By the Horns

by Jeanette Lynn

  “And he just... allows you to- to make love to his- his-”

  “Pair bond? Of course not.” The silly, petulant look he shot my way wasn’t lost on me. “The old fool’s a drunk, taken to drink these last few years. Hah! He’s sleeping right now, dreaming of conquering virgin lands and seeking new territories. Bugger can barely keep his eyes open past five, sleeps until the afternoon.” Dancing a little jig, his cloven hooves clacking, the man-skirt, or kilt as Kvigor had called them, he’d traded his wrap style skirt thing out for popping up around him as he went.

  “What exchange would be worth the price of allowing you free use of his person when he’s not of sound mind?” This tale was layered with horrors. I was afraid I didn’t want to know.

  “Power.” There was that greedy look again. “How do you think he’s been afforded all that he has? How he’s stayed in power this long?”

  “Brute... force?”

  “Wrong!” his hand shot up and he pointed at me, then hooked a thumb at himself. “ME. That’s how, and he’ll keep listening to me, doing as I say, if he wishes it to remain so. Banish me, will they? Deform my beautiful self,” chest puffing out, he brushed his hands over his scraggly pectorals, “turn me into... argh. I’ll show them. I’ll show them all. This kingdom, this place, it’s mine. All of it, mine. Who do they think set the population booming? Got all these blasted species started, hmm? Set them on the right path? It wasn’t their precious All-father, I’ll tell you that.”

  Wondering if it was even smart to speak, I had to know, “You said they banished you from the planes, not to this one.”

  The madman paused in his odd ramblings, his face twitching. “You’re so very clever, little one.” His finger lifted and he shook it at me, eyes narrowing, a funny noise clucking from him. “See, you actually pay attention. They weren’t without merit when they thought to choose you.”

  “Choose me for what?!” I cried out.

  Instantly thinking of the whip tree, I froze.

  Everything was shockingly still. Nothing happened. Blinking rapidly, about to cry out in happiness instead of fright, my eyes fell to the male smirking, stalking towards me.

  “You’re the key to it all, to this.” His hands raised and he spun in a circle. “He thought to torture me, limiting me with magicked amulets, mirrors posing as family heirlooms, and fancy artifacts from years lost. He ‘picked’ them up, playing some All-father nonsense, claiming he was,” his voice depend and in a perfect imitation of that deep, Warrior King’s voice, “cleaning up my mess.”

  He was back to pacing again, his feet leaving a dent that only grew bigger, longer, the more he paced.

  No wonder the real chief was so tired all the time, Puck was using his body like it was in its youth, giving him the exercising of his life. The Trickster, and that was definitely what he was, was going to send the village’s chief to his grave.

  “No. I created them, a mockery of my image, a last hurrah against the matriarchy! I would have started a rebellion!”

  But....? And there was a big one in there he left unanswered.

  In a flash he was on me, the trees mysteriously still as the smell of hot, sweet but bitter smelling ale wafted across my face. A disgustingly long tongue snuck out to slither across my chin.

  “If it weren’t for these silly repeat occurrences, swaying my children, MINE, from me, with stupid quests and whispering trinkets, spouting lies and promises of eternal happiness,” he made a fake gagging noise, “ridiculous nonsense, sending them off to other realms to inhabit before I could close the portals. Warriors? Hero’s journeys? Who buys into this bullshittery? Hmm? My idiots! Mine! And after all the time I’d spent manipulating them into believing there was only one messiah!”

  “Let me guess,” I muttered hoarsely, “you?”

  “Of course! Who else could tell them how to live their lives as they should? To better assist ME. To better this sorry existence of mine! To offer themselves, their livelihood, their lives, to me.”

  “What happened to you?” It was a rhetorical question. He’d obviously been punished, forced to live here, and gone plumb crazy. Mayhap he was mad to begin with, but surely there was another him before? A saner Puck? One does not just wake up one day mad as a loon.

  A bitter laugh escaped him. “I think we all know what happened to me.”

  When I didn’t say anything he gripped my chin, ignoring my pained yelp as he yanked my head up. “I’m mortal here, without magicks, true merriment, the royal court to muck about in, what was there to live for?” His free hand slid down my cheek, stopping to pinch the flesh until I cried out. “Gods don’t age. Gods are immortal.” Another eye roll, more words spoken in that mocking tone.

  A soft gasp escaped me when he finally let go, leaving my face throbbing. I would be bruised, to be sure.

  “I can’t kill you,” he said thoughtfully. “I gave up my hold on this land, as the fae king knew I would, to come back home. I wasn’t done with it, though, because now I know, Titania’s obsession with her human pets wasn’t merely a fascination, in some ways, I dare say, the idea of so many to lord over, it was everything. And the children created by such unions, those sweet little abominations, I dare say she even loved the ugly little half breeds. But for my moldering carcass,” he added with a nod, like he was waiting for me to agree.

  Wiggling my hands in my binds, I sighed heavily. They weren’t about to budge.

  “This,” he waggled his arms and jiggled his head, sending his horns smacking into tree branches, “was my way around it. Though soon enough,” the lunatic let off a giggle, “I’ll need a replacement. Guess it’s a good thing I already have one lined up, eh? And the balls on that one,” reaching under his kilt, he grabbed himself.

  “Ah... who’s the lucky fella?” Realizing him telling me all of this was bad—very bad for me—I glanced around, wondering if shouting for help would make any difference.

  “Don’t you listen?” he snapped. “I thought I just told you you’re smart!” Lips pursing, he crossed his arms over his wide chest. He didn’t like feeling ignored. Good to know. “I’m not allowed to kill you, if you’ll recall, clever catch. No slaying the fat corpse walking.”

  “Why, then? Why tell me all of this? Why torture me?” Gods help me, I was still thinking and talking aloud, I realized belatedly.

  Sniffing, he ran his tongue along his teeth, his hand lifting to pick at one of his more beast-like fingers. “Why not? It’s not like anyone is going to believe you. I mean, Adelric might, the soft-hearted sap, but that’s exactly why, knowing he possessed this unpleasant trait, I had Ekodar renounce him as his own. That sniveling female sibling, too. What use are they to me? I have too much to worry about to have them mucking about my plans. It wasn’t like they could just die, either, believe me I’d thought of it, but old Chief-y pants wouldn’t renounce them without my pesky word I wouldn’t off them, even made his grumbling oldest head guard, which has, I’ll admit, proved useful. He’s damned loyal,” a snigger and a nasty smile, “to a fault. I underestimated the runt. So, eh, guess if the little cow fucks a few of the villagers, boosts moral, they aren’t entire wastes of space.”

  “Cruel,” I blurted. My heart was pounding wildly. He was right, I wasn’t stupid. He was telling me all of this freely, more for his own fun than my benefit, another form of torture, perhaps, but there was always a catch.

  “What was that?” He mock-mumbled. Cupping his hand over his ear, he leaned in close.

  “I said you’re cruel!” I bellowed right into his ear canal, screaming for all I was worth.

  Puck pulled back, shoving his finger in his ear with a gasp. “Now that was just mean,” he chastised.

  The words sounded more playful than angry but I wasn’t fooled. The things that amused the Trickster made no sense, and he knew nothing of the feelings of others.

  “Guess I should be off, have a big day tomorrow,” he cooed in a sing-song, “you know, what with the big hunt I’m thinking on planning and a
ll. A celebration of Kvigor’s return and the wingless beast I’ve collected, one of my Titania’s newly claimed little pet’s taming.”

  A hunt. Adelric was the leader of the... “No.” Meaning he’d be expected to go, which left me... Louder, “No.”

  “Oh, yes.” He gave a slow nod. “See,” his finger waggled, “my queen wanted you chosen over the other because you reminded her of herself. Thought you the stouter choice, pun intended.” Pausing, he snorted, shaking his head. “I was surprised the King allowed it. At first... But this is our king, and who am I to know what he thinks?” A sour look struck his stern features, then darkened. “Or plans.”

  “I’m nothing like your queen,” I raged.

  “I know,” he chortled, then sobered, “and therein lies the rub.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oberon knew.” Lips thinning, eyelids lowering, he glowered. “He always knows.”

  Blinking, I took a moment before responding, knowing he wasn’t going to be pleased I couldn’t keep up. “I don’t follow.”

  “Of course you don’t,” he went on conversationally. Glancing up at the moons, he smiled. “He can put a ring on it all he likes,” his hand lifted, stabbing at the moon emphatically, “that one is still mine.” He shook his finger at the Taurans’ Trickster moon—a Puck’s moon, Kvigor’d called it. “Think to try and stop me, does he? Hah! Fool.”

  “It binds your powers?” Why else would he care if Oberon put a ring around it, and why would the Warrior King bother unless it served some purpose?

  “What a good little guesser you are, you bumble-brained, wingless beast. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And you know what? Rest easy in the knowledge you’ve a brain in that head of yours, in a sea of horned, empty ones.” With a pat to my noggin he spun on his heel, practically skipping away from me. “Oh, and, Chosen?”

  When I looked up he smiled, reaching over to the last tree along the circle of them, pulling it all the way back until it touched the ground. Pulling a small black object from his pocket, a shiny rock with pretty markings similar to the runes in the well between realm’s walls, he hummed a merry tune.

  “Bit of a warning, I can’t kill you, but I can make your life a living hell until you pray I could. And this,” he let the branch go, grinning evilly, “m’dear, is cruel.”

  One tree smacked the other with the force of the first, one after the other, branches swaying wildly. The first tree didn’t simply sway and come to a stop, it kept going.

  “No,” I whispered, watching them fall forward like the little squared wooden blocks my father’d carve for us as children, to line up in neat little rows to watch them fall, one tumbling after the other. Unlike the toys of my childhood, these weren’t about to tumble and fall, remaining motionless. This was going to hurt, and there was nothing I could do. “No-no-no-no.”

  My screams as the first of the spiked leaves tore at my flesh, over and over, echoed into the night.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The suns weren’t yet creeping into the sky when the foliage rustled, leaves steadily, quietly crunching beneath heavy feet. If it wasn’t Adelric, as promised, it could be an animal. A big one. Had the blood drawn it near? Beyond fatigued, bone tired down deep to my soul, Puck’s taming accomplished, I didn’t honestly care.

  Any hope that Kvigor would come to my aid was next to none. That would require him actually giving a single shit.

  Pain and fear did funny things to you, heighten one sense, dull another. My vision had gone blurry, and but for the thundering that had at one point pounded my ears, my hearing was sharp, crisp. When the fear left you and all you had was the pain...

  “Which way?” a deep voice whispered. “You bloody wait ‘til now to tell me?” A deep snarl rent the air. “I don’t care about-”

  Kvigor, of all beings, came growling, stumbling into view, a fat sack strapped to his back. His nose kept twitching, the thick black and gold ring that shot through the middle of the bit of skin at the middle of his nose glinting in the light.

  I would have gasped out loud at the sight of him but it hurt to breathe. The only noise I could manage at the moment was a pained moan. I’d take any help I could get at the moment, even his.

  Skin slick and tight, I imagined there was an injury within my chest, a bone of some sort along my ribs, a result of my instinctive thrashing, out of my mind, a last ditch, fruitless effort to attempt to free myself.

  I felt sticky, damp with perspiration, tears, blood. Some spots felt so tight, the skin pulling like it was being stretched, I wondered why it still clung to me instead of sloughing off.

  It was moments like this that did one in, wondering if I was split open and bleeding, exposed, burning from the residue left behind on my skin from the spiked leaves, or fresh. So many tiny cuts, so close together, it all sort of blended into one giant chasm of pain.

  Kvigor paused upon spotting me. His breath left him in a loud, stunned exhalation. “Addie,” he breathed.

  Addie was dead, I thought, grimacing at the mental anguish hearing him whisper my name like that caused. You killed her the day you turned me away.

  “Come to gloat?” The teeth baring smile I offered sent my chapped lips cracking.

  While I could definitely sympathize with that helpless feeling, the pressure to go along with whatever you were told to do for fear of the very real repercussions, particularly considering Puck’s brand of spiteful nastiness, I couldn’t resolve the male I’d thought I was falling in love with, the one I’d foolishly thought would stand by my side, take up arms for me, love me ‘til the end, with the one who’d demanded I follow along, play along, no matter what, pretending we never were to a crowd of his own people. He was too afraid to claim me. I was too heartbroken at the thought to forgive. This was the tiny, dying village back home all over again. Instead of the Elders there was a fae playing god and a failing chief’s minions for sons.

  I couldn’t be sure I’d ever be big enough to forgive the big white bull, but deep down, if only to myself, I’d admit I understood it. Kvigor was, but for a few differences—like Thess being secretly in love with my sister—Thessen and I all over again.

  Head hanging low, I peered at him through my less swollen eye. My temples throbbed, a sharp yet dull ache, like someone had pounded spikes into them and left them there. Was the trees’ toxin doing that? Or the pain? Perhaps both. My hands and feet had long ago lost that pins and needles feeling, to the cold and lack of circulation.

  “Addie...” Kvigor’s legs started to give out when he rushed towards me.

  Over and over he kept saying that word, but, “Addie’s dead,” I mumbled, closing my eye.

  “Addie...” Maybe he was too surprised to comprehend what I was saying, or the way it sounded in my head wasn’t meshing with the words actually forming on my lips.

  I could feel when he was looming over me, the heat from his body enough to make me shiver. His hands shook, accidently bumping me. My breath left me in a great whoosh and I whimpered. Gods, it hurt.

  This was his fault as much as the others, leaving me to their mercy.

  So cold...

  If I could lift more than my head I’d have slumped against him, my need to warm up outweighing my need to push him away, make him hurt the way he had me.

  “Kvigor?” The sharp, barked out words had me cocking my head to listen. A third voice, Vachel’s, followed. “Oh... Oh... Is she- Kvigor... I didn’t- I’m-”

  Moving my head slowly, so as not to upset the trees, I would have opened my eye if it didn’t now feel fused shut.

  “Go home, Vachel. You should never have allowed Kvigor to talk you into taking him out here.”

  “But I- She- I had to! I couldn’t find you and this was all my fault!” A sniffle rent the air. “If I hadn’t have said anything to Bainan in the first place and he hadn’t’ve run off- I- I- I’m sorry!”

  “You should be,” Kvigor snarled, making the girl cry harder.

  “Leave her alone,” I mumbled. “Mind
yerm bid-ugh-nesssss.”

  Kvigor and all that heat he’d brought with him shifted. “Is this your doing?” Kvigor’s voice was hard, angry.

  “My doing?” That stocky, dark bull of a male sounded equally unimpressed. “That would be your precious father’s. Did he not tell his beloved next in line of his plans to tame the wingless? Or were you too busy flirting with the females? Boasting of your saving the little broken princess, as you tell it? Or perhaps you were saving your surprise to play with the creature’s emotions, yet again.”

  “You know nothing of what you speak,” Kvigor thundered. “Nothing.”

  A clacking noise came from Adelric’s direction. “I know enough.”

  “I was saving her!” Boots thudded heavily, stomping steps. The sounds of something smacking, horns, rung throughout the copse of trees.

  “By bringing her here? From what?” Thrashing, more clashing of horns. “Turning into an icicle? She might’ve been better off!”

  Horns scraping, clashing harder until I heard something crack ominously. “Don’t you ever say that about her!” Kvigor roared. “You know nothing! Nothing about her, or me, or us! This wasn’t supposed to be!”

  “Then why was it?” The sound of huffing breaths was loud, chests heaving, trying to catch their breath.

  Adelric was panting, they both were, their breaths puffing the air noisily. He sounded subdued, curious and baffled at the same time.

  “I couldn’t leave her, even if I’d wanted to. And... I’d promised him.”

  Adelric made an impatient noise. “Him?”

  “The voice. The All-father. If I was to accept his help, I was to bring whatever I found on my quest to the village. I’d no clue it was to be her! And believe me I’d thought of leaving her, tried to will myself to do it. I couldn’t. No, that’s a lie. Wouldn’t.”

  “What for?” Adelric’s voice had dropped low, so low it was a hissed murmur. “To what end, what purpose was what you found on your trek to be brought to the village?”