The Chestnut King

  “Peace, Franklin,” Mordecai said. “Let the boy breathe. The finish can wait a moment.”

  “But where is she?” Fat Frank asked. “She’ll fly. She’ll grow again and take another root.”

  “She can’t,” Henry said. “She’s broken. But I’d rather find her now.”

  A few courtiers were picking themselves up out of the dandelions. Henry pointed.

  “Make them help pick up all the faeren. And someone find Richard.” Sighing, he turned to Fat Frank, but Mordecai took his shoulder.

  “Must you do this?” he asked.

  Henry nodded.

  “Alone?”

  “I’ll go with Fat Frank.” He pointed at the fair man by Caleb. “And he should come if he can.”

  Phedon picked himself up carefully and bowed. “I owe you the empire. I will come.”

  The climb was grueling. Henry’s bones felt like paper. His eyes hurt, and his right hand felt run over. His jaw was burning, and the baseball thumped in his pouch. The gray strand that trailed faint gold from his face was thinner than a spiderweb and hard to follow. He kept losing it. Fat Frank was still impatient, but dizzy and weak on his feet. Phedon insisted on expressing his gratitude and running out of breath on the long spiral stairs. And then, near the top of the tower, Henry realized that he’d gone too far. The thread was no longer leading up, and they had to walk slowly back down the stairs, trying to find where they’d missed a turn.

  The turn was a small window. Or it looked like one. When they opened the window, a door appeared, and they stepped out onto a small, unrailed balcony. Slung on its enormous chains, the hanging garden now leaned a little forward. Across the rope-bridge, a wooden door in the garden wall had been left hanging open.

  They crossed the rope-bridge one at a time. Fat Frank hobbled out first, bouncing, testing its strength, and then Henry. Inside the garden, Henry couldn’t help but be surprised how nothing had changed from his dream. He didn’t know if he’d expected it to be in ruins, but he hadn’t expected it to be the same fake-perfect place.

  “Well, this is a bit of evil,” Frank said. “These trees aren’t trees at all, and they’re not living on tree life, nor the grass. It’s all stolen and stored and shaped into a wicked wrong perfect.”

  “It is very well balanced,” Phedon said, and Fat Frank wheeled on him.

  “Well balanced, like a slaving ship. The right number of lives to a bench and the right number of chains. Only this is worse. A slave on a chain is still human. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your slaves what went missing or fell down stairs are stuffed in these trees.”

  Henry had already begun walking through the grove, and the others hurried to catch up.

  “Why did you want me to come?” Phedon asked, ignoring Frank’s loud muttering.

  “Your brother’s here.”

  “Maleger? Is he alive?”

  “I doubt it,” Henry said. “But we’ll see.”

  The black pool had overflowed to one side because of the garden’s new angle, but nothing else had changed. Nothing, until Henry reached the little clearing and Nimiane’s bower.

  The two trees that had held the man’s hands had both died. The trunks were ashen and peeling. In between them, in an awkward pile, his feet still in the earth, was Phedon’s dead and fingerless brother.

  Phedon dropped to the ground beside him. Fat Frank and Henry moved into the bower.

  On the couch, with her legs curled up and a dead cat clutched to her chest, was Nimiane, witch-queen of Endor. She was tiny and shriveled in her rags, a blind and hairless monkey.

  “Pauper son,” she whispered. “Pauper son grew fire inside us. Fire. The marble ate our blood. It drank it up. Where is our blood? Make the marble give it back.” She coughed, wheezing.

  “She’s dying,” Henry said. Frank moved closer, staring at the witch’s head, at her swollen sockets. Suddenly shivering, he backed up.

  “Not dying,” the witch hacked. “Don’t die. We don’t die.”

  “Nimiane,” Henry said. “You are.”

  “No!” the witch shrieked, and she lunged from her couch. Her nails dug into Henry’s chest and groped for his throat. “No! There are drops left. They will grow. Give me yours.”

  Henry gripped the witch’s wrists and twisted her down to the ground. He felt her, even now, gathering the strength she had stored in the garden. That was her life, all that was left of it. Her skin began to chill, and Henry’s jaw ached.

  “Nimiane, peace,” Henry said, and he gathered himself. He pressed his blazing right hand to her skull. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as her arms dropped to the ground, limp. Her breathing was even. He’d been wrong. She was shattered, but she was still dangerous. She was an evil seed.

  Henry poured more of his life into her flesh. Her leathered skin softened and feathered, and her breathing stopped. Henry stood, breathing hard, and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He wanted to wash his hands. At his feet, a pile of dandelion down lay in the shape of an old and shriveled woman, unmoving in the stillness of the garden.

  Fat Frank sighed with relief and sat on the witch’s couch. Phedon had come at the sound of the shrieking, and he stood, horrified, with his mouth hanging open. “I loved her,” he said. “I met her first, I thought by chance, and introduced her at court. My brother won her love, or so I thought, and I envied him. I wanted him dead.” He put his head in his hands. “This is my fault. My brother, my father, she took them both. I brought her in. I thought her lovely.”

  “I broke the seal on her tomb,” Henry said, and he walked out of the bower into the clearing.

  He couldn’t leave the garden, not as it was, with all its stolen life. He reached for it, but there was so much. Henry shoved his hand into his pouch, and his fingers closed around his baseball. Pulling it out, he began to pace the garden. Where he walked, the false trees died and the grass shriveled. Phedon, with the body of his brother over his shoulder, stood by the gate and watched Henry work. Franklin Fat-Faerie leaned against the wall, breathing loudly.

  In Henry’s hand, the baseball grew hot, and it grew heavy. The old leather smoothed beneath his touch, the core crackled, and every inch of string wound tight within it crawled with life. When he was finished, the garden was a graveyard of fake trees and carpet turf.

  “Now what?” Fat Frank asked.

  Facing the west, Henry could just see the falling sun above the garden wall. He pulled at the wind, and it bent down and rustled through the ashen garden. Filling his lungs and hardening his bones, Henry rocked back, hopped forward, and brought his left arm around.

  The air cracked as the ball left his hand and climbed the wind’s back, sailing for the bloody sun and below it the western sea.

  The great chains groaned and popped as the garden sagged and tipped. The black water from the pool ran through the grass and slopped against the wall. The three hurried across the swaying, jerking rope-bridge and scrambled into the tower. They turned and watched the chains slip and the hanging garden fall, rolling to its side, trailing ash, trailing down, thundering in its death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Henry York Maccabee sat in a chair beside his father. His uncle Caleb sat beside him, and his uncle Frank beside him. James stood behind Henry. He’d been offered a chair, but he was too angry to sit. Henry could hear his mouth opening and shutting, but he hadn’t spoken. Mordecai had told him not to.

  Across from them all, filling his living chair, sat Nudd, the Chestnut King.

  Henry hadn’t eaten or slept in two days, not since the throne room. And he hadn’t wanted a birthday party. His day had passed. He’d catch the next one, and his family could visit him in his dirt room at Glaston’s Barrow. Richard, between telling his war story and explaining how he’d been stabbed in the thigh and exactly how it had felt, insisted that he would live with Henry, and Henrietta had suggested that they all move to the faerie world and pretty much live forever. Una and Isa had simply cried and hugged their brother. Anastas
ia had wanted to fight the faeries. Zeke had told Henry he was sorry, but he thought he’d make a good king. That was before Caleb had taken him back to Kansas. Hyacinth had said nothing. She had simply sat with her son on the roof of a smaller house in Hylfing, overlooking the sea, and when he asked, she sang.

  He’d asked a lot.

  “Nothing moves in Endor,” Mordecai said. “The tombs are still. And dandelions spread in the streets. It will green. You should have destroyed the star many years ago.”

  “I told the boy there were risks,” Nudd said, pulling at his beard. “And it was a true telling. I could not say which king or prophet faerie crafted it. It might have released a more ancient evil and returned us all to the world’s first death.”

  James’s teeth clicked.

  “But,” the king continued, “the fuller truth is that I tried and failed. I had not the strength, nor had Amram, your father. He struggled with the star on this very barrow and called down lightning beneath the tower. Those days before his death, risks were worth the taking.”

  “And in these times?” Caleb asked.

  Nudd shifted his weight. “They were again. Who placed the star in the boy’s hands and sent it to the last striking serpent of Endor? Was that not a risk?”

  Mordecai smiled. “It was, to my mind, a bargain. Your closet world is secure enough. What did you risk for yourself? And what punishment did you heap on my son’s courage?”

  Nudd chuckled. “No risks? A third of the barrow troop has fallen. Jacques One-Eye fell at the last in the throne room, along with twenty others. Punishment? Being a king is punishment? Counting centuries like men count decades is punishment?”

  “It is,” Caleb said. “As you well know. Jacques we honor as we honor those others, and those among our own city’s fallen. But my brother asked what risk you took for yourself, not what risks your bold faeren fighters took. You left Henry no choice.”

  “He had a choice,” Nudd said. “And he made a promise and said his word was binding.” He smiled. “He’ll be crowned tomorrow, and then I’m away from this world and from my life.”

  James snorted.

  Uncle Frank cleared his throat. “I had a little taste of entrapment once. I found love in that world, but I never stopped being lost in it. I was just a weed in the wrong ditch. If you intend to hold Henry to this, I have to say, I’m likely to work myself into an almighty spite.”

  Nudd laughed and held his belly while it shook. “Henry gave me his word. And Henry it will be who holds himself to it.”

  Henry picked slowly at the bandage on his jaw. The raggant snored beneath his chair. “I did make a promise,” Henry said quietly. “And I’ll keep it.”

  Nudd raised his eyebrows and held out his hands. “Behold the boy,” he said. “He keeps a promise.”

  Henry put his hands on his head and leaned back. Faeren were so stupid. At least some of them were. All of them were petty. Fat Frank had never been like that. Which is why he was in serious trouble, too.

  Frank’s sorrow hadn’t lifted. Henry knew his friend was proud of him, and swollen with the praise of the queene, but that seemed to be the only spark of life left in the former faerie. His joints were hardening, and his eyes were cloudy. His breathing was brittle and mechanical. When Henry had looked for his friend’s wild green strength, he had found only yellow and cream and, worst of all, rigid white. Not one ounce of the mound magic still flowed within Franklin Fat, and he hadn’t allowed himself to be bonded by the Chestnut King. He wouldn’t until he found out what was happening to Henry.

  Henry jerked up. Someone was talking, but he didn’t care. He pointed at Nudd.

  “But what did I promise you?”

  Nudd’s brows sank low in confusion. “To be heir to my throne. To be the Chestnut King.”

  “Right,” Henry said. “And I will. But for how long?”

  “As long you like,” Nudd said. “Or until you pass the crown to an equal, not from among the faeren.”

  Henry grinned, really grinned, for the first time in two days. “Well, I’ve found him,” he said. “You can crown me if you like, that’s fine, I said you could, but then I’m turning right around and crowning him.”

  “Who is it?” James asked.

  Mordecai was looking at Henry. His eyes were skeptical.

  Henry jumped out of his chair. “Hold on.” He turned and ran over to the carved door in the wall. The bookshelf still stuck out awkwardly beside it. Henry knuckle-tapped the door and opened it quickly.

  “Hey,” he said. “Could you come in here for a minute?”

  Behind him, Caleb burst into laughter.

  “What?” James asked. Uncle Frank rubbed his jaw and sent half a smile at the Chestnut King.

  Henry stepped away from the door and held out his hands.

  Fat Frank limped into the room on one crutch. His clothes were sharp and new, and his face had actually been washed. But his eyes were heavy, and his nose and fingers were white. He turned and stuck his head back through the door. “Yes, Majesty,” he said slowly. “I’ll just be a moment.”

  Nudd snorted. “‘Not from among the faeren’ was too confusing?”

  “Frank,” Henry said. “Are you a faerie?”

  “No,” Frank said. “Not but in my spirit. And good riddance, I begin to think. Struck from the mound magic—all legal and binding. Used the last of it in Dumarre. Look at me if you have the eyes. You’ll see no green.” He held up his pale fingers. “The toes are worse. Can’t much balance. I’m a common dwarf, and I’d be a chalk road-marker within the week if I let things go. Alma, Her Majesty, even put in a recommending as to a reinstatement, but she couldn’t help herself and squashed in some extra bit demanding an apology. The district said it wasn’t in good order or had an improper seal or some such.”

  “Frank,” Henry said. “Have you joined the faeren of Glaston’s Barrow?”

  Frank leaned on his crutch. “You know the tale. I was seized, thrown in the cellar, and then Henry here freed me by hook and barter, and I joined in battle. But I haven’t been bonded, nor fed by any of the chestnut life, as you can see. I was waiting until Henry was the Chestnut King to do that. No offense.”

  “As for being my equal,” Henry said, “I can do better. He is my brother. Without Frank, the witch would still be on her throne in Dumarre, and Endor would still be crawling with the undying. I used his courage more than mine, and whenever I ran out, he gave me more. We fought side by side, and I listened to his directions and followed his orders to the end.”

  Mordecai’s eyes twinkled. He turned and gave Nudd a tight-lipped smile. “If the faeren had been more like Fat Franklin, you would have walked free in your world long ago, chains broken at the naming of your son. My father called you Robert Kirk. Was that your name? Your son would have lived with his father, your wife with her husband. Your bones would have long been in the ground and your mind at rest.”

  The Chestnut King sputtered his lips and tugged sharply on his beard. After a silent moment, he flushed and nodded.

  Laughing, Henry turned to the confused faerie.

  “Franklin Fat Once-a-Faerie, how would you like to be the Chestnut King?”

  Frank’s eyes widened and then narrowed. He swallowed hard and sat down on the floor. He looked into every pair of eyes in the room, checking for any hint of jest.

  “Well?” Mordecai said.

  Fat Frank sputtered and began to blink. Tears filled his eyes, and his lips scrunched up tight. “I haven’t been long without a people, but it’s like not having a head nor a body. I’d be a faerie again?”

  Nudd nodded. “The king of faeries.”

  “Franklin,” Uncle Frank said, smiling. “I’d get right down to the business of a royal family.”

  James laughed. “And a few royal words for the district committees.”

  Fat Frank spun on his heel and hobbled back through the door, slamming it behind him.

  That night in Hylfing, bonfires blazed in the square, and while me
n plucked strings and swirling women drew them out to dance, the Faerie Queene came on the arm of Fat Franklin, surrounded by strange little women laced up in prisons for dresses and guards in puffy pants. Henry took off his solid silver necklace and hung the chestnut around his fat friend’s neck. Then, while Frank and Dotty danced with the faeren, Henry ate plates of fish until he thought he would burst, and while the fires died and his mother hummed and sang, he stretched himself out in the street beside her, beside his sisters and his laughing cousins, his brothers and the tall shapes of Mordecai and Caleb, and, tucking a folded hoodie beneath his head, he slept, his mind dreaming only of the sea and tall wheat and a baseball field full of gold.

  Hyacinth woke him when the moon was high and the faeren were gone and the fires were dim beds of popping coals.

  And all them rose and went into The Horned Horse and carried lanterns through a doorway Mordecai had prepared.

  The attic of the old farmhouse was still damp, and the floors were covered with silt. The water had finally torn apart the small cupboard and closed its own gate. Pieces of it were scattered through the little room full of doors and out in the attic, where stacks of wrinkled papers rustled.

  Downstairs, the plaster had collapsed from the ceiling and burst in fragments on the dining room table and in the kitchen.

  “I liked this house,” Anastasia said. “I feel bad for it, all alone here.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Frank said. “It might just be happy to see us go. And it has itself a prairie to watch as good as any Kansas wheat.”

  “Not quite,” Henrietta said. “But almost.”

  Mordecai opened the back door a crack. The camera crews and crowds were gone, but two people remained, asleep in the back of Frank’s old truck, one camera on a tripod beside them. An unusual wind came in over the burned fields, gentle but firm. A little gust peeled off and climbed for the sky. A tripod tipped, and a camera filmed the mud.

  They waded through the marsh in a line, the girls holding hands, the women braced by their husbands. Monmouth, with his head still bandaged, between James and Caleb.