“But, what about… W-what if they can all talk?” George sputtered.
“It’s worth investigating but irrelevant,” Moonbeam said. “The elemental fey have not changed. We’ve always known that the kin fey can talk, so it shouldn’t be a shock that the rest of them can speak. Regardless, our relationship with them—kin or elemental—has not changed.”
Waterfall rubbed his temple. Before he could speak, Fireheart picked up the argument. “If you are that curious, I suggest you ask Ember.”
George glared but didn’t reply.
“Why do you think Ember even spoke to you?” Fireheart asked Waterfall.
“I wish I knew,” he answered. He paused for a long time before speaking again. “I will attempt to investigate the matter, but I make no promises that I will learn anything useful. Will that satisfy you, George?”
The fey hearted gave a curt nod. “Yes.”
“Thank you, Waterfall,” Moonbeam said. “Any information is welcome. However, even if you discover nothing of value, our relationship with the elemental fey has not changed.”
“I wish you luck,” Fireheart said.
Waterfall nodded. “Are there any other pressing concerns? It’s been a long day. I need some sleep.”
Rose awoke to Pearl’s cold nose in her ear. She frowned at the playful dragon but got up, ignoring her burgeoning headache and her desire to go back to sleep. Yesterday had been too eventful, and she wanted more time to recover.
In some ways, Rose wished she could trade places with Rebecca so she could see her family. Viewing them through the pond had been like a double-edged sword. While catching a snippet of their lives had been wonderful, it had dredged up the sorrow. Maybe one day the pain of leaving them would fade, but she doubted it. As she watched Pearl snuggle into her pillow, a sense of contentment washed over her, despite it all. This felt like more of a home than the human world ever had, no matter how much she missed her family.
While she was getting ready for the day, it suddenly occurred to her that they didn’t have enough food in the house for all the people who’d slept over. Rose dressed quickly and Pearl settled on her shoulder. After finding an empty basket in her sitting room, Rose padded into the main room. Waterfall was still asleep, but Silverlight awakened long enough to give a nod and mouth a thank-you as she left the house.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon, and the little light that reached the Field wasn’t enough to warm the air. Frozen grass crunched underfoot, and the world seemed no different from usual. Out here, nothing let on about last night’s events. The goats played king of the hill on a neighbor’s house, and Esmeralda made a lazy loop overhead before flying into the woods.
Pearl stayed curled around Rose’s neck all the way to the Commons. Not only was the warmth welcome on the cold morning but she was comforted by the dragon’s presence. Rose walked into the Commons. Even at this time of day, there were plenty of people there. Today they were sitting in small groups and their voices were oddly quiet. Several of them watched her fill the basket from the buffet, but no one spoke to her.
Rose guessed they had somehow heard about what had happened. She had nothing to say to them. It was too new and too raw for her to be able to explain it. Rebecca was gone, and Rose still wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Mostly she was sad.
Rose was beginning to feel the weight of all the stares when Pearl launched off her shoulder and landed in front of the most obvious of the lot. The dragon glared at him until he turned red and redirected his attention to his food. She gave a satisfied snort and returned to Rose’s shoulder. The stares stopped after that. Rose petted the little dragon, grateful that she had a guardian.
Back at the house, Silverlight helped Rose set up breakfast while Waterfall used her bathroom. Alda went back to her house to clean up and returned with a jug of herbal tea that did wonders for Rose’s lingering headache and fatigue.
Summersky came out to get a cup of tea but quickly returned to Everblue’s side. All she would say when questioned was that he was as well as could be expected. There wasn’t much conversation over breakfast, and they were nearing the end of the meal when Summersky returned with Everblue trailing behind her.
Everblue took the cup of water and the plate Summersky pushed into his hand. He sat down at the table in silence. When he finished eating, Everblue set the dishes in the sink. Turning to look at everyone, he spoke in a quiet, rough voice. “Thank you.” He walked out of the kitchen and left the house.
Silverlight pushed back from the table, ready to go after his friend.
“Sit down,” Summersky said.
Silverlight looked to his father, who nodded, and he returned to his seat.
“We”—Summersky motioned to Waterfall and Alda—“need to know exactly what happened last night.”
“I don’t know,” Silverlight said.
Seeing that Summersky was about to object, Rose quickly chimed in. “It isn’t that we can’t tell you what happened, it’s that… If you really want to know, you’d need to ask Rebecca. We’ll tell you what we can.”
Silverlight and Rose quickly summarized the evening. Waterfall, Summersky, and Alda listened to the story without interrupting. Rose wanted to ask if this was the usual way someone was rejected by magic, but she didn’t think this was an appropriate time. Later, when she was alone with one of them, she’d ask.
“Moonbeam said Rebecca was struggling with depression and grief,” Waterfall told Summersky.
“I know, but I thought Rose’s arrival would help. And really, it’s been so long… I never thought this was a possibility.”
Alda patted Summersky’s arm. “There is no shame. You tried to help, as did the rest of the treis and Moonbeam, not to mention your son and these two.” She pointed at Rose and Silverlight. “Some people simply can’t make the transition, no matter who helps them along the way. As long as Everblue knows that, knows he isn’t to blame…” Alda sighed. “There was going to be another at some point. No method is perfect.”
“We will help him through this,” Waterfall said. They all nodded, and Summersky gave them a teary smile. He turned to Silverlight and Rose. “The two of you still have lessons. I don’t expect you to be at your best, but you must try.”
“I still expect you this afternoon, too,” Alda said.
Summersky hugged them and whispered words of thanks, and Rose felt bad about being so happy to escape the house. Yet, as long as she was inside, she could still see Rebecca sitting in their living room. It was better to be outside. There was something about the daylight and the change of scenery that helped distance her from the night’s events.
Rose hoped that by the time they got home everyone would have cleared out and they could have their house back. It would take some time, but they could move past the bad memories and make it a happy place again.
“To the garden?” Silverlight asked.
“Yes. I want to keep busy.” There were memories there, too, but they were happier, and the hard work would be good for her.
“Me too,” he said as they set off for the garden.
The silence between them wasn’t as comfortable as usual, but that didn’t surprise Rose. There was much they weren’t saying, and probably an equal amount they felt they didn’t have to say. Rose couldn’t shake the feeling that the magic could have just as easily rejected her, and she suspected Silverlight was thinking that he could have been in Everblue’s position. Those thoughts didn’t leave much room for peaceful silence or cheerful conversation.
Today, they were to pick radishes, which wouldn’t come out of the ground unless they made a racket, so they each collected a drum from the lean-to. Rose quickly fell into the rhythm of hitting the small drum, waiting for the radishes to get out of the ground, and then quickly snatching them up and setting them in a basket. Silverlight was doing the same a row over.
“Silverlight?” Rose asked after a while.
He set down his drum and looked at her.
; “How are failed fey hearted usually returned to the human world?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “In the story I heard, the person was taken back through the Slit. It wasn’t as sudden as last night.”
Rose wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. With a sigh, she moved on to her next question. “I was wondering something else. I thought the elemental fey couldn’t talk, but now we’ve heard a bird and a dragon speak. Can all elementals actually talk, then?”
“We always thought they couldn’t, or didn’t. I asked Father while you were getting breakfast, but he said Ember wouldn’t discuss it and Father wasn’t willing to press.” Silverlight shrugged. “Hopefully things will go back to normal, though, and we never have to find out.”
“That would be nice.” Rose went back to harvesting the radishes.
The work kept her hands busy and gave her time to think, but she was tired of reflecting on all that had happened, so she focused on the troubles she’d been having in her magic lessons. One issue that had been clouding her ability to discern types of magic was how other people’s magic often had a distinct smell, while her own was never consistent. Waterfall’s magic smelled of water, and Ember’s magic reminded her of fire.
With that in mind, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like there might be a pattern. In her lessons, the reasons for using magic weren’t very clear, but she noticed that what she was asking the magic to do seemed to determine the scent, at least to some extent. In everyday life, asking for practical things, like cleaning up or repairing something, there was typically a strong scent of lilies. Whimsical or fun requests smelled like irises. Healing magic smelled of herbs, though one or another of them was prevalent in different situations. What she hadn’t figured out was where the rose scent fit in. It seemed to happen randomly, more so when the magic was doing something to please her, but other than that, she hadn’t found a connection.
There were a few other scents that seemed to happen randomly, like the lemon and sandalwood, but none of them occurred as frequently as the lily, iris, and rose. Her guess was that those scents were unique to an individual activity.
A thump pulled her out of her thoughts, and Rose looked behind her. Silverlight had dropped an empty basket on the ground and was looking over the rows of radishes. “I think if we finish this row we can call it done for the day.”
“All right.” Rose wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Hey, you know how you keep telling me there has to be a pattern to the different scents I associate with different types of magic?”
Silverlight nodded, seeming grateful to have a new, noncontroversial topic to discuss. “Did you figure it out?”
“Maybe. I think that the odor depends on the intention. You know, if I’m trying to do something practical I smell one thing, but if it’s a magic for fun I smell something else.” Rose went through the correlations she’d made for other scents and types of magic, as well as the exceptions she’d noticed.
“That would make sense, though I’ve never heard of it before. I’ll come up with a way we can test it tomorrow.” Silverlight wrestled his full basket out of the way and positioned an empty one beside him.
Rose resumed making a racket to get the radishes out of the ground, feeling a great deal better about her progress, yet Rebecca’s sudden return to the human world still weighed on her. It had all happened so fast, and while that seemed to satisfy Ember, Rose longed for more closure. Perhaps in a few days she could talk Silverlight into taking her back to the pond to see Rebecca, as well as her family.
Waterfall watched Ember exchange quiet words with Everblue. After an earlier conversation with Silverlight, he knew this was at least the third time elementals had spoken to fey. That would be fine except that the first words had been uttered before Rebecca had become a problem. A firebird, of all things, had welcomed Rose and told her, If you believe.
He had yet to determine what that meant or why a firebird would say it, but it was clear that something was afoot. The connection to Rose worried him. While there were people who wanted exciting lives, Waterfall had always hoped his son would have a remarkably ordinary life. Now that Rose was getting unsolicited attention from the elementals, it seemed unlikely.
With a sigh, Waterfall turned his attention to the exchange in progress. Everblue didn’t look happy, but he was attentive. As odd as it was to have an elemental speaking to a fey, Waterfall was grateful that he was not burdened with the task of explaining Rebecca’s return to the human world. Everblue would still need time to heal, but hopefully this meeting would help the process. Waterfall wanted the youngster to get as much help as possible. This could very easily be an event that changed his entire life for the worse, and Waterfall didn’t want that for the boy.
Ember stretched out his neck and touched the boy’s chest with his nose. Everblue rested a hand on the dragon’s cheek and nodded. A moment later, they broke contact and Everblue walked back to Waterfall.
The dragon nodded at Waterfall, who returned the gesture, hoping that it meant Everblue was on the road to recovery. The boy was so calm that Waterfall checked for magic. When he looked, he could see a faint light indicating that Ember had used it to push back the grief so Everblue could absorb his words.
Waterfall sent Everblue out of the clearing. Summersky was just down the path and would care for him. She would have been here, but Ember had forbidden her presence.
Turning back to Ember, Waterfall hoped he could get some more information out of the dragon. “Why are you talking to us now?”
Ember cocked his head to the side. Waterfall held his breath, hoping he hadn’t angered him.
After a long pause, Ember said, “You needed wordsss.”
“Will you continue speaking to us?” Waterfall hoped he would get another answer.
“If therrre issss need.”
“Why did the firebird talk to Rose?”
Ember stretched his wings. “We like Rossse.”
“Thank you. We do, too, but why did the firebird speak to her?”
“We arrre finissshed.”
Waterfall didn’t say anything as Ember took to the air. One did not argue lightly with a dragon.
As he left the clearing, Waterfall tried to figure out what he would say during the next treis and council meeting. They would want to know more about Ember’s behavior, and what the talking meant for the future, but he didn’t have much information.
All he had were suspicions. The elementals had first talked to Rose, and were still interested in her, so Rebecca was not the primary reason for their new linguistic abilities. Not to mention that Ember had been willing to answer questions only until Waterfall asked about Rose.
He wasn’t sure what was happening, but the situation had him worried, and no amount of affection from the elementals could quell his concern for Rose. Or for his son, who would be pulled into whatever was going on. Waterfall would not allow his son to come to harm. He simply couldn’t bear it.
Chapter 17
The weapons lesson wasn’t up to Rose’s or Alda’s usual standards. At least Bronzeblade had taken Silverlight outside for practice so they weren’t there to see her poor performance. After the third time Rose dropped her guard, she lowered her sword. “Could we cool down and talk?”
Alda shrugged. “It’s not like this is a worthwhile practice.”
Rose hung up her blade and joined Alda in stretching. Every time she thought she understood what had happened to Rebecca, something new occurred to her. Rose would catch herself looking for Rebecca before she remembered that her friend was gone. Maybe if she had been able to say good-bye it would have been different. She had so many questions. She hardly knew where to start.
Alda broke the silence. “Are you thinking about Rebecca?”
“Yes. It hits me at the strangest moments. I’ll think of something I want to tell her, then remember that I can’t.”
“Time. You need time.”
Rose looked up. “That’s
not all. Do you know what Ember meant when he said she had poison in her?”
Alda chose her words carefully. “While I cannot speak for Ember, I can guess that Rebecca allowed her bitterness to grow until it destroyed her love of this place, and that’s why the magic rejected her.”
“And no one saw that before they offered her the chance to stay here? I know they had a way of looking inside me.”
“Have you ever kept a big secret from someone close to you? Or not known something about yourself until it was too late to change your actions?”
“Yes.”
“That’s likely how she made it through the initial evaluation.”
“By keeping a secret?” Rose asked.
“No, not exactly. Just like you, Rebecca didn’t know how leaving her family would affect her. Since she didn’t know, the fey who examined her couldn’t know. She was also unaware of what she would find in this world, so she had no idea how the transition would affect her. So it’s always a risk. Does that make sense?”
Rose nodded.
“That is why the elemental fey, or the magic if you’d rather, have the final say in who can stay in this land. You cannot hide anything from them. Not for long.”
They moved into a different stretch, this one focusing on their legs. Rose felt the pull in her thighs. She phrased her next question carefully. “In the stories, fey take young children. Why don’t you take younger people? Wouldn’t it be an easier transition for them?”
“We do not take children,” Alda said sharply. “All children believe in magic, in things they cannot sense. Later in life, they learn to believe in what can be counted and touched, nothing more, nothing less. The people who belong here keep looking for magic; they keep believing in things they cannot see.”
“But why wait so long? I’ve wanted these things for years.”
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