Except the Queen (11 page)

She and Hawk had talked about her skin, Hawk had stroked her arm, and Sparrow found herself agreeing to a small tattoo. She wasn’t sure she was the “pretty” tattoo kind but she didn’t tell him that. There had to be trust. He’d said that. She trusted him.

He sat next to her and leaned down close to her face.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said and as she inhaled the sweetness of his breath, she felt herself become relaxed and sleepy. Almost like being hypnotized. Or drugged. She felt his hand warm on her throat, stretching the skin where he would begin the design. She stared up at the smooth arch of his brows, the almond-shaped eyes of malachite green, and waited for him to begin.

He was beautiful, but he lied.

It had hurt a lot, stinging like hundreds of wasps injecting fiery venom into her neck. Yet, each time Sparrow gasped, clenching her fists against the pain, his eyes met hers, and the pain subsided in his cool forest gaze. Had she slept? She wasn’t sure, but something dark skittered like an insect across her vision. She felt it enter her blood, felt her veins contract. Her heart pounded violently and she groaned, trying to waken. But each time she surfaced, Hawk was there, murmuring into her face, stroking her cheek. When he was finished, he oiled the tattoo with a thin layer of Vaseline and taped a bandage over it. As he sat her up on the table, she felt the fear subside.

“Can I see it?”

“Later,” he said. “When the swelling goes down and it’s not so raw. I promise you it’s just what you wanted.”

His green eyes sparkled beneath the cool lights. He touched her shoulder, slid his hand down her arm and held her wrist for a moment.

By the time Sparrow was on the street walking home, she could hardly recall the pain of the needle, only the longing sensation of wanting to return to Hawk’s side. She clasped her hand over the bandage to keep it secret, needing to hold on to the intimacy of the event.

*   *   *

M
ARTI WAS OUT WHEN
S
PARROW
arrived home and she was grateful that she didn’t have to explain just yet about the tattoo. She took Lily on an urgently needed walk around the block and then fed her.

Sparrow thought about eating something herself, but
nothing in the fridge seemed appetizing. Instead, she grabbed a handful of crackers, washing them down with a glass of milk that hinted of turning sour. She poured the remains of the milk down the sink, suddenly tired, as if she’d been awake for a month.

Twilight had settled into darkness, and though it was still early in the evening, Sparrow undressed, climbing into bed with a book. Though she was exhausted, she couldn’t sleep, but instead read feverishly and without pleasure, turning the pages of her book rapidly. She thought she could still taste the sour milk, her mouth flooded with a bitter gall despite smoking cigarette after cigarette to rid it of the unpleasant taste. As she turned a page, she burned her leg with a careless flick of hot ash. Rushing to the bathroom for water to cool her skin, she banged her head along the bedroom doorjamb. In the bathroom she administered cold compresses to her leg, then checked her temple in the mirror and saw the reddish bruise welling up. She tossed back two aspirins in hopes they would soothe the headache that was sure to follow and returned to her bed.

Late that night, the moon a dagger in her window, Sparrow sat up on the edge of her bed and shivered violently, her arms clutched tightly around her shoulders. She was weeping uncontrollably, stifling her sobs so as not to disturb Marti and Mitch who had come home late and were sleeping in the next room. She had awoken from a string of nightmares, each one more brutal than the last. They’d never been this bad before—the searing flashes of beasts chasing her, fangs tearing at her throat, her breasts, while she ran and fell and ran again with infinite slowness, blood everywhere, slick and stinking. She moaned, and clamped a hand over her neck where pain, real pain, throbbed and itched like a burn.

Her legs trembled as she walked to her dresser and fished out a small mirror from the top drawer. Standing in a rectangle of blue moonlight shining in her window, she held the mirror up and removed the bandage taped to her neck. She burst into fresh tears seeing the circular
knot of a gnarled sprig inked into the skin, still glistening with oil.

She lay back down on the bed, trembling, dazed. And a new string of howling nightmares began, one following another on its heels, giving her scarcely a moment to wake between them. She managed to rouse herself finally, and sitting up in the bed, her eyes full of the vision of blood and terror, she was plunged by memory into the life she had left behind with her father: the constant beatings, the rages, the verbal abuse, and then finally, the attempted rape in the motel.

You are shit
.
You are worthless
.
You’ll never be like her.
It’s your fault she left. Please baby, I need you. Be her for me . . .

In the dark, Sparrow gagged on the tormenting weight of the past. There had to be a way out of its powerful grip, but she couldn’t think what. There was only the abyss and the lashing sting of the tattoo on her neck.

O
n my return to Number 13, I was careful to avoid the chaos of before, walking round and about widdershins till I found the right number and the green door. I crossed and recrossed the streets many times for fear of someone stepping on my shadow or speaking my name aloud. I did not know if the humans in this great village had any magic—and none actually knew my name—but better to be safe than buried. This was not the Greenwood where I could touch elderflower if my nose began to drizzle or chew on a rosemary sprig if I feared my new lover might smell my morning breath and leave me for another. This was a new world of strange stone-and-iron buildings where folk spoke casual curses and did not honor the old gods. Who knew what they might do given the chance, or the push. I do not want to die here, so far from the green that nourishes me.

Yet, for all the peril of these strange streets, I did delight in finding the place the Man of Flowers sent me to, with its windows filled with pretty papers and writing tools. I stepped inside and smiled, relieved for a moment of my fears. Oh, the colors there, like a pied meadow. I finally chose papers that had names of growing things: lavender, marigold, madder, apricot, violet, straw, and a blue the shade of a robin’s egg. I also purchased a pen
with no iron in it that wrote with ink the color of an otter’s wet coat.

*   *   *

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK TO
my nest, safe at last, the rooms seemed airier than before, and then I noticed I’d left the windows wide open. Probably not a good idea, with chaos about and me without the protection of my magic, but there was a serenity here that made me think no UnSeelie thing had gotten in.

I put the papers and pen on the table next to the bed. However, it took me longer to decide where to keep the food. The cold locker seemed right for some of the fruit and the green leaves. But as for the herbs, I spread them about the windowsills, some to find the sun, and some the shade, where their homey magicks could do the most good. Across the windowsill, closest to the dove’s tree, I spread crumbles of bread as well.

Then I moved the downy mattress into the front room and lay down on it to rest, my rosy silk patch clutched in my hand. Walking so much on the hard human roads in this aging, aching body had left me more tired than I realized.

*   *   *

W
AKING
, I
FOUND THAT MY
old feathered friend from the tree was the first to find my offering of bread crumbs. I got up carefully, tiptoeing to the window where I watched him eat his fill. Afterward, I put my hands around his stout body, pinning his wings, but gently. I did not want to fright him, only get his attention. Most bird brains are not made for long thinking, though some have deep, almost fey thoughts.

“I need you to find my sister,” I said to him. “I do not know if she is in the Greenwood or out in the world, if she is in this village or another. She is a fey of uncommon beauty, with eyes that are berry black and a nose that uptilts. I will tell you her secret name.” I whispered it to
him; not Meteora’s true name of course, but her Name of Finding.

He cooed his acceptance, and gave me his name in return, Coo-coo-rico, which means Old Man of the Small Tree.

“Well, Coo-coo-rico, you will have many miles to go before you can rest again in your small tree.” Then I opened my hands, and he was gone.

I tried this with three more doves, two female and another male, who was smaller than the first, being no more than a yearling. They were called Fly By, Leaf By Linden, and Puff Boy. By the time I was done, the bread was all gone.

I had no idea how long the search would take them. If Meteora was safe and in the Greenwood, they would find her with ease. But what if she had to hide, having seen what the Queen had done to me? Or worse, what if she had been stripped of her own magicks and banished somewhere, too? This last did not bear thinking of. I forced myself to shut the thought away.

Doves
, I told myself,
think upon the doves
. I knew they were strong fliers. They can always find their way home. I had their names. And they were entirely loyal. More I could not do. The only problem was that they were often prey of greater birds, and if Meteora was far from here, there might be hawks or merlins or shrikes to contend with. That’s why I sent out four of them. I did not like putting them into danger, but they were all that I had, now that magic had been taken from me. And having fed at my hands, they and their small natures were mine to command. I could only hope that at least one of them was stalwart enough to find my sister.

*   *   *

T
O EASE MY MIND
, I sat down and made packets of thyme to carry in the seams of my clothes to keep me healthy and to help me make money. Though I was healthy enough for this new age, no more money had come to
me while I was out, and I had only copper coins left, change from the scrip that Jamie Oldcourse had given me. I did not know when I would see her again. Or indeed, if I wanted to.

I left the other herbs in their pots or in pieces on the windowsill: basil for the peaceful home, bay leaf against jinxes, marjoram to drive off those who would harm me and mine, rosemary for protection against evil and to give me dominance in my home.

I thought about speaking again to the Man of Flowers. I would do it because of the Law of Friendship and because he had given me a gift of a strange fruit with a star at its center. I knew not how he managed to sneak it into my paper sack. But now I was beholden to him.

Also, I wanted to say to him, “If I tell fortunes, and make predictions, can I be given money for this?” I knew that the Rom, the traveling folk who have small magicks, often do such a thing. They are the nearest of human folk to the fey. Telling fortunes and making predictions was a magic that did not depend on what had been stripped from me. I could still read tea leaves, palms, the pattern in a swirl of hair, the lines of a face. All such readings are accurate to a degree as long as the reader has some small part of fey blood.

Suddenly, I remembered how Meteora and I had teased the locals who came with gifts to our faerie market, telling them outrageous lies, the exact opposite of what we read on their hands, on their faces. But if I told fortunes properly here, perhaps I could make enough until Meteora and I could figure out how to get home again without suffering the iron rain.

If the Queen would let us back in.

Always, it came down to the Queen. I knew that. Meteora did, too. But oh, how I wished it were not true.

W
hen I woke the following morning, I was confused by the greening light spilling across the tousled sheets. It wasn’t until I rose, lips parted expectantly, that I realized I was not at home in the forest. An ancient ash tree sheltered the bedroom window and the morning sun was filtering through its lush canopy. Though comforted by its presence, I rose weary at heart to be so reminded of my loss.