Tithe

Page 8

 

  His tone of voice was odd, urgent and strangely unfriendly. He had never talked to her that way before. Still, she obeyed out of familiarity: same old room, same little friends coming in the middle of the night to take her to catch fireflies or pick sour cherries. She pulled a black sweater on over the white old-lady nightgown her grandmother had loaned her to sleep in and kicked on her boots. Then she scanned the room for her coat, but it was just another black, soft pile in the dark, and she left it. The sweater was warm enough.

  Kaye climbed out onto the roof. "Why does she want to see me?" Kaye had always thought of the Thistlewitch as a crotchety aunt, someone who didn't like to play and who you could get in trouble with.

  "There's something she needs to tell you. "

  "Can't you tell me?" Kaye said. She swung her legs off the edge of the roof while Spike scuttled down over the bark and Lutie glided down on iridescent wings.

  "Come on," Spike said.

  Kaye pushed herself off the edge and dropped. The dry branches of a rhododendron bush scratched her legs as she landed, spry as a cat, on her two feet.

  They ran toward the street, Lutie-loo dancing half in the air around Kaye whispering, "I missed you, I missed you. "

  "This way," Spike said, needlessly. Kaye remembered the way.

  "I missed you too," Kaye said to Lutie, reaching out her hand to brush the light body. Lutie felt slick as water, smooth as smoke.

  The Glass Swamp, so called because of the abundance of broken bottles choking the little stream, ran beneath the road a half a mile down the street. They climbed down the steep bank, Kaye's boots slipping in the mud. Beer bottles sat on rocks, some already smashed into big pieces. The thin rivulets of water shimmered with multicolor hues like a church window.

  "What's happening? What's the matter?" she called as quietly as she could and still have Spike hear her. Something was definitely wrong—he was hurrying along like he couldn't look her in the face. But then, maybe she was too old to be fun anymore.

  He didn't answer.

  Lutie darted up to her, hair whipping the air like a banner of cream. "We have to hurry.

  Don't worry. It's good news—good-news. "

  "Hush," Spike said.

  The heavy growth close to the stream forced her to pick her way near the water's edge. Kaye stepped carefully along the bank, darkness making it hard to see whether the next step would plunge her boot into cold water. They walked in silence while Kaye tried to make out her path by the dim light of Lutie's glow.

  A flash of white caught her eye—cracked eggshells bobbed in the narrow stream. Kaye stopped to watch the armada of shells, some small and spotted, others gleaming supermarket white. In the center of one, a spider scuttled from side to side, an unwilling captain. In another, a black pin anchored the center as the shell spun dizzily.

  Kaye heard a chuckle.

  "Much can be divined from an eggshell," the Thistlewitch said. Large black eyes peered out from the braided weeds and briars that covered her head like hair. She was sitting on the opposite side of the riverbank, her squat body covered in layers of drab cloth.

  "They have even caught us," the Thistlewitch went on, "with the brewing of eggshells. Pride makes braggarts of even the wisest of the folk, so it is said. "

  Kaye had always been a little afraid of her, but this time she felt nothing but relief. The Thistlewitch had kind eyes, and her scratchy voice was sweetly familiar. She was as unlike Roiben and his demon-horse as anything could be.

  "Hullo," Kaye said, not sure how to address her. When she was a child, most of the times she had spoken to the faerie had involved a splinter or a skinned knee or an apology for dragging one of her friends Ironside for a prank. "Spike said you had something to tell me. "

  The Thistlewitch regarded her for a long moment, as if taking her measure.

  "So much focus on the egg—it is life, it is food, it is answer to a hundred riddles—but look at its shell. The secrets are writ on its walls. Secrets lie in the entrails of things, in the dregs. " The Thistlewitch poked a pin into either side of a tiny blue egg and put it to her lips. Her cheeks puffed out with air, and a trickle of clear, thick snotlike liquid drizzled into a copper bowl in her lap.

  Kaye looked at the eggshells, still bobbing down the stream. She didn't understand. What secrets did they hold, except a spider and a pin?

  The Thistlewitch tapped the damp earth beside her. "Would you see what I see, Kaye? Sit beside me. "

  Kaye looked for a dry patch and crossed the stream with an easy leap.

  A tiny being wearing a moleskin coat slithered onto the Thistlewitch's lap and poked its head inquisitively into the bowl.

  "Once, there were two courts, the bright and the dark, the Seelie and the Unseelie, the folk of the air and the folk of the earth. They fought like a serpent devouring its own tail, but we kept from their affairs, kept to our hidden groves and underground streams, and they forgot us. Now they have made truce and remembered that rulers must have subjects. There is such a habit of service among us. " The Thistlewitch stroked the gleaming fur of the little faerie's coat absently as she spoke. "They have brought back the Tithe, the sacrifice of a beautiful and talented mortal. In the Seelie Court they may steal away a poet to join their company, but the Unseelie Court requires blood. In exchange, those who dwell in Unseelie lands must bind themselves into service. Their service is hard, Kaye, and their amusements are cruel. And now you have drawn their notice. "

  "Because of Roiben?"

  "Oh do speak his name again," Spike hissed. "Shall we invite the whole Unseelie Court to afternoon tea while we're being daft?"

  "Hush," the Thistlewitch soothed. Spike stomped his foot and looked away.

  "You mustn't even use their speaking names aloud," the Thistlewitch told Kaye. "The Unseelie Court is terrible, terrible and dangerous. And of the Unseelie Court, no knight is as feared as… the one you spoke with. When the truce was made, each of the Queens exchanged their best knights—he was the offering from the Seelie Court. The Queen sends him on the worst of her errands. "

  "He is so unpredictable that even his Queen cannot trust him. He's as likely to be kind as to kill you," Spike put in. "He killed Gristle. "

  "I know," Kaye said. "He told me. "

  Spike looked at the Thistlewitch in surprise. "That's exactly what I mean! What perverse ovation of friendship is that?"

  "How… how did he do it?" Kaye asked, half of her dreading the answer, but needing to know nonetheless. "How did Gristle die?"

  Lutie flitted to hover in front of her, tiny face mournful. "He was with me. We went to the knowe—the faerie hill. There was cowslip wine, and Gristle wanted me to help him filch a bottle. He was going to trade it for a pair of pretty boots from one of his hob friends.

  "It was easy to find the way inside. There's a patch of grass that's all brown and that's the door. We got the bottle, easy-peasy, and were on our way out when we saw the cakes. "

  "Cakes?" Kaye was baffled.

  "Beautiful white honey cakes, heaped on a plate for the taking. Eat 'em and you get wiser, you know. "

  "I don't think it works that way," Kaye said.

  "Of course it does," Lutie-loo scolded. "How else would it work?"

  Continuing, the tiny faerie gripped onto a thin twig and hung from a low bush as she spoke. "He swallowed five before they caught him. "

  Kaye didn't point out that if these cakes were supposed to make him wiser, it should have occurred to him to stop after one. It didn't make his death any less horrifying.

  "They probably would have let him go, but she needed a fox for her hunt. Since he stole the cakes, she said he was the perfect fox. Oh, Kaye it was awful. They had these dogs and horses, and they just rode him down. Roiben was the one that got him. "

  "What is it with you fools and saying his name?" Spike growled.

  Kaye shook her head. Roiben had killed Gristle f
or fun? Because he stole some food? And she'd helped the bastard. It made her skin crawl to think of the easy way she'd spoken with Roiben, the ways she had thought of him. She wondered what exactly could be done with a name, what sort of revenge she could really have.

  The Thistlewitch held out the little egg. "Come, Kaye, blow out the insides of the egg and then break it open. There is a secret for you. "

  Kaye took the little blue egg. It was so light that she was afraid it would break from the slight pressure of her hand.

  She knelt over the Thistlewitch's bowl and blew lightly into the pinhole of the egg. A viscous stream of albumen and yolk slithered from the other side, dropping into the bowl.

  "Now break it. "

  Kaye pressed her thumb against the egg and the whole side of it collapsed, held together by a thin membrane.

  Spike and Lutie looked surprised, but the Thistlewitch just nodded.

  "I did it wrong," Kaye said, and brushed the eggshells into the stream. Unlike the little boats, this egg was a shower of confetti on the water.

  "Let me just speak another secret then, child, since this one eludes you. If you think on it, I'm sure that you'll admit there's something passing strange about you. A strangeness, not just of manner, but of something else. The scent of it, the spoor of it, warns Ironsiders off, makes them wary and draws them in all the same. "

  Kaye shook her head, not sure where this was going.

  "Tell her a different secret," Spike warned. "This one will only make things harder. "

  "You are one of us," the Thistlewitch said to Kaye, black eyes glittering like jewels.

  "What?" She'd heard what was said, she understood, she was just stalling for time for her brain to start working again. She could not seem to get a breath of air into her lungs. There were grades to impossible, levels, at least, of unreality. And each time Kaye thought she was at the lowest level, the ground seemed to open up beneath her.

  "Mortal girls are stupid and slow," Lutie said. "You don't have to pretend anymore. "

  She was shaking her head, but even as she did it, she knew it was true. It felt true, unbalancing and rebalancing her world so neatly that she wondered how she didn't think of it before now. After all, why would only she be visited by faeries? Why would only she have magic she couldn't control?

  "Why didn't you tell me?" Kaye demanded.

  "Too chancy," Spike said.

  "So why are you telling me now?"

  "Because it is you who will be chosen for the Tithe. " The Thistlewitch crossed her lanky arms serenely. "And because it is your right to know. "

  Spike snorted.

  "What? But you said I'm not…" She stopped herself. Not one single intelligent comment had come out of her mouth all night, and she doubted that was likely to change.

  "They figure you're human," Spike said. "And that's a good thing. "

  "Some crazy faeries want to kill me and you think it's a good thing? Hey, I thought we were friends. "

  Spike didn't even have the grace to smile at the weak joke. He was entirely wrapped up in his planning. "There is a knight from the Seelie Court. He can pull the glamour off you. It will look like the Unseelie Queen wanted to sacrifice one of our own—the sort of jest many would well believe of her. " Spike took a breath. "We need your help. "

  Kaye bit her upper lip, running her teeth over it in deep concentration. "I'm really confused right now—you guys know that, right?"

  "If you help us, we'll be freeeeee," Lutie said. "Seven years of free!"

  "So what's the difference between the Seelie Court and the Unseelie Court?"

  "There are many, many courts, Seelie and Unseelie alike. But it is nearly always true that the Unseelie Courts are worse and that the gentry of either court enjoy their rule over the commoners and still more over the solitary fey. We, without ties to any courts, are at the mercy of whoever rules the lands to which we are tied. "

  "So why don't you just leave?"

  "Some of us cannot, the tree people, for instance. But for the others, where would we go? Another court might be harder than this one. "

  "Why do the solitary fey trade their freedom for a human sacrifice?"

  "Some do it for the blood, others for protection. The human sacrifice is a show of power. Power that could force our obedience. "

  "But won't they just take you back by force, then?"

  "No. They must obey the agreement as we do. They are bound by its constraints. If the sacrifice is voided, then we are free for seven years. None may command us. "

  "Look, you guys, you know I'll help you. I'd help you do anything. "

  The huge smile on Spike's face chased away all her former concern over his gruffness. He must have just been worried she'd say no. Lutie flew around her happily, lifting up strands of her hair and either tangling or braiding them; Kaye couldn't be sure.

  Kaye took a deep breath and, ignoring Lutie's ministrations, turned to the Thistlewitch. "How did this happen? If I'm like you, how come I live with my… with Ellen?"

  The Thistlewitch looked into the river, her gaze following the wobbling egg-boats. "Do you know what a changeling is? In ancient times, we usually left stock—bits of wood or dying fey—enchanted to look like a stolen babe and left in the cradle. It is rarely that we leave one of our own behind, but when we do, the child's fey nature becomes harder and harder to conceal as it grows. In the end, they all return to Faery. "

  "But why—not why do they return, but why me? Why leave me?"