by Sarah Zettel
Jack tugged on my arm, and pointed at the sky. I jerked my head up to see what else was coming. But it wasn’t a warning. It was a reminder.
“Hold on!” I grabbed Jack with one hand and Dan Ryan with the other, and I jumped up into the air, and flew.
And dang, those boys were heavy.
28
Them That’s Not Shall Lose
From up here I could see the boiling white cliffs of the Seelie country where they’d rolled up to the border of the Unseelie. I felt the waves of laughter bubbling out of them and it rocked me as badly as any wind in the human world could. The Seelie land saw the war. It saw the Halfers tearing up the Unseelies, weakening them, breaking them. It laughed and it cheered because its king cheered. Wherever he’d hidden himself, the Seelie king saw the Unseelie country being broken, and he was celebrating. Understanding landed heavily in my mind and I knew why the Seelie king ran and hid. He didn’t care who won this fight. He just had to wait, to let the Unseelies and the Halfers chew each other up. Then he’d come out and take what was left. My stomach twisted up and my flight faltered.
“Watch it!” screamed Dan Ryan, digging into my arm with his pointy fingers.
“Quit squirming!” shouted Jack. “You want her to drop us?”
“Shut up, both of you!” I bawled back.
We had to get out of here. All of us. We had to get the prisoners and pull back, before we did any more damage to the Unseelies. Before the Seelie king could come out and destroy us all.
I jackknifed my body like I was diving into the deep end of a pool, and headed for the ground.
I didn’t land us in the palace. I swooped over the broken dome and hit the ground beside the Kitchen Garden a lot harder than I meant to. I’d never used so much magic up so fast and my bones were burning with hunger and strain.
“In there,” I gasped and pointed. Dan Ryan ran ahead. Jack got his arm around me and pulled me forward into the fractured daylight of the busted-down greenhouse.
“Touhy!” Dan Ryan was shouting. He had his hands on the paper vine she’d been turned into. He was trying to wish, but the Unseelie magic that twisted her up was fighting back hard. He hadn’t even seen Ashland, where she lay in the mushroom bed. All his mind was on Touhy, and his horror ran right through me.
“Get her back!” he snarled at me. “Do it!”
“Well, don’t just stand there, you idiot,” snapped Jack to Ryan. “She’s gotta have something to work with. Wish!”
He did. Dan Ryan wished harder and clearer than I’d ever felt, and I caught it. “Tola!” I called out Touhy’s real name. I pictured her and Ashland like they’d been in Halferville, when we’d squared off in Touhy’s tree house. I saw them in their own shapes, tough and certain, and ready for a fight. I wrapped my wish all around those memories. “You’re free, Tola! Berta, you too! Ashland and Touhy, I wish you free!”
The Unseelie land had its orders. These creatures were to be held and their strength was to be made into food for the kings. But I was the heir to the Midnight Throne and I wielded the true names. I could not be ignored.
Slowly, the garden magic crumbled. The mushrooms fell away from Ashland first. She shook herself hard, and Jack ran over to help her up out of the earth. The magic around Touhy gave way more slowly, but it did give. The paper vine collapsed and unwound, rustling and crackling, until the scrap-paper girl stood in front of us again. Touhy’s face flipped and unfolded into a question mark, until she got a good look at me. Then she screamed, and charged.
She had her hands around my throat before I knew what was happening, and she had a grip like a python. I couldn’t breathe. I was seeing stars. She yelled at me, cursing hot, hard, and crazy.
“Touhy, stop it!” yelled Dan Ryan. “Touhy! Cut it out! She’s on our side! Touhy! Listen to me!”
He yanked on Touhy and Jack yanked on me, and between the two of them, they got us apart. I fell gasping against Jack. Dan Ryan grabbed hold of both Touhy’s hands. They stared at each other, wild-eyed and frightened. I felt Dan Ryan remembering Touhy being the one who trusted and believed, the one he counted on. I felt how much he loved her, which explained why he’d been so mad when he thought she’d turned on him.
Slowly, Touhy blinked. Tears shone in her green eyes, and she and Dan Ryan wrapped their arms around each other.
I turned away, giving them this one second. Jack and I shared our own second of surprise, and of wishing there was time to talk.
But there wasn’t, and there wouldn’t ever be if we kept standing around here.
“Jack, watch the door,” I said. “Ashland, are you okay?” The sparrow woman brushed the last crumbs of dirt and mushrooms off herself and nodded. She didn’t look okay. She looked thin and shaky and I knew just how she felt.
There was still one more thing I had to do here. I walked up to the cherry tree. It was closed tight around the man inside, but he was still alive.
“Feodor Alexi Alexeovich!” I called. “I wish you free!”
Dan Ryan and Touhy both swung around. I might not be able to see everything here like I had before, but I could tell the tree had been feeding off Feodor for a very long time. I knew just standing there that this trap was a favorite of my uncle’s, and it was not going to let go for anything as tiny as a cake crumb or an enemy’s weak little wish. It was an old, malicious creature. It was the head of this whole garden, and it would. Not. Let. Go.
Dan Ryan said something. I didn’t understand the words, but I knew what it meant.
“Father?” he whispered. “Father, it’s me.”
The tree shuddered. Cherries shriveled and rained to the ground. The branch that had grown around the sword peeled back and the sword began to struggle, swinging and slicing. Dan Ryan shouted and all of them, Ryan, Ashland, and Touhy, ran to the tree, grabbing at the shredding bark. Jack and I jumped in too, digging our fingers into tree bark and yanking it back like it was a banana peel, until at last Feodor Alexi stumbled out.
“Father!” Dan Ryan threw himself into the soldier’s arms. Feodor shouted back and wrapped the Halfer boy into a tight embrace, lifting him right off the ground.
“My son,” said Feodor Alexi over and over. “Oh, my son!”
Jack was wiping at his cheeks. Mine were pretty wet too. Ashland just lifted her beak-nose and turned this way and that, listening to the distant sounds of the war.
“We need to get out of here,” she announced.
Feodor put Dan Ryan down and picked up his rusted sword. Touhy unfolded herself to her full size and crowded close to Ashland. Jack just gripped his bat and looked at me. Everybody was looking, waiting for me to tell them what to do. I didn’t want this. I could feel the hatred beating down from overhead and the mockery welling up from the Seelie country and its hidden king. I didn’t want to have to be in charge. I wanted to run away and hide. But the time for that was long gone, if it had ever existed. They needed me. Papa needed me.
“Ashland, do you think you can get the other Halfers free?” Ashland looked across the beds of earth that stretched out on all sides.
“I will,” she said.
“I’ll help.” Touhy looked shaky and fragile, but her voice was as strong as ever. I was ready to believe she and Ashland between them could do anything.
“Me too,” chimed in Dan Ryan. Hate burned in him hot enough to melt steel.
“No,” I said. “We’re gonna need you, and that sack.”
“Then you will have us.” The old soldier laid his hand on Dan Ryan’s shoulder. Dan Ryan looked like he wanted to protest, but he didn’t.
“This way,” I said, and headed for the palace.
It was quiet inside the broken palace, but it was not still. A cold wind whipped through it, as if there was a storm on the way. The trapped light in the marble’s veins flickered wildly. We passed the door to my chamber, stepping around the pool of melted silver that had spread onto the floor. We passed my father’s chamber, covering our faces with sleeves and hands to keep fro
m breathing in the golden fog that swirled out of the shattered doorway. Jack shifted his grip on his bat. Dan Ryan and his father were so close behind us they were practically stepping on our heels. Feodor had his sword at the ready, and he kept cocking his head this way and that, watching the stones, trees, and ferns around us, waiting for them to make a wrong move.
But the trees and the ferns just chuckled and bowed elaborately as we passed. I wanted to wish at them to shut them up, but I didn’t have any strength to spare. Something bad was waiting for us in the Throne Room and it knew we were coming. I could tell, not because I could feel who it was, but because they had left the doors wide open.
Jack and I glanced at each other. Jack jerked his chin at Dan Ryan and Feodor, and they moved even closer together behind us. Together, we walked through the open, broken doors and into the Throne Room.
29
He’s a Bad Man
The first thing I saw was my father on his knees. My uncle had strapped his broken mask over Papa’s face and tied it in place with the silver ribbons, and now he had both hands spread across Papa’s scalp, as if he was holding him in place. Papa’s head was thrown back and his mouth was open in a soundless scream. He was fighting. I couldn’t see what he saw, but I felt it crawling across his skin and driving itself into his eyes. Madness. Pain and madness, being driven into him by his brother. It played out in front of his eyes, which were covered by the Seelie king’s mask.
Shake turned his blind, ruined face toward me.
Lightning rippled and flashed overhead. Tendrils of dark fog curled through the doors. When I last saw him, my uncle still had one good eye. That was gone now. The left half of his face was a mass of scars, and those scars had sealed his eyelid shut, like something had bitten a chunk right out of him. His right eye was milk white and shining and rolled constantly underneath the other, sagging eyelid.
“Your father’s close to breaking, Callie.” Shake grinned. His teeth were all broken or missing and it hurt just to look at him. His voice was slurred. He was spending too much strength keeping Papa on his knees. He didn’t have any magic left to make his voice beautiful. Not even with the king inside him. “I thought I’d show him what sort of nightmares our new king has at his command. I owe him so many, after all.” He tilted his head, listening.
But he was wrong. Papa wasn’t breaking. He was holding tight, leading on Shake and the king inside him. Papa was fooling Uncle Shake. He’d been fooling Shake and the Seelie king since we got here, so he could stay close to me, and send messages out to Jack, Mama, and the Halfers about what was happening. Now Papa was keeping Shake and his king busy while the Halfers took hold of the Unseelie lands.
A voice whispered behind me, so faint it was little nothing more than a thought.
“Engine, engine number nine …”
“Let him go!” I shouted to my uncle and the king inside his skin. I stepped out front of the others. I let myself get angry and I let that anger grow big. Big enough to block out Dan Ryan’s whisper and the stirring of his words. Jack was right at my shoulder. He knew what I was doing, I was sure of it.
“Let my father go, or so help me, you’ll never see daylight again.” I thought about every single trick my uncle had ever played on me. I thought about all the ways he’d tried to trick me to death. I thought about how this whole war, with all its blood and disaster, was his fault. I bundled that all up and threw it at him.
In answer, my uncle laughed. “I can’t see daylight now! But no fear! I’ll have your eyes when you’re done with them!” He grabbed Papa’s hair and hauled his head farther back. “Or maybe I’ll just take my brother’s sight and leave him to crawl blind at my feet!”
“And if that train should jump the track …,” whispered Ryan.
“Lorcan deMinuit!” I shouted. “Uncle Shake, Seelie king, get in the sack!”
And he did. He never even saw it coming.
Quick as a flash, Dan Ryan twisted the burlap bag shut while Feodor leaned a knee against it to stop its squirming. Dan Ryan pulled off the rope he wore as a belt and he and Jack knotted it tight around the sack’s mouth.
“That’s gonna be trouble later,” muttered Jack.
“We’ll worry about it when later gets here,” said Dan Ryan.
Jack and I ran over to Papa. Jack held Papa tight to keep him still while I struggled with sore fingers and tired magic to unknot the ribbons. The mask fell away and Papa sagged backward. I staggered under his weight, but I caught him. His face was a mass of dark lines where the mask had dug in and I could feel the pain still winding through him. But he blinked open his shining eyes, and he saw me.
“Papa, are you okay?” I choked.
“Yeah, yeah.” He covered my hand with his. “But we need to get out of here.”
“I know, I know, I just …” I turned to the thrones. Some tremor or other had shaken my grandparents. My grandmother had fallen forward, and both her hands dragged on the ground. Grandfather had slumped across her, his arm thrown crookedly around her shoulders. “We can’t leave them like this.”
For a moment, I thought Papa was going to argue. I know Dan Ryan wanted to, but he moved closer to his own father, grim-faced and forcing himself to keep quiet. It’s entirely possible the look Jack shot him had something to do with that.
“Whatever you’re going to do, Your Highnesses,” sneered Dan Ryan, “do it fast.”
Papa nodded and we faced the thrones and my flopped-over grandparents. He put his hand on my shoulder and I felt his magic wrapping around mine. We were both exhausted and way too weak, but together, we might just be able to call out loud enough for them to hear.
“Faelen deMinuit, Twilight Lord, King of the Midnight Throne,” called Papa. Grandfather stirred, sluggishly. His fingers wriggled. His arm slid off of Grandmother’s shoulders. Papa clenched his fists. “Luigsech deMinuit, Midnight’s Consort, Twilight’s Queen, Daughter of the Ebony Road and the Bone Forest.” Grandmother’s head shook back and forth. She tried to lift her shoulders. And tried again. I wished, and I wished. “Come home!” shouted Papa. “Come home, my father! Come home, my mother!”
It wasn’t a physical fight, like freeing Feodor had been. It was simple and natural, like waking up in the morning. My grandparents stirred, and they sat up and opened their eyes and looked around them.
My grandfather climbed slowly to his feet, trembling like an old man. The light shone in his fairy eyes as he looked down at my father. Next to him, my grandmother sat up straight and tall on her throne. For a moment, confusion and fear flickered through her. Then she smiled and slowly, she reached out shaking hands to me. I glanced at Papa. He nodded. Together we walked forward. Papa took his father’s hand and bowed his head. Slowly, half hoping, half afraid, I let my grandmother put her strong arms around me and pull me close.
“Help him,” she whispered in my ear.
Papa screamed. I whirled around. My grandfather shrieked, loud and harsh and terrible. He lifted my father up in his arms.
“No!” Grandmother dove forward, trying to get her arms around her husband, trying to get her son free. Her magic lashed out, but too late, too late. Grandfather reached out with a flicker of will and laughed her name, and she crumpled to the ground.
Because I’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t my grandfather who stood there. I could see it as he turned his eyes to me. This was the Seelie king.
30
Wish I May, Wish I Might
I didn’t think. I didn’t have time. I looked through my grandfather’s eyes. I looked down into the white and the dark and the emptiness to the Seelie king underneath. I gathered up my power, and I reached.
The Seelie king felt me coming, and he turned around, and he ran. I cussed with every inch of myself, and I threw myself after him.
I’d reached inside a person once before. Jack, one time when he’d been almost killed. That had been bad. This was worse. This was warm and squishy and stinking and wrong. It was a long way too. Farther than I’d eve
r reached before. I couldn’t care about that. I had to reach farther yet. The king had gotten through from somewhere. There was some kind of door, some kind of gate for him to run back to in here. I had to find it and shut it tight.
At last I felt it. It was very small and very strong and very old. But it was a gate and I was who I was. Its edges were worn smooth and almost butter soft. I found them anyway. I found the lock. I twisted it open, and I was through, and into the Seelie country.
And the Seelie country was filled with dust.
I stood alone, staring and staring some more. White shining dust swirled around me. It grated against my skin. I could taste it in my mouth, and it burned in my throat and lungs. This was why the white cliffs shifted so wildly on the borders of my grandfather’s kingdom. I should have recognized it. It was like the billows of a dust storm, right before it rolled down across the countryside.
“You killed it,” I said, and I coughed and spat. The Seelie dust tasted like cold copper. “You used all the magic in it, and the country dried up and died.” This was why I’d never seen any Seelie soldiers in the palace, or anywhere else. All the fairies had been Unseelies, traitors and friends of my uncle. That was why they wore his masks. It wasn’t just to show their loyalty; it was so they could hide from my grandparents.
Very good, Callie LeRoux, said the Seelie king. His voice was plain and bland, beyond feeling or weight. He had no shape of his own. That was why he could fit himself anywhere. He’d even used up his own body, trying to feed his hunger. No one has ever come to meet me in my own palace.
Well, you haven’t exactly put out the welcome mat, have you? I put my hand over my mouth to try to stop the dust, but it wormed its way in. I coughed, and coughed again.