The Treachery of Beautiful Things

by Ruth Frances Long

  Had he dropped her?

  She regarded the boy carefully through heavy-lidded eyes. His dark hair was too long, the cut ragged, the cast of his features sharp, and he wore…She started as her eyes focused on his clothes. They appeared to be made of leaves.

  He smiled grimly at her, and in his mismatched eyes she could see wariness and hope and something else. Something she couldn’t quite pin down. A strangeness in his gaze.

  “You’ll be right soon enough. You’ve been elfshot by the Foletti, but they’re gone now.” He glanced behind him.

  “Who are you?” she tried to say, but her tongue was too large in her mouth, her lips swollen and dry. “Where…?”

  He leaned over her and she tensed. But he only moved her head so it was out of the mud, letting it down on soft moss instead and gingerly drawing back, as if loath to touch her at all. Then he sat back on his heels and studied her a moment, lifting a hand as if to lay it on her burning forehead, but pulling away when she flinched.

  “I’m Jack.”

  Her eyes were growing heavy. They closed, but she forced them open again. Should she tell him her name? She searched his face, trying to make sense of him. “Jenny,” she finally mumbled, still not entirely sure she should have.

  “Hush then, Jenny.” He smiled fully then, such a beautiful smile. She scowled—or tried to. Beautiful boys didn’t smile at her. She was too tall, too skinny, too strange for that. But this boy, this Jack, didn’t seem to notice, and she was growing sleepier by the second. He leaned over her again. “You must sleep and let your body purge itself of their drugs. Hush now. I’ll keep a watch, I swear it. When you wake I’ll take you back to the Edge.”

  She frowned. “Can’t…” she mumbled, finally dredging up enough strength to lift her arms and push him away. Well, push him, anyway. He didn’t move. “Have to find Tom.”

  His smile melted into confusion. “Tom?”

  “My brother. Have to…” Her voice shook and she tried to focus her vision. It defied her, swirling until her stomach threatened to empty itself.

  Then a strange thing happened. Jack took her hand. Instinctively she wanted to pull away, but his grip was firm, and she’d used up the last ounce of energy left to her. Her muscles went limp, a tingling replacing any feeling in her fingertips.

  “Later. Sleep now. It will be all right. I’ll help you home, Jenny Wren. It’s my duty to do so as Guardian of the Edge. No harm will befall you. I promise you this.”

  He sounded determined, as if she had no choice but to believe him, as if he was so used to being trusted that it didn’t occur to him she’d find any of this odd.

  And he’d called her Jenny Wren. A frown flickered over her forehead. A strange name to use, like something Shakespeare would have written. If only she could recall it now. English classes were a very long way away and Mrs. Granger’s droning voice had never made iambic pentameter flow like the poetry she claimed it was…

  The ragged remains of her strength ran away from her like water through cupped hands. As darkness enveloped her, she caught sight of one more wonder, something else that had to be part of her fevered imagination. A man stood behind Jack, a little man, so small he would only come up to her hips. His lower body was covered in thick brown fur, like a dog’s, and from his forehead two little horns projected. Goat’s horns. He had goat’s feet too. A name came to her, though rationality rejected it. But then, what was rational here? She was lying in a forest that didn’t exist, watched over by a boy dressed in leaves with wildwood eyes who had dropped her on the ground.

  As if sensing her discomfort, Jack’s hand came up again. And this time he did brush her forehead, his cool fingers smoothing back her hair. She wanted to push his hand away, but couldn’t find the strength. He murmured words she couldn’t place.

  “Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, come our lovely lady nigh…” He murmured rhymes that flowed over her like a lullaby, and she surrendered to sleep.

  chapter three

  “Be honest with yourself, Jack,” said Puck. He rocked forward, chuckling to himself in that odd, infuriating way of his. “Can you look into her eyes and manage as much as a word that isn’t a lie?”

  Jack scowled and turned his back on the hobgoblin. He wasn’t going to give the little devil the satisfaction of an answer.

  Puck just broadened his smile and edged closer. “For one who claims to be friend to the lost, you don’t act much like it.”

  “She doesn’t need friends. She needs to get out of the Realm. Then she can make all the friends she wants. I’m just guarding the border, that’s all. I’m just doing my job.”

  “Oh, aye. That’s all you ever do, isn’t it?” Puck slipped past him and knelt over the sleeping girl. His tail twitched, the coarse brown hair of his rump shivering in such close proximity to a mortal. “She’s fair, though,” he commented, and stretched out a hand toward her flushed skin. “Well, for a mortal.”

  It was true. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on her brow and the dampened hair at the edge of her face curled back, tiny curls, much darker than the chestnut tones of the rest. She had freckles too, a sprinkling of dapples across her nose and at the sides of her face.

  Jack couldn’t remember the last time he had seen freckles on a woman’s flesh. The Sidhe were pale and flawless and all the fae were wont to imitate them, but this girl, this Jenny, was more perfect by far. She bristled like a hedgehog, though, and had a streak of stubbornness—the way she set her chin and glared…Jack hoped she wouldn’t give him trouble.

  “Shame she’s elfshot, or there’d be some sport in her, I feel.” Puck grinned up at him and twisted one of her curls around his dirt-soiled fingers.

  With a snarl that surprised even himself, Jack seized the hobgoblin and hauled him back.

  “Leave her be, you foul little thing.”

  Puck’s laughter rang through the glade, answered by a dozen or more other voices gathered out of sight around them. So they were watching, the wee folk, watching and mocking. The Foletti loved their sport. Jack released him and moved back to crouch over Jenny, guarding her from them. If they could, they’d carry her off. And if they managed that…

  Jack bared his teeth, and he drew his flint knife.

  “Feeling protective, are you, Jack?” Puck asked, his mocking tone more pronounced now. Friend and companion though he was, Puck could be a vindictive little toad, and he had no love of mortals beyond the poems they wove. “That’s the lure of innocence you’re feeling. Beware of it, lad, or she’ll try to make you her own. Aye, and when the queen finds out…”

  Jack’s shoulders tensed at the mention of Titania.

  The laughter surged again, trees and shrubs shaking with the Foletti’s mirth. Oh, it was all too hilarious to them, all right.

  “I don’t belong to the queen.”

  “Try explaining that to her,” Puck said, but there was no laughter this time. “Or to himself.”

  “Get gone, all of you,” Jack ordered, to Puck, to those he could see amid the trees, and to those he could not. “I’ve watch of this place and I’ll keep the peace. Go, Goodfellow, and take your folk with you. There will be no ‘sport’ here this day. Understand?”

  “Elfshot is suggestible, Jack. Remember that when she wakes, and mayhap she can be made a threat to you no more.”

  He glanced at her sleeping face. “She’s no threat.” And yet he gripped the knife a little tighter.

  “No threat?” Puck echoed, no longer visible, but his voice was as clear as if he stood at Jack’s ear. “Woe to you Jack, if you deceive yourself so.”

  He laughed as he retreated. Jack looked up, an emptiness opening inside him, a dark and cold place where his heart should be.

  “Puck? We have to send her back.”

  The hobgoblin stopped and made himself visible again, looking back over his shoulder. “Are you asking for my help now?”

  Jack scrubbed a hand over his face, shifting uncomfortably at the thought. He couldn’t do this on hi
s own. There was nighttime to consider. She would need a guardian in the Realm, and he could not do that come nightfall. He had duties that would not be ignored.

  “Night will be falling soon enough. I—I’m asking for help. Please, Robin Goodfellow, help me and I will owe you a debt.”

  Puck turned back and gave a gracious bow. “I’ll listen to your terms then, Jack o’ the Forest.”

  “You’ll help me watch her, tend her, and you’ll not harm her. I’ll have your word on that. When she wakes, we’ll take her back to the Edge.”

  Puck sat down opposite him, his expression serious now. “But she won’t go back. You heard her. She seeks her brother. She’s on a quest.”

  A quest did complicate things. As honor-bound as he was to defend the borders and guide the lost, Jack was also oath-bound to aid all on a quest. Only his duty to the king outdid that. He pursed his lips. There was one way. A way of working around what his honor and oath said he should do. A way to get rid of her, and quickly, though to contemplate saying it was like a bone lodged in his throat. Puck was grinning, his mouth wide, all his teeth on display. He knew it too and knew how offensive Jack found the idea. Oh, hilarious indeed.

  “As you said,” Jack told him solemnly, “elfshot is suggestible.” He hesitated and then plunged on, his words tumbling out of his mouth. If he paused again, he wouldn’t have the stomach to finish. Honor be damned, the Realm was too dangerous for the likes of her. “We persuade her to go back, as soon as she wakes up. We get her out of the Realm as soon as possible.”

  “It’s too late to get to the Edge before nightfall,” Puck replied, eyeing Jack dubiously. “Far too late. She wouldn’t be safe.”

  “Not alone. But we can get her to a guide, someone to take her the rest of the way this very night, someone who isn’t bound as I am. The Woodsman could take her there.”

  Puck raised his eyebrows. “The Woodsman? Now there’s a thought. You want me to find him and get a promise from him.”

  Jack nodded and his hand fell to almost brush Jenny’s cheek again. He didn’t touch her, though. Not quite. But he remembered. Her skin was as soft as the inside of flower petals, and so warm. He could feel the heat that rose from her. And her scent, like nothing he’d ever encountered. It was unnerving. More than unnerving. “And find out what the Foletti know. You can make them tell you anything. How did she get here? And where from?”

  Puck scrambled to his feet, watching the pair unsurely. His tone gentled now, the mockery gone. “I wasn’t joking about being wary of her, Jack. There’s nothing so dangerous to us as her kind of innocence. Can’t you see it in her? She shines.”

  Jack’s hand recoiled from its place just above her cheek and he moved back, knotting his fingers in the grass. It felt real to him, a cool reminder of what was what. Puck was right, and that stirred more than doubt in Jack’s mind. It stirred fear. “Just hurry. Be back well before dark.”

  Jenny’s skin itched as if she’d rolled in nettles. She’d done that once. Tom had pushed her into a patch in the garden and spent weeks doing her chores to make up for it. That had just been her arms. This time she ached everywhere. Before she could wonder why, the memory jerked through her like electricity. She sucked in a breath and realized something else. She was being watched.

  She knew it somehow, an unshakeable instinct. Knew it in the way an animal senses a hunter. A shiver crawled over the back of her neck on spindly legs. She tried to keep her breathing steady and at the same time open her eyes just a slit. Something betrayed her. She wasn’t sure what, but the moment she saw his gaze fixed on her, she realized by the bitter quirk of his lips that Jack had seen through her pretense.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked at length. “Often the elfshot complain about headaches and pained breathing.”

  “No, I’m…I’m fine.” Jenny pushed herself up, trying to ignore the sway of the world around her and the sickening lurch of her stomach. She wondered briefly if nausea was also a symptom of being…elfshot? She squinted up at him. “Who are you?” She knew, of course. But she wanted to hear him say it again, just to check.

  He didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. “I’m Jack.”

  “Jack. Right.” A guardian, he’d called himself. Or something like that. She went to stand—she was fine; he didn’t need to watch her like a hawk—but when she tried, her legs wobbled and she went down in a tangle of limbs.

  He moved more quickly than she would have thought possible, not darting or rapid, not by any means overly eager to be closer to her, but as if he flew through the space between movements. He crouched suddenly at her side, his head cocked over toward his left shoulder, and caught her before her head could hit the ground. His was the swiftness of a wild animal.

  She shook him off and rolled over, fighting the urge to scratch through her skin or, worse, vomit.

  “Lie still and rest, Jenny Wren. We’ll have you to safety and back home again in no time. I’ll find you a guide to take you back to the borders.”

  Jenny rolled onto her back again and lay there, glaring at him.

  “No,” she said slowly. “I told you. I have to find my brother. I heard him playing.” Jenny paused, squinting at him. “Why did you stay if you’re so eager to be rid of me?”

  Jack ignored this. “I think you must have been mistaken about your brother. The woods can play tricks with sound, you know.”

  She blinked her eyes and tried to focus on that thought. He was right, if you looked at it that way. The way the woods had been…the noises…the things she had seen…And yet, he was sitting in front of her wearing clothes made of leaves. She resisted the urge to pinch herself. Or, better yet, pinch him, hard enough to hurt.

  But that would mean touching him. And if she touched him…

  Jenny shook her head.

  “You’re real enough,” she said. “And you aren’t quite…” To say normal sounded so rude. Human would probably be worse. Her voice choked in her throat and she stared up at him. He had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. They caught the sunlight, the color so bright…

  God, what was she thinking? She scowled at him.

  If Jack noticed, it didn’t seem to bother him.

  “I’m as normal as you’ll find around here.” Was that amusement in his voice? Was he laughing at her?

  Jenny held his gaze, trying to ignore the heat rising in her skin. He had so easily known what she wanted to say, as if he had plucked the thought out of her mind. God, what was normal about him?

  “Look at you, at your clothes…” she said.

  Jack laughed, and it was as if the birds in the trees joined in delightedly. “My clothes are normal too, aren’t they?”

  Even as he said it, she realized that he was wearing a green T-shirt with an abstract pattern like falling leaves and cargo pants, and nothing more exotic than that. Jenny’s face burned hot and she felt tears sting her eyes. But it had been real. She’d heard Tom, she’d seen the Foletti, she’d been so sure. This time. It had been real.

  “Don’t lie to me. I was sure I heard Tom. And the things I saw…”

  Jack got to his feet and helped her up, holding her hand long enough for her to feel the warmth of his skin. She pulled herself free as soon as she was standing.

  “Maybe you hit your head when you fell, you know? Dreams can be so very vivid.”

  “A dream?” It made sense. Of course it made sense. She had fallen and hit her head and it was only after that she had seen all those strange things, wasn’t it? After Tom had vanished, she had dreamed so many times that he was back. She searched for him in so many places. She’d thought she’d find him if she looked in enough of the woodland places of the world. If only she could make herself actually go in among the trees. She wished it. And so dreamed it. Dreams just as real, as vivid as this.

  Jenny stared at Jack now, studying him for some sort of clue. The boys she’d known—and there weren’t many—didn’t look like him, didn’t act like him. For all their bravado, they never s
eemed comfortable in their own skin. And that face. She frowned. No one was that good-looking and didn’t know it. For all he appeared oblivious, he had to realize. His eyes hid far too much.

  A rustling shook the bushes behind them and a figure pushed its way through, as tall as her waist and half covered in coarse hair—half man, half goat. Jenny screamed and crashed back into a shrub. Jack caught her again. She shook him off and he released her too quickly, as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of her.

  “It’s only my dog,” he said calmly. “Don’t be afraid.”

  The world blurred, re-formed, remade itself into something…normal…

  The brown mongrel wagged its tail, but seemed to glare at Jack with murder in its liquid brown eyes. Jenny glanced back just in time to see Jack’s lips quirk into a smile and he knelt down to pet the dog. It bared its teeth at him and skulked off behind his legs. This wasn’t right. She knew it wasn’t. And yet there it was, playing out before her, perfectly normal. Jenny stepped back. Though not as hot as when she first stepped into the trees, the forest was still unseasonably warm. It stifled her breath. She didn’t know where she was. If only it had been real. If only she could have truly found her brother.

  A hallucination? Her heart thudded against her ribs and her stomach seemed to drop away inside her, leaving only emptiness. It hadn’t been real. It had just been another…another incident.

  She could imagine Dr. Griffin’s face if she described this to him, right before he reached for the prescription pad.

  She closed her hand tightly around the locket until it pressed its shape deeply into her palm. Not again. Never again.

  Jack’s voice was very soft as he talked to his dog, but the sudden breeze lifted the words and carried them to her. It was a strange conversation to be having with an animal.

  “And what did he say?” He paused, ruffling the dog’s hair. The creature all but snapped at him. “Good, good. We can be there before nightfall.” The dog’s eyes slid to hers, glaring, and she was sure she saw more intelligence in them than was possible. She stared at her muddy shoes, not really seeing them.