I read my sister’s latest letter with growing horror. A Jack? She invited a Jack into her life? Had her brain, now encased in old bone, turned to mush? All Jacks are tricksters and guisers; they are breakers not makers.
Sitting in my room, I worried over this bit of information. A Jack! Might as well have tea with Red Cap! If she thought her green-haired girl a problem . . .
I grabbed up a piece of paper, leaf green like the girl’s hair had been, and began to write so quickly, it was almost impossible to decipher my scrawl.
Listen, my fern, I wrote, you have begun something you cannot stop. It will be a story that devours you even as it unravels. It will . . .
There was a noise outside. I put down the pen, as much to gain control of my roiling emotions as to see what was going on. I looked out of the window, and down onto the stoop. There was my scare-bird, back after a few days away. I had worried that the poor boy had died, been run over, run out, run off by who knew what kind of demons, his own or those I had dogging my footsteps. Or the ones, like the Jack, dogging Meteora.
Yet there he was, the stray, like a beaten dog, waiting for me on the stairs.
I flung open my front door and raced down the stairs. My cheeks flamed. My breath came in short gasps. I felt my stomach contract, both delightful and awful in one motion. It was as if I were young again, going to meet a new lover. But this was a young man, scarcely old enough for a beard, and I an old woman. What I felt was sorrow and anxiety and relief all intermixed. Like a mother with her mite. Poor little straw man. Poor lost waif.
When I got to him, he looked up at me with such adoration and poverty of soul, that I took him by the hand and he did not resist.
“Who are you . . .” I began
He was mute, but his eyes, the blue-black of a peaty lake, were voluminous in their conversation.
“What are you . . . ?” I wrinkled my nose. Rank as a badger, he smelled as if he had been rolling in a farmer’s midden. Or the contents of the black bags. “You need a bath.”
Taking him by the hand, I brought him up the stairs, stood him in the water room, and began to fill the big white tub. While the water ran, fast and hot and pure, I hastened back to where I kept the herbs. I pinched seven basil leaves from their stems, shook chamomile from the bottle, took a bit of sage and rubbed it between my hands till it warmed. Then I stirred in lavender, peppermint, and thyme all together widdershins with my left forefinger. I would have loved to have added clary and geranium to the mix, but did not have any to hand. I would need to visit the Man of Flowers again. But not now.
The scare-bird had not moved from where I had put him, but watched as I dropped the herbs into the tub that was now quite full of water.
“Now you,” I said.
Perhaps he thought I meant to strip him, for he crossed his arms over his chest. His clothes were as rank as he and I did not want to touch them. Instead, using a shower cloth to cover my hands, I pushed him, fully clothed, into the bath.
He sank immediately under the water. I left him for one, two, three long shuddering breaths on my part, then thought the better of it and reached in to pull him up into a sitting position. I did not mean to drown the poor thing, only clean him and his clothes of their toxins.
But when I got him sitting, his eyes were closed and he hardly roused. I knew then that the poisons I had noted in his dreams must have run very deep in his veins.
While he soaked, I got out the stone I had found outside under the tree, the aquamarine for deeper cleansing.
“I give thee thanks,” I whispered to whoever or whatever had dropped it there.
Then I went into the cook room and got out salt as well.
Once again back in the water room, I held the stone up to the light. Its very color seemed just right for soaking up hot, fevered blood. I wrapped it in three strands of my hair—that hair that was lately golden and fine and now is white and coarse—then stuck it beneath his knees. Then I sprinkled him with the salt.
Afterward, I said the words. I may be stuck here in a body like a moldering toadstool—but I did not forget the words. This I wrote later to my sister.
Much later.
Standing there looking down at the boy for a long time, I saw the water was now gray, heading toward black. There was too much iron in the bones of this building for magic to work as it does in Faerie.
If it works here at all.
* * *
FINALLY THE BOY WAS STRIPPED down and asleep under my covers, the stone carefully clasped in his hand.
But do I really want him here? Even cleaned up, there was a stink about him, like a wolf in a sheepfold or a dog in a farmer’s manger.
Still, I thought, he is here. And I have made him clean and made him mine though it has taken hours and all of my hot water to do so.
At the last moment before he fell into sleep, the scare-bird opened his eyes. I was stunned. Those were surely fey eyes. Not the peaty ones I had seen out on my steps, but a deep bronze shot through with haze, the lozenge-shape of a cat’s eye. Or they were for a moment. And then one blink later, they were human again.
As I wrote to Meteora:
I do not know what this means, darling M. I doubt anyone except the Queen knows the whole of it. Not even the Great Witch. But as you say, there is something else going on. You are right. I believe we have been dropped into this cesspit for a reason.
Surely we are not meant to bring the girl and boy together. Surely not. For that would be too simple. And the Queen has never been simple, whatever else she may be. But what if it were so, and we too cunning to allow it to happen? What if we out-puzzled the prime puzzle maker? What then?
The question that simply will not go out of mind: are we walking this maze of our own volition, or are we being walked through it by a greater player?
I send a kiss for courage. I need one, too. Or something stronger. Magic, mayhem—or a drink of honey mead though I know not where such might be found.
Your sister, loving always.
Serana