Faeries Never Lie, page 23
Of course, it could be the faeries partying underground, like the rats told her.
As she steps onto the paved driveway, now spiderwebbed with cracks and weeds sticking up through them, she sees lights beyond the chain-link fences, in the roofless rooms with their empty windows.
There’s no movement other than the lights, which seem to dance around, almost like fireflies if they burned brighter. Almost like falling stars.
Heather’s heart hammers as she paces around the outside. She half expects something to jump out at her, hidden by the dark. She tries to pay attention to what she’s there for and notes that despite rocks resting all along the perimeter of the old mansion, there’s only one that could be considered a boulder.
She places her hand on its rain-slicked surface.
“Stone of old, heavy and cold,” Heather says, feeling as though she’s reading lines from a play. “Move aside from the way foretold.”
The earth beneath her feet begins to shake and Heather takes two steps back, stumbling over uneven earth, sliding in mud. The boulder rolls over. In the space it once occupied, she can see a passageway. A tunnel, hung with roots and lit with glowing bits of some kind of blue, phosphorescent mushroom. For a moment, it seems to be a gaping mouth, beckoning her to its gullet.
The sound of the music is much louder.
Forget this, she thinks. Go home. But she’s forgotten so much already.
Gingerly, she gets down on her hands and knees and lowers herself into the hole. Scrabbles downward, her path lit only by moonlight.
A few feet into the passageway, she hears the terrible sound of the rock sliding firmly into place behind her. Panic catches her by the throat. The darkness is absolute, unending. She feels as though she’s been buried alive.
She tries to force herself to stillness. To breathe. The scent of soil is all around her, but when she breathes, the air doesn’t taste stale. And the music is coming from somewhere nearby.
She thinks about Vivienne and plans what she will say when she sees her again. Tell me, she will demand. Tell me who you are to me. Tell me what you did to me.
Heather feels the tunnel widen and hears the sounds of people nearby. Laughter along with the music, the rustling of fabric, footfalls. And then, after a curve in the path, she sees a golden glow ahead.
She emerges, hands and knees covered in dirt, in an enormous hall. The walls are packed earth, but the floor is a dizzying pattern of stones laid out in connected circles. And everywhere there’s shifting light. Candles sit in nooks in the walls, spilling wax. Glowing creatures dart above her head.
And in that light, she sees all the monsters.
Winged and fanged, some with tails and a few with what appear like leaves or bark growing over their bodies, they gather in knots. Some dance in circles that seem to follow the pattern of the floor. An enormous creature, large enough that he must have had to stoop to enter the room, sits against one wall. He has what appears to be the body of a deer spread out over his lap and is sawing off a leg. When she passes, he looks up and she realizes he has only a single eye, centered above his nose.
Heather shudders.
Three tables rest along one wall, all of them made from doors set on sawhorses. And atop are bowls of fruit—apples, beach plums, blueberries, chokeberries. Small cubes of gleaming stewed meat on orache leaves. A chipped porcelain bowl holding dandelion greens covered in dried berries and nuts. A plank of cedar with purslane, a soft white cheese, and honey.
A small band of musicians are gathered in one corner—a fiddler who looks almost human, except for the points of his ears and the sharpness of his features; a shaggy, spindly creature drumming on a bodhrán with a knot of cloth wrapped around the end of a stick; and three tiny winged creatures plucking at the strands of an enormous harp.
It seems as though Heather is walking through a terrifying dream, but not a totally unfamiliar one. She’s drawn beings like this, impossible creatures for which she no long can congratulate her imagination. Had she been afraid like this before? Had she forgotten more than a week? A few of the winged, fanged partiers glance in her direction, suggesting that she’s been noticed.
Mortals aren’t allowed.
“I’m looking for Bryern.” Her voice shakes a little as she speaks to a woman with skin as brown as hers and the wings of a dragonfly.
The woman makes a buzzing sound when she speaks. “There,” she says, pointing to a man with the head and hooves of a black goat, clad in a waistcoat, a cloak, and a bowler hat.
“Oh,” Heather says, blinking twice. “Thank you.”
The woman scowls at her, as though insulted, and moves away.
Heather approaches the goat-guy, not sure what she did wrong in the last interaction and not sure how she’s going to avoid insulting Bryern too. “Um, excuse me.”
Bryern looks down at her with his long-lashed, horizontal-pupiled goat eyes. Then, holding his hat by the brim, he makes an extravagant bow. “You’ve come a long way if you’re looking for me.”
“Is this your party?” she asks.
“Mine? Oh, no. It belongs entirely to itself,” he says with what might be a smile, but she finds expressions hard to read on a goat head.
“Okaaaay,” she says, feeling entirely unprepared for this level of whimsy.
At that moment, Heather spots Vivienne across the room, except that this Vivi looks exactly like the drawing in her comic book, with cat eyes and sharper features. Ears that rise to points on either side of hair the color of wheat. Terrifying and yet Heather also has the entirely unwise desire to cross the room and take the monstrous girl in her arms.
Instead, she turns abruptly, so that her back is toward Vivi. But goose bumps bloom all along her arms.
Her heart thuds. Fear makes her palms sweat.
“Someone you know…,” Bryern begins, but then trails off. “Ahhhh, yes. I used to employ her sister, although that’s a touchy subject now.”
The sister to the Queen of Faerie. It didn’t seem likely that this guy had employed a queen. But maybe the rats were wrong? What did rats know anyway?
“Can you remove the spell on me?” she asks. “The one that’s taken my memory?”
He peers at her for a long moment, his gaze falling to her wrist where the bracelet used to be, as though he can see its residue. “Is that what you want?”
He doesn’t contradict her by saying no such spell is on her. And in this hall with the scents of melting candle wax and mead and spilled beer eddying through the air, she wonders if any of her reasons for coming here were good ones.
Maybe she doesn’t want to remember. She’s already scared—who’s she kidding?—she’s terrified. And now that she knows about this world, she will never be able to not know there are all these creatures with power over her.
Maybe she shouldn’t ask the goat-guy to remove the spell. Maybe she should ask him to extend it so that she forgets Vivienne. Forgets about tonight.
“I’m sure,” Heather says, although she isn’t.
He points a finger in the direction of Vivi. “You’ll have to talk to the woman there—the one leaning on the cane. That’s Mother Marrow—a hag, which is something like a witch, but worse and more powerful. She set the spell and she will have to remove it.”
The woman he points to appears elderly, with hair the color of smoke, a sharply curved nose, and bird feet. Around her neck she has a strand of river rocks. A cloak rests on her shoulders, but where Bryern’s is lined and elegant, hers is worn and tattered.
“Is it bad manners to thank you?” Heather asks him, thinking of the dragonfly woman.
“It would be better to give me something in return for the service I’ve rendered you. A lock of hair, perhaps?”
Heather thinks about every fairy story she’s ever read, about the rules she knows and the ones she’s still trying to puzzle out. And she asks herself what she’s willing to give up to know the truth.
Maybe she could still walk away.
“Sure,” Heather says, reaching up for a pink curl. He produces a small brass pair of scissors from within his waistcoat and snips. Then he bows again.
Taking a deep breath, Heather crosses the room to Mother Marrow. Vivienne spots her. She’s too close to the hag not to.
“Hello,” Heather says. “I understand you put a spell on me.”
Mother Marrow’s smile ought to belong to a cat.
Vivi’s gaze goes to Heather’s wrist and she seems to brace, as though for a blow. “What have you done?”
“Oh, no,” Mother Marrow tells her. “We’re all bound to our bargains. And it seems I have you now.”
“Bargain?” asks Heather.
Vivi flinches.
The hag puts a hand on Vivienne’s arm. “This one made a foolish promise that was beyond her skill. And so, she came to Mother Marrow. But I bet you know exactly what she asked for, don’t you?”
“To erase my memories,” Heather says, remembering how unsure she’d been about wanting them back. Suddenly she has a very good guess what happened.
Mother Marrow’s smile widens. “Clever girl. But you see, she offered to serve me for ten years if you rejected her token. She had three days to convince you. And our Vivienne thought she was clever. She waited until the last day to approach you and gave you the gift on the final night. Gave me so little time to persuade you to throw it away.”
“Those were your rats,” Heather says.
“They were in my employ, yes,” says Mother Marrow, turning to Vivi. “And now you’ve lost her forever. That should teach you not to dally with mortals. A lesson we all must learn.”
Vivi’s expression is so filled with longing and loss that Heather feels as though she can hardly breathe.
“As for you,” Mother Marrow goes on, her attention returning to Heather. “I saw that you gave away a lock of your hair. And when I get it, I will use it in a spell.”
“Leave her alone,” Vivi says. “She’s not part of this.”
“And you’ll help me, Vivienne,” Mother Marrow says, looking delighted with herself. “After all, you will be my servant.”
“Jude and Cardan are going to—” Vivi starts.
But Mother Marrow only laughs. “Pay handsomely for your release? Make a bargain of their own? Let them. In fact, I am counting on it.”
“You must think I wasn’t paying attention,” says Heather.
Mother Marrow frowns at her. “Is that so?”
“Rats told me that your people can’t lie,” Heather says. “That instead they had to trick and deceive. I know they were acting like they were warning me about Vivi, but they were warning me about you too.”
Vivi’s gaze on Heather is hard to interpret, with her strange cat eyes.
“They told me to take off the bracelet and throw it away. But I wasn’t sure that was good advice.” Heather pulls up the cuff of her jeans to reveal the beads threaded around her ankle.
“What is that?” Mother Marrow demands.
“I decided to take a chance,” Heather says. “I took the bracelet off and then put the beads back on. Tied new thread to the old. I assume there’s nothing in your bargain about whether or not I added some length. My ankles are thicker than my wrists.”
Vivi’s smile is wide and wonderful. She looks as though she wants to throw her arms around Heather, but something is holding her back. “But why? Why trust me?”
“You tried to tell me the truth,” says Heather. “I wouldn’t listen. If you were trying to trick me, why tell me all that? Besides, I think I just figured out the rest. When you asked Mother Marrow to take my memories, it was at the request of someone else, wasn’t it?”
Vivi nods, her eyes shining.
“Me,” Heather says. “I asked you to take those memories, didn’t I?”
Vivi nods again. “You did, but then you regretted it—at least kind of. And you told me to find you again. I didn’t do things the right way the first time and I don’t know that I’m doing much better now.”
“This is all very touching, but I believe you’ve forgotten that Bryern over there still has a strand of your hair,” Mother Marrow says. “One way or another, I will have control of Vivienne through you.”
Heather grins, really feeling herself right at this moment. “Oh, no,” she says. “That is a strand from my hair, but not the hair growing from my scalp. Not the kind you can use to control me. I have a sew-in.”
Mother Marrow gnashes her teeth and stomps her bird feet. “You’re going to regret crossing me,” she says.
But Vivi only laughs and loops her arm around Heather’s waist. “No one crossed you. My clever, beautiful girlfriend won the day.”
“Your clever, beautiful girlfriend needs to get out of here before she passes out,” Heather whispers into her ear.
Vivi grins. “So long as—no, I won’t make conditions. You won the day and won me too. I just hope you’ll agree to see me again, knowing what you know.”
Heather pauses. The idea that there is a world of creatures out there with fangs and tails and magic frightens her, just as it must have before, but part of her is thrilled to be part of something that feels like a story. And she managed this, didn’t she? Won the game, won the girl.
A girl who isn’t human, but who loves Heather enough to risk years of her own life for a chance to be together again. A girl who fascinates her. A girl who she must have loved too and who she can imagine loving again.
“We can go on another date,” Heather says. “And you can meet my friends. I think you’d like them.”
Vivi nods. “I already do.”
Right, because she met them before, even if she doesn’t remember it. Heather rolls her eyes as they head toward the tunnel, Vivi stopping to grab a bottle of mead. “Is this going to be annoying? You know me so much better than I know you.”
“Very annoying,” Vivi promises with a heavy-lidded look. It’s clear she’s imagining all the ways she will be able to use that knowledge to her advantage.
Heather’s cheeks heat. “But no more hiding things from me, right? This time around.”
“And no more running?” Vivi asks.
“No more running,” Heather agrees.
“So perhaps we could finish our picnic under the stars?” Vivi asks, holding up the mead. “And you could ask me all your questions and I could answer them in full—for a price.”
“It’s raining and I am tired of riddles.” Heather groans, but she still can’t stop smiling. Can’t stop feeling a thrill when her body brushes against Vivienne’s.
“What if the price was a kiss?” Vivi says. “One per answer.”
Heather laces her fingers through Vivi’s with a laugh, pulling her close. “Now there’s a price I would gladly pay.”
ASK TWICE
Ryan La Sala
I
The first time I asked my mother if she believed what our small suburb was saying about me—that I was different, that I was strange, that I could not be hers, that I could not be human—she smiled big and said, “Don’t be ridiculous, sweetie.”
The second time I asked her, she was forced to tell the truth.
Leaving would have been easier if my mother kicked me out, but the reality is that after I ripped the truth out of her, she begged me to stay. There was even a moment when I thought she would chase me into the night. But she didn’t.
When I ran away from home, all that followed me was my shadow.
And then I ran from that, too, to the brightest place I could think of: the stage of the Ballet Maléfique.
I stand on that stage now, eyes adamantly opened against the spotlights, posing and pretending that the empty theater before me is packed with a rapt audience. I stand still—so still—as Riggs makes the final adjustments to the lights for the performance I’ve been rehearsing for all week. It’s the stillness that allows these old, familiar thoughts to finally catch up to me. Thoughts of home and shadows and running.
“One step to your left, Saturn,” Riggs instructs me, and I oblige. The lights shift imperceptibly. “Okaaaay, hold that position. The spotlight will be set ahead of time, so if you miss your mark, no one will see your final pose.”
I check the corners in my periphery and memorize where I’m standing. Riggs continues to make adjustments. Hurry up, Riggs, I pray, so I can get back to dancing for my life. If I’m still for much longer, it might find me.
My shadow.
I still see my shadow sometimes, crawling toward me across the great distances I’m always careful to keep between me and it ever since I cut it from my heels. Without my body to give it form, it’s disfigured into something monstrous. It has many more legs now, spread down a body that has unraveled into an undulating ribbon of night. My hands now wave at me from the ends of arms with six elbows. They swish toward me from the dark, but tentatively, as though eager to hold me but embarrassed to be seen.
I think I understand. Sometimes, I wonder what shape I would become if I wasn’t always holding myself together in the shape of a person.
My shadow scares me, but I don’t resent it. Maybe it’s monstrous, but it’s the only thing that has ever chased me. My parents never even bothered to call the police when I vanished. I know because after I’d been on my own for a few days, I decided I’d made a mistake, and I walked into the nearest police station to introduce myself as missing. They told me I didn’t match any of the profiles of people reported missing by loved ones. Ah, I thought. That’s the problem right there. You’ve got to be loved to be missed.
That’s when I found the Ballet Maléfique, and now, months later, my thoughts rarely turn back the way I came. I wonder why now, a week before I’m set to debut as Saturn, my brand-new stage persona, my thoughts return to the house.
Suddenly, the spotlight pinning me to center stage drops out and I’m swallowed in darkness. A screech echoes in the emptiness and somewhere high up Riggs swears. My heart clenches. Is he falling? Did he catch himself? All I can make out above me are the pulsing afterimages from the lights, but then I see it … not Riggs, but it. A writhing darkness nestled into the curve of the proscenium. It slithers upward, and I only catch a glimpse of it—arms, dozens and dozens of arms, a snaking body that curls with boneless fluidity, pitch-velvet skin—before Riggs adjusts the spotlight and I’m blinded once more.
