A Local Habitation (50 page)
Read A Local Habitation Online
Authors: Seanan McGuire
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Mystery fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fiction - Fantasy, #Science Fiction And Fantasy, #American Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Fantasy - General, #Fairies, #Women private investigators
Sylvester called a month after I walked out. I hadn’t seen or heard from anyone at Shadowed Hills during that time; not even Quentin. Not until the day I came home from following a cheating wife and found the message on my answering machine. “The funeral will be held at our estate in the Summerlands on the new moon. Please come.” That was all he needed to say—I ran away from him once, but now, I always come when he calls. Gordan was right about that much. When you get right down to it, I’m Sylvester’s dog.
Quentin called the next day, asking nervously if he could escort me to the funeral. I said yes. What choice did I have? If he needed to see me half as much as I suddenly needed to see him, refusing would have been cruel. We agreed to meet at the Japanese Tea Gardens and walk from Lily’s knowe to the edges of the Torquill estate. I wasn’t ready to go back inside the knowe at Shadowed Hills. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
The day of the funeral dawned bright and clear. I met Quentin in the Tea Gardens five minutes after I’d said I’d be there. His arm was in a sling, and he was wearing a black doublet and hose that made him look like Hamlet’s forgotten younger brother. A don’t-look-here spell shielded him from tourists, eliminating the need for a mortal disguise; anyone watching saw me smile and link arms with nothing, then climb the garden’s tallest suspension bridge. If they watched closely enough, they may have even seen me disappear. I don’t think anyone saw. People almost never look that closely.
We walked through Lily’s knowe, stepping out the back gate into the Summerlands. All the glory of the endless Faerie summer was on display, and I stopped, catching my breath. I’ve been living in the mortal world too long, and it takes time for me to adjust. Summerlands air is too clean for lungs accustomed to modern pollution, and the constantly changing twilit sky disorients me. I still love those lands, but they’re not home anymore, if they ever really were.
The sky was the color of burnished amber, and the hills were bright with flowers. I picked a blue daisy, and smiled as it dissolved into a dozen tiny butterflies. The Summerlands are like that. Logic is just a convenience there; change is the only constant, and even that’s false, because the Summerlands are founded on the concept that life—our life, the life of Faerie—can last forever. They’re wild and strange and slowly dying. They weren’t the first home of my people. They’ll almost certainly be the last.
I was a child in the Summerlands. I won’t say I grew up there, but I was a child there, and they’ll always be a part of me. They have a lot in common with stories of Never-Never Land—no one there grows up, just older. Faerie is a world filled with eternal children, forever looking for the next game and never quite learning what adult life is like. That’s what we learn from the mortal world.
Quentin watched me, frowning at this odd frivolity. He was as serious as he’d been when we met; he’d lost a lot of the ground he’d worked so hard to gain. I could understand why: part of his innocence was gone forever, and while I hated the way he’d lost it, I couldn’t say I was sorry it was lost. We all have to learn that leaving the Summerlands means leaving the nursery; he’d grow up or he’d die. Maybe that’s cruel . . . but that’s the world.
I straightened, wiping the pollen off my fingers. “Come on. We need to get moving.”
“Of course,” he said, and followed me across the fields toward a spiraling rose-colored tower. It was like something from a fairy tale, all spun sugar and elegance, and we reached it faster than perspective indicated we should.
The gardens around the tower were a maze of greenery and untended roses. I led Quentin through them, stopping at a tiny door almost concealed behind a wishing well. He looked at it, frowning.
“You know your way around pretty well,” he said.
“I should.” I pressed my hand against the door. It swung open and I smiled sadly. At least the house still knew me. “I used to live here.”
“Will your . . .”
“Don’t worry, Quentin. My mother’s out.” She’s been out for a long time now. No one knows exactly when Amandine went crazy; she collapsed a few years after I vanished, moving into an internal world far stranger than the Summerlands. She doesn’t spend much time in the tower anymore. Most reports place her wandering endlessly through forests and standing, motionless, at crossroads.
I wish I knew what she was looking for.
“I’m sorry,” he said, subdued. “I didn’t think.”
“It’s not your fault.” I stepped inside, motioning for him to follow.
Amandine’s tower has no mortal aspect: you can only get there via the Summerlands. I led Quentin through the gallery and up the stairs to my suite. My door was still closed, sealed with the wards I set on my last visit. Amandine was the only one who could open that door without breaking my wards, and she never would; my rooms would stay the same until the end of time unless I chose to change them. There was something reassuring and deeply sad in that thought. We stopped in what had been my living room; it was almost as large as my entire mortal apartment. Quentin looked around wide-eyed, air of sophistication fading as he took in the high windows and tapestry-draped walls.
“This is really nice,” he said, sounding surprised.
“I suppose. Can you wait here? I need to change.” We were only visiting the tower so I could raid my own wardrobe. I had nothing suitable in the mortal realm, and I didn’t trust my magic to obey me well enough to keep me properly dressed for the entire funeral.
“Sure. But . . . why don’t you live here anymore?”
“Quentin? If you don’t already know the answer, there’s no way I can explain.” I walked through the door into the bedroom and closed it behind me, leaving him alone.
My old bedroom isn’t large, but it’s the only room in the tower that looks like it’s been lived in. The bed grew to match me as I aged, and the shelves lining the walls are still piled with small, interesting items collected from the forests and fields nearby. I never cared much for toys after I came to live in the Summerlands, but I always loved running and finding things out. Everything I loved went into that room, right up until the day I left it.
The wardrobe doors came open at the touch of my hand, spreading to show a rainbow of gowns. Most of them were designed for a young girl I don’t remember being and may never have been at all. They were made of things both wild and strange: butterfly wings and cobweb silk, peacock feathers and dragon’s scales. Faerie clothing is a bit like Japanese cooking—we use what we have. Amandine always chose the wildest dresses she could for me, putting me in colors that brought out the mortal tints of my skin and hair. It was a long time before I realized that was what she was doing. I’m still not sure why she did it.
The dress I was looking for was hidden in the back of the wardrobe, buried under the brighter gowns. It was made of dark gray velvet trimmed with slightly paler silk roses; I wore it to a ball in the Coblynau caverns when I was eleven years old. Amandine brought me with her, a small, half-mortal accessory for a haunted evening. I remember that they lit the darkest corners of their halls with jack-o’-lanterns and sparks of gleaming mist, and that the Candela came with their globes of dancing flame, and that when I danced with the master of the mine, his smile was kind. I remember.
The dress fit like it had been sized for me the day before. Faerie tailoring fits forever, no matter how much you change. I looked down at myself, swishing my skirt back and forth, and looked away. I’ll always be Amandine’s daughter. No matter how far I run, Faerie catches up with me in the end.
Quentin was staring up at one of the tapestries when I stepped out of the room, closing the door behind myself. I cleared my throat. He jumped.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s time.”
Amandine’s estate borders Shadowed Hills on the far southern side. Distances are smaller in the Summerlands: it took less than twenty minutes for us to walk to a place that I knew was more than an hour’s drive from where we’d started. The grove where the funeral was to be held was at the heart of the family forest. It took another twenty minutes to navigate the paths through the forest. Long dresses weren’t designed for walking in the woods. My mother could’ve made the walk without stumbling; she fits into the world that well, even insane. That’s what it means to be a pureblood. I stumble and fall, and I always get up and keep going. That’s what it means to be a changeling.
The grove was filling when we arrived. They were coming from all directions, meeting and falling silent: no one knew what they were supposed to say or feel. Pureblood wakes are things of deep, bitter mourning, but they exist for the living. Human funerals are sadder, holding a mixture of sorrow, relief, and terror, and they’re held for the dead. Jan was a pureblood, but her funeral would be the first of its kind in living memory. That made it a changeling affair, mixing two worlds that didn’t understand each other, and didn’t want to. I think she would’ve liked that.
A pyre of oak, ash, and rowan boughs stood at the center of the clearing, piled in imitation of a phoenix nest and covered with a white silk sheet. Jan was at the center, hands folded over her midriff. They’d dressed her in a long red-and-gold gown that brought out the highlights in her hair and concealed her wounds. I winced when I saw her. All the obvious signs of who she’d been were gone, leaving only what she
was
. Pureblood. Daoine Sidhe. Fallen. That wasn’t even half of her, but it was all she had left, and all she could take with her to the grave.
was
. Pureblood. Daoine Sidhe. Fallen. That wasn’t even half of her, but it was all she had left, and all she could take with her to the grave.
Quentin stopped beside me. “She looks like she’s sleeping.”
“I know.” Fae flesh doesn’t rot. She looked like she should wake up and demand to know where her glasses were. She wasn’t going to. Even if the process was eventually reversed and the other casualties of ALH brought back to life, Jan was gone forever. Thanks to Gordan, she wouldn’t even have the dubious immortality of the night-haunts. For the first time in centuries, a child of Faerie was genuinely lost.
Sylvester and Luna stood by the pyre, hands locked together. Luna nodded to me as we entered, one ear flattening in silent greeting. I curtsied deeply in reply, and then walked to the opposite side of the grove, standing in the shadow of the trees. Quentin followed. After a moment, Luna patted Sylvester on the arm and murmured something in his ear before walking over to join us.
“My Lady,” I said. Quentin bowed.
“Toby—Quentin,” she said, and offered a small, sad smile. “You’re well?”
“As well as can be expected,” I said.
“Good. We were worried.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll come visit soon.” She probably knew I was lying. I didn’t care.
“Good. And Toby . . . he’s not angry. You did the best you could. Both of you.” She smiled again and turned, walking back to her husband.
I suppressed a bitter smile as I watched her go. If ALH was us doing our best, I never wanted to see our worst. Quentin’s expression looked as conflicted as mine felt, and I was willing to bet that his thoughts were running along the same lines as my own.
Letting my eyes drift across the crowd, I froze, my stomach dropping as I saw a flash of silver-blonde hair attached to a willowy woman in a tattered green-and-brown dress. “Mom . . . ?”
“Toby, what—”
“Wait here,” I said, and started across the grove, yanking my dress up around my knees to keep myself from stumbling. Several people shot startled glances in my direction at my lack of decorum, but no one stopped me. It didn’t matter.
By the time I reached the place where I thought I’d seen my mother, she was gone.
Quentin came running up behind me, wide-eyed and bewildered as he said, “Why did you run off like that?”
“I thought I saw someone,” I said, closing my eyes and sighing. “Somebody I knew. Guess I was wrong.”
“Oh,” said Quentin, and quieted.
We were still standing there, silent, when a voice spoke behind me. “Please do not jump or scream or make any other exclamations of surprise. I am very tired.”
The voice was almost familiar: female and slightly flat, like it had been run through a synthesizer. But it was an adult voice, not a child’s. I turned. “Hello, April.”
“Hello.” April had changed in the last month, going from a teenager to someone that could have been Jan’s twin, if you ignored the blonde hair and too-perfect skin. When she grew up, she grew up fast. She was wearing a black dress made of some glittering material that I suspected was actually solid light. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Quentin was gaping. I understood the impulse.
“We couldn’t miss it,” I said. “I didn’t think we’d see you here.”
“Elliot has used my mother’s notes to establish a portable server unit. It only works for short periods, but it expands my range of motion considerably.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“April?” Quentin asked, wide-eyed.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled sadly. I looked at her expression, and realized she’d had a crush on him at ALH. Had; past tense. However strong it might have been, it was over now.
She’d outgrown him.
“It’s good to see you,” he said.
Elliot walked up behind her, leaning on his cane. He looked battered, but at least he was moving. “Toby,” he said.
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