Except the Queen

by Jane Yolen

  Sparrow wrenched herself upright on her elbows. “Neither,” she answered thickly, her tongue tasting of bile. A wave of nausea rolled up from her stomach to her throat. “Getting sick, I think.” She glanced over at Marti hovering at the open door. Her robe was pulled tightly around her body like armor, her arms crossed over her breasts. She was trembling, and Sparrow realized how scared she was, and how angry.

  “For fuck’s sake, Sparrow,” Marti said, and drew a shaky hand across her face. “I can’t take this anymore. I don’t want to move, but between you howling at the moon, or getting dead drunk, and now that dog turning Cujo on me, I’ve had it. Some of us get up early to go to work.” Turning brusquely from the door, she stormed off down the hallway. Then she slammed her bedroom door. Sparrow could hear the low, pissed-off rumble of a male voice. Mitch. He was here, too, to witness Sparrow’s complete humiliation.

  “Shit!” Sparrow sat up, dazed and chilled from the fading remnants of her nightmare. Gazing down at her arm, she gave a hoarse cry, for circling her arm—elbow to wrist—was an elaborate tattoo of a snake, its fangs buried in the swollen veins of her wrists. She brushed her fingertips over the black lines. The rows of snake scales shuddered and the muscular coils seemed to tighten their grip on her arm. From its diamond-shaped head, the crimson snake eyes glared up at her. Sparrow gasped as a charge of venom penetrated her veins with fire and then spread a cold numbness across her palm. The skin of her fingers suddenly bleached white.

  Sparrow stared, transfixed by the slow undulations of the snake’s body, at the fangs digging deeper into her flesh. A splash of new sunlight spilled across the bed, the warming rays falling over her outstretched arm. As it illuminated the tattooed snake, the skin glowed and then faded. Pale scales covered, then concealed the baleful red eyes. Quiet in the dawn’s light, the snake settled against her skin and, mercifully, warmed her chilled hand. She wriggled her fingers and the flesh turned pink again.

  In the healing sunlight, Sparrow swallowed her fear and studied the lines of the tattoo. Hawk. It had to be Hawk. What a fool she’d been to challenge him in his own shop. She had underestimated the extent of his power. And now he was letting her know that he was coming for her.

  Exhausted, Sparrow lay back on the bed, drew her knees to her chest, and pulled the sheets tightly over her head, breathing heavily into the musty folds of the fabric, rank with the odor of her sweat. Fear-washed blood churned through her limbs, but when it throbbed against the puckered scar on her thigh, she whispered, “Enough!”

  Fear and Hurt. She’d hauled those twin bastards all her life until the one day she fought back. True, she had to flee to save her life. There was no other choice back then. But the real question is how much longer am I going to keep running? She uncurled her body and forced her legs over the side of the bed.

  “So—what do you want to do about this?” she asked aloud. She stood abruptly, as though to defy the sudden weakness in her limbs and the terror in her heart. Fight back, she wanted to proclaim, but before the words could reach her tongue, she doubled over and vomited into a wastepaper basket by her bed.

  Lily scampered out of the room, her ears flat against her head at the sounds of Sparrow’s retching.

  * * *

  SPARROW LAY BACK ONCE MORE in bed, waiting. She could hear Marti and Mitch arguing as they got ready to leave for work, banging kitchen cupboards, stomping around the apartment as though to pay Sparrow back for Lily’s barking into the wee hours. Then with a jangle of keys, the slam of the front door, they were gone. Sparrow heaved a sigh of relief as the apartment settled into a calm quiet. She was halfway to the bathroom for an aspirin when she heard the keys in the lock and Marti burst into the living room.

  “Those little punks have skipped out,” Marti announced. “Nick and Alex. They’re gone and the place is a disaster.”

  “Shit!” Sparrow groaned. Rents were due soon, and Baba Yaga wasn’t going to like it that they would be short. “How bad?”

  “Really bad. Looks they trashed it just to be assholes.”

  “Crap.” Sparrow squeezed her eyes shut against the throbbing pain of a headache. Her throat was scratchy and dry from heaving.

  “But I have an idea,” Marti said, speaking rapidly. “Mitch and I will clean it up and in return, maybe you could put in a good word to the rental agency so that Mitch and I could move down there.”

  Sparrow opened her eyes.

  “Look,” Marti was saying, “I know I was a bitch this morning—and I’m sorry for that—but really, I think it’s time Mitch and I found our own place. What do you think?”

  “Sure,” Sparrow said. “I’ll talk to them.” It was an easy lie. There was no rental agency. Just an office where students left phone messages, which Sparrow always answered. How exactly tenants came to the house Sparrow didn’t know, but she figured Baba Yaga had her own method for selecting them.

  “Thanks a ton,” Marti answered, smiling. “We’ll take care of it tonight, after work. Look, I’m sorry I can’t stay to make you tea, especially if you’re getting sick.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” Sparrow waved away Marti’s concern. She forced herself to smile, even though she felt miserable down to the soles of her feet. “I’m a big girl,” she joked. “I can take care of myself. But thanks for the offer. Go now, or you’ll be late for work.”

  “See you later then. Feel better.” And then Marti was gone, leaving Sparrow alone, still weak and trembling.

  “Okay,” Sparrow murmured. “Looks like I’m making a stand right here . . . even if it kills me. If not here in Baba Yaga’s house, then where else?” She glanced down at Lily who was wagging her tail frantically at the sound of Sparrow’s words. “But first an aspirin, then some food for the mighty beast, right, girl?”

  Lily barked her approval and danced in a circle.

  42

  Sparrow’s Plan

  Sparrow sat in the far back corner of the Central Library, a stack of books at her elbow. The librarian thought she was doing research on fairy tales for a paper and had helped Sparrow use the library’s database to search articles and books on fairy lore, tales of fairy possession, and protection from fairies. She had a small spiral notebook and wrote down anything that might be useful to her now. She knew the usual things of course, a cross and holy water, though she shied away from them. She didn’t think it right or effective to use the sacred symbols of a religion one didn’t know anything about much less believed in.

  No, she had been rescued all those years ago in the woods. She was pretty sure it was in nature that she would find her protection, even if she did live in the city.

  The last two nights had been difficult, but she’d learned something since Hawk had marked her for a second time: the tattoos had the power to harm her only when she slept at night. With enough coffee, she could stay awake till morning. Then she could sleep, but only restless catnaps to avoid the dreams that still hovered even during waking hours.

  In that time, Marti and Mitch had cleaned the downstairs apartment and quietly moved in. Sparrow told them the new lease was coming soon. That gave her a chance to pick up a boilerplate lease at a stationery store and write in the house name and Marti and Mitch’s name as well. She decided against a new roommate. Instead, she planned to get a second job like waitressing or something to help pay Marti’s share of the rent. She didn’t want anyone else in her home while dealing with Hawk.

  Leaning back in her chair, she yawned, stretching her arms overhead. The long sleeve of her turtleneck pulled back and revealed the snake’s head, its fangs still clamped around her wrist. Sparrow yanked down the sleeve to hide it and returned to the book in front of her. It was a textbook on psychological disorders and Sparrow had thought it an odd choice until the librarian pointed out a section of the book that dealt with patients whose psychoses were clustered around various claims of fairy possession.

  “Maybe this could help you find what you need,” she’d said, sympathetically.

&nb
sp; Their stories unnerved Sparrow, made her wonder and second-guess her own life, for these patients had also grown up in small communities, with histories of child abuse, domestic violence, and tragedy. She tapped her right forefinger against a passage about a girl whose history was a bit too much like hers.

  But not one of the patients—not even the girl on the page under Sparrow’s finger—had lived what she had lived through, Sparrow reminded herself. Not one had been claimed by the woods, staying two years among the wild, sheltered at night by deer. In those days, when she needed it, she’d found clothing waiting for her beneath a bush or tree; not just stolen jeans and T-shirts, but also woven cloaks of rough wool, felted mittens lined with down feathers, and hats of rabbit skin. For most of the year there was always food growing wild: onions, sorrel, fairy spuds, berries, mushrooms, and nuts. And when there wasn’t enough to scrounge in the dead of winter, she would wake to find a small cake in her hand made of seed, dried berries, and coarse-ground flour.

  “Match that!” she whispered to the people in the book.

  She might never have been found had she not wandered too close to a campground one spring night, attracted by the sounds of human laughter. She’d been spotted by a young couple, who coaxed her closer to their fire. Though she’d tried to resist, it was no use. She’d missed the sound of human voices. They’d fed her cookies, and as she savored the sweet exotic taste, they had asked her a few questions. She tried to remember how to lie, or better, tell the truth without saying too much. But it hadn’t worked. While Sparrow waited for the woman to heat up some dried stew from a small clear pouch plunged into boiling water, the man had disappeared. Sparrow thought he had gone to relieve himself, but he returned shortly with a park ranger, who clapped his hand on her shoulder and asked her far more penetrating questions while she shoveled the food into her mouth. Three hours later, she was in custody, the forest far behind her.

  Bending over the book again, Sparrow read the case study of a woman who was convinced she’d lived in the fairy world as a child. She described the splendor, the music, and the unbearable longing that filled her heart when she was unable to find the door into Faerie again. Sparrow knew how the woman felt. Twice she’d run away from foster families. Good people but at a loss how to cope with her. Her nightmares unsettled the other children, her shy silence taken for sullenness. But when she’d run back to the woods, something had changed. The animals fled from her, the nights were cold, and no food or clothing appeared in the morning. The door to Faerie was truly shut. She was suddenly more alone than she’d ever been in her life.

  I stink of the city, she’d thought then. But soon after, she discovered that while the door was closed to her, it was not closed to them. She saw and heard what other humans did not: the hooves beneath the long hem of a pretty girl’s skirt; a cocky young man’s gleaming yellow eyes as he strolled under streetlights whistling; the small voices that chattered in the rosebushes, in the branches overhead. She had followed a man and a woman one winter day because the man’s face wavered as he looked at the woman. The woman saw only the handsome face, blond curls over a broad forehead and a white-toothed smile. But when he tilted his head to the side, Sparrow saw the coal-black eyes, hollowed cheeks and fangs. She wanted to warn the woman, but didn’t know how without calling attention to herself. So she followed them, but only a little way for the man raised his head and looked behind him. Sparrow ducked into a shop, terrified, for she had seen the horns curled around his temples, and the red snake of his tongue as it tasted the air. That was when she realized they hunted here, just as humans hunted in the woods.

  As Sparrow scanned the pages of the case studies, she realized the one thing she’d learned on her return to the human world, and that was how to lie. It had saved her from the well-meaning but clueless therapists and the patronizing foster parents, but not from the hunters and creatures who prowled around her in the bars, on the streets, or anywhere she stayed too long. They knew she was not difficult but different. And they resented it. She was like the midwife in the story called to assist at a fairy birth who was given the ability to see into the fairy world only to have her eyes gouged out later by a malicious fey.

  “Screw that,” Sparrow murmured. It was time to even the score somehow. Not just for me but for all those hunted women. She would arm herself with whatever was necessary and go after bastards like Hawk. It wasn’t actually murder, was it? After all, he wasn’t human, of that she was certain. And if others followed . . . ? Sparrow shrugged. She’d worry about that when the time came.

  Checking her list of items, she realized that most of the things on it were easy enough to find: Saint-John’s-wort, thyme, and comfrey for one’s pockets; red verbena, white daisies, primroses, and peonies to shield one from fairy mischief; stakes made from elderberry, ash, and juniper for protection. Iron she could find down by the train tracks, or at any construction site.

  And the last thing she needed was silver. A bit of pure silver. The only charm capable of severing the life from that murderous son of a bitch.

  43

  Meteora Has More Questions Than Answers

  “Hey, Sophia,” Raul called, sauntering between the bins of stacked vegetables toward the little counter, where I was busy refilling the glass jars from newly arrived bags of fresh herbs. I turned to smile at him, thinking wistfully that he reminded me of someone in the Greenwood.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said, meaning it. “How can I assist you?”

  “Actually, I’m here to thank you for assisting us,” he said with a polite nod of his head. “Sales are up in the herbal shop, Sophia. I gotta hand it to you. You’ve really turned it around.”

  “Julia works very hard too,” I said, wanting to be loyal to her.

  “I know, but everything changed when you came. So the Co-op board wants to offer you a bit more money and a bonus for everything you’ve done for us. Make it all aboveboard.”

  “Is this to make sure I stay?”

  Raul nodded, sheepishly. “Yeah. But don’t say anything about this, okay? I wouldn’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt.” He was looking toward Julia who was busy stocking boxes of tea in an adjacent aisle.

  “Of course, I understand,” I murmured, as he handed me an envelope, which I took with a little nod of thanks.

  After he left, I peeked inside and saw the bundle of green bills. Green for the color of the forest, green for the color of the fey, green for joy. I was happy as a tick with my newfound wealth and decided that I would share my good fortune, for to be favored by the Goddess is an invitation as well as an obligation to be generous.

  * * *

  I LUMBERED THROUGH THE PARK that afternoon, my hands firmly clasped around the handles of two overflowing cloth sacks. I came to a towering ash tree, set the bags down and groaned as I settled onto the damp grass beneath the tree. It didn’t take long before I heard the rustle of wings, the soft chirrups and clicking beaks in the branches above me. I glanced up at the crows, their heads downturned and cocked, the better to view the feast below.

  “It’s nicer than the rank garbage behind the shops, is it not?” I asked. One flew off the perch and landed on the grass in the shadows. Lifting its wings and shrugging off the feathers, it became a boy in the dappled light.

  “Depends,” Awxes said, striding toward me. “A crow likes his food riper than a boy. You’d be surprised what a crow will eat when hungry.”

  “Will this do then for a boy?” I asked, and handed him one of the wrapped sandwiches from my bag.

  He held the sandwich to his nose and inhaled its aroma. Between two pieces of dark wheat bread, spread with mayonnaise and mustard, were thin slices of a rare beef, seasoned with garlic and pepper. I would never have eaten such animal flesh, but I was neither a hungry boy, nor a crow—both of whom enjoyed such fare.

  Awxes put the sandwich down and gave me a rare smile. His dark eyes glowed beneath the arches of his black brows, and his teeth were white against his nut-brown skin,
which was etched with faint white scars. “It’s good,” he said shyly. “It will do very well for a boy. And his friends,” he added, beckoning the pair of crows still waiting in the branches above. They flapped their wings and drove their bodies into the thickest part of a leafy bush, startling a little scream out of a red-faced woman who was running on a nearby path.

  A moment later the two girls emerged, scrambling over one another to join Awxes and me at our meal. They touched everything with their fingers, as though it might disappear as treasure does when one wakes from a wishful dream.

  “Go on then, eat, for you have earned it,” I said.

  “How so?” asked Awxes. He used the tail of his black T-shirt to wipe his chin clean of plum juice.

  “I know it must be terribly dull following me each day. And regardless of your purpose, it is a thankless job, for I am of no importance really. And yet someone has set you this task.” I turned to the younger girl, her wheat-colored hair braided with stray feathers.

  “But you ain’t nobody,” she said, licking the crumbs from the corner of her mouth. “You’re special . . .”

  “Hsssst!” The older girl put a finger to her lips. “Tell nothing.”

  “I agree,” I said with a smile, trying to hide my burning curiosity. “Be quiet. Eat instead.” I leaned back against the tree, peeled the paper off of my own sandwich of cheese, tomato, and something called pesto, and began to eat.

  And quiet they were, solely intent on the food. Licking their lips, wiping stray mayonnaise and mustard off their cheeks with the back of a dirty hand, they sucked plum pits, crunched the hard flesh of the apples, and gulped down the bottles of fresh water. However, they did not gobble the cookies, but slowly savored their sweetness. Then they lay down on the grass and slept.