. He was petrified beyond measure, and the High Lady stole closer.
“Look at you, you lowly worm of a creature,” her voice hissed. “Do you realize how loathsome it was for I, Rhiannon Rigantona, daughter of King Ragallach, She who is Queen of the Hollow Hill, for my royal person to degrade myself and sit among your foul gathering this day? Base, crawling vermin is what you are. How dare your kind destroy my thorn ogres and conspire to assail me? When this night is done, I shall send forth my spriggans and have them slaughter you all. Then your paltry woodland will be cut down, and the very roots of your trees shall be reduced to ashes and charcoal. Not for three hundred years will so much as a thistle be allowed to flourish there. Such is the fate of those who think they can challenge me! Even my own father and then my brother could not stand in my way. I would have slain my own sister too, had she not escaped me. So what chance did you truly think you had? A crow’s breakfast in the bleak gray morning—that shall be your deserved, ignoble fate.”
Stooping over him, she stretched out her hand, grasped the terrified boy about the middle in a strong, painful grip, and plucked him from the ground.
Tollychook could do nothing to save himself.
The High Lady lifted his podgy form before her pale, perfect features, and when he looked into the pitiless deeps of her eyes, tears of despair streamed down his cheeks.
“One wer-rat less to infest my realm,” she uttered, almost spitting out the words.
Reaching her arm back, she prepared to hurl the werling against the nearest Dooit Stone with as much force as she could summon, as thoughtlessly as a bored child might fling an egg against a wall merely to watch it smash.
Tollychook squeezed his eyes shut and waited.
Suddenly there came a fierce barking. From the shadows between the standing stones, a streak of ginger fur bounded up. Snapping his teeth, Fly the fox cub leaped as high as he could and bit the fingers of Rhiannon’s other hand.
The Queen of Faerie shrieked in surprise and staggered back under the ferocity of the attack. She let go of Tollychook, and the boy fell to the ground.
A brief but savage fight commenced. Fly darted all around her, jumping and lunging in and out, dodging her blows. Hunting for a clear aim as she swiped and struck out at him, he catapulted himself on to her side and seized hold with his claws. Then, slithering downward, the fox cub tore a great rent in the fine silk of her gown and sank his sharp little teeth deep into her leg.
Rhiannon raged and snatched him by the throat, throwing the animal as far away from her as she could.
Yelping, Fly tumbled into the bracken beneath the trees. His head struck a mighty root, and the fox cub’s body went limp and still.
With bright scarlet blood trickling from the wound in her leg, the High Lady strode over to stamp the animal into the ground. Then she remembered Tollychook and spun on her heel.
The boy was nowhere to be seen, and she glowered at the caravan beyond the entrance of the avenue.
LIFFIDIA AWOKE WITH A START.
“Stop it!” she cried in alarm as Tollychook shook her violently. “What’s happening?”
The boy spluttered to find his voice, but the enchantment that the High Lady had placed in his throat still held. It had been difficult enough scrambling to his feet after landing in the grass. His only thought had been to run as far away from that place as fast as possible and never look back, but he could not leave without Liffidia. Returning to the caravan to save her instead of bolting off into the darkness was the most courageous thing he had ever done.
“Are we there?” the girl asked excitedly. “Has Nanna Zingara found the Pool of the Dead?”
Unable to speak, Tollychook pulled frightened faces and pointed fearfully out of the caravan, but the girl remained mystified.
“Why can’t you tell me what’s happened?” she demanded. “You’re starting to scare me!”
Tollychook nodded his head vigorously to show that she should be very scared indeed. Then he dragged a worried Liffidia across to the doorway and tried to bundle her outside.
“Here’s eagerness!” an all-too-familiar cracked voice declared.
Over the low door, the headscarf-wrapped face of Nanna Zingara reared, with a false grin splitting her wrinkled cheeks.
Tollychook reeled backward. The High Lady had disguised herself as the gypsy once more.
“Nanna was just coming to fetch her young befrienders,” she announced, her sharp eyes gleaming at Liffidia as she tried to guess how much she knew. “There is a fire lit to cheer them.”
Liffidia did not notice the murderous stare that then stabbed toward Tollychook.
“Are we at the Pool of the Dead?” the girl asked.
The gypsy winked at her. “That we are, that we are,” the croaky voice answered. “Come, see this place of wonder and do what must be done. Time grows short.”
She leaned in to help them climb over the door, but Tollychook wrenched Liffidia away, out of the dwarf’s reach.
; “What is the matter with our plump companion?” Nanna asked in mock surprise. “He seems most ill at ease.”
The girl pulled away from him and frowned. “I don’t know,” she replied, beginning to sound irritated. “He was like this when he woke me.”
“And he told you naught to explain it?”
“He’s playing some kind of game, pretending he can’t speak. Well, it’s not at all funny, so he can just stop it. We have important work to do!”
She moved away from him, but Tollychook clutched at her and dragged her even farther along the bunk, to the back wall of the caravan where they stumbled into a bookshelf and sent two leather-bound volumes crashing to the floor.
“Let go!” Liffidia yelled. But the boy held on more tightly than ever and shook his head continually, imploring her with his eyes to understand what was really happening.
Watching them with barely concealed contempt, Nanna Zingara put her pipe to her lips. “Maybe he had a bad dream,” she suggested. “The forest can be a world filled with horror and fear for one so small and helpless. Yes, there is a lot to be afraid of out here, far from home and rescue. Waking in a strange place must have been very frightening for him.”
“I don’t know,” Liffidia said uncertainly. Tollychook appeared genuinely terrified, and her annoyance turned to concern as she looked at his stricken face and realized he was trembling.
“What is the matter?” she asked softly. “What are you so scared of?”
The boy pointed wildly at the gypsy and managed to let loose a fretful squeal.
Nanna Zingara’s pretend smile grew ever wider.
“He is not himself,” she said with a menace in her voice that only the boy recognized. “A plate of stew will calm his nerves. Nanna will brew some ’specially for him. That should bring an end to all these imagined woes—forever.”
“Well, it’s the only thing that could,” Liffidia agreed. “Tollychook likes his food.”
But the dwarf’s clear threat frightened the boy more than ever, and at last his terror broke through the High Lady’s bewitchment of his voice.
“She’s not her!” he bawled. “She’m a werglin’ fiend!”
Liffidia stared at him in astonishment. “Tollychook!” she cried. “Don’t be so rude!”
“She’m goin’ to do us in, all of us!” he insisted. “She’s a-play actin’ an’ a-guisin’. That bain’t be no wandrin’ old woman—it’s the High Lady herself come to get us.”
“Stop that!” the girl demanded. “We owe Nanna Zingara so much already! How can you tell such horrible lies about her?”
“I doesn’t lie, not never, and I bain’t be doin’ so now! She were going to dash out my brains on them stones yonder. She wants to know where the Smith hid the casket so she can have it herself! She’m worse than ten Frighty Aggies!”
Liffidia turned to the gypsy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We shouldn’t have brought him along. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“Yes, I does!” he raged back. “That there’s the enemy in a friendly mask, don’t you be took in no more! She’ll murder us when she gets what she wants.”
Nanna Zingara let out a pitying sigh and tapped the stem of her pipe against her temple. “Poor mannikin,” she tutted. “His wits are overcooked with fright. Let him remain here; we two will go look on the Pool of the Dead together and ask our old friend the Smith to disclose his secret.”
“Don’t you listen to her!” Tollychook cried.
The girl patted his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “It’s all right,” she said calmly. “We’ll be straight back as soon as we know the answer.”
“No, you won’t!” he yelled. “You’ll be killed! The minute she finds out, she’m push you in and drown you most like.”
Liffidia tore her arm away from his grasp and hurried to the door. “We’ll be as fast as we can,” she promised.
“Don’t go!” he begged.
The boy darted after her, but his large feet tripped over a fold in the blanket and he fell on his face. “Listen to me!” he wept.
Nanna Zingara puffed on her pipe and chuckled softly to herself as the girl drew near. “Let him rest there,” she said. “Nanna will cure him when she returns from the pool.”
Oblivious to the danger she was placing herself in, Liffidia took a last, concerned glance at Tollychook and prepared to climb over the doorway.
The boy was scrambling to his knees to run after her. “No!” he pleaded. “Believe me!”
The gypsy hopped from the seat and on to the ground. “We must be swift,” she urged the girl. “Before dawn rises we must discover the truth. The magic that swirls in yonder pool recoils from sunlight, and there is no time to wait for another moonrise.”
Liffidia clambered over the door, but just as she swung her legs around to jump down, she halted.
“Fly!” she exclaimed.
Down the trackway came the fox cub. He was dazed and limping.
Liffidia’s gentle heart leaped in her chest to see his faltering steps, and she almost jumped straight to the ground to rush over and throw her arms about his neck, but Tollychook’s hands caught hold of her and pulled the girl back.
“I must go to him!” she stormed, pushing the boy away with all her strength. “He needs my help!”
Tollychook snatched her arm and in a grim voice said, “Who d’you think did that to him? It were her!”
The girl stopped struggling and looked down at Nanna Zingara. The gypsy shook her head. “Mind fever,” she declared. “Why would Nanna harm the little cub? Nanna hurts no one.”
For a moment Liffidia believed her. Then she stared back at Fly.
The fox cub had drawn level with the donkey. There was a cut above his right eye, and a smudge of blood was soaking through his fur. Despite his pain, those eyes were shining, and they were fixed upon the figure of the dwarf.
“Little bruiseling,” Nanna Zingara crooned, stooping forward to hold out her hands in greeting. “Come to Nanna. She will tend to your hurts. I have ointments and lotions to soothe and salve.”
Fly did not move. He was rigid with hate, and a fierce growl began to sound in his throat.
“You are mistaken,” Nanna protested. “The blow to your head has jumbled your thought. Let Nanna nurse you.”
The growl grew louder, and the fox bared his teeth threateningly.
“I do not understand!” the gypsy cried, clapping her hands to her face in phony bewilderment. “Every creature is friend to Nanna.”
But for Liffidia the webs of deceit were finally torn aside, and at last she realized the truth. “I understand,” she said simply. “I know and love animals, and they do not lie; neither does my friend Tollychook. You fooled everyone, even me—but not anymore.”
The dwarf tutted in alarm and wrung her hands in despair. “No, no,” she said, sounding genuinely affronted by the accusation. “Do not think such badness of Nanna. She desires only to help your folk. We must destroy the foul tyrant of the Hollow Hill, stamp out Her evil for once and always. Put your doubts aside. Come to the pool. Be quick, be quick! So little time is left.”
“Never,” the girl answered, and the resolve in her voice was unshakable and final. “I can see through you now. You may as well cast off your disguise; it doesn’t hide your true self. Tollychook is right. You are Her—the hideous Deathless Lady. Who but a monster without a heart would harm an animal?”
Nanna Zingara stared at her for a moment, and the eyes in that old, weathered face grew hard and cruel. The pretense was over.
“Hideous?” she hissed, and the sound of her voice was like the blistering breath of a desolate winter. “Hideous? Look on me and behold symmetry and grace, undying and undiminished, surpassing the reach of your insolent wits!”
She put her hand to the silver talisman at her throat, and at once the hunched form of Nanna Zingara spilled to the floor. A ripple of shadow bruised the air, and the tall figure of the Lady Rhiannon took the gypsy’s place.
The Dark Queen of the Unseelie Court ignored him, and she looked down at the werlings in the caravan with a malevolent sneer on her beautiful lips.
Framed in the luxuriant mane of raven hair, a deathless and unnatural gray-green light seemed to shine from the smooth marblelike skin of her face. In contrast to the cold splendor of her presence, the surrounding forest appeared even more drear and distorted.
Regarding the two youngsters before her with pitiless eyes, she considered what to do with them.
Tollychook was shuddering, but Liffidia gazed up at that perfect, icy countenance, met the hostile stare without fear, and countered it with one of her own.
“There is no beauty in you!” she shouted hotly. “All I see is a twisted misshapen horror! A dirty, murderous creature who tries to hide behind a painted mask, but not even that can veil your real ugliness! You’re more hideous than the thorn ogres you sent to kill us! You’re an ugly, ugly, foul hag!”
The High Lady said nothing. Instead an unpleasant smile formed on her face.
Turning, she glanced at the fox cub, who had begun to bark at her, and gave a chilling laugh.
“Such a pretty tail he has,” she observed. “What a prize addition to Nanna’s collection of waggers that brush would make.”
“No!” Liffidia cried.
Rhiannon strode purposefully toward Fly, and the fox snapped his jaws as she bent over him.
“Run!” Liffidia yelled. “Get away, please!”
But Fly would not leave and continued to bark and snap as the High Lady’s hand came down to snatch him.
Seizing the animal by the scruff of the neck, she lifted him up and shook him roughly. The fox cub yelped as she swung him around like a rag doll and he helplessly paddled the air with his paws.
Powerless to save him, tears of rage and distress burned down Liffidia’s cheeks. She could do nothing but watch her beloved Fly being tormented.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “You’re hurting him!”
“What does that matter?” Rhiannon replied, relishing the werling’s suffering and the fox’s pain. “You know full well I have no heart to care.”