The Treachery of Beautiful Things

by Ruth Frances Long

  Jenny pulled Jack toward her and he wrapped his arms around her, even as Mab’s body thrashed, arched, her muscles ratcheted in agony. Finally, she fell still.

  The flames dwindled to smoke, to patches of black, and the forest reasserted itself, tumbling back over the scars.

  “Are you hurt?” Jack asked, breathless, his eyes flicking over her, not trusting her to tell him the truth, so intent was his examination.

  Beneath them the earth moved. Like a great beast rolling under their feet, the ground itself shook and reared up with a howl of loss and dismay.

  Oberon burst from the soil, rocks and roots torn up around them. Jenny and Jack were thrown backward in a tangle of limbs amid the scattering forest fae. Seeing his fallen queen, Oberon threw back his head and roared like the breaking of a mountainside.

  “Who has done this?” He gathered her up, a frail and tiny body in his massive arms, her hair a swathe of gold again. Her limbs dangled from his embrace like a broken doll. Mab and all her vile traces were gone. All that remained now was Titania, beautiful as dawn.

  “Who has done this?” the king repeated, and the words stretched out with grief. His head swung around, a wounded animal seeking the source of its torment. His maddened gaze fixed on Jack and Jenny, and the pain turned to malice.

  “You!” he snarled, spittle flecking the air before him. “Oath-breakers. Murderers!” He cradled his queen’s limp figure against his chest and slammed one fist into the quaking earth. “I let you go, and this is how you repay me? You killed her! My queen!”

  Jenny froze, horrified as the monstrous king bore down on them, driven out of his mind with anguish. He’d loved her. Even after all that had happened, he’d loved Titania. And now losing her had made him mad.

  I’m sorry, she wanted to say. I didn’t mean…I didn’t think… All lies. She’d known, even as she did it. She had fought for her life, done the only thing she could.

  Jack’s body tensed, ready to do something. What, she didn’t know. To run, perhaps. Or fight. She risked a glance at his face, recognized that expression. He held the sword in a firm grip. He meant to fight.

  “No, Jack,” Oberon roared. “Not this time. She killed the queen. She’s forfeit. She’s mine. My May Queen, bound by the blood she has spilled, by the death she has wrought. Would you fight me again? Would you give up this freedom once more? You aren’t strong enough yet, boy. You never will be. I’ll break you as I broke you before.”

  “She goes back,” replied Jack, in a voice just as powerful. “She isn’t yours or mine. She’s going home.”

  “Mine!” Oberon’s voice barely sounded human anymore. It was the sound of the rock-fall, the thunderclap, the roar of the mountain. His features froze like petrified wood, hard and implacable.

  Jack dipped his head so his lips passed close to her ear. She could feel his breath against her skin, moving strands of her hair. His words shivered against her. “Forgive me.”

  He seized her, flinging her over his shoulder, and he ran for the Edge.

  The forest around them shrieked. Stones and earth bucked beneath them. The trees and branches twisted to stop him. Not for Oberon’s sake, Jenny knew, for her own mind screamed the same warning. They had to stop him. Because if Jack—the old forest king made new again, creature of wild magic, the Oak—crossed into the mundane world of mankind, if Jack carried her over the Edge—

  “No!” She struggled, trying to break free, to topple him before— “You have to stop, Jack! You have to—” She fought against his arms, tried to throw herself out of their grasp. She wasn’t strong enough. But neither was his magic. Not to cross the Edge. Not to cross it and survive.

  Jack tore his way across the Edge, carrying her to safety and himself to his destruction.

  The broken cry that came from his mouth took them over the Edge, and into her world. The mortal world.

  He collapsed as his feet passed over the threshold, momentum carrying them on, out into the thin and meager moonlight. Earth, trees, and briars moved like the blades of some terrible machine on the far side of the Edge. Trying to stop him, to save him from himself. But they failed and then fell still. Too still.

  Jenny’s eyes dragged their way back to Jack, to the transformation that was even now gripping him, tormenting him like a seizure. He stretched out on the grass, his body arching, jerking as if electrocuted. The change swept over him far too quickly, his legs already no more than ancient wood, his hands reaching for her mottled with bark and lichen.

  “No!” She grasped at him. “No. Stay with me!”

  “Would,” he gasped, and his eyes leaked sap-like tears. “With all my heart, I would. But I can’t. Your world. Not mine. Wish…wish…I…”

  She grabbed his hand but found herself touching only wood instead of flesh.

  “Why did you do it? Why cross? You knew this would happen! You were free. You were king. If you had just stayed—”

  His eyes were all that remained, still bright. His crooked smile was melded on a face that looked like the rough bark of the oldest tree. “Nothing in the world…” His whisper was the sound of a tree creaking in the high wind, strange and familiar to her. Horrifying. “…worth so much as you…my Jenny Wren…”

  And with that he became tree and leaf, moss-covered and silent, lost to her.

  “No,” Jenny whispered. “Please no.”

  Her locket still hung around his neck. She reached for it just as the earth unfolded and rose up to swallow it, and what remained of Jack, whole.

  Someone had to die. She looked up to find them behind the trees, watching from between branches, all the forest fae, their elation gone, mourning him for a third time, their lost king.

  “It’s what he wanted,” Puck murmured. “To save you. To get you home, to safety. All he ever wanted.” The hobgoblin flopped into the long grass right at the Edge, while still remaining on the far side. Safe. He tried to reach for the mound that had been Jack, but he couldn’t. Tears covered his face, dripped off his nose and chin, and he rubbed his eyes with clenched fists. “I warned him. I swear I warned him. No forest child can cross the Edge, not without powerful protection. Not even our king, not until they’re old and strong as Oberon, not without that sort of power. This second time he had only his love. It wasn’t strong enough, not for this. Both journeys were for you, Jenny.”

  Jenny pressed her hands into the grass and her tears fell between them. The grass drank them down.

  Sirens cut the night behind her. She heard shouts, people calling her name and the beams of flashlights searched the darkness. Tom’s voice, her mother’s, her father’s, their neighbors’. But she didn’t answer, couldn’t listen. All she could hear was the echo of Jack, all she wanted was Jack.

  The forest had taken him back, the earth itself growing over him, grass and roots and dirt, flowing over him, reclaiming him at last. Not as a monster, nor a man, but as part of itself. One of its own.

  “Here,” said Puck, and stretched out his hand, offering something to her. Jenny barely recognized it through her tears. The Leczi’s stone. He’d dug it up, brought it back to her. “Wishes may work quicker in my world, but they have more power in yours. Try again.”

  Snatching it from his hands, Jenny thrust her hand into the earth where Jack had lain, digging down and dropping the stone into the hole. Nothing happened.

  “I want him back,” she cried. “I want Jack. I love him. Please.”

  Her words fell around her in the darkness. She looked up and Puck was gone too. The forest stretched dark and silent before her, no longer the forest of the Realm. Just Branley Copse, an isolated piece of ancient woodland that had once been so much more. Her cry burst from her mouth and she raised her face to the trees.

  “Jenny!” Tom yelled. He seized her by the shoulders, pulling her to her feet and into the arms of her family.

  chapter twenty-seven

  Jenny looked up from her book as the professor entered the room. The usual pre-class bustle died down and wa
s replaced with the rustle of papers, click of computer keys, muted laughter, the sounds of people rummaging in bags and folders.

  “Okay, settle down, please,” the lecturer said. “These tutorials are meant to deepen your knowledge of the mainstream of your lectures and fine-tune your reading lists. So what did you make of your first week? Anyone have any additions to the articles and chapters assigned?”

  Silence settled over the classroom. And then someone spoke.

  “O’Kelly’s Forest Folklore and Kennedy’s Green Man?”

  “Good examples, eh…” The tutor checked his list of names. “Mr. Woodhouse.”

  A few offhand remarks, jokes, and chatter followed, and a brief discussion of what had been said. But Jenny wasn’t listening, not anymore. She looked up at the student sitting at the table opposite her. He was smiling, a smile that lifted familiar lips and sparkled in mismatched eyes. Jenny’s mouth went dry, and the thunder of her heart was so loud she was sure everyone in the room could hear it. But Jack just leaned his chin on his fist and continued to smile without noticing her, his attention on the professor.

  Jenny sat in silence through the lesson, listening to them talk about things she’d experienced as though they were just myths, fairy tales, dark tales to frighten children.

  And all the time, Jack sat there, and he didn’t know her.

  Every other moment she thought, no, she’d been mistaken, but then he’d smile, or frown, and it was him. Could only be him. Sometimes his face looked different from the corner of her eye, but when she looked at him, really looked at him, it was Jack.

  In the general rush to leave, Jenny lost sight of him. In truth, she could barely bring herself to move. It had been months, and perhaps…God, perhaps she was imagining things now. It was possible, wasn’t it? They’d watched her after her escape, her parents, overjoyed at the return of their son, but horrified at the so-called attack on their daughter. It had taken her the summer to persuade them to still let her go away to university, though a large part of her had wanted to stay near her brother. She and Tom—they had seven years’ worth of time to make up for. Counseling and psychiatrists hadn’t really helped, of course. “What really happened?” they asked again and again. But Jenny knew better now. She kept most of it to herself. What could she tell them without ending up in an asylum? Tom took the same line, feigned amnesia, and if no one was fooled there, the sheer relief that he was home quelled the questions.

  She had kept the faith, secretly, silently, with only Tom to rely on. But even so, her old friend doubt gnawed away at the edges of her mind. And she couldn’t help but wonder.

  It had to have been real. Hadn’t it? That was Jack.

  There was no sign of him in the corridor when she left the room. Nor on the stairs, or the corridor beneath. Mr. Woodhouse, or whoever he was—the name made her smile—had vanished.

  The desolation returned, the smile slipped from her face. Head down, she walked back through the quadrangle, to the lawns beyond. Better this way, without false hope. Better than enduring such a crushing disappointment again.

  “Excuse me?” someone called from behind her.

  Every cell in her body shuddered. She turned to see him sitting under a tree. An oak tree. She stared at him. It was. It was her Jack.

  And at the same time not. Just a boy in jeans and a T-shirt, with a backpack slung over one shoulder. But his eyes…his expression, his smile…

  “You’re in my folklore class. Jenny, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she managed.

  He laughed then, and blushed, getting to his feet with fluid movements. He shook his dark hair out of his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He offered his hand. “I can’t get over the feeling that I…I’ve met you before…I’m Jack,” he said.

  Jenny let her hand close around his, felt his fingers wrap around hers. The warmth of his skin, the sensations of his touch were real, and just as they had been. It couldn’t be a mistake. But how? Her breath hitched her chest as she struggled to stay still. Her eyes snagged on a flash of gold at his neck and she saw it, recognized it.

  Her locket.

  She stared too long at it and his other hand rose to close over it protectively. His hands, so familiar, long elegant fingers that had entwined with hers once upon a time. His other hand held on to hers and his grip tightened ever so slightly. She could feel the calluses on his palm and fingers. She knew every one.

  She dragged her gaze back to his face and found his color high, his eyes bright with embarrassment.

  “Jack,” she said slowly, aware that her eyes were shining with tears. She must look like a crazy person. He didn’t know her. Couldn’t remember her. But he was here. He was truly here.

  Jack stared at her, a confused smile playing over his lips, fading into something else. A distant recollection, the dawn of a remembered dream. He released her hand slowly and slid his fingers into his jeans pocket. She stepped back, uncertain.

  He must have noticed.

  “Wait a minute, please Jenny.” He reached out, offering her something. A green stone. Polished and bright.

  Jenny stared with wide eyes.

  “It’s yours. Isn’t it? I don’t know where it came from. I…I kind of found it, but it feels like—like it’s yours.” And he blushed more fiercely, flustered. He looked so very young in that moment with the shadows of the leaves playing over his face, like a lost boy.

  She plucked the stone from his palm, closed her hand into a fist around it, and wished. She wished with all her heart.

  Jack watched her and slowly, something else trickled into his expression. His eyes widened, as if he were seeing her for the first time. He made a sound like he was trying to breathe and speak at once.

  He reached out again and she didn’t pull away. Memories flooded his eyes, making their blue and green glisten. His pupils dilated and she saw herself reflected in them, herself and so much more. Jack stepped back, stumbled and caught himself, still staring at her. Then strong arms wrapped her up, lifted her, and she slipped her arms around his neck, holding him close. “Jenny.” He murmured her name into her hair, and spun her around in a dizzying circle.

  He finally set her down again and took a step back, his hands grabbing hers, his eyes taking her in. “My Jenny Wren. I’ve missed you.” Earnest, true, words she knew she could believe, from the boy she could trust. He touched her nose and smiled. “Freckles.”

  Jenny threw back her head and laughed, laughter that rang out through the leaves of the oak tree above them. Jack pulled her to him, to kiss her and whisper her name again. And the oak tree above them whispered back, of love and sacrifice, of a king and a queen, and a future made anew.

  acknowledgments

  There are many people I’d like to thank for their help on this novel and the great fear is always there that I’ll leave someone out. So to everyone who has read, guided, critiqued, and made suggestions over the years, thank you.

  I’d like to send special thanks to the ever-wonderful Gnats of Ooh Shiny, best writers’ support group of all time: Dayna, Lee, Crystal, Kate, Patti, and Lori. Just remember that for every…Ooh! Shiny!

  Thanks also to Ciara Franck, reader extraordinaire, a bright girl with a very bright future ahead of her. And to the lovely Stacia Kane for giving me a healthy shove in the right direction.

  More thanks than I can ever give to my agent that was, the fabulous Colleen Lindsay, my agent that is, the fantastic Suzie Townsend, and my wonderful editor at Dial, Jessica Garrison. The invaluable input, knowledge, and advice you’ve given has helped to shape this book into something more than I’d dreamed. I’m also deeply grateful to Danielle Delaney for the beautiful jacket design, which takes my breath away each time I see it.

  I’d like to thank Jeff Goddard of The Friends of the Ridgeway and Jennifer Delaney for answering many questions on the Ridgeway and Wayland’s Smithy. Any mistakes are my own.

  Last but by no means least I’d like to thank my family, especially my husband and kids, who hike
up hillsides and scramble through passage tombs, who replace the mugs of cold tea with hot ones, and who put up with an awful lot.

  You’re the best.