Elixir (30 page)

I couldn’t restrain my Shadow and also carry Eva back out of the dungeon.

I was going to have to leave my Shadow behind.

Part of me was furious at her. But it wasn’t her fault. My Shadow was still a child—forever a child—a lost, tortured, forgotten child. And dammit—I swore silently in my mind—someday, I would make things right. Somehow I would get her and all the children out of here.

But right now, I had to save the only life I could save:
Eva’s.

“Alright, enough!” I cried out to my Shadow. “Go back to the dark! I won’t try to make you come against your will again.” She didn’t reply, but I could see understanding in her eyes. “I can’t save you,” I said to her.

I began dragging Eva’s limp body back into the main passageway, where the light was brighter. “The only person I can do anything for right now is Eva—and I’m going back to the human world to help her.”

That was when I heard a voice echoing in the walls of the cave.

“You’re not going anywhere, Mab.”

It was the Queen.

My Shadow shrieked in fear at the sound of her voice—she recognized it too—and fled back into the farthest corner of the room, huddling against the wall, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her head between her knees, as if she could protect herself.

I turned around to see my mother striding towards me, the light from the Perpetual Candle illuminating her imperious face. A squadron of Goblin guards marched behind her—two of them were dragging Obadiah, who was twisting and struggling in their grip, his arms bound behind him.

I screamed as I recognized him.

His buckskin shirt had been ripped to shreds in struggle, the knees of his breeches dirtied and bloodied. His ankles were bound together, arms tied behind his back with thick ropes.

I ran towards him.

Both of his eyes were blackened. What had they done to him?

All this time I thought he’d abandoned me, but he’d been captured by the Queen.

I reached out towards him, but one of the Goblin guards cuffed me aside.

Obadiah looked up at me, his pain-twisted face managing a smile.

“I know what you must think of me, Mab,” he said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “You must have thought I left you. I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry! I didn’t know you’d been taken. I’m so sorry I blamed you; this wasn’t your fault!”

I wanted to cry as all the anger I’d felt towards him melted. I reached out, tried to touch his arm, but the Goblins held me off.

Obadiah hung his head.

“Actually, it was my fault . . .”

“No, it wasn’t . . .”

He cut me off. “This morning, I guess the reality of it all hit me. The Fairy Queen’s daughter was in my bed . . .”

At that I saw the Queen glare at him, aghast, but I shot her a look, and Obadiah went on.

“ . . .  the daughter of my enemy,” he continued. “The girl I’d been supposed to kill. I guess I was in shock. Maybe I couldn’t handle it. I needed time to think about it all. So I went off to the woods. Then I felt guilty. I knew you wouldn’t understand where I’d gone. You’d think I just slipped off the morning after, like some first-light blaggard. So I decided to come back. I was on my way home to the tree and stopped to pick you some wildflowers as a surprise. It was a foolish notion. It was what ended up getting me kidnapped . . .”

My eyes were blurring and I swallowed hard. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I understand . . .”

But the Queen interrupted me. “Mab, did you really think you could do all this and escape my notice?”

I felt like a fool. How had I thought I wouldn’t get caught?

“I was watching you the whole time. I had my pixies spying on you, you know,” my mother went on. “I could have stopped you at any point. I told my guards to keep themselves hidden inside the walls, to just let you pass. Do you know why?”

I shook my head miserably.

“Because, as much as it pained me, I needed you to see your Shadow for what she is. I was afraid to let you near her, afraid you would get hurt. It wasn’t the screaming that alerted us; it was the fact that she tried to kill you, my precious daughter—that was the signal to the guards. I am sorry you had to go through this. But if you hadn’t seen her for yourself, you never would have believed me. You would have gone on feeling sorry for the girl, and not seen how necessary it was to lock her up—see that she is beyond saving.”

I opened my mouth to speak up, but the words faltered on my tongue and I was silent. In her own sick way, the Queen was right about my Shadow. My mother went on.

“Mab, I am sorry to say that this man”—she pointed to Obadiah—“is a criminal.”

“But he isn’t!” I cried, stepping in front of him. “The only criminal is you. It’s criminal what you’ve done to those children!”

“Obadiah is guilty of murder.”

“Obadiah never killed anyone!” I protested. “The only murderer among us is you! All those children, I saw them! Hundreds and hundreds of children . . .  !”

The Queen put up her hand for me to be quiet.

“I admit I made some difficult choices. But, Mab, every child who is sacrificed saves the lives of dozens and dozens of Fey. The magic that I have been able to distill from them has preserved what little magic we have in our world.”

“You don’t just use magic to save lives,” I said as I watched Obadiah twisting and fighting in the Goblins’ hold, “you waste it on frivolous spells. I’ve seen you!”

“That is nothing compared to the amount of magic it takes to keep a fairy alive,” she replied. “That’s what these children’s sacrifice has done. It has prevented us from becoming extinct. And while I have been doing whatever it takes to save us, this man has been stealing our magic, syphoning it away and wasting it upon humans.”

I opened my mouth to defend Obadiah, to say that giving magic to humans wasn’t a waste, but the Queen cut me off.

“All the Fey who have died since he began to steal our magic—their deaths are on his head. And since the drop in Elixir, due to his theft, has forced my hand to take even more children,” she continued, “the deaths of those children are on your head too, Obadiah.”

He had gone completely still in the guard’s arms, all the color drained out of his face, his eyes stricken.

The enormity of what he had done was hitting him. It was hitting me too.

“For every vial of Elixir you fill from our streams and give away at your club, that forces me to steal more children.”

We stared at each other, aghast, silent, while the Queen looked at us, an expression of smug triumph on her face.

In trying to make things better, Obadiah had only made it worse.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the rows of children in their unnatural sleep. But he wasn’t the one who kidnapped them—that was the Queen. No one forced her to take these kids. She was blaming Obadiah, but it wasn’t his fault.

But if we don’t steal the children, the fairies die,
I could hear her say.

There was no way out.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry. It was wrong—all of it so wrong. Obadiah had made it worse, but it wasn’t his fault. It was the Queen’s fault. But the Queen was right—if we stopped this, we would become extinct—and then there would be thousands more dead.

I didn’t know what to do.

The Queen’s guards were beginning to drag Obadiah away.

“Stop! Where are you taking him?”

“He is guilty of stealing our most precious resource and murdering our people. He will be put to death,” the Queen said quietly.

“No! You can’t!” I lunged towards Obadiah, as if I could grab him from the guards, but they pushed me away.

“You have a compassionate heart, Mab,” said the Queen, “but this man has done a grievous wrong, and he must face the consequences.”

“It’s not his fault!” I cried, fighting with the guards. “It’s your fault!” I lunged towards the guards but they held me off. Tears blurred my vision. I couldn’t let the Queen do this.

Obadiah had stopped struggling with his captors. Maybe he realized it was futile.

“Don’t cry, Mab,” he said, putting on a brave face that just made me want to cry more. “Listen, I was aware I was living on borrowed time. I knew I could never steal that much and not get caught—I knew the Queen would get me sooner or later. I’m a pirate’s son; pirates don’t have a very long life expectancy. I had more than two hundred years. A lot more than most.”

But I couldn’t listen to him.

I was staring at my mother, my eyes hard with hate.

“If you kill him, I will stay in the human world forever. I will never see you again. I will never accept the throne. I will stay a human till I die. I don’t care if you’re my mother and I’m your heir. I will never forgive you for this!”

The Queen let out a long sigh.

“I was afraid you would say that,” she said quietly, “but the truth is, Mab, you have no way of getting back to the human world, without help. So I’m afraid you’re stuck here.”

“But I have to get back to the human world! I have to help my friend!” I gestured towards Eva, who was lying prostrate on the floor of the cave. The injury on her head had swelled to a bloody, purple mass. She needed a doctor desperately. “I have to take her to the hospital. Her injury is serious!”

The Queen frowned.

“I’m not sure that I can allow that, Mab.”

“What do you mean?”

“Humans should never see this world. Your friend has seen too much. I told you not to wake her up . . .”

“You would risk Eva’s life because of your paranoia! She needs help!”

“Your friend’s health is not my chief concern. My concern is doing what’s best for the realm.”

I looked at her with cold hatred.

She was right—I couldn’t get back to the human world without help. I didn’t know how to do Obadiah’s ball-drop travel in reverse, now that it was no longer New Year’s Eve. Obadiah couldn’t help get us out, bound hand and foot by the Queen’s guards. What were we going to do?

And then I stopped, standing still, listening. I heard something—a sound I hadn’t heard in a long time. It was so faint I could barely make it out—

Obadiah was singing a spell.

I gaped at him, not believing what I was hearing. I don’t think the Queen had even realized yet what he was doing—because Obadiah was singing the spell so badly, in such a human way, not in the octave of the fairies. But I could smell the Elixir, the smell of a coming storm—he was using fairy magic!

But he didn’t have any Elixir. I felt in my pocket. The flask of Elixir was still there. He’d given me all he had. Yet he was chanting, his body beginning to sway and twitch. It was different than any spell I’d ever seen performed—it was so effortful and clumsy—it was such a
human
way of doing it. His forehead was creased in exertion. And yet, it was working. The air around us began to shimmer. Obadiah was using his own powers, his own innate fairy magic. The Elixir wasn’t out there—it was inside him.

“Stop him! Stop him!” the Queen began to cry, realizing what he was doing. One of the Goblin guards cuffed him across the face. I reached out helplessly to intervene.

But Obadiah was smiling, his face triumphant. He must have known they were too late.

“I didn’t know you could do . . .” I whispered in shock.

“I didn’t know I could either,” he said, sounding as shocked as I did. “I’d never tried to do it like this since I was a boy. I always thought the magic came from the Elixir I drank—but what if it doesn’t? What if I have my own Elixir in my blood that I can call upon? What if the magic comes from me?”

This was the experience he’d tried to give people—and now he was having it himself. Not through syphoned magic, not taking magic like a drug, but through real inner power.

His eyes were still closed, his face scrunched up with intention. And all of a sudden, I realized what spell he’d performed. I started to smile. He hadn’t performed the spell as effortlessly as a fairy would have—but it was working.

I could see the particles beginning to dance. All around us in the cave the darkness and light were moving—dancing, dissolving.

“What in the Queen’s name?” I heard one of the Goblins cry.

And then we all saw it. He was making a rift, a portal back into the human world.

The Queen was screaming. The Goblin guards clapped their hands over Obadiah’s mouth—but they couldn’t stop the hole that was growing in the air before us. Obadiah’s eyes were closed, his whole posture reverent with intention. Through the swirl of particles, I could see faintly the lights of Times Square.

Obadiah wrenched his face away from the guards’ hands.

“Go, Mab!” he cried. “Go, and take Eva with you!”

“But I can’t leave you here! You have to come with us!”

“Mab, go! I don’t know how much longer I can hold this!”

I ran towards Eva’s body and managed to get her to her feet as she slumped against my shoulder. Obadiah was giving us a chance. But if I left him, the Queen was going to kill him.