Chapter 17
Seventeen
“Hansel!” Cyrus raises his wing in greeting and waves. “Sorry! I mean Hans.”
His smile, bright as a lantern in the dark, guides you down the path. That smile fades as you get closer. He sets his watering can down amongst the sprawling tomatoes and joins you on the road.
“What is it?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”
You take him by the shoulders. “The Fair Queen,” you say.
“What about her?”
Chest heaving, you suck down air through your teeth. “You asked the Fair Queen about me?”
“Well, not me,” he says. “Gertie did. I tried to tell Gertie about it the day it happened, but, ah, you know why that didn’t work. Telling her what happened to you was the first thing I did when she made me human again. And the first thing she did was write to the Fair Queen to inquire about you.”
“What,” it takes all your self-restraint not to crush his narrow, pretty shoulders with your meaty hands, “did she say?”
“You’re scaring me, Hans, are you all right?”
“What did she say?”
He looks at you like an animal who can’t figure out why it’s displeasing its master. Your heart can break about it later, when you know for certain whether or not your heart will break over worse things.
“She said that when our father abandoned us in the woods, he left us with a servant.” Cyrus lowers his eyes.
“And that she had reason to believe the Fair Queen had taken that servant without fair compensation. She asked for either the servant to be returned or a sum of coin that would settle the debt.”
A servant.
Not family. Not anyone well-loved or long-hoped-for.
“The Fair Queen wrote back saying that you’d died from fever years ago,” he says, “and enclosed the requested sum. So we thought… I swear, we really did think…”
You drop your hands from his shoulders. You shove your fingers through your hair.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “We didn’t think of you that way, you know that, surely you— Hansel, it’s only that—there are rumors about her, and we didn’t…”
“You were clever,” you mutter. Over the sound of your walloping heart, your voice seems so small, so ragged and beaten down. A servant. You can’t believe your luck.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
“You were right to be careful,” you say, straightening up, your breath coming easier now. Your throat tightens a little. You swallow through it and take another deep breath. “Especially with her, especially in regards to me.”
Cyrus nods, a fragile little gesture of his head. He raises his eyes to yours, asking a thousand silent questions that you could answer in a thousand different ways. After a few moments pass, you decide to answer in the simplest way possible.
“The rumors about the Fair Queen,” you say, “are—”
Your throat clenches shut like a fist.
Suddenly: no air. Suddenly: fire in every nerve.
You open your mouth to scream, but you can’t make a sound.
Nothing in. Nothing out.
On your knees, on the ground, you scratch at your burning throat with burning hands, every part of you alight in a forge.
When Cyrus pulls you into his lap, the fire crescendos. You try to scrabble away from him, away from this heat, but you can’t buck free.
“Stop wanting to tell me,” he says, right at your ear, his voice soft and his breath volcanic. “Whatever it is, stop. Don’t tell me. You don’t want to tell me that. You never did.”
The first sip of air whistles down your swollen throat.
I don’t want to tell him.
I never did.
The unseen noose loosens. The fire wanes. A bigger breath, this time.
“Lie to me,” he says.
I don’t want to tell him. I never did.
A bigger breath, this time. He pets his hand through your hair.
When did he take off his garden glove?
When was the last time anyone took care of you?
“I’ll believe anything you tell me,” he says.
“… Rumors are all false,” you say.
“Of course they are,” he whispers. “The Fair Queen is known for her kindness.”
You make a strained noise of agreement.
“Anything to the contrary is slander,” he says. “I’d never believe anything unkind about her.”
Clever, you think. So clever.
“We’re safe, we’re happy, our lives are lovely,” he says. “Nothing more to it than that.”