by Cutter, Leah
Julius turned to face Francine.
“Darling, if I say run, that means there’s something comin’ that I can’t handle, not by myself, not even with you. I ain’t scared of the Seelie, and neither should you be. But I value my skin. We wouldn’t be running less it was really bad. A few Seelie warriors?” he snorted. “We can take them on our own. A slew of them, though?”
Julius shook his head.
“I understand,” Francine said, nodding. She needed to trust Julius, trust that he could judge a threat.
Francine just wasn’t used to trusting anyone but herself.
Julius went through the arch first.
Francine followed right after, but still arrived a few minutes later. She eagerly looked around, trying to find a landmark or two so she could come back here herself later if she wanted.
It was easy to see the actual border: the trees changed abruptly, the Unseelie side darker and more twisted, the Seelie side more fair and willowy. The trees from both sides loomed at each other, as if jealously guarding their realms, their branches not touching. A line of stumps ran behind the line of trees on the Unseelie side, sickly and gray.
How dare the Seelie take over the Unseelie woods that way? Francine’s blood boiled. She pulled out her fiddle and sent a mournful tune to the stumps, hoping to soothe their pain.
The music bounced back at her, oddly disjointed.
Puzzled, Francine tossed another melody out, a smooth jazz piece that her trees in her woods liked, but that the Unseelie trees didn’t. The Unseelie trees growled and shivered, but the stumps settled down, soaking in the tune.
“If you’re finished saying hello?” Julius asked, a sly smile on his face.
Francine swallowed nervously and looked around again. She nodded but didn’t say anything, coming over to stand next to Julius, moving away from the stumps.
The stumps weren’t Unseelie trees. They were from the Seelie woods.
It was the Unseelie trees that had killed them, the Unseelie that had expanded their border.
It didn’t matter, Francine told herself. They were probably just doing a counter attack, to balance out trees they’d lost in a different place along the border, where the Seelie had attacked first.
“Such a shame, no?”
Francine made herself nod.
Julius didn’t realize she could tell the difference, and she wasn’t about to tell him.
“So what should I play?”
“Don’t you have a favorite ass-kicking song?” Julius asked with a grin.
Francine nodded, and started in with “Wild Nights,” one of her favorite zydeco songs. It had a beat that reminded her of going down the highway in her cousin’s truck in the middle of the night, way too fast, the wind blowing her hair like crazy.
When Francine got to the chorus, she started flinging the bass notes out. They flew like black darts, scattering in front of her.
“Sharper,” Julius commanded.
Francine nodded, and played shorter, staccato notes, pounding down on them with all her strength. The notes grew spiked heads, like wicked arrow tips, the ends glowing red-hot.
“Those are good,” Julius said. “Now what else can you do?”
Francine looked at Julius, puzzled. Wasn’t he supposed to be teaching her?
Well, maybe he needed to know what she already knew.
So Francine showed him the sparks she could throw, as well as the rough winds she could make circle. Julius gave her a few suggestions, but nothing that Francine couldn’t have figured out herself.
When Francine finished the next piece, she lowered her fiddle and looked at Julius expectantly.
“Don’t you have any specific music I should play?”
Julius shrugged.
“I’m not a musician. I’m a warrior. I just know it needs to be hard and fast.”
Francine swallowed down her disappointment, remembering how much she’d learned from her time with Pierre. She really needed to study with another fiddler.
“Now, just because I don’t know your tunes don’t mean I don’t know how to fight. The general attacks you have are good, but let’s make ’em more personal. All right? And later we’ll work on defense too.”
“Okay,” Francine said, raising her bow and fiddle again, waiting.
“Imagine someone who’s wronged you,” Julius instructed.
That was easy. Billy’s smarmy smile came instantly to Francine.
Julius touched her arm and gestured.
Billy suddenly stood in the clearing. Francine saw him clearly. She directed her attack at him, setting him ablaze.
“Good, good. Now others.”
Laura and Karyn. The teachers who had never said anything, had never helped.
Even Papa, who’d denied Francine her heritage, forbidden her from knowing her kin.
Francine tore all of them apart with fire and rage.
When Julius finally called a stop, Francine found she trembled and panted as if she’d been sprinting. She nodded, collapsing onto the ground, sitting with her forehead resting on her drawn-up knees.
Julius sat next to Francine.
“You’re doing well, darling,” he said, his voice gravelly.
Francine snuck a peek at Julius, slowly moving her head but not raising it. He also looked exhausted and pale from the amount of magic he’d used to make her imaginings real.
“How much longer do we have to prepare?” Francine asked, worried that she might not be strong enough in time.
“Until the fall equinox.”
“What?” Francine suddenly found the strength to raise her head.
“But that’s months away!”
“The timing of these things is of great importance,” Julius told her. “Erastus wants more than to just win a battle or two.”
Francine looked over her shoulder at the Seelie woods.
“What’s he going to do?” she whispered, suddenly wary that others might hear.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” Julius said, with a vague motion toward the trees. “They’ve already negotiated the results. If we win, we hold their queen for one hundred and one days.”
“What will that do?” Francine asked, puzzled.
“Strengthen us,” Julius assured her. “After we hold her, we get to bind her power.”
It didn’t make sense to Francine. Then again, the formal declaration of war hadn’t either. The two sides had met for days, negotiating, while she and the rest of the court had watched tensely from the sidelines.
“What happens if we lose?”
“Same thing. Only Erastus will have to go with them.” Julius looked away, his back tense and his jaw tight. “We’d lose power and influence. It wouldn’t be pretty.”
Francine swallowed and nodded. She remembered what Queen Yvette had done to Pierre for the merest slight. What would she do to Erastus?
Julius patted Francine’s knee. “Don’t worry. They won’t win.”
“You’re right. They won’t.”
Francine would do everything in her power to make sure they didn’t.
* * *
Francine slept, dreaming of honeyed wind that teased her as she played, swirling around her and carrying her floating notes away on a golden breeze. The trees danced and swayed to her tune, sensitive to every phrase, the perfect audience.
Then the wind snapped at her, dropping the notes and carrying her name.
“Francine!”
Startled, Francine sat up and looked around. The late summer afternoon had grown warm, the air wrapping around her like a soft blanket. A lazy chorus of bugs called from the underbrush. Clear blue sky winked at her from above the green ceiling of leaves.
“Who is it?” Francine called out, stretching slowly.
“It’s me.” Pierre stepped out from behind a tree.
Francine scrambled to her feet, putting her fiddle under her chin instantly.
“What do you want?” she asked, prepared to defend herself, her heart beating hard in
her chest.
Pierre kept his hands wide to show they were empty, though Francine could see the head of his fiddle poking over his shoulder.
“I wanted to talk with you.”
“Are you here to join us?” Francine asked. It seemed reasonable to her, given how Queen Yvette had tortured him.
“What? No.”
Pierre shook his head.
“I been watching you practice the other day. With Julius. You’re very good.”
He paused, then added, “The best I’ve seen.”
“Yes, I am,” Francine said, pride drawing her up, making her stand taller. Both Julius and Erastus had told her that as well. She knew it was as much her anger as her technique.
“You can’t fight,” Pierre said.
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course I can fight.”
“It’d be better if you didn’t.”
Francine snorted. “Better for you. Why shouldn’t I?”
“The Unseelie can’t win.”
Francine restrained herself from bashing Pierre with a string of notes, driving him off his feet.
“Why not?”
“You don’t know what all they’re doing. What they’re really after.”
“They want more power,” Francine said, shrugging.
“It isn’t like we’ll kill Yvette after we win.”
Francine deliberately didn’t use the queen’s full title.
“It’s more than that. If the Unseelie win, they’ll have more power in the human realm. They’ll make people darker, meaner, more chaotic.”
Remembering Billy, Laura and Karyn, and the others who had hurt her, Francine laughed.
“People there are already like that.”
She let her fiddle rest by her side.
“You don’t really know what they’re like. How mean and cruel. Like the Seelie were to me. And to you.”
“Queen Yvette—” Pierre started, then stopped.
“She’s done that to you before, hasn’t she?” Francine said.
“And maybe again after I left.”
“But she isn’t dark and twisted like the Unseelie!”
“Just cruel and twisted.”
Pierre looked to the side.
“It’s one of my own powers, you know. To be a tree.”
“So she’s taking something you love and twisting it!”
Francine thought she couldn’t be more angry with the Seelie. She’d been wrong.
“Why do you stay with them? What else have you given up?” she asked, remembering Brooks and Jacque accusing Pierre of lessening himself.
“Please,” Pierre said softly. “Lower your voice.”
He sighed.
“Chérie, there’s always give and take.”
“What do you get?” Francine hissed.
For the first time, Pierre gave Francine a smile that was a little wild around the edges.
“This.”
He dragged his fiddle over his shoulder before Francine could stop him and started playing a soft, fast tune.
The air grew thicker and the leaves golden. A new forest shimmered into being. The trees grew tall there, right up into the sky. The smell of rich earth and fresh mulch washed over Francine. She could taste the sweetness of this place. Francine nodded, feeling the pull on her own heart. It reminded her of the woods Lady Melisandra had created for her, with meadows and trees fit for a fiddler.
“No place else is home,” Pierre said softly, letting the music die. His personal woods faded away.
Francine gave an unwilling nod. The call of her own forest filled her, the trees that she’d claimed as her own.
“We’re still going to fight you. And win,” she said stubbornly.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter to you that the Seelie didn’t attack first? That the Unseelie did? Sending their trees into our territory?”
Francine bit her lip, remembering the borderlands. She’d wondered about that. Julius had told her that Queen Yvette had raided them first. Had he lied to her?
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter,” Francine said quietly. The fairies were still going to war.
Pierre sighed. “Doesn’t blood mean anything to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know your papa and your uncle have joined the court, right?”
“I don’t believe you,” Francine said hotly.
“Your uncle is sick. He has something like what your mama had. The wasting disease.”
Francine’s face suddenly felt hot while her stomach hollowed out with fear.
“No,” she whispered.
“He says he’s lucky—they found it early. If he lives with the Seelie, well, time moves differently here. He’ll live longer.”
Francine nodded numbly. She’d used the healing waters of the land herself. She doubted they could cure cancer, but they might slow the process. She shivered, remembering the creature from the land she’d made up.
“Come with me. I’ll show you.”
Francine shook herself, then sneered at Pierre.
“If you think I’m going to walk with you into the Seelie court and be captured, you’re a fool.”
No matter how much she wanted to see Papa, and Uncle Rene, she couldn’t just go with him.
“It isn’t a trick,” Pierre assured her.
“Look.”
He slowly laid his fiddle on the ground.
“This is my heart,” he said stepping back.
Pierre stood completely defenseless before Francine.
“I swear by my fiddle that what I’m saying is true: that the Unseelie started the war, that they’ll gain more from it than you know, that your papa now lives in the Seelie court, and that I’ll take you there to see him, and return you here, safely.”
Sweet chords filled the air, music from Pierre’s heart.
Francine recognized the truth of every word, striking like sunlight through the trees.
“Then take me there.”
* * *
Pierre tried to lead the way along the trail. But the path worked against him the whole time: sending up roots to trip him, snagging his pants on thorns, making curves and twists unexpectedly.
Francine thought about suggesting she walk first, but seeing the how hard it was for Pierre, who’d always been so graceful, made her grin.
Until it finally occurred to Francine that when she got to the Seelie woods, she was likely to have as much trouble.
“Here, let me walk first,” Francine offered.
“No, we’re almost there.” Pierre paused and looked back at Francine.
“I’m surprised the path doesn’t attack you as much. You’re not Unseelie.”
Francine shrugged.
“They’ve learned to respect me,” she said, indicating the trees.
They still teased her sometimes, but she also teased them right back, with tunes that whipped them into frenzied dancing, causing them to tear up their roots and some of the younger saplings to fall over.
“Will I have the same problems when I get to the Seelie woods?”
“No,” Pierre said, shaking his head.
“You’re part Seelie. It will still recognize you.”
They passed the fern house, crouched on one side of the trail, all the leaves surrounding it curled and black, as if burned from the inside out. Like in the Seelie lands, it rose far above Francine’s head. Here, though, it looked haunted.
“All the lands are just layers, one on top of another, aren’t they?” Francine asked quietly.
Pierre nodded.
“You could think of them that way. Or like old film, where the images from one negative bleed into the next. If the Unseelie win—they’ll bleed into every other layer, more than they already do.”
After they walked a bit more, Francine finally had to ask, “So where we going?”
“Do you think I could just walk into the Unseelie lands?” Pierre asked, amused.
“Now mind, I’d been to the court befor
e. But both Queen Yvette and King Erastus have put up barriers to stop people from coming and going as they please.”
“Wait. Do you mean I can’t get to my woods anymore?” Francine asked, stopping.
Erastus had promised her that she could always get back there.
Pierre turned to look at her.
“You mean the place Lady Melisandra created for you?”
At Francine’s nod, he continued.
“You should be able to get there. Probably. That place—it isn’t completely real. It’s your place. The place that’s formed out of you, for you.”
Francine’s palm suddenly tingled. The one that had been cut by the glass flower. That was why the lady had cut her hand, mingled the glass shards with her blood. So the place would be hers, and only hers.
“But I don’t know if you could come back here, afterward. The barriers—they might make it impossible.”
Francine pondered that as they made their way down the other side of the ridge. She might well leave sometime and not come back. She didn’t want to, but it was good to know she could.
That made her ponder something else.
“Have you seen Brooks or Jacque around at all?”
“No,” Pierre said.
“They haven’t been around since—ah.”
He stood nodding, rubbing the back of his head.
“You think they can’t come home.”
“Would they want to?”
Pierre gave a bitter laugh.
“As much as they might hate their mother, those boys’ll do what’s right. Can you get us there?”
“Yes,” Francine said, the memory of their golden afternoon still bittersweet.
“Let’s get them first. Then I’ll take you to see your papa.”
Francine looked around, placing trees and the stream in her mind. She wanted to be able to come back here, to the Unseelie court, on her own, if necessary. If the barriers would let her through.
Pierre whistled softly at the doorway Francine drew.
“Who taught you that?”
“My friends here,” Francine said hotly.
“You know the dangers, right?”
“I’m not a little girl.”
“You ended up in the swamp,” Pierre said.
Francine glared at him, the memory of the cancer-like creature she’d created fresh in her mind. She opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head.
“After you.”
