Title: The Oak Queen (5/6)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Sequel to The Desert Children; Kirk, Spock, and McCoy reunite, but they soon learn an otherworld, while easy to enter, is impossible to leave – particularly when it is conspiring to keep one of them forever.
Parts: Foreword | Where a Tale Begins | A Quest for Three | A Quest for Two | A Quest for One | At the Heart’s End

A Quest for One

Fee. Fi. Fo. Fum. The stones in the hall floor rattle occasionally with the distant chant. They haven’t seen the giant. Either it gave up or had no real intention of catching them. Figures, Leonard decides. We’re being played, pushed around like chess pieces.

Somebody is having plenty of fun at their expense.

Leonard pulls open another door and sticks his head briefly into the room before pulling back again. He slams the door shut with all of the temper he can muster and tries the next door.

We’re stuck is the thought repeating itself in his head. Damn it. Stuck in a tower in the sky for God-knows-how-long. It’s not like they can climb down somebody’s hair.

Of the three of them, Leonard is the only one slamming doors. He thinks his Captain ought to be displaying some kind of frustration; instead Jim simply seems determined to keep looking, even if he has to investigate one million rooms before he dies of old age. Spock on the other hand, Leonard knows, is a lost cause on the emotional front. The Vulcan slowly and methodically plods from one room to the next.

Leonard stops for a moment to watch said-Vulcan exit his fifteenth room. The doctor imagines Spock’s eyes are blinking in such a way that means he finds their hunt to be quite fascinating. Leonard marches over to the Vulcan, intercepting him at the door of the next room on the opposite side of the hall with a sharp “Mr. Spock!”

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock says, turning, “what have you found?”

“Nothing! A big, fat nothing, Mr. Spock, and I gather your search has produced much the same.”

“Indeed.”

“Then what are you grinning about?” he not-quite snaps.

One of Spock’s eyebrows shoots up nearly to his hairline.

Leonard locks his hands behind his back in an imitation of Spock and bounces on the balls of his feet. “Don’t think I can’t tell when you’re grinning, mister. What is it, all fun and games to be up here? Is it that damned fascinating?“

Spock doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he tilts his head in that maddening way of his and asks, “Doctor, are you well?”

With a noise of disgust, Leonard spins around and stomps back to his side of the hallway. Spock, much to his annoyance, follows him. No doubt thinking he needs a keeper, that his emotions are flying all over the place and compromising their mission!

Spock wouldn’t be wrong, but Leonard is more likely to admit he respects a logical viewpoint rather than admit that. He jerks open a door, saying, “You’d better not be following me, you pointy-eared hobgoblin…!” In his distraction, Leonard completely misses the fact that the room is without a floor. His foot passes through air and he falls forward with a surprised “Oh hell!”, quite literally a heartbeat away from falling off a cliff—

—and is wrenched backwards by the collar of his blue uniform.

“It appears you have found something, Doctor McCoy.”

“Yeah,” Leonard says, trying not to sound as flummoxed as he feels. “T-Thanks, Spock.” His anger is suddenly gone. “I’m, uh, sorry I yelled at you. …Not sure why I was so mad.”

“Your emotions are less stable than usual,” Spock states in a tone of voice too mild to register as a taunt. Leonard is duly shocked into silence. “I do not believe this is entirely of your doing,” the Vulcan continues. “Other …forces are exerting influence over your state of mind.”

“So I’m not a complete basket-case.” Leonard’s relieved sigh is not quite an exaggeration.

Spock has latched onto something infinitely more interesting than a door that opens at the edge of a cliff. “‘Basket case?’ I do not understand precisely, Doctor. How is a basket a euphemism for insanity?”

“How should I know? My mama always said it, and my mama’s mama. So I guess it’s learned speech.”

“You never researched the origin of the phrase.” Spock’s eyebrows express the absurdity of the notion.

Leonard’s eyes roll heavenward. “Are you telling me you haven’t inadvertently adopted a single habit of your parents’?”

“If I had the means to—”

“Hey, what’s going on? Have you found something?” Jim calls as he jogs down the corridor, no doubt wondering why his two officers are loitering in the hallway instead of performing their assigned tasks.

“Sure did, Jim. Spock’s really putting a dampener on the ‘nuture’ side on an old psychological debate. Apparently he popped straight outta his momma as a walking, talking computer.”

Jim looks to Spock, completely confused.

Spock blinks steadily. “Doctor McCoy almost fell off a cliff.”

Leonard’s mouth drops open at the unjust comeback. “W-Why y-you—tattletale!”

Jim shoulders him aside, already too preoccupied by the idea of a cliff to listen to McCoy’s sputtering. The Captain peeks over the threshold of the open door and whistles. “That’s a long drop.”

“Indeed.”

“And you saved Bones?” Jim guesses. “Good work, Spock.” He claps a friendly hand on the Vulcan’s shoulder.

“Never mind me,” Leonard grouches from the side.

Jim’s mouth twitches. “You want congratulations for almost dying, Doctor? I have to say, congratulating you isn’t the first thing that comes to my mind.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Leonard says somewhat contritely.

Spock opens his mouth to speak. Jim raises a hand to stall the comment. “So we found a room which isn’t a room. What’s next?”

“What do you mean—what’s next? It’s a cliff, Jim. We aren’t going to jump off it.”

Immediately, he wishes he’d swallowed the words. Jim’s face lights up. Leonard backs away from the door. “No. No, that’s crazy! Even I’m not that crazy!”

“We jumped into a tree which could displace itself,” Spock muses.

“We also jumped off a tree the size of New York’s old Empire State Building,” Jim adds.

“See, the common factor is trees!” Leonard almost shrieks, only calming his voice in time to sound like he is squeaking. “I guarantee you, Jim-boy, this is a test to see if you’re dumb enough to throw yourself off a mountain side. Not everything here is real, but that doesn’t mean everything is magical either. You could still end up dead!”

Spock looks intrigued. “What is the alternative if a thing is neither real nor magic-based?”

Jim folds his arms and plants his feet which reminds Leonard too much a man taking root to weather a storm. So the doctor does the only thing he can: he walks away.

“Bones!”

They won’t do something so foolish without him. If he can find another door (and a safer way to the ground) he can worry about Jim and Spock that much less.

You’re stalling, the condescending voice in the back of his head tells him. You’re already afraid of what’s going to happen when you reach the firebird.

He hates that know-it-all voice, even if it is his rational side talking to his normal, blundering self. Ignoring it, Leonard reaches for a doorknob the moment Jim takes a hold of his arm, having caught up to him.

“Bones…”

“No, Jim,” he says firmly, throwing open the door to another room. “There has to be—”

Sunlight blinds them. Using his hand to shield his eyes, McCoy barely makes out the figure standing in the middle of the white room but he sees her face for an instant, just an instant, and that is enough. The overly bright light disappears, taking the woman with it. Leonard blinks several times to clear his vision of white spots from seared optical nerves. At his side, Jim pinches the bridge of his nose with a noticeable grimace.

Leonard places a hand on Kirk’s arm. “Take a deep breath,” he says softly to the man. “Is it bad?”

“No,” Jim says, dropping his hand. “It’s just—I was prepared for…” pain, he doesn’t finish. “But I’m all right, Bones.”

“I know, Jim,” the doctor says with sympathy. He flicks a glance at their surroundings. “This isn’t the best place for a migraine, anyway. I’ve got nothing to treat you with,” he ends gloomily.

“I feel fine.”

Leonard eyes his friend. “If you’re sure… It wouldn’t hurt if we take a minute to relax. De-stress… just until you’re certain, Jim.”

Jim’s smile is mirthless. “I can’t remember a life without stress, Bones,” the man admits. He rubs a hand over his face, huffing out a sigh. “Besides, I doubt I could ever feel comfortable here. Do you know we haven’t sleep in days?”

He nods. “Or eaten. Our bodies are sustained somehow by the environment. I haven’t figured out how it works yet.”

“Magic.” Jim mutters the word like a curse.

Leonard becomes aware of Spock is standing slightly to the right of them, having stayed nearby in case he might be needed but not close enough to seem like an interloper in Kirk and McCoy’s discussion. Leonard motions him over and points to the room beyond the door. “We’ve found our exit, gentlemen.”

“What did you see?” the Vulcan asks him, fixing his dark eyes on McCoy’s face.

“Gram.”

“Could it have been a trick?” Jim asks.

“I don’t think so, Jim. She smiled at me, and while that’s a pretty rare event, it was definitely her.” He hadn’t exactly thought of the smile as encouraging but something in Leonard knows she is telling him how pleased she is. Gram probably thought it was about time I showed the steel in my backbone.

Jim says “Okay” and squares his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

But it is Leonard who hesitates again. “Do you remember your promise?”

The look Jim shoots him is both amused and slightly grim. “We do.”

“Don’t follow the firebird—”

“Bones, we’re prepared.”

“—and don’t lose sight of each other.”

Jim enters the empty room. Leonard and Spock follow him. In the instant the door snaps shut of its own accord, the room fills with light, grower bright and brighter until Leonard hunches in on himself, thinking this is how it feels to be blind, not with darkness but light… too much light, blocking out every detail. When it finally abates, he is standing inside a forest. It’s night.

And he is alone.

In the unrelenting fog, the men can see nothing. They cannot move for fear of where they might tread.

“Do you understand now?”

James Kirk, incensed, whirs around to face the woman speaking. “Where is he? What have you done!”

Gram merely levels an even stare upon the man. “Your doctor is not the man you once knew. He is not the man you came to save. Do you still intend to free him?”

“Is this why you separated us from McCoy?” Jim asks, rage deepening in his voice. “Do you think we would leave him here, no matter what state he was in?”

“That is not my choice, but yours.”

Jim takes a carefully controlled step away from her, clearly fighting one of his baser instincts to lash out. “I’ve had enough of this game you’re playing, Gram. In case it wasn’t clear before, let me make it plain to you: Leonard McCoy does not belong to you or anyone on this world. He does not belong to me, either, but he is my friend in addition to being my responsibility. That gives me the right to demand he is treated with fairness and respect and allowed free will, and to remove him from a situation where he is not. I have seen none of those things from your people. Therefore Leonard won’t be staying. I don’t care what he is or isn’t.”

“And if he were a threat to your other… responsibilities?” Gram prompts mildly.

Spock’s immediate response has a sharp edge to it: “Doctor McCoy is not a threat.”

She studies the Vulcan. “Your belief is strong.”

“I have seen no evidence to the contrary.”

“Fascinating,” she says as he would. “I watched him threaten you.”

The Vulcan’s brows draw downward. “Those are not—sincere—threats. They are part of the doctor’s peculiar manner of communication.”

“Look,” Jim interrupts, “we are not here to debate Bones’ habits. They are what they are. What I want is McCoy returned to my ship.” Kirk repeats, his tone hard, “Where is he?”

“He is on the path to find his heart.”

“Take us there.”

“No,” Gram says.

“That wasn’t a request!” Kirk snaps.

“It is a trap.”

Jim’s hands tighten into fists, both paling and filling with purpose at that statement. In his stead, Spock speaks. “Then you wanted the Captain and I to avoid the trap, but not Doctor McCoy. Why?”

“The Queen would see you fail,” the woman says simply. “I would not.”

It is clear Jim believes her though he detests how she accomplished her task. For McCoy, who is without them, he appears deeply worried. “Tell us what we’re supposed to do, Gram.”

“The leader and the wise one,” Gram murmurs. “Find the firebird,” she tells Spock, “and she will ask a favor of you. Yours,” to Kirk, she says solemnly, “is the more difficult task. Blood and bone. I can advise of only one thing, Captain: when the time comes, hold him fast. If he is your friend as you claim, you must see that in him and not let go.” Finished, Gram sighs softly and seems to fade, as though her power is diminished by all that she has said.

“Where is the firebird?” Jim asks of her.

“By law, only the Vulcan should seek her.”

Jim shakes his head, jaw stubbornly set against the idea. “I made a promise. I must go with him.”

He could have said he would go with Spock regardless of any promise but Gram nods at his choice of words. “Then you must. A word given is a law unto itself. It is wise that you have said so; otherwise, to break your promise would only turn magic against you—and that you can ill afford.”

“As you say,” Jim mutters grimly. He turns to Spock. “Ready?”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

Gram is gone when he looks for her again, but with her departure, the fog has faded. Jim and Spock can see where they are, not at the edge of a forest, but at the door of a hut. Though they are not at the seaside, Jim recognizes the wind chime hanging beneath the eaves. Since this is Spock’s quest, he stands aside while the Vulcan knocks.

“Finally, a polite visitor! Well,” comes a querulous voice, “don’t dawdle. Come in—but don’t you dare attempt to steal my white hen! I’ve got a pot big enough for thieves!”

Panic sets in and stays with Leonard no matter how far he runs or what direction he takes through the forest. It chases his heels and spurs him onwards; he circles around pine trees that loom immense and ancient and so tall they might be near to touching the night sky. Sometimes he imagines their branches reaching out like clawed hands to hook his clothes, but those hands never capture him. Leonard keeps running.

“Jim!”

“Spock!”

He shouts himself hoarse, only realizing once his voice can no longer carry that he has been fooled again.

What is the point in separating them? They weren’t close to solving any mysteries yet. They weren’t doing anything but bumbling through the otherworld with an ant’s view.

“We weren’t going to win!” He whispers it because he is unable to yell.

Is that what you wanted to hear, whoever you are?

He stops running then, stumbles, and almost sinks to the ground, catching himself against a wide, rough tree trunk.

This maze is so simple—an endless expanse of trees, a sea—that he knows he will never find his way out again. He is well and truly trapped; he will become the crazed king in some horrific tale, wandering around digging graves, trying to find his death. This is when he needs to be less human, he thinks, so no walls, no magic, could imprison him. Without being Other, he has no power to become the stone he sees, the bird that flies between the bars of its cage.

Yet Leonard McCoy is not so untouched by the otherworld he does not perceive what is there that does not want to seen. “Who are you?” he asks, and adding in the same breath, “Go away!”

When he turns, the firebird is watching him in her human form. Her lovely face is round and luminous in the dark, and her body is framed by a tumbling fall of flame-colored curls. He stills, fearing that if he releases too loud a breath she will disappear. Simultaneously leaning forward and pushing away from the tree, Leonard cannot help but anticipate a song, thought it will surely fill every thought in his head with only her. Already, most of his thoughts are captivated by her presence. She is magic, a single flower blooming in a desert. What aches and grievances and regrets ailed him before he had borne are unimportant.

But the firebird remains silent, her golden eyes speculative. As the doctor watches, she transforms: her curly hair shortens into feathers and the light in her face dims until he can see something plainer beneath. Leonard’s clouded mind becomes clear and sharp again—and fully his own. He steps back against the tree, needing its support to ground him, and draws in a deep breath of night air to rid be of any lingering spell.

The woman shifts, drawing his attention to her again. She is caught somewhere between the beautiful firebird and the hawk-eyed, foul-tempered witch from the hut. Her voice, however, is still liquid fire. “Why have you come to my forest?”

“To ask you to return my heart.”

“I told you,” the words wash over Leonard, “I did not have your heart.” She studies his surprised expression. “You might have given your heart to me once, but you turned from that path and chose another. Even then, you had only half a heart to give.”

Disappointment is a sharp bone in Leonard’s throat. “Then where is my heart?”

Her golden eyes caress him. “You know where your heart lies.”

“But I don’t!” he insists. “I—”

She clucks softly. “Why are you here?”

He shakes his head, torn between distraught and exasperated. They are talking in circles. “Because I thought you had my heart.”

“That is not my question. Listen.” She sings then, loosing lovely notes, cinders falling which make Leonard shudder with pleasure.

He can feel his eyes glazing, the world turning to shadow behind him. “I’d follow you forever,” he whispers, moving toward her. A twig cracks underfoot, a disjointed sound.

The singing stops abruptly. “Even without a heart, you would follow me?”

“Yes.”

Her arms melt into wings and she turns her face up to the night sky. “That is not what I want most,” she tells the white face of the moon. “Where does your true heart lie? What brought you here?”

He swallows. She’s planning to leave him, he thinks in despair. “Maybe I don’t need it anymore. Not in your world.”

Her voice is mixture of a sigh and the chicken lady’s sharp squawk. “You told me a heart is never worthless, yet you forget yours so easily. I warned you not to forget.”

Leonard hesitates. “I said that?” He muses at length, drawing words from his thoughts. “Maybe I forgot because it wasn’t worth much to me.”

“Perhaps your heart was worth more to another.”

That startles him. Would he give his heart up willingly? That is an easy question to answer: he would. He must have. But not to the firebird.

The woman sings to the moon suddenly, an eerie dirge of burden and loss in a voice older and deeper than the firebird’s trill. It could be the story of a single, flickering candle lighting a window on winter’s longest night, or the sorrow of a broken-hearted swan. The song goes on until tears are dripping from the doctor’s chin. Then it sweeps upward, sweetening, climbing slowly to the sky like roses winding along a trellis. She sings of a heart, blossoming within the shelter of tiny hands.

Still singing, the golden-eyed firebird, no longer a woman, lifts her wings and takes flight, spiraling towards the highest branch of the tallest pine tree. Her song trails after her like flaked fire, falling and melting into the earth below. One ethereal, unfaltering note reaches into Leonard and burrows into an empty hollow within him. The firebird repeats that solitary note as she descends to a branch and, clutching it in her talons, sways dreamily. The note glows beneath his skin, just behind the curve of his ribs.

Leonard stands under the firebird’s tree for an eternity. Sometimes he catches one of his stray thoughts and turns it over, inspecting it curiously, before allowing it to drift away again. Always, as he listens and dreams, he is cocooned by the warmth in his chest.

The song, a soft lullaby, fades when the night stars are invisible behind the sun. The firebird is nowhere to be seen.

Leonard comes back to himself and rubs at dried tear tracks on his face. The question is still lingering before him, but this time he thinks he knows its answer.

“Where does my heart lie?” he asks a morning-bright forest. But these trees have no mouths to answer him with.

Tiny hands holding a heart. Tiny, leaf-shaped hands.

Leonard closes his eyes as he lifts his cold face to the warm sun. He remembers how his heart led him from his ship to the children, how his heart had hurt because of the fear in their eyes. And when he had seen what had truly been their fate, his heart had broken.

When a heart breaks, what becomes of its pieces?

Leonard opens his eyes, finally knowing where he needs to be, to seek a path through the trees but can see none. “Help me,” he asks of anything that will listen.

A bark draws his attention.

“I can help you,” says a small, red-gold figure winding between two trees.

“Red,” he says, glad to see the fox. “I need to find the… the birch grove.” Would Red know about the children?

Red’s black eyes narrow as he tilts his head. This time he is wearing a miniature crown, perhaps to remind the world of what he is beneath his appearance—or to remind himself of what he lost. “Why the birch grove?” the fox wants to know.

“Please help me.”

“I, of course, cannot decline such a plea, but you already know that.” The fox springs across the forest floor, uprooting fallen leaves and other forest debris in his wake. “Follow me!”

Gratefully, Leonard does.

Leonard and the fox walk through miles of mirrored forest before there is a break in the tall, unwavering pines. Red stops at the tree line, where mist hovers oddly as if to obscure what is beyond, and Leonard pushes through the mist and into a circular grove. The birches, crowded close together, are silent.

“Children,” Leonard calls in a whisper.

Leaves stir but whether the wind or the trees themselves are the cause, Leonard cannot tell.

Red barks lightly, catching the man’s attention. With his eyes shining brightly through the mist but the rest of him mostly invisible, the fox says, “Ah, I see your reason for coming here. You left something behind, human—a dangerous thing to do in this world. I think it unwise of you to have returned but I am no judge, as equally unwise as I once was and still am!” And with that warning, the fox bounds back into the pines and vanishes as silently as he appeared, his duty to Leonard done.

Alone, Leonard walks toward the birches but this grove isn’t as he remembers it. He frowns and finally pinpoints what is different: among their roots grows a wild bush, its thorny branches bent under the heaviness of vividly red blooms. There is a scent of summer roses in the air. He reaches down to rub one soft petal between his thumb and forefinger in admiration. But as McCoy bruises the flower, a hot fire flares beneath his breastbone. He jerks away, gasping at the sensation, not quite painful, and accidentally kicks something on the ground.

An empty cup of beaten metal rolls in between two birch roots, stark silver against the brown earth. Leonard plucks it up in surprise. Gram had given him this cup. He fed the water to the children rather than taking it for himself.

His eyes are drawn down to the solitary rose bush again. A sore ache is spreading through his chest. “My god,” he says softly, falling to his knees beside the rose heads and replacing the cup on the ground. Leonard looks to the silent birches. “You’ve always had it, haven’t you? My heart.”

Did he mean to give it to them? No, but the gifting had happened so naturally, Leonard did not realize what he had done. How could he? Never has he withheld his heart from children. And these, more than any other children he has known, deserve what kindness can be spared for them.

Leonard withdraws his hand, realizing only belatedly he had been stroking the edge of a rose petal. Folding his legs, he settles on the ground to think. Now he faces a true dilemma: here is his heart, but what if the children need it? How could he take it away from them then?

He lets his face rest in his hands. Time parts and flows around him, unnoticed. At last, McCoy allows himself to listen to the light murmurs around him, conversations without words. Someone giggles.

He stills, slowly withdrawing his hands and easing them into his lap. Leonard looks up to find the trees are watching him, their sleepy eyes set in simple faces of bark. He has the sense the children are happy to see him. Leaves wave playfully, welcomingly in the air. Tears sting the corners of Leonard’s eyes.

“I’m so sorry.” It’s a poor expression to capture his regret but Leonard can think of no other words that might suffice. His mind churns again, restless. He should stay here for a while. Are they lonely? How can he give them more than a comforting presence?

He is close to forming his thoughts into words when the wind carries a new sound into the grove. Leonard freezes, and the birch trees—the children—come fully awake. They rattle their limbs in distress. The doctor climbs to his feet, hushing them. “Quiet,” he orders quickly in his firmest grown-up voice, and “Hide!”

Though they obediently return to a glamour of sleeping trees, Leonard can feel the thrum of their awareness just beneath his skin. He paces to the center of the grove, tensed like a hunted animal. The sound of a horn comes again, just ahead, piercing through the forest and the mist. He doesn’t realize he is holding his breath until a white stag comes battering through the dense underbrush. It veers when it sees Leonard, its red eyes rolling, and plunges mindlessly into the birches. The children cry out, frightened.

Another figure forms just inside the misty tree line, coming toward the grove more slowly, a great lumbering beast. Not a beast, Leonard amends, as it enters the grove: the Queen, mounted on a midnight steed.

“Tithe-payer.” In the Queen’s pale hand is a golden horn carved with a ring of oak leaves. Her eyes skim the grove; as they pass Leonard, invisible icy fingers plunge into his chest and crush the firebird’s note. The world grays and when it returns, Leonard is on his knees in the clearing struggling to breathe. “So,” she says, “this is where your heart lies—and where my children have been hiding. You have done well.”

His mouth opens in wordless horror.

The Queen raises her horn and blows a single, cold note. Out of the mist come more mounted riders, spilling into the grove like a silvery river. Their horses are fierce and foaming, seemingly mad; the riders, regal and grotesque in their plated armor and antlered helmets.

This is the Hunt, Leonard realizes, here for prey. Prey he led them to.

The birches shudder and weep sap. As the grove is invaded, its magic is destroyed: white bark peels; branches snap like brittle bones; summer leaves wither into dust. The trees vanish, and in their place is a huddle of thirty-two children, who clutch at each other’s hands in fear.

Leonard forces his body to ignore his pain and climbs to his feet with an angry shout. “You can’t have them!”

“I shall,” the Queen of the Wood replies, “for they have always been mine,” and lifts a commanding hand to her hunters. “Bring their magic to me—” Her eyes are smiling in triumph though her mouth is stone. “—and the tithe-payer’s heart.”

I might have to apologize in advance for how this is going to end.

At the Heart’s End

Related Posts:

• The Oak Queen (6/6) – from June 29, 2012
• The Oak Queen (4/6) – from June 17, 2012
• The Oak Queen (3/6) – from June 13, 2012
• The Oak Queen (2/6) – from June 4, 2012
• The Oak Queen (1/6) – from May 29, 2012