Eileen Gunn - Questionable Practices

She reclined casually on the air just above a brocade-covered divan in the center of the tent. She wore a cream-colored man’s Brioni suit, cunningly retailored to fit her elegant body, an apricot silk blouse open to the navel, from which peeked a teardrop-shaped rock-crystal pendant, and no shoes. Her skin was the color of polished bronze, with hints of verdigris and subtle green depths. Her cheekbones were high and sharp. Her eyes were set at an angle, and they flashed jungle-green, an emerald effulgence from a star that did not shine in the night sky of this world. Unbidden a name popped into Agnes’s mind: Melisaundre .

Queen Melisaundre was beautiful. Even Agnes could see that.

Beside her, Richard was transfixed.

“We came here by accident,” the elf-queen said casually, as if returning to a conversation already in progress. “We didn’t know your world even existed here on the marches of Avalon, that fey land we set out to conquer. Imagine our surprise and delight! A realm of possibilities opened before us! As it happened, of course, we destroyed your lands and killed your people. But, well… we were bored, pure and simple. What else could we have done? What other would any sensible being have done in our position?”

Agnes knew it would be a mistake to answer, and she kept her mouth shut. She was relieved at first that Richard did the same, but then she dared a quick sideways glance and saw that he was blushing. At a time like this! Agnes all but stamped her foot. If Richard, of all people, couldn’t be relied on to keep his wits about him, then who could?

Melisaundre dangled her bauble before her lips and blew softly upon it, setting it swinging gently on the pendulum of its chain. She reached out and delicately touched it — like so! — with the tip of a tongue as pink as a cat’s. “Don’t you wish you could be this jewel?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you like to lie between my breasts forever? Wouldn’t that be the pleasantest doom imaginable?”

“Thank you, ma’am, no,” Agnes said quickly, dipping the briefest of curtseys. It was essential to be polite: she realized that instinctively. And the higher the level of danger, the more polite you had to be. She knew she had to be very, very polite to the queen of the elves.

Richard stepped forward involuntarily, his eyes glowing as if lit by a flash from a hidden mirror. In a dazed voice, he said, “I think that. .”

“Richard! No!” Agnes said.

“I mean, it kind of sounds like…”

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

“Maybe, I don’t know…”

“ Think , Richard! Don’t just —”

“… I’d like that.”

And he was gone.

The elf-queen held the pendant up, admiring its newly flawed interior. “A jewel with a soul reflects a better quality of light, don’t you think?” she remarked lightly. “And as we have none of our own, we are so grateful when you volunteer yours.”

Without thinking, Agnes launched herself at the elf-queen, clawing, kicking, and screaming. And found herself immediately frozen in mid-air, suspended about four feet above the floor.

“Cassis and asphalt,” said the elf-queen. “Hints of anise. An elusive smoky quality. Just a trace of honey. And a flintiness under it all. We could bottle that and sell it at market.” She placed her long, sharp nose in the crook of Agnes’s neck and inhaled deeply. Sharp fingers pinched Agnes’s arms and the inside of a leg, as if assessing her plumpness. “But with encouragement, what might you not become? Worthy, perhaps, of even a queen’s palate.” She raised her voice. “Store her with the others, and we’ll do more with her later.”

Agnes was taken away and fed — on marzipan, melon slices and sugared oranges, on candied ginger and great slabs of baklava so intensely sweet they made her teeth ache, washed down with honeyed tea. She ate until her stomach hurt. But all the while, though she was careful to hide it, she burnt with that deep inner anger of which children, in the sentimental imagination, were deemed incapable. Any casual observer of a kindergarten or a schoolyard, however, can see that the younger the child, the less capable it is of hiding any anger it may harbor. By Agnes’s age, most children are able to bank their fury so that it is generally unseen by adults and, often, by the child itself. Agnes certainly could do that.

Then she was washed, in water that had been heated to body temperature, and had hibiscuses afloat in it. Needle-toothed yakshis dried her down with impossibly fluffy towels and helped her into new garments. They were of elven make and did not cover her stomach, but otherwise they seemed decent enough. Finally she was led to a large oval cushion which, though it looked suspiciously to her like the sort of thing people had for their pet dogs or cats, was nevertheless so comfortable that she fell asleep almost immediately.

When Agnes awoke, the bed was rocking gently under her. She drew aside the bed-curtain and discovered that the armies were on the march again, and that her bed was being carried by two trolls. She swung her legs over the edge so she could climb down.

“I’d advise you not to do that, Missy,” one of the trolls said. He was a tusked grotesque with legs like a rhinoceros’s.

“If you did,” said the second, “we’ll reflexively stop you in the most painful available manner.”

“Which, truth be told, we’d really rather not.”

“You’re just another victim of elvish depravity, like we are, after all.”

“So just stay with the program, okay?”

Agnes scrambled back into the center of the bed. “Okay,” she said. And, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You can’t get us in trouble, Missy.”

“Even if you could, what would we care?”

“We’re not self-aware.”

“Just bundles of reflexive responses, is all. It’s not as if we were actually conscious.”

So she spent most of the day, dozing off and on, being carried along with the trooping armies of Elfland. When at last they made camp, she climbed down and fed herself from one of the many tables overflowing with food of all kinds. Then Melisaundre sent for her.

“You are a green gemstone, I believe,” the elf-queen said. “So you shall be treated with jealousy.”

“Ma’am? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand. Only to obey.”

Thus it was that for thrice a thousand and one nights in a row, Agnes served as the elf-queen’s cup bearer. Silent and attentive, she sat on a small chair in a shadowy corner while her liege lady consulted with scholars and annotated books. Slim in green livery, she watched the elf-queen practice her archery, and brought iced tea to slake her thirst between bouts. At banquets, she poured a sip of every libation into a shallow bowl and drank it down, to test for poison. Rarely did she speak. Always did she watch. In this way, she picked up something of an education in the ways of polite society.

Even more did she learn at night, when the elf-queen retired to her bed and comported herself with whomever had caught her eye during the long day. Agnes brought flagons of wine to set the mood beforehand, vials of aphrodisiacs when the queen’s lovers began to flag, and fruit-flavored ices to refresh them afterwards. She watched as the elf-queen coupled with warriors, scholars, poets, fauns, women by threes and men by the brace, with centaurs and imps as small as lapdogs and quilled apes with extra arms. It was the queen’s custom that her lovers should begin by entertaining her with oration and so, night after night, they related gesta taken from the history of Elfland, or ornate tales of bawdry stemming from their own experiences. Scholars taught her alchemy and astrology and the secret workings of the crystal spheres that moved the stars and planets through their complex dance in the night. Soldiers spoke of battles they had fought and heroic deeds they had seen.