The Treachery of Beautiful Things

by Ruth Frances Long

  “It was the Nix,” he said. “He lured her to the water’s edge. I was too late.” Answer given—not a full answer perhaps, but true enough for all its brevity. Jack shook Jenny again, searching her face for a response. It was empty.

  Something in Jack’s chest staggered as if struck from behind, an unfamiliar, unwanted sensation. The echo of a feeling that wasn’t his anymore, no matter what he might dream. Dreams were just pieces of cloth tied to a tree and then scattered to the wind.

  “He didn’t take her body? Didn’t drown her?” Puck asked quietly.

  “No. I surprised him. But Puck…” Jack looked up at the hobgoblin, aware that his eyes pleaded like a child’s. “Puck, he kissed her.”

  Puck groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Then she’s lost.”

  “Just help me wake her up.”

  “You can’t, lad. There’s no waking her now. He didn’t take her to be a servant in his halls. He did worse. He stole her soul. He’s probably bound it in a golden cage deep beneath the water. She’s gone, lad. As surely as if he had simply drowned her. Now the queen can collect her body whenever she will. And the Nix will hand over her soul for the reward. Her heart and soul together would keep her free of the queen. But this way—body and soul separated—Jenny is helpless.”

  “Titania…” The queen’s name was fluid music and a bitter curse. “This was her plan all along. The Nix is her favorite, isn’t he? Has she arranged all this, Puck?”

  And why? Because she doubted him. And was she wrong to? How high a price would he be willing to pay for his heart? Perhaps Titania feared the price she asked was too high. Jack feared the same.

  But Puck didn’t answer. He touched Jack’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I was to have watched her.”

  Of course it was his fault. If he hadn’t told the king…Anger like a lick of flame ignited again inside him, and he glared at Puck.

  “I’d give anything to take it back,” Puck babbled. “I’d do anything if I thought it would help!”

  “How do I get her back?” Jack’s voice cracked like ice on a winter’s night.

  Puck stared at him in disbelief. “From the Nix? Jack, no one so taken returns. Had he pulled her in bodily, to be a servant or a concubine, perhaps in seven or twenty-one years, she’d come back, but he took her soul, boy. Look at her!”

  Jack’s gaze dropped back to her pale face, and grief etched lines in his skin. He glanced at his friend to see it reflected there. Puck felt some form of it himself, Jack realized, though he would never have dreamed it, not for a mortal. Neither of them should feel anything like this.

  It was as if she slept, but from this sleep there was no awakening. Her lips were already turning blue. Her skin looked like marble, traced with indigo veins.

  “How do you kill a Nix?” Jack asked.

  Puck sank to his knees at his side. “The river isn’t your place, Jack.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “You’re an earth creature, a forest child, like me.”

  “If you won’t tell me, someone will. Rusalka perhaps, or Greenteeth. I’ll find someone and pay the price. Even if I can’t bring her back, the least I can do is kill him for her. I can let her soul go so the queen can’t have her. Puck, I promised to protect her!” It was that more than anything. He’d promised and he’d failed to keep that promise. He’d failed Jenny. The thought left him shredded inside.

  And yet it was still more than that.

  What would Oberon do to him for his failure? What would Titania do? Any hope of his own freedom was gone, that was certain.

  Those worries were pale ghosts compared to the one overwhelming truth.

  He’d failed Jenny.

  The hobgoblin said nothing. Enough that it was a promise. Enough that Jack had failed. Anything more would mean facing things that neither of them wanted to face, not now, not in anger.

  “Steel,” Puck muttered, as if even the word were a poison to him.

  Jack looked up.

  “You need steel for preference. Iron at a push. But a sword, not haggled for, given in fair exchange. And there’s only one place to get it. Out there, along the Ridgeway between worlds, in the place of metal and fire from a hand that hates us and everything we are. The touch of impure metal is as foul to you as it is to me.”

  Jack swallowed down a breath and stepped over the Edge. The mortal world was wreathed in darkness, and a chill, constant drizzle misted the hilltop on which he found himself. He walked through a place called the Vale, crossing a road and climbing the steep incline, heading for an ancient pathway running through the sloping countryside. Beneath the mud, smears of pale chalk that formed the foundations of the land hereabouts were visible, like bare bones exposed. There was no sign of the folk anywhere. Neither mortal nor fae. But then, as Puck had warned him, the fae had no place here anymore. Not in the human world. Not in the places between.

  “You’ll have but one chance,” Puck had said. “Oberon’s protection is all that will keep you safe. And he didn’t give it with good grace. He doesn’t relish the thought of you stepping even a foot outside his power, no matter how much he wants the girl. He’s turning your enchantment upside down for this one night so you can walk in her world.” Jack had stared, unable to believe that. “Don’t mistake me,” Puck continued. “It’s no favor. You owe him a great debt, Jack. He wants your word that you’ll renounce what was yours, and your right to it, for once and for all.”

  Renounce what was his. Jack gazed down on the fields below, edged with hedgerows, a final line of wildness clinging to the edges of the mortal world, and the squat and flat-topped hillock where he had crossed through. There, Puck had said, a hero killed a dragon. Jack knew better. Dragons weren’t killed so easily, certainly not by mortals. Not even by him. Another failure. More likely this hero was buried there.

  Jack pulled the collar of his dappled green coat up around his neck against the rain. Beneath it, he wore a simple green shirt and loose britches. His boots were a sturdy leather fastened with synthetic laces. Puck’s glamour was impressive. If he did encounter any mortals, they’d hardly give him a second glance.

  Renounce what was his. The words rose again. It had been so long since he had even considered what was once his. And yet he never ceased to long for it. Titania’s recent offer had made it more real by far. But he knew the truth. He was meant to protect the Realm. Yet he couldn’t even protect Jenny. What was once his? That was a joke. Freedom? Knowing he could never take it back, or win it for himself, all this was a small thing to renounce.

  No more dreams or hopes.

  No more wishes.

  His wishes had been torn from the tree. Puck had told Oberon everything and despite his regret, would probably do it again in an instant. The queen could come for Jenny at any second. With her soul in the hands of the Nix, there would be nothing she could do to withstand Titania. And Mab. This one chance was all he had—and a slim one at that. He had failed in every way, in his servitude to the king, in his attempts to placate the queen, in his tattered friendship with Puck, his broken self-control, but most of all, he had failed in his primary duty—to protect those who wandered in the Realm. He had failed Jenny. He’d failed her from the moment he met her. His efforts to send her home had just served to entangle her in the Realm. To trap her there.

  Better their paths had never crossed.

  Resigning his claim to the last particle of his old self was a little thing in comparison to helping her now, a vain attempt to restore his honor perhaps, but the only thing he could do. And that meant approaching yet another king. A fallen one.

  And then what? A voice whispered within him. Win her back and hand her over? And to whom? There is no way to win this. Whatever you touch turns to ruin. That’s your true curse.

  White Horse Hill lay dark beneath the clouded sky. And Titania’s ward—the great White Horse itself—was blind without the moon. A small relief. Jack hurried past it as rain fell in gray waves, whipped up by gusts
of wind that seemed to scratch at the sky. The clouds shifted then, and moonlight broke through. Almost at the summit of the hill, all Jack could do was stare. He lifted his face.

  The moon hung high in the night’s sky, cut by clouds, full and so very bright. He’d never seen it. Never thought to see it, not with these eyes. It was beautiful and vast, hovering so far above him.

  The moonlight fell on him, and it fell on the horse. The White Horse. Titania’s ward. He was a fool. So very much a fool. Jack cursed, pulled his hood up over his head, and hoped Titania wasn’t watching. She’d no reason to notice him in this place, no reason to suspect that he was here or why. He prayed that the White Horse was not so mystical a thing after all, just a chalk outline carved into the living landscape. Someone had dug it out of the earth, clearing the grass to reveal the white chalk beneath, thousands of years ago. People, just people, he tried to tell himself. It looked like a sketch done by a child, and yet at the same time, profoundly powerful, as if a great hand had reached down from the sky—or up from the earth—to scour its mark into the land, long brush strokes that glowed with light when the moon spilled over it. He feared it. No simple thing of humankind. It was a ward. It kept things away. Things like him.

  The moonlight called to him now. Almost as strongly as the trees. He’d never seen its light falling about him, never seen it silvering his hands. It made them like stone, strong and reliable. Hands that did their own work.

  Jack thought of what Puck had promised on his behalf, and it made the pit of his stomach plummet. And yet, he would have done the same if he’d been the one to bring the news to their king, if he’d been the one to beg for help. That Puck had gone in his stead said much for their ruined friendship. Jack would never have asked it. He wasn’t quite sure he should have allowed it. But Oberon now had his promise. It served them all.

  Puck wasn’t able to look him in the eye anymore, and some deep dark part of Jack was glad. That part of him took a malicious joy from the hobgoblin’s shame. That part would be slow to forgive and quick to suspect. It always had been, and he should have known better and trusted it more.

  Jack turned onto the Ridgeway now, the hilltop shielding him from the White Horse as he descended the other side of the summit, following the wide, ancient trail. Thick knots of trees and undergrowth pressed along the edges of this pale chalk path, lush and dark—rose, oak, holly, and hawthorn tangled together. The white mud was churned and rutted as if a great many people and chariots of enormous size had passed that way.

  Nothing fae strayed along this road, not willingly. Not along the Ridgeway. There was no place for them here, and the place where it led…Well, the less anyone dallied there, the better. Humans too. Though the people of this place might think the Ridgeway was their oldest road, it was far older than mankind, older than anything. The path took him off the hill, into sheltered land where mankind farmed and tilled, where the Ridgeway met other, newer roads, but still carried on its own way, paying them no heed. At the crossroad, he tried to ignore modern man’s way-markers, white ciphers on blackened wood. Each one was carved with an acorn, pure white like the chalk of the land, meticulously detailed. Even the things that showed him his path seemed to point at what a fool he was. Another of life’s ironies? Or just fate’s way of mocking him?

  It was a place of magic, the Ridgeway, a place between. The only way to approach it was to step from the world of Faerie into the world of men, and from there into another world, one where both should fear to tread. This was the doorway to a place of another magic and other gods. This was Jack’s destination.

  The moon reappeared, just for a moment. The path ahead was overgrown, its center thick with grass. To the side of it, dense hedgerow surrounded a large field of swaying wheat. But then the hedgerow parted, broken by a gate, which revealed another, narrower path cutting its way through the crops. Beyond it was an unfarmed area, shaded by ancient beech trees. The dome of trees hid the interior from sight.

  Only a gate stood in his way. Jack frowned at the chest-high barricade. That wouldn’t stop him. It wouldn’t stop anything. He climbed over it easily. Was it really meant to keep people from entering? Modern man should be more worried about what might get out.

  Jack walked quickly up the narrow white path—chalk again, smoother and less traveled, but not overgrown. He passed beneath the ring of trees and stopped, staring at the burial mound that now rose before him. It lay like a monster sleeping beneath a blanket of earth, fronted by its teeth of stone while its body sprawled back to the trees. The sign nearby named the place, giving facts, figures, and dates, and offered free entry for all. Humans had no idea of the true price demanded, but Jack did. No one had really entered this place in over a hundred years. They may have walked in the shadows of the standing stones, or made their way up onto the mound. They may have listened to descriptions of barrows and dates so long ago that they had no meaning anymore. But they would never be able to enter the smithy.

  Jack felt the power of the place, the earth and fire energies seeping up through his legs even as the chill rain ran through his hair and down his face. He approached the mound, step by onerous step. All around him the beech trees swayed and whispered warnings that should have driven him back.

  Every few feet, enormous rock slabs, standing upright like sentinels, guarded the narrow path cut into the mound. Once, it might have been a tunnel, but its roof had long ago been stripped off. A rock wedged across the opening before him gave the message loud and clear—stay away. Jack didn’t listen, couldn’t. He skirted up and over the cold, wet stone to the path inside and walked toward the black mouth at its far end, like a doorway, two upright stones and one on top, and beyond them darkness. Thick rocks on either side made walls that appeared to teeter on the edge of crushing anyone unwise enough to venture farther. But he couldn’t stop now.

  In the flat rock at the height of his eyes was a gap, barely discernable without fae sight. Jack reached for the pouch hanging at his belt, only to find it was now a portion of the britches themselves. Like in Jenny’s clothes—pockets, she had called them. He smiled grimly, remembering her bemused expression in having to explain so simple a concept to him, the way the small line had creased between her eyebrows.

  He tucked thoughts of her safely in the back of his mind and took out the first coin. It carried the image of a king on a horse. On the other side, the image had been worn clean away. Oberon had only given them grudgingly. He guarded such objects with a fierce possessiveness. The mortal metal sizzled against Jack’s skin, but he could touch it, so heavy was the gold in it. The king had won it long ago, in a far-off land, in one of his many wagers. Oberon rarely lost.

  Jack closed his eyes, murmuring his request, and set the ancient coin in the hollow, an offering to something far older than him. Then he leaned back against the nearest rock to wait, pulling his hood up over his head for shelter.

  It didn’t take long, but then, these things rarely did when you knew the way. He couldn’t say exactly when it appeared, but between the blinking of his eyes to clear the rain, a ruddy glow appeared in the dry gloom of the barrow doorway. It stained the ancient stones, illuminating hidden runes around the entrance.

  Jack read them each in turn. Old magic, as old as the stones themselves, foreign to him, but strangely familiar, as if he were finally seeing something he always should have known. Runes were not part of Faerie magic. But they were nonetheless powerful. They were the symbols of ancient things, things that Jack’s absent heart would know intimately. Things stolen from him, perhaps, like his heart.

  Is, it sounded like a voice, hissing in his ear, like water falling on a hot stone.

  Rad, a distant shout, a violent urge, cut off too soon.

  Ger, the growl of a cat, a murmur on the edge of sleep, a threat.

  He might not understand their meaning, but that didn’t really matter. It was magic, and the message was so very clear.

  Know yourself, the runes seemed to warn him in the flickering g
low, before you enter here. Before you ask a boon you can never repay. Kings were not patient. Not even the fallen kind.

  The runes glowed a fiery red for a moment, the rain hissing as it came into contact with them and turned to steam in the frigid air. The shadows in the doorway to nowhere deepened, glowed red, and suddenly it didn’t lead nowhere anymore. It led to a very definite place, the last place his instincts wanted him to go.

  “Well,” said a rough voice from inside. “You’d better come in if you’re coming.”

  chapter fifteen

  Something dark lurched between the stones and the fire, a huge figure, misshapen and hobbled. The rain worked its way under Jack’s collar and ran icy fingers down his skin. He moved on reluctant limbs and stepped out of the rain, laying his wet cloak aside, shaking wet hair from his eyes. The center of the circular room was dominated by the forge, its fire bright and hot. The heat hissed life back into his skin. He hugged his arms around his chest and looked up into the black eyes of the enormous figure who stood on the far side of the forge, his features turned demonic by the glow.

  He had gray hair, the color of smoke, but he didn’t look old. At the same time, Jack knew, he was as ancient as the stones around them. This was no mere man. The relaxed stance did nothing to hide the strength in his hulking shoulders and arms. He wore a leather apron, and leather cuffs around his wrists. His thick beard was neatly trimmed, but the wildness in his dark eyes remained untamed. In one meaty grip he held a hammer. All around the edges of the room were workbenches, cluttered with objects in various stages of completion, each one so beautifully detailed that to look too long at them would draw tears from a stone.

  “Cat got your tongue?” asked the smith.

  Jack forced his voice out.

  “Greetings and honor to you, Wayland. Peace be at our meeting.”