The Treachery of Beautiful Things

by Ruth Frances Long

  “I don’t want to be the May Queen!”

  “You don’t have a choice.” Tom’s face crumpled at the words, and Jenny found herself suddenly wanting to comfort him. “Titania was a May Queen once”—he took a calming breath—“a May Queen who won. A thousand years ago or more, she stepped from our world into this one of dreams and shadows, and she too defeated Queen Mab. She ate the old queen’s heart, as had been Mab’s way.”

  Jenny’s stomach twisted in disgust. “Why?”

  Tom shrugged, again composed. “A tradition, perhaps, a victory rite. They were different times, violent and dangerous with old and bloody magics. Or maybe it was a trick. I don’t know. But like a snake coiled beneath a stone all winter, Mab came back, even stronger.” Tom’s eyes were distant now. “And Titania wasn’t the victor anymore. They were one and the same. There were many others, whose names we haven’t heard, names no one has heard since the day they came—they weren’t so lucky. They lost and were consumed, defeated.”

  “Titania and Mab—they aren’t the same person?”

  His eyes snapped back to her. “They are now. The May Queen is like a mold into which the power is poured. And with power comes new life, fresh power. They haven’t seen such power as they see in you in a thousand years, Jenny. The forest didn’t come alive for me. It came for you. She can’t let you go. And Oberon won’t let her keep you here.”

  “Then we ask him for help.” Even as she said it, she knew it was ridiculous. How could she hope to outwit even one of them, let alone both?

  “Oberon?” Tom sighed, and his eyes hardened the way Dad’s did when he had to explain something he thought she was deliberately failing to grasp. “There was a time when there were two kings and they fought for the May Queen. Until Oberon. He started the imbalance when he defeated the trees and trapped his rival king rather than kill him. He does not allow freedom. That’s why Titania fled from him in the first place. And now he wants you in her place. He sees you as a queen he can control.”

  “I won’t be controlled by anyone.” Anger flared in her voice and Tom looked back at her, a curious expression on his face.

  “You sound like Mother,” he murmured. Then he shook his head and the moment was gone. “He’ll find a way to control you. They always do. Mab’s approach is simpler. Kill you. Use you. Become you. Or, failing that, have you become her.”

  She swallowed hard and took his hand again. His skin was too warm, covered in a light sheen of sweat, as if he had been sitting in the noon sun for too long.

  But it was Tom…

  “Come with me.”

  He shook his head. “I belong here now.”

  “If you could only see…Mother and Dad…If you could have seen what they went through when you disappeared—the endless searches, the pleas on TV, the newspaper reporters everywhere, the Internet—” She studied his face, trying to see something more of the boy she had known again—the warmth and gentleness that had allowed him to create such beautiful music, so beautiful that it touched the souls of all who heard it. The music that was the very reason he had been taken.

  “Mother and Dad.” He laughed bitterly. “You don’t remember what it was like, Jenny. Mother and Dad and their child prodigy. All I heard was how talented I was, how that would open so many doors. But they weren’t the doors I wanted to open. You were the only one who didn’t care if I could play or not, or who took pleasure in the music just for the sake of it, the way I used to.”

  A smile formed on her lips. “I don’t have a musical bone in my body, Tom.”

  “Yes you do. You may not be a musician, but you loved music. It’s inside you. You loved…you still love so much.”

  “I loved you. I still do. You’re my brother.”

  It was a plain and simple answer, the honest answer, but he clearly wasn’t expecting it. The moment dragged on too long. Tom backed away from her, freeing his skillful hands.

  “You wouldn’t claim me so easily if you knew what she—” He stopped at the door, lost in the shadows again. “I’ll take you as far as the Edge, Jenny. That’s all I can do. I can’t leave her, and you can’t remain here. They need me. She needs me. She might not have gone about it the right way, but that doesn’t change things. If they don’t tithe—”

  “What? What happens if they don’t send some innocent person to die?”

  He drew in a breath, as if she’d uttered some terrible blasphemy. “Innocent…” he scoffed, but the word was tainted with regret. “No. It’s not like that.” His voice shook, suddenly childish. “It’s a sacrifice to save them all, not just the Sidhe. To keep the whole Realm safe.”

  Jenny shook her head. “Why can’t she do it herself? Come back with me, Tom,” she tried, a last desperate effort. “She’s going to kill you, no matter what. If not now, then in another seven years. You aren’t one of her people, and she tires of new things in the blink of an eye.” Jenny’s voice was rising. “You’re old to her now! She’s just using you.” She took a step toward him, but stopped when he shied back as if afraid.

  “Meet me at midnight, when they’re all feasting. I’ll be in the rose garden.”

  Her brother stepped outside and slammed the door behind him. The sound was final, but Jenny couldn’t stop now. She threw herself against the wood. “Please, Tom. Listen to me! Come home. You’re a grown man, not a child. They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. Tom! Please. It’s a lie. Everything about this place is a lie!”

  But the only sound that came back was his retreating footsteps. The cut in her palm made her whole arm ache now, and a deep weariness went alongside it. The jack dragged at the pocket of her ruined apron, pulling at her until she sank to the ground.

  She breathed. Jack had been right. If only she could tell him that. If only she could see him once more.

  But if she was going to get herself and Tom out of the Realm, that wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps that was what Jack had been trying to tell her.

  chapter twenty-three

  Jenny waited, clutching the iron jack, until she heard the footsteps coming toward the kitchen. She didn’t have much time. And if they guessed even for a moment that she was no longer in their thrall…

  She scrambled up from where she sat with her back against the kitchen door, took three breaths, and forced herself to be calm. She had to make sure she played the part to perfection.

  Somewhere far off, a clock chimed midnight.

  Three other servants opened the door, different ages, a man and two women. They smiled at her and set to work carrying out trays of food Jenny could not remember having been there before, and she smiled back, the same beatific expression that spoke of nothing but bliss, and headed for the door with a similar tray in her hand. She moved as if she were a puppet, mimicking them exactly. And smiling.

  Smiling, smiling, smiling, until her face ached.

  Still holding her tray, she drifted down the halls as if her only thought was to carry it to her masters and mistresses. The palace was a maze. She passed room after room, some filled with revelers, some empty and eerily silent. Turning corners and following the hallways, she found her way to the ground floor of the palace, to the outer wall, and finally to a way out. Awkwardly opening the heavy doors, the tray still balanced in one hand, she stepped into the night.

  Cool air washed over her. The midnight chimes fell silent, the last one echoing after her as she tried to find her way to the rose garden.

  She had almost given up hope when she heard the flute. The tune began slowly, an invitation, and sped up, elaborating on its main theme until she knew it, better than she knew her own heartbeat. “Haste to the Wedding,” Tom’s favorite, the same song that had brought her—and him, she realized now—to the Realm in the first place.

  The silvered notes rang out clear and bright. They carried over the evening air and she followed them, determined this time to make him listen, to make him come with her across the Edge. The tune guided her back to the rose garden, and she couldn’t
help but pick up her pace. She ran through the courtyards and cloister-like paths, slowing to a sleepwalk when she encountered someone, her blissful smile pasted onto her face, her tray her excuse.

  When she stepped into the rose-scented air of the garden, she was almost convinced she had gotten away with it. Almost.

  Titania’s presence sent her heart into the pit of her stomach like a lead weight. Ducking down at the last moment, she crouched out of sight behind one of the flowerbeds, waiting.

  “You seem tired,” Titania was saying. “I brought you a drink to help you sleep.”

  “You’re too kind to me,” Tom replied dreamily, and Jenny’s heart sank still lower. He was back in the queen’s power, lost to her. “I should practice, though. I want my music to be perfect for you.”

  A smile ghosted across Titania’s face. The moonlight made her even paler, an angelic being in the darkened garden. “Your music is always perfect, Tom. You never fail me there.”

  “Then where do I fail you? Help me serve you better, my queen.”

  “It isn’t a punishment to be the tithe, Tom. Some consider it the highest honor. You will preserve all of the Realm by your sacrifice. Hell…Hell is not as people imagine it.”

  Tom frowned, and Jenny saw something else in his eyes. Doubt. Only for a moment, but there.

  “But hell is torment, my queen,” he murmured as calmly as before. “Hell is being without you.”

  Titania sighed. “I would that I could keep you, Thomas. Even at your most obstinate and headstrong, you are unique…”

  She leaned in to kiss him, a gracious lover, a queen among queens, and Tom returned her kiss with unexpected passion. Jenny remembered the kiss she had shared with Jack, though, and could see that both of them were lying. Too many things were between them, too many resentments. Even in their intimacy, they lied.

  Titania pulled back first, and smoothed her hand through Tom’s hair, curling it around her long, elegant fingers. “Drink down the water, my sweet Tom, sleep and dream of me. Dream of wanting nothing but to serve the good of the Sidhe. And die well on the morrow. Like the prince you are.”

  Tom nodded, drugged and enchanted, helpless before her. What was Jenny going to do with him now? What was he going to do with her? He lifted the glass to his lips as Titania left him there.

  But he didn’t drink.

  Sitting still, waiting to see if she returned, he didn’t tip the glass up, but held it there at his lips. Only when she was gone did he pour the glistening liquid onto the ground behind him.

  “Tom?” Jenny whispered, rising cautiously.

  “Jenny? You’re here. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Are…are you…?”

  He sighed, and she saw his age in his face. More than his own age, the weight of the years he had spent here. “I’m more myself than I have been in seven years. I don’t know how you did it.”

  She smiled and held out the iron jack for him to see.

  “Iron? You brought iron in here?” The shock on his face made him look young again, the brother she remembered. Then he laughed. “God, Jenny, only you would have the gall. If she’d found it…”

  “Can we go now?”

  He nodded and lowered his eyes. “About what I said, I’m—I’m sorry, Jenny. I didn’t— I wouldn’t—” He stared at the ground and rubbed a hand over his face.

  Jenny walked over and put her arms around him. She felt her brother’s arms tighten around her in a bear hug. But Tom’s voice was solemn.

  “It took the look on your face to make me see what Titania has made of me. I—I can make music to wring out a soul, but I can’t feel it myself. I’m a—a waste…I’m sorry, Jenny. If I have to die tomorrow, so be it, but I’ll get you out of here.”

  She pulled away and turned to look beyond the garden walls. “No,” she murmured. “We’re getting out together.”

  Jack would know the way, would help them. Jack—

  Jack in this very garden, Jack swallowed up, Jack in her dream trying to speak, but only dirt falling from his lips. The lips she had kissed. Jack, holding a golden heart.

  “Jenny?” Tom asked.

  Cold slicked through her veins. “I have to find Jack.”

  “The Jack o’ the Forest?” Confusion filled his face. “He’s gone, Jenny. Back to the earth, back to Oberon.”

  “But I can get him. I’ll get him back.”

  “Jenny.” Tom’s voice soothed her, cajoled. “Jenny, he’s gone. And we have to go now, no matter what. She’s going to realize you’re missing. You’re too valuable to her for her not to check on you.”

  He was right. God, he was right. Jack would tell her to go. All he had wanted was for her to leave the Realm, to be safe. And yet he had helped. Despite his duties and the temptations laid before him. He’d risked everything for her. And he’d lost. He’d lost everything.

  But if she didn’t flee with Tom now, she would never have another chance to free her brother. Come the morning, the queen would kill him.

  Jack or Tom. That was what it came down to. Jack or Tom.

  All the choices she might have had were gone, like water held in cupped hands.

  “Come on, then,” she said. Jenny took her brother’s hand and they hurried out of the rose garden, through the moonlit meadows, and onward toward the waiting forest.

  The call of the hounds cut the night and Tom tensed, his head lifting like a stag sensing the approach of the hunt.

  “They’re coming,” he said. Dawn stained the eastern sky and filtered through the forest, giving them much-needed light at last. But with it…with it came their enemies.

  “We’ll have to run for it,” Jenny said.

  “No, we should hide. Maybe if we…”

  Jenny broke into a sprint ahead of him. She heard him curse and pick up his speed to match hers.

  “They’re tracking us!”

  Let them, she wanted to say. Just run. But she didn’t have the breath to spare. She tore through the narrow forest path, brambles and twigs catching her skirt, pulling at her bodice. The dress was awkward and constricting. She wished it would transform back into her jeans and shirt. Branches tangled in her hair, and something sent her crashing to her knees in the dirt. Tom picked up her, hefting her onto her feet again with barely a pause.

  “Hounds and horses. She’s coming and she’s angry. Can’t you feel it?”

  The wind rushed through the trees around them and the hounds howled as they caught the scent.

  “Run,” she told him. “Faster!”

  “Jenny…” Tom’s voice faltered and broke on her name. “Jenny, you go. If she has me, maybe—”

  “No!”

  “No,” said a new voice, a gloriously familiar voice. Jenny turned, her heart almost bursting within her, to see Puck standing there in the forest path. “No, she won’t be content with you now, piper. Not with the new May Queen here. She wants your sister. You’re little more than an inconvenience now. The sooner she’s rid of you, the better. She wants Jenny. And we can’t allow that.”

  Jenny dropped to her knees, scooping Puck into her arms like a child. He gave a cry and stiffened, shocked at her behavior, but she didn’t care. Not anymore. She held him, tears welling in her eyes and her chest tightening.

  Puck patted her back, laughing at her exuberance. “It’s all right, lass. We’ll get you and your brother to safety now. All will be well.”

  “Where’s Jack?”

  He pulled back from her, his face full of confusion and grief. His brown eyes flicked up to Tom. “Why didn’t you tell her?”

  “I tried. I swear, I tried, Robin, but she—my sister is stubborn.”

  Puck sighed. “Come, the forest will hide you and I’ll show you the way home.”

  “But Jack…” she tried again.

  Puck held up a hand to silence her. “To the deep forest now. And be quiet. There are things in here that would not welcome you, not even if I vouch for you.”

  “Some would say especially
not if you vouch for us,” Tom muttered, but he followed them nonetheless.

  Folletti and sprites clung to the trees as they passed. Jenny watched them cautiously, aware of other eyes following them, unseen, some benign and some hostile. Not to her, she realized, but to Tom. The piper. They knew him too well to trust any apparent change in his nature.

  It sent a chill through her. What had he done under the power of the queen to make them hate him so? And just what did they expect of her? Because clearly the forest fae were looking for something.

  Other creatures flitted around her, their voices rising in song as she passed through the trees. Slender girls in white and pale green shifts drifted through the forest, smiling at her and bowing their heads. Little gnarled figures like living mushrooms crawled from the ground to watch her go by.

  The sound of the hunt fell away as they passed deeper and deeper through the trees. The path was easier now, as if it opened up to admit them, to let them through. The forest had done it before, Jenny realized, remembering the night the trees had unfolded, ushering her toward the greenman, toward Jack. And maybe even before that as well. The forest had known, even if she hadn’t. She glanced back to find a tangle of briars and undergrowth in their wake. The forest had closed around them, sealing off any possibility of pursuit, or escape.

  “Puck,” Jenny murmured, keeping her voice as quiet as possible. “Puck, please tell me what happened to Jack. He can’t be dead.” It was more of a plea than a statement. She needed it to be true.

  “No, not dead,” Puck replied, his voice a low rumble, and he glanced at Tom from the corner of his eye. “But Oberon has locked him away for his failure. He may not have betrayed you to Titania, but neither did he bring you safely to the king. He’ll never see the light again. And that, for a forest creature…” Puck lowered his gaze and kept walking. “That is death indeed.”