by Melanie Tem
Faye whispered, 'We can be together now.'
The smell of oilcloth warmed by hotter sun than this, through a kitchen window. The smell of roses, up very close; the taste of roses.
Faye murmured, 'That's right.'
As her feet parted the gauzy weeds and her hands the crumbling strata in which they were embedded, Rebecca thought: I have noplace else to go. Nobody expects me anywhere. Why not go with her?
Faye breathed, 'Oh, my darling, why not?'
Rebecca thought: I'm not the administrator of The Tides anymore. I'm not anybody's lover. I'm not the same person to my father from one minute to the next. I'm not my mother's daughter.
'I'll show you who you are!' Faye shrieked in delight, and pink and lavender spangles puffed toward Rebecca from all directions like a pretty mushroom cloud.
Rebecca said, 'No,' and freed herself.
'What? What did you say?'
'Go away. Nobody wants you here.'
The cloud burst apart in fury, and Faye screamed, 'You little fool! You little bitch! You'll be sorry! You'll regret this for the rest of your boring little life!'
'Leave me alone. Leave us all alone.'
Faye was beside herself, a dervish, crisscrossing streaks and stars. 'Nobody is going to keep me from what's mine. Not even you.' A bottle broke against Rebecca's shoulder, shards skittering across her skin and scratching, drawing blood, but not embedding. A long branch, just budding at half a dozen places along its shaft, flung up her skirt and whipped across the back of her leg.
'Go away!'
'Sure, Becky,' Faye hissed. 'Fine. Whatever you say,' and then, swelling, giddy and full of herself, she started toward Rebecca again.
Teetering on the viscous, shifting edge of the pit, strobed by its wild tides, Marshall reached for his daughter and caught her arm. The wind raved, and the fog spat and clawed, and Marshall tugged at his child until she stumbled backward into his lap. He wrapped his arms around her there, bent his head over her, was whispering not her name now, which he couldn't say, but wordless connectives.
Faye threw herself on them both, howling. Billie lumbered up to them, ashen-faced and dizzy, as Naomi burst out of the angry fog and cried, ''I am Faye! I am Rebecca! Let me!' and flung herself in Faye's path.
Curled in her father's lap and with her mother's sweaty hands on her back, Rebecca heard, then turned and saw the shiny bits of Faye shoot up in a sparkling fountain and then organize around Naomi as if they couldn't help themselves. Naomi spread her legs, opened her mouth, pried open her own clenched fists, and Faye went in. Glittering opaquely, Naomi's eyes rolled back in ecstasy, and the suffering coming out of her mouth, on breath stinking of roses, in words upon words upon words, was at last her own.
Faye had made a mistake.
She had expected to be in and out of Naomi on her own terms, as always, taking what she needed with no fuss or price. But she had underestimated the strength of Naomi's imagination and will. Naomi wouldn't let her go.
Faye pushed against the confines of Naomi's mind, the prison that had masqueraded as playground and feast. Naomi seized, clawed at soil that had not been nourishing or supportive in the first place and now had been further disturbed, broke apart strata to make new strata. But she would not let her go.
Faye cajoled, threatened, pleaded, sang riffs of desperate wantonness. Naomi screamed and babbled and keened. But she would not let her go.
Faye danced and fought. Faye threw herself off high places and burrowed into deep ones. Faye rose and fell with the tides. But Naomi had been waiting all her life for habitation like this, for possession and martyrdom like this, and she would never let Faye go.
Melanie Tem's novels are Prodigal (recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement, First Novel), Blood Moon, Wilding, Revenant, Desmodus, The Tides, i, and in collaboration with Nancy Holder, Making Love and Witch-Light.
Several dozen of her short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines. She has published numerous non-fiction articles.
Tem also was awarded the 1991 British Fantasy Award, the Icarus for Best Newcomer.
A former social worker, she lives in Denver with her husband, writer and editor Steve Rasnic Tem. They have four children and two granddaughters.
