The Treachery of Beautiful Things (23 page)

It was her heart that did it, that made them all notice her, that made her stand out like the only still thing in a world of movement. Her heart, the very fact that she cared at all after everything she had been through, that beauty of spirit, the heart of a May Queen. No wonder Titania wanted it so badly.

“The sun’s setting,” he said. “That’s all I meant.” He
closed his eyes. Opened them. Struggled against his own exhaustion. “It isn’t safe.”

“I know,”
she replied and he heard the fear in her voice. Not fear of the Nix now. Just…fear.
“I…I’m losing myself.”

She could feel it too, he realized. The silence, the endless dark. She wasn’t losing herself, not really.
He
was losing
himself
. To the evening shadows. To the night.

Jenny shrank back somewhere in the center of his chest. It was just as well that her fear kept her from examining her surroundings. Jack wasn’t sure if he would be able to maintain his control long enough as it was, let alone if she fought him. He lowered himself back into the river, flinching in expectation of another attack. But it was calm now. Except for the churning of the waterfall, nothing moved. The cold helped. So did being in another element. It distanced him from the earth, helped him to hang on a little longer. But even that wouldn’t last. He swam as quickly as he could for the shore.

Strength was fading fast. It wasn’t far, but that didn’t matter if he couldn’t make it. The water might stop him changing but not for long, not forever. And in the meantime it might just kill him instead.

“Jack? What’s happening? Jack?”

Kill them both.

Spots of light danced before his eyes. The world around him blurred and twisted. He was almost there, but the river
was pulling him down, cold fingers as strong and insidious as those of the Nixies. He wasn’t going to make it. Water filled his mouth and nose, choking him, sucking him under. The light was going, his vision dimming, flooding with water thick with weeds, darkening. Water closed over his head. Sound and light faded away, leaving only darkness.

Strong hands closed on his, a grip like a tree root, impossibly strong, dragging him to shore. He took a deep breath, choking and coughing up water, then blinked as his sight returned and saw the nut-brown face and copper eyes, as familiar to him as anyone’s, but full of fear. Puck, soaking wet, dragging him through the mud.

“You’re all right, lad. You’re here. You’re safe.”

Jack coughed up more muddy river water, choked, and pushed himself up on his aching arms. Puck? Puck had saved them? No time to riddle it out, but the relief on the hobgoblin’s face spoke more than could ever be voiced between them. Back on dry land, Jack hung on his hands and knees, breathing hard as the pull of earth and forest returned, slamming into him with renewed force. Puck tugged at his arm, trying to get him to stand. The sun was a blood-red orb hanging over the trees. Jack’s body creaked as he hauled himself upright. The change was sweeping through him now.

“That’s it, lad,” said Puck. “All will be well now. Take it slowly.” But Jack pulled away from him. He staggered for the trees, aware that stiffness was coiling beneath his skin.

“Jack?”
Jenny felt his panic. He couldn’t disguise it from her now. She wasn’t a fool. She could feel it as clearly as he could. And it terrified her as it terrified him.
“Jack? What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

In the midst of the glade, the forest folk saw his frantic approach and scattered. They could sense it too. He fell to his knees before her body, jerked back the cloak so he could see her pale face and those wondrously human freckles.

“Go,” he gasped.

“I—I don’t know how.”

“Jenny, now! Go!”

“But I—”
She fluttered within him, a firefly in a jar.

“Old ways,” said Puck, laying a small, gnarled hand on Jack’s bent shoulder. He spoke softly, in calm and measured tones that Jack found too disturbing for words and far too great a comfort to say. “Old ways. Though they are never without danger.”

Jack stared at Jenny’s still face. He knew of what Puck spoke. It was never without danger, just as the hobgoblin said, but he couldn’t think of anything else that might work. He took in Jenny’s features with his eyes one last time, then seized her shoulders, pulling her limp body up, and kissed her.

It was hardly romantic. He could sense Jenny’s outrage at such a savage touch, her shock, and then…Nothing.

She was gone, no longer inside him. But her body remained
still and unmoving. Panic raked through him, even with the encroaching dark, even with the threat of what was to come. It hadn’t worked. Jenny was gone.

With a gasp, she convulsed against him, her eyes opening, her mouth stretched, hiccoughing for air. He dropped her back down and saw her outrage turn to shock, to horror.

It’s time,
his mind screamed.
It’s time. She’ll know.

She scrambled back from him, and with a snarl of despair, Jack threw himself heedlessly toward the trees and their dark, welcome embrace.

S
hivering, Jenny huddled against the flowery bier—it might have been her grave if it hadn’t been for Jack. She wrapped his leaf cloak tightly around herself, twisting her fingers through the material. The moon had risen and the trees whispered on and on and on. There was no sign of Jack. No sign of anything moving in there. No monsters in the darkness. But she couldn’t be sure…

The forest seemed exceptionally dark tonight, or was it that she just couldn’t see its beauty anymore? The Nix had left her afraid. Again, afraid. Of the shadows, of the water, of the distant sound of the waterfall. Afraid of—of everything. Always afraid! She was sick of it.

And Jack had come. He had come and gone…and left her with a—with a monster in his place.

She was confused, that was all, her mind addled from everything that had happened. Waking up, she’d seen her nightmare made real and screamed. Puck had eventually calmed her down, but by then it was too late.

It was gone. And so was Jack.

She was an idiot, so afraid of the greenman, so angry with Jack, so thoughtless. She’d kissed the Nix—not willingly perhaps, but she’d done it, all the same—fallen under his spell without a moment’s resistance. So upset, so angry, so stupid and blind. But like the Goodwife and her husband, she’d slipped into a fairy trap, and almost lost everything.

She was no better than them, it seemed. The thought made her shiver more than the cold.

And then Jack was gone. And in his place, the monstrous forest spirit that haunted her, hunted her. But she knew Jack had saved her. That she had somehow been inside him. That he had kissed her. And changed. She lifted shaking fingers to her mouth, as if his kiss still lingered there.

What had happened? What on earth had happened?

But of course, deep down, she knew. She just didn’t want to.

“What ails you, lass?” asked Puck, gently enough.

Jenny looked up as his gnarled little hand brushed her cheek and came away damp. Tears streamed from her eyes. Strange, she thought. Up to that moment she hadn’t realized they were there.

“Will he ever forgive me, Puck?”

“Forgive you what?”

“The…the Nix…” she began uncertainly, unable to voice another reason. “Will Jack…will Jack come back?”

He had to. Moments flickered like lights through her mind. The exhilaration of their escape, rushing back from the river, Jack’s hard kiss, opening her eyes to find…not Jack, but the greenman standing over her. She hadn’t been able to help herself.

He’d lied to her all along. He wasn’t protecting her from the monster at all.

Puck nestled himself beside her, his warm earthy scent a comfort; even that reminded her of Jack. No matter that his kiss had been brief and desperate, hurried. No matter. Its effect was the same. It wasn’t shy or uncertain. It wasn’t seductive. It had only served a purpose. And yet…it was like nothing she’d ever experienced.

She smoothed her fingers over Puck’s wiry fur and he rested his head against her shoulder, warm as a sleeping cat. Who would ever have thought a hobgoblin could be such a comfort? Only to someone like her, she thought with a grim smile.

“Jack would never hold another’s enchantment against you,” said Puck. “He knows that within the Realm, one’s actions are not always—”

“When I woke up, when he had to kiss me like that…”

“Shh…” Puck pulled his head away, his eyes bright with grief. “He’ll come back. Jack must patrol at night. That’s in his nature. Surely you’ve realized that by now, lass.”

A childish need rose inside her, a need to hide from everything, to make the world normal again, to pretend at
least that none of this was real. It was what people had tried to tell her for the last seven years, wasn’t it? That she’d been hallucinating, dreaming, that somehow losing Tom was all her fault and if she just told them the truth—their truth—it would magically make everything better.

She could try one last time, to pretend everything was normal, couldn’t she? To pretend this wasn’t happening and make it go away. “And the—the creature?”

“What
creature
?”
A hint of impatience entered Puck’s voice with the word.

She bit her lip and pressed on. “The beast he’s hunting, or that’s hunting us. The thing that killed the Woodsman, the”—she had to whisper the word—“the
greenman
. Is he—is Jack holding it back from us?”

There was a long pause as Puck scanned the trees with catlike contemplation. Was that disappointment in his face? Whatever it was, he decided to veil the truth, if not lie outright. He sighed. “You could say that, lass.”

Jenny paused. “What is it? I saw it before, when Tom was taken. A monster.”

“Aye.” He smiled as if he were talking to a child, or an idiot. Perhaps that was what he thought of her. And perhaps she was. She wanted to think that. To hide for just a little longer, to be normal, to be sane, not someone who was falling for a— Puck’s voice trembled just a little with regret. “A fairy-tale monster. Nothing more.”

Jenny sagged forward, her chin against her chest. She was an idiot indeed if she chose to believe that.

She drew in a deep breath. Puck would lie to her, for her, but she couldn’t lie to herself. No matter how badly she might want to.

“But it isn’t. Not really.” She closed her eyes and let her head tilt back against the bier. Jutting from among the neatly piled layers of sticks and stones a stray twig poked into the back of her neck, snagging her hair. She pulled it free, twisting it in her hands. She couldn’t hide any longer. She couldn’t be a child in this world, or it would swallow her whole. Hers was not the truth of psychiatrists and drugs, of her parents and their world. Their truth—human truth—had never been enough. Her truth was Jack’s truth and everything that couldn’t be real. “Jack is…it’s him, isn’t it? Somehow? The greenman. He turns into it at night.”

Puck didn’t stir. She could sense him watching her. “That…that is perceptive, Jenny Wren,” he said at last.

She sighed, the sound wrung out of her body. Puck would lie to her as long as he felt it comforted her. “Not really. I should have realized. That’s what you meant, isn’t it? When you told me about the jack-in-the-box. A Kobold.”

“Yes. That’s the truth of it. A curse, or something as near as like it. They were tree spirits once. Wild creatures, reveling in that wildness in the moonlight, but hidden in their
trees by day. Jack was the strongest of them. Their leader. Their king. Oberon took them prisoner one by one, and broke them, carving the wood of them into the semblance of men. He breathed new life into them and they are his servants, his knights, some might say”—his voice grew strained—“his slaves. The last one, the strongest of them all, the Oak King was Oberon’s eternal enemy. But even he fell, at the last, alone, the wild king of the wild places.” Puck breathed deep. “Oberon didn’t just subjugate him. First Oberon destroyed all his people, and then took him as well. He carved his wood into the same figure as all the rest, made our Jack one of so many slaves, took away all that made him different. His spirit, his fire, his heart. Oberon took them all. Oberon made Jacks of them all. His slaves. All the fearless trees.”

Jack’s tree flashed through Jenny’s mind—the May Tree, Puck had called it—tied all over with fluttering white. “You said he wished for freedom,” she breathed. “Not just freedom for him. For all of them.” She turned to look at Puck, a hope rising behind her eyes. “Then he…he wasn’t there that night, when Tom was taken? It was one of the others.”

“No.”

That single word crushed her.

Puck looked at her sadly, intently. “It was Jack,” he said. “He guards the Edge. The others guard other edges. But the forest is still his. Even when he isn’t Jack, when he’s in his
natural state, the trees are his, Jenny. And they took your brother. Jack…Jack found him a home here rather than leave him lost.”

Tears needled her eyes but she pushed them back. “I don’t believe you.”

He shook his head slowly, so sadly. “Then you must ask him.”

“But he’s helping me.”

Puck didn’t answer at first. When he shifted his eyes to look at her, she caught the flash of guilt across his face. “He
wants
to help you, lass.”

Puck pulled away from her then, getting to his hoofed feet and stretching like a cat waking from sleep.

Jenny’s heart stuttered. “Jack is bound by vows. To
him
. To
her
. To do what, Puck? And why? Why would he make such vows?”

“You must ask him that, Jenny Wren.”

Lines wrinkled Puck’s face and suddenly he looked old, as old as the stones on the riverbank. Sorrow lined his features and changed him from a mischievous sprite to something ancient and unfathomable.

“Only he can give you an answer to that. I’ll tell you this, though: I’ve never known Jack—I’ve never known
any
of the Jacks—to do for another as much as he has done for you. Though I was the one who begged our master’s protection, he crossed to your world, walked the Ridgeway between, and
risked himself before our master’s enemy to get that sword. I imagine it burns against his back every second he wears it. Even setting foot in your world could have killed him, for without the protection of Lord Oberon, it is fatal to us. And Oberon exacted a price from him too. A terrible price for a forest king. His freedom, any chance of winning it for himself, and his kingship too. But he gave all that. For you.”