Except the Queen (36 page)

“What are you doing?” she asked the image, still gently squeezing the underwear in the soapy water. The face smiled back, giddy and ridiculously happy, a new emotion for her.

Two days ago, when she’d gone to the Market in search of the arum, there were so many different vendors hawking herbs and wild plants that she’d spent the better half of the morning strolling through the individual stands, chatting with organic gardeners, and rolling leaves between her palms to loose the aromatic oils. A farmer’s wife had talked her into buying a bouquet of early fall flowers, yellow black-eyed Susans and purple
cone flowers, sprigs of orange bittersweet, and a handful of blue delphiniums. Another had convinced her to purchase a handful of dried lavender. “Sprinkle the buds in your clothes,” she said and winked.

Finally, in a small stand nestled beneath a huge spreading oak, Sparrow found the arum. She’d gone online at the bookstore to make sure she knew what it looked like, and she could not imagine why Serana had considered it so dangerous. And yet when she saw its single funnel-shaped blossom, green on the outside and burnt red on the inside, sheltering the tall brown stamen, she felt her pulse race. The closer she got to the plant, the harder it was to breathe properly. And yet the feeling was pleasant, even heady. She’d touched the waxy leaves, and leaned down to sniff the blossom, hoping that—like the herbs—it too would have a lovely aroma. A faint perfume, sweet and dusty, emanated from the yellow pollen packed against the base of the upright stamen. Inhaling deeply, she was suddenly warm all over, smiling.

“Are you interested?” asked the vendor. “Not too many are turned on by this beauty.”

Sparrow thought him attractive enough: reddish hair that fell in loose curls to the collar of his shirt, a squared jaw, hazel eyes. His teeth were white and much too even to be entirely natural.
Not the real deal
, she found herself thinking,
a suburban boy slumming on the land. In another year he’ll be sick of peddling plants and go back to law school.

“Yeah. I have a friend who will dig it,” she said.

She studied him as he bagged the pot in a paper bag. Next to Robin’s angular face, with the narrow gap between his front teeth, and the dark haunted pools of his eyes, this spoon-fed boy in a farmer’s dirt-splatter T-shirt was too perfect and therefore uninteresting. She gave him a full smile, conscious that he was staring at her body. For once, that didn’t frighten her. In fact she let her hips sway as she walked away carrying the plant.

*   *   *

S
PARROW HADN
’
T BEEN SURE TWO
days earlier why the arum was dangerous. It simply felt right. Especially when she’d seen Robin sprawled on the porch taking a break from gardening.

When he saw her, he straightened up. She approached carefully, like a temple acolyte bearing an offering. He’d opened his hands to receive the gift even before he
knew
it was a gift.

“For you,” she said in a husky voice. “For the garden.”

“Thanks.” He opened the bag to glance inside. His head shot up and his eyes gleamed. “
Really
, thanks.”

She’d nodded then, afraid to say more and started toward the stairs, feeling the heat from his body on her thighs. At the threshold of the door, even though she tried not to, she’d turned and looked over her shoulder. He’d been staring at her, holding tightly to the bag.

*   *   *

T
HAT DAY
, S
PARROW HAD WATCHED
Robin from her balcony. Watched him dig in the garden, watched him throw back his head to laugh at something Jack said, watched him tease Sophia. She’d seen Sophia’s eyebrows shoot up to the crown of her russet hair and the alarmed expression on her face when Robin showed her the arum.

So,
Sparrow thought,
everybody knows it’s here to start something.
Even Jack knew, for he’d pulled Sophia aside to whisper in her ear and nod at the plant.

And on the following day, when the afternoon sun had been at its longest point, Robin had looked up and acknowledged her where she stood, leaning into the warm, burnished light. He hadn’t said anything, just stared with a smile that was at once hungry and sorrowful. She knew that feeling and as the heat flared in her chest, a ribbon of gold dust lifted from the red throat of the arum flower, swirled around the turgid stamen, and cast its pollen over the garden. She inhaled and caught the familiar scent of its dusty perfume, tasting its sweetness on her lips.

*   *   *

A
T THE BATHROOM SINK
, S
PARROW
squeezed the last of the soap and water out of her lace panties and bra and hung them to dry. Standing back to look at them, she rolled her eyes, abashed at the sight, and yet wanting to somehow be ready. She hoped that for once she might feel beautiful. She hoped that making love might be as lovely as she imagined it could be. That for once the invitation to sex would be about sharing not owning, about tenderness and not violence.

Turning off the bathroom light, she returned to the bedroom and shimmied into her old cotton nightgown with the border of white embroidery. Although it was falling apart at the hem and neck, the flimsy fabric around her legs made her feel feminine. And desirable.

As she lay down on the bed, hands resting lightly on her breasts, with Lily dozing the floor, Sparrow waited for Robin’s fiddle to play. The melodies were soft that night, and insinuating. As were her dreams.

I
was asleep and then suddenly awake, all parts of me. Getting up, I played the fiddle softly for a few minutes, then went downstairs past her door.

Listening at the keyhole, I could hear the dog’s paws trembling on the floor as she raced through a dream forest chasing a hare. She houghed a little, then settled. I could not hear her mistress, though, and while I longed to tap on the door, to go into the room, which would be hot with Sparrow’s breath, I dared not. She needed the healing sleep.

So I tiptoed outside, sat for a bit on the front stoop, all a-tremble. Looking up at the moon, the stars, Mars with its bloody halo, I promised myself not to think on my father, lest it call him to me. But I sniffed the air. It was free of everything except the scent of Sparrow—heather and heat.

I wiped a hand across my brow because I was sweating profusely even though the night air was cool. So I decided to walk swiftly around the garden in the hope that the odors would take me out of my fevered longing.

The ground was still warm beneath my bare feet, the overturned earth comfortable between my toes. In the small, puzzling breeze, the smells of the newly planted flowers and herbs were almost overwhelming. But then the arum, brought hungrily to life under the moon,
forced its violent, acrid smell into my nostrils. I could feel it traveling down into my throat. Dragon Root. Wild Turnip. Cuckoopint. Devil’s Ear. It was all of that and more. For some reason I began to weep, though the way a dog does, without actual tears.

“Boy, why are you crying?” She whispered it, the sound caressing my ears.

I spun around. Sparrow was standing there, haloed by moonlight, in a long, white, sleeveless, slightly tattered nightgown, the neck scooped low in front. I could see the mounds of her breasts, and below the shadow of her pubic hair. The faded tattoos on her arms took on an unearthly look, as if the snaky forms were beckoning to me.

“What makes you think I’m crying?” I asked.

“Sorry. It’s a line from a book I love.” She smiled. I could not tell if she was mocking me or simply stating a fact.

“What book?”

“A book called
Peter Pan
. I was given it in one of the twenty or so foster homes I was put in. The only halfway decent one, actually. I took the book with me when I ran away.” She smiled. “I
always
ran away.”

I stepped a moment closer to her, hoping, praying she would not run away now. “Do you still have the book?”

She didn’t step back. “Of course not. That was years ago.”

“I thought you were asleep, that the fiddle might have soothed you enough to . . .”

“I needed to think. I was sitting on the dark side of the porch when you came out. I watched you walk out into the garden.”

I hadn’t smelt her. Or rather, I thought I was carrying the smell from upstairs. I hadn’t even heard her.
What kind of a tracker . . . ?
It was that bloody arum that fuddled me.

Well, no more
, I thought, taking another step toward her. Now I could truly smell her, the heather, the blood under the fragile shield of skin. The sour/sweet smell between her legs, wet, welcoming. I smiled back thinking
that the heat was not just coming from me. She was as aroused as I.

And then she pushed into my opening arms and we kissed, mouths open, tongues thrusting, until we were both so dizzy with the kisses, we sank down into one of the furrows, first she on top of me, then me on top of her.

I waited till she had opened entirely like a flower, pushed her gown above her knees, so tight and taut from my desire and the arum and the moon and the heather smell, I thought I would burst before entering her.

“I am a . . .” she whispered, “I never before . . .”

But I already knew. Virgins simply smell different, new, honest. And then her legs went around my back and we were both ready. I was on my knees and about to . . .

She screamed.

Someone tumbled across my shoulders. There was a startled laugh. A shout.

Sparrow pushed herself away from all of us, her gown once again covering her long, beautiful legs, and she was away, like a deer in the forest pursued by dogs, though none of us—not me or the old lady or the Jack—tried to follow.

T
hat damned stalk festered for two nights in the garden. That was all it took for its power to wake the dragons in us all.

Walking out that second night, Jack and I stumbled over Sparrow and Robin in the gardens, twined as in Serana’s vision. I laughed in delight and embarrassment, trying to extricate myself. But Sparrow rose from the soil, drew her clothes about her in dark shame and fled before I could stop her. Robin lay there erect, miserable and moaning in the moon.

If only Sparrow could have trusted me. If only she could have believed that such a joyful sight is as old as earth to me. But she did not trust, and ran from us, locking herself away.

In the morning I stood on the landing before her door trying to find the words that might soften her humiliation. I left without knocking, feeling strongly the bolt and lock that shut all of us out.

That night I listened for sounds of her in the room below, as I am sure did Robin, but it was quiet. And after, she would walk the dog, go to work, come home, feed the dog, and then leave again. I caught a glimpse of her on the sidewalk one evening and was shocked to see her looking more like a common tart than the young woman I knew.

I fumed, full of doubt and worry. Was
she
the one who had read my letter? Did she tear away the lines of warning? Was the arum a gift to Robin from her own hands? Or was she being used by another to sow discord?

My anxiety grew even more when Serana’s pigeon arrived on my sill bearing the awful news, the missing lines that warned of the arum. As well as telling of the Queen seeking someone in the streets of a mortal city. Like Red Cap, like the glamoured Highborn. Serana’s words of warning deepened my resolve to watch over these two nest-starved birds. It was the least I could do for allowing the arum to root in the garden.