by Skye Allen
My eyes stopped on the woman at the narrow end of the room. She was seated on a low bench that looked like it was made out of driftwood. She had the same satiny skin and dark eyes as the Queen of the Summer Court, but there was no kindness in her face and no softness in the set of her wiry body as she perched on the bench like a wild bird ready to launch. She was draped in pale blue fabric that settled on the jutting knobs of her shoulders, and her legs ended in boots with jagged tops, as if the skin had been ripped off the animal and not trimmed into shape. I shuddered, knowing she could see me, not able to stop myself.
So this was the Winter Court. Laura must be here somewhere. I had arrived where I wanted to be. I told myself that was good, even though my stomach was trying to find a way to swim down through the center of the earth.
I had to look up to see the woman who must be the Winter Queen. She was on a stage. The room we were in was a theater. I swept my eyes around the room again, used to the faint white light now. Behind the stage was a high arched window filled with diamond-shaped panes that should have reflected the light. Where the window should have touched the ceiling, there was nothing but sky. No roof. I looked down the walls and saw what my pupils were too dilated to see at first: cone-shaped black streaks down the reddish walls. This building had been burned. There was no glass in that beautiful window.
A candle hissed and flared, and what I had assumed was a wall sconce shifted its waxy hands around the dark metal base. Oh God. My body convulsed again, acid behind my teeth. It was a girl, with loose hair and eyes that were entirely blue, no iris at all. Like the ring-around-the-rosy girls from the Summer Court meadow, except that this girl looked dead. I forced myself to look at the row of candles beside her. Each was held in two translucent hands.
The hawklike woman laughed a laugh that was more animal than human. I looked again at the bench she sat on. This time I could see better. The rounded supports it rested on were not driftwood. Those were bones.
Fear overruled the part of my brain that knew I couldn’t run. My arms were still bound to my sides, and I could not use them to break my fall when I lost my balance. Legs that were already numb buckled in whatever I was standing in. The ground was too far away and too dark to see clearly, but I sat down hard in icy liquid and heard splashing. My mouth filled with a mushroomy smell as cold soaked into my jeans. Please let that just be water.
“Answer my question,” the Winter Queen said, but if she’d asked me a question, I couldn’t remember it. I nodded. Nodding was a safe choice. “It is wise of you to come when you are called,” she continued. “I am sure you realize that next time it will not be play-toy animals that you find impaled.” The globe. It is hers. How did it get into my room? I would probably never find out. I was going to die here.
Laura could already be dead. I heard myself whimper when I thought that. This was the end of both our lives. Right here, tonight. Mom. Please don’t be alone or sober when you find out.
The fey woman went on, “Now. Let us see if our student knows why she has been called to the front of the class. No? Then let me enlighten you, mortal. You have meddled in affairs that you cannot possibly understand. I have no tolerance for vermin.” She didn’t scream, didn’t raise her voice at all, just weighted each word like it was a kitten being dropped down a well.
She waved a bare arm, and a squat figure rolled out of the shadows behind her. His grayish face split open into a lipless, black-red smile, and earthworms mounded in my stomach. He took smooth steps toward me, boulder-like body shifting from side to side. He was wearing a loose dirt-colored shirt, and as he came closer, I could see the outline of what looked like a knife handle under the silky material. A strap across his exposed chest held a tight row of four things that could be small darts or large needles.
The Lady went on, “I do, however, find myself in need of coin in this distasteful battle with my sunburnt kin.”
“Coin?” My voice came out brave. I didn’t feel brave.
“I can use you. To bargain. Is that clear enough for you, mortal?”
“I want to see my sister!” I shouted.
The Winter Queen cocked her dark head to one side like I was a painting she was scrutinizing. “But you have her remains,” she said.
She means Margaret. “Laura! She’s here! Let me see her!”
“The mortal musician is not here,” she said, countering my loud voice with a murmur.
I knew the fey couldn’t lie, but they would twist the truth if they could. “Do you know where Laura is? Exactly where she is right now?” I asked.
She chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I do not.”
“Did you order her to be kidnapped?”
“How can I seize a mortal child whose whereabouts are unknown to me? Now, attend. I did not invite you to my house to be squalled at.” She waved her arm at the man.
He was ungainly, but he moved fast. He was behind me now. “Up, princess,” he cooed, too close to my face. His instruction was useless. I could barely move my frozen legs, and my arms were glued down. I tried again to move them. There was no rope or anything I could see; they were just stuck, wrists turned painfully against my thighs. The man hooked me under my arms, smashing my face to the side against his stomach. I breathed in a quick whiff of mustard and dirty towels. He hauled me up, slower than it seemed like he needed to, and his fingers probed into the sides of my breasts. “That’s it,” he breathed, stretching out the words.
I was standing now, but his hands were still cupping my armpits. I held my breath and tried to shrink my body forward away from him. “Nope you don’t,” he husked. He hitched me up so that I was pushed forward toward the stage, with my feet grazing the ground. I tried to kick out backward, but my pins-and-needles legs were not taking orders. The air filled with the Lady’s laughter as the fat man push-dragged me through a dusty curtain.
I twitched its slippery weight off my shoulders and looked around. I was in a wallpapered hallway, lit unevenly by the same nightmarish candles. The ceiling had brown water stains but was intact. This had to be a wing of the burned theater. I wondered if I would ever be able to find this place again. If I’m even alive later. Why didn’t I tell Neil where I was going tonight? Not that he could have done anything. The Lady’s strange warriors were supposed to help us if we asked, now that I’d made that deal with her. But Neil couldn’t ask because he didn’t know I was in trouble, because I hadn’t wanted him to follow me. “Help,” I whispered into my chest. I flinched as I passed too close to a motionless candle girl and willed myself not to look up into her dead-eyed face.
The man swerved right and pushed open a door by shoving me at it headfirst until it swung inward. The hinges didn’t creak. In my swirl of fear, I zeroed in on that one detail: They keep the hinges oiled on their jail cells. The air smelled like musty carpet. The room contained a hard couch, a vanity table with a mirror ringed by gray lightbulbs, and—out of place—an upright piano. Its peeling white paint and missing keys made it look like a skeleton of itself. The room was lit by a cluster of those too-bright Winter candles sitting in a fat lantern on the piano’s high top. Did they plan to bring Laura here? My mind showed me a movie of her being forced to play that piano, the Woodcutter breathing behind her. And if she wasn’t here, where was she? I shuddered.
Propped up against the vanity table was a child’s hobbyhorse, with a black yarn mane and a green head. One round bead eye seemed to wink at me. Another impaled play toy. A row of dolls sat with their backs to the mirror like prisoners, ranked in height from a grubby Raggedy Ann down to a chipped teacup crowded with plastic babies.
The man was still pressing into my back and pinching my armpits to hold me up. He kicked the back of my knee so it buckled, and when he threw me forward, I stumbled into the couch and barked my shin hard on its metal frame.
I got a good close-range look at the stumpy man. He looked like a crazed monk, with his pale stubbled head and that loose tunic. My eyes went to the weapon tucked into his wa
istband. “See something you like?” he said, and he pulled the silky fabric of his shirt aside to reach for his belt. Small eyes sunk in peeling skin never left my face.
Stupid. Oh, stupid. This is going to happen right now. My breath was a ball of clay in my throat. There was no way to move backward. I scrambled to remember my self-defense moves: Yell! Kick! Bite! There were no instructions from that week in PE class about what to do when your wrists were glued to your pants by bad fairy magic and you were in a building that probably didn’t exist in the real world, trapped by someone who was only a “man” because you didn’t know what kind of monster he actually was. I’d seen the fey fly and turn into animals and make things disappear. I had no clue what this one’s powers were. Terror made my body a lobster’s: liquid inside my too-thin shell.
He drew out the knife with a rustle of fabric and a faint clang as it hit his belt buckle. The blade was longer than a bread knife and tapered to a point so fine it was invisible.
A knife like that could cut a person’s heart out of their body. The thought was cold and far away. Woodcutter. I found you.
I wondered how it happened that this ugly man had known Margaret well enough to love her. I knew the Woodcutter had to be someone who loved her. And who was coming for her sisters.
Realization settled on me like a blanket. There was nothing I could do. He was going to kill me the same way he killed Margaret. Not tonight. Not until the Winter Queen got whatever she wanted. Not until she was done using me to bargain with.
He could probably keep me in this room for a long time.
And then, when he got the green light from the boss lady, he was going to butcher me and dump me in the bay. The cops were going to come to the door, and if she was still alive, they’d ask Laura if Mr. or Mrs. Grant were home, and she’d start crying before she even knew what was wrong because only someone bearing very bad news would ask for people who didn’t exist. Mom’s name was Ms. Blackwell now, and Dad was living in Priest River, Idaho, with no address or phone number, just the postmark on those plain white envelopes that never had a note inside with the check.
I was crying. I was terrified and crying. The man watched me with watery blue eyes like he was a spider and I was a fly, lazily flicking the knife in a Z motion. That hideous little man thought he was Zorro. I gulped on a half laugh, half sob. Keep it together. Tough chick. Nobody’s here to help you. Got to help yourself. But I was shaking and I couldn’t stop.
The man lunged in toward me. I inhaled a near scream. His breath was mustard and decay, and I felt the hard little darts in his chest belt as he pressed his bulk against me. He backed me against the vanity table. The green horse clattered against the mirror and slid to the floor. I looked down at its glittering black eye and found I could not look up again: the knife was in my way. It was a strip of light held at an angle, and the point was pricking my collarbone. At the center, where the ribs start. My heart knew what was going to happen to it, independent from my brain, and it stopped beating.
A thumping scratch on the door made the man’s eyes pop. The sound deepened into something that rang rhythmically out in the corridor.
The Woodcutter’s body went stiff, and his meaty head turned toward the door. “Later,” he wheezed to me. He spun on one thick leg and swept his knife arm up. His loose sleeve drifted across my mouth and eyes, and for a second I was smothered in that slimy-soft brown fabric.
Then he was gone. The door thudded shut. I didn’t hear a key turn, but I knew I was locked in. My knees finally stopped holding me up, and then I was on the carpet, chin in a bare patch. Wake up. My arms aren’t really stuck. Unstick, arms. This is just a nightmare. A freakishly real nightmare about the Woodcutter. I’m going to wake up in calculus, and Neil is going to be drawing moustaches on my knuckles. I shouldered my way up to a sitting position. The calm acceptance of my fate was gone. I gave in to fear like sliding into the deep end at the swimming pool, felt the heavier-than-air liquid fear flood me, seal my eyes and ears. I was crying in earnest, little gulps bursting out of my mouth that sounded muffled and alien. I bit my fingers, trying to stop the sound.
I was biting my fingers.
I dropped my hands and stared. They were free. I shook them, but there was no loss of circulation, no marks where my wrists had been bound. No ache.
I had told my arms to unstick, and they did. The spell broke. Just like that.
This time I didn’t stop to be amazed at my new power. If the magic worked to get my arms unstuck, maybe it would work to open the door too. I knelt up and then got to my still-wobbly feet with the help of the hobbyhorse’s worn stick. There was a faint buzzing under my feet that I knew wasn’t really there, like how regular shoes felt after roller-skating. I stretched my hands out to the door before I reached it. Open. Unlock. Let me out.
I shouldered it, feeling the pinch under my arms where the gray man had grabbed me and held me up. A throbbing patch on my cheek reminded me that when he had shoved me into the room, the door had swung inward. I felt for the knob and then looked where it should be. Nothing but smooth wood, sanded where a fist-sized pine knot showed through under the white paint.
But this was a jail cell, and cells didn’t have door handles on the inside. I bumped my forehead on the cool center panel and thought hard: Let me out, door.
I dug my fingernails into the tight crack between the door and the frame, but there wasn’t even a wiggle. I sucked in a dusty breath and tried to keep the panic down. There had to be a way out of here. I had some kind of fey magic now, if that was what you could call the gift the Summer Queen had given me. I just had to figure out how to use it. I was like a six-year-old kid with the keys to the family car but no way to reach the pedals.
On the hinge side, where the knot was imperfectly painted over, there was a very slight give. I pushed at the knot until my fingers were white and then purple. Panic flamed up my throat. Making noise wouldn’t do any good—it would probably get me killed faster—but I shouted, “Let me out!” through the knot. Maybe if I said it out loud, the door would obey.
What could I use to break it down? I looked at the flimsy gilt legs on the vanity bench. The hobbyhorse would be better. I felt a weight swing out from my side as I turned to pick it up: my bag! I had totally forgotten my bag. I searched it for anything that could be a tool. All I came up with was my keys, on the sad little hard-hat keychain I’d bought because it reminded me of Dad. Damn it. I couldn’t have picked a Swiss Army knife?
I seized the hobbyhorse and charged the door with the stick end. That only wrenched my shoulder: no movement from the door. Why wouldn’t my on-off power work now? It occurred to me that the door could be just plain locked, no magic. That thought only fed my fear. I had some kind of magic skill, but I was still trapped.
I threw the child-sized battering ram across the room. It bounced off the mirror and thumped on the couch.
I gulped back the fresh tears that threatened to spring up. I jumped up and down like a boxer a few times to keep myself energized. Do not quit, soldier! Do you think anyone’s coming to save your ass? I picked up the horse and rapped the mirror with it. Maybe it was two-way glass, and the Winter Queen was watching me from the other side. “I’m getting out of here, evil queen, do you hear me? And you’re not getting Laura either.” I listened to the frantic sound of my voice. In the ten minutes I’d been in this room, clearly I’d already lost my mind.
But something had creaked when I hit the mirror. I tapped again, more carefully this time. If I could get it to break, I could use the shards to try to wedge the knot out of the door. The mirror was framed in brass, studded with gray lightbulbs like decayed teeth. I threw all my weight into stabbing at the mirror with the hobbyhorse, but it wouldn’t crack. I picked up the bench and backed up as far as I could toward the door and heaved it at the mirror—nothing. Maybe everything in this room was enchanted. Mirror, mirror on the wall, let me the hell out of here.
I looked sweaty and undone in the wavy glass of the mi
rror, pink hair and green hoodie the only colors around my ghostly white face, which was half black from the sharp shadow cast by the candles. If those lightbulbs worked, maybe I’d be able to see some way to get out that I couldn’t see now.
Lightbulbs. I fingertipped one to see if there were some kind of fairy whammy on it, but it just felt like dusty glass. On, I thought experimentally, and then I repeated it out loud. “On!” I felt stupid, like Mickey Mouse with the sorcerer’s hat. It didn’t come on. But I twisted it gently, and after a second of rusty tightness, it came unscrewed from its socket.
The door swung open, and the Woodcutter stumped in, huffing. “Do I have to shut you up?” He must have heard me yelling at the door. His face was mottled with fury, and I felt a fresh wave of terror. He could overpower me without a thought. I knew he had done it before.
I’d seen people in movie brawls smash bottles. I didn’t stop to plan. In one movement, I punched the lightbulb into the mirror, spun, and ran at the Woodcutter.
He gurgled out a laugh and slapped the smashed lightbulb out of my hand. I ducked and scrabbled for it as it bounced toward the couch, caught it at the broken end, and felt the bite as glass sank into my thumb.
The man was huge, standing over me. Swaying belly, tree-trunk legs. He picked up one foot and swirled his leg around from the knee, getting ready to stomp on me. A few inches of maggoty flesh showed between his pants cuff and his boot.
His leg came down, and I drove the broken lightbulb into his bare calf.
He barked in surprise, like a dog when you step on its tail. I was on the floor on one knee and one palm. He kicked out sideways, but my body was in the way, and he couldn’t get to the door. I crawled to the doorway in two strides.
