The girl smiled, but there was nothing in her eyes but ice. I felt as though I’d swallowed another gallon of frigid water from the well. I had no doubt that if she perceived me as a threat, that ice would turn in a flash to malice.
“But...”
“You’ve shown great fortitude, making your way here,” Creiddylad said. “For that, we commend you; few have the will to do so without our invitation. You are welcome to stay, to feast, to make merry with your kind. Eat and drink whatever you wish; take a token of beauty, if you so desire. Consider it our gift.” She leaned back in her throne. “But make no claim to kinship, because there is no claim to be made.”
The three of them rose as one and walked away, the hounds trailing at their heels.
I had been dismissed.
I was trembling, not from fear but disappointment, and even some anger.
They had treated me as if I was nothing more than a stray cat: I could make a home in the barn, or I could leave; it meant nothing to them either way.
I didn’t get the sense their stolen daughter mattered much more to them. It seemed they had chosen her because they’d wanted a golden child, not because they had any great devotion to her.
In fact, the stories all said the fae—like gentlemen and Hollywood—had a fascination for blonds. I’d just never listened. Never wanted to believe that part of the tale.
They didn’t want me, and had made that clear when they’d abandoned me in another child’s crib.
Stupidly, I’d even thought the other girl—Cerys and John’s real child, the one they’d named Poppy—would want to change places with me, would want to go home and meet her real parents. But unlike me, she’d clearly never wished for that.
I’d wanted her to go back, too, so that Cerys and John could have their real child back, and be truly happy.
The faerie king and queen had praised my strength. That strength, that stubbornness had come not from them, but from Cerys and John. My will to live was something they’d imbued in me when they’d fought for my survival in that tenuous first year.
It had come from the love they’d given me, unconditionally, when they’d accepted me as their daughter. They hadn’t wanted blond, stolen Poppy back any more than the faerie king and queen wanted me back.
Love. Acceptance. A home. All from them.
I’d wished all my life for a family I already had.
I was a sodding idiot. A sound bubbled out of me, half-sob, half-laugh, taking with it a painful weight in my chest, one I hadn’t known was there until it was gone.
I had to get back before Cerys and John found my note.
I desperately wanted to go back.
I turned and pushed my way through the dancers, not caring about politeness or propriety. I ignored the food, the music, the gems and silver and gold. All of it felt cold, empty—beauty without passion, without emotion.
So different from the warm, cozy cottage I’d grown up in and the comforting embrace of parents who loved me.
My real mum and dad.
At the end of the cavern hung a silk tapestry depicting a stone staircase. I didn’t remember coming past it, but when I brushed it aside, I saw that staircase, the one I’d come down.
I went back up the slick, worn stone steps, carefully. I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to pick myself up if I tripped and fell. My thighs burned from the long climb, my lungs aching from gulping in the cold air, my stomach in knots, my emotions in tatters.
When I emerged, I saw the sky had taken on a pale peach glow of dawn. I’d been gone longer than I realized.
Then a horrifying thought struck me, and I fumbled for my mobile. It took a moment for it to find a connection, and when it did, I let out a long breath of relief.
I hadn’t been in faerie for a hundred years. Just a few hours. It was the morning of my sixteenth birthday.
The cottage would be warm. There would be presents, and a cake—my father had baked it last night before I snuck out, white with chocolate ganache frosting. My mum would hug me, tell me what a smart, beautiful, creative person I was becoming. This year, though, I’d let myself hear the love in her voice, and taste the emotion baked into that cake.
The wall I’d put up, the one that hadn’t allowed me to see and feel and believe that they truly loved me, was gone forever.
I paused beneath the hawthorn, running my frozen fingers along the cold, whisper-fine silk of my offering, and silently gave my thanks.
Then I turned and headed across the farmer’s sheep field toward home.
Toward family.
True
Leslie Claire Walker
Leslie Claire Walker also contributes a personal story to this issue of Fiction River.
Another part of the Uncollected Anthology collective, Leslie has appeared in four previous volumes of Fiction River. Her stories for us often come from her Awakened Magic Saga, which includes the Faery Chronicles YA urban fantasy series and the Soul Forge urban fantasy series. But “True” comes from two other sources.
“First,” Leslie writes, “I have always loved the certain of the bayous in my hometown. To me, they have been a kind of borderland for as long as I can remember—wild and populated by poisonous snakes and ravenous insects (and definitely faeries) that have a questionable relationship with humankind, because humans didn’t necessarily belong there. A couple of years ago, during a Christmas trip back to Houston, I discovered that the city had ripped out the riparian forest along Buffalo Bayou near downtown and created manicured paths with landscaping along the length of the water there. It broke my heart.
“Second, the loss of a mercurial, wild friend who played by her own rules to cancer in her thirties. She was one of the most magical people I’d ever known, and many mutual friends reported having dreams about her or otherwise experiencing her beautiful spirit after she passed away.
“‘True’ is a love letter to my human friend—and my not-so-human friends as well.”
The last molten shine of the sun faded on the horizon, and the dark seemed to rise out of the earth rather than fall from the sky. The southerly sunset breeze kicked up, poking holes in the August heat and humidity. All around me, reeds and wild onion on the bank of Buffalo Bayou hid slithering cottonmouths and God only knew what else.
A ways west of downtown Houston, the bayou was its own universe. It snaked along ten feet to my right, its muddy water broken by the leap of a gar. Dinosaur fish, my best friend Elise called them. The hum of traffic from the road I couldn’t see and the sharp whine of mosquitoes made the world seem far away and too close at the same time.
The air tasted of salt from the Gulf of Mexico and car exhaust and the crushed leaves of the willow tree that I’d pulled from nearby branches as I’d fallen to my knees.
It’d never occurred to me that I could taste something without putting it in my mouth, but then I never really thought I’d die at seventeen either. And I’d always said I hoped to learn something new every day until I kicked it, so points for me.
Hope will get you exactly nowhere, Steve, Elise said to me yesterday. She stood in front of me now, frozen in place, eyes wide with fear.
I disagreed. Without hope, every single one of us was screwed, but I couldn’t tell her that.
Elise was big on one thing: helping people. She seemed to know what they needed most, or when they were in trouble.
I didn’t know how she did that. I’d spent a lot of time wondering, but I’d never been able to come up with the right answer. And asking never got me anywhere. She changed the subject every time.
All I knew was that I wanted to help her, so I’d signed up as her partner in crime. That was how I ended up down by the bayou at twilight with my heart giving out.
It had a defect—the kind that showed on the outside. I’d started out looking like a normal guy, but ended up with a tall torso all out of proportion to my shorter legs. I’d been told over and over again that I shouldn’t play basketball. I shouldn’t run or dance too wild or
drink too much because I could have a heart attack. I should curl up in a ball and wait for doom to descend because I had no other choice.
Yeah? No.
I wasn’t exactly fearless, but if I thought like that—if I acted like that—fear was all I would be.
This morning, Elise and I had gone for a bike ride. We’d rolled out of her cracked concrete driveway at our usual time, a couple of minutes after 7:00 a.m. We left the small, red and white Heights bungalow where she lived with her mom in the rearview as the neighborhood woke, lights flicking on in the windows, dew sparkling on pristine front lawns and wrought iron fences.
We passed a couple of joggers in matching white tanks and shorts. A dark blue Chevy pickup veered around us, the man behind the wheel yawning wide enough to swallow creation, exhaust from his tailpipe stinking up the street. Dogs barked in backyards.
This early, the temperature was a blessedly cool eighty degrees and pedaling generated as much breeze as it did sweat. In ten minutes, we could add iced coffee and donuts to the pleasures of the morning, and then we’d head over to the basketball court behind school and catch the weekly pickup game. Elise had a mean jump shot from the three-point line.
After that, we’d have a mission. We’d had one every Saturday for the last two years. No idea what today’s would be, only that like all of them, it’d be important to whoever we set out to help. Not that it was ever a life-or-death thing; more like an empty-or-full belly thing, the difference between someone being warm or frozen, the difference between someone feeling cared for or all alone.
Elise rode on my left, her long, red hair streaming loose behind her black helmet, her freckled face and bright blue eyes serious. She wore a black tank top with an anatomical heart on the front, black capris that came to just below her knees, and black sneaks. She smelled fresh—like baby shampoo and vanilla lip balm.
From this angle, I couldn’t see the light brown stripe of a birthmark that stretched from jawline to cheekbone on the left side of her face. That mark defined her in ways she pretended to ignore—people looked too long, or they looked everywhere but at her face. I had no idea how she could act like it didn’t matter.
Only one thing ever mattered to me about Elise: everything about her. That birthmark was part of her, just like her love of Brussels sprouts, her encyclopedic knowledge of song lyrics, and her refusal to cry in front of anyone, including me.
Her voice reminded me of Fourth of July fireworks. Not the explosions, but the impossibly beautiful sparks that rained down from the seeds of destruction.
“There’s something I want to show you,” she said.
“At the coffee shop or at school?” I asked.
“Neither,” she said. “Change of plans. The game’s postponed.”
I gave her the side-eye. “The game’s never postponed.”
“It is today.”
Serious face. Serious look. “What gives?”
“You do.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
She rode faster, pulling ahead.
I had to stand on the pedals to catch up. Sweat beaded on my forehead and at the small of my back. My red, white, and blue Texans jersey and cutoff denim shorts stuck to my skin.
“You realize I don’t operate caffeine-free, right?” I asked.
“You’re too young to be addicted, Steve.”
“Clearly, you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” I said.
She turned toward me, narrowing her eyes, her expression even more serious than before. And unnerving. “How long have we been friends?”
“Since kindergarten,” I said. “But I like to think I still have some mysteries you don’t have a bead on.”
She laughed, but the humor in it didn’t reach her eyes. “I know everything there is to know about you, Steven William Black. Including that you’re today’s mission.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true,” she said.
“But I don’t need anything.”
I had a family that simultaneously drove me crazy and loved me, decent grades, and an all-around good life, although money was kind of tight. Sure, if I had my way, I’d also have a million dollars and a college scholarship and a brand new Charger to replace my bike as primary transportation.
She opened her mouth to answer, but unconnected words fell out instead. “Steve, watch out—”
My front tire rolled into a pothole, stopping the bike in an instant. I flipped over the top of the handlebars and landed hard on the street, flat on my back. The impact stole every last molecule of breath from my lungs. I coughed, sucking air. I blinked, taking in the cloudless sky and then Elise’s face as she knelt beside me.
The world grayed out for a heartbeat. It went black. Then, all of a sudden, the colors swam back into place.
Elise looked like an angel, the sun framing her head in a fiery halo. She grabbed my shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You tell me. You’re the one who knows everything.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Steve.”
“I think I’m in shock.”
“Me, too,” she said. “We have bigger problems.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Your heart.” Her eyes looked funny. Watery, as if she might cry any second.
Seeing that sent a chill skittering from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. “Whoa—what’s wrong with my heart that I don’t already know?”
“Today’s the day,” she said.
She could only mean one thing. “The day I die?”
She nodded.
“I should go to the hospital,” I said.
“It won’t help.”
What the hell did that mean? “How do you know that?”
She held my gaze. “I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t,” she said. “Not yet.”
My voice raised a notch with every word. “This is my life here, Elise.”
“I know,” she said. For a moment, she had the kind of lines on her face that no one our age should have—crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, downturned lines at the corners of her mouth. I blinked. The lines vanished.
She hadn’t said no. She’d said not yet. “Jesus, Elise.”
She rolled onto her heels. “Can you move?”
“Should I?” I asked.
“You’ve never let the hand of fate stop you before,” she said.
She was right. And I felt physically normal, except for impending bruises and elevating blood pressure and stone cold fear. “Help me up.”
She took my hands and carefully pulled me to my feet. I didn’t feel dizzy and I didn’t fall over, but I did have several jagged bits of gravel stuck to my calves and arms. I peeled off the ones I could see one by one, and Elise got the rest.
I brushed off the back of my shorts. “You said going to the hospital won’t help. What do you think will? Is it the thing you need to show me?”
“Yes,” she said.
I studied her face. In the space of a half hour, I’d seen her almost cry. Now, I saw fear etched around her eyes and mouth. Real fear.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up.
Even after all the missions we’d done together, the rational part of me wanted to call bullshit. It wanted to turn my bike around and head home. I should tell my parents that I didn’t feel right and ask to go to the hospital, where the doctors and nurses would run tests. They might keep me overnight for observation or send me home, but either way, I’d be okay. I’d live to see tomorrow and die some other day.
Except that Elise looked so serious and so sure, and she’d never been wrong before. I’d always trusted her. She’d never let me down, not counting the fight we’d had the week before her fifteenth birthday that caused her to boycott me for two weeks. We’d gotten over it, because in the end it meant nothing. In the end, being together was all that counted.
/> Did I trust her now with so much at stake?
I’d always known I wouldn’t live as long as most people, and I’d made a point of acting like that didn’t matter. But now, my knees felt weak, like they wanted to give out. Breathing felt hard, and not because I’d had the wind knocked out of me.
When had my life not been at stake? The only thing different about right now versus every other day was that before, I hadn’t known when I would die. Now, I did. I had to choose how I handled that knowledge.
If Elise said the hospital wouldn’t help, then it wouldn’t help. If I was going to die today, did I want to do it there, stuck with needles and surrounded by beeping machines and the stink of industrial-strength disinfectant? Surrounded by my family?
My dad would sit stoic in his dark blue mechanic’s uniform, his black hair mussed from combing it with his fingers. His nails would be black around the edges with engine grease and chemicals. My mom would pace the room until she wore a groove in the floor. My little brother would sprawl in the corner chair, surfing on his phone and checking on me from the corner of his eye.
I wish I’d done more than grunt at them this morning. I wished I’d said something. Anything. I should call.
What the hell would I say if I did?
Elise put her hand on my shoulder. “Steve?”
Her touch felt electric. I met her gaze and held it. More than anything, if I was going to die tonight, I didn’t want to lose her.
“Okay,” I said.
She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Can you ride?”
I expected my bike to be unrideable. Flat tire. Bent wheel. But it was fine. “It’s a miracle.”
“Let’s hope for two, then,” she said.
Strange—and scary—hearing the word hope come out of her mouth.
Then again, I’d take what I could get, given that the rest of the ride consisted of taking our lives into our own hands while heading south out of the neighborhood. More cars and trucks rolled by, at higher speeds the further we traveled outside of our usual haunt. I counted six brushes with death—not that I needed more of those—as the bungalows gave way to wide streets flanked on either side by mom-n-pop boutiques with closed signs in their front windows.
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