First Interlude Gwen, Underfoot #7
Beauty back to life, but your kiss, Gwendolyn, will condemn your beloved to death.”
Gwen felt her shock as a stone hardness in the pit of her stomach. She had anticipated some macabre cruelty. He would want
to claw her face off; he would want to cripple her; he would want to harm her parents. She had not imagined he would want
to play some kind of game with the simplest bit of happiness she had left to her: Arthur’s easy affection, his arms around
her, his head on her shoulder. She was not fifteen minutes from Arthur’s gentle kisses, not fifteen minutes from Arthur’s
warm, bare body.
“That’s fucked,” she said, and King Sorrow laughed again. A little smoke, smelling almost of incense, gushed into the front
seat.
“He’ll know something is up,” Gwen said. “I wouldn’t just tell him I don’t love him.”
“Then tell him it’s because he fucked Tana Nighswander against her will. Fucked her because he could. Because her older sister made her give Arthur a little sweetener to keep him on the hook.”
“That’s not true.”
“Ask him.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“He did do that. He felt he was owed, and it was revenge, and Tana was just a bit of townie trash to him. You don’t imagine he thinks
any differently of you, do you?” King Sorrow shifted in the back seat and the Honda rocked on its springs. “Hm, p’raps I’ve
already won my prize! But that’s no fun. We have to riddle.”
Gwen couldn’t think. It was like being knocked down a flight of stairs. For a moment all she could do was sit there, stunned,
trying to figure out if anything had been broken. She struggled to determine if this was a thing that could be forgiven . . .
then pushed such considerations aside.
“How long do I have to answer your riddle?” Her tongue felt numb and heavy.
“Till a star falls from the sky. That’s long enough.”
“Till there’s a shooting star? That could be hours.”
“Or moments.” He paused. “How much do you want it, Gwen? Do we have a game?”
“I need . . . I need a few minutes.”
“No. We play now or not at all. Conversing with you this way, before I’ve fully come through from the Long Dark, is a pleasure,
but also tiring. It’s now or never.”
She stared at the windshield, a sheet of brushed chrome. The defroster roared, melting the hoarfrost at the bottom of the
glass in circles. The stars were out there. Who knew when the next would fall.
“All right then. Let’s hear your riddle.”
“Sometimes I taste bitter, sometimes I taste sweet,” he said gleefully. “I hate to be held but I loved mother’s teat.”
Gwen stared into the night, her mind a bewildered, terrifying blank. The ice melted from the windshield and she gazed helplessly
into dim and distant stars.
She shouted her answer just as one of them dropped like a tear, guessing wildly. “A toddler! Or hope.”
“Neither,” he sneered. “Your tongue, luv. And it would’ve been better if you held yours, don’t you think? You just talked yourself out of Arthur’s love. I can’t
wait to see his face. I will see it, you know. I see you all, often, as through a blurred sheet of glass. The six of you come more and more into focus as Easter approaches.”
She sank forward, putting her brow against the steering wheel, thinking Stupid stupid stupid damn townie. She hurt through the middle as if she had been struck in the chest. He was going to take the best thing she had from her
and she would win nothing.
“Wait,” she said. “I didn’t get to ask you a riddle. And you want a riddle.”
“We’d have to agree on terms. I won’t give you Arthur back. That’s off the table, my joy. But if you can stump me—if I can’t
answer before the next star falls—I’ll give you what you asked for first, an easy ending for your sacrifice.”
“What if I can’t—”
“Then you’ll fuck Colin Wren and write Arthur a letter about how good he was.” King Sorrow cackled.
“No,” she whispered, through cracked lips.
“Very well. I suppose this concludes the business of the evening and I expect soon enough to know who I am going to kill this—”
“All right,” she said, frantic now, her breath shooting out of her. A part of her was still tumbling down that first flight
of stairs. Tana was just a bit of townie trash and I want you to tell Arthur you do not love him. She was tumbling and she did not know what would happen to her when she struck bottom. She took a ragged breath. “What do
I have in my pock—”
“No, no. That’s not a riddle, it’s a question.
And weren’t you listening to me? I see you all.
You’ve got two nickels in one front pocket of your overalls and a baby’s pacifier in the other.
I saw you putting things in those pockets when you hardly knew what your hands were doing.
Try again. Make it good, Gwen. How you would delight me if you could outwit me.
You may not believe that, but it’s true. ”
She should’ve prepared. Why hadn’t she prepared? How had she somehow imagined she could wing this? She should’ve studied like
Arthur. She should’ve buried herself in the Rackham College library and read every book she could find on riddles, ancient
and modern. Although maybe even that wouldn’t have helped her. King Sorrow had heard a thousand-thousand riddles. He knew
them all, had heard all the good ones, all the classic ones.
“Gwen,” he said. “I’m waiting.”
“Why is sex in a canoe like Milwaukee’s Best?” she blurted without thinking.
They sat in the silence, the car idling in darkness.
“Why is—” King Sorrow began and his voice trailed off. At last, he said: “Is this really a riddle, Gwen Underfoot?”
“That’s the sort of thing a person asks,” she said, “when they don’t know the answer.”
They sat in darkness and Gwen watched the stars, her pulse thumping in her neck.
16.
Two days before Arthur’s flight back to London, Gwen was in the library, stripping decorations off Colin’s tree, when Arthur
wandered in from the kitchen with two mugs of tea. She looked at him and then quickly looked away. Arthur looked good, in
a waffled hoodie and a pair of carpenter jeans, a big man who slouched and lumbered, bearlike. The sight of him twisted up
her insides and it took an almost physical effort to keep her face a careful blank, to fight off the sudden stinging sensation
in the backs of her eyes.
“Want me to help dispose of the body?” he asked.
“Nothing stopping you,” she said, her voice stilted and stiff. He didn’t seem to notice.
He handed her a mug of good, hot, strong tea, and it was easy, with the first sip, to imagine being with him all day, basking
in his quiet attention. It was a morning for pajamas, pancakes, sex on the couch, and lazy TV, but they weren’t going to get
any of that. Not today, not ever.
She sent him to get their coats and opened the French doors. The sun glared off the humped and cracked ice in the little bay,
and she could smell the rotting seaweed tang of low tide. Some despised that smell, but she had always liked it, liked the
salty perfume of sea-scrubbed rock and cold ocean.
“We hauling it down to the water?” Arthur asked.
Gwen started to reply and her throat was too tight. She swallowed, and tried again, and her voice seemed almost normal to
her. “Like last year. You guys will have to burn it down without me, though. Tana is working. I’m looking after the baby.”
This was a lie, but when she thought about what was coming, she knew she couldn’t be there tonight, with the others, pretending
everything was fine, pretending she wasn’t stricken, almost numb with hurt.
They shuffled out through the open doors, into the sharp air and the dazzle of light glancing off snow. It was big but not
heavy, and the only real effort was stepping through the snow, which was almost a foot deep, glazed on the surface, soft powder
beneath.
“I’m out of here in forty-eight hours,” he said, as if she didn’t know. “We should do something tomorrow evening.” In a diffident
tone he added, “Colin said we could borrow the Caddy. We could get something to eat and maybe drive down to Portland.” Letting
her know they could have the night together and it wouldn’t have to be under anyone’s nose. He wouldn’t have to bring her
back to The Briars, she wouldn’t have to sneak him into her house.
Best, she thought, to get it done, now, today. To drink off her own goblet of dragon tears.
“You could just get us a pizza from Shut-Up-And-Eat-It,” Gwen said. “If Tana’s working, she could give you a freebee. Didn’t
she used to do that? A free pizza now and then, when it was time to pick up the books? You ever take anything else from her,
free of charge, Arthur?”
He didn’t reply. His face was set in an expression of the mildest calm, the professor surveying the class while they worked
at a test. They crunched along through the snow, with the carcass of the Christmas tree between them, and she had the angry
thought that he was planning a lie.
They crossed a hundred yards, to the edge of a fissured stony embankment, and set the tree down. It was as good a spot as
any to burn something to the ground. A mile of frozen bay lay before them, great plates of ice broken in crooked lines and
piled up against each other in jagged ridges. Out past the edge of the floe, the water was blue and choppy.
“I thought Tana would tell you sometime,” he said.
“Thought? Or worried?”
He looked out to sea, staring into the eastern waters. When he spoke, his voice was as reasonable as his expression. “I wish
I could take it back. I was angry and I was scared.”
“I wish you could take it back too. She was prostituted by her sister. To drug dealers. To people they owed money. And to
you.”
At that he flinched—but did not reply.
“I’m sorry,” he said, without looking at her.