Trailer Park Fae

by Lilith Saintcrow

  No answer. Puck twisted the knob, stepped into a hot bath of mortal illness and dim red light. Chemical stink filled his nose, and he stepped fastidiously around broken glass scattered on the floor.

  “Only the wind, the child of heaven,” Goodfellow murmured, and stepped leaf-light and lively. A skip, a hop, and he was atop a laden table. Rinds of cheese, nutshells, takeout containers—free sidhe brughnies had brought the mortal pet enough to dine on and to spare, and much of it had gone to rot.

  They lost appetite when Summer’s sickness was upon them.

  The mortal curled on his narrow pallet, shirtless and frowsy-haired. His shoulder blades were tiny wings, the knobs of his spine almost piercing stretched-tight, yellowed skin. Hugging his knob-knees and muttering to himself, he rocked back and forth slightly, and his movement caused an echo in the trailer as well.

  The branches and vines coaxed through the walls now exuded a sweet, drowsy resin—the mortal had lashed at the walls with something sharp, not caring where he cut, and it was the sapblood that flowed so steadily. Long strings and ribbons of amber festooned every corner, slowly thickening. Perhaps they would even reach the mortal’s bed, did he slumber overlong, and wrap him in a crystalline cocoon. The pungent analgesic would lull him, and he would not even feel the digesting juices.

  Such was the revenge of free earth. Slow but steady, and turning all to advantage.

  From his perch, Puck surveyed the ruin. The glass containers and the microscope the mortal was always muttering at were broken, scattered across the table. The privy stank, clogged with Stone alone knew what, and the strange spinning-machines the mortal used to “separate” fluids lay in twisted pieces still smoking from the fury that had crushed them. The glowing screens were all smashed, too.

  Henzler’s soft mumbling stilled. So did his rocking motion. A rabbit, crouched in the snare.

  “Hello, mortal.” Puck balanced on the table, his feet placed just so. Mortal filth disgusted him, and yet this particular sack of sweetsalt blood had been useful. Perhaps mercy could be granted here. A quick movement, a sigh, and this small pile of chantment and glamour could close about itself. Eventually, this entire decaying place could become free earth, with Goodfellow’s influence already at its core. They did not know how he spread his own borders, either of the so-lordly in either Court. Perhaps Unwinter suspected, for he was a canny beast.

  Even the most fell of beasts died before a hunter with enough patience, though.

  The cot creaked as Henzler moved, pushing himself up and turning slowly, swinging his legs off the bed. His bare feet were now horn-callused as a brughnie’s, though not nearly as charming or useful. Yellowed nails curled around the end of the knotted toes, weeping sores covered his stick-legs. His wide dark eyes, pupils swollen in the dimness, held the firefly-flickers of the moontouched. Were Summer to see her pet now, she would turn away in loathing.

  Puck almost chuckled at the thought.

  “Boy,” Henzler breathed. “Little boy.” He had clawed at his own cheeks, and Puck decided to be magnanimous.

  “You have served well, mortal. I promised you a reward.”

  Henzler waved one clawlike hand, half-moons of grime tipping each finger. “Where is she? Did she send word?”

  Puck’s good temper frayed slightly. Asking for Summer, when the Fatherless was before him? Still, he had decided mercy would please him. So he rested one narrow brown hand on the hilt by his side, and smiled broadly. His ear-tips wiggled, twitching with pleasure that had nonetheless lost some of its luster.

  Perhaps there was a way to repolish it. “Oh aye, she sent word. You are fortunate, indeed.”

  The mortal leapt to his feet with surprising speed. His scarecrow limbs trembled, and he bounced two paces toward Puck, kicking glass out of his way with abandon. Part of a container rolled and shattered, but he paid it no mind. “What? What did she say?”

  Puck did not move. He observed the man’s trembling fists, his knobbed knees. “She’s ill, and not expected to live past sundown. She sends her regard, and does not know you made the rot that killed her, with your glass baubles and spinning-machines.”

  Silence, broken only by the faint tinkling drip of sweet narcotic resin. The mortal’s thin mouth trembled and fell open. So fragile, and so easily wounded.

  Yes, that sweetened his pleasure nicely. Puck’s mouth had filled with its own juice, anticipating. His wide V-shaped grin gleamed, a flash in the ruddy glow, and the mortal lunged for him.

  Desperation made them strong, and quick. Puck leapt aside, his left hand sinking into the wall, claws slicing effortlessly as he folded in half, bringing his legs up. A cat-flexible spine twisted, crackling, and he propelled himself across the trailer. The cot crumbled underneath him, its legs shattering, and he hissed, again like a cat—they were such elegant creatures, after all.

  The mortal stumbled for him, shrieking blindly, and perhaps the moontouch insanity was like the plague in its own way, for it made him quick. Clasped in one shriveled hand was a wicked curve of mortal glass, its edge ground fine-sharp and its handle wrapped with black electrical tape. It whistled as it clove the air, and Puck leapt nimbly again—but the crumbling metal and fabric of the mortal’s sleeping-couch pitched, and the glass-edge striped the sidhe’s arm.

  One lean brown fist flashed in return, a crystalline dagger singing, but the mortal had skipped nimbly back. The luck of the moontouched was on him, too, for he did not grind his bare feet on broken glass.

  “You killed her!” the mortal roared, and Puck hissed, a grinding, serpentine noise too big for such a narrow chest.

  The sidhe darted forward. Any of his kind, facing him, might have retreated, for when Goodfellow drew his wicked, glittering little knife, green venom collected on its pinpoint tip.

  Dying of wyrmsting was a thing to be feared.

  The mortal scientist, however, had another piece of blind luck. His hip struck one of the tables, and its legs screeched. His arm, windmilling wildly, struck a tiny glass bottle full of colorless liquid, with a wick protruding from its top. It flew in an insanely perfect arc—

  —and hit Puck Goodfellow’s snarling, twisted boyface with a shattering crunch. The boy-sidhe howled, and the mortal, perhaps understanding that not even luck would save him now, blundered for the door. His free hand, sweat-slick and shaking, pawed at the knob.

  Puck howled afresh as colorless alcohol mixed with thick, dark ichor, stinging and blinding. He was barely aware of the mortal flinging the thin door open and scampering out into weak, cloud-choked daylight. He rolled on the floor of the hovel, shrieking, pawing at his face with his free hand.

  Henzler blundered down a rotting, cracked pavement strip, tearing two toenails loose as he ran. His throat burned with screaming, his eyes blinded by daylight he hadn’t seen for quite some time, and his feet slapped both concrete and thistles threading their way through cracks with equal force.

  Behind him, the cries from the trailer ceased. It took much more than a few shards of glass and some mortal solution to damage the Fatherless.

  Puck bounced out of the trailer, landing soft as a whisper on the steps, loping in Henzler’s wake. He was utterly silent now, his grin no longer pleased but instead grim good cheer, his soft boyface striped with swiftly healing cuts bleeding thick sapphire-blue ichor. He did not hurry, for the boundaries of this dilapidated village were his to command.

  The mortal would not get far, and there would be no mercy in his end, now.

  NO SMALL PROPOSITION

  21

  It was late afternoon, and she was weary. Robin moved among the mortals with her head down, seeking cover, if not comfort, in their mass of gray salt and sourness. When night fell, she would have to find a hole to hide in, or…

  Perhaps she should have stayed at Gallow’s abode, and not sought him elsewhere? Yet if barrow-wights could find the same job-building she had, would his burrow be safer at all? Could she risk returning to the knight’s trailer? She could not decide,
and she kept walking. Moving was better than staying still, and there were hiding places well within range once dusk threatened.

  Which of them, if any, would be safe?

  The best was a place she had never visited since finding it, preferring to keep its secret locked within like a highborn sidhe’s truename. Was the danger extreme enough to warrant using it? For once used, no place was safe ever again.

  Not from Unwinter, and she thought it rather likely he might take a personal interest in matters very soon.

  Another of her narrowing options was the waste and wrack of Tanglemire Park, where the free sidhe held little truck with either Court. She was not hated among them, but neither was she loved. Still, even those who rode a-hunting sometimes hesitated at the borders of their holdings.

  That hesitation would give Robin precious time, and breath to spend.

  Had she already decided? She found herself stepping from pavement onto long, sere grass, her heels almost catching in a blown-down section of chainlink fencing. Her calves ached slightly, mortal weakness only, since the heels were full of surefoot and passage chantment. She made for a stand of birch trees—they had been manicured once, long ago, but the free sidhe had diverted mortal interest in this slice of land for a while now. Bracken and bramble, greenness under the brown of winter’s weathering, thorn and thistle all shouting the presence of the Folk to all who cared to look.

  Who would, in this time? They lamented, in Summer, that they were not recognized anymore.

  Anyway, birches were good. Hopefully no other had found shelter there, for the wind was chill and unsettled. With Unseelie about and so active, the free and those who held even nominal allegiance to Summer would be seeking safety. Those whose fealty lay with the King of Unseelie’s gray and red, well, they would do well to seek, too. Crimson in tooth and claw was Unwinter, and Summer held them to be the darker half of sidhe, almost Twisted in the Sundering between the Courts.

  Still, the Seelie Court was just as dangerous. The difference was the perfume they laced the poison with.

  She was about to step into the grove when a chill rippled through her. She turned, inhaling sharply—

  —and let the breath out, dangerous song unsung, staring at the slim boylike sidhe who grinned with his sharp white teeth. “Puck,” she said, as the air neared the end of its outcycle, and did she imagine his slight flinch?

  She decided she had. He had been dogging her steps in the mortal world of late, and even more so now that she was playing fetch for the Queen. Sometimes he took an interest in Court affairs, but not often, and given his taste for mortal boyflesh—for eating, not for sport, most said, though the two were often commingled among the sidhe—Robin did not think him likely to be wanting much of her except mischief.

  He had brought her to Summer, of course. Maybe he felt proprietary, or was simply bored.

  His name echoed uneasily, fell flat against sere grass. The hard consonant was crisper than she liked, and the birches rustled uneasily. Maybe they felt her; even if they were ghilliedhu they might be sleeping until the Queen opened the Gates. Or they might be a-wandering away from the tree that housed what might be called a soul.

  Did they have them, the beautiful sidhe? It was an open question.

  “At your service, my lady Robin.” He grinned even wider, and cut her a fine, if unpolished, bow. It had to be a mockery, for she had seen him act with the latest Court manners when he pleased to do so. “ ’Tis fine to see your face again so soon. And whither are you bound this cold evening?”

  Nowhere you may see me tread. “On business, Goodfellow, and thank you for your interest.”

  The browns and greens melded him into a clutter of bramble and blackberry vines as he crouched, his hands carefully kept from the leaf-sheathed dagger at his belt. The age-blackened reed pipes, bound with thin flexible bands suspiciously resembling dried tendons, were just as dangerous, but he spread his long-fingered hands, only four and a thumb on each hand but each with an extra joint, in the leaf and mulch. Hourglass-pupiled, flash-green into yellow eyes winked through his tumbled hair, and he laughed. “You may thank me for more than that, Ragged. I have a riddle for thee.”

  She backed up two paces, wondering if she dared step inside the birch grove now. “I do not recall asking thee for one, good sir.”

  “Nevertheless. Why do you not leave the changeling to the Queen’s graces, Ragged? You could be free. Truly free.”

  That’s twice he’s mentioned Sean. Will I have to kill him? It was no small proposition. Goodfellow was ancient even among the Folk, called the Fatherless in certain quarters—though never to his face.

  Robin-mama. And all the stars of Summer’s dusk. Were they worth the risk of enmity with one this old and strong?

  Her expression hardened, and when she spoke, each word was chill. “That would make me faithless as your own good self, Goodfellow. What business have you here?”

  “Ah, the lady who disdains me is the lady I love.” He sang it, queerly accented but musically enough, and she did not recognize the tune. No doubt if she had it would have been a cruel jest, and her skin was thin enough just now.

  “Sing another measure, Robin Goodfellow, and I shall sing one in return.” It was not a true threat, but it was satisfying to see him blanch slightly. As if she did not know that very little would stir Puck’s heart to the cruel mercy of his kind of affection.

  He unfolded from the ground with queer, flowing grace, and had she not been accustomed to the strange movements of sidhe flesh and bone she might have been nauseous at the alienness of his articulation. When he spoke, though, there was no fear or laughter, and his voice could have been a mortal man’s, with even a mimicry of tenderness in its timbre.

  “I’ll bring you Gallow, dear Robin, if you want him.”

  She measured him from top to toe, and found him just the same as ever. The question was, dared she trust his word, or was it a silken lure? There was no love lost between them, but neither was there open enmity, and he had stood almost-godfather in presenting her to the Queen. No, Puck the Goodfellow treated her just as he treated all others, granting where it pleased him and snatching away as well.

  In that, he was like Unwinter, and like Summer herself. At least he had given her the cure ampoules… and as far as he knew, now, she had handed them over to Summer.

  Almost alarmed at the turn her thoughts had taken, Robin backed away another step. Her skirt fluttered on the edge of the freshening breeze, and now that dark was rising as well, the wind had teeth. Muzzled for the moment, but soon they would bite.

  “Do not flee me, Ragged.” Puck performed a capering little jig, dry blackberry vines crunching under glove-soled feet. “It pleases me to bring to you the Armormaster. That is what the Gallow was, before he left Court. Did you know?”

  Armormaster? Broghan the Black wears the glass badge now, and none speak of who preceded him. Maybe they’ve forgotten.

  Or maybe he displeased Summer, and left. Which might make this Gallow more of an ally than she had thought. The Armormaster set the guard on the Keep, and was the arbiter of duels. And he could be challenged by any who sought to wear the glass badge, or make a name for themselves. It was unlike any of them to simply leave Court unless banished—perhaps that was why he wasn’t spoken of, and he would take Robin’s tidings as a gladness, that he was to be readmitted to Seelie?

  She shrugged, carefully enough. The sun dipped below some of the frowning buildings overlooking the tangled woods, and the distant sound of traffic held a thread of silver.

  Yes, maybe even Unwinter himself would be riding tonight. Perhaps following hard on the heels of a ragged bird.

  “Come, Ragged. A neutral place, and I shall bring thee a princely gift. For no other reason than it warms me cockles to see the Glass-Gallow face you. No doubt you have words he should hear; he and I are acquainted of old.”

  Glass-Gallow. And merely acquainted. At least he’s not claiming to be friends. Once I have Gallow himself, or hav
e delivered my message, I may return to Summer. At the moment, it seemed a better option than any other that had presented itself the whole dreary day. “Name the ground, Puck.” For his choice of traps would tell her much.

  “The Rolling Oak. At the very least, if I am not true, you shall have an ale and perhaps a means to divert ill-luck.”

  The Oak was free ground, and one of the few places that perhaps could break her trail. She did not wish to cross its threshold unless things became truly dire, but the wind chilled further as light drained from the sky, and Robin Ragged was suddenly aware of just how weary she was.

  She calculated distance, probable meanings, and Puck’s sudden interest, and arrived at a very depressing conclusion.

  I might as well. What does it matter?

  “The Rolling Oak.” It was neither a confirmation nor a denial, and she backed up still further. No hummock turned her ankle, no bog clutched at her shoes. Perhaps it was an omen, or merely good luck. “Perhaps I shall see thee there, Goodfellow.”

  “Ah, my lady Ragged, perhaps you shall.” The unholy glee on his slim brown face would have given her pause, but she had already fled into the birches, taking the chance that they would halt or turn any curse he spat at her retreating back. His last call, though, shivered the naked branches overhead. It was an old song, and no doubt he sang it to taunt her, for at the end of it was a death.

  “For my love promised to meet me, and will she be untruuuuuuue…”

  The rest of its chorus burned inside her as she reached the edge of the park.

  And lo, my love, she came too late.

  And oh, my love, was you.

  LONG AND LONG

  22

  It would have been easier with something to practice a sympathetic chantment on. Something she had worn or breathed upon.

  But of course it couldn’t be easy, not for him.

  Dusk found Jeremiah on Challer Avenue, where the old Garden Faire had stood. A meeting place for free sidhe and mortal-Tainted, it had once been a throbbing hub on the edge of the Gobelins. The market—and its goblin Doges—no longer stitched themselves to the alley alongside, perhaps because the coffee shop was now a burned-out husk, with only a faint lemony tang of sidhe remaining. Violence still tingled in the blackened walls, and he ducked past the faded festoons of caution and crime-scene tape.