Copper Girl (21 page)

Mom and Sadie descended the dark basement steps as Micah, Max, and I turned to leave. Max swiped the picture of the three of us as kids, lounging under the fairy tree, but I didn’t call him on the theft. I was glad someone had remembered it.

Once we were outside, Micah wrapped his arm around my waist and Max threw some daggers with his eyes. This overprotective brother crap was getting real old, real fast, but I knew better than to confront him directly. Instead, I shocked him into silence.

“Mom’s a fairy queen,” I mentioned, ever so casually.

Max stopped dead in his tracks. “
What
?”

Finally, I wasn’t the last to know something.

The Corbeau family’s return to the Otherworld was, thankfully, uneventful. Sadie, cradling the well-swaddled Raven against her breast, gazed about in barely concealed wonder, and well she should. It was the first time she’d returned since we were kids and had attempted to rescue Max, and her wide eyes made it apparent that she, like myself, had come to believe that the Otherworld was little more than a half-remembered dream. I laughed to myself; here I was, pretending to be the jaded older sister, when I’d only made my own return to the Otherworld about a week ago.

My musings were interrupted when we happened upon a tree that looked similar to a magnolia, only the leaves were shiny and metallic, like enameled brass, and the blossoms sparkled like pink sapphires.

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, my aloof façade forgotten as I stared at the tree that seemed, impossibly, to be made of metal and jewels. Micah, again wearing his bemused smile, caught my hand and pressed it to his lips.

“My eyes rest upon a far lovelier sight.” Wow. Cheesy, yes, but my heart did a little somersault at his endearment. Sadie, however, was unimpressed.

“You two are horrible,” she commented, adding an eye roll for extra effect. My darling baby sister.

Micah, however, was unperturbed by her outburst. “What makes us so horrible? Is it because we both freely admire beauty wherever we find it, or because I can hardly let a moment pass without my Sara’s touch?” Before she could respond, we turned a corner and entered the lush gardens behind Micah’s home. I heard Sadie’s breath catch in her throat, and I smiled. It seemed that she freely admired beauty, too.

Max, for his part, was quite taken with the Bright Lady of the Clear Pool. “She’s always just hanging out in your backyard?” Max asked Micah, after we’d explained why a naked woman lounged by the water. After a short explanation to Micah as to what a backyard was, he affirmed (to Max’s utter joy) that he’d never known the Bright Lady to leave her pool.

“You humans never should have turned your backs upon magic,” Micah continued. “Without magic, you deny yourselves untold wonders.”

“We didn’t turn our backs on anything,” Max grumbled. “It was taken away from us. Stolen! Everything worth—”

“Max. Enough.” Mom’s voice was soft, but he fell silent nonetheless. More than a decade apart from her son hadn’t diminished Mom’s authority in the slightest.

However, her authority over me seemed to have waned. I touched her elbow, and we fell back behind the others. “You knew?”

Mom pursed her lips and looked away. I understood that she didn’t want to talk, but we deserved some answers. I
needed
answers. “The day Sadie was born, we knew. You should have seen Beau.” She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering a time when we had been a happy, whole family. “He was proud of all of you, but to have the Inheritor of Metal in our own family was an untold honor. Sadie’s the first to be born into the Raven clan.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell her?” I pressed.

“I’d already lost my mate by the time she would be able to understand, and then I lost my son. I couldn’t bear losing one—or both—of my girls.” She opened her eyes then, her clear blue eyes that I’d always wondered about. Her gold hair could have marked her as metal, but her seawater gaze could have been the manifestation of a water affinity. Now I knew the truth: my mother was not wholly human.

Hmm. If she wasn’t, then, neither was I. Had Micah somehow sensed my fairy blood?

Forget that, and all the accompanying questions. I was mad: mad at Mom, and Dad, and
especially
Max, even though he’d paid for whatever deceit he’d used against us many times over in his imprisonment. I mean, I was used to the government lying to me, but I never thought my own family—my own
mother
—would keep such vital information from me. I turned back to Mom, ready to tell her how wrong she had been, that we should have been told the whole truth from the beginning, but one look at her and my anger fizzled away. Her gaze, resting on the back of Max’s head, was mingled relief at the return of her son, as well as longing. It was then that I saw it: Max’s bright, coppery hair, his short, lean build, the nimble way his feet and hands moved. Add a full beard, and Max could be Dad’s twin.

Her husband is still missing
, I remembered with a pang.
Dad
.

That my parents had adored each other had never been in question. I remembered how they used to look at one another, the stolen kisses when they thought we weren’t watching, the lazy days when the two of them had cuddled on the couch while we watched movies or on the lawn chairs in the backyard while the three of us made our own trouble. Dad had been gone a long time, yet Mom had never looked for another companion, never even gone on a date; once, Sadie had suggested it, and from Mom’s reaction you would have thought she’d suggested stuffing The Raven and roasting him for dinner.

As I remembered my parents’ strong, loving bond, my eyes traveled to Micah. Instantly, he felt my gaze, turned around, and smiled. After we’d fought, I’d been lost without him, even though we’d been apart for less than a day. I couldn’t imagine how Mom had managed without Dad for all these years, the pain and loneliness she must have endured.

We needed to find Dad
. I hooked my arm into Mom’s and rested my head on her shoulder. I still felt a bit betrayed, but at least I understood why she had kept things from us. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.

“I’ve only known him a week,” I mumbled.

“That’s how it is with Elementals,” Mom soothed. “When you find your mate, you know, and no one else will ever compare.”

The five of us had crossed nearly the whole of the garden, and we now approached the edge of the bathing pool. As always, the Bright Lady reclined on its bank, gloriously naked and busily tending her hair. Now that we were only a few paces from the pool, Max was unashamedly staring at her, until he stumbled and nearly face-planted. It occurred to me that he had only been fifteen when he’d been arrested, and I wondered if he was still as innocent as I’d been only a short time ago. He’d said that he hadn’t always been held in that medical device, but I couldn’t imagine Max dating one of the labcoats. Not to mention that Peacekeeper-prisoner relationships were probably frowned upon.

Still, from the way Max blatantly ogled the Bright Lady, I wondered if he’d ever seen a naked woman before. “You should ask to borrow her comb,” I suggested.

“Why would I need her comb?”

“If she likes you, she’ll let you use it. Don’t you want to know if she likes you?” Mom shot me a look as Micah tried not to laugh. Yes, the Otherworld was truly a strange and wondrous place.

Once we were inside Micah’s silver chateau, Max remaining sadly comb-free, the silverkin immediately presented themselves, seeing to our every comfort. They swiftly herded us into the front sitting room, and we settled on the vine- and cushion-covered settees, with The Raven perched upon his own special cushion. The ‘kin were in the midst of passing around a steaming beverage, the Otherworld’s version of hot buttered rum, when my consort turned to my brother.

“Max, I believe it is time for you to tell us what you know.” Max looked as if he might decline, but Micah’s tone made it clear that he wasn’t making a request.

“What do you want to hear?” Max mumbled. “That I’m an idiot, or that the Peacekeepers are going to win?”

“Haven’t they already won?” I said, while Mom exclaimed, “You’re not an idiot!” Mom and I stared at each other, then she reached over and grabbed Max’s hand.

“You only tried to help your family. That is the most noble act one can attempt,” Mom soothed.

“Maeve is correct,” Micah stated. “There is nothing, not in this world nor the Mundane, more important than one’s family. You did an admirable thing by taking your sister’s place.” Mom whispered something in Max’s ear, and he nodded. After another gentle prompt from Micah, Max continued.

“Funny thing is, fey stones really did start the war. It was the head of the power company who started all the fuss, saying that a few enterprising Elementals were stealing the food right from his children’s mouths. After a few years of no one paying enough attention to him, he changed his tune and claimed that those born of the elements were less than human, and that all we did was fight with other Elementals. He claimed that we were a danger to everyone else. To the
real
humans.” Max exhaled heavily and supported his head in his hands. “What always got me, got Dad, was that they said we were less than them. I mean, aren’t we all just people?” Max fell silent again, but only for a moment. “After a while, the `real’ people started to listen.”

Max went on, occasionally supported by Mom’s affirmations, and told a story of bigotry and xenophobia. In the space of a decade, Elemental and Mundane humans had gone from a peaceful coexistence to one filled with animosity and distrust, at least on the Mundane side of things. The Elementals hadn’t seemed to care what the Mundanes thought, about them or anything else.

“See, that was the real problem,” Max said. “The Elemental-born—us—we thought we were untouchable. After all, when you can wield fire and stone and metal with just a thought, how could a Mundane really hurt you?” He fell silent, shaking his head. “We were wrong. We were so wrong.”

His voice shaking just a bit, Max went on to detail the weapons the Mundanes had developed to capture and torture us, the plastic guns and manacles and holding cells specially engineered to render Elementals powerless. Simultaneously with the stockpiling of such vile objects, anti-Elemental factions had spread across the country with a religious-like fervor.

“I do remember the factions,” Micah interrupted. “But they had existed for many decades. Centuries, perhaps. As I recall, most of the world ignored them. What occurred to change that?”

“You mean what rang the bell that started the fight?” Max leaned back in his chair and shot Mom a glance. “The President’s son was born with a mark, and his nanny ratted him out to the media.”

“What?” Sadie and I gasped in unison. Sadie continued, “The Law states that the ruling body is always made up of Mundanes! That was recorded when our country was first founded, so Mundane and Elemental could live together in peace. The checks and balances were meant to keep both sides equal, regardless of ability.” Sadie left off that, before the days of the Law, rogue Elementals had been known to enslave Mundanes, not that the Mundanes who spent the time to learn magic handling treated us any better; there were plenty of cautionary tales about Elementals being taken captive by Mundane magic users. I guess you could say it was the never-ending war that had preceded this war, which, despite all the government propaganda, was far from over. At least we’d had a few calm centuries in between.

“I know,” Max agreed. “It was a mess.”

“Wait,” Micah interjected. “Even if the woman had been Elemental-born, an Elemental mark is only passed down from the father. Either she had lain with one other than her mate, or your President was false.”

“They tried to hide the baby’s ability, but word got out quickly,” Mom said. “First, the President’s wife claimed she’d been raped by an Elemental. Of course, there was no report of the incident, and no one quite believed her. I mean, if a woman in her position had found herself in such an undesirable state, there were things she could have done. Adoption, erasure…”

“So, what was done?” I prompted. I’d never been so attentive in school, and with good reason. This was the true history of my people we were learning, not the recycled garbage we’d been taught in history class.

“The President was hauled before the Senate and publicly stripped,” Mom said. “It was on live television. We all saw his mark; it was air, as I recall. Then everything went to hell.”

Mom was silent for a moment, the images of that long-ago scandal flitting behind her eyes. When she continued, she relayed the ensuing fallout from the President’s secrets. “Those factions—the ones everyone had brushed off as bigots and fools—started up again,” Mom continued. “They were louder than they’d ever been, only this time far more people were paying attention.”

“They said the President was a spy,” Max grumbled. “As if an Elemental needs to go through all the trouble of infiltrating the government to spy on Mundanes when we could just dreamwalk!”

“You mean, to learn what they know,” I said. That made Max, Micah, and Mom look at me as if I’d sprouted another head.