Except the Queen (5 page)

She smiled. “That’s right. Like the golf at Saint Andrews.” Clearly something she said often. If it was an explanation, it meant nothing to me.

And so we met, my spirit guide to this new and awful Eden, and Miss Jamie Oldcourse became the first of my Helpers. For in this new world, one cannot navigate without them; the rules are so particular, so peculiar, and so dissimilar to the fey’s.

First there is the
Law of Papers
. One cannot move, buy food, nest, heal, or otherwise live without papers. And of course I had none.

Second there is the
Law of Restraint
. Humans believe in it, the fey do not. Why consider restraint when you have magic that can overcome all restraints at will?

Third, is the
Law of Friendship
, which seems to supersede
family, sept, clan, or court. It would be a long and hard while before I was to truly understand and trust this.

Three rules. Three unbelievable rules. But I quickly realized that as I was to live in this place for the unforeseeable future—and that time would be of the Queen’s choosing, not mine—I would have to learn these rules. Even if I did not believe them. This did not make me happy and I told the Glade so.

She laughed. Again that tinkling, bell-like sound. I have never liked bells. I told her that, too. Which made her laugh anew.

It was not a good beginning. But at least it was a start.

I
n the utter darkness of my rumbling prison I passed the longest night I have ever known, one without the comfort of stars or moon. A suffocating heat gathered in damp waves, infused with the sour stench of unwashed humans. I wept noisily until an unseen hand touched mine, sharp nails scratching the inside of my palm. Briefly her eyes flared into reddened coals, the dim light illuminating the hag’s grotesque face.

“Quiet,” she rasped, her breath pungent with wild garlic and leeks. Her callused hand cupped my cheek, holding it steady before gently raking her gnarled fingers through my sopping hair. “Show your courage, little one, and I will not harm you.”

In the dark, I obeyed, stifling my sobs. Instinctively, I opened my senses to the aura of the power beside me, but there was only a deep well of nothing. Beneath my breath, I whispered the spell of shielding to hide me from the bold touch of this stranger. The hands continued to comb my hair, the splayed fingers snagging on the knotted tangles. I tried the spell of stabbing pain, followed by a spell of bursting sight. Desperate when none of those worked, I spoke in a loud voice the spell of endless shitting.

This provoked a loud guffaw that ended in a snarl.

I froze as the hollowed eyes flared brighter. In the light of those terrifying eyes, I studied her more closely. Her misshapen skull was framed by matted gray hair. The bulbous nose cast a shadow over purple lips that parted to display two yellowed tusks, one broken and jagged. A thick tongue uncurled between rows of tarnished metal teeth and licked my cheek. I sat still, my stomach lurching at the overly familiar gesture. She sat back again, clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“Ah,
bednjaga.
It wasn’t enough to cast you out. They stole from you too.”

“Stole what?” I asked, forcing myself not to reach up and wipe away the damp trail of her tongue.

“Everything,” she answered. “Now you must rely on good manners. Something your folk have conveniently forgotten.”

“Who
are
you?” I demanded, my pride pricked by her insult. “Get away from me, you hearth-hag.”

Grinning wolfishly, the light of her coal-fire eyes glancing off the metal teeth, she held me fast by the wrist. “Manners!”

“Help me, help me, good folk,” I cried to the others who were hidden in the shadows. “Help me, I am being attacked!”

There was no answer. No rustle or movement, not even enough sound to indicate they’d heard but didn’t want to get involved.

“They sleep,” she said. “Maybe I eat later, maybe not.”

“I pray thee, Black Annis, daughter of Giants, do not eat me,” I burbled, suddenly very cold. “I am but small and insignificant.”

She threw back her head and howled with crackling laughter. Beneath the hard knob of her uplifted chin I saw a necklace of delicate finger bones threaded with knuckles small as pearls. My heart leaped in my chest.

“Not small anymore.” She poked me hard in the ribs.
“But I would not eat you. You are not the sweet flesh and wine-blood of man, which is what I crave.”

I lowered my head in a hasty bow of obeisance and real fear. Of course. I knew her now. “My abject apologies, oh most Glorious Mother of the Woods, Slayer of Wayward Children, and Undefeated Rival of Koschey the Deathless. I apologize. I did not recognize you before, not in this place of iron and wood. I am your humble servant,” I squeaked like a cornered mouse, and then dared her name. “Baba Yaga.”

“That is better,” she croaked, releasing me with a pat of her hand. She leaned back, all the while sucking on her lower lip, scraping her tusks against the purple flesh. She was wearing odd clothes—odd in the sense that she was wearing any at all—for the little I knew of her, Baba Yaga was not beholden to the fashions of the Seelie court or of man himself. She was old enough to have roamed pristine forests in gleaming nakedness when the first man and first woman still wore their skins in innocence. She could not forgive their betrayal, the death of those perfect forests, and now wore the skin of old age, of mortal corruption, to remind those who encountered her that she had not forgotten.

Serana and I had seen her once Under the Hill. Accustomed to the cloth of beauty and youth, we were goggle-eyed at her withered hide, her long sagging breasts hanging low over the bony chest. Her hips had jutted like the pelvis of a starved cow, the loose skin of her belly had lapped in folds over the tangled fur of her sex. But her spindled arms were wound with taut ropes of muscles, her hands broad as spades with thick fingers that ended in black nails, sharpened to razor points. At that time she had refused all gifts of clothing the Queen had offered her: the finely woven cloaks with silver clasps, the silken green gowns, the lace chemises and pretty petticoats.

Serana and I had talked about nothing else for days. How from a leather pouch slung low on her bony hips, Baba Yaga had withdrawn a necklace of little bones and
knuckles and placed it around her neck. The court had flinched at the sight of it. Even Red Cap, there as an emissary from the UnSeelie court, bowed his head before the mocking challenge in her flaming eyes. All fell back from her, all except the Queen who bloodied her fine garments carrying the carcass of a new-slaughtered fawn and placing it as an offering in Baba Yaga’s hands.

“Sleep,” Baba Yaga commanded as we rocked in the swaying box, riding over the iron rails. “Sleep, little one, no harm tonight.”

I willed my eyes shut, the red flare of her gaze still visible beneath the skin of my lids. Despite her saying I was not her type of meat, I waited in stillness for those taloned hands to tear me to tiny pieces as she had done the slaughtered fawn. We had stood speechless, watching her eat her fill, watching as she rolled the bones into the bloody hide, tying it with the sinews, tossing it into her mortar. She’d climbed in after it. Then, snatching up the heavy pestle, waved it in the air until the mortar hovered a few feet above the ground. The ancient doors that protected our court Under the Hill shattered with a huge blast of splintered wood. She steered her mortar through the ravaged entry, poling the air with the pestle until she found the open sky again.

Serana had said to me then, “Do not meddle in the affairs of
that
one, little sister. She will eat you whole and not even spit out the pips.”

*   *   *

I
SLEPT AS
B
ABA
Y
AGA
commanded, but it was a sleep plagued by fitful dreams, most of them about Serana.

Since first I awoke in the Greenwood, I have known my sister; known her in the shared heartbeat and the quickness of minds that needs no words. If I touched a web of hoarfrost on stilled water, she shivered. If she ate wild strawberries, I tasted the sweetness. We were joined by unbreakable bonds. Until now.

Why had the Queen separated us? Where had Serana gone? In my restless sleep I searched for her, but there
was not even a phantom echo of her presence. I was without her for the first time in my long life.

The dragon-train screeched and hissed and I felt the wheels grind as it came to a shuddering stop. I woke confused, blinded by a narrow band of dawn’s light that fell into our dark hold. My unknown companions slipped out quietly, only the dull thud of their footfalls on the ground below to mark their passage.

“We go now,” Baba Yaga said, roughly pulling me by the hand.

“Go where?” I stumbled as she dragged me to the open door.

“Other world.”

In the pale dawn, I was startled to see that Baba Yaga had transformed her harsh crone’s face into that of a smooth-cheeked elderly woman. The blazing eyes were now a faded blue, and her once unruly hair hung in a braid down her back. But she had not disguised those iron teeth. Perhaps she could not. She glanced both ways quickly before jumping down, and as she still held my hand, I was obliged to follow, though my landing was far less successful. I fell heavily and rolled, my free hand brushing against the iron rails. I screamed as it seared my skin, hot as a brand.

“Be quiet,” Baba Yaga snarled, and hauled me back up to my feet. “Don’t wake the dogs.”

It was too late. A door slammed open, a voice called out an angry warning, and dogs began barking wildly. We heard the sound of their paws scrabbling over the gravel.

“Go!” Baba Yaga shouted.

But I couldn’t. All around me the land was crisscrossed with bands of iron on which rested the hulking bodies of other dragon-trains. Steam hissed from beneath their bellies and the iron glistened.

“I cannot,” I answered. Iron screeched into my blood, drove pins into my joints, nails into my stomach. I swayed on my feet, gripped by waves of nausea.

Cursing, Baba Yaga lifted me easily and tossed me like a sack over her shoulder, my head dangling down
her back. She moved quickly across the iron grid, but not fast enough, for the dogs found her and as I lifted my throbbing head, I saw them bounding toward us, a man following close behind.

“The dogs . . .” I said weakly and groaned as she turned abruptly to face them.

Then I saw nothing, but I heard it: the squeal of the dogs as they rushed us, only to be tossed aside by the killing sweep of her hand, the razor claws gutting them as they leapt.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” the man cried. Baba Yaga reached into the pocket of her trousers, pulled up a carved comb and tossed it on the ground before turning to run. Clutching her shirt to steady myself, I glanced up from her bouncing gait and watched the ground churn into a wave of gravel that rose and then crashed down on our pursuer. As the earth tumbled over him, the man flailed his arms, struggling without success to stay above the wave of rumbling rock. I closed my eyes, unable to watch as the dirt enclosed him in its fist, silencing his screams for help.

*   *   *

B
ABA
Y
AGA RAN OUT OF
the field of iron rails, down toward a gleaming lake where rocks and boulders littered its shore. As soon as we reached a grassy beach by the water’s edge, she brusquely set me down on the ground and waited impatiently for me to stand. I was dizzy, a roar echoing in my ears that did not quite drown out the last cries of the doomed man. I rose again to my feet, swallowing hard at the taste of rust in my throat. Straightening my shoulders, I tried to look braver than I felt.

Grinning, Baba Yaga nodded approval. “Good. Tell me,” she asked, head tilting to one side, “do you know yourself now?”

“What do you mean?”

She reached out and pulled my cape from off my shoulders. “Look.”

I glanced down and gasped, seeing for the first time what
had become of me. Gone was my slender torso, the small hard breasts, the flat belly. Now I was stolid and thick-waisted, my breasts pendulous. My thighs had spread like yeasted bread, and creased over my knobbed knees. I lifted my hands, cried out at the web of blue veins, and the little gold rings embedded in the swollen flesh of my fingers.

Walking to the water’s edge, I leaned down to see my reflection in the calm surface of the lake. My face was wider, with cheeks and chin padded and softly wrinkled. My eyelids drooped sleepily, the lids darker and more deep-set. My hair once the color of acorns and burnished leaves was graying at the temples and crown.

I stumbled back from the water, shocked and then angry. “That miserable bitch. Wasn’t it enough to banish me? Why did she have to leave me . . . so . . .”

“Old?” finished Baba Yaga with a snort. “Foolish thing. You have been old a long time and still you know nothing. So, your Queen has done this to you? For what reason?”