by Leah Cutter
Dale turned back to the Queen. She’d said earlier that this was an entrance—as had Kostya—but he didn’t see a doorway.
“Tell me which one you’d choose to open the door to the stairway,” the queen replied, indicating the machines.
Dale obediently walked over to study them. A few he dismissed automatically; though he didn’t know what they did, they felt incomplete to him, like clock without a mainspring. Finally, Dale settled on a machine that reminded him of a spider. Levers stuck out from all sides of the center barrel. Some of the levers were for decoration only, while others moved gears that spun around the body of the machine.
“Very good!” Queen Adele said, clapping her hands. “I knew you were clever. And so brave to come in here that first time, all alone, with no light!”
Dale’s cheeks grew warm her praise.
“Now, are you clever enough to work it?” the queen challenged.
“I’ll try,” Dale replied seriously. It took him three tries to find the right combination of levers to set the center barrel whirring. Blue light sparked, causing Dale to start and almost drop the machine. The queen laughed softly.
An echoing light outlined the mantel. The shimmer grew brighter, then the mantel disappeared. An open arch appeared in its place, as well as the top of a grand marble staircase, leading down into the earth.
Awed, Dale turned to the queen. She beamed up at him, then told him, “Leave the machine here. You’ll always be able to find it now. That’s your personal key to my kingdom.” She unfurled her wings again. “Will you join me?” she asked, indicating the arch.
“Yes,” Dale said. He wished he had some sort of formal training, so he’d know exactly how to speak with his queen. “Please.” He left the machine next to the arch and descended after the queen. The staircase spiraled around and around. Soft lights danced along the rough-cut walls. The polished marble stairs shone and reflected the light. The stairs were wide enough, and the ceiling tall enough, that Dale could walk upright.
“This will be one of the few places you’ll be able to stand up fully, I’m afraid,” Queen Adele told him. “The grand staircase is large enough for a formation of warriors to fly up together,” she added proudly.
That made sense to Dale, though the mention of the warriors made him uneasy. As if the queen read his mind, she added, “I must apologize for how the warriors previously treated you. It was my fault. I should have sent someone from the court to fetch you. I’d assumed the warriors would merely escort you. I can’t imagine why they decided to kidnap you.”
“No need to apologize,” Dale murmured, feeling better. He believed his queen—she wouldn’t have ordered them to hurt him.
“We have a saying: Never ask a warrior to listen.” The queen laughed merrily. “They only know how to fight.”
Before Dale could ask any more questions about the warriors, or the other fairies, the spiraling staircase made its final circle. Through another arch Dale saw a valley; they had come out on the side of a hill. Above him, the “sky” was carved rock, rounded and lit with thousands of tiny lights, as bright as daylight. Hundreds of tiny homes set along ordered streets fanned out before him, from the base of the hill below him to a distant, similar cliff. A stone wall immediately to his right circled around a grand palace made of brick and wood. Further to the right, almost touching the wall on that side, stood a golden tower. To the left, roughly in line with the tower, lay the only open spot Dale could see, populated with rows of rocks. It took him a moment to recognize it as a graveyard. Beyond that stood a gleaming white building: A factory, he realized excitedly.
“It’s beautiful,” Dale told the queen. The streets looked clean, set out in a grid, the houses well maintained. He bet no one knew poverty here; no homeless beggars in the streets, no trash carelessly thrown into the streets.
Queen Adele nodded gravely. “It is. But it’s in trouble. Please, come see what I mean.” She led him around a bright fountain, splashing merrily, then along a brick path between smooth white walls. A cluster of austere buildings lined the right side of the road. Dale realized they were barracks for the warriors.
At the gate, Dale had to bend over to pass under the arch. He tried to look at the guards on either side as he walked through. Warriors, he realized, strong and tall, bigger than the queen. They passed a few servants along the gravel walkway to the palace. They seemed much smaller than the queen, with smaller wings. Dale remembered Kostya had said there were three races of fairies—the warriors, the royalty, and the peasants. Dale wondered if he’d just seen all three.
The door to the palace disappointed Dale: plain wood, leading to a plain hallway where he had to bend over again. The queen hurried now, leading Dale along passageways quickly so he only caught a glimpse of the paintings decorating every wall. The servants all bent their heads with their eyes downcast. Dale assumed that none dared speak with the queen. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to leave in a hurry, or without the queen. He’d never find his way on his own.
After another winding staircase, going deep into the bowels of the palace, Queen Adele finally paused in front of a set of large, double doors. “My former husband’s workroom,” she said formally, before throwing them open.
Dale couldn’t help but gasp. A huge piece of machinery stood in the center of the room.
“He died before he finished it,” Queen Adele continued behind Dale. “It is supposed to protect us, to save our little kingdom from any invaders, human or fairy.”
Dale found he could stand up in the workroom. The machine reached two fairy stories high, at least. A balcony lined the upper part of the room.
The machine crouched on three golden legs, looking as if it were about to leap into the air. The bottom motion works looked finished to Dale’s critical eye. However, the top gear assemblies weren’t complete. Dale walked around the machine, marveling at the workmanship. Many of the pieces held delicate etchings, designs for other workers or repairmen.
A workshop surrounded the machine—rows of tools hung on the walls, along with small containers of parts and wires. Gears hung in order, from smallest to largest, on one side. Everything was spotless, not a spec of dust to be found. The order sang to Dale’s heart. Finally, someplace he could work. He’d gladly give his soul to be able to live here.
Dale reached up to touch a wire, then drew his hand back guiltily.
“It’s all right,” the queen gently assured him.
Dale shook his head, ashamed.
“What is it?”
Slowly, Dale showed her his hand. “I must wash my hands before I touch anything,” he explained, suddenly ashamed of the dirt and grime under his nails. He looked down at his shorts and sandals, again feeling out of place. He didn’t belong in this clean room, this formal place, not dressed like this.
“I’ve already prepared something for you,” Queen Adele said, opening a closet next to the door.
A white silk shirt, human-sized, hung there, along with a long-tailed, heavy work coat, also white. Fine brown leather boots stood below them.
“Perfect,” Dale said. He squashed the voice in his head, the one that sounded suspiciously like Nora, that accused it of being too perfect. He didn’t care. She’d never fit in here. She couldn’t even have opened the door.
Chapter Eight
Nora watched the piece in her hands grow more lopsided with every knot. She threw it down on the bed beside her and banged her head against the wall. “Kostya, what am I doing wrong now?” Nora hated how whiny her voice sounded, but she was too frustrated to try to change it. Dale would have teased her about being three years old, but Dale wasn’t there—he was meeting with the fairy queen.
Kostya put down the machinery he’d been tinkering with, came over to the bed, and picked up the offending knotwork. He clacked his tongue as he drew his finger along the piece. “Threes, my dear. You always forget: patterns of three.”
“Knitting is odd and even rows,” Nora grumbled. “The patterns are alwa
ys divisible by two. Not three.” She knew that wasn’t true, but she was too frustrated to be truthful.
Kostya patted her knee. “I’m sure you’ll get it. You just have to be patient.”
“All right. I’ll start again.”
Kostya tutted at Nora. “Remember what I said about used pieces?” he said, handing her the knotwork she’d been working on.
With an aggrieved sigh, Nora took it from the dwarf. “I know. I know. Even this little bit has some magic in it—enough to cause problems. But I’m not learning anything taking it apart! Can’t I just start again?” Ripping apart the knotwork didn’t feel the same as ripping apart a knitting project. It wasn’t creative destruction. There was nothing creative or fun about it.
Kostya pulled the piece down and looked at it critically. “You only have to rip it out to there,” he said, indicating a mere inch of knotwork.
Nora sighed and acquiesced. This project felt like it was going nowhere: two steps backwards for every step forward.
Using fingernails, teeth, and a safety pin, Nora pulled out the irritating knots. Finally she reached the spot Kostya had indicated and started following his pattern again. “Left, left, right,” she muttered under her breath. “Right, right, left.” She stopped and showed Kostya when she successfully completed a new row. “They’re like little eyes, aren’t they? Each knot?”
Kostya looked at Nora strangely, eyebrows raised.
“It’s supposed to be a bracelet to help me see, right? To find the edges between reality and illusion? So the knots, to me, kind of look like eyes.”
“Very good,” Kostya said. He nodded at Nora as if he approved, but he wasn’t smiling. He looked upset. “That’s exactly right.” He handed back the piece to Nora with surprising reluctance.
“Good,” Nora said, turning her attention back to her work. “Now all I have to do is remember the pattern.” She paused for a moment. “You know, the screws that Dale took out of that fairy machine—they all had a kind of three-pronged indentation. These knots have threes all over them.”
“Yes, yes,” Kostya said. “Fairy magic—all magic—is based on threes. You know the most stable chair in the world is a three-legged stool, right?”
Nora hadn’t known that. She also didn’t see the connection, between stability and magic. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Kostya said, finally smiling at her. He turned back to his tinkering and Nora tried knotting again. Her mind wandered, though, and soon the piece was lopsided again.
“I hate this!” Nora complained. She threw the piece across the room. It instantly disappeared into a pile of yarn heaped by the door. “Take that,” Nora muttered. If magic could just show up in her life, it could disappear just as quickly, she decided.
Kostya clucked his tongue. “I need to go get some parts,” he told her. “From my tunnels up north.”
Nora nodded, arms folded over her chest. “Good. I need to work on something else for a while.” She was glad Dale didn’t hear Kostya talk about his other tunnels. He would have wanted to know why the dwarf hadn’t stayed there the first night.
“I will see you in the morning,” Kostya said, bowing slightly.
“Okay,” Nora said with ill grace. At that moment she didn’t care if she ever saw the dwarf again.
“You will be able to learn it,” Kostya told Nora as he paused on top of stacked book under the window—a staircase he’d built for himself to get in and out of the room easily. “You’re picking it up much more quickly than I’d thought a human could.”
“Thanks,” Nora said, unsure if she’d just been insulted or not.
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
After Kostya left, Nora got off her bed and wandered over to the pile where she’d thrown the piece she’d been working on. She picked up a second piece laying there as well. Instead of working from the top down, knotting side to side, she’d tried experimenting with making a loose crochet chain along the long side of the bracelet, then knotting from there. Kostya had stopped her, telling her she had to learn the proper form first. While she understood what he meant, she still knew she wanted to play. She’d learn faster if it wasn’t so serious.
Nora put it down and picked up a failed hat. She’d done a swatch to get the measurements right, but when she’d started knitting, the pattern had stretched and it was several inches too big. Only a monstrous giant would have a head that big. With glee, Nora started tugging the stitches out, tearing the piece apart. As the hat unraveled, a new image took place in her eye. Now that she understood the properties of the yarn, she knew what she needed to make from it instead. A cool shawl appeared to her mind’s eye, not a pattern she’d ever seen, a twisting knot that doubled back on itself and took advantage of the easy looping of the yarn.
This was magic Nora understood, how destruction brought about new creations. Now, if only she could do that with the knot magic.
With a sigh, Nora quickly wrapped the freed yarn into a ball, then dropped it onto the other abandoned projects scattered on the floor and picked back up the failed knot experiment.
On her way back to her perch on the bed, Nora took a detour to the corner where Kostya had been working. A partially assembled piece with a scarlet-jeweled body and lever-like legs caught her eye. It looked like some kind of insect. Two thin, filigreed wire wings stuck out at awkward angles near the shoulders. The head lay next to it. Tiny wheels and gears filled the open brain case. It didn’t have eyes or teeth yet. She knew those would determine if it was cute or creepy.
Nora didn’t know what the bug was for, but she didn’t trust it. She didn’t trust the fairies or Kostya. She might have been initially charmed; however, there was something off with him, with the whole situation. When she went back to her bed, she debated which piece she’d work on—the one that was her own experiment, or the one following the dwarf’s strictures.
With a sigh, Nora picked up Kostya’s piece, attacking the knots again. She didn’t trust herself, or her own vision, either.
***
Kostya left Nora’s room, then went to sit by the side of the road, waiting for the Tinker, Dale. The gray, overcast, early evening suited his contemplative mood. He pushed behind the first row of grass, pressing down a circle of stems to make a comfortable seat for himself. When he sat very still, no one—not human nor fairy—could see him waiting. Cicadas and the occasional gull broke the quiet of the afternoon, but even the wind seemed subdued.
Nora had quickly taken to the knotwork—too quickly. She’d found her own path with her knitting instead of being forced down a more artistic, but less natural road, like drawing or painting. Kostya wasn’t sure if it had been her Grandma Lily’s influence or, more likely, Dale’s. Having a twin gave Nora more confidence at a younger age than most Makers ever achieved.
Kostya had still been able to subtly mislead her. Even if she finished a bracelet following the pattern he’d set for her, it wouldn’t be very powerful. He’d set the eye knots to look at each other, instead of outward. The piece could be used for meditation, not breaking illusions.
However, Kostya didn’t know how long he’d be able to deflect the girl from her path. Making her take out the knots from her failed attempts merely slowed her, not stopped her.
Then there was the boy. He’d been harder to turn to Kostya’s purpose. Stubborn, that one—possibly more stubborn than his sister. Kostya had tried to influence his dreams and been soundly rejected. Still, Kostya did what he could to weaken Dale’s natural defenses, making him more susceptible to suggestion.
When Kostya saw Dale walking down the road after meeting Queen Adele, he realized he’d succeeded, too well. The boy was completely enthralled by the fairies. A net of power wrapped around his aura, contracting his spirit and his will. He couldn’t lift a finger to defend himself. The net was wrapped too tightly.
Nora wouldn’t see it, at least, not at first. It would take her a day, perhaps two, before she realized something was wrong
with her twin.
Kostya’s plans of carefully introducing one magicked jewel at a time came crashing down. Nora would put a stop to the fairy magic, sooner rather than later. Too soon for Kostya’s plans.
The boy walked heavily up the driveway to his house, weighted down with fairy ropes. How many days would he return here? How long before he ran away to live with the fairies, just because it was easier on his soul?
Once Dale had entered his house, Kostya left his resting spot. It was going to be a very long night. He started walking up the road, heading north, then to the coast. He hoped his little boat still stayed hidden, that his stash of jewels and supplies hadn’t been raided, that the clouds cleared so he at least had the light of the stars to guide him.
Kostya had started making an ohotnik, a little bug to keep track of the twins. Dale would appreciate the craftsmanship, while Nora would find the creature attractive.
Now, though, Kostya planned to modify his design. The little ohotnik would still track. But it would also lay eggs: powerful, explosive eggs.
***
When Denise came home later that afternoon, Nora’s casual assurance that Dale had met some girl did nothing to assure Denise, particularly not after the visit from the strange man. Dale’s cell phone went straight to voice mail, and when she tried to find it, it showed he was out of range.
However, asking Nora for more details only brought an exasperated sigh. “Mom, he’s okay. Stop worrying. You’re worse than he is.”
Denise bit her lip and didn’t respond. Nora was obviously in the middle of a project. Yarn was spread all over her room, looped around the back rungs of her desk chair as well as clipped to her bed. Nora practiced knots, some kind of macramé. “What are you making?”