Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Daylily had stepped back outside, slowly so as not to let that smell know how it chilled her. “I’ll not be visiting Auntie today after all, my goodwoman,” she had said before returning to the carriage without another word.

  The Wilderlands was cold like that. Cold and watchful, uninviting and silent.

  But Daylily was not inclined to retreat. The more still the air grew, the more frozen the silence, the more determinedly she strode, yanking her skirts with uncaring rips every time they caught on branch or stone. She liked that sound. It was like the sundering from her old life made audible.

  And she thought, I should have done this years ago.

  She didn’t expect to survive. No one who entered the Wilderlands ever came back, and it didn’t take a great deal of imagination to guess why not. But for the moment, she didn’t care. She gloried. Had she been the type to crow in victory, she would have crowed! Instead, she merely smiled grimly and grabbed her skirt in both hands to give a particularly violent tug when it caught in a thornbush. The tear ran almost to her knee that time.

  “You ought to let it go.”

  Daylily had once boasted a rather fixed notion of the world and its workings. Recent history had made fair headway into reorienting those fixed notions; recent history and the all too real Dragon. Indeed, as far as Daylily was concerned, the world could stand on its head and sing love ditties, and she would hardly bat an eye anymore.

  Thus, when the songbird fluttered onto a branch near her head and sang a song that became words she understood, she did not startle but merely turned to give him an appraising glance. He turned his head to look at her with one bright eye and chirped innocently. Daylily was not fooled.

  “If you are going to give personal recommendations, you need to be rather more specific,” she said to that bird. “Otherwise, I shall be obliged to ask obtuse questions. Such as ‘What ought I to let go?’ for example.”

  The bird—which was good-sized for a songbird and sported a speckled breast—ruffled his feathers at her but without malice. Then he sang, “You know of what I speak.”

  “You assume a great deal for a bird,” Daylily replied.

  “I never assume. I know.”

  “Isn’t that nice for you, then?”

  “More to the point, it is everything for you.”

  Not a muscle on Daylily’s face moved. Her eyes did not narrow; her jaw did not clench. She might have been bored for all her features revealed. When she spoke, her voice was far too calm.

  “I remember how this works. It’s been some years since I’ve read Eanrin’s Rhymes for Children, but I remember well enough. Mortals enter the Faerie Forest, and all sorts of beasts and unsavory characters intercept them along their way, plying them with misguidance, etcetera. And the moral of each story is never to be swayed from your path.” She straightened her already perfectly straight shoulders. “I’ll not be persuaded; I’ll not be turned. I’ve made my decision, and it’s best for everyone involved. And I’ll thank you not to pry.”

  With that, Daylily gathered the remnants of her skirts and continued on her way. There was no path, at least none that she could see, only tall trees and green undergrowth. Something was not quite right about this Wood; something beyond a bird singing to her in a voice she understood. She paused a moment and looked down at her feet.

  One can look a long time at a phenomenon without recognizing it for what it is, especially if one is tired after narrowly escaping a wedding. So Daylily stood for some moments, staring at her feet and wondering what it was she saw that struck her odd.

  When at last she realized, she gasped.

  Though the forest floor was thick with grasses and ferns and low-growing things, nowhere she looked was there any sign of decay. Not a withered leaf, not a dropped pinecone, not a red needle off a pine bough.

  “The Wood Between knows little of Time,” sang the songbird. He had fluttered from branch to branch and perched on a twig no more than a foot from her face. “There are places, such as this, where leaves don’t drop unless disturbed by a strong gale. Even then, they do not lie to rot upon the floor, but vanish even as they fall.”

  “I don’t care,” Daylily said, still staring at the ground. “Do you realize I’ve stood before the Dragon’s own throne?”

  She sounded like a child making boasts of courage to the monsters lurking in the depths of her wardrobe.

  The bird chirruped cheerfully. “You’ve done a foolish thing, running away. All you need to do is let it go, and you’ll not have to run anymore.”

  “And what would you know about it?” Daylily glared at the bird. Anger made her forget how wildly her heart pounded in her throat. “What are you? Some figment of my imagination come to life?”

  “Certainly not,” replied the bird with what was probably a laugh. “The figments of your imagination are far more dreadful and much less awful than I.”

  This made about as much sense to Daylily’s tired mind as you’d expect. She smoothed the scowl from her face with masterful care, turning her features into a mask. In her ignorance, she even smiled a little. “I don’t care to discuss it. Least of all with you.” Once more, she continued into the Wood.

  “You know,” sang the bird, keeping pace with ease, “that it will destroy you if you try to contain it.”

  “Of course,” Daylily replied, still smiling. “Better me than everyone else.”

  That was the secret, down at the heart of this mad flight of hers. She knew this already with a bitter certainty: Nothing in the Wilderlands could frighten her as much as that which she brought into it herself.

  The bird said no more. When Daylily finally looked around, she did not see him anywhere near. Somehow she knew he had not gone far, but the relief of his current absence was enough that she let the smile fall from her face. Grim lines assumed places on her cheeks, under her eyes, around her mouth; lines that had become all too familiar in the last year. Ever since Lionheart had vanished.

  Ever since Rose Red.

  The spasm came. It did not surprise her anymore, but it hurt, and Daylily doubled up with the pain. She choked on it, her hands clutching her sides just below her rib cage, her knees bent, though she refused to let herself fall. Slowly her hands moved up from her sides to her heart; then her fingers crept up her neck and clasped her cheeks, pressing.

  She whispered, “No. You cannot come out.”

  Then she twisted her head, wanting to look, afraid to see, so she closed her eyes. And she growled, “I’m not cruel. You made me cruel.”

  As always, the moment passed so gently, so thoroughly, that were it not for the increased frequency of its coming, Daylily could have made herself believe it never happened. But it had. And she was no longer going to sit back and let the world go on around her, knowing all the while that she would, in time, destroy everything she touched. Not even Prince Foxbrush deserved that.

  The Wood darkened.

  In those places where Daylily’s footsteps left the green grass momentarily bent in her wake, something like mist gathered, springing up in sinuous coils. It was only like mist because, unlike mist, it was invisible to a mortal’s eye. But it moved with the same gentle wafting, spreading and contracting and curling as it went. It crawled across the ground, then up the trunks of several trees, gathering in the branches above.

  Daylily continued on her way, unaware.

  The something-like-mist watched her with invisible eyes. Reaching out tremulous hands, it crawled from treetop to treetop, keeping pace just behind her, high above her head. Like the barest breath or whisper of wind, it rustled the leaves, but she did not notice or turn her head. She did pause once midstep, but only once. Then, with the slightest tensing of a muscle in her cheek, she proceeded.

  The invisible eyes watched her go.

  Then one invisible being said to another: “I like it!”

  “Me too!” said the other. “Let’s tickle it and make it run!”

  5

  UP UNTIL RECENT HISTORY, Foxbru
sh would have confidently told anyone who asked that Eanrin, Chief Poet of Iubdan Rudiobus, did not exist.

  Eanrin was a figure from nursery tales. Indeed, he was the fictional inventor of nursery tales, including the most famous collection, Eanrin’s Rhymes for Children, a volume on which Foxbrush had been raised and which was solely responsible for the bulk of his childhood nightmares. (Its woodcut illustrations could be rather gruesome, particularly one of the Wolf Lord pursuing the Silent Lady that was not lacking for blood.) This Eanrin character obviously held a higher estimation of children’s abilities to stomach frightening stories than Foxbrush’s stomach had merited.

  But Eanrin himself was a story. He was a Faerie bard, a shape-shifting cat, one of the Merry Folk and, according to some stories, even a Knight of Farthestshore. All completely impossible according to the rules of the logical, orderly reality upon which Foxbrush had founded his life.

  That was before the Dragon.

  Foxbrush sat at his desk, holding the scroll Lionheart had tossed him. He didn’t open it. He didn’t really want to. But he turned it over and over, letting the silky ribbon dangle and the starflower gleam. That flower was an anomaly in itself. Starflowers, the national blossom of Southlands, were red in daylight but turned white under moonlight. However, they never . . . glittered. At least none Foxbrush had ever before seen.

  But this one shone like a tiny star. And though it must have been plucked from its vine many hours ago, it showed no sign of wilting.

  A trick, perhaps. But somehow, Foxbrush could no longer quite believe this.

  Of all the scars the Dragon had left upon Southlands in the wake of his flaming passing, this one pained Foxbrush the most: his inability to believe anymore in the logic of things. In the complete fit-inside-the-box rationality upon which he had always depended. That rationality had never allowed for the possibility of dragons. And then the Dragon had come. That rationality had never allowed for the possibility of poisoned nightmares. And then the nightmares had come.

  For a little while after the Dragon departed, Foxbrush tried to convince himself that it had all been some misunderstanding, some large-scale hoax or hallucination. But a man can only fool himself for so long before the truth, however inconvenient, will assert itself once more.

  So the Dragon existed. Maybe this Poet Eanrin did as well?

  “But, dragons eat it,” Foxbrush growled, squinting at the scroll and the ribbon and the flower, “why would he write to me?”

  Then, because no one else was going to answer that question, he slid the ribbon and starflower off, unrolled the scroll, and read what it had to say. His eyes narrowed still more. He fumbled in a drawer, pulled out a pair of spectacles and, shaking himself a little, read it again.

  Then he said, “Dragon’s teeth” with very little vim and tossed the scroll onto the desk. It rolled up with a smart snap. The starflower blossom gleamed silver beside it. Its pure, gentle light touched the contours of yet another object on that crowded desk, one that, in the hectic storm of recent emotions, Foxbrush had been almost able to forget.

  His love letter. Tossed aside into an unhappy ball.

  The worms in his stomach woke up and began chewing once more.

  “I myself will go into the Wilderlands and find your lady Daylily. I will return her to you. . . .”

  “You will, won’t you, Leo?” Foxbrush muttered, slowly removing the spectacles from his face and shoving them absently into the front pocket of Tortoiseshell’s jacket. “You’ll stride off into the unknown. You’ll play the hero. You’ll save the damsel. And you’ll leave me in your dust yet again.”

  He slammed his palm down hard on the desk top, cursing at the sting that shot up his wrist and arm. The next moment, still cursing, he crossed the study and flung open the door of his dressing room, which was, mercifully, empty of Tortoiseshell and his disapproving nose. For Tortoiseshell, a man of dignity and taste, would never have approved his master’s subsequent actions.

  Foxbrush did not own much in the way of hero-ing garments. No stout pair of boots, no long and dramatic cloak. His oiled riding boots would only slow him down, and it was much too hot this time of year to consider a cloak, even the fine fur-trimmed thing he’d been intending to pin to his shoulders for the ceremony that day.

  But he found things he thought might work—a pair of loose trousers, a shirt made after the draping Southlander style (thus negating the need for a cravat), some older house shoes that he wouldn’t mind getting a little scuffed if necessary. And, to finish off the outfit, a fine belt with a buckle engraved with a seated panther, the emblem of the crown prince. He would not venture into the unknown without some sign of his title.

  He stood in front of the mirror, taking in his appearance by the dim moonlight glimmering through the window. His reflection was far more informal than he was used to seeing. The draping shirt made him look more stoop shouldered than ever without the padding his man usually sewed into the shoulders of his jackets. But who ever heard of a hero setting out on a quest in shoulder pads?

  In his eyes a light shone, a light of determination that could not be repressed, even when his stomach gurgled. “I’ll find her myself,” he whispered to his image. “I’ll climb down to the Wilderlands and find her myself, and I’ll tell her that I don’t want to marry her. She can do as she likes after that, and I won’t care!” He strode from his room as only a hero strides.

  He scurried back a moment later to his study and the desk, and grabbed the scroll. After all, if it were from the Poet Eanrin, it might not do to leave it behind. Shoving the scroll deep into a trouser pocket, he hastened, rather less heroically, from the room once more.

  The Eldest sat at his bedroom window and thought he saw his wife in the moonlit gardens below.

  He had been hustled out of the way to this place in the commotion of the day. It was better for him to keep his mind untroubled by unsettling events. He wasn’t himself, of course. Everyone knew that. Since his son went away, he’d succumbed to the Dragon’s lingering poisons, and now he was little more than a shell of the man he had once been.

  So he sat at the open window, alone in his kingly chambers, still clad in the wedding garments no one had thought to take off him. And he thought he saw the queen down below. How she must be enjoying the new rosebuds emerging on the remnant bushes, and the young mangoes beginning to put forth fruit! Those years of bondage had been hard on her, strong woman though she was. The Eldest, as he watched her from above, was glad that she no longer lived in dragon poison.

  “Starflower?” he whispered, though he believed he shouted the name. “Starflower, my dear, hadn’t you better come in now?”

  She did not seem to hear him but continued moving on through the gardens, like a low cloud skimming the surface of the pond. It was growing rather dark. The moon was high for the moment; soon it would sink, however, and anyone out in the night would be left blind. Why did the queen not come in?

  The Eldest frowned and decided it would be best for him to summon a servant to send a message to his wife. It would be a shame for her to get lost in the gardens.

  “Boy?” the Eldest said, turning a little toward the door, though his eyes remained upon the figure below. “Boy, come to me, please.”

  “Yes, Father” came the response. His servant was most obliging, the Eldest thought, careful of his master’s needs and ever ready at his beck and call. He saw movement from the tail of his eye as the lad drew closer and knelt at his side.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s the queen,” said the Eldest. “She’s down in the gardens, but night is deepening. Can’t imagine why she hasn’t come in. Send someone to tell her, will you?”

  The servant said nothing. Distantly, the Eldest thought he felt two hands take his.

  “Father, she’s dead,” said his son, Lionheart. Except Lionheart was gone, run away, vanished. “Mother died in the Occupation. Don’t you remember?”

  “There. I can’t see her anymore,” said
the Eldest, and he struggled a little to free his hands from that earnest grip. His eyes, clouded from too many years of breathing sorrows and nightmares, filled suddenly with tears.

  He bowed his head.

  “You remember now?” asked Lionheart.

  “Yes,” whispered the Eldest. “Yes, I do. She’s dead. She’s not in the garden. She’s gone. Like Lionheart.”

  “No,” said his son. “I’m here, Father. I went away for a time, but I’m here now. Can’t you see me?”

  The Eldest could see nothing, for he refused to look. His son knelt at his feet, still clad in the groundskeeper’s hood and the bloodstained nightshirt with the hole in the breast where a unicorn’s horn had pierced it. Tears filled Lionheart’s eyes for, though he knew his father was frail from the years under the Dragon’s thrall, he had not expected to find him so far gone. When Lionheart entered into exile when the Dragon first came all those years ago, the Eldest had been a strong man yet in his prime. Now he sat in his chair by the window, huddled with unexpected age, his face withered and gray.

  Lionheart rubbed his father’s thin, papery fingers, feeling how loose the signet ring with the sign of the rampant panther had become. He struggled to speak, both because his throat clogged with sorrow and because, well, what could he say?

  “Father,” he whispered thickly, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” The Eldest turned to him then, and for a moment his old eyes were bright. “Sorry for what, lad?”

  “For leaving you.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing to be sorry for! You have your other duties. I understand. But you always come back to me, don’t you? Faithful boy.”

  Lionheart forced himself to breathe, though it pained him. Tears fell down his face, one from each eye. The last time he wept had been in the gardens of Hymlumé, standing at the crest of Rudiobus Mountain. He’d wept there at the sudden piercing beauty of the Spheres and their Songs and at what they made him realize about himself.

  He wept now because he loved his father, and his father was dying. He was a child again, but without the comfort of childhood innocence. So he clutched the Eldest’s hands between his own and let the tears come as they must.