Because You Love to Hate Me(70)
“Not without the girl,” George said. “Release my sister from your bewitchment, or I will shoot you, as I shot your hell-spawned offspring.”
“Victoria made a bargain. A life for a life.” The forest rippled as she approached, half walking and half drifting, like a wraith from a nightmare. “Leave.”
Marigold splashed through the water and ran toward the monster. George grabbed her and pulled her, writhing, against him. He pressed the pistol to his sister’s jaw, and she began to cry out: a hoarse, enraged sound. Her breast heaved as the Erl-queen watched them, her face betraying nothing through the veil.
“Isaac,” Marigold gasped, “Isaac, you must see what he is.”
“Quiet.” George only had eyes for the Erl-queen. “You will stand aside and let us leave.”
“If she leaves,” the Erl-queen whispered, “she dies young.”
Isaac swallowed. “And Princess Alice?”
When the Erl-queen turned to look at him, the forest seemed to move with her. Leaves and petals clung to her veil. The birds warbled a frenzy of song. The wind sighed. He almost lost courage, but he said, “Will the princess also die young?”
“Her wedding will be held in the shadow of death. She will be melancholy all her life and will not outlive her mother. Two of her children will be slain,” the Erl-queen said. “Two more will die before they truly lived. She was happy in the Forest of Erl.”
“She protects us, Isaac,” Marigold said, her voice low and strained. “The Erl-queen protects us from being hurt, being killed. She brings us here to save us from our fates, to give us a happy life. She is kind to us. She saw in the pool that George would—”
“Riddles and blasphemy.” George gripped her arm. “Back to London we go, my dear. Isaac, with me.” His face was almost bloodless. “We must get Marigold away from here. She needs protection from a man, not this monster.”
Isaac hesitated.
He ought to listen to Marigold. He thought he had loved her . . . but he had loved a fa?ade. Whatever might or might not be true of George, he was her blood, and a shrewd man—he knew what was best for her. And to leave her with this hellish thing that had worked such an enchantment on her mind was surely to leave her for dead.
“No, Marigold,” he said thickly. “I want you too much.”
She closed her eyes and turned her face away.
That was when the Erl-queen’s son appeared beside his mother. As Isaac beheld the creature he was certain they had killed, he turned cold to his very soul.
“If we Erl-folk had any weaknesses, we would take care for humans not to know them.” The mouth of thorns smiled at them both. “I did ask you, Isaac Fairfax,” it said, “if you believed everything you heard about me. You believed that girls were easily distracted. You believed I could be slaughtered with metal.”
Steel had never harmed them. It had been a lie, all of it—baseless gossip, London whispers.
They had no weapons. No means by which to guarantee their safe passage. As Isaac realized how grave a mistake they had made, George ran, hauling Marigold with him by the hair. She screamed at him in fury. In his wake, Isaac desperately swung his sword at the Erl-queen’s son, shouting “Get back, villain,” no longer knowing whether he was fighting to reach Marigold or to protect George, or simply to preserve his own life—but when he slashed open that glistening skin, all that came out were sap and flies. Thousands of flies. He screamed as they surrounded him, as they infested him. The last thing he saw were the rose-thorn teeth.
It must have been hours later when he woke. George was nowhere to be seen. Isaac’s sword lay dull and stained among the leaves, too far away to grasp.
The Erl-queen and her son stood over him. Bloodied mouths. Glinting black eyes.
Oh, those teeth, those terrible teeth, red with death.
“Do not weep, Isaac Fairfax,” the Erl-queen said softly. “This story has a happy ending. Marigold is safe at last from the monsters who imprisoned her.”
A whimper was the only sound that passed his lips. He could not move; he could not speak; he could not scream as the forest drank him into its embrace. Somewhere in the dancing shadows, Marigold was singing. And darkness was encroaching on the glade.
REGAN PERUSSE’S VILLAIN CHALLENGE TO SAMANTHA SHANNON:
Erl-Queen Retelling in Nineteenth-Century London
EVIL REVEALED
BY REGAN PERUSSE
Folklore is awesome because, historically, it is both a tool for entertainment and for warning against dangers—both natural and human-made. Societal expectations of behavior are woven into these fantastical stories, and they are used as guides to explain what is “right” and what is “wrong.”
Within the realm of folklore, the Erl-queen fascinated me the most. Originating in Scandinavian folklore, she is a faerie queen who lives deep in the forest, where she lures young children and kidnaps them. She is a villain created to scare young children from straying too far from home and also a story to scare society about women who seek too much power, or any power at all. Because while the Erl-queen is “evil,” she is also inherently a very formidable (badass) independent woman. Enter Samantha Shannon’s “Marigold” . . .