Modern Faerie Tales

by Holly Black

  Kaye blushed.

  “If you thought the King of the Unseelie Court would give you so simple a quest, you must think him besotted.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? He said that I . . .” Kaye stopped, realizing that she shouldn’t repeat his words. You are the only thing I want. It wasn’t safe to say that to Ethine, no matter what had happened.

  “A declaration is very serious.”

  “But . . . I thought it was, like, letting everyone know we were together.”

  “It is far more immutable than that. There is only ever a single consort, and more often there is none. It joins you both to him and to his court. My brother declared himself once, you know.”

  “To Silarial,” Kaye said, although she hadn’t known, not really, not before right then. She remembered Silarial standing in the middle of a human orchard and telling Roiben that he’d proved his love to her satisfaction. How angry Silarial had been when he turned away. “He finished his quest, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Ethine said. “He was to stay at the Unseelie Court, as Nicnevin’s sworn knight, until the end of the truce. Nicnevin’s death ended it. He could be the Bright Lady’s consort now if he wanted, if he returned to us. A declaration is a compact and he has fulfilled his side of the bargain.”

  Kaye looked around at the revelers and felt small and stupid. “You think they should be together, don’t you? You wonder what he saw in me—some dirty pixie with bad manners.”

  “You’re clever.” The faerie woman did not meet Kaye’s gaze. “I imagine he saw that.”

  Kaye looked down at the scuffed tops of her boots. Not that clever, after all.

  Ethine looked thoughtful. “In my heart I believe that he loves Silarial. He blames her for his pain, but my Lady . . . she did not intend for him to suffer so—”

  “He doesn’t believe that. At best he thinks she didn’t care. And I think he very much wanted her to care.”

  “What quest did he send you on?”

  Kaye frowned and tried to keep her voice even. “He told me to bring him a faerie that can tell a lie.” It hurt to repeat it, the words a reproach for her thinking he liked her enough to put feelings above appearances.

  “An impossible task,” Ethine said, still considering.

  “So you see,” Kaye said, “I’m probably not the best person to answer your questions. I very much wanted him to care too. And he didn’t.”

  “If he doesn’t care for you, for her, or for me,” Ethine said, “then there is no one else I can think of whom he cares for, save himself.”

  A blond knight strode toward them, his green armor making his body nearly disappear into the leaves.

  “I really do have to go,” Ethine said, turning away.

  “He doesn’t care about himself,” Kaye called after her. “I don’t think he’s cared about himself for a long time.”

  Corny strolled through the woods, trying to ignore how his heart hammered against his chest. He tried not to make eye contact with any faeries, but he was drawn to their cats’ faces, their long noses and bright eyes. Luis’s scowl was fixed, no matter what they passed. Even a river full of nixes—cabochons of water beading on their bare skin—did not move him, while it was all Corny could do to look away.

  “What do you see?” Corny asked finally, when the silence between them had stretched so long that he’d given up on Luis’s speaking first. “Are they beautiful? Is it all illusion?”

  “They’re not exactly beautiful, but they’re dazzling.” Luis snorted. “It sucks, when you think of it. They have forever, and what do they do—spend all their time eating and fucking and figuring out complicated ways to kill each other.”

  Corny shrugged. “I probably would too. I can see myself with bag after bag of Cheetos, downloading porn, and playing Avenging Souls for weeks straight if I was immortal.”

  Luis looked at Corny for a long moment. “Bullshit,” he said.

  Corny snorted. “Shows what you know.”

  “Remember that cake you ate before?” said Luis. “All I saw was an old mushroom.”

  For a moment Corny thought he was joking. “But Kaye ate one.”

  “She ate, like, three.” Luis said with such glee that Corny started to laugh, and then they were both laughing together, as easy and silly as if they were going to be friends.

  Corny stopped laughing when he realized that he wanted them to be friends. “How come you hate the Folk?”

  Luis turned so that his cloudy eye was to Corny, making it hard for Corny to read his expression. “I’ve had the Sight since I was a little kid. My dad had it and I guess it got passed down to me. It made him crazy; or maybe they did.” Luis shook his head wearily, as though he were already tired of the story. “When they know you can see them, they fuck with you in other ways. Anyway, my dad got the idea in his head that no one was safe. He shot my mother and my brother; I think he was trying to protect them. If I had been there, he would have shot me, too. My brother made it—barely—and I had to put myself in debt to a faerie to get him better. Can you imagine how things would be without the fey? I can. Normal.”

  “I should tell you—one of them, a kelpie, killed my sister,” Corny said. “He drowned her in the ocean about two months ago. And Nephamael, he did stuff to me, but I still wanted . . .” His words trailed off as he realized that maybe it wasn’t okay for him to talk about a guy that way in front of Luis.

  “What did you want?”

  In the clearing ahead, Corny spotted a group of faeries tossing what looked like dice into a large bowl. They were lovely or hideous or both at once. One golden-haired head looked uncomfortably familiar. Adair.

  “We have to go,” he whispered to Luis. “Before he spots us.”

  Luis took a quick look over his shoulder as they walked faster and faster. “Which one? What did he do?”

  “Cursed me.” Corny nodded as they ducked under the curtain of a weeping willow. Neither mentioned that Silarial had promised no harm would come to them. Corny guessed that Luis was as cynical about the parameters of that promise as he was.

  A tangle of faeries rested near the trunk of the tree: a black-furred phooka leaning against two green-skinned pixie girls with brownish wings; an elfin boy slumped by a drowsy-looking faerie man. Corny stopped short, surprised. One of them was reciting what seemed to be an epic poem on the subject of worms.

  “Sorry,” Corny said, turning. “We didn’t mean to bother anybody.”

  “Nonsense,” said a pixie. “Come, sit here. You will give us a story too.”

  “I’m not really—” he started, but a faerie with goat feet pulled him down, laughing. The black dirt felt soft and damp under his hands and knees. The air was heavy with the rich smells of soil and leaf.

  “The drake rose up with wings like leather,” intoned a faerie. “Its breath set afire all the heather.” Perhaps the poem was about wyrms.

  “Mortals are so interestingly shaped,” said the elfin boy, running his fingers over the smoothness of Corny’s ears.

  “Neil,” Luis said.

  The phooka reached over to touch the roundness of Corny’s cheek, as though fascinated. A faerie boy licked the inside of Corny’s arm and he shivered. He was a puppet. They pulled his strings and he danced.

  “Neil,” Luis said, his voice distant and unimportant. “Snap out of it.”

  Corny leaned into their caresses, butting his head against a phooka’s palm. His skin felt hot and oversensitized. He groaned.

  Long fingers tugged at his gloves.

  “Don’t do that,” Corny warned, but he wanted them to. He wanted them to caress every part of him, but he hated himself for wanting it. He thought of his sister, following a dripping kelpie boy off a pier, but even that didn’t curb his longing.

  “Come, come,” said a tall faerie with hair as blue as the feathers of a bird. Corny blinked.

  “I’ll hurt you,” Corny said languorously, and the faeries around him laughed. The laughter wasn’t particularly mocking or crue
l, but it hurt all the same. It was the amusement of watching a cat threaten the tail of a wolf.

  They slid off the gloves. Decayed rubber dust flaked from the tips of his fingers.

  “I hurt everything I touch,” Corny said dully.

  He felt hands at his hips, in his mouth. The soil was cool against his back, soothing when the rest of him was prickling with heat. Without meaning to he reached out for one of the faeries, feeling hair flow across his hands like silk, feeling the shocking warmth of muscled flesh.

  His eyes opened with the sudden knowledge of what he was doing. He saw, as from a great distance, the tiny pinholes in cloth where his fingers touched, the blackberry stains of bruises blooming on necks, the brown age spots spreading like smeared dirt across ancient skin. They didn’t even seem to notice.

  A slow smile spread over his lips. He could hurt them even if he couldn’t resist them.

  He let the pixies stroke him, arching up and biting at the exposed neck of the elfin boy, inhaling their strange mineral-and-earth scents, letting lust overtake him.

  “Neil!” Luis shouted, pulling Corny up by the back of his shirt. Corny stumbled, reaching out to right his balance, and Luis pulled back before Corny’s hand could catch him. Corny grabbed Luis’s shirt instead, the fabric singeing. Corny stumbled and fell.

  “Snap out of it,” Luis ordered. He was breathing fast, maybe with fear. “Stand up.”

  Corny pushed himself onto his knees. Desire made speaking difficult. Even the movement of his own lips was disturbingly like pleasure.

  A faerie rested long fingers on Corny’s calf. The touch felt like a caress and he sagged toward it.

  Warm lips were next to his. “Get up, Neil.” Luis spoke softly, against Corny’s mouth, as if daring Corny to obey. “Time to get up.”

  Luis kissed him. Luis, who could do everything that he couldn’t, who was smart and sarcastic and the last boy in the world likely to want an awkward geek like Corny. It was dizzying to open his mouth against Luis’s. Their tongues slid together for a devastating moment, then Luis pulled back.

  “Give me your hands,” he said, and Corny obediently held out his wrists. Luis bound them with a shoelace.

  “What are you—” Corny tried to make some sense of what was happening, but he was still reeling.

  “Thread your fingers together,” Luis said in his competent, calm voice and pressed his mouth to Corny’s again.

  Of course. Luis was trying to save him. Like he saved the man with the mouth full of pennies or Lala with the snaking vines. He knew about cures and poultices and the medicinal value of kisses. He knew how to distract Corny long enough to bind his hands, how to use himself as bait to lure Corny away from danger. He saw right through to Corny’s carefully hidden desire, and—worse than using it against him—Luis had used it to rescue him. Exhilaration turned to acid in Corny’s stomach.

  He stumbled back and staggered toward the curtain of branches. They scraped his face as he passed through.

  Luis followed. “I’m sorry,” he called after Corny. “I’m—I didn’t—I thought—”

  “I’m? I didn’t? I thought?” Corny shouted at him. His face was suddenly too hot. Then his stomach clenched. He barely had time to turn before retching up chunks of old mushrooms.

  Predictably, Luis had been right about the cakes.

  An owl’s yellow eyes caught the moonlight, making Kaye jump. She’d given up on calling Corny’s name and was now just trying to find her way back to the revel. Each time she turned toward the music, it seemed to be coming from another direction.

  “Lost?” asked a voice, and she jumped. It was a man with greenish-gold hair and white moth wings that folded across his bare back.

  “Kind of,” Kaye said. “I don’t suppose you could show me the way?”

  He nodded and pointed one finger to the left and the other to the right.

  “Hilarious.” Kaye folded her arms across her chest.

  “Both ways would bring you to the revel eventually. One would just take quite a bit longer.” He smiled. “Tell me your name and I’ll tell you which is better.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Kaye.”

  “That’s not your real name.” His smile was teasing. “I bet you don’t even know it.”

  “It’s probably safer that way.” She looked into a dense copse of trees. Nothing seemed familiar.

  “But someone must know it, mustn’t they? Someone who gave it to you?”

  “Maybe no one gave me a name. Maybe I’m supposed to name myself.”

  “They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins. But without a name, a thing isn’t quite real either. Maybe you’re not a real thing.”

  “I’m real,” Kaye said.

  “You know a name that isn’t yours, though, don’t you? A true name. A silver pin that could stick a King in place.”

  His tone was light, but the muscles in Kaye’s shoulders tensed. “I told Silarial that I wouldn’t use it. I won’t.”

  “Really?” He cocked his head to the side, looking oddly like a bird. “And you wouldn’t trade it for another life? A mortal mother? A feckless friend?”

  “Are you threatening me? Is Silarial threatening me?” She stepped back from him.

  “Not yet,” he said with a laugh.

  “I’ll find my own way back,” she mumbled, and headed off, refusing to be lost.

  The trees were heavy with impossible summer leaves, and the earth was warm and fragrant, but the woods were as still as stone. Even the wind seemed dead. Kaye walked on, faster and faster, until she came to a stream pitted with rocks. A squat figure crouched near the water, the brambles and branches of her hair making her look like a barren bush.

  “You!” Kaye gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am sure,” the Thistlewitch said, her black eyes shining, “you have better questions for me than that.”

  “I don’t want any more riddles,” Kaye said, and her voice broke. She sat down on the wet bank, not caring about the water soaking her skirt. “Or eggshells or quests.”

  The Thistlewitch reached out a long, lanky arm to pat Kaye with fingers that felt as rough as wood. “Poor little pixie. Come and rest your head on my shoulder.”

  “I don’t even know which side you’re on.” Kaye groaned, but she scooted over and leaned against the faerie’s familiar bulk. “I’m not sure how many sides there are. I mean, is this like a piece of paper with two sides or like one of those weird dice that Corny has with twenty sides? And if there are really twenty sides, then is anyone on my side?”

  “Clever girl,” the Thistlewitch said approvingly.

  “Come on, that made no sense. Isn’t there anything you can tell me? About anything?”

  “You already know what you need and you need what you know.”

  “But that’s a riddle!” Kaye protested.

  “Sometimes the riddle is the answer,” the Thistlewitch replied, but she patted Kaye’s shoulder all the same.

  9

  Fair as the moon and joyful as the light;

  Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;

  Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

  Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

  —CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, “IN AN ARTIST’S STUDIO”

  In the darkness of early dawn, Corny woke to distant bells and the thunderous pounding of hooves. He rolled over, disoriented, sore, and filled with sudden panic. Somehow he’d gotten his leather jacket back on, but the edges of the sleeves looked tattered. His wrists ached and when he inadvertently pulled against the shoelace that tied them, it made them hurt more. His mouth tasted sour.

  Realizing he was still in the Seelie Court explained the dread and the discomfort. But when he saw Luis, wrapped in Kaye’s purple coat, cheek pillowed against the burl of a nearby blackthorn tree, he remembered the rest. He remembered what an idiot he’d been.

  And the agonizing softness of Luis’s lips.
/>   And the way Luis had brushed Corny’s hair off his face while he puked in the grass.

  And the way that Luis had only been being kind.

  Shame made his face hot and his eyes burn. His throat closed up at the thought of actually having to talk about it. He rolled onto his knees and stood awkwardly, physical distance the only thing that calmed him. Maybe Kaye was in the direction of the noise. If he could find her, Luis might not say anything. He might act like it had never happened. Corny threaded his way alone through the trees, until he spotted the procession.

  Silver-shod horses raced past, their manes streaming and eyes glittering, the faces of the faeries on their backs covered by helms. The first rider was arrayed in dark red armor that seemed to flake like old paint, the next in white as leathery as a snake’s egg. Then a black steed galloped toward Corny, only to rear up, front hooves dancing in the air. This rider’s armor was as black and shining as crow feathers.

  Corny stepped away. The rough bark of a tree trunk scraped his back.

  The black-clad rider drew a curved blade that glittered like rippling water.

  Corny stumbled, terror making him stupid. The horse trotted closer, its breath hot on Corny’s face. He threw up his tied hands in warding.

  The sword cut through the shoelace binding his wrists. Corny cried out, falling in the dirt.

  The rider sheathed the sword and pulled off a ridged helm.

  “Cornelius Stone,” Roiben said.

  Corny laughed in hysterical relief. “Roiben! What are you doing here?”

  “I came to bargain with Silarial,” Roiben said. “I saw Sorrowsap on the other side of the lake. Who bound your hands? Where’s Kaye?”

  “This is, um, for my own good,” Corny said, holding up his wrists.

  Roiben frowned, leaning forward in the saddle. “Favor me with the story.”

  Reaching up, Corny touched one of his fingers to a low green leaf. It curled, turning gray. “Pretty nasty curse, huh? Tying me up with the shoelace was supposed to keep me from touching anyone by accident. At least I think that was what it was for—I don’t remember everything about last night.”