In The Coils Of The Snake (18 page)

She mulled over what
she had learned from Seylin’s conversa
tion.
The elf lord hadn’t enslaved her after all. He had been so angry
about her suicide plan, so insistent that she was
a child who needed
care. He had clearly just done what he thought was
the responsible
thing to do. She felt
grateful for this, and she supposed she shouldn’t
have been so curt and
uncivil to him. He had given her a second chance to think things over.

Well, she had done
it, and there was no avoiding the obvious
conclusion.
She would have to go back and face her family and find
a new life among
human beings. That would be hard, but Catspaw
was
right: she was strong, and she would survive. Marak had raised her to be both
brave and practical. There was no sense putting it off.

The
elf lord was copying his spell book when Miranda
approached.
Looking at his pale face, she felt a wistful pang. She would never see anything
like him or his elves again, and she was sure that she would never forget him.

Nir glanced up at
his prisoner’s purposeful expression. Then he
put
down his quill and waited. He already knew what she was
going to say.

“Thank
you for saving my life,” she began. “You were right about
my killing myself; it would have been evil and absurd.
You were right,
too,
that I should have been at home. I’m ready to go back to my own
world
now.”

“Your world,
Sika,” murmured the elf lord. “And what world is that?”

“The daylight
world,” she answered, thinking of the warm sun overhead, the greens and
browns of the trees, a pale blue sky with clouds of white and gray and
lavender. She couldn’t wait to see the sun again. That would make up for a
great deal.

Nir winced at the
happiness that shone in her eyes.

The little boy lay
in his tent in the predawn hush, listening to her argue and beg. “I don’t
belong here,” she said, her soft voice pleading. “Ash, let me go back
to the daylight.”

Father’s
voice followed hers, quiet and sad: “Will the daylight hunt for
you?
Will the sun bring you food?”

Nir
shook off the memory with an effort. “You told me that you
had
no people,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t think
I did,” she said, rather embarrassed. “I thought I
was too good for them, I suppose. I’d been raised
all my life to think
of myself as
something extraordinary, someone set aside for a special
destiny. Marak
told me that, and I believed him.” She sighed. “I thought he could
read it in my face.”

“The goblin
King is right,” remarked the elf. “You aren’t ordi
nary, and you have a special destiny. I’m glad
that you were raised to
know it. It
may be the only thing that brings you comfort in your life.”

Miranda stared at
him, taken aback. She couldn’t imagine what
he
might mean. “I don’t care anymore,” she assured him. “I’m ready
to
go back to my family whether I’m ordinary or not. Would you
please remove the magic now?” She rubbed her
hand over the stars at her wrist.

The elf lord looked at them, too, and rubbed his own
finger over
the stars. “I can’t remove them,”
he said quietly, “and neither can anyone else. Only time can take them
away.”

This shook Miranda
at first, but she rallied, determined to be logical. “Even if they’re
permanent,” she pointed out, “they don’t have to keep me here.”

“It is true
that the stars can let you leave camp,” he agreed.

“Then
you can just do that,” proposed the girl. “And if they keep
protecting me from harm at home, then that would be a
good thing.”

Nir studied her
moodily for some time, still rubbing his finger over the stars. Once again, he
saw no way out of his dilemma.

“You
don’t understand,” he said at last. “I’m not concerned
about
the magic. I would let you leave if I could, but I can’t let you go. You’re too
important to the elves.”

Miranda stared at
that unearthly face, at those beautiful, unread able black eyes. He could read
her own expression easily enough. She looked absolutely horrified.

“Important
how?” she demanded. “Why should elves care about
an
ordinary human?”

Nir angrily
considered the suffering he was causing. “Not ordinary. Extraordinary,”
he corrected.

Miranda hesitated,
trying in her shock to frame an argument to
refute
him. She didn’t know what to say. After all, Marak had raised
her to be
extraordinary.

“But I don’t
have to be,” she pleaded at last, in defiance of both great lords.

“You
already are,” he answered. “That’s what my magic tells me.”

There was nothing
more to say. Miranda just turned and left.
Tired
and numb, she wandered away and dropped down on the
grass by the river,
listening to its soothing rush and gurgle in the
darkness. The tangle of trees closed around her, cutting off the light
of the stars. Miranda stared up at the pale
undersides of leaves
caught in the bracelet’s weak light. Its faint
reach was so short, and
the night was so
immense. Blackness, all around her. A world with
out the sun. She couldn’t
go home because she was extraordinary. She was where she would always be.

You have to get used
to it,
gloated
a silky voice in her mind.
You’ll live your whole life in the dark.

Miranda
flinched, trying to dodge the memory. Would she never
be free of her
mother? Unbidden, her mind went back in time. She was standing in total
darkness, pounding on that locked door, begging to be let out.

“You’re cursed,” purred that
voice. “You’ll never see daylight again. You can’t imagine the things that
live in the darkness. They’ll be your only friends.”

The little girl was hysterical,
wailing and screaming, with no dignity left at
all. Anxious, whimpering, late into the night. Waking up
to find that he had
come. Pulling her
pillow over her head. Afraid to walk down the hall in the darkness. Afraid to
face him again.

She heard the bedroom door open and felt him
sit down on the bed. “How’s my little girl? Miranda? What’s wrong?”

Sobbing, Miranda threw herself into his
arms, telling him of her childish treason. In broken sentences, she confessed
all her sins against him. But here was no icy contempt, no harsh disapproval.
She was cradled in warm arms, safe from the darkness.

“I
shouldn’t cry, ” she bawled helplessly. “You aren’t raising a
crybaby.”

“It’s all
right, ” he consoled her. “‘Sometimes crying is good.”

He waited until she had cried herself out,
and then he had her tell him what
had
happened. His calmness steadied and comforted her. Whatever he might
have
thought of Til’s behavior didn’t show on his face.

“Your mother can’t
curse you,” he explained. “You’re protected against that.”

“But she knew my
future,” Miranda protested tearfully. “She did. She
said
so!”

He held her away,
studying her face. He had never looked so wise.

“She didn’t know
your future,” he declared finally. “I do. I’m not raising my
little
girl to be trapped in the dark like a ghost. You have a special destiny, and
that’s why I teach you so many things. I’m raising you to be a King’s Wife, and
that’s what you’re going to be.”

“A Kings Wife?”
She thought about that and felt a spark of hope and
courage.
“Just like in the stories? I’ll marry a prince and live happily ever
after?”

“Just like that, “he promised,
smiling. “Except that he’ll be a King.” And he tucked his little girl
back into bed.

“You’re a King,
” she remarked hopefully as she settled onto her pillow.

“And about
fifty years too old for you,” he chuckled. “You’ll have to wait for
the next King. Sleep well, Miranda. I’ll stay here to watch. You’re going to
have nice dreams.”

Miranda found that
she was crying. All her love and faith in
Marak
and all his love and faith in her had turned out to be for nothing. She would
never make him proud, and there would be no living
happily ever after.
In the end, it was her mother who was right.

A
hand touched her arm in the darkness, and she jumped in
alarm.
The elf lord stood beside her.

“There’s
nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Nothing comes into
an elf camp but elves and those creatures the
elves bring. Not even a
fly or an ant
can come in. Nothing can hurt you here.” Miranda
could have pointed
out that her mother still had an uncanny ability
to hurt her, but she couldn’t speak because of the lump in her throat.

“It’s time for
the morning meal,” he noted. Miranda just shook
her head. He took her hand, and she stood up, the stars on her wrists
and
ankles lighting in protest.

“You
don’t have to eat, but at least come spend time with us,” he
said,
and the silver stars winked out.

Later
that morning, she sat at the opening of the tent for as long
as she could to see the colors return to the woods.
Squinting through
the bright light,
Nir watched her and wondered how the daylight world looked.

• • •

Seylin stood outside
the goblin King’s bedroom door and gave a gentle call in his thoughts. If the
King was asleep, he could wait until morning to hear the bad news. But after a
minute, Marak
Catspaw emerged, wearing a
shirt and breeches of dark blue elf
cloth that Irina had made for him.
Seylin wasn’t surprised. His
monarch always
dressed like an elf at night because the stretchy cloth
was so
comfortable to sleep in.

The
King motioned for silence, and they tiptoed to a small study.
Catspaw
closed the door and sank down wearily into a chair. “She couldn’t sleep,”
he sighed. “Or rather, she wouldn’t sleep. Finally I
used magic on her, but she fought me for a long
time. I’m impressed
at her strength. She has a lot of magic, and she isn’t
afraid to use it. She’s resting now, but not very well. Where’s Miranda?”

“Still at the
elf camp,” said his chief adviser slowly. “I couldn’t bring her home.”

“What do you
mean, you couldn’t bring her home?” demanded Catspaw. “I’ll go
tomorrow, then, and
I’ll
bring her home.”

“In
the first place, she refused,” observed Seylin. “She says that
you gave her her freedom.” When his King made no
comment at
this indirect reproach, he continued,
“And in the second place, he’s used the Seven Stars.”

“The
Seven Stars!” Marak Catspaw sat bolt upright and stared
at
him. ‘Adviser, you’re mistaken! There can’t be an elf left alive today who
knows that spell.”

“This one does,”
replied Seylin. “The stars are in place and in force. They burned me
badly.” He gingerly pulled up his sleeve to
reveal a line of nasty wounds and blisters. “That was from one
touch,”
he observed.

Catspaw leaned
forward to look at the damage, frowning with
concern.
“Seylin, you should have healed those!” He left the room to
retrieve
a jar of salve.

“To be honest,
I tried on this area,” confessed Seylin when he
returned. “You can see that it didn’t do much good. Besides, I
thought
you should see them.”

Using a generous
amount of salve, the goblin King healed the
burns.
Like most magical tools, the salve increased in strength with
the
magical power of its user.

“That
criminal!” he exclaimed. “He has complete control over her
now, and he knows there’s absolutely nothing I can do.
But why? To
use the Seven
Stars — that’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of!”