The Lost Child

by H. P. Mallory

  That night, Odran slept while Klassje and I sat up, she on guard duties, I unable to sleep.

  “It occurred to me,” I tried to introduce the subject casually,

  “we have never spoken of your life before we met.”

  Klassje frowned. “That isn’t what we do, is it?”

  By ‘we’ she meant vampires and she was absolutely correct. For creatures such as ourselves with long lives, there is an unofficial ‘do not ask, do not tell’ policy. Partly this is politeness; have you ever been cornered at a family gathering by an elderly relative telling you about how things were in ‘their day’—now imagine that relative had centuries of ‘their day’ on which to draw. No one wants to hear it. But among vampires there is also the acknowledgement that the past is a place of painful memories, of things we would rather not discuss and of blood spilt.

  “True,” I admitted. “But I would like to know you better, Klassje.”

  “Are you forgetting we used to date?” she asked with a smile.

  “I have not forgotten.”

  “Yet, you never asked about my past when we were dating.”

  “Perhaps it had not occurred to me to ask then.”

  Klassje met my eyes with the dark intelligence that I admired in her and yet could also be most inconvenient at times. “Sinjin, if there is something you want to tell me, then do it without the song and dance.”

  I snorted. “Her e in Faery it seems as if everything comes with a song and dance.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re right; we have known each other a while now and I know when there’s something you want to get off your chest. It’s not like you. So I’m guessing that, even if it’s about your past, it’s actually about Bryn.”

  As I said, she could be inconveniently intelligent.

  I shook my head. “I sometimes wonder why on earth you are with Chevalier.”

  “Stop deflecting, Sinjin.”

  “I a m not deflecting, I genuinely do not understand what you see in someone who is so mentally beneath you that…”

  “It’s mostly sexual,” shrugged Klassje, interrupting me. “He’s an extraordinary lover. And wait till I tell you about the size of his penis.”

  I held up a hand, and Klassje raised her eyebrows, waiting for my next move.

  “I believe you are lying,” I said.

  Klassje smiled. “But you can’t be sure. So the question is; how much detailed description of my sex life with Dureau can you bear to listen to, just to avoid talking about a subject that you brought up in the first place.”

  For a long moment I was silent, my eyes trained on the ground.

  “Do you think we are bad people?”

  Klassje looked genuinely taken aback. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Some paranoid nonsense about Dureau and Bryn.”

  “He used to be obsessed with her…” I began, defensively.

  “And now he has me,” Klassje interrupted. “And as long as we’re talking about stuff that we never talk about, Sinjin; every time you act jealous just because the two of them are friends, I find it incredibly insulting.”

  “That is very fair,” I acknowledged. “I apologize.”

  “What do you mean about ‘bad people’?”

  “You ha ve killed a few humans in your time.”

  Klassje looked away. “I’m not as old as you but… yes. There is blood on my fangs.”

  “And back in the day it did not bother you?”

  “No. It was the way things were. Back then there were no other options, it was feed or die.”

  “Do you now feel guilty for those you killed then?”

  Klassje shifted uncomfortably, now wishing we could go back to talking about her sex life, no doubt. “Some of them. Maybe. Some deserved it but some definitely didn’t.”

  “Do you dream of them?”

  “No,” Klassje shook her head. “The past is a closed book.” She paused, then looked at me. “Do you?”

  I nodded. “I ha ve been having dreams. About my past.”

  “Have you spoken to Bryn about them?”

  I shot her a look and she understood. How could I tell Bryn about those dreams without revealing what I used to be? And then what would she think? She knew I was a vampire and she knew I had a past, but to actually hear about that past? What might she think when she knew the truth about me?

  “It’s no accident this is happening now, Sinjin,” said Klassje.

  “Now you’re about to become a father.”

  “I ha d worked that much out for myself.”

  “You don’t want to know if you’re a bad person…”

  “I asked if we were bad people .”

  “Yeah, I’m not joining in this little game. You don’t want to know if you’re a bad person, you want to know if you can be a good father.”

  She read me well. “And?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Thanks,” I scoffed sarcastically. “I cannot tell you how helpful that is.”

  “Look,” Klassje leaned closer. “Every father has had thoughts like this; vampire, human, Fae or whatever. You’re worried about your past, but your child only gets to know your present. To that little girl, you’ll always be the Sinjin you are now. If that Sinjin is a good man then you’ll be a good father.”

  I nodded. “That is very helpful. Why did you not say that rather than ‘ How the hell would I know ’.”

  Klassje gave me a sad and rueful smile. “Because you’re not going to listen to it. It may be good advice. It may be true. But it won’t stop the dreams or the doubts. If you seriously thought there was anything I could say to you here, tonight, that was going to make these demons stop plaguing you then, Sinjin, you were horribly mistaken.”

  My head sunk to my chest. “I just want to know if I am going to be a good father. I have changed in my life but who is to say I will not change again? My child deserves better than a father who is that thing in the dark that everyone is afraid of.”

  Klassje said nothing. There was nothing she could say. It was all in my head, and that was an adversary I did not know how to fight.

  We sat in silence a long while.

  “So… Chevalier is really that good in bed?”

  Klassje laughed. “You’ll be glad to know he gets similarly paranoid about you. One day the two of you are going to have to head into the little boys’ room with a ruler and sort it out once and for all. But you should know that, on that day, Bryn and I will be ashamed of you.”

  Okay, so perhaps it was not all about me. It had taken me a long time to get over my jealousy and mistrust of Chevalier, and his relationship with Klassje had helped. But now a new paranoia had reared its head. I did not think Bryn could love him more than she loved me, I did not think he was better looking than me and, whatever stories Klassje made up, I did not think he was better in bed than me. I was more than arrogant enough to have total faith in myself on all scores. But I did worry he might make a better father than me.

  If this mission was successful — when this mission was successful, then Bryn would be a Mum, and her priorities for a partner would change. I could not blame her for that. I could not even blame the fop. In the small, dark recesses of my mind was a little voice saying how much better it would be for my daughter to have a father like Chevalier. How much better for Bryn it

  would be to have someone like him. That little voice pushed at me, urging me to leave now and let her choose a better parent to raise our baby.

  But I did not want to lose Bryn. Or the child.

  Staring out, into the darkness of Faery by night, I fancied I could almost see them. They were out there somewhere, Bryn and Chevalier. Cuddled up to each other to spend the night? Talking about… what? Would he share how much he wanted to be a father, and how he knew it could never happen with Klassje? Would Bryn start to wonder, to wish that things had been different?

  I sighed. If it was not dreams, then it was
this sort of self-torture. Either way, I was not going to be getting a good night’s sleep tonight.

  SEVEN

  BRYN

  The blackthorn trees gave way to other trees as we ran back through the wood s, so we could finally slow our pace and come to a stop to evaluate our position.

  “Do all these trees have their own guardians?” I asked.

  Dureau shrugged. “I’m not an expert in all aspects of our realm.”

  “But you’re a Fae. Don’t you know anything about your own world?”

  “What’s the capital of Portugal?”

  I paused, then frowned at him. “Point taken.”

  “Some of the trees certainly host Fae of their own,” Dureau explained with a shrug. “Oakmen, wood elves and water spirits.

  Willow trees take care of themselves—they come to life by night and can actually walk.”

  I looked around nervously; night would be coming soon and I didn’t want to be trodden on as I slept by a passing willow tree.

  “Other trees have properties of their own,” Dureau went on.

  “Hazel brings fertility…”

  “Don’t need it. Already got a baby.”

  “… the birch brings madness…”

  “I’m ahead of the game there too.”

  “… and rowans are powerful protection against bad spirits.”

  I smiled. “Now that I could use.”

  “What do we do now?”

  I looked around, which was barely worth doing because a forest is a forest. “Okay, I think can find Sinjin.”

  “You can sense him?” clarified Dureau.

  I nodded. “He’s pretty closed-minded, even to me, but we’re so close that, even if I can’t read him, I can still sense him. And here in Faery he’s easier to find—he really stands out here.” As far as I was concerned, there was no one else like Sinjin in the world, but in a very real sense there was no one else like him in Faery, his energy was utterly unique.

  Dureau looked around, frowning with uncertainty. “We came a long way back, and they’ll have probably made just as much progress forward.”

  “I’m up for a walk,” I shrugged.

  “But it’ll be night soon.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was wait around for a night rather than pressing on to catch up with Sinjin, but he was right.

  Still, we could press on.

  “A walk through the Faery woods by night? Who wouldn’t enjoy that?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Dureau, firmly. “And you wouldn’t either.”

  “Might bump into a willow tree you mean?”

  Dureau sighed, “There’s a lot more than walking willows out there. There are elder witches and those of the White Hand. And don’t forget the Lunantishee are still pissed at us.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that we go back through the blackthorns.”

  “And you’re confident avoiding them by night?” asked Dureau. “In a place that neither of us have ever been before, which you’re navigating by mentally seeking your partner? Does that sound safe to you?”

  It didn’t. And the idea of tangling with the Lunantishee again without being able to see them didn’t appeal to me. We would end up blindly running away from them—probably straight into the nearest tree, walking or otherwise.

  “So we spend the night here?” I asked.

  “I can find somewhere safe,” said Dureau. He gave me a ‘making the best of it’ smile. “It’s for the best. And it’s just for one night.”

  What went unsaid between us was that this was more than just an inconvenience in the sense of delaying our journey and separating us from our loved ones, it was also awkward due to our personal history. Dureau Chevalier was, in a way, my ‘what might have been’ guy, and I knew I was very fortunate to have had two men vying for my attentions. If I hadn’t gotten together with Sinjin then I probably would have had a very happy life with Dureau. But Sinjin and I, for all our natural antagonism, had met and had sparred and had somehow fallen in love. It was all very improbable in the way that love sometimes is, and a day didn’t go past that I wasn’t grateful for it.

  For me there had never been any real doubt; it was not a choice of Sinjin or Dureau, it was simply Sinjin. Dureau had moved on from me, but not quite as quickly as I’d moved on from him. He’d maintained an interest in me after Sinjin and I began our volatile relationship, and that was why things between him and Sinjin could never be more than cordial, and seldom even managed to be that. Since he and Klassje had hooked up, things seemed to be different, and I sensed in Dureau the hope that he and I could be friends again, as we once had been. I liked him as a man and my friend--it would have been a shame if our history stopped us from enjoying each other’s company.

  On the other hand, you can’t pretend that something close to a relationship didn’t happen between us, so every time Dureau looked at me, I didn’t know if it was because there was something on my face or because he was secretly yearning for me.

  Maybe that sounds like I’m a little full of myself , but I like to think I’m worth yearning over. It’s nice to be wanted. That said, it gets significantly less nice when the two of you are forced to spend a night together in the middle of the woods with your respective partners somewhere else. And with walking trees, no less.

  I really hoped Dureau was so heavily into Klassje that he couldn’t even think of me that way anymore.

  “Here is good,” said Dureau, indicating an enclosed thicket flanked by four trees.

  “What are the trees?” I asked.

  “Rowans.”

  “Protection against bad spirits, right?”

  “Nice to know you were paying attention.”

  It was good to know we had some sort of protection, on the other hand it was kind of worrying to learn Dureau felt we needed it.

  We ate a light dinner from the rations in our backpacks and then bedded down, a healthy distance apart. Night fell heavily in the forest, the canopy blotting out even the bright Faery moon so I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

  “Bryn?” Dureau’s voice came out of the darkness.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “If you’re not comfortable answering, that’s cool.”

  My stomach tied itself in an anxious knot —what the hell was he going to ask me? Tonight could get very awkward very fast.

  “Shoot.”

  “It just seemed like there was… a bit of an atmosphere between you and Sinjin today. Is everything okay?”

  Was it a bad sign that he ’d noticed all wasn’t well between Sinjin and me? Was it a bad sign that he was asking about it? Was he looking for cracks between us and planning to insert himself into those cracks? Or was I being oversensitive and this was just the natural anxiety of a friend? Whether you’re human or Elemental, Fae or vampire, relationships are never easy, and a relationship like mine with Dureau was always fraught with wondering what the other person was thinking. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that Dureau had, for a while, been obsessed with me and I couldn’t help but wonder—did that sort of thing just go away? Was I being arrogant in assuming he was still infatuated now, even after he’d gotten together with my friend?

  So many questions that a sensitive like myself should have been able to answer. But when emotions like this were involved, even the best sensitive can only detect a roiling mass of interwoven and conflicting feelings. Let’s be honest, where past loves are concerned, there are always mixed emotions and half the time we don’t even know what we’re feeling ourselves.

  “I shouldn’t have a sked,” said Dureau. Clearly I was taking a long time to answer.

  “No, you had every right. It’s just…” The trouble was, that while I doubted Dureau’s motives, I could also really use a friend to talk to right now, and Dureau was my friend. “I don’t know what’s going on with him. I don’t know if it’s something I’ve said or done, but it feels like he’s pushing m
e away and I can’t tell why.”

  “Sounds like the two of you need to talk.”

  “Hah!” I gave a hollow laugh. “Sinjin and I don’t always find it easy to talk about stuff. He’s so used to being the lone wolf

  that he struggles to let anyone in. In fact, he puts up barriers to stop me poking around in his head and he doesn’t like it when I try.”

  “I guess I was easier to read,” said Dureau. He instantly added.

  “Sorry. Don’t know why I brought that up. I didn’t mean to… you know; make a comparison. Carry on.”

  “It’s just tough.” I wished he hadn’t said what he just had. Now my guard was up again. I wanted to talk to my friend, not my

  ‘road not taken’. “For all that he’s not very emotional, Sinjin can actually read people pretty well—he’s spent a lifetime observing from the outside. It’s weird for a sensitive to be in a relationship where the other person understands them better.”

  “On the other hand, I would guess you understand Sinjin better than anyone,” pointed out Dureau. “He’s let you in more than he lets anyone else in. It may seem like he’s giving you nothing, but he’s giving you more than he’s ever given anyone else. That’s no small thing.”

  “I guess. But none of that tells me what’s bugging him right now.

  I can’t help wondering if he’s tired of me.” I hadn’t meant to say the words but they sort of spilled out, all the same. It was my greatest fear, that Sinjin would decide the settled-down life no longer appealed to him and he’d want to return to his bachelor ways, but voicing it to Dureau seemed as if I was flirting with danger. But I wanted so badly to talk to someone.

  “I thought the two of you were rock solid.”

  “So did I,” I whispered. “I mean… we are. Some days. But there are still times when he retreats into himself. There are things he keep from me. About his past mostly.”