Strangewood (31 page)

Then she tasted the blood from her lip once again, and
reality returned without delay. Without mercy.

* * * * *

In a clearing at the heart of Strangewood, where a cairn of
large stones burned with blue fire, stood an enormous oak tree. In the branches
of the tree sat the small dragon called Fiddlestick. The dragon stared down in
horror as the Peanut Butter General, with whom he was now allied, raised his
sword against the Queen of the Wood herself.

It was blasphemy.

The General cried out to Fiddlestick for his aid in this
battle, but the dragon would not move. Could not move. She was the Queen, after
all, and if she wanted them dead, then dead they would be. Smoke filtered out
of Fiddlestick's nostrils as the little dragon began to cry. The General
shouted for his aid once more, and Fiddlestick did nothing.

The Peanut Butter General was bleeding.

Through the thick swirls of sticky peanut butter, blood
seeped through where the sharp wooden talons of the Queen had slashed. Bees
buzzed round his body, agitated and unsettled, the conflict keeping them
moving. The General breathed deeply and paused a moment, waiting for the peanut
butter to cover the wounds. After a moment, it did so, soothing and cool. But
he ached there, and he had to wonder if the bleeding continued, deep within.

Behind him, the cairn burned blue. Before him, the Queen
snarled angrily, her back to the tree that was her home. He stared at her,
noted where the edge of his sword had chipped a chunk of bark off her right
breast, scoring the wood beneath deeply, but apparently not enough to truly
hurt her.

"You defile the wood with your arrogance," the
Queen of the Wood sneered. "Even the bees desert you now."

And it was true, he noted. One by one, and then in tiny
swarms, the bees moved away from the General into the trees. They knew
something he refused to acknowledge. He shouldn't be here. Not at all. It
mattered very little or not at all that he had not entered this clearing of his
own free will. The Queen would not suffer his presence, nor his quest. And the
General would not allow himself to be stopped, or even delayed a single moment
longer than necessary.

He would die before he would be diverted from rescuing
Nathan.

Even as that determination crystallized in his mind, another
thought gained strength within him. He stared into the white, glaring eyes of
the Queen and knew that he would indeed die.

"Fiddlestick!" he shouted. "Dragon, come to
me now! Before it is too late!"

At the edge of the clearing, all around the circle, wood
nymphs with burning red eyes tittered in amusement, then shied back with fear
as the Queen's gaze passed over them. But Fiddlestick did not respond.

"Come then, my Queen," the General said,
brandishing his sword with practiced casualness. "Let us finish this,
then."

Her body was covered with huge thorns. Her talons were wood
sharp as razors. Her willow branch hair moved as if of its own volition,
whipping from side to side, like the tail of a scorpion, positioning itself to
strike. The Queen of the Wood drew herself up to her fullest height, more than
seven feet, and she smiled at the Peanut Butter General. He held his breath a
moment, drinking in her beauty. For, surely, she was the most alluring creature
who had ever set foot within Strangewood. She was its Queen, after all.

Her natural state, her nakedness, drew him now. But the
General had fought too many battles, engaged in too many pointless wars, to be
distracted from his task for long. This war was about something more precious
to him than patriotism or politics, or even life itself.

With a grunt, and then silence, the General stepped toward
the Queen, sword raised and out to one side, its hilt gripped in both hands. The
Queen seemed to glide away and off to his left, and then she darted in at him,
talons before her, rending the air as they would rend the General himself. His
sword, glinting in blue flame and orange starlight, whickered out and slipped
between the fingers of the Queen's left hand. Her hand split down the middle,
and two wooden talons were sliced off, dropped to the ground, and lay there,
withering in seconds.

But the sacrifice of two fingers barely slowed her. The
Queen's right hand gripped the General's sword hand. Her willow branch hair
whipped out and pulled the sword from his grasp, tossing it aside in the clearing.
The General tried to fight her off, his right palm splitting on a huge thorn.

Then the Queen took him into her embrace. Thorns pierced the
peanut butter and whatever remained beneath it. The General felt weak
instantly, and he wondered if the thorns themselves were poisoned, of if he had
simply had enough. Then the Queen of the Wood gripped him around the throat
with her whole hand and lifted the split appendage in the air for him to see. New
green shoots had begun to sprout up where her fingers had been chopped off.

She hauled back the wounded hand, held the fingers straight
and firm, and drove her hand as a projectile right through the General's chest.
Ribs shattered. Organs were punctured.

The Peanut Butter General let out a long gasp of despair and
pain and loneliness, and then the Queen of the Wood shoved him back. He tumbled
onto the blue blaze and it began to melt and bubble the peanut butter that
enshrouded him.

The General rolled away from the blaze and lay there, barely
breathing, on the scrub grass and dirt of the clearing. He waited for the
killing stroke, blinded by the pain of the fire and his wounds. After a moment,
instead, he heard applause.

The Queen of the Wood spoke. "You dare?" she said,
furious and frustrated as well. And somehow, the General knew that she did not
speak to him.

"Ain't thisss a pretty sssight?" growled a
familiar voice. "You've done my job for me, and I get to watch. It'sss a
beautiful thing, ssso it isss. Glad to sssee you've landed on the right ssside
of thisss thing."

The Queen was silent a moment. Then her voice came, but not
from any one spot. It came from the trees themselves. From the wood, a whisper
that any sane man would have known was prelude to bloodletting.

"I am Queen of the Wood," her voice rustled like
wind in the trees. "I have no allies, only subjects. I am not here for
your amusement. You will suffer, just as he, your enemy, has suffered."

The General was bleeding profusely now. The peanut butter
was healing him, but with the scorched area on top of his skin, it wasn't as
malleable as it ought to be. It was slowing down the process, possibly too
much. Where the thorns had pierced him, new peanut butter had slipped in to
knit the wounds. But where the Queen had impaled him on her talons, opened up his
chest . . . he was not faring as well. Still, the General managed to moved a
bit further from the blue flames and sit up enough to see the battle that was
about to be joined. To see the other creature foolish enough to stumble into
the Queen's lair . . . this one doing so with purpose, and without regard to
her.

As he looked up, the General saw them standing opposite one
another. The Queen of the Wood and Bob Longtooth, the saber-toothed tiger man. Longtooth's
fur was matted, and his claws and mouth were crusted with gore. He had been
living in the forest at least one full night. His eyes burned with malice and
mischief.

"I'm not here to fight you, my Queen," Longtooth
snarled. "Only to be certain the General and hisss companionsss never
reach their dessstination."

Companions, the General thought. So much for Fiddlestick. His
vision had begun to dim slightly, or, he thought, perhaps the blue fire from
the tumble of stones had begun to flicker out. He preferred the latter, though
he knew the possibility was likely pure fancy.

The Queen of the Wood snarled something nearly
unintelligible to Longtooth. Clearly, this was a challenge. Longtooth laughed
at her.

"The Jackal Lantern isss my massster, lady," the
tiger man said bluntly.

"I have killed the General for his blasphemy, Robert of
the Long Tooth," the Queen of the Wood said, clearly, rising to her full
height, her willow hair sprouting thorns of its own. Each strand was more like
a pricker branch now than a willow. "But the General is not of the wood,
cub. You are, and thus, I will give you one final chance to bow and pay fealty
to your Queen before I flay the fur and flesh from your bones."

The General lay on his side, only a yard or so from his
sword. He wanted it back in his grasp, but the pain in his abdomen made the
very thought of moving too agonizing to bear. His mind had begun to drift, to
lose its focus, but still he stared at Longtooth and the Queen. The tiger
growled, low and deep, and allowed air to fill his chest so that he looked
every bit as vicious as the General knew him to be. His yellow eyes flashed in
the blue light of the cairn fire and he took several steps to one side, taking
the Queen's measure.

"I warn you, Robert. I played with you when you were a
cub, but I will gut you without remorse if you . . ."

Longtooth growled. Hissed at her. "Ssshut your rotten
trap, you ssstupid bitch."

The Queen froze, horrified. For a moment, the thorny
tendrils hanging from her head dropped lifelessly to lie along her back. She
stared at Longtooth in astonishment.

"You're nothing but a dim-witted wood nymph, a
ssspritely ssslut with too much power and delusionsss of greater grandeur. You've
been nothing but deadwood sssince Our Boy put you in this circle. You're Queen
of the Wood? What a fucking joke. Queen of thisss circle, perhapsss. A patch of
dirt, sssome burning rocks, and a big oak tree. Half the creaturesss in the
Wood have forgotten all about you, little ssstump. Little sssapling. The Jackal
Lantern didn't even consider asssking for your aid becaussse you're
uselesss."

On the ground, the General was as stunned as the Queen
seemed to be. In the forest around the clearing, the real wood nymphs buzzed
with what passed for conversation among them. They must have also been shocked,
for they had let Longtooth into the circle, and now he was challenging their
Queen. But perhaps after all this time, and all the fear she had inspired in
them, the nymphs were uncertain how to respond.

This was the General's thought as the Queen of the Wood
began to scream. It seemed, almost, a scream of suffering, of horrible agony. In
truth, it was the scream of a tree being uprooted, branches snapping and
whipping the air as it fell toward the forest floor. That was the sound that
was emitted from her mouth as she flew at Bob Longtooth in a rage unlike
anything the General had ever seen. She was out of control.

Which was the only reason, as far as the General was
concerned, that Longtooth cut her as badly as he did. Her face was his target. Green
and new as a raw shoot bursting through the earth after the last snow before
spring comes on full bloom. It was her vanity, he knew. The softness of her
face.

Longtooth tore half of the Queen's face off with his claws. One
of her eyes burst, spouting sticky sap. She screamed. And then she attacked
him, the thorny strands of her hair wrapping around him, tearing at his fur. Blood
began to flow.

While the General watched, failing. Dying.

Then a bee landed on the tip of his nose.

Simple as that, the swarm returned. They covered him. Filled
him. Worked their way into the cavity in his belly, bolstering the peanut
butter, working with it the way they might have with honey. And the fabric of
his form, the sticky sweet flesh of him, responded. The peanut butter flowed
over him, covering the opening in his gut, trapping the bees inside to buzz
around in there forever, or as long as they could keep him alive.

The General struggled to his knees. He held out one hand and
a tendril of peanut butter flew from his palm to wrap around the hilt of his
sword and bring it flashing, flying through the air to lodge comfortably in his
grip.

He stood, sword at the ready.

Bob Longtooth broke free, and ran screaming from the
clearing, bleeding, stumbling, cursing weakly. The wood nymphs flew off after
him, and the General smiled thinly and offered up a little prayer for the
saber-tooth's death.

The Queen turned, saw the General newly risen, and scowled
at him with her ruined face. She was maddened now, beyond reason. Her talons
extended, grew thorns of their own, until they were like ragged tentacles. The
General thought to retreat. There was no sense in continuing this fight. With
the wood nymphs gone, he could go on to Old Jack's fortress and find Nathan,
save the boy.

Sword in front of him, the General moved backward as quickly
as he was able. He moved around the flaming blue cairn, the pile of stones
blazing high. He could feel the heat on the part of his body that had been
scorched before, but he ignored the discomfort. He had to. The Queen was coming
for him.

Like serpents, her long fingers moved in front of her,
reaching for him. The General hacked one tentacle clean through. Then he turned
and dove for the edge of the clearing. Thorns wrapped around his legs. Cutting.
Crushing.

"No," he said furiously. "Not now."

The General's head and shoulders and arms were beyond the
edge of the clearing. But even now, she was dragging him back in. Despair began
to creep over him. The bees within him were silenced for the moment. He heard
no buzzing and wondered if they had somehow abandoned him once more. But no, he
could feel them crawling over his ribs from the inside.

"No!" he roared. "My Queen, you know not what
you do! If I don't save Nathan, Strangewood may be destroyed forever! Don't you
see? Our Boy might scour us from existence, as vengeance, or merely in his
grief! We may cease to be entirely!"

But the Queen was not listening. She hauled him back into
the clearing.