Tooth and Nail

by Jennifer Safrey

  “Morning fae?”

  She paused.

  “Are there afternoon fae?” I asked.

  “Midnight fae,” Mom said, then, “The dark fae. They’re not us.”

  She stopped, chewing her lip. “I should get dinner on the table,” she said faintly.

  “Let’s hear it,” I said. “I just found out today I’m a tooth faerie, so if you’re wondering about my capability to handle what you’re about to say, we’re way past that. I want answers. I don’t even know the right questions to ask, but I want the answers.”

  I realized my fists were clenched tightly, and I stretched all of my fingers out, in the space between Mom and me, and maybe the fact that she couldn’t fully see my expression let her continue.

  “My parents are dead,” she said quietly.

  “I know,” I said, softening my tone.

  “But not for as long as you thought,” she said at the same low volume. “Your grandfather died when you were ten. Your grandmother died seven years after that.”

  I blinked, startled, but considering the fact that I’d never known my grandparents to miss them—and considering everything else I had learned today—I waited to hear my mother out.

  “I cut myself off from my fae family. I kept up infrequent contact with my parents because I couldn’t bear to—oh, but you were too important to me, and I knew you’d be too important to all of them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed and her shoulders melted down deeper into her pink cotton cardigan. “Fae marry fae. We’re barely hanging on to our existence as it is. But rare mixed marriages do happen.”

  Dad. George Cross’s presence was in every room of this house even still, like old rugs you couldn’t unload at a garage sale because the strangers who stopped into your yard knew—despite the fact that you’d scrubbed the rugs clean—that they were covered with ghosts. Since he left, Mom hadn’t talked about him ever, not to me, even when I asked her over and over, “Why?” Then somewhere along the line I had become an adult, and I had realized his leaving had hurt her more than it had hurt me, and that maybe she didn’t tell me why because she didn’t know why. And I stopped asking.

  But I had more questions now. “Your family didn’t want you to marry Dad?”

  I saw her flinch, and I felt awful.

  “The fae do tolerate a mixed marriage,” she said, “and it’s only because of what—who—they produce.”

  Produce? Would that be me?

  “What did you see, Gemma?” Mom asked before I could take my conversational turn. “When Frederica showed you a glimpse?”

  I didn’t have to struggle to remember that. Brief as it was, it had embedded itself into my permanent heart’s memory. But putting it into words was difficult. “I didn’t see,” I said, “as much as I felt.” I slid from the sofa cushions onto the carpet, and lay on my back staring at the ceiling. I tried to will it back to me, that sense of falling into soft nothing, that certain joy. “I felt light, and air, and music, and water, and peace.”

  “You felt peace,” Mom repeated. “So you understand the true essence of the Olde Way is peace and innocence. War doesn’t exist there, or chaos, or violence in any form. It can’t. So when the Olde Way crumbled, the fae had no means of resistance. The fae have no physical fighting instinct, so there was nothing to draw upon—and humans simply took over without conflict, most likely without even knowing our ancestors were there.”

  From my spot on the floor, I just looked at her feet, one curled over the other, in thick blue socks. None of that made sense, at least as far as the individual me was concerned. “How could I not have the fighting instinct?” I asked. I nudged my duffel on the floor where I’d tossed it when I came in. It was zipped, but only partway, and a few inches of the stretchy wrap I used under my gloves snaked out. “I’m a fighter.”

  “The half-human side of you is the fighter,” Mom said. “And that’s why you’re a precious gem to the fae, and that’s why, before I was even pregnant, I knew I had to get you away.”

  I waited. I didn’t get it. I needed her to explain it to me. She’d taught me how to read, how to tie my shoes, and how to safely cross a busy intersection. I had to trust she could reach and illuminate the confused part of me, because if she couldn’t, I wasn’t sure anyone could.

  But she sat there, looking not at me but at the spot I’d occupied on the sofa a few moments earlier.

  “You didn’t want me to be part of this?” I finally asked. “You didn’t want me to be a collector? You didn’t want me to be”—oh, I thought, God help me—“a tooth faerie?”

  She winced. “’Faerie’ is not the right word. It’s a human word for the ideas they have of us. And no,” she said quickly, her voice rising on the last syllable. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to embrace this. My reason for leaving had nothing to do with escaping the fae dream. Not at all.”

  “You grew up in Connecticut.”

  Her brows drew together. “Yes?”

  “So is that like faer-” I checked myself—“fae headquarters or something?”

  She smiled a bittersweet smile. “They’re everywhere,” she said. “We’re everywhere, although many cluster in communities. Frederica recruits for the D.C. fae.”

  “So not only is tooth collection real,” I said, “but there’s a whole network?”

  “It’s a global operation,” she said, reflecting my wryness back at me through her grin.

  “Yet still retaining that homey family business feel.”

  I paused, remembering the crumpled card in my pocket. “Frederica said there are local meetings. What are they, like AA?”

  Mom laughed. “Maybe, in terms of the confidentiality and locations. They’re gatherings where fae—can be herself. Or himself. Shed the human guise and just be fae for a while.” Her smile remained, but changed. “I told you the memory is fading with each generation.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, when you go past the beginning of human time, that’s a lot of generations. When you touch the tooth, come in contact with the essence, a tiny sliver of that memory is sliced off so you can taste it. It’s intoxicating, but fleeting. When the fae gather, there’s power in the group, and they use that power to channel the Olde Way. It’s a little stronger, and they can hold it a little longer. They renew the connection to the dream, and to one another.”

  “To remember why they’re—we’re—doing all this.”

  “Yes,” she said. “The different lineages all have a role. There are morning fae who gather innocence from animals, in zoos and shelters and the wild. There are fae who manipulate the environment—the best that they’re able. Humans would have destroyed the Earth we share far back if not for the fae efforts, and we need the Earth intact to bring about our, well, our heaven.” She sighed. “When you’re a tooth collector, every tiny bit of innocence you obtain becomes a piece of that whole dream that we’re striving to get back. It’s our purpose. I loved doing it. I would have done it for as long as I was allowed to, if not for … “

  “Dad?”

  She fell silent, the word hitting her again. I hated with all my heart to be the one delivering the painful blows, but I needed to know what was at the center of this powerful secret. “Did you not say anything all those years and leave your family because of Dad? You didn’t want him to find out what you were?”

  Her eyes watered a bit, and I squeezed my own eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to see it, but in my personal darkness I saw Dad again, saw him holding up the pads for my tiny fists to punch. One-two. One-two.

  “It hurts.”

  “No, Gemma, that isn’t pain. You’re feeling what it is to be human. You’re human.”

  You’re human…

  “Dad knew,” I said, and snapped my eyes open. I jumped to my feet. “Dad knew what you are. What we are.”

  She nodded. “I told him right before we got married. He had a right to know me. He had a right to know why he could never truly be a part of my
family. And he had a right to know what your destiny could be if I didn’t break away.”

  “He had a right to know,” I echoed. “But I didn’t?” I began to pace around the room. Emotions swirled and gathered heat in the center of my chest, and I felt my fists ball up, tightening and stretching the muscles on the insides of my wrists.

  “Your father agreed,” she said, and despite my anger, I hated to hear her plead with me.

  “Maybe I … “ I pressed the heels of my fists against my eyes hard enough to see red and yellow streaks before I dropped my hands again. “Maybe I would have wanted to be a part of it. Maybe I want to be a part of it now. What Frederica showed me…” I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have kept me from that. I would have wanted to do my part.” I still can, I thought. I still could. I didn’t lose my chance. Frederica was offering it back to me. She was only waiting for me to believe in what I was.

  And looking at my mother curled up in the corner of the sofa I had spent so many hours on, in the living room I had lived in, I believed.

  “It was never my intention to take you off the fae path to peace.” Mom got up. Standing, she was tall enough to look me straight in the eye. “I left so you would have peace in this world. I couldn’t give you over to fight their battles.”

  A thousand more questions crowded my head and I opened my mouth to let the next one spill out, but the doorbell rang before I could make a sound.

  Mom and I both looked at the door, then at each other. “Avery,” she said, her tone dissolving from that of Scheherazade storyteller and re-solidifying as mother. “He called earlier and said he’d meet you here for dinner.”

  I actually felt my shoulder blades quiver with tension. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Seems like keeping information to myself is my character flaw,” she said. “Go open the door.”

  I stood rooted to my spot on the carpet, completely unnerved. I wasn’t ready to see Avery. Since he’d left the house this morning I’d met a faerie, been told that my mother was a faerie, been informed that I was half-faerie, and melted into a sensual puddle at a guy leaning against a lamppost who I was now relatively certain also was a faerie.

  Not faeries. Fae.

  Yeah, that distinction really just wasn’t sinking in.

  “Open the door,” Mom repeated gently, and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Go on. You’re no different than you were before now. Your self-awareness is the only thing that’s changed.” She kissed my forehead, but I saw her crease her own before she left for the kitchen. Somehow I got to the door and opened it.

  >=<

  I didn’t remember what the three of us talked about over roast turkey, or how many glasses of white wine I had, or how Avery must have kissed me and said, “No problem,” when I told him I wanted to stay overnight with my mother and I’d be back in the morning.

  When my mother and I were finally alone again, we made a mutual silent pact to not resume our discussion, and I retreated to my old bedroom. She knew I had questions, and I knew she had answers, but I needed to own this for a while, to turn this new information around and around and inspect it from every angle, the way I would spin and examine each row of a Rubik’s Cube.

  Although my glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling had been scratched off years ago and my golden throw rug had flattened into a roughened scrap, this room was still mine. I pushed against the wooden window frame, throwing my whole body behind it once, twice, before it rose, creaking with resistance, the chilly breeze lifting the hem of my T-shirt. I was grateful for it, and for my room, and for the momentary normalcy.

  Sinking cross-legged to the floor, I pulled out Frederica’s card and my cell phone, flung both onto the threadbare rug in front of me, and thought.

  I thought for a long, long time.

  I thought about destiny—my destiny. Mom hid me from it. Dad ran away from it. Frederica invited me to accept it. Avery didn’t know a thing about it.

  “We need you, Gemma Fae.”

  I was half innocence and peace, and half chaos and conflict. Had I always known that, deep down?

  My emotions had taken hold of me and shaken me senseless for the last few hours, so I let my brain take over for a while, cooling my core with logic and analysis. My mind only had to turn everything around a few times before it told me what Mom hadn’t yet: That the morning fae, knowing I was out there in the world, had chosen to leave me alone, biding their time. Tracking me down now meant they had a reason, a strong reason.

  If there were fae everywhere and they had a large recruiting pool, they could have asked any local fae to join the D.C.-area collection. So this wasn’t just a help-wanted plea. They bridged a three-decade communication gap to find me, the hybrid, and I knew why.

  There was a threat to the fae again, and they needed a warrior. They needed me to fight.

  I could have said no. I could have told them to flap their filmy little wings and get the hell away from me. I could resist their twinkly entreaties, no problem. I was no wimp.

  I had to make a decision, and my room had been the location of many decisions I’d made in my life. In here, I’d decided to call Tim Saporino and ask him to the prom because I knew he was too much of a lame-o to ask me first. In here, I’d decided whether to do my math homework before bed, or save it until the morning and do it in the hurry time before homeroom, with my back against the lockers and my books balanced on my knees. In here, I decided to color the sky green-blue instead of blue-green, and my silver horses soared between the clouds, close to the crayon sun, with huge feathered wings that took up half the page. I decided to draw wings even though horses didn’t really have wings. Faeries had wings. But faeries weren’t real.

  I had to make a decision, and my room was too full of memories of the me I was until this morning.

  Think, I told myself. Think rationally. Think the way you would have at work. When would I make a decision at work? When would I present my findings and make a recommendation?

  When I knew for sure that I’d covered every angle, gotten every opinion.

  I’d listened to Frederica’s plea, I’d heard Mom’s story, I’d felt the Olde Way imprint my soul. But if I was to deny my so-called destiny, then it was only fair for me to face a roomful of the people—the fae—I was saying no to.

  I dialed the phone, and no sooner had I placed it against my ear than I heard Frederica say simply, “Gemma.”

  She was wide awake. Why wouldn’t she be? After all, it only made sense that tooth fae worked night shifts, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock.

  “So,” I asked. “You busy tonight?”

  “You know I am.” I heard her soothing smile.

  I paused, then swallowed. “Mind if I tag along?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she said. “But I hoped—we hoped—you would.”

  CHAPTER 6

  From a key on a huge jangling set, Frederica let us into a side street bakery at ten minutes to midnight. It wasn’t open yet, but a gritty sugary scent lingered. The counters were wiped clean, the display cases empty.

  We went back through the kitchen, where the floor was very recently wiped clean, and stopped at the back wall.

  I thought I was looking at nothing but a wall, but Frederica nudged me a little closer until I found, at eye level, a small but intricately carved wrought iron pair of wings. Like the faerie wings in children’s books. I traced the grooves with my fingernail, and a tingle of fear—or something else?—shivered through my hand.

  Frederica stepped forward and discreetly licked the tips of her index and middle finger, then put one finger on each wing.

  Suddenly there was a door.

  That had not been there a moment before.

  I would have known I was looking at a door if the large frame and golden knob had been there. But it hadn’t. And now it was, with the iron wings square in the middle.

  I turned wide eyes at Frederica. She had to be expecting me to flip out, run through the kitchen to the
front of the store, crash through the bakery window, and flee, never to be seen again. But she merely turned the knob and opened the door to wave me in.

  I’d slipped out of Mom’s house earlier tonight—well, no, I didn’t. I’d walked through the front door, trying to keep quiet not because I didn’t want her to catch me but because she might have fallen asleep. If she noticed my absence for the next couple of hours, she’d know where I was.

  Frederica and I had traveled in silence. I resisted the urge to joke that she was driving the hybrid in a hybrid, but I let it go even though I was pretty sure she would have gotten a laugh. She was content in our silence, leaving me to percolate my fresh information in my own mind. After sneaking a few glances at her profile—the portrait of serenity—I had pressed my forehead against the window and watched without seeing the D.C. streets. As the familiar scenery blew by, my eyes rested on nothing. Instead it served as a moving backdrop for my thoughts.

  Now, I glanced around in a near panic. We were only a few blocks from Smiley’s Gym. I could easily break free from this surreal living dream, run from Frederica and whoever else waited for me inside, kick open a window at Smiley’s and lie across the hard row of chairs until morning. That was me, that was where I belonged: in there. Not where I was going.

  But I didn’t run away. Probably because I knew that if I did, Frederica wouldn’t make the slightest move to stop me. I was here on my own volition, and now I had a responsibility to myself to see this through.

  So now, I entered through a magical door and allowed Frederica to usher me down a very tight, spooky stairwell. Dark stairwells were generally spooky, and at best, made me wonder why I didn’t take an elevator, and at worst, gave me the feeling of fleeing from fire or gunmen. I looked over my shoulder as we descended, flexing my hands and ready to spring if I needed to, but Frederica didn’t so much as glance around her. Her ballet-slippered toes made no sound, and I clunked behind her in the platform sneakers I’d dug up from my last stay at Mom’s.

  We emerged on the underground floor and stopped at a red door at the bottom. I didn’t know what I expected—a sign that said, “Welcome Tooth Faeries” or something—but it was just a door—one I could see—and my heart started to pound. On instinct, I tried to take mental note of possible escape routes. To my left was an impenetrable silver steel wall, but on my right was a hallway with doors, ending in another steel wall.