Unthinkable (2 page)

“Or could it be”—the queen’s brother paused suggestively—“that you have not the power to help her?”
Fenella glanced up as Queen Kethalia met Ryland’s
mocking eyes. Only when the queen had stared her brother
down did she look away, out at her people.
The bird fey cocked their heads. The insect faeries angled
their antennae. One of the rock fey rumbled low, and a spider replied with the almost inaudible flex of her eight legs
against the rock. Far away, among the large mammals at the
edge of the clearing, the huge pronged antlers of the huntsman could be glimpsed.
The queen said, to all of them, “Undoing a spell cast four
hundred years ago is no easy task. We fey are not now what
we once were.”
“Consider it a test, sister,” drawled Ryland. “Your test.”
Feathers and skin and feet were still. Thousands of eyes
and antennae and ears and receptors awaited the queen’s
answer.
The queen did not seem intimidated. She took her time
looking at her brother.
“Come here,” Queen Kethalia said finally to Fenella. “Let
me touch you. I will discover what is required to undo the
spell.” She paused and then added dryly, “I advise you not to
have much hope. The spell seems . . . tangled.”
“Hope is all I do have,” said Fenella. Her pulse was pounding, pounding in her throat. She had not told the tree fey of
this part of her plan. She rose from her knees. She took one
firm, quick step forward, and then a second.
The queen was an inch away.
Desperately Fenella lunged. She fell against the queen
and grabbed the hilt of the queen’s ceremonial knife. For a
split second, the knife’s jagged blade gleamed in a shaft of
moonlight.
In the next second Fenella plunged the blade viciously
into her own body.

through flesh and muscle as she twisted it up under her ribs,
aiming for her heart.
Warm blood gushed onto her hands and the ground.
There was, however, no pain. Fenella twisted the knife
with all her strength. She was succeeding, she must be.
Please, please, please. It was the queen’s sacred ceremonial
knife. It had been used to kill the old queen. If anything
would have the power of death, it would. Please—
Firm hands on her shoulders. Gentle despite their claws,
the hands rolled her over. Fenella’s body uncurled. She
looked up into the face of Queen Kethalia.
She knew then that it was useless.
The queen pulled the knife smoothly out of Fenella’s body.

Now there was pain, but Fenella made not a single sound
as her body healed and her flesh knit back together inexorably, even her dress fabric renewing. By the end, the bloodstains on her dress and hands and on the knife had also
vanished.
So, Fenella thought. She swallowed hard, exactly once.
Then she got to her feet and wiped her palms on her mossy
skirt.
“I’m sorry, Fenella,” said the queen. “No knife can help
you. Not even mine.”
“What if you were the one to wield it?” Fenella challenged. “Or the huntsman?”
“No,” said the queen. “Your body is enchanted and protected. You cannot die before your time.”
Fenella nodded. She said belatedly, “I am sorry for grabbing your knife.”
“I understand,” said the queen.
It was generous of her, Fenella thought. She kept her gaze
steady on the queen’s face. For a moment Fenella felt almost
as if it was only the two of them there; as if she was understood. She said dully, “Is there a way to undo the spell, as
you were first trying to determine? I will do anything to
die.”
There was silence in the clearing. Silence among the fey.
And that emotion again that Fenella could not read in the
queen’s face, as she glanced once at the impassive tree fey
guards, once at her brother, and then back to Fenella.
The queen slid her knife back into its sheath and regarded
her hands. “Now that I have touched you, yes. I see a way to
break the spell. But you must do it, not I. It will be difficult.
I shall not tell you how to do it unless I am assured that you
are—are fully sane.”
Fenella felt a grim smile curl her lips as new hope flickered dimly in her.
“I am sane. I was enslaved to Padraig—he whom you call
the Mud Creature—for four hundred years, and I did not
lose my mind. I never will. I never can.”
Someone else had, though. But Fenella would not think
of Bronagh. One after another Scarborough girl had come
to Faerie, remained eighteen years, and then died and was
replaced. But none of them had been more damaged than
Bronagh. Fenella’s very own daughter, Bronagh.
A slender, flexible willow bough sneaked out from one
of the tree guards, slipping round Fenella’s waist. She heard
the whisper of leaves as the other tree guard murmured
something to her in leaf language. She sensed that the murmur was meant to be comforting. However, despite some
practice, Fenella could not translate what was said. Leaf and
flower language was so nuanced, so subtle, so complex.
The queen was speaking to her tree fey guards, also using
leaf language. Of this, Fenella caught the gist. “Bring the
Mud Creature here.”
The queen was summoning Padraig? Why? Why did
he need to be present in order for the queen to explain to
Fenella how to break the life-spell? Was it because Padraig
had cast it? Abruptly, Fenella’s stomach roiled.
Fenella had not seen Padraig since Lucy broke the curse
on her family. She did not know how he had managed during the recent crisis that had nearly decimated the fey. She
had not cared. She had only hoped that if all of the fey died,
she would too.
And Padraig. She had not been above hoping Padraig
would die first, so she could see it. So she could spit on his
corpse—no, no. Fantasies were too dangerous.
She knotted her fingers together. She allowed the tree fey
to stand with her, in their way.
Once upon a time, in her long-ago human life, Fenella
would have walked by the tree fey without thinking them
anything other than slender saplings. Even now, her human
vision wasn’t sharp enough to distinguish tree fey from ordinary trees unless the trees wanted her to.
Which they sometimes didn’t. At the beginning of her
life in Faerie, the tree fey had played pranks on Fenella.
They’d lay snares of flexible green fronds to trip her, or grow
a thorny branch across her path, or shift around in the forest so that she became hopelessly lost. Fenella eventually—it
took decades—understood that the tree fey were interested
in her, even liked her, and she learned to distinguish them
from normal trees by smell. The tree fey had a subtle scent
that, if you closed your eyes and stilled your mind, made
the world around you feel softly, indescribably green, and
wrapped in calm.
You could have a good talk with a tree fey, if you were
patient. She was still learning.
The sapling on Fenella’s left wrapped a second vine
around her waist. It supported her as Padraig was marched
into the clearing between four tree guards. But the support
was not necessary. After an initial instinctive flinch, Fenella
stood firm. I am not afraid of him, she thought. I hate him,
but—no matter what my body thinks—he has no power
over me or Bronagh or anyone anymore, and I know it. I do
not fear him. I fear nobody.
She folded her empty arms around herself.
Still, the tree fey kept its vines in place around her, and as
Padraig came closer, the vines tugged Fenella gently away
so that there was room for him to stand with her before
Queen Kethalia.
All the fey of the court, in their varied ways, focused on
Padraig. Fenella too looked at him straight on. She stared
boldly, scornfully, and—
She inhaled and borrowed some calm from the tree fey.
Padraig’s beauty almost assaulted the senses. He knew it
too. For the last four hundred years, Fenella had watched
him tend his body and face; had seen him strut around like
his beauty entitled him to anyone and anything he wanted.
She had even seen many of the Scarborough girls dazzled
and enticed and seduced by his looks—at first.
Padraig was the rare fey who needed little magical guise
to appear human. Fenella had been surprised to learn that
he was not considered attractive by those of the fey with
more flexible, more mixed blood. Or, at least, that had been
Fenella’s understanding until today. What did it mean, she
wondered, that the queen and her brother called him the
Mud Creature? Ryland had said Padraig was not noble, and
that he was a bastard. But what did the word bastard even
mean, when there was neither marriage nor simple twoperson parentage among the fey?
Padraig had lied to her about himself; at least that was
clear. Interesting. No, wait, it wasn’t interesting. It was the
past. She did not care. She wanted only death. Soon the queen
would tell her how to achieve it.
“Your Majesty,” Padraig said, inclining his head to Queen
Kethalia.
Fenella saw then that he had changed after all. Yes,
his black hair grew as thickly as ever from his scalp, and his
eyes gleamed more brightly than sapphires, and he stood
straight, tall, his shoulders square, his body taut and youthful looking. And yet.
Fenella’s descendant Joanne Scarborough had described
to her a mechanical contrivance called a copying machine.
Padraig seemed like a replica of himself. He actually looked
blurred. Fenella thought about rubbing her eyes and looking again. But she didn’t, because she didn’t care about him
and she wasn’t afraid of him anymore and she wouldn’t voluntarily waste another moment on him.
The queen spoke to Padraig courteously enough. “Fenella
Scarborough, who was once your slave, has come to us with
a request.”
Padraig swept Fenella a low bow. “My love.”
Fenella did not reply.
The queen said, “Fenella seeks to reverse the life-spell
upon her.”
“She can’t do that,” said Padraig instantly.
“Oh, but she can,” said the queen. The small leopardpatterned gecko that rode on the queen’s shoulder stuck his
head and neck entirely out from her wondrous mass of hair.
“There is a way.”
Fenella leaned forward. “How? What must I do?”
The queen said, “You must complete three tasks of deliberate destruction in the mortal realm.”
Three tasks of deliberate destruction.
It took a moment to penetrate. “You mean like before?” A
leaf brushed Fenella’s cheek and she pushed it away. “Three
tasks? As with the first curse?”
Padraig was looking at her. Fenella saw his sneer.
They both knew she had failed at the previous three tasks.
Everyone knew.
“Yes and no,” said the queen. “These are tasks not of creation, but of destruction.”
Fenella opened her mouth to ask a question, but the
queen’s brother Ryland spoke first.
“How poetic. I feel the beginnings of a new ballad. What
shall we call this one? Scarborough Fair, part two? Summon
the minstrels.”
Fenella whirled on him. Ryland thought her life—her
death—was a joke. “You want minstrels? I’ll rip you apart
and use your forepaw for a lute!”
“Ooo la la,” said Ryland. “I am terrified.”
“Stop it,” said the queen. “Both of you. I said that this is
not like before. Ryland, that means there will be no riddles,
no tricks, and no song. And, Fenella, not a single one of
these three tasks is impossible. It is only . . .” She paused. “It
is only that your choices will be . . . difficult. Terrible. Also,
as they must be done in the human realm, they will be terrible in human ways.”
Hope had touched Fenella with the lightest of fingers,
however. “No riddles? No tricks?”
“That is correct,” said the queen.
“How dull,” Ryland said.
Fenella knew better than to react, and yet—
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I’ll make my death quest entertaining in other ways, shall I?”
“Please do.” Ryland bared his teeth at her. She scowled
back—and then, abruptly, realized that she was focusing
her attention on the queen’s brother in order to ignore
Padraig. But she felt Padraig’s gaze. Hot, as always. Possessive. Vindictive. And angry; always angry.
Well, she was angry too.
The queen’s brother was laughing now. He beat at the
ground with one large paw. Then the other fey joined in,
everyone save the queen, the tree fey, Fenella, and also
Padraig. It was laughter at the irony of it all. It was laughter
at Fenella’s expense, and also at the expense of the despised
Mud Creature.
But it was also simply the laughter of those who have
lived too long without it. “Three more tasks for the Scarborough girl!” they chorused. “Better luck to her this time!”