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As Ruth's breath evened out into sleep andLolli and Luis's breath escalated
into something else, Val bit the inside of her lip and rode out the pain of
withdrawal.
Chapter 10
They love not poison that do poison need.
 William Shakespeare, Richard II
As the night wore on, Val got no better. The cramping of the muscles under
her skin grew until she stood up and crept away from their crash spot so that
she could at least twist and move as her discomfort urged. She walked across
the rocks and started back through the Ramble, scattering a flurry of crumpled
leaves from their branches. She took another sip of the tea, but it had turned
icy cold.
Val had grown up thinking of Central Park as dangerous, even more than the
rest ofNew York , the kind of place where perverts and murderers lurked behind
every bush, just waiting for some innocent jogger. She remembered countless
news stories about stabbings and muggings. But now the park just seemed
tranquil.
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She picked up a stick and did lunging drills, thrusting the tip of the wood
into the knothole of a thick elm until she figured she'd cowed any squirrels
that might have lived there. The movements made her feel dizzy and slightly
nauseated and when she shook her head, she thought she saw moving lights on a
nearby path.
The wind picked up just then and the air felt charged, the way it did before
a thunderstorm, but when she looked again, she saw nothing. Scowling, she
squatted down and waited to see if there was anyone there.
The wind whipped past her, nearly pulling her backpack off her shoulder. This
time she was sure she heard laughter. She turned, but there were only the
thick bands of ivy crawling up a nearby tree.
The next gust of wind hit her then, knocking the cup out of her hand,
spilling the remains of the tea in a puddle and rolling the white cup in the
wet dirt.
"Stop it!" Val yelled, but in the silence that followed, her words seemed
futile, even dangerous to shout into the still air.
A whistle turned her head. There, sitting on a stump, was a woman made
entirely of ivy. "I smell glamour, thin as a dusting of snow. Are you one of
us?"
"No," Val said. "I'm not a faerie."
The woman inclined her head in a slight bow.
"Wait. I need ," Val started, but she didn't know how to finish. She needed
to score; she needed Never but she had no idea if the faeries had a name for
it.
"One of the sweettooths ? Poor creature, you've wandered far from the
revels." The ivy woman walked past Val and down toward the bridge. "I'll show
you the way."
Val didn't know what the ivy woman meant, but she followed, not only
becauseLolli and Luis were breaking Dave's heart on some nearby rocks and she
didn't want to have to see it, not just because the dead eyes of the
policewoman seemed to follow her in the darkness, but because the only thing
that seemed important right then was stopping her own pain. And where there
were faerie revels, there would be some way to find surcease.
The ivy woman led Val back to the terrace with its carved walls of birds and
branches, the fountain at its center, and the lake beyond. The faerie rustled
across the tiles, a moving column of greenery. Fog rolled up off the water, a
silvery mist that hung in the air for a moment before it roiled forward, too
dense and fast to be natural. Val's skin prickled but she was too dazed and
full of aches to do more than stumble back as the fog came in like the tide on
some dark shore.
It settled around her, warm and heavy, carrying a strange perfume of rot and
sweetness. Music ghosted through the air the tinkling of bells, a moan, the
shrill notes of a flute. Val walked unsteadily, engulfed and blinded by swells
of mist. She heard a chorus of laughter, close by, and turned. The fog ebbed
in places, leaving Val looking at a new landscape.
The terrace was still there, but the vines had grown from the stone into wild
looping things, blooming with strange flowers and thorns long and thin as
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needles. Birds flew from their sculpted nests to pick at the swollen grapes
that hung from the stair rails and squabble with fist-sized bees over the
steely apples that littered the pier.
And, too, there were faeries. More than Val might have imagined could live
among the iron and steel of the city, faeries with their strange eyes and
knifelike ears, in skirts woven of nettle or meadowsweet, in T-shirts and
vests with embroidered roses and in nothing at all, their skin gleaming under
the moon. Val passed a creature with legs that seemed to be branches and a
face carved from bark and a little man that peered at her through opera
glasses with lenses of blue beach glass. She passed a man with spines that ran
along his hunched back. He smelled ofsandlewood and she thought she knew him.
Each fey creature seemed bright as leaping flame and wild as wind. Their eyes
glowed hot and terrible in the moonlight and Val found herself afraid.
And, too, along the edge of the lake, were cloths woven with gold and heaped
with all manner of delicacies. Dates, quinces, and persimmons lay on platters
of cracked and dried leaves, next to decanters of sapphire andperidot wines.
Cakes piled with roasted acorns were stacked beside spits of limp pigeons and
cups of viscous syrups. Nearby them, in a heap, wereRavus's white apples,
their red innards visible through vellum skin, promising Val respite from
pain.
She forgot her fear.
She grabbed one, and bit into the warm, sweet flesh. It slid down her throat
like a bloody chunk of meat. Fighting back nausea, she bit again and again,
juice sluicing over her jaw, the skin of the fruit giving under her sharp
teeth. It didn't feel like Never, but it was enough to numb her limbs and
still her trembling.
Relieved, Val sank down by the lake as a creature of moss and lichen surfaced
for a moment with a flailing pewter fish in her mouth, then dove again. Too
tired to move and too relieved to be anything but sated, Val contented herself
by watching the crowd. To her surprise, she saw that she was not the only
human. A girl, too young to be out of middle school, rested her head in the
lap of a blue faerie with black lips that braided tiny bells andbeggarsweed
into the child's pigtails. A man with graying hair and a tweed coat knelt
beside a green girl with mossy, dripping hair. Two young men ate slivers of
white apples off the edge of a blade, licking the knife to get all of the
juice.
Were they the sweettooths ? Human thralls, willing to do anything for a taste
of Never, not even knowing what it was to stick it in your arm or burn it up
your nose.Never , Val told herself.Never again Never. Never more.
NeverNeverNeverNeverLand . She didn't need to make the shadows dance. She
didn't need to keep choosing the wrong path, gloating that at least she was
picking her disaster. No matter how bad her decisions, they weren't keeping
any other troubles at bay.
Another faerie came down the stairs. There was something wrong with his skin;
it looked mottled and bubbling in places. One of his ears and part of his neck
looked like they were sculpted crudely from clay. Some of the others drew back
as he strode across the terrace.
"Iron sickness," someone said. Val turned to see one of the honey-haired
faerie girls fromWashingtonSquarePark . Her feet were still bare, although she
wore an anklet of holly berries.
Val shuddered. "Looks like he was burned."
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"Some say that's going to happen to all of us if we don't stay in the park or
go back where we came from."
"Were you exiled here?"
The faerie girl nodded. "One of my lovers was also the lover of a
well-favored Lord. He made it appear as though I had stolen a bolt of cloth.
It was magical fabric, the kind that shows you stories precious stuff and the
punishment from the weaver was likely to be both elegant and severe. My
sisters and I went into exile until we could prove my innocence. But what of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]