Frederic backed away, struggling not to grin.
She ascended to the throne.
Everyone cheered, elves as well as the humans. Looking out over them, Agnes was surprised to see that the other children were all grown now. Some of them had children of their own.
Human history has begun again, she thought. And this will be known forever as the Day of Two Queens.
Agnes raised a hand for silence. “I am your new queen and my power is absolute. Does anyone here dispute that?”
Nobody spoke.
“Well, then. My reign shall consist entirely of three edicts. The first is that Frederic shall search through the grimoires and books of spells to either discover a way to return the elves to their own world or, failing that, otherwise rid our world of their presence. That shall be his sole employment until his task is done, however many years it may take.”
Frederic looked stricken.
“The second is that until that happy day when they are gone, the elves shall be set to work restoring our world to what it was before they came. We will settle here and scour the wilderness for human survivors. When such are found, those who will may join us. Those who will not shall be left in peace.
“The third and last edict is that henceforth we shall have no queens or absolute rulers of any kind. Form committees, hold elections, do whatever you like — but I will not tell you how to live your lives.” Mouths fell open. Eyes widened in shock. Frederic put his head in his hands.
Agnes stepped down from the throne, a queen no more.
After her abdication, she went to see Richard.
Agnes dressed as carefully for this meeting as ever she had in her life. Her clothing was deliberately modest. Yet it did nothing to disguise her newly adult shape. Her jewelry drew no attention to itself. She wore makeup, though she doubted that Richard, used as he was to Queen Melisaundre’s theatrical extravagance, would notice.
The elf-queen’s tent smelled as always of incense, spices, and perfume. Yet the air felt strangely clean, for the cat-in-heat stench of the queen herself was gone. Beside her bed (sheeted in green and blue satins with foams of lace so that it was almost as vast and billowy as the sea itself) was a small obsidian box. In it rested Richard’s gemstone.
When Agnes had laid out shirt and trews on the bed, she took the rock crystal gem and warmed it between her hands. It had been clear and ordinary once, but Richard’s soul had deepened its color into a golden-red topaz with hints of flame at its heart. Speaking a word she had often heard from the lips of Queen Melisaundre, she summoned Richard from its depths.
He appeared, smiling sleepily, in the middle of the bed.
When Richard saw that he and Agnes were alone, he sat up and donned the russet-colored clothing — first the trousers and then the sark. They fit him well and seeing him thus clad Agnes felt a sudden flush of desire that, paradoxically, she had not felt on beholding him naked.
It was true, she thought. She genuinely had come of age, if Richard’s mere presence could disorder her thinking so.
“Where is Melisaundre?” he asked.
Agnes’s mouth felt dry. She could not form words with it at first. But at last she managed to croak, “There have been… I have made some changes.”
Then she told him.
When Agnes emerged from the tent at last, her face was grim and a golden-red stone hung from a silver chain about her neck.
Frederic was waiting for her. “What shall we do with that?” he asked, gesturing toward the tent.
“Burn it,” she said. She knew she had surrendered all authority to give such a command. But listening to her own voice, she knew too that she would be obeyed. “Burn it to the ground.”
Frederic nodded and two lovely young women whom Agnes realized with dull astonishment used to be the young Lexi and Latoya raised up hands that burst into fire. Stepping forward, they stroked the silks and velvets. Soft flames rose up the sides of the tent, merged, and became an inferno. When Agnes made no motion to get away from the heat, Frederic gently took her by the arm and led her toward the cool.
Agnes could feel the flames at her back. Shadows leaped and cavorted before her.
“What of Richard?” Frederic asked.
She touched the gem. “He did not care to share our lives without Melisaundre,” she said. “I gave him permission to return to his crystal, to his oblivion.”
Frederic crooked a sad smile. “ ‘He is not dead but sleeping,’ ” he quoted from one of Richard’s favorite books. “Perhaps he will reconsider someday, when we have remade the world into a pleasant place again. I… I will become the junior husband then, if that is what you wish.”
Agnes looked at him evenly, and realized for the first time how much Frederic desired and even, in his own peculiar way, loved her. Raising her head, she looked into the future. The humans would not rebuild the cities in her lifetime, but there would be towns. The elves would one by one fade away, into wells, into trees, into small, pathetic beings who served mankind and were rewarded with dishes of milk. She would have children, and then grandchildren. She would grow old, and fat, and revered. She would desire Richard often. But she would never see him again.
“No,” said Agnes firmly. “He’s gone forever. The time for fairy tales is past.”
Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany at the Joyce Kilmer Service Area, March 2005
Output from a nostalgic, if somewhat misinformed, guydavenport storybot, in the year 2115
Transcribed by Eileen Gunn
Their journey took place in verdant March, when the sun was not yet so high in the sky as to be dangerous. The New Jersey Turnpike was redolent with the scent of magnolias, and the trees in the Joyce Kilmer Service Area were clad in exuberant green. What brought them, the nascent politician and the noted philosopher, to this place, in a vehicle that shed its rich hydrocarbons liberally into the warm, clean air?
The truth was that Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany shared a taste for animal flesh, and had come to this bucolic waystation to satisfy their common need. “I’m a burger kind of guy,” said the future ruler of Russia. “So am I,” said the white-bearded semiotician, and they chose an imperial meat-patty palace for their repast.
As they stood in line, contemplating a panoply of burgers, fries, and blue raspberry Icee®s and basking in the cool green glow of fluorescent lights, Swanwick was struck with nostalgia for a time long past.
“I miss Howard Johnson’s,” he said. “Not the food, of course — I miss the orange-roofed temples, celebrated by Jean Shepard as sirens of the highway. Once upon a time, every rest area on the Jersey Turnpike had a Howard Johnson’s. ‘A landmark for hungry Americans.’”
Though Swanwick had spoken the words, each man, involuntarily, heard the chime of the ghastly jingle. “Funny thing,” he continued quickly. “It was capitalism that killed it. Marriott bought it for the real estate.”
“Red in tooth and claw,” said Delany. “I miss the pistachio ice cream cones, that’s all…. But here,” he added in a soothing tone, “here we have trading cards with robots on them.” He accepted a trading card from the cashier. It depicted Cappy, a sleekly androgynous silver-metal lover. “I want a different one,” he said.
“Have it your way,” said the cashier, shrugging. He handed Delany another card, this one featuring Crank, a grubby makeshift robot with rust under his gnawed fingernails.
Delany laughed, a musical sound somewhere between a snort and a giggle. “I’ll keep this one,” he said. He ordered a beef patty made with real beef, medium rare, topped with horseradish and béarnaise sauce, kosher dill slices on the side.