“You’re lying.” She wasn’t. I could see Firtha when I closed my eyes, could remember her telling me the story of how she’d died—how her entire family had died.
Selkie. I was a Selkie now.
“I’m not.”
I was angry and I was scared and I couldn’t stop blaming her. This all came back to her. Whether she’d intended it or not. “You—you orchestrated this whole thing! You wanted this to happen! You wanted me to have to come and live with you!”
Toby looked at me with sorrow in her eyes, and my heart sank. This was what it meant to be a monster. Now even my own mother was rejecting me. “That’s not going to happen,” she said. “You may need to take a little time off from school to adjust to the change, and I apologize for that. It’s still better than dying. And you’re not coming to live with me. You won’t even have to see me if you don’t want to. Your . . . ”
She stopped, looking like she was choking. I frowned.
“What?”
Toby swallowed, and said, “Your mother is here. J—Miranda. She knows about Faerie. She’s always known. She’ll take you home and tell you how to hide yourself from your father until someone can teach you how to spin illusions, and she can take you wherever you need to go.”
I sat up straighter. “Miranda is here? In this weird place?” Hope felt almost as unfamiliar as the webs between my fingers, growing in my chest like a strange flower. “Miranda knows about fairies?”
“She is. When the bad woman took you, she tried to make us think Miranda had done it, that she was the one who’d hurt you. I think she wanted us to fight, to give her more time to get you into hiding.” She paused. “Gillian, I’ll get Miranda for you, and I won’t come around unless you ask me to. You have my word on that. But I need you to think very hard. Apart from the woman you can’t remember clearly, was there anyone strange around the residence hall in the last few weeks? Anyone at all who didn’t feel like they should be there?”
I started to shake my head. Then I stopped, and asked, “Did I really see Jocelyn in that place with all the fog?”
Toby looked genuinely regretful as she said, “I’m sorry honey, but yes, you did.”
“That bitch.” The urge to find a way back there, just so I could rip every goddamn hair out of her head, was incredibly strong. “She was always trying to suck up to me, you know? Always asking questions about you, like you were some kind of hero, and not a deadbeat who ran out on her family when things got hard.”
“She said something similar when I came looking for you,” said Toby. It was clear that my words had struck home; I had never seen her looking so uncomfortable. “Why do you ask?”
Oddly, I found myself wanting to apologize to her. It wasn’t the best feeling. “Because she had a new boyfriend hanging around this past week. I mostly noticed because he was really cute, and I thought he might make a good model for our life drawing class.”
Toby sat up a little straighter. “What did he look like?”
“Cute,” I repeated. “Um. Tall, skinny, sort of a hipster vibe, like he did all his shopping at vintage stores for ‘the aesthetic,’ but didn’t really know how things went together. He pulled it off, it just didn’t look right, you know?”
“I do.” For a moment, I thought she might say something more. Finally, she gave a little shake of her head and asked, “Was there anything else about him that caught your attention? His hair, maybe?”
“Oh, yeah, his hair!” I would have snapped my fingers, but I wasn’t sure they worked that way anymore. I didn’t want to test it. “It was this amazing shade of emerald green. I really wish I’d been able to get the number of his stylist. My hair’s so dark that I can’t ever seem to find anyone who can get it to take color.” I plucked at a strand of my hair. At least that was still familiar.
“The man you saw with Jocelyn was tall and pretty and had green hair,” Toby pressed. “Are you sure?”
“I notice a good dye job.”
“Okay.” She rose, taking a step back. “I need to go. I’ll ask the Luidaeg to let Miranda come up here and talk to you. Please don’t try to take the sealskin off. I’m not sure you could yet, but if you did, I think you’d probably die. Please promise me you won’t.”
I nodded slowly. “I won’t.”
“Good.” She turned away.
Her shoulders were slumped, and she looked suddenly small, neither the monster of my childhood nor the hero of my infancy. She looked . . . tired. I didn’t like seeing her that way. She looked . . .
Human.
“Mom?”
She stopped dead. I wasn’t even sure that she was breathing.
“I . . . I’m really angry with you. For leaving, and for being something you never told us about. It impacted my life and I never knew why, and that’s not fair. I don’t know if I’m ever going to stop being angry with you. But thank you. For coming to save me when I needed you. I don’t know what I am now, and I don’t know if I’m going to like being it, but I know I didn’t want to be dead. So thank you.”
She smiled over her shoulder at me, still wan and tired and clearly miserable, but better. Just a little bit.
“You’re welcome,” she said, and slipped out the door, leaving me alone.
I flopped back into the pillows and raised my hands above my face, spreading my fingers until the light shone through the webs that connected them. I could feel them stretch like any other skin. They were a part of me. This was really happening.
“Well, fuck,” I said, and I had never said anything more accurate in my entire life.
FOUR
I would have sworn I wasn’t tired, but I must have fallen asleep again, because I woke to the sound of the door swinging shut, with the taste of saltwater in my mouth. I pushed myself upright in the bed, bracing my strange new hands against the mattress. It had more give than I was used to. I thought it might be stuffed with actual feathers, which didn’t make sense. No one had done that in centuries.
Then again, no one had believed in fairies—in faeries—in centuries, either, and look how that was going.
“Hello?” My voice came out as a dehydrated rasp, which didn’t make sense, given how much time I’d spent drenched to the skin recently. I still felt damp. Clearing my throat, I tried again, calling, “Is someone there?”
“Gilly!” Miranda swept the curtains of the bed aside with one hand before she flung herself at me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and pulling me into a tight embrace. “Oh, sweetheart, you had me so scared!”
She pushed me out to arm’s length without waiting to hear my reply, eyes raking up and down the length of my body. Her lips tightened when she looked at my hands, and tightened further when she reached my eyes, which she only met for a second before hugging me again.
“Never do that again,” she said, voice muffled by my shoulder. “Promise me you’ll never, ever do that again.”
“I don’t think I can lose my humanity more than once,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it’s like virginity. You’ve either got it or you don’t.”
Miranda pushed me back out to arm’s length, eyes flashing fury. “Don’t you say that. Never say that. No one can take your humanity away from you.”
“Really, Mom? Because I’m pretty sure I’m not human anymore.” I twisted free of her grasp, holding up my hand so that she could see the webs between my fingers. The gesture was horrifyingly similar to the way I had shown those same webs to Toby, and the thought turned my stomach. Was I going to lose both my mothers over this?
“You were born human, Gillian. That’s what matters.”
“Was I? October was just here, and she seemed to think I’d been born half-fae.”
“Not half,” said Miranda automatically—and froze.
My eyes narrowed. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Because
it sounded like she was right, and you knew.”
Miranda didn’t answer.
“Did you know, Mom? Did you know Toby wasn’t human? That she disappeared because she wasn’t human, and not because she ran away from us at all?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Miranda desperately. “It wasn’t my place, and the fae, they defend their secrecy fiercely. To the death, even. So I couldn’t say anything, and your father didn’t know. He thought she’d gotten overwhelmed by her responsibilities and run off. You were both happier thinking you understood what had happened. I didn’t lie. I just . . . didn’t tell anyone else’s secrets. I kept you safe.”
“You let me think my mother had run out on me,” I said slowly. “You let me think she didn’t love me.”
“She wouldn’t have kept you safe, Gillian. She couldn’t. What she is . . . humans aren’t meant to live in her world, and you were more human than not. Even then you were more human than not.” She tried to grab my hands.
I pulled them back and held them up, showing her the webs again. “Humans aren’t meant to live in our world, you mean. Are you going to leave me also, since I’m fae now? Like h—like my mother?”
“You’re not like her,” said Miranda, looking horrified. “You’re my little girl. Don’t be foolish, Gillian, you know I’ll never leave you.”
“You knew.” I shook my head. “You knew she wasn’t human, and you knew she didn’t mean to go. When I was kidnapped that first time, when she turned me human to save me, you knew that, too, didn’t you? I mean, if you knew everything else, you must have known what she’d done.”
“I was aware that she had pulled Oberon’s burden from your blood, yes,” she said stiffly. An odd accent crept into her words, flavoring them in a way I couldn’t quite name. “I thought she had done it as an apology.”
“An apology? To who?”
“To you. To your father. To our family. She set you free when she cast you out of Faerie. You could have had a normal life, with none of the trials she’d have set before you. You got so lucky, baby. I thought . . . I thought we were safe.”
“She’s still my mother, Mom. She’s still the woman who gave birth to me, and fae or not, I was—I am—still her daughter. I don’t know her.” I gestured wildly at the gauzy curtains around me, at the room I hadn’t really seen. “But I know that whoever she is, it’s the kind of person who makes someone who calls herself the sea witch want to do her favors. I know she saved me. Twice, she’s saved me. Don’t you get it, Mom? You thought you were keeping me safe, but you were putting me in danger, because you made sure I knew nothing about the people who might be out there looking to hurt me.”
“I didn’t do that!” Miranda protested, looking shocked. “She did that. If she hadn’t—” She seemed to realize that she’d made a mistake, because she stopped midsentence, a guilty look flashing over her face.
“If she hadn’t what, Mom?” I asked quietly. “If she hadn’t come back? If she hadn’t tried to make contact? Are you really going to sit there and tell me that you could have stayed away if your positions had been reversed?”
Miranda wouldn’t meet my eyes. Which was, in its own way, answer enough.
“How do you know about the fae?”
“I met them a long time ago. They made things difficult for me, so I’ve spent my life making things difficult for them.”
A new thought came to me, accompanied by a wash of tired horror. “You didn’t meet Dad by accident, did you?”
“Gillian . . . ” She paused and sighed heavily. “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”
“What if I do want to know?”
“Then you shouldn’t ask them because you’ll break your poor old mother’s heart.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and throw things and rip the sealskin off my shoulders and keep it far, far away from her, in case she decided that it was too fae and hence not to be allowed. If I took it off, I’d die. I felt like I was dying anyway. Maybe being poisoned by something magical and impossible triggered a sort of weird repeat puberty, where your emotions went all out of control and weird. It would have been a better answer for the way I was feeling than anything else.
Although I guess simple shock could have had something to do with it.
“Get out.”
My voice was low enough that she didn’t hear me at first, just continued sitting next to my bed and waiting for—something. I didn’t know what, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to ask. Finally, she turned back to face me.
“Did you say something, sweetheart?”
“Yes.” I made myself keep looking at her. If I turned away, I’d lose, and if I lost now, I lost forever. I could see that, as surely as I didn’t know what winning meant anymore. “I said ‘get out.’ I want you to leave, please.”
She couldn’t have looked more startled if I had slapped her. “Gilly—”
“You lied to me. My whole life, you’ve been lying to me, and now I’m . . . I’m not even human anymore. I don’t ever get to be human again. And I know you’re going to tell me that’s Toby’s fault, that she’s the reason I was in danger, and I guess you’re right, but she’s also the one who turned me human when she could have stolen me away from you forever. She’s the one who tried her hardest to let me keep my life the way it was. I guess if you’d bothered to tell me what she was, to tell me how to take care of myself, we might not be sitting here now.”
Miranda recoiled, putting one hand over her heart like I had stabbed her. In a way, I guess I had.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she whispered.
“Whose fault is that?” The air was too dry. I couldn’t breathe. Forcing myself to stay as calm as I could, I pointed to the door. “Go. I need some time.”
“I’m your mother.”
“You are. No one can ever take that away from you. You raised me. You’re the face I picture when I think of the word ‘mom.’ But . . . I don’t know how I feel about that right now. Because maybe no one can take it away from you, but maybe you took it away from someone else. Please leave. I don’t want to be mad at you, and I think I will be if you stay.”
Miranda rose, movements short and jerky. “I’ll be right downstairs,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re ready to come home with me.”
“That’s good. Dad probably wouldn’t like it if you came home alone. I—” I hesitated. “Does he know? About, um, the fae, and about Toby not being human, and . . . everything?”
“No,” said Miranda. “He never did.”
Somehow, that didn’t make things better. I nodded silently and lay back down, rolling onto my side so that I couldn’t see her. I stayed there, perfectly still, until I heard footsteps cross the floor, and the door opening, and the door closing again, and I was alone.
Hot, bitter tears stung my eyes. No matter how much I blinked, they refused to fall. The overwhelming dryness of the air was getting worse, and it was like my body knew it couldn’t afford to lose any more liquid. I sat up, shoving the covers aside, and staggered to my feet for the first time since I’d woken up, pushing the gauzy veils surrounding the bed aside.
The room was small and round and like something out of a fairy tale, the sort of place where the witch would keep Rapunzel until it was time for ever after to begin. There were windows. All of them looked big enough for a person to fit through. I started toward the nearest one and paused as I realized that I wasn’t naked. Maybe that was a weird thing to be surprised by, but after everything else that had happened since I’d been kidnapped—again—it was just one thing too many. I looked down at myself. I was wearing a plain blue sweater and dark pants, in addition to the sealskin tied around my shoulders.
Wait. It was tied outside the sweater. So how could I feel it so clearly? I fingered the knot, trying to make sense of what
I felt. There was a layer of wool between my actual skin and the one that had been gifted to me. It should have been a weight, nothing more.
You have to keep it on, whispered Firtha’s voice. But it was only a memory. She wasn’t here, if she was even real. My dreams weren’t usually that literal.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, and undid the knot.
Leather knots easily. Leather is made for tying things off and holding things in place. Fur is a different story. Fur is thick and heavy and when I picked the knot at the front of the sealskin apart with my fingers, it separated easily, eagerly even, like it wanted to be free of this stupid situation as much as I did. A small voice that was half mine and half Firtha’s whispered panicked warnings in the back of my mind, but I ignored it. I was tired of people acting like they knew what was best for me, like they didn’t need to give me clear answers and allow me to make my own choices. I was done.
The sealskin came away from my shoulders, falling with a thump. I took a deep breath. See? I hadn’t dropped dead or collapsed or anything else ridiculous like that. I was fine. I was—
Every nerve in my body felt like it caught fire at once. I had time for one short, sharp scream before I was falling, and I was unconscious before I hit the floor.
FIVE
“Get up.”
A toe dug into my side, prodding me. Whoever it belonged to wasn’t being particularly gentle.