Give Me (8 page)

M
other clung to the table’s edge, her
knuckles white. “Help me get up to the roof, Elyse. I want to see the forest one more time.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

She knew this was a nightmare, but Elyse couldn’t wake up.

“You can do it.” Mother struggled to stand without the support of the table. She cupped her hands and made a scooping motion in the air, then spread them flat, palms down. “I should weigh nothing to you now.”

Elyse couldn’t deny it. She still felt exhilarated being in on a spell, but this time it was mixed with dread. She draped her mother’s arms around her neck and guided, more than carried, the feather-light bundle up to the roof deck. Everything was clear to her now. Mother’s recent hand gestures hadn’t been for mere effect. Like a young wyrder newly come into power, she’d needed the movements to make her magics stick.

Elyse hugged her close, desperate to sense strength and power, but there was only the feeling of someone slipping away. On the roof deck, Elyse eased her mother into the chair and spread the shawl over her lap.

“Aeolios has gone.” Mother looked at the still gray clouds.

“My apologies to Brother Sun,” Elyse said, “but I prefer the clouds and mist.”

Mother’s gaze traveled over every little thing on the roof deck, the jasmine, the roses, and the rosemary. She looked north to the distant sea then southwest to the forest. She watched the trees, or the spaces between them, for quite a long time.

She was silently saying farewell to it all.

Elyse’s heart compressed, surely to the size of a walnut. She cut some jasmine and laid the blossoms like an offering on Mother’s lap.

“I shouldn’t have called you,” she said. “Breaking the boundary was too much for you.” It had taken the final toll on her mother’s strength. And for what? It would have dissolved anyway once Lourdes was far enough away from the cottage.

“I didn’t break the boundary, Elyse.”

Elyse frowned. “Did Lourdes let me go?”

“No.” Mother smiled sadly and stared at the woods as if thinking something over. Then she seemed to come to a decision. “I’ve made mistakes, Elyse. Many small. A few big. The Great Wyrding should never have happened. It altered the natural order below ground. I believe it gave Aeolios a perpetual headache.”

They both laughed.

“He has a right to be furious.”

“But that’s what you do,” Elyse said. “Isn’t that what wyrding is?”

“A moral wyrder plays with the universe, but never really changes it. We direct energy; we must never transform it.”

Elyse wasn’t quite sure she understood the difference.

“I was wrong to do it, and I’ve paid for it with ruined health and a shortened life. But that hasn’t satisfied Aeolios.”

“What does he want?”

“A wife.”

“He can have Lourdes,” Elyse blurted out. Her face turned red. “Well, it would solve a lot of problems.”

“Also my first thought.” Mother chuckled. “But human and divine couplings tend to end badly for the human.”

This was nice, just the two of them talking. They were never intimate like this when Lourdes was with them. “I don’t believe the Great Wyrding was wrong,” Elyse said. “Look how much good it has done, and it will last forever.”

“But the cost, Elyse. Every spell has a cost, and I did not consider it.”

“Like King Jowan,” Elyse said. “He didn’t think of what would come after he showed off the swords to Sarumos.”

“No, he did not.”

Time. Elyse needed more time with Mother, time to learn everything. Time to love her. All the magics in the world couldn’t give them that.

Mother stirred in her chair. “I need the glimmer glass.”

Elyse shook her head. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Just inside, there’s one on my bed.”

This voyeuristic element in her mother was unnerving. On the other hand, it explained her uncanny intelligence of people’s comings and goings. The glimmer glass was on the bed, and as Elyse picked it up she was struck by a sick feeling.
Had Mother ever watched her?
In the woods she’d often felt followed, but she’d always believed it was the animals who tracked her movements.

“Thank you, Elyse.” Mother passed her fingers over the glass until Galen’s image appeared. He’d reached Igdrasil and sat cross-legged in a hollow at the tree’s roots. The bag of glamour dust rested in his hand. “Hold it with me.”

Elyse sat on her knees beside the chair. When she touched the corner of the glass, she heard seagulls calling and waves pounding on rocks—and Galen’s sigh, laden with care. He rose to his feet with a resolved look, opened the bag, and tossed a handful of glamour dust into the air.

“Diantha.”

Lourdes had known he would do it.

“Diantha.”

Prince Galen was no better or worse than any other man. He needed to know
what she looked like.

“Diantha.”

“I didn’t tell Galen the entire truth about the glamour.” Mother was even paler than before.

“Please don’t distress yourself.”

“Listen to me—we don’t have much time!”

Oh, Mother.

“When Galen looks upon the glamour image, he’ll see past Diantha’s outer shell to her true nature. Not the brave front she puts on for the world, but the gentle soul she keeps hidden away. If he likes what he sees, his natural feelings will intensify.”

“You put a wyrd on the glamour after all.”

“Merely to enhance what is authentic and to smooth their path to each other, if there can be one.”

“How does it work?

“The very act of beholding a beloved has great power. It is mysterious and deep and all the stronger because it lives in hidden recesses of our hearts. If Galen sees in Diantha that which he can love, then we matchmakers can step back and let things take their natural course.”

“Direct the energy, don’t transform it.”

“Yes, my dear. You understand.”

An image formed in the air near Galen a few feet off the ground. It didn’t translate well in the glimmer glass. To Elyse it seemed like the ghost of a woman.

“Diantha is very pretty,” Mother said. “But if Galen loves, she’ll be beautiful beyond measure in his eyes.”

The only distinct feature Elyse could make out was pale golden hair that fell past the ghost’s waist. Apparently Galen liked what he saw. Worry fell away from his countenance like shattered glass. Until now, Elyse hadn’t appreciated how seriously he had treated this matter of an engagement. When such innocent pleasure lit up his face, it was easy to smile with him—and for him.

“It is done,” Mother said. “Observe. That isn’t desire you see. That is delight, far more ennobling.” She let out her breath. “Thank sun and moon. Galen and Diantha can be happy together.”

“Not if she can help it,” Elyse said. Lourdes rode into view in the glass.

“What are you doing here?” Galen said, and the hovering glamour image dissolved.

“We have to talk.” Lourdes slid off Hector’s back and ran to the prince. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. So much for talking.

“Lourdes, no.” Galen reached behind his neck to pry off Lourdes’s grip. “This isn’t right. This isn’t…” His eyes lost focus. He shook his head and seemed to notice Lourdes for the first time.

Elyse felt sick to her stomach. Lourdes had Galen in her power.

“You can’t love that Sarumosian.” Lourdes backed him against Igdrasil’s trunk.

“I can’t love that Sarumosian?”

She pressed close to him. “You love me, Galen. I’m the one.”

“You’re the one?”

“Let me clear things up for you, darling.” Lourdes kissed him again, and again. She reached between his legs.

Galen groaned with pleasure—and some anguish. “Lourdes, no.”

“Yes, my love.” Lourdes opened his trousers and slid them over his hips, past his thighs. “Very much yes.” As she sank to her knees, the glimmer glass went blank.

“Stop her!” Elyse jumped up.

“I can’t.” Mother lifted her hand. Elyse thought she meant to bring back the image, but her hand just hung in the air, trembling. When had it become such a frail and brittle packet of bones? “My dearest child. I wish I’d had more time with you.”

“We have all the time in the world.” But the words sounded like a lie coming out of Elyse’s mouth. She kissed her mother’s palm.

“You must take the ring.”

“Great gods, Mother. No.” Now Elyse’s heart swelled like it would pound out of her chest wall. To remove the oracle’s ring meant death.

“Please, Elyse. Let us not waste the time we do have.”

“Mother…Mommy.” Elyse stared at the ring. A simple design. One fine braid of gold and another of silver, the two entwined in a circle. It had always made her think of Brother Sun and Sister Moon—and of eternity. “Lourdes,” she said. “The ring is for her. She’ll be the next oracle.”

Oh, sun and moon. Had she really said that? She might as well acknowledge that Mother was on her death bed.

“Not Lourdes. You are the next oracle.

“Impossible. I don’t even have my power.”

“I’ve wronged you so terribly, Elyse.”

“Don’t be silly. You’ve always been good to me. The best mother anyone could hope for.”
No, no, no! I am not having this conversation.

“You can’t begin to know your power, Elyse. You have it now. You always have had. You were born with it.” Mother again stared at the woods until Elyse expected someone to emerge from among the trees. “You’re not like Lourdes. You know that.”

“Of course. We’re two different people.” But Mother meant something else.

“My husband was a wyrder,” she said. “Not a great one. But he was a wonderful man, tall and darkly handsome. He was a good husband, and he doted on Lourdes. He died, and Lourdes and I came to Glimmer Cottage not long after. Until then, we’d lived in the castle keep. The queen was still alive in those days. Lourdes was a favorite of hers.”

“I never knew.”

“Why would you? Poor Lourdes. I haven’t the heart to tell her, but the queen nurtured a fancy that she and Galen would one day marry.”

“Oh.”

“Quite. I couldn’t stay in the castle. I was the king’s oracle and suddenly unmarried. The suitors were so thick I thought I would suffocate. I tried moving to the topmost rooms, far away from the bustle and with a view of Igdrasil, but that proved no barrier to the truly resourceful. So the queen gave me Glimmer Cottage. I put up a boundary. The men couldn’t get through, and I could grieve in peace.”

Her face softened. The furrow between her brows disappeared, and the corners of her mouth turned up.

“I met your father in the woods. Aubrey. He had yellow hair and eyes the color of lilacs. I didn’t know what he was, but he was different from any man—from any person—I’d ever met. He didn’t care about politics or fortunes or fighting enemies or courting me to get to the king. He wove flowers into garlands for my hair. When he kissed me I forgot the rest of the world. I can still smell the hollow where we met. A mix of early hawthorn and rosemary and clean damp dirt.”

A chill passed through Elyse. She knew the place, a dip hidden by a fallen tree.

“I asked him what he wanted of me—everyone always wants something from a wyrding woman. He said ‘more than anyone will ever want from you, Frona. I want to sing to you, and I want you to hear me. I want to dance with you, and I will lead. I want to strip you naked and lick every part of your skin, and I want to plunge inside you and feel your heat pull me deeper into you than you think possible.’ ”

Oh, please! Mother!

“He was from fae. A fairy. I had one moment to decide. Yes, and I would be happier than imaginable—but in his power. No, and I would never see him again. I said no.”

“Then what’s the point of—”

“But he had lied. I did see him again. He came back the next day and asked the same question. And the next. And every day until a day came when I was tired of being the king’s oracle, tired of leading the dance. Tired of the burdens of freedom and responsibility. On that day, I said yes.”

“Great gods.”

Mother looked sideways at Elyse. “In fae, the high gods can’t help you.”

Fairies. Maybe it hadn’t been animals watching Elyse in the woods all these years.

“It was wonderful. You can’t imagine the depth of satisfaction Aubrey gave me. Physical satisfaction, anyway. I doubt he had the capacity to consider anything beyond pleasure for more than three minutes altogether. Elyse, you know how time works in the land of the fae.”

“I know nothing of the fae.” But if Aubrey was her father, then Elyse was half fae.

“Well, it works differently. It seemed I had been with Aubrey but a few hours when I saw that my belly was swollen with a nine-months’ child. I panicked. All I could think of was getting back to Glimmer Cottage and reality.”

Mother grasped Elyse’s hand so tight it hurt.

“I couldn’t let you be born in there, or you’d never be mine.”

“How did you get away? Did he let you go?”

“He’d given me the breaking charm at some point—I suppose he thought it would make me trust him all the better. He didn’t believe I would use it. But I spoke the words:
I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.

What an odd charm. But then it was fae, and who knew their logic?

“With the last word, Aubrey’s world dissolved around me. I was no longer in the woods but standing at the threshold to Glimmer Cottage. It felt slightly off, as if I’d been gone but five minutes. But it had been summer’s end five minutes earlier, and now it was spring.”

It was terrifying to think any creature, human or fae or Aeolios himself, had the power to bedazzle Mother.

“You were born that night. I haven’t seen Aubrey from that day.”

“Should I be relieved?”

“You should ask quite a different question, dear.”

Elyse wracked her brain, but she couldn’t think what to ask.

“Don’t you wonder what happened to your sister all the time I was gone from Glimmer Cottage?”

Great gods!

“I found her in the barn. Meduyl was milking the cow, and Lourdes was playing with a litter of kittens, clean and well fed, if not exactly happy. Aubrey must have charmed the cottage and the entire surroundings. Meduyl behaved as if all was in order, but I’ve always believed Lourdes was aware of my absence and that she never forgave me.”