Wicked Hungry

Where is the queen herself? But then I see a larger bed, up above us on a raised platform, surrounded by passion fruit and prickly cactus trees. The woman lying there has a head full of thin white hair, but paradoxically seems young, and her skin glows faintly in the near darkness.

Then, from outside, I hear voices.

“I’ve done as you asked. I hooked half the middle school and high school on those stupid pills. I built you a zombie army, and now I want my reward.”

Zach. What’s he doing here?

“You are too impatient, son.”

“That’s not my fault,” Zach says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You sent me to live among them. Made me a changeling. Forced me to live with those impure humans. Among the meat eaters.”

“Nowhere else but in a human family could you have developed such fine talents. Such rage and such desire for purity.”

“But it’s not fair, and besides, you never let me use them. I want to help with the sacrifice. Help with the cleansing. I want to help destroy all their factories, their cars, their meat-packing plants.”

“You’ve done your part, Zach. You know it is not for us to destroy. We of the Summer Court make things grow. We create. But we can’t clean the slate.”

“It’s not enough. I’m tired of growing fruit and vegetables. I want to take part in the cleansing and feel their suffering.”

“You will, when we call the Old Ones.”

“My Lord Gilroy?” says another. “Should we not lower our voices? Will we not wake Queen Eleanor?”

“You know full well, Nevin, that my mother will not wake unless I wish her to wake,” says Gilroy.

“But the servants,” asks Nevin. “And the guards—”

“Have all had too much mulled wine to drink, those who weren’t drugged.”

“Let me start the sacrifices, then,” Zach says. “I’m ready. Let me call the Old Ones now.”

The voices grow nearer. I drop beneath Carolina’s cot and hope the others are hiding, as well. And that whoever was last out remembered to shut the door.

A dim light enters the room. A candle, maybe, carried at waist-height. Before the three of them can enter, there’s just time to glance over behind me, and I see the door still open, showing the rock staircase behind it.

It’s too late to do anything but wiggle farther underneath Carolina’s cot. Above me she breathes deeply and slowly, rhythmically, in and out.

“They’re asleep,” says Zach.

“I told you as much,” says Gilroy. “Better safe than sorry, Mother always said.”

“And look at her now,” says Nevin.

“I would have liked to know my grandmother,” says Zach.

Gilroy laughs, and his laugh chills me. “She would not have appreciated your mixed blood. We had to hide you; she would not have approved.”

“But she’s my grandmother,” Zach says.

“She would have disowned you,” Gilroy says.

“He’s right, you know,” says Nevin. “She can barely stand her own son.”

“She can’t stand me, actually,” Gilroy says, with a laugh. “But she doesn’t have to, now, does she?”