The glam’s undoing took even the raven by surprise: before he could register that he wore quite a lot less mass, a hot heavy Something (which turned out to be Glenn’s arm) pinned his wing to his side; the other wing battered the air, striking back against something solid that may well have been Glenn’s face. For the whole of that frenzied ride, the Raven could not remember ever drawing in a single breath.
In the next second he was flat on his back, squawking and scratching at the air. For a terrifying moment, he had no orientation, and since a raven always knows where the sky is, all he could figure was that either Catch or the Lady or a combination of the two had, somehow, obliterated
Up.Then he flipped himself onto his feet, and the world turned with him, settling itself into horizons and verticals. Up was Up and Down was Down.
Glenn was Down, crawling away retching. If you were whole enough to crawl and had enough innards left to retch, you were probably alright enough. For now.
And the Lady?The raven had to squint past Catch’s blinding whiteness to find her.
* * *
And the Lady…She both heard and felt his single word as it slammed into her. Her skull rang.
He did nothing; He only commanded, and before she could even register what the Word was, she obeyed. The web snapped like so many cut cables, every strand flicking back to slap her across the face, the breasts, cutting her legs out from under her so that her knees thudded in the mud, while her forearms crossed over her face to ward off an assault she couldn’t even identify while she cried out with fat, tongueless croaks and gurgles.
The onslaught passed as quickly as it had begun. She lowered her shaking arms, but the pain of the invisible welts melted away before she could even begin to look for the damage.
The half-head of hair gave a defiant little toss, fluttering like a tattered banner as she raised her gaze upward to Catch.
Her Catch. Both on their knees, face to face, even though He was enormous and glorious, a shade no one could possibly mistake for silver, His filaments writhing and rippling. Her trembling hand reached for the curve of His jaw and at once her fingertips began to ooze and throb, black tendrils dripping down and curling upward under their own power before they touched the ground.
The glamourie snagged one edge, then the other, and once they were found, it was a simple matter to
fold—
and the world—
shattered—
—into quadrants
Through no effort on either of their parts, Benedict found himself settling lightly upon his lady’s forearm. Her blackened left hand reached for his face, but he ducked its head, shuffling out of reach. His sharp face twisted back and forth, stabbing the air. Not only were they alone, the whole Woods felt empty. It smelled like high summer: the green reek of the lake, grass baking in the heat, a noontime stillness in the air. No skates on the water. No fluttering insects in the tall grass, no rising sizzle of cicada. No other birds. The lake was flat as glass, blinding to look at with the sun straight on it.
And over the Lady’s shoulder, past the far gleaming edge of the lake…no Myrken. Only an unbroken line of trees.
But this didn’t feel like a glam, dammit. Try as he might, he couldn’t find any edges. As far as glamourie went, this was a seamless glass globe, all summer tucked away in a little sphere with them in the center. Just him, and just her, dreamy and thoughtful, as if she had all the time in the world.
His beady blue eyes jerked back to her. “Where are we?”
Her smile reformed with frankly worrying softness. She shrugged a shoulder carelessly.
“Yes, it damn well does matter.” The raven crawled back and forth along her forearm, wingtips shivering. “Who’s doin’ this? You or the big guy? Why can’t I find the wanker? He was right over there—”
Both heads turned to look—she with amusement, the raven with increasing anxiety—at the uncreased spot in the grass where Glenn had been lying.
“—and now he’s not. He’s not anywhere. Nobody is anywhere.” Angrily he dodged her hand again. “Don’t pet me! I ain’t in the mood.”
Her fingers curled inward and her hand drew away, chastened. She seemed earnestly baffled. The raven felt a thin thread of hope. He made himself calm, almost limp on his perch.
“Look. I don’t know what’s going on here, but this really isn’t fair. We came to fetch you out, and now there isn’t any out. I can’t find Myrken. I can’t find anything. And you…ah, your head there. That looks like it hurts. You’re going to want patching up.” The raven lowered his voice, proof against no one, as the two of them were all that existed in this splinter of time. Nevertheless, you never quite knew. “You’ll be alright, I know. And the big guy, he’ll be alright. Me, I’m always fine; I can fly myself somewhere. Glenn, though—he can’t. You know what he’s like. If he’s somewhere, he’ll try to wait you out, and he’s already sort of a mess right now. Think of him, at least.”
The Queen, surprised, turned her head towardHer sionnach, flat on his back on a mat of rust and gold. Her clever, stubborn, graceful fox. She herself lay stretched on her side in the crackling leaves beside him, one hand cushioning her head. Not touching. Only looking. They had both been there for a goodly while. Sunset lapped at the lake, the last light falling on the city walls, and the ground had grown chill enough to hint that perhaps it might be a good idea to move along soon, but there was no pressing need. She had done the impossible trick: she had made the glamourie real. The still-more impossible trick was to make herself believe that she had done it for his sake.
Her lips pressed in a wry line, she plucked a wedge of dark hair off his brow and tucked it back into place. The sick sweat vanished with it, along the acid burning the back of his throat. More leniency than he deserved for such foolishness. There was little doubt that if he was here, he was here of his own volition; even Catch would have had to drag him, and no doubt untangle him from every tree trunk along the way as he resisted.
Admonition would do him no good. It was only his nature. She forgave him for it, all in the single sweep of a finger against his forehead, but did not speak. Couldn’t. Only the gesture had a voice:
The only reason I never loved you, my sionnach, was because you would never love me back. It is a pity for us both, though mayhap not for the world. Such edifices we might have built! I would have convinced you, or you would have talked me into it, one way or another, had we love among all our other armaments. Perhaps that is why you did not. You knew better. You have always known better than I.
A sudden pulse of brightness distracted her. She shifted slightly on her hip toward
Catch, her leannan, now made lovely and wild beyond all reason. Had she held that head in her lap? What on earth had been in her—bravery or ignorance?
But look at him now, pure silver, rainbows rippling along the lengths of his tendrils, the world bowing to his feet. Undaunted. Choosing his own path. And she had played a part in that. Oh, the least little part, true, but her pride glittered bright, a lesser star bound in orbit to his shining. Love for him swelled in her chest, too big for her to contain. Glamourie blurred in the impression of thoughts:
I am so happy for you. What you have become. What you are. What you have always been. Fortunate am I, to live in such an age, to see you so! You have made peace of my war, mo leannan, for if was needed to bring me to this moment, it was worth the blood.
The black blood gushed from her hand and pooled under her feet, tarring them to the earth. Spring violets uncoiled and popped out of the black earth. A wind shivered the new leaves.
But there isn’t any moment, is there? There is no age. The raven was wrong, and she was wrong, too, wasn't she? It is not that no one is anywhere. Everything is everywhere. All the time. Always. That is the only way to Fix everything: to go to the place where it was never broken.
With a musing, thoughtful expression, her head turned toward the Woods, seeing through the miles of trees and fields and tultharian towns as though they had all turned to glass. All the way to the sea. The glamourie turned with her, stretching like a greedy hand toward the north. Far, far north.
I’ve solved the riddle, mo leannan. I know how to bring Mabhe ni Niall out from under the hills, so that she never died at all, and still make myself be born as myself. I know how to undo the High Queen so that she never was. And once ’tis done, I can make Here Home and Home Here. All I have to do is put everything in the same place.And here, and now, she was: slumped on her knees at the banks of the night-black lake, indifferent stars above, shivering uncontrollably in spite of her burns. At her back, she heard voices, a great pack of them, bodies jostling, and the crushing of brush underfoot. She held an old man’s cold stiff hand between her own, pressing it to her chin while she rocked back and forth, keening faintly. Alone. Unable to remember how she had come here. Or where Here was.