Grandma Janice wasn’t crying. She’d hardly shed a tear since that night in the hospital three days ago when they’d said goodbye to her husband of forty-six years. But Rebecca could see that she was in pain. That much was clear in the glazed look of exhaustion in her eyes. In her refusal to leave anything undone. In the way she kept glancing at Grandpa Frank’s cane, propped in the corner by the back door, where she’d set it the night they’d come home from the hospital.
“Ouch!” Grandma Janice held her finger up to the light, and Rebecca saw a single drop of blood welling from the pad. She had cut herself while she was dicing the leftover tomato slices.
“Grandma, let me do that.” Rebecca stood.
“I’m really fine, hon. Why don’t you get some sleep? Or go out? You’ve hardly left the house all summer.”
She’d hardly left the house because she had no one to go out with and no desire to go out alone. The friends she’d had in high school were really just acquaintances, and since graduation, she’d had no organic reason to see them and—to her own surprise—no real urge to call them.
She’d always felt like a charity case around them, anyway. The girl who survived the reaping. More a symbol—someone it wasn’t okay to exclude—than an actual friend.
In her room, Rebecca flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, listening as her grandmother puttered around in the kitchen. Then she rolled over, and her gaze caught on a stack of unopened envelopes on her dresser.
Letters from her mother.
Rebecca’s dad only wrote once a month, but her mother still wrote a letter to her every Saturday afternoon, and though Becca had spent her freshman year of college on campus, the letters had always come to Grandma Janice’s address.
She’d decided not to give her mom the dormitory address, in part because she wanted to at least pretend to be a normal college student, unscathed by the pain of two—possibly three—murdered siblings and two incarcerated parents. But also because she didn’t want anyone at school to see her getting mail from prison.
According to a special report CNN had aired on the fourth anniversary of the reaping, only six children had escaped the slaughter. All six of them had been out of the home during the murders.
The parents of two of the other older survivors had been acquitted. The other three survivors were still in middle school, and Rebecca doubted they actually remembered their parents.
As far as she could tell, she was in a unique and unenviable position, and the only upside was that the press hadn’t released the names of the survivors.
Rebecca had lost so much. Two sisters. One brother. Two parents. And now Grandpa Frank. Grandma Betty had died nearly a year before, of both emphysema and a broken heart; according to the ladies in her garden club, she’d gone to visit her son in prison every week until he’d asked her to stop coming.
Rebecca took the stack of letters from her desk and flipped through them. She knew she should open them. But they were always the same questions about her life, followed by short updates on her mother’s existence in prison, where she’d taken up origami and several of her best friends were fellow parental victims of the reaping.
At least she had friends.
Instead of reading the letters, Rebecca bound them in a stack with a rubber band and pulled a pink cardboard keepsake box from beneath her bed. Inside were bound stacks of at least a hundred other letters from her parents, all read, though she’d only responded to a handful of them. Beneath those lay a single three-by-six minialbum of family photos—what few she’d claimed for herself as her grandmothers had negotiated over her parents’ keepsakes, when it had become clear they would remain in prison.
Rebecca flipped through the album. Nearly five years had passed since the reaping, and she’d grown up, but Laura and John remained forever frozen as ten-and twelve-year-olds. And Erica...
She stopped on a picture of all six of the Essigs, taken by a waiter at her father’s birthday dinner, two weeks before the reaping. Double prints had arrived in the mail nearly a week after he’d been arrested. That family photo was the only picture she’d kept of Erica.
Rebecca ran her finger over her youngest sister’s face, and for the thousandth time, she wondered whose face it really was. Then she wondered what her real sister—the one who’d likely never made it home from the hospital—would look like now. If she were even still alive.
Were she and the surrogate who’d replaced her identical? Newborns grow and change so much that they are virtually unrecognizable from one week to the next. Which meant that if the initial glamour on the surrogate had worn off when she was still a baby, would anyone have even realized? Could Rebecca’s real sister look like a totally different child by now?
Was she still alive somewhere, unrecognizable at eleven years old? If so, other than Grandma Janice, she was Rebecca’s last living, unincarcerated relative. And she might be out there alone. In foster care, or...?
What had happened to the three hundred thousand babies replaced by surrogates in 1980?
After her parents lost their appeal, that question had obsessed Rebecca. She’d spent most of her senior year of high school tracking down books through the library’s interbranch loan program, trying to find answers. But without knowing the species of whoever had taken the babies, her search had only led to more unanswered questions.
Some species of fae raised lost and stolen children as their own. Others raised human changelings as servants. And still others actually ate the young they’d kidnapped.
Rebecca shuddered at the thought. She’d come across that tidbit more than a year ago, and that horrific possibility was what had led her to give up her search for answers. But now...
Now, Grandpa Frank was gone, and she needed something else to think about.
Rebecca replaced the letters and pictures and pushed the keepsake box back under the bed. Then she lay flat on her stomach and reached even farther into the dusty space her grandmother had given up cleaning when her back had gone out a couple of years before, and pulled out the small stack of books she’d removed from the public library without actually checking them out, during the summer after her senior year of high school.
Rebecca preferred to think of the act as liberating resources, rather than stealing. After all, no one had checked any of them out for a full four years before she’d freed them from their library prison.
The grubby stack of hardbound books still had torn-out strips of notebook paper sticking out of the tops, to mark pages she’d found potentially helpful during her initial search. Rebecca flipped through the first book, glancing at the passages she’d highlighted, which purported to tell the reader how to secure the return of a stolen human child by forcing the one left in its place to admit the ruse.
Pretend to be willing to put the changeling in the oven.
Let the changeling see something he or she has never seen before, to prompt it to speak and reveal its true nature.
Beat the changeling until it reveals its true form.
Even if she were willing to beat a child or pretend to cook it, none of those ridiculous and homicidal options were viable, since the government had taken custody of all of the surrogates, including Erica, years before.
Her curiosity renewed, Rebecca settled onto her unmade bed with the top book from the stack. She brushed dust from the cover, then flipped to the last page she’d marked and began reading.
Most of the information read more like folklore than like research into cryptid biology or sociology—a fact that seventeen-year-old Rebecca hadn’t picked up on. Nineteen-year-old Rebecca read until long after she’d heard her grandmother retire for the night to a bedroom she now had all to herself.
By midnight, Rebecca had begun to yawn. She started to close the heavy hardbound book propped up on a pillow on her lap when a swath of neon yellow near the bottom of the page caught her eye. She hadn’t
read this far in her earlier attempts, which meant that some previous reader had highlighted that line before she’d stolen the book from the library.
To make contact with the party who exchanged your human infant for a changeling, simply prick the changeling’s finger and smear its blood on a mirror in a dark room.
Rebecca closed the book, dismissing the new bit of instruction because—though it sounded much less violent than the other methods she’d come across—the fact that she didn’t have access to Erica’s finger in order to prick it was still a problem.
She headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and as she stared into the mirror with a mouthful of mint-flavored suds, her gaze caught on the hand towel hanging to the right of the sink.
On it was a single drop of blood, left behind from her grandmother’s cut finger when she’d washed and dried her hands hours before.
And just like that, Rebecca had an idea.
Delilah
Eryx passed in and out of consciousness during the tense drive back to the cabin. Claudio climbed over the second-row bench seat to sit on the folded-down third row and help Lala try to keep him awake. And to stem the flow of blood.
I used the drive time to spend more of our dwindling prepurchased cell phone data to monitor coverage of the break-in at the university lab.
So far, the local media hadn’t caught wind of it, and the university hadn’t posted anything. But that wouldn’t last. A man had died.
Two men, if you counted the naked man from the cage. But no one would count him. No one other than us.
I should have tried harder to get him to focus and communicate, before the furiae killed him. I should have tried harder to get his name. At least then we could have memorialized him properly. I could have given my profound, paralyzing guilt a name, as well as a face.
When we got back to the cabin, Rommily was waiting for us on the small lawn. Her feet were bare and filthy, from pacing in the dirt and leaves.
Lenore sat in the old, creaky rocker on the front porch with Genni curled up next to her in wolf form. Both of them were watching Rommily, clearly ready to follow should she take off into the woods.
“Thank goodness.” Lenore bolted out of the rocker as I opened my door and carefully lowered myself out of the van. “She got hysterical about an hour ago. Screaming. Crying. Saying things that made no sense. I gave her some of the bourbon we found in that upper cabinet, in some warm milk, to calm her down. Then she started pacing.”
Genni rounded the van, whining, sniffing the air. She could clearly smell blood, though there was none on my clothes, and all of what had been splattered on Gallagher’s had migrated into his hat during the drive.
“Lenore...” But I didn’t know how to continue.
“What happened?” She glanced from me to Zyanya as Gallagher opened the sliding door and fled the van as if it were yet another cage. “Did you—?”
Claudio and Mirela emerged behind Gallagher, and Lenore let out a squeal of relief. “Thank goodness!” She pulled Miri into a hug. “I was so worried about you and Lala!”
“I’m afraid it’s not all good news.” Mirela gave her a squeeze, then let her go to follow the rest of us around the van, where Zyanya opened the double cargo doors.
Inside, Lala was still pressing a handful of bloody cloth to Eryx’s stomach, while Claudio sat on the folded bench seat, hovering over them both, in search of some way to help.
“Oh, no!” Lenore templed her hands over her nose and mouth. “Rommily must have known.”
Genni whined, a canine sound of distress, while her father and Gallagher helped the minotaur sit up. “One more walk, big guy,” Claudio said, while Eryx blinked sluggishly.
The minotaur groaned as the act of sitting put strain on his torn abdominal muscles, and on the internal damage beyond. He let out a nasal, bovine cry of pain as he stood, and Rommily rushed forward, tears streaming down her face. But there was nothing she could do except stroke one small hand down his muzzle in a gesture of comfort.
I headed into the cabin ahead of the crowd and laid out blankets on the couch, to try to make him comfortable, and to keep blood from soaking into the cushions.
Getting the minotaur inside was difficult, since he hardly fit through the door frame by himself, and by the time Gallagher and Claudio helped lower him onto the couch, he’d broken out in a sweat all over. Eryx fell in and out of consciousness as we cut off his shirt and cleaned and bandaged his wound with what first aid supplies we’d managed to collect over the past months.
Rommily paced and hovered the whole time, pausing only to grip her sisters in a fierce hug every time she remembered that we’d gotten them back. But her focus was never far from Eryx, and every attempt I made to get her to sit or eat something, or even take a sip of water, was either ignored or met with a desperate, semicoherent plea for me to help him.
“There’s not much more we can do without a hospital,” Lenore whispered to me as she poured a cup of coffee for each of us.
“I know.” Midnight had come and gone, and the day had caught up with me. But I couldn’t sleep while Eryx was suffering. While we were, essentially, waiting for him to die.
“I think there’s internal bleeding.”
“There is.” Mirela took a mug from the dish drainer and helped herself to a cup of coffee. Black.
I leaned against the short length of kitchen counter, trying to stretch out my lower back. “How long have you known?”
“A couple of years,” she whispered. “Rommily told us, a lifetime ago, that the minotaur would die protecting Lala and me. That was before the menagerie coup. Before she and Eryx were a thing. Right after she got...hurt. But she didn’t seem to know when it would happen, and Lala and I didn’t recognize the circumstances until we were actually there, standing in the hall. With him shielding us from the gun.”
“I can’t imagine,” Lenore said. “It must be a terrible burden to know what’s going to happen and be unable to stop it.”
“Sometimes it is,” Miri admitted. “But you don’t always have to be a prophet to see something coming and be unable to stop it.”
Her words echoed my worst fears.
A cryptid born into this world would need every weapon and advantage it could get, in order to survive. And the longer my pregnancy lasted, the less convinced I became that I would see my child grow up.
Claudio and Genni were a rare and fortunate exception to the rule that Zy and her children exemplified. Which meant that the odds were not good for my baby and me once she came out to greet the world.
“You should lie down.” Gallagher’s voice was a rumble from the shadows on the other side of the kitchen. I hadn’t even realized he was there. “For the baby, if not for yourself. There’s nothing you, or any of us, can do for him.”
“Yes, there is.” I drained my mug and set it in the sink. “We can sit with him. We can be with him—be here for him—for as long as he has left.”
Gallagher blinked at me, seeming to consider. Then he nodded. “I’ll get you a chair.”
My redcap warrior carried two of the kitchen chairs into the living room and set them near the couch. Miri and Lenore each followed with two more, and we formed a semicircle around the sofa, some of us in chairs, some—like Genni, in wolf form—curled up on the floor. We didn’t say much. Rommily mostly sobbed quietly and stroked Eryx’s muzzle while Lala sniffled next to her.
The minotaur’s eyes were closed, and if not for the flinch with every breath he took, I might have thought he was asleep. But the pain wouldn’t allow him even that mercy.
Then, in the middle of the night, he opened his eyes, and though they were filled with agony, they were entirely lucid. He gripped the back of the couch in his huge hand, and when it became clear that he was trying to sit up, Gallagher stood to help him.
Eryx snorted, an expression he often used to pun
ctuate statements he agreed with. But this time, the sound had a ring of imperative to it. Of request.
“What’s wrong?” Gallagher said with one hand on his friend’s shoulder. “What do you need?”
The minotaur tried to stand, and fresh blood soaked through his bandages. Rather than let him hurt himself further, Gallagher helped him up.
“Where are we going?” Claudio asked, sliding under Eryx’s other arm to help support his weight. “What do you need? Water?”
Eryx shook his head, and even that small movement seemed to compromise his balance. Then he shuffled one step forward. Toward the front door.
Mirela and I seemed to come to the same conclusion. Her eyes fell closed. Mine watered. Gallagher’s jaw clenched, and I realized he understood, as well.
Eryx knew that if he died on the couch, we’d never get him out of the cabin.
“You don’t have to do this.” Claudio’s voice was little more than a whisper as the minotaur continued toward the front door with his help. “Why don’t you lie down?”
Eryx snorted. And took another step.
It took several minutes for him to shuffle his way through the door and down the steps, with help from Gallagher and Claudio. From there, he headed for the nearest tree, where they helped him sit with his broad back against the trunk.
In the light spilling from the front door of the cabin, the minotaur’s skin was slick with sweat. Blood still seeped from his bandaged wound. His eyes were both yellow and bloodshot. And I suspected he was burning up with a fever. Heedless of all that, Rommily sat next to him on the ground, curled up with her legs tucked beneath her and her head on his chest, careful not to touch his stomach. He lifted his arm to wrap it around her, then he rested his huge bovine muzzle on the top of her head.
Sensing that the end was near, we gathered around the tree. Miri and Lala held each other, with Genni whining at their feet, her tail twitching miserably in a bed of dead leaves. Zyanya wrapped one arm around my back. Lenore pressed close on my other side, and the three of us—sisters in fugitive status for nearly a year—watched as Eryx took a shallow breath, his exhalation stirring Rommily’s hair.
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