The Phantom Queen Awakes (5 page)

The cold, if possible, deepened. She reached
behind her, to the bag she carried, trying to draw out a second
feather, but her hands were too cold to move.

“Who comes?”

“One who has used the raven’s
feather.”

“Who comes?”

“One who would speak with the Raven
Queen.”

Something dry and cold brushed her cheek. She
held herself still. The cold dryness reached up to cup her face in
ten narrow, rough points. She suddenly knew what her cheeks felt:
fingers of dry bone. She swallowed to keep from
screaming.

“And what would this one speak of to the Raven
Queen?”

“Ravens fall into our village.”

“Lives for a life,” said the Raven
Queen.

“You have had four,” said Maire. “Four for the
death I asked. The death I asked and three.”

“And still I am unpaid. Three and three and
three again: that is and was and will be the price.”

Maire remembered the fists slamming into her
back, the shouts, the nights she spent huddled in the ashes,
wondering if she dared kick a coal into the wall. She remembered
the woman, now dead, who had never learned how to bake.

“Do you touch them, and I shall take your
wings.”

“Do you take my wings,” the Queen hissed, “and
I shall take your eyes.”

“You cannot,” said Maire. “For I am already
blind.”

Silence. Then the Raven Queen
laughed.

“Yes, I remember you,” she said, her voice
seemed filled with a thousand screams, the cries of songbirds and
the shrieks of ravens. “The blind one, crying in the night, weeping
over her tender and torn skin ― without the courage to bend her
fingers around his neck.”

But she had dreamed it, dreamed of choking
him, of beating him, of wrapping her fingers around his neck and
hearing his breathing cease and―

“I had the courage to call your name, and call
upon the raven song.”

“To have another kill him. For
cruelty.”

She remembered the blows striking her cheek,
remembered the―

“No. Because I could not see.”

“And now refuse to pay my price.”

“I did not know your price.”

“You did not see.”

“Three and three and three again? For but one
death?”

“A price of kindness, not of
cruelty.”

Maire thought of the child who had died. “You
name that kind?”

Another whisper of frozen touch across her
cheek. “The child plays beneath my mounds. And her brothers may
waver now before they call my name. And think upon it. What would
it mean, if any could call upon my name, and have no cost to
pay?”

“And why should they be the ones to pay my
price?”

“A point. A point.”

Finger bones caressed her cheeks again; this
time Maire did not suppress a faint moan. “Indeed, a most fair
point. And I could, I think, spare your village, yes. Spend my
nights in the shadowed hills, and think no more of ravens, and let
its children grow in peace.”

Maire found herself breathing
again.

“But then no other could call out my name, for
aid at home and war.”

Maire thought of her own dark nights in the
straw bed; thought of the women with arms bruised from their
husband’s love, thought of the men who sobbed at the deaths of
brothers and friends. She thought of the tales she so often heard,
of ravens shrieking during war.

“You lie,” she said.

“Without the blood, I cannot answer another
call. And I am too weak to journey far.” And now the voice was a
rich caress, “Your words brought me to this hill. If not your
village, where else can I sip my blood?”

“Our cows―”

“Do not pulse with a human soul.”

“Your wings―”

“Beat only when filled with human
blood.”

She remembered her mother, weeping over her
when she was a child.

“Your choice,” the voice said, and it was
filled with gold; “Deny me your promised price, and deny all others
the power to call upon my name, or give to me my feathered wings
and step aside, and know the helpless have a shield.”

“Too heavy is your price.”

“Three and three and three again,” the voice
said, now filled with the calls of ravens. “That is the price. But
perhaps we can bargain; you and I.”

Do not bargain with those under the hills, for
they are full of treachery and deceit. The song said nothing of
nine deaths.

“I make no bargains,” Maire said. “Not with
tricksters.”

She knelt, and pulled a flint and stone from
beneath her robes, and set the feathers alight.

****

The Raven Queen spoke not a word, though Maire
choked in the billowing smoke and stretched out her hands towards
the fire’s warmth. But still her hands remained icy cold, and she
shook upon the spiral path.

“Farewell,” she said, after she sensed that
the smoke and flames were nearly gone, and turned to walk back up
the stairs.

“Alas,” said the Raven Queen, and Maire
thought she could hear regret in her voice. “No mortal can step
beneath these mounds and return to her sunlit home. Not without a
dance or two; not until many turnings of the sun.”

“Then I shall stay here and dance,” Maire
said, allowing her flint and stone to drop, waiting for another
touch of bone.

It did not come. The Raven Queen laughed.
“Farewell, then,” she said, and Maire heard the footsteps leaving,
walking up through the mound.

“Where do you go?” Maire shouted.

“To collect my price, of course.”

“You have no wings!”

Laughter filled the frigid air. “Aye, I do
not,” said the Raven Queen. “But birds can walk upon two
feet.”

The tears upon Maire’s cheeks felt like ice.
Her voice seemed caught in her throat.

“Did you truly think you could hold ravens so
easily?”

Three and three again.

“Take my blood instead,” Maire
cried.

More laughter. “You would bargain
then?”

“I would,” she said.

Maire felt icy hands upon her breasts; felt
herself folded into a cold embrace. “You will need your sight for
this,” she heard. And the Raven Queen pressed her lips to Maire’s
eyes.

****

Light: gray, the early gray light of morning,
but light. She could see before her the shadowed forms of houses
and grasses and weeds. She blinked, feeling dizzy with radiance,
and blinked again. She hardly knew how to handle vision.

It was not her village. She knew that,
although she had not seen her own village since the fever. This
place felt different, smelled different.

A raven swept over her head, calling out. She
hesitated and stepped into the house that stood before
her.

A small place, like the houses of her village,
with three people huddled in the great room near the fire. They did
not stir as she approached, and she did not look at them, drawn to
the cloth hanging in the rear. She drew the material aside, and
stared at the flushed and sweating face below.

She bent down to kiss the girl upon her
forehead. From above, she heard the ravens shriek.

****

Afterword

It’s probably best not to bargain with
tricksters.

This story grew from the old tales of journeys
beneath the fairy mounds, from the warnings about bargaining with
fairies and gods, and three black feathers I found on a parking
lot, with a hint of blood on one.

We have cats and alligators and eagles and
hawks here; it is not always safe to be a black bird. No safer, at
least, than travelling in other realms.

****

Biography

Mari Ness lives in central Florida, near bike
trails haunted by old trees, new mansions, half crumbling homes,
the occasional ostrich, and the not-so-occasional alligator. Her
work has appeared in multiple print and online venues, including
Fantasy Magazine
,
Ideomancer
,
Hub Fiction
and
Farrago’s Wainscot
. She blogs about bad movies, evil
squirrels, and other inconsequential and important things at
http://mariness.livejournal.com
.

****

Donald Jacob
Uitvlugt

Gifts of the Morrigan

Badb

The third night the youth dreamed of her, he
awoke in a cold sweat. He remembered little of his dream. Hair the
color of a moonless night or a raven’s wing. The heat of his arms
around her, the pressure of their bodies together. A wordless,
bestial cry ― of fury or of passion, he did not know. A struggle, a
clash of bodies for supremacy. A contest he had been losing, and to
his horror, the losing had been pure ecstasy.

Thus he awoke, sweat cold on his skin, but
blood hot and pulsing in every vein. He felt as lathered as a
hard-ridden mare, and there arose in him the desire to wash the
too-pleasant nightmare from his body. He made his way to the river
by the light of the stars and of the crescent moon. The cold waters
soothed but did not extinguish the internal fires kindled by his
dreams.

As he bathed, a maiden came upon him, hair so
dark it seemed to be one with the night itself, cloak billowing
behind her like wings, though there was no wind. She brought her
own cold from the north, with the burn of ice. Her beautiful face
strained under a ferocious passion.

“I have found you at last.” She drew a sword
and pointed it at his neck. “I would slay you, if your fate
permitted.”

He gathered as much dignity as could a man
floating naked in the water. “Why would you slay me? What crime
have I committed?”

He knew he should make away. Swim to the
opposite shore and flee. But he was young and she was beautiful,
and the spell of his dream was still upon him.

“I have dreamed of you these past three
nights. You have made me fall in love with you, my brave and
beautiful youth. And for that, you shall die.”

The words were spoken not as a curse. The
maiden’s anger had faded. More like a prophecy or a terrible truth
did they drop from lips red as apples. The young man rose from the
water. The tip of her sword dropped. A hand went to the pins that
held her garments in place.

She was indeed lovely, and her wildness only
added to her beauty. She grappled with him, and they fell on top of
her garments, and the passion of their coupling was sweet as battle
and bitter as love. The moment of ecstasy was like the cry of a
bird taking flight.

For a long while they lay in each other’s
arms. Then horror descended on her face. She pulled her soiled
garments from under him, gathered them about her. When he tried to
stop her, tried to plead with her to be his forever, she slapped
his face. Her nails scratched him, drew blood.

“I will hate you forever, for I was a maiden
and will be a maiden no more. I can never forgive you for making me
love you. Pray that we never meet again.”

She flew off into the night, disappearing as
she had come. Her sword she left behind and he claimed it as his
own, and well it served him as he went from triumph to triumph. The
nail mark on his cheek scarred. And try as he might, he could never
bring himself to pray the prayer she wished on him.

****

Macha

The warrior could not sleep. For two nights he
had dreamed the same dream. Though he remembered little of it, he
feared to sleep this third night. Instead, he girded on his sword,
threw open his tent flap, and went out beyond the camp. He
inspected the field of war by the light of the full
moon.

The smell of the previous day’s battle was
rich and heavy in the air. Blood. Bodies. The excrement of men and
horses. The war-stained land sang to him, string of harp and wail
of pipe and beat of drum. If tomorrow it was fated that he die, it
was well. If tomorrow saw victory for kith and clan, so much the
better. Certainty reigned like peace in his soul.

She came up from the earth, a dark shadow
taking on solid form. As beautiful as before. He thought he was
dreaming. Mayhaps he was.

“I have found you again. How I wish that I had
slain you under the crescent moon.”

He was ensorcelled by her beauty, but he found
his tongue at last. “How can you speak thus? Since that night you
have burned in my heart. No other love have I enkindled there. I
love only you.”

Tears fell from her eyes, two dark rivers in
fields of white. “You know not whom you love.”

He took her in his arms. “My clan decreed that
I must sire children, and I have done my duty by my wife. But I
love only you.”