The Poison Eaters_ And Other Stories Part 8

"Who taught you how to do that?" the king demands, pointing to the knife.

Elienad shrugs slender shoulders. "No one."

Which seems unlikely, but there is no reason for that to bother the king. Yet it does. The boy has recently turned thirteen and when the king thinks back on that age, he remembers telling many lies. Elienad's jaw looks firmer than it did a year ago, his soft limbs turning into the lean, hard arms of an adult. Soon the king will know even less about what he does.

"Does she mean to do it?" he asks, "or is it just talk?"

"Amadine," the boy says. "I remember her name now. She's bought powder and honey to hide the taste. She says it will seem like he's getting sick. Her friends are very proud of her. They say they are too frightened to kill their own husbands."

The boy looks up at him, hesitating, and the king thinks that if Elienad were a human boy, it would be abominable to raise him as a spy with no companions save drunk scholars and the king himself.

"Go on," the king says. "You have something else to tell me?"

The boy tilts his head to one side. His hair has gotten long. "Who was my mother?"

"I don't know," says the king, shaking his head. The boy asked for this story over and over again when he was very young, but he hasn't asked in a long time. "I've told you how you were brought to me by hunters and I bought you from them."

"Because I licked your hand," the boy said. "I was the last of a litter. The other pups died of exposure."

The king nods slowly; there is something new in the boy's voice, something calculating.

"That's not a true story," he says.

The king thinks he should be angry, but what he feels is panic. "What do you mean?"

The boy is very calm, very still. "I could hear it in your voice. It isn't a true story, but I can't tell which parts are false."

"You will not question me," the king commands, standing. "I will not be questioned." He thinks of Elienad, lying beneath tables, listening to the inflections of lies. Watching the hesitations, the gestures, the tensed muscles. Learning a language the king was unaware he even spoke.

"Did my brothers and sisters go to the fights?" the boy asks and his voice hitches a little. He drops the wood and the knife on the bed and stands. "Was it you who found me? Maybe you shot my mother? Please just tell me."

The king is too afraid to answer, afraid some movement will give him away. He stalks from the room. When he looks back, Elienad has not followed him.

"I won't be mad," the boy says softly as the door shuts.

The king's heart is beating so loudly that he thinks everyone in the hall must hear it. To him, the sound is the dull thudding of something chasing him, something that speeds the faster he runs from it.

Late that night, the boy leaves his room and pads barefoot to the great hall where the throne is. He sits on the velvet and runs his hands over the carved wood. He imagines himself no longer cowering under a table. He imagines looking every one of the courtiers in the eye.

Every evening the knights ride out into the town and hunt. They patrol the streets until dawn and come back empty-handed.

One night as the courtiers spin in a complicated dance that looks like cogs in a delicate machine, Toran walks into court, his armor wet and red. At the sight of the blood, ladies shriek and the wheels of spinning dancers come apart.

The king is flushed with exertion. "How dare you?" he demands, but Toran seems to ignore him, sinking down on one knee.

"The monster attacked me," the knight says, his head still bowed. "We fought and I managed to slice off one of its paws."

He opens a stained woven bag, but inside is no gory paw. Instead there is a slim hand with long, delicate fingers, pale save for the hacked flesh and severed bone at one end. And one finger is circled with a fat ruby ring.

There are more screams. Elienad smells blood and fear and the commingling of those scents wakes something coiled inside of him.

Toran drops the bag, rises, backs away. "Your majesty," he stammers.

Elienad pads closer. Courtiers shrink from him.

"This hand came from a wolf?" the king asks, still hoping that somehow it has not come to this.

One of Toran's party, all of whom idle near the doorway, not bold enough to interrupt the king, steps forward. "It was. We all saw it. That thing killed Pyter."

"The rumors are all true! The creatures walk among us!" Lady Mironov says, before swooning to the floor. She is practiced at swooning and is caught easily by her husband and his brother.

"It is gravely wounded," says the king. "It will be tracked and destroyed." He hopes it will be killed before it can be interrogated. He does not want to hear the things of which the creature might speak. His kingdom must have the illusion of safety, even at the cost of truth.

He does not remember the ring or the woman who wore it, but Elienad does. He recognizes the red stone and remembers the hand he licked clean under the table.

Elienad finds her by smell, behind Lord Borodin's stables. The horses s.h.i.+ft and whinny in their pens as he pa.s.ses. Her blood has soaked the icy ground around her and dotted the snow with bright red holes, like someone scattered poisonous berries. She is wrapped in a horse blanket, stiff with gore. Her hair is tangled with dirt and twigs.

She has never seen him with a human face, but she knows him immediately. Her pale mouth curves into a smile. "I didn't know they let you out of the palace," she says. She is very beautiful, even dying.

"They don't," he says and knees beside her. "Give me your arm."

He ties his sash around it as tightly as he can and the bleeding ebbs. It is probably too late, but he does it anyway.

"It is a hunger never ending, to be what we are. It gnaws at my stomach." Her eyes look strange, her pupils blown wide and black.

"Where did you come from?" he asks her. He doesn't want to talk about the hunger, not with the smell of her blood making him dizzy.

"From the forests," she says. "They caught my son. I thought it would be easy to find him. I had never even seen a city."

He can't help hoping. "Like me. They brought me-"

She sees his face and laughs. It is a thin rattling sound. "He's dead. And you never came from any forest."

"What do you mean?" he asks. He has brought a sack with men's clothes. They are too loose for her in some places and too tight in others, but they are warm and dry.

She struggles to get the s.h.i.+rt over her head. Her shoulders are shaking with cold. "You were born here, in this city. Didn't you know?"

"I don't understand." Part of him wishes she would stop talking because he feels as he does when he's about to s.h.i.+ft, like he's drowning. The rest of him only wishes she would speak faster.

"A mirror would tell you more than I could." Her sly look bothers him, but he still doesn't know what she means.

He shakes off the questions. "We have to get you inside. Somewhere warm."

"No. I can care for myself." Her hand slides under her body. She holds out a knife. Toran's knife. "I want you to take this and put it into the chest of the king."

His eyes narrow.

"Have you been to the dog fights? Have you seen how we are set against each other, how we are kept in stinking pens?"

"You murdered those children," he says softly. "And then you ate them."

" Let them know what it is to have their babies s.n.a.t.c.hed from them, what it is to be afraid and then find that they were killed for amus.e.m.e.nt. For amus.e.m.e.nt For amus.e.m.e.nt." Her face is so pale that it looks like the snow. "You are not the only wolf he has kept, but the first one was grown when he got her. She died rather than become his pet. You are nothing but an animal to him."

"I see," he says. "Yes, you are right." Elienad takes the knife from her cold hand. He looks at his face in its mirrored surface and his features look as though they belong to someone else. His voice is only a whisper. "He must think I am an animal."

The king leaves his court late and stumbles tipsily to his rooms. The court will continue to celebrate until they collapse beneath tables, until they have drunk themselves so full of relief that they are sick from it.

The king lights a lamp on his desk and begins to write the speech he will give in the morning. He plans to say many rea.s.suring things. He plans to declare Toran his heir.

He hears a laugh. It is a boy's laugh.

"Elienad?" the king asks the darkness.

There is silence, then the sound of laughter again, naughty and close.

"Elienad," the king says sternly.

"I will be king after you," the boy says.

The king's hands begin to shake so hard that the ink on his pen nib spatters the page. He looks down at it as though the wet black marks will tell him what to do now.

The boy moves into the lamplight, his face lit with an impish smile, showing white teeth.

"Please," says the king.

"Please what, Father?" The boy blows down the gla.s.s of the lamp and the light goes out.

In the darkness, the king calls the boy's name for the third time, but his voice quavers. He remembers his age, remembers how stiff he is from dancing.

This time when he hears the boy's laughter, it is near the door. He hears the footsteps as bare feet slap their way out the door and down the dark hall. Like the court, the king feels sick with relief.

Later, when the king lights the lamps-all of them-he will think of another woman, now long gone, and of her liquid eyes staring up at him in the dark. He will not sleep.

In the morning, he will make his way to the throne room. There, he will find courtiers gathered around a young boy with black hair in need of cutting. Beside the boy will be a corpse. The dead woman's hand will be missing and her throat will be cut. Dimly, the king will remember that he promised the kingdom to whosoever killed the wolf. And the boy will smile up at him as the trap closes.

Virgin

Let me tell you something about unicorns-they're faeries and faeries aren't to be trusted. Read your storybooks. But maybe you can't get past the rainbows and pastel c.r.a.p. That's your problem.

Zachary told me once why the old stories say that mortals who eat faerie food can't leave Faerie. That's a bunch of rot, too, but at least there's some truth in it. You see, they can can leave; they just won't ever be able to find another food they'll want to eat. Normal food tastes like ashes. So they starve. Zachary should have listened to his own stories. leave; they just won't ever be able to find another food they'll want to eat. Normal food tastes like ashes. So they starve. Zachary should have listened to his own stories.

I met him the summer I was squatting in an old building with my friend Tanya and her boyfriend. I'd run away from my last foster family, mostly because there didn't seem to be any point in staying. I was humoring myself into thinking I could live indefinitely like this.

Tanya had one prosthetic leg made from this s.h.i.+ny pink plastic stuff; so she looked like she was part Barbie doll, part girl. She loved to wear short, tight skirts and platform shoes to show off her leg. She knew the name of every boy who hung out in LOVE park. Tanya introduced us.

My first impression of Zachary was that he was a beautiful junkie. He wasn't handsome; he was pretty, the kind of boy that girls draw obsessively in the corners of their notebooks. Tall, great cheekbones, and red-black hair rolling down the sides of his face in fat curls. He was juggling a tennis ball, a fork, and three spoons. A cardboard sign next to his feet had will juggle anything for food will juggle anything for food written on it in an unsteady hand. written on it in an unsteady hand. Anything Anything had been underlined shakily, twice. Junkie, I thought. I wondered if Tanya had ever slept with him. I wanted to ask her what it was like. had been underlined shakily, twice. Junkie, I thought. I wondered if Tanya had ever slept with him. I wanted to ask her what it was like.

After he was done and had collected a little cash in a paper cup, he walked around with us for a while, mostly listening to Tanya tell him about her band. He had a bag over his shoulder and walked solemnly, hands in the pockets of his black jeans. He didn't look at her, although sometimes he nodded along with what she was saying, and he didn't look at me. He bought us ginger beer with the coins people had thrown at him and that's when I knew he wasn't a junkie, because no junkie who looked as hard up as he did would spend his last quarters on anything but getting what he needed.

The next time I saw Zachary, it was at the public library. We would all go there when we got cold. Sometimes I would go alone to read sections of The Two Towers, The Two Towers, jotting down the page where I stopped on the inside hem of my jeans. I found him sitting on the floor between the mythology and psychiatry shelves. He looked up when I started walking down the aisle and we just stared at one another for a moment, like we'd been found doing something illicit. Then he grinned and I grinned. I sat down on the floor next to him. jotting down the page where I stopped on the inside hem of my jeans. I found him sitting on the floor between the mythology and psychiatry shelves. He looked up when I started walking down the aisle and we just stared at one another for a moment, like we'd been found doing something illicit. Then he grinned and I grinned. I sat down on the floor next to him.

"Just looking," I said, "What are you reading?" I had just run half the way to the library and could feel the sweat on my scalp. I knew I looked really awful. He looked dry, even cold. His skin was as pale as if he never spent a day in the park.

He lifted up the book spread open across his lap: Faerie Folktales of Europe Faerie Folktales of Europe.

I was used to people who wouldn't shut up. I wasn't used to making conversation.

"You're Zachary, right?" I asked, like an a.s.shole.

He looked up again. "Mmhmm. You're Jen, Tanya's friend."

"I didn't think you'd remember," I said, then felt stupid. He just smiled at me.

" What are you reading?" I stumbled over the words, realizing halfway through the sentence I'd already asked that. "I mean, what part part are you reading?" are you reading?"

"I'm reading about unicorns," he said, "but there's not much here."

"They like virgins," I volunteered.

He sighed. "Yeah. They'd send girls into the woods in front of the hunts. Girls to lure out the unicorn, get it to lie down, to sleep. Then they'd ride up and shoot it or stab it or slice off its horn. Can you imagine how that girl must have felt? The sharp horn pressing against her stomach, her ears straining to listen for the hounds."

I s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. I didn't know anyone who talked like that. "You looking for something else about them?"

"I don't even know." He tucked some curls behind one ear. Then he grinned at me again.

All that summer was a fever dream, restless and achy. He was a part of it, meeting me in the park, or at the library. I told him about my last foster home and about the one before that, the one that had been really awful. I told him about the boys I met and where we went to drink-up on rooftops. We talked about where pigeons spent their winters and where we were going to spend ours. When it was his turn to talk, he told stories. He told me ones I knew, old stories, and he told me old-sounding ones I had never heard. It didn't matter that I spent the rest of the week begging for cigarettes and hanging with hoodlums. When I was with Zachary, everything seemed different.

Then one day, when it was kind of rainy cold and we were scrounging in our pockets for money for hot tea, I asked him where he slept.

"Outside the city, near the zoo."

"It must stink." I found another sticky dime in the folds of my backpack and put it on the concrete ledge with our other change.