Going Under

by Justina Robson

  He was so fast he was almost flying. Every part of him was working as hard as it could to keep up his incredible speed, but it was slowing, and the tension that was creeping into him was so visible she could almost feel the huge burden of the pain as his body began to fail. Jack saw it too, and in reply he began to undergo a series of transformations, the form of his man shape dropping away into a leaping cat, then a bear, then a cloud of snow like the onrush of an avalanche that began to rip all the surrounding snow and ice into its wake. Behind him the white wolf and Madrigal peeled off rapidly to the side, inexplicably heading in the wrong direction towards the closest bank. At the same moment Zal reached the bank and stumbled. He fell heavily, somersaulting as he missed his footing, and the lake rose up behind him in one enormous wave, vast blocks of ice breaking up in its grey black flow.

  And something twisted in the water of the wave, stalling its upward rise.

  As Zal tumbled over, flames dimming, and clawed his way to his feet, shapes became distinct in the turbid water, huge, unlikely shapes of things that might once have been horses but were now mutated into monstrous forms. Their bodies shone, scaled and muscular as they turned in the wave, tearing at the empty air with their long, crocodilian jaws agape, teeth like needles and as long as Lila was tall punching through the water. Their manes and tails coiled with life of their own and it was then Lila realised that this wasn’t Jack in the water, it was kelpies, bringing the wave to try and throw him down into the depths where they might grasp and drag him down to drown. Jack was lost in the tumult.

  Lila saw Zal reach the top of the far bank as she came directly over the lake. He stopped and turned around to look back. Halfway to shore Madrigal and the wolf leaped gamely from block to block of ice but the fury of the artificial tide was too great. The cracks became canyons. One moment they were there, the next they simply vanished into the black mass of freezing lake. Zal was shouting, though none of them save her could possibly hear him.

  “Poppy! Vi’dia!” He was anguished, and then she saw why and heard the doll’s singsong voice.

  “Help’s a cheating, takes a beating.” The soft and eerie witchlight of the Hoodoo reached up from its place in the lake with Madrigal and suffused the lake briefly, illuminating it from within so that for a moment everything seemed inverted, the ice shining below, the bodies of the kelpies flying in their element. Then it went out and with a rush the wave subsided in all directions, creating a series of gigantic ripples that went speeding towards the banks. One of these effortlessly smashed into the shallow rise where Zal stood and swept him off his feet. Lila saw him scrabbling for a hold on the frozen ground as he was sucked backwards into the heaving water. Behind him Jack’s form rose effortlessly from the pristine snow. Far out in the lake the tiny shapes of the wolf and Madrigal struggled amid ice blocks that rose higher than their heads.

  Beneath the surface two heavy bodies turned slowly over and over, falling silently into the depths.

  Jack Giantkiller strode down to the water’s edge and waded into the shallows, barging ice aside with sweeping strokes of his arms. He plunged himself down with a great energetic movement that put his shoulders under the water and came up blowing, all the water that clung to him becoming ice instantly, fracturing and breaking off in showers and sprays that glittered and smoked with cold. With two strides and heaves he dragged Zal out of the lake, keeping a hold on him by the straps of his armour at his back and swinging him around violently to throw him onto the shore. He landed about ten metres away almost silently and lay like a grey and black ragdoll in a motionless heap.

  Madrigal reached them almost at the same moment Lila did, emerging from the water in the form of a thick-bellied sea lion before standing easily onto two legs in a seamless change before running forwards, the doll brandished in her hand in front of her. Lila landed at Zal’s side and bent close to him, careful not to touch him. She needed no analysis to tell her the kelpies were as dead as dead could be, faery or not.

  “That fucking Hoodoo thing,” she thought, as her insides churned suddenly with an intensity of anguish she chose to show no sign of outwardly. Then she knew what her completed transformation had bought. “Zal!” she said roughly. “Zal!”

  He didn’t move. He was so small suddenly, nothing but a bundle of black, wet rags. His face was hidden against the ground in the mud that covered him. She attempted to do a distant ultrasound scan on him, to see what was wrong, but his shadow form gave no resistance to the waveforms—he was effectively invisible in that spectrum, as in most others. All she wanted to do was hold him, fix him, save him.

  Jack barrelled past her and shoved her out of his way, grabbing the straps at Zal’s back once more and picking him up. He shook him with terrific violence and shouted as Zal’s head lolled loose on his neck, dripping sludge. “Not gone already are you? You promised me a fight! You promised me!”

  Lila seethed with rage and hate for him then. She glanced at the doll and saw its light undimmed. It didn’t speak, so she reasoned Zal couldn’t be dead. Surely the bloody thing would speak if the deed was done? At her ear the jewel that was the imp had nothing to say.

  Jack turned to her and shook Zal again, in her direction, as if it was her fault. “Pathetic. I expected better after so long waiting. Is this all you bring me?! Is this all? Did you think you’d better me with this cursed halfblood mutation? Me?” He stopped and cast about him as if completely confounded. “What were you thinking, human?”

  “I didn’t bring you anything,” she said through clenched teeth, all her attention on Zal—he seemed not to be breathing. His arm was at an unnatural angle. “I don’t care about you or what you think you are. I don’t care about any of this. He gave what you asked. Give him to me.”

  “No, no, no,” the doll sang. “Race not run. Deal not done. Thread not spun.”

  She wanted to kill it, more than anything, but she knew that wish was futile. There was no sense dying here, it would do no good.

  “I’ll give him to you,” Jack said softly, “when I’m done.” He threw Zal’s body over his shoulder and set off towards the tall circle of stones behind them on the rise of the hill.

  There was nothing for Lila to do but follow. Madrigal walked beside her, the doll back in her belt. She put it to the side farthest from Lila, though that didn’t stop Lila feeling its malignant enjoyment of the situation.

  “It’s not over,” the faery whispered. She glanced at Lila tentatively and Lila saw she meant to offer hope.

  She ignored it, her eyes fixed on Jack’s unreasonably fast-striding shape. At the stones the rest of the faeries were waiting, clustered around the outer edge of the ring. She had never witnessed anything more barbaric. She longed to kill them all. Inside her arm the bullets clicked and clicked in and out of the magazine. Eight shots. Not enough. In her mind’s eye she made swords, whips, razors of cold iron from her arms and hands. These things could kill faeries, if you did it right. No heads, no hearts. At the same time as she felt the energy of this orgy rise through her, she knew it to be stillborn and knowledge of her complete impotence sat in her limbs and body like a smothering blanket. She welcomed them as twin couriers, the messengers who brought the news that in spite of her complete transformation she was still, in the important ways, alive, and her face stretched into a smile.

  She saw Jack’s wife looking at her as if she were completely mad.

  At the centre of the broken circle the ground was stamped down into a slight depression like a shallow bowl. Jack strode to the middle of it and looked up at the stars, accusingly. “Near midnight!” he called out to the gathered thousands clustered silently around, watching his every move. “Think you this shall be my ending?” and he laughed as he lifted Zal off his shoulder and held him out before him beneath the shoulders, giving him another shake. Zal’s head lifted slightly.

  Lila bit her lips. She willed Zal to stay unconscious and give Jack no reason to act, to wait, to let him do his gloating spree until somehow midnigh
t came and freed them all.

  Zal looked up, squinting and blinking, his face twisted with pain. He spat in Jack’s face.

  Tath appeared at the edge of the circle, disgorged by the faeries there suddenly, as if he was a stone they were casting to get catch Jack’s attention and distract him from whatever he was about to will into being. They pushed him hard and he tripped on a stone and staggered forwards. Despite the doll’s witchlight and the faint light of the stars, it was dark and hard to see any detail, but Lila saw his expression well enough—cool and calm. He murmured, “thank you,” all but inaudibly, and she knew that he was unaffected by the small humiliation of being brought low before an enemy by the humble stone and that the thanks was for its action in being there to stall him. She knew him so well and missed his presence so much that it silenced her. Her throat and mind both became painful.

  Jack spared Tath a moment of time, long enough to sneer and laugh at him. “Treetender, I hope your question is better than his fight.” He lifted Zal up with one colossal arm, held him high in the air for a moment, and then, as they fell for the charm of the moment and his will and his drama, brought him smashing down hard on the ground with all his force.

  Lila ran forwards and kicked Jack with all her strength. Her foot connected with his hip but it was like kicking snow. The force of her own move spun her round out of control so she had to whirl and twist in midair to regain her feet. Part of Jack’s body exploded in a shower of white crystals, but even as he bellowed in rage and pain from the burn of her cold iron skin he was already reforming himself as if he’d never been harmed.

  She crawled across the icy ground to Zal, waiting for the Hoodoo’s awful light, hoping she would get there before it was too late. Around her the faeries were whispering, whispering. She managed to stretch her hand out and touch his face. He was so cold and so broken she began to cry. The longer the silence stretched, the more certain she became that he was dead. The whispering increased and then, just as it became frenzied, stopped.

  “Zal,” Lila whispered, in a private world of their own, “come back.” She smiled, willing it all to be a clever trick. Carefully she wiped the mud from his cheek. His eyes fluttered once and then went still. He did not breathe. “Zal,” she said. “Zal.”

  “Get away from him, girl,” Jack said.

  “No,” she replied. “Here,” she took the key from her neck and held it out. “Take it. You’ve won it. I renounce it. Take it, and let us alone.” She wished this was a clever trick, but if it was its cleverness was lost on her. She didn’t care.

  When the necklace didn’t leave, or he didn’t take it, because she wasn’t looking she didn’t know, she simply threw it in Jack’s direction. It landed in the snow at his feet. The sight that wasn’t sight—the sensors in the back of her body—created an image for her of him stooping to pick it up. At the same time there was movement in the faery ranks and Malachi appeared, coming forward with a peculiar raggedy black and white fey of no particular gender who was very reluctant to approach. They seemed to be arguing, though they didn’t speak, but finally Malachi said gruffly, “Try, Nix.”

  “I’m a healer,” the new faery whispered, all her awareness on the massive form of Jack Giantkiller. She was shaking with fear. “I might…”

  Lila moved back and pulled her forwards. The last thing she wanted to do was move away but she did it, so fast. She watched the faery stretch her hands and arms out over Zal’s motionless, hollowlooking form. After what seemed an eternity she sat back on her heels and looked at Lila. Lila knew then.

  “I can’t do anything,” the faery said apologetically. “He’s not dead, but he soon will be. A minute, at most.”

  She retreated to the safety of Malachi’s side and he moved back, cowering away from Jack too. Lila didn’t blame them. An energy had begun to radiate from Jack that was as ominous and dreadful as the first breath of a coming hurricane. He had picked up the key and it stayed in his hand. This had given him pause and he stared at it in wonder, half bent over.

  “Take the elf,” he said, as if he’d already forgotten what had happened, his entire being focused on the key.

  An eerie feeling of calm descended and everything became still, except for Lila, who was struggling with her desire to move forward and the terror that touching Zal might cause him pain, or death, though it was all she wanted to do. She brushed his hair where it met his forehead, where at least that was whole and fine. What followed she saw only because she could create images from all her senses and her entire skin was able to sense anything in light or sound because she didn’t move except to lie down next to Zal and put her face beside his. It was the right place to be, there was nowhere left to fall.

  “It is midnight,” Tath said, stepping forwards in Jack’s direction.

  Jack looked up, his face bearing a gaze that would brook no delay. “Speak.” He couldn’t wait to get back to his love affair with the key. He seemed to have no doubt that it would be only a moment before this elf was a memory too.

  Around them the faery gathering began to inch away, jostling to escape the front ranks and disappear in the crowd.

  “Where is your heart?” Tath asked. He stood quite relaxed, as if there was all the time in the world.

  Jack looked around him. “Is that it?”

  “You seem to suffer from a disbelief problem,” Tath said. “You heard me. That was my question. It is no doubt not the right question, but then, no question is the right question now, but it serves the purpose and so it seemed as good as any.”

  Jack started to laugh, then shuddered and shook his shoulders as if trying to dislodge a crick from his neck. “Ah!” he convulsed and shivered, and the snow form that he’d worn abruptly crumbled and fell away from him leaving him standing in his true material form, a tough but normally sized old man, with a salt and pepper beard and thinning hair. His clothes were the same rough and ready furs his wife wore, stitched by her hand. They made his already bulky, strong form seem even sturdier. He regarded Tath from his diminished height and narrow grey-blue eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but before anything could come out his body suddenly gleamed with a matrix of brilliant blue and yellow light, as if someone had cast a net of shining strands over him. Then he fell apart in pieces and bloody ruin.

  Two long blades, one blue, one yellow, and two white eyes shone out of the darkness behind him. “Old man, your kung fu is useless,” Teazle murmured. He put the swords away and shook himself free of the dark anthracite dust so that he emerged, shining, almost blinding. He stared at Madrigal and then gave her a small, theatrical little bow. “Madam.”

  “Dragon,” she said, returning the formality stiffly. Then, without appearing to move, he was on his knees beside Lila in the mud.

  Tath became illuminated. Literally. A light the colour of soft spring green radiated suddenly out of him, then snapped inward like the backdraft of a serious fire. He was jolted by it, but then stood. All the faeries turned to him, with a vast sussuration of little noises that sounded like a waterfall but were actually the sound of every faery turning one step to face a new position. Jack’s blood seeped into the ground, slowly at first, then as if the ground was greedy, until it was all gone. His flesh melted and soaked away. His bones crumbled to dust with a sigh.

  Without any outward signs each being present felt a change in the air, in the energy of everything that existed on that spot. A new figure stood where Jack had been. She was tall, Amazonian, and heavily pregnant. She had an electromagnetic signature not unlike that of a small star, although the frequencies that would have destroyed them were matched by another kind of equal and opposite force in what Lila could only assume was the aetheric field, and so she did nothing to them.

  As one everyone present averted their faces, except Teazle, who sat back on his heels, one hand on Lila’s back, one hand on his own knee, and watched her curiously.

  “At long last,” said the Muse gently, stroking her belly. She bent down with some effort and picked
the small round of the key out of the remains of Jack’s mortal body. “What was knotted has been undone. Elf, you have ascended to the Fisher King’s throne and you must keep it until a knight comes who is able to fathom your mystery. And it’s okay to look at me…”

  Tath bowed. “The faeries are free to leave,” he said. There was a sound like snapping strings, a twanging and pinging that was almost comical, and where the vast crowd had stood in a dim huddle like a body forest lights bloomed and colours shone out. Firework explosions of glory shot upwards and sideways as the smaller fey darted into the air. The sound of the group changed from silence to babble and then uproar which quieted down eventually into a new formation that wanted to watch and see what happened though they were itching to be away.

  “Miss.”

  Lila realised after a minute that the woman was speaking to her. She couldn’t feel a heartbeat or any breath under her hands. She couldn’t feel the slightest presence of any aetheric body, although she had been imagining it so fiercely that sometimes, for seconds, she wasn’t sure… Slowly she dragged herself upright, the demon behind her keeping his hand on her shoulder for which she was grateful.

  “I will take him.”

  “What are you?” Lila asked, her hands face up in her lap. She was quite relaxed now there was nothing to be done. “Is he dead?”

  “I am one of the Three, the second sister. I have a lot of names, all of which are quite wrong. You may call me Lily. I like that name. For the flower.”

  “Lily, is he dead?”

  “Almost. If he can be restored I will do it.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then he will stay with me. He is one of our favourites. We aren’t supposed to have such things but of course we do.”

  Lila thought about this. “Will you send him back to me?” she felt like a pathetic little kid for asking, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “If I can,” the creature that was not really a woman or really a sister said. “And if not then I will take care of what remains until the end.”