Elfland

by Freda Warrington

  The warm beeswax scent of Oakholme wrapped around Rosie as they went upstairs. She always felt the same rush of nostalgia, a physical longing for the dark oak paneling, creaking floorboards, wide corridors running at quirky angles, and always the promise of mysterious extra rooms that might reveal themselves.

  “How are things with Alastair?” Faith asked as she ran the taps and poured in bath foam. Steam misted the tiles.

  “We’re supposed to be talking about you.” Rosie sat on the closed lid of the loo.

  “We are,” Faith said. “Indirectly. Is he . . . Are you happy?”

  “Yes.” The question took her by surprise. “Pretty much.”

  Faith exhaled, her posture radiating misery as she tested the bathwater. She’d always found it torture to admit anything was wrong. Once Heather, all pink and blond, was splashing happily in a meringue of bubbles, Faith asked, “What’s Alastair like? I mean, has he changed? Does he take you for granted? Can you tell him absolutely anything?”

  Rosie knelt on the bathmat and wound up a clockwork frog for her niece’s delight. “Look, it’s no good comparing Alastair with Matthew. Do you think I have a perfect marriage?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “No, Fai. I don’t know what I expected.” The truth came easily with her friend, as it hadn’t with her father. “We got on great until we were married, because we didn’t make demands on each other. I’m really fond of him, even when he has his little tantrums. He’s a big handsome man, what’s not to like? But the moment we got married, I panicked. It’s like . . . imagine you have a really good friend whom you occasionally sleep with and it’s a nice, comfortable arrangement. But one day you sign a contract saying you’ll spend every moment of the rest of your life with them and never look at anyone else—wouldn’t you break out in a sweat and think, Oh fuck, what have I done?” She paused for breath. “We’re okay. I just feel a bit . . . stifled.”

  Faith stared. “So why did you marry him?”

  “Delusions about romantic passionate love messed my head up. I was trying to be levelheaded and sensible instead.”

  “But you made a mistake.”

  “No. I made a choice. And after the huge fuss and expense of the wedding, and our lives being tangled up together for so long—I’ve invested too much in it not to make it work.”

  “Does Alastair know you don’t love him?”

  The bluntness of Faith’s question startled her. “He . . . He means a lot to me.” She frowned. “We don’t discuss it. Alastair slumped into marriage like it’s a comfy chair. He’s not interested in ecstasy. I think it scares him. He just wants a safe, quiet life.”

  “With the boss’s daughter, no less,” Faith remarked.

  That threw Rosie off her stroke. She’d never even thought of it before. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “The boss’s daughter. Am I really that blindingly stupid?”

  “No—oh no, Rosie, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded! I’m sure he loves you for yourself. How could he not?”

  “Well. I expect we’ll be fine in the end; I need time to adjust, that’s all. I know I should try harder, so one day I wake up and think, wow, I’m happy, we did the right thing after all . . . but I’m finding it such an effort. I know he’s pissed at Luc and Jon being there and I should make them go . . . but I’m sort of hiding behind them, so I don’t have to face this . . . making-it-work thing.”

  She sighed. Faith said worriedly, “I had no idea.”

  “Fai, I’m only saying that if something’s wrong, join the club. I know how difficult Matthew can be. Is your love life still okay?”

  “Fine,” Faith said with a blush. “It’s the one thing that always has been. He can be so sweet, especially in the dark . . . but . . .”

  “Daylight turns him into a big posturing ego on legs?” Rosie suggested. “It always has. So what’s he done?”

  “Nothing.” Faith gave a shiver. “It’s what he might do if . . .” She swept bubbles away from Heather’s waist, leaving a clear window of water. The child’s top half was plump, pink and awash with bubbles; but her legs and tummy, submerged, shone with blue-green scales like a mermaid’s. Her small hands flashed in and out of the water; now iridescent green, now pink again. “Can you see, Ro?”

  “Yes,” Rosie murmured.

  “I can’t let Matthew see this.” She sounded anguished.

  Rosie said gently, “Darling, this isn’t altogether a surprise to me. She’s half-Aetherial. Sometimes it shows. Mind you, being of an earthy persuasion, it’s usually leaves in the hair or furry legs with us, but . . .”

  Faith didn’t smile. “Matthew can’t know.”

  “Are you sure he doesn’t already? He must have bathed her himself.”

  Faith gave a firm shake of her head. “No. He’s old-fashioned, he’s happy to leave it to me. I’ve got quite clever at covering her with foam or a towel if he comes in. Jessica knows, of course, but he can’t. He mustn’t.”

  “But he’ll guess. He’s Aetherial. He won’t be amazed that his daughter shows signs of it.”

  “No,” Faith groaned. “That’s not the point. You know what he’s like. In his own mind he’s human, and so are we. This would spoil the illusion. It wouldn’t be perfect anymore. Rosie, I want more children, but how can I? I daren’t, I can’t . . .”

  “Honey, are you scared of him?” Rosie had never seen her so distressed before. “He’s not going to turn against his own daughter, is he? The only way to deal with Matthew is to give as good as you get.”

  “I can’t. I’m not like you. If I was, he wouldn’t have married me—oh, I didn’t mean that like it sounded. I know I do everything his way, but it pleases him. That’s what he loves about me, he says.”

  “And meanwhile, you’re making yourself ill with worry trying to disguise his faerie daughter as human? You think that if you tell him something he doesn’t want to hear, he’ll stop loving you?”

  “Yes,” Faith said, white-faced. “I know it’s ridiculous, it’s all wrong and I should stand up for myself, but I can’t change, it’s what I learned from my parents, keep them sweet or they’ll leave. They left anyway.”

  “Hey. Don’t. D’you want me to tell him?” She placed a firm hand on Faith’s shoulder. “Before Heather decides to announce it herself? She already talks more than a politician. Look, Matt’s got a decent soul in there somewhere. He’ll come round.”

  “No.” Faith sponged her daughter’s back. “It’s not just Heather. That’s the point. It’s worse, much worse.”

  “How?” Rosie lowered her voice. “Matthew’s not her father?”

  “Of course he is! He’s the only man I’ve ever slept with. You know that.”

  “Whew. That would be a wild leap out of character. Sorry. But what could be worse? Come on, tell me.”

  Faith rose, lifted Heather out of the bath and wrapped her in a fluffy white towel. Rosie emptied the bath and tidied up, joining them in the nursery until her niece fell charmingly asleep. Then Faith pulled Rosie along the landing into her old bedroom. They closed the door, switched on a bedside lamp and sat on the bed together. The room glowed warmly and its scent of wood and polish was so familiar that Rosie felt homesick. “Go on, then.”

  Faith’s head drooped. She said, “It’s too hard. I can only say if you tell me one in return. A deep, dark secret that no one else knows.”

  “It’s that serious?”

  “It really is.” Faith looked up, eyes glimmering, face intense.

  “Can’t think of anything,” she laughed.

  “You must. It’s a pact.” Faith leaned forward and took her hands.

  “Okay,” Rosie said slowly. “This is the deepest darkest one I’ve got. I’ve slept with Sam.”

  A beat. “Is that it?”

  “What do you mean, is that it?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly earth-shattering, as secrets go, is it?”

  Rosie gave a tight smile. “You didn’t mention rules about what secre
ts qualify! Okay. I had sex with Sam—in my wedding dress.”

  Faith’s eyes grew large. “Come on, Rosie, that’s bizarre. Don’t make things up to humor me.”

  “I’m not,” she said, quiet and serious. “In my wedding dress. Up against a tree. Four hours after the ceremony and during the reception. Is that deep and dark enough for you?”

  Now Faith believed her. Her face was a picture. “Whoah, bloody hell,” she said, making Rosie smile. “How, why?”

  “Tell you later. I’ve kept my half of the bargain. Now you.”

  “Right.” Faith stood up, white and shaky. “Open the wardrobe.”

  Puzzled, Rosie obeyed. The built-in double doors creaked as she pulled them wide. She caught her breath. Beyond the old clothes she’d left behind snaked the Dusklands tunnel she remembered. The walls were sheened like beech bark and shone with alluring silver light.

  Emotion burned Rosie’s throat. She hadn’t found it for years. “Faith, can you see this?” she asked. In answer, Faith stepped into the wardrobe and walked into the tunnel.

  Rosie followed. A couple of gentle curves brought them into a little cavern, its boundaries blurred by shifting light. In the center was the thick, gnarled bole of her secret tree. She touched it. The bark was satin-smooth, like the skin of a lover.

  Pools of rainwater sparkled in pockets between the thick roots. Faith put her bare toes in the water. She dipped her fingers and anointed her own forehead.

  She changed.

  Her skin turned to gleaming blue-green scales, her hair to waterweed. Even her clothes became dragonfly wings. She looked translucent, too delicate to be real. Her face was still recognizably her own, but it glimmered with scales, reptilian yet eerily lovely.

  Rosie cried out loud, as if she’d been kicked. “Faith? How?”

  “I’m Aetherial,” Faith whispered. “Only I didn’t know until I came to Oakholme. Being here brought it out of me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I tried—you were going to phone me back, remember? Only you didn’t, and I lost my nerve.”

  “Oh my god, I’m sorry. It was when Luc turned up—went right out of my head.” Then Rosie remembered. Two demons battling in a storm, the night Faith had fled to Oakholme. Rain-light flashing on scales, one demon falling, the other slithering away. Faith’s mother and father, in their deeper Aetherial form? “Your parents must have known.”

  “Either they’d forgotten, or they were in denial. They never said or did a thing that wasn’t horribly human. I’m sure they didn’t know.”

  “Auberon spoke about this once,” said Rosie, thinking fast. “Humans and Aetherials can interbreed, can’t they? Usually we are either one or the other but sometimes the balance tips. What if your parents had just enough Aetheric blood to make you, but not your sisters, Aetherial? Same as if you got two recessive genes for green eyes while the rest of your family got brown. Does that make sense?”

  “I suppose so. Odd things have always happened to me but I kept it secret, in case people thought I was weird. That’s why I was always asking you questions! Ro, help me.”

  “Honey, don’t be scared,” Rosie said, finding her breath again. “You look beautiful, by the way.”

  “You don’t look any different.”

  “You’re more Aetherial than I am, then,” she said with a bittersweet smile.

  “I’m a demon.”

  “No, you’re not. Your affinity is water. Melusiel. You’re a water nymph, Fai, an undine.”

  She looked distraught, pinned like a butterfly. “How am I going to tell Matthew? I’m sure Jessica’s guessed, but I daren’t discuss it. How am I going to keep it secret? A mortal wife, a human wife—that’s all he wanted. If he ever finds out what I am—he will kill me.”

  Much later, Rosie walked alone through the streets of Ashvale, brooding.

  She’d stayed with Faith until Jessica and Auberon came home. As Rosie left, Jessica slipped out to the car with her. “I gather you know about Heather’s, er, skin condition,” Rosie said softly, fishing keys out of her jacket pocket.

  “Of course,” Jessica breathed. “And about Faith, too, though she won’t admit it.”

  “That she’s one of us? I’ve only just found out myself. Can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

  Jessica nodded. “She’s a deep girl. I can’t bear to see her so afraid of Matt finding out. I’m in an impossible situation. Heather needs to learn about matters Aetherial, and Faith won’t tell her so I must . . . but if Matthew’s against it, what can I do? I can’t go behind his back. Neither can I watch her grow up in ignorance, it’s not right.”

  “Someone ought to stand up to him,” Rosie said grimly, “but I don’t want to be responsible for holy hell breaking loose.”

  “I’m afraid he’d actually take them away,” Jessica said worriedly. “I couldn’t bear that.”

  “And if he knew about Faith, what else might he do?”

  Rosie had driven nearly home, but couldn’t face the moribund house, haunted by twin wraiths Lucas and Jon. Since Alastair was away, it didn’t matter if she was late. She parked near the center of Ashvale, locked her car and began to walk, hands in pockets, towards the main street.

  She was now fuming with thoughts of Matthew. Who the hell did he think he was? So set in his ideas that Faith was terrified of admitting the truth. Instead she would hide her real self until she shriveled away. What kind of love was that?

  Rosie walked down the lively main street. Shoals of shaven-headed lads poured from one pub to the next. Groups of girls with bleached hair went staggering along shrieking with laughter, hands spilling food wrappers. Rosie walked slowly among them, hypnotized by acres of bare bellies and white thighs. It was mild for late January, but still far too chilly for such a bravura display of flesh. No one took any notice of her. Covered up in her velvet jacket, scarf and long skirt she was apparently—thankfully—as enticing as a traffic officer.

  She thought, If Matt says one word to hurt Faith—

  “Rosie?” Sam’s voice came from an alley on her right. She looked round and saw him in the darkness, almost invisible in a long black coat. He was leaning against a wall in the shadows, a predator contemplating the night hordes.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” she said, folding into shadow beside him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I could ask the same of you,” he said.

  “I asked first.”

  He shrugged. “Somewhere to go. Don’t want to go home.”

  “Pretty much the same here,” said Rosie.

  “How come?”

  “I just found out something . . . devastating, actually.”

  “Really? Tell your wicked uncle Sam.”

  “It’s not me, it’s a friend. I can’t tell anyone.”

  “I know the feeling,” he said thinly.

  There was something wrong. Sam was wax-pale and unsteady, eyes lifeless. He had none of his usual spark. “Are you drunk?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he said grimly, producing a hip flask. “D’you want to try?”

  Rosie accepted and took a sip. Whiskey. She took another, closing her eyes at the delicious burn. “It’s good stuff,” he said with a ghoulish grin. “One of my father’s zillion-quid-a-bottle single malts.” He took the flask, drank from it and used it to indicate the Friday-night masses. “Do you ever feel like you’ve just stumbled in from another planet?”

  “Try another universe,” she said.

  “Too right.” Sam fell quiet, unlike his usual self. She saw faint lines drawn in his forehead, a cold burning of his eyes. The prospect of lager-fueled yobs colliding with a drunken Sam gave her chills. She knew who’d come off the worse.

  “Are you okay?” she said, more brisk than sympathetic.

  “Great,” he said, then sighed. “No, not really.”

  She paused. “Is this about me?” she asked softly.

  “No,” he laughed. “No, it’s not. Amazingly enough
, not everything is about you, Rosie.”

  He wouldn’t look at her. Usually he couldn’t take his eyes off her. “What is it?” She took his arm and tried to pull him deeper into the alleyway. He resisted. “Come on, Sam, tell me, please.”

  She pulled again, and this time he went with her. Around them were shuttered shops, and farther down, a jumble of old buildings split by a maze of small courtyards. He veered into one of these, reeled back against a wall and stood there, ashen. “I can’t tell anyone,” he said. “I’m stuck with it.”

  “This is me you’re talking to.” She moved closer, touching his arm. “You told me every grim detail of a fatal stabbing; how can it be any worse?”

  “It is.” The words were almost a sob. “That’s it, it’s come back.” His eyes closed. “The body. A few nights ago when I went home, the house was dark and no one up. And the corpse was back. The man I killed. Lying on the carpet exactly as I left him, only stark naked and glowing white.”

  “Oh, god,” said Rosie, picturing it. “An illusion?”

  “Not really white, more this horrible yellowy color . . . You can see all the veins, and his eyes . . .”

  “Sam, it must have got to you more than you’ll admit. It wasn’t real.”

  “That’s what I thought. But it was still there the next morning. It’s still there now. I poked it with my boot, and it was solid. Fuck, this sounds ridiculous.”

  “Dumannios playing tricks on you.”

  “I suppose. Doesn’t make it any less real to me.”

  “Can anyone else see it?”

  A pause. “Lawrence can, I swear. He won’t say, of course, but the looks he’s been giving me, like he knows . . . I don’t know what to do. It won’t go away.”

  She’d never seen him in shock like this before. Sam wasn’t the sort of person you could hug in sympathy. His arms were folded against her, one palm to his forehead. She let her hand stay on his arm. “I know what to do,” she said gently. “Just acknowledge it.”

  “What? Give it a friendly kick each morning, ‘Thanks for ruining my life, you bastard?’ ”

  “No. That’s not what I meant. Instead of pretending it’s not there, go and look at it. At him. Talk to him. Ask what he wants, say you’re sorry, or whatever you need to say.”