Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre (20 page)

    "But you didn't." I kept my voice calm, trying to steady her.

    "I knew it was you and I still wanted to kill you."

    She was trying to explain it to herself, as if her hand had been guided by some external force.
    "The important thing is, you didn't."
    "I was going to."
    "But I'm still here. So it's OK."
    "It's not OK. It'll never be OK."

    And there it was, the dead end I encountered every time I tried to reach out to her. I stood watching the traffic, unable to cross the chasm between us. I was surprised when she spoke.

    "When I was little, we lived in a house in a forest." Her voice lost its edge and softened with memory. I had no idea where this conversation was going but I left her space to think about what she wanted to say and it was a while before she spoke again.

    "The house was deep into the trees. At night, sometimes, I went to sleep with the wind roaring in the canopies around the house. It was elemental, and I loved it." There was another long pause.

    "My mother used to hold me up high and whirl me around and tell me I had wings and that one day I would fly…" Her voice broke and she stopped again. She fished in a pocket, pulling out a rumpled hanky. "She used to leave me with my father for hours sometimes. She would kiss his cheek and tell him she'd be back soon. He would smile and busy himself outside. He loved the forest and would spend hours chopping logs or mending things. I would go up to my room and play, wondering where she went.

    "There was a pitched roof below my window at the back of the house and, one time, I stepped out over the sill and slid down the slates to the soft earth. I sneaked around the house and followed my mother into the forest while my father was occupied. It didn't take long to catch up with her, she was in no hurry. She followed a path though the trees to a clearing.

    "I nearly cried out when I saw what came out of the forest to meet her, but she ran towards it and threw herself into its arms and he picked her up and whirled her around above his head, the way she did for me. It was the first time I saw Gramawl."

    She stiffened, steeling herself against whatever was coming.

    "I never heard my mother and father fight. Then one night I woke to her screaming my name up the stairway, telling me to run and hide." Her voice solidified into ice. "I didn't know what to do. I wanted to go to her, but there were sounds downstairs, strange sounds, screams, crashing, my father yelling – it sounded like they were fighting. I didn't understand."

    I could hear her, steadying herself with long slow breaths.

    "I went to my window and opened it wide. It was a wild night and the wind was tearing leaves from the trees in the dark. Everywhere was moving, swaying in the moonlight and I stood at the window and thought how I would slide down the pitched roof and run and find my mother's friend in the forest and tell him to come and help. But I couldn't. I was scared. It was dark and wild, and I wanted her to come and get me. I wanted her to come and tell me everything was well. "The noises downstairs ceased, quite suddenly, and I backed into the corner of my room and made myself as small as I could. I put my hands over my eyes and peeked through my fingers. I still wanted to see, do you understand? The moonlight came into my room, dancing across the ceiling with the wildness outside. I leaned over to look outside, but the moon wasn't shining in." Her voice had gone quiet and small.

    "I tucked myself back in the corner, just as the door was thrown open, and my instinct shouted in my mind 'I'm not here! I'm too small! You can't see me!' But I was only young and there was no magic in me to answer." She took a long slow breath.

    "The figure in the doorway was darkness. He was outlined in moonlight, but he was just dark. The light in the room swam with the trees outside as he entered the room. He went to the open window and looked out into the night. I could have touched his coat, I was so close. He turned back and went to the mirror hanging over the dresser, my faerie mirror, the one my mother had bought for me because it had tiny winged figures carved into the frame all around it. He placed his hand on it and the light from his hand entered it, turning it milky and then clear as the moonlight shone through it." She glanced sideways at me, then looked back resolutely at the road.

    "He said, 'They're dead, but the girl has run off into the forest.' For a moment I thought he was talking to me and I nearly said, 'No, I'm here,' but then a voice came from the mirror, distorted and slowed down. "It said 'Find her.' That's all. Just two words: 'Find her.' It sounded so cold, so angry.

    "The figure took his hand from the mirror and the light within it faded. He turned back to the window facing me, but there was no face, just blackness. The light swelled until a nimbus formed around him and I was sure he couldn't fail to see me squeezed into the corner. Then he took a step towards me and vanished. "The room went dark, but it was a normal dark, a welcome dark. I stayed there, curled into the corner, too terrified to close my eyes in case he came back. The wind died down and the room faded into grey and I stayed pressed into the corner, sure the figure of darkness was waiting for me to give myself away. "As the light grew steadier, there was a noise on the stairs, a creak as something heavy shifted. Gramawl, my mother's friend, unfolded from my doorway and filled my room. He didn't make a sound, but he opened his arms and I uncurled myself and ran to him, burying myself in his embrace." She blew her nose noisily.

    "There was no point in looking for her. The Feyre stand between life and power, holding the two in equilibrium, but when they die there's nothing to hold the power back. The magic consumes their flesh and bones in a last flare of power. We buried my father in the forest, Gramawl and I. It was the only thing to do. He loved the trees."

    She tucked the hanky back into her pocket and straightened her coat.

    "Afterwards, I went back up to my room and smashed the mirror. I couldn't bear the thought of his hand on it, calling the moonlight. Then Gramawl took me to Kareesh and she took me in, just like that. She didn't dwell on what had happened, and I grew up in the forest with her and Gramawl as foster-parents, though she is more like a grandmother to me. She told me what I was and who I was and taught me about the Feyre. They were both there for me when no one else was."

    She pushed her hair back from her face, sniffed.

    "When I was older, I asked her about that night and about what had happened. I asked her why the wraithkin hadn't seen me, though I must have been plainly visible. She told me she would tell me when I came into my power and that then I would understand. So I waited.

    "And when the time came, she taught me what power was and how to wield it, tutoring me in the subtleties and nuances of it. She showed me what it means to be Fey. I thought she would tell me about that night, when I had learned enough, but she never raised it. She let me take my time until I was ready to ask again. "
    "When I finally did, she explained it to me." She turned to face me, finally, her eyes red-rimmed, skin puffy and blotchy. "You remember when I sent you to the moors with the wolves? That's one of the gifts I inherited from my mother. That's what my mother did to the wraithkin, but she couldn't bind him to it. Without his name, he could shrug it off any time he wanted to. So she made a world for him identical to the one he was in, except I wasn't in it. He couldn't see me because, for him, I wasn't there. "
    "She saved you," I said quietly.

    "She saved me, but to do it she had to touch…" The tears welled in her eyes again and she fumbled for the hanky. "She had to put her hand on that blackness, defenceless against what he could do. He consumed her power, sucked the life out of her and discarded her, and she stood there and deceived him while he did it so that I…" The tears ran down her cheeks unheeded, the hanky wrung between her hands. "So I…" Her shoulder shook and she turned her back to me. I stepped forward to offer some comfort.

    "Don't!" She threw her hand back, warding me off.
    "Don't touch me."
    "I'm sorry, I didn't think–"
    "You can't help it. It's what you are."
    Her shoulders shook.
    "I can't change what I am."

    "I know. But that's why I wanted to kill you. Part of me still wants to." She stood apart and I watched her cry.

    Sometimes Alex hates me. She rails against me and screams and shouts and stamps about as if she can't contain the fury within her. Then she cries and screams again and I try and stay calm and soothe her. And when her anger is spent, she won't let me touch her, won't let me hold her. So I wait. And when the storm has finally blown itself out and she's calm again, I open my arms and she'll come and press her head against my chest and accept comfort from me.

    I waited until Blackbird had calmed herself and then

    I opened my arms in that way to her, knowing that, being Fey, touch had other connotations to her than to my daughter but wanting to offer her that simple gesture against her pain. Her grief was wrapped about her like a veil and it was beyond me not to offer some comfort. She hesitated at this human gesture and I thought she would turn away from me again.

    Instead, she shook her head. "No, I'm all right, really. It's just that I've never told anyone that before. Kareesh and Gramawl knew but I've never told anyone else. Only with you being…" She dried up.

    "Yes." I dropped my hands back to my sides, awkwardly. At least I knew why she pulled away. She blew her nose on the dishevelled hanky and stuffed it back into her pocket, looking up at me. "So now what?" she lifted her chin, making a bold effort to put the weight of the past aside. Eyes still puffy, she was determined to move on, rather than dwell on what had been.

    "I don't know. I was hoping you'd be able to tell me. "
    "The building over the way, there. You said it was the one in your vision. What about it?"

    "I don't know. It was mixed up with a whole load of other stuff. I just know it's the one. In the vision there was a sign by the main door carved into the stone, that's all. "
    "What does it say? "
    "I don't know. I couldn't see it clearly. "
    "We should go and look then. "
    "Are you sure you're up to this?"

    "I'm fine." She broke into a half smile. "I thought I was over it, it was all such a long time ago, but when you summoned the gallowfyre… it brought it all back. I know it's wrong to blame you, but… "
    "You still do."

    "I don't blame you. I don't. It just feels like I should. "
    "Because of what I am?" I rubbed at where the point of the knife had pressed under my chin, feeling the break in the skin.

    "The rational part of me knows you aren't him and could never have been him. It's just my feelings haven't caught up with the rest of me yet.
    "I understand. Sort of."

    "We should go and have a look at this building of yours. Maybe the writing on the doorway will tell us something."

    I accepted her change of subject and she turned away from the window, straightening her coat, and took the stairway down to ground level. I tagged along, down and through the darkening passage to the heavy street door. Blackbird turned the catch, shot back the bolt and opened the door, spilling daylight into the corridor. We stepped out onto the pavement along the Strand, attracting only mildly curious stares from passers-by. Blackbird let me past and then stood at door, masking what she was doing with her body. It made a low
crunk
sound and when she tested it again, it was locked. I stepped across the wide pavement and turned to look at where we had emerged. A sign along the base of the arched window above the street declared it to be the Strand Station of the Piccadilly Railway. "I've never heard of a Strand Station," I told her. "In fact, I didn't know there was a tube station here at all. "
    "There isn't. The line was supposed to go through under the Thames but the extension was never built. This is as far as they managed."

    She turned and walked brusquely off down the Strand with me trailing after her. Then she slowed, allowing me to catch up so we could walk alongside each other. It was a small concession, given what she'd told me.

    We crossed the busy road when the traffic thinned momentarily and continued across the road down the side of Australia House. The building was roughly triangular in plan, being the easterly point at the end of the long crescent formed by Aldwych alongside the Strand. There were doors for the public set along the side of the building with notices about opening times for the issuing of visas and other documents. Posters of Ayer's Rock, Uhuru or whatever it was called, adorned the walls inside.

    We followed the pavement past these until we came to the blunted point of the triangle where the Strand opened out into a wide thoroughfare. A church faced us across the broad paved area where the trees were shedding, the leaves whirling around in a fickle breeze. Turning back, the entrance to Australia House was impressive with tall stone pillars and heavy iron gates folded back against the wall inside the entrance porch. To either side of the doorway, stone statues graced the entrance, while high above the gates a bronze sculpture of heroic figures on untamed horses adorned the frontage. Inside the doorway there were letters picked out in gold, carved into the door pillar where I knew they would be. Blackbird leaned down to inspect the writing. "What does it say?" I asked.

    "It says the stone was laid in…" She translated the
    Roman numerals. "1913. Does that mean anything to you?"
    "No. Should it?"

    "Are you sure? It must have some significance or you wouldn't have seen it in the vision."

    "Well, perhaps it's not the building that's significant. Maybe we're supposed to meet someone here, or find something?"

    I looked around at the roads, busy with passing traffic. No one approached us with a secret code word or a mysterious package. There was a distinct absence of things with clues written on them.

    "Do you see anything else that looks familiar?" Blackbird asked.