Chapter 15 Silva #5
Her hair hung in thick, golden waves down her back, and instead of a tiara, she wore a magnificent headpiece of antlers, coated in their spring velvet.
Greenery was caught in the antlers’ tines, branches of pussy willow with fuzzy-soft catkins, a vine of flowering jessamine, and at the center, cradled in moss and branches, a bird’s nest holding three baby blue eggs, trembling with life.
She was told this was not the court. That she would not lose time at the market, and that the market was all it was, that she was free to browse, to look and to leave. Silva no longer felt free to do anything.
“You ought to stay a spell, lovely girl. We can get you refreshment and whatever comforts you require. It is such a beautiful morning.”
Silva shook her head, forcing her mouth into an approximation of a smile. She wondered if this doll-like Queen could see the way she shook. “I appreciate the courtesy, your Majesty but I’m not staying. I’m only here to look.”
“You won’t find him here, sweetling. At least, not yet.
” She paused, giving Silva a wide, twinkling smile.
“Why should you go troubling yourself to seek out my sister’s realm?
Death is all that awaits in Night’s Court.
Death and darkness. Why would you go, when Spring is so beautiful and welcoming?
He will pass through this way eventually, and won’t he be so delighted to find you here waiting for him? ”
Her voice was musical and light, nearly hypnotic.
Silva’s eyes fluttered shut, too heavy to stay open, weighted down as she was with all she was trying to accomplish.
It was beautiful here. It would be easy to find a comfortable place to sit, to enjoy this glorious golden morning — the birds chirping sweetly, the air still carrying the smell of flowers and candy floss.
It would be better than going back. Back to her puppet play, back to a husband she didn’t love, to the world that still expected her to be a mouse.
Back to a life without him, alone. She was Orpheus, standing at the edge of the world, afraid to move forward and afraid to look back.
“Think of it, sweetling. You’ll be this young and beautiful here forever. Your child will be born in a gentle light. You can put all these hard decisions behind you. And he’ll make his way back here eventually. All things do.”
Spring borrows what Autumn will demand repaid. She wouldn’t be free here. She would be borrowed. Do not become another debt collected. Silva opened her eyes.
For the first time in nearly two years, she did not feel a flutter of life beneath her breast. There was no heartbeat thumping beside her own.
Her hands shook as they raised, going to her front.
Her stomach was flat, as flat as it had been the day she’d ridden in the backseat of Ris’s car, on her way to a weekend trip with her new work friends.
Her body was devoid of life beyond her own.
Her baby, the only piece of him she had left, was gone.
The little giggle caught her attention again, darting through the trees, and Silva whirled to find it, tears brimming in her eyes and overflowing.
“Where is she? Give her back to me!”
“You would be free to rest here as long as you wanted, beloved. You could be safe here. Welcomed. For as long as you need.”
“And in payment,” she choked out, voice shaking with her tears, already knowing the answer, “you’ll take my child.”
The queen recoiled, a hand going to her throat as if Silva’s words shocked her to the core.
“Oh course not, my lovely dear! There’s no cost for rest, save for the time you spend doing so.
Your child would be born of Spring. She would belong to Spring, as she belongs here.
As will you! And as I said, he would find his way here. All lost things do.”
“And how long would that take?”
The Queen shrugged, smiling sweetly. Her dress was formed by leaves and petals, overlapping one another, too many to count, swaying as she moved. “Time enough,” she answered lightly. “And won’t he be so happy?”
He wouldn’t be. That much, she knew.
Tate would be horrified to find her here, to find their child bound to this court, as had been done to him.
Another family shredded and reaped to the other side, everything he’d told her not to do.
He would be horrified at all she had done, most likely.
He wanted you to live your life, made you promise not to look back, not to wait for him. And you broke it.
“Give her back to me. Right now.”
The smile on the doll-like queen’s face hardened. “Careful, dearest. There’s no cost for courtesy, but don’t mistake our kindness for charity.”
Silva felt as though she might shake apart.
Grief and fear were warring with her anger.
She didn’t want to find out what the punishment might be for causing offense, but neither did this queen want to learn what she might do in her desperation.
You are an elf. If they want to take her, they’ll have to kill you first. She forced herself to breathe, to calm herself.
Keep the upper hand. That’s what he would do.
“If I stay here,” Silva began slowly, gesturing to the small form just out of her sight behind a tree. “Then this . . .”
“This becomes reality. Your child will play and laugh in an endless morning. You will stay exactly as you are now. Young and beautiful forevermore.”
Silva nodded. Then it’s not reality yet. “And if I go back . . .”
The doll-like Queen’s mouth turned down in a sneer, her narrowed eyes fixing on Silva intently. Thorns beneath the petals. “Beloved, why would you want to?”
Knowledge or nurture. The cost of one will cancel out the other, and you cannot bear them both.
She understood now. Understood everything.
For the first time, Silva understood fully the true cost of the path she had followed.
That locked away voice she heard screaming in her head was her own, hidden and supplanted by the false confidence she’d purchased alongside that key.
“I appreciate the offer,” she forced out, her voice stronger than she expected, her feet already finding the center of that painted spiral that was still there. The pathway back. “But I’m only browsing today.”
Her steps were quick, following the tight circle. She ignored the pressure, ignored the voice in her head wondering if she was giving up finding him by leaving. Already, the queen in her clearing seemed farther away.
“Such a waste,” she called out to Silva with a shimmering laugh. “You will not survive Autumn, sweetling. You could have been beautiful here.”
The flower market came swimming back into her view, as if she were emerging from underwater. The cooler door stood out against the wall, ugly, like a bruise, marring this perfect place. She beelined towards it, uncaring if she was sticking to the pathway any longer.
“Get out of my way,” she shouted at a cluster of those blurry shapes who tried to impede her once more, pushing her way through with force, a strength she didn’t normally possess, one hand protectively over her bump, the evidence of the only thing in the world that mattered.
She felt more like herself since the day she’d started all this.
Her little wing kicked and thrashed, as if she, too, were eager to leave the false promises of Spring behind.
Wrenching open the door, there was no hesitation this time when she crossed the threshold, lurching down the sickly green hallway, cramps twisting her insides. She was panting when she erupted through the second door, safe in her own world once more.
“You were in there far too long,” the florist snapped instantly. “What happened? I told you not to linger!”
“And you told me it was just the market,” Silva snapped, shoving the girl aside as she limped to the front of the shop.
There was a heavy pressure sitting on her lower back, and she winced as another throb of pain moved through her.
The wisp was following after her, but she didn’t slow down.
She needed to get out of here, needed to put distance between herself and the other side of that hallway, needed to lie down, and let her body and her little wing rest.
Her hands were unsteady when she was at last behind the wheel of her car, glancing in the rearview mirror to see the florist standing on the sidewalk in front of her door, throwing up her hands as Silva pulled away.
Her hands were still shaking as she gripped the steering wheel, navigating her way out of the city as quickly as she could.
The sun was already beginning to set. She had arrived at the flower shop shortly after it opened that morning.
A whole day. She nearly sobbed in relief upon checking her phone, seeing that the date had not changed, that she hadn’t lost weeks of her life again.
Only hours. Her heart was still thumping as she pulled into the express lane, bypassing the Cambric Creek exit entirely.
That wasn’t where she was going that night.
She had one last stop to make before she went home for good.
* * *
That her key still worked was a revelation.
Silva eased her car into the alley behind the bar, parking in the space it had once occupied every weekend. The security light came on as she approached the Plundered Pixie’s back door, her hands shaking as she slid the key into the lock without issue.
She could hear the noise of the bar through the back hallway, laughter and loud voices wrapped in the din of music, and she could easily envision the mass of huge bodies crowded around the pool tables and leaning at the bar.
Scurrying like a mouse, she hurried through the dark hallway, waiting for the moment the door would be thrown open, her discovery called out . . . but it never came.