The Iron Traitor

Page 42

Kenzie crouched down to peer into the narrow hole, then looked back at me. “Um...so we’re all going to turn into weasels to get through this, I guess?”
“I could turn you into a mouse if you want,” Puck offered. “Don’t really know when you’d turn back, but hey, it would be an experience, right? I’d watch out for Furball, though. He might think he’s smarter than anyone else, but like he says, he’s still a cat.”
“Do not be ridiculous, Goodfellow,” Grimalkin said with an offended air. “There is no question that I am smarter than all of you.” And he slipped into the dark hole without a backward glance or any hint of how we were supposed to fit down a freaking rabbit hole after him.
In desperation, I looked at Keirran, who gave me an encouraging smile. “It’s all right,” he reassured me, nodding to the hole. “Don’t think that you won’t fit. You will. It’s much bigger than it looks. Try it.”
Dubiously, I looked down at the hole. I would’ve said something about the impossibility of it all, but I reminded myself that we were in Faery, and nothing ever made sense here. Slowly, I bent down, peering cautiously into the darkness in case something with large teeth came lunging out at my face. Weirdly enough, the closer I got to the hole, the bigger it seemed. When I was just a foot or so away from the embankment, crouched all the way on my hands and knees, the burrow seemed just wide enough for my head to fit through. Trying not to think of how stupid I’d look if my head got stuck while my ass poked out the end, I inched forward and leaned into the opening.
My head did not get stuck. In fact, I discovered I could wiggle my shoulders through and slide all the way into the tunnel. Cold dirt pressed against my jeans, and feathery roots tickled the back of my neck as I crawled in farther. The tunnel stank of mud, leaves and some kind of potent animal musk, making me wrinkle my nose. I hoped we wouldn’t run into the owner of this burrow on our way to the Seelie Court. I didn’t think I’d have a great advantage waving my swords around in such a tight space. Hopefully, nothing would come up on us from behind, either, because there was no way I could turn around.
I could still hear Keirran and Kenzie at the mouth of the burrow, and glanced back to see that the hole looked the same size as it did before, tiny and rabbit-size. Kenzie’s face abruptly peered through the opening, eyes wide, and I wondered if I had shrunk while trying to wiggle into the burrow. Or did the tunnel somehow conform to my presence, expanding to allow me to slip inside? Or was this all some kind of illusion?
Ugh, stop thinking about that, Ethan. Logic doesn’t apply here and you’re going to make your brain explode.
“Human.” Grimalkin’s disembodied voice drifted out of the dark. A pair of glowing yellow eyes floated ahead in the shadows, though I couldn’t see the rest of the cat. “Are you going to move, or are you going to sit there like a lump and block the opening of the tunnel?”
Oh, right. I crawled forward, giving Kenzie and Keirran room to slide in behind me. It was weird; I watched them both crawl into the tunnel, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell if they shrank or if the hole got bigger or if I was going completely batty or what. It just happened, and a few seconds later, they were behind me, Razor’s neon blue grin lightening the walls of the burrow.
“Funny!” He cackled, and I had to agree. Not the funny-ha-ha kind, though.
“Oof,” Puck muttered as he joined us, bringing up the rear. “Oh yeah, I forgot about this,” he mused, peering up the burrow. “Been a while since I’ve used this shortcut, though. Hey, Furball, where does this lead, again?”
The floating eyes ignored that question. “This way,” Grimalkin said and turned away, padding down the tunnel. “And do try to keep up.”
It wasn’t a straight shot, we discovered. Almost immediately, the tunnel branched out in several directions, twisting off into the unknown. I concentrated on the bobbing yellow eyes as we navigated this labyrinth on our hands and knees, feeling my skin crawl every time we passed another dark tunnel. Except for the blueish glow of Razor’s teeth, it was pitch-black down here, and the earthen walls seemed to press in on me the farther we went. I tried not to imagine the tunnel collapsing around us, or Grimalkin vanishing without a trace, leaving us behind in the dark. If there was ever a time to be thankful I wasn’t claustrophobic, this would be it.
Finally, after a much longer time than I thought it would take, I followed the eyes around a corner and found a door sitting at the end of the tunnel. Not a regular, full-size door; this one was short and square, looking like the entrance to a cupboard or cabinet. It was halfway open, and a sliver of yellow light peeked through the crack.
Crawling forward, I pushed it open and looked down.
Yep, I was in a cupboard, apparently. Right below me was a stone sink, and next to that, a long counter with piles of chopped vegetables and bloody bits of meat and bone. Were we in...a kitchen of some sort? The thought made me very nervous; of all the places to end up in the world of Faery, kitchens were not at the top of my list. All those stories about people getting stuffed into ovens or baked into pies? They didn’t happen in the living room.
“Are you ever going to come down?” Grimalkin wondered, now sitting across the room on top of a shelf. “Or are you going to sit there and gape until the cook opens the door and finds you?”
I carefully eased out of the cupboard, using the sink to balance myself until I could step down. Kenzie followed me and I helped her to the stone floor, where she looked around eagerly.
“Are we in a kitchen?” she asked, voicing my own question earlier. Looking up at the cabinet, where Keirran slid out and hopped gracefully to the floor, she frowned. “And...did we just crawl through a cupboard to get here? How...?”
“Don’t ask,” I said. “Trust me, it’s better if you don’t wonder about it.”
Puck joined us, dropping to the ground, dusting off his hands as he rose. Taking a swift glance at our surroundings, his eyebrows arched.
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh?” Keirran gave him a weary look as Razor buzzed with alarm. “We’re not going to like what you’re going to tell us next, are we?”
“Well...” Puck scratched the side of his neck. “I just remembered why I stopped using that shortcut—”
Footsteps echoed outside the hall. Loud, ponderous footsteps, made by something large and heavy. Atop the shelf, Grimalkin disappeared.
Puck grimaced. “Maybe you should hide now.”
We scrambled for a nearby closet, crowding in among brooms, mops and bags of potatoes. As Keirran pulled the door mostly shut, leaving a crack to peer through, a shadow darkened the door, and a massive green troll filled the frame. It—she?—wore a once-white apron, now stained with red, and carried a meat cleaver in one thick claw. A brown braid was tossed over a shoulder, and two long tusks curled up from her jaw as she stared at Puck, her lips curling back in revulsion.
“Robin Goodfellow?” the troll bellowed as Puck gave her a cheeky wave. “You are not supposed to be here—you were banned from this kitchen for life!”
“Aw, come on, Sarah,” Puck answered as the troll stalked into the room. “You’ve missed me. Admit it.”
“Out!” roared the troll, swinging her knife, which he instantly dodged. “Get out, you miserable thief! I’ll have no more pies stolen by the likes of you! Out, out!”
Laughing, Puck ducked, rolled and finally scrambled out the door, the troll stomping after him waving her meat cleaver. Keirran shook his head as Razor cackled with glee and bounced on his shoulder.
Grimalkin was waiting on the top shelf as we emerged from the closet, looking as though nothing had happened. “Are we quite finished?” he asked, as if a giant troll storming into the room and chasing after Puck was our fault, somehow. “Are you ready to go find the queen?”
“What about Puck?” Kenzie asked.
“I am sure Goodfellow will rejoin us when he is done playing with the cook,” the cat said, leaping to the floor. “Now, shall we move on before anything else can happen?”
* * *
Following Grimalkin, we left the kitchens, opened a large wooden door and found ourselves in a brambly tunnel. Once the door was shut and we were a good distance away, no longer able to hear the furious bellows still echoing through the branches, the cat paused and turned to face us.
“That is the way to the throne room, where Titania is holding court,” he said, nodding to where another bramble tunnel twisted off into the thorns. “I assume you can find your way from here, Prince?”
“Yes,” Keirran said as Razor hissed at the cat from beneath his hair. “I take it you’re not coming with us to see the queen?”
“I have no business with the court.” Grimalkin yawned. “I brought you into the Seelie Court, as I said I would, and though it would be amusing to see how you fare with the queen, I have other things to do. Fear not, humans.” He turned and trotted off, tail held up like a flag behind him. “I am certain we will meet again soon.”
Slipping beneath the thick hedge, he vanished.
The walk to the end of the tunnel wasn’t far. Several dozen steps down the brambly corridor, around a bend, and then it opened into a large clearing, thorny walls still surrounding it on every side.
A pair of thrones sat in the center of the glade, shafts of sunlight streaming down on them from above. They seemed to have grown right out of the forest floor, as they were covered in vines and blooming flowers, with birds perched on the arms and back and insects floating around them. The throne on the left was empty and probably Oberon’s, the absent Summer King. But sitting in the chair on the right...
“Oh boy,” Keirran whispered, and Razor hid beneath his hair.
Titania, Queen of the Summer Court, lounged on her throne like a lazy cat, a tiny, amused smile on her full lips as she observed her subjects. She was tall and slender with golden hair cascading down her shoulders, her face that of a goddess, perfect and frightening. I was beginning to reach a point where the inhuman beauty of the gentry didn’t affect me as much anymore, but still, the Seelie Queen took my breath away.