Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie

My hopes disappeared when I heard voices, distantly, and saw two faeries approaching me on the sidewalk. My stomach flopped over in a hollow kind of way, an unfamiliar sensation. Nerves.

It was the queen.

Before she had been queen—before the previous queen had been ripped into pieces—Eleanor always wore white. The white had lent her pale gold hair more color. Now that she was queen, Eleanor wore green according to the oldest traditions, and her long hair looked nearly white under the streetlights. Tonight’s dress was of course a thing of freakin’ beauty, deep green-black with golden rings and spangles stitched into the sleeves and into the high collar that covered her long neck and framed her chin. Some sort of jewels glittered at me from her train, which dragged on the sidewalk behind her. Unlike the previous queen, Eleanor didn’t wear a crown—only a small circlet of pearls that shone dully like baby teeth.

She was so beautiful that it ached. Was this what James felt when he saw me?

Eleanor saw me and laughed, terrible and lovely. The person beside her was not a faerie, as I’d first thought, but rather her consort, the man from the dance. He smiled at me with one corner of his mouth and looked back at Eleanor. He was very human; fragile and stolen and in love.

“Ah, little whore,” Eleanor said, pleasantly. “By what name are you called this time?”

I’d heard the word too many times before to flinch. I tilted my chin up, defiant. “You’d ask me to say my name where anyone could have it?” After I said it, I regretted it. I waited for the obvious comeback, heard a thousand times before: Anyone could have the rest of you.

But Eleanor just smiled at me, benevolent; with wonder, I thought perhaps she hadn’t meant “whore” as an insult, merely as a title. Then she spoke. “Not your true name, faerie. What does your current boy call you?”

James had said no to me, so saying “Nuala” was technically a lie. I couldn’t lie any more than Eleanor could, so I was forced into telling the truth. “I don’t have anyone at the moment.”

Eleanor’s pity burned like a slap. “Feeling quite weak, are you, poor dear?”

“I’m fine. He only died a few months ago.”

Her consort frowned, his thoughts drifting toward me, wondering if he should be politely expressing grief. Eleanor inclined her head gently toward him and explained. “She needs them to stay alive, you know. Their creativity. The poor creatures die of course, eventually, but I’m sure the sex was worth it. Don’t worry, lovely, I won’t let her have you. He’s a poet.”

I realized that the last bit was directed at me and looked at the human again; he returned my gaze steadily and without judgment. His thoughts were easier for me to read now, without the cacophony of the faerie dance around us. I probed gently in them for his name but met resolute silence—he protected it as well as a faerie. So he wasn’t a complete idiot, despite his questionable taste in women.

“So you are looking for a new friend ?” Eleanor asked, and I realized that she had known all along that I had no one. “I would just ask you to be mindful of my court, lovely, as you’re choosing your next … pupil. There are goings-on that we don’t need meddling with. This will be a Samhain to remember.”

It took me a moment to remember that Samhain was Halloween. I jerked my chin toward her consort. “Because of him? I hear there’s king-making going on.”

I had probably said too much, but there was no taking it back now. Besides, Eleanor was just gazing at me as if I were a pile of puppies. “Truly there are no secrets amongst my people, are there?”

The consort, for just a moment, looked a little sick to his stomach—regretting, I imagined, his loose tongue.

The queen stroked his hand with her fingers as if she sensed his unease. “It’s all right, darling, no one thinks ill of you for becoming a king.” She looked to me again. “You will of course remain quiet on this subject with your pupils, won’t you, little muse? Just because all of Faerie knows of our plans doesn’t mean that the humans need to.”

“Quiet as flowers,” I said sarcastically. “What do the humans have to do with it?”

Eleanor laughed with painful delight, and her consort stumbled from the force of it. “Oh, lovely, I forget how little you know. A human—the cloverhand—is what pulls us here to this place. We follow her, as always, against our will. But after this Samhain, we will choose our own path. And we will become more fey, more powerful, for it.” She paused. “Except for you, of course. You will always be tied to them, poor creature.”

I just looked at her, resentful, hating either her or myself.

Eleanor’s lips curved up at my expression. “I forget how sulky you young ones can be. Tell me, how many summers have you seen?”

I stared at her, sure that she knew the answer to this question and was just baiting me, trying to push me to tears or anger. In my head, flames licked at my skin, hungry, both recollection and premonition. It had been years since my body had last burnt to a cinder, but the memory of the pain never went away—even though all other memories did. “Sixteen.”

The new queen stepped very, very close to me, and she ran a finger up my throat to my chin, lifting my face toward hers. “Yours is a very strange immortality, isn’t it? I am surprised you don’t plead at my feet for freedom from your fate.”

I couldn’t even see her feet underneath her sweeping green dress, and I couldn’t imagine pleading at them even if I could. I stepped back from her touch, hands fisted. “I know better. There’s no avoiding it. I am not afraid.”

Eleanor smiled, thin and mysterious. “And I thought my people couldn’t lie. Truly you are the most human of us.” She shook her head. “Remember what I said, dear. Don’t get in the way of our work here and perhaps I myself will find time to watch your burning this year.”

I sneered at her. “Your presence would be truly an honor,” I spat.

“I know,” replied Eleanor, and between one breath and the next, she and her consort were gone.

James

I scrambled up into the corner of my bed, jerking from sleep, and pulled spiderweb strings of music from my face. They clung to my features, lovely, perilous strands of melody, and I scraped at them until I realized that they were nothing and that I was ruining my boyish good looks with my fingernails. Nothing. Music from a dream. Music from Nuala. I leaned the back of my head against the wall with a brain-cell killing thunk.