The Treachery of Beautiful Things

by Ruth Frances Long

  Cradling the baby Leczi a little closer, Jenny let her eyes range over the broken remains. She’d never been close to a dead body before stepping into the woods. Now she’d seen two that had been all but torn to pieces. Her stomach coiled tight, her mouth filling with sweetness in a prelude to vomiting. She swallowed convulsively. She couldn’t fall apart.

  Upright, the creature would have been at least eight feet tall and terrifying, an ogre of legend, just as she had imagined a monster to be in her childhood. It smelled of corruption and decay, of rancid flesh, even though it could not have been dead for long. The baby gave off the same odor, she realized, just not so strongly.

  “What could have done this?” she asked Puck.

  To her horror, the hobgoblin was trembling. “I can think of one or two things, none of which we want to meet tonight. Jenny, we need to get out of here.”

  “Like the thing from the farmhouse? The one following us?”

  But Puck looked away quickly. “Yes, possibly. Could be a Kobold. Or a troll. Maybe wood elves if they attacked in a swarm. And even a common ogre would have a pretty good chance at it too. None of which we would have a hope against. But there are other things. Much worse things…”

  The baby stirred, opened its eyes, and then began to wail mournfully, the sound sharp and grating, tearing on the edge of their hearing to the very point of pain. Jenny hugged it closer, rocking it against her body as she shushed it.

  The thought of the greenman chilled her, and despite Puck’s attempt to deflect her question, she was sure it was still nearby—and not just since she had ventured out alone, she realized now. Ever since she arrived in this place, whenever the sun had set, when the darkness oozed up out of the shadows like oil, she could feel its eyes on her, feel it circling around her. It hadn’t come so close by day. With Jack there, it would never dare to come so close, but at night, with Jack gone…

  A chill etched its way down her back, little fingers of fear probing between her vertebrae. She could sense it.

  Why had she ever thought she could brave this world alone at night?

  But she had, she reminded herself. She had seen it, and faced it. She set her jaw a little more firmly.

  “It’s watching us now, isn’t it?”

  Puck tugged at her arm. “Leave the child and come back to the camp. It isn’t safe here. Whatever killed the Leczi may come back at any moment. Please, Jenny. It’s dangerous here.”

  “All right,” she agreed, hiding her relief at the thought of their camp and safety. “We’ll go back, but the baby comes too. I won’t leave it here to die.”

  They made their way slowly back along the path, Puck’s eyes darting furtively from side to side. The baby slept now, curled like a kitten against Jenny’s chest, its head on her shoulder, its breath coming in harsh little snorts. With tiny arms and legs bunched up against its torso, it held in its warmth. Jenny feared she’d disturb it with her own fears, so she hummed softly to it as they walked, and the creature slept on, snorting and snuffling into her shoulder. Puck glared at her whenever he dared tear his attention away from their surroundings.

  “What’s a Kobold?” she asked. She didn’t know the word. Come to that, she didn’t know what a Leczi was either, but something in the way Puck had said Kobold intrigued her.

  Puck rolled his eyes to the branches and the stars above, growling under his breath.

  “A spirit set to guard a house. First they were the dwellers in the trees, the living spirits of the forest. But their sacred trees were cut down and carved into figurines in such a way that the spirit was trapped inside. Then they were shut into boxes, locked away and brought indoors. Once there, they lived as slaves. Only if the box was opened by one other than their master could they escape, and if they did, they wreaked a terrible revenge.” He leaned closer, enjoying this a little too much for her comfort. “They stole the children, spoiled the herds, blighted the crops, and set the house alight.”

  Jenny drew back from him, but he wasn’t finished. He grabbed her wrist to pull her close.

  “To protect their young, the masters created toys to teach the children never to go near a Kobold’s prison—terrifying things. A box was simply but beautifully decorated in the manner of the shrine that trapped the spirit. The lid was held in check by a simple latch—unlike the wooden cage, which was sealed by magic. Ah, but if the child tripped that catch, just as if they opened the Kobold’s box, something terrible leaped out, laughing like a maniac delighting in new freedom.”

  Disappointed, Jenny sighed. Was this Puck’s idea of a joke? He did have that twisted sense of humor, after all. “A jack-in-the-box,” she said. “I had one when I was little.” They’d both had it, her and Tom, given to them by some great-aunt who should have known better. It had scared her half to death, which Tom had found hilarious, of course. Where was it now, she wondered. Lost and forgotten in the attic, gathering dust, probably. She couldn’t remember when it had been put away, or lost. So many things blurred in her memory around the time Tom had vanished.

  “A Kobold,” Puck told her solemnly. “It’s called a Kobold.”

  She shook her head. A jack-in-the-box. Another Jack. “Does everything come back to Jack?”

  Puck grinned suddenly, the seriousness evaporating like morning mist. “Between mankind and the Realm, yes, of course.”

  Jack was back with the morning, just as Puck had promised. Jenny found him standing over her, his expression dark as a thunderous sky. For a moment she couldn’t move. She stared up at him, suddenly afraid.

  There was no shaking him, or Puck, she realized. No running away from them, no striking out on her own. But she couldn’t let him lead her back home, or whatever else he had planned. She struggled to think of an alternative in that split second, faced with the anger blazing from his mismatched eyes. Nothing came. She stared up at him. Beside her, something warm and soft stirred, cooed, and then began to cry, a fierce snarling noise cut with knife-sharp wails. The baby! She sat up as quickly as she could, Jack forgotten, and gathered it against her.

  But Jack was not so easily dismissed.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, his voice thin. She looked up. His jaw pulsed. His brows formed a grim line over tired eyes. He had not slept, then. Whether it was his duty as guardian, or hunting the creature in the forest to keep it away, he looked exhausted. In fact, she never saw him sleep. He didn’t even doze when they rested. His eyes never left their surroundings, never ceased their patrol. And now he stared at the child in her arms.

  “I found it last night,” she replied, aware of the defensiveness in her voice. “Its father was dead.”

  “And where is the mother?” Jack turned away, moving with unsettling speed. She kept forgetting that whatever he was, he wasn’t human. Now, with the dawn rising around them, his speed and strength seemed to grow by the moment. “Puck!”

  But Puck was nowhere to be seen. Swearing, Jack searched the undergrowth around him, prodding all the likely looking hidey-holes. Puck was gone.

  Lucky Puck, she thought.

  When he turned back to her, his hands were clenched, his shoulders straight and hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and his face a blank, white mask. “Will you at least show me where you found it?” He bit out the request.

  Jenny led the way, the baby cradled in her arms. She found herself drawn without conscious thought to stroke its face, to rock it against her as she walked. The baby snuggled, quiet now, lulled by movement. It had to be hungry, and yet, good little soul that it was, it never made a whimper. Jenny sang to it in undertones, gentle songs she remembered from her earliest childhood. When she looked at Jack, his expression mixed fascination and disgust. He flicked his dark hair from his eyes and turned away.

  From the clearing ahead, they heard the sound of a woman weeping. Jenny stopped, hugging the child a little closer. Jack slid in front of her, drawing his wicked-looking knife.

  The woman wore a simple white shift-like gown. She was sittin
g on the fallen tree trunk, her head and shoulders hunched over. She trembled as she wept, her sobs cutting through the still forest.

  Jack came to a halt so quickly that Jenny nearly ran into him.

  “Who is she?” she whispered.

  He opened his mouth to say something when a dreadful cry split the silence. It sounded like metal tearing under pressure. Jenny’s free hand went instinctively to her ear, to block the sound, but Jack seized her shoulders and pulled her into the undergrowth. The baby woke, its face reddening as it made ready to cry. Jenny hugged it close to her.

  “Quiet!” Jack said. “Keep it quiet or we’re dead.”

  Jenny pushed her little finger into the child’s mouth, trying not to think of its teeth, and was rewarded by its frantic sucking. Hunger made it forget fear and it fell silent, but for the occasional grunt of frustration that no milk was forthcoming.

  “This won’t last long. It’s too hungry. What was that awful noise?”

  Wind rippled the leaves, set the forest around the clearing trembling and then, beyond the weeping woman, Jenny saw something alight on the ground as gracefully as a bird. For all that, the earth still shook beneath the weight of its enormous body.

  “Elders defend us,” Puck gasped. “It’s a dragon.” He wriggled from the bushes beside them, planting himself firmly at Jack’s side. Questions of where he had been evaporated in the face of this mighty beast.

  The creature was over twenty feet long, coil after coil of scaled body glinting red in the sunlight. Its great head moved from side to side as it tasted the air, a snake’s tongue flickering between the massive teeth. Saliva dripped from its maw and it sucked in a breath. The roar bellowed through the clearing, rattling the forest.

  “It’s a dragon,” said Jenny. “Jack, it’s a real—”

  “I know,” he snapped. “Just stay down and be quiet. Maybe it won’t scent us over the stench of Leczi.”

  “But that sound.” She kept her voice low, no more than a breath. “Did it make that?”

  “No. It was her. She called it.”

  On the far side of the clearing the fairy woman got to her feet, her pale face slick with her tears. There was no life in her eyes. Jenny knew that look far too well. Her mother wore the same expression. Her own mother could look right through Jenny, as if she weren’t there some days. Perhaps she wasn’t. Some days, anything could have happened and the only thing her mother would have welcomed was oblivion. Faced with that, the wretched boarding school had been a blessed relief. Faced with it now, seeing it in another…

  “Jack, you have to stop her.”

  His glance, a mix of bemusement and disbelief, told her she was mad. “That’s Titania’s dragon, one of the most dangerous creatures in the Realm. If she wants to commit suicide, it’s her affair.”

  “She’s the baby’s mother.”

  “Which means she’s a Leczi,” Puck interrupted. “And powerful in her own right. All the more reason to stay out of it, Jack.”

  Jenny turned on them both. “You can’t! Look at her. And what will become of the baby? I know you’d both rather see it dead, but we aren’t leaving it behind. So help her, or get ready for a life of Leczi nappies!”

  “Jenny,” Jack said in a calmer voice. “You don’t understand. It isn’t right for any one of us—”

  “And what about the baby? Jack! You’re a guardian. You have to. She wouldn’t do this if she knew that the child was still…Oh God!” The decision was too terrible, but it blazed in her mind as if already made for her. “Oh God. I don’t believe I’m doing this!” She surged to her feet, trying to shelter the baby, and ran into the clearing, straight at the dragon.

  chapter ten

  The dragon’s roar shook the ground beneath her feet, almost sending Jenny to her knees. She scrambled forward, breathing hard. She was an idiot, that’s what she was. The baby felt like a lead weight against her chest, dragging at her shoulders.

  “Stop!” she screamed.

  Claws scoured the earth to her left, and the Leczi’s eyes flashed.

  Then the mother saw the child.

  Disbelief passed over her features, and then a light sprang into her eyes. She struggled toward Jenny, but the dragon brought one huge foot down between them and lashed its tail out, raking up the earth like a plow. Jenny threw herself back, but with her arms protecting the baby, she fell heavily, rocks digging into her shoulder. The dragon loomed over her, flashing red in the sunlight, each scale a shining jewel, and a wave of hot breath covered her, the smell of sulfur. She scrambled back, trying to retreat.

  A figure leaped over her, waving a long tree branch. Jack yelled something incoherent, running right at the dragon with his makeshift spear as if his presence alone could drive it back. The beast exhaled with a shriek, and fire billowed toward this new threat. The branch burst into flames, but Jack held on, swinging it toward the dragon in an arc of light. The dragon shied to the left, exposing its flank, where a series of gashes glistened with crimson blood. Jenny thought of the dead Leczi, the blood and skin beneath its yellow nails.

  “Jenny, get back!” he yelled. “To the forest!”

  A line of flames burst toward him, incinerating the grass and turning the earth into a scorched scar. Jack dived to one side, rolled over the burning branch, and came up again, thrusting the end at the dragon’s exposed belly. Jenny sucked in a breath, but the makeshift weapon only glanced off the glistening scales.

  Squirming against Jenny’s chest, the baby began to scream, its awful keening cry rising above even the roar of the dragon. Jenny struggled to her knees in time to see the Leczi running toward her, her face distorted with a vicious hunger. The baby screeched again and this time the mother joined in, their voices intertwining at the top of Jenny’s hearing. Claws sprouted from the Leczi’s hands as she bore down on Jenny.

  Jack staggered back, still brandishing the flaming branch.

  “Run, Jenny!” He drove forward again, aiming for the wounded side and the dragon lumbered away, on the retreat.

  The Leczi shrieked and Jenny froze, staring at her, at the murderous claws and the teeth twisting her once beautiful face. But the creature wasn’t looking at her. The piercing eyes were fixed on the baby alone.

  “Wait,” Jenny whispered. “Wait, please…just wait…”

  She fumbled with the baby, cursing her own hands as she did so. The child cried out mournfully as Jenny lifted it out and offered it to its mother, holding it at arm’s length.

  The Leczi seemed to shrink down on itself, teeth and claws retracting. She edged forward, warily snapping her eyes up to Jenny, then back down to the baby. Jenny held firm, forcing herself to be calm and still so as not to frighten the mother.

  In no more than a heartbeat, the Leczi snatched back the child, pulling it to her breast and crooning over it.

  The roar of the dragon shook the world around them. Jack raced by Jenny and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her after him.

  “I said run!”

  Stumbling behind him, Jenny tried to catch both her breath and footing as they dodged into the trees. Jack pitched himself forward, rolling into the undergrowth and pulling her down behind him. She struggled through a tangle of limbs, fern, and bushes, and fell, finding herself face-to-face with him, their mouths a finger’s length apart. His exhilarated grin faded, and his eyes widened, the pupils huge and dark. Her own face reflected there, mouth parted.

  So much for her insistence that he never touch her again.

  For a moment the insane thought that he would kiss her flickered across her mind. Jack stared. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Her eyes followed its movement and then were drawn back to meet his gaze.

  She’d been kissed before, once, by Peter Browning outside a school dance. It was rushed and disastrous, teeth clashing, wet. He’d tasted of beer and cigarettes and she’d frozen under the onslaught, then pulled away to find him laughing at her inexperience.

  But this was different, wasn’t
it?

  Jack leaned closer, his face strained, as if he weren’t acting of his own free will. He reached out, his fingertips sliding into her hair, his palm cradling her cheek. Jenny’s eyelids fluttered down and her breath hitched.

  The dragon let out an earth-trembling bellow and the spell shattered as danger reasserted itself. Its wings battered the trees overhead and a shower of leaves and twigs rained down all over them. Jack snapped to a protective crouch, every muscle poised.

  Free of his hands, Jenny’s good sense slammed back into her head. The dragon whipped around in the air above the clearing, a new gash running down its side, a murderous gleam in its multifaceted eyes.

  The Leczi still knelt in the clearing, cradling her baby, singing to it.

  “Oh God, it’s going to kill them!” Jenny started to get up, but Jack hauled her back down, pinning her there with his body.

  “Don’t move. Not if you want to live. Cover your ears.”

  She pushed at him ineffectively. “Get off me!”

  He slapped his hands over the sides of her head, and she was surrounded by the scent of him—a combination of musk and forest leaves, of new growth and decay.

  The dragon roared, then drew in a breath, the wind of its great wings sending a gale through the trees. Flames billowed from its mouth, boiling the air, making everything shimmer.

  The Leczi lifted her head as if scenting the air. Her eyes were closed, and she smiled. She actually smiled. The flames enveloped her and she opened her mouth. Instead of a scream, she sang.

  The fire transformed around her. It spread out like wings, billowing away in time with her song. The dragon recoiled, howling as it fell back, and the Leczi’s note rose again, higher this time. Jenny’s teeth ached with the sound. It pierced deep inside her brain. She winced. Jack’s hands tightened around her ears, muffling her hearing from the full impact. Twisting her head, she caught just a glimpse of his grimace. He wasn’t immune to the sound either, but he kept his hands where they were. His eyes showed discomfort, then outright pain until he squeezed them tightly shut.