The Chestnut King

  “They liked everyone.”

  “What are you going to do with us?” Frank asked.

  “Take you to the emperor,” the captain said. “I was told to bring Mordecai peaceably or by force. This was the only other option.”

  “Bait a hook with his family?” Frank asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “The emperor considers him a danger to be corralled, contained, or destroyed. I don’t know which, and I don’t need to.”

  “You don’t want that,” Frank said. “You don’t want that hanging round your neck.”

  The captain flexed his jaw. “Mordecai made his choice when he angered the emperor. He chose again when he refused to come peaceably. He’s the one who gave you chains.”

  Frank leaned over and looked closely at the captain’s face. The man’s eyes were scrunched, like he was staring into the sun, and he was gnawing his lip. “Call a pickle a peach, it’ll still make you pucker,” Frank said. “You don’t want this.” He turned around and shoved back his wrists. “Chain me on up. Take me back down to where you got the grandbabies of Amram of Hylfing in shackles. Take me down to my wife and the wife of Mordecai Westmore.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Come down yourself. We’re in the slave hold. Tell ‘em all some stories about the family.”

  A clay pipe smashed into the side of Frank’s head, and he staggered forward. The two soldiers ran up the stairs and grabbed his arms.

  “Your family draws death and evil like a tower draws lightning!” the captain yelled. “I’m not bringing you anything you didn’t ask for!”

  Frank twisted around in the soldiers’ grip. “Tall trees get struck. Ditch weeds got no cause for fear. They can watch out the window. Maybe later, they can blame the tree.”

  His legs dragging, Frank stared at the captain as the soldiers lugged him across the deck.

  “Give him some wool,” the captain said, and one of the men shoved two clumps of fleece up Frank’s nose.

  He snorted them out on the deck. “I’ll smell it.”

  The captain pointed at him. “I refused to chain your mother! I wouldn’t!”

  “They burned her house,” Frank said. The soldiers shoved him onto a ladder. He looked back at the captain, at the boy who’d lived three houses behind him. “She was in it,” he said, and he climbed belowdecks.

  When he had been reshackled and the soldiers had gone, Frank thumped his head against the post behind him. “Brainless,” he said. “Can’t coax a turtle with shouts. He’ll be shelled up now.” Shutting his eyes, he breathed in deeply.

  Through his nose.

  Fat Frank pushed away a fourth empty bowl of what had been crab stew and licked his lips. He’d brought Una and Anastasia and Richard to an old inn on the square—The Horned Horses—and they weren’t being charged for any food. A woman with red cheeks and an apron ruffled Richard’s hair as she walked by. Mordecai’s people wouldn’t pay. Not today. Not any day. The place was dark, the ceilings were low, and the plank floors rolled like hills, but the food was good and a fire swarmed in the hearth between the two big, black, and badly chipped stone unicorns. Some people said that the inn had been built first—by a fisherman who’d lost his ship—and then the town had been built around it, by people who wanted to be closer to his cooking. Others said that the unicorns had been carved first, and the inn built around them, and the town built around that. But what everyone knew is that the inn—in its first incarnation, and in every bit of repairing and growing that had been done through the centuries—was entirely built from the timbers of broken and wracked ships. The dark beams that carried the low plaster ceiling, the posts that braced the leaning stairs, the planks in the floors and tables, all of it had been fished from the sea, and every piece had been branded with a ship’s name, the number of souls lost, and the date. Between the beams, where the walls were plaster, strange designs and scenes and sea creatures and battles had been painted by sailors long dead. The walls were covered with the faded colors, coated over with pipe smoke and the grime of years, but the sailor artists and doodlers had each left their own mark—a name or self-caricature and date—though most were smudged over. It was the first time Anastasia and Richard had been in the place, and they couldn’t even look at their food. Instead, they were scanning the beams for names, or slipping out of their seats and walking to a wall to stare at some wild doodle older than Kansas.

  “Two Deaths?” Anastasia asked. “How’s that a name for a ship? And fifty souls lost.” She looked down at her cousin. “It’s like we’re eating in a graveyard, but without the bodies.”

  “Graveyards are nice,” Una said. “If you see them the right way. I’m always the saddest when a gravestone has lost its name. I just wish they could have listed every sailor. I’d want to memorize all of them, and try to imagine their lives and stories, their mothers and fathers whenever I looked at the sea. Sometimes I wonder how many people I was related to on all these ships. You can’t ever know.” She pointed at the beam. “Two Deaths was probably raised twice.” She pushed her empty bowl away and picked up a roll the shape and color of a potato. “Two wrecks, but recovered both times. Just not the third.”

  Richard looked around. “That would be a great deal of memorization.”

  Una laughed and pushed her black hair back over her shoulders. “Isa and I counted once. We came in here with pens and paper and wrote it all down. It adds up to more than sixteen thousand souls. The oldest beam is over three hundred years old, from a ship named Beolaf.”

  Fat Frank leaned back on his tall stool and sighed. Children were strange creatures. Humans were strange creatures. A little food, a little warmth, and they forgot their boiling troubles and let their minds go skip in daisy fields. He couldn’t do the same. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion and then throw himself into the sea. He wanted the innkeeper to add one more number to the timbered ceiling in memory of his death. His magic was fading. He could feel the change. The green mound life no longer pulsed through him. He felt like a mug of scum-topped water, and every sip, every draught from the faeren strength that remained in him took him closer to emptiness. Closer to the opposite of green life. Closer to chalk bones and chalk blood, and a death more suited to a troll than a onetime faerie. His anger—at Mordecai for giving him a task in his grief, at himself for failing—was all that warred with the despair inside him. He wouldn’t fade into lifelessness. He’d die fighting and green. He’d see that he did, and it wouldn’t be long coming.

  Now that Frank had eaten, he had to set a course for himself, and for these three. He looked at Una. There was a bit of Henry in her looks, but more of her cousin Henrietta. The same jaw, but framed with Hyacinth’s dark hair. And she had her mother’s strength, a peaceful mind in high winds, a thin tree that would bend when thick trunks broke. Frank pulled on his earlobe and crossed his arms. Richard would be no use to him no matter what he might decide, and little Anastasia, who didn’t know how young she was, would be a gamble and come up trouble or laughs at every toss.

  “So what is it, Frank, waning faerie?” he muttered. “Stay and wait? Hope for the green man to trot home early? Wait days, maybe till next week’s end to tell him that fingerlings were abroad, that his house has been burned and his family sacked and shipped off on imperial galleys? That his son and niece and mother were last seen in the flames?”

  Frank snorted and stuck a knuckle against his forehead. Or was it off to Endor? He couldn’t take these three, and leaving them behind, well, he had a promise to Mordecai.

  “A broken promise,” he said aloud. “That didn’t last the night.”

  The three children stared at him. The fat faerie stared back. Then he looked for the woman in the apron. He could eat more. Another bowl of stew. Maybe some chops or spiced apples. Pie.

  “No,” he said. “No being a human about this, Franklin. Make your mind and make your move. Staring at the pinch won’t ease the pain.”

  He dug into his pocket and pulled out the box the faerie had given him.
At least a message from the faeren could make him angry at someone other than himself. He dropped the little cube onto the table. The others froze, Anastasia with her spoon in the air, Una picking at her roll, Richard with a cheek bulging and a dribble on his chin. The thing was smooth, oily even, and deep brown in the firelight. The corners were rounded. Frank flipped it with his finger. It appeared to be seamless.

  “Open it,” Anastasia said. Fat Frank glared at her.

  He turned it over again and found a faint, pale circle on one side. “Can’t be,” he muttered. “Not now.”

  Richard tipped his head back, pooling the stew in his jaw to speak. “I used to have a puzzle box,” he muffled. “Perhaps I should take a look.”

  Frank grunted. Anastasia watched the faerie spin it, twisting, staring at each side, moving on and doubling back. It was a perfect cube. And it looked heavy for its size. Full of something.

  “I really think—” Richard said.

  Groaning, Fat Frank looked up. “This isn’t a box.” He dropped it back onto the table and shoved his fingers into his hair.

  “What is it?” Anastasia asked. She scooted down the table.

  “Beyond trouble?” Frank dropped to the ground and kicked over his stool. “Beyond a blight and a curse and a kick to the shins? Beyond a salty finger in the eye, and the most unhelpful, useless bit of tomfool faeren nonsensing?” He stormed to the door. “Beyond that, it’s just an impossibility. A bedtime story.” He kicked the wall and stomped on the floor. “A faerie tale!” he yelled, and pushed out into the street. “And not even a good one!”

  Anastasia watched him go. Then she leaned over the table and picked up the box. In her hands, she knew it immediately. She knew the dark swirling grains and the oily skin. She knew the pale white spot.

  Confused, she looked up. “It’s a chestnut.”

  Richard and Una crowded around her, watching the glistening cube rotate in her fingers.

  “Odd,” Richard said. “Botanical geometry.”

  “There’s writing on it,” said Una. “In the grain. The grain is writing.”

  Anastasia leaned closer and tipped the oversize chestnut to avoid any glare. The circling grain worked into a calligraphy of sorts that traveled around the cube in lines as uneven as the grain on any chestnut. The words seemed written with smoke.

  “Where’s the beginning?” Anastasia asked.

  Una reached down and rotated the cubed chestnut until the pale spot was down. Anastasia let go and watched her cousin. Squinting, Una began to read.

  “Nudd, Lord of the Second World, monarch of Glaston’s Barrow, soul of the three-mace trees, master of the earthen winds, protector of true faeren, bane of traitors and folly-coddlers, claims Franklin, infamous, hopeless, hapless, severed faerie, for his own, as is his divine right, and bids him come and prove the worth of his life. Bend and live. Stand and be broken.”

  “Who is Nudd?” Anastasia asked.

  “Apparently,” Richard said, “he is someone who believes himself to be a king of some sort.”

  Una dropped the chestnut on the table and sat down. “I’ve just heard stories. Nothing nice.”

  Anastasia poked the chestnut onto its side. “But what is he? Who is he?”

  The door opened and Fat Frank hurried back in, white-faced. Scooping the chestnut up, he threw it into the fire and sat down, bouncing his short legs.

  “A pint!” he yelled.

  The rosy, aproned woman stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Dark?” she asked.

  Fat Frank put his head in his hands. “Something to curl my hair.”

  Anastasia looked at Fat Frank’s round head and then at Una.

  “What is it?” Una asked.

  Fat Frank took a deep breath and sat up. “They’re in the street already,” he said. “Thirteen of them. The moon’s about perched. They’ll be in in a breath or two.”

  A tall glass full of something the color of a pond bottom thumped down in front of Fat Frank. The chestnut popped loudly in the fire. Frank picked up his glass, sucked the froth off the top, and raised it with two hands.

  The front door opened, and a wind blew in, bending the flames, setting chills in Anastasia’s skin. The door began to shut but pushed back open, again, and again, and again. Thirteen times.

  Footsteps drummed on the plank floor while invisible bodies surrounded the table, and still Frank drank on.

  “Um,” Anastasia said. “Frank?”

  Richard tried to stand, but unseen hands shoved him back into his seat.

  Una looked around slowly with her eyes narrowed. Anastasia moved closer to her. “You see anything?” she whispered.

  “Just shimmers,” said Una. “And that means faeries.”

  “So it do!” a voice boomed.

  The inn was far from full, but the few customers slid into corners, or felt their way along the walls to the door.

  Fat Frank emptied his glass and threw it into the fire. “And what are you fancies looking for? I’d expect you lot to be off tying strings to cat tails, or maybe sucking eggs in the henhouses. Of course, the evening’s fresh, you could fit it all in yet.” He leaned forward and laughed. “Wait, you’re all standing in a ring.” He spun his finger in a circle. “Do yer little dance! Make it come up mushrooms!”

  Anastasia scanned the room. She could hear breathing, and the floorboards creaked, but nothing more.

  “We’ve come for your reply,” a voice said.

  “To what?” Frank asked.

  Two more chestnut cubes appeared and tumbled across the table like dice. “Franklin,” the voice said. “You must know they grow in threes. Burn them all and still nothing changes.”

  Fat Frank crossed his arms and wrinkled up his face. Anastasia tried to follow his eyes. “What is it you’re called?” Frank asked.

  “My name is Jacques,” the voice replied. “And that is what I am called.”

  “Well, Jacques,” Frank said. “I am a faerie what loves my queene. I’ll not budge.”

  Anastasia blinked. The air warped like a heat mirage, and a faerie appeared. The bald faerie from the street. He reached up, adjusted his purple eye patch, pulled the ends of his mustache, and then shoved his thumbs into his wide belt.

  “You are no longer faeren, or have you forgotten? And even if you were, the queene is”—he waved his hand slowly—“a decoration. Love her if you like. That is allowed. The king himself indulges in love for the queene. But she offers you no loyalty or love in return. You are out from her protection. You, Fat Franklin, are the Chestnut King’s to claim, and we have been sent to collect you. Whether he keeps you or leaves you to the law of faeren decay will be entirely up to him.”

  “I shall have no king,” Frank muttered.

  Jacques grinned. “But the king shall have you.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small book bound in leather, almost as thick as it was tall. He slapped it down in front of Frank and flipped it to the back. “Is that your signature, Franklin? Is this not your copy of The Book of Faeren, issued to you upon your entrance into the service of District R.R.K. and its committee?”

  Anastasia’s eyes were wide. Frank had turned a pale gray. He closed his eyes and puffed his cheeks.

  “I was a tyke,” he said quietly. “It was just a bit of formalizing. That’s what they said. They said it was just fancy words and tradition. There was no king. He was a story, the same as the midnight goat. No one had been expelled, not all the way, in a hundred years.”

  “Is it yours?” Jacques asked.

  Frank nodded.

  “Who shall read it?”

  Frank put his forehead on the table. Jacques straightened and held the little book high in front of him.

  Anastasia, realizing that she was gaping at him, shut her mouth quickly. The faerie smiled, leaned over the table, and slid her the book.

  “From the top of the page,” he said. “Crisply now. Don’t slur.”

  Anastasia looked down at the dirty little book and then back up. Fran
k was motionless. Richard was goggling at her, breathing heavily out of his mouth. Una nodded.

  Anastasia blinked at the old typeface. It looked like each letter had been stamped, smashed on by an antique printing press, and the spelling was odd in places, just plain wrong in others. The pages were brittle, and little notes and pictures had been childishly scrawled in the margins. Clearing her throat, she read.

  Being the Fifty-Second Article Section xxxviii

  Individual Incorpoarates, Loyaltys, Fealtys, and Threatenings

  I, being born amung the faeren people and no changeling, free in mind and boddy, under no oppressions or duressings, do put my mark to this book, swearing my self in service to my district, my queene and all her hairs, all dutifly and parliamentally appointed committees and governmentors, bonded pauper-sons and allegiances, and to abide in the waking life according to the laws and regulates herein plainly stated.

  If my oath be broken, may I be struck from the faeren peoples, banished from the mounds, stricken from the lively blud and all recordings, abandoned by the queene and her governmen, and stricken with a public death, or given boddy and mind to the king and his torments. Sworn to and signed in the presence of witnesses, and charm bonded with blud,

  Franklin Fat

  “It wasn’t meant to be literal,” Frank mumbled.

  “Oh,” said Jacques, “when the wording was agreed upon by the king, I believe that it was.” He took a bite of Una’s roll. “Bid farewell to your friends, Franklin. The king’s waiting.”

  Frank’s head jerked up. “They come, too,” he said. “Or cut me down where I stand.”

  Jacques sniffed and looked around the table. “Three children?”

  “I promised to look after them,” Frank said.

  The bald faerie winked at Anastasia. “And you keep promises, do you?”

  “Poorly,” said Frank. “And worse tomorrow.”

  Richard rose in his seat. “Perhaps we should struggle.”

  The ring of faeries burst into laughter.

  “Bring him for certainty!” one cried.