“Don’t apologize,” he says. “We will be joined soon enough.”
Then he turns and stalks away, leaving a trail of crushed brown footprints in his wake.
He’s gone a few seconds later, down the corridor without a second glance back. Is he for real? He just wandered off and left me out here?
“I wouldn’t, were I you.”
The voice comes from my left. I glance over to see a statue of a minotaur on a pedestal, all white alabaster. The beast’s head turns toward me. That’s when I realize it’s not all stone—the giant double-headed ax it holds is definitely steel and definitely sharp.
“Strict orders. You are not to leave.”
I sigh internally.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say to the statue. “It’s so welcoming here.”
Of course he’d have you guarded. Then, before the thing can get suspicious—if a creature of stone can even get suspicious—I step into my room and close the door to my own little prison.
The room is exactly how it was when I was first locked here: moss carpet, draped bed, bookshelves filled with gibberish and great picture windows overlooking the statue-filled gardens. Moonlight shines in through the windows—not entirely certain how that works, seeing as dusk was barely settling in the hall—and the light makes slashes across the room, shadows of hedges rustling in the night breeze. I walk over to the windows and nearly scream when it’s not a shadow that moves in the corner of my room, but the statue it stains.
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss, reaching a hand to my heart as the statue steps forward. “Pan, what the hell are you doing here?”
Pan gives a little bow when he emerges in the moonlight, all four foot nothing of him. He’s adorable, in an “I could headbutt you into oblivion” sort of way—tiny little goat hooves and furry legs, bare muscled torso, and two nubs of horns sticking out of his curly stone hair.
“Oberon said you would be arriving soon,” he says with a mischievous smile. “He required a guard for the interior of your chambers, so of course I offered my services.” The grin slides from his face when he registers my expression. “Are you okay, Oracle? Has he hurt you?”
It’s like every nerve inside of me releases at once. All the tension, all the fear and stoic resolve, all of it drops to the ground as I drop to my knees. Pan is there in an instant.
“There, there,” he says, his arm over my shoulders. “Tell old Pan all about it. We’ll get through this, whatever it is.”
I don’t know what spurs me to speak. Maybe it’s the fact that he helped me before, or the knowledge that he was, in another lifetime, my only friend. Or maybe it’s just the exhaustion, the sheer hopelessness of my life. I lean into his shoulder and tell him. Everything. And I don’t stop until my words dissolve into tears.
* * *
“I’ll help,” he says. It’s the first thing Pan’s said since I started my tirade, and his words halt my tears in their tracks.
“What do you mean?” I ask, wiping my eyes clear.
“Exactly what I said.”
“I can’t let you do that,” I say. “If Oberon finds out you helped me escape—”
“What could he possibly do?” Pan asks. “I’m a statue, Vivienne. At worst, he’ll force me into the mortal world to collect pigeon shit. If it means getting you out of here—for good—it’s more than worth the risk.”
I shake my head. “Not if I’m just going to be coming back.”
He studies me for a moment.
“You have to die to be reborn,” he finally says. “If you stay with the show, you won’t die.”
“If I stay with the show, he’ll burn it down and kill everyone I love.”
Pan squares his shoulders and stands up straighter.
“Vivienne. You are the Oracle. The assassin. If you have control over your powers, there’s nothing Oberon can do to stand against you. I saw you when you were in your prime. You were a goddess of the most vengeful sort.”
I can’t help the smile that flits across my face. The idea of kicking Oberon’s ass is a divine mental image. And if I get Kingston to Mab’s care, those powers are mine. Then the smile falters.
“There’s only one problem: I can’t get out of here. There’s a guard at the door and more outside. I’m trapped.”
“But I’m not,” Pan says. “I can get you the chimera’s blood easily enough. Oberon doesn’t keep a store, but the beast shouldn’t pose too much of a threat.”
“And Kingston?”
“Just leave it to me.” He grins wickedly. “I can’t wait to see Oberon’s face once you’ve escaped. It will make my decade.” Then, before I can ask for any more specifics, the faun kisses me on the forehead and bounds across the room, hopping through the leaping window and disappearing into the courtyard below.
I watch until his shadow slides in with the hedges, then look down to Zal curled around my wrist.
“Did you hear that, Kingston?” I whisper. “We’re coming to save you.”
And then, hopefully, you’ll be able to save me.
Chapter Seventeen: Die Another Day
I pace back and forth for what feels like hours, but might only be ten minutes. Hard to tell, what with the enchanted moon not moving in the sky and absolutely no clocks anywhere. Save for one, but it doesn’t tell the time.
I pull out Oberon’s magical pocket watch and hold it up to the moonlight. The brass glints, emeralds and rubies glow. I was going to wait until Pan came back, but who knows how long that will take? I might just drive myself insane before his return. I might as well do what I can to prepare.
“If this holds the history of your kingdom,” I mutter to an imaginary Oberon, “then maybe it will hold all your secrets, too.”
I flip it open. The interior is filled with intricate gears and numerous hands, shifting golden symbols and dials that make no sense. I don’t know how it works, but it’s my only shot at learning what Oberon did to his kids to make them controllable. If I can figure that out—like if he has an enchanted ring or magical object—maybe I can turn them against him. I rotate the dials back and forth, watching the hands move and the constantly changing symbols on the face shift and shimmer. I’m assuming the chicken-scratch writing is Elvish or something; none of it makes any sense, but I’m hoping this works on instinct or need. I keep spinning the gears, keep Oberon’s children focused in my mind. Then, after a few moments of fiddling, the sound of ticking fills my ears and the world fades out to the cadence.
* * *
The night is dark and deep, the halls of Oberon’s kingdom empty, open, like gullets of monsters just waiting for tribute. There is no moonlight beyond the open windows. The night breeze carries only the scent of dust and dirt, like the wind forgot to touch the night blossoms bursting in shadow.
We walk down the hall, the shadowed figure and I. Our footsteps make the memory waver, each step a tick of the clock, each tick bringing us closer to a door. A wooden door at the hall’s end. A door carved in flowers and birds.
From behind the door comes the terrified scream of a child.
Our footsteps halt. I glance to the robed figure beside me. Oberon, clothed in dark cotton, garbed like a reaper. He doesn’t run toward the door at the scream. He halts, goes still as a statue. He is featureless in the shadows, but the tension he exudes is palpable. Oberon slides against the wall, loses himself to darkness.
Shift.
I stand in a room with three tiny beds. Three tiny beds lit by three tiny lamps; three tiny beds holding three tiny bodies, each wrapped in blankets and staring at the window in horror.
Staring at a figure I know all too well: Mab.
She stands in all her glory, leather and lace and studded spaulders, her black hair wild and green eyes glinting in the firelight. Her face is a mask of malice, her smile a fierce slash. When she steps forward, one of the children screams again. But Oberon doesn’t come in. I know he stands outside the door, but he doesn’t come to help.
“Hello, lovelies,”
Mab says. Her voice creeps into my bones, makes me shiver despite the distance of time. There’s something twitchy in her movements, an agitation I’ve never seen before. It’s familiar, in a dissonant sort of way. “I think it’s time we took a little trip.”
She snaps her fingers. Ropes appear from nowhere, wrap themselves around the screaming children, blankets and all.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It will only hurt for a few hundred years.”
The door bursts open then. Not Oberon. A woman in a nightgown. A woman with cloven hooves and buds of antlers on her head.
“Mama!” one of the children screams. “Mama, help!”
There’s only a moment’s pause, when Titania looks between her children and Mab. Then she runs forward, toward Mab, her teeth bared.
Mab flicks her wrist. Titania flies, slams against the wall. Paintings shake. Concrete cracks. Titania slides to the ground, a smear of dark blood marring the wall behind her.
Titania doesn’t move again.
“Mama!” comes another scream, this one tinged with tears. “Mama! Daddy!”
“Come, little ones,” Mab says. She waves her hand; the three small bundled babes lift from their beds, hover in the air. They float toward Mab like will-o’-the-wisps, bobbing gently on. She walks to the open window and steps up to the sill. Then off of it. She hovers in the night, her hair billowing out in a dark halo. “Say good-bye to Summer.”
Then she glides off, the three children flying out behind her.
Only then does Oberon rush into the room. He calls out to his children. They scream back, “Daddy, Daddy!” but he doesn’t move from the open window. He stares out, one hand outreached, grasping for air. He calls their names, “Cortis! Helena! Javits!” but they are too far away. They dance away into the night, toward Winter.
Shift.
We are in a field. But it is not Mab’s Kingdom. It is the Wildness—the trees here shuffle and scratch at empty skies and barren earth. Lights float among the branches. Whispers in the distance.
Mab stands in a clearing. Three holes in the ground, three concrete caskets, and three floating bundles above each open coffin.
“It’s not your fault, little ones,” Mab says as she coaxes the bound bodies into the caskets. “If you had never been born, you wouldn’t be involved. But this is what happens when you defy the Winter Kingdom. This is what happens when you defy Queen Mab.”
The children aren’t screaming. Ropes bind their mouths. At least, until they’re safely inside the coffins and the concrete lids slide into place. Then the ropes must disappear. I can hear their muffled screams, their pitiful thumping against the sides.
Mab’s face goes slack as the coffins slide into the ground. There’s no victory in her green eyes; no, the spark is gone. “It’s not your fault, little ones,” Mab repeats. “If you had never been born. If you had never been born…” Even as she speaks, her face retains its indifferent glaze.
The children don’t stop screaming. When the ground closes over them and tangled thorns cover the mounds, I swear I hear the echoes.
Mab doesn’t move. She doesn’t smile in victory. “Little ones,” she says, then goes silent, her mouth still ajar.
Then a firefly drifts through the branches, alights on her studded shoulder.
And in that instant, Mab disintegrates. All that’s left is a pile of leaves and rotted twigs. That’s when Oberon steps out of the shadows. He kicks the pile of leaves with one bare foot and stares at the mounds of earth.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But this had to be done.”
Then he turns and leaves, treading through all that remains of Mab’s Construct.
* * *
I gasp as the pocket watch goes silent in my hands. My heart is cold as everything else ticks into place. Oberon waiting in the shadows; Mab’s strange, jerky movements. And then the pile of twigs and leaves once Mab’s job was done. I’ve seen it before. Hell, I’ve had it used against me.
“Oberon, you bastard,” I mutter.
“The Summer Court loves making human look-alikes,” Kingston once said, “always playing God…”
Rage fills me. Oberon made a Construct of Mab. He watched in the shadows as his machination stole his children and killed his lover. And then, I’m sure, he rescued them years later, after their transformation was complete.
There was no secret talisman, no spell to keep them under control.
The demons follow Oberon because he’s their savior. He made them believe their torment was Mab’s doing. He turned them into weapons, each of them trained on Mab and Mab alone. He devised all of it. All of it to get back at Mab.
Pan opens the door moments later.
“Vivienne, what…?” he asks as the door clicks behind him.
It’s only then that I realize the pocket watch is destroyed. A pool of brass and gemstones lies at my feet; moss burns under the liquid metal. But I don’t smell it. I only smell the brimstone of Oberon’s greatest betrayal.
I don’t comprehend what Pan’s holding at first. His alabaster hands are muddied with purple, and in the candlelight it looks like he’s holding a dirty sock. He walks over slowly, holding the parcel in cupped hands, like an offering. That’s when I notice the limp. That’s when I see the chunk of stone missing from his shoulder.
“Pan,” I whisper. I hurry over to him and drop to my knees, the rage from what the pocket watch showed me momentarily forgotten.
“Tricky beasts, those chimera,” he mutters. He stumbles forward; I catch him just in time. I nearly drop him—he’s heavier than he looks. “You think you’re watching the right head, then the other snaps you from behind.” He looks up at me. “I couldn’t get a vial, I’m afraid. Damn thing smashed them all. But I think there’s enough on me to work.”
I tear my eyes from his scratched face to the object in his hands. A mouse. A little, bloodstained mouse.
“Pan, is that…?”
“Kingston,” he says, nodding. “Thought it might be fastest this way.” He glances to the metallic pool glinting behind me. “What was that?”
“Oberon’s watch,” I say. I can’t look away from the mouse, from Kingston. He looks so fragile, so small. I reach out with one shaky hand but can’t bring myself to touch it. Zal writhes on my wrist. “He turned his own children. Framed Mab. Killed Titania.”
Pan goes silent. I catch his dead stare.
“What?” I ask.
“I thought as much,” he whispers. “Many of us did, but who would refute the word of the Summer King? Mab would never step upon his lands. If she had, he would have led a war against her. Instead, he did nothing. Just told us to wait.” Pan looks up to me and holds out Kingston. “You don’t have much time. The blood will wear off in a few hours, and you must be out of here by then.”
“But I don’t know the way.”
Pan nods to the tattoo on my wrist. “It does.”
I shake my head. “No, the demons will see.”
“I’ll occupy the demons,” Pan says. He gestures again with Kingston. “Become a bird. A hawk. Take him and fly, follow the familiar. It will guide you back to Mab.”
I take Kingston from him, delicate and light as a flower. As I do, Zal unwinds from my skin, floats out into the air like a dim golden ribbon.
“I hope I never see you again,” Pan says. When I look to him, there’s a smile on his face laced with sadness.
“Likewise, old friend,” I say.
He wraps me in a strong yet gentle hug, careful not to jostle Kingston from my grasp. It might be my imagination, but I’m pretty certain he sniffles.
“What’s going to happen to you?” I ask. “If Oberon finds out?”
Pan’s grin shifts from sad to mischievous, every bit the imp from stories.
“He’ll have more than enough on his plate after tonight. I’ll be the least of his worries.” He winks. “Now, I’m afraid you’ll have to lick my arm. The blood’s still fresh. Remember, think of a hawk.”
I nod. I glan
ce at Zal, who’s looking at me with impatient eyes. Clearly, now that his master is free, he wants back home.
Then, before I can get grossed out by what I’m about to do, I close my eyes and picture a fierce hawk. I lick the cold, viscous blood from Pan’s arm.
The moment my tongue touches the first bubble of blood on his marble flesh, static burns across my lips. It charges down my throat, casts lightning over my nerves, and then I’m sinking, sinking, my bones twisting and snapping as the world explodes in a thousand new colors. It lasts forever, the agony of every muscle twitching, every synapse burning. And then, a breath, and I’m no longer human.
Everything is acute, the world a rainbow of colors my human eyes had never seen. I stretch my arms, my wings, see the small form of Kingston in front of me. I pick him up in one claw, my body and brain somehow in sync, somehow able to move these jointed feet and powerful wings.
“Fly true,” Pan says, and his voice is loud, a hundred layers of a hundred pitches. I cock my head to him, hope he notices the nod. Then I focus on the glowing form of Zal, which now looks more godlike than serpentine, his glow radiant. I spread my wings. Flap once. And then we’re soaring out the open window, leaving Oberon and his shattered kingdom far, far behind.
* * *
The flight back to the Wildness is an explosion of light and color and sound, one I can barely comprehend even as it happens. All I can do to keep myself from falling into prismatic madness is to focus on the ever-shifting form of Zal. When the golden apparition finally enters the dark woods of the Wildness my head is exploding, but it’s not just with the sights and sounds and scents of a forest suddenly come alive. There’s a burning in my bones, a static that stretches me from claw to wingtip to beak. Sparks streak across my eyes and blur the world like tears. I know I release Kingston as his weight leadens under my faltering grasp. I know Zal curls above a stone as big as a hill. And I know the feeling of earth as it shatters over me and I’m rolling, the world a whorl of dirt and magic.
The Immortal Circus: Final Act (Cirque des Immortels) Page 18
