Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

  “You really don’t have to cancel your plans,” I told him. “I’m not a child in need of a nanny. I’ll be fine on my own.”

  For an awful moment, I worried that he might actually take me up on that, but he mercifully shook his head.

  “It’s fine,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “I was going to end things with her anyway. You’re just giving me a day’s reprieve on that unpleasant conversation, and Morgana gloating that she told me so.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll mind if you faint from hunger halfway up the mountain. You haven’t eaten anything.”

  I looked down at my plate, which was still piled high with fruit and pastries. The others all devoured their breakfast, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a bite. Hungry as I was, the stories I’d heard about fay food lingered in my mind. How it could turn you loopy and delirious. How, with fay food, there never seemed such a thing as too much, and humans had a tendency to gorge themselves to death. The apple I cut into looked as normal as anything I’d find in Albion, though brighter and crisper than I thought possible. I blinked hard, half expecting it to turn to rot before my eyes, but it didn’t. The pastries were just flaky layers of dough crusted with violet and rose sugars—inordinately pretty, but normal enough.

  “Are you . . . checking for poison?” Lancelot asked me, watching as I poked and prodded at a rose pastry. I didn’t know him well enough then to tell if he was amused or simply thought me an idiot.

  I bit my lip. “In Albion there are stories about fay food being enchanted,” I admitted.

  “In Avalon, we say that human food tastes of dirt,” he replied, a touch of scorn in his voice that rubbed me the wrong way.

  “Food is food,” I told him. “Some of it is good, some of it not. I don’t think any of it tastes like dirt, though.”

  He leaned back again, looking a bit disappointed, though I wasn’t sure why. “Well, our food isn’t enchanted. Can’t say the same for the water, though, so I’d recommend staying clear of that.”

  I gaped at my water goblet—the only thing I’d trusted enough to try. After all, water was only ever water—except in Avalon, apparently.

  Lancelot managed to hold on to his somber expression for another few seconds before breaking into laughter. “Oh, you should have seen your face,” he said. “The water’s fine, and so is the food.”

  I felt my cheeks warm, though I tried to hide it by taking another sip of my water. I still couldn’t bring myself to put a morsel of food into my mouth, though, which Lancelot noticed.

  “You’re going to have to eat eventually,” he pointed out.

  Hesitantly, I speared a violet pastry petal with my fork and lifted it to my lips. The sugar crystals melted against my tongue, and I realized they not only looked like violets but tasted like them as well—or at least how they smelled, since I’ve never thought to eat a violet myself. But somehow, with the buttery pastry flaking and the generous coating of sugar, the violet tasted like a treat of its own.

  When I swallowed, I realized Lancelot was still watching me, waiting for my reaction. I took a moment to ponder the flavor and textures. I’d had hundreds of pastries in my life, but I had never had one quite like that.

  I lifted my napkin to dab at the corners of my mouth.

  “I suppose I understand why the fey think human food tastes like dirt,” I told him. “It’s edible, but nothing like that.”

  I went to spear another piece of it when Lancelot’s laughter stopped me. The more he laughed, the less I found I liked it. He wasn’t laughing with me, the way Morgana did. He was laughing at me. It reminded me of how Morgause and her friends laughed at me, and I felt myself shrink.

  “You look so funny with your fork and knife,” he said, folding his arms over his chest.

  I looked down at my utensils and back at him, failing to grasp what was funny. I knew that I was holding them right—I had taken etiquette lessons at the palace for the last four years. Seeing my confusion, he shook his head.

  “I’ve just never seen anyone eat like that, apart from things like meat.” He unfurled his arms and reached for a pastry with his hands, breaking off a corner and popping it into his mouth with only his fingers before brushing the crumbs off onto the table. “It’s a bit easier,” he said after he swallowed.

  I frowned, watching him. My mother would have fainted if she saw him eat with his hands like that—and if she saw me do it, it would simply kill her. That wasn’t the reason I held tight to my fork and knife, though. It did appear easier, and a quick look around the table confirmed that everyone else was eating with their fingers as well. But I purposefully speared another piece of pastry on my fork because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  26

  IT’S A STRANGE thing—I haven’t called Shalott home in more than a decade now, but as soon as we cross the river that separates my father’s domain from Tintagel, my blood begins to thrum through my veins like a lullaby, sung in my mother’s voice. The air tastes different here—familiar, in a way, though I can’t put my finger on exactly what about it I recognize. All I know is that it smells like picnics in the meadow, my brothers laughing nearby, my father’s deep voice chiding them to behave, my mother’s cool fingers combing through my hair.

  “Welcome home, Elaine,” Arthur says to me when we stand together on Shalott’s side of the river. The others are behind us, coaxing the horses across, but all my attention is focused ahead. The rolling green hills, the open skies the color of lapis, the thick patches of white lilies that stretch over the landscape.

  Lily, my father would call me, after the flower on our family’s sigil. The first daughter born in my family in generations. Lily, my mother said the night before I left, in the middle of her rambling, raving prophecy. My Lily Maid will scream and cry. She’ll break them both and then she’ll die.

  I shake my head, clearing away my mother’s voice like cobwebs and turn to Arthur. “It’s not home, though,” I say. “Not really. I spent only a few years here. Avalon is home.”

  But even as I say it, I wonder how true the words are. Yes, Avalon is the first place that comes to mind when I think of home, but standing here on this shore, I can’t deny the tug of yearning in my heart, the breath of relief I feel in my whole body, the sense of peace that can only accompany a homecoming.

  “You can have more than one home,” Arthur says. “Are you ready to see your father?”

  I open my mouth and then close it again. I don’t know how to explain, even to Arthur, that my nerves aren’t about seeing my father, or my brothers for that matter. It isn’t about whom I will be seeing again at all, it’s whom I won’t be. It’s the fact that my mother’s ghost will linger in this place, just as she lingers in the tower at Camelot. But this time, I will see that ghost in people instead of stone; I will see her lingering behind my father’s eyes, in my brothers’ smiles.

  That is what I’m not ready for. That’s what I’ll never be ready for.

  “It’s been a long time,” I say instead. “He’s a stranger to me, and I to him. What do you say to a stranger that shares your blood?”

  As soon as I ask the question, I wish I could take it back. Arthur’s parents were both strangers, and he never got the chance to say anything at all to them.

  But he smiles slightly at me, one corner of his mouth rising higher than the other. “I don’t know, El,” he says. “But I suppose you have to start with hello.”

  * * *

  I DON’T REMEMBER SHALOTT being very heavily populated—especially when compared to Camelot—but when we cross over the moat and into the village that surrounds the castle, the streets are crowded with too many people to count, cheering our arrival. Parents hold small children on their shoulders to see; men and women wave and shout.

  “Quite a welcome for you,” I say to Arthur as we
ride in, our horses keeping pace with each other. “I assumed that people would wait to meet you before deciding to oppose Mordred, but perhaps tales of your valor have preceded us.”

  Arthur looks at me, both amused and bemused. “They aren’t shouting for me, El,” he says with a laugh. “They’re shouting for you.”

  Once he says it, I listen closer. It’s hard to hear much of anything in the din of cheers, but there it is—“Lady Elaine,” they shout, over and over. Some even cry out that old nickname, Lily Maid.

  “The prodigal daughter returns,” Morgana adds from behind us, her voice carrying over the crowd.

  Heat rises to my cheeks as I look around. I left here a wallflower of a child—surely not one to be missed by anyone, and yet . . .

  “Go on and wave,” Arthur says, grinning now. “Isn’t that what you always tell me? Wave and smile at your admirers.”

  My face grows even hotter at that, but I do as he says and raise my hand. The movement feels jerky and unnatural to me—how does Arthur always manage it so gracefully?—but I do my best. After only a few minutes, my arm begins to ache. Arthur must see the strain in my smile because he laughs.

  “Not as easy as it looks, is it?” he asks.

  I turn to retort, but before I can, my eyes catch on the stairs leading up to the palace, where the crowd clears to reveal a mere handful of figures dressed in pale blue—Shalott Blue—standing in wait as we approach.

  My father is older than I remember him, which I expected, but he is sharper too. As if my memory exists only in the background of my life, blurry and out of focus. His face is broad and weather-beaten, with deep lines around his bright blue eyes and smiling mouth. When his eyes find mine, his smile widens and he lifts his hand in a wave.

  I suppose you have to start with hello, Arthur said, and I know he’s right. So I wave back.

  When we reach the castle steps, Arthur dismounts and hands me down from my horse first so that I can lead our procession up the steps.

  As I walk, I lift my dress so I don’t trip over it, though it’s also an excuse to drop my gaze and focus on the stones beneath my feet instead of my forgotten family waiting. When I do force myself to look up, though, I find my father walking toward me as well, throwing all decorum to the wind.

  When we meet in the middle, he smiles at me, and that smile works its way into my blood, familiar and kind.

  “Elaine.” He says my name like he is giving thanks to a deity. “I feared you were lost to us.”

  The confession knocks the breath from me. “But you must have gotten my letter—”

  “I did,” he says. “But after all these years and no word . . . we began to think the worst. And your mother . . .”

  It pains him to talk about her, even after all these years. I understand—it pains me too. Before he can say more, I place a hand on his arm.

  “I’m here,” I tell him. “I’m sorry you worried.”

  He pauses, looking me over. “And to think,” he says with a laugh, shaking his head. “When you sent word you were coming home, I imagined I would be greeting the same child I saw last. You’ve grown up.”

  “Yes,” I say, squeezing his arm. “But I am so happy to see you again.”

  He takes me by the shoulders and folds me into his embrace, kissing me on the forehead before pulling back.

  “Welcome home, Elaine,” he says before holding his arm out to me. I take it and let him lead me up the rest of the steps, my friends and the knights trailing behind me as we make our way up to the small group gathered.

  My father makes introductions quickly—my brothers, Torre and Lavaine, who are now in their late twenties, with beards and wives and children.

  Torre steps forward to embrace me first, but when I step into his arms, he ruffles my hair, and that simple gesture sends me back in time, and, without thinking about it, I bat his arm away playfully, making him laugh.

  “You haven’t changed at all, Elaine,” he says, stepping back to introduce his wife, Irina, a reed-thin woman with a guarded expression, her pale blond hair pulled back in a tight braid. When Torre gestures toward her, though, she smiles warmly and steps forward to kiss me on each cheek while holding an infant bundled in her arms so that all I can see is a small pink face with round cheeks and wide eyes that find mine and hold my gaze.

  “And our son, Hal,” Torre continues, gesturing to the baby.

  Lavaine is next, his embrace tighter than my father’s or Torre’s. He hugs me so hard I feel like my bones might break, but I hold him back just as tightly. He towers over everyone else—taller even than Lancelot behind me—and after a second, he lifts me off the ground so my legs dangle.

  “Good to see you, Little Lily,” he says when he sets me back down, his grin mischievous. He gestures to the woman behind him with deep ochre skin and black hair done in two braids that loop over her ears. Her swollen belly pushes against the flowing silk of her gown—I’m surprised she’s out of bed in her condition; she looks ready to give birth at any moment. “This is my wife, Demelza,” he says.

  Demelza beams at me, stepping toward me with outstretched arms and a wide smile, pulling a girl of about six with her, clinging to her skirts and watching me with somber dark brown eyes. Though they are her mother’s eyes, not my brother’s blue ones, there is something unmistakably familiar about her.

  “I am so glad to have another sister,” Demelza says as she hugs me. When she pulls back, she takes hold of her daughter’s hand and tugs her forward. “And this is your niece, Mathilde.”

  The name catches me off guard, stealing the breath from my lungs. I look to Lavaine to find him watching me.

  “After Mother,” he says when my eyes find his. “We thought it a fitting tribute.”

  “If this one’s a girl, we’ve been planning on calling her Elaine,” Demelza says, one hand resting on top of her stomach.

  “I’m sure Mother would have been honored,” I say when I find my voice. “Just as I would be. Thank you.”

  I look down at the small girl with her fearful eyes and my mother’s name, something I can’t place tugging at my mind. She looks at me like she recognizes me, her brow furrowed as her eyes scan my features, as if I am a puzzle she is trying to put together. It’s a look I recognize—one I know I’ve given people myself.

  Before I can follow that thought, though, Arthur clears his throat behind me and I remember myself. I look over my shoulder at Arthur and his knights, Lancelot standing on one side of him, Morgana on the other.

  What do we look like to my father? I wonder. After two days of riding and a night spent in the woods, all of us look a little worse for wear—more akin to a band of rough nomads than a royal procession. I turn back to my father and gesture at my friends.

  “And it is my honor to present His Royal Highness, Prince Arthur of Camelot and Albion, along with his sister Lady Morgana of Tintagel, and his loyal band of knights.”

  “Your Highness,” my father says, his voice low. He wastes no time in dropping into a bow—not the shallow, effortless dipping of the head the courtiers at Camelot did, though—a surface courtesy and nothing more—no, my father bows deeply at the waist until his back is parallel to the ground. An instant later, my brothers follow suit, and Irina and Demelza drop into deep curtsies—or at least as deep as they can manage with a child in Irina’s arms and another in Demelza’s belly.

  “Rise, please,” Arthur says, glancing at me with discomfort plain in his eyes. He steps toward my father and holds out a hand, which my father takes in both of his. “Your daughter has been an invaluable friend and adviser over the last ten years, and it is truly an honor to meet you,” Arthur continues. “I thank you for your hospitality on this leg of my quest.”

  My father lowers his head over Arthur’s hand before rising and clapping Arthur on the shoulder, a gesture that strikes me as familiar—the way a father might gree
t a son. The others rise as well in my father’s wake.

  “You have my support and the support of my family, both in your pursuit of your throne and anything else you may require. Whatever you ask of Shalott, you shall have it, Your Highness,” my father says, his eyes darting to me for an instant before finding Arthur again. “I hope that you enjoy our hospitality tonight. We’ve prepared quite a feast for you and your brave men, to show you the best Shalott has to offer. It is the least we can do for you after bringing my daughter—Shalott’s greatest treasure—back home to me.”

  My father looks at me again, his gaze tender, and I try to smile back, but something has lodged in the pit of my stomach that makes it difficult to smile or even to breathe.

  Shalott’s greatest treasure. Grateful as I am to be with my father and brothers again, I’ve no desire to be their treasure or anyone else’s. Maybe, in another life, I would have been exactly that. I would have grown up here, content and happy. But I am not that girl.

  * * *

  AS MY FATHER leads our group inside the castle, Morgana appears at my side, linking her arm through mine and leaning in to whisper in my ear.

  “Your father does know you aren’t staying, doesn’t he?” she asks.

  I’d had the same thought. With all his talk of my return and welcoming me home and thanking Arthur for bringing me back, I wonder if he thinks I mean to settle here. And if he does . . . how will I be able to explain to him that I don’t mean to stay any longer than Arthur does—just for the night? Arthur needs me, after all.

  And what of your father? a voice whispers in my mind. Doesn’t he need you as well?

  “I don’t know,” I tell Morgana, biting my lip. “I’ll talk with him about it later. Once we’re settled and we can speak privately.”

  I hesitate, thinking about the girl—Mathilde—and the nagging feeling that hasn’t gone away since I saw her. That frightened expression, the way she looked at me . . . like she knew me somehow, like I knew her even though neither of those things were possible. But they are—I know that better than anyone.