Except the Queen (20 page)

But not—I decide—this.

I found some newspapers in a wire basket nearby. I
placed them over her. From head to toe. To shield her. To hide her. To keep her warm. And safe.

I would guard her from afar, but I
would
guard her.

You may hit me with the rod, Father
, I think,
and try to leash my mind, but this time I shall not yield
.

I hope I am right. Or that he is wrong.

I
woke up hours later, something hard striking my shoulder.

“Get up, lady, you can’t sleep in the park.”

I sat up, blinking into the dawn. Papers fluttered off me like wings.

The man standing over me was dressed all in dark blue. He had a round face with a nose as flat as a squashed peach, and the same color.

I was not in my bed at the Number 13 house nor—even with the trees I could see around me—was I in my nest in the Greenwood. “Where am I?”

“Riverside Park,” he grumbled.

River side. Then I remembered the sluggish river. And something else.

“Music,” I said.

“Not a sound,” he answered. “Did you lose your iPod?”

It was as if we were speaking two different tongues. Perhaps I had been transported to yet another world even as I slept.

“Is it still the New York?” I asked.

“It’s not the New Jersey,” he said.

Suddenly, I recalled the red cap belonging to the piper, though I could not bring up either his face or his name. He had returned me my money. I touched my skirt and could hear the coins rattle.

“Lady, if you have money, what the hell are you doing sleeping out here in the park?” he asked. “Of course your iPod got stolen.”

“What is an iPod?” I looked around for the creature and saw nothing.

“What you been smoking, lady?”

“I do not smoke.”

“Well, you’re sure high on something. You still flying?”

I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “I have not been able to fly since the Greenwood.” And then I remembered the brownies and how their magic had made me laugh and cry simultaneously. Sticking out my tongue, I tried to taste them again, as if their magic still lingered in my mouth. But it was only a sour morning breath.

“Oh—just get out of here, before the kids come and I won’t take you in.” He pulled me to my feet. “Oh yeah, and no littering. Stow those papers in the can.”

I figured out he meant me to deposit the large flapping papers in a nearby bin. Then I walked in the opposite direction the blue man had taken. Nothing was familiar. Suddenly, I feared
where
I was, and
when
I was. Had I slept away the afternoon and the night? Or had the magic lost me more time than that? A year? A generation? All the tales of faerie time ran through me like a river. But the trees were still in their late summer sheen. I had to believe not
too
much time had passed.

Either I have lost a day or found one,
I thought, but three things were certain. First, humans have magic here in their village of New York. Second, I was suddenly and overwhelmingly hungry. And third, I was lost.

My heart beat as loudly as black Chim’s drum. Now the sour taste in my mouth was fear. I thought then to pray to the gods of the Greenwood, yet I doubted they could hear me here, even with the trees and flowers of the Riverside Park.

As I stood dithering on the walkway, turning this way and that, a stranger put a hand on my arm and said, “Are you lost, old dear?”

Old dear?
The woman was surely twice as old as I, her
face a mask of wrinkles with two dark eyes peering out like currants in a doughy bun.

“Thank you, good dame,” I said to her, “but I am looking for the Number 13 and the Man of Flowers whose store is filled with fruta. Do you know them? Or perhaps the place where the made-woman lies with her face near the water.”
If I could get back there
, I thought,
I might be able to find my way to my rooms.

“Goodness, where do you come from?” she asked. “Czechoslovakia or summat?”

Because she said
goodness
, I knew her for someone on the Seelie side, and answered back with the same good grace. “Summat.” It seemed a safe response.

She laughed. “Summit, New Jersey?”

Does everyone here know of this New Jersey?
And is it important?
I was mulling this over when she pointed to the corner, crooking her finger to indicate the direction. “I bet you mean that large statue called Memory; if memory serves, it’s that way. Hah!” She laughed at herself. “Sure, I can take you there. But I can’t do more than that. I’m on my way to see my grandchildren.”

The touch of her hand on mine led me to turn her hand over and touch the palm. There was a knot under the lifeline. “There will be one more grandchild,” I said. “At last, a girl.” She would not live to see it. But at least I could give her this.

“How do you . . . know . . .” her voice trailed off.

“I accept your help,” I said. Now that I would not be beholden to her for it. Though I would not have been beholden for long. The hand never lies, though the mouth can.

“Oh, I hope you’re right. After five grandsons, a girl would be . . .” Her wrinkles all seemed to turn up at the thought.

“I am always right,” I said.

*   *   *

W
E WALKED THE REST OF
the way in silence along the winding walkways until at last I realized where I was.
“This is it!” I said aloud. We were right across from the made-woman, and I stood still for a moment contemplating her. There was something infinitely sad about her that I had not recognized before. Perhaps the children bouncing on her side had distracted me. Perhaps the sound of the music.

I saluted the grandmother, who walked swiftly away from me, and then I retraced my steps from the day—or days—before. I remembered the way, going steadily along the walk where the young people on wheels had run by me, up the stone waterfall, over the road.

As I hurried along, I nodded at other walkers on the street as if I knew them, and a few of them nodded back.
Small magicks
, I thought.
A smile elicits a smile.

At the spindly tree not far from Number 13, nestling near one of the stinking bags, something caught my eye. I bent down, knowing that if one does not look, one can never find. It was a stone I had not seen before, blue and green. A cleansing stone. I picked it up and slipped it into my pocket. After all, one must never ignore a gift.

Then I headed toward the stairs up to my home.
Home!
I wondered that I could call it so, after only a day or two away, but home it had become.

I
meant to go back out and buy food, but after I washed my face and changed my clothes, I lay down for a moment, and woke at midnight. Turned over, and woke again into the brightness of day.

Raising the window, I leaned out to get fresh air. Below me, huddled on my doorstep was something large and dark. For a moment I thought it a bag of garbage that had broken apart. Angry that I would have to clean it up, I started to pull back inside, but the thing moved, shook itself all over, lifted its head up, and glared at me through befogged eyes.

Quickly, I made the sign against the Dark, the two fingers crossed before me—male over female, life over death—and hurried downstairs to shoo it away. When I came close, the creature said a single word in a rough voice, the sound a shoe might make over stone.

“Sanctuary.” The voice was human, young. Then he bent over again, put his head down on his arms, and promptly began to snore.

What else could I do
?
He had asked for sanctuary, an old fey custom that the humans have taken over, honoring it more in the breach than in the doing.

I raced to the Man of Flowers’ shop where I quickly gathered apples, nuts, goat’s cheese, eggs, milk, tea for a tisane, and an assortment of herbs, all ones I had not
bought before. I would think about what to do with them later. I gave all the money in the sachet into Juan Flores’ hands, glad that the strange bird-boy had pressed them back on me. “I was told you were sick. I feared for your safety.”

He nodded. “I had the flu.”

“Flu.” I rolled the word around in my mouth. “Is that like flying?”

“Only when the fever is at its height.” He smiled, almost shyly.

Even though I did not understand, I smiled back. Then I took a deep breath. “I like the bark-colored lady who was here the other day. Tell her I found my way to the mails with her good help.”

“The malls?” He shook his head. “We don’t have any around here.”

“The place of mails. Where one can send an eagle letter.” I saw understanding light his face.

He laughed, head back, full-throated and easy. “The bark-colored lady is named Nita. And I will give her your thanks, dona.” He handed me back money since the trade was not for all that was in my purse. Then he packed my purchases into two sacks and walked me to the door.

Hurriedly, I walked back to my home, juggling the packages.

The stairs were now in sight and I hoped I had purchased the ingredients to make something the scare-bird could keep down. Also I hoped to clean him up and make him safe. Sanctuary he had asked for and sanctuary he would get. I am still a good fey.

But when I got back to Number 13, the scare-bird was gone. The stairs were empty. He had left nothing behind but a stink.

*   *   *

I
T WAS ANOTHER TWO DAYS
before he returned, the same day that the Collectors came in their clanking vehicle and took away the black bags at last. People on the
streets celebrated, waving and laughing and cheering them on. The sun was out, making the streets suddenly sparkle.

I would have waved and danced with the others, but I had no time to spare. The scare-bird sat on my steps, went away and came back like a shadow, depending upon the height of the sun. He did not speak to me again in all that time, and I wondered if I had simply misheard the word
sanctuary
. I tried several times to coax him upstairs, but he was like a wild thing that would not be caged. He was much taller than I but thin, his dark hair tangled practically beyond redemption, with a shadowy beard on his chin. He shivered in his frequent sleeps on the steps, moaning and making sounds but no real sentences.

So I left him tisanes and little packets of cheese and sliced apples, the goodness of each leaching into the other. He must have eaten what I set down beside him, for there was nothing left, not even crumbs for the birds or the persistent gray squirrel that haunted my stoop whenever the scare-bird took off. Indeed, the birds and creatures seemed frightened of him. Any blanket or toweling I put around him, he shrugged off. I never left either blanket or towel outside, but took them back inside, washing each thoroughly before using them myself.

Once I touched the scare-bird as he dreamed, picking up his hand to read the palm. The tremors that ran through him would have made a mountain collapse. His blood was filled with bile, the lifeline kinked like a broken promise. I should have let him go, but stupidly I had already made him mine.

And then a man with the sigil of an eagle on his breast came to the step as I was sitting there next to the boy. He thrust three envelopes into my hand. Two were not for me, but one had Mabel’s name. I tore it open and read it right there.

I wondered that Meteora had not turned that dreadful green-haired girl into a toadstool and then remembered that she could not.
Woeful offspring of misery
indeed. I put a hand up to my own neck as if tracing an
UnSeelie tattoo. I could not believe that all this was coincidence. Chim the dark prince, May who cooked magical food that made two days and nights fly by. And perhaps even this scare-bird, though he seemed more lost than wicked. But what were the connections—besides evil being attracted to good, besides all of us being fairies thrust out of Faerie into a world of iron, stone, and dark?

Oh my sister
, I thought,
you have the weeping girl, I have the dreaming boy. What are we to make of this? Everything—or nothing
?