At the Queen's announcement, the handmaidens seemed to thrum with that same cold species of excitement that had overtaken them on Vishaptatha, and a throbbing dread filled Mab. Something was going to happen. She knew it. But whatever it was, it didn't happen, and it didn't happen, and her dread stretched itself out fine and taut across the weeks of autumn. Her bleeding came and went twice more, and she waited and waited for the new bad thing, but still it didn't come.
In fact, those months were sweet. The Queen cherished her again and kept her close, and the handmaidens fluttered around her like birds, petting her with their hands as soft as owl feathers. The tithes had just been gathered, so there was fresh food in plenty, cheeses and dried cherries and strips of meat, more than usual and all for her. She was never hungry that autumn and she began to put on flesh, a little, so she was no longer sharp in the ribs and knees like a fawn. Her br**sts grew. Her h*ps fluted out. Every day the handmaidens rubbed scented oils into her skin until she was pink and fragrant, and they sang her a song about ripening fruit that she had never heard.
"Grapes on the vine, lips as sweet as cherries, nectar dark as wine, ripen, sweet fruit, ripen. Plums that I can gather, swelling on the branches, ripen, orchard, ripen. Ripen, berry, ripen."
The Queen sang too, and her voice was sweeter than anyone's, but through all the petting and the singing, Mab never lost her dread. Perhaps it was the way Isvant the hunter looked at her now, with something in his eyes that made her want to cover herself. Her own nakedness had never meant anything to her before; she was as a bird before the Druj, or a fish. Her skin was her self, only to be hidden against the cold. But one day Isvant came as a crow to perch in her rock window and watched the handmaidens anoint her with their oils, and even in crow cithra his look was like a leer. She shivered and crossed her arms over her small br**sts and he cawed an ugly laugh and kept on watching. Snaya laughed too and sang, "Fruit sweet for the plucking, ripen, berry, ripen."
Mab was grateful when the season's first snow fell that night, because it meant the Queen and the Naxturu would be going away.
EIGHT The Boy
Izha, wake up," said the Queen. She was kneeling at Mab's bedside, and even before Mab opened her eyes, she smelled the snow JL. in the air and knew what was coming. Peace was coming. Months of it.
"Snow," she murmured, sitting up in her furs. "Snow," said the Queen.
The first snow always heralded the Winter Hunt. The Queen would take her Naxturu and go away. They would stalk the forest, cleansing it of poachers, and they would range far, visiting distant Druj tribes to reassert the Queen's rule over them all. She always brought back silky pelts and strange seed pods, jewels and silver-work and wine, and in her pockets, wrapped in leaves, she carried home a tender cargo of freshly plucked eyeballs to add to the collection in her Tabernacle of Spies.
They were away for months each year, and when Mab was small, those months had been lonely, but after that fateful Vishaptatha she had learned to welcome them. She spent her winters cold to the bone and huddled in furs, but at peace in her body and blessedly alone.
"Let me braid your hair, my pretty child," said the Queen, and Mab turned and sat still while the Queen brushed out her hair and plaited and twisted it into long graceful spirals all down her bare back. It took several hours. She hummed the whole time, that same strange ripening song, and when she was done, she drew a curved knife from a sheath at her hip and sliced off one braid, which she tied to the chain of the moonstone amulet she wore always around her neck. Then she kissed Mab on the brow with her icy lips and left.
From the window Mab watched the Naxturu assume wolf cithrim. There were six of them, three male, three female, and they dropped their cloaks in the snow and stood for an instant na**d before their bodies hunched over and attenuated, sprouted black fur, ears, tails. Each wolf howled once and turned to face the Queen. As ever, the Queen did not change.
"Can't she?" Mab had asked Snaya once, long ago.
Snaya had made a scornful sound in her throat and replied, "Of course she can! Mazishta could change into the moon itself if she wished."
Then why didn't she? Mab had wondered. It was such a marvelous thing that the Druj could do. If the Queen was most powerful of all of them, why did she not do it too? That last winter in Tajbel, she still didn't know. She watched a low-caste Druj ready the Queen's sledge, test the edges of its long, curved runners, and harness the bezoar goats that would pull it. They were fantastical creatures and huge, with scimitar horns sharp enough to slit throats, and when the Queen gave a whistle, they were off and stamping. Snow flew. The wolves howled. The Queen looked back over her shoulder once and Mab saw her eyes flash like sunstruck ice and she glimpsed her own red braid fastened at the Queen's perfect throat.
And then she was gone, and the winter stretched ahead like a field of untrammeled snow. Peace.
Of course, it couldn't last. As she did every year, the Queen returned. But Mab soon learned this year was not like every year. Not anything like. She woke one dawn to find the Queen bending over her just as on the morning she'd left. She blinked awake. Was the winter already over? The Queen's eyes were bright.
"Izha, a surprise," she said, her voice husky. "Come."
She led her from her bed and scrubbed her with handfuls of snow, too impatient even to let it melt into water first. The handmaidens fluttered around her but didn't touch her. This morning, more than ever, Mab belonged to the Queen. She rubbed Mab's skin with oils, and then she did something new. She painted her flesh. A handmaiden named Keshva brought a squirrel-hair brush and a pot of indigo paint and the Queen took them and drew blue coils around Mab's arms and legs, and spirals around her navel and br**sts. At the base of her throat she painted three small symbols: the moon waxing, full, and waning. As she drew them, Mab saw the handmaidens' eyes over the top of the Queen's bent head. Her heartbeat quickened. Their eyes, they were like the eyes of cats watching the futile scuttling of injured prey as they toyed with it, minute by minute, prolonging for pleasure the inevitable fatal strike.
And she knew this was the moment her dread had reached for, all those months ago.
The Queen rose and led Mab to the window, where they watched several low-caste Druj toss cats to the beasts until they were sated. Then, from across the bridge came a short procession. Isvant was at the head of it, and beside him, stumbling, was a boy. Mab stared. In all her life she had never seen another human being, but still, a thrill of instant recognition sparked through her. The boy was na**d as she was, and his arms and legs were ringed in blue paint too. She couldn't take her eyes off him. Looking at him was like seeing evidence that she herself truly existed, that she wasn't only a cithra for the Queen to wear, but something alive and distinct.