--from Golden Tongue: The Poems of Steven Slaughter
Watching James come out to rescue Dee behind the W dorm put me in a bad mood. I got tired of watching her boohoo-ness really fast, and decided to go to the movie theater instead. If I was going to be witness to that amount of melodrama, I wanted it to be delivered by a highly paid and beautiful head on a big screen. On the walk over to the theater, I thought of the multitude of things I didn't like about Dee. While I waited in line for a ticket--not that I really needed a ticket--I wondered if she practiced her sad faces in a mirror. Or if she was just a natural at invoking sympathy in male types. Not something I really had talent for myself.
The kid at the ticket counter looked bored. "Which movie?"
"Surprise me," I told him, and waved money at him. It took him a moment to figure out what I meant. "Seriously?"
"Serious as death."
He raised his eyebrows, punched something into the computer, and then gave me an evil grin that made me think fondly on the human race in general. He handed me a ticket, face down. "Go right. Second theater. Have fun."
I rewarded him with a smile and headed down the dim carpeted hall. It smelled of popcorn butter, carpet cleaner, and that other odor that always seemed to invade theaters-anticipation, or something. In such familiar surroundings, my brain returned to its previous preoccupation: things that I hated about Dee.
One, her eyes were too big. She looked like an alien.
I counted the doors to the second theater and resisted the temptation to look up at the sign above the door to see what movie Ticket-Boy had chosen for me.
Two, her voice was pretty at first, but it got annoying fast. If I wanted to hear singing, I'd get a CD.
Inside the theater, it was quiet and fairly empty--only two or three other couples. Maybe that wicked grin from Ticket-Boy was because he had sent me to a dud.
Three, she used James to make herself feel better. It was the sort of attribute I only liked for me to have.
I chose a seat in the dead center of the theater and put my feet up on the chair in front of me. It was the perfect seat. If anyone came in and sat in front of me, I'd kill them.
Four, she fit in James' arms too perfectly. Like she'd been there before. Like she was claiming him.
The trailers boomed to life in front of me. Normally I would've basked in them, enjoyed the promise of movies to come, but I couldn't focus on them tonight. For starters, I wouldn't be around for any of the movies they were advertising--they were all for the Christmas season and next year--and plus, I was rehearsing dialogue in my head for next time I saw James.
"Unrequited love," I'd say. He'd look at me sideways in that cunning way he did and say, "What about it?" and I'd reply, "It's just not your color." Pithy. Just to show him that I'd noticed. Or maybe I'd show myself to her and say, "Guess I'm not the only one who uses humans around here." And then I'd summon some of Owain's hounds to chew off the bottom bits of her legs. Then she wouldn't fit just right into his arms. She'd be too short. It'd be like hugging a midget.
I grinned in the theater.
The movie began with a sweeping rock ballad from the '70s and a helicopter shot of New York City. The guitar work was inspired--I wondered if I'd had anything to do with it. It quickly became apparent that Ticket-Boy had sent me to a romantic comedy. Not really my thing, but at least it would take my mind off James and the song he'd played for me earlier. It was unbearable to think I might never hear it played out loud again.
I was getting a crush on it.
For a half hour, I tried to get into the movie but I couldn't. It was cutesy, and they kissed, and there was lovey music. And I started thinking how I would fit into James' arms, if my head would fit just right under his chin like Dee's had. And then I started thinking about his car, how it had smelled like him, and I imagined that smell clinging to my skin.
Crap.
I got up and pushed my way out of the theater. I didn't stop to talk to Ticket-Boy, although I felt his eyes on me. He probably thought I hated the movie. Maybe I had. I walked straight out into the twilight. The rain had stopped; thunder growled far away. I headed down the rain-slicked sidewalk, fast, as if I could put space between me and my thoughts.
It wasn't like there hadn't been tension of the sexual variety between me and my pupils before--the guys, poor little lambs, almost always wanted to get my clothing off, which just made them work harder and sound all the more beautiful.
But it wasn't supposed to happen to me. I wasn't human.
I was so caught up in myself that I didn't realize I wasn't alone until the street lights flickered around me, guttering and flickering like candles before shining brightly again. Whoever-whatever--it was, it wouldn't do to look cowed, so I kept walking along the sidewalk as if I hadn't noticed. Maybe it was only a solitary faerie who would leave me alone.
My hopes disappeared when I heard voices, distantly, and saw two faeries approaching me on the sidewalk. My stomach flopped over in a hollow kind of way, an unfamiliar sensation.
Nerves.
It was the queen.
Before she had been queen--before the previous queen had been ripped into pieces--Eleanor always wore white. The white had lent her pale gold hair more color. Now that she was queen, Eleanor wore green according to the oldest traditions, and her long hair looked nearly white under the streetlights.
Tonight's dress was of course a thing of freakin beauty, deep green-black with golden rings and spangles stitched into the sleeves and into the high collar that covered her long neck and framed her chin. Some sort of jewels glittered at me from her train, which dragged on the sidewalk behind her. Unlike the previous queen, Eleanor didn't wear a crown--only a small circlet of pearls that shone dully like baby teeth.
She was so beautiful that it ached. Was this what James felt when he saw me?
Eleanor saw me and laughed, terrible and lovely. The person beside her was not a faerie, as I'd first thought, but rather her consort, the man from the dance. He smiled at me with one corner of his mouth and looked back at Eleanor. He was very human; fragile and stolen and in love.
"Ah, little whore," Eleanor said, pleasantly. "By what name are you called this time?"
I'd heard the word too many times before to flinch. I tilted my chin up, defiant. "You'd ask me to say my name where anyone could have it?" After I said it, I regretted it. I waited for the obvious comeback, heard a thousand times before: Anyone could have the rest of you.
But Eleanor just smiled at me, benevolent; with wonder, I thought perhaps she hadn't meant "whore" as an insult, merely as a tide. Then she spoke. "Not your true name, faerie. What does your current boy call you?"
James had said no to me, so saying "Nuala" was technically a lie. I couldn't lie any more than Eleanor could, so I was forced into telling the truth. "I don't have anyone at the moment."
Eleanor's pity burned like a slap. "Feeling quite weak, are you, poor dear?"
"I'm fine. He only died a few months ago."
Her consort frowned, his thoughts drifting toward me, wondering if he should be politely expressing grief. Eleanor inclined her head gently toward him and explained. "She needs them to stay alive, you know. Their creativity. The poor creatures die of course, eventually, but I'm sure the sex was worth it. Don't worry, lovely, I won't let her have you. He's a poet."
I realized that the last bit was directed at me and looked at the human again; he returned my gaze steadily and without judgment. His thoughts were easier for me to read now, without the cacophony of the faerie dance around us. I probed gently in them for his name but met resolute silence--he protected it as well as a faerie. So he wasn't a complete idiot, despite his questionable taste in women.
"So you are looking for a new friend?" Eleanor asked, and I realized that she had known all along that I had no one. "I would just ask you to be mindful of my court, lovely, as you're choosing your next... pupil. There are goings-on that we don't need meddling with. This will be a Samhain to remember."
It took me a moment to remember that Samhain was
Halloween. I jerked my chin toward her consort. "Because of him? I hear there's king-making going on."
I had probably said too much, but there was no taking it back now. Besides, Eleanor was just gazing at me as if I were a pile of puppies. "Truly there are no secrets amongst my people, are there?"
The consort, for just a moment, looked a little sick to his stomach--regretting, I imagined, his loose tongue.
The queen stroked his hand with her fingers as if she sensed his unease. "It's all right, darling, no one thinks ill of you for becoming a king." She looked to me again. "You will of course remain quiet on this subject with your pupils, won't you, little muse? Just because all of Faerie knows of our plans doesn't mean that the humans need to."
"Quiet as flowers," I said sarcastically. "What do the humans have to do with it?"
Eleanor laughed with painful delight, and her consort stumbled from the force of it. "Oh, lovely, I forget how little you know. A human--the cloverhand--is what pulls us here to this place. We follow her, as always, against our will. But after this Samhain, we will choose our own path. And we will become more fey, more powerful, for it." She paused. "Except for you, of course.
You will always be tied to them, poor creature."