Never After

4



Sally danced that night. It was not the first time she had ever danced, but it was the first beyond the watchful eye of home, in a place where she was not known as the eccentric tatterdemalion princess - but as Sally, who was still a mystery, and unknown, without the aura of expectation and distance that so many placed on her. If anyone recognized her face - and there were several older women who gave her and her clothing sharp looks - no one said a word.



And no one seemed to be aware of the encounter with the ravens; nor commented on the wound in her head. She thought the children must have talked, but the people of Gatis were either too polite, or too used to strange occurrences, to make much of it.



Instead, she was treated as another Twisting Riddle, a woman of letters, who held children in her lap while she transcribed messages on the backs of flat rocks, smooth bark, and pale tanned hide; listening with solemn patience to heartbreak, tearful confessions, stories that would be amusing only to family and friends; news about births, livestock, weather; and the growing mer cenary presence with pleas attached to be safe, be at ease, stay out of the hills. I love you, people said. Write that down, they would tell her. I love you.



And all the while, Mickel juggled and sang, and juggled and danced, and juggled some more: no object was too large or small, not even fire. The other two men were also gifted, in surprising ways. Rumble dragged a stool into the heart of the gathered crowd, where he slouched with his elbows on his knees and began reciting, halfheartedly, a well known fable that also happened to be utterly boring. But at the end of the first verse his hand suddenly twitched, and the ground before him exploded with sparks and fire and smoke.



The crowd gasped, jumping back, but Rumble never faltered in his story, his voice only growing stronger, richer, more vibrant. More explosions, and he began striding forcefully across the ground, punctuating words and moments with clever sleights of hand; cloth roses pulled from thin air, along with scarves, and coins; small hard candies, and once a rabbit that looked wild and startled, as though it couldn't quite believe how it had gotten there.



Patric was a marksman. Daggers, arrows, any kind of target. Sally was convinced to stand very still against a tree with a small soft ball on her head - holding her breath as the blond giant took one look at her, and threw his blade. She felt the thunk, listened to the gasps and cheers, but it was only when she walked away that she was finally convinced that she'd survived.



The men had other acts that impressed - shows of horsemanship, riddles, recitations of famous ballads (during which Sally beat a drum) - indeed, several hours of solid entertainment that no one in Gatis would likely forget for a long time to come. Nor would Sally. And, when the show was over, it seemed only natural that the village treat the little troupe to dinner (at which Patric's catch of venison was sold), and to a performance of their own - as all the local musicians took up a corner of the square, and began playing to their heart's content.



It was night, and the air was lit with fire. Sally danced with strange smiling men, and then Rumble and Patric; but she danced with Mickel the longest, and he was light on his feet, his hands large and warm on her arms and waist. She felt an odd weight in her heart when she was close to him, a growing obsession with his thoughts and the shape of his face; and it frightened her, even though she could not stop what she felt. She thought he might feel the same, which was an even graver complication. His eyes were too warm when he looked at her - cut with moments of flickering hesitation.



But neither of them stopped, and when the music slowed, Mickel twirled her gently to a halt, as Sally spun with all the careful grace she possessed and had been taught.



"Well," he said hoarsely, standing close.



"Yes," Sally agreed, hardly able to speak past the lump in her throat.



The people of Gatis offered them beds in their homes that night. The men politely refused. Sally helped them pack the wagon, including fine gifts of cloth and wine, and then the troupe followed the night road out of the village, toward the north. Sally kept meaning to jump out and head in the opposite direction, but her heart seemed to be heavier than her body, and refused to move from the wagon bed.



"Why did you leave?" she asked Mickel.



"It's never good to overstay," he replied, sounding quiet and tired. "What feels like magic one night becomes something cheap the next, if you don't take care to preserve the memory. Familiarity always steals the mystery."



"Always?"



"Well," he said, smiling. "I believe you could be the exception."



Sally smiled, too, glad the night hid her warm face. "Who taught you all these things?"



"We learned on our own, in different places," Rumble said, the bench creaking under him as he turned to look at her. "All of us a little strange, filled with a little too much wild in our blood. Got the wander-lust? Nothing to do but wander. Now, Mickel there, he comes from a long line of those types. Knows how to recognize them. He put us all together."



"And how long have you been at this?"



Patric flashed white teeth in the dark. "How long have you? You were quite good tonight."



"I read. I held children and beat a drum, and stood while you threw a knife at my face."



"But you did it easily," Mickel said. "You made people feel at ease. Which is not as simple as it sounds. I know what Patric means. You have it in you."



"No," she replied. "I was just being... me."



"As were we."



"Mostly," Rumble added. "I don't usually keep chickadees in my pants, I'll have you know."



"That," Sally said, "was a remarkably disgusting trick."



"It only gets better," Patric replied dryly.



They set up camp near the road, beside a thick grove of trees that was not the Tangleroot, but nonetheless made her think of the ancient forest. It was somewhere close, but if she kept going north with these men, she would lose her chance, lose what precious time she had left.



Perhaps it was for nothing, anyway. Despite her strange dreams and the behavior of the raven (her head still ached, and she could not imagine her appearance), the longer she was away from the gardener and her words, the less faith she had in her chance of finding something, anything, that could help her in the Tangleroot. It might be a magical forest, filled with strange and uncanny things, but none of that was an answer. Perhaps just another death sentence.



You think too much, she told herself. Sometimes you just have to feel.



But her feelings were not making anything easier, either.



Rumble and Patric rolled themselves into their blankets as soon as they stopped, and were snoring within minutes. Mickel stayed up to keep watch, and Sally sat beside him. No fire, just moonlight. He wrapped himself in one of the new cloaks the villagers had given them, and fingered the fine heavy cloth with a great deal of thoughtfulness.



"This is a good land," he said. "Despite the mercenaries."



Sally raised her brow. "You say that as though you've never been here."



He shrugged. "It's been a long time. I hardly remember."



"So why did you come back?"



"Unfinished business." He met her gaze. "Why are you running? More specifically, why are you running to the Tangleroot?"



"My own unfinished business," she replied. "I have questions."



"Most people, when they have questions, ask other people. They do not go running headfirst into a place of night terrors and magic."



Sally closed her fists around her skirts. "I suppose you're lucky enough to have people who can help you when you're in trouble. I'm not. Not this time."



"Apparently." Mickel did not sound happy about that. "Perhaps I could help?"



I wish, she thought. "I doubt that."



"I have two ears, two hands, and I have seen enough for two lifetimes. Maybe three, but I was very drunk at the time. Certainly, I could at least lend some advice."



Sally hesitated, studying him. Finding a great deal of sincerity in his eyes. It almost broke her heart.



"You don't understand," she began to say, and then stopped as he held up his hand, looking sharply away, toward the road. Sally held her breath, listening hard. At first she heard only the quiet hiss of the wind - and then, a moment later, the faint ringing of bells.



Sally knew those bells.



She stood quickly, weighing her options - but there were none. She turned and began running toward the woods. Mickel leapt to his feet, and chased her. "Where are you going?"



"Horses," she muttered. "Deaf man, there are horses coming."



"And?"



She could hardly look at him. "My father. My father is coming to find me, and when he does, he will drag me home, stuff me in a white dress like a sack of potatoes, and thrust me into the arms of the barbarian warlord he has arranged to marry me."



Mickel, who had been reaching for her, stopped. "Barbarian warlord?"



"Oh!" Sally stood on her toes, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Or tried to. It was the first time she had ever done such a thing, and she was rushed. Her lips ended up somewhere around his cheek, left of his nose. Mickel made an odd choking sound.



"I do like you," she said breathlessly. "But I have to go now. If my father finds me with you and your men, he'll assume you all have dispossessed me of my virtue, in various unseemly ways. And then he'll kill you."



Mickel still stared at her as though he had been hit over the head with one of the rocks he was so fond of juggling. "I have a strange question."



"I probably have a strange answer," she replied. "But unless you want to see your man parts dangling around your neck while my father saws off your legs to feed to his pet wolves, I'd best be going. Now."



He followed her, running his fingers through his hair and pulling so hard she thought his scalp would peel away. "Why would your father need to make an alliance with a warlord? He sounds perfectly ghastly enough to handle his enemies on his own."



"Oh, no," she assured him, walking backward toward the woods. "That's me. I have a much better imagination than he does."



A pebble was thrown at them, and hit Mickel in the thigh. Rumble poked his head out from beneath the covers. "Eh! Shut up, shut up! I'm trying to sleep! Can't a man have a decent night's - "



Mickel found something considerably larger than a pebble, and threw it back at him. Sally heard a thump, and Rumble shut his mouth, grumbling.



"You can't go," he said.



"Oh, really." Sally marched backward, pointing toward the forest. "Well, here I am, going. And you should be thanking me."



Mickel stalked after her. "You are the craziest woman I have ever met. You make me crazy. Now come back here. Before I..."



"Do something crazy," Rumble supplied helpfully.



"If you're so crazy, dear man," she said quickly, "I don't think that would be prudent."



And she turned and ran.



Mickel shouted, but Sally did not look back. She wanted to, quite badly, with all the broken pieces of her grieving heart.



But her father would find her if she stayed with him, and she liked Mickel too much to subject him to the harm that the old king most certainly would inflict. He might not be an imaginative man, but he was thorough. And a princess did not travel with common performers, not unless she wanted to become a... tawdry woman.



Which, she thought, sounded rather charming.



The forest was very dark, and swallowed her up the moment she stepped past its rambling boundary, suffocating her in a darkness so complete that all she could do was throw up her hands, and take small, careful steps that did not keep her safe from thorns, or the sharp branches that seemed intent on plucking out her eyes. She had to stop, frequently - not for weariness, but because she was afraid, and each step forward was a struggle not to take another step back.



Or to simply hide, and wait for dawn, until her father passed.



But that would not do, either. Returning to Mickel and his men would endanger them, and she could not tell them who she was. No man - no common, good men - would want to deal with a princess on the run. All kinds of trouble in that, especially for one who was betrothed to the Warlord of the Southern Blood Wastes, Keeper of the Armored Hellhounds, Black Knight of the Poisoned Cookies - or whatever other nefarious title was attached to his name.



Sally could depend only on herself. She had been foolish to imagine otherwise, even for a short time.



And, like the gardener enjoyed saying, life never fell backward, just forward - growing, turning, spinning, burning through the world day after day, like the sun. One step. One step forward.



Until, quite unexpectedly, the forest became something different. And Sally found herself in the Tangleroot.



She did not realize at first. The change was subtle. But as she walked, she found herself remembering, Some trees are bark and root, and some trees have soul and teeth, and she suddenly felt the difference as though it was she herself who was changing, transforming from a human woman into something that floated on rivers of shadows. It became easier to move, as though vines were silk against her skin, and she listened as words riddled through the twisting hisses of the leaves, a sibilant music that slid into her bones and up her throat: in every breath a song. Sweet starlight from the night sky disappeared. The world outside might as well have been gone.



Sally had journeyed too far. The Tangleroot, she had thought, lay farther away - but the ancient had reached into the new, becoming one.



She was here. She had been drawn inside. Nor could she stop walking, not to rest, not even to simply prove to herself that she could, that her body still listened to her. Because it did not. Her limbs seemed bound by strings as ephemeral as cobwebs, tugging her forward, and though she glimpsed odd trickling lights flickering at the corners of her eyes, and felt the tease of tiny invisible fingers stroking her cheeks and ankles, she could not turn her head to look. All she could see was the darkness in front of her.



And finally, the children. Tumbling from the trunks of trees like ghosts, staring at her with sad eyes. Tiny birds fluttered around their shoulders, while lizards and mice raced down their limbs; and though there was no moon or stars to be seen through the canopy, their bodies nonetheless seemed slippery with light: glimpses and shadows of silver etched upon their skin.



The little girl from her dream appeared, dropping from the branches above to land softly in front of Sally. She was different from the others, less a spirit, more full in the flesh. More present in her actions. Her matted hair nearly obscured the silver of her eyes. She crouched very still, staring. Sally could not breathe in her presence, as if it was too dangerous to take in the same air as this child.



The girl held out her hand to Sally. Behind her, deep in the woods, branches snapped, leaves crunching as though something large and heavy was sloughing its way toward her. She did not look, but the children did, their eyes moving in eerie silent unison to stare at something behind her shoulder.



The girl closed her hand into a fist, and then opened it urgently. Swallowing hard, Sally grabbed her tiny wrist - suffering a rapid pulse of heat between their skin - and allowed herself to be drawn close, down on her knees.



The girl reached out with her other hand, and hovered her palm over Sally's chest. Warmth seeped against her skin, into her bones and lungs. She became aware of the necklace she wore, and began to pull it out. The girl shook her head.



Better if you never had the desire to find this place, came the soft voice, drifting on the wind. She would not have heard your heart.



"Who are you?" Sally whispered. "What are you?"



The child glanced to the left and right, at the watching, waiting children. I am something different from them. I was born as I am, but they were made. Forced into the forms you see. They were human and dead, but the trees rose through them, around them, and trapped their souls in this tangled palace, from which they can never leave.



"The queen," Sally said.



She sleeps, and yet she dreams, and though the crown that shackles her mind weakens her dreams, her power is still great through the green vein of the Tangleroot. You have entered her palace, you redheaded daughter, and you will escape only through her will.



Sally leaned back on her heels, feeling very small and afraid. "Why are you telling me this?"



The child made an odd motion over her chest; as though sketching a sign. Because you have lain in my roots from babe to woman, and it is my fault the queen heard your desire. I could not hide your heart from her mind, though I tried. As I try even now, though I cannot disobey her for long.



Sally's breath caught. "You are no tree."



But I am the soul of one, replied the little girl, and tugged Sally to her feet. Beware. She will try to take you, and what you love. And we will have no choice but to aid her.



"No," Sally said, stricken. "How can this be? I came here for help."



There is no help in the Tangleroot. Do not trust her bargains. All she wants is to be free.



And the child forced Sally to run.



She lost track of how long they traveled, but it was swift as a bird's flight, and silent as death. The girl led her down narrow corridors where the walls were trees and vines, and the air was so dark, so cold, she felt as though she was running on air, that beneath her was the mouth of a void from this world to another, and that if she fell, if the child let go, she might fall forever.



Beyond them, in the tangle of the forest, she glimpsed clearings shaped like rooms, replete with mushrooms large as chairs, and steaming pools of water within which immense scaled bodies swam. She glimpsed other runners, down other corridors, ghosting silver and slender, limbs bent at impossible angles that startled her with fear. Voices would cry out, some in pain or pleasure, and then fade to an owl's hoot. And once, when a wolf howled, its voice transformed into slow, sly laughter, accompanied by the whine of a violin; clever music that women danced to, glimpsed beyond a wall of vines: breasts bare with nipples red as berries, faces sharp and furred like foxes, and eyes golden as a hawk.



Sally saw all these things, and more; but none seemed to see her. It was as though all the strange creatures within the Tangleroot abided in separate worlds, lost in the maze that was the queen's dreaming palace. It was haunting, and terrifying. Sally was afraid of becoming one of those lost living dreams, sequestered and imprisoned in a room made of vines and roots, and ancient trees.



But the little girl never faltered, though she looked back once at Sally with sadness.



Finally, they slowed. Ever so delicately, Sally was pulled through a wall of trees so twisted they seemed to writhe in pain. Even touching them made her skin crawl, and she imagined their leaves weeping with soft, delicate sobs. And then Sally and the girl broke free, and stood upon the edge of a lake.



It felt like dawn. A dim silver light filled the air, though none had trickled into the forest. She had thought it was night until now - and perhaps it was still, on the other side of the Tangleroot.



No birds sang, no sounds of life. The water was frozen and the air was so cold that Sally could see each breath, and her face turned numb. When she looked up, examining the rocky shore, she thought that the trees still carried leaves, black and glossy, but then those leaves moved - watching her with glittering eyes - and she realized that the branches were full of ravens. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, sitting still.



It made her feel small and naked. Fear had been her constant companion for the last several days - but now a deeper, colder terror settled in her stomach. Not of death or pain, but something worse that she could not name, worse even than those rooms in the forest filled with strange beings. It had not seemed such a bad thing before, to enter a place and come back changed - but she had been a fool. Sally felt as though she sat on the edge of a blade, teetering toward sanity or madness. One wrong slip inside her heart would be the end of her.



The little girl pointed at the ice. Sally looked into her silver eyes, uncertain.



Only through her, whispered words on the wind, though the child's mouth did not move. She has you now.



Sally gazed out at the frozen lake, which shone with a spectral glow. Far away, though, the mists parted - and Sally glimpsed a long dark shape on the ice.



She found herself stepping onto the ice. The little girl did not follow, nor did the ravens move. She walked, sliding and awkward, terror fluttering in her throat until her heart pounded so hard she thought it might burst. And yet she could not stop. Not until she reached the coffin. Which, when she arrived, was not a coffin at all, but a cusp of stone jutting from the water, dark with age and carved to resemble the bud of a frozen flower. It seemed to Sally that the stone might have been part of a tower - the last part - reaching through the ice like a broken gasp.



Sally peered inside. Found a woman nestled within. She knew her face from dreams: pale, glowing, with a beauty so unearthly it was both breathtaking and terrifying. There was nothing soft about that face, not even in sleep; as though time had refined it to express nothing but truth: inhumanly cruel, arrogant, and cold.



She wore a crown of horns upon her head, though they seemed closer to branches than antlers, thick with lush moss covered in a frost that enveloped much of her body; painting her dark brow and hair silver, and her red dress white, except for glimpses of crimson. The crown seemed very tight upon her head, and there was a small heart-shaped groove at the front of it, set in wood.



The lock for a key.



Sally could hardly breathe. She started to look behind at the shore to see if the little girl was still there, but a whispering hiss drew her attention back to the sleeping queen. Her eyes were closed, her mouth shut, but Sally heard another hiss, and realized it was inside her head.



I know your face, whispered the sleeping queen. I know your eyes.



Sally stared at that still, pale face, startled and terrified. "No. I have never been here."



I know your blood. I know your scent. You bear the red hair of the witches who imprisoned me. So, we are very close, you and I. I know what you are.



A chill beyond ice swept over Sally. "Is that why you brought me here?"



You wanted to come, murmured the queen. So you have. And now you stand upon the drowned ruins of the old kingdom, amongst the souls of the long dead. You, who share the blood of the dead. You, whose ancestors escaped the dead. And left me, cursed me, bound me.



Sally trembled. "I know nothing of that. I came for answers."



Release me, and I will give you answers.



Her hand tightened, and she realized that she was holding her mother's necklace, squeezing it so forcefully the chain was digging into her hand. She was almost too afraid to move, and glanced back at the shore - glimpsing movement amongst the trees. Children. The little girl. Ravens fluttering their wings. She did not know how it all pieced together. It was too strange, like a dream.



Someone else stumbled from the woods, down to the edge of the lake.



Mickel. He had followed her into the wood.