Seven Wild Sisters

by Charles de Lint

  “No harm can come to us or any under our protection,” she said—reluctantly, it seemed.

  It was pretty much the answer that the Apple Tree Man told us she’d have to give.

  “Nothing else?” I asked.

  “Nothing else.”

  “Then this is the boon I ask,” I said. “That you harm no one here, nor in any way cause harm to another for the rest of your days.”

  Fury raged in the queen’s eyes now. The Apple Tree Man had warned us about that as well. She squeezed her fists and clenched her jaw, but finally she sighed heavily and gave an unwilling nod.

  “The boon is granted,” she said, her voice tight. “Now tell us what you were doing.”

  “A spell.”

  “That was no spell.”

  The Apple Tree Man had expected this as well.

  I shrugged. “We were told it was a spell. We were told that only music and dancing and the pattern of the grass would rescue my sisters from you.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, though it clearly mattered plenty to her.

  I beckoned to Ruth and Grace then. Laurel called out to Elsie. Just as I was about to ask after Adie, she came out of the trees behind the fairy court’s horses, carrying a spear. She must have been planning to make her own try at a rescue.

  “It’s time you were going,” I told the bee queen.

  She shook her head. “No. You didn’t play fair.”

  She made a swift gesture with her hand, and suddenly we were all gone from that field by Aunt Lillian’s orchard and back in the Otherworld again.

  “You lied about what you were doing.”

  “No, we—”

  “Kill them!” the queen cried. “Kill them all. Then go back into their world and kill their mother. Kill all their friends and their friends’ families. Burn down their homes. Salt their fields.”

  There was a maniacal look in the bee queen’s eyes, but I suppose it didn’t much matter. Crazy or not, she was the queen and there was nothing we could do to stop her—not with only the seven of us and the fairy court in this world, and our ’sangmen friends left behind in the other.

  Looked like I was right, always to be so scared of bees. Some part of me must have known that one day they’d kill me.

  I saw Adie raise her spear. I stepped in front of Ruth and Grace. Laurel and Bess came to stand beside me, though what the three of us could do to protect the younger twins, I didn’t know. Elsie was halfway from the tree where she’d been standing to where we were. She stopped dead with bee fairies all around her.

  An ugly murmur went through the court. The bees carrying the tiny fairies buzzed angrily in the air all around us. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and have it over with, but I couldn’t. I had to go down swatting them bees, doing what I could to keep my sisters as safe as I could before the bees finally brought me down.

  Turned out it wasn’t necessary.

  Those bee fairies weren’t mad at us. They were mad at their queen.

  One of the tall riders stepped up to her, and before she could stop him, he grabbed hold of a pendant she was wearing and gave it a sharp tug. The chain broke and he stepped back with the pendant in his hand just before she took a swing at him. Before she could try again, he pointed a finger at her.

  “Enough. We’ve put up with your anger and feuds for too long as it is,” he said. “But when you break a solemn oath, you go too far.”

  The queen fixed him with a cold look. “Don’t you dare judge me. I am your queen and so long as I—”

  “Queen no longer,” he broke in.

  He lifted a hand and those bee-riding fairies came swarming. There were thousands, I figure. Each with a bow and a quiver filled with tiny venomed arrows.

  “When you broke your oath,” he said, “you forfeited your royalty. You have no place in this court.”

  He cut downward with his hand and all those little bee fairies let loose with their arrows.

  I didn’t much like that queen. Truth be told, the way she threatened me and my sisters, I wouldn’t have cried to find out she’d up and died somewhere, somehow. But to see her killed, right there in front of my eyes, all I felt was sick.

  She dropped to the ground with all those little arrows sticking out of her like she was a pincushion, screaming and writhing from the pain of the venom. I began to step forward, wanting to do something to ease her pain, but Bess caught hold of my arm.

  “Wait,” the bee fairy who’d given the order to have her killed said to me.

  The queen stopped screaming, her movements slowing as she lay there on the grass.

  The bees carrying the tiny archers had all landed now, most on the ground, some on the foliage nearby. It was so quiet in the meadow that the queen’s dying gasp echoed for what seemed like forever.

  I looked at the new leader of the fairy court.

  “Wait,” he repeated.

  And then I heard it—the same sound I’d heard in the Apple Tree Man’s house. The rumbling drone of a bee swarm coming from inside the dead queen. My sisters on either side gasped as the newborn bees came swarming up out of the queen’s mouth.

  There were a lot of them—far more than had come out of the little ’sangman. So many that, for a long moment, we couldn’t even see the bee queen. Then they went spiraling up and away, this dark buzzing swarm of bees, like a storm cloud driven afore the wind. All that was left of the queen was the shape of her, made up of what looked like old, dried honeycombs, all gray and papery.

  The new leader looked like he was about to say something to me, but just then we heard a commotion at the far end of the court. The bees’ dogs started up barking as out of the woods came an army of ’sangmen, led by their king and queen. The ’sangman I’d rescued walked beside them, hand-in-hand with the last daughter of the bee queen. In among the crowd of ’sangmen I spied Aunt Lillian, the Apple Tree Man, and Li’l Pater, who, I found out later, was the one who’d brought them all over to this part of the Otherworld.

  “Hold!” the leader of the bee fairies cried to the court as they started notching arrows and aiming spears.

  He walked through the court to meet the ’sangmen. After glancing at one another, my sisters and I trailed along behind him, Adie and Elsie joining us so that all seven of us were together. The ’sangmen awaited the bee fairy’s approach. They were purely outnumbered, no question about it, but they looked ready to fight all the same.

  But the fight never happened. The bee man went down on one knee in front of the princess and offered her the pendant that he’d torn from her mother’s neck. She hesitated for a long moment, then accepted it. The court erupted into cheers, all the bee fairies grinning at one another, gone in the blink of an eye from grim, dangerous creatures to folks just looking for an excuse to have a party.

  My sisters and I exchanged puzzled looks, but I was feeling hopeful that all our troubles were done.

  The princess—I guess I should call her the queen now—signaled the bee man to rise, then had him lead her to us. There was a merry laugh in her eyes, but when she spoke, it was serious, like a ceremony.

  “Your boon was fairly asked and just,” she said. “We have no quarrel with you, nor with any other. Will you promise us the same?”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “We never wanted any trouble in the first place.”

  She sighed. “So it would appear. My mother… she…”

  “Wasn’t exactly easy to get along with.”

  She nodded.

  “Still,” I said, “it was harsh, what happened to her.”

  When she gave me a puzzled look, I added, “You know, killing her and all. If it were my mama…” I didn’t finish. Our situations were too different to compare.

  “Did your mother lock you in a tower for most of your life?” she asked. “Did she never have a kind word for you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You don’t have to explain. I know things were different for you.”

&n
bsp; She gave a slow nod. “They were.” She waited a beat, then added, “But she wasn’t killed. She was changed into a new tribe. This is her chance to begin again and make amends for the wrongs she did in this life.”

  That all sounded fine and dandy, but it put a big question in my head. I didn’t know quite how to ask, but I had to know.

  “Is there… any chance she could get it into her head to come after us again?” I asked.

  “No. You’ll be safe now. You and your sisters and anyone under your protection. You have my word on that.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said.

  “No. Thank you,” she said. “All of you,” she added, looking around to take in my sisters and the ’sangmen as well.

  She held out her hand and the little ’sangman prince left his parents’ side to come and stand by her.

  “We both thank you,” she said.

  There was a moment’s silence, then the fairy court cheered again. This time the ’sangmen joined in.

  I guess this is where most fairy tales would end. Trouble was, we still had to get home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  id you hear me roar like the Father of Cats?” Li’l Pater asked me.

  “That was you?”

  He nodded, then whapped his tail on the ground to make that pat-pat-pat sound we’d heard after the panther’s scream.

  “Guess you saved the day,” I told him.

  “Bet you’re glad I came along now.”

  “Better than glad,” I said, and I meant it.

  Both fairy courts had departed and we were alone in the meadow now, just Aunt Lillian and us Dillard girls, the Apple Tree Man, and Li’l Pater. My sisters didn’t know what to make of this pair of fairy people, but they were taking it in good stride. I suppose with everything they’d already seen today, spending time with a little cat man and a fellow who looked more like a tree than a man was pretty tame. Heck, Grace and Ruth were already tussling in the grass with Li’l Pater like he was some long-lost friend, paying no mind to the rest of us.

  But while I was grateful for the help the pair of them had given us, I was pretty much done with fairylands and the people in them. I went over to where the Apple Tree Man and Aunt Lillian were talking.

  “I want to go home,” I told him. “I purely hate it here.”

  “Of course,” the Apple Tree Man said. “But you know, you’ve only seen the worst this place has to offer. There is far more laughter and glory in this land than could ever be represented by feuding fairy courts.”

  What happened to how dangerous it was for ordinary folks to cross over here? I wondered. But I didn’t press him on it. I got the sense he wasn’t talking to me anyway, but to Aunt Lillian. I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming, but as soon as she put her hand on his arm I knew that she’d be staying.

  “I won’t be coming back,” she said.

  “I guess I knew that,” I said, “but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “I know. But I’ve got a chance here.…” She shot a glance at the Apple Tree Man and I had to smile. “I guess I just need to take it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t my place to steal this moment of happiness, but I was going to miss her something terrible.

  “I made arrangements sometime back with my lawyer,” she went on, “for everything to go to you. I was thinking of it as an inheritance, but now… I suppose it’s a gift. You’re the only one I know who will take care of all I hold dear. I just have to come back and stop by his office to sign it over to you and make it official.”

  Now I really didn’t know what to say.

  “What?” Laurel asked. “You mean you’re giving her that ramshackle old homestead?”

  Bess elbowed her in the side.

  “Sorry,” Laurel muttered.

  But Aunt Lillian didn’t take offense.

  “The homestead,” she said. “Yes. But also the hills. I can’t recall exactly how much land’s involved. Something in the neighborhood of a hundred square miles, I reckon. The lawyer will know for sure.”

  “You own all that land behind our farm?” Adie asked.

  “No one really owns the land,” Aunt Lillian told her. “But I guess I hold the paper on it.”

  “But you…”

  Aunt Lillian grinned. “Live plain and simple and poor as a church mouse?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t have any money,” Elsie said, a smug look on her face. “But I’m guessing Lily McGlure has more than enough.”

  “Who’s Lily McGlure?” Laurel asked.

  “Famous artist,” Adie told her. “Loads of money.”

  I wondered how Adie’d come to know something like that, but it got explained pretty quick.

  “I’m sorry,” Elsie was saying to Aunt Lillian. “I know we shouldn’t have looked in that chest with all your paintings and sketchbooks, but we got scared when we couldn’t find you or Janey. So then we got thinking about bodies and where you could hide them…”

  “That’s all right, girl,” Aunt Lillian said. “It’s nothing I’m ashamed of. I just always kept my distance from being Lily McGlure on account of once folks know you’ve got money, they come hounding you for it and you never do get no peace. Folks always knew me as Lily Kindred, living with her aunt, Em Kindred, though I was indeed born Lillian McGlure. It was purely a girlish whim I took to use the McGlure name on my art at first, but later I saw the advantage of it and, well, I just left it that way.”

  “You’re a famous artist?” I asked. “When did that happen?”

  “Oh, a long time ago,” Aunt Lillian said. “I started in on drawing when I was younger than you and I guess I did pretty well because, after a time, I had me all these folks in Newford, and even farther off, falling over themselves to buy what I was doing. Got me an agent and everything, selling both the originals as well as prints and the like. Aunt Em and me, well, we didn’t need more than we had—and didn’t want it, neither. So first off, I bought all this land to keep it safe from the mining and logging companies and such, and then I had any other money coming my way put into a trust fund to take care of taxes and all.

  “A body could get themselves proper rich, selling off the land and using the money in that fund, I reckon.”

  “I would never do that,” I told her.

  She smiled. “I know. Why do you think I’m leaving it to you, girl? But you ever find you need some money, maybe to get you an education, or for one of your sisters, don’t you be shy about selling off some of that old artwork of mine. And you’ll find a treat or two, down at the bottom of that chest. I got me three color studies by Milo Johnson, any one of which’d fetch top dollar at an auction.”

  Elsie’s eyes went wide, but the rest of us didn’t much know who she was talking about.

  “Probably another famous artist,” Laurel said.

  “Only the most famous to paint in these hills,” Elsie said, “after Lily McGlure.”

  “Now you’re embarrassing me, girl,” Aunt Lillian said, but I could see she was pleased with the compliment all the same.

  “Why did you stop painting?” Elsie asked.

  Aunt Lillian shrugged. “I don’t know. I got old and my fingers got stiff. And I said pretty much all I had to say with my paints, I reckon, though I’ve still been drawing in one of my sketchbooks from time to time. The thing is, you do a thing long enough, don’t matter how much you love it, it can start to wear some and you want to turn to something else. Gets so you look at what could be the perfect picture and you just want to hold it in your head and appreciate it for what it is, ’stead of trying to capture it on canvas.

  “And after Aunt Em died, I didn’t really have the time no more.”

  She turned to me.

  “You remember this, girl,” she said. “You don’t have to be no spinster to live out on that old homestead and do it right.”

  I just shrugged.

  “There’s just one more thing,” Aunt Lillian said.
“I’m leaving you with a lot of benefits, I guess, though truth to tell, it just lets my heart rest easy knowing that everything I got’s passing into such good and capable hands. But I’ve got to leave you with an unpaid debt as well.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, that Father of Cats that Li’l Pater and the fairies were talking about—that’s the same old black panther in those stories I told you ’bout from when I was a girl. You ’member them?”

  I gave a slow nod.

  “Well then, I reckon you remember how I owe him. That debt’s supposed to pass on to my children and their children after. But I never had me a child. I guess the closest I’ve come is you, so I’m asking you to take that on as well.”

  “What… what’s he going to ask me to do?”

  I knew I couldn’t say no to Aunt Lillian, but I was remembering how even those fierce bee fairies had seemed wary when they thought the Father of Cats was taking an interest in their affairs. And if he scared them…

  “I don’t rightly know,” Aunt Lillian said. “But I told him I’d only do whatever it was if no one would be hurt by it.”

  “The Father of Cats is an honorable being,” the Apple Tree Man said. “What he asks of you might be hard, but it won’t be wrong.”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take on that debt for you, Aunt Lillian.” I turned to the Apple Tree Man, adding, “And I guess I owe you an apology, just like I did Li’l Pater. I should have just trusted you.”

  He smiled. “Nothing wrong with someone needing to earn your trust. I’m just happy it all worked out the way it did. You were very brave out there with the bee fairies.”

  “I didn’t feel brave. I just felt stupid.”

  “Oh, I know,” Bess said. “And scared, too. I was sure they’d hear my knees knocking against each other from one end of the meadow to the other.”

  I looked at her for a long moment.

  “But you and Laurel,” I finally said. “You’re always doing stuff in front of people. Playing and singing and dancing.”