We were halfway down the stairs when she said, voice pitched low, “Everything has a cost, October; remember that. It may be a long time before the bill comes due, but everything has a cost.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Come on.”
At the bottom of the stairs, the Luidaeg turned away from the light and music of the living room, opening the door that led to the porch behind the house. Moonlight glittered off the waves like a thousand broken mirrors, all of them too shattered to ever be repaired. She kept walking, and so I kept following, until we reached the wet, hard-packed sand at the water’s edge.
“I can lie to the Selkies because I’m their First, even though they aren’t my children,” she said, as matter-of-factly as if she were remarking on the weather. I made a small sound of surprise. She cast me a sharply amused look. “Did you think I’d lived a chaste life? I’m the mother of the Roane. I loved them so much it hurt. It still does, if I think about it too much.”
“But—”
“For the love of my father, October, listen. I don’t know if I’ll have the nerve to tell you this twice.” She looked out at the water, at the waves—at anything but me. “One of my sisters betrayed me. She put knives in the hands of humans and told them to kill my children, because it would make them immortal. The Roane who lived were the ones who were with me. Not enough to make a race. Barely enough to remain a family.”
I gasped. That was all.
The Luidaeg’s shoulders slumped. “They killed my babies because they wanted to live forever. Only it turns out forever isn’t very long. Their own children slit their throats while they slept, and brought the skins of my dead babies home to me. They begged me for their lives. Me, the sea witch, the wronged one . . . they begged me to forgive them for the sins of their parents. So I forgave them. And I bound them. They would be Selkies from that day onward, they would wear the skins of my sons and daughters and grandchildren, and they would keep the magic alive until I could find a way to make things right.”
“Until the bill could come due,” I whispered.
“Yeah.” She glanced at me. “I love the Selkies because they are my family. I hate them because they killed my family. Everything’s a contradiction.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I had children. I was a mother. And now my children are gone, almost all of them. Their skins live, on the backs of Selkies . . . for now. Because everything changes, Toby. Everything passes, even in Faerie. For now, you’re alive. Your squire needs you to be a knight; your Fetch needs you to be a sister; your liege needs you to be the daughter he didn’t lose. So be alive. If you’re not willing to do it for them, do it for Connor. I seriously doubt he took an arrow for your kid just so you could cry yourself to death. I’d tell you he wasn’t worth it, but no one gets to make that call for you. So I’ll just tell you that everything changes, everything passes, and we need you too much for you to keep doing this.”
“I miss him,” I said. The waves almost swallowed the sound of my voice.
The Luidaeg looked at me gravely, her irises shading back to dusty driftglass blue. It looked right on her; it looked real, like I was seeing her eyes without a mask for the first time. “That doesn’t go away. But it gets better.”
There were so many things I wanted to ask. What was the shallowing in Muir Woods? What did the Luidaeg mean when she told Elizabeth the bill was almost due? Who was Arden, and why would a shallowing care if she was alive? Questions stacked upon questions . . . and none of them mattered in that moment, as we stood at the edge of the water and watched the waves beating themselves against the sand. Because the Luidaeg was right. Nothing stays the same for long, not in Faerie, not in the human world, not anywhere. But some things are worth fighting for.
Dean would have Goldengreen. Gillian would have her father, and nightmares she couldn’t explain—nightmares that would fade, if she stayed away from Faerie. I would have my strange little self-assembled family, with all the problems and pleasures that included. I wouldn’t have Connor anymore. But someone would wear his skin, and if that was enough to keep the Roane a little bit alive, maybe it was enough to keep him a little bit alive, too.
The Luidaeg put a hand on my shoulder. I glanced at her, startled, before nodding and putting my own hand over it. We stayed there for a long time, listening to the distant music drifting from the house behind us, and watched as the tide rolled out. She didn’t say anything about my tears. I didn’t say anything about hers.
Everything changes.
DAW Books Presents Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Novels:
ROSEMARY AND RUE
A LOCAL HABITATION
AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT
LATE ECLIPSES
ONE SALT SEA
ASHES OF HONOR (Available September 2012)
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One Salt Sea od-5 Page 37