The Girl Who Chose

by Violet Grace

  I’m also counting on the fact that everyone, including my father, will still be in bed. And we’ll be long gone before the sun comes up.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not going to talk to him?’ Tom whispers.

  ‘Yes.’ It comes out more defensive than I intended.

  ‘Wounds need air and light to heal. Otherwise they fester.’

  ‘I’m not talking to him,’ I say adamantly. ‘He’ll be asleep anyway.’

  The words have barely left my mouth when the aroma of fresh coffee reaches my nose. Normally I’d find the smell comforting, but right now it makes me want to vomit.

  ‘Looks like your father is an early riser.’

  The sound of my father’s voice singing softly to himself silences us both. I’d recognise that voice anywhere. It awakens deep, aching feelings of yearning. And I really wish it didn’t.

  I brace myself for the confrontation. I’m about to come face to face with the man who manipulated my mother and played God to create me. I think of all the wasted years I yearned for a father, a perfect man, who I now know is nothing other than a childish fantasy. He’s the last person in the world I should care about.

  So why are my palms so sweaty?

  Tom is tense and alert, listening for danger and peering into darkened rooms as I creep down the hall soundlessly until I reach my father’s door. It’s partly open. I look through the crack to see him leaning over the desk.

  My mouth drops open. He’s examining the Voynich manuscript. The Veritas.

  A grey curl flops over his broad forehead, which I’m irritated to notice is the same shape as mine. His finger tracks slowly along the words as if he’s searching for a hidden meaning, just the way I did when I was trying to break the code. He scribbles something in a notebook and returns to studying the manuscript.

  Now would be a good time to snatch the book and run, just like I’d planned. I could ask Tom to conjure a spell to snatch it and we’d be out of here before my father even knew what happened. But I don’t. I just stand in the door, staring at the first man I ever loved. The first man who treated me like I didn’t matter. The first man who broke my heart, even though I didn’t realise it at the time.

  He must sense someone in the doorway because he looks up and sees us. He jumps in his chair, his body stiffening. He looks like, well, like he’s seen a ghost.

  I see the intent on his face as his hand slips off the desk towards the drawer. I assume he’s got some sort of weapon in there

  ‘Bad idea,’ I say, stepping into the room.

  He raises his hands next to his ears in surrender and then slowly places them flat on his desk. He glances at Tom, who’s standing behind me in the doorway, and then back to me.

  ‘You’re the fairy from the cell.’

  I form the words ‘No shit, Sherlock’ in my head. But they must get scrambled on the way out because, to my horror, what I actually say is, ‘Is that all I am to you?’

  His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. ‘Your face … your voice,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘It’s as if…’

  He reminds me of a computer unable to process an error in logic.

  ‘Cordelia?’ he says eventually.

  Something inside me cracks when I hear the anguish in his voice and see the colour draining from his face.

  ‘Cordelia?’ he says again, breathlessly, as if his words have the power to manifest her right in front of him.

  ‘No,’ I say, hoping the ice in my voice masks my pain.

  He brushes the wayward grey curl out of his eyes and stares at me intently.

  He closes his eyes and then opens them again as if he’s waking from a dream. Or perhaps a nightmare.

  ‘Chess?’ he manages.

  ‘Samuel.’ I can’t bring myself to call him Dad. Dads are supposed to love their children, not use them. Stick around and raise them, not abandon them without a thought.

  ‘And who are you?’ he says to Tom.

  Tom stares my father down, his nostrils flaring. ‘The one who cared for Chess when you didn’t.’

  Samuel visibly recoils from the venom in Tom’s voice. I’ve never heard Tom speak to anyone like that before.

  I stand there, bolted to the ground, as Samuel Maxwell walks towards us on long, lanky legs and then, about a metre out, crumbles to the ground in a messy heap of limbs and unironed khaki.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he says as he cradles his head in his hands and sobs. ‘My Chess.’ He looks up at me through red, teary eyes. ‘My girl.’

  It’s not his tears that almost break me. It’s that one tiny word that changes everything: my.

  I want to reach out to him. I want to be that little girl again, who snuggled into his shoulder – innocent, trusting, and safe. But I am not that girl anymore. I haven’t been for a very long time.

  ‘You left me,’ I say, trying and failing to keep my voice steady.

  ‘You were dead.’ He wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt. ‘They told me you were dead.’

  ‘They told me you were dead,’ I counter.

  ‘What?’ The look of devastation on his face chips away at the stone around my heart. I do my best to resist it. He has a long history of manipulation. I will not be sucked in by his performance like my mother was.

  ‘If I thought you were alive I would have returned. I would have come back for you,’ he says, standing back up.

  ‘Do not lie to me, Samuel,’ I spit. He looks wearily at the blue sparks sizzling from my fingertips. ‘You used my mother so you could make me. I was your project and my mother was just collateral damage.’

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t like that, I promise you. You and your mother, you were my family, my everything. It started out as an assignment, but…’

  I grip the edge of the desk as he ploughs on, seemingly oblivious to my rage. An assignment. I was an assignment. I have spent my whole life grieving for a man who saw me as an item on his to-do list.

  ‘I was tasked with finding a way to simulate magic in order to infiltrate Iridesca,’ he stammers. ‘It seemed an utterly hopeless pursuit at first but then it occurred to me that if magic is energy, then it must behave as energy does. It must obey the same laws of movement and vibrations of atoms and molecules. I experimented with heat and frequency until I was able to simulate the Art. One moment I was standing in my lab in London, the next I was in the woods in Trinovantum. Before I knew what had happened, I was surrounded by the Protectorate and taken to the dungeon at Windsor Castle.’

  I recall the dank misery of the dungeon. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even my father.

  ‘Without my lab equipment I was unable to replicate the conditions to conjure a transfer spell home. And once I met your mother, Cordelia, I stopped trying.’ He smiles at the mention of her. ‘You must believe me, Chess. I am a scientist. Not a spy or a politician or a soldier. I am just an ordinary man who met the most extraordinary woman who has ever lived and fell hopelessly in love with her.’

  Goosebumps prickle along my arms. I want to believe him so much.

  ‘And then you came along. And for a brief moment in time my life was perfection.’ Sadness creeps into his features. ‘And then, it wasn’t. Cordelia was taken and you – they told me you we gone.’ Tears stain his cheeks again. ‘They erased us from each other’s lives with the same lie.’

  With pleading eyes, he clasps his hands in front of him. ‘I have thought of you every single day of my life. What I lost. That brief moment of happiness I would never have again.’

  I look up into his face, crinkled with years and emotion, my anger falters, dissipates, and I find myself believing him. I see sincerity and a heart as broken and lonely as mine.

  ‘Dad.’ I take a step towards him, my eyes misting.

  He enfolds me in a bear hug. I feel warm tears fall on my shoulder. I cling on tightly, afraid that he might disappear if I let go. The hug feels safe and familiar.

  I have a dad. I have a dad.

  ‘You’re alive,’ my father says as if
he’s still having trouble believing it. ‘The Chancellor told me you were dead, that Damius killed you.’

  ‘The Chancellor?’

  ‘Yes. You know him?

  ‘Know him? He was the one who dumped me in foster care. And then came and got me again to make me Queen.’

  ‘Queen? You’re Queen of Albion now?’

  ‘How could you not know that?’ Tom scoffs from the doorway. ‘Surely the coronation wouldn’t have been missed by the Agency’s intelligence-gathering efforts.’

  ‘They don’t tell me anything,’ my father says darkly as he walks back to his desk and sits down. ‘And to be honest, maybe I’ve preferred it that way. I work here alone and all I have cared about for the last ten years is finding a way to free Cordelia.’

  I take a seat on the other side of his desk.

  Taking a steadying breath, he continues with his story. ‘I don’t know how I returned to Volgaris. I was returned as abruptly as I arrived. It certainly wasn’t my doing.’

  ‘The Chancellor, no doubt. When it comes to discarding people who have outlived their usefulness, he has form.’

  ‘Perhaps. Or the Agency – or both. My presence there – and my relationship with Cordelia – had created the mother of all diplomatic scandals. I returned to the Agency to face disciplinary action for my unauthorised mission. Let’s just say that falling in love with the Queen of Albion was not in my brief.’ He smiles awkwardly. ‘My superiors told me you were dead and I never wanted to return to the realm that gave me everything and then took it all away.’

  ‘Agent Eight knew I was alive. She’s been monitoring me my whole life.’

  He looks up, his red eyes hardening. ‘Awful woman. I had not laid eyes on her until she turned up here a week ago with her thugs and torture device.’ His face brightens ever so slightly. ‘I was pleased when I heard that you’d worked out my clue.’

  ‘So you intended to give that away?’

  ‘I had to be careful. And honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure it would work.’

  ‘You helped me even though you didn’t know who I was?’

  He looks shocked by my question – offended, even. ‘I could not let anyone suffer like that without trying to intervene. But I could not risk detection, Chess. Agent Eight is very well connected.’

  ‘You didn’t think, even for a moment, that it was your daughter in the cell?’ It’s Tom in the doorway, his arms folded. ‘There can’t be too many fairies you know of with chromium in their blood.’

  My father directs his response to me. ‘I have been resigned to your death for such a long time, the thought that that fairy could be you never even occurred to me.’ His face crumples to a look of pure pain. ‘I’m so sorry, Chess,’ he says, struggling to meet my eyes. ‘I can’t imagine what you’ve been through all these years.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ I say, afraid that I might burst into tears at any moment.

  His eyes cast upwards as if reaching for a memory. ‘In the beginning I did not feel worthy of being loved by someone as wonderful as Cordelia.’ His words strike an uncomfortable chord. I know that feeling.

  ‘She gave her love to me when she didn’t have to, when there was every reason in the world for her not to,’ he continues. ‘So I grabbed it with both hands and I didn’t let go. I never have. There is an invisible, unbreakable thread that still connects us through time, through the realms and all adversity. I have been holding onto that thread all these years. I owe it to your mother to never let go of it. I owe it to myself. And now, I owe it to you.’

  He makes love sound so simple, so obvious and authentic. It’s exactly the way Tom sounded in the butterfly house when he told me that he conjured the cataclysmic spell because he loved me. It’s the opposite of the way Victor spoke of love. His love came with strings attached.

  I look down at the Voynich manuscript resting on the desk. Now that I’m in the same realm as it, I can feel its energy, strangely enticing and repulsive at the same time.

  ‘That book. It’s the original, isn’t it?’

  A hint of colour rises up my father’s cheeks and I know I’m right. ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘I, er … well, you might say I…’

  He looks exactly like I feel when I’ve been sprung.

  ‘You stole it!’ I am both incredulous and impressed.

  ‘Now, Chess, I don’t condone theft of any sort,’ he says, sounding, to my horror, like a parent. ‘But, well, under the circumstances …’

  I sit back in my chair. ‘My father broke into Yale and stole the Voynich manuscript. Nice work, Dad.’

  ‘I, er … borrowed it nine years ago and replaced it with a facsimile from an expert forger. Since it apparently hasn’t been missed I saw no reason to rush to return it.’

  ‘Why’d you steal it?’

  ‘Well, there is a scroll, you see —’

  ‘You know about the Scroll of Sirena?’

  He nods and my mind races. Something doesn’t add up. ‘Why would the Agency allow you to spend a decade on a project like the scroll? Wouldn’t they want you to be doing real work for them?’

  ‘The Agency has wanted the Scroll of Sirena for centuries. They consider it a threat to humanity. And with good reason.’

  ‘Do they know what you want it for?’

  He looks up at me, alarmed. ‘You must not tell them, especially not her.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Agent Eight and I are not what you’d call friends.’

  My father traces his finger along the binding of the book. ‘I studied it day and night for about a year, trying to crack the code or find some clue about the scroll. But I came up blank and I gave up. And then just last week I had a feeling. Not just any feeling. The same feeling I get in the presence of magic. Familiar magic. All these years I have not heard a thing from anyone in Iridesca and then I get this undeniable sense that the Luminaress is somehow trying to nudge me towards the book.’

  ‘Madeline?’ I say.

  He looks confused. ‘Gladys.’

  My breath catches in my throat. ‘What exactly did she say to you?’

  ‘Nothing specifically. It was just a feeling she provoked in me.’

  ‘Dad,’ I say softly. ‘Gladys is dead.’ The words are heavy in my mouth. ‘She died over a year ago.’

  His already sad face looks a little sadder. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. As you can imagine, your mother’s engagement to me was not a cause for celebration for many Fae. Gladys was one of very few supporters.’

  It’s hard to believe that Gladys would have supported the match, but I let it slide.

  ‘The Fae call that book the Veritas and say it contains every secret worth knowing. And yes, I imagine that also includes the location of the mermaid scroll.’

  My father looks up at me, surprised, even a little bit impressed.

  ‘I felt it calling to me last night,’ he says. ‘It dragged me from my bed, pleading for me to do something. I’m just not sure what.’

  To anyone else he’d sound nuts. Like he’s spent way too much time alone in a basement. But to me it makes perfect sense.

  ‘Have you deciphered it?’

  ‘I don’t think it can be decoded like an ordinary cypher,’ my father says. ‘I’m convinced its secrets cannot be read like words on a page. The meaning is buried deep within the pages. The truth is sentient somehow, and will reveal itself when it feels inclined to do so.’

  Tom walks over and looks down at the Veritas. He runs his finger lightly along the words as if he’s reading braille.

  ‘This book was fashioned using the Art. It’s a highly sophisticated and ancient dialect that I doubt exists anymore. I recognise the signature, but I don’t understand any of it,’ he says. ‘It’s … multidimensional,’ he says, searching for words.

  ‘Let me show you something,’ my father says. He flicks to a page with an efficiency that suggests he’s spent hours studying it. It’s a block of text with illustrations of women around the side. He points to the i
mage at the bottom. Unlike all the other women, this one has a tail. The drawing is simple, but the anguish on the mermaid’s face is clear.

  ‘Can you feel it?’ my father says.

  I nod. It’s like the mermaid’s despair is rippling off the page and changing the energy in the room. It takes me back to a time and place where I felt just as helpless and desperate, a place I never want to visit again.

  ‘Listen,’ my father says.

  Just like Victor’s page, this one is humming, soundwaves emanating from it. But I can’t make sense of it. It’s as if my brain can register the sound patterns, but can’t decode their meaning.

  ‘It’s language – or at least a code of some sort. But it doesn’t resemble anything I’ve come across,’ my father says. ‘All my efforts to unlock its secrets have been fruitless.’

  ‘If one of the secrets in this book is about the mermaid scroll, maybe it’s written in the language of mermaids.’

  My father looks at me and smiles. ‘Sharp as a whip. Just like your mother.’

  I’m glad he doesn’t see my eyes glisten as he looks down at the page.

  I turn to Tom. ‘What was the original tongue of mermaids?’

  ‘The legends say it was Sirena,’ he replies.

  ‘Wait,’ I say as my father turns to another page. ‘That.’ I point to a grid of 3x3 circles, each embellished differently, some looking almost plant-like, others like cogs in a machine. ‘I know that. I’ve seen it before.’

  ‘It’s called the Diagram of Nine Rosettes,’ my father says. ‘Some scholars hypothesise that it represents a compass pointing true north. But no one knows for certain. Like the rest of the book, it’s a mystery.’

  It’s the centre circle that catches my attention. Roughly drawn circles surrounding a cluster of domes. It’s the same image as on the glyph.

  ‘We need to show this to the mermaids,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve dealt with mermaids?’ my dad asks.