Presently, I muttered to Greenpea, “We’ll get nothing more out of him till he’s cried out. It’s like reasoning with a waterspout.”
Greenpea studied the Pied Piper, her brow creased. “He’s cracked.”
“Got it in one.”
“But you used him anyway?”
I bared my teeth at her, the little know-it-all. Show her I could chew through anything—metal spokes, bandaged leg stumps, leather coat, bone.
“Yeah. I used you, too, don’t forget. And your friends. Oh, and about half a million rats. And all those children we murdered here tonight. I used the Mayor herself against herself and made a puppet of the puppet master. I’ll tell you something else, little Rebel Greenpea—I’d do it again and worse to wake this Swan Princess now.”
Resting her head on the back of her chair, Greenpea whispered, “It won’t.” I couldn’t tell if it was smugness or sorrow that smelled so tart and sweet on her, like wild strawberries. “Only one thing can.”
“But it’s not—” I drew a breath. “Seemly.”
Greenpea’s clear gray gaze ranged over the Heart Glade. She rubbed her eyes beneath her spectacles. “None of this is.”
In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to…
Not her lips at least. That, Dora Rose’d never forgive, no matter what excuse I stammered out. No, I chose to kiss the sole of her foot. It was blackened like her mask, and webbed and beginning to curl under. If she later decided to squash me with that selfsame foot, I’d feel it was only my due. I’d let her squash me—happily. If only she’d wake.
Beneath my lips, the cold webbing warmed. The hard toes flexed, pinkened, fleshed back to mortal feet. I bowed my head to the ground and only dared to breathe again when I felt her stir. I glanced up to see Dora Rose wholly a woman again, Greenpea putting the Pied Piper’s motley cloak over her nakedness and helping her sit up. Nicolas scrambled to hide behind the fortress of Greenpea’s wheelchair as soon as Dora Rose was upright.
Then Dora Rose looked at me.
And I guess I’ll remember that look, that burning, haughty, tender look, until my dying day.
She removed her sole from the palm of my hand and slowly stood up, never breaking eye contact.
“You’re wrapped in a dog blanket, Maurice.”
I leaned on my left elbow and grinned. “Hellfowl, Dora Rose, you should’ve seen my outfit when they fished me outta the Drukkamag. Wasn’t wrapped in much but water, if I recall.”
She turned a shoulder to me, and bent her glance on Greenpea. It brimmed with the sort of gratitude I’d worked my tail to the bone these last three days to earn, but for whatever reason, I didn’t seem to mind Dora Rose lavishing it elsewhere. Probably still aquiver from our previous eye contact.
“You did so well, my friend.” She stooped to kiss Greenpea’s forehead. “You three were braver than princes. Braver than queens. When I hung on the juniper tree, I told the ghost inside it of your hurts—and of your help. It promised you a sure reward. But first…first I must hatch my brothers and sisters from their deaths.”
Dora Rose moved through the tree’s shadow in a beam of her own light. She lifted an exhausted Froggit from the ground and returned him to his cousin. He huddled in Greenpea’s lap, face buried in her shoulder. Possum crept toward them with uncertain steps, feeling for the chair. Finding it, she sat down near one of its great wheels, one hand on Froggit’s knee, the other grasping fast to Greenpea’s fingers. She was not a big girl like Greenpea. Not much older than Froggit, really.
They all patted one another’s shoulders and stroked one another’s hair, ceasing to pay attention to the rest of us. There was Nicolas, huddled on the ground not far from them in his fetal curl. At least he’d stopped crying. In his exhaustion, he watched the children. Something like hunger marked his face, something like envy creased it, but also a sort of lonely satisfaction in their fellowship. He made no move to infringe, only hugged his own elbows and rested his head on the moss. His face was a tragedy even I could not bear to watch.
Where was my favorite Swan Princess? Ah.
Dora Rose had plucked the first fruit from the juniper tree. I went over to help. Heaving a particularly large one off its branch (it came to me with a sharp crack, but careful inspection revealed nothing broken), I asked, “Now what would a big silver watermelon like this taste like, I wonder?”
“It’s not a watermelon, Maurice.” Dora Rose set another shining thing carefully on the ground. The silver fruit made a noise like a hand sweeping harp strings. “It’s an egg.”
“I like eggs.”
“Maurice, if you dare!”
“Aw, come on, Ladybird. As if I would.” She stared pointedly at my chin until I wiped the saliva away. “Hey, it’s a glandular reflex. I’ve not been eating as much as I should. Surprised I’m not in shock.”
As Dora Rose made no attempt even at pretending to acknowledge this, I went on plucking the great glowing eggs from the juniper tree. Soon we had a nice, big clutch piled pyramid-style on the moss.
Let me tell you, the only thing more tedious than a swan ballet is a swan hatching. You see one fuzzy gray head peeping out from a hole in a shell, you’ve seen ’em all. It takes hours. And then there’s the grooming and the feeding and the nuzzling and the nesting, and oh, the interminable domesticity. Swan chicks aren’t even cute like rat kits, which are the littlest wee things you did ever see and make the funniest noises besides. Swan chicks are just sort of pipsqueaking fluff balls.
But Dora Rose’s silver-shelled clutch weren’t your average eggs.
For one thing, when they burst open—which they did within minutes of being harvested—they all went at once, as if lightning smote them. Up from the shards they flew, twenty swans in total, of varying aspects and sexes.
But all a bit, well, weird.
When they finally came back down to the ground, in a landing that wanted nothing in grace or symmetry, I noticed what was off about them. They had no smell. Or if they did, it wasn’t a smell that matched my notion of “swan” or even of “bird.” Not of any variety. Second, as the disjointed moonlight shone through the tree branches to bounce off their feathers, I saw that though the creatures were the right shape for swans, that flew like swans and waddled like swans, there was something innately frightening about them. Impenetrable. As if a god had breathed life into stone statues, and that was what they were: stone. Not creatures of flesh and feather at all.
It hit me then. These swans were not, in fact, of flesh and feather. Or even of stone. They were covered in hard white scales. Their coats weren’t down at all, but interlocking bone.
Even as I thought this, they fleshed to human shape. Ivory they were, these newborn Swan Folk. Skin, hair, and eyes of that weirdly near-white hue, their pallor broken only by bitterly black mouths: lips and teeth and tongues all black together. Each wore a short gown of bone scales that clattered when they walked. Their all-ivory gazes fastened, unblinkingly, on Dora Rose.
She reached out to one of them, crying, “Elinore!”
But the swan girl who stepped curiously forward at the sound of her voice made Dora Rose gasp. True, she was like Elinore—but she was also like Ocelot, the gravedigger’s daughter. She wore a silver circlet on her brow. Dora Rose averted her face and loosed a shuddering breath. But she did not weep. When she looked at the girl again, her face was calm, kindly, cold.
“Do you have a name?”
Elinore-Ocelot just stared. Tentatively, she moved closer to Dora Rose. Just as tentatively, knelt before her. Setting her head against Dora Rose’s thigh, she butted lightly. Dora Rose put a hand upon the girl’s ivory hair. Nineteen other swanlings rushed to their knees and pressed in, hoping for a touch of her hand.