Late Eclipses od-4

by Seanan McGuire

  “I don’t understand.” I folded my arms. “You know, I don’t appreciate being ignored for years and then having you show up in my hallucinations.”

  She didn’t answer. She just sighed, expression growing even sadder as she walked to the windowsill and rested her hands against it.

  “Mother?” No reply. “Mom. This isn’t funny.” Still no reply. I walked over to stand next to her. I had to rise up onto my tiptoes in order to peer out the window. “What are you looking at?”

  “The moon. See?” A smile ghosted over her lips. “Do you remember what your father called the moon when it looked like that?”

  I nodded. “Cheshire cat moon.”

  “A smile without a cat.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. “Mom, please. Can you just talk straight for once in your life? I’m not in the mood for riddles.”

  “Is it down the rabbit hole again, darling, or will you be a good girl this time and stay where you can be found for marmalade and tea?” Amandine’s voice was sad and distant; her eyes stayed on the moon. “It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you, even when I thought it could be up to me. But you’re choosing for keeps this time; you’re choosing to stop deceiving yourself. Out of the tower now, no more protection for Daddy’s precious princesses.”

  “What—”

  “No.” Her voice was like a whip cracking through the air. “Choose. No more arguments. No more letting me lie to you. Choose.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You didn’t understand the first time either, and you chose then.”

  I dropped back to the soles of my feet, looking around the room. The shadows had deepened, twisting my toys into strange new shapes. This wasn’t my childhood reality anymore. This was something new, sea-changed and wild, like a mirror reflection of what had really been. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “You have to choose.” There was no pity in her voice, no mercy; just a strange echo, like distant bells. My reflection in the window changed, growing taller, melting into my adult self before the lines of my flesh thinned and refined themselves, becoming something altogether different.

  The face in the glass was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It was too delicate, with sharply pointed ears and eyes that were even more colorless than before. Even my hair looked bleached, going from brown to a silvery ash-blonde. It was who I would have been if I’d been born a pureblood, immortal, bred to the faerie rides and the dark at the bottom of the garden path.

  I’d never realized how much I look like my mother.

  “It’s not too late,” she said. The bells were stronger now, layered with moonlight and madness. “This is your choice to make, and there are always other roads. Look.” Amandine gestured to the window. The glass cleared, reflection fading. I looked.

  A second window had replaced the Cheshire cat moon, separated from ours by a few feet of empty space. It framed a second me, a frightened little girl in a toonew nightgown, standing next to her own version of Amandine. But this little girl and her mother were human, without fae strangeness or illusions.

  “What is this?” I pressed my palm against the window. The other me did the same.

  “This is the choice you can’t take back.” Amandine’s voice came from above and slightly behind me. The other Amandine’s lips moved in perfect time with the words. “If you take it, nothing you do will change the road you’re on.”

  Swallowing hard, I asked, “What am I choosing?”

  “Me or her, October. Humanity or fae.” There was a pause before she added, much more quietly, “Freedom or the crossroads burden.”

  “The Changeling’s Choice?” I twisted around to face her, my hand still pressed against the glass. “I already made that choice.”

  “Now you have to make it again.”

  A second chance? “What happens if I pick the human road this time?” I asked. “What happens if I say I want to stay here?”

  “If you choose that road, I’ll tuck you into bed, kiss you good night, and walk away. You’ll sleep, you’ll dream, and you’ll die. I don’t know whether it’ll hurt. I’ve never died of elf-shot.” She shook her head. “It probably won’t, if that helps your decision at all. You’ll just sleep until your heart stops.”

  “What if I choose the road I took last time? Does that mean I’ll live?”

  “Maybe. Nothing’s certain.” She looked away. “This has only happened a few times.”

  “Great. Even my hallucinations aren’t normal.” I shook my head. “Go away. I’m not choosing anything.”

  “October—”

  “I’m not!” I pressed my hands over my ears. “I’m dying. You can’t change it, you can’t stop it, and you’re nothing but a bad dream! Now go away!”

  “Toby?” This voice was different.

  I lifted my head, uncovering my ears. The dreamlike twisting of the room was gone. I was back in the bed; the lights were on, and most importantly of all, my father was standing in the doorway, one hand still on the light switch.

  “Bad dream, baby?” he asked.

  For a moment, it felt like I’d forgotten how to breathe. Swallowing, I managed to whisper, “Daddy?”

  My mother didn’t bring any pictures of my father when we left the mortal world, and I was too young to understand how much I’d want them someday. I didn’t take my teddy bear, much less the family photo album. No one told me I’d never see my father again; I wouldn’t have believed them if they had.

  I barely remembered what he looked like until I had him standing right in front of me. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a thick waist, and pale Irish skin speckled with a lifetime of freckles. I got my rotten knees from his side of the family, even though I didn’t inherit his height or bright blue eyes. I always looked like a changeling next to him, even before I knew how true that really was.

  “Yeah, baby, it’s me,” he said, smiling as he walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. He smiled at me. I found the strength to smile back. I had my father’s smile. Mother never told me that. Mother never told me a lot of things. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Not really.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Maybe I was hallucinating while the elf-shot shut my body down, but I hadn’t seen my father in a long time. I wanted to look at him as much as I could. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

  “It’s all right. I was up.” Daddy was a tax attorney. He brought a lot of work home during the week and worked on it after I’d gone to bed, leaving his weekends and afternoons free. I never forgot that, even though I’d forgotten the way the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Just don’t wake your mother.”

  “I won’t,” I said earnestly. Amandine went away when I told her to; I didn’t want her coming back.

  He ruffled my hair, asking, “Everything okay in there?”

  “Sort of. Daddy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is it wrong to walk away from a choice you’re supposed to make? If you’re supposed to pick something, is it bad not to pick anything at all?”

  “I guess it depends on what you’re choosing,” he said, with his usual careful deliberation. “If you were deciding whether to take your teddy bear to bed with you, I guess you could take a different dolly and never make up your mind about the bear. But if you were deciding whether you’d do something that needs doing—like cleaning your room—I guess it would be bad to never decide.”

  “What if it was something more important than cleaning your room?”

  “How much more important?”

  “As important as going away or not going away.”

  He stiffened before nodding, saying, “With something like that, it would be bad not to choose. You planning on running away from home?”

  “No. But if I had to decide whether to stay or go, wouldn’t it be better to just not decide? To stay without choosing?”

  “Not really.” He reached out again, putting his hand over mine. “You have to decide what matters t
o you, baby, and follow that decision. I’d be sad if you left, but I know you’d only do it for something that mattered so much you felt you had to.”

  Oh, Daddy, I thought, you were more than sad when I left. “So you want me to choose?”

  “You have to make your own choices in life. If you don’t, what’s the point?”

  “You’re right.” I managed to smile again, blinking back tears. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, baby.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead before standing and walking to the door. “Get some sleep, and think about it, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  “Good night, Toby.” He turned off the light, closing the door as he left.

  I wasn’t afraid of the dark when I was a kid, but for a moment, I wished my childhood room had come with the usual night-light. It would’ve been nice if those shadows had been just a little shallower as I climbed out of the bed and walked to the window. The Cheshire cat moon grinned down on me like a beacon.

  I fumbled with the latch until it came loose, and then pushed the window open, leaning out on my elbows until my face was in the wind. “I don’t want to do this again,” I said. “It’s not right, and it’s not fair, and I don’t want to. You shouldn’t be allowed to make me do this again.”

  The moon didn’t answer. I didn’t expect it to. “I’m a hero. That’s what Faerie made me, and I think my father would be proud. I don’t want to make this choice again, because there’s no right choice for me. But there is a choice that’s right for the people who count on me to be there when they need me.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to decide?” Amandine asked, behind me.

  “I don’t think ‘none of the above’ is an option.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. “What do you want? What’s your choice?”

  “I choose the evil I know.” I turned to face her. “I can’t be a hero with no one to save, and I can’t run out on them just because I’m scared. I already walked away from this world once. I don’t get to go back.”

  “So you choose Faerie?” she asked. The blood-androses smell of her magic was rising around us. This was my last chance to back out. But what would I be backing out on? You can’t rewind reality. Choosing to stay human wouldn’t change history; it wouldn’t unmake anything I’d ever done, or seen, or been, and I wouldn’t want it to. Faerie may not always have been the kindest place to live, but it was still my home. I owed it to Gillian, to May, to Dare, and Tybalt and January and all the others not to say that my life had been a mistake. Not when it had been so intertwined with theirs.

  “Yes,” I said. “I choose Faerie. Take me home.”

  Amandine’s smile was ripe with sorrow. “This may sting,” she cautioned, and kissed my forehead. There was a moment of stillness, of perfect rightness and serenity.

  Then the pain came.

  I screamed, dropping to my knees. This wasn’t elf-shot pain; this was something new, something even worse because it was so intrusive. I screamed again, and my voice echoed like it was the only sound in the world. The pain kept increasing, building to a fevered pitch that shook me all the way down to my bones. It was worse than dying; dying ends, but this pain seemed to be settling in to stay forever. The room was dissolving around me in streaks of watercolor black and gray. The dream landscape couldn’t survive this much turmoil.

  Dream. That was the answer; that was the way out of this. I had to wake up. My eyes were already open, but that didn’t matter. Not in a dream.

  Concentrating as hard as I could through the pain, I ordered myself to wake up.

  And I opened my eyes.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE PAIN FADED BY INCHES, leaving me numb. I tried to flex my fingers, moving carefully in case the pain decided to come back. They obeyed. I lifted a hand, shielding my eyes as I cracked them cautiously open. The light burned at first, but the glare faded quickly, leaving me squinting up at a pale purple sky.

  I gradually realized that I was leaning against something soft. Hand still shielding my face—just in case—I tilted my head back until I saw what was supporting me: Connor. His eyes were wide and grave, making him look like a little kid whose Christmas prayers had been suddenly, impossibly answered.

  “Is … ” I rasped. I licked my lips to wet them and tried again: “Is Luna okay?” Connor nodded. “Thank Maeve. Did anybody get the number of that truck?”

  Connor didn’t smile. He just kept staring at me.

  I frowned and lowered my hand. The world danced a drunken reel around me, spinning to an irregular beat. I’ve never been a fan of motion sickness. “Dammit,” I muttered, sitting up a little. “Luidaeg?”

  “Why … Toby, why are you calling for her?” asked Connor.

  “Isn’t that how you fixed me?” It was the only thing that made sense. The Luidaeg brought me back from the edge of death once before, after I’d been shot with iron bullets. If anyone could deal with elf-shot, it was her.

  The thought seemed to be a signal for the pain to come surging back. This was a new sort of hurt, dull and throbbing, like an all-over bruise. It felt like I’d just finished running a marathon. I groaned, slumping against Connor.

  “It wasn’t the Luidaeg,” said Sylvester. I squinted as I turned toward the sound of his voice. He was standing a few feet to my left, his fingers clenched white-knuckled around May’s upper arm. May didn’t seem to mind how tightly he was holding her; she was just staring at me, eyes gone as wide as Connor’s.

  “It wasn’t the Luidaeg,” Sylvester repeated. “I would have sent for her, if there’d been time. But there was no time.”

  I used Connor’s shoulder for balance as I levered myself into a sitting position. Every move awoke another cascade of aches. My head hurt, my legs hurt—pretty much everything that could hurt, hurt. Pain does nasty things to my patience. “Does somebody want to tell me what the hell’s going on? Starting with, I don’t know why I’m not dead?” Purebloods sleep. Humans and changelings die. It’s in the rules.

  Sometimes life seems to take an obscene pleasure in throwing me curve balls.

  “You have to understand, there just … there was no time.” Sylvester was almost pleading. “I didn’t know she’d come. Once she did, I couldn’t refuse her.”

  “You died, Toby,” said May. Her voice was matter-offact, entirely out of synch with her shell-shocked expression. “Your heart stopped, and you died.”

  I stared at her before twisting to face to Connor and demanding, “Tell me what they’re not saying.”

  “The rose goblins ran away when you fell, and they came back with Amandine.” His eyes searched my face, looking for a sign that I understood. “Sylvester and I were … you were having some sort of seizure, and we were holding you down. She pushed us out of the way when your heart stopped.”

  “I was fading,” said May. “But she told me to stop, and I did. She just said ‘stop,’ and I was here again. She yelled at you to choose. She yelled until you started breathing again, and now, you’re …” Her voice faltered. Barely above a whisper, she added, “I’m not your Fetch anymore. I can’t feel you.”

  I raised my hand. She stopped talking.

  If I thought about it—really focused—I could almost remember hands holding me down, and shouting, all of it filtered through dream images of a little girl’s room and a second Changeling’s Choice. I dropped the hand I’d used to signal May to silence and wiped my lips. My fingers came away smeared with blood. I looked at them without any real surprise. I didn’t bother tasting the blood; I already knew which of my memories it held. Nothing but a little girl’s bedroom, and a choice she was only supposed to be offered once.

  “It’s always blood and roses with you, isn’t it, Mother?” I murmured. I was starting to understand. It fit with too many things, going back too far, to be ignored. I just didn’t want to believe it. The balance of your blood is the one thing that shouldn’t change … but if that’s true, why did Oberon make the hope chests?

/>   The hope chests were made to turn changelings all the way fae. At that moment, they represented a final chance to reduce the magnitude of the lies my mother told me. I seized the possibility for all that it was worth. “Did she have a hope chest?” I asked.

  “You know she didn’t,” said Sylvester. The resignation in his voice was almost impossible to bear. “It was the only way to save you. She didn’t ask for consent, and I didn’t stop her. I’m sorry, Toby. I couldn’t let you go.”

  May’s hair grew to match mine overnight, like the sudden growth of a thorn briar around a castle meant to sleep for a hundred years. Would it grow again if she cut it now? Somehow, I didn’t think so.

  “Connor, help me up.”

  He nodded, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and guiding me gently—almost tenderly—to my feet. It took several minutes of teetering before I was stable. Connor held me the whole time, and didn’t let go even after I could have stood on my own. I was quietly relieved. I had the feeling I was going to need the support.

  “Toby—” Sylvester began.

  “Give me a minute.” Amandine offered me a second chance to make my first decision. It shouldn’t have been possible, but it was my mother, and I was starting to realize that “shouldn’t” didn’t apply. “No more letting me lie to you,” she said.

  Someone had been lying to me, all right. More than one someone. I held on to Connor with one hand as I raised the other and pushed my hair back, feeling my ear. The planes and edges I knew were gone, replaced by a sharper angle, rising to a more tapered point. My breath caught. So. I was right. Now what was I going to do about it?

  “I want a mirror.” I wasn’t sure whether I was overreacting, underreacting, or doing both at once. Part of me wanted to blame the poison in my blood, but the answer was probably simpler. I came close to dying—hell, I actually died—and I was panicking. Isn’t stress fun?