With a Kiss

by Stephanie Fowers

  Chapter Eighteen

  My arms are withered and thin,

  My hair once golden is grey;

  'Tis winter—my reign doth begin—

  Youth's summer has faded away.

  —Donald Alexander Mackenzie, Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend

  "Well, well, Hobany." The Snow Queen laughed and he did too, though a little cautiously. "You weren't going to actually kiss her, were you?"

  His eyes grew serious at that and he refused to answer.

  "I can't trust you to do anything. Why do you think I sent Gan?" She gave a mean smile. "Someone had to trick the trickster." The Snow Queen picked up her ornate skirts and circled her son, frost curling over the ground everywhere her ice slippers touched. Her hand sliced forward, and she ripped Hobs' medallion away from his neck with nails as sharp as icicles. "Stupid thing stopped me from keeping better tabs on you. I'll never make that mistake again!"

  "Mother, you're overreacting. I was going to bring her to you."

  Excuse me?

  "Overreacting?" she cried. The medallion twisted through her white fingers. "Don't you tell me I'm overreacting! I raised you for better things than this . . . this . . . oaf! Tell me this isn't some cruel joke, this pitiful reenactment of Beauty and the Beast!"

  I gulped. Beauty and the Beast? I didn't know the Sidhe version of the story. I knew the faerytale—it was about two star-crossed lovers, not the betrayal of a baby. I didn't think it fit us at all—unless Hobs was the beast! It would explain why he had been so difficult in the beginning, but looking at his face and the way he watched me now, it was hard to imagine he meant me harm.

  Babs was waking up. She stretched on the ground, her silky hair spread over my coat and the blankets Hobs had dropped over her. Hobs must've turned against his mother for her. Who wouldn't fall for our little imp?

  "Oh c'mon, Mother. She can't love. You made sure of that. What are you so worried about?"

  My heart lurched at that. Poor Babs. She was just a little girl stuck in the middle of a crown war. The hag could take her curses and choke on them! None of this was Babs' fault. The little girl wiped the sleep from her eyes, looking up at me. I tried to break away from the hag's soldiers to get to her, but Cyclops stood in my way. His eyes watered, and I remembered that he was allergic to humans. It made me want to rub my hands all over his creepy face.

  "Unless you try to break the curse. Then she can love!" His mother shrieked at her son. "The ice I put in her has melted. Any fool can see that. Did you do that to her? You wanted to claim her power for yourself. That's what this is!"

  Of course, the ice had melted. Babs couldn't rule unless she loved a mortal—me—and she did. Hobs was her prince, and he would rule with her. I had played right into his hands.

  Bugul, poor mute Bugul, had tried to warn us, and now he was missing because Hobs had tricked him too. And I almost let that traitor kiss me! Never, never fall in love with a faery . . . or at the very least, don't let them kiss you! I remembered the first faery kiss I had witnessed. It banished the faery queen's lover from the Otherworld. Was Hobs going to do that to me too? Now that I had melted the ice in Babs' heart, he didn't need me anymore . . . and then the love of mortals fades from view. That's how he'd get rid of me. He even warned me against faery kisses. It was all such a cruel joke!

  "Hobsh?" Babs was finally aware of what was happening. Her cheek was red from the cold ground. She turned from him to me, looking scared. "Halley?"

  I tried to shove past Cyclops, but he stopped me with a beefy hand. "Where you going?" He tried to threaten me back with his hard eye.

  I refused to let him intimidate me. "Leave her alone! She's just a kid."

  "She cares for the girl?" The Snow Queen gaped at me with horror. "Disobedient boy. I should've known your word meant nothing." She turned her icy eyes on him, and his lips turned even bluer. His breath came out in a mist, but still he met her glare in defiance.

  She wouldn't turn her own son into an ice cube, would she? "Don't hurt him!" I shouted out, surprising even myself.

  The Snow Queen's expression grew haunted, and she studied her son with new loathing. "No, it couldn't be you." She exhaled, filling the air with frost. "I am a fool. You would know it as soon as you touched her! You are this oaf's consort. And I sent you to her?"

  Cyclops' hands were the size of tree branches, and they clawed into fists. His hideous eye rolled up into his eyelid until it went red. Hobs shouted out a warning before falling to his knees—his frozen legs couldn't support his weight. "No, Balor! Stop!"

  Beams of intense red light shot from the Cyclops' eye. I twisted and felt the heat shoot out at me, but then something weird happened. It deflected off my shoulder and hit Cyclops full in the chest. He grunted and fell flat to the ground. Had I done that? My chest heaved from the exertion.

  "Protection from the good faery queen," the hag's minions whispered.

  "Good?" the queen snarled. They fell back at her wrath. "The child." She spun from me to glare down at Babs. "She has no protection from the faery queen. The two go together! Get her and you have the other."

  The wolves swarmed in, and Hobs held out an ineffectual hand. His teeth chattered, but still he tried to stop his mother. He pushed up from the ground, but his body was freezing, and there was no way he could get to us. Cyclops drew a saw-toothed dagger and turned it menacingly on me.

  "Balor," Hobs hissed at the Cyclops. "Don't." The Cyclops ignored him, lunging, but I maneuvered deftly away, knowing I had to get to Babs. His vision was blinded by his watering eye. His allergies were the only thing I had going for me.

  "Run!" I shouted to Babs.

  She held out her hands to me. "Halley! Halley! Don't leave me!"

  It would kill me to be separated from her, but she had to escape. I couldn't fight them off forever. "Go! Please!" I shouted at her. "Run while you can!" She scrambled to her feet, kicking the blankets from her little snow boots to run, and I saw the Grim coming in from the outskirts of the forest to meet her. "No! Stop!" I cried. "Don't go!"

  Babs hesitated, not sure what to do. Tears streamed down her face. Her ragged breath shook her small frame. She wouldn't make it out there in the dark woods without me. I couldn't even survive out there. Only when the princess knew who she was would she have power, but it was useless. I had failed her. I had no idea who she was.

  The wolves circled me, growling. I had tried every name I could think of, everything but . . . "Beauty!" I borrowed it from the Snow Queen. Her head twisted around at my guess and she guffawed. Hobs glared at her, but there was nothing he could do to help us. He collapsed to the cold snow, choking with the pain.

  "Your names have no power here," the queen told me.

  "Babs! You're Babs!" It was a long shot and I watched for some sort of reaction from my girl, but there was nothing. I had it all wrong, didn't I? I just wanted to break the curse and give Babs back her power, but I was losing her. She loved me, but it was no good. I didn't have the power to give my kid a name. If I didn't help her, she could never rule. I would disappear and it would all be in vain.

  The delicate little waifs got to her first and plucked her off the ground. The redhead had Babs in her arms and I cried out when they dragged her away from me. The tiara over my head wracked me in agony. They tucked her in a sled carved from ice.

  "Halley! Halley! Hobsh!" she sobbed. Her small fingers wrapped around the rope on the sled. "Help me!"

  I couldn't fight them with my head throbbing so badly, but I couldn't let the Snow Queen know it. I tried to bluff them. "I'm her protector and keeper," I cried. "I won't let you hurt her."

  The Snow Queen gave me a secretive smile that reminded me painfully of her son. He glowered up at her, doubled over. He couldn't talk anymore, couldn't give me an idea of what to do. "What will you give me in exchange?" she asked me.

  "What do you want?"

  "Your promise. Your promise that you will not fight me."

  Never break a promise to a
faery, the tiara reminded me. Could I do it? Would it be enough to save Babs? I turned to study her face. Tears stained her baby soft cheeks. All my fear and distrust returned tenfold. Was this what love did to us—made us helpless? Love would make me more vulnerable than I had ever been. Being normal was the worst thing ever.

  "You cannot love," the Snow Queen whispered, "for if you do, the love of mortals fades from view." I blanched. I recognized that alright. That was Babs' curse. The hag laughed.

  I glared. No. They might take Babs away from me, but my love would never fade. I wouldn't stop loving her. The pain I felt would never belong to this little girl. I couldn't let them hurt her, even if it hurt me in the end. "And if I make that promise, you won't hurt her?" I asked the hag. Her forehead wrinkled in confusion, but she nodded. "Then you must promise Hobs!" I shouted. "Promise your son that you won't hurt her!" He was a faery. No matter if they were on the same team, if the witch gave Hobs a promise, she'd have to keep to it.

  She rolled her eyes, but did it anyway. "Hobs, my good, young, faithful son, I promise I won't hurt this little girl if I get the promise that I've asked from her keeper."

  Relief filled me at her words and I breathed in deeply. "Then I promise that I will not fight you."

  The look Hobs gave me filled me with about a million self-doubts. "What . . . have you done?" he got out.

  "Are you kidding? You didn't really give me a choice, Hobs. What were you planning on doing with Babs if it wasn't this? Did you plan on stealing what was rightfully hers?"

  The witch's laughter sounded like the tinkling of bells and was just as annoying. "What would my son want with that child—a human?" Her mouth twisted into an ugly smirk. "It's you he wants." Her sneer punctuated each word like a knife. "Don't you know who you are, little changeling?"

  I stopped short, my head reeling as I tried to digest what she was saying. A changeling was a faery child switched at birth with a human. I knew that much from Midsummer Night's Dream. But that was supposed to be Babs, so who had she swapped lives with? Or had I swapped my life with hers? I trembled with the realization. Was that why I had faery sight? I was one? But why now? What had changed? I knew the answer. My mother's kiss.

  My knees buckled. The faery queen was calling me her baby, not Babs. I circled to the one who I considered mine. Babs looked fragile under the hands of the witch's followers. She looked human. Was that what my mother was trying to tell me, that my destiny was hers? It didn't seem possible that we had been switched at birth. Babs was so young . . . because humans couldn't be touched by the years here.

  "I knew it," one of the wolves growled under his breath. I dumbly watched the paws exchange money.

  It was just a bet to them. And to me? My whole life had just changed. I pieced everything together. My distrust. My sickness at birth. The curse. My happy family of tall blonde sisters. Babs fit in perfectly with them. She belonged with them. How could the witch be so heartless as to rip her from their arms and replace her with me? Babs could have grown up happy and fulfilled. And me? What of me? I was supposed to be here in this cold place. Somehow it all fit, though I desperately didn't want it to. I felt a loss so painful that I tried to push it back, but it was impossible. My family wasn't really my family.

  "You didn't know, did you?" The Snow Queen looked mildly amused. "My son told you nothing. How charming."

  "You weren't ready," Hobs told me through chattering teeth. "You still aren't . . . I had no choice . . ." He gave his mother a look of fury.

  She cooed at him. "Look at you, my dear. You're freezing. Let me kiss it better." She had already numbed him with the first kiss and she leaned down to deliver a second. "I can no longer give you my protection, Hobany, I'm so sorry."

  He tried to pull back. "Mother . . ."

  "I can't have you turning on me, again." She kissed him on his right cheek and he groaned in pain. "Stop fighting me," she hissed, "or I'll do more than take away your powers, my darling."

  "What will you do? Kiss me to death?"

  Her lips hesitated over him. "I will save you from yourself, Hobany. I hereby banish you from this dreary place. Send you some place . . . safer." With that, she gave him a final kiss on his left cheek. He glared up at her with a tortured look, gasping for air as thousands of ant-sized sprites circled him in a cloud, flying faster and faster until he blurred before our eyes and disappeared into a flurry of snow.

  At my separation from him, my arms grew instantly pale and then frosted over. The frost then fell off me in a sprinkle of dust until my skin went normal. The nymph kisses were gone. "Hobs," I whispered. Losing him hurt worse than his betrayal. What had he done to me? Before, I couldn't feel, and now . . .

  The wolves pawed through the backpack, taking anything of value. The cotton, the frog's breath, the nymph kisses. Glasses hesitated at the book of faerytales, sniffing at it until he finally clamped onto it with his drooling canines. My earrings and bracelets they left on the ground where other scavenging faeries could find them. I didn't see the love potion anywhere. Maybe Hobs had used it on me already. But no, what I felt for him was very real. I just didn't want it.

  The Snow Queen frowned at me. She stepped into the sled with Babs, winding the reins around her delicate fingers.

  "Why are you taking her?" I had to somehow bargain her back. "She's just a human. Give her to me."

  She clucked her tongue. "Oh, you can't be separated from her, can you? Don't ask me why your mother did that. She must like to see you in pain, since she never told you the truth. She has made all of us suffer, and now it's your turn. It hurts, doesn't it? Just like love. Remember that the next time you're tempted to try it again."

  "Halley!" Babs called out to me.

  "She is not Halley," the witch told her impatiently. "You are!" I cried out when the sled pulled away with a crack of a whip. It drifted higher and higher in the sky in a flurry of snow. The pain screamed through my head. This pain was my destiny. It wasn't with Babs. Her destiny to rule the Sidhe was never hers, but mine. The thought ran through my mind until I sobbed for mercy.

  "You have no power here," the witch's voice echoed above me, just like it had from the rafters in the Omak stage in my hometown—no, not my home. Babs'. She was lost in the clouds of the Sidhe, and I felt her drift farther away. "Leave this place, girl . . . or die!" The hag cackled. I felt the painful reality of it in my mind. "You know nothing of this place, nothing of who you are."

  Who did? And now that I knew, I still didn't. I couldn't save Babs. Hobs was banished far away, and I couldn't help either of them. And worse, without them I was lost. How could I even save myself?