by Caleb James
She winced. “More gross than funny, but there is truth there. So you would know my story. Tell me, Doctor, tell me your years.”
“Near five hundred.”
“So well after the war and my sister’s mist. Though it’s only now her treachery is laid bare. Even as I think of it, of her… for it’s Lizbeta that brought me to you. It’s Lizbeta that summoned the mist. It is her that clouds my thoughts even now.”
“That’s not the story we’ve been told.”
“I know.” She rested her head back and looked at the wood-coffered ceiling. “In truth these games of yours reveal things. You are of some use with all your scratching at my thoughts.”
“Good to know.”
“Do not mock me. I am your queen, and though I may be down, this story is far from over.”
“Yes.” He softened his tone further. He pressed his special. “Tell me what you’ve learned of the Mist and of your sister. What we’re taught, what’s in the record, is that the Mist came at the end of the war and separated the world of the humans from the Unsee. That before then, the races mixed freely.”
“She tricked me. And what makes it the more painful, even humiliating, is that it is I who thought I had tricked her. Only now I see her fingers on all of this. She summoned the mist. It reeks of her special.”
“Her special is peace,” he stated.
“You say that as if it’s a good thing.”
Redmond held his tongue and nodded to encourage her story. Important things were being uncovered. As she spoke, he too wondered at Lizbeta’s motives. Her special and the caress of the Mist addled one’s thoughts. The words May now spoke were a radical departure from the history of the Unsee as recorded and retold.
“My sisters conspired against me. They wanted an end to the Thousand Year War.” She squinted her eyes, as though trying to see something on the ceiling. “They united their specials against me—love and peace. How they could do this to their own flesh and blood, reeks. Katye, it was her that must have called the Hound. It was her who created the abominable enchantment that separated our warring days from our lusty nights. Wait a minute.” Her breath quickened. “I can see it. I can almost see it.”
Redmond held still, aware that May was on the verge of something important.
“Sweet Goddess, no.” She looked at Redmond with an expression twisted with pain. “She caused me to give him my heart. She caused me to break off a piece of myself. And she knew. She knew….” The words choked in her throat.
“Tell me,” Redmond said.
May’s hands flew to the sides of her head. What came through her lips was more a cry as tears tracked down her porcelain cheeks. “She knew. She knew he was a dog. She made me fall in love with a dog.” She trembled. “Everyone knows that dogs sniff every crotch and ass they can. He played me false and stole my heart.” She turned on Redmond. “Tell me how you came to be so close to the Hound that he took my stone.”
“He just took it,” Redmond said without guile.
“You must have been standing close.”
Her observation startled him. She is in pain, and when vicious creatures are in pain, they attack. What have I done? She is beyond cure. Only death or life imprisonment will keep her from her dream to tear down the Mist, reunite the realms, and be queen over all. She knows. She suspects. It was a single kiss. He is her betrothed. It’s what is recorded. It’s what…. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but the story you tell is much different from our history books.”
She shook her head, as though trying to clear it of his special. “I do not lie, though he did and does. What makes this worse is now I believe he was a party to the treachery.” She convulsed and coughed. She spat a tiny missile of fairy fire onto the carpet.
Redmond edged back as a wave of the dust scent rolled across the room. I cannot take much more. I need to get out of here. He struggled for words and saw that she too was in distress. Having held her form mostly together for the session, her costume and hair now shifted, but worse, her hands now ended in razor-sharp talons. She growled, and the building shook.
I need to get out of here. But the tight quarters and the dust reek made it hard to think.
Get out. Get out now! Whatever calming grace his special had on her was gone. Yes, she appeared drained by all she’d laid bare in the last few hours, but there’s something in her eyes, its….
“Doctor, doctor, doctor.” Her words grew less intelligible as her face turned amphibious, with a sloping brow and mouth that grew ever larger as her lips disappeared.
Around them, the air filled with the sound of inmates who first sang different tunes in different keys, and then one by one the words and music turned to barks and howls.
What is happening? Redmond thought. Is this the howl of my banshee? His mouth was dry. He pulled at all the magic inside him to steady his voice and strengthen his special. “We should end for today. You did exceedingly well.”
“Yes, Doctor.” And in the blink of an eye, the reflective May was gone and the predatory one leapt from the couch and stood inches before him.
He met her gaze. His knees trembled as he watched her eyes shade from amber, to black, to red. The corners of her jaw unhinged. He tried to move, to reach for the door. I’m paralyzed. Too late he realized the tables had turned. I am glamoured…. This is how I end. He listened to the roar of the inmates as his heart pulsed in his ears.
May’s tone growled and mocked. “You did exceedingly well too. You have such a way of getting at my secrets, all the hurty twisty places inside. Like shucking meat from an oyster, well done, exceedingly well done. ‘Pus under pressure.’ I will remember that, just as I will remember how tasty you were swimming down my gullet.”
Paralyzed, he watched her mouth gape wide like a python preparing to devour its prey.
He’d had a talisman to protect him, and now….
Something crashed behind him. Unable to turn, he watched as she pivoted. She glared at an intruder Redmond could not see. He tried to read her expression, outrage and something else, something he’d glimpsed through the last few hours—pain. Heartbreak.
Her glamour broke, and he turned to flee. As he did, he came face-to-face with a legend. An Irish wolfhound taller than he even on all fours, with lustrous red-and-silver fur and a broad square head.
The dog arched its back, growled, and stalked May into the corner. It sniffed at the patch of fairy dust, lifted a hind leg, and peed on it. There was a flash of silver and a hiss like air being let out of a balloon.
Redmond stared at the spot. The drug’s smell vanished, and Redmond’s head cleared as though a switch had been turned from On to Off. He watched as the beast’s lips pulled back. It snarled. Its intent was clear. He was going to attack.
She is still a patient here. Above all else, do no harm. He was torn. She is too dangerous to ever leave this place. And can you contain her? “Stop!” he shouted.
The beast did, its bared teeth inches from May’s exposed throat.
He does not fear her. And she, she has swallowed ogres and trolls. Why is she so frightened? He glanced back to see the two guards staring transfixed in the doorway. What am I to do?
The beast stared back at him with large soulful eyes. May tried to speak.
It barked and sent her tumbling onto her ass. All traces of the salamander had vanished.
She appeared tired and gaunt.
The Hound growled and sat back on its haunches halfway between him and May.
Redmond wondered, Why doesn’t she attack? What is this effect he has on her? He backed toward the ruined door where the two guards stood. He left May’s cell, and as he did the Hound followed at his heels. Redmond stopped and reached out a hand. The Hound lowered his head, and he stroked the wonderful fur, soft and silken. He scratched between his ears and looked into the animal’s eyes.
The dog nudged the side of Redmond’s face. His broad tongue licked his cheek.
The touch calmed h
im, and then the Hound turned around three times and lay down in the smashed opening of May’s door.
From inside her cell, May sobbed and cursed first Redmond and then the Hound. He summoned his head of security. “Gark, put her in the reflective cell.”
“It will not hold her long.”
“I will repair this one. Double the guard until then.”
“As you wish. But if she eats my guards….”
“I know. They don’t grow on trees.”
“Would that they did.”
“Yes.” Redmond stayed as the guards cautiously restrained May. He noted how the Hound never strayed from his watch at her door. It was odd, seeing something in the flesh that he’d always considered legend and fairy tale. He thought of the broken sprite… Nimby, tucked away in a healing cradle. Perhaps in her rambles she holds a clue.
He stepped back as the nervous battalion of ogres transported May to a different cell.
Unbidden, the Hound followed. Redmond nodded as it passed and felt a sense of loss. Of course the Hound follows his queen, his betrothed. He listened as their footfalls faded into the bowels of the earth. He thought of Finn’s question after their kiss. “And you, Redmond. With whom do you belong?”
Rather than think of the answer, he thought of dust and the peaceful oblivion it would bring.
Twenty-Two
IT WAS midnight in Manhattan as the puka rose from the depths of the Hudson River.
Marilyn, her mouth tight over Adam’s, had given him all her air. Her sanity vanished as they left the river floor. A chill rooted in her flesh. Panic took hold as she sought to feel a pulse in her son’s neck.
My child is dead. I have killed him. She gasped as they broke the surface. “Say something!” Adam lay cold and still in her arms. She blew breath into his mouth and felt the rise of his lungs. “Adam!” She’d never taken CPR and couldn’t imagine his small body could take the violent chest compressions. Instead, she gave him breaths one after the other, her fingers tight in the crook of his neck by the carotid artery.
A beat flickered against her forefinger. He opened his eyes.
Water gurgled from his lungs as the puka surged toward the shore and the brightly lit riverside park, which even at this hour had joggers, dog walkers, and couples who strolled hand in hand.
Clutching Adam with one arm, Marilyn dismounted. The chill water of the Hudson did not support them as it had in the Unsee, and the weight of her clothes and of Adam’s barely conscious body threatened to drown them both.
Her booted foot found purchase on the river bottom, but with the next step, there was nothing. She pumped her legs as they tangled in her long skirt and robe. I will not die. Here and there she caught glimpses of the surface and unintelligible sounds as she fought hard for each inch that brought them closer to the rough boulder breakwater. Yes. She bounced off something solid, keeping Adam’s head above water. She sank back, yes again. Her foot landed on something hard, and with gratitude but no words for it, she came to the cold, slick rock that separated the river from the land. Winded, she rested her head against a cool flat stone. She kissed Adam’s cheek and didn’t move until she saw the flicker of his eyelids. He turned to her.
“Tell me this place,” he whispered.
She opened her mouth but knew from painful experience that what would emerge would frighten him. His body trembled in her arms, and they were soaked to the skin as she stood knee-deep in the Hudson. The river’s chill water lapped against its reinforced bank. “Shh,” she tried to say, but what she’d meant to soothe came out like the scream of a teakettle set to boil. Get him safe. Find your son, your other son. Find your daughter, who went down the rabbit hole. I am the mother of kings.
She scrambled for purchase on the slick rocks.
Her efforts were observed by late-night strollers and joggers. “There’s someone in the water.”
“Someone’s fallen in!”
“Call 911.”
People ran to her aid.
No! Stay away. And that’s when she knew she’d traded one peril for another. Her words would not come… at least not any that made sense.
“What are you doing in the water, lady?” a man asked as another went down on his belly and grabbed her hand.
A crowd formed as she shinnied up the rocks with the assistance of the strong stranger.
Adam clung to her and helped as best he could.
“Was she trying to drown her kid?”
She wanted to say I’m Marilyn Nevus, this is my son Adam, and we need to find my eldest, Alex. What came out as she and Adam stood in a circle of curious and not-so-friendly onlookers was, “I am the mother of kings, and of the girl who went down the hole. Stand back, lest my fire burn you to ash.” It did not help.
“She’s out of her nut.”
“Call 911.”
“Screw 911. I saw a couple cops not far back.” And the man raced away to find the authorities.
“Somebody should get that kid. She tried to kill him.”
Her teeth chattered, and before the opening in the mob closed behind the guy who’d just left, she picked up Adam and, jostling through the crowd, she fled.
Some followed her.
“Hey, lady, you need help.”
“Where you think you’re taking that boy?”
“I bet she kidnapped him.”
She screamed as they pursued. “Keep your pitchforks and your fire. You have no power here. I am the mother of kings and of the girl who went down the hole.” She cried into the night and cursed the clang and clatter of her thoughts. But she did not slow. She ran with her precious Adam in drenched clothes that tangled between her legs.
“Mommy, put me down. I can run.”
“Yes.” She managed and grabbed his hand. Where am I? Without direction she fled the park and crossed one street after the next, going in whichever direction the stoplights allowed. She’d once loved this city, had come here as a young woman to be an artist, and she had known success. Gleaming SoHo galleries displayed her work. Museums had begun to include her in their collection. And then she’d glimpsed Cedric in a mirror. “I am the mother of kings and of the girl who went down the hole.” I am broken.
Holding Adam’s hand tight and keeping to the shadows, she lost the last of their pursuers.
She covered him in her wet robe and avoided the gazes of strangers. On some level, she knew how she looked. The rub of her damp boots raised blisters on her heels and the balls of her feet. Her calves ached as she walked and walked. Free from the angry crowd, her thoughts cleared enough for her to remember that the street numbers could guide her. If they were going down as she walked, then east was on her left and west and the river from which they’d come was on her right. It was all she needed.
Adam struggled to keep pace. Wordlessly, she hefted him onto her back and felt the comfort of his arms around her neck. Find Alex. Find Alice. I am the mother of kings and of the girl who went down the rabbit hole.
She arrived at the corner of Avenue B and Third Street. I know this place. She turned and scanned for the brick apartment building she’d once called home. Her gaze tracked down the block. Where is it? Not wanting to at look at the wreckage of a burned-out building halfway down.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Mommy.”
She gazed back and forth. No.
She stopped in front of the boarded-up husk of a structure. Plywood walls had been constructed around its first floor, concealing the entry from the street. Posters slapped on the plywood read No Trespassers. There was a number to call if someone suspected any public hazards.
“Mommy.”
No. What little plan she’d constructed was gone. In a city of many million souls… how? Before despair could overtake her, she caught the whiff of something bad, something familiar. She put a hand to the rough wood barrier wall and pressed her nose to it. Fairy fire.
“Mommy.”
No. Tears fell as she let her and Adam’s combined weight slump against the wall. All for na
ught. She whimpered. “I am the mother of kings and of the girl who went down the hole.” But then, through a knot in the wood, she caught a flash of movement from the basement of the boarded-up building. The place that had once been her home. Someone’s there.
“Mommy.” Adam struggled down from her back. His feet found the ground. “Mommy, tell me this place.”
Her back screamed, and her feet burned with angry blisters. She’d hoped this was the end of her trials. Get Adam to safety. She tried to speak, testing each word for insanity as it passed her lips. “Alex, your brother’s name is Alex. Your sister is Alice.”
“I know,” Adam said. He stared into his mother’s face.
“This is the See.” She grabbed for his hand, and he pulled it away.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Mommy.”
She read terror in his eyes and knew she was its cause. She steadied her breath and on a stream of air floated a simple sentence. “We have to find Alex and Alice.” That was good. That was normal. “For I am the mother of kings and of the girl who went down the hole.” Crap!
“Okay.” He stared out at Third Street between Avenues B and C. “Those lights. They’re not fairy lights.” And his gaze bounced from window to window and then to the occasional car that passed in front of them at that late hour. “That’s a taxi.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Come.” Barely able to manage even simple words and fearful of what might pass through her lips, she gripped his hand. “Come.”
Shattered glass twinkled in the moonlight as she found a crude door in the plywood wall.
It had been padlocked, but its shank had been cut. The smell of fairy fire washed over them as they entered the burned-out husk of her former apartment building. Fear trickled down her spine, and gooseflesh popped on her arms. She paused. Keep Adam away. Danger. Is May here? The cloying sweet smell of fairy fire and burn came strong from below. With Adam’s hand gripped tight, they headed down the basement stairs.
“Mommy….” She clamped her other hand over his mouth and shook her head.
She stopped dead at the sound of hushed voices from below. I should not bring him… and what? You’d leave a seven-year-old, who’s really two, on the streets of Manhattan. Not the first time. Before the guilt of her life with Alex and Alice could return, she pressed on. I am the mother of kings. I will not fear.