The Woodcutter (15 page)

Chapter 41

Hour after hour.

Day after day.

The party did not end.

The Woodcutter continued to search the House, trying to find the hostage fae. Each time, the rooms shifted, each time, the hallways twisted, and each time, he always found himself returned to the doors of the ballroom.

Jack’s eyes had become sunken.

But try as he might, whenever the Woodcutter tried to approach the child, the illusion of a wolf still veiled his true identity.

The Woodcutter sat in the corner, a pounding headache ripping through his skull.

The way out looked more and more attractive, but he had still found no sign of the captured fae and, if he left, he would lose the child. He could not risk Jack, he would not risk Jack.

But the dust was wearing away at his soul.

The only people allowed to leave the Vanishing House were the Twelve Dancing Ladies, but only when their dancing shoes had worn through. Hours later, they would appear with no memory that they had ever been in the Vanishing House before.

He would catch flickers of conversation as they danced by.

“That suitor will never figure out where we are…” said the Dancing Lady of Yellow to her sister in Green.

“One more fool who thought he could catch us…” said the Dancing Lady of Indigo.

The Woodcutter watched them night after night, their eyes glazed and unaware. He watched and wondered, wondered about their importance to the Queen and the Gentleman.

He waited until one night when the youngest Dancing Lady, blonde curls cascading upon her bare shoulders, fell exhausted at his side. She leaned against his arm and gripped his arm as if the whole world was spinning.

“Truly…is there any place that could be more fun?”

The Woodcutter lit his pipe.

“I have never danced like I have danced tonight. I think I wore through my shoes!”

“Better dancing than last night?” asked the Woodcutter.

She slapped his arm playfully, “Silly goose, what happened last night?”

“You were here dancing,” he said.

“No, I wasn’t. I came here tonight for the very first time as the special guest of the Queen.”

The Woodcutter raised an eyebrow, “Really?”

The lady’s head nodded too emphatically, “Indeed. She loves me and my sisters. And she says that we are all really princesses.”

“Really?”

“Indeed.”

“Princesses?”

“Princesses.”

“I thought you had to be born with blood that runs blue to be royalty,” said the Woodcutter.

“That’s how it used to be. But you see…” she walked her fingers up his jerkin and tweaked his nose, “Things change.”

“Really?”

“Indeed.”

“And how does this work?”

“Well,” she wiped away a rivulet of drool that had escaped from the side of her mouth. “The Queen says false princesses have taken over the Kingdoms. Lots and lots of Kingdoms. Twelve in all. One got away and found a prince. But that’s okay because another Kingdom magically appeared. Just like that.”

She tried to snap her fingers.

“The universe is on the side of the Queen. It just wants her to be happy.” She paused, her thought stream interrupted by an explosion of confetti at the far end of the dance floor.

The Woodcutter shifted in his seat.

“Right.” She turned back to the Woodcutter, chattering, “The universe just wants the Queen to be happy and what would make the Queen happy, and I know this because she told me, is to have me and my eleven other sisters become princesses and rule the Twelve Kingdoms. She would be an Empress, but not really. Just in case my sisters and me need help.”

“And how is this going?” he asked.

“Oh, very well. She has captured just about everyone. Except there is this one princess that disappeared and evidently, she is important. And this man who has an empire in the Woods. He holds things together and they can’t figure out how to get rid of him. The Queen is going to take over for him. Oh, and there are Thirteen Kingdoms now, but they are having trouble seating my sister on the new throne. They don’t know why, but they are going to see if anyone else had blue blood in the Thirteenth Kingdom that we didn’t know about. But otherwise, it is splendid.”

The Woodcutter tapped his pipe thoughtfully, “But how do they get your blood to run blue?”

The Dancing Lady leaned in excitedly, “Dust. Lots and lots of dust. We have to have dust with every meal. It really is lovely and I don’t know why everyone doesn’t have dust all the time. Pretty soon, him,” she pointed at the Gentleman, “he’s going to make dust fall from the sky and we’ll have even more kingdoms. Or bigger kingdoms. Or no kingdoms or something. I don’t know which. But they just have to find that girl and that man and then it will be perfect.”

The Woodcutter playfully brought his face close to hers, “Our host, I just keep forgetting… Do you know his name?”

She looked at the Gentleman through one eye as her body swayed, “No.”

And her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed onto the floor.

Chapter 42

He did not know what price she would pay for the treachery of telling him, but he was grateful.

He leaned her unconscious form against the wall and rose to his feet.

They wanted the Kingdoms.

They wanted his Wood.

Many thought that he who controlled the Wood would control the faerie world.

He shook his head at their ignorance.

It was now time to leave, danger or not. He reached into his pack and removed the harp. The wooden lady stretched like a waking kitten in the candlelight of the ball.

“Would you do me the honor?” he asked.

The harp bowed her head.

The Woodcutter brought his hands to her strings and she began to sing a sweet song that felt like a warm blanket on a cold night.

The Gentleman’s head snapped to attention, even as his eyes began to droop. The Woodcutter could feel him try to wrap a magic spell about him, but too late…too late…

The Queen yawned, “Destroy the harp!”

Even as she sank sleepily to the floor.

Even as the whole room sank to the floor.

They slept.

Everyone slept.

And for the first time in weeks, the night shifted to day.

The painted faces could not hide their fading colors.

The Woodcutter spoke as he continued to play, “Milady, I need a song that will make those with blue blood sleep, even when your song has faded.”

Once more, she bowed her head.

This time, the song was dark and drowning.

Breathing slowed.

Faces faded from pink to gray.

The Woodcutter played on, played until the final note and the harp’s voice died away.

The harp gave him a nod and then closed her eyes.

The Woodcutter gently placed the harp back in his pack. He picked his way through the crumpled forms on the dance floor to the sleeping Jack upon the sill.

He leaned over and gathered up the child and held him close to his heart.

Together, they left the house.

Chapter 43

The Woodcutter re-entered the forest.

The trees became thicker and moved their roots to hide the Woodcutter’s steps.

The Woodcutter stopped when the wind no longer carried the taint of the Vanishing House and placed Jack gently upon the ground. Jack’s breathing was slow and steady. His golden brown curls lay thickly across his untroubled brow. The shadows had lifted and his eyes seemed not as sunken.

The Woodcutter patted him upon the cheek to try and wake him, but Jack still slept.

A night.

And a day.

And the night had come once again, but still Jack had not stirred.

The darkness was kept at bay by the cracking fire the Woodcutter built to keep Jack warm. The Woodcutter smoked his pipe thoughtfully, staring at Jack and waiting for the answers to make themselves known.

He looked up at the sky as the smoke rose, twisting and turning and bringing with it a disturbing warning.

The Woodcutter stood, troubled by what he had seen. He walked to Jack’s side and took the boy’s hand in his own and pricked Jack’s finger.

Blue.

The child bled blue.

Blue from the dust storm that had anointed Jack’s mother as Queen of the Thirteenth Kingdom, crowned moments before her death.

Blue because with her death, the magic transferred to Jack, making him the heir and ruler.

The Woodcutter held his handkerchief to Jack’s finger, watching the blue seep into the fibers.

Inherited blue blood never faded.

The Woodcutter sat down upon the ground heavily. He had not thought that Jack would turn, but the child had held his mother and wept powerful tears over her corpse.

The magic had found its path.

And now he slept as a blue-blooded victim of the harp’s spell.

The Woodcutter knew the Queen and the Gentleman were unaware that Jack’s mother had become the Thirteenth Kingdom’s Queen before her death. The Queen and the Gentleman had not calculated on there being an heir. The Queen and the Gentleman would stop at nothing to re-capture Jack once they made the discovery.

And Jack with his unclaimed heart was now prey for the Beast.

The Woodcutter reached with his senses, straining to hear the first heavy steps of the hellhound’s paws. The fact they had survived this long was a miracle. He knew he could not protect the child and also stop the Queen and the Gentleman.

He watched the gentle rise and fall of Jack’s chest.

He would have to leave the child.

The survival of the entire human race depended upon it.

But he could not lose another to The Beast, especially a child who came back for him when he could have climbed down a beanstalk to safety, a child whose mother died because the Woodcutter had given three magic beans to a peddler, a child who had trusted him…a child he had failed.

There was only one bit of magic that the Woodcutter could do to protect him. It was not enough, but it was all that he could do.

The Woodcutter turned to the trees and whispered. They caught the whisper and murmured it back and forth to one another.

He rubbed together his hands and they whispered,
Yes
.

He blew upon his fingertips and sparkling earth magic followed the path of his whisper, landing upon the trees’ branches, giving them the power to step outside the boundaries of nature.

Slowly, they began to move.

Gracefully, playfully, they swayed to unheard music. Faster, they captured up the sleeping child to cradle him like a newborn babe in their intertwining branches. Soft moss sprouted and grew to build a blanket and a soft pillow for Jack’s head. Vines spread between the branches of the trees, forming a woven wall that grew thicker and thicker until the child could no longer be seen.

The Woodcutter stepped back.

A rumbling shook the ground beneath his feet, a rumbling that erupted into a fortress of thorns. They sprang from the earth, followed by a surge of sharp, jagged rocks. With rocks and thorns, they formed an impenetrable wall.

And Jack was gone.

Claimed by the forest.

The Woodcutter stared at the protective prison, the hidden castle surrounded by a briar patch of deadly roses, and he felt a part of his heart leave itself with the boy.

He had once called Jack “son.”

His wife had stared so many nights at the lonely road before their small cottage, hoping and praying that their child would arrive.

And the child never had.

The Woodcutter bowed his head and whispered to the leaves, “Let no one pass, save this child’s true love, who will part the thorns with her step and wake his spirit with true love’s first kiss.”

The leaves gently rustled in agreement, binding the pact.

The Woodcutter whispered, “Goodbye.”

He knew he would never see Jack again.

Chapter 44

He walked far from the fortress that now guarded Jack, as far and as fast as he could, as if monsters nipped at his heels until finally, swaying with hunger, he sat down.

He opened his pack, his heart heaving.

He opened his last journey cake, the last bit of food packed by his wife. He ate it slowly until he looked down and all that was left was one bite.