Oberon's Children

by Hal Emerson

  Chapter Eight: Prior Claim

  The next night, Ite’Ilyn was gone and Ai’Ilyn had returned.

  She woke us as she had done every moonrise save for the last, and I noticed that she was changed: her skin was redder than before. The change was slight, so small that it seemed almost a trick of the light or a wrinkle of the mind, but I knew it was there. What Ite’Ilyn had said the night before came back to me – that he was old, much older than the other Ilyn. Ite’Ilyn with his skin so green that nearly all the white was gone.

  She’d aged. Somehow, for some reason, she’d gone away to age.

  “Stand!”

  The command snapped out of her mouth with its customary whip-like quality, and there was nothing we could do but obey. She slowly began to walk up and down before us. She was holding herself differently: her shoulders were more relaxed, her chest higher. Her back was still ramrod straight, and her stride contained the same purposeful sense of direction it always had, but she looked … refreshed.

  “You’ve now been here almost a full moon’s cycle,” she said once we’d all risen from out places in scrambles of limbs and blankets. I did a quick calculation in my head, thinking about the size of the moon the night before, and realized it was coming back close to full.

  “If I had my way, I would continue holding you in silence for the full customary month.”

  My eyes flicked over the others, Ai’Ilyn’s back turned to me, and saw they’d all stiffened with anticipation. She didn’t speak again immediately, instead taking the time to examine us with her customary snarl.

  “But Ite’Ilyn tells me that most of you conducted yourselves … well.”

  She let more silence fall, filling up the space between us, filling the entire room save for the sounds of Fae in the field outside. None of us looked toward Tristan, but we all knew whom she’d left out by saying “most of you.”

  “So I will be lenient. You are allowed to speak at meal times – and only at meal times. At all other times, you will remain silent and speak only when spoken to. You are nestlings – do not even think of speaking to the greater Fae, or I will be the least of your problems.”

  She paced back to the beginning of the line.

  “If I catch any of you speaking out, all of you lose the right to speak for another full moon’s turn. If I catch you speaking to any of the other nestlings from the other groups, you will be punished and you will lose the right to speak for another full moon’s turn. If you fail to follow a command, you will be punished and you will lose the right to speak for another full moon’s turn. I think, if I am not mistaken, that this makes the trend of punishments abundantly clear.”

  She turned to me.

  “Does it not … Mol?”

  My name, rolling from her mouth and through her pointed teeth made me shiver violently. I tried to stop the motion, suppressing it as best I could, but I know she saw it, and she knew I knew. She grinned, and then turned away.

  She led us through the Bower again, going by one of several customary routes. Some of the turns now looked familiar, but only one in three at best, and even those I wasn’t sure about. We crossed the Hollowed Hall, filled with Fae eating there, predominantly Paecsies, Urden, and Ilyn; and passed into the scullery, where finally we came to our eating room.

  I attacked my bowl with my usual appetite, still not entirely convinced that they wouldn’t decide this was my last meal before they threw me out or ran me off into the forest. It was only when I was halfway done that I realized the others were exercising their right to talk, and I quickly listened in.

  “Isn’t something different about her?”

  “Besides the fact she’s letting us talk?”

  “Well, she isn’t completely different; she still looks at us like something she’d like to scrape us off with a stick–”

  “You mean her skin.”

  They all turned to me, the final one to speak, and stared as if I were trying to be funny. When they saw my face and realized I was being serious, they shifted uncomfortably.

  “What skin?” one of the boys asked – the lankier blonde one. Brandel.

  “Her skin is more red,” I said softly, feeling the pressure of their eyes.

  This answer seemed to satisfy them, and they turned away from me and began to talk amongst themselves again. I glanced down the table at Tristan, to see how he was responding, and saw that, while bruised and battered, he was smiling and joking with Celin and Igrin at his end of the table, making them laugh.

  I returned to my food, but I kept my ears open, waiting for the sound of Tristan’s voice, not knowing what I would do if I heard it.

  There was no more talk of running that night. With Ai’Ilyn back, and the combined resistance of both Faolan and myself, it appeared that Tristan had not yet found the time or place to renew his call for action. The others seemed to have dismissed it from their thoughts – they were sharing personal details of the lives they’d lived, and Igrin and Aelyn were fast becoming friends via the kind of superficial, high-pitched conversation that I had sometimes heard in town squares from the women who ignored me as they walked past. Part of me wanted to join in – I’d never had another girl as a friend – but they weren’t turned towards me and I didn’t know how to break into the conversation without looking stupid. Then Celin and Tristan both devolved into baby voices and two girls started laughing at them and I gave up. I glanced across the table at Faolan and he caught my gaze. He rolled his eyes and focused on his food. I hid a smile and did the same.

  The days passed into the old routine, the one with which we were all becoming comfortable, save for Tristan and Igrin, who I knew were both still thinking of when to run. I knew it because they spent too much time together, they and Aelyn and Celin. Everywhere we went, they were at the back of the line; every day we worked, they managed to be put in the same group; and at every meal they made references to “when they were back home.” I felt unease twist in my chest like a compressed coil, but I didn’t speak up. It was their plan, it was their problem.

  But I still worried, and I couldn’t make myself stop.

  The only time I could let such thoughts go were when I danced with the older children. I’d been allowed to catch the moonlight with them every night since that first one, and it was so wonderful that there was no place for worry. It made me feel like I could fly, that I could leap and miss the earth and just go up and on forever, though of course I never did. We ran and jumped and twirled among each other, the only time when all the children were together and encouraged to interact. When we stepped into the moonlight I could feel the pulse beat faster in my chest and my head felt squeezed; my breath came faster and my muscles moved with perfect precision; I felt graceful for the first time in my life.

  But with each night that passed, it became harder to pull back from the edge of the moonlit field when the time had passed and the bags of dew were full. As the moon grew bigger in the sky, the desire for the moonlight burrowed deeper into my heart, and soon all thoughts disappeared. When the dance was over, I felt like sobbing with the loss that echoed through me.

  So when the night of the new full moon came, when the light was brightest in the fields outside as we worked to clean the rooms of the Bower, to scrub the hallways that always needed cleaning and evening as the living tree grew around us, I felt fear and desire war in my chest. Every time we passed a window, I found myself licking my lips, thinking of the taste of the dew; even just the memory was tonight so sweet that it made my teeth ache and my stomach churn.

  But with the desire came fear of what a full moon would do to me. Would I be able to contain myself? Would we be able to keep from going mad?

  Is it bad that the danger made me want it more?

  “It won’t happen,” Brandel said when the topic came up during meal time. He was the most talkative of the group; he had an opinion on everything and felt very free to share it, though he was too spacy to be considered bossy or rude. “Think about it – it’s been a mont
h since we got here. That means more are coming tonight.”

  “What’s it like?” Gwenel asked me again, staring at me with eyes half jealous and half admiring.

  “She’s already tried explaining it to you,” Brandel chimed in, seamlessly switching topics while shoveling food into his mouth; berry juice and honey dripped down his chin, but no one said anything. He wouldn’t wipe it away until he was done – we’d tried to get him to and he just wouldn’t.

  “So let her try again,” Gwenel said, annoyed.

  “Later,” I said stiffly, not looking at either of them, simply eating my food, which was the same as it always was and thus had lost some of its novelty for the others. For me it was still as fantastic as always. I’d been near starving for the majority of my life – I’d need more than a month of steady meals before I started taking them for granted.

  “They’re coming tonight,” Brandel said, picking up right where he’d left off as if worried someone else might get a word in before he’d finished. He had a big ball of food squirreled away in his cheek that continued to grow as he spoke. “That’s why all the Fae are here.”

  I looked up at Faolan as he looked over at me, raising an eyebrow. It looked like we weren’t the only ones who’d noticed something for a change.

  “Which means that there’s a lot of other things that –”

  “By the blood, shut up, Brandel!”

  We all cringed back from the outburst as Tristan looked up from his food. I glanced reflexively toward the twisted door-less entryway, but Ai’Ilyn didn’t appear: either she hadn’t heard, or she was choosing to ignore the outburst.

  “Who cares?”

  Tristan was being sulky. His moods were erratic, and it was this that made him, if possible, even more dangerous. The bruises he’d received had mostly healed, but his wounded pride had not, and he still watched Faolan and I with hatred when he thought we couldn’t see. Some of the others seemed to feel bad for him – Celin and Igrin had become his two disciples, and they were always by his side trying to make him feel better, whispering good words. I don’t know how they didn’t realize they were being used. Maybe they did know and just didn’t mind.

  “Sorry, Tristan,” Brandel said, looking hurt. He fell silent and swallowed the ball of food. The rest of the meal passed in silence.

  When Ai’Ilyn came back, we all stood as one and walked out of the room in single-file, me leading as seemed to have become the custom.

  “Stop.”

  I pulled up short. I looked around the scullery, confused, and saw that all of the other children groups had filed out ahead of us; the refectory, with the long storage-space mounds where the food was kept, stood unattended for the first time since we’d arrived. I caught a glimpse of one of the last children moving around the corner of the doorway that led to the Hollowed Hall, and then we were alone with Ai’Ilyn.

  “Tonight is the Calling ceremony,” she said, scrutinizing us one by one. When she got to me I flinched away. “That means that all the Fae of the Bower will be gathered here. Oberon will be here. Gwyn ap Nudd and the Wild Hunt will be here, and the Fae who live on the borders of the realm will have come just for this night.”

  She reached the last person in line – Durst, who also flinched away from her gaze, making me feel somewhat less craven – and then began to scan us again, as if she could imprint on us the importance of her speech through the power of her stare alone.

  “You are to stay silent,” she continued, speaking with the special softness she reserved for truly important threats, “or you will be punished.”

  I glanced at the others from the corner of my eye. I hadn’t been inclined to give any trouble to begin with, but I hoped that whatever resistance Tristan, Igrin, or Celin had found it in them to retain had just been quashed. It wasn’t that I cared for them so much – it was that if Ai’Ilyn was angry with them, she might revoke the speaking privileges of the entire group. That thought alone, of someone messing up what we’d just earned, was enough to set my teeth on edge.

  “You will stay where I place you,” she continued, still scanning us, the intensity of her stare like a hot brand held menacingly out toward us, “or you will be punished.”

  Back up the line.

  “You will act with respect and deference to the Fae … or you will be punished.”

  Back down the line.

  “You will act as though your very life depends on you being good little boys and girls … or you will be punished.”

  She stopped on me.

  “Are you sensing the trend here, nestling?”

  There was a long pause and I realized with growing panic that she expected me to answer her. I didn’t know how to respond – should I nod and stay silent? Would that be considered rude? Should I speak?

  “Answer me, nestling.”

  “Yes, Ilyn,” I squeaked, my voice breaking even as I did my best to keep it level.

  “Elucidate,” she said. She almost purred it, like a cat toying with a mouse.

  “If we break the rules,” I said, trying to find all the right words and get them in the right place, “you’ll punish us.”

  I flicked my eyes up to read her expression and saw her looking down at me still. She quirked an eyebrow at me, or at least the skin where an eyebrow should have been, and I realized she expected more. Panic once again floated up from the bottom of my stomach and began to inflate inside me.

  “Severely,” I added.

  Ai’Ilyn’s brow relaxed, and I was almost faint with relief until she knelt down before me and the fear came right back in.

  “And if you do as I ask,” she said, in a voice completely different from what I’d heard from her so far, a voice that was calm and simple, “what then?”

  I swallowed, my mouth so dry I felt like I was choking on ashes, and tried to think of what she was trying to pull from me. Why me? Why was she asking me this question?

  Prove that you deserve more, and it will be given you.

  “You’ll reward us,” I said softly, looking her in the eye in a flash of understanding that overrode my fear.

  She smiled, a full-on beaming grin. She looked at the others. It was as if she had become a different person – like watching black clouds dissipate in the middle of a thunderstorm. She was no longer sneering, no longer contemptuous – she looked … excited.

  “The choice is yours,” she continued, containing some of the eagerness she’d exhibited and becoming neutral again. “Ignore this warning, and you’ll be punished. Heed me … and you’ll be allowed to catch the moonlight.”

  It took a full beat of time for this pronouncement to sink in, but when it did the others all stood taller, even Tristan, as if strings attached to their heads had pulled them upright. I felt excitement, too, realizing I wouldn’t be the only one of us out there, that they would experience it with me.

  Ai’Ilyn turned on her heel and strode from the refectory. Immediately I was moving, and within two strides I had caught up to her and was following so closely I was almost stepping on her heels. I heard the others scramble into place behind me, and I wondered if Tristan had done so too. I didn’t dare turn around and look, but the question burned in the back of my mind.

  We left the room and filed into the Hollowed Hall, but nowhere near the center. Ai’Ilyn led us directly to the left and up a concealed incline that I hadn’t even realized was there. We moved into a small rock tunnel somehow grown through and around branching root supports, and I saw several other groups ahead of us. When we broke back out into the open air of the Hall, we were several dozen feet higher up, and I realized that there were similar hidden outcroppings among the smooth Bower walls opposite us, where greater Fae were lining up, row upon row of creatures that I couldn’t clearly see in the flickering of the moonlight fires. We were shifted still further out along the outer rim to the very front of the Hall. Other groups of children were led into chambers that branched off the main walkway we took, but our group only stopped when we’d reached
the final chamber. We entered into the room and Ai’Ilyn led us up to a high railing at the far side that came up to our chests. With a single sweeping motion, she told us to come forward and stand along beside her in a line. I moved up directly next to her, careful not to touch her, and looked out of the corner of my eye to see the others line up directly to my side.

  I looked down over the side of the ledge, pressing my hands against the cool wooden railing as I leaned forward, and realized now why we had never seen any of the other changelings when we’d arrived – there was no way we’d be seen up here unless those looking knew exactly what to look for. We were almost directly over the opening that led out to the field, and were tucked away in a secluded corner that was mostly concealed from the ground. We could see and be seen by leaning over to look, but if we leaned back we were cloaked in shadow.

  Ai’Ilyn retreated, and I wanted nothing more than to look after her and she where she was going, but I kept my head locked in place, looking down over the side of the ledge. Her heavy footfalls moved back behind me, and stopped at the entrance of the small catacomb chamber in which we’d been stationed, watching us all.

  I cut my eyes to the side, trying my best not to show that I was looking anywhere but forward, and caught sight of Tristan toward the end of the line, sandwiched in-between Igrin and Celin. All three of them were looking down, and I started to breathe easier.

  I looked back out over the scene below us, and marveled at the spectacle.

  Just as when we’d been called a month ago, there were Fae here of every shape and size imaginable. Some of them I could pick out now: the majority of them were Ilyn of a dozen different shades, Urden hulking in the shadows, Paecsies flitting back and forth over the heads of the others, and those that I knew now must be high ranking members of the Wild Hunt – nearly fifty of them clustered around Gwyn ap Nudd, who stood head and shoulders taller than the rest, clothed once again in leather and furs that gave him the appearance of a half-man half-beast. But there were others too, some that looked like moving trees and others like strange animals, but those not native to the Bower kept to the shadows.

  Ai’Ilyn spoke from behind us, making us all flinch:

  “When the music starts, it will be hard for you to resist. You have only been here for a short time, and as such you are only slightly older than the age when the Calling has the most effect. If you are able to successfully withstand its draw, then you will be allowed to participate in the moonlight ceremony, beginning tomorrow night.”

  I saw movement from the corner of my eye and knew one or two of the others had stirred in excitement – likely Brandel among that number. Ai’Ilyn ignored them.

  “You must remain in this room,” she continued. “You will want to leave, but you must resist. You will want to fight your way past me – you must resist.”

  The room suddenly made sense – her position behind us, too.

  I began to sweat. The chamber was hot, and the heat of the gathered Fae spread out below us – there must have been thousands of them down there – was only making it worse. I started worrying about what would happen if I couldn’t resist the music, but then I remembered I’d already experienced the moonlight, which meant I was better prepared than the others. I should be –

  The music began, and my mind went blank.

  It was as beautiful as I remembered it, and, without Ai’Ilyn’s warning that we would be once again hopeless before it, I would have succumbed to its pull with laughable ease. The sound of it rose up, high and quavering, filling the room like water rushing to fill a new-made depression, and it washed over me in waves that had me thinking of the beautiful moonlight, of dancing among the other children –

  I snapped out of the trance with a strange jerk and came back to myself. Fearful, I put hands to my chest, to my stomach and then my head, trying to determine whether or not I was being affected, whether or not I was in thrall to the music still and simply didn’t know it.

  But I felt perfectly fine.

  Surprised, I forgot myself and looked toward the others, turning my whole head to do so, and it was this that might have saved Aelyn’s life.

  The girl was swaying dangerously beside me, and as I watched she placed her hands on the railing before us and lifted herself up off the floor.

  “Wait – stop!”

  She couldn’t hear me, that much was immediately clear. Her green eyes were glazed over, seeing nothing but what the music had planted in her mind, and as I watched she crouched down, readying herself to jump straight over the side.

  Instinct took over and I reacted without thinking – I reached up, grabbed the back of her shirt, and pulled with all my might. She fell backwards on top of me, and for a second I lost my breath as her weight – I was small for my age and she large – crushed me beneath her. She rolled off of me and stood, her eyes still glazed and sightless, but this time locked on Ai’Ilyn. Gasping, I levered myself to my knees just as she launched herself toward the opening.

  I threw myself in her path, wrapping her knees in my arms, and tried to tackle her. Just as I did, another form shot over the top of us, landing on her back and taking her the rest of the way to the ground; a second later, my mind caught up to my eyes and I realized it was Faolan, who’d apparently fought through his own bout of music-madness. All three of us were tangled up together, a mess of limbs and twisted clothing. There was another flash of movement off to my left – I turned and saw, but there was no time –

  “Pinur Fe, grab him!”

  Pinur Fe was himself shaking off the effects of the music, swaying slightly but with feet firmly planted. When I said his name he broke out of it altogether, just as Celin broke away from the lip of the drop and raced for Ai’Ilyn. Pinur Fe reached out almost effortlessly and grabbed Celin around the chest with one of his huge hands, pulling him back. I saw that Celin’s eyes were glazed over, and Pinur Fe saw it too. He snapped his fingers in front of the boy’s face and then lightly slapped the side of his cheek. Celin blinked a few times and then seemed to return to himself. He blushed furiously and pushed Pinur Fe’s hand off of him, then turned back to the ledge and stood, looking down at the ceremony as if daring anyone to remember that he’d tried to break away, his shoulders hunched against what he must have expected to be a disciplinary blow from Ai’Ilyn.

  Aelyn had finally calmed as well. Faolan and I climbed up off of her, and she quickly got back to her feet, brushing off the front of her clothing, until slowly she stopped and looked up. Her eyes were big and round and she seemed to be questioning how she’d gotten to be where she was.

  I looked over her shoulder and saw Ai’Ilyn watching us with stony-faced calm, but saw too that she had made no move to come forward. Faolan and I looked at each other, and then both seized one of Aelyn’s arms and dragged her back to the line. She didn’t protest, but instead seemed so relieved that she wasn’t being punished that she turned to dead weight in our hands and we had to work twice as hard to move her.

  Back in line, hearts pounding, we looked back over the side of the ledge. The music had continued to swell, and though I was no longer enthralled by it, the beauty was still heartwrenching. All of the Fae seemed to be moving to it, swaying where they stood as their voices rose up and up and up, filling the chamber, echoing the melody line that came from hidden instruments, reeds and strings and percussion.

  I felt myself swaying again and realized that I was in danger of falling back into the trance. I shook my head and snapped my eyes into focus, squinting hard, and the mind-numbing effect faded to the background, though I could feel it trying to worm its way back inside me. I looked down the line again and saw the others swaying as well, and noticed that even Faolan’s eyes were glassy.

  There was shouting from down below, distant, indistinct words that I couldn’t understand, but, before I had the chance to make them out, Aelyn stumbled backwards again. I reached for her once more, grabbing her silk clothing in a viselike grip that twisted the fabric into a hard rope in my h
and, and her eyes focused on me and cleared again. She shook her head and then pressed her hands to her ears, and I nodded.

  I saw Faolan take a step back and my heart leapt in my chest; I moved back behind the entire group, waiting to catch him, to catch any of them.

  Faolan staggered and I held out a hand for him, my body so tense waiting to react that I felt like a wrung rag tied in knots. My bare feet were well positioned on the floor, and I’d lowered my shoulders, ready to throw my slight weight against anything that came my way. I had to make sure they didn’t get through.

  Why did I care? I think it was because this was different. If they chose to run, or to disobey, then that was on them. But there was a line here for me. It was thin and vague, and maybe just too big for my ten-year-old mind to grasp, but I knew that this was different; this was something they didn’t have a choice about. They were my group – that meant I needed to help – didn’t it? Didn’t it mean – ?

  Faolan turned and took a step toward me, his eyes glassy. Two others did as well, Brandel and Gwenel, but all three of them stopped and seemed to collect themselves. Brandel shivered violently as if dunked in cold water, and Gwenel was sweating all over her face and through the heavy silk fabric of her shirt. They both came out of it with strange jerking sensations, as if they’d been pulled back by something tethering them here. Faolan’s eyes cleared a moment later, and they locked on me, the first image he saw when he came back.

  But they didn’t linger – they rose and looked up over my head. I felt a wave of fear rush through me.

  Ai’Ilyn laid a hand on my shoulder.

  I wanted to run, or turn around and fight, or maybe to throw myself over the edge of the railing to get away from her – but her hand had closed with an iron grip, and I knew I would never escape it.

  “Turn back around,” she said, and I realized she was speaking to the other children. Brandel swallowed and continued staring at me, and I realized he was still battling through the music, which was swelling even now, crescendoing as more shouts came from down below. Something was happening.

  “Turn back around,” Ai’Ilyn repeated, this time with greater force.

  My eyes were still on Faolan, pleading with him, begging him not to leave me there, but I knew there was nothing he could do. Gwenel grabbed Brandel and they both turned back, and Faolan followed them, watching me until he was forced to turn his head.

  Ai’Ilyn’s hand shifted on my shoulder, and then there was pressure on me. I found myself turning and realized she was spinning me to face her, but slowly – not using the quick, decisive motions she did when doling out punishments, but slow, easy movements that were somehow calmer.

  She knelt so that she was closer to eye-level with me, and encased both my arms in her iron hands.

  “What you’ve done will be remembered,” she said slowly, her eyes holding mine so that there was not even a thought of looking away. My breathing was harsh and shallow, and my belly was doing strange in-and-out quivers as I tried to fully catch my breath.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her, knowing somehow that she expected me to ask, maybe seeing it in her eye, in her changed persona.

  She smiled slightly, a small flaring of her lips and wrinkling of her inhuman eyes.

  “You’ve begun to prove you deserve something better.”

  I frowned, unable to understand, unable to hold back my open emotions with her here, so close, dominating me so much that I couldn’t even remember who I was. She smiled again, that small smile of excitement and promise, and then she stood and retreated to her post by the door, turning her back on me. When she was back in position, she turned toward us again, and her face was once more the contemptuous snarl of the Ilyn, only barely concealed beneath a stony façade.

  The music stopped.

  I swayed where I stood, suddenly unbalanced, and then turned back toward the ledge, shocked by how keenly I felt the music’s absence. What was happening? All of the others were leaning against the ledge now, looking over, craning to see – what?

  I moved back into position, curiosity driving me, and saw that a path had been cut through the center of the gathered Fae, and that a group of children were standing before the seat of the Erlking.

  He was just as majestic as I remembered him, and I realized he had come forward and was speaking.

  “Do any of the Fae assert prior claim?”

  It was the same question he’d asked on the night he had Called us – the same question that seemed to run around and through the gathered Fae like a heavy wind, as they each turned to look at the others among them. None of them spoke, though – the whole room had fallen silent.

  After another beat of time, Oberon nodded and opened his mouth to continue.

  “Wait!”

  The shout came from the back of the room, from a gathered group of Ilyn that stood close to the opening of the Hall. A figure detached itself from the crowd, a tall, thin Ilyn that had black coloring against the flaky white base layer. He moved forward, pushing past those in his way, his eyes fixed on the Erlking and the children. The Fae began to part before him in a wave, until his way was clear and he burst into the bubble of space around the throne.

  “I claim her,” the Ilyn said, pointing; his voice echoed clearly through the chamber. “I claim her.”

  “What claim do you lay?” Oberon asked, the question obviously part of some ritual.

  “The claim of blood, as one of the Fae.”

  “Can you prove your claim?”

  There was a brief hesitation here, and as I watched from the distance of the hall I managed to make out a sudden movement, like the Ilyn was reaching for –

  The black-and-white hand touched one of the girls in the group, brushing the hair from her face, and a flare of silver light burst from the fingers, blinding all of us. There were shouts and cries, and then the light was gone and there was nothing left but the image of the male Ilyn holding the girl by the cheek, she looking up at him with fear and wonder.

  “Your claim is proven,” Oberon said, and I realized now that there were subtle strands of anger in his voice. “She is yours – so long as you take her from this place, as is your duty.”

  “I swear to do so, Erlking,” the Ilyn said, dropping to a knee before him.

  “Then be gone,” he said, his arms held tensely by his sides.

  The Ilyn stood, head still bowed, and grabbed the girl by the arm. He turned and began to walk back down the path between the Fae, and I watched, alarmed, as they all just let him go.

  “He’s taking her,” I whispered to myself, unable to believe it.

  They walked through the opening of the Bower and disappeared. My mind began to run wild with thoughts of what might happen to her, thoughts of where he was taking her, what was going to happen. What would it be like to live with one of the Ilyn? What was he going to do to her?

  Stories I’d heard growing up of what happened to young girls in the wrong hands flashed through my mind, and I felt my stomach and hips clench, almost as if I were unconsciously trying to curl up into a ball.

  “Are there any other claimants?”

  I looked back over the ledge, up toward the Erlking, and waited along with the rest of the Fae, barely daring to breathe.

  But the silence lasted less this time before he spoke again, and I felt certain it was because he didn’t want to lose another one – didn’t want any other claims fulfilled.

  “Then they are mine.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, the music started again and I felt that familiar pull in my mind, like a hook had been sunk behind my eyeballs and was reeling me forward. I gritted me teeth so hard that my head shook, and my mind seemed to pop loose of the hook, leaving me free. I looked at the others and saw each of them doing something similar – Gwenel and Brandel both covered their ears, and Faolan and several others pinched themselves hard enough to draw blood – and then Ai’Ilyn was speaking.

  “The ceremony is over – come. It is time we ret
urn.”

  We moved jerkily away from the ledge, and, as everyone else shifted, I saw Tristan walking with stiff legs and wide eyes, blinking constantly as if having trouble seeing straight. But even this, after what I’d just seen, didn’t give the thrill of satisfaction it normally would have. Where had that Ilyn taken that girl? What was going to happen to her? How could they –?

  Ai’Ilyn put a hand to my chest, stopping me dead.

  Terror spiked my blood, racing from brain to heart to hands where it pooled and began to tingle. I looked up, wondering what I had done wrong, already tensing for a blow. But Ai’Ilyn was simply looking at me. She raised her eyes and looked behind me – I turned and saw that she was watching Faolan.

  “You are each permitted one question,” she said to the two of us. I turned back to her so fast I cricked my neck, and I felt my eyes widen until I feared they would pop out of my head. “For helping save your fellow nestlings from disgrace, and for showing how easy it is for a determined mind to resist the pull of the music, you each may ask me one question. I will answer truthfully – none of the Ilyn lie.”

  She fell silent and watched us. The sounds of the other Fae leaving the Hall drifted up over the ledge, a massive shuffling of feet and beating of wings, all sounding in counterpoint to the still-playing music that seemed not the least bit softer.

  A question. What could I ask? What did I need to ask? This might be my only chance, the only time something like this was ever offered. But what could I –?

  “What does prior claim mean?”

  I knew as I said it that it was what I needed to know. I knew somewhere in my bones that the answer to that question would settle for me once and for all how I felt about … about all of this. About everything that was happening. The answer to that question … it would tell me if I was in a nightmare or a dream.

  Ai’Ilyn watched me for a long time, and I began to fear she wouldn’t answer. My throat closed up and I willed her to speak, holding her eyes with mine, knowing that I must look frantic and pathetic, but not willing to back down.

  Finally, she pursed her lips and opened her mouth.

  “Should the Fae parent of a child wish to asset prior claim, they may do so. They are then responsible for seeing that child through to adulthood; they are responsible for tending to them, feeding them, securing their life. The child is theirs, so long as they can prove their claim.”

  I swallowed hard and felt numb.

  I looked sideways at Faolan, who’d come up beside me. His hazel eyes were hard and bright, and I knew he’d come to the same conclusion I had. We both knew what this meant, maybe had known all along. This time when he looked up at Ai’Ilyn he didn’t flinch away when she met his eyes.

  “Does that mean each of us has a Fae parent? At least one?”

  I saw a flicker of emotion tug at the corner of Ai’Ilyn’s mouth, but couldn’t make out what it was. She took another pause before answering, but shorter than before.

  “Yes.”

  I heard gasps from of the others and barely stopped myself from reacting the same way. I realized I was absently picking at a spot on my pants and stopped. I heard Ai’Ilyn tell us that we were to follow her, and then remembered nothing at all of the journey back through the Bower save for snatches of the music that seemed to chase us mockingly up through the corridors.

  I thought of the face of the girl as she’d watched with fear and awe as the Ilyn had taken her away. I thought of the anger on the Erlking’s face. I thought of the way that Ai’Ilyn’s pronouncement had startled me, and the way it had also confirmed something that I’d somehow known on a deeper level all along.

  I tried to think of what it all meant. I tried to wrap my thoughts around what it meant for me, for Mol, the girl who’d never met either of her parents, who didn’t even know for sure that the stories she’d heard of her mother’s death were true. Was her mother still alive? Had I been born and left in the other world?

  Had I been abandoned by one of the Ilyn?

  It was this thought that filled me with revulsion. It couldn’t be true, I wanted to shout, but I didn’t, because I couldn’t stop my mind there. I went deeper and realized I might be the child of one of the other Fae – one of the ones who didn’t show themselves in the light, one of the ones who lived in the deepest caverns. One of the Paecsies or the Urden, or the Caelyr –

  Some safety valve in my mind shut off the thoughts there and vented the tension out through my skin in a rush of sweat. I realized the blood had drained from my face and that I had fallen to the back of the group as we made our way through the Bower. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d continued spiraling down like that, or where I would have ended up; I don’t know if I’d ever have come out again.

  But when we reached the nestle room and Ai’Ilyn had seen us into our beds, I found myself staring up at the sloped wooden ceiling, tracing the wood grains in my mind, running through it all again.

  I should have been proud that I was able to so easily withstand the pull of the music, should have been proud that I had done something that had earned me the privilege of a question. But only one thought was going through my mind, over and over in a loop, twisting through every layer of my consciousness, crowding out any other concern:

  Had my parents been in the Bower tonight?