No, Grit thought. There was no such thing as “just stories” for faeries. They were living, breathing stories themselves. That was what she had always been taught—that their magic could never really die, not if they lived on in the whispers in the trees, or the stories mothers told to get their children to behave (or else), or the tales of some friend of a friend who met a weeping faerie maiden or saw a strange glowing light in the forest. These were the spaces where the fae lived—in the streak of movement in the underbrush you couldn’t quite make out, in the land still unconquered by human machines, in bedtime stories.
But the Seelie king’s heart—the king or queen’s magic they needed to open a portal to Faerie, to change Rinka and Yarlo’s allegiances for good—wasn’t here. Of that much, Grit was certain. So even if Wetherwren Light ever blinked on and off on a foggy night—despite the fact that its tower had been destroyed—or the passageway to the island grew or shrunk, ever so slightly, without explanation, or if the black rocks rearranged themselves into pleasing little stacks along the shoreline . . . maybe it didn’t even matter. Not if no one was looking now but the fae and the waves. The story was exactly that—a story, and nothing more.
Grit almost laughed. They had come all this way, had braved Princess Pru and murderous mermaids and nearly drowned, and now . . . there was nothing. A bunch of rocks and a broken staircase, to go with her broken wing.
“Well, that’s just fabulous,” she said to Yarlo, furiously blinking away tears. “Maybe the fact that this place is absolutely boring and worthless will keep the Wild Hunt from showing up and carrying us all away.” The mermaids had probably known they’d just drown or get stuck. She’d been so silly to think she and Yarlo could outsmart them. She turned toward the sea and cupped her hands around her mouth, shouting, “Hey, no need to worry about us! Nothing to see here!” Grit kicked a pebble down the steep hill.
“What am I going to do?” Rinka whispered, staring down at her chafed hands.
Grit looked back at the changeling, embarrassed at her own outburst. She wasn’t the one giving up her life as she knew it, or trusting her fate to complete strangers—Rinka was. Rinka, and even Yarlo, had much more to lose than Grit did because of their failure.
“I’m so sorry, Rinka,” said Grit. She shuffled over to the edge of the ruins and looked down into the pool of water at the bottom. Her own reflection greeted her, the stars in the night sky blurry spots of bright in the dark water.
“I hate to interrupt a good pity party,” drawled Yarlo, breaking the silence, “but aren’t y’all forgetting something?”
“And what is that?” Grit snapped, still glaring at the water.
“You said we needed a center of Seelie power to have this shindig—”
“Ceremony,” corrected Grit.
“Hootenanny, whatever,” said Yarlo.
She looked up at him, finally, and he winked; he was holding up a wet, dripping clump of something that looked alarmingly like hair.
“I picked up this from my little encounter with the mermaids down on the rocks,” he explained. “You never know when you’ll need a bit of water fae.”
“What’s your point, Yarlo?”
“In case you forgot, little miss, we’ve got a Seelie princess in our midst—whether she likes it or not.”
Grit bit her lip. Sure, she was a princess. So what? How was she supposed to help them now, when their one slim chance at escape hadn’t ever even existed? When she couldn’t even fly back to the Wonder Show to warn the others?
Yarlo walked over to the bottom of crumbling stones and held up his grisly souvenir. Grit looked at it, and at the water, and suddenly understood.
“If you need a powerful place,” Yarlo said, “you might just have to make your own.”
23.
SEAS BETWEEN US
In the end, the police only agreed to let them go when Mr. Tinkerton showed up, dressed to the nines in his rainbow-striped New Year’s suit and with an attitude big enough to match. After much bluster and a repeated insistence that no, he did not want to press charges against his employees, even if they did blow up his car—in addition to an invented story from Nan that she’d been in disguise and “borrowed” Tinkerton’s car so that she and Carmer could elope together—they were finally released with a flurry of rushed paperwork and shoves from behind by Tinkerton.
“They’re just kids, Deputy Oliver,” Tinkerton said with a shrug. “Besides, it’s not like they blew up that car on purpose.”
Carmer gulped.
“Good luck,” said the young officer behind the desk to Carmer, with an appreciative look at Nan’s flaming red hair, as they hurried out. “I’d do anything for a woman like that.”
Carmer nodded. “We’re very much in love.”
Nan yanked him out the door with a little more force than necessary.
TINKERTON STALKED THROUGH the streets like one of the Blythes’ dogs on the hunt, whipping his head around every few moments to snarl at Nan and Carmer to keep up, even as the carnival crowds pressed thicker and thicker around them. Nan was using her matted wig as a muff to keep her hands warm; there wasn’t much point in keeping up the ruse now.
“Mr. Tinkerton, wait!” Carmer finally called to him. “Where are you going?”
“Where do you think?” Tinkerton rounded on him. “To find the fastest ship that will take me to my daughter. I should have never trusted our lives to a mere boy.”
Carmer flinched. The revelers around them scurried about, marveling at the hanging lanterns and eating sweets, laughing and talking excitedly about the show, utterly oblivious to the argument in their midst.
“Mr. Tinkerton,” said Nan, “I know you’re my boss and all, but I’ve gotta say, you might be wrong there. Carmer saved my life, blowing up that car like he did, and just because we got caught doesn’t mean the diversion didn’t work. Rinka could be—”
Carmer held up a hand and shook his head. They never knew who was listening out here on the open pier.
Nan lowered her voice. “Rinka could be just fine. It’s just too early to say.”
“Thanks,” said Carmer, looking at Nan in surprise. He didn’t think she was his biggest fan.
“Well, I am madly in love with you,” she joked.
“When will we know?” Tinkerton interrupted them, his face still grave. “When will we know for sure?”
“Not until midnight, sir,” said Carmer. “That’s the official deadline. Until then . . . the most we can do is keep the Wonder Show safe.”
Carmer considered his hodgepodge of lessons about the Unseelies and his new status as Friend of the Fae. Hadn’t he been able to sense something off, the first time he’d seen the Wonder Show, and again during the snowstorm? They had the dogs sniffing around for unfamiliar faeries. They had their own faeries, returning now from crier duty, who would patrol the ships as best they could. And even if it wouldn’t be much help, they also had him.
He couldn’t afford to stay on the ground, hidden and hampered by the crowds. He needed to be able to see the big picture. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he looked at the gold and white balloons tied to the pier, ready to ascend during the spectacular’s finale. The balloons would be tethered to the docks—no one wanted to chance them drifting out into open water—but if he got high enough, he’d be able to see the whole carnival below. And maybe, this time, he’d be able to sense something was wrong before it hit.
Carmer pointed to the balloons, proud that his hand shook only a little. “How do I get up in one of those?”
NEARLY THE ENTIRE fleet of Rinka Tinka’s Roving Wonder Show spread out before him, every floating bumblebee and swordfish and dragonfly glider. The sprawling coast of Driftside City was below, glowing with the light from the hundreds of lanterns that had been strung up for the carnival like candles on a big and lopsided birthday cake. He could see the spectators on the pier, pointing at the daring acrobats and waving to the masked criers and other crew. Here and there, a wolflike dog pace
d through the crowds, pausing occasionally to take a lick from an inattentive child’s snack.
Carmer could see everything from up there, but he needed to see more. He closed his eyes, willing his mind toward stillness. He needed to forget the hustle and bustle of the crowd, the whooshing of the other ships sweeping by—and how very, very high up he was. He needed to stop seeing and hearing what he was expecting to see and hear and start recognizing things that he didn’t. He remembered the feel of the freezing water, that night in the bog, and looking sideways through the glowing lights. He opened his eyes slowly—so slowly, in fact, that it took him a moment to register the faerie sitting on the edge of the balloon’s basket.
It was amazing, really, how the magic of the Mechanist’s cloak allowed Princess Pru to change her size like that. She was as big as a full-grown human, a feat Carmer hadn’t thought possible outside of the realm of Faerie. Her hair was still long enough to pool around her feet. Carmer could just imagine what Grit would say about the impracticality of that, but it didn’t seem to get in her way; it was an extension of her, like the tails of the mermaids who guarded her palace. Her wings were folded against her back, underneath the cloak. Sitting there like that, she could almost pass for human.
Almost, but not quite.
Pru’s milky-gray eyes fixed themselves on Carmer. “I think I do like you better this way,” she said, her gaze trailing up and down his body. “People nearly always look better wearing their real faces.” She said this as if she spent a lot of time around people who didn’t—which he supposed was entirely possible.
“Where is the changeling?” Pru asked it casually, but Carmer wasn’t fooled. He was familiar with how quickly the Unseelie princess’s methods of questioning escalated. He did, however, need to stall for time—for all of them.
“We have until midnight,” was all Carmer said.
Pru cocked her head and made a clicking, ticktock noise with her tongue, but otherwise made no move toward him.
Carmer looked down at the pier below. He didn’t see any signs of distress there, which wasn’t what he’d expected. Where were the other Unseelies? After all her threats, had Princess Pru . . . come alone?
“Why do you want Rinka so badly?” Carmer asked her. “Why can’t you just leave the Free Folk on the Wonder Show be?”
“Ah, but those are two very different questions, Carmer,” said Pru, twirling a pale finger through her hair. He hated the sound of his name on her lips. “The textbook answer—is that how you say it?—to your first question is this: as an Unseelie subject, Rinka belongs to us.”
“Nobody belongs to anybody,” said Carmer, crossing his arms.
“Says the boy who bonded his soul to the fae with his own blood,” countered Pru.
Carmer couldn’t help staring at his hands, where Queen Ombrienne’s apple blossom staff had drawn blood as he’d gripped it, all a part of the ceremony to make him a Friend of the Fae.
“You didn’t want her. You gave her up.”
Pru shrugged and hopped up onto the edge of the basket. “And now we want her back.” They were a hundred feet in the air, but the balloon didn’t even sway with her weight.
“Why?” Carmer resisted the urge to reach out and help steady Pru as she walked along the edge of the basket, evil faerie princess or not. “Because she’s got such a head for figures?” He’d been joking, but Pru swerved on her bare, black feet to face him.
“Precisely,” she said, jumping back down into the basket. “I thought you—a man of science, they say—would understand. Don’t you see? Look at what that girl has done, trapped in a human body not meant to last a fortnight, abandoned by her own kind, constantly sickened by the iron around her. That mind—that beautiful mind—created all of this, and more.”
Pru gestured to the fleet of ships around them, the meticulously crafted gliders, the towering lantern giants, even the glowing lights of the carnival below. Carmer thought of all of “Tinkerton’s” supposed inventions, of the airplanes he’d stumbled across that first night in Elysian Field. Who better to design the future of flight than a faerie genius herself?
And that’s what Pru wanted—Rinka’s mind. Rinka’s mind in service of the Unseelie Court.
“Don’t you understand what we could do, Rinka and I?” Pru asked, taking a step closer to Carmer. Her pale eyes were wide and shining with excitement. “I wouldn’t need to sneak around anymore, messing about with silly typewriters and telephones in my palace. With Rinka in her rightful place in my court, we could finally stand a chance at regaining the fae’s former glory.”
“You’d use her technology against the humans,” Carmer guessed.
“Some of us would prefer to hide, it’s true,” Pru said. “To cling to the old ways and sink deeper and deeper into the sea, hoping the iron world daren’t touch us there. But not me.”
Carmer was suddenly reminded of Grit, rebelling against her mother’s inaction against the Mechanist back in Skemantis.
This isn’t the time to hide in our trees or burrow into the ground like mice in winter, she’d said to the queen. The world outside is changing, and it won’t be long before it reaches our gates. It already has.
“There is no ‘iron world’ to be separated from any longer,” said Pru with a bitter tinge to her voice, as if she’d known a time when there still was. “There’s just the world, exactly as it is. It’s up to us to survive in it or not.” Pru looked out at the bustling shoreline.
Somewhere, a clock tower struck twelve.
The airships would soon spread out and land elsewhere on the shore. The balloons would be reeled in. The barges below would let loose with fireworks to entertain the Driftsiders on the shore—and woe befall any balloon that was still in range.
Carmer supposed he had better start getting used to woe.
Between each chime of the clock, he heard the Driftsiders below cheering and singing. A slightly drunken chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” floated up from the shore, snatches of each line getting carried away with the wind.
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?
“Where is the changeling?” Pru asked again with a flourish of the Mechanist’s cape.
“Hopefully,” Carmer said, trying not to look in the direction of Wetherwren Light, “far away from here.”
Pru seemed to grow taller, more willowy, the veins on her face popping out as the skin was pulled taut. Carmer inched backward.
“They say fire is the first enemy of these flying machines you humans are so proud of,” said Pru quietly, though it came out like a snarl. “But you know what the second is?”
Memories of the frozen shell of the Jasconius flooded Carmer’s mind.
“Ice,” she said with a sneer. “I wonder how fast I can freeze every envelope of every ship in this fleet?” The ends of her hair, usually dripping wet, had sharpened into frosted spikes of ice. “When people think of water magic, that’s what they think of, isn’t it? It’s not usually my style—I prefer all the things that can take root, where there’s water to give them life—”
A few mushrooms sprouted from between her toes. “But I’ll be obvious if I have to.”
Carmer didn’t give her the dignity of a response. Instead, he did the thing he’d been hoping to avoid, and whipped out the knife he’d stashed in his pocket. He took one more step back, to the rope he’d already frayed almost to the breaking point—the rope that was tethering his balloon to the docks—and slashed at it with all his might.
The balloon started to drift away.
Pru did not look pleased.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, but Carmer had already cut loose all of the ballast as well. They had nowhere to go but up—until they couldn’t. Pru watched the retreating ground with narrowed eyes. He was counting on her to want Rinka—and him and Grit—more than she wanted the rest of the Wonder Show.
“Seeing how high faeries can fly,” said Carmer. He comforted himself with the small sense of satisfaction the quip brought him—and so well timed, too. Grit would have been proud.
The singing grew fainter the higher they rose.
We two have paddled in the stream,from morning sun till dine;But seas between us broad have roared since auld lang syne.
But Pru seemed determined to have the last word on any subject.
“I don’t know,” she said just as cheekily. “How high can humans breathe?”
The balloon climbed, the ships and buildings and people on the shore becoming smaller and smaller. It was absolutely freezing; Carmer tried not to shudder in the cold, thin air. Pru stood there as if the winter wind were nothing but a refreshing breeze.
The truth was, Carmer didn’t know the answer to either of those questions—but a brilliant ray of light, breaking across the night sky like a beacon, told him he might not have to.
In the distance, Wetherwren Light was shining once more.
It blinked like a new star in the sky, brighter than any real lighthouse had ever glowed. Carmer felt a wave of magic, the same as when he’d entered Seelie Faerie the first time—like the very fabric of the world was curling up and rippling around him. It nearly knocked him off his feet.
“What was that?” Pru asked, her voice low and growling. She lunged forward and grabbed Carmer’s jaw, her hands like ice. “What have you done?”
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Carmer couldn’t help but smile, even with his jaw clamped in Pru’s bony hands. Grit had succeeded. Rinka was safe—well, safer. Relief flooded through him, almost enough to make him forget that he was stranded up in a drifting balloon with a psychopath of a faerie princess.
The Crooked Castle Page 22
