XVIII

 

 

 

I came to a halt on dry ground, painlessly, upright on my feet, as though I had floated down like a leaf on a gentle wind from the opening in the grotto. I opened my eyes, which had been clenched tightly shut, and blinked at the brilliance before me. I was in a grand chamber, the walls paneled in silver, white silk, and mirrors, the floor of polished parquet. In front of me was a low platform with a tall-backed silver throne, upholstered in lilac velvet padding and cushions. On the throne sat a delicate, diminutive blonde woman in a white dress. To one side of her a sumptuous banquet was laid on a long table. To the other side a group of musicians played music, and beyond them a small crowd of men and women in courtly dress milled around, talking as if at a royal reception.

I might have thought I was looking at a painting of one of the royal courts of Europe were it not for the fact that all the people, including the demoiselle on her throne, had iridescent wings protruding from their backs, like beautiful insects. The wings flickered and fluttered from time to time as they conversed with one another, like ladies’ fans. The demoiselle-queen had a youthful, heart-shaped face framed by long pale hair, atop which she wore a silver diadem encrusted with diamonds and amethysts. She leaned forward in her seat and peered intently at me as though trying to ascertain what manner of creature I was. Her musicians, courtiers, and ladies all wore coats and gowns of lustrous satin or velvet in pastel shades, with gleaming trims of silver braid, embroidered flowers, pearl buttons, and jewels. The queen caught one of the musicians’ eye and gave a nod so the players fell silent. The other guests gradually noticed and stopped speaking, until the room was quiet and all eyes were upon me.

“Welcome,” the queen said to me. “It’s a long time since we had a guest from up there.”

I tried to speak but found my throat had closed up from terror and astonishment. I wished to say, “Thank you,” but the only sound I could get out was a kind of terrible croaking, punctuated by coughs, like a strangled frog.

“Poor dear,” said the queen. “Someone get her a drink, quickly.”

A goblet was placed in my hand by an unseen helper. I coughed again and pretended to take a drink from it. It looked and smelled like water, but I remembered all the stories warning against accepting food or drink from fairies, so I didn’t allow any of the liquid to pass my lips. When I had pretended to drink a long draught, the goblet was taken from me. I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself, then cleared my throat.

“Thank you, your Majesty,” I croaked. “Excuse me, it’s as though I had a frog in my throat.”

She looked taken aback, as though I had insulted her, and I sensed a wave of surprise and disapprobation wash over the assembly. Whatever I had said to offend her, after a moment the queen shrugged it off.

“But tell us, how did you come here? We do love hearing human tales. Some of us write them down in books, and we tell them to our young to put them to sleep at night.”

“Well, I …”

“Start from the beginning and leave out no detail.”

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. I tried to think where to begin. If they liked hearing “human tales” as much we enjoyed our fairy tales, I had to take care in how I told it. It couldn’t be too short or too long, and I had to leave out what might bore them and build to an exciting end. So I started with my father telling me I had to go to live with the Marquis de Boisaulne, and I ended with his wife setting the dogs on me. The queen seemed pleased with my tale.

“My goodness, chased by dogs like a hind! But never fear, you can stay down here with us as long as you like. And you really met the roi des aulnes? Fascinating.”

“But truthfully, I might only have dreamt of meeting him. I was ill, delirious and half-frozen from falling into the stream.” The mention of the roi des aulnes reminded me of the Cernunnos medallion in my pocket, and without thinking I slid my hand into the pocket to rub the silver metal with my thumb and reassure myself it was still there. The moment I touched the medallion, everything changed before my eyes, and I stumbled backward.

It all appeared before me now in double vision. The scene and ensemble of figures was just the same as before, but I saw another, entirely different scene superimposed over it. It was as if I had two sets of eyes and two separate minds to see it with, while having yet a single soul receiving both impressions. It was such a strange sensation that I feared I might go mad, so I took my hand off the medallion, and once again saw only the gleaming fairy court. But I knew what I had seen. Underneath the exquisite facade, there was no white-and-silver mirrored throne room, but a murky cave with black slime on the walls and a mud floor. There was no throne with a radiant fairy queen seated on it, but only an enormously fat, wart-covered toad crouching in the black-green muck in a coating of her own mucus, regarding me with protruding eyes and croaking with a noise like deep belches. What I had taken to be the assembly of the fairy court was a pulsing mass of common frogs in a patchwork blanket of dull dark grays and greens covering the rocks, flicking their long tongues in and out and puffing out their sides with croaks. What had appeared to be the banquet table laid with shining silver and porcelain, bearing heaps of mouth-watering roasts and mounds of perfectly ripe sweet fruit, was in fact a wide slippery sinkhole, a lightless abyss I couldn’t see to the bottom of.

“But if you saw him as a stag, even if he only revealed himself to you in a dream, you must be highly favored of him,” the fairy queen said.

I remembered now that the fairy in Aurore’s tale had a grudge against the roi des aulnes. “But nay, Queen, the tales I hear of him describe him as a cruel, bloody-handed ogre. I only hope never to see the monster again.”

The queen nodded thoughtfully, as though only partially satisfied by my answer. “Come then, my dear, you must be tired and hungry. Sit down at my banquet table and refresh yourself.” She swept an imperious hand toward the table.

I touched the medallion for an instant again. The yawning void of the sinkhole was still visible where she had gestured that I ought to sit down. Involuntarily I took a step back. “Thank you for the kind offer, your Highness, but I already ate a large supper tonight.”

The queen’s eyes narrowed. “You have something in your hand. Something precious. Show me.”

Panic flooded me. “N-no, your Majesty, it’s nothing, just an old token I found. It soothes me to touch it, like a smooth pebble.”

“You have the second sight. You see things as they are. Give me the token.” Her voice turned to wheedling like a little girl. “I just want to see it. I don’t even want to keep it. The second sight will drive you mad if you use it too much. I just want to see myself as I truly am. Then I’ll give it back to you, I promise. We never break our promises, you know. We can’t. It’s against our laws.”

I took another step back. “No.”

“I’ll give you something in return. I can help you. You’re in desperate straits. Help me, and I’ll help you. That’s the law of the humans, isn’t it? Tell me, what do you desire?”

“I just want to go back, to my own world up above. Safely.”

“Is that all?”

“If there’s more I could ask for, it’s that … I wish for my beloved to be safe, and for both of us to be together.”

“Hmm, it’s not a small thing you’re asking for. Even we fairies have our limits. But I’ll see what I can do. Only let me hold the token.”

I could see no better alternative, and no other means of escaping this cave, so I slowly stepped forward and approached the queen. I reached into my pocket, grasped the ribbon, and drew the medallion out by it without touching the metal to my skin. I placed it around my neck so that it hung down over the fabric of the stomacher that covered my stays in front, and leaned forward so the queen could put her hand to it without it leaving my possession. The queen eyed it eagerly, reached out her slim white hand, and wrapped her long fingers around the horned figure of Cernunnos.

She screamed. It was a long, high-pitched cry of anguish, fear, and rage. She let go, and I fell back as though she had pushed me. For a long moment she stared at me, her breath heaving in and out, her eyes alight with fury.

“How dare you? You knew what I would see. How could you have let me look? Cruel human.” She spat. “But a promise is a promise. Go away from here.” She waved her hand.

A dizzying, whirling sensation came over me, as though I were falling from a great height in a dream, and the pit of my stomach sank out from under me. I blinked as the feeling subsided, and gradually I became aware of my new surroundings.

I was in darkness, a strange darkness like nothing I had encountered before. I blinked, trying to discern what was different about it. Slowly, as I blinked more and moved my head from side to side, the realization came over me that it was the way I saw things that was new. I wasn’t blind in this darkness, though there was no moon or lantern for me to see by. My eyes had changed, and I had become like my Thérion, who could see in the nighttime. The outlines of objects were visible to me, though colorless, like one of the pen-and-ink sketches that he signed Harlequin.

I stood next to the sentry stone, above the ground outside the entrance to the grotto at the edge of the forest. I could feel the weight of the medallion around my neck on the ribbon, as before, but it seemed I must be naked, for my clothes all lay in a neat pile on the ground next to me. Reflexively, absently and without looking down, I tried to feel myself to see if I truly was bare-skinned there in the forest in the middle of the night, but my hands were gone.

My hands were gone.

I turned my neck, which felt longer than before, to get a view of my body below and to each side. Hooves at the end of slender, velvet-coated legs stamped up and down on the ground as I tried to move my arms. My chest, too, and belly were fur-covered. So were my flanks. Craning my neck, I could see the tip of a lighter-colored tuft of fur at the end of my spine.

The fairy queen had transformed me into a deer. It was I who was the beast now. Never again could I return to my children, my father, and Edmée. Even if I could find them, I’d have no power to protect them or speak to them, to warn them of the danger they were in from the Marquise. No refuge awaited me at Madame Jacquenod’s tavern in the village. For all the days that remained to me, I would be forced to live in this forest, fleeing creatures who would kill and eat me, foraging for what food I could find, mating in season, giving birth in the spring. The fairy queen had kept her end of the bargain, but had betrayed me utterly.