Chapter 10
Ten
I would be brave. I must be brave. Eamon Grieve was only my father. Not even my true father. Bess’s. He was mortal, and a good forty years older than I. I had nothing to fear from him.
But you do not shake off eighteen years among the humans so easily.
I bled as quickly as a mortal when Eamon’s rod cut into my back.
My flesh recalled it now, stinging as if from a hundred cuts, and the packet of pennyroyal was rough against my front.
I was caught between my sin and its penitence, though I belonged to a people who knew neither one.
And the voice of my people spoke in me, too, however much the fear threatened to drown it out. Beltane is nigh, it sang out. Beltane Eve is here.
The Veil thinned, and my birthright called me, but I could not bring myself to move.
And what if I go? I am only half-faery, vulnerable to cross and iron but with no magic of my own. Might I not be used and tossed aside, as mortals often are by the fae? Enslaved, even? Danced until my toes fall off, or even to my death?
I had no way to know.
Eamon stood before the table, perfectly still, like a troll who turns to stone with the light of the sun. He thrummed with energy, like the voice of Faery in my blood. And when he spoke, it would be as the thunder, and whatever remained between us would likely not last out the storm.
My breath caught; my chest tightened; my blood seemed to retreat from my skin.
“Have you been plying your mother’s trade?” Eamon said quietly. I did not mistake it for calm.
Excuses choked me, lies growing like thistles in my throat.
“I . . .” I gathered pennyroyal. I crushed it, to brew into a tisane.
It was for Glenna Baker, but I never did place it in her hands.
The intention was there, surely, yet my sin, as he would call it, remained incomplete.
Could I claim innocence, therefore, and not offend my fae nature?
Mairi and I were not even true kin.
Eamon slammed his hands upon the table before I could respond. “Do not lie to me!”
“I cannot!” I cried out, in and of itself a half-truth. My entire life was a falsehood, and my balance ever slipping on the careful path I trod.
Eamon loomed, breathing heavily as he shored himself up for the next outburst. I recalled that afternoon with the baker, how I had taken the calm inside me and poured it outward, into him. A tiny gift of my fae nature, but it had been something, at least.
The baker was in no way my father, and I had no calm inside me left to give.
“I have told you,” Eamon heaved, “not to follow in your mother’s footsteps. Not to go against the will of the Lord.”
“I do not know the will of ‘the Lord,’” I told him, hoping he did not notice how I stumbled on the last two words. “How can I go against it when I don’t know what it is?”
This was not the approach to take with Eamon. “You heed the words that come from my lips.” His voice was a rumbling echo. “I am the master of this house. I am your master as well.”
How this chafed at me, as a voice inside me protested, No man is my master!
“You ask me not to follow Mairi Grieve’s path,” I said, sniffling. “You treat the only mother I know like a criminal, something shameful. But I am not ashamed, not of who she was, not of what she taught me, not of what I know.”
I recalled walking through the forest with Mairi when I was but eight years old.
“Do you see this bark?” she’d asked, as she took her knife and cut a bit off the willow tree. “We will brew it into a tisane and give it to your sister Sorcha. Mayhap then she will not suffer with her monthlies so bad. And we can make it into a poultice and treat your father’s injured arm.”
I had smiled, so grateful to learn these new things. And Eamon had benefited from Mairi’s knowledge as well. Had he forgotten? Why did he lock his heart away?
Because Mairi had become first an embarrassment to him and then a burden.
Because his pride told him the family fortunes rose from his efforts alone.
That she should be known as Eamon Grieve’s wife, not he as the midwife’s husband, however widespread and welcome her efforts were among the townsfolk.
Mairi was meant to be his helpmeet only, never to have enterprise of her own.
Something softened in Eamon’s face then.
Mayhap he remembered the girl he had married, how her healing touch had helped him as well.
Those days before the priest poured his poison into Eamon’s ears, before he became so full of his own importance and so dismissive of his wife and kin’s.
Before Eamon’s favor had been worth currying as his fortunes rose in the world.
I had the impulse to reach out to him, mourn with him, share our memories and tales.
Why must there be this wall between us? We had both loved Mairi, in our own way.
Once.
“I seek to protect you from her fate,” Eamon said.
I reached out, placing my hand lightly upon his forearm. “Mairi became ill,” I said. “It happens. Some may call it a judgment from Heaven. Others may name it a faery stroke.” My voice caught in a half sob. “I do not believe we will ever know. That does not mean—”
“It means,” said Eamon, shaking me off, “what I say it means. I am your father, and I will be obeyed.”
I heard the rod in his words. Ever would I hear the rod in his words.
Even if I relented now, and never used anything Mairi had taught me, sooner or later I would transgress in another way.
I could not be who he wanted. Nor could I leave Glenna Baker to suffer.
I would not violate the dictates of my own heart.
I might as well not have one if I did. “I cannot obey you,” I said softly, “when I know that you are wrong.”
Without a warning, Eamon’s hand cracked across my face.
A cry erupted from me as the pain blossomed, this harsh crack of skin upon skin. Self-pity and guilt blended inside me, a toxic brew.
And then . . . And then my rage boiled over, like porridge cooking over the hearth.
I am not mortal. The fae will not be so abused.
“You lift a hand to me? To me?” Flame sparked beneath my skin, gushing through my veins like the fiery rivers of the Christian Hell. I scarce trusted my mortal shell to contain it. “How dare you?”
On the walls, the firelight cast shadows: horned, with grotesque chins and noses, pointed ears, like characters from a puppet play.
The shadow fae bore witness to our fight.
Burn it in your memories, I thought. Recall forever how this human has transgressed.
“How dare I?” Eamon asked. “You live in my house, but do not follow my rules.” He scooped the pennyroyal off the table and flung it into the fire. The sharp minty tang of the herb filled the air. “You sully our home and mock God’s will with your devilry and pride.”
I laughed bitterly. “Devilry and pride? Were it not for me, you might have had to look after your own dying wife.” Tears sprung to my eyes at Mairi’s memory, but they could not quench the angry fire within.
Eamon stared, sweat beading across his forehead, skin growing red.
The shadow fae moved. Hands flew up in triumphant fists; caught in profile, their mouths opened wide in voiceless cheers.
I had not finished. Like a firestorm, the rage swirled within me, built up from eighteen years of endless drudgery. “I loved Mairi, even when sickness robbed her of her senses. I wish I could have told her. I wish she were here right now.” And not you.
“You are defiant to the last,” Eamon said stonily.
A peculiar calm passed over me. Is this the last? For somehow we had both crossed bridges we dare not return by. I did not think we could ever find our way home.
Then I shall shed my human skin and let him know I have been a changeling all along.
“Willful child,” Eamon persisted. “Mairi was too soft with you, let you play the huir, and this is the result.”
My breath heaved, my face grew hot, and I clenched my fists. I could barely recognize the sound of my own voice. “Keep her name out of your mouth.”
Eamon’s face paled. “You are no longer welcome in my home.”
There it was. The thing I had been most afraid of. The thing my inner Bess had tried to avoid. Eamon would cast me out with no protection, and no way to feed myself, for all he knew.
He did not care.
I do not know what you call that, but it is not love.
On the other side of the forest, Faery waited. Called to me as seductively as it did to wayward mortals, who stumbled into our faery rings or wandered, bedazzled, into the noonday sun.
Dusk drew near. The Veil between the worlds would thin, and I could make my way home.
To what welcome, I did not know. To mockery and abuse, it did not matter. My only other alternative had vanished.
Who do you become when everyone who told you what you were is gone?
Anyone you want.
I was not the same Bess I had been. I could shed her and return to Faery, and I would not look back.
But my business with this false father was not done.
“Fie on you, Eamon Grieve. May your milk sour, and your fortunes fail. May you wizen beyond your years, may your seed grow dry, and you never know love with another. I wish you a long and miserable life.” I still wore my sweet, human face, but an angry fae raged deep inside me, and even Eamon recoiled from me in fear.
“Get out of my house,” he said.
And I did.