Oberon's Children

by Hal Emerson

  Chapter Sixteen: Puck

  Robin Goodfellow held my arm the entire way back to the Hall.

  “Where is your room?” he asked, voice low and serious. I didn’t answer; I don’t know if I could have. “Where is it?” Still I said nothing. The question barely even registered with me. I knew he was speaking, but that was all.

  “Damn it, girl!”

  We ascended a staircase I didn’t know that led to passages I’d never seen. I realized I was cold, and then also that we were both covered in blood and mud and rain. We arrived at a room somewhere high in the Bower, higher than I’d ever been before. It was much wider and fuller, with a nestle easily twice the size of mine.

  Robin abruptly released me.

  “Stay here,” he said before he left again.

  I don’t know how long he was gone. I do know that when he came back he was in different clothing, and that there was another set in his arms.

  “Change.”

  I did, not even thinking about the fact I was stripping naked in front of him until much later. When I was done, he took the clothes from me and bundled them inside out so that the mud and blood were on the inside. He walked to the side of the room and laid a hand against the smooth wood wall. He said something that had a peculiar sound, a sound that echoed the wind and rain outside, and then a small outline began to glow with silver light mixed through with veins of gold the color of his eyes. A piece of bark fell away and revealed a hole behind it. Robin shoved the clothing into it, then held the piece of wood up to where it had come from and the outline flamed back to life. When he released it and stepped back, the broken panel was once more part of the wall, without even a scar in the wooden flesh to show where the cut was made.

  “Sleep here for the night,” he said with ill-concealed annoyance.

  “No,” I whispered.

  His golden eyes flashed and he turned to face me.

  “Why were you there?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “I told him to meet me there. I told him we would meet … why were you there?”

  “I followed him,” Robin said slowly, still watching me. I couldn’t understand the strange look he was giving me, couldn’t understand why his usually arrogant demeanor had turned to one of intense caution. And then something changed, something flickered inside him and he turned away. His shoulders tightened and he stood up straight, and the air of the room changed.

  “Why did you follow him?”

  He turned back to me, and now the air of caution was gone. Something had been decided.

  “Because he was past his time,” Robin said softly. “It was a mistake to bring him here. He will never go through the madness – he has Fae in him, but not enough that he can stay. The Erlking has no use for those who do not fit his perfect mold.”

  “He … Oberon told you to kill …”

  My voice caught on the final word and I trailed off. I swayed dangerously and caught myself against the wall of the Bower.

  “Stay here,” he said softly. “The boy died in shadows, but the light will find him in the morning. I need to take care of it now, while it is still dark.”

  “No – I’m coming.”

  “No,” he said sharply, standing up to his full height again, looking down his nose at me. His lips twitched, but he held himself together. “You’re going to stay here. You’ll only get in my way.”

  “I followed you,” I said suddenly. “I’ve followed you before, too, remember?”

  His eyes narrowed but he didn’t speak further; he only watched me, suddenly wary.

  “I know you want to leave,” I continued, pressing my advantage, “I know it. I heard what you said to him – I heard him say he was keeping you here.”

  Surprise flashed over his face, sending his brows up and blinking his eyes, and then he narrowed in again, turning to anger, and I felt the first real emotion I’d had since seeing Faolan: fear.

  This was Robin Goodfellow, the Puck, Oberon’s right hand. What was I doing?

  “I owe him allegiance,” he said simply. “Nothing more. And it is none of your business.”

  “You’re just his servant. His plaything. Just a murderer!”

  “SHUT UP!”

  The shout rocked me back on my heels and his eyes were blazing at me, his face drawn up in sharp lines that I was sure would somehow cut me if he came too close. His hands had balled into fists and he advanced on me, was so close now that if he chose to strike me he would knock me to the ground with little effort.

  But at the last second he regained control. A shiver washed over him, throwing his black hair over his eyes and veiling his face from me. I realized he was embracing the madness, or else regaining control of it. He shook himself again, the thick black hair falling back, and then rolled his shoulders and his head, cracking his neck.

  He spoke as he turned to go:

  “I don’t belong here. That is all you need to know.”

  “Then I don’t belong here either!”

  “Yes, you do.” He stopped and turned back to me, looking me straight in the eye again and holding me with the intensity of his gaze. “You certainly do belong here.”

  “I need to leave,” I pleaded. I don’t know when I’d decided it, but I had. I wanted to run that very minute, wanted to leave and never look back. “I don’t care whether or not I belong here – I don’t want to be here, no more than you do!”

  “Then leave!” he sneered at me, looking both amused and somehow achingly sad. “You’ll be back in a matter of days, you’ll get the beating, and you’ll never try to leave again. No matter how far you go, no matter how fast you run, they will find you, like they always find everyone who runs, and that will be the end of it. All thoughts of flight will be long gone from your head, then. You spend a year deciding, no more no less. You can run when your time is up – not before.”

  “I want to run so that they won’t catch me. There has to be a way. I can’t stay here anymore – I can’t!”

  “There is no way,” Robin said, shaking his head. “Now stay here. I have things to deal with.”

  He left before I could say another word. I ran across the room after him, but just before I was through the door, he slapped his hand to the side of the wall and whispered something in those hissing words I couldn’t understand. The wall moved and snapped the doorway closed in front of me, trapping me in his quarters.

  I slammed my fists against the wall and shouted at him, tearing my throat with the viciousness of the cry. I slammed my body into it, first my shoulder then my palms, then my feet, my elbows, everything over and over again until my skin was torn and bloody in a dozen places. I started crying at some point, sobbing, and then I remember sinking to the floor.

  Faolan was dead.

  I started howling again, trying to reject what I knew was true. I’d seen it, I’d seen Robin standing over him …

  Seen Robin doing what the Erlking had told him to do.

  Sickness washed through me and I almost retched. I thought of him giving that order – the same Oberon that had told me he would save any who would come to his Bower – the same Oberon that had helped us through the madness –

  The same Oberon that had been accused by the Queen of savagery.

  He did it. Robin was the tool he used, but he was the one who’d killed Faolan. It was what they’d all been whispering about, what they all had refrained from telling us. It was the final secret, the one they’d keep hidden until we chose to join them and then we’d have no way to leave.

  Some of the children never went through the madness.

  I was on my feet and pacing about the room as the black thoughts swirled through me with gusting force. I could barely take a full breath – it felt as though my diaphragm had contracted so that my lungs were only half their normal size.

  I thought of kissing Faolan, thought of how much I wanted him.

  I screamed at the top of my lungs and slammed myself against the nearest wall.

  I had
to see it. I had to see the body. I had to know it was real. I had to see it again. I had to know. I had to – had to be there – I had to –

  The rambling in my head turned to madness as the fever encompassed me, roaring up to turn my skin into a blazing furnace. I blinked, and suddenly the fire was in my eyes, where it had never been before. At first I didn’t understand it, and then I saw the details of the Bower. The wood was no longer just wood – it crawled with life and power. The grains were swirling currents in a huge rushing river of madness, just waiting to be directed, just waiting for me to jump into the river and be carried away.

  I reached out and touched the wall that blocked the doorway.

  Heat left my hand in a rush and melted into the wood, but then came rushing back. There was a music to it, a song that sounded like what the Fae sang at the Calling ceremony. It was wind and rain and growing trees, rustling leaves, all of it wrapped up together, a song that drove the spheres and echoed through my blood.

  I opened my mouth and sounds came out that made no sense, sounds that were wrapped around the haunting, terrible melody.

  The wood shifted, then retracted into the wall, leaving my way free.

  I ran through the Bower, rushing for the Hall. I passed through it all without seeing, and then burst out into the field. The rain had stopped and the clouds were dissipating. I thought wildly about how long I’d been trapped in Robin’s room and realized I had no sense of the time I’d lost, had no sense of really anything.

  I lit my moonstone and ran again for the alcove, my whole body aching.

  Robin was there – but Faolan was gone.

  “Where is he?” I hissed immediately, rushing forward.

  Robin jumped back, shock crashing through the carefully neutral mask he’d been wearing just seconds before, and I actually felt him grab the madness inside himself. It was like there was suddenly more to him – like he had more weight.

  “How did you – how are you –?”

  “Where is he?!”

  “He’s gone!”

  “No – NO! Show me the body. I don’t believe you that he’s dead. He can’t be dead!”

  I rushed him and tried to slam my fist into his face. He stepped aside easily and threw me to the ground. He slammed his own fist into the place where the ribs meet on my chest, knocking the wind out of my body.

  I rolled over, gasping for breath, stars winking at the edges of my vision.

  He began to walk away, and I scrambled to my knees.

  “Stop following me.”

  “No – no! If he’s dead then – then we need to do something!”

  “There is nothing we can do.”

  “He made you do it – the King – it’s his fault.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “He needs to pay!”

  Robin spun around and faced me again, and I realized in the brief second it took for him to respond that I truly meant what I’d said. All the respect and wonder and even love I’d felt for the Erlking was gone, replaced by blinding hatred. I think he saw it in my eyes, and I think the force of it scared even him.

  “No,” he said. “You have no idea who he is.”

  My heart was pounding in my throat. I grasped desperately for the madness, but it wouldn’t come – it had gone with my breath. It came and went as it wanted – I was its servant, not its master.

  He knows something about Oberon – he knows something!

  “Who is he, then?”

  He made no move or sound, only continued to watch me. I gasped and continued, pushing on as best I could.

  “Where is he from? Is he truly the father of all the others, or is he just a changeling, like us?”

  Robin’s whole body tensed, and he rushed forward. His hands grabbed me and pulled me close, and a sudden pure sense of violence consumed me. His breath was hot on my face, and his golden eyes were all I could see.

  “I am not a changeling.”

  His fury was palpable. I was too shocked even to think – he was so close and the danger in his eyes so clear that all I knew was that I had to escape. I pulled back against his arms with all my strength, but he held me as easily as he might a struggling kitten. I could tell from his eyes and from his posture that I was almost nothing to him – less than nothing. What I had said, though … what I had said certainly seemed to be important.

  “I am not a changeling. I am not one of his children. I don’t belong here – I never belonged here – and don’t for a second think that somehow that fact brings us closer. You are an ant to me, a worm, and while Oberon may have power over me, it is only because I choose to allow him such!”

  He released me and I stumbled away.

  “I keep my word, even if it’s given to someone not worthy of my service.”

  Gasping, I clutched at my neck, trying to massage away the pain that encircled my throat like a fiery vice.

  “I knew it,” I gasped. “I knew you wanted to escape.”

  His eyes widened in surprise, and I couldn’t help but feel surprised as well. Where had that come from? I realized that the healthy fear I’d always harbored toward Robin had been momentarily pushed aside by the shock of what he’d done, and I realized too that if I was to ever have a chance of getting answers from him, answers of whatever kind they might be, I had to continue, or he wouldn’t wait for me to run away to see me beaten to a bloody pulp.

  “He killed Faolan,” I said, my voice catching. I bore down on my back teeth to stop the tears that threatened to flow. “And he couldn’t even do it himself! He sent someone else to do it! I don’t know what you are, but you just told the truth. I’m one of the changelings, I know that. But you’re not. You weren’t meant to be someone’s boy, even if that person is the Erlking. I don’t know what you are – but you’re more than that. Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

  He was staring at me now, transfixed, and I felt the words continue to pour out of me, a huge rushing torrent unlike anything I’d ever spoken.

  “And the only thing that is keeping you here is something I don’t understand. I’ve been turning it over and over in my head ever since I saw you. You don’t fit. The Ilyn fit, the Urden fit, the Sylphs fit, even the Paecsies and the Caelyr fit, but you don’t. And you want to leave – I can see it. I can see you hate him, it’s all over you– I know you want to leave, I know it down in my body somewhere like I know how to breathe! So that means you can’t. You can’t leave, and that makes no sense because I’ve seen what you can do – I saw you mock Gwyn ap Nudd without even thinking about it! So there has to be something you can’t do. There’s something you need someone else for.”

  I stopped, gasping for breath, my raw throat burning and swollen. He was staring at me as if he’d never seen me before, and I couldn’t let up. I knew that I’d hit on something in the midst of my rambling. The madness still hadn’t come to help me, but I didn’t need it now. I knew what to do, knew what to say, because I’d already figured it out, all on my own.

  “You need a changeling,” I continued, slower now, marveling at the knowledge. As soon as I’d said the words, his face twitched, almost as if I’d struck him.

  “You need a changeling to help you break whatever promise you made,” I said, breath slowing but only at a glacier’s pace as I started to bring myself under control. “The promise that keeps you bound to Oberon. You need a changeling to help you break it – you need one of us to do something you can’t do.”

  Robin’s eyes had narrowed and he stood impassive. He’d regained control of his composure as I fell silent, and his face had become completely inscrutable. I wished again for the madness, but I wasn’t even sure that would help. Whatever Robin was, he must have some way around the madness to keep him unreadable.

  “You swear that he made you do this?” I asked, forcing the words out.

  Robin’s face twitched again and settled into a mask of disdain so deep I couldn’t begin to fathom it.

  “You overheard us talking when you followed
us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know he did. I do whatever he tells me. Whatever he tells me.”

  “Then he needs to pay.”

  His golden eyes were gleaming in the moonlight, and I stared right back at him. The fear and apprehension were gone completely; they had been leeched from me when Faolan died. I would never be afraid like that again – I would rather die than be afraid.

  “What are you prepared to do?” he asked.

  The question came with no preamble – nothing about his impassive demeanor changed; his lips had barely even moved as the words came forth, almost drawn from the air itself.

  “Whatever is necessary,” I said, never breaking eye contact.

  He continued to regard me with impersonal detachment, a giant studying a mildly interesting insect. Slowly his eyes moved from my eyes downward, but he wasn’t looking at my body. I could feel his gaze on the inside of my skin, like heat building inside a closed room, trying to get out.

  “You can’t help me like you are,” he said, his mouth twisted in more than slight contempt. “You don’t have nearly enough control of the madness. You’re not even holding it now.”

  “You can’t hold it all the time,” I spat at him, not bothering to control the venom in my voice.

  “I do,” he spat back, mocking me by imitating my voice. The heat of his gaze blazed hotter and I realized he was telling the truth. He looked me up and down again, faster this time, simply confirming what he’d seen. “You’re half-trained at best. You’ve been coddled by the Ilyn.”

  “I’ve been trained by Ite’Ilyn himself.”

  “The best half-wit is still a half-wit.”

  “Then you train me.”

  His eyes tightened at the edges and I felt the thrill of victory as he paused. He was considering it. “There are two months left until my year is up,” I said. “You can teach me whatever I need to know. Whatever it is, I’ll learn it.”

  “Some things are impossible for changelings,” he said.

  I took another step, staring him down.

  “Not – for – me.”

  A long moment passed between us, and I knew by the fact he hadn’t left that he was thinking everything over, examining my proposal from every angle, looking for flaws. But the silence lengthened, and I felt a thrill of hope rush through my blood as he continued to stare. My eyes began to water, but I didn’t dare blink. He may have been devoted to mischief and mockery, but his cleverness, cunning, and sheer determination were what made him powerful – what made him devious.

  “Grab hold of the madness,” he said suddenly.

  Unquestioning, I did it. I felt the pressure on the sides of my head, the soaring in the pit of my stomach, and the jittery energy in my lungs that wouldn’t allow me to take a full breath.

  “Hold out your hands.”

  He held out his own, upper arms bent at his sides, forearms perpendicular to his body, palms facing up. I copied him.

  He stepped forward and reached a hand inside his sleeve.

  Pain slashed both my hands, and blood began to flow from two slim, shallow cuts running across my palms. I gasped and flinched in surprise, but whatever he’d used to do the cutting disappeared in the same quick motion and I held my ground.

  My blood glistened in the moonlight like dew.

  “Swear that you will tell no one what has happened this night,” he said.

  “I swear I will tell no one.”

  Robin held out his own hands and I saw his skin gape open of its own accord in the same slim cuts he’d carved in my skin. His hands descended on mine, mingling our blood, and a flare of heat passed between us that left me gasping. I looked up into his eyes, and saw him staring at me with a gaze so intense it was like looking at the sun.

  “Swear that you will tell no one of this conversation, any conversation that shall follow between us, and nothing of what we plan to do.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Only if you swear I’ll have revenge for Faolan.”

  Something behind Robin’s eyes shifted, and his hands curled around mine until he was gripping me so tightly that it hurt.

  “You don’t trust me?” he murmured.

  “No,” I said back.

  “I swear you’ll have your revenge,” he said. “Now you.”

  I paused, but then pushed on recklessly.

  “I swear I will tell nothing of us or what we plan.”

  Heat rushed through me in one huge wave, sweeping from my head to the tips of my fingers and toes, before pooling in my chest where it coiled around my heart. As soon as the heat had left my extremities, an equally shocking cold set in, making me shiver uncontrollably.

  Robin stepped forward, still grasping my hands in his. He was now so close that I could smell the raw masculine scent of him. I was shaking, the tremors of the vow we’d taken together still rushing through my body like earthquake aftershocks.

  “I will work you until you would rather die than live another minute,” he said. “You will come to me every day, and every day I will work on you until you either improve or you are reduced to the sniveling pile of useless flesh I still suspect you are.”

  “And then?” I asked, investing the question with as much arrogance as I could muster, as if his threats hadn’t shaken me to the core, as if I wasn’t doubting the wisdom of what I’d just done.

  A small smile quirked the corner of his mouth.

  “And then we kill a king.”