The Kingdom of Back(79)

Nothing stirred in the night except the kingdom itself, which had begun to grow faster, its dark grasses lining the steps of the stairs, its poisonous vines and leaves suffocating the buildings. I could hardly feel my bare feet against the rain-soaked pavement of the street.

The woods of the kingdom lined the side of the city, the path into them shrouded in black. I halted in my steps to gather my courage. My shadow wavered under silver light. I looked up to see the twin moons aligned at last with each other, forming a single bright disk in the sky.

Then I stepped onto the path and disappeared into the woods.





THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT



The path I took was lit by nothing more than slivers of moonlight. The tortured trees of the kingdom sighed in the wind, leaning their bare branches and roots toward me as if to pull me to them. I went on, careful to avoid the dark water pooled near their bases. For a while, I couldn’t be sure where I was heading. The path could have led down to the white shores, toward the hidden grotto where the trapped queen lived. Or to the castle, where I would meet Hyacinth.

I tried to turn in the direction that I thought would take me to the beach. My feet padded quietly down the winding path. My breaths came shallow and swift. What if Hyacinth kept me from going there? What if he appeared at the end of the path, waiting for me?

The piece I had composed played on the night air, a melancholy melody that drifted between the trees. There were no faeries lighting the path tonight, for all of them must have abandoned the woods to join Hyacinth at the castle. I was grateful for their absence. If one were here, it would surely tell Hyacinth the news of my presence. But he was distracted by the festivities he was throwing tonight, waiting for me to bring my brother to him.

At last, when I thought I could go no farther, the woods ended, and the path led out onto the shore of white sand. With a start, I realized that the kingdom had permitted me to take the path that my heart wanted to follow. And my heart had led me to the trapped queen.

The ocean was no longer the calm blue I remembered. Now it was so dark that I could no longer see the sand sifting at its bottom, and when I dipped a toe into the water, it no longer felt warm but as cold as the winter sea. I sucked my breath in sharply as I waded in, letting the icy water shock my skin. A short distance away rose the rocks beneath where the grotto lay.

I glanced back once at the woods behind me, half expecting to see Hyacinth waiting for me on the shore, his head tilted at me in expectation. But he was not there.

I turned back to the ocean, took in a deep breath, and dove.

At first, I could see nothing. The water swallowed me whole, pushing against me as I swam deeper, my arms searching for the rough surface of rock. I went on and on, until my lungs began to burn. Had it taken this long for Woferl and me to find the grotto’s entrance when we last entered it? Had it only been a nice memory, the warm, sweet water and the glowing cavern?

What if it was no longer there? Perhaps I was too late, and the Queen of the Night had perished alone.

Just as I thought my lungs might burst, my hands scraped along rock that curved inward into a tunnel. I pushed myself frantically through the black water, reaching blindly, until I hit the end of the tunnel and felt it curve sharply upward. My legs kicked with the strength of my last breath.

I surfaced with a terrible gasp.

The cavern had grown darker since the last time I saw it. The blue flowers that had draped down from the cavern ceiling in sweet garlands, filling the air with their heady scent, had withered and died, leaving behind their shriveled shells. The night flowers that crawled along the walls, lighting the space with their blue glow, had turned scarlet as they died, their skeleton husks littering the cavern floor with an ominous red hue.

I swam toward dry ground. As I went, the silhouette of a figure hunched against the rock walls, her head in her hands, came into view.

Her shoulders shook as she cried. Her legs were still melted into the cavern floor, trapped eternally there. Her wings looked even more tattered and faded than I remembered, hanging limply against her back—but tonight, there was a golden glow about her, as if some remnant of magic were stirring in her blood.

The twin moons. Their alignment. I remembered that this would be the night when her power would be at its height, and then I recalled the Sun’s love for the queen, how he had bestowed her with the magic of his fire.

She did not look up at my approach until I pulled myself out of the water. It must have been the sound of my dripping against the rock that shook her out of her reverie. Her face jerked up, and her dark gaze locked straight on to mine. There was no white in her eyes at all. Suddenly I remembered Hyacinth’s old warning to me, that she was a witch who was not to be trusted, and I felt myself yearning, even now, to heed his advice.

Then her sobs quelled some as she took me in, tilting her head this way and that. At last, a glint of recognition appeared.

“You tricked me,” she said. Her blue lips curled into a snarl as her voice echoed off the cavern walls, repeating the words over and over. You tricked me, you tricked me. “Hyacinth’s little Fr?ulein.”

I forced my hands to stop trembling and myself to move forward. “He tricked me too,” I whispered. “He told me that you were the Queen of the Night, but not that you were once the queen of Back.”

At my words, she froze. She eyed me suspiciously, as if not quite believing me, and for a moment I thought that perhaps she didn’t remember her past at all.