“Gay,” Keegan supplied. “And it’s not an alliance. It’s a bunch of gay kids pretending the straight kids don’t hate them.”
I wanted to argue, but it’s not like I’d ever gone to any of the meetings. I plucked the flier from Lora’s hand.
“I’m going to join,” she told me. “Are you a member?”
“Uh, no,” I said distractedly, searching for an explanation.
What’s the problem?
“Do you want to be?” she asked. “I think we have the opportunity to effect real change here. Maybe even shift the power structure completely.” She smiled, but there was a fierceness in her eyes. I wondered why this was so important to her.
“Well, I have soccer practice a lot of the time, and, uh … ” I trailed off, unable to finish my thought. Across the lawn, I could just make out the picnic table where Brad sat, surrounded by his usual band of drones. His taunt from Saturday’s game circled my head, whispering “fairy,” just because I hadn’t felt like putting a guy in the hospital.
I turned the flier over in my hands, my eyes blurring over the list of meeting times. “Sure.” I folded the paper in half. “Why not?”
9
ElorA
A scream rent the air, high and sharp like the battle cry of a hawk. I lurched from my place of rest, pupils dilating until they had taken over the whites of my eyes. The darkness gave way to strange silhouettes scattered around a small enclosure, and though I scanned my surroundings with nocturnal expertise, it took me nearly a minute to understand where I was.
Yet with this understanding came greater confusion.
Crouching on the floor of Taylor’s bedchamber, the edge of the blanket still wrapped around my leg, I knew without glancing toward the window that it was the middle of the night. But I couldn’t explain the scent of fear hanging in the air, heavy enough to taste, nor could I identify the cause of the scream. I crawled toward the sleeping mortal on silent hands and knees, hoping the closeness might provide insight.
As I drew near he thrashed to the side, all but flinging himself from his little bed, and moaned regretfully as if his beloved had forsaken him. Ever so gently, I brushed my fingers against his arm.
His eyes popped open.
For a moment we spoke only in breaths, his sharp and ragged, mine hissing and long, as we searched, in our own ways, to bring our hearts relief. I was the first to part my lips, yet he was the first to speak.
“What happened?” His eyes traveled the length of the bedchamber, and I realized that in his dreamy state, he believed I’d come to warn him of some danger.
Nothing, I thought to myself, but the word caught in my throat and shied away from my lips. “You cried out,” I said, staring at the strands of hair that clung to his forehead. “I heard you.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, turning away from me.
“Why?” I asked. His back was soaked with sweat, seeping through the fabric of his shirt, and I placed my hand upon it, to cool him.
“For waking you up,” he said.
“It seems I have returned the favor. But I require little sleep.”
“Okay … ” He twisted around to look at me.
I couldn’t help but wonder, berating myself all the while, what would happen if I let the glamour slip for a moment. Would he be able to see? It wasn’t a terribly disturbing thought. The disingenuous nature of my disguise would cause any faerie unease. Sure, we were tricksters, but playing a human for this duration was a flat-out lie. And yet my desire to be revealed ran deeper than this. I wanted to show myself to him, specifically. It was a desire originating not from my body but from my spirit, and it went ricocheting through me, igniting my heart, my mind, everything.
All my life, I had been warned of faeries who lost their minds in the wasteland. Is that what was happening to me now?
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I said. “I know you have trouble falling asleep.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“No more intently than you watch me.” The rogue words defied my guarded lips.
Bad faerie.
“Sorry.”
The sincerity in his voice surprised me. So much of what the Dark Court said about humans seemed untrue of this one. Perhaps I was not losing my mind. Perhaps I was simply reacting to him empathetically, the way I did with so many earthly creatures. For a moment I missed my train of ravens, flying around my head like a dark veil. Even my mother’s wolves could be sweet, and playful, when the Dark Lady’s moods did not make them surly.
“I should be the one who is sorry,” I said. “You’ve done much to help me feel comfortable here. Isn’t there some little thing I can do for you?”
Clever girl, limiting the terms of the bargain.
After all, he had been content to offer me room and board for nothing. I was the one who had promised him his heart’s greatest desire. Why had I done that? The words had just slipped past my lips, as if I were possessed.
Or under a spell.
Did humans have a magic all their own?
Taylor was watching me. His hair had fallen into his eyes. I had a sudden vision of him dancing in the moonlight, his body adorned in leaves and vines: the ritual for a faerie child entering into maturity. “Remember what I said to you at the park?” he asked. “About wanting you to be safe?”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t the whole story.”
My breath caught in my throat. Here, he would divulge his true intentions. Here, I would be proven right about humanity.
But he did not look evil in the darkness. He looked broken. “I moved out of my parents’ house over a year ago.”
“Any particular reason?”
“It’s just better this way,” he said quickly, hiding his bitterness. Three days and I was already learning his tricks.
“I think I can understand,” I said, reminding him that my situation was far from perfect.
The words leant him obvious strength. His back straightened as he spoke. “I like the privacy. I can come and go without bugging anyone. But it’s quiet. The sound of my breathing keeps me awake. So I lie in bed at night letting every possible thought come into my head. Sometimes the thoughts are really stupid. Sometimes they’re dangerous … ” His gaze drifted to the books stacked on his desk.
Maybe his glance was inadvertent, but I took the opportunity and ran with it. “Are you asking for something to fill up the silence?” I said. “Perhaps a story?”
“No, I just—never mind.” He hid his face in his pillow.
“Not so fast.” In Faerie, a well-told story was worth more than gold. If I could choose the right one, I would not feel so indebted to him. “What kind of story?”
“I don’t need a bedtime story,” he snarled. “Just … tell me about yourself.”
I froze, staring into the darkness. “Is that what you desire?”
“It is.”
I chose my words carefully. “Then I will do as you ask. But my story will start in a curious place, and you will just have to trust me.”
“I trust you,” he said without missing a beat.
My heart constricted. My entire body was trembling, but I opened my mouth and pushed out the words: “Once upon a time, a planet came into being, spinning through the universe amongst a billion burning stars. The planet, now called Earth, had a body and a spirit, which shared no visible connection but were intrinsically linked. So when the planet’s body separated into innumerable forms of life, her spirit separated too, into millions of self-aware entities, and that is the origin of faeries.”
“Sorry, Tinker Bell,” Taylor said with a laugh.
I smiled at that. “In those early days, the faeries lived only as spirits, nestled inside flowers and stones or dancing across the earth in sunlight and rain. But as more creatures came to life, the faeries began to experiment
with matter, manipulating the elements to create physical bodies.”
I paused as Taylor shivered. The window above the bed lay open a crack, at my request, and a breeze drifted steadily into the room, carrying the scent of hyacinth. I reached for the blanket Taylor had tossed aside in the throes of sleep and pulled it over him. He turned to me, and a multitude of emotions danced across his face: surprise, embarrassment, gratitude.
My breath quickened as his hand neared mine, accidentally brushing against me as he settled onto his back. I had the sudden desire to take those fingers and clutch them in my own, but I fought it, knowing it to be foolish.
It’s in his nature to hurt me.
“You can have some of the blanket,” he offered, and my confusion deepened.
“That’s okay,” I said, thinking of other things that might lend me warmth. I couldn’t believe my boldness, even if only in my own mind, and turned away, terrified and entranced at the same time.
Taylor’s voice brought me back. “What happened next?”
“Humanity was born,” I said softly, “providing the Folk with new features to incorporate into their many forms. Using humanity as their inspiration, they made bodies with human faces and limbs, adding dragonfly wings or shimmering fins. This was a time of glorious discovery for the fey, and they tried on every imaginable ensemble, emerging transformed each time.
“But things began to change. Humans separated themselves from the natural world, studying it from afar as if it were not a part of them. They stopped entering the dark forests and began fashioning their houses from dead trees, afraid that live trees held spirits they couldn’t contain. And as the human world grew more controlled, more finite, faeries living in physical forms grew more finite as well, until only the oldest among them could transform at will. For the rest of them, their bodies became like shells, encasing them.
“Fearing the changes brought forth by humanity, the Folk traveled to the places where the connection between body and spirit remained uncompromised: untouched forests, peaks of desolate mountains, and the depths of the sea. They relied on glamour—magical illusion—to keep humans away. But no matter how far they went, one aspect of human life always managed to reach them: iron. Iron-infested air attacked the faeries’ lungs. In its purest form, iron could burn the flesh from their bones. And at the height of the Middle Ages, when humans laid iron over their doorways and fashioned it into instruments of death, the faeries found they were losing the ability to reproduce.”
“Wait,” Taylor broke in. “How does that work? If faeries are spirits who put on physical bodies, how can they reproduce?”
“When faeries fashioned bodies from the elements of the earth, those bodies were as real as the earth herself. As real as you are.” There was an edge to my voice that I hadn’t intended.
“I didn’t mean—it’s just fascinating,” he said quickly.
I wanted to touch him so badly then, to illustrate the realness of my body. “As fascinating as where human bodies and spirits come from?”
“Okay, okay,” he said with a smile. “So the faeries just manipulated elements and formed bodies—”
“From soil and leaves, from air and starlight. Yes. Call it magic, or concentrated will, or focused energy. So if a faerie made a body like a tree, she could self-populate. And if she made a body like an animal, she could give birth like that animal does. The earth is filled with miracles and magic, and faeries are no exception. For many centuries, they were blessed with the ability to have children.”
“Until they weren’t anymore?”
“Exactly.”
He closed his eyes, scooting an inch closer. His smallest finger came to rest upon my arm. I stared down at it, savoring the connection between us in spite of the danger.
“What did they do?” he asked.
“They didn’t know what to do.” I exhaled slowly. I couldn’t believe the tiniest of touches could bring me such joy. I didn’t want to believe it. “They knew they had to try to reach humanity and take back what they had lost, but they could not fathom how to do it. Humans no longer listened to them. They believed the faeries were minions of some demonic underlord, if they believed in them at all. It seemed hopeless.”
“But it wasn’t?” His voice was very soft now, the cooing of a slumbering babe.
“No. For out of the darkness of their despair emerged a leader, whose cruel and cunning tongue promised to bring salvation to faerie kind: the future Unseelie Queen.”
Taylor’s eyes fluttered and I heard the soft rhythm of his breathing. For a moment I sat perfectly still, before passing the silent words from my lips: “My mother.”
10
TayloR
“How old were you?” I asked, watching the walls in the stuffy basement room. Maybe if I stared hard enough, a window would appear, presto! Cracks lined the ceiling, hinting at a mess of leaky pipes in the wall, and I could hear someone turning on a faucet up above.
“Eleven,” Keegan said, his desk squeaking as he nodded to Kylie. “We’d just turned eleven.”
“Wow.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Was it hard?”
Keegan shrugged. “They wouldn’t let me go back to Sunday school, with all those other boys. I guess they weren’t worried about the priests.”
Sitting to Keegan’s left, Kylie winced. “That’s not funny,” she said, nervously arranging her skirt. Fat black letters covered the white fabric, spelling out slang words: sick, weak, bomb, money.
“It’s not funny it happens,” Keegan said. “It’s funny they could read news story after news story about creepster priests and still think I’d be the bad influence.”
“Explain to me the metaphor,” Lora said from her desk by the wall. Today she was wearing ripped jeans under a black babydoll dress—my mom’s “uniform” from college. “I do not understand this coming out.” Her gaze traveled over each member of the group.
Besides the four of us, three other people had shown up for the weekly meeting of Unity’s Gay-Straight Alliance. There were two girls in the back of the room, snuggled together like ferrets, and a boy sitting at the desk closest to the door. With his darting eyes and sweating hands, he gave off the distinct impression that someone had forced him to come to the meeting, though I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case.
“It’s about not hiding,” Kylie explained. “Staying in the closet means hiding who you are.”
“And maybe … playing in your mother’s pumps,” Keegan added.
“You didn’t do that.” Kylie smirked at him, her face losing its tension for the first time since she’d arrived.
Keegan grinned back. “You did.”
“So the closet is a metaphor for keeping oneself hidden,” Lora said, a curious intensity in her eyes.
Kylie nodded. “It’s safe and warm, but it’s dark and nobody can see you.”
“So when you come out, you step into the light of the world,” Lora finished for her.
Kylie’s gaze traveled to the floor, to the dust gathering like tiny tumbleweeds. “And then everybody can see you.”
For a minute, everyone was silent.
Keegan repositioned himself in his chair, the desk scraping across the floor. He seemed to enjoy doing it, like maybe he was leaving his mark. “What’s really interesting is, once you’ve revealed your true colors, people start to reveal theirs.”
I scanned the room, watching the different reactions. From the back of the room, the two girls nodded. The boy in the front clutched the sides of his desk.
“So when you came out, your parents actually told you to get out?” I tried to envision such a scenario. I couldn’t imagine what kind of trouble I’d have to get into before my mother threw me out on the street.
Then again, I was a lot closer to the street than I used to be.
“Yup,” Keegan confirmed. “But it was fine
. We moved in with our aunt and never looked back.” He shot Kylie a glance. “Well, I did, first.”
“What about you?” I asked Kylie, whose hands had taken to wringing themselves.
“Oh, she’s only half a heathen,” Keegan said.
“What does that mean?” Lora asked.
“I’m bi,” Kylie explained. “Maybe I could’ve stayed at home. But after Keegan left, they were really … strict.”
“They were always strict,” Keegan said.
“They’re just … ” Kylie searched for the right words. “They’re just different.”
“I’d say they’re pretty normal.”
Kylie ignored her brother. “I knew it was only a matter of time before they asked me if I was … you know. I couldn’t lie to them. So I called Auntie Jane and had her come get me.”
“At, like, two a.m.,” said Keegan.
Kylie lowered her eyes.
“Hey.” He reached for her. “I’m just playing with you.”
Her voice was soft, a kitten’s mew. “I know.”
He turned back to me. “Seriously. They’re assholes.”
A slew of horrific scenarios ran through my mind, complete with dungeon chambers and exorcising priests. Then it hit me, hard as a brick in the face. Parents didn’t have to lock their kids in dungeons to make them feel worthless.
I caught Keegan’s gaze and held it. “I’m sorry.”
He laughed. “I’m not.” His eyes were glued to me, but I got the impression he was talking to Kylie. “Bad things happen to everyone. You either care about what other people think or you realize their hang-ups have nothing to do with you.”
Kylie sniffed, raising her head to face the group. “People hate you and they haven’t even met you. But it’s better than the alternative.” She ran her hands through her hair, the dark strands shining in the fluorescent lights. “Because when you’re hiding, all you do is hate yourself.”
–––––
After the meeting, Kylie caught up with Lora on the school’s front lawn. “Come shopping with me,” she entreated, glancing at me as she wheeled down the walkway. “Unless you have plans.”
The Last Changeling Page 6
