LILLIAN WANTS A tour, so after dinner and the first round of cocktails, Miranda and Daniel take her all through Honeywell Hall, the parts that are kept up and the parts that are falling into shadow. They end up in one of the attics, digging through Elspeth’s trunks of costumes. They make Lillian try on cheesecloth dresses, hand-beaded fairy wings, ancient, cakey stage makeup. Take selfies. Daniel reads old mail from fans, pulls out old photos of Elspeth and Joannie, backstage. Here’s Joannie perched on a giant urn. Joannie, her mouth full of pins. Joannie, at a first-night party, drunk and laughing and young. It should hurt to look at these pictures. Shouldn’t it?
“Do you think it will snow?” Lillian says. “I want snow for Christmas.”
Daniel says, “Snowed last Christmas. Shouldn’t expect that it will, this year. Too warm.”
Not even trying to sound casual about it, Miranda says, “It’s going to snow. It has to snow. And if it doesn’t snow, then we’re going to do something about it. We’ll make it snow.”
She feels quite gratified when Lillian looks at her as if Miranda is insane, possibly dangerous. Well, the dress should have told her that.
“My present this year,” Miranda says, “is going to be snow. Call me the Snow Queen. Come and see.”
Her suitcases – her special equipment – barely fit into the Tiger. Elspeth didn’t say a word, just raised an eyebrow. Most of it is still in the carriage house.
Daniel is game when she explains. Lillian is either game, or pretending to be. There are long, gauzy swathes of white cloth to weave through tree branches, to tack down to the ground. There are long strings of glass and crystal and silver ornaments. Handcut lace snowflakes caught in netting. The pièce de résistance is the Snowboy Stage Whisper Fake Snow Machine with its fifty-foot extending hose reel. Miranda’s got bags and bags of fake snow. Over an hour’s worth of the best quality fake snow money can buy, according to the guy who rented her the Snowboy.
It’s nearly midnight by the time they have everything arranged to Miranda’s satisfaction. She goes inside and turns on the Hall’s floodlights, then turns on the snow machine. A fine, glittering snow begins. Lillian kisses Daniel lingeringly. A fine romance.
Elspeth has been observing the whole time from the kitchen stair. She puts a hand over her cocktail. Fake snow dusts her fair hair, streaks it white.
All of the Honeywells who haven’t gone to bed yet, which is most of them, ooh and ah. The youngest Honeywells, the ones who weren’t even born when Miranda first came to Honeywell Hall, break into a spontaneous round of applause. Miranda feels quite powerful. Santa Claus exists after all.
ALL OF THE Honeywells eventually retreat back into the house to drink and gossip and admire Miranda’s special effects from within. It may not be properly cold tonight, but it’s cold enough. Time for hot chocolate, hot toddies, hot baths, hot water bottles and bed.
She’s not sure, of course, that this will work. If this is playing by the rules. But isn’t she owed something by now? A bit of luck?
And she is. At first, not daring to hope, she thinks that Daniel has come from the Hall to fetch her in. But it isn’t Daniel.
Fenny, in that old justacorps, Miranda’s stitching around the piece above his pocket, walks out from under the hawthorn tree.
“It worked,” Miranda says. She hugs herself, which is a mistake. All those spikes. “Ow. Oh.”
“I shouldn’t be here, should I?” Fenny says. “You’ve done something.” Miranda looks closely at his face. How young he looks. Barely older than she. How long has he been this young?
Fake snow is falling on their heads. “We have about an hour,” Miranda says. “Not much time.”
He comes to her then, takes her in his arms. “Be careful,” she says. “I’m all spikes.”
“A ridiculous dress,” he says into her hair. “Though comely. Is this what people wear in this age?”
“Says the man wearing a justacorps,” she says. They’re almost the same height this year. He’s shorter than Daniel now, she realizes. Then they’re kissing, she and Fenny are kissing, and she isn’t thinking about Daniel at all.
They kiss, and Fenny presses himself against her, armored with spikes though Miranda is. He holds her, hands just above her waist, tight enough that she thinks she will have bruises in the shape of his fingers.
“Come in the Hall with me,” Miranda says, in between kisses. “Come with me.”
Fenny bites her lower lip. Then licks it. “Can’t,” he says.
“Because of the rules.” Now he’s nibbling her ear. She whimpers. Tugs him away by the hair. “Hateful rules.”
“Could I stay with you, I vow I would. I would stay and grow old with you, Miranda. Or as long as you wanted me to stay.”
“Stay with me,” she says. Her dress must be goring into him. His stomach, his thighs. They’ll both be black and blue tomorrow.
He doesn’t say anything. Kisses her over and over. Distracting her, she knows. The front of her dress fastens with a simple clasp. Underneath she’s wearing an old T-shirt. Leggings. She guides his hands.
“If you can’t stay with me,” she says, as Fenny opens the clasp, “then I’ll stay with you.”
His hands are on her rib cage as she speaks. Simple enough to draw him inside the armature of the dress, to reach behind his back, pull the belt of heavy chain around them both. Fasten it. The key is in the Hall. In the attic, where she left it.
“Miranda,” Fenny says, when he realizes. “What have you done?”
“A crucial component of any relationship is the capacity to surprise the one you love. I read that somewhere. A magazine. You’re going to love women’s magazines. Oh, and the Internet. Well, parts of it anyway. I won’t let you go,” Miranda says. The dress is a snug fit for two people. She can feel every breath he takes. “If you go, then I’ll go, too. Wherever it is that you go.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he says. “There are rules.”
“There are always ways to get around the rules,” Miranda says. “That was in another magazine.” She knows that she’s babbling. A coping mechanism. There are articles about that, too. Why can’t she stop thinking about women’s magazines? Some byproduct of realizing that you’re in love? ‘Fifteen Ways to Know He Loves You Back.’ Number eight. He doesn’t object when you chain yourself to him after using fake snow in a magic spell to lure him into your arms.
The fake snow is colder and wetter and heavier than she’d thought it would be. Much more like real snow. Fenny has been muttering something against her neck. Either I love you or else What the hell were you thinking, Miranda?
It’s both. He’s saying both. It’s fake snow and real. Real snow mingling with the fake. Her fake magic and real magic. Coming down heavier and heavier until all the world is white. The air, colder and colder and colder still.
“Something’s happening, Fenny,” she says. “It’s snowing. Really snowing.”
It’s as if he’s turned to stone in her arms. She can feel him stop breathing. But his heart is racing. “Let me go,” he says. “Please let me go.”
“I can’t,” Miranda says. “I don’t have the key.”
“You can.” A voice like a bell, clear and sweet.
And here is the one Miranda has been waiting for. Fenny’s she. The one who catches foxes in traps. Never lets them go. The one who makes the rules.
It’s silly, perhaps, to be reminded in this moment of Elspeth, but that’s who Miranda thinks of when she looks up and sees the Lady who approaches, more Honeywell than any Honeywell Miranda has ever met. The presence, the puissance that Elspeth commands, just for a little while when Elspeth takes the stage, is a game. Elspeth plays at the thing. Here is the substance. Power is something granted willingly to Elspeth by her audience. Fenny’s Lady has it always. What a burden. Never to be able to put it down.
Can the Lady see what Miranda is thinking? Her gaze takes in all. Fenny keeps his head bowed. But his hands are in Miranda’s hands. He is in her kee
ping, and she will not let him go.
“I have no key,” Miranda says. “And he does not want to go with you.”
“He did once,” the Lady says. She wears armor, too, all made of ice. What a thing it would be, to dress this Lady. To serve her. She could go with Fenny, if the Lady let her.
Down inside the dress where the Lady cannot see, Fenny pinches the soft web between Miranda’s thumb and first finger. The pain brings her back to herself. She sees that he is watching her. He says nothing, only looks until Miranda finds herself again in his eyes.
“I went with you willingly,” Fenny agrees. But he doesn’t look at the Lady. He only looks at Miranda.
“But you would leave me now? Only speak it and I will let you go at once.”
Fenny says nothing. A rule, Miranda thinks. There is a rule here. “He can’t say it,” she says. “Because you won’t let him. So let me say it for him. He will stay here. Haven’t you kept him from his home for long enough?”
“His home is with me. Let him go,” the Lady says. “Or you will be sorry.” She reaches out a long hand and touches the chain around Miranda’s dress. It splinters beneath her featherlight touch. Miranda feels it give.
“Let him go and I will give you your heart’s desire,” the Lady says. She is so close that Miranda can feel the Lady’s breath frosting her cheek. And then Miranda isn’t holding Fenny. She’s holding Daniel. Miranda and Daniel are married. They love each other so much. Honeywell Hall is her home. It always has been. Their children under the tree, Elspeth whitehaired and lovely at the head of the table, wearing a dress from Miranda’s couture label.
Only it isn’t Elspeth at all, is it? It’s the Lady. Miranda almost lets go of Daniel. Fenny! But he holds her hands and she wraps her hands around his waist, tighter than before.
“Be careful, girl,” the Lady says. “He bites.”
Miranda is holding a fox. Scrabbling, snapping, blood breath at her face. Miranda holds fast.
Then: Fenny again. Trembling against her. “It’s okay,” Miranda says. “I’ve got you.”
But it isn’t Fenny after all. It’s her mother. They’re together in a small, dirty cell. Joannie says, “It’s okay, Miranda. I’m here. It’s okay. You can let go. I’m here. Let go and we can go home.”
“No,” Miranda says, suddenly boiling with rage. “No, you’re not here. And I can’t do anything about that. But I can do something about this.” And she holds on to her mother until her mother is Fenny again, and the Lady is looking at Miranda and Fenny as if they are a speck of filth beneath her slippered foot.
“Very well then,” the Lady says. She smiles, the way you would smile at a speck of filth. “Keep him then. For a while. But know that he will never again know the joy that I taught him. With me he could not be but happy. I made him so. You will bring him grief and death. You have dragged him into a world where he knows nothing. Has nothing. He will look at you and think of what he lost.”
“We all lose,” says an acerbic voice. “We all love and we all lose and we go on loving just the same.”
“Elspeth?” Miranda says. But she thinks, it’s a trap. Just another trap. She squeezes Fenny so hard around his middle that he gasps.
Elspeth looks at Fenny. She says, “I saw you once, I think. Outside the window. I thought you were a shadow or a ghost.”
Fenny says, “I remember. Though you had hardly come into your beauty then.”
“Such talk! You are going to be wasted on my Miranda, I’m afraid,” Elspeth says. “She’s more for the doing of things than for the telling of them. As for you, my lady, I think you’ll find you’ve been bested. Go and find another toy. We here are not your meat.”
The Lady curtseys. Looks one last time at Elspeth, Miranda. Fenny. This time he looks back. What does he see? Does any part of him move to follow her? His hand finds Miranda’s hand again.
Then the Lady is gone and the snow thins and blows away to nothing at all.
Elspeth blows out a breath. “Well,” she says. “You’re a stubborn girl, a good-hearted girl, Miranda, and brighter than your poor mother. But if I’d known what you were about, we would have had a word or two. Stage magic is well and good, but better to steer clear of the real kind.”
“Better for Miranda,” Fenny says. “But she has won me free with her brave trick.”
“And now I suppose we’ll have to figure out what to do with you,” Elspeth says. “You’ll be needing something more practical than that coat.”
“Come on,” Miranda says. She is still holding on to Fenny’s hand. Perhaps she’s holding on too tightly, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s holding on just as tightly.
So she says, “Let’s go in.”
TEN RULES FOR BEING AN INTERGALACTIC SMUGGLER (THE SUCCESSFUL KIND)
Holly black
Holly Black (blackholly.com) is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), the Modern Faerie Tale series, the Curse Workers series, Doll Bones, and The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. She has been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award and for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of both an Andre Norton Award and a Newbery Honor. Her new books are The Darkest Part of the Forest, a return to faerie fiction, and The Iron Trial, the first book in a middle grade fantasy series, Magisterium, coauthored by Cassandra Clare. Holly currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret door.
1. There are no rules.
THAT’S WHAT YOUR uncle tells you, after he finds you stowing away in his transport ship, the Celeris, which you used to call the Celery when you were growing up, back when you only dreamed of getting off the crappy planet your parents brought you to as a baby. No matter how many times you told them their dumb dream of being homesteaders and digging in the red dirt wasn’t yours, no matter how many times you begged your uncle to take you with him, even though your parents swore that he was a smuggler and bad news besides, it wasn’t until you climbed out of your hidey-hole with the vastness of space in the transparent alumina windows behind you that anyone really believed you’d meant any of it.
Once you’re caught, he gives you a long lecture about how there are laws and there’s right and wrong, but those aren’t rules. And, he says, there are especially no rules for situations like this. Which turns out to be to your advantage, because he’s pissed but not that pissed. His basic philosophy is to laugh in the face of danger and also in the face of annoyance. And since he thinks his brother is a bit of a damp rag and likes the idea of being a hero to his niece, it turns out that no rules means not turning around and dumping you back on Mars.
He also turns out to be a smuggler. Grudgingly, you have to admit that your parents might not be wrong about everything.
2. Spaceports are dangerous.
YOUR UNCLE TELLS you this several times as you dock in the Zvezda-9 Spaceport, but it’s not like you don’t know it already. Your parents have told you a million stories about how alien races like the spidery and psychopathic Charkazaks – fugitives after their world was destroyed by InterPlanetary forces – take girls like you hostage and force you to do things so bad, they won’t even describe them. From all your parents’ warnings about spaceports, when you step off of Celeris, you expect a dozen shady aliens to jump out of the shadows, offering you morality-disrupting powders, fear inhibitors, and nucleus accumbens stimulators.
Except it turns out that spaceports aren’t that interesting. Zvezda-9 is a big stretch of cement tunnels, vast microgravity farms, hotel pods, and general stores with overpriced food that’s either dehydrated or in a tube. There are also InterPlanetary offices, where greasy-looking people from a variety of worlds wait in long lines for licenses. They all stare at your homespun clothes. You want to grab your uncle’s hand, but you already feel like enough of a backworld yokel, so you curl your fingers into a fist instead.
There are aliens – it wasn’t like your parents were wrong about that. Most of
them look human and simultaneously inhuman, and the juxtaposition is so odd that you can’t keep from staring. You spot a woman whose whole lower face is a jagged-toothed mouth. A man with gray-skinned cheeks that grow from his face like gills or possibly just really strange ears loads up a hovercart nearby, the stripes on his body smeared so you know they are paint and not pigmentation. Someone passes you in a heavy, hairy cloak, and you get the impression of thousands of eyes inside of the hood. It’s creepy as hell.
You do not, however, see a single Charkazak. No one offers you any drugs. “Stop acting stupid,” your uncle growls, and you try to act less stupid and keep from staring. You try to act like you stroll around spaceports all the time, like you know how to use the gun you swiped from your mother and strapped to your thigh under your skirt, like the tough expression you plaster on your face actually makes you tough. You try to roll your hips and swagger, like you’re a grown lady, but not too much of a lady.
Your uncle laughs at you, but it’s a good kind of laughter, like at least you’re sort of maybe pulling it off.
Later that night, he buys you some kind of vat-meat tacos, and he and some of his human ‘transporter’ buddies get to drinking and telling stories. They tell you about run-ins with space pirates and times when the InterPlanetary Centurions stopped their ships, looking for illicit cargo. Your uncle has a million stories about narrow getaways and hidey-holes, in addition to a large cast of seedy accomplices able to forge passable paperwork, but who apparently excel at getting him into dangerous yet hilarious situations. You laugh your way into the night.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine Page 10
