Queen of Sea and Stars

by Anna McKerrow

  ‘I know,’ Lyr replied, smiling.

  ‘Is there no other way?’ Sylvia’s voice was eerily calm.

  ‘There is not,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘Take her. But I want Gabriel back. Now!’ Sylvia cried out.

  ‘As you wish, Priestess.’ Lyr smiled, and touched Mallory’s forehead; she unfroze, but her expression was still vacant. Lyr took her by the hand. As he did so, a black pathway appeared through the forest where there hadn’t been one before: Faye knew instinctively it was the road to Falias.

  ‘Daughter, if you seek the wisdom of plants to rid yourself of your affliction – seek out my sister, the Faerie Queen Moronoe,’

  As Lyr and Mallory disappeared, Faye felt herself able to move and talk again. The rest of the coven unfroze and looked around them in expressions of confusion. Some of them stumbled and fell. Faye knelt at the centre of the circle as branches, twigs and leaves rained down from above her, released from her fury, and hugged the inert body of Gabriel Black, who lay unconscious in her arms.

  Forty-One

  Faye sat on the side of Gabriel’s single bed and held the mug of herbal tea to his lips.

  ‘Drink up. It’s good for you,’ she instructed.

  ‘What is it?’ Gabriel sat bolstered by pillows, too weak to hold himself up.

  ‘Valerian for the pain. Turmeric, Yarrow, St John’s Wort.’ Faye tipped up the cup gently so he could drink without having to lean forward. ‘Penny gave it to me.’

  The coven had carried Gabriel’s body out of the oak grove and Manu had called for an ambulance on his mobile phone. Ruby had noticed Mallory was gone. Did she go home? Ruby had asked, like a child awoken from a dream. Sylvia had said, I’ll explain. But not now. Ruby and the others had exchanged glances, but no-one had said anything.

  Sylvia and Penny had helped Faye get Gabriel into a cab after he’d been checked over by the medics in the van; it looked like just another inebriated end to a night out to most passing by on the street, Faye supposed, as she’d stood around the ambulance with the rest of them. Manu had his arm around Victoria’s shoulders; Simon crossed his arms over his chest, his expression stony.

  There was nothing apparently wrong with Gabriel except severe exhaustion, the ambulance worker said, pushing a strand of red hair from her tired eyes. Someone should keep an eye on him for a day or two. Faye could tell from her expression that she assumed the lot of them had been partying for a few days up in the woods, and Gabriel was the worse for wear. None of them explained otherwise; they would hardly be believed.

  Their glances at her were wary as they stood in the street, after the ambulance had gone. Did they understand anything of what had happened? Had they seen it? Faye thought not. Faye wondered what the High Priestess would tell them. How she’d explain Mallory being taken. I had no choice. It was Gabriel for Mallory, and she isn’t one of us. How callous that sounded, under the streetlights. How unreal.

  No-one said it, but Faye could hear it nonetheless; all their thoughts were the same. You have caused nothing but chaos since you came. You’re not one of us. They feared her. They thought that she could banish and return people to faerie on a whim. They didn’t yet know what Sylvia had done. What she was willing to do for them. What she’d do to anyone who wasn’t one of her chosen ones.

  Faye wanted to tell them there and then what had happened: that she’d screamed at Sylvia not to do it. That Sylvia was as much a pawn in the games that the faerie kings and queens played with humans as anyone else. But it was too much. There were too many of them, and she could hardly breathe from the grief over Aisha that still crushed her chest. Yet, now, there was also a blinding, cutting relief that Gabriel was still alive.

  Faye had taken him home. Sylvia had lain her hand on Faye’s arm after they had got him into the cab. I’ll make it right, she’d said, desperation in her eyes. Faye had nodded. What else could she do?

  Gabriel lay back and closed his eyes.

  ‘Can you talk about it?’ Faye returned the half-full mug to the bedside table and kept her eyes on it, away from his. It hadn’t been her fault, his time in Murias, but she felt responsible nonetheless. It was too recent, too raw, this nursing of someone that had been lost in faerie. She told herself that Gabriel had wanted to go, unlike Rav. But it made no difference either way when you saw how close to death humans came in the faerie realm. She remembered Aisha’s face under the ice-glass ballroom floor, and closed her eyes in horror.

  ‘Yes,’ he breathed. His voice was cracked, as if he’d forgotten how to speak.

  ‘What happened? Did you… go willingly? Or did you get taken with me? By accident?’ Guilt weighed Faye’s heart. She couldn’t bear it that she’d endangered another friend.

  ‘I wanted to go.’ Gabriel coughed, and she waited for him to catch his breath. ‘I planned to go. When Finn came, I jumped into the wave with you. When I woke up, I was in her bed. I didn’t want to leave, either.’ He lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes again. ‘I told you. What life did I have, here? Whole days go past and I don’t see a soul in that bookshop. I don’t have anyone special in my life.’ His eyes met hers and she saw the pain in them. Faye looked away, not knowing what to say.

  ‘You would have died there,’ she said quietly. ‘Sylvia… saved your life.’ She didn’t explain how; it was a bargain that should never have been made.

  ‘I didn’t want it saved!’ Gabriel’s voice cracked again, the shout lost in his throat, but Faye felt his anger, nonetheless. ‘I wanted her. Glitonea. I still want her.’ He tried to sit up, but his muscles were wasted, and wouldn’t let him. ‘I’ll go back. When I’m strong enough. She’s calling to me.’

  Horror spread its fingers over Faye’s skin as she recognised the dull shine of a possessed soul in Gabriel’s formerly bright eyes. Was this how she’d been with Finn? Had she been this lost, this willing to sacrifice her humanity to the power of faerie?

  ‘You can’t go back. You won’t survive there,.’ Faye repeated. ‘You’ll die. Aisha died. I saw her.’ Her voice broke.

  A tear rolled down Gabriel’s cheek. ‘She loves me, Faye. And her love is… so powerful. Like the ocean. She took me to the deepest places in myself, Faye. You must know how that feels. To want and be wanted so intensely. To be devoured, over and over again. There’s no point being alive if I can’t have that.’

  He cried, letting the tears wrack his weak body, unable to stop them. Faye held him, knowing that he was as addicted to Glitonea as she had been to Finn; knowing that he’d go back to her if given the slightest opportunity.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated, over and over again as she held him. ‘Gabriel, I’m so sorry.’

  And as she held him, she thought of Mallory, and her stomach twisted. Lyr had promised that Mallory would be safe, but he couldn’t be trusted any more than Finn or Glitonea.

  Gabriel’s desperation was one she knew all too well: it was the lust of the human for faerie, and of the almost-dead for life. Gabriel’s darkness resonated with her own shadow: they had both known the desolation of having been loved so intensely that they would die to remain in the dream – if a dream was what it was – and had felt the deep despair in waking. It was as though, for a moment, she saw herself and Gabriel standing on opposing sides of a flat, black lake, as glassy and perfect as the obsidian wand she carried in her pocket. And in her vision, they were reaching for each other, both alone in their sorrow and desperate to be held.

  Yet, though there was sorrow there for both of them, there was also kinship, now, in a way that there hadn’t been before.

  ‘Gabriel,’ she said softly, feeling the weight of his confusion and sorrow break like a wall in an earthquake. She held him to her as he sobbed desperately. ‘I’m here. I… I understand. What you feel. I know.’

  Faye closed her eyes, and the vision of the black lake reappeared. Yet, even though Gabriel was in her arms, he remained standing at one edge of the water, now looking away from her. And she knew that no matter how l
oudly she called him, he wouldn’t wade across to her. Not yet.

  ‘What did you… what was the bargain? To get me back?’ he asked, against her shoulder.

  Faye sat back and put her head in her hands.

  ‘Lyr took Mallory. I tried to stop it, but he had control of me. It was Sylvia who agreed to it.’

  ‘Mallory?’ Gabriel’s hands were on his knees, now: a posture that implied he was keeping himself upright with a force of will. Despair ordered his body like a slumped puppet; he had no strength for the demanding weight of the human world which pulled him down. Faye knew that he craved the flowing moments of Murias, even though it was while under their spell that he’d been so horribly tortured.

  ‘She’s a… friend… of Rav’s. She’s in Falias with Lyr.’ Faye felt dizziness overcome her and shook her head to clear it.

  ‘Falias?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With Lyr,’ Gabriel repeated, dully. She wondered how much he was really taking in: he was dazed, confused. Half of him was still lost; he might never be whole again.

  Faye nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry. I…’ She didn’t know what to say.

  Gabriel said nothing, staring blankly at his knees. He had lapsed into a kind of waking fugue; she spoke to him, nudged him, called his name, but he was gone again, blank and absent from the human world in everything but his already-starved body. How long had Glitonea kept him there, in faerie time? How long had he suffered at her hands, and how long had the pressure of Murias impacted his body?

  She settled him back on the pillows and sat back in the chair by his bed. It seemed fitting to Faye that she should be with Gabriel, in his dark night of the soul, watching over him while his spirit tried to free itself from Murias.

  The light from the bedside lamp was dim, but she didn’t put the overhead light on for fear of disturbing whatever rest Gabriel could get. Instead, she sat in the near-darkness and thought about Mallory.

  It might already be too late for her; if Mallory returned, would she be like Gabriel? Would she be mired as deep in the despair of leaving the faerie realm? Or was she, even now, calling out to return to the human world, frightened and alone? She couldn’t stop thinking about Aisha, and every time she did, the grief crushed her.

  She closed her eyes. Over and over again she weighed up every offer, every possible way, but every time, she came up against a faerie king or queen that sought only to manipulate her. Lyr was no different.

  But she also needed something for herself, and she was frightened of the kind of help she might need. Because it had been two months without a period, and she was sick, still, every day, long past the point where she should have recovered from being in the faerie realm.

  For the first time, Faye placed her hand on her flat stomach and dared to imagine that she might be pregnant. Worse: that the bargains she’d struck with Glitonea might have to be fulfilled.

  Forty-Two

  She wasn’t aware of falling asleep in the chair, but she suddenly found herself standing in a golden-green forest. Sunlight dappled the yellow, red and green leaves: all the colours were slightly too bright to be real, as if rendered by a child. Silver birch stood alongside ash and oak, and a row of the prickly hawthorns with their red berries lined a pathway through the trees.

  Faye walked slowly along the path, feeling the pull of faerie in her blood; she smelt the tang of lemon and the savoury tinge of wild oregano in the air. The green light welcomed her in, and the wild power of the cold, black earth seemed to soak through her boots. It was December, but in the dream – or was it a dream? – there was no distinct season. The earth was cold and damp, but the sun was warm; the leaves on the trees could have been spring shoots or autumn colours. The grief she carried for Aisha was still there, but being in faerie muted it somehow, like a drug.

  To her right flowed the same merry stream she’d visited with Lyr on their way into Falias: the bridge in the shape of a woman’s body was still there, as beautifully carved as it had been before. She crossed it, and stood before the tall black gate. The Queendom of Moronoe, High Queen of the Realm of Earth.

  Faye remembered Lyr’s expression as he’d talked about his sister; it was dismissive, distant. Clearly there wasn’t a great love between them as brother and sister, or even as co-rulers of Falias. Finn and Glitonea didn’t keep themselves separate in Murias: both resided in the castle and ruled from it. Faye wondered what had happened to mean that Lyr and Moronoe were so estranged that they had split a realm between them.

  Something about that black door fascinated her. She touched it lightly with her fingers and it swung open without her needing to do anything more.

  The last time she’d visited this place, roots and vines wrapped themselves around her feet and ankles, and she could go no further. Stop, traveller. Only one pure in her desire may enter the Queendom of Moronoe, Mistress of Earthly Delights a chorus of voices sang out: it was the same phrase as before. Have knowledge of where you tread. Know thyself and admit thy deepest desires.

  Beyond the gate, the forest was more densely packed, and moonlight rather than the warm sun filtered between the gaps between thick-trunked yews, dense with their dark green needles and poisonous red berries. Faye could see their exposed roots under the black soil that glowed with jewels: amber, citrine, jet and emerald. The air that drifted out of the gate smelt of copper, and it reminded her of her monthly blood. Know thyself.

  Faye took a deep breath and put one foot inside the gateway; the jewelled black earth beyond accepted her weight, and no vines sought to trap her. Carefully, she stepped between the dense yews, and though there was no black lake, the ground itself reminded her of the vision she’d had of standing opposite Gabriel, lost and seeking refuge from the faerie realms.

  Perhaps the recognition of her shadow was something to recommend her to the faerie queen here

  Come to terms with your desire, Faye, the same voice sang, as she walked further and further into the jewelled yew forest. Accept that desire does not have walls, or rules, or niceties. Desire does not arrive packed safely in a box and wait to be looked at. It rips itself from the box, from the womb, it is born bloody and with teeth, and it feeds.

  Faye walked deep into the faerie forest, where the trees became a labyrinth and led her down long, sinuous paths that twisted and bent under the moonlight. Faye walked and walked until time had lost all meaning, and as she walked, moving images like film appeared on the leafy branches of the trees that she followed. As she walked past, an unfolding record of her lovemaking with Finn and with Rav were played out for her in lurid colour and detail.

  At first, Faye turned her head away, repulsed both by seeing her own body and the expressions on her face that captured moments of lust and ecstasy. She broke into a run, tripping on her own feet or on stray fallen branches or vines on the ground, desperate to escape the vision. If this is a dream, I want to wake up! she thought, but she didn’t find herself back in her bed. But, when she was breathless and her heart was hammering, she was forced to stop and watch.

  And, as she watched, remembering, she came to a new peace. Her body was more beautiful than she’d imagined. She saw arousal and passion in the images, but she also saw tenderness on Rav’s face, and on Finn’s. What they did was all for pleasure. Was any of it so wrong? Perhaps she was the only one that had ever thought it was. Faye had categorised faerie as the shadow because of the sexual boundaries she’d crossed when she was there. She’d thought shadow was wrong, and light was good. But in the tree labyrinth with the milky glow that filtered through the shadowy pines, Faye pondered whether light and shadow were all part of one spectrum of being.

  She could have been walking for an hour or a day; she’d no idea of how long she’d been in the trees, but unlike the fear she’d experienced in the labyrinth leading to Murias, she felt only calm. And as if they had been waiting for her to reach acceptance with what she’d seen, the trees opened onto a clearing.

  Forty-Three

 
Queen Moronoe crouched with her back to Faye on a throne made from rock, held together by moss and covered in ivy. She was completely naked, and her impossibly wide, stout thighs suffocated the head of what appeared to be a human man. He lay on a kind of reclined green velvet chair, on his back, with his head buried in the faerie queen’s large, rounded bottom. The queen’s thighs rippled with pleasure as she moaned loudly, grinding her whole bottom half onto his face; he was also naked, and Faye looked away in embarrassment as she noticed the man’s erection. His head and face was completely obscured by the mountainous behind, and Faye wondered if he could breathe at all.

  Moronoe’s throne room – Faye guessed this was what this was – resided in a hollowed-out cave where insects scurried up the walls and roots poked out of the black earth. The coppery smell of earth and blood was stronger here, but combined with the freshness of a lemony resinous smoke that rose from a number of crude earth pots with holes at the top.

  Sex was thick in the air; the cave-like room was womblike and dark, and the whole place seemed to have a heartbeat of lust uniting it.

  It was a different allure to Murias, but Faye could feel it entering her senses, nonetheless. It seemed that all the faerie realms had this sexual element: they were the primal places of elemental power, after all, and nothing was more primal than the life force of nature, forever seeking to perpetuate itself, to grow and spread.

  Faye called out to the faerie queen, who had dismounted her prone human lover.

  ‘My queen! I would speak with you.’ Faye bowed her head before the vast presence of Moronoe, who, despite being naked, gave her such an imperious look that Faye felt mortified by her own presence in the room.

  ‘Who is it that interrupts my pleasure?’ the queen boomed. Her breasts were the largest Faye had ever seen, supported by voluptuous rolls of fat; her arms were thick with muscle and dimpled flesh like her thighs, and her stomach was wide and curvaceous. There was simply so much of her; her power, Faye knew, would be great, like all the faerie queens. But there was something in her simple physical presence that screamed power, like a mountain. Where Glitonea seemed to merge with her surroundings, Moronoe pulled everything in the room to her. Moronoe represented every pleasure that the body could ever possibly experience. Her largeness was testament to the strength and vitality that emanated from her, like a battery of life.