The Bread We Eat in Dreams

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Mallow asked after Wet Magic, eager to hear the Lays of Dripping and the Eddas of Seeping. The Cats of Nephelo knew it well, being intimate with rain and the sea and the blood of all bodies as they were. But Imogen would only say to her: You will have had enough of Wet Magic forever by the end. And though the Leopard loved to be cryptic and serenely mysterious, Mallow found she liked her best, and slept curled against her furry white belly while the stars moved over broken, hollow Pandemonium.

  In the dizzy night following the Applemas Eve feast, Mallow woke. She heard a swinging, sighing sound beyond the ice tent. Curiosity woke with sharp teeth within her. She crept out of the Leopard of Little Breezes’ heavy protecting paws and out of the tent, drawing a pale, glimmering robe belonging to the Gold Wind over her shoulders. The Winds lay snoring, all about, Green in Mabry Muscat’s Arms, Red with her Panther, Gold with his arms flung over his head, as if in his sleep trying to stop some fell act. Mallow left them behind and peered out from the flaps of fur that served as Nephelo’s current gate. The long, wide boulevard of central Pandemonium lay silent and black all up and down, streetlamps guttering and flickering, the moon a great blue mirror in the sky.

  Mallow heard the sound again.

  She squinted to see, up the street one way and down the other. She might have ducked into a near alley to follow it, but her eyes finally seized the prize—a long figure waddling down the cobblestones, shoulders hunched, cloak drawn up to its face. Wisps of fog billowed at its feet. Mallow froze; she could not have begun to convince her feet to move. The figure drew closer, into the lamplight, and where the beams struck it a thousand colors sprayed out as if a vein had been cut in the side of a rainbow.

  It was King Goldmouth.

  Mallow knew him from every coin and portrait in a Seelie hall. A huge clurichaun, hunched down in his cloak of jewels, voluminous brown leather stitched with every gem, so heavy it stooped him, dragged him down. His nose bulged, barrel-thick, hanging down so far as to hide his mouth and mustache, his lips of gold. Furry eyebrows concealed his gaze, and his bald head had been tattooed with astrological gibberish, the graffiti of a hundred royal stargazers.

  With a garumph and a groan and a grinding creak, Goldmouth extended his long arm and his six long, spidery fingers. In the lamplight Mallow saw them shine, perfect gold, even the fingernails burnished. Not just his mouth then, but more, and from the sound of his steps, maybe a foot, too. He was getting old, much older than anyone had really suspected. A leprechaun spent his days guarding gold—but a clurichaun drank and ate and gluttoned and over the centuries slowly turned to gold, becoming his own treasure.

  As Mallow watched, King Goldmouth scratched a scrap of fog behind the ear and whispered to it. The mist scampered off and returned in less than a moment with the sleeping body of a strong, handsome Gremlin, his buttery pelt gleaming, his wings a pale, leathery orange. Grumbling and grunting and groaning softly all the while, Goldmouth stretched his long, gold fingers, popping the knuckles. He drew all six of them together and gently pushed them into the Gremlin’s mouth, under his long thin nose. He worked his thumb, pushing further and further until the King had his whole arm down the poor creature’s still-sleeping throat, grasping, scrabbling, looking for something in the depths of him. Mallow felt ill. Finally, with a cluck of triumph, King Goldmouth withdrew his arm, and held up what he had found to the moonlight: a single lovely, faceted topaz. He popped it into his mouth and chewed, savoring it.

  When he had done, the King breathed upon the dreaming imp, and his body shivered into yellow ash, wafting away while the clouds of fog whirled and cheered in their silent, wispy way.

  Mallow watched the King at his night feast for another hour, her calves aching, her skin frozen, unable to move or even weep, her horror a heavy, real thing that moved up her legs and stilled her mind. She watched him prod the sides of buildings and bridges and towers, wiggling his fingers inside them, plucking out some secret, tiny heart—a brick or a pebble or a china cup or a lump of mortar—devouring it, and striding on as the wall or terrace or window crumbled away into one of the great gaping holes Mallow had seen all over the city.

  Bit by bit, the King was eating Pandemonium.

  “Everyone is hungry,” Imogen growled quietly behind her, startling Mallow out of her spell. “But only the King can eat his fill.”

  That night, Mallow wept bitterly into the Leopard’s fur, and did not know what was to be done. The Leopard licked her gently, in a sleeping rhythm, and did not know, either.

  The day of the Tithe arrived suddenly and with a tremulous energy in the morning air. Fairyland’s whole nation prepared breakfast and drank their coffees and teas and stiff peach-liquors, nibbled at brioche and iced cake and crisp bacon, but found itself not very hungry. Mallow told her tale and the Red Wind turned her face into her hair. Iago laid his head on her red knee. The Green Wind and Mabry Muscat exchanged fearful glances. It will be more than Pandemonium one day, those glances said. He’ll want all of Fairyland on his table sooner or later. And maybe one day is today and that is the awful reason for the dead, dark Tithe coming back into the light. They held hands, and for once, Mallow wished she had a hand to hold.

  Before her thought could finish itself, Mabry took her fingers in his, and the Leopard dropped her head into her lap, looking up at her with those black, kind eyes. “Tell him no,” she begged. “All of you together. He cannot eat you all.”

  The Blue Wind stroked his indigo beard and sighed. “Perhaps he is right, and the Tithe is good and and honest and will make us strong. We did it for a hundred thousand years, or anyway a lot of years, before it stopped. There must have been a reason. We cannot know until we try. And maybe he will be sated.”

  The Silver Wind blushed storm-grey. “Next Saturnalia, perhaps, the wheel will turn and some young maid will tip his throne. That’s how he got it, after all, from the Chamomile Prince, when he was young and his nose had not yet reached his chin. Politicks are an unlovely sport.”

  But the Green Wind would not look at her brother or her sister. She stared at her hands in her lap as though by staring she could set them aflame. It was time. They had to go.

  The Tithing Ground had been festooned with banners and garlands of apples, torches blazing by day and wreaths of colorful mushrooms. A crowd had already gathered, but no one wanted to get too close. They hung around the edges, some weeping, some trying too hard to laugh.

  In the center stood a monstrous, outsized faucet, rusted and chained with iron bands, the sort which has a great wheel at the top for turning water hot or cold. It seemed to come up directly out of the ground. Dust and cobwebs clung to it—it had not seen use in ages. Before it stood King Goldmouth, his jeweled coat a throng of color, his nose brushing his chest. He held up his hands and more Fairylanders crowded the square. He raised them higher, and all fell silent, the Winds and the Cats and the Fairies and the Ouphes and the dryads and the Ifrits and all the folk of the world. They strained like strings sure to be cut.

  “Welcome, my countrymen!” bellowed Goldmouth, his voice a round brass bell. “The Foul has come to a close and I know you have all had as marvelous a time as I. But the time has come to put aside fun and frolick and attend to business! Too long have we let the old ways sag and rot—time, I say, to be Fairies once more! In just a moment I will ask the help of the Nephelese Cats and the first Tithe of a new age will begin. Don’t be afraid! Bring your children close, line them all up so I can see their merry little eyes. They’ll tell their grandbabies about this day—well, some of them.”

  But no one came forward. A tall, spindly birch-dryad began to cry audibly, and soon the square had filled with frightened, uncertain tears.

  “Hush it!” hollered Goldmouth. “Is that any way to greet your destiny? Are you Fairies or aren’t you? We are a great, powerful people, and we will not cry! The King may do as he likes! That’s the whole point of being King! And I shall be King for a good long while yet so stop your blubbering. Take your Tithe like gr
own-ups! Get over here, you mongrels,” he snapped at the Cats. “You too, Jack, and your Windy friends.” Mabry Muscat looked pleadingly at Mallow, and she could not understand why they all obeyed him—except that of course the King could eat them, and of course he was King, and did not people everywhere do more or less as they were told when someone with a crown did the telling?

  Mabry and the Green Wind, the Red Wind and the Blue Wind and the Silver, all laid their hands to the great, heavy chains that bound the faucet. Instantly, boils and hives and long red wounds appeared in their hands wherever they touched the iron, for Fairyland Folk cannot bear it. Yet they pulled on, all of them crying out in agony, screaming up at the empty sky as their bodies bled and scarred and tore. The chains, wet with blood, loosened at last. The Cats shook their great heads miserably, but they came forward when called. Iago and Imogen and Cymbeline and Caliban put their strong mouths to the wheel and began to walk.

  A screeching creak filled the air, and then a knocking, thudding noise, and finally a whistling, rushing, wet sound moving under the earth. Goldmouth hurried to place a crystal goblet beneath the faucet to catch the single enormous, blindingly blue drop of water that issued from its grimy mouth.

  “The blood price,” he said in awe. “The blood of a whole world.” The drop splashed into the goblet, filling it utterly and sloshing over the side. The water was not water—it shone blue and swirling, with white wisps floating through it like clouds. “Why did we stop this? When we could feast every seven years on the price paid by other men in some ridiculous world that’s nothing to do with us?” Goldmouth lifted the goblet high. His sleeves fell away from his golden arm and a gasp rippled out, which he did not hear. “In the old days, the days of our youth, we received the Tithe from a hundred worlds. We took their bounty and gave it out among our kind. We were so strong; we lived practically forever. Every time we took the Tithe, more magic leaked from their worlds to ours, more folk crossed over, more spells and wonders and riches!”

  Mallow covered her eyes with her hand. It seemed obscene to look at the blood, somehow. “You said blood price, Mabry! I thought you meant we would pay it—we would all prick ourselves and bleed a little, or the changelings would be bled, or a great deal of cattle would be slaughtered.”

  Mabry’s eyes turned rueful and creased. “Oh, no, Mallow. The blood price is paid to us. I thought you knew. From a hundred worlds and more, every seven years, or ten, or a hundred, or seven hundred. They pay their Tithe and we collect it.”

  “Which world is that?” Mallow asked. Her voice seemed so loud in the square.

  “I’ve no idea,” Mabry sighed. “Blood has no name. Some place with less magic and less joy than it had a moment ago, that’s certain. In days past the whole of Fairyland shared out the stuff, with reverence, and strength like nothing you’ve known flowed through us. I had but a sip when I was a babe and I’ve lived a thousand years. But we stopped it—we had to stop. It was the Sympathetics who discovered the how and why of it. We were bleeding worlds dead, and none of us could bear it. We can be cruel, if it is fun to be cruel, but we are never callous. Never unfeeling. We would not make ourselves vampires for a few more years’ revels. you have never heard of it, because we buried our secret shame as deep in a library as a stone may fall into a well sunk through the world, one end to the other.”

  King Goldmouth, with his goblin’s ears, snarled into the heart of their talk. “Who cares? If a vampire I must be to live and dance and howl at the sun, then let me show my teeth! They paid their price, we’re fools not to take it! To have let them hoard it all this time. And I shall take the first, all of it, for I alone thought to turn the wheel again. I shall drink it and live forever and rule forever and eat forever and turn utterly to gold—don’t you look at my arm like it’s poison!—and none of you will ever be able to stick a knife in me. Goldmouth’s Feast, Ten Thousand Years Long!”

  “No,” Mallow said softly, but in her voice moved a hardness she had always known she owned in some deep cupboard of her heart, but rarely taken out, even for company. No Magic turned inside her, end over end, growing cold and implacable. She strode forward and leveled her needle-sword at the King’s throat. It joined there a sudden and unexpected green lance, balanced in the Green Wind’s lovely, jeweled hand. The Wind’s stare could have curdled stone, but she said nothing.

  It happened so quickly Mallow could not afterward say for certain who moved first. Goldmouth broke the green lance as easily as a branch and seized the Green Wind’s neck in his fleshy fist. As soon as he turned from her, small and not green and with nothing but a needle as she was, Mallow buried her blade in his side. The Winds sprang toward their sister, and Mabry, too, all screaming and bellowing and Mallow could not even hear herself think. Blood gushed warmly over her hands, black clurichaun blood, night blood, and full of stars. Goldmouth pressed his golden fingers together and pushed them into the Green Wind’s throat. Green tears spilled from her eyes. She choked and gagged as he worked his hands into her.

  And then the King reeled, screeching. Black starry blood streamed everywhere in inky ribbons. Mabry Muscat had drawn the Blue Wind’s azure cutlass and sliced Goldmouth’s arm off at the shoulder. The Green Wind fell to the ground, clawing at the severed arm in her mouth, dragging it out of herself, slipping in the spreading blood. Mallow tugged her needle free of the King’s sodden body. And three things happened in the same moment:

  Goldmouth’s cloud-hounds shot into the air, knotting around Mabry Muscat’s throat and tying off before he could gasp. The light blew out of his eyes and his body fell to the streetside.

  The Leopard of Little Breezes roared so loud and long every soul in Fairyland clapped hands over their ears.

  Goldmouth’s broken hand opened on the cobblestones beside the body of the Green Wind. In its golden palm lay a tiny, dazzling green leaf.

  A great battle followed—but that is not important. To be sure, Goldmouth’s clouds frothed into a rage, and the Great Cats of Nephelo rose up to fight them in the great, stormy sky. In years hence they would call the battle the Nor’Easter, for its squalls turned the heavens black and brought rain onto every head. The Red Wind shot so many clouds with her scarlet pistols and Iago, her Panther, tore so many with his teeth that afterward she would be called Cloudwyf, and the cowed nation of clouds would be hers to rule and ride. A bonny knight, Mallow rode upon Imogen, the Leopard of Little Breezes. With her needle stitched cloud to cloud until a thread of wind pierced a hundred hearts all in a row. Great cries were uttered, loyalties made, and far below the people of Fairyland fled home or took up their brooms and bird-mounts and carpets to join the fray. Grandbabies would be told of the day, rest you certain.

  But that is a battle story, and battle stories belong to those who fight them. How a battle feels is impossible to tell, except by nonsense: It felt like a long rip. It felt like a weight landing upon me, over and over. It felt like red. It felt like a bell unringing forever. What can be told is that when Mallow and her Leopard and the Red Wind and all her brothers and sisters landed, Goldmouth still lay in the wreckage of his black blood, dying in between his breaths. Beside him, two strangers stood whole and with so much sorrow in their faces that the Red Wind staggered to see it. But beside the sorrow lay a rueful humor, as though a joke had been told while the war raged, and only now did these two youths catch the punch line.

  One was a pretty young woman with brown, curling hair and a simple white dress with a few pale ribbons trailing from it. She wore a bonnet of valerian and heartsease. The color in her cheeks gleamed rich as bread and sun-rosy, and her feet were bare.

  The other was a man with a neat, pointed beard and kindly eyes which had become the most beguiling shade of green. He was dressed in a green smoking jacket, and a green carriage driver’s cloak, and green jodhpurs, and green snowshoes. In his hands he held a long green lance, quite whole.

  “He died to save her,” the Leopard growled. “And now he must take her place. It’s different for
each Wind. Red will need to be tricked by her replacement into putting on a white gown. Gold will be killed. So it goes. Long ago, a girl named Jenny Chicory loved a boy, and meant to be a water-duchess in the Seelie before going on the Great Hunt. She drowned saving a little boy in green, a boy she did not know from a stranger, from a pirate band with a whale on their side. She could not let him go down into the waves, and woke up all in green with a job to do and no more a happy maid with a suitor at her door. Now Mabry’s done it, and he can’t take it back, nor go home with her to Winesap any more than she could leave the sky windless. The gales of the upper Fairyland heavens would shatter her, as they would have shattered him. In the doldrums of summer, sometimes, they arrange to meet at sea, where the sails droop and crow’s nests swelter. I imagine they’ll keep that date.”

  Jenny looked at her Leopard with a grand and sorry love. “We are used to it,” she said thickly. “And storms must sometimes come to Winesap, too.”

  Mallow looked down at the dying King. His breath did not stop or slow—a clurichaun his age had reserves of will waiting to be tested. He might live years in distress but not die. She considered what to do. She considered the Gremlin and the Green Wind. She considered poor, crumbling Pandemonium. She considered the shattered goblet and that blue and cloudy blood, the wettest of all possible Wet Magics, mingling with all the other blood that had poured out onto the square, wretched, dull, of use to no one.

  Mallow knelt. She drew her needle and pricked the thumb of King Goldmouth’s golden hand. Slowly, as slowly as he had pushed his fingers into helpless mouths, she pushed her needle in, pulled it through, and made her stitch. Beneath her hands, a thick, glassy thread appeared. She made another stitch, and another, hauling up the clurichaun’s feet to his chest and beginning to cry a little despite herself, so exhausted and revolted and determined and sorry was she.