by Paula Guran
He would do everything he could to protect this baby, everything he could to take care of his family.
“He trusts you,” Gerda said with a tiny bit of amazement in her voice.
Most people never trusted Deshin. Gerda did, but Gerda was special.
Deshin blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy again, and Paavo laughed.
His boy did trust him.
He picked up his newly diapered son, and cradled him in his arms. Then he kissed Gerda.
The three of them, forever.
That was what he needed, and that was what he ensured today.
The detective could poke around his business all she wanted, but she would never know the one thing that calmed Deshin down.
Justice had been done.
His family was safe.
And that was all that mattered.
THE BONE SWANS OF AMANDALE
C. S. E. Cooney
Dora Rose reached her dying sister a few minutes before the Swan Hunters did. I watched it all from my snug perch in the old juniper, and I won’t say I didn’t enjoy the scene, what with the blood and the pathos and everything. If only I had a handful of nuts to nibble on, sugared and roasted, the kind they sell in paper packets on market day when the weather turns. They sure know how to do nuts in Amandale.
“Elinore!” Dora Rose’s voice was low and urgent, with none of the fluting snootiness I remembered. “Look at me. Elinore. How did they find you? We all agreed to hide—”
Ah, the good stuff. Drama. I lived for it. I scuttled down a branch to pay closer attention.
Dora Rose had draped the limp girl over her lap, stroking back her black, black hair. White feathers everywhere, trailing from Elinore’s shoulders, bloodied at the breast, muddied near the hem. Elinore must’ve been midway between a fleshing and a downing when that Swan Hunter’s arrow got her.
“Dora Rose.” Elinore’s wet red hand left a death smear on her sister’s face. “They smoked out the cygnets. Drove them to the lake. Nets—horrible nets. They caught Pope, Maleen, Conrad—even Dash. We tried to free them, but more hunters came, and I . . . ”
Turned herself into a swan, I thought, and flew the hellfowl off. Smart Elinore.
She’d not see it that way, of course. Swan people fancied themselves a proud folk, elegant as lords in their haughty halls, mean as snakes in a tight corner. Me, I preferred survivors to heroes. Or heroines, however comely.
“I barely escaped,” Elinore finished.
From the looks of that gusher in her ribs, I’d guess “escaped” was a gross overstatement. But that’s swans for you. Can’t speak but they hyperbolize. Every girl’s a princess. Every boy’s a prince. Swan Folk take their own metaphors so seriously they hold themselves lofty from the vulgar throng. Dora Rose explained it once, when we were younger and she still deigned to chat with the likes of me: “It’s not that we think less of anyone, Maurice. It’s just that we think better of ourselves.”
“Dora Rose, you mustn’t linger. They’ll be tracking me . . . ”
Elinore’s hand slipped from Dora Rose’s cheek. Her back arched. Her bare toes curled under, and her hands clawed the mossy ground. From her lips burst the most beautiful song—a cascade of notes like moonlight on a waterfall, like a wave breaking on boulders, like the first snow melt of spring. All swan girls are princesses, true, but if styling themselves as royalty ever got boring, they could always go in for the opera.
Elinore was a soprano. Her final, stretched notes pierced even me. Dora Rose used to tell me that I had such tin ears as could be melted down for a saucepan, which at least might then be flipped over and used for a drum, thus contributing in a trivial way to the musical arts.
So maybe I was a little tone-deaf. Didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy a swan song when I heard one.
As she crouched anxiously over Elinore’s final aria, Dora Rose seemed far remote from the incessantly clever, sporadically sweet, gloriously vain girl who used to be my friend. The silvery sheen of her skin was frosty with pallor. As the song faded, its endmost high note stuttering to a sigh that slackened the singer’s white lips, Dora Rose whispered, “Elinore?”
No answer.
My nose twitched as the smell below went from dying swan girl to freshly dead carcass. Olly-olly-in-for-free. As we like to say.
Among my Folk, carrion’s a feast that’s first come, first served, and I was well placed to take the largest bite. I mean, I could wait until Dora Rose lit on outta there. Not polite to go nibbling on someone’s sister while she watched, after all. Just not done. Not when that someone had been sort of a friend. (All right—unrequited crush. But that was kid stuff. I’m over it. Grown up. Moved on.)
I heard the sound before she did. Ulia Gol’s ivory horn. Not good.
“Psst!” I called from my tree branch. “Psst, Dora Rose. Up here!”
Her head snapped up, twilight eyes searching the tangle of the juniper branches. This tree was the oldest and tallest in the Maze Wood, unusually colossal for its kind, even with its trunk bent double and its branches bowing like a willow’s. Nevertheless, Dora Rose’s sharp gaze caught my shadowy shape and raked at it like fingernails. I grinned at her, preening my whiskers. Always nice to be noticed by a Swan Princess. Puts me on my mettle.
“Who is it?” Her voice was hoarse from grief and fear. I smelled both on her. Salt and copper.
“Forget me so quickly, Ladybird?” Before she could answer, I dove nose-first down the shaggy trunk, fleshing as I went. By the time I hit ground, I was a man. Man-shaped, anyway. Maybe a little undersized. Maybe scraggly, with a beard that grew in patches, a nose that fit my face better in my other shape, and eyes only a mother would trust—and only if she’d been drunk since breakfast.
“Maurice!”
“The Incomparable,” I agreed. “Your very own Maurice.”
Dora Rose stood suddenly, tall and icy in her blood-soaked silver gown. I freely admit to a dropped jaw, an abrupt excess of saliva. She’d only improved with time; her hair was as pale as her sister’s had been dark, her eyes as blue as Lake Serenus where she and her Folk dwelled during their winter migrations. The naked grief I’d sensed in her a few moments ago had already cooled, like her sister’s corpse. Swan Folk have long memories but a short emotional attention span.
Unlike Rat Folk, whose emotions could still get the better of them after fifteen years . . .
“What are you doing in the Maze Wood?” The snootiness I’d missed was back in her voice. Fabulous.
“Is that what this is?” I peered around, scratching behind my ear. She always hated when I scratched. “I thought it was the theater. The Tragedy of the Bonny Swans. The Ballad of the Two Sisters . . . ”
Her eyes narrowed. “Maurice, of all the times to crack your tasteless jokes!”
Aaaarooooo! The ivory horn again. This time Dora Rose heard it, too. Her blue eyes flashed black with fury and terror. She hesitated, frozen between flesh and feather, fight and flight. I figured I’d help her out. Just this once. For old time’s sake.
“Up the tree,” I suggested. “I’ll give you a boost.”
She cast a perturbed look at dead Elinore, grief flickering briefly across her face. Rolling my eyes, I snapped, “Up, Princess! Unless you want to end the same, here and now.”
“Won’t the hounds scent me there?”
Dora Rose, good girl, was already moving toward me as she asked the question. Thank the Captured God. Start arguing with a swan girl, and you’ll not only find yourself staying up all night, you’ll also suffer all the symptoms of a bad hangover in the morning—with none of the fun parts between.
“This old tree’s wily enough to mask your scent, my plume. If you ask nicely. We’re good friends, the juniper and I.”
I’d seen enough Swan Folk slaughtered beneath this tree to keep me tethered to it by curiosity alone. All right, so maybe I stayed with the mildly interested and not at all pathological hope of meeting Dora Rose again, in some situation not unlike this one, perhaps
to rescue her from the ignominy of such a death. But I didn’t tell her that. Not while her twin sister lay dead on the ground, her blood seeping into the juniper’s roots. By the time Elinore had gotten to the tree, it’d’ve been too late for me to attempt anything, anyway. Even had I been so inclined.
And then, Dora Rose’s hand on my shoulder. Her bare heel in my palm. And it was like little silver bells ringing under my skin where she touched me.
Easy, Maurice. Easy, you sleek and savvy rat, you. Bide.
Up she went, and I after her, furring and furling myself into my more compact but no less natty shape. We were both safe and shadow-whelmed in the bent old branches by the time Mayor Ulia Gol and her Swan Hunters arrived on the scene.
If someone held a piece of cheese to my head and told me to describe Ulia Gol in one word or starve, I’d choose magnificent. I like cheese too much to dither.
At a guess, I’d say Ulia Gol’s ancestry wasn’t human. Ogre on her mama’s side. Giant on her daddy’s. She was taller than Dora Rose, who herself would tower over most mortal men, though Dora Rose was long-lined and lean of limb whereas Ulia Gol was a brawny woman. Her skin was gold as a glazed chicken, her head full of candy-pink curls as was the current fashion. Her breasts were like two mozzarella balls ripe for the gnawing, with hips like two smoked hams. A one-woman banquet, that Ulia Gol, and she knew it, too. The way to a mortal’s heart is through its appetite, and Ulia Gol prided herself on collecting mortal hearts. It was a kind of a game with her. Her specialty. Her sorcery.
She had a laugh that reached right out and tickled your belly. They say it was her laugh that won her the last election in Amandale. It wasn’t. More like a mob-wide love spell she cast on her constituents. I don’t know much about magic, but I know the smell of it. Amandale stinks of Ulia Gol. Its citizens accepted her rule with wretched adoration, wondering why they often woke of a night in a cold sweat from foul dreams of their Mayor feasting on the flesh of their children.
On the surface, she was terrifyingly jovial. She liked hearty dining and a good, hard day at the hunt. Was known for her fine whiskey, exotic lovers, intricate calligraphy, and dabbling in small—totally harmless, it was said—magics, mostly in the realm of the Performing Arts. Was a little too enthusiastic about taxes, everyone thought, but mostly used them to keep Amandale in good order. Streets, bridges, schools, secret police. That sort of thing.
Mortal politics was the idlest of my hobbies, but Ulia Gol had become a right danger to the local Folk, and that directly affected me. Swans weren’t the only magic creatures she’d hunted to extinction in the Maze Wood. Before this latest kick, Ulia Gol had ferreted out the Fox Folk, those that fleshed to mortal shape, with tails tucked up under their clothes. Decimated the population in this area. You might ask how I know—after all, Fox Folk don’t commune with Rat Folk any more than Swan Folk do. We just don’t really talk to each other.
But then, I always was extraordinary. And really nosy.
Me, I suspected Ulia Gol’s little hunting parties had a quite specific purpose. I think she knew the Folk could recognize her as inhuman. Mortals, of course, had no idea what she was. What mortals might do if they discovered their Mayor manipulated magic to make the ballot box come out in her favor? Who knew? Mortals in general are content to remain divinely stupid and bovinely docile for long periods of time, but when their ire’s roused, there is no creature cleverer in matters of torture and revenge.
Ulia Gol adjusted her collar of rusty fox fur. It clashed terribly with her pink-and-purple riding habit, but she pulled it off with panache. Her slanted beaver hat dripped half a dozen black-tipped tails, which bounced as she strode into the juniper tree’s clearing. Two huge-jowled hounds flanked her. She caught her long train up over her arm, her free hand clasping her crossbow with loose proficiency.
“Ha!” shouted Ulia Gol over her shoulder to someone out of my sightlines. “I thought I got her.” She squatted over dead Elinore, studying her. “What do you think of this one, Hans? Too delicate for the glockenspiel, I reckon. Too tiny for the tuba. The cygnets completed our wind and percussion sections. Those two cobs and yesterday’s pen did for the brass. We might as well finish up the strings here.”
A man emerged from a corridor in the Maze Wood. He led Ulia Gol’s tall roan mare and his own grey gelding, and looked with interest on the dead swan girl.
“A pretty one,” he observed. “She’ll make a fine harp, Madame Mayor, unless I miss my guess.”
“Outstanding! I love a good harp song. But I always found the going rates too dear; harpists are so full of themselves.” Her purple grin widened. “Get the kids in here.”
The rest of her Swan Hunters began trotting into the Heart Glade on their plump little ponies. Many corridors, as you’d expect in a Maze Wood of this size, dead-ended in thorn, stone, waterfall, hedge, cliff edge. But Ulia Gol’s child army must’ve had the key to unlocking the maze’s secrets, for they came unhesitatingly into the glade and stood in the shadow of the juniper tree where we hid.
Aw, the sweetums. Pink-cheeked they were, the little killers, green-caped, and all of them wearing the famous multicolored, beaked masks of Amandale. Mortals are always fixed in their flesh, like my rat cousins who remain rats no matter what. Can’t do furrings, downings, or scalings like the Folk can. So they make do with elaborate costumes, body paint, millinery, and mass exterminations of our kind. Kind of adorable, really.
Ulia Gol clapped her hands. Her pink curls bounced and jounced. The foxtails on her beaver hat swung blithely.
“Dismount!” Her Hunters did so. “Whose turn is it, my little wretches?” she bawled at them. “Has to be someone fresh! Someone who’s bathed in mare’s milk by moonlight since yesterday’s hunt. Now—who’s clean? Who’s my pure and pretty chanticleer today? Come, don’t make me pick one of you!”
Oh, the awkward silence of children called upon to volunteer. A few heads bowed. Other masks lifted and looked elsewhere as if that act rendered them invisible. Presently one of the number was pushed to the forefront, so vehemently it fell and scraped its dimpled knees. I couldn’t help noticing that this child had been standing at the very back of the crowd, hugging itself and hoping to escape observation.
Fat chance, kiddling. I licked my lips. I knew what came next. I’d been watching this death dance from the juniper tree for weeks now.
Ulia Gol grinned horribly at the fallen child. “Tag!” she boomed. “You’re it.” Her heavy hand fell across the child’s shoulders, scooting it closer to the dead swan girl. “Dig. Dig her a grave fit for a princess.”
The child trembled in its bright green hunter’s cape. Its jaunty red mask was tied askew, like a deformed cardinal’s head stitched atop a rag doll. The quick desperation of its breath was audible even from the heights where we perched, me sweating and twitching, Dora Rose tense and pale, glistening faintly in the dimness of the canopy.
Dora Rose lay on her belly, arms and legs wrapped around the branch, leaning as far forward as she dared. She watched the scene with avid eyes, and I watched her. She wouldn’t have known why her people had been hunted all up and down the lake this autumn. Even when the swans began disappearing a few weeks ago, the survivors hadn’t moved on. Swan Folk were big on tradition; Lake Serenus was where they wintered, and that was that. To establish a new migratory pattern would’ve been tantamount to blasphemy. That’s swans for you.
I might have gone to warn them, I guess. Except that the last time she’d seen me, Dora Rose made it pretty clear that she’d rather wear a gown of graveyard nettles and pluck out her own feathers for fletching than have to endure two minutes more in my company. Of course, we were just teenagers then.
I gave the old juniper tree a pat, muttering a soundless prayer for keepsafe and concealment. Just in case Dora Rose’d forgotten to do as much in that first furious climb. Then I saw her lips move, saw her silver fingers stroking the shaggy branch. Good. So she, too, kept up a running stream of supplication. I’d no doubt she kn
ew all the proper formulae; Swan Folk are as religious as they are royal. Maybe because they figure they’re the closest things to gods as may still be cut and bleed.
“WHY AREN’T YOU DIGGING YET?” bellowed Ulia Gol, hooking my attention downward.
A masterful woman, and so well coiffed! How fun it was to watch her make those children jump. In my present shape, I can scare grown men out of their boots, they’re that afraid of plague-carriers in these parts. The Folk are immune to plague, but mortals can’t tell a fixed rat from one of us to save their lives.
Amandale itself was mostly spared a few years back when things got really bad and the plague bells ringing death tolls in distant towns at last fell silent. Ulia Gol spread the rumor abroad that it was her mayoral prowess that got her town through unscathed. Another debt Amandale owed her.
How she loomed.
“Please, Madame Mayor, please!” piped the piccolo voice from behind the cardinal mask. It fair vibrated with apprehension. “I—I cannot dig. I have no shovel!”
“Is that all? Hans! A shovel for our shy red bird!”
Hans of the gray gelding trudged forward with amiable alacrity. I liked his style. Reminded me of me. He was not tall, but he had a dapper air. One of your blonds was Hans, high-colored, with a crooked but entirely proportionate nose, a gold-goateed chin, and boots up to the thigh. He dressed all in red, except for his green cape, and he wore a knife on his belt. A fine big knife, with one edge curved and outrageously serrated.
I shuddered deliciously, deciding right there and then that I would follow him home tonight and steal his things while he slept.
The shovel presented, the little one was bid a third time to dig.
The grave needed only be a shallow one for Ulia Gol’s purposes. This I had apprehended in my weeks of study. The earth hardly needed a scratch in its surface. Then the Swan Princess (or Prince, or heap of stiffening cygnets, as was the case yesterday) was rolled in the turned dirt and partially covered. Then Ulia Gol, towering over her small trooper with the blistered hands, would rip the mask off its face and roar, “Weep! If you love your life weep, or I’ll give you something to weep about!”
