“Fairy queens follow rules,” agreed Zee. “Mortals who are taken to the Elphame cannot be killed or permanently harmed—it’s part of the magic of building a place apart.”
Ariana gave him a little smile. “My Phin must be too human for her to kill. I wonder if she knew that when she took him to her lair? If he is human, she cannot, of her own volition, release him for a year and a day.”
“Does that mean she can’t kill Gabriel?” Jesse rubbed her arms to keep warm. “And that we can’t get him for a year and a day either?”
“She can’t kill Gabriel either.” It was Samuel who answered. “That doesn’t mean she won’t hurt or enthrall them. Fairy prisoners can be rescued by stealth, by battle, or by bargaining.”
“Bargaining? Like in the song ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ but with a fairy?” I asked. It seemed to me that I’d heard a similar tale with fairies in it.
“Right,” Samuel agreed. “It can be a contest—usually musical, because fairy queens tend to be musically talented. But there are stories of footraces or swimming contests. My father has a wonderful old song about a young man who challenged a fairy to an eating contest and won.”
“How do we get in?” asked Jesse.
“The only way I know of getting into Elphame is by following the queen in,” Ariana said.
“I might be able to open a way,” said Zee. “I think I can manage to keep her from knowing what I’ve done. But I’ll have to stay here and hold the door open—and I won’t be able to keep it open forever. An hour at most and you have to be out. If the door closes . . . As it does in Underhill, time passes differently in Elphame. If the door closes, even if you manage to escape, there is no telling how much time will have passed when you get out.”
“Okay,” said Jesse.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Not you, Jess. No.”
“I’ll be the safest person there,” she told me. “I’m strictly a mortal human—they can’t kill me.”
“They can make you want to be dead,” said Samuel.
“You need me to find Gabriel.” Jesse set her chin. “I’m coming.”
I looked at Ariana, who nodded. “The Elphame is entirely under the control of its maker. If we want to find your young man quickly and get him out, we’ll need her to do it.”
“Then let me call Adam and get the wolves.” I should have stopped at Sylvia’s to pick up something that Ariana could have found Gabriel with that wasn’t living. I didn’t want to cause Adam’s pack any more trouble than I already had—but I wanted even more to get Gabriel and Phin out of the fairy’s hold and still keep Jesse safe.
Ariana sucked in a quick breath. “I am sorry,” she said. “Samuel is . . . I could not do it with strange werewolves. If it were just fear, I would do it. But the panic attacks can be dangerous to anyone around me.” She looked at Zee. “Could they find them without me, do you think?”
“No,” said Zee. “If I have to stay out here, then they will need you to keep them from being lost. Moreover, I think that the wolves might be a mistake. Samuel is old enough and powerful in his own right—I think he could resist the will of one such as a fairy queen. But all of the wolves . . . The chances are too great that she would turn our own against us. If she turns you or Jesse, Ariana and Sam can still get you out. If you go in with the pack, even one wolf who turns would mean death.”
“It’s all right, Mercy,” said Jesse. “I’m not helpless, and I . . . Would you be able to wait out here if it were Dad in there?”
“No.”
“Are you ready?” asked Zee.
“All right,” I said, painfully aware that Adam would not be happy with me, but Jesse was right. She was probably the safest among us. “Let’s get them out of here.”
“Good,” said Zee—and he dropped his glamour without fanfare or drama.
One moment he was the tallish skinny old man with a little rounded belly and age spots on his neck and hands, and the next he was a tall, sleek warrior with skin dark as wet bark. Sunlight tinted his hair gold. It hung in a thick braid that flowed over one shoulder and hung lower than his belt. The last time I’d seen him, his pointed ears had been pierced many times, and he had worn bone earrings in the piercings. There were no decorations at all.
His was a body that didn’t belong in the jeans and plaid flannel shirt he still wore. The clothing fit him as well in his current shape as they had in the one I was used to. I supposed that made sense because it was the Zee I knew who was the illusion and this man, and his clothes, that were real.
Zee’s true face was uncanny—beautiful, proud, and cruel. I remembered the stories I’d found about the Dark Smith of Drontheim. Zee had never been the kind of fairy who cleaned houses or rescued lost children. He’d been one to avoid if you could and to treat very, very courteously if you couldn’t. He’d mellowed a little with age and didn’t disembowel anyone who displeased him anymore. Not that I’d seen anyway.
“Wow,” said Jesse. “You are beautiful. Scary. But beautiful.”
He looked at her a moment, then said, “I have heard Gabriel say the same of you, Jesse Adamstochter. It was meant as a compliment, I believe.” He turned to Ariana. “You’ll have to leave the glamour behind. The only glamour that works in Elphame is the queen’s, and if you wait until the Elphame rips it from you, it will alert those inside that they have an intruder.”
She clenched her fists and glanced at Samuel and away.
“I’ve seen your scars,” he said. “I am a doctor and a werewolf. I saw those wounds when they were new and raw—scars do not bother me. They are the laurels of the survivor.”
Like Zee, she didn’t bother with theatrics. Without glamour, her skin was a warmer color than Zee’s and several shades lighter. It was beautiful against silver-lavender hair that was no more than a finger-length long anywhere and floated out from her scalp more like plumage than hair—a lot like Jesse’s current hairstyle. Ariana’s clothes altered when her glamour dropped as well, into a simple knee-length dress of an off-white color with a handkerchief hem.
She wasn’t conventionally beautiful—her face was too inhuman for that, with eyes that were too big and a nose too small for humanity. Her scars weren’t as bad as they’d appeared when I’d seen them before. They looked older and less angry . . . but there were a lot of them.
“We are ready,” Samuel said, looking at Ariana with a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.
Zee reached behind his head and drew his dagger, dark-bladed and elegant in its deadly simplicity, from beneath the collar of his shirt. Either it was magic or a sheath, I couldn’t tell, and with Zee it could be either one. He used it to make a single clean cut on his forearm. For a moment, nothing happened, and then blood, dark and red, welled up. He knelt and let the blood drip into the dirt.
“Mother,” he said. “Hear me, your child.”
He put the hand of his uninjured arm into the soil and mixed his blood into the powdery earth. In German he whispered, “Erde, geliebte Mutter, dein Kind ruft. Schmecke mein Blut. Erkenne deine Schöpfung, gewähre Einlass.”
Magic made my feet tingle and my nose itch—but nothing else happened. Zee stood up and counted off four paces before he sliced his other forearm.
Kneeling, he bowed his head, and this time there was power in his voice. “Erde mein, lass mich ein.”
Blood slid over his skin and down onto the backs of his hands, which were flat on the ground. “Gibst mir Mut!” he shouted—and rolled his hands over, wiping the blood on the ground.
“Trinkst mein Blut. Erkenne mich.” He leaned forward and put his weight on his arms. First his hands, then his arms sank into the ground until they were buried past the wounds he’d given himself. He leaned down until his mouth was nearly in the dirt, and said quietly, “Öffne Dich.”