by Sarah Zettel
Which might have been a fine answer coming from an ordinary person, but this was Shake talking to me. “Promise,” I said.
That one word took all the relaxation out of his skinny frame. He stiffened, as though he’d just heard an alarm bell ring. “I’ve got no reason to hurt him, Callie, or you.”
“Oh, no. That’s you trying to change the subject.” And I was not falling for it this time. “Promise.”
Shake went quiet for a long, slow minute. The longer he stayed quiet, the farther the lid drooped over his white eye, and all at once he looked tired and old, older than anybody had a right to look. “Very well. I promise to take no action that will hurt your Mr. Holland.”
“Okay.” I pulled the silk stockings I’d ruined off the back of the room’s one battered chair. With a twinge of guilt at the waste, I wadded them up and threw them into the trash basket. There’d be other stockings someday, once I got out of this mess. Problem was, I didn’t feel like I was any closer to getting out of it. I looked around for something else to pack, but there wasn’t anything.
Shake had settled onto the edge of the chair. His back and shoulders were bowed and his broken hands dangled between his knees. He looked the way he had out on the street: like a bum without home or hope. It’s for show, I tried to tell myself. But I couldn’t stop seeing the scar on his face or his broken fingers. Those were real things. Something deep inside me said the exhaustion and hunger that drew his skin tight across the bones of his face were real too.
“I wish you’d decide to trust me,” he whispered. “I really do want to help you.”
“Then how about a straight answer? If you haven’t got any magic anymore, how come you found me before anybody else could?”
Shake turned his head back and forth, looking at me with his amber starlit eye, and then with his milk-white scarred eye. After he’d taken a good long look, he nodded.
“All right, a straight answer. I may not be able to cast enchantment now, but not even the king and queen could change my nature. I knew what you were wishing for most, and I followed that wish.”
“How’d you know what I wish?”
“I felt it in you when we met.” A proud little grin across Shake’s tired, hungry face. It made me think of Jack when he’d just been especially clever, and I wished I could bury that thought somewhere else. “It took a while for me to understand you really do want to free your parents, not just your father but your mother too. The king and queen”—he jerked his chin toward the door, as if they waited in the hall—“never worked it out. I could have told them, of course, but they weren’t going to listen to me.” His voice went soft under the weight of anger and memory, and that milk-white eye glittered as bright as the one full of starlight. For a moment I felt something sharp under my own eye, like a knife point, and I winced. “They’re trying to sniff out your ambition, grab hold of the texture of your scheming.” Shake’s little grin spread and grew into a full-blown smile, and that smile had nothing to do with any polite feeling. “They don’t know to look for your love.”
“Why wouldn’t they figure I love my parents?”
“Love is not natural to us, Callie,” said Shake. “Not the deep, lasting love that humans know. Ordinarily, love for us comes slow and passes quick, like ripples on a pond.”
Cold trickled down my spine. I told myself Shake’s “us” didn’t really include me. I was only half Unseelie. I had just as much human in me. Of course I loved my parents. It didn’t matter that sometimes the only thing keeping me from turning around was that I had nowhere to turn to. That was just on bad days, when things got hungry, or lonesome, or just plain hard. It didn’t count.
“Your grandparents, my parents, think you want to be a princess, Callie.” Shake’s words poked at me, searching out a soft spot. “That’s the only reason they can understand for what you’re doing. They believe you want to take their place on the Midnight Throne and that you don’t intend to wait for them to make way for you.”
That yanked me right out of my private worries, and I was glad to go. “The king and queen think I want to kill them?”
“Can you blame them? Especially after you went and set fire to their earthly palace and summoned a train to run over the Kansas City gate.”
“The train was an accident,” I muttered.
“You’ve got a way of creating really big accidents, niece Callie.” Shake chuckled. “They’ve got a name for you around the Midnight Throne now, you know. You’re not the Prophecy Girl anymore. They call you the Bad Luck Girl.”
Bad Luck Girl. Those words didn’t just poke; they sank straight in. Amerda had called me that, and I’d been able to let it go past. But it was different when Shake said it. It hit too close to home.
I’d always been afraid I was a jinx. I never talked about it, not with Jack, not with anybody, but I’d always felt it. When I got near people, bad things happened. If it wasn’t for me, Mama wouldn’t be kidnapped. If it wasn’t for me, Jack wouldn’t be in danger all the time. Mrs. Constantine took me in, and now she was being magicked into believing whatever Shake wanted, whatever I wanted. Shimmy’d died because she’d tried to catch me and then help me.
I had a lot of experience not thinking about things, and I used it now. I needed something to distract me, and it needed to be something big. I made myself look at Shake. He was in the mood to talk about family, but there was only one person out of all my Unseelie relations I really wanted to know about.
“What was … what is my father like?”
“Your father?” Shake repeated slowly. He leaned back on that rickety chair and crossed his legs, making a great show of thinking hard. “Your father was different from the rest of us,” he said. “We all like humans, of course, but he was enthralled by your kind. He spent as much time in your world as he did in ours. I did try to warn our parents that he was absorbing much more than music to bring home.”
“Did he …” I bit my lip.
“Did he what?”
I shook my head and snapped the catches on my case shut. I was not asking this question.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to. “You want to know if he loved your mother,” my uncle whispered. “You want to know if he even could. Isn’t that it?”
“Yes.” Tears pricked, as bright and sharp as the anger.
“Look at me, Callie.”
I did look at him, right in the mismatched eyes.
“I said that ordinarily, love for us is fleeting. Your father was never ordinary. He did love your mother. Our parents couldn’t say or do anything to change it, and believe me, they tried every trick in their book. He was perfectly prepared to give up everything to be with her.”
I believed him. Maybe it was just because I wanted so bad for what he said to be true, but I did believe.
“What … what’s his real name? Mama called him Daniel, but that can’t be it.”
“Oh, now, Callie, you know with us that’s a very serious question.”
“I know. I also know you keep saying you want me to trust you.”
Shake didn’t speak for a long time after that. Finally he said, “You understand I am putting him in your hands if I tell you. You could well be used against him.”
“I know your name,” I reminded him.
There was another long pause as he thought that one over. “Donchail,” Shake whispered at last.
Now that I had the name, I knew I’d never lose it. My father was Donchail deMinuit, and he loved my mother.
“Thank you,” I said, and I really meant it. For the first time he’d given me something I could hold on to. Maybe it wasn’t much, but it was lots better than the aching nothing I’d had so far.
Shake nodded once, accepting the words. His starlit eye narrowed, and my insides set about tying themselves into sailor’s knots.
“You found something in there.” Shake jerked his chin toward the window this time. He meant the studio. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “
Maybe nothing.”
“Callie, Callie.” Shake leaned closer. “I just gave you something of great value, and this is how you pay me back?”
“This ain’t about paying back.”
“Isn’t it?” He was giving me his smile again, the one that looked so clever and so similar to one of Jack’s. It was creepy and wrong, and he was doing it on purpose. I knuckled my eyes. I had so much I needed to hold on to. I had to figure out what to do with Shake, and I had to get back to the studio so I could find out what was going on around Ivy Bright, and I had to find my way through the gate to my parents. But my head was too tired to keep its grip on even one of those things. I needed time—time to sleep and time to think—but there just wasn’t any.
“There is, though,” answered Shake.
“What are you talking about?” But I already knew. I’d been wishing for time, and he’d felt it.
Shake chuckled again. “Poor Callie. She needs so much, but she doesn’t even know what she’s got. Stop pretending you’re human, little niece of mine. You are a queen-in-waiting among the Unseelies. You can have all the time you need.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re tired, Callie. You need to rest. Open yourself a gate and step outside, and stay for as long as you want.”
I stared at him. I knew my magic could open a gate in time. I’d once opened a window that looked back a hundred or so years. But I’d never thought about being able to get past time altogether.
“How?” I probably should have just told him to be quiet, but I had to admit, he had my curiosity going.
“Let me show you.”
“You can’t open gates.” That was supposed to be something only I could do, which was what all the fuss was about in the first place.
“But you’re going to let me inside, and then I’ll be able to show you how your power works.”
This was not good. In fact, this was really bad. I’d refused this idea before, and I should do it again this time, no matter how tired I was, no matter how badly I needed to understand my magic. “You just want something from me,” I said, but my voice wasn’t anything like as strong as it should have been.
“Of course I do. That doesn’t mean I can’t teach you how to use your powers as well.”
I wished I wasn’t alone. I wanted Mr. Robeson there, or Jack. I needed an anchor to keep me tied to the memory of all that Shake had done to us. The problem was, I wanted more than that. I hated not knowing about my magic. It felt like a bad dog on a short chain inside me. I didn’t have any real idea what it was going to do when I let it off that leash. I really was tired too, all the way from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. The thought of having time enough to sleep sounded sweeter than anything I’d heard in days. All those things got together and ganged up on the rest of my sense.
“Okay,” I said to Shake. “Show me.”
My uncle smiled until his mismatched eyes twinkled. He held out his crooked hand. It was still cool and weak. If I squeezed even a little, I’d break those bones all over again. That nasty idea didn’t linger long, however, because something else was happening. Something new pricked my mind and started worming its way into my veins, down deep into my blood. Not something, I realized. Someone.
Walk with me, niece. Let me show you your true world.
This person inside my head wasn’t any broken bum called Shake. This was my uncle Lorcan deMinuit, a scion of the Midnight Throne. I was finally hearing his true voice, the voice that could call up magic as easily as whistling and twist it into any shape required. I had a voice like that inside me, as soon as I was ready to use it.
My uncle leaned lightly against my thoughts. He made them shift, slowly, so I could feel the change and follow it. One move at a time, we found the key in the pocket of my magic. We brought it out and set it into the lock of the world. I turned it, we turned it, and the world twisted around us. Lorcan tugged on my hand and on my thoughts. Together we moved. We stepped sideways, turned in place and rounded a corner, and stepped down. My mouth went dry and my ears popped. Everything shifted and blurred. I couldn’t tell if we’d really moved or not, because I couldn’t see anything. Then I could see too much.
Shake and I still stood in that dingy boardinghouse room, but now I could see under it and through it. I could see the stained plaster walls, but also the lath and frame beneath them. I could see the boards that frame used to be, and the logs the boards used to be, and the trees the logs used to be. I could see the street, and the dirt roadbed underneath it and the blank dry ground under that—all the states of existence for this single place, all stuffed one inside the other.
My mouth wouldn’t move, but my thoughts still shaped the question. What is this?
We’ve moved betwixt and between. I felt the smile in Shake’s silent words. You’ve opened a gate from the human world, and now we are between all worlds.
I didn’t like this. Nothing felt solid or remotely real. I couldn’t even feel the floor beneath my shoes. People flickered in and out of my vision like fireflies. I didn’t dare look up to see all the skies shifting overhead. Seeing didn’t even seem the right word for what I was doing. The world came straight in through my skin. I knew the texture of the path we’d traveled to get here, and how the places where the motion was the fastest were warmer than the places where the states of being were stuffed most tightly together. Slowly, fear bled away, to be replaced by something close to excitement.
What’s that? I asked, looking toward a patch of shadow. That shadow was neither flickering with motion nor stuffed tight with different states of being. It was something different.
What? came Shake’s answer. Show me, niece.
There. I tried to focus on it. It felt warm to the touch of my thoughts and magic, like a stone lying in the summer sun.
Shake took hold of those ideas and turned them over to get a better look.
That’s one of the thin places.
A thin place? It didn’t feel thin, or like a place. It felt more solid than anything else around me. It felt loose too, like I could wrap my hand around it, lift it up, and move it aside.
The mortal and fairy worlds are in constant motion. They rub against each other, and sometimes they rub each other thin. Sometimes a hole is worn between them, creating a natural gate that anyone can pass through. Some of these holes heal over quickly; others last a long time and are seized by one court or the other.
A picture of the Fairyland amusement park, where I’d first met my grandparents, formed in my mind, and I knew it had come from my uncle’s thoughts. I countered with a picture of the Waterloo Bridge, and Rougarou crawling out from underneath. I felt him agree.
You can’t see this hole, though?
No. I can’t shape it either. But you could.
How?
How do we do anything? Reach out for it. Wish for it. Try, niece.
He was pushing me, almost daring me. Maybe I should have hesitated, but I wanted to understand, and here was a chance. Things that had been buried deep bubbled up to the surface. I wouldn’t have to search for a way to power my magic. I wouldn’t need music or wishes or strong feeling. Here I was the magic and it was me. I’d left the human on the other side of the open gate. All I had to do was reach out to that new piece of warmth and stillness I’d found. It was a hole and it was a door, and it led to the outside. I reached for the key, just as Lorcan had showed me, and held the key toward the lock. If I’d been in my regular human self, I’d have been taking a deep breath. I set lock and key together and made them twist. Easy as breathing, I felt the gate open wide, until I was looking out from betwixt and between to a whole new world.
A city waited on the other side of my gate. Its air wrapped around us, silent, heavy, and dense, but also as warm as the welcome of your best friend and filled with all the good scents there were. Golden trees spread their branches over towers of obsidian and silver. No stars burned overhead and no sun, only a blank indigo sky. But it wasn’t dark at a
ll. The whole world—the ground, the trees, the blossoms, even the stones—shone from the inside out with sweet golden light. I knew that light. I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t remember when. It grabbed hold of me the way the sound of my father’s name had. I wanted to melt into it, take it into myself, and become part of it at the same time. I stepped closer, and my uncle followed right behind.
Where is this?
Can’t you guess, Callie? Uncle Lorcan’s laugh sparkled through me. It’s our home.
A wall stretched right up against the gate. It was about as high as my waist and its stones shimmered with the same golden light as the trees and the gleaming black towers. Vines twisted around and between the stones, shining green, gold, ruby, and emerald. As a fence, it didn’t look like much. I could climb right over it. I didn’t have to just see home; I could be home.
Then one of that wall’s shining stones stretched and shivered. The twisted vine around it stretched too. There was a sharp pop and the stone opened a single eye, cold and clay-colored.
“Who’s that?” The stone crawled out of the wall and squatted right in front of us, looking like a bullfrog with vines for legs and crooked arms. “Who comes knocking at my door?”
10
Then We Must Part
“Who’s that?” the stone repeated. Its tongue ground against its teeth as it spoke. “Who’s that come sneaking?”
Pop, pop, pop. The other stones jammed together in the wall opened their eyes. They were all the same cold clay color, and they all had the same long twisted limbs and grinding teeth and tongues.
“Who? Who?” They grated as they heaved themselves toward us. “Who? Who?”
“Shake …” I backed up.
But Shake stayed right where he was, and his amber eye flashed. I mean it really flashed, like someone had struck a match inside him. Now I knew why the golden light in this place looked so familiar. This was the light the fairies carried inside them, even when they came to the human world.
“Down, all of you!” my uncle shouted. “Down before the heir!”