In The Coils Of The Snake (3 page)

Her mother turned away
from the window to glare at them both. “She’s
torn
that scab off three times so she would have a wound to show you,” she
said.

“That “s
good,” said Marak, smiling at his Miranda. “I’m not raising a coward.
She’s not afraid of a little pain.”

“You said you wanted a normal human
girl!” said Til sharply. “How can
you
call that thing normal when you come around here every few days working
new
spells on her?”

“Work
a spell on me! Work a spell on me!” begged Miranda happily. Marak grinned
at the frustrated Til before bending over his little girl again. “What
spell do you want me to work?” he asked her.

She
stopped to think. “Nurse told us a story, and it had a girl, and she was
spelled to be the beautifulest in all the land,” she told him.

“I
can’t work that spell on you,” he responded sincerely. “You’re
already the most beautiful girl in this land.”

And
that little face lit up with a beautiful smile.
“Work another
spell on me!”

“Just anything?
” he chuckled. “How about this?

He cupped his hand over
her butterfly bracelet. When he pulled it back, a
real
butterfly sat there, deep blue, trembling and fanning its wings. It fluttered
crazily up before her wide eyes and clung to the
front of her nightgown.
Miranda was beside herself with joy.

“I knew it did
something!” she exclaimed triumphantly, and the goblin
King
laughed.

• • •

Miranda
sat at her dressing table and watched the blue butterfly loop
about on its
whimsical travels of the room. “You shouldn’t act so cheerful,” she
whispered as it landed on her wrist. “He won’t be coming to see us
anymore.”

In
the short time that Miranda had been in the goblin caves, Marak
had kept his ward
very much to himself, determined that Catspaw
would
hold for her the thrill of the unknown. Miranda had lived qui
etly in an apartment on the elves’ floor of the
great palace, content with
her
ongoing studies and Marak’s daily visits. If she had seen almost
nothing of Catspaw, she had seen very little else
of goblin life, either.

Now
the girl found herself propelled to the very center of goblin society. The new
King kept her by his side at every social occasion,
and
the fascinated monsters thronged around her. Miranda played
her part to perfection, exhibiting the fine
manners and graciousness
that Marak
had drilled into her. She hid her true feelings from everyone
— including,
at first, from herself.

Because the fact of
the matter was that many goblins were hideous. They didn’t just look funny, as
Marak had always said.
There were deformities
among them that sent a chill down
Miranda’s
spine, a shock such as she might have felt at the sight of a
corpse. She
could barely swallow food in their company.

There
was the goblin, for instance, with the huge flat head, burly
arms, and tiny body. His doll’s legs dangled uselessly a
foot above the
ground
as he swung himself from place to place on his hands. There
was
the genial little goblin with the common abnormality, eyes of two different
colors. One of his eyes was dark brown, twinkling with good humor. But the
other eye was huge and bright red. And
there
was an entire family of goblins who were the color of dark gray
earth, with the look
of things too long underground. Their hairless
heads were round and bulbous, like soft rubber balls. Their pale eyes
bulged
alarmingly, as if they were being strangled.

Seen
in the light of an honest day, these forms would have been
frightful
enough, but far worse was their appearance in the thick shadows of the kingdom.
At any moment, Miranda might turn a
corner
in the dim hallways of the palace and find herself face-to-face
with a
horror she had never even imagined. And when she met it, she had to remember to
smile.

It didn’t occur to
the girl that Marak’s death had left her over
wrought
and that her repugnance was compounded by her grief. All
Miranda knew
was that she was pretending to be happy when she
had thought at last her hiding and pretending would be over. She had
looked forward all her life to coming to Marak’s
kingdom and being a
King’s Wife. She
had never once considered that it might be difficult.

The long years of
protecting herself from her brutal mother
guided
her conduct now. Miranda smiled her way through to the
end of each day,
and no one knew she was pretending. The callous goblins never hid their
feelings, so they didn’t doubt her performance. Seylin or Kate might have seen
through the act, but they were too busy, and they had their own sorrow.

Little
by little, Miranda felt herself sinking beneath the weight of
her own perfect manners. Her smile seemed frozen on her
face, like a
lead mask that
she couldn’t remove. She was performing on a stage
that
she couldn’t leave. She could never step out into the sunlight. And where her appreciative
audience should have been, cheering her on, there was only the silence of
death.

What a pity,
he had said to her.
What
a pity I won’t be here to see you.

“I
want to see Marak’s grave,” she announced one morning to the
dwarf
in charge of the Kings’ crypt. The little creature stroked his
long white beard. Then he led her through the
hallways to the thick,
leaden door that closed off the end of the crypt.

“He
doesn’t have anything graved,” he pointed out. “There’s not
a
thing graved anywhere amongst the lot of them. It’s not allowed,
you see no names or nothing. Shame, really. Your
stone, though,
it’s graven real nice. I got to help on that one.”

Miranda pushed from
her mind the thought of her own marble headstone, placed in the Hallow Hill
graveyard when Marak had taken her away from home. He had worked a spell on the
whole community to make them dream her funeral. It was uncomfortable to
remember that her own family thought that she was dead.

She followed the
diminutive man down the twisting path of the
narrow,
chilly cavern, watching nervously as his torch pushed away
the inky blackness of the never-ending night. He
kept up a cheerful
patter, pointing
at the all-but-invisible tombs. “That one, he was eight
feet tall
from the tips of his horns to his cloven hooves.” Miranda tried her best
not to listen.

They
came to the turn of the cavern where the last tomb was, and
Miranda’s grief hit her like a blow. Right here, he had
stood and said
good-bye. Then, he
had turned and walked away from her.

“This will be
for the new King,” the dwarf noted, gesturing at a
rocky outcrop with his torch. The shadows dipped and swayed with the
torchlight, rushing around the cave walls, and Miranda’s nerves
stretched
taut.

“If you don’t
mind,” she said, “I’d like to be alone with him.”

“With who?”
The dwarf peered past her in surprise.

“With him.”
She pointed at the tomb, and the dwarf’s expression cleared.

“Oh, him! Now,
that’s what I call being alone. I’ll be right outside then, making sure the
door don’t shut. I’d hate to think of you locked up in here. I’d get in no end
of trouble.”

He
started off, and the shadows leaned to embrace her. Miranda
gasped
in alarm.

“Your torch!”
she called, and remembered just in time to give him a smile as he turned
around. “I’m afraid I need to borrow it.”

She
took the smooth pole from him and was rather surprised at its weight; i
t
was stone, not wood, and top heavy as well. Its flame, she
realized, came from
something like a match head, coated with a chemical that burned.

The little man took
his pickax from his belt, and the blade lit
with
a clear white light. Miranda watched it bob away up the wind
ing path.
She sat down next to Marak’s tomb and laid her head on the sloping lid, resting
the bottom tip of the torch on the ground. The rocks within the circle of
torchlight were dull and sandy-pale,
devoid
of interest or appeal. “Marak,” she whispered, but no answer
came.
She wouldn’t find comfort there.

“I
never knew you were going to leave,” she continued. “I
thought you’d always be with me.” The echoes of her
whisper hissed
up and down the
cave, turning corners and coming back again.

“You
wanted to go,” she accused the empty darkness. “You were
happy about dying. First you made me a stranger to my
family, and
then you brought me to all these strangers,
and then you couldn’t wait to leave.”

Her reserve was
breaking down. The smile had cracked off her face. The manners that had carried
her through began to desert her.

“I told you I
didn’t want to stay here without you,” she insisted. “I told you I
wanted to be with you. It’s so hard here, and I’m tired, so tired of it all!
Please come back and take me with you.”

There
was no reply, only the echoes, like a thousand snakes, crawl
ing
around the edges of the cave. Nothing changed in the bright, blank circle of
torchlight, and nothing changed in the darkness
beyond. Miranda felt her despair and isolation rise up to choke her.

“Marak!”
she cried, beating on the tomb with her fist. “Come back and take me with
you!”

The
tomb lid reverberated like a drum with deep, sonorous
booms that swelled
into a rumbling roar. They seemed to shake the
cave walls, to come from the earth under her feet.
Miranda stopped,
startled, but the
noise only increased, its echoes resounding like thunder. Too late, she
remembered that every goblin King was named Marak. When she had called him, she
had called them all.

She
started to her feet, but the top-heavy torch slipped from her
grasp,
shattering in an explosion of sparks. Flaming pieces rolled
away and fizzled out, and the shadows leapt upon
her. Marak’s tomb
vanished in the darkness.

Miranda
seized the largest piece of torch that still burned and held
it up in trembling fingers. She could still see just the
hint of a path in the wavering rays of light. Would the dwarf hear her if she
called to
him, or would
the echoes just come shrieking back? At any moment,
the
last flames might go out and leave her trapped in the dark.

She started up the
path, staggering a little, her feet clumsy and
heavy, as if she were a puppet trying to work her own strings.
Desperately, she clutched the piece of splintered stone, trying to navigate the
cavern by its flickering light. She
kept herself to a walk, reasoning with
her terror. Another stumble, and
the light would be gone for good.

Past the King with
the bat wings who had choked to death on
mutton.
Past the King whose fingers had ended in hooks. The wan
ing gleam barely
suggested a path, and the rock formations beside
her seemed like tall, twisted shapes. She tried not to see them as cen
turies-old
bodies, lining the way to watch her pass. She tried not to hear the echoes in
the cavern as the shuffling of long-unused feet. You don’t want to die yet, her
pounding heart told her. You don’t
want to
be with him after all. But Miranda kept her eyes on the path
before her
and spoke no more words to the dead.

She stumbled through
the doorway and into the tunnel beyond A
t
lit with the warm glow of hanging lamps. Only then did she feel a
painful throb and look down to find blood on her
hand. She had
split her knuckles open hammering on Marak’s tomb.

“What happened
to you?” asked the dwarf, peering at her interestedly.

Miranda
was far too upset to smile at him this time. “Do you
hear
anyone following me?” she gasped.