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

by Lena Mae Hill

  I could eat another, could sink to the kitchen floor and open one package after another, eating every single one until my belly protruded like a pregnancy. But I stop myself, pushing the drawer closed with my knee so I can’t see the temptation. I trod back to the bedroom, determined to go through with this. I’ve already fortified my strength. If I back out now, I’ve just stolen food from my own unborn child.

  I start to get dressed, then laugh at the ridiculousness. I’m not driving over the mountain to pay him a visit. I drop my nightgown onto the floor and wrap my arms around myself, instantly shivering despite the lack of chill in the summer air. As I start for the door, I catch a movement in the corner of my eye and turn, halfway expecting Owen to be striding past the window. But it’s only my own reflection in the mirror. For a second, I stand there studying myself.

  If I want Owen to want me again, I’m going to have to do something to win him back, starting with the way I look. Whoever his girlfriend is, she’s got to look better than the pasty, emaciated thing I see in the mirror, as dry and stringy as a piece of jerky. I remember the witch only vaguely—full lips telling me to go to sleep, golden hair swinging like a pendulum, hypnotizing me into obedience. I know she was pretty.

  But that will have to come later. For now, I need to know where he is. I need to see for myself. I don’t know why I have to know, but I do. After my conversation with Galon, I feel too guilty to ask him to go along with me. Because I am spying on his friend, on my husband. Just once, to check out the competition. If it’s a witch, she could have some kind of love spell on him, and I’ll never get him back. But I have to know.

  I open the door and step out onto the porch, take a deep breath, and change into my natural form. It’s easier than I expected in my weakened state. When I’m in my raven form, I beat my wings against the thick air pressing up against my feathers, lifting me into the sky. I’m weightless, floating above the trees, borne on a warm current towards the top of the mountain. I am truly myself for a moment. From here, I can see across the wolves’ valley to the lookout tower across the valley, on the next mountaintop.

  I scan the valley below, where the little wolf community nestles in the trees, then set my sights on the tower and head for witch territory, alone.

  3

  I sit frozen in the tree below the Lighthouse, watching the witch disappear into the Enchanted Forest. I don’t completely understand what I’ve just heard, but I understand enough. If it’s not bad enough that Owen had fallen prey to a witch’s seduction, he’s now moved on, judging by the vitriol in the words she just flung at him.

  As much as I despise her for leaving her thoughts in my brain, for invading my body for unknown purposes, I can’t hate her. As I watch her race away, catch a vine, and swing far down the mountain, all I feel for her is pity. I know what it feels like to lose Owen to another woman. I know the pain that made her scream loudly enough to bring my attention. If not for her shrieking, I may never have checked the Lighthouse. But when I arrived, there she was with Owen. At first, I thought she was the woman. After hearing their conversation, I know better. She’s a jilted lover, like me.

  I remember Galon’s warning, that knowing won’t make anything better. And I know he’s right. I don’t want to know who’s up there in that room, who he’d risk angering a witch for. But I can’t unclench my talons from around the branch where I’ve perched. I can’t let go and fly all the way back home without seeing her. At last, I let the air buoy me upwards, past the window that is now standing open, the shutters thrown back and the sun falling through the opening.

  I circle the tower once, just above the trees, before rising to the window. When I see them, my warm blood freezes in my veins. Beneath my black feathers, inside my raven heart, the last warmth blinks out. If it were possible to plummet from the sky, I would. Instead, I land on the windowsill and perch there, watching. I don’t care if they see me.

  But they are too busy. Busy holding two beautiful, perfect, pink-skinned babies. Not only does Owen have another lover. He has one who can give him not one child, but two. The barrenness is not his problem. It’s mine. I am done, used up, cold and grey as a winter sky, while inside the room, an eternal summer spills its bounty over the ungrateful, undeserving, unsuffering, blessed family.

  Owen is changing the diaper of one baby, singing to her as he does so, trying to quiet her fussing. She is tiny and plump, her bare legs covered in chubby rolls of fat. The girl is nursing the other one at her full, life-giving breast. Golden light spills into the room, bathing the woman in sunshine. She is all gold—hair, skin, eyes. Her skin glows with health and youth. Her golden hair radiates its own light. It bathes the babies, her voluptuous body, and my husband.

  My husband. Not hers.

  The sun behind me makes a black outline of my silhouette on the floor. But they don’t look my way. As I watch them, an arctic tsunami of cold, black rage builds inside the unremarkable bird on the windowsill. When at last it reaches its crescendo, the last threads of sanity stretch thin within me, and then, one by one, they begin to snap.

  4

  I stand facing the door, my heart quelling inside my chest. I can do this. I will do this. I think of the plump and juicy legs of those little babies, and I steel my resolve. I lift one hand and knock.

  The door swings open, and the face of my one friend in the world smiles back at me. “Doralice,” Galon says, gesturing for me to come inside. “How you been, pretty lady?”

  “Good,” I say, a grin stretching across my face. It feels all wrong, but I can’t remember how to do it the natural way. “Is Ira home?”

  “No,” Galon says. “Why? Come on in and have a drink. I got tea, and coffee, and probably a can or two of Busch.”

  “Okay,” I say, following him into the trailer’s narrow kitchen. “I followed Owen.”

  “You did?” Galon asks, pausing to look at me.

  “She has babies. Two of them. I’m going to take them, and then he won’t want her, because she won’t have his babies anymore.”

  “Doralice,” he says, his voice conveying the shock written all over his face.

  “You’re going to help me, right?” I ask. “That’s why I told you.”

  “Doralice.” This time, he makes my name into a scolding so clearly he might as well have finished with, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  And that’s when I know how stupid I’ve been. He’s not my friend. He’s not going to help me put those babies in the white paper packages in his freezer, unlabeled, where no one will ever know what happened to them. He’s never been my friend. And I was so desperate that I’m even more pathetic than he is, so pathetic than even big dumb Galon could fool me. But now I see clearly. We aren’t friends. I have no friends. I’ve never have. I’m alone in the world, as I’ve always been.

  I’m on my own. Just like when I was too young, and my father came staggering into my room, and I told him to stop, but it was like he couldn’t hear me, like I wasn’t there at all. Nothing I did could help me, nothing I tried did any good to stop him. I was on my own then, and on my own later, when my mother told me to treat him well, because he worked so hard, and I knew she wasn’t going to help me. I was on my own then, and I’m on my own now.

  “I think you are going to help me,” I say evenly. “I don’t know what he told her, but he might have told her about me. He might have warned her to watch out for a raven queen. And I’m not strong enough to shift into anything other than my natural form anymore. How is a raven going to carry two babies all the way back from the Lighthouse?”

  “Sit down, have some coffee,” he says, pushing a mug into my hand. “I’m sure you’re in shock. We’re not going to steal anyone’s babies.”

  “Yes, we are,” I say, looking up at him. I thought he’d say yes. I thought he’d be outraged on my behalf. But no one has ever been outraged on my behalf except Owen. No one has loved me but Owen, and no one ever will. My only hope is to get him back, and now I have the means.<
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  But he’s Owen’s friend, like the rest of them. Of course he’s not going to take my side.

  “No, Doralice,” Galon says patiently. “We’re not.”

  “Actually, you’re right,” I say. “We aren’t going to. You are.”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head and turning away. Has he always been this big? He’s like a giant in the small kitchen, knocking over a bottle of some spice on the counter, then squeezing past the refrigerator door when he opens it to pull out a jar of milk. I remember her nipple, pink as a rose petal, leaking milk into that baby’s mouth.

  “You wouldn’t want Ira to find out about us, would you?” I ask.

  Galon stops with his hand on the lid of the jar and stares at me across the table. “He knows we’re friends.”

  “Oh, but we’re much more than that, aren’t we?” I ask.

  His eyes are harder than I’ve ever seen them, his jaw set. “No.”

  He could snap my neck with his bare hands if he wanted to. For the first time, I’m not sure that he’s beyond violence. But I’m beyond caring. “Are you sure about that, Galon?” I ask, my voice taking on an edge of coyness I didn’t know I still possessed. “And more importantly, will Ira be sure?”

  “Of course he will,” Galon says, opening the milk. He splashes some into my coffee cup and then his own before sitting down across from me. His hulk takes up the entire side of the table. He could probably eat a whole baby in one sitting and still have room for gravy.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “We’ve spent an awful lot of time together. Lots of time alone, at night. Once the rumors start, all kinds of people will be able to say they’ve seen our trucks at each other’s houses at all hours of the night. And with Owen running around on me, no one will be surprised. I can tell them intimate details about you, give the rumors some validity. You have a scar just above your pubic hair. And a mole on your inner thigh, higher up than anyone could see, even if they saw you shift. Which you don’t do, anyway. I know that, too.”

  His eyes are steel. “Ira doesn’t believe gossip.”

  “No, but he might start to wonder. Why is my hair on your pillow, and what’s that earring doing down the side of the bed? And how did a pair of women’s panties end up in your laundry, anyway?”

  He stares at me across the table, but I don’t flinch. Not even when he drops his eyes, and his shoulders slump. “I thought we were friends.”

  “I did, too.”

  “Won’t the mama come looking for them?” he asks after taking a sip of coffee. “And Owen—he’ll know they aren’t your babies.”

  “You let me worry about Owen,” I say. “You just worry about the babies.”

  He has no idea just how much he should worry about them.

  5

  That night, I pace the house in the dark, trying to find a way out. A way out of signing the papers Owen brought me this afternoon. Divorce papers. I can’t see anything ahead but more bleakness than what lies behind me. And I can’t pretend life with Owen has been the fairytale I envisioned when I married him.

  At last, when the first streaks of dawn rake across the cold and starless sky like the claws of a lion, I creep into the bedroom. Shivering with cold and fear, I nudge Owen. He gives a single loud snore before falling silent again. I press my frigid hands to his broad, warm back. When he still doesn’t move, I move towards him under the blankets and nestle my body around his. The thought of living without this warmth, this comfort, for the rest of my life grinds away at whatever shred of hope remains inside me.

  I have nothing to lose. I’ve already lost Owen, the babies, everything. What is one more rejection?

  I slide my hands down Owen’s strong, furry chest, where his heart beats strong as a lion inside him, unlike the erratic bird that flutters its last wingbeats inside my chest. His stomach is flat and almost painfully hot against my cold hands. His deep, steady breathing falters, quickens. Is that my doing?

  Hardly daring to breathe, I let my hand creep further down, into the hot fur nestled at his groin.

  “What are you doing?” His voice rumbles from somewhere deep inside his chest, but he doesn’t spring from the bed, even when I grip him and begin to move my hand the way I still remember he likes.

  “I’ll sign the papers,” I say.

  For a minute, he doesn’t say anything. But my cheek pressed against his back senses the increase in his heartbeat. “But?” he asks, still not pulling away.

  “I’ll sign the papers if you’ll try this one last time.”

  “I’m not going to wait for nine months to find out,” he says. “Or even two.”

  “I’ll sign them tomorrow.”

  “I’m not coming back to you even if it works,” he says. “We’ll be divorced. You understand that? You’ll leave me alone.”

  “Okay,” I whisper, my heart filling my mouth like a second tongue.

  “Promise me you’ll sign the papers and leave us alone.”

  Us. What’s left of my frozen heart shatters inside me.

  But I know my husband. He may be fickle and easily distracted by his appetites, as apt to chase shiny things as a crow, but he is a good man. He will take care of his family, like he took care of me and took me away from mine. If I were to have a child, he could not ignore it any more than he could ignore his own natural inclination to change to a lion rather than a bird. He will always return to his true form, his true nature as king. And he will always return to his family, to what’s right.

  “I promise.”

  He rolls over onto me, and to my surprise, kisses my lips. The familiarity of his warm lips, of his soft beard against my face, brings tears to my eyes. I grip his shoulders, shaking suddenly. “This is the last time,” he says firmly. “For old time’s sake, nothing else.”

  I nod mutely, and he strokes my hair back. I can see as much sorrow pooling inside him as in my own heart, but mine is a bottomless well where I can sink forever before finally drowning in the cold darkness of it. His is capped with a glacier’s worth of ice, freezing his heart from admitting that this is as painful for him as it is for me. On top of the ice, his new lovers may come to play to skate and entertain him like toys. But underneath, the sadness for what we shared will always lie hidden.

  When he’s done, he remains on top of me for a long time, until I think he’s fallen asleep with his face buried in my neck. But finally, he rises without a word and leaves the room. I lie there, not daring to get up and spill the last seeds that will ever be planted in my barren womb.

  Fall, 2000

  1

  My breasts are heavy and tender, and the tell-tale cramps foretell my fate. More blood coming. My last chance at giving Owen what he wants has come and gone. I sit at the kitchen table, the late afternoon sun streaming in the window marking out a rectangle before me, spotlighting the papers waiting for my signature. For a few days, I have been able to put off Owen’s repeated requests, but there’s no point now. I can feel the ache inside my womb, telling me it’s too late. There’s no point.

  All I have now is a plan to destroy him, to have revenge for the ways he has destroyed me. He tried to bypass me, to find another way, but if he won’t have my heirs, he won’t have any. The babies are on their way. Through casual conversation, I have already gleaned the information I need from Galon. I know where he took his meat to have it butchered and wrapped in unmarked white paper. I will fill the freezer and feed Owen the tenderest cuts, never letting on that I serve him his own end the way he served me mine in these papers.

  With grim determination, I press the end of the pen, and the tip pops out like the blade of a box cutter. That’s what I will use. A box cutter I found in Owen’s shed, one he uses to open boxes filled with supplies for his new home. He won’t be needing that anymore. Once they are gone, all of them, he will know that I’m the wrong woman to leave.

  I look up at the crunch of tires in the drive. Is that him, home at last?

  But before I reach the door, I hear th
e mewling squall of a creature that is not Owen in any form. It’s not an animal at all, but the delivery I’ve been waiting for. I throw open the door and rush outside to greet my accomplice. He carries one in a basket and one in a backpack dangling from his hand.

  “Here,” he says, thrusting them both at me at once. “I did it. Now you have the babies you’ve always wanted.”

  “Oh, thank you,” I cry, snatching the basket from him. One fat, tiny baby stares up at me, her eyes brimming with tears and her lip trembling.

  “I don’t know how you think you’re going to get away with this,” Galon says, his eyebrows drawn together like thunderheads. “And I don’t want to know. Don’t ask me to go back and tell the mother. Don’t ask me for anything.”

  “I won’t,” I say, ushering him inside. He stomps up the steps, and the whole house shifts under the weight of his fury.

  “My duty is done,” he says. “And so is our friendship. I thought you were a good person, Doralice. I always thought you were. But this…”

  “It’s not my fault,” I say, lifting the second baby from the carrier. I begin to bounce her in my arms, and her crying quiets. “If you hate me, I’ll have to accept that. But I hope you know, this is Owen’s doing. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have to do this.”

  “You don’t have to,” he says. “Let me take them back. You can still do the right thing.”

  His eyes are pleading, but I steel myself against the hurt I see there. “I can’t.”

  “Then we’re done,” he says. “I don’t want to know you anymore. Don’t bring those kids around and ask us to be their uncles. You’re dead to us.”