Chapter 3 #2
There was no other choice. Silva didn’t know how to account for the length of time she had been sick to her stomach, endless months of it by then, couldn’t deny the existence that there was something there inside her .
. . what it was, though, she didn’t know.
She was too afraid to find out, and it was easier to pretend there was nothing there at all.
“Thank you for the invitation,” she hummed, although it had hardly been that.
“I actually have an appointment to keep this afternoon. There’s an antique auction in the city.
And then,” she turned to the elf beside her — unobjectionable, perfectly nice, handsome, kind and successful, who had never once made her heart so much as speed up — “I’m picking up someone’s favorite takeout for dinner. ”
Tannar shook a fist in triumph, grinning broadly. “I’d almost forgotten! I haven’t had good ph? since that place in Bridgeton. Everything’s coming up Tannar today.”
Silva smiled, the perfect new bride, leaning in to accept the kiss he pressed to her cheek.
“What antique shop is this?” Lucine’s mother asked, brows drawing together. “Is it the shop right up the block from Lily & Lace? Because you can still come with —”
Tannar shook his head, answering for her before the other elf had finished speaking. “This is some invite-only sale. I’m not even allowed to go with her.”
The two elves shared a glance.
A careful sip of her tea, a polished, Silva of the Daytime smile.
No one at this table needed to know where she was going, her husband included.
“It’s a private collection. Just looking for a few tea set pieces to supplement what my grandmother gave me.
” Another sip, another smile. “Will there be any decisions coming up on the spring fundraiser? I do hope it’s something fun!
” It was enough to reroute them entirely.
Silva breathed a small sigh of relief. Safe for another day.
Across the table, Lucine was fiddling with the sleeve of her dress again. It itches her, Silva wanted to interject, wanted someone at the table to notice the child’s movements, to actually see her.
Instead, her mother caught her wrist. “Mind your manners, darling.”
Silva continued to sip her tea, keeping the cup pressed to her lips even after it was empty. She might not be happy, but she knew what to expect. She knew the rules of this game, of this place, and she could continue her life as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever derailed her.
This place would never be home, but she wasn’t sure that any place would ever feel like home again, not anywhere in the world. Not since he’d left, taking her heart with him. Ripped directly from her chest, dripping from his teeth as he disappeared forever.
***
There was no way to admit in polite company that she had become a bit of a regular in clandestine circles. Certainly not something she could discuss over quiche at her mother-in-law’s table.
It had begun shortly after their move.
Silva knew she had shattered her family’s hearts by leaving.
Her grandmother, especially, and that was the severing that had hurt her the most as well, but it couldn’t be helped.
This was the life they wanted for her. This was the roadmap they’d drawn out themselves, the plan they’d made, the elf they’d nudged her toward the instant Tannar had appeared on their radar, and what she wanted had never registered as any vague importance. Careful what you wish for.
“How can you do this, Silva?” her mother had wept bitterly, attempting to change her mind. “Why are you doing this to us? Is this to punish me for thinking of your future? You’re breaking your grandmother’s heart by doing this.”
Silva remained dry-eyed. Her heart was already broken. Misery loves company and company loves more.
“I don’t understand what you’re upset over,” she’d lied, refusing to be talked out of the move that had already been set in motion.
“Isn’t this exactly what you wanted me to do?
Marry someone you approve of, be a perfect little Elvish housewife.
I’m only doing what you planned for me to do, what you’ve been planning for my whole life. ”
She knew it wasn’t so. Daughters didn’t leave their families.
Their husbands were the ones who moved, who found new careers or relocated existing ones, joining the enclave and club of their wives, so that she might stay with her mother and grandmothers.
The community that remained after their menfolk were gone.
Children belonged to the mothers, took their mothers’ names, an unending chain if they happened to be little girls themselves.
Silva knew she was meant to stay, meant to be there for her grandmother’s jubilee, to be there with her mother, to raise her own little girl right there in the town she’d always lived in.
Still, her mind had been made up. Cambric Creek was ruined for her now. Every one of her favorite places, the waterfall, the coffee shop, all of it. They all echoed with his laughter, the impression of his shadow still lingering.
She could not stay and be reminded of what she had lost at every turn. And so she left.
Tannar was from a different part of the unification entirely, a suburb of a city not unlike Bridgeton in size, but with far less industry.
They were further from the coast and more remote, a small, semi-urban patch in the midst of what her father would have unkindly called “flyover farmland.” It was quickly evident that what passed for high Elvish society here was a far cry from the community she was used to, but Silva had decided that would only make things easier for her in the long run.
She had no job, no friends, and now, quite unexpectedly, she had no baby.
Tanner had come to the conclusion that she’d lost the baby she’d been carrying, came up with the reason for her lack of showing all on his own, saving her lips from needing to concoct one more lie. It was a common enough occurrence in their community.
“It was early days,” he’d murmured into her hair the day he’d broached it at last. “I guess we should have prepared for something like this to be a possibility.”
Silva had nodded woodenly, agreeing because it had been the easiest thing to do.
She’d counted, one afternoon, just how many months she’d been sick to her stomach, without any excuses of stress or nerves.
Since the previous autumn, before he’d disappeared.
He had been gone just over a year at that point.
A year of existing with a hole carved in her chest where her heart was meant to beat, a year with that little wing inside her. It didn’t make any sense.
There was still no progression. No outward sign that there was another heartbeat beneath her own, no public evidence of that flutter she felt beneath her breast. Silva was almost able to convince herself she had dreamed the whole thing up .
. . almost. But the flutter was there, and there were some nights in bed when she stared at the ceiling, terrified to close her eyes, the other heartbeat within her hammering so hard it overtook her own.
Something had gone wrong.
Something in the witch’s spell, maybe. The sweet witch who made her favorite shampoo, maybe it had started that day Silva had sat in the woman’s kitchen in Cambric Creek, allowing her fingers to be pricked with needles, her blood added into a cauldron, drop by drop, a noxious potion she was given to drink.
Maybe something had happened that day, maybe the spell had gone wrong.
Maybe that was what she deserved.
“I don’t know if this is ethical.” The steam from the cauldron had fogged up the witch’s glasses, and they slid down her nose as she tied a tourniquet around Silva’s arm that afternoon.
“I-I understand your reasoning, I suppose, and I suppose there are always extenuating circumstances, but when we specifically start choosing things like eye color and ear length . . . it seems small, but it’s a dangerous line of thinking. ”
“Humans are able to design their children in a lab,” she’d whispered, tears burning in her eyes as the witch unwrapped a needle as long as Silva’s hand.
“There’s that billboard right off the highway advertising it.
They can choose eye color, hair color, sex .
. . and we don’t even have painkillers that work. ”
The witch had nodded, turning over Silva’s hand.
“A friend of the family is a lawyer, and he’s involved in a case about that very issue.
It’s not fair. I don’t disagree with that.
It’s all gene manipulation, what they do.
And it has its roots in excellent medicine.
We can eradicate hereditary conditions by eliminating gene mutations, once we know what to look for in the sequence.
We can change lives for the better. It’s important, life-saving science .
. . and now we have labs that let you choose your baby’s eye color.
It’s all the same principle, just very different applications.
I don’t know how ethical some of those applications are. ”
The prick of the needle made her wince, watching the blood well up. “This is lifesaving for me,” Silva whispered again, the tears overflowing at last.
She hadn’t had a backup at that point, if the witch were to have turned her away.
All of her planning hinged on having a baby that looked like her.
Tannar’s family would send her packing the instant they saw tusks, and then where would she go?
Her own family would be ostracized at Cevanore if she came home.
She had nothing of her own, no money, no savings, nowhere to go, other than his apartment.
I told you that you’d always have somewhere to come, dove, and so you do.