Except the Queen

by Jane Yolen

  Flying would have been fun if we could have done most of it by day. If we were not in a hurry to get to Milwaukee. But Shawnique warned we had to do most of our flying by night or in the times between dusk and the true dawn.

  “Hard to disguise us completely in the light of day, Mabel,” she said. “There are some human folk with farsight.”

  “And scopes,” added Blanche darkly.

  I already understood about the scopes. Humans with farsight—now that surprised me.

  * * *

  WE GOT TO METEORA’S HOUSE just as the sun was rising, settled down as birds in the garden furrows and then slowly stood up in human form. To this day, I am not sure how the sisters knew which street was which. And when I fly by myself, I have to come down often just to walk the streets in my human form till I find where I am going. I have learned to read maps.

  But once in the furrows, I began to shiver. There was something dirty—something horribly evil—polluting the ground. As my human form overtook my feathered body, I let out a huge sigh.

  Is it the arum? I wondered. But there was too much of the smell and it was everywhere.

  “Whoooo-eee,” said Blanche. “That is some odorama. Something stinks to high heaven, sister.”

  “I was thinking the other direction myself,” Shawnique said. She flicked away some of the dirt from her skirts.

  “Arum,” I said, sniffing.

  Shawnique added thoughtfully, “And nightshade, manglewort . . .”

  “And mandrake,” said Blanche, wrinkling her nose dramatically.

  Now the sun was full on us.

  “But something else.” I didn’t want to say what I feared the most.

  “Blood spilled in anger, in terror,” said Shawnique. How could she say it so dispassionately? But then, she did not know Meteora and the others.

  “And some spilled in shame.” Blanche looked down at her hands, which were wrangling together.

  “So it’s begun.” Shawnique reached over and untangled her sister’s fingers.

  “Then we better find them and get them out of here.” I kept my voice steady.

  Shawnique came over and put her arms around me. Her skin was cool, from the flying, but so was mine. I inhaled her essence—pear blossom, rose petals, driftwood, musk, partly to be comforted, but also to help dissipate the smells of the befouled garden.

  “Now, Mabel,” she said, holding her hand up. “You gotta be wary. They may be dead people in there. Even your sweet sister. So be prepared. This . . .” She gestured to the garden. “This is a bad sign.” Shaking her head, she added, “Blanche and I better go in first.”

  “Not me!” Blanche backed away, holding up both her hands. “You know I don’t like dead folks. Fight and run, that’s my motto. Fight and run!”

  I kissed Shawnique on her cheek, and it was surprisingly soft. “She is my sister, Shawnique. If she is gone, I want to make sure she looks all right before anyone else sees her. Tidy her. Hold her. I want . . .” My voice began to break up.

  “You’re right, honey,” she said. “I’d do the same for mine.”

  “I’m not dead over here,” Blanche said, waving her right hand.

  “Not yet,” snapped Shawnique. “But you’d better shape up or you will be!”

  I left them to squabble and was already walking toward the house, but I thought how much they sounded like Meteora and me. Sisters!

  The door was closed, but not locked, so I went in. Remembering the description from Meteora’s letters, I took the stairs two at a time. My heart was hammering in fear and anticipation.

  Meteora’s door stood wide open, which was a surprise. And when I went in, even more surprising was what was inside. On the table were the remains of a meal for two people, as if they had—a day or two ago—suddenly run off and left everything to molder. Two mugs, still half full of cold tea, porcelain plates on which the remains of eggs had congealed, a candlestick with the burned-down candle wax dried and hard.

  A dove was sleeping on the table, leaning against an empty bottle of wine.

  Where had the dove come from? And then I saw the open window. On the sill were a variety of small items, some of Meteora’s “precious things.” She was such a jackdaw.

  But of my sister and the boy and the girl and the Jack there was no sign.

  I sighed heavily and turned, just as the dove shook itself and woke. It flew to my shoulder and plucked a single hair from my head.

  “Stop that,” I yelled.

  “Listen,” the dove said in its cooing voice. “I have one message and one message only.”

  “Tell me. Is it good news or bad?”

  “Listen,” the dove said again. “I have one message and one message only.”

  “For green’s sake . . .”

  “Listen,” the dove said again. “I have one message and one message only.”

  I knew then that all I could do was listen. The dove would deliver its message and go. And lucky it was that I was the one for whom the message was meant.

  “Sister, we have fled the bananachs,” the dove said. “We have gone to stay with Jack’s Aunt Vinnie, an Old One, at Sixth Street and Elm, by the Bridge of Trees. The dove will show you the way.” The dove finished and shivered three times, then sat still on my shoulder. I lifted it down with gentle hands, cradling it carefully before getting us both downstairs on shaking legs.

  The sisters were gone.

  I looked around the garden, circled the house three times widdershins, and was about to try again when a well-dressed young woman stuck her head out of a window on the first floor.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” Her voice was sharp and frightened at the same time.

  Of a sudden, I remembered there were other tenants in the house. “My sister . . . Sophia . . .” I stumbled on the name. “Old woman. Upstairs room?”

  “Ah, haven’t seen her in a couple of days,” she said. “Haven’t seen any of them. Now get outta here before I call the cops.”

  Then she truly did withdraw, slamming the window down hard.

  “Thank you,” I called out, but she did not answer.

  So I walked over to the garden, wondering where the sisters had gone, but afraid to call out. The pink and gray paving stones were set out in a mazed pattern. Perhaps there would be more clues here. Just as I was about to walk the maze, the crones came out of another house, looking flustered.

  Shawnique raised her right hand to stop me. “Don’t go in there,” she said. “Trouble. Trou-ble. I smelled it, and it’s nasty stuff.”

  “Something’s been marking its place,” added Blanche. “Pee everywhere. And black turds big as oranges.”

  “They are not here,” I said, holding the dove in both hands to show them. “My sister nor her friends. The dove had a message. We are to follow and . . .”

  “Well, girl, why didn’t you say that right off,” Shawnique scolded. “Time wasted is time gone. Let’s get into those furrows and turn back into birds.”

  “But there are folks in the house. On the bottom floor. Looking out of windows.”

  “Can’t be helped. We shouldn’t be changing into feathers in the day either.”

  “We calls this Needs Must,” added Blanche.

  “How many folk in that house?” Shawnique asked, talking right over her sister.

  “One. Maybe two.”

  “Hell’s bunions.” Shawnique laughed. “Even if they see us, they’ll never believe their eyes. Not enough of them to confab. Let’s go.”

  Quickly, we went to the farthest part of the garden, as far from the rank musk of the wicked plants as we could manage, then lay down. Shawnique was at the very end of the furrow. Blanche lay head to foot with her. And I put myself beneath Blanche’s feet.

  “Hi-de-hi-de-ho . . .” Shawnique began and Blanche and I joined in.

  On the fifth or sixth iteration, I began to change. I could feel my bones reshaping, my hair turning to feathers, my nose elongating into a beak. At the last moment, I rememb
ered to let the dove go or it would have been held in the talons of a hawk and probably die of fear.

  The dove flew straight out of the furrow and in seconds, two crows flew after it. And I, wings reaching out to feather the air, came last out of the dirt. But it did not take me long to catch up, and we remarked the dove’s flight, following it closely into the blue and lightening air.

  67

  Dark Passage

  We remained at the table, late and later still into the night. The bottle of Scotch made a slow journey around the table. Glasses were filled, tunes played, songs sung. We should have been more afraid, but at least for the moment we refused such thoughts.

  And haven’t the bravest of our Seelie warriors spent the night before a battle doing just this? Celebrating their lives together, holding it precious before the threat of losing everything, even life itself? That is what it says in all our ballads and great songs. “So drink to the life I would love to have lived . . .” goes one. And “Brother, I stand, with my sword ready, my staff at my side . . .” If I could have remembered more than two verses of any of the old war ballads I would have sung it to rouse us. But such things had not been the leaf and stem of my life back then. I usually fell asleep beneath the Queen’s table and never heard the songs all the way through. Perhaps, that was just as well, for though we five were brave, we were hardly warriors. And when had bravery alone stood against dark magic and won? It had to be magic against magic for us to have a chance. So I took another sip of the amber liquid and let it burn down into my stomach for comfort and warmth.

  In the lapse between one fiddle tune and the next—and just as Vinnie was lifting the bottle for another round—we were startled by a gust of wind that rapped against the windowpanes. Four cats leaped to the ledge, tails twitching, fur lifting along their spines.

  “What is it, boys?” Vinnie set the bottle down on the table. “Are the rats playing beneath the sill again?”

  The cats’ ears flicked, agitated, but they refused to turn away from the glass. An old marmalade tom with a chewed ear arrowed his head low and, nose against the pane, growled softly.

  From where I sat, I could see only the pale reflection of our candle’s flame and Sparrow’s face leaning over it.

  The wind gusted again, this time hammering the panes loose in their wooden frames. The startled cats hissed, backs arched high, as little windlings, normally the shyest of creatures, wriggled spindly fingers and filmy bodies through the narrow cracks. Once inside, trailing torn wings, they flung themselves wildly around the room with the frenzy of mayflies. They hid, darning themselves into Vinnie’s braid, ducking down behind Sparrow’s ear, nestling in Robin’s fiddle, their voices trilling out from its wooden belly. One, folding its wings, wriggled into the breast pocket of Jack’s shirt. I held my hands up to them, beckoned them not to fear and four of the poor wee things landed on my palm, their silken touch a cold puff of air.

  In soft, whispery voices, they cried, “They come, they come. The Seelie and the Unseelie, the shriven and the cursed, the newly made and soon-to-be-dead.”

  One of them even fluttered up to my face and puffed, “Flee, flee for here will they meet and here will be blood.”

  Another joined her, crying, “Their war destroys us as easily as summer lightning sweeps grass into flames.”

  I spoke a swift prayer that Serana be protected as she rode high in the night sky with the crones. She was flying toward a storm she did not know was so soon gathered. No, I castigated myself. It was I who drew her into this. I alone. My speaking to the boggans of the Queen’s child; my calling Serana to Milwaukee; my leaving the dove to lead her here. My fault. Mine. I did not say it aloud. I did not have to.

  But of those at the table only Vinnie had wits enough to act.

  “We’re outta here,” she barked, clapping a black hat on her head. She picked up a heavy walking stick, its handle stout and club-shaped, its point wrapped in metal. Iron by the smell of it.

  “Where to?” Sparrow asked, threading her fingers through her hair, dislodging the windlings.

  “The Bridge of Trees. Here, you’ll need this.” From a closet she pulled out three more rounded sticks, the length of my arm. White ash, they were, with animal spells inscribed in black, “Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers.”

  With a strange smile, Jack grabbed one and, gripping the wooden handle with both hands, swung it with obvious pleasure. “You kept my bats,” he said. “I thought Mom sold them along with my cards.”

  Vinnie grimaced. “She was crazy, not stupid. Those are ash—you never give away ash. And they come in handy when the rats prove too much for the cats. Like now.”

  “I’ll take my fiddle,” Robin said, refusing a bat and instead tucking his fiddle under his arm, the bow hanging from the crook of his forefinger and thumb.

  “Bit risky, isn’t it?” Vinnie asked.

  “It can do things.” Robin lifted the fiddle to his chin and scraped the bow against the strings. The fiddle howled and the windlings wailed, ducking into cups and bowls. All the cats scattered out of the room as though their tails had caught fire. The planked floorboards rumbled, lifting from their frame, nails screeching and popping from ancient grooves. Puffs of malignant brown spores chuffed up from the twisting floorboards, and I caught the scent of burial dirt, spiced with bone and blood. I choked on it, and the others coughed hard, gasping in the thickened air.

  “Stop! Stop!” I shouted.

  And he did, placing the fiddle back underneath his arm. His skin was white, the hooded eyelids a bruised lavender. His mouth turned cruel, and his eyes made a chill throb through my recent wound. Those eyes were suddenly black mirrors, smooth as polished stone. And when he tossed his head, the coils of hair parted, revealing the long shape of his ears. Then he shuddered and the pale skin flamed rose once more.

  “What are you?” I whispered.

  “Don’t fear me, Sophia,” he answered softly. He held out a hand toward Jack, who had been gripping his bat more tightly, ready to swing. “Or you, good Jack.”

  Vinnie clucked her tongue softly against the roof of her mouth. Only Sparrow waited, hands in her pockets, an understanding sadness like a shadow on her face.

  Robin spoke softly. “I am like Sparrow. A mistake. Something that shouldn’t have happened. I am the darkness to her light, the UnSeelie bound to the Seelie. Born too low and sent away to the world of man in the guise of a hound. To seek and to find.” He shuddered and I saw the hound beneath his skin, a dark hound, with long floppy ears and bloodred eyes. Then he shuddered again and was only Robin, the scare-bird, the fiddler, the one who followed Sparrow faithfully and would come wherever and whenever she whistled. As he spoke, his mouth was a bruise in his face.

  “And do you serve them still?” I asked. “Or are you free?”

  “Free. Like Sparrow. Like you and your sister. I could not stomach the taste of blood, nor the lash my Master was certain to give me as reward for doing his bidding. I refused to answer when he called me to his side. Your sister found me in that state of refusal, Sophia. I was poisoned, left to die slowly over days, tortured by nightmares. I wandered in my grotesque form, following the lingering scent of green that I knew was your sister. She found me on the doorstep. She was right, you know. You are glowworms pushing back the darkness.”

  “You read her letters!” I was appalled, but not surprised. Had not Sparrow read mine?

  “All of them. I knew I had to come here, for after your sister, it was Sparrow I was to seek and find. I had to warn her. Explain it to her.”

  “Explain what?” Was this at last to be the true reason for my exile?

  “The Queen exiled you and Serana not as a punishment, but to provide protection to her child. She counted on Sparrow finding one of you, light drawn to light. I was sent to hunt Serana, and thereby the girl, should she come. My Master found another, here in your city, Meteora, to do his bidding.”

  “Lankin,” I said, bitterly.

  “Yes.
I didn’t know that until I came here. Your sister was right to send me here. But I was so blinded by the arum, I could not guard Sparrow. Lankin found her and nearly . . .” He shuddered like a dog, his skin wrinkling with fear.

  “But if we are meant to protect her, why are we here now?” I asked, confused, wanting all the little threads to braid together in a single strand. “Should not someone inform the Queen? Is this not her affair?”

  “My mother, if that’s who the Queen is, left me on my own a long time ago. I’ve been running ever since. But not anymore,” Sparrow said. “Robin and I are here to make a stand for ourselves.” She reached out to twine her fingers in his, sounding both brave and magical. It was then I noticed in the bright light of the kitchen that the trouble tattoo on her neck was almost gone. Clearly there was power in their union, healing power.

  “We’ll be making a stand in the boneyard if we don’t hightail it outta here,” Vinnie snapped. “Run now. Talk later.” She nudged Sparrow toward a low door in the kitchen and behind her Robin followed close, then Jack, still gripping the bat uncertainly.

  I hesitated until I saw the gray slag-heap faces of the Boggles pressed against the windowpanes. Too big to creep in as the windlings had done. Kept out by the wards for now, they waited. Waited—but not for long.

  Darting after the others, I found myself descending into a musty, dark cellar. In the dim light of a single bulb the floor appeared like an ocean of shifting fur. Cats—dozens of them—swirled in agitated circles around our ankles, hissing and spitting. Kittens mewled from baskets stacked around the edges of the room.

  From above, we could hear the sounds of the front door being splintered and a window shattering. The cats flowed up the stairs behind us in a wave of caterwauls and flashing teeth, their claws scrabbling on the wooden stairs.

  “Come, quick. There’s a tunnel here that leads out to the bridge. The cats will hold them for a while.” Vinnie bent low and scurried into a small narrow passage.

  “Is that our escape route?” asked Jack for all of us.