Except the Queen (2 page)

You study his face, wondering if you can allow yourself this indulgence. All the others have had their dalliances, their madcap affairs—everyone except the Queen. But you are here now and strangely calm as he turns toward you. You raise your arm and the dun-colored sleeve covers your face as you bend from your supple waist. You hold your breath for you hear the soft snick of the gun, feel its eye upon you, and you brace yourself for the stinging touch of iron.

The shot cracks the air open like a nut and it is too late to change your mind. You cry out as the bullet passes beneath your ribs and out your back. How could you have known it would hurt so much? Blood spills, staining your white shift crimson and you fall into a nest of autumn-bitten bushes. You can hear him now,
running
toward you, the gun dropped behind him when you screamed. Already he bleeds too; despair, hope, and love spilling out for you as he runs to where you wait, wounded in the bloodstained green.

I
n the Greenwood, the fey do not write accounts of their own doing. Yes, we have bards whose entire lives are spent composing heroic verses to praise those we claim as heroes or those great and terrible loves that have nearly destroyed whole clans. Yes, we have history. But we do not care much for personal memory. When you live each day as we do, nearly immortal, there is no day that is unlike the other, there are no rites of passage but those of the seasons, there is no memory of consequence. Each day is the same tale, so there is no need to remember it at all.

But the Queen has requested that my sister Serana and I chronicle our time in the world and so it must be. And in this body unexpectedly aged by exile, it is indeed comforting to record these events for myself and my sister. We can no longer return to what had been for us a blithe and pretty life among the green. We have been transformed by exile that made us strangers dependent on the generosity of other strangers quite unlike ourselves. Our fey lives have been deepened with the tincture of mortality.

How it began was simple enough. Serana and I had escaped to the edge of the Greenwood, looking for sport. Lovesick boys wandered in these margins, saplings with sad eyes and dirty nails. There were rough-hewn men
sometimes, but then, we were strong enough in magic to tame those flat-footed satyrs into playmates. We were beautiful then; our bodies fleshed full and ripe, skin scented with honeysuckle, and shoulders dusted with amber pollen. Bees kissed our mouths and our lips as ruby as pomegranate seeds.

On that day we heard the moans and the soft slap of skin against skin before we saw the couple. Serana, her berry-black eyes wide with delight, placed a finger against her lips to remind me to be still. I suppressed the giggle, though it bubbled in my throat. We crept silently through the brush, following the sound, stopping only when we had reached the boundary between our world and theirs. The green shadows hid us in the leafy arms of a viburnum, its tiny fruit dangling like drops of blood.

On a field of cut grass, someone had spread out a blanket, and on the blanket was a golden-haired child in a pale blue dress sleeping soundly on her back. Pretty thing she was, with pouting lips, creamy round cheeks touched in the middle with a bright red blush. Serana and I exchanged looks and I knew what she was thinking—that we should steal her; bring her back to court as our precious pet, our wild strawberry.

We glanced around and realized that the couple had indeed slipped into the woods a little way so as not to disturb the napping child. Their moans were reaching a crescendo, something that of course amused us even more than the child. We crawled through the bushes and parting the branches, we saw them.

It was known that the Queen did not engage in carnal play as the rest of us did. She held herself aloft, as though her power and her crown made her untouchable to such passionate fires. Or so we had thought. Even as I write this now, I am struck remembering how vulnerable she looked in his arms—head thrown back, the pulse of her veins against the white skin, her shimmering hair falling on the ground like spilt honey from the comb.

And the man? Mortal, we knew by the gamey smell that prickled our noses. We were shocked into laughter.
Imagine our haughty, Highborn Queen rolling in the dirt with a common man. I recall very little of his looks, only that we could not fathom how this man had found favor enough in the eyes of the Queen that she should shield the brilliance of her power beneath a glamour intended to make her seem ordinary as a haymaker. And I know that even as we choked on the surprised laughter, the sound escaped in peals that rang clear as a wind chime disturbed by a breeze.

The child began to cry. The couple sat up, dazed for a moment. Wariness hardened the man’s features as his eyes searched for us. We were not afraid of him, for we knew he could never see us in the Greenwood. But the Queen could and before she could rise from the ground, Serana grabbed my hand and we ran, scampering through the dense brush like squirrels back to our own nests.

The Queen was cold and merciless and we knew that punishment would be swift and unpleasant if we were found. So all that day and night we hid in the hollowed trunk of a knotted pine, our arms wrapped around each other, fearing the sound of her hunting horns. Serana whispered hiding spells softly over and over, and I—for once—was very quiet.

But except for the patter of rain that fell on the second day, the Greenwood remained silent of rumor. On the third day we came to the conclusion that perhaps we had escaped unseen. And perhaps, if we kept the secret to ourselves and told no one, the Queen might never know that it was us who had spied upon her in the woods.

“You must never tell,” Serana warned. “The Queen will not forget this.”

*   *   *

W
E RETURNED TO COURT AS
innocent as lambs. Seasons came and went, and though there were many times I wanted to spill our secret while frolicking with a new playmate, I did as my sister instructed and remained quiet about it. But my cheek twitched during the solemn court rituals to see the Queen standing at regal attention,
so unlike that time in the woods. And then I would feel Serana’s hot gaze, the stern set of her lips beneath her flashing eyes, reminding me to forget that old secret once and for all.

But an arrow loosed in the world must eventually find its mark, and there are few secrets that do not eventually fly into the shell of an ear.

I was napping in a field, when through my dreaming I overheard a pack of boogans talking as they set traps on a farmer’s field.

“Do ya think he’s the one? You know, the one that giped the old girl. Aww . . . can you imagine that, then? Her on her back, legs to the sky. What a sight, eh?”

“Nah,” chaffed another voice. “She said it were a different man. Not a farmer.”

“What then?”

“The mason, you know, a man who lays the bricks.”

The boogans were guffawing now. “He laid her, ’tis true. Trowel in hand, he stuffed her, he did, working that yellow hair of hers into the dirt, while the babe wailed in its cradle.”

From the depths of sleep I blurted out, “What did Serana tell you about the Queen and her man?” I sat up and rubbed my eyes, confused. Then turned in horror to see the boogans, stunned into silence.

They stared at me slack-jawed, their bottom tusks more in evidence than usual. They were surprised as much by my question as by my sudden resurrection in the field. But their expressions quickly turned sly, then nasty, the leers splitting their faces till they looked like frogs.

“Oy, then, so the Queen herself is a-laying with the mason. Busy man he is. And she got with a wailing baby too. Now that is news!”

“No, you misunderstood me. Not the Queen.” I tried to call the words back into my mouth.

“You said the Queen. Your sister was it told you?” The boogans snickered. “We all heard you and anyway who cares if it’s true or not? It’s a good lark. And we’ll
just blame the pair of you if we get caught.” Their heads goggled excitedly. “Let’s away then, boogans, there’s more tricks afoot to be played with this thread of news than watching a farmer’s old nag turn lame in one of our holes.”

They dashed away into the green and I knew that within a heartbeat, the story would grow and I would be the root of it no matter how far the branches spread, or how bright the leaves of the tale unfurled. I spoke from a dream and there it was, the secret nocked to the quickest arrow in the quiver. There was nothing I could do to stop the rumor. I had to find my sister to warn her. We needed to hide, somewhere safe from the Queen’s wrath. The Highborn clans were gathering at the Great Hall, Under the Hill, and I prayed that we might have the chance to scamper while they were so engaged.

L
isten! She knows winter comes, knows
we
come. When shadows be longest, we UnSeelie rise. So She gathers light into Herself to hold Her weakling people through the cold.

Ha! How I love it then: gnashing of teeth, trembling of limbs, tooth red in the gum, stone in the eye, heart beating in the hand. How I love to hear the weak puling of those milklings, whose blood be like whey. The struggle, dark/light, death/life. Ho!

Already, we prepare the way. Listen! The scream of an old woman brought down by a Ravener. Smell! A man in Founder’s park strangled with twine and mistletoe. Taste! A village well poisoned, a crop blighted, dung in the porridge. Touch! A child stolen from his cradle, a wooden log sprinkled with blood left in his stead.

This be my duty.

This be my delight.

I write sonnets in my enemy’s blood. I dip my red cap in a thousand years of war. Ho!

Strength be needed now: fist, spear, blood. Now I cry vengeance, argue it in our own court, the
Un
Seelie. I stand here, cap newly red with blood. The old woman’s blood. The man in the park’s blood. The boy child’s blood. My muscled legs spread apart. Let them see my
maleness. Let them desire me. Let their jealous natures feed me. All help me reach my ends.

“We be under threat,” I tell them. I speak first in that hushed voice that draws all ears. Even my dark lord listens.

Then loudly I say: “Humans and their iron destroy our world. Let us hunt them as once we did. Not one by one by one. But all of them. Let us make tithes of blood sacrifice. Let the winter be long. Let the dark be king.”

Jackdaws caw my name. Wolves howl. Jackal-headed men caper on the red carpet. Overexcited, one squats and lets loose a series of black pebbles. The King blows him into ashes, along with his shit.

My voice rises even louder. “Now be the time to cull their weakest. Pull down their strongest. Take back their power. No more this easy pax. We must war on the Seelie court. Take the Highborn and we take the Game.”

And then the hall bursts into flames of laughter, shouts of my name. Only my King sits silent on his throne. No smile creases that dark face. But I know he agrees with me.

After all, he has not blown
me
into ashes. Hah!

B
eneath the blazing torch light, you hold your head high, your slender hands resting at your sides. Betray nothing, you counsel yourself. Let them see only the glamour regardless of what it costs you. There will be time later to rest. But not now. The clans of the Seelie and UnSeelie court have gathered Under the Hill to celebrate the Solstice, the slow turning of day into night, green fields into the black muck of winter. They come to consume the light and unleash the darkness. As it has always been.