Chapter 15 In Which the Scenery Changes #3
“Ow,” he said, grabbing her wrist. “Rijska, desist, please!”
Everly tugged on me again. “I set the table,” she said, with gravitas. “It’s my task. Would you like to help me?”
I smiled, because who isn’t going to smile at an adorable child solemnly explaining her boring household chores? “Of course,” I said. “I’d love to.” I let her lead me toward the open shelves on the far wall.
“Brother, what has kept you?” Rijska repeated.
Everly pointed imperiously up at the shelves, her ribboned pigtails bobbing. “My pap gets the plates,” she said, “but you can if you want.”
I stood on tiptoe and pulled a stack of plates into my arms.
“Five, correct?” I asked Everly, meaning to put a few back.
“Seven,” Aram said. I glanced back at him—he had taken out a cutting board and begun dicing vegetables.
“I was detained,” Sahir said to his sister. “The Princeling has need of me.”
“The Princeling will scheme for centuries,” she snapped. “Everly is only a child once.”
Everly, who appeared not to be listening, had taken forks from a drawer. She held them in front of her like an exciting multipronged weapon, her tiny pink fingers barely meeting around the bouquet of cutlery.
“Lead the way,” I said to her, nudging her toward the kitchen table.
She chirped, skipped twice, and went right past the kitchen table, through the far doorway.
I looked back at Sahir, but he only waved me away. So I followed Everly into a cozy combination living-dining room.
There was what could only be described as a chesterfield sofa on one wall, framed by two tall, rickety bookcases and catty-corner with a simple wood bench.
On the near side of the wooden bench was another table, nicer than the one in the kitchen, laid with a lace runner I was almost positive my grandma also owned.
The two short sides of the table had one large chair each, and the other long side had two smaller chairs. Everly, practically bouncing, started to divest herself of forks.
I followed her, laying plates down—three along the bench. “And Uncle Sahir will sit with me,” Everly said. “And Pap will sit with me, and Grumps will sit with you, and Grumpy will sit with you.”
“Grumps and Grumpy?” I repeated, convinced I had misheard her.
“My parents,” Sahir said, appearing next to me with two stacks of glasses. “My dad, Grumps, and my mom, Grumpy.”
“Is that…” I trailed off, glancing down at Everly. She’d turned to look at her uncle as soon as he walked in, mouth agape.
“Are the descriptions accurate?” he filled in for me. “You will have to decide for yourself.” With a wink, he tossed the glasses in the air—I gasped—they hovered, unstacking themselves, then floated to sit at the right hand of each plate.
“Show-off,” I muttered. But Everly squealed in delight.
“Again!” she crowed.
“Everly, where will Mamsie sit?” he asked her, having apparently heard her entire speech.
She shrugged. “Mamsie sits at the top,” she said, pointing to the head of the table. “Mamsie is in charge.”
It was hard not to smile at that.
“Very true,” Rijska said, entering with a large tray. “Sahir, will you get Grumps and Grumpy?” They grinned at each other.
Sahir saluted his sister and went up a narrow spiral staircase I had not noticed, in the shadowy corner of the room.
“Mom! Dad!” he shouted as he went, which made me smile again, imagining him as a kid.
I wondered what childhood was like in Faerie, and what Aram had meant when he’d said Sahir wasn’t old enough to remember the last time humans had been in Faerie.
There were at least three humans in Faerie right now.
I suppressed a shudder, remembering Chad and Milo.
Everly grabbed my hand and put me in one of the chairs on the long side of the table, against the wall; then she went around to the other side and slid to the middle of the bench.
Aram—I hadn’t noticed him come in—laid several dishes of food out and then joined his daughter, yanking on one of her pigtails as he sat.
She giggled. Everly appeared to be a generally delighted and delightful child. If I ever had a daughter, I wanted one just like her.
Except I would never have a daughter now. I stared, aching, at the staircase in the corner.
Sahir’s boots were visible first, followed by two bare pairs of feet. The three of them spilled out into the room almost simultaneously and jerked to a preternatural halt as one.
“Grumps,” he said, gesturing at the man, “and Grumpy”—with an affectionate clap on the woman’s shoulder.
I stood up, unsure what to do, and knocked the chair over. “Oh, no—” I said, but Sahir had already righted it with a tendril of brown magic.
“This is my lady,” he said. “In Court we call her Lady of the True Dreams, or Lady of the Cats.”
“Nope, not the cat one,” I said. “But really, Miriam is fine.”
“We are not so determined to hide our names here,” Grumpy said, giving Sahir a look. She had the same sharp brown eyes as her son, the same way of standing so she took up more space than her body. “Nor will we use yours ill, Miriam.”
Since I doubted Sahir’s parents had been auspiciously named Grumps and Grumpy and then found each other and started a family, this felt a bit ironic.
“Dinner looks delicious, Rijska,” Grumps said, smiling at his daughter. His children got their riots of silky black curls and the broad strong angles of their faces from him. “Let us sit and eat, and we can discuss your query, Sahir.”
Query?
But I dutifully sat again, looking around the table. I hadn’t had a family dinner in months—it had been months even before I was trapped in Faerie, because I’d been so busy at work.
As Everly had said, she sat on the bench between Sahir and Aram, lolling side to side so her head rested on first one and then the other of them.
Every time her head landed on Sahir’s arm, he smiled down at her, his face so soft it sent a stab of unnamable longing through me. Or maybe namable but unwanted longing.
I sat between Grumps and Grumpy, not lolling at all. Grumps had taken the foot of the table and Rijska the head.
They all reached for the food in front of them, and so I did the same.
There were six dishes—a salad of sorts with the purple veiny leaves I’d become accustomed to, a ricelike dish, a pressed protein that looked suspiciously like an extra firm tofu slab out of a package, soft dinner rolls, a thick brown sauce, and what appeared to be a tub of unflavored yogurt.
I gaped when Grumps handed me the yogurt. “You guys have this?”
Grumps grinned, one thick-knuckled hand still on the container, his eyes crinkling with crow’s feet just like a mortal man’s. “Sometimes our friends who walk the mortal world return with gifts.”
I glanced around and saw that everyone had taken a heaping spoonful.
“We should discuss,” Aram said, when everyone had filled their plates. “How to stop the mortal girl from withering.” His left hand splayed out on the table; he tapped his fingers in restless staccato.
Sahir pretended to steal a bite off Everly’s plate, and she squealed.
“Well, why is she withering now?” Rijska asked, intent on Aram’s face.
She stared at him with wide, trusting eyes—Sahir’s eyes, with an expression I’d never seen on his broader face.
Without any apparent conscious thought, she laid her right hand over Aram’s left on the table. He flipped his palm up and squeezed.
“There is an answer,” Grumpy said. She had filled her plate with heaping scoops of yogurt and nothing else. My chest tightened in anticipation. Who knew what Grumpy might say? Faerie curses, or a lack of dopamine.
Everyone turned to her, expectant. She stuck her spoon in the yogurt and plopped a dollop into her mouth.
“Well?” Sahir prompted.
“I do not know the answer,” Grumpy said. “Only that there is one.”
Grumps sighed, a heaving exhalation that put Sahir to shame.
I glanced at Sahir, whose lips quirked like he knew what I was thinking.
Sitting across from him at the table, I could see again the shadows beneath his eyes, the hollows under his cheekbones, and the unshaven stubble at his jaw. I’d never seen him so tired.
“Perhaps the Queen or the Duke will know the answer,” Grumps volunteered, tearing a soft roll to pieces on his plate.
He tossed a piece to Everly, who flinched under her father’s arm and then giggled.
Rijska glared at her father with enough force that I, personally, would have crawled under the table.
He ignored her and continued, “Though I cannot advise you to ask them for it.”
Now there was a Duke, too? Was he planning some kind of land invasion as well?
I stared at Aram. He had a faraway expression in his eyes, and I wondered what he knew. He seemed more alien than the others.
“Some of the humans do not wither,” Sahir said. “Those who wandered into the Court through winding roads open only to them.”
I looked around the table, struggling to process. Were they all trying to figure out why I was unhappy? Did wither just mean experience crippling existential depression?
“But it does not matter.” Rijska ripped a roll in half. “No matter who you ask, you will have to travel the roads. And we know the Queen’s soldiers have become bolder.”
Sahir looked at her. “You have seen them?”
His sister shook her head. “No, but we have heard from others. They wait along the paths between the Courts,” she said. “They waylay travelers and take them captive.”
Aram put a hand on Everly’s head.
Grumps stared at his son. “You will need a company for your journey, Sahir.”
I couldn’t stop myself, the sudden surge of rage. We didn’t need a magical mystery quest or another faerie to give us riddles. “I already know how to stop me from withering,” I said, slamming my fork onto the table. “You need to let me go home to my family.”
Sahir looked from Everly to me. And I saw him realize, fully, what had been done to me.
He sagged onto the bench, limbs lengthening. His body started to flicker.