The Lost Child

by H. P. Mallory

  I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately. I feel like I’m trying my hardest, but I can’t keep having the same fight with you.”

  I waited for the apology or the sharp comeback, but he didn’t even look at me.

  “I can only be who I am.”

  What did that mean? Had I pushed him away? Was he pushing me away?

  Not for the first time in our relationship, I wished I could look into Sinjin’s mind to see what he was thinking. We were so different, so ill-suited, but that had always seemed to somehow make us closer. Until now.

  I walked on in silence beside the father of my lost child. He was the father, but would he ever get to be the Dad? Right now I wasn’t sure if he even wanted to be.

  #

  SINJIN

  Perhaps it was all for the best.

  I would not have wanted Chevalier raising any child of mine but if he was the catalyst necessary to break us up, so Bryn could have a fresh start with someone more worthwhile then perhaps it was all for the best.

  Surely, you can’t believe that is what this is, old man? I asked myself.

  But, I was not certain. I had seen the way they emerged from the woods, walking closely, laughing and smiling. What had caused their candor?

  Of course, I knew Chevalier was still in love with Bryn. How could he not be? And now I began to wonder at her feelings for him? Certainly she recognized he would be the better bet where fatherhood was concerned.

  What if this was it? What if this were the start to the end of the line between my little hellion and me? What if this were the beginning of the end?

  It would not be easy, but once the child was safe I would resume my wanderings —the lone wolf once more. Though I could not pretend I would be the same as I once had been. For the rest of my life there would be a hole in my heart. For the rest of my life I would know what I had lost.

  But perhaps it would be for the best? That child deserved the sort of father that I could never be. And so did her mother.

  Perhaps I should have tried to put these feelings into words for Bryn, but if I had attempted to explain it, she would just have disagreed and said what a good father I would make. She would have covered up her true beliefs and feelings. She would have attempted to make me feel better and sacrificed the truth of my statements.

  And then I would have had to convince her that I really was a terrible man to become a father—I would have had to reveal more of my past, to prove how unworthy I was of my daughter. Then I would have to see the disappointment in her eyes as her love turned to contempt.

  This way was better. Agonizing for us both; but still better.

  Right now, the child was all that mattered.

  NINE

  BRYN

  The journey through Faery wasn’t much fun. It wasn’t supposed to be, of course; we had a serious purpose and there was a lot at stake. But I’d been on enough life or death expeditions to know that, even on the worst of them, a person tries to find joy where she can. In war there are always jokes and songs and the camaraderie of comrades. Though Odran tried his best to keep our spirits up—Dureau and Klassje too—Sinjin and I had ruined it for everyone.

  “Would ye like to talk aboot it, lass?” Odran asked me one night, when Sinjin had gone for a walk by himself. As per his new usual.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Ye are both goin’ through a terrible situation,” Odran tried to help. “‘Tis nae wonder ye are at each other’s throats.”

  I forced a rueful smile. “But we’re not, are we? We’re not fighting. I wish we were. Fighting for me and Sinjin is second nature. It’s like our sex,” I continued, without even realizing what I was saying. But, it was true, all the same. Our arguments, like our sex, were hard, lengthy, unnecessarily competitive and with an incredible climax

  Odran laughed.

  “That’s just another thing we’re not doing,” I admitted.

  “Maybe ye should.”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem.”

  “Then what is?”

  I thought about the question a long while. “The real problem?

  Like deep down?”

  “Aye.”

  I shrugged. “We love each other. This would be easy if we didn’t.

  But the fact that we love each other is tearing us apart at the moment, and neither of us knows what to do about it, because we can’t stop loving each other.”

  Odran considered all this. “It seems like a lot o’ hard work.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have ye tried talkin’ to him?”

  My face hardened. “He knows where I am.”

  “Ye could make the first move, could ye not?”

  “Why should I?”

  Odran shook his head. “Ah hope the two of ye can figure this oot.

  Because ye are certainly made for each other.”

  Part of me thought that once we had our child back, everything would be better, because we would have that common ground to focus on. But at night, when I lay awake, worrying and wishing, I often found myself wondering if the child was common ground.

  Maybe it was no accident that Sinjin was slipping away from me now. The reality of having a child might finally be getting to him and he was trying to drive a wedge between us so he didn’t have to assume his duties as a father. It was a cowardly way to go about it, which was definitely not like Sinjin, but what else was I supposed to think when he wouldn’t talk to me?

  And yet, for all that, for all the frosty silences and bitter words, what I’d said to Odran was, I thought, true. We loved each other… right?

  Someone smart— I forget whom—said something about you needing to really love someone to be able to really hate them. I could identify. There was a time when I had loved Luce and look how that had ended up.

  A few days ago, when we ’d first entered the foothills of the Ice Mountains, plodding along snowy paths in the winter clothes we’d

  bought from the last village we’d passed through, I’d slipped.

  I’d put my hands out to break my fall, but before I’d so much as scuffed a knee, Sinjin had been there, moving with his inhuman speed, catching me and holding my weight easily in those strong arms which had once been so familiar to me. For a few breathless moments, we remained like that, him holding me. I think we were both lost in the wistful relief of renewed contact.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “My pleasure,” came the muttered reply. He released me, and as his hands left my body, I felt a physical ache at the loss of his touch. It was like I was having withdrawal symptoms.

  We still loved each other, and moments like that showed it. By night, I would often roll over to find him staring at me by the light of the dying fire, a terrible anguish in his eyes . I felt the same anguish myself. It was so easy to hate someone you loved, and yet it was torture too.

  Damn it all, why wouldn’t he just talk to me?

  #

  “There she is!” Odran announced expansively, sweeping an arm out to indicate the massive claw of ice that rose up ahead of us.

  “Tor Clyd. If Finvarra is right, then that is where the Fir Darrig bides.”

  It was a grim and imposing sight , but it made me feel better and happier than I had for the last few days. There up ahead was, potentially, the end of our journey. It was an ugly sight, a great, grey-green hook of ancient ice, a million miles from the beauty of the Castle of the Seelie Court, but to me it was beautiful, because hopefully I’d find my baby there.

  “What’s the plan?” Dureau asked. He was a leader by nature , but knew when to take the back foot.

  “We watch,” said Sinjin. He then looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded.

  That was tough for him. His natural instinct was always to go in, all guns blazing, but he knew that in this situation that was the wrong decision and potentially dangerous for us and, more importantly, for our child. We needed to gather surveillance first, to see what we could learn about
our foe and his fortress.

  We needed to know what we would be up against. We would get one chance at this, if the Fir Darrig caught us, then that was it; game over.

  “Whit do ye have in mind?” asked Odran, another natural leader who was deferring to Sinjin for now. Even at this strained time, I still took a quiet pride in the way these two alpha males

  deferred to my Sinjin (if I could still call him mine) and how he rose to the challenge. For all my wondering if Sinjin still wished to be a father, there was no one I would trust more with the life of my child. Maybe Sinjin didn’t want the baby, but Sinjin would give his own life to save her—I never doubted that for an instant.

  “I want to get closer and have a proper look at them,” Sinjin replied to Odran.

  “You’ll need help,” said Dureau, instantly. “Someone to keep an eye out.”

  Sinjin nodded. “I sha ll take Bryn.”

  That did surprise me. However much I knew Sinjin would do what was best for the baby, taking Dureau would surely have been just as good. Perhaps he just disliked the French Fae that much?

  “We will meet back here,” said Sinjin.

  “There’s a better spot to camp a ways down the face,” suggested Odran. “Ah dinnae think anyone in the Tor will be able to spy oos there an’ we’ll be hidden from the path as well.”

  Sinjin nodded. “Very good. Set up camp there. If we are not returned in two hours…” He paused. “Please do not abandon our child.”

  It was a suddenly serious moment, as we all reflected on how uncertain our fate.

  “Ah swear she will be safe, back in Kinloch Kirk before the end o’ the month,” said Odran.

  Sinjin nodded a curt thanks, then turned to me. “Ready?”

  I just nodded.

  With Sinjin leading, we picked our way along narrow, icy mountain paths, creeping ever closer to the menacing shadow of Tor Clyd.

  To our left, a jagged cliff of sheer ice dropped away into darkness. All we could see below were drifts of cloud.

  “We should tie ourselves together,” I suggested. “Then if one of us slips, maybe the other can hang on.”

  “I a m not sure if the other would be able to hang on,” replied Sinjin. “More likely we would both just plummet.”

  I nodded. “Possibly.”

  Sinjin acknowledged this and got out the rope to tie us together.

  If one went, we both went.

  After a nerve-wracking half hour of tentative climbing, we were close enough to Tor Clyd to get a good look at its entrance; a dark mouth of black and dirty green ice from which frozen teeth of icicles protruded.

  “They a re not subtle in Faery, are they?” muttered Sinjin. “They call a spade a spade.”

  “I don’t think the vampire dressed all in black should be criticizing.”

  That almost drew a smile. Almost. “That i s the main way in,” he said, motioning forward. “I think we might do best avoiding it.”

  “Look there.” I pointed lower down, to the black rock of the spire on which the tower was perched. Caves bored their way into the mountain. “I bet those lead in.”

  Sinjin nodded. “Just need to figure out how we reach them.”

  I peered down into the chasm beneath us. “Looks like there’s only one way.”

  A narrow bridge of black rock spanned the chasm. It shone in the high sunlight as if it had been polished, though I suspected it was , in fact, slick with ice.

  “Dangerous, stupid, probably fatal.” Sinjin nodded. “Ticks all our usual boxes.”

  If we could get across the bridge without plunging to our deaths, then it was just a precipitous and equally treacherous climb to the nearest of the little caves. What could possibly go wrong?

  “Let us head back.”

  But as the words left his mouth, I saw movement across the canyon in the mouth of Tor Clyd. “Get down!”

  I pulled Sinjin roughly to the ground with me and we both lay our stomachs, peering over the snow-covered rocks to see what was going on.

  The figure was not that of the Fir Darrig—unless it was in disguise—but nor did it seem like a guard or servant.

  “What is that?” breathed Sinjin.

  As we watched, the figure threw back a hood to reveal a shock of scraggly hair, framing a wizened face. It was female, her body was wrapped in dirty-looking cloaks and she walked with a stick.

  At least, that was what I thought at first.

  “That i s a human leg bone she is using as a walking stick,”

  breathed Sinjin.

  His vampire eyesight was better than mine and I knew well enough not to question him. The fact that the woman could use a femur as a walking stick meant she was relatively small. But judging her by her size might be the last mistake a person made. Even at this distance, her black eyes were so piercing, Sinjin and I ducked as she seemed to look in our direction. When we dared to look again, the old woman was not alone.

  “The Darrig…” I saw Sinjin’s fists close, so tightly, his knuckles went white. I felt a surge of hatred from inside. There was the creature that had taken my child and was still holding her. It was beyond fortuitous that we’d found him, but the sight still made my blood boil. If only I’d had a gun, then I could have picked the fucker off here and now. But of course fire arms did not function in Faery. All we could usefully do was watch.

  “The Fir Darrig has a friend,” growled Sinjin, watching as the Darrig and the crone met with an embrace.

  “Can’t imagine that’s good news,” I muttered, and was about to say more when I felt Sinjin stiffen beside me.

  His face turned to me, sharp with urgency and he mouthed the words; ‘ Someone is coming ’.

  Again, I never questioned his vampire senses. We looked around for somewhere to hide and found a crevice just large enough to hide in, a fissured crack in the rock, not far from where we’d been stationed. Now, I too could hear the approaching footsteps, coming from the same direction we had just come. I hoped it didn’t mean they might have encountered Odran and the others. Now I listened to the approach, I could hear something odd about it.

  The footfalls were heavy and solid, but very oddly spaced. The reason for this rounded the cliff a few moments later.

  In a life in which I’ve seen more than a few weird things, I ’d never seen anything like this. The creature was over six feet tall, heavy-set and muscular, its skin thick, rough, pale green and leathery. In the center of its forehead was one large eye, in the center of its chest was one strong arm, and beneath it was one single leg. It hopped closer, moving at a startling rate, unbothered by the ice. The one leg ought to have made the creature ungainly and liable to topple, but it looked to be neither of these things. It looked dangerous.

  As it reached the point where we’d been observing Tor Clyd, the beast stopped and sniffed. It leaned down, still maintaining perfect balance on one leg, to sniff closer. It clearly knew someone had been there. I held my breath and Sinjin did the same as we forced ourselves further back into the split in the rock.

  It was a good hiding place—or at least the best that had been on offer in a bad situation—but this creature could easily trap us.

  From outside, I heard the loud slap of a bare foot on rock, as the creature hopped closer. At the last moment, Sinjin used his black coat to cover us both, blending into the darkness of the hollow into which we were squeezed.

  The hopping footstep stopped. A pause that felt like a brief eternity. The creature emitted a little growl, like a rumbling in the back of its throat.

  A moment later, the hopping started again, speeding up quickly and getting fainter as the creature kept on its way to Tor Clyd and the Fir Darrig, who seemed to be having quite a party for itself.

  For a long while, Sinjin and I remained still and quiet. I wondered if he could feel my heart, beating hard against him. I wanted to put an arm around him, to reassure him and to get the comfort I always felt from having him near me. But I was no longer sure I had the right to do something
so familiar. Where did we stand now? How had things changed between us?

  It was a hard asking. Hard to be in the situation and not able to do what seemed like the most natural thing in the world; to reach out to the one I loved. But there was also no one I would rather have been in such a situation with, no one who made me feel safer.

  Finally, Sinjin breathed, “I think it is gone.”

  Inch by inch, we extracted ourselves from the rocky crack, only now feeling the discomfort of being in that compressed and twisted position for so long. We stretched our cramped limbs and massaged our strained muscles.

  “Do you know what that was?” I asked.

  Sinjin shook his head. “I fear I do not keep up on the denizens of Faery. The Fae are such a diverse crowd. But my feeling is that its intentions were not to our betterment.”

  “Any friend of the Fir Darrig is an enemy of ours,” I nodded.

  Across the chasm, we could now see the Darrig welcoming its second guest.

  We walked, and in focusing on our mission and on practicalities, the awkwardness that had grown between us vanished.

  “This is going to make things more difficult,” Sinjin began, grimly. “If the Fir Darrig has company, we will have other, perhaps powerful, Fae to contend with.”

  “I have a hunch it might be even worse than that,” I replied, making a face.

  “Worse? In what fashion?”

  “Have you stopped to ask yourself why they’re there?”

  Sinjin frowned and shrugged. “I confess I assumed the Fir Darrig was as convivial as most Fae seem to be. Even malign spirits bent on tormenting the human race have a social life.”

  I shook my head. “I hope you’re right, and the Fir Darrig is just having a house party. But I think what we’ve just seen is the re-establishing of the Unseelie Court.”

  Sinjin’s face went through shock, anger and then grim resignation, ending with a rueful smile. “It seems you, once again, know better than me. I am apt sometimes to forget how clever you are. You are right, of course. One such creature arriving here perhaps we could have overlooked, but two of them?

  No.”

  “It seems that way, doesn’t it?”