Read The Treachery of Beautiful Things Online

Authors: Ruth Long

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Family, #Siblings, #Love & Romance

The Treachery of Beautiful Things (3 page)

BOOK: The Treachery of Beautiful Things
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Jenny found a prayer on her lips, one she couldn’t quite voice.

“Help me,” was all she managed to whisper.

The creature—the boy had said
Folletti
, hadn’t he? Was that what these fairies were?—laughed, a trilling sound just on the edge of hearing that made her skin itch. From the corner of her eye, Jenny saw another one blink into existence, and then another. Bright and beautiful as butterflies made of light, they danced through the air around her, continually moving, their presence enchanting. Her fear melted into wonder.

“Fairies?” she whispered. “I must have hit my head harder than I thought.”

They all laughed at that, holding their sides and somersaulting through the air. One came right up to her amazed face, looking back at the others to make sure they saw its bravery. Jenny thought it perfect, the features of a tiny child, from huge brown eyes and long lashes, to a rosebud mouth. It pursed its lips and, quicker than light, it planted a kiss on the end of her nose.

Then it twirled away from her, its companions cheering in the same musical tones.

Fairies
. Jenny smiled in bewilderment as they darted about her. Their wings made different colored lights as they fluttered, no more than a smudge or a glow behind them to the human eye. The only sound was a faint, high-pitched
hum—the sound of the wings themselves—and the trill of their laughter.

Crazy. The girls at school had always said she was crazy. She had half suspected as much for years. And here was proof—tiny, winged, glowing proof.

Ask the Foletti,
the boy had said.

No going back now. Embrace the madness, Jenny.

“I need to find my brother,” she said. “I heard him playing his flute in here. The boy said he’d gone to the castle. Called him the piper? Can you help me? Please?”

They rolled through the air around her and then one darted forward again, tugging at her shirt. Following its directions, Jenny clambered to her feet and the Folletti tugged again, leading her forward. The others reeled around her, their actions an invitation. Jenny smiled, unable to do anything but let them lead the way. It was like magic. And if this was merely a hallucination, at least it was a beautiful one.

The sense of magic didn’t last long. The Folletti set a punishing pace from the start. Soon Jenny found herself stumbling in their wake, disorientated and exhausted until, when she rounded a turn in the path, they were gone and she stood alone, panting for breath. In less than an hour, or so it seemed, she felt more lost than ever. She wished she had a watch or a phone. But her phone was in her bag. She let
out a groan. She’d left her bag back there at the edge of the copse, its contents spilled all over the grass. What if someone found it? What would they think had happened? Her stomach clenched in on itself and bile rose in her throat. What would her parents think?

Jenny stopped. The path twisted on ahead of her, back into the thicket of thorn trees. Where was she? Sure now that she had doubled back on herself, Jenny tried to get her bearings. What was she doing here? Dad would be sick with worry. Mother…Mother would freak. This was insane. The trees stooped over her, and she couldn’t tell the sun’s position through the dense foliage. Roots, thicker than her entire body, plunged in and out of the earth like a sea serpent’s coils. Moss grew everywhere, as heavy as a coat of fur. Ferns clung like exotic parasites to the fallen trunks of lost trees, some dead, but some still living. Rocks and stones broke through the surface of the forest like the bones of an ancient creature. In the shifting, green-gold light, she could sense movement, always hidden, always out of sight, but there. Definitely there. The breeze hissed through the leaves.

Because of the sharp turns in the narrow dirt track, Jenny couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. And through the trees…through the breeze…she was sure she could hear laughter. And not a pleasant laughter this time. The bright trill of the Folletti vanished. This was a snickering,
the sound of mockery, the laughter of people who enjoy the distress of others. She thought of the halls of St. Martha’s School for Young Ladies, where Hazel Tully and her cronies held sway. The sounds reminded her of their voices, the way they’d followed her down the dreary corridors, their taunts echoing off the high walls, and something in her chest tightened. Day by day, they’d punctuated her existence with misery. She’d tried to ignore them, but in the end how could she? They’d made sure everyone knew she was different. That she’d lost her brother and told the world the trees had taken him.

But they
had
taken him. She knew for certain now that they had. That thing, it had been real. It was all real. The thought terrified her, and at the same time, it filled her with an unfamiliar rush, a surge of blood to her head, a pounding in her temples. How dare they? Whatever they were, how dare they?

“You’re meant to help!” she shouted at the forest. “You’re meant to show me the way!” Her voice cracked on the last word.

The snickering turned to tittering and Jenny started forward again. Brambles tore at her legs, tugging at her jeans, and her feet skidded in the mud. Her shoes were mud-slicked and saturated. She could hear her mother’s voice even now—that barbed lemon-bitter tone, the implication that she didn’t value anything, that she didn’t think.

“This isn’t fair.” Her voice was a whisper. “Mother isn’t like that. She’s never been like that.”

Not really. Not now. But then, Mother had never forgiven her either. Oh, she tried to make up for it with shopping expeditions and “girls’ days out.” But the memory of Tom, of Jenny coming home alone, it hung between them. That was the reason for St. Martha’s. Because having Jenny at home—so like Tom in looks, so different from him in nature—meant their mother could never really move on. She could never forgive her daughter. How could she, when Jenny could never forgive herself?

Now Jenny forced a deep breath, ordered herself to be calm and still her racing thoughts. She’d seen the creature in the forest that evening seven years ago. She wondered suddenly if Tom’s music had called it. She’d seen it first. But it had taken
him
. Why?

Something was messing with her thoughts, twisting her memories, pulling all her doubts to the fore and goading them into fury. Seven long years of whispers condensed to this—maybe she was mad, maybe she had imagined it, maybe it was all her fault—

The trees rustled and she was sure she could see movement behind the screening thicket. She could hear laughter, the same strange and sinister laughter, and through the leaves she saw the glow of the Foletti. As she started forward again, she heard a distinct and alien hiss. Turning
toward the sound, though her instincts screamed at her to escape, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.

“What’s going—?”

Hiss
. Sharp pain jabbed her in the hand.

“Ow!”

Hiss-hiss
.

Something stabbed at her neck, her cheek, her ankle, all within a second. She raised her hand to see a trickle of blood from a small cut. Protruding from the tiny wound was a splinter no longer than her little fingernail. She pulled it out and brought her hand to her mouth, tasting a bitter tang mixed into the blood.

Small silver lines cut through the air around her, fissures in this unreal too-real world. Her consciousness lurched inside her skull and she dropped to her knees, all strength snatched from her legs.

Hiss-hiss-hiss.

Pain burst like raindrops over her exposed skin, little pinpricks that robbed her of her senses by heightening them beyond bearing.

The mud felt smooth and slick, marvelously cool. Her jeans and shirt grazed her skin, coarse as old sacking. Her throat scratched with each breath and her straining lungs filled with fire.

She stared at another dart in her hand. She could see it clearly. Too clearly. The end finished in feathers, tiny strands
of thread tying them to the shaft in intricate knotwork. She reached out with her other hand—huge and fumbling—and tugged it out. It was topped with a tiny, perfectly formed flint arrowhead. Her own blood glistened on it, and on her skin a red pearl formed around the wound.

Her hand shook violently and went numb, the miniature arrow falling from her grip into the grass.

Hiss-hiss-hiss.
Her body jerked convulsively with every tiny impact. She could do nothing to avoid them. One of the Foletti danced closer, its delicate wings a blur. It prodded her with the end of its miniature bow and laughed. Tears rolled from her eyes, fat and scalding on her cheeks and mouth.

“Enough,” said a voice, a wonderfully human voice. “Be gone, you vicious little imps. Leave her be.”

She felt herself lifted from the ground and a face merged from the blurs, a boy’s face, or a man’s, or someone just hovering between the two. In that moment he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, though his nose was not straight and his eyes were different colors—one green, one blue. Beautiful, but alien somehow. A fresh panic clutched her then. The Foletti had been beautiful and look where that had gotten her. Jenny struggled against his grip, but her body wouldn’t obey.

“Hush,” he said, sounding almost annoyed. Jenny felt an answering prickle of irritation and tried again to struggle
free of him. She hit the ground with a sudden thump and lay there, stunned.

Had he
dropped
her?

She regarded the boy carefully through heavy-lidded eyes. His dark hair was too long, the cut ragged, the cast of his features sharp, and he wore…She started as her eyes focused on his clothes. They appeared to be made of leaves.

He smiled grimly at her, and in his mismatched eyes she could see wariness and hope and something else. Something she couldn’t quite pin down. A strangeness in his gaze.

“You’ll be right soon enough. You’ve been elfshot by the Foletti, but they’re gone now.” He glanced behind him.

“Who are you?” she tried to say, but her tongue was too large in her mouth, her lips swollen and dry. “Where…?”

He leaned over her and she tensed. But he only moved her head so it was out of the mud, letting it down on soft moss instead and gingerly drawing back, as if loath to touch her at all. Then he sat back on his heels and studied her a moment, lifting a hand as if to lay it on her burning forehead, but pulling away when she flinched.

“I’m Jack.”

Her eyes were growing heavy. They closed, but she forced them open again. Should she tell him her name? She searched his face, trying to make sense of him. “Jenny,” she finally mumbled, still not entirely sure she should have.

“Hush then, Jenny.” He smiled fully then, such a beautiful
smile. She scowled—or tried to. Beautiful boys didn’t smile at her. She was too tall, too skinny, too
strange
for that. But this boy, this Jack, didn’t seem to notice, and she was growing sleepier by the second. He leaned over her again. “You must sleep and let your body purge itself of their drugs. Hush now. I’ll keep a watch, I swear it. When you wake I’ll take you back to the Edge.”

She frowned. “Can’t…” she mumbled, finally dredging up enough strength to lift her arms and push him away. Well, push him, anyway. He didn’t move. “Have to find Tom.”

His smile melted into confusion. “Tom?”

“My brother. Have to…” Her voice shook and she tried to focus her vision. It defied her, swirling until her stomach threatened to empty itself.

Then a strange thing happened. Jack took her hand. Instinctively she wanted to pull away, but his grip was firm, and she’d used up the last ounce of energy left to her. Her muscles went limp, a tingling replacing any feeling in her fingertips.

“Later. Sleep now. It will be all right. I’ll help you home, Jenny Wren. It’s my duty to do so as Guardian of the Edge. No harm will befall you. I promise you this.”

He sounded determined, as if she had no choice but to believe him, as if he was so used to being trusted that it didn’t occur to him she’d find any of this odd.

And he’d called her Jenny Wren. A frown flickered over
her forehead. A strange name to use, like something Shakespeare would have written. If only she could recall it now. English classes were a very long way away and Mrs. Granger’s droning voice had never made iambic pentameter flow like the poetry she claimed it was…

The ragged remains of her strength ran away from her like water through cupped hands. As darkness enveloped her, she caught sight of one more wonder, something else that had to be part of her fevered imagination. A man stood behind Jack, a little man, so small he would only come up to her hips. His lower body was covered in thick brown fur, like a dog’s, and from his forehead two little horns projected. Goat’s horns. He had goat’s feet too. A name came to her, though rationality rejected it. But then, what was rational here? She was lying in a forest that didn’t exist, watched over by a boy dressed in leaves with wildwood eyes who had dropped her on the ground.

As if sensing her discomfort, Jack’s hand came up again. And this time he did brush her forehead, his cool fingers smoothing back her hair. She wanted to push his hand away, but couldn’t find the strength. He murmured words she couldn’t place.

BOOK: The Treachery of Beautiful Things
11.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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