Except the Queen (40 page)

Magic—how I had missed it.

When it was full morning, with Chim and May restless behind us, I said to the crones, “Sisters, come to my house. I have butter and jam for that bread, as well as spearmint tea.” If they would not take thanks, then I could at least give them hospitality. And what greater than bread and tea.

Shawnique looked at me and laughed. “Tea?”

Blanche said, “Nuthin’ stronger?”

“Wine,” I whispered, “but it is morning.”

They laughed and Chim and May laughed as well. Instead, we went around the corner and upstairs to their own apartment, which was full of dark wooden statues of women with swollen bellies and warriors holding spears. There were fierce masks lining the walls. With such strong guardians, I doubted anyone not invited could get in.

We drank some dark amber liquid that burned my throat and opened it, too, for I found myself spilling out the tale of the Lankin to them. We ate the bread without butter or jam and still it was good. The salt they put in the cupboard.

“We was just about out,” Blanche said, “and it was good you brought that. But of course, we knew you would.”

Shawnique added, “Now, sister, it’s time for us to go to sleep. Past time actually. We gonna dream on your problem. We will find you in the evening. Be ready.”

I gave them the number of my house and the street, and then we hustled out of their apartment and into the afternoon sun.

*   *   *

W
HEN WE GOT BACK TO
my house, stomachs full of bread and warmed by the drink, I told all this to my sister, over the air cell. I said, “Who knew there was such magic in the city, though it is not what we are used to. The crones throb with an odd power I cannot name. They think me strange, laugh at my clothes, but their laughter is not harsh. Not at all. Almost, I think, it is . . . 
conspiratorial
. Their power is built on something other than leaf and thorn. It has iron at its base, and paving. It has strong bones.”

Then May and Chim left, taking the pink air cell with them. And suddenly I felt bereft, who had not even known of such a thing hours before. So quickly have I
fallen for this new magic. I will ask the Man of Flowers how to get one. Surely he knows.

Before falling back into bed, I did a last blood casting, this time with my own hair. And the surprise of it was so great, I knew I could never speak it on the air cell or commit it to paper lest the wrong hands touch it, the wrong eyes see it, the wrong ears hear it. Though the Queen had forbidden me to find Meteora, I knew I had to chance it. I dared because of the casting and because of the power of the crones.

In a quick letter to Meteora, sent by eagle mail before I slept, I wrote a short note about Chim’s aunts, ending with:

I
sent out the eagle mail, first sprinkling some acacia into the envelope, for power, then sealing it on all sides and the flap with candle wax dipped in a drop of my blood and clary. Meteora would know at once if it had been tampered with.

Then I lay down to sleep, exhausted by the night’s activities and the morning’s walk to the sisters’ place and back.

I slept through until nearly dark, then woke to a scritch-scratch at the front window, followed by the same sound at the back. A black eddy of crows was whirling in the alleyway, and two of them were squatting uncomfortably on the sill. I tapped on the glass to shoo them away and the larger bird stared at me with walnut-colored eyes.

I
knew
those eyes. Opening the window, I said in the old tongue first and then in a clumsy translation, “My house is yours, my sisters. My heart is yours, my sisters. My way is yours, my sisters.” I hoped it was the right thing to say.

The crones flew in, changing to human form as they touched the floor.

“Whooo-ee!” said Blanche. “You are some slow girl. I told you to be ready. Gotta listen. Listen and learn.” She shook herself all over, as if to shake off the last of the birdness. But some of it remained, in the way she cocked her head, to see out of the corner of her eye, the way her arms fluttered. I wondered that I had not noticed it before.

“Will you take tea with me?” I said. “Bread and jam?”

“We’ll go for that wine you talked of this morning,” said Shawnique.

“Should be late enough for you now,” added Blanche.

They laughed together, though whether it was
at
me or some small joke of their own I did not know.

“Wine, then.” I quickly poured three glasses, theirs to the brim and mine but a quarter full. I put out bread, too, for I did not dare drink on an empty stomach. The wine was a full-bodied red, to bring blood to the cheek and heat to the loins. The Man of Flowers had brought it to our dinner, but neither of us had taken much then. Both—I think—had wanted to be careful our first time together. How far away that seemed now. How fruitless in all senses of the word.

The crones drank their wine in large, noisy sips, talking about its flavor, about the vines from which it had been taken, the side of the vineyard slopes. I could not tell if they were having fun with me, or being serious. Either way, the wine got drunk in record time. I even offered to pour my small glass into theirs.

“You’re gonna need the heat, girl. Up there,” said Blanche, pointing to the ceiling.

I had no idea what she meant. But I drank the quarter glass quickly, and suddenly suspected I knew.
“Flying?”

They looked at me as if I were a slightly stupid and very much younger sibling.

“Hold out your arms, girl. Pull the sleeves back,” Shawnique said.

As I followed her orders, she took out a small porcelain jar from a hidden pocket in her dress. When she opened it, the smell was sharp as wind, clear as air, light
as clouds. I drew in a deep breath, smelling toad essence, almond oil, sweet flag, and water plantain. Maybe even—I thought—a touch of belladonna.

She put two fingers in the green ointment and then rubbed it along the undersides of her arms. “Take the
unguenta
like this,” she said. “Under the arms, on the hands, wrists, forearms. Don’t use too much, but don’t spread it too thinly either.”

“Don’t want you fallin’, darlin’,” added Blanche with a smile, her teeth white against her dark face, reminding me of Chim. “Chasing you down and catching you up gonna slow us a pocketful.”

“Not to mention SPLAT!” said Shawnique and they both began to cackle again.

I did as they did, two fingers into the ointment, then rubbing it on my arms. Everywhere the
unguenta
touched me, my skin began to tingle. Then the tingle went deeper, until I could feel it in my bones as if they were unknitting and then knotting up in a new way.

We went to the back window, climbed out, sat on the sill, squeezed tightly together. I could feel the sisters on either side of me so thin yet so strong. They might as well have been as hollow-boned as the birds they mimicked. I worried I was too heavy for what they had planned.

“She sure is a plump one,” Blanche said, cackling, as if she could read my mind. “A pigeon?”

“She gonna surprise you, sister,” Shawnique replied. “There’s something fierce in Mabel. She gonna surprise us both.”

Then she pulled out a jay’s feather from a different pocket, dipped it into the pot of ointment, closed the pot, disappeared it into the folds of her dress, and anointed us each on the forehead.

This time there was no tingle, only a sharp sudden opening of what felt like a third eye. Somehow I could see more clearly, feel more clearly than I had a moment before.

“We gonna be lifted above the gravity of this situation,” Blanche said, nudging me with her sharp elbow.

“What is . . .” I began, but before I could finish what I was asking, we began to rise from the sill . . . and fly.

And yet, the sisters still looked like themselves, and I could see my own hands were still hands, not wings. I feared we would be revealed, three old women lifting above the ground, flying into the sky. I squinted my eyes to follow them as they flew ahead of me, and even as I watched, they morphed into crows, black against the black sky.

And then I understood. I would be both woman and bird until the
unguenta
wore off. Ordinary folk would see birds, but not anyone with fey blood. How long that transformation would hold, the sisters surely knew. Turning my head carefully, I looked at my broad shoulders, my wings, my talons that lay like a shadow over my real body. Shawnique was right. I
was
a surprise.

I thought
: Oh, sister, to be able to fly again, across this vast city so spectacularly hung with lights like imprisoned stars. To dip, to soar. To lift my sagging body above the gravity of the situation.
And with that we flew into the darkening skies.

*   *   *

O
F COURSE WE TOUCHED DOWN
often. The crones, like many old women, had small bladders. And our arms frequently went numb. Our eyes watered. Backs ached. Also we had to avoid phone lines and the telescopes of bird-watchers who would know what we were not. And city folk up checking out their neighbors.

“We calls them
jeeper-peepers
,” Blanche told me.

I learned quickly. I had to. It was either that or die. And I was not ready to die. I had a sister to save, a boy and girl to bring together, Long Lankin to confront, a Red Cap to vanquish, a puzzle to solve. I had not felt so well in days.
In weeks
.

I was ready for everything ahead of me.

Everything. Except. Perhaps. The Queen.

W
rapped in a blanket and sitting at Jack’s huge kitchen table, Sparrow wrote a letter on a piece of blue onionskin paper. It felt weird writing a letter. She had never actually done that—put words on paper to someone else: a salutation, followed by “How are you?” “Doing fine,” and all the other glib things people sent each other. She’d never even had the chance to write home for money.
And let’s face it
, Sparrow fumed,
it was these damn letters that got Sophia—it’s hard to call her by her right name—injured in the first place.

She glanced over to where Sophia lay resting on a small day bed. Her arm was bandaged and secured in a homemade sling.
Jack’s a good medic
, she thought.
At least he seems to know what he’s doing
. But Sophia was pale, and Sparrow noticed her breathing was labored.

On the other side of the room, Robin was watching out the window, scanning the backyards and the garden for further signs of attack. Jack was in the kitchen, rattling the pots and then opening and slamming drawers in preparation for cooking.
Or maybe just sharpening the knives
, Sparrow thought, hearing the soft scree of blade against a hone.

Sparrow read over what she had written so far:

Sparrow bit the end of her pen cap, thinking she should probably explain those last few sentences.

What
is
coming
? Thinking about the last few days, all she could understand was that for the first time in her life, all the insanity, the danger, the oddness of her identity were coming together. And the crazier and more dangerous it had become, the more true.