“Someone annoying is at the door for you, Imogen,” Helena called.
“Okay, I’ll go right down and take care of that,” I said.
There was a paint-spattered woman pacing back and forth on our front porch. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Imogen? You look like Marin said you would—tall, with long black hair. But I’ve been wrong about people before, so maybe you’re not.” Her words ran together like rain.
“I’m Imogen,” I said cautiously.
“Good. Okay, good. I’m Michelle. Marin said you were good at fairy tales, like, good enough to write your own. And I have one of these”—she dangled a silver hourglass from her hand, then stuffed it back into a pocket—“but, like, I barely know anything beyond Hansel and Gretel, and this isn’t really a candy house sort of thing, is it?”
“I’m pretty sure not.”
She was literally wringing her hands, squeezing the stress from one set of fingers to the next. “So what do I do? I looked on the Internet, and it said stuff about leaving out bread and milk, and not speaking their names unless you want to attract their attention, but I do want their attention, so how do I make something good enough that they pick me?”
It was an excellent question.
“Look, um, Michelle.”
She stopped pacing, stared, laser-like. I resisted the urge to step back, out of range.
“Here’s the thing. The fairy tales I know about, they’re in books. I don’t know anything about actual Fae. I didn’t know that’s what Gavin was, when I met him. I didn’t know that Faerie was right across the river. I don’t know why the Fae are here, or what they want from us, or how to get their attention, though I’d say you can probably skip the milk and bread deal. I’m pretty sure Gavin drinks whiskey.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
I sighed, scrubbed my hands over my eyes. “I’m really not. But I don’t know anything more about how any of this works than the rest of you.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice cracked, and she looked like she might cry.
“Look, give me your email, and I’ll send you a list of my favorite fairy tale collections. Maybe there’s something in one of them that will help you.”
“Okay.” She nodded vigorously. “It’s just so stressful, you know? Like, every little bit helps.”
“You’re right,” I said, thinking of demanding answers from Evan, from Marin, from Beth. “It does. I’ll send you the email. If you can’t find the books, come back—we’ve got at least some in the library here.”
I knocked on Marin’s door.
“Come in,” she called. She was sitting on the floor, folded into lotus position, and breaking in a new pair of pointe shoes, reshaping them to better fit her feet.
“So, I just ran into your friend Michelle outside.”
She winced, slammed her shoe into the ground. “Sorry about that. She has a studio just a couple spaces away from me, and she’s really been freaking out. You’re the closest thing to an expert on this stuff I know.”
“Well, if I’m the expert, we’re all fucked. I mean, I haven’t come across any stories that look like what’s going on here. Believe me, you’d be the first person I told if I had.”
She paused. “Really? You don’t have any ideas?”
“Marin, I’ve spent most of my life thinking that fairy tales were, you know, fairy tales. Plus, all the stuff in them about how you’ll be fine if you’re just pure of heart and virtuous, and kind to the white cat that follows you through the woods or to the little old lady at the fork in the path—well, I don’t really think any of that applies. So no, I don’t have any ideas.”
I paused. “I mean, you’re dating Gavin. Have been almost since we got here. Do you have any insights, any ideas into how to impress the King of the Fae?”
“That’s not who he is when he’s with me.”
“Good,” I said, meaning it.
She set one shoe aside, picked up the second, whacked it against the floor. “Still, point taken. I won’t offer you up as a consultant again.”
“Thanks. Like I said, I couldn’t help her anyway.” I walked over to her window, watched the river run past.
“So, for something completely different, what do you want to do for Thanksgiving this year?” I asked.
“Besides the obvious part where we stay the hell away from our mother?”
I shuddered. “When did she stop asking you?”
“Oh, she still does. It’s random now—she only invites me to one of the major holidays each year. I’ve never gone to any of them.”
Holidays had always been even more awful than everything else when we were growing up. Our mother had seen them as performances, meant to showcase her.
When I was nine, I had been reading, and I hadn’t noticed the buzzer for the pumpkin pie going off until I smelled it burning. There hadn’t been time or ingredients to make another, so I had spent that Thanksgiving locked in my room, the visiting relatives told that I had the chicken pox. Marin had smuggled me a roll and a slice of turkey, both covered in blue fuzz from being stuffed in her pockets. I had eaten it all, even the fuzz. It had been the only food I had gotten that day.
“Why not cook here? Something nice, something not turkey and dressing. And invite any other orphans to eat with us,” Marin said.
“Like who? I mean, besides Gavin, obviously.”
“Ariel and Helena.” Marin rolled her eyes as she said Helena’s name. “We can’t ask one and not the other. Beth, if you want.”
“She has plans already. Visiting family.”
“What about Evan?” Marin asked.
“I think so.” I had meant what I’d said—if he was willing to behave like I mattered, I was willing to give things between us another chance. The couple of times we’d seen each other since, he’d seemed like he was trying.
“What happened? Do I need to kick him for you?” She wiggled her feet.
I laughed. “No, but I’ll let you know if that changes. I remember what you did to Brian O’Neal.”
“He deserved it, kissing that what’s-her-face when he was supposed to be your boyfriend.”
“To be fair, she was a grade ahead of me. The allure of the older woman.”
“Hey, a cheating bastard at eleven is no different than a cheating bastard now. And if a guy needs to be kicked, I will kick him.” Marin leaned in and gave me a hug. It was good, normal. She was my sister, not my rival. Better to remember that.
We hadn’t talked about the tithe since the morning after the ride through Faerie. I was afraid to bring it up—it would feel like declaring opposition. I tried to tell myself that it was no different than applying to Melete. There had always been the chance that one of us would get in and the other wouldn’t. But I knew that was a lie. This was different. There was only one spot. It was obvious from the beginning that one of us wouldn’t get it.
She still wore her charm, so she hadn’t changed her mind about wanting it. But then, I still wore mine, too.
As it turned out, Ariel was going home for the long weekend. “Which I will regret to some extent, because they’ll all call me Arabella, which I hate and have hated my whole life, and which hasn’t been my name since I legally dropped it and started going by Ariel—which is actually my middle name—so it’s not like I suddenly asked everyone to call me Starchild or something random, but they don’t see what the point was, and so they ignore it, because Arabella is what they’re used to.” She stuffed another T-shirt into the suitcase I had loaned her.
“Arabella Ariel?”
“I know, right? There will be at least one conversation, probably started by Aunt Ida, about when I think I am going to grow up and get a real job instead of showing myself off onstage, and at least two offers to set me up with ‘a nice boy.’ Now, I do like boys, but the ones on offer won’t, let me assure you, be nice. In either instance. And one of the so-called nice boys will be there, and at some point he will grab my ass and I will punch him. Plus, you know, I already have a girlfriend.
“But I miss my mom, who likes my girlfriend, and will have invited her as a surprise for me, and who will secretly appreciate the fact that I punched the ass-grabber, and I really miss her bourbon pecan pie, so I’m off.”
“Oddly enough,” I said, “I can totally understand why you’re going. Have a great time.”
“I’m hoping that being away will help me clear out my thinking on the whole should I stay or should I go thing, too,” she said, zipping the suitcase shut. “Have fun with the cooking.”
“Thanks. Travel safe.”
Helena was staying at Melete, and once she realized we weren’t planning the traditional turkey dinner, she said she’d join us. “Pumpkin pie is an abomination. I’ll get the wine.”
Marin and I made boeuf bourguignon, because it was the kind of thing that would cook all day and make the house smell warm and welcoming. Helena brought her work down to the library instead of staying up in her room, and joined us in the kitchen for a glass of wine as we cooked. It was the most social she’d been since we arrived, and the first time I’d thought she looked relaxed.
Evan had sent me a letter saying he would be here. And so I stood in front of my closet, like a teenager getting ready for her first date, rejected articles of clothing scattered across my bed and dropped at my feet. Everything was too something, and I wondered how it was that even though I had bought every item hanging in my closet, all of them were wrong. “You’re an idiot, Imogen,” I told myself. “It doesn’t matter what you wear. He’s already seen you naked, and if you don’t put on some clothes soon, everyone else will too.”
I glanced at the clock on my phone. “Fuck.” I shimmied back into the black dress I had taken off twice, put on my favorite red lipstick, and got downstairs at the same time as the knock on the front door.
“Happy Thanksgiving.” Gavin held a cake box, and Evan an armful of roses, reds and golds.
“Come in,” I said. “Gavin, you can put that in the kitchen. Here, Evan, let me take those.” Their fragrance burst like glory into the air.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Evan said, so close that when I breathed, my arm brushed his.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, filling the vase with water.
“I’m hoping we have some time alone. Later.” His voice was low, secret, a shiver over my skin.
“I—ouch.” I winced. Blood welled around the thorn broken off in the pad of my finger.
The oven timer rang, and Helena came in to pour the wine. “Are those from the rose garden? I love that place. I’m surprised there’s anything still in bloom there, though.”
“They’re not,” Evan said. “I love the rose garden, too, but these are from a florist.”
It was one of the best Thanksgivings I’d ever had. No holiday pressure or baggage, just a meal among friends, food, wine, and conversation. The most common of magics, an alchemy of people and place, transmuted into happiness.
Gavin and Marin sat across the table from me, and I watched them. Evan had said that the Fae weren’t good at emotions, that they didn’t love. But Gavin looked at Marin as if she were a miracle. It looked like love to me, or at least what I hoped love was.
“I’ll go get the dessert,” he said, gesturing Marin and me back into our seats when we protested. “You made dinner, and I’m sure I can find plates without trouble.”
Marin widened her eyes at Helena’s departing back. We waited and waited. “I’m just going to go see if they need any help. You know how tricky the coffeemaker is,” I said, lying through my teeth.
I opened the pocket doors.
“She said you promised.” Helena looked furious.
“I can’t make that promise,” Gavin said. “You know what the rules are.”
“You owe—” Helena began.
“Do you guys need any help?” I said, overly brightly. The dessert, chocolate ganache cake, draped in a dark red sauce, was already plated. “I’ll just start taking these in.”
“Thank you,” Gavin said under his breath as I picked up two plates. “Nothing I could have said was going to be the right thing.”
Helena clattered her way through dessert, stabbing her fork into her cake as if it was Gavin’s heart she expected to see pierced on the tines. Once she finished, she went back upstairs without saying good night.
Evan and I took our coffee into the library. A fire crackled and glowed in the fireplace. Romantic golden light and the pleasant smell of wood smoke. “I feel like there’s an invisible neon sign blinking ‘make out now,’ ” I said.
“An invisible neon sign?” Evan curled his hand around the back of my head and stroked up and down my neck with his thumb. “Sounds complicated.”
He leaned in and kissed me, and even though I didn’t move any closer, I kissed him back. His mouth was bitter like coffee and sweet like chocolate, and it would have been so easy to sink into the taste and feel of him. To not think about secrets and tithes and complications.
“When I’m in Faerie, all I can hold in my head is Tania,” Evan said. “It doesn’t matter that it’s been seven years now. I go back there, and it’s like traveling in time. Everything is raw, immense.”
As seductions went, this one was failing on a number of levels.
“Then I come back,” he continued, his hand stroking up and down my back. “And you’re here, and you’re real. I can feel you under my hands, and taste you on my lips, and it’s overwhelming. I breathe, and there you are.” He closed his eyes, spoke the next words into my hair. “I get lost in you.”
And so, for the moment, I let myself be overwhelmed. I didn’t ask questions, didn’t consider the complications. I wove my fingers into his hair, pressed against him, and kissed him hard in the dying light.
Ariel got back late Monday night. She still had her bags with her when she knocked on my door. “Thank God you’re still up.”
“What happened?”
“Actually, will you come downstairs? Because downstairs is where the whiskey is, and I really want a drink with this conversation.”
“Sure, of course. Let me just make sure that I’ve backed up my work.”
“I’ll drop these in my room and meet you down there.”
She poured us both generous glasses, then drank off half of hers in the first sip. “So, have you talked to anyone about that magic charm?”
“This?” I pulled the hourglass necklace from under my shirt. I’d gotten so used to wearing it, I hardly noticed it anymore.
Ariel nodded.
“Sure. You, Marin, Beth. Evan, sort of. I mean, we talked about the tithe, but not the charm, specifically. No one said not to. Which is weird, now that I think of it.” It seemed like a thing you’d be warned against discussing: By the way, Faerie is real and also a significant percentage of the world’s most successful artists served time there, and that is part of why they’re successful. But there hadn’t been a warning, and somehow the tithe was a thing that there weren’t even whispers of rumors about—no underground gossip about the events of every seven years.
“They don’t need to tell you not to. Try it with anyone who’s physically not here, and you can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you literally can’t. I went out with my girlfriend on Friday. After we reacquainted ourselves, we started talking about whether or not I’m going to stay here. And even though it sucks being apart, she’s totally supportive of me staying, if that’s what I want.” Her eyes flicked to the windows, her fingers playing along the rim of her glass.
“So I decide I’m going to joke a bit, ask how she’d feel if I were gone for seven years. And I can’t. Literally can’t. My throat starts closing up like I’m having an allergic reaction to the words every time I try to say something.”
“That must have been terrifying,” I said.
“It was. And it gets worse. Because after that, I can’t leave it alone. I try to tell everyone. Every single way I can think of. Nothing works. Not only can I not talk, my email messages bounce. My cell phone turns into the Ninth Circle of Autocorrect. Even the fucking pen I try to use bursts open in my hand.”
She refilled her glass and drank. “Then I get back here. I’m on the shuttle, and we pass through the gates, and everything just comes bursting out of my mouth, and I’m babbling away about the Fae and tithes and all this magic shit, and the driver just nods and says ‘yes, miss’ like I’m talking about the fucking weather.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“No, I’m really not. I couldn’t speak, Imogen. I’m not even part of this. I don’t have an hourglass, and I wouldn’t go to Faerie even if I had one. All I did was agree to come to Melete, and still they got in my head and made it so I couldn’t talk.
“My voice is who I am, and they can take it from me. I don’t know how to feel okay.”
I gave her my hand, and she held on tight.
“Are you here just to pack your things and go, then?” I asked.
“No, because the sick thing is, leaving doesn’t help with this. The part that’s weird and scary just gets worse if I leave, because there will be no one I can talk to. I won’t even be able to say why I left.
“So no, I’m not leaving. I am here to the end, because if they can do that to me, if they can take my voice, then I am taking everything I can from them by way of payment. I will stay in this house and eat the food and use the time that I have to make something brilliant, and in the end, they will have paid for all of those things.” Cold fury in her voice.
“So what will you do?”
“I’m thinking of changing my project,” she said.
“No more Joan of Arc?”
She finished her drink and smiled, and there were teeth in her smile, sharpness. “Suddenly I find I’m more interested in exploring ideas of silence, rather than of voices. And from sources that aren’t necessarily divine. I think I’m going to work on something that might speak for me a little better when I do leave here.”
“Be careful, Ariel.”
“Come on now, Imogen. You know how this works. No one ever made great art by being careful.”