by Niabh » Thu Mar 05, 2020 8:19 pm
Well, well. She had been dismissed, then. Her jaw trembled, as though the force of a sharp retort shook her locked teeth, a tin cup scraped across the jail bars. She swallowed, and the shaking stilled, her face smoothing into what the raven recognized as a dangerous calm. The storm could be dissipating, or they could be in the eye of it. She might blow either way.
In truth, the calm was acquiescence. Benedict was up to something. Glenn slipped down beside him—ah, there was her sionnach, all stealthy spontaneous grace—while she swept herself aside. Her shoulder leaned against Benedict’s house in a way that a more suspicious creature might take as a threat, or a warning—you’ll pass this way eventually—and she gave her plait a rough, irritated swipe away from her shoulder. She was going to come out of this badly, she feared.
The raven scooted nervously away from Glenn. Nothing personal; he just had a vast wing-spread and didn’t like being crowded. Plus Glenn was still acting all weird and chummy; he would not be surprised—though he would certainly be upset—if the man got himself all full of bonhomie and slung an arm across his back like they were drinking buddies.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t just say it, since it’s the only thing that makes anything else make sense. Anyway, you know how before Catch were sort of…um, simple?”
“Raven!” she snapped, aggravated.
“Don’t fecking raven me, he was simple. Even you called him simple. At first I thought she was off her tree, that she was…I don’t know, I thought it was her bein’ kind to the village idiot, or maybe she was so smitten that she just saw what she wanted to see.” Dark and intense, he leaned closer to Glenn, speaking urgently. “I’ve seen those two together before and nothin’ against the big guy but usually she has to speak to him with real small words, if you get me.”
Fionn could not restrain from a loud hmmph! Her shoulders slumped, her gaze black and bitter as a wolf’s.
“But he has changed. It’s like…there’s more there there. Like he’s solidifying. He's more like her. I even thought she’d done something to him, but she swears she didn’t and the way she is about him, I don’t think she’d lie.” He tapered off, with an uncertain little dance, foot to foot. His wingtips hung loose, dragging the stump’s rough face. “But then I thought, she hung around you, and you changed, and she hung around him, and he changed, and that seems like way too much coincidence.”
“I’ve done nothing to Catch.” She spread her palms and gave a helpless laugh. “I should be flattered anyone believes I could do anything to Catch.”
“You’re the Queen,” the raven said, stony. “You’re a Niall. You’re the only person here who don’t believe you have enough power to change whatever you want changed.”
That made her cross all over again. To have her own title flung into her face, as though it were evidence against her. Hands bound, impatient, she sighed again and folded her arms sullenly. The raven hesitated long enough to confirm that she was really going to stand down. Then he spoke.
“It’s easier to start from the beginning. Remember a couple years back I told you I might not be able to get you a reply for a few days because she was in jail? That turned out to be no big deal; she pranked her way back out. But the reason she was in jail, she told me, was because some old bloke she deals with had some plant what only grows back home.” He cocked his head toward the lady. “What was it, cos mactíre?”
“Cloigíní,” she said. “Cloigíní geala. The red kind.”
The raven tck-tck-tcked like a clock spring wound to breaking, then gave a little impressed wheeze, tension releasing. “Yeah, all right. No wonder.”
His head twisted back toward Glenn. “Anyway, she found out he had it and decided to go get some, and I know it seems like I’ve gone off on a wild tangent but bear with me, this is all context. She said she wanted it because it might come in handy, but if it was red cloigíní he had, then I think she’d taken it into her head to be offended. Tultharian gettin’ hold of something that belonged to Tuatha, you know? Anyway, that’s how she got arrested. They caught her. She couldn’t break glam and didn’t want to do anything too bad to the geezer, so she went along with it. But she sneaked out some seeds.”
“Under my thumbnails.” With a bright, brittle grin, not at all pleasant, she crooked both thumbs and wiggled them. “No one thought to look.”
“So araile-araile, some time goes by, years go by, and suddenly there’s this notice. Someone’s askin’ if anyone’s seen the very same plant. So she moves ’em further away from the den, out in the Woods, and she sets a trap in case someone comes lookin’. And then as a prank she sends a whole mess of them to the fellow what put up the notice. She said if he had enough of his own, maybe he’d stop nosin’ after her stash.
“A few days after that, someone ends up fallin’ in the trap. Put it all together, the timing and all, and you don’t gotter be a goddamn genius to figger out they're after the plant, you know? Anyway, we go out together to see who’s been snoopin’, and it’s Gloria.”
The raven glanced uncertainly to his lady, who stood lean and strained, spine tensed to pounce. Then back to Glenn, with a tiny sigh. This many words was an investment. He couldn’t just leave it there, even if he wanted to.
“So. Gloria’s in the hole, and she’s nowhere close to in her right mind, and neither of us know what's wrong with her. The lady thinks she’s rummed up. But then she—the lady—she starts taunting Gloria. Needlin’ her. Makin’ it worse. And all of a sudden Gloria snaps and starts hurting herself, like she said—she pulled out a godsdamn tooth and threw it at us. Not like I know anything about it but it looked like it hurt. And she's like you’d better not kill me or Catch’ll be pissed and I’m standin’ there thinkin’ good job, Gloria, say the one thing that’ll make her even more angry, and right on time, it did. She…” He faltered again, looking almost embarrassed. “The lady accused Gloria of doin’ something bad to Catch. Like. Real bad. Just trust me on this one. It was bad. And Gloria’s like, you’re just so in love with him so you don’t see what he really does to people, the mare will dam araile-araile, and the lady…well, I thought she was going to leave her down there.”
“I said I was going to get a branch,” Fionn said, irritated.
“You didn’t say anything. You stormed off. And I told her if she left, I’d go get help from the town guard and let Gloria tell ’em whatever she wanted, and then I’d go tell you about all the business with her and Gloria. Because there’s a lot. But she left anyway. I figgered she wasn’t coming back, so I went and found some help, which was a goddamn mistake, but never mind that now. Anyhow, about the time I did get back, so did she. And that’s when she took my voice. I guess so’s I didn’t end up tellin’ you everything I just did. And that’s when Gloria called her a rat’s back.”
“Rat’vak.” The r ripped from the tip of her tongue; the final syllable became a whipcrack. The morning dew steamed off the grass around her as if her very anger had caused it to smolder. “Servant. She called me servant.”
The raven shuffled, eyes sliding away from her. “Ye-e-e-ah, in case you couldn’t tell from that tone, callin’ a queen a servant? Not great. Anyway, that was pretty much the end of it. She stormed off, I stuck around long enough to see Gloria got out, then I buggered off before anyone could ask me any questions. Except by then I couldn’t’ve answered them.”
His chest inflated, then sagged. The effort of telling the story had blunted the edge of his frustration; the broken dam reduced to a trickle. Watery pink light bounced off the lake’s ripples. A bank of yellow-bellied clouds drifted idly over Myrken. The larks were out, and the hole of his front door looked awfully dark and cozy from here, were not his lady’s face, now clear in the dawn’s glow, glaring at him like a baleful moon: lips pressed to a line, eyes widened somewhere between anger and betrayal. It was, he realized, not unlike the look on her face when she’d taken his voice to begin with. She’d do it again, the moment Glenn’s back was turned, if this gambit failed.
“So,” he concluded, “long story short: she’s gotten weird about Catch. I just didn’t realize how weird until all that happened. I don’t think she realized either. She still doesn’t realize it. I think the reason she got so mad with Gloria is because Gloria was right. When it comes to Catch, she don’t see anything. And I don’t know if it’s her or if it’s him anymore.”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.