Reunion (47 page)

"You have your own bathroom," Teagan pointed out and then she smiled as she realized the problem. "Come on, let me help you up and I'll show you how it works. They're insane in this realm. They using drinking water to flush everything away, but you'll love having hot showers, I can promise you that."

"Thank you."

Brydie was quite sore, apparently. She'd given birth by caesarean and it would be weeks before she would be back to normal. Teagan helped her to the bathroom without tangling herself in the drip line, wheeling the unit as Brydie shuffled slowly alongside. Teagan showed her how everything worked in the bathroom, and then waited in the room with the door open for Brydie to finish. Once she was done, she helped her back to the bed, rearranged the drip and then straightened her blankets for her.

"Thank you so much," Brydie said with a sigh.

Poor girl, I wonder how long she's been holding on?
"That's okay."

"My name is Brydie."

"I know," she said taking a seat at the foot of the bed. "They told me. My name is Teagan. Mother says I'm to show you how to get by in this world." She smiled. "It takes some getting used to."

"I'm still getting used to daylight," Brydie said with a sigh. "Everything seems different when you're not looking at it through an amethyst wall."

Teagan had no idea what Brydie was talking about and decided not to inquire. That was something else she'd learned here. Uninvited curiosity was frowned upon. If the
Matrarchaí
thought you needed to know something, they would tell you, otherwise it was none of your business.

"Oh, and I can take you to see your babies, if you feel up to the walk. Apparently it's supposed to be good for you to start moving about."

"Maybe later," Brydie said.

Teagan was surprised by that. She thought the new mother would be champing at the bit to see her babies. She'd expected to have to hold Brydie back, but the young woman seemed disinterested. Maybe she was suffering post-partum depression. Or perhaps it was pain. They'd cut the babies out of her, after all.

"Do you live here?" Brydie asked.

"In this place? Or in this realm?" Clearly this girl came from somewhere other than this world, so Teagan figured she was safe asking that.

"Are you not from this realm?"

"I was brought here from another realm about seven years ago."

Brydie studied her for a moment with a thoughtful expression. "And your name is Teagan, you say?"

"Yes ... why? Is that a problem?"

Brydie nodded, as if she had worked something out for herself that Teagan wasn't privy to. "I suppose ... makes sense, really. I mean they always thought it was the
Matrarchaí
who took you."

"What are you talking about?"

"You are the Empress Teagan, aren't you? Your sister is Isleen. Your mother is Wakiko."

Teagan stared at her in shock. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I've just come from your realm," Brydie informed her. "Ren told me about you."

It was as if the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. For a moment, Teagan couldn't breathe. "
You
know Renkavana?"

Brydie nodded and then she shrugged. "Kind of. He talked to me a lot when I was ... well, in your realm. Did you ever catch up with Isleen?"

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you know? Isleen broke through the bonds Ren put on Delphine's memories and went rift running looking for you. I suppose it must have only been a couple of weeks ago, now, but I really have no idea. Time was ... different where I've been." She stopped talking and looked at Teagan with concern. "I'm guessing, from the look on your face, that you didn't know any of this."

Teagan shook her head, almost speechless with shock. "They keep promising me they'll go back for her when we're twenty-one."

"Why twenty-one?"

Teagan shrugged. "I don't know. How is she? How's my mother?"

"I couldn't say, Teagan. I'm sorry, but I only know what Ren told me about you and your sister. I never actually saw anyone other than Ren the whole time I was in your realm. Well, eventually I saw the
Leipreachán
. And Trása. And Nika, too, come to think of it, and some of the
Youkai
in
Tír Na nÓg
. But really, that was just toward the end before we came to this realm."

"Trása is in this realm
now
?" Teagan wasn't actually under instructions to report her conversations with Brydie to the
Matrarchaí
, but she had a feeling they'd want to know something like that. "Why did they come here? Are they looking for Isleen? Is she here, too?" That possibility made her almost giddy. Teagan rarely admitted, even to herself, how much she missed her twin. But the thought that Isleen might be stuck in this realm with no chance to use her magic and no way of coping without it ...

That was something else Teagan had figured out over the years. It took her a long time to understand why, when in a magical realm she had the power to flatten buildings if the mood took her, they had kept her here where she could do nothing and learn nothing about her power. Teagan had eventually realized it suited the
Matrarchaí
for people like her to be rendered powerless.

In her own realm, had she stayed there, they would have welcomed her ability and used her to further their ambition to strip as many realities as possible of their
sídhe
populations. But here in this realm, in the very bosom of the
Matrarchaí
, in the place where the true power resided, the
Matrarchaí
kept a very tight leash on potential powerhouses like Teagan. Had the
Matrarchaí
been successful in bringing Isleen through the rift, the same night they stole Teagan from the Edo palace, it might have been different. Twins provided their own innate set of checks and balances. But without Isleen here, with no way of controlling both of them, or knowing what her twin was up to, the
Matrarchaí
never fully trusted Teagan, despite the promises they had made to her the first day they brought her here. By now, of course, she'd realized they had no intention of sharing their innermost secrets with her, just to have her sister turn up someday and entice her away, or worse, entice her to join the
Matrarchaí
's enemies.

Teagan understood their reasoning, she even sympathised with it. But that didn't alter the fact that she had been denied the chance to become a great sorcerer because her twin sister hadn't made it through the rift with her.

"I'm sorry, Teagan. I don't know where she is," Brydie explained.

"She'd know the way here," Teagan said. "When Mother finally unlocked the memories in my mind, I knew immediately how to get here through a rift. I even knew who to contact when I got here and how to do it. Do you suppose she came here?"

"Surely they would have said something to you if your sister had arrived in this realm?" Brydie said.

Teagan nodded. "Of course they would." She wished she felt as confident of that as she sounded.

Before Brydie could ask anything further, the door opened and a smiling face appeared around the door. "Ah! There you are," the woman said. She was an older woman, with a round face and a warm smile, wearing a nurse's uniform. "Not interrupting anything important, am I?"

"We were just talking," Teagan assured her. "Come in."

"I just came to tell you the babies are ready when you are," the woman announced from the door. "A pair of fine wee babes they are, too. Take your time and don't strain anything. Teagan can show you the way."

Brydie smiled, but it looked quite forced. "Be right there!"

The door closed and Teagan turned, expecting to see Brydie throwing back the covers. But she hadn't moved. In fact, she looked quite pale.

"Are you okay?"

Brydie's eyes welled up with tears. "Can you keep a secret, Teagan?"

"Sure."

"I don't want the babies." She looked panic-stricken but almost relieved to admit such a thing out loud.

Teagan wasn't sure what to say. She was barely twenty, hadn't even thought about having her own children yet, and Brydie looked no older than she was. Far from being shocked by her admission, she was actually quite sympathetic. "I understand, but maybe once you see them ..."

Brydie wiped away her tears, and sniffed, as if she was angry at herself for being so emotional. "There's something not right with them, Teagan. I know it."

"Ana just said they were fine."

But Brydie was adamant. "They're not fine. They were caught in an enchanted jewel for ten years and went from nothing to being born in a matter of hours."

"That's magic for you," Teagan said with a shrug.

"But this realm has no magic, Teagan," she reminded her. "So tell me, how can that be?"

Teagan had no answer for that.

"Do you know, they didn't cry."

"What?"

"The babies. When they were born. Neither of them made a sound."

"That might have been because of the drugs they gave you," Teagan suggested, uncomfortable with the whole discussion. What would she know about having babies?

"It wasn't the drugs. There's something not right with them, Teagan."

"Tell you what," she said, "why don't we go and see them? Then we can find out, one way or another."

"Do you believe me?"

Teagan thought about that for a moment before she shrugged. "I don't
disbelieve
you."

"That's a start," Brydie said with a sigh. "Will you come with me?"

"Sure," she said, "I like babies."

"I wish I did," Brydie said.

The nursery was a short way up the hall in a room so well set up, Teagan figured there must be a lot of babies born here. It made sense, she supposed. Babies were the
Matrarchaí
's stock-in-trade. It shouldn't surprise her to find they were well equipped to cope with a couple of newborns.

"Ah, there you are," the cheerful, tubby nurse overseeing the nursery pronounced as they opened the door. Teagan followed Brydie into the nursery and looked around with interest. It looked like any hospital nursery, with mobiles hanging from the ceiling, nursery rhyme characters painted on the walls and a couple of unoccupied neonatal humidicribs parked in the corner, obviously not needed for Brydie's babies.

The babies were not in the clear plastic cribs hospitals favored, however. In the center of the room was a massive wooden cradle carved with elaborate Celtic knotwork, inlaid with softly glowing mother-of-pearl. Teagan studied the cradle with interest.

"Solid oak, it is," the nurse informed them with a smile. "The wee babes should fit in there together for a while yet."

"It's beautiful," Brydie said, looking a little bemused.

"Aye, it is. That mother-of-pearl was brought up from the very depths of the ocean by the
mara-warra
. It was a gift from a faerie queen centuries ago, according to legend. It's rocked many a generation of twins to sleep since then, I don't doubt."

"I thought we hated Faeries," Teagan said.

"That we do, lassies," the nurse agreed, and then she turned to Brydie, "but it doesn't mean they can't turn out the odd craftsman when it suits them. My name is Ana, by the way. I'll be helping you with the bairns until you're properly on your feet again."

"Er ... thank you," Brydie answered.

"Have you given them names yet?"

"Marie-Claire named them. Hope and Calamity."

Ana said nothing for a fraction of a second and then she smiled. "Well, Mother knows what she's about. They're lovely names."

Hope, maybe,
Teagan thought.
But Calamity ... really?

"You can come closer," Ana said, as neither Teagan nor Brydie made any attempt to move further into the room. "They won't bite."

Using the wheeled drip stand to support herself, Brydie took a step closer. Teagan couldn't believe how reluctant she was to see her children. Surely she was a little bit curious?

"You'll be able to spend more time with them once the doctor's been to check on your stitches and you get that drip out. She's already rung to say she's on her way, so that should be sometime after dinner. Then we can bring them to you and you can try feeding them yourself. It's important for you to begin the bonding process."

Teagan glanced at Brydie and realized that far from looking forward to having her babies with her, she was terrified by the idea. "I'll stay with you," she offered.

Brydie shot her a grateful look and then turned to stare at the cradle. "It's very ... impressive."

"An impressive cradle for some impressive babes," Ana said. She fussed over the cradle a little more, smoothing the mattress out and arranging the blankets, and then she stepped back and allowed them to come closer.

A step behind Brydie, Teagan followed her toward the cradle. She heard Brydie gasp before she saw the babies for herself. Brydie covered her mouth with her hand as Teagan stepped up beside her, wondering at the horrified look on Brydie's face, and then she looked into the cradle and understood why.

The babies weren't human.

There were human-shaped and they looked the size of day-old babies, but they had distinctly pointed Faerie ears, a shock of dark hair and when one of them opened her mouth a little, she spied a mouthful of tiny, pointed teeth.

"What ... what are they?" Brydie gasped.

"The future," Ana replied.

"I never gave birth to these ... monsters."

"I'd not be saying that in their hearing," Ana warned. "Whatever you might think of the bairns, lass, they are your flesh and blood. You are their mother. You are required to love them."

Brydie shook her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks. "They're not even human."

"Of course they're not. What good would human babies be to us at this juncture?"

Brydie didn't answer. Instead, she turned and struggled to flee the room, dragging the drip stand in her wake. Teagan stared down at the babies for a moment longer and then looked up at Ana, feeling the need to apologize for Brydie's odd behavior.

"She'll come around."

"She'd better," Ana said, rather ominously, and then she turned to attend to something over by the change table near the window.