A sullen teenaged nod.
“Then hurry up and keep quiet, you ever want to see that w
ayward brother of yours again, ‘cause I got somethin’ else entirely in mind—somethin’ you’d never think of, not in a million years.”
“You don’t know me so well, ma’am.”
“Oh no?”
—
Certain principles run ‘cross all cultures, as Samaire Cornish could probably tell you. Hell, she probably did a dissertation on it. Our Lady of the Upside-Down is one of these, queen of the primal Ds: Death, Despair, Darkness, Decay. In old Sumer, they called her Ereshkigal, who hung Her trespassing sister Inanna’s naked body at Her gates like a rag on a stick; ‘round Mexico way she’s La Flaca, the Skinny one—Santa Muerte, Beautiful Death, patroness of assassins and thieves. And here on the mountain?
Here, we call her the Rot-Pearl Queen, the Chigger’s Bride, who does away with every secret thing left to lie untended in the deepest of the hillside thickets. She who carries the will-o’-the-wisp and leads poor travelers astray, her stiff hair full of tiny clattering bones and dead leaves. She whose footsteps leave little black holes of mould, whose hand is white as peeled birch-bark, whose lightest touch means madness.
Most run to avoid her, and never speak her name aloud; most barely dare to think it, lest she catch its echo, and attend.
But like we’ve discussed already, on several different occasions—I ain’t most.
—
“That thing you threw,” I tossed back at Doll, as she pulled herself headlong through a brake of dead blackberry thorns, barely pausing to hiss where they tore what little skin her jacket left unwrapped. “Old Harlan’s demon familiar, right?”
She nodded. “Found it buzzin’ ‘round his place like a two-pound mosquito, all pissed; must’ve been feedin’ it bits of himself, I reckon, since he didn’t have nothin’ else on offer. So I drew blood into that bottle, waited ‘til it climbed inside, and...like you saw.”
“Hard for a man to get hold of one of those without bearing a true Mark, willingness to bleed or no. Though it can be done, so long’s you’re willing to bed down in strange places—as old Bishop Gorlois found out when he raised up that many-mouthed starfish of a thing and bound it to the Olek Psaltery, charging it to make sure his grimoire’d survive the Burning Times, even if he didn’t. For once they’ve had a taste of human meat given, not taken, they never do like it when somebody else cuts off their supply.”
She nodded, mouth twisting, a weird shred of pride overtaking her close-kept game face. “So might be he was cunning, after all.”
Might be. For all this was proof how Harlan Tearsheet’d likely done at least enough research to point him towards something half-forgot, hungry after worship the way a junkie hungers after his or her jolt of choice. The Queen, in other words.
Those who did Her service got service in return: They weren’t any harder to kill, but harder by far to keep dead. A useful quality in general, but particularly so right now, given both our specific goals.
“Where are we?” Doll asked, glancing ‘round, distrustingly. Smart as she’d proven to be, I was sure she’d probably already cottoned on to the fact that the trees were growing widdershins and wrong-way-’round, that the very ground beneath our feet had an unfamiliar lack of give to it, that the stars above were knit in patterns unseen for millennia: We were elsewhere, having shimmied ourselves straight through the mirror-surface gate of the Queen’s domain without her initial notice, albeit with my full connivance.
“Oh, never you mind,” I replied, smiling. “Real question should be—who is it lives here, exactly? And what are we gonna offer Her for safe passage, when She realizes we’re already at her door?”
Such pretty eyes Miss Doll had, ‘specially when they flew all the way open like that. And when I caught them starting to narrow again as she glimpsed something over my shoulder, coming through the trees—while I heard for myself the creak and sigh and moan of its passage, those same trees contorting away to let it through, like they feared to let its skirts brush their roots. I knew we really were in the right place, after all.
“Your Majesty,” I said, turning, my head hung down respectfully. “I come to give You sad news of one dear to Your heart, and beg a boon meant to help repair his circumstances, likewise.”
Her voice was soft, like a corpse well time-seasoned for dismemberment ‘fore digging commenced; it spiraled up from inside like a tapeworm you hadn’t known you harboured, unspooling segment by segment, fit to make you retch. But I stayed right where I was, and let it wash over me, wash through me, a maggoty wave of awful. I knew I could take it.
Witch-woman, devil-child, you enter my realm uninvited, without parole. You bring your apprentice here under false pretenses, and walk without respect, disturbing everything. You constitute a living insult. Why should I forgive you?
“Because, my Queen...I do it for love.”
From my first kiss on, I’ve been able to fool with just about anyone, I put my mind to it—always could. Some people might call that a curse (the white coats have a specialized name for it: Polymorphous perversity), but I choose to take it as a gift; the gift of turning trash into treasure, no matter the circumstances. In other words, I can find a thrill on any given dungheap, even with the heap itself, and while I’m in the thick of it, it will be real. or seem so.
Six of one, I say.
Do not think to play with my affections, Allfair Chatwin. Perverse as you are, you hold no true desire for me.
“Maybe not, but Harlan Tearsheet did, sure enough; does still, wherever he might be. And this gal loves him, in turn—enough to come here. Don’t that count for anything?”
Should it?
“I think so. Oh, fear is easier to call up than love, by far—but the best sort of worship comes from both, don’t you find?”