Except the Queen by Jane Yolen, Midori Snyder Read Free Book Online

rather too heavily for such a small climb—and there, at the top of the building, was a green door, always a good sign. Jamie opened it with another key, this one gray as stone. Gold and silver. Another good sign. Breathing heavily herself, she pushed the door open and ushered me through. “I hope you like it. It’s one of the nicer places.”
    There were but four small rooms, colored improbable shades of pink, like old, blown roses. The walls felt too close, and crowded in like the sides of a cave. The UnSeelie folk may live in caves, but we of the Seelie court prefer the open spaces under the hill and over it. Still, there were windows in the front room looking down onto the trees, and water running from strange taps in a cooking corridor. The water tasted a bit off, not like the springs I was used to, but with a metallic burn. At least it was plentiful. Jamie Oldcourse showed me the cooker and the cooler. I could only guess at their functions, but I knew I would have time to explore once she left.
    There was a nestlike bed in the small back room, but the window in that room looked out onto another building. Anyone might spy in while I slept. Anyone could fly from their nest into mine. With no magic, I could not make myself safe. I knew I could not sleep in there. But Jamie Oldcourse said nothing about my having to leave the bed where it was, so I determined to move it to the front room before I passed a night in my place.
    My place
. I had already agreed, of course. The green door. The gold and silver keys. That was enough to convince my senses that I could at least make a nest of it.
    Still, it was not
home.
Never home. Just a place of my own.
    “Yes,” I said to Jamie Oldcourse. “Yes.”
    It is a word that evidently means much to humans. And to be honest, at that very moment, it meant much to me as well.
    *   *   *
    S O SHE LEFT ME THERE , with the two keys that must have had iron at the core, so I had to pop them immediately into the pocket of my skirt. She gave me as well a handful of paper that she called money, telling me to spend it carefully on what I needed; me who has always spent my magic freely and with great ease, and who rarely needed anything at all.
    “There will be more later, but this will tide you over now,” she said.
    I clutched them tightly, which seemed to be the proper thing to do, for she smiled.
    Then I listened as her footsteps went down the steps, and I heard the snick of the door open and then close. I thought about going to the window in the front room to watch her go along the numbered street, but instead I sat on a soft nesty chair and looked over the money in my hands. They were a strange green covered with writing and human likenesses and numbers I did not understand. I worried that they might be like fairy gold that one has to use quickly or it is gone.
    What did I
need
? I already had a nest and water. I had clothing I did not like, but at least it disguised this sagging body. I was warm enough, high enough. And I was alone at last, to think, to feel, to plan.
And to mourn
. I missed the Greenwood, the meadows, the dances, the joy. I even missed Will of the Feather. But most of all I missed Meteora, my other self. I wanted to be angry with her, for it was her loose tongue that had brought me to this miserable fate. But I could not hold such anger against her. She was breath and blood to me, and I knew that in all likelihood, she too had not escaped theQueen’s rage. My silly, little sister, out in the wilds of the world. What would become of her?
    Suddenly I recalled the last words the Queen had shouted:
    Should Sister meet Sister in Light again,
    Then falls the iron rain.
    Was it meant as a spell? Or a curse designed to keep us forever apart? Tears welled in my eyes.
    And as I was deep in these mournful maunderings, my stomach made a horrible sound. Of course, I did not recognize it at first. Under the Hill there is no hunger. When we want honey or mead or a sip of dew, a