by Julie Kagawa
An orange glow suddenly lit the darkness, and we came upon a narrow wooden walkway stretching out over the swamp. A lantern hung from one of the posts, swaying gently and filling the air with a high-pitched creaking sound.
“This is the edge of the Iron Realm,” Meghan announced, stepping onto the boardwalk with an expression of relief. Mud clung to her knee-high boots, but the rest of her had escaped mostly unscathed, unlike myself and Coaleater, whose bottom halves looked like we had sloshed out from the set of Swamp Thing. No one doubted or questioned her claim. Like all rulers of Faery, she was strongest while within her own realm and knew instantly when she had left her territory. “Where did you say the oracle lived, Grim?”
Grimalkin leaped atop one of the wooden posts and vigorously shook one back leg, looking indignant that it had dared get wet. Only after he’d sat down and licked it furiously several times did he deign to answer.
“The oracle lives deep in the Black Marsh, whose edge we have only now reached,” the cat replied, rising with a yawn and a wave of his tail. “It is not too far, but it is not terribly close, either.”
“Vague as always, Furball.”
“Does anything else live out here?” Nyx wondered, stepping easily onto the planks. She had managed to keep herself bone-dry through the entire trek, and I both admired her grace and envied her lack of soggy socks.
Meghan nodded, stepping back as the rest of us clambered atop the narrow boardwalk. “There are a few species of fey that call this swamp home,” she told the Forgotten. “But they’re shy and keep mostly to themselves. It’s likely we won’t see anyone until we get out of the marsh.”
After a few minutes, the dry land disappeared, the small islands vanishing beneath the muck, until it was a solid pool of black water and dead trees stretching away into the night. Colored fireflies appeared, bobbing over the surface like tiny Christmas lights, flashing red, green, blue, and pink against the pitch-black water. It was very quiet. Save for the tiny floating lights, nothing moved out in the swamp, no splashes of frogs or fish or startled turtles echoed around us. The surface was as still as a giant black mirror under the stars.
“I feel like we’re being watched,” Nyx murmured beside me.
A grimace crossed my face. “You, too, huh? Oh good. And here I thought I was the only one being paranoid—”
Something flew at me from the water. I spun, catching sight of a long spear, the tip curved in a nasty, serrated barb, flying right at my head. I twisted aside, and the projectile sailed past me into the water.
“Uh, princess?” I called, as all around us, the water started to move. “I don’t think the locals are as shy as you first let on.”
We all spun, glamour flaring and weapons unsheathed, to face the churning waters. I pulled both daggers, watching as a few dozen or so heads broke the surface of the swamp, rising from the muck like zombies. They looked like some sort of merfolk or fish creatures; fins sprouted from their cheeks and ran down their backs, and their taloned fingers were webbed. Rubbery, dark blue skin blinked with dozens of tiny luminescent lights scattered down their arms and shoulders, and a glowing bulb dangled from the top of their skulls like a huge angler fish. Enormous white eyes fixed on us hungrily, and their mouths opened to show rows of gleaming, sharklike teeth.
With furious hisses, the mob of fishmen raised their spears and swarmed toward us.
I tensed, but before anyone could do anything, a massive jolt of power went through the air. A streak of lightning descended from the sky, striking the upraised hand of the Iron Queen with a dazzling flash and a boom that rocked the planks and sent waves through the surface of the swamp. Meghan stood there a moment, strands of blue-white energy flickering around her, making the air crackle with power.
Unsurprisingly, everyone, fish and friend included, went rigid and stared at her.
Lowering her arm, the Iron Queen gazed calmly at the mob of luminescent fishfolk surrounding us. “You know who I am,” she said, and though her voice wasn’t loud, the planks trembled under our feet, and ripples spread through the water. “This does not have to end in violence. Depart in peace, and we will do the same. But attack my companions, and I will have no choice but to defend them.”
For a few heartbeats, the creatures stared at us, baleful hunger battling the obvious fear of the Iron Queen standing in the center of the walkway. Ash stood at Meghan’s side, his posture calm, but his hand resting close to his sword hilt, ready to defend her if needed. I could feel Nyx at my back and caught the shimmer of light from the blades in her hands, back to her full power. For which I was very relieved. And yes, a tiny bit worried, but mostly relieved. Coaleater faced the mob with his arms crossed and his head raised, almost daring them to take one step forward. Grimalkin, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
Then one of the fish creatures hissed softly and drew away, sinking back into the water. As the blackness closed over its head, the rest of the swarm began to follow, sinking into the muck and vanishing from sight, their glowing angler bulbs the final things to be swallowed by the darkness. Within moments, they had all disappeared, and the waters were perfectly still once more.
Meghan slumped, as the power swirling around her flickered once and died, taking the steely Iron Queen persona with it. “What was that about?” she whispered, gazing around the now quiet marshland, her blue eyes narrowed in concern. “The merfolk have never been aggressive. What is going on here?”
“It is the same in the Obsidian Plains,” Coaleater rumbled from the back. “Tensions are rising between fey that have always been peaceful. There is...an anger that I have never felt before. It is why I am here now. And I assume it is why we are going to the oracle.”
“That monster’s influence couldn’t have reached this far,” Nyx began, but before she could finish, a shudder went through the planks at our feet. I looked down through the cracks just in time to see a glowing bulb vanish beneath the water.
“Uh-oh.”
There was a lurch, an earsplitting crack, and then the entire walkway collapsed, plunging us all into waist-deep swamp water.
The waters boiled, and fish creatures surged out of the depths, surrounding us. Clutching spears and baring jagged fangs, they swarmed us like piranhas, stabbing and biting. I dodged a spear thrust at my head, then floundered back as a pair of snapping jaws followed me. Reaching down, I snatched a piece of the broken walkway and shoved it between the nasty set of chompers coming for my face. Serrated fangs snapped shut on the wood, and the fishman gargled in fury.
Coaleater bellowed as a group of fishmen pounced on him, clawing and biting only to recoil with shrieks of pain from a mouthful of iron. His huge fists lashed out, sending several of them flying into the water, though more piled on him as soon as they were gone. A flurry of ice daggers sang through the air in an arc, courtesy of the Ice Prince himself, and the fishmen burbled as they fell back, recoiling from the storm of frozen shards.
I twisted to avoid a pair of spears thrust at my face, feeling the sharpened tips barely graze my skin, and the fury in me roared. Okay, fishies, you wanna play with Robin Goodfellow? Let’s see how you like this little trick. Sloshing back, giving myself a little room, I glanced around at the cluster of fishmen and their spears and smiled. You really shouldn’t run with sharp things. You might poke your eyes out.
With a pulse of glamour, the ring of spears surrounding me began sprouting with vines and flowers, growing rapidly as they bloomed from the wooden shafts, causing the fishmen to pause and stare at their spears in confusion and alarm. A few of them began shaking the spears, trying to remove the blossoms, and I grinned.
Just wait. You haven’t seen anything yet.
Long black thorns shot abruptly from the wood, piercing hands, arms, eyes, and throats, impaling the fishmen on their own spears. A couple of them howled, trying in vain to drop their suddenly spiky weapons, but the thorns had pierced their hands
and fingers, and they couldn’t drop it even as the spines continued to grow. They shrieked as the barbs reached their faces and chests, desperately trying to arch away, but their voices were cut off as the thorns slid through their bodies and silenced them. The rest, the ones lucky enough to die quickly, let out choked gurgles and slumped beneath the water, sinking from view.
I felt a brief stab of disgust with myself and quickly squashed it; that was another particularly nasty trick I’d stopped using, but Meghan had given these slimy bastards the chance to run and they’d ambushed us instead. Really, they’d brought this on themselves; I refused to be turned into Goodfellow sushi for a bunch of garbling fishmen.
In the breath of stillness that followed, I looked around to see Nyx slice through a trio of fishmen who had stupidly gotten too close to her, and Coaleater give a bellow of annoyance as his body erupted with flame. The fishpeople clinging to him let out hisses and shrieks as they leaped off the blazing faery into the water. They didn’t surface again.
Silence fell. I glanced around at the others and saw Meghan and Ash standing back to back, swords in hand, surrounded by a ring of dead, scaly bodies. The Iron Queen hadn’t used any of her glamour, but then again, she hadn’t needed it. Meghan was quite the competent swordswoman now, having been trained by one of the best. With a sigh, she lowered her blade and sheathed it at her side as the last few fishpeople decided this wasn’t worth it after all and fled. They slipped beneath the water as suddenly as they had appeared, and we were alone in the swamp once again.
“Well,” I commented, smirking and gazing around at the carnage left behind. “That was fun.” The frozen, charred, stabbed, and dismembered bodies of the fishmen wriggled as they suddenly turned into piles of leeches and lampreys, and I wrinkled my nose as they slithered into the black waters and vanished. “Not very nice of them, collapsing the bridge like that. Although I suppose if I were an unreasonably hostile fishperson, I wouldn’t want a fair fight, either.”
“It was more than that,” Ash said, sheathing his own blade. “This wasn’t just an ambush that would give them the advantage in the water. They knew Meghan wouldn’t be able to use her full power, not without hurting the rest of us.”
I remembered the lightning Meghan had called down from the sky and knew Ash was right; if she had used it against the fishmen while we were all submerged, everyone’s hair would be standing on end right now.
“That they would attack us at all is concerning,” Nyx broke in. She stood chest deep in swampy black water, silver hair floating around her, and looked faintly annoyed that she was now submerged with the rest of us. “Unless things have changed drastically since I’ve been gone, no fey, even mobs of fey, would dare attack the Lady. Are the rules different now?”
“No,” Coaleater said, billowing indignantly in the water, steam rising off him in clouds. “They are not. No fey would attack the ruler of a court. It’s blasphemous to even think such a thing.”
“I wish I knew what was happening,” Meghan said, sounding frustrated. “This isn’t normal behavior for any of them. They didn’t have to die.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead, then gazed behind her at the edge of the boardwalk that hadn’t been submerged in water. “Get us to the oracle, Grim,” she ordered. “I need answers, and I need them now.”
The cat peered down from the edge of the broken walkway, curling his whiskers at us all. “I am doing my best, Iron Queen,” he said in a put-upon voice. “Perhaps if you would all stop playing with fish, we would arrive a lot sooner. Just an observation.” He turned, flicked his tail, and leaped to the edge of the shattered boardwalk. “This way, if you would.”
“Ugh,” Nyx muttered as she hopped gracefully onto the walkway again. “Now I smell like a bog. It’s going to take forever for my boots to dry.”
Coaleater tossed his head, choosing to walk alongside the narrow planks instead of atop them, which was good, as his huge iron body would likely collapse the rest of the walk. Steam billowed off his skin where the water touched the superheated metal. “I could dry them for you,” he said seriously, and snorted a cloud of flame and smoke into the air. “If you don’t mind a few singed spots.”
Nyx grimaced. “I think my soggy boots will be fine.”
The swamp continued, the walkway snaking over water and through fields of cattails and dead trees, colored fireflies bobbing lazily through the air. Gradually, the marshland began to change, the trees growing larger, more twisted and gnarled. The streetlamps jutting out of the water disappeared, and curtains of moss began appearing in the branches overhead, draped like lacy green curtains over the walkway.
“We must be close to the center of the marsh by now,” Meghan mused from up ahead. “How far is it to the oracle, Grim?”
“Not far. In fact...” The cat paused, raising his head, his ears pricked to the breeze. “We are here.”
We stopped. Up ahead, the trees thinned out a little, revealing a small island in the center of a black pond. A wooden cottage sat in the middle of the island, surrounded by a pair of enormous, moss-covered trees, the roots snaking up the walls and curling over the thatched roof like grasping fingers. A pair of naked skulls sat atop the posts at the edge of the island, and a black cauldron huddled in the ashes of a large firepit just outside the door. A flickering orange glow spilled through the single round window in the wall, as inviting as the light coming from the mouth of a dragon.
“Oh,” I commented. “That’s great. This couldn’t scream ‘witch’s house’ any louder if the walls were made of gingerbread.”
Nyx frowned at me. “All the witches’ houses I knew of were made of stone. Or sometimes bones. What is this strange magic where the walls are made of bread?”
“I’ll tell you the story later.”
The wooden door creaked open. A figure emerged from the hut, standing for a moment in the doorframe. From this distance, it was hard to see it clearly; it wore a tattered green cloak or dress, but that was all I could make out. It stood in the frame a moment, gazing right at us, before it lifted an arm in a wave, turned, and went back inside.
“And we’re expected,” I went on. “This just gets better and better.” No one answered me, and I grinned. “Welp, no use standing around here. Shall we go and see what’s for dinner? Hopefully it won’t be us.”
Cautiously, we followed the winding planks toward the island in the center of the pond, hearing the boards creak under our feet. Bullfrogs croaked out in the marsh, and hanging vines dripped warm water onto our heads.
Meghan walked up to the door and raised an arm to tap on it, but a quiet voice echoed through the wood before she made contact.
“It is open, Iron Queen.”
Meghan pushed the door open. It swung back with a groan, revealing a small, cozy room, a fireplace crackling on the far wall. Crystals, bones, and other, stranger things hung on strings from the ceiling, dangling throughout the room and catching the firelight. I ducked a pair of bird feet as I stepped through the door, the tiny claws withered and dry as they spun on the twine.
A chair sat before the fireplace, its back to us. It was occupied, but all I could see was a slender hand and forearm, and the hem of a ragged green cloak. As everyone but Coaleater stepped into the room, the arm lifted in a vague greeting, accompanied by the same voice.
“I knew you were coming, Iron Queen. Come in, come in. Though, be informed, the floor will collapse if the Iron creature steps in any farther. That I have seen.”
Coaleater blew out a breath of steam and tossed his head. “I will wait outside,” he informed us, and wandered away toward the edge of the island, presumably to keep watch. The rest of us crowded inside, ducking trinkets and paraphernalia, until we were all clustered together in the small room.
The figure in the chair rose, turning to face us. My brows arched. I’d been expecting a withered hag, a hunchbacked old crone with crooked talons and dental problems. Like
the previous oracle. I was not expecting a young, beautiful faery with perfectly manicured nails and long raven hair without a strand of gray in it. She stood tall, unbowed, though her gaze seemed to stare right through us at the opposite wall. It seemed rather odd, until I noticed her eyes. They had been blue once, but were now hazy and clouded over, the pupils focusing on nothing. She was blind.
“It is not polite to stare, Robin Goodfellow,” the faery said without looking at me. “My eyes may not work, but I see more than you could ever imagine.”
“I dunno about that,” I said, just to be contrary. “I can imagine a lot.”
Meghan stepped forward before I could say anything else. “You are the oracle, I presume.”
“Am I?” The faery put a hand to her eyes, peering out between her fingers. “I suppose that’s right,” she muttered. “Hard to claim otherwise. When you see these things, you are either an oracle or delirious.”
“Or both,” I put in. “Both is always an option, I’ve found.”
Meghan shot me a look that said, How is this helping? before turning back to the oracle. “We need your help, Oracle,” she went on, getting right to the point. “I will be brief, because there might not be much time. There is some sort of terrible creature plaguing the Nevernever. It radiates negative emotions, is immune to glamour, and has the power to change faeries into crueler versions of themselves. We need to know what it is, and where it might be now.”
The oracle’s already pale face went even whiter, her cloudy eyes getting huge and round. “No,” she whispered, turning violently away. “It cannot be that time. It is too soon. Too soon, too soon. Evenfall comes. All is emptiness, and darkness, and nothing.”
“What is?” Meghan stepped forward, and the oracle cringed back, hands flying to her face. “What are you talking about?”
“I do not know.”