Roadside Magic

  Which was worse—Unwinter’s blood-freshened doorways and cold, inalterable will, or the green fields of Summer bought and anchored with nameless lives?

  Idiot. This place is not safe. Leave, vanish, don’t let anyone catch you here!

  Silly and stupid to come.

  Robin stepped out onto the bone-white sidewalk. Her heels clicked softly as she strode for the house. If any mortal was peering through a window at this hour, they would see her, but what did that matter?

  What did anything matter, now?

  The house had a wraparound porch. Two newspapers lay on the WELCOME mat, its fraying a comfortable sign of habitation. The door, painted a merry green, had a lovely etched-glass inset, rosevines in a lover’s knot. She touched the doorknob with a single fingertip.

  It was unlocked.

  Why are you doing this? It could be a trap.

  The front door ghosted wide. She hopped nervously over the threshold—no cold iron buried here to bar passage, of course. They lamented in Summer, sometimes, that they were forgotten. Mortals did not recognize or fear them as they once had.

  The smell was awful. She peered into the living room—a television large enough to stable an elfhorse in, its face glaring blindly at a leather couch and two comfortable armchairs. The place was huge, the carpeting still fluffy, and Robin glanced into the kitchen—spick-and-span except for half a glass of water near the gleaming white sink. The countertops, some manner of plastic made to look like polished stone, glowed in the early-morning light without stone’s solidity.

  Dining room, empty, the table stacked with papers along one end. Downstairs bathroom, utility room leading to the garage—there was so much space, Stone and Throne, did they rattle in here like tiny peas in a too-big pod? Stairs, slightly creaking as she edged up them one at a time, not daring to touch the banister.

  Daisy would have loved a big house like this.

  The reek grew worse. Robin tried not to breathe too deeply, despite the fact that she would need her lungs full if this was a trap. Brass and a loathsome bathroom stench, reminding her of nauseating scrubbing after Daddy Snowe had “let a bomb off” in a tiny trailer toilet. Wooo-eeee! he’d yell. Go fix that, Miss High-N-Mighty!

  He never made Daisy clean up. When she was born, still redheaded but unquestionably Daddy Snowe’s child, he’d mellowed a little, thinking maybe Robin was his after all. Mama had sworn up and down she was, but what woman left alone with a baby and finding a protector wouldn’t swear such a thing?

  Three bedrooms. Had they wanted another child? Was the changeling difficult? They were usually strange but passive, sometimes called special needs, but once or twice they could turn into troublesome sprites indeed. No matter how disobedient they proved to be, though, the Seelie expected mortals to care for them and could grow . . . irate . . . if their “gift” was abused. In the old days, sometimes the mortals had threatened the changelings or left them on the hills to force the sidhe to bring the precious mortal children back as the placeholder withered. Risky, of course—the sidhe could take offense to that, too.

  If they chose to.

  Master bedroom. The door, hacked wide open, shattered bits of it still quivering from the violence of the explosion. Robin took one look into the dark cave and turned away, retching so hard her eyes filled with hot salt water. The sound echoed horribly down the stairs.

  Why did they not simply take the changeling? Mortal children vanished all the time, their glowing televisions were full of reports. Any of the childcatchers could have simply come to the changeling’s window and called to it, and it would have risen, with dreamy slowness, to undo any lock between it and the catchers’ painful-sweet urging. Why did they have to . . .

  She found herself stumbling down the stairs, turning away from the front door, blindly staggering through the kitchen as if she were mortal-drunk or pixie-led. Why? Why would they—

  Oh, but she knew. Sean was dead, and the changeling taken—but Summer’s wrath would not cease there. Robin had robbed the Queen of a mortal plaything before she was done with it, and had not loosed her song on Unwinter when commanded to. Of course the kin of any mortal brat Robin Ragged cherished would be punished.

  There was no vengeance more thorough than Summer’s when she felt herself cheated.

  The back door was unlocked, too, but Robin simply blundered through it, so heedless she tumbled out onto a low, pleasant deck with an expensive gas grill crouching under a canvas sheath in one corner. Another canvas shape, dragonlike, had to be a patio table; she ran full-tilt into it with a noise like a wyrm’s snapcrunching bite. Glass shattered, tubing buckled, and she regained her senses lying in a heap, the cover’s tough material folded and crumpled, torn where the table had broken and sent metal jabbing through.

  She’d narrowly missed spearing herself on one—now that would be a fine jest, to escape Unwinter and Summer both, and impale oneself on a table. The only thing better would be one of the huge umbrellas the mortals used to shield such things.

  She lay there for a moment, very still, her eyes closed and throat working. Had she not, she never would have heard the slight scuffle as something darted across the patio.

  Robin Ragged realized she was not alone.

  Her throat relaxed, the music under her thoughts spiking into dissonance, and she turned her head, very slowly. Cradled in a twisted nest of what had no doubt been a very fine patio table, she couldn’t see a damn thing.

  Except the top of a pale golden head, slowly rising over the curve of damp, stretched canvas speared by glass teeth. A small, furrowed brow, and her heart caught in her throat, silencing her just as effectively as a barrow-wight’s strangling fingers.

  Its deepset eyes were a worn, faded blue, and its ears came to sharp points through a mat of curiously bleached hair. Under its sharp, misshapen nose a crust of snot had formed, and its wide, sloppy mouth housed picket-fence teeth. The glamour that kept it from mortal discovery was fading fast, and those teeth were sharp-white and strong.

  Its lips trembled, its thin shoulders hunched, and the changeling that had held Sean’s place in the mortal world let out a small piping sound.

  FAIR ROBIN

  14

  There were no horses on the streets and their cities had turned to stone, but one thing, at least, had not changed—mortals saw what they wished to, and nothing more. Their metal chariots were wondrous enough, Crenn supposed, but the belching clouds of foulness they left behind would wrinkle even the nose of a stonetroll, and those were not gifted with overly refined senses.

  Which could have explained this particular stonetroll, curled in a choked, noisome culvert some ten miles from the city’s limits. Except for the fire-scarring on the thing’s tough hide, and the fact that metal carriages whisked on a stony road above, much faster than even a steam-train. While the sound of their passage could have lulled the troll, it wasn’t like one of their kind to sleep so close to sunlight.

  Or with the silver gleam of a leash about its thick throat. Unwinter was hunting the Ragged as well.

  The thing’s trail overlaid hers, and he perhaps should not have followed so quickly, since the scent was already fading. The Ragged had not been Summer’s errand girl for naught; she was sprite-fleet, vanishing like a startled naiad.

  Alastair, crouched easily at the mouth of the culvert, narrowed his sharp eyes as thin trickles of nasty-smelling water slid around his boots. He’d bargained hard for his footwear from Madge the Wanderer, marveling at their thick but supple soles and how they kept his feet dry without chantment.

  Crenn’s nostrils twitched. Seamed, runneled flesh tingled all over his face. The scars spilled down his neck, grasping his shoulders and continuing down his chest and back. They tingled, too, and he knew the sensation too well to move.

  A leash on a troll meant someone to hold it, of course. Any Unwinter hiding behind the large, gray-green, slightly snoring hulk couldn’t venture out without the violet dapples of lightshield chan
tment on them, and Crenn needed to double back to find the Ragged’s trail again . . . but still. Leaving an enemy alive behind you was a fool’s move.

  Besides, he held no love for the Unseelie.

  Still, he hesitated, the sting of stagnant water and choking moss exhaling into the sunlight touching his shoulders and his brown-green hair. The moss would begin to dry soon, without Marrowdowne’s shady, steady drip, drip, drip to creep between the strands.

  What had she done, to fire-scar a troll and drive it this far? There was her voice, of course.

  Not a scratch upon her . . . I will make you beautiful again.

  Crenn straightened. As he did, something occurred to him. Her trail was far too thoroughly confused. He wasn’t her only pursuer, but who else would erase her traces?

  Who else would Summer send? And why ask for Crenn himself, a forgotten relic mired in a noisome swamp?

  Perhaps because there was another player in this game, one the Hunter of Marrowdowne was known to have some manner of grudge against. Though grudges were as common as pixies; to have sidhe blood was almost synonymous with craving vengeance.

  Crenn left the stonetroll—and whatever else it was guarding—to its sleep. It was a puzzle. First Unwinter’s attack during the revels, now spring bursting free over the mortal world and Summer’s errand girl to be brought back whole.

  Then there was the little matter of him.

  Gallow. Perhaps he was clearing the Ragged’s trail, so as to have the pleasure of gutting her? It wasn’t like him to kill a woman, or at least it hadn’t been when Crenn had called him brother.

  Still, you could believe a Half capable of almost anything, with the right inducement.

  While Crenn might make a halfhearted effort to keep Summer appeased, the idea of thwarting the former Armormaster held much more appeal. Perhaps Summer had known as much.

  His scars tingled afresh, thinking of doing that green-eyed Half bastard a disservice.

  “Fear not, little bird,” he murmured as he reached the top of the hill and peered through a screen of bushes at the metal carriages whizzing past. “Not a hair on your head shall be harmed.”

  First, though, he had to find her.

  Crenn checked the sky, rolled his shoulders back, and vanished.

  CHANGELING NO MORE

  15

  It cowered as she worked herself free of the tangle, but it didn’t vanish into the bushes alongside the deck. Where had it hidden, that childcatchers couldn’t find it? Had the shock of Sean’s . . . death . . . driven it into witless flight? Was that why they had vented their anger on the parents, not finding the placeholder sleeping in his bed?

  It doesn’t matter. She had to carefully wriggle between the glass teeth; the last thing she wanted was to leave a bloodtrail. Getting to hands and knees was tricksome, and crawling free probably destroyed whatever dignity she had left.

  At least when she finally extricated herself the changeling didn’t flee her. It crouched, a thin, bleached figure, near the grill. It was alarmingly gaunt—of course, without its mortal anchor, its substance was thinning rapidly. Its eyes, once as bright blue as Sean’s, were now the color of old much-washed cotton sheets and protruded from its starveling face. It made that tiny sound again, a baby bird’s pleading. A wet, filthy, red T-shirt with a picture of a dog stuck to its wasted chest; it hitched its similarly filthy jeans up with skinny, dirty fingers.

  Robin slowly, so slowly, sank back on her haunches, brushing at her skirt. She pushed her hair back, and the changeling cowered, shrinking away.

  “It’s all right,” she managed, as soft and soothing as possible. Her voice made sidhe nervous—those who knew of her, at least.

  Those who didn’t learned soon enough.

  The changeling sank down. It had a pair of red sneakers, just as muddy and wet as the rest of its attire. It settled on its knees and reached up, touching its own tangled, pale mop.

  Robin concentrated on breathing. Four in, four out. The changeling was alive, for now. There was, if she looked closely, an echo of Sean in its bird-thin grace, its fading coloring. It had lost the ability to speak—perhaps the shock. Just a faint copy, wasting away. It would dissolve into nothingness soon enough, if the childcatchers didn’t come back and snatch it. No doubt Summer would use the flint knife even on this sorry specimen.

  Even a changeling wasting away to nothing could still bleed.

  What was I thinking? Was I even thinking at all? She dropped her hands, and the changeling did as well. Its piping stilled, and it stared at her.

  The wriggling of an idea in the back of her head became more pronounced. Robin stilled, her breathing evening out. A damp morning breeze touched her bare, steaming shoulders. The deck, hard and gritty against her naked knees, stayed just as solid, but she rocked a little as the idea crept out of its hiding place and presented itself.

  Don’t be stupid, Robin. It’s madness.

  And yet.

  Her hand stole out, found a glass shard tangled in the canvas. Wicked-sharp and slightly curved. The changeling stared blankly at her. It didn’t judge her a threat.

  Should it? It had the sense to flee from the childcatchers, or perhaps mere luck had saved it. Who could tell?

  Her fingertips skated along the glass shard. It was madness. Unthinkable folly. She should simply leave the fading thing to its fate.

  Then why did you come here, Robin? Why?

  She picked the glass up, delicately. Thin sunshine strengthened—the clouds were clearing. It would probably be a beautiful day.

  It’s insane. A Half can’t do what you’re thinking. That much chantment will hurt you, badly.

  If Summer ever found out . . .

  A small, pained smile lit Robin’s face, echoed by the changeling’s ghastly grin. It copied her slight movement to pick the shard up, brushing its filthy fingertips across decking.

  “Changeling,” Robin said, again so softly, soothingly. “Do you want to live?”

  Its mouth moved, nothing but the piping coming out.

  “Do you?” she pressed.

  Something struggled in its pupils, a dim spark. It stopped grinning, its forehead knitting, and for a moment it looked like a wizened old brughnie, its face a map of wrinkle-rivers.

  It nodded, and its outlines blurred.

  Robin set the glass shard against the back of her left forearm—not the inside, where the veins could be opened. She, after all, wanted to live as well.

  If she did this, she might even be able to salvage something of her pride. Or at least make the grief and despair a little smaller.

  She hissed between her teeth as she drew the glass along her flesh. It was surprisingly hard to slice, but once she’d made up her mind to do it, the sharp edge sank in, almost as if eager.

  She was going to leave a bloodtrail after all.

  The changeling hissed, too, and crept forward, its palms scraping the deck and its head bobbing. The hiss became that pleading little noise again.

  Robin dropped the glass shard onto her skirt. The wound glowed red as sunshine steamed along the wreckage. Behind her, the kitchen door slammed, the mortal house closing itself around its secret carnage.

  The changeling’s mouth fastened on her arm. It suckled, experimentally, and Robin opened her mouth. The Old Language dropped like rain, chantment blurring down her arm, and when the changeling set itself more firmly, its small hands creeping up to grasp her arm, and drew again on the wound, she winced.

  She held the chantment steady, even when darkness beat at the corner of her vision, and the changeling drew again. A Half wasn’t supposed to do this; changelings belonged to the Queen. Their blood made corners of the sideways realms forever Summer, and her apple trees drove their roots deep to do the same. To do this was to rob the Queen, outright inexcusable theft. No sidhe of Summer would ever dream of attempting it.

  Swimming weakness closed around Robin Ragged. Lungs straining, heart laboring, she held the stre
am of the Old Language steady. The changeling flushed, its outlines running like clay in water.

  Syllables thrust up through the stream of chantment, repeated over and over. They fitted themselves together, sharp edges slicing as they fought against her hold. If she could just keep the chant long enough, they would knit themselves together, and—

  A massive internal noise. Robin sagged, dimly aware of her head striking the deck as she toppled. The changeling’s mouth tore away, almost taking a chunk of her arm as its teeth clicked together, and the thing threw back its head and howled as the finished chantment pierced it, reshaped it.

  The oldest of magics—to create is to name.

  Howling ceased. Groaning and shuffling, glass shattering, the creaking of metal tubing. Heavy, wet crunching sounds as the changeling-no-more writhed and spasmed, the name shaping the thing.

  Birth is always painful.

  Darkness, brief shutterclicks of light as her eyelids struggled to rise, then slammed down again.

  When the spasming and writhing ended, a sleek wheat-gold shape lay, still as death, next to a milk-pale woman in a faded blue dress, her redgold hair oddly drained of its luster. The sun shrugged free of thin clouds, burning away haze and pouring over both of them, and for a moment the heartbeat of both creatures halted. Still, the chantment continued, its thunder fading into the distance as the act rippled through real and more-than-real.

  The changeling-no-more stirred. It whined as the cramps and seizures withdrew. Its slim paws twitched, and after a little while it dragged itself to the depleted statue of a sleeping woman, curling its long body into that uncertain shelter.

  DIRTY WORK

  16

  Close. Very close. Half the afternoon was gone, clouds massing in the north as another spring storm tiptoed its unsettled way closer and closer. Jeremiah sighed, an involuntary noise, as he scrambled up the side of an embankment and found a housing development spread before him. One of the newer ones, its pavement still tar-black, and a couple dead ends showed where they were going to build even more as soon as winter lost its grip. Bulldozing the trees that might have been here before and putting in these blocks of tofu, then planting anemic saplings—well, it was enough to make any sidhe shake their head. Even a Half.