In The Coils Of The Snake (21 page)

Catspaw began to
send her dream images instead, scenes from
the
forest outside the goblin caves. He imagined for her the stars from
the
top of the Hill and the quiet lake far below, its dark surface
patterned
by the rising moon with a thousand silver wrinkles. As he
sent
her the whisper of night breezes, the quiet drift of clouds, he felt
her
start to relax. Her breathing slowed, becoming even and regular.
The tired girl shut
her eyes.

Now
he sent her the image of a leaf being blown from a tree. He
followed it in his mind, tumbling through space,
skimming effortlessly
along
on the river of wind. It dipped and flew, spinning high into
the
air, until it disappeared into the empty sky. The goblin King’s eyes closed,
too.

After
a couple of minutes, Arianna blinked and cautiously looked
around.
Withdrawing her hand carefully from his, she maneuvered out from under the
blanket. With a bewildered frown, she studied
the
goblin, touching the tawny fur on the back of his paw to find out
how it
felt. Then the elf girl slipped noiselessly from the room.

Pulling
open one of the gold double doors, she surveyed the
black
draped monstrosities beyond. The two soldiers stared at her, and there was no
mistaking their apprehension and unease. The
diminutive
girl walked past as if she didn’t notice them. These hulks
were no match for her; she would try the King at
his word before she
knocked them to the floor. But the guards stayed
where they were,
and she could feel their
eyes follow her as she walked away. The gob
lin King hadn’t lied to her
after all.

Arianna was
beginning to learn her way through the strange
square passages of the palace. In spite of her fatigue, she felt her
spire
its lift at the stillness
around her: even in this dreary underworld, she
felt the hush of the
falling night. Goblins, like humans, lived their lives in the blaring, blazing
hours of the daytime. They huddled in
their
compartments around her now, their thoughts vague and inco
herent in
sleep.

Feeling momentarily
safe, free from her sleeping giant, the girl paused to lean out one of the
great empty windows high above the
valley
fields. She didn’t look at the lights below that made her squint
with
their brilliance, crossing the valley in a gross and clumsy parody
of a star-filled
sky. Instead, she looked up at the rich, green, incan
descent lake water that trapped the lamplight and reflected it down
ward like a vast but indistinct mirror. No
moonlight or starlight
shone through that watery mirror-sky, but strange
currents of pale
green and turquoise
wandered across it, barely revealing themselves,
like a breath misting on cold glass. The goblin world was quiet now,
and
she felt the soothing peace of it, herself a child of quiet. After the long day
of listening to her husband’s staccato growl and rumble, the silence seemed
like an exquisite song.

Why did he want her
to talk? What could she say to him, an enemy, that could possibly please him?
He tried in his lumbering
way to please
her, she could tell, but his words meant nothing. Aria
nna had that most troublesome and temperamental of
magical
gifts, the ability to feel a
person’s thoughts. And she knew that when
this alien King looked at her, he wasn’t speaking about what was on
his
mind.

Not
yet,
he was thinking as he
talked to her of plants and flowers.
Later. Soon. And
then —
But here Arianna’s gift failed her,
as this gift
almost always did. Only a
handful of goblins and elves who had
ever lived knew precisely what went
on in the minds around them.

While the goblin
King roared and rumbled his meaningless phrases, Arianna focused all her magic
on his
then.
What plan had this unnatural beast concocted for his
foreign bride, whom he kept ostentatiously by him as he governed his hosts of
malformed eyes
sores? There had been
terrifying whispers in the elf camp about what
a goblin King did to
produce a bride worthy of his status, and she was sure she understood his plan.
He would continue the magical operations on her that he had commenced on the
very first night.

Arianna
shrank within herself as she thought of that ghastly
time, when he had transformed her, little by little,
before a screaming,
chanting mob. Every
new spell he had worked had robbed her of
some of her beauty, as had plainly
been his intent. No doubt he meant her to be a showpiece, an exhibition of his
magical skill and vision. She uncurled her hands to study the white lines
inscribed in
her flesh and rubbed the
garish snake around her neck. On her foreh
ead flashed a bright letter for all to see.
The goblin King’s Wife,
it
said — a mark of ownership, like the symbols that humans seared into the
sides of their cattle.

What
had saved her that night? What had stopped him from car
rying
on this transformation until she looked as frightful as he did
himself? Undoubtedly she had begun to fare badly,
and he had been
afraid that the procedure would cost too much. He was
sincere, at
least, in his worries about her
health. Perhaps she wouldn’t have sur
vived.

And
now his shadowy
not yet
haunted his thoughts and hers as
she
instigated obstructions and delays. She knew that her attitude
baffled him: her strategies were limited, and his
plan would triumph
in the end. But
life was a finite space of time: each moment, she came
closer to her
escape. And each moment that she stayed herself was one she counted as a
victory.

“Arianna!”

She
turned from her window to find an intruder there. That
oddest of all oddities, the goblin who looked like an
elf, was a little
distance from her in
the hallway, his handsome face puzzled and
concerned.
He had stopped in surprise, doubtless wondering at find
ing her there. Then
he stepped forward, composing his face into cheerful normality, murmuring
something calm and reassuring.

Arianna continued to
stare at him, unmoving. Then she put out her hands. At once, a large white owl
hung in space where she had
been. It
hovered for an instant, wavering, beating the air with its soft,
silent
wings. Then it launched itself through the great empty window and floated off
into the night.

Equipped with proper
elf shoes and clothing, Miranda felt more comfortable, but she was far from
contented. The next night, she
went bathing
with the women in the cold river water, but they didn’t allow her to take a
dignified bath. Instead, they played tag, splashed one another, and splashed
her, too, and insisted on washing her hair.

Concerned that she
had no work to do after the evening meal, she looked for some useful activity
to join. But the elves didn’t do anything useful, they just fooled around:
dancing, singing, playing
with their
children, coming and going on walks. She noticed a pair
of hunters leaving to bring back a deer for the
band’s daily stew, but
it was clear
that they enjoyed hunting too much to call it work. Only
the elf lord, copying spells and practicing them
at his writing desk,
was performing a task that Miranda could approve of

She sat down near
the edge of camp, dejected and annoyed. It didn’t matter that the elvish life
was so lovely, she thought. They
really
should engage in some honest labor. They could be plowing a
field right now or cutting down some trees to
build a house. Marak
had been right about the lazy elves. They needed
taking in hand.

Just
as she was concluding this arrogant thought to her satisfac
tion, Hunter and another elf man walked up behind her on
their
way back into camp.
With lightning skill born of long practice, they had half her hair in an untidy
braid before she knew what they were
doing.
When she reached back to smack their hands away, they were
already
walking past her, talking together in low voices as if she weren’t even there.
This was exactly the sort of thing, she fumed,
that she should expect from the silly elves. Rummaging in her small
store
of elvish, she found the right word for them.

“Turturla!”
she yelled. Children!
The men laughed and turned
to look back at her,
answering in bursts of graceful elvish as they continued on their way. Nir
heard the exchange and smiled to him
self.
Then he paused in his writing to think about it. It was the
human
prisoner’s first attempt to speak elvish to an elf. That was very good, he
mused: a real step forward. Of course, it had been an insult, but that didn’t
really matter. One had to start somewhere.

That
does it, decided Miranda in disgust, standing up and
brushing herself off. I don’t care if I am important to a
bunch of
pretty children who have no manners with
strangers and nothing to do but play stupid pranks. I don’t see what I’m
supposed to add to their world except be made the butt of jokes. I want to know
what I’m doing here, and I want to know it now. And if I don’t like it, I’ll
find some way off this stretch of ground if I have to dig under the camp border
with my teeth.

She marched
resolutely off to the elf lord, thinking of all the
things she wanted to say. She walked up to his writing desk, ready to
do battle, her face looking like a thundercloud.
But the elf lord closed his spell book when she appeared beside him and turned
to her with a
smile. It was the first time he had ever smiled at her,
and he won the
battle before she could say a
word. She forgot that she was angry. She
forgot everything. She just
stood and stared at that smile.

“Sika,” he
said, “I’m bored with writing, and I’m tired of learning spells. Let’s go
on a walk.” Then he stood up, stretched to take
the writing cramp out of his arms, and reached for her hand. No
stars
lit up in protest this time. The dumbfounded girl was quite incapable of
protest.

They climbed up the
side of the nearest hill together, the elf
lord’s
hand guiding her as she struggled to find her footing. Not far from the top,
they came out of the trees and stopped above a short cliff. The whole elf camp
lay below them, the bend in the river gleaming in the light from the stars.

The
elf lord walked along the cliff edge and then sat down
where
a broken slab of rock angled up to provide a comfortable backrest. He looked at
the small figures of his elves dancing in the
meadow
below. Miranda sat beside him, listening to the faint music.

“When
I was little,” he told her, “I was raised by a human woman
who lived with my father and me. She always talked about
being in the dark. Elves move camp each season, but we moved all the time,
and I got the feeling that we were trying to escape the
dark, as if it were
a
frightening place. But dark is really a shade, isn’t it, like dark red or
dark
green. Do you humans see everything in dark colors?”

“I can’t see
colors at night,” answered Miranda. “Everything’s black, except that
the moon and stars are white, and a little light
shining on the river is white. The sky is dark, and the ground is even
darker.
That’s why we call it being in the dark.”

The
elf lord looked deeply shocked. “No color at all?” he echoed
in
dismay. “Do you mean that the whole scene in front of you now
looks just like a goblin’s cloak? That’s far worse
than I had imagined!”

Miranda considered
this, looking around. “What do you see?” she wanted to know.

“I
see the leaves of the trees, all different shades of green, tossing in
the wind, and the patterns that the elves are making as
they turn and
dance in circles. The sky is a dark
blue-green, going on and on for
ever, and the
stars hang in it like globes of fire—yellow, red, orange,
pale green, blue, and white like ice. The big
round disk of the moon
is dark blue. Only the thin rim is bright.”
He paused. “A silver-gold
rim, I’d
call it. I don’t know your word for that color.” At the aston
ishment
on her face, he grimaced. “But to you, it’s all just black.”