Ballad

by Maggie Stiefvater

  “Don’t be silly,” Eleanor said. “It’s his.” She made a flippant gesture to the stage behind her. On it, her consort —the dead one—lay in the middle of a dark, dusty-looking circle on the stage, moaning and arcing his back. A gaping wound in the center of his chest oozed black-blood.

  I wasn’t going to give Eleanor the satisfaction of showing my disgust, so I just set my jaw and looked back at her. “Yeah. He looks like he’s having a great time. Where’s Dee?”

  Eleanor smiled so prettily that the edge of my vision shimmered a little. She brushed her pale hair from her face, leaving a red smear on her cheek, and pointed to her feet. I recognized the curl of Dee’s shoulders and her clunky shoes. Eleanor shrugged. “We’re really doing her a favor. She doesn’t handle stress very well, does she? Right after Siobhan took out Karre’s heart, Deirdre threw up all over my shoes”—Eleanor gestured with the heart to a pair of green slippers piled underneath a chair—“and I’m afraid I had to have Padraic knock her on the head to calm her down a little.”

  A faerie with white curls all over her head looked at me and said, “Do I kill him now, my queen?”

  “Siobhan, so bloodthirsty. We are a gentle race,” Eleanor said. She turned her attention toward me. A bit of blood bubbled out of the heart in her hand. “My dear piper, why don’t you go back to the bonfire and be with your love? I am very eager to see how that works out for you.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Just as soon as I have Dee, that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

  On stage, her consort made a sound of excruciating pain. His bloody fingers covered his face.

  “It’ll be over soon, lovely. Cernunnos will be here soon,” Eleanor told him. To me, she said, “If you’ll wait a moment, I’m nearly done with her. Siobhan, I need that knife again.”

  At her feet, Dee groaned and rolled onto her back, putting her hand to her head. Eleanor, heart in one hand, knife in the other, nodded toward Siobhan, and the white-headed faerie placed a foot on one of Dee’s shoulders.

  I lunged to the faerie next to me, grabbing the knife from the sheath at his side. Before Siobhan had time to react, I was beside Eleanor, the knife pressed against her throat. My skin rippled painfully with goose bumps.

  “That was stupid,” Eleanor said. “What are you going to do now?”

  The faeries whispered to each other, low, melodic songs beneath their breaths.

  “Better question is”—I held the knife as steady as I could as I started to shiver—“what are you going to do now?”

  “I’m trying to decide if I should kill you quickly or kill you slowly,” Eleanor hissed. “I’d prefer the latter, but I really don’t have much time to cut out lovely Deirdre’s heart before Cernunnos arrives. So I think the first.”

  There was a weird, sucking feeling happening in my throat that made me think she wasn’t bluffing.

  “And if I ask that you spare him?”

  Every single faerie in the room became silent. Eleanor looked toward the door as Sullivan walked up the aisle and halted a few yards away from us. Took him long enough.

  When Sullivan had told us he’d been Eleanor’s consort, I’d always assumed he’d escaped from her. I never thought she might have let him go.

  “Patrick,” Eleanor said, and her voice had completely changed. “Please leave.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. As annoying as James is, I’m loath to watch him die.”

  “He is annoying,” admitted Eleanor. It was as if I didn’t have a knife stuck at her throat. As if her current consort—was he still current if he had a hole in his chest?—weren’t writhing on the stage. “And very cocky.”

  Sullivan inclined his head in agreement. “That being said, I’ll need my other student as well.”

  Eleanor frowned gently; the most beautiful frown the world had ever seen. My chest heaved with the pain of it. “Do not ask me for her. I will give you this idiot. And I’ll let you leave. But do not ask me for things I can’t give.”

  “Won’t give,” Sullivan said, and his voice had changed too. “It’s always won’t, not can’t. It’s priorities.”

  It was like Eleanor and Sullivan were the only ones in the room. “My subjects come first. Don’t tell me you don’t understand, Patrick Sullivan. Because you came storming in here not for you, but for your students. I will have freedom for my fey.”

  “Cheap at the price of two humans,” Sullivan said mildly.

  Eleanor’s voice crackled with ice. “You cannot preach at me. Did you think twice about the two bodies you stepped over to stand before me? I think not—because they were only fey, yes?”

  I looked down at Dee. She lay on her back, a bruise darkening her right cheek, and her eyes were on me. Totally unfathomable. I knew what she was capable of. She could blast us out of here, if she wanted.

  “If I think that way, Eleanor, it was only because I learned from the best,” Sullivan said. “For an endangered species, you are very casual about killing your own.”

  “They are not the easiest race to govern,” snapped Eleanor. “I would like to see you try it.”

  “As I recall, I had some suggestions that worked nicely.”

  Eleanor backed away from my knife to better glare at Sullivan. “Would have worked nicely. If I’d had an extra set of hands to implement them.”

  “I was more than willing to fill that role. I knew the dangers.”

  Eleanor looked away, her expression furious. “That was not a price I was willing to pay.”

  “And this is?” Sullivan asked.

  Eleanor looked back at him.

  And then there was an unremarkable pop.

  I didn’t understand what the pop meant until, behind Sullivan, I saw Delia, Dee’s damn, ever-present evil aunt, step over the two faerie bodies by the door. In her hand was a very small, fake-looking gun.

  Sullivan very carefully laid a hand on his stomach, and then stumbled in slow-motion against one of the folding chairs. I closed my eyes, but I saw what happened anyway. He fell to his hands and knees and threw up, flowers and blood.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to have to be the one with the backbone here,” Delia said. “I’ve been staying in a hotel for two weeks and spending every single evening up to my elbows in dead fey. Cut her heart out before I get pissed off.”

  Eleanor’s voice was below zero. “My finest horse to whichever faerie in this room brings me that woman’s left eye.”

  My thoughts exactly.

  “Wait!” snapped Delia, as every hand in the room reached for a knife. “You can cut out my damn eye if you like, but what you should be cutting out is her heart. It’s nearly eleven. What will you do if he’s here and her heart’s not in him?” She gestured to the consort on the stage.

  I crouched down and, seizing Dee’s arm, hauled her to her feet. Eleanor and Delia just looked at me. Delia and a gun were between me and the door. Eleanor and her damn voodoo were between me and everything.

  “Why don’t you save yourself?” I hissed at Dee. This summer, there’d been more faeries, and I’d been mostly dead, and she’d still gotten out of it. Now, Nuala was burning by herself, Sullivan was bleeding on the floor, and Dee wasn’t doing a thing to stop it.

  But Dee turned to Delia instead of to me. “What did I ever do to you, anyway?” Her voice sounded hoarse, like she’d been screaming or singing.

  Delia shook her head and made a face that was like a caricature of disbelief, like she couldn’t believe Dee even thought the question worth asking. “I just want your voice when you’re done with it.”

  Siobhan said, “My queen—there’s no time. Cut out her heart, put it in him, and make Karre a king.”

  In my head, I heard the thorn king’s song as he approached. Only, instead of singing grow rise follow, the words were follow feast devour.
>
  Eleanor looked at Siobhan and nodded shortly.

  It all happened in a blur then. Siobhan leapt toward Dee, one hand stretched as if to seize Dee’s shoulder, the other gripping the knife. Dee frowned at the blade, pointed unerringly at her heart. And I flung out my arm, smashing the back of my arm and my wrist against Siobhan’s face.

  Siobhan squealed—strangely high-pitched—and stumbled backwards, the knife clattering to the floor. Flowers were pouring from her face. Or her face was falling into flowers.

  Eleanor stepped back just as Siobhan, a blanket of petals, flopped to the ground at her feet. She looked pissed.

  I looked at my arm. The sleeve of my sweatshirt had pulled down to reveal the iron bracelet on my wrist; a single yellow petal was still stuck to the edge of it. So the damn thing had turned out to be useful for something.

  I held my wrist out toward Eleanor. “Will this do the same thing to you?”

  She looked really pissed.

  “James,” Sullivan called from the aisle. His voice sounded wet. I tried not to pay attention to that. “Stage left.”

  Of course. The exit at the back of the stage. I grabbed Dee’s hand and pulled her up the stairs, going sideways so I could keep watching Eleanor. Cernunnos’ song was deafening in my ears. It was time to get out.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Delia snapped, staring at us. “This thing has a lot of bullets in it. And I’m not above shooting someone at the moment.”

  Eleanor folded her hands gently before her and said coldly, “Someone else.” She looked away, at something in the aisle, and said, “Patrick, pull your coat over your head.”

  I just had time to realize what she was saying when the back door busted open.

  For a moment, there was nothing but silence and sheer, absolute cold, our breaths clouded in front of us.

  And then the dead came pouring in. They ran along the walls, fluttered around the lights like moths, cast crazy shadows on the floor and the chairs. They stank of sulphur and damp earth. With them came noise: shrill screams, gurgling calls, guttural singing. They ricocheted off the faeries as if they were nothing more than stones, but when they saw Delia, their noises changed to something more urgent.

  Delia spun and let off a shot, right before they fell on her. She disappeared under the weight of intangible darkness, and if she made a sound, I couldn’t hear it over the sounds of them screaming over her.

  And then the dead noticed us.

  “Dee,” I said, “Do something. I know you can.”

  Dee looked at me, her eyes wide. I recognized the look. It was like her system was flashing a little warning sign at me that read overload overload overload. Seeing it now, I realized that she’d been working toward this moment—this moment of utter giving up—for a long time, and I wondered that I hadn’t recognized it until now, when it was too late.

  The dead rushed over the chairs, crawled up the windows, sank claws into the edge of the stage. Delia was a rustling, kicking pile on the floor. I gripped Dee’s shoulders and looked right in her eyes. “Dee. Do this for me. You owe me. You know you owe me.”

  Dee’s eyes were locked right on mine, and I could almost see her processing my words. I waited for her to do something—blast the dead to the back of the room, call down heaven’s wrath, anything.

  But all she did was take my hands and step backwards.

  Just as the dead broached the stage, I looked down and realized that, with that one step, we now stood inside the dark circle with Eleanor’s consort. The dead swirled around the circle, rushing past us, making strange shapes that I didn’t think I’d ever seen before. Dee tugged my hands to make me step forward a little, farther away from the circle’s dusty edge.

  Below us, Eleanor’s consort lay still. His eyes were open and glassy. I thought he’d died, but then he blinked. Very slowly.

  There was nothing in the world but this dusky circle. Population: three. Three people broken in three totally different ways.

  Our world was silent.

  The dead swirled around our circle, not getting any closer, but not getting any farther away. They were dark as a storm cloud.

  Cernunnos stepped out from amongst them.

  James

  “Eleanor-of-the-skies, you did not speak truth to me.” Cernunnos paced around the edge of our circle. Like the dead, he was getting no closer, but no further away either. He was somehow even scarier in this context—standing on the stage where I’d read my lines, pacing past the piano bench where Nuala and I had sat. He didn’t belong here. Cernunnos turned his antlered head toward the circle, and with a shock, I saw his eyes for the first time. Hollow black irises ringed with a smoldering red line, all future and past and present mixed up in them. It was like drowning, looking at them. Like falling. Like looking in a mirror. I closed my eyes for a second.

  “I only speak truth,” Eleanor said. She sounded a little testy. “It is all I can speak.”

  “You promised me a successor.” Cernunnos looked into the circle. It felt like he was only looking at me. “Not three.”

  Eleanor held up the consort’s heart. “Well, things got a bit out of hand.” She looked at me and pursed her lips. “I don’t suppose you’d let us have a moment to put things right?”

  “Things are as they are,” Cernunnos said. “The circle’s drawn. I am here. There are three inside and nothing shall change until a successor is chosen.”

  Eleanor closed her eyes and then opened them. “So be it.”

  Cernunnos called, “I am the king of the dead. I keep the dead, and they keep me. I have earned my place here. I swelled the ranks of the dead before I joined them. Are these three worthy? Who amongst the dead can vouch for them?”

  The dead stirred, swirled, arranged themselves.

  A dark smudge grew in front of us, like a smear in our vision, and a voice came from it. Siobhan’s. “I died by the piper’s hand.”

  A winged thing crab-walked over the chairs, its eyes luminous red lamps in its dark skull. “I died by the Consort’s hand.”

  Dee closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against my shoulder.

  The noxious cloud that was Linnet floated forward. “The cloverhand murdered me.”

  I seriously thought it had to be a lie. But it seemed like a dumb idea, even for someone who was already dead, to lie to Cernunnos. I whispered to Dee, “Is it true?”

  She shook her head against me. “They tricked me. They knew I had to kill someone for this to work. All They wanted was my heart for him.”

  I looked at Karre, at the bright beads of sweat on his forehead, and I realized what Eleanor had meant to accomplish. I imagined a consort who was at once a cloverhand and the king of the dead—the faeries would be allies with that ravenous force that had destroyed Delia; they would be able to go anywhere they wanted to. Suddenly I saw what force had driven the faerie to come to the bonfire where I was.

  “So all of you are worthy,” Cernunnos said. “But there can be only one.” His eyes lingered on Dee and a chill seeped through me.

  I said, suddenly, “Why do you need a successor?”

  The antlered head turned slowly toward me. “I am tired, piper. I would lay this down. It has been centuries since I stood in that same circle.”

  “And this is how you choose who follows you?” I demanded. “Whoever is pushed or falls into this circle is powerful enough to control them?” I pointed out at the seething forms.

  “My successor will learn,” Cernunnos replied, and his voice was no angrier nor more passionate than before I spoke out. “As I did. And there will be many lifetimes for my successor to discover what I have.”

  “So you think any of us can do what you do?” I pointed down at Karre. “Him? How smart can he be, that he arrives in the circle already dead ? And Dee?” I stood back from her, looked at he
r. “She can’t even stand the idea that she’s killed someone.”

  “And you?” Cernunnos said.

  “Me?” I showed him my hands, covered with words. “I can’t even keep myself together, much less a legion of dead people. And I’m a cocky little shit who doesn’t care about anybody but myself. Ask anybody. They’ll tell you.”

  Cernunnos inclined his thorny head toward me. “That is not truth, piper. I know what is in your heart. And that is why I choose you as my successor.”

  There was silence. Nothing.

  I lowered my hands to my sides. His song was humming in my head. I could feel the deadness of him, the strangeness of him, the old and dark and bitterness of him, flowing around me.

  “No,” Dee whispered. “Not you, James. You’ve done enough for me.” She looked at Cernunnos. “Take me instead.”

  Cernunnos shook his head. “No, cloverhand. The piper spoke the truth of you.”

  “Then take me,” Sullivan said. I spun to see him shuffle slowly into the circle, hand still pressed on his side and covered with blood.

  “The number in the circle cannot change,” Cernunnos said.

  “Not until a successor is chosen,” Sullivan said. I stepped hurriedly over the consort to offer Sullivan my shoulder. I expected him to refuse it, but he leaned on me, heavy. The movement made more blood run between his fingers, over his iron ring. “You’ve chosen, and I’m here. And there’s nothing to say that once you choose a successor, you can’t change your mind. So change it. Take me.”

  The red-rimmed eyes took in both of us. “Why would I change my mind, Paladin?”

  “Because I am everything that James is, but I’m dying.”

  “Is there any amongst the dead to vouch for you?”

  Sullivan paused a long moment, and then he nodded. Outside of the circle, a form slowly rose, a dark, bent shape still crackling with fury. On the other side of the consort, Dee winced.

  “I will vouch for him,” snarled Delia. “He stole my ward. I died by his hand.”

  Sullivan reached into his pocket with a shaky hand and withdrew three twigs tied with red ribbon, identical to the one he’d given me. He turned it back and forth before Cernunnos, as if to prove that it really was Delia’s.