In the Coils of the Snake

by Clare B. Dunkle

  Miranda studied the bracelet, and Catspaw stood by to watch her. In honor of the King, it was a chain of lion heads, their unmatched eyes tiny emeralds and sapphires. “Thank you,” she told him. “I like it very much.” But actually she felt dismayed. She was in mourning for Marak, and women in mourning shouldn’t wear ostentatious jewelry.

  “Is there anything you would like to ask of me?” he inquired. “Nothing is unimportant.”

  Miranda hesitated. “I don’t have any black dresses,” she began.

  “Ah! The English custom of remembering one’s dead,” said Catspaw, returning to his place on the dais. “I’ve already had this discussion with my mother. You may certainly instruct the tailors to make you a black dress. Because of its resemblance to the King’s Guard uniform, it will be seen as a patriotic gesture. But if you decide to wear black every day, you will cause confusion and concern. My father’s reign was happy, and his death was peaceful. A public display of somber feeling would be out of place.”

  “I see,” said Miranda slowly. “But the three months’ delay of marriages — isn’t that a period of mourning?”

  “The delay of our own marriage, you mean,” clarified the goblin. “Other marriages are still taking place. The delay is purely practical. It goes back to former times. Before the elves disappeared, new Kings were often injured in the quest to capture a bride. The three month delay allows the new King time to appoint his court and bring the kingdom into good order before embarking on such a risky ordeal. I grant that this ceremony is unlikely to pose a threat to my health, but a law is a law, even for kings,”

  While Miranda considered this surprising information, Catspaw gave her appeal further thought. “I understand your desire to demonstrate your love for my father,” he concluded. “Why don’t you choose something that he gave you and keep it with you as a remembrance? Then you can do your mourning in a way that won’t seem so extreme.”

  Later, in her dressing room, Miranda considered this suggestion. It was true that Marak had given her many things when she was a child, but she hadn’t brought much with her when she had left home. As she rummaged through her jewelry box, looking for items that linked her to him, she drew out a small bracelet decorated with a blue-enameled butterfly.

  The little girl awoke and sat up in excitement. He was here! She pelted down the dark hallway, calling out his name.

  “Marak, Marak!” she yelled, dashing through the parlor door. Her father looked up with a smile from the chair where he was reading a newspaper. Her mother stood with her back to them, looking out the window into the darkness.

  The black cloaked man caught her and swung her up onto his lap. “How’s my Miranda? ” he asked.

  “What did you bring me? ” she demanded breathlessly as she hugged him.

  “You’ll have to find it, ” he replied. She drew from one of the pockets of his cloak a gold bracelet with a butterfly on it, and Marak helped her put it around her wrist.

  “What does it do?” she asked, her brown eyes owlish with anticipation. Marak threw back his head and laughed. “Must my gifts always do something?” he asked.

  “They always do,” she said.

  “Maybe this one is just supposed to look pretty,” he suggested.

  Miranda studied the bracelet for a second, a little disappointed. Then she smiled at him. “It’s pretty,” she said, and he bent down so that she could give him a thank-you kiss.

  “That’s my Miranda,” he said, pleased. “Now, how have you been?”

  The little girl promptly tugged up the hem of her nightgown to reveal a scab.

  “I fell out of the wagon and skinned my knee,” she announced. “I didn’t cry.”

  “Good girl, ” he said approvingly. “I’m not raising a crybaby.” He smeared salve on the knee, and the scab bubbled back into skin. Miranda sighed with satisfaction.

  Her mother turned away from the window to glare at them both. “She’s torn that scab off three times so she would have a wound to show you,” she said.

  “That “s good,” said Marak, smiling at his Miranda. “I’m not raising a coward. She’s not afraid of a little pain.”

  “You said you wanted a normal human girl!” said Til sharply. “How can you call that thing normal when you come around here every few days working new spells on her?”

  “Work a spell on me! Work a spell on me!” begged Miranda happily. Marak grinned at the frustrated Til before bending over his little girl again. “What spell do you want me to work?” he asked her.

  She stopped to think. “Nurse told us a story, and it had a girl, and she was spelled to be the beautifulest in all the land,” she told him.

  “I can’t work that spell on you,” he responded sincerely. “You’re already the most beautiful girl in this land.”

  And that little face lit up with a beautiful smile. “Work another spell on me!”

  “Just anything? ” he chuckled. “How about this?

  He cupped his hand over her butterfly bracelet. When he pulled it back, a real butterfly sat there, deep blue, trembling and fanning its wings. It fluttered crazily up before her wide eyes and clung to the front of her nightgown. Miranda was beside herself with joy.

  “I knew it did something!” she exclaimed triumphantly, and the goblin King laughed.

  • • •

  Miranda sat at her dressing table and watched the blue butterfly loop about on its whimsical travels of the room. “You shouldn’t act so cheerful,” she whispered as it landed on her wrist. “He won’t be coming to see us anymore.”

  Chapter Two

  In the short time that Miranda had been in the goblin caves, Marak had kept his ward very much to himself, determined that Catspaw would hold for her the thrill of the unknown. Miranda had lived quietly in an apartment on the elves’ floor of the great palace, content with her ongoing studies and Marak’s daily visits. If she had seen almost nothing of Catspaw, she had seen very little else of goblin life, either.

  Now the girl found herself propelled to the very center of goblin society. The new King kept her by his side at every social occasion, and the fascinated monsters thronged around her. Miranda played her part to perfection, exhibiting the fine manners and graciousness that Marak had drilled into her. She hid her true feelings from everyone — including, at first, from herself.

  Because the fact of the matter was that many goblins were hideous. They didn’t just look funny, as Marak had always said. There were deformities among them that sent a chill down Miranda’s spine, a shock such as she might have felt at the sight of a corpse. She could barely swallow food in their company.

  There was the goblin, for instance, with the huge flat head, burly arms, and tiny body. His doll’s legs dangled uselessly a foot above the ground as he swung himself from place to place on his hands. There was the genial little goblin with the common abnormality, eyes of two different colors. One of his eyes was dark brown, twinkling with good humor. But the other eye was huge and bright red. And there was an entire family of goblins who were the color of dark gray earth, with the look of things too long underground. Their hairless heads were round and bulbous, like soft rubber balls. Their pale eyes bulged alarmingly, as if they were being strangled.

  Seen in the light of an honest day, these forms would have been frightful enough, but far worse was their appearance in the thick shadows of the kingdom. At any moment, Miranda might turn a corner in the dim hallways of the palace and find herself face-to-face with a horror she had never even imagined. And when she met it, she had to remember to smile.

  It didn’t occur to the girl that Marak’s death had left her overwrought and that her repugnance was compounded by her grief. All Miranda knew was that she was pretending to be happy when she had thought at last her hiding and pretending would be over. She had looked forward all her life to coming to Marak’s kingdom and being a King’s Wife. She had never once considered that it might be difficult.

  The long years of protecting herself from her bru
tal mother guided her conduct now. Miranda smiled her way through to the end of each day, and no one knew she was pretending. The callous goblins never hid their feelings, so they didn’t doubt her performance. Seylin or Kate might have seen through the act, but they were too busy, and they had their own sorrow.

  Little by little, Miranda felt herself sinking beneath the weight of her own perfect manners. Her smile seemed frozen on her face, like a lead mask that she couldn’t remove. She was performing on a stage that she couldn’t leave. She could never step out into the sunlight. And where her appreciative audience should have been, cheering her on, there was only the silence of death.

  What a pity, he had said to her. What a pity I won’t be here to see you.

  “I want to see Marak’s grave,” she announced one morning to the dwarf in charge of the Kings’ crypt. The little creature stroked his long white beard. Then he led her through the hallways to the thick, leaden door that closed off the end of the crypt.

  “He doesn’t have anything graved,” he pointed out. “There’s not a thing graved anywhere amongst the lot of them. It’s not allowed, you see no names or nothing. Shame, really. Your stone, though, it’s graven real nice. I got to help on that one.”

  Miranda pushed from her mind the thought of her own marble headstone, placed in the Hallow Hill graveyard when Marak had taken her away from home. He had worked a spell on the whole community to make them dream her funeral. It was uncomfortable to remember that her own family thought that she was dead.

  She followed the diminutive man down the twisting path of the narrow, chilly cavern, watching nervously as his torch pushed away the inky blackness of the never-ending night. He kept up a cheerful patter, pointing at the all-but-invisible tombs. “That one, he was eight feet tall from the tips of his horns to his cloven hooves.” Miranda tried her best not to listen.

  They came to the turn of the cavern where the last tomb was, and Miranda’s grief hit her like a blow. Right here, he had stood and said good-bye. Then, he had turned and walked away from her.

  “This will be for the new King,” the dwarf noted, gesturing at a rocky outcrop with his torch. The shadows dipped and swayed with the torchlight, rushing around the cave walls, and Miranda’s nerves stretched taut.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’d like to be alone with him.”

  “With who?” The dwarf peered past her in surprise.

  “With him.” She pointed at the tomb, and the dwarf’s expression cleared.

  “Oh, him! Now, that’s what I call being alone. I’ll be right outside then, making sure the door don’t shut. I’d hate to think of you locked up in here. I’d get in no end of trouble.”

  He started off, and the shadows leaned to embrace her. Miranda gasped in alarm.

  “Your torch!” she called, and remembered just in time to give him a smile as he turned around. “I’m afraid I need to borrow it.”

  She took the smooth pole from him and was rather surprised at its weight; it was stone, not wood, and top heavy as well. Its flame, she realized, came from something like a match head, coated with a chemical that burned.

  The little man took his pickax from his belt, and the blade lit with a clear white light. Miranda watched it bob away up the winding path. She sat down next to Marak’s tomb and laid her head on the sloping lid, resting the bottom tip of the torch on the ground. The rocks within the circle of torchlight were dull and sandy-pale, devoid of interest or appeal. “Marak,” she whispered, but no answer came. She wouldn’t find comfort there.

  “I never knew you were going to leave,” she continued. “I thought you’d always be with me.” The echoes of her whisper hissed up and down the cave, turning corners and coming back again.

  “You wanted to go,” she accused the empty darkness. “You were happy about dying. First you made me a stranger to my family, and then you brought me to all these strangers, and then you couldn’t wait to leave.”

  Her reserve was breaking down. The smile had cracked off her face. The manners that had carried her through began to desert her.

  “I told you I didn’t want to stay here without you,” she insisted. “I told you I wanted to be with you. It’s so hard here, and I’m tired, so tired of it all! Please come back and take me with you.”

  There was no reply, only the echoes, like a thousand snakes, crawling around the edges of the cave. Nothing changed in the bright, blank circle of torchlight, and nothing changed in the darkness beyond. Miranda felt her despair and isolation rise up to choke her.

  “Marak!” she cried, beating on the tomb with her fist. “Come back and take me with you!”

  The tomb lid reverberated like a drum with deep, sonorous booms that swelled into a rumbling roar. They seemed to shake the cave walls, to come from the earth under her feet. Miranda stopped, startled, but the noise only increased, its echoes resounding like thunder. Too late, she remembered that every goblin King was named Marak. When she had called him, she had called them all.

  She started to her feet, but the top-heavy torch slipped from her grasp, shattering in an explosion of sparks. Flaming pieces rolled away and fizzled out, and the shadows leapt upon her. Marak’s tomb vanished in the darkness.

  Miranda seized the largest piece of torch that still burned and held it up in trembling fingers. She could still see just the hint of a path in the wavering rays of light. Would the dwarf hear her if she called to him, or would the echoes just come shrieking back? At any moment, the last flames might go out and leave her trapped in the dark.

  She started up the path, staggering a little, her feet clumsy and heavy, as if she were a puppet trying to work her own strings. Desperately, she clutched the piece of splintered stone, trying to navigate the cavern by its flickering light. She kept herself to a walk, reasoning with her terror. Another stumble, and the light would be gone for good.

  Past the King with the bat wings who had choked to death on mutton. Past the King whose fingers had ended in hooks. The waning gleam barely suggested a path, and the rock formations beside her seemed like tall, twisted shapes. She tried not to see them as centuries-old bodies, lining the way to watch her pass. She tried not to hear the echoes in the cavern as the shuffling of long-unused feet. You don’t want to die yet, her pounding heart told her. You don’t want to be with him after all. But Miranda kept her eyes on the path before her and spoke no more words to the dead.

  She stumbled through the doorway and into the tunnel beyond At lit with the warm glow of hanging lamps. Only then did she feel a painful throb and look down to find blood on her hand. She had split her knuckles open hammering on Marak’s tomb.

  “What happened to you?” asked the dwarf, peering at her interestedly.

  Miranda was far too upset to smile at him this time. “Do you hear anyone following me?” she gasped.

  He chuckled. “No. That’s just your fancy. Those Kings — they’re dead. They don’t go following people about anymore.”

  Of course. How absurd. Miranda felt her face grow hot as she blushed. But the shaken girl had no time to nurse her injured feelings or her hand. Marak Catspaw was giving her a tour of the Kings’ trophy rooms that morning, and her visit to the crypt threatened to make her late. She felt a little frantic at the idea of keeping a King waiting. Twisting her handkerchief around the bloody hand, she hurried off.

  Catspaw was already there when she arrived, studying the various display cases in the first of the long, low rooms, but the courteous goblin didn’t seem annoyed with her. Miranda apologized prettily, aware that the King would interpret her shaking hands and flushed cheeks as anxiety over causing offense. While he led her from case to case, explaining obscure points of history, Miranda began to calm down. The frightening episode receded from her mind as she concentrated on the task of making witty conversation in order to charm her royal fiance.

  They spent several hours in the quiet trophy rooms. To her escort, the place clearly represented both a legacy and a challenge. These galleries had be
come, over the centuries, the kingdom’s national museum, and each King selected one or two exhibits to add from his own reign. Marak had added a display about the sorcerer and a case holding the rags that Irina had worn on the night she arrived. They were a sad testament, he had thought, to the end of the elves.

  “I wonder what exhibits will date from my time,” mused Catspaw as they examined a display of elvish weaponry. “I wonder what stories they’ll tell. ‘In the reign of Marak Catspaw…’ Stories used to begin with both goblin and elf King names, but no longer, of course. That made for a better beginning, and they certainly made the most thrilling tales. There’s almost nothing for a goblin King to do these days, with the elves gone. Humans don’t make particularly threatening adversaries. The times are dreadfully peaceful.”

  “Isn’t peace best?” asked Miranda. Her suitor responded with a noncommittal shrug.

  She was enjoying Catspaw’s company. He made her feel important, and his conversation was worldly and knowledgeable. She knit her brows, preparing to turn his offhand comments into a debate, something that both of them relished. But the goblin King interrupted her thoughts.

  “What are you doing to your fingers?” he wanted to know, seizing her bandaged hand. Fresh blood stained the wrap. Miranda had been rubbing the skinned knuckles with her thumb, breaking through the dried blood and newly forming scabs.

  It was an old habit. She had hoarded her injuries even when she was very small for the pleasure of watching Marak heal them. If he didn’t come for several days, she tore open the wounds to make sure they couldn’t heal on their own. Later, she had sneaked the nursemaid’s scissors administer her own cuts. It made her proud to bear pain without a murmur: she felt that she had mastered herself. Some days, when the household was particularly harsh to her, it seemed the only thing she could control.

  Miranda’s mother had soon guessed what she was doing and had triumphantly denounced the girl to Marak. He didn’t seem particularly concerned, but the girl had learned caution. Afterward, she only indulged in the habit when she was really desperate, when her mother was more than usually severe and she hadn’t seen Marak for days. She couldn’t talk to anyone about him, so she couldn’t share her private worries over whether he was ever coming back. Then it was a relief to give herself a small cut to fret over. It wasn’t as if she was misbehaving: no one knew what she’d done. And the pain was like a friend, sharing her silent vigil until he returned to heal it.