Except the Queen (32 page)

I stopped writing and shoved the half-written letter between two tins of tea. I needed to cool my head before I sent such harsh words. For as furious as I was at Serana, she was still my beloved sister.

R
ain battered the windows as Sparrow sat on the side of her bed, surrounded by tattered journals. The ones on the rumpled sheets lay open to reveal certain pages, while the rest remained in a lopsided stack on the floor near her feet. A small bed lamp provided an oval of pale light by which she read the one journal she held in her hands, studying intently the crabbed handwriting, the fading pencil lines all rushing to the edges of the pages.

She’d been on the run when she wrote that entry, fleeing a well-meaning social worker who had spotted her busing tables in a Southwest diner. The woman had probably recognized her from the picture on a missing child report. Sparrow knew the woman had only meant to help. Probably thought she was rescuing a long-lost, abducted child. But when the squad car pulled up, and the woman glanced nervously in Sparrow’s direction, she’d snatched the tip jar by the cash register, grabbed her backpack from the shelf under the counter, and split out the back door. She wrote down her escape that night while hiding out in the bus station’s restroom. That’s what she did when she reached a new town: stuffed her journals and spare clothes in a locker and kept them there for ease of escape.

When Sparrow had been taken from the woods that
first time, she’d refused to cooperate with the authorities after they brought her to the station. The police had called in a child services counselor to get her to talk. Sparrow gave a half smile remembering that earnest young woman with the short brown hair like an acorn cap. She’d smelled of lavender and wet dog and Sparrow had noticed white hairs clinging to her black sweater.

“If you don’t feel like talking, honey, why don’t you write out your feelings in here.” She’d passed Sparrow a speckled composition notebook along with an assortment of colored pens.

Here is the tale of Malia, the deer
, Sparrow wrote. And she proceeded to fill the book with every memory of the forest she had, for she could feel the reality of that life already slipping away from her.
I must, to remember it all
, she told herself, and did by writing it down.

Of course, the counselor assumed it was a fairy tale allusion to her abduction. Sparrow was fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a halfway house until someone could figure out to whom she belonged. All she had with her when she arrived at the halfway house—besides the clothes she had on—was the notebook, a handful of wild berries in her pockets, and a withered lady’s slipper that she’d tied into her hair.

Sparrow brought the journal to her nose and sniffed. Each journal had its own scent, its own handwriting, and its own author. Seven books, a dozen tales, and as many different names. She touched each different name, recalling each identity, some of which had lasted a few months, and others for no more than a few days. Like a litany of fairy-tale saints, she could recite her journey in the story of each new name—Malia, Phoebe, Margaret, Katie, Marion, Tina (short for Titania), Vasilisa, Molly, and many more until taking on Sparrow. Sometimes Sparrow thought she had forgotten her own name, the one that lingered on the edge of her memory, no more than a woman’s voice whispering it into her ear. What her father had called her didn’t bear repeating.

She lifted a mug of coffee and grimaced as she took a
cold swig. She needed it to keep awake. As long as she didn’t fall asleep at night, she could just about fend off the nightmares and the new tattoos that had begun to appear on her body. Pushing back her sleeve, she scratched the raw skin on her wrist where the snake still held her in its fanged grip. Two nights ago, another had begun to coil on her shoulder when she made the mistake of dozing off. She’d awoken with a start just before a head appeared over her breast. Later she’d gone to the library and from a snake identifying book discovered it was an adder, the bite not fatal, but painful. It was meant to torture, not kill her.

Sparrow roused herself from the bed and looked at the cache of herbs and roots on her desk. She had almost everything she needed. She’d sharpened the tips of the silver dove’s wings into dangerous points. Not much more menacing than the head of a dart. But deadly enough if tipped in what she hoped was the right poison.

Pacing around the room, swinging her arms across her body and slapping her hands across the back of her shoulders, she told herself, “Stay awake, Sparrow.” She said it aloud to hear the sound of her own voice. On the bed, Lily lifted her head at the sound.

“You too, you butterball,” Sparrow warned the dog.

At Sparrow’s voice, Lily yawned, stretching her enormous jaw wide enough to show every tooth, then abruptly scrambled to her feet, leapt off the bed, and headed for the door.

Sparrow snatched up the little dove and followed after her. Someone was stomping up the stairs, and it couldn’t be Sophia because Sparrow knew she’d never left into the downpour.

Lily barked at a stranger beyond the door who replied with a single, deep-chested woof. Lily’s tail wagged and she dropped her nose down to the gap beneath the front door to sniff.

Well
, thought Sparrow,
at least not foe
.
But who then?
She lifted her head, following the sounds of the footsteps to the top landing.

There were voices, Sophia’s stern alto, followed by another, softer, more playful male voice.
Clearly not Jack
, Sparrow decided. The step was heavy, as was the sound of bags and shoes being tossed to the floor. Cupboards were opened and closed; a chair scraped across the kitchen floor. Reluctantly, Sparrow returned to the bedroom, followed by Lily, whose ears perked upright every time she heard the man’s voice.

Sitting down on the bed, Sparrow picked up another journal and started to read. Her hands trembled from too much caffeine and not enough sleep. Her body protested, wanting only to sleep, but she wouldn’t let it. Tomorrow—if the sun rose, she’d rest briefly before going to work at the bookstore. But that was it. She dared not trust herself to a nap in the late afternoon. The last time she’d done that, she’d slept well past sunset and awoken to the scratching of the new tattoo on her shoulder. Instead she forced herself to read the journals, finding solace in her own peculiar history.

Above her, the sounds of conversation eventually died down, twilight to evening, and Sparrow knew from the creak of Baba Yaga’s bed, that Sophia had retired for the night. But where did the other one stay? That apartment was much too small for two.

And then she heard the fiddle, its husky voice unrolling down through the floorboards with a jaunty tune. She grinned, thinking
that
would certainly keep her up! But then she frowned upon hearing the angry muffle of Sophia’s voice. Abruptly, the music stopped.

The fiddler started pacing, and in her room below, Sparrow followed his footsteps with her own. She smiled at the spiral pattern of his steps, reminding her of Lily’s own dog ritual of turning in slow circles on the bed, her paws ruffling the covers into a nest. Sophia yelled again and the pacing, too, stopped.

Sparrow sighed and sat down on the bed, weary to the bone.
And dangerously bored,
she thought, wondering which journal to reread. She plucked a newer one, one that had crude and mildly pornographic illustrations. She
figured that, at the very least, she could laugh at her worthless skills.

That’s when the fiddle began again in a soft, muted voice. It hummed through the lathes, sweet notes cascading down on her like golden dust in sunlight. She put the journal down, the spine opened to reveal a drawing of an almost naked man. He had on a coat, but was holding it open to show his swollen prick. That picture memorialized the first and only time Sparrow had seen a penis. She’d stared, not with disgust as she presumed he wanted, but rather curiosity, trying to remember it so that she could later commit the image of it in her journal. She had heard enough stories from other runaways and knew this kind of man wasn’t that dangerous. But most men
were
and she’d managed, despite some close calls, to keep herself free of any entanglements.

Later, Sparrow couldn’t recall the moment the music had lulled her into sleep. She could only remember the way the sound had wrapped around her like cloth, swaddling her limbs with each draw of the bow. She wasn’t frightened, but soothed. As she closed her eyes, she caught the familiar scents of the forest, the springy feel of dried pine needles beneath her palm, and the whoosh of the wind gusting through the branches. Lily’s warm body lay close to her, the dog’s slow, deep snoring as soporific as the fiddle’s music. The memory of the man in the alley flickered dreamlike on the edges of her mind. She walked toward him, and he transformed, the dirty coat giving way to a cowl of pale green leaves and the ruddy phallus growing into a stalk speckled with heavy grains of pollen.

*   *   *

S
HE WOKE IN THE MORNING
, without panic or fear, greeted by sunlight spilling into her room. Only when she spied the glint of silver wings on her desk did she remember. Stumbling toward the bathroom and pulling off her T-shirt as she went, she stared into the mirror, expecting to see more of the snake coiling around her right shoulder.
But it had not changed; if anything, the ink had faded from blue black to soft brown. Sparrow rubbed her hand over her skin in amazement.

She walked back to the bedroom, to the sight of the sleeping dog, the books scattered across the bottom of the bed and the outline of her head in the pillows. Clearly, she’d slept the night away.

But how?

She looked up at the ceiling as though it could give her answers. Sophia’s mysterious guest? The music? She was grateful for the much-needed respite, but she was cautious too, for many a sweet spell came to a bad end. Nonetheless, she had slept without harm and for that, she offered silent thanks to the unknown fiddler.

I
n the morning the sun burst forth as though to welcome this errant boy to Jack’s promise of a second summer. By midmorning the day was almost hot. I glanced out the window as I cleaned up Robin’s mess in the kitchen and saw Jack working in the garden below. Not to plant—no, it was much too wet for that—but to set and build the new paths of the maze.

I shook the boy where he lay sprawled between the two chairs. He woke with a start, saw it was only me, and then stretched and yawned languorously.

“Come on, my lad, you have work to do.”

“Work?”

I pulled him by the collar of his grubby shirt to the window and pointed down to the garden. “See that man down there?” And as if he had heard me, Jack looked up from a rock he was hoisting into place and smiled. I opened the window, and leaned out. “I have a new pair of sturdy hands to help you, Jack! He’ll be down in a moment.”

“Great! There’s plenty to do,” he called back.

“I am not a gardener. I don’t do dirt,” the boy said scornfully.

“You are now and you will do dirt if you wish to remain and eat. My sister may have coddled you but I will not.”

He started to protest. He needed his hand for playing the fiddle. He was tired after his journey. He was hungry . . .

I paid no attention, and while he was off in the water closet, I rifled through his bag until I found a clean shirt and a pair of socks that while not clean, were at least dry. When he reappeared, I thrust the clothes and his shoes into his arms, and practically pushed him out the door. I shut it hard and turned the lock, keeping his fiddle as hostage.

“Shit,” I heard him mutter, and then his feet thudded down the stairs. Lily barked as he passed the landing and he barked back, finishing with an ascending howl. Lily joined him and for a minute or two, the pair did a duet. Then he continued down to the door, clumping like a one-legged farmer.

I returned to my kitchen, grumbling and swearing as I washed dirty dishes, returned them to the shelves, wiped down the counters. Then I cleaned the house, cleaned myself, and dressed for work. Before I left, I chanced a glance out the window to see how Robin was managing in the garden. And there he was, despite his earlier complaints, laughing and joking with Jack as they moved rocks back and forth creating the low wall. After a moment or two of studying him, I softened my heart, thinking he might be a fair-enough lad after all.