Throne

by Phil Tucker

  The door opened, and the little old man walked in. Maya dropped the cell in her purse and set it aside.

  “Ah, awake are we?” asked the small man. He gave her an ugly smile, turned so as to shove the door closed, and then stomped over to the table to take the stool across from her.

  “Yes, thank you. I slept very well.”

  “Don’t be thanking me!” He looked suddenly angry, but it passed as quickly as a cloud passing before the sun. “And of course you did, course you did,” he said, distracted by the sight of the butter and honey and cream. Without preamble or prayer he began to serve himself, tearing a hunk of bread free and lathering it with butter. “Yer welcome to the sleep, seemed that you might of needed some.”

  “Yes,” said Maya. She hesitated for a moment longer, but then smiled and reached out for the pitcher of cream at his impatient nodding that she do so. “I was really lucky to find your cottage so close.”

  “Fortunate?” He asked, mouth full. He washed the bread down with a swig of cream, and then shook his head. “There was nowt lucky about it, girl.”

  “Oh? You mean, as in you believe in fate, or something?”

  “Ach, fate is for the truly powerful or the foolish. You’re neither—not yet. No, I came because you pulled me here. Simple as hampen stampen.”

  Maya looked at him carefully. Chose to smear some amber honey on the bread instead of answering first. “I pulled you?”

  “Aye, you think I’d build my cottage here in this dark and dreary place? Not I!” He nodded firmly, and stuffed another hunk of bread in his mouth, crumbs falling everywhere.

  “Oh,” said Maya. “I didn’t know I could do that. How did… how did I do that?”

  “Orf,” said Tim Tom Tot, “Youf jusht make a fink of it.” He paused, dry swallowed massively, and then wiped the back of his wrist across his puckered lips. “I said, you’re Summer rising. Not to say you’ll make it to full bloom, but you’ve got the fixings of power to you already.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Maya. Her comfort and peace of mind were growing tattered again. “I’m summer rising?”

  Tim Tom Tot refilled his cup of cream, and then set it down and fixed her with his gaze. “Aye, of course, girl! You think Guillaume would have attended to you if you were ought but catching fire?” A pause. “The Seelie Court. You’re entering our orbit, like, gathering resonance to yourself.”

  Maya placed both hands on the table top, took a deep breath, and then fixed him with a gaze of her own. “Tim Tom Tot. I don’t know what you mean. Can’t any of you speak clearly?”

  Tim Tom Tot chortled, amused. “Speak clear? I couldn’t speak more clearly if I tried. The Seelie Court, girl, the Host of the Blessed, the kindly fae that walk at twilight and not at night.” He paused, watched her for dawning comprehension, saw none. Tried again, speaking slower as if to a slightly challenged child, “We fae who bow to the sun and the summer, who delight in light and in laughter. Not all are so simple, and many are lief to switch their allegiance, but on the whole, a kindly lot, well intentioned, the good folk.”

  “Oh,” said Maya. “Oh, I see. So Tommy Rawhead—“

  “Is a member of the Unseelie Court, the damned and the dark, the wretched and cunning and low. A miserable lot.” He shrugged his boney shoulders, wiped crumbs from his whiskers and beard.

  “And I called you,” said Maya, musing. “Because I’m becoming a part of the Seelie Court?”

  “You’ve the comprehension of a two year old, and a drunk one at that!” said Tim Tom Tot, throwing his hands up. “Hampen stampen, I’ve a mind to crack open your noggin to let the light in. Haven’t I said just that?”

  “So I’m becoming a fairy?” asked Maya, ignoring him. She looked down at herself, at her hands.

  “Ach, it’s not as simple as all that. You’ve been vouchsafed by the Smiling Jack, and your star is ascending. Where you’ll end, I cannot say, but you’ve got the glimmerings of Glamour to you now. It’s how you pulled me here.”

  “Oh,” said Maya. She sipped the cream. It was thick, luscious, cool and delicious. “I think I see. But, okay, who is this Smiling Jack, and why me? Guillaume wouldn’t say.”

  Tim Tom Tot gripped his head with both hands and screwed his eyes closed. “You’re going to cause my head to burst with all your horrible questions!” He grimaced and swayed from side to side as if on the deck of a heaving boat, and then let his hands fall. “Smiling Jack, the Green Man, Puck and master, Lord of Summer, Lord of Laughter. He took a fancy a your legs most like. He likes a good pair of legs. The taste of your sorrow, the color of your spirit, the tang of your choler.” He shrugged his shoulders once more, and pushed an improbable amount of bread, butter and honey into his mouth.

  “Oh,” said Maya. She finished her own slice of bread with careful bites, absently enjoying the dark, earthen taste, the sweet honey. “So what do I do now?”

  Tim Tom Tot licked his wrinkled lips with a leathery tongue, and wiped his wrist against the back of his nostril slits. His eyes gleamed as he stared at her. “Do what you like, girl. This is the kind of dance you make up as you go along. If you’re to stay here with Tim Tom Tot, you’ll have to learn to shut your yammering trap. Too many questions will drive me barmy, and this is supposed to be my retirement.”

  “Retirement?”

  The little brown man smoothed down his fine little jacket, fluttered his fingers over the fabric that went down to his bony wrists and then finally hooked his thumbs behind his suspenders and bowed them out proudly. “Earned this I did, long work, hard labor. Hampen stampen, was paid in fair coin, and now I labor no more.”

  “Oh,” said Maya. She wanted to ask more, but didn’t dare. Instead she rose to her feet. The cottage was nice, a welcome relief from the dreary world outside it, but she couldn’t think of staying there for very much longer. She’d go mad. “Well, I’d like to get back to my world. The real world. I don’t just want to go back outside. Or maybe find Guillaume?”

  Tim Tom Tot worried his jaw from side to side as he stared up at her. “Don’t know ought of tricksy Mr. Fox’s location. But I can send you to your city, if that be your desire.”

  “Yes,” said Maya. “That would be great.” Chang and Senora Mercedes and all the rest of them seemed positively tame compared with Tommy Rawhead and his ilk.

  “Ach, so will it be, then. Come along.” He stood up from his stool, stomped over to the far side of the room, and energetically rolled back the carpet, revealing large flagstones beneath. Without hesitating, he gripped the edge of a broad, flat stone, and hauled it up, much like a trapdoor. A dark hole yawned beneath it, leading down.

  “There you go, girl. Down and down, mind your elbows. If you’ve a need of me, call me again and I’ll come a hopping, leastwise unless I’ve some honey to eat.”

  Maya turned and picked up her purse. Leaned over the hole, and saw that roots extended in loops from its side, lending themselves to handholds. “Down?”

  Tim Tom Tot stamped his foot, “Ach, questions questions questions! You make less sense than a stoat! How else could you go down a hole but down? Up? Left? Hampen stampen!”

  Maya suppressed a smile, butterflies beginning to frolic in her stomach, and sat down so that her legs hung into the hole. A dry, stale smell wafted up. Turning around, she grabbed the first root, then the second, and began to descend into the darkness. “Thank you,” she said, when looking up. “Thank you for everything.”

  “Ach, don’t be thanking me! Never thank less you ruin the gift!” And with that, he slammed the stone shut, closing her in the reverberating darkness.

  Chapter 9

  Disorientation was okay. Things had stopped making logical, empirical sense some time ago, and thus Maribel followed the phooka into an impossible tunnel without qualm or question. Through the portal, she had pulled Isobel into the darkness beyond which gave way to a poorly lit passageway. The bricks that lined the walls were even older than those from the alley, crumbled and crus
hed, and everything seemed breathless and laden with antiquity. The sourceless light served to emphasize shadow more than anything else, the kind of light one might see honeyed within amber, passing slowly around a trapped insect from ages past. The phooka moved ahead like a dream, drifting down the length of the tunnel, his horns high like a crown and barely brushing the curved ceiling above.

  Isobel trailed after, a hand outstretched to the rough wall to her left, fingertips almost brushing them but never quite making contact. The gate had fallen behind, consumed by darkness, and they seemed to walk through an interminable stretch of tunnel, with no end or beginning, beguiling and disorienting both.

  “Where are we?” asked Isobel. Her voice was a whisper, a harsh grating upon the stillness.

  “I don’t know,” said Maribel. Confidence buoyed her on, lifted her, secured her. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that they were moving. Each step drew her closer.

  “Maribel,” said Isobel, her voice more urgent. “Maribel, what is this place? We should have passed out onto the next avenue by now.”

  Maribel smiled, felt the urge to laugh bubble up in her throat. She looked over her shoulder, and refrained only because of the strained look on her friend’s face. She slowed, reached out with one hand and took Isobel’s once more. Pulled her so that she walked alongside.

  “Isobel, we don’t have to understand it. It doesn’t matter.” She spoke gently, trying to help her understand. “This is all beyond us. Kubu, this tunnel. It doesn’t have to make sense.”

  Isobel nodded, and tightened her grip on Maribel’s fingers, her eyes searching Maribel’s face for the confidence she felt none of. “I know—but—okay.” She forced herself to take a breath, the stale air passing audibly into her mouth. “It’s just that I’ve always been at the edges of all this. Never really stepped off into the deep end. Flashes and insights, things I couldn’t.” They were walking side by side, both looking ahead now. “But this. This is more, this is so much more. How am I going to ever go back to just finding lost poodles?” Her smile was all the braver for the fear it sought to hide.

  Maribel smiled once more and pulled her along. A sense of inevitability had descended upon her, a mantle of tranquility. She had no idea what she would do once confronted with Kubu, that hovering mass of black ink and that gaunt, skeletal face, had no idea how she would compel him, but she didn’t care. Her desire, her need, was irrefutable. Nothing could deny her. With the phooka before and the psychic by her side she would meet what wonders this place would throw at her, and emerge with her child in her arms.

  Sofia. The name was a talisman, a summons, a need that transcended anything she had ever felt. It went deeper than hunger, consumed her more than any love she had felt for another. Through Sofia she would align her life, find herself, recreate herself. Her child, her girl, her baby. Moving, walking, she pressed her hand to her flat stomach. To the hollow that filled her now. But not for long.

  The phooka had stopped. His gaunt, hirsute form was waiting for them, sloping shoulders, hands hanging by his thighs. Eyes milky white even in this amber light, watching them approach. Horns great and spiraled beyond all possibility. Isobel still couldn’t see him, so Maribel pulled her to a stop, and waited.

  “We approach a Guardian,” he said, his voice sepulchral in the tunnel. He lifted his arm, and pointed with a long nailed finger into the gloom beyond. “It will try to stop you.”

  “Maribel--who said that?” asked Isobel, turning to her. “A voice—I heard—“

  “A guardian?” asked Maribel, impatiently cutting off her friend. “What kind of guardian?”

  The phooka canted its head to one side, and a saturnine smile twisted its broad, goatish mouth. “Most often a hound, but sometimes a bull, or a man dressed in the fur of a bear. The passage to where Kubu… dwells is never open. Not to you or your friend, not while you yet breath, while your blood still runs warm.

  “All right,” said Maribel. “Lead on.”

  The phooka bowed its head, and turned to stride on, bare feet on the dirt floor.

  “What were you speaking with?” asked Isobel. “What’s leading us?”

  “We have a guide, kind of,” said Maribel, making a decision. “It’s warned us of something up ahead.”

  “A guide? A ghost?” Isobel’s face was all fierce focus. She released Maribel’s hand and extended her arm into the darkness, fingers splayed as if she were to unleash a bolt of power into the dark. She closed her eyes, frowned, and held her breath as she focused.

  The phooka paused, stopped. Turned its great head to look over one shoulder at the psychic. Its smile was amused, malicious.

  Isobel snatched her hand back as if burned. Eyes snapped open, “What is that? What is it?”

  “Did you sense it?” asked Maribel, curious despite her need to go on.

  “Yes. Not human.” She rubbed both hands on her jeans, and then lowered her chin and gripped Maribel by the shoulders. Stared her in the eyes, “What. Are we. Following?”

  “A phooka, or at least, that’s what it calls itself. A man with the head of a goat. It’s what showed me the alley that led us here. It’s opening the way to Kubu.”

  “To Kubu,” said Isobel. “A man with a goat’s head. Maribel, let’s go back. Come on. This is not right, this is going to only get worse and worse. Please.”

  Maribel smiled. Reached up, took Isobel’s hands in her own. Nothing seemed able to stop her. Nothing could. Her confidence was a bronze shield, her certainty irrefutable. Before it, Isobel’s fear was inconsequential. “Come on,” she said, and began to walk. Isobel, however, stood firm.

  “No. I can’t. I can’t just follow you into this.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll continue alone. And without you I will become lost down here.”

  Isobel looked back, and then at Maribel. “You would, wouldn’t you. Just walk ahead into this nightmare by yourself.” Isobel shook her head. “You’re mad. And I am mad for helping you. God help us both.” She walked forward, and reached out for Maribel’s hand. Took it, and then focused and stepped past her, deeper into the tunnel, leading her on.

  The phooka, who had been watching, also turned and continued to walk.

  Minutes passed. No more questions from Isobel. The tunnel had begun to slope down, at first unnoticeably, and then with a definite gradient, always seeming to level out just ahead, but never quite doing so. Side tunnels branched off, but all of them were shrouded in gloom. No noise came from their depths, and the smell was at all times a musty staleness, the air still, dead, inert.

  And then the phooka was gone. Slipped ahead into the shadows, and in its place a low growl reverberated, rumbling deep and powerfully and felt in the cavity of the chest rather than heard with the ears. It was a primordial sound, bypassing the mind and cutting straight to the instincts, the kind of sound that humans had been running from ever since they descended from the trees. It echoed and reechoed down the shadowed length of the tunnel, and then, reluctantly died away.

  “What,” asked Isobel, voice rigid, “the fuck. Was that?”

  “The guardian,” said Maribel, peering ahead. Despite herself she felt suddenly nervous. It was one thing to feel complacently confident in an empty tunnel. Another to continue to feel so after that sound. The darkness seemed suddenly to constrict about them. The walls of the tunnel seemed narrower, the weight of the ceiling making her want to lower her head.

  “A bear? A… what. Some kind of mythical monster? A tiger shark?”

  “Tiger shark?” asked Maribel, turning to stare at Isobel. Who stared right back, eyes wide, surprised at her own words.

  “I… I don’t know why I said that. OK, I guess the odds of that being a tiger shark are pretty low.”

  “A tiger shark,” repeated Maribel, feeling some of the darkness lift, unable to keep herself from smiling.

  “Look, whatever, okay, probably not a shark, but still. What the hell?”

  The growl again. All humor drained away. It
was as if white, freezing water, luminous with electricity and panic had washed over them, an invisible tide of fear. The two women immediately stepped closer together. It was getting louder.

  “A dog, I think,” said Maribel. “The phooka said it could be a dog.”

  And then they saw it, the floating specks of crimson light. Moving toward them from up ahead, glowing like two gobs of lava cooling into stone, as if two small light bulbs of incredible potency had been dropped into a pool of blood from whose depth they glowed with malignant luminescence.

  Isobel took a step back, then a second. Maribel raised her chin. Her heart was a fluttering thing, a wounded bird beating against her ribs. Where was the phooka? Had it not promised to open the ways for her? Why was it not commanding this guardian to one side?

  The Guardian stepped forward, its form coalescing from the darkness into view. Broad enough that its shoulders brushed each side of the tunnel, furred so thickly and blackly that it was only distinguishable from the shadows around it by the blue tints that flickered over its pelt as it approached. It plugged the tunnel before them like a cork does a wine bottle, and approached with a negligent slowness.

  “Oh god,” said Isobel.

  Maribel’s breaths were coming in faint shivers, seeming unable to fully escape her mouth or make their way down her throat. The Guardian was neither dog nor hound nor wolf nor any other canine she had ever seen. It seemed prehistoric, dredged up from ages past to kill them in a manner not seen or heard of for millennia. Jaws large enough to bite then them in half, its breath filling the tunnel with its fetid rankness.

  There was no logic to its presence down here, no logic to its existence, to its residing in a tunnel beneath the streets of Manhattan. Had it been down here before she and Isobel had ventured below? Had it been summoned by their presence? Were they in some place that was intelligible, real? Maribel brushed all thoughts aside.