Elixir

by Ruth Vincent

  Chapter 15

  A squat Goblin guard sat at the entrance to the door. He regarded us with an expression simultaneously bored and hostile as he slowly chewed something, making popping sounds with his jaw.

  The Wolfman dragged me over to him, growling at the Goblin guard; I detected the word “prisoner.”

  The Goblin guard just continued to chew whatever was in his mouth.

  Irate, the Wolfman repeated what he had just said, louder this time.

  Eventually the Goblin gave a nod, and then grabbed my arm as the Wolfman released me.

  The Goblin surveyed me with no more interest than if I was a shipment of crabapples, and then he turned and pressed one of the stones in the wall. Slowly the gate creaked open. I saw the guard hand some kind of payment to the Wolfman, who, satisfied, trotted away, and I was alone in the custody of the Goblin.

  The gate came to a shuddering stop, not open all the way, but enough for us to walk through.

  The Goblin dragged me along, even more roughly than the Wolfman had, and I struggled to keep up. He led me down a long passageway. Other Goblin guards sat all along the hall, laughing, having spitting contests with each other and playing knucklebones—­with what looked like actual knucklebones. I hoped those bones weren’t human.

  At the end of the passage was an enormous door. It swung open with a bang.

  And standing inside it was not some squat Goblin guard, but a handsome young Elf dressed in a spider-­silk suit, his face so radiantly beautiful that it was eerily impossible to distinguish if he was male or female.

  He bowed to me.

  “My Lady Mab,” he said, bending so low that his forehead almost grazed the polished stone floor. “Please forgive our earlier reception. Her Majesty the Queen is delighted to see you. Overjoyed. She sends me to express her joy,” he said, but his expression did not match whatever happiness he was trying to convey. In truth, he looked scared. “My companion,” said the Elf, his eyes flashing angrily at the Goblin, whom I noticed was cowering now on the other side of the door, “did not recognize who you were. He will be dealt with later. But you are a most honored guest. Please, may I take your coat? May I offer you some refreshments? Elixir, perhaps?” He snapped his long fingers and a goblet appeared, hovering in midair.

  It was foolish to use magic just to manifest a cup. Because of the Elixir drought, magic was limited, precious. You didn’t waste it upon trifles. Once we’d used magic to do our laundry and heat our tea, but those days were gone. It might take just as much magical energy to make that goblet of Elixir appear than was contained in the goblet itself. I wondered why the Elf had done it—­he must be awfully desperate. But why?

  The cup hovered in front of my fingers. It was definitely filled with Elixir. I could smell it. But I hesitated. For all I knew it was poisoned. I didn’t believe all this flowery nonsense about the Queen being overjoyed to see me. Why would the Queen want to see me? She’d abandoned me. Something was fishy about this. The overly nice reception I was getting now from this Elf made me much more nervous than the rudeness of the Goblin. It felt like a trap.

  “And once again,” the Elf said, babbling apologies, “please excuse our earlier reception. Our gatekeeper is new. He should not have been allowed to man the door so soon. His insouciance will not be tolerated, I assure you. He will be punished for these transgressions . . .”

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” I said, casting a sidelong glance at the miserable creature cowering behind the door. I almost wished I was still in the custody of the Goblin. At least the Goblin’s rudeness had been genuine. This Elf with the shining face, I couldn’t figure out.

  “You do not want the Elixir?” said the Elf, seeing that I had left the goblet untouched.

  I shook my head.

  “I did not mean to insult you by offering it. I am so sorry. It shall disappear at once.” He snapped his fingers again and—­in another massive waste of magic—­it disappeared.

  I couldn’t get anywhere with this Elf butler. By aiming to please me in every way, he was just pissing me off. The sooner we got inside the palace, the better.

  “Please just take me to the Queen,” I said.

  “As you wish,” replied the Elf, walking quickly down the hall, his feet seeming to never entirely touch the floor.

  I followed after him.

  We came to the Great Hall. I remembered this room—­Ursaline used to take me here when I was a child, for holidays, when the Queen hosted great public spectacles for all the Fey, to make us like her better. I would sit on Ursaline’s furry lap and watch the fairy ladies dancing—­waltzing in midair—­and wishing that I’d be that graceful when I grew up.

  The Great Hall was mostly empty now. My footsteps echoed loudly on the polished agate floor, its concentric circles expanding ever outwards like the rings of an ancient tree.

  Columns of stalactites and stalagmites lined the walls, Elixir slowly running in rivulets down them to drip into the underground rivers in the floor—­where the gondolas would come to ferry the Queen’s guests to parties, deep underground inside the biggest fairy mound in all of Mannahatta. A thousand tiny lights—­the Perpetual Candles—­shimmered like dragonflies, frozen in midair. They cast a sparkling glow on the slick sandstone architecture, making everything sparkle as if it was encrusted with tiny diamonds.

  As a child, I’d thought this was the most beautiful room in the world. But seeing it now—­empty, without all the guests talking and laughing and dancing—­it was cold. And I felt uneasy.

  Then I saw movement at the far end of the hall. The Elf and I weren’t alone here. About a half-­dozen fairies flitted about at the edges of the room. They were setting up a long table and appeared to be laying it with all sorts of food.

  We walked closer and I realized it was human food. I could smell it. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten anything since Obadiah and I had shared a few snacks in the New Year’s Eve ball, trying not to spill crumbs all over ourselves as we tried to eat potato chips around a pole inside a sphere—­it seemed like a year ago, instead of less than twenty-­four hours.

  How had they gotten human food in the Vale? Did they have it here because they knew I was human? Was it even real? It smelled like food, but would it evaporate as soon as I touched it?

  As I edged closer, I saw that all my favorite foods were laid out upon the table—­huge dishes of crème brûlée with a crunchy, caramelized brown sugar topping that a fire Djinn was torching with his flaming fingers. He flashed a fiery grin at me as I passed.

  But that wasn’t all—­there were plates of grilled cheese, pots of mashed potatoes, chocolate éclairs, dishes of dark, twisted licorice candy—­all my favorite foods, thrown haphazardly together, like a banquet designed by a three-­year-­old.

  Why was the Queen going through all this trouble on my behalf? Why was she acting so overjoyed to see me? The obsequious servant, the Elixir, the food—­it was too much. It was weird. If it was supposed to make me feel welcome, it wasn’t working. It was making me feel more uncomfortable.

  I heard the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the room. Another Goblin was walking towards me, but he was much better dressed than the guard. There was something very familiar about his face. I recognized those hideous features from somewhere. And then it hit me.

  “Korvus Korax!” I said aloud.

  It was the Goblin who had helped the Queen grab the baby out of the crib and shove her into the sack the night I’d become a changeling.

  “Mab, how delightful to see you,” he replied in a tone that said he didn’t find the experience delightful at all.

  Korvus seemed like he’d done well for himself the past twenty-­two years. He was wearing the robe of an advisor, with all sorts of tassels and medallions and insignia stuck all over it—­the Queen gave you more doodads for your gown the more honors you received, until your gown was so h
eavy you could hardly walk. He appeared to be waddling under the weight of his elaborate cloak. His scaly skin was polished to a high sheen, showing the wealth he’d acquired, but despite all the grooming, he was still ugly.

  “You’re looking well,” I said awkwardly, in an attempt to make conversation.

  “It’s amazing where hard work will get you,” sniffed Korvus.

  Couldn’t he just take a compliment?

  Should I ask Korvus about what happened to my Shadow? Or if he knew what had happened to Eva? Would he know? I was about to speak when I heard another sound, a rustling of feathers.

  And then I saw the Fairy Queen.

  She stepped from behind a stalactite column, and I had to wonder if she’d been waiting there the whole time, listening to us.

  My breath caught in my throat as I saw her. For a moment, I forgot that I was furious at her, and all I could feel was awe.

  Her radiant face shone like the moon over her dress of crisp black raven plumes. Reds, greens and blues sparkled in their shiny blackness, like the rainbow on the surface of an oil slick. They swept around her ankles like flapping wings, and fanned over the tops of her breasts. Underneath the froufrou feathers, I could see the corset made of gleaming bones.

  Something was flittering above her head—­for a moment I thought it was the floater—­but then I saw it was a pixie, one of her tiny minions, alighting on one of her glittering earrings like a bee upon on a flower. The pixies were often spies. What secret was the tiny fairy whispering in her ear right now?

  Watching the Queen, I felt a tightness in my throat. It wasn’t the rage I expected to feel—­it was more like grief. I remembered when I’d been so excited to see the Queen—­when old Ursaline used to scrub me clean and dress me up and I eagerly anticipated my audience with her . . . before she’d betrayed me.

  For the first time, I noticed how old the Queen looked. Not old like a human. Not wrinkled and frail. Her skin was still as smooth as glass and her breasts as firm as if they were sculpted from Carrara marble. It was her eyes that were old, like she’d seen too much, and it had made her hard. They were like Obadiah’s eyes, but without their sparkle.

  The Queen turned towards me. But instead of the cold, imperious expression I was expecting from her, her eyes were urgent, anxious . . . scared.

  I had never seen the Queen scared before. That frightened me more than anything.

  “Mab!” she cried out, hurrying towards me. It was not a dignified motion. The Queen did not run to greet guests.

  But now she was walking quickly, the feathers rustling in her wake, like hundreds of quills scratching secret messages into the agate floor.

  The fairies that had been setting up the food table had stopped their motions and were staring at her open-­mouthed. Clearly they had never seen the Queen act this way before either. I was a guest—­a human too. None of this made sense—­to any of us.

  The Queen stopped short, obviously aware that everyone was staring at her. She frowned and bit her lip. For a moment there was a hard gleam in her eyes that seemed to say that everyone who had just stared at her would get punished for it later. But then the other expression returned to her eyes—­fear, and something else I couldn’t quite name—­almost excitement.

  “Mab,” said the Queen, her voice breathless, “how I have been waiting for the day when I would see you again!”

  “I didn’t know you expected to see me,” I retorted. “I mean, after you left me in the human world . . .”

  There was a beat of awkward silence between us. I shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling all the fairies at the sides of the room staring at us.

  “I knew you would return,” the Queen said, her eyes hopeful and shimmering with tears. “I knew you’d find a way. You were always such a clever, resourceful child. I knew you’d eventually find your way back home.”

  “Well, you certainly made it a challenge for me—­castrating my magical abilities and all that.” I hadn’t meant to get snarky, but I couldn’t help it. I was still angry. It had been one thing with the Queen’s Elf butler, being a sycophant was his job, but for the Queen herself to be buttering me up like this was just wrong. She was the one who had put me in exile!

  The Queen said nothing. Instead, she turned away from me, her eyes on the ground. I was taken aback—­she was not a woman easily upset.

  “I am truly overjoyed to see you, Mab,” she said when she raised her eyes to me again. “Please, won’t you partake in your feast? I hope you like it—­it’s all real, human food—­I got all your favorites.” She twisted her hands together.

  I cast a glance at the table of food. My stomach made an awkwardly loud noise of hunger, but I wasn’t going to touch anything the Queen had prepared for me. I wasn’t stupid. Still, I wondered, how had she known what all my favorite foods were? And why had she even bothered?

  “No, thank you,” I said, tense. It was strange, though—­if she wanted to kill me, she could have done it already without making an elaborate feast just for the purpose of poisoning me.

  The smells of hot, buttered mashed potatoes, grilled cheese and caramelizing brown sugar on top the crème brûlée kept distracting me. I had to keep my focus on why I was here. Whatever the reason, I’d been lucky enough to have gotten an audience with the Queen. So I was going to ask her what I’d come here to ask her.

  “I didn’t come here to eat your food, or even to see you,” I said, glaring at her.

  Her face crumpled. I had never known the Queen to be sensitive.

  “I came here to find out what happened to my friend Eva. I don’t think the body in the hospital is really her. I think she’s been switched with a Fetch. I want to know where she really is.”

  There was more I wanted to ask her, but I figured I’d start with Eva.

  “Oh yes, your human friend,” said the Queen, her tone nonchalant, which infuriated me further. “Of course you can see her,” the Queen continued. “We didn’t really want to take her—­it was just that there was no other way. Don’t worry, she is completely unharmed.”

  The Queen made eye contact with Korvus, who gave a quick nod. He disappeared into the next room, and a moment later he returned with another fairy. They were carrying something.

  “Eva!” I called out.

  She was lying in some sort of chrysalis. I could see her through the translucent spiderweb of fibers. She was unconscious or asleep or . . . no, she couldn’t be dead—­her skin was glowing, healthy, unlike the frail, grayish body in the hospital room. This Eva appeared like herself, like she had just dropped off for a nap and would soon awaken, smiling.

  My heart leapt up when I saw her—­it was the first time since her fall that I felt like I’d really seen the old Eva. That ghastly body in the hospital was not my friend—­this was my friend.

  “Is she okay? Why isn’t she moving? Is she unconscious?”

  “She’s asleep,” said the Queen.

  “Eva!” I shouted with all my might. But she didn’t stir. She didn’t even twitch at the sound of her name.

  “She’s not waking up! What did you do to her?” I glared at the Queen.

  But it was Korvus who spoke.

  “We put her in an enchanted sleep for her own safety,” he said. “When I found her at the club . . .”

  “Wait, you were in Obadiah’s club . . . ?” I turned on Korvus.

  “Well, sort of,” he replied, seeming to delight in my outrage. “It wasn’t really me. At least, I didn’t look like myself.”

  He smiled smugly at my confusion.

  “I think you’ve met Ramsey Cunningham, your roommate’s on-­and-­off boyfriend? A few strands of hair contain enough DNA to do a doppelgänger spell . . .”

  It was how he’d tricked Eva. She’d thought he was her boyfriend—­he’d taken her to the club. And that was how he’d given her the Elixir. It would
explain why no vials were missing from Obadiah’s stock—­Korvus had brought his own from the Vale. Then he’d gone back into Fey form—­invisible to humans—­and switched her when she fell.

  “Well, when is she going to wake up from this enchanted sleep?” I demanded.

  “That will have to wait, Mab,” said the Queen. “Don’t worry; the sleep spell will wear off when you return her to the human world. There will be plenty enough time before her Fetch expires. But we are going to keep her here until I have had time to talk to you.”

  “You’re using my friend as a hostage?” I demanded.

  The Queen’s brow furrowed, but I detected a faint blush. My god, the Queen was using Eva as collateral! I was more pissed at her than I’d ever been. Though what exactly she wanted out of me I had no idea.

  “I took your friend because I knew you’d come after her. You might not have taken the risk to travel back to the Vale if it was just for yourself, but if someone you loved was in danger, you’d do anything for them. Don’t worry about the human girl. Your friend is safer here in her cocoon. You must understand—­tiny human minds can’t handle seeing our world. It would be too much for them. It’s better to let her sleep. And it gives us time to talk. Don’t worry.”

  I was worried, but I held my tongue. Truth be told, I didn’t know how to undo the effects of enchanted sleep as a human—­I did need the Queen’s help. So I figured it would be more prudent to keep my mouth closed and listen to whatever she had to say.

  “I really am overjoyed to see you,” the Queen said again, and she actually smiled.

  I don’t think I’d ever seen the Queen really smile before.

  “I can’t imagine why,” I said, my hands jammed in my pockets. “The last time, you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  The Queen looked at the ground again.

  “That was a long time ago. I . . . I’m sorry.”