Because You Love To Hate Me

by Ameriie

  “Men,” this formidable creature observed. “Human men in the Forest of Erl.”

  The pointed ears marked him as an erl, but the black eyes were the true seal of his heritage. Maggot holes into oblivion. This could only be the Erl-queen’s son.

  Isaac thrust his sword forward, gripping it in a white-knuckled hand. He had seen the fanciful illustrations of elves in Punch, but he had never felt such terror as he did when he beheld their prince with his own eyes. No drawing could capture the way the creature bled the warmth from the air around them, the sense that he was more element than being, the certainty that he had no business taking the form of a man. He had been here since the world was new. All this Isaac knew from only a glance.

  “We have come for Marigold Beath,” Isaac said. His hand shook. “Tell us where you took her.”

  “Don’t speak to it, Isaac.” George’s pistol was aimed between those ghastly eyes. “It has no power over metal.”

  “Is that so, man of flesh?” the Erl-queen’s son purred. “People will believe almost anything if they hear it in a coffeehouse. If rumor has it, then it must be true. Do you believe everything you hear about Erl-folk, Isaac Fairfax?” He took a step toward them. “Do you believe everything you hear about me?”

  The eyes were on him now, penetrating his soul. Isaac swallowed the sour taste that was rising in his gorge. When he looked into those eyes, he saw a world without order. He saw the chaos of prehistory. Despite what the gossips had whispered, he could not imagine this . . . thing in the brothels of Covent Garden.

  “Tell us—” His mouth was so dry. “Tell us where you took Marigold, damn you.”

  “Marigold Beath is safe,” was the calm rejoinder, “just as Princess Alice was. How cruel of you, it was, to take Alice away! She left without injury, but Marigold is older. She has tasted our food and sipped our honey. If she leaves the forest, she will die.”

  “Lies,” George sneered. “You bewitched the princess, and you stole my sister. Take us to her at once, or I will help the Erl-queen understand how it feels to lose a member of one’s family.”

  The Erl-queen’s son tilted his head. “Oh my. Do you mean to break your own queen’s law?”

  “The laws of England have never helped me. Neither have they helped my sister.” George locked gazes with the fiend. “Marigold needs her brother.”

  “Or does her brother need her, George Beath?”

  Isaac stared. There was one thing the gossips had painted with some accuracy: the smile of thorns. It was as if the stem of a rose had been stripped and each thorn pressed into coal-black gum. A red tongue licked over them.

  “She will not be pleased that you have come for her,” the Erl-prince said. “She does not speak well of you, gentlemen. Not at all.”

  How did the Erl-queen know of them already? Surely even sprites weren’t that quick on their feet. Isaac tried to find his voice—he was ready to plead for Marigold’s life, to fall to his knees and beg—but George’s patience snapped violently. Isaac cried “No” an instant too late; the bullet pierced the Erl-queen’s son where a man’s heart should be. He looked down at his chest with a sort of curiosity.

  “Oh, England,” he said. “When will you learn?”

  He crumbled into nothing. Isaac threw himself upon the heap of leaves.

  “George,” he choked out, “he might have led us to Marigold. Why in God’s name did you shoot him?”

  “He would have lured us into a trap,” George said curtly. “You saw his mouth. They speak of roses without thorns, but elves are roses without blooms.”

  “You killed her son. Their prince.” He hunted desperately through the leaves. “If this forces open war—”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, we are already at war, Isaac. My poor sister is a prisoner of it.” George kept his pistol close. “On your feet, now. Help me find a yew.”

  Isaac’s hands fell limp. “Yes. A yew.”

  He had almost forgotten that they were looking for one. Yes, they must find a yew and tear the bark from it, and the sprites would return and lead them to the Erl-queen.

  George extended his free hand. Isaac took it. Once he was upright, he used his cuff to smear away the sweat from his upper lip, tasting salt and fear. The leaves did not stir again.

  He could not consider the repercussions now. If he could come out of this with Marigold in his arms, and her gratitude to him, even treason would be a small thing.

  Yew. Yes, he knew what a yew tree looked like; he had seen them often enough as a boy in Surrey. He followed George farther into the gloom, staggering a little. When he looked over his shoulder, he could still make out the grass beyond the trees, and the light of the hansom cab beyond, but that light was ebbing.

  “George,” he said, “ought we to leave a trail?”

  “No, no. Once the Erl-queen is dead, her hold on the forest will be released.”

  “You know this for certain?”

  “Nothing is known for certain about the elves. This,” George said, “is intuition, and I trust mine implicitly. I trusted that you would love Marigold as fervently as she loved you, and was that not true? I trusted that you would one day make her a good husband, and I know that you will prove me right.” He stepped over a root. “You must ask her, after this, Isaac. You must marry her.”

  “This hardly seems the time for talk of marriage, George.”

  “You have delayed for too long. Marigold’s reputation will be in jeopardy by now.”

  Isaac had no room for these thoughts. “Her reputation?” For some absurd reason, he chuckled. The forest was addling his wits. “She was sent by royal decree, George. Surely nobody could question—”

  “Her honor was never in peril before, while I was there to protect you both, but she has been with the Erl-folk for three days,” George said, shooting him a doleful look. “Unchaperoned. Unprotected. You saw that creature. How . . . bestial it was.”

  “Marigold would never—”

  “Of course not, Ise, but London is a nest of gossips and busybodies. They will wonder how any woman’s virtue could survive in the company of such wildness. No one else will have her.”

  It was as George was saying this, in his earnest tone, that Isaac heard the music. At first it was gentle, almost imperceptible, but it soon engulfed his hearing. “Do you hear that?” he asked, but George had already pressed ahead, taking the lantern with him. Isaac turned drunkenly.

  “He called us cruel,” he murmured to no one in particular, “for taking Princess Alice away.”

  A light flared in the forest, blue and pulsing. He followed the song toward it without care, forgetting about George, about Marigold, about the Erl-queen’s son. Every faery tale warned of the voices of the elves, of stone circles concealed in grass that ensnared whatever stepped inside them—but although Isaac knew this, the knowledge was distant, so it hardly seemed like it mattered at all. The forest was safe, and there was something miraculous waiting for him where the blue light shone, something that would put an end to his anguish. All he needed to do was go to it . . .

  Soon he was following a stream, where iridescent fish were swimming. Their teeth were needles jutting out of their turned-down mouths. He waded in and cupped his hands, saw his own image in the water. The same face he had seen in the glass but happier, with bloodshot eyes.

  He blinked, and he was standing before the mouth of a cave. Giddy, he lurched into it. His gloved hands rasped against stone. He breathed in an ambrosial scent.

  Isaac, someone was calling. Isaac. The wind itself was whispering his name.

  “Marigold,” he said.

  Isaac.

  He forced his body through the cave, scrabbling at its walls, splashing through the stream. Blind and deaf, he dashed his head against a low rock, but the pain was washed away by the realization that Marigold was close. He would have her back. She would be his to love again.

  When he emerged, he shielded his eyes. Light was streaming from above him, glorious sunlight, softe
ned to amber where it fell through a canopy of ochre leaves. Birds were chirruping from low branches, which were laden with rainbows of fruit. Had it not been nighttime on the other side?

  He was standing in a sheltered glade, an Elysium in the depths of the forest—and all around him there were women and girls. A child with golden ringlets was laughing on the grass, her cheeks and brow flecked by the sunlight. Older girls, no more than fourteen, were fishing with spears. Others were dancing or picking fruit or making chains of wildflowers. One woman had a prune for a face and silver hair, and she held a newborn baby in her arms.

  They wore simple clothes. Many wore trousers, like men, or had their skirts bound up around their knees, while others were clad in dresses that looked for all the world like they were made of butterflies. He had never seen so many girls together without a chaperone. Was it a mirage? He was drunk on the cloying scent of flowers . . .

  And at the end of the stream, where water pooled deep and clear beside a waterfall, was a woman with hair that shone like the finest lacquer. She wore a gown of emerald-green silk, hitched up to bare her slim brown calves. She poured water over her hair from a jug, renewing its luster. Her head was tilted into the sunlight, and her eyes were closed. He could have stared at her forever, so peaceful did she look.

  “Marigold,” he breathed, because he could not bear to be silent. Then, louder: “Marigold!”

  Her head flicked to face him. Her eyes grew wide, and Isaac’s face broke into a smile. She was alive. He should admonish her for dressing so improperly, but instead he ran toward his treasure, arms outstretched to grasp her.

  She screamed.

  Isaac stopped dead. Marigold scrambled away from him, slinking down the rock until she was knee-deep in the water. “No. No,” she said. To the girls, she shouted, “Fetch the Erl-queen! Why on earth did none of you stop them?”

  The children in the glade sprang to their feet. “Mother,” they chorused. “Mother, help Marigold!”

  The plea was taken up all around them, until it echoed like a cry into the mouth of a bell. Isaac hardly noticed. All he could do was gaze at Marigold, and it seemed all she could do was gaze back, but there was nothing familiar left in her eyes. He looked upon a changeling.

  “Leave me, Isaac Fairfax,” she said in a tremulous voice. Her skirts drifted on the surface of the water. “Let me go.”

  “Marigold, you are bewitched.” He held out his hand. “The Erl-queen stole you. I can take you back.”

  “Back to what?” Marigold shook her head. “Back to a life as a scullery maid, rented for profit?” She sank deeper into the water. “She says he’ll murder me. George. He’s always longed to do it, you know. If I return to that world, I am not long for it. I pitied you once—you were deceived—but I cannot forgive you. I cannot forgive you for not seeing through George’s lie . . .”

  She had never spoken like this to him. The quake had left her voice. Now she sounded so cold, so hardened.

  “Lie,” he repeated. “Marigold, what on earth do you mean? Nobody rented you.”

  “Look to George. Look to your own heart. Did you never realize that when I wept, I wept because I was afraid—not happy?” She crossed her arms over herself, as if to shield her heart. It made her look so young, so fragile. So like his Marigold. “I know now. I know that I am whole, that I am strong, and I am free to make my life what I will. You will not take me, as Queen Victoria took Alice. As my father took me from my mother.”

  “Marigold, enough of this.” She must be addled by the Erl-queen’s feast, but he was beginning to feel angry. All this way he had come for her, and all she could do was call her own brother murderous and talk about the mother she had never known. “You are confused, my love. You are not yourself.”

  She raised her chin. “I believe I am best-placed to decide what I am. I am more myself than I ever was.”

  “You were perfect before.” His throat was full. “You are perfect, Marigold.”

  “No. I was compliant,” she said bitterly, “because that was what you wanted. He knew what you wanted, Isaac. My brother knows you like your women to be soft-spoken, to flatter you and simper for you!” Her hand struck through the water in frustration. Isaac flinched. “He blackmailed me. He saw me as his ruin, his mother’s death—in my cradle, I was poison to his name—and he meant me to pay for it. To pay my debt by marrying you, even if I had to spend the rest of my days in misery. He cared nothing for my happiness. Only his reputation.” Her face was contorted. “Oh, Isaac—do you still not see?”

  Tears were in her eyes; her teeth were bared in anger. Leaves were shifting in the glade. The children emptied baskets of them, carpeting the grass.

  This could not be Marigold.

  “He was using both of us, Isaac,” she spat. “He told me he would kill me, the first time, if I refused to do what you wanted . . . and after, he promised he would ruin me if I was not the perfect mistress. He would tell the Sinnetts we met, allow them to find us. He was the one who arranged our meetings, wasn’t he? He always knew where we were.” Marigold rose from the water. Rivulets streamed from her hair, soaking her sleeves. “He befriended you because he thought you were weak-willed. My brother has a silver tongue. If you married me—if you could be persuaded, in the end, to marry me—he believed the Beath family would be raised to its former glory. That he would no longer be in destitution.” She shook her head. “I was never yours. I do not love you. I never did. If you care for me at all, leave me.”

  Isaac was close to choking. “I cannot leave you.” He could not understand—would not understand. “George told me. He told me you loved me, that you wanted to see me—”

  “A scullery maid in a household you had never visited. When did I become besotted with you?”

  “You saw me through the window!”

  Now she looked pitying. “Do you really suppose that one can fall in love with a person through a window?”

  He could not stand this. He couldn’t look at her, knowing she would flee from him if he tried to take her in his arms again.

  “Marigold, come here.”

  Isaac was jolted from his memories. George had come into the glade. The children fled from him, crying for their mother.

  “George,” he said faintly.

  “Marigold,” George said, ignoring him, “you will stop making a fool of yourself and step out of the water. Come with us at once.”

  Marigold stumbled deeper into the pool, so the water came past her waist. “No, George,” she said, eyes flashing. “I have had enough of your threats—your scheming—”

  George clicked his tongue. “You see, Isaac. Bewitched, just as I said.” He strode toward her. She looked half wild with fear. “Marigold, I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  “Leave me be.”

  Isaac cringed at her shrill tone. This was not her voice, not Marigold. George was right.

  “You are becoming hysterical, sister.” George was always so calm, so unruffled. He fixed her with an unblinking stare, the sort one would use on a deer before shooting it. “Marigold, Isaac has given me his word that he will marry you when you return to England. You see? You will be Marigold Fairfax, a respectable lady of London, with a husband who adores you. Your reputation will not be ruined. And our family name will be restored. You’ll see.”

  But Isaac had never promised to marry her. George must know that it was impossible. He must always have known that Isaac was meant to court Anne, surely, yet he spoke of the possibility so often . . .

  “Reputation.” Marigold laughed. “Our father used my mother to slake his desire, stole her newborn child, and left her to rot—and she was not the only woman to suffer that fate.” Tears glossed her eyes for a fleeting instant before they turned to flint again. “You used me to get what you wanted. So did Isaac. Yet it is my reputation in peril. Do you truly wonder why I want to stay here?”

  George’s pistol pointed at her heart. “George,” Isaac cried. “How dare you threaten her?”


  “Don’t be a milksop. I will shoot her if it saves her life,” his friend snapped. “A decent surgeon will take out the bullet. She’ll only have a little scar.”

  “Shoot me, then,” Marigold said before Isaac could protest. “Shoot me. Like an honorable man.” She held out her hands. “He’ll kill me either way, Isaac. The Erl-queen knows the future. If you let him take me back, he will strangle me before I turn seventeen. He will tell you that I ran away to find my mother, that I drowned at sea, anything to make you forget. No one will know the truth.”

  His heart was breaking. He was a statue struck too hard by a chisel, splintering all over. His eyes grew hot and damp. George claimed he had done it all for her, so she might have a chance of love with a man above her station. Could his dear friend really have been little more than a procurer, a parasite with designs upon the Fairfax fortune? Had George truly believed Isaac would make Marigold his bride, even if it meant lowering his own reputation? It was more than he could bear. And he could not believe it of George, his friend . . .

  Wind murmured around them, carrying leaves with it. The light vanished from overhead, turning the mist the stern grey of pewter. Isaac felt a chill on his neck.

  A woman had appeared in the center of the glade. Earth cracked from her shoulders as she rose to her full height. Her skin was the darkest bark, her hair was a wreath of ivy, and she wore nothing but a veil of gossamer. Inside her face, just visible through it, were the same black eyes she shared with the prince—for this could be none other than the Erl-queen, the other queen of England, the creature who had stolen all these girls from those who loved them. The creature who had terrorized a country.

  “Leave,” she said in a soughing voice.

  Isaac unsheathed his sword again. It had been easy to kill the Erl-queen’s son. Now he was not so afraid.

  “Not without the girl,” George said. “Release my sister from your bewitchment, or I will shoot you, as I shot your hell-spawned offspring.”

  “Victoria made a bargain. A life for a life.” The forest rippled as she approached, half walking and half drifting, like a wraith from a nightmare. “Leave.”