I started to ask him why, but he rode on, faster and faster, until he came up beside Queen Mab. She turned and smiled at him, and he smiled in return. A very sad, hopeless smile.
Most of the people went to the hot springs where they bathed. I went to my room. When the door was tight shut behind me, I sat down on the bed and called, “Fenoderee! I need a friend.”
He was there in the instant, standing beside me.
I said, “There was something frightening. I can’t remember what!”
“Ah, weel,” he said to me, “you’ve not the knack of the seein’ yet, and your human sight comes through. It wasna only deer they lopped the heads from there in the wood. It was a man and his wife they hunted down, a man and his wife who’d refused to give their child to Queen Mab when she wanted it.”
“And they’ll eat them?” I cried, unable to believe it.
“Ach, no, lass. They’ll eat venison right enough. They wouldn’t kill or eat human flesh, for that would break the covenant. But it was human flesh they enchanted into deer. So, what is it they eat? Ah? Did they indeed break the covenant? They’ll tell you it’s venison, and they’ll tell you true, but you know what you saw, don’t you?”
“Thomas told me not to eat it.”
“Then Thomas told you what was good for you.”
“Then he saw it, too.” What I had seen, that overlay of human flesh when the heads had come off.
“Aye, he sees. A man so fearful as that will see what’s true.”
“What’s he fearful of, Fenoderee?”
Fenoderee turned himself around like a dog trying to find a place to lie down. “He’s fearful Oberon will use him for something forbidden.”
“And what’s that?” I could not imagine what could be forbidden in this land where cannibalism seemed to be a matter of course.
“Long ago,” said Fenoderee, “when man was made, the Holy One asked us of Faery to help man out, for he was a witless thing then, barely able to stand on his two feet. Some of the Sidhe assented, a few. But Oberon was King then, as he is now, and he told them to hold their tongues, that the Sidhe would do it only if the Holy One commanded it.
“ ‘No,’ said the Holy One, ‘I could command it, true, but I will not. I have not designed this universe in all its unpredictable glory in order to interrupt it with gratuitous commands and arbitrary miracles. If you honor my request, you do it out of your own will, out of goodness, in thankfulness for what you’ve been given.’ ”
“What did Oberon say?”
“He said no, as he’d said before. So then the Holy One said, ‘I will not command, but I may destroy some parts of my creation if they threaten other parts. So I will make treaty with the Sidhe. It is I who made the Sidhe immortal, and they may remain so only so long as no man comes to lasting harm at their hands.’ And Oberon accepted that.”
“Who were the ones who said they’d help man?”
“Israfel and his lot. Oh, and Carabosse. Oberon paid them no attention. They didn’t even go on living in Faery; they went off to Baskarone. Since then, we Bogles have called them our Separated Kindred, or the Long Lost. Oberon calls them something else, but then he’s not a forgiving sort.”
“But the deer,” I cried. “The enchanted deer! That was surely lasting harm to the man and his wife. To be eaten!”
“Sneaky the Sidhe have become,” said Fenoderee. “Sneaky and sly. It wasn’t the man and his wife that they killed, you see. It was only deer. Sneakiness like that has been going on for some time now. They’ve kept the letter of the treaty, no matter what they’ve done to the intentions.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re proud, lass. The creation of man was a dreadful blow to them. It needn’t have been if they’d put their minds to understanding man rather than just resenting him. But then, after the Dark Lord went off and made his own place, he sent whisperers among the Sidhe, telling them how much their pride had been offended. And some time after the treaty was made, Oberon made another one, this one with the Dark Lord, who pledged to teach Oberon ways to keep the Holy One at bay—though the Dark Lord couldn’t keep daylight at bay if the Holy One didn’t allow it. The payment to the Dark Lord comes every seven years, and it’s what is called the teind to hell, for that is what the Dark Lord has made for himself.”
“The hell?”
“The only one I know of,” he said.
“What’s the payment?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry.
“The payment is a person,” he said. “Of some sort. Oberon’s been using us Bogles for the teind, when he can catch us, but we’ve grown too smart for him and he hasn’t caught one of us in recent time. That’s why there were so many of us come to court with Puck, to fight them off if they tried to take one of us by force. Oberon knows if he uses one of the Sidhe, it could cause rebellion against him. So he’s thinking of defying the treaty and using a human. And the only human
