“I could crush you in an instant,” he said. “Grind you like salt. If you don’t give me a son soon, I will make the other girl my wife.”
He took the creatures off. At first they cried. Then they didn’t.
The queen cramped and bled. Her nipples leaked.
The girl’s heart broke for the queen. And she understood her role now: she was a handmaid. Her job, Teilo said, was to tend to the queen, be a companion. Try to keep her happy.
“You will get your turn one day,” he promised.
She washed the queen’s soiled rags in the bucket. Held her while she slept.
“I want to go home,” the queen whimpered.
“I know,” she told her queen, rocking her gently. “Me too.” But the truth is, she hardly remembered home anymore. It was a faraway place. Made up, like something from a fairy tale. A place she had been once upon a time.
Chapter 43
Phoebe
June 13, Present Day
Following Sam, Phoebe lowered herself down through the open window, scraping her back against the wooden frame. She hoped like hell she hadn’t scratched herself too badly on the rusty nails. Did they give tetanus shots to pregnant women?
She landed with a not-so-gentle thud and saw that they were in a dimly lit room with cinder-block walls. Lisa came through next, lowering herself down without a sound. Above them a single forty-watt lightbulb gave a dull glow. Covering the walls were pictures cut from magazines and books, held up with yellowing tape: flowers of every shape and color. Lilacs and lilies. Sweet peas and daffodils. Flowers from formal gardens and weed-filled roadside ditches. There was a twin mattress on the floor in the corner, piled high with dirty blankets. Two stained pillows were at the head. Next to it, a five-gallon plastic bucket and roll of toilet paper. The walls, between the taped-up flower pictures, were full of chalk drawings—lines, circles, dashes, Teilo’s mark. She saw Lisa’s name written in tiny scrawl, just beside the bed. Next to it, another name, in different, more bubbly writing: Gabrielle.
Phoebe blinked hard, tried to focus.
“There was another girl here with you,” she said to Lisa. “They’d taken someone else. A girl called Gabrielle.”
Lisa flinched a little at the name.
“Phoebe,” Sam called from the doorway. He held a heavy, open padlock in his hands, taken from the hasp on the frame. There was also a sliding bolt outside the door.
“Oh my God,” Phoebe said. “This is it, isn’t it, Lisa? This is your room in the garden?”
Could it be? The place Lisa had been kept, year after year? Taken by whom? Old drunk Aunt Hazel? It didn’t make any sense. But Phoebe felt strangely relieved to know once and for all that they were dealing with real people, not shape-shifting fairies who could get inside your dreams.
Lisa smiled, touched one of the taped-up flowers, bending the corner a little.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “there were two little girls out wandering in the forest. They met a wicked man.”
Sam slid the lock back into the hasp and walked across the cellar, past the furnace and water heater. Phoebe followed, green boots creeping over the damp cement floor. There was a dusty exercise bike, piles of newspapers and magazines, cardboard boxes. A tall bookcase rested against a wall, stuffed full of paperbacks, mostly romances. The bookcase looked slightly askew. Lisa went right up to it, grabbed the edge, and pulled.
“Lisa!” Phoebe yelled, sure the case would come toppling over, crushing her.
Instead, the bookcase swung out, its left edge held with heavy hinges. It opened like a door.
“Sam, look!” Phoebe called.
Behind the swinging bookcase was a heavy wooden door with a cut-glass knob. Phoebe turned the knob and pushed, but the door was locked. She glanced at the keyhole below the knob, then, taking a chance, reached into her pocket and took out Evie’s necklace. The key slid right into the hole and turned easily.
Lisa gave it to me. She told me this story that summer about two sisters who went on an adventure with a magic key that was supposed to save them. She said this was the key.
Phoebe opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was small but tidy. There was a high rectangular window, like in the flowered room. A twin bed rested in one corner, neatly made with a green wool blanket on top, tucked in so tightly Phoebe was sure you could bounce a quarter on it. A wooden bookcase was stuffed full of books on the occult, mythology, and fairies.
Next to it, a small desk. On it, an old red leather-bound diary, a stack of notebooks, a blank pad of paper, a pen and pencil, and a small microcassette recorder. There was an antique-looking pair of brass binoculars. Sam picked them up. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
“Sam? You okay?”
“We found these in the woods that summer. He was there. He was watching us the whole time!”
Taped to the wall above the desk were sketches of a girl Phoebe recognized from the family photos at Sam’s: Lisa. A young Lisa, smiling, laughing, stars in her eyes. Lisa in a hooded sweatshirt. Lisa in a summer dress, the straps loose on her narrow shoulders. The drawings were done in pencil and charcoal. Phoebe looked from the drawings to the older, haggard version of Lisa, who stood beside Phoebe smiling down at her younger self. It was impossible to believe this was the same person. It wasn’t just the sallow skin, the worn expression. It was as if the shape of her eyes had changed. Just how much could sorrow reshape a person?
“Sam, look,” Phoebe said, holding out the diary.
“Teilo’s?” he asked.
“No. It belongs to a girl. No dates, but listen to this:
Early Summer, 10 years old
Dear Diary,
Today, Sister and I met the King of the Fairies! Mother says we’re lucky girls, that when she was little, she could see him too.
Grandfather smiled, went back to reading his newspaper. Sometimes when Grandfather smiles at me, my throat feels like there’s an invisible noose around it, and as the corners of his mouth go up, the rope gets tighter.
People in town say we shouldn’t play back there. That those woods are haunted. An evil place where the Devil dances.
The King of the Fairies is no devil. He’s very handsome. That’s what Sister says anyway. It was so dark, and at first, he made us close our eyes. When we opened them, he was standing against a tree, and at first it was hard to see where the tree ended and he began. But as we looked longer, harder, we could make him out.
But it was a little like that game you play in the dark—the one where you stand in front of a mirror, chanting Bloody Mary until you see something, then you wonder if you really saw it at all, or if it was just your imagination.
What I saw was this:
A man with the blackest eyes I’d ever seen. Like oil, all reflective and glimmering. His hair is long and dark. His breath is sweet at first, like flowers, but then horrid and rank. He speaks in riddles. Sister loves riddles. He wears a cloak colored like tree bark, and when he wraps it around himself, you can’t see him at all.
He’s called Teilo and he says he’s lived here a long, long time.
“Jesus,” Phoebe said, closing the diary. “Who is this guy?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “But the diary sure isn’t Lisa’s. She didn’t have a sister.”
“So he went after other girls too,” Phoebe said.
Sam opened a chest of drawers, exposing neatly folded men’s briefs, white T-shirts, jeans. Sam reached into the back of the top drawer and pulled out a white face mask and a pair of black leather gloves.
“If you look upon the true face of a fairy, you’ll be driven mad,” Sam said, holding up the mask.
Phoebe picked up the gloves. “Look at the fingers!”
Six. There were six fingers on each hand.
“Who the hell is he?” Sam asked.
“He calls himself Teilo, the King of the Fairies,” Lisa said. “But he isn’t really.”
Sam was going through the bookshelf. Lisa st
ood in the doorway, looking in with worried eyes. Phoebe opened the diary, flipped ahead a couple of pages, and read another entry:
Middle of Summer, 11 years old
Dear Diary,
Sister says she’s going to marry Teilo.
I was angry at first. Not because I actually expected him to choose me over her or because I even wanted him to. It’s just that Sister has changed so much since he came. She’s become so serious. Each day, I feel her pulling away from me and getting closer to him.
So when she said she was getting married, I was silent.
“Don’t be a mope,” Sister said.
Later, when we went to the bottom of the hill, Sister told Teilo I’d been sulking all day. He laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You can both be my brides.”
Sister says we can live here forever, all three of us.
“Aren’t we the luckiest girls on earth?” she asks.
When we got back to the house, Grandfather asked, “Why the long face?”
“Because I’m one of the luckiest girls on earth,” I told him.
He laughed, throwing back his head. His teeth are perfect squares, whiter than white, like a mouth full of sugar cubes. His breath smells like dirt and minerals, like the inside of a cave.
He wrapped his cool fingers around my wrist like he does sometimes. It’s like he’s checking my pulse. Wanting to know if I’m alive or dead. Sometimes he just holds me like that awhile, his strong bony fingers encircling my wrist like a handcuff, and if I try to pull away, he just grips me tighter.
“Figured out who it belongs to yet?” Sam asked.
Phoebe shook her head. “No, but it’s damn creepy.”
She closed the diary and picked up the small recorder, saw there was a tape inside. She rewound it to the beginning, then pressed Play.
“Tell me a story,” a girl said. Another girl giggled.
The first girl cleared her throat and said, “Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, the world’s greatest storyteller, Lisa Nazzaro.” There was the sound of clapping, then another giggle.
Phoebe glanced over at Sam, who looked like he’d been hit with an arrow.
On the tape, Lisa said, “You’re too much, Evie.”
“Just tell the damn story.”
“Once upon a time,” Lisa began, “there was a poor peasant girl. Orphaned, she lived on her own at the edge of the woods. She came to town to gather rags and food scraps. Sometimes the townspeople would take pity on her and give her some soup. A slice of bread. A shiny coin. Mostly, they were cruel. They called her Rag Girl. But what none of them knew, including the girl herself, was that she was really a princess.”
“Ooo,” moaned Evie. “Will there be magic in the story?”
“There always is,” said Lisa. “What fun is a story without magic?”
Chapter 44
The Girl Who Would Be Queen
On full moon nights, the man who called himself Teilo came for both of them. He wore a mask. Black leather gloves and jacket.
“Shh!” he warned. “We don’t want to upset the guardians.”
It was a game. It was us against them. The guardians were overprotective, Teilo said. They didn’t approve of him visiting his girls.
“But how could they keep me away?” he asked. “A way. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Up, up, and away!”
He led them through the small opened window, took them to the orchard. They all held hands and danced in a circle. The queen threw back her head and laughed. “I think,” said Teilo, “that you each grow more beautiful every day. The fairy world suits you.”
They both knew it was a lie but smiled anyway. They knew they looked washed out, had tangles in their hair, sores on their lips and in their mouths. Moth-girls who never saw sunlight, never washed in a tub, only a bucket with a sponge. Girls who lived on white bread and sweet sugary Kool-Aid that had a bitter aftertaste and made them sleepy. Their teeth were rotten. Their breath, rank. They bruised easily, like old fruit.
Once, they were dancing and a voice from the trees called out, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing!” shouted Teilo. “Mind your own business, Evie!”
Evie stepped out of the shadows, looked at the girls. She looked tall and brave and very, very angry. “You’re not supposed to talk to them! They shouldn’t even be outside,” she said. “I’m telling Mom.” She ran back to the house.
“We’d better get you girls home,” Teilo said. “The ball’s over. Time to turn back into pumpkins. Pretty little, pretty little pumpkins in my pumpkin patch.”
That night they heard a lot of shouting outside their locked door. The voices were muffled but furious, and they caught only a few words here and there:
Dangerous. Ruined. Teilo. Who do you think you are?
Then hammering, as nails were put into the outside of their little window.
They held each other there in the dark, shivering on their thin mattress.
Teilo didn’t come to visit again for a long, long time. But Evie did. She warned them. “Don’t talk to him,” she said. “He isn’t who he says he is. They’re all a bunch of liars. The only one you can believe is me. If you trust me, if you’re patient, I’ll get you both out of here one day. I swear it.”
Chapter 45
Phoebe
June 13, Present Day
Phoebe carried the diary out of the hidden room, flipping through pages as Sam searched the rest of the basement.
End of Summer, 11 years old
Dear Diary,
Sister says we have to make a deal with Teilo.
It seems like whatever I do, however hard I try to break away, he’s there. Even when I don’t go see him, when I make excuses to Sister, he’s there in my dreams. He’s always there.
I have my own secret name for him. I call him the Nightmare Man.
Sometimes in the night, I wake up screaming. Grandfather comes into my room, gives me a bitter tablet to place under my tongue. “Excitable child,” he calls me as he encircles my wrist with his fingers. Then he asks, “What did you dream?”
“I don’t remember,” I tell him and he gives me this horrid little smile. Sometimes I wonder if maybe my pulse is telling him a story, beating out words in some kind of code that only Grandfather can understand.
“So what’s the deal we have to make with Teilo?” I asked Sister when we were on our way into the woods. Lately, when we go there, I feel like everything is alive—like the trees have eyes and ears and we have to be very careful about what we say and do.
“If we promise him our firstborn,” Sister explains, “he’ll give us what we wish for most in the world.”
What I wish for most is that we never met Teilo.
If I said that out loud, something terrible would happen to me. I just know it.
Phoebe skimmed ahead.
Mid-summer, 12 years old
Dear Diary,
Sometimes I wonder if Sister’s making all this up. I don’t know how she could, but still, I wonder. . .
I wonder if a person can bring something to life by wishing it. But why would you wish for something dark? Something evil?
Phoebe skipped ahead again, and found an entry that made her heart sink like lead into her stomach.
“Oh my God, Sam,” she said. “I know whose diary this is.”
Sam turned away from the boxes of books and papers he’d been going through. “Whose?”
“Listen:
Midsummer, 13 years old
Dear Diary,
I am in love. And the best part is . . . he loves me too! We’re keeping it a secret, though. Grandfather says I’m not allowed to go out with boys and that if he ever catches me with one, I’ll never leave the house again. Grandfather says boys only want one thing. But he’s wrong about David. David has promised to take me away from all of this, as soon as I turn eighteen.
He works at the general store, but he goes to high school. He’s an artist. A potter.
The other day he gave me a gift: a blue bowl with a mermaid painted at the bottom.
“It’s too pretty to eat out of,” I told him.
I filled the bowl with water, made it ripple, and the mermaid seemed to come to life. Then a crazy thing happened, a thing that made me wonder if I was going mad. I looked into the bowl and saw the mermaid’s sweet face turn angry and horrid—it was Teilo’s face looking back. Then I heard a laugh, felt cold breath on my neck. He was standing behind me. Only when I turned, he wasn’t there.
I told Sister about this later. She demanded to know where the bowl had come from, and when I told her, she got quiet.
“David loves me,” I told her. “He says that when he’s done with high school, when I’m old enough, we’ll get married. We’ll move far away. California maybe.”
I left out what I was thinking. Away from Teilo. Away from you and Grandfather.
Sister just smiled, said, “You think you can leave that easily?”
Phoebe closed the book and looked up at Sam. His face was pale. “It’s my mother’s,” he said.
Phoebe nodded. “And I don’t know who or what Teilo is, but your Aunt Hazel’s been involved with him for a long, long time.”
Sam turned from the boxes, jogged over to the steps.
“Stop,” Lisa said as Sam stepped onto the rough wooden basement stairs. “We’re not allowed up there. It’s dangerous.”
“Bullshit,” Sam mumbled, taking the stairs two at a time. Phoebe tucked the diary in her back pocket and followed him. Lisa hung back, muttering, “Not safe, not safe, not safe.” An incantation.
Phoebe wondered what they would find up there—the King of the Fairies? A doorway to another world?
She flashed back onto the dream she’d had back in the cabin: the hand reaching into her belly, pulling back the door of flesh, muscle, and skin.
She thought of the tiny graveyard in the orchard.
“Sam?” she said, voice quavering. “Maybe it’s time to call the police?” He didn’t show any sign of having heard her and hurried up the last steps. Phoebe stayed right behind him. And behind her, Lisa tentatively followed, mumbling, “Not safe,” again and again.
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