Except the Queen (28 page)

Bending over the book again, Sparrow read the case study of a woman who was convinced she’d lived in the fairy world as a child. She described the splendor, the music, and the unbearable longing that filled her heart when she was unable to find the door into Faerie again. Sparrow knew how the woman felt. Twice she’d run away from foster families. Good people but at a loss how to cope with her. Her nightmares unsettled the other children, her shy silence taken for sullenness. But when she’d run back to the woods, something
had
changed. The animals fled from her, the nights were cold, and no food or clothing appeared in the morning. The door to Faerie was truly shut. She was suddenly more alone than she’d ever been in her life.

I stink of the city
, she’d thought then. But soon after, she discovered that while the door was closed to her, it was not closed to
them
. She saw and heard what other humans did not: the hooves beneath the long hem of a pretty girl’s skirt; a cocky young man’s gleaming yellow
eyes as he strolled under streetlights whistling; the small voices that chattered in the rosebushes, in the branches overhead. She had followed a man and a woman one winter day because the man’s face wavered as he looked at the woman. The woman saw only the handsome face, blond curls over a broad forehead and a white-toothed smile. But when he tilted his head to the side, Sparrow saw the coal-black eyes, hollowed cheeks and fangs. She wanted to warn the woman, but didn’t know how without calling attention to herself. So she followed them, but only a little way for the man raised his head and looked behind him. Sparrow ducked into a shop, terrified, for she had seen the horns curled around his temples, and the red snake of his tongue as it tasted the air. That was when she realized
they
hunted here, just as humans hunted in the woods.

As Sparrow scanned the pages of the case studies, she realized the one thing she’d learned on her return to the human world, and that was how to lie. It had saved her from the well-meaning but clueless therapists and the patronizing foster parents, but not from the hunters and creatures who prowled around her in the bars, on the streets, or anywhere she stayed too long.
They
knew she was not difficult but different. And they resented it. She was like the midwife in the story called to assist at a fairy birth who was given the ability to see into the fairy world only to have her eyes gouged out later by a malicious fey.

“Screw that,” Sparrow murmured. It was time to even the score somehow.
Not just for me but for all those hunted women
. She would arm herself with whatever was necessary and go after bastards like Hawk. It wasn’t actually murder, was it? After all, he wasn’t human, of that she was certain. And if others followed . . . ? Sparrow shrugged. She’d worry about that when the time came.

Checking her list of items, she realized that most of the things on it were easy enough to find: Saint-John’s-wort, thyme, and comfrey for one’s pockets; red verbena, white daisies, primroses, and peonies to shield one from
fairy mischief; stakes made from elderberry, ash, and juniper for protection. Iron she could find down by the train tracks, or at any construction site.

And the last thing she needed was silver. A bit of pure silver. The only charm capable of severing the life from that murderous son of a bitch.

“
H
ey, Sophia,” Raul called, sauntering between the bins of stacked vegetables toward the little counter, where I was busy refilling the glass jars from newly arrived bags of fresh herbs. I turned to smile at him, thinking wistfully that he reminded me of someone in the Greenwood.

“It’s good to see you,” I said, meaning it. “How can I assist you?”

“Actually, I’m here to thank you for assisting us,” he said with a polite nod of his head. “Sales are up in the herbal shop, Sophia. I gotta hand it to you. You’ve really turned it around.”

“Julia works very hard too,” I said, wanting to be loyal to her.

“I know, but everything changed when you came. So the Co-op board wants to offer you a bit more money and a bonus for everything you’ve done for us. Make it all aboveboard.”

“Is this to make sure I stay?”

Raul nodded, sheepishly. “Yeah. But don’t say anything about this, okay? I wouldn’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt.” He was looking toward Julia who was busy stocking boxes of tea in an adjacent aisle.

“Of course, I understand,” I murmured, as he handed me an envelope, which I took with a little nod of thanks.

After he left, I peeked inside and saw the bundle of green bills. Green for the color of the forest, green for the color of the fey, green for joy. I was happy as a tick with my newfound wealth and decided that I would share my good fortune, for to be favored by the Goddess is an invitation as well as an obligation to be generous.

*   *   *

I
LUMBERED THROUGH THE PARK
that afternoon, my hands firmly clasped around the handles of two overflowing cloth sacks. I came to a towering ash tree, set the bags down and groaned as I settled onto the damp grass beneath the tree. It didn’t take long before I heard the rustle of wings, the soft chirrups and clicking beaks in the branches above me. I glanced up at the crows, their heads downturned and cocked, the better to view the feast below.

“It’s nicer than the rank garbage behind the shops, is it not?” I asked. One flew off the perch and landed on the grass in the shadows. Lifting its wings and shrugging off the feathers, it became a boy in the dappled light.

“Depends,” Awxes said, striding toward me. “A crow likes his food riper than a boy. You’d be surprised what a crow will eat when hungry.”

“Will this do then for a boy?” I asked, and handed him one of the wrapped sandwiches from my bag.

He held the sandwich to his nose and inhaled its aroma. Between two pieces of dark wheat bread, spread with mayonnaise and mustard, were thin slices of a rare beef, seasoned with garlic and pepper. I would never have eaten such animal flesh, but I was neither a hungry boy, nor a crow—both of whom enjoyed such fare.

Awxes put the sandwich down and gave me a rare smile. His dark eyes glowed beneath the arches of his black brows, and his teeth were white against his nut-brown skin, which was etched with faint white scars. “It’s
good,” he said shyly. “It will do very well for a boy. And his friends,” he added, beckoning the pair of crows still waiting in the branches above. They flapped their wings and drove their bodies into the thickest part of a leafy bush, startling a little scream out of a red-faced woman who was running on a nearby path.

A moment later the two girls emerged, scrambling over one another to join Awxes and me at our meal. They touched everything with their fingers, as though it might disappear as treasure does when one wakes from a wishful dream.

“Go on then, eat, for you have earned it,” I said.

“How so?” asked Awxes. He used the tail of his black T-shirt to wipe his chin clean of plum juice.

“I know it must be terribly dull following me each day. And regardless of your purpose, it is a thankless job, for I am of no importance really. And yet someone has set you this task.” I turned to the younger girl, her wheat-colored hair braided with stray feathers.

“But you ain’t
nobody
,” she said, licking the crumbs from the corner of her mouth. “You’re special . . .”

“Hsssst!” The older girl put a finger to her lips. “Tell nothing.”

“I agree,” I said with a smile, trying to hide my burning curiosity. “Be quiet. Eat instead.” I leaned back against the tree, peeled the paper off of my own sandwich of cheese, tomato, and something called pesto, and began to eat.

And quiet they were, solely intent on the food. Licking their lips, wiping stray mayonnaise and mustard off their cheeks with the back of a dirty hand, they sucked plum pits, crunched the hard flesh of the apples, and gulped down the bottles of fresh water. However, they did not gobble the cookies, but slowly savored their sweetness. Then they lay down on the grass and slept.

Studying the napping children, I wondered whose darlings they had once been? When had they become exiles from their mothers’ arms? What names did they
carry then? And why had it never occurred to me before that such a taking might be as cruel for them as my own forcible exile? But what had been done to them was permanent now. They had been changed too much to ever be fully human again.

And why, oh why are they tracking me?

Awxes sat up, yawned widely and gave me a little scowl. “What are you thinking? I can hear the scritching of your thoughts from here.”

“Do you remember your parents?” I realized with a shock that it was a question I would never have even considered asking in the Greenwood.

A shadow crossed his face. “Not much. Sometimes I think I hear my mother’s voice calling me, but it has been so long, I can’t be certain. She’s dead by now anyway.” Awxes shrugged it off. “Don’t fret about us. When this is over we’ll all be back in our beds again.”

“What is
this
?” I asked, hoping for an answer.

“If we speak of it, we’ll never get home,” he replied, his brow pinched.

“Where
is
home?”

Awxes looked up and silently pointed into the dense, green canopy of trees.
The Greenwood
he meant, but would not speak the word for fear of losing it.

“But you are human,” I argued.

“And you are fey,” Awxes said. “And yet look how fat and happy you are here. You make money now instead of magic.”

Well, up to a point, he was right. I had made a nest here and in my deepest heart I knew that here would I remain for as long as the Queen willed it. And by the time she changed her mind, this mortal body would surely be dead.

But did I really care? The bustle of the Co-op had brought me unexpected friends, a community of sorts to which I could contribute, if not confide. I had learned how to order a decent cup of tea at the coffee shop and now, they never asked me what I wanted, but brought it to me with a smile. At the Farmer’s Market I had become
friends with Leila, a woman of middle years and dirt under her nails who grew the finest herbs and kept bees that produced a dark, flowery honey as potent as liquor.

“You are right,” I said, “perhaps I have changed in these weeks as you have changed. And though I have no power to return you to that home you seek, let me give you a token to remind you of it.” I reached my hand into the front of my blouse—one of Baba Yaga’s bizarre flowery affairs—and dug around in my bra.

The girls giggled at the sight of me rooting in my blouse until I pulled out the folded wad of white silk. At once the air was filled with the aroma of lavender, hyssop, bay, and the pungent sap that comes only from the budding tips of the needled pines deep in the Greenwood. To me it smelled of my dam; to them, it smelled of Faerie.

I unrolled the fabric and tore it into small pieces, one for each of them. They took the pieces eagerly and held them over their faces, inhaling deeply.

“Thank you,” the oldest girl whispered, tucking the scrap beneath her furred cap.

The smaller girl quickly undid a braid and then entwined the fabric as she rewove her hair.

Then in turn, the girls leaned forward to give me a kiss of thanks on each cheek before plunging headfirst into the bushes.

Only Awxes remained, still staring at the small white square of fabric.

“I will tell you this,” he said. “You may think yourself hidden among humans, but you are not. Whether fair or dark, they are coming, drawn by the blood that sings in your veins. Be watchful.”

“But why me?”

“It may not be you they seek, but you they will find.”

Then he stood and followed the others into the shelter of the brush. A moment later three crows burst from the thicket of green leaves and rose quickly above the trees. But not before I noticed that each now wore a white patch of feathers on their wings.

*   *   *

A
S
I
WALKED HOME
, I pondered over what Awxes had revealed—which was little enough. None of this made sense, unless perhaps Serana and I were meant to serve as the bait for a larger prize. It was not unknown for Seelie and UnSeelie to use worthless fey in their contentious battles for power.

So who might be using us now?
And for what purpose?
I shook my head, unused to such hard thinking. I tallied up the fey encounters I had experienced since my banishment, searching for answers. There were the changelings waiting for me in the forest the night I fled who followed me still. Baba Yaga, whose hands reached down to pull me into the dragon train.
Should I count these in my favor?
I thought I must until I remembered it was not I who mattered if I was bait. Bait is supposed to sit quietly in the snare. Had I not encountered Baba Yaga, I might well have kept running instead of roosting innocent as a hen on her nest.

Had the merchant sold the girl a mandrake, knowing it would come to me? Had Red Cap been looking for me on that street so near to the Co-op?