by J. M. Frey
I crack the cap on the bottle and sip slowly, washing the hysteria back down into my gullet. Pip sits on the edge of the bed again and pets my hair.
“You’ll make it fall out more,” I grumble, and she laughs, just like I hoped she would.
“It’s a beautiful painting,” I whisper, running the fingers of my free hand over the glossy curve of the herb garden under the kitchen window. “Can we get a copy? A big one? I want to hang it in our condo.”
“Sure,” Pip says, sounding surprised. “If you want.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to? It’s my home,” I say.
“I just thought that you might . . . not want the reminder.”
I chew on that for a moment. “It would not make me regret my decision, if that is what you fear,” I hazard. Pip blows out a breath, and I realize I was right, that I have hit perhaps a little closer to the center of the target than she expected. “And I should like our child to know Turn Hall, even if it is only from a painting. It would be his inheritance if we were there, as Kintyre and Bevel cannot procreate.”
“They could adopt,” Pip points out. “And it might be a she, you know.”
I turn my head and kiss the swell of her belly. “Of course. Her inheritance.”
Pip runs her hands across her middle, into my hair, and back out again, over and over, soothing. “I think we can get posters of the calendar art. They did a great series of landscapes like this.We could have them printed on canvas, put them up in your office?”
“In the living room,” I amend. “Where everyone can see.”
“Okay.”
We sit like that for a long while, the three of us, quiet and softly happy. And then I ask the question that has been nagging at me: “What is FantaCon 29?”
Pip sighs and retrieves the magazine from where I set it down on the bed beside her leg. She flips through until she finds a particular page, and then folds back the cover and hands it to me:
Guest of Honor—Elgar Reed
“The Tales of Kintyre Turn”
Underneath, there is a picture of the man, and I cannot contain my gasp of shock. A low twisting of horror curls through my guts. All of my hard earned ease shatters. There is a brief biography of the man, and a list of his published works, and then a schedule of where he will be and when to allow, I assume, his fans to mob him.
“Wh-why are we h-here, Pi-Pi-Pip?” I ask, and the chill of horror in my voice is so predominant that I jerk away from our child, fearful of freezing him or her with my breath.
“I thought, maybe, you might want to meet him.”
“Why?” I explode, surging to my feet, borne on a wave of such sudden and incandescent fury that I shock both of us. But I cannot rein it back. “Wh-why do you th-think I would ever want to meet such a selfish, h-h-horrible man!”
Pip draws back from me, hands over her stomach as if to cover the child’s ears, her eyes wide with surprise. “Horrible?” she echoes.
“He m-made the Viceroy. He thought up Bootknife!”
Pip flinches again, gets that look in her eyes that sometimes appears when she remembers that there are scars on her back and where they came from. Like she is looking at something that the rest of us can never see, and that is right over my shoulder. I resist the urge to whirl about to check, wringing the magazine between my hands as if it was Bootknife’s neck instead.
“All writers create villains, Syth,” Pip says, but her voice is small and shaky. “They have to.”
“And the Drebbin Dragon? And the sylph at the Salt Crystal Caverns? The Library Lion? All the suffering of the creatures of the world simply because they are not human? All the poverty, the wars, the starving small children in the Chippings run by resentful, neglectful lordlings? What of that?”
“I . . . I wasn’t looking for an existential battle here, bao bei,” Pip protests.
“Then what were you looking for?” I snap. “What is the point of this?”
“Closure, maybe?” Pip suggests, but her expression is drawn and wary now. Not of me, never of me; she has nothing to fear from me. But perhaps she fears what my temper will drive me to think, or say, or do. In truth, I’m not certain how I will next react either.
My mind is a white rush of rage and fear, and I can feel my heart thundering against my larynx. I swallow hard, and it tastes of bile and anger and cowardice.
“I thought you’d like a chance to talk to him. To look at him?”
“If I wanted that, I could have looked him up on the internet! I didn’t on purpose, and I’m glad I didn’t,” I shout, snapping my finger with absolute violence against the pages of the magazine. The sharp pop makes Pip startle, her eyes going wide. “All I see when I look at him is my F-F-Father!”
Pip’s gaze swings down to the magazine, disbelieving, stunned. The photo is in grays instead of color, so I cannot determine the shade of his hair or his beard, but his jowls and the puffy bags under his eyes are identical, as is the bullish expression in his gaze. The shape of his eyebrows matches my own, and his nose is Kintyre’s.
Elgar Reed and I are very clearly family.
“Really?” Pip breathes, lips pursed with academic curiosity. “The resemblance is that—”
“Do n-not turn this into yet another intellectual puzz-zzle for you to p-p-pick at!” I snap, and she clicks her mouth shut, swallowing the rest of whatever it is she was going to say.
“Sorry,” she says instead.
I want to shout more, so instead, I put down the magazine, go into the washroom, and splash cold water on my face until my breathing has returned to normal and the urge to vomit has passed.
When I come out, collar damp but my ire cooled, Pip is lying on her side on the bed, face buried in the pillow. I feel a pang of guilt for yelling at her, and for ruining her surprise. My feelings on the man should not negate the hard work Pip clearly did to arrange this for me.
She didn’t know that I wouldn’t want it.
I crawl up onto the bed behind her, careful of my shoes, and curl myself around her back, my arm over her swollen belly, and kiss the little leaf. She shudders and makes a sound that takes me a moment to identify as a sob. I lift my other arm from under my own head and brush her hair off her cheek. Pip has been crying.
I crane up, kiss her cheek and taste salt water.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For pissing you off?”
“For arranging this surprise for me.”
“But you don’t want to meet him.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“I should have asked,” she says, miserable.
“That is quite against the spirit of a surprise,” I remind her. “Oh, no, please, don’t cry more.”
She hiccups. “I’m not upset, it’s just . . . stupid hormones.”
“I think you are upset,” I say gently. “I ruined it. And you expected me to be happy.”
She flops over onto her back, trapping my leg underneath her hips. I kiss her nose.
“I will gird myself and meet him,” I say. “In fact, I think it better that I am forewarned. I do not think I would have been able to contain my shock and disdain if I’d met him in person without warning.”
“Does he really look like your father?”
“Nearly identical.”
“That’s creepy as hell.”
“Hmm,” I agree.
“If you still want to meet him, I have to clean up my face.” Pip sighs. “Help me up.”
I do, and when she waddles to the bathroom, I retrieve the magazine and inspect Reed’s scheduled appearances. “There is nothing here,” I say. “He is nowhere this evening where we can meet him.”
Pip dries her face on a towel and meets my eyes in the mirror.
“You’ve secured us a private audience,” I say, and it’s not a question. Pip nods anyway and begins to repair her eye makeup.
I sit down hard on the foot of the bed.
“We don’t have to go if you don’t want,” Pip says. “I can cance
l.”
“No,” I say, and reach out to grasp her hand. My grip must be tight, because she winces slightly. “No. I can do it. I can do it if you’re with me.”
✍
My palms are damp as I lift the pint glass of beer, and I feel a cursory flit of fear that it will end up on the floor before I can deliver it to the table. The waitress takes pity on me when I stretch a desperate smile into the corner of my mouth, and pulls out a rubber-matted tray. I let her take the other two drinks as well—a pint of apple juice and my own glass of wine.
I am too overcome with nerves to even point out where we are sitting. Pip saves me the trouble, raising her hand and waving to the waitress, then pointing to the low round table between the three bucket chairs she has pulled together for us. I take my time carefully placing my credit card back into its spot in my wallet, then tuck that into the back pocket of my jeans. It still feels odd to have my posterior so exposed, but the way Pip licks her lips and slides her fingers into the belt loops when we walk side by side is a generous compensation for my humility. I follow the waitress, letting her cut a swath through the crowded lounge and following in her wake like a rowboat, eyes on my feet rather than on the man who has just now joined our table.
Pip has not risen to meet him, allowing him to bend down to shake her hand. But she is well beyond the ability to stand or sit comfortably and unaided anymore.
He is just settling into his seat, reaching out to shake Pip’s hand and undoing the button of his very well-worn blazer with the other. The man himself is twice my age, portly without being fat, and sort of carelessly dressed—wrinkled and comfortable, as I have found to be the result of all plane travel, no matter how carefully I pack my case—though the blazer is quality, if not new. His hair is limp from travel, and of a style that clearly means he hasn’t had the time to get it cut recently and is quite due. It is brown, shot through with white, and with a slight ginger sheen that makes it almost the exact same shade as my own.
I repress the shudder that comes of that comparison.
His unmemorable eyes are on the waitress and the approaching beverages, rather than the man who is following them, for which I am thankful. It gives me a moment to study him and to gird myself for our meeting.
He is relaxed, confident; he knows the people around him recognize him, know who he is, and his body language is projecting welcome. I wonder how long it will be before we are interrupted by autograph seekers.
“Thanks for going up to the bar, bao bei,” Pip says to me as the waitress hands her the apple juice, and I smile involuntarily, recalling that first night when she had tried scrumpy. And what had happened next. Ducking my head and concentrating very hard on not blushing, I drop into my own seat as the waitress places the beer and wine down on the table.
The newcomer flips lank brown hair out of his face and picks up the beer—the brand Pip’s research proved he prefers—and raises it to us. “Cheers,” he says, still mostly to Pip, and we duly toast. “So, Lucy, can I call you Lucy? How did the dissertation go? I was really happy to get your letter about it. Imagine, someone doing a PhD on The Tales of Kintyre Turn!”
Pip dodges both the question and the heavy-handed invitation for praise. “I’m happy you had the time to meet me, around all of this.” She gestures at the hotel lounge full of science fiction and fantasy authors and their entourages, all just-arrived for the convention.
“Oh, well, you know,” he says. “Who am I to turn down a pretty girl when she offers to buy me a beer?”
Pip flashes him one of those beautiful, blindingly sweet smiles that means she’d rather be breaking his nose with her fist than talking to him. Something warm and wonderful flips over in my tummy when I realize that I can tell the difference now, that I can parse what that expression means. Pip hates to be called a “girl.” And Pip is feeling defensive on my behalf.
She is ready to cut this short and have us leave the moment I grow uncomfortable, and I love her, oh, how I love her.
And, yes, I can definitely see from where Kintyre inherited it. It is a very good thing I had been warned about his behavior in advance by reading Pip’s thesis, else I might be disappointed. And equally lucky that Pip has told me that not everyone of his profession behaves as he does. Many she had met were far more grateful for their luck, for the support of those whose money went toward their royalties, who were just happy to be able to create worlds and make a living on it with no arrogance present. A good thing, too, or I might have been completely put off of her world altogether.
Our guest takes a sip of his beer, not even acknowledging me, and continues to—I can only call it as it is—leer at Pip. Of course, I find her beautiful like this—I would find her beautiful no matter how she looked—but there’s something indecent about leering at a woman eight-and-a-half-months pregnant like she’s some sort of . . . pork chop.
“And the dissertation?” he pushes.
“Top marks,” she replies, unable to sidestep the topic, as she had hoped she might. “The oral defense was a bit of a bitch. That’s what happens when your paper’s on something that every geek on the internet has an opinion about, and you make the defense public.”
“Stupid questions?” He grimaces in sympathy. “Or the kind where they point out every mistake you made in the minutia of things that nobody but they were keeping track of?”
Pip’s smile gets wider and less genuine, and I grin into my own glass, amused by how poorly our guest is able to read her facial expressions and body language.
“Oh, no, none of that,” Pip says. “None of the stereotypical nerd rage stuff. It was a really great group, all really smart, and, you know, together. Just, it went on forever. It was only two hours, but when your whole degree is on the line . . .”
“Yeah, but my fans—” our guest begins.
“Are not automatically all losers for being fantasy geeks,” I cut in, just to see him splutter. I quite like this colloquialism—loser. It encompasses so much, is a lovely shorthand for how I felt my whole childhood. And perhaps I am feeling vindictive. “And many of them, in fact, are very well adjusted, intelligent, and eloquent young people like Pip. Lucy. You mustn’t speak of them so, not when they admire you so completely.”
It is not fair to take out my hatred of my father on Elgar Reed, to push my own discomfort and anger upon him, but I cannot help it. I want to see him squirm. I want him to account for himself, for what he created, for what he did. Which is also not fair, because he did not think he was beating up a real little boy, or verbally abusing a real woman. He was just writing a story.
I want to see him suffer for something he didn’t know he’d done. And for a brief flash of a moment, I suddenly understand why the Viceroy hated Reed so much, why he resented him enough to try to find a way into this world and kill him. The man in front of me is personally responsible for every single moment of suffering I have ever endured, and I want to give it back to him tenfold.
But then, I must pause. Because he is also responsible for every moment of joy. Were it not for Elgar Reed, I would not have Pip, nor our child.
I am not grateful to my creator. But I can be forgiving.
I can try.
Reed turns his face to me, expression frozen between shock and insult, and really looks at me for the first time. At first, his glare is dismissive, but then it seems to catch like warm toffee on my features, the way I dangle my glass of wine between my fingers, my wrist on my knee, the scar on my cheek. And I am not even wearing russet.
“What’s that accent?” he asks, his words suddenly tight and small, his expression a war between disbelief and hope and horror, each chasing the other back and forth like children at play upon his face.
“My own,” I reply, laying it on thicker, just for the fun of it. “Everyone in Lysse Chipping shares it.”
“Ah, right, sorry,” Pip says, with a grin that says she is anything but. “How remiss of me. Allow me to introduce my husband. This is—”
“Forsyth Tu
rn,” the man chokes out, eyes bugging outward. “I’d know you anywhere. I do know you. You’re Forsyth Turn. But you can’t be . . . !”
“I a-assure you, I c-can, and I a-a-am,” I say softly, wishing that my nervousness at this confession would vanish and allow the sentence to come out more smoothly.
He rises unsteadily to his feet, clearly torn between running away and staying to hear more, mouth working, but no sound coming out. He shoots a look around the room, as if to confirm that he is still in the correct reality and that it hasn’t imploded or lost gravity or turned purple.
“You stuttered,” he whispers. “Oh my god, you stuttered.”
“A-as I of-of-often do-o when I-I’m ner-nervous o-or sur-surprised,” I say, forcing the sentence out, no longer ashamed by the impediment but still annoyed at the way it delays my speech, the way it forces my words to flow at a slower pace than my mind. “A-as we-ell you kno-know.”
“But I never wrote that in! It was in my character notes, but I never . . . what’s the name of your horse?” he asks quickly, hands spasming as if he has no idea what to do with them—grab a pen, or grab his beer, or grab me.
“Dau-dauntless,” I answer, willing to take his test.
“Your mother’s name?”
“Al-Alis.”
“The Shadow Hand before you?”
“Lewko Pointe, whose gran-grandson is named for h-him, inc-inciden-dentaly.”
He gasps, loud and full of amazement.
Pip reaches out and puts a possessive, comforting hand on my knee. It is still slightly chilly from her recent grip on the cider glass, and the disparity in temperature sends goose bumps running up my spine.
“He’s the real thing,” she says.
“You’re not just a really good cosplayer,” he says, and it is part denial and part hope, I think. “God, you . . . there’s things I never put in the books. Things that got cut by my editor . . . but you have it all right. You . . . you’re you.”
“P-Please, do sit, Mr. Reed,” I say softly, reaching out to lay a gentle hand on his wrist. He jolts his arm back, startled by my touch, perhaps even a bit scared, and then surges back and wraps my own hand between both of his. Pip leans back out of our way, giving us our moment. Giving us this.
