John Crowley: Little, Big

Unless she, who had no intention of ending up in some place ruled by who knew what masters, masters who might well take her revolt against them very badly, could turn him. Turn him, as a secret agent is turned by the side he is spying on. For this she had stolen the cards. With them she might rule him, or at least make him see reason.

There was one great flaw in that scheme, however.

What a pickle, what a pickle. She glanced up at the purse over on the luggage rack. She felt that her shift against this storm was as hopeless as any, as any sad hopeless shift of those caught in the path of something, something uncaring and oncoming, and far huger than they had imagined. Eigenblick had said it in every speech, and he had been right, and she blind. To welcome it was as futile as to defy it, it would have you anyway if it wanted you, Hawksquill was very sorry she had been smug but still she must escape. Must.

Footsteps: she sorted their progress down the corridor toward her bedroom from the regular clatter of the train wheels’ turning.

No time to hide the cards, nowhere better anyway than in plain sight. This was all coming too rapidly to a head, she was after all only an old lady and no good at this, no good at all.

Do not, she counseled herself, do not look toward the alligator purse.

The door was flung open. Holding the jamb in his two hands to steady himself against the train’s motion, Russell Eigenblick stood before her. His somber tie was pulled awry, and sweat glistened on his forehead. He glared at Hawksquill.

“I can smell them,” he said.

There, there was the flaw in her scheme. She had glimpsed it first in the Oval Office on a certain snowy night. Now she was certain. The Emperor was mad: as mad as any hatter.

“Smell what, sir?” she asked mildly.

“I can smell them,” he said again.

“You’re up very early,” she said. “Too early for a glass of this?” She showed him the brandy bottle.

“Where are they?” he said, stumbling into the tiny chamber. “You have them, now, here somewhere.”

Do not look toward the alligator purse. “Them?”

“The cards,” he said. “You bitch.”

“There’s a matter I must speak to you about,” she said, getting up. “I’m sorry I was delayed boarding last night until late, but…”

He was lunging around the room, eyes shifting rapidly, nostrils flaring. “Where,” he said. “Where.”

“Sir,” she said, drawing up but feeling hopelessness swim up in her, “sir you must listen.”

“The cards.”

“You’re acting on the wrong side.” She blurted it out, unable to frame it cleverly, feeling horribly drawn to stare at the purse which he had not seen on the luggage rack. He was tapping the walls for hiding places. “You must listen. Those who made promises to you. They have no intention of keeping them. Even if they could. But I…”

“You!” he said, turning to her. “You!” He laughed hugely. “That’s rich!”

“I want to help you.”

He paused in his search. He looked at her, depths of sad reproach in his brown eyes. “Help,” he said. “You. Help. Me .”

It had been an unfortunate choice of words. He knew— she could see it in his face—that helping him had never been what Hawksquill had intended, nor was it her intention now. Mad he might be, but he wasn’t stupid. The betrayal in his face made her look away. It was apparent that nothing she could say would move him. All he wanted from her now was what was useless to him without her, though even that she couldn’t think how to explain.

She found herself staring at them, in their purse on the luggage rack. She could almost see them looking back at her.

She snatched her look away, but the Tyrant had seen her. He made to shove her aside, reaching up.

“Stop!” she said, flinging into the word powers she had once vowed never to use except at deepest need, and for good ends only. The Emperor stopped. He was still in mid-grasp; his bull’s strength struggled against Hawksquill’s command, but he couldn’t move. Hawksquill grabbed the alligator purse and fled from the room.

In the corridor, she nearly collided with the stooped and slow-moving porter. “Ready to sleep, now, miz?” he inquired gently.

“You sleep,” she said, and pushed past him. He slid down the wall, mouth open, eyes closed, asleep. Hawksquill, already crossing into the next car, heard Eigenblick roar out in rage and dismay. She shoved aside a heavy curtain that barred her way, and found herself in a sleeper, where at Eigenblick’s cry men had awakened and were now pulling aside the curtains on upper and lower berths and looking out, sleepy, alert, pale. They saw Hawksquill. She backed out through the curtain and into the car she had come from.

There, in a niche in the wall, she saw that cord which she had often studied in her train-going, the cord that when pulled in fun or malice set the puller up for a stiff fine. She had never really believed that these slim ropes could actually stop a train, but, hearing steps and clamor in the far car, she pulled it now, and stepped quickly to the door, and grasped its handle.

Within seconds the train came to a thrashing, crashing, jolting stop. Hawksquill, astonished at herself, wrenched open the door.

Rain struck her. They were in the middle of nowhere, amid rainy, dark woods where last hillocks of snow melted. It was fiercely cold. Hawksquill leapt to the ground with a fainting heart and a cry. She struggled up the embankment, hampered by her skirt, hurrying herself lest the impossibility of her doing this at all catch up with her.

Dawn was gray, almost in its paleness more opaque than night. At the top of the embankment, within the woods, panting, she looked back at the dark length of the stopped train. Lights were coming on inside. From the door she had left, a man jumped down, signalling behind him to another. Hawksquill, stumbling in snowobscured undergrowth, ran deeper in. She heard calls behind her. The hunt was up.

She turned behind a great tree and rested her back against it, sobbing painful cold breaths, listening. Twigs crackled, the woods were being beaten for her. A glance around showed her a dim figure, far off to the left, with something blunt, pointed and black in a gloved hand.

Done secretly to death. No one the wiser.

With trembling hands she opened the alligator purse. She clawed out from amid the loose cards a small morocco-leather envelope; Her breath condensing before her made it difficult to see, and her fingers shook uncontrollably. She pulled open the envelope and fumbled within it for the sliver of bone that it contained, one bone chosen from among the thousand-odd bones of a pure black cat. Where was the wretched thing. She felt it. She pinched it between two fingers. A crackle of brush that seemed close by startled her, she threw up her head, the tiny charm slipped from her fingers. She almost caught it as it fell catching along the stuff of her skirt, but her eager hand grasping for it brushed it away. It fell amid snow and black leaves. Hawksquill, crying a hopeless no, stepped unwittingly on the place where it had fallen.

The calling of those who followed her was soft, confident, coming closer. Hawksquill fled from her shelter, glimpsing as she did so the shade of another of Eigenblick’s soldiers, or the same one, anyway armed; and he saw her too.

She had never given much thought to what in fact might happen to her mortal body, its soul securely hidden, if fatal things were done to it; if projectiles were passed violently through it, if its blood were spilled. She couldn’t die, she was certain of that. But what, exactly? What? She turned, and saw him aim. A shot was fired, she turned to run again, unable to tell if she had been struck or only shocked by the noise.