Modern Faerie Tales

by Holly Black

  Skillywidden chittered and began digging through her bolts of cloth. Kaye’s drugged haze seemed to keep her from remembering that the seamstress scared her, and she was now stroking a fabric that shifted color as she touched it.

  “Stretch out your arms,” the seamstress croaked, “wide as a bird. There.”

  Kaye held up her arms while Skillywidden draped her with fabrics and whispered incoherently. The little crone grasped Kaye’s chin suddenly and jerked it downward, then shuffled over to her bowls, digging around in them. There was nothing for Roiben to do but wait.

  Apple blossoms no longer reminded Roiben of home, although the Seelie Court had reeked of them. No, now the scent of apple blossoms reminded him of a treewoman, whose brown face had been tranquil as dirt despite how far she was from her tree. She had been a prophet, but she would not prophesy for the Unseelie Queen. He had been ordered to persuade her.

  What he remembered most now, however, were the treewoman’s last words to him, spoken as mossy fingers scraped his cheek and thick sap ran from the many cuts in her body. “Don’t envy the dying,” she had said.

  You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.

  “Knight?” Skillywidden said, holding up a skein of thin, white silk. “Is it meet?”

  “Send the dress to my rooms,” Roiben said, pulling himself from his thoughts. “The Queen desires her to be clad and back in the brugh tonight.”

  Skillywidden looked up from the collection she was assembling, blinked owlishly, and grunted. That was enough of a response for him; he had no need to urge further swiftness on the seamstress. Kaye was likely to benefit from any delays.

  “Come,” Roiben said, and Kaye followed him tractably. She looked drunken with magic.

  Retracing their steps through the Palace of Termites, he at last brought them to a wooden door carved with a crude unicorn. He opened it with a silver key and let her go inside before him. He watched her stop to look at the books that covered a low table, running her hands over slim paperback volumes of Yeats and Milton, lingering as she touched a leather volume with silver clasps. It was a book of old songs, but there was no title on the dusty cover, and she did not unclasp it to look at the pages. On the wall, there was a tapestry, the one he had slashed into shreds one night long ago. He wondered whether his room looked like a cell to her. It couldn’t have been what she had expected after the marvelous things she had seen elsewhere.

  Kaye was looking at the tapestry, studying what was left of it. “She’s pretty. Who is she?”

  “My Queen,” he said. He wanted to correct himself, but he couldn’t.

  “Not the Unseelie Queen? The other one?” Kaye sat down on the drab coverlet of his bed, tilting her head, still looking at the figure. He didn’t need to look to see the depiction, dark hair falling like a cape over the back of her emerald dress—beautiful, but only stitcheries. A mortal had woven it, a man who, having caught sight of the Seelie Queen, had spent the remainder of his short life weaving depictions of her. He had died of starvation, raw, red fingers staining the final tapestry. It was a long time that Roiben had envied him such perfect devotion.

  “The other one,” he agreed.

  “I read that”—Kaye pointed to Paradise Lost—“Well, part of it.”

  “Horror and doubt distract his troubled thoughts and from the bottom stir the Hell within him, for within him Hell he brings, and round about him, nor from Hell one step more than from himself can fly by change of place,” he quoted.

  “It was in one of those huge anthology books, but we didn’t actually talk about it in class. I kept the book after I dropped out—do you know what high school is?” Her voice sounded drowsy, he thought, but the conversation was relatively normal. While the enchantment lingered, it no longer seemed to overwhelm her. He allowed himself to see that as a positive sign.

  “We know about your world, at least superficially. The solitary fey know more. They are the ones huddled around windows, watching television through the blinds. I’ve seen a stick of lipstick traded for an unseemly amount among dryads.”

  “Too bad they didn’t let me bring my bag. I could have bribed my way out of here.” Kaye snickered, pulling herself all the way onto his bed.

  She was drawn up against the headboard, black jeans frayed at the ankles where they touched the scuffed boots. Just a girl. A girl who shouldn’t have to be this brave. Around her wrist, a rubber band encircled the flesh, faded patterns drawn in blue ink still visible. No rings on those fingers. Nails bitten to the quick. Details. Things he should have noticed.

  She looked tired, he realized. He knew little of what her life was like before he had made a mess of it. With a grimace he remembered the ripped shirt that she had ripped further to bind his wound. “At least we think we know something of your world. I do not, however, know near as much as I ought about you.”

  “I don’t know much about the world,” Kaye said. “I only know about the crappy town I grew up in and the even crappier city we moved to after that. I’ve never even been out of the country. My mom wants to be this singer, but mostly she just winds up getting drunk and screaming how other vocalists suck. God, that sounds depressing.”

  Roiben thought of what would happen if the sacrifice was not made, if by guile or chance or something else, Kaye escaped. The solitary fey would be free for seven years. He imagined the chaos that would ensue.

  It very nearly pleased him.

  “I don’t think I’ve exactly been cheery myself, fair Kaye.”

  She sighed, smiling, and let her head fall back, her ragged blond hair spreading out in a halo over his pillows. He thought absently that he would like to braid that hair the way he had once braided his sister’s.

  “I went to high school for a while,” she continued absently, “and then I got out of the habit. People usually think that I’m pretty weird, which is funny at the moment. Maybe funny is the wrong word.”

  He sat on the end of the bed, just listening.

  “I thought weirdness was a good thing. I don’t mean that defensively, either. I thought it was something to be cultivated. I spent a lot of time hanging around bars, setting up equipment, breaking it down, loading up vans, fishing my mom’s head out of toilets—things other kids didn’t do. And sometimes things just happened, magical things that I couldn’t control. But still, all this—you—it’s so hard to accept that you’re really real.” She said the last with a hushed reverence that was completely undeserved.

  Still, she sounded so normal. Conversational. She even looked normal, if a touch too comfortable on a stranger’s bed. “Do you still want to please me?”

  Her smile was surprised, a little baffled. “Of course I do.”

  “It would be better if you did not,” he said, hesitating, trying to find a way to reason her out of enchantment. He could do nothing for her if she was like this when the actual ceremony took place. “It would be better if you acted according to your own desires.”

  She sat up and looked at him intently. “Do you? Don’t you want to go home?”

  “To the Seelie Court?” He allowed himself to say it. For a long moment, he considered what she asked and then he shook his head. “Once, I wanted nothing more. Now, I think I would not be welcome among them and, even were I, it is unlikely we would suit.”

  “You’re not the way everyone says you are,” Kaye said, looking at him so fiercely that he couldn’t meet her gaze. “I know you’re not.”

  “You know nothing of me,” he said. He wanted to punish her for the trust he saw on her face, to raze it from her now so that he would be spared the sight of her when that trust was betrayed.

  He wanted to tell her he found her impossibly alluring, at least half enchanted, body bruised and scratched, utterly unaware she would not live past dawn. He wondered what she would say in the face of that.

  Instead, he forced a little laugh. “Let me explain again. Of the Host of the Unseelie Court are many unconcerned by bloo
d and death, save as amusement. But the Host is more than a scourge. Nicnevin rules over ancient secrets, buried in the bowels of warrens and fens. The twilight holds as many truths as the dawn, perhaps more, since they are less easily perceived. No, I do not think that I would be welcomed back, now that I can see that.”

  “But they—” Kaye began, and he held up a hand to forestall her objection.

  “Smallish sects of beings, of which Faerie is certainly one, require enemies to give them purpose. Think on Milton’s angels. Was not his God wise in giving them a devil to fight?”

  Kaye was quiet a moment. “Okay, you’re saying that the Seelie Court needs to hate the Unseelie Court. But does that mean that you think that they’re not all bad?”

  “I can think of no insult too rich for the Unseelie Queen, but I have seen kindness in some of her court. More kindness and wisdom, surely, than I would have ever been given leave to expect.”

  “So what adversary does the Unseelie Court have?”

  “Again, the parallels to your devils are amazing. They struggle with their own boredom. It is a struggle that often requires increasingly cruel diversions.”

  Kaye shuddered. “And you?”

  Roiben shrugged. He had nearly forgotten what it felt like to just sit and talk with someone. “I am some other thing, not of any court, nor truly solitary. There are too many possessors of my soul.”

  She moved to her knees, and reached for both his hands. “Just so you know, I trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t,” he said automatically. Nevertheless, he found himself no longer wanting to punish her for her faith in him. Instead, he found himself wanting to be worthy of it. He wanted to be the knight he had once been. Just for a moment.

  He watched her take a breath, steeling herself, perhaps, for the next turn of the conversation. He found that he could not bear it.

  Roiben leaned forward before he might think to do otherwise and pressed a kiss to her dry lips. Her mouth opened with a rush of warm breath, and her arms ran over his shoulders to rest lightly, almost hesitantly, at the nape of his neck.

  His tongue swept her mouth, searching for some escape from the chill inside him. It felt so good it made his teeth hurt.

  Nor from hell one step more than from himself can fly. Charmed. He was kissing a charmed girl. He jerked his mouth back from hers. She looked a little dazed and ran her tongue over her lower lip, but said nothing.

  He wondered what exactly she might think of it when her mind was better disposed toward the contemplation of such things. But then, his mind whispered, tomorrow would never come to her, would it? There was only now and if he wanted to kiss her, well, it was only kissing.

  Kaye moved slightly back from him, folding her knees against her chest. “Would that piss her off?” Again, he didn’t need to ask to whom she referred.

  “No,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face, giving a short laugh. “Hardly. It would doubtless amuse her.”

  “What about the other one—the other Lady?”

  He closed his eyes reflexively, as if something had been thrown at him. He wondered why he was enamored of a girl that could dissect him with the odd comment, throw him off balance with the idle, earnest question.

  “You can kiss me, if you want,” she said softly, roughly, before he found an answer. It seemed that the magic had burned out of her, because her eyes were as clear as they were bright. He could not tell whether the Queen’s spell held her or what compulsions it put on her. “I should just stop asking you stupid questions.”

  He leaned forward, but there was a rapping on the door then, soft but insistent. For a moment, he didn’t move. He wanted to say something about her eyes, to ask her perhaps a better question about her enchantment, or at least one that might produce a better answer. Tell her that she could ask him anything she wanted. And he wanted to kiss her, wanted it so badly that he could barely pull himself to his feet, march to the door, and heave it open.

  Skillywidden had somehow gotten a redcap to do her delivering for her. It stood in the doorway, stinking of congealed blood and rot. Pointed teeth showed as it smiled, looking beyond him to the girl on his bed.

  Roiben snatched the white cloth out of its hands. “This better be clean.”

  “Lady wants to know if you’re done with her yet.” The leer on its face made it obvious how the Redcap interpreted those words.

  Fury rose in him, choked him so unexpectedly that he feared he was trembling with it. He took a breath, then another. He trusted that the messenger would not notice. Redcaps were not much for details.

  “You may tell her that I have not yet finished,” he said, meeting that gaze with what he hoped was a small smile and a bow of his head as he shut the door, “but I expect to in short order.”

  When he turned back to her, Kaye’s face was blank.

  He swallowed the emotion he felt without even bothering to identify it.

  “Put it on,” he said harshly, not even trying to keep the anger out of his voice, letting her think it was directed at her. He tossed the gown toward Kaye, watched her flinch as the slippery silk slid over the edge of the bed, watched her lean down mutely to pick it up again.

  She didn’t trust him after all. Good.

  “It is time,” he said.

  10

  A word is dead

  When it is said

  Some say.

  I say it just

  Begins to live

  That day.

  —EMILY DICKINSON, “VI. A WORD.”

  Corny sank lower in the warm, silty water as Nephamael swept into the room. The faerie women who had cut his hair and oiled his skin finished and left without being told to do so.

  “They have made you quite lovely,” Nephamael said, yellow eyes reflecting in the flickering candlelight.

  Corny shifted self-consciously. The oil made his skin feel weird, even under the water. His neck itched where stray strands of cut hair stuck to it. “Making me look good is about as likely as turning lead into gold,” he murmured, hoping he sounded witty.

  “Are you hungry?” Nephamael asked in his rich-as-butter voice. Corny wanted to ask about Kaye, but it was so hard when the knight was walking toward him with slow, even strides.

  Corny nodded. He didn’t trust his voice. He still could only half believe that Nephamael had brought him from his ratty, ridiculous life, to this.

  “In this country there are fruits that taste better than all the meat of your land.” His wide lips twisted into a grin.

  “And I’m allowed?”

  “Very like, very like.” Nephamael gestured to a pile of clothing. “Dress and I will show you.”

  Corny was both grateful and disappointed when Nephamael left him to dress on his own. Hurriedly pulling on the blue velvet tunic and tight pants, Corny ignored the dampness of his skin.

  Nephamael was waiting in the hall. He ran his fingers through Corny’s hair, smoothing it back into place. “A compliment would go amiss, I’m sure.”

  With those hands on him, he could hardly manage a reply.

  “Come,” Nephamael said, and Corny followed.

  Candlewax dripped down the walls in an imitation of the stalactites above them. He could hear music and laughter as from far away. They walked through open doors of silver ivy to a garden where silver apples weighed the boughs of trees nearly to the ground. A slender path of white stones wound around the trees and back over itself throughout the garden. Above the orchard, the curved ceiling glowed as though it were day and they were no longer under the hill. Corny could smell fresh-turned earth, cut grass, and rotting fruit.

  “Go ahead,” Nephamael said, nodding toward the trees. “Eat whatever you desire.”

  Corny was no longer sure whether he was hungry. Still, to avoid displeasing the knight, he went over and plucked an apple from one of the trees. It tumbled easily into his hand. The silver skin was warm to the touch, as though blood ran beneath the surface.

  Corny looked up at Nephamael, who appear
ed to be studying a white bird perched in one of the trees. Corny took a cautious bite of the fruit.

  It tasted of fullness, of longing and wishful thinking and want, so that one bite left him empty. Nephamael smirked as he watched Corny lick the broken fruit, devour the pulp, sink to his knees, sucking the pale center pit.

  Several of the Host gathered to watch him gorge, beautiful faces with upswept features and teardrop eyes turned toward him like flowers. They were laughing. All Corny could do was eat. He barely noticed Nephamael laughing uproariously. A woman with thin, curving horns tossed him a bruised plum. It burst in the dirt, and he hastened to lap up the pulp, soil and all. He licked the dirt after the fruit was gone, hoping for a darkened drop.

  Black ants crawled over the sticky, fallen fruits and he ate those as well, blindly questing for any morsel.

  After a time, Nephamael came forward, pressing a cracker to Corny’s lips. He took it in his mouth thoughtlessly. It tasted like sawdust, but he swallowed it down.

  It felt solid in his stomach, and the overwhelming empty hunger abated. It left him squatting under one of the trees, awake and aware. He looked at his filthy hands, the stained clothes, the laughing Folk, and he choked to keep from crying like a child for sheer helplessness.

  “There, there,” Nephamael said, patting Corny’s shoulder.

  Corny stood, fists clenched.

  “Poor Cornelius. You look so fragile, I’m afraid your heart will break.” There was amusement in the knight’s tone.

  Corny could feel himself reacting to that rich, smooth voice, could feel the shame and embarrassment receding until they seemed of only distant importance.

  “Come here, my pet. You’ve made a mess of yourself.” Nephamael raised his hand, beckoning.

  One look into those yellow eyes and he broke like a wishbone. Corny stepped into the circle of Nephamael’s arms, basking in the feel of thorns.

  Tonight the revels were quieter. No dueling fiddlers or raucous daisy-chain dances. There were no piles of fruit or honey cakes. Instead there were whispers and smothered laughter. The only light came from braziers throughout the brugh and the small faeries that flitted over the congregation.