The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

His eyes narrow.

"Have you been to the dog fights? Have you seen how we are set against each other, how we are kept in stinking pens?"

"You murdered those children,” he says softly. “And then you ate them."

” Let them know what it is to have their babies snatched from them, what it is to be afraid and then find that they were killed for amusement. For amusement.” Her face is so pale that it looks like the snow. “You are not the only wolf he has kept, but the first one was grown when he got her. She died rather than become his pet. You are nothing but an animal to him."

"I see,” he says. “Yes, you are right.” Elienad takes the knife from her cold hand. He looks at his face in its mirrored surface and his features look as though they belong to someone else. His voice is only a whisper. “He must think I am an animal."

The king leaves his court late and stumbles tipsily to his rooms. The court will continue to celebrate until they collapse beneath tables, until they have drunk themselves so full of relief that they are sick from it.

The king lights a lamp on his desk and begins to write the speech he will give in the morning. He plans to say many reassuring things. He plans to declare Toran his heir.

He hears a laugh. It is a boy's laugh.

"Elienad?” the king asks the darkness.

There is silence, then the sound of laughter again, naughty and close.

"Elienad,” the king says sternly.

"I will be king after you,” the boy says.

The king's hands begin to shake so hard that the ink on his pen nib spatters the page. He looks down at it as though the wet black marks will tell him what to do now.

The boy moves into the lamplight, his face lit with an impish smile, showing white teeth.

"Please,” says the king.

"Please what, Father?” The boy blows down the glass of the lamp and the light goes out.

In the darkness, the king calls the boy's name for the third time, but his voice quavers. He remembers his age, remembers how stiff he is from dancing.

This time when he hears the boy's laughter, it is near the door. He hears the footsteps as bare feet slap their way out the door and down the dark hall. Like the court, the king feels sick with relief.

Later, when the king lights the lamps—all of them—he will think of another woman, now long gone, and of her liquid eyes staring up at him in the dark. He will not sleep.

In the morning, he will make his way to the throne room. There, he will find courtiers gathered around a young boy with black hair in need of cutting. Beside the boy will be a corpse. The dead woman's hand will be missing and her throat will be cut. Dimly, the king will remember that he promised the kingdom to whosoever killed the wolf. And the boy will smile up at him as the trap closes.

Virgin

Let me tell you something about unicorns—they're faeries and faeries aren't to be trusted. Read your storybooks. But maybe you can't get past the rainbows and pastel crap. That's your problem.

Zachary told me once why the old stories say that mortals who eat faerie food can't leave Faerie. That's a bunch of rot, too, but at least there's some truth in it. You see, they can leave; they just won't ever be able to find another food they'll want to eat. Normal food tastes like ashes. So they starve. Zachary should have listened to his own stories.

I met him the summer I was squatting in an old building with my friend Tanya and her boyfriend. I'd run away from my last foster family, mostly because there didn't seem to be any point in staying. I was humoring myself into thinking I could live indefinitely like this.

Tanya had one prosthetic leg made from this shiny pink plastic stuff; so she looked like she was part Barbie doll, part girl. She loved to wear short, tight skirts and platform shoes to show off her leg. She knew the name of every boy who hung out in LOVE park. Tanya introduced us.

My first impression of Zachary was that he was a beautiful junkie. He wasn't handsome; he was pretty, the kind of boy that girls draw obsessively in the corners of their notebooks. Tall, great cheekbones, and red-black hair rolling down the sides of his face in fat curls. He was juggling a tennis ball, a fork, and three spoons. A cardboard sign next to his feet had will juggle anything for food written on it in an unsteady hand. Anything had been underlined shakily, twice. Junkie, I thought. I wondered if Tanya had ever slept with him. I wanted to ask her what it was like.

After he was done and had collected a little cash in a paper cup, he walked around with us for a while, mostly listening to Tanya tell him about her band. He had a bag over his shoulder and walked solemnly, hands in the pockets of his black jeans. He didn't look at her, although sometimes he nodded along with what she was saying, and he didn't look at me. He bought us ginger beer with the coins people had thrown at him and that's when I knew he wasn't a junkie, because no junkie who looked as hard up as he did would spend his last quarters on anything but getting what he needed.

The next time I saw Zachary, it was at the public library. We would all go there when we got cold. Sometimes I would go alone to read sections of The Two Towers, jotting down the page where I stopped on the inside hem of my jeans. I found him sitting on the floor between the mythology and psychiatry shelves. He looked up when I started walking down the aisle and we just stared at one another for a moment, like we'd been found doing something illicit. Then he grinned and I grinned. I sat down on the floor next to him.

"Just looking,” I said, “What are you reading?” I had just run half the way to the library and could feel the sweat on my scalp. I knew I looked really awful. He looked dry, even cold. His skin was as pale as if he never spent a day in the park.

He lifted up the book spread open across his lap: Faerie Folktales of Europe.

I was used to people who wouldn't shut up. I wasn't used to making conversation.

"You're Zachary, right?” I asked, like an asshole.

He looked up again. “Mmhmm. You're Jen, Tanya's friend."

"I didn't think you'd remember,” I said, then felt stupid. He just smiled at me.

” What are you reading?” I stumbled over the words, realizing halfway through the sentence I'd already asked that. “I mean, what part are you reading?"

"I'm reading about unicorns,” he said, “but there's not much here."

"They like virgins,” I volunteered.

He sighed. “Yeah. They'd send girls into the woods in front of the hunts. Girls to lure out the unicorn, get it to lie down, to sleep. Then they'd ride up and shoot it or stab it or slice off its horn. Can you imagine how that girl must have felt? The sharp horn pressing against her stomach, her ears straining to listen for the hounds."

I shifted uncomfortably. I didn't know anyone who talked like that. “You looking for something else about them?"

"I don't even know.” He tucked some curls behind one ear. Then he grinned at me again.

All that summer was a fever dream, restless and achy. He was a part of it, meeting me in the park, or at the library. I told him about my last foster home and about the one before that, the one that had been really awful. I told him about the boys I met and where we went to drink—up on rooftops. We talked about where pigeons spent their winters and where we were going to spend ours. When it was his turn to talk, he told stories. He told me ones I knew, old stories, and he told me old-sounding ones I had never heard. It didn't matter that I spent the rest of the week begging for cigarettes and hanging with hoodlums. When I was with Zachary, everything seemed different.

Then one day, when it was kind of rainy cold and we were scrounging in our pockets for money for hot tea, I asked him where he slept.

"Outside the city, near the zoo."

"It must stink.” I found another sticky dime in the folds of my backpack and put it on the concrete ledge with our other change.

"Not so much. When the wind's right."

"So how come you live all the way out there? Do you live with someone?” It felt strange that I didn't know.

He put some lint-encrusted pennies down, and looked at me hard. His mouth parted a little and he looked so intent that for a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me.

Instead, he said, “Can I tell you something crazy? I mean totally insane."

"Sure. I've told you weird stuff before."

"Not like this. Really not like this."

"Okay,” I said.

And that's when he told me about her. A unicorn. His unicorn. Who he lived with in a forest between two highways just outside the city. Who waited for him at night, and who ran free, hanging out with the forest animals or doing whatever it is unicorns do, all day long, while Zachary told me stories and scrounged for tea money.

"My mother . . . she was pretty screwed up. She sold drugs for some guys and then she sold information on those guys to the cops. So one day when this car pulled up and told us to get in, I guess I wasn't all that surprised. Her friend, Gina, was already sitting in the back and she looked like she'd been crying. The car smelled bad, like old frying oil.

"Mom kept begging them to drop me off and they kept silent, just driving. I don't think I was really scared until we got on the highway.

"They made us get out of the car near some woods and then walk for a really long time. The forest was huge. We were lost. I was tired; my mother dragged me along by my hand. I kept falling over branches. Thorns wiped along my face.

"Then there was a loud pop and I started screaming from the sound even before my mother fell. Gina puked."

I didn't know what to do, so I put my hand on his shoulder. His body was warm underneath his thin t-shirt. He didn't even look at me as he talked.

"There isn't much more. They left me alone there with my dead mom in the dark. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight. I wailed. You can imagine. It was awful. I guess I remember a lot, really. I mean, it's vivid but trivial.

"After a long time, I saw this light coming through the trees. At first I thought it was the men coming back. Then I saw the horn. Bleached bone. Amazing, Jen. So amazing. I lifted up my hand to pet her side and blood spread across her flank. I forgot everything but that moment, everything but the white pelt, for a long, long while. It was like the whole world went white."

>

His eyes narrow.

"Have you been to the dog fights? Have you seen how we are set against each other, how we are kept in stinking pens?"

"You murdered those children,” he says softly. “And then you ate them."

” Let them know what it is to have their babies snatched from them, what it is to be afraid and then find that they were killed for amusement. For amusement.” Her face is so pale that it looks like the snow. “You are not the only wolf he has kept, but the first one was grown when he got her. She died rather than become his pet. You are nothing but an animal to him."

"I see,” he says. “Yes, you are right.” Elienad takes the knife from her cold hand. He looks at his face in its mirrored surface and his features look as though they belong to someone else. His voice is only a whisper. “He must think I am an animal."

The king leaves his court late and stumbles tipsily to his rooms. The court will continue to celebrate until they collapse beneath tables, until they have drunk themselves so full of relief that they are sick from it.

The king lights a lamp on his desk and begins to write the speech he will give in the morning. He plans to say many reassuring things. He plans to declare Toran his heir.

He hears a laugh. It is a boy's laugh.

"Elienad?” the king asks the darkness.

There is silence, then the sound of laughter again, naughty and close.

"Elienad,” the king says sternly.

"I will be king after you,” the boy says.

The king's hands begin to shake so hard that the ink on his pen nib spatters the page. He looks down at it as though the wet black marks will tell him what to do now.

The boy moves into the lamplight, his face lit with an impish smile, showing white teeth.

"Please,” says the king.

"Please what, Father?” The boy blows down the glass of the lamp and the light goes out.

In the darkness, the king calls the boy's name for the third time, but his voice quavers. He remembers his age, remembers how stiff he is from dancing.

This time when he hears the boy's laughter, it is near the door. He hears the footsteps as bare feet slap their way out the door and down the dark hall. Like the court, the king feels sick with relief.

Later, when the king lights the lamps—all of them—he will think of another woman, now long gone, and of her liquid eyes staring up at him in the dark. He will not sleep.

In the morning, he will make his way to the throne room. There, he will find courtiers gathered around a young boy with black hair in need of cutting. Beside the boy will be a corpse. The dead woman's hand will be missing and her throat will be cut. Dimly, the king will remember that he promised the kingdom to whosoever killed the wolf. And the boy will smile up at him as the trap closes.

Virgin

Let me tell you something about unicorns—they're faeries and faeries aren't to be trusted. Read your storybooks. But maybe you can't get past the rainbows and pastel crap. That's your problem.

Zachary told me once why the old stories say that mortals who eat faerie food can't leave Faerie. That's a bunch of rot, too, but at least there's some truth in it. You see, they can leave; they just won't ever be able to find another food they'll want to eat. Normal food tastes like ashes. So they starve. Zachary should have listened to his own stories.

I met him the summer I was squatting in an old building with my friend Tanya and her boyfriend. I'd run away from my last foster family, mostly because there didn't seem to be any point in staying. I was humoring myself into thinking I could live indefinitely like this.

Tanya had one prosthetic leg made from this shiny pink plastic stuff; so she looked like she was part Barbie doll, part girl. She loved to wear short, tight skirts and platform shoes to show off her leg. She knew the name of every boy who hung out in LOVE park. Tanya introduced us.

My first impression of Zachary was that he was a beautiful junkie. He wasn't handsome; he was pretty, the kind of boy that girls draw obsessively in the corners of their notebooks. Tall, great cheekbones, and red-black hair rolling down the sides of his face in fat curls. He was juggling a tennis ball, a fork, and three spoons. A cardboard sign next to his feet had will juggle anything for food written on it in an unsteady hand. Anything had been underlined shakily, twice. Junkie, I thought. I wondered if Tanya had ever slept with him. I wanted to ask her what it was like.

After he was done and had collected a little cash in a paper cup, he walked around with us for a while, mostly listening to Tanya tell him about her band. He had a bag over his shoulder and walked solemnly, hands in the pockets of his black jeans. He didn't look at her, although sometimes he nodded along with what she was saying, and he didn't look at me. He bought us ginger beer with the coins people had thrown at him and that's when I knew he wasn't a junkie, because no junkie who looked as hard up as he did would spend his last quarters on anything but getting what he needed.

The next time I saw Zachary, it was at the public library. We would all go there when we got cold. Sometimes I would go alone to read sections of The Two Towers, jotting down the page where I stopped on the inside hem of my jeans. I found him sitting on the floor between the mythology and psychiatry shelves. He looked up when I started walking down the aisle and we just stared at one another for a moment, like we'd been found doing something illicit. Then he grinned and I grinned. I sat down on the floor next to him.

"Just looking,” I said, “What are you reading?” I had just run half the way to the library and could feel the sweat on my scalp. I knew I looked really awful. He looked dry, even cold. His skin was as pale as if he never spent a day in the park.

He lifted up the book spread open across his lap: Faerie Folktales of Europe.

I was used to people who wouldn't shut up. I wasn't used to making conversation.

"You're Zachary, right?” I asked, like an asshole.

He looked up again. “Mmhmm. You're Jen, Tanya's friend."

"I didn't think you'd remember,” I said, then felt stupid. He just smiled at me.

” What are you reading?” I stumbled over the words, realizing halfway through the sentence I'd already asked that. “I mean, what part are you reading?"

"I'm reading about unicorns,” he said, “but there's not much here."

"They like virgins,” I volunteered.

He sighed. “Yeah. They'd send girls into the woods in front of the hunts. Girls to lure out the unicorn, get it to lie down, to sleep. Then they'd ride up and shoot it or stab it or slice off its horn. Can you imagine how that girl must have felt? The sharp horn pressing against her stomach, her ears straining to listen for the hounds."

I shifted uncomfortably. I didn't know anyone who talked like that. “You looking for something else about them?"

"I don't even know.” He tucked some curls behind one ear. Then he grinned at me again.

All that summer was a fever dream, restless and achy. He was a part of it, meeting me in the park, or at the library. I told him about my last foster home and about the one before that, the one that had been really awful. I told him about the boys I met and where we went to drink—up on rooftops. We talked about where pigeons spent their winters and where we were going to spend ours. When it was his turn to talk, he told stories. He told me ones I knew, old stories, and he told me old-sounding ones I had never heard. It didn't matter that I spent the rest of the week begging for cigarettes and hanging with hoodlums. When I was with Zachary, everything seemed different.

Then one day, when it was kind of rainy cold and we were scrounging in our pockets for money for hot tea, I asked him where he slept.

"Outside the city, near the zoo."

"It must stink.” I found another sticky dime in the folds of my backpack and put it on the concrete ledge with our other change.

"Not so much. When the wind's right."

"So how come you live all the way out there? Do you live with someone?” It felt strange that I didn't know.

He put some lint-encrusted pennies down, and looked at me hard. His mouth parted a little and he looked so intent that for a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me.

Instead, he said, “Can I tell you something crazy? I mean totally insane."

"Sure. I've told you weird stuff before."

"Not like this. Really not like this."

"Okay,” I said.

And that's when he told me about her. A unicorn. His unicorn. Who he lived with in a forest between two highways just outside the city. Who waited for him at night, and who ran free, hanging out with the forest animals or doing whatever it is unicorns do, all day long, while Zachary told me stories and scrounged for tea money.

"My mother . . . she was pretty screwed up. She sold drugs for some guys and then she sold information on those guys to the cops. So one day when this car pulled up and told us to get in, I guess I wasn't all that surprised. Her friend, Gina, was already sitting in the back and she looked like she'd been crying. The car smelled bad, like old frying oil.

"Mom kept begging them to drop me off and they kept silent, just driving. I don't think I was really scared until we got on the highway.

"They made us get out of the car near some woods and then walk for a really long time. The forest was huge. We were lost. I was tired; my mother dragged me along by my hand. I kept falling over branches. Thorns wiped along my face.

"Then there was a loud pop and I started screaming from the sound even before my mother fell. Gina puked."

I didn't know what to do, so I put my hand on his shoulder. His body was warm underneath his thin t-shirt. He didn't even look at me as he talked.

"There isn't much more. They left me alone there with my dead mom in the dark. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight. I wailed. You can imagine. It was awful. I guess I remember a lot, really. I mean, it's vivid but trivial.

"After a long time, I saw this light coming through the trees. At first I thought it was the men coming back. Then I saw the horn. Bleached bone. Amazing, Jen. So amazing. I lifted up my hand to pet her side and blood spread across her flank. I forgot everything but that moment, everything but the white pelt, for a long, long while. It was like the whole world went white."