A lovely light, p.5
A Lovely Light, page 5
I cannot follow. Not so simply, at least. But I’ve always been the curious one, peering through this world into the next. I know the world I was taken from, know who holds my place there. A chain remains between us, a path I might follow. And her magic, greater than my own, should ease the veil’s hunger.
The door is open. The path familiar. All I need to do is call my changeling and grab hold. What choice do I have but to go back there? The dying lands: the world that Nightingale fled, that Echo ruined himself trying to avoid, that I left so long ago I hardly remember.
A world without magic, where life is short and sharp and meaningless, where the sun burns away the beauty of night.
It doesn’t matter. It can’t. Echo is there. His soul is lost. I have to do it. Eteir will be furious. But she brought him here. She told us we could live forever, that the world was a game for us to play. And then she did nothing as the magic ate his soul. Threatened to discard him when he tried to heal himself. He was never hers, not really. She brought him for me. This is my fault. But I can fix it. And I will. Even if he no longer believes I can.
CHAPTER 5
Iguess some days are just haunted. Some days start with a doppelganger in the oven and end with a debate over whether your mother, the rose bush, would be happier on the porch or in the living room.
“She’s a plant,” I told Tyson, pointing to the sliding glass door. “Plants need sunlight.”
“Yeah, but it’s Mom. She gets cold.” Tyson was a mess of scratches from carrying the rosebush from the car to my apartment, but he showed no inclination to set her down.
“Keep her inside and the dog will eat her.” For now, at least, I had it locked in my bedroom.
“And the dog is your computer?”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Maybe I should take her to my place.”
“And you’ll explain that to Grace how?”
“She’s hardly home anyway.” The rose leaves rustled as he spoke, broadcasting tension he probably thought he was hiding. Flower petals rained down on the carpet, then disappeared into pink dust.
“You two all right?”
Another rustle. “Sierra, Mom’s going to wilt.”
“Porch!” I pushed the sliding glass door open. “There’s some old tomato plants out there. You can rip them out and get her settled. I’m going to find you some bandages.”
I left him to it, the sound of his dissatisfied muttering chasing me into the bathroom. My fault, all of it. Mom. The scratches on Tyson’s arms. The awkward call he’d made to Rich, explaining that I wasn’t doing well, that Mom was staying with me. So frustratingly easy to believe.
I stood in the cool darkness of the bathroom, letting the quiet wash over me. Gone at last, the buzzing undercurrent of unspent magic, the feeling of pressure beneath my skin. The scales on my hands muffled sensation, the bathroom sink a distant chill beneath my fingertips.
I was okay. It was okay. It would all be okay.
I turned on the lights. And there she was in the mirror, waiting. No smile this time. Her hair hung lank; her eyes were red.
“Changeling,” she said.
It was not okay. We had never spoken. Never been able to speak. I’d never heard her voice, so like mine, but with an odd, lilting accent all her own.
I tensed, claws scratching the sink’s finish. Stared at her.
“Changeling?” Now she smiled, sweet and easy, put her hand up to the glass of the mirror. I could have met it with my own. I didn’t.
“How are you talking?” I asked.
“Such a welcome, sister-mine!” Her laughter was bright and bell-sweet, but a little wild. “Come now, aren’t we friends?”
“Are we?” I asked. What was I to her, but a thief? And what had she been to me, but my own personal demon? Bad luck with a face.
“Of course, we are. Who could know you better than me?”
She had a point, there. She wore my face, shared my earliest memories. And even that wasn’t quite right. She came first. Of the two of us, I was the shadow.
I looked down at my hands, scales gleaming red. Reminded myself which one of us was the monster.
“Rough day, huh?” Once again, her hand rested against the glass. Like she was reaching for me.
“Yeah.”
“Mine as well.” A harsh bark of laughter, quickly swallowed. “Want to talk about it?”
Tyson was cursing out on the deck. I knew I should call him in, let him see his real sister. Bandage the cuts he’d gotten for helping me.
I closed the bathroom door.
“Magic,” I said. “Don’t know how it is for you, but here it just makes a mess of things.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line; her gaze fell. “Here, too.”
“Great. Figures things would be bad all around.” The words came out harsher than I intended.
“Something lurking I should know about?”
“What does it matter to you?”
“Hostile!” Again, that burst of wild laughter, though her gaze was level and cold. “Not happy to see me?”
What did you want as a child? What did you desperately wish for, each time you blew out your birthday candles? A pony? A castle? Wings? And what would you do, granted them now?
She’d been my wish. My always and forever dream. To be her. Really be her. To have her world, that should have been mine. To talk to her, at least. At least that.
And now, wish granted so long after I’d moved on, I had no words.
“I just don’t understand. How are you talking? What changed? What do you want?”
Why didn’t you talk to me when I begged you to? When I was crying and desperate and the world was strange? When your face was the only thing I understood? I swallowed the questions. Choked back the anger. I had no right.
She let out her breath in a long sigh and leaned forward, her forehead and both hands on the glass. “I lost a friend today. I guess I just needed someone to talk to.”
No laughter now, the thin veneer of playfulness giving way to pain. She tried on a smile, and it hurt to see.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She was crying. Really crying. It’d been years since I’d seen her cry. And she was right there, but impossibly far away.
I remembered Fiona, sobbing in my office. I hadn’t dared let her touch me. But this, the mirror between us, was different. I couldn’t touch her. And that made it safe.
I stepped toward the mirror and set my hands, ruined though they were, against hers. Almost, I imagined I could feel the heat of her palms.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Me too.”
The mirror rippled like water; her reflection gone strange. And her fingers were around my wrists, real and solid and pulling me toward her.
I was falling. Dancing. Breaking apart. I saw myself repeated a thousand times over. Sometimes, I looked like her. Sometimes, like me. Sometimes I was a monster, red scaled, wreathed in flame.
I tried screaming but couldn’t hear my voice. Her laughter echoed on and on.
And I was me again, and she was her. She was standing in my bathroom. And I was... somewhere else.
“What—Wait—What are you doing?” I reached toward the mirror, even as she backed away. It didn’t give at my touch.
“Nothing personal,” she said. “My friend, he’s here. He needs my help. And I needed a bridge. You should be grateful. Changelings aren’t generally allowed to visit Faerie.”
“Wait!” I raised my fist to the mirror, thought better of it. “Please. Just put me back.”
“You should be safe enough, until I’ve concluded my errands. Stay out of Eteir’s way. Tell Nightingale I’m bringing Echo home.”
Meaningless names and reassurances. The mirror nipped at my fingertips, ice cold. The scales were gone. I was shivering.
She was walking away.
“Don’t do this to me.”
“It’s what you’re for, changeling.” All the warmth had left her voice. All the playful teasing. The sorrow, though, that lingered. “You take my place. Do your job.”
And then all I could see was my face.
For too long, I sat there beside her mirror, shivering. Stared and stared and stared at my reflection, waiting for her to return.
The room wasn’t like any I’d seen her in. The walls and floor were white marble, veins of gold shining in a dim, sourceless light. The only furniture was a large, four-poster bed, the canopy curtains made of some thin, shimmering material, the mattress heaped high with furs. The cold permeated everything. It hurt to breathe, and I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering.
Had Tyson found her yet? Had he swept her up into a hug, welcomed her home? How long before she replaced me among them? How long until I lost my job?
I would not stay here. I would not.
I made myself stand. My knees threatened to lock, and I gripped the frame of her mirror, while the room spun. I told myself I shouldn’t be scared. This had been my world, hadn’t it?
I was from here. I would survive. And I would go home.
Stumbling, shivering, I made my way to her bed. Lifted one of the great, heavy furs, softer than anything I’d ever touched, and wrapped it around my shoulders. It gleamed, ebony and russet in the faint light, and I had to admit, it was beautiful. Even the room, stark and cold, had a strange, perfect loveliness, the full moon pouring in the open window.
The fur smelled sweet. Distant, unfamiliar music drifted in the window.
I could do this. I was used to dealing with the impossible.
Cupping my hands, I breathed warmth into my fingertips, trying to get my shivering under control. Warm. Think warm.
A shiver of power, leaving me. A whoosh of displaced air, then a crackling heat and merry, orange light. Fire danced brightly in a fireplace that hadn’t existed a second before. The mantle was stone, carved with dragons, which never seemed to be in the same position between glances.
I stepped closer, and the chill retreated as if by magic. Indeed, certainly by magic, my skin suffused with a cozy, comforting warmth. I let the fur drop to the floor. My hands, so recently returned to normal, shone with scales again. This was my magic. But how could it be mine, this comfortable, benign manifestation? When had my powers ever reflected my desires?
Still, the fire burned on. And I stood there, soaking up the heat, running through what had been said between us, trying to find a path home in her words.
The door slammed open, tearing me from the cycle of my thoughts.
“What the hell, Rumor?” The woman in the doorway looked almost normal at first glance. A worn utility jacket and jeans. Long dark hair, worn loose to her waist. Then she stepped into the light. Golden filigree covered her skin, twists and swirls from her fingertips to her face. The markings were too metallic for a tattoo, and I saw a spiral at her cheek unfurl like a plant reaching for the sun. “You think you’re Dr. Frankenstein now? Think you can—”
She must have finally gotten a good look at me. She stopped talking, her eyes going wide. Then she laughed, a low, acid chuckle. She sounded dangerous. Looked like a dream: dark eyes and black lipstick. A feral smile.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “Fuck. She didn’t. She did, didn’t she? You poor sucker, you. How’d she manage to get you to do it? How’d she manage it, for that matter?”
And for all the lack of specificity, I knew what she meant. What else could she mean?
“She just grabbed me,” I said. “Through the mirror.”
“Great. No. Seriously. Great. This is what we need. A changeling in Faerie. Why not?”
“I’m from here,” I objected. “Originally, I mean.”
Another laugh, and she patted me roughly on the shoulder, ignoring my flinch. “Oh, honey. No. If you think this is a family reunion with all your little changeling friends, you are about to be all sorts of heartbroken.”
“I just want to get back.”
That seemed to please her, the sly sharpness of her smile easing into something a little less like a knife.
“Good. Back is good. Back I can work with. Maybe.”
“You mean you can help?” I tried not to sound too much like I was begging. But I was begging.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But I’m guessing I’m stuck with you, for the next little while.” She extended her hand, grabbing mine before I had a chance to refuse. The filigree on her palm was smooth and icy, her fingertips rough as they brushed my skin. “I go by Nightingale. And what do you call yourself, changeling?”
“My name’s Sierra.”
Her eyebrows rose, a fine arc of surprise, an eyebrow ring flashing on her left. Her ears, too, were pierced, the left one glittering with an abundance of silver, the right almost bare, a dangling plastic guitar pick the only exception. Not exactly the gauze-winged faerie I’d imagined meeting.
“True names are currency here.” Her lips pressed in a thin, perfect line, before cutting into a smile. “But then it wouldn’t be yours, would it, changeling? Sierra, then. We can work with that.”
I’d never thought of my name as anyone’s but mine. Never thought of who I might be, if not Sierra. But she was right. I wasn’t the one my parents had named, the one it was meant to belong to.
“What does she call herself?” I asked, swallowing the desire to defend myself.
“You mean original flavor you? We call her Rumor.”
Rumor. A name for her, at last. The one who’d grown up beside me, whose unexpected smile always meant my luck was turning for the worse. The one who’d called me sister-mine, then dragged me into this place. Rumor had trapped me here. Nightingale wanted to send me back. Of the two, I knew which was my ally, no matter the sardonic edge to her smile.
“She said she was looking for someone. Echo. She told me to tell you that.”
“Idiot.” Nightingale brushed past me to stand before the warm glow of the fireplace. “Not you. Her. Echo’s dead.”
“Oh.” I’d assumed Rumor’s tears were just part of her trick. Maybe not. It didn’t matter. She’d done what she’d done. “But—Then what’s she looking for? Why’d she do this to me?”
Nightingale held her hands to the fire, giving a little sigh of delight. “This your work?”
“I guess. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“Don’t worry about that. This is Faerie, not Hogwarts. Magic isn’t a formula; it’s a point of view.”
“That doesn’t really clear things up.” I moved to stand near her, allowing enough space that she couldn’t easily reach out and grab me again. “Look, Nightingale. I’m not really here to learn about Faerie or magic. All I need is a way home. Jesus, I have classes to teach tomorrow. Can you help me?”
“Nope.” Just that as she leaned into the fire’s warmth, eyes closing like a contented cat’s.
Well, there went my hope of an ally. Did she hate all changelings, or had I somehow managed to offend her in our brief acquaintance? Well, let her hate me. It’d be stupid to try to impress her, to make things right. I’d be gone soon. Somehow.
“Fine. Then who can?”
“Make some chairs,” she said, not opening her eyes.
“What?”
“Make some chairs. I can’t do magic.”
I wasn’t sure I could either. Not on purpose, anyway. Probably best not to admit that. “Why?”
“I am warm. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt warm. And you are adorably ignorant. If we’re going to have story time, I’m not going to do it sitting on the bare floor.” She opened her eyes at last, deep brown and unwavering as they met my own. “C’mon, changeling. Think chair thoughts.”
I did as she asked. I thought dining room chairs and overstuffed recliners, fancy leather numbers with their brass studs, computer chairs, love seats. I thought chairs, and for the first time since I’d, all innocence, turned the family dog into a unicorn, I reached into myself, calling the monster up. Inviting it out to play. A dizzying eager rush, my skin burning, and—
“Easy, tiger.” Nightingale’s laughter, a musical fall of sound, with just a touch of panic.
I pulled in, pulled back, looking instinctively at my hands first, the familiar climb of scales. I folded my hands behind my back. And then—
Chairs. Dozens and dozens of chairs. Chairs sitting in neat conversational rings. Chairs stacked on chairs in sculptural, impossibly balanced displays. Every chair I’d thought of and plenty that I hadn’t. A chandelier of chairs hung from the ceiling, legs burning like candles.
“Oh.”
“Might need to work on the volume knob, changeling.” She patted one of a pair of armchairs, set close to the fire. “Still, it works. Get cozy. I’m going to tell you a story. Rumor says we’re good at that.”
So, I sat, and I listened. She told me of the courts. Of Susaire, the selkie queen, and Roic, lord of the Ravens. Of Eteir, whose court she and Rumor belonged to. Eteir who I’d seen, if only once. Picking up Rumor and holding her close. Leaving me behind.
She told me of Echo, drunk on Faerie blood. Rumor, Eteir’s favorite, desperate to save her lover. She told me of Whisper, more cat than boy. Of Jest, who I should avoid, and Banter, who was pretty but not nearly enough trouble to be fun. She told me that magic was poison, and magic was the air we breathed. She said she’d come to Faerie, left, and come back again. And then she said there was nothing she could do to help me.
“Humans don’t cross the veil on their own. Even most fae can’t manage it. Otherwise, we’d have dragons roosting on the White House lawn or something. And every starry-eyed kid who’d ever read about magic would be crashing their way into Faerie.”
“But there’s got to be a way. She did it.”
“Yeah, well, blood sacrifice seems to help. Echo’s the one who opened a door, Rumor just crossed through before it closed.” She’d perched on the edge of her chair, one knee up, chin resting on top. “Don’t get any ideas, changeling. Eteir won’t take kindly to someone killing her mortals.”
