Chronicle Worlds: Feyland Page 3

  And for the first time, the Lance takes his burning gaze off me to glare at the Knight. “Oh, I think not, you vile dog.”

  “Villain fight!” Kandess scrambles up to her knees to grab my arm and yanks me away from the two warriors just as they raise their weapons and the flaring brilliance of the Lance’s spear claws at the smoking darkness of the Knight’s sword.

  “This is awesome,” Kandess whispers in my ear. “We let one kill the other, and then we only have to beat the winner, and he’ll probably be really weak from the fight!”

  But the two warriors remain unmoved, glaring in silence.

  “I will not be the first to deal a treacherous blow against the Dark Court,” the Lance announces. “So strike, you foul creature, and learn what true valor is!”

  “Still the maniac? Still the mindless lapdog?” The Black Knight laughs with the all the mirth of a thousand knives clawing across a wall of ice. “Attack me if you wish to die, but I will not cross this Rubicon for you.”

  “Damn it. It looks like they need a little encouragement,” Kandess whispers to me. Then she shouts, “Don’t worry, Goldilocks, it’s okay to be scared. I fought him a minute ago and he was pretty tough. Perfectly okay to back down. No one will call you a pathetic, cringing little coward!”

  “Silence, girl!” the Lance roars. “I will not be goaded like some simple child!”

  “Whoa, settle down,” Kandess says. “Look, if you’re not up to it, then maybe I’ll just roll out with Tall, Dark, and Armored over there. That’s fine, too.”

  “Silence, mortal! Your soul belongs to the Bright King!” The Lance slams the butt of his spear into the earth and it flares twice as brightly as before, forcing us to turn away and shade our eyes with our hands.

  “She is for the Dark Queen!” The Black Knight raises his sword and his entire body is suddenly enveloped in a dark mist that hides all but his upraised sword.

  “Yes!” Kandess whispers. “Time to rock and roll!”

  “No!” I shove the mortal girl away from me and stride back out between the two warriors. “There will be no duel here.”

  “Rue! What are you doing?” Kandess wails.

  “If they fight each other in open combat, it could ignite a war between the Courts and thousands of innocents would die, and I won’t have a single person suffer so needlessly.” I look from the flaming Lance to the smoking Knight. “Moreover, I am not some trinket to be claimed by the meager virtue of a thug’s skill in brutality, or murder. I go where I choose, and I choose neither of you, nor your cruel masters.” My heart is racing. I have no idea what I’m saying or what I’ll do when they come after me a few seconds from now, but these words have been simmering in my heart for so long that I can’t contain them any longer. I only wish I had thought to practice a better speech than whatever I’m babbling now.

  “The Queen saved your life when you came to her,” the Knight reminds me.

  “The King gave you your life in the first place,” the Lance argues.

  “You owe her much,” the Knight growls.

  “You owe him more,” the Lance booms.

  “How much?” Kandess calls out.

  We all turn to look at her.

  “How much is owed?” The girl steps out from the shadows and approaches the would-be killing ground. “I mean, what does she need to pay to clear all these debts? Gold? Jewels? Some sort of dangerous errand?”

  “No, no! Stop!” I wave her back. “There will be no duel, and no ransom either. I owe the Queen nothing. I served her loyally in return for her protection, and I left as freely as I came. And I owe the King even less, for he created me to be less than a person, to be a gift, to be owned by some stranger. My life is my own, and I will not pretend to buy it from anyone else.”

  “Such lovely sentiments,” the Lance remarks. “So noble. So lofty. A pity that nothing that spills from your treacherous lips is of any consequence.” His spear roars as it burns brighter still.

  “Your life is forfeit,” the Knight snarls at me. “My Lady commands your return at once!”

  My heart is racing, my hands are shaking, and I can barely breathe. These people… they’re not people at all. They’re monsters, animals, beasts! They’re slaves to their own pride and rage and fear of their masters.

  I cannot reason with them.

  I cannot change them.

  I wish I could just knit their lips closed, and their eyes closed, and their fingers closed forever, and leave them silent and harmless on a distant mountain peak where I would never have to see them again…

  …wait. A place where I never have to see them again?

  I turn to Kandess, my hand outstretched. “Take my hand if you want to see tomorrow.”

  Her eyes meet mine, and I feel her hot, sweaty palm slam against mine. I close my eyes and spin my arcane magicks inward, calling on every shred of strength that I have to overcome the mass of iron encasing the girl’s body.

  The Lance bellows and the Knight screams.

  Lightning flashes, thunder roars...

  ...and then all is silence and darkness.

  I feel weak and sick, my head spinning and my limbs shaking hot and cold at the same time as a thin veil of perspiration trickles down my cheeks and the small of my back. I open my weary eyes and see Kandess still staring at me, her eyes impossibly wide, her face awash with sweat, her breath coming thin and quick between her parted lips.

  “What just happened?” she whispers.

  Still clutching her hot, clammy hand, I look around at the low silvery trees draped in Old Man’s Beard and the thick clumps of pale moss adrift in the sluggish waters of the Gray Bog on every side of us. We’re standing on an island of sorts, an island so small that perhaps I should only call it a small mound of soft, damp earth surrounded by the dark, glittering pools of the swamp. It’s so small that we can’t take more than a step apart before slipping into the water, though I suppose if we stand here too long, we’ll sink the poor lump straight down to the bottom all the same.

  “I moved us,” I say softly, still teetering on the verge of collapse. “Both of us, all at once. Not very far, but far enough, I think.”

  She looks around at the quiet swamp. A fish swishes through the water. A night heron cries out. And the girl asks in a voice as soft as silk, “Are we safe here?”

  “For the moment.” I nod and we let go of each other’s hands. Instantly I feel stronger and clearer, and I step away from her steely armor to stand at the water’s edge. I’m not sure if this will work, but it’s the only idea I have, so I have to try. I kneel by the water and plunge my face just below the freezing surface and I yell into the bubbling murk, “Jenny! Peg!”

  I sit up, shivering as the frigid water pours off my face and hair.

  “What was that? Are you okay?” Kandess asks, but I don’t answer. I’m still wiping the cold bog water from my eyes, and she says, “Is this where we come up with a new strategy? Fetch some sort of magical swamp mud that will help us… somehow?”

  “No.” I shake my head and pull my sweater tighter around my shoulders. “No, none of that. Nothing like that. What would be the point? The Lance, the Knight, they’ve lived their whole lives like this. Serving the Courts. Making everyone else serve them. That’s all they know, circles of power, circles of slavery. It’s who they are. And I’m not going to waste my time and sanity trying to change them.”

  “But… but that’s what we do!” Kandess kneels beside me. “We’re heroes! This is what we do, we fight evil and injustice, and we don’t give up until we’ve made the world a better place.”

  I stare into the murk, watching threads of silvery silt-water swirling like clouds. “If you wish to be a hero, then by all means, be a hero. But that is not the life for me.”

  “Why not?” She touches my hand gently. “You’re smart, you’re passionate, you’re powerful. You could rally the people to rise up against these Court punks, and, I don’t know, start your own Court!”

  I smile. �
��Crown myself the Dusk Queen? No, thank you.”

  “But…” There’s a deep sense of confusion in her eyes. She’s genuinely lost for words. “But we have to. We can’t let them win! Those psychos? We can’t let them go on treating people like this.”

  I sigh and squeeze her hand. “You’ve a noble heart, Kandess the Daring, and if you choose to spend your days fighting evil in the hopes of creating a better world for future generations, then I wish you well. But I have no heart for that life. Nor the stomach, neither.”

  “Oh, Rue.” She squeezes my hand back.

  I nod at her. “The world needs heroes, I know it all too well, but the world needs someone to make sweaters and candles that smell like old books, too. They want me to be a trophy, and you want me to be a hero. And yes, someone needs to slay the dragons, surely, but someone also needs to protect the dormice and the vales, and even wayward girls with silver swords.” A crooked smile curls my lip. “That’s what I want to do, and what I’ve been doing, and what I will go on doing if I survive this day.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes drift away from me, gazing out over the bog, her thoughts wandering somewhere I cannot follow.

  “But Kandess, there’s more to life than just what we do,” I say, drawing her eyes back to me. “There’s also what we feel, too. And I don’t want to feel angry, or frightened, or tired from fighting or worrying. I want to feel happy. I want to enjoy living, every day.”

  “Well, I…” She frowns. “I want that too. But we owe it to—”

  “No.” I hold up my hand and look her sternly in the eyes. “We don’t owe anyone anything. My first breath was taken in slavery. The first thing I saw was a golden King, and the first thing I heard was that I was the property of the Lance, to serve and obey him for all time. I hadn’t even spoken my own name yet, and already my life was set and sold for all eternity.”

  Can she even comprehend that? She, a mortal? Has anyone ever lived a life like mine in her world? Maybe not, and I certainly hope not, but I want her to understand. I want someone, somewhere, to understand, so I continue, “My first three days of life were passed in a golden cage, dressed like a doll, ordered about like a pet, ignored like a dumb object. I was so confused by it all. But then…” I exhale slowly. “Then he struck me. The Lance. Because I questioned him. Questioned the notion of our marriage. He hit me… and I left. I ran. I just… ran. I didn’t know anyone in the world, and I had no idea where to go. I just ran away into the wild.”

  Kandess stares at me, her eyes shimmering with tears, her lip pushing out into a sad pout.

  “For days I ran, and for days they hunted me with phoenixes and sundogs.” I pause. “I barely slept. It was hour after hour of fear, shaking at every sound, running until I was too exhausted to move. Just fear and fatigue, day after day. But then Puck found me and brought me to the Dark Court, and I lived there in safety for a time.” I look down into the bog at my wavering, rippling reflection. “It was… passable. I was still ordered about, but only as much as anyone else. But then I saw the Queen steal the soul of that girl, that mean, selfish human girl, and I… I just didn’t want to have anything to do with that world anymore.”

  I’m crying a little, but I don’t care. I’ve told this story to myself so many times. It feels good to tell it to someone else. A silence falls over us. The bog is still. I close my eyes and feel… calm. Quiet. Free.

  “You’re a survivor,” Kandess says. “That’s what they call it, when something like that happens to you and you get away. You’re a survivor.”

  “No.” I shake my head, frowning. That word, survivor, it sounds all wrong in my head. “No, I’m MeadowRue. And yes, something horrible happened to me once, but that isn’t what I am, or who am I. I am… quiet, and I like being alone, which doesn’t feel lonely at all, and I love knitting, and poems, and dormice, even ones that nibble on my knitting needles.” I smile at the thought of little Norbert.

  Another long silence falls, and we hear only the croaking of a toad in the distance.

  “My friend died,” Kandess whispers. “She killed herself. Four months ago.”

  I blink and wipe at my tears and look at her, silently bidding her to go on.

  “They bullied her. Kids at school. For… being fat, and… I don’t know, being different.” The girl looks away, shaking her head. “Every day. Until she couldn’t take it anymore, and they found her… with a bunch of pills, in the bathroom.” Kandess takes a long breath and exhales slowly. “So I, uh… I started this vlog where I talk about bullying, and abuse, and shelters…” She trails off.

  I only understand about a half of what she says, but I’m sure it’s the important half. “I’m truly sorry about your friend.”

  She nods and shivers. “So what will you do now? I mean, if you won’t fight these jerks, will you go on the run again?”

  “Yes,” I nod. “But only a short distance, this time.” I look back down at the water, and I smile. They’re coming.

  “What’s that?” Kandess points at the swamp and stands up sharply, backing away from the murk. “What are they? There’s two of them!”

  “They’re my friends,” I say as the two heads break the surface. “Kandess, allow me to introduce Jenny Greenteeth and Peg Powler.”

  I know my friends are far from lovely and won’t be receiving any Court invitations anytime soon, but they have their charms, their kindnesses. Jenny and Peg protect their toads and their eels, keep their rivers clean and healthy, and only rarely trouble those on the shores. But no one seems to care about that. They only care about what the hags look like, and how they smell, and where they live. Typical.

  “Ladies, this is Kandess the Daring,” I introduce the human girl to my friends. “And before you ask, no, you can’t eat her.”

  “Oh poo,” Peg pouts. “You’re such a tease, Rue!”

  “But I do have some good news,” I continue smoothly, smiling at them. “I’ve decided to join you two in the river realm.”

  “Lovely!” Jenny cackles. “Rue ‘O the River!”

  “Oh, very nice!” Peg claps. “And three is such a lucky number! A magic number!”

  “I certainly hope it is.” I slip off my shoes and step down into the soft mud, feeling the biting chill of the water. “Oh dear frog, that’s cold! It may take me a few moments to sort out my change. I’ve never done this before.”

  “Wait!” Kandess catches my wrist. “You’re going to live in the rivers? You’re just going to let the Lance scare you off? You won’t even fight for your home here?”

  I look at her and shrug. “Home is where you make it, and I want my home to be somewhere I feel safe and happy. I don’t want to go back to being scared and tired again, not even for a single day. I’m sorry, but I hope you can understand that.”

  She nods a little and lets go of my arm. “I—”

  The brush on the far side of the bog rustles and crackles with the sound of heavy boots crushing the undergrowth, and the Lance and the Knight stumble through the veil of hanging moss at nearly the same moment, still a fair distance from us across the water, but only a dozen paces apart from each other.

  “They found us!” Kandess cries, drawing her sword.

  “I’m not ready!” I wade out into the freezing water and try to focus on my changes. I’ve never lived in the water before. I’ll need scales, and fins…

  “Oh, what shiny things,” Peg hisses at the Lance. “I like shiny things.”

  “Oh dear me, I want a taste of the shadowy one!” Jenny giggles.

  The two river hags plunge back down into the murk and emerge again only a moment later on the far side of the bog, throwing their arms up around the necks of the two armored warriors, and try to drag them back down into the cold water.

  Kandess barks out a relieved laugh at the sight of the two dripping hags caressing and sweet-talking the outraged men, and I wade out a bit farther as I clad my legs in tiny verdant scales that remind me of the leaves of the brambles and the hazel outside my cottage
window. The chill of the water quickly fades as I transform myself, spreading the scales up my chest and down my arms and across my face. Slender fins of deepest indigo and darkest gold extend from my calves and forearms, and thin gills spread across ribs under my dress. As I walk farther out into the bog, I feel the water rise to lift me, letting me float. Swimming here is effortless, like flying in a dream, my hair spreading out around me in delicate black fans. It’s wonderful.

  I turn to look back at Kandess. “It’s done. Everything is all right now. The Courts don’t care much for the river realm, or the river folk. I’ll be safe. I suppose I’ll have to learn to knit my sweaters and scarves from reeds and moss now. And maybe I’ll raise otters, or turtles. I do like turtles. But try not to worry, and don’t look so sorrowfully at me!”

  “I’ll try.” She smiles sadly and waves. “I guess this is goodbye. Good luck, MeadowRue. I mean, fare thee well.”

  “Farewell to you, dear Kandess. I hope you find your own happiness one day, young hero.”

  A pair of high shrieks and huge splashes turn my head and I see Jenny and Peg crashing down into the bog as the Lance and Knight stagger back up onto the banks, dripping and cursing. The sight makes me smile. I swim out a bit farther and feel my gills breathing easily through the soft, slow water, and I slip beneath the surface.

  “MeadowRue!”

  Kandess’s voice sounds strange and muted, but I hear it clearly enough and I swim back up to see her still standing on the lonely little mound in the center of the swamp with the Knight and Lance circling quickly along opposite banks toward her.

  “MeadowRue!” she cries. “How do I get home?”

  I blink and a shiver runs down my legs as I realize that I don’t know, so all I can call back to her is, “I don’t know!”

  The two warriors reach the places on the banks closest to the little island, and each one takes his terrible weapon to begin felling the ancient willows to bridge the bog.