In the Coils of the Snake

by Clare B. Dunkle

  Her magic gone, Arianna rocked back and forth in pain, cradling her throbbing arm. Catspaw altered some flax reeds, dispersed their foggy ghosts, and sat down beside her on his ruined bed.

  “You have to tell me what you’re afraid I’m going to do,” he said urgently. “You think I’m going to change you. Into what?”

  Interpreting the injury to her arm as a threat of further retribution, the elf girl was finally frightened into speaking. “The goblin King is angry that he can’t marry another goblin,” she burst out. “He’s angry that he has to marry an elf. So he cuts her and burns her and bends her bones until she looks worse than the ugliest goblin.”

  “That’s not true at all,” said Catspaw, very surprised. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that except for revenge, and I would never practice revenge on my wife.”

  “They told me you would do it,” cried the terrified girl, “and look, you’ve already started!” She uncurled her palms to reveal the scars and held them up as evidence.

  The goblin King gathered both shaking hands into his human one. Her magic hand was very cold, and he began rubbing it to bring the blood back.

  “No, I haven’t,” he said reassuringly. “Someone lied to you about what I was doing. Those are just part of the wedding ceremony.”

  Wedding? Arianna didn’t contradict him, but the statement seemed absurd. Her exhausted brain couldn’t begin to apply that term to the disgusting spells he had worked.

  “Every King’s Wife has those lines,” continued Catspaw. “They give an indication of our future. You’ll have a long life.” He traced the line on her left palm. ‘And so will I.” He traced the other one. “You’ve seen several elves here, Arianna. No one has changed them into anything else.”

  “Those others don’t have to be married to the goblin King,” she whispered. “The King of all that’s ugly wants his wife to be as ugly as he is.”

  “Just because I look different from you doesn’t mean I want you to look like us,” said the goblin. “If I did, I would tell you. Why should I lie? I haven’t done a single thing to change your appearance since the King’s Wife Ceremony, and that took place weeks ago.”

  Arianna looked up at him, solemn and reproving, her black eyes larger for the purple shadows beneath them in her pinched white face. “You’re waiting until a better time,” she accused. “I see it in your thoughts.”

  The goblin King mused over this, impressed and interested by her claim to be able to mind-read. “You see me wanting to deform you?” he asked. “I’m not, so that can’t be right.”

  Arianna hesitated. “I see you waiting,” she confessed. “Always, when we’re together, you think, ‘Later, not yet, soon.’ Always! It’s in your mind every time you look at me!”

  As he took this in, the sophisticated King became perturbed and indignant, perhaps because his thoughts had been so woefully misunderstood, or perhaps because he now had to explain them. “I’m not thinking about deforming you,” he retorted in exasperation. “I’m thinking about kissing my wife! When I’ll be able to hold you, put my arms around you — Might I point out that I’m your husband?”

  The elf girl’s stare went blank. “You wanted to kiss me?” she exclaimed.

  “It’s something married people do, I believe,” he remarked severely.

  Arianna gazed at him in complete amazement. “Then when you were thinking — all that time ” She made a sound between a breath and a sob. “You just wanted — you wanted—” But now she was quite overcome. She gasped and whooped, and her shoulders shook until tears spilled down her cheeks. She couldn’t manage to stop for some time. Relief and something that might be mirth showed on her face, but the goblin King felt very anxious about her. He never could quite make up his mind whether the exhausted girl was laughing or crying.

  “I wish you had just said so!” she told him finally, rubbing her hand over her streaming eyes. “Besides, you can’t be thinking that. I’m too young to kiss.”

  Poor little elf, she looks so tired, he thought worriedly, and he put his paw around her. “You’re not too young,” he countered. “You’re too tired, too upset, too sick. And I don’t want to make you any worse.”

  Arianna leaned her aching head against his chest, thinking about this. Catspaw looked around, marveling at the destruction she had wrought. The bits of floor and walls that he could see through the leafy, exuberant growth were shattered by invading roots.

  “Your magic isn’t gone forever,” he said. “It will come back in a week or so. I know you miss your forest and your plants. I’ll bring you a small tree, and you can keep it in a pot. It won’t live very long down here, but it will survive for a few months.”

  “No, don’t,” said the elf girl softly. “A tree shouldn’t have to die in this terrible place. I wouldn’t want to watch it.”

  “I’ll bring you a branch, then,” he promised, holding her close. `A fir branch. They smell nice. I’ll bring you flowers, too, the finest flowers I can find. I’ll start searching right away.” He reached out and snapped a rose off a nearby stem. “Here, this is for you.”

  Arianna cradled the rose in her scarred hands with the ghost of a smile on her face. “That search didn’t take you very long,” she whispered.

  A second later, she was fast asleep.

  • • •

  Marak Catspaw spent the day watching over his wife, but his thoughts were far from kind. He called his two lieutenants into the wreckage of his bedroom and held a whispered consultation. Not that he needed to whisper. Arianna was sleeping so soundly that shouts wouldn’t have waked her.

  “The elf lord sent this poor girl here thinking that she was going to be mutilated,” he hissed furiously. “No wonder she kept leaving — she never knew when I might decide to scarify her, or slice off a couple of toes! That elf is a sly, scheming menace. He deliberately tried to sabotage my marriage.”

  “There isn’t an elf King now because of a failed marriage,” remarked the white-haired Richard. “If you lost your life, Marak, the goblins would be as bad off as the elves.”

  “Exactly,” declared his sovereign. “I think that lord has some plot in mind. Arianna and Miranda are both part of it.”

  “But how can that be?” objected Seylin. “Arianna didn’t say that the elf lord told her you would deform her. She could have learned it from camp gossip, and he might have had no idea. He didn’t know that you would choose her to be your wife, either, and he certainly didn’t know about Miranda.”

  “Adviser, you’re thinking like an elf,” said the King impatiently. “He knew perfectly well I would pick Arianna, unless he thought I was simply a fool: he knew we were interested in an aristocrat and intended to look over the whole band. She was his own fiancee; he spent half his time with her. Do you actually suggest that he never talked to her about what would happen?”

  “He could well not have,” replied Seylin. “Elves hate to talk about unpleasant things. And if I’m the one who thinks like an elf, I should know.”

  “It doesn’t matter in any case,” said Catspaw. “If he could abandon her without making sure she understood what her new life would be like, then he doesn’t deserve to be a leader, but I think that Arianna `knew’ just what he wanted her to know. And he undoubtedly had learned about Miranda as well. He had obviously done some spying. Remember, he knew that I was unmarried before we told him.”

  “Tattoo was clear on that,” noted Richard. “The elf had it all planned. He walked Miranda to the edge of the truce circle, nabbed her the minute she was out, and trapped the guard within seconds, as neat as you please. He’s a cunning one, all right.”

  “Cunning and vindictive,” added Catspaw. “Don’t forget what he did to Mother, right under all our noses. He’s afraid to take on a man in a fair fight, but he doesn’t mind mistreating women.”

  “What do we know about his plans for Miranda?” asked Richard.

  “We have no idea what he has in mind,” replied Seylin. “The Scholars studied the prob
lem for days and came up with nothing.”

  “This is a military situation,” declared the King. “Richard, I want that camp watched day and night. And I want to find out how Miranda is and what he may have told her about her purpose there. A goblin can’t enter the camp, but Sable could do it.”

  “If you’re right about him,” observed Seylin, “then you’re putting Sable in danger. And goblin spies would violate the treaty.”

  “He broke it first,” interposed the military lieutenant. “He attacked one of the Guard on goblin lands and took the King’s ward hostage.”

  “We’ll make sure that Sable has an innocent reason to enter camp,” decided Marak Catspaw, “and we’ll send her when we’re sure he isn’t there. Don’t worry, adviser. I swore when I signed the treaty to act in the best interest of the elves, and I fully intend to. Whiteye proposed to become King of the two races, and the idea strikes me as sound. They lack a real leader. I’m the one who can best take care of their needs.”

  “The elf lord would never agree to that,” protested the astonished Seylin.

  “No, he wouldn’t,” mused Catspaw. “I’m seeing more and more reasons why that elf needs to go.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Miranda was alone, practicing her constellations. Nir was teaching them to her the elvish way, having her form them on the ground with pebbles and then look for them in the sky. Even elves had to learn constellations. They knew where every star was by instinct, but they had to learn the names and patterns.

  “Miranda!” The soft voice came from the trees nearby. She looked up from her pebbles in surprise. Who would use her goblin name?

  “Sable!” Miranda hurried over to the elf woman. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m bringing the elf lord another book,” said Sable, handing a bulky spell book to the girl. Then she dusted off her hands and pushed back her long black hair. Miranda found the book surprisingly heavy, so she sat down with it in her lap. Sable sat down beside her, spreading the full skirt of her silk gown out to cover her feet.

  “Nir isn’t in camp right now,” Miranda told her. “He’s out hunting, and I don’t know if he’s finished with the other book.”

  “I know he’s not in camp,” said Sable, looking around carefully. She switched into goblin. “The King’s worried about you.”

  Miranda felt insulted by both the language and the comment. “How kind of him,” she snapped. “I think of him constantly as well. I’m not speaking goblin to you.”

  “Speak what you want,” replied Sable in goblin. “But you’re a prisoner here, and the King wants to know why. You’re his subject; the elves have no right to hold you.”

  “Nir took me in after Catspaw threw me out,” declared Miranda. “I would have killed myself if Nir hadn’t stopped me, and I’m not a goblin subject anymore.”

  “Don’t lie to yourself,” said the black-haired elf impatiently. “The King didn’t throw you out, he released you for a little while under guard because he thought letting you have your own way would calm you down. The elf lord trapped your guard, dragged you to his camp, forced you to undergo spells, and imprisoned you here. And the question is: Why? What do you know about it?”

  Miranda considered this information unhappily. She hadn’t known about the guard, but she knew the rest was true. She didn’t like to think about it. The elf lord she had fallen in love with didn’t go around attacking people. He was kind and wonderful.

  “I’m important to the elves,” she said. “Nir’s magic says so, and he has to do what his magic says. I don’t know why I’m important, but I can tell he feels sorry for me. That’s all I know. He isn’t like a goblin; he doesn’t just blurt everything out. He’s an elf. He’s refined.”

  “Refined.” Sable’s tone was acidic. “I can tell he’s an elf man who doesn’t drop your food on the floor. The King thinks he may have real harm in mind for you, some sort of plot or revenge.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” replied Miranda. “Nir worries about me. He thinks Catspaw abused me because he kissed me before I was eighteen. I don’t know why he was so angry over a few kisses.”

  “It’s really just an elf custom, the eighteen rule,” answered Sable uneasily, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. “Elf women have a terrible time with childbirth. If they went into labor before they were fully grown, even magic wouldn’t save them. And the elves live so closely together, sleeping in little tents, coming and going through the forest. If their society weren’t structured by the eighteen rule, there would be complete chaos. As it is, a woman’s a child one night and married the next: no stolen kisses, jealousies, dangerous friendships, or chaperones. She learns to love her fiance over years of childhood, without the pressure to grow up too soon. I have to admit, I’m an elf,” she sighed. “It still makes sense to me.”

  “I think that’s why Nir hasn’t told me anything,” said Miranda gloomily. “I know he thinks of me as a child. But I like it here. Everyone’s so nice to me, they treat me just like an elf There’s only one difference that I can think of I’m dressed in brown, and every one else is dressed in green. Maybe brown is just for humans.”

  “Elves wear brown in the winter, green in the summer,” said Sable matter-of-factly. She paused to study Miranda. “He had you put in brown because you’d look terrible in green,” she said cynically. “That kind of thing matters to an elf.”

  • • •

  Nir heard from his people that Sable had been in camp and had spoken goblin to the human girl. He was worried and suspicious about the intrusion. He learned what he could of the visit from Miranda, but he knew she didn’t tell him everything. The Seven Stars didn’t control her speech. She was free to keep her secrets.

  “Sable helped me understand some things I didn’t know about elves,” volunteered Miranda as she sat on her pallet that morning. “She explained why elf women marry at eighteen and why you were so angry at Catspaw.”

  Nir, coiling his belt and stowing it in the corner of the tent, didn’t glance up at this statement. He privately wondered why anything that obvious would need an explanation.

  “And she explained why you had Igira make me brown clothes,”

  added Miranda sadly. “Because I would have looked terrible in green.”

  “She said that?” murmured Nir as he settled himself on his pallet.

  “You should have asked me. I would have said that your clothes are brown because you look beautiful in brown. I don’t understand that woman. She’s even more horrible than that poor little goblin girl who looked like an elf. She’s an elf who acts like a goblin.”

  “I don’t think that’s her fault,” Miranda pointed out. “Sable was horribly mistreated. She told me she’d never known kindness until she lived with the goblins. Marak taught her magic himself, and he made sure she learned to read and write. She didn’t even know elvish when she came. It was the goblins who taught it to her.”

  “The old goblin King was very clever,” said Nir with his eyes closed. “He knew that elf women have more children if they’re happy, so he made sure they were happy, and he knew the children would be more elvish if he developed the character of the women. It makes the elf blood last longer down in those caves.”

  “Oh, you make it sound so awful!” cried Miranda in distress. “Why can’t you say anything good about the goblins? Sable loved Marak like a father, and I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Marak cared about his elves, he really did.”

  “I did say something good about the goblin King, I said he was clever,” remarked Nir a little heatedly, propping himself up on an elbow. “If you’d asked him, Sika, he’d have told you what he cared about. He cared about their blood. He cared about it when he took it out to look at it, and he cared about it when he strengthened it through teaching and good breeding. We elves care about the deer, too; we put spells on the land to keep them healthy and make them bear more does. But the deer don’t thank us, and they don’t love us. We consume them, a
nd that’s just what the goblins do to us.”

  Miranda stared at him, astonished at the hostility in his voice. He studied her shocked expression. “You have to understand something,” he said. “We have always been the goblins’ prey. I signed a treaty with them, but they won’t honor it. My magic knows that already. The elves are in danger now, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why would you be in danger?” demanded the girl. “Catspaw isn’t evil. He wouldn’t hurt innocent people.”

  The elf lord continued to study her, amazed at how severely they had crippled her thinking. She herself had suffered terribly in their schemes, and she didn’t seem to blame them at all.

  “We’re a temptation to the goblin King,” he replied. “A whole band of unprotected elves — that’s like putting a bag of gold before a human! Whether he’s evil or not, he won’t be able to resist. He’s either thought of the possibilities we offer, or he’s a fool.”

  “The possibilities of what?” asked Miranda in confusion, and Nir gave up the attempt.

  “Never mind,” he sighed. “You lived with them too long. I can’t make you understand.”

  If the elf lord was worried, he kept his troubles to himself after that, and Miranda wasn’t worried at all. The man she loved couldn’t be planning harm and revenge for her. Instead, he spent lots of time teaching her things and talking to her. She was positive that he enjoyed her company.

  One night she walked up to the writing desk to ask him to go on a walk. “Look at this, Sika,” he said excitedly, holding out his hand.

  On the ground by her feet a wide circle of glimmering white bumps appeared, rising silently from the dark earth. When they had burgeoned to a height of four inches, plump mushroom caps formed, unfolding like tiny umbrellas.

  `A dancing ring!” exclaimed Miranda, and then she blushed over such a silly statement. But the handsome lord didn’t laugh at her. He just looked a little puzzled.