The Treachery of Beautiful Things (34 page)

“You may have your new queen,” she said. “Aye, and your old king. But it cannot last. She won’t stay. He can’t go. The Realm will not allow it. He can’t pass the Edge. And the old magic doesn’t just require blood, as well you know, Puck. It calls for a death. Like the tithe. Like all the old magic.”

She tightened the reins and the spell on her horse finally cracked. It whinnied and paced back, trying to retreat from this hostile place.

“Go then,” said Titania. “Go and relish your victory. It won’t last long. Nothing does. Nothing in this world or your own.” She turned the horse’s head toward her home. Her shoulders sagged, her head hung forward.

Jenny let her breath out softly. Everything ached, from her feet to her fingertips. For a moment, just a moment, the tension in her began to uncoil and Jack, sensing it perhaps, let her go.

Titania spun around, twisting in her saddle. One hand lashed out, twisted like a claw, and a sheet of flames sprang up between them, cutting Jenny off from the others. The heat drove her back with its intensity, the flames licking into the night.

The old queen leaped down from the bucking horse, which fled, whinnying with terror, bells jangling in a cacophony. Titania crouched low, moving so slowly, like a spider advancing along her web. In her face, in the black depths of her endless eyes, Jenny saw nothing of the austere beauty from before. Hardly a trace of Titania remained. The twisted smile, the deviant glint in her eyes, it was Mab. The beauty drained away to leave something else behind, something shriveled, corpselike, ancient.

An obsidian knife rang against its jeweled scabbard as Mab drew it forth. The firelight turned the blade a deep crimson, the color of old blood. Jenny stumbled back, fell, but continued to scramble away until she’d backed up
against a tree and there was nowhere else to go. She tried to push herself upright, but as Mab advanced, fear robbed her of the strength to move. She could only stare in horror.

The flames caught the leaves and branches above them, devoured the undergrowth, spreading through Jack’s precious forest like a living thing consuming all in its path. The forest fought back, but all Jenny could see was the spiderlike figure advancing on her.

Mab crept forward, her head tilting this way and that as if expecting Jenny to run, daring her to do so. She spread her arms wide, the knife making intricate patterns in the air.

“Mine now.” Her voice cracked, the silken purr discarded. Or else Titania was no more. “Mine to have and hold. Mine to taste. Mine to consume.”

Less than a foot away now. Less than that. Inexorable, relentless. Jenny scrambled back, but there was nowhere to go.

Mab reached out, one gnarled hand stroking the length of Jenny’s hair, as if she was testing the texture of fabric. She smiled—or at least bared her teeth, yellow and broken from age—and her hand closed around Jenny’s throat. The fine sleeve of her gown hung loose around a wrist skeletal rather than elegant. She stank of the grave, of blood and sacrifice.

“What did you think the May Queen was, little girl?” She lifted the knife and pressed the point against the underside of Jenny’s left breast.

Images flickered through Jenny’s mind—girls in white, crowned with flowers, paraded through villages, fêted and celebrated and brought to the edge of the forest.

Oberon only asked for her heart in the figurative sense. Mab was actually going to take it. Just as she had taken all the others. All of them. Those who won and those who lost, through conquest or deceit. Mab always won.

The obsidian knife-tip dug into Jenny’s skin through the gown, and she closed her eyes. Mab’s hand felt like desiccated leather on her skin, tightening until she couldn’t breathe.

“Ancient magic calls for blood, for sacrifice, so the earth can be made new. You’ve given your heart to the trees, and now you must give it to me, so the earth will be made new. And when this fire purges the deadwood, we’ll make the forest anew as well. We’ll make it better. You’ll see. Jack will love us and he will be king. And we will be queen again. Oh yes.”

Mab leaned in, her stench engulfing Jenny, her lips rasping against Jenny’s cheek.

“Ready yourself, child. This is your moment of sacrifice. It’s a little price to pay and now you’ll live forever in me. And I in you.”

Jenny’s hands scrabbled against her own body, seeking something, anything that might help her. It couldn’t end like this. She didn’t want to die. And she didn’t want to be reborn as that
thing
.

Jack burst through the sheet of flames, sword in hand, his body smoldering, fire catching on his arms and legs. “Leave her be!”

At the same time, Jenny thrust her hands into her pocket, and closed her grasping hand on something.

Something hard and spiky and cold, so cold.

Mab turned, distracted by the arrival. When she saw Jack, she grinned again, gloating. Her mouth opened wide as she cackled.

With all the strength in her, Jenny thrust the iron jack into Mab’s mouth. For a moment the queen froze. Jenny shoved her back and Mab choked. The knife tumbled from her fingers, which now grasped at her own throat. She thrashed, clawing at her leathery skin, tearing at her neck. A sound came from her, something between a scream and a clogged drain.

Jenny pulled Jack toward her and he wrapped his arms around her, even as Mab’s body thrashed, arched, her muscles ratcheted in agony. Finally, she fell still.

The flames dwindled to smoke, to patches of black, and the forest reasserted itself, tumbling back over the scars.

“Are you hurt?” Jack asked, breathless, his eyes flicking over her, not trusting her to tell him the truth, so intent was his examination.

Beneath them the earth moved. Like a great beast rolling
under their feet, the ground itself shook and reared up with a howl of loss and dismay.

Oberon burst from the soil, rocks and roots torn up around them. Jenny and Jack were thrown backward in a tangle of limbs amid the scattering forest fae. Seeing his fallen queen, Oberon threw back his head and roared like the breaking of a mountainside.

“Who has done this?” He gathered her up, a frail and tiny body in his massive arms, her hair a swathe of gold again. Her limbs dangled from his embrace like a broken doll. Mab and all her vile traces were gone. All that remained now was Titania, beautiful as dawn.

“Who has done this?” the king repeated, and the words stretched out with grief. His head swung around, a wounded animal seeking the source of its torment. His maddened gaze fixed on Jack and Jenny, and the pain turned to malice.

“You!” he snarled, spittle flecking the air before him. “Oath-breakers. Murderers!” He cradled his queen’s limp figure against his chest and slammed one fist into the quaking earth. “I let you go, and this is how you repay me? You killed her! My queen!”

Jenny froze, horrified as the monstrous king bore down on them, driven out of his mind with anguish. He’d loved her. Even after all that had happened, he’d loved Titania. And now losing her had made him mad.

I’m sorry,
she wanted to say.
I didn’t mean…I didn’t think
…
All lies. She’d known, even as she did it. She had fought for her life, done the only thing she could.

Jack’s body tensed, ready to do something. What, she didn’t know. To run, perhaps. Or fight. She risked a glance at his face, recognized that expression. He held the sword in a firm grip. He meant to fight.

“No, Jack,” Oberon roared. “Not this time. She killed the queen. She’s forfeit. She’s mine. My May Queen, bound by the blood she has spilled, by the death she has wrought. Would you fight me again? Would you give up this freedom once more? You aren’t strong enough yet, boy. You never will be. I’ll break you as I broke you before.”

“She goes back,” replied Jack, in a voice just as powerful. “She isn’t yours or mine. She’s going home.”

“Mine!”
Oberon’s voice barely sounded human anymore. It was the sound of the rock-fall, the thunderclap, the roar of the mountain. His features froze like petrified wood, hard and implacable.

Jack dipped his head so his lips passed close to her ear. She could feel his breath against her skin, moving strands of her hair. His words shivered against her. “Forgive me.”

He seized her, flinging her over his shoulder, and he ran for the Edge.

The forest around them shrieked. Stones and earth bucked beneath them. The trees and branches twisted to stop him. Not for Oberon’s sake, Jenny knew, for her own
mind screamed the same warning. They had to stop him. Because if Jack—the old forest king made new again, creature of wild magic, the Oak—crossed into the mundane world of mankind, if Jack carried her over the Edge—

“No!” She struggled, trying to break free, to topple him before— “You have to stop, Jack! You have to—” She fought against his arms, tried to throw herself out of their grasp. She wasn’t strong enough. But neither was his magic. Not to cross the Edge. Not to cross it and survive.

Jack tore his way across the Edge, carrying her to safety and himself to his destruction.

The broken cry that came from his mouth took them over the Edge, and into her world. The mortal world.

He collapsed as his feet passed over the threshold, momentum carrying them on, out into the thin and meager moonlight. Earth, trees, and briars moved like the blades of some terrible machine on the far side of the Edge. Trying to stop him, to save him from himself. But they failed and then fell still. Too still.

Jenny’s eyes dragged their way back to Jack, to the transformation that was even now gripping him, tormenting him like a seizure. He stretched out on the grass, his body arching, jerking as if electrocuted. The change swept over him far too quickly, his legs already no more than ancient wood, his hands reaching for her mottled with bark and lichen.

“No!” She grasped at him. “No. Stay with me!”

“Would,” he gasped, and his eyes leaked sap-like tears. “With all my heart, I would. But I can’t. Your world. Not mine. Wish…wish…I…”

She grabbed his hand but found herself touching only wood instead of flesh.

“Why did you do it? Why cross? You knew this would happen! You were free. You were king. If you had just stayed—”

His eyes were all that remained, still bright. His crooked smile was melded on a face that looked like the rough bark of the oldest tree. “Nothing in the world…” His whisper was the sound of a tree creaking in the high wind, strange and familiar to her. Horrifying. “…worth so much as you…my Jenny Wren…”

And with that he became tree and leaf, moss-covered and silent, lost to her.

“No,” Jenny whispered. “Please no.”

Her locket still hung around his neck. She reached for it just as the earth unfolded and rose up to swallow it, and what remained of Jack, whole.

Someone had to die
. She looked up to find them behind the trees, watching from between branches, all the forest fae, their elation gone, mourning him for a third time, their lost king.

“It’s what he wanted,” Puck murmured. “To save you. To get you home, to safety. All he ever wanted.” The hobgoblin
flopped into the long grass right at the Edge, while still remaining on the far side. Safe. He tried to reach for the mound that had been Jack, but he couldn’t. Tears covered his face, dripped off his nose and chin, and he rubbed his eyes with clenched fists. “I warned him. I swear I warned him. No forest child can cross the Edge, not without powerful protection. Not even our king, not until they’re old and strong as Oberon, not without that sort of power. This second time he had only his love. It wasn’t strong enough, not for this. Both journeys were for you, Jenny.”

Jenny pressed her hands into the grass and her tears fell between them. The grass drank them down.

Sirens cut the night behind her. She heard shouts, people calling her name and the beams of flashlights searched the darkness. Tom’s voice, her mother’s, her father’s, their neighbors’. But she didn’t answer, couldn’t listen. All she could hear was the echo of Jack, all she wanted was Jack.

The forest had taken him back, the earth itself growing over him, grass and roots and dirt, flowing over him, reclaiming him at last. Not as a monster, nor a man, but as part of itself. One of its own.

“Here,” said Puck, and stretched out his hand, offering something to her. Jenny barely recognized it through her tears. The Leczi’s stone. He’d dug it up, brought it back to her. “Wishes may work quicker in my world, but they have more power in yours. Try again.”

Snatching it from his hands, Jenny thrust her hand into the earth where Jack had lain, digging down and dropping the stone into the hole. Nothing happened.

“I want him back,” she cried. “I want Jack. I love him. Please.”

Her words fell around her in the darkness. She looked up and Puck was gone too. The forest stretched dark and silent before her, no longer the forest of the Realm. Just Branley Copse, an isolated piece of ancient woodland that had once been so much more. Her cry burst from her mouth and she raised her face to the trees.

“Jenny!” Tom yelled. He seized her by the shoulders, pulling her to her feet and into the arms of her family.

J
enny looked up from her book as the professor entered the room. The usual pre-class bustle died down and was replaced with the rustle of papers, click of computer keys, muted laughter, the sounds of people rummaging in bags and folders.

“Okay, settle down, please,” the lecturer said. “These tutorials are meant to deepen your knowledge of the mainstream of your lectures and fine-tune your reading lists. So what did you make of your first week? Anyone have any additions to the articles and chapters assigned?”

Silence settled over the classroom. And then someone spoke.

“O’Kelly’s
Forest Folklore
and Kennedy’s
Green Man
?”

“Good examples, eh…” The tutor checked his list of names. “Mr. Woodhouse.”

A few offhand remarks, jokes, and chatter followed, and a brief discussion of what had been said. But Jenny wasn’t listening, not anymore. She looked up at the student sitting
at the table opposite her. He was smiling, a smile that lifted familiar lips and sparkled in mismatched eyes. Jenny’s mouth went dry, and the thunder of her heart was so loud she was sure everyone in the room could hear it. But Jack just leaned his chin on his fist and continued to smile without noticing her, his attention on the professor.