Except the Queen (42 page)

*   *   *

W
E DROVE FOR WHAT FELT
like days, weeks, an eternity, though they assured me it was less than an hour’s tick on the clock till we arrived at a small, shabby house in a desolate neighborhood of the city. Not far away were the massive girders of a huge bridge spanning a river, separating this ill-tide collection of houses from the brighter lights of the city on the other side.

As Jack carried me from the car to a redbrick house, I noticed wild shapes and lines painted in riotous colors on the home’s walls and fences. Swirls and whirls, whorls and wobbles. Even the street signs were marked with black and red letters. Most were meaningless, but here and there amid the outsized letters and curled symbols I saw the wriggles of warding spells that might protect this house and others from malicious influences.

Good
, I thought, hope rising.
Fighting without hope,
as my dam used to say,
is the road to ruin
.

Once inside the house—its walls covered in fox grape vines, which offered even more protection—Jack set me down and led me into a small sitting room. There he had me sit down like an invalid—which I nearly was. I perched on a huge lumpy couch along whose spine rested four very large sleeping cats. Each opened one eye in my direction and then closed it again, unperturbed by my presence. The house smelled of dried lavender, sweet incense, and the faint whiff of cat pee. It also smelled of power. Not a lot but—another hope—perhaps enough.

Jack had gone off somewhere though I could still hear him, speaking quickly to someone. And then I heard a woman’s voice, low, tremulous, breathy, urging Sparrow and Robin to hurry in with their bundles.

“I need to close the door from the prying eyes of my neighbors,” she said. “Snoopy, gossipy . . .” I did not catch the last of it because of the sound of their running footsteps.

Then I heard the key in the lock and a scratching sound, which I took to be her sketching another warding sign on the door’s wood.

I closed my eyes and sighed.
Safe at last
.

“Sophia, this is my Aunt Vinnie.”

Had I dozed off? Certainly I had not heard them come close. I opened my eyes. “Hello, Aunt Vinnie,” I began, then goggled.

Time away from the Greenwood had changed her, though I could not say for certain how long ago it had been since our court had seen her. She was old now, humpbacked and with a mouth full of buckteeth through which her speech whistled. But still I recognized those gray-blue eyes, the long silver braid wrapped around the crown of her head, and the soft gentleness of her hands as she laid them on my forehead. I knew her smell.

“Lavinia,” I whispered. “Milk-mother to all.” I remembered her when she was young and buxom, milk flowing in her breasts but no child of her own to nurse for death had taken that babe early. A servant sent into the world to find a wet nurse for a Highborn lady had found a distraught Lavinia, standing on a bridge overlooking a rushing river. The servant had coaxed her with music and Lavinia had followed, through the veil and into the Greenwood. For seven years she served as wet nurse to those few precious children that had been born to Highborn mothers whose own milk was too thin to nourish. Lavinia had remained young in the Greenwood, and beautiful, glamoured by her grateful lords. And then, when there were no more births, she was returned—I had heard—to the very bridge where she had been found.

She chuckled in a low voice. “It’s Vinnie now,” she said, “but I don’t remember you,” she added, squinting at my face.

In spite of my illness, I blushed. “I am not as I was then.”

“Like me,” she replied. “Glad to know I am not forgotten Under the Hill. I hope to return one day.” Her blue eyes sparkled.

“So do I,” I croaked, throat tight with emotion. “So do I.”

*   *   *

W
E HUNKERED DOWN AT
V
INNIE
’
S
for the next two days as Vinnie brought me teas and tinctures of the very herbs I would have selected for myself, including a few I might have overlooked. She was the only healer I could have imagined with the skills in this world to rid me of the bananachs’ poison. For the first time I wondered: was it only chance that had brought Jack into my life, and his Vinnie, or had someone else had a hand in my destiny?

Jack hovered and I saw similar questions dancing like fireflies in his eyes but I was not ready to share answers with him. And neither, it seemed, was Vinnie.

But not all of my questions were about me. As Vinnie bustled around me, checking my bandages, brewing tea, occasionally throwing back her head to laugh at one of Jack’s teasing remarks, I wondered how she felt about her exile in the Greenwood? About her return home to this world? I could not answer those questions for myself, let alone an almost stranger. I was only aware that I had been changed—outside and in—and I was like a stone in the middle of the stream that longs for the solid feel of the shore but can no longer decide which one.

*   *   *

O
N THE NEXT EVENING WHEN
I felt the poison ebb and leave my body for good, I rose from the couch, gave the cats a brisk rub behind the ears, and went in search of the others. I paused at the kitchen door to delight in my returning health and the sight of my friends there.

Jack was cooking, swooping back and forth between table and a collection of bubbling pots like an alchemist intent on the transformation of lead into gold. At the table, chin resting on her palms, Vinnie listened to Sparrow sing a song penned by that fairy-touched poet Yeats, while Robin played his fiddle. And I saw clearly in Sparrow’s face the reflection of the Queen—beauty like a
flame—something that she could no longer hide beneath the black hair and smudged eyes.

I entered the room, found my own chair, gently pushed a calico cat off the seat, and joined them, glad to be in their company. And gladder still that we seemed so safe and unharmed in this warded house made of sturdy bricks.
Ah—seeming
. You would think a fairy—even an aged fairy—would beware of such a transitory state.

The song ended, and supper was served. We grabbed our forks and plates and amid noisy conversation, tucked into the platters filled with the Jack’s offerings: brown bread and butter, savory vegetables with dried apricots and prunes, rice for me, and lamb stew flavored with mint for the others.

Midway through the meal, the calico cat settled into my lap and gently kneaded my thighs. Whistling between her teeth, Vinnie poured neat glasses of Scotch, that very human drink. We held up our glasses, the Scotch bright as amber, and drank to our health.

Is this how it should be?
I thought.
Halfling and Highborn, young and old, man and maid, fairy and mortal sitting together thus at a single table in friendship and in peace?

It must be so, for I felt a great warming rush of happiness that had nothing to do with the drink. Yes, I longed in my heart to see my sister’s face and know her safe. Yes, I longed to touch the sweet fields of the Greenwood again. And yes, I feared what was coming. But for the first time since my banishment, I did not feel alone.

T
he sisters flew wingtips apart. They understood how to catch the coasting parts of the air, the eddies of wind. They knew from long experience how to rest upon a breeze. While I, new come to flying in my cumbersome body, pumped my wings more than I needed to. My arms grew tired. My thighs, stretched out behind me, grew tired. My eyes straining against the blowing winds grew tired as well.

And still we flew, until I began to spiral down and the crones came on either side of me, to help with a soft landing.

What might a watcher have seen? Crows mobbing a hawk, I expect. But that was not what was going on. They guided me to a meadow, leaving me to catch my breath, there beneath the safety of a towering pine. Then they flew off, coming back with food and water, entering the meadow in their human shapes. And I, with barely enough energy to eat, though they made me, sitting on either side and putting the food in my hands.

“You ain’t aerio-dynamite yet,” said Blanche.

“Aerodynamic,” corrected Shawnique.

“That, too.”

They both laughed while I sipped at the water, munched the berries, and ate the small, hard apples they gave me.

Then Shawnique drew a flask from her skirts. My, that dress had pockets!

“Just a small sip, Mabel,” she said. “We got a long road ahead.”

“A sky road,” added Blanche, who seemed to have a talent for the obvious.

“We can’t count on your sister or her Jack having a bottle of the good stuff.” Shawnique licked her lips.

“She means a single malt,” explained Blanche, though that explained nothing. “An Islay. Peatier the better.”

“I like my whiskey neat and my men the same way.”

I nodded as if I understood a word of what they were saying, then took the proffered sip. The drink was body temperature and mellow-tasting, until it hit my throat and then it burned down to my belly where it sat, like a little furnace, warming me up.

“Look at the color in this girl’s cheeks,” said Blanche. “She’s on fire! She’s a hot one! Mabel—
are you able
?”

Shawnique took the flask from me. “She’s about as able as she’s gonna get. Now you take a sip, sister, and so will I, and then it’s liftoff time.”

“How much farther?” I asked. “Are we almost there?”

“Not for a while yet,” said Shawnique.

“Plenty more miles to go,” added Blanche.

“So we gotta keep movin’. We gotta get there before the shit really hits the fan,” Shawnique said. She began crooning the
Hi-de-ho
again.

Blanche chimed in.

And then me.

They stood, Shawnique depositing the flask back in her pocket with nary an extra movement, and then before I quite understood it, they were in the air.

Suddenly, my arms and legs felt renewed. Though I wondered silently about that shit and that fan. Sounded awkward at best, messy at worst. Would I ever understand humans?

I leaped into the air, arms windmilling till I was caught by a gust and lifted farther up.

“Coming, sisters!” I cried. Even to my own ears, it sounded like the hawk’s scream, “Kreee-aaah.”

“Listen to her now!” cawed Blanche. “She’s got it!” And she raced ahead of me into the dark.

*   *   *

I
T TOOK US ANOTHER DAY
, with frequent stops, plus sips of the energizing brew, to get within one state and two counties away. I did not even ask what a state or county was. They sounded vast.

But my flying had improved until I was almost as good as the crones. They even took to complimenting me, though in an offhanded way.

Shawnique said, “We’re making you an honorary crone, Mabel.”

And Blanche said, “Pretty good for a white chick.”

“Peep! Peep! Peep!” I made the sounds of a chick at her.

That made them howl with laughter, and they called me “chicken hawk,” which was the first really funny thing either of them had said. Or at least that I understood.

Flying would have been fun if we could have done most of it by day. If we were not in a hurry to get to Milwaukee. But Shawnique warned we had to do most of our flying by night or in the times between dusk and the true dawn.

“Hard to disguise us completely in the light of day, Mabel,” she said. “There are some human folk with farsight.”

“And scopes,” added Blanche darkly.

I already understood about the scopes. Humans with farsight—now
that
surprised me.

*   *   *

W
E GOT TO METEORA
’
S HOUSE
just as the sun was rising, settled down as birds in the garden furrows and then slowly stood up in human form. To this day, I am not sure how the sisters knew which street was which. And when
I fly by myself, I have to come down often just to walk the streets in my human form till I find where I am going. I have learned to read maps.

But once in the furrows, I began to shiver. There was something dirty—something horribly evil—polluting the ground. As my human form overtook my feathered body, I let out a huge sigh.

Is it the arum
? I wondered. But there was too much of the smell and it was everywhere.

“Whoooo-eee,” said Blanche. “That is some odorama. Something stinks to high heaven, sister.”

“I was thinking the other direction myself,” Shawnique said. She flicked away some of the dirt from her skirts.

“Arum,” I said, sniffing.

Shawnique added thoughtfully, “And nightshade, manglewort . . .”

“And mandrake,” said Blanche, wrinkling her nose dramatically.

Now the sun was full on us.

“But something else.” I didn’t want to say what I feared the most.

“Blood spilled in anger, in terror,” said Shawnique. How could she say it so dispassionately? But then, she did not know Meteora and the others.

“And some spilled in shame.” Blanche looked down at her hands, which were wrangling together.

“So it’s begun.” Shawnique reached over and untangled her sister’s fingers.

“Then we better find them and get them out of here.” I kept my voice steady.