“Oh, come on,” said Rhianna. “This is dress-up, not a fashion contest. The whole point is to put on the sexy firefighter costume you’d never wear in real life.”
Whirl gave Rhianna the evil glance and waved her finger. With a spiral of sparks, Rhianna’s classic Cinderella ballgown vanished, replaced by said sexy firefighter outfit.
Rhianna laughed. “No, I would wear this. You’ve got to put this on Branwyn. I’m not going to tell you what to put me in, but you should definitely give Summer a cute cat girl outfit.”
To Branwyn’s relief, Whirl ignored the suggestion to put the firefighter outfit on her and instead focused on dressing Summer. After that, Branwyn was able to fade into the background as a game rapidly developed between Whirl, Rhianna and Summer. Rhianna and Summer would suggest increasingly bizarre ‘sexy’ or ‘cute’ costumes to Whirl, and she would make them happen. At first, they were stock ideas Whirl had clearly seen somewhere before, but ‘sexy unicorn’ and ‘cute window washer’ both made Whirl’s eyes narrow at the challenge, and then they were off to the races. Rhianna and Whirl were merciless at inventing weird sweetness to put Summer in, and Summer blushed and tried to hide her delight as best as somebody required to be honest could.
Branwyn occasionally threw out a suggestion, at first just to claim participation, and then when it was clear to her one of the others had made a suggestion that was not quite right. But as Summer and Rhianna got sillier, Branwyn curled up in the armchair and watched, brooding over Rhianna’s scars and Rhianna’s glint.
Finally, Whirl ended the escapade with a double snap. All outfits were replaced with long, silky nightgowns: green, red, and golden. “I am done,” she announced. “You have outlasted the immortal; I have acquired a headache. Goodnight.”
Summer collapsed onto the beanbag with a sated sigh. Then she lifted her head. “Before you go, sweet, wonderful Whirl, would you turn my other mirror into a view on the invading beast?”
Whirl gave her another stern look, but slid open a second section of wall and touched the half-length mirror there. Instantly, Whirl’s reflection was replaced by crimson flames in darkness. She frowned, touched it again, and the exposure shifted so the brightness of the beast was dimmed and the darkness of the night lightened. What she saw there made her mouth tighten, but all she said was, “Enjoy your party, Your Majesty,” and left the room.
Summer bounced to her feet and went to the mirror. “Hmm… Come see, you two.”
Reluctant without knowing why, Branwyn nonetheless joined Summer, although not with Rhianna’s alacrity. This was her first good view of the beast she’d only seen before as a distant fire. They called it ‘the beast of fire and thorns,’ but there was something of the wolf to it as well. It had great thorn-like claws and a crown of horns and its mane and tail and paws were crimson flame.
And it was big. Very big. Far, far bigger than an elephant, if the white figures around it were the knights she’d previously observed. The beast kept trying to step on them, but they dodged easily. They were doing something cunning with a net that was hampered by the way the net kept catching on fire. Each time the flames started, they were doused, but it was clearly a challenge.
Summer made a face. “My Knights. But is Sev out there? I don’t see him.”
Branwyn stared at the beast for a moment and spotted three red sparks making a regular circle above the beast: impossible to detect if you didn’t have some idea of what to search for. “He’s there.” She scanned the area around the beast, then touched the mirror. “Right there.”
She’d found the silhouette standing beside the edge of the road. If she squinted, she thought she could see his hands in his pockets, in a stance she recognized.
“He’s just standing there,” said Summer.
“He’s waiting until they need help,” said Branwyn grimly.
Summer brightened. “Really? Aww.”
Oops. “I don’t think your Knights are going to like being helped by a monster, Summer.”
Disdainfully, Summer said, “That’s because they’re meatheads.”
They watched a while longer as the knights failed to do more than slow the beast. They got tossed this way and that, but there were enough of them that they were always underfoot.
But eventually, it was clear Severin was bored. After a particularly vigorous scattering of Knights, the three sparks over the beast’s back accelerated until they were a blurred ring. Then all three of them shot downward. One impacted the beast’s skull while the other two intersected with its spine.
The beast roared, collapsed like its strings had been cut, and then faded away, ending as nothing more than a burning outline that fizzled out. Severin’s silhouette merged with the shadow of a tree while the Knights picked themselves up and shouted at each other.
Sounding a little disappointed, Summer said, “I thought he’d do… more. Fight it.”
“I don’t know,” said Rhianna thoughtfully. “I thought that was pretty impressive. Though… he’s been getting injured somehow, so he must not always be attacking at range.”
The Knights regrouped and rode out of the frame. The mirror stayed fixed on the point where the beast had vanished. Summer touched it lightly. “It comes back.”
“Yes,” said Branwyn.
Summer was silent a moment. “It’s a force rather than a true creature. It’s still there, which is why the mirror hasn’t lost focus.”
Branwyn frowned. “How do you mean?”
“A force,” said Summer vaguely. “Like Sev’s bullets?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Branwyn said. “If something stopped his bullets, they wouldn’t start up again later.”
“Maybe not in your version of the world,” said Summer darkly. “It happens here all the time.”
“Think of it like stopping something without absorbing the momentum, Bran,” said Rhianna casually. “It doesn’t bounce, nothing breaks, it just… stops. Where does the momentum go? Somewhere. And eventually it comes back, and the bullet starts moving again.” She glanced over and met Branwyn’s surprised stare. “I learn the strangest things at work.”
“You’ve seen this before?” Branwyn demanded.
Rhianna hesitated. “Not… Not exactly like this. Something similar, though.”
“How do you deal with those other unstoppable things?” Branwyn knew she sounded accusatory, and couldn’t help herself.
“You let them get where they’re going, and hope like hell you can clean up the mess after,” said Rhianna with a shrug.
“Let’s do our hair,” suggested Summer. “We can watch the mirror while we do. Branwyn, I wanted to try giving you a French braid first.”
Branwyn was really, really not in the mood to be a doll some more. But she’d agreed to take part in the slumber party, so she pushed down her bad mood and sat on the floor in front of the Summer Queen and let her brush and braid her hair.
Rhianna sat near the Queen, holding open the French braiding book she’d found. The Queen was mostly quiet as she worked with Branwyn’s hair, occasionally muttering to herself, “Oops, missed one…” and other notes of the novice braider.
After a while, Branwyn, eyeing Rhianna as best she could without moving her head, said, “I hate that you can’t tell me things anymore, Rhi. You used to tell me everything.”
Rhianna shrugged and said lightly, “The cost of my mighty position, I’m afraid.”
Branwyn considered this extremely unsatisfying answer. “Is it worth it? Don’t you miss when it was you and me against the world?”
Rhianna was quiet for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and said, “It was never you and me against the world, Branwyn. It was you against the world and me trying desperately to keep up.” She shook her head and kept going before Branwyn, stunned, could think of anything to say. “I wanted so badly for you to see me, but all you ever saw was your shadow. And now I’m out of your shadow. I’ve got my own life, and my own things I’m good at. I’m making different choic
es because I’m a different person than you. Sometimes I feel like I have to make different choices, just so I know I’m me. When I was a kid and did that, your disappointment always pushed me back into line. But… my Advisor likes me the way I am, Branwyn.”
Weakly, Branwyn said, “You said he lectured you.”
“Yes, and I like it! He sees me.”
Branwyn didn’t respond, thinking over Rhianna’s description of herself, trying to decide if she was right. She couldn’t tell. She was too hurt to tell. But… “I didn’t think of you as my shadow. I thought of you as my sister.”
Rhianna sighed. “I know.” She squeezed Branwyn’s shoulder in a ghost of a hug. “I know you did. It’s okay.”
Branwyn’s hair was suddenly released from the gentle tugging. She shook her head, but it didn’t feel like there was a braid. It felt loose against her back, sliding strangely over the silky nightgown. She felt the same way, as if she’d been unbound somehow.
“I don’t think I can do this right now,” said Summer, her voice melancholy.
“I’m sorry,” said Rhianna. “I didn’t mean to be a downer.”
“Nah,” said the Queen. “I think stuff like that’s supposed to happen at slumber parties. But Branwyn’s pretty bad at sitting still and I don’t want to make her look ridiculous.”
“Sorry,” Branwyn muttered.
“How about I do your makeup, Summer?” said Rhianna brightly, as if she hadn’t just… just what? Made Branwyn question their entire relationship? Confessed a secret? Calmly pointed out how Branwyn had accidentally hurt her? Branwyn was sure the brightness was false, but Rhianna was doing it anyhow, and doing it well.
And that’s why I have to fix the glint before it becomes something worse.
15
Summer Nights
Branwyn said, “Yeah, you two do makeup. I’ll do some sketching. I always used to draw at my slumber parties.”
Summer perked up. “All right. There’s art stuff in my desk. I think there’s still some towers Griff drew me, too.”
The desk contained everything Branwyn needed to draw, but she didn’t want to sit there, turned away from the others. And Rhianna wanted a bright light for the makeup application, which of course the drafting table had, even if it was a particularly bright application of foxfire rather than an electric light. So Summer sat in the swivel chair and Rhianna sat in a table chair, and Branwyn sat across from them in the window seat with an oversized pad of luscious paper and a number 2 pencil.
It wasn’t a conversable distance in the large room, but Branwyn wasn’t in a conversational mood. Rhianna and Summer were quiet as well, except for murmurs about the makeup. From beyond the open window, she could hear snatches of faint music on a guitar and a flute: melodies she almost but not quite recognized. It was better than silence.
Branwyn concentrated on her breathing for a few minutes, taking extra time before settling into the Artificer’s trance. She needed to see what was actually there, not what she wanted to see. She had to get this right.
Even with her extra preparation, it was harder than she expected. She’d never looked at a Queen of Faerie with the Sight before. It was a mistake she never wanted to repeat. While everything else in Faerie was itself, the child was a mass of incandescent light bound into a loose human shape, and cables of the Geometry ran from her to the deep lines above and below Faerie. The slightest movement of her head sent tremors running up and down the cables and touched the deep lines.
Branwyn closed her eyes and turned her face toward the paper before opening them again. She set her pencil to work for a few minutes, sketching the mortal body of the Queen, blocking in Rhianna next to her. It kept her hands busy while the glory faded from her eyes.
It would be painful to look again, but she refused to give up this task or this opportunity. She’d earned this when she’d decided to not tell Rhianna about the glint, and when she’d avoided previous opportunities to study her sister. She could have done this on the sailing stone, but instead she’d slept. When had Rhianna last slept?
There was absolutely no room in her surge of determination for any small, pragmatic voices to point out she and Rhianna were different people, who had exerted themselves differently; that not sleeping enough had led her into a different uncomfortable situation. She shut them out. They didn’t matter.
She turned the page in the sketchpad and looked up again. By angling her head, she could see Rhianna’s shape but very little of Summer’s. What little she did see made her head hurt, but that didn’t matter as long as she could see what she’d done to Rhianna.
Branwyn hadn’t looked at humans much as an Artificer. Her ability to work with a node network had capped out at four with Titanone and she’d never yet repeated that feat. For most projects she stuck with one. The human network of seven was far beyond her scope.
But she wasn’t trying to shape a human, or add a new node. All she wanted to do was analyze what was there. She wanted to figure out the source of the glint, understand out what was missing, and what that meant.
She spent the entire extended makeup session trying to comprehend what she was seeing. With or without the Sight, she could see that something was missing. But she couldn’t see what that missing element had been. It was gone, and whatever it was, she couldn’t identify it by comparing Rhianna to herself. Just as the handmaiden had said, just as Rhianna had said, they weren’t nearly similar enough.
Her headache grew worse and worse, but she ignored it. Even when she could barely see through the agony, she couldn’t separate it from the pain of what she’d done and what Rhianna had told her. All she could do was keep pushing, keep looking, work harder, find what was missing so she could learn how to repair it and make everything better again. She just had to keep pushing.
Something brushed against the back of her neck.
Whatever you’re doing, stop. It’s distracting, Severin whispered in her ear.
“Fuck off,” she muttered, trying to wipe annoying blurriness from her eyes and flinching at the sudden sharpening of the pain.
Branwyn, if you don’t cut it out, I’m going to show up and kill somebody, which would put a real damper on your little sleepover. I’m not in the mood to find out what happens to me if you have an aneurysm.
Suddenly explosive with fury, Branwyn turned to the half-open window behind her, and hurled the pencil, then threw out the entire pad of paper. Then she knelt on the window seat with her hands over her ears, panting as she finally really felt the pain in her head.
Distantly, she heard Rhianna say, “Bran?” A gentle hand, not her sister’s touched her hair. She didn’t dare look up. Rhianna sat beside her. Branwyn tried to focus, failed, flailed, panicked, all in her breath. Her sister’s cool hand rubbed the back of her neck. So different from Severin’s light touch.
It helped. Branwyn was able to visualize the pattern that shut off the Sight. The pain in her skull eased. She drew a deep breath, and another, and another. The pain kept fading. At last it was nearly gone, and she risked dropping her hands and raising her head.
Rhianna was as white as a ghost, while Summer hovered nearby, frowning. Branwyn took another couple of breaths, and said, “Um.”
“Are you feeling better? What happened?” Rhianna demanded.
“Um,” said Branwyn again, trying to figure out what to say. She’d accomplished nothing in exchange for all that pain.
Rhianna’s eyes narrowed. “Branwyn, raise both arms to your sides, please.”
Branwyn did so and then dropped them again. “I found out we shouldn’t look at faerie Queens with the Sight. Or at least I shouldn’t. Maybe you got a different charm. Uh, sorry about the paper, Summer.”
Rhianna sighed. Then she put her arms around Branwyn and squeezed her tightly. “You’re such an idiot, Branwyn. Why do you do such stupid things and keep doing them when they hurt?”
Summer looked between them with wide eyes as Branwyn said, “Hey, no pain, no gain, right? Don’t you p
ush yourself at the gym?” She squeezed Rhianna back, stuffing down the stress over her failure as deeply as she could.
“I have a trainer,” Rhianna said firmly. “I don’t just make it up as I go along and think, oh this hurts, maybe I should do it some more. And you do.”
Branwyn was about to point out that somebody had to work out what Rhianna’s trainer taught, when Summer said, “Oh! I think the beast is reforming.” The Queen darted over to the enchanted mirror.
Branwyn amended her comment to, “I suppose we should watch this.”
Rhianna kept one arm around Branwyn as she stood up, only dropping it once Branwyn had taken a few steps on her own. Walking wasn’t a problem. Physically, she almost felt normal, except for the exhausting shadow of pain that made her want to flinch from things like a stray breeze and the light on the drafting table. As for her helplessness regarding the glint… well, whatever it was seemed stable, at least.
A burning glow filled the center of the enchanted mirror, tendrils of flame waving. Slowly they extended, becoming nebulous legs, a head, a tail. Finally, with a booming explosion that echoed outside the window, the beast of fire and thorns reformed.
Branwyn said, “Is it just me, or is it bigger?”
The red bullets of molten glass appeared over the beast once more. This time they didn’t lazily circle, but plummeted down into the beast’s skull and spine. The beast staggered, but didn’t fall. Instead, it started bounding along the road, straight into the troop of disorganized knights that had turned back from their triumphant return to the Court.
Their tactics hadn’t improved from the previous round. They slowed the beast but did not stop it. Severin’s glass bullets punctured the beast several times, each time having a visible but non-lethal effect. One of the knights fell and didn’t get up again; he was slung onto his waiting mount unceremoniously and the mount sent walking home. Neither Summer nor his companions seemed much concerned by this.
Summer actually turned away, once again bored and disappointed. “I know fights against giant creatures aren’t the same as fights against ones your own size. I’ve got a video game about that. But it’s not as fun to watch as it is to do.”
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