The traders arrived in the afternoon. It was dry and chilly. They were late. The women of Holstead House were in an evil mood; they had sat up all night waiting for the trucks to rumble down the road. More than once one of the twins, excitable with anticipation, had mistaken the sound of a plane overhead for wheels. Lunch had been a silent, sorry affair. But Rae thought the trickster women hid their bad humor quite effectively as they hurried toward the trucks and embraced the dismounting men, kissing cheeks, asking after wives and children.
Of course any visitor would be a cause of excitement, she told herself, lingering in the edge of the trees, breaking a twig into pieces. Man or woman. Look at the attention they had lavished on Rae herself! (Although Liesl and Anthea had both been markedly colder since the night she spoke with Hannah, and there had been no more invitations to the daemon dell.)
Their behavior toward the traders seemed out of keeping with the fathomless woman-bond which manifested itself in their obsession with testing each other’s weak points and their habitual disparagement of the male half of the daemon industry. In their flirting, she saw confirmed what she had guessed: the traders played a far more important role in their lives than they had admitted. Sex was almost certainly the key to the puzzle. It was depressing.
But the razor-pinioned bird fluttered around her head. This morning at breakfast, Hannah, who apparently thought she and Rae were allies (and did not seem quite so overjoyed as the others about the arrival of the traders) had commented on her silence. Rae could only shake her head mutely, causing everyone at the table to laugh. It was not pleasant laughter.
With a man on each arm, Anthea tripped back toward the green garden and pretended to catch sight of Rae for the first time. She fluted, “Darling! Come meet Mr. Hepplewhite and Mr. Ellary!”
Rae shook the traders’ hands. To her dismay, she found she could not keep her eyes off them. Her sensibilities seemed to have realigned themselves without her knowledge. How long had she been at Holstead House? Only a few clays. But already she could not accept the men as natural beings. Their heavy shoulders and stubbled chins fascinated her: they were unnatural, monstrous. She had always, she realized, thought of women as senselessly lumpy variations on human form. Now the men seemed the odd ones out, rough-hewn, unfinished variants on woman.
She shook the younger trader’s hand and said in her most sincere voice, “Hello. Rae. I’m very happy to make your acquaintance.”
A huge smile broke out on the man’s face. “Jem Ellary. Delighted.”
His voice was like farm bread, soda-harsh with the accents of Valestock.
“Isn’t she a darling,” Anthea trilled. “Now you must let me take you up to the house. You’ll want to wash before supper. You haven’t said how many nights you’ll be staying; of course, you’re welcome here for as long... ”
“Long as it takes us to load up,” Rae heard the grim-faced Hepplewhite saying as the trio moved into the trees. “Three trucks this time, see. Increased demand from bases. Hate to ‘pose on you, Anthea, but—”
Anthea’s answer was girlish laughter. Rae really believed, for the first time, that the trickster woman was not yet thirty.
She gazed at the trucks which hulked in the road. How many daemons would they hold? Would the menagerie be empty after they left? Did they plan to stay three days or three weeks? Everybody seemed to think she was acquainted with the logistics of these things. She wasn’t a trickster, only a costumier’s assistant; although she wasn’t even that anymore. The razor-pinioned bird had taken it away from her for good and for all. The trucks stood about twenty feet apart, their trailers bending the branches aside—green on one side of the road, brown on the other. Chewed ruts followed them to their parking places.
She looked again. One of the trucks...
It couldn’t be. Could it?
Liesl, Sally, and Millie were talking with the remaining truckers between two of the vehicles. (Hannah had not elected to join the greeting party.) One of the men was eagerly unfastening a tailgate to display the supplies they had brought Holstead from Valestock. Same game, same two-step that people danced everywhere.
Rae slipped out of the trees and around the back of the last truck. Quietly, she examined the main latch of the tailgate. In the daylight, the scratches were obvious. She tiptoed around the far side of the vehicle. Not obvious unless you were looking for it, but there was the dent where Crispin had smashed the would-be thief’s head into the truck. She could even make out a trace of something dark. That night rushed back to her in a storm of dizziness and confusion. She leaned against the truck. The knowledge that she was going to die tasted like blood. Splinters dug into her fingertips.
The conversation around the front of the truck subsided into an incomprehensible buzz. Her ears rang. She put her hand to her mouth.
When she had got some of her composure back she ventured up to the tractor. Even without climbing up, she could see where Crispin had jimmied the passenger-side lock. She scrambled on the step—awkwardly, her dress hampering her legs—and peered into the cab. The blankets in which she had slept were gone, and the dashboard fittings looked new, but there was no question that it was the same vehicle.
“Hey, hey,” a voice said softly behind her. “What’re you looking at, lady?”
Rae yelped and lost her balance. For a sickening moment she teetered. Then big, warm hands fastened around her waist, and she found herself lowered to the ground, feetfirst, like a kitten in the grip of a child.
“Can’t remember seeing you last time I was here.”
He was at least thirty, over six feet, with a pitted face and deep-set blue eyes. He smiled.
“And I think I’d’ve remembered.”
Rae was annoyed to find herself flushing. “I’m new.”
“Baird Glassman.”
“Rae. I’m happy to meet you.”
“You aren’t acting it.”
“I didn’t want to make a fuss.” She bit her lip, prettily, not taking her eyes off his face. “I—I’m sorry. I just wanted to see—”
“Never seen a truck before, have you? Country girl? You’ve got that fresh skin.”
“Only once. It’s a monster!”
“Been making this run for a good few years. I remember when Sal and Mil were as wide-eyed as you. ‘Course they were a bit younger. Not that they look it now!” He clapped her on the shoulder in a fatherly way, which almost allayed her bad feelings about him. “It’s a hard life, this is, Rae, young lady. Sure you’re ready for it? Might be things they haven’t told you yet.” As they came around the seven-foot hood of the truck and joined the others, he added softly: “Might be things no one knows. Not to discourage you! Just tryin’ to make sure you hear both sides of the story. ‘Course I don’t know you or nothin. You might think I’m being presumptuous.”
She wanted to ask: Where did you get this truck? After reliving the terror of that night, she found herself looking for Crispin. She couldn’t believe he was not somewhere close by. Her eyes skidded over the animated faces of the others as if they had been a bunch of white stones. Suddenly she wanted him so badly that she pulled the trader’s arm down and began, “Sir—Baird—I think I’ve seen—”
But Millie cut her off. “Oh, Baird,” she chirped. “Ernie was showing me some of the traveling cells you brought! They’re so little and clever! But do you really think you can fit our daemons into them?”
The youngest man covered a smile. Sally poked her twin, and Millie’s face and neck went cherry red. She tried to cover her unintentional innuendo by holding out her hands to Rae and gabbling, “Rae, sweetheart, we haven’t introduced you! Baird, have you—”
“Yes,” Baird said. “We’ve met.” He gave Rae a half smile, with one eyelid drooped. She returned it, inwardly cringing.
Liesl stirred herself smoothly to cover the silence. “It’s getting late.” She twined her arm through that of the tall trader. “I think we should make you unload at least one truck before dark, so we can begin packing the daemons first thing tomorrow, don’t you? Have you brought hand trucks, Baird? It makes everything so much easier... ”
Baird Glassman seemed overcome by the flow of her conversation. He nodded again and again, like a clockwork toy, as she led him away. The others followed, as good as hypnotized, the way Rae had seen daemons follow at Liesl’s heels, like big ugly dogs. Liesl was not that pretty! But of course it wasn’t always the pretty ones who snared the men. Liesl had that certain something else which Rae herself had longed for countless times, whenever she saw a ring on another girl’s finger. As she stood looking after them, she found herself suddenly sandwiched between Sally and Millie. Sharp fingernails dug into her arm. The twins were wearing scent: the floral bouquet choked her nostrils. Millie’s face was still pink, no doubt with the memory of her gaffe, and for once she let Sally do the talking. “Now, while they’re all distracted,” Sally hissed. “You have to come to the menagerie!”
Rae tried to fight. Her hair got in her face. They were both holding her. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Shut up.” Sally pinched Rae so hard that tears welled up in her eyes. “Liesl made Anthea give you as long as she could! And we begged her, too! It’s not our fault if you didn’t make any use of the time! Now they’re here, you can’t just sit around like a lump any longer. Anthea’s waiting.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Rae protested in a whisper, not wanting to make a scene, as they dragged her along behind Liesl and her coterie of men.
“Exactly!” Millie hissed. “You just sat around accepting our hospitality, while we were on our feet night and day, getting ready for them! You haven’t been in the menagerie once since Anthea showed you around!”
“But I was tired,” Rae said, trying to keep her voice level. “All I could do was sleep. I mean it. I couldn’t help it. There’s something in the air—”
“Of course there is. You’re in the Wraithwaste!”
“That’s what we meant when we told you you’d have to be strong!”
Branches whipped Rae’s cheeks. She could not free her hands, only turn her face to one side or the other, and on each side there was a twin.
“We tried to warn you!” Sally said righteously.
“We told you you need strength to survive!”
“The air is thick with daemons. You’re breathing them right now. You can’t help it.”
“But you thought you were too good to listen to us.”
“You didn’t pay any attention.”
“Now you’ll be sorry!” Millie said viciously.
But there was a catch in her voice, and the scent of sweat filtered through her heavy perfume. Rae looked from her to Sally. These young girls, with the premature lines around their eyes and mouths and their skeletal, purple-veined hands, were no less upset by what was happening to Rae than she was. But that didn’t mean they were going to let her go. “Come on,” Sally said, and jerked her arm so that she stumbled.
But when they left her alone with Anthea in the bright stillness of the menagerie, what had seemed almost like a kidnapping took on quite a different aspect. Anthea bubbled with laughter when Rae spilled out the story of how the twins had accosted her.
“Those two! Their social skills are so poor! They are completely unaware of how frightening they can be. It’s a pity they can’t be exposed to strangers more often—they came to us so young... Now of course for you things will be different. You are already experienced.” Anthea chuckled. “No, all this is—is a little test which we give our new girls. I wanted to get it over with earlier, before the men arrived, but I just couldn’t find time. It’s too bad of me, I know.”
What about yesterday? Rae thought. What about this morning, while you waited, and I dozed with my head on the table? You were watching me like you were trying to decide to have me on toast or on a sweet cake. I bet the twins were telling the truth, and Liesl pressured you to hold off as long as possible. To give me a little longer—for what? What have I done?
“Have you been in here much during the past few days?” Anthea asked offhandedly, stroking the furry leaves of a giant geranium. “I haven’t been paying as much attention to you as I should. Forgive me.”
Something snapped in Rae. “You keep asking me to forgive you. All of you. You and Liesl and Hannah. I don’t understand.”
“Oh, my dear,” Anthea said, her voice sad. “My dear.” Then her mouth hardened into a smile again. “Now, here’s what I want you to do. The traders are all daemon handlers, but they can’t do anything with our poor darlings until they’re collared. We don’t collar them before the traders arrive because they start to deteriorate as soon as they feel the touch of silver. And they go all helpless. It’s awful to see. We’d have to feed them ourselves, by hand, instead of letting them just get along on their own in the menagerie. It’s been tried, and it’s just not practical... So we have a very busy few weeks ahead of us. We work in pairs—one of us collars a daemon and one of them cells it. We can only do about two or three dozen a day; it’s very tiring work.”
“There are six of them,” Rae said, her heart sinking. “Does even Mother come down to help?”
“Yes, she does. Of course.”
“Then why—”
“There is always the possibility... Let me be honest.” Anthea’s face was serious. “Mother is old.” It was true. Though Mother was only in her forties, she had the body of a nonagenarian. “And she has always worked with Baird Glassman, who is not a man to compromise the speed he deems necessary to make a profit. Therefore, you may have to step in for her. So I need to know that you can do what’s needed. That’s all.” She smiled. “There’s really nothing to be nervous about.”
Rae took a deep breath. She could not see any way out. “What do I have to do?”
Anthea pointed to the center of the menagerie. Bushy geraniums grew in a mound around the base of one of the tall, whippy, bare trees which were the most puissant demogorgons. They were fifty feet tall, Liesl had said, in human form. Anthea circled a geranium stern with her fingers. “This one. I’m making it as easy as possible for you! Put your arms around it. Speak to it. Do whatever you have to. It will change into its human form. Then, when you have it close and trusting, slip this around its neck.” She reached into her dress pocket and tossed Rae a silver band, no bigger than a child’s bracelet, hinged in the middle. “There’s a hook-and-pin closure. If it was a larger daemon it would be a spring strip, and we’d solder it closed, but this will do for a Nemanes. Maybe you’d better practice.”
Rae snapped the band shut a few times. “Isn’t it too small?”
“I caught this daemon. I chose this collar for it the same day. Look inside.”
Scratched on the inside of the band, in beautiful copperplate script, Rae read Nemanes. She knelt in the earth by the geranium and tentatively stroked its stem. Not-scent wafted into her nostrils. She looked over her shoulder at Anthea. “You’re not going to watch?”
“How else will I know whether you have succeeded?”
Rae turned back to the plant and opened her eyes as wide as she could, trying not to cry. “Nemanes,” she whispered shakily. She wanted to absorb herself in the daemon’s greenness to the exclusion of the rest of the world. She rubbed her cheek against the furry, prickly leaves. “Oh, Nemanes. Be my friend. I’m yours. Trust me, Nemanes, I won’t hurt you!”
“No good!” Anthea said. “No good at all!”
Rae visualized the daemon as a little green child who would grin and stretch and hop onto her lap and not mind at all having a collar fastened around his neck.
“I thought she had the gift for sweet talk! I’m never wrong!” Anthea murmured to herself. Rae’s concentration almost shattered, but she forced herself not to give up.
And after a moment or two the leaves went away from between her fingers, as if they had turned to vapor. She could not open her eyes. The scent made her so dizzy that her head came off her neck and floated. Something hovered still before and above her. It was fantastically powerful, and she knew that if she looked up she would die, for its power lay not in any killing blow, though it was certainly capable of striking her if it wished, but in the sheer intensity of its presence. It was pungently masculine. It was ancient. All of its considerable energy was concentrated without movement or speech into waiting.
Waiting for her to speak words she had forgotten.
Waiting.
With a flash of fear so strong she could taste it, she identified the sensation: it was her tenth birthday again and she was being presented to the Prince. She had seen him every day of her life, of course, leading the evening prayers, but never this close up. Never in his own apartments. All the best furnishings of the Carathraw mansion had long ago been collected into the master bedroom. When Rae walked in, flanked by two of the Consorts (one of them Saonna), her spine dripping with fear, the unexpected riot of riches nearly shocked her into breaking her respectful shuffle. She kept her head down, though she longed to look around. The musty perfume of the place made her heart beat as quickly as it had that time she and Daphne and Colm stole buns from the baker in Greenberith.
The walls seemed to tower forever into the darkness; there was no ceiling. Only a few streaks of day penetrated between the heavy, unswagged curtains. The twilight gave the clutter of furniture a gloomy majesty akin to that of a glade of huge trees come on unexpectedly just before dawn. It was as if the furniture had been walking clumsily across the floor, and had only just frozen the moment Rae entered: as if the worm-eaten hearts of the sofas and beds and tables were still racing deep inside. Their draperies created a dusty spiderweb that obstructed all but one way into the room.
The Prince reposed high up, on a throne of stacked beds draped with fabrics that Rae wanted to run her fingers over and wrap around her shoulders and hide beneath.
She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t do anything except stumble to her knees.
The Prince shone like a sun below the horizon. Behind her, her mother wavered, as insignificant as the setting moon. Rae knew just as certainly as if she had turned around that Saonna was biting her lip with worry. Rae had been supposed to say the words the minute she knelt.
What were the words?
What were they?
Trembling all over, she shrieked faintly, “Oh, Prince, I salute you with my soul, and I wait in ecstatic silence until the moment when you shall enfold me in the wing of your royal spirit and lift me above the nameless destruction that shall attend the death of the Queen to the place that is not a place, the safety that is not safety, the existence that is not existence, that is transcendence!” Her child-sized lungs were empty, and she gasped aloud. But she had done it, she had remembered, she had not disgraced Saonna!
“In the name of the Queen, girl,” a furious female voice said. “Get out of the way!”
Rae felt herself toppling over. She could not make her hands obey her to break her fall. Her face pressed into the earth. She sneezed, shuddered, and sat up. Her knees and shoulders ached. Her mouth tasted like sleep.
Anthea straightened up from between the geraniums, wincing like an old woman and rubbing her back with her free hand. She looked haggard. Under one arm she held a squawling little leprechaun which was almost exactly as Rae had imagined it, except that it wasn’t green. It was bright pink—the same color as the flowers on the geraniums. A silver collar encircled its candy-floss-colored neck.
Rae got slowly to her feet. “How long was I... ”
Anthea’s expression made her look down in shame. It was the same look she had seen on Saonna’s face when the Third Consort caught Rae and Colm kissing down by the wading pool. It made Rae feel hateful, ungrateful, ugly inside her skin. That was the year Rae was ten: later that year Saonna would die, and in spring Rae would run away from the Seventeenth Mansion.
“You were under for about four hours.” With tired sarcasm: “You didn’t expect me to wait any longer than that, did you?”
Rae looked wildly about. The menagerie breathed and swayed. Overhead the daemon glares hummed. On a low branch of Exarces balanced a food-stained plate with a fork, knife, and water glass.
Four hours!
“You—you—”
“You weren’t asleep,” Anthea said over the meowling of the daemon. “You were in communion with Nemanes.” She stepped out of the geranium mound, straightened her wool wrap, refastened the pin on her shoulder, and did something to the collar around Nemanes’s neck. At once the daemon quieted. Its legs and head dangled. Except for its bright, blinking eyes, it looked catatonic. “It’s such a small daemon I really don’t know how you managed to get lost so deeply. But people drown in six inches of water. It happens.”
“Anthea,” Rae begged. Everything was happening too fast. What had happened? Four hours— “What did I do wrong?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing!” Anthea’s voice was as sharp as pieces of a broken mirror. “Come on, everybody’s outside! You’ve kept us in here long enough!”
She brushed past, wreathed in scent. Rae hurried after her. A newly risen wind slammed the door behind her. Anthea was making for a bonfire that had been lit behind the house, about a hundred feet into the dead forest. Rae had wondered before about the blackened clearing in the pines back there: it must have been created for this purpose. The scent of woodsmoke gusted on the wind, evoking her childhood as everything else did tonight. Camping out in the tangled grounds of the mansion with the other kids (nobody ever told the Children of the Dynasty not to do things which other children were only able to dream about), burning her fingers on potatoes roasted in a fire which only the Queen, surely, had prevented from burning down everything within a hundred miles, lying on her back on the bare ground after everyone had quieted down, Daphne cool and softly asleep on her shoulder, looking up into the star-filled night.
Could she really only have been six? It felt like yesterday.
Oh, Daphne! Where are you now?
Carried on the woodsmoke was another, darker scent, incense perhaps that the traders had brought.
Rae saw Anthea reach the clearing. She laughed back at the voices that greeted her, sounding young and wildly excitable. There was a shout from the watchers, and a terrified human scream, and then the fire burned bright and white as a giant fireball, its fingertips straining above the tops of the trees. With a shock of disbelief Rae understood that Anthea had thrown Nemanes into it. The trickster woman stood with her hands empty, looking into the fireball, a dark girlish silhouette against the glare. Then she spun around, laughing, her hair flying out in a slow corona.
Rae was clutching a tree so tightly that it hurt. Baird Glassman said behind her, in a pleasant, slightly slurred voice, “Have a sip of this, young Rae. I recommend the brew.” A mug came over her shoulder and slid along her cheek, ice-cold, beaded with water. Without looking around, she took it and drank deeply. But she couldn’t just run away. It was out of the question. The very thought of venturing into the wind-tumbled forest unnerved her. Baird’s arm lay on her neck, and he kept making small motions that meant he would like to take her somewhere private. But though she was afraid of being on her own, she was more afraid of what he might do if he got her alone. Safety lay in the leaping light of the fire, just as when she went out with her admirers in Valestock, safety had lain in public places where there was no danger of hands slipping underneath clothes.
Two of the other traders, young Ellary and a gangling fellow named Frazier, sat beside them, making desultory conversation and replenishing each other’s mugs. Rae had counted on their talk to save her from the awfulness of her thoughts, but they were making it obvious through winks and innuendo that they weren’t going to butt in on whatever she and Baird supposedly had going.
She couldn’t reject his attentions. It was impossible. Now that Crispin had deserted her, and the trickster women had proved false, Baird was her only hope, though he did not know it. Anthea, Liesl, and even Hannah had all gone over to the other side. They threatened her like a row of red queens across the chessboard, promising certain destruction before the game was up. Baird remained on her side, an unlikely white knight with a wife and children in Valestock.
But she could not surrender to him!
Would he be repulsed? Like Crispin? Or would he laugh tenderly, dispelling the fears of nineteen years, and kiss her poor pale stump just as he was kissing her neck, with expert tongue-tip teases? It seemed inevitable that she would find out. But her courage was insufficient to overcome her fear. And a voice inside her cried, Crispin...
He was probably a hundred miles away by now. He had given up on her. And who could blame him? She had deserted him, that day in the daemon dell.
But back then she hadn’t known how this was going to end! Transcendence had not played her false. But circumstances had. And there, circumstances govern us all, even the Children of the Dynasty—
When Baird first led her into the clearing, all the trickster women, even Mother, had presented brilliant smiles to her and pressed mugs of ale into her hand, and she had wondered if maybe it did not matter after all, if she had been wrong, if they were going to give her another chance. But then Sally and Millie had drawn her aside and told her it was no good.
“You’d better leave.”
They both started to cry as Millie said it. Their tears shone red as blood in the firelight.
“They’ve made their decision.”
“But how do you know? Where can I go?” Rae was panicking.
“Away!”
“Away from here.”
“Tonight.”
“Rae, we don’t want anything bad to happen to you!”
“What?” Rae said. They had pulled her away from the fire, into the cold, crunchy forest. The three of them huddled together like refugees trying to console each other over some terrible loss. The darkness disguised the lines on the twins’ wet faces. For once their youth was obvious. “What’s going to happen to me?”
Sally wiped her nose. “Same thing happened to Sarah from the cult, and Anna from the south, and our cousin Jillie, when she wanted to be a trickster woman! We told her she should come, we planned it for months, we sent her secret letters, but when she got here it was no good, she wasn’t strong like us... Oh Rae, we’re trying to warn you, you didn’t listen to us before, but if you know what’s good for you, you’d better listen now We could show you what’s going to happen to you, we have scars you wouldn’t believe—”
I’m in danger of my life, Rae thought, because I made the mistake of trusting them, because they seemed kind! How naive can I be?!
But the illusion was shattered for good now. She remembered what Anthea had said to her that first night, when she, Rae, had been deaf with tiredness: Not many travelers come this far into the Wraithwaste, unless they’re coming to us! And none of them ever leave.
When the three of them returned to the fire she saw very clearly that the bright chatter Anthea, Liesl, and Hannah directed at her was no more sincere than the patter of shopgirls. They seemed interested in nothing but the traders they had hypnotized. But Rae did not miss the darting, snakelike glances that they directed at Sally and Millie, who had gone, barely controlling their sniffles, to sit with Mother.
Rae had excused herself from the three in a shaky voice. She had gone to the other side of the fire and sank down, grateful for Baird’s ready embrace.
What was going to happen to her now? She dared not move from his side in case they meant to dispose of her right here, in front of everyone, though in that case she didn’t know what he could do to protect her, anyhow. The way Anthea had disposed of Nemanes convinced Rae that death was the most likely probability.
But Baird would save her. He had to.
Fear sat like a lump of snow in her belly, melted only a little by mug after mug of ale.
And it was late, late, and nothing had happened, and Hannah and Liesl had retired, leaving Mother, and the twins, and Anthea, the most dangerous of the three. There were loud, sporadic cracklings in the forest, and Rae was certain that from time to time she saw eyes gleaming in the trees. She mentioned it half-jokingly to Baird, and he muttered something about the Wraiths coming when they smelt alcohol.
Thank transcendence I didn’t make a run for it then! Hannah had told her, both in words and in the language which did not lie, how much the Wraiths hated Ferupians. And what could be more Ferupian than this drinking party? It was a release from the obsessive austerities that governed Holstead House during the day. And like the parties that had happened occasionally at the Seventeenth Mansion, it was going to end with everyone pairing off. Would the Wraiths take advantage of Holstead House’s vulnerability then? Or were they too much diminished to be anything but spectators at the feast? Rae felt in her heart that they were not half as toothless as Hannah had tried to make them sound.
The wind moaned like a storm in the branches overhead.
On the far side of the clearing, Anthea and her paramour Hepplewhite were snuggling, their bodies making a spider that twitched its great legs in the light of the dying flames. Sally, Millie, and Mother sat with two young traders, Greengate and Puriss, who seemed hypnotized by the twins. They had danced attendance on them all night and were only now, with respectful restraint, claiming their property: a hand on a thigh, another stroking flaxen hair. The twins sat passive under their caresses, like show horses being groomed by their trainers. Mother gazed off into the distance with a smile on her face, rocking back and forth, apparently unaware of the courtship taking place on either side of her.
“Someone’s gonna have fun tonight,” Ellary said for the fourth or fifth time, and drained his mug.
Frazier stared morosely at the fire. Suddenly he tossed his mug into the embers, where it burst, and stood up, stretching his long limbs. “C’mon, Jem. Time for you and me to hit the sack. Got a busy day coming up.”
“Wasn’t hired to be no stockboy,” Jem Ellary muttered without malice. Staggering upright, he slapped Baird on the shoulder. “What ‘bout you, fella?”
Rae closed her hand over Baird’s. “I’ll look after him.” She smiled at Ellary, crinkling her eyes to suggest that the two of them had a private joke. “I don’t think he’s going to be good for much tomorrow morning, though.”
Frazier and Ellary chuckled drunkenly. Ellary said, swaying and hiccuping, “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Always happens like this. We plan on starting to unload the minute we get here, and we end up drinkin’ all night. Witches. They’re witches. They do it to us, oh, what do they do to us?” he began to sing mournfully.
“Shut it,” Frazier said, and wrapping his arm around the stumbling man, led him off. “Night.”
“Night,” Rae called, somewhat taken aback.
The clearing was quiet now but for the crackling of the fire and the surreptitious noises in the forest. Baird’s kisses moved from Rae’s neck to her mouth. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she let herself go. His tongue entered her mouth. He drew back and whispered, “Where? Where can we go?”
Danger seemed far away, and at the same time she felt its breath on her face. Her head was, spinning. She could not face the forest, or the house: for all she knew, the bones of Sarah, Anna, and Jillie, who had also failed the trickster women’s tests, were boarded up in the walls. By comparison, the scene of this evening’s humiliation seemed attractive.
“The menagerie,” she murmured, letting her hands fly over his shoulders, inside his coat.
She had never had an admirer who was this much older than she—or at any rate never encouraged one. She had always had more attractive offers. Not that Baird wasn’t attractive, of course (and in the dark, you couldn’t see his blue eyes, those blank spots in the pale face that reminded her of uncurtained windows onto an empty room). “Do you know the way?”
He pulled her to her feet. They meandered back toward the house, stopping every now and then to kiss. To distract herself from the flickers in the corners of her eyes, Rae asked Baird about the truck she had recognized.
“Stolen,” he grunted. “Taken possession of by Fewman and Fewman. Believed to be original property of Lemonde Daemon Dealers of Cherry Hills.” That was a domain near Plum Valley. The heartlands were home to the richest companies in Ferupe—heartlanders had more business sense than westerners, who were handed wealth on a platter every day, but did not know enough to hold on to it. “Compensation paid to Lemonde, minus costs of repairs.”
“But how does anyone steal a truck?” she asked.
“Not that difficult if you know daemons.” Baird pressed kisses into her ear. “Why?”
“I’m—I’m just curious.” She twisted to avoid getting a tree branch in her ribs. “Everything you do interests me, Baird!”
He laughed indulgently. “Follow this then! Darky traveler stole the truck from outside of an eatery in Valestock, same night there was a fire in the armory on Main Street, all the police distracted. Rain washed away traces of escape. Truck later discovered stripped of fittings, primary daemon gone, contents of trailer missing, near a hamlet on the edge of the Wraithwaste, about a hundred miles from Valestock. Darky never seen again. Most of missing fittings discovered on search of nearby hamlet. Daemon lost; peasants have no idea what’s really valuable, they just like bright, shiny metal. Thieving magpies!” He laughed uproariously. “Boys taught ‘em a lesson they won’t forget!”
“Hilarious!” Rae laughed. “The darky stole it, and then had it stolen from him! And later, the girl he had rescued from the fire deserted him without so much as a thank-you, and a daemon was set on him, and if he isn’t dead by now I expect he’s halfway to the war front! And I’ll never see him again. I can’t bear it. never see him again—”
“What’re you blathering about? You a storyteller or somethin? You a gypsy? No, no.” Baird pinched her cheek, then kissed her hard on the mouth. “Too fair, too daisy daisy pretty—”
“I’m a little drunk, I think,” Rae said meekly. Her heart was pounding inside her chest. “Oh, Baird!” They were at the door. The heavy slab of oak swung inward and they moved into a warm night that smelled of flowers. Rae was too grateful for the dark to question it; only in the back of her mind she thought, Should close the door... should close...
They came on Liesl and Hannah in the darkest corner of the menagerie, where tiny daemons grew like grass. Liesl’s pale body shone in the night; Hannah was her shadow come to life. Her lips suckled greedily at Liesl’s small breasts. Liesl’s fingers clenched spasmodically on Hannah’s buttocks. Despite her shock and disgust, Rae felt something twitching deep inside her at the sight. Baird clapped a hand over her mouth and pulled her away, crashing through the daemon growths. The two women were too absorbed in each other to notice the intrusion, or the noisy retreat. Nonetheless, to Rae, it would have been the worst breach of decorum to stay a moment longer in the menagerie. But Baird seemed to have been set on fire by the scene they had witnessed. Growling softly, he pulled her down near the door and started undoing her dress. Rae tried to push him away, but it was no good; she could not resist muscles that could keep a sixty-ton truck on the road for hours on end. He forced her back down onto the soil.
She imagined she could feel the rhythm of Hannah and Liesl’s lovemaking pulsing through the earth. She had never guessed that that was what lay between the pair. Although really, she should have; she had seen the same kind of thing in similar circumstances, and it explained a good deal.
A warm wind blew over her, tickling her face as if it were thick with dust. It was going in the wrong direction. Not into the menagerie, but out. What was wrong? She could not think, could not act. She caressed Baird’s hair. Now that it had started she did not want it to stop even for a moment. She did not want to think about what she was doing. Kneeling between her thighs, Baird pulled off his coat and shirt. His chest was soft with ginger curls. He squeezed her breasts, flicking the nipples expertly with his index fingers. The sweet disability of surrender washed over her. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, pulling him down on top of her, kissing him.
And rearing up, he shuddered and went limp, crashing facefirst into the earth beside her. For one absurd moment she thought he had finished, and he couldn’t have yet, not a man in the prime of his life—but then she sat up and shook him, and he did not move, and there was a knife hilt standing out of his back, and she screamed. It came out as a whimper.
“Get away from him!” It was Crispin, standing huge and solid and black in the doorway. There was—could it be?—a child behind him, peering around his legs. “I think I’ve killed him. Queen!” He came forward and collected his knife, kneeling to wipe it on the daemon grass. “You’re bloody lucky I came when I did!” He peered into her face. “He looks a real bastard!”
He had come. He would save her. But her mind was empty of all but the sweeping waves of blackness that were the wings of the razor-pinioned bird. She crouched transfixed. Intermittently, stars replaced the roof, and replaced Crispin’s face, replaced the doorway. But the black wings beat even faster. Soon the wings would come close enough to slash her. She whimpered again, not in relief but terror.
“Say the words!” repeated the voice. Cuddlepie was stiff with fear. He couldn’t remember one word, yet he had said them over and over all the way. “Too late! Eat him!” shouted the voice fiercely.
—May Gibbs, The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie