Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

by Maggie Stiefvater

  “Deirdre Monaghan.”

  At the sound of his voice, I was immediately thrust through countless memories: Luke, looking at the bodies of his brothers in the ditch, and the Hunter bidding him to come away. The Hunter pinning Luke to the ground, face impassive, as the torc was forced onto his arm by a chanting faerie. Luke dragged from a well by the Hunter, who viewed him with no malice: “Time to work.” Playing the flute while the Hunter listened, head cocked and eyes closed. The Hunter dragging Luke’s bloodied body into a massive room, a scarlet trail leading out the door behind him.

  Thomas whispered into my ear, “Only Luke can kill you with that iron on you. Be brave, child.”

  The Hunter gazed at him. “Thomas Rhymer, be silent, if you can.”

  He felt old. I sensed when I looked at him that I was looking at thousands of years of pursuit. I was more afraid of his strangeness than I was of Eleanor’s vicious pleasure. I was afraid to speak; there must be some sort of protocol I ought to be following so as to not offend him.

  “What do you want from me, Hunter? Shouldn’t you be pursuing more challenging quarry with a pack like this?”

  A strange expression flickered through the faerie’s eyes. “Indeed.” He studied me through slit lids. “Indeed, they are wasted chasing such an easy trail.”

  “You cannot kill her,” Thomas said. “So why chase her at all?”

  “I bid thee be silent, Rhymer.” He turned back to me and the pause dragged out for centuries. At the end of it, he reached to his hip and pulled out a long, bone dagger, the hilt all carved with the heads of animals. “Deirdre Monaghan, you are a cloverhand, and thus you must die.”

  Yeah. He was scary, but not scary enough that I was just going to sit back and let him stick me with a dagger. I took a step back, stumbling a bit over one of the hounds. “I know you’re not thinking of stabbing me with that.”

  Thomas winced beside me, no doubt imagining how painful getting the dagger plunged into my body would be, even if it didn’t kill me.

  “Take off your iron,” the Hunter said. “I can smell it on you.”

  “Like hell I will,” I told him. “Keep back.”

  The Hunter’s face bore no frown; I was a little rabbit darting away from his knife, and that was to be expected. He stepped forward, lifted the dagger slightly, and said again, “Take off your iron.”

  I glanced to the edge of the field. Afternoon had dragged into evening, and I could feel the looming darkness over the horizon even if I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t very close, but it was going to have to be close enough. Something in me seized that darkness, and I let it swell into me.

  I held up my hand, and as neatly as if tugged by a string, the bone dagger flew into my palm. The hilt slapped my hand, and a bit of the blade as well; it parted my skin as easily as butter and I flinched, nearly dropping the knife. But I couldn’t afford to drop it, so I didn’t. I gripped it, a thin trail of blood dripping down the ivory surface, and I raised it toward the Hunter.

  My voice shook. “Go back to her and tell her I want my friend back. And I want Luke.”

  The Hunter’s eyes were fixed on me as if they would will the knife from my hand. “I will not leave my quarry.”

  “You will,” I said, holding the knife steady with sheer force of will. “Go tell her what I said.” I held out my other hand, the palm toward him, and imagined it was a huge giant’s hand pressing into the Hunter’s chest, gripping the strange surface of his clothing. And I shoved the giant’s hand as hard as I could, pulling what force I could find in the darkness-that-was-not-yet-darkness.

  The Hunter stumbled backward, pressed down the hill. I shoved some more.

  “Go, or I’ll crush you,” I lied. I barely had the strength to hold the dagger, much less to threaten him. It took all that was in me to squeeze the giant hand on his chest a bit, to hopefully convince him I had the strength to do what I said.

  He gave me a long look and then he lifted a hand. “Hounds, come.”

  They streamed after him, coats glittering in the long evening light. I waited, my hand outstretched and shaking, until they had been gone two long minutes.

  “Is he gone?” I finally whispered.

  Thomas nodded, disbelieving. “Yes.”

  “Good,” I said, and collapsed.

  In my dream, I lay on a hill in a ring of mushrooms that glowed dusky white in the light of a million stars. There was no place in the world closer to the night sky than was that hill where I lay, the darkness pressing all around me, holding me to it. Every breath I took, the night filled me.

  In this dream, I lay on my back, staring at the multitude of stars above me and at the chalk-white surface of the moon. I knew I was dreaming because as I looked at the moon, I could see curled birds trembling on its surface, white wings folded over one another in an impossible puzzle. There was something so beautiful and vast about their presence that I wanted to cry. Had they always quivered there in the light of the moon, only I’d never seen them until now?

  It took me longer than I would have thought to realize I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t until I heard him sigh. I turned my head to look into his face. “I thought you were dead.”

  Luke looked tired; there was dried blood on his face and an odd longing in his voice. “I’m afraid not.”

  I swallowed tears; they got stuck in my throat. “I wish you were really here.”

  Sitting next to me, he cradled my cold bare feet in his warm hands; the flight from the hounds had left them filthy. “Oh, me too, lovely. But I’m glad enough for a dream; it was clever of you to think of it.”

  I didn’t remember thinking of anything before I dreamt. I only remembered falling into the grass and wishing that the darkness had come sooner.

  I pushed myself up, sitting closer to him, taking comfort in the memory of his smell. He wrapped his arms around me and spoke in my ear. “Don’t let Them take my secret from you. It’s all I have to give you.”

  He sounded miserable, his head resting on my shoulder, so I said earnestly, “All I want from you is you.”

  Luke’s breath escaped in a long sigh. “Oh, Dee, I never wanted to be free as badly as I do now. I didn’t think it would hurt like this.”

  “I’m coming to save you,” I said.

  He pushed back from me, holding me by my shoulders, staring into my face. “No matter what I say later, remember that I’ll never hurt you. I could never hurt you.” I didn’t know if he was promising me or convincing himself.

  “Tell me what to do,” I pleaded.

  Luke frowned, and I thought he would say that he didn’t know what I should do. But he took my chin in his hand. “Trust yourself.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I couldn’t trust myself; every time I did, I swapped memories with someone, made a car run continuously, or fell down in a useless faint. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was a little kid waving a gun, playing with a toy of unimaginable power. I stared away from him at those milling white birds on the surface of the moon, thinking how they represented just how much I didn’t know.

  “Stop,” he said. “I know what you’re doing. You’re a smart girl, Dee. The smartest I’ve ever met.”

  “Smart doesn’t have anything to do with it,” I snapped, jerking my chin away. “I can teach myself stuff from books or from watching someone else do it. How am I supposed to learn anything about this? There aren’t any books on being a freak, as far as I know.”

  “I’m always pissing you off.” Luke shook his head. “Even in your dreams, I’m managing to piss you off.”

  I looked back at him, at his tired, pale face watching me with his pale blue eyes reflecting the light of the moon-birds. He looked so vulnerable and human in this darkness. I shuddered. “I’m afraid I’ll screw up and lose both of you.”

  “You have to trust yourself. You don’t need someone else to tell you what to do.”

  Maybe I did. Maybe I wasn’t ready for the independence I’d wanted so badly. I buried my face in m
y hand, shutting out the light.

  He took my wrist, and his voice was soft. “You can do anything you want to do, remember? Now come here and say goodbye to me because I don’t know if I’ll see you again.”

  My chin jerked up at his words and I saw that a wet streak glittered on his face before he kissed me, lips rough on mine. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I held onto him as he kissed me again and again, another gleaming trail joining the first on his cheek and mixing with my tears.

  I thought the dream would end there, but it didn’t end until after he’d pulled me down into the grass with him, lean body wrapped around me, and whispered, “Goodbye, pretty girl.”

  Above, the birds in the moon began to wail an eerie, lonely song, dozens of voices keening in a strange melody, and I woke up.

  nineteen

  Wake up, girl, it’s nearly Solstice.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the sky overhead; the moon had shifted from where it had been in my dream, but otherwise the sky was unchanged. My skin was clammy and my stomach was growling, but though there was no sign of Thomas, I wasn’t alone.

  Three faeries, the size of toddlers, sat at my feet watching me, naked except for flower chains that hung on their shoulders like swordless scabbards. They had plucked the grass from around me and scattered it all over my legs, and they laughed as I sat up and brushed off my jeans.

  Their pinched faces were so charming as they giggled that I grinned, too. “Very tricky,” I told them.

  They squealed with delight and leapt up, pulling at my hands with theirs. “Get up, get up, and dance with us.”

  I wasn’t sure of a polite way to decline, but I was sure I’d heard about humans losing themselves in faerie dancing before. Hiding my wariness, I said, “You dance. I’ll watch.”

  “You’re so bright and pretty,” one of the faeries said, touching my hair reverently. “We want you to dance with us. We want to see you dance.”

  They really did remind me of children: small, amoral children. I held out my hand. “Let me have some flowers.”

  They shrilled with pleasure and draped a circle of flowers around my neck, tripping around me within the faerie ring. “Now we dance?”

  I shook my head. “Now I dance, and you watch me. When I’m done, I’ll watch you dance for a little. Does that sound fair?”

  They laughed like children on a playground, their smiling faces illuminated by the stars above and the dully glowing mushrooms buried in the grass below. “Very clever, girl! Fair as fair!”

  Fair as fair reminded me of Luke, and I wondered if he’d picked up the weird phrasing from the faeries. Ignoring the pang in my stomach from thinking of his name, I stood up and straightened the flowers around my neck. I looked down at the three little faeries, who stood with their arms linked around each other’s necks and waists, looking back up at me. “Well, do I get any music?”

  “Music! Yes! She wants music!” One of the faeries began to clap its hands and stomp its foot, hard and rhythmic, and another began to make a low, melodic sound halfway between humming and babbling. The third began to sing, voice brash and suggestive, in a language I didn’t understand. But I knew the language of their music: it was a double jig. I began to step dance in the middle of the faerie ring, careful not to crush their mushrooms with my dirty bare feet. I like to think I gave them a good show, too; I clapped my hands and spun and step danced, crazy like Una would step dance. I was a bit out of breath when I stopped.

  “You outshine the moon,” one of them said. “Will you live with us?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ll sing you a tune, though. A short one. Would you like me to?”

  “Yes! Yes! She sings for us!” They clapped, delighted, and took their places near me in the circle. I didn’t know any songs quite as rowdy as theirs, but I sang them “Brian Boru’s March,” which was fast, driving, and minor. They hooted as they recognized the tune, and then they began to dance together. Their steps were tightly wound and practiced, and they moved as one entity, spinning around each other and clapping each other’s hands at the end of each twirl. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anybody so happy to be dancing. When I’d finished, the faeries clapped and hugged each other delightedly. They were still half-dancing, even though the music had stopped.

  “I would like to give you something,” said one.

  “Is it something I want?” I asked suspiciously. They all laughed at my voice, and I laughed too—I think they liked me.

  “Let me whisper it in your ear.”

  I frowned, unsure if I should trust them. Finally I crouched, letting the faerie step up to my ear. I smelled a sweet, flowery scent, as pleasant as a summer day, and then the faerie whispered, “O’Brien.”

  The other faeries shrieked, covering their mouths with their hands as if the faerie had said something really scandalous. “Oh ho ho, thou shalt burn for that!”

  The whispering faerie giggled at my puzzled expression. “She doesn’t know what it is.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It’s a name.”

  They shrieked again and clasped their arms around each other, spinning. The faerie who had whispered it to me looked at me, biting its lip. Its eyes gleamed with a wickedly mischievous smile. “You won’t forget it, will you, girl?”

  “No more than you will, imp,” I told it.

  They all fell down, chortling in the mushroom circle, helpless with laughter. They reminded me of the pack of junior high kids I’d found smoking dope behind the gym once. I smiled tolerantly at them. “I have to go now. I have to save my friend.” They were still giggling, but I tried asking anyway. “Do you know where he is?”

  “The bloody one?” asked one of the faeries. “Or your lover?” It pointed at its privates, and I rolled my eyes. Definitely like the junior high kids.

  “Either.”

  “At the beginning,” said the one who’d whispered “O’Brien.” “It finishes at the beginning.”

  “Very cryptic. Thanks.”

  They just laughed. “Will you dance with us again, girl?”

  “If I live, I’ll pencil it in,” I promised.

  The summer night was alive with music. I heard strains of a hundred different songs from a hundred different directions as I made the hurried walk back to my parents’ house. All around me, I saw glowing beacons of light in the darkness, faeries illuminating the night by means mysterious. Though I was certain I was being watched, I wasn’t approached by any other faeries before I padded up the driveway.

  Ouch, dammit. My bare feet were killing me. The run from the hounds had really done a number on them, and walking back to the house hadn’t helped. Then I froze, in the shadows. Delia’s car was still parked on the road in front of the house, and my parents’ bedroom light was on. I wondered what poison she’d poured into my parents’ ears about my absence.

  I momentarily battled between my desire to get my shoes from the house and my fear of encountering Delia. I thought back to what the little faerie had told me about finishing at the beginning. There were countless ways I could interpret the statement, but I knew what I thought of as the beginning. The high school, where I’d met Luke. And if I was to walk there sometime tonight, I had to have shoes. End of story.

  I crept up to the kitchen door and tried the knob; unlocked. I felt a pang of guilt. My mom had probably left it open in case I came back without a key. But there was no way I could tell them I was all right and still be able to search for Luke and James.

  Inside the dark kitchen, I waited by the door until my eyes adjusted to the dim green light from the glowing clock numbers on the microwave. My shoes were in the same jumble I’d left them in when I’d returned from searching with Sara; I pulled them on over my bare feet as I scanned the room. I had half an idea that Delia might be sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, ready to pounce. I squinted over at the breakfast table, making sure it was unoccupied.

  Delia wasn’t there, but her purse was. A wicked idea popped into my head. It only took me a few m
inutes to rummage through for her keys. I clutched them so that they wouldn’t jingle, grabbed a handful of Mom’s apple mini-muffins, and stole back into the night, my heart pounding with daring.

  I glanced back at the house to make sure I wasn’t being watched, and then let myself into Delia’s car. It stank of her perfume, which was as obnoxious as she was. And then I saw the mostly empty jar of Granna’s concoction, sitting on her passenger seat.

  Bitch. I ought to wreck this car when I was done with it.

  I stuck the key in the ignition and imagined a heavy blanket covering the car, muffling the outside world. “Quiet, now,” I mumbled, and turned the key. Soft as a whisper, the engine came to life. With another quick glance at the house to make sure they hadn’t heard the car start, I pulled away from the curb.

  This is ten different kinds of illegal.

  I stuffed a muffin in my mouth to give me some courage.

  Once I was away from the house, I flicked on the headlights and headed toward the school. Delia had left one of her own albums in the CD player, so I hit buttons and whirled knobs until I found a rock station. I needed the pounding bass and growling guitar to give me courage. Cramming another muffin in my mouth, I started to focus a little better; I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. What I needed to do was prioritize. If you took out the supernatural homicide bits, this was just a problem like any other I’d faced: a super-hard school project, a tune that refused to be tamed, a musical technique that twisted my fingers. I’d tackled all those before by breaking them down into little bits.

  Okay. So I knew I had to confront the Queen. What did I know about her? Nothing—except that she was both like me and like a faerie from living among them for so long. So I could pretty much abandon any idea of appealing to her emotions. Maybe I could appeal to her human nature, if she had any left. Hell if I knew how to do that. I jammed another muffin into my mouth.

  As I pulled into the short access road that led to the empty high school parking lot, I saw a fire twisting high and wild at the base of one of the streetlights. In the flickering orange light, a massive black animal bellowed and charged as tall, whip-like men with horns tormented it, tossing glowing hot embers at its sides and face with their bare hands. I could almost feel the thinness of the veil between my world and Faerie—in my head, I could imagine it crackling, paper-thin and fragile.