Stranger Things Happen (11 page)

Zeus and that malevolent birdbrained bitch are still married,
can you believe it? As if the world would stop spinning if she
admitted that the whole thing was a mistake. It infuriates her to
see anyone else having fun, especially her husband. We've never
gotten on well—she fights with everyone sooner or later, which is
why most of us are exiled to this corner of the world. I miss the
sun, but never the company.

19. An unkindness of ravens.

June waited at Waverly Station for three and a half hours. The
Fringe was in full swing, and performers in beads and feather masks
dashed past her, chasing a windblown kite shaped like a wing. They
smelled of dust and sweat and beer. They looked at her oddly, she
thought, as they ran by. The kite blew towards her again, low on
the ground, and she stuck out her foot. The kite lifted over her in
a sudden gust of wind.

She rested her head in her hands. Someone nearby laughed,
insinuating and hoarse, and she looked up to see one of the
kite-chasers standing next to her. He was winding string in his
hand, bringing the kite down. Bright eyes gleamed at her like jet
buttons, above a yellow papier-m?ch? beak. "What's the matter,
little thief?" the peacock said. "Lose something?"

Another man, in crow-black, sat down on the bench beside her. He
said nothing, and his pupils were not round, but elongated and flat
like those of an owl. June jumped up and ran. She dodged raucous
strangers with glittering eyes, whose clothing had the feel of soft
spiky down, whose feet were scaly and knobbed and struck sparks
from the pavement. They put out arms to stop her, and their arms
were wings, their fingers feathers. She swung wildly at them and
ran on. On Queen Street, she lost them in a crowd, but she kept on
running anyway.

Lily was sitting in the parlor when she got home. "Humphrey's
Aunt Rose called," she said without preamble. "There's been an
accident."

"What?" June said. Her chest heaved up and down. She thought she
felt the tickle of feathers in her lungs. She thought she might
throw up.

"His plane crashed. A flock of birds flew into the propeller. He
died almost instantly."

"He's not dead," June said.

Lily didn't say anything. Her arms were folded against her body
as if she were afraid they might extend, unwanted, towards her
daughter. "He was a nice boy," she said finally.

"I need to go up to my room," June said. Of course he wasn't
dead: she'd read the book. He'd explained the whole thing to her.
When you're immortal, you don't die. 
Half
-immortal,
she corrected herself. So maybe 
half
-dead, she could
live with that.

Lily said, "The woman in Room Five left this afternoon. I
haven't cleaned it yet, but I thought we might move the guests in
your room. I'll help you."

"No!" June said. "I'll do it." She hesitated. "Thanks,
Lily."

"I'll make up a pot of tea, then," Lily said, and went into the
kitchen. June took the ring of keys from the wall and went up to
her room. She took the blue sweater out of the cupboard and put it
on. She picked up the bottle of perfume, and then she paused. She
bent and thumbed open the suitcase of the Strasbourg honeymooners,
reaching down through the folded clothes until her hand closed
around a wad of notes. She took them all without counting.

The last two things she took were the two
books: 
D'Aulaire's Greek
Myths 
and 
Arrows of Beauty
.

She went out of her room without locking it, down the stairs to
Room Five. The light didn't come on when she lowered the switch and
things brushed against her, soft and damp. She ran to the drapes
and flung them back.

The window swung open and suddenly the room was full of
whiteness. At first, blinking hard, she thought that it was snowing
inside. Then she saw that the snowflakes were goosedown. Both
pillows had been torn open and the duvet was rent down the middle.
Feathers dusted the floor, sliding across June's palm and her
cheek. She choked on a feather, spat it out.

As she moved across the room, the feathers clung to her. She
felt them attaching themselves to her back, growing into two great
wings. "Stop it!" she cried.

She opened the 
D'Aulaire
, flipping past Hera's
mad, triumphant face, to a picture of rosy-cheeked Venus. She
pulled the stopper from the perfume bottle and tipped it over on
the drawing. She poured out half the bottle on the book and behind
her someone sneezed. She turned around.

It was Humphrey's aunt, Rose Read. She looked almost
dowdy—travel-stained and worn, as if she had come a long way. She
didn't look anything like the woman in the picture book. June said,
"Where is he?"

Aunt Rose shrugged, brushing feathers off her wrinkled coat.
"He's gone to see his Aunt Prune, I suppose."

"I want to go to him," June said. "I know that's possible."

"I suppose you had Classics at your comprehensive," said Aunt
Rose, and sneezed delicately, like a cat. "Really, these
feathers—"

"I want you to send me to him."

"If I sent you there," Rose said, "you might not come back. Or
he might not want to come back. It isn't my specialty either. If
you're so clever, you've figured that out, too."

"I know you've sent people there before, so stop playing games
with me!" June said.

"Your mother could tell you what to do when a lover leaves,"
Rose Read said in a voice like cream. "So why are you asking my
advice?"

"She didn't go after him!" June shouted. "She had to stay here
and look after me, didn't she?"

Rose Read drew herself up very tall, smoothing her hands down
her sides. She looked almost pleased. "Very well," she said.
"Fortunately Hell is a much cheaper trip, much nearer to hand than
Australia. Are you ready? Good. So listen, because I'm only going
to tell you this once."

20. Going to hell. Instructions and advice.

"If you don't let the sweater fall from your hands, if you
follow the sleeve until it is only yarn, it will lead you to him.
He won't be as you remember him, he's been eating his memories to
keep warm. He is not asleep, but if you kiss him he'll wake up.
Just like the fairy tales. His lips will be cold at first.

"Say to him, 
Follow me
, and unravel the right arm
of the sweater. It will take you to a better place, little thief.
If you do it right and don't look back, then you can steal him out
of the Bonehouse."

June stared instead at the birdcage, gilt and forlorn upon its
single hinged leg. Down was caught like smoke in a sieve in the
grill of the cage. "What now?" she said. "Do you disappear in a
puff of smoke, or wave a wand? Can I just leave?"

"Not through the door," Rose said. "It's time you had your
flying lessons." She stepped upon the windowsill, crouching in her
coat like a great black wing beneath the weight of the moon. She
held out her hand to June. "Come on. Are you afraid?"

June took her hand. "I won't be afraid," she said. She climbed
up on the sill beside Rose, and pointed her shoes toward the moon,
away from the scratch of quills against the walls and ceiling. She
didn't look back, but stepped off the edge of the known world.

Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead.
Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that
part of you. You enter the walls of the city early in the evening,
when the cobblestones are a mottled pink with reflected light, and
cold beneath the slap of your bare, bloody feet. You ask the man
who is guarding the gate to recommend a place to stay the night,
and even as you are falling into the bed at the inn, the bed, which
is piled high with quilts and scented with lavender, perhaps alone,
perhaps with another traveler, perhaps with the guardsman who had
such brown eyes, and a mustache that curled up on either side of
his nose like two waxed black laces, even as this guardsman, whose
name you didn't ask calls out a name in his sleep that is not your
name, you are dreaming about the road again. When you sleep, you
dream about the long white distances that still lie before you.
When you wake up, the guardsman is back at his post, and the place
between your legs aches pleasantly, your legs sore as if you had
continued walking all night in your sleep. While you were sleeping,
your feet have healed again. You were careful not to kiss the
guardsman on the lips, so it doesn't really count, does it.

Your destination is North. The map that you are using is a
mirror. You are always pulling the bits out of your bare feet, the
pieces of the map that broke off and fell on the ground as the Snow
Queen flew overhead in her sleigh. Where you are, where you are
coming from, it is impossible to read a map made of paper. If it
were that easy then everyone would be a traveler. You have heard of
other travelers whose maps are breadcrumbs, whose maps are stones,
whose maps are the four winds, whose maps are yellow bricks laid
one after the other. You read your map with your foot, and behind
you somewhere there must be another traveler whose map is the
bloody footprints that you are leaving behind you.

There is a map of fine white scars on the soles of your feet
that tells you where you have been. When you are pulling the shards
of the Snow Queen's looking-glass out of your feet, you remind
yourself, you tell yourself to imagine how it felt when Kay's eyes,
Kay's heart were pierced by shards of the same mirror. Sometimes it
is safer to read maps with your feet.

#

Ladies. Has it ever occurred to you that fairy tales aren't easy
on the feet?

#

So this is the story so far. You grew up, you fell in love with
the boy next door, Kay, the one with blue eyes who brought you bird
feathers and roses, the one who was so good at puzzles. You thought
he loved you—maybe he thought he did, too. His mouth tasted so
sweet, it tasted like love, and his fingers were so kind, they
pricked like love on your skin, but three years and exactly two
days after you moved in with him, you were having drinks out on the
patio. You weren't exactly fighting, and you can't remember what he
had done that had made you so angry, but you threw your glass at
him. There was a noise like the sky shattering.

The cuff of his trousers got splashed. There were little
fragments of glass everywhere. "Don't move," you said. You weren't
wearing shoes.

He raised his hand up to his face. "I think there's something in
my eye," he said.

His eye was fine, of course, there wasn't a thing in it, but
later that night when he was undressing for bed, there were little
bits of glass like grains of sugar, dusting his clothes. When you
brushed your hand against his chest, something pricked your finger
and left a smear of blood against his heart.

The next day it was snowing and he went out for a pack of
cigarettes and never came back. You sat on the patio drinking
something warm and alcoholic, with nutmeg in it, and the snow fell
on your shoulders. You were wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt; you
were pretending that you weren't cold, and that your lover would be
back soon. You put your finger on the ground and then stuck it in
your mouth. The snow looked like sugar, but it tasted like nothing
at all.

The man at the corner store said that he saw your lover get into
a long white sleigh. There was a beautiful woman in it, and it was
pulled by thirty white geese. "Oh, her," you said, as if you
weren't surprised. You went home and looked in the wardrobe for
that cloak that belonged to your great-grandmother. You were
thinking about going after him. You remembered that the cloak was
woolen and warm, and a beautiful red—a traveler's cloak. But when
you pulled it out, it smelled like wet dog and the lining was
ragged, as if something had chewed on it. It smelled like bad luck:
it made you sneeze, and so you put it back. You waited for a while
longer.

Two months went by, and Kay didn't come back, and finally you
left and locked the door of your house behind you. You were going
to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This
is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It's
hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart,
and you weren't quite ready to give him up yet. You told yourself
that the woman in the sleigh must have put a spell on him, and he
was probably already missing you. Besides, there are some questions
you want to ask him, some true things you want to tell him. This is
what you told yourself.

The snow was soft and cool on your feet, and then you found the
trail of glass, the map.

After three weeks of hard traveling, you came to the city.

#

No, really, think about it. Think about the little mermaid, who
traded in her tail for love, got two legs and two feet, and every
step was like walking on knives. And where did it get her? That's a
rhetorical question, of course. Then there's the girl who put on
the beautiful red dancing shoes. The woodsman had to chop her feet
off with an axe.

There are Cinderella's two stepsisters, who cut off their own
toes, and Snow White's stepmother, who danced to death in red-hot
iron slippers. The Goose Girl's maid got rolled down a hill in a
barrel studded with nails. Travel is hard on the single woman.
There was this one woman who walked east of the sun and then west
of the moon, looking for her lover, who had left her because she
spilled tallow on his nightshirt. She wore out at least one pair of
perfectly good iron shoes before she found him. Take our word for
it, he wasn't worth it. What do you think happened when she forgot
to put the fabric softener in the dryer? Laundry is hard, travel is
harder. You deserve a vacation, but of course you're a little wary.
You've read the fairy tales. We've been there, we know.

That's why we here at Snow Queen Tours have put together a
luxurious but affordable package for you, guaranteed to be easy on
the feet and on the budget. See the world by goosedrawn sleigh,
experience the archetypal forest, the winter wonderland; chat with
real live talking animals (please don't feed them). Our
accommodations are three-star: sleep on comfortable, guaranteed
pea-free box-spring mattresses; eat meals prepared by world-class
chefs. Our tour guides are friendly, knowledgeable, well-traveled,
trained by the Snow Queen herself. They know first aid, how to live
off the land; they speak three languages fluently.

Special discount for older sisters, stepsisters, stepmothers,
wicked witches, crones, hags, princesses who have kissed frogs
without realizing what they were getting into, etc.

#

You leave the city and you walk all day beside a stream that is
as soft and silky as blue fur. You wish that your map was water,
and not broken glass. At midday you stop and bathe your feet in a
shallow place and the ribbons of red blood curl into the blue
water.

Eventually you come to a wall of briars, so wide and high that
you can't see any way around it. You reach out to touch a rose, and
prick your finger. You suppose that you could walk around, but your
feet tell you that the map leads directly through the briar wall,
and you can't stray from the path that has been laid out for you.
Remember what happened to the little girl, your great-grandmother,
in her red woolen cape. Maps protect their travelers, but only if
the travelers obey the dictates of their maps. This is what you
have been told.

Perched in the briars above your head is a raven, black and
sleek as the curlicued moustache of the guardsman. The raven looks
at you and you look back at it. "I'm looking for someone," you say.
"A boy named Kay."

The raven opens its big beak and says, "He doesn't love you, you
know."

You shrug. You've never liked talking animals. Once your lover
gave you a talking cat, but it ran away and secretly you were glad.
"I have a few things I want to say to him, that's all." You have,
in fact, been keeping a list of all the things you are going to say
to him. "Besides, I wanted to see the world, be a tourist for a
while."

"That's fine for some," the raven says. Then he relents. "If
you'd like to come in, then come in. The princess just married the
boy with the boots that squeaked on the marble floor."

"That's fine for some," you say. Kay's boots squeak; you wonder
how he met the princess, if he is the one that she just married,
how the raven knows that he doesn't love you, what this princess
has that you don't have, besides a white sleigh pulled by thirty
geese, an impenetrable wall of briars, and maybe a castle. She's
probably just some bimbo.

"The Princess Briar Rose is a very wise princess," the raven
says, "but she's the laziest girl in the world. Once she went to
sleep for a hundred days and no one could wake her up, although
they put one hundred peas under her mattress, one each
morning."

This, of course, is the proper and respectful way of waking up
princesses. Sometimes Kay used to wake you up by dribbling cold
water on your feet. Sometimes he woke you up by whistling.

"On the one hundredth day," the raven says, "she woke up all by
herself and told her council of twelve fairy godmothers that she
supposed it was time she got married. So they stuck up posters, and
princes and youngest sons came from all over the kingdom."

When the cat ran away, Kay put up flyers around the
neighborhood. You wonder if you should have put up flyers for Kay.
"Briar Rose wanted a clever husband, but it tired her dreadfully to
sit and listen to the young men give speeches and talk about how
rich and sexy and smart they were. She fell asleep and stayed
asleep until the young man with the squeaky boots came in. It was
his boots that woke her up.

"It was love at first sight. Instead of trying to impress her
with everything he knew and everything he had seen, he declared
that he had come all this way to hear Briar Rose talk about her
dreams. He'd been studying in Vienna with a famous Doctor, and was
deeply interested in dreams."

Kay used to tell you his dreams every morning. They were long
and complicated and if he thought you weren't listening to him,
he'd sulk. You never remember your dreams. "Other peoples' dreams
are never very interesting," you tell the raven.

The raven cocks its head. It flies down and lands on the grass
at your feet. "Wanna bet?" it says. Behind the raven you notice a
little green door recessed in the briar wall. You could have sworn
that it wasn't there a minute ago.

The raven leads you through the green door, and across a long
green lawn towards a two-story castle that is the same pink as the
briar roses. You think this is kind of tacky, but exactly what you
would expect from someone named after a flower. "I had this dream
once," the raven says, "that my teeth were falling out. They just
crumbled into pieces in my mouth. And then I woke up, and realized
that ravens don't have teeth."

You follow the raven inside the palace, and up a long, twisty
stair-case. The stairs are stone, worn and smoothed away, like old
thick silk. Slivers of glass glister on the pink stone, catching
the light of the candles on the wall. As you go up, you see that
you are part of a great gray rushing crowd. Fantastic creatures,
flat and thin as smoke, race up the stairs, men and women and
snakey things with bright eyes. They nod to you as they slip past.
"Who are they?" you ask the raven.

"Dreams," the raven says, hopping awkwardly from step to step.
"The Princess's dreams, come to pay their respects to her new
husband. Of course they're too fine to speak to the likes of
us."

But you think that some of them look familiar. They have a
familiar smell, like a pillow that your lover's head has rested
upon.

At the top of the staircase is a wooden door with a silver
keyhole. The dreams pour steadily through the keyhole, and under
the bottom of the door, and when you open it, the sweet stink and
cloud of dreams are so thick in the Princess's bedroom that you can
barely breathe. Some people might mistake the scent of the
Princess's dreams for the scent of sex; then again, some people
mistake sex for love.

You see a bed big enough for a giant, with four tall oak trees
for bedposts. You climb up the ladder that rests against the side
of the bed to see the Princess's sleeping husband. As you lean
over, a goose feather flies up and tickles your nose. You brush it
away, and dislodge several seedy-looking dreams. Briar Rose rolls
over and laughs in her sleep, but the man beside her wakes up. "Who
is it?" he says. "What do you want?"

He isn't Kay. He doesn't look a thing like Kay. "You're not
Kay," you tell the man in the Princess's bed.

"Who the fuck is Kay?" he says, so you explain it all to him,
feeling horribly embarrassed. The raven is looking pleased with
itself, the way your talking cat used to look, before it ran away.
You glare at the raven. You glare at the man who is not Kay.

After you've finished, you say that something is wrong, because
your map clearly indicates that Kay has been here, in this bed.
Your feet are leaving bloody marks on the sheets, and you pick a
sliver of glass off the foot of the bed, so everyone can see that
you're not lying. Princess Briar Rose sits up in bed, her long
pinkish-brown hair tumbled down over her shoulders. "He's not in
love with you," she says, yawning.