Bindings (6 page)

“She was wonderful. Too good for this world, I used to think.” Mr. Hunter hung his head. “Too good for me, anyway.” He looked up at Tim again, nervously fiddling with the keys in his trouser pocket. He gave a sad smile. “Her getting pregnant. That was a bit of luck, the way I saw it. I'm not sure your mother would have married me if she didn't think she had to.”

Does he know?
Tim searched his father's face
for an answer and didn't find it.
Does he know that I am not his child? Did my mother lead him to believe I was their child together so he would marry her?

“I don't look like you,” Tim said finally, not meeting his father's pained eyes. “Did you ever notice that?”

The distance between them—Tim halfway down the stairs and his father standing in the hall—was filled with such a fragile silence, the wrong answer could make it shatter.

“Yes,” Mr. Hunter whispered. “It never mattered though.” His voice got stronger. “It never mattered to me—ever.”

Tim took that in; it was a relief in one way. His father hadn't been betrayed; his father had accepted things as they were. And yet…

Tim thought his head would explode. There were only more questions. Questions upon questions. He raced up the stairs, past his father, and slammed into his room.

Tim paced the tiny space.
When your father isn't really your father, and you don't catch on until you're thirteen, well, then, you're a bloody idiot, aren't you?
Tim's hands balled into fists. He smacked them into his thighs
. What do I really know now? All I know is that the father I grew up with isn't my father at all.

He stopped in the center of the room and
rubbed his face, as if it would help him think. He felt determination rise up through the bewilderment.
So it's time to discover who my real father is. What kind of person would have done that? Knock up my mum and walk out of her life. And mine.

Tim collapsed into his desk chair. His hands reached for the objects that lay strewn across his desk—a key, some coins, an amulet.

Tim picked up the key and turned it over and over in his hand. It had been given to him by Titania, Queen of Faerie, but it had almost cost him his freedom. When Titania suddenly tossed the key to him, Tim, forgetting the dangers of accepting a gift from one of the Fair Folk, had caught it. He had been excited when it turned out to be a key that opened doors to other worlds. He was less than thrilled when he was informed that, according to Faerie rules, catching it meant he would be required to stay there as the Queen's page. However, when Tim offered Titania his Mundane Egg in exchange—a gift of equal or greater value—the key became rightfully his, with no strings attached.

He shoved the key into his pocket. Then he picked up the amulet.

Maybe my father didn't
walk
away. Maybe he
flew.

Tim held out the amulet Tamlin had given
him, staring at it hard. He recalled Tamlin's words. “Need, you said,” he addressed the Opening Stone. “Magic answers need. All right. I need to know. I need to know now!”

Q
UEEN TITANIA WANDERED
the grounds of her castle. She felt weary, weighed down by grief. The hem of her long lavender velvet dress trailed through dead branches and leaves, but she ignored it. What did it matter? What could matter now?

Tamlin had forced her to face the truth: Faerie was dying. She had been shocked awake as if he had tossed bracing cold water into her face. How she wished he had not; she preferred the cloaking glamours that kept her surrounded in beauty.

But truth had arrived with a vengeance. There was no avoiding the crumbled stones that once were a splendid stairway, the tumbled tree, or the withered vines. Try as she might, Titania could not lift the pall over the lands, nor return the sky's color from a murky, muddy gray to its former clear and brilliant blue.

Titania stopped by the vine-covered wall that circled her estate. Where once there had been pink and scarlet roses, there were now brown and black twisted shapes unrecognizable as flowers, as if the life force had been choked from them. She reached out to stroke the decaying petals, but as gentle as her light touch was, it was too much for the petrified husks; they disintegrated into dust.

“Oh, my Faerie,” she moaned. “You were the heart of me. If tears could restore you, then tears you would have—oceans of them.”

She touched the vines again. “But tears will do nothing.” She felt the prick of the thorns on her fingertips and gazed down at the droplets of blood as they appeared. “It may be
blood
that must be shed for you. For us.”

She began her slow walk again. Anger began to cut through her sadness.
If it is blood you need, then blood it is
, she thought.
Blood of your murderer—blood of the man who was once my lover.

Titania stopped walking. She could feel a presence forming behind her. It was time to have this out.

“Milady,” Amadan said. “We two fools attend your pleasure.”

Titania turned around to face them. The untrustworthy Fool and the man who had been her downfall. Tamlin.

“I thank you, my Amadan, for fulfilling my request with such speed,” she said. “But do not speak to me of pleasure. Not here, not now.” She addressed Tamlin. “You see your handiwork, Falconer?” Titania gestured at the barren trees, the dried and parched riverbed.

“I see it.”

“And the sight gives you satisfaction?”

“I've been satisfied once or twice in my life,” Tamlin answered evenly. It irked Titania to see him so calm. She wasn't rousing a reaction in him.

Tamlin sighed. “But that was long ago. This place was a paradise then, and you were—”

“I am what I have always been,” Titania snapped. “But you…” She crossed her arms over her chest, her jeweled cuffs jangling as she brought them together. “Look at this creature, Amadan,” she said disdainfully. “He was not always thus, but see him now. Don't let him fool you. He is not a man who takes pleasure in wearing a hawk's wings. He's a hawk who finds it useful to pretend he's a man. What do you say to that, my lord raptor?”

There. That should get a rise out of him
. Her pain made her desperate to hurt him. Why was it not working?

“I say that you mask your thoughts with your words,” Tamlin replied, “just as you concealed the
truth of this garden with spells of glamour.”

Titania's eyes flashed fury at this, but she was pleased to see the glint of anger in Tamlin's brown eyes. He took a step closer to her.

“Why don't you pick a peach from that beautiful tree, my lady?” He pointed to one of the few trees in the orchard that had not yet been overtaken by the blight. From Tamlin's tone, Titania knew that the tree's bounty was just illusion. “Take a big bite,” he sneered.

Having broken through his implacability, his stone mask, Titania knew they would now speak to each other honestly. She wanted no witnesses for that. “Amadan, leave us.”

The flitling hovered a moment, his eyes narrowed. Titania could see he resented being dismissed.
He really is becoming far too arrogant for safety
, Titania observed. She had leaned on him too long, too frequently, and too indiscriminately, particularly since she and Tamlin had grown so far apart. “Go,” she said to Amadan.

He bowed in midair. “Yes, milady. What pleases milady, pleases me.”

She fought the urge to swat Amadan for his insincerity. Did he think she did not see through him? But that problem would have to wait; she had other matters to deal with.

She watched Amadan fly away. She kept her
back to Tamlin; she didn't want him to see her vulnerability, and she didn't trust herself to be able to mask it. “Why, Tamlin?” she asked a little more piteously than she meant to. “Why have you made this gentle place a hell?” She tried to keep the desperate sadness from her voice but did not succeed.

“Lady, I did not create this desolation.”

She whirled around. “I do not believe you.”

“The realm has been withering for centuries,” Tamlin shouted at her, suddenly furious. “You haven't seen it until now because you've chosen not to. All I did was open your eyes.”

He gripped her upper arms. She was frightened to see the passion and pain in his face. She was shocked by the realization that he was as devastated by this as she was.

“Sarisen, a city I loved, is now a husk that desert winds howl through,” he told her, his voice shaking. “Red sand has choked the life from the bejeweled caverns of Ulven.”

Titania squirmed in his grip. She hated this directness, had lived her life avoiding it. Tamlin held her tightly and did not let go. “Riverbeds have gone dry, choking the fish so that they suffocate in agony. The bones of the hobble children bleach in the glare of the sun.”

“Enough!” she cried out, tears streaming down her face. “What would you have me do?”

“Not do, lady. Undo.” He released her, and she stumbled backward a few steps. She rubbed her arms where his hands had clasped her. Once he had done so only in love; now his aggressive touch was an accusation. An invasion.

“Tear down the walls you've raised,” he said. His voice was pleading. “Open your twilight land fully to the world again. More than these tiny gaps that allow a few to slip in and out. Let it be now as it was in the beginning, when Faerie touched the Earthlands with her mystery, and in return they gave her life.”

She stared at him. How did he know what she had done so long ago? Worse, he had no idea that what he was asking her to do was impossible. “You're mad.”

“Am I? More than the land has changed since the Fair Folk withdrew from the world of mortal kind. You've changed—all of you. You've lost something. Lost it to fear.”

She could not meet his eyes. She knew he was right, but she didn't know how to fix it. He mistook her silence for disagreement.

“When was the last time you laughed because you felt it, milady?” he demanded. “You speak constantly of pleasure, but when did you last know joy?”

She could take no more. She had to confess.
“Tamlin, stop. These things you say may well be true.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were afraid she might shatter. She yearned for the comfort and safety she had once felt in Tamlin's strong embrace, but she knew that the time was long past.

“But I have already undone the bindings I wrought so long ago,” she told him. “I learned recently that the woman, that Earth woman who held you in thrall, had died. When I finally saw Faerie in this state, I tried to reopen the portals, no longer fearing that I would lose you to her. It changed nothing.”

He shook his head incredulously. “It was
jealousy
that made you do such a thing? Create the bindings between our world and theirs? Risk the life of all Faerie?”

“That doesn't matter now.” She did not want him to dwell on that past. She needed him to understand her fear, the present crisis.

“Hear me,” she said, taking a step toward him. “I told you—I undid what I had done. Do you understand? I told you that it changed nothing! I discovered other bindings. Choking our world tightly.”

She gazed down at her feet and shook her head, answering his unasked question. “I do not know whose they are. But they are strong. Very
strong. I cannot heal the breach I made between man's world and ours. Someone will not let me.”

Now she searched his face, waiting for his response. He had to help her—help them all—help restore Faerie. But would he? Could he?

Tamlin nodded as if he were thinking it all through. “Then we need to find a different hope,” he said finally.

T
IM LOOKED AROUND HIM.
“I—I—did it,” he stammered. “But what exactly did I do?”

He stared down at the amulet he still clutched in his hands.
Did I do this magic, or did the stone do it?
Tim wondered. No matter. He was…somewhere. But where?

He was someplace totally new. “Nothing recognizable here,” he murmured. This wasn't the beautiful countryside he remembered from his first trip to Faerie. It wasn't the desolate desert where Tamlin, his maybe father, had brought him. This was someplace…twisted. He could feel it. It even smelled wrong—sort of like the garbage when he and his dad forgot to take it out for a few days.

Tim shoved the stone back into his pocket, then gazed around. He was standing in a broken-down courtyard of a mansion that had seen better
days. A brick wall surrounded the grounds, making it impossible for Tim to see what lay beyond it. As his eyes traveled up the wall he noticed the sky was a bruised purple.
Is it going to storm
, Tim wondered,
or does it always look like that here?

Tim took a step and heard a crunching sound. Glancing down, he discovered he was standing on a pile of skeletons. He lifted his foot and carefully placed it a few inches over, in the nearest clear space, then gingerly brought his other foot beside it.

Tim fought back a shudder. Skulls with their gaping eye sockets stared back at him, and the entire courtyard was littered with rib cages, leg bones, and skeletons of creatures Tim didn't recognize.

“Great,” he muttered, “I've landed in bone city.”

Looking down at the little pile beside him, Tim was horrified to see that the bones were covered with teeth marks. These creatures didn't just die here—they were someone—or some
thing
's meal.

I don't think this is where I want to be
, Tim decided. He scanned the wall.
That doesn't seem too tough. Shouldn't be any harder than scaling the walls at the car park.
But back home in London the
wall around the car park was designed to keep him out. Tim had a sinking feeling that here the wall was intended to keep him in.

Tim picked his way over to the wall, trying to avoid crunching any more of the scattered bones, but they were hard to avoid. He cringed every time he heard another crack.

He reached as high as he could up the wall and shoved his fingers in between the crumbling bricks. With a grunt, he pulled himself up. Feeling along the wall, he found a handhold, then bent his leg until his foot found a toehold. By straightening his leg and pulling hard with his arms, he lifted himself another foot up the wall.

That's it,
he told himself.
Piece o' cake.

He repeated the process: handhold, foothold, grunt, up. Sometimes his progress was mere inches. Sometimes he covered more ground. Each time, he scraped his knuckles, his knees, his face.

Sweat poured down his back.
I've got to be near the top by now
, he thought. Tim squinted up. He blinked several times, certain his eyes must be playing tricks on him.

How is that possible?
The top of the wall seemed as far away now as it had been when he had started.

It didn't seem to be much of a wall from the ground
, he thought, gritting his teeth and reaching
again
. Only fifteen or twenty feet high. With lots of cracks and little ledge things to hang on to.

He let out a groan. His shoulders burned from the effort, and his arms felt wobbly as his muscles grew exhausted.

It looked like an easy climb
.
Just one problem. You can't ever get to the top.

“Harum.” Tim heard someone clear his throat below him. “I venture to suggest that you are unacquainted with Zeno's paradox, or you'd be exerting yourself to better purpose.”

Tim craned his neck to glance down. A man in a velvet overcoat, a ruffled shirt, and breeches looked up at him. His greasy red hair fell limply from his receding forehead to his high stiff collar. From his spot halfway up the wall, Tim couldn't quite make out the man's face, but he could tell that there was something strange about it.

“Come down, my boy. And we will begin your education with this morsel of classical thought.”

The man's voice was high-pitched, as if he were whining or his nose were too small. He also carried a riding crop, but he wasn't dressed for riding.

Seriously weird
, Tim surmised.

“I think…I think I'd rather not,” Tim replied. He faced the bricks and went back to trying to make it to the top of the wall.

The man below him cleared his throat again. “Harrum. Then we will begin your studies now. The paradox, as it is traditionally presented, involves the swift-footed Achilles and a tortoise. However, we can as easily illustrate Zeno's point with a boy and a wall. Are you listening, child?”

Suddenly, the man was above him, standing on top of the wall. Tim was so startled he nearly lost his grip.
How did he do that?

The man knelt down, balancing himself with his riding crop. “Our boy climbs halfway up the wall. Eager to reach freedom, he continues to climb, and he covers half the remaining distance. And then half of that. But still some distance remains between the boy and his goal. So the boy climbs on and on, although his arms are tiring.”

The man seemed to be in no hurry to get to the end of his story. Tim's fingers clung desperately to the rough bricks.
Why doesn't this creep hurry up and finish his stupid lecture? Or maybe,
Tim suspected,
he's taking so long in the hope that I'll lose my hold and drop back down.

“The boy looks up,” the man continued in his annoying, whiny voice, “and being quite a clever lad, he finally realizes that each time he covers only half the distance. Half, and then half of that, and then half of that. He is always halfway to freedom. Achilles never overtakes the tortoise. The
boy can never scale the wall. I'm afraid you're about to fall, child,” the man said, suddenly leaning forward. “Perhaps you ought to take my hand.”

“You wish!” Tim exclaimed. Recoiling from the man's outstretched palm, Tim lost his grip and tumbled to the ground. To his astonishment, the man was there to greet him.

Tim scrambled back up to his feet—he didn't want this jerk to see that he was rattled. Brushing off his jeans, he tried to regain his composure. “I know some of the rules, you know,” Tim informed the creep. “I'm not about to take any favors from you. Or gifts. Or anything.”

There
, Tim thought, setting his jaw,
that should put the bloke in his place. Let him know what's what. I mean, he's not dealing with any ordinary thirteen-year-old kid from London. No. Not me.

But the man just laughed. “You've been out in the sun too long, my boy. The heat has broiled your brain. Shade is what you need. Now come inside. Really. I do insist.”

Tim hated it when grown-ups referred to him that way. “I'm not your boy,” he shouted. He kicked some dirt and then some bones at the man for good measure. “And I'm not going into your…that place, whatever it is. I didn't mean to come here. And I don't mean to stay here.”

The man tsk-tsked and touched his long fingers to the middle of his forehead as if he were thinking deep thoughts. “Let me guess. You set out for Faerie. Only you found yourself here. And as a result, you are disappointed and hence disagreeable.” The man raised his eyebrows as if he were expecting Tim to confirm this theory.

“Well, child. This
is
Faerie.” The man held out his arms in an expansive gesture. “All of it that matters, at any rate. All that's real. Beyond those walls”—he pointed the riding crop at the wall that Tim had just fallen from—“all is illusion. Consider yourself fortunate to have found this place. An oasis of rationality in the midst of a desert of superstition.” He tucked the riding crop under his arm.

Tim narrowed his eyes. This place looked nothing like Faerie. Then he remembered the desert wasteland Tamlin had brought him to. He hadn't believed that desolate landscape was Faerie either. This man might actually be telling the truth.

“Now we must enter your name in the master register,” the man said. “What did you say your name was?”

Tim sneered. Did this bloke think he was as dumb as all that? He wasn't going to fall for the oldest trick in the book. Tim kicked a large femur
toward the man. “Bone,” Tim replied. “Jack Bone. And you?”

“Ahh. You are a clever boy, aren't you?”

Tim noticed the man's smile was tight with anger. He also realized there was something seriously wrong with the guy's mouth. The man took a step closer.

Tim's nose wrinkled.
What a stink
.
This freak could use extra-strength mouthwash.
His breath had the foul odor of old blood and bad meat.

“As much as I appreciate your ready wit, I hate an impasse,” the man said. “A tie, as it were. Perhaps if I am more direct, we can come to terms more quickly.” He placed his fingertips together lightly and formed a little triangle of his hands. He licked his lips. “I propose a game.”

“A game,” Tim repeated. He didn't like the sound of that. He also knew he had no idea how to escape from this place, so he had to hear the guy out.

“Yes. And to make the game more interesting, what shall we play for? What are the stakes?” A slow smile tried to make its way across the man's face, but it was as if his lips were stuck. They only made it partway into a smile.

“Ahhh. I know. I know what should tempt a clever boy. I can tell you who your father is.”

Tim felt little prickles under his hair. How
could this man know that was the reason Tim had come to Faerie?
Can he read my mind?

“Yes, I will tell you about your father, child, if you can best me at my game.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “I don't believe you.”

“No? But it is a question you'd love to learn the answer to, you don't deny.”

Tim swallowed hard. He couldn't come up with a clever retort or a decent bluff.

“And consider this,” the man continued. “How could I know the question if I did not know the answer?”

Tim had to admit that there was some sort of twisted logic there. “What if I lose?” he asked.

“If you lose, you'll accept my tutelage. You will become my student. I will liberate you from all of your illusions.”

Tim gazed around at the courtyard, at the decaying and brittle bones. He put the evidence together with the unmistakable odor emanating from the man. “And then you'll eat me.”

The man didn't seem to care that Tim had figured this out. “Eventually, yes,” he said casually. “But you won't care when that time comes. You won't care at all.” The man cracked his knuckles.

Jeez
, Tim thought,
he's the type who probably enjoys scratching his fingernails on a chalkboard
.

“You see, I'll consume your magic before I
touch your flesh. You might be surprised to learn how little one cares for one's flesh once one's soul has been stripped away.”

Tim swallowed hard, to keep the sick bile he felt in his stomach from rising. What kind of monster was he facing?

The man knelt down and picked up two small skeletons. Tim thought they might have once been flitlings, the pretty, graceful creatures he had seen at the Queen's palace. Handling them with surprising delicacy, the man fashioned the bones so that they were able to stand in the dirt, posing them like macabre action figures. Figures without flesh. Just bones.

Tim glanced over at the wall again. Then at the mansion. Then at the man. What choice did he have? “Okay,” he agreed.

Besides
, he thought
, maybe I can actually win
. He would do his best, at any rate.

The man stood back up. “Bravo,” he said. He clapped his hands so lightly they made no sound. “I'm so pleased that we could settle our differences in so civilized a manner. Now we have world enough and time to know each other better, as the poet said.”

Tim cringed as the man clapped a hand on his shoulder. Tim tried shaking it off, but his grip was too strong.

“I would like to tell you the axiom that rules my life.” The man guided Tim toward the ominous mansion. “It is the center of all that I do.
Fronti nulla fides
, delectable boy.” He passed his arm in front of his face, covering his mouth, and rubbed his fingers over his lips as if he was in deep thought. He lowered his hand and Tim gasped. The man had three daggerlike sets of teeth in his mouth.

“In appearances place no faith,” the man declared.

What is he?
Tim wondered. He stared at the set of teeth that went from ear to ear, as if the man's jaws could unhinge and open wide enough to swallow Tim whole. In the center, where a human's mouth usually was, were another two sets of teeth, one immediately behind the other. And all the teeth looked razor sharp.

The man strolled toward the crumbling mansion, dragging Tim with him. “As you shall see, I have a vocation,” he explained, “a most singular and satisfying goal. I am simplifying the world.”

They had arrived at the threshold of the enormous house. Tim's heart was pounding hard, but he knew there was no turning back. Old Toothy would make certain of that. Tim's only hope of survival was beating the creature somehow.

The door opened and Tim stepped inside,
hearing the man lock the door behind him. The first thing that hit Tim was the smell of death and of something chemical. It reminded him of his school's science lab.

Tim stood in a dark, cavernous hallway. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the light. When they did, his mouth dropped open. In front of him were rows of glass cases, like in a museum, each housing an amazing animal. There were also creatures stuffed and sitting on pedestals, others pinned to display boards. Each had an identifying card, listing its specimen number.