Fey 02 - Changeling (44 page)

The smile touched his lips again.
 
It was good he could smile.
 
He needed to know that he would feel lighter emotions again.
 
"Nicholas is fine."

"Good," she said.
 
She paused over Sebastian, then shook her hand.
 
Nicholas had seen cats make that gesture with a front paw when they were near something that disgusted them.
 
"Jewel allowed you to name this lump, didn't she?
 
Big mistake.
 
Probably part of the reason Rugar won that round.
 
Fey children need Fey names."
 
She walked over to Nicholas and peered into the baby's face.
 
"We'll go back to my generation.
 
No 'meaning' names.
 
That's a L'Nacin tradition, not a Fey one."
 
She ran a hand over the baby's head.
 
"We're going to call her Arianna."

"She's also Islander," Nicholas said.
  
Then he stopped.
 
He remembered this discussion with Jewel.
 
I swear, she had said.
 
It was easier to make the child than it is to name him.

Solanda shook her head and rolled her eyes.
 
"Arianna was a great Shape-shifter who disappeared into enemy lines when she was a toddler.
 
She took as her second form that of the general who adopted her, and after he died, used his visage to convince his troop to surrender to the Fey."

"What an auspicious name," Nicholas said dryly.

"It is a name worthy of her talents and her future.
 
Go ahead," Solanda said.
 
"Name her as you named your son."

Nicholas sighed.
 
The day had defeated him.
 
"Right now, one name is as good as another."

Solanda peered at him.
 
Then she turned as the nurse approached carrying towels torn up as diapers.
 
"You must decide where this child will sleep.
 
I would suggest boarding her in a crib in your room until Rugar realizes he cannot steal her."

"I'll take care of everything," Nicholas said.
 
There was no one else to.
 
And he had hours before he could even think of sleep.
 
First he would care for Arianna.
 
Then he would take care of Jewel.
 
"I'll need you to stay with Jewel and scare off anyone who tries to touch her."

"Ah," Solanda said.
 
"The evil feline.
 
It could get me killed."

He looked at her sideways.
 
"I'll rescind that decree soon.
 
Until then, I think you can take care of yourself."

She chuckled, then slipped into her feline form.
 
Her body shifted, molded, compacted.
 
Fur grew on her skin.
 
Only her eyes remained the same.

"I promise you, Nicholas the Highness," she said when the change was complete.
 
"We will bring this girl up right.
 
She'll be prepared for anything her grandfather throws at her."

"I hope you're right," he said, looking over his daughter's head at the body of his wife.
 
"I really do."

THE SCHISM

[The Following Day]

TWENTY-FIVE

His whole body hurt.
 
He woke slowly, his eyes glued together by sleep and tears.
 
Gift had the feeling that Coulter was on the bed next to him, but when he opened his eyes, he was sleeping alone.
 
But he wasn't in his room.
 
He was in the front room, the door closed and bolted.
 
He was lying on the rug, but someone had put something soft — a pad? — underneath it.
 
His mother sat on a cushion, her wings bandaged and taped to her sides.
 
Her eyes had deep shadows under them and she appeared thinner than she had before.

She had been hurt.

Dying.

And she had cried when she saw him, and cursed his grandfather, and told Gift that she loved him.

Or had she?

A fire burned in the fireplace, the smell of woodsmoke at once comforting and alarming.
 
He had just been somewhere near a fire.
 
In his dreams …

"Gift?" His mother asked.
 
She half-stood, as if she needed a better view of his face.
 
"Gift?"

He lifted a hand.
 
White light dripped off it like water.
 
"Mommy," he said.
 
"I had a bad dream."

"We all did, little sweetness," she said.
 
"It's over now."

But it wasn't.
 
Not the way he felt.
 
He felt as if the dream had been true.
 
For the first time in his life, he wanted to see his grandfather.
 
His grandfather had been there, in that strange room with the Domestics and the yellow people.
 
His grandfather had cried for the woman on the mattress.

Gift's throat was sore and his forehead felt like something bad had happened to it.
 
He brought up his hand, dripping white light, and touched his forehead.
 
The skin was smooth.
 
His hair fell over it, as it should have, and his head felt solid.
 

Somehow, he had thought it shouldn't.

"What happened?" he asked.
 
His voice was raspy.
 
When he spoke this time, he noticed that his stomach hurt too.
 
And the back of his legs.
 

"We don't know, honey," his mother said.

"What happened to you?
 
Who hurt your wings?"

She shook her head.
 
"It's over now," she said.

"What's this white stuff?"
 
He held out his arm.
 
The white dripped off it and splashed on the floor.
 
The light spread like water before disappearing into the wood.

"It made you better," she said.
 
Her eyes wouldn't meet his when she spoke.
 
For the first time in his life, he realized that his mother didn't want to tell him what had happened.

Gift closed his eyes.
 
He saw the woman — (Mother?) — on a mattress in a strange room his grandfather called a kitchen.
 
She wasn't moving.
 
Beside her stood a yellow man holding a little baby.
 
He was watching a cat.

The whole thing seemed very real.
 
The crackle of the fire beside Gift echoed the large fire in the kitchen with the woman.
 
But it wasn't real.
 
He had seen these images in his dream:
 
these and others, like the ones he had seen when his grandfather was here.
 
This time the Vision had lasted forever, and it had made him cry.

He opened his eyes.
 
His mother was watching him closely, as if she were afraid something was going to happen to him with his eyes closed.
 
"I had that Vision thing again, didn't I?" he asked.

Her lips got tight, and she shrugged, a tiny movement he almost didn't see.
 
Then the door opened, and he turned, thinking it would be his father.
 
Instead, Coulter came in.

Coulter looked bigger somehow, older, not like his friend, but like a grown-up.
 
Coulter's blue eyes seemed brighter than they had ever been before.
 
Gift could feel him almost more than he could see him.

The light around Gift grew brighter, almost blinding.
 
Coulter waved his arm over Gift, and the light dimmed.
 
Gift could no longer see it, but he could feel it, encircling him like a warm hug.

"You woke up," Coulter said.
 

Gift nodded.
 
"What happened?"

Coulter looked at Gift's mother.
 
Gift recognized the look as one grownups gave each other.
 
It sent some sort of secret signal.
 
Gift's mother stood.
 
She moved gingerly, as if her wings hurt her.
 

"You be careful," she said to Coulter.
 
"I'll just be outside."

Coulter didn't answer her.
 
Instead he waited until she left before he sat, crosslegged, beside Gift.

Gift had always liked Coulter.
 
He looked funny — kind of like the yellow people in Gift's Vision — but he was big and friendly and had a sparkle that surrounded him.
 
The sparkle had grown stronger all winter, and now it was as bright as the light had been around Gift.
 
In fact, the light made him think of Coulter.

"You did something to me, didn't you?" Gift asked.

Coulter nodded.
 
"I want you to think in your grown-up way before I talk to you."

Gift frowned.
 
He hadn't told anyone except his mother about his grown-up think, and she hadn't believed him.
 
He knew she hadn't told Coulter.
 
Gift raised himself on his elbows.
 
"Something awful happened, didn't it?"

"Do you remember how you came to this place?" Coulter asked.

Gift nodded.
 
"My mother and her friends brought me here when I was very, very little."

"Solanda brought me," Coulter said.
 
"I was a year old."
 
He leaned forward, his arms resting on his thighs.
 
"You and me, we aren't real Fey."

Gift frowned.
 
He could see that about Coulter.
 
Coulter didn't look like anybody else.
 
His hair was yellow, his eyebrows were straight, and his eyes were round.
 
But Gift had seen himself in a mirror.
 
He had the eyebrows, his hair was dark, his features were swept up in proper Fey fashion.
 
"I'm Fey," he said.

"No," Coulter said.
 
"Part Fey.
 
Your daddy is what they call Islander, like me."

The man who held the baby.
 
That was Gift's father.
 
He knew that as clearly as if he had been with the man every day of his life.
 
"Then why am I here?"

"I don't know," Coulter said.
 
He bit his lower lip, finally looking like a kid again.
 
Gift wasn't sure he wanted to talk to a kid.
 
Coulter glanced around as if he were making sure they were alone.
 
"Yesterday, I heard you screaming.
 
No one else seemed to.
 
They all did the same stuff they always do. But I heard you.
 
In my head.
 
And it was like this door opened in my brain, and all this stuff I knew came to my mind."