Ah, humans. My guilty pleasure, my fatal flaw. They were always just so… fun.
My first affair with a human started out harmlessly enough. A young man—Nikos—came by to say that his love potion had not worked. They usually didn’t. Love potion customers either found the confidence to step up and admit their feelings, or they admitted defeat. They rarely returned.
“Ah,” I said, appearing to give his dilemma great thought. “This is a far more serious matter.” I hoped my expression did not betray the joy I felt instead.
“I will do whatever it takes, Kyria. Ask me for anything. I will loot the Troll King’s treasure room; I will carve out a piece of the moon. I need Damara in my life.”
“You must understand,” I told him. “The human heart is not mine to give. I can only persuade it.”
But Nikos was relentless. His lust was like a drug that seeped through my thin skin. My heart leapt inside my tiny human-sized chest.
“If you cannot promise me forever, promise me one night,” he pleaded. “Even one night with Damara would ease this ache that tortures me.”
I doubted that. Humans were always bursting with one emotion or another. But a single night with his love… that, I could do.
I leaned in to him, lowering my voice as if the gods might overhear. “Bring me what you can of her. An eyelash. A nail clipping. A lock of her hair. A scrap of her clothing. A tear on a handkerchief. You get the idea.”
“Yes, Kyria.”
He rushed out the door, and I retrieved my little trunk.
He returned that night with a scarf full of items.
“Wait here,” I bade. I went outside and lowered the bucket into the well, deep enough to bring back seawater. Into this I emptied the contents of the scarf. Then I opened my trunk, tore off a pinch of my true skin, and dropped it into the mixture. It did not take long to grow. The new skin had ample curves and long, dark hair and eyes as bottomless as the cenote. I slipped it on with incredible ease. Becoming Damara was almost as effortless as returning to seal form.
Nikos did not stop to ask how his love had suddenly come to this door, or why her homespun dress looked so familiar. He simply took her—me—into his arms and kissed her—me—with all that passion. It was decadent.
I gave that young man one deliciously carnal night with the woman he loved. In return, he gave me an exciting new world of possibilities.
I do not remember how many people I became after that, or how many human lovers I took. Each time was as thrilling as the time before, and come morning, no party was ever unsatisfied.
Until the last.
I should have recognized danger when it walked through my door. Despite the cenote’s presence as a surefire escape route, I had not been raised to play safe. In truth I had not been raised at all—Love and Strife were my sires, not my parents.
That he had come bearing a scarf of tidbits without having previously solicited a love potion should have been the first warning sign. But he was tall, with cheeks and hands the color of flawless sealskin and kind, dark eyes that reflected the moonlight. Black hair surrounded that handsome face in a halo of twisted locks. His shoulders looked as strong as his lips looked soft.
And, unlike the rest of my custom, he was fey.
I would have sworn that I had seen nothing in the world as beautiful as that man. I knew what pleasures could be gained from the touch of thin, mortal skin. My soul was drawn to him like a wave to the shore. I could not wait to possess him for my own. And because of that, I did not ask certain very important questions. I did not even stop to think. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to kiss the life right out of him.
He withdrew a small bag from his pocket and emptied the contents on my altar. Gold coins spilled out, displacing the rocks and shells and lines of salt drawn there. The troll king’s stamp scowled up at me a dozen times over.
I should have asked a question then, but I did not care about the money. I wanted this man so badly, I would have done the spell for free.
“I must tell you what I tell them all,” I said. “The human heart is not mine to give. I can only persuade it.”
“She is a sorceress.” He indicated the scarf full of ingredients. His deep voice echoed in my bones and my knees went weak. “Not entirely human. Will that be a problem?”
I would have this man and some magical ability? I could feel my human form flush from head to toe. “No problem,” I said. “Wait here.”
I went out back and drew up the bucket of seawater. I tossed in the bits of his lover and a pinch of my true skin. The wait for that new skin to grow almost killed me. In that time, I should have noticed the clouds that rolled in to cover the stars. The absence of sound as the animals silenced. The acrid smell, like marshland. The reflection of the moon in the bucket as it turned red. The universe gave me every sign, and I ignored them all.
I did not even bother to look at the skin before I stepped into it. I felt my face widen, my waist thicken. The skin of her—my—hands was now mottled, her—my—hair now coarse. Not that any of that mattered. I rushed back to my beautiful man without a care in the world. I hoped he would be as passionate as all the lovers who had come before. I could not wait to see his face. I could not wait to taste him.
But instead of delight, the sight of me made him scowl.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in a voice that was not my own. “Am I not what you desired?”
“You are perfect.” He lowered his eyes to the floor. “But you are not for me.”
He opened my door, and two enormous men covered in leather armor swept in. Their stench filled the room. I fell to my knees, choking on the scent.
Trolls.
Each one took an arm and lifted me off the floor.
“Well done, Jason,” grunted the one on the left.
“The king will be pleased,” grunted the one on the right.
They dragged me outside and threw me into a cage on the back of a wagon pulled by a pair of massive aurochs. The wagon creaked beneath the weight of the trolls as they mounted. Jason, that gorgeous traitor, sat in the back beside my prison.
“What have you done?” I whispered.
His scowl deepened. He still did not look at me. “What I had to.”
The wagon crossed the plain and rose into the mountains, up and up, farther and farther away from the sea. I grew tired and listless. My ears felt strange. The chill air crept through my homespun dress and into my bones. I had never been this far from the sea, from my home, from my seal skin. The loss was like a bottomless sinkhole in my soul.
The trolls’ castle was an ugly beast of a thing. Dead bodies were lashed to the iron gates: some fresh corpses, some nothing but bone. The gates smelled worse than the trolls.
Is this what they did to foes? Friends? Not that it mattered. Any intelligent being was automatically an enemy of the troll kingdom. I noticed a half-rotted skull smiling at us as we passed by. I found it a fitting welcome.
The trolls carried me through a back door and up a tower to a small chamber. My new prison. They dumped me onto the floor beside a pile of red cloth and then left. Their stench lingered.
“Those are robes,” said my beautiful jailor. “Put them on.”
Even in the skin of a sorceress, I could work no magic in this weakened state. I managed to summon only enough energy to do as ordered. The robes were bulky and awkward, but I was grateful for their warmth. I did not rise from the floor.
“Can I get you anything?”
My home? My true skin? A ride back down the mountain? Freedom? But only one word escaped my parched lips. “Water.”
He poured me a glass from a pitcher on the small table. Fresh, no salt. Desperate, I drank it anyway.
I still felt empty.
I half expected him to leave the room, but he did not. He lowered himself to one of the chairs beside the table and said nothing.
In time, I was able to lift myself up off the floor. Tapestries covered three walls; the fourth had a small window. Beneath this window was a large couch, or a small bed. I crawled onto it, turning myself so that I could stare at Jason. What had the universe had been thinking, creating someone so exquisite and cruel? If he truly was fey, what sort of magic did he possess? Could his magic be his beauty? Surely not. I, above anyone, knew how mutable a person’s outward appearance could be.
I might have asked him, but I did not. Instead, I watched him not-watching me.
I was not surprised when the king, Atatroll, arrived. By then, I’d thought through my situation enough to put that much together. I had been captured for the king. But why me? Or, rather, why her? This body I wore would be useless in an armory, or in the mines. Did trolls even care about anything else? It couldn’t be power—wearing a sorceress’s skin didn’t give me anything like her full abilities, or I would have escaped long before this.
I braced myself, sure that this encounter would not be pleasant.
He was large and smelly, as all trolls were, but his stench was no worse than the guards who’d brought me here. That part did surprise me a little. I’d assumed that a king of trolls would be bigger or stronger or smellier, somehow. This troll simply had eyes a little wider set than the others. His skin was a shade yellower. He wore layers of furs on top of his leathers. His necklaces were made of teeth and claws. What I could see of his own teeth were stained and pointed. A large golden hoop pierced one side of his giant hooked nose.
He reached out a meaty hand, grabbed my robes at the neck, and lifted me off the couch until my face was level with his. I forced myself to remain as limp and calm as I could manage. I would not gag. I would not scream. I would not beg. I would not cry.
He was all muscle and menace. The spelled skin I wore was thin and mortal. For the first time I wondered what death would be like. It might be preferable to whatever the troll king had in store. If only that window were wide enough—
He slapped me in the face with his free hand. My head snapped back, my cheek and jaw exploding with pain. There was blood on my—her—lips. The salty mineral taste was almost refreshing.
Somehow, I managed to stay silent. I knew I had no control over what happened next, so I merely stared into the troll king’s eyes. They, too, were yellow, like bile, the pupils so large I could almost see myself—herself—in them.
The troll king gave a fetid huff, and then tossed me to the ground like a discarded rag doll. “She’ll do.” The nasally growl was addressed to Jason. “For now.”
Jason bowed low to the troll king. “Yes, your highness.”
The troll guards outside flanked the king at attention. They shut the door firmly behind their sovereign, leaving Jason inside the room with me.
“A-ha.” My voice and my lip both cracked. My laugh was a low, raspy cackle.
“Something funny?”
“You are not so much my jailor as you are a fellow captive.” Only half the words emerged from my dry throat, but Jason understood. He fetched my glass and refilled it with water. My pride did not want to take it from him. My desiccated body demanded otherwise.
“They killed my wife,” he whispered. “They will kill my daughter if I do not help them.” He sat down on the floor with me. After what had felt like ages, those soulful dark eyes finally met mine. Hers. “I’m sorry.”
The spiteful laugh died inside me, not that I had the energy to continue it anyway. There were so many ways both of us could have avoided this mess. And yet, here we were. His apology didn’t change anything. I was still glad to have it.
“Who am I?” I raised my robe-covered arms. “Whose body is this?”
“Gana. Atatroll’s sorceress.”
My recollection was hazy with lust, but I vaguely remembered something about a sorceress. Never let it be said that elementals were ever overly intelligent. “A sorceress? Surely not. Her nature should grant me some little power. Even in my weakened state.”
Jason shook his head. “She works in blood magic.”
I glanced around the small room. “No blood and no water.” Not unless I stabbed my cellmate, at any rate, and even then I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Blood magic was learned, not inherited. I wore this Gana’s skin, not her history. I could not help but laugh again at the irony of it all. “You could not have chosen a more perfect prison.”
“Water will help you to heal?”
I nodded.
“I will arrange for a bath to be brought here.” He stood and walked to the door.
“Salt, too,” I said after him. “If you can manage it.”
He knocked on the door. The guards opened it a crack and spoke to him. I could not hear the exchange.
“What did you say?” I asked him when the door had closed again.
“I reminded them that if you die, you will be of no use to the king.”
“What use am I to the king in this state? Who is this Gana to him?” Please don’t say his lover, I silently begged the universe.
“She is Atatroll’s closest advisor,” said Jason. “More importantly, the blood magic gives her power he will never possess. And no one should have more power than the king.”
“I bet that drives him crazy.”
“He hates her as much as he needs her,” said Jason. “Maybe more.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re fey. Doesn’t that make you more powerful than the king as well?”
“If only I had been smarter about it,” he said, as if he’d plucked my previous thoughts right out of my head. “Wiser fey moved south when the trolls began to flex their muscles. But I was too proud of the life I had built here to leave it all behind. So instead of fleeing, I decided to find a way to keep my home. I became a seeker in the mines, and the king valued my service. I thought it would keep my family safe.” He looked up at the small window. “I could not have been more wrong.”
“Your magic is finding things,” I deduced. Seekers found gems and ores and veins of gold in the mines. He had found me easily enough. Found my weaknesses as well.
“Yes.”
“Then I suppose I am here to be… a whipping boy, of sorts. When the king gets frustrated with his sorceress, he cannot take his rage out on her. But he can take it out on me.”
Jason hung his head. “Yes.”
I gave him a moment to steep in his shame. “Are you sure you can’t find a way out of here?”
“I haven’t yet,” he said to the floor.
Love and Strife help me, I reached out to take the hand of this man who had been my doom. “We will survive.” Even with a foreign throat I sounded so sure of myself. I’d had years of practice consoling sad souls with worse lies. “But only if we work together. You must promise to never again betray me.”
“I cannot make that promise if my daughter’s life depends on it.”
Gods bless his stunning, stalwart heart. The child was most likely already dead, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He’d dive headfirst out that window I’d been eyeing, and then where would we be? “What is her name?”
“Rashida.” I could almost hear his heart break as he said the word.
“When you are about to betray me for her sake, say her name,” I suggested.
“I can do that.” He squeezed my hand. I tried not to enjoy it. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“Give me time,” I said, though I was already nodding.
We did survive after that, though each day was worse than the next for a while. I would have lost count, had I bothered counting them at all from the start. The troll king did not come to me every night, but he visited often enough. Jason continued to walk the line between warden and fellow prisoner. Eventually, he even became my friend.
He tended my wounds between abuses in whatever way he could. Soaking in a salt bath worked the most wonders—the sorceress’s skin healed faster when I was wearing it, but the pain halved when I removed it. And so we maintained that delicate balance. Atatroll would beat his sorceress fiercely enough to relieve his rage but not fiercely enough for me to die, and then Jason and I would patch and soak her—and me—at whatever speed and pain level I could tolerate.
Removing the sorceress’s skin was the most blissful part of those long, wretched days. I relished the ability to simply exist as beautiful, graceful me for some precious little while. Yes, there was still pain, and yes, I was still a thin-skinned mortal, but all the hair and lips and eyes and nose and fingers I wore were mine.
I remember Jason’s reaction the first time I’d slipped out of Gana’s skin—he had not laid eyes on my human form since the night he’d betrayed me. His face was a vision of pure remorse. I would have consoled him had I not been in such pain from a particularly brutal session with the king, so I let him console me. I let him vent his shame and apologies. I let him cry for me. For his daughter. For the displaced fey. For himself. His tears added more salt to my bathwater, and maybe a little magic as well.
More time passed. Seasons changed. Snow fell on the mountaintops outside our small window. I wondered about my home, my cenote, my seal body in the trunk beside the well. I hoped it was safe. I truly would die in this skin if it wasn’t.
Rare days came that weren’t so bad, and Gana’s skin was able to heal by itself in the salt bath. On those days, Jason and I pretended we were strangers in another place, with far less horrible fates. We shared stories. We shared the small bed. Eventually, we found sweet solace in each other. We made our own magic.
He tasted as delicious as I’d imagined.
My days featured little else besides Jason, pain, and time, so I took the opportunity to do the thing I had neglected to do before: I listened. I did not ask questions—the king would have sliced me with a thousand cuts before giving me a direct answer—but I learned how to obtain information. Jason used his own fey gifts to subtly acquire intelligence elsewhere in the castle. Late at night, or while I soaked, paralyzed, in the bath, we shared our discoveries.
There is a saying among immortals: if one is patient enough, one can move mountains.
“The dungeons are filled to capacity. Humans and fey, though the fey keep using what magic they have to escape when they can. It’s frustrating the trolls to no end.” There was pride in his voice as he made his report. “But what’s the point? What are the trolls doing with them all?”
I rested my head against the back of the tub. It had been a particularly physical day. One ear was half gone, one eye was swollen shut, and my arm might have been broken. My toes, my fingers, even my teeth hurt. “Mmm,” I managed to say. I tried again, concentrating on forming whole words. “Mines? Food for winter?”
“The king already has more gold and gems than he could spend in seven lifetimes. If he hollows out any more of this mountain, it will fall down around his ears. As for food, Aurochs are much easier to corral and breed than humans or fey,” he pointed out. “They also yield far more meat. And that’s not counting all the other livestock possibilities. No… it must be something else. Something they need man power for.”
“But troll power,” I muttered.
“Yes. Trolls are definitely stronger than humans and fey put together. So what is it that we can do that they cannot?”
I drifted in and out of my pain, trying to think. “Love,” I said finally.
“I would kiss you for that, if you weren’t so miserable,” was his response. As a consolation, I imagined the kiss behind my closed eyes. It was perfect.
“Art,” I added, after our fantasy kiss had played itself over in my head a dozen times. Art required love, compassion, and a depth of emotion I was sure that trolls could never experience.
“Craftsmen,” Jason said, after a moment. “Didn’t you say last week that they’d rounded up a bunch of woodworking fey and an earth elemental at some point?”
“Mmm,” I affirmed. It might have been last week, or last month. I had tried to stop myself from imagining how many families had been slaughtered to press those fey into service, or what horrible trap they’d set for the Green Man. The king had been particularly proud of his handiwork that day, whatever it was. I hoped all his terrible stories were hyperbole, but I knew they weren’t. Jason and I were proof enough of that.
“They have to be building something. But what?”
I forced my split lips open once more. “War.”
It was always war with trolls. War and money and power. Another battering ram, another sword, another plate in the armor. The trolls would not be happy until every corner of the world was under trollish rule. And even then, I suspected they’d turn on each other just to have something to do.
I’d also gathered tidbits about the sorceress—the real sorceress—but I couldn’t summon the words to tell Jason. I wasn’t sure what to say, anyway. I only knew that something big was brewing, a magic spell that Atatroll resented not being a part of, even though it was being made for him. It was all for him.
“Way out?” No matter how bad the pain, I always asked if his fey gifts had found us a way out. Not that it was something he’d ever forget. But I did love how the question made him smile.
“I might have a lead,” he said. “There’s a story going around about a certain fey… the trolls have captured her three times now. And every time she disappears again, the youngest and oldest and sickest of the prisoners seem to vanish right along with her.”
I did not ask about his daughter. It had been a very long time since he’d mentioned her. I allowed him the dream of imagining that she’d escaped. Dreams like that were what kept us both breathing most days. Dreams and secrets.
I silently thanked the gods. If this fey was real, she’d come at the perfect time.
The next time I was delivered to the troll king’s chambers for a session, I kept that rebellious fey in mind. I intended to see what I could discover about her. But the king had something else in mind.
“Tell me I am the greatest,” he bellowed as I entered. The demand was no surprise; our visits usually began this way. I would lavish praise upon him, list a myriad of achievements, and cower in his shadow.
I chose to skip to the end of the pleasantries. “I tremble in your presence, your greatest majesty.” He usually struck me at that point, and we went on from there.
“Of course you do.” He motioned to a sitting area. “Have some tea.” It was an odd request, not that it was a request at all. Glancing down at the oversized pot and cups large enough for troll hands to manage, I was immediately on my guard. What fresh hell was this? I would have suspected poison, but no troll worth his salt would have carried out such a lazy, passive murder. Especially not a king. Kings were physical, loud, and as bloody as possible. I would know.
Dutifully, I sat.
“I changed the world today,” he said as he settled down into the lavish sofa opposite me. “Henceforth I will be known as the greatest troll that ever lived.”
“And the strongest and richest, to be sure,” I added.
“Riches? You mean garbage,” spat the king. “My men can harness the aurochs in gold and gems for all I care. I have no use for them anymore. I am beyond wealth.”
Beyond wealth? My mind was racing. I forced my skin not to show it.
The only thing trolls valued more than gold, jewels, and iron was power. Had he found a way to subsume his sorceress’s gifts? Taught himself blood magic? That was a chilling thought. Not only would he be a most dangerous beast, but he would also have no more need for me.
“Your brilliance is unmatched,” I said.
“YES!” He slammed his cup down with such force that the table shook. “The Thaumater was my idea. You may have sacrificed a thousand human souls to your profane gods to make it work, but it would not exist without me.” He slapped me in the face. “You remember that.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“And whatever magics we manage to extract will come to me, do you hear? The power will be mine. Not yours. MINE.”
Each sentence was punctuated with another slap. “Yes, your majesty.”
“My trolls will march down from the mountain, and then I, King Atatroll, will conquer the world. Not you. ME.”
Punches this time, then a sound kick. I answered each with “Yes, your majesty,” until I lost the ability to speak at all. When that happened, I left Gana’s skin to absorb the beating while my mind wandered. The trolls would be coming down the mountain to conquer the world. Atatroll would be leaving the castle. Which meant a significant change in my and Jason’s situation. On top of that, the most direct route from the top of the mountain to the rest of the world was through town. My home and my true skin were no longer safe.
I hoped that fey was real, because we needed her. Now.
The king was in high spirits. The beating lasted for hours. The guards dragged my carcass back to the room where Jason had a salt bath waiting. It was several more hours until the water had healed me enough to speak.
“Escape.” It was more of a moan than a word.
“I spoke to one of the scullery maids who gets food to the dungeons,” he said. “The rogue fey woman isn’t just a story. She’s real, and she’s here. I will find a way to contact her.”
“Now,” I said. There would be no escape if the trolls caught this woman. We could not risk her becoming one of the souls sacrificed by the sorceress. I could not wait until the trolls were on the move.
“What is it that you say to me?” Gods, his eyes were beautiful when he smiled. “Patience can move mountains.”
“Skin,” I said to him. It was time to play my hand.
Jason’s smiling brow furrowed with worry for me, and I loved him all the more. I had not shed Gana’s skin in months—I only ever risked it when the pain was too great. And though my pain was great now, I feared his was about to be worse.
I sunk beneath the surface of the bathwater, slipped out of Gana’s skin, and stood. Well, I almost stood. Jason caught me when I began to falter. He helped me steady myself. He even smiled at my foolish show of bravado. And then he saw my rounded middle.
Every muscle in his body tensed. His brow furrowed. His face hardened. He said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for. It had taken both of us to create the being that now grew inside me. I suspected the universe had played a hand as well—I should not have been able to conceive in this manner. Immortals could not do this. But I had not worn the skin of an immortal for a very long time.
I know I felt some guilt for hiding my condition for so long, but I did not regret that. Had Jason known about the pregnancy, he would have done something, despite the fact that I was the one with the power to hide the babe and keep it safe. He would have found a way to stop me from visiting the troll king. I envisioned him physically putting himself between us. That scenario never ended well for anyone.
Truth be told, I was probably apologizing for myself. I was a poor substitute for the woman who had loved him and willingly shared his life. This child, if it lived, would in no way replace the one he had lost. Yes, the trolls had most likely murdered both of them before Jason ever met me, but I was the one here now. With him. Carrying his child.
He reached out a hand and his skin met mine. Tears slid down his cheeks. “Rashida. She’s gone.”
“You will see her again,” I said softly. “You will see them both again. On the other side.” There was that practiced surety again. Only, I hoped this lie were true. If I could not save my skin, I might be joining them there.
We held each other in silence for a while, until I involuntary shivered from the cold. Slowly, he helped me back down into the bath. I donned Gana’s skin once more, to heal and hide. And then we made plans.
Jason had not heard of the Thaumater the troll king had mentioned, but he knew that Gana and the king were spending more and more time behind closed doors. The dungeons these days contained far fewer humans and far more fey. Whatever Atatroll’s infernal device did, if it could facilitate a world ruled by trolls, it needed to be destroyed.
Jason located the rebel, Teneka, whose fey power was the ability to walk through walls. Together they arranged a wagon that would quickly deliver me to town and, hopefully, to safety. I begged Jason to come with me, though I had no idea how to hide him once I became a seal again. I would cross that bridge when I came to it.
But he would not be dissuaded. If the fate of the world rested on destroying this Thaumater, he trusted no one else to the task. After all, the troll king and his sorceress would surely have hidden such a powerful device. Jason was the only fey guaranteed to find it. Once he had it, he would use his gift to find a place deep in the mountain where he could destroy it.
I gasped when Teneka appeared through the locked door of our chamber. She was a petite thing—the halo of her hair was almost half as large as the rest of her—but I had no doubt of her strength. If this woman said she could drive a team of aurochs through the mountains undetected, I trusted her. Granted, it wasn’t like I had a choice.
“It’s time to go,” she announced.
Jason and I pulled each other into as tight an embrace as my belly would allow. Dreamers until the end, we stubbornly refused to call it a goodbye.
“I fell in love with you the moment I laid eyes on you,” I whispered in his ear. “I was doomed from the start.”
“I found you a way out of this room,” he whispered back.
Lord and Strife help me, I laughed, even as tears fell from my eyes.
“You,” he said. “You were my way out.”
“There was always the window,” I suggested playfully.
I felt his lips smile against my cheek. “You were the better choice.”
We kissed then, long and deep. The goodbye we did not say in words was said with that kiss. Then I stepped back into Gana’s skin, hopefully for the last time.
Teneka gasped as I shifted into the sorceress. “Amazing.”
“At this moment, I envy your power much more.”
“Take my hands,” she said, and then she pulled us through the door as if it were made of water. Once we got to the bottom of the tower, Teneka and I took the left corridor. Jason took the right. I felt his hand slip from mine, but I did not look back.
There was no turning back for either of us now.
Teneka’s arrival—and our escape—could not have come at a better time. The wagon was halfway down the mountain before the cramping in my belly began in earnest. It might have started sometime earlier, but I had borne so much pain for so long that I did not take notice until the child was almost upon me. My body took over, or the universe did; I was too far gone to care, and Teneka had her hands full driving the wagon. I shed Gana’s foul skin—or it was shed for me?—and the babe burst from my loins in a rush of… something. Blood? Brine? I could not see, but I definitely smelled salt on the air. I gave birth twice, once to the child, and once to its seal skin. Until that moment, I was not sure what my child’s nature would be. I cried out in joy. Immortal or otherwise, whatever elemental magic ran through his veins would make him far heartier than any fey or human babe. If any of us survived, it should be him.
Him.
I had a boy.
If only I’d had Jason as well.
I wrapped the babe in his seal skin and cradled him in my arms and wept. I might have been weeping since I left the castle. I didn’t care anymore.
I was a mother for the length of a wagon ride. I memorized every beautiful inch of him. There were so many stories he would never know. Perhaps that was for the best. I told him to remember me, no matter how long his life was. But he would not have a life if I did not act swiftly.
I cried out again when the wagon came to a stop, this time in anguish. Teneka hopped down from her seat, and froze in utter shock. I could only imagine the mess of me in a pool of fluid and Gana, desperately clutching a newborn seal to my breast. I sobbed as if the world were ending. And maybe it was.
Reluctantly, I thrust the babe into Teneka’s arms. “Water,” I said forcefully, and then remembered she was not Jason. She did not know what I meant, because we had not spent months—years?—in each other’s company. “Take him to the water.”
“Come with us,” she said as she cradled the seal-babe.
“I will die without my true skin,” I told her. “I must fetch it from my house.”
“Your house is the first place the trolls will look for you.”
I knew that. “Which is why you must run to the water. It is his lifeblood. Find a ship, whatever ship you can, and go as far from here as you’re able. If… anything happens, throw him into the sea.” I did not want to imagine what “anything” might entail.
Thankfully, Teneka needed no translation. “Throw him into the sea,” she repeated.
“He will thrive in the sea. It is his nature.” I pushed her away from me, though it killed me to do so. “Go.”
Teneka slowly backed down out of the wagon. “What shall I call him?”
Such a mundane thing really should have occurred to me on the wagon ride. “Use his father’s name,” I said.
“And what is your name?”
“What?” It had been so long since anyone asked me the question, I’d almost forgotten. They’d always called me Kyria in human form. Even Jason had called me Kyria. But that was never my name. “Malia,” I told her. “May you both live long enough for him to know it.”
“May you live long enough to find us again,” she replied. “Gods bless you, Malia.”
I watched her run with the babe, in the direction of the water, until I could not see her anymore. Gingerly, I slid myself out of the wagon. I was not sure if my legs would hold me, but they did. Slowly, one tenuous step at a time, I made it back to my home.
The trolls were waiting for me at the well, the same guards that had been with Jason when he captured me. The same guards that had waited outside that locked door for the length of my imprisonment. They held me until their king arrived.
Atatroll strolled through my courtyard as if it were his own. He walked right past the trunk at the base of the well. The trunk that held my true skin.
So close.
I needed to find a way to get him to throw me—and that trunk—down that well. That didn’t seem so impossible. And yet…
So close.
“Hello, Kyria. My trolls tell me that this is your true form.”
Your trolls know nothing. Smash that trunk and I’ll show you my true form, I didn’t say. The troll king deserved none of my words. He deserved nothing. He would get nothing.
“I bet you thought you were so clever turning my fey slave against me.”
He was never you slave, I didn’t say.
“He may have destroyed my Thaumater, but no matter. My sorceress will make me a new one. My true sorceress.”
He said the words “my” and “me” with such ridiculous emphasis that it took me a moment to comprehend what he’d said. To realize that the sounds beyond my house were not the ceaseless waves but screaming. To smell smoke on the wind.
A thousand human souls—that’s how many his foul sorceress had sacrificed. In order to make another one, she would have to kill enough humans to fill a small town.
My town.
“Gana told me about skin walkers like you,” he said.
How had he admitted to my existence to her without severely wounding his pride? I hoped the experience had been terrible for him.
“She told me that there would be another skin, a true skin, and that if I destroyed it, it would destroy you.”
I closed my eyes so that I could not look at the trunk. He found it anyway. I heard the iron bands spring away as he crushed it into splinters. I opened my eyes then. My true skin dangled from his fist.
He had to throw it down the well now. It was the only sensible place to discard it.
So close.
Atatroll stared at the skin until he realized what it was. “When we are done here,” he said to his guards, “kill all the seals.”
The troll guards grunted in agreement.
I bit back a laugh at the order. The seals will be safe, I didn’t say. They are in the sea, far beyond the reach of trolls. Like my son is in the sea, I thought. I hoped.
“As for you…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
He opened up his mouth and swallowed my skin whole instead.
I would have collapsed had the trolls not been holding me. My death, that thing I had never contemplated, was now a surety. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, since Atatroll loved torture so much, but someday that end would arrive.
My obvious defeat put a spring in his step. “Come,” he said. “Join me. When the new Thaumater is finished, you shall have the honor of being the first drained of power.” He smiled at that, with his mouthful of yellow, pointed teeth. “And then, we will drain every fey we can find.” He all but skipped back to the road.
The troll guards dragged my limp body behind him.
I had almost no power without my skin, and there were no fey that I knew of in town. How in the name of Love and Strife…
The sun hit my face as the troll guards stepped out the door, and that’s when I saw them. Many ships, massive ships, larger than any I had seen before, large enough to each hold a complement of trolls. They glided through the streets of town on wheeled conveyances pulled by teams of aurochs.
This. This is what the woodworkers were for. This is why they had trapped a Green Man. This is how they would kill the seals. This is how they would capture the fey. This is how Atatroll would conquer the world.
I struggled, scrambling for anything I could use to kill the troll king, to kill myself. I managed to wrest a dagger from the belt of one of the guards.
“It’s okay,” said the king. “Let her go.”
I ran at him, knife brandished, screaming for the fate of the world.
He was laughing when he struck me down.
I woke lashed to the mast of his ship, like the dead bodies on his castle gates. I could taste the sea on the air, but I could not drown myself in it. I thought there could be no truer torture. And then I heard the groan beside me.
I turned my head, tried to open my swollen eye, but there was no need. I knew it would be Jason there, tied next to me. He was not dead—of course he was not dead. Atatroll would desire Jason’s power most of all. Once he had it, he would be able to find all the fey, everywhere.
I struggled against the bonds, hoping to move my hand enough to find his. I managed to link a few of his fingers into mine.
He said something, one word, but I could not hear him over the rush of wind in my ears. I slipped more of my fingers beneath his hand and squeezed. He turned his head to me, lips almost touching mine.
“Rashida.”
I closed my eyes. He had figured out what the Thaumater was for. I had told him to say his daughter’s name when he was about to betray me. He said it now, knowing that his power was about to betray the whole of fey kind. Rashida’s soul may have been long gone from this world, but it was for her sake that I did what I did next. At least, that’s what I told myself.
The man, this beautiful, tortured man, had chosen life with me instead of death by window. It had not been the better choice. But I had loved him, with whatever love my sires had deemed fit to put inside me. Love and Strife… all things being equal, if any force was going to save the world, it was Love.
And so I filled my heart with as much love and magic as I could muster and did what I had wanted to do since the moment we met.
I kissed the life right out of him.
I would have wept as I felt him go, but there was nothing left in me. I turned my face into the beautiful sea air and let the salt bless my lips. Death could have me now, come what may. Love and Strife would both take me to task for what I had done. I had taken a mortal life this day, but I had also brought one into the world. Perhaps the universe, at least, would be satisfied. Perhaps the gods would find my life payment enough for the chaos I had caused. And perhaps somewhere out there a young seal boy would live long enough to sing the song of his mother.
Perhaps.