Courts of the Fey

by Martin H. Greenberg

  “She bound you to her daughter.”

  “In a fashion, yes. I had thought she would attempt to give her daughter my name.”

  “She did not?”

  “No—and it surprised me. Instead, she did the unexpected.”

  “And that?”

  “She gave her daughter to me.”

  He was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke, he allowed his confusion to show. “She was knowledgeable enough to entrap you, and you say she loved this child, but she gave the child to you? Did her dying strip her of all sense?”

  “I thought so at the time. There was no one—not even me—that she loved as she loved that child, and oft no one she resented half so much; it was complicated, the one and the other existing side-by-side, a human alloy.” Her gaze sharpens as she watches him; he does not understand why. “But I understood that the gift was in equal measures blessing and burden ; the greatest source of her joy and the greatest source of her sorrow, bound together. Yet I could not refuse her.”

  “She commanded you?”

  “It was a gift. It was a mortal gift. I could have refused.”

  “Then why did you not do so?” He frowns, now, thinking about his mother′s court. “This was—it was just before you left.”

  “It was decades before I left, in mortal count, but yes, in ours, it was brief.”

  “You—you did not bring the child to court; you could not have kept her a secret. I heard of no such—”

  “No. I did not bring her to court, not then, and not later.”

  “But if you accepted her as a gift—”

  “There was no place for her in the court, as there would have been no place for Anne. The court was not my home, do you not understand that? It was where I lived, but I lived as you lived: in her vast and expansive cage. I could live in that cage; I would have chosen it, in the end, because of what I felt for your mother. But what I owned, your mother owned—and I did not choose to surrender Anne’s only child into her keeping.” She smiles again, a tired, mortal smile. “Although there were certainly days to follow when I considered that option seriously.

  “We buried her mother in the garden, and from her grave, a tree grew. It grew overnight, and perhaps that was unwise, but it comforted the child, who would often rest beneath its bowers or climb its branches. She was not Anne, although she had some of her looks and bearing; she was brighter, happier, less constrained. But so, too, might Anne have been in a different life.

  “I stayed with her. Sometimes I let the small ones in, and they would tend the house; I paid them their due, although the child learned what they liked and would often skim milk or flour for their use. She had no friends, and that was my fault; I—like all of my kin—hold tight to what I own, and I held her too tightly, too long. I did not wish her to suffer her mother′s fate.”

  “She was mortal, she would—”

  “I did not wish the brief span of years allowed her by her very nature to be those years.”

  “Why would you care?”

  “I really can’t explain it.” Her voice is soft, and there is sorrow in it. “Except in this: I owned her, yes, and she owned me; whatever it was that existed between us bound us both.”

  “It was not a binding; you said yourself the child’s mother did not make that attempt.”

  “It was not a binding of word and power, no, but it was strong and subtle and in the end. It changed almost everything. I learned what Anne learned in the long and hard sleepless years: to find joy, to make it. It was Anne’s gift to me—I believe that now. To learn to understand her joy, and what love can be, even if it begins unwanted.” She pauses, tightens her grip on the blanket; her hands are less blocky now, her fingers longer and finer; her hair has straightened and it is, as he remembers, the color of pure, spun gold. “I learned, also, the measure of her pain and her fear in a way that I had never understood it.

  “I understood how to manipulate it, of course; who among us did not? But to feel it, to live it? No. And I believe that I would not understand her joy if I had not come to understand her sorrow. I learned both, tending to the child. I held her while she wept, and I held her—when she could be held at all— while she ambled about the house like a restless cat; I listened to her laughter and her chattering, and I taught her what I thought she needed to learn.

  “She would not allow me to destroy her enemies, large or small; what I did, I did without her knowledge. She was not her mother, in that regard; she was not canny, and far too trusting—and perhaps that was my fault. She could have asked for the moon, and I would have attempted to retrieve it for her, abandoning the night skies—but she asked only for me. For my time, my constant attention, my acceptance.

  “And when she was of Anne’s age, I guarded her. The small ones guarded her. We kept vigilant watch against predators, and in time, she found a man she could love, and we deemed him almost worthy.” She laughs as she says this, her laughter clear and high, as unlike the face she now wears as—as almost anything could be. “But before their first child was born, your mother finally returned to court, and I was called away.

  “I returned to the strangeness of the court. It was as it had always been: eternal, ageless, free of disease and blemish and unpleasant noise. She came to me in her armor, her sword sheathed, and she brought—ah, she brought rubies, the color of light seen through blood. It was as if she knew.

  “I was not different; I thought I was unchanged. I appeared before her as I now appear before you: eternal, immortal, hers.” She lifts her hands to her face for a moment. “It is true that I loved your mother before Anne. It is true. But it is the love of our kind; it is not lived in, it does not transform. It is regard and—and distance. She did not need me, and I did not need her. I needed only avoid her rage and her fury; I needed only to stand, to observe, to be caught a moment by her utter, perfect power, her perfect beauty. It was . . . peaceful, for a day. For two. It was peaceful and quiet.

  “But I could not remain in that court for long, for Anne’s daughter was aging with every passing day; she had so little time left her, and your mother had forever. Surely, surely, in her councils of war and her plans for conquest, a few years here or there would not be missed?”

  He is utterly silent, watching her. She is no longer mortal, not to his eyes; he cannot see the barmaid in her perfect, porcelain skin at all. Yet the barmaid lingers in the quilt, which has not changed; dingy, patchwork, colors faded, it shrouds her shoulders.

  “But of course, that is not the way of the queen. She followed me. When her son was born—Anne’s daughter had three children—she followed me. She did not interfere, not then, but she watched me, for I attended the birth as midwife. I did not come as I am now; I arrived as you first saw me; it was a comfort to her husband, and to his wife, I think, for if she loved me, she was also mortal, and some fear lurked in her. I helped deliver her son; I was careful in the disposition of his birth caul, and I protected the child against our own. Then I gave him to his father, and I spent some time at the side of Anne’s daughter. She had aged so much in my absence; I had missed the birth of her second child entirely.

  “But I told her my queen had come, and I could not leave the court as often. The small ones remained by her side, and in her house, as was proper, and she made certain that her husband and her children paid them the respect and regard they desired. When I rose to take my leave, when I left their home, your mother was waiting on the path.

  “She was smiling. It was a smile of brittle rage. My hands were not entirely clean of blood and afterbirth and human sweat. ‘So, this is what you do when you leave my side? Tend to mortals like the meanest and lowest of their kind?’ I thought she would kill them all.”

  He is surprised that she did not, but he knows she did not. Somehow, he knows.

  “Yes. I stood by your mother′s side for centuries, and asked nothing of her but her presence, her permission to stand in her perfect shadow. That night, I asked her for one and only one thing:
that she spare this family and its descendants. It did not ease her rage, and I feared that she would refuse me—but had she, I would not be here now. I would have died before I allowed her to cross that threshold. She returned to the court, and she did not summon me. I was not allowed to enter her chambers.

  “It was hard,” she says quietly. “And perhaps, had I abandoned my mortals entirely, she would have forgiven me and we might have continued as we had begun. But—their time was so short. In the end, instead of attempting to mollify her, I travelled to Anne’s daughter, there to watch her children grow, as Anne’s daughter had before her.

  “Your mother watched me. She could not—did not—understand what they gave me, or why I wanted it. Perhaps it was the latter. But she thought me changed.” She glances at her hands, now. “I thought she was wrong—and that was my mistake; your mother was so seldom wrong about anything. But she watched, she waited, and in time, Anne’s daughter also passed away; she was much older, in mortal years, than her mother had been, and she was less terrified, for her own children had children and homes of their own. She gave me this blanket, because Anne had made it, so long ago, and it was one of the few things that remained of Anne in her home.

  “And I brought it to court, and I hid it, and I grieved.” She looks up at him, her eyes once again luminescent. “She called me Mother,” she says softly. “I thought she was addled and wandering, and told her, gently, that I was not Anne—and she said, rather crossly, that she knew that.

  “And time passed. I did not go into the mortal world so often, and when I did, it was only to catch a glimpse of her children, and her grandchildren. But . . . there was no joy in your mother′s court, and I understood, as the decades passed, that I—I missed it. I tried, but the court is too cold and too perfect and it requires a subtle labor into which one puts passion, but not what mortals call ‘heart.’

  “She came to me, when the moon was at nadir, and she stood where you are standing now, and she said the mortals had all but destroyed me. I told her no, I tried to explain—but there are some experiences that defy explanation; you understand the explanations only when you have the experience. Do you understand, now, where this is going?”

  He is holding his breath. He thinks he has been holding his breath since she entered the apartment. “What happened to the small ones?”

  He has surprised her, and yet, he has pleased her as well. “They remained with Anne’s family. With her daughter, and then, in ones and twos, with her grandchildren. One day, perhaps, they will leave, but they are all there now.”

  “They did not return to you?”

  “I could not give them, not entirely, what the mortals could. Is that not the way? If mortals offered us nothing of value at all, we would be sundered ; we would live in worlds that do not, and will never, touch. I know what they can be, because I have seen it; small, they are large and ferocious.” But she lifts a golden brow. “You have not answered my question.”

  “I—I—no. No, Lady, I do not know.”

  “She desired the experience, to better understand her loss—but she was the queen, and not the least of her hostages; she could not bear to take a mortal child as her own, not in the way I had done. Why bring a mortal babe into her realm? She had done so countless times, and it had never moved or changed her. I told her that I had not lived in court with a mortal; I had lived in their homes—and this she could not do.

  “We have no children,” she added softly. “It is a truth which you must understand and acknowledge; if we are enamored of that brief flash of youth, we steal them. We do not make them. Why, then, were you born at all? And how?” She finally rises. “There is only one of our kind who has borne a child. Your mother. She could not do what I did, and she could not bring herself to be bound in any fashion to a home not her own.

  “Do you remember your childhood? I remember some of it. It was not Anne’s childhood; it was not the childhood of Anne’s daughter. It was, like the court, slow and cold and joyless. We were not, any one of us but you, children. We did not run and play and we did not desire the open affection, the vulnerability, of our creators. But you? You were different.

  “You were a child. You are still your mother ’s child. What you wanted, we did not want; what you feared, we did not fear. Can you not see that, now?” She is radiant, tall, beautiful; she is what she was in the childhood that they both remember. “We none of us wanted her love, until the end, and only one among us, besides you, could.”

  “You speak of yourself.”

  She smiles. “Yes. I said I love to talk, didn’t I? But you left your mother’s home, her court, her lands. You left her.”

  “I left after you did. Why did you leave?”

  “Because I wanted what she could not give me, and I could not return to her side until I no longer wanted it so deeply, so completely. It is not her fault, and not her failing; it is entirely my own, and I have struggled to learn how to give myself what I need.” There is no lie in her voice, or her words, but looking as she does now, he doesn’t expect to hear one; she is as flawless in her presentation as any one of his mother′s court might be. Yet she is here, and he cannot think what she might gain by it.

  “And . . .” he walks to the window, to look—as he has often looked—down. “Why did you return? You said you had returned and my home is not what it was?”

  “I have learned much from mortals in my time here, I have experienced much. I returned to her because, for the first time in her long history, she had need—of me. She had, I think, no joy of it, and I regret that; but she had need.”

  He swallows. “What did she need?”

  “She needed me to find you, of course. To find her son, who left her, inexplicably, to live in the realm of mortals, as a mortal—just as I had done.”

  “She asked this?” He cannot keep the shock from his voice.

  But she shakes her head as he turns. “No, of course not. She is your mother. She could no more ask than come herself, and if she came, it would be to break and destroy; she knows it, as we know it. She could not give you what you wanted—what you needed—because she had no experience of it; she did not know how. She will never, I think, know how.” Her voice is soft. “She will never be able to surrender that much.

  “I told you—I never expected to love her. I did not expect to find her beautiful: I was wrong. She was beautiful—to me—the way things that are beautiful are: she was entirely herself. She is what she is, and she was always that. She is not capable of being what we want, what either of us grew to want or need. But she has changed, slowly, and almost imperceptibly. She has changed.”

  He is staring, now; he cannot help it. “How?” he finally demands—or means to demand; it comes out as a plea.

  “She needs, and she knows that I know it. Yet she has not repulsed me, and she has not destroyed me. That is a start—and it is a small, small start, and it may not be enough for you. I will make no attempt to compel, but—if you can, visit her.”

  “She will never allow me to leave again.”

  “I am here,” was her soft reply. “Her home is a cage, but there are gaps between the bars, and seeing them, she has not—quite—closed them.”

  “She has you,” is his bitter reply. “She has always had you, even then. She cried for you. Men died because of it. She has never—” he cannot bring himself to say it, to expose it, although he is certain she knows.

  But she smiles, and it is a sad, wise smile that is entirely out of place on the face she now wears. “It is not the same. I loved her, as we love, but I could not leave my only daughter, a child I did not bear and did not want.” Pulling the blanket across her shoulders, she heads toward the kitchen; as she walks, she dwindles and shrinks, losing elegance and height and even hair. “I’ll clean up here. Call her.”

  He closes his eyes. “She—she wanted me? She wanted to bear me?”

  “Oh, yes. And, in the way of things, she had days where she bitterly regretted that choice, and days where she
exulted in it. She is what she is, but in as much as she has ever been capable of love, she loved you.”

  He turns from her to the television on the wall, lifts his hand and gestures.

  There she is: the height of perfect Winter, in her aerie, surrounded by the only pets she now keeps: her silent birds. But they are not silent now, and she has clearly not destroyed them. He watches her for a long, long moment. And then, almost helpless, he whispers a single word, and she turns, and their eyes meet.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Amber Benson co-wrote and directed the animated web-series, Ghosts of Albion, (with Christopher Golden) for the BBC. The duo then novelized the series in two books. Her first solo novel, Death’s Daughter , was released in 2009, and the sequel Cat’s Claw, in 2010. As an actress, Benson spent three seasons as Tara Maclay on the cult hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She has also written, produced, and directed three feature films, including her latest, Drones, which she co-directed with Adam Busch and will be released later this year.

  Paul Crilley is a Scottish speculative fiction writer based in South Africa. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Dr Who: Destination Prague, and Under Cover of Darkness. His first young adult novel Rise of the Darklings, Book One of The Invisible Order series, came out in 2010. The sequel, The Fire King, was published in September 2011. He also worked on the computer game, Star Wars: The Old Republic and writes for television.

  Sarah A. Hoyt has published over a hundred short stories, in venues ranging from Asimov’s SF and Analog Science Fiction to various anthologies. She’s also the author of over twenty published novels. Currently, she is writing the Daring Finds mystery series (Dipped, Stripped And Dead, A French Polished Murder, A Fatal Stain) as Elise Hyatt, the Shifter Series (Draw One In The Dark, Gentleman Takes A Chance, Noah’s Boy) and a space opera series (Darkship Thieves, Darkship Renegades) under her own name. More information and samples of her work are available at http://sarahahoyt.com.