“Unexplained deaths?”
“There have only been a few. They were found in different places, had no marks on them, and had nothing in common—not that we could find, anyway. Your buddy Moyeth looked into it.”
“He was a friend of my mother’s, she trusted him,” I said, dropping his hand from mine.
“That doesn’t mean he should have your trust; it has been a long time since your mother knew him.”
“I’m not saying I trust anyone here yet,” I snapped.
His face fell. “Oh, I almost forgot, I got you this.” Jax reached into his pocket and pulled out a shimmery bronze packet.
“Oh my God! Coffee!” I grabbed it from him and hugged him tightly. His hands rested on the small of my back, sending shivers up my spine. I released him, but he held on a moment longer.
Jax grabbed my hand again-maybe he thought I was going to back out and want to go back to Sayeesies-he led me towards the large grey door, set in the wall in front of us. Not what you would expect of an entrance to a castle, its stone door distinguishable only by its lack if black moss. A small blue stone that resembled a human eye glimmered from inside the clear glass doorknob. Without knocking, Jax turned the eye and led me inside.
Tall candles sat in metal holds along the wall of the entry, each as big around as my thigh and with three wicks that burned and flickered in the breeze we’d let in by opening the door.
My father met us in the enormous entry hall.
I looked away, not wanting to start my barrage of questions before at least getting fully through the door. My gaze travelled the room. There were portraits along each wall, all of them adorned with thick golden frames, but the one closest to me drew my attention. I stepped closer to it dropping Jax’s hand, ignoring everything around me, I ran my fingers along the side of her face. I felt the rise and fall of each brush stroke.
“Ma,” I breathed. It had been painted when she was younger, but it showed her holding a child no more than a few weeks old. “Is that me?”
They didn’t answer. Depicted perfectly right down to the tiny mole by her left eye, if I squinted it was as if she was right in front of me.
But she isn’t and never will be again.
“It is a perfect likeness, don’t you think?” My father asked from behind me.
I tensed. “It’s close,” I said dryly. I turned to see him take position beside Jax. “Where are your shoes?”
He shrugged, curling his toes on the ornate hall runner.
It just looks weird. Why stay suited up, only removing your shoes?
I used to sleep naked and often walked the short distance between my bathroom and bedroom without a towel. Until one spring afternoon when I caught my sleazy neighbor Mark watching me. I got better curtains; Mark got a restraining order and six months’ good behavior.
“Well you got me here,” I said, leaning against the thick gold frame of my mother’s portrait. “Tell me what you need to, but then I have a few questions of my own.” I tried to exude maturity, but it came out more like a bossy child.
I held less anger towards him after Jax had told me what he’d been through, but the child in me didn’t want to let go of the hate. It swelled beneath the surface of my voice, tainting each word that left my lips. It wasn’t rational, I knew he hadn’t had a choice. But I’d never prepared for that outcome. It had never occurred to me that he could be the victim in all of it.
“Well, I guess I should start with my name,” he began.
“And that is?”
“Maxvillious Thomas Archibald Armond Shale.”
I burst out laughing.
Jax and Maxvillious stood in silence, watching me try to stifle my chuckles. I snorted and hissed through my hands, alternating between composure and erupting again at the memory of him reciting his long, ridiculous name. Finally managing to calm myself, I took a deep breath, leaned against the sandstone wall, and gave him a nod to continue.
“I don’t know what your mother may or may not have told you about me, her, or any of this. If you would follow me into the sitting room, I’d be happy tell you everything I now know. I myself have only recently been enlightened as to the inner details of what happened those many years ago.”
He turned towards a deep purple curtain that shielded a large archway and he tied it open on either side with thick golden ropes. Jax and I followed him into a round, gilded room. More thick purple velvet draped over various archways around the room and delicate gold tapestries hung above the two fireplaces on either end. It was overwhelming how beautiful it all was, as if it had crawled right out of a fairy-tale picture book.
I giggled and Jax gave me a stern frown. I guessed he thought I was thinking of my father’s name again. I sat on a large red sofa opposite Maxvillious, and Jax first sat in a large black armchair, but stood to reposition himself so he could sit beside me on the deep red sofa.
The vision, I realized, my heart thumping. This is it! If it were to come true, my father was about to hand me a black box.
I waited, unsure whether or not I wanted the vision to come true.
We sat in silence, my eyes darting between Max’s bare feet and my pretty blue shoes. I loved that I had my shoes again; my lovely Louis Vuitton’s were much better off on my feet than in some sad storage shed.
“Okay” I started, moving forward on my seat and rested my forearms on my knees. “Max, how did you meet my mother?” I pulled this question straight from the ten-year-old Desmoree diary list of Things I Wanted to Know About My Father.
Max spilled the water he had begun to pour across the marble-topped coffee table between us. Sitting the jug down, he took a sip from his half-filled glass, unruffled by the water dripping onto the blood-red rug that took up almost all of the floor space in the room.
“We… uh… we met in the Travails. It’s a clearing about a mile from here. But… don’t you want to know why she left? Why I stayed? Don’t you…”
I could not make out the last of his words, but I could tell it was hard for him.
Trying to remain calm and collected, his brow beaded with tiny drops of sweat revealing his nerves were getting the better of him.
I sat back in the sofa, leaning slightly into Jax, his warmth calming my own nerves.
“I want to know a lot of things, but if you would like to start there, fine, tell me why my mother left Sayeesies.” I was surprised that my voice held none of its previous hurt. I felt calm, my heart strummed a steady beat, and I knew I was ready to listen to what he had to say.
“Your mother was connected to sight. Do you know that?”
I nodded.
“Her connection with sight was the strongest I’ve ever known. She had become so deeply connected with sight, she was able to see possible futures and also communicate with those who had passed on into essence.”
“I can do that,” I butted in, to the resulting kick to the shin from Jax.
Max stormed towards me. Kneeling down, he grabbed my arms in his enormous hands and squeezed them hard. “You can? But how? Your mother was the only one… you cannot tell anyone else, promise me! Jax, you as well, you can’t tell a soul. They will want to use you. To communicate, to speak to those who have left us, who have become essence.” Desperation consumed his voice, his grip on my arms tightened and the tips of my fingers tingled with the loss of blood flow. “You will never be left alone!” He shook me, I began to feel dizzy.
“Max!” Jax tried to get his attention.
“You won’t be left alone. They will drain you, they will take it all.”
“Let her go, Max.” Jax groped at Max’s fingers, prying them from my arms and stunning my father out of his erratic state.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he returned to his seat across from us. “You have to know, your mother was going to tell people at one point, but she saw it—she saw in a dream that she would be overrun by Fey wanting to use her. Some of them would spell her to do what they asked, threaten and bribe her. She saw it.”
“Are you okay?” Jax whispered, ignoring Max as he ran the tips of his fingers over the red marks left my Max’s hand on my right forearm. It sent shivers up my arm and made my heart race even harder.
I took a controlled breath, nodded and looked at Max, who was still rambling across from us. “She received many ‘visits,’ as she called them, from Stalisies who had passed on. Tanzieth too. And then there was the dream, the one responsible for changing both of our lives. Desmoree, are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening.” I was still rubbing my arms where the impression of his large hands had only begun to fade.
“Your mother received a dream created in her head entirely by the oldest of our kind.”
“Do you mean the Stail?” I asked.
My father snorted. “Traflier calls it the Stail to boost his deranged view of the pure blood of his people.”
So Stalisies aren’t pure. My internal list was growing.
“Frey is not Stalisies or Tanzieth, she is Oley,”
“Frey?” Jax and I both blurted remembering my dream of my mother.
“Frey is the one who told your mother she would have a child, a daughter born of your mother’s blood, of my blood, and of Oley. Your coming was foretold long before anyone knew of the Dazerarthro and its prophecy.”
He knows about the prophecy. I wondered if he had it here—I needed to see that scroll, it had to say more than Des will kill the Dazerarthro. Maybe it will give me a clue to its weakness.
“You were born in the human world,” he continued, “and as you grew, your mother shielded you from detection and suppressed your abilities. She wanted you to have a normal life. She wanted you to be safe.”
“Don’t you think I would have been safer knowing what I was meant to do? If I had grown up here, I would already be able to use my so-called abilities. I would understand them. Don’t you think I—”
“No!” Max stood, eyes wide. “You are the birth of something new, unique. You would not have been safe. Your mother said you would die if you stayed. I had to do as she asked, I had to let her go. Let you go.” He sunk back into his chair for a moment then swallowed down the remainder of his glass of water.
“Fucking hell. Okay, so, I am a one-of-a-kind type of fairy who speaks to the dead in her dreams and will stop an ancient evil. Hi, I’m Des, I like double-shot espresso, Red Bull, Manolos, and I am going to save the fairies from the Dazerarthro with my invisible power and my stunning wit. Yes, of course, how could I not have seen it? It is so logical: a foul-mouthed, feisty fairy. Des the Pure, here to save the masses. YOU’RE ALL NUTS!”
“Desmoree, after all you have seen, all you have read, you still cannot accept your life?”
“This isn’t my life, it’s yours. Before I came here, I had a life, a job, and a wardrobe consisting of more than black and white. Why would I want this life when all you have offered me is a future of beasts and blood?”
“You have so much more than that,” Jax said, placing his hand on mine, I sulked back into the lounge. “You can’t run from the prophecy. You will become the most powerful of us all.”
“I haven’t even seen these scrolls everyone keeps talking about. How can you be sure it’s me?”
“It is you, it has to be.” He paused and looked down at his bare feet. “Your mother made me forget her.”
Random much?
“Look, don’t get me wrong, I want to know what happened to make Ma leave, but I don’t have any gifts yet. Plus the Dazerarthro should already be here and the fact that it isn’t makes me question how accurate these scrolls really are.”
“The Dazerarthro shouldn’t have surfaced yet,” Max said, dropping his gaze to the floor. He took a few deep breaths, keeping his head down as he spoke. I looked at Jax but he just shrugged.
“It has to be you. She was never wrong, if there was a chance she was wrong I would never… I could never…”
“What do you mean, it shouldn’t have surfaced? The scrolls said—”
“I know what they said, and I know Traflier wanted them, he has always wanted them. I had them changed.”
“You did what?” Jax stood, but I pulled him back down beside me.
Max took another deep breath and stood to pace the room. “She said you would need more time, so I changed the date. The moon will be full when the Dazerarthro surfaces, it will be full and high in the human sky.”
“Who said I would need more time?”
“Your mother. She knew she would never return, and she said when our daughter returned to Sayeesies it would take time to convince you, time to teach you. She said I would remember everything the moment you stepped back into Sayeesies, and I do. I remember the smell of her hair, the wrinkle she would get above her right eye when she tried to look stern with me.”
I remember that, too.
“I can remember how her belly had only begun to swell with your existence when I led her out of Baldea and into the life of a human. That same day, Baldea was dark, and ever since. My connection to this place runs so deeply that my sorrow leached from me and spread across the land. I didn’t know what I was doing. When they brought me the potion that would enable me to forget, I refused. I locked myself away, thinking if I was unable to get to her, I would not need to forget. I wanted to hold onto the memories, but my desires to see her—and you—were too much. When I fought my way out of self-imprisonment and made my way into the human world to search for you, I was captured, detained and forced the potion.”
“But you are the ruler here, how could they force you?”
“I signed a decree; it was law, my order to follow, not to be changed or altered by me until your return. Taking the potion also contained my effect to only this manor, the rest of Baldea was again able to flourish. I did get to see you, before they caught me. Your mother had only given birth a few days before and I found her at a hospital near where your grandmother and I had set up their home. Cradling you in her arms, she was the most beautiful I had ever seen her. My guard tackled me to the ground and took me back to Baldea, where I quickly spelled an image from that moment, the last time I would see my Giovanya, my love.”
He crossed the distance between us in two strides then pulled a small, square photo from inside his jacket and laid it in my hands. It looked like a polaroid, but it was paper thin and soft as silk. In it, my mother cradled me in her arms as she sat in a green hospital chair by a barred window. Now I understood how the painting in the entry hall could have been created with such clarity. I handed the photo back to him and, sliding it into his jacket, he returned to his seat opposite Jax and me.
“They gave it back to me when my memory returned. In my state of despair, I remained locked away. The potion to relieve me of my memories worked, but the loss had remained, only I had no idea why I was so sad. The feeling began to seep through to Baldea, slowly darkening everything surrounding this place. Until one morning, Jax came by asking about my Sine. Then he had me moved to my regular room.”
“Jax?” The day he’d tried to kill me. I wondered if Max would be so forgiving if he knew what Jax had tried to do.
“I fell asleep in my own bed for the first time in decades. I was a little annoyed actually to be woken up by a bird singing outside my window, but when I looked up from my pillow to see a small bluebird—the most brilliant blue I had ever seen—I remembered everything. After that, I had to find you.”
He paused again, lost in his own thoughts. Bluebirds had been a familiar sight for me growing up. They would show up in a nearby tree, on a bench in the park, even sitting on the windowsill of my biology class. They were seemingly everywhere I went—usually a bad omen. I tried to convince myself they weren’t actually there, and after a while, I didn’t notice them so much. But after my mother died, I struggled not to see them. It was odd: I would finish a shoot, and be sorting through shots at my proofing table, and there would be this bluebird in almost all of the shots. At first, I had them airbrushed out, but when it became too time c
onsuming, they became a regular appearance in my work.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked him.
“When it all came flooding back, I contacted Traflier to ask about your mother, about you. He was hurt. He’d never forgiven me for taking his daughter and granddaughter away from him. First, by falling in love with your mother and her moving to live here, away from her family. And second, when I helped her and your grandmother to disappear in the human world. All he would tell me was that Giovanya had not returned, but that Desmoree, his granddaughter, was home.”
“Why didn’t you come see me right away?”
Max looked past me to the wall behind us. “He’d lost so much. I gave him three days to have you all to himself, and then I had to see you. I was so excited.” His gaze dropped. His tale had reached a point I remembered well. I recalled the day with clarity—when I’d verbally beaten him until I’d passed out from anger. He looked up at me, his eyes beginning to well, and cleared his throat to help regain his composure.
“Desmoree, I did not want to leave you. I hope you see that now. I did not want to leave her. I would have gone with her, lived only a few years with you both. I would have done whatever she asked of me, which is why I did as I did. I forgot it all.”
“It’s okay,” I said quietly but with enough real feeling of understanding behind it that he smiled.
Max stood up and walked over to a small card table positioned behind him, and placed his hand flat on its bare surface. With a small push, something clicked. He lifted his hand and the tabletop lifted with it, revealing a hidden space containing a black box. It glistened as if painted with glitter. Light bounced from the tiny diamond flecks as my father slid it free from its hiding place and stepped closer.
“This was your mother’s,” he said as took the last steps towards me, the box firmly in his grasp.
“She wanted me to never open it, which, like all of her other requests, I followed. It has been hidden there, unopened, awaiting you.”
Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series Page 11
