A Life Less Ordinary (22 page)

I recalled what Master Revels had said and shivered. They might look human, but the elves were composed of pure magic. The laws governing magic governed them...and creating any form of obligation, deliberately or accidentally, had to be balanced or punished. I had been warned that the elves might offer me a gift. Unless it was given freely, or without obligation, I dared not accept it. They might use it as an excuse to enslave me.

The Queen switched her gaze to Master Revels, as if she had seen me and was unimpressed. “You have entered through the Lost Gate,” she said. Her voice was chilling, both remarkably seductive and utterly inhuman. The elves fell silent and clustered in around her. They seemed less human with every second. “You come before us under the Compact. Do you serve the Thirteen Who Rule?”

“I do,” Master Revels said. His voice seemed weaker in the Elfish Kingdom, but somehow it seemed warm and welcoming. “They send me here to ask you a question.”

“The Compact does not reflect well on questions,” the Queen observed. Her mouth twitched into a cruel smile. Just for a second, I saw razor-sharp teeth hidden under her full lips. “You trespass where you are not wanted.”

“The Compact allows us to ask questions about Elfish activities in our world,” Master Revels countered. The Queen’s voice had chilled me, yet he seemed unflustered. “The Thirteen seek their answers from those who can give it to them.”

The Queen looked down at him, her dark eyes boring into his. I found myself wondering just what was happening and why. There had been no mention of a Compact between the Thirteen and the elves, unless it had been mentioned and I hadn’t realised what it was talking about. The books hadn’t been too specific about what the elves had done when they’d walked away from the mundane world and entered their own pocket dimension, one they controlled absolutely. Perhaps the Compact referred to something older than the split between the magical and mundane worlds.

“By the terms of the Compact, we may not answer unless there is sufficient payment,” the Queen said. A dull rustle of amusement ran through the elves. “A payment will buy you one answer, Servant of the Thirteen. What payment do you offer us?”

“I offer myself to face the Ordeal,” Master Revels said, firmly. He stepped forward, closer to the throne. “I will give you hours of amusement, provided only that you return us to the mortal world alive and unharmed, at the moment we left.”

I stared at him. I hadn’t expected him to offer himself to them. I’d read about the Ordeal in the books, although none of them had gone into details, perhaps because the authors hadn’t known any details – or because they’d been too scared to write them down. The elves would test someone, somehow, and if they failed the elves would enjoy their suffering as they died. I wanted to protest, to offer to go in his place, but the words froze in my mouth. He had warned me to say nothing unless I was asked a direct question.

The Queen seemed to sense it. Her eyes bored into mine, forcing me down onto my knees. “And your apprentice wishes to go in your place,” she said. I realised suddenly that the Queen could read minds and tried to block out the other thoughts that threatened to betray me. “She is a girl who daunted the Mistress of the Island, Circe herself. She will provide us with many hours of amusement and then we will answer your question. We swear it upon our Royal Name.”

Master Revels looked horrified. I realised that he hadn’t intended for me to take the Ordeal. He stepped forward, ignoring the protocol, and caught my hand. “Dizzy,” he said sharply, “you don’t have to do this.”

The Queen laughed, a harsh inhuman sound, and her Court echoed her. “You wish the answer to your question?” she asked. “We have named our price. Your apprentice will face the Ordeal.”

I looked at him and nodded. “I accept,” I said. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I couldn’t help thinking of the disappearing ghosts. I had to do whatever it took to find out what had happened to them. “I’ll be fine.”

“So shall it be,” the Queen announced. Her body
twisted
suddenly, as if it was suddenly so much more than human, and then the world went away in a flare of bright light. “Welcome to the Ordeal, fool!”

I found myself standing in absolute inky blackness. I couldn’t even feel something under my feet. I thought of a basic illumination spell and ran through it in my head, but nothing happened, not even the sense of magic working around me. The darkness seemed somehow claustrophobic. Anyone could be out there, waiting for me. I risked stepping forward and nearly lost my balance. I was standing in a room, I realised suddenly, with countless bottomless pits. In the darkness, I could stumble and fall to my death at any moment. I had to stay still.

It reminded me of reading about sensory deprivation in a thriller novel sometime ago, but it didn’t seem very dangerous. Or perhaps that was the point. Given time, I would go mad in the darkness, or whatever was holding me up would collapse and I would plunge to my death. I had the sudden absurd feeling that countless elves were watching and sniggering at my discomfort and then it occurred to me that it wasn’t such an absurd thought. The elves would drain every morsel of my suffering and probably record it for replaying when they were bored.

A light shone through the darkness, revealing a humanoid figure walking towards me. I strained my eyes and saw my mother, her cold eyes fixed on me. I felt a twinge of guilt flourishing within me, for it had been years since I had spoken to my mother. She had ordered me out of her life, yet...she was still my mother. I could have gone back to her, just to reassure her that I was alive and well. I had chosen, instead, to run into the magical world and not look back.

“You failed me,” my mother said. Her voice seemed to cut into my very soul. “You’re a worthless piece of trash, a useless piece of shit. You could have made something of your life. You could have been a doctor, or a teacher, or even a scientist. Instead, you threw away everything I gave you and wasted your life. You’re a failure and I hate you.”

I shivered and shambled backwards. “You’re a stupid fucking cunt,” another voice said. I turned to see my father standing behind me, as he had been in the handful of photographs I had saved, back when I had hoped that one day my father would save me from a humdrum existence. It was a female dream that, perhaps, I was a princess and my father a king. Absurd, of course; my father had been an abusive husband and a drunkard. When he’d left us, my mother had been delighted, even though she’d been left to raise a child on her own. “I should have washed out your mother’s cunt just to prevent you from being born. You were never mine just the child of one of the men she let fuck her in exchange for money. She was never a very good lay. The best of him trickled down her legs, leaving you to be born from the refuse. You were never mine.”

“You’re lying,” my mother shouted. Her voice rang in my ears, her face contorted with rage. “Look at him, Dizzy; that’s your father! How can you be surprised at your shitty life when you came from such poor stock? I could have fucked Bruce Wayne or someone, but no – I had to settle for Prince Fuck-Up! He could never keep a job longer than a week or two because the fucking managers discovered that he kept fucking it all up!”

“Bitch,” my father shouted back at her. “You didn’t do a good job of raising her, did you? Just look at her, all puffed up because she can recite a handful of spells and thinks that that makes her Wonder Fucking Woman! She’s got herself into a trap she cannot escape, thanks to you!”

I found myself on the ground, holding my hands over my heads, but I could hear their words in my head. My father and mother, screaming at each other about how useless I was, how terrible I had been as a child...I wanted to block them out permanently, but there was no escape. Their words dug deep into my soul. A hand caught my arm and yanked me to my feet. I found myself staring into the face of my first boyfriend.

“You were never much of a lay,” he sneered. I’d opened my legs for him because I had felt that he was on the verge of leaving me for my then-best friend. Mandy, who was a bitch if ever there was one, had been making eyes at him, so I had allowed him to fuck me one afternoon in his flat. It hadn’t been a great experience for me, although he’d seemed happy enough. Virginity was nothing these days. “I pissed inside you and you thought I had come!”

I shuddered, feeling bile rising up in my throat. I had feared that, back when I had first learned about the birds and the bees, a boy would do that. It had been an immature joke, yet it had remained at the back of my mind, hidden away until the Ordeal had dragged it out of my memories. Dave kept attacking me, slicing away at my self-esteem, mocking everything about me. I had been a useless girlfriend, a poor cook, and a worthless bed-mate...it just rolled on and on. He told me that he had been cheating on me, with Mandy, with Tami, with a hundred other girls...and I believed him. There had been all those unexplained absences, mysterious messages on his mobile phone and photographs he kept hidden in his flat. I felt tiny, as if there was nothing left of me.

“Damn you,” I shouted, trying to muster myself. “Get away from me!”

Dave leered at me, so I slapped him, but my hand went right through his face. A moment later, my hands were caught and pulled behind me, just before I felt the handcuffs placed on my wrists. I knew who I would see before I turned and looked. It was the cop who’d arrested me once – three years ago – for shoplifting. I had been lucky not to be formally charged with theft and sent to prison, or so Dave had told me, afterwards. I had only wanted something I couldn’t pay for.

“You should have been locked up for the rest of your life,” the cop snapped. He’d been decent enough in real life, but inside the Ordeal he was terrifying. His hands searched me roughly, lifting up my dress to feel inside my knickers. I screamed in pain as every inch of me was exposed and searched. “You’re just another worthless girl with no sense of right or wrong. You’re just useless. You should have been executed because you would never amount to anything.”

He kicked me to the ground, my hands still cuffed, and I began to cry. It hadn’t happened that way, not in real life. The cop had been polite, but firm; I certainly hadn’t been searched so roughly, yet now...the dress was torn away and I heard the sound of snapping plastic gloves.

“She was always worthless,” another voice said. It was Neil, my second boyfriend. He was a worthless sack of crap. I’d been taken in by his glamour and the fact that he always seemed to have money in hand. He’d bought me food, drink, clothing...and he hadn’t been too bad in bed, but then he’d expected me to start paying him back by selling myself for money. I had tried it once, after he’d talked me into it, yet it had been the most disgusting and degrading experience of my life...and it hadn’t happened that way! I’d dumped him, hadn’t I? I’d escaped before he’d forced me into anyone else’s bed. “Useless in bed, useless out of it, useless at selling herself...men would prefer to sleep with an AIDS-infected whore than her.”

The cop leered down at me. “Who knows what she might be hiding inside her,” he said, with a cruel leer. “Shall we look and find out?”

His hands were changing, flickering every time I looked at them. He wore gloves, and then a pair of translucent scissors, and then a surgical probe. I stared as they closed in on me, remembering...I was in the Ordeal! Everything I was seeing wasn’t exactly real. Their chant of ‘worthless, worthless, worthless; was just another trick. I fought to concentrate as they rolled me over in preparation for a search, remembering...

I had freed the slaves. It had been my idea, right from the start; I had freed them when everyone else in the magical world had been content to ignore their slavery. I had done well - even if it had cost me an aching bottom - and it had been my idea. No one had made me free the slaves, or risk my own life and freedom for their sake. I was far from worthless. I pulled my hands around – the handcuffs melted away as I no longer believed in them – and pulled myself to my feet. The figures stopped, staring at me. They no longer looked invincible; they no longer looked
real
.

If we shadows have offended
, I thought, suddenly,
think of this and all is mended
. I had studied the play back in school, although we had never been allowed to actually act it out. How had the rest of it gone?
You have, but slumbered here, while these visions did appear
...

I had hated reading the Bard in school, but now his words gave me something to cling onto as the shadows started to close in again. My mother, my father, my boyfriends, the cop and behind them, other shadows, pulled from the back of my mind. All powerless, unless I chose to grant them power. I walked forward, certain that I would not fall, and they melted away. The world went white and I found myself in the Throne Room, standing in front of the Queen.

“Your Majesty,” I said, with a bow. I had no idea where the new confidence had come from, but I resolved to enjoy it as much as possible. “I defeated the Ordeal. I believe that you owe us an answer.”

Chapter Twenty

The Queen seemed amused, although the same couldn’t be said for her Court. The elves, the male elves in particular, looked...unhappy. I caught sight of one of them who looked vaguely like Cardonel and I wondered if he was his father. There was no way to know for sure. I had been warned, in the strongest possible terms, that Cardonel was
not
to be mentioned. Besides, the elves could change their shape and it could be nothing more than a mere coincidence.

“You have indeed beaten the Ordeal,” she said, calmly. “And so you may ask your question, secure in the knowledge that we will answer one question truthfully.”

I had the uneasy feeling I was being mocked. I glanced over at Master Revels and saw, to my surprise, that he was shaken. I’d been in danger and it had terrified him. Oddly, it didn’t bother me that much now. I felt far more confident and secure, as if I could take on the entire world and win. The elves seemed to sense it and reacted harshly, their cold inhuman eyes boring into me. The humans…were no longer in evidence. I wondered what that meant. Maybe the elves thought that anyone beating the Ordeal would encourage them, although I didn’t know why they would care. It wasn’t as if the slaves could break free.