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

by Lena Mae Hill

  “Can you?” he asks.

  “Of course,” I say. “I’ve been a loner all my life. I’m great at secrets.”

  He leans forward, his eyes shining, so close his beard brushes my cheek. “I’m not a shifter.”

  “What?” I pull back, staring at him. My mind is racing back over the years since he’s been here. Six years? Seven? The bobcats. Everyone knows they’re bobcats. Right?

  Owen always told me that. Ironically, he formally introduced me to them when we started hanging out, back in high school. After several months of meeting in the apple barn, I had to be introduced as his girlfriend, as if I were now someone else. Galon and Ira weren’t in high school anymore, but we still hung out. I’ve known these guys for years.

  Have I ever seen Galon shift? Surely I have…

  “Come here,” he says, standing. I hesitate, but when he pulls my chair back from the table, I stand. My legs are suddenly shaking. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why am I always alone with these big men when I find out I can’t trust them?

  “Don’t be afraid,” Galon says, his hand on my back, steering me towards the back door of the trailer. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Maybe not a fly, but a girl? A raven?

  He opens the back door and herds me down the steps into the soft grass of his back yard. I should run. Shift into a bird and fly away. But my legs trudge forward instead, my body numb with dread as we approach their little barn. Galon pulls a keyring from his pocket, and the keys jangle while he finds the right one.

  Because everyone keeps their barn locked. It’s totally normal.

  I am about to die. I can feel it, the blood in my veins turning cold and sluggish, like the babies when they die inside me.

  Galon unlocks the barn, which is really more like a shed, and pulls open the door. He crowds in behind me, his body pushing me into the small space. When he door closes behind us, it’s pitch dark. It smells like cat pee and straw. My breath is coming so fast I think I might faint before he does whatever he’s going to do. I thought Ira was the sick and twisted one. But maybe they both are. Like attracts like.

  A dim bulb blinks on overhead, and I squint against the dull light. Galon’s large hand comes down from the chain on the light and points to the corner, where something brown and furry lies curled against the wall inside a cage. “That’s the bobcat,” he says.

  Along both sides of the small barn are more cages, some empty, some with different animals in them. “What—what about Ira?”

  “He’s a real shifter,” Galon says. “I just pretend.”

  “What do you mean, pretend?”

  “Watch,” he says, opening another small cage. His big hand closes around a little finch, which tweets in protest. Its wings beat inside his cupped hands for a minute, while he holds them in front of his mouth and whispers to it. When he opens his hands, it’s lying still. He picks up one of my limp hands and sets the little bird in my palm.

  “You killed it.”

  “No, feel,” he says, stroking its tiny body with the gentlest touch. He takes my other hand and places my finger on its chest, where I can feel the racing flutter of a heartbeat. “Now watch.” He kneels on the floor, and I wait for him to open another cage, but he doesn’t. After a second, he keels over on the floor.

  “Oh my God, Galon,” I say, dropping to my knees. The little bird lets out a series of loud cheeping noises. I’m so startled, I release it, and it flutters its wings and goes careening around the shed. “Galon,” I say, shaking his shoulder. The finch suddenly swoops down and lands on his shoulder, where it, too, tumbles to the floor. I shriek and jump up, away from it, from whatever just got both of them at once.

  Galon sits up, laughing, and picks up the little bird. “See?” he says. “I can move around. So I can be a bobcat, or a bird, or a man. Just like a shifter. But…not.”

  “How?” I whisper, my back pressed to the door.

  “I’m a Nix,” he says, standing to replace the sleeping bird in the little house inside the cage.

  “Oh God,” I say, pressing my palms to either side of my head. I should have known better than to think someone normal would want to be my friend.

  “We’re not evil,” he says. “Neither are witches, or humans, or werewolves. We’re all capable of good and evil both, whatever we are. You are, too.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head back and forth.

  “You are,” he insists. “I don’t use magic to do what you just saw. That’s what my kind has to do. I could borrow a little bird flying by, but I’d kill it. Instead, I keep a few animals here. We’re good to them, Doralice. They’re our pets. Only sometimes, I put a little sleeping charm on them, and then I’m the pet.” He grins at me, like a kid showing off some neat trick.

  But I remember that witch who came to the house to wait for Owen, and when she told me to go to sleep, I simply obeyed, powerless to do so much as ask why. I remember how I felt when I woke up, like I was going mad. Like something was wrong, very wrong, as if a pillow was being held down on my face while I panicked. Only there was no pillow. I couldn’t get it off. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt right again. And suddenly, I know what happened to me that day. She was inside me. In my body.

  I shudder at the thought, gasping for breath and cowering against the door.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Galon asks, reaching for me. I shriek and close my eyes, ready for him to do that same thing to me that he just did to the bird.

  Instead, he reaches past me and presses the latch, and the door swings outwards. I tumble to the grass outside, sucking in the green, clear air like I’m dying.

  “Doralice, I’m sorry,” Galon says, hauling me to my feet. “I didn’t know that would scare you.”

  “Do you…can you…” I pant, trying to clear my head, until I can speak. “Could you do that to person?”

  “No,” he says, drawing back like I slapped him. “Course not. That’s dark stuff. I stay away from that. I’ve never tried, and I never will. That’s something you just don’t do.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  “Sure, anything’s possible,” he says, walking up to the back step. He sits and pats the spot beside him. “It’s called projecting. But to do it to a human… We got natural shields. You’d have to be a super strong projector, and find a real weak body, probably one who’s dying, before you could displace them like that.”

  I approach the step with caution. Everyone knows not to trust a witch, but a Nix is an unknown quantity to me. They live near the ocean, not in landlocked valleys.

  “I think…someone did it to me,” I say slowly. “While I was sleeping. I think it was Owen. Is that possible?”

  He frowns and rests his elbows on his knees. “Yes,” he says after a long pause. “Anyone can project.”

  “I think he also…let someone else do it.” I tell him quickly about the witch who came to the house and told me to go to sleep, and how I had no choice but to obey. And how I woke up, and how I felt funny and heard her voice afterwards though I had never met her. How before that, I’d heard Owen’s voice, and thought I was going crazy, but I knew him, so I hadn’t thought it was so strange until the witch did it.

  When I finish, Galon stands and disappears into the house. A minute later, he comes back with two beers. He sits beside me on the step, opens a beer, and hands it to me.

  “Why would he do that?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I got to tell you something,” he says suddenly, turning to me. “You know how I said they never invited me to come out with them again?”

  “Yeah….”

  “Well, they didn’t. But once, I followed them.”

  I take a swig of beer, already feeling woozy. I probably don’t need this, but I take another swallow anyway. My heart is beating so hard I can barely hear him when he speaks.

  “I don’t know exactly what they’re up to,” Galon says. “And I probably shouldn’t tell you any of this. It goes against all the codes of
everything there is. But Owen’s got a girl over there.”

  “Oh God,” I whisper, clutching the beer so tightly I think the bottle will shatter. I wish it would, wish the shards would slice through my wrists and I’d bleed out. It couldn’t hurt more than this. “I knew it.”

  “You did?” he asks, letting out a breath. “I’m kind of glad. Not that he has one, but that you know. I hate to be the one telling you.”

  “I—I always knew,” I say. “It’s been going on a long time. Who is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she…a wolf?” I ask. I can’t ask what I want to ask, if she’s prettier than me. Look at me. I’m nothing but bones inside rags. Anyone’s prettier than me. No wonder he wanted another woman.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I didn’t want to know. I thought I did, but when I heard what he was doing, I left. I’m sorry, Doralice.” He puts a hand on my bare shoulder. I’m cold even in the warm evening air, but his big hands are hot and calloused, like Owen’s when he used to touch me.

  “Then it doesn’t matter if we do it without telling him,” I say suddenly, my voice high, desperate. “We can see if I can have a baby. He’s obviously seeing with someone else. Why shouldn’t I?”

  I turn to him, but he only looks at me with his sad, kind eyes.

  “Oh, right,” I say. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” he says. “If there’s anything I can do…besides…baby making…”

  I laugh a little at the way he says it, and he smiles, too. “I know it’s pathetic,” I say. “But if you could just be my friend…that’s what you can do.”

  “I can do that.” He clinks his beer against mine and smiles. “Friends.”

  Summer 1998

  1

  Owen is gone again. I sit on the porch, wrapped in a blanket even though the warmth of the day still hangs low over the yard. The trees sag with heat, but I am cold, like always. There is nothing left of my body to keep me warm. Even the midwife says I’m nothing more than bones, that I wouldn’t be able to carry a child anymore.

  I laughed when she said that. As if I have a chance for that now. Owen hasn’t touched me in years. Galon won’t touch me. I’m untouchable, a dried and shriveled skeleton sitting on the porch waiting to die. Waiting for Owen, knowing he won’t come home again tonight. I rock forward and back, as if the swing had chains instead of legs, as if it were a real swing instead of a bench. Like me, it is counterfeit, a promise that couldn’t deliver.

  I blink when headlights sweep into the driveway, washing the porch in a yellow glow. The truck bounces to a stop and the door swings open. Though it’s not Owen’s truck, I crane my neck, trying to see past the lights, to see if he’s in the cab. Instead, Galon hops out. The truck rises a few inches when unburdened from his weight.

  “Hey there, pretty lady,” Galon calls, shutting off the lights. For a moment, I’m blind as a mole in the darkness left by the light’s absence. I hear the truck door slam, feel the porch sink as he climbs the steps. “How’s my girl?” he asks. “I brought you a little treat.”

  A bag crinkles as he sits down beside me. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness again, and I take the package he hands me, a honeybun from the convenience store.

  “Thanks,” I say, setting it in my lap. Later, I’ll add it to the drawer full of little sweet things he’s brought me. I keep them, waiting for the day when I’ll need them. But I don’t let myself have them yet. When Owen is ready to try for a baby again, I’ll need to gain weight, to have enough to nourish the baby inside me. Until then, I save them.

  “No word tonight?” he asks, ripping open the package on his own honeybun.

  “No word.”

  He tears off half the honeybun in one bite, then pushes it into his cheek long enough to say, “Ira’s home.”

  “I just wish I knew where he went,” I say, sneaking a glance at Galon. Since the day Owen stopped taking Ira with him, I’ve been waiting for Galon to offer to spy for me. Just a month or so after Galon and I became friends, Owen stopped taking Ira on his nightly excursions. It’s as if he sensed that I might have a friend of my own and had to do something to stop it. As if the mere possibility of my happiness was cause for alarm.

  When Galon doesn’t offer, yet again, I take a deep breath. I’ve waited long enough. At first, Owen would disappear for a few hours every day, only rarely staying away all night. But in the past month, he’s only been home a handful of nights.

  “Do you think you could follow him for me?” I should have asked months ago. I know that Galon doesn’t take hints. “I would go myself, but he caught me last time I tried.”

  “I don’t know,” Galon says, shifting on the swing and swiping crumbs off his lap. “You’re my friend, Doralice. But so is Owen.”

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I should probably stay out of it, though.”

  “Of course. I’ll do it. He probably won’t even notice me this time. He never notices me anymore, anyway.”

  “Be careful.”

  I don’t say what I’m thinking, even though it’s the truth—no one would care if I got hurt. Probably, no one would notice if I didn’t come back. Only Owen, and he’d be too relieved to go looking for me or send out a search, unless he was trying to cover up my disappearance by pretending to be the grieving husband. Instead, I tell Galon I will be careful, because that’s what friends say to reassure each other.

  “What have you got to gain by it, anyway?” Galon asks. “Why would you want to see where he goes, who he’s with?”

  I remember sitting on that branch by the river a thousand years ago, watching Owen and Willa Golden make love. “I don’t know,” I say. “I just…I have to know. I don’t know why.”

  “It won’t change anything,” Galon says quietly.

  “Maybe it will.”

  He glances sideways at me, his big beard outlined by the silvery moonlight. “What are you planning to do, Doralice?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “I just have to see for myself. I need to know. I don’t know why, and I know that it will probably make things worse. I’m not stupid.”

  “I know you’re not,” he says. “That’s why I don’t understand you wanting to do this. Do you think I’d lie to you about this? You think I’d say a thing like that to hurt you?”

  “No,” I say quickly, putting a steadying hand on his knee. “I trust you, Galon. It’s just something I have to do. Maybe to make it real, so I can finally accept it.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then… Maybe I can let him go.”

  Galon shifts, his big body like a horse next to my frail one. “I reckon if you wanted me to go with you, just for a lookout, I could maybe do that. Just to keep you safe, not to spy on my friend.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I say. “I don’t think the wolves care much about birds on their property. We’re not competition.”

  Galon shoves the other half of the honeybun into his mouth and crumples the wrapper in his huge fist. If I could get him to hate Owen somehow, he could scare Owen straight. Maybe even scare him into staying home with his wife every night, like he used to. But I don’t think Galon is capable of hate, and he’d never want to scare his best friend.

  “They’re not in wolf territory anymore,” he says, his voice a low rumble, almost inaudible over the song of insects in the trees.

  “What?” I ask, turning to him in the dark. Though the half-moon provides enough light to make out his features, I can’t see his expression clearly in the shadows. “Where are they? How do you know?”

  He hesitates a long moment. “They’re in the Enchanted Forest.”

  “Who is?” I ask, the knife of his betrayal twisting in my gut. “How long have you known? And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think I ought to. It wasn’t going to make anything better for anyone.”

  “Who is she?” I demand. “Th
at witch?”

  He shakes his big head slowly back and forth. “I don’t know, Doralice. All I know is what Ira said. He stopped going with Owen because they decided to meet up there, and Ira didn’t want to risk angering the witches. I don’t know if she’s a witch or what.”

  I know why Ira wouldn’t want to go in there. No one wants to risk it, to go into the forest and have a tree pull you limb from limb or steal your soul. But I don’t know why Owen would go there, and how he could be safe there, unless that witch was with him. I should have known it was her all along. He’s always liked to dance with danger, defending Dr. Golden and her witch skills when she wanted to come back the valley, and now this one, the one who got inside my head and my body and did… Who knows what.

  Sometimes, the wondering drives me madder than the thought-trails she left, the random times her voice pops into my head to answer an unspoken question. Not knowing what she did in there, what they used me for, what evil collaboration I was a part of without even knowing. Or what Owen got in return for letting her use me for dark purposes for those few hours I was asleep. The madness of not knowing, of being in the dark, gnaws at me again when I think of it. I’ll get her back for what she did. I’ll find a way to repay her for invading my body against my will, without my consent.

  2

  After two days, when Owen hasn’t returned, I go to the kitchen in the morning and open the drawer full of goodies. I stare at the jumble of honeybuns, Cosmic Brownies, snack cakes, Twinkies, Sno Balls, oatmeal pies, moon pies, bear claws, Ding Dongs, and individual-sized cherry pies in waxed paper packages. I’m not nourishing a baby yet, but I need the energy if I’m ever going to get Owen back.

  Gripping the plastic wrapper of a packet of Swiss Rolls in both hands, I pull it open. The sweet smell of chocolate is tinged with a cardboard smell, probably because I’ve left the rolls on their cardboard tray for so long. I peel back the plastic and eat them, one after another, standing in my kitchen with the morning sunlight streaming in the window to pool at my bony feet. I chew slowly, relishing the way the frosting coats the inside of my mouth while the creamy filling slides right down my throat. When I’m done, I scrape the chocolate off the cardboard with my finger and pop it into my mouth, sucking my finger clean.