Elixir

by Ruth Vincent

  My Shadow screamed in agony, her hands shielding her eyes, and she fell to the ground.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I heard Eva cry.

  My Shadow was saying something, but at first I couldn’t make it out with her hands covering her face. She was repeating the same phrase over and over.

  “She’s saying . . . ‘it hurts, it hurts.’ ”

  I knelt down on the floor of the cave beside her.

  “What hurts?”

  But she wouldn’t answer me. She ran back into the corner of her cave room.

  “Oh god, it’s the light,” I realized, and my stomach clenched. “She’s been in the dark so long, the light is torture.”

  My Shadow was now cowering in the darkest part of the room. When I walked towards her she hissed at me.

  “I’m so sorry!” I said, awkwardly bending down beside her. “It’s the only way out. It’ll get better. I’ll try to shield you. Will you come with me?”

  Violently, she shook her head.

  I reached out to touch her hand. She raised her eyes to me, an expression of such utter hatred that I felt it like a pain in my body.

  And then the pain became real, searing, physical. With a wild yell, my Shadow wrenched my arm back. As I screamed and tried to free myself, she slammed her fist into my jaw. Eva screamed too, running towards me as I stumbled backwards. My arms reached out in vain to catch myself, but I fell, smacking down on the stone floor. Pain radiated through my tailbone. I had less than a moment to take stock of what was happening when suddenly my Shadow was on top of me.

  She was slamming her fists into my ribs. I cried out but she kept hitting me.

  With a guttural yell, Eva ran up to my Shadow and jumped on her back, kicking her from behind. But the girl was strong; she wrenched Eva off and threw her backwards.

  “Eva!” I yelled as she crashed into the wall.

  As I turned in Eva’s direction, my Shadow slammed her fist into my head. I winced at the pain, and blocked my head with my arms as her fists pummeled into me.

  My Shadow was trying to kill me!

  I couldn’t fight her. I don’t know if it was that I understood why she’d hate me—­or maybe just shock and fear had frozen my muscles, frozen my brain. But she kept punching me. I could hear my own voice crying out. And yet my body wouldn’t move.

  “Are you just going to lie there and let her make a punching bag out of you?” I heard Eva say. She was on her feet again.

  And then I heard impact, and felt the girl’s weight dragged off of me. Eva rolled her limp body onto the floor of the cave. She had knocked my Shadow unconscious with one all-­out, well-­placed punch.

  “Don’t hurt her!” I called out.

  “Are you insane?” said Eva. “She was trying to kill you! Good thing she didn’t know as much about fighting as I do, otherwise you’d be dead—­she certainly had enough enthusiasm for hurting you. I know you pity her, Mab, but you cannot let your pity undermine your self-­preservation.”

  Slowly, I nodded. Eva was right.

  My Shadow was out cold, slumped against the floor, as if asleep.

  “It might be easier to transport her like this, unconscious,” I said at last. “She won’t try to fight us.”

  Eva hoisted her hands up under my Shadow’s arms, I got her legs, and together we began to carry her. It was slow going; the girl was heavier than she appeared. Still, it was progress.

  But a thought kept haunting me as I looked down at the passed-­out girl in my arms. What if she really didn’t want to come with us? She hated me; she’d made that clear. She hadn’t come with us of her own volition. If we carried her out unconscious, we’d be taking her to another world against her will. It was the very thing I’d done last time. That was what had started the problem.

  I felt queasy about what we were doing. All her life this girl had been a pawn, subject to the whims of others. And now we were forcing our will on her again, carrying her out of her prison, her body limp in our grasp as Eva and I dragged her through the passage. It’s for her own good, I told myself. That’s exactly what the Queen probably said when she severed your magic, the little voice in my head whispered back. I felt ill.

  Even if we were successful in getting her out of here, which I highly doubted—­at every minute I kept expecting the Queen’s guards to apprehend us—­what would happen then? How would my Shadow fare in the human world? She had lost her mind down here in the darkness. And if I took her back home—­to my parents, to her parents—­how would it go? There would be two of us. Would my human parents believe me? Surely they’d have to accept that something strange was going on—­I mean, we looked exactly alike. But how could I explain it? I didn’t know what to do. I’d become a changeling so blindly, I had no answers.

  We were getting towards the entrance of the room where we’d found my Shadow. The passage was narrower here.

  Eva’s eyes grew wide. “Mab! Look out!”

  “What?”

  My Shadow had woken up.

  I didn’t even have time to respond, because Eva leapt through the passage, tackling me to the ground.

  I heard my Shadow give an ear-­piercing cry.

  And then Eva yelped in pain and slumped on top of me.

  “Eva!” I cried.

  My Shadow was still screaming—­high-­pitched sounds that echoed off the walls of the passageway. The Queen’s staff would have to be deaf not to hear that. I called out to her, begged her to stop, but it was no use. If she even understood me she didn’t care.

  Eva’s face was slack, an enormous purple bruise rising from her forehead. What had my Shadow done to her?

  I staggered up, kneeling beside her.

  She had hit Eva with a rock. I saw the stone, lying cast off on the floor of the cave. My Shadow had been aiming for me, but she’d hit Eva when Eva dove to protect me. She’d jumped in to save me, and had gotten hit instead. Couldn’t I keep anyone I loved safe?

  In that moment, I lost all my sympathies for my Shadow and I rushed her, tackling the girl to the ground. My Shadow kept kicking me in the shins, but I was too upset to even feel it. I grappled with her, pinning her down. What if she hadn’t been unconscious after Eva’s blow? Maybe the whole thing had just been a ruse on her part to trap us.

  As I struggled to restrain my Shadow, who wriggled violently underneath me, I cast a look over at Eva. Her injury was swelling up from the blow into an ugly purple mass. She might have a concussion. I had to get her out of here—­I had to get her to help.

  “Eva?” I called—­but there was no response. She was breathing, but my Shadow’s blow had left her unconscious.

  I felt like kicking myself. Why hadn’t I just listened to the Queen and left Eva asleep? She never would have gotten hurt. It was all my fault. Eva had wanted to see the world; she wanted to see magic. And look how it had ended up.

  I wished Eva was conscious and I could consult her nursing skills—­I was no nurse, but I knew it was bad. A lump of swollen flesh the size of an egg had risen up from the spot where the stone had hit her. Her skin was a purple-­ish blue.

  “Eva—­talk to me, say something,” I pleaded.

  She made a twitching, muttering sound—­like she had when she was in the enchanted sleep—­but she didn’t respond. Panic took hold in my gut. This head injury was serious. She needed medical attention—­fast.

  I couldn’t restrain my Shadow and also carry Eva back out of the dungeon.

  I was going to have to leave my Shadow behind.

  Part of me was furious at her. But it wasn’t her fault. My Shadow was still a child—­forever a child—­a lost, tortured, forgotten child. And dammit—­I swore silently in my mind—­someday, I would make things right. Somehow I would get her and all the children out of here.

  But right now, I had to save the only life I could save: Eva’s.


  “Alright, enough!” I cried out to my Shadow. “Go back to the dark! I won’t try to make you come against your will again.” She didn’t reply, but I could see understanding in her eyes. “I can’t save you,” I said to her.

  I began dragging Eva’s limp body back into the main passageway, where the light was brighter. “The only person I can do anything for right now is Eva—­and I’m going back to the human world to help her.”

  That was when I heard a voice echoing in the walls of the cave.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Mab.”

  It was the Queen.

  My Shadow shrieked in fear at the sound of her voice—­she recognized it too—­and fled back into the farthest corner of the room, huddling against the wall, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her head between her knees, as if she could protect herself.

  I turned around to see my mother striding towards me, the light from the Perpetual Candle illuminating her imperious face. A squadron of Goblin guards marched behind her—­two of them were dragging Obadiah, who was twisting and struggling in their grip, his arms bound behind him.

  I screamed as I recognized him.

  His buckskin shirt had been ripped to shreds in struggle, the knees of his breeches dirtied and bloodied. His ankles were bound together, arms tied behind his back with thick ropes.

  I ran towards him.

  Both of his eyes were blackened. What had they done to him?

  All this time I thought he’d abandoned me, but he’d been captured by the Queen.

  I reached out towards him, but one of the Goblin guards cuffed me aside.

  Obadiah looked up at me, his pain-­twisted face managing a smile.

  “I know what you must think of me, Mab,” he said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “You must have thought I left you. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry! I didn’t know you’d been taken. I’m so sorry I blamed you; this wasn’t your fault!”

  I wanted to cry as all the anger I’d felt towards him melted. I reached out, tried to touch his arm, but the Goblins held me off.

  Obadiah hung his head.

  “Actually, it was my fault . . .”

  “No, it wasn’t . . .”

  He cut me off. “This morning, I guess the reality of it all hit me. The Fairy Queen’s daughter was in my bed . . .”

  At that I saw the Queen glare at him, aghast, but I shot her a look, and Obadiah went on.

  “ . . . the daughter of my enemy,” he continued. “The girl I’d been supposed to kill. I guess I was in shock. Maybe I couldn’t handle it. I needed time to think about it all. So I went off to the woods. Then I felt guilty. I knew you wouldn’t understand where I’d gone. You’d think I just slipped off the morning after, like some first-­light blaggard. So I decided to come back. I was on my way home to the tree and stopped to pick you some wildflowers as a surprise. It was a foolish notion. It was what ended up getting me kidnapped . . .”

  My eyes were blurring and I swallowed hard. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I understand . . .”

  But the Queen interrupted me. “Mab, did you really think you could do all this and escape my notice?”

  I felt like a fool. How had I thought I wouldn’t get caught?

  “I was watching you the whole time. I had my pixies spying on you, you know,” my mother went on. “I could have stopped you at any point. I told my guards to keep themselves hidden inside the walls, to just let you pass. Do you know why?”

  I shook my head miserably.

  “Because, as much as it pained me, I needed you to see your Shadow for what she is. I was afraid to let you near her, afraid you would get hurt. It wasn’t the screaming that alerted us; it was the fact that she tried to kill you, my precious daughter—­that was the signal to the guards. I am sorry you had to go through this. But if you hadn’t seen her for yourself, you never would have believed me. You would have gone on feeling sorry for the girl, and not seen how necessary it was to lock her up—­see that she is beyond saving.”

  I opened my mouth to speak up, but the words faltered on my tongue and I was silent. In her own sick way, the Queen was right about my Shadow. My mother went on.

  “Mab, I am sorry to say that this man”—­she pointed to Obadiah—­“is a criminal.”

  “But he isn’t!” I cried, stepping in front of him. “The only criminal is you. It’s criminal what you’ve done to those children!”

  “Obadiah is guilty of murder.”

  “Obadiah never killed anyone!” I protested. “The only murderer among us is you! All those children, I saw them! Hundreds and hundreds of children . . . !”

  The Queen put up her hand for me to be quiet.

  “I admit I made some difficult choices. But, Mab, every child who is sacrificed saves the lives of dozens and dozens of Fey. The magic that I have been able to distill from them has preserved what little magic we have in our world.”

  “You don’t just use magic to save lives,” I said as I watched Obadiah twisting and fighting in the Goblins’ hold, “you waste it on frivolous spells. I’ve seen you!”

  “That is nothing compared to the amount of magic it takes to keep a fairy alive,” she replied. “That’s what these children’s sacrifice has done. It has prevented us from becoming extinct. And while I have been doing whatever it takes to save us, this man has been stealing our magic, syphoning it away and wasting it upon humans.”

  I opened my mouth to defend Obadiah, to say that giving magic to humans wasn’t a waste, but the Queen cut me off.

  “All the Fey who have died since he began to steal our magic—­their deaths are on his head. And since the drop in Elixir, due to his theft, has forced my hand to take even more children,” she continued, “the deaths of those children are on your head too, Obadiah.”

  He had gone completely still in the guard’s arms, all the color drained out of his face, his eyes stricken.

  The enormity of what he had done was hitting him. It was hitting me too.

  “For every vial of Elixir you fill from our streams and give away at your club, that forces me to steal more children.”

  We stared at each other, aghast, silent, while the Queen looked at us, an expression of smug triumph on her face.

  In trying to make things better, Obadiah had only made it worse.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see the rows of children in their unnatural sleep. But he wasn’t the one who kidnapped them—­that was the Queen. No one forced her to take these kids. She was blaming Obadiah, but it wasn’t his fault.

  But if we don’t steal the children, the fairies die, I could hear her say.

  There was no way out.

  I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry. It was wrong—­all of it so wrong. Obadiah had made it worse, but it wasn’t his fault. It was the Queen’s fault. But the Queen was right—­if we stopped this, we would become extinct—­and then there would be thousands more dead.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  The Queen’s guards were beginning to drag Obadiah away.

  “Stop! Where are you taking him?”

  “He is guilty of stealing our most precious resource and murdering our ­people. He will be put to death,” the Queen said quietly.

  “No! You can’t!” I lunged towards Obadiah, as if I could grab him from the guards, but they pushed me away.

  “You have a compassionate heart, Mab,” said the Queen, “but this man has done a grievous wrong, and he must face the consequences.”

  “It’s not his fault!” I cried, fighting with the guards. “It’s your fault!” I lunged towards the guards but they held me off. Tears blurred my vision. I couldn’t let the Queen do this.

  Obadiah had stopped struggling with his captors. Maybe he realized it was futile.

  “Don’t cry, Mab,” he said, putting on a brave
face that just made me want to cry more. “Listen, I was aware I was living on borrowed time. I knew I could never steal that much and not get caught—­I knew the Queen would get me sooner or later. I’m a pirate’s son; pirates don’t have a very long life expectancy. I had more than two hundred years. A lot more than most.”

  But I couldn’t listen to him.

  I was staring at my mother, my eyes hard with hate.

  “If you kill him, I will stay in the human world forever. I will never see you again. I will never accept the throne. I will stay a human till I die. I don’t care if you’re my mother and I’m your heir. I will never forgive you for this!”

  The Queen let out a long sigh.

  “I was afraid you would say that,” she said quietly, “but the truth is, Mab, you have no way of getting back to the human world, without help. So I’m afraid you’re stuck here.”

  “But I have to get back to the human world! I have to help my friend!” I gestured towards Eva, who was lying prostrate on the floor of the cave. The injury on her head had swelled to a bloody, purple mass. She needed a doctor desperately. “I have to take her to the hospital. Her injury is serious!”

  The Queen frowned.

  “I’m not sure that I can allow that, Mab.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Humans should never see this world. Your friend has seen too much. I told you not to wake her up . . .”

  “You would risk Eva’s life because of your paranoia! She needs help!”

  “Your friend’s health is not my chief concern. My concern is doing what’s best for the realm.”

  I looked at her with cold hatred.

  She was right—­I couldn’t get back to the human world without help. I didn’t know how to do Obadiah’s ball-­drop travel in reverse, now that it was no longer New Year’s Eve. Obadiah couldn’t help get us out, bound hand and foot by the Queen’s guards. What were we going to do?

  And then I stopped, standing still, listening. I heard something—­a sound I hadn’t heard in a long time. It was so faint I could barely make it out—­

  Obadiah was singing a spell.

  I gaped at him, not believing what I was hearing. I don’t think the Queen had even realized yet what he was doing—­because Obadiah was singing the spell so badly, in such a human way, not in the octave of the fairies. But I could smell the Elixir, the smell of a coming storm—­he was using fairy magic!