Chapter Two #2
Ina hesitated only a moment. Her mother had earned the truth many times over, and there was no one else in the world she could speak to quite this way.
“It’s Derran and Karai,” she said. “Or rather, it’s me. Or all three of us.”
Mara leaned back slightly in her chair, folding her hands in her lap.
She had grown older, as humans did, since Ina first flew from her kitchen into the world, but not in any way that made her seem smaller.
If anything, age had made her steadier, as if time had sanded away everything in her that was not useful or kind.
“Go on,” she said.
Ina did.
She told her mother what had been true for some time now.
That she loved them both.
That she wanted them both.
And yet, that there was a clear choice they both expected her to make.
A choice between burrow prince and sky prince, as though they also expected she could not keep both, or perhaps that she would not want to.
That Karai, for all his grand promises and grand pride, seemed resigned to accept if it were not him, though he hoped beyond hope it would be.
That Derran, though he loved her no less, was not at ease with any of the tension at all and grew jealous in ways he tried hard not to show.
She told Mara that she did not want to choose, and yet not choosing was itself a choice that seemed to leave someone wounded each time it was made.
Mara listened without interrupting. When Ina had finished, her mother sat quiet for a little while, looking not at Ina but at the small folded stocking in her lap, as though some thread of old memory had caught under her fingers there.
“At your age,” Mara said at last, “I had many suitors.”
Ina blinked. “You did?”
Mara smiled faintly. “What, you thought I was born sensible and free of desire?”
Ina laughed.
“No,” Mara went on. “I had many desires, and with them came many choices. Men who were kind enough, handsome enough, promising enough. I chose one. My husband.”
She looked toward the window, though there was nothing particular to see there but late light and the edge of the garden.
“He died young. Not long after we were married.”
Ina had always known this in the broad way children know their parents’ old sorrows. But hearing it now, in her mother’s own voice and with the shape of a life behind it, made it feel different.
“He never gave me the child I wanted,” Mara sighed. “That was the worse grief, in the end. Or perhaps not worse. Longer.”
Her hands moved once over the stocking, smoothing a wrinkle that did not matter.
“My life was lonely for a very long time,” she said. “Unbearably lonely. I didn’t think it would ever become anything else. I didn’t think it could.”
Then she looked at Ina.
“Until a fairy knocked at my door and gave me a barley corn.”
Ina went still. The room seemed to grow quieter around that memory, though Mara spoke of it simply, with no wish to make a legend out of what had once been desperation answered in the smallest possible form.
“You know the rest,” Mara said. “You came from that seed. You grew. You filled my kitchen and my days and every empty place I’d been carrying. And though I’m alone again now, in one sense, because you are grown and off on your own adventures and kingdoms and dangers...”
Here she smiled, proud and amused in equal measure. “I’m not lonely anymore.”
Ina looked down for fear she might cry and make too much of it.
“Because I had you,” Mara said softly. “Because I fulfilled the greatest desire I had. To be a mother.”
She reached out one finger and touched Ina gently at the shoulder.
“And because I see where you are now. Look at you. A queen. Knowing where you are, knowing what you’ve become, knowing you are safe and powerful and everything a mother could dream for her child, fills me with such pride and joy that there is no room for loneliness left in me.”
Ina laughed lightly, but there was water in her eyes now and she did not much care.
Mara drew her hand back and went on more quietly. “So here’s what I think. It’s all right to want both of them.”
Ina looked up.
“It’s also all right if they are not all right with that,” Mara said. “You are allowed your desires. So are they. Love is not made cleaner by pretending one heart is simple and therefore all should be.”
Ina ruminated on that quietly.
Mara tilted her head then. “Although, have you not fulfilled your deepest wish already? With Derran and Karai, the both of them?”
“What do you mean?”
“You dreamed of being loved,” Mara said.
“Romantically, I mean. I knew it, even then. You were very young and very lonely and very full of stories. You lived in my kitchen with snails and crickets and ladybugs for companions and wanted, more than you said aloud, to be cherished by someone who looked at you and saw wonder.”
Ina smiled in spite of herself. That was true. She had dreamed extravagantly in those days, because dreams had cost nothing and the kitchen walls had seemed too close.
“Yes,” she smiled. “I’ve fulfilled that wish. I’ve been loved more deeply than I could have ever hoped.”
“But?”
Ina let out a breath. “But something in me is still unsure. Unsure who to choose. Unsure why I have to choose.”
Mara nodded as if that, too, were natural.
“It may remain unsure,” she said. “You are not done becoming who you are. A heart does not stop changing because it has found love. Sometimes it grows more complicated instead. Sometimes there is enough room for every bit of complication. Sometimes, you’ll find,
that the best choice is not choosing at all.”
That sounded so sensible that Ina wanted to object on principle, but could not manage it. Instead she flew from the table to her mother’s shoulder and wrapped her arms as far as they could go around Mara’s neck.
Mara turned her head carefully and kissed the top of her hair.
After many long minutes, Ina whispered, “I must go.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Mara smiled against her temple. “No one does. Some people simply do it more confidently.”
Ina laughed softly and held on for one last breath before letting go.
Then she drew back, looked once at her mother’s face, and carried that steadiness with her as she turned back to the duties required of the fairy queen.