Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback (23 page)

A cream silk wimple, a veil of amaranthine gossamer, and a circlet

of engraved gold hid the tight calamus cap her hair had become.

Only Emer’s un-feathered face remained visible. Her high-necked

ruby robe had sleeves long and loose enough to conceal her glossy

black body and her arms, which were rapidly knitting into wings.

Stubbornly, she fumbled with gloves, but didn’t bother with shoes—

her legs had wizened, toughened with dusky gray skin, finished with

pronged feet. Now three clawed toes
click-click-clicked
as she walked.

And so it was that the kingdom’s firstborn, pride and joy (and

occasional frustration) of her royal parents, entered the great hall with a strange new gait. Her eyes, once blue, were black, and her head moved this way and that, taking everything in with a darting gaze.

She promenaded along the ermine carpet to where her parents sat,

enthroned and enthralled by her terrible progress.

When she stood before them, dropping into the queerest curtsey

ever seen, the Queen and King began to weep and wail respectively.

Emer’s hands convulsed and the delicate gloves, which had been

shoved onto the tips of her transmuting fingers, fell away as the flesh melded. The gown, too, was rent, and soon the princess was jiggling

about on one leg then the other, kicking away the rags. Her head grew rounder, tinier, and her ears disappeared; the coronet slid down to sit around her neck like a collar. Wimple and veil hung loose until she

shook them off. Emer’s nose and mouth speared into a scintillating

beak.

Ladies-in-waiting screamed and lords bellowed. The noise was

astonishing; it swelled until the crescendo broke over the raven-girl and she tottered about, looking for escape. One of the high-reaching windows was open to allow the cool breeze in, and she half-ran, half-skipped towards it, shrinking, until the golden circlet slipped away and she leapt through the opening as if performing a circus trick. She hopped onto the sill, gave her parents one last look, and
caw-cawed
, a sound that echoed the whole sad length and breadth of the chamber.

• 196 •

• Angela Slatter •

With one swift beat of her new wings she caught an updraft. Her

parents, released from their paralysis, ran to the window and watched as their daughter joined a waiting unkindness of ravens that greeted her with croaks. The sun kissed her wings and she and the birds were gone, faster than thought, faster than possibility.

They flew toward the horizon. Emer-that-was wondered how far

they’d come—and when they’d stop—as they floated over fields and

rivers, mountains and valleys, towers and turrets of rulers petty and great. But Emer-of-feathers did not ponder, merely obeyed instinct

and followed her fellows. They flew for so long that Emer-that-was

despaired of ever finding her way back.

When finally they began to descend, it was toward a huge granite

edifice positioned astride a river, nothing like Emer’s hilltop home of polished marble and clear glass. This was a castle fit for battle, with windows so slender they were suitable only for shooting arrows

through, or sending out the occasional pigeon bearing a message to

an attacking general, saying he may as well piss into the wind, for this bastion would never fall to the likes of him.

The flock aimed itself at the closed portcullis, winging precisely

through the grille, Emer as lithe and light as the rest. They traversed a deserted courtyard, thence towards a great set of doors hewn from

oak and banded with silver. The doors, as if sensing their approach, opened at the very last moment, but the winged host did not slow,

did not hesitate, as if cooperation was to be expected.

They flew along hallways lined with threadbare tapestries and

paintings of people who’d been obscured not by time but by the tearing and shredding of canvas. They flew through rooms lined with rows

of weapon racks filled with rusting swords and battleaxes, unstrung

bows, decaying spears and toothless morning stars. They flew through bedchambers so thick with dust they had to rely purely on intuition to navigate. They flew until at last they came to a hall as lofty and lengthy as a cathedral’s nave, as cool and dim as one too, for most of the tall pointed windows were shuttered. At the farthest end sat a woman.

• 197 •

• Flight •

Bustling around the chamber was an army of servants. Here and

there, valets and footmen, butlers and a majordomo, maids and

ladies-in-waiting, some of them in the costume of courtiers and

some of them in rustic attire, but Emer had no doubt they were all,

without exception, slaves. No matter their garb, none wore human

form. Each was canine, walking upright and wearing a motley mix

of livery, using fans, carrying trays, bearing tea pots and saucers, one the lord of a samovar, another king of the canapés.

Emer glided onwards, unaware that her companions had dropped

behind. She slowed, and descended, carefully avoiding the shifting

mass of what appeared to be large rabbits—no, hares kicking at

each in occasional ill-temper. She alighted on the shabby red carpet leading to the dais upon which a cushioned throne was set. Three

short steps separated her from black-booted toes.

Lifting her gaze, Emer took in the woman’s face, gypsy-hued, marred

with long-healed scars; her hair and eyes like jet, lips like a damson plum.

And the features somehow familiar, yet Emer could not place them. The woman in a long charcoal dress, with carmined nails, smiled down at

the raven who was a girl. Emer shuddered deep inside her hol ow-boned body. She wished to fly, to flee, but her limbs would not obey.

The dark one limped down the stairs to gather up the bird. She

tucked Emer under her arm as one might a chicken, and stroked

her with a hand almost entirely curled in upon itself. Emer recoiled, willing her talons to lash out and tear, her beak to stab and shred, but her body was contrary. All she could do was shiver. Clicking her fingers, the woman produced a chain as fine as thread from thin air.

The thing shone and shimmered as she twisted it twice around the

raven’s right foot. Emer watched as the metal fused. The other end

was looped through the intricately carved rose-and-briar pattern

adorning the top of the throne.

The woman’s voice, when she spoke, was strange, a mix of the

sweet and the discordant—only later would the girl realize it came

of the scars at the base of her throat.

“Now. Now you are secure, my little one, the game has begun.”

• 198 •

• Angela Slatter •

Emer, finding her own voice unaffected by whatever paralyzed

her body, gave an answering cry.

“Come, come—you want to help me, don’t you? And if I take my

fun at the same time, then what harm?” She laughed. “Would you like

a story, my dear one? My sweet sister’s darling child? Shall we begin thus? Once upon a time . . . ”

And Emer listened as her unsuspected aunt told of two sisters, one

swan-white, the other raven-dark. All the while the girl wondered

how long she would be in this shape. How long before all she began

to think of were bugs and beetles, worms and carrion. How long it

would take for someone to find her. And Emer despaired because

she knew her parents believed the Black Bride defeated and dead.

They would never find their raven-daughter because they would

never think to hunt for a ghost.

The girl spent many months feathered and tethered.

Each night she heard the Black Bride’s version of the tale Emer’s

governess had told in hushed tones. Her mother had tenderly sworn

it was no more than a story, and even though Emer pretended to

believe her, she had seen the evidence on the Queen’s very flesh: the blemishes around her neck where the gold band clutched too tightly,

the left hand missing its smallest finger where her wings had been

clipped so she would not flee the palace pond. By the end of her first month in captivity, Emer was acquainted with every cadence of the

new account as surely as she was her own heartbeat.

How the Black Bride’s mother had two perfectly serviceable

husbands, one after the other, and produced one lovely daughter

with each. How both girls were raised with equal affection, and how, when an exceedingly fine suitor—a king-to-be—came a-courting

those very girls, this very same mother refused to choose between her daughters, so the dark girl had no choice but to make her own fate.

How the prince had made his preference for the snowy girl known—

and the girl of shadows had determined
her
will would prevail.

It wasn’t as if she’d harmed her sister so terribly, said the Black

• 199 •

• Flight •

Bride with a shrug. Turned her into a swan, certainly, but as she was sure Emer could attest, a few feathers never hurt anyone. And hadn’t the swan-sister’s revenge been a terrible over-reaction?

When she came to this point in the tale, the Black Bride always

fingered the scars on her cheeks, neck, breasts, where spikes

hammered into the barrel had pierced her as she was rolled up

hill and down dale until that barrel had finally hit a tree and burst asunder, leaving her bleeding and dying, the tiny child within her

withering as surely as an ice-lily on a summer’s day.

How, when she’d thought her last breath was spent, she was found

by a woman, a witch—not kindly—who mended her and taught her

greater things than she’d ever imagined. Marvelous magics, legends

of objects that might grant every wish, but none of this imparted fast enough for her wanting or wishing. There was still much to learn

when the Black Bride held a pillow over the old woman’s face and

stifled
her
last breath, but the girl was simply tired of waiting for her to step aside and let a new order begin.

How, after years of plotting and planning, everything she’d worked

for threatened to slip from the Black Bride’s grasp. Though she’d

schemed and marshaled her resources so she might yet play on, she

had failed to get what her heart most desired: healing. It was tricky, balancing the time she had left between revenge and recovery, but

she refused to relinquish one for the chance of the other. No matter how it taxed her, she could be—
would
be—whole once more, and all scores settled with her sister and the king.

Emer listened and watched, watched and listened, although no

one spoke to her but the Black Bride. She paid attention to the

comings and goings of the shadowed woman’s pilfered court, noting

the frequency and severity of the woman’s wet cough, the sweet-sour

dying scent of her breath. There were suitors—for her wealth, though stolen, though dusty, was not insubstantial, and the strength of her sorcery was of great value. Aside from these charms, in certain lights, the ravages of her punishment were not so obvious. So, the willing

grooms came, though none of them ever left.

• 200 •

• Angela Slatter •

In the cold hours, after the woman had talked herself out, after

she’d muttered at the windows
when wil she come, when wil she

come?
, then gone to bed, Emer would work with her sharp beak at the deceptively fragile-looking chain, more out of habit than hope,

but inexorably, insistently.

Peck-peck-peck.

Peck-peck-peck.

Peck-peck-peck.

“About time.”

Emer, perched on the padded armrest of the throne, was enduring

the Black Bride’s caress, staring out the only unshuttered window.

Normally, she divided her time between eyeing the roiling mass of

canine domestics, the fluttering carpet of ravens who came and went

at the Bride’s bidding, and the hopping, kicking sea of fur that had once been the courting princes—all now transformed to fine, fat

hares. This day, though, the sky had her undivided attention. She

ignored the dark woman, assuming the remark was addressed to

someone else. But the Black Bride’s next words—and her tone, so

soft and sad—dragged the raven-girl’s gaze back to the room.

“Did you think yourself forgotten?”

Emer was startled—it was precisely what she was beginning to

think. She had lost track of the days, weeks, months, but the turning of the season outside told her winter was arriving for what seemed

the second time. She wasn’t sure—speculations about bugs and

beetles had occupied her mind of late. A tentative movement at the

entrance of the chamber made her head tilt in curiosity.

The figure was willowy, dressed in white furs, a hood of silver fox

framing her pale face. She moved with all the grace of a bird on the surface of a lake, effortless. She hesitated as if, unable to find whom she sought, she was unwilling to commit deeper to the room.

“You should know,” continued the Black Bride, her touch stilled,

“that she raised an army to find you. Your father failed and wept,

wasted away—trust me, my girl, I have my spies. But she, oh
she

• 201 •

• Flight •

mobilized their vassals, rode at their head, slept in the saddle, scoured all the lands that could be covered by foot and sea. I’ll warrant she’d have given her very soul to take to the skies if it meant she might find you that way.”

Her hand slid to the black chain. She toyed with the liquid length,

unconsciously worrying at the dent Emer’s beak had made. She

stared at the woman hovering in the doorway and seemed to realize

that there would be no further progress without some kind of carrot.