Tapping the Dream Tree (53 page)

The fat little man who'd been standing with Ruth and Grace returned to my mind's eye.

The way the arrow went into his throat.

The blood.

Seconds slipped by and I dared a glance at the bee fairies, quickly laying another blade of grass as I did. None of them had an arrow nocked and aimed at any of us. They'd just come closer, trying to get a better look at what we were doing.

“You!” the queen cried to one of the footmen near me. “Shoot her.”

But the footman wasn't paying any attention to her.

I did another dancy side step, even though Laurel and Bess weren't humming their tune anymore, and carefully laid down three more blades of grass in a triangular pattern.

The queen addressed another of her footmen, then one of the riders who had dismounted to come closer. They all ignored her.

“Then I'll do it myself,” the queen said.

She stepped to the footman standing closest to her and reached for his bow.

I don't know what would have happened then. But before the queen could grab a bow, there came this godawful cry from the woods where we'd left the ‘sangmen. Anybody lives in these hills for a time knows that sound. It's the scream of a panther. You don't see them much at all, but time to time you'll hear that terrible cry of theirs, like a woman or child wailing in pain.

The cry was repeated, this time followed by a weird, quiet
pit-a-pat
sound that was loud in the sudden stillness. I tried to figure out what it was. Then I remembered Aunt Lillian's stories about the Father of Cats and the sound his tail made as it patted the ground.

The sound stopped everybody dead in their tracks, including the queen.

“The Father of Cats,” I heard one of the fairies closest to me say.

The queen shook off her paralysis and reached for the bow again, but the footman stepped back, pulling it out of her reach.

“I… I'm sorry, madam,” he said. “But the Father of Cats has spoken.”

I figured for sure she'd blow her stack at that. Instead, she sighed and walked over to me.

“Very well,” she said. She stood in my way. “Let's end this nonsense, child. Tell me what you're doing and I'll give you the gift of your sisters'lives.”

I ignored her, just as the Apple Tree Man had told me to, though I was surely tempted. But getting away from the bee fairies this time wasn't enough. What was to stop them from coming after us again?

“You want more?” the queen asked. “What? Treasure? A long life? Good luck in love? A cure for your miserable freckles?”

I laid blades of grass at her feet, making a shape that started by her toe and then moved away till it looked like a fan.

“Answer me,” the queen said.

I started to hum “Shenandoah,” but I never could hold much of a tune. Luckily first Bess, and then Laurel picked it up, replacing my weak voice with their strong harmonies. I moved away from the queen to lay down more grass.

“Child,” the queen said, her voice hard.

I took a pebble from my pocket and laid it on the ground, then balanced a blade of grass upon it.

“Offer her a boon,” one of the other fairies said.

“Perhaps I'll change her into a toad,” the queen replied. “We'll see how well she dances and sings and lays down those damnable blades of grass then.”

Could she even do that? Probably. She was magic, after all.

I heard a buzzing and saw that some of the bee fairies were tinier than I thought possible. I'd never noticed them before, though I had noticed the bees they were riding. I just hadn't realized there were little people on them until a few of them flew right under my nose, trying to get a closer look at what I was doing.

“Offer her a boon,” either the same bee fairy or another repeated.

“A boon, a boon,” more of them took up.

The queen said nothing for such a long time that I finally had to sneak a peek at her.

“Well, child?” she said. “Is that what it will take to unravel this mystery for us?”

I laid down one more blade of grass, then straightened up until I was facing her. She stood a full head taller than me, imperious and threatening. I gave a quick nod.

“Then ask your boon,” she said. “But remember this: if you've played us for fools, if all this game of dancing and blades of grass is only so much nonsense, the bargain will be undone.”

I let the last of my grass fall to the ground and clasped my hands in front of me.

“What are the limits of the boon you will grant?” I asked, repeating what the Apple Tree Man had told me to say when it came to this moment.

The queen's eyes narrowed and I knew that she realized I'd been coached, but I guess there wasn't a whole lot she could do about it at this point.

“No harm can come to us or any under our protection,” she said, reluctantly it seemed.

It was pretty much the answer that the Apple Tree Man told us she'd have to give.

“Nothing else?” I asked.

“Nothing else.”

“Then this is the boon I ask,” I said. “That you harm no one here, nor in any way cause harm to another for the rest of your days.”

There was fury in the queen's eyes now. The Apple Tree Man had warned us about that as well. But I guess we had her right in a corner because she gave a unwilling nod.

“The boon is granted,” she said, her voice tight. “Now tell us what you were doing.”

“A spell.”

“That was no spell.”

The Apple Tree Man had expected this as well.

I shrugged. “We were told it was a spell. We were told that only music and dancing and the pattern of the grass would rescue my sisters from you. We don't know much about magic, but we had to give it a try because we didn't know what else to do.”

“Who told you this?”

“It doesn't matter,” I said, though I guess to her it mattered plenty.

I beckoned to Ruth and Grace then. Laurel called out to Elsie. I was about to ask after Adie, but she came out of the trees behind the fairy court's horses, carrying a spear. I guess she'd been planning to make her own try at a rescue.

“It's time you were going,” I told the bee queen.

She shook her head. “No. You didn't play fair.”

She made a gesture with her hand and before we could do a thing we were all gone from that field by Aunt Lillian's orchard and back in the otherworld again.

“You lied about what you were doing.”

“No, we—”

“Kill them!” the queen cried. “Kill them all. Then go back into their world and kill their mother. Kill all of their friends and their friends' families. Burn down their homes. Salt their fields.”

There was a crazy look in her eyes, but I suppose it didn't much matter. Crazy or not, she was the queen and there was nothing we could do to stop her—not with only the seven of us and the fairy court in this world and our friends left behind in the other.

Guess I was right, always to be so scared of bees. Some part of me must have known that one day they'd kill me.

I saw Adie lift her spear. I stepped in front of Ruth and Grace. Laurel and Bess came to stand beside me, though what the three of us could do to protect the younger twins, I didn't know. Elsie was halfway from the tree where she'd been standing to where we were. She stopped dead with bee fairies all around her.

An ugly murmur went through the court. The bees carrying the tiny fairies buzzed angrily in the air all around us. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and have it be done with, but I couldn't do it. I had to go down swatting them bees, do what I could to keep my sisters as safe as I could before the bees finally brought me down.

Turned out it wasn't necessary.

The bee fairies weren't mad at us. They were mad at their queen.

One of the tall riders stepped up to her and before she could stop him, he got hold of this pendant she was wearing and gave it a tug. The chain broke, and he stepped back with the pendant in his hand just before she took a swing at him. Before she could try again, he pointed a finger at her.

“We've put up with your angers and feuds for too long as it is,” he said. “But when you break a solemn oath, you go too far.”

The queen fixed him with a cold look. “Don't you dare judge me. I am your queen and so long as I—”

“Queen no longer,” he broke in.

He lifted a hand and I don't know how many of those bee-riding fairies came swarming. Thousands, I figure. Each with a bow and their tiny venomed arrows.

“When you broke your oath,” he said, “you forfeited your royalty. You've lost your place in this court.”

He cut downward with his hand and all those little bee fairies let loose with their arrows.

I didn't much like that queen. Truth be told, the way she threatened my sisters, I wouldn't have cried to find out she'd up and died somewhere, somehow. But when I saw her killed, right there in front of my eyes, all I felt was sick.

She dropped to the ground with I don't know how many thousands of those little arrows sticking out of her like she was a pincushion, writhing and crying from the pain of the venom. I actually started to step forward, wanting to do something to ease her pain, but Bess caught hold of my arm.

“Wait,” the bee fairy who'd given the order to have her killed said to me.

The bees carrying the tiny archers had all landed now, most on the ground, some on the horses or the taller fairies. It was so quiet in the meadow that the queen's dying gasp echoed for what seemed like forever.

I looked at the new leader of the fairy court.

“Wait,” he repeated.

And then I heard it—the same sound I'd heard in the Apple Tree Man's house. The rumbling drone of a bee swarm coming from inside the dead queen. I guess she got shot so many times, the process was all that much quicker. My sisters on either side gasped as the newborn bees came swarming up out of the queen's mouth.

There were a lot of them—a lot more than had come out of the little ‘sangman. So many that, for a long moment, we couldn't even see the bee queen. Then they went spiraling up and away, this dark buzzing swarm of bees, like a storm cloud driven afore the wind. All that was left of the queen was the shape of her, made up of what looked like old dried honeycombs, gray and papery.

The new leader looked like he was about to say something to me, but just then we heard a commotion at the far end of the court. The bee's dogs started up barking as out of the woods came an army of ‘sangmen, led by their king and queen. The ‘sangman I'd rescued walked beside them, hand-in-hand with the last daughter of the bee queen. In amongst the crowd of ‘sangmen I spied Aunt Lillian, the Apple Tree Man, and Li'l Pater, who, I found out later, was the one who brought them all over to this part of the otherworld where we were.

“Hold!” the leader of the bee fairies cried to the court as they started nocking arrows and readying their spears.

He walked through the court to meet the ‘sangmen. After glancing at each other, my sisters and I trailed along behind him, Adie and Elsie joining us so that we were all seven of us together. The ‘sangmen awaited the bee fairy's approach. They were purely outnumbered, no question about it, but they looked ready to fight all the same and damn the consequences.

But there wasn't going to be a fight, it appeared. The bee man went down on one knee in front of the princess and offered her the pendant that he'd torn from her mother's neck. She hesitated for a long moment, then took it. The court erupted into cheers, all these bee fairies grinning at each other, gone in the blink of an eye from these grim, dangerous creatures to folks just looking for an excuse to have a party.

My sisters and I exchanged puzzled looks, but I was feeling hopeful that maybe all our troubles were done.

The princess—I guess I should call her the queen now—signaled the bee man to rise, then had him lead her to us. There was a happy laugh sitting there in her eyes, but when she spoke, it was like the exchange I'd had with her mother, serious like a ceremony.

“Your boon was fairly asked and just,” she said. “We have no quarrel with you, nor with any other. Will you promise us the same?”

“Well, sure,” I said. “We never wanted any trouble in the first place.”

She sighed. “I know. But my mother … she …”

“Wasn't exactly easy to get along with.”

She nodded.

“Still… it seems harsh, what happened to her.” When she gave me a puzzled look, I added, “You know, killing her and all. If it was my mama …” I didn't finish. I guess our situations were too different to set one up against the other.

“Did your mother lock you in a tower for most of your life?” she asked. “Did she never have a kind word for you?”

“It's okay,” I said. “You don't have to explain. I know things were different for you.”

She gave a slow nod. “They were.” She waited a beat, then added, “But she wasn't killed. She was changed into a new tribe. This is her chance to begin again and make amends for the wrongs she did in this life.”

That all sounded fine and dandy, but it put a big question in my head. I didn't know quite how to ask, but I had to know.

“Is there … any chance she could get it into her head to come after us again?” I asked.

“No. You'll be safe now. You and your sisters and anyone under your protection. You have my word on that.”

“Thanks for that,” I said.

“No. Thank you,” she said. “All of you,” she added, looking around to take in my sisters and the ‘sangmen as well.

She held out her hand and the little ‘sangman prince left his parents' side to come stand by her.

“We both thank you,” she said.

There was a moment's silence, then the fairy court cheered again. This time the ‘sangmen joined in.

I guess this is where the fairy tales always end. Trouble was, we still had to get home.