Britta came to herself first. She drew her knife and moved to my side of the bed, standing between me and the others. My breath quickened until she spoke, alleviating my fear that she was about to stab me. “No one touches Lucy. I don’t care what she is. I won’t lose Jamie because of Pesta.”
Ouch. Jamie, but not me. I expected as much, but it stung all the same. Poor sleeping Jamie knew nothing of my deception, so I pretended that his supine position at my side was him standing next to me, taking my side no matter how wrong it was. I pretended I wasn’t alone, making Jamie my imaginary friend for as long as his slumber lasted.
Linus would’ve taken my side, no matter the depths of wrong I was buried under.
Jens shook his head, his eyes wide with all the emotions that would no doubt keep him awake at night and distance us from each other. “I need some air.” Then Jens did what we do best. He ran. No one spoke as we all listened to him bolt down the stairs, slam the front door, start up the car and peel out of the garage.
Jens was gone, and I deserved to lose him.
I closed my eyes, pulled my knees to my chest and buried my face in my knees. I expected his reaction, but it sealed the doom all the same. “I wasn’t sure until Jamie cut himself gardening a while back. I suspected what it all meant, but now I know.” I swallowed. “I’m part water elf, part wind elf, part Huldra, part human and part siren. My blood’s still red, but it’s got bits of Pesta in it now. I didn’t kill the last siren.” I hung my head in shame. “I am the last siren.”
Eight.
Facing the Music
Foss stood from the chair and drew the knife he kept in his boot. Britta postured, her own blade ready to fight the man she had plenty of reasons to gut.
“Relax.” Foss didn’t take his eyes off the stain on my jeans. “I’m not about to kill Lucy. But we need to see it. I have to see for myself.”
Britta nodded, allowing him passage, but she kept her knife at the ready just in case.
Leif was signing angrily to Elsa, who was too floored to throw around her catty quips and superior musings. Her cow’s tail was swishing quickly back and forth as she tried to make sense of everything.
Foss towered over me and I cowered, feeling the fear afresh I’d once known in his presence. Without asking permission, he grabbed my arm.
“Don’t you put your hands on me!” I snapped, ripping myself from his grip.
“You don’t get a say anymore.” Foss shook his head at me. “You’ve proven you can’t be trusted to make rational decisions.” He grabbed me again, hard and bruising on my upper arm, his knife aimed at the flesh.
“Stop! Stop!” I screamed, thrashing against him, standing on the bed to better extract myself from his dominance.
I thought Elsa was coming to my aid, but she whistled me to collapse in Foss’s grip. The desire to run was strong, but I couldn’t move my body. Foss jerked me around, shaking me hard to take his anger out on me when I couldn’t fight back. “We have to see the blood for ourselves,” he explained, throwing me down on the bed.
I flopped like a dead fish, whimpering when I felt the steel on my bicep. I screamed not from the pain, but the fear as Foss cut a slit into my arm. Everyone gasped anew and watched with fascination as the sparkly blood fell from the gash onto the pillow, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that their worst fears weren’t nearly dark enough to compete with reality.
Foss jumped back, lest the blood stain him in the permanent way my hands were. Elsa whistled me back to motion, and I leaped up and ripped the beige pillowcase off the pillow. I turned the soiled linen inside out and rolled it up so no one would accidentally touch my tainted blood. Then I bolted for the bathroom. I ran my shaking arm under the stream of water in the sink, angling my elbow as the dam began to crack. I quickly spackled in the weakness with reinforced compartmentalizing, lest I cry in front of everyone. I’d betrayed them; I didn’t deserve the release of tears. I bandaged my arm and came back out, the conversation hushing again at my presence.
Well, it was a nice seven months while it lasted. I got my white picket fence. I got non-battle time with my boyfriend and an almost life established. It would have to be enough, for I knew everything beyond this point would be a luxury if it were even a smidgen of normal. “Look, whatever you decide to do with me, I get it. Just do it tonight. If you’re going to kill me, do it now. I don’t want to sleep with one eye open. I don’t want to worry one of you’s going to off me in my sleep. Do whatever it is to my face, is all I ask.”
Foss pointed his knife at me. “You don’t get a preference, rat.”
I winced. The use of the mean nickname he hadn’t used in ages stung my sore spot.
Foss growled through my visible pain. “We decide how this plays out, not you. You lost your chance at a vote the second you decided not to tell us what we were dealing with.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I was trying to make it so no one had to deal with it. It’s not like I can actually control people like Pesta could. I can’t use my Huldra powers. I can’t do elf magic. Sure, my blood looks different, but that’s the extent of it. I’m not trying to wreck stuff for you. I thought this would give everyone plausible deniability if it ever did come out.”
“Yeah, because that’s what we want,” Foss snapped. “You shut up. If I want more lies, then you can talk.”
I shut my mouth, knowing I deserved to get bit by the snake I’d chosen to play with. He’d called me honey not two hours ago by accident. The descent back to rat was a steep drop-off.
Elsa began pacing, her brow wrinkled as she thought through her plan of attack. “This is bad. I know about this, which means if Undraland ever does find out, and they know we’re allied, they’ll come for my coven. They’ll come for my girls. Undra isn’t exactly filled with grace for the Huldras. We’ll be seen as aiding the enemy. We’re as good as dead.”
I closed my eyes, speaking through my teeth. “I’m sorry, Elsa. This is why I didn’t tell you. I don’t want to put your girls at risk.”
She bounced from contemplative to livid. “But you did! Just existing does that! Don’t you see? They won’t care if you have powers or not. They’ll see the stars and start the witch hunt all over again!”
Britta, beautiful Britta, came to my defense. “She didn’t ask for Pesta’s arv! She didn’t want to be a siren! Would you want Pesta for a mother? It could just as easily been any of us! Alrik grabbed her and yanked her through the portal. Lucy didn’t seek any of it out! She was at the portal to destroy it, risking her life over and over again for a people who kicked her family out and gave her nothing! And now they’ll hunt her if they catch a hint of her blood change. You’ll not accuse Lucy of anything other than keeping us in the dark.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Which she shouldn’t have done.”
It was the closest thing to upset she’d ever been towards me, and I bore the shame as if she’d cussed me out. I’d lied to my only girlfriend; I didn’t deserve her sticking up for me.
Since I wasn’t allowed to speak, per Foss’s barked orders, I excused myself and went downstairs. The urge to run was powerful, but I knew from experience I wouldn’t get far without Jamie onboard. I walked outside under the nighttime sky, not wanting to hear the arguing going on upstairs.
Jamie and Britta kept an immaculately clean house, and their yard was no different. As soon as Jamie learned the parameters for an acceptable lawn length, he tended to it faithfully, growing flowers in pretty white-painted boxes all along the sides of his cheery yellow home. The lawn was perfectly manicured and soft, but it was the fence I migrated to. I sat in the green facing my favorite post, which was about halfway between our two houses, though my house was further back on the property from the dirt road we lived off of. One might think it strange to have a favorite post in a line of identical fencing, but this one was special. I’d nailed this one in. I’d sanded and painted it. This bit of home was mine, and in my hour of unfathomable lost, I found myself with my one piece of fifties s
itcom flawlessness. Here I was a housewife with a polka-dotted flared dress that never creased as I baked a perfect pot roast. I had hair that never frizzed; it was always curled and pinned to the exact standard of beauty that satisfied my husband and me. My pies were golden brown and never burned, devoid of calories but still laced with rich butter and lard. My parents came over, my dad chatting with Jens about the taxes and how things used to be back when he was young. I pictured Jens in a blue cardigan with a pipe, reading the paper with my dad and commenting on the weather. My mom would marvel at my culinary skills while we girl-talked in the kitchen. And Linus…
The crisp night air turned to deadly daggers dragging up and down my throat. Linus was dead. He’d never see my white picket fence. I couldn’t even place him in the fantasy – it was so far from our reality. The buildup of the lie being so thoroughly suppressed over time bubbled up with pain the likes of which I was unprepared for.
My white picket fence was a lie, though I loved it all the same. It was normal when I wasn’t, and beautiful despite the ugly woman that ran through my blood without my permission. I wrapped my arms around the post, pressing my cheek to the wood as if it could bring my brother back to me. I’d tried so hard not to think about my family, but it turns out that was like loading a slingshot. You could only stuff the emotions so far down before they came catapulting back up like buckets of tears and vomit.
I touched the vial at my throat that held the ashes of my family. They belonged in my veins. They’d earned it. Heck, Alrik had pretty much earned that right, too, despite his many flaws. Pesta didn’t deserve a spot in my DNA. She just took it, and now my June Cleaver fantasy was broken.
Jamie had planted me a fern just to the right of our front porch. He’d done it to replace the fern I’d had before the rabbit hole of Undraland sucked all my normal away. I wished for it now. When Jens was gone, I allowed myself to pretend the fern was my dad, as I’d done in the apartment I’d lived in last year. I confessed many things to my fern-dad, and was glad he had a home he’d never have to move me from.
Jamie never told anyone what the fern meant to me. He simply spackled in the hole as best he could and left me to my devices. I loved Jamie for many reasons, and one of those was the fern. After he awoke and learned how deeply I’d deceived him, I wasn’t sure he’d be able to look at me with the same fondness that made me feel precious to someone so wonderful.
I hugged the post tighter, willing it to absolve my sins and the blemishes in my blood. Jens might leave me – take his pipe and cardigan and go – but the post would never leave me. It had faith I would one day live up to the picture it started out for me, and I loved it for the belief it had in my potential to be normal.
Of course, I was a girl getting fresh with a fence post in the middle of the night, so I guessed normal was still more than a stone’s throw away.
Sometime later, Jamie called to me in my head. Get in here, Lucy. They want to talk to you. He left the conversation before I could respond, drawing the clear line that he was pissed at me, and had cut me off from his affection.
I deserved it, so I didn’t push at the bond. Instead I pulled myself up and trudged back into the house, my body tired with the late hour and the creeping depression. I walked into the house, passed the fireplace in the living room, the country blue kitchen and dragged myself up the beige carpeted stairs back to Jamie and Britta’s bedroom.
I kept my head down as I walked into the lion’s den, avoiding any hint that I might put up a fight or question their ruling. I stood in the doorway, not willing to go into a room only to be kicked back out. I was siren now. I was dirty.
Jamie spoke for the group, who seemed somewhat united in their decision on what to do with me. “No one’s going to kill you, Lucy.” There was no softness to his tone. He was merely stating a decree as he spat through his clenched teeth. “We’re not running, either. You’re not to leave the property without one of us with you at all times. You don’t open the door if the mailman comes. You don’t go to college anymore. You don’t invite people onto our property. If you trip and cut yourself in public, the wrong person might see you and report your blood to Undraland. You’re on complete lockdown unless Jens or I say different. Nod if you understand.”
I nodded, eyes still on my mismatched shoes. Dread weighted my shoulders, and my heart filled with concrete, dragging me down to the brinks of depression.
“You took yourself off our team when you kept this from us. Seven months, Lucy!” Jamie barked, condemning me where I stood. Aside from earlier today, I couldn’t recall the last time Jamie yelled at me. “I know you didn’t ask for this, but the way you handled it was wrong. Now we can’t trust you, so you don’t get a vote anymore. We say jump, and you obey.”
I nodded again, anger mixing with my self-loathing. I despised being talked down to, but muscled through the gag reflex and swallowed my pride. I deserved this. I’d lied to them and put us all in danger.
Jamie continued, his dad voice in full swing as he swaggered over to me just to prove he was bigger. He jabbed his finger at me. “You’ll sleep on our couch until Jens comes back. If he comes back. Elsa and Leif are staying until they figure out how her coven fits into all this.”
Elsa’s voice was stern, though not as acidic as Jamie’s. “You’ll talk to Grayson and answer any questions he asks until we’re all satisfied you’re not holding anything else back from us.” Her tail swished slowly from side to side as she spoke.
Panic welled up in me, but Jamie was unmerciful. “I don’t care what you want! You betrayed me!” He picked up a pillow and threw it across the room. Though it was pure fluff, Britta squeaked at the uncharacteristic outburst. Even Foss eyed Jamie with suspicion. I could feel an unfamiliar waft of black fog seep in under the door of our linked minds and wondered where it originated. Jamie was focused on my quivering chin. “Don’t you dare cry! You don’t get my pity!”
“Jamie,” Britta hissed. She moved to stand next to me, offering what solidarity she could. “You’ll all do well to remember Lucy is not at fault for anything, save for lying to us. You’ll not treat her like an outcast. She’s not her mother.”
Rage and psychosis rose up in me, and before I knew it, I was screaming, fists shaking as I shed my submissive stance. “My mother is Hilda! My father is Rolf! My uncle is Alrik! My brother is Linus, and that’s where it ends!” My voice trembled with fury I’d not felt before. “Pesta is not my mother! And you’re not my brother, Jamie! Don’t you ever call me your syster again!” I yelled through the room, causing Britta to jump back from my wrath. “I have a mom!” My voice trembled as I gripped the vial around my neck. “I have a mom!” Flashes of her shell of a body possessed by Pesta smacked me over and over as I recalled the horror of Limbo. The stab of her attack gutted me afresh.
Jamie touched his chest, my agony ripping a hole in his heart as it gouged mine. He shook his head, angry with me for the swing of emotion I couldn’t control. “I care nothing for your pain! Do you hear me? Our bond demands trust, Lucy, but you buried your lies so deep, you deceived even me! If Jens ever comes back, it will be because he’s promised to your family, not because he forgives you.” He felt the horror his words bathed me in, but it only added more fuel to his fire. “You did this to yourself! To all of us!”
“Jamie!” Britta reproached him, indignant.
I backed out of the room and bolted down the stairs, lest they see me burst into tears. Though Jamie could feel the hurt his judgment pushed on me, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching me buckle under his harsh words.
I deserved this. I deserved this. I deserved this.
Nine.
Punished
“I get the couch. Rats sleep on the floor,” Foss ruled, shoving me off the couch and onto the cream-colored carpet. He hadn’t been so rough with me since Undraland, and the refresher of his former personality hurt me at a soul level. It was like Jamie’s bad behavior today gave Foss permission to devolve back into the smackh
ole he’d been before we… just, before.
Foss flopped on the long wraparound sofa and kicked off his boots so he could put his feet up. He laid back and stared up at the ceiling. “Boy, when you break something, you do a good job of it.”
I said nothing to his baiting. Instead I curled up on the carpet in front of the fireplace, not bothering to grab a spare blanket from the linen closet I’d helped stock for them. I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep anyway; at least this way I could blame it on the lack of a blanket. Jens’s back bothered him most at night, so I always gave him a good backrub before bed. He was gone though, and now we were both in pain.
Foss tried starting an argument a few more times before he resigned himself to my silence. An hour later, he was snoring softly with his knife clutched to his chest, but I was no closer to sleep.
Jamie’s thoughts were starting to bleed under the door of my mental wall. There was that same black foreign fog of irrational anger creeping in, so I made sure to give that a wide berth, shoving imaginary pillows and blankets to the fake door to stem the creeping in of the smoke.
Then something happened I did not expect. The beige walls on either side of the door that formed my mental wall began shaking as if they’d been hit.
Another hit revealed Jamie with a sledgehammer, knocking down the barrier that gave us privacy.
What are you doing? I screamed, backing away so he didn’t hit me.
Jamie was resolute as he kept knocking down the drywall. You don’t get freedom anymore. You betrayed me, so you lost your right to privacy.
What? You don’t get to decide that. And that would mean you wouldn’t get privacy for…
I heard moaning that grew louder and more intrusive as the drywall ripped from top to bottom on one side, leaving my mind exposed to Jamie’s.
Jamie, no!
Most people who were laplanded ended up getting married, and I understood why. Having someone know your every thought was bonding, but tonight it was a torture. We’d respected the limits of the bond out of courtesy to each other, slowly building until we would someday be able to experience the heights of emotion without bringing the other along for the ride. Jamie was better at that, hence, he and Britta were able to have sex without me feeling more than errant swings of desire and the occasional mental image I was able to quickly dismiss.
Lucy at Peace Page 6