Laird Barron [Barron - The Croning

OTHER BOOKS BY LAIRD BARRON

Occultation
The Imago Sequence

LAIRD BARRON

NIGHT SHADE BOOKS
SAN FRANCISCO

The Croning 2012 by Laird Barron
This edition of The Croning
2012 by Night Shade Books

Cover Illustration and design by Cody Tilson
Interior layout and design by Amy Popovich

Edited by Ross E. Lockhart

All rights reserved

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-59780-414-1

Night Shade Books
http://www.nightshadebooks.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to the following for making this book possible: Amy, Marty, Jason, Jeremy, Ross, and the entire staff of Night Shade Books; my agents Brendan Deneen, Colleen Lindsay, Heather Evans, and Peter Rubie; Matt Jaffe; Jody Rose; JD and Lara Busch; Mark Ibsen; Larry Roberts; and Ellen Datlow.

Special thanks to my loyal companions Athena, Horatio, Ulysses, and Persephone; and my friendsyou know who you are.

Extra special thanks to Jason and Harmony Barron; and the Langan familyJohn, Fiona, and David. I love you guys.

For Oksana, Julian, and Quinn.

CONTENTS

Looking for Mr. R

(Antiquity)

T hat venerable fairytale of the Millers daughter and the Dwarf who helped her spin straw into gold has a happy ending in the popular version. The events that inspired the legend, not so much.

The Spy who was the son of the Miller embarked upon a perilous mission into the Western Mountains. The cart tracks and game trails he followed were tortuous, wending through darksome forests full of robbers and all manner of wild beasts. Such were the dangers of travel in most regions of the world in those days. He chose to walk and was accompanied by a grizzled mastiff whod served him faithfully through many a bleak hour. He carried a dagger, a water skin, a few coins in a dried-up purse, and a tiny crucifix around his neck. Just those meager possessions and his heart, which burned for the Queen. That devotion guided him through thorn thickets and quicksand, over rockslides and across rivers. It comforted him all those dark, dark nights as he and the dog camped along the trail, wrapped in his cloak, fire dwindling to embers, wolves howling among the trees. The stars glowed cold as stones, cold as the snowy caps of the peaks he climbed closer to each passing day.

He thought of his sister, the Queen, also daughter of the Miller, albeit of a different mother. Shed elevated herself unto royalty by convincing the old King she possessed the secrets of alchemy, that she could spin flax into gold, or some similar horseshit. The Spy couldnt be certain what particular deception his lovely sister had practiced for this high-stakes roll of the bones. He loved her all the more for her foibles, her casual cruelty.

The Spy knew damned well, however, that while Sister possessed a golden tongue for sucking cock and other manipulations, she was no fucking alchemist. Thus, when the old King called her bluff and imprisoned her in a dungeon with a pile of straw and a dawn deadline, literally a dead-line, the Spy, who was at that time a humble groom, figured her head would roll into a basket before noon the next day. He sent his nicest black peasant ensemble to be cleaned, and picked a bouquet of white roses for the paupers grave.

Imagine everyones amazement when she emerged from the cell twelve hours later with several baskets of gold wire and a formula scrawled on a parchment for repeating the process under spectacularly rare astrological conditions. Her smug little smile and coy eyelash batting aside, the Spy sensed her fear.

In the three years that followed, all through her lavish marriage ceremony to the Crown Prince, which half the population of the neighboring kingdoms attended; the opulent honeymoon; the abdication of the old King, and her subsequent elevation to queen and consort; the gala balls and garden parties of epic extravagance; the rosy pregnancy; only the Spy detected a black cloud of gloom piling around her in a gathering storm. Only he paid heed to crows in the branches of the willow tree in her favorite garden.

Despite a ruthless nature and innate talents for subterfuge and skullduggery, he was the Spy entirely due to his sisters generosity. Shed rewarded their father with retirement to a country estate and her brother with a post at court in the clandestine services. The Ministry of Red Hot Pokers, as certain wits dubbed the office.

The Groom was happy to be shut of his prior job. No more getting kicked by nags during shoeing, no more pitching shit or fetching water for the irritable stable master. No more shagging brawny farriers daughters and warty hags in back alleys (or so he thought)! It was going to be frock coats, feathered hats, and high-tone pussy until he keeled over.

Things went in that general direction for a while. Until the Queen showed pregnant and the creepy Dwarf started hanging around the palace

During a polo match the Spy noticed the Queen staring at a dwarf in a cassock who was lurking near the bleachers. Horrible creatureand the Spy knew from horrible after his many misspent years on the mean streets among lepers and beggars, and maimed veterans of foreign adventures. Hed seen his share of pox-ridden, congenitally defective, gods-cursed twisted caricatures of the human form in alleys and brothels alike. The Dwarf, hunched and scabrous, peeping at the world through gimlet eyes and grinning with the malice of a butcher or coroner who enjoyed his job for all the wrong reasons, was something special indeed. The Spy figured the fellow for a mendicant or an entertainer, an itinerate jester. Then the Dwarf tipped the Queen a sly wink, eyeing her by then prodigious belly, and the Spy smelled trouble brewing.

That night he separated her from the entourage of ladies-in-waiting and snot-nosed footmen and brought her into the garden under the weeping willow. He came right out and asked if she was being blackmailed regarding the fact the baby did not belong to the virile young King whod, ironically, made a virtue of siring hundreds of bastards during his boring wait for the throne.

Have you told anyone its mine? the Spy said, holding her small, chilly hand too tightly.

Im not stupid, she said in a tone that indicated she thought he sure as hell was. I prefer my head where its positioned rather than mounted on the wall in my loving husbands study.

Then whos the pygmy working for and what do they want?

The Dwarf never told me his name. Hes an imp of Hell.

This doesnt sound very good, the Spy said. The pigfucker smuggled in the gold and now he wants a royal favor, is that it? Gods blood, honey. Youre in a real bind if its political.

He doesnt desire a political favor.

Really. No maps, no troop movements, no appointments to the cabinet?

Nothing of the sort.

Your sweet ass?

He wasnt interested in the royal preserves.

Well, shitfire. Fuck. Piss. Whats his game, then?

The Dwarf spun the gold, not I. Hes come for his prize.

What, dear sister, have you gone and done?

Sister grinned exactly as a fox in a trap baring her teeth, and told him what pact shed made to produce those fabled baskets of gold wire and thus get her family out of the poorhouse. It hadnt involved the Spys biggest fear at the timeher blowing the misshapen Dwarf. No, it was far worse.

A few nights after the Prince was born, the Dwarf arrived on a cold draft, then went away empty-handed. However, the reprieve would be short-lived. He vowed to return in three months to the minute and collect paymentthe tender babe who presently nuzzled the Queens fair breast. Although, if dear Queenie could learn the Dwarfs name during the interim, why then hed declare the whole sordid pact null and void and theyd take crumpets and tea instead.