The woman who’d shown up on our doorstep fourteen years later hadn’t been laughing—had looked like she didn’t even know what laughter was, like she had never smiled in her life. She had been thin and pale and frightened, and when Dad had pushed her away, she had gone almost without protest, like she didn’t have the strength to fight. Like I wasn’t worth fighting for. If she’d really loved me, if I’d been as important to her as a daughter is supposed to be, she would have fought for me. Wouldn’t she?
The woman was looking at me with sympathy, so much sympathy that it made me want to scream. I looked away, out at the waves breaking on that vast and midnight sea.
“I guess it didn’t seem important,” I said. “She left me. Why should it matter if I leave her? She started it.”
“Mothers always do.” The woman paused before adding, “I’m Firtha, as they call me. Daughter of Antigone.”
She stopped there. I waited a few seconds, then glanced back to her, frowning. “Antigone, like the Greek tragedy? What’s your father’s name?”
“I never knew,” she said, and shrugged. “It never mattered enough for her to tell me. My mother is the sea witch, and she might have spun me out of spindrift and seafoam for all I know.”
I blinked. “Your mother is what?”
“Oh, child, I would tell you so many things if there were time, and I may, if you come to me again: you’re a haunted house now, after all. Perhaps we’ll have time to become the best of friends and share all our secrets, sisters in every way that matters.” Her smile was bright enough to chase the shadows from her words. “Here, though, now, time is short and there’s much I have to tell you, because my mother can bring you to the sea, but she cannot make you swim. However much she might wish she could, her power ends at the shore.”
“What are you . . . ”
“Peace, child, and ask your questions when the time is right. My name is Firtha, youngest daughter of Antigone, and I was born to the sounding sea. The year of my birth does not matter, and in fact, I cannot give it, for the calendar has changed since my beginning. I know the harvest was good, because I was held up as a blessing and a bounty by my brothers and sisters; I know the storms were mild. I grew to my adulthood wrapped in all the love my family had to offer, and I knew nothing of the battles that consumed my kin, either inland or far from shore. I was a creature of cradle and cove, and perhaps if I had been less innocent, I might have lived . . . but so many of us did not that even that bitter medicine lies uneasy on my tongue. I was who I was, and I have no regret of it.”
I sat silent, frowning slightly, trying to figure out what she was trying to tell me. My dreams could be weird, but this was a bit much, even for me.
“My mother’s eldest sister, more powerful than she when there was land beneath her feet or snow in the air, was a cold woman, and a cruel woman, and she hated that we were happy. She despised us for being content with what we had, for refusing to reach for more than we could hold. She called us beasts and burdens, and when that failed to set the hands of our kin against us, she went to the least among the Courts, and she said, ‘I have a way you can be uplifted.’ And they, fools that they were, listened.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘Courts’? Like King Arthur?”
“I never met him, but I understand he was a gentleman,” said Firtha. “Yes, like King Arthur, but more, and more importantly, like Oberon and his Ladies. I speak of the Courts of Faerie, child, to which I once belonged. To which you may yet belong, if you choose to accept this haunting.”
I gaped at her. “Fairies aren’t real,” I said finally. “None of this is real.”
“If it’s not real, then it can’t hurt you to listen a little longer, can it? Peace, little sister. Keep your ears open, and hear me, because your life lies upon the shore. You can’t return inland; the cliff walls stand too high, and the climb will kill you. Listen, and choose whether you’ll swim or drown.”
I swallowed hard and said nothing.
“Merlins they were, with the whispers of Faerie in their blood and bone, but so much of the mortal in them that they could never touch eternity, nor wrap their fingers around most of magic’s gifts. Eira—my aunt, my betrayer—pressed knives into their hands and told them where our rookery was lain, told them where we danced and dreamt all unaware of the danger coming from our own kind. They had every chance to put their knives aside. They could have gone to my mother and told her what Eira offered, could perhaps have bargained to acquire what they wanted in a less terrible way. But they were greedy, and they had seen too many doors slammed in their faces to believe that there was any other chance of claiming their place in Faerie.”
Firtha’s expression grew solemn as she turned her face back toward the waves. “They came at dawn, when magic is at its weakest. They knew we would be off-guard, unable to defend ourselves. They slashed our throats and opened our bellies, and when they had us dead before them, they stripped the skins from our bodies and claimed them for their own. They thought they could become wholly fae through our sacrifice. They thought . . . ” She sighed. “Does it matter what they thought? They wanted more than they had, and they destroyed something precious and irreplaceable to fill their empty hands. They killed me. They killed my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, and they broke my mother’s heart. They speak of her with fear now, when they remember her to speak of her at all, and they did it to themselves. They made her the monster they feared to face.”
“You . . . what?” My stomach churned. I pressed a hand against it, trying to calm myself. “You’re dead?”
“I told you that you were a haunted house now, lassie. To what did you think I was referring?” She glanced at me, expression caught somewhere between amusement and sorrow. “Our killers went home to their own families, their own children, and said that they would be immortal now, that Eira would reward them, would teach them the way to tease Faerie’s secrets from our poor, flayed hides. And those children, who could already see the shadow of my mother’s vengeance stretching over them like a sword about to fall, did the only thing they could possibly have done.”
“They ran?” Horror had stolen my voice. It came out as a whisper, nearly lost in the wind off the sea.
Firtha laughed. “Running would have done them no good, and could easily have done them ill, for my mother is not the forgiving sort. She would have hounded them to the ends of the Earth, chased them down until every trace of their bloodline had been broken on the coral reefs that were once the bones of her children. She would have had their children, and the children of their children, step by step and line by line, so that there was nothing left of them. No. Faerie was closer to the surface in those days. They knew better than to flee before her fury. Instead, that night as their parents lay sleeping, they took the knives still stained with our innocent blood, and they took my mother’s vengeance for her.”
I shook my head in silent denial. Firtha nodded.
“Oh, yes. They killed their own parents, every one of them: they drenched themselves in family blood, peeled the stolen skins from the backs of their mothers and fathers, and they sought audience with my mother, that they might make apologies for what their parents’ hands had done. They hoped she might accept a life for a life as payment and let them go. They forgot that a fae life, which might span centuries if not interrupted, must—of necessity—weigh more heavily in fae hands than a human life.”
Firtha turned to fully look at me. Her expression was unreadable.
“She cursed them, or blessed them, depending on which side of the shore you’re standing on. She said, ‘You bear the stolen skins of my children, who I loved more than any other thing in any other world that time itself has ever known.’ She said, ‘Your hands are red with the blood of your mothers and fathers, who stole from me that which was most precious.’ She said, ‘You are not thieves in the night, to be punished as thieves are pun
ished, but neither are you innocent, and I will not forgive you.’ And she drew our skins tight around their shoulders, tied them tight, and bound them to Faerie. She gave them what their parents wanted most, and she did not ask them leave, and she did not grant them ‘no.’ She made them Selkies.”
I reached up and touched the knot at my sternum. The fur was slick and wet beneath my fingers.
Firtha smiled. “Yes,” she said. “As I told you before, that was mine when I was numbered among the living, and I had joy of it. Oh, how I loved being alive, loved the water around me and the sky above me. There’s so much I never had the chance to do—so much that’s still yours to experience, if you’ll take this gift, knowing now what it cost to make. Lives are wrapped up in that shawl you wear, and at last I can say that mine was given freely, for I know my mother would never have offered it to you if you weren’t worthy. You can’t be what you were. That shore is closed to you, now and forevermore. But you can live. If you’ll consent to a haunting, you can live.”
I slowly lowered my hand. “My name is Gillian.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Firtha. “Welcome to the family.”
That was all the warning I had before she leaned over and unceremoniously pushed me off the cliff’s edge. I fell, screaming, to the restless, waiting sea.
THREE
Someone was crying. Not just crying—sobbing, big, brokenhearted sobs that sounded like they were going to shake the person apart. I opened my eyes. There was no ceiling above me, just a cascade of diaphanous veils filled with small, glittering points of light, like someone had sliced the sunrise into a thousand individual sheets of gauze. A hand was wrapped around mine. I raised my head.
October was kneeling next to the bed, her forehead against the mattress, crying. I blinked. I had never imagined her crying over me. I had never imagined her caring enough to cry over me.
Carefully, I reached out with my other hand and touched the top of her head. She jerked it up, staring at me. Her eyes . . . they were gray, so pale they looked like they had no color at all, like they were all pupil and sclera and no iris. Her ears, poking through the tangle of her hair, were pointed. But that wasn’t possible. None of this was possible. I was dreaming. I had to be.
She was still staring at me, like I was the most incredible thing she had ever seen. It made me uncomfortable.
“M . . . ” I began, and caught myself, stopping before I could finish the word. “Toby?”
“Hi,” she breathed.
“I . . . your ears. I thought I dreamt it. I thought I dreamt . . .” The meadow. The choice she had offered me the first time I’d been kidnapped. That had been a dream. That had been nothing but a dream. And she had looked exactly like this. “This is a dream. I’m dreaming right now.”
“You’re not, honey. I’m sorry, but you’re awake.” She stood up. She didn’t sound sorry. She sounded like a kid on Christmas morning, like this was her dearest dream coming true. “This is all really happening.”
“No, it’s not. This can’t be happening.” I clutched the blankets around my chest, sitting up a little straighter. My fingers brushed against something slick and heavy tied around my shoulders. A sealskin. I jerked away from it like I had been burned.
Toby winced. “Gillian . . . ” she began and stopped.
“That woman, that awful woman, she stabbed me.” I looked at my hands. There were webs stretched between my fingers, thin sheets of skin that moved when I moved, like they were a part of me. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t handle this right now. “She stabbed me with an arrow and I thought I was going to die, and why can’t I remember what she looked like? She nearly killed me. Why can’t I remember?”
“She’s a pureblood, and humans have trouble looking at the fae. You were too human before. Your head couldn’t handle looking at what she really was.”
You can live. If you’ll consent to a haunting, you can live, whispered Firtha’s voice, echoing somewhere in the back of my head.
“What do you mean,” I asked, “I was too human before?”
She hesitated. “What did they tell you when they woke you up?”
I opened my eyes. Nothing had changed, and somehow that was the worst thing of all. “The other woman, the one with the green eyes, she made me drink this stuff that tasted like seawater, and then she said, um, ‘This isn’t a perfect solution, and I’m sorry, but you deserve better, and so does your mother, and some debts are too old to ever be paid.’ Then she tied this thing around my shoulders and told me to go to sleep again, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I wasn’t even tired, and I fell asleep.”
Something was wrong about that. Something hadn’t happened in exactly that order or exactly that way. I just couldn’t figure out which part was wrong.
“That was the Luidaeg,” said Toby. Her relief was naked in her voice. “You may hear people call her the sea witch. She needed you to sleep so you could get used to the skin.”
My mother is the sea witch, and she might have spun me out of spindrift and seafoam for all I know, whispered Firtha. I tried to shut her out. I couldn’t think about homicidal ghost women by the sea right now.
“The . . . skin?” I asked, resisting the urge to touch it again. I didn’t like Toby talking about it. Something about it made me possessive in a way I couldn’t quite explain and didn’t want to examine too closely.
Toby looked unsure for the first time. She took a breath, clearly measuring her words. Finally, she said, “Faeries are real.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Fairy tales get a lot of things wrong, but faeries are real, and when you were born, you were part-faerie, because I was half-faerie. Do you remember a few years ago, when the woman with the red hair snatched you from your bedroom?”
I managed—barely—to resist the urge to snarl at her. It had been the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to me. Of course, I remembered. I would have given anything to forget. “I have nightmares about it,” I said curtly.
“Do you remember the dream you had, before the police found you and brought you home?”
“I . . . ” I looked at her. “I was in a meadow, and you were there too, only you didn’t look the way you looked in pictures. You looked like you were something else. Like you were my fairy godmother.”
She nodded. “Yes. Exactly. What happened in the meadow?”
“There were two more versions of me. One of them who looked like you, and one who looked like Daddy.” I hesitated. “You told me I had to choose, because you could only save me if I chose. You looked so sad, and I wanted to be the kind of person who could choose to stay with you, but I couldn’t do it. All I wanted was to go home. I wanted my dad and Miranda. I wanted my room and my things, and I guess that’s why I’m being punished now, isn’t it? Because I chose wrong.”
There was a certain brutal satisfaction in watching the color drain out of Toby’s face, replaced by a sickly waxen sheen. She looked horrified. I appreciated that. I shouldn’t be the only one suffering.
“Oh, baby, no. No, you’re not being punished. You’re not . . . you did nothing wrong. The choice was yours to make, and you asked for what you needed. No one should ever be angry with you for that. I’m not. I never was.” She sounded like she almost meant it. “That meadow, though, that choice . . . I was there with you. It wasn’t a dream. It was the magic letting you see what you needed to see in order to understand what I was asking. You had been shot with a sort of poison that only kills mortals, whether human or changeling—um, fae who have some human blood in them—and in order to take it out of you, I needed to change your blood. When you asked me to make you human, I did.”
None of this made any sense, except that all of it made sense, because it was answering questions I had lived with for so long that I had almost stopped understanding how to ask them. “That’s why my skin stopped breaking out when I helped
Dad work on the car, and why I stopped being so tired in the mornings,” I said. “Because you took the alien out of me.”
The word was intentionally chosen. I wanted to see if her story was consistent. She looked horrified as she responded, “Not alien: fae. And yes. My kind of fae is . . . we’re a little odd. We work with blood. We can make it do what we want. But we can only work with what’s there. When I took the fae blood out of you, I couldn’t ever put it back again.”
“And you took it out of me to save my life. Because I asked you to.”
“Yes.”
I raised my left hand, spreading my fingers until the skin that had formed between them was stretched to its furthest extent. It still felt alien, like something that wasn’t meant to be attached to my body. It was attached to my body. It was a part of me, as much as my hands or my legs or the sealskin tied around my shoulders.
Anger surged through me, hot and bitter. How dare she? Every time she tumbled in and out of my life, she left me changed in some new, awful way that I hadn’t asked for and never wanted. She was my mother. That didn’t give her the right to keep doing this.
“So what the fuck is this?” I asked. “Why does everything feel wrong? Why is there fur tied around my shoulders, and why can’t I take it off? What did your weird monster friends do to me?”
Toby breathed in sharply. Then, in a carefully measured tone, said, “The woman whose face you can’t remember stabbed you with the same stuff you’d been shot with before. The stuff that kills humans. It’s called elf-shot. It was tearing you apart, because that’s what it does. You were dying, Gillian. So my friend Tybalt brought you here, at my request, to find out whether there was anything that could be done to save you. I was hoping . . . I don’t know what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a miracle. What I got was a loophole. That skin you’re wearing, it belonged to the youngest daughter of my aunt, the Luidaeg. The woman with the green eyes. When her children . . . died, she put powerful magic into their skins. Anyone who bonds with one of them becomes what’s called a Selkie. A kind of fae. Not the kind you were before you asked me to change you, but still fae, and if you’re fae, the elf-shot can’t kill you.”
Night and Silence (October Daye) Page 37
