Chapter Eleven Kit #4
“If they marry a human man, they never age,” Abram explains. He rubs his arm, embarrassed. “Idris is clearly not on offer, but they’ve been … pleased by my situation.”
My stomach churns, and I’m not sure how to answer. Skin stolen for a marriage or an enchantment woven to create love—I’m not sure that one is any better than the other.
“Here.” I dig into my reticule. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to bring more, but these should be safe.” I pass him the flask of water and what remains of my hazelnuts. “I’ll try to bring more tomorrow.”
He smiles and takes a deep drink of the water. “Thank you.”
Out in the dance, Idris suddenly stumbles and collapses to the ground. I take a step forward, but Abram catches my arm.
“Stay here,” he says, leaving the flask and hurrying on without me.
Reluctantly, I move back against the wall.
I can still see everything as it unfolds.
The Hidden Folk drag Idris to the chaise longue.
His face is colorless, and his head lolls.
They hold his head back and tip reddish-amber liquid from a glass into his mouth.
My heart nearly stops, but I remember Abram’s words: Idris can still leave.
He’s protected by rules that may or may not extend to Abram and me.
Abram reaches the chaise longue just as they begin to haul Idris back to his feet. I hear Abram’s words faintly over the wild music.
“Let him rest,” he’s saying. He reaches for Idris’s arm. “Let him be, for God’s sake!”
But the Hidden Folk pay him no attention, and Idris is shoved back into the crowd. Abram stops at the edge of the ring, helpless, and then a mermaid with hair blacker than coal pulls him into the dance as well. I think I see him hold back, but it’s only a moment before he’s in the thick of it too.
I crawl back into my hiding place, thinking.
The dances go on and on. The music—played by performers I cannot see—shifts and changes between on piece and the next.
First, it is a meandering tune, as rhythmic as the waves, and then it turns into a stormy frenzy, loud and fast. The next jig rises joyful as a seagull cresting a cloud, before plunging like an osprey into serene depths.
The instruments have a sound similar to ours, but with an unnerving edge to each note.
It vibrates in my ear, somewhere between a comfort and an itch.
A fiddle tuned a notch too high. A cello whose sound carves into me.
A flute that’s rusted with seawater. A whistle that hits two notes at once.
I can’t tell how much time has passed before Abram extracts himself again. He weaves his way toward me, glancing at the Folk often to see whether they are paying any attention. But before he can get far, the music abruptly cuts off.
The Hidden Folk turn as one to the larger of the open tunnels.
The instruments were so loud that in their sudden silence the final notes ring through my ears.
Faintly, I can hear the cooing babble of the water in the cove.
But otherwise, there is no sound, not even the breathing of the crowd.
Abram stops, turning as well. Idris has his arm draped over the shoulder of a selkie on one side and on the other a finman—
No, not a finman. It’s Speir.
My hands clench into fists. When did he arrive? How had I missed him?
Speir takes a handful of Idris’s hair and uses it to turn him. When he lets go again, he gives Idris’s head a pat, the way one might a dog. My blood boils.
The near-colorless moonlight makes it seem everyone has turned to stone. I cannot move without breaking the moment, and there is no way I can reach Speir without making a scene.
Then there are shuffling steps, and from the tunnel march four finmen with a sedan chair on their shoulders.
A woman—a queen, I think—sits in the chair, upright and proud.
On her head is an elegant crown of white coral and amethyst gems. She wears a long gown, glowing white silk tinged with the pale pink of a pearl.
The skirt hangs over the edge of her chair, and a breeze from the cove behind me ripples the hem like a wave.
Underneath the skirt, I glimpse lumpy metal shoes. They seem too tight, biting into her skin and sending blue streaks up her legs. I wonder why she wears them.
Then the dress settles again, covering her feet. The men set her sedan on a raised dais, where she can preside over everyone. Her gaze drifts past Abram to Idris, where she pauses with a measuring look. She lifts her hand, graceful and pale.
Then she stares right at me.
I freeze where I am, hands tightening on the edge of my nook.
She is across the large hall, and I should not be able to see her as I do—all clarity and closeness.
Her eyes are wide and vivid, her irises nearly black.
Selkie eyes. Her hair is the palest blonde, left loose and long enough to brush her ankles.
Her cheekbones cut shadows into her face that in the daylight of an autumn afternoon would have made her beautiful.
But in the light of the moon, she is left hollow. Skeletal.
She holds herself upright with a rigidity I recognize.
It is the sheer will of determination in the face of invisible pain.
It is in the stiffness of her fingers, still lifted in some sort of signal.
It is in the angle of her head, exactly straight rather than relaxed one way or the other.
It is in her eyes that are like black mirrors. They hold mine in a question.
I am back at the ball, Byrne reaching for me. I am staring at those around me. I am asking them, Can you see me? Am I real?
Then the queen slides her gaze away. Back to Idris. She smiles, less mirth than grim satisfaction. She lowers her hand. The music resumes.
I sink back into my hiding place, relieved and confused.
When I look again, Speir is gone.