Elixir (32 page)

There was a low, grating squeak, and the door of the cell creaked open. A Goblin guard was standing in the doorway.

“Got a message for you,” said the Goblin in a tone that suggested he’d rather not be bothered. “Queen wants to see you.”

The Goblin picked up a bowl of what appeared to be water and set it roughly on the stone floor of the cell, spilling some of the contents out.

“Go wash yourself up. Queen wants you to look nice.”

“Apparently she wants me to be a clean corpse?” muttered Obadiah. But the Goblin had already departed. The door slammed shut with a bang, sloshing the water further.

Obadiah walked over to the bowl, its surface glinting in the light of the single Perpetual Candle that illuminated the cell. He dipped a finger in. It was ice cold. He threw a little on his face, wiping off the dirt, then scrubbed his legs and arms clean of the blood leftover from his fight with the Goblins. He didn’t give a damn about looking nice for the Queen, but it would be good to wash his wounds so they didn’t fester.

He was about to rip his shirtsleeve off into bandages when the cell door swung open again.

It was the same Goblin.

“Ready?” he barked.

“Not particularly.”

“Don’t care. Queen wants to see you. Now.”

“She’s not very patient, is she?” Obadiah remarked. But the Goblin looked like he was going to hit him with his stick, so Obadiah decided the wise choice would be to shut up. He’d already picked enough fights with these prison guards—he should at least give his existing wounds time to heal before he gave himself new ones. Plus, the guards weren’t really worth arguing with. They weren’t bright enough to make for real repartee.

“Take your coat,” said the Goblin.

Obadiah eyed the makeshift pillow he’d made of his jacket in the corner.

“You’re meeting her in the Central Forest,” the Goblin said.

“How kind of you to not want me to be cold.” Obadiah smiled sardonically.

“Queen said take your coat,” replied the Goblin.

Obadiah sighed.

“Why does she want me to meet her in the woods?” he asked.

The Goblin was silent.

“Oh, never mind, I know you don’t know.” He shook his head. “It is odd, though,” he said. “If she wanted me dead, she could easily kill me right here. Why do we need to go to the woods?”

O
badiah stood at the agreed-upon spot in the Central Forest, shifting from foot to foot, uneasy. It was one of the remotest spots in Mannahatta. He didn’t know why the Queen wanted to meet him here. Was it a trap? If she wanted to kill him, she could have done it right in her own dungeon; no one was going to come to his aid.

A ring of hemlock trees surrounded him. Their arrow-straight trunks towered over his head like columns of the Parthenon. The air was faintly spiced with pine needles mixed with the murky odors of decomposing things on the forest floor. There were strange noises all around—little rustlings and scufflings in the leaves behind him that just made him more on edge. Nature was not his element—but it was the Fairy Queen’s.

A faint wind stirred the hemlock branches, signaling the Queen was coming. An eerie light silvered everything, and Obadiah saw that hundreds of fireflies had just illuminated. They were hovering, motionless, between the trees, like crystals in a living chandelier. Good god, were the very insects at the Fairy Queen’s command?

Obadiah saw something out of the corner of his eye and his breath stopped. It seemed for a moment like the hemlock trees were moving. Not moving in the wind, but moving towards him, closing in. He whirled around and stared at the trees. But they were all perfectly still, rooted. He was imagining things. The forest was starting to get to him, to play tricks on his mind.

He heard a light, mellifluous voice through the leaves. It was the Fairy Queen.

“Obadiah,” she said. “How good of you to meet me. Come. Eat.”

Obadiah glanced down and saw that there was a white linen tablecloth covering the forest floor, laid out with the most delectable banquet. It had not been there a moment before. It was all human food—steam rising from crusty loaves of bread, savory hunks of roast meats studded with garlic and rosemary, pies with golden crusts oozing syrupy fruit. Obadiah’s stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten anything but a piece of stale bread in the cell. He noticed that all of his favorite dishes were present—mulled cider, meat pies, salmagundi, raspberry syllabub—dishes he hadn’t seen since he was at his mother’s table two hundred years ago. The smells brought back memories of her, patting his face with her floury hands. The thought sent a pain through his chest, and he tried to dismiss it. How had the Fairy Queen known what all his favorite foods were anyway? Tantalizing aromas of garlic and cinnamon filled his nostrils.
It’s not real,
he told himself.
None of this is real
. He knew better than to eat fairy food.
Don’t eat anything they give you.
That was the first thing he’d learned since coming to this strange place.
That’s one way they put you under their spell.

“I’m not hungry,” Obadiah said.

“You’re a terrible liar, Obadiah,” the Fairy Queen replied. She laughed infuriatingly, like a tinkle of chimes. “But suit yourself.”

The entire feast vanished as she spoke. And the Fairy Queen was standing beside him.

Obadiah forced himself to stare at the ground. He would not allow himself to look in her eyes, afraid that if he did so, she could bewitch him. But he caught a glimpse of the dress she wore. The iridescent spider-silk of her gown was so fine it was translucent. He could see the sleek outlines of her thighs. The curves her breasts almost glowed beneath the fabric. Her skin was as supple as a young girl’s. She had bespelled herself to be as young as Mab.

Obadiah closed his eyes, but he couldn’t get the Queen’s image from his mind. He did not want to see her as beautiful. She was the Fairy Queen. She was Mab’s mother! Finding her attractive was just wrong.

“Sit, Obadiah,” she said, her voice dripping with mocking lightness. “You’re going to be here awhile.”

Obadiah took a seat on top of a knotty hemlock stump. He tried to gather his thoughts, but it was impossible to concentrate with the Queen so close to him. Turning his head away from her, he studied the surrounding forest. It seemed like the ring of trees was closer than it had been a moment ago. The clearing was smaller. Or maybe it just felt that way—like everything was closing in on him.

Obadiah tried to remember what he’d planned to say, all the negotiation tactics and diplomatic demands he’d carefully worked out during his time in the cell, but he couldn’t think straight in the Queen’s presence.

“So,” said the Queen. “Do you want to negotiate with me?”

Obadiah could hear it in the tone of her voice; she was laughing at him.

His cheeks flushed in anger.

“I can’t negotiate with anyone who won’t look me in the eye,” said the Fairy Queen.

Obadiah swallowed hard. He knew he couldn’t avert his eyes forever—he needed to read her, to figure out what she was thinking, what she was playing at.

“I can’t,” he said. “You’ll bewitch me!”

The Fairy Queen laughed again.

“I won’t bewitch you,” she said, “though I can’t help it if you become bewitched.”

Obadiah gripped the root of the tree behind him, feeling the rough bark beneath his fingers. At least something was solid and real in this world of lights and shadows. Taking a deep breath and steeling himself, he gazed up into her face.

As his eyes met hers, he forgot for a moment that he was supposed to hate her. He had never seen a woman so beautiful. It was a perfection no human could ever hope to achieve—not even Mab. Obadiah knew he should look away, but he couldn’t. He just stared, dumbstruck and open-mouthed. He imagined this must be what light looked like to a moth—and he understood how they could fry themselves just to be close to something so transcendentally beautiful.

Obadiah felt something touching his arms. A hemlock root had risen up from the ground and wound itself around one of his wrists—like a manacle.
What the . . .  ?
Obadiah wrenched his hand forward, trying to free himself of the woody vine, but the more he struggled the tighter the root became. Then another root grasped his other hand. The roots of the trees were moving. They had been creeping closer this whole time. It wasn’t his imagination. Hemlock roots were sliding across the forest floor like snakes. Obadiah kicked wildly with his feet, trying to stomp on them, but they wound themselves around his ankles. They yanked him flat against the trunk of the tree.

Desperately, he opened his mouth to try to sing a spell, but one of the vines whipped round, lashing against his face, slithering inside his mouth, gagging him. The vines gripped him tighter and the panic rose in his gut. When he opened his eyes, the Queen was smiling.

“Start negotiating, Obadiah.”

“This is not fair,” he tried to say, but the vine in his mouth made it impossible to talk.

“I can’t understand you,” laughed the Queen infuriatingly, “but if you said something about not being fair, I never promised to be fair. I only promised Mab I wouldn’t kill you.”

Obadiah stared at her.

“Mab begged me to spare your life. My pixie messengers informed me. It was very touching, what they said—she didn’t even ask to see you again, she only prayed for your life. I must obey my daughter’s wishes; I won’t kill you, Obadiah—I’ll keep that promise to Mab. Though I can’t promise you won’t die in other ways.”

Obadiah writhed against the roots till the tough bark began to cut his hands, drawing blood on his skin. But they weren’t budging. The thought that Mab had begged and pleaded for his life affected him so deeply it made his chest ache. But he didn’t believe the Queen that she wouldn’t kill him. And what was worse—the roots weren’t like ropes, passively holding him down. They were more like hands—warm and alive—a thousand hands at the Queen’s command. The more he struggled, the harder they held him.

“Why?” Obadiah growled against the bark. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Besides the fact that I enjoy it?” said the Queen, smiling at him. She clearly understood him, even through the gag. She was just playing with him, like a cat playing with a mouse. “Because there’s something you need to see.”

Bending down, she produced two knives from the luminescent folds of her gown. She held them in front of Obadiah. The knives were identical. The blades were made of stone—though that stone had been carved as sharp as any steel. The hilts were forged out of glinting copper and fashioned in the shape of the crescent moon. They were inscribed with runes and strange symbols he couldn’t read. Obadiah looked up into the Queen’s eyes as fear began to crystalize in his gut.

“You promised Mab you wouldn’t kill me!” he whispered through the vines in his mouth, flattening himself against the tree, recoiling as far as he could away from her and the knives. He knew he was pleading with her now, and it unmanned him—but he was at her mercy.

“That is true. I promised Mab
I
wouldn’t kill you,” said the Queen. “I didn’t promise her that you wouldn’t kill yourself.”

“I would never do that! Don’t be ridiculous!” Obadiah shouted through the choking vine. But now he saw what Mab meant about the slippery nature of a fairy’s promises.

“Do you know what these two knives are, Obadiah?” the Queen asked rhetorically.

Obadiah shook his head.

“One is the knife they call the Vale Cleaver. A knife that cuts through the veils of reality—and rips an opening between one world and the next. This is the knife you need to go home, Obadiah. Stab yourself with it and you reappear, alive and well, in the human world.”

“What’s the other knife?” Obadiah asked.

“The other knife is just an ordinary knife—fashioned to resemble the Vale Cleaver in every way. If you stab yourself with it, you just die.”

Bending down, she took one of the blades and ran the blunt edge of it over the contours of his face, down his arm, over his chest, teasing him. Obadiah shuddered.

“Release his right hand and his mouth,” the Fairy Queen said in a loud, commanding voice. Obadiah heard a rustle in the leaves and then slowly felt the tension easing in his right wrist. The vine slithered back, away from his lips. The root that had been around his right hand was sinking slowly back into the earth. He bent and flexed his fingers, enjoying the ability to move. But what about the rest of his body? One hand was not enough to free him—there was no way he could disengage himself from the other roots. Somehow, this one taste of freedom made him feel even more helpless than before. Again he tried to sing a spell, but he couldn’t. It was like the trees had sucked his life energy. He had no magic to call up inside himself. The only way out would be through the Queen’s knives.

She stretched out her hands, holding each knife out to him on the flat of her open palms.

“Choose, Obadiah,” she said.

Obadiah shook his head. His heart was hammering.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You can, and you will.”