I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I did. “How were you cured if none of the others were?”
“I’m hungry,” the stranger said, “and I’ll warrant that a feast awaits us.” He smiled down at me. “You’re a rare brave maid.” He patted my foot through the covers, and his touch soothed just as Meryl’s had. Then he left the room, stepping gracefully for such a giant.
Milton straightened my bedclothes and then followed the stranger out.
Bella stood over me. “Addie . . .” She shook her head, and a tear landed on my hand. She turned to Meryl. “Remember—she’s not as strong as you were.” She left.
“You are strong,” Meryl said after Bella had closed the door behind her. “You’re stronger than I was, stronger than I had any idea of.”
“I had no idea either. You could have started your adventures years ago and taken me along.” Now that she was ready to answer my questions, I was reluctant to hear. “I’ll come in the future, though.” I would, too. I had made a promise in Vollys’s cave, and I would keep it. I would help Meryl save Bamarre. Rhys would help too.
She shook her head.
“Yes, I will,” I said. “I want to be near you from today on.”
“I will always be nearby.”
“Good. That’s settled. However, I’m tired again. I think I’ll go back to sleep.” I wriggled down into the bed and closed my eyes.
“Addie?” Her tone changed. “Listen. . . . Please open your eyes.”
Now she sounded exactly like her old self.
“Meryl?”
She looked just as she used to when she was planning something forbidden—excited and happy and bursting with energy. She picked up my left hand and ran her fingers lightly across my knuckles. “Suppose I had a chance at adventures that were greater even than fighting monsters, greater than anything Bamarre can offer. Suppose I couldn’t be slain or even hurt in these adventures. I might not win—I might even lose—”
“It would be an odd adventure if you couldn’t get hurt.” I thought about it. “Nice, but it wouldn’t be a real adventure.”
She frowned in mock annoyance. “You’re not letting me finish. Suppose the adventures are real. Suppose the stakes are enormously high, even if I’m in no danger. Suppose I want to go on these adventures more than I ever wanted to do anything. Suppose I’m abjectly grateful at the chance to go on these adventures. But suppose you couldn’t come with me, suppose I couldn’t even tell you much about them. Would you—”
“But I have to come. I told you, I want you nearby.” I laughed, holding her hand tightly. “I’d especially want to go if we couldn’t get hurt.” I added impulsively, “Oh, it’s so wonderful to have you back, your old self back.” I squeezed her hand.
“I’m doing this all wrong.” Meryl’s voice had changed again, to something between my familiar Meryl and the new calm Meryl. “I’m not my old self anymore. That is, part of me is, but most of me isn’t. The fairies couldn’t cure me, Addie. I was too near death. So they offered me a way to live, a different way. It was a great honor.
“They offered to transform me into a fairy, and I said yes.”
Chapter Thirty
* * *
IMPOSSIBLE! SHE COULDN’T be a fairy. She was sitting here next to me, breathing in and out just as I was, as human as I was.
Yes, she was different—she’d gone insane. That was the difference. The Gray Death had robbed her of her mind.
“I know it’s hard to believe, Addie. I’d never . . .”
Why did Bella and Milton leave me alone to find out she was crazy?
“. . . not the first person to become a fairy. We remember what it was to be human—the other fairies don’t know. And Addie, the love stays.”
I couldn’t think what to say. “It must be pleasant to be a fairy,” I said, trying to speak as usual. “I’d like to try it myself.”
She laughed. “Addie, Addie. I’m telling the truth. I’m a fairy now.”
Maybe she was teasing me. But the joke wasn’t funny, and she had never been cruel.
She stood up. “How can I prove it to you?”
“You can’t.”
She paced in a small circle. After a minute or two, she said, “Perhaps this will convince you.” She took my empty mug from the table next to the bed and upended it over her hand. A few drops spilled out. One of them kept its shape in her hand and began to swell.
She resumed her seat next to me. “Watch.”
The drop grew to be a huge wet bubble the size of a cabbage. A scene took shape inside. I saw myself in there. I was crossing the drawbridge at Bamarre castle, wearing a serving maid’s gown and carrying a sack.
That scene dissolved, and another took its place. I saw myself in the magic boots. I was skimming along the ground and pulling an ogre after me.
In the next scene I saw myself, stepping warily through Mulee Forest. More scenes of my quest followed. I couldn’t look away, although I kept thinking, I’m dreaming. This is delirium.
Finally the scene in the Aisnan Valley appeared. It was the end of the battle, or the end of my part in it. I saw myself climb out of the grip of Vollys’s tail, saw Meryl stab Vollys’s claw. Then Vollys flamed at Rhys; he fell; I heaved my sword into Vollys’s throat; she freed my arm; the boulder smashed into my chest.
The scene went on, showing me what had followed, the part I hadn’t seen. The sky darkened. Lightning flashed, and rain fell, putting out the dragon fires that still raged.
“Now watch,” Meryl said—as though I’d look away!
The valley was lit again, not by the sun, but by whorls of colored light that drifted down from a mountain I had somehow not seen before. Within each bright whorl I made out a figure, not human but human shaped.
These beings of light bent over us, picked us up, and floated upward with us. I kept my eyes on the beings that carried Meryl and Rhys and me. But the scene shifted. I saw a being place me on a bed—this bed. Then the being bent over me. Its light engulfed me for a moment, no more. The being straightened and floated from the chamber, leaving me alone.
The scene shifted again, and I saw Rhys treated just as I had been. Another shift, and I saw Meryl on a bed, surrounded by many of the beings of light, a throng of them.
I saw Meryl sit up. Meryl, my Meryl!
“They could make me well for a little while, long enough for me to decide.”
In the bubble, Meryl’s face was rapt. She was listening to something. A moment later she laughed, while tears rolled down her cheeks.
“That’s when they offered me the choice of death or transformation. Before, I would have thought it would be easy to decide, but it wasn’t. The choice would last forever. Forever. Eternity—no going back, no changing my mind.
“But in one way there was no choice. Either way I’d lose you. Either way I’d stop being a human sister and stop having a human sister.”
In the bubble Meryl said something.
“That’s when I chose to be a fairy.”
I saw her lie back on the bed, and all the beings engulfed her. After a few seconds, they backed away from the bed. A new being, a new whorl, rose up. I gasped. “No!”
Then it was over. The bubble shrank and became a droplet again. The being next to me, the one who looked like Meryl, dried her hand on her gown.
I rolled over and wept into my pillows.
A hand stroked my hair, patted my back. I felt the comfort but went on crying. I hadn’t saved Meryl. My quest had failed. The Gray Death had killed her after all. If I hadn’t screamed when the ogre had grabbed me, she would have reached the waterfall in time. If I hadn’t waited so long to take up the quest, she would have lived. If I’d reached the Aisnan Valley before she’d been so near the end, dawn wouldn’t have mattered, and the water would have cured her. Now I’d lost her, and it was my fault.
The fairy stroked my back, and I cried on and on. I’d miss loving my sister. Loving her had changed me, had made me brave. Loving her was the
best part of me.
I don’t know how long I cried. Finally, I rolled over and peered up at the fairy through eyes that stung from so much weeping.
“Why do you look the same as you used to?” Almost the same.
“I’m accustomed to this shape. Several other fairies used to be human. They prefer to be this way, and so do I.”
“Do you miss your old self?”
“She’s still in me.”
But the human Meryl was frozen in the past, locked inside the fairy. The human Meryl would no longer feel things on her own, would no longer grow and change.
More tears came. “It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. You saved me. If not for you, I’d be dead.”
“If I had left home earlier, you’d be alive, and you’d be human.”
“Perhaps. But still, none of it was your fault. The Gray Death chose me. It might have chosen you, but it chose me.” She stroked my wet cheeks. “I used to wonder if I was secretly glad that I’d promised not to begin my adventures until you were married. I thought I might have promised because I was really a coward.”
That was absurd. She was never a coward. And it was my fault. She just didn’t realize. “If I hadn’t screamed when that ogre snatched me, you would have contin—”
She put her fingers over my lips. “No, Addie, that was my fault. I should have gone on to the falls. I should have known you could overcome an ogre. I had seen how much you’d changed.”
“But . . .” She was right. I had changed, and I did overcome the ogre. “But it wasn’t your fault for wanting to rescue me.”
“I’m not sure, but it makes no difference. It was all part of that glorious day. I’m so grateful to you for bringing me to the battle in the Aisnan Valley, because I discovered there that I was brave. You brought me to an adventure and gave me the chance to be a hero, which is all I ever wanted.”
“It’s not all I wanted,” I said. But her words comforted me somewhat, and they brought an understanding that had eluded me before. I finally saw the real difference between Meryl and me, truer than the difference between cowardly and brave. She wanted to battle monsters for the adventure of it. I wanted to defeat them for the peace that would follow.
“I missed you,” the fairy Meryl said. “I missed you while you were gone. I was proud of you for going, but I was afraid that you wouldn’t get back in time to tell me goodbye. I was afraid even while the Gray Death made me sleep. I’ve missed you here too, while you were healing. I’m so glad you’re awake now. I’m so glad I’ve regained you.”
“It’s not the same, though.” I thought about returning to Bamarre castle without her. Father had one daughter now. His firstborn was gone.
The fairy Meryl looked sad too. “You’re right. It’s not the same, and it won’t be the same. Fairies don’t have sisters.”
Her sadness was the best comfort, oddly enough. She missed being a sister too. It made me hug her, and when I did, when she hugged me tight, I found oceans of comfort, galaxies of comfort.
Chapter Thirty-one
* * *
AFTER A TIME MERYL left me, and I fell asleep again.
I’m not sure how long I slept. I awoke several times, and she was always there. Sometimes I wept again, grief mixed with joy. Sometimes I only filled my eyes with her.
At last I awoke and knew my convalescence was over. This time I was alone. I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. A gown was draped across two chairs.
It was a fairy gown, deep purple, with a gathered skirt that revealed a pale-violet underskirt. I touched the skirt, half expecting it to give off sparks. It didn’t, and the cloth was oh so soft, as soft as the cloth Rhys had given me an age ago.
Rhys!
I had asked Meryl for news of him whenever I awoke, but her report was always that he was resting. Now I would see for myself.
I dressed quickly. Not surprisingly, the gown fit me perfectly.
Someone knocked on my door. I opened it, and Meryl came in.
Standing up, dressed, no longer a weepy invalid, I felt shy with her. It came to me in a new way that she was a fairy.
“You’ve changed too, you know,” she said, understanding my look, or reading my mind—I was afraid to think which. “You’re not the timid little sister anymore. I’d feel shy meeting the new Addie—that is, if I were ever shy to begin with.” She grinned.
I felt easier. I asked about Rhys, and she said he was still resting. I couldn’t even look in on him, she said. Since sorcerers don’t sleep, he needed dark and quiet to get better. She said Milton was sitting outside his chamber. He had sworn to fetch me the moment Rhys was well enough for a visit.
I asked her to take me to Milton, because I had a few questions. She did, and we found the elf knitting as always, seated on a three-legged stool, looking smaller than usual next to the huge carved door to Rhys’s chamber. He jumped up when he saw us and put his knitting down on the stool.
“Addie! You’re well again.” He hurried toward us and looked me up and down. “Completely well.”
“How is Rhys?”
“He’s mending.”
“Why is it taking so long?”
Milton shrugged. “It takes as long as it takes. In the end he’ll be as well as you are.”
“Are you certain?” I wished the door were thinner and I could hear something, Rhys breathing or rolling over.
“Does he speak?” I asked next. Does he speak of me?
“When I go in to make sure he’s comfortable, he always asks after you.”
Always! Every time! I grinned foolishly.
“Tell him . . . tell him I’ve been to see you. Tell him I said he should mend as hard as he can and as fast as he can. Tell him . . .” I stopped. Tell him what?
Tell him I love him.
He knew that. “Tell him I miss him.”
Meryl and I left. She gave me a tour of the fairy castle and its gardens. The castle was vast, and the corridors seemed to twist and turn endlessly. I hoped I would never have to find my chamber on my own. The walls of the corridors and the chambers were hung with enormous tapestries depicting Drualt’s adventures. I examined one closely, comparing it to my own efforts in watercolor and embroidery. The colors were richer than any I ever had, and the realism was astonishing.
Meryl said, “Your portrayals have more feeling, Addie.”
I was glad to hear it, but I thought she was wrong. “What adventure is this?” It wasn’t in Drualt. “What monster is that?”
It resembled a huge winged crab that breathed fire like a dragon and had knife-sharp pincers.
“That’s Idrid. It’s the only one of its kind. Drualt fought it for a week before he finally defeated it.”
I was about to ask her how she knew about an adventure that wasn’t in Drualt, but then I remembered. She was a fairy. She’d know.
We left the castle, and Meryl showed me the gardens, where spring flowers and the flowers of summer and fall bloomed together. I heard again the singing that I’d first awakened to.
It was the pink sunrise or sunset of a fine warm day. As we wandered, I noticed that the sun never rose nor set. It only trembled on the brink, eternally full of promise.
“How high up are we?” I asked. “How tall is Mount Ziriat?”
“It’s half again as tall as the tallest peak in the Eskerns.”
“Are any creatures in Bamarre able to see it?”
“Not one. Not even dragons, although they know where it is.”
I wondered how it could be so warm here when we were so high up. A fairy came toward us on the path. It was one of the whorl-of-light fairies. I curtsied and didn’t dare look up until it had passed. But then I stared hard at the retreating figure. It seemed to glide more than walk, reminding me of a breeze made visible.
“Meryl, how does it feel to be a fairy?”
“I don’t know if I can describe it.” She was silent. “Humans . . . No, that’s not right. I used to have keen eye
sight. Do you remember?”
Of course I did.
“It’s even better now.” She took a deep breath. “I can see farther than you can with your spyglass, and I can look at you at the same time. From right here I feel the heat in the Bamarrian desert. I feel a teaspoon of sand slide off a sand dune. I hear the wind whistle around the stars. If I need to, I can leave you for a moment to move a star.”
To move a star? Why would she need to do that?
“You said being a fairy meant having more important adventures than you could have in Bamarre. What sort of adventures?”
She took my hand and led me to a bench. “Come. Milton says you shouldn’t overdo.”
We sat down.
“Bamarre and the other kingdoms float on a vast ocean, right?”
I nodded. Every child knew that. The kingdoms floated on a vast ocean under a vast sky.
“Under a vast sky. There are monsters deep in the ocean and high in the sky who threaten all the kingdoms. They’re wondrous, Addie! Wondrous and terrible!”
She sounded exactly as she used to.
“Idrid is one of them, and not the worst one. Some are . . .”
If Idrid was a monster in the world beyond Bamarre, then how could Drualt have fought it?
“. . . than ogres, and some are cleverer and wilier than dragons, and one I know of is hungrier and greedier than all the gryphons combined.”
Were they real? I wondered, looking up. It seemed that I could see forever through the clear sky, and I saw no monsters.
Meryl looked up too. “Eternal night hovers above our daylight. We fight monsters in that inky dark. We can see through it, and so can they. A host of fairies is fighting now. I’m to join them.” She stopped, and her unspoken words hung in the air. She would join them, and I would return to Bamarre without her.
I swallowed over the lump in my throat and tried to keep the misery out of my voice. “Will you really be safe? Are you sure you can’t be hurt?”
She took my hand. “I’m sure. They can’t hurt me. None of them can.”
“If they can’t hurt you, don’t you always defeat them?”