The hideous queen inside writhed as if in pain (strangely, Crystine bizarrely noticed, she wasn’t upside down), as if becoming abruptly more hideous still.
Crystine herself was also in agony, the blood rushing into her head, her brain. Her eyes felt like they would explode with the sudden increase in pressure. Everything around her took on a shade of blood red, such that she could have been looking out from inside the ruby.
She struck the ground hard, but with nowhere near the crushing force she had expected.
It felt, weirdly, as if she had simply tripped and fallen.
The thick redness enveloping her at last began to clear, to disperse and drop away, as if it had all been nothing more than a red cloud of disturbed and whirling dust.
A man rushed up to her, a handsome if strangely dressed man.
‘I saw you trip and fall,’ he said concernedly, offering her his hand, wishing to help her rise to her feet, ‘are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Crystine assured him, surprised that she had survived such a long fall, ‘I’m incredibly lucky–’
The word died on her lips.
She wasn’t outside her house.
She was out in wild countryside, the road one of rutted and packed red dust.
*
‘Where am I?’ Crystine asked the young man, trying to hide her bewilderment as she dusted herself down.
‘According to my maps,’ the man answered brightly, ‘we’re not far from the castle of the Hag Queen: but yes, I must admit it’s so easy to get lost out here, isn’t it?’
The man’s trousers were stained with the red dust, a sign, Crystine reasoned, that he had been out walking for a long time.
His jacket – if that’s what you insisted on calling it – could have been something whisked here from a much earlier century, partially quilted and with a decoration of what she assumed had to be fake pearls: there were far too many for them to be real. He would be an easy target for any robber, particularly as he wasn’t armed in any way. He had a large, over-crammed pack on his back, all of it topped with a stringed instrument threatening to send his feathered cap flying.
Another, older man was with him, one far more conventionally dressed.
‘Let me take a look at you,’ this other man kindly offered, drawing closer to Crystine to check her skin for cuts or bruises. ‘I’m a doctor.’
He was thorough yet quick in his investigation. As he stood back, he declared that she was fine, no harm done; then held out an open palm for payment.
‘That will be–’
‘Doctor!’ the young man protested, yet in a manner that told Crystine he wasn’t that surprised by the older man’s actions. ‘You can’t charge her for that!’
‘So you’re saying I’m supposed to starve?’ the elder retorted, observing the young man with a tilted head, much as a curious parrot might do.
In fact, the doctor was very bird-like in his fledgling build, his wizened face and hands.
‘How much this time?’ the younger man asked exasperatedly.
‘Well,’ the doctor began as his tilted gaze fell towards the other man’s jacket,‘I have been admiring a few more of your pearls–’
With a resigned grimace, the young man tore off one of the pearls. There were loose, broken threads everywhere about his jacket, as if the pearls were his only means of making payment,
‘Two pearls,’ the doctor corrected.
The young man sighed as he tore off and handed yet another pearl to the greedily grinning doctor.
‘Ah, I meant two more pearls!’ said the doctor, holding out his palm for yet more payment.
‘Three pearls?’ an aghast Crystine protested. ‘Just for checking that I wasn’t grazed?’
‘Obviously, you don’t know the price of things here, young lady!’ the doctor irately snapped at Crystine, his eyes lighting up with even greater greed as she reached for one of the pearls on her necklace.
At some point during in either the fall or Crystine’s dusting down of herself, the necklace had slipped once more behind her blouse. Now that she was fruitlessly attempting to wrench a pearl free, however, the young man saw it for the first time: and he looked at it with a wide-eyed gaze of immediate recognition.
‘The necklace!’ he declared, awestruck. ‘It’s the one my love had stolen!’
*
Chapter 9
‘I’m sorry,’ Crystine apologised ashamedly to the young man. ‘I didn’t know the necklace had been stolen!’
The young man casually, almost distractedly handed over another pearl to the doctor, his interest no longer on the destruction of his jacket but, rather, on Crystine’s necklace.
‘It was years ago now, I’m afraid; yet it happened just before she was crowned queen!’
The man didn’t sound in any way as if he were calling Crystine a thief. His tone was still more one of complete surprise rather than containing even a hint of any accusation.
‘She’s a queen? The woman you love is a queen?’ Crystine asked with almost as much surprise as she vainly attempted to lift the necklace from around her neck. ‘Please, you can take it back – give it back to her – if you can just help me remove the damn thing!’
Instead of attempting to help her remove the necklace, the young man shook his head sorrowfully.
‘She couldn’t take it off either,’ he admitted.
‘Then…’ Crystine paused in her efforts to take the necklace off, ‘how did she lose it?’
‘We don’t know,’ the man replied honestly. ‘She woke up one morning and she was no longer wearing it. She was distraught for a while, thinking it meant she wouldn’t receive the powers to make the magic jewellery.’
‘She made it?’ the doctor asked, trying to hide his eagerness to hear more after quietly listening to the conversation with growing interest. ‘She makes this jewellery?’
‘Not this necklace,’ the young man said. ‘But she can make other kinds. It turned out, thankfully, that the necklace wasn’t connected to her skills.’
He briefly frowned, then grinned sickly.
‘She was worried, though, that I wouldn’t love her anymore.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘I mean, it wasn’t as if it was some magic necklace, one that makes you fall in love!’
‘Perhaps if we return it to her, to your queen, I might be able to remove it after all!’ Crystine pointed out brightly. ‘She might know how to–’
She stopped, seeing that the young man was shaking his head miserably.
‘She’s not my love anymore,’ he admitted morosely. ‘I can’t return! She won’t have me back!’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Crystine said, seeing the pain in the young man’s entire expression.
The doctor either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He stepped closer towards Crystine, reaching into his cumbersomely shaped leather bag and withdrawing a glittering scalpel.
‘I should be able to help you remove–’
The young man stretched out a long arm, holding the doctor back from progressing any further.
‘No you won’t, doctor! You’ll probably charge her ten pearls for the privilege of having her head cut off!’
The doctor whirled on the younger man, obviously scandalised by the accusation.
‘I’ll have you know I’ve brought more young people into this world than you’ve probably had hot dinners, young man!’
‘Wait,’ Crystine blurted out, recalling something the young man had said after helping her up off the floor. ‘Did you say we were near the Hag Queen’s palace?’
‘Not far at all: so close, in fact, that it should be in view!’
Crystine glanced about herself, looking out for anything that could resemble a castle or palace. There was nothing to see, however, apart from gently rolling hills and woodland.
‘Hah, I meant it should be in view, if it was a normal palace!’ the young man explained.
‘It’s invisible?’ Crystine asked.
‘In it
s way, I suppose,’ the young man chuckled. ‘But only because she built it upside down: digging down into the earth!’
*
‘If her palace is hidden way, how do you know we’re close?’
Crystine couldn’t see anything about this part of the land that made it recognisably different to anything else stretching out from either side of the red road.
‘The road,’ the doctor replied, punching his heel into the packed earth, pointing out that just ahead the deep ruts had been scrupulously repaired, completely flattening the surface. ‘No ruts, no holes, see? Not even the very smallest dip!’
‘She keeps her roads well maintained?’
‘Yes, definitely’ the doctor answered with a knowing guffaw. ‘But only for the very same reason that there’s a complete lack of lakes around here. Or, rather, the lakes have been painstakingly filled in, along with any ponds, even puddles.’
The young man couldn’t miss Crystine’s frown of bewilderment.
‘So that there’s nowhere for water to pool,’ he explained. ‘So she doesn’t have to look at her own reflection.’
*
Under normal circumstances, Crystine might have protested that no one could be so ugly they would go to such lengths to avoid seeing themselves.
But, of course, she had already seen the Hag Queen: seen her staring out at her from within the necklace’s ruby; seen her every night, as she plagued every one of Crystine’s dreams.
‘She even chooses her servants only from those who are no longer of this world,’ the doctor added ominously, his gaze still strangely locked on the red road stretching out into the Hag Queen’s lands.
His increasingly narrowed eyes were focused on a swiftly approaching dust cloud.
‘Is it possible, do you think,’ he added edgily, ‘to outrun horses that have been raised from amongst the dead?’
*
Chapter 10
It was a small platoon of cavalry, gradually taking form in the midst of the dust cloud as if they were appearing out of a morning mist.
They made absolutely no noise, however: there was no thunder of hooves, despite the urgency of their gallop. Neither was there any clattering of hard wheels from the carriage they were escorting.
Their armour was of hardened leather rather than polished steel, for even the points of their pennants had been dulled. Nothing sparkled. Every piece of metal had been painted black, including the brass rings of the reins and saddles.
‘She gets first choice of the dead, it’s said,’ the doctor pronounced fearfully, apparently wishing to shrink even further into his already wasted body. ‘Even the KingFisher is relegated to second place when it comes to picking out the freshly killed.’
The horses exhaled no breath, despite their obvious exertion. There was no sheen of sweat, no stench of overstretched mounts.
Thankfully, there was also no stench of the dead.
There were other signs that the horses had been raised from death, however; their muscles were perhaps a little wasted, their bones maybe a touch more prominent than to be expected.
The men – what could be seen of them beneath their helms – were similarly a touch too skull-like in their expressions, which were blank apart from a stretched grin.
Crystine and the two men stood aside, leaving the road to the riders, hoping the soldiers would simply pass by.
Instead, the small column came to an abrupt halt, such that the carriage stopped exactly opposite them.
The carriage’s driver, seated almost on top of it, had the same, dead stare of the soldiers. The carriage could have been a funereal cart, everything black, the windows heavily curtained.
Not even the slightest nail head was allowed to sparkle upon it.
The edge of one of the curtains shifted a little, someone inside moving it slightly aside, probably so that the occupant could get a better view of the nervous trio.
‘Yes, yes,’ came a harsh yet excited woman’s voice from deep inside, ‘That’s the girl of my dreams!’
*
The door opened; surprisingly with an ominous creak. Steps dropped down into place with an audible clack.
Every solider, along with the driver, had never taken their gaze off the road lying ahead. Now they all as one abruptly turned their heads, some almost all way around, to directly gaze down on Crystine. Their empty stares were nevertheless completely decipherable: she shouldn’t attempt to run.
‘Just you, girl!’ the woman seated inside the carriage barked.
The doctor sighed with relief. The young man, however, stepped in front of Crystine, holding her back from entering the carriage.
‘No!’ he declared adamantly. ‘I must come with her!’
The woman inside chuckled richly.
‘Fool,’ she suddenly snapped.
*
As the young fool graciously if unnecessarily helped Crystine to climb up the short flight of lowered steps leading up into the carriage, the doctor turned and walked away as hurriedly as he could.
As she entered the darkened interior, Crystine fought her curiosity to glance the Hag Queen’s way. All she caught in the corner of her eye, in the dim light coming in from the opened door, was a seated woman garbed in the very darkest of materials.
The fool followed after her; and either his curiosity was greater than Crystine’s or he was less capable of fighting the urge to stare.
He gasped, a deep exhalation of complete shock.
As Crystine slipped into her own seat, seated almost opposite the Hag Queen, she no longer had any excuse not to look her way.
She gasped, more shocked even than the poor fool.
The woman’s face wasn’t veiled, as Crystine might have expected.
Neither was she hideous, as everybody claimed.
For she could have been Crystine’s twin.
No: she could have been Crystine herself.
*
Chapter 11
The lowered steps rose back into position, requiring no helping hand. The door closed behind the fool, as if it were simply returning to its most natural position.
The interior was now completely dark.
Crystine sensed that the carriage was turning completely around, even though there was little if any change to the stability of the carriage. Neither was there any of the sounds that would usually accompany such a complicated manoeuvre: the strained creaking of wheels and springs, the horses whinnying as they were brutally urged to wheel their heavy, cumbersome charge around.
‘Don’t try and hide it,’ the woman snarled, ‘I can see the horror in your eyes!’
Crystine’s eyes were gradually adjusting to the darkness, catching odd glimpses of the lighter flesh, the glittering eyes, amongst the otherwise perfect blackness.
‘No, not horror,’ Crystine replied truthfully. ‘Surprise: disbelief. You’re...you’re me?’
‘How could I possibly be you? I thought he was the fool!’
‘He’s not a fool!’ Crystine responded angrily.
‘I’m afraid she’s righ–’
‘Do you know him?’ the Hag Queen demanded, both interrupting and ignoring the poor fool’s modest reply. ‘Haven’t you only just met him?’
‘I do know him–’
‘Don’t lie, girl! I saw in my dreams: you’ve only just arrived here amongst us! From your world!’
‘Her world?’ the fool frowned in bewilderment.
Ignoring the fool once more, the Hag Queen unexpectedly leapt up from her seat, lunging towards Crystine.
Crystine fearfully slunk back into her seat as far as she could; but of course, she had no hope of avoiding the Hag Queen’s outstretched, grasping hands. The fool leapt up from his own seat, reaching out for the Hag Queen in an attempt to restrain her: but he never got even close to her.
The dark straps of the lushly quilted seats lashed out like the blackest of serpents, curling about his arms, his waist, even his head and throat. They mercilessly dragged him back into his seat, f
irmly holding him there.
The Hag Queen’s hideously withered hands snatched at Crystine’s blouse, almost ripping it apart as she palmed and dragged out the glowing ruby of the necklace.
There was no change in the queen’s blank expression as she stared at the precious stone, so gorgeous that it glittered star-like even in the dark universe of the Hag Queen.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the Hag Queen hissed with obvious glee.
She briefly dragged her admiring gaze away from the stone’s alluring glow, looking up into Crystine’s petrified eyes.
‘It graces your beauty, my dear,’ the queen declared with an uncharacteristic mildness to her tone. ‘You must, of course, make sure you wear it at all times!’
‘I don’t have any choice,’ Crystine admitted.
Crystine wondered if the Hag Queen could see the hideous woman lying deep within the ruby. If she could, she’d made no sign that she’d seen the ugly queen, whom Crystine had presumed was the Hag Queen herself.
‘Good, good: that’s how it should be!’ the Hag Queen said with great satisfaction. ‘It will greatly add to your already highly impressive beauty! Until, of course, the KingFisher decides it’s time for you to be parted from it.’
‘The KingFisher? He took it?’
The fool had been gagged by the straps, but had managed – after a quick, pained struggle –to force out his exclamation of surprise. But he was swiftly gagged once again by an abrupt tightening of the restraining bands.
‘How does a kingfisher decide?’ Crystine asked, failing to recognise the name.
‘You’ll hear more of him later,’ the queen replied with a dismiss wave of a hand. ‘It’s a long story: one you’ll have to ask your fool to explain.’
She continued to roll the ruby in her other hand, glancing at it appreciatively from all angles.
‘Ah yes, I see her: you were wondering, weren’t you?’ Her voice carried tones of both amusement and threat. ‘And you were also wondering, of course, who she is; for now you’ve seen me, you realise it can’t be me, after all?
Crystine nodded in agreement.