Extraordinary (31 page)

“Don't you want to fight?”

“Only if I win,” said Phoebe finally, softly. “Otherwise, I want my mom to live. And you. And—” She stopped.

“And what?”

“I don't like the thought of a whole people dying. I don't want to be responsible for that.”

“But it's them or you, Phoebe. And Mallory and—that other one.” The sharp inhale and the tightening of Benjamin's face, and the way he did not even so much as glance at the manticore, was the only opinion that Benjamin would ever utter to Phoebe about the creature who had been Ryland. “They deliberately set you up.”

Phoebe sighed. “Look. I'm thinking it all over. But I need to know: Will you be with me tonight? Whatever happens? Whatever I decide to do or—or not do?”

A long, long moment of silence.

“That's why I came,” said Benjamin bleakly. “That's what she asked me to do. She said you needed me.”

“Mallory, you mean?”

“Mallory. May her soul rot in hell.”

“That won't happen,” said Phoebe. “She doesn't have one.”

Evening came. There was no preventing it. The sun began to sink behind the mountains, sending out bands of orange and pink against the sky. Across the clearing from where Phoebe and Benjamin sat, the manticore got to his feet. As he stretched, the bones of his skeleton rose up from his thin pelt in stark, chilling silhouette.

Phoebe felt Benjamin's hand tighten where it cupped her shoulder, digging painfully into her skin. His face was rigid with fury and hate, directed at the manticore and perhaps also at the setting sun and the inescapable fact that time had run out. A second later he was struggling to stand. But the moss shackles had grown to cover even more of Benjamin's legs, so in the end Phoebe had to help him.

“Phoebe,” Benjamin whispered. “What have you decided? Will you refuse? Will you fight?” His voice was urgent, demanding. He had no need to say again that this was what he thought she should do; it was utterly clear.

She loved him for it. But she didn't know if he was wrong or right. All afternoon, as she sat with Benjamin, first she had decided one way and then, the next minute, the other.

Phoebe shook her head. “I'm not sure.” Then she added, “I'm sorry.”

She heard Benjamin's wordless exhalation of impatience, of frustration. But he stayed close to her; he kept holding her, and she knew he would be there as long as possible.

And so they stood, leaning on each other, while across the clearing the sun sank lower and the manticore was gradually joined by others of his kind.

The new arrivals drifted into visibility like mist solidifying. First there was a group of four faeries by the manticore's side. Then there were eight, then ten, then twenty-one, and soon too many to count, many more than had gathered with the queen that morning. Phoebe turned slightly so that she could watch Benjamin's face as he took in the faerie folk in all their variegated glory. Fur, feathers, leathery skin, tree bark, spots. Two legs and four legs and in a couple of cases, eight. Tails. And yet they were so unmistakably humanoid too.

They were exactly as Mallory had described in the story of Mayer Rothschild and the faerie queen, which Benjamin too had heard on Nantucket. But seen in the flesh, they were also so much more. They were the creatures of myth and legend, of ancient pagan religion and power. They were the unearthly, the inhuman. The mysterious and the unutterable, that which cannot be mapped or known. They represented the limits of logic and rationality and the depths of the subconscious. Their very existence made you small. And somehow, at the same time, it made you large.

Despite everything, Phoebe's breath caught in her throat as she looked. Once more she understood why her ancestor had knelt. But this time, she also had a glimpse of something else: that perhaps his worship had not been entirely in contradiction to a love of the one God. For who was she—and who was Mayer—who were even the faeries—to understand the whole of the universe?

What would the world be without this physical manifestation of the ineffable living somewhere in it? If they died, what else might be destroyed along with them?

She saw Benjamin's eyes flicker behind his glasses—those intelligent eyes that she knew so well—as he looked from one faerie to the next to the next. She saw him understand fully what she had understood earlier: They weren't making it up. These people had been decimated by weakness, disease, powerlessness. They were truly on the verge of death.

She felt his breath in her ear as he whispered, “Let them die, Phoebe.”

It was no longer a demand. It was a plea.

Perhaps he did not see all that she now did about them. Or perhaps he did, but still valued her life more. This too Phoebe couldn't know. There was no time to find out.

She thought: I am not smart enough or brave enough or strong enough to make this choice. I am not—she groped for the right word and found it—not
extraordinary
enough.

Across the clearing, the faerie folk formed themselves into a rough semicircle, facing Phoebe and Benjamin. Then, in the center of them all and taller than everyone, the antlered man appeared.

“The king,” Phoebe whispered to Benjamin. He nodded. Phoebe inclined her head again when the king's gaze rested on her, but Benjamin didn't. Benjamin stood straight and grim, and Phoebe had a kind of double vision as she saw in him a glimpse of what he was going to be like when he was a man. Suddenly she knew that if she could have been so lucky as to pick one certain thing to happen in her future, it would be to still know Benjamin. To always know Benjamin.

The piping notes of a pan's flute twisted through the air.

The king approached, alone. He bowed to Phoebe deeply, and then he held out his arm, offering it silently to her. But Benjamin's arm was still around her shoulders and it tightened like a vise. He was shaking. So was Phoebe.

She could not help noticing that, in a fitted sling that hung over one shoulder, the king wore a knife. She could only see its shape, but that was enough to tell her that the knife was thick, with a curved tip that came to a point.

For one second she closed her eyes. Then determinedly, she turned swiftly within Benjamin's arm and faced him, and reached up with both hands for the sides of his head, cupping her palms against his cheeks. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being here. I wish I knew how to tell you what it means to me. And don't believe for a second that I didn't love you, Benjamin. I always did and I always will. I never understood how much until today. Until right now. I love you.”

“Phoebe,” said Benjamin.

“And now,” said Phoebe steadily. “Let me go.”

“Phoebe, no. No.”

“Yes,” said Phoebe. “My dear friend. My beloved friend. This is my decision to make. Please let me. Right or wrong.” She saw the desperate question in Benjamin's eyes. “No. I still haven't figured out what I'll choose. But I'll know soon. And here's the thing. No one is forcing me into anything; not anymore. That's over and past, because I say so. This is just me now. Just me and my decision. So let me go. Let me go.”

He did. His arms loosened and fell to his sides, though his eyes remained fixed on hers. After several long seconds, Phoebe let her hands fall from his face. She stepped away and, in silence, took the king's arm. “Wherever we're going now, my friend is coming too,” she said to the king, and it was not a question, it was a command.

He nodded. A glance at Benjamin's legs, and the moss shackles fell away. Phoebe held out her other hand and Benjamin took it and stood once more beside her.

By now the sun was almost finished sinking below the horizon. Phoebe fixed her gaze on it in these precious remaining seconds—this final sunset—and watched the last of the orb disappear. Then, in the dusk, the fey in their semicircle held torches aloft. The fire from the torches lit the night. Though music still came only from the single pan's flute, now it seemed entirely to fill the clearing.

The faeries parted, making a pathway between them, with their torches lighting the way. Slowly, between the king and Benjamin, Phoebe walked with her head held high. Ryland trailed behind. Behind them came the flutist, playing. Walking in the dark, Phoebe could not see the landscape. What she saw, instead, were the eyes and the shapes of the faerie folk as they stood along the path that they lit for her. As she passed, those at either side fell in behind them, making a procession that grew in length and glowed with more and more light as it went on, and on, and on, until at last they came again to the rocky ground with its circle of standing stones, and to the throne of the faerie queen.

Torches that had been driven into the ground filled the circle with light. In the very center of the circle, the small, shrunken queen sat upon her throne. At her right hand stood Mallory. She was thin and wan, as before, but also straight, tall, and grave. And she was beautiful in the exact same way that, to Phoebe, she had always been.

Apart from that first glance, Phoebe didn't look at Marl-lory. As she and Benjamin and the king came forward, she fixed her gaze instead on the queen. Odd. The queen's eyes were no longer calm and unreadable, but instead held an emotion that Phoebe recognized. A very human emotion. Anxiety.

Then Phoebe was distracted by something else. The queen held a chalice on her lap.

The poison. Phoebe's grip would have tightened on Benjamin's hand, but he was already crunching the bones of her hand to near-numbness. On her other side, at her elbow, she felt the king's support. There was a moment when, without both of them holding her up, she would have fallen.

She could not look away from the chalice.

It was the size of a large wineglass, but was opaque, with a short, thick stem and a wide base. The queen held it between her hands, with its base resting on her thighs. Something about the way she cupped it made Phoebe think that it must be of considerable weight. Or maybe, she thought, it wasn't the chalice itself that the queen found heavy, but the death within it.

Staring at the chalice, seeing its physical reality, Phoebe suddenly could not imagine willingly lifting it to her lips.

But then again, hers was one life, and against it was an entire culture. Plus she had the assurance that Catherine would recover and Benjamin would return home safely.

What did Phoebe's small life matter against these things? It wasn't as if she had any extraordinary plans or dreams for herself; just ordinary ones that she had hardly even begun to articulate. True love. Good friends. Some fun. Some sort of satisfying work. Children?

Oh. Children.

Time had run out. Phoebe, the king, and Benjamin were standing directly before the queen. Behind them, the procession of faeries formed themselves into a wide ring, within and beyond the torches that lit the circle of stones. Their desperation and their hope and their expectation filled the atmosphere like thick smoke.

Beside her, Benjamin stooped to whisper, “Phoebe, believe me. You are not ordinary.” But his words were lifted aloft by some acoustical quality of the standing stones, and echoed.
You are not ordinary—ordinary—ordinary.

Phoebe tore her gaze from the chalice and fixed it on Benjamin. She didn't speak, but her eyes communicated again what she had told him before.
This is my decision to make
. She planted her feet and stood straight.

The queen turned to Mallory and said something that was not audible. But Mallory's reply was. “Yes, Your Majesty. That is the friend.”

The queen lifted her voice so that it too was caught and enlarged. “The friend is welcome.”

Benjamin spoke precipitously. “Yes, I'm the friend, and the friend thinks—”

Mallory interrupted. She sounded tired. “Benjamin. Stop. Your part now is only to witness. If you try to interfere, you won't be allowed to stay. Would you do that to Phoebe? She needs you here. Also, I remind you, you gave me your word.”

“My word? When you cheated and lied—”

Mallory lifted her chin, and three faeries—hulking brutes of fur and claw—surrounded Benjamin. They hustled him a few yards away from Phoebe, and stood tight around him. Phoebe met his gaze again for one long wordless moment before she looked back at the queen and at Mallory.

Silence descended upon the gathering.

With Mallory assisting her, the queen struggled to her feet, careful to keep the chalice balanced. She took two, three, four steps to stand directly before Phoebe. The top of her head was barely level with Phoebe's chin. The bones of her outstretched arms looked as if they would snap beneath the weight of the chalice. It trembled in her hands.

The king released Phoebe and stepped forward too, reaching out as if to help support the queen instead. But with a movement so small it was almost imperceptible, she shook her head. His hand remained outstretched for a moment more before dropping to his side.

The queen said formally to Phoebe, “You are a descendant of Mayer Rothschild?”

Phoebe's body was shaking, but she found that her voice was steady, and as formal as the queen's. “I am Phoebe Rothschild. I am a descendant of Mayer Rothschild.”

“You also understand,” said the queen, “that your ancestor Mayer promised you to us.”

“I know he promised you a daughter of his family,” said Phoebe. “A daughter who is ordinary.” She felt the faerie crowd stir restively at her careful wording.

“You are the promised one,” said the queen. “There is no doubt.”

“I have doubt.” Phoebe cast the quickest look at Benjamin before refocusing on the queen. “And if you're honest, you do too. For hundreds of years, you've waited for an ordinary Rothschild daughter. But now you have no other option but me, and no more time. So you need to believe I am the one. You've tried to force me into that role.”