Desdemona and the Deep

by C. S. E. Cooney

  But Desdemona had just watched her friend essentially—and with a smile—give Susurra away.

  A silent but intense sense of argument and agreement seemed to pass between the goblin princess and the Gentry Sovereign. Then they moved as one, Alban Idris setting Susurra back upon her feet with slow courtesy, she offering it in turn her long, long hand.

  Bowing formally to kiss that green-veined inner wrist, the Gentry Sovereign promised, “Susurra the Night Hag, we will grant thee up to half our realm, and half the Antler Crown to set upon thy brow, if thou wouldst have us.”

  To the surprise of everyone, Susurra countered, “But I want only a third.”

  “A . . . third?” the Gentry Sovereign repeated.

  “If, that is, you are willing to give the other third away.”

  “Ah.”

  The Gentry Sovereign turned to appraise Chaz, but it was Susurra who reached for her hand, taking it bashfully in her own and asking, “If you will . . . stay? With me? Beloved?”

  “Oh!” Chaz touched her hair, her tattered dress, and then glanced at Desdemona, fear and longing in her face. Desdemona was frozen; she wanted to shake her head until her fur fell off, but she could not move. “It’s just . . . But, I . . .”

  “You are most welcome,” the Gentry Sovereign assured her, possessing itself of her other hand. “The wisdom—not only to withstand art but to interpret it, and then to recognize asymmetry as a powerful beauty, is a rare commodity in any world. We must needs employ your expert eye: first, to bring the Valwode back into some stark balance; next, to help us tease out the gracious subtleties of uncertainty. And, for our own part . . .” The Gentry Sovereign’s hand lifted, sifted through Chaz’s curls. “We find your hair to be the brightest fire in the Valwode.”

  Chaz began to look a little drunk, as between them, Susurra and Alban Idris caressed her and whispered entreaties.

  Desdemona turned to Farklewhit. “They want Chaz to stay? Forever?” For, possibly, eternity? Long past the time Desdemona was worm-dust in the Mannering Mausoleum? Chaz, the bright mortal bride to the immortal sovereigns of the Valwode? Was this what desolation felt like?

  Farklewhit clapped his hands, delighted. “Ha! Yes! The Three-Petal Solution! That’s the way of the World Flower! Why didn’t I think of it? Nyx, you tricksy wight!” he cried to the ceiling. “Wicked sister, I could kiss you—though I curse your name!” With a caper of his shining hooves, he fluffed the remains of his apron. The gesture was not any more modest for the several significantly singed gaps in the pink lace—but that didn’t faze Farklewhit. Chattering at buffoonish speeds, he danced around the mutually betrotheds, speaking of wedding trousseaux and nuptial contracts, the guest list, the seating charts, goblin versus gentry versus human etiquette for the banquet, and asking, “Whatever will your father say, Susurra-li-urra?” and “Do you think we can get all of your sisters to attend?” and more along these lines until Susurra started shaking her head at him.

  “No! No, Nanny, no, no, no! I want none of that! You are to perform the ceremony now! Bind us, Nanny. You are my Umber-sire. You speak with Da’s voice.”

  Farklewhit stopped mid-caper. “Only at need.”

  “I need this. And the Valwode needs a dream, fleet and vast.” Susurra wrapped Chaz close to her side. “I can dream nothing but nightmares till my place here is assured—and my beloved safe beside me.” Her chin lifted. “Bind us now, Nanny. Split the Antler Crown amongst us three.”

  It did not escape Desdemona’s notice that Susurra was also holding Alban Idris firmly by the hand as well. And it was letting her, smiling down with all apparent docility.

  Three may rule the Valwode in name, but Desdemona rather thought she could hazard a guess as to which one of them would rule the other two.

  But then, Chaz had always liked being ordered around. Right up until she didn’t.

  “Please!” Chaz broke away from her suitors. “Please, I need a minute. I need . . .”

  And then she was standing in front of Desdemona, grabbing her hands and dragging her a little apart from the rest. Farklewhit stood guard in front of them, amiably whup-whup-whupping away any gentry busybody who sidled too near.

  “What do you think?” Chaz whispered.

  As Desdemona looked at her friend, a smile rose to her lips like the surface glitter of a lake, all while her heart dropped like a stone to the black, cold bottom. Already she could feel herself tucking the memory of Chaz away—this Chaz, as she was right now, truly happy for perhaps the first time since Desdemona had met her—Chaz, and her blazingly open smile. She would take the image down into the deep-lake darkness and bury it in the cool silt, preserving her memory like a rare wine cellared for the next generation.

  “I think,” Desdemona replied, squeezing Chaz’s hands, “that this means no more stupid soup-and-fish suits for you.”

  Laughing, Chaz agreed, “No, never again!”

  But still she clung to Desdemona’s fingers. She shook her head, not in refusal or denial, but in happy disbelief. “How is this happening, Desi? How can this be possible?”

  Desdemona shrugged, her smile twisting. “Because Susurra is dreaming it?”

  “No.” Chaz shook her head. “Susurra can change the world around me if she chooses, but she cannot compel my decisions. She would if she could!” She laughed. “I could see her trying. Actually, she’s a bit like you when you want something, Desi. No.” That little head shake again. “This? Right now? I think I might be dreaming it. The way they look at me? The way they see me? Desi—I’ve dreamed of that all my life.”

  And there it was. Chaz wasn’t here to be convinced otherwise; she was here to be spurred onward. And Desdemona owed her that—for having known Chaz all her life but never truly having seen her. She knew her duty.

  “You’d better hoof it, then,” she advised.

  “You’ll stand as my witness,” Chaz said, with a hint of anxiety, “or I swear I’ll take one of your tails for my stole!”

  Desdemona cheerfully flicked her the universal sign of ill will—hand up, knuckles out, first three fingers twisted together, indicating a mixed breeding from all three worlds—and spinning Chaz around to face her suitors, gave her a little push. Blushing like cotton candy caught in the act, Chaz joined Susurra and Alban Idris, holding out her hands to them. They reached for her, drawing her close again, and Chaz beaconed out a smile of such indelible elation that it lit the royal courtroom like the noontime sun of Athe.

  Rubbing his hands together, Farklewhit came up behind Desdemona and clapped her on the back. “Well, if you’re all sure, then—let us proceed!” And then there was no more time to dwell in melancholy—for he caught up Desdemona’s elbow and galloped her up the steps to the dais while the others processed up behind them in a statelier manner. Desdemona laughed at the speed, but she did not stumble; her new body was too well balanced, with its sleek limbs and bare paws and all her tails helping. They attained the glimmering opal disk of the dais before the others did and took center stage, right in front of the silver sickle throne, which was terrifyingly large this close up.

  Mouth close to her paired ears, Farklewhit ordered, “Stand just here, Tattercoats. You’re the witness now.”

  His breath was not grassily gaseous as Desdemona had expected, but the stone-cool sweetness of petrichor. She leaned into the scent, sniffing appreciatively.

  “Now,” Farklewhit went on worriedly, “I don’t have any flowers for you to hold—that’s what you mortals do at weddings, isn’t it?—but take this for proxy! It’s colorful, anyway!” and thrust his corky quilted cap into her hand.

  Desdemona grinned. “This’ll do nicely, Nanny.” She fluffed the sizzling pom-pom until it boi-yoi-yoinged in a spray of rainbow light.

  Farklewhit gave an approving little hop and turned to the newly betrotheds, directing them to kneel in a row on the steps. He assigned the Gentry Sovereign center place. Susurra loudly objected to this—in a bossy voice that reminded Desdemona uncomfortably of
herself—saying that, as Alban Idris was the tallest of them, it should at least kneel several steps below herself and Chaz. She did this, Desdemona suspected, mostly for Chaz’s sake—as Susurra could dream herself any height she desired. They all adjusted accordingly.

  A line of marble giants flanked the bottom of the dais, their backs to the ceremony, making certain the gentry did nothing to disrupt the proceedings. But nothing seemed unlikelier—the gentry were overjoyed! Wings fluttered, scales glistered, feathers puffed, tentacles slithered. The subjects of the Valwode crowded as close as they dared.

  The ceremony began with a stomp of Farklewhit’s cloven hoof. It rang out like a glass bell against the dais. A hush fell. Farklewhit stood center, obscured to the onlookers below by the rising beams of the Antler Crown, but from behind those tangled tines, his harsh and merry voice (like a donkey attempting to perform the rites of a priest) brayed up and out:

  “Here is Alban Idris, enthroned sovereign of Dark Breakers! Made by mortal hands, enkindled by gentry magic, it is Nyx the Nightwalker’s Anointed Heir, faithful servant of the Valwode, who, having failed its directive to dream the Veil-Between-Worlds anew and eager to atone for its failure, makes reverence before you now.”

  The Antler Crown comprised eight branching beams growing in a circle from the Gentry Sovereign’s skull, their highest points all entangled. Farklewhit’s right hand reached out to grasp the beam at its left temple, his fingers closing around the base between brow tine and burr. At his touch, that beam’s whole branch began to glow: not the soft, pervasive gloaming everywhere to be seen in Dark Breakers, but the dark, blood-fed ivory of living bone.

  “Here is Susurra the Night Hag, Twelfth Daughter of Kalos Kantzaros! Princess of the Koboldkin, Erl-Daughter of Bana the Bone Kingdom, she is Nyx the Nightwalker’s Appointed Heir and traitor to the Valwode, who, having served her sentence and paid off her debts to the Veil, makes reverence before you now.”

  When Farklewhit’s left hand closed around the rightmost beam of the Antler Crown, that bone-colored branch also smoldered with an inward fire. But here he paused, and his thin black lips wobbled a bit. Alarmed, Desdemona reached out and squeezed his arm. He glanced over gratefully, his eyes tender and full of tears, then cleared his throat and boomed anew:

  “Here is the Maiden Mallister, mortal-born! Beloved of Susurra and of Alban Idris, she is the chosen bride of both, who, having forsaken Athe to dwell apart from mortal kind and live with her beloveds in the Valwode, makes reverence before you now.”

  Though the courtroom of Dark Breakers was enclosed, with no visible windows or doors, a wind picked up. Perhaps it blew from Farklewhit himself, for his braying voice had become the sound of a cyclone, the thunder of hurricanes making landfall, the splitting of the earth along a fault line.

  It was a voice Desdemona knew well. She had only heard it twice in her life, but if she grew old and bent and forgot all else, that voice would remain.

  Before the gentry court, Farklewhit was changing. His fleece was peeling back, his limbs elongating. His horns were looping, leaping, lifting from his head with the fluidity of flame. His hands, grasping the Antler Crown, were no longer hard and brown and furred in fleece, but quicksilver and flaring white fire, with talons of smoldering emerald, filigreed in copper.

  “I,” said the Kobold King, “Kalos Kantzaros, declare these promised three to be wed hereafter. Let the scionhorn be sundered!”

  With an energetic twist, his lightning-colored hands wrenched upward and—CRACK!—ripped the two side beams of the Antler Crown from their seated pedicles in the Gentry Sovereign’s skull.

  Alban Idris made no sound, but its subjects sighed with a certain satisfaction. A few applauded. Someone struck up music—a melody like spiders playing their own webs. There was a great tinkling, and the sound of wings. A few gentry levitated several feet off the floor in elation. Even the stern policemen giants, whose backs were to the proceedings, softened with approval of their sovereign sibling.

  Of the six remaining beams of the Antler Crown, two protruded from Alban Idris’s wide forehead, four from the back of its head. Two bloody holes marred the marble-white curls just above its temples. Chaz looked horrified, and began to weep, and threw her arms about Alban Idris as if to protect it from further harm. Even Susurra seemed slightly concerned, stretching back her hand to touch its shoulder. Alban Idris smiled bravely at them, tears standing out in its black-flash eyes.

  “Do not let the sight disquiet you. What is missing will grow back. We suffered worse hurt when first the Antler Crown sprang full-horned from our skull.”

  “Sovereigns!” the Kobold King remonstrated, and the three newlyweds snapped forward like scolded children to attend him. His focus burned upon them with the radiant precision of sunlight through diamond. Desdemona both wished and feared his attention would fall on her as well, bringing her to her knees as it had done in the World Beneath the World Beneath. She wanted to search out Farklewhit behind those acid-green eyes and see if she could pull him forth as from his own hat. But the Kobold King did not so much as flicker a glance her way.

  “As the scionhorn is sundered,” he announced, “let it now be grafted in good faith. You three,” he said, “shall be Companions-at-Throne in the Valwode. Teach each other to dream.” And lifting the severed beams high, Kalos Kantzaros plunged them down again, driving them like stakes through the centers of Chaz’s and Susurra’s skulls.

  The sound they made was neither gasp nor croak nor scream. There was no breath behind it, only the crunch-shock of impact. Desdemona screamed for them. She pounced forward, teeth bared, but the Gentry Sovereign lunged to stop her, dragging her to the steps and pressing her down.

  “Be still!” it whispered. “All is well!”

  Desdemona writhed, trying to get to Chaz.

  Below the dais, the gentry court started dancing in a frenzy of celebration. The Bog Sisters whirled in a merry circle of linked arms. A creature with the head of a hare and the body of a young boy gamboled up to a great, burly, bearded man, whose beard was a waterfall of roses, to pluck handfuls of petals from his face and throw them into the air. They did not fall but took flight like butterflies, flitting through the crowd. No one seemed to notice, or noticing, care, about the blood fountaining from Chaz’s skull, or the ichor from Susurra’s, how they staggered and would have fallen, but that the Kobold King held them upright by the horns in their heads.

  Susurra steadied first. Several segmented strands of her hair shook themselves out of their stupor, wavered upright, and whipped round the beam planted in her forehead, wrapping it blackly like trained ivy on a trellis. This, it seemed, was an act of integration, welcoming the antler into Susurra as part of her body. Within seconds, her beam took root and began to send out shoots. A circlet of smaller black horns budded from her head.

  It went harder for Chaz. Her knees sagged. Her head lolled forward. Blood spurted from her skull, pulsing with each heartbeat, splashing up onto her antler until it was soaked: stem and branch and tine. Bright red fuzz began to velvet the antler, starting at the base, crawling to the tip. The longer Chaz bled, the more her antler was fed. The deeper the nap, the darker the velvet. Crimson. Carmine. Garnet. Burgundy. But she would not stop bleeding.

  It seemed to Desdemona that all the blood in Chaz’s body was erupting up through her skull. That she, being mortal, had sustained a mortal wound. When her heartbeat started to stagger, when the pause between spurts lengthened, only then did the antler finally take root. Eight pedicles sprouted all around Chaz’s skull, pushing up through her soaked-dark hair, each new bud as wine - cherry - blood - berry - red as the original graft. But Chaz did not straighten. Her eyes did not open.

  “Dream wild,” said Kalos Kantzaros in final blessing. “Dream dangerous. Dream true.”

  His form became unfixed. Soon, he was only a corkscrewing column of quicksilver flame, turning, turning, swirling ceiling-ward. The column touched the high roof of the royal courtroom, where it flashe
d green and reversed direction, hurtling back into the ground like a mechanized earth auger. Where it disappeared.

  “Chaz?” Desdemona screamed, clawing away from Alban Idris. “Chaz!”

  The sounds of celebration and laughter drowned out her frantic cries.

  Susurra—Antler Crown full-grown now, lacquer-black like her hair—held Chaz by one arm. Alban Idris held her other. They both leaned in to kiss her: forehead, eyelids, nose, the corners of her drained-pale mouth.

  When they stepped back, only Desdemona was left gripping her about the waist, holding on like a drowning woman clings to flotsam, hoping it will carry her ashore.

  And when Chaz opened her eyes, she was no longer human.

  The blue of her irises floated like jewels on scarlet scleras. Her own Antler Crown bloomed and branched upon her brow, still covered in red velvet, but showing the first glimpses of the red iron underneath. She did not shake free of Desdemona but did not look to her either. Her strange regard met that of Susurra and Alban Idris. She smiled for them, her teeth the same red iron as her horns.

  “Is it well, Consort?” Alban Idris asked her.

  If Chaz’s laughter sounded shaky, at least it was familiar to Desdemona. “It is well, Consort.”

  Susurra grinned then as only goblin girls and Gentry Queens can grin. She flourished like a statesman and cried, “Then, Consorts, let us feast! For tonight we dream in each other’s arms—and wake to a Valwode born anew!”

  14: QUEEN AT THE THRESHOLD

  LATER, THEIR EXIT UNNOTICED in the jubilant midst of the revelry, Desdemona and Chaz slipped away to walk in the orchard. Branches glittered. Gold. Silver. They flowered, bore fruit-like gems. Gem-like fruit. Desdemona snapped off the prettiest branches as she passed under them, biting her tongue, which wanted to snap, too. Make the break clean between them. Never mind the bleeding. The leave-taking. She would not let it.