“He didn’t find me a husband because you had cursed me,” I argued, growing a little pink in the face. I could feel it.
“No, no, no,” she said, waving her cane. “Before I cursed you. I looked at what he would do if I hadn’t cursed you, don’t you see? I don’t go around doing indiscriminate curses. Besides, it wasn’t you I cursed, remember?”
“Wasn’t it Aunt Joyeause who changed your curse from death to sleep,” I argued, wanting to get this business of the curse straightened out at last. “That’s what the letter said.”
Carabosse shook her head, to and fro, sipping at her tea, smiling a knowing, half-toothless smile. “Joyeause doesn’t have the wits of a bat. She couldn’t summon up a fairy gift if her life depended on it. And besides that, she tells lies. She was the only one near when I cursed Duke Phillip’s lovely daughter with sleep.”
“Duke Phillip’s lovely daughter, and Westfaire,” I pointed out.
“Well, yes. And Westfaire.”
“Forever?”
“Let us say without a stated time of wakening,” she said stiffly, warning me with her expression to press the matter no further. “I left immediately thereafter. Joyeause must have gone to your Mama with some fay and follet story about what she thought I’d said or what she invented to say I’d said or what she would have said in my place. It’s like her. Such a sillyshee.”
“I used to think all fairies were wise,” I said sadly. The thought that Carabosse might be lying never entered my head. She was telling the truth, and I knew it.
“Some are and some aren’t.”
“So, what’s happening, Carabosse.”
“The Dark Lord saw you, is what’s happening. First, in Faery, picking that vengeful herb to get back at that man. Then, later, in that mirror in Marvella. The first time, it meant little to him. The second time, it meant more. Your showing up in both places has a certain resonance to it. He didn’t really see what you’re carrying, but he scents it perhaps. He wants to put his nose on you and sniff you up, find out what you are.”
Hearing it like that, even though I’d known it, in my heart, made me shudder. “Well, Carabosse, you must find somewhere else to put it, that’s all.”
“True.” She sipped and nodded.
I sighed. “I didn’t mean what’s going on about the Dark Lord, anyhow. I meant, what’s going on in Faery.”
“The Bogles did a thing,” she said, cocking her eyebrows at Puck where he sat on the carpet. “Oh yes, they did a thing.”
“What have you done, Puck?” I asked him.
“The Sidhe wouldn’t listen to us, so we’ve tried the only thing left to try. We’ve sent a message out of Faery.”
“How have you done that?”
“How haven’t they?” snorted Carabosse.
Puck settled himself for oration. “We’ve cried out by every hob and boggart, by the gruagach and the selkies, by the killmoulis and every lob-lie-by-the-fire capable of speech. Every pixie and nixie, phouka and glashan have carried our summons. We’ve sent the aughisky and the banshee out to howl, the bogan and the spriggans out to screech. The gabriel ratchets have honked the call into the sky, and the fuath have bubbled it down into the watery places beneath the sea.
“In the towers of the north, the dunters are grinding our words in their quern until the message rattles the stones beneath the mountains. Even the duergar have been constrained against wickedness and made to write our summons in the smoke of their fires. The cait sith prowls the edges of the world yowling our yowl, and after her come the black dogs, barking our bark. In all the times of earth until now, no such call has gone out from the Bogle-folk, and if there are any left to answer it, surely they will.” He finished up with a fine, broad gesture.
“If they’d asked me,” said Carabosse, “I’d have told them it wasn’t necessary. I’d have told Israfel, and he’d have told his kinfolk. A few quiet words. All this hullabaloo wasn’t needed.”
“We wanted a hullabaloo,” said Puck in a dignified voice.
“And what answer have you had, Puck?” I knew the answer already. What else could it be?
“The Long Lost are coming home,” he said. “They’re coming back to Faery. The Sidhe don’t much like it. Oberon’s wrathful and that makes his people edgy. Elladine’s people are in no good mood. They’re snarly, and snarly folk do stupid things.”
“They’re snarly, right enough,” I said, remembering how Mama had flown at me, over nothing.
Puck replied, “If things get very bad for you there, with them, call me. It might be well for you to come visit my places. I’ve visited yours often enough.”
“Maybe you should come stay with me,” suggested Carabosse.
I shook my head, feeling confused and alone. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “What will be best?”
“Just go on,” she advised me, pursing her old, wrinkled lips, leaning forward to place her hand on my breast, feeling the little fire in there. “Just go on. Being ordinary.”
“With the Dark Lord hovering in the wings, sniffing and waiting to pounce?”
“We’ve talked about that, Israfel and I. If he pounces, we’ll be there. Don’t worry, Beauty. We’re watching. We’re good at that.”
I tried to get more out of her and got nothing. She was closemouthed as a turtle, glaring at Puck out of the corner of her eyes, as though he had betrayed the secret instead of merely finding out about it.
He and I went out into the world and rode back to the castle. When we came within sight of it, we stopped and merely sat, seeing what was there. Things change about in Faery. What is there one day is often not there the next.
“Why is
