…and watch the heavy tapestries reappear, hanging from the curved branch of an oak tree. The cinderblock and linoleum have vanished. Could I have imagined them?
Questions clamor to my tongue, but Nissa gazes uninterrupted at her baby. I, too, am mesmerized by the way the infant’s perfect black lashes rest against her porcelain skin.
It would be awkward to interrupt their intimacy with questions. I explore the room instead, my fingers running over the living vegetation on the wall. I bend to pet a fat fluffy rabbit hopping past.
The organic shapes of a birch rocking chair and side table look like they’ve grown right up through the floor. The rocker takes my weight, adjusting around me for a custom fit.
Next to me a photo album lies open on the slender white-limbed side table, beckoning. I pick it up to find that my favorite pictures of my brothers and sister fill its pages.
I fall in love with them all over again.
There has never been a shape more flawless than Jacob’s golden newborn head. Aidan’s wrinkled prune-purple skin and bead-button eyes make him look like a little old man in comparison, while Claire is almost a caricature. When she learned to crawl I was amazed every time she managed to lift her head off the ground, her cheeks were that big.
Page after page reveals their quirks and personalities, simple treasured highlights I cherish probably more than they do, as if I hand-picked and compiled these snapshots myself:
Jacob in a white undershirt clutches a red hen to his two-year old chest.
Blonde Aidan takes his first steps on a windswept beach in Carmel, surf crashing behind him.
Claire’s chubby dimpled hand in Jacob’s skinny fist as she jumps in a pile of crackling autumn leafs.
Nissa takes her place behind an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine, humming while she sews, the needle’s happy staccato gives rhythm to her wordless song.
Another jolt rattles the ground. Linoleum instantly replaces the clover under my feet, hospital antiseptic stings my nose.
Nissa’s sewing machine morphs into a shabby armchair. The princess’s hollow eyes stare at me with her withered hands clasped in her lap. A thin tube connects her to the plastic IV bag hanging from the metal pole at her side. I jump from the rocking chair and rush to her.
Before I’ve taken half a dozen steps everything morphs back to the way it was…sunlight sparkles off the playful stream, the crushed clover I’m standing on perfumes the air with eternal spring. Nissa busily hums away at her sewing.
I hold up the photo album in my hand. “Why do you have these pictures of my brothers and sister, Princess?”
“Come see what I made for them!” She leaps to her feet, pulling me over to an ornately carved wardrobe.
The weapons are inside.
Nissa picks up the dagger, turning the blade to reflect the light before placing it in my hand. “Have you ever walked so quickly into a room that once you get there you can’t remember why you went? That’s my brave, brilliant Jacob. This dagger represents him. It’s meant to remind you to pace yourself. Most of the time a warrior keeps her dagger sheathed. It isn’t wise to always be on offense with your weapon in your hand looking for a challenge. Wearing this dagger sheathed symbolizes preparation and patience.” She buckles the filigree sheath around my hips. I slip the dagger inside.
Next, she takes the black leather-bound shield down from its hook inside the door and fastens it around my left forearm. Algiz, the emblem of Protection, bristles in spikes at the center.
“This shield represents Aidan, my blue-eyed knight. Aidan’s like you, so sensitive. His imagination is bigger than the world. Sometimes he doesn’t know how to turn it off, and it hurts him.” The way she talks about Aidan pierces me, as if she doesn’t understand that I know him better than I know my own heart. “This shield will act as a filter when too many things press down on you at once.”
Finally, she takes the studded gauntlet down from where it rests on a shelf and slides it onto my right hand. “Claire can be silly,” she says, “but she is also fierce and beautiful like this gauntlet. If anyone were to discount her as being pretty and nothing else they would only have themselves to blame. They’d be in for a big surprise, wouldn’t they? Claire is strong and confident. This gauntlet is a good reminder of those things. Now, Emily, listen carefully, this is important. While each of the weapons work independently, when used together they are virtually undefeatable.”
Pride steals my breath. The night the crimbal attacked I was scared spitless. Jacob, Aidan, and Claire united to fight off the monsters so I had time to take Mom’s Blaze.
“Look at you, Emily.”
I shiver with strange excitement. The weapons fit as if they were made for me. My dress shimmers in the dappled sunlight of Toad’s enchanted belly-garden.
When Nissa spoke to me in Aidan’s dream she said the weapons would give me Purpose.
“You’re a maiden warrior ready for battle.”
A rumbling starts all around us. At a ping behind me I pivot to see the mobile suspended above the carved cradle start to rotate in a slow spin. Delicate dragonflies with stained glass wings wobble around the large crystal spider at its center. Another ping and I notice a hairline fissure stretching across the rose orb of the spider’s middle.
Nissa races for the wailing baby, gathering her up in her arms. “There, there my sweet little princess. I’ve got you now. You’re my beautiful Emma, aren’t you? My brave girl. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
The pitch and roll of the ground doesn’t stop. Another ping. The mobile shatters. Plaster falls from the ceiling. Birds squawk alarm.
“What did you call her?”
“Emma,” Nissa answers. “She’s my first. My darling Emily Ava Alvey.” She bounces the startled infant on her shoulder, singing her name.
“My name is Emily Ava Alvey.” I’m trembling.
Nissa dances toward me. The sway of her hips comforts the fussy baby, but the glare she directs at me is pointed like a knife. “Keep your voice down, young lady. If you upset my daughter I’ll send you to your room.”
“You can’t send me to my room.” I look down at the dagger, the shield, and the gauntlet to find they are nothing more than the letter opener, wooden shield, and beaded cuff from our box of make-believe. “None of this is real. This is all just a stupid bedtime story I made up…”
“You’re confused, Emily, about which parts of your story are real and which parts you embellished. I know I let you down in so many ways, but the weapons are real. I poured all my love into them. When you wear them your bond with Claire, Aidan, and Jacob is your strength.”
My anger mounts with every word I hear. “Stop it. Stop it! Stop pretending that abandoning us is okay because you ‘poured all your love’ into some toys.”
“You don’t understand!” Nissandra cries, her eyes desperate. “I’ve been working on your armor, too. Here, hold her.” She deposits the squirming baby in my arms and hurries to the sewing machine. “Look!” She holds up a handful of dirty linen.
The earth heaves.
This time I’m expecting it. I drop the breathless baby in the cradle and march to Nissa’s side, grasping the cloth in her grip. “This isn’t armor. It’s nothing but scraps you’ve stitched together!”
The enchanted nursery disappears completely as the tremors grow stronger. Nissa is gone.
Mom sits in a utilitarian hospital bed in her room at the detox center. A monitor above her head begins a plaintive warning beep, but no one comes to check.
I’m furious, livid. I yank off the toy sheath and dagger, unstrap the shield and rip the gauntlet from my wrist, throwing them to the linoleum floor. I shove the fistful of rags in her face. “We needed you and you abandoned us!” I grab her shoulders and lean in. “You disgust me. You’re a weak pathetic woman pretending to be a good mother to a fake baby!” I point to
the second-hand basinet in the corner where a doll lies in a twisted heap. “I will never forgive you for what you’ve done.” I spit the words, deliberate and quiet, through gritted teeth.
A low pitiful keening rends my ears. It’s the broken sound of a wounded animal, the tortured sound of the abused, the unending grief-sound of self-hate.
This pain bleeding from Mom’s throat…I did this. I cut her this way.
“Oh my God I’m sorry I’m so sorry please forgive me I’m so sorry!” I gather her fragile skin-and-bones body into my arms and rock her back and forth like a newborn. My fingers smooth her coarse-thin hair while huge sobs torment her frame. The words of a lullaby she used to sing me bubble up from a deep forgotten place.
“Oh once I had a little swan
She was so very frail
She’d sit upon an oyster shell
And hatch me out a snail,
The snail it turned into a bird
The bird to butterfly
And he who tells a bigger tale
Will have to tell a lie.
Sing terry-oh day. Sing autumn to May.
Her body calms. I stop singing, thinking she’s fallen asleep. But from her silence comes a trance-like voice: “My father taught me that being brave meant being quiet. He said it wasn’t good to always be whining and complaining. He said I had one purpose: to be a wife and mother, and that if my husband wasn’t happy it was my fault. Your father was never happy. I believed that if I hid my bruises and buried my pain and tried harder no one would get hurt but me. But it wasn’t all pretend, Emily. I don’t know if I can make you understand what it was like, being your mother when you were young. You and Jacob and Aidan and Claire were my whole world and I adored every minute with you. But as you got older you became much stronger than me. I was broken, and I told myself you didn’t need me anymore.” She starts to shake again, her tears wetting the front of my ridiculous silver gown. “I know I hurt you. I know you can never forgive me. I can never forgive myself.”
How can I blame her for burying and hiding the awful things she didn’t think she could change? I did the same thing. But now I know: secrets have power. They grow and fester until they leak out as toxic waste.
“I do forgive you, Mom.”
Saying it is like salve on wounds I’ve carried for as long as I can remember. Not just because I can’t stand seeing other people in pain. This is for me. I’m ready to heal.
Thirty-Four
“EMILY! Where are you?”
Startled by the sound of Aidan’s shout I look down. In the corner of the room where the dull linoleum tiles meet the wall is a mouse-hole gap. Through it I see Aidan where I saw him last, on his knees in the dirt beneath the oak tree by the old rope swing. Claire stands at his side. They look small and lost amid the chaos erupting around them.
Kaillen strides toward them flanked by two elves I don’t recognize. He pulls Aidan to his feet. “Are you hurt?”
“She’s gone.” Red rims Aidan’s eyes “There was an earthquake. I tripped and that weird black lightning shot up from the ground…I could feel something—opening—in the grove. Then she was just…gone.”
Oh NO. Aidan thinks I left him.
“Aidan!” I yell, dropping to the floor and pounding on the wall. “Claire!”
“I told you, Emily. They can’t hear you.” Mom’s voice is empty.
Panic grips me. I have to let Aidan know I would never leave him on purpose, that I’m coming back. “There has to be a way to make him hear me!”
“There isn’t. I’ve tried so many times. There isn’t a way.”
“I’ve never seen a black lightning strike before now,” Kaillen says, “but I know what it means. Someone has Traveled.”
“Traveled?” Claire asks. “Like on a plane?”
“No. Traveling is a fabled art, as old as legend,” Kaillen explains, “something the Ancients were said to have done. Elves still learn the concept of bending space and time to move between places when we’re adolescents, but only as theory. No one living has actually ever done it. Honestly, I didn’t even believe it could be done. It would require colossal amounts of Magic. None of us has the strength necessary to Travel, not even if we were in the First Realm with our full power. None, of course, except your sister with the weapons.”
“Why do you sound mad at Emma?” Claire asks. “What has she done that’s so bad?”
“She’s infected me.” Kaillen mutters. A blush stains his face, betraying his anger. My stomach seizes in a tight thrill. “Your sister is incredibly smart and strong, Claire, but she’s put herself in danger. Attempting Travel is completely irresponsible.”
“Surely it’s beyond her capability,” the stocky elf on Kaillen’s right says.
“Emily is one of the most capable people I have ever met,” Kaillen responds.
Is this detox-center/mouse-hole/crack-inside-a-giant-Toad thingy broken, or did Kaillen just compliment me? My pulse spikes.
“Even if she has managed to learn the lost art, why would she Travel? Where would she go?” the elf on Kaillen’s left asks.
“I have no idea,” Kaillen says, “but the strain on her physical body will render her useless. It will take days for her to recover enough to open the Doorway.”
“Is that all you care about?” Aidan asks.
“No,” Mom whispers from her hospital bed.
“No.” Kaillen answers.
“When will she be back?” Aidan asks.
“We’ll be leaving within minutes to investigate where your sister went and when she’ll return. We’ll need water. Aidan, will you take the canteens and fill them up in the house? We need to be ready to go as soon as the General gives the order.”
“Yes.” Aidan stands a little straighter.
“You two, keep with Claire and Aidan,” he commands the two elves. “Lady Claire, your job is to go with these men and make certain they hurry back. Can you do that for me?”
“Where are the canteens?” She takes charge immediately.
Kaillen joins the General and Lady Kaye under the birch tree.
“Ava regained consciousness and refused to say anything until Quince agreed to take her to find Lady Alvey.” Kaye is saying.
“Were they attacked? Why did Emily Travel?” the General asks.
“From what I can ascertain from Twist, it was accidental,” Kaye answers. “Ava was teaching Emily to channel through the weapons, and…”
“Ava was teaching her to channel?” Kaillen interrupts, clearly confused.
Ian ignores him, speaking urgently. “Has Lady Emily returned?”
“No. But her Path is not entirely shut.”
Ian mutters something under his breath that sounds like “foolish girl,” but his tone is worried, not angry. “Marcus, Jack!” he barks. “Order your warriors to form rank. Lady Kaye, please gather your maidens.”
The Fae assemble, men and women standing together.
“General, are we under attack?” yells an elf at the back of the group.
“Has the Doorway been opened?” a maiden calls out.
“Fae, we are not under attack,” Ian’s voice booms across the yard. “The Doorway has not been opened. Lady Alvey has mistakenly opened a Path, inadvertently Traveling. We don’t know where she’s gone. It’s likely she will return shortly.”
Behind me, Mom stares at the hole in the wall, transfixed. She shakes her head, muttering under her breath.
“Marcus, Lizzy,” the General barks, “your squadrons will accompany me to the grove to ensure no unwanted visitors enter this Realm through Lady Alvey’s Pathway. We must bring her back and close the Opening. The rest of you will remain here and await our word. We will communicate via dragonfly,” he indicates Twist who hovers near his shoulder.
“Mom, did you hear that? They’re coming to get me!” I scrambl
e back to the metal-railed bed and hug her to me.
“Emily. Please stay a little longer. We could make such beautiful things together.”
“We can’t stay, Mom. We have to take the weapons you made to Jacob, Aidan, and Claire, remember?”
“You’re leaving me.”
“Of course not! You’re coming with me.”
“I can’t leave.” The skin of her neck and chest above the threadbare hospital gown is mottled and splotched. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? There’s a man, Emily. Covered in Gray. His clothes, his rifle, even his body is Gray. He’s out there…watching…waiting. If I try to leave he’ll hunt me. He won’t let me escape alive.”
She has a Gray Man, too. And I know she’s right: she isn’t strong enough to fight him.
“I’ll come back for you, I promise. I’ll come back and I won’t stop calling until you answer.”
I barely feel the pressure of her grip when she squeezes my hand. She studies the faded paisley pattern covering her too-thin knees. “I’m tired Emily. Will you help me with my pillow?”
I lay her back, gently adjusting the pillow under her head. Pulling the covers up to her chin and tucking them in around her shoulders, I place a kiss at her hairline.
“You can’t give up, Mom. Not now that I’ve found you here. Tell me you’ll listen for me,” I beg.
But she’s already fallen asleep.
Ascending the concrete steps of Toad’s echoey astringent throat, I emerge into the noxious gray skyscape of the Third Realm.
The scene from the Second Realm plays on through the sidewalk. I clamber over Toad’s fleshy bottom lip and hurry to peer into the crack.
The Fae have marched to the grove. Claire and Aidan push their way up to the front of the tightly pressed ranks of elves and maidens who’ve formed a semi-circle around Quince. Xander weaves in and out of the crowd. “Where is she, Lady Quince? Where’s Emma?” Claire yells.
“Claire!” I shout at the top of my lungs. But it’s useless. She can’t hear me.
Riven: Young Adult Fantasy Novel (My Myth Trilogy Book 1) Page 22