by Jane Yolen
But the boat turned, and within moments ran smoothly aground. Aspen stepped off onto the slick rocks and picked his way to her using his long steering pole for balance. He wore a black robe, as the first Sticksman had, but it was smaller, just as he was.
“I require two pennies for each passenger,” he said, his voice lifeless and dull, “and a silver for the Sticksman.”
Snail didn’t ask if he knew her; it was obvious he no longer did. Nor did she ask why he had taken the Sticksman’s staff—as well as his curse.
He did the noble thing. He freed a cursed king and in doing so probably saved his own people. If she had to, she would remind the King Who Returned just what payment Aspen had made. She fought back against tears but knew she would lose. And as a reward he gets an eternity of poling strangers back and forth across the river.
“I require two pennies—” Aspen began again but stopped when Snail snapped at him.
“I know!” She shifted so he could see her bonds. “I can’t pay you when my hands are tied.”
“Oh,” he said, and for a moment looked discomfited and a bit awkward. Like the old Aspen.
But noble for all that, Snail thought sadly.
He produced a dagger and sliced through the bonds holding her hands, then paused and freed her feet as well.
“I requi—” he tried again, but a glare from her stopped him.
What now? she thought to herself. I have no silver. I have no plan.
Poor Aspen looked desperate to speak, but afraid to as well, as uncomfortable in his new role as Sticksman as he’d been as king.
And soon I will have no friend, she thought.
Looking away from Aspen, she saw the Unseelie king pointing at Old Jack Daw.
“Bring me the pretender’s crown,” he said. “And his head as well.”
Every creature in the Unseelie army produced something sharp and pointy and advanced on the old drow.
Suddenly she knew what to do.
“Give me your staff,” she said.
It won’t be so bad, she thought. I won’t even remember.
Aspen cocked his head and stared at her oddly.
“Give me your staff,” she said, louder this time.
And Aspen deserves better than this. His people deserve better. He will be a good king. A great king. And who will miss a midwife’s apprentice compared to that?
She knew the answer to that: nobody. Then she looked at Aspen. Well, maybe one person will miss me.
“Aspen,” she said, then corrected herself. “Sticksman, give me your staff.”
He straightened. Looked down at her. When did he get taller than me?
And then the Sticksman spoke; it was a single word. “No.”
“What?” she exploded. “I made the best offer you will ever have, and you say no?”
He shrugged. “You do not want it.”
He’s right. I don’t. I want it less than anything I’ve ever not wanted. But . . .
He stared at her.
“I need it.” Tears were in her eyes now, and Aspen looked blurry. “I need to free you.” She wiped at her eyes, looking away from him so the tears wouldn’t fall. There were two bodies at Old Jack Daw’s feet now and a dagger—probably poisoned—in his hand. It didn’t matter; there was a whole horde of creatures ready to cut his head off. One of them would eventually succeed.
“It does not matter. You do not want to take it, and I cannot give it to you.” Aspen pulled the sleeves of his robe down fussily. “Furthermore, I do not require freedom. I require two pennies for each passenger and a silver for the Sticksman.” He looked smug about getting his sentence out uninterrupted.
I’m losing him, Snail thought. But who in their right mind would want to take on the Sticksman’s curse? She looked at Aspen. He’d always wanted to do something noble.
An ogre charged Jack Daw and got the drow’s dagger in his eye for his troubles. But the dagger stayed there, and now Jack Daw was unarmed and doomed.
Who would want to live that desperately?
“Sire!” Snail shouted as loudly as she could to the new Unseelie king. “Hear me!”
The former Sticksman glanced over at her, then raised his hand. “Hold.” His horde stopped in their tracks, weapons still at the ready. He peered closer at Snail, his big, blue eyes boring into her. “I know you, do I not?”
Do I not? she thought. What a toff!
She knew how to deal with toffs.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said smoothly, and bowed low. Aspen tugged at the edge of her riding tunic.
“I require—”
“Shush!” she hissed back at him. “The king has your payment.” She stepped out of the boat and called, “May I approach, Majesty?”
He waved a thin hand at her.
“Sire,” she said in a normal tone of voice when she was close enough, “I am the boon companion of the prince who so recently saved you. And as such . . .” She paused and bowed low once more. You can never bow too much to these toffs. “I would ask a boon of you.”
He didn’t look convinced.
But what does a convinced bug-man look like anyway? “And,” she added, before he could refuse her out of hand, “I can tell you where to find more of your kind. Possibly they’re family of yours.”
The Unseelie king leaned forward eagerly. “I have not seen my family for . . . for quite some time.”
“They live with the changelings who have taken care of them for years, Majesty.”
The Unseelie king straightened and went on, sounding toffy once again. “For the service your companion has done me and for information on my family, I will most certainly grant you a boon. What is it you ask of me?”
Snail pointed at Old Jack Daw. “I need you to spare that drow.”
“Absolutely not,” the Unseelie king spat. “I have had pretenders on my throne for far too long. I will make an example of this one.”
“But, sire,” she answered quickly. “I only require you to spare him for a short while so he may do one thing for me. If he refuses . . .” She smiled at Old Jack Daw. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Then you can do what you like.”
“And if he does not refuse?”
“I think you’ll want to spare him anyway. Either way,” she said, “I’ll consider my boon granted.”
The Unseelie stood considering for a few moments, then he nodded. “Your short while begins now. Do not make me wait overlong.”
Yes, Your Toffiness, she thought, but wisely said nothing out loud. She marched toward Old Jack Daw, who frowned at her.
“So the little servant girl bargains with royalty for my life?” he rasped. He looked old and tired and grey.
But not defeated, she thought. Not yet. Good.
“Why would you do that?” he said.
Snail knew he wasn’t actually curious. He was just buying time. His eyes traveled over her, looking for weapons he could grab, she assumed. Or considering her worth as a hostage, if he could get hold of her. But she answered him anyway.
“Not for you,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, looking back at Aspen in the boat. “For him.”
“Yes, for him.” She glared up at him. “You deserve to die. But I’m giving you a choice: die here and now, or perhaps live forever.”
Jack Daw snorted, and the loose grey skin under his chin waggled. “Live forever as the Sticksman? With no memory of who I was? I’d rather die right—”
“Don’t say it!” Snail said. “Or it will be so. But think, old drow—a lot can happen in a thousand years or more. Maybe someone will do for you what Aspen did for the king”
She waited for his answer thinking: Though not if I can help it. “So choose, drow. Life or death.”
It was no choice at all, really. Drows came out of the egg clawing and fighting for life,
and Old Jack Daw was the greatest fighter and clawer of them all. He gave Snail a defeated nod.
“Call him.”
“I will,” she said, turning back toward Aspen and the king. But then she stopped. “But you have to want to live. Want to take the Sticksman’s place.”
“Call him,” he growled at her, and for a moment she heard the voice of a creature who had upended two kingdoms and been a hairbreadth from ruling over all of Faerie. “I want to live.”
Maybe this isn’t such a great idea. Maybe I should just let the Unseelie king kill him.
But then she thought of Aspen poling the river in a long black cloak for all eternity and knew that she couldn’t leave him to that fate.
“Sticksman,” she called again, as she and Jack Daw walked to the shore. The Unseelie king waved his arm, and the horde parted to allow them through. “I have someone who requires passage.”
Aspen watched them approach stonily, then grumbled at Snail when she was close enough to hear. “It is dangerous to toy with the Sticksman. You said you required passage, and yet you have no pennies nor silver. And this one,” he said, looking at Old Jack Daw, “does not require passage and will not for—” He stopped, eyes widening. “For as long as I can tell.”
Old Jack Daw looked down at Aspen, and Snail could see him scheming and straining to find another way out. But he was surrounded by a suddenly hostile army and knew the only escape was the one Snail had given him.
“Sticksman,” he said reluctantly, “give me your staff.”
Aspen cocked his head. “Do you really want it?”
“Yes,” Old Jack Daw said, snarling. “I want it. I want to take up the Sticksman’s staff and forget all that has befallen me. I want to forget you and your changeling girlfriend. I want to forget the years I had to spend listening to your whining and pining. I want to forget this ignominious defeat and the horror of—”
He stopped cold as Aspen placed the staff in his hands. He looked down at it, then back at Aspen, who was once again bathed in a golden glow.
“Neither of you,” the new Sticksman said, looking at Snail then back at Aspen, “requires passage.” His voice was bland and biteless, the total opposite of his tirade of just moments before. “And you will not require it for a goodly long time.”
Then the newest Sticksman turned and stepped onto the rough decking of his boat, gathering his blackwater cloak about him.
Aspen leaped to the shore.
“Sire,” Snail heard someone say, perhaps one of the Red Caps, “are you just going to let him go?”
“There must always be a Sticksman,” the Unseelie king replied. “Better him than me.”
Snail let herself smile then and beamed at Aspen. “We did it!”
He looked at her strangely, his ears red, his face squinched.
She frowned. “What?”
He was mute for a moment, then squinched his face up even more before speaking. “He called you my girlfriend.”
She glared at him, her face now hot, too. But maybe not with anger. Well, not completely, anyway.
AFTERWARDS
As it is written in The Great Book of the Two Kingdoms, penned by the chief archivist of the Seelie Wars himself, one of many books published by his own imprint, Odd Books:
Thus the two kingdoms were united under two co-rulers, and there was a true peace. The practice of taking changelings was forbidden, and every human survivor of the Seelie Wars was given land in whichever faerie land they chose. Those who wished to return to their own world were shown to the Door and allowed through, where, it is presumed, they crumbled into dust.
The Seelie king—or more likely, the new Seelie queen—showed great mercy as the runaways, malingerers, cowards, and others who had hidden themselves away rather than fight were welcomed back regardless. And the Order of Midwives achieved the highest status in the kingdom, elevated by the Seelie queen, whose mother-in-law, the Dowager, became their most active supporter for the rest of her long life.
The moat troll raised his adopted child Og and many halflings with the great warrior and leader of the armies, Dagmarra, honorary member of the Poppy Clan.
The dead simulacrum, Maggie Light, was set up in a glass casket that stood in the front hall of the Seelie castle to await the birth of someone who might know a way to make her live again.
And though there must always be a Sticksman, no one—no living Seelie nor Unseelie, not man, woman, nor child—has ever seen him since the final battle of the Seelie Wars, for it is forbidden upon pain of death to call on the Sticksman for passage.
All the seers agreed that the peace that descended on the Seelie and Unseelie lands would last for a thousand years or more.
But a lot can happen in a thousand years.
Or more.
JANE YOLEN, called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America” (Newsweek) and the “Aesop of the Twentieth Century” (The New York Times) is the author of well over three hundred and fifty books, including Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and the How Do Dinosaurs . . . series. Her work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, and up to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. She has also written lyrics for folk-rock singers and groups and done voice-overs for several animated shorts. Her books and stories have won an assortment of awards—two Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Medals, a nomination for the National Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award, among others. She is also the winner of the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library’s Regina Medal, the Kerlan Award from the University of Minnesota, the 2012 de Grummond Medal, and the Smith College Alumnae Medal.
Also worthy of note, she lost her fencing foil in Grand Central Station on a date, fell overboard while white-water rafting in the Colorado River, and her Skylark Award—given to her by NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association—set her good coat on fire. If you need to know more about her, visit her website at www.janeyolen.com.
ADAM STEMPLE is an author, musician, web designer, maker of book trailers, and professional card player. He has published many short stories, and CDs and tapes of his music, as well as seven fantasy novels—five for middle graders and two for adults. One of his middle grade novels, Pay the Piper (also written with Jane Yolen), won the 2006 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book. The Locus plaque sits on his shelf next to two Minnesota Music Awards and trophies from his Fall Poker Classic and All Series wins. His first adult novel, Singer of Souls, was described by Anne McCaffrey as “one of the best first novels I’ve ever read.” For musings, music downloads, code snippets, and writing advice, visit him at www.adamstemple.com.
For more on this series, go to
www.theseeliewars.com