“Ha!” shouted Ulia Gol over her shoulder to someone out of my sightlines. “I thought I got her.” She squatted over dead Elinore, studying her. “What do you think of this one, Hans? Too delicate for the glockenspiel, I reckon. Too tiny for the tuba. The cygnets completed our wind and percussion sections. Those two cobs and yesterday’s pen did for the brass. We might as well finish up the strings here.”
A man emerged from a corridor in the Maze Wood. He led Ulia Gol’s tall roan mare and his own gray gelding, and looked with interest on the dead swan girl.
“A pretty one,” he observed. “She’ll make a fine harp, Madame Mayor, unless I miss my guess.”
“Outstanding! I love a good harp song. But I always found the going rates too dear; harpists are so full of themselves.” Her purple grin widened. “Get the kids in here.”
The rest of her Swan Hunters began trotting into the Heart Glade on their plump little ponies. Many corridors, as you’d expect in a Maze Wood of this size, dead-ended in thorn, stone, waterfall, hedge, cliff edge. But Ulia Gol’s child army must’ve had the key to unlocking the maze’s secrets, for they came unhesitatingly into the glade and stood in the shadow of the juniper tree where we hid.
Aw, the sweetums. Pink-cheeked they were, the little killers, green-caped, and all of them wearing the famous multicolored, beaked masks of Amandale. Mortals are always fixed in their flesh, like my rat cousins who remain rats no matter what. Can’t do furrings, downings, or scalings like the Folk can. So they make do with elaborate costumes, body paint, millinery, and mass exterminations of our kind. Kind of adorable, really.
Ulia Gol clapped her hands. Her pink curls bounced and jounced. The foxtails on her beaver hat swung blithely.
“Dismount!” Her Hunters did so. “Whose turn is it, my little wretches?” she bawled at them. “Has to be someone fresh! Someone who’s bathed in mare’s milk by moonlight since yesterday’s hunt. Now—who’s clean? Who’s my pure and pretty chanticleer today? Come, don’t make me pick one of you!”
Oh, the awkward silence of children called upon to volunteer. A few heads bowed. Other masks lifted and looked elsewhere as if that act rendered them invisible. Presently one of the number was pushed to the forefront, so vehemently it fell and scraped its dimpled knees. I couldn’t help noticing that this child had been standing at the very back of the crowd, hugging itself and hoping to escape observation.
Fat chance, kiddling. I licked my lips. I knew what came next. I’d been watching this death dance from the juniper tree for weeks now.
Ulia Gol grinned horribly at the fallen child. “Tag!” she boomed. “You’re it.” Her heavy hand fell across the child’s shoulders, scooting it closer to the dead swan girl. “Dig. Dig her a grave fit for a princess.”
The child trembled in its bright green hunter’s cape. Its jaunty red mask was tied askew, like a deformed cardinal’s head stitched atop a rag doll. The quick desperation of its breath was audible even from the heights where we perched, me sweating and twitching, Dora Rose tense and pale, glistening faintly in the dimness of the canopy.
Dora Rose lay on her belly, arms and legs wrapped around the branch, leaning as far forward as she dared. She watched the scene with avid eyes, and I watched her. She wouldn’t have known why her people had been hunted all up and down the lake this autumn. Even when the swans began disappearing a few weeks ago, the survivors hadn’t moved on. Swan Folk were big on tradition; Lake Serenus was where they wintered, and that was that. To establish a new migratory pattern would’ve been tantamount to blasphemy. That’s swans for you.
I might have gone to warn them, I guess. Except that the last time she’d seen me, Dora Rose made it pretty clear that she’d rather wear a gown of graveyard nettles and pluck out her own feathers for fletching than have to endure two minutes more in my company. Of course, we were just teenagers then.
I gave the old juniper tree a pat, muttering a soundless prayer for keepsafe and concealment. Just in case Dora Rose’d forgotten to do as much in that first furious climb. Then I saw her lips move, saw her silver fingers stroking the shaggy branch. Good. So she, too, kept up a running stream of supplication. I’d no doubt she knew all the proper formulae; Swan Folk are as religious as they are royal. Maybe because they figure they’re the closest things to gods as may still be cut and bleed.
“WHY AREN’T YOU DIGGING YET?” bellowed Ulia Gol, hooking my attention downward.
A masterful woman, and so well coiffed! How fun it was to watch her make those children jump. In my present shape, I can scare grown men out of their boots, they’re that afraid of plague-carriers in these parts. The Folk are immune to plague, but mortals can’t tell a fixed rat from one of us to save their lives.
Amandale itself was mostly spared a few years back when things got really bad and the plague bells ringing death tolls in distant towns at last fell silent. Ulia Gol spread the rumor abroad that it was her mayoral prowess that got her town through unscathed. Another debt Amandale owed her.
How she loomed.
“Please, Madame Mayor, please!” piped the piccolo voice from behind the cardinal mask. It fair vibrated with apprehension. “I—I cannot dig. I have no shovel!”
“Is that all? Hans! A shovel for our shy red bird!”
Hans of the gray gelding trudged forward with amiable alacrity. I liked his style. Reminded me of me. He was not tall, but he had a dapper air. One of your blonds was Hans, high-colored, with a crooked but entirely proportionate nose, a gold-goateed chin, and boots up to the thigh. He dressed all in red, except for his green cape, and he wore a knife on his belt. A fine big knife, with one edge curved and outrageously serrated.
I shuddered deliciously, deciding right there and then that I would follow him home tonight and steal his things while he slept.
The shovel presented, the little one was bid a third time to dig.
The grave needed only be a shallow one for Ulia Gol’s purposes. This I had apprehended in my weeks of study. The earth hardly needed a scratch in its surface. Then the Swan Princess (or Prince, or heap of stiffening cygnets, as was the case yesterday) was rolled in the turned dirt and partially covered. Then Ulia Gol, towering over her small trooper with the blistered hands, would rip the mask off its face and roar, “Weep! If you love your life weep, or I’ll give you something to weep about!”
Unmasked, this afternoon’s child proved to be a young boy. One of the innumerable Cobblersawl brood unless I missed my guess. Baker’s children. The proverbial dozen, give or take a miscarriage. Always carried a slight smell of yeast about them.
Froggit, I think this little one’s name was. The seven-year-old. After the twins but before the toddlers and the infant.
I was quite fond of the Cobblersawls. Kids are so messy, you know, strewing crumbs everywhere. Bakers’ kids have the best crumbs. Their poor mother was often too harried to sweep up after the lot of them until bedtime. Well after the gleanings had been got.
Right now, dreamy little Froggit looked sick. His hands begrimed with dirt and Elinore’s blood, his brown hair matted with sweat, he covered her corpse well and good. Now, on cue, he started sobbing. Truth be told, he hadn’t needed Ulia Gol’s shouting to do so. His tears spattered the dirt, turning spots of it to mud.
Ulia Gol raised her arms like a conductor. Her big, shapely hands swooped through the air like kestrels.
“Sing, my children! You know the ditty well enough by now, I trust! This one’s female; make sure you alter the lyrics accordingly. One-two-three and—”