Curse of the Thirteenth Fey

by Jane Yolen

  So I started thinking about all the different things in my dream, hoping they might help me figure out how to bring down the Gate.

  The knight in armor was surely Grey, I thought. So, then the deadly chimera had to be the prince.

  I scratched at my head. Really—it was past time for a hair wash. And then I told myself, After—meaning after the Gate came down.

  And the castle door in the dream? The Gate, of course.

  Oh, I thought, I’m really understanding this dream-reading stuff!

  I almost danced with delight.

  But what about the hearth fire? The crown? The throne? I bit my lower lip and thought some more. Was the hearth fire anger, passion, hot blood? Were the crown and throne supposed to be read as real, the kingship of the Unseelie Court? Or was one of them supposed to be the Oath?

  I went around and around thinking about it until my head began to ache all over again from doing that amount of thinking. And from the magick that continuously leaked from the Gate.

  Perhaps, I thought, perhaps it’s something simpler. Perhaps the fire is simply . . . fire.

  “Fire.” I said it aloud. “Hearth fire.”

  I went over to the nearest hearth, stared down into the flickering flames, looking at the place the hot embers . . . should have been.

  Suddenly, I realized that not only were there no embers . . . there were no logs either. None. Instead the fire was set in a large natural cauldron filled with an odd dark lake of burning liquid. It reminded me of something—and then I had it—

  Grey’s sister’s poem:

  “The pool is still, and deep, and dark,

  We make our wishes, and our mark.”

  I leaned over, gazing deeper into the fire before I understood. There was plenty of heat. But the smell . . . was not at all like wood smoke. It was that odd pong.

  So, I thought, for centuries these hearth fires had been kept burning by the McGargle tribe for warmth. They—and presumably the two fey men at their own hearth—have cooked in the fire’s small flames and eaten by its small light.

  I mumbled aloud, trying to reason the fire thing out, “The prince’s great fire may be partially glamoured, but surely not here where the McGargles camp. There’d be no reason for Orybon to waste his glamour on these creatures when they are off alone. I mean, they lived in the caves long before he was ever sent here as punishment, so they must have had these fires before he ever came.”

  Think, Gorse, think!

  So, I thought, not glamoured fire, and not glamoured food. At least something here is real.

  My growling stomach asked me the next questions. Where has the fire come from, then? And where the food?

  Suddenly I realized that the dream hadn’t been about bringing down the Gate at all. It was simply helping me solve a puzzle that my eyes had observed but my brain hadn’t begun to figure out. Would it help me eventually with the greater puzzle of the Gate? I didn’t know that . . . yet. But at least I knew I could eat something without fear of being bewitched.

  “At court, we call that fire stuff oyl.” Grey was at my side. I wondered if he’d heard what I’d just said, then realized it hardly mattered.

  “Oyl?” It wasn’t a word I’d ever heard, and even if it was mentioned in the library, I wasn’t close to the O’s yet.

  “O, Y, L.” He spelled it out. “It is a liquid that burns forever, or so it seems. The cave walls weep with it. Do you not have that where you live?”

  I looked at him wryly. “I don’t live in a cave, prince, but up above. In the woods and meadows and . . .”

  He smiled at my calling him a prince, then shook his head. “I assumed you Shouters lived in a cave beside the woods.”

  “In a belvedere, actually.”

  He said belvedere back at me the way I’d said oyl to him, a moment before.

  “B, E, L, V, E, D, E, R, E,” I said, mimicking his preciseness. “It’s a kind of house with . . .” I tried to describe its domed roof and winding stairs with my hands, and failed.

  “And you built these?” He was clearly astonished.

  “I think the royals whose Bidding we do built them long ago. Not as houses, actually, but as . . . well, as pretty displays hidden in their vast gardens.”

  He folded his arms and looked at me searchingly. “You do someone else’s Bidding, someone who is not a fey?”

  I nodded, suddenly reluctant to admit it.

  “What kind of princess are you?”

  This time I was the one who laughed. “I never said I was a princess.”

  He thought for a minute, then stared at me, his face unreadable. “Ah, I see that now. You never said you were a princess.”

  I didn’t enlighten him. If Fergus could have been king, I suppose I was a princess.

  “So that was just Orybon’s fancy,” Grey said. “He cannot believe, even down here, that someone with power and backbone can possibly be less than his equal in rank. Except for me. He knows quite well where I dangle on the chain.” He stood quietly for a bit more, now staring down at the cave floor, strange looks passing across his face like an army on the move. Suddenly, he bit his lip, almost like a boy, before saying at last, “Perhaps you are worse off up there in your belvedere than the prince and I are down here in our cave. At least our fate is in our own hands.”

  “Your fate is in his hands,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, it is, but I put it there, more shame to me.” His voice no longer seemed either sarcastic or angry but was, in fact, rather sad.

  For the first time, I actually liked Grey. Or at least for the first time, I didn’t actually hate him. At that moment, I thought those things were the same.

  “You . . . you aren’t here because of loyalty or love,” I said, suddenly recognizing what had been before me all this time. “You swore an Oath!”

  He looked at his feet. “I was thirteen. And far from home.”

  “And he was how old?”

  “Twenty-five. A man.”

  “So he, at least, knew what he was doing.”

  “Alice Pudding, or whatever your name is,” Grey said, looking so deeply at me, I thought he could see into my heart, “you are quite a one.”

  I mistook him. “No. I am not the One.”

  Suddenly bemused, he looked his old sardonic self. “The One?”

  “The One to save you and the Unseelie prince.” I didn’t mention what that meant to the Aunts and Mother, and I didn’t mention saving myself as well or bursting into a thousand stars. I didn’t have to.

  His face suddenly reminded me of Father’s when he’d told me about how we were tied forever to the land.

  “If you will not do,” Grey said, his voice soft, “no one will.”

  “Probably that,” I whispered.

  If he heard, he said nothing in response.

  One of the McGargles—impossible for me to tell them apart with all that hair—came over and made sounds rather like a cow in labor. He . . . she . . . held out a hairy hand. There was something meaty in it. I didn’t like the look of the meat—it was all mushed and had little bits of bone sticking out—but at least it smelled well cooked. As I’d read somewhere, but couldn’t recall where, hunger is a great seasoner.

  “She is offering you dinner,” Grey said. “Better take it. You have not eaten since falling down here.”

  I took the messy thing, but not before making a face at it.

  “She had better offer me some, too.” He mooed back at her, and the monster scampered off, presumably to find more of the meat.

  “It’s real, isn’t it?” I asked, and was pleased when he nodded.

  “Real as I am. Not glamoured by Prince-All-About-Me.”

  “Prince-All-About-Me?” I giggled.

  “Well, he is not all about you,�
�� Grey said. “Or,” he added, jamming a thumb toward his chest, “not all about the fate of his Oath-man, either.”

  For a moment, I wondered if Grey was just trying to win me over, then decided to take what he said as simple, straightforward, honest. I pinched a bit of the meat with two fingers, took out the largest pieces of bone, and put half of the meat into my mouth. It was warm and sweet and delicious.

  “Fish?” I asked.

  “Underground streams,” he said. “It is either that or bats. A seemingly endless supply of both. Oh—and mushrooms.”

  I wrinkled my nose. I hated mushrooms, dingy gray things. And the bats didn’t sound at all appealing.

  “You can get used to anything,” Grey said.

  “I guess you’d have to, if you’re here a long time.”

  “Occasionally a cow or rabbit falls into one of our traps. And . . . other things.”

  I thought about the Uncles going back and forth on the Wooing Path. He couldn’t mean that, could he? Surely the prince and Grey hadn’t eaten any of . . . no! It didn’t bear thinking about. I shook my head.

  As if he guessed what I was thinking, he shook his head in return. “We are not cannibals here. But a man falling down one of those traps without wings to slow his fall rarely lives very long. It is why we always hoped for a fey.” He said it matter-of-factly, as a soldier would count the cost of a battle.

  I chose to believe him. I chose not to ask how many human men had actually fallen down one of the traps and died. Or what they looked like. Or if any had taken an Oath. Though Oaths don’t mean the same to humans as they do to fey. All I knew was that some had talked about the Shouting Fey. For now, that was enough.

  “So once you have eaten, and until the McGargle gets back with something for me as well, let us think about the Gate.”

  The Gate. I’d almost forgotten about it.

  I wanted to savor the food, mostly so I didn’t have to think Gate thoughts right away. But hunger got the better of me, and I gobbled up the rest of the fish and was sucking what bits remained on my fingers when the monster returned with something for Grey.

  He ate slowly, smacking his lips over the meat and the—ugh—mushrooms, a most unprincely sound. Then he laughed at my grim face.

  “I taught the creatures how to cook, and they taught me how to show I like it. Besides taking Oaths—and heads”—he winked at me—“cooking is my one great trick. When I was first at Orybon’s court, I was so homesick and lonely, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, where no one made fun of me. So I talked to cooks and told stories to the pot boys, and things . . . just rubbed off on me.”

  It was such a homely confession, I had to smile at him, which encouraged more admissions.

  He said, “When we found ourselves here—Orybon and I—the tribe had only eaten their meat raw, even though they were practically drowning in oyl. We introduced them to cooked food. They had already learned to make fire on their own. They are not stupid, you know, just a bit . . .”

  “Smelly?”

  He laughed. “Very smelly. It’s the hair, mostly. They never wash it, and it manages to keep hold of everything they rub up against, bat droppings, oyl, mushrooms, fish bones, bits of stone. By the time they are grown, they are walking midden piles. And yet”—he took a deep breath—“and yet, they have become wonderful cooks, and each generation has taught the next. We never have a banquet now without them doing the cooking.”

  “Did you teach them to dance, too?” For now I knew where the court had come from: glamoured McGargles!

  “Orybon did, for entertainment. But they never look as if they are having much fun,” he said, “only counting out the steps of the pavane in Gargle-talk.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And figured it out right away, I am sure.”

  I smiled and let him think so. Then I remembered the tribe’s cadence count, but didn’t ask if he’d taught them that or if it had been one of the Uncles.

  “If we ever get out of here,” he said with a sigh, “I want to learn how to get things for the tribe that will make their lives easier.”

  “What kinds of things?” I asked.

  “Carts, kitchen implements, fishing poles, that sort of thing.” Grey finished his bat-and-mushroom meal and then, torch in hand, led me to the underground river, where we washed the meal down with several handfuls of clear, clean, cold water.

  “Have you ever tried to follow the river out?” I asked as we walked back to the McGargle hearth.

  “Three times. But the water is much too frigid, and the passage where it runs through the stone too narrow. I thought I would never get warm again after the second try. But of course, I did.”

  I didn’t ask him if the prince had gone into the river with him. I didn’t have to.

  “Now,” he said, “we heat water for baths, though we have never been able to convince the tribe to try one. I think they fear water too much. With that much hair, they’d stay wet for far too long.”

  Suddenly there was a huge rush of sound, like a wild wind. It filled the chamber and whooshed through the corridors. With it came a strange, high keening.

  “What’s that?” I started to tremble, thinking of more monsters. Angry ones. Not like the McGargles.

  He laughed. “Night chorus,” he said. “Bats on the move. They go out all at once, like a great black wind.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I don’t speak Bat.”

  He looked at me strangely, then laughed, stopping only when he saw I was serious. “What do you speak?”

  Just as serious, I replied, “Hawk, Jay, Crow.” Suddenly, I realized what he’d said. “Going out where?”

  “Out to where you and yours live.”

  “But why haven’t I heard them down here before? That’s a pretty loud noise.”

  “You were sleeping, child. It seemed an unkindness to wake you for that. I thought there would be plenty of . . .” He hesitated, then plunged on. “Plenty of time for you to see them.”

  “You don’t really believe I’ll get the Gate open.” I said it flatly, without blame, without expecting an answer.

  He had the grace to look down at his feet. Orybon would just have laughed.

  “No,” he said at last, “I do not believe a thirteen-year-old can manage that. After all, Orybon and I are grown men. In fact, I suspect that we are much older than we look. I can tell the McGargles apart and know how many generations we have been with them. Orybon does not even bother to try. So I have some idea of how long a time we have been down here, trying to figure out an escape plan. All without success.”

  Longer than you imagine, I thought. “How do the bats get out?”

  “Through small apertures in the ceiling. And come back in again at dawn the same way. They roost hanging upside down from the cave roof.” He pointed where the cave arched high over us, so high I couldn’t actually see the ceiling. “That is what gave us the idea for faerie traps.”

  I’d read all about bats in one of the books on the B shelf. About their ability to navigate by echoes. About their bat droppings, called guano. About diseases they carried. But I didn’t mention any of that to him.

  “Well, then, maybe I’ll have time to learn their language,” I said.

  “Will you teach me?”

  “If you wish. After all, you learned McGargle, so I suspect you’ll be able to pick up Bat.”

  “Easier to get close to a cave troll than a bat and point out things.”

  I laughed. My, that felt good!

  Suddenly I spotted two tiny pinpoints of light in the ceiling above. “Look!”

  “Stars,” he said.

  Never had I seen anything so glorious as those two stars shining through the small opening in the cave ceiling, even better than magicks. Soon, the two stars turned into ten, crowded into th
e small space. I shivered, thinking that I might soon become such tiny points of light.

  I looked back at Grey. Prince Grey, I reminded myself. “Have you tried—”

  “Before you ask, we do not have the resources to build a ladder that high. We never got any farther than a rickety thing twice my height, and by then we had used up all the wood we could find. I expect that even if we actually had gotten all the way up, the aperture would have been too small for any of us to get through.” He looked at me, head cocked. “Even you.”

  I nodded. It seemed a likely guess.

  “How is your right wing?” he asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “I watched you sleeping, and every time you turned on it, you whimpered and turned back. Did you land on the wing when you fell through the trap?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, when it heals, perhaps you could fly up and see if there is any room to wiggle through. You could possibly escape through that hole, since it’s not a magick trap, but as for the rest of us . . . even if we could get up that high, any leap down could prove disastrous. As you may recall, Orybon and I were Cursed wingless by his father, just as a precaution.” He turned to show me his back.

  And of course, now that he was in just his shirt, the jacket still over the sleeping McGargle child, I could see there was no outline of wings. It made his winglessness real to me in a way it hadn’t been before.

  “I wasn’t . . . wasn’t sure Prince Orybon was telling the truth.”

  “You are right to be cautious with the prince,” Grey said carefully, turning around again. “He tells a lie and convinces even himself that it is true.”

  “Does that . . . hurt?” I asked, pointing to his back.

  “Sometimes it aches, as if a pair of phantom wings are there.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I began, and could think of nothing else to say, but my eyes got cloudy.

  “Orybon learned his cruelty at his father’s knee,” Grey said quietly. “But this exile is not all a bad thing. His brother Fergus will have made a much better king. He’s noble and kind and—”