by Mel Sterling
"What—why? What's in the woods?"
"My Queen, and her Court, and her justice." Thomas's voice was flat and brooked no more discussion. "When we get there, let me do the talking. And for God's sake, keep that sack a secret."
"It's going to be hard," Tess said, looking down at the sack for the first time in what seemed like forever. "My...uh, jacket...is growing moss. And bark. And bluebells." She pinched off a budding bloom head and tossed it aside, where it burst like a silent firework against the kelpie's glamour, and vanished.
"Fuck," said Thomas. She couldn't have agreed more.
To their right ahead of them, Tess could see the streetlight-spangled shape of the most beautiful bridge in Portland: the St. Johns, with its gothic buttresses and verdigris paint. It arched over the Willamette so high it needed no drawbridge for even the largest ship to pass beneath it. It too was shrouded in a dark fog, and Tess realized she must be seeing how the fae saw iron, as a dark miasma to avoid. The Hunt turned left once again, leaving the highway for a steep slope upward.
They had entered Forest Park. Tess saw the familiar, ubiquitous ivy on the ground, and the Hunt plowing through it, one moment wheels, and the next, hooves and feet and bodies, as the Hunt abandoned its urban glamour. The trees were black and silver and motionless in the forest's moonlit midnight, except for the birches, which were walking slowly, shedding their brown-gold leaves like droplets shaken from wet fingers.
Walking.
Trees, walking. Looking more like the ghosts of girls Tess had known in high school. Slender and winter-pale, untouched by sun, with lovely, strange faces winking and squinting out of the scored and blotched bark. She fumbled for the seeing stone. She had to see what was truly beneath the surface, or if she was now seeing through the glamour. If, indeed, they were disguised at all. These must be the birch girls Stephen had spoken of. They were beautiful beyond comprehension.
Thomas put up a hand and stopped her. She looked up at him to find his mouth shaping a silent "no" in the gloom. "Guard your secrets," he whispered. "All of them. As long as you can."
"Oh." She couldn't imagine what possible good it would do, keeping the seeing stone hidden, but she trusted him. He knew this world, and she did not. "Are those trees...walking?"
"Ghille dhu," murmured Thomas, as if that meant something. "They are always the last to fall to the wintersleep."
"They're lovely." She didn't know what else to say as the trees swayed away from the crashing progress of the Hunt. These were Stephen's birch girls, and at last she knew what he'd been talking about. The faces of the girls turned to look at them, gray-eyed and smiling, pale hair streaming upward, half branch, half silk, defying gravity. The old-gold coins of their dying leaves fluttered in the night wind, seeming to reach toward the moon.
"Yes," said Thomas, "very." She heard the yearning in his voice. It left her bereft. What good was an ordinary human woman in the world of the fae? Even her brother had longed for the birch girls and their delicate beauty. Thomas said he wanted to be human again, but the fae still had claims on his soul and his heart. Fortunately the birch girls were swiftly out of sight and Tess ran out of time to consider them. The Hunt raged uphill, breaking the brittle branches of big leaf maples and crashing through the whippy red alder limbs still dangling the last of their miniature cones.
Tess and Thomas were thrown from side to side on the kelpie's back as it dodged and lurched. Now the pack was yelping, in full cry, hounds of night blasting ever upward, until suddenly they were at the crest of the spine of hills that formed Forest Park. Below her to the south, Tess saw the lights of Portland and the shimmering artery of the Willamette, and then vertigo spun her senses as they plunged downward into a black hole. Hunter looked back over his shoulder at them. The antlers had returned with his red eyes, like the scorched eyeholes of her pumpkin at home.
Home.
It was a thousand years ago and yet only an instant.
Tess saw the hole was really a tunnel. They seemed to be racing as fast as they had through the streets of Portland, but in the blackness it was even more terrifying because she could not see the way ahead of them, and did not know the environment at all. There were spots of glowing things on the walls, and the occasional sense of passing openings to the side, when the pack's yelping echoed differently and the space felt larger. Down and down and down they went, the whole place smelling richly of soil and mold and moisture and rock. It smelled alive, in a way the caves she had toured in the past never had.
The further they went, the stronger the scent became. Much like the swooning intoxication of the bluebells in her house, this was a fragrance that summoned deep summery memories of grass and earth, warmth and daylight, and the heavy sweetness of blackberries so ripe they verged on wine.
Thomas put a hand to the back of her head and pressed her down, still holding her tight. "The ceiling lowers soon." He bent with her, and his trow scent mingled with the blackberries.
Sure enough, within a minute the space around them tightened, giving the impression they were hurtling through an ever-smaller pipe. She pictured them shooting out like storm run-off from a culvert and wondered where this strange ride would end, and what new terrifying things they would find when they got there.
From somewhere up ahead she could hear music and laughter, weird atonal songs that were more chants than music. She turned her head, feeling a pull toward the music, a yearning that made no sense. Somewhere close was a party, and dancing, and she longed to be a part of it.
The Hunt clattered out of the tunnel into an enormous space. The noise of the party burst over them as if a door had been opened, voices calling and singing and shrieking. Everything was confusion and sound and she could not tell left from right, up from down, a sensation as extraordinary and disorienting as floating underwater. The room's ceiling and walls were covered with crystals reflecting and refracting torchlight, candlelight, and darting, flickering glimmers she was inclined to label fairylight. The Hunt raced along the room's perimeter, their glamour blurring and shredding away like smoke.
It was like being inside a geode the size of a concert hall. Sound came from everywhere, whispers, screams, laughter and joy and terror. On the floor beside them, the fae wound in a spiral that tightened and unwound itself at the same time, whirling both ways. Vertigo took Tess's last vestige of balance, and she closed her eyes against the myriad shapes of the dancers. The singing grew piercingly sweet.
When she opened her eyes again, the Hunt had joined the dance and was spinning and twisting its way to the center of the room, in a spiral like a whirlpool. All around them a tricky wind was blowing. Her hair lifted like that of the birch girls aboveground. She tried to look closely at the creatures around her, but each time her eyes settled on one, it seemed to turn into something she might find blowing down a Portland street in the city's frequent east wind, or trapped in the gutters. A rustle of newspaper here, a scudding leaf there, a sparkle of broken glass, a crushed paper cup, a budding twig, a trodden soda can, a cluster of gravel or sand. And yet, and yet...it was all so beautiful, brilliant with light and sound. As long as she didn't try to stare at any one thing, she could see the shapes of the dancers. They were slender or thick, heavy or floating, all graceful, all beautiful, all horrible, dark and bright and gossamer. Their touch brushed along the neck and sides of the kelpie she and Thomas rode, stroking over her as they passed. What had been a lurching trot became something more dreamlike and swaying, a slow-motion gavotte.
She struggled to be free of Thomas and the kelpie and the binding cord that cinched their waists together. She had to dance, had to wave her arms, leave her heavy clothes and shoes behind, join that irresistible tidal flow, kiss the beautiful mouths that smiled at her...
...and whispered, "Salt. Blood. Meat!"
The whisper grew as the Hunt penetrated into the whirling heart of the spiral, until the leafy sibilance became the wild screeching of trees rubbing together in storms, of hellish violins, of the rabbit
taken by the owl.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THOMAS WATCHED THE WOMAN IN his arms as her head twisted this way and that, following the movement of the fae in their Allantide spiral. He knew what she needed, for it was the same thing he needed. She needed to dance, to sing and shriek out her madness and grief. To fall into the arms of the male that drifted alongside them, his hand trailing along Tess's arm. Thomas batted it away, but it was back immediately.
Thomas turned her head from the dancers with hurtful fingers pinching either side of her mouth, and stared into her eyes. "Don't look at them, look at me."
She did, for a moment, then her gaze drifted to the stranger's hand on her arm, the one that lifted to touch her collarbones—a sweet, tender place Thomas had kissed and nuzzled only hours ago. He hissed at her harshly. "Look here. Here, damn you!"
This time she held his gaze for longer, staring into his eyes, the part that stayed Thomas, no matter what the rest of him looked like. The hand that had begun to coil around her throat slid away.
"Salt. Blood. Meat!" the dancers cried. Out of the corners of his eyes he saw their attention following the Hunt's progress the way daisies followed the sun.
"Don't look away!"
This, as Tess's gaze slid sideways. She looked back to him, and then she pulled his head down to hers, closing her eyes.
"You're real," Tess breathed. "I came here for you and the souls in this sack. I won't give in." Her fingers groped for the seeing stone, but Thomas rested a hand atop hers. She settled for wrapping her hand in the folds of Thomas's coat and burying her face in his sweaty neck. He felt her lips touching where his frantic pulse beat strongest. She breathed deep, and he wondered whether she was smelling Thomas the trow, or the whirling, summer-wine decadence of dancing fae. It could not be summer, here at the precipice into winter. It could only be glamour, and glamour was never true. Her senses might fool her, but her heart never would. Of this Thomas was sure.
"Salt. Blood. Meat!"
She whispered her doubt to Thomas. "Doesn't it make you need to dance with them?"
His chest swelled on a long inhalation. "Yes. Yes. Every single moment, yes. But I won't, ever again. I don't know if I can get you out of this, but I'm going to try."
The noise of the crowd receded, just a little. "We can do it," she promised him. "We can."
His laugh was brittle and sad, and she held tight to him, breathing him in, her hand cupped above his beating heart. Thomas thought of nothing else. No plans, no thoughts of iron or water or what they could do next. For a little while only Tess existed for him, the warm center of a very small circle scribed by the binding cord.
Then there came a dizzying moment when the center of the spiral was reached, a feeling like the bursting of a bubble inside him, and the coil turned to the other direction. They were coming out of the dance, and the absolute need seemed to lessen, the touch of the other dancers along their bodies, and those of the Hunt, less insistent or persuasive. The cries of hunger did not diminish, however. As the Hunt neared the outer arm of the spiral, they grew louder and louder.
Tess being Tess, she would not hide her eyes forever. She peeked out of Thomas's collar to see where they were heading. At the edge of the spiral was the set of arched double doors into the Queen's chamber, guarded by the two grinning, dancing kelpies. The Hunt picked up speed again, fueled by the tingling energy stored up by the spiral, and headed for the doors as if it would crash straight through them.
The kelpies flung open the doors at the last possible microsecond, as Tess was flinching away from the inevitable crash. The pack hit the doorway and stopped as if it had run into a glass wall, yelping and leaping over and over again in thwarted eagerness. But Hunter and their kelpie mount went blasting through, hooves and feet clattering and sliding on a floor as transparently black and glossy as obsidian, shadow given substance.
Hunter's antlers swung round to them as he stopped, his staff aloft in one hand. With his other, he gave a yank on the binding cord. Tess and Thomas toppled from the back of the kelpie, which leaned toward Tess with an unmistakable leer on its face, its penis sliding free of its horse-body sheath.
Tess turned away with a shudder, one hand struggling with the binding cord, the other clinging tight to Thomas where they sprawled on the shining floor.
"I call Hunter to Court, by the will of my Queen and the Law of the ages!" Thomas shouted, over the top of Hunter, who cried, "Salt! Blood! Meat!"
Tess hiss-whispered to Thomas, "Meat? Are we the—"
"Shhh."
"Give me another of your iron nails." Her hand groped over his coat and once again he stopped her. He had eyes and ears only for what was going on here in the Queen's chamber until he knew which way the Queen's inclinations lay. Since she had tried to poison him earlier that day, he didn't think he had much chance of winning his life away from the Wild Hunt, but he had to try. Tess might be the variable that changed the game.
Across the room, the curtains of the Queen's bed stirred. They moved like fog, like smoke, draped fantastically over rock crystal stalagmites. Thomas heard Tess's gasp when they drifted aside. He saw his Queen for the first time as if through Tess's eyes: beautiful in her languid awakening. She patted back a yawn in the exaggerated fashion of a stage actress. She sat nude on the edge of her bed, reaching her arms upward, her fingertips beckoning gently. From everywhere in the room came a flurry of pixies in her direction, and the woman was clothed as she rose.
Thomas was very still beside Tess, his attention riveted on the Queen.
Tess whispered to him, "She's the one who met Aaron! Is that the queen?"
Thomas nodded, not looking away from the woman by the bed. Her eyes were taking in everything: Thomas and Tess on the floor, Hunter beside them, the kelpie cringe-prancing in an ecstasy of terror and delight.
Tess moved a little. Thomas allowed himself a glance in her direction and saw that she had settled the tote bag more securely against her body, pressing her elbow down over it tightly. Good for Tess. It was best if she remembered afresh they weren't here for a friendly visit.
The Queen walked toward them. Thomas struggled to his knees, bringing Tess with him. Hunter's every aspect was cloaked in fury, but he had apparently made his official statement and was now awaiting comment from the Queen.
"Which is the meat?" The Queen halted, glancing from Hunter to Thomas to Tess.
"I," said Thomas.
"Pity." The Queen smiled at Tess kindly. "She looks delicious." Thomas knew the moment when Tess felt the compulsion of that gaze, a desire to do anything the Queen might ask of her, if only she would smile or allow Tess to remain in her presence. He saw the worshipful tilt of her face, basking in that smile's warmth. Such beauty could not intend evil. But then Tess's free hand crept into his and squeezed, and her spine stiffened. She looked past the Queen, to where something else was stirring in the bed.
Tess gasped. "Aaron!"
Thomas saw the dawning comprehension on her face as a hundred questions were answered, but he was sure a hundred more rose to take their places. She trembled in Thomas's hold. He tightened his arm protectively. Let the Queen see. She knew, anyway. Of that he had no doubt.
The Queen looked over her shoulder to the bed where Aaron stood naked and slumped in exhaustion, rubbing his eyes. Dismissively, she returned her attention to Thomas and Hunter. "What is it you have brought me, my huntsman? This is unusual."
Thomas and Hunter spoke at the same time, once again. "I throw myself on the Court's judgment!"
"He must trouble me no longer! He is your meat, my Lady!"
The Queen looked from one to the other, and jerked her chin at the kelpie, standing to one side, ribs heaving with the exertion of the long hunt. "Speak."
The kelpie gave Thomas a sidelong glance, and cringed away when Hunter raised a clenched fist. "He was our prey. But there was a moment of doubt, when we should have taken him, and did not, and thus he is entitled to your judgment rather than ours. My Lady.
"
Thomas saw the Queen's eyes change. A chill went through him as she appeared—only for a moment—to be nothing but blind fury.
The Queen turned to Hunter. "You have brought me my own knight. How came this? Speak the truth. And release them."
"Leave us!" Hunter shouted at the kelpie, which bared its teeth and then slunk toward the exit. Hunter thumped his staff on the floor of the room and the cord binding Thomas and Tess fizzled away like a cigarette falling to ash. Tess hardly paid attention as the kelpie left. She had eyes only for Aaron, who at last seemed to recognize her through his haze. She and Thomas got to their feet, slowly and painfully.
"Aaron!" she cried again, holding out her hand. "Come with us!"
"Come with you where?" interrupted the Queen. "Do you think you are leaving?"
Tess's gaze flicked back to the Queen. "We came to get Aaron and take him home." She beckoned him with an urgent hand motion. Thomas knew what was in Tess's mind. If she could just get him close enough, she could show him the things in the tote bag, and maybe—maybe he would take a marker and be restored, like Rory.
"But he does not wish to leave."
"He doesn't know what he wants—what's best for him—because you have bewitched him."
The Queen laughed, and every pixie in her dress laughed with her, tiny hands waving in mirth, tiny mouths shrilling amusement. "He has made a choice, that is all. We bewitch nothing. If the bargains are not made by free will, they are void." She looked over her shoulder at Aaron again. "Come, my love. Tell her what she needs to hear, so we can get on with this dreadfully boring discussion. Allantide wanes and I am not half done with my work, and my Court has not had its salt and blood and meat."
Aaron moved out of the drifting curtains of the bed, his eyes fixed on the Queen. He wore nothing except a torc around his neck, twisted of the same slender threads of gold as Thomas's armband. Twined amongst the threads were droplets of ruby—blood red, shining dully in the shadowless light of the room. When he was near enough, he took the hand the Queen held out to him, his eyes filled with adoration and need. He could hardly look away from where the pixies fluttered and crept and caressed his lover's breasts, her hips.
