Unthinkable

by Nancy Werlin

  Chapter 2

  Immediately she threw herself to the ground, curling into a ball to protect the knife. She felt the blade slice

  through flesh and muscle as she twisted it up under her ribs, aiming for her heart.

  Warm blood gushed onto her hands and the ground.

  There was, however, no pain. Fenella twisted the knife with all her strength. She was succeeding, she must be. Please, please, please. It was the queen’s sacred ceremonial knife. It had been used to kill the old queen. If anything would have the power of death, it would. Please—

  Firm hands on her shoulders. Gentle despite their claws, the hands rolled her over. Fenella’s body uncurled. She looked up into the face of Queen Kethalia.

  She knew then that it was useless.

  The queen pulled the knife smoothly out of Fenella’s body.

  Now there was pain, but Fenella made not a single sound as her body healed and her flesh knit back together inexorably, even her dress fabric renewing. By the end, the bloodstains on her dress and hands and on the knife had also vanished.

  So, Fenella thought. She swallowed hard, exactly once. Then she got to her feet and wiped her palms on her mossy skirt.

  “I’m sorry, Fenella,” said the queen. “No knife can help you. Not even mine.”

  “What if you were the one to wield it?” Fenella challenged. “Or the huntsman?”

  “No,” said the queen. “Your body is enchanted and protected. You cannot die before your time.”

  Fenella nodded. She said belatedly, “I am sorry for grabbing your knife.”

  “I understand,” said the queen.

  It was generous of her, Fenella thought. She kept her gaze steady on the queen’s face. For a moment Fenella felt almost as if it was only the two of them there; as if she was understood. She said dully, “Is there a way to undo the spell, as you were first trying to determine? I will do anything to die.”

  There was silence in the clearing. Silence among the fey. And that emotion again that Fenella could not read in the queen’s face, as she glanced once at the impassive tree fey guards, once at her brother, and then back to Fenella.

  The queen slid her knife back into its sheath and regarded her hands. “Now that I have touched you, yes. I see a way to break the spell. But you must do it, not I. It will be difficult. I shall not tell you how to do it unless I am assured that you are—are fully sane.”

  Fenella felt a grim smile curl her lips as new hope flickered dimly in her.

  “I am sane. I was enslaved to Padraig—he whom you call the Mud Creature—for four hundred years, and I did not lose my mind. I never will. I never can.”

  Someone else had, though. But Fenella would not think of Bronagh. One after another Scarborough girl had come to Faerie, remained eighteen years, and then died and was replaced. But none of them had been more damaged than Bronagh. Fenella’s very own daughter, Bronagh.

  A slender, flexible willow bough sneaked out from one of the tree guards, slipping round Fenella’s waist. She heard the whisper of leaves as the other tree guard murmured something to her in leaf language. She sensed that the murmur was meant to be comforting. However, despite some practice, Fenella could not translate what was said. Leaf and flower language was so nuanced, so subtle, so complex.

  The queen was speaking to her tree fey guards, also using leaf language. Of this, Fenella caught the gist. “Bring the Mud Creature here.”

  The queen was summoning Padraig? Why? Why did he need to be present in order for the queen to explain to Fenella how to break the life-spell? Was it because Padraig had cast it? Abruptly, Fenella’s stomach roiled.

  Fenella had not seen Padraig since Lucy broke the curse on her family. She did not know how he had managed during the recent crisis that had nearly decimated the fey. She had not cared. She had only hoped that if all of the fey died, she would too.

  And Padraig. She had not been above hoping Padraig would die first, so she could see it. So she could spit on his corpse—no, no. Fantasies were too dangerous.

  She knotted her fingers together. She allowed the tree fey to stand with her, in their way.

  Once upon a time, in her long-ago human life, Fenella would have walked by the tree fey without thinking them anything other than slender saplings. Even now, her human vision wasn’t sharp enough to distinguish tree fey from ordinary trees unless the trees wanted her to.

  Which they sometimes didn’t. At the beginning of her life in Faerie, the tree fey had played pranks on Fenella. They’d lay snares of flexible green fronds to trip her, or grow a thorny branch across her path, or shift around in the forest so that she became hopelessly lost. Fenella eventually—it took decades—understood that the tree fey were interested in her, even liked her, and she learned to distinguish them from normal trees by smell. The tree fey had a subtle scent that, if you closed your eyes and stilled your mind, made the world around you feel softly, indescribably green, and wrapped in calm.

  You could have a good talk with a tree fey, if you were patient. She was still learning.

  The sapling on Fenella’s left wrapped a second vine around her waist. It supported her as Padraig was marched into the clearing between four tree guards. But the support was not necessary. After an initial instinctive flinch, Fenella stood firm. I am not afraid of him, she thought. I hate him, but—no matter what my body thinks—he has no power over me or Bronagh or anyone anymore, and I know it. I do not fear him. I fear nobody.

  She folded her empty arms around herself.

  Still, the tree fey kept its vines in place around her, and as Padraig came closer, the vines tugged Fenella gently away so that there was room for him to stand with her before Queen Kethalia.

  All the fey of the court, in their varied ways, focused on Padraig. Fenella too looked at him straight on. She stared boldly, scornfully, and—

  She inhaled and borrowed some calm from the tree fey.

  Padraig’s beauty almost assaulted the senses. He knew it too. For the last four hundred years, Fenella had watched him tend his body and face; had seen him strut around like his beauty entitled him to anyone and anything he wanted. She had even seen many of the Scarborough girls dazzled and enticed and seduced by his looks—at first.

  Padraig was the rare fey who needed little magical guise to appear human. Fenella had been surprised to learn that he was not considered attractive by those of the fey with more flexible, more mixed blood. Or, at least, that had been Fenella’s understanding until today. What did it mean, she wondered, that the queen and her brother called him the Mud Creature? Ryland had said Padraig was not noble, and that he was a bastard. But what did the word bastard even mean, when there was neither marriage nor simple twoperson parentage among the fey?

  Padraig had lied to her about himself; at least that was clear. Interesting. No, wait, it wasn’t interesting. It was the past. She did not care. She wanted only death. Soon the queen would tell her how to achieve it.

  “Your Majesty,” Padraig said, inclining his head to Queen Kethalia.

  Fenella saw then that he had changed after all. Yes, his black hair grew as thickly as ever from his scalp, and his eyes gleamed more brightly than sapphires, and he stood straight, tall, his shoulders square, his body taut and youthful looking. And yet.

  Fenella’s descendant Joanne Scarborough had described to her a mechanical contrivance called a copying machine. Padraig seemed like a replica of himself. He actually looked blurred. Fenella thought about rubbing her eyes and looking again. But she didn’t, because she didn’t care about him and she wasn’t afraid of him anymore and she wouldn’t voluntarily waste another moment on him.

  The queen spoke to Padraig courteously enough. “Fenella Scarborough, who was once your slave, has come to us with a request.”

  Padraig swept Fenella a low bow. “My love.”

  Fenella did not reply.

  The queen said, “Fenella seeks to reverse the life-spell upon her.”

  “She can’t do that,” said Padrai
g instantly.

  “Oh, but she can,” said the queen. The small leopardpatterned gecko that rode on the queen’s shoulder stuck his head and neck entirely out from her wondrous mass of hair. “There is a way.”

  Fenella leaned forward. “How? What must I do?”

  The queen said, “You must complete three tasks of deliberate destruction in the mortal realm.”

  Three tasks of deliberate destruction.

  It took a moment to penetrate. “You mean like before?” A leaf brushed Fenella’s cheek and she pushed it away. “Three tasks? As with the first curse?”

  Padraig was looking at her. Fenella saw his sneer.

  They both knew she had failed at the previous three tasks. Everyone knew.

  “Yes and no,” said the queen. “These are tasks not of creation, but of destruction.”

  Fenella opened her mouth to ask a question, but the queen’s brother Ryland spoke first.

  “How poetic. I feel the beginnings of a new ballad. What shall we call this one? Scarborough Fair, part two? Summon the minstrels.”

  Fenella whirled on him. Ryland thought her life—her death—was a joke. “You want minstrels? I’ll rip you apart and use your forepaw for a lute!”

  “Ooo la la,” said Ryland. “I am terrified.”

  “Stop it,” said the queen. “Both of you. I said that this is not like before. Ryland, that means there will be no riddles, no tricks, and no song. And, Fenella, not a single one of these three tasks is impossible. It is only . . .” She paused. “It is only that your choices will be . . . difficult. Terrible. Also, as they must be done in the human realm, they will be terrible in human ways.”

  Hope had touched Fenella with the lightest of fingers, however. “No riddles? No tricks?”

  “That is correct,” said the queen.

  “How dull,” Ryland said.

  Fenella knew better than to react, and yet—

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I’ll make my death quest entertaining in other ways, shall I?”

  “Please do.” Ryland bared his teeth at her. She scowled back—and then, abruptly, realized that she was focusing her attention on the queen’s brother in order to ignore Padraig. But she felt Padraig’s gaze. Hot, as always. Possessive. Vindictive. And angry; always angry.

  Well, she was angry too.

  The queen’s brother was laughing now. He beat at the ground with one large paw. Then the other fey joined in, everyone save the queen, the tree fey, Fenella, and also Padraig. It was laughter at the irony of it all. It was laughter at Fenella’s expense, and also at the expense of the despised Mud Creature.

  But it was also simply the laughter of those who have lived too long without it. “Three more tasks for the Scarborough girl!” they chorused. “Better luck to her this time!”

  Chapter 3

  When the laughter stopped, the queen’s gaze was intent on Fenella. “You can do these tasks. I have no doubt.

  You see, destruction, unlike creation, is easy. There will be many possible solutions to these tasks. But I warn you, the ease will be only on the surface.”

  She paused, and then added, “My advice to you, Fenella, is to live out your life instead, long though it may be. I advise you to reject this challenge. To give up your quest for death.”

  “Continue with your long life,” murmured Padraig. “Your lonely life, filled with memories. Like when Bronagh came to me. Fenella, you remember your gawky daughter? That big overlapping front tooth she had . . .”

  Fenella looked only at the queen. She listened only to the queen.

  The queen said, “Don’t allow yourself to be provoked.” “I’m not listening to him,” Fenella said. And she wasn’t,

  though he was still murmuring provocative poison in his low, resonant voice.

  The queen had said the tasks would mean difficult choices, terrible choices. But at least, finally, Fenella would have choices. She met the queen’s globed eyes and thought that they were beautiful.

  “Your Majesty,” she said. “Thank you for this chance. What are the tasks of destruction?”

  Padraig was silent at last.

  The queen leaned forward. “You will destroy three things, but you will get to pick each one, to fit a prescribed condition.”

  Fenella listened carefully. “I will be in control? I will choose all three of the destructive tasks? I will not need to destroy anything—or anyone—that I do not decide to destroy?”

  “Yes. There will be one guideline per task.”

  “I see. Yes. I agree to it.”

  “You are not committed, Fenella, until you have said yes three times. Consider one last time that these are tasks of destruction. This means—”

  Fenella lifted an impatient hand. “I am not a child. I know what it means. So I am responsible for destroying this thing or that thing. What does it matter? Life destroys everything too. Nothing lasts for long. Especially in the human realm.”

  Feeling many critical eyes on her, she whirled and outstared a unicorn, only a foot away. She met the gaze of a speckled faun with wings. She glared at a large, mossy stone that had shuffled closer.

  “Life destroys all of us anyway. At the end we are broken. At the end, we are dust.” She discovered she was looking at her friends the tree fey, and that her voice was quiet, steady, and certain. “At the end, it is all meaningless. Life is death. Life is destruction.”

  “Ah,” Ryland drawled. “A philosopher.”

  Even he could not irritate her now, however. Not now that she saw her path before her, shining strong like the sun on water. Fenella merely looked at Ryland. “Yes. I am a realist.”

  She did not wait for his reaction. She did not care whether he realized she was no longer the uneducated peasant girl she once had been. “I absolutely agree to do this,” Fenella said to the queen. “I agree thrice. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  As the sound of her final yes faded, Fenella realized that her waist was free and bare. It felt strange, to be without the touch of the tree fey. Then excitement welled up in her. She was on her way at last. She held her own fate in her hands.

  The queen’s brother stretched, front paws extended on the ground, muscles rippling.

  “Very well, Fenella,” said the queen. Her gaze moved. “Padraig, Fenella has accepted the three tasks of destruction. Now comes your part.”

  Padraig had a part? Before she could control herself, Fenella found she had swiveled to face Padraig.

  He looked straight back at her. “Why did you think she summoned me?”

  Fenella turned to the queen. “You said there would be no tricks!”

  “There are none. Padraig cast the original spell. Breaking it will affect him.”

  Of course. Fenella gritted her teeth. Why had she not realized this?

  The queen said, “Padraig, your fate will depend on Fenella’s actions, just as hers for so long depended on yours. If Fenella Scarborough succeeds in breaking the life-spell you cast on her, you will die.”

  There was a stirring of deepened interest from the surrounding fey. The only change in Padraig’s expression was a slight flaring of his nostrils.

  But Fenella caught her breath. Padraig, dead? Dead as a result of her actions? Before she had a chance to soak it in, Padraig said, “May I ask a question?”

  The queen inclined her head.

  “What if Fenella fails? What is the consequence to her? Surely there is one.”

  “You are correct,” the queen said. “Everything must balance.”

  There was a pause, a long one. Fenella waited for the blow that she should also have expected. She had been a fool to trust this unknown queen. A fool not to realize that nothing was ever straightforward with the fey.

  The queen said, “If Fenella fails, Padraig, then her life will again belong to you.”

  “My slave again?” said Padraig, slowly. “In my power again?”

  “Yes.”

  No, Fenella thought. And then: What have I done?

  Padraig threw back his
handsome head and laughed. It was a raucous laugh, like a crow.

  Despite all her resolve, despite all her best intentions, Fenella flung words at him.

  “Laugh all you like, Mud Creature!” She took pleasure in using his new name. “We shall see.”

  “We shall indeed.” His gaze swept Fenella up and down in the old way.

  And her control snapped.

  When the red haze lifted from Fenella’s eyes, she discovered that the tree fey had her in their grip. All she had was a vague memory of having lunged, again, for the queen’s knife. Padraig was still leering, but he had stepped prudently back.

  It was the smallest of victories, his stepping away from her, but it would have to do. For now. When she won freedom, when she won her death, she would see him lifeless first.

  “I was wrong. This is far from dull,” murmured Ryland.

  All the fey were talking excitedly, laying bets, exchanging thoughts, like in the old days. The murmurs rose and strengthened—

  “Silence!” The queen got to her feet.

  She looked measuringly at her brother. “I have allowed you too much leash of late, brother.”

  “Allowed?” Ryland yawned. “You have little power over me, sister. We both know it.”

  The queen did not answer with words. She drew her knife and shaved its blade sharply along her inner arm. A viscous line of deep green-blue blood welled up.

  “Consider this a test, brother.” The queen smiled, but it was a smile that did not change her expression. “Your test.”

  “Wait,” said Ryland, half rising. “What are you—”

  “Or perhaps it is a punishment.” The queen spoke over him easily. “You will go with Fenella to the human realm. You will be her adviser. And you will do it well, or you shall not come back here. Do not doubt I have sufficient power for that.”

  Queen Kethalia stretched out her bloody arm and laid it on her brother, blood to his skin.

  A spasm passed through Ryland’s body. His shape went smoky. It writhed and shrank.

  When Ryland came back to solid form, he was a mediumsized, fluffy-haired tomcat. His fur was mostly white, but he had one black forepaw and, on his chest, a second black spot. This spot was in the exact shape of a heart.