Modern Faerie Tales

by Holly Black

  “I saw it stand up.” His voice was so low she could almost pretend that she didn’t hear him right. His hand dropped to her thigh and slid upward to the cotton crotch of her panties.

  Even though she had seen the slow progression of his hand, the touch startled her. She was paralyzed for a moment before she sprang up, letting the horse fall as she did. It crashed down, knocking the bottle of bourbon over, dark liquor pouring over her coat and soaking the bottoms of the dusty boxes like the tide coming in at night.

  He grabbed for her before she could think, his hand catching hold of the neck of her shirt. She stepped back, off-balance, and fell, her shirt ripping open over her bra even as he let go of it.

  Shoes pounded up the stairs.

  “What the fuck?” Marcus was at the top of the stairwell with Doughboy, trying to shove his way in for a look.

  Kenny shook his head and looked around numbly while Kaye scrambled for her bourbon-soaked coat.

  The boys moved out of the way, and Janet was there, too, staring.

  “What happened?” Janet asked, looking between them in confusion. Kaye pushed past her, shoving her hand through an armhole of the coat as she threw it over her back.

  “Kaye!” Janet called.

  Kaye ignored her, taking the stairs two at a time in the dark. There was nothing she could say that would explain what had happened.

  She could hear Janet shouting. “What did you do to her? What the fuck did you do?”

  Kaye ran across the carousel hall and swung her leg over the sill. The bits of glass she’d mostly avoided earlier slashed a thin line on the outside of her thigh as she dropped into the sandy soil and weeds.

  The cold wind felt good against her hot face.

  Cornelius Stone picked up the new box of computer crap and hauled it into his bedroom to drop next to the others. Each time his mother came home from the flea market with a cracked monitor, sticky keyboard, or just loads of wires, she had that hopeful look that made Corny want to scream. She just couldn’t comprehend the difference between a 286 and a quantum computer. She couldn’t understand that the age of guerilla engineering was at a close, that being a motherfucking genius wasn’t enough. You needed to be a rich motherfucking genius.

  He dropped the box, kicked it hard three times, picked up his denim jacket with the devil’s head on the back, and made for the door.

  “Can you use that stuff, honey?” His mother was in Janet’s room, folding a new pair of secondhand jeans. She held up a T-shirt with rhinestone cats on it. “Think your sister will like it?”

  “Thanks, Ma,” he said through gritted teeth. “I got to get to work.” He walked past The Husband, who was stooped over, getting a beer from the case under the kitchen table. The white cat was waddling along the countertop, its belly dragging with another pregnancy, screaming for canned food or pickles and ice cream or something. He petted its head grudgingly, but before it began rubbing against his hand in earnest, he opened the screen door and went out into the lot.

  The cool October air was a relief from the recirculated cigarette smoke.

  Corny loved his car. It was a primer-colored Chevy blooming with rust spots and an inner lining that hung like baggy skin from the roof. He knew what he looked like. Beaky. Skinny and tall with bad hair and worse skin. He lived down to his name. Cornelius. Corny. Corn-dog. But not in his car. Inside, he was anonymous.

  Every day for the last three weeks he had left a little earlier for work. He would go to the convenience store and buy some food. Then he would drive around, wondering what it would be like to just get on the highway and go, go, go until the gas ran out.

  Tonight, he bought a cup of coffee and a package of black licorice. He lingered over a paperback with an embossed metallic dragon on the cover, reading the first few sentences, hoping something would interest him. The game was becoming boring. Worse than boring, it made him feel more pathetic than before. Nearly a week before Halloween and all, he’d been doing this long enough that it was clear he would never really go. He sipped at the coffee and almost spat it out. Too sweet. He sipped at it some more, steeling himself to the taste. Disgusting.

  Corny got out of his car and chucked the full coffee into the parking lot. It splashed satisfactorily on the asphalt. He went inside and poured himself another cup. From behind the counter, a matronly woman with frizzy red hair looked him over and pointed to his jacket. “Who are you supposed to be, the devil?”

  “I wish,” Corny said, dropping a dollar twenty-five on the counter. “I wish.”

  2

  The stones were sharp,

  The wind came at my back;

  Walking along the highway,

  Mincing like a cat.

  —THEODORE ROETHKE, “PRAISE TO THE END!”

  The wind whipped tiny pebbles of rain across Kaye’s face. The droplets froze her hands, making her shiver as they slid down her wet hair and under the collar of her coat. She walked, head down, kicking the scattered trash that had eddied up on the grassy shores along the highway. A flattened soda can skittered into a sodden chrysanthemum-covered foam heart, staked there to mark the site of a car crash. There were no houses on this side of the road, just a long stretch of wet woods leading up to a gas station. She was over halfway home.

  Cars hissed over the asphalt. The sound was comforting, like a long sigh.

  I saw you. I saw what you did.

  Awfulness twisted in her gut, awfulness and anger. She wanted to smash something, hit someone.

  How could she have done anything? When she tried to make a magazine page turn on its own or a penny land on heads, it never worked. How could she have made Kenny see a broken-legged carousel horse move?

  Never mind that she might as well assume that Spike and Lutie and Gristle had been imaginary. She’d been home for two weeks, and there was no sign of them, no matter how many times she had called them, no matter how many bowls of milk she left out, no matter how many times she went down to the old creek.

  She took a deep breath, snorting rain up her nose. It reminded her of crying.

  The trees seemed like lines of lead grille missing the stained glass to fit between their branches. She knew what her grandmother was going to say when she got back, stinking of liquor with a torn shirt. True things.

  His hand on her leg was what Janet would really care about—that, and that she had let it rest there, even if only for a moment. And she could imagine what he was telling Janet now—flushed, angry, and drunk—but even a badly managed lie would sound better than the truth.

  I saw it stand up.

  Kaye couldn’t contradict them either. Who would believe that he touched her crotch on purpose, but ripped her shirt by accident? So what was Kaye supposed to say when Janet asked what happened? Janet thought she was a liar already.

  She could still feel the heat of Kenny’s hand, a stroke of fire along her thigh in contrast to her otherwise rain-soaked skin. She had plenty to feel guilty about.

  Another gust of rain stung her cheeks, this one bringing a shout with it from the direction of the woods. The noise was brief, but eloquent with pain. Kaye stopped abruptly. There was no sound except the rain, hissing like radio static.

  Then, just as a truck sped past, kicking up a cloud of drizzle, she heard another sound. Softer, this one, maybe a moan bitten off at the end. It was just inside the copse of trees.

  Kaye moved down the slight slope, off the short grass and into the woods. She ducked under the dripping branches of an elm, stepping on tufts of short ferns and looping briars. Weeds brushed across her calves, leaving strokes of rain. The storm-bright sky lit the woods with silver. An earthy, sweet odor of rot bloomed where she disturbed the carpet of leaves.

  There was no one there.

  She half turned toward the highway. She could still see the road from where she was standing. What was she doing? The sound must have carried over from the houses beyond the thin river that ran along the back of the woods. No one else would be dumb enough to go troopin
g through wet, dripping woods in the middle of the night.

  Kaye walked back up to the road, picking her way through spots that looked somewhat drier than others. Burrs had collected along her stockings, and she bent down to pull them off.

  “Stay where you are.” She jumped at the voice. The accent was rich and strange, though the words were pronounced precisely.

  A man was sprawled in the mud only a few steps from her, clutching a curved sword in one hand. It shone like a sliver of moonlight in the hazy dark. Long pewter hair, plastered wetly to his neck, framed a face that was long and full of sharp angles. Rivulets of rain ran over the jointed black armor he wore. His other hand was at his heart, clutching a branch that jutted from his chest. The rain there was tinted pink with blood.

  “Was it you, girl?” He was breathing raggedly.

  Kaye wasn’t sure what he meant, but she shook her head. He didn’t look much older than she was. Certainly not old enough to call her “girl.”

  “So you haven’t come to finish me off?”

  She shook her head again. He was long-limbed—he would be tall if he were standing. Taller than most people, taller than any faerie she had ever seen—still, she had no doubt that was what he was, if for no other reason than the pointed tops of his ears knifing through his wet hair—and that he was beautiful in a way that made her breath catch.

  He licked his lips. There was blood on them. “Pity,” he said quietly.

  She took a step toward him, and he twisted into a defensive crouch. Wounded as he was, he still moved swiftly. Hair fell forward across his face, but his eyes, shining like mercury, studied her intently.

  “You’re a faerie, aren’t you?” she said soothingly, holding her hands where he could see them. She had heard stories of the court fey—the Gentry—from Lutie-loo, but she had never seen one. Maybe that was what he was.

  He stayed still, and she took another half step toward him, holding out one hand to coax him as if he were some fascinating, dangerous animal. “Let me help you.”

  His body was trembling with concentration. His gaze never moved from her face. He held the hilt of his sword in a white-knuckled grip.

  She did not dare take another step. “You’re going to bleed to death.”

  They stayed like that a few more minutes before he slumped down to one knee in the mud. He bent forward, fingers clutching the leaves, and spat red. The wet lashes over his half-closed eyes were as silver as a safety pin.

  She took two steps and knelt down next to him, bracing herself with shaking hands. This close, she could see that his armor was stiff leather sculpted to look like feathers.

  “I cannot draw the arrow myself,” he said softly. “They are waiting for me to bleed a little more before they come against my blade.”

  “Who is waiting?” It was hard to comprehend that someone had shot him with a tree branch, but that seemed to be what he was saying.

  “If you would help me, draw this arrow.” His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “If not, then push it in as deep as you can and hope that it kills me.”

  “It will bleed more,” Kaye said.

  He laughed at that, a bitter sound. “Either way, no doubt.”

  She could see the despair in his face. He obviously suspected her to be part of some plan to kill him. Still, he slid his body back until he could lean against the trunk of an oak. He was braced, waiting to see what she would do.

  She thought of the faeries she had known when she was a child—impish, quick things—no mention of wars or magical arrows or enemies, certainly no deception. The man bleeding in the dirt beside her told her how wrong her perceptions of Faerie had been.

  Her fingers flinched away from the wound in his chest. Her lungs turned to ice as she looked at the grisly wound. “I can’t do it.”

  His voice stayed soft. “What do they call you?”

  “Kaye,” she said. There was silence for a moment as she noticed the cold cloud of her breath rise up with the word.

  “I’m Roiben.” Faeries didn’t give their names easily, even part of their names, although she had no idea why. He was trying to show her that he trusted her, maybe trying to make up for the assumptions he had made. “Give me your hand.”

  She let him take it and guide it to the branch. His skin was chilled and wet, his fingers inhumanly long and rough with calluses as they closed over hers. “Just close your hand on it and let me pull,” he said. “You don’t even have to look. As long as I’m not touching it, I might be able to draw it out.”

  That shamed her. She had told him that she wanted to help him, he was in a whole lot of pain, and it was no time for her to be squeamish. “I’ll do it,” she said.

  Roiben let go, and she gave a sharp tug. Although his face constricted with pain, the branch only pulled out a short way.

  He moaned low.

  Were there really other faerie Folk in the trees, waiting for him to be weak enough to defeat? Kaye thought that if so, now would be a great time for them to come down and have a go at it.

  “Again, Kaye.”

  She took note of the angle of the armor, changing her position so that the branch couldn’t catch on one of the plates. She raised herself to one knee, braced, and then stood, pulling upward as hard as she could.

  Roiben gave a harsh cry as the branch slid free of his chest, its iron tip black with blood. His fingers touched the wound and he raised them, slick with blood, as if suddenly disbelieving that he had been shot.

  “Very brave,” he said, touching his wet fingers to her leg.

  Kaye tossed the stick away from her. She was shuddering, and she could taste the ghost of blood in her mouth. “We have to stop the bleeding. How does your armor come off?”

  He seemed not to understand her at first. When he did, he looked at her with a kind of incredulity. Then he leaned forward with a groan. “Straps,” he managed.

  She came and sat behind him, feeling over the leather for buckles.

  A sudden wind shook the branches above, raining an extra shower of heavy droplets down on them, and Kaye wondered again about faeries in the trees. Her fingers fumbled in her haste. If those faeries were still afraid of Roiben, they might not have to worry much longer—he looked as though he might pass out at any minute.

  To get off his breastplate, she not only had to detach it from the backplate at his shoulders and sides—there were also straps that connected it to the shoulderplates and to his legplates. Finally, she managed to peel it off his chest. Underneath, the bare skin was mottled with blood.

  He tipped back his head and closed his eyes. “Let the rain clean it.”

  She pulled off her coat and hung it on one of the branches of the tree. Her shirt was ripped already, she reminded herself as she took it off. She tore it into long strips and began winding them around Roiben’s chest and arms. He opened his eyes when she touched him. His eyes narrowed, then widened. Their color was mesmerizing.

  He straightened up, horrified. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “You have to try to stay awake,” Kaye said. “Is there somewhere you can go?”

  He shook his head. Fumbling near him, he picked up a leaf and wiped it against the underside of the leather breastplate. It came away shining red. “Drop this in the stream. I—there is a kelpie there—it is no sure thing that I will be able to control it in this weather, but it is something.”

  Kaye nodded quickly, although she had no idea what a kelpie was, and made to take the leaf.

  He did not let it go immediately. “I am in your debt. I mislike not knowing how I must repay it.”

  “I have questions . . .”

  He let her take the leaf. “I will answer three, as full and well as is within my power.”

  Like a faerie tale, which was what she supposed she’d stumbled into.

  “When you drop the leaf in the water, say ‘Roiben of the Unseelie Court asks for your aid.’ ”

  “Who do I tell?”

  “Just say it aloud.”
>
  She nodded again and ran in the direction of the water. The steep bank of the stream was choked with vegetation and broken glass. Roots, swept bare of the mud that should have surrounded them, ran along the ground like the pale arms of half-buried corpses. She forbade herself to think of that again.

  She squatted down and set the leaf, blood side down, into the water. It floated there, spinning a little. She worried it would get stuck in the shallows, and tried to blow it farther out.

  “Roiben of the Unseelie Court asks for your help,” she said, hoping that she had gotten it right. Nothing happened. She said it again, louder, feeling foolish and frightened at the same time. “Roiben of the Unseelie Court needs your help.”

  A frog surfaced and began to swim in her direction. Would that have something to do with a kelpie? What kind of help were they supposed to get from a shallow, polluted stream?

  But then she saw that she had been mistaken. What she had taken for the eyes of a frog were actually hollow pits that quavered as something large swam through the water toward her. She wanted to run, but fascination combined with obligation rooted her to the spot. Hollow pits formed into flaring nostrils on the snout of a black horse that rose up from the black water as if created from it. Moss and mud slid from its dripping flanks as the thing turned its head to regard Kaye with luminous white eyes.

  She could not move. How many minutes passed as she stared at those mottled gray flanks, smooth as sealskin, and stared into the impossible glow of those eyes? The creature inclined its neck.

  Kaye took a half step backward and tried to speak. No words came.

  The horse-thing snuffled closer to her, its hooves sinking in the mud, snapping twigs. It smelled of brackish water. She took another step backward and stumbled.

  She had to say something. “This way,” she managed finally, pointing through the trees. “He’s this way.”

  The horse moved in the direction she pointed, speeding to a trot. She was left to follow, shaking with relief. When she got to the clearing, Roiben was already straddling the creature’s back. His breastplate had been haphazardly strapped on.