Authors: Sarah Zettel
I froze in place, my hands buried in the living warmth of Unseelie earth. I felt something underneath me. Something soft and cold.
“Callie, talk to me!” Jack stood over me, his bat in both hands, trying to watch in all directions at once.
My hands were shaking. They’d gone numb. I brushed carefully at the soil. I felt the shape of a head, then a forehead. A cheek. This was a person under my hands, and they were cold. Cold and dead. I was choking on my breath. I couldn’t see.
“God Almighty,” whispered Jack. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“It’s Ivy,” he said.
My eyes flew open and I stared. It was Ivy, or Ivy’s body, anyway. Still and dead, and laid out straight in the grave that had been dug for my father.
“B-but …,” I stammered. “But the king was in her! What happened?” I cast my thoughts around frantically, looking for memories, but there was nothing. The king was nowhere. I scrambled to my feet again. I didn’t for a second believe the Seelie king was really dead. But if he wasn’t inside Ivy, where was he? What was he hiding inside now?
Before Jack could answer, there was another shout out of the shifting, struggling forest. Dan Ryan broke through the ragged line of the trees, a flock of rats scattering around him.
“Where’s Touhy?” he shouted as he pelted up to us. “You’re supposed to be finding the prisoners!”
“Where’re the Halfers?” demanded Jack, but Dan Ryan just glanced over his shoulder, his eyes wide with anger and fear. Nobody else broke out of the forest, and the trees were starting to close ranks.
Uh-oh
.
I faced the Emerald Fields. The Ebony Road was undulating and switching back and forth so like a snake, I was sure it would rear up at us any second. No going that way. The Seelie king was out there somewhere, hiding beneath the surface like a land mine. But there was still a war going on around us, and we had to get to the palace. The palace was the heart of the Unseelie country. From there we could find the prisoners, and Papa and my uncle. My uncle was out here somewhere too, and I was ready to bet my last nickel that if we found him, we’d find the king. Where else would the Seelie king have gone? If he retreated to his own country, he knew I could shut him out for good. There was nowhere left for him except inside the skin of his best friend.
Jack tugged on my arm, and pointed at the sky. I jerked my head up to see what else was coming. But it wasn’t a warning. It was a reminder.
“Hold on!” I grabbed Jack with one hand and Dan Ryan with the other, and I jumped up into the air, and flew.
And dang, those boys were heavy.
From up here I could see the boiling white cliffs of the Seelie country where they’d rolled up to the border of the Unseelie. I felt the waves of laughter bubbling out of them and it rocked me as badly as any wind in the human world could. The Seelie land saw the war. It saw the Halfers tearing up the Unseelies, weakening them, breaking them. It laughed and it cheered because its king cheered. Wherever he’d hidden himself, the Seelie king saw the Unseelie country being broken, and he was celebrating. Understanding landed heavily in my mind and I knew why the Seelie king ran and hid. He didn’t care who won this fight. He just had to wait, to let the Unseelies and the Halfers chew each other up. Then he’d come out and take what was left. My stomach twisted up and my flight faltered.
“Watch it!” screamed Dan Ryan, digging into my arm with his pointy fingers.
“Quit squirming!” shouted Jack. “You
want
her to drop us?”
“Shut up, both of you!” I bawled back.
We had to get out of here. All of us. We had to get the prisoners and pull back, before we did any more damage to the Unseelies. Before the Seelie king could come out and destroy us all.
I jackknifed my body like I was diving into the deep end of a pool, and headed for the ground.
I didn’t land us in the palace. I swooped over the broken dome and hit the ground beside the Kitchen Garden a lot harder than I meant to. I’d never used so much magic up so fast and my bones were burning with hunger and strain.
“In there,” I gasped and pointed. Dan Ryan ran ahead. Jack got his arm around me and pulled me forward into the fractured daylight of the busted-down greenhouse.
“Touhy!” Dan Ryan was shouting. He had his hands on the paper vine she’d been turned into. He was trying to wish, but the Unseelie magic that twisted her up was fighting back hard. He hadn’t even seen Ashland, where she lay in the mushroom bed. All his mind was on Touhy, and his horror ran right through me.
“Get her back!” he snarled at me. “Do it!”
“Well, don’t just stand there, you idiot,” snapped Jack to Ryan. “She’s gotta have something to work with. Wish!”
He did. Dan Ryan wished harder and clearer than I’d ever felt, and I caught it. “Tola!” I called out Touhy’s real
name. I pictured her and Ashland like they’d been in Halferville, when we’d squared off in Touhy’s tree house. I saw them in their own shapes, tough and certain, and ready for a fight. I wrapped my wish all around those memories. “You’re free, Tola! Berta, you too! Ashland and Touhy, I wish you free!”
The Unseelie land had its orders. These creatures were to be held and their strength was to be made into food for the kings. But I was the heir to the Midnight Throne and I wielded the true names. I could not be ignored.
Slowly, the garden magic crumbled. The mushrooms fell away from Ashland first. She shook herself hard, and Jack ran over to help her up out of the earth. The magic around Touhy gave way more slowly, but it did give. The paper vine collapsed and unwound, rustling and crackling, until the scrap-paper girl stood in front of us again. Touhy’s face flipped and unfolded into a question mark, until she got a good look at me. Then she screamed, and charged.
She had her hands around my throat before I knew what was happening, and she had a grip like a python. I couldn’t breathe. I was seeing stars. She yelled at me, cursing hot, hard, and crazy.
“Touhy, stop it!” yelled Dan Ryan. “Touhy! Cut it out! She’s on our side! Touhy!
Listen to me!
”
He yanked on Touhy and Jack yanked on me, and between the two of them, they got us apart. I fell gasping against Jack. Dan Ryan grabbed hold of both Touhy’s hands. They stared at each other, wild-eyed and frightened. I felt Dan
Ryan remembering Touhy being the one who trusted and believed, the one he counted on. I felt how much he loved her, which explained why he’d been so mad when he thought she’d turned on him.
Slowly, Touhy blinked. Tears shone in her green eyes, and she and Dan Ryan wrapped their arms around each other.
I turned away, giving them this one second. Jack and I shared our own second of surprise, and of wishing there was time to talk.
But there wasn’t, and there wouldn’t ever be if we kept standing around here.
“Jack, watch the door,” I said. “Ashland, are you okay?” The sparrow woman brushed the last crumbs of dirt and mushrooms off herself and nodded. She didn’t look okay. She looked thin and shaky and I knew just how she felt.
There was still one more thing I had to do here. I walked up to the cherry tree. It was closed tight around the man inside, but he was still alive.
“Feodor Alexi Alexeovich!” I called. “I wish you free!”
Dan Ryan and Touhy both swung around. I might not be able to see everything here like I had before, but I could tell the tree had been feeding off Feodor for a very long time. I knew just standing there that this trap was a favorite of my uncle’s, and it was not going to let go for anything as tiny as a cake crumb or an enemy’s weak little wish. It was an old, malicious creature. It was the head of this whole garden, and it would. Not. Let. Go.
Dan Ryan said something. I didn’t understand the words, but I knew what it meant.
“Father?” he whispered. “Father, it’s me.”
The tree shuddered. Cherries shriveled and rained to the ground. The branch that had grown around the sword peeled back and the sword began to struggle, swinging and slicing. Dan Ryan shouted and all of them, Ryan, Ashland, and Touhy, ran to the tree, grabbing at the shredding bark. Jack and I jumped in too, digging our fingers into tree bark and yanking it back like it was a banana peel, until at last Feodor Alexi stumbled out.
“Father!” Dan Ryan threw himself into the soldier’s arms. Feodor shouted back and wrapped the Halfer boy into a tight embrace, lifting him right off the ground.
“My son,” said Feodor Alexi over and over. “Oh, my son!”
Jack was wiping at his cheeks. Mine were pretty wet too. Ashland just lifted her beak-nose and turned this way and that, listening to the distant sounds of the war.
“We need to get out of here,” she announced.
Feodor put Dan Ryan down and picked up his rusted sword. Touhy unfolded herself to her full size and crowded close to Ashland. Jack just gripped his bat and looked at me. Everybody was looking, waiting for me to tell them what to do. I didn’t want this. I could feel the hatred beating down from overhead and the mockery welling up from the Seelie country and its hidden king. I didn’t want to have to be in charge. I wanted to run away and hide. But the time for that
was long gone, if it had ever existed. They needed me. Papa needed me.
“Ashland, do you think you can get the other Halfers free?” Ashland looked across the beds of earth that stretched out on all sides.
“I will,” she said.
“I’ll help.” Touhy looked shaky and fragile, but her voice was as strong as ever. I was ready to believe she and Ashland between them could do anything.
“Me too,” chimed in Dan Ryan. Hate burned in him hot enough to melt steel.
“No,” I said. “We’re gonna need you, and that sack.”
“Then you will have us.” The old soldier laid his hand on Dan Ryan’s shoulder. Dan Ryan looked like he wanted to protest, but he didn’t.
“This way,” I said, and headed for the palace.
It was quiet inside the broken palace, but it was not still. A cold wind whipped through it, as if there was a storm on the way. The trapped light in the marble’s veins flickered wildly. We passed the door to my chamber, stepping around the pool of melted silver that had spread onto the floor. We passed my father’s chamber, covering our faces with sleeves and hands to keep from breathing in the golden fog that swirled out of the shattered doorway. Jack shifted his grip on his bat. Dan Ryan and his father were so close behind us they were practically stepping on our heels. Feodor had his sword at the ready, and he kept cocking his head this way and that,
watching the stones, trees, and ferns around us, waiting for them to make a wrong move.
But the trees and the ferns just chuckled and bowed elaborately as we passed. I wanted to wish at them to shut them up, but I didn’t have any strength to spare. Something bad was waiting for us in the Throne Room and it knew we were coming. I could tell, not because I could feel who it was, but because they had left the doors wide open.
Jack and I glanced at each other. Jack jerked his chin at Dan Ryan and Feodor, and they moved even closer together behind us. Together, we walked through the open, broken doors and into the Throne Room.
The first thing I saw was my father on his knees. My uncle had strapped his broken mask over Papa’s face and tied it in place with the silver ribbons, and now he had both hands spread across Papa’s scalp, as if he was holding him in place. Papa’s head was thrown back and his mouth was open in a soundless scream. He was fighting. I couldn’t see what he saw, but I felt it crawling across his skin and driving itself into his eyes. Madness. Pain and madness, being driven into him by his brother. It played out in front of his eyes, which were covered by the Seelie king’s mask.
Shake turned his blind, ruined face toward me.
Lightning rippled and flashed overhead. Tendrils of dark fog curled through the doors. When I last saw him, my uncle still had one good eye. That was gone now. The left half of his face was a mass of scars, and those scars had sealed his eyelid shut, like something had bitten a chunk right out of
him. His right eye was milk white and shining and rolled constantly underneath the other, sagging eyelid.
“Your father’s close to breaking, Callie.” Shake grinned. His teeth were all broken or missing and it hurt just to look at him. His voice was slurred. He was spending too much strength keeping Papa on his knees. He didn’t have any magic left to make his voice beautiful. Not even with the king inside him. “I thought I’d show him what sort of nightmares our new king has at his command. I owe him so many, after all.” He tilted his head, listening.
But he was wrong. Papa wasn’t breaking. He was holding tight, leading on Shake and the king inside him. Papa was fooling Uncle Shake. He’d been fooling Shake and the Seelie king since we got here, so he could stay close to me, and send messages out to Jack, Mama, and the Halfers about what was happening. Now Papa was keeping Shake and his king busy while the Halfers took hold of the Unseelie lands.
A voice whispered behind me, so faint it was little nothing more than a thought.
“Engine, engine number nine …”
“Let him go!” I shouted to my uncle and the king inside his skin. I stepped out front of the others. I let myself get angry and I let that anger grow big. Big enough to block out Dan Ryan’s whisper and the stirring of his words. Jack was right at my shoulder. He knew what I was doing, I was sure of it.
“Let my father go, or so help me, you’ll never see daylight again.” I thought about every single trick my uncle had
ever played on me. I thought about all the ways he’d tried to trick me to death. I thought about how this whole war, with all its blood and disaster, was his fault. I bundled that all up and threw it at him.
In answer, my uncle laughed. “I can’t see daylight now! But no fear! I’ll have your eyes when you’re done with them!” He grabbed Papa’s hair and hauled his head farther back. “Or maybe I’ll just take my brother’s sight and leave him to crawl blind at my feet!”
“And if that train should jump the track …,”
whispered Ryan.