by Nancy Werlin
She was alive.
And though she could not be with Walker, there were many things on her list that she could work toward, and she would add other things too as she lived out her life. Her seventy, seventy-five years.
Her life belonged to her again. It was waiting to be seized. And what if Ryland was right about her? What if she could become the Fenella Scarborough he had described, the one who might leave a blazing comet trail behind her, full of her inventions and her ideas?
What if?
“I want to live.” Fenella stared in shock at the queen and at Ryland and at the tree fey. “I want my life.”
“At last,” said Ryland. “Now, please. Do something. I really, really want this. Say thank you to me. Just once. Say thank you like you mean it.”
Fenella looked around at a whole new world, full of color and light and possibility. She heard the low pleased whispering of the tree fey. She saw a smile growing on Queen Kethalia’s strange, beautiful, and tired face. She saw how the queen stepped forward and stood next to her brother.
Her mind was full. Her heart was full. Ryland’s words penetrated only vaguely.
She sent an abstracted nod in his direction. “You’re welcome.”
Chapter 48
It was after daybreak in the human realm when Fenella pulled open the unlocked front door to the threefamily house. She hesitated in the vestibule, feeling the quiet all around her. There was no time to be lost in returning Dawn to her parents, even though Fenella was terrified to face them. She could feel her heart thudding with that fear as she looked at the staircase.
She thought of how she would ascend the steps and knock on the apartment door. She thought of how Lucy would grab Dawn from her. She wondered if her family would be able to hear her, when she explained that the stakes had been higher than they knew. When she explained that she had had to steal Dawn, in order to save Lucy’s and Dawn’s futures.
Maybe they would simply throw her out, even after hearing it all. Probably they would. How could they forgive her? After all, her motives had hardly been pure and loving at the beginning of the three tasks. She had pursued her own selfish way.
But she had been dead, at the beginning. Now she was alive. Now she would do whatever she had to do to earn her family’s trust and forgiveness.
“Keekee,” said Dawn conversationally. She laid her head on Fenella’s shoulder. The child was clutching in her little hand another oak leaf, a gift from the tree fey. Fenella was grateful for it. The leaf kept the child calm, and would ensure she presented a smiling face to her parents. That would be infinitely valuable in the firestorm ahead.
I said to my soul, be still.
“Mommy,” said Fenella. “You’re going to Mommy and Daddy.”
Dawn nodded happily. “Keekee.”
Kitty was not a word that Lucy and Zach would want
to hear from Dawn, Fenella knew, even though it seemed to mean many things besides Ryland. The word keekee was another reason Fenella could not yet instruct her feet to climb the stairs.
Also, it was early. What if they were all sleeping? She glanced at the closed door of Walker’s apartment. She had looked in vain for Walker’s truck outside. Was he away?
Could he have spent the whole night somewhere else? Then she heard the house’s front door open behind her. She stiffened.
She didn’t have to see Walker with her eyes; for him, she
had antennae. She didn’t have to hear his voice; the nape of her neck recognized his footfall.
She turned.
Walker wore a hooded gray sweatshirt, faded jeans, and work boots. His thick hair was firmly banded back, the way it had been when she first met him.
His gaze went from Fenella’s face, to the little girl in her arms, to the oak leaf clutched by the child, to Fenella’s feet on the stairs, and then back, finally, to Fenella’s face.
She could not read his.
She blurted, “Dawn is safe and she’s well. I’m bringing her upstairs, to her parents. Everything is all right now. The curse—I don’t remember if you know about the curse—but anyway, it’s broken. I broke it at last.”
Her throat choked up and it was impossible to say anything more.
“Miranda told me,” Walker said. “About this Padraig. And about the family curse.” He was still expressionless. “She says the faerie stuff is real. That you were in danger, even if we don’t understand what exactly it was.”
Fenella managed to nod. Miranda, she thought. Perhaps Miranda would be able to understand, and would risk allowing Fenella back into her life. Perhaps.
“I did see your arms heal from the cat scratches. The first day I met you.” He sounded neutral.
Fenella swallowed. “There is a lot to explain, and it’s complex.”
“Yes.”
Fenella nodded toward the staircase. “So here I am. I am going to explain everything to my family, and ask for forgiveness, though I don’t really expect to receive it.” She lifted her chin. “I know I can’t undo the damage I have done.”
“No,” Walker said. “You can’t.”
This was hard to hear. She knew it for truth, however. She had inflicted terror on Lucy and Zach and Soledad and Miranda. Leo’s rehabilitation lay ahead. There was an old home to mourn; and a new home to make. There were family financial losses too, and those were not small.
Wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
Still, if they let her, she would face it all with her family. She would shoulder as much as she could, for them, with them. Now, or later. She would be useful. She even had a legal birth record now, inserted into computer records as a gift from Queen Kethalia. The first thing she would do with it was get a driver’s license. Ryland’s voice came back to her: Seventy, seventy-five years. She wanted every minute of every day. Not one moment would be thrown away. Not even the hard ones.
Like this one.
Fenella shifted the weight of the child in her arms. Dawn’s foot dangled against her stomach, where, beneath her clothes, Fenella’s skin had scabbed over.
She said to Walker, “Yes. I did the damage I did. I am here to take responsibility and make amends and help my family in every way I can.” She paused. “To you too I owe explanations and apology.”
Walker’s eyes flickered. “It’s hard to believe any of this. Even though your family says it’s true about the faeries. I almost think you were all having a mass hallucination.”
“It’s real,” Fenella said, as if the words could make him believe it. “You saw my arms heal from the cat scratches. You said it yourself.”
“Unless I imagined that.” Walker looked away.
Dawn brushed her leaf up against Fenella’s cheek.
“Well,” Walker said. “Don’t let me keep you. Go on upstairs.” He turned, and Fenella meant to let him go—it was right that he go. But—
There is yet faith.
She called after him.
“You told me once about your family. You said they were tree people.”
He paused. He half turned back. “We have a tree farm.” “You said trees are in your blood.”
He turned toward her again. “That’s a family joke. I don’t know why I mentioned it.”
Following her instinct, Fenella pressed further. “Is it really a joke? Or are there some strange things about your family and trees? Things as unexplainable as what you’ve learned about me?”
Walker’s gaze went to the leaf in Dawn’s hand. “There was that business with the oak leaf. The other one, that took me to you when—when—” His face flushed. She knew he was remembering that night with her on the park bench, in the bower of trees.
Fenella wanted, as badly as she had ever wanted anything, to step close to him. To put her hands on his face, to make him understand.
The faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
She stayed where she was. “Is that the only strange tree experience?”
“Well, it’s like h
aving a green thumb. We all love trees in my family. There’s nothing strange about it.”
“Did the trees ever talk to you?”
“No,” he said quickly. Too quickly.
“It wouldn’t be in language. It would be . . .” Fenella drew air into her lungs, released part of it, and then whistled softly, taking in new air through her nose and releasing it through pursed lips, a complex movement that resulted in a rustling sound. She repeated the words she knew. You are kin. You are part of the whole. You are beloved.
Walker shuddered.
“Have you ever heard the trees say something like that? Somehow, you feel what they mean. In your spine. On your skin.”
Walker had an arrested look on his face.
“I am part tree too.” Fenella felt shy, saying this. Shy, but proud. “Not by blood, like you. I am adopted. In Faerie, the tree fey are—well, they’re different from trees here, but they are still all one people. They became my friends. They looked after me. They loved me and I loved them, and I think that I grew strong again only because of them. I never really knew how important they were to me, but they knew.”
And I believe, she thought suddenly, that the tree fey sent Walker here originally, all the way across the country, to wait for me. Long before I knew that I would have the chance to return to the human realm. Time is different for them.
“Tree fey,” said Walker.
“Yes. I wish you could meet them. I’d take you to Faerie if I could.”
A long, long silence. Then Walker said, “The night I turned thirteen. I woke up and went outside in the dark. I felt pulled.”
Fenella waited.
“I went to the middle of the forest. Then—that noise you made, just now? That’s what I heard from the trees. I understood it. Like you said. In my spine. On my skin.”
“What did you understand?”
He said it simply. “That I am part of them. That they are me.”
They looked at each other. Fenella felt all the things she wanted to say; all that she wanted to give. But she held back. It was enough that Walker was talking with her.
Perhaps, tomorrow, he would talk with her again.
She would water and nurture. She would give space and sun and air. And who knew what might grow? Destruction need not be the end. Creation could follow. What was broken might be remade, stronger than ever.
She was living proof.
Walker put a hand into his pocket. He pulled out the oak leaf. Fenella’s jaw dropped down right against the top of Dawn’s head.
“This came to me again,” he said. “I don’t know how it got into my pocket, but there it was.”
Now Fenella did take that step forward. Cautiously, so as not to jostle Dawn, she reached out.
Walker made to put the leaf in her hand. But at the last second, he didn’t let go. They both held the leaf, their hands near each other, not touching.
A minute passed.
Fenella said, “Would you—by any chance, would you come upstairs with me? Would you bear witness when I tell my family my full story?”
Walker’s eyes were wary, but still he held on to his half of the leaf.
He said, “Yes.”
Fenella closed her eyes, just for a second, not daring to believe. Then she opened them to see Walker’s face.
“Yes,” he said again. “I will.”
Acknowledgments
Asking for other people’s ideas can get you into serious trouble, but I always do it.
Scottie Bowditch at Penguin told me she’d love to read a prequel to Impossible, focused on the backstory of Lucy Scarborough’s ancestress Fenella, the young woman with whom the Scarborough Fair song-curse began. I thought this was a bad idea and I told her so. “We already know Fenella’s story ends sadly!” But then time passed and I wondered: What if Fenella were magically still alive? Could the prequel also be a sequel? Could I transform Fenella’s sad ending into a new, hopeful beginning? I wrote excitedly to my editor, Lauri Hornik, that the new book would be “about healing, and ‘becoming strong in the broken places,’ and the re-embrace of life.”
Scottie’s bad idea had hooked me.
I knew Fenella’s prequel/sequel story would be tricky to write.
Among other problems, there would need to be a new puzzle in the present day, which would somehow be entwined with the curse from the past. I consulted my writer friend Mark Shulman. After five whole minutes of concentration, he suggested Fenella be forced to pursue three destructive tasks, to balance out the three tasks of creation in Impossible. “Brilliant,” I said.
Halfway through writing the first draft, having fallen totally in love with Fenella—in other words, when I was too far gone to turn back—I understood that I actually had things backward. Scottie’s was the good idea, whereas Mark’s was insane. Insane.
I take full responsibility for the badness or goodness of all the other ideas in this novel, which arose out of wrestling with those first two.
My thanks—along with a shake of my fist—go to those devilangels, Scottie Bowditch and Mark Shulman.
Thanks are also due to the friends who read and/or discussed the novel with me in its various drafts and parts along the way. Some of them won’t even realize how much they helped. Sarah Aronson, Franny Billingsley, Toni Buzzeo, Pat Lowery Collins, Carolyn Coman, Jacqueline Davies, Amy Butler Greenfield (who also vetted the historical sections), Alison James, A. M. Jenkins, Liza Ketchum, Jane Kurtz, Ellen Kushner, Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Jennifer Richard O’Grady, Lisa Papademetriou, Mary E. Pearson, Dian Curtis Regan, Leda Schubert, Delia Sherman, Joanne Stanbridge, Tanya Lee Stone, Deborah Wiles, Ellen Wittlinger, and Melissa Wyatt. My mom, Elaine Werlin. My steadfast agent, Ginger Knowlton. My workshop group at Vermont College for the Fine Arts, led by Betsy Partridge and Sharon Darrow, which discussed and dissected the first chapter. The novel workshop attendees at the New England SCBWI spring 2012 conference, who told me that I could indeed make it work. My audience at the Florida SCBWI summer 2012 conference, who said that they thought I could not.
Thanks also go to the folks at Penguin and Puffin Books for Young Readers, who are such great partners and whose professional expertise means I can focus on writing.
My wonderful editor, Lauri Hornik, gave me honest critiques and encouragement, as well as time to work—the deadline came; the deadline went—until we were both satisfied with Fenella’s story. Our editorial partnership goes back over nine books now, and I look forward to our getting into the double digits together.
Final thanks go to my own true love and husband. Jim McCoy is not only loving and supportive, he is wise. He never reads a book until it’s done.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Acknowledgments
