The Brightest Fell

by Seanan McGuire

  I pulled away, just enough to press a finger against his lips. “Don’t.”

  Tybalt nodded. There were shadows in his eyes. I wasn’t the only one who’d been traumatized. He’d gone to the Court of Cats as soon as he was ready, relieving Raj of the throne. He was still going back and forth, and both of us were nervous wrecks every time he had to leave. It wasn’t a healthy situation. We would have to get past this. Given how recently everything had gone wrong, I wasn’t going to push the issue.

  Someone knocked on the back door.

  We both went still. I glanced at the clock. It was barely eight o’clock at night, early enough that virtually anyone could have been at the door, human, fae, or somewhere in between. I looked at Tybalt. We both nodded before stepping away from one another, grabbing handfuls of shadows from the air and spinning them around ourselves, draping our true faces in the thin veneer of our human disguises.

  The illusions also covered the knife at my belt. I’d put the iron away again, but the silver went everywhere with me now, and would for a while. Resting my hand on the hilt in what I hoped would look casual and ordinary to whoever was outside, I walked to the door, unlocked it, and swung it open.

  August was on the back porch. She looked at me. I looked at her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Good-bye,” I said, and started to swing the door shut.

  “Wait!” She flung out her hand like she was going to prevent me from locking her out. I paused, and she grimaced and said, “I don’t need to come in. I just came . . . I just came to say I was sorry, and to make sure your people were okay. Are your people okay?”

  “October?” Tybalt was suddenly at my shoulder, a warm, reassuring presence. “Who’s this?”

  “My sister,” I said, and that was true, and it wasn’t true, all at the same time. We shared blood. That was all, and that was what she’d tried to take from me. “Tybalt, meet August.”

  “Ah.” His voice turned wary. “Come looking for more things to steal?”

  “That wasn’t me,” she said. “That was our mother. October, I—”

  “I know,” I said wearily. “You were lost. You were lost, and you were scared, and you didn’t know, and I want to be the bigger person here. I want to forgive you for hurting me. I want to be able to step back and not blame you for what Amandine did. But I can’t. Not right now. Maybe someday. Right now, I just want to put my family back together, and breathe. Can you understand that?”

  She bit her lip before asking, “Are you going to find my father?”

  I didn’t even have to think. “Yes,” I said. “Not right now, but someday . . . yes. Finding lost people is what I do. Even if I didn’t want to find him, I probably would.”

  “Why not right now?” August blurted.

  I took a sharp, angry breath, forcing myself to count to ten before I said, “Because right now, I can’t be away from my fiancé without thinking he’s never coming home. Because my Fetch, my sister, keeps breaking down crying, and her girlfriend is afraid to change shapes, thanks to Amandine making her afraid she’ll get stuck that way. Do you understand? Mom left a Raven-maid afraid to fly. The only person in this house who isn’t completely fucked up is Quentin, and honestly, I think he’s hiding how upset he is from me because he doesn’t know if I can take it. My liege won’t let me into his knowe, Simon is missing and possibly a threat again, the Luidaeg has a human-sized pixie and a sleeping police officer in her apartment—I can’t go looking for your father! I may be a hero, but even heroes need to rest. Let me rest.”

  August took a step back. “I might go looking for him myself,” she said, and it was a warning, and a threat.

  “If you do, I’ll find you, and I’ll bring you home,” I said coldly. “You disappear again, Amandine comes after the people I love. I can’t allow that.”

  “I’m not going to be a prisoner because you want to be left alone!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You sort of are. If you don’t like it, convince Mom she isn’t allowed to come here and punish me for your bad behavior. This is between you and my mother. I want no part in it.”

  “I won’t forget this.”

  “I know,” I said. “Neither will I.”

  August glared before turning on her heel and walking away. I watched her go. When I was sure she wasn’t going to come back, I closed the door, letting my forehead rest against the wood. Tybalt stepped up behind me, putting his arms around me again, and lowered his head to my shoulder. We stood there, wounded, frozen, exhausted, and waited for home to start feeling like home again. We waited for the safety to come back.

  We were going to be waiting for a very long time.

  Read on for a brand-new April O’Leary novella by Seanan McGuire:

  OF THINGS UNKNOWN

  And as imagination bodies forth

  The form of things unknown, the poet’s pen

  Turns them to shapes . . .

  —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  ONE

  October 30, 2013

  THE WORLD SANG in a coruscating curtain of colors, shades that had no place or purpose outside the comfortable circumference of my tree. Here, I had no body, only the potential to make one when it was needed. Here, I had no tie to time, only the bright and brilliant light of the infinite now. I could stay forever and never tire of the perfection of it all. I could leave any time I wanted to and be as refreshed as if I had stayed a hundred years.

  I wonder if death is the same way. I wonder if my mother is surrounded by curtains of light, comfortable and content and willing to remain where she is until something better comes along. I do not think so. I have read everything our scholars have written about the dead, and I have sent Elliot to the Library dozens of times to transcribe texts that touch, however glancingly, upon the night-haunts and the afterlife they represent, and all I know for sure is that whatever waits for us upon our ending is, as yet, undocumented.

  Death and I are not close friends. I died once. I am sure of that. Men came to the grove where my first tree had sprouted, back when I was green and growing, roots in the earth and branches in the sky. Human men, with iron in their machines, and in their axes. They should never have been able to get so close to the grove. We were supposed to be protected.

  I do not know what failed. I do not know if we were betrayed. I only know that my sisters died screaming as their trees were felled, slaughtered by men who never saw them fall. They were loyal to their Lord and Ladies to the very end, refusing to let themselves appear to their killers. To do so might have betrayed the existence of Faerie, and that would have been against the rules.

  True Dryads are not swift thinkers. They do not change their minds quickly, if they change them at all. This is a good thing, when what is wanted is obedience. When I considered myself a true Dryad, I and my sisters had been told over and over and over again that we must never reveal ourselves to mortals. We were told that Dryads who were seen would be transplanted to the Summerlands, where the sun never shines. Our trees could grow there, could even thrive in their slow way, but there would be no more sunbaked bark, no more lazy summer days spent drinking in the goodness of the light.

  My sisters feared transplantation more than they feared death, because they understood one and had never been educated on the other. They died thinking they were saving themselves, and perhaps they were, because they died as Dryads, and I, who screamed and ran and risked being seen, I lived as something else.

  I am still a Dryad, of a kind. There is no other word to describe me. “Dryad” contains the seed of me, if not the tree, and so Dryad I am, although I no longer know exactly what that means. My roots are silicon and titanium and electricity; my sap is light racing through a thousand bright channels, reaching, reaching, reaching for a sun made of information and power.

  My sisters died untransplanted. I found new soil, and I thriv
ed there. I ran from death, and death spared me.

  But it did not spare my mother.

  She has been away too long. I will have her back again. I am a Dryad, and I am not a Dryad, and if there is one thing I know for sure, it is that nothing is impossible. Not when I can be here, alive, surrounded by this light.

  Something touched the edge of my awareness: a keyword tied to my consciousness. Someone was speaking my name. I opened my eyes, making them manifest through the act of asking them to exist, and the light burst around me, and I was gone as surely as if I had never been there at all.

  Then I was back, still myself, still a Dryad who is not a Dryad; only my surroundings had changed. Instead of weightless in the center of a tree of light and bright potential, I was physical, flesh crafted from the idea of flesh, clothing crafted from the idea of clothing, standing next to the server which acts as my primary home. The inside of the case is lined with wood, and thin strips of my former roots run through the circuitry, breaking up the easy flow of electrical power. It should never work, my server; it should be a dead, useless thing. But my mother made it for me, as a home to hold my heart, and she was better than the rules of physics. Her work is good.

  I look like her. I know that, because it was her the face I chose to emulate when it became time for me to grow more adult, to set aside childish ideas and ideals and step into the hole her absence made. Her hair was red and brown, mixed together like an oak in autumn, while mine is the pure gold of an aspen in the same season. I could make my hair look like hers, if I wanted to, but it would be cruel. I am already a reminder of what has been lost. There is no need to make myself into her reflection, not when my mind will ever and always be my own, and never hers at all.

  “There you are.”

  I turned. My other mother—the one who lives, the one who did not save me, but who saved my first mother, once, in a time when I was not yet sprouted—stood in the space behind me, her hands behind her back, smiling.

  “Did you have a nice nap?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. It is an untruth: I do not sleep the way things with bodies of blood and bone sleep, the way people or cats sleep. I . . . drift, awash in the delicate lace of information, and allow myself to dissolve into the sap, until I am as much idea as identity, and when I come back together, I am refreshed. But I do not sleep.

  Sometimes, it is appropriate to lie to your mother. I learned this long ago. Learned it too well, in some ways, and I am paying for that flaw in my code. I am paying every day.

  Li Qin frowned, displeasure pulling her lips into a delicate arch. The mother I do not resemble is beautiful. Her skin is tan undershot with gold, and her hair is black, as are her eyes. She had much of the raising of me, and she only ever treated me as her own child. It hurt, to know that I had put that expression on her face.

  “What is wrong, Mother?” I inquired, as politely as I could.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “You are talking to me.”

  This time, Li Qin sighed. She was wearing one of my other mother’s old T-shirts, this one advertising some software convention that happened years before my replanting. It hung on her like a shroud. I had not seen her wear it before, and I doubted I would see her wear it again. She has been working her way through her wife’s wardrobe for the past three years, wearing each piece as many times as she can before it must be washed, before the last traces of my mother’s skin and scent are wiped away. It is her own form of mourning, and I envy it, a bit, because it is not an option for me. My clothing is made of the same light as my flesh, and while I can change it on a whim, it carries no trace of my mother’s hands.

  “You know what I mean, April,” she said patiently. “I want to talk to you. Are you in a position to do that?”

  She always assumed I was busy with the minutiae of the company her wife had created, to which I had become heir upon my mother’s death. It was a pleasant delusion when I wanted to avoid her—all I had to do was bring up my responsibilities and I would be free from whatever uncomfortable conversation she wanted to have.

  Sometimes, it is appropriate to lie to your mother. If I tell myself that enough times, in precisely those words, perhaps I will forgive myself for believing it.

  “I am,” I said. “What do you desire, Mother?”

  “Are you solid?” she asked.

  I nodded, and she embraced me.

  It was a curious thing, to be embraced by my surviving mother. Li Qin had been absent when January died, sent away for her own protection. She left me a child, and came back to find me a woman and herself a widow, her wife and one true love killed by someone we had both considered a friend. When I had reconfigured myself into something closer to the woman who made me, I had not considered how it would change the way I received Li Qin’s hugs.

  If I had, I might not have done it. It was not right, for her to be shorter than me, for her head to come up to my breastbone and not rest against the top of my head. It was not right. But it was not right for me to retain a child’s appearance after what I had done, either, and if anyone was suffering here, it was me. That, at least, was fair.

  She held me for a count of ten before releasing me, pushing me to arm’s length and looking at me gravely. The skin around her eyes was tight. She always carries her concerns there. I remember my other mother running her thumbs over the skin under Li Qin’s eyes, stroking and stroking, working the worry away.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  I frowned, attempting to formulate a response. Sometimes, when Li Qin asked that, she genuinely wanted to know my condition. Other times, she seemed to want me to tell her I was fine, that I was well, that I needed nothing from her aside from her presence, which was easily given.

  Li Qin sighed, seeing my hesitation. “I need to know, dearest,” she said. “It’s part of what I need to discuss with you.”

  “I am . . . well,” I said. “I have been working with the code. It soothes me.” It also led to my misplacing blocks of time. Our programmers work on the code from the outside. I walk through it like a gardener, planting and replanting the commands I need with a sweep of my intangible hand. Together, we can make things that work faster and more cleanly than anything mortal. More, when I was in the code, I could not dwell over what I had done, or what I had the potential to do again.

  “Good,” said Li Qin, looking relieved. She had a project of her own: the Duchy of Dreamer’s Glass, over which she had claimed custodianship when the true Duchess, Treasa Riordan, “mysteriously” vanished. There was no mystery to it for those of us who had been there. Riordan was marooned in Annwn, trapped there due to her own machinations. Presumably, she was still alive. She might demand her duchy be returned to her if she ever found herself back in the Summerlands. It seemed unlikely. The routes between Annwn and the Summerlands have been sealed for centuries. She had been able to find one way through. I doubted she would find another.

  Silence sprouted between us like a weed, unplanted, unruly. I have a great deal of respect for weeds. Still, it seemed unwise to allow this one to flourish. The soil of our relationship has become fertile and welcoming to weeds since Li Qin left and returned.

  Since I allowed my mother to be killed.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, knowing she would read my bluntness as efficiency and not rudeness. No one understands my ways better than Li Qin. Not even January understood them as well as she does, because January saw me first as her daughter and her darling, while Li Qin saw me as the immigrant I was, lost, in need of education. January would have loved me no matter what. So, I believe, would Li Qin, but she chose to teach me what I would need to survive in this world, alien as I will always be to it.

  I love both of my mothers. If my love for January was always a bit brighter, a bit more unwavering, Li Qin did not blame me for that. She loved January better, too.

  Li Qin took a breath,
held it a moment, and let it out unsteadily through her nostrils, centering herself. I waited. I did not want to wait. For her, I would do many things I did not want to do. For her, I would do anything.

  “You know we don’t have an alchemist,” she said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. Tamed Lightning was small, with a population that had never exceeded fifty, and had lagged well behind that number for quite some time. The one alchemist we had ever attracted, a Kitsune woman named Yui, had been among the victims of the incident which claimed my mother.

  January had been a bit of an alchemist in her own way, inheriting certain skills and affinities from her father, my grandfather, who had been of the Tylwyth Teg. No ordinary alchemist could have taken a dying Dryad and a cracked server with a slipping drive and combined them into a single, vital whole. She had been outside of Faerie’s narrow definitions, strong when common wisdom said her blended blood should have made her weak, clever when her pampered childhood and noble heritage would happily have settled for foolishness. With her at the head of County and company, we had needed little more in the way of alchemy. She had never pursued it.

  “I’ve been studying at the Library of Stars in San Francisco when I had time,” said Li Qin. “I’ve been reaching out to old friends, people I haven’t spoken to in centuries. Do you understand why, April?”

  A sluggish flicker of alarm sparked at the edges of my thoughts. I looked at her, trying not to let it intrude on my expression, and wished—not for the first time—that I was still a child, able to retreat into the safety of my server when I didn’t want to handle the world.

  Adulthood was my choice. All of this was my choice. If I had not chosen to assist Gordan when she came to me speaking of equality in the virtual world, of mothers who could tuck me into bed in earnest, who could hear me when I cried in the night, everything would be different. I would be different. A choice, once made, cannot be taken back.