Except the Queen (17 page)

I stopped, thinking of how to end the letter. I remembered the women who crossed the street rather than be near me and the man with the child giving me a grim look. And the waiter at the coffee shop who refused to look me in the eye, but spoke only to Jamie Oldcourse. Had my sister suffered such slights too? And I wrote, rather more strongly perhaps then I meant:

Though I said to forget the weeping girl, I wondered
if I would take my own advice and so easily forget Juan Flores in his shop. I suspected Jamie Oldcourse would tell me an emphatic no. She would say—all the bells in her voice tinkling—that we need all the friends we can get in this gray place. And after all, I
did
need him for information. So I was determined that in the morrow I would go to his shop again and with all the centuries of faerie powers of seduction behind me, make friends. After all, there was still much I had to learn.

I
awoke to a morning so sharp and clear, I thought at first I must be back in the Greenwood till I tried to rise and everything ached.

“Oh!” I said aloud, remembering who I was and what I was now. I took a long waterfall in the white tub, the water first hot and then cold but at last just right.

There is nothing like this hot waterfall in the Greenwood
, I told myself.
Or profiteroles
. I could still taste them and thought I might have one for breakfast. And so it was that I began to understand that not everything in the human world was bad.

Afterward, I dried myself, dressed in the same old dress, slipped into my shoes, grabbed my sachet of money and my letter, and went down the street to talk to the Man of Flowers. Flores was not there, but a nice lady the color of tree bark with surprised brows told me how to send an eagle letter.

“You can get a stamp and an envelope at the PO, dahlin’.”

“PO?”

She cocked her head to one side like a slightly demented dove. “Post Office.”

When I still looked puzzled, she added, “The mail place, honey. You ain’t from here now, are ya?”

I shook my head, and she explained in patient detail how to get there.

As it was some way to the place of mails, and I still had so much of the food Jamie Oldcourse had bought for me, I did not buy anything but two apples to eat along the way, with a promise to return. She smiled at me, her teeth white against the dark skin.

“You do that, dahlin’,” she said. “I’ll be here.”

“And the Man of Flowers?” I ventured.

“Old Juan? He’s home sick. So he says. But the Yankees are playing today, so you know . . .” And she winked at me, which changed her face from a stranger’s to someone so familiar and Puck-like, I almost hugged her even though I had no idea who the Yankees were or what they played.

“Now remember, dahlin’, it’s two times to the right, cross the street, and then left and . . .”

*   *   *

S
O
I
DID THE TURNINGS
she suggested, and found the place of mails with the big eagle sigil on the wall. I did not see any of my sister’s men in blue, but there was a lady behind some bars—caged like a farmer’s cows—who told me to put the letter into an envelope and seal it. I wrote Meteora’s new name and address on the front, my cow name and address on the back, paid one of my pieces of paper money for the
envelope
(that was the name of it) and the stamp and was given coins “in change.” The lady behind the bars promised me it would reach Meteora in two days.

“Two days?” Complaint edged into my voice. “But I thought this is eagle mail. The dove can do it in that time and for nothing more than some honey water and bread.”

She looked at me as if I were crazy and I looked at her as if she were mad. Then she glanced over my shoulder and said, “Next!”

For a moment we stared at one another, and then the man behind me tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m next,” he said, his face wreathed in anger.

“I am Mabel and I am here.”

The people behind him mumbled. One put her hand in the air, her middle finger extended toward me, which carried some dark magic at the core, though not enough to hurt me.

The impatient man stepped around me. The people behind him elbowed me aside. And so I was dismissed.

I walked out confused but still trusting that what Meteora said about the eagle mail was true, and that she would get my letter. However, I kept its contents in my head just in case, saying the words over and over as I walked along the street, not caring which way I was going or who crossed the road to get away from me.

M
y father left blood spoor at my door in the hind end of the night. It was a child’s blood, one not yet weaned. I had to follow; there was never any choice. Gods, how I hate him. And how he feeds on that hate.

The trail led me to the park as I knew it must. He does not like the gray buildings. They heap him. They leech him. They age him as they age all fey who settle here in the human towns. Green runs in our veins like sap. It keeps us young.

If I am ever to throw my father over, it will not be in the park but in the grayness or on the iron trail. Yet I went to the park. The blood called and I had to follow.

He waited beneath a linden tree, its heart-shaped leaves serrated like the teeth of little saws. I think he waited under the linden
because
of the leaves. He loves such metaphors. He is telling me by waiting there that I must do his bidding or he will put a saw to my heart. And I believed that. I am his child and his dog only so long as I am useful to him. After that, I am mere meat.

“Welcome, son,” he said in his growl of a voice. Sometimes he laughs, but not this time. I was glad of that. His laugh is worse than his growl. I hate these visits, but I cannot stop them.
Small favors
, my mother said before she died, meaning that he did not visit her anymore, had
already torn her up so much inside that there was nothing left but a hollow. I wish he would do such small favors for me.

He stood there, arms crossed. He did not open them to me. It was not that kind of a relationship. “Welcome once again.”

I nodded at him and could not help but smell the blood on his cap. It was more of the child’s blood. He always dips that awful cap in his kill. A woman will weep tonight, I thought. And then I thought—
many women will weep tonight. That is the human way. As my mother had wept. For herself. For me.

“I need you to seek.”

Of course he did. That is all I am to him. His hound. His Dog Boy. The one who seeks.

He told me no name. Names do not help me in the finding. But he gave me a taste of the scent he wanted me to follow. I was surprised. It was a strange combination of human and fey, a bit fetid as if the two had not combined well.

“Do not kill,” he said, “but follow closely. There is another who may come too, attracted by the light of your prey. Younger, sweet-fleshed and fey. Bring that one to me. And if you are successful, I will unleash you at last.”

I nodded and looked down at the ground, never into his eyes. Did he mean what he said? I doubted that. But I did not
fully
disbelieve. If I thought I would never be free of him, I would have to kill us both.

Instead I pissed on the roots of the linden as he watched. He laughed, thinking I did it to mark my territory, but I did it to dishonor him. He knew that as well, but would not let himself know.

Until it is too late,
I told myself. It was my only hope.

I
had been in Baba Yaga’s house for almost ten days. Three days addled and tripping over my once nimble feet, two days learning how to behave as a woman of my new age, four days waiting for mail that would not come, and seven nights awakening to the sounds of a young woman crying her heart out in the rooms below mine.

That night, I did what I had never done before and knocked on a mortal’s door.

“Who is it?” she answered, her voice hardly more than a rough whisper. I could hear the dog snuffling beside her.

“Are you all right?” I asked her. “Can I be of help? Your tears have drawn me here . . .”

Whatever else I meant to add was interrupted by the door being violently flung open. The girl stood before me, her green hair like a patch of forest grass that had not been rained upon in days. She was wearing only a long shirt with nothing under it, and she smelled ever so slightly of mold. Along the side of her neck I saw the mark of trouble etched in her skin. Swaying, one hand clutching the door as though she might fall, she closed her eyes.

“Perhaps I could make you some tea . . .” I reached out a hand to steady her.

Her eyes snapped open and she backed away from
me in alarm. “Go away, get out of here. I told you before just leave me alone. All of you, get out of my life.” She shut the door hard in my face and I heard her retching on the other side.

I stood there perplexed. I had never spoken to the girl, yet she spoke to me as if she knew me. I was ruffled, my pride insulted at being confused with someone else, someone clearly undesirable. But what could I do? My help had been refused so I returned upstairs.
She has the dog
, I thought, and put her out of my mind.

*   *   *

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY WAS FULL
of sun so I went in the afternoon to a coffee shop where I knew I could purchase a meal “to go,” then took myself to a nearby wooded park. I sighed as I sat down, not even minding the dampness of the grass beneath me. Reaching into a paper bag, I took out a little bundle wrapped in white paper and opened it with curiosity. All I could recall in the busy crush at the coffee shop counter was asking for something named “5,” and that it contained cheese and no animal flesh.

I smiled down at the sight of two slabs of brown bread, thickly buttered, layered with green sprouts, tomatoes, ruby onions, and slices of golden cheese. In my pocket I had two peaches that I had purchased the day before at the Co-op, and in the other pocket, three buttery sugar cookies, also from the Co-op’s bakery.

I felt elated basking in the late summer sunset, buoyed by an unexpected rush of happiness. Everything seemed more important, more precious, and more beautiful for its fleeting temporal nature. I watched young couples walking together on the little paths, suddenly aware of how many children and infants there were in this world. And how few had been in mine. Two towheaded girls, dressed in bright pink T-shirts proclaiming them “fairy princesses” skipped in front of their parents, stopping every now and then to pick the last of the dandelions, which they waved around as if they were wands capable of granting wishes.

Perhaps, it will not be so bad to live here
, I thought. I inhaled deeply, smelling the fusty dampness of the earth, the sugary sweetness of the little girls, the dusty fur of a dog that stopped to sniff the uneaten sandwich on my lap. There was chatter and talk all around me; the scolding of a squirrel, the squeals of delight as children ran through the park, the insistent calls of their parents reining them back to their sides. Someone was singing—or perhaps it was the noise that seeped through those little white buds the students liked to wear in their ears.