The Raven Queen: Fairy Tales of Horror (Villain Stories Book 1)

by Lena Mae Hill

  “Don’t worry, we’ve all lost one at some point,” she says, her skillful hands working first on the outside of me, then inside, as I lie on my bed. “You will bring Owen a child yet, a leader for our future.” She smiles reassuringly, but all I hear are the words she didn’t say. I failed Owen this time. Not just Owen and myself, but the whole shifter valley. It’s up to me to give us a future. All of us.

  And the future inside my womb is dead.

  And though I already knew, when she says the worst, great sobs well up inside me. I hold them back. I’m no longer the raven girl with the father who drinks too much. I can’t sit at the river with tears carving lines in the dirt on my face. I’m an example.

  I rise from the bed when the midwife is done. I accept the tonic she offers, ashamed that I forgot to prepare something to trade for it. In the kitchen, I search for something of value. At last, I push a jar of honey into her hands, knowing it’s worth far more than the tonic she gave me, but wanting nothing more than to be rid of her.

  With a promise to be back in a few hours to check on me, she departs. I drink the tincture. The contractions come, and when the midwife returns, she brings forth the grey thing, so tiny her fingers are like twigs, her eyelashes like the down on a peach. I want to stare at her longer, to hold her, to see what could have been. I want her to be my baby.

  “Whatever you need to do,” the midwife says, arranging a small box and lining it with an old sheet. “When you’re ready, we’ll take her away.”

  “What?” I ask dumbly, blinking at the midwife without comprehension.

  “Would you like to name her?” she asks, giving me a pitying smile.

  We already named him, Owen and I. We were sure it was a boy.

  “Eastwood,” I whisper, remembering how Owen had worn me down, insisting on naming him after his favorite actor. I argued that he’d be teased in the larger community, but Owen didn’t care.

  “Oh yeah? I’d like to see the kid that teases my son,” he said. “He sure as hell won’t do it twice.”

  “That’s lovely,” the midwife says. “I’ll give you some time with her. Tomorrow, we’ll make arrangements.”

  When she’s gone, I hold the baby. A girl. She would have been a real queen, unlike me. One with royal blood. She’s still warm from her time inside me, her little body wrapped in the rags of the old sheet we’ll bury her in tomorrow.

  At last, I cry. Tears flood from my eyes, enough to wash her clean, to wash her away. Enough to wash away the house, to fill the valley and spill over the ridge into the werewolf valley, to drown their self-righteous, greedy village. Enough to spill over the next mountain into the Enchanted Forest, to drown all the trees and release the spirits imprisoned within each one, so they could dance with my baby girl as she departed this world.

  4

  Owen bounces down the driveway with a silly grin on his face, all chagrin and charm, looking so ridiculous in a pair of boxer briefs and hiking boots that I could laugh. But midway through my laugh, it turns into something grotesque, a choking, strangling sob. Owen rushes to my side on the porch swing that doesn’t swing because the chains are missing, so he converted it into a bench seat.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks urgently, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “Did something happen while I was gone? Did someone hurt you?”

  I try to answer, but I can’t. All I can do is cling to him, half hiccupping and half wailing from the pain twisting inside my chest, wracking my body with awful, ugly sobs. I press myself into his arms and wish that he could take me away from here, from this body, from this life. I can now shift into something else, but the memory of the baby will still be inside my body, no matter what form I take. It will be with me forever. Owen has always made me forget my sorrows, but this time, it’s all I can think of.

  At last, he pulls back and cups my face between his hands. “What happened, Doralice? Tell me. Who did this to you? I’ll take care of him. Was it your father? Did he come home?”

  I shake my head, too scared to point him to my shrunken belly. He’s too busy looking at my face to notice that I’ve grown smaller in his absence, not bigger. My belly still protrudes from the pregnancy, even now that it’s gone, a cruel taunt reminding me of what I’ve lost. How can he not see it?

  “What?” he asks, impatient now, his bushy blonde eyebrows drawing together in a fierce frown.

  “The baby,” I choke out, drawing in a deep, wet breath. “I didn’t know what to do. You told me not to call my mother, and the midwife—”

  “You didn’t call your mom, did you?” he asks, his mouth tightening in disappointment.

  “No,” I say, drawing a wet, wavering breath. “You told me not to.”

  “Good.” At last, his eyes leave my face and find my belly, and his frown deepens. “What happened?” he demands.

  My eyes spill over with tears again. I shake my head, managing to convey that I don’t know. When he pulls me into his arms this time, I rest my head against his chest and let the tears stream steadily down my face, as silent as an unbeating heart.

  Owen strokes my hair, his strong, broad chest rising and falling under my cheek. “It’s okay,” he says at last. “We’ll have another one. We can start again tonight. We’ll have a baby, Doralice. This was just one, your first one. I’m sure it happens a lot. We’ll just have to try again.”

  “What if,” I choke out, lifting my head from his warm chest. “What if I can’t?”

  “You can,” he says. “You can and you will. We’ll have a child, because we have to. Don’t worry. It will happen. Pretty soon, you won’t even remember this one happened.”

  For the first time in our marriage, I can’t convince myself that his little white lies are true. Though I know they are always for my benefit, meant to comfort rather than hurt me, this time, I can’t talk myself into believing him.

  Fall 1995

  1

  The Second Annual First Frost Banquet is held on a cold, drizzly day in November. After helping set out dishes and greet guests, I retreat to the porch, where I sit on the porch swing-bench wrapped in a long sweater, a hat pulled low over my ears. I press my palm to my abdomen, tight with cramps, and close my eyes. It rained last night, and the smell of wet leaves hangs thick in the air. The trees are bare and ghostly against the fog creeping in as night falls. Every night since the frost last weekend, the sky has been a miserable grey. Undeterred by the dismal weather, Owen makes the rounds in the mucky yard.

  He leaps onto one of the picnic tables he built for this very occasion after being short tables at last year’s banquet. His foot knocks a bowl of Jell-O salad towards the edge of the table, and he snatches for it, fumbles it. Just before it can topple to the ground, he recovers it and balances it on his fingertips, as if it were all an act, all intentional. Everyone around laughs, and a few of his friends applaud. Owen always says his friends are my friends, but I’ve never gotten past some invisible barrier with them. They are civil to me, and that’s all I can ask.

  “I just wanted to thank you for coming out in this shitty weather to celebrate with me and my wife,” Owen says, standing and holding up a plastic cup that no doubt contains some variety of homemade whiskey or moonshine. “This year, our fortunes are going to change. I can feel it. I can smell it. Can you smell it?” He stops speaking, throws his head back and inhales a deep, long, audible breath, his eyes closed. Letting out his breath in an explosion, he raises his cup again. “Who can smell it?”

  A bunch of men and a few women cheer and hold up their cups. I’d like a change of fortune right about now, but I don’t have a cup to raise.

  “This year, we’re going to get two things we need,” Owen continues. “A treaty with the wolves so we can hunt in their valley, and an heir so you all won’t have to look at this ugly mug forever.” He grins that big, disarming smile. “In fact, I hope my old lady won’t mind if I tell you we’ve been doing everything we can to make a baby. And I do mean everything.”

  The men
all laugh and whoop, and their wives and girlfriends elbow them and scowl. Owen knows how to work a crowd, and I’m too preoccupied by the heaviness inside my womb to be humiliated.

  “And I think it’s safe to say that inside a year, you’ll be looking at a much cuter, littler version of your king than you have to look at now. I’d bet you anything this is the very month we’ll find out. What do you say, baby? You feel like this is it, too?” He raises his cup to me this time, and I manage a tight smile. I should have told him this morning, but I didn’t want to ruin his good mood. I don’t know how many more months I can go through the cycle of cautious hope and crushing, inevitable disappointment.

  And worse, I don’t know how I could get through another pregnancy. But what choice do I have? Owen is everything to me, all I have in the world. And he wants a baby. I want a baby. I just don’t want to risk falling in love with it again, only to have it ripped away at the last possible moment.

  “Come on, let’s get this party started,” Owen yells. He throws his head back and downs the contents of his cup. Crushing the cup in one fist, he hurls it the ground and whoops. Everyone cheers and hollers, and he leaps off the table, grabs Ericia, the girl who was wounded as a fawn, and bends her over backwards. She just has time for a shriek of surprise before his mouth possesses hers, devouring her as her coltish body quivers in his burly arms.

  I sit frozen, the smile on my face stretched so thin I think my lips will split. I don’t know what to do, how to react to this situation. I know I can’t expect complete devotion every minute of my life. Many shifters never marry at all, and those who do usually make our way through several marriages. But a king lives under different expectations. A king chooses a queen to bear a child for him, and until the heir is firmly established, usually with a backup or two waiting in line behind him, he is bound to the wife he chose. That is how it’s been for hundreds of years, so that no one questions the legitimacy of the heir or squabbles over which child has a rightful claim.

  A king and his queen are examples in the community, and usually stay together until their children are grown, sometimes until the eldest takes over and they are no longer under scrutiny from the rest of the shifters. They might take advantage of an opportunity when in animal form, but that’s just nature. And even then, kings are careful to be discrete. They usually do not get drunk and ravage teenagers with their tongues right in front of their wives.

  When Owen finally straightens and pulls away, the girl is starry-eyed and stumbling, a dopey grin glued to her flushed face. “Let’s dance,” Owen yells.

  Galon hits a switch on the stereo. Pulsing music pounds from the two large speakers set up on the porch, grating against my growing headache.

  Owen runs up the steps, grabs my hand, and pulls me to my feet. “Come on,” he says. “You’re my wife, dance with me.”

  I let him drag me off the porch into the muddy yard, where people are dancing and jumping around and rubbing their bodies together. Owen leans in and kisses me, his tongue swiping across mine. I pull back, sure I can taste a hint of her on his tongue.

  “Oh, don’t be mad about that,” he says, laughing. He could always read me too well. “It’s just for fun. You know you’re the only woman I’ll ever love.”

  “I know,” I say, forcing my body to move with his. I remember a year before, when the only thing that made me feel alive, like I belonged, was when I was by his side. At the banquet, I danced with him all night, never wanting that feeling to end. I believed his promises that I’d feel at home with them if I just relaxed and was myself. But myself never feels at home anywhere, with anyone. Except Owen.

  I cannot lose him. If it means dancing when my head is throbbing, I’ll do it. If it means swallowing my pride when he flirts with other women, I’ll do that, too. Most of all, it means giving him a child. I must find a way to do that, even if it means going back to the witch-trained doctor who might have killed my last one. What choice do I have?

  Winter 1995

  1

  Every time Owen leaves, my stomach tightens and churns all day. My womb aches as if I’m losing that child all over again. We’ve tried to replace her, my darling Eastwood, but with no success. And lately, we haven’t even tried.

  It’s my fault. I know I should be softer, more serving, more loving. I know that’s what kind of woman Owen likes. Also, I should be fun. Owen loves fun. But every time I think the word, it sounds foreign in my head, like when you say a word over and over until it has no meaning. Except that word is like one I’ve never said, one I’ve never known.

  I shake the thought away. That’s no way to entice a man into bed with you. Lately, I’ve been seeing more of the midwife. I asked if Dr. Golden could have caused what is wrong inside me, and she said no. She says that if she had caused it, I would know. And in truth, I already knew the baby was gone when I went to see Willa Golden. I only want someone to blame, someone who swings her hair and her hips a little too much when Owen is around, at the feasts. Someone who had Owen before I did, even if it was back in high school.

  I want to go to her, to ask her what she did to keep his attentions. What she put up with, pretended not to see. But I can’t ask her that, because every time I think I’ve worked up the nerve to do it, I remember that I’m the girl who stole him away from her. She’d laugh in my face, tell me to sleep in the bed I’ve made. She’d say I must already have the secret, or I wouldn’t be the one married to Owen.

  Maybe I do have the secret. I know what he likes, everything he wants. And so, while he’s visiting with wolves to seek a peace treaty, I make his favorite meal—meatloaf, made from the venison he hunted in the fall, mashed potatoes from the garden we grew, homemade catsup for drizzling over the slabs of meatloaf and mountains of potatoes. Just the way he likes it.

  While it cooks, I push away the memory of that fateful evening when he didn’t come home last summer. When it’s ready, I wash up the dishes so the kitchen is clean. Owen does not like chaos, despite his carefree attitude. I make the bed in the bedroom, too, turning down his corner of the blanket to make it inviting. The stub of a homemade candle remains from the last time we had a power outage, and I set a book of matches beside it for easy access when we get to there.

  I listen, my heart pounding in my ears, but I don’t hear the telltale clank of the truck’s motor yet. I strip quickly, well aware that the image will be shattered if he sees me getting ready for him. The magic is in the presentation, not the preparation. I rush to dress in a soft gown, though I’m wracked with shivers in the chill of evening. After adding wood to the fire, I get out the plates and serve the meal.

  It’s still warm when the truck grinds to a halt outside the house. Owen’s boots thump up the steps, and then he’s looming in the doorway, his large frame nearly filling it. I bite my lip, waiting for his response. Praying silently that he’ll even notice.

  “Smells great,” he says, striding to the table. He scoots his chair in and picks up a forkful of potatoes before he’s fully settled. “Mmm, tastes great, too.”

  Though he speaks through a mouthful of food, I know what he’s saying. I smile, relaxing enough to take a bite. My hands are shaking. I can’t tell if it’s from cold or from nerves.

  “How did it go?” I ask at last.

  “What? Oh, the meeting? Didn’t work,” he says, stuffing meatloaf into his mouth and chewing.

  “What did the wolves say?” I press.

  “They didn’t say anything,” he says, shifting through his food before scooping up another bite. “Except no.”

  “And that took all day?”

  He swallows, then sets his fork down. “We got anything to drink?”

  “Oh—of course. Sorry,” I say, scooting back. I go to get a jar of water and bring it back to the table. Owen takes it and chugs about half, then wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and resumes eating.

  I take a small bite, wanting to push for answers but not sure I want to hear them. Finally, I can’t take the silence
a moment longer. I try to keep my voice light and casual, like I’m just making pleasant dinnertime conversation. “So where did you go the rest of the day?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You left this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “I just took care of some things, ran by the store in town, hung around with some old buddies.”

  “Uh huh,” I say. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

  “What’s this about?” he asks, dropping his fork on his empty plate with a clatter. I wince. “Now you’re telling me how to spend my day? That I can’t hang out with my friends because you don’t have any friends? I told you this morning, Doralice. Go visit some of the wives. They won’t think you’re so uppity if you just hang out with them.”

  “I did,” I say to my plate. “I went to see the midwife.”

  “The midwife, the midwife, always the midwife,” he says. “You’re obsessed with this, Doralice. Stop worrying. That’s probably why you haven’t gotten pregnant. All that stress. We’ll have a baby. Just let it happen.”

  “And if we don’t? You’re never here. You’re always off…doing whatever you do…and I’m here alone. How is that going to make us a baby?”

  “I work,” he says through gritted teeth. “I take odd jobs to make money for us, so we can afford to eat. Sometimes, I need to relax afterwards, and it’s not exactly relaxing to come home to…this.” He gestures vaguely, though I don’t know what he means. It’s not easy waiting for him to come home, worrying all day and night, never knowing when he’ll show up, if he’ll show up. If I should cook or if he’ll have already eaten. If he’ll be drunk or sober. I can’t sleep at night, waiting for him to come crawl into bed, wondering if he’ll reach for me. Aching for him to touch me, but almost scared that he will.